but they were never, in
Virginia, as eminent for large estates and political influence as
others of the same county whose English ancestry is of much less
distinction. Next, as known descendants of minor gentry, were the
families of Page, Burwell, Lightfoot and Clayton. Other leading names
of the county, nothing certain in regard to whose English ancestry is
known, were Kemp, Lewis, Warner, etc. These families were, like those
of the ruling class in other countries, doubtless derived from
ancestors of various ranks and professions ... members of the country
gentry, merchants and tradesmen and their sons and relatives, and
occasionally a minister, a physician, a lawyer or a captain in the
merchant service."[30] The William and Mary Quarterly makes the
unequivocal statement that it was the "shipping people and merchants
who really settled Virginia." John Fiske, despite the exaggerated
importance which he gives to the Cavalier immigration, agrees that the
leading planters were not descended from English families of high
rank. "Although," he says, "family records were until of late less
carefully preserved (in Virginia) than in New England, yet the
registered facts abundantly prove that the leading families had
precisely the same sort of origin as the leading families of New
England. For the most part they were either country squires, or
prosperous yeomen, or craftsmen from the numerous urban guilds; and
alike in Virginia and in New England there was a similar proportion of
persons connected with English families ennobled or otherwise eminent
for public service."[31]

Beyond doubt the most numerous section of the Virginia aristocracy was
derived from the English merchant class.[32] It was the opportunity of
amassing wealth by the cultivation of tobacco that caused great
numbers of these men to settle in the Old Dominion. Many had been
dealers in the plant in England, receiving it in their warehouses and
disposing of it to retailers. They kept up a constant and intimate
correspondence with the planter, acting for him as purchasing agent,
supplying him with clothes, with household goods, with the thousand
and one articles essential to the conducting of the plantation, and
thus were in a position to judge of the advantages he enjoyed. They
kept him in touch with the political situation in England and in
return received from him the latest tidings of what was going on in
Virginia. In fact for one hundred and fifty years after