,
an event second only in importance to the original meeting in
1619.[33]

Other matters besides the form of government pressed upon the
attention of the settlers. Tobacco entered more and more into the life
of the colony, and the crop in the year 1628 amounted to upward of
five hundred thousand pounds.[34] King Charles took the ground of
Sandys and Southampton, that the large production was only temporary,
and like his father, subjected tobacco in England to high duties and
monopoly. He urged a varied planting and the making of pitch and tar,
pipe-staves, potashes, iron, and bay-salt, and warned the planters
against "building their plantation wholly on smoke." It was observed,
however, that Charles was receiving a large sum of money from customs
on tobacco,[35] and it was not likely that his advice would be taken
while the price was 3s. 6d. a pound. Indeed, it was chiefly under the
stimulus of the culture of tobacco that the population of the colony
rose from eight hundred and ninety-four, after the massacre in 1622,
to about three thousand in 1629.[36]

In March, 1629, Captain West went back to England, and a new
commission was issued to Sir John Harvey as governor.[37] He did not
come to the colony till the next year, and in the interval Dr. John
Pott acted as his deputy. At the assembly called by Pott in October,
1629, the growth of the colony was represented by twenty-three
settlements as against eleven ten years before. As in England, there
were two branches of the law-making body, a House of Burgesses, made
up of the representatives of the people, and an upper house consisting
of the governor and council. In the constitution of the popular branch
there was no fixed number of delegates, but each settlement had as
many as it chose to pay the expenses of, a custom which prevailed
until 1660, when the number of burgesses was limited to two members
for each county and one member for Jamestown.[38]

In March, 1630, Harvey arrived, and Pott's former dignity as governor
did not save him from a mortifying experience. The council was not
only an upper house of legislation, but the supreme court of the
colony, and in July, 1630, Pott was arraigned before this tribunal for
stealing cattle, and declared guilty. Perhaps Harvey realized that
injustice was done, for he suspended the sentence, and on petition to
the king the case was re-examined in England by the commissioners for
Virginia, who decided that "condemning Pott o