Existing comment:
The Charter of Virginia
In 1606 King James I granted a charter to the Virginia Company to establish a commercial settlement in North America. The charter, drafted by Sir Edward Coke, who had heavily invested in the scheme to develop colonies in North America, extended the privileges and liberties of English subjects to the inhabitants of the Virginia colonies and their descendants. Thomas Jefferson acquired this manuscript of the Charters of the Virginia Company from the estate of Richard Bland (1710–1776), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and later loaned it to William Hening, who used it to compile his Virginia Statutes at Large. |