perhaps more valuable than the estate of Robert Beverley.[1] There were fifty, probably one hundred, planters in Virginia at the close of the century whose property equalled if it did not exceed fifty thousand dollars.
Robert Beverley, the historian, declared that such was the geniality of the climate of Virginia and such the fertility of its soil, that no one there was so sunk in poverty as to be compelled to secure a living by beggary.[2] This statement was doubtless perfectly accurate for the time at which it was made, but it was not entirely true of a period fifty years earlier, when the accumulation of property was not as yet so great. There are several recorded instances in that age in which special licenses were granted to mendicants. Such a license was obtained by John Claxson of York County, whose only property had been destroyed by fire, and who had been left with a family of five children without means of support. It is probable that this professional beggar was physically disabled. Similar cases were those of Thomas Bagwell of the Isle of Wight, and Richard New of James City, both, like that of Claxson, occurring as early as 1653.[3] A general complaint arose in 1672, that the neglect into which the vagrant laws had fallen had led to an increase in the number of vagabonds, and a statute was passed in consequence looking not only to the suppression of all idlers, but also to setting the poor to work.[4]
- ↑ In the course of four years, William Byrd advanced out of his own pocket, £2955 9s. 8d. to cover deficiencies in the revenues of the Colony. At the time he was auditor-general of Virginia. See Palmer’s Calendar of Virginia State Papers, vol. I, p. 58. The early records of the county in which the inventory of Byrd’s personal estate was entered on record are not now in existence.
- ↑ Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 223.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 381.
- ↑ Ibid., vol. II, p. 298.
