USA > Virginia > A history of Virginia : from its discovery and settlement by Europeans to the present time. Vol. I > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31
d Third Objection, in Dec., He-
b See Declaration, in Hening, i. ning, i. 232; Burk, ii. 70, in note. 231; and in Burk, ii. 69, in note.
281
A PROSPEROUS PEOPLE.
1642.]
tween their defenceless heads and the sword of the monarch, grasped by the hand of the very governor whom they now delighted to honour.
But, whatever may have been the motives impel- ling the Assembly, it is certain that their petition was highly acceptable to the King. (July 5.) From his Court, at York, he returned them a gracious answer-complimenting them upon their loyalty, expatiating upon his own abundant "grace, bounty, and favour" towards them, and promising never to restore a Company to power which seemed now equally unwelcome both to crown and to colonists.a
The influence of a popular governor, and of excited hope, acted like a charm upon the interests of the settlement. The commercial restrictions were not enforced with rigour, and attracted so little attention that we hear no complaints at this time made against them. Recovering, with elastic strength, from the pressure they had so long sus- tained, the colonists increased rapidly in numbers, in wealth, in general intelligence. The papers prepared by the Councils, or even by individuals, at this period, bear upon their faces the impress of minds in love with freedom, and expanded by cul- ture. The assemblies were regularly convened ; and they passed laws, many of which still remain upon our ancient statute book, to attest the wisdom and patriotism of our fathers. Notwithstanding their veneration for the governor, we note with pleasure the same jealous regard for the rights of the people which they had always evinced. In
ª Burk, ii. 74, in note ; Gordon's America, i. 51; Bancroft, i. 221.
282
INTOLERANCE.
[CHAP. V.
the midst of the session of 1642-43, we find a statute forbidding the Governor and Council to lay any taxes or imposts upon either persons or property, except by authority of the General Assembly.ª
But in one respect, the laws of this period were as unjust and cruel in theory, as they were dan- gerous and destructive in their practical tendency. The Church of England had always been the cherished establishment of the colonists. The early settlers of Virginia had no sympathy with the Puritans, who were now so rapidly increasing in numbers and power in the mother country. Two classes may exhibit the whole religious as- pect of the colony, at the time when Berkeley assumed its government. One consisted of the cavaliers and gentlemen planters, who, with a re- putable regard for order and morality, and strong prepossessions in favour of the ancient " régime" of England, looked upon the Church as closely connected with all that was dignified and honour- able. They loved her ministers, her forms, and, perhaps, her creed; and they looked with dis- trust upon all innovation. These men were ardent friends of freedom; and, had they lived in Eng- land, it is not improbable that closer acquaintance with prelacy, and experience of its inseparable con- nexion with the maxims of civil tyranny,b would
a Act iii., Laws, 1642-43; He. with consummate folly in general, ning's Stat. i. 244.
sometimes exhibited singular acute-
b "No Bishop no King," was a ness.
favourite maxim of James I., who,
1
283
INTOLERANCE.
1642.]
have driven them into the Puritan ranks, which now embraced the noblest hearts and clearest intel- lects found in the English realm. The other class included the lower order of colonists-labourers, artisans, servants-men who had never been re- markable for virtue; who found little congenial to their tastes in the strict morality of dissenters ; who looked upon religion with indifference, and were content to discharge their obligations to the Supreme Being by attendance upon the forms of an established church. From neither of these classes could we expect any serious resistance to the known wishes of Berkeley, who was a church- man of the deepest dye. The Assembly quietly proceeded to pass laws of the most stringent cha- racter on the subject of religion. Strict con- formity was required; tithes were inexorably im- posed; ministers' persons were invested with a sanctity savouring strongly of superstition ; popish recusants were forbidden to hold any office, and their priests were to be banished from the country ; the oath of supremacy to the king, as head of the Church, was in all cases to be tendered; dissent- ing preachers were strictly forbidden to exercise their office; and the Governor and Council were empowered to compel " non-conformists to depart the colony with all convenience."a
Such laws, in the present age, would blacken the statute book of any people with a stain never to be
ª Laws, in Hening's Stat. i. 240, 241, 243, 268, 269, 277; Burk's Va., ii. 66, 67 ; Bancroft, i. 222, 223.
284
INTOLERANCE.
