o
tobacco was injuring the exchequer, made a compromise with the Company.
The King agreed to restrict the importation of Spanish tobacco to 60,000
pounds a year, and after two years to exclude it entirely. All the
Virginia leaf was to be admitted, but the Crown was to receive one third
of the crop, while the other two thirds was subjected to a duty of six
pence a pound.[162] This agreement proved most injurious to the Company,
and it was soon abandoned, but the heavy exactions of the King
continued. Undoubtedly this unwise policy was most detrimental to
Virginia. Not only did it diminish the returns of the Company and make
it impossible for Sandys to perfect all his wise plans for the colony,
but it put a decided check upon immigration. Many that would have gone
to Virginia to share in the profits of the planters, remained at home
when they saw that these profits were being confiscated by the
King.[163]

Yet the strenuous efforts of the London Company would surely have
brought something like prosperity to the colony had not an old enemy
returned to cause the destruction of hundreds of the settlers. This was
the sickness. For some years the mortality had been very low, because
the old planters were acclimated, and few new immigrants were coming to
Virginia. But with the stream of laborers and artisans that the Sandys
regime now sent over, the scourge appeared again with redoubled fury. As
early as January, 1620, Governor Yeardley wrote "of the great
mortallitie which hath been in Virginia, about 300 of ye inhabitants
having dyed this year".[164] The sickness was most deadly in the newly
settled parts of the colony, "to the consumption of divers Hundreds, and
almost the utter destruction of some particular Plantations".[165] The
London Company, distressed at the loss of so many men, saw in their
misfortunes the hand of God, and wrote urging "the more carefull
observations of his holy laws to work a reconciliation".[166] They also
sent directions for the construction, in different parts of the colony,
of four guest houses, or hospitals, for the lodging and entertaining of
fifty persons each, upon their first arrival.[167] But all efforts to
check the scourge proved fruitless. In the year ending March, 1621 over
a thousand persons died upon the immigrant vessels and in Virginia.[168]
Despite the fact that hundreds of settlers came to the colony during
this year, the population actually declined. In 1621 the percentage of
m