ceived formal authority to serve as his agent. The character of this cargo depended in large measure upon the special line of trade which the person who dispatched it pursued. Every branch appears to have been represented by the English merchants who had commercial intercourse with Virginia in the seventeenth century; there were tallow-chandlers, haberdashers, distillers, stationers, pewterers, fletchers, ironmongers, cordwainers, apothecaries, felt-makers, merchant tailors, weavers, goldsmiths, coopers, vintners, and woollen drapers. Only in a few cases did they, in the powers of attorney which they gave to their factors in the Colony, describe themselves as tobacconists.[1] The value of the goods sent by the English traders to the Colony was very great; those included in a single shipment made in 1681 were held at twelve thousand pounds sterling.[2] Instances of cargoes appraised at two thousand pounds sterling were not uncommon, a sum with a purchasing power perhaps equivalent to as much as fifty thousand dollars at present.[3] A fair notion may be obtained of the size of many of these cargoes from the warrants issued in the time of the Protectorate giving permission to merchants to transport shoes to Virginia, there being a law then prohibiting the exportation of leather without a special license from the Government. In 1653, licenses of this kind were granted to the masters and owners of twelve
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1684-1687, p. 171; Ibid., vol. 1691-1701, p. 89, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Petition of William Fisher et al., British State Papers, Colonial; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1681, p. 104, Va. State Library.
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IX, No. 64. In 1678, James Vaulx imported a cargo of goods valued at £260. Records of York County, vol. 1675-1684, p. 390, Va. State Library. A cargo brought into Northampton County about the middle of the century by Edward Prescott was appraised at £ 471 18s. 6d. See Records of that county, original vol. 1654-1655, f. p. 43.
