gotten very competent
estates," wrote Colonel Robert Quary in 1763. "These gentlemen take
care to supply the poorer sort with provisions, goods, and
necessities, and are sure to keep them always in debt, and so
dependent on them. Out of this number are chosen her Majesty's
Council, the Assembly, the justices, and other officers of the
government."

Hartwell, Blair, and Chilton, in their _The Present State of Virginia
and the College_, written in 1697, divide the people into three
classes--planters, tradesmen, and merchants. "The merchants live
best," they said. But though profits were large, their business was
carried on in the face of great difficulties. The tobacco they bought
from the small planters had to be carted or rolled to the landings and
put on board their sloops and shallops for transfer to the merchant
ships; they had to sell imported goods on credit; often there were
long delays in loading the ships.

Some of the most influential men in Virginia were importers of
servants and slaves. Among them were William Claiborne, Peter Ashton,
Isaac Allerton, Giles Brent, Joseph Bridger, Thomas Milner, Henry
Hartwell, and Robert Beverley.

The distinguished historian, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in _Tyler's
Magazine_, Volume I, says that "Virginia owes much to the London
firms, because they were continually sending over trusted young agents
... many of whom settled down and founded Virginia families.... The
business of the merchants consisted largely in buying and selling
tobacco and importing settlers and servants, for each of which if
imported at their expense the merchants were entitled to fifty acres
of land. Then there was the usual trade in clothing and articles of
general use."

Though the Virginian who acquired a degree of wealth was no
aristocrat, he longed to be one. His grandfather, or his
great-grandfather might have been a younger son of an English squire.
He envied the honor, wealth, and power landholding brought that
ancestor, just as many Virginians today envy the life of the colonial
plantation owner. So when he found himself an extensive landholder, he
thought of himself as an English squire. He too would build a fine
residence, decorate his walls with family portraits, have a formal
garden, accumulate a library, and dress in the latest English fashion.

Virginia in the colonial period was linked to England by government,
commerce, religion, reading, education. The mother country sent over
governors