WEBVTT NOTE 9. British Mercantilism over Virginia 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Volume 1, Chapter 9, British mercantilism over Virginia 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:16.000 Rule in the European governments of the 17th century was exercised not only by the great landowners through feudalism, 3 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:23.000 but also by groups of merchants and capitalists specially privileged and subsidized by the state 4 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:28.000 in the system that later came to be known as mercantilism. 5 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:39.000 The essence of mercantilism was the granting or selling of monopolistic privilege and subsidy by the state to favored groups of businessmen. 6 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:49.000 Thus, crown, feudal nobility and privileged capitalists exercised rule over the exploited remainder of the populace, 7 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:53.960 and Capitalists, which included the bulk of merchants and capitalists who sought profit 8 00:00:53.960 --> 00:01:00.120 by voluntary service in the marketplace rather than by obtaining privileges from the coercive 9 00:01:00.120 --> 00:01:02.800 power of the state. 10 00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:08.600 From the beginning, government meddling, especially by the English government, fastened the mercantile 11 00:01:08.600 --> 00:01:11.840 system on the American colonies. 12 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:18.840 As early as 1619, the Crown imposed a duty of one shilling per pound of tobacco imported 13 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:26.760 by the Virginia Company and, in 1622, prohibited any tobacco from being grown in England or 14 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:32.880 Ireland. The motivation for the latter act was not to benefit Virginia, but to increase 15 00:01:32.880 --> 00:01:39.680 the revenue seized by the Crown. Domestic tobacco producers, after all, paid no customs 16 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:47.920 duty. In 1621, the Crown indeed delivered a grave blow to the Company and to Virginia 17 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:55.140 by prohibiting the colonist from exporting tobacco, or any other commodity, to any foreign 18 00:01:55.140 --> 00:02:03.040 country without first landing in England and paying customs duty there. 19 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:07.960 It was in vain that the company protested that other English subjects and companies 20 00:02:07.960 --> 00:02:13.400 were allowed to sell their goods in the best markets, that the edict would cripple the 21 00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:19.800 The tobacco-cattle trade with Ireland, that many Virginia products were not saleable in 22 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:25.760 England. The sweetener for the company in this network of restriction was the granting 23 00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:32.760 in 1622 to the Virginia Company of the monopoly privilege of importing tobacco into England 24 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:41.400 and Ireland. The supposedly liberal Sir Edwin Sandys had led the Intra Company fight to 25 00:02:41.400 --> 00:02:50.400 to accept the monopoly, and he and his faction were appointed to manage the monopoly at extravagant salaries. 26 00:02:50.400 --> 00:03:01.400 In the period of the Republic, Parliament, as we have seen, hardly reluctant to impose mercantile restrictions for the benefit of merchant groups, 27 00:03:01.400 --> 00:03:04.400 began the famous series of navigation acts. 28 00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:14.400 In 1650, it outlawed foreign ships from trading in the colonies without a license, thus striking a blow at efficient Dutch shipping. 29 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:30.400 The following year, it decreed that no goods from Asia, Africa or America could be imported into England or its colonies except when the owner and most of the crew were English or English-American. 30 00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:49.400 It also prohibited imports of foreign goods in entrepôt trade from countries where the product did not originate, prohibited the importation of fish by aliens and outlawed all participation of foreign ships in the English coastal trade. 31 00:03:49.400 --> 00:03:59.400 These were blows to the efficiency and prosperity of interregional trade and to the property, actual and potential, of the colonies. 32 00:03:59.400 --> 00:04:05.400 all for the special privileges accorded to inefficient ship owners. 