This interesting dialogue reveals the nature of the situation into which Bacon had drifted. As the days went by, he could hardly fail to see that the king was more likely to take Berkeley’s view of the case than his. According to that view the deliverer of Virginia from the Indians was a proscribed rebel who must “fly or hang for it.” There was little hope for Bacon in “seasonable submission.” He would, therefore, consider it safer and better for Virginia to hold out until the king could be induced to take Bacon’s view of the case; or failing this, it might still be possible to wear out the king’s troops and achieve independence for Virginia, with the aid of the discontented people in the neighbouring colonies. These were the speculations of a man whom circumstances were making desperate, and the effect which they wrought upon John Goode was likely to be repeated with many who had hitherto loyally followed his fortunes.
Thus far Bacon’s fighting had been against Indians. His quarrel with the governor had been confined to fulminations. Now the two men were to come into armed collision and give Virginia a brief taste of civil war. Bacon sent Giles Bland, “a gentleman of an active and stirring disposition,” with four armed vessels, to arrest Berkeley in Accomac, but Colonel Philip Ludwell, aided by treachery, succeeded in capturing Bland with his flotilla. Bland was put in irons, and one ship’s captain was hanged for an example. Meanwhile Berkeley was enlisting troops by promising as rewards the estates of all the gentlemen who had taken the oath at Middle Plantation. He also sought to win over the indentured servants of gentlemen fighting under Bacon by promising to give them the estates of their masters. Many longshoremen also were enrolled. Having in these ways scraped together about 1,000 men, the governor sailed up the river to Jamestown and took possession of the place, from which Lawrence and Drummond fled in the nick of time.
When this news reached Bacon it found him at West Point, with the work of subduing the red men practically finished. Not four months had yet elapsed since the first attack on his plantation. It was clearly no ordinary young man that had done that summer’s arduous work. Now he advanced upon Jamestown, and made his headquarters in his adversary’s comfortable mansion at Green Spring. Sir William had thrown an earthwork across the neck of the promontory, and Bacon began building a parallel. It is said that he compelled a number of ladies in white aprons—wives of leading Berkeleyans—to stand upon the works, and sent a message to the governor not to fire upon these guardian angels. “The poor gentlewomen were mightily astonished,” says the chronicle, “and neither were their bands void of amazement at this subtle invention.”54 The incident is an ugly spot in that brief career. One would gladly disbelieve the story, but our contemporary authority for it seems unimpeachable, and is friendly withal to Bacon.
The speech made by the young commander to his men at Green Spring before the final assault is a good specimen of his eloquence: “Gentlemen and Fellow Soldiers, how I am transported with gladness to find you thus unanimous, bold and daring, brave and gallant. You have the victory before the fight, the conquest before the battle.... Your hardiness will invite all the country along as we march to come in and second you.... The ignoring of their actions cannot but so much reflect upon their spirit, as they will have no courage left to fight you. I know you have the prayers and well wishes of all the people in Virginia, while the others are loaded with their curses. Come on, my hearts of gold; he that dies in the field lies in the bed of honour!”55
The governor’s motley force was indeed no match for these determined men. In the desultory fighting that ensued about Jamestown he was badly defeated and at last fled again to Accomac. Jamestown remained at Bacon’s mercy, and he burned it to the ground, that it might no longer “harbour the rogues.” We are told that Lawrence and Drummond took the lead in this work by applying the torch to their own houses with their own hands. At Green Spring an “oath of fidelity” was drawn up, which was taken voluntarily by many people and forced upon others. Bacon seems now to have shown more severity than formerly in sending men to prison and seizing their property. One deserter he shot, but from bloodthirstiness he was notably free. Among the gentlemen who suffered most at his hands were Richard Lee and Sir Henry Chichely, who were kept several weeks in prison, Philip and Thomas Ludwell, Nicholas Spencer and Daniel Parke, Robert Beverley and Philip Lightfoot, whose estates were at various times plundered. John Washington and others who were denounced as “delinquents” saw their corn and tobacco, cattle and horses, impressed and carried away. Colonel Augustine Warner, another great-grandfather of George Washington, “was plundered as much as any, and yet speaks little of his losses, though they were very great.”56 Among the sufferers appears “the good Queen of Pamunkey,” who was “driven, out into the wild woods and there almost famished, plundered of all she had, her people taken prisoners and sold; the queen was also robbed of her rich watchcoat for which she had great value, and offered to redeem at any rate.” The next paragraph in the commissioners’ report is delightful: “We could not but present her case to his Majesty, who, though he may not at present so well or readily provide remedies or rewards for the other worthy sufferers, yet since a present of small price may highly oblige and gratify this poor Indian Queen, we humbly supplicate his Majesty to bestow it on her.”
