USA > Virginia > Old Virginia and her neighbours > Part 21
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An act of the assembly in 1631 prescribed " that there be a uniformity throughout this colony both
1 In the famous picture of the baptism of Pocahontas, in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, Whitaker, as an Episcopal clergyman, is depicted as clothed in a surplice. A letter of Whitaker's, of June. 1614, tells us that no surplices were used in Virginia ; see Purchas His Pilgrimes, iv. 1771. Surplices began to be used there about 1724 (see Hugh Jones, Present State uf Virginia. 1724. p. 69), and did not come into general use till the nineteenth century (Latané, Early Relations, etc. p. 64).
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
in substance and circumstances to the canons and constitution of the Church of England." Act of Uni-
This legislation probably reveals the formity, hand of William Laud, who had three 1631. years before become bishop of London; and it may be taken to indicate that a large majority of Virginians had come to disapprove of Puritanism. Probably the act was not vigorously enforced, for Governor Harvey seems to have looked with fa- vour upon Puritans, but it may have caused some of their pastors to quit the colony. In 1641 an appeal for more ministers was sent to Boston, and in response three clergymen - William Thompson of Braintree, John Knowles of Watertown, and Thomas James of New Haven --- sailed from Narragansett Bay in December,
. 1642. Their little ship was wrecked at Hell Gate and their welcome from the Dutch at Manhattan was but surly ; nevertheless they were able to procure a new ship, and so, after a wintry .. voyage of eleven weeks, arrived in James River.1 They brought excellent letters of recommendation from Governor Winthrop to the governor of Vir- ginia, but might as well have thrown them into the fire, for the new governor of Virginia, who arrived in 1642, was the famous Sir William Berkeley, & Cavalier of Cavaliers, a firm believer in the meth- ods of Strafford and Land, an implacable foe of Puritanism and all its advocates. At the next meeting of the assembly. in March, 1643, the fol- lowing aet was passed : " For the preservation of 1 Randall, " A Puritan Colony in Maryland," Johns Hopkins University Studies, iv.
Puritan min- isters from New Eng- laud.
304 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
the purity of doctrine and unity of the Church. it
New Act of is enacted that all ministers whatsoever.
Uniformity, which shall reside in the colony, are to 1613. be conformed to the orders and constitu- tion of the Church of England, and not otherwise to be admitted to teach or preach publicly or pri- vately, and that the Governor and Council do take eare that all non-conformists, upon notice of them, shall be compelled to depart the colony with all convenience." 1
Armed with this fulmination, Berkeley was not long in getting rid of the parsons whom Winthrop had commended to his hospitality. Knowles and James went in April, after some weeks Expulsion of the minis- of incessant and successful preaching,
ters.
but Thompson, " a man of tall and comely presence " as we are told, stayed through the summer and made many converts, among them the wayward son of Daniel Gookin, a junior Dan- iel whose conversion was from worldliness or per- haps devilry rather than from prelacy. This brand snatched from the burning by Thompson went to Massachusetts, where for many years he was superintendent of Indian affairs and won fame by his character and writings. Thompson's work in Virginia is thus commemorated by Cotton Mather : -
" A constellation of great converts there . Shone round him, and his heavenly glory were. Gookin was one of them ; by Thompson's pains Christ and New England a dear Gookin gains."
The expulsion of the Boston ministers was the
1 Hening's Statutes at Large, i. 277.
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LEAII AND RACHEL.
beginning of a systematic harassing of the Puri- tans in Virginia. It was strangely affected by the massacre perpetrated by the Indians in the spring of 16-44.1 We seem carried back to the times of John Smith when we encounter Indian mas- sacre of 1641. once more the grim figure of Opekan-
kano alive and on the war-path. We have no need, however, with some thoughtless writers, to call him a hundred years old. It was only thirty- six years since Smith's capture by the Indians, although so much history had been made that the interval seems much longer. Though a wrinkled and grizzled warrior, Opekankano need not have been more than sixty or seventy when he wreaked upon the white meu his second massacre, on the eve of Good Friday, 1644. The victims numbered about 300, but the Indians were quickly put down by Berkeley, and a new treaty confined them to the north of York River ; any Indian venturing across that boundary, except as an envoy duly marked with a badge, was liable to be shot at sight. Ope- kankano was taken captive and carried on a litter to Jamestown, whence Berkeley intended to send him to London as a trophy and spectacle, but before sailing time the old chief was ignobly mur- dered by one of his guards. It was the end of the Powhatan confederacy.
Some worthy people interpreted this massacre as a judgment of Heaven upon the kingdom of
1 Hildreth (Hist. of the U. S. i. 340) says that the Indians " were encouraged by signs of discord among the English, having seen a fight in James River between a London ship for the Par- liament and a Bristol ship for the king."
306 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Virginia for the sin of harbouring Puritans ; rather a tardy judgment, one would say, coming a year after the persecution of such heretics
Conflicting
views of
had begun in earnest. In Governor
theodicy.
Winthrop's opinion,1 on the contrary, the sin which received such grewsome punishment was the expulsion of the Boston ministers, with other acts of persecution that followed. Rev. Thomas Harrison, the bigoted Berkeley's bigoted chaplain, saw the finger of God in the massacre, repented of his own share in the work of persecu- tion, and upbraided the governor, who forthwith dismissed him. Then Harrison turned Puritan and went to preaching at Nansemond, in flat defi- ance of Berkeley, who ordered and threatened and swore till he was out of breath, when suddenly business called him over to England.
It was the year of Marston Moor, an inanspi- cious year for Cavaliers, but a hopeful time for that patient waiter, William Claiborne. The gov- ernor of Maryland, as well as the governor of Vir- ginia, had gone to England on business, and while the cats were away the mice did play. The king ordered that any Parliament ships that might be Invasion of tarrying in Maryland waters should Maryland by forthwith be seized. When this order Claiborne
and Ingle. was received at St. Mary's, the deputy- governor, Giles Brent, felt bound to obey it, and as there seemed to be no ships accessible that had been commissioned by Parliament, he seized the ship of one Richard Ingle, a tobacco trader who was known to be a Puritan and strongly suspected
1 Winthrop's Journal, ii. 164.
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
of being a pirate. This incident caused some ex- citement and afforded the watchful Claiborne his opportunity of revenge. He made visits to Kent Island and tried to dispel the doubts of the inhab- itants by assuring them that he had a commission from the king.1 He may have meant by this some paper given him by Charles I. before the adverse decision of 1638 and held as still valid by some private logie of his own. When Governor Calvert returned from England in the autumn of 1644 he learned that Claiborne was preparing to invade his dominions, along with Ingle, who had brought upon the scene another ship well manned and heavily armed. It was a curious alliance, inas- much as Claiborne had professed to be acting with a royal commission, while Ingle now boasted of a commission from Parliament. But this trifling flaw in point of consistency did not make the alli- ance a weak one. It is not sure that the invasion was concerted between Claiborne and Ingle, though doubtless the former welcomed the aid of the lat- ter in reinstating himself in what he believed to
be his right. The invasion was completely suc- cessful. While Claiborne recovered Kent Island. Ingle captured St. Mary's, and Leