Liquor and slavery combined produced the Southern planter, whose life has often been described by various writers. When Yeardley assumed control of affairs in Virginia, the Company required that there should be inserted in all formal grants of land a covenant that the patentees should not apply themselves either wholly or principally to the culture of tobacco, but should divide their attentions among a number of commodities carefully specified in each deed. These consisted of Indian corn, wheat, flax, silk-grass, and wine. Parton, in his _Life of Jefferson_, says that the Virginia planter expended the proceeds of his tobacco in vast ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly apparel, Madeira wines, fine horses, and slaves. Another writer says: "The gentleman of fortune rises about nine o'clock. He may perhaps make an excursion to his stables to see his horses, which is seldom more than fifty yards from his house; he returns to breakfast between nine and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, bread and butter and very thin slices of venison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down on a pallet on the floor in the coolest room in the house in his shirt and trousers only, with a negro at his head and another at his feet to fan him and keep off the flies; between twelve and one he takes a bombo or toddy, a liquor compounded of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg, which is made weak and kept cool; he dines between two and three, and at every meal, whatever else there may be, a ham and greens or cabbage is always a standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, toddy, punch, port, claret, and Madeira, which is generally excellent here; having drank some few glasses of wine after dinner he returns to his pallet, with his two blacks to fan him, and continues to drink toddy or sangaree all the afternoon. Between nine and ten in the evening he eats a light supper of milk, fruit, etc., and almost invariably retires to bed for the night. This is his general way of living in his family when he has no company. No doubt many differ from it, some in one respect and some in another, but more follow it than do not. Pewter cups and mugs were everywhere to be seen and now and then a drinking horn. There were in the house for the purposes of drinking a variety of receptacles, such as the tumbler, the mug, the cup, the flagon, the tankard, and the beaker. The cups were known by a number of names, such as the lignum vitæ, the syllabub, the sack, and the dram. Many planters in moderate circumstances were in possession of a quantity of silver plate."