[CHAP. V.
erased. Yet should we remember, that they were the results of the age rather than expressions of popular feeling. Toleration was then almost wholly unknown. Men had not learned, that the human conscience is a thing too sacred to be touched by human laws. Religion was regarded as all-important ; and each dominant sect, believing its own peculiarities to embody the truth, sternly required that all should believe according to its cherished faith ; forgetting the precepts of Him who declared that He was neither a Judge nor a Ruler of the affairs of man, that his Father was to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and that even enemies were to be loved rather than persecuted. Men professing His religion had for centuries dis- graced the Christian world by their cruelty to those who ventured to decide for themselves in a matter affecting their own immortal interests. The Church of Rome was chiefly prominent in the work of blood ; the Church of England fol- lowed in her footsteps, and left the fields of Scot- land covered with the dead bodies of her victims. The Puritan Church of Massachusetts could not resist so imposing examples, and hung Quakers and persecuted Anabaptists with edifying zeal. With these models before, around, and behind her, it is not wonderful that Virginia should have yielded to the temptation, and given her hand to the demon of Intolerance. Yet it is consoling to reflect, that no actual violence followed these enact- ments; and when, nearly eighteen years after- wards, the first martyrs to religious freedom fell
285
HOSTILITY OF THE NATIVES.
1643.]
upon the soil of New England,a the elder colony was wholly unstained by blood shed under laws so unholy and vindictive.
While the colonists were thus voluntarily im- posing upon themselves a burthen of ecclesiastical oppression, an ever active foe was preparing to in- flict upon them a dangerous wound. The Indians were now inveterate enemies. Peace was never thought of. Successive enactments of the Assem- bly made it a solemn duty to fall upon the natives at stated seasons of the year, and heavy penalties were visited upon all who traded with them, or in any mode provided them with arms and ammuni- tion. The whites were steadily increasing, both in moral and physical strength ; the Indians were as rapidly wasting away before the breath of civi- lized man. A few incursions,-a few convulsive efforts, always attended by heavy loss to them- selves,-one final struggle,-these will complete their history in Eastern Virginia.
The illegal grants, favoured by Sir John Her- vey, had provoked the natives into active hostility. They saw their hunting grounds successively swept away by a power which they were unable to resist, and all the passions of the savage arose to demand revenge.b . When Sir William Berkeley arrived, he used all his influence to mitigate the
a See Grahame's Colon. Hist. i. 309. In 1659-60, four Quakers, Keith, 144.
three men and one woman, were executed at Boston. Bancroft, i. 488-496.
b Beverley, 49 ; Burk's Va., ii. 51 ;
286
INDIAN WAR.
[CHAP. V.
injustice of these grants, in their effects both upon the colonists and the Indians ; but enough re- mained to inflame the spirits of men who were yet heated by the recollection of past' misfortunes. Among the natives there still lived a hero, who had proved himself a formidable adversary, even when encountered by European skill. Opecan- canough had attained the hundredth year of his life.b. Declining age had bowed a form once emi- nent in stature and manly strength. Incessant toil and watchfulness had wasted his flesh, and left him gaunt and withered, like the forest tree stripped of its foliage by the frosts of winter. His eyes had lost their brightness, and so heavily did the hand of age press upon him, that his eyelids drooped from weakness, and he required the aid of an attendant to raise them that he might see ob- jects around him. Yet within this tottering and wasted body, burned a soul which seemed to have lost none of its original energy. A quenchless fire incited him to hostility against the settlers. He yet wielded great influence among the members of the Powhatan confederacy ; and by his wisdom, his example, and the veneration felt for his age, he roused the savages to another effort at general massacre.
The obscurity covering the best records which remain of this period, has rendered doubtful the precise time at which this fatal irruption occurred ;
a Keith, 145. Keith's opinion of
c Beverley, 49-51; Keith, 145; Berkeley is always favourable.
Burk, ii. 57.
b Burk's Va., ii. 62.
.
287
BERKELEY PURSUES THE NATIVES.
1644.]
yet the most probable period would seem to be the close of the year 1643.ª The Indians were drawn together with great secrecy and skill, and were instructed to fall upon the colonists at the same time, and to spare none who could be safely butchered. Five hundred victims sank beneath their attack. The assault was most violent and fatal upon the upper waters of the Pamunky and the York, where the settlers were yet thin in num- ber and but imperfectly armed. But in every place where resistance was possible, the savages were routed with loss, and driven back in dismay to their fastnesses in the forest. .
