1 Bamford, ed., A Royalist’s Notebook, 230.

2 A very large literature on this subject is surveyed in John J. McCusker and Russell R. Men-ard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill, 1985), 117-43.

3 Here again the historiographical literature has gone through broad swings. Three generations ago, Virginia gentlemen were perceived as hostile to commerce and removed from it. The next generation reversed this interpretation, and argued that the first gentlemen of Virginia were descended from merchants, and actively and even centrally engaged in commercial activity. The truth lies in between.

4 Kingsbury, Records of the Virginia Company, III, 706.

5 William Byrd II to Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery, 2 Feb. 1727, Tinling, ed., Correspondence of the Three William Byrds, I, 350.