33 00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:13.400 To enforce these sweeping prohibitions required a bureaucratic apparatus mighty for the time and place, 34 00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:17.400 including a network of paid government informers. 35 00:04:17.400 --> 00:04:25.400 So strict was the enforcement that not enough English vessels existed to replace the outlawed Dutch shipping, 36 00:04:25.400 --> 00:04:34.400 and grave complaints of shortages spread throughout the English colonies in the Americas, including the West Indies. 37 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:48.400 The rebellious Virginia Assembly asserted in 1655 that freedom of trade would be maintained and demanded that sea captains pay bond not to molest Dutch or other foreign shipping. 38 00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:57.400 England, however, continued to tighten its mercantile restrictions, especially after monarchal rule had been restored. 39 00:04:57.400 --> 00:05:12.400 Thus the Navigation Act of 1660 provided that no goods, whatever, could be imported into or exported from any English colony except in English-owned ships, 40 00:05:12.400 --> 00:05:31.400 of which at least three-fourths of the crew must be English, and compelled certain important enumerated colonial products, including tobacco, to be shipped only to England, thus outlawing colonial export trade in these goods to any other country. 41 00:05:31.400 --> 00:05:38.400 All ships leaving the colonies were required to give bond that they would not ship the goods elsewhere. 42 00:05:38.400 --> 00:05:43.480 The Navigation Act of 1662 extended these privileges. 43 00:05:43.480 --> 00:05:50.240 All future ships not built in English shipyards were now to be excluded from this colonial 44 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:52.200 trade. 45 00:05:52.200 --> 00:05:59.880 The mercantilist structure of the Navigation Acts was completed in 1662 with the exclusion 46 00:05:59.880 --> 00:06:06.960 of all European goods, except for a few commodities, from the colonial market, except as shipped 47 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:13.760 from English Ports and in English Built Ships. Colonial governors were charged with the responsibility 48 00:06:13.760 --> 00:06:20.040 of enforcement of the navigation laws, but in practice the power was delegated to a naval 49 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:27.160 officer appointed in England. The navigation laws continued to be tightened still further. 50 00:06:27.160 --> 00:06:33.800 The Navigation Act of 1673 moved against the attempt of the planters to maintain some of 51 00:06:33.800 --> 00:07:03.800 The act placed a prohibitive tax of one penny on each pound of tobacco shipped from one colony to another, and appointed customs commissioners to collect the duty. This act crippled the flourishing tobacco trade with New England. More sweeping was the Navigation Act of 1696, which confined all colonial trade to England. 52 00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:10.480 English built ships, enlarged the powers of the colonial naval officers and gave the provincial 53 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:17.480 custom officers the right of forcible entry, which they already enjoyed in England. 54 00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:24.760 The act led to the establishment of vice admiralty courts in the colonies to enforce the regulations. 55 00:07:24.760 --> 00:07:30.560 Operating under Roman law, a vice admiralty court could try and convict without having 56 00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:36.840 to Submit the Cases to Colonial Juries, which were almost unanimous in their sympathy with 57 00:07:36.840 --> 00:07:39.560 any arraigned smugglers. 58 00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:45.120 We have mentioned the drastic fall in the prices of tobacco in the 17th century. 59 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:50.320 Much of this drop was due not to the great expansion of the Virginia tobacco crop, but 60 00:07:50.320 --> 00:07:57.000 to the Navigation Acts and their smashing of the export market for tobacco in Holland 61 00:07:57.000 --> 00:07:59.700 and other countries in Europe. 62 00:07:59.700 --> 00:08:06.340 Before the Navigation Acts, the Dutch had paid three pence per pound for Virginia tobacco. 63 00:08:06.340 --> 00:08:13.860 After the Acts, the tobacco price had fallen to half a penny per pound by 1667. 64 00:08:13.860 --> 00:08:19.140 The fall was aggravated by the heavy losses of the English tobacco fleet in the wars with 65 00:08:19.140 --> 00:08:49.140 Since Holland, the Dutch Wars of 1664-67 and 1672-73, to offset the crisis, Virginia turned to domestic mercantilism, compulsory cartels to raise tobacco prices, but since such an increase could only be accomplished by coerced restrictions on tobacco acreage, this meant that tobacco markets were not being widened and prosperity could not be restored 66 00:08:49.140 --> 00:09:01.140 In a compulsory tobacco cartel, some tobacco producers could only benefit at the expense of others and of the rest of the colony's population. 