in Warwick and Elizabeth City counties;
Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., for York County, the Isle of Wight, and the
southern part of New Kent; and similar designations for other members of
the Council. In 1699, however, the Council ordered William Byrd, auditor
of the colony, to sell the quitrents of each county to any individual at
the price of one penny per pound of tobacco and on the condition that
the usual payment would be made to the sheriff for receiving the rent.

While some improvement was made in the last half of the seventeenth
century in the collection of quitrents, the sum was never very great;
and according to one report in 1696 no land had been taken over by the
colony because of failure to pay the rent. As to the amount being
collected near the end of the century, the figure was not impressive.
For the period of six years between 1684 and 1690, the estimate has been
made that receipts totalled L4,375 13s. 9d. or a little over L700 as an
average for each year during this period. The figure was little changed
near the end of the century, for it was reported in 1697 that the amount
collected from quitrents did not total more than L800.

These weaknesses and abuses of the Virginia land system underwent a
detailed analysis near the end of the seventeenth century by the newly
created agency--the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations which
was commonly known as the Board of Trade. During the first year of its
organization in 1696 the Board received a report from Edward Randolph,
sent from England to be surveyor-general of customs in America. Randolph
pondered the question as to why the colony of Virginia was not more
densely populated with all of the migration that had occurred. He
attributed little importance to the imputation of "the unhealthiness of
the place" and to the assertion that tobacco sales yielded little return
in England after all fees were paid. In an incisive statement he
concluded that

... the chief and only reason is that the inhabitants have been and
still are discouraged and hindered from planting tobacco in that
colony; and servants are not so willing to go there as formerly
because the members of Council and others who make an interest in
the government have from time to time procured grants of very large
tracts of land, so that for many years there has been no waste land
to be taken up by those who bring with them servants, or by servants
who have served t