(1644.) Sir William Berkeley instantly placed himself at the head of a chosen body, composed of every twentieth man able to bear arms, and marched to the scene of devastation. Finding the savages dispersed and all organized resistance at an end, he followed them with a troop of cavalry. The aged chief had taken refuge in the neighbour- hood of his seat at Pamunky. His strength was too much enfeebled for vigorous flight. His limbs refused to bear him, and his dull vision rendered
a Beverley, who has given the original account of this massacre, cannot be relied upon for the time, 49-51. Mr. Burk, ii. 54, thinks it was in the winter of 1641, or early in the next year. In the office of the General Court of Virginia, held in Richmond, are several MS. vo- lumes of Records, which give valu- able light upon several subjects con- bell, 62, 253.
1
nected with our history. In the most ancient of these volumes I find the following entry : " 6th day June, 1644. By reason of the late bloody massacre, divers plantations have been abandoned." For direction to this passage, I am indebted to Gus- tavus A. Myers, Esq.
. b Burk, ii. 55; Keith, 144; Camp-
288
DEATH OF OPECANCANOUGH.
[CHAP. V.
him an easy prey. He was overtaken by the pur- suers, and carried in triumph back to Jamestown.
Finding the very soul of Indian enmity now within his power, the governor had determined to send him to England as a royal captive, to be de- tained in honourable custody until death should close his earthly career.ª The venerable chief lost not for a moment his dignity and self-possession. True to the principles of that stoicism which had ever been the pride of his race, he looked with contempt and indifference upon the men who held his liberty and life in their hands. It might for the sake of humanity have been hoped, that one thus bending under the weight of years, and stand- ing upon the verge of the grave, would be suffered to go down to the dust in peace. But a death of violence awaited him. A brutal wretch, urged on by desire to revenge injuries to the whites which had long been forgotten or forgiven, advanced with his musket behind the unhappy chieftain, and shot him through the back !' We know not whether this murderer was punished; but could his name be known, his deed would entitle him to a place among the most hateful and black-hearted of man- kind.
The wound thus given was mortal. Opecanca- nough lingered a few days in agony ; yet, to the last moment of life, he retained his majesty and sternness of demeanour. A crowd of idle beings
a Keith, 146; Burk, ii. 59 ; Be- 96, in note, speaks with a coldness verley, 50, 51.
not very creditable to his heart, con-
b Burk, ii. 58. Mr. Grahame, i. cerning this dastardly murder.
289
DEATH OF OPECANCANOUGH.
1644.]
collected around him to sate their unfeeling curio- sity with a view of his person and his conduct. Hearing the noise, the dying Indian feebly mo- tioned to his attendants to raise his eyelids, that he might learn the cause of this tumult. A flash of wounded pride and of just indignation, for a mo- ment, revived his waning strength. He sent for the governor, and addressed to him that keen re- proach, which has so well merited preservation : " Had I taken Sir William Berkeley prisoner, I would not have exposed him as a show to my people."ª In a short time afterwards he expired.
Opecancanough was a savage, and with no jus- tice can he be judged by the rules of Christian morality. If he was revengeful, he had wrongs to revenge ; if he hated the whites, he loved his own people, whom he believed to be their victims. If he made war with the darkest perfidy, it was the manner of his race, and not a crime peculiar to himself. Indian valour would avail little in the open field against European science, and Indian wiles alone could compensate the disparity. He was faithful to his own countrymen, among whom he ruled for many years with the sway of a supe- rior mind; and the circumstances of his death affixed another blot upon our escutcheon, already stained with the blood of thousands of native Americans.b
2 Beverley, 51; Burk, ii. 59 ; note
mark to Opecancanough before he was shot; but Beverley contra.
to Grahame's Colon. Hist., i. 96; Keith, 146; Campbell, 254. The b The reader will derive pleasure last two writers attribute this re- from Mr. Burk's sketch of Opecan- VOL. I. 19
290
DECAY OF INDIAN STRENGTH. [CHAP. V.
