were to be restricted to twelve, the number now permitted amounting to thirty. As the population of the Colony at this time was close upon three thousand, the quantity prescribed by the King for each master of a family and for each servant, that is to say, two hundred, and one hundred and twenty-five pounds respectively, was insufficient to maintain the people in comfort and ease. The number of plants allowed to each head was reduced to the lowest point consistent with this end, and to ensure the excellence of the tobacco to be exported, sworn triers were appointed to pass upon the quality of the leaf produced, and to destroy what was inferior in character.[1]
The conditions advanced by the colonists do not seem to have been acceptable to Charles, as there is nothing to show that the proposed arrangement was consummated. It is doubtful whether at heart they were more eager to enter into a contract with him than they had been with Mr. Ditchfield and Mr. Amis and their associates. In the letter to the King bearing date March 28, 1628, to which reference has been made, the General Assembly declared that during the last six years they had “perpetually labored in the confused paths of labyrinths” of tobacco contracts.[2] In the same month they had expressed to Lord Delaware their grateful sense of his earnest and successful efforts to annul the different arrangements which had been made for the disposition of their only staple.[3] Influenced by this feeling, it is not likely that they looked upon an
- ↑ Answer of the General Assembly to Proposition of the King, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IV, No. 45; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1628, pp. 176-179, Va. State Library.
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IV, No. 45; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1628, p. 176, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Governor and Council to Lord De La Warr, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IV, No. 47; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1628 p. 181, Va. State Library.
