Chapter 3

In England the Privy Council heard the charges against Harvey and his defense. None of the accusations stood up, and he was able to show why the Council had private reasons to desire his removal. The King directed him to return to his government with increased power, and ordered the Councilors who had been instrumental in deposing him to be sent to England for trial. Harvey was able to collect some of his back pay and to obtain the King's agreement that he should return in a ship of war. Unfortunately, an old and unseaworthy prize ship was provided him which had to turn back shortly after its departure, and Harvey was forced to take passage on an ordinary merchant ship which arrived in Virginia January 18, 1637. Harvey suffered great losses because of the unseaworthiness of the prize ship, and petitioned the King for recompense. He was, however, ordered to pay out of his own pocket all the losses he had sustained by the affair, although he was authorized to collect an equivalent amount from the estates of the mutinous Councilors should they be convicted.

The sending of the mutinous Councilors--Capt. John West, Samuel Mathews, John Utie, and William Pierce--as prisoners to England, strangely enough allowed them to accomplish what they had been unable to do in Virginia. So many and so powerful were their friends, so wealthy were they themselves, and so many were the charges that they contrived against Harvey now that he was back in the colony and unable to answer them, that the King soon reversed himself and ordered Harvey relieved of his post. The King's action illustrates one of the little appreciated factors in American colonial history: the role played by petitions to the King. Three thousand miles of ocean, and months, even years, in time, separated the assertion from the proof, encouraged the most exaggerated charges, and contributed to the unjustified sympathy extended by the King to many petitioners who did not deserve such consideration. Some of the "crimes" charged against Harvey were even discovered to have their origin in the King's own commands or in earlier acts of Assembly. Yet they contributed to clouding the atmosphere and blinding the lords of England to the true worth of their representative in Virginia.

On the basis of unjustified or unsupported charges concerning Harvey's alleged misappropriation of the mutinous Councilors' estates, which had been seized for the King pending their trial, the King, on May 25, 1637, ordered these estates returned to their owners. Harvey complied immediately as far as four of the Councilors were concerned, but he had already allowed legal action to be directed against Mathews' estate by those who had claims against Mathews, and judgments had been made in favor of the plaintiffs. When the English government heard he had not turned back Mathews' property, it promptly ordered that he do so without delay, which order Harvey then tried to put into effect as best he could. The damage had been done, however, and the impression created that he had willfully misappropriated Mathews' property and disobeyed the King's commands.

Harvey's fight against the charges his enemies brought against him in England suffered another blow when Mr. Anthony Panton, a minister who had been twice banished from the colony, returned to England to add his complaints to those of the others. Harvey was not given a chance to defend himself against the new charges, and on January 11, 1639, Sir Francis Wyatt was appointed to succeed him.

On Wyatt's arrival Harvey's estate was seized and the old Governor prevented from returning to England until he could satisfy his creditors. To meet their demands, Harvey, in 1640, was forced to sell all his land and much of his personal property. The fact that he was in debt to many persons in the colony is itself a significant indication that he had not abused the powers of his office. It is a curious fact that both Governor Sir William Berkeley and Governor Harvey were much in debt when the rebellions against their rule began, while their principal enemies were among the wealthiest men in the colony.

Harvey was finally able to return to England, probably in 1641. There he found Anthony Panton continuing his campaign of defamation against him. Panton was not content to accuse the previous government in Virginia of every sort of general crime (although he failed to cite any specific instance of oppression) but charged that the commission the King had granted to Sir William Berkeley in August 1641 to replace Wyatt had been surreptitiously obtained. The House of Lords therefore ordered Berkeley's voyage delayed while they examined the case. The House of Commons, on the basis of an earlier petition from Panton, had similarly prevented the return to Virginia of Richard Kemp, Secretary of the colony, and Christopher Wormeley. Both Berkeley and the two Virginians presented counterpetitions, the one pointing out that he was charged with nothing and hence desired not to be held up on his costly voyage, the others asserting that all Panton's accusations were untrue and similarly requesting permission to leave. The House of Lords thereupon granted these petitions, sending Panton's charges to the Governor and Council of Virginia for a decision.

