Chapter XXIV
1652-1656.
Bennet and Clayborne reduce Maryland--Cromwell's Letter-- Provisional Government organized in Virginia--Bennet made Governor--William Clayborne Secretary of State--The Assembly-- Counties represented--Cromwell dissolves the Long Parliament, and becomes Lord Protector--Sir William Berkley--Francis Yeardley's Letter to John Ferrar--Discovery in Carolina-- Roanoke Indians visit Yeardley--He purchases a large Territory --William Hatcher--Stone, Deputy Governor of Maryland, defies the Authority of the Commissioners Bennet and Clayborne--They seize the Government and entrust it to Commissioners--Battle ensues--The Adherents of Baltimore defeated--Several prisoners executed--Cromwell's Letters--The Protestants attack the Papists on the Birth-day of St. Ignatius.
NOT long after the surrender of the Ancient Dominion of Virginia, Bennet and Clayborne, commissioners, embarking in the Guinea frigate, proceeded to reduce Maryland. After effecting a reduction of the infant province, they, with singular moderation, agreed to a compromise with those who held the proprietary government under Lord Baltimore. Stone, the governor, and the council, part of them Papists, none well affected to the Commonwealth of England, were allowed, until further instructions should be received, to retain their places, on condition of issuing all writs in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England.[222:A] Sir William Berkley, upon the surrender of the colony, betook himself into retirement in Virginia, where he remained free from molestation; and his house continued to be a hospitable place of resort for refugee cavaliers. There was, no doubt, before the surrender, a considerable party in Virginia, who either secretly or openly sympathized with the parliamentary party in England; and upon the reduction of the colony these adherents of the Commonwealth found their influence much augmented.
On the 30th of April, 1652, Bennet and Clayborne, commissioners, together with the burgesses of Virginia, organized a provisional government, subject to the control of the Commonwealth of England. Richard Bennet, who had been member of the council in 1646, nephew of an eminent London merchant largely engaged in the Virginia trade,[223:A] was made governor, April 30, 1652; and William Clayborne, secretary of state for the colony. The council appointed consisted of Captain John West, Colonel Samuel Matthews, Colonel Nathaniel Littleton, Colonel Argal Yeardley, Colonel Thomas Pettus, Colonel Humphrey Higginson, Colonel George Ludlow, Colonel William Barnett,[223:B] Captain Bridges Freeman, Captain Thomas Harwood, Major William Taylor, Captain Francis Eppes, and Lieutenant-Colonel John Cheesman. The governor, secretary, and council were to have such power and authorities to act from time to time as should be appointed and granted by the grand assembly.[223:C] The government of the mother country was entitled "the States," as the United States are now styled in Canada. The act organizing the provisional government concludes with: "God save the Commonwealth of England, and this country of Virginia." The governor and councillors were allowed to be, ex-officio, members of the assembly. On the fifth day of May, this body, while claiming the right to appoint all officers for the colony, yet for the present, in token of their implicit confidence in the commissioners, referred all the appointments not already made to the governor and them. The administration of Virginia was now, for the first time, Puritan and Republican. The act authorizing the governor and council to appoint the colonial officers was renewed in the following year. The oath administered to the burgesses was: "You and every of you shall swear upon the holy Evangelist, and in the sight of God, to deliver your opinions faithfully and honestly, according to your best understanding and conscience, for the general good and prosperity of the country, and every particular member thereof, and to do your utmost endeavor to prosecute that without mingling with it any particular interest of any person or persons whatsoever."
The governor and members of the council were declared to be entitled to seats in the assembly, and were required to take the same oath. This assembly, which met on the 20th of April, 1652, appears to have sat about ten days. There were thirty-five burgesses present from twelve counties, namely: Henrico, Charles City, James City, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, (originally called Nansimum,) Lower Norfolk, Elizabeth City, Warwick, York, Northampton, Northumberland, and Gloucester--Lancaster not being represented.[224:A] Rappahannock County was formed from the upper part of Lancaster in 1656.
At the commencement of the ensuing session of the assembly, which met in October, 1652, Mr. John Hammond, returned a burgess from Isle of Wight County, was expelled from the assembly as being notoriously a scandalous person, and a frequent disturber of the peace of the country by libel and other illegal practices. He had passed nineteen years in Virginia, and now retired to Maryland; he was the author of the pamphlet entitled "Leah and Rachel."[224:B] Mr. James Pyland, another burgess, returned from the same county, was expelled, and committed to answer such charges as should be brought against him as an abettor of Mr. Thomas Woodward, in his mutinous and rebellious declaration, and concerning his the said Mr. Pyland's blasphemous catechism. These offenders appear to have been of the royalist party.
In the year 1653 there were fourteen counties in Virginia, Surry being now mentioned for the first time, and the number of burgesses was thirty-four. The people living on the borders of the Appomattox River were authorized to hold courts, and to treat with the Indians. Colonel William Clayborne, Captain Henry Fleet, and Major Abram Wood were empowered to make discoveries to the west and south. In July, some difference occurred between the governor and council on the one side, and the house of burgesses on the other, relative to the election of speaker. The affair was amicably arranged, the governor's views being assented to. Bennet appears to have enjoyed the confidence of the Virginians. He was too generous to retaliate upon Sir William Berkley and the royalists who had formerly persecuted him. Some malecontents were punished for speaking disrespectfully of him, and refusing to pay the castle duties. From the charges brought against one of these, it appears that the Virginians considered themselves, under the articles of surrender, entitled to free trade with all the world, the navigation act to the contrary notwithstanding; and that act does not appear to have been enforced against Virginia during the Commonwealth of England.[225:A] By the articles of surrender the use of the prayer-book was permitted, with the consent of a majority of the people of the parish, for one year; so that it would seem that its use was prohibited after March 12th, 1653; but the prohibition was not enforced, and public worship continued as before without interruption.[225:B] In April, 1653, Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament, and in December, in the same year, assumed the office of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Owing to the war with Holland, Sir William Berkley's departure from Virginia was delayed, and, in conformity with the articles of convention of 1651, he now became subject to arrest. But the assembly passed an act, stating that as the war between England and Holland had prevented the confirmation of the convention of 1651, in England, or the coming of a ship out of Holland, and Sir William Berkley desiring a longer time, namely, eight months further, to procure a ship out of Flanders, in respect of the war with Holland, and that he should be exempted from impost duty on such tobacco as he should lade in her; "it is condescended that his request shall be granted." Some seditious disturbances having taken place in Northampton County, on the Eastern Shore, in which Edmund Scarburgh was a ringleader, it was found necessary for Governor Bennet, Secretary Clayborne, and a party of gentlemen, to repair thither for the purpose of restoring order. Roger Green, and others, living on the Nansemond River, received a grant of land on condition of their settling the country bordering on the Moratuck or Roanoke River,[226:A] and on the south side of the Chowan. Divers gentlemen requesting permission, were authorized, in 1653, to explore the mountains. The ship Leopoldus, of Dunkirk, was confiscated for the use of the Commonwealth of England, for violating the navigation act; and the proceeds, amounting to four hundred pounds sterling, were given to Colonel Samuel Matthews, agent for Virginia at the court of the Protector, Colonel William Clayborne, secretary, and other officers, in return for their services in the matter of the forfeited ship.
Captain Francis Yeardley, who has been mentioned before, was a son of Sir George Yeardley, some time governor of Virginia, and Lady Temperance, his wife, and was born in Virginia. A letter dated in May, 1654, was addressed by him to John Ferrar, at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, brother to Nicholas Ferrar, whose name is so honorably connected with the early annals of Virginia. The younger Yeardley describes the country as very fertile, flourishing in all the exuberance of nature, abounding especially in the rich mulberry and vine, with a serene air and temperate clime, and rich in precious minerals. A young man engaged in the beaver trade having been accidentally separated from his own sloop, had obtained a small boat and provisions from Yeardley, and had gone with his party to Roanoke, at which island he hoped to find his vessel. He there fell in with a hunting party of Indians, and persuaded them and some of the other tribes, both in the island and on the mainland, to go back with him and make peace with the English. He brought some of these Indians with the great man, or chief of Roanoke, to Yeardley's house, which was probably on the Eastern Shore, where his father had lived before him. The Indians passed a week at Yeardley's. While there, the "great man" observing Yeardley's children reading and writing, inquired of him whether he would take his only son, and teach him "to speak out of the book, and make a writing." Yeardley assured him that he would willingly do so; and the chief at his departure expressing his strong desire to serve the God of the Englishmen, and his hope that his child might be brought up in the knowledge of the same, promised to bring him back again in four months. In the mean time Yeardley had been called away to Maryland; and the planters of the Eastern Shore suspecting, from the frequent visits and inquiries of the Indian, that Yeardley was carrying on some scheme for his own private advantage, were disposed to maltreat the chief. Upon one occasion, when Yeardley's wife had brought him to church with her, some over-busy justices of the peace, after sermon, threatened to whip him, and send him away. The "great man" being terrified, the lady taking him by the hand, resolutely stood forth in his defence, and pledged her whole property, as a guarantee, that no harm to the settlement was intended, or was likely to arise from the Indian's alliance. Upon Yeardley's return from Maryland, he dispatched, with his brother's assistance, a boat with six men, one being a carpenter, to build the great man an English house; and two hundred pounds for the purchase of Indian territory. The terms of the purchase were soon agreed upon, and Yeardley's people "paid for three great rivers and also all such others as they should like of, southerly." In due form they took possession of the country in the name of the Commonwealth of England, receiving as a symbol of its surrender, a turf of earth with an arrow shot into it. The territory thus given up by the Indians was a considerable part of what afterwards became the province of North Carolina. As soon as the natives had withdrawn from it to a region farther south, Yeardley built the great commander a handsome house, which he promised to fit up with English utensils and furniture.
Yeardley's people were introduced to the chief of the Tuscaroras, who received them courteously, and invited them to visit his country, of which he gave an attractive account; but his offer could not be accepted, owing to the illness of their interpreter. Upon the completion of his house, the Roanoke chief came, with the Tuscarora chief and forty-five others, to Yeardley's house, presented his wife and son and himself for baptism, and offered again the same symbol of the surrender of his whole country to Yeardley; and he in his turn tendering the same to the Commonwealth of England, prayed only "that his own property and pains might not be forgotten." The Indian child was presented to the minister before the congregation, and having been baptized in their presence, was left with Yeardley to be bred a Christian, "which God grant him grace (he prays) to become." The charges incurred by Yeardley in purchasing and taking possession of the country, had already amounted to three hundred pounds.[228:A]
At the meeting of the assembly in November, 1654, William Hatcher being convicted of having stigmatized Colonel Edward Hill, speaker of the house, as an atheist and blasphemer, (from which charges he had been before acquitted by the quarterly court,) was compelled to make acknowledgment of his offence, upon his knees, before Colonel Hill and the assembly. This Hatcher appears to have been a burgess of Henrico County in 1652. More than twenty years afterwards, in his old age, he was fined eight thousand pounds of pork, for the use of the king's soldiers, on account of alleged mutinous words uttered shortly after Bacon's rebellion.
Upon the dissolution of the Long Parliament and the establishment of the Protectorate, Lord Baltimore took measures to recover the absolute control of Maryland; and Stone, (who since June, 1652, had continued in the place of governor of Maryland,) in obedience to instructions received from his lordship, violated the terms of the agreement, which had been arranged with Bennet and Clayborne, acting in behalf of the Parliament, and set them at defiance. These commissioners having addressed a letter to Stone proposing an interview, he refused to accede to it, and gave it as his opinion, that they were "wolves in sheep's clothing." Bennet and Clayborne, claiming authority derived from his Highness the Lord Protector, seized the government of the province, and entrusted it to a board of ten commissioners.[229:A]
When Lord Baltimore received intelligence of this proceeding, he wrote to his deputy, (Stone,) reproaching him with cowardice, and peremptorily commanded him to recover the colony by force of arms. Stone and the Marylanders now accordingly fell to arms, and disarmed and plundered those that would not accept the oath of allegiance to Baltimore. The province contained, as has been mentioned before, among its inhabitants a good many emigrants from Virginia of Puritan principles, and these dwelt mainly on the banks of the Severn and the Patuxent, and on the Isle of Kent. They were disaffected to the proprietary government, and protested that they had removed to Maryland, under the express engagement with Governor Stone, that they should enjoy freedom of conscience, and be exempt from the obnoxious oath. These recusants now took up arms to defend themselves, and civil war raged in infant Maryland. Stone, to reduce the malecontents, embarking for Providence with his men, landed on the neck, at the mouth of the Severn. Here, on the 25th of March, 1654, he was attacked by the Protestant adherents of Bennet and Clayborne, and utterly defeated; the prisoners being nearly double of the number of the victors, twenty killed, many wounded, and "all the place strewed with Papist beads where they fled."
During the action, a New England vessel seized the boats, provision, and ammunition of the governor and his party. Among the prisoners was this functionary, who had been "shot in many places." Several of the prisoners were condemned to death by a court-martial; and four of the principal, one of them a councillor, were executed on the spot. Captain William Stone, likewise sentenced, owed his escape to the intercession of some women, and of some of Bennet and Clayborne's people.[229:B] John Hammond, (the same who had been, two years before, expelled from the Virginia Assembly,) also one of the condemned, fled in disguise, and escaped to England in the ship Crescent. The master of this vessel was afterwards heavily fined by the Virginia assembly for carrying off Hammond without a pass. Of the four that were shot, three were Romanists; and the Jesuit fathers, hotly pursued, escaped to Virginia, where they inhabited a mean low hut.[230:A]
Thus Maryland became subject to the Protectorate. The administration of the Puritan commissioners was rigorous, and the Maryland assembly excluded Papists from the pale of religious freedom. Such were even Milton's views of toleration;[230:B] but Cromwell, the master-spirit of his age, soared higher, and commanded the commissioners "not to busy themselves about religion, but to settle the civil government." He addressed the following letter, dated at Whitehall, in January, 1654, to Richard Bennet, Esq., Governor of Virginia:--
"SIR:--Whereas, the differences between the Lord Baltimore and the inhabitants of Virginia, concerning the bounds by them respectively claimed, are depending before our council and yet undetermined; and whereas, we are credibly informed you have, notwithstanding, gone into his plantation in Maryland, and countenanced some people there in opposing the Lord Baltimore's officers; whereby and with other forces from Virginia, you have much disturbed that colony and people, to the engendering of tumults and much bloodshed there, if not timely prevented:
"We, therefore, at the request of the Lord Baltimore and divers other persons of quality here, who are engaged by great adventures in his interest, do, for preventing of disturbances or tumults there, will and require you, and all others deriving any authority from you, to forbear disturbing the Lord Baltimore, or his officers, or people in Maryland, and to permit all things to remain as they were before any disturbance or alteration made by you, or by any other, upon pretence of authority from you, till the said differences, above mentioned, be determined by us here, and we give farther order herein.
"We rest, your loving friend, "OLIVER, P."
Cromwell was now endeavoring to heal the wounds of civil war, to allay animosities, and to strengthen his power by a generous and conciliatory policy, blended with irresistible energy of action. In return for Lord Baltimore's ready submission to his authority, the Protector apparently recognized his proprietary rights in Maryland, yet at the same time, he sustained and protected his commissioners, only curbing the violent contest that had arisen between Virginia and Maryland respecting their boundary. His policy as to the internal government of these colonies was one of a masterly inactivity.
"To the Commissioners of Maryland.
"WHITEHALL, 26th September, 1655.
"SIRS:--It seems to us, by yours of the twenty-ninth of June, and by the relation we received by Colonel Bennet, that some mistake or scruple hath arisen concerning the sense of our letters of the twelfth of January last; as if by our letters we had intimated that we should have a stop put to the proceedings of those commissioners who were authorized to settle the civil government of Maryland. Which was not at all intended by us; nor so much as proposed to us by those who made addresses to us to obtain our said letter. But our intention (as our said letter doth plainly import) was only to prevent and forbid any force or violence to be offered by either of the plantations of Virginia or Maryland, from one to the other, upon the differences concerning their bounds, the said differences being then under the consideration of ourself and council here. Which, for your more full satisfaction, we have thought fit to signify to you, and rest
"Your loving friend, "OLIVER, P."[231:A]
Remembering, however, Lord Baltimore's ready submission to his authority, he nominally, at the least, restored him to his control over the province.
It was the custom of the Maryland Romanists to celebrate, by a salute of cannon, the thirty-first of July, the birth-day of St.
Ignatius, (Loyola,) Maryland's patron saint. On the 1st of August, 1656, the day following the anniversary, a number of Protestant soldiers, aroused by the nocturnal report of the cannon, issued from their fort, five miles distant, rushed upon the habitations of the Papists, broke into them, and plundered whatever there was found of arms or powder.
FOOTNOTES:
[222:A] "Virginia and Maryland," 11, 34; Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.; Chalmers' Annals, 221.
[223:A] Stith's Hist. of Va., 199.
[223:B] Properly Bernard: see Hening, i. 408.
[223:C] Hening, i. 372.
[224:A] Gloucester and Lancaster Counties are now named for the first time; when or how they were formed, does not appear. Sir William Berkley was of Gloucestershire, England. The name of Warrasqueake was changed to Isle of Wight in 1637, and first represented in 1642. In that year Charles River was changed to York, and Warwick River to Warwick. The boundaries of Upper and Lower Norfolk were fixed in 1642; and Upper Norfolk was changed to Nansimum (afterwards Nansemond) in 1646. Northumberland is first mentioned in 1645; Westmoreland in 1653; Surry, Gloucester, and Lancaster in 1652. New Kent was first represented in 1654, being taken from the upper part of York County. (McSherry's Hist. of Maryland.)
[224:B] Force's Hist. Tracts, iii.
[225:A] Burk, ii. 97
[225:B] Virginia's Cure, p. 19, in Force's Hist. Tracts, iii.
[226:A] Called Moratuck or Moratoc above the falls, and Roanoke below. Roanoke signifies "shell:" Roanoke and Wampumpeake were terms for Indian shell-money.
[228:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, ii. 506. The letter is preserved in Thurloe's State Papers, xi. 273.
[229:A] "Virginia and Maryland," Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.
[229:B] "Leah and Rachel," Force's Hist. Tracts, iii.; Chalmer's Annals, 222.
[230:A] White's Relation, 44, in Force's Hist. Tracts, iv.
[230:B] Milton's Prose Works, ii. 346.
[231:A] Carlyle's Cromwell, ii. 182.
Chapter XXV
1655-1658.
Digges elected Governor--Bennet goes to England the Colony's Agent--Colonel Edward Hill defeated by the Ricahecrians-- Totopotomoi, with many Warriors, slain--Miscellaneous matters--Matthews Elected Governor--Letter to the Protector-- Acts of Assembly--Magna Charta recognized as in force-- Governor and Council excluded from Assembly--Matthews declares a Dissolution--The House resists--Dispute referred to the Protector--Declaration of Sovereignty--Matthews re-elected-- Council newly reorganized--Edward Hill elected Speaker--Rules of the House.
IN March, 1655, Edward Digges was elected by the assembly governor of the colony of Virginia. He was of an ancient and distinguished family, and had been made a member of the council in November, 1654, "he having given a signal testimony of his fidelity to this colony and Commonwealth of England." He succeeded Bennet, who had held the office since April, 1652, and who was now appointed the colony's agent at London.
In the year 1656, six or seven hundred Ricahecrian Indians having come down from the mountains, and seated themselves near the falls of the James River, Colonel Edward Hill, the elder, was put in command of a body of men, and ordered to dislodge them. He was reinforced by Totopotomoi, chief of Pamunkey, with one hundred of his tribe. A creek enclosing a peninsula in Hanover County, retains the name of Totopotomoy; and Butler, in Hudibras, alludes to this chief:--
"The mighty Tottipotimoy Sent to our elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league held forth by brother Patch."
Hill was disgracefully defeated, and the brave Totopotomoi, with the greater part of his warriors, slain. It appears probable that Bloody Run, near Richmond, derived its name from this sanguinary battle. The action in which so many Indians were afterwards massacred by Bacon and his men, and with which a loose tradition has identified Bloody Run, did not occur near the falls of the James River. Hill, in consequence of his bad conduct in this affair, was subsequently, by unanimous vote of the council and the house of burgesses, condemned to pay the expenses of effecting a peace with the Indians, and was disfranchised.[234:A] During this year an act was passed allowing all free men the right of voting for burgesses, on the ground that "it is something hard and unagreeable to reason that any persons shall pay equal taxes, and yet have no votes in elections." So republican was the elective franchise in Virginia, under the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell two centuries ago! In this year, 1656, Colonel Thomas Dew, of Nansemond, sometime before speaker of the house of burgesses, and others, were authorized to explore the country between Cape Hatteras and Cape Fear. The County of Nansemond had long abounded with non-conformists.
The salary of the governor, as ordered at this time, consisted of twenty-five thousand pounds of tobacco, worth two hundred and fifty pounds sterling, together with certain duties levied from masters of vessels, called castle duties, and marriage license fees. A reward of twenty pounds was offered to any one who should import a minister; ministers, with six servants each, were exempted from taxes, it being provided that they should be examined by Mr. Philip Mallory and Mr. John Green, and should be recommended by them to the governor and council, who were invested with discretionary control of the matter.[234:B] Letters were sent to Matthews, Virginia's agent at the Protector's court, directing him to suspend for the present the further prosecution of the long and fruitless controversy with Lord Baltimore respecting the disputed boundary.[234:C] Matthews, returning from England, was elected by the assembly to succeed Digges in the office of governor, who was now employed as agent. Colonel Francis Morrison, speaker, was desired by the assembly to write a letter to the Protector, and another to the secretary of state, which was as follows:--
"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS,--
"We could not find a fitter means to represent the condition of this country to your highness, than this worthy person, Mr. Digges, our late governor, whose occasions calling him into England, we have instructed him with the state of this place as he left it; we shall beseech your highness to give credit to his relations, which we assure ourselves shall be faithful, having had many experiences of his candor in the time of his government, which he hath managed under your highness, with so much moderation, prudence, and justice, that we should be much larger in expressing this truth, but that we fear to have already too much trespassed, by interrupting your highness' most serious thoughts in greater affairs than what can concern your highness' most humble, most devoted servants.
"Dated from the Assembly of Virginia, 15th December, 1656."
Superscribed, for his "Highness, the Lord Protector."
The letter to the secretary of state was as follows:--
"RIGHT HONORABLE,--
"Though we are persons so remote from you, we have heard so honorable a character of your worth, that we cannot make a second choice without erring, of one so fit and proper as yourself to make our addresses to his Highness, the Lord Protector. Our desires we have intrusted to that worthy gentleman, Mr. Digges, our late governor; we shall desire you would please to give him access to you and by your highness. And as we promise you will find nothing but worth in him, so we are confident he will undertake for us that we are a people not altogether ungrateful, but will find shortly a nearer way than by saying so, to express really how much we esteem the honor of your patronage, which is both the hopes and ambition of your very humble and then obliged servants.
"From the Assembly of Virginia, 15th December, 1656."
