Finally the captain agreed to make the trip for three hundred and fifty pounds, two hundred to be paid in advance for furnishing the vessel. Considering the great value of money at that time, when the ordinary wages of a seaman was eightpence a day, and everything else in proportion, Captain Nelson did not make a bad bargain.
As before said, Ralph's brother-in-law, John Somers, was a personal acquaintance of the Treasurer of the Virginia Company, as well as a member of the Company, and through his influence Ralph readily got a license to make a voyage to Virginia to trade, on condition of giving two and a half per cent. of the value of his cargo to the Company.
Ralph's next oldest brother, Henry, had been a soldier since the age of eighteen, at first in the war between England and Spain, and afterwards fighting for the Dutch against the Spaniards in Flanders. He was now at home, and Ralph engaged him to make the voyage to Virginia. Ralph's brother next younger than himself, Charles, was now nineteen. Ralph engaged him, also, promising to pay him well, although Charles would have been glad to go to America without promise of pay.