THE EARLY ADMINISTRATION OF SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY, 1642-1644: AN ERA OF GOOD FEELING

In March 1642 Sir William Berkeley took up his duties in Virginia and began a career which ended both gloriously and ignominiously thirty-five years later. Berkeley came from a distinguished family, was a graduate of Oxford and the Inns of Court, a playwright, and a courtier much admired by the King. Men frequently wondered why he chose to waste his talents in the American wilderness when he might have achieved eminence at Court. The mystery will probably ever remain. In Virginia Berkeley had to work with many of the same Councilors who bedeviled Harvey, but Berkeley was able to get along well with them and with the Assembly and people of Virginia. No Governor of Virginia in the seventeenth century was ever so well or so deservedly loved by the people. Since he ended his long career as Governor amidst a colonial rebellion against his rule in 1676, historians have found it hard to determine whether to bestow praise or blame upon him. Usually he is praised for his early years in the government and condemned for his later years, thus taking on a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde character. The last word has not yet been written on Governor Berkeley, however, and his character may prove to be more consistent than historians have realized.

Berkeley's first action was to join the Burgesses and Council in a violent denunciation of those who were attempting to reinstitute the old Virginia Company's control over the colony. In a "Declaration against the Company" Berkeley and the Assembly asserted that government under the Company had been intolerable and if introduced again would destroy all the democratic rights allowed by the King's instructions, such as legal trial by jury, the right to petition the King, and yearly Assemblies. The readmission of the Company would also, the declaration asserted, impeach the "freedom of our trade (which is the blood and life of a commonwealth)." The declaration went on to order that anyone who promoted the restoration of the Company's power would, upon due conviction, be held an enemy to the colony and forfeit his whole estate.

Berkeley's next action was to recommend the repeal of the tax of four pounds of tobacco per poll which formerly had been levied for the Governor's use. The Assembly acknowledged this as "a benefit descending unto us and our posterity ... contributed to us by our present Governor." Berkeley abolished certain other valuable emoluments due him by virtue of his office "wherein," the Assembly declared, "we may not likewise silence the bounty of our present Governor in preferring the public freedom before his particular profit." Finally Berkeley recommended that taxes be proportioned in some measure "according to mens abilities and estates" rather than by the old poll tax system, and the new scheme was, for a brief period, put into effect.

Governor Berkeley not only showed himself selfless in restraining his own opportunities for profit, but fearless in restraining the colonists' itch for land. A few months before his arrival, the Assembly had authorized settlement both on the north side of the York and in the Rappahannock area, if it could be done in great enough force. Opechancanough was to be offered fifty barrels of corn a year for the area between the York and the Piankatank, although the English proposed to take the area whether Opechancanough accepted the offer or not. Twenty-four years had elapsed before English settlement jumped from the James to the York. Now, ten years after the first settlements on the York, Virginians were settling on the next great river to the north, the Rappahannock. By the time Berkeley arrived, some settlers had established themselves in the area, and many more had claimed grants. Indian hostility was great, however, and soon a number of the settlers returned to more secure areas of the country.

Berkeley, working with the Assembly of March 1643, obtained a law which provided that the Rappahannock River region should remain "unseated," though grants might be tentatively claimed in the area, until the Governor, Council, and Burgesses, that is, the Grand Assembly, should authorize settlement there. The Governor was attempting to regulate the expansion of the colony so that the twin goals of security for the English and justice for the Indians could both be secured. In this he was not entirely successful, since he could only guide, not arbitrarily direct, the representatives of the people. The rich, virgin land of the frontier exerted a continuing attraction to the tobacco planters, and five years later, in 1648, the restrictions on settlement in the Rappahannock region, as well as in the Potomac region, were officially lifted.

Many other important policy decisions were made at the March 1643 meeting of the Grand Assembly. One of these decisions concerned church government. The first act provided for the establishment of church government according to the Anglican form. Virginia was not formed as a protest against the Church of England, as were the Puritan colonies in New England in large measure. Conformity in religious matters was considered a virtue in Virginia. The Assembly, indeed, enacted that nonconformist ministers be compelled to depart the colony, an act which did much to sour Virginia's relations with New England. What was significant about the act, however, was that, with certain exceptions and qualifications, it gave the vestry of every parish power to elect the minister of the parish. Because established landlords and nobles did not exist to build and endow churches as in England, the representatives of the people, in the vestry, had to assume the role of patron, to build the church, and to provide for the support of the minister. In such circumstances it was natural that much of the power that remained in the hierarchy of church, state, and society in England should, in Virginia, pass to the ordinary people and be exercised through their representatives--the vestry and Burgesses. The people, not the King, became the patron of the Church of England in Virginia. Popular responsibility replaced clerical responsibility and added one more phase of life to those controlled directly by the people in the New World. It is significant that Patrick Henry, years before the Revolution, should first have asserted the doctrine of popular responsibility and authority in a case--the celebrated "Parsons' Cause"--involving the people's authority over the church.

