CHAPTER X.

THE COMING OF THE CAVALIERS.

[Sidenote: Virginia depicted.]

“These things that follow in this ensuing relation are certified by divers letters from Virginia, by men of worth and credit there, written to a friend in England, that for his own and others’ satisfaction was desirous to know these particulars and the present estate of that country. And let no man doubt of the truth of it. There be many in England, land and seamen, that can bear witness of it. And if this plantation be not worth encouragement, let every true Englishman judge.”

[Sidenote: Animals.]

Such is the beginning of an enthusiastic little pamphlet, of unknown authorship, published in London in 1649,[1] the year in which Charles I. perished on the scaffold. It is entitled “A Perfect Description of Virginia,” and one of its effects, if not its purpose, must have been to attract immigrants to that colony from the mother country. In Virginia “there is nothing wanting” to make people happy; there are “plenty, health, and wealth.” Of English about 15,000 are settled there, with 300 negro servants. Of kine, oxen, bulls, and calves, there are 20,000, and there is plenty of good butter and cheese. There are 200 horses, 50 asses, 3,000 sheep with good wool, 5,000 goats, and swine and poultry innumerable. Besides these European animals, there are many deer, with “rackoons, as good meat as lamb,” and “passonnes” [opossums], otters and beavers, foxes and dogs that “bark not.” In the waters are “above thirty sorts” of fish “very excellent good in their kinds.” The wild turkey sometimes weighs sixty pounds, and besides partridges, ducks, geese, and pigeons, the woods abound in sweet songsters and “most rare coloured parraketoes, and [we have] one bird we call the mock-bird; for he will imitate all other birds’ notes and cries, both day and night birds, yea, the owls and nightingales.”

[Sidenote: Agriculture.]

The farmers have under cultivation many hundred acres of excellent wheat; their maize, or “Virginia corn,” yields an increase of 500 for 1, and makes “good bread and furmity” [porridge]; they have barley in plenty, and six brew-houses which brew strong and well-flavoured beer. There are fifteen kinds of fruit that for delicacy rival the fruits of Italy; in the gardens grow potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions, artichokes, asparagus, beans, and better peas than those of England, with all manner of herbs and “physick flowers.” The tobacco is everywhere “much vented and esteemed,” but such immense crops are raised that the price is but three pence a pound. There is also a hope that indigo, hemp and flax, vines and silk-worms, can be cultivated with profit, since it is chiefly hands that are wanted. It surely would be better to grow silk here, where mulberry trees are so plenty, than to fetch it as we do from Persia and China “with great charge and expense and hazard,” thereby enriching “heathen and Mahumetans.”

[Sidenote: Northwest passage.]

At the same time they are hoping soon to discover a way to China, “for Sir Francis Drake was on the back side of Virginia in his voyage about the world in 37 degrees ... and now all the question is only how broad the land may be to that place [_i. e._ California] from the head of James River above the falls.” By prosecuting discovery in this direction “the planters in Virginia shall gain the rich trade of the East India, and so cause it to be driven through the continent of Virginia, part by land and part by water, and in a most gainful way and safe, and far less expenseful and dangerous, than now it is.”

[Sidenote: Commercial rivals.]

It behooves the English, says our pamphlet, to be more vigilant, and to pay more heed to their colonies; for behold, “the Swedes have come and crept into a river called Delawar, that is within the limits of Virginia,” and they are driving “a great and secret trade of furs.” Moreover, “the Hollanders have stolen into a river called Hudson’s River, in the limits also of Virginia, ... they have built a strong fort ... and drive a trade of fur there with the natives for above £10,000 a year. These two plantations are ... on our side of Cape Cod which parts us and New England. Thus are the English nosed in all places, and out-traded by the Dutch. They would not suffer the English to use them so; but they have vigilant statesmen, and advance all they can for a common good, and will not spare any encouragements to their people to discover.”

[Sidenote: New England.]

[Sidenote: Health of body and soul.]

“Concerning New England,” which is but four days’ sail from Virginia, a trade goes to and fro; but except for the fishing, “there is not much in that land,” which in respect of frost and snow is as Scotland compared with England, and so barren withal that, “except a herring be put into the hole that you set the corn or maize in, it will not come up.” What a pity that the New England people, “being now about 20,000, did not seat themselves at first to the south of Virginia, in a warm and rich country, where their industry would have produced sugar, indigo, ginger, cotton, and the like commodities!” But here in Virginia the land “produceth, with very great increase, whatsoever is committed into the bowels of it; ... a fat rich soil everywhere watered with many fine springs, small rivulets, and wholesome waters.” As to healthiness, fewer people die in a year proportionately than in England; “since that men are provided with all necessaries, have plenty of victual, bread, and good beer, ... all which the Englishman loves full dearly.” Nor is their spiritual welfare neglected, for there are twenty churches, with “doctrine and orders after the church of England;” and “the ministers’ livings are esteemed worth at least £100 per annum; they are paid by each planter so much tobacco per poll, and so many bushels of corn; they live all in peace and love.”

[Sidenote: Schools.]

[Sidenote: Captain Mathews and his household.]

“I may not forget to tell you we have a free school, with 200 acres of land, a fine house upon it, 40 milch kine, and other accommodations; the benefactor deserves perpetual memory; his name, Mr. Benjamin Symes, worthy to be chronicled; other petty schools also we have.” Various details of orchards and vineyards, of Mr. Kinsman’s pure perry and Mr. Pelton’s strong metheglin, entertain us; and a pleasant tribute is paid to “worthy Captain Mathews,” the same who fourteen years before had assisted at the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey. “He hath a fine house, and all things answerable to it; he sows yearly store of hemp and flax, and causes it to be spun; he keeps weavers, and hath a tan house, causes leather to be dressed, hath eight shoemakers employed in their trade, hath forty negro servants, brings them up to trades in his house; he yearly sows abundance of wheat, barley, &c., the wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushel, kills store of beeves, and sells them to victual the ships when they come thither; hath abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poultry; he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Hinton, and, in a word, keeps a good house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia; he is worthy of much honour.”

