[4][5][6][7] The biggest trade breakthrough resulted after adventurer and colonist John Rolfe introduced several sweeter strains of tobacco[8] from the Caribbean.

[10] Cultivation of Rolfe's new tobacco strains produced a strong commodity crop for export for the London Company and other early English colonies and helped to balance a national trade deficit with Spain.

The company failed in 1624, following the widespread destruction of the Great Massacre of 1622 by indigenous peoples in the colony, which decimated the English population.

[16]By the terms of the charter, the London Company was permitted to establish a colony of 100 miles square between latitudes 34° and 41° N, approximately between Cape Fear and Long Island Sound.

The Plymouth Company was permitted to establish settlements between latitudes 38° and 45° N, roughly between the upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay and the U.S.-Canada border.

A successor company eventually established a permanent settlement in 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, aboard the Mayflower.

Aboard the Sea Venture were fleet Admiral George Somers, Vice-Admiral Christopher Newport, Virginia Colony governor Sir Thomas Gates, William Strachey, and businessman John Rolfe with his pregnant wife.

The Sea Venture was leaking through its new caulking, and Admiral Somers had it driven aground on a reef to avoid sinking, saving 150 men and women but destroying the ship.

The colonists at Jamestown were saved only by the timely arrival three weeks later of a supply mission headed by Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, better known as "Lord Delaware".

[23] In February 1613, company projects were promoted at court when the lawyer Richard Martin helped produce The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn at Whitehall Palace for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate.

The birth of representative government in the United States can be traced from this Great Charter, as it provided for self-governance from which the House of Burgesses and a General Council were created.