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011 - Chapter 11 · Chronicles of America Volume 05 - Pioneers of the Old South

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven of Pioneers of the Old South by Mary Johnston.
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  Speaker 1: This libribox recording is in the public domain, Chapter eleven,
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  Speaker 1: Commonwealth and Restoration. On the thirtieth of January sixteen forty nine,
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  Speaker 1: before the Palace of Whitehall, Charles the First of England
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  Speaker 1: was beheaded in Virginia. The event fell with a shock.
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  Speaker 1: Even those within the colony who were Cromwell's men rather
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  Speaker 1: than Charles's men, seemed to have recoiled from this act.
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  Speaker 1: Presently two came fleeing royalists from overseas to add their
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  Speaker 1: passionate voices to those of the royalists in Virginia. Many
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  Speaker 1: came nobility, clergy, and gentry men of the first rate.
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  Speaker 1: A thousand are said to have arrived in that year.
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  Speaker 1: After the king's death. In October, the Virginia Assembly met
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  Speaker 1: parliament men. And now these were, while with head in
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  Speaker 1: the air, might regret the execution of the past January,
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  Speaker 1: and yet be prepared to assert that with the fall
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  Speaker 1: of the kingdom fell all powers and offices named and
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  Speaker 1: decreed by the hapless monarch. What was a passionate royalist
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  Speaker 1: government doing in Virginia? Now that England was a Commonwealth.
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  Speaker 1: The passionate government answered for itself in acts passed by
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  Speaker 1: this Assembly with swelling words with a tragic accent. It
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  Speaker 1: denounced the late happenings in England and all the round
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  Speaker 1: head wickedness that led up to them. It proclaimed loyalty
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  Speaker 1: to his sacred majesty that now is, that is, to
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  Speaker 1: Charles Stewart, afterwards Charles the Second, then a refugee on
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  Speaker 1: the continent. Finally, it enacted that any who defended the
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  Speaker 1: late proceedings, or in the least affected to question the
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  Speaker 1: undoubted inherent right of his majesty that now is to
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  Speaker 1: the colony of Virginia, should be held guilty of high treas,
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  Speaker 1: and that reporters and divulgers of rumors tending to change
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  Speaker 1: of government should be punished, even to severity. Berkeley's words
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  Speaker 1: may be detected in these acts of the Assembly. In
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  Speaker 1: no great time the cavalier governor conferred with Colonel Henry Norwood,
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  Speaker 1: one of the Royalist refugees to Virginia. Nor would thereupon
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  Speaker 1: sailed away upon a Dutch ship and came to Holland,
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  Speaker 1: where he found his Majesty that now is. Here he
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  Speaker 1: knelt and invited that same Majesty to visit his dominion
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  Speaker 1: of Virginia, and, if he liked it, there to rest
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  Speaker 1: sovereign of the Virginian people. But Charles still hoped to
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  Speaker 1: be sovereign in England and would not cross the seas.
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  Speaker 1: He sent, however, to Sir William Barkley a renewal of
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  Speaker 1: his Governor's commission, and appointed Norwood Treasurer of Virginia, and said,
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  Speaker 1: doubtless many gay and pleasant things in Virginia there continued
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  Speaker 1: to appear from England. Adherents of the ancient regime, men,
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  Speaker 1: women and children came, until to a considerable degree the
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  Speaker 1: tone of society range cavalier. This immigration, now lighter, now heavier,
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  Speaker 1: continued through a rather prolonged period. There came now to
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  Speaker 1: Virginia families whose names are often met in the later
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  Speaker 1: history of the land. Now Washington's appear with Randolph's carries, Skipwits,
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  Speaker 1: broad Knax's, Tyler's, Mason's, Madison's, Monrose, and many more. These
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  Speaker 1: persons are not without means. They bring with them servants.
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  Speaker 1: They are in high favor with Governor and council. They
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  Speaker 1: acquire large tracts of virgin land. They bring in indentured labor,
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  Speaker 1: they purchase African slaves, they cultivate tobacco. From being English
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  Speaker 1: country gentlemen, they turned easily to become Virginia planters. But
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  Speaker 1: the Virginia Assembly had thrown a gauntlet before the Victoria's Commonwealth,
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  Speaker 1: and the Long Parliament now declared the colony to be
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  Speaker 1: in contumacy, assembled and dispatched ships against her, and laid
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  Speaker 1: an embargo upon trade with the rebellious daughter. In January
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  Speaker 1: of sixteen fifty two English ships appeared off Point Comfort
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  Speaker 1: for commissioners of the Commonwealth were aboard of whom that
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  Speaker 1: strong man Claiborne was won. After issuing a proclamation to
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  Speaker 1: quiet the fears of their people, the commissioners made their
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  Speaker 1: way to Jamestown. Here was found the indomitable Berkeley and
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  Speaker 1: his council in a state of active preparation, cannon trained.