[Sidenote: Rapid growth of population.]

It will be observed that Captain Mathews possessed, in his forty black servants, nearly one seventh part of the negro population. Of the conditions under which wholesale negro slavery grew up, I shall treat hereafter. In the third quarter of the seventeenth century it was still in its beginnings. Between 1650 and 1670, along with an extraordinary growth in the total population, we observe a marked increase in the number of black slaves. In the latter year Berkeley estimated the population at 32,000 free whites, 6,000 indentured white servants, and 2,000 negroes. Large estates, cultivated by wholesale slave labour, were coming into existence, and a peculiar type of aristocratic or in some respects patriarchal society was growing up in Virginia. It was still for the most part confined to the peninsula between the James and York rivers and the territory to the south of the former, from Nansemond as far as the Appomattox, although in Gloucester likewise there was a considerable population, and there were settlements in Middlesex and Lancaster counties, on opposite banks of the Rappahannock, and even as far as Northumberland and Westmoreland on the Potomac. In the course of the disputes over Kent Island, settlements began upon those shores and increased apace.

[Sidenote: Names of Virginia counties.]

Some significant history is fossilized in the names of Virginia counties. When they are not the old shire names imported from England, like those just mentioned, they are apt to be personal names indicating the times when the counties were first settled, or when they acquired a distinct existence as counties. For a long time such personal names were chiefly taken from the royal household. Thus, while Charles City County bears the name of Charles I., bestowed upon the region before that king ascended the throne, the portion of it south of James River, set off in 1702 as Prince George County, was named for George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne. So King William County on the south bank of the Mattapony, and King and Queen County on its north bank, carry us straight to the times of William and Mary, and indicate the position of the frontier in the days of Charles II.; while to the west of them the names of Hanover and the two Hanoverian princesses, Caroline and Louisa, carry us on to the days of the first two Georges.[2] At the time with which our narrative is now concerned, all that region to the south of Spottsylvania was unbroken wilderness. In 1670 a careful estimate was made of the number of Indians comprised within the immediate neighbourhood of the colony, and there were counted up 725 warriors, of whom more than 400 were on the Appomattox and Pamunkey frontiers, and nearly 200 between the Potomac and Rappahannock.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of royalist names on the map of New England.]

The map of Virginia, in the light in which I have here considered it, shows one remarkable point of contrast with the map of New England. On the coast of the latter one finds a very few names commemorative of royalty, such as Charles River, named by Captain John Smith, Cape Anne, named by Charles I. when Prince of Wales, and the Elizabeth Islands, named by Captain Gosnold still earlier and in the lifetime of the great Queen. But when it comes to names given by the settlers themselves, one cannot find in all New England a county name taken from any English sovereign or prince, except Dukes for the island of Martha’s Vineyard, and that simply recalls the fact that the island once formed a part of the proprietary domain of James, Duke of York, and sent a delegate to the first legislature that assembled at Manhattan. Except for this one instance, we should never know from the county names of New England that such a thing as kingship had ever existed. As for names of towns, there is in Massachusetts a Lunenburg, which is said to have received its name at the suggestion of a party of travellers from England in the year 1726;[3] it was afterward copied in Vermont; and by diligently searching the map of New England we may find half a dozen Hanovers and Brunswicks, counting originals and copies. Between this showing and that of Virginia, where the sequence of royal names is full enough to preserve a rude record of the country’s expansion, the contrast is surely striking. The difference between the Puritan temper and that of the Cavaliers seems to be written ineffaceably upon the map.

[Sidenote: The Cavaliers in Virginia: some popular misconceptions.]

[Sidenote: Some democratic protests.]

We are thus brought to the question as to how far the Cavalier element predominated in the composition of Old Virginia. It is a subject concerning which current general statements are apt to be loose and misleading. It has given rise to much discussion, and, like a good deal of what passes for historical discussion, it has too often been conducted under the influence of personal or sectional prejudices. Half a century ago, in the days when the people of the slave states and those of the free states found it difficult to think justly or to speak kindly of one another, one used often to hear sweeping generalizations. On the one hand, it was said that Southerners were the descendants of Cavaliers, and therefore presumably of gentle blood, while Northerners were descendants of Roundheads, and therefore presumably of ignoble origin. Some such notion may have prompted the famous remark of Robert Toombs, in 1860: “We [_i. e._ the Southerners] are the gentlemen of this country.” On the other hand, it was retorted that the people of the South were in great part descended from indentured white servants sent from the jails and slums of England.[4] This point will receive due attention in a future chapter. At present we may note that descent from Cavaliers has not always been a matter of pride with Southern speakers and writers. There was a time when the fierce spirit of democracy was inclined to regard such a connection as a stigma. The father of President Tyler “used to say that he cared naught for any other ancestor than Wat Tyler the blacksmith, who had asserted the rights of oppressed humanity, and that he would have no other device on his shield than a sledge hammer raised in the act of striking.”[5] On the subject of Cavaliers a well known Virginian writer, Hugh Blair Grigsby, once grew very warm. “The Cavalier,” said he, “was essentially a slave, a compound slave, a slave to the King and a slave to the Church. I look with contempt on the miserable figment which seeks to trace the distinguishing points of the Virginia character to the influence of those butterflies of the British aristocracy.”[6] Historical questions are often treated in this way. We grow up with a vague conception of something in the past which we feel in duty bound to condemn, and then if we are told that our own forefathers were part and parcel of the hated thing we lose our tempers. Mr. Grigsby’s remarks are an expression of American feeling in what may be called its Elijah Pogram period, when the knowledge of history was too slender and the historic sense too dull to be shocked at the incongruity of classing such men as Strafford and Falkland with “butterflies.” The study of history in such a mood is not likely to be fruitful of much beside rhetoric.

[Sidenote: Sweeping statements are inadmissible.]

