SOURCE: “Growth of the Tobacco Trade between London and Virginia, 1614-40,” in Guildhall Studies in London History, Vol. III, No. 4, April 1979, pp. 248-62.

[In the following essay, Pagan traces the economic ascendancy established by the Virginia tobacco trade and how it translated into significant political power for the tobacco growers and the London-based tobacco importers.]

Disheartened by a staggering mortality rate¹ and a series of ruinously expensive agricultural and industrial failures,² the settlers at Jamestown and their backers in the Virginia Company of London were on the verge of abandoning the colony when John Rolfe began his experiments with West Indian tobacco in 1612. Tobacco was not new to Virginia. An indigenous variety existed, but it was of such poor quality as to be unfit for the colonists' own consumption, let alone for export. The native strain could not hope to compete with Spanish leaf, which had been growing in popularity since the latter part of Elizabeth's reign.³ In 1603 £8,064 worth of Spanish tobacco was brought into London; in 1614 £29,708 worth was recorded; two years later imports of Spanish tobacco were valued at £44,369.⁴ But within twenty-five years after the first barrels of improved Chesapeake tobacco reached London in March 1614,⁵ Virginia leaf had achieved a position of dominance in the English market and become one of London's fastest growing imports.

Virginia possessed two physical assets which enabled it to become a great tobacco-producer: a superb network of waterways that facilitated commercial intercourse over great distances, and an abundance of easily accessible virgin land which was available to replace fields exhausted by tobacco cultivation after only a few seasons.⁶ These natural advantages, coupled with extremely high prices, led to a rapidly growing volume of tobacco shipments during the trade's formative years. Imports of Virginia and Bermuda tobacco rose from 2,300 pounds in 1616 to 18,839 in 1617,⁷ in which year the best tobacco sold for 3s. per pound and the remainder for 18d. Assessed in the Book of Rates at 10s. a pound, it brought less than half that amount in the latter part of 1619, but in 1620 sold for as much as 8s. a pound on the London market.⁸

By 1618, when 49,518 pounds of Virginia and Bermuda leaf were imported,⁹ tobacco had become the medium of exchange and principal source of employment for Virginians. When Rolfe returned to the colony from England in May 1617, he found Jamestown almost deserted and the marketplace and streets planted with tobacco.¹⁰ So obsessed were the settlers by the profitable weed that many of them neglected to raise enough food for their own subsistence. Colonial officials found it necessary to require each person who cultivated tobacco to plant at least two acres of corn for himself and each manservant in his employ.¹¹

Virginia became a one-crop economy, its fortunes linked inseparably to the fluctuations of English and, to a lesser extent, Continental markets. The emergence of tobacco as the colony's single significant export is fully understandable when one considers the incredible profits planters realized during the first decade of tobacco cultivation. It was reported in 1619 that one planter cleared £200 by his own labour; another made £1,000 with the help of six servants.¹² With the fervour that later characterized the participants in nineteenth-century gold rushes, during the next five years about 4,000 Englishmen flocked to Virginia to seek their fortunes, creating what Professor Edmund Morgan has aptly called ‘the first American boom’.¹³

Tobacco shipments from Virginia and Bermuda totalled 117,981 pounds in 1620, more than double the combined output of the two previous years.¹⁴ Due, in part at least, to a dispute over commercial policy between the crown and the Virginia and Bermuda Companies,¹⁵ the two colonies' exports between Michaelmas 1621 and Michaelmas 1622 were reduced to 61,337 pounds, only half the previous year's total.¹⁶ But trade showed definite signs of recovery the following year when 134,607 pounds of colonial tobacco were imported.¹⁷ With colonial leaf selling for between one and three shillings a pound during the first half of the 1620s,¹⁸ imports continued to rise. 202,962 pounds—the largest quantity thus far—were brought in from Virginia and Bermuda in 1623/24.¹⁹

Promising though it seemed, the growing tobacco trade was not enough to keep the Virginia Company solvent. Without funds to carry out development projects on its own, the Company came increasingly to rely upon individuals and groups of investors, acting nominally under the corporation's aegis, who engaged in trade and agriculture for their own profit.²⁰ Incessant factionalism, poor management and deepening indebtedness prevented the Company from giving adequate aid and direction to the colony. In 1624 the Company was dissolved and Virginia was brought under royal control.²¹

THE YEARS OF EXPANSION, 1625-1640

The confusion surrounding the Company's dissolution briefly disrupted commercial relations with Virginia. Colonial tobacco imports into London and the outports declined from 202,962 pounds in 1623/24 to 131,808 in 1624/25.²² However, once it became clear that the crown would assume control over Virginia, confidence in her economic potential was restored. Until the market became glutted near the end of the 1620s, the level of tobacco imports steadily increased.²³

Prior to 1622/23 Spanish tobacco, although higher priced, provided stiff competition for the Virginian product in English markets.²⁴ Spain and her colonies furnished all the 102,277 pounds of tobacco imported by London and the outports in 1615, but by the end of the decade Virginia and Bermuda had captured a significant portion of the market—52٪ in 1620 and 30٪ in 1621. Of the 994,599 pounds of tobacco imported by all English ports between 1615 and 1621, the Spanish total was 685,030 (69٪) and the two English colonies' was 309,569 (31٪).²⁵

