So far was the massacre from affecting the confidence of the public in Southampton and his friends at the head of the company that eight hundred good settlers went to Virginia during the year 1622, and John Smith wrote, "Had I meanes I might have choice of ten thousand that would gladly go."[22] But during the summer the members of the company were entangled in a dispute, of which advantage was taken by their enemies everywhere.

At the suggestion of the crafty earl of Middlesex, the lord high treasurer of England, they were induced to apply to the king for a monopoly of the sale of tobacco in England; and it was granted on two conditions--viz., that they should pay the king L20,000 (supposed to be the value of a third of the total crop of Virginia tobacco) and import at least forty thousand pounds weight of Spanish tobacco.

Though this last was a condition demanded by the king doubtless to placate the Spanish court, with whom he was negotiating for the marriage of his son Charles to the infanta, the contract on the whole was displeasing to Count Gondomar, the Spanish minister.

He fomented dissensions in the company over the details, and Middlesex, the patron of the measure, being a great favorer of the Spanish match, changed sides upon his own proposition.[23] In April, 1623, Alderman Robert Johnson, deputy to Sir Thomas Smith during the time of his government, brought a petition to the king for the appointment of a commission in England to inquire into the condition of the colony, which he declared was in danger of destruction by reason of "dissensions among ourselves and the massacre and hostility of the natives." This petition was followed by a scandalous paper, called _The Unmasking of Virginia_, presented to the king by another tool of Count Gondomar, one Captain Nathaniel Butler.[24] The company had already offended the king, and these new developments afforded him all the excuse that he wanted for taking extreme measures.

He first attempted to cow the company into a "voluntary" surrender by seizing their books and arresting their leading members.