One of the accusations against Bacon was that to him a good Indian meant a dead Indian, so that he did not take the trouble to discriminate between friends and foes. But what shall we say when we find him plundering his own kinsman, the affectionate cousin whose timely warning had once perhaps saved his life? The commissioners report the losses of Nathaniel Bacon the elder, at the hands of his “unnatural kinsman,” as at least £1,000 sterling. The old gentleman was “said to have been a person soe desirous and Industrious to divert the evil consequences of his Rebell kinsman’s proceedings, that at the beginning hee freely proposed and promised to invest him in a considerable part of his Estate in present, and to leave him the Remainder in Reversion after his and his wife’s death, offering him other advantages upon condicion hee would lay downe his Armes, and become a good subject to his Majestie, that that colony might not be disturbed or destroyed, nor his owne ffamily stained with soe foule a Blott.”
At the burning of Jamestown the end of Bacon and of his rebellion was not far off. “This Prosperous Rebell, concluding now the day his owne, marcheth with his army into Gloster County, intending to visit all the northern part of Virginia ... and to settle affairs after his own measures.... But before he could arrive to the Perfection of his designes (wch none but the eye of omniscience could Penetrate) Providence did that which noe other hand durst (or at least did) doe and cut him off.” Malarious Jamestown wreaked its own vengeance upon its destroyer. When Bacon marched away from it he was already ill with fever, and on the first day of October, at the house of a friend in Gloucester, he “surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands of the grim and all-conquering Captain, Death.” Accusations of poison were raised, but it is not likely that any other poison was concerned than impure water and marsh gases. The funeral was conducted with extraordinary secrecy. If a sudden turn of fortune should put Berkeley in possession of the body, he would surely hang it on a gibbet; so thoughtful Mr. Lawrence took measures to prevent any such indignity. One chronicler darkly hints that Bacon’s remains were buried in some very secret place in the woods, but another mentions stones laid in the coffin, which suggests that it was sunk beneath the waves of York River, as Soto was buried in the Mississippi and mighty Alaric in the Busento.
A strange meteoric career was that of young Bacon, begun and ended as it was in the space of about twenty weeks. On the news of his death the rebellion collapsed with surprising suddenness. His followers soon began giving in their submissions to the governor; the few that held out were dispersed or captured. Although it was not until January that the work of suppression was regarded as complete, yet that work consisted chiefly in catching fugitives. In January an English fleet arrived, with a regiment of troops, and a commission for investigating the affairs of Virginia. The commissioners were Sir John Berry, Sir Herbert Jeffries, and Colonel Francis Morison, three worthy and fair-minded gentlemen. They found nothing left for soldiers to do. They had authority for trying rebels, but in that business Berkeley had been beforehand. Soon after Bacon’s death one of his best officers, Colonel Thomas Hansford, was captured by Robert Beverley, and carried over to Accomac. He asked no favour save that he might be “shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog,” but this was not granted. Hansford has been called “the first native martyr to American liberty.”57 Soon afterward two captains were hanged, and the affair of Major Edward Cheesman seems to have occurred while Berkeley was still at Accomac. It is the foulest incident recorded in Berkeley’s career. When Cheesman was brought before him, the governor fiercely demanded, “Why did you engage in Bacon’s designs?” Before the prisoner could answer, his young wife stepped forward and said, “It was my provocations that made my husband join the cause; but for me he had never done what he has done.” Then falling on her knees before the governor, she implored him that she might be hanged as the guilty one instead of her husband.58 The old wretch’s answer was an insult so atrocious that the royalist chronicler can hardly abide it. “His Honour” must have been beside himself with anger and could not have meant what he said; for no woman could have “so small an affection for her husband as to dishonour him by her dishonesty, and yet retain such a degree of love, that rather than he should be hanged she will be content to submit her own life to the sentence.” Perhaps the governor’s thirst for vengeance was satisfied by his ruffian speech, for Major Cheesman was not put to death, but remanded to jail, where he died of illness.
