secure that commodity as they were to sell their merchandise. This view seems to be sustained by the fact that in the same statute it was provided that no money sterling in excess of forty shillings should be exported from Virginia, under a penalty for a violation of the regulation in double that amount.[1]
That the right to sue for debts contracted in money sterling retrained unimpaired after the middle of the century is revealed in the conclusion reached by the county court of York in 1669, in the suit of Captain Samuel Cooper, as attorney of Edward Smith, against John Page and others in their character of executors. The sum in dispute was twenty-six pounds, twelve shillings and six pence. They were ordered to deliver this amount in coin. It is safe to say that this decision would not have been arrived at if the court had thought that it would impose a special hardship to require the defendants to pay in money sterling, and we may accept the fact as an indication that English currency was now somewhat more abundant in Virginia than twenty years earlier.[2] When Colonel Norwood, who had been spending several months at Green Spring, left Jamestown to go to Holland with the view of securing from Charles the Second the position of Treasurer of the Colony, it is stated that he was furnished with a sum of money by Governor Berkeley.[3] Whatever coin
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 493.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1664-1672, p. 378, Va. State Library. “Hipwell Milton seeing Mr. Thomas Wythe Sr. deft. for £11 16s. sterling for a/c of worke done for ye deft, who also produces an a/c for ye same worke rated in tobacco, and sayeth that tobacco is only due according to agreement, it is ordered that in case ye plt. cannot prove his agreement with ye deft. for money due for ye said worke, that then the deft. be allowed to make oath to his a/c the same as due in tobacco.” Records of Elizabeth City County, vol. 1684-1699, p. 7, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Norwood’s Voyage to Virginia, p. 50, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