Superscribed, to the "Right Honorable John Thurlow, Secretary of State."
The allusion in the close of the letter appears to be to a douceur which it was intended to present to the secretary.
Digges was instructed to unite with Matthews and Bennet, in London, and to treat with the leading merchants in the Virginia trade, and to let them know how much the assembly had endeavored to diminish the quantity, and improve the quality of the tobacco; and to see what the merchants, on their part, would be willing to do in giving a better price; for if the planters should find that the bad brought as high a price as the good, they would of course raise that which could be raised the most easily.[236:A] It appears that Digges was appointed agent conjointly with Bennet. Matthews was elected by the assembly to succeed Digges as governor; but the latter was requested to hold the office as long as he should remain in Virginia. Digges departing for England toward the close of 1655, would appear to have co-operated for a short while with both Matthews and Bennet. By a singular coincidence, Digges, Matthews, and Bennet, who were the first three governors of Virginia under the Commonwealth of England, were transferred from the miniature metropolis, Jamestown, and found themselves together near the court of his Highness the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.
Digges was succeeded as governor by Matthews, early in the year 1656. The laws of the colony were revised, and reduced into one volume, comprising one hundred and thirty-one acts, well adapted to the wants of the people and the condition of the country. Of the transactions from 1656 to 1660, the year of the restoration, Burk says there is an entire chasm in the records; Hening, on the contrary, declares that, "in no portion of the colonial records under the Commonwealth, are the materials so copious as from 1656 to 1660." The editor of the Statutes at Large is the better authority on this point.
The church government was settled by giving the people the entire control of the vestry; while the appointment of ministers and church wardens, the care of the poor, and parochial matters, were entrusted to the people of each parish. An act was passed for the keeping holy the Sabbath, and another against divulgers of false news. The ordinary weight of a hogshead of tobacco at this time did not exceed three hundred and fifty pounds, and its dimensions by law were forty-three inches long and twenty-six wide. Letters, superscribed "For the Public Service," were ordered to be conveyed from one plantation to another, to the place of destination. A remedy was provided for servants complaining of harsh usage, or of insufficient food or raiment. The penalty for selling arms or ammunition to the Indians was the forfeiture of the offender's whole estate. It was enacted that no sheriff, or deputy sheriff, then called under-sheriff, should hold his office longer than one year in any one county. The penalty of being reduced to servitude was abolished. The twenty-second day of March and the eighteenth of April were still kept as holy days, in commemoration of the deliverance of the colonists from the bloody Indian massacres of 1622 and 1644. The planters were prohibited from encroaching upon the lands of the Indians. The vessels of all nations were admitted into the ports of Virginia; and an impost duty of ten shillings a hogshead was laid on all tobacco exported, except that laden in English vessels, and bound directly for England; from the payment of which duty vessels belonging to Virginians were afterwards exempted. An act was passed to prohibit the kidnapping of Indian children.
In the year 1656 all acts against mercenary attorneys were repealed; but two years afterwards attorneys were again expelled from the courts,[237:A] and no one was suffered to receive any compensation for serving in that capacity. The governor and council made serious opposition to this act, and the following communication was made to the house of burgesses: "The governor and council will consent to this proposition so far as shall be agreeable to Magna Charta. WM. CLAYBORNE." The burgesses replied, that they could not see any such prohibition contained in Magna Charta; that two former assemblies had passed such a law, and that it had stood in force upwards of ten years. It thus appears that Magna Charta was held to be in force in the colony.
The ground leaves of tobacco, or lugs, were declared to be not merchantable; and it was ordered that no tobacco should be planted after the tenth day of July, under the penalty of a fine of ten thousand pounds of that staple. The exportation of hides, wool, and old iron, was forbidden. The salary of the governor, derived from the impost duty on tobacco exported, was fixed at sixteen hundred pounds sterling.
The burgesses having rescinded the order admitting the governor and council as members of the house, and having voted an adjournment, Matthews, on the 1st of April, 1658, declared a dissolution of the assembly. The house resisted, and declared that any burgess who should depart at this conjuncture, should be censured as betraying the trust reposed in him by his country; and an oath of secrecy was administered to the members. The governor, upon receiving an assurance that the business of the house would be speedily and satisfactorily concluded, revoked the order of dissolution, referring the question in dispute, as to the dissolving power, to his Highness the Lord Protector. The burgesses, still unsatisfied, appointed a committee, of which Colonel John Carter, of Lancaster County, was chairman, to draw up a resolution asserting their powers; and in consonance with their report the burgesses made a declaration of popular sovereignty: that they had in themselves the full power of appointing all officers, until they should receive an order to the contrary from England; that the house was not dissolvable by any power yet extant in Virginia but their own; that all former elections of governor and council should be void; that the power of governor for the future should be conferred on Colonel Samuel Matthews, who by them was invested with all the rights and privileges belonging to the governor and captain-general of Virginia; and that a council should be appointed by the burgesses then convened, with the advice of the governor.
The legislative records do not disclose the particular ground on which the previous elections of governor and appointments of councillors under the provisional government were annulled; but from the exclusion of the governor and council from the house, it might be inferred that it was owing to a jealousy of these functionaries being members of the body that elected them. Yet Bennet, the first of the three governors, and his council, were, in 1652, expressly allowed to be ex officio members of the assembly. An order was also made, April 2d, 1758, by the assembly, in the name of his Highness the Lord Protector, to the sheriff of James City, and sergeant-at-arms, to obey no warrant but those signed by the speaker of the house; and William Clayborne, secretary of state, (under Bennet, Digges, and Matthews,) was directed to deliver the records to the assembly. The oath of office was administered to Governor Matthews by the committee before mentioned, and the members of the council nominated by the governor and approved by the house, took the same oath.[239:A]
The number of burgesses present at the session commencing in March, 1659, was thirty. Colonel Edward Hill, who had been disfranchised, was now unanimously elected speaker. Colonel Moore Fantleroy, of Rappahannock County, not being present at the election, "moved against him, as if clandestinely elected, and taxed the house of unwarrantable proceedings therein." He was suspended until the next day, when, acknowledging his error, he was readmitted.
Any member absent from the house was subject to a penalty of twenty pounds of tobacco. A member "disguised with overmuch drink" forfeited one hundred pounds of tobacco. A burgess was required to rise from his seat, and to remain uncovered, while speaking. The oath was administered to the burgesses by a committee of three sent from the council.
FOOTNOTES:
[234:A] Hening, i. 402, 422; Burk's Hist. of Va., ii. 107.
[234:B] Hening, i. 424.
[234:C] Burk's Hist. of Va., ii. 116. An Armenian was imported by Digges for the purpose of making silk.
[236:A] Burk's Hist. of Va., ii. 116.
[237:A] Hening, i. 434, 482.
[239:A] The governor and council were as follows: Colonel Samuel Matthews, Governor and Captain-general of Virginia, Richard Bennet, Colonel William Clayborne, Secretary of State, Colonel John West, Colonel Thomas Pettus, Colonel Edward Hill, Colonel Thomas Dew, Colonel William Bernard, Colonel Obedience Robins, Lieutenant-Colonel John Walker, Colonel George Reade, Colonel Abraham Wood, Colonel John Carter, Mr. Warham Horsmenden, Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Elliott.
Chapter XXVI
1659-1661.
Death of Oliver Cromwell--Succeeded by his Son Richard-- Assembly acknowledge his Authority--Character of Government of Virginia under the Commonwealth of England--Matthews dies-- Richard Cromwell resigns the Protectorate--Supreme Power claimed now by the Assembly--Sir William Berkley elected Governor--Act for suppressing Quakers--Free Trade established-- Stuyvesant's Letter--Charles the Second restored--Sends a new Commissioner to Berkley--His Reply--Grant of Northern Neck-- The Navigation Act.
ON the 8th of March, 1660, the house of burgesses having sent a committee to notify the governor that they attended his pleasure, he presented the following letter:--
"GENTLEMEN,--His late Highness, the Lord Protector, from that general respect which he had to the good and safety of all the people of his dominion, whether in these nations, or in the English plantations abroad, did extend his care to his colony in Virginia, the present condition and affairs whereof appearing under some unsettledness through the looseness of the government, the supplying of that defect hath been taken into serious consideration, and some resolutions passed in order thereunto, which we suppose would have been brought into act by this time, if the Lord had continued life and health to his said highness. But it hath pleased the Lord, on Friday, the third of this month, to take him out of the world, his said highness having in his lifetime, according to the humble petition and advice, appointed and declared the most noble and illustrious lord, the Lord Richard, eldest son to his late highness, to be his successor, who hath been accordingly, with general consent and applause of all, proclaimed Protector of this Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions and territories thereunto belonging. And, therefore, we have thought fit to signify the same unto you, whom we require, according to your duty, that you cause his said Highness, Richard, Lord Protector, forthwith to be proclaimed in all parts of your colony. And his highness' council have thought fit hereby to assure you, that the settlement of that colony is not neglected; and to let you know, that you may expect shortly to receive a more express testimony of his highness' care in that behalf; till the further perfecting whereof, their lordships do, will, and require you, the present governor and council there, to apply yourselves with all seriousness, faithfulness, and circumspection, to the peaceable and orderly management of the affairs of that colony, according to such good laws and customs (not repugnant to the laws of England) as have been heretofore used and exercised among you, improving your best endeavors as for maintaining the civil peace, so for promoting the interest of religion, wherein you will receive from hence all just countenance and encouragement. And if any person shall presume, by any undue ways, to interrupt the quiet or hazard the safety of his highness' people there, order will be taken, upon the representation of such proceedings, to make further provision for securing of your peace in such a way as shall be found meet and necessary, and for calling those to a strict account who shall endeavor to disturb it.
"Signed in the name and by the order of the council.
"H. LAWRENCE, President.
"Whitehall, 7th September, 1658."
Superscription, to the "Governor and Council of his Highness' Colony of Virginia."
Upon the reading of this letter, the governor and council withdrew from the assembly; and the house of burgesses unanimously acknowledged their obedience to his Highness, Richard, Lord Protector, and fully recognized his power.[241:A] So much truth is there in Mr. Jefferson's remark,[241:B] that in the contest with the house of Stuart, Virginia accompanied the footsteps of the mother country. The government of Virginia under the Commonwealth of England was wholly provisional. By the convention of March the 12th, 1652, Virginia secured to herself her ancient limits, and was entitled to reclaim that part of her chartered territory which had been unjustly and illegally given away to Lord Baltimore. In this, however, owing to the perplexed condition of affairs in England, Virginia was disappointed; but she secured, by the articles of convention, free trade, exemption from taxation, save by her own assembly, and exclusion of military force from her borders. Yet all these rights were violated by subsequent kings and parliaments.[242:A]
The administration of the colonial government, under the Commonwealth of England, was judicious and beneficent; the people were free, harmonious, and prosperous; and while Cromwell's sceptre commanded the respect of the world, he exhibited toward the infant and loyal colony a generous and politic lenity; and during this interval she enjoyed free trade, legislative independence, civil and religious freedom, republican institutions, and internal peace. The Governors Bennet, Digges, and Matthews, by their patriotic virtues, enjoyed the confidence, and affection, and respect of the people; no extravagance, rapacity, corruption, or extortion was charged against their administration; intolerance and persecution were unknown. But rapine, corruption, extortion, intolerance, and persecution were all soon to be revived under the restored dynasty of the Stuarts.
Richard Cromwell resigned the Protectorate on the 22d day of April, 1659. Matthews, the governor, had died in the preceding January. England was without a monarch; Virginia without a governor. It was during this interval that public opinion in England was in suspense, the result of affairs depending upon the line of conduct which might be pursued by General Monk. The Virginia assembly, convening on the 13th day of March, 1660, declared by their first act that as there was then in England no resident, absolute, and generally acknowledged power, therefore the supreme government of the colony should rest in the assembly; and writs previously issued in the name of his Highness, the Lord Protector, now issued in the name of the Grand Assembly of Virginia. By the second act, Sir William Berkley was elected governor; he was required to call a grand assembly once in two years at the least, and was restricted from dissolving the assembly without its consent. The circumstances of this reappointment of Sir William Berkley have been frequently misrepresented; historians from age to age following each other in fabulous tradition, erroneous conjecture, or wilful perversion, have asserted that Sir William was hurried from retirement by a torrent of popular enthusiasm, and made governor by acclamation, and that Charles the Second was boldly proclaimed in Virginia, and his standard reared several months, some say sixteen, before the restoration; and thus the Virginians, as they had been the last of the king's subjects who renounced their allegiance, so they were the first who returned to it![243:A]
Error in history is like a flock of sheep jumping over a bridge; if one goes, the rest all follow. Sir William Berkley, as has been before mentioned, was not elected by a tumultuary assemblage of the people, but by the assembly; the royal standard was not raised upon the occasion, nor was the king proclaimed. The bulk of the Virginia planters undoubtedly retained their habitual attachment to monarchy and to the Established Church; and some royalist refugees had been driven hither by the civil war. Yet, as the colonists had formerly been greatly dissatisfied with some acts of the government during the reign of Charles the First, they certainly had much reason to approve of the wise, and liberal, and magnanimous policy of Cromwell. Besides this, a good many republicans and Puritans had found their way to Virginia. The predominant feeling, however, in Virginia as in England, was in favor of the restoration of Charles the Second. Sir William Berkley, in his speech addressed to the assembly on their proffer of the place of governor, said: "I do, therefore, in the presence of God and you, make this safe protestation for us all, that if any supreme settled power appears, I will immediately lay down my commission, but will live most submissively obedient to any power God shall set over me, as the experience of eight years has shewed I have done." In his address to the house of burgesses, he alludes to the late king, as "my most gracious master, King Charles, of ever blessed memory," and as "my ever honored master, who was put to a violent death." The Berkleys were staunch adherents of Charles the First, and extreme royalists. Referring in his address to the surrender of the colony, Sir William said, that the parliament "sent a small power to force my submission, which, finding me defenceless, was quietly (God pardon me) effected." Of the several parliaments and the protectorate he remarked: "And I believe, Mr. Speaker, (Theodorick Bland,) you think, if my voice had been prevalent in most of their elections, I would not voluntarily have made choice of them for my supremes. But, Mr. Speaker, all this I have said, is only to make this truth apparent to you, that in and under all these mutable governments of divers natures and constitutions, I have lived most resignedly submissive. But, Mr. Speaker, it is one duty to live obedient to a government, and another of a very different nature, to command under it." It thus appears that Sir William accepted the place hoping for the restoration of Charles the Second; but with an explicit pledge, that he would resign in case that event should not occur.[244:A] This speech was made March the nineteenth, and on the twenty-first the council unanimously concurred in his election. The members were Richard Bennet, (late Puritan Governor,) William Bernard, John Walker, George Reade, Thomas Pettus, William Clayborne, Edward Hill, Thomas Dew, Edward Carter, Thomas Swan, and Augustine Warner. Nearly all of these were colonels. The title of colonel and member of the council appears to have been a sort of order of nobility in Virginia. Sir William Berkley was elected two months before the restoration of Charles the Second, which took place on the 20th of May, 1660, that being his birth-day. Yet the word "king" or "majesty" nowhere occurs in the legislative records, from the commencement of the Commonwealth of England until the 11th day of October, 1660, more than four months after the restoration.[244:B] Virginia was indeed loyal, but she was too feeble to avow her loyalty.
An act was passed, entitled an act for the suppressing the Quakers; the preamble of which describes them as an unreasonable and turbulent sort of people, who daily gather together unlawful assemblies of people, teaching lies, miracles, false visions, prophecies, and doctrines tending to disturb the peace, disorganize society, and destroy all law, and government, and religion. Masters of vessels were prohibited from bringing in any of that sect, under the penalty of one hundred pounds of tobacco; all of them to be apprehended and committed, until they should give security that they would leave the colony; if they should return, they should be punished, and returning the third time should be proceeded against as felons. No person should entertain any Quakers that had been questioned by the governor and council; nor permit any assembly of them in or near his house, under the penalty of one hundred pounds sterling; and no person to publish their books, pamphlets, and libels.[245:A] This act was passed in March, 1660, shortly after the election of Sir William Berkley.
Of late years, certain masters of vessels trading to Virginia, in violation of the laws and of the articles of surrender granting the privilege of free trade, had "molested, troubled, and seized divers ships, sloops, and vessels, coming to trade with us." The assembly therefore required every master to give bond not to molest any person trading under the protection of the laws.
Act XVI. establishes free trade: "Whereas, the restriction of trade hath appeared to be the greatest impediment to the advance of the estimation and value of our present only commodity, tobacco, be it enacted and confirmed, That the Dutch, and all strangers of what Christian nation soever, in amity with the people of England, shall have free liberty to trade with us for all allowable commodities." And it was provided, "That if the said Dutch, or other foreigners, shall import any negro slaves, they, the said Dutch, or others, shall, for the tobacco really produced by the sale of the said negro, pay only the impost of two shillings per hogshead, the like being paid by our own nation." The regular impost being ten shillings, this exemption was a bounty of eight shillings per hogshead for the encouragement of the importation of negroes.[245:B]
When Argall, in 1614, returning from his half-piratical excursion against the French at Port Royal, entered what is now New York Bay, he found three or four huts erected there by Dutch mariners and fishermen, on the Island of Manhattan. Near half a century had since elapsed, and the colony planted there had grown to an importance that justified something of diplomatic correspondence. In the spring of 1660 Nicholas Varleth and Brian Newton were sent by Governor Stuyvesant, celebrated by Knickerbocker, from Fort Amsterdam to Virginia, for the purpose of forming a league acknowledging the Dutch title to New York. Sir William Berkley evaded the proposition in the following letter:--
"SIR,--I have received the letter you were pleased to send me by Mr. Mills his vessel, and shall be ever ready to comply with you in all acts of neighborly friendship and amity; but truly, sir, you desire me to do that concerning your letter and claims to land in the northern part of America which I am incapable to do, for I am but a servant of the assembly's; neither do they arrogate any power to themselves further than the miserable distractions of England force them to. For when God shall be pleased in His mercy to take away and dissipate the unnatural divisions of their native country, they will immediately return to their own professed obedience. What then they should do in matters of contract, donation, and confession of right, would have little strength or signification; much more presumptive and impertinent would it be in me to do it, without their knowledge or assent. We shall very shortly meet again, and then, if to them you signify your desires, I shall labor all I can to get you a satisfactory answer.
"I am, sir, your humble servant, "WILLIAM BERKLEY.
"Virginia, August 20th, 1660."
Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch governors of New Amsterdam, within a few years was dispossessed by a small English squadron, and the captured colony was retained. Sir William Berkley's letter was written nearly three months after the actual restoration, and yet, not having received intelligence of it, he alludes to the English government as in a state of interregnum, and writes not one word in present recognition of his majesty Charles the Second; on the contrary, he expressly avows himself a servant of the assembly.
Tea was introduced into England about this time; the East India Company made the king a formal present of two pounds and two ounces.[247:A]
The address of the Parliament and General Monk to Charles the Second, then at Breda, in Holland, was carried over by Lord Berkley, of Berkley Castle. On the eighth of May Charles was proclaimed in England king, and he returned in triumph to London on the twenty-ninth of that month, being his birth-day. The restored monarch transmitted a new commission, dated July the 31st, 1660, at Westminster, to his faithful adherent Sir William Berkley. He had remained in Virginia during the Commonwealth of England under various pretexts, and it is probable that he kept up a secret correspondence with refugee royalists, and it is said that he even invited Charles to come over to Virginia. This tradition, however, is without proof or plausibility; had the exiled Charles sought refuge in Virginia, an English frigate would have found it easy to make him a prisoner. Virginia would have presented few attractions to the royal profligate; and it could have hardly been a matter of regret to the Virginians that he never came here. Sir William Berkley's letter of acknowledgment, written in March, 1661, is extravagantly loyal. He apologizes for having accepted office from the assembly thus: "It was no more, may it please your majesty, than to leap over the fold to save your majesty's flock, when your majesty's enemies of that fold had barred up the lawful entrance into it, and enclosed the wolves of schism and rebellion, ready to devour all within it," etc. By "the wolves of schism and rebellion" he probably meant the Puritan and Republican party in Virginia, and he appears to have looked upon them as formidable enemies.
Charles the Second, in the first year of his reign, that is, in the first year after the death of his father, for he was considered or imagined to have reigned all the while, had granted all the tract of land lying between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, known as the Northern Neck, to Lord Hopton, the Earl of St. Albans, Lord Culpepper, and others, to hold the same forever, paying yearly six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence to the crown.
The Anglo-American colonies now established, Virginia, New England, and Maryland, contained eighty-five thousand inhabitants. The navigation act had not been recognized by Virginia as obligatory on her; had been opposed by Massachusetts as an invasion of her rights; and had been evaded by Maryland. James the First, Charles the First, and the Commonwealth, had expressly exempted the colonies from direct taxation, but the Restoration parliament extended the customs of tonnage and poundage to every part of the dominion of the crown; and the colonists did not for years resist the collection of those imposts.[248:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[241:A] Hening, i. 509.
[241:B] Preface to T. M.'s Account of Bacon's Rebellion, in Kercheval's History of Valley of Va., 21. The clause quoted from Mr. Jefferson is omitted in the copy of the same introduction found in Force's Hist. Tracts, i.
[242:A] Jefferson's Notes, 125.
[243:A] Robertson's Hist. of America, iv. 230; Beverley's Hist. of Va., B. i. 55; Chalmers' Annals, 124; Burk's Hist. of Va., ii. 120; Grahame's Colonial Hist. of U. S., i. 89; Hawks' Prot. Episcopal Church in Va., 63. See, also, Hening's Statutes at Large of Va., i. 126. Hening first corrected these errors.
[244:A] Southern Lit. Messenger for January, 1845.
[244:B] Hening, ii. 9, in note.
[245:A] Hening, i. 532.
[245:B] Hening, i. 535.
[247:A] Pepys' Diary, i. 110. Pepys was pronounced Peeps.
[248:A] Chalmers' Revolt of Amer. Colonies, 99.
Chapter XXVII
1661-1663.
Settlements of Virginia--The Church--Laws for establishment of Towns--Intelligence received of Restoration--Assembly sends Address to the King--Demonstrations of Loyalty--Berkley visits England--Morrison elected by the Council in his stead-- Assembly's tone altered--Act for ducking "Brabbling Women"-- Power of Taxation vested in Governor and Council for three years--Miscellaneous Affairs--Act relating to Indians--Persons trespassing on the Indians, punished--Sir William Berkley returns from England--Instructions relative to the Church-- Acts against Schismatics and Separatists--Berkley superintends establishment of a Colony on Albemarle Sound.