67 00:09:01.140 --> 00:09:17.140 In brief, quotas based on existing production must privilege the inefficient grower and the large grower about to fall behind in the competitive race and discriminate against the efficient and the new up-and-coming planters. 68 00:09:17.140 --> 00:09:32.140 In the plant-cutting riots of 1682, the planters benefiting from the quotas organized bands of vandals to go from plantation to plantation, destroying the tobacco crop. 69 00:09:32.140 --> 00:09:46.140 The protection from foreign competition accorded by the Navigation Acts to British shippers not only ruined the Virginian's tobacco market and that of neighboring Maryland's planters as well, 70 00:09:46.140 --> 00:09:52.140 It also raised the price of the gamut of imported goods now confined to British ships. 71 00:09:52.140 --> 00:09:57.140 Thus, Virginians suffered doubly from the imperial restrictions. 72 00:09:57.140 --> 00:10:05.140 English enforcement of the Navigation Acts was unfortunately rigorous, especially in the southern colonies. 73 00:10:05.140 --> 00:10:13.140 Three wars of aggression against the Dutch between 1652 and 1675 drove the Dutch, 74 00:10:13.140 --> 00:10:18.140 The more efficient of England's competitors, out of the Chesapeake trade. 75 00:10:18.140 --> 00:10:23.140 The varied geography of the Chesapeake Bay area made enforcement easy. 76 00:10:23.140 --> 00:10:28.140 The English Navy needed only to control the narrow entrance of the bay 77 00:10:28.140 --> 00:10:34.140 to keep foreign ships from buying or selling to the Virginia or Maryland plantations. 78 00:10:34.140 --> 00:10:41.140 Thus, the English orientation of Virginia trade and finance was compelled by the Navigation Acts, 79 00:10:41.140 --> 00:10:48.340 Acts, which gravely injured Virginians and retarded Virginia development. Furthermore, 80 00:10:48.340 --> 00:10:54.140 the canker of slavery was also due partly to the Navigation Acts. The economic pressure 81 00:10:54.140 --> 00:11:01.740 of the Acts on the planters led them to look to slavery as a way to cut cost by exploiting 82 00:11:01.740 --> 00:11:08.740 forced labor. Moreover, the English government forbade Virginia from restricting the infamous 83 00:11:08.740 --> 00:11:15.100 was slave trade, the monopoly of which had by the wars against the Dutch been assured 84 00:11:15.100 --> 00:11:21.700 to British traders. John Bland, a London merchant who had traded with the Dutch in Virginia 85 00:11:21.700 --> 00:11:27.740 tobacco presented the excellent case of the Chesapeake planters against the Navigation 86 00:11:27.740 --> 00:11:35.580 Acts, but unfortunately to no avail. Added to the devastation caused by the Navigation 87 00:11:35.580 --> 00:11:36.580 in the 16th century. 88 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:39.580 The first tax tax in the 16th century was the burden of increased taxes. 89 00:11:39.580 --> 00:11:46.480 In addition to the crippling penny a pound on all coastal tobacco trade imposed in 1673, 90 00:11:46.480 --> 00:11:50.580 the hated poll tax was reimposed. 91 00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:56.200 In his first years of rule, Governor Berkeley had abolished the poll tax, which being levied 92 00:11:56.200 --> 00:12:02.280 equally on all particularly burdened the poor strata of the population. 93 00:12:02.280 --> 00:12:08.580 In 1674, however, when Berkeley reintroduced the poll tax, a number of farmers assembled 94 00:12:08.580 --> 00:12:16.660 with their arms in Kent County to prevent collection of the new taxes by force if necessary. 95 00:12:16.660 --> 00:12:23.120 This incipient tax rebellion was dispersed upon Berkeley's proclamation that tax rebels 96 00:12:23.120 --> 00:12:29.200 would be accounted guilty of treason and punished accordingly. 97 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:35.040 Lately adding to the grievances of most Virginians was the steady accumulation ever since his 98 00:12:35.040 --> 00:12:41.800 reappointment of absolute rule in the hands of Governor Berkeley and his clique of allies 99 00:12:41.800 --> 00:12:45.240 in the great planter oligarchy. 100 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:51.140 No sooner was he reappointed governor than Berkeley seized control of the House of Burgesses. 101 00:12:51.140 --> 00:12:56.280 He filled the seats with his own henchmen and repudiated the Virginia tradition of frequent 102 00:12:56.280 --> 00:12:57.280 elections. 103 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:05.700 In fact, he refused to call any election for the House of Burgesses from 1661 on and only 104 00:13:05.700 --> 00:13:10.340 called meetings of the assembly at his pleasure. 