but in vain. The profligate monarch, who seems never to have had a clear perception of right and wrong, but was governed by caprice and passion, gave away, to his special favorites, large tracts of the finest portions of the Virginia soil, some of it already well cultivated.'

3

Week after week, and month after month, the Royalist party continued to show more and more of the foul hand of despotism. The pliant Assembly abridged the liberties of the people. Although elected for only two years, the members assumed to themselves the right of holding office indefinitely, and the representative system was thus virtually abolished. The doctrines and rituals of the Church of England having been made the religion of the State, intolerance began to grow. Baptists and Quakers were compelled to pay heavy fines. The salaries of the royal officers being paid from duties upon exported tobacco, these officials were made independent of the people. Oppressive and unequal taxes were levied, and the idle aristocracy formed a distinct and ruling class. The "common people”—the men of toil and substantial worth-formed a republican party, and rebellious murmurs were heard on every side. They desired a sufficient reason for strengthening their power, and it soon appeared. The menaces of the Susquehannah Indians,* a fierce tribe of Lower Pennsylvania, gave the people a plausible pretense for arming during the summer of 1675. The Indians had been driven from their hunting-grounds at the head of the Chesapeake Bay by the Senecas, and coming down the Potomac, they made war upon the Maryland settlements. They finally committed murders. upon Virginia soil, and retaliation' caused the breaking out of a fierce border war. The inhabitants, exasperated and alarmed, called loudly upon Governor Berkeley to take immediate and energetic measures for the defense of the colony. His slow and indecisive movements were very unsatisfactory, and loud murmurs were heard on every side. At length Nathaniel Bacon, an energetic and highly esteemed republican, acting in behalf of his party, demanded permission for the people to arm and protect themselves. Berkeley's sagacity perceived the danger of allowing discontented men to have arms, and he refused. The Indians came nearer and nearer, until laborers on Bacon's plantation, near Richmond, were murdered. That leader then yielded to the popular will, and placed himself at the head of four or five hundred men, to drive back the enemy. Berkeley, jealous of Bacon's popularity, proclaimed him a traitor

5

6

9

8

1 In 1673, the king gave to Lord Culpepper and the Earl of Arlington, two of his profligate favorites, "all the dominion of land and water called Virginia," for the term of thirty years. 2 Note 7, page 94.

3 One of the charges made against the King of England in the Declaration of Independence, more than a hundred years later, was that he had "made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries."

5

⚫ Page 23.

4

Page 17.

6

Page 82.

* John Washington, an ancestor of the commander-in-chief of the American armies a century later, commanded some troops against an Indian fort on the Potomac. Some chiefs, who were sent to his camp to treat for peace, were treacherously slain, and this excited the fierce resentment of the Susquehannahs.

8 He was born in England, was educated a lawyer, and in Virginia was a member of the council. He was about thirty years of age at that time.

9

• King Philip's war was then raging in Massachusetts, and the white people, everywhere, were alarmed. See page 124.

[May, 1676], and sent troops to arrest him. Some of his more timid followers returned, but sterner patriots adhered to his fortunes. The people generally sympathized with him, and in the lower counties they arose in open rebellion. Berkeley was obliged to recall his troops to suppress the insurrection, and in the mean while Bacon drove the Indians' back toward the Rappahannock. He was soon after elected a burgess, but on approaching Jamestown, to take his seat in the Assembly, he was arrested. For fear of the people, who made hostile demonstrations, the governor soon pardoned him and all his followers, and hypocritically professed a personal regard for the bold republican leader.

2

3

Popular opinion had now manifestly become a power in Virginia; and the pressure of that opinion compelled Berkeley to yield at all points. The long aristocratic Assembly was dissolved; many abuses were corrected, and all the privileges formerly enjoyed by the people were restored. Fearing treachery in the capital, Bacon withdrew to the Middle Plantation,* where he was joined by three or four hundred armed men from the upper counties, and was proclaimed commander-in-chief of the Virginia troops. The governor regarded the movement as rebellious, and refused to sign Bacon's commission. The patriot marched to Jamestown, and demanded it without delay. The frightened governor speedily complied [July 4, 1676], and, concealing his anger, he also, on compulsion, signed a letter to the king, highly commending the acts and motives of the "traitor." This was exactly one hundred years, to a day, before the English colonies in America declared themselves free and independent, the logic of which the King of Great Britain was compelled, reluctantly, to acknowledge, a few years later. The Virginia Assembly was as pliant before the successful leader as the governor, and gave him the commission of a general of a thousand On receiving it, Bacon marched against the Pamunkey Indians. When he had gone, Berkeley, faithless to his professions, crossed the York River, and at Gloucester summoned a convention of royalists. All the proceedings of the Republican Assembly were reversed, and, contrary to the advice of his friends, the governor again proclaimed Bacon a traitor, on the 29th of July. The indignation of the patriot leader was fiercely kindled, and, marching back to Jamestown, he lighted up a civil war. The property of royalists was confiscated, their wives were seized as hostages, and their plantations were desolated. Berkeley fled to the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. Bacon proclaimed his abdication, and, dismissing the republican troops, called an Assembly in his own name, and was about to cast off all allegiance to the English Crown, when

men.

