Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/501

 Asheton estate in the Northern Neck in 1687, and also in the case of other estates equally as large. It was sometimes the custom of a number of planters to unite in the confinement of their horses to a neck of land, where they were permitted to roam at liberty, only they were periodically driven into a pen, and the special mark of each owner branded upon the foals born to his mares in the interval. In order to prevent any secret encroachments upon the rights of each other, it was generally required that a notice of an intention to drive the herd should be given by the persons interested, at the parish church, two weeks previous to its actual undertaking.

In 1688, Clayton states that the average value of horses in the Colony was five pounds sterling. This amount exceeded rather than fell below the ordinary prices as disclosed in the contemporaneous records of court. There is an instance in Henrico of the sale of an animal of this kind at twelve pounds and eleven shillings, and in Middlesex, at seven pounds. In 1690, a mare, two years old, was valued in York at two pounds and five shillings, and one, four years old, at two pounds and two shillings; some years previous to this, a mare of the same age had been sold in the same county for two pounds and five shillings, a difference so small as to show that these figures represented the general appraisement of such an animal. In 1699, a mare eight years of age was valued in Henrico at four pounds; and about the same