oned as Governor in
1698, he received strict instructions to advise with the Council and the
Assembly upon this matter and to report back to the Board.[8-18] That
nothing was accomplished, however, may clearly be inferred from a letter
of a certain George Larkin written December 22, 1701. "There is no
encouragement for anyone to come to the Plantation," he declared, "most
of the land lying at all convenient being taken up. Some have 20,000,
30,000 or 40,000 acres, the greater part of which is unimployed."[8-19]
Two years later Nicholson himself wrote that certain recent grants were
for ten or twenty thousand acres each, so that privileged persons had
engrossed all the good land in those parts, by which means they kept
others from settling it or else made them pay for it.[8-20]

Despite all the concern which this matter created, it is doubtful
whether it was to any appreciable extent responsible for the continued
emigration of poor families. The mere granting of patents for large
tracts of land could not of itself fix the economic structure of the
colony, could not, if all other conditions were favorable, prevent the
establishment of small freeholds. Rather than have their fields lie idle
while the poor men who should have been cultivating them trooped out of
the colony, the rich would gladly have sold them in small parcels at
nominal prices. In the first half century after the settlement at
Jamestown, as we have seen, such a breakup of extensive holdings into
little farms actually occurred. Had similar conditions prevailed in the
later period a like development would have followed. But in 1630 or
1650, when slaves were seldom employed and when tobacco was high, the
poor man's toil yielded a return so large that he could well afford to
purchase a little farm and make himself independent. In 1680 or 1700, in
the face of the competition of slave labor, he was almost helpless. Even
had he found a bit of unoccupied ground to which he could secure a
title, he could not make it yield enough to sustain him and his
family.[8-21]

In 1728 Governor Gooch wrote the Board of Trade that the former belief
that large holdings of frontier land had been an impediment to
settlement was entirely erroneous. It was his opinion, in fact, that
extensive grants made it to the interest of the owners to bring in
settlers and so populate the country. In confirmation of this he pointed
to the fact that Spotsylvania country, where many large patent