As for possible profits from Newfoundland cod, he would gladly consign them to those hearty fishermen who by nature were better able to cope with the rigors of the northern climate! So it came about that in 1629 his lordship wrote to King Charles asking that a precinct of land in Virginia be granted to him with the same quasi-regal privileges he enjoyed under his Newfoundland patent. Then, without waiting for a reply, he embarked for Jamestown where he let it be known that he was looking for a new plantation site, and forthwith began cruising about Chesapeake Bay with the air of a man who was confident that the king would approve his plans. This was anything but politic. No Virginians, Anglican or Puritan, wanted a Catholic in their midst. They didn’t want one even as a neighbor in their great bay, and especially such an influential convert as Baltimore. Who knew what Romish plot he might be promoting? But even more alarming was the threat that this ambitious baron posed to their fur trade in the Chesapeake. * * * * * The tidewater had come to represent a treasure house of pelts to the merchants and factors on the James River, at Jamestown and at Kecoughtan, and to scores of traders plying their shallops and pinnaces in the bay. On the York, the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers these traders regularly visited the villages of the Indians, their shallops returning to the James River plantations laden with skins. And across the bay on the Eastern Shore there was still another lively fur trading center at Accomac where beaver and muskrat abounded in the near-by streams and marshes. The most profitable branch of this trade was that in the Potomac River, where the Spaniards of the sixteenth century had been the first of record to barter with the natives for pelts and hides. Captain Samuel Argall, who succeeded Captain John Smith in 1609 as the colony’s main support for trade with the Indians, made several early visits to the villages of the Patowomecks there. For hatchets and hoes, no doubt, he took good quantities of beaver, otter, raccoon and deer skins as well as the corn that was so badly needed at Jamestown. In 1612 he really whetted the Patowomecks’ appetite for English goods when he produced a copper kettle for their chief. Many English traders, with and without permits, followed Captain Argall into the Potomac River, but especially members of the Virginia Council who more or less controlled the Chesapeake trade as a perquisite of office.