It is essential to understand that legislation passed in Virginia had to be approved in London. There it might be rejected, amended, or accepted. This particularly applied to unusual legislation, and to laws which affected trade between Virginia and Great Britain. As an example, Virginia once passed a law that convicts could no longer be sent to Virginia. A person in England brought up the point that he had a contract to transport convicts to Virginia and if Virginia refused to accept these convicts then he could no longer fulfill his contract. The law was overturned because it interfered with trade between England and Virginia.
In the first few months that he was on the job as Lt. Gov., Alexander Spotswood proposed that the Colony of Virginia set up an "iron works" to mine and smelt iron ore for shipment to England. The arguments that he gave for this enterprise were excellent. The Board of Trade by a return letter warned him that any Virginia legislation which set up an iron works might be judged to be an interference with trade. It also warned him that any investment that might be made in this iron works could be lost. These were hardly the words to encourage anyone to invest in iron works which would cost from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds Sterling.
That a warning of this nature could possibly have some real teeth in it was brought home to Spotswood by what happened to the Virginia Indian Trading Company, of which he was a partner. This was judged to be an interference in the established trade patterns and it was not allowed. The people who were probably complaining the most were the suppliers of the trade goods and the purchasers of the furs in London. The Virginia Indian Trading Company, as the only body authorized to trade with the Indians, could drive harder bargains in England for the trade goods they were buying and for the furs they were selling. The English merchants complained that this was a monopolistic practice which should not be allowed and they won their point. Spotswood and his partners were told to abandon the Indian Trading Company. They may have recovered some of their investment, but it was a net loss to them as the legislation establishing the Indian Trading Company was overthrown.
There are two points to be observed here. First, trading with the Indians would not become an element in Spotswood's retirement plan. Second, any iron works might be subject to the same action, i.e., overthrown in England on trivial grounds. This is one of the major reasons that Spotswood was very slow to get into iron smelting and manufacturing. He could not be sure that his investment would stand up. So, he sought other activities to earn a retirement income. As we will see, iron was the last activity that he engaged in.
Before the Indian trading was overthrown, Spotswood was very optimistic about the possibilities here. In the next Note, we will examine some of the evidence.
(26 Jul 05)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.