An even more significant indication of the shift in power in the government was the provision in one of the acts of the Assembly of 1643 that appeals from the General Court (composed of the Governor and Council, all appointees of the Crown) should be made to the Grand Assembly (composed of the representatives of the people plus the Governor and Council).

Still another demonstration of the _de facto_ shift in power from the Crown to the people was the third act of the 1643 Assembly which declared that the Governor and Council "shall not lay any taxes or impositions upon this collonie their lands or comodities otherwise then by the authority of the Grand Assembly to be leavied and imployed as by the Assembly shall be appointed." The first such law had been passed in March 1624 and renewed in February 1632. The process of wresting control of the purse strings from the representatives of the Crown was to be a long-drawn-out process in America, as indeed it was in England. In Virginia the battle was won without a fight either because the Governors were unable to oppose the power of the Burgesses or because they identified their interests with those of the people. In the case of the rights won by the people of Virginia during Sir William Berkeley's governorship, these seem to have been the results as much of the Governor's benevolence as of the Burgesses' power.

The colony also took its economic welfare into its own hands in the early years of Berkeley's administration. Dutch traders were encouraged by an act which made it free and lawful for any Dutch merchant or shipowner to bring merchandise into the colony and to take tobacco out of it. Means were provided to ease the difficulty caused by the requirement that the Dutch give security for payment of the King's customs at the port of London.

THE GREAT MASSACRE AND INDIAN WAR, 1644-1646

On April 18, 1644, occurred the second great Indian massacre in Virginia's history. Opechancanough, King of the Pamunkey Indian confederation, planned and executed the massacre, which most historians attribute to the steadily increasing pressure exerted by the English on the Indians' lands. The white population had increased from 3,000 in 1630 to 8,000 in 1640, and more were pouring in yearly. Nearly four hundred English, living in exposed areas of the colony, reportedly lost their lives in the massacre. The gallant young Berkeley, as proficient a soldier as he was a playwright and courtier, struck back hard at the Indians. The entire colony was put on a war footing. Campaigns, usually by small mobile forces, were conducted against the Indians where they could be found. The June Assembly passed an act for "perpetuall warre with the Indians" promising to "pursue and root out those which have any way had theire hands in the shedding of our blood and massacring of our people."

As in the case of so many Indian wars, there was a difference of opinion as to which Indian nations were guilty of the attack. The Assembly's act attempted to restrict reprisals to those who had actually perpetrated the massacre. Some individuals, however, like Col. William Claiborne, seem to have desired to extend the reprisals to the Indians living between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, where the land interests of Claiborne and others were concentrated at this time.

Little progress was made in defeating the enemy in the early months of the war. The Assembly, meeting in June 1644, foreseeing ruin and desolation unless the colony could be furnished with a greater supply of arms and ammunition, entreated Governor Berkeley to return to England and implore His Majesty for assistance to the country. The Assembly also commissioned Mr. Cornelius Lloyd as agent for the colony to obtain what supplies he could from the Dutch plantation in Hudson's River, from the Swedish plantation on the Delaware, and from the New England settlements.

It does not seem, from the records available, that either mission was successful. Governor Berkeley found England involved in full-scale war between the forces of the King and those of Parliament. Instead of receiving aid from the King, Berkeley lent his own assistance to the King's cause in his English campaigns. Berkeley returned to Virginia a year later.

The mission of Virginia's agent to the northern colonies apparently met with similar lack of success. Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay attributed the massacre to Virginia's expulsion of certain "godly ministers" sent from New England a short time before, and told the Virginia agent that Massachusetts could not spare the powder requested. When Massachusetts' principal powder store shortly thereafter blew up, Winthrop wondered whether God's wrath might not have been kindled against the Bay Colony for her refusal to provide powder to fellow Englishmen in need.

The war with Opechancanough continued throughout the fall and winter of 1644 and into the spring of 1645. At the Assembly of February 1645 provision was made for sending out the usual military parties. But in addition three forts were ordered built: one in the Pamunkey territory, one at the falls of the James, and a third along the Chickahominy.

Efforts were made to see that the expenses of the war were equitably shared. The settlers at Northumberland, on the south bank of the Potomac, were ordered to contribute to the cost of the war on the north side of the James. Chickacoan, as the area was known at first, had served for several years as a rallying point for Protestants disaffected with the government of Lord Baltimore, but this was the first official notice of the settlement by the Virginia Assembly. Settlement along the Potomac was significant, of course, because it placed a body of citizens farther from effective control than any had been in the past. It had been hard enough for Harvey to control the citizens on the south side of the York River; now two broad rivers, the York and Rappahannock, lay between the frontier settlements and Jamestown.

