The decade of 1650-60 corresponds to the period of the Commonwealth
Government in England. Virginia, for the most part, appeared loyal to
the crown, yet in 1652 the colony submitted to the new government when
it demonstrated its power before Jamestown. Governor Berkeley withdrew
to his home at Green Spring, just above Jamestown, and the General
Assembly assumed the governing role, acting under the Parliament of
England. Virginia was given liberal treatment, with considerable freedom
in taxation and matters of government. The governors in this interval,
elected by the assembly, were Richard Bennett, Edward Digges (an active
supporter of the production of silk in Virginia), and Samuel Mathews. In
1660, on the death of Mathews, the assembly recalled Berkeley to the
governor’s office, an act that was approved by Charles II, who was
restored to the English throne in that year. The decade passed quietly
for the colony, although, in the years that followed, it had occasion to
remember the liberal control that it had enjoyed. It had witnessed an
increased wave of immigration that brought some of those who were
fleeing from England, and this more than offset the loss of the Puritans
whom Berkeley had forced out of the colony prior to 1650.
In matters of religion, Virginia continued loyal to the Church of
England, although there was considerable freedom for the individual. The
Puritans found it uncomfortable to remain, however, and two Quaker
preachers, William Cole and George Wilson, soon found themselves in
prison at Jamestown. Writing “From that dirty dungeon in Jamestown,” in
1662, they described the prison as a place “... where we have not the
benefit to do what nature requireth, nor so much as air, to blow in at a
window, but close made up with brick and lime....” Lord Baltimore
(George Calvert) did not find the colony hospitable when he visited
Jamestown with his family in 1629, for, being a Roman Catholic, he could
not take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy which denied the authority
of the Pope.