the establishment of commercial relations between Virginia and New Amsterdam were met with the reply, that no step could be taken by the former until a license had been obtained from the Council of State; and in the following year, two English merchants are found petitioning the English government for permission to sail from Holland to Virginia and Antigua.[1] Another English merchant[2] who was a resident of Amsterdam, applies for a license to transport a cargo from that city to the plantations on the James and York. In 1653, the ship Leopoldus, of Dunkirk, a Spanish Fleming, was seized in the Colony and confiscated, on the ground that its, master had violated the Act of Navigation. It is a fact of some significance, that the Governor was charged with having gone on board of this vessel and afterwards furnished her with supplies, an accusation which he warmly denied.[3]
After the close of hostilities, a renewed assumption by the Virginians of the right of free trade would seem to be shown by the petition that the owners of the Charles offered to Cromwell in January, 1655, in which a commission was sought, authorizing them in the person of their shipmaster to surprise the different vessels occupied contrary to the ordinance of October 3, 1650, in carrying the commodities of the Colony to foreign countries.[4] This
- ↑ Sainsbury’s Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 418. One of these merchants was Edmund Custis.
- ↑ Sainsbury’s Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 419.
- ↑ Randolph MSS., vol. III, p. 248. An interesting account of the manner in which the Leopoldus was captured will be found in the Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1651-1656, folio p. 52. The Leopoldus was doubtless one of the two Spanish Fleming ships which are known to have arrived in Virginia in 1653. Randolph MSS., vol. III, p. 248.
- ↑ Petition of the Owners of the Ship Charles to Lord Protector, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. XII, No. 33; Sainsbury Abstracts, vol. 1640-1691, p. 137, Va. State Library. There is recorded in Lower Norfolk County, for the year 1666, an agreement between a citizen of Plymouth, England, and a citizen of Lynhaven, Virginia, by the terms of which the latter was to furnish one hundred hogsheads of tobacco. If the cargo was landed at Plymouth or London, the freight charge under the contract was to be eight pounds sterling; if in Zealand or Holland, nine pounds. Vol. 1651-1656, folio p. 144. In 1663, Abraham Read was fined and imprisoned because, among other things, he had said that “no foreigners ought to have trade in Virginia,” which was declared to be contrary to the terms of the surrender to Parliament. Randolph MSS., vol. III, p. 248.
