Virginia Under Francis West and Dr. John Pott, 1627-1630
Meanwhile the King had grown increasingly disgusted that Virginia's economy continued to be "built on smoke," and he ordered the Virginians to concentrate on crops and products other than tobacco. Among the products urged on the colonists were iron, salt, pitch and tar, potash, and pipe staves. As his directives went unheeded, the King determined to force a drastic reduction in the planting of the profitable tobacco crop. In instructions sent out in 1627 he directed that no master of a family be allowed to plant above 200 pounds of tobacco and no servant more than 125 pounds. He also ordered that all tobacco was to be consigned to him or his representatives.
Charles directed that a general assembly of the planters' representatives be summoned to deal with his proposals, and Governor West and the Council ordered an Assembly to meet on March 10, 1628. The Assembly thanked the King for prohibiting the importation of Spanish tobacco into the English market, but cried that they would be at the mercy of covetous individuals in England if a monopoly on Virginia tobacco was allowed. They proposed, however, that since the King intended to take all their tobacco, he should agree to take at least 500,000 pounds of tobacco at 3 shillings 6 pence the pound delivered in Virginia, or 4 shillings delivered in London. If the King was unwilling to take so much, they desired the right to export again from England to the Low Countries, Ireland, Turkey, and elsewhere. As to the King's proposal to limit tobacco cultivation to 200 pounds for the master of a family and 125 pounds for a servant, "every weake judgment," they asserted, could see that this would not be sufficient for their maintenance. As to the King's desire that the colonists should produce pitch and tar, pipe staves, and iron, they complained that much capital was needed to put such enterprises in operation. Few planters either could or would undertake such schemes when tobacco culture required so little capital and produced such quick and profitable results.
National Portrait Gallery, London
KING CHARLES I
Painting by Daniel Mytens
The Assembly commissioned Sir Francis Wyatt, then in England, and two Virginians to represent them in negotiations with the King. They were to be allowed to come down six pence on each of the figures insisted upon by Governor, Council, and Burgesses in their answer to the King's letter.
As in 1625, the opportunity to join in Assembly for the purpose of agreeing on regulations for tobacco production allowed the planters to deal with other matters. Wesley Frank Craven has written that "representative government in America owes much in its origins to an attempt to win men's support of a common economic program by means of mutual consent." Had the King been less desirous of taking every planter's tobacco and less concerned with the neglect of staple commodities, he might well have governed the colony without calling the planters together in periodic "assemblies."
Dr. John Pott was elected by the Council on March 5, 1629, to succeed West as Governor, and he governed in Virginia for one year. Few men possess a less savory record than this first representative of the medical profession in America. In 1624 he had been ordered removed from the Virginia Council, at the insistence of the Earl of Warwick, for his part in the attempt to poison the colony's Indian foes. He was later convicted of cattle stealing but spared punishment because he was the only doctor in the colony and therefore in great demand.
Both West and Pott were foes of the Indians, and in numerous orders and proclamations denounced former treaties of peace with them, and directed that perpetual enmity and wars be maintained against them. A pretended peace was, however, authorized to be extended to the Indians in August 1628 until certain captive Englishmen were redeemed; then it was to be broken.