owners and masters to make no report to the collector of the district in which their vessels came to anchor. The unlawful trading was especially prevalent on the Eastern Shore and in the Lower James, as these localities offered many facilities for eluding the vigilance of the officers of the revenue.[1]
In one instance only has evidence of a trade between South America and Virginia in the seventeenth century been discovered.[2] In 1670, it was decided that the articles enumerated in the Act of Navigation should not be transported directly to Ireland. Previous to the passage of this statute, as well as subsequent to it, there was a considerable volume of commerce between Virginia and the Irish ports.[3]
There are a few indications of commercial intercourse between Virginia and Scotland in the seventeenth century. In 1638, a special warrant was issued to John Burnett of Aberdeen, granting him the privilege of trading in the Colony upon condition that he paid the customs due upon the tobacco to be exported by him, and that he gave bond that he would only unload in Scotland.[4] In 1670, Thomas Bushrod, acting as the attorney of Thomas Lowey of Edinburgh, obtained judgment in the
- ↑ See Official Letters of Gov. Spotswood, Virginia Historical Society Publications.
- ↑ William and Mary College Quarterly, April, 1893, p. 152.
- ↑ This was a regulation of Parliament. See acquittance in Virginia, in 1670, of the ship Anthony of Londonderry, against which an information had been lodged by one of the collectors, on the ground that she was not a free vessel. Records of General Court, p. 40. For evidences of the trade between Virginia and Ireland, see Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1666-1675, pp. 46, 179; Records of Lancaster County, original vol. 1687-1700, pp. 167, 177; original vol. 1666-1682, p. 150.
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IX, No. 118; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1638, p. 23, Va. State Library.