105 00:13:10.340 --> 00:13:16.280 Any recalcitrant Burgesses were bribed with public offices, all of which were appointed 106 00:13:16.280 --> 00:13:18.400 by the Governor. 107 00:13:18.400 --> 00:13:23.920 Berkeley's absolute control of the Council, always dominated by the Governor, was assured 108 00:13:23.920 --> 00:13:30.000 by the fact that the bulk of the councillors were allowed to die without being replaced, 109 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:37.280 were not called together or were out of reach. Now Berkeley was in full control of both houses 110 00:13:37.280 --> 00:13:44.680 of the assembly. In 1670 Berkeley and the assembly further tightened oligarchic control 111 00:13:44.680 --> 00:13:51.280 by taking the franchise away from non-land owners. Berkeley also assumed supreme judicial 112 00:13:51.280 --> 00:14:02.480 Oligarchic control by the leading planters over local government was further tightened. 113 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:08.540 The vestries, for example, became self-perpetuating local governing bodies. 114 00:14:08.540 --> 00:14:14.580 County courts made up of the great planters met in secret to impose the county levy, which 115 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:19.220 more and more placed tax burdens on the poor. 116 00:14:19.220 --> 00:14:25.340 Exorbitant fees were paid to sheriffs, clerks and other local officials out of these taxes 117 00:14:25.340 --> 00:14:30.500 and there was considerable graft involved in the heavy expenditures needed to construct 118 00:14:30.500 --> 00:14:39.500 forts westward on the rivers. Power is always used to acquire wealth and here was no exception. 119 00:14:39.500 --> 00:14:45.300 Berkeley and his allies granted themselves the best lands, most of the public offices 120 00:14:45.300 --> 00:14:49.700 and a monopoly of the lucrative fur trade with the Indians. 121 00:14:49.700 --> 00:14:54.960 Another of Berkeley's tyrannical actions was to have the assembly reestablish the Anglican 122 00:14:54.960 --> 00:15:01.500 Church and also to bring pressure for a governmental college that would include Anglican teaching 123 00:15:01.500 --> 00:15:03.780 of the youth. 124 00:15:03.780 --> 00:15:09.580 Whenever anyone in the American colonies in the 17th century decided to embark on a policy 125 00:15:09.580 --> 00:15:16.220 The Theory of Tyranny and Religious Persecution The first group to bear the brunt was usually 126 00:15:16.220 --> 00:15:24.220 the hapless Quakers, of all sects the least devoted to idolatry of church or state. 127 00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:29.780 Upon embarking on the dictatorial rule of his second term, Governor Berkeley did not 128 00:15:29.780 --> 00:15:36.420 hesitate to revive the old laws against dissenters and naturally concentrated on the handful 129 00:15:36.420 --> 00:15:45.620 of Quakers. An English Quaker, George Wilson, upon arriving at Jamestown in 1661, was thrust 130 00:15:45.620 --> 00:15:53.760 into a dungeon, scourged and kept in irons until death. While dying, he wrote in a truly 131 00:15:53.760 --> 00:16:01.220 saintly manner, For all their cruelty, I can truly say, father, forgive them, they know 132 00:16:01.220 --> 00:16:04.240 know not what they do. 133 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:11.080 The previous year, 1660, the assembly had passed an act outlawing an unreasonable and 134 00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:19.080 turbulent sort of people commonly called Quakers who are endeavoring to destroy religion, laws, 135 00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:23.040 communities and all bonds of civil society. 136 00:16:23.040 --> 00:16:28.760 Apparently these bonds of civil society were to rest not on voluntary consent but on the 137 00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:38.480 The Dungeon and the Torture Rack In 1662, Berkeley decreed heavy fines on any non-conformist 138 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:44.880 who refused to have their children baptized and threatened to exile any ship masters who 139 00:16:44.880 --> 00:16:50.040 brought any dissenters into the colony. 140 00:16:50.040 --> 00:16:56.720 The next year, two Quaker women entered Virginia, spreading the message in the colony. 141 00:16:56.720 --> 00:17:04.400 The two, Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose, were imprisoned and inflicted with 32 lashes 142 00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:10.840 from a whip of nine cords. After this, their property was seized and they were expelled 143 00:17:10.840 --> 00:17:17.880 from Virginia. It stands to reason that a man with this sort of attitude toward religious 144 00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:25.640 liberty and search for truth should be vehemently hostile toward education, freedom of inquiry, 145 00:17:25.640 --> 00:17:29.220 and Individual and Collective Search for the Truth. 