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  Speaker 1: But when always said, the commissioners had brought wisely moderate terms. Submit,
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  Speaker 1: Because submit, they must acknowledge the Commonwealth, and that done
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  Speaker 1: rest unmolested. If resistance continued, there were enough parliament men
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  Speaker 1: in Virginia to make an army. Indentured servants and slaves
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  Speaker 1: should receive freedom in exchange for support to the Commonwealth,
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  Speaker 1: the ships would come up from point Comfort, and a
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  Speaker 1: determined war would be on. What Sir William Barkley personally
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  Speaker 1: said has not survived. But after consultation, upon consultation, Virginia
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  Speaker 1: surrendered to the Commonwealth. Berkeley stepped from the Governor's chair,
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  Speaker 1: retiring in wrath and bitterness of heart to his house
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  Speaker 1: at Green Spring. In his place at Richard Bennett, one
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  Speaker 1: of the commissioners, Claiborne, was made Secretary. Kingsmen went out
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  Speaker 1: of office, parliament men came in, but there was no persecution.
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  Speaker 1: In the blend and wide Virginia, air mines failed to
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  Speaker 1: come into hard and frequent collision. For all the ferocities
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  Speaker 1: of the statute books, acute suffering for difference of opinion,
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  Speaker 1: whether political or religious, did not bulk large in the
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  Speaker 1: life of early Virginia. The commissioners after the Reduction of
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  Speaker 1: Virginia had a light part to play with Maryland. At
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  Speaker 1: Saint Mary's, as at Jamestown, they demanded and at length
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  Speaker 1: received submission to the Commonwealth. There was here the less trouble.
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  Speaker 1: Owing to Baltimore's foresight in appointing to the office of governor,
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  Speaker 1: William Stone whose opinions political and religious accorded with those
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  Speaker 1: of revolutionary England. Yet the governor could not bring himself
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  Speaker 1: to forget his oath to Lord Baltimore and agree to
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  Speaker 1: the demand of the Commissioners that he should administer the
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  Speaker 1: government in the name of the Keepers of the Liberties
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  Speaker 1: of England. After some hesitation, the Commissioners decided to respect
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  Speaker 1: his scruples and allow him to govern in the name
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord Proprietary, as he had solemnly promised. In
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  Speaker 1: Virginia and in Maryland, the Commonwealth and the Lord Protector
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  Speaker 1: stand where stood the Kingdom and the king. Many are
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  Speaker 1: far better satisfied than they were before, and the confirmed
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  Speaker 1: Royalist consumes his grumbling in his own circle. The old
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  Speaker 1: exhausting quarrel seems laid to rest, But within this wider
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  Speaker 1: piece breaks out suddenly an interior strife. Virginia would if
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  Speaker 1: she could have back all her old northward territory. In
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  Speaker 1: sixteen fifty two, Bennett's government goes so far as to
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  Speaker 1: petition Parliament to unseat the Catholic Proprietary of Maryland and
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  Speaker 1: make whole again the ancient Virginia. The hand of Clayborne
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  Speaker 1: that remarkable and persistent men may be seen in this.
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  Speaker 1: In Maryland, Puritans and independents were settled, chiefly about the
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  Speaker 1: River's Severn and Protuxant, and in a village called Providence,
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  Speaker 1: afterwards Annapolis. These now saw their chance to throw off
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  Speaker 1: the proprietary's rule and to come directly under that of
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  Speaker 1: the Commonwealth. So thinking they put themselves into communication with
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  Speaker 1: Bennett and Clayborne. In sixteen fifty, Stone charged the commissioners
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  Speaker 1: with having promoted faction, sedition, and rebellion against the Lord Baltimore.
