Participants
Besides Lord Warwick, among the twenty shareholders in the Company were William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and Robert Greville, Lord Brooke. Oliver St John, a Puritan barrister, represented the Providence Company's interests, and the treasurer was John Pym, a squire from the West Country. William Jessop was commissioned as the Company's Secretary.
The Company was granted a royal charter. The following are listed as Charter Members: of these investors 12 already were involved with the Somers Isles Company. An official record names 17, with others to be added in future, for the patent granted 4 December 1630.
| Member | Notes |
|---|---|
| Gabriel Barber (Barbor) | Barber was treasurer to the Somers Isles Company. A reluctant joiner, his participation was only confirmed on 10 February 1631. Member of the Feoffees for Impropriations; left 1632. |
| Sir Thomas Barrington, 2nd Baronet | Not in the original Charter Member group of November 1630, he was brought in to make up the numbers to 20 in January 1631. |
| John Dyke | Dyke had extensive commercial experience, being from a merchant family, of the Fishmongers' Company, and an investor in other colonial ventures. Left 1632; ¼ share was taken by John Upton via Pym. |
| William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele | Peer. |
| Gregory Gawsell | Gawsell worked as an estate manager for Warwick. During the First English Civil War he was treasurer for the Eastern Association. |
| Gilbert Gerard | Member of Parliament |
| John Graunt (Grant) | A clerk at Whitehall, and colleague of Pym from the Exchequer. |
| Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke | Peer. |
| John Gurdon | Member of Parliament. |
| Edward Harwood | Died 1632. His brother George Harwood was a member of the Feoffees for Impropriations. |
| Richard Knightley | Member of Parliament. |
| Edmond Moundeford | Member of Parliament. |
| John Pym | Member of Parliament. Pym was influential in bringing in Graunt, Robartes and St John. |
| Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland | Peer. |
| Nathaniel Rich | Member of Parliament. |
| Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick | Peer. |
| John Robartes | Peer from 1634. |
| Benjamin Rudyerd | Member of Parliament |
| Oliver St John | Member of Parliament |
| Christopher Sherland | Member of Parliament, member of the Feoffees for Impropriations; died 1632. A ½ share was taken by William Ball. |
Four of them dropped out early, and other investors bought into the Company.
A decade later, the English Civil War would make these names famous. John Hampden, also a prominent figure in the events leading up to the English Civil War, was not a shareholder personally but was a cousin of one and did arbitrate between the shareholders and their agents on the island.
A close kinship group linked several charter members of the Company: Lord Warwick's younger brother Henry, recently made Earl of Holland and a favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria; their half-brother, their mother's natural son, Mountjoy Blount, recently made Earl of Newport, and like Holland a figure at court; their cousin the Earl of Essex and his brother-in-law the Earl of Hertford; At the end of the 1630s, around this nucleus and their friends in both Houses of Parliament, meeting in Gray's Inn Lane or Brook House, Holborn, or in the country, ostensibly for Company business, coalesced the first opposition party in English history, formed in resistance to the imposition of Ship Money.
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“A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)