Volume 1, Chapter 16, Virginia After Bacon's Rebellion
The crushing of Bacon's Rebellion had left Virginia itself in the control of the despotic Governor Berkeley and his Green Spring clique.
Even after Berkeley was recalled at the urging of the King's commissioners, the Green Spring oligarchy continued to rule the colony until news arrived in the fall of 1677 of Berkeley's death.
At that point, news came of the appointment of Thomas Lord Culpepper as governor.
Until his arrival, Colonel Herbert Jeffries, one of the King's commissioners, was to continue as lieutenant governor.
But Jeffreys soon fell ill, and the council, dominated by the Green Spring faction, effectively
continued its oppressive rule of the colony.
Jeffreys died at the end of 1678 and was succeeded by Sir Henry Chicharly, who at last held
a fair election for the assembly the following year.
The new assembly began to institute reforms, for example, re-enacting Bacon's laws, authorizing
the free men and housekeepers of each parish to select two men to sit with the judges in
the county courts. But Chicharley, too, was old and sick, and reforms were therefore not
pressed forward. Finally, the king forced the reluctant Lord Culpepper to sail personally
for Virginia or give up his governorship. And Culpepper arrived in the spring of 1680.
One of his first acts was to urge the assembly at the king's instigation to provide a permanent
revenue for the support of the government. But the assembly refused to turn over the
crucial power of the purse into the hands of the royal governor. The assembly however
finally passed the bill after considerable bullying and threats by Culpepper. The governor
Culpepper also tried to force a fantastically uneconomic plan on agricultural Virginia,
compelling every county to construct a town and warehouse near water and coercively restricting
all trade in the county to that town.
Fortunately, while the assembly passed the law, the Crown realized the impracticality
of such hothouse plans and vetoed the bill.
However, also faced the perennial tobacco problem.
Tobacco had been suffering grievously from two-fold government interference, a fall in
prices due to trade restrictions imposed by the Navigation Acts, and the restrictions
of compulsory cartels.
The restrictions raised tobacco prices, but at the expense of the more efficient farmers
and planters, of reducing trade for all, and of greatly injuring American and European
consumers.
Moreover, the bulk of the price fall had been because of increased tobacco production.
The fact that annual tobacco output in Virginia and Maryland in the 1680s reached the 28 million
pounds shows that, for all the complaining, tobacco was still the most profitable line
of investment.
The repeated attempts at compulsory cartels cannot be excused on pleas of poverty.
The fact that Virginia governors repeatedly tried to force the reduction of tobacco planting
without success demonstrates that the profitability of tobacco was enough to overcome even government
prohibition and trade restrictions.
Thus, in 1640, the planter-dominated government had passed a law compelling the burning of
half the colony's tobacco crop, fixing the price of tobacco and relieving debtors from
In 1662, Berkeley and the leading Chesapeake planters petitioned the king to outlaw all planting and shipping of tobacco during the following year.
In response, King Charles II, following the tradition of James and Charles I, in wanting to compel a shift from tobacco planting, ordered the restriction of planting.
Commissioners from Virginia and Maryland met in May 1663 and resolved to limit tobacco planting jointly, but though the Virginia Assembly obediently agreed, the Maryland Assembly refused.
Undaunted, the Virginia planters managed to arrange a conference of commissioners from the three tobacco colonies, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, in the summer of 1666,
and they agreed to outlaw all tobacco planting for the year 1667. All three assemblies then approved this plan for injuring the consumers in order to raise tobacco prices, but the colonies were saved at the last minute by the veto of Lord Baltimore of Maryland.
Now in 1680, with tobacco crops even more bountiful, Culpeper resumed the old pressure by urging the king to prohibit all tobacco planting in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina during the following year.
The plan for total prohibition, incidentally, would have particularly benefited tobacco speculators who had purchased the crop.
Their accumulated stocks would benefit most from the temporary price rise.
Most gravely injured would be the most efficient, lowest-cost planters, as well as the consumers.
When the King did not agree to total prohibition, the big planters put on pressure for a session
of the assembly to outlaw a year's tobacco planting in Virginia alone. Crowds in each
county led by the prominent local planters sent petitions and held meetings clamoring
for an Assembly Session. Under this pressure, the infirm, Sir Henry Chitcherley, again acting
governor after Culpepper had returned to England, called a special assembly session for April
1682, but Culpepper at the last minute vetoed the session, forcing it to wait until November
when he would be back in the colony. Deprived suddenly of their assembly session, the planters
Cudders Rose in the Plant Cutters Rebellion Beginning in Gloucester County on May 1, gangs
of tobacco planters and their retinues engaged in an orgy of destroying tobacco plants, obviously
the plants of those efficient and free-spirited planters who were willing to trust their fortunes
to the marketplace. Despite arrest and patrols by the militia, the orgy of destruction spread
to New Kent, Middlesex and other counties.