Government-imposed restrictions on Spanish imports and the growing trade in colonial tobacco greatly reduced Spain's share of the English market during the 1620s and 1630s.²⁶ In 1622/23 the importation of Spanish leaf was limited to 40,000 pounds per annum, and in 1625 it was banned altogether. Large quantities continued to be smuggled in, so in 1626 the crown authorized a group of merchants headed by Philip Burlemachi to import 50,000 pounds of Spanish tobacco a year. The duties levied on foreign tobacco were much higher than those on colonial produce. These and other discriminatory policies were a great boon to Virginia and Bermuda. Of the 3,167,324 pounds of tobacco imported by London and the outports between 1622/23 and 1630/31, the Spanish and Brazilian portion was only 525,955 (16.6٪),²⁷ quite a contrast to the 1615 to 1621 period. The decline of the foreign tobacco trade was even more marked during the 1630s. Between 1637 and 1640 less than 4٪ of London's tobacco imports were Spanish.²⁸

The government's desire to increase its customs revenues reduced, though never eliminated, competition from another source: English tobacco growers. In 1619 the crown prohibited tobacco planting in England in return for the Virginia and Bermuda Companies' agreement to pay import duties in excess of those stipulated in their charters.²⁹ As Dr. Joan Thirsk has shown, tobacco was a very lucrative crop for English farmers, and enforcement of these restrictions was a perennial problem.³⁰

During the 1620s Virginia achieved clear dominance in the English colonial tobacco market over its chief rival and erstwhile sister colony, Bermuda.³¹ It is not possible to distinguish between London's Virginia and Bermuda tobacco imports until 1627/28 and 1630, for which years complete London port books are extant.³² These were fiscal records kept for customs purposes, not commercial statistics.³³ They must be used cautiously for, as G. D. Ramsay has pointed out, they omit all smuggled goods.³⁴ But since the port of London was administered more efficiently than the outports,³⁵ smuggling was probably less common there than elsewhere. Although they have their limitations, when used in conjunction with supporting data as we have tried to do in this article, the port books can illuminate certain general trends. By comparing port book entries for Virginia tobacco with customs and declared accounts giving combined Virginia and Bermuda import totals,³⁶ we can arrive at an estimation of the two colonies' respective shares of London's tobacco trade in the late 1620s. Three-quarters of the nation's tobacco imports entered through London. …

In 1627/28 Virginia's share of the outports' tobacco trade was even larger: 70٪ of the 165,852 pounds they imported that year came from the Chesapeake colony. The English colonies supplied four-fifths of the outports' total tobacco imports, and of this amount 87٪ was Virginian.³⁷

Bermuda probably lagged behind Virginia because the island lacked fresh land for expansion once tobacco had exhausted the tracts planted by the first generation of settlers. During the 1630s Virginia overcame a new group of competitors with a similar handicap: the West Indian islands. Again Virginia's natural resources were a major cause of her success. But there were other factors which compelled Barbados, St. Christopher, and the lesser islands to withdraw from the tobacco race. Their product was inferior to the Chesapeake variety, it paid a higher duty, and it fetched a lower price.³⁸ Consequently, between 1637 and 1640 West Indian planters were able to ship to England only about one-fifth as much tobacco as the Virginians.

Unable to compete as tobacco producers, the West Indian colonies began switching to cotton and ginger towards the end of the 1630s. The sugar revolution, which began in Barbados in the late 1640s and somewhat later in the other islands, provided West Indian settlers with a profitable alternative to tobacco, which had fallen drastically in price since the late 1620s. In the islands tobacco became a poor man's crop, while wealthy and middling planters put all their available capital into sugar production.³⁹ Thus by the end of the 1630s Virginia clearly dominated the English tobacco market. Only the fledgling colony of Maryland posed any threat to the Old Dominion's supremacy as a tobacco producer.

Such was Virginia's success that she soon suffered from too much of a good thing. Her tobacco shipments grew faster than the market's ability to absorb them. Prices in England and in the colony fell sharply. Governor John Harvey complained in 1630 and again in 1632 that the planters received only a penny a pound for their crops.⁴⁰ The slump caused imports in 1630/31 to decline to less than half the 1627/28 level.⁴¹ Virginia tobacco sold for only five to six pence a pound on the London market in 1631 and 1632, a fraction of the inflated prices it brought during the two previous decades.⁴²

As the tobacco glut worsened, the English government repeatedly pressed the Virginians to diversify their economy. These directives had very little impact. However, the colonists did try to reduce their tobacco production in the hope of driving up prices. Act V of the October 1629 session of the Virginia Assembly limited growers to 3,000 plants each; Act VII passed in March 1630 lowered the number to 2,000. By August 1633 it was down to 1,500 plants per poll. The legislature also tried to upgrade the quality of the colony's tobacco shipments by instituting an inspection system designed to eliminate second-rate produce.⁴³

The Virginians' efforts were at least partially successful. England's tobacco market began showing signs of recovery in 1633, although prices never again reached their previous levels. In 1633 English merchants imported 363,443 pounds of Virginia tobacco at London, the most since 1627/28 and 73٪ more than the quantity of Virginia and Bermuda leaf received in 1630/31.⁴⁴ The volume of Virginia imports rose an additional 9٪ in 1634, when 396,008 pounds were imported.⁴⁵

