WEBVTT NOTE 8. The Royal Government of Virginia 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.800 Volume 1, Chapter 8, The Royal Government of Virginia 2 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:11.000 From their earliest days, Virginians engaged in conflicts with their government. 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:17.400 The first open rebellion while Virginia was under royal rule occurred in 1635. 4 00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:23.000 This arose from a territorial dispute with the new neighboring colony of Maryland. 5 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:28.500 William Claiborne, a leader of the Virginia colony and secretary of its council, 6 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:35.500 had obtained a royal license to establish a fur trading post on Kent Island between Maryland 7 00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:41.900 and Virginia, which he had purchased from the Indians. The Virginia House of Burgesses, 8 00:00:41.900 --> 00:00:46.980 which included a representative from Kent Island, backed Claiborne in his refusal to 9 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:54.380 recognize the overlordship of the Maryland feudal proprietor, Lord Baltimore, egged on 10 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:59.140 Found by a competing Virginia fur trader's accusation that Claiborne was inciting the 11 00:00:59.140 --> 00:01:06.420 Indians to attack the Marylanders, Lord Baltimore ordered the seizure of Claiborne and the confiscation 12 00:01:06.420 --> 00:01:08.740 of his property. 13 00:01:08.740 --> 00:01:14.500 Maryland's ships attacked and seized a vessel of Claiborne's and not only killed several 14 00:01:14.500 --> 00:01:21.340 Kent Islanders in the process, but also hanged one as a pirate after the battle. 15 00:01:21.340 --> 00:01:27.380 Governor John Harvey of Virginia angered the Virginians by taking the side of Lord Baltimore, 16 00:01:27.380 --> 00:01:34.740 removing Claiborne from his office as secretary, and jailing an official who sided with Claiborne. 17 00:01:34.740 --> 00:01:40.020 Harvey here showed his ability to judge the winning side as the Crown also ruled against 18 00:01:40.020 --> 00:01:42.940 Claiborne in 1638. 19 00:01:42.940 --> 00:01:48.020 This and other tyrannical actions by Governor Harvey brought about an open revolt by the 20 00:01:48.020 --> 00:01:56.020 by the Council, led by Samuel Matthews, a former indentured servant at the head of several hundred armed men. 21 00:01:56.020 --> 00:02:03.020 Aside from high-handed personal actions, Harvey was accused of making unauthorized expenditures, 22 00:02:03.020 --> 00:02:13.020 levying export taxes on tobacco and fees on each immigrant, and requisitioning ammunition from ships entering the colony. 23 00:02:13.020 --> 00:02:18.340 However, among the rash of legitimate complaints against Harvey was the charge that he had 24 00:02:18.340 --> 00:02:25.020 made a dangerous peace with the Indians without the Council's consent. 25 00:02:25.020 --> 00:02:29.900 It must be remembered that the settlers not only protested against despotic actions of 26 00:02:29.900 --> 00:02:35.780 the government, but were also hell-bent for grabbing as much land as possible from the 27 00:02:35.780 --> 00:02:36.780 Indians. 28 00:02:36.780 --> 00:02:42.780 Accordingly, peace with the natives was the last thing that the settlers desired. 29 00:02:42.780 --> 00:02:49.780 Thus the Council was driven to meeting and it thrust out Harvey from the colony in 1635. 30 00:02:49.780 --> 00:02:58.780 Harvey was shipped back to England and Captain John West appointed in his place until the King's wishes could be known. 31 00:02:58.780 --> 00:03:05.780 As soon as he arrived in England, Harvey again showed his character by having arrested the two negotiators 32 00:03:05.780 --> 00:03:15.780 Harvey was re-appointed by the Crown and returned to Virginia in 1637, thirsting for vengeance against the rebellious colonist. 33 00:03:15.780 --> 00:03:26.780 First, Harvey, backed by Lord Baltimore, had his chief enemies arrested for treason and hauled to England to appear before the Court of Startling. 34 00:03:26.780 --> 00:03:32.620 First, Harvey, backed by Lord Baltimore, had his chief enemies arrested for treason and 35 00:03:32.620 --> 00:03:39.300 hauled to England to appear before the Court of Star Chamber. Those arrested included Captain 36 00:03:39.300 --> 00:03:46.620 John West, Samuel Matthews, and George Menafee, as well as William Claiborne. True to his 37 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:53.940 personal vow that he would not leave Captain Matthews with assets worth the cow's tail, 38 00:03:53.940 --> 00:03:57.740 Harvey confiscated his enemy's property in Virginia. 39 00:03:57.740 --> 00:04:03.180 The Crown, however, forced Harvey to disgorge the seized property. 40 00:04:03.180 --> 00:04:08.420 Harvey also concluded that humor was dangerous to the state, and he consequently arrested 41 00:04:08.420 --> 00:04:14.100 the Reverend Anthony Panton, rector for some of the leading rebels. 