THE settlements of Virginia now included the territory lying between the Potomac and the Chowan, and embraced, besides, the isolated Accomac. There were fifty parishes. The plantations lay dispersed along the banks of rivers and creeks, those on the James stretching westward, above a hundred miles into the interior. Each parish extended many miles in length along the river-side, but in breadth ran back only a mile. This was the average breadth of the plantations, their length varying from half a mile to three miles or more. The fifty parishes comprehending an area supposed to be equal to one-half of England, it was inevitable that many of the inhabitants lived very remote from the parish church. Many parishes, indeed, were as yet destitute of churches and glebes; and not more than ten parishes were supplied with ministers. Hammond[249:A] says: "They then began to provide, and send home for gospel ministers, and largely contributed for their maintenance; but Virginia savoring not handsomely in England, very few of good conversation would adventure thither, (as thinking it a place wherein surely the fear of God was not,) yet many came, such as wore black coats, and could babble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissoluteness destroy than feed their flocks." Hammond's statements are not to be unreservedly received. Where there were ministers, worship was usually held once on Sunday; but the remote parishioners seldom attended. The planters, either from indifference or from the want of means, were remiss in the building of churches and the maintenance of ministers. Through the licentious lives of many of them, the Christian religion was dishonored, and the name of God blasphemed among the heathen natives, (who were near them and often among them,) and thus their conversion hindered.[250:A]
In 1661 the Rev. Philip Mallory was sent over to England as Virginia's agent to solicit the cause of the church. The general want of schools, likewise owing to the sparseness of the population, was most of all bewailed by parents. The children of Virginia, naturally of beautiful persons, and generally of more genius than those in England, were doomed to grow up unserviceable for any great employments in church or state. As a principal remedy for these ills, the establishment of towns in each county was recommended. It was further proposed to erect schools in the colony, and for the supply of ministers to establish, by act of parliament, Virginia fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge, with an engagement to serve the church in Virginia for seven years. To raise the funds necessary for this purpose, it was proposed to take up a collection in the churches of Great Britain; and the assembly ordered a petition to the king to that end, to be drawn up.[250:B] Another feature of this plan was to send over a bishop, so soon as there should be a city for his see. These recommendations, although urged upon the attention of the bishop of London, seem, from whatever cause, to have proved fruitless. The Virginia assembly, in no instance, expressed any desire for the appointment of a bishop; they remembered with abhorrence the cruelties that had been exercised by the prelates in England.
Mr. Jefferson remarked that the legislature of Virginia has frequently declared that there should be towns in places where nature had declared that they should not be. The scheme of compelling the planters to abandon their plantations, and to congregate in towns, built by legislation, was indeed chimerical. The failure of the schemes proposed in the Virginia assembly for the establishment of towns, is attributed by the author of "Virginia's Cure" to the majority of the house of burgesses, who are said to have come over at first as servants, and who, although they may have accumulated by their industry competent estates, yet, owing to their mean education, were incompetent to judge of public matters, either in church or state. Yet many of the early laws appear to have been judicious, practical, and well adapted to the circumstances of a newly settled country. The legislature, eventually finding the scheme of establishing towns by legal enactments impracticable, declared it expedient to leave trade to regulate itself.
The assembly of March, 1661, consisted in the main of new members. At another session held in October of the same year, there appeared still fewer of the members who had held seats during the Commonwealth; and it may be reasonably inferred that the bulk of the retiring members were well affected to the Commonwealth of England. Intelligence of the restoration of Charles the Second had already reached Virginia, and was joyfully received. The word "king," or "majesty," was used in the public acts now for the first time, since the commencement of the Commonwealth of England--an interval of twelve years.
An address was sent to the king, praying him to pardon the inhabitants of Virginia for having yielded to a force--which they could not resist. Forty-four thousand pounds of tobacco, worth two thousand and two hundred dollars, were appropriated to Major-General Hammond and Colonel Guy Molesworth, for "being employed in the address." Sir Henry Moody was dispatched on an embassy "to the Manados," or Manhattan. Colonel Carter was required to declare what passed between him and Colonel William Clayborne at the assembly of 1653 or 1654, relative to the making an act of non-address to the Right Honorable Sir William Berkley; but the particulars of this affair have not been handed down. The rent paid for the use of the house where the assembly met, was three thousand five hundred pounds of tobacco, equivalent to one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Four thousand pounds of tobacco, worth two hundred dollars, were paid for the rent of the room where the governor and council held their meetings. The name of Monroe occurs at this early day in the County of Westmoreland as one of the commissioners, or justices of the peace.
The assembly strove to display its loyalty by bountiful appropriations to the governor and the leading royalists; the restoration in England was reflected by the restoration in Virginia. The necessity of the case had made the government of the colony republican; she was as free and almost as independent during the Commonwealth of England as after the revolution of 1776. For a short time even Sir William Berkley appears to have been identified with this system. He and the new assembly were now eagerly running in an opposite tack, and were impatient to wipe out all traces of their late forced disobedience and involuntary recognition of the popular sovereignty.
Sir William continued as governor till the 30th of April, 1661, when being about to visit England, Colonel Francis Morrison was elected by the council in his place. Sir William, it is said, was dispatched to England as agent to defend the colony against the monopoly of the navigation act, which threatened to violate their "freedoms," as is declared by the first act of the assembly held at James City, on the 23d of March, 1661. Sir William was heartily opposed to the restrictions on the commerce of Virginia; but any efforts that he may have used in opposition to them were fruitless.
He embarked in May for England, and returned in the fall of the following year, 1662. His pay on account of this mission was two hundred thousand pounds of tobacco, or five hundred and seventy-one hogsheads, the average weight of a hogshead at this period being three hundred and fifty pounds.[252:A] This quantity of tobacco was worth two thousand pounds sterling, or ten thousand dollars.[253:A] The ordinary salary of the governor consisted of castle duties, license fees, tobacco, corn, and customs, and probably amounted to not less than twelve thousand dollars per annum.[253:B]
The assembly's tone was now altered; during the Commonwealth of England, Oliver Cromwell had been addressed as "His Highness," and the burgesses had subscribed themselves his "most humble, most devoted servants;" nor had Richard Cromwell been treated with a less obsequious and respectful submission. But now the following language was employed: "Whereas, our late surrender and submission to that execrable power, that so bloodily massacred the late King Charles the First of ever blessed and glorious memory, hath made us, by acknowledging them, guilty of their crimes; to show our serious and hearty repentance and detestation of that barbarous act, be it enacted, That the thirtieth of January, the day the said king was beheaded, be annually solemnized with fasting and prayers, that our sorrows may expiate our crime, and our tears wash away our guilt."[253:C] Their compulsory acknowledgment of the sovereign power of the Commonwealth of England, if they all the while remained in their hearts loyal, could not have implicated them in the execution of the king.
Colonel Francis Morrison continued to fill the place of Sir William Berkley until his return, which took place some time between September and the 21st of November, 1662.
An act was passed, entitled "Women causing scandalous suits, to be ducked:" "Whereas, oftentimes many brabbling women often slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits, and cast in great damages; be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, That in actions of slander occasioned by the wife, as aforesaid, after judgment passed for the damages, the woman shall be punished by ducking; and if the slander be so enormous as to be adjudged at a greater damage than five hundred pounds of tobacco, then the woman to suffer a ducking for each five hundred pounds of tobacco against the husband adjudged, if he refuse to pay the tobacco." A ducking-stool had been already established in each county.
The anniversary both of the birth and the restoration of Charles the Second was established as a holiday. The navigation act was now enforced in Virginia, and in consequence the price of tobacco fell very low, while the cost of imported goods was also augmented. An act prohibiting the importation of luxuries seems to have been negatived by the governor. It was ordered that "no person shall trade with the Indians for any beaver, otter, or any other furs, unless he first obtain a commission from the governor." This act gave great offence to the people; it was in effect conferring on the governor an indirect monopoly of the fur-trade. By a still more high-handed measure the governor and council were empowered to lay taxes for the ensuing three years, unless in the mean time some urgent occasion should necessitate the calling together of the assembly. Thus taxation was dissevered from representation; the main safeguard of freedom was given to the executive. Major John Bond, a magistrate in Isle of Wight County, was disfranchised for "factious and schismatical demeanors." He had repeatedly been returned as one of the burgesses of his county during the Commonwealth of England. An act making provision for a college, appears to have remained a dead letter; other acts equally futile, passed at ensuing sessions, frequently recur. The assembly ventured to declare that the king's pardon did not extend to a penalty incurred for planting tobacco contrary to law.
Colonel William Clayborne, secretary of state, was displaced by Thomas Ludwell, commissioned by the king. Colonel Francis Morrison and Henry Randolph, clerk of the assembly, were appointed revisers of the laws. Beverley[254:A] says that Morrison made an abridgement of the laws. In this revised code the common law of England is, for the first time, expressly adopted, being spoken of as "those excellent and oft-refined laws of England."[254:B] But it has been seen that Magna Charta had been previously recognized as of force in Virginia. In making a revision of the laws it was ordered that all acts which "might keep in memory our forced deviation from his majesty's obedience," should be repealed "and expunged." In the absence of ministers it was enacted that readers should be appointed, where they could be found, with the advice and consent of the nearest ministers, to read the prayers and homilies, and catechise children and servants, as had been practised in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Although not more than one-fifth of the parishes were supplied with ministers, yet the laws demanded a strict conformity, and required all to contribute to the support of the established church. But the right of presentation still remained in the people. The number of the vestry was limited to twelve, elected by the people, but they were now invested with the power of perpetuating their own body by filling vacancies themselves.[255:A] Vestries were ordered to procure subscriptions for the support of the ministry. The number of burgesses to represent each county was limited to two; the number of magistrates to twelve. The assembly confirmed an order of the quarter court prohibiting "Roger Partridge and Elizabeth, his wife, from keeping any maid-servant for the term of three years."
The assembly say, that "they have set down certain rules to be observed in the government of the church, until God shall please to turn his majesty's pious thoughts" toward them, and "provide a better supply of ministers." "The pious thoughts" of Charles the Second were never turned to this remote corner of his empire. Magistrates, heretofore called commissioners, were now styled "justices of the peace," and their courts "county courts."[255:B] A duty was laid on rum, because "it had, by experience, been found to bring diseases and death to divers people." An impost, first established during the Commonwealth of England, was still levied on every hogshead of tobacco exported; this became a permanent source of revenue, and rendered the executive independent of the legislature.
The numerous acts relating to the Indians were reduced into one: prohibiting the English from purchasing Indian lands; securing their persons and property; preventing encroachments on their territory; ordering the English seated near to assist them in fencing their corn-fields; licensing them to oyster, fish, hunt, and gather the natural fruits of the country; prohibiting trade with them without license, or imprisonment of an Indian chief without special warrant; bounds to be annually defined; badges of silver and copper plate to be furnished to Indian chiefs; no Indian to enter the English confines without a badge, under penalty of imprisonment, till ransomed by one hundred arms'-length of roanoke; Indian chiefs tributary to the English, to give alarm of approach of hostile Indians; Indians not to be sold as slaves.[256:A]
It was ordered that a copy of the revised laws should be sent to Sir William Berkley in England, that he might procure the king's confirmation of them. Beverley mentions a tradition that the king, in compliment to Virginia, wore, at his coronation, a robe made of Virginia silk, and adds, that this was all the country received in return for their loyalty, the parliament having re-enacted the navigation act, (first enacted during the Commonwealth,) with still severer restrictions and prohibitions. Even the traditional compliment of the king's wearing a robe of Virginia silk appears to be unfounded.
Wahanganoche, chief of Potomac, charged with treason and murder by Captain Charles Brent, before the assembly, was acquitted; and Brent, together with Captain George Mason and others, were ordered to pay that chief a certain sum in roanoke, or in matchcoats, (from matchkore, a deerskin,) in satisfaction of the injuries. Brent, Mason, and others were afterwards punished by fines, suspension from office, and disfranchisement, for offences committed against the Indians, and for showing contempt to the governor's warrant in relation to the chief of Potomac. The counties of Westmoreland and Northumberland were especially exposed to Indian disturbances at this time. Colonel Moore Fantleroy was disfranchised for maltreating the Rappahannock Indians; Mrs. Mary Ludlow was restrained from encroaching on the lands of the Chesquiack Indians at Pyanketanke; Colonel Goodrich was charged with burning the English house of the chief of the Matapony Indians. George Harwood was ordered to ask forgiveness in open court on his knees, for speaking disrespectfully of the right honorable governor, Francis Morrison; and, at the next court held in Warwick County, to ask forgiveness of Captain John Ashton for defaming him, and to pay two thousand pounds of tobacco.
It was during this year, 1662, that Charles the Second married Catherine, the Portuguese Infanta.
The court of Boston, in New England, having discharged a servant belonging to William Drummond, an inhabitant of Virginia, the assembly ordered reprisal to be made on the property belonging to inhabitants of the Northern colony to the amount of forty pounds sterling.[257:A]
Sir William Berkley returned in the fall of 1662 from England, having accomplished nothing for the colony, but having secured for himself an interest in a part of the Virginia territory, now North Carolina, granted to himself and other courtiers and court favorites. He brought out with him instructions from the crown, comprising directions relative to church matters; that the Book of Common Prayer should be read, and the sacrament administered according to the rites of the Church of England; that the churches should be well and orderly kept; that the number of them should be increased as the means might justify; that a competent maintenance should be assigned to each minister, and a house built for him, and a glebe of one hundred acres attached. It was further directed that no minister should be preferred by the governor to any benefice, without a certificate from the Lord Bishop of London; and that ministers should be admitted into their respective vestries; that the oaths of obedience and supremacy should be administered to all persons bearing any part of the government, and to all persons whatsoever of age in the colony. The last of these instructions is in the following words: "And because we are willing to give all possible encouragement to persons of different persuasions in matters of religion, to transport themselves thither with their stocks, you are not to suffer any man to be molested or disquieted in the exercise of his religion, so he be content with a quiet and peaceable enjoying it, not giving therein offence or scandal to the government; but we oblige you in your own house and family to the profession of the Protestant religion, according as it is now established in our kingdom of England, and the recommending it to all others under your government, as far as it may consist with the peace and quiet of our said colony. You are to take care that drunkenness and debauchery, swearing, and blasphemy, be discountenanced and punished; and that none be admitted to publick trust and employment whose ill fame and conversation may bring scandal thereupon."[258:A]
The spirit of toleration expressed in these instructions was insincere and hypocritical, and dictated by the apprehensions of a government yet unstable, and by a temporizing policy. In December, 1662, the assembly declared that "many schismatical persons, out of their averseness to the orthodox established religion, or out of the new-fangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, refuse to have their children baptized," and imposed on such offenders a fine of two thousand pounds of tobacco.
The act for the suppression of the sect of Quakers was now extended to all separatists, and made still more rigorous. Persons attending their meetings were fined, for the first offence, two hundred pounds of tobacco; for the second, five hundred; and for the third, banished. In case the party convicted should be too poor to pay the fine, it was to be levied from such of his sect as might be possessed of ampler means.
A Mr. Durand, elder in a Puritan "very orthodox church," in Nansemond County, had been banished from Virginia in 1648. In 1662, the Yeopim Indians granted to "George Durant" the neck of land in North Carolina which still bears his name. He was probably the exile. In April, 1663, George Cathmaid claimed from Governor Berkley a large tract of land on the borders of Albemarle Sound, in reward of having colonized a number of settlers in that province. In the same year Sir William Berkley was commissioned to organize a government over this newly settled region, which, in honor of the perfidious General Monk, now made Duke of Albemarle, received the name which time has transferred to the Sound.
FOOTNOTES:
[249:A] "Leah and Rachel," published at London in 1656, in Force's Historical Tracts, iii.
[250:A] Virginia's Cure, (Force's Hist. Tracts, iii.,) printed at London, 1662, and composed by a minister. The initials on the title-page, R. G. He appears to have taken refuge in Virginia during the Commonwealth of England; and it is evident that he had resided in the colony for a considerable time. "Virginia's Cure" is addressed to the Bishop of London: it is a clear and vigorous document, acrimonious toward the late government, but earnest in behalf of the spiritual welfare of Virginia.
[250:B] Hening, ii. 33.
[252:A] Hening, i. 435.
[253:A] Hening, i. 398, 418.
[253:B] Ibid., i. 545, and ii. 9.
[253:C] Ibid., ii. 24.
[254:A] Hist. of Virginia, second edition.
[254:B] Beverley, B. i. 43; Chalmers' Revolt, i. 101.
[255:A] Ibid., 44.
[255:B] Hening, ii. 69.
[256:A] Hening, ii. 138.
[257:A] Hening, ii. 158.
[258:A] MS. (Virginia) in State Paper office, (London,) cited in Anderson's Hist. of Colonial Church, ii. 548-9.
Chapter XXVIII
1663.
Report of Edmund Scarburgh, Surveyor-General, of his Proceedings in establishing the Boundary Line between Virginia and Maryland on the Eastern Shore--The Bear and the Cub-- Extracts from Records of Accomac.
A CONTROVERSY existed between Virginia and Lord Baltimore relative to the boundary line on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The dispute turned on the true site of Watkins' Point, which was admitted to be the southern limit of Maryland on that shore. The Virginia assembly, in 1663, declared the true site of Watkins' Point to be on the north side of Wicocomoco River, at its mouth, and ordered publication thereof to be made by Colonel Edmund Scarburgh, his majesty's surveyor-general, commanding, in his majesty's name, all the inhabitants south of that Point, "to render obedience to his majesty's government of Virginia." A conference with Lord Baltimore's commissioners was proposed in case he should be dissatisfied, and Colonel Scarburgh, Mr. John Catlett, and Mr. Richard Lawrence were appointed commissioners on the part of Virginia. Lawrence will reappear in Bacon's Rebellion. The surveyor-general was further directed "to improve his best abilities in all other his majesty's concerns of land relating to Virginia, especially that to the northward of forty degrees of latitude, being the utmost bounds of the said Lord Baltimore's grant, and to give an account of his proceedings therein to the right honorable governor and council of Virginia."[259:A]
Colonel Scarburgh's report of his proceedings on this occasion is preserved.[259:B] He set out with "some of the commission, and about forty horsemen," an escort which he deemed necessary "to repel the contempt" which, as he was informed, "some Quakers and a fool in office has threatened to obtrude." The party reached Anamessecks on Sunday night, the eleventh of October. On the next day, at the house of an officer of the Lord Baltimore, the surveyor-general began to publish the assembly's commands by repeatedly reading the act to the officer, who labored under the disadvantage of being unable to read. He declared that he would not be false to the trust put in him by the Lord-Lieutenant of Maryland. To this Colonel Scarburgh replied, "that there could be no trust where there was no intrust," (interest.) The officer declining to subscribe his obedience, lest he might be hanged by the Governor of Maryland, was arrested and held to security (given by some of Scarburgh's party) to appear before the governor and council of Virginia, and "the broad arrow" was set on his door. This matter being so satisfactorily adjusted, the colonel and his company proceeded to the house of a Quaker, where the act was published "with a becoming reverence;" but the Quakers scoffing and deriding it, and refusing their obedience, were arrested, to answer "their contempt and rebellion," and it being found impracticable to obtain any security, "the broad arrow was set on the door." At Manokin the housekeepers and freemen, except two of Lord Baltimore's officers, subscribed. "One Hollinsworth, merchant, of a northern vessel," at this juncture, "came and presented his request for liberty of trade;" which, Scarburgh suspecting to be "some plan of the Quakers," to defeat their design, "presumed, in their infant plantation, to give freedom of trade without impositions." Scarburgh gives a descriptive list of those who stood out against submitting to the jurisdiction of Virginia: one was "the ignorant yet insolent officer, a cooper by profession, who lived long in the lower parts of Accomac; once elected a burgess by the common crowd, and thrown out of the assembly for a factious and tumultuous person." George Johnson was "the Proteus of heresy," notorious for "shifting schismatical pranks." "He stands arrested," and "bids defiance." "Thomas Price, a creeping Quaker, by trade a leather-dresser," and "saith nothing else but that he would not obey government, for which he also stands arrested." "Ambrose Dixon, a caulker by profession," "often in question for his Quaking profession," "a prater of nonsense," "stands arrested, and the broad arrow at his door, but bids defiance." "Henry Boston, an unmannerly fellow, that stands condemned on the records for fighting and contemning the laws of the country; a rebel to government, and disobedient to authority, for which he received a late reward with a rattan, and hath not subscribed; hides himself, so scapes arrest." "These are all, except two or three loose fellows that follow the Quakers for scraps, whom a good whip is fittest to reform."
On the 10th day of November, 1663, the county court of Accomac authorized Captain William Thorn and others to summon the good subjects of Manokin and other parts of the county, so far as Pocomoke River, to come together and arm themselves for defence against any that might invade them, in consequence "of the rumors that the Quakers and factious fools have spread, to the disturbance of the peace and terror of the less knowing."
The following extracts, from the records of the county court of Accomac, exemplify the simplicity of the times, and the quaint orthography, and the verbosity of the records of courts; while the final decision of the case is not less equitable than those of Sancho Panza, sometime Governor of the Island of Barataria, or those celebrated in Knickerbocker's History of New York.
"At a Court held in Accomack County, y{e} 16{th} of November, by his ma{ties} Justices of y{e} Peace for y{e} s{d} County, in y{e} Seaventeenth yeare of y{e} Reigne of o{r} Sovraigne Lord Charles y{e} Second, By y{e} Grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of y{e} Faith, &c.: And in y{e} Yeare of o{r} Lord God 1665.
"Whereas, Cornelius Watkinson, Philip Howard, and William Darby, were this Day accused by Mr. Jno. Fawsett, his ma{ties} Attory for Accomack County, for acting a play by them called y{e} Bare & y{e} Cubb, on y{e} 27{th} of August last past; upon examination of the same, The Court have thought fitt to suspend the Cause till y{e} next Court, & doe order y{t} the said Cornelius Watkinson, Phillip Howard, & W{m.} Darby, appeare y{e} next Court, in those habilemts that they then acted in, and give a draught of such verses, or other speeches and passages, which were then acted by them; & that y{e} Sherr detaine Cornelius Watkinson & Philip Howard in His Custody untill they put in Security to performe this order. It is ordered y{t} the Sherr. arrest y{e} Body of William Darby, for his appearance y{e} next Court, to answere at his ma{ties} suit, for being actour of a play commonly called y{e} Beare and y{e} Cubb.
"At a Court held in Accomack County, y{e} 18{th} of December, by his ma{ties} Justices of y{e} Peace for y{e} s{d} County, in y{e} Seaventeenth yeare of y{e} Raigne of o{r} Sovraigne Lord Charles y{e} Second, By y{e} Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, & Ireland, King, Defendr of y{e} Faith, &c.: And in y{e} yeare of o{r} Lord God 1665.
"Its ordered y{t} y{e} Sherr sumons Edward Martin to y{e} next Court, to show cause why hee should not pay y{e} charges w{ch} accrued upon y{e} Information given by him against Cornelius Watkinson, Philip Howard, & William Darby.
"At a Court held in Accomack County, y{e} 17{th} of January, by his ma{ties} Justices of y{e} Peace for y{e} s{d} County, in the Seaventeenth year of y{e} Reigne of o{r} Sovraigne Lord Charles y{e} Second, By y{e} Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c.: And in the year of o{r} Lord God 1665.
