On the 30th of January, 1649, before the palace of Whitehall, Charles
the First of England was beheaded. In Virginia the event fell with a
shock. Even those within the colony who were Cromwell's men rather than
Charles's men seem to have recoiled from this act. Presently, too, came
fleeing royalists from overseas, to add their passionate voices to those
of the royalists in Virginia. Many came, "nobility, clergy and gentry,
men of the first rate." A thousand are said to have arrived in the year
after the King's death.
In October the Virginia Assembly met. Parliament men--and now these were
walking with head in the air--might regret the execution of the past
January, and yet be prepared to assert that with the fall of the kingdom
fell all powers and offices named and decreed by the hapless monarch.
What was a passionate royalist government doing in Virginia now that
England was a Commonwealth? The passionate government answered for
itself in acts passed by this Assembly. With swelling words, with a
tragic accent, it denounced the late happenings in England and all the
Roundhead wickedness that led up to them. It proclaimed loyalty to "his
sacred Majesty that now is"--that is, to Charles Stuart, afterwards
Charles the Second, then a refugee on the Continent. Finally it enacted
that any who defended the late proceedings, or in the least affected to
question "the undoubted and inherent right of his Majesty that now is to
the Collony of Virginia" should be held guilty of high treason; and
that "reporters and divulgers" of rumors tending to change of government
should be punished "even to severity."
Berkeley's words may be detected in these acts of the Assembly. In no
great time the Cavalier Governor conferred with Colonel Henry Norwood,
one of the royalist refugees to Virginia. Norwood thereupon sailed away
upon a Dutch ship and came to Holland, where he found "his Majesty
that now is." Here he knelt, and invited that same Majesty to visit his
dominion of Virginia, and, if he liked it, there to rest, sovereign of
the Virginian people. But Charles still hoped to be sovereign in England
and would not cross the seas. He sent, however, to Sir William Berkeley
a renewal of his Governor's commission, and appointed Norwood Treasurer
of Virginia, and said, doubtless, many gay and pleasant things.
In Virginia there continued to appear from England adherents of the
ancient regime. Men, women, and children came until to a considerable
degree the tone of society rang Cavalier. This immigration, now lighter,
now heavier, continued through a rather prolonged period. There came now
to Virginia families whose names are often met in the later history
of the land. Now Washingtons appear, with Randolphs, Carys, Skipwiths,
Brodnaxes, Tylers, Masons, Madisons, Monroes, and many more. These
persons are not without means; they bring with them servants; they are
in high favor with Governor and Council; they acquire large tracts
of virgin land; they bring in indentured labor; they purchase African
slaves; they cultivate tobacco. From being English country gentlemen
they turn easily to become Virginia planters.
But the Virginia Assembly had thrown a gauntlet before the victorious
Commonwealth; and the Long Parliament now declared the colony to be
in contumacy, assembled and dispatched ships against her, and laid an
embargo upon trade with the rebellious daughter. In January of 1652
English ships appeared off Point Comfort. Four Commissioners of the
Commonwealth were aboard, of whom that strong man Claiborne was one.
After issuing a proclamation to quiet the fears of the people,
the Commissioners made their way to Jamestown. Here was found the
indomitable Berkeley and his Council in a state of active preparation,
cannon trained. But, when all was said, the Commissioners had brought
wisely moderate terms: submit because submit they must, acknowledge the
Commonwealth, and, that done, rest unmolested! If resistance continued,
there were enough Parliament men in Virginia to make an army. Indentured
servants and slaves should receive freedom in exchange for support to
the Commonwealth. The ships would come up from Point Comfort, and a
determined war would be on. What Sir William Berkeley personally said
has not survived. But after consultation upon consultation Virginia
surrendered to the commonwealth.
Berkeley stepped from the Governor's chair, retiring in wrath and
bitterness of heart to his house at Greenspring. In his place sat
Richard Bennett, one of the Commissioners. Claiborne was made Secretary.
King's men went out of office; Parliament men came in. But there was
no persecution. In the bland and wide Virginia air minds failed to come
into hard and frequent collision. For all the ferocities of the statute
books, acute suffering for difference of opinion, whether political or
religious, did not bulk large in the life of early Virginia.