42 00:04:14.100 --> 00:04:19.300 Panton's crime was apparently calling the man who Harvey had appointed Secretary of 43 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:34.300 The Trial of Panton was conducted by none other than Richard Camp himself, the new secretary in question, who acted as both prosecutor and judge. 44 00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:48.300 Sentence was meted out by Camp with appropriate severity, the seizure of Panton's possessions, his expulsion from his parish, and exile from Virginia, with the penalty of death should he return to the colony. 45 00:04:48.300 --> 00:05:00.300 Harvey also moved to impose a tithing tax on the corn of Panton's parishioners, presumably a special punishment for their lack of wisdom in having Panton as their rector. 46 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:06.300 This monstrous procedure was too much for even the rather callous sensibilities of the day. 47 00:05:06.300 --> 00:05:12.300 The Crown suspended the sentence and finally removed Harvey in 1639. 48 00:05:12.300 --> 00:05:19.860 The decision against Panton was reversed, and his property and parish restored. 49 00:05:19.860 --> 00:05:24.860 The imprisoned council leaders were released and restored to their positions. 50 00:05:24.860 --> 00:05:30.300 The mutiny of the Virginia leaders against Governor Harvey's despotic rule had finally 51 00:05:30.300 --> 00:05:31.460 succeeded. 52 00:05:31.460 --> 00:05:37.380 It was Harvey's successor, Governor Francis Wyatt, who was instructed to convene periodic 53 00:05:37.380 --> 00:06:00.380 One lasting consequence of Claiborne's colony was the settlement in 1645 of the Northern Neck of Virginia, the peninsula between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers, by refugees from Kent Island. 54 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:06.380 The most prominent figure in the government of Virginia in the 17th century was the governor, 55 00:06:06.380 --> 00:06:17.020 Sir William Berkeley, whose term of office began in 1642 and continued with interruption until 1677. 56 00:06:17.980 --> 00:06:23.500 In contrast to the later years of his term, Berkeley's first years found him a liberal 57 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:32.500 The entire poll tax, both the tax paid to the governor and the general tax, was repealed. 58 00:06:32.500 --> 00:06:35.500 Peace was made with the Indians. 59 00:06:35.500 --> 00:06:38.500 Taxes on estates were lowered. 60 00:06:38.500 --> 00:06:41.500 Impoverished debtors in prison were given relief. 61 00:06:41.500 --> 00:06:47.500 And such relics of Virginia company oppression as condemnations were abolished. 62 00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:51.500 In addition, a law was reenacted to prevent the governor and the council 63 00:06:51.500 --> 00:06:59.740 from levying any taxes or appropriating any new money except by authority of the assembly. 64 00:06:59.740 --> 00:07:05.440 Berkeley also ended some of the land abuses in Virginia by removing arbitrary James River 65 00:07:05.440 --> 00:07:12.260 Valley particular plantation grants that had never been settled and allowing settlers to 66 00:07:12.260 --> 00:07:16.780 enter these lands and gain title to them. 67 00:07:16.780 --> 00:07:22.400 Even after Berkeley took office, the Virginia colony found itself confronted with a revolution 68 00:07:22.400 --> 00:07:24.220 in Great Britain. 69 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:30.420 Staunchly royalist in that era, Virginia stood firm for the crown. 70 00:07:30.420 --> 00:07:35.420 Virginia's devotion to the royal cause was shaped by its own particular experience. 71 00:07:35.420 --> 00:07:41.460 For one thing, Charles I's rule in Virginia had been relatively moderate, far different 72 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:45.760 indeed from the tyranny he was imposing on England. 73 00:07:45.760 --> 00:07:50.880 Relations had been permitted to enjoy more freedom and local rule than Englishmen had 74 00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:58.360 ever enjoyed before. The oppressive Navigation Acts had not yet been imposed. The King had 75 00:07:58.360 --> 00:08:06.120 removed the hated John Harvey. Governor Berkeley's reforms had been welcomed. Moreover, Anglican-Puritan 76 00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:13.160 relations were not nearly as exacerbated as in the home country. As we have seen, Virginia's 77 00:08:13.160 --> 00:08:20.040 on Anglicanism was decidedly low church. The Pilgrim Fathers had been invited to Virginia 78 00:08:20.040 --> 00:08:29.040 in 1620 and an influential moderate Puritan group settled during the 1640s in South Side 79 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:34.920 Virginia. This is not to say that religious liberty prevailed. Puritans were sporadically 80 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:41.880 persecuted and dissenting ministers driven from the colony. Finally, to the Virginians, 81 00:08:41.880 --> 00:08:48.240 The rule of the old Virginia Company had been far worse than royal rule. Petitioning against 82 00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:53.780 any reimposition of the Company, the Assembly exclaimed that the colonists, if under