The Assembly commissioned Sir Francis Wyatt, then in England, and two
Virginians to represent them in negotiations with the King. They were to
be allowed to come down six pence on each of the figures insisted upon
by Governor, Council, and Burgesses in their answer to the King's
letter.
As in 1625, the opportunity to join in Assembly for the purpose of
agreeing on regulations for tobacco production allowed the planters to
deal with other matters. Wesley Frank Craven has written that
"representative government in America owes much in its origins to an
attempt to win men's support of a common economic program by means of
mutual consent." Had the King been less desirous of taking every
planter's tobacco and less concerned with the neglect of staple
commodities, he might well have governed the colony without calling the
planters together in periodic "assemblies."
Dr. John Pott was elected by the Council on March 5, 1629, to succeed
West as Governor, and he governed in Virginia for one year. Few men
possess a less savory record than this first representative of the
medical profession in America. In 1624 he had been ordered removed from
the Virginia Council, at the insistence of the Earl of Warwick, for his
part in the attempt to poison the colony's Indian foes. He was later
convicted of cattle stealing but spared punishment because he was the
only doctor in the colony and therefore in great demand.
Both West and Pott were foes of the Indians, and in numerous orders and
proclamations denounced former treaties of peace with them, and directed
that perpetual enmity and wars be maintained against them. A pretended
peace was, however, authorized to be extended to the Indians in August
1628 until certain captive Englishmen were redeemed; then it was to be
broken.
The colonists, too, suffered during the administrations of West and
Pott. One man expressed the hope for "an Easterly wind to blow to send
in Noble Capt. Harvey, And then I shall have wright for all my wrong."
Capt. John Harvey was known in the colony for the investigation he had
conducted in Virginia in 1624-1625, and the King had appointed him
Governor on March 26, 1628. Harvey did not actually take up his
government in Virginia until two years later. In the meantime West and
Pott administered the colony.