Another major reason why the colonial tobacco market improved during the middle years of the 1630s was the expansion of England's re-export trade. By 1640 London's re-exports, including Virginia tobacco sent mainly to Holland and Hamburg, were equal in value to the City's exports of all English goods other than textiles.⁴⁶ Whereas in 1634 English merchants had re-exported 48,505 pounds of Virginia tobacco from London, 12٪ of the amount the City imported from the colony that year,⁴⁷ in 1640 they re-exported 419,607 pounds, 42٪ of the quantity imported. The 1640 London port books list an additional 29,825 pounds which were shipped to European destinations from other English ports. English merchants also re-exported 17,985 pounds from Flushing, Hamburg and other foreign cities which had presumably been brought there directly from Virginia. Scottish and alien merchants apparently shipped only 1,400 pounds of Virginia tobacco from London in 1640.⁴⁸

Charles gave a boost to tobacco re-exports in the early 1630s when he instituted a drawback system under which half or more of the impost and subsidy on tobacco transported out of England within a year of its importation was repaid.⁴⁹ So important were these re-exports that throughout the period under discussion English merchants strove relentlessly to drive their chief rivals, the Dutch, out of the tobacco carrying trade.

Prices continued creeping upward until 1638 when over three million pounds of tobacco, more than three-quarters of it Virginian, flooded the market. In March 1638 Lord Goring was prepared to pay 6d. a pound in the colonies or 8d. a pound in England for 1,600,000 pounds of tobacco, about 63,000 more than the previous year's total imports.⁵⁰ But later in the same year, after it had become apparent that ‘the quantity … far exceeds other times’, the tobacco commissioners considered 4d. a pound a generous offer.⁵¹ In fact, the imports for 1638 were twice those of the previous year, so it is likely that prices subsequently dropped even lower. The market collapsed, and drastic action had to be taken on both sides of the Atlantic. Emergency measures were enacted to cut production. Declaring that ‘Tobacco by reason of excessive quantities made being soe low that the planters could not subsist by it or be inabled to raise more staple comodities or pay their debts’, the Virginia Assembly in January 1640 ordered that all unmerchantable tobacco and half the good tobacco should be burned. The total annual output was limited to 1,300,000 pounds for the next three years.⁵² According to Governor Francis Wyatt, this action ‘was propounded to us & desired by the principall Merchants about London, as the onely means to raise the price’.⁵³ The Virginians did not stop there, however. They also resorted to price-fixing, but to no avail. In 1641 the crown instructed the new governor, Sir William Berkeley, to put a stop to this practice and to safeguard the merchants' right to make their own bargains.⁵⁴

LONDON'S DOMINATION OF THE VIRGINIA TOBACCO TRADE

Between 1600 and 1640 London accounted for 80٪ of England's imports. The City's import trade doubled in volume during this period, increasing by nearly 50٪ between 1628 and 1640 alone. In 1600 half of London's imports came from north-western Europe. Forty years later only a third were from this area, while more than 50٪—primarily raw materials and semi-manufactured goods—came from Spain, the Mediterranean region, and the new trading areas which were developing in America and the West Indies. Tobacco imports played a major role in this expansion. They doubled between 1621/22 and 1634 and doubled again between 1634 and 1640. In fact, after 1634 tobacco was London's fastest growing import.⁵⁵

London dominated the colonial tobacco trade for several reasons. First, City merchants had larger amounts of capital at their disposal than outport traders. Second, because the Virginia Company had been seated in London, and City merchants were able to establish control over the colony's trade during its formative years and to consolidate their position after the dissolution. And third, the crown's policies favoured London over the outports.

To enforce the ban on foreign leaf and to facilitate customs administration, in 1624 the crown proclaimed that London was to be the sole port for the importation of tobacco.⁵⁶ This restriction was often circumvented. For example, traders sometimes claimed that foul weather or a leaky vessel forced them to land their cargo at a port other than London.⁵⁷ Although London remained dominant throughout the 1620s and 1630s, the outports' share of England's tobacco trade increased substantially. Between 1615 and 1621 only 7٪ of the Spanish tobacco entering England came through the provincial ports; their portion rose to 44٪ in the period 1622-31. The outports' gains in the field of colonial commerce were even more impressive: their share of the nation's total Virginian and Bermudan tobacco imports grew from an annual average of only 0.5٪ during the period 1615-21 to an annual average of 23٪ between 1622 and 1631.⁵⁸ Comparable figures are not available for the 1630s, but there is evidence which suggests that the outports' involvement in the tobacco trade continued to grow.⁵⁹ In February 1639 the customs farmers reported that it had become a common practice for the merchants of Plymouth, Dartmouth, Bristol, and Southampton to import large quantities of tobacco at their home ports. The farmers said the regulation requiring ships to discharge tobacco only at London was so often evaded that it was in the crown's interest (and presumably their own) to revoke it and permit the western ports to engage in this trade. The Privy Council followed their advice, but a month later it reversed its decision after hearing complaints from licensed London tobacco sellers who feared provincial competition.⁶⁰

