plant ten mulberry trees for every one hundred acres in his possession, was reënacted, and, in order to make it more stringent in its operation, the Grand Jury were called upon to report with the utmost strictness all infringements of it, both in the failure to plant and in the failure to protect by a proper fence when a plantation had been made. As a means of promoting the culture of silk, the extraordinary reward was offered of fifty pounds of tobacco for every pound of that commodity produced, the tobacco to be raised in the public levy and to be paid in the county where the silk-maker happened to reside.[1] These provisions were adopted to some extent under the influence of instructions from the Privy Council.[2] The limit allowed for planting, under the Act of 1661-62, was December 30th, 1663, but it was found so difficult to obtain the required number of mulberry trees in this interval, that the Assembly extended the period to December 30th, 1666.[3] The effect of all these regulations must have been favorable, for we find that Secretary Ludwell, in writing to Secretary Bennett in the year 1665, refers to the fact that the industry was making satisfactory progress in Virginia. Governor Berkeley was still more sanguine in the expression of his views. He assured the authorities in England that so many mulberry trees had been planted in the Colony that in four or five years, at the furthest, its inhabitants would be in a position to furnish as much silk as could be expected of a community of forty thousand people.[4] He spoke in a despondent
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 121.
- ↑ Minutes of the Council for Foreign Plantations, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. XIV, No. 59, pp. 18-21; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1661, p. 7, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 191.
- ↑ Governor Berkeley to the King, Aug. 1, 1665, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. XIX, No. 86; Winder Papers, vol. I, p. 187, Va. State Library.
