The dependence of 17th-century Virginia upon the single
crop--tobacco--was a chronic problem. A bad crop year or a depressed
English market could plunge the whole colony into debt, creating a chain
reaction of overextended credits and failures to meet obligations.
Tobacco exhausted the soil, and soil exhaustion led to an ever-widening
search for new land. This in turn brought about population dispersal and
extreme decentralization.
After the Restoration in 1660 the Virginia colonial government was faced
not only with these economic hazards but also with the resulting
administrative difficulties. It was awkward to govern a scattered
population and almost impossible to collect customs duties on imports
landed at the planters' own wharves along hundreds of miles of inland
waterways. The royal governors and responsible persons in the Assembly
reacted therefore with a succession of plans to establish towns that
would be the sole ports of entry for the areas they served, thus making
theoretically simple the task of securing customs revenues. The towns
also would be centers of business and manufacture, diversifying the
colony's economic supports and lessening its dependence on tobacco. To
men of English origin this establishment of port communities must have
seemed natural and logical.
The first such proposal became law in 1662, establishing a port town
for each of the major river valleys and for the Eastern Shore. But the
law's sponsors were doomed to disappointment, for the towns were not
built.[1] After a considerable lapse, a new act was passed in 1680, this
one better implemented and further reaching. It provided for a port town
in each county, where ships were to deliver their goods and pick up
tobacco and other exports from town warehouses for their return
voyages.[2] One of its most influential supporters was William Fitzhugh
of Stafford County, a wealthy planter and distinguished leader in the
colony.[3] "We have now resolved a cessation of making Tob^o next year,"
he wrote to his London agent, Captain Partis, in 1680. "We are also
going to make Towns, if you can meet with any tradesmen that will come
and live at the Town, they may have privileges and immunitys."[4]
[Illustration: Potomack River]
[Illustration: Figure 2.--Survey plats of Marlborough as copied in John
Mercer's Land Book showing at bottom, John Savage's, 1731; and top,
William Buckner's and Theodorick Bland's, 1691. (The courthouse probably
stood in the vicinity of lot 21.)]
Some of these towns actually were laid out, each on a 50-acre tract of
half-acre lots, but only 9 tracts were built upon. The Act soon lagged
and collapsed. It was unpopular with the colonists, who were obliged to
transport their tobacco to distant warehouses and to pay storage fees;
it was ignored by shipmasters, who were in the habit of dealing directly
with planters at their wharves and who were not interested in making it
any easier for His Majesty's customs collectors.[5]
Nevertheless, efforts to come up with a third act began in 1688.[6]
William Fitzhugh, especially, was articulate in his alarm over
Virginia's one-crop economy, the effects of which the towns were
supposed to mitigate. At this time he referred to tobacco as "our most
despicable commodity." A year later, he remarked, "it is more uncertain
for a Planter to get money by consigned Tob^o then to get a prize in a
lottery, there being twenty chances for one chance."[7]
In April 1691 the Act for Ports was passed, the House, significantly,
recording only one dissenting vote.[8] Unlike its predecessor, which
encouraged trades and crafts, this Act was justified purely on the basis
of overcoming the "great opportunity ... given to such as attempt to
import or export goods and merchandises, without entering or paying the
duties and customs due thereupon, much practised by greedy and covetous
persons." It provided that all exports and imports should be taken up or
set down at the specified ports and nowhere else, under penalty of
forfeiting ship, gear, and cargo, and that the law should become
effective October 1, 1692. The towns again were to be surveyed and laid
out in 50-acre tracts. Feoffees, to be appointed, would grant half-acre
lots on a pro rata first-cost basis. Grantees "shall within the space of
four months next ensueing such grant begin and without delay proceed to
build and finish on each half acre one good house, to containe twenty
foot square at the least, wherein if he fails to performe them such
grant to be void in law, and the lands therein granted lyable to the
choyce and purchase of any other person." Justices of the county courts
were to fill vacancies among the feoffees and to appoint customs
collectors.[9]