The Assembly of February 1645 found time to deal with matters other than the conduct of the war. It passed an act providing "That Free trade be allowed to all the inhabitants of the collony to buy and sell at their best advantage." Because some questions had been asked by the merchants of London concerning a rumored prohibition of trade with them, it was thought fit to explain that Virginia's free trade extended to them as to other Englishmen.

Following Sir William Berkeley's return from England June 7, 1645, vigorous measures were taken to end the protracted war with Opechancanough, and a new Assembly was called to reform abuses which had sprung up. This Assembly met in November and passed reform laws which demonstrate the concern Berkeley had for satisfying all the legitimate grievances of the people. Action was taken against innkeepers who charged unreasonable rates and fraudulently mixed their wines and liquors with water. Similar action was taken against millers who overcharged the people. Attorneys at law who charged fees for their services were expelled from office, the colony having become outraged at their exactions. The prohibition against professional attorneys continued for a number of years before it was finally relaxed. Strict regulations were instituted to curb the abuses of administrators of deceased persons and orphans. Because of the trouble and charge to plaintiffs and defendants of coming to Jamestown to attend the General Court, county courts were allowed power to try all causes at common law and equity. The tradition that appeals should lie from county courts to the General Court and from the General Court to the Assembly was reaffirmed. General poll taxes, which had been reintroduced, were abolished on the grounds that they were "inconvenient" and had "become insupportable for the poorer sorte to beare." All levies were ordered to be raised "by equall proportions out of the visible estates in the collony." Exemptions from taxation extended to members of the Council were canceled for the duration of the war. It is not hard to imagine the praise that would have been heaped on the initiator of such reforms, had it seemed that they were the result of a democratic uprising.

In March 1646 the Assembly met again. The policy of building forts had evidently been considered successful enough to encourage the Assembly to order another, Fort Henry, constructed at the falls of the Appomattox for the defense of the inhabitants on the south side of the James River and to deprive the Indians of their fishing in the area. The war had been going on for a year and a half and the enemy forces were still not destroyed. The Assembly, considering the vast expense that the conflict had caused and considering "the almost impossibility of a further revenge upon them, they being dispersed and driven from their townes and habitations, lurking up and downe the woods in small numbers, and that a peace (if honourably obtained) would conduce to the better being and comoditie of the country," authorized Capt. Henry Fleet, the colony's interpreter, and sixty men, to go out and try to make a peace with Opechancanough. If they could not make such a peace, they were to erect a fort on the Rappahannock River or between it and the York.

The "break" in the war came with the daring capture of Opechancanough himself by Governor Berkeley. Berkeley, who frequently led the troops of the colony in the field, was apprised of the Indian leader's whereabouts, and with characteristic boldness led a troop of men in a raid on his headquarters. The raid was successful: Opechancanough was captured and brought back to Jamestown. The old chief, said to be over 100 years, acted the part of Emperor of the Indian confederation with grave dignity. The historian Robert Beverley tells us that one day the nearly blind warrior heard "a great noise of the treading of people about him; upon which he caused his eye-lids to be lifted up; and finding that a crowd of people were let in to see him, he call'd in high indignation for the Governour; who being come, Opechancanough scornfully told him, that had it been his fortune to take Sir William Berkeley prisoner, he should not meanly have exposed him as a show to the people." Berkeley accepted the rebuke, and ordered him treated with all the dignity due his position as the leader of many Indian nations. Unfortunately the life of Opechancanough was shortly after snuffed out by one of his guards who shot him in the back, despite his defenseless condition.

Peace was concluded with Necotowance, Opechancanough's successor, by the first act of the October 1646 Assembly. The treaty is a document of historic importance. Under its provisions Necotowance acknowledged that he held his kingdom from the King of England and that his successors might be appointed or confirmed by the King's Governors. Twenty beaver skins were to be paid to the Governor yearly "at the going away of the geese" in acknowledgment of this subjection. Necotowance and his people were given freedom to inhabit and hunt on the north side of York River without interference from the English, provided that if the Governor and Council thought fit to permit any English to inhabit the lower reaches of the peninsula, where land grants had been made before the massacre, Necotowance first should be acquainted therewith. Necotowance in turn surrendered all claim to the land between the falls of the James and the York rivers downward to Chesapeake Bay. Indians were not allowed on this land unless specially designated as messengers to the English. Similarly it was a felony for an Englishmen to repair to the north side of the York River except temporarily under special conditions authorized by the Governor.