There is recorded in Lancaster, a letter from Captain James Barton of New England, which throws light on the relations of the merchants there with the trade of Virginia at this time. He urges his correspondent, who was in the latter Colony and who was acting as his attorney, to secure a cargo of tobacco, hides, and pork for the market in Barbadoes, to be purchased with commodities already in his hands, and with goods that Barton would dispatch in his own ketch, now about to sail for Virginia. While the vessel was absent on the voyage to and from the West Indies, that being the second point of destination, the attorney was to make a further collection of hides, which, with tobacco, was to be shipped directly to Holland, an evidence that the merchants of New England openly evaded the injunctions of the Navigation Act.[1]
In case of disputes between New England traders and Virginian planters, it seems to have been occasionally the habit to settle the causes of difference by reference to arbitrators chosen among the citizens of Virginia. Such was the course pursued in 1680 by Hugh Campbell of Boston and Philip Edwards of Lower Norfolk County.[2] The attorneys representing many of the merchants of New England were shipmasters of the two Colonies.[3]
The commodities brought in by these vessels were only in small part of West Indian or New England growth or manufacture; through the merchants and shipowners of
