high, the suppression of the insurrection having left all the interests of the Colony in a state of confusion. The schedule was adopted to override this condition of affairs by force of law.
In the list of debts filed against the estate of John Griggs, in February, 1678-79, there is found an interesting statement of prices of certain provisions. For instance, a beef was appraised at four hundred pounds of tobacco, a turkey at forty pounds, two geese at eighty, two bushels of flour at ninety, and twenty pounds of butter at one hundred.[1] A pound of tobacco at this time was worth from one and a quarter to two pence. In 1682, the price of fresh beef was fixed at ten shillings or one hundred pounds of tobacco a hundred-weight; the price of fresh pork at twelve shillings or one hundred and twenty pounds of the same commodity a hundred, representing in both instances a value of one penny and one-fifth of a penny a pound.[2] Dried beef was higher by several pence.[3] The different figures quoted show very plainly that the rates for provisions gradually fell in Virginia with the progress of the seventeenth century; this was due to the increase in the number of plantations, and the enlargement of the volume of production in every department. The decline continued in the eighteenth century for the same reasons. When Beverley wrote his history of Virginia, a pound of beef or pork ranged in price as low as one penny. The fattest pullets were sold for six pence apiece, a turkey hen for fifteen or eighteen, and a turkey cock for two shillings.[4]
It is interesting to compare the rates for provisions in
