Washington, whose preference for British goods was as strong as anyone’s, nevertheless sponsored the nonimportation agreement adopted at the Raleigh Tavern in May 1769. James Geddy, Jr., in a newspaper advertisement of that September, declared that he had now on hand a neat assortment of country made GOLD and SILVER WORK, which he will sell at the lowest rates for cash, or exchange for old gold or silver. As he has not imported any jewellery this season, he flatters himself he will meet with encouragement, especially from those Ladies and Gentlemen who are friends to the association. Geddy, however, did not subscribe himself as a member of the Association until July of 1770, and only three months later he ventured to advertise, along with country-made wares, “a small, but neat assortment, of imported JEWELLERY (ordered before the association took place).” The boycotting of British goods, however, was a political technique adopted for a particular purpose—to put pressure on Parliament to repeal the Townshend duties or other offensive legislation. When that purpose was accomplished, or seemed certain to be, the old preferences for imported goods reasserted themselves. Thus we find Washington in August 1770 ordering from London a quantity of expensive clothing and some jewelry “if the Act of Parliament Imposing a Duty upon Tea, Paper, &ca, for the purpose of raising a Revenue in America shoud [sic] be Totally repeald before the above goods are shipped.” And by the next spring Geddy was again advertising goods just imported from London. Throughout the colonial period it was generally more convenient for Virginia planters to acquire high quality goods in London than in Virginia. This was a consequence of the narrowly channeled two-way trade between the great plantations of the Chesapeake Bay and the great commission-merchant warehouses along the Thames. The planters grew and exported enormous quantities of tobacco, almost all of it sent to London and sold there. Against the proceeds they ordered whatever they needed and wanted of manufactured necessities and luxuries: textiles, clothing, furniture, hardware, ceramics, glass, and silver. To the planter aristocrats, silver plate (not to be confused with plated silverware) performed three functions at once. It was a form of stable investment, easily watched over, easily identified in case of theft, and easily converted into cash if needed. In the absence of safe-deposit boxes or bank vaults, silver in daily use was as safe a form of “savings” as the times offered. Secondly, plate was a form of social ostentation in which all members of the group indulged to a greater or lesser degree. Finally, plate was useful in the proper serving of the owners and their guests; a well-to-do planter would have thought it impossible to get along without quantities of food and drink on his table, and almost as unthinkable not to have some silver articles on the table, too.