If provincial merchants at times challenged the Londoners' control of England's tobacco import trade, aliens did not. Foreign merchants played a diminishing role in London's import trade as a whole between 1600 and 1640. Banned from colonial commerce during most of the period, aliens were largely confined to the trade between London and northwestern Europe, which was becoming relatively less important as the new branches of commerce expanded. As Dr. A. M. Millard has shown, alien merchants' share of the City's general imports fell from 26٪ in 1600 and 37٪ in 1609 to no more than 15٪ between 1624 and 1640.⁶¹ Their decline was even more marked in the tobacco trade. There appears to have been a correlation between the level of Spanish tobacco imports and aliens' share of the English market. In 1615, when the entire supply came from Spain and her possessions, aliens brought in between 25٪ and 45٪ of London's tobacco.⁶² As Spanish imports fell during the 1620s and early 1630s, so did the aliens' portion of the English market. Spanish leaf, which had constituted 67٪ of London's tobacco imports between 1615 and 1621, declined to only 13٪ between 1622 and 1631.⁶³ Not surprisingly, in 1633 we find that aliens accounted for less than 0.5٪ of the City's tobacco imports.⁶⁴ This trend continued throughout the rest of the decade. Between 1637 and 1640 aliens brought in only 1٪ of London's tobacco. By that point English merchants had gained control of almost all the Spanish as well as colonial imports. 94٪ of the 276,055 pounds of Spanish leaf entering London in those four years was brought in by English merchants, as was 99٪ of the Virginian and West Indian tobacco.⁶⁵

As London's tobacco trade grew in both volume and importance, it attracted an increasing number of merchants. The port book for 1627/28, a year when demand was still fairly high, lists 139 importers of Virginia tobacco.⁶⁶ There were five fewer in 1630 because the glut necessitated a reduction in imports.⁶⁷ In 1633, with over 62٪ of Virginia tobacco imports in the hands of the monopolists Maurice Thompson, Thomas Stone, and their associates, there were only 61.⁶⁸ The revocation of the Thompson-Stone group's monopoly opened up commercial opportunities to a wider range of London merchants the following year.⁶⁹ Moreover, prices were starting to rise as the worst effects of the surplus began to wear off. Consequently, in 1634 we find 163 persons listed as Virginia tobacco importers, an increase of 167٪ over the previous year.⁷⁰ But the most rapid growth took place in the second half of the decade, when native merchants' Virginia tobacco imports climbed from 363,443 in 1633 and 396,008 in 1634 to an annual average of 1,387,897 between 1637 and 1640.⁷¹ By the late 1630s over 300 persons were bringing Virginia tobacco into London each year.⁷² Between 1627/28 and 1640 the number of importers grew at an average annual rate of 10٪. The average quantity imported per merchant also increased, though at a somewhat slower rate: 8٪ a year.⁷³

Although hundreds of people participated in Virginian commerce and per capita average imports were rising, this does not mean the volume of trade was evenly distributed. On the contrary, the group comprising 80-90٪ of London's importers of Virginia tobacco, those bringing in less than 5,000 pounds each per year, were responsible for only 16-44٪ of the total trade during the five years between 1627/28 and 1640 for which quantifiable port book data are available. As the following table shows, these small and middling merchants were not the principal beneficiaries of the enormous expansion of the Virginia tobacco trade in the 1630s. In fact, their relative commercial importance actually declined.

It was a relatively small group of merchants, no more than 10٪ of the total number in any given year, who dominated the Virginia tobacco trade. These men, some of whom resided in London and some in Virginia, controlled between half and three-quarters of the City's imports of Virginia tobacco between 1627/28 and 1640. …

Two sets of men comprised the group which dominated Anglo-Virginian trade during the 1620s and 1630s: the greater colonial merchants of London and a handful of wealthy, politically prominent Virginia planters. Both groups imported tobacco at London under their own names; both possessed extensive landholdings in Virginia. The members of this transatlantic commercial community were inter-connected by a network of business and kinship ties. They were interdependent as well: planters and merchants needed each other's skills, capital, and influence to maintain or enhance their positions. Consequently they formed a powerful and mutually rewarding alliance capable of taking concerted action on both sides of the Atlantic. The nature and importance of the links between London's colonial merchant community and Virginia's planter elite will be explored in a later study of trade and politics in Virginia between 1625 and 1660.

The central figure in London's colonial merchant community⁷⁴ was a former Virginia settler named Maurice Thompson.⁷⁵ He was involved in almost every major operation of the period and his circle included most of the top colonial traders. His commercial interests were wide-ranging: West Indian sugar and tobacco, Canadian furs, interloping in the eastern trades. But, since he had close personal ties with the colony, Virginia always claimed much of his attention. The younger son of an armigerous Hertfordshire family, Thompson emigrated to Virginia in 1617. There he remained for nine years, establishing himself as a ship captain, trader, and landowner.⁷⁶ Three of his brothers, George, William and Paul, also spent several years in the colony. George Thompson, a future member of the English Council of State under the Commonwealth, served in the Virginia Assembly in the late 1620s. Along with his brother-in-law William Tucker, George Thompson provided his brother Maurice with a useful connection in Virginia's political hierarchy, which controlled the distribution of land and regulation of commerce in the colony.

