Note 325 — Chapter X

"The remonstrances of the Virginia corporation and a transient regard for the rights of the country could delay, but could not defeat, a measure that was sustained by the personal favorites of the monarch. King James issued to forty of his subjects, some of them members of his household and his government, the most wealthy and powerful of the English nobility, a patent, which in American annals, and even in the history of the world, has but one parallel. The territory conferred on the patentees in absolute property, with unlimited jurisdiction, the sole powers of legislation, the appointment of all officers and all forms of government, comprised, and at the time was believed to comprise, much more than a million of square miles: it was, by a single signature of King James, given away to a corporation within the realm, composed of but forty individuals."—Bancroft, vol. i., p. 273.