Dale’s injunction as to the superior attention to be paid to the production of grain seems to have been carefully observed by his successor. Not only was the granary in Charles Hundred full when Argoll reached Jamestown in 1617, but there were stores of grain in all the plantations. It was said that at this time the part of the Company’s lands, known as the common garden, yielded a profit of three hundred pounds sterling; this profit must have been derived almost exclusively from the production of tobacco, as tobacco was the only crop shipped to England. The common garden was cultivated wholly by laborers bound to the Company by indentures.[1] The supply of grain upon which they were fed was obtained from the tenants in the form of rent, or from the savages as tribute. In the spring of 1617 the area in tobacco was probably extended; it was now cultivated in the streets, and even in the market-place of Jamestown.[2]
The first act of Argoll, who displaced Yeardley in the government, was to take possession of the granary in Charles Hundred and convert its contents to his own use, an act which was characteristic of the whole of the latter part of his administration.[3] A short time after he assumed control in Virginia, he wrote to the authorities of the Company in England that great abundance prevailed in the Colony, and that the people were in a state of peace and contentment. In addition to large supplies of grain, there were one hundred and twenty-eight kine, eighty-eight goats, and hogs in great numbers. Argoll, in the