Within a few years of his return to England in 1626, Maurice Thompson was well on his way to becoming London's leading colonial merchant. By 1627/28 he was already among the top 10٪ of Virginia tobacco importers; he brought in 7,655 pounds that year.⁷⁷ In 1633 he and several other merchants secured special trading privileges which enabled them to import 226,700 pounds of Virginia leaf, almost two-thirds of the total.⁷⁸ In 1638 he imported at least 132,000 pounds.⁷⁹ He was also extensively involved in the lucrative re-export and colonial supply trades.⁸⁰ By the early 1630s his brother William had become a major colonial merchant as well. In 1634 he brought in 46,200 pounds of Virginia tobacco, almost 12٪ of the total.⁸¹ That same year he was London's largest re-exporter of Virginia leaf, shipping 47,840 pounds to Amsterdam and Hamburg.⁸²

Thomas Stone, Maurice Thompson's partner in a number of ventures, was another leading colonial trader. In addition to his share of the Virginia tobacco monopoly's imports which amounted to almost a quarter of a million pounds, he brought in over 100,000 pounds of Bermudan and West Indian leaf in 1633.⁸³ He was also a substantial tobacco re-exporter and a supplier of cloth and other goods to the colonies.⁸⁴ Among the other prominent Virginia traders were William Harris and Thomas Deacon, who first became active in Anglo-Virginian commerce as cheesemongers involved in the provisioning trade. Their activities later included tobacco shipping, and they even took up residences in the colony for a time.⁸⁵ Other important members of Thompson's circle who were among the top 10٪ of Virginia tobacco importers and/or conspicuous participants in the re-export and colonial supply trades were William Cloberry, Matthew Craddock, Elias Roberts (Thompson's brother-in-law), Jeremy Blackman, Richard Quiney, William Allen, and Richard Perry.⁸⁶

By the eve of the Civil War, these men and others like them⁸⁷ had been elevated by their success in the Virginia tobacco trade and other colonial ventures to positions of power and influence in London's commercial community. Economic strength soon led to political prominence. As Robert Brenner has shown, almost to a man prominent Virginia traders supported the Parliamentarian cause. With the victory of the King's enemies came important posts in the national government for the Thompsons and their leading associates, along with an opportunity to exert considerable influence in the determination of colonial and commercial policy.⁸⁸

Notes

1. See Edmund S. Morgan, ‘The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18’, American Historical Review, lxxvi (1971), pp. 595-611.

2. The colonists' inability to establish Iberian and southern European plants such as citrus fruits and grapes as staple crops and the failure of sericulture experiments are discussed in Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1933), i, pp. 20-30. On the unsuccessful attempts to secure commercially significant quantities of timber, naval stores, and iron, see Philip Alexander Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1895), ii, pp. 440-49.

3. See C. M. Mac Innes, The Early English Tobacco Trade (London, 1926), chs. i-ii.

4. These valuations are based upon the 1604 Book of Rates and were taken from A. M. Millard, ‘Import Trade of London, 1600-1640’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1956), p. 86. Cf. L. C. Gray's estimate that by 1610 England imported £60,000 worth of tobacco. Gray, History, i, p. 21.

5. ‘Lord Sackville's Papers Respecting Virginia, 1613-31’, ed. A. P. Newton, Amer. Hist. Rev., xxvii (1921-22), p. 496.

6. A. P. Middleton, Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of the Chespeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Newport News, Va., 1953), pp. 30-40; Avery O. Craven, Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606-1860 (Urbana, Illinois, 1926), ch. i.

7. ‘Sackville Papers’, p. 526. Virginia's share of colonial tobacco imports cannot be distinguished from Bermuda's until 1627/28.

8. L. C. Gray, ‘The Market Surplus Problems of Colonial Tobacco’, William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd ser., vii (1927), p. 232. For a year-by-year analysis of the prices at which tobacco was sold in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, see Russell R. Menard, ‘A note on Chesapeake tobacco prices, 1618-1660’, V(irgini)a Mag(azine of) Hist(ory and) Biog(raphy), lxxxiv (1976), pp. 401-10.

9. ‘Sackville Papers’, p. 526.

10. Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), i, p. 40.

11. Gray, History, i, p. 22. This regulation was periodically re-enacted by the Virginia Assembly throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. See The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, From the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, ed. William Waller Hening (2nd edn, New York, 1823), i, pp. 166, 190, 246, 419.

12. Edmund S. Morgan, ‘The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630’, Wm. & Mary Qtly., 3rd ser., xxviii (1971), p. 178.

13. Ibid., p. 170.

14. ‘Sackville Papers’, p. 526.

15. The dispute is discussed in George L. Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (New York, 1908), pp. 119-22.

16. Neville Williams, ‘England's Tobacco Trade in the Reign of Charles I’, Va. Mag. Hist. Bio., lxv (1957), p. 419. This article contains a great deal of useful data taken from the declared accounts for the 1620s, along with a transcript of those portions of a 1627/28 port book relating to tobacco imports at London and the outports.

17. Ibid.

18. Morgan, art. cit., p. 177.

19. Williams, art. cit., p. 419.

20. On the importance of the groups of investors who financed private colonies or ‘particular plantations’ within the boundaries of the Company's patent, see Morton, loc. cit., i, p. 62; Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, Conn., 1934), i, pp. 130-33; W. R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies (Cambridge, 1910-12), ii, pp. 254-88. Trade with the colony was opened to non-members of the Company magazine in 1619. Records of the Virginia Company of London, ed. Susan M. Kingsbury (Washington, D.C., 1933), i, pp. 293, 303.

