The Virginia Company was divided, as were other groups, into factions.

The court party and the country party found themselves distinctly opposed.
The great, crowded meetings of the Company Sessions rang with their divisions upon policies small and large.

Words and phrases, comprehensive, sonorous, heavy with the future, rose and rolled beneath the roof of their great hall.

There were heard amid warm discussion: Kingdom and Colony--Spain--Netherlands--France--Church and State--Papists and Schismatics--Duties, Tithes, Excise Petitions of Grievances--Representation--Right of Assembly.

Several years earlier the King had cried, "Choose the Devil, but not Sir Edwyn Sandys!" Now he declared the Company "just a seminary to a seditious parliament!" All London resounded with the clash of parties and opinions.* "Last week the Earl of Warwick and the Lord Cavendish fell so foul at a Virginia...
court that the lie passed and repassed....