146 00:17:29.220 --> 00:17:35.180 We are fortunate to have on record, however, a classic statement by Berkeley revealing 147 00:17:35.180 --> 00:17:40.520 the despot's fury toward learning and free inquiry. 148 00:17:40.520 --> 00:17:47.060 When asked in 1671 by the Crown what he had been doing to instruct the people in the Christian 149 00:17:47.060 --> 00:17:50.920 religion, Berkeley in the course of his answer declared, 150 00:17:50.920 --> 00:18:12.920 I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sext into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both. 151 00:18:12.920 --> 00:18:24.920 Learning and culture apparently were to be reserved to the safe hands of the ruling class and were not to be permitted the ruled who might learn enough to want to cast off their chains. 152 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:45.920 The inherent conflicts within Virginia's society, as well as between Virginia and England, were further aggravated by an enormous land grant made by Charles II to Lord Hopton and a group of his friends, including Berkeley's brother, Sir John, in 1649. 153 00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:58.920 This was a grant of over 5 million acres, constituting the partially settled northern neck of Virginia between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. 154 00:18:58.920 --> 00:19:03.920 The Hoppen grant was assigned to Lord Culpepper in 1689. 155 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:15.920 Even more startling was the joint proprietary grant of all Virginia in 1673 to two royal favorites, 156 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:21.920 Lord's Arlington and Culpepper, for a term of 31 years. 157 00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:32.920 The latter grant generated fierce opposition in Virginia because, for one thing, the Crown had been collecting the quit rents on Virginia lands in haphazard fashion, 158 00:19:32.920 --> 00:19:38.760 where as Lord Culpepper and Arlington could be expected to make the best out of their 159 00:19:38.760 --> 00:19:40.760 feudal grant. 160 00:19:40.760 --> 00:19:45.680 The new proprietors were given the power to establish churches and schools, to appoint 161 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:50.440 ministers and teachers, and they were given the power to appoint the sheriffs and other 162 00:19:50.440 --> 00:19:56.000 officers to grant lands and to create towns and counties. 163 00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:02.440 Suddenly the Virginians were now confronted with the specter of absolute proprietary feudal 164 00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:07.160 rule, as well as the deprivation of all their liberties in their considerable 165 00:20:07.160 --> 00:20:11.880 measure of home rule. Indeed, no guarantees for the rights of Virginians 166 00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:17.040 were included in the Arlington Culpepper Grant. The alarmed assembly met the 167 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:23.400 following year, 1674, and protested that the grants would threaten the rights of 168 00:20:23.400 --> 00:20:29.200 the people, impose upon them new rents and dues, new grants and levies, and 169 00:20:29.200 --> 00:20:34.400 and deprived them of the present protection of their rights and properties. 170 00:20:34.400 --> 00:20:40.160 The Virginians insisted that they wanted no privileged proprietors, whether individuals 171 00:20:40.160 --> 00:20:46.780 or chartered company, standing between them and the Crown and exploiting them still more. 172 00:20:46.780 --> 00:20:52.660 At heavy expense, the assembly sent commissioners to London to ask for removal of the grant. 173 00:20:52.660 --> 00:20:59.040 The negotiators eventually persuaded Lords Arlington and Culpepper to abandon all claims 174 00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:22.320 In the course of the negotiations, the commissioners and the two proprietors agreed that Virginia 175 00:21:22.320 --> 00:21:29.640 should buy back the vast northern net grant for four hundred pounds to each proprietor, 176 00:21:29.640 --> 00:21:35.680 and that the quit rents on the remaining lands should continue to be paid to the crown, thus 177 00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:43.560 ending feudal quit rents in the colony. The proprietary grant of 1673 was to be revoked 178 00:21:43.560 --> 00:21:50.000 and no further grants made without consulting the Virginia Council. A new liberal charter 179 00:21:50.000 --> 00:22:05.000 The Charter drawn up by the King's Solicitor General declared that the taxation provision contains that which we humbly conceive to be the right of Virginians, as well as all other Englishmen, which is, not to be taken into account by the Government of Virginia, and that no taxes could be imposed on Virginia without consent of the House of Burgesses. 