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  Speaker 1: The charge was well founded. Claiborne and Bennett assumed that
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  Speaker 1: they were yet parliamentary commissioners, empowered to bring all plantations
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  Speaker 1: within the Bay of Chesapeake to their due obedience to
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  Speaker 1: the Parliament and Commonwealth of England, and they were indeed
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  Speaker 1: set against the Lord Baltimore. Claiborne would head the Puritans
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  Speaker 1: of Providence, and a troops be raised in Virginia and
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  Speaker 1: marched northward. The commissioners actually advanced upon Saint Mary's and
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  Speaker 1: with so superior a force that Stone surrendered, and a
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  Speaker 1: Puritan government was inaugurated. A Puritan assembly met, debarring any
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  Speaker 1: Catholics presently, it passed in act annulling the Proprietary's Act
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  Speaker 1: of Toleration, professors of the religion Rome should be restrained
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  Speaker 1: from the exercise thereof the hand of the law was
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  Speaker 1: to fall heavily upon popery, prelacy, or licentiousness of opinion.
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  Speaker 1: Thus was in Tolerance alive again in the only land
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  Speaker 1: where she had seemed to die. In England, now there
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  Speaker 1: was hardly a parliament, but only the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell.
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  Speaker 1: Content with Baltimore's recognition of the protectorate, Cromwell was not
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  Speaker 1: prepared to back in their independent action the commissioners of
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  Speaker 1: that now dissolved parliament. Baltimore made sure of this, and
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  Speaker 1: then dispatched messengers overseas to Stone, bidding him do all
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  Speaker 1: that lay in him to retake Maryland. Stone thereupon gathered
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  Speaker 1: several hundred men and a fleet of small sailing craft,
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  Speaker 1: with which he pushed up the bay to the see.
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  Speaker 1: In the meantime, the Puritans had not been idle, but
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  Speaker 1: had themselves raised a body of men, and had taken
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  Speaker 1: over the Golden Lion, an armed merchantmen lying before their town.
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  Speaker 1: On the twenty fourth of March sixteen fifty five, the
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  Speaker 1: two forces met in the Battle of the Severn. In
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  Speaker 1: the name of God fall On cried the men of Providence,
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  Speaker 1: and hay for Saint Mary's, cried the others. The battle
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  Speaker 1: was won by the Providence men. They slew or wounded
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  Speaker 1: fifty of the Saint Mary's men, and desperately wounded Stone himself,
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  Speaker 1: and took many prisoners, ten of whom were afterwards condemned
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  Speaker 1: to death, and for were actually executed. Now followed a
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  Speaker 1: period of up and down, the commissioners and the proprietary alike,
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  Speaker 1: appealing to the Lord Protector for some expression of his
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  Speaker 1: determinate will. Both sads received encouragement inasmuch as he decided
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  Speaker 1: for neither his own authority being denied by neither. Cromwell
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  Speaker 1: may have preferred to hold these distant factions in a canceling,
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  Speaker 1: neutralizing posture, but farwayier matters, in fact, were occupying his mind.
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  Speaker 1: In sixteen fifty seven, weary of her very sad, distracted
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  Speaker 1: and unsettled condition, Maryland herself proceeded Puritan, Pelatist and Catholic
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  Speaker 1: together to agree, henceforth to disagree. Toleration viewed in retrospect,
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  Speaker 1: appears dimly to have been seen for the Angel that
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  Speaker 1: it was Maryland would return to the Proprietary's rule, provided
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  Speaker 1: there should be complete indemnity for political offenses and a
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  Speaker 1: solemn promise that the Toleration Act of sixteen forty nine
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  Speaker 1: should never be repealed. This, without a smile Baltimore promised.
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  Speaker 1: Articles were signed. A new Assembly composed of all manner
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  Speaker 1: of Christians was called, and Maryland returned for a time
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  Speaker 1: to her first allegiance. Quiet years on the whole follow
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  Speaker 1: in Virginia under the Commonwealth. The three governors of this period, Bennett,
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  Speaker 1: Diggs and Matthews, are all chosen by the Assembly, which,
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  Speaker 1: but for the navigation laws, might almost forget the Home Government.
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  Speaker 1: Then Oliver Cromwell dies, and after an interval back to
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  Speaker 1: England come the Stuarts. Charles the Second is proclaimed King,
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  Speaker 1: and back into office in Virginia is brought that staunch
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  Speaker 1: old monarchist Sir William Barklay, first by a Royalist Assembly
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  Speaker 1: and presently by commission from the new King. Then Virginia
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  Speaker 1: had her long Parliament or assembled in sixteen sixty one,
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  Speaker 1: in the first gush of the restoration, there was elected
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  Speaker 1: a House of Burgesses so condenial to Berkeley's mind that
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  Speaker 1: he wished to see it perpetuated for fifteen years. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: he held it in being, with adjournments from one year
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  Speaker 1: into another, and with sharp refusals to listen to any
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  Speaker 1: demand for new elections. Yet this demand grew, and still
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  Speaker 1: the governor shut the door in the face of the people,
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  Speaker 1: and looked imperiously forth from the window, his temper, always fiery,
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  Speaker 1: now burned vindictive. His zeal for Kingdom, Church, and the
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  Speaker 1: high prerogatives of the Governor of Virginia became a consuming passion.