"Whereas, Edward Martin was this day examined concerning his information given to Mr. Fawset, his ma{ties} Attory for Accomack County, about a play called the bare & y{e} Cubb, whereby severall persons were brought to Court & charges thereon arise, but the Court finding the said p'sons not guilty of fault, suspended y{e} payment of Court charges; & forasmuch as it appeareth upon y{e} Oath of y{e} said Mr. Fawsett, that upon y{e} s{d} Edward Martin's information, the Charge & trouble of that suit did accrew, It's therefore ordered that y{e} said Edward Martin pay all y{e} Charges in y{e} suit Els. Exon."[262:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[259:A] Hening, ii. 183.
[259:B] This document, entitled "The Account of Proceedings in his Majt's Affairs at Anamessecks and Manokin, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia," is preserved in the records of Accomac County Court, and a copy, furnished by Thomas R. Joynes, Esq., the clerk, (himself a descendant of Colonel Edmund Scarburgh,) was published in 1833, by order of the legislature of Maryland. I am indebted to William T. Joynes, Esq., of Petersburg, for the use of this report, and for some other interesting particulars relating to the Eastern Shore.
[262:A] "The foregoing are true transcripts from the Records of the Court of the County of Accomack, in the State of Virginia."--Test: J. W. Gillett, C. A. C.
Chapter XXIX
1666-1675.
Plot discovered--Miscellaneous Matters--England at war with the Dutch--The Plague in London--Tobacco--Forts--Cessation of planting Tobacco for one year--Drummond's Petition rejected-- Baptism of Slaves--Tributary Indians--Batt's Expedition--The Algonquin Tribes--The Powhatan Confederacy--Convicts sent to Virginia--Legislative Acts.
THE Northern colonies appear at this time to have been styled the "Dutch Plantations."[263:A] The persecution of the dissenters, the restrictions imposed upon commerce by the navigation act, the low price of tobacco, and high price of imported goods, so inflamed the discontents of the poor people as to give rise to a plot, which was well-nigh resulting in tragical effects in 1663. The conspiracy was attributed to certain Cromwellian soldiers, who had been sent out to Virginia as servants; but the real grounds and true character of it can now hardly be ascertained. The plot was discovered only the night before that appointed for its execution, (the assembly being then in session,) by one of the conspirators named Birkenhead, a servant to Mr. Smith, of Purton, in Gloucester County. Poplar Spring, near that place, was the appointed rendezvous. As soon as the information reached Sir William Berkley, who was then at his residence, Green Spring, he issued secret orders to a party of militia, to meet at Poplar Spring, and anticipate the outbreak. Only a few were taken, of whom four were hanged. Birkenhead was rewarded[263:B] with his freedom and five thousand pounds of tobacco; Beverley[263:C] makes the reward two hundred pounds sterling. The thirteenth of September, the day fixed for the execution of the plot, was set apart by the assembly as an anniversary thanksgiving. The news of this affair being transmitted to the king, he sent orders for the building of a fort at Jamestown; but the Virginians thinking that the danger had blown over, only erected a battery of some small pieces of cannon.
The Indian chief of Potomac, and other northern werowances and mangais, were required to give hostages of their children and others, who were to be kindly treated and instructed in English, as far as practicable. Measures were taken to bring Indian murderers to justice, especially the hostile Doeggs. The chief of Potomac was inhibited from holding any matchacomico, or council, with any strange tribe, before the delivery of hostages.
John Bland, a London merchant, and brother of Theodoric Bland, a leading man in Virginia, received the thanks of the assembly for goods advanced for the use of the colony. In this year, 1663, a conference was held, by royal command, at Mr. Aleston's, at Wicocomico, in Virginia, in May, by commissioners appointed by Governor Berkley, and Charles Calvert, Governor of Maryland, for the purpose of devising means of improving the staple of tobacco. The Virginia commissioners were Thomas Ludwell, secretary, Richard Lee, John Carter, Robert Smith, and Henry Corbin. The Maryland commissioners were Philip Calvert, Henry Sewall, secretary, Edward Koydes, and Henry Coursey. They recommended that in the year 1664 no tobacco should be planted after the twentieth day of June.
In 1665 further acts were passed to prevent the depredations of Indians. If a white should be murdered, the nearest Indian town was held responsible; the Indian werowances to be in future appointed by the governor; colonists to go armed to church, court, and other public meetings; Indians south of the James River, not to cross a line extending from the head of Blackwater River to the Appomattox Indian town, (probably where Petersburg now stands,) and thence across to the Mannakin town.
In the year 1665 Charles the Second, instigated by France, engaged in an unprovoked war with Holland, the object being mainly to strike a blow at the Protestant interest.[264:A] During the same year the plague raged in London, the victims for some time perishing at the rate of ten thousand weekly. In this fatal year Secretary Bennet, a plausible man, of good address, but mediocre capacity, was made Lord Arlington. The English monopolizing laws now reduced the condition of the planters of Virginia so low, that they proposed to discontinue the planting of tobacco for one year, so as to enhance the price of it; and an act was passed preparatory to a "stint or cessation." To render this remedy effectual, it appeared necessary to obtain the co-operation of the colonies of Maryland and North Carolina. For some years it was found impracticable to effect this object, and in the mean time, in order to prevent Virginia from receiving any supplies, save those sent from England, and also for defence against the Dutch, the king sent directions that forts should be built on the rivers, and that ships should lie under them, and that those places alone should be ports of trade. These instructions were obeyed for a year; breast-works were erected at places appointed by the assembly, and the shipping lay at them for a time; but the great fire and plague occurring in London at this juncture, rendered their supplies very uncertain, and the fear of the plague being brought over with the goods imported, prevented the people from living at those ports, and thus all were again at liberty.[265:A]
The Virginia planters supposed that by lessening the quantity of tobacco, called a "stint," they would improve the quality and enhance the price of it. The merchants, to whom the planters were indebted, were favorable to a stint; but although they would certainly be benefited by its operation, yet they were apparently not willing to abate any part of their claims against their debtors. The nett proceeds derived from the sale of the staple were barely enough to furnish the planters with clothing. As some remedy for this state of things, the legislature ordered looms and work-houses to be set in operation at the charge of each county. Bounties were again offered for encouragement of the raising of silk, and measures were adopted to foster the culture of flax and hemp.
In the year 1666, while London was desolated by fire and depopulated by the plague, war added her horrors. A government imbecile and corrupt, a court frivolous and debauched, darkened the shadows of the gloomy picture. The English colonies shared in the miseries of the mother country. It is remarkable that a book published in England many years before contained a prediction that the year 1666 would be the very climax of public disaster.[266:A] It was not unreasonable to conclude, that the wickedness of men had been directly avenged by a visitation of Heaven. Evelyn[266:B] says: "These judgments we highly deserved for our prodigious ingratitude, burning lusts, dissolute court, profane and abominable lives."
The assembly met in September, 1664, by prorogation from the preceding September--a compendious mode of dispensing with the popular election. However, in act vi., the assembly, declaring that the principal end of their coming together was to provide for the people's safety, and to redress their grievances, ordered that in future due notice of the convening of the burgesses should be given to the people by publication in the parish churches, so that they may then make known their grievances. The act for a "cessation" passed in June, 1666, commanded that no tobacco should be planted between the 1st of February, 1667, and the 1st of February, 1668.[266:C] The governor of Carolina at this time, and the first governor of that province, was William Drummond, a native of Scotland.
Similar acts were passed by Maryland and Carolina, but the latter province, owing to trouble with the Indians, not having given formal notice by the day agreed upon, Maryland availed herself of the informality to decline enforcing the cessation. Thus, as has been before mentioned, action was long delayed. Virginia, nevertheless, adhering to the scheme, again, at the session of October of the same year, confirmed her former act, and by dint of negotiation it was finally consummated.
The County of Stafford is mentioned in this year for the first time, and it was now represented by a burgess, Colonel Henry Mees.
The petition of William Drum, probably a misprint for Drummond, concerning a grant of land in what was commonly called "the governor's land," in the main reserve, was rejected, the house being of opinion that such grants appertained only to the governor and council. The assembly asserted their right to assess the levy without the interposition of the governor and council; and Sir William Berkley assented to this decision; the sincerity of the terms in which he expressed his willing acquiescence may well be doubted.
The Dutch about this time appear to have surprised several vessels, laden with tobacco, in the James River; and it was determined to erect several forts: one on James River, one on Nansemond River, one on York River at Tindall's Point, (now Gloucester Point,) one on the Rappahannock at Corotoman, and one on the Potomac at Yeohocomico.
It was declared that baptism did not exempt slaves from bondage. As the reducing of negroes to slavery was justified on the ground that they were heathens, so the opinion prevailed among some that when they ceased to be heathens they were, by the very fact, released from slavery.
In 1668, peace being restored, vessels were relieved from the necessity of anchoring under the forts. The war with the Dutch, unjustly commenced by the English, ended very disgracefully to them. A day of humiliation was appointed, and all persons were required to attend the parish churches, "with fasting and prayers, to implore God's mercy, and deprecate the evils justly impending over us."
It was ordered that work-houses should be built in each county, for the instruction of poor children in spinning, weaving, and other useful occupations and trades. An act was passed for the "suppressing and restraint of the exhorbitant number of ordinaries and tippling houses."
The Indians were required to bring in one hundred and forty-five wolves' heads annually, the reward for each head being one hundred pounds of tobacco and cask. To prevent fraud, the ears were cut off from the heads of the wolves.[268:A]
The elective franchise was restricted, in 1670, to freeholders and housekeepers.
Sir William Berkley sent out a company of fourteen English and as many Indians, under Captain Henry Batt, to explore the country to the west. Setting out from the Appomattox River, in seven days they reached the foot of the mountains. The first ridge was not found very high or steep, but after crossing that they encountered others that seemed to touch the clouds, and so steep that in a day's march they could not advance more than three miles. They came upon extensive valleys of luxuriant verdure, abounding with turkeys, deer, elk, and buffalo, gentle and, as yet, undisturbed by the fear of man. Grapes were seen of the size of plums. After crossing the mountains they discovered a charming level country, and a rivulet that flowed westward. Following this for some days, they reached old fields and cabins recently occupied by the natives; in these Batt left toys. Not far from the cabins, at some marshes, the Indian guides halted and refused to go any farther, saying that not far off dwelt a powerful tribe, that never suffered strangers, who discovered their towns, to escape. Batt was therefore reluctantly compelled to return. Upon receiving his report, Sir William Berkley resolved to make an exploration himself, but his intention was frustrated by the troubles that shortly after fell upon the country.[269:A] Beverley alone gives an account of Batt's explorations, leaving the date of it uncertain between 1666 and 1676. Burk dates it in 1667.
The Algonquin tribes are said to have been included within lines extending from Cape Hatteras to the head of the Mississippi, and thence eastward to the coast north of Newfoundland, and thence along the Atlantic shore to the cape first mentioned.[269:B] The bulk of the Indians within this triangle spoke various dialects of the same generic language.
The thirty tribes of Indians comprised within the Powhatan confederacy, south of the Potomac, at the time of the landing at Jamestown, are conjecturally estimated at about eight thousand souls, being one to the square mile.[269:C] The population of the mountain country was probably sparser than that of the country east of the mountains. The number of square miles in Virginia at the present day is upwards of sixty-five thousand. The number of warriors belonging to the tribes tributary to Virginia in 1669, as has been before mentioned, was seven hundred and twenty-five, and their proportion to the entire population being reckoned as three to ten, their aggregate number was about twenty-four hundred. Thus in about sixty years the diminution of their numbers amounted to about five thousand six hundred; of these, part had perished from disease, exposure, famine, and war; the rest were driven back into the wilderness.
In the year 1670 complaints were made to the general court by members of the council and others, being gentlemen, of the counties of York, Gloucester, and Middlesex, representing their apprehensions of danger from the great number of felons, and other desperate villains, sent hither from the prisons of England. Masters of vessels were prohibited from landing any such convicts or jail-birds. In 1671 Captain Bristow and Captain Walker were required to give security in the sum of one million pounds of tobacco and cask, that Mr. Nevett should send out the Newgate-birds within two months. Mr. Jefferson[270:A] has made the following remark: "The malefactors sent to America were not sufficient in number to merit enumeration as one class out of three which peopled America. It was at a late period of their history that the practice began. I have no book by me which enables me to point out the date of its commencement; but I do not think the whole number sent would amount to two thousand." And he supposed that they and their descendants did not, in 1786, exceed four thousand, "which is little more than one-thousandth part of the whole inhabitants." Mr. Jefferson appears to have been mistaken in his opinion, that malefactors were not sent over until a late period in the annals of Virginia; and he probably underrated the number of their descendants.
The acts prohibiting the exportation of wool, hides, and iron, were repealed, and every one was "permitted to make the best he can of his own commodity." The preamble to the act for the naturalization of foreigners declares, that "nothing can tend more to the advancement of a new plantation, either to its defence or prosperity, nor nothing more add to the glory of a prince, than being a gracious master of many subjects; nor any better way to produce those effects than the inviting of people of other nations to reside among us by communication of privileges."[270:B]
In 1672 the assembly provided for the defence of the country by rebuilding and repairing of forts. Repeated and vigorous laws were enacted providing for the apprehension of runaways; rewards were offered the Indians for apprehending them. A negro slave was valued at four thousand five hundred pounds of tobacco; an Indian slave at three thousand pounds of tobacco.
FOOTNOTES:
[263:A] Hening, ii. 188.
[263:B] Ibid., ii. 204.
[263:C] Beverley, B. i. 61.
[264:A] Evelyn's Diary, i. 391.
[265:A] Beverley, B. i. 63.
[266:A] Pepys' Diary, ii.
[266:B] Diary, ii. 17.
[266:C] The commissioners appointed to treat with Maryland and Carolina on this subject were, of the council, Thomas Ludwell, Esq., secretary of Virginia, Major-General Robert Smith, and Major-General Richard Bennet; and of the burgesses, Robert Wynne, speaker, Colonel Nich. Spencer, Captain Daniel Parke, Captain Joseph Bridger, Captain Peter Jennings, and Mr. Thomas Ballard.
[268:A] The tributary Indians of Virginia at this period were, in
Bowmen, or Hunters. Nansemond County 45
Surrey County { Powchay-icks 30 { Weyenoakes 15 { Men Heyricks 50
Charles City County { Nottoways, two towns 90 { Appamattox 50
Henrico County { Manachees 30 { Powhites 10
{ Pamunkeys 50 { Chickahominies 60 New Kent County { Mattaponeys 20 { Rappahannocks 30 { Totas-Chees 40
Gloucester Chiskoyackes 15
{ Portobaccoes 60 Rappahanock { Nanzcattico } { Mattehatique } 50
Northumberland Co. Wickacomico 70
Westmoreland County Appomattox 10 --- Total 725
[269:A] Beverley, B. i. 64.
[269:B] P. W. Leland, in Hist. Mag., iii. 41.
[269:C] Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, 97; Hening, ii. 274.
[270:A] Writings of Jefferson, i. 405.
[270:B] Hening, ii. 289.
Chapter XXX
1670-1671.
Governor Berkley's Reply to Inquiries of the Lords Commissioners of Plantations--Government of Virginia--Militia--Forts-- Indians--Boundary--Commodities--Population--Health--Trade-- Restrictions on it--Governor's Salary--Quit-rents--Parishes-- Free Schools, and Printing.
THE lords commissioners of foreign plantations, in 1670, were Arlington, Ashley, Richard George W. Alington, T. Clifford, S. Trevor, Orlando Bridgeman, C. S. Sandwich, president, Thomas Grey, ---- Titus, A. Broucher, H. Slingsby, secretary, Hum. Winch, and Edmund Waller. These, during this year, propounded inquiries to Sir William Berkley, governor, respecting the state and condition of Virginia; and his answers made in the year following present a satisfactory statistical account of the colony. The executive consisted of a governor and sixteen councillors, commissioned by the king, to determine all causes above fifteen pounds; causes of less amount were tried by county courts, of which there were twenty. The assembly met every year, composed of two burgesses from each county. Appeals lay to the assembly; and this body levied the taxes. (This power was delegated for some years to the executive.) The legislative and executive powers rested in the governor, council, assembly, and subordinate officers. The secretary of the colony sent the acts of the assembly to the lord chancellor, or one of the principal secretaries of state. All freemen were bound to muster monthly in their own counties; the force of the colony amounted to upwards of eight thousand horsemen. There were five forts: two on the James, and one on each of the three rivers, Rappahannock, York, and Potomac; the number of cannon was thirty. His majesty, during the late Dutch war, had sent over thirty more, but the most of them were lost at sea. The Indians were in perfect subjection. The eastern boundary of Virginia, on the sea-coast, had been reduced from ten degrees to half of one degree. Tobacco was the only commodity of any great value; exotic mulberry-trees had been planted, and attempts made to manufacture silk. There was plenty of timber; of iron ore but little discovered. The whole population was forty thousand; of which two thousand were negro slaves, and six thousand white servants. (The negroes had increased one hundredfold in fifty years, since 1619, when the first were imported.) The average annual importation of servants was about fifteen hundred; most of them English, a few Scotch, fewer Irish; and not more than two or three ships with negroes in seven years. New plantations were found sickly, and in such four-fifths of the new settlers died. Eighty vessels arrived yearly from England and Ireland for tobacco; a few small coasters came from New England. Virginia had not more than two vessels of her own, and those not over twenty tons. Sir William Berkley complains bitterly of the act of parliament restricting the commerce of Virginia to the British kingdom--a policy injurious to both parties; and he adds that "this is the cause why no small or great vessels are built here; for we are most obedient to all laws, while the New England men break through and trade to any place that their interest leads them to." Sir William gave it as his opinion, that nothing could improve the trade of Virginia, unless she was allowed to export her staves, timber, and corn to other places besides the king's dominions. The only duty levied was that of two shillings on every hogshead of tobacco exported; the exportation of the year 1671 amounting to fifteen thousand hogsheads. Out of this revenue the king allowed the governor one thousand pounds, to which the assembly added two hundred more, making twelve hundred pounds, which was four-fifths of the entire customs revenue for that year. Yet he complains: "I can knowingly affirm, that there is no government of ten years' settlement but has thrice as much allowed him. But I am supported by my hopes, that his gracious majesty will one day consider me."
The king had no revenue in the colony except quit-rents; these were not of much value, and the king gave them to Colonel Henry Norwood. Every man instructed his children at home according to his ability. "There were forty-eight parishes, and our ministers are well paid; by my consent should be better, if they would pray oftener, and preach less. But as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us; and we have had few that we could boast of, since Cromwell's tyranny drove divers men hither. But 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!"[273:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[273:A] Hening, ii. 511.
Chapter XXXI
1673-1675.
Acts of Assembly--The Northern Neck--Earl of Arlington-- Threatened Revolt in 1674--Agents sent to England to solicit a Revocation of the Grants of Territory and to obtain a Charter--The effort fruitless.
THE acts of a session were headed as follows: "At a Grand Assembly holden at James City, by prorogation from the 24th day of September, 1672, to the 20th of October, Annoque Regni Regis Caroli Secundi Dei Gratia Angliæ, Scotiæ, Franciæ et Hiberniæ, Regis, fidei Defensoris, &c., Anno Domini 1673. To the glory of Almighty God and public weal, of this his majesty's colony of Virginia, were enacted as followeth."
Provision was made during this year for a supply of arms and ammunition. The commissioners appointed for determining the boundaries of the Counties of Northumberland and Lancaster were Colonel John Washington, Captain John Lee, Captain William Traverse, William Mosely, and Robert Beverley.
The restoration, that worst of all governments, re-established an arbitrary and oppressive administration in Virginia in church and state; and as soon as reinstated, tyranny, confident of its power, rioted in wanton and unbridled license.
The grant which had been made by Charles the Second in the first year of his reign, dated at St. Germain en Laye, of the Northern Neck, including four counties and a half, to Lord Hopton, the Earl of St. Albans, Lord Culpepper, etc., was surrendered, in May, 1671, to the crown, and new letters-patent were issued, with some alterations, to the Earl of St. Albans, Lord Berkley, Sir William Morton, and others,--to hold the same forever, paying annually the quit-rent of six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence to his majesty and his successors. In February, 1673, the king granted to the Earl of Arlington and Thomas, Lord Culpepper, the entire territory of Virginia, not merely the wild lands, but private plantations long settled and improved, for the term of thirty-one years, at the yearly rent of forty shillings. The patents entitled them to all rents and escheats, with power to convey all vacant lands, nominate sheriffs, escheators, surveyors, etc., present to all churches and endow them with lands, to form counties, parishes, etc. Although the grants to these noblemen were limited to a term of years, yet they were preposterously and illegally authorized to make conveyances in fee simple.[275:A]
Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, said to have been the best bred person at court, like his master, as far as he had any pretension whatever to religion, was a disguised Papist. He became allied to the monarch as father-in-law to the first Duke of Grafton, the king's son by Lady Castlemaine. Arlington had received, while fighting on the royal side in the civil war, a wound on the nose, the scar of which was covered with a black patch. Barbara Villiers, only daughter of William, Viscount Grandison, and wife of Roger Palmer, created Earl of Castlemaine in 1661, distinguished for her beauty and her profligacy, becoming mistress to Charles at his restoration, was made, in 1670, Duchess of Cleveland. Henry Bennet was created Baron of Arlington in 1663, and Viscount Hetford and Earl of Arlington in 1672. He was also Knight of the Garter and chamberlain to the king, his chief favorite, companion in profligate pleasure, and political adviser. He and Culpepper were members of the commission of trade and plantations.
The Virginians grew so impatient under their accumulated grievances that a revolt was near bursting forth in 1674, but no person of note taking the lead, it was suppressed by the advice of "some discreet persons," and the insurgents were persuaded to disperse in compliance with the governor's proclamation. The movement was not entirely ineffectual, for justices of the peace were prohibited from levying any more taxes for their own emolument.[275:B] The assembly determined to make an humble address "to his sacred majesty," praying for a revocation of the fore-mentioned grants of her territory, and for a confirmation of the rights and privileges of the colony. Francis Morrison, Thomas Ludwell, and Robert Smith were appointed agents to visit England and lay their complaints before the king; and their expenses were provided for by onerous taxes, which fell heaviest on the poorer class of people. These expenses included douceurs to be given to courtiers; for without money nothing could be effected at the venal court of Charles the Second.[276:A] Besides the revocation of the patents, the Virginia agents were instructed to endeavor to obtain a new charter for the colony. They prayed "that Virginia shall no more be transferred in parcels to individuals, but may remain forever dependent on the crown of England; that the public officers should be obliged to reside within the colony; that no tax shall be laid on the inhabitants except by the assembly." This petition affords a curious commentary on the panegyrics then but recently lavished by "his majesty's most loyal colony" upon his "most sacred majesty," who repaid their fervid loyalty by an unrelenting system of oppression. The negotiations were long, and display evidence of signal diplomatic ability, together with elevated and patriotic views of colonial rights and constitutional freedom. After many evasions and much delay, the mission eventually proved fruitless.[276:B] Application was also made to Secretary Coventry to secure the place of governor to Sir William Berkley for life.
FOOTNOTES:
[275:A] Hening, ii. 519.
