The colony of Providence Isle was of little weight, and the charter of the proprietary Company, accordingly, has received scant attention. That document, however, issued twenty-one months later than that of the Massachusetts Bay Company, is in many ways the culmination of the series of grants to English corporations for colonizing purposes. All the powers granted to proprietaries in earlier charters, including those which were dropped out in the Massachusetts charter, reappear here; and in some important matters there is much new detail. A study of this document removes the last possible basis for the claims of the older New England historians that the Massachusetts charter was in any peculiar way adapted to the purpose of a transfer to America.
1. _Puritan membership._--The incorporators comprise the Earl of Warwick, Lord Say and Sele, Sir Nathaniel Rich, Oliver St. Johns, and John Pym,--all prominent leaders of the Puritan party, more prominent than any Puritans in the Massachusetts Company.
2. _Sectarianism._--The Company is given the "Patronages and Advowsons" of "all" churches and chapells,--without even a restriction as to the customs of the Church of England (such as is found in the Baltimore charter). If this provision had been in the Massachusetts charter, Puritan historians would have found it certain proof of an intention to build a non-conformist state. The passage conferring authority to impose the oath of supremacy is copied from the charters of 1612 and 1629. No other sectarian restriction occurs.
3. _Place of meeting._--The Company are to govern themselves and their settlement (as the Virginia Company of 1612 and the Massachusetts Bay Company) in four "General Courts" each year; but these courts are to be held "_in any place or places by themselves to be appointed_." (And, again, the Company is authorized to hold its courts "_in any place or places convenient_"). Surely, this disposes of the ancient argument that the omission of a specific place of meeting in the Massachusetts charter suggests an intention to establish some place out of England.
The facts as to a specific meeting place for a colonizing corporation in England seem to be as follows:
_a._ The charter of 1606 establishes two sub-companies, which necessarily are designated geographically to distinguish one from the other; and the charters of 1609, 1612, and 1620 use geographical designations, necessarily, to show to which one of those sub-companies they respectively apply.