the 83 00:08:53.780 --> 00:08:59.540 scepter of the Company, would be subject to arbitrary rule, their property rights would 84 00:08:59.540 --> 00:09:05.160 be taken from them, and their freedom of trade, the blood and life of a commonwealth, would 85 00:09:05.160 --> 00:09:11.160 be sacrificed to the monopoly of the Company. While attached to the Crown, many Virginians 86 00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:16.600 The Puritans protested immediately when in 1648 the governor and the council claimed 87 00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:23.600 authority to conscript, impress soldiers without the concurrence of the House of Burgesses, 88 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:31.060 and when they proceeded to conscript a ten-man bodyguard for the governor. The assembly gave 89 00:09:31.060 --> 00:09:38.060 as one excuse for agreeing to this conscription the existence of a schismatic party, the Puritans 90 00:09:38.060 --> 00:09:55.060 In 1649, when Parliament had executed Charles I, Virginia stood stubbornly by the old order and proclaimed its continued allegiance to the House of Stuart. 91 00:09:55.060 --> 00:10:14.060 Indeed, the Virginia Assembly denounced the King's execution bitterly, defied the proclaimed authority of Parliament, and proceeded to uphold this view savagely by decreeing it a crime carrying the death penalty, for anyone even to defend the execution. 92 00:10:14.060 --> 00:10:28.060 In fact, anyone making so bold as to question the right of succession of Charles II or to propose any change in the existing government of Virginia was to be charged with high treason. 93 00:10:28.060 --> 00:10:35.060 Even speaking, any evil of the King was to be punished at the arbitrary discretion of governor and council. 94 00:10:35.060 --> 00:10:43.060 Virginia also offered refuge to prominent émigrés, the cavaliers, for example, faithful supporters of the Crown. 95 00:10:43.060 --> 00:11:04.060 The Cavaliers, largely of wealthy merchant and landed families, took their custom place among the leading planting families in Virginia, including the prominent Lees, Carters, Randolphs, and Masons, and indeed the bulk of the men who remained as the dominant planters of Virginia. 96 00:11:04.060 --> 00:11:24.060 In retaliation, Parliament in 1650 passed the Embryo of the First Navigation Act, which forbade Virginia from trading with foreign countries or with any foreign ships lacking a special license, thus hitting England's efficient Dutch competitors. 97 00:11:24.060 --> 00:11:36.060 It is instructive that this first important measure of restrictive mercantilism was specifically proclaimed to be a punishment to a rebellious colony. 98 00:11:36.060 --> 00:11:42.060 Parliament concluded by denouncing the Virginians as rebels and traitors. 99 00:11:42.060 --> 00:11:48.960 When news of Parliament's punitive action reached Virginia in early 1651, the reaction 100 00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:55.060 of the Virginia rulers was both perceptive and heroically defiant. 101 00:11:55.060 --> 00:12:01.260 Comparing the situation in Virginia with that in England, Governor Berkeley told the Assembly, 102 00:12:01.260 --> 00:12:16.260 Consider yourselves how happy you are and have been, how the gates of wealth and honor are shut on no man, and that there is not an arbitrary hand that dares to touch the substance either rich or poor. 103 00:12:16.260 --> 00:12:20.260 What can be hoped from submission to parliamentary dictates. 104 00:12:20.260 --> 00:12:26.820 Now, Berkeley went on, the Virginians enjoyed freedom from oppression, peace, and the opportunity 105 00:12:26.820 --> 00:12:33.020 to gain wealth, and the security to enjoy this wealth when gotten. We can only fear 106 00:12:33.020 --> 00:12:39.440 the Londoners, who would feign to bring us to the same poverty wherein the Dutch found 107 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:45.420 and relieved us, would take away the liberty of our consciences and tongues and our right 108 00:12:45.420 --> 00:12:50.580 of giving and selling our goods to whom we please. The Governor and the members of the 109 00:12:50.580 --> 00:12:59.580 Assembly then unanimously adopted a vindication for their actions. The vindication perceptively 110 00:12:59.580 --> 00:13:05.940 concluded that Parliament was punishing the trade of Virginia in order to appease the 111 00:13:05.940 --> 00:13:12.340 avarice of a few interested persons, the big London merchants, who endeavored to rob us 112 00:13:12.340 --> 00:13:22.420 In 1652, parliament sent a fleet with four commissioners to Virginia to bring the recalcitrant 113 00:13:22.420 --> 00:13:29.020 colony to heel. Fortunately, the commissioners were moderates in the instructions liberal. 114 00:13:29.020 --> 00:13:35.340 Furthermore, the Virginians, after raising an army of over a thousand men, wisely decided 115 00:13:35.340 --> 00:13:42.340 that discretion was the better part of warfare and submitted to the commissioner's force. 