21. The standard account of the Company's collapse in Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company (New York, 1932).

22. Williams, art. cit., p. 419.

23. Tobacco imports from Virginia and Bermuda between Michaelmas 1625 and Michaelmas 1631 were as follows (figures are for London and the outports combined):

    1625/26	1626/27	1627/28	1628/29	1629/30	1630/31
    333,102	376,858	552,871	178,715	458,151	272,295

    Williams, art. cit., p. 420.

24. Spanish tobacco sold for 18s. a pound in 1619, more than twice as much as Virginia leaf. Even in the glutted markets of the 1630s Spanish tobacco fetched 12s. 3d. a pound while the Virginian variety was lucky to bring much more than three to five pence. Bruce, loc. cit., i, p. 294; Gray, ‘Market Surplus’, p. 232; Morgan, art. cit., p. 177.

25. ‘Sackville Papers’, p. 526.

26. For the restrictions on the importation of Spanish tobacco, see Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, 1613-1680, ed. W. L. Grant and J. Munro (Hereford, 1908), no. 148, pp. 89-90; no. 197, pp. 120-21; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1574-1660, ed. W. N. Sainsbury (London, 1860), pp. 83, 86.

27. Williams, art. cit., pp. 419-20.

28. ‘Tobaccoes entred in the porte of London in fower yeeres from Lady Day 1637’. Earl of Norwich's Papers, B. L. Addit. MS. 35865, ff. 247-48. A transcript is printed in Caribbeana, iii (1913-14), pp. 197-98.

29. Andrews, loc. cit., i, pp. 156-57.

30. Joan Thirsk, ‘New Crops and Their Diffusion: Tobacco-growing in Seventeenth Century England’, in Rural Change and Urban Growth 1500-1800: Essays in English Regional History in Honour of W. G. Hoskins, ed. C. W. Chalklin and M. A. Havinden (London, 1974), pp. 94-97.

31. Joined for a few years with the Virginia Company of London, the Bermuda or Somers Island Company became autonomous in 1615. It survived the dissolution crisis intact and remained under Company control until 1684. See Andrews, loc. cit., i, chs. xi-xii.

32. In the period 1625-40 complete London port books listing tobacco imports are available for the following years: Michaelmas 1627-Michaelmas 1628 (1627/28), 1630, 1633, 1634, 1638, and 1640. The last five cover periods extending from Christmas to Christmas.

33. G. N. Clark, Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696-1782 (London, 1938), p. 53; Neville Williams, ‘The London Port Books’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, xviii (1955), p. 15.

34. G. D. Ramsay, ‘The Smugglers' Trade: A Neglected Aspect of English Commercial Development’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., ii (1952), pp. 131-57.

35. Williams, ‘London Port Books’, p. 15.

36. The customs and declared accounts data are abstracted in Williams, ‘England's Tobacco Trade’, pp. 419-20.

37. Williams, art. cit., pp. 419-20.

38. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), p. 53.

39. Dunn, loc. cit., pp. 19, 53, 59-62; Richard Pares, ‘Merchants and Planters’, Ec(onomic) Hist(ory) Rev(iew), Supplement iv (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 20-23; K. G. Davies, The North Atlantic World of the Seventeenth Century (Minneapolis, Minn., 1974), pp. 147-50.

40. Harvey to Privy Council, 29 May 1630, Va. Mag. Hist. Biog., vii (1899-1900), p. 382; Harvey to Commissioners for Virginia, 27 May 1632, ibid., viii (1900-1901), p. 149; Cal. S.P. Col. 1574-1660, p. 117; see also Menard, art. cit., p. 405.

41. Williams, art. cit., p. 420. 332,793 pounds of foreign and colonial tobacco were imported in 1630/31 as compared to 672,692 in 1627/28. For the English colonies' share, see p. 6, note 23 supra.

42. P.R.O., High Court of Admiralty Examinations (1634), HCA 13/51, f. 178, printed in Seventeenth Century Economic Documents, ed. Joan Thirsk and J. P. Cooper (Oxford, 1972), pp. 348-49.

43. Hening, loc. cit., i, pp. 141-42, 152, 165, 212, 224-25.

44. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Surveyor of Tunnage and Poundage, Overseas Imports by Denizens: Xmas. 1632-Xmas. 1633. E.190/38/1; Williams, art. cit., p. 420.

45. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Surveyor General of Tunnage and Poundage, Overseas Imports by Denizens: Xmas. 1633-Xmas. 1634. E.190/38/5.

46. F. J. Fisher, ‘London's Export Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Ec. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., iii (1950), p. 160.

47. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Controller of Tunnage and Poundage, Overseas Exports by Denizens: Xmas. 1633-Xmas. 1634. E.190/38/7; E.190/38/5.

48. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Searcher [Denizens and Aliens]: Xmas. 1639-Xmas. 1640. E.190/44/1; P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Surveyor of Tunnage and Poundage, Overseas Exports by Denizens: Xmas. 1639-Xmas. 1640. E.190/43/1; E.190/43/5.

