Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/655

The charge for the conveyance of servants from England to Virginia remained substantially the same throughout the seventeenth century. During the period of the Company’s administration, it was six pounds sterling or its equivalent to the individual.^[1] In 1664 when forty years had passed since the revocation of the charter of that corporation, a committee of the Council for Foreign Plantations reported that the cost of transportation by the head was still six pounds sterling.^[2] An item in the inventory of Mathew Hubbard, recorded in York County, shows that as late as 1670 this continued to be the amount which was paid,^[3] exclusive of the sum spent in the purchase of clothing and other necessary articles. In 1623, a planter who imported six servants into the Colony was compelled in the case of each to go to the expense of thirteen pounds sterling,^[4] but this included not only the charge for transportation, but also the cost of clothing, victuals, mechanical tools, and military arms. Another contemporaneous authority estimated the general outlay as high as twenty pounds sterling.^[5] George Reade, writing in 1640 to his brother in England, requests him to send two servants to Virginia, the charges on whose account he states would

1. Abstracts of Proceedings of Virginia Company of London, vol. I, pp. 28, 172; Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 609.
2. British State Papers, Colonial Entry Book, vol. 92, p. 275.
3. Records of York County, vol. 1664-1672, p. 469, Va. State Library. There is an instance preserved in the Records of York County in which the charge for the transportation of thirty-three servants was placed at £5 a head. The shipmaster who conveyed them to Virginia was, however, one of the owners, and for that reason only it is probable the rate was materially reduced. See vol. 1687-1691, p. 248, Va. State Library.
4. British State Papers, Colonial Papers, vol. II, No. 54; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1623, p. 169, Va. State Library.
5. British State Papers, Colonial, vol. III, No. 32; McDonald Papers, vol. I, p. 155, Va. State Library.