8. The Royal Government of Virginia

From their earliest days, Virginians engaged in conflicts with their government. The first open rebellion while Virginia was under royal rule occurred in 1635. This arose from a territorial dispute with the new neighboring colony of Maryland (see below). William Claiborne, a leader of the Virginia colony and secretary of its Council, had obtained a royal license to establish a fur-trading post on Kent Island, between Maryland and Virginia, which he had purchased from the Indians. The Virginia House of Burgesses—which included a representative from Kent Island—backed Claiborne in his refusal to recognize the overlordship of the Maryland feudal proprietor, Lord Baltimore. Egged on by a competing Virginia fur trader’s accusation that Claiborne was inciting the Indians to attack the Marylanders, Lord Baltimore ordered the seizure of Claiborne and the confiscation of his property. Maryland’s ships attacked and seized a vessel of Claiborne’s, and not only killed several Kent Islanders in the process, but also hanged one as a “pirate” after the battle. Governor John Harvey of Virginia angered the Virginians by taking the side of Lord Baltimore, removing Claiborne from his office as secretary, and jailing an official who sided with Claiborne. Harvey here showed his ability to judge the winning side, as the Crown also ruled against Claiborne in 1638. This and other tyrannical actions by Governor Harvey brought about an open revolt by the Council led by Samuel Mathews, a former indentured servant, at the head of several hundred armed men.

Aside from high-handed personal actions, Harvey was accused of making unauthorized expenditures, levying export taxes on tobacco and fees on each immigrant, and requisitioning ammunition from ships entering the colony. However, among the rash of legitimate complaints against Harvey was the charge that he had made a dangerous peace with the Indians without the Council’s consent. It must be remembered that the settlers not only protested against despotic actions of the government, but were also hell-bent for grabbing as much land as possible from the Indians; accordingly, peace with the natives was the last thing that the settlers desired.

Thus the Council was driven to meeting and it “thrust out” Harvey from the colony in 1635. Harvey was shipped back to England and Captain John West appointed in his place until the king’s wishes could be known. As soon as he arrived in England, Harvey again showed his character by having arrested the two negotiators whom the Council had sent to England to plead its case. One of them, Francis Pott, was still languishing in prison a year later, and under harsh conditions.

Harvey was reappointed by the Crown and returned to Virginia in 1637, thirsting for vengeance against the rebellious colonists. First, Harvey, backed by Lord Baltimore, had his chief enemies arrested for treason and hauled to England to appear before the Court of Star Chamber. Those arrested included Captain John West, Samuel Mathews, and George Menefie, as well as William Claiborne. True to his personal vow that he would not leave Captain Mathews with assets “worth a cow’s tail,” Harvey confiscated his enemies’ property in Virginia. The Crown, however, forced Harvey to disgorge the seized property. Harvey also concluded that humor was dangerous to the state, and he consequently arrested the Reverend Anthony Panton, rector for some of the leading rebels. Panton’s crime was apparently calling the man who Harvey had appointed secretary of the colony instead of Claiborne, a “jackanapes.” The “trial” of Panton was conducted by none other than Richard Kemp himself—the new secretary in question—who acted as both prosecutor and judge. Sentence was meted out by Kemp with appropriate severity: the seizure of Panton’s possessions, his expulsion from his parish, and exile from Virginia—with the penalty of death should he return to the colony. Harvey also moved to impose a tithing tax on the corn of Panton’s parishioners, presumably a special punishment for their lack of wisdom in having Panton as their rector.

This monstrous procedure was too much for even the rather callous sensibilities of the day. The Crown suspended the sentence and finally removed Harvey in 1639. The decision against Panton was reversed and his property and parish restored. The imprisoned Council leaders were released and restored to their positions. The “mutiny” of the Virginia leaders against Governor Harvey’s despotic rule had finally succeeded. It was Harvey’s successor, Governor Francis Wyatt, who was instructed to convene periodic meetings of the Virginia Assembly, thereby making Virginia’s representative body a permanent one.

One lasting consequence of Claiborne’s colony was the settlement in 1645 of the Northern Neck of Virginia (the peninsula between the Rappahannock and the Potomac rivers) by refugees from Kent Island.

