Chapter 6

Some historians have seen the election of Berkeley as the signal for a royalist purge of the Parliamentary influences that were thought to have existed in the colony since 1652. A study of the membership of the House of Burgesses, Council, and county courts, however, shows a continuity of membership which extends from before the Parliamentary seizure of the colony until after the restoration of King Charles II. The evidence suggests that there was no violent division between royalists and Parliamentarians in Virginia. The people were Virginians first and royalists or Parliamentarians second. The solidarity of their political interests was a harbinger of the American independence that was slowly to mature in the next century.

On May 29, 1660, the birthday of Charles II, that monarch returned to London and was restored to the throne of England. Word of the restoration was received in Virginia in the fall, and Berkeley ordered the sheriffs and chief officers of all counties to proclaim Charles II King of England, and to cause all writs and warrants from that time on to issue in His Majesty's name. The Assembly of March 1661, taking into consideration the fact that the colony, by submitting to the "execrable power" of the Parliamentary forces, had thereby become guilty of the crimes of that power, enacted that January 30, the day Charles I was beheaded, should "be annually solemnized with fasting and prayers that our sorrowes may expiate our crime and our teares wash away our guilt." Another act declared May 29, the day of Charles II's birth and restoration, a holy day to be annually celebrated "in testimony of our thankfulnesse and joy."

Thus ended the brief period in which Virginia's government was turned upside down and permanent alteration caused in her relations with England. Although the King once more became the symbol of the unity of the colony and the mother country, the royal prerogative would never again be blindly accepted by the people of either place. Larger developments in the economic, social, and intellectual spheres were bringing to an end the era of all-powerful Kings. Power had descended to the lower ranks of society, and that power was beginning to be brought into play.

This larger shift of power has been chronicled in the story of Virginia from 1625 to 1660. It is the story of a small community of Englishmen transplanted to American shores, living for a time subject to traditional English restraints, then, in a period of rapid expansion, losing their cohesiveness and their values under the impact of the American experience and their own natures. Their political expression soon passed from a passive to an active mode. The law became something they made, not something someone else applied to them. Land was similarly not something bestowed on them by generous parents, but something one took from Nature, or Nature's surrogate, the Indian. Labor was no longer a privilege allowed the individual by the community, but a precious gift contributed by the individual to the community. In sum, the ordinary people who had removed themselves to the New World soon discovered that they were no longer humble servants of great lords, but were themselves lords of the American earth. If they had the power why not exercise it? The process by which the rulers of the people were forced to become the "servants" of their "subjects" thereupon began. The culmination of this rearrangement of the political atoms of society was the War for Independence of 1776. Whether the swing from authority to liberty was for good or for evil is not for the historian to say.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Another booklet in this series contains a selected bibliography of works on seventeenth-century Virginia. The interested student should consult that booklet for a more detailed listing of works used in preparing this account of Virginia in the period 1625-1660.

The best secondary account of Virginia in the period covered by this booklet is Wesley Frank Craven, _The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689_ (Baton Rouge, 1949). Craven skilfully combines research in Virginia local history with a broad understanding of developments in England and in other colonies. He points out the social and political significance of many hitherto ignored aspects of Virginia history. Other important works include Charles McLean Andrews, _The Colonial Period of American History_, I (New Haven, 1934), Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, _Virginia under the Stuarts_ (Princeton, 1914), Herbert L. Osgood, _The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century_, 3 vols. (New York, 1904-1907), and Edward D. Neill, _Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles the First and Second, A.D. 1625-A.D. 1685_ (Albany, 1886).

Any study of colonial Virginia must begin with a perusal of Philip Alexander Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, 2 vols. (New York, 1895), and his _Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, 2 vols. (New York, 1910). Bruce's work is the indispensable platform upon which political and social accounts of the period must rest. Morgan Poitîaux Robinson, _Virginia Counties: Those Resulting from Virginia Legislation_ [Virginia State Library, Bulletin, IX, Nos. 1-3] (Richmond, 1916), is a carefully documented study of the growth of Virginia as evidenced by the formation of its counties. Maps showing the area of settlement at frequent intervals give a graphic account of the nature and extent of Virginia's expansion.

There are a number of local histories chronicling the growth of particular regions in Virginia. An outstanding local history is Fairfax Harrison, _Landmarks of Old Prince William_ (Richmond, 1924), which analyzes the growth of settlement in the Potomac River valley. Histories of the Eastern Shore are numerous: Susie M. Ames, _Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century_ (Richmond, 1940), Jennings Cropper Wise, _Ye Kingdome of Accawmacke, or the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_ (Richmond, 1911), and Ralph T. Whitelaw, _Virginia's Eastern Shore_, 2 vols. (Richmond, 1951).

A reading of but a few works in Virginia history will be enough to show that the interpretations and conclusions of the authors must be accepted with extreme caution. There are two conflicting interpretations for nearly every important event in Virginia's history. History may be defined as the attempt to state what happened in the past on the basis of inadequate evidence existing in the present. The reader should keep always in mind that historical writing is largely a series of guesses more or less intelligently elaborated.

Much of the original manuscript material upon which an account of the period must be based has been published in the following sources: William Waller Hening, _The Statutes at Large; being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia_, Vol. I (Richmond, 1809), H. R. McIlwaine, _Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 1622-1632, 1670-1676_ (Richmond, 1924), H. R. McIlwaine, _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1619-1658/59_ (Richmond, 1914), Nell Marion Nugent, _Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1666_ (Richmond, 1934), _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ (Richmond, 1893 to present), _William and Mary Quarterly_ (Williamsburg, 1892 to present), _The Southern Literary Messenger_, January 1845 (documents on the recall of Governor Berkeley by the Burgesses and Council of Virginia in 1660), and W. Noel Sainsbury, _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660, Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office_ (London, 1860). The essential guide to most of this material is Earl G. Swern, _Virginia Historical Index_, 2 vols. (Roanoke, 1934).

The most important unpublished manuscript materials of the period are the county records, some of which are complete from the earliest period of settlement. Originals or transcripts of the county records are available in the Virginia State Library, Richmond. Another important source of unpublished manuscript material for the period is the "Virginia, Book No. 43" manuscript in the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., which contains numerous commissions and proclamations for the period 1626-1634. Among the Virginia papers of the Barons of Sackville, Knole Park, are a few documents relating to the period which have not been printed either in the documentary articles in the _American Historical Review_, XXVII (1922), Nos. 3-4, or elsewhere. They are now available on microfilm in the Library of Congress, having been photographed by the British Manuscripts Project of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Important unpublished dissertations include James Kimbrough Owen, "The Virginia Vestry: A Study in the Decline of a Ruling Class" (Ph. D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1947), and Edna Jensen, "Sir John Harvey: Governor of Virginia" (M. A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1950).