The Commissioners, after the reduction of Virginia, had a like part to
play with Maryland. At St. Mary's, as at Jamestown, they demanded and at
length received submission to the Commonwealth. There was here the less
trouble owing to Baltimore's foresight in appointing to the office
of Governor William Stone, whose opinions, political and religious,
accorded with those of revolutionary England. Yet the Governor could
not bring himself to forget his oath to Lord Baltimore and agree to the
demand of the Commissioners that he should administer the Government
in the name of "the Keepers of the Liberties of England." After some
hesitation the Commissioners decided to respect his scruples and allow
him to govern in the name of the Lord Proprietary, as he had solemnly
promised.
In Virginia and in Maryland the Commonwealth and the Lord Protector
stand where stood the Kingdom and the King. Many are far better
satisfied than they were before; and the confirmed royalist consumes his
grumbling in his own circle. The old, exhausting quarrel seems laid
to rest. But within this wider peace breaks out suddenly an interior
strife. Virginia would, if she could, have back all her old northward
territory. In 1652 Bennett's Government goes so far as to petition
Parliament to unseat the Catholic Proprietary of Maryland and make whole
again the ancient Virginia. The hand of Claiborne, that remarkable and
persistent man, may be seen in this.
In Maryland, Puritans and Independents were settled chiefly about
the rivers Severn and Patuxent and in a village called Providence,
afterwards Annapolis. These now saw their chance to throw off the
Proprietary's rule and to come directly under that of the Commonwealth.
So thinking, they put themselves into communication with Bennett and
Claiborne. In 1654 Stone charged the Commissioners with having promoted
"faction, sedition, and rebellion against the Lord Baltimore." The
charge was well founded. Claiborne and Bennett assumed that they were
yet Parliament Commissioners, empowered to bring "all plantations within
the Bay of Chesapeake to their due obedience to the Parliament and
Commonwealth of England." And they were indeed set against the Lord
Baltimore. Claiborne would head the Puritans of Providence; and a troop
should be raised in Virginia and march northward. The Commissioners
actually advanced upon St. Mary's, and with so superior a force that
Stone surrendered, and a Puritan Government was inaugurated. A Puritan
Assembly met, debarring any Catholics. Presently it passed an act
annulling the Proprietary's Act of Toleration. Professors of the
religion of Rome should "be restrained from the exercise thereof."
The hand of the law was to fall heavily upon "popery, prelacy, or
licentiousness of opinion." Thus was intolerance alive again in the only
land where she had seemed to die!
In England now there was hardly a Parliament, but only the Lord
Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Content with Baltimore's recognition of the
Protectorate, Cromwell was not prepared to back, in their independent
action, the Commissioners of that now dissolved Parliament. Baltimore
made sure of this, and then dispatched messengers overseas to Stone,
bidding him do all that lay in him to retake Maryland. Stone thereupon
gathered several hundred men and a fleet of small sailing craft, with
which he pushed up the bay to the Severn. In the meantime the Puritans
had not been idle, but had themselves raised a body of men and had taken
over the Golden Lyon, an armed merchantman lying before their town. On
the 24th of March, 1655, the two forces met in the Battle of the Severn.
"In the name of God, fall on!" cried the men of Providence, and "Hey for
St. Mary's!" cried the others. The battle was won by the Providence men.
They slew or wounded fifty of the St. Mary's men and desperately wounded
Stone himself and took many prisoners, ten of whom were afterwards
condemned to death and four were actually executed.
Now followed a period of up and down, the Commissioners and the
Proprietary alike appealing to the Lord Protector for some expression of
his "determinate will." Both sides received encouragement inasmuch as he
decided for neither. His own authority being denied by neither, Cromwell
may have preferred to hold these distant factions in a canceling,
neutralizing posture. But far weightier matters, in fact, were occupying
his mind. In 1657, weary of her "very sad, distracted, and unsettled
condition," Maryland herself proceeded--Puritan, Prelatist, and
Catholic together--to agree henceforth to disagree. Toleration viewed
in retrospect appears dimly to have been seen for the angel that it was.