Before we proceed, a few further words are desirable concerning the fallacies and misconceptions which abound in the opinions cited in the foregoing paragraph. It is impossible to make any generalization concerning the origin of the white people of the South as a whole, or of the North as a whole, further than to say that their ancestors came from Europe, and a large majority of them from the British islands. The facts are too complicated to be embraced in any generalization more definitely limited than this. When sweeping statements are made about “the North” and “the South,” it is often apparent that the speaker has in mind only Massachusetts and tidewater Virginia, making these parts do duty for the whole. The present book will make it clear that it is only in connection with tidewater Virginia that the migration of Cavaliers from England to America has any historical significance.

[Sidenote: Difference between Cavaliers and Roundheads was political, not social.]

It is a mistake to suppose that the contrast between Cavaliers and Roundheads was in any wise parallel with the contrast between high-born people and low-born. A majority of the landed gentry, titled and untitled, supported Charles I., while the chief strength of the Parliament lay in the smaller landholders and in the merchants of the cities. But the Roundheads also included a large and powerful minority of the landed aristocracy, headed by the Earls of Bedford, Warwick, Manchester, Northumberland, Stamford, and Essex, the Lords Fairfax and Brooke, and many others. The leaders of the party, Pym and Hampden, Vane and Cromwell, were of gentle blood; and among the officers of the New Model were such as Montagues, Pickerings, Fortescues, Sheffields, and Sidneys. In short, the distinction between Cavalier and Roundhead was no more a difference in respect of lineage or social rank than the analogous distinction between Tory and Whig. The mere fact of a man’s having belonged to the one party or the other raises no presumption as to his “gentility.”

[Sidenote: England has never had a _noblesse_, or upper caste.]

[Sidenote: Contrast with France.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the middle class.]

It is worth while here to correct another error which is quite commonly entertained in the United States. It is the error of supposing that in Great Britain there are distinct orders of society, or that there exists anything like a sharp and well defined line between the nobility and the commonalty. The American reader is apt to imagine a “peerage,” the members of which have from time immemorial constituted a kind of caste clearly marked off from the great body of the people, and into which it has always been very difficult for plain people to rise. In this crude conception the social differences between England and America are greatly exaggerated. In point of fact the British islands are the one part of Europe where the existence of a peerage has not resulted in creating a distinct upper class of society. The difference will be most clearly explained by contrasting England with France. In the latter country, before the Revolution of 1789, there was a peerage consisting of great landholders, local rulers and magistrates, and dignitaries of the church, just as in England. But in France all the sons and brothers of a peer were nobles distinguished by a title and reckoned among the peerage, and all were exempt from sundry important political duties, including the payment of taxes. Thus they constituted a real _noblesse_, or caste apart from the people, until the Revolution at a single blow destroyed all their privileges. At the present day French titles of nobility are merely courtesy titles, and through excessive multiplication have become cheap. On the other hand, in England, the families of peers have never been exempt from their share of the public burdens. The “peerage,” or hereditary right to sit in the House of Lords, belongs only to the head of the family; all the other members of the family are commoners, though some may be addressed by courtesy titles. During the formative period of modern political society, from the fourteenth century onward, the sons of peers habitually competed for seats in the House of Commons, side by side with merchants and yeomen. This has prevented anything like a severance between the interests of the higher and of the lower classes in England, and has had much to do with the peaceful and healthy political development which has so eminently characterized our mother country. England has never had a _noblesse_. As the upper class has never been sharply distinguished politically, so it has not held itself separate socially. Families with titles have intermarried with families that have none, the younger branches of a peer’s family become untitled gentry, ancient peerages lapse while new ones are created, so that there is a “circulation of gentle blood” that has thus far proved eminently wholesome. More than two thirds of the present House of Lords are the grandsons or great-grandsons of commoners. Of the 450 or more hereditary peerages now existing, three date from the thirteenth century and four from the fourteenth; of those existing in the days of Thomas Becket not one now remains in the same family. It has always been easy in England for ability and character to raise their possessor in the social scale; and hence the middle class has long been recognized as the abiding element in England’s strength. Voltaire once compared the English people to their ale,--froth at the top and dregs at the bottom, but sound and bright and strong in the middle. As to the last he was surely right.

[Sidenote: Respect paid to industry in England.]

One further point calls for mention. In mediæval and early modern England, great respect was paid to incorporated crafts and trades. The influence and authority wielded by county magnates over the rural population was paralleled by the power exercised in the cities by the livery companies or guilds. Since the twelfth century, the municipal franchise in the principal towns and cities of Great Britain has been for the most part controlled by the various trade and craft guilds. In the seventeenth century, when the migrations to America were beginning, it was customary for members of noble families to enter these guilds as apprentices in the crafts of the draper, the tailor, the vintner, or the mason, etc. Many important consequences have flowed from this. Let it suffice here to note that this fact of the rural aristocracy keeping in touch with the tradesmen and artisans has been one of the safeguards of English liberty; it has been one source of the power of the Commons, one check upon the undue aspirations of the Crown. It indicates a kind of public sentiment very different from that which afterward grew up in our southern states under the malignant influence of slavery, which proclaimed an antagonism between industry and gentility that is contrary to the whole spirit of English civilization.

[Sidenote: The Cavalier exodus.]

With these points clear in our minds, we may understand the true significance of the arrival of the Cavaliers in Virginia. The date to be remembered in connection with that event is 1649, and it is instructive to compare it with the exodus of Puritans to New England. The little settlement of the Mayflower Pilgrims was merely a herald of the great Puritan exodus, which really began in 1629, when Charles I. entered upon his period of eleven years of rule without a parliament, and continued until about 1642, when the Civil War broke out. During those thirteen years more than 20,000 Puritans came to New England. The great Cavalier exodus began with the king’s execution in 1649, and probably slackened after 1660. It must have been a chief cause of the remarkable increase of the white population of Virginia from 15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670.

[Sidenote: Political complexion of Virginia before 1649.]

[Sidenote: The great exchange of 1649.]