The most prominent figure in the government of Virginia in the seventeenth century was the governor Sir William Berkeley, whose term of office began in 1642 and continued, with interruption, until 1677. In contrast to the later years of his term, Berkeley’s first years found him a liberal reformer. The entire poll tax, both the tax paid to the governor and the general tax, was repealed; peace was made with the Indians; taxes on estates were lowered; impoverished debtors in prison were given relief; and such relics of Virginia Company oppression as condemnations were abolished. In addition, a law was reenacted to prevent the governor and the Council from levying any taxes or appropriating any new money except by authority of the Assembly. Berkeley also ended some of the land abuses in Virginia by removing arbitrary James River Valley particular-plantation grants that had never been settled, and allowing settlers to enter these lands and gain title to them.

Soon after Berkeley took office, the Virginia colony found itself confronted with a revolution in Great Britain. Staunchly royalist in that era, Virginia stood firm for the Crown. Virginia’s devotion to the royal cause was shaped by its own particular experience. For one thing, Charles I’s rule in Virginia had been relatively moderate, far different indeed from the tyranny he was imposing on England. Virginians had been permitted to enjoy more freedom and local rule than Englishmen had ever enjoyed before. The oppressive Navigation Acts had not yet been imposed. The king had removed the hated John Harvey. Governor Berkeley’s reforms had been welcomed. Moreover, Anglican-Puritan relations were not nearly as exacerbated as in the home country. As we have seen, Virginia’s own Anglicanism was decidedly low church; the Pilgrim fathers had been invited to Virginia in 1620 and an influential moderate Puritan group settled, during the 1640s, in southside Virginia. (This is not to say that religious liberty prevailed: Puritans were sporadically persecuted and dissenting ministers driven from the colony.) Finally, to the Virginians, the rule of the old Virginia Company had been far worse than royal rule: petitioning against any reimposition of the company, the Assembly exclaimed that the colonists, if under the scepter of the company, would be subject to arbitrary rule, their property rights would be taken from them, and their freedom of trade—“the blood and life of a commonwealth”— would be sacrificed to the monopoly of the company.

While attached to the Crown, many Virginians protested immediately when in 1648 the governor and the Council claimed authority to conscript (impress) soldiers without the concurrence of the House of Burgesses, and when they proceeded to conscript a ten-man bodyguard for the governor. The Assembly gave as one excuse for agreeing to this conscription the existence of a “schismatical party” (the Puritans and Dissenters) disaffected from the government.

In 1649, when Parliament had executed Charles I, Virginia stood stubbornly by the Old Order and proclaimed its continued allegiance to the House of Stuart. Indeed, the Virginia Assembly denounced the King’s execution bitterly, defied the proclaimed authority of Parliament, and proceeded to uphold this view savagely by decreeing it a crime carrying the death penalty for anyone even to defend the execution. In fact, anyone making so bold as to question the right of succession of Charles II, or to propose any change in the existing government of Virginia, was to be charged with high treason. Even speaking any evil of the king was to be punished at the arbitrary discretion of governor and Council. Virginia also offered refuge to prominent emigrés—the Cavaliers, for example, faithful supporters of the Crown. The Cavaliers, largely of wealthy merchant and landed families, took their accustomed place among the leading planting families in Virginia, including the prominent Lees, Carters, Randolphs, and Masons, and, indeed, the bulk of the men who remained as the dominant planters of Virginia.*

In retaliation, Parliament in 1650 passed the embryo of the first Navigation Act, which forbade Virginia from trading with foreign countries or with any foreign ships lacking a special license—thus hitting at England’s efficient Dutch competitors. It is instructive that this first important measure of restrictive mercantilism was specifically proclaimed to be a punishment to a rebellious colony. Parliament concluded by denouncing the Virginians as rebels and traitors.