Maryland would return to the Proprietary's rule, provided there should
be complete indemnity for political offenses and a solemn promise that
the Toleration Act of 1649 should never be repealed. This without a
smile Baltimore promised. Articles were signed; a new Assembly composed
of all manner of Christians was called; and Maryland returned for a time
to her first allegiance.
Quiet years, on the whole, follow in Virginia under the Commonwealth.
The three Governors of this period--Bennett, Digges, and Mathews are
all chosen by the Assembly, which, but for the Navigation Laws,* might
almost forget the Home Government. Then Oliver Cromwell dies; and, after
an interval, back to England come the Stuarts. Charles II is proclaimed
King. And back into office in Virginia is brought that staunch old
monarchist, Sir William Berkeley--first by a royalist Assembly and
presently by commission from the new King.
* See Editor's Note on the Navigation Laws at the end of
this volume.
Then Virginia had her Long Parliament or Assembly. In 1661, in the
first gush of the Restoration, there was elected a House of Burgesses so
congenial to Berkeley's mind that he wished to see it perpetuated. For
fifteen years therefore he held it in being, with adjournments from one
year into another and with sharp refusals to listen to any demand for
new elections. Yet this demand grew, and still the Governor shut the
door in the face of the people and looked imperiously forth from the
window. His temper, always fiery, now burned vindictive; his zeal for
King and Church and the high prerogatives of the Governor of Virginia
became a consuming passion.
When Berkeley first came to Virginia, and again for a moment in the
flare of the Restoration, his popularity had been real, but for long now
it had dwindled. He belonged to an earlier time, and he held fast to old
ideas that were decaying at the heart. A bigot for the royal power,
a man of class with a contempt for the generality and its clumsily
expressed needs, he grew in narrowness as he grew in years. Berkeley
could in these later times write home, though with some exaggeration:
"I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall
not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into
the world and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best
governments! God keep us from both!" But that was the soured zealot
for absolutism--William Berkeley the man was fond enough of books and
himself had written plays.
The spirit of the time was reactionary in Virginia as it was reactionary
in England. Harsh servant and slave laws were passed. A prison was to
be erected in each county; provision was made for pillory and stocks and
duckingstool; the Quakers were to be proceeded against; the Baptists
who refused to bring children to baptism were to suffer. Then at last in
1670 came restriction of the franchise:
"Act III. ELECTION OF BURGESSES BY WHOM. WHEREAS the usuall way of
chuseing burgesses by the votes of all persons who having served their
tyme are freemen of this country who haveing little interest in the
country doe oftener make tumults at the election to the disturbance of
his Majestie's peace, than by their discretions in their votes provide
for the conservation thereof, by makeing choyce of persons fitly
qualifyed for the discharge of soe greate a trust, And whereas the
lawes of England grant a voyce in such election only to such as by
their estates real or personall have interest enough to tye them to
the endeavour of the publique good; IT IS HEREBY ENACTED, that none but
freeholders and housekeepers who only are answerable to the publique for
the levies shall hereafter have a voice in the election of any burgesses
in this country."
*Hening's "Statutes", vol. II, p. 280.
Three years later another woe befell the colony. That same Charles
II--to whom in misfortune Virginia had so adhered that for her loyalty
she had received the name of the Old Dominion--now granted "all that
entire tract, territory, region, and dominion of land and water commonly
called Virginia, together with the territory of Accomack," to Lord
Culpeper and the Earl of Arlington. For thirty-one years they were to
hold it, paying to the King the slight annual rent of forty shillings.
They were not to disturb the colonists in any guaranteed right of life
or land or goods, but for the rest they might farm Virginia. The country
cried out in anger. The Assembly hurried commissioners on board a ship
in port and sent them to England to besiege the ear of the King.
Distress and discontent increased, with good reason, among the mass of
the Virginians. The King in England, his councilors, and Parliament,
played an unfatherly role, while in Virginia economic hardships pressed
ever harder and the administration became more and more oppressive.
By 1676 the gunpowder of popular indignation was laid right and left,
awaiting the match.