5

1 Page 40.

2 The chief leaders of the republican party at the capital, were William Drummond, who had been governor of North Carolina [page 97], and Colonel Richard Lawrence.

3 This event was the planting of one of the most vigorous and fruitful germs of American nationality. It was the first bending of power to the boldly-expressed will of the people.

* Williamsburg, four miles from Jamestown, and midway between the York and James Rivers, was then called the Middle Plantation. After the accession of William and Mary [see page 113], a town was laid out in the form of the ciphers WM., and was named Williamsburg. Governor Nicholson made it the capital of the province in 1698.

5 This was a small tribe on the Pamunkey River, one of the chief tributaries of the York River.

intelligence was received of the arrival of imperial troops to quell the rebellion.' Great was the joy of the governor, when informed of the arrival of the hopedfor succor, for his danger was imminent. With some royalists and English sailors under Major Robert Beverley, he now [Sept. 7] returned to Jamestown. Bacon collected hastily his troops, and drove the governor and his friends down the James River. Informed that a large body of royalists and imperial troops were approaching, the republicans, unable to maintain their position at Jamestown, applied the torch [Sept. 30] just as the night shadows came over the village. When the sun arose on the following morning, the first town built by Englishmen in America,3 was a heap of smoking ruins. Nothing remained standing but a few chimneys, and that old church tower, which now attracts the eye and heart of the voyager upon the bosom of the James River. This work accomplished, Bacon pressed forward with his little army toward the York, determined to drive the royalists from Virginia. But he was smitten by a deadlier foe than armed men. The malaria of the marshes at Jamestown had poisoned

CHURCH TOWER.

his veins, and he died [Oct. 11, 1676] of malignant fever, on the north bank of the York. There was no man to receive the mantle of his ability and influence, and his departure was a death-blow to the cause he had espoused. His friends and followers made but feeble resistance, and before the first of November, Berkeley returned to the Middle Plantation in triumph.

4

The dangers and vexations to which the governor had been exposed during these commotions, rendered the haughty temper of the baron irascible, and he signalized his restoration to power by acts of wanton cruelty. Twenty-two of the insurgent leaders had been hanged,5 when the more merciful Assembly implored him to shed no more blood. But he continued fines, imprisonments, and confiscations, and ruled with an iron hand and a stony heart until recalled by the king in April, 1677. who had become disgusted with his cruel conduct." There was no printing press in Virginia to record current history, and for a

7

1 This was an error. The fleet sent with troops to quell the insurrection, did not arrive until April the following year, when all was over. Colonel Jeffreys, the successor of Berkeley, came

with the fleet.

2 Besides the church and court-house, Jamestown contained sixteen or eighteen houses, built of brick, and quite commodious, and a large number of humble log cabins.

3 3 The church, of which the brick tower alone remains, was built about 1620. It was probably the third church erected in Jamestown. The ruin is now [1856] a few rods from the encroaching bank of the river, and is about thirty feet in height. The engraving is a correct representation of its present appearance. In the grave-yard adjoining are fragments of several monuments.

5 The first man executed was Colonel Hansford. He has been justly termed the first martyr in the cause of liberty in America. Drummond and Lawrence were also executed. They were considered ringleaders and the prime instigators of the rebellion.

6

Charles said, "The old fool has taken more lives in that naked country than I have taken for the murder of my father."

" Berkeley was an enemy to popular enlightenment. He said to commissioners sent from England in 1671, "Thank God there are no free schools nor printing press; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged these, and libels against the best government." Despots are always afraid of the printing press, for it is the most destructive foe of tyranny.

hundred years the narratives of the royalists gave hue to the whole affair. Bacon was always regarded as a traitor, and the effort to establish a free government is known in history as BACON'S REBELLION. Such, also, would have been the verdict of history, had Washington and his compatriots been unsuccessful. Too often success is accounted a virtue, but failure, a crime.

2

Long years elapsed before the effects of these civil commotions were effaced. The people were borne down by the petty tyranny of royal rulers, yet the principles of Republicanism grew apace. The popular Assembly became winnowed of its aristocratic elements; and, notwithstanding royal troops were quartered in Virginia,' to overawe the people, the burgesses were always firm in the maintenance of popular rights. In reply to Governor Jeffreys, when he appealed to the authority of the Great Seal of England, in defense of his arbitrary act in seizing the books and papers of the Assembly, the burgesses said, “that such a breach of privilege could not be commanded under the Great Seal, because they could not find that any king of England had ever done so in former times." The king commanded the governor to "signify his majesty's indignation at language so seditious;" but the burgesses were as indifferent to royal frowns as they were to the governor's menaces.

