Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/587

 Colony, with a view to curtailing the area of uncultivated ground, proposed that where a plantation exceeded one thousand acres in extent, the owner should be required to deliver his quit-rents in coin. In an order addressed to Lord Howard in 1684, the King, after referring to the revocation of the letters patent granted to Culpeper and Arlington in 1673, under which all the quit-rents of Virginia had been conferred upon these noblemen, urges upon him the necessity of collecting the one shilling for every fifty acres in pieces of eight and not in tobacco, as had hitherto been the case. These instructions must have been carried into effect to a certain extent, for in the following year, 1685, the owners of land presented a petition to Howard, in which they warmly urged that they should be permitted to settle their quit-rents in tobacco alone, on the ground that coin was extremely scarce in the Colony, and that it was practically impossible to obtain it from England. Howard so far yielded to this request as to allow those who, on account of the scarcity of coin or their poverty, would find it difficult to pay in metallic money, to deliver to the sheriff such a quantity of their best leaf at the rate of one penny a pound as would assure the satisfaction of the King&#8217;s dues. The sums in either form thus collected were to be turned over to Nathaniel Bacon, the Auditor-General. This was really a reversion to the former condition of affairs, for the large