Looks like you've got the makings of a good article or book, either or both
would be good ways to make your case.

On Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 8:46 AM Christopher Thompson <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I began my serious historical research many years ago by investigating the
> involvement of the Rich family, i.e. of the 2nd Earl of Warwick and his
> second cousin, Sir Nathaniel Rich, in the affairs of the Virginia Company
> of London. This entailed detailed work on the Records of the Virginia
> Company edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury between 1906 and the mid-1930s and
> contact with the studies of Wesley Frank Craven and that of Theodore Rabb
> which was then in progress on the career of Sir Edwin Sandys. I have
> maintained a watching brief on more recent historiography and have written
> quite a few small-scale pieces over the years on the subject. One of the
> features of earlier and later historiography on the subject which was and
> still is a surprise to me is the credence given to the claims of Sir Edwin
> Sandys and the two Ferrar brothers, John and Nicholas, about the struggle
> for control of the Virginia Company and over its eventual dissolution.
> Sandys and his allies usually appear as admirable figures brought down by
> the Indian massacre of the English colonists and by the machinations of
> their opponents in the Virginia and Bermuda companies. This view, which
> still features in very recent works, is, I am afraid, profoundly mistaken.
> Sandys was a grossly incompetent manager of the companies' affairs as Rabb
> and, more recently, Michael Jarvis recognised. The records, moreover, on
> which this erroneous assessment rests are highly selective and inadequately
> edited. It is a grave mistake to take the opinions of Sandys, the Ferrars
> and their allies about their own virtues and their critics' malevolence at
> face value. The problem for Sandys and their supporters in the final
> analysis was that their correspondence with the colonists in Virginia fell
> into their opponents' hands and revealed the desperate state of the colony
> and their mendacity. The history of Virginia requires a wholly new
> approach, one free from the misconceptions that still dog its
> representation.
>
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