A libertine from the purlieus of the licentious court now came to rule the liberty-loving Virginians. It was Lord Culpepper, who, under the grant of 1673,3 had been appointed governor for life in 1677. He arrived in 1680. His profligacy and rapacity disgusted the people. Discontents ripened into insurrections, and the blood of patriots again flowed.* At length the king himself became incensed against Culpepper, revoked his grant' in 1684, and deprived him of office. Effingham, his successor, was equally rapacious, and the people were on the eve of a general rebellion, when king Charles died, and his brother James was proclaimed [Feb. 1685] his successor, with the title of James the Second. The people hoped for benefit by the change of rulers, but their burdens were increased. Again the wave of rebellion was rising high, when the revolution of 1688 placed William of Orange and his wife Mary upon the throne." Then a real change for the better took place. The detested and detestable Stuarts were forever driven from the seat of power in Great Britain. That event, wrought out by the people, infused a conservative principle into the workings of the English constitution. The popular will, expressed by Par

1 These troops were under the command of a wise veteran, Sir Henry Chicheley, who managed with prudence. They proved a source of much discontent, because their subsistence was drawn from the planters For the same cause, disturbances occurred in New York ninety years afterward. See page 218. Page 71. 3 Note 1, page 110.

2

4 By the king's order, Culpepper caused several of the insurgents, who were men of influence,. to be hanged, and a "reign of terror," miscalled tranquillity, followed.

5

Arlington [note 1, page 110] had already disposed of his interest in the grant to Culpepper. 6 James, Duke of York, to whom Charles gave the New Netherlands in 1664. See page 144. 7 James the Second, by his bigotry (he was a Roman Catholic), tyranny, and oppression, ren-dered himself hateful to his subjects. William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, who had married Mary, a Protestant daughter of James, and his eldest child, was invited by the incensed people to come to the English throne. He came with Dutch troops, and landed at Torbay on the 5th of November, 1688. James was deserted by his soldiers, and he and his family sought safety in flight. William and Mary were proclaimed joint monarchs of England on the 13th of February, 1689. This act consummated that revolution which Voltaire styled "the era of English liberty."

liament, became potential; and the personal character, or caprices of the monarch, had comparatively little influence upon legislation. The potency of the National Assembly was extended to similar colonial organizations. The powers of governors were defined, and the rights of the people were understood. Bad men often exercised authority in the colonies, but it was in subordination to the English Constitution; and, notwithstanding commercial restrictions bore heavily upon the enterprise of the colonies, the diffusion of just political ideas, and the growth of free institutions in America, were rapid and healthful.

From the revolution of 1688, down to the commencement of the French and Indian war, the history of Virginia is the history of the steady, quiet progress of an industrious people, and presents no prominent events of interest to the general reader.1

CHAPTER II.

MASSACHUSETTS. [1620.]

"WELCOME, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen !" were the first words which the Pilgrim Fathers2 heard from the lips of a son of the American forest. It was the voice of Samoset, a Wampanoag chief, who had learned a few English words of fishermen at Penobscot. His brethren had hovered around the little community of sufferers at New Plymouth3 for a hundred days, when he boldly approached [March 26, 1621], and gave the friendly salutation. He told them to possess the land, for the occupants had nearly all been swept away by a pestilence. The Pilgrims thanked God for thus making their seat more secure, for they feared the hostility of the Aborigines. When Samoset again appeared, he was accompanied by Squanto,* a chief who had recently returned from captivity in Spain; and they told the white people about Massasoit, the grand sachem of the Wampanoags, then residing at Mount Hope. An interview was planned. The old sachem came with barbaric pomp,5 and he and Governor Carver smoked the calumet' together. A preliminary treaty of friendship and alliance was formed [April 1, 1621], which remained unbroken

1The population at that time was about 50,000, of whom one half were slaves. The tobacco trade had become very important, the exports to England and Ireland being about 30,000 hogsheads that year. Almost a hundred vessels annually came from those countries to Virginia for tobacco. A powerful militia of almost 9,000 men was organized, and they no longer feared their dusky neighbors. The militia became expert in the use of fire-arms in the woods, and back to this period the Virginia rifleman may look for the foundation of his fame as a marksman. The province contained twenty-two counties, and forty-eight parishes, with a church and a clergyman in each, and a great deal of glebe land. But there was no printing press nor book-store in the colony. A press was first established in Virginia in 1729. Page 77.

2

3

Page 78.

Page 74.

• Massasoit approached, with a guard of sixty warriors, and took post upon a neighboring hill. There he sat in state, and received Edward Winslow as embassador from the English. Leaving Winslow with his warriors as security for his own safety, the sachem went into New Plymouth and treated with Governor Carver. Note 5, page 14.

6

Page 78.

7

Page 14.