The period of the Commonwealth in England thus marks an important epoch in Virginia, and we must be on our guard against confusing what came after with what preceded it. As to the political complexion of Virginia in the earliest time, it would be difficult to make a general statement, except that there was a widespread feeling in favour of the Company as managed by Sandys and Southampton. This meant that the settlers knew when they were well governed. They did not approve of a party that sent an Argall to fleece them, even though it were the court party. So, too, in the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey in 1635 we see the temper of the councillors and burgesses flatly opposed to the king’s unpopular representative. But such instances do not tell us much concerning the attitude of the colonists upon questions of English politics. The fortunes of the Puritan settlers in Virginia afford a surer indication. At first, as we have seen, when the Puritans as a body had not yet separated from the Church, there were a good many in Virginia; and by 1640 they probably formed about seven per cent. of the population. The legislation against them beginning in 1631 seems to indicate that public sentiment in Virginia favoured the policy of Laud; while the slackness with which such legislation was enforced raises a suspicion that such sentiment was at first not very strong. It seems probable that as the country party in England came more and more completely under the control of Puritanism, and as Puritanism grew more and more radical in temper, the reaction toward the royalist side grew more and more pronounced in Virginia. If there ever was a typical Cavalier of the more narrow-minded sort, it was Sir William Berkeley, who at the same time was by no means the sort of person that one might properly call a “butterfly.” If the eloquent Mr. Grigsby had once got into those iron clutches, he would have sought some other term of comparison. When Berkeley arrived in Virginia, and for a long time afterward, he was extremely popular. We have seen him acting with so much energy against the Puritans that in the course of the year 1649 not less than 1,000 of them left the colony. Upon the news of the king’s death, Berkeley sent a message to England inviting royalists to come to Virginia, and within a twelvemonth perhaps as many as 1,000 had arrived, picked men and women of excellent sort. Thus it curiously happened that the same moment which saw Virginia lose most of her Puritan population, also saw it replaced by an equal number of devoted Cavaliers.

[Sidenote: Moderation shown in Virginia.]

From this moment we may date the beginnings of Cavalier ascendency in Virginia. But for the next ten years that growing ascendency was qualified by the necessity of submitting to the Puritan government in England. In 1652 Berkeley was obliged to retire from the governorship, and the king’s men in Virginia found it prudent to put some restraint upon the expression of their feelings. But in this change, as we have seen, there was no violence. It is probable that there was a considerable body of colonists “comparatively indifferent to the struggle of parties in England, anxious only to save Virginia from spoliation and bloodshed, and for that end willing to throw in their lot with the side whose success held out the speediest hopes of peace. There is another consideration which helps to explain the moderation of the combatants. In England each party was exasperated by grievous wrongs, and hence its hour of triumph was also its hour of revenge. The struggle in Virginia was embittered by no such recollections.”[7]

[Sidenote: Colonel Richard Lee.]

[Sidenote: Election of Berkeley by the assembly.]

A name inseparably associated with Berkeley is that of Colonel Richard Lee, who is described as “a man of good stature, comely visage, an enterprising genius, a sound head, vigorous spirit, and generous nature,”[8] qualities that may be recognized in many of his famous descendants. This Richard Lee belonged to an ancient family, the Lees of Coton Hall, in Shropshire, whom we find from the beginning of the thirteenth century in positions of honour and trust. He came to Virginia about 1642, and obtained that year an estate which he called Paradise, near the head of Poropotank Creek, on the York River. He was from the first a man of much importance in the colony, serving as justice, burgess, councillor, and secretary of state. In 1654 we find him described as “faithful and useful to the interests of the Commonwealth,” but, as Dr. Edmund Lee says, “it is only fair to observe that this claim was made for him by a friend in his absence;”[9] or perhaps it only means that he was not one of the tribe of fanatics who love to kick against the pricks.[10] Certain it is that Colonel Lee was no Puritan, though doubtless he submitted loyally to the arrangement of 1652, as so many others did. There was nothing for the king’s men to do but possess their souls in quiet until 1659, when news came of the resignation of Richard Cromwell. “Worthy Captain Mathews,” whom the assembly had chosen governor, died about the same time. Accordingly, in March, 1660, the assembly resolved that, since there was then in England no resident sovereign generally recognized, the supreme power in Virginia must be regarded as lodged in the assembly, and that all writs should issue in the name of the Grand Assembly of Virginia until such a command should come from England as the assembly should judge to be lawful. Having passed this resolution, the assembly showed its political complexion by electing Sir William Berkeley for governor: and in the same breath it revealed its independent spirit by providing that he must call an assembly at least once in two years, and oftener if need be; and that he must not dissolve it without the consent of a majority of the members. On these terms Berkeley accepted office at the hands of the assembly.

[Sidenote: Lee’s visit to Brussels.]

[Sidenote: Charles II. proclaimed king.]

Before this transaction, perhaps in 1658, Colonel Lee seems to have visited Charles II. at Brussels, where he handed over to the still exiled prince the old commission of Berkeley, and may have obtained from him a new one for future use, reinstating him as governor.[11] There is a vague tradition that on this occasion he asked how soon Charles would be likely to be able to protect the colony in case it should declare its allegiance to him; and from this source may have arisen the wild statement, recorded by Beverley and promulgated by the eminent historian Robertson, that Virginia proclaimed Charles II. as sovereign a year or two before he was proclaimed in England.[12] The absurdity of this story was long ago pointed out;[13] but since error has as many lives as a cat, one may still hear it repeated. Charles II. was proclaimed king in England on the 8th of May, 1660, and in Virginia on the 20th of September following.[14] In October the royal commission for Berkeley arrived, and the governor may thus have felt that the conditions on which he accepted his office from the assembly were no longer binding. Our next chapter will show how lightly he held them.

