Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/89

 of supplying the American plantations with slaves, had become thoroughly discouraged by the encroachments of the Dutch, who did not hesitate to seize English vessels seeking to participate in the African trade. To prevent the entire exclusion of these merchants, it was found necessary, in 1662, to grant a charter to the Royal African Company, with the exclusive right of importing negroes into the English possessions, the number to be introduced annually not to fall short of three thousand. The Duke of York, brother of the King, was placed at its head. This corporation was authorized to give a license to any English subject to export slaves from Africa to the English Colonies on the payment of three pounds sterling a ton on the tonnage of the vessel used in transporting them. It also received permission to enter into a contract with the Governor of Barbadoes to supply the planters of that island with negroes at the rate of seventeen pounds sterling a head. The slaves to be conveyed to the planters of Antigua and Jamaica, under contracts with the Governors of these Colonies, were to be delivered respectively at eighteen and nineteen pounds sterling apiece. It is worthy of note that the right was not specifically conferred upon the Company at this time to enter into an agreement with the Governor of Virginia as to the rates at which Africans were to be sold to the people of that English possession, an omission due perhaps to the fact that the Colony was not yet regarded as an important market for slave labor.

It is questionable whether in 1663 the slave population of the Colony was in excess of fifteen hundred persons. Eight years later it had risen only to two thousand. In