Charles I. had all the arbitrary notions of his father, but fortunately he was under personal obligations to Sir Edwin Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar, Jr., and for their sake was willing to be liberal in his dealing with the colonists.[30] Hence, soon after his father’s death, he dismissed the former royal commissioners and intrusted affairs relating to Virginia to a committee of the Privy Council, who ignored the Smith party and called the Sandys party into consultation.[31] These last presented a paper in April, 1625, called The Discourse of the Old Company, in which they reviewed fully the history of the charter and petitioned to be reincorporated.  Charles was not unwilling to grant the request, and in a proclamation dated May 13, 1625, he avowed that he had come to the same opinion as his father, and intended to have a “royal council in England and another in Virginia, but not to impeach the interest of any adventurer or planter in Virginia.”

Still ignorant of the death of King James, Governor Sir Francis Wyatt and his council, together with representatives from the plantations informally called, sent George Yardley to England with a petition, dated June 15, 1625, that they be permitted the right of a general assembly, that worthy emigrants be encouraged, and that none of the old faction of Sir Thomas Smith and Alderman Johnson have a part in the administration; “for rather than endure the government of these men they were resolved to seek the farthest part of the world.”

Yardley reached England in October; and the king, when informed of Wyatt’s desire to resign the government of Virginia on account of his private affairs, issued a commission, dated April 16, 1626, renewing the authority of the council in Virginia and appointing Yardley governor.[32] The latter returned to Virginia, but died in 1627.  After his death the king sent directions to Acting Governor Francis West to summon a general assembly; and March 26, 1628, after an interval of four years, the regular law-making body again assembled at Jamestown, an event second only in importance to the original meeting in 1619.[33]

Other matters besides the form of government pressed upon the attention of the settlers.  Tobacco entered more and more into the life of the colony, and the crop in the year 1628 amounted to upward of five hundred thousand pounds.[34] King Charles took the ground of Sandys and Southampton, that the large production was only temporary, and like his father, subjected tobacco in England to high duties and monopoly.  He urged a varied planting and the making of pitch and tar, pipe-staves, potashes, iron, and bay-salt, and warned the planters against “building their plantation wholly on smoke.”  It was observed, however, that Charles was receiving a large sum of money from customs on tobacco,[35] and it was not likely that his advice would be taken while the price was 3s. 6d. a pound.  Indeed, it was chiefly under the stimulus of the culture of tobacco that the population of the colony rose from eight hundred and ninety-four, after the massacre in 1622, to about three thousand in 1629.[36]