After Berkeley had occupied the York peninsula little work remained for him but that of the hangman. Not all the leaders were easy to find. Richard Lawrence, thoughtful as always, escaped from the scene. “The last account of him,” says T. M., “was from an uppermost plantation, whence he and four other desperadoes, with horses, pistols, etc., marched away in a snow ankle-deep.” Here the scholarly rebel vanishes from our sight, and whether he perished in the wilderness or made his way to some safer country, we do not know. On a cold day in January his friend Drummond, hiding in White Oak Swamp was found and taken to the governor. “Aha!” cried the old man, with a low bow, “you are very welcome. I would rather see you just now than any other man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour!” “What your honour pleases,” said the undaunted Scotchman. He was strung up that afternoon, but not until his wife’s ring had been pulled from his finger, for rapacity vied with ferocity in the governor’s breast. Before the end of January some twenty more had been hanged. An election was then going on, and the newly-elected assembly called upon Berkeley to desist from this carnival of blood. “If we had let him alone,” said Presley, the venerable member for Northampton, to T. M., the member for Stafford, “he would have hanged half the country!”
The governor’s rage had carried him too far. His conduct did not meet with the approval of the commissioners, whose report on the disturbances is written in a fair and impartial spirit. He treated the commissioners with crazy rudeness. It is said that when they had called on him at Green Spring and were about to return to their boat on the river, he offered them his state-coach with the hangman for driver! whereupon they preferred to walk to the landing-place. Fresh seeds of contention were sown, to bear fruit in the future. The complaints of Drummond’s widow and others found their way to the throne. “As I live,” quoth the king, “the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father.” In the spring the royal order for Berkeley’s removal arrived, and on April 27 he sailed for England, apparently expecting to return, for he left his wife at Green Spring. Sir Herbert Jeffries, one of the commissioners, succeeded him with a special commission as lieutenant governor. Berkeley’s departure was joyfully celebrated with bonfires and salutes of cannon. He cherished hopes of justifying himself in a personal interview with the king, but the interview was delayed until, about the middle of July, the old man fell sick and died. It was believed that his death was caused by vexation and chagrin. A few weeks afterward the other two commissioners, Sir John Berry and Colonel Morison, returned to England; and we are told that one day the late governor’s brother, Lord Berkeley, meeting Sir John Berry in the council chamber, told him “with an angry voice and a Berkeleyan look,” that he and Morison had murdered his brother.59 In October a royal order for the relief of Sarah Drummond declared that her husband “had been sentenced and put to death contrary to the laws of the kingdom.”
Thus ended the first serious and ominous tragedy in the history of the United States, a story preserved for us in many of its details with striking vividness, yet concerning the innermost significance of which we would fain know more than we do. It may fairly be pronounced the most interesting episode in our early history, surpassing in this regard the Leisler affair at New York, which alone can be compared with it for intensity of human interest. As ordinarily told, however, the story of Bacon presents some features that are unintelligible. It is customary to liken the little rebellion of 1676 to the great rebellion of 1776, and we are thus led to contemplate Bacon and Virginia as arrayed against Berkeley and England. In such a view the facts are unduly simplified and strangely distorted. If it were possible thus fully to identify Bacon’s cause with the cause of Virginia, it would become impossible to explain the ease with which his followers were suppressed by Virginians, without any aid from England. But when all the facts are considered, we can see at once that such a result was inevitable.