Lord Baltimore was moved to place armed guards along the Potomac to keep the frenzy from
spreading to Maryland.
The opponents of the plant, cutting, gained control of the council and charged that the
leader of the uprising was Major Robert Beverly, Clerk of the Assembly and the leader of the
Green Spring clique.
They charged also and with reason that Chicharley was under Beverly's influence.
Beverly agreed to imprison Beverly, but otherwise issued a general pardon to the criminals,
with one exception. For his punishment, one tobacco saboteur was ordered to build a bridge,
a bridge conveniently near Chicharly's own plantation.
Returning to Virginia in December, Culpepper, understandably enraged at the soft treatment
of the plant cutters, went overboard and declared that tobacco destruction was treason and thereupon
Colpepper hanged two of the leaders as an example to the people.
Colpepper showed good economic sense in keeping secret and thus suppressing the King's authorization
to end tobacco planting.
He realized that if the planting of tobacco were really excessive, the inefficient producers
would soon shift to other industries.
Lord Colpepper's troubles with Virginia were aggravated by his unpopularity.
Mr. Culpepper, along with Lord Arlington, had received in 1673 the proprietary grant
of thirty-one years of quit rents and isheets in Virginia. He had not received the right
to govern, but his gaining of the governorship had been an attempt to enforce his feudalistic
proprietary claims. In 1681 Culpepper bought out Lord Arlington's share, but on being ousted
by the King in mid-1683, he was happy in 1684 to sell his proprietary rights back to the
Crown in return for a royal pension of 600 pounds a year for 21 years. But Culpepper's
removal by no means meant the end of conflict in the colony. On the contrary, the appointment
of the despotic Francis Lord Howard began a four-year struggle in Virginia. Howard promptly
launched a determined drive to exalt the royal prerogative over the assembly and over the
liberties of the Virginians. Howard demanded a law to authorize the governor and council
to levy a high poll tax up to the sum of twenty pounds of tobacco. Such a bill would eliminate
the need to keep returning to the assembly for annual appropriations. The Burgesses,
however, turned down the plan. Howard also wanted to revive the compulsory town building
plan and disclosed the King's instructions to eliminate the cherished custom of allowing
judicial appeals from the royally appointed General Court to the General Assembly. The
The change meant that the administration of justice was now completely under the control
of the governor and his appointed officials, including the council.
Furthermore, Howard, under royal instructions, demanded that the assembly repeal all permission
granted to county courts and parish officials to make local laws, and to replace it by insisting
that all local laws receive approval of the central government.
The Lower House, the House of Burgesses, was understandably disturbed at this comprehensive
assault on their and Virginia's liberties, and a general struggle ensued between Governor
and Burgesses. Howard also refused to disclose his instructions and thus to end rule by secrecy.
When the Catholic James II succeeded to the throne in February 1685, a new issue arose
to exacerbate relations between Lord Howard and the people of Virginia. For Howard was
a Catholic, and he promptly proceeded to fire several officials of the colony and replace
them with Catholics. To suppress the groundswell of criticism, Howard forbade all seditious
In all of this, the majority of the governor's creatures, the council, supported his actions.
Another disturbing threat facing the House of Burgesses was use of the royal veto to
impose laws, in effect by vetoing their repeal.
The Burgesses sent a vigorous protest to the King against this practice, but the King countered
by ordering Robert Beverly's removal as Clerk of the House of Burgesses in late 1686, transforming
the position into one appointed by the Governor.
Now that the main threat to Virginian liberties had become the crown and the royal prerogative,
the displaced Greenspring clique, out of favor, shifted to take the lead of Virginians opposed
to royal encroachments.
The clique was now led by Robert Beverly and Philip Ludwell, and Ludwell assumed the leadership
of the liberal, popular opposition to royal tyranny in the council.
Woodwell was expelled from the Council by Howard in 1687, the year of Beverly's Alster.
Howard also dismissed two other leading burgesses from all public offices.
Lord Howard raised fierce opposition by imposing a large fee of 200 pounds of tobacco for stamping
official papers, and by shifting payment of quit rents from tobacco to the higher-valued
sterling.