[275:B] Ibid., ii. 315.
[276:A] Account of Bacon's Rebellion in Va. Gazette, 1766.
[276:B] Hening, ii. 518, 531.
Chapter XXXII
1675.
The Reverend Morgan Godwyn's Letter describing Condition of the Church in Virginia.
THE Bishop of Winchester, during the whole negotiation, lent his assistance to the agents; he also brought to their notice a libel which had been published against all the Anglo-American plantations, especially Virginia. It was written by the Rev. Morgan Godwyn, who had served some time in Virginia; and he had given a copy of it to each of the bishops. The agents make mention of him as "the fellow," and "the inconsiderable wretch." They sent a copy of it to Virginia, thinking it necessary that a reply should be prepared, and addressed to the Bishop of Winchester and the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is probable that this pamphlet is no longer extant; but the character of its contents may be inferred from a letter addressed by the author to Sir William Berkley, and appended to a pamphlet published by him in 1680, entitled the "Negro's and Indian's Advocate." Indeed this letter may have been itself the libellous pamphlet circulated in England in 1674, and referred to by the Virginia agents. In this letter Godwyn gives the following account of the state of religion, as it was in that province some time before the late rebellion, i.e. Bacon's, which occurred in 1676. Godwyn acknowledges that Berkley had, "as a tender father, nourished and preserved Virginia in her infancy and nonage. But as our blessed Lord," he reminds him, "once said to the young man in the gospel, 'Yet lackest thou one thing;' so," he adds, "may we, and I fear too truly, say of Virginia, that there is one thing, the propagation and establishing of religion in her, wanting." And this he essays to prove in various ways: saying that "the ministers are most miserably handled by their plebeian juntos, the vestries, to whom the hiring (that is the usual word there) and admission of ministers is solely left. And there being no law obliging them to any more than to procure a lay reader, (to be obtained at a very moderate rate,) they either resolve to have none at all, or reduce them to their own terms; that is, to use them how they please, pay them what they list, and to discard them whensoever they have a mind to it. And this is the recompense of their leaving their hopes in England, (far more considerable to the meanest curate than what can possibly be apprehended there,) together with the friends and relations and their native soil, to venture their lives into those parts among strangers and enemies to their profession, who look upon them as a burden; as being with their families (where they have any) to be supported out of their labor. So that I dare boldly aver that our discouragements there are much greater than ever they were here in England under the usurper." After citing various evidences in support of these statements, among which he specifies the hiring of the clergy from year to year, and compelling them to accept of parishes at under-rates, Godwyn thus proceeds: "I would not be thought to reflect herein upon your excellency, who have always professed great tenderness for churchmen. For, alas! these things are kept from your ears; nor dare they, had they opportunity, acquaint you with them, for fear of being used worse. And there being no superior clergyman, neither in council nor any place of authority, for them to address their complaints to, and by his means have their grievances brought to your excellency's knowledge, they are left without remedy. Again, two-thirds of the preachers are made up of leaden lay priests of the vestry's ordination; and are both the shame and grief of the rightly ordained clergy there. Nothing of this ever reaches your excellency's ear; these hungry patrons knowing better how to benefit by their vices than by the virtues of the other." And here Godwyn cites an instance of a writing-master, who came into Virginia, professing to be a doctor in divinity, showing feigned letters of orders, and under different names continuing in various places to carry on his work of fraud. He states also that owing to a law of the colony, which enacted that four years' servitude should be the penalty exacted of any one who permitted himself to be sent thither free of charge, some of the clergy, through ignorance of the law, were left thereby under the mastery of persons who had given them the means of gratuitous transport; and that they could only escape from such bondage by paying a ransom four or five times as large as that to which the expenses of their passage would have amounted. Moreover, he describes the parishes as extending, some of them, sixty or seventy miles in length, and lying void for many years together, to save charges. Jamestown, he distinctly states, had been left, with short intervals, in this destitute condition for twenty years. "Laymen," he adds, "were allowed to usurp the office of ministers, and deacons to undermine and thrust out presbyters; in a word, all things concerning the church and religion were left to the mercy of the people." And, last of all: "To propagate Christianity among the heathen--whether natives or slaves brought from other parts--although (as must piously be supposed) it were the only end of God's discovering those countries to us, yet is that looked upon by our new race of Christians, so idle and ridiculous, so utterly needless and unnecessary, that no man can forfeit his judgment more than by any proposal looking or tending that way." Such is the Rev. Mr. Godwyn's account of the state of religion and the condition of the clergy in Virginia during Sir William Berkley's administration.[279:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[279:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, first edition, ii. 558, 561.
Chapter XXXIII
1675.
Lands at Greenspring settled on Sir William Berkley--Indian Incursions--Force put under command of Sir Henry Chicheley-- Disbanded by Governor's Order--The Long Parliament of Virginia --Colonial Grievances--Spirit of the Virginians--Elements of Disaffection.
THE lands at Greenspring, near Jamestown, were settled during this year on Sir William Berkley, the preamble to the act reciting among his merits, "the great pains he hath taken and hazards he has run, even of his life, in the government and preservation of the country from many attempts of the Indians, and also in preserving us in our due allegiance to his majesty's royal father of blessed memory, and his now most sacred majesty, against all attempts, long after all his majesty's other dominions were subjected to the tyranny of the late usurpers; and also seriously considering that the said Sir William Berkley hath in all time of his government, under his most sacred majesty and his royal father, made it his only care to keep his majesty's country in a due obedience to our rightful and lawful sovereign," etc. The Rev. John Clayton, (supposed to be father of the Virginia naturalist,) writing in 1688, says: "There is a spring at my Lady Berkley's called Green Spring, whereof I have been often told, so very cold, that 'tis dangerous drinking thereof in summer time, it having proved of fatal consequence to several. I never tried anything of what nature it is of."
The Indians having renewed their incursions upon the frontier, the people petitioned the governor for protection. Upon the meeting of the assembly, war was declared against them in March, 1676; five hundred men enlisted, and the forts garrisoned. The force raised was put under command of Sir Henry Chicheley, who was ordered to disarm the neighboring Indians. The forts were on the Potomac, at the falls of the Rappahannock, (now Fredericksburg,) on the Matapony, on the Pamunkey, at the falls of the Appomattox, (now Petersburg,) either at Major-General Wood's, or at Fleets', on the opposite side of the river, on the Blackwater, and at the head of the Nansemond. Provision was made for employing Indians; articles of martial law were adopted; arms to be carried to church; the governor authorized to disband the troops when expedient; days of fasting appointed. The Indians having been emboldened to commit depredations and murders by the arms and ammunition which they had received, contrary to law, from traders, a rigorous act was passed to restrain such. When Sir Henry Chicheley was about to march against the Indians he was ordered by Sir William Berkley to disband his forces, to the general surprise and dissatisfaction of the colony.
There had now been no election of burgesses since the restoration, in 1660, the same legislature since that time having continued, to hold its sessions by prorogation. It may be called the Long Parliament of Virginia in respect to its duration. Among its members may be mentioned Colonel William Clayborne, Captain William Berkley, Captain Daniel Parke, Adjutant-General Jennings, Colonel John Washington, Colonel Edward Scarburgh. Robert Wynne was made speaker shortly after the restoration, and so continued until 1676, when he was succeeded by Augustine Warner, of Gloucester. James Minge, of Charles City, was now the clerk, and had been for several years.
The price of tobacco was depressed by the monopoly of the English navigation act, and the cost of imported goods, enhanced. Duties were laid on the commerce between one colony and another, and the revenue thence derived was absorbed by the collecting officers. The planters, it is said,[281:A] had been driven to seek a remedy by destroying the crop in the fields, called "plant cutting." The endeavors of the agents in England to obtain a release from the grants to the lords and a new charter, appeared abortive. The Indian incursions occurring at this conjuncture, filled the measure of panic and exasperation. Groaning under exactions and grievances, and tortured by apprehensions, the Virginians began to meditate violent measures of relief. Many of the feudal institutions of England, the hoary buttresses of mediæval power, could have no existence in America; a new position gradually moulded a new system; and men transplanted to another hemisphere changed opinions as well as clime. Thus, in Virginia, the most Anglican, oldest, and most loyal of the colonies, a spirit of freedom and independence infused itself into the minds of the planters. The ocean that separated them from England lessened the terror of a distant sceptre. The supremacy of law being less firmly established, especially in the frontier, a wild spirit of justice had arisen which was apt to decline into contempt of authority. Added to this, the colony contained malecontent Cromwellian soldiers reduced to bondage, perhaps some of them men of heroic soul, victims of civil war, ripe for revolt. The Indian massacres of former years made the colonists sensitive to alarms, and impatient of indifference to their cruel apprehensions, which can hardly be realized by those who have never been subjected to such dangers. The fatigues, privations, hardships, perils of a pioneer life, imparted energy; the wild magnificence of nature, the fresh luxuriance of a virgin soil, unpruned forests, great rivers and hoary mountains, these contributed to kindle a love of liberty and independence. Moreover, the disaffection of the colonists was somewhat emboldened by the civil dissensions of England, which appeared now again to threaten the stability of the throne.
FOOTNOTES:
[281:A] Account of Bacon's Rebellion, in Va. Gazette, 1766.
Chapter XXXIV
1675-1676.
Three Ominous Presages--Siege of Piscataway--Colonel John Washington--Indian Chiefs put to death--Fort evacuated-- Indians murder Inhabitants of Frontier--Servant and Overseer of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., slain--The People take up Arms--Bacon chosen Leader--His Character--Solicits Commission from Berkley --He proclaims the Insurgents Rebels--Pursues them--Planters of Lower Country revolt--Forts dismantled--Rebellion not the Result of Bacon's Pique or Ambition--He marches into the Wilderness--Massacre of friendly Indians--Bacon returns-- Elected a Burgess--Arrested--Released on Parole--Assembly meets--Bacon sues for Pardon--Restored to the Council-- Nathaniel Bacon, Sr.--Berkley issues secret Warrants for arrest of the younger Bacon.
"ABOUT the year 1675," says an old writer, "appeared three prodigies in that country, which, from the attending disasters, were looked upon as ominous presages. The one was a large comet, every evening for a week or more at southwest, thirty-five degrees high, streaming like a horse-tail westward, until it reached (almost) the horizon, and setting toward the northwest. Another was flights of wild pigeons, in breadth nigh a quarter of the mid-hemisphere, and of their length was no visible end; whose weights broke down the limbs of large trees whereon these rested at nights, of which the fowlers shot abundance, and ate them; this sight put the old planters under the more portentous apprehensions because the like was seen (as they said) in the year 1644, when the Indians committed the last massacre; but not after, until that present year, 1675. The third strange phenomenon was swarms of flies about an inch long, and big as the top of a man's little finger, rising out of spigot holes in the earth, which ate the new-sprouted leaves from the tops of the trees, without other harm, and in a month left us."[283:A]
The author of this account, whose initials are T. M., says of himself, that he lived in Northumberland County, on the lower part of the Potomac, where he was a merchant; but he had a plantation, servants, cattle, etc., in Stafford County, on the upper part of that river; and that he was elected a burgess from Stafford in 1676, Colonel Mason being his colleague. T. M., perhaps, was Thomas Matthews, son of Colonel Samuel Matthews, some time governor. He owned lands acquired from the Wicocomoco Indians in Northumberland, and it is probable that his son, Thomas Matthews, came into possession of them.[284:A] He appears to have lived at a place called Cherry Point, probably on the Potomac, in 1681.[284:B]
On a Sunday morning, in the summer of 1675, a herdsman, named Robert Hen, together with an Indian, was slain in Stafford County, by a party of the hostile tribe of Doegs, and the victims were found by the people on their way to church.[284:C] Colonel Mason and Captain Brent, with some militia, pursued the offenders about twenty miles up the river, and then across into Maryland, and, coming upon two parties of armed warriors, slaughtered indiscriminately a number of them and of the Susquehannocks, a friendly tribe. These latter, recently expelled from their own country, at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, by the Senecas, a tribe of the Five Nations, now sought refuge in a fort of the Piscataways, a friendly tribe near the head of the Potomac, supposed to be near the spot where now stands the City of Washington. In a short time several Marylanders were murdered by the savages, and some Virginians in the County of Stafford. The fort on the north bank of the Piscataway consisted of high earth-works having flankers pierced with loop-holes, and surrounded by a ditch. This again was encircled by a row of tall trees from five to eight inches in diameter, set three feet in the earth and six inches apart, and wattled in such a manner as to protect those within, and, at the same time, to afford them apertures for shooting through. It was probably an old fort erected by Maryland as a protection to the frontier, but latterly unoccupied. The Susquehannocks, to the number of one hundred warriors, with their old men, women, and children, entrenched themselves in this stronghold. Toward the end of September they were besieged by a thousand men from Virginia and Maryland, united in a joint expedition, at the instance of the latter. The Marylanders were commanded by Major Thomas Truman, the Virginians by Colonel John Washington.[285:A] John Washington had emigrated from Yorkshire, England, to Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in Westmoreland. Not long after, being, as has been conjectured, a surveyor, he made a location of lands, which, however, was set aside until the Indians, to whom these lands had been assigned, should vacate them. In the year 1667 he was a member of the house of burgesses.[285:B]
To return to the siege: six of the Indian chiefs were sent out from the fort on a parley proposed by Major Truman. These chiefs, on being interrogated, laid the blame of the recent outrages perpetrated in Virginia and Maryland upon the Senecas. Colonel Washington, Colonel Mason, and Major Adderton now came over from the Virginia encampment, and charged the chiefs with the murders that had been committed on the south side of the Potomac. On the next day the Virginia officers renewed the charges against the Susquehannock chiefs; at this juncture a detachment of rangers arrived, bringing with them the mangled bodies of some recent victims of Indian cruelty. Five of the chiefs were instantly bound, and put to death--"knocked on the head." The savages now made a desperate resistance; but their sorties were repelled, and they had to subsist partly on horses captured from the whites. At the end of six weeks, seventy-five warriors, with their women and children, (leaving only a few decrepid old men behind,) evacuated the fort during the night, marching off by the light of the moon, killing ten of the militia found asleep, as they retired, and making the welkin ring with the war-whoop and yells of defiance. They pursued their way by the head-waters of the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the York, and the James, joining with them the neighboring Indians, slaying such of the inhabitants as they met with on the frontier, to the number of sixty--sacrificing ten ordinary victims for each one of the chiefs they had lost. The Susquehannocks now sent a message to Governor Berkley, complaining of the war waged upon them, and of the murder of their chiefs, and proposing, if the Virginians, their old friends, would make them reparation for the damages which they had suffered, and dissolve their alliance with the Marylanders, they would renew their ancient friendship; otherwise they were ready for war.[286:A]
At the falls of the James the savages had slain a servant of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., and his overseer, to whom he was much attached. This was not the place of Bacon's residence; Bacon Quarter Branch, in the suburbs of Richmond, probably indicates the scene of the murder. Bacon himself resided at Curles, in Henrico county, on the lower James River.[286:B] It is said that when he heard of the catastrophe he vowed vengeance. In that time of panic, the more exposed and defenceless families, abandoning their homes, took shelter together in houses, where they fortified themselves with palisades and redoubts. Neighbors banding together, passed in co-operating parties, from plantation to plantation, taking arms with them into the fields where they labored, and posting sentinels, to give warning of the approach of the insidious foe. No man ventured out of doors unarmed. Even Jamestown was in danger. The red men, stealing with furtive glance through the shade of the forest, the noiseless tread of the moccasin scarce stirring a leaf, prowled around like panthers in quest of prey. At length the people at the head of the James and the York, having in vain petitioned the governor for protection, alarmed at the slaughter of their neighbors, often murdered with every circumstance of barbarity, rose tumultuously in self-defence, to the number of three hundred men, including most, if not all the officers, civil and military, and chose Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., for their leader. According to another authority, Bacon, before the murder of his overseer and servant, had been refused the commission, and had sworn that upon the next murder he should hear of, he would march against the Indians, "commission or no commission." And when one of his own family was butchered, "he got together about seventy or ninety persons, most good housekeepers, well armed," etc. Burk[287:A] makes their number "near six hundred men," and refers to ancient (MS.) records.
Bacon had been living in the colony somewhat less than three years, having settled at Curles, on the lower James, in the midst of those people who were the greatest sufferers from the depredations of the Indians, and he himself had frequently felt the effects of their inroads. In the records of the county court of Henrico there is a deed from Randolph to Randolph, dated November 1st, 1706, conveying a tract of land called Curles, lately belonging to Nathaniel Bacon, Esq., and since found to escheat to his majesty. At the breaking out of these disturbances he was a member of the council. He was gifted with a graceful person, great abilities, and a powerful elocution, and was the most accomplished man in Virginia; his courage and resolution were not to be daunted, and his affability, hospitality, and benevolence, commanded a wide popularity throughout the colony.
The men who had put themselves under Bacon's command made preparations for marching against the Indians, but in the mean time sent again to obtain from the governor a commission of general for Bacon, with authority to lead out his followers, at their own expense, against the enemy. He then stood so high in the council, and the exigency of the case was so pressing, that Sir William Berkley, thinking it imprudent to return an absolute refusal, concluded to temporize. Some of the leading men about him, it was believed, took occasion to foment the difference between him and Bacon, envying a rising luminary that threatened to eclipse them. This conduct is like that of some of the leading men in Virginia who, one hundred years later, compelled Patrick Henry to resign his post in the army.
Sir William Berkley sent his evasive reply to the application for a commission, by some of his friends, and instructed them to persuade Bacon to disband his forces. He refused to comply with this request, and having in twenty days mustered five hundred men, marched to the falls of the James. Thereupon the governor, on the 29th day of May, 1676, issued a proclamation, declaring all such as should fail to return within a certain time, rebels. Bacon likewise issued a declaration, setting forth the public dangers and grievances, but taking no notice of the governor's proclamation.[288:A] Upon this the men of property, fearful of a confiscation, deserted Bacon and returned home; but he proceeded with fifty-seven men. Sir William Berkley, with a troop of horse from Middle Plantation, pursued Bacon as far as the falls, some forty miles, but not overtaking him, returned to Jamestown, where the assembly was soon to meet. During his absence the planters of the lower country rose in revolt, and declared against the frontier forts as a useless and intolerable burden; and to restore quiet they were dismantled, and the assembly, the odious Long Parliament of Virginia, was at last dissolved, and writs for a new election issued. This revolt in the lower country, with which Bacon had no immediate connection, demonstrates how widely the leaven of rebellion, as it was styled, pervaded the body of the people, and how unfounded is the notion, that it was the result merely of personal pique and ambition in Bacon. Had he never set his foot on the soil of Virginia there can be little doubt but that an outbreak would have occurred at this time. There was no man in the colony with a brighter prospect before him than Bacon, and he could hardly have engaged in this popular movement without a sacrifice of selfish considerations, nor with out incurring imminent risk. The movement was revolutionary--a miniature prototype of the revolution of 1688 in England, and of 1776 in America. But Bacon, as before mentioned, with a small body of men proceeded into the wilderness, up the river, his provisions being nearly exhausted before he discovered the Indians. At length a tribe of friendly Mannakins were found entrenched within a palisaded fort on the further side of a branch of the James. Bacon endeavoring to procure provisions from them and offering compensation, they put him off with delusive promises till the third day, when the whites had eaten their last morsel. They now waded up to the shoulder across the branch to the fort, again soliciting provisions and tendering payment. In the evening one of Bacon's men was killed by a shot from that side of the branch which they had left, and this giving rise to a suspicion of collusion with Sir William Berkley and treachery, Bacon stormed the fort, burnt it and the cabins, blew up their magazine of arms and gunpowder, and with a loss of only three of his own party, put to death one hundred and fifty Indians. It is difficult to credit, impossible to justify, this massacre. The Virginians, a hundred years afterwards, suspected Governor Dunmore of colluding with Indians. Bacon with his followers returned to their homes, and he was shortly after elected one of the burgesses for the County of Henrico. Brewse or Bruce, his colleague and a captain of the insurgents, was not less odious to the governor. It was subsequently charged by the king's commissioners that the malecontent voters on this occasion illegally returned freemen, not being freeholders, for burgesses.[289:A] The charge was well founded. It is probable also that others were allowed to vote besides freeholders and housekeepers. Bacon, upon being elected, going down the James River with a party of his friends, was met by an armed vessel, ordered on board of her, and arrested by Major Howe, High Sheriff of James City, who conveyed him to the governor at that place, by whom he was accosted thus: "Mr. Bacon, you have forgot to be a gentleman." He replied, "No, may it please your honor." The governor said, "Then I'll take your parole;" which he accordingly did, and gave him his liberty; but a number of his companions, who had been arrested with him, were still kept in irons.
On the 5th day of June, 1676, the members of the new assembly, whose names are not recorded, met in the chamber over the general court, and having chosen a speaker, the governor sent for them down, and addressed them in a brief abrupt speech on the Indian disturbances, and in allusion to the chiefs who had been slain, exclaimed: "If they had killed my grandfather and my grandmother, my father and mother, and all my friends, yet if they had come to treat of peace, they ought to have gone in peace." After a short interval, he again rose and said: "If there be joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth, there is joy now, for we have a penitent sinner come before us. Call Mr. Bacon." Bacon appearing, was compelled upon one knee, at the bar of the house, to confess his offence, and beg pardon of God, the king, and governor, in the following words:[290:A] "I, Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., Esq., of Henrico County, in Virginia, do hereby most readily, freely, and most humbly acknowledge that I am, and have been guilty of divers late unlawful, mutinous, and rebellious practices, contrary to my duty to his most sacred majesty's governor, and this country, by beating up of drums; raising of men in arms; marching with them into several parts of his most sacred majesty's colony, not only without order and commission, but contrary to the express orders and commands of the Right Honorable Sir William Berkley, Knt., his majesty's most worthy governor and captain-general of Virginia. And I do further acknowledge that the said honorable governor hath been very favorable to me, by his several reiterated gracious offers of pardon, thereby to reclaim me from the persecution of those my unjust proceedings, (whose noble and generous mercy and clemency I can never sufficiently acknowledge,) and for the re-settlement of this whole country in peace and quietness. And I do hereby, upon my knees, most humbly beg of Almighty God and of his majesty's said governor, that upon this my most hearty and unfeigned acknowledgment of my said miscarriages and unwarrantable practices, he will please to grant me his gracious pardon and indemnity, humbly desiring also the honorable council of state, by whose goodness I am also much obliged, and the honorable burgesses of the present grand assembly to intercede, and mediate with his honor, to grant me such pardon. And I do hereby promise, upon the word and faith of a Christian and a gentleman, that upon such pardon granted me, as I shall ever acknowledge so great a favor, so I will always bear true faith and allegiance to his most sacred majesty, and demean myself dutifully, faithfully, and peaceably to the government, and the laws of this country, and am most ready and willing to enter into bond of two thousand pounds sterling, and for security thereof bind my whole estate in Virginia to the country for my good and quiet behavior for one whole year from this date, and do promise and oblige myself to continue my said duty and allegiance at all times afterwards. In testimony of this, my free and hearty recognition, I have hereunto subscribed my name, this 9th day of June, 1676.
