ABSTRACT
Corruption was already a necessary humanist obsession in a society in which office played such a vital role, but the colonial promoters were also acutely conscious that conquest amplified the dangers of corruption. Consistent with the humanistic approach to colonization of the time, the daily affairs of the Virginia Company were conducted in largely humanistic terms, but the talk was about corruption rather than virtue. Tacitean analysis of corruption was nostalgia for civic virtue. One factor contributing to the American republics of corruption was the disastrous character of early modern English colonization. With Alderman Robert Johnson's petition to the King that same April, Nathaniel Butler's report was one of the factors that influenced King James finally to dissolve the bitterly feuding Virginia Company. Johnson later became one of the leaders of the Virginia Company, rising to Deputy Treasurer, and he also became deputy Governor of the Bermuda Company as well as a director of the Levant and East India Companies.