When news of Parliament’s punitive action reached Virginia in early 1651, the reaction of the Virginia rulers was both perceptive and heroically defiant. Comparing the situation in Virginia with that in England, Governor Berkeley told the Assembly: “Consider yourselves how happy you are, and have been, how the gates of wealth and honor are shut on no man, and that there is not an arbitrary hand, that dares to touch the substance either poor or rich.” What can be hoped from submission to parliamentary dictates? Now, Berkeley went on, the Virginians enjoyed freedom from oppression, peace, and the opportunity to gain wealth, and “the security to enjoy this wealth when gotten.... We can only fear the Londoners, who would fain to bring us to the same poverty, wherein the Dutch found and relieved us, would take away the liberty of our consciences, and tongues, and our right of giving and selling our goods to whom we please.” The governor and the members of the Assembly then unanimously adopted a “Vindication” for their actions. The Vindication perceptively concluded that Parliament was punishing the trade of Virginia in order to appease the “avarice of a few interested persons [the big London merchants], who endeavor to rob us of all we sweat and labor for.”

In 1652 Parliament sent a fleet with four commissioners to Virginia to bring the recalcitrant colony to heel. Fortunately, the commissioners were moderates and the instructions liberal. Furthermore, the Virginians, after raising an army of over a thousand men, wisely decided that discretion was the better part of warfare, and submitted to the commissioners’ force. In return, the rule of the parliamentary commissioners turned out to be liberating rather than vindictively repressive. Not only was the royalist Berkeley deposed and Commissioner Richard Bennett substituted as governor with the agreement of the Burgesses, but executive and judicial powers were shorn from the governor and the governing power placed in the House of Burgesses, the colony’s elected house and miniature Parliament. The supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power was now vested in the House of Burgesses, where at least the Virginians themselves could exercise some check on state power. Virginia was declared “free from all taxes, customs and impositions,” and it was affirmed that none could be levied without consent of the Assembly, and that no garrisons could be maintained there without the same consent. Virginian trade was no longer to be singled out for discriminatory treatment. Berkeley himself was permitted to retire undisturbed to his Virginia estate.

Again, as in other matters, liberalism went only so far, and all inhabitants who refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Parliament were ordered exiled from the colony. On the other hand, the majority of the people of any parish was permitted to keep using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Partially in fidelity to its revolutionary principles, partially from preoccupation with pressing affairs at home, Parliament left Virginia pretty much alone during the decade of the republic. In one sense, too much alone—for Bennett and the new secretary of the colony, William Claiborne, the veteran anti-Marylander, determined to take up the cause of the Virginia irredenta and forcibly bring Maryland back under the Virginia motherland. However, the new lord protector, Oliver Cromwell, soon scotched these efforts and in a few years Virginia and Lord Baltimore finally settled peacefully the Virginia-Maryland boundary.

The leading home-rule problem within Virginia, in those years, was the grievance of Northampton County on the Eastern Shore. Northampton protested in May 1652 against paying poll taxes of forty pounds of tobacco when it had not been represented in the Virginia Assembly for five years; in short, a cry against taxation without representation.

There were some difficulties between Governor Samuel Mathews, Jr. and the Burgesses during the late 1650s over unauthorized actions of the governor as well as his attempt to dissolve the Assembly in a dispute, but the disagreements were amicably resolved and the Burgesses left in unchallenged control.

With the collapse of the republican Protectorate in 1659, and the virtually coincidental death of Governor Samuel Mathews, the Virginia House of Burgesses proclaimed its “supreme power” until England should reassert a legitimate authority. The Burgesses then voluntarily elected the royalist Berkeley governor once more. Achieving total, if temporary, independence from Britain, however, did not improve the civil-libertarian attitude of the Assembly. For it decreed that anyone who should “say or act anything in derogation of the present government” would be punished as an enemy of the peace. The election of Berkeley in March 1660 preceded the restoration of the monarchy in England by two months, and the new king, Charles II, quickly extended the official commission to Berkeley. Granting the extreme royalism motivating Virginia’s action and its purely temporary character, the fact remains that Virginia had the boldness to battle England, and even to declare a short-lived independence from the motherland. Surely, whatever the motives, here was an unwitting training ground in revolution, a testing of Virginia’s willingness to stand on its own feet and defy the mighty imperial country to which all the colonists had sworn allegiance.

*See Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 1:166–68. For a rather different account of this immigration, cf. Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Virginia,” in Seventeenth-Century America, ed. James M. Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), pp. 98–100.