Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/216

 special rates for a meal and lodging at Jamestown were enforced by the authorities, a master being required to pay twenty pounds of tobacco and a servant fifteen. The same charges were prescribed by an Act of Assembly a decade later, this Act extending to all parts of the Colony. So onerous were the rates adopted by the tavern keepers on their own motion, that it is stated to have had a serious effect in deterring persons having just claims from attending the General and County Courts and prosecuting their suits. The excessive demands had their origin not so much in the exorbitant spirit of the keepers of ordinaries as in the limited character of the local custom, and the great danger of depreciation in the leaf offered in payment. The rate fixed upon by law for a single meal, fifteen pounds for a master and ten for a servant, was very high, as fifteen pounds of tobacco at this time would bring, if its quality was good, not less than five shillings in modern English currency, which appears remarkable in a country distinguished for an extraordinary abundance of provisions.

Ten years later some important changes were made in the rates for food at the taverns. For a master, the amount for a single meal was fixed at twelve pounds of tobacco and for his servant at eight, if they were stopping at an ordinary in the town where the General Court or the Assembly had convened. Elsewhere it was to be ten for the master and six for the servant. The cost of lodging for each one was not to exceed three pounds, whether at Jamestown or at other places in the Colony. The charge for pasturing a horse, the owner of which was a guest of the inn, was fixed at six pounds for a period of twenty-four hours; if sheltered and supplied with hay and straw, the fee for the same length of time was to be