Careful inspection of the relevant facts will show us that Bacon was contending against four things:—
1. The Indian depredations.
2. The misrule of Sir William Berkeley.
3. The English navigation laws.
4. The tendency toward oligarchical government which had been rapidly growing since the beginning of the great influx of Cavaliers in 1649.
Under the first three heads little need be said. The facts have been generally recognized. It was by Bacon’s zeal and success in suppressing the Indian power that he acquired public favour. As for the peculation and extortion practised or permitted by Berkeley, it cannot for a moment be supposed that such men as John Washington, Richard Lee, etc., were inclined to tolerate or connive at it. As for the navigation laws, it was a common remark, after the oath at Middle Plantation, that now Virginians might look forward hopefully to trading with all countries. It is therefore altogether probable that on all these grounds the public sentiment of Virginia was overwhelmingly on the side of Bacon.
Under the fourth head some explanation is needed, for historians have generally overlooked or disregarded it. One of the most conspicuous facts in the story of Bacon’s rebellion is the fact that a great majority of the wealthiest and most important men in the colony were opposed to him from first to last. The list of those who were pillaged by his followers is largely a list of the names most honoured in Virginia, the great-grandfathers of the illustrious men who were among the foremost in winning independence for the United States and in building up our federal government. It is also largely a list of the names of Cavaliers who had come from England to Virginia since 1649. The political ideas of these men were surely not democratic. If they were devout disbelievers in popular government, the fact is in nowise to their discredit. Popular government is still on its trial in the world, and the last word on the subject has not yet been said. In our day the men who do the most to throw discredit upon it are often those who prate most loudly in its favour; political blatherskites, like the famous “Colonel Yell of Yellville,” whose accounts were sadly delinquent though his heart beat with fervour for his native land. The Cavaliers who came to Virginia were staunch and honourable men who believed—with John Winthrop and Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton—that society is most prosperous when a select portion of the community governs the whole. Such a doctrine seems to me less defensible than the democratic views of Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Herbert Spencer, but it is still entitled to all the courtesies of debate. Two centuries ago it was of course the prevailing doctrine.
In the preceding chapter I pointed out that the period of Cavalier immigration, between 1650 and 1670, was characterized by a rapid increase in the dimensions of landed estates and in the employment of servile labour. The same period witnessed a change of an eminently symptomatic kind in local government. In any state the local institutions are the most vitally important part of the whole political structure. Now, as I have already mentioned,60 the English parish was at an early time reproduced in Virginia, and its authority was exercised by a few chosen men, usually twelve, who constituted a vestry. At first, and until after 1645,61 the vestrymen were elected by the people of the parish, so that they were analogous to the selectmen of New England. A vestry thus elected is called an open vestry. Now soon after the Long Assembly had begun its sessions in 1661, in the fall tide of royalist reaction, we find on its records a statute which transformed the open vestry into a close vestry. In March, 1662, it was enacted that “in case of the death of any vestryman, or his departure out of the parish, ... the minister and vestry make choice of another to supply his room.”62 The speedy effect of this was to dispense with the popular election and to convert the vestry into a self-perpetuating close corporation. When we consider the great powers wielded by the vestry, we realize the importance of this step. The vestry made up the parish budget, apportioned the taxes, and elected the churchwardens, who were in many places the tax-collectors. By its “processioning of the bounds of every person’s land,” the vestry exercised control over the record of land-titles. Its supervision of the counting of tobacco was also a function of no mean importance. The vestry also presented the minister for induction. All the local government not in the hands of the vestry was administered by the county court, which consisted of eight justices appointed by the governor. So that when the people lost the power of electing vestrymen they parted with the only share they had in the local government.63 Nothing was left them except the right to vote for burgesses, and not only was this curtailed in 1670 by a property qualification, but it was of no avail while the Long Assembly lasted, since during those fifteen years there were no elections. That political power should thus rapidly become concentrated in the hands of the leading families was under the circumstances but natural. That the deprivation of suffrage was by many people felt to be a grievance is unquestionable.64 No testimony can outweigh that of the