49. Stanley Gray and V. J. Wyckoff, ‘The International Tobacco Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, Southern Economic Journal, vii (1940-41), p. 16; Acts of P.C. Col. 1613-80, no. 291, p. 175.

50. Beer, loc. cit., pp. 157-59. In 1634 the colonists had asked 6d. per pound for tobacco sold in the colony and 14d. for that delivered in England. The king's agents felt these sums were unreasonable. Cal. S.P. Col. 1578-1660, p. 190. That Goring was willing to pay 6d. in 1638 indicates prices had risen somewhat during the interval.

51. Beer, loc. cit.

52. Hening, loc. cit., i, pp. 224-25.

53. P.R.O., C.O. 1/10, ff. 162-62v: Wyatt to [Francis Windebanke?] 25 March 1640; Va. Mag. Hist. Biog., xiii (1905-06), p. 381.

54. Hening, loc. cit., i, pp. 162-63, 188, 206, 210; P.R.O., Colonial Office, Entry Book of Letters, Commissions, Instructions, Charters, Warrants, Patents, and Grants Concerning Virginia and the Bermudas, Series 5, vol. 1354, ff. 233-34.

55. This paragraph is based upon Millard, loc. cit., pp. i-ii, 4, 218, 220-21, 313-14, 316-17.

56. Beer, loc. cit., pp. 197-99.

57. See, e.g. Acts of P.C. Col. 1613-80, no. 351, p. 210; no. 356, p. 212; no. 415, p. 249.

58. By the late 1620s the English colonies were the outports' principal source of tobacco. Whereas Virginia and Bermuda furnished only 3٪ of the tobacco brought into the provincial ports between 1615 and 1621, no less than 72٪ came from these colonies during the rest of the 1620s. These and the calculations contained in the text are based upon data in ‘Sackville Papers’, pp. 526-27 and Williams, art. cit., pp. 419-20.

59. Evidence concerning the outports' tobacco trade must be used cautiously lest the provincial merchants' importance be exaggerated. The fact that tobacco entered England through Southampton, Plymouth or Dover did not necessarily mean it had been imported by one of those cities' own traders. In 1627/28, for example, one fourth of the 109 shipments of Spanish and colonial tobacco landed at the outports were brought in under the names of Londoners. Bristol was the only provincial port whose trade was exclusively in the hands of local merchants. Williams, art. cit., pp. 418-20.

60. Privy Council Register, v. (4 January-10 April 1639: facsimile edn., London, 1968), pp. 100-02, 166-68; Acts of P.C. Col. 1613-80, no. 415, p. 250.

61. Millard, loc. cit., pp. i-ii, 207-10, 220, 240-45, Table A, Appendix Volume 2.

62. Ibid., pp. 86, 125.

63. ‘Sackville Papers’, p. 526; Williams, art. cit., pp. 419-20. The 1622-31 figures include Brazilian tobacco as well. The percentage of foreign tobacco was much higher for the outports than for London during the 1620s: 28٪. Foreign tobacco constituted 17٪ of the combined imports of London and the outports.

64. Millard, loc. cit., p. 226.

65. B.L. Addit. MS. 35865, ff. 247-48.

66. P.R.O. E. 190/32/8.

67. E. 190/34/2; E. 190/35/4.

68. E. 190/38/1.

69. See Acts of P.C. Col. 1613-80, no. 314, pp. 187-88.

70. E. 190/38/5.

71. E. 190/38/1; E. 190/38/5; B.L. Addit. MS. 35865, ff. 247-48.

72. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Waiters, Overseas Imports: Xmas. 1637-Xmas. 1638. E. 190/41/5. Parts of this volume are illegible, so no precise number of importers can be adduced. However, there appear to have been well over 300. In 1640 there were 302. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Controller of Tunnage and Poundage, Overseas Imports by Denizens: Xmas. 1639-Xmas. 1640. E. 190/43/5.

73. These computations are based upon the port books.

74. For an excellent study of the rise of London's colonial merchant community, see Robert P. Brenner, ‘Commercial Change and Political Conflict: The Merchant Community in Civil War London’ (Princeton Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1970). Also see Brenner's articles: ‘The Civil War Politics of London's Merchant Community’, Past and Present, lviii (1973), pp. 53-107; ‘The Social Basis of English Commercial Expansion, 1550-1650’, Journal of Economic History, xxxii (1972), pp. 361-84.

75. On Thompson's career, see J. E. Farnell, ‘The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War, and the London Merchant Community’, Ec. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xvi (1963-64), pp. 441, 443-53; Brenner, ‘Commercial Change’, pp. 85ff; Va. Mag. Hist. Biog., i (1893-94), pp. 188-90.

76. Records of Va. Co., i, p. 277, iv, pp. 245, 257. In March 1621 he patented 150 acres between Newport News and Blunt Point, 50 acres for his personal adventure and 100 for transporting two others. Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1800, ed. Nell Marion Nugent (Richmond, Va., 1934), p. 4; also see Brenner, ‘Commercial Change’, pp. 85-86.

77. P.R.O. 190/32/8, ff. 9, 10, 11, printed in Williams, art. cit., pp. 421-29. The other members of the top 10٪ in 1627/28 were Thomas Claiborne (7,246 lbs.), Tobias Felgate (5,082), Thomas Grindon (5,434), John Hanger (6,314), William Perkins (6,173), John Preene (19,400), Samuel Rastall (11,000), Richard Russell (5,510), John Sharples (8,095), Richard Stephens (27,000), Thomas Stone (9,828), William Tristram (15,250), and Richard Wake (6,773).