Furthermore, Howard quarreled with the Burgesses over the military. Howard naturally advocated a bigger militia, whereas the Burgesses wanted to relieve the colonists of the oppressive tax and resource burdens of the armed forces and urged disbandment of the troops of the colony.
Howard also struck a grievous blow at local rights and assembly powers by personally decreeing repeal of permission given local courts and officials to make their own bylaws.
After dissolving and discuss the assembly at the end of 1686, Lord Howard determined to continue his rule while the assembly met in session as little as possible.
In early 1688, royal orders compelled Howard to call the assembly in the spring to pass a law prohibiting the export of bulk tobacco.
Since tobacco was exported either in bulk or in hogshead, the scheme was clearly an attempt to grant special privileges to the tobacco merchants who packed their tobacco in hogsheads by outlawing their competition.
The Assembly was also asked to aid New York in its projected war against the French, but the Assembly courageously and defiantly refused such aid, since New York, it saw perceptively, was in no real danger, and since it steadfastly refused to levy still higher taxes upon Virginia.
The Burgesses persisted in their refusal to bow to the royal demands.
The House of Burgesses also rejected the King's bill to outlaw bulk tobacco exports, pointing
out acidly and correctly that the bill was originated by London tobacco merchants and
not even by Virginia planters.
During the Howard administration, the Burgesses and the Virginians had lost the right to receive
Judicial Appeals to appoint their clerk and to control certain revenues and fees, but
the fierce struggle also helped retain many liberties for Virginians and the House of
Burgesses, especially the general taxing power. Furthermore, a host of oppressive laws were
spurned by the independent-minded assembly. The battle between Lord Howard and the bulk
The book of Virginians came rudely to an end with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Howard
happened to be in England when the news came of James II's overthrow and the president
of the council became acting governor.
The Glorious Revolution had an unusually mild impact upon Virginia as compared with its
Rumors fed by anti-Catholic hysteria led the people of the Northern Neck, already disgruntled from opposing the Culpepper proprietary, to take up arms in their defense.
The new climate meant the Crown would grant a much friendlier hearing to Virginia's numerous grievances and to Virginia's agent in England, Philip Ludwell.
Howard made a determined attempt to stay in office, but Ludwell finally prevailed and the Crown ordered the end of the hated fee of 200 pounds of tobacco for the official stamping of documents.
Howard kept the nominal title of Governor, but Captain Francis Nicholson, lately Lieutenant Governor of New York, was sent to Virginia to rule as Lieutenant Governor.
Governor. During the Nicholson administration of 1690 to 92, the
governor managed to harmonize with and reconcile the opposition, although no
fundamental reforms were passed. Increasingly coming to the fore was one
of Virginia's most bitter grievances, the problem of land monopoly in the
northern neck. In 1649, Charles II had arbitrarily granted the enormous tract
of Land between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers to Lord Hopton and a group of his friends including Sir John Berkeley. Hopton's circle now had proprietary control of revenues from the area, but not of political power. In 1669, however, a renewed grant gave control of the local governmental policies at Northern Neck to the proprietors. The proprietary menace to the Northern Neck could
L'Odwell had been ended when Lord Culpepper sold his proprietary claim to Virginia in 1684.
But not only did the King refuse to buy the Northern Neck claim, he transformed the 31-year grant into a permanent charter.
Phillip Lodwell was not destined to remain long in his new role as champion of the liberties of the people.
Ludwell joined the employ of Lord Culpepper as agent for managing the neck, and soon Ludwell began to appoint government officials in the neck area.
In early 1692, Lord Howard resigned from his nominal post as governor of Virginia and was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros, formerly head of the Dominion of New England, who now came to Virginia to assume the reins of power.
Andros was an arch-tory, fond of the royal prerogative, and so he resumed all the oppressions and conflicts of the Howard era.
Andros insisted on a forced town and port creation program, but this and another revived bill to prohibit the export of bulk tobacco failed to pass the House of Burgesses.
The Burgesses also refused once more to send aid to New York, pointing out incisively that
New York was not Virginia's first line of defense and indeed that the Iroquois, staunch allies of
New York, were a most severe threat to Virginia. Finally, however, in 1695, the Burgesses gave
in to Andros's pressure and sent military aid to New York, paying for it by a temporary liquor
Andros also introduced a frightening new note into his struggle with the colonists, continued
hints that Virginia land titles were really invalid. Nothing could have been better calculated
to inflame the opposition of the landowners. One of the most important men in Virginia
beginning in the 1690s was the Reverend James Blair, a young Scottish Anglican who had been
and appointed in 1689 as representative or commissary in Virginia of the Bishop of London.
