PREFACE
In studying the history of the Virginian people in the seventeenth century, apart from the course of events, it will be found that the general subject falls under the following heads.
I. Economic Condition. II. Social Life. III. Religious Establishment and Moral Influences. IV. Education. V. Military Regulations. VI. Administration of Justice. VII. Political System.
By following in minute detail the various ramifications of each of these special subjects, some offering a broader field for treatment than others, a perfectly complete account might be written of the state of the people of the Colony in that age. In the present work, I have confined myself very strictly to an investigation of their economic condition alone. Where this has encroached upon the boundary of any of the other divisions which I have named, I have, except in a few instances, refrained from pursuing the subject beyond that point. Thus, no references have been made to printing in Virginia in the seventeenth century and the degree to which books entered into the inventories of the planters’ estates, because such references, it appeared,
