Virginia Company

Virginia Company, name of 2 companies of merchant-adventurers granted patents by the English crown (1606) for colonizing America. The London Company, authorized to settle anywhere from present-day South Carolina to New York, founded Jamestown (1607). The Plymouth Company, granted rights from present-day Virginia to Maine, fared badly. It was reorganized (1620) into the Council for New England, which made the original grant to the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritan settlers.