After the death of this warrior, the celebrated confederacy of Powhatan was immediately dis- solved. Originally formed by the force of the emperor's genius, it was preserved during his life by his influence, and, although constantly growing weaker, it remained formidable so long as Opecan- canough survived to inspire it with his own cou- rage. But now it was without a head, and the members fell away and speedily lost all tendency to cohesion.ª The Indians had learned, by fatal experience, that they contended in vain with the whites. Their spirits were broken; their buoy- ancy was gone; they had no alternative, except to suffer their savage habits to be moulded into civil- ized forms, or to be wasted by the resistless march of the new power in their land. Few, too few, we fear, chose the wiser part. The greater number could not yield, and the result need scarcely be told. They have faded away and gradually dis- appeared, never more to return.
(1645.) Happily relieved from fear of the sa- vages, the people of Virginia addressed themselves to their duties with great vigour and success. Sir William Berkeley paid a brief visit to England, leaving Richard Kemp to perform his duties in his absence.b (1646, Oct.) About a year after the governor's return, peace was concluded between
canough, ii. 57-63. This writer, al- though often turgid and declamatory Oct., 1644, we find the name of in his style, always evinces the Richard Kempp, as governor ; and, in Nov., 1645, Sir William Berkeley has resumed his place. warmest sympathy for the oppressed and the unhappy.
a Burk, ii. 63.
b Bancroft, i. 224. In Hening, i.
29 1
DECAY OF INDIAN STRENGTH.
1648.]
the colony and Necotowance, the successor of Ope- cancanough.ª The red men submitted to terms proposed by their conquerors, and yielded up all claim to lands upon which their fathers had hunted for immemorial ages. We cannot yet dismiss them from the page of Virginian history. Hereafter, they will hold a subordinate part in the drama in which they were once the most exciting actors. Art had conquered nature ; science had taken the place of untaught ingenuity ; Christian rites were substituted for the gross forms of savage supersti- tion.
Under a government yielding to them liberties, which had already become dear to their hearts, the colonists had few causes either of fear or of com- plaint. Their commerce was yet unrestricted, and the full monopoly they enjoyed for their staple in the English market, gave them lucrative advan- tages. Their soil was fertile; their climate was charming ; peace had returned to their borders ; the savages around them were no longer active in hostility. Social happiness flowed to them from fountains provided by their own industry and care. Their numbers rapidly increased. About the close of the year 1648, we find a notice of the shipping of the colony. Ten ships visited them regularly from London; two from Bristol; twelve from Hol- land, and seven from New England. The popu- lation had already attained to twenty thousand
a The full treaty will be found in Mass. Hist. Collec., ii., ix. 118; Ban- Hening, i. 322-326.
b New Description of Virginia, in
croft's U. S., i. 226.
292
THE STORM IN ENGLAND.
[CHAP. V.
souls.ª Gradual climatization had made the air friendly. Except at certain seasons, and upon un- favourable spots, we hear no more of fatal fevers, and of those numerous forms of disease which had assailed the early settlers. General content prevailed in Virginia. Although they loved liberty with warm affection, the people loved the King, from whom, as they verily believed, they had ob- tained a full grant of this precious boon. Had they lived in the mother country at this time, it is reasonable to suppose they would have sympa- thized with the men who sought to restrict the royal prerogative ; but, at a distance, they saw not the vices of a dominion which had never pressed heavily upon them. Attached to a religion of forms, and despising Puritanism, they wished not to identify themselves with a rebellion conducted almost exclusively by men who were dissenters from the church establishment of England.b
1
But while the colony was thus prosperous, peace- ful, and happy, the mother country was shaken to her centre by the contest now in progress between her people and their unhappy monarch. To detail all the important events which attended this strug- gle, would not be consistent with the plan of this narrative. Charles had summoned and dissolved
a Burk, ii. 81; Robertson's Am. i. of the King, ii. 75. This is not at 420; Marshall's Am. Col., 68; Ban- croft, i. 226.
b Burk thinks that religious zeal was the principal cause of the at- tachment of Virginia to the interests
all probable; a majority of the people of the colony cared very little for re- ligion, provided their civil rights and their private inclinations were not disturbed.
293
THE STORM IN ENGLAND.