This was the first such appointment in America. Blair was instrumental in inducing the assembly
in 1691 to create a free governmental college, the College of William and Mary, rooted in
the Anglican faith. Money for construction was raised from the crown and the bulk of
The governing trustees were selected by the Assembly, which also paid its operating support.
Reverend Blair received a live appointment as President from the Assembly and was so
confirmed by the Bishop of London.
Blair combined political, ministerial and educational activities, assuming a seat in
the Council in 1694.
He soon broke with Andros, who was apparently not theocratic enough for the young minister,
Blair agitated for increased support for the established Church, and King William and Queen Mary responded by asking the Assembly to pay the clergy in money or in tobacco valued at current prices.
The House of Burgesses replied tartly that the ministers were well enough paid, whereupon in mid-1696 the Anglican clergymen of the colony petitioned the Assembly for greater salaries and subsidies.
The legislature yielded to the pressure and increased subsidies for the ministers.
Blair's pressure finally resulted in Andros's removal in the spring of 1698 and his replacement as governor by Francis Nicholson, now returning to Virginia as full-fledged governor rather than as Culpepper's deputy.
Nicholson effected a few badly needed reforms on royal instructions. He had the great powers of the council over the colony reduced. No longer could councillors be customs collectors, naval officers and auditors all in one, thus reducing the practice of councillors sitting in judgement on their own actions.
Nicholson also tried to institute land reforms. During the 1680s and 1690s, land engrossing through large arbitrary land grants had grown apace.
Governor Andros, in particular, had granted large tracts to individuals by selling to individual engrossers rights to land.
The old headright system of granting 50 acres of land to each person settled in or brought to Virginia was hardly ideal, but selling rights to 50-acre plots at one to five shillings per right completely cut the natural link between land settlement and ownership, and added to the monopolizing of unused land by speculators.
Typical of land abuses in Virginia was the case of a large planter, William Byrd II.
The law required a land grantee to establish at least one settler to every 100 acres of his grant within 10 years of the date of issue.
Now this was hardly a satisfactory safeguard against land abuses since the grantee, rather than the settlers themselves, was considered the property owner.
The settlers either were forced into a quasi-feudal subservience to the privileged grantee or else had to buy the land at prices far higher than the zero price that would have obtained without the engrossment by the government and its pet grantees.
Of course, the settlers still had to spend money immigrating, clearing the land, and so forth, but at least no arbitrary cost would have been imposed on top of these expenses.
Yet, despite these grave weaknesses, the law at least tried to establish some connection between land ownership and settlement, and grantees like Byrd proceeded to evade even this vague limitation.
Thus, in 1688, William Byrd obtained a grant from the government of over 3,000 acres.
He failed to get the land settled within the ten years, but, being head of the Virginia
Land Office, he managed to delay forfeiting the land until 1701. At that point, Bird got
the same tract re-granted to his close friend, Nathaniel Harrison, who soon had the land
re-granted to Bird for another ten years' chance. An additional tract of 6,000 acres
was secured by Byrd. Failing to settle it in time, he had it transferred to his son.
Nicholson tried to reform these practices, but accomplished little. In his first administration
he tried to revoke some land grants, but the council refused to cooperate. In his second
term he prohibited the practice of gaining more head-right land by bringing in more negro
On the other hand, far less helpful were Nicholson's attempts to enforce quit-rent payments to the Crown.
During the Nicholson administration, Virginia changed its capital from Jamestown nearby to the newly created city of Williamsburg in the spring of 1700.
A more lasting achievement was Nicholson's proclamation in 1703 of the English Act of
Toleration in Virginia. Liberty of conscience for all religions was guaranteed, except for
non-Protestants. This action guaranteed religious freedom to the new and growing dissenting
Protestant sects in Virginia, especially Presbyterians, whose form of worship was quite close to the
The Erasable Nicholson soon felt quarreling with the Blair faction, by now intermarried with the powerful Ludwells.
The Blair-Ludwell clique immediately began to plot for Nicholson's recall.
Six counselors, led by Blair, submitted such a petition to Queen Anne in 1703, accusing Nicholson of personal bullying and despotic behavior.
But the governor took his case openly to the assembly and the public in the spring of 1705 and the majority of the House of Burgesses as well as the great majority of the Anglican clergymen of the colony came to Nicholson's defense.
The bulk of the clergy petitioned England, denouncing Blair's attack on the governor and hailing Nicholson's administration.
