openly asserted that the officers of the Company made an improper use both of their tenants and the tenants’ servants. The servants were taken away from their masters and removed by the officers to their private estates, while the tenants themselves were kept so constantly engaged in rowing the officers to and fro between Jamestown and the lands assigned to the different official positions, lying some near the mouth of the river and some near the Falls, that it was not in their power to pay the rent expected of them.[1] In spite of these obstacles, which were probably not quite as great as Pory represented them to be,[2] there is reason to think that a fair proportion of the tobacco shipped from Virginia to England in the short interval before the massacre, had been raised by tenants who were seated on the public domain. The George, which arrived in England in March, 1622, was loaded in great part with a cargo that was the product of the lands assigned by the Company to the College and Treasurer or reserved
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 571. The following extract from a letter written by the Governor and Council of Virginia to the Company in England in January, 1621 (O. S.), presents the conduct of the officers in a more favorable light. “Yt being a matter of difficultie to finde out on the suddaine such a convenient place for the seating of the Tresurers Tenants as in our judgments we thought requisite, and that would have much endangered the help of his people, and beine the means of the certaine loss of his next year’s cropp to have kept them long without employment, about James Cyttie, Mr. Treasurer was out of necessitie enforced to purchase for himself out of his own private Estate, two hundred acres of Lande, being the divident of a private planter, for the present employment of his people where they are yett remayninge . . . the like course wee propose to take for the land and Tennantes belonging to the place of Physitian who onto of the like necessitie was fame for the present to give certain closes and clere ground for the employment of his people not far from James Cyttie.” Neill’s Virginia Company of London, p. 281.
- ↑ See, however, in support of his statements, Company’s Letter dated July 25, 1621, Neill’s Virginia Company of London, p. 230.