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  Speaker 1: When Berkeley first came to Virginia, and again for a
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  Speaker 1: moment in the flare of the restoration, his popularity had
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  Speaker 1: been real, but for long now it had dwindled. He
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  Speaker 1: belonged to an earlier time, and he held fast to
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  Speaker 1: old ideas that were decaying. At the heart. A bigot
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  Speaker 1: for the royal power, a man of class with the
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  Speaker 1: contempt for the generality and its clumsily expressed needs, he
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  Speaker 1: grew in narrowness as he grew in years. Berkley could
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  Speaker 1: in these later times write home, though with some exaggeration,
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  Speaker 1: I thank god there are no free schools nor printing,
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  Speaker 1: and I hope we shall not have these hundred years,
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  Speaker 1: for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing
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  Speaker 1: has divulged them, and libels against the best governments. God
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  Speaker 1: keep us from both. But that was the soured zealot
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  Speaker 1: for absolutism. We embarkly. De man was fond enough of books,
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  Speaker 1: and himself had written plays. The spirit of this time
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  Speaker 1: was reactionary in Virginia, as it was reactionary in England.
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  Speaker 1: Harsh servant and slave laws were passed. A prison was
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  Speaker 1: to be erected in each county. Provision was made for
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  Speaker 1: pillory and stocks and ducking stool. The Quakers were to
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  Speaker 1: be proceeded against. The Baptists, who refused to bring children
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  Speaker 1: to baptism were to suffer. Then, at last, in sixteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy came restriction of the Franchise Act Free election of
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  Speaker 1: Burgesses by whom whereas the usual way of choosing burgesses
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  Speaker 1: by the votes of all persons who, having served their
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  Speaker 1: time are freemen of this country, who, having little interest
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  Speaker 1: in the country, do oftener make tumults at the election
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  Speaker 1: to the disturbance of His Majesty's peace, than by their
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  Speaker 1: discretions in their votes, provide for the conservation thereof by
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  Speaker 1: making choice of persons fitly qualified for the discharge of
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  Speaker 1: so great a trust. And whereas the laws of England
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  Speaker 1: grant a voice in such election only to such as,
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  Speaker 1: by their estates real or personal, have interest enough to
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  Speaker 1: tie them to the endeavor of the public good, it
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  Speaker 1: is hereby enacted that none but freeholders and housekeepers, who
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  Speaker 1: only are answerable to the public for the levy, shall
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  Speaker 1: hereafter have a voice in the election of any burgesses
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  Speaker 1: in this country. Three years later, another woe befell the
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  Speaker 1: colony that same Charles, the second, to whom, in misfortune,
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  Speaker 1: Virginia had so adhered that for her loyalty she had
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  Speaker 1: received the name of the old dominion. Now granted all
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  Speaker 1: that entire tract, territory, region, and dominion of land and water,
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  Speaker 1: commonly called Virginia, together with the territory of Accomack to
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  Speaker 1: Lord Culpeper and the Earl of Arlington, for thirty one years.
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  Speaker 1: They were to hold it, paying to the King the
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  Speaker 1: slight annual rent of forty shillings. They were not to
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  Speaker 1: disturb the colonists in any guaranteed right of life, or
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  Speaker 1: land or goods, but for the rest they might farm Virginia,
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  Speaker 1: the country out in anger. The Assembly hurried commissioners on
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  Speaker 1: board a ship in port and sent them to England
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  Speaker 1: to besiege the ear of the king. Distress and discontent
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  Speaker 1: increased with good reason among the mass of the Virginians.
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  Speaker 1: The King in England his counselors in Parliament played an
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  Speaker 1: unfatherly role, while in Virginia economic hardships pressed ever harder,
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  Speaker 1: and the administration became more and more oppressive. By sixteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy six, the gunpowder of popular indignation was laid right
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  Speaker 1: and left awaiting the match. End of chapter eleven,