Virginians to concentrate on crops and products other than tobacco. Among the products urged on the colonists were iron, salt, pitch and tar, potash, and pipe staves. As his directives went unheeded, the King determined to force a drastic reduction in the planting of the profitable tobacco crop. In instructions sent out in 1627 he directed that no master of a family be allowed to plant above 200 pounds of tobacco and no servant more than 125 pounds. He also ordered that all tobacco was to be consigned to him or his representatives.

Charles directed that a general assembly of the planters' representatives be summoned to deal with his proposals, and Governor West and the Council ordered an Assembly to meet on March 10, 1628. The Assembly thanked the King for prohibiting the importation of Spanish tobacco into the English market, but cried that they would be at the mercy of covetous individuals in England if a monopoly on Virginia tobacco was allowed. They proposed, however, that since the King intended to take all their tobacco, he should agree to take at least 500,000 pounds of tobacco at 3 shillings 6 pence the pound delivered in Virginia, or 4 shillings delivered in London. If the King was unwilling to take so much, they desired the right to export again from England to the Low Countries, Ireland, Turkey, and elsewhere. As to the King's proposal to limit tobacco cultivation to 200 pounds for the master of a family and 125 pounds for a servant, "every weake judgment," they asserted, could see that this would not be sufficient for their maintenance. As to the King's desire that the colonists should produce pitch and tar, pipe staves, and iron, they complained that much capital was needed to put such enterprises in operation. Few planters either could or would undertake such schemes when tobacco culture required so little capital and produced such quick and profitable results.

National Portrait Gallery, London

The Assembly commissioned Sir Francis Wyatt, then in England, and two Virginians to represent them in negotiations with the King. They were to be allowed to come down six pence on each of the figures insisted upon by Governor, Council, and Burgesses in their answer to the King's letter.

As in 1625, the opportunity to join in Assembly for the purpose of agreeing on regulations for tobacco production allowed the planters to deal with other matters. Wesley Frank Craven has written that "representative government in America owes much in its origins to an attempt to win men's support of a common economic program by means of mutual consent." Had the King been less desirous of taking every planter's tobacco and less concerned with the neglect of staple commodities, he might well have governed the colony without calling the planters together in periodic "assemblies."

Dr. John Pott was elected by the Council on March 5, 1629, to succeed West as Governor, and he governed in Virginia for one year. Few men possess a less savory record than this first representative of the medical profession in America. In 1624 he had been ordered removed from the Virginia Council, at the insistence of the Earl of Warwick, for his part in the attempt to poison the colony's Indian foes. He was later convicted of cattle stealing but spared punishment because he was the only doctor in the colony and therefore in great demand.

Both West and Pott were foes of the Indians, and in numerous orders and proclamations denounced former treaties of peace with them, and directed that perpetual enmity and wars be maintained against them. A pretended peace was, however, authorized to be extended to the Indians in August 1628 until certain captive Englishmen were redeemed; then it was to be broken.

The colonists, too, suffered during the administrations of West and Pott. One man expressed the hope for "an Easterly wind to blow to send in Noble Capt. Harvey, And then I shall have wright for all my wrong." Capt. John Harvey was known in the colony for the investigation he had conducted in Virginia in 1624-1625, and the King had appointed him Governor on March 26, 1628. Harvey did not actually take up his government in Virginia until two years later. In the meantime West and Pott administered the colony.

When Harvey arrived in 1630 he found that inadequate restrictions placed on tobacco production in the previous years had created an enormous surplus which had forced the price down to a penny a pound. Harvey found also that because of their "greedie desires to make store of Tobackoe," the settlers had neglected to plant sufficient corn, let alone to develop different commodities as instructed by the King. Calling an Assembly, he convinced the representatives to agree to reduce the amount of tobacco planted, and to increase the amount of corn. He also sent ships into the Chesapeake and southward to Cape Fear to trade for corn with the Indians to make up the deficit left by the negligent planters. But most important of all, Harvey put into effect the long-dreamed-of plan to secure the entire area between the James and the York by building a palisade between Archer's Hope Creek (now College Creek), emptying into the James River, and Queen's Creek, emptying into the York River. Harvey's plan called also for a settlement on the south side of the York. This outpost would serve as an advance base and point of defense for operations against Opechancanough, King of the Pamunkeys, and his many warriors. Six hundred acres apiece were granted there in 1630 to Capt. John West, brother of Lord Delaware, and to Capt. John Utie, who were made commanders of the settlement. Fifty acres were offered to any person who would settle there during the first year of its existence and twenty-five during the next year. Exactly when the first settlers moved to the York is uncertain, but it was probably in 1631. West and Utie settled on either side of a bay formed by the joining of King's Creek and Felgate's Creek about four miles above modern Yorktown. The tourist who speeds along the Colonial Parkway from Jamestown to Yorktown crosses the bay within sight of the tracts granted West and Utie. Today he may drive from Jamestown to the York with comfort and safety in a few minutes. It took the early settlers twenty-four years to cover the same distance.

About the same time, probably in 1630, another distant settlement was established. William Claiborne, Secretary of the Council of State of Virginia, with one hundred men, settled Kent Island 150 miles up Chesapeake Bay. In the Assembly of February 1632 both "Kiskyacke and the Isle of Kent" were represented by Capt. Nicholas Martiau, ancestor of George Washington.

The great expansion had now begun. Settlers crossed from the James to the York, and provision was made by an act of the Assembly of February 1633 for building houses at Middle Plantation, situated strategically between College Creek and Queen's Creek, and for "securing" the tract of land lying between the two creeks.

Besides being concerned with questions of defense, Harvey pursued a policy of encouraging trade