February 1633 similarly required all gunsmiths, brickmakers, carpenters, joiners, sawyers, and turners to work at their trades and not to plant tobacco or do other work in the ground.

Another booklet in this series deals with agriculture in Virginia. It is enough to say here that as the total production of tobacco increased so did the price decline. Our present-day farm surplus problem is not new. Even when the price had plummeted to a penny a pound the planters were not discouraged from planting. Attempts were made on both sides of the Atlantic to fix prices and to control the amount of production in order to restore prosperity to the tobacco farmers. The important questions were whose interests would be served, and how would they be served best?

The death of James I and the dissolution of the Virginia Company occurred almost at the same time. Charles I, his son, assumed the throne in 1625 and promptly assured the planters that though the form of Virginia's government had changed, the individual planters could be sure that their rights and property would be respected. Charles informed the colonists, however, that he would take over the buying of their tobacco as a royal monopoly and give them such prices as would satisfy and encourage them. Agreement with the planters, nevertheless, was difficult to obtain. The Virginians were solidly united as a special interest in favoring the highest prices and the greatest production. Their representatives, both in the House of Burgesses and on the Council, were their ardent spokesmen, themselves planters, whose interest lay in fighting the battle of all Virginians. On the other hand the King, and the English merchants and associates through whom he dealt, desired to buy Virginia's tobacco at the lowest possible prices and in moderate quantities. The tug of war between the two sides continued for many years without any clear-cut resolution.

Sir Francis Wyatt, who had been the London Company's Governor in the period 1621-1624, was appointed Governor by James I the first year the colony was under royal control. Although the King made no specific provision for the continuation of a representative Assembly, Wyatt and the Council called together representatives of the various settlements to meet in a General Assembly on May 10, 1625, in Jamestown. There they drew up a petition complaining of the old Company rule and the miserable state in which it had kept the colony during the previous twelve years, and pleading with the King not to allow a monopoly of the tobacco trade. The King's advisers, they feared, were those who had formerly oppressed them and who would do so again should the King consent to a "pernitious contract" taking all their tobacco at unfair rates. To present their case against the contract they chose Sir George Yeardley, former Governor, to go to England as their agent. The willingness of Wyatt and the Council to call such an Assembly and the unanimity of views deriving from it, show how single in their economic interests all Virginians were.

Governor Wyatt attempted to prevent disorderly expansion of settlement and to build positions of strength in the colony, but he knew that the "affection" of the planters to "their privat dividents" was too strong a force to resist. Hence he recommended that a palisade be built from Martin's Hundred on the James River to Chiskiack on the York River, with houses spaced along it at convenient intervals. In this way the Indians might be kept out of the entire lower portion of the peninsula, the cattle kept in, and the colony provided with a secure base for the development of its economy. After the economy was flourishing, there would be a chance for finding the riches in the mountains to the west and the longed-for passage to the South Sea, so confidently believed to lie just beyond the Appalachians. All these enterprises presupposed the "winning of the Forest" between the York and the James, which Wyatt hoped to accomplish by means of his palisade scheme.

Wyatt's project was not immediately put into effect. In 1626 he was replaced by Sir George Yeardley. Yeardley, like Wyatt, devoted much of his time to devising means to promote the security of the colony against attack by land or by sea.

It is hard for us to realize how desperately concerned with their security were the few thousand Englishmen who inhabited Virginia at this time. Separated from the mother country by 3,000 miles of ocean, a dangerous crossing usually taking two months, the settlers had only a precarious toe hold on a vast continent. From the ocean side the settlers feared possible attack from other European colonizing powers: the Spanish, French, or Dutch. The Spanish ambassador in London in the early period of the Virginia settlement had frequently urged his government to wipe out the struggling colony. But the indecision of Spain's monarch had saved the colony.

The Virginians themselves had engaged in expeditions against the French settled in Maine, and spoke menacingly of the Dutch who had established a settlement on the King's domain in Hudson's River in 1613. The claims of the European monarchs to the American continent conflicted with one another, and there seemed little chance that a resolution would come by any other means than war. So it proved to be, later. In the meantime, at home, Virginia settlers stood on guard. Governor Yeardley appointed Capt. William Tucker, one of the Virginia Council, to check at Point Comfort all ships entering the James River. Tucker was provided with a well-armed shallop and absolute authority to check all ships arriving. He could not do battle with an enemy warship, of course, but he could give the alarm in case the enemy appeared. A few years later a fort was built at Point Comfort to defend the entrance to Virginia's great river. Although the channel was too wide ever to be adequately commanded by the cannon of the day, the fort provided some protection to the colony.

Yeardley made similar efforts to strengthen Virginia's position on land against the numerically superior Indians. Like Wyatt he urged the necessity of "planting the forest" rather than jumping beyond it to areas far from existing settlements. As a means of controlling the population Yeardley issued a proclamation requiring that anyone who desired to move his place of residence within the colony must obtain prior permission from the Governor and Council. Even to be absent for a short time from his place of residence, a planter was required to get permission from his "plantation commander." As was pointed out earlier, "plantations" in this early period were usually not the individually-owned, individually-operated plantations of later times, but "private colonies" or "particular plantations," organized on a joint-stock basis, on which more than a hundred men might live.

In keeping with his conception of the colony as a military outpost, Yeardley made plans for an armed settlement on the York at Chiskiack, and devised a project for a surprise attack on all the surrounding Indians on the first day of August 1627. Each "particular plantation" was to march against an Indian town, kill as many Indians as possible, and seize or cut down what corn it could. The attack was a success, but because of a scarcity of shot the English failed in their desired goal of utterly extirpating the red men.

In November 1627 Yeardley died, and the Council chose one of its number, Captain Francis West, to assume the role of Governor and Captain General.

Meanwhile the King had grown increasingly disgusted that Virginia's economy continued to be "built on smoke," and he ordered the