If one may judge from the public accounts of York County in 1660, expressed in the arithmetic of a tobacco currency, the 20th of September must have been a joyful occasion:--

Att the proclaiming of his sacred Maisty:

To y^e Ho^{ble} Govn^r p a barrell powd^r, 112 lb. .00996 To Cap^t ffox six cases of drams .00900 To Cap^t ffox for his great gunnes .00500 To M^r Philip Malory .00500 To y^e trumpeters .00800 To M^r Hansford 176 Gallons Syd^r at 15 & 35 gall at 20, caske 264 .03604

There can be no doubt that it was an occasion prolific in legend. The historian Robert Beverley, who was born about fifteen years afterward, tells us that Governor Berkeley’s proclamation named Charles II. as “King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and Virginia.” The document itself, however, calls him “our most gratious soveraigne, Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, ffrance, & Ireland,” and makes no mention of Virginia.

[Sidenote: The seal of Virginia.]

William Lee tells us that it was “in consequence of this step” that the motto _En dat Virginia quintam_ was placed upon the seal of the colony.[15] Since “this step” was never taken, the statement needs some qualification. The idea of of designating Virginia as an additional kingdom to those over which the English sovereign ruled in Europe was already entertained in 1590 by Edmund Spenser, who dedicated his “Faëry Queene” to Elizabeth as queen of “England, France,[16] and Ireland, and of Virginia.”[17] As early as 1619 the London Company adopted a coat-of-arms, upon which was the motto _En dat Virginia quintum_, in which the unexpressed noun is _regnum_; “Behold, Virginia gives the fifth [kingdom].” After the restoration of Charles II. a new seal for Virginia, adopted about 1663, has the same motto, the effect of which was to rank Virginia by the side of his Majesty’s other four dominions, England, Scotland, “France,” and Ireland. We are told by the younger Richard Henry Lee that in these circumstances originated the famous epithet “Old Dominion.” In 1702, among several alterations in the seal, the word _quintum_ was changed to _quintam_, to agree with the unexpressed noun _coronam_; “Behold, Virginia gives the fifth [crown].” After the legislative union of England with Scotland in 1707, another seal, adopted in 1714, substituted _quartam_ for _quintam_.[18]

[Sidenote: Increase in the size of land grants.]

Just how many members of the royalist party came to Virginia while their young king was off upon his travels, it would be difficult to say. But there were unquestionably a great many. We have already remarked upon the very rapid increase of white population, from about 15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670. Along with this there was a marked increase in the size of the land grants, both the average size and the maximum; and in this coupling of facts there is great significance, for they show that the increase of population was predominantly an increase in the numbers of the upper class, of the people who could afford to have large estates. In these respects the year 1650 marks an abrupt change,[19] which may best be shown by a tabular view of the figures:--

Largest number of acres Average number of Years. in a single grant. acres in a grant.

1632 350 1634 5,350 719 1635 2,000 380 1636 2,000 351 1637 5,350 445 1638 3,000 423 1640 1,300 405 1641 872 343 1642 3,000 559 1643 4,000 595 1644 670 370 1645 1,090 333 1646 1,200 360 1647 650 361 1648 1,800 412 1649 3,500 522 1650 5,350 677 1651-55 10,000 591 1656-66 10,000 671 1667-79 20,000 890 1680-89 20,000 607

Another way of showing the facts is still more striking:--

Number of grants exceeding Years. 5,000 acres.

1632-50 3 1651-55 3 1656-66 20 1667-79 37 1680-89 19

[Sidenote: Cavalier families.]

[Sidenote: Ancestry of George Washington.]

[Sidenote: Value of genealogy.]

The increase in the number of slaves after 1650 is a fact of similar import with the greater size of the estates. All the circumstances agree in showing that there was a large influx of eminently well-to-do people. It is well known, moreover, who these people were. It is in the reign of Charles II. that the student of Virginian history begins to meet frequently with the familiar names, such as Randolph, Pendleton, Madison, Mason, Monroe, Cary, Ludwell, Parke, Robinson, Marshall, Washington, and so many others that have become eminent. All these were Cavalier families that came to Virginia after the downfall of Charles I. Whether President Tyler was right in claiming descent from the Kentish rebel of 1381 is not clear, but there is no doubt that his first American ancestor, who came to Virginia after the battle of Worcester, was a gentleman and a royalist.[20] Until recently there was some uncertainty as to the pedigree of George Washington, but the researches of Mr. Fitz Gilbert Waters of Salem have conclusively proved that he was descended from the Washingtons of Sulgrave, in Northamptonshire, a family that had for generations worthily occupied positions of honour and trust. In the Civil War the Washingtons were distinguished royalists. The commander who surrendered Worcester in 1646 to the famous Edward Whalley was Colonel Henry Washington;[21] and his cousin John, who came to Virginia in 1657, was great-grandfather of George Washington. After the fashion that prevailed a hundred years ago, the most illustrious of Americans felt little interest in his ancestry; but with the keener historic sense and broader scientific outlook of the present day, the importance of such matters is better appreciated. The pedigrees of horses, dogs, and fancy pigeons have a value that is quotable in terms of hard cash. Far more important, for the student of human affairs, are the pedigrees of men. By no possible ingenuity of constitution-making or of legislation can a society made up of ruffians and boors be raised to the intellectual and moral level of a society made up of well-bred merchants and yeomen, parsons and lawyers. One might as well expect to see a dray horse win the Derby. It is, moreover, only when we habitually bear in mind the threads of individual relationship that connect one country with another, that we get a really firm and concrete grasp of history. Without genealogy the study of history is comparatively lifeless. No excuse is needed, therefore, for giving in this connection a tabulated abridgment of the discoveries of Mr. Waters concerning the forefathers of George Washington.[22] Beside the personal interest attaching to everything associated with that immortal name, this pedigree has interest and value as being in large measure typical. It is a fair sample of good English middle-class pedigrees, and it is typical as regards the ancestry of leading Cavalier families in Virginia; an inspection of many genealogies of those who came between 1649 and 1670 yields about the same general impression. Moreover, this pedigree is equally typical as regards the ancestry of leading Puritan families in New England. The genealogies, for example, of Winthrop, Dudley, Saltonstall, Chauncey, or Baldwin give the same general impression as those of Randolph, or Cary, or Cabell, or Lee. The settlers of Virginia and of New England were opposed to each other in politics, but they belonged to one and the same stratum of society, and in their personal characteristics they were of the same excellent quality. To quote the lines of Sir William Jones, written as a paraphrase of the Greek epigram of Alcæus inscribed upon my title-page:--