statute book, and two of the notable acts of Bacon’s assembly in June, 1676, were those which restored universal suffrage and the popular election of vestrymen, and limited the terms of service of vestrymen to three years. The first assembly after the rebellion, which met at Green Spring in February, 1677, with Augustine Warner as speaker, declared all the acts of Bacon’s assembly null and void. Then in the course of that year and the three years following several of those wholesome acts were reënacted, especially those which related to exorbitant fees and the misuse of public money. Great pains were taken to guard against extortion and corruption,65 but the provisions concerning vestrymen were not reënacted. A law was passed allowing the freeholders and housekeepers in each parish to elect six “sober and discreet” representatives to sit with the vestry and have equal votes with the vestrymen in assessing the parish taxes; in case the parish should neglect to choose such representatives, or in case they should fail to appear at the time appointed, the vestry was to proceed without them.66 This act seems to have had little effect, and the law of 1662, which created the close vestry, still remained law after more than a century had passed.67 As for the right to vote for burgesses, the royal instructions received from Charles II. in January, 1677, restricted it to “ffreeholders, as being more agreeable to the custome of England, to which you are as nigh as you conveniently can to conforme yourselves.”68 According to the same instructions the assembly was to be called together only once in two years, “unlesse some emergent occasion shall make it necessary;” and it was to sit “ffourteene days ... and noe longer, unlesse you find goode cause to continue it beyond that tyme;” qualifications which could easily be made to defeat the restriction.
The legislation of Bacon’s assembly concerning the suffrage and the vestries proves that the people whom he represented were not in sympathy with the political and social changes which had been growing up since the middle of the century. These enactments were a protest against the increasing tendency toward a more aristocratic type of society. It was, therefore, natural that a large majority of the aristocrats should have been opposed to Bacon. Doubtless they sympathized with his protests against legislative oppression and official corruption, but they did not approve of his levelling schemes. Their language concerning Bacon’s followers shows how they felt about them and toward them. William Sherwood calls them “ye scum of the Country.”69 According to Philip Ludwell, deputy secretary and member of the council, Bacon “gathers about him a Rabble of the basest sort of People, whose Condicion was such, as by a chaunge could not admitt of worse, wth these he begins to stand at Defyance ag’t the Governm’t.”70 Again, “Mr. Bacon had Gotten at severall places about 500 men, whose fortune and Inclinations being equally desperate, were ffit for ye purpose there being not 20 in ye whole Route, but what were Idle & will not worke, or such whose Debaucherie or Ill Husbandry has brought in Debt beyond hopes or thought of payment these are the men that are sett up ffor the Good of ye Countrey; who for ye ease of the poore will have noe taxes paied, though for ye most pt of them, they pay none themselves, would have all magistracie & Governm’nt taken away & sett up one themselves, & to make their Good Intentions more manifest stick not to talk openly of shareing mens Estates among themselves,71 with these (being Drawne together) Mr. Bacon marches speedly toward the towne, etc.”72 Governor Berkeley’s testimony should not be omitted; he wrote to the king in June, “I have above thirty-five years governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters in every respect like to that of Masaniello except their leader.”73 In other words, the rebels were a mere rabble, except their leader, who was not a humble fisherman like the Italian, but a gentleman of high birth and breeding. According to the careful and fair-minded commissioners, Bacon “seduced the Vulgar and most ignorant People (two-thirds of each county being of that Sort) Soe that theire whole hearts and hopes were set now upon” him.74
Allowance for prejudice must of course be made in considering the general statements of hostile witnesses, such as Berkeley and Sherwood and Philip Ludwell. It is quite clear that Bacon’s followers were by no means all of the baser sort. This is distinctly recognized in a letter to the king by Thomas Ludwell and Robert Smith, containing proposals for reducing the rebels. In a certain event, they say, “there will be a speedy separation of the sound parts from the rabble.”75 Here we have an explicit admission that there was a “sound part.” It will be remembered that Drummond had been a colonial governor, and that his house and Lawrence’s were the best in Jamestown. The officers we have met in the story, Hansford and Bland and Cheesman, were men of good family; and among the foremost men in the colony we are told that Colonel George Mason was inclined to sympathize with the insurgents.76 In this he was clearly by no means alone. On the whole, however, there can be no doubt that Bacon’s cause was to a considerable extent the cause of the poor against the rich, of the humble folk against the grandees.
