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lower part of Middlesex and in York suffered very much. The rioters were careful to destroy the sweet-scented tobacco, as it only grew in this part of Virginia. The tumults were finally overawed by the militia. The two companies of regular soldiers which had been sent over to the Colony to suppress the Rebellion of 1676 had been billeted upon the people, but as they had not been promptly paid, they were in a mutinous condition, and were suspected of leaning very strongly towards the plant-cutters.^[1] The militia cavalry of Gloucester and New Kent were for some time kept in motion to discourage the slightest disposition on the part of the population to rise again, to which they were inclined upon the smallest pretext.^[2]

There were many forebodings as to what the planters whose tobacco had been ruined would do in their despair. In Gloucester and New Kent alone, the ordinary crop had been curtailed to the extent of four thousand hogsheads, and in the Colony at large, to the extent of ten thousand.^[3] The country had fallen into such impoverishment at this time, that one of the leading citizens in a letter to the authorities in England declared that he could only describe its condition in the language of the prophet, “the whole body is sick and the whole heart is faint, from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it.”^[4]

1. Nicholas Spencer to Secretary Jenkins, British State Papers, Colonial Entry Book, No. 82, pp. 69-74; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1682, pp. 167-171, Va. State Library; Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 74.
2. Ibid., Aug. 12, 1682, British State Papers, Colonial Papers; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1682, pp. 174, 200, Va. State Library.
3. Nicholas Spencer to Lords of Trade and Plantations, British State Papers, Colonial Papers; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1682, pp. 173, 175, Va. State Library; Archives of Maryland, Proceedings of Council, 1667-1688, p. 362.
4. Charles Scarborough to Secretary Jenkins, British State Papers, Colonial Papers; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1682, p. 180, Va. State Library.