The book begins with the account of Virginia under Wyatt and Yardley, 1625 -1627: Sir Francis Wyatt, who had been the London Company's Governor in the period 1621-1624, was appointed Governor by James I the first year the colony was under royal control. Although the King made no specific provision for the continuation of a representative Assembly, Wyatt and
the Council called together representatives of the various settlements to meet in a General Assembly on May 10, 1625, in Jamestown. There they drew up a petition complaining of the old Company rule and the miserable state in which it had kept the colony during the previous twelve years, and pleading with the King not to allow a monopoly of the tobacco trade.
The King's advisers, they feared, were those who had formerly oppressed them and who would do so again should the King consent to a "pernitious contract" taking all their tobacco at unfair rates. To present their case against the contract they chose Sir George Yeardley, former Governor, to go to England as their agent. The willingness of Wyatt and the Council to call such an Assembly and the unanimity of views deriving from it, show how single in their economic interests all Virginians were.