restrict the degree of attention to be paid to tobacco, Dale commanded that no man should be permitted to plant it until he had put down two acres in grain, an indication that as soon as the farmers were left to follow their own inclination they were disposed to neglect the cultivation of grain in their eagerness to produce the former commodity.[1] Not all the colonists were granted the privilege of tenants.[2] Those persons who were not so distinguished were placed in what was known as the common garden,[3] being compelled to turn over to the general store all the results of their labor during eleven months of the year, the fruit of the twelfth being left in their hands to be disposed of to their own private advantage.[4] A section of these agricultural servants, for such
- ↑ Rolfe’s Virginia in 1616, Va. Hist. Register, vol. I, No. III, p. 108.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 516. It is impossible to give the proportion between those who received and those who did not receive this privilege.
- ↑ Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, vol. I, p. 21.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 516. It is not stated which of the months the month allowed them was. It is not improbable that the time was a period equal to a month, made up of days granted from week to week in the season of planting and cultivating. This time they
throughout the whole Colony; . . . he hath allotted to every man three English acres . . . .” The Brief Declaration, &c., on the other hand, states that “the penurious and harde kinde of livinge enforced and emboldened some to petition to Sir Thomas Gates, then Governor, to grant them that favor that they might employ themselves in husbandry. . . . which request was denied unless they would paye the yearley rent of three barrels of corne, &c.; British State Papers, Colonial, vol. III, No. 21, I; Colonial Records of Virginia, State Senate Doct., Extra, 1874, p. 75. It should be remembered that although Gates was the Governor of the Colony at this time, he was in Virginia during only a part of his term, Dale acting in his stead. The petition was probably presented to Gates only nominally, if at all. Hamor’s Discourse is more trustworthy than the Brief Declaration.