"NATH. BACON."
The intercession of the council was in the following terms: "We, of his majesty's council of state of Virginia, do hereby desire, according to Mr. Bacon's request, the right honorable the governor, to grant the said Mr. Bacon his freedom.
PHIL. LUDWELL, HEN. CHICHELEY, JAMES BRAY, NATHL. BACON, WM. COLE, THOS. BEALE, RA. WORMELEY, THO. BALLARD, JO. BRIDGER.
"Dated the 9th of June, 1676."
+ + + + +
When Bacon had made his acknowledgment, the governor exclaimed: "God forgive you, I forgive you;" repeating the words thrice. Colonel Cole, of the council, added, "and all that were with him." "Yea," echoed the governor, "and all that were with him." Sir William Berkley, starting up from his chair for the third time, exclaimed: "Mr. Bacon, if you will live civilly but till next quarter court, I'll promise to restore you again to your place there," (pointing with his hand to Mr. Bacon's seat,) he having, as has been already mentioned, been of the council before those troubles, and having been deposed by the governor's proclamation. But instead of being obliged to wait till the quarter court, Bacon was restored to his seat on that very day; and intelligence of it was hailed with joyful acclamations by the people in Jamestown. This took place on Saturday. Bacon was also promised a commission to go out against the Indians, to be delivered to him on the Monday following. But being delayed or disappointed, a few days after (the assembly being engaged in devising measures against the Indians) he escaped from Jamestown. He conceived the governor's pretended generosity to be only a lure to keep him out of his seat in the house of burgesses, and to quiet the people of the upper country, who were hastening down to Jamestown to avenge all wrongs done him or his friends. According to another account, he obtained leave of absence to visit his wife, "sick, as he pretended;" but from T. M.'s Account, and others, this version appears to be unfounded.
There was in the council at this time one Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, a near relative of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., who was not yet thirty years of age. The elder Bacon was a wealthy politic old man, childless, and intending to make his namesake and cousin his heir. It was by the pressing solicitations of this old gentleman, as was believed, that young Bacon was reluctantly prevailed upon to repeat at the bar of the house the recantation written by the old gentleman. It was he also, as was supposed, who gave timely warning to the young Bacon to fly for his life. Three or four days after his first arrest, many country people, from the heads of the rivers, appeared in Jamestown; but finding him restored to his place in the council, and his companions at liberty, they returned home satisfied. But in a short time the governor, seeing all quiet, issued secret warrants to seize him again, intending probably to raise the militia, and thus prevent a rescue.
FOOTNOTES:
[283:A] T. M.'s Account of Bacon's Rebellion, in Force's Hist. Tracts, i.
[284:A] Herring, i. 515, and ii. 14.
[284:B] Va. Hist. Reg., i. 167.
[284:C] For the following details, see T. M.'s Account; Hening, ii. 841, 543; Beverley, B. i. 65; Keith's Hist. of Va., 156; Breviarie and Conclusion, Burk, ii. 250; Account of Bacon's Rebellion, in Va. Gazette, 1766, and Bacon's Proceedings, in Force's Hist. Tracts, i.
[285:A] Chalmers' Annals, 332, 335, 348; The Fall of the Susquehannocks, by S. F. Streeter, in Hist. Mag., i. 65.
[285:B] Burk, ii. 144; Account of our Late Troubles in Virginia, written in 1676, by Mrs. Ann Cotton, of Queen's Creek, 3 in Force's Hist. Tracts, i. This curious narrative was published from the original MS. in the Richmond Enquirer of September 12th, 1804. T. M.'s Account was republished in the same paper.
[286:A] Narrative of the Indian and Civil Wars in Va., in the years 1675 and 1676, 1, in Force's Hist. Tracts, i. This account is evidently in the main, if not altogether, by the same hand with the letter bearing the signature of Mrs. Ann Cotton. Several passages are identical.
[286:B] Account of Bacon's Rebellion, in Va. Gazette, 1766.
[287:A] In Hist. of Va., ii. 164.
[288:A] Burk, ii. 247
[289:A] Breviarie and Conclusion, Burk, ii. 251.
[290:A] Hening, ii. 543.
Chapter XXXV
1676.
Bacon, with an armed Force, enters Jamestown--Extorts a Commission from the Governor--Proceedings of Assembly--Bacon marches against the Pamunkies--Berkley summons Gloucester Militia--Bacon countermarches upon the Governor--He escapes to Accomac--Bacon encamps at Middle Plantation--Calls a Convention--Oath prescribed--Sarah Drummond--Giles Bland seizes an armed Vessel and sails for Accomac--His Capture-- Berkley returns to Jamestown--Bacon exterminates the Indians.
WITHIN three or four days after Bacon's escape, news reached James City that he was some thirty miles above, on the James River, at the head of four hundred men. Sir William Berkley summoned the York train-bands to defend Jamestown, but only one hundred obeyed the summons, and they arrived too late, and one-half of them were favorable to Bacon. Expresses almost hourly brought tidings of his approach, and in less than four days he marched into Jamestown unresisted, at two o'clock P.M., and drew up his force, (now amounting to six hundred men,) horse and foot, in battle array on the green in front of the state-house, and within gunshot. In half an hour the drum beat, as was the custom, for the assembly to meet, and in less than thirty minutes Bacon advanced, with a file of fusileers on either hand, near to the corner of the state-house, where he was met by the governor and council. Sir William Berkley, dramatically baring his breast, cried out, "Here! shoot me--fore God, fair mark; shoot!" frequently repeating the words. Bacon replied, "No, may it please your honor, we will not hurt a hair of your head, nor of any other man's; we are come for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often promised, and now we will have it before we go." Bacon was walking to and fro between the files of his men, holding his left arm akimbo, and gesticulating violently with his right, he and the governor both like men distracted. In a few moments Sir William withdrew to his private apartment at the other end of the state-house, the council accompanying him. Bacon followed, frequently hurrying his hand from his sword-hilt to his hat; and after him came a detachment of fusileers, who, with their guns cocked and presented at a window of the assembly chamber, filled with faces, repeating in menacing tone, "We will have it, we will have it," for half a minute, when a well-known burgess, waving his handkerchief out at the window, exclaimed, three or four times, "You shall have it, you shall have it;" when, uncocking their guns, they rested them on the ground, and stood still, till Bacon returning, they rejoined the main body. It was said that Bacon had beforehand directed his men to fire in case he should draw his sword. In about an hour after Bacon re-entered the assembly chamber, and demanded a commission, authorizing him to march out against the Indians. Godwyn, the speaker,[294:A] who was himself a Baconian, as were a majority of the house, remaining silent in the chair, Brewse, (or Bruce,)[294:B] the colleague of Bacon, alone found courage to answer: "'Twas not in our province, or power, nor of any other, save the king's vicegerent, our governor." Bacon, nevertheless, still warmly urged his demand, and harangued the assembly for nearly half an hour on the Indian disturbances, the condition of the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, abuses and corruptions of the administration, and all the grievances of their miserable country. Having concluded, and finding "no other answer, he went away dissatisfied."
On the following day the governor directed the house to take measures to defend the country against the Indians, and advised them to beware of two rogues among them, meaning Lawrence and Drummond, who both lived at Jamestown. But some of the burgesses, in order to effect a redress of some of the grievances that the country labored under, made motions for inspecting the public revenues, the collector's accounts, etc., when they received pressing messages from the governor to meddle with nothing else till the Indian business was disposed of. The debate on this matter rose high, but the governor's orders were finally acquiesced in.
While the committee on Indian affairs was sitting, the Queen of Pamunkey, a descendant of Opechancanough, was introduced into their room. Accompanied by an interpreter and her son, a youth of twenty years, she entered with graceful dignity. Around her head she wore a plait of black and white wampum-peake, a drilled purple bead of shell, three inches wide, after the manner of a crown. There is preserved at Fredericksburg a silver frontlet, purchased from some Indians, with a coat of arms, and inscribed "The Queen of Pamunkey," "Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and Virginia," and "Honi soit qui mal y pense." She was clothed in a mantle of dressed buckskin, with the fur outward, and bordered with a deep fringe from head to foot. Being seated, the chairman asked her "How many men she would lend the English for guides and allies?" She referred him to her son, who understood English, being the reputed son of an English colonel. But he declining to answer, she burst forth in an impassioned speech of a quarter of an hour's length, often repeating the words, "Totopotomoi dead," referring to her husband, who, as has been seen, had fallen while fighting under Colonel Hill, the elder. The chairman, untouched by this appeal, roughly repeated the inquiry, how many men she would contribute. Averting her head with a disdainful look she sate silent, till the question being pressed a third time, she replied in a low tone, "Six." When still further importuned she said "Twelve," although she had then one hundred and fifty warriors in her town. She retired silent and displeased.
The assembly went on to provide for the Indian war, and made Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., general and commander-in-chief, which was ratified by the governor and council. An act was also passed indemnifying Bacon and his party for their violent acts; and a highly applausive letter was prepared, justifying Bacon's designs and proceedings, addressed to the king and subscribed by the governor, council, and assembly. Sir William Berkley at the same time communicated to the house a letter addressed to his majesty, saying: "I have above thirty years governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters, in every respect like that of Massaniello, except their leader." Massaniello, or Thomas Anello, a fisherman of Naples, born 1623, exasperated by the oppressive taxes imposed by Austria upon his countrymen, at the head of two thousand young men, armed with canes, overthrew the viceroy, seized upon the supreme power, and after holding it for some years, fell by the hands of assassins in 1647. Some of the burgesses also wrote to the king, setting forth the circumstances of the outbreak. The amnesty extended from the 1st day of March to the 25th day of June, 1676, and excepted only offences against the law concerning the Indian trade.[296:A] The assembly did not restrict itself to measures favorable to Bacon. According to the letter of the law, at least, he had been guilty of rebellion in assuming a military command and marching against the savages without a commission, and he had so acknowledged. Yet he was not more guilty than the bulk of the people of the colony, and probably not more so than a majority of the assembly itself; and the popular movement seemed justified by an urgent necessity of self-defence, and an intolerable accumulation of public grievances. On the other hand, Sir William Berkley had violated his solemn engagement to grant the commission. Besides, it did not escape the notice of the assembly that the term of ten years for which, it was believed, he had been appointed, had expired; and this circumstance, although it might not be held absolutely to terminate his authority, served at the least to attenuate it. The assembly adopted measures with a view at once to vindicate the supremacy of the law; to heal the wounded pride of the aged governor; to protect the country; to screen Bacon and his confederates from punishment, and to reform the abuses of the government.
It is remarkable that the resolutions, instructing the Virginia delegates in Congress to declare the colonies free and independent, were passed in June, 1776, and that the assembly, under Bacon's influence, met in June, 1676. The first act of this session declared war against the hostile Indians, ordering a levy of one thousand men, and authorizing General Bacon to receive volunteers; and if their number should prove sufficient, to dispense with the regular force; Indians taken in war to be made slaves; the forces divided into southern and northern, and such officers to be appointed to command these divisions as the governor should commission. An act was then passed for the suppressing of tumults, the preamble reciting that there had of late "been many unlawful tumults, routs, and riots, in divers parts of this country, and that certain ill-disposed and disaffected people of late gathered, and may again gather themselves together, by beat of drum and otherwise, in a most apparent rebellious manner, without any authority or legal commission, which may prove of very dangerous consequences," etc. The act for regulating of officers and offices, shows how many abuses and how much rapacity had crept into the administration. By this act it was declared that no person, not being a native or minister, could hold any office until he had resided in the colony for three years. The democratic spirit of this assembly displayed itself in a law "enabling freemen to vote for burgesses;" and another making the church vestries eligible by the freemen of the parish, once in three years. Representatives were to be chosen by the people in each parish to vote with the justices in laying the county levy, and in making by-laws. The county courts were authorized to appoint their own collectors; and members of the council were prohibited from voting with the justices. An act for suppressing of ordinaries, or country taverns, suppressed all except three, one at James City, and one at each side of York River, at the great ferries; and these were prohibited from retailing any liquors, except beer and cider. Lieutenant-Colonel Hill, and Lieutenant John Stith, both of the parish of Westover, and County of Charles City, were disabled from holding office in that county, for having fomented misunderstandings between the honorable governor and his majesty's good and loyal subjects, the inhabitants of the Counties of Charles City and Henrico, and having been instrumental in levying unjust and exorbitant taxes.[297:A] In evidence of the excitement and suspicion then prevailing, it was observed that some of the burgesses wore distinctive badges; a hundred years afterwards the opposite parties walked on opposite sides of the street.
In a few days the assembly was dissolved by the governor, who, seeing how great Bacon's influence was, apprehended only further mischief from their proceedings. A number of the burgesses, intending to depart on the morrow, having met in the evening to take leave of each other, General Bacon, as he now came to be styled, entered the room with a handful of papers, and, looking around, inquired, "Which of these gentlemen shall I interest to write a few words for me?" All present looking aside, being unwilling to act, Lawrence, Bacon's friend, pointing to one of the company, (the author of T. M.'s Account,) said: "That gentleman writes very well," and he, undertaking to excuse himself, Bacon, bowing low, said: "Pray, sir, do me the honor to write a line for me;" and he now consenting, was detained during the whole night, filling up commissions obtained from the governor, and signed by him. These commissions Bacon filled almost altogether with the names of the militia officers of the country, the first men in the colony in fortune, rank, and influence.
His vigorous measures at once restored confidence to the planters, and they resumed their occupations. Bacon, at the head of a thousand men, marched against the Pamunkies, killing many and destroying their towns. Meanwhile the people of Gloucester, the most populous and loyal county, having been disarmed by Bacon, petitioned the governor for protection against the savages. Reanimated by this petition, he again proclaimed Bacon a rebel and a traitor, and hastened over to Gloucester. Summoning the train-bands of that county and Middlesex, to the number of twelve hundred men, he proposed to them to pursue and put down the rebel Bacon--when the whole assembly unanimously shouted, "Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!" and withdrew from the field, still repeating the name of that popular leader, the Patrick Henry of his day, and leaving the aged cavalier governor and his attendants to themselves. The issue was now fairly joined between the people and the governor. Francis Morryson, afterwards one of the king's commissioners, in a letter dated at London, November 28th, 1677, and addressed to Secretary Ludwell, says: "I fear when that part of the narrative comes to be read that mentions the Gloucester petitions, your brother may be prejudiced, for there are two or three that will be summoned, will lay the contrivance at your brother's door and Beverley's, but more upon your brother, who, they say, was the drawer of it. For at the first sight, all the lords judged that that was the unhappy accident that made the Indian war recoil into a civil war; for the reason you alleged that bond and oath were proffered the governor, intended not against Bacon but the Indians, confirmed the people that Bacon's commission was good, it never being before disavowed by proclamation, but by letters writ to his majesty in commendation of Bacon's acting, copies thereof dispersed among the people."[299:A] According to another authority[299:B] the people of Gloucester refused to march against Bacon, but pledged themselves to defend the governor against him, if he should turn against Sir William Berkley and his government, which they hoped would never happen. From the result of this affair of the Gloucester petitions, we may conclude that either they contained nothing unfavorable to Bacon, or if they did, that they were gotten up by designing leaders without the consent of the people. It is certain that now, when Bacon's violent proceedings at Jamestown were known, the great body of the people espoused his cause and approved his designs.
Bacon, before he reached the head of York River, hearing from Lawrence and Drummond of the governor's movements, exclaimed, that "it vexed him to the heart, that while he was hunting wolves which were destroying innocent lambs, the governor and those with him should pursue him in the rear with full cry; and that he was like corn between two mill-stones, which would grind him to powder if he didn't look to it." He marched immediately back against the governor, who finding himself abandoned, again, on the twenty-ninth of July, proclaimed Bacon a rebel, and made his escape, with a few friends, down York River and across the Chesapeake Bay to Accomac, on the Eastern Shore. A vindication of Sir William, afterwards published, says: "Nor is it to be wondered at that he did not immediately put forth proclamations to undeceive the people, because he had then no means of securing himself, nor forces to have maintained such a proclamation by; but he took the first opportunity he could of doing all this, when Gloucester County, having been plundered by Bacon before his going out against the Indians, made an address."[300:A]
Bacon, upon reaching Gloucester, sent out parties of horse to patrol the country, and made prisoners such as were suspected of disaffection to his Indian expedition; releasing on parole those who took an oath to return home and remain quiet. This oath was strict in form but practically little regarded.
About this time there was detected in Bacon's camp a spy, who pretended to be a deserter from the opposite party, and who had repeatedly changed sides. Upon his being sentenced to death by a court-martial, Bacon declared that "if any one in the army would speak a word to save him, he should not suffer;" but no one interceding, he was put to death. Bacon's clemency won the admiration of the army, and this was the only instance of capital punishment under his orders, nor did he plunder any private house.
Having now acquired the command of a province of forty-five thousand inhabitants, and from which the crown derived a revenue of a hundred thousand pounds, he sate down with his army at Middle Plantation, and sent out an invitation, subscribed by himself and four of the council, to all the principal gentlemen of the country, to meet him in a convention at his headquarters, to consult how the Indians were to be proceeded against, and himself and the army protected against the designs of Sir William Berkley.[300:B] Bacon also put forth a reply to the governor's proclamations, demanding whether those who are entirely devoted to the king and country, can deserve the name of rebels and traitors? In vindication of their loyalty, he points to the peaceable conduct of his soldiers, and calls upon the whole country to witness against him if they can. He reproaches some of the men in power with the meanness of their capacity; others with their ill-gotten wealth; he inquires what arts, sciences, schools of learning or manufactures they had promoted; he justifies his warring against the Indians, and inveighs against Sir William Berkley for siding with them; insisting that he had no right to interfere with the fur-trade, since it was a monopoly of the crown, and asserting that the governor's factors on the frontier trafficked in the blood of their countrymen, by supplying the savages with arms and ammunition, contrary to law. He concludes by appealing to the king and parliament.
In compliance with Bacon's invitation, a great convention, including many of the principal men of the colony, assembled at his quarters in August, 1676, at Middle Plantation. In preparing an oath to be administered to the people, the three articles proposed were read by James Minge, clerk of the house of burgesses: First, that they should aid General Bacon in the Indian war; second, that they would oppose Sir William Berkley's endeavors to hinder the same; third, that they would oppose any power sent out from England, till terms were agreed to, granting that the country's complaint should be heard against Sir William before the king and parliament. A "bloody debate" ensued, especially on this last article, and it lasted from noon till midnight, Bacon and some of the principal men supporting it, and he protested that unless it should be adopted he would surrender his commission to the assembly. Some report[301:A] that Bacon contended in this debate single-handed against "a great many counted the wisest in the country." With what interest would we read a report of his speech! But his eloquence, like Henry's, lives only in tradition. In this critical conjuncture, when the scales of self-defence and of loyalty hung in equipoise, the gunner of York Fort brought sudden news of fresh murders perpetrated by the Indians in Gloucester County, near Carter's Creek, adding that a great number of poor people had taken refuge in the fort. Bacon demanded, "How it could be possible that the chief fort in Virginia should be threatened by the Indians?" The gunner replied, "That the governor on the day before had conveyed all arms and ammunition out of the fort into his own vessel." This probably took place on the twenty-ninth of July. Dunmore removed the gunpowder a century afterwards. The disclosure produced a deep sensation, and the convention now became reconciled to the oath. Among the subscribers on this occasion were Colonel Ballard, Colonel Beale, Colonel Swan, and 'Squire Bray, of the council; Colonels Jordan, Smith, of Purton, Scarburgh, Miller, Lawrence, and William Drummond. He had been recently governor of North Carolina. It has been supposed that he was a Presbyterian. He was a Scotchman; but the command of a colony would hardly at that time have been intrusted to a Presbyterian.[302:A] Writs were issued in his majesty's name for an assembly to meet on the fourth day of September; they were signed by the four members of the council. The oath was administered to the people of every rank, except servants, and it was as follows: "Whereas, the country hath raised an army against our common enemy, the Indians, and the same, under the command of General Bacon, being upon the point to march forth against the said common enemy, hath been diverted and necessitated to move to the suppressing of forces by evil-disposed persons raised against the said General Bacon purposely to foment and stir up civil war among us, to the ruin of this, his majesty's country. And whereas, it is notoriously manifest that Sir William Berkley, Knight, governor of the country, assisted counselled, and abetted by those evil-disposed persons aforesaid, hath not only commanded, fomented, and stirred up the people to the said civil war, but failing therein hath withdrawn himself, to the great astonishment of the people and the unsettlement of the country. And whereas, the said army raised by the country for the causes aforesaid remain full of dissatisfaction in the middle of the country, expecting attempts from the said governor and the evil counsellors aforesaid. And since no proper means have been found out for the settlement of the distractions, and preventing the horrid outrages and murders daily committed in many places of the country by the barbarous enemy; it hath been thought fit by the said general to call unto him all such sober and discreet gentlemen as the present circumstances of the country will admit, to the Middle Plantation, to consult and advise of re-establishing the peace of the country. So we, the said gentlemen, being, this 3d of August, 1676, accordingly met, do advise, resolve, declare, and conclude, and for ourselves do swear in manner following: First, That we will at all times join with the said General Bacon, and his army, against the common enemy in all points whatsoever. Secondly, That, whereas, certain persons have lately contrived, and designed the raising forces against the said general and the army under his command, thereby to beget a civil war, we will endeavor the discovery and apprehending all and every of those evil-disposed persons, and them secure until further order from the general. Thirdly, And whereas, it is credibly reported, that the governor hath informed the king's majesty that the said general and the people of the country in arms under his command, their aiders and abettors, are rebellious and removed from their allegiance, and that upon such like information, he, the said governor, hath advised and petitioned the king to send forces to reduce them: we do further declare, and believe in our consciences, that it consists with the welfare of this country, and with our allegiance to his most sacred majesty, that we, the inhabitants of Virginia, to the utmost of our power, do oppose and suppress all forces whatsoever of that nature, until such time as the king be fully informed of the state of the case by such person or persons as shall be sent from the said Nathaniel Bacon, in the behalf of the people, and the determination thereof be remitted hither. And we do swear that we will him, the said general, and the army under his command, aid and assist accordingly."[303:A]
Drummond advised that Sir William Berkley should be deposed, and Sir Henry Chicheley substituted in his place; his counsel not being approved of, he said: "Do not make so strange of it, for I can show from ancient records, that such things have been done in Virginia," referring probably to the case of Sir John Harvey. But it was agreed that the governor's withdrawal should be taken for an abdication. Sarah Drummond, a patriot heroine, was no less enthusiastic in Bacon's favor than her husband. She exclaimed, "The child that is unborn shall have cause to rejoice for the good that will come by the rising of the country." Ralph Weldinge said: "We must expect a greater power from England that would certainly be our ruin." But Sarah Drummond remembered that England was divided into two hostile factions between the Duke of York and the Duke of Monmouth. Picking up from the ground a small stick and breaking it, she added: "I fear the power of England no more than a broken straw." Looking for relief from the odious navigation act, she declared: "Now we can build ships, and, like New England, trade to any part of the world;" for New England evaded that act, which her people considered an invasion of their rights, they not being represented in parliament.
