Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/260

tection these were one suit of light armor, a long gun, a sword and belt, a bandoleer, twenty pounds of powder, and sixty pounds of shot and lead.^[1]

When Yeardley assumed control of affairs in Virginia, the Company, with a view to increasing the production of other articles, required that there should be inserted in all formal grants of land a covenant that the patentees should not apply themselves either wholly or principally to the culture of tobacco, but should divide their attention among a number of commodities carefully specified in each deed. These commodities consisted in part of agricultural products, that is to say, Indian corn, wheat, flax, silk-grass and wine, a portion of which, as we have seen, England was anxious to be able to purchase in the Colony, in order that she might escape the heavy charges of the continental merchants, as well as to avoid all possibility of an interruption in her supply.^[2] As a further provision to ensure a permanent diversion from tobacco as the exclusive crop of Virginia, it was proposed that the only payment that the Company should receive from the planters for the servants to be sent them should be in the form of the commodities named.^[3] As laborers were so much needed by the colonists, it was anticipated that this

1. Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 608. The following entry is found in the Records of Lower Norfolk County, Sept. 2, 1640, vol. I (see the inventory of the estate of Philip Felgate): “an old cross bowe, an old cibron, a suite of black armour, an head piece of white armour.” These may have belonged to one of the Company’s tenants originally. My attention was called to this entry by Mr. Edward W. James, the well-known antiquarian of Norfolk, Va.
2. Orders and Constitutions, No. cxiv, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. See also Declaration of the State of the Colonie, p. 10, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
3. Declaration of the State of the Colonie, p. 14, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III; Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, vol. I, p. 92.