ounds of tobacco, and it was ordered that this debt should have
precedence of all others. The price of a wife afterward became higher.
The bishops in England, by the King's orders, collected nearly fifteen
hundred pounds to build a college or university at Henrico, intended in
part for the education of Indian children.

In July, 1620, the population of the colony was estimated at four
thousand. One hundred "disorderly persons" or convicts sent over during
the previous year by the King's order were employed as servants. For a
brief interval the Virginia Company had enjoyed freedom of trade with
the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco; but in October, 1621,
this was prohibited by an order in council; and from this time England
claimed a monopoly of the trade of her plantations, and this principle
was gradually adopted by all the European powers as they acquired
transatlantic settlements.

Many new settlements were now made on the James and York rivers; and the
planters, being supplied with wives and servants, began to be more
content, and to take more pleasure in cultivating their lands. The brief
interval of free trade with Holland had enlarged the demand for tobacco,
and it was cultivated more extensively.

Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the Company's
council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of Southampton, appointed
Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentleman of Ireland, whose
education, family, fortune, and integrity well qualified him for the
place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and
brought over a new frame of government constituted by the company, and
dated July 24, 1621, establishing a council of state and a general
assembly.

Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the
permanent guidance of the governor and council. Among other things he
was to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals, dyes,
gums, and medical drugs, and to draw off the people from the excessive
planting of tobacco; to take a census of the colony; to put apprentices
to trades and not let them forsake them for planting tobacco or any such
useless commodity; to build water-mills, to make salt, pitch, tar, soap
and ashes; to make oil of walnuts, and employ apothecaries in distilling
lees of beer; to make small quantity of tobacco, and that very good.

In 1615 twelve different commodities had been shipped from Virginia;
sassafras and tobacco were now