The significance of the part played by the Virginia Company's abortive attempt to negotiate a contract with King James VI and I's regime over the importation of tobacco from Virginia and Bermuda into England and Wales in 1622-1623 has long been understood by historians. Its hard terms and the salaries envisaged for its prospective managers, Sir Edwin Sandys and his allies, stimulated fierce opposition in the Virginia and Bermuda Companies' Courts and led ultimately to the suspension of the contract, then to its termination and the enquiries that caused the revocation of the Virginia Company's charter. Criticism of the contract was fed not just by its monopolistic character and threat to the economic interests of many adventurers in the two companies but also by strong personal animosities.
The point about the threat to the economic interests of some adventurers can be reinforced. One thing that has not apparently been done by historians is to use the surviving archive of Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, and of Sir Nathaniel Rich, his second cousin and man-of-affairs, to indicate how important the sale and scale of tobacco imports to them. Sir Nathaniel Rich's account book for July, 1623 indicates that he and the Earl received £300 for tobacco produced in Bermuda and sold by them in the Low Countries. Subsequently, in December, 1624, the two men shared £1,300 - a sum later increased by £80 - for the sale of their tobacco.
These sums were large enough to help to explain why both were determined not to allow control over the sale of their tobacco to pass into the hands of Sandys and his confederates in 1622-1623. Exactly what Sir Nathaniel Rich's landed income was cannot be determined. In Warwick's case, his net landed income in the county of Essex alone - i.e. rents and profits of court minus entry fines for new leases and wood sales - was well over £6,000 p.a. in 1622 and 1628. His landed income from his estates in Northamptonshire and Norfolk is unknown but, in 1641 (and after the sale of the bulk of his Norfolk estates to Sir Ralph Hare), it was estimated to have been over £1,600 p.a. A cautious assessment might be that Warwick's total net landed income in the early to mid-1620s was over £8,000 p.a. and possibly higher still. If tobacco sales brought in c.£650 p.a. for Warwick alone and c.£1,300 p.a. for Warwick and Sir Nathaniel Rich, then their reluctance to allow their tobacco to come under the control of Sandys and his allies becomes much more comprehensible.
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