ARMS.--_Argent, two bars and in chief three mullets Gules._

John Washington, of Whitfield, Lancashire, time of Henry VI. | | Robert Washington, of Warton, Lancashire, 2d son. | | John Washington, of Warton, m. Margaret Kitson, sister of Sir Thomas Kitson, alderman of London. | | Lawrence Washington, of Gray’s Inn, mayor of Northampton, obtained grant of Sulgrave Manor, 1539, d. 1584; m. Anne Pargiter, of Gretworth. | +--------------------+---------------------------------+ | | Robert Washington, Lawrence Washington, of Sulgrave, b. 1544; of Gray’s Inn, m. Elizabeth Light. register of High | Court of Chancery, | d. 1619. | | | | Lawrence Washington, Sir Lawrence Washington, of Sulgrave and Brington, register of High Court of d. 1616; m. Margaret Butler. Chancery, d. 1643. | | +--------+-----+--------------+ | | | | | Sir William Sir John Rev. Lawrence Lawrence Washington, Washington, Washington, Washington, d. 1662; m. Eleanor Gyse. d. 1643; m. Anne d. 1678. M. A., Fellow | Villiers, of Brasenose | half-sister of College, Oxford, | George Villiers, Rector of Purleigh, | Duke of d. before 1655. | Buckingham. | | | | | | +-----------------+ | | | | | Henry Washington, John Lawrence Washington, Elizabeth Washington, colonel in the Washington, b.1635, came to heiress, d. 1693; royalist army, b. 1631, Virginia, 1657. m. Earl Ferrers. governor of d. 1677; Worcester, came to d. 1664. Virginia, 1657; m. Anne Pope. | Lawrence Washington, d. 1697; m. Mildred, dau. of Augustine Warner. | | Augustine Washington, b. 1694, d. 1749; m. Mary Ball. | | GEORGE WASHINGTON, b. 1732, d. 1799. _First President of the United States._

“What constitutes a State? Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No:--MEN, high-minded MEN, * * * * * “Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain: These constitute a State.”[23]

Such men were the Cavaliers of Virginia and the Puritans of New England.

[Sidenote: Importance of the Cavalier element in Virginia.]

There can be little doubt that these Cavaliers were the men who made the greatness of Virginia. To them it is due that her history represents ideas and enshrines events which mankind will always find interesting. It is apt to be the case that men who leave their country for reasons connected with conscience and principle, men who have once consecrated themselves to a cause, are picked men for ability and character. Such men are likely to exert upon any community which they may enter an influence immeasurably greater than an equal number of men taken at random. It matters little what side they may have espoused. Very few of the causes for which brave men have fought one another have been wholly right or wholly wrong. Our politics may be those of Samuel Adams, but we must admit that the Thomas Hutchinson type of mind and character is one which society could ill afford to lose. Of the gallant Cavaliers who drew the sword for King Charles, there were many who no more approved of his crooked methods and despotic aims than Hutchinson approved of the Stamp Act. No better illustration could be found than Lord Falkland, some of whose kinsmen emigrated to Virginia and played a conspicuous part there. A proper combination of circumstances was all that was required to bring the children of these royalists into active political alliance with the children of the Cromwellians.

[Sidenote: Differences between New England and Virginia.]

Both in Virginia and in New England, then, the principal element of the migration consisted of picked men and women of the same station in life, and differing only in their views of civil and ecclesiastical polity. The differences that grew up between the relatively aristocratic type of society in Virginia and the relatively democratic type in New England were due not at all to differences in the social quality of the settlers, but in some degree to their differences in church politics, and in a far greater degree to the different economic circumstances of Virginia and New England. It is worth our while to point out some of these contrasts and to indicate their effect upon the local government, the nature of which, perhaps more than anything else, determines the character of the community as aristocratic or democratic.

[Sidenote: Settlement of New England by congregations.]

That extreme Puritan theory of ecclesiastical polity, according to which each congregation was to be a little self-governing republic, had much to do with the way in which New England was colonized. The settlers came in congregations, led by their favourite ministers,--such men, for example, as Higginson and Cotton, Hooker and Davenport. When such men, famous in England for their bold preaching and imperilled thereby, decided to move to America, a considerable number of their parishioners would decide to accompany them, and similarly minded members of neighbouring churches would leave their own pastor and join in the migration. Such a group of people, arriving on the coast of Massachusetts, would naturally select some convenient locality, where they might build their houses near together and all go to the same church.

[Sidenote: Land grants in Massachusetts.]

This migration, therefore, was a movement, not of individuals or of separate families, but of church-congregations, and it continued to be so as the settlers made their way inland and westward. The first river towns of Connecticut were thus founded by congregations coming from Dorchester, Cambridge, and Watertown. This kind of settlement was favoured by the government of Massachusetts, which made grants of land, not to individuals but to companies of people who wished to live together and attend the same church.

[Sidenote: Small farms.]

It was also favoured by economic circumstances. The soil of New England was not favourable to the cultivation of great quantities of staple articles, such as rice or tobacco, so that there was nothing to tempt people to undertake extensive plantations. Most of the people lived on small farms, each family raising but little more than enough food for its own support; and the small size of the farms made it possible to have a good many in a compact neighbourhood. It appeared also that towns could be more easily defended against the Indians than scattered plantations; and this doubtless helped to keep people together, although if there had been any strong inducement for solitary pioneers to plunge into the great woods, as in later years so often happened at the West, it is not likely that any dread of the savages would have hindered them.

[Sidenote: Township and village.]

Thus the early settlers of New England came to live in townships. A township would consist of about as many farms as could be disposed within convenient distance from the meeting-house, where all the inhabitants, young and old, gathered every Sunday, coming on horseback or afoot. The meeting-house was thus centrally situated, and near it was the town pasture or “common,” with the school-house and the blockhouse, or rude fortress for defence against the Indians. For the latter building some commanding position was apt to be selected, and hence we so often find the old village streets of New England running along elevated ridges or climbing over beetling hilltops. Around the meeting-house and common the dwellings gradually clustered into a village, and after a while the tavern, store, and town-house made their appearance.

