Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

Now, with respect to Newport's and Sir William Neuse's¹ alleged joint presence in the Colony, let us see how a few facts of history will dissipate into vanishing mist the dreams of Mr. Grigsby as to this matter. But permit first a few remarks preliminary thereto.

When, in 1624, the King resolved to take away and abolish the charter of the Virginia Company of London, “an attempt was made to obtain the records of the Company by their opponents.” --[Neill.] Mr. Neill, in the preface to his history of that Company, states that Collingwood, the Secretary of the Company, informed Sir John Danvers, “a prominent member of the Company,” of this attempt, whereupon it was decided to have an accurate copy of the records made before the Company should be called on to deliver them up. To preclude discovery a clerk of Collingwood's was locked up in a room of Sir John's house “while he transcribed the minutes.” After the work was done on sheets of folio paper, each page, in order to prevent interpolation, was carefully compared with the originals by Collingwood, and then subscribed “Con. Collingwood,” and the whole (bound in two volumes, the first of 354 pages and the second of 387 pages, containing the Company's Transactions from April 28, 1619, to June 7, 1624), was taken by Danvers to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who was President of the Company.

Space does not permit me to trace here the travels of these manuscript volumes through the hands and ownership of different parties in England and Virginia, until they came at length into the possession of Thomas Jefferson, and after his death were purchased by the Government of the United States, and are now in their manuscript state, in the library of that goverment in Washington, D. C.

Three days before the comparison was finished, judgment (in court) was pronounced against the Company, and on the 15th July the King ordered all the papers of the Company to be given up to a commission. This was done, but the commissioners knew nothing of the copies that had been executed by Collingwood's clerk.

[After repeated researches in England for the original minutes, they cannot be found, and it is supposed they were designedly destroyed because they contained entries damaging to the reputation of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the commissioners.]