Bacon also issued proclamations, commanding all men in the land, in case of the arrival of the forces expected from England, to join his standard and to retire into the wilderness, and resist the troops, until they should agree to treat of an accommodation of the dispute.
There was a gentleman in Virginia, Giles Bland, only son of John Bland, an eminent London merchant, who was personally known to the king, and had a considerable interest at court. He was, as has been seen, also a generous friend of Virginia. His brother, Theodorick Bland, sometime a merchant at Luars, in Spain, came over to Virginia in 1654, where, settling at Westover, upon James River, in Charles City County, he died, in April, 1671, aged forty-five years, and was buried in the chancel of the church, which he built, and gave, together with ten acres of land, a court-house and prison for the county and parish. He lies buried in the Westover churchyard between two of his friends, the church having long since fallen down. He was of the king's council and speaker of the house of burgesses, and was, in fortune and understanding, inferior to no man of his time in the country. He married Ann, daughter of Richard Bennet, sometime governor of the colony.[304:A] When John Bland sent out his son Giles Bland to Virginia to take possession of the estate of his uncle Theodorick, he got him appointed collector-general of the customs. The governors had hitherto held this office, and it was in 1676 that a collector of the revenue was first sent over from England under parliamentary sanction, and it is therefore probable that the appointment of Bland diminished the perquisites of Governor Berkley. Giles Bland, in his capacity of collector, had a right to board any vessel whenever he might think it proper. He was a man of talents, education, courage, and haughty bearing, and having before quarrelled with the governor, now sided warmly with Bacon. There happened to be lying in York River a vessel of sixteen guns, commanded by a Captain Laramore, and Bland went on board of her with a party of armed men, under pretence of searching for contraband goods, and seizing the captain, confined him in the cabin. Laramore, discovering Bland's designs, resolved to deceive him in his turn, and entered into his measures with such apparent sincerity that he was restored to the command of his vessel. With her, another vessel of four guns, under Captain Carver, and a sloop, Bland, now appointed Bacon's lieutenant-general, sailed with two hundred and fifty men for Accomac, and after capturing another vessel, appeared off Accomac with four sail.
This peninsula, separated from the main land of Virginia by the wide Chesapeake Bay, was then hardly accessible by land, owing to the great distance and the danger of Indians. The position was therefore geographically advantageous for the fugitive governor; but as yet few of the inhabitants had rallied to his standard. They indeed shared in the general disaffection, and availed themselves of this occasion to lay their grievances before Sir William Berkley, who found himself unable to redress his own. Some of the inhabitants of the Eastern Shore at this time were engaged in committing depredations on the estates of the planters on the other side of the bay, just as the adherents of Lord Dunmore acted a century afterwards. Upon the appearance of Bland and his little squadron, Sir William Berkley, having not a single vessel to defend him, was overwhelmed with despair; but at this juncture he received a note from Laramore, offering, if he would send him some assistance, to deliver Bland, with all his men, prisoners into his hands. The governor, having no high opinion of Laramore, suspected that his note might be only a bait to entrap him; but upon advising with his friend Colonel Philip Ludwell, he knowing Laramore and having a good opinion of him, counselled the governor to accept the offer as the best alternative now left him, and gallantly undertook to engage in the enterprise at the hazard of his life. Sir William consenting, Ludwell, with twenty-six well-armed men, appeared at the appointed time alongside of Laramore's vessel. Laramore was prepared to receive the loyalists, and Ludwell boarded her without the loss of a man, and soon after captured the other vessels. According to T. M.'s Account, Captain Carver was at this time, upon Sir William's invitation, holding an interview with him on shore. Bland, Carver, and the other chiefs were sent to the governor, and the rest of the prisoners secured on board of the vessels. Bland's expedition appears to have been very badly managed, and the drunkenness of his men probably rendered his party so easy a prey.[306:A] The greater part of the prisoners screened themselves from punishment by entering into the governor's service. When Laramore waited on the governor, he clasped him in his arms, called him his deliverer, and gave him a large share of his favor. In a few days the brave old Carver was hanged on the Accomac shore. Sir William Berkley afterwards described him as "a valiant man and stout seaman, miraculously delivered into my hand." Sir Henry Chicheley, the chief of the council, who, with several other gentlemen, was a prisoner in Bacon's hands, afterwards exclaimed against this act of the governor as most rash and cruel, and he expected, at the time, to be executed in the same manner by way of retaliation. Bland was put in irons and badly treated, as it was reported.
Captain Gardner, sailing from the James River, went to the governor's relief with his own vessel, the Adam and Eve, and ten or twelve sloops, which he had collected upon hearing of Bland's expedition. Sir William Berkley, by this unexpected turn of affairs, raised from the abyss of despair to the pinnacle of hope, resolved to push his success still further. With Laramore's vessel and Gardner's, and sixteen or seventeen sloops, and a motley band of six hundred, or, according to another account, one thousand men in arms, "rogues and royalists," the governor returned in triumph to Jamestown, September 7th, 1676, where, falling on his knees, he returned thanks to God, and again proclaimed Bacon and his adherents rebels and traitors. There were now in Jamestown nine hundred Baconites, as they had come to be styled, under command of Colonel Hansford, commissioned by Bacon. Berkley sent in a summons for surrender of the town, with offer of pardon to all except Drummond and Lawrence. Upon this, all of them retired to their homes except Hansford, Lawrence, Drummond, and a few others, who made for the head of York River, in quest of Bacon, who had returned to that quarter.
During these events Bacon was executing his designs against the Indians. As soon as he had dispatched Bland to Accomac, he crossed the James River at his own house, at Curles, and surprising the Appomattox Indians, who lived on both sides of the river of that name, a little below the falls, (now Petersburg,) he burnt their town, killed a large number of the tribe, and dispersed the rest.[307:A] Burk[307:B] places this battle or massacre on Bloody Run, a small stream emptying into the James at Richmond, but he refers to no authority, and probably had none better than a loose tradition. The Appomattox Indians, it appears, occupied both sides of the river in question, and it is altogether improbable that Indians still inhabited the north bank of the James River near Curles. Besides, if they had still inhabited that side, it would have been unnecessary to cross the James before commencing the attack. Curles was a proper point for crossing the James with a view of attacking the Indians on the Appomattox.
From the falls of the Appomattox, Bacon traversed the country to the southward, destroying many towns on the banks of the Nottoway, the Meherrin, and the Roanoke. His name had become so formidable, that the natives fled everywhere before him, and having nothing to subsist upon, save the spontaneous productions of the country, several tribes perished, and they who survived were so reduced as to be never afterwards able to make any firm stand against the Long-knives, and gradually became tributary to them.
FOOTNOTES:
[294:A] Hening, ii. 606.
[294:B] Breviarie and Conclusion, in Burk, ii. 250. T. M. calls him Blayton.
[296:A] Hening, ii. 363.
[297:A] Hening, ii. 341, 365.
[299:A] Burk, ii. 268.
[299:B] Narrative of Indian and Civil Wars, 14.
[300:A] Burk, ii. 261.
[300:B] T. M. says: "Bacon calls a convention at Middle Plantation, fifteen miles from Jamestown."
[301:A] Narrative of Indian and Civil Wars, 18.
[302:A] Bancroft, ii. 136; Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, ii. 519, in note.
[303:A] Beverley, B. i. 74.
[304:A] Bland Papers, i. 148.
[306:A] Bacon's Proceedings, 20; Force's Hist. Tracts, i.
[307:A] History of Bacon's Rebellion, in Va. Gazette for 1769.
[307:B] Burk, ii. 176.
Chapter XXXVI
1676.
Bacon Marches back upon Jamestown--Singular Stratagem-- Berkley's Second Flight--Jamestown Burnt--Bacon proceeds to Gloucester to oppose Brent--Bacon dies--Circumstances of his Death and Burial--His Father an Author--Marriage and Fortune of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr.--His Widow.
BACON, having exhausted his provisions, had dismissed the greater part of his forces before Lawrence, Drummond, Hansford, and the other fugitives from Jamestown joined him. Upon receiving intelligence of the governor's return, Bacon, collecting a force variously estimated at one hundred and fifty, three hundred, and eight hundred, harangued them on the situation of affairs, and marched back upon Jamestown, leading his Indian captives in triumph before him. The contending parties came now to be distinguished by the names of Rebels and Royalists. Finding the town defended by a palisade ten paces in width, running across the neck of the peninsula, he rode along the work, and reconnoitred the governor's position. Then, dismounting from his horse, he animated his fatigued men to advance at once, and, leading them close to the palisade, sounded a defiance with the trumpet, and fired upon the garrison. The governor remained quiet, hoping that want of provisions would soon force Bacon to retire; but he supplied his troops from Sir William Berkley's seat, at Greenspring, three miles distant. He afterwards complained that "his dwelling-house at Greenspring was almost ruined; his household goods, and others of great value, totally plundered; that he had not a bed to lie on; two great beasts, three hundred sheep, seventy horses and mares, all his corn and provisions, taken away."
Bacon adopted a singular stratagem, and one hardly compatible with the rules of chivalry. Sending out small parties of horse, he captured the wives of several of the principal loyalists then with the governor, and among them the lady of Colonel Bacon, Sr., Madame Bray, Madame Page, and Madame Ballard. Upon their being brought into the camp, Bacon sends one of them into Jamestown to carry word to their husbands that his purpose was to place their wives in front of his men in case of a sally.[309:A] Colonel Ludwell[309:B] reproaches the rebels with "ravishing of women from their homes, and hurrying them about the country in their rude camps, often threatening them with death." But, according to another and more impartial authority,[309:C] Bacon made use of the ladies only to complete his battery, and removed them out of harm's way at the time of the sortie. He raised by moonlight a circumvallation of trees, earth, and brush-wood, around the governor's outworks. At daybreak next morning the governor's troops, being fired upon, made a sortie; but they were driven back, leaving their drum and their dead behind them. Upon the top of the work which he had thrown up, and where alone a sally could be made, Bacon exhibited the captive ladies to the views of their husbands and friends in the town, and kept them there until he completed his works. The peninsula of Jamestown is formed by the James River on the south, and a deep creek on the north encircling it within ten paces of the river. This island, for it is so styled, is about two miles long, east and west, and one mile broad. It is low, consisting mainly of marshes and swamps, and in consequence very unhealthy. There are no springs, and the water of the wells is brackish. Jamestown stood along the river bank about three-quarters of a mile, containing a church, and some sixteen or eighteen well-built brick houses. The population of this diminutive metropolis consisted of about a dozen families, (for all of the houses were not inhabited,) "getting their living by keeping of ordinaries at extraordinary rates."
Bacon, after completing his works, in which he was much assisted by the conspicuous white aprons of the ladies, now mounted a small battery of two or three cannon, according to some commanding the shipping, but not the town, according to others commanding both. Sir William Berkley had three great guns planted at the distance of about one hundred and fifty paces. But such was the cowardice of his motley crowd of followers, the bulk of them mere spoilsmen, "rogues and royalists," intent only on the plunder of forfeited estates promised them by "his honor," that although superior to Bacon's force in time, place, and numbers, yet out of six hundred of them, only twenty gentlemen were found willing to stand by him. So great was their fear, that in two or three days after the sortie they embarked in the night with all the town people and their goods, and leaving the guns spiked, weighing anchor secretly, and dropping silently down the river; retreating from a force inferior in number, and which, during a rainy week of the sickliest season, had been exposed, lying in open trenches, to far more hardship and privation than themselves. At the dawn of the following day, Bacon entered, where he found empty houses, a few horses, two or three cellars of wine, a small quantity of Indian-corn, "and many tanned hides." It being determined that it should be burned, so that the "rogues should harbor there no more," Lawrence and Drummond, who owned two of the best houses, set fire to them in the evening with their own hands, and the soldiers, following their example, laid in ashes Jamestown, including the church, the first brick one erected in the colony. Sir William Berkley and his people beheld the flames of the conflagration from the vessels riding at anchor, about twenty miles below.
Bacon now marched to York River, and crossed at Tindall's (Gloucester) Point, in order to encounter Colonel Brent, who was marching against him from the Potomac, with twelve hundred men. But the greater part of his men, hearing of Bacon's success, deserting their colors declared for him, "resolving with the Persians, to go and worship the rising sun."[310:A] Bacon, making his headquarters at Colonel Warmer's, called a convention in Gloucester, and administered the oath to the people of that county, and began to plan another expedition against the Indians, or, as some report, against Accomac, when he fell sick of a dysentery brought on by exposure. Retiring to the house of a Dr. Pate, and, lingering for some weeks, he died. Some of the loyalists afterwards reported that he died of a loathsome disease, and by a visitation of God; which is disproven by T. M.'s Account, by that published in the Virginia Gazette, and by the Report of the King's Commissioners. Some of Bacon's friends suspected that he was taken off by poison; but of this there is no proof. In his last hours he requested the assistance of a minister named Wading, whom he had arrested not long before for his opposition to the taking of the oath in Gloucester, telling him that "it was his place to preach in the church, and not in the camp."
The place of Bacon's interment has never been discovered, it having been concealed by his friends, lest his remains should be insulted by the vindictive Berkley, in whom old age appears not to have mitigated the fury of the passions. According to one tradition, in order to screen Bacon's body from indignity, stones were laid on his coffin by his friend Lawrence, as was supposed; according to others, it was conjectured that his body had been buried in the bosom of the majestic York where the winds and the waves might still repeat his requiem:--
"While none shall dare his obsequies to sing In deserved measures; until time shall bring Truth crowned with freedom, and from danger free, To sound his praises to posterity."[311:A]
Lord Chatham, in his letters addressed to his nephew, the Earl of Camelford, advises him to read "Nathaniel Bacon's Historical and Political Observations, which is, without exception, the best and most instructive book we have on matters of that kind." This book, though at present little known, formerly enjoyed a high reputation. It is written with a very evident bias to the principles of the parliamentary party, to which Bacon adhered. It was published in 1647, again in 1651, secretly reprinted in 1672, and again in 1682, for which edition the publisher was indicted and outlawed. The author was probably related to the great Lord Bacon.[312:A] Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., came over to Virginia about the year 1672, when the third edition of that work was secretly reprinted in England. In the quarto edition the author, Nathaniel Bacon, is said to have been of Gray's Inn. It was published during the Protectorate. He appears probably to have been, in Oliver Cromwell's time, recorder of the borough of Ipswich, and to have lived at Freston, near Saxmundham, in Suffolk. His son, Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., styled the Rebel, married, against the consent of his father, who violently exhibited his disapprobation, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Edward Duke, and sister to Sir John Duke, of Benhill-lodge, near Saxmundham. Ray, who set out upon his travels into foreign parts in 1663, says he was accompanied by Mr. Willoughby, Sir Philip Skippon, and Mr. Nathaniel Bacon, "a hopeful young gentleman."[312:B] He owned lands in England of the yearly value of one hundred and fifty pounds; and after his marriage, being straitened for money, he applied to Sir Robert Jason for assistance, conveyed the lands to him for twelve hundred pounds sterling,[312:C] and removed with his wife to Virginia. Dying, he left Elizabeth a widow, and children. She afterwards married in Virginia Thomas Jervis, a merchant, who lived in Elizabeth City County, on the west side of Hampton River,[312:D] and upon his death she became his executrix, and in 1684 claimed her jointure out of the lands sold to Jason, under a settlement thereof made by Bacon on his marriage, in consideration of her portion.[312:E] Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., was cousin to Thomas, Lord Culpepper,[312:F] subsequently governor of Virginia. Jervis appears to have been owner of a vessel, the "Betty," (so called after his wife,) in which Culpepper sailed from Virginia for Boston, August 10th, 1680. Elizabeth, relict of Jervis, married third a Mr. Mole. There are, at the present day, persons in Virginia of the name of Bacon, who claim to be lineal descendants of the rebel.
FOOTNOTES:
[309:A] Mrs. Cotton's Letter.
[309:B] Letter in Chalmers' Annals, 349.
[309:C] Narrative of Indian and Civil Wars.
[310:A] Mrs. Cotton's Letter.
[311:A] Extract from verses on his death, attributed to a servant, or attendant, who was with him in his last moments, and entitled "Bacon's Epitaph made by his Man." (Force's Hist. Tracts, i.)
[312:A] Hist. Magazine, i. 216.
[312:B] Ibid., i. 125.
[312:C] Hening, ii. 374.
[312:D] Ibid., ii. 472.
[312:E] Vernon's Reports, i. 284.
[312:F] Va. Hist. Reg., iii. 190.
Chapter XXXVII
1676.
Bacon succeeded by Ingram--Hansford and others executed-- Ingram and others hold West Point--They surrender--Close of Rebellion--Proceedings of Court-Martial--Execution of Drummond--His Character--Mrs. Afra Behn--Richard Lawrence--His Character.
UPON Bacon's death, toward the end of 1676, the exact date of which can hardly be ascertained, he was succeeded by his lieutenant-general, Joseph Ingram, (whose real name was said to be Johnson,) who had lately arrived in Virginia. Ingram, supported by George Wakelet, or Walklett, his major-general, who was very young, Langston, Richard Lawrence, and their adherents, took possession of West Point, at the head of York River, fortified it, and made it their place of arms. West Point, or West's Point, so called from the family name of Lord Delaware, was at one time known as "De la War," and is so laid down on John Henry's Map, dated 1770. There is still extant there[313:A] a ruinous house of stone-marl, which was probably occupied by Ingram and his confederates. A bake-oven serves to strengthen the conjecture.
As soon as Berkley heard of Bacon's death, he sent over Robert Beverley, with a party, in a sloop to York River, where they captured Colonel Hansford and some twenty soldiers, at the house where Colonel Reade had lived, which appears to have been at or near where Yorktown now stands. Hansford was taken to Accomac, tried, and condemned to be hanged, and was the first native of Virginia that perished in that ignominious form, and in America the first martyr that fell in defending the rights of the people. He was described by Sir William Berkley as "one Hansford, a valiant stout man, and a most resolved rebel." When he came to the place of execution, distant about a mile from the place of his confinement, he appeared well resolved to bear his fate, complaining only of the manner of his death. Neither during his trial before the court-martial, nor afterwards, did he supplicate any favor, save that "he might be shot like a soldier, and not hanged like a dog;" but he was told that he was condemned not as a soldier, but as a rebel. During the short respite allowed him after his sentence, he professed repentance and contrition for all the sins of his past life, but refused to acknowledge what was charged against him as rebellion, to be one of them; desiring the people present to take notice that "he died a loyal subject and lover of his country, and that he had never taken up arms but for the destruction of the Indians, who had murdered so many Christians." His execution took place on the 13th of November, 1676.[314:A]
Captain Wilford, Captain Farloe, and several others of less note, were put to death in Accomac. Wilford, younger son of a knight who had lost his estate and life in defence of Charles the First, had taken refuge in Virginia, where he became an Indian interpreter, in which capacity he was very serviceable to Bacon. Farloe had been made an officer by Bacon, upon the recommendation of Sir William Berkley, or some of the council. He was a mathematical scholar, and of a peaceable disposition, and his untimely end excited much commiseration. Major Cheesman died in prison, probably from ill usage. His wife took to herself the entire blame for his having joined Bacon, and on her bended knees implored Sir William Berkley to put her to death in his stead. The governor answered by applying to her an epithet of infamy. Several other prisoners came to their death in prison in the same way with Cheesman.
Sir William Berkley now repaired to York River with four merchant-ships, two or three sloops, and one hundred and fifty men.[314:B] According to another account,[314:C] he sent Colonel Ludwell with part of his forces to York River, while he himself with the rest repaired to Jamestown; but this appears to be erroneous. Sir William proclaimed a general pardon, excepting certain persons named, especially Lawrence and Drummond. Greenspring, the governor's residence, still held out, being garrisoned with a hundred men under a captain Drew, previously a miller, the approaches barricaded, and three pieces of cannon planted. A party of one hundred and twenty, dispatched by the governor to surprise at night a guard of about thirty men and boys, under Major Whaley, at Colonel Bacon's house on Queen's Creek, were defeated, with the loss of their commander, named Farrel. Colonel Bacon and Colonel Ludwell were present at this affair. Major Lawrence Smith, with six hundred Gloucester men, was likewise defeated by Ingram at Colonel Pate's house, Smith saving himself by flight, and his men being all made prisoners. The officer next in command under Smith was a minister. Captain Couset with a party being sent against Raines, who headed the insurgents on the south side of James River, Raines was killed, and his men captured.
Meanwhile Ingram, Wakelet, and their companions in arms, foraged with impunity on the estates of the loyalists, and bade defiance to the aged governor. They defended themselves against the assaults of Ludwell and others with such resolution and gallantry, that Berkley, fatigued and exhausted, at length sent, by Captain Grantham, a complaisant letter to Wakelet--or, as some say, to Ingram--offering an amnesty, on condition of surrender. This was agreed to, and in reward for his submission, Berkley presented to Wakelet all the Indian plunder deposited at West Point. Greenspring was also surrendered by Drew upon terms offered by Sir William Berkley. A court-martial was held on board of a vessel in York River, January the 11th, 1676-7.[315:A] Four of the insurgents were condemned by this court: one of them, by name Young, had, according to Sir William Berkley, held a commission under General Monk long before he declared for the king; another, a carpenter, who had formerly been a servant of the governor, but had been made a colonel in Bacon's army; one, Hall, was a clerk of a county court, but, by his writings, "more useful to the rebels than forty armed men."
When West Point was surrendered, Lawrence and Drummond were at the Brick-house in New Kent, on the opposite side of the river. On the nineteenth day of January, Drummond was taken in the Chickahominy Swamp, half famished, and on the following day was brought in a prisoner to Sir William Berkley, who was then on board of a vessel at Colonel Bacon's, on Queen's Creek. The governor, who, through personal hostility, had vowed that Drummond should not live an hour after he fell into his power, upon hearing of his arrival, immediately went on shore and saluted him with a courtly bow, saying, "Mr. Drummond, you are very _un_welcome; I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour." He replied, "What your honor pleases." A court-martial was immediately held, in time of peace, at the house of James Bray, Esq., whither the prisoner was conveyed in irons. He was stripped; and a ring--a pledge of domestic affection--was torn from his finger before his conviction; he was condemned without any charge being alleged, and although he had never borne arms; and he was not permitted to defend himself. Condemned at one o'clock, he was hurried away to execution on a gibbet at four o'clock, at Middle Plantation, with one John Baptista, "a common Frenchman, that had been very bloody." Drummond was a sedate Scotch gentleman, who had been governor of the infant colony of North Carolina, of estimable character, unsullied integrity, and signal ability. He had rendered himself extremely obnoxious to the governor's hatred by the lively concern which he had always evinced in the public grievances. Sir William Berkley mentions him as "one Drummond, a Scotchman, that we all suppose was the original cause of the whole rebellion." When afterwards the petition of his widow, Sarah Drummond, depicting the cruel treatment of her husband, was read in the king's council in England, the lord chancellor, Finch, said: "I know not whether it be lawful to wish a person alive, otherwise I could wish Sir William Berkley so, to see what could be answered to such barbarity; but he has answered it before this."[317:A]
Mrs. Afra Behn celebrated Bacon's Rebellion in a tragi-comedy, entitled "The Widow Ranter, or the History of Bacon in Virginia." Dryden honored it with a prologue. The play failed on the stage, and was published in 1690; there is a copy of it in the British Museum.[317:B] It sets historical truth at defiance, and is replete with coarse humor and indelicate wit. It is probable that Sarah Drummond may have been intended by "The Widow Ranter." It appears that one or two expressions in the Declaration of Independence occur in this old play.