1649.]
successive parliaments with ever-growing danger. He had claimed rights to which no free people could submit, and had enforced his claims by arbi- trary imprisonments and all the tyrannic enginery of the Star Chamber and the Tower of London. He had raised money so long as he could extract it from his people without the aid of the Commons ; and when at length he was compelled to meet them, he encountered nothing but resistance, and a reso- lution to maintain their privileges. He devoted his unfortunate friend to the scaffold, that his blood might appease the stern spirit that had arisen among his subjects; but he soon learned, in bitter self-reproach, that the hour of safety was gone. At open war with the people of England, he drew around him many gallant souls ready to meet death in the service of their sovereign; but their strength was feeble in contest with a nation. Betrayed by those to whom he had entrusted his safety, the monarch was carried through the forms of a trial, before a body from which all moderation had been forcibly expelled; and, on the 30th January, 1649, England gave to the world the sublime but most dangerous example, of a king publicly executed by the hands of his own oppressed people.
If a powerful reaction took place in Europe upon the death of the royal victim,-and if many who had been foes were now almost converted into friends, we may presume that, in Virginia, popular feeling was not less enlisted in his behalf. The deed was done. They could not recall him from the tomb; but they could remain faithful to his
294 VIRGINIA-THE LONG PARLIAMENT. [CHAP. V.
son, and they could resist all attempts to subject them to the dominion of the Long Parliament. Charles, the unworthy son of an unhappy father, yet survived to give embodiment to those who wished a renewal of monarchy. An exile from his country, he took refuge at Breda, and drew around him a slender court, composed of men who had loved his parent, and who were willing to die for the child. They were not long in marking the loyalty of Virginia, and Charles had now too few real friends to be able to neglect any with impu- nity. (1650, June.) He sent from Breda to Sir William Berkeley a new commission, confirming the powers granted by his father, and the distant colony remained true to the fortunes of the outcast Stuart, when all other parts of the world where his language was spoken seemed combined for his destruction. It has even been supposed that the Queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, had formed a pro- ject, with the aid of the sovereign of France, for transporting to the hospitable shores of Virginia a large body of her retainers, and of continuing in the new world the monarchical reign, which, in the old, had been so suddenly and fatally arrested.b
When the Long Parliament had attained to su- preme power, they did not confine their views to the domestic administration of the English com-
a Grahame's Colon. Hist., i. 97; lish fleet, and speedily discomfited. Bancroft's U. S., i. 226; Robertson's Am., i. 420.
Davenant's life was only preserved by the friendship of John Milton. See Johnson's Lives of the Poets,
b The poet Sir William Davenant accompanied the expedition; but it i. 113, Milton; Grahame's Colon. was encountered at sea by the Eng- Hist., i. 98, in note.
1650.] VIRGINIA-THE LONG PARLIAMENT.' 295
monwealth. Already their fleets had gone abroad in every sea, and they began to learn how strong was that arm which has since made the name of Britain formidable to all the world. Distant colo- nies could not be unimportant ;- Massachusetts had already submitted with joy to their rule-or rather, she had hailed the late revolution as a change of all others most grateful to her people.ª With, perhaps, as much love of rational liberty as was felt in Virginia, the northern colony had like- wise the warmest sympathy for the Puritan sects who had achieved the overthrow of monarchy in England ; and they hastened to grasp the hand ex- tended to them by their religious brethren in Par- liament. Under these circumstances, we are not surprised that the sturdy republicans of the mother country should have looked with displeasure upon the loyal spirit of Virginia, and should have deter- mined at once to reduce her to subjection by open force.
But they found the task by no means so easy as had been expected. If the minds of the colonists were already strongly prepossessed in favour of the Stuart dynasty, this feeling was not dimi- nished by the opening acts of the Commonwealth. Anxious to attract to their own coffers some of the wealth which Holland was amassing by her carry- ing trade, the Parliament had already required that all commerce between England and the rest of the world, should be conducted by English
ª Grahame's Colon. Hist., i. 290-293.
,
296
A FLEET TO CRUSH LOYALTY. [CHAP. V.
ships, English captains, and a large proportion of English sailors. The result was a war between the Dutch and the young republic, in which ter- rific contests at sea took place between their fleets;a and though Holland was sometimes successful, her rival gained rapidly in confidence, in fame, and in maritime skill.
Following up a policy, of which the germ at least can be detected in the commission of Charles I. to Sir William Berkeley, the Parliament issued an ordinance, forbidding all commerce with the colonies, except to those bearing a special license, either by their own authority or from the Council of State. The navigation act, above noted, ope- rating to confine the carriage of colonial produce to English ships, the combined effect of these or- dinances was to secure an absolute monopoly of the commerce of the colonies to the mother coun- try.b
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.