The charter being thus secured, both companies proceeded to procure emigrants; and they had not much difficulty, as at this time there were many unemployed people in England.  The wool culture had converted great tracts of arable land in England into mere pastures for sheep,[8] and the closure of the monasteries and religious houses removed the support from thousands of English families.  Since 1585 this surplus humanity had found employment in the war with Spain, but the return of peace in 1605 had again thrown them upon society, and they were eager for chances, no matter how remote, of gold-mines and happy homes beyond the seas.[9]

Hence, in three months’ time the Plymouth Company had all things in readiness for a trial voyage, and August 12, 1606, they sent out a ship commanded by Henry Challons with twenty-nine Englishmen and two Indians brought into England by Weymouth the year before.  Two months later sailed another ship (of which Thomas Hanham was captain and Martin Pring master), “with all necessary supplies for the seconding of Captain Challons and his people.”  Unfortunately, Captain Challons’s vessel and crew were taken by the Spaniards in the West Indies, and, though Hanham and Pring reached the coast of America, they returned without making a settlement.[10] Nevertheless, they brought back, as Sir Ferdinando Gorges wrote many years after, “the most exact discovery of that coast that ever came to my hands since,” which wrought “such an impression” on Chief-Justice Popham and the other members of the Plymouth Company that they determined upon another and better-appointed attempt at once.[11]

May 31, 1607, this second expedition sailed from Plymouth with one hundred and twenty settlers embarked in two vessels—­a fly boat called the Gift of God and a ship called Mary and John.  August 18, 1607, the company landed on a peninsula at the mouth of the Sagadahoc, or Kennebec River, in Maine.  After a sermon by their preacher, Richard Seymour, the commission of government and ordinances prepared by the authorities at home were read.  George Popham was therein designated president; and Raleigh Gilbert, James Davis, Richard Seymour, Richard Davis, and Captain Harlow composed the council.  The first work attempted was a fort, which they intrenched and fortified with twelve pieces of ordnance.  Inside they erected a church and storehouse and fifteen log-cabins.  Then a ship-builder constructed a pinnace, called the Virginia, which afterwards was used in the southern colony.  But the colonists were soon discouraged, and more than half their number went back to England in the ships when they returned in December.