had been adopted in relation to salaries some years before. A decline in the price of tobacco would have inflicted special loss on the class of office-holders if the rule had been different. No class in the Colony were more careful in maintaining every condition that was favorable to their welfare. Although their salaries were rated in 1638 in English currency, it is known that they contented themselves with receiving tobacco instead of money sterling, either because there was no coin in Virginia or because this course was more in accord with their interests.[1]
At this time, a certain amount of money sterling was introduced by means of masters of ships, who, in some cases, paid in this form the tax of two pence, imposed for the benefit of the Register upon every hogshead exported from Virginia.[2] So small, however, was the volume of the metals in circulation in 1636, that Governor Harvey, in a letter to Secretary Windebank, stated that there was in the country “little or no money” sterling, and so much inconvenience and damage did this fact occasion, that he was prompted to beg that a large quantity of farthings should be dispatched to the Colony to facilitate transactions in local business.[3] Among the persons to whom a patent lead been granted by the King to make and to place in general use in England coin equal in value to a farthing was Lord Maltravers, and upon him was conferred the right of supplying the people in Virginia with the same coins in exchange for such commodities as were readily salable in the English markets.[4] Their face value was
- ↑ Governor Harvey and Council to Privy Council, Jan. 18, 1639, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. X, No. 5; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1638-1639. p. 52, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IX, No. 17; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1636, p. 161, Va. State Library.
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IX, No. 96, 1.
