Chartered companies in England, the main precursor of which were medieval merchant guilds, were a form of organization that had legal trading monopolies over certain produced in specific geographic areas, as stipulated in royal charters granted by the state. While many companies engaged in foreign trade in the 16th century, an innovative form of chartered company, namely the joint stock company, emerged as an evolution of "regulated" chartered companies. First, their structure minimized commercial and political risks related to dynamic conditions abroad, which spread risks and incentivized investors in businesses. Second, “the issuance of a royal charter granted these entities quasi-governmental functions, such as recruiting settlers and building fortifications,” which gave businesses more flexibility. Stock corporations played a key role in the creation of New England. This essay takes Virginia Company as an example to support this assertion by analyzing the primary evidence that demonstrates the historical, political, and philosophical importance of the Virginia Company to permanent settlement in America. Most people, upon conversion at the Thanksgiving dinner table, would not associate the Virginia Company with the founding of the United States; however, this is not the case. The Virginia Company was just as, if not less, important in the birth of the United States of America as the Massachusetts Bay Company. In 1606, King James I, a few years after he came to the throne, granted charters to two companies that applied for royal charter, the Virginia Company of London and the Plymouth Company. This decision met the needs of England at that time, as England was in the middle of paper ......l History (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1909), vol. III, 194Braddick, MJ, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550-1700, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 399.Rudolph Robert, Chartered Companies and their Role in the Development of Overseas Trade (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1969), 12.EncyclopÖdia Britannica Online , sv “chartered company”, accessed November 12, 2011, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/107687/chartered-company.LH Roper, The English Empire in America, 1602 – 1658: Beyond Jamestown (London : Pickering and Chatto, 2009), 6.L. Maren Wood, The Founding of Virginia, accessed November 13, http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-colonial/2029Rudolph Robert, Chartered Companies and their Role in the Development of Overseas Trade (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1969), 100. Ibid., 101.