CHAPTER XV.

VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND UNDER CHARLES II. AND

JAMES II.

DURING the continuance of the English Common- CHAPTE

wealth, Virginia had enjoyed a very popular form of government. All tax-payers had the right to vote for burgesses. The Assembly, subject to frequent renewals, had assumed the right of electing the governor, counselors, and other principal officers; and, except a general conformity to the policy of the mother country, local affairs appear to have been managed with very little of external control.

Great changes in these respects were now to happen. During the quarter of a century which followed the Restoration, a considerable part of the freemen of Virginia were deprived of the elective franchise-an invaluable. privilege, not recovered till the middle of the current century. The Assembly's authority was also greatly curtailed; while a corresponding increase took place in the power and prerogatives of the governor and the counselors. These changes were occasioned, in part, by external pressure, but they sprung also, to a considerable extent, from internal causes, existing in the social organization of the colony.

The founders of Virginia, like those of New England, had brought with them from the mother country strong aristocratic prejudices and a marked distinction of ranks. Both in Virginia and New England the difference between "gentlemen" and "those of the common sort"

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CHAPTER was very palpable. Indented servants formed a still inferior class; not to mention negro and Indian slaves, of 1660. whom, however, for a long period after the planting of Virginia, the number was almost as inconsiderable in that colony as it always remained in New England.

But though starting, in these respects, from a common basis, the operation of different causes early produced different effects, resulting in a marked difference of local character. The want in New England of any staple product upon which hired or purchased labor could be profitably employed, discouraged immigration and the importation of indented servants or slaves. Hence the population soon became, in a great measure, home-born and home-bred.

The lands were granted by townships to companies who intended to settle together. The settlements were required to be made in villages, and every village had its meeting house, its schools, its military company, its municipal organization. In Virginia, on the other hand, plantations were isolated; each man settled where he found a convenient unoccupied spot. The parish churches, the county courts, the election of burgesses, brought the people together, and kept up something of adult education. But the parishes were very extensive; there were no schools; and parochial and political rights were soon greatly curtailed.

Even the theocratic form of government prevailing in New England tended to diminish the influence of wealth, by introducing a different basis of distinction; and still more so that activity of mind, the consequence of strong religious excitement, developing constantly new views of religion and politics, which an arrogant and supercilious theocracy strove in vain to suppress. Hence, in New England a constant tendency toward social equality. In

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Virginia and Maryland, on the other hand, the manage- CHAPTER ment of provincial and local affairs fell more and more under the control of a few wealthy men, possessed of large 1660 tracts of land, which they cultivated by the labor partly of slaves, but principally of indented white servants.

Indented service existed, indeed, in all the American colonies; but the cultivation of tobacco created a special demand for it in Virginia and Maryland. A regular trade was early established in the transport of persons, who, for the sake of a passage to America, suffered themselves to be sold by the master of the vessel to serve for a term of years after their arrival. But the embarkation of these indented servants was not always voluntary. Sometimes they were entrapped by infamous arts, sometimes even kidnapped, and sometimes sentenced to transportation for political and other offenses. We have already had occasion to mention the exportation of felons to Virginia, known among the colonists as "jail-birds.” In the same way Cromwell disposed of many of his English, Scotch, and Irish prisoners of war, a few of whom were also sent to New England. On the expiration of their term of servitude, limited to four, five, or, more commonly, to seven years, these servants acquired all the rights of freemen, and, in Virginia, a claim, also, to the fifty acres of land to which all immigrants were entitled. But the lands most favorably situated were already taken up, and held in large tracts by the more wealthy planters. It was only on the outskirts of the cultivated country that these new freemen could locate their grants.

The rivers which intersected Lower Virginia, dividing the colony into a series of "necks," as they were called, served an excellent purpose for intercommunication. There was not a plantation at any great distance from tideVessels, ascending the rivers, landed goods and

water.

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CHAPTER took tobacco on board at the very doors of the planters. But even this facility was not without its disadvantages. 1660. It prevented the concentration of trade at particular spots, and long opposed an insuperable obstacle to the formation of towns-a want sensibly felt, and vainly attempted, as we shall see, to be supplied by legislation.

The cultivation of tobacco, at the low prices to which it had sunk, afforded only a scanty resource to that great body of free planters obliged to rely on their own labor. Yet all schemes for the introduction of other staples had failed. The domestic manufacture of cloths, successfully introduced into New England, seems to have been almost unknown in Virginia. Nor were there any mechanical employments except of the rudest and most indispensable sorts. All kinds of manufactured goods were imported from England; but neither in this importation, nor in the exportation of their own produce, did the Virginians themselves take any part. The maritime character of New England was already well established. The fisheries and foreign trade formed an important part of her industry. Her ships might be seen on the Grand Bank, in the West Indies, in the ports of Britain, Spain, and Portugal, on the coast of Africa, in the Chesapeake itself; while hardly one or two small vessels were owned in Virginia, and that notwithstand

g the efforts of the Assembly to encourage ship-build

ing and navigation, for which the province afforded such abundant facilities.

Competition between Dutch and English trading vessels had assisted hitherto to keep up the price of tobacco, and to secure a supply of imported goods at reasonable rates. But that competition was now to cease. The English commercial interest had obtained from the Convention Parliament, which welcomed back Charles II to

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the English throne, that famous navigation act, which, CHAPTER among other provisions for the special benefit of English shipping, substantially excluded foreign vessels from the 1661. English colonies. The Anglo-American colonists were also required to ship exclusively to England all their most valuable staples, designated by name, and thence known as "enumerated articles," of which tobacco was one of the chief. The Virginians, alarmed at an act which threatened to place them at the mercy of the English traders, sent Governor Berkeley to England, at an March expense to the colony of two hundred thousand pounds of tobacco, to remonstrate on their behalf. Berkeley failed in this public mission; but he improved the opportunity to secure for himself a share in the new province of Carolina, now erected by charter, and of which he became one of the eight proprietors. So far, indeed, from relaxing the restrictions complained of, the new Parlia ment passed a further act, by which the colonists were 1663 restricted to England for their supply of European commodities, being no longer allowed to import them direct from the countries where they were produced. was the English merchant enabled to charge a double profit on the intercourse between Europe and the colonies, and the mother country, also, to impose a tax upon. it, by means of duties levied upon all "enumerated articles" imported into England.

Thus

At the same session at which Berkeley was sent to England, Clayborne was ordered by the Virginia Assembly to deliver up the colony records to Thomas Ludwell, appointed secretary by royal commission.

Under the administration of Colonel Francis Moryson, 1662 captain of the fort at Point Comfort, a Royalist immigrant March of 1649, appointed by the council to act as governor dur

ing Berkeley's mission to England, a third revision was