[Sidenote: Social position of settlers in New England.]

Among the people who thus tilled the farms and built up the villages of New England, the differences in what we should call social position, though noticeable, were not extreme. While in England some had been esquires or country magistrates, or “lords of the manor,”--a phrase which does not mean a member of the peerage, but a landed proprietor with dependent tenants,--some had been yeomen, or persons holding farms by some free kind of tenure; some had been artisans or tradesmen in cities. All had for many generations been more or less accustomed to self-government and to public meetings for discussing local affairs. That self-government, especially as far as church matters were concerned, they were stoutly bent upon maintaining and extending. Indeed, that was what they had crossed the ocean for. Under these circumstances they developed a kind of government which has remained practically unchanged down to the present day. In the town meeting the government is the entire adult male population. Its merits, from a genuine democratic point of view, have long been recognized, but in these days of rampant political quackery they are worth recalling to mind, even at the cost of a brief digression.

[Sidenote: Some merits of the town meeting.]

[Sidenote: The “magic fund” delusion.]

Within its proper sphere, government by town meeting is the form of government most effectively under watch and control. Everything is done in the full daylight of publicity. The specific objects for which public money is to be appropriated are discussed in the presence of everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to declare his opinions. Under this form of government people are not so liable to bewildering delusions as under other forms. I refer especially to the delusion that “the Government” is a sort of mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible fund of wealth, and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of “the People.” Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is the prolific root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In point of fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any money for public purposes which it did not first take from its own people,--unless when it may have plundered it from some other people in victorious warfare.

The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that “the Government” is “the People.” Although he may think loosely about the government of his state or the still more remote government at Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small value.

[Sidenote: Educational value of the town meeting.]

In the kind of discussion which it provokes, in the necessity of facing argument with argument and of keeping one’s temper under control, the town meeting is the best political training school in existence. Its educational value is far higher than that of the newspaper, which, in spite of its many merits as a diffuser of information, is very apt to do its best to bemuddle and sophisticate plain facts. The period when town meetings were most important from the wide scope of their transactions was the period of earnest and sometimes stormy discussion that ushered in our Revolutionary War. In those days great principles of government were discussed with a wealth of knowledge and stated with masterly skill in town meeting.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Primogeniture and entail in Virginia.]

In Virginia the economic circumstances were very different from those of New England, and the effects were seen in a different kind of local institutions. In New England the system of small holdings facilitated the change from primogeniture to the Kentish custom of gavelkind, with which many of the settlers were already familiar, in which the property of an intestate is equally divided among the children.[24] In Virginia, on the other hand, the large estates, cultivated by servile labour, were kept together by the combined customs of primogeniture and entail, which lasted until they were overthrown by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. In this circumstance, more than in anything else, originated the more aristocratic features in the local institutions of Virginia. To this should be added the facts that before the eighteenth century there was a large servile class of whites, to which there was nothing even remotely analogous in New England; and that the introduction of negro slavery, which was beginning to assume noticeable dimensions about 1670, served to affix a stigma upon manual labour.

[Sidenote: Virginia parishes.]

[Sidenote: The vestry a close corporation.]

In view of this group of circumstances we need not wonder that in Old Virginia there were no town meetings. The distances between plantations coöperated with the distinction between classes to prevent the growth of such an institution. The English parish, with its churchwardens and vestry and clerk, was reproduced in Virginia under the same name, but with some noteworthy peculiarities. If the whole body of ratepayers had assembled in vestry meeting, to enact by-laws and assess taxes, the course of development would have been like that of the New England town meeting. But instead of this the vestry, which exercised the chief authority in the parish, was composed of twelve chosen men. This was not government by a primary assembly, it was representative government. At first the twelve vestrymen were elected by the people of the parish, and thus resembled the selectmen of New England; but in 1662 “they obtained the power of filling vacancies in their own number,” so that they became what is called a “close corporation,” and the people had nothing to do with choosing them. Strictly speaking, that was not representative government; it was a step on the road that leads towards oligarchical or despotic government. It was, as we shall see, one of the steps ineffectually opposed in Bacon’s rebellion.

[Sidenote: Powers of the vestry.]

It was the vestry, thus constituted, that apportioned the parish taxes, appointed the churchwardens, presented the minister for induction into office, and acted as overseers of the poor. The minister presided in all vestry meetings. His salary was paid in tobacco, and in 1696 it was fixed by law at 16,000 pounds of tobacco yearly. In many parishes the churchwardens were the collectors of the parish taxes. The other officers, such as the sexton and the parish clerk, were appointed either by the minister or by the vestry.

With the local government thus administered, we see that the larger part of the people had little directly to do. Nevertheless, in those small neighbourhoods government could be kept in full sight of the people, and so long as its proceedings went on in broad daylight and were sustained by public sentiment, all was well. As Jefferson said, “The vestrymen are usually the most discreet farmers, so distributed through the parish that every part of it may be under the immediate eye of some one of them. They are well acquainted with the details and economy of private life, and they find sufficient inducements to execute their charge well, in their philanthropy, in the approbation of their neighbours, and the distinction which that gives them.”[25]

[Sidenote: The county was the unit of representation.]

The difference, however, between the New England township and the Virginia parish, in respect of self-government, was striking enough. We have now to note a further difference. In New England, the township was the unit of representation in the colonial legislature; but in Virginia the parish was not the unit of representation. The county was that unit. In the colonial legislature of Virginia the representatives sat, not for parishes but for counties. The difference is very significant. As the political life of New England was in a manner built up out of the political life of the towns, so the political life of Virginia was built up out of the political life of the counties. This was partly because the vast plantations were not grouped about a compact village nucleus like the small farms at the North, and partly because there was not in Virginia that Puritan theory of the church according to which each congregation is a self-governing democracy. The conditions which made the New England town meeting were absent. The only alternative was some kind of representative government, and for this the county was a small enough area. The county in Virginia was much smaller than in Massachusetts or Connecticut. In a few instances the county consisted of only a single parish; in some cases it was divided into two parishes, but oftener into three or more.