On the 24th of January, 1677, six other insurgents were condemned to death at Greenspring, and executed. Henry West was banished for seven years, and his estate confiscated, save five pounds allowed him to pay his passage. William West and John Turner, sentenced to death at the same time, escaped from prison. William Rookings, likewise sentenced, died in prison. Richard Lawrence, with four companions, disappeared from the frontier, proceeding on horseback and armed, through a deep snow, preferring to perish in the wilderness rather than to share Drummond's fate. Lawrence was educated at Oxford, and for wit, learning, and sobriety, was equalled by few there. He had been one of the commissioners for adjusting the boundary line between Maryland and Virginia in 1663. He had been defrauded of a handsome estate by Berkley's corrupt partiality in behalf of a favorite. The rebellion, as it was called, was by most people mainly attributed to Lawrence; and it is said that he had before thrown out intimations that he hoped to find means by which he not only should be able to repair his own losses, but also see the country relieved from the governor's "avarice and French despotic modes." Lawrence had married a rich widow, who kept a large house of entertainment at Jamestown, which gave him an extensive influence. Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., probably had lodged at his house when search was made for him on the morning of his escape. The author of T. M.'s Account says: "But Mr. Bacon was too young, too much a stranger there, and of a disposition too precipitate, to manage things to that length those were carried, had not thoughtful Mr. Lawrence been at the bottom."
FOOTNOTES:
[313:A] 1847.
[314:A] Ingram's Proceedings, 33; Force's Hist. Tracts, i.
[314:B] T. M. and Mrs. Cotton.
[314:C] In Va. Gazette.
[315:A] Consisting of the Right Honorable Sir William Berkley, Knight, Governor and Captain-General of Virginia; Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Colonel William Clayborne, Colonel Thomas Ballard, Colonel Southy Littleton, Colonel Philip Ludwell, Lieutenant-Colonel John West, Colonel Augustine Warner, Major Lawrence Smith, Major Robert Beverley, Captain Anthony Armistead, Colonel Matthew Kemp, and Captain Daniel Jenifer.
[317:A] Morrison's Letter, in Burk, ii. 268.
[317:B] Thomas H. Wynne, Esq., of Richmond, who is laudably curious in matters connected with Virginia history, has a copy of this play, and I have been indebted to him for the use of that and several other rare books.
Chapter XXXVIII
1677.
Arrival of an English Regiment--The Royal Commissioners-- Punishment of Rebels--Execution of Giles Bland--Commissioners investigate the Causes of the Rebellion--Seize the Assembly's Journals--Number of Persons executed--Cruel Treatment of Prisoners--Bacon's Laws repealed--Act of Pardon--Exceptions-- Singular Penalties--Evaded by the Courts--Many of Bacon's Laws re-enacted--Berkley recalled--Succeeded by Jeffreys--Sir William Berkley's Death--Notice of his Life and Writings--His Widow.
ON the 29th day of January, 1677, a fleet arrived within the capes, from England, under command of Admiral Sir John Berry, or Barry, with a regiment of soldiers commanded by Colonel Herbert Jeffreys and Colonel Morrison. Sir William Berkley held an interview with them at Kiquotan, on board of the Bristol; and these three were associated in a commission to investigate the causes of the late commotions and to restore order. They were instructed to offer a reward of three hundred pounds to any one who should arrest Bacon, who was to be taken by "all ways of force, or design." And the other colonies were commanded by the king not to aid or conceal him; and it was ordered, in case of his capture, that he should be brought to trial here; or, if his popularity should render it expedient, be sent to England for trial and punishment. They were authorized to pardon all who would duly take the oath of obedience, and give security for their good behavior. Freedom was to be offered to servants and slaves who would aid in suppressing the revolt.[319:A] The same measure had been before adopted by the Long Parliament, and was resorted to a century afterwards by Governor Dunmore. It is the phenomenon of historical pre-existence. The general court and the assembly having now met, several more of Bacon's adherents were convicted by a civil tribunal held at Greenspring, and put to death--most of them men of competent fortune and respectable character. Among them was Giles Bland, whose friends in England, it was reported, had procured his pardon to be sent over with the fleet; but if so, it availed him nothing. It was indeed whispered that he was executed under private orders brought from England, the Duke of York having declared, with an oath, that "Bacon and Bland shall die." Bland was convicted March eighth, and executed on the fifteenth, at Bacon's Trench, near Jamestown, with another prisoner, Robert Jones. Three others were put to death on another day at the same place. Anthony Arnold was hung on the fifteenth of March, in chains, at West Point. Two others suffered capitally on the same day, but at what place does not appear, probably in their own counties.[320:A]
In the month of April, Secretary Ludwell wrote to Coventry, the English secretary of state, "that the grounds of this rebellion have not proceeded from any real fault in the government, but rather from the lewd disposition of desperate fortunes lately sprung up among them, which easily seduced the willing minds of the people from their allegiance, in the vain hopes of taking the country wholly out of his majesty's hands into their own. Bacon never intended more by the prosecution of the Indian war than as a covert to his villanies."
The commissioners, who assisted in the trial of these prisoners, now proceeded to inquire into the causes of the late distractions; they sat at Swan's Point. The insurgents, who comprised the great body of the people of Virginia, had found powerful friends among the people of England, and in parliament; and the commissioners discountenanced the excesses of Sir William Berkley, and the loyalists, and invited the planters in every quarter to bring in their grievances without fear. Jeffreys, one of the commissioners, was about to succeed Governor Berkley. In their zeal for investigation the commissioners seized the journals of the assembly; and the burgesses in October, 1677, demanded satisfaction for this indignity, declaring that such a seizure could not have been authorized even by an order under the great seal, because "they found that such a power had never been exercised by the king of England"--an explicit declaration of the legislative independence of the colony. Their language was stigmatized by Charles the Second as seditious.[321:A]
The number of persons executed was twenty-three,[321:B] of whom twelve were condemned by court-martial. The jails were crowded with prisoners, and in the general consternation many of the inhabitants were preparing to leave the country. During eight months Virginia had suffered civil war, devastation, executions, and the loss of one hundred thousand pounds,--so violent was the effort of nature to throw off the malady of despotism and misrule. Charles the Second, in October, issued two proclamations, authorizing Berkley to pardon all except Nathaniel Bacon, Jr.; and afterwards another, declaring Sir William's of February, 1677, not conformable to his instructions, in excepting others besides Bacon from pardon, and abrogating it. Yet the king's commissioners assisted in the condemnation of several of the prisoners. An act of pardon, under the great seal, brought over by Lord Culpepper, was afterwards unanimously passed by the assembly in June, 1680, and several persons are excepted in it who were included in Sir William's "bloody bill" in February, 1677.[321:C]
The people complained to the commissioners of the illegal seizing of their estates by the governor and his royalist supporters; and of their being imprisoned after submitting themselves upon the governor's proclamation of pardon and indemnity; and of being compelled to pay heavy fines and compositions by threats of being brought to trial, which was in every instance tantamount to conviction. Berkley and some of the royalists that sat on the trial of the prisoners, were forward in impeaching, accusing, and reviling them--accusing and condemning, both at once. Sir William Berkley caused Drummond's small plantation to be seized upon and given to himself by his council, removing and embezzling the personal property, and thus compelling his widow, with her children, to fly from her home, and wander in the wilderness and woods until they were well-nigh reduced to starvation, when relieved by the arrival of the commissioners. At length the assembly, in an address to the governor, deprecated any further sanguinary punishments, and he was prevailed upon, reluctantly, to desist. All the acts of the assembly of June, 1676, called "Bacon's Laws," were repealed, as well by the order and proclamation of King Charles, as also by act of the assembly held at Greenspring, in February, 1677.[322:A]
The assembly granted indemnity and pardon for all acts committed since the 1st of April, 1676, excepting Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., and about fifty others, including certain persons deceased, executed, escaped, and banished. The principal persons excepted were Cheesman, Hunt, Hansford, Wilford, Carver, Drummond, Crewes, Farloe, Hall, William and Henry West, Lawrence, Bland, Whaley, Arnold, Ingram, Wakelet, Scarburgh, and Sarah, wife of Thomas Grindon. Twenty were attainted of high treason, and their estates confiscated. The provisoes of the act virtually left the whole power of punishment still in the hands of the governor and council. Minor punishments were inflicted on others; some were compelled to sue for pardon on their knees, with a rope about the neck; others fined, disfranchised, or banished. These penalties did not meet with the approbation of the people, and were in several instances evaded by the connivance of the courts. John Bagwell and Thomas Gordon, adjudged to appear at Rappahannock Court with halters about their necks, were allowed to appear with "small tape;" in the same county William Potts wore "a Manchester binding," instead of a halter.
The assembly, in accordance with one of Bacon's laws, declared Indian prisoners slaves, and their property lawful prize. An order was made for building a new state-house at Tindall's (Gloucester) Point, on the north side of York River, but it was never carried into effect. Many of the acts of this session are almost exact copies of "Bacon's Laws," the titles only being altered--a conclusive proof of the abuses and usurpations of those in power, and of the merits of acts passed by those stigmatized and punished as rebels and traitors. Such likewise was the conduct of the British Parliament in relation to the legislation of the Commonwealth of England. The fourth of May was appointed a fast-day, and August the twenty-second a day of thanksgiving.
Sir William Berkley, worn down with agitations which his age was unequal to, and in feeble health, being recalled by the king, ceased to be governor on the 27th of April, 1677, and returned in the fleet to London, leaving Colonel Herbert Jeffreys in his place, who was sworn into office on the same day. His commission was dated November the 11th, 1676--the twenty-eighth year of Charles the Second. In July, 1675, Lord Culpepper had been appointed governor-in-chief of Virginia, but he did not arrive till the beginning of 1680; had he come over when first appointed, it might have prevented Bacon's Rebellion.
Sir William Berkley died on the thirteenth of July, 1677, of a broken heart, as some relate,[323:A] without ever seeing the king, having been confined to his chamber from the day of his arrival. According to others, King Charles expressed his approbation of his conduct, and the kindest regard for him, and made frequent inquiry respecting his health.[323:B] Others again, on the contrary, report that the king said of him: "That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father."[323:C] Sir William Berkley was a native of London, and educated at Merton College, Oxford, of which he was afterwards a fellow, and in 1629 was made Master of Arts. He made the tour of Europe in the year 1630. He held the place of governor of Virginia from 1639 to 1651, and from 1659 to 1677--a period of thirty years, a term equalled by no other governor of the colony. He published a tragi-comedy, "The Lost Lady," in 1639, the year in which he came first to Virginia. Pepys, in his Diary, mentions seeing it acted. Sir William published also, in 1663, "A Discourse and View of Virginia." He was buried at Twickenham, since illustrated by the genius of Pope. Sir William Berkley left no children. By a will, dated May the 2d, 1676, he bequeathed his estate to his widow. He declares himself to have been under no obligation whatever to any of his kindred except his sister, Mrs. Jane Davies, (of whom he appears to have been fond,) and his brother, Lord Berkley. Sir William married the widow of Samuel Stephens, of Warwick County, Virginia. She, after Sir William's death, was sued by William Drummond's widow for trespass, in taking from her land a quantity of corn, and in spite of a strenuous defence, a verdict was found against the defendant. In 1680 she intermarried with Colonel Philip Ludwell, of Rich Neck, but still retained the title of "Dame (or Lady) Frances Berkley."
Samuel Stephens was the son of Dame Elizabeth Harvey (widow of Sir John Harvey) by a former marriage.[324:A]
It does not appear when Colonel William Clayborne, first of the name in Virginia, died, or where he was buried, but probably in the County of New Kent. There is a novel entitled "Clayborne the Rebel."[324:B]
Colonel William Clayborne, Jr., eldest son of the above mentioned, was probably the one appointed (1676) to command a fort at Indiantown Landing, in New Kent, together with Major Lyddal,[324:C] as the father was probably then too old for that post. Some suppose also that it was the son that sat on the trial of the rebels. A certificate of the valor of William Clayborne, Jr., is recorded in King William County Court-house, signed by Sir William Berkley, dated in March, 1677, attested by Nathaniel Bacon, Sir Philip Ludwell, Ralph Wormley, and Richard Lee.
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Clayborne, only brother of William Clayborne, Jr., lies buried not far from West Point, in King William County. He was killed by an Indian arrow which wounded him in the foot. It appears that each of the sons of Secretary Clayborne had a son named Thomas. Colonel Thomas Clayborne, son of Captain Thomas Clayborne, is said to have married three times, and to have been father of twenty-seven children. One of his daughters married a General Phillips of the British army, and is said to have been the mother of Colonel Ralph Phillips, of the British army, who fell at Waterloo, and of the distinguished Irish orator who died recently. Another son, William Clayborne, married a Miss Leigh, of Virginia, and was father of William Charles Cole Clayborne, Governor of Louisiana, and of General Ferdinand Leigh Clayborne, late of Mississippi. He assisted General Jackson in planning the battle of New Orleans. The widow of this Governor Clayborne married John R. Grymes, Esq., the eminent New Orleans lawyer. And a daughter of the governor married John H. B. Latrobe, Esq., of Baltimore.
Colonel Augustine Clayborne, son of Colonel Thomas Clayborne, was appointed clerk of Sussex County Court in the year 1754, by William Adair, secretary of the colony. His son, Buller Clayborne, was aid-de-camp to General Lincoln, and is said to have received a wound while interposing himself between the general and a party of British soldiers. Mary Herbert, a sister of Buller Clayborne, married an uncle of General William Henry Harrison. Herbert Clayborne, eldest son of Colonel Augustine Clayborne, married Mary, daughter of Buller Herbert, of Puddledock, near Petersburg. Puddledock is the name of a street in London. Herbert Augustine Clayborne was second son of Herbert Clayborne, of Elson Green, King William County, and Mary Burnet, eldest daughter of William Burnet Browne, of Elson Green, and before of Salem, Massachusetts.
The Honorable William Browne, of Massachusetts, married Mary Burnet, daughter of William Burnet, (Governor of New York and of Massachusetts,) and Mary, daughter of Dean Stanhope, of Canterbury. William Burnet was eldest son of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, and Mrs. Mary Scott, his second wife. Thus it appears that Herbert Clayborne married a descendant of Bishop Burnet.
FOOTNOTES:
[319:A] Chalmers' Annals, 336.
[320:A] Burk, ii. 255.
[321:A] Chalmers' Revolt, i. 163, and Annals, 337.
[321:B] Hening, ii. 370.
[321:C] Hening, ii. 366, 428, 458.
[322:A] Hening, ii. 365.
[323:A] Chalmers' Introduction, i. 164.
[323:B] Beverley, B. i. 79.
[323:C] T. M.'s Account.
[324:A] Mass. Gen. and Antiq. Register for 1847, p. 348.
[324:B] By William H. Carpenter, Esq., of Maryland. Published in 1846.
[324:C] Hening, ii. 526.
Chapter XXXIX
1677-1681.
Failure of the Charter--Sir William Berkley's Proclamation revoked--Ludwell's Quarrel with Jeffreys--Jeffreys dying is succeeded by Sir Henry Chicheley--Culpepper, Governor-in-Chief, arrives--His Administration--He returns to England by way of Boston.
THE agents of Virginia, in 1675, had strenuously solicited the grant of a new charter, and their efforts, though long fruitless, seemed at length about to be crowned with success, when the news of Bacon's rebellion furnished the government with a new pretext for violating its engagements. By the report of the committee for plantations, adopted by the king in council, and twice ordered to be passed into a new charter under the great seal, it was provided, "that no imposition or taxes shall be laid or imposed upon the inhabitants and proprietors there, but by the common consent of the governor, council, and burgesses, as hath been heretofore used," reserving, however, to parliament the right to lay duties upon commodities shipped from the colony. The news of the rebellion frustrated this scheme; the promised charter slept in the Hamper[326:A] office; and the one actually sent afterwards was meagre and unsatisfactory. Colonel Jeffreys, successor to Berkley, effected a treaty of peace with the Indians, each town agreeing to pay three arrows for their land, and twenty beaver skins for protection, every year. He convened an assembly at the house of Captain Otho Thorpe, at Middle Plantation, in October, 1677, being the twenty-ninth year of Charles the Second. William Traverse was speaker, and Robert Beverley clerk. The session lasted for one month. According to instructions given to Sir William Berkley, dated in November, 1676, the governor was no longer obliged to call an assembly yearly, but only once in two years, and the session was limited to fourteen days, unless the governor should see good cause to continue it beyond that time; and the members of the assembly were to be elected only by freeholders. During this session regulations were adopted for the Indian trade, and fairs appointed for the sale of Indian commodities; but the natives being suspicious of innovations, these provisions soon became obsolete.
In 1677 Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., by a warrant from the treasury in England, was appointed auditor of the public accounts. At this time Colonel Norwood was treasurer, but the governor and council, from motives of economy, united his office with that of auditor.
It has before been mentioned that the king, by proclamation in 1677, revoked and abrogated Sir William Berkley's proclamation of February of the same year, as containing "an exception and exclusion from pardon of divers and sundry persons in his said proclamation named, for which he hath no ground or authority from our foresaid proclamation, the same being free and without exception of any person besides the said Nathaniel Bacon, who should submit themselves according to the tenor of our said proclamation."[327:A]
This appears to be unjust to the governor; for the words of the king's proclamation of October are: "And we do by these presents give and grant full power and authority to you, our said governor, for us and in our name to pardon, release, and forgive unto all such our subjects (other than the said Nathaniel Bacon) as you shall think fit and convenient for our service, all treasons, felonies," etc., evidently investing the governor with discretionary powers. The capitulation agreed upon with Ingram and Walklet, at West Point, appears to have been violated by Governor Berkley and the assembly. Colonel Philip Ludwell, alleging that he had suffered loss by Walklet's incursions, sued him in New Kent for damages. The defendant appealing to Jeffreys, he granted him a protection. Whereupon, Ludwell declared that "the governor, Jeffreys, was a worse rebel than Bacon, for he had broke the laws of the country, which Bacon never did; that he was perjured in delaying or preventing the execution of the laws, contrary to his oath of governor; that he was not worth a groat in England; and that if every pitiful little fellow with a periwig that came in governor to this country had liberty to make the laws, as this had done, his children, nor no man's else, could be safe in the title or estate left them." Jeffreys having laid these charges and criminations before the council, they submitted the case to a jury who found Ludwell guilty. The matter was referred to the king in council; and in the mean while the accused was compelled to give security in the penalty of a thousand pounds, to abide the determination of the case, and five hundred for his good behavior to the governor.
Westmoreland was the only county that declared that it had no grievances to complain of, and the sincerity of this declaration may well be doubted. Accomac claimed as a reward for her loyalty an exemption from taxation for a period of twenty years. A letter, bearing date December the 27th, 1677, addressed by the king to Jeffreys, informed him that Lord Culpepper had been appointed governor, but that while he (Jeffreys) continued to perform the duties of the office, he should be no loser, and stating the arrangement which had been made as to the payment of their salaries. Jeffreys dying in December, 1678, was succeeded by the aged Sir Henry Chicheley, deputy governor, who entered upon the duties on the thirteenth of that month, his commission being dated February 28th, 1674.
Thomas, Lord Culpepper, Baron of Thorsway, had been appointed in July, 1675, governor of Virginia for life--an able, but artful and covetous man.[328:A] He had been one of the commissioners for plantations some years before. He was disposed to look upon his office as a sinecure, but being reproved in December, 1679, by the king for remaining so long in England, he came over to the colony in 1680, and was sworn into office on the tenth of May. He found Virginia tranquil. He brought over several bills ready draughted in England to be passed by the assembly, it being "intended to introduce here the modes of Ireland."[329:A] His lordship being invested with full powers of pardon, found it the more easy to obtain from the people whatever he asked. After procuring the enactment of several popular acts, including one of indemnity and oblivion, he managed to have the impost of two shillings on every hogshead of tobacco made perpetual, and instead of being accounted for to the assembly, as formerly, to be disposed of as his majesty might think fit. Culpepper, notwithstanding the impoverished condition of the colony, contrived to enlarge his salary from one thousand pounds to upwards of two thousand, besides perquisites amounting to eight hundred more. After the rebellion, the governor was empowered to suspend a councillor from his place. It was also ordered, that in case of the death or removal of the governor, the president, or oldest member of the council, with the assistance of five members of that body, should administer the government until another appointment should be made by the crown.[329:B]
In the year 1680 Charles the Second granted to William Blathwayt the place of surveyor and auditor-general of all his revenues in America, with a salary of five hundred pounds to be paid out of the same, Virginia's share of the salary being one hundred pounds.
In August of this year, Lord Culpepper returned to England, by way of Boston, in the ship "Betty," belonging to Jervis, who married the widow of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., (a cousin of Culpepper,) Jervis being also a passenger. Elizabeth, or Betty, was the Christian name of Bacon's widow. The vessel having run aground in the night, his lordship landed on the wild New England shore, one hundred and thirty miles from Boston, with two servants, each carrying a gun, and made his way twenty miles to Sandwich, where he was furnished with horses and a guide, and so reached Boston, where the Betty arrived ten days thereafter. In a letter, dated September the twentieth, addressed to his sister, he mentions that he has with him, "John Polyn, the cook, the page, the great footman, and the little one that embroiders." The Betty conveyed soldiers, servants, plate, goods, and furniture. Culpepper was received at Boston by twelve companies of militia; and was well pleased with the place, "finding no difference between it and Old England, but only want of company."[330:A]
Virginia now enjoyed repose, and large crops of tobacco were raised, and the price again fell to a low ebb. The discontents of the planters were aggravated by the act "for cohabitation and encouragement of trade and manufacture," restricting vessels to certain prescribed ports where the government desired to establish towns.
In the year 1680 Charleston was founded, the metropolis of the infant colony of South Carolina. By the grant of Pennsylvania, made by Charles the Second to William Penn, dated in March, 1681, Virginia lost another large portion of her territory.
FOOTNOTES:
[326:A] Hening, ii. 531; Hamper, i.e. Hanaper.
[327:A] The direction of this proclamation is as follows: "To our trusty and well-beloved Herbert Jeffreys, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor, and the council of our colony and plantation of Virginia in the West Indies."
[328:A] Account of Va. in Mass. Hist. Coll., first series, v. 142.
[329:A] Chalmers' Introduction, i. 164.
[329:B] In 1678 the vestry at Middle Plantation determined to erect a brick church, the former one being of wood.
[330:A] Va. Hist. Reg., iii. 189.