When we take into account this aspect of the case, which has never received the attention it deserves, the whole story becomes consistent and intelligible. The years preceding the rebellion were such as are commonly called “hard times.” People felt poor and saw fortunes made by corrupt officials; the fault was with the Navigation Act and with the debauched civil service of Charles II. and Berkeley. Besides these troubles, which were common to all, the poorer people felt oppressed by taxation in regard to which they were not consulted and for which they seemed to get no service in return.77 The distribution of taxation by polls, equal amounts for rich and for poor, was resented as a cruel injustice.78 The subject of taxation was closely connected with the Indian troubles, for people paid large sums for military defence and nevertheless saw their houses burned and their families massacred. Under these circumstances the sudden appearance of the brave and eloquent Bacon seemed to open the way of salvation. The indomitable queller of Indians could also curb the tyrant. Naturally, along with a more respectable element, the rabble gathered under his standard; it is always the case in revolutions with the men who have little or nothing to lose. It is likewise usual for men with much property at stake to be conservative on such occasions. Philip Ludwell’s statement, that some of the rebels entertained communistic notions, is just what one might have expected. There is always more or less socialist tomfoolery at such times. In some of its aspects there is a resemblance between Bacon’s rebellion and that of Daniel Shays in Massachusetts one hundred and ten years later. But the Massachusetts leader was a weak and silly creature, and his resistance to government had nothing to justify it, though there were palliating circumstances. The course of Bacon, on the other hand, was in the main a justifiable protest against misgovernment, and until after the oath at Middle Plantation a great deal of the sound sentiment in Virginia must have sympathized with him. In the unwillingness of some of the gentlemen present to take the oath, we seem to see the first ebbing of the tide. Evidently there began to be, as Thomas Ludwell had predicted, “a separation of the sound parts from the rabble;” and this appears very distinctly in the defection of Goode about four weeks later.
In the intention of resisting the king’s troops, which thus weakened Bacon’s position, he certainly showed more zeal than judgment. It has the look of the courage that comes from desperation. Had he lived to persist in this course, the policy most likely to strengthen him would have been to make his foremost demand the repeal of the Navigation Act which all Virginians detested and even Berkeley disapproved. But it is not likely that anything could have saved him from defeat and the scaffold. Death seems to have intervened in kindness to him and to Virginia.79
In the early history of our country Bacon must ever remain one of the bright and attractive figures. Our heart is always with the man who boldly stands out against corruption and oppression. To many persons the name of rebel seems fraught with blame and reproach; but the career of mankind so abounds in examples of heroic resistance to intolerable wrongs that to any one familiar with history the name of rebel is often a title of honour. Bacon’s brief career was an episode in the perennial fight against taxation without representation, the ancient abuse of living on other men’s labour. We cannot fail to admire his quick incisiveness, his cool head, his determined courage; and the spectacle of this young Cavalier taking the lead, like Tiberius Gracchus, in a movement for justice and liberty will always make a pleasing picture.
