Great Britain's first attempts at colonization around the globe started with Queen Elizabeth I, who granted charters to three major companies for the exclusive rights to extract the wealth from other regions of the world to stock the coffers of Britain. These three companies were the Plymouth, London (also known as Virginia) and East India Companies. In this paper we will look at the charter companies that started the colonization of North America. We will also focus on how each company ruled their territory and gained or lost power respectively.
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On April 10, 1606, George Popham and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were granted a charter from Queen Elizabeth I to start the Virginia Company of Plymouth. The Plymouth Company was one of two joint-stock companies who had charters in England to colonize in North America. The other company was the Virginia Company of London , which will be mentioned in more depth in the next section. The Plymouth Company was allotted the northern region of North America and was not to start a settlement less than a hundred miles away from any London Company settlement. The first band of colonists set out from England and was captured by the Spanish, undiscouraged the second ship with colonists aboard left England in 1607 and settled on the west bank of the Kennebec River in Maine.# That winter Popham died and a harsh winter set in that forced the would be colonists to return to England in 1608. Thus the company founded no permanent settlements until 1620. That year the Company was reorganized into what would be called the Council for New England, with a major shareholder being Sir Edwin Sandys.# The Plymouth Company had been having a hard time finding people to move to the forsaken New England colonies, then in 1620 a group of separatists who had illegally left Britain and moved to Holland, but were having troubles with the culture there as well, expressed an interest in the New England colony.