78. P.R.O. E.190/38/1, ff. 18v, 56, 60, 79v, 159v, 171. Thompson's chief partner was Thomas Stone. The other members of the top 10٪ in 1630 were Edward Bennett (10,170 lbs.), William Claiborne (8,500), Roland Craine (8,165), Humphrey Farley (8,180), Robert Grimes (9,520), Samuel Mathews (10,000), George Menefie (10,660), John Osborne (18,000), William Peirce (15,000), Richard Perry (10,733), John Prim (17,000), Robert Swinerton (15,000).

79. P.R.O. E.190/41/5, ff. 52, 92v, 120, 132, 138, 167, 222, 222v. Many of the entries in the 1638 port book are barely legible, so the total should be taken as an approximation only.

80. The port books for exports, though not nearly so comprehensive in scope as those for imports because duties were not imposed on many types of goods shipped from England to America, indicate that in 1627 Maurice Thompson shipped cloth, shoes, canvas, clothing, food, and an assortment of other goods to Virginia. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Searcher: Xmas. 1626-Xmas. 1627. E.190/31/1, ff. 95, 95v; P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Controller of Customs, Overseas Exports of Cloth by Denizens: Xmas. 1626-Xmas. 1627. E.190/32/2, f. 40. In the same year he re-exported 9,700 pounds of Virginia tobacco to Flushing, Amsterdam, and Middelburgh. E.190/31/1, ff.39v, 131, 135, 158v, 162, 164; also see Acts of P.C. Col. 1613-80, no. 312, p. 187.

81. P.R.O. E.190/38/5, ff. 43v, 148. In addition to William Thompson, the leading 10٪ of Virginia tobacco importers at London in 1634 were William Allen (9,300 lbs.), Edward Bennett (5,000), Alexander Bidgood (5,037), Jeremy Blackman (12,000), Timothy Bourne (7,132), William Button (17,000), Thomas Ceeley (6,562), John Constable (20,000), John Grant (5,000), Edward Gregg (6,550), Richard Johns (24,000), William Johns (7,989), Samuel Langham (8,200), Thomas Stone (72,160), Robert Tucker (11,720).

82. P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Controller of Tunnage and Poundage, Overseas Exports by Denizens: Xmas. 1633-Xmas. 1634. E.190/38/7, f. 31.

83. P.R.O. E.190/38/1, ff. 51, 79v. Stone was among the top 10٪ of Virginia tobacco importers in 1627/28, 1633, and 1634.

84. In 1627 Stone re-exported 10,257 pounds of Virginia tobacco to Middelburgh, Flushing and Amsterdam. About a fifth of this amount was shipped under a partnership arrangement with Maurice Thompson, P.R.O. E.190/31/1, ff. 3v, 7, 39v, 103v, 104, 105. For Stone's shipments of goods to Virginia, see P.R.O., Exchequer King's Remembrancer, London Port Books. Controller's Entries of Pretermitted Customs, Overseas Exports of Cloths: Xmas. 1627-Xmas. 1628. E.190/32/3, f. 54.

85. Privy Council Register, vii (21 July-30 October 1639), pp. 551-52; ix (26 January-27 March 1640), p. 382; Acts of P.C. Col. 1613-80, no. 464, p. 281; no. 429, p. 259; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1639-40, p. 563; Cavaliers and Pioneers, pp. 12, 53, 114, 135, 170.

86. P.R.O. E.190/32/8; E.190/34/2; E.190/35/4; E.190/38/1; E.190/38/5; E.190/41/5; E.190/43/5; E.190/38/7; E.190/32/2; E.190/44/1; E.190/32/3; E.190/31/1. Also see Brenner, ‘Commercial Change’, ch. iii.

87. In 1640 the following persons comprised the top 10٪ of Virginian tobacco importers: William Allen (21,230 pounds), Thomas Armeston (14,000), Edward Barton (11,640), Richard Bateson (15,000), John Bradley (47,557), Henry Brooke (30,501), Thomas Cornwallis (33,051), Nicholas Corsellis (10,973), Thomas Gower (17,200), Alexander Harewood (11,709), Edward Harris (27,200), George Handly (32,430), Antony Hobson (9,800), Francis Huffe (15,734), Edward Hurd (23,400), James Jenkins (20,800), Thomas Jennes (13,800), William Mellinge (15,069), Edward Meyer (19,000), Thomas Norwood (8,930), Richard Perry (7,460), Richard Quiney (23,250), Elias Roberts (12,500), Israel Scarlet (26,490), Abell Snowe (9,300), John Southwood (28,085), John Turner (36,760), William Underwood (18,300), William Watts (27,000), John White (14,495) and Richard Wilson (11,350).

88. Brenner, ‘Commercial Change’, chs. v-vii, ix; Brenner, ‘Civil War Politics’, pp. 53-107; Brenner, ‘Social Basis of Expansion’, p. 384. For an interesting discussion of Thompson's influence on commercial and colonial policy during the Commonwealth period, see Farnell, art. cit., pp. 440, 454.