Payne was a projector[1]: 64 who started promoting schemes in Nottinghamshire for the production of Jersey wool for stockings and woad as a dye.
He was accompanied by five farmers, fourteen freeholders, forty copyholders and twenty five cottagers and labourers.
As the title echos the tract by Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia published a year previously, this indicates a rivalry between Virginia and Ireland in finding potential colonists.
[3] Writing shortly after the Second Desmond Rebellion, he puts the Irish in a good light saying that they should be "judge[d] charitably, for such was the misery of the time that many were driven to this bad choice, whether they would be spoiled as well by the enemy as the worser sort of soldiers at home, or go out to the rebels and be hanged, which is the fairest end of a traitor.
"[4] The pamphlet was composed of letter he had written to his 25 partners, primarily living in Nottinghamshire.