[Sidenote: The county court was virtually a close corporation.]

In Virginia, as in England and in New England, the county was an area for the administration of justice. There were usually in each county eight justices of the peace, and their court was the counterpart of the quarter sessions in England. They were appointed by the governor, but it was customary for them to nominate candidates for the governor to appoint, so that practically the court filled its own vacancies and was a close corporation, like the parish vestry. Such an arrangement tended to keep the general supervision and control of things in the hands of a few families.

[Sidenote: The county seat or Court House.]

This county court usually met as often as once a month in some convenient spot answering to the shire town of England or New England. More often than not, the place originally consisted of the court-house and very little else, and was named accordingly from the name of the county, as Hanover Court House or Fairfax Court House; and the small shire towns that have grown up in such spots often retain these names to the present day. Such names occur commonly in Virginia, West Virginia, and South Carolina, and occasionally elsewhere. Their number has diminished from the tendency to omit the phrase “Court House,” leaving the name of the county for that of the shire town, as for example in Culpeper, Va. In New England the process of naming has been just the reverse; as in Hartford County, Conn., or Worcester County, Mass., which have taken their names from the shire towns. Here, as in so many cases, whole chapters of history are wrapped up in geographical names.[26]

[Sidenote: Powers of the court.]

[Sidenote: The sheriff.]

The county court in Virginia had jurisdiction in criminal actions not involving peril of life or limb, and in civil suits where the sum at stake exceeded twenty-five shillings. Smaller suits could be tried by a single justice. The court also had charge of the probate and administration of wills. The court appointed its own clerk, who kept the county records. It superintended the construction and repair of bridges and highways, and for this purpose divided the county into “precincts,” and appointed annually for each precinct a highway surveyor. The court also seems to have appointed constables, one for each precinct. The justices could themselves act as coroners, but annually two or more coroners for each parish were appointed by the governor. As we have seen that the parish taxes--so much for salaries of minister and clerk, so much for care of church buildings, so much for the relief of the poor, etc.--were computed and assessed by the vestry; so the county taxes, for care of court-house and jail, roads and bridges, coroner’s fees, and allowances to the representatives sent to the colonial legislature, were computed and assessed by the county court. The general taxes for the colony were estimated by a committee of the legislature, as well as the county’s share of the colony tax. The taxes for the county, and sometimes the taxes for the parish also, were collected by the sheriff. They were usually paid, not in money, but in tobacco; and the sheriff was the custodian of this tobacco, responsible for its proper disposal. The sheriff was thus not only the officer for executing the judgments of the court, but he was also county treasurer and collector, and thus exercised powers almost as great as those of the sheriff in England in the twelfth century. He also presided over elections for representatives to the legislature. It is interesting to observe how this very important officer was chosen. “Each year the court presented the names of three of its members to the governor, who appointed one, generally the senior justice, to be the sheriff of the county for the ensuing year.”[27] Here again we see this close corporation, the county court, keeping the control of things within its own hands.

[Sidenote: The county lieutenant.]

One other important county officer needs to be mentioned. In early New England each town had its train-band or company of militia, and the companies in each county united to form the county regiment. In Virginia it was just the other way. Each county raised a certain number of troops, and because it was not convenient for the men to go many miles from home in assembling for purposes of drill, the county was subdivided into military districts, each with its company, according to rules laid down by the governor. The military command in each county was vested in the county lieutenant, an officer answering in many respects to the lord lieutenant of the English shire at that period. Usually he was a member of the governor’s council, and as such exercised sundry judicial functions. He bore the honorary title of “colonel,” and was to some extent regarded as the governor’s deputy; but in later times his duties were confined entirely to military matters.[28]

If now we sum up the contrasts between local government in Virginia and that in New England, we observe:--

1. That in New England the management of local affairs was mostly in the hands of town officers, the county being superadded for certain purposes, chiefly judicial; while in Virginia the management was chiefly in the hands of county officers, though certain functions, chiefly ecclesiastical, were reserved to the parish.

2. That in New England the local magistrates were almost always, with the exception of justices, chosen by the people; while in Virginia, though some of them were nominally appointed by the governor, yet in practice they generally contrived to appoint themselves,--in other words, the local boards practically filled their own vacancies and were self-perpetuating.

[Sidenote: Jefferson’s opinion of township government.]

These differences are striking and profound. There can be no doubt that, as Thomas Jefferson clearly saw, in the long run the interests of political liberty are much safer under the New England system than under the Virginia system. Jefferson said: “Those wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation.[29] ... As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words _Carthago delenda est_, so do I every opinion with the injunction: ‘Divide the counties into wards!’”[30]

[Sidenote: “Court-day.”]

We must, however, avoid the mistake of making too much of this contrast. As already hinted, in those rural societies where people generally knew one another, its effects were not so far-reaching as they would be in the more complicated society of to-day. Even though Virginia had not the town meeting, “it had its familiar court-day,” which “was a holiday for all the countryside, especially in the fall and spring. From all directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the court-house green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes,--the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election times were near, stump-speaking.”[31]

[Sidenote: Virginia prolific in great leaders.]

For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed in Massachusetts town meetings when representatives were to be chosen for the legislature. Such questions generally related to some real or alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal governor, who, being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to have ideas and purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the people. This perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial interference with American local self-government, was an excellent schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and for Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading colonies cordially supported each other, and their political characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which each was especially distinguished. The Virginia system, concentrating the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county families, was eminently favourable for developing skilful and vigorous leadership. And while in the history of Massachusetts during the Revolution we are chiefly impressed with the remarkable degree in which the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training that nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion can impart; on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us--in Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Madison, and Marshall, to mention no others--such a group of leaders as has seldom been equalled.