Between the breaking out of Bacon’s rebellion in the summer of 1676 and the Declaration of Independence, the interval was exactly a hundred years. It was for Virginia a century of political education. It prepared her for the great work to come, and it brought her into sympathy more or less effective with other colonies that were struggling with similar political questions, especially with Massachusetts. It was in that same year, 1676, that Charles II. sent Edward Randolph to Boston, to enforce the Navigation Act and to report upon New England affairs in general. This mission of Randolph led to quarrels which resulted in the overthrow of the charter and the sending of royal governors to Massachusetts. From that time forth the legislatures of Massachusetts and Virginia had to contend with similar questions concerning the powers and prerogatives of the royal governors, so that the two colonies kept a close watch upon each other’s proceedings, while both received a thorough training in constitutional politics. Amid such circumstances came into existence the necessary conditions for the establishment of political independence and the formation of our Federal Union.
The suppression of Bacon’s rebellion was far from equivalent to a surrender to Charles II. or his representatives. Questions of privilege soon arose, and it was not long before Berkeley’s most efficient officer came himself to be regarded almost in the light of a rebel. Major Robert Beverley, of Beverley in Yorkshire, an ardent royalist, had come to Virginia in 1663. He was elected clerk of the House of Burgesses in 1670, and held that office for many years. No one was more active in stamping out rebellion in the autumn of 1677, but after the arrival of the royal commissioners he was soon at feud with them. As the disturbances had been quieted without the aid of their troops, there was a disposition to resent their coming as an interference, especially as they seemed to lend too ready an ear to the complaints of the malcontents. In the list of grievances of Gloucester County we find “a complaint against Major Robert Beverley that when the country had (according to Order) raised 60 armed men to be an Out-guard for the Governor—who not finding the Governor nor their appointed Comander they were by Beverly comanded to goe to work, fall trees and maule and toate railes, which many of them refusing to doe, he presently disbanded them & sent them home at a tyme when the countrey were infested by the Indians, who had a little before cut off six persons in one family, and attempted others.” Upon this the commissioners remarked, “Wee conceive this dealing of Beverly’s to be a notorious abuse and Grievance, to take away the peoples armes while ther famlies were cutt off by the Indians, and they deserve just reparation here.” But Berkeley declared that what Beverley had done was by his orders, and the newly elected House of Burgesses stood by its clerk. After Berkeley had sailed for England, in April, 1677, the commissioners called upon the House of Burgesses to give up its journals for their inspection, and Beverley refused to comply with the demand. No king in England, said the burgesses, would venture to make such a demand of the House of Commons. Then the commissioners seized the journals, and the burgesses indignantly voted that such an act was a violation of privilege. This enraged the king, and in February, 1679, the privy council ordered that Beverley should be removed from office.
A change of governors, however, altered the situation. After Jeffries and Chichely, who served but a year each, came Lord Culpeper, whom Charles II. had undertaken to make co-proprietor of Virginia, along with the Earl of Arlington. Culpeper was an average specimen of the public officials of the time, fairly agreeable and easy-going, but rapacious and utterly unprincipled. In one respect he might be contrasted unfavourably with all the governors since Harvey. Such men as Bennett and Mathews and Berkeley looked upon Virginia as home. After his own fashion the tyrannical Berkeley had the interest of Virginia at heart. But Culpeper regarded the Virginians simply as people to be fleeced. Through four years of chronic brawl he kept coming and going, coming to manage the assembly and returning to consult with the king. Charles wished to have the power of initiating legislation taken away from the burgesses. All laws were to be drafted by the governor and council, and then sent to England for the royal approval, before being submitted to the burgesses. With such an arduous task before him, it was wise for Culpeper to avoid giving needless offence; and seeing the high regard in which Beverley was held, he caused the order for his removal to be revoked.
