tobacco each year could count on an income of
L12, which was ample for his needs. After the passage of the
Navigation Acts he was fortunate if he made forty-five shillings. This
was so little that Secretary Ludwell attributed it to nothing but the
mercy of God that he had "not fallen into mutiny and confusion." In
1662 Berkeley and others complained that the price of tobacco was so
low that it would not bear the charge of freight and customs, give
encouragement to the merchants, and subsistence to the planters.

As though this were not enough, a series of disasters struck the
colony bringing ruin and suffering in their wake. In 1667, when
England and Holland were at war, a fleet of five Dutch warships
entered Chesapeake Bay and captured the _Elizabeth_, an English
frigate of forty-six guns. They then turned on the tobacco fleet and
captured twenty vessels. Six years later nine Dutch warships came in
and engaged the English in a desperate battle off Lynnhaven Bay while
the tobacco ships scurried for shallow water. Unfortunately nine or
ten ran aground and were taken.

Even nature seemed bent on completing the ruin of the planters. "This
poor country ... is now reduced to a very miserable condition by a
continual course of misfortune," wrote Thomas Ludwell in 1667. "In
April ... we had a most prodigious storm of hail, many of them as big
as turkey eggs, which destroyed most of our young mast and cattle. On
the fifth of June following came the Dutch upon us.... They were not
gone before it fell to raining and continued for forty days
together.... But on the 27th of August followed the most dreadful
hurricane that ever the colony groaned under.... The nearest
computation is at least 10,000 houses blown down, all the Indian grain
laid flat upon the ground, all the tobacco in the fields torn to
pieces."

It was soon after the Restoration that the people of Virginia learned
that "all the lands and water lying between Potomac and Rappahannock,
together with all the royalties belonging thereto," had been granted
to Lord Hopton and several other noblemen. In alarm they appealed "for
relief" to the King, and were greatly relieved when the grant was
recalled. And though another patent was issued, it contained
reservations to protect "the rights, privileges, and properties of the
inhabitants." But their joy was tempered by a provision giving the
patentees the quit rents with eleven years arrears. This would be more
than the enti