ly half the duty paid by Spanish
tobacco, it was nonetheless a heavy burden to be imposed upon leaf that
was declared never to have sold at more than 5s. a pound and that
brought an average of only 2s. for the better grade in 1620.[A] The
adventurers' attempted escape by shipping their tobacco to Holland won
them a sharp reprimand from the privy council, and an order to bring
all of Virginia's tobacco to England for payment of his majesty's
customs. As negotiations with the king's ministers for some relief
continued, it was proposed in 1622 that the Virginia and Bermuda
adventurers might take over the tobacco monopoly, which was a grant of
the sole right to import tobacco of any sort into the kingdom in return
for a fixed contribution to the royal revenues. The holder of such a
monopoly--a very common device at the time--was entitled to collect the
customs and to hope that what he collected, plus the advantage of a
monopolistic control of the market, might enable him to clear a profit
on the transaction. Here, in other words, was a proposal that might
provide the needed relief, even some income for the company's hard
pressed treasury. The Virginia Company by 1622 was in no position to
ignore such an opportunity and fortunately, the Sandys faction was now
in control of the Somers Island Company. A joint committee of the two
companies, headed by Sir Edwin himself, entered into negotiations for
what was known as the tobacco contract.

The bitterest factional strife in the history of the London adventurers
soon followed. It is a complicated story, too complicated and too long
to be told fully here. Briefly, both the terms agreed upon by Sandys
and his proposals for the management of the contract, proposals which
left Sandys and his cohorts in full control, touched too closely the
vital interests of some of his bitterest enemies. In Bermuda, as in
Virginia, the hope of an early profit from the production of sugar,
silk, wine, indigo, and other such commodities had proved vain, and
like Virginia, Bermuda lived by the tobacco it grew. The Earl of
Warwick and members of his family had made especially heavy investments
in their Bermuda properties, and Sir Nathaniel Rich became the floor
leader, as it were, of an attempt to defeat the contract. Sir Thomas
Smith and his friends joined in the effort. Especially objectionable in
the view of the opposition were plans for placing the management of the
contract in the hands of salaried