The evil effects of the Navigation Act still continued. In 1679 the tobacco crop was so large that a considerable surplus was left over till the next year unsold. In 1680 the surplus was still greater, so that there was evidently more than enough to supply the English market for two years. The assembly therefore proposed to order a cessation of planting for the year 1681, but on account of the customs revenue it was necessary to obtain the king’s assent to such an order. By the same token the assent was refused, and great was the indignation in Virginia. The price of tobacco had fallen so low that, according to Nicholas Spencer, a whole year’s crop would not so much as buy the clothes which people needed.80 The distress was like that which was caused in the War of Independence by the Continental currency and the rag money issued by the several states. It was the kind of sickness that has always come and always will come with “cheap money.” Culpeper insisted that the only chance of relief was in exporting beef, pork, and grain to the West Indies. A more effective measure would have been the repeal of the Navigation Act. In the spring of 1682, on the petition of several counties, the assembly was convened for the purpose of ordering a cessation of planting. Amid great popular excitement the assembly adjourned without taking any decisive action. Then a fury for destroying the young plants seized upon the people. “The growing tobacco of one plantation was no sooner destroyed than the owner, having been deprived either with or without his consent of his crop, was seized with the same frenzy and ran with the crowd as it marched to destroy the crop of his neighbour.”81 The contagion spread until ten thousand hogsheads of tobacco had been destroyed. In Gloucester, where the most damage was done, two hundred plantations were laid waste. The riot was suppressed by the militia, three ringleaders were hung, and the rest pardoned. One, we are told, received pardon on condition that he should build a bridge.82
This was contracting the currency with a vengeance, but it produced the desired effect. In 1683 the purchasing power of tobacco was greatly increased, and a feeling of contentment returned. But the destruction of the plants served to heighten the king’s indignation at Culpeper’s ill success in curtailing the power of the burgesses. Culpeper tried to play a double part and appear complaisant to the assembly without offending the king. Consequently he pleased nobody, and early in 1684 he was removed. Shortly afterward the king confirmed him in the possession of the territory known as the Northern Neck, and he relinquished all proprietary claims upon the rest of Virginia, in exchange for a pension of £600 yearly for twenty years.
Culpeper’s successor was Lord Howard of Effingham, an unworthy descendant of Elizabeth’s gallant admiral. He was as greedy and dishonest as Culpeper, without his conciliatory temper. The difference between the two has been aptly compared to the difference between Charles II. and his brother. Howard was indeed as domineering and wrong-headed as James II., and rapacious besides. He treated public opinion with contempt. His administration was noted for corruption and tyranny. No accounts were rendered of the use of public funds, and men were arbitrarily sent to jail. Howard went so far as to claim the right to repeal the acts of the assembly, and over this point there was hot contention. The subject of “plant-cutting,” or the destruction of growing tobacco, came up again, and the crown was enabled in one and the same act to wreak its vengeance upon an eminent victim and to aim a blow at the independence of the House of Burgesses.
Robert Beverley, as we have seen, had incurred the royal displeasure by refusing to hand over to the commissioners the journals of the House of Burgesses. In 1682 he was strongly in favour of a cessation of planting, and accordingly it suited the purposes of his enemies to point to him as the prime instigator of the plant-cutting riots. On this accusation he was turned out of office and several times imprisoned. At last, just after Lord Howard’s arrival, he was set free after asking pardon on his bended knees and giving security for future good behaviour. A statute passed about this time made plant-cutting high treason, punishable with death and confiscation.83
As soon as Beverley was set free the House of Burgesses again chose him for its clerk. But presently Lord Howard tried to get the burgesses to allow him to levy a tax, and in the course of the quarrel sundry trumped-up charges were brought against Beverley, so that in 1686 James II. instructed Howard to declare him incapable of holding any office of public trust. The same letter ordered that henceforth the clerk of the House of Burgesses should be appointed by the governor.84