Yesterday evening I started re-reading Wesley Frank Craven's book on The Dissolution of the Virginia Company and came across his short quotation from the start of the instructions the company gave to George Yeardley on 18th November, 1618: the relevant phrase is to be found in Kingsbury, Volume III, pp.98-99 where Yeardley was informed that the company had "thought good to bend our present cares and Consultations .... to the setling there [i.e. in Virginia] of a laudable form of Government by Majestracy and just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting like as we haue already done for the well ordering of our Courts here and of our Officers and accions for the behoof of that plantacion ...." The words from 'like' to 'plantacion' in the quotation are the ones I am puzzled about. I am not clear exactly what this refers to or, more importantly, when this procedure had been accomplished. Was it very recent or some time in the past? If it had been done recently, the puzzle is complicated by the report of the Committee appointed on 26th April, 1619 and which met on 27th April, 1619 to delineate the duties of the officers of the Virginia Company (Kingsbury, Volume III, pp.139-144): the excisions in this document and marginal notes may - I do not want to make any rash assertions - just be based on an earlier document. I am just wondering about how much earlier, if at all, that might have been

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