. The planters were forced to take
for their crops half of what they had formerly received and had reason
for rejoicing if they could dispose of it at all. In 1662 Governor
Berkeley and other leading citizens stated that the price of tobacco had
fallen so low that it would not "bear the charge of freight and customs,
answer the adventure, give encouragement to the traders and subsistence
to the inhabitants."[5-9] In 1666 Secretary Thomas Ludwell told Lord
Arlington that tobacco was "worth nothing."[5-10] Later in the same year
the planters complained that the price was so low that they were not
able to live by it.[5-11] "For the merchants, knowing both our
necessities and the unconsumable quantities of tobacco we had by us,"
they said, "gave us not the twentieth part of what they sold it for in
England."[5-12] Tobacco had so glutted the markets, it was declared, and
brought the planter so small a return, that he could "live but poorly
upon it." In fact, the merchants in 1666 had left the greater part of
the two preceding crops upon their hands.[5-13]

"Twelve hundred pounds of tobacco is the medium of men's crops," wrote
Secretary Ludwell to Lord John Berkeley in 1667, "and half a penny per
pound is certainly the full medium of the price given for it, which is
fifty shillings out of which when the taxes ... shall be deducted, is
very little to a poor man who hath perhaps a wife and children to cloath
and other necessities to buy. Truly so much too little that I can
attribute it to nothing but the great mercy of God ... that keeps them
from mutiny and confusion."[5-14] The following year he wrote in similar
vein. The market was glutted; a third of the planters' tobacco was left
on their hands; the rest sold for nothing.[5-15]

The Governor and Council declared that the merchant "allows not much
above a farthing a pound for that which the planter brings to his door.
And if there shall be any amongst us who shall be able to ship his
tobacco on his own account, it will be at such a rate as the tobacco
will never repay him, since they are inforced to pay from L12 to L17 per
ton freight, which usually was but at seven pounds."[5-16] "A large part
of the people are so desperately poor," wrote Berkeley in 1673, "that
they may reasonably be expected upon any small advantage of the enemy
to revolt to them in hopes of bettering their condition by sharing the
plunder of the colony with them."[5-17] That matters had not changed in