116 00:13:42.460 --> 00:13:49.460 In return, the rule of the parliamentary commissioners turned out to be liberating rather than vindictively 117 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:56.460 repressive. Not only was the royalist Berkeley deposed and Commissioner Richard Bennett substituted 118 00:13:56.980 --> 00:14:03.000 as governor with the agreement of the Burgesses, but executive and judicial powers were shorn 119 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:10.000 The Supreme Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Power was now vested in the House of Burgesses, where at least the Virginians themselves could exercise some check on state power. 120 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:17.000 Virginia was declared free from all taxes, customs, and impositions, and it was affirmed that any state power would be granted to the Virgin. 121 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:37.820 that none could be levied without consent of the Assembly, and that no garrisons could 122 00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:43.840 be maintained there without the same consent. Virginia trade was no longer to be singled 123 00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:50.320 out for discriminatory treatment. Berkeley himself was permitted to retire undisturbed 124 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:57.320 to his Virginia estate. Again, as in other matters, liberalism went only so far, and 125 00:14:57.320 --> 00:15:04.320 and all inhabitants who refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Parliament were ordered exiled from the colony. 126 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:13.320 On the other hand, the majority of the people of any parish was permitted to keep using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. 127 00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:21.320 Partially in fidelity to its revolutionary principles, partially from preoccupation with pressing affairs at home, 128 00:15:21.320 --> 00:15:28.640 at Home, Parliament left Virginia pretty much alone during the decade of the Republic. In 129 00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:35.200 one sense, too much alone, for Bennett and the new Secretary of the Colony, William Claiborne, 130 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:42.680 the veteran anti-Marylander, determined to take up the cause of the Virginia Irredenta 131 00:15:42.680 --> 00:15:49.320 and forcibly bring Maryland back under the Virginia Motherland. However, the new Lord 132 00:15:49.320 --> 00:15:56.320 Federal Protector, Oliver Cromwell, soon scotched these efforts and in a few years Virginia 133 00:15:56.600 --> 00:16:03.520 and Lord Baltimore finally settled peacefully the Virginia-Maryland boundary. 134 00:16:03.520 --> 00:16:10.000 The leading home rule problem within Virginia in those years was the grievance of Northampton 135 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:17.000 County on the eastern shore. Northampton protested in May 1652 against paying poll taxes to 136 00:16:19.320 --> 00:16:39.320 There were some difficulties between Governor Samuel Matthews, Jr. and the Burgesses during the late 1650s over unauthorized actions of the Governor as well as his attempt to dissolve the Assembly in a dispute, but the dissertation 137 00:16:39.320 --> 00:16:56.320 In the late 1650s, over-unauthorized actions of the governor, as well as his attempt to dissolve the assembly in a dispute, but the disagreements were amicably resolved, and the Burgesses left in unchallenged control. 138 00:16:56.320 --> 00:17:13.320 After the collapse of the Republican Protectorate in 1659 and the virtually coincidental death of Governor Samuel Matthews, the Virginia House of Burgesses proclaimed its supreme power until England should reassert a legitimate authority. 139 00:17:13.320 --> 00:17:19.760 The Burgesses then voluntarily elected the royalist Berkeley governor once more. 140 00:17:19.760 --> 00:17:26.460 Achieving total, if temporary, independence from Britain, however, did not improve the 141 00:17:26.460 --> 00:17:33.200 civil libertarian attitude of the assembly, for it decreed that anyone who should say 142 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:40.520 or act anything in derogation of the present government would be punished as an enemy of 143 00:17:40.520 --> 00:17:42.240 the peace. 144 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:48.640 The election of Berkeley in March 1660 preceded the restoration of the monarchy in England 145 00:17:48.640 --> 00:17:55.360 by two months, and the new king, Charles II, quickly extended the official commission to 146 00:17:55.360 --> 00:18:02.840 Berkeley. Granting the extreme royalism motivating Virginia's action and its purely temporary 147 00:18:02.840 --> 00:18:09.040 character, the fact remains that Virginia had the boldness to battle England and even 148 00:18:09.040 --> 00:18:13.760 and to declare a short-lived independence from the motherland. 149 00:18:13.760 --> 00:18:20.000 Surely whatever the motives, here was an unwitting training ground in revolution, a testing of 150 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:26.120 Virginia's willingness to stand on its own feet and defy the mighty imperial country 151 00:18:26.120 --> 00:18:29.120 to which all the colonists had sworn allegiance.