One of Blair's friends published a bitter attack on the convocation of clergymen, the
first stanza of which pointedly declared, bless us, what dismal times are these, what
stars are in conjunction, when priests turn sycophants to please and hare-brained passion
to appease, dare prostitute their unction.
Finally, in the summer of 1705, Blair succeeded and Nicholson was removed as governor. He was replaced by a new system. Appointed as governor-in-chief of Virginia was the Earl of Orkney, who remained in England for forty years, drawing a good salary for his post while taking no interest whatever in colonial affairs. As lieutenant governor, in actual charge of Virginia, the Crown appointed Major Edward Knott.
During the short-lived Knott administration, the new governor tried once again to push through a bill forcing Virginia to build ports and to restrict all trade to them.
The port bill was instigated by English merchants, who would have found it cheaper and more convenient to concentrate their shipments at a few ports rather than having to trade at each planter's wharf.
The Crown, however, disallowed the bill and thus finally ended the menace of compulsory ports in Virginia.
The Crown also became alarmed that Virginians were shifting from tobacco to cotton or wool raising and manufacturing.
In the imperial mercantilist framework, the colonies were not supposed to compete with imperial manufacturers.
They were supposed only to supply raw material and then purchase the finished product from the mother country.
The Board of Trade ordered Knot to discourage any cotton planting in Virginia.
The big dispute of the Knot administration was over the established church.
The oligarchic council, led by Blair, was anxious to put the Anglican church on a more secure footing
by raising ministers' salaries and securing greater tenure in office.
Nothing was done, since the relatively liberal House of Burgesses had opposite objectives.
One objective was to reduce the Church oligarchy by periodically dissolving the ruling bodies of the Church,
that is, the vestries which had become self-perpetuating bodies of Church elders.
Both parties deadlocked, and neither set of changes could pass, an impasse aggravated
by the Anglican clergy's denunciation of the high-handed tactics of the Scott-Hireline
Blair.
The deadlock meant that the overwhelming majority of Anglican ministers in Virginia, those not
officially inducted into office, held office only on the sufferance of the particular board
of vestrymen.
Buck died a year after his induction, and the next four years were politically uneventful,
as the president of the council served as acting governor of the colony.
While Virginia, in the decades after Bacon's Rebellion, increasingly settled down to a
rather placid, oligarchic rule, one element in Virginia society persisted in being the
reverse of placid about its condition.
From Bacon's Rebellion to 1710, the colonies seethed with incipient and actual revolts
by the Negro slaves. Being an oppressed minority of the populace, the slaves, in revolt by
themselves, and lacking mass white support, could not hope to succeed, and yet they continued
to try to break through to freedom. In the early 1680s, the Virginia legislature was
was troubled enough to pass the Act for Preventing Negro's Insurrections. Frequent meetings
of Negro slaves were denounced as dangerous, as conspiratorial activity abounding under
pretext of feast and burials. Yet, despite such precautions, slave revolts broke out
in Virginia in 1687, 1691, 1694, 1709 and 1710 as well as in other years. The 1687 uprising
was centered in Virginia's northern neck. The plan of uprising was uncovered and the
leaders executed. The council, as a consequence, prohibited public slave funerals, which the
The rebels had used as their meeting ground, but this did not prevent the uprising of 1691,
in which the slave Mingo, having escaped his master in Middlesex County, gathered a guerrilla
band and attacked plantations, especially in Rappahannock County.
By 1694, Governor Andros condemned the lack of enforcement of anti-slave rebellion legislation,
As Negro slaves increased in number after the turn of the century, threats of slave rebellion grew correspondingly. Early in 1709, a plot for rebellion by both Negro and Indian slaves in Surrey, James City, and Isle of Wight, Counties, was uncovered. The Court of the United States of America, the United States of America, and the United States of America, and the United States of America, and the United States of America,
The revolt inquiry found that the late dangerous conspiracy was formed and carried on by great
numbers of Negroes and Indian slaves for making their escape by force from the service of
their masters and for the destroying and cutting off such as should oppose their design.
The revolt conspiracy was led by four slaves, Scipio, Peter, Salvador and Tom Shaw.
The following year a slave revolt planned for Easter in Surrey and James City Counties was
betrayed by the slave Will, whose freedom was purchased by the Virginia legislature as
a reward of his fidelity and for encouragement of such services.
It was ironic that the informers should be rewarded with the very goal that the rebels
were desperately trying to achieve, freedom.
The two main rebel leaders were duly executed, said Lieutenant Governor Jennings, to strike
such terror in the other Negroes as will keep them from forming such designs in the future.