180 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:25.000 by their consent, expressed by their representatives. 181 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:33.000 Unfortunately, this new charter was blocked upon the outbreak of rebellion in Virginia in 1676. 182 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:40.000 Neither did the losses suffered by Berkeley's administration in the Dutch War during 1673 183 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:43.000 endear the government to the people of Virginia. 184 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:49.000 One of the principal motives of the aggressive English war against the Dutch beginning in 1672 185 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:55.120 In 1892 was to drive the Dutch out of the Virginia trade. The Dutch attacked Virginia 186 00:22:55.120 --> 00:23:02.080 and succeeded in sinking 11 Virginia merchant men laden with tobacco. Neither the war nor 187 00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:08.080 the losses were calculated to gain the support of the populace. Indeed, many Virginians, 188 00:23:08.080 --> 00:23:14.520 oppressed by English rule, welcomed the Dutch invasion and the prospective shift of sovereignty 189 00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:23.000 to the Netherlands. If we consider then the situation in Virginia in the mid-1670s, we 190 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:30.680 can see the accumulation of grievances and the aggravation of conflicts. The sudden feudal 191 00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:38.400 proprietary grant of all Virginia to Lords Arlington and Culpeper in 1673, the exclusive 192 00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:47.240 of Landed Property Franchise in 1670, the reimposition of the poll tax in 1674, and 193 00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:52.480 the general increase in taxation, and the establishment of tight rule by the Berkeley 194 00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:54.320 clique. 195 00:23:54.320 --> 00:23:59.360 To these we might add Berkeley's persecution of the dissenters, virtually driving them 196 00:23:59.360 --> 00:24:01.360 out of the colony. 197 00:24:01.360 --> 00:24:08.280 Tents of revolt and mutiny against Berkeley began to emerge in the 1670s. 198 00:24:08.280 --> 00:24:16.240 On December 12, 1673, fourteen people met at Lons Creek Parish Church in Surrey County 199 00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:21.680 to protest against excessive taxation and to insist that they would thereafter refuse 200 00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:23.980 to pay their taxes. 201 00:24:23.980 --> 00:24:31.600 Here was one of the first tax rebellions or organized refusals to pay taxes in America. 202 00:24:31.600 --> 00:24:38.080 On January 3rd, the very day that Berkeley's judges issued a writ to haul the 14 into court 203 00:24:38.080 --> 00:24:45.420 for sedition, the group met again in a field and one of their leaders, Roger Delk, declared 204 00:24:45.420 --> 00:24:53.400 that we will burn all before one shall suffer. Berkeley lost no time in hauling the rebels 205 00:24:53.400 --> 00:25:23.400 In April 1674, Swann was brought before the Council and General Court of Virginia 206 00:25:23.400 --> 00:25:30.640 for his dangerous contempt in unlawful project and his wicked persisting in the same. Berkeley 207 00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:37.360 was forced, however, by popular resentment at the treatment, according to the tax rebels, 208 00:25:37.360 --> 00:25:44.720 to remit all the fines some months later. Many of the tax strikers were prominent landowners 209 00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:52.120 of the county. Matthew Swan was possibly related to Colonel Thomas Swan, a member of the Council. 210 00:25:52.120 --> 00:25:56.480 Ludwig's father had been a member of the House of Burgesses. 211 00:25:56.480 --> 00:26:01.880 Several other protesters were related to former Burgesses, and one was relative of one of 212 00:26:01.880 --> 00:26:04.680 the judges issuing a writ for their arrest. 213 00:26:04.680 --> 00:26:11.600 Furthermore, a near uprising was called off in 1674, and two mutinies occurred in the 214 00:26:11.600 --> 00:26:13.520 following year. 215 00:26:13.520 --> 00:26:19.920 All in all, the stage was set for one of the most important American armed rebellions against 216 00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:26.920 English Authority in the Colonial Era, Bacon's Rebellion of 1676.