Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/391

 county to command the militia to assist in suppressing any disturbance which would arise in enforcing the statute. After the Restoration, petitions were offered by the leading planters and merchants of Virginia, begging that the sternest measures should be adopted to enforce the prohibitory Acts. As late as 1677, there are many evidences that these Acts were still evaded.

Turning from the English legislation, which had a direct bearing upon the agricultural growth of the Colony at this time, to the growth itself, it will be found that the long interval between the establishment of the Protectorate and the deposition of James the Second in 1688, was marked by a steady progress in Virginian agriculture, but also by many events which temporarily, at least, exercised a reactionary influence upon this interest. In the early part of this period, an unusual degree of attention was given to the culture of the silk-worm. Edward Digges, a man of wealth and prominence, was especially active in making experiments in silk husbandry, Denbigh, on James River and Bellefield in the vicinity of the modern Williamsburg, being the scenes of these experiments. He was in constant communication with John Ferrer and the latter&#8217;s sister in England, who probably supplied him with seed, and he mentions in a letter to the former in 1654, that he had produced four hundred pounds of bottoms, from which he had extracted about eight pounds of silk. In order to make a beginning, he had imported at his own cost two Armenians, who enjoyed a high reputation in their native country for their skill and experience. In 1654, he informed Mr. Ferrer that he had in the course of that year secured from his own preserve ten pounds