great ferries of York River, were revoked. The keepers of the ordinaries which were permitted to remain open at the latter places were allowed to sell only beer and cider. This regulation was the more remarkable from the fact that it was adopted by the action of the people at large, who must have been the principal customers of the tippling-houses, if not of the inns. Not content with putting a stop to sales in the public places, the framers of the regulation further prescribed that “no one should presume to sell any sort of drink or liquor whatsoever, by retail, under any color, pretence, delusion; or subtle evasion whatsoever, to be drunk or spent in his or their house or houses, upon his or their plantation or plantations.”[1]
After the suppression of the insurrection, this sweeping measure was substantially modified by a substitute restricting the number of ordinaries allowed in each county to two, Jamestown for obvious reasons being excepted from its scope. The rates for “Virginia drams” were fixed at ten shillings, or one hundred pounds of tobacco a gallon; for beer, at two shillings, or twenty pounds a gallon; for perry and cider, at twenty pounds if boiled, and at eighteen if raw. Tobacco at this time commanded about one and a half pence a pound. The prices of the foreign wines and spirits were to be fixed for each county in the months of May and November by the justices according to the market values then prevailing; and a failure on the part of these officers to set the rates subjected the court of which they were members to a very heavy fine.[2]
- ↑ Bacon’s Laws, 1676, Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 361.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 394. The alternative “ten shillings or one hundred pounds of tobacco” would seem to show that 1 1/5d. a pound was now the price of tobacco. It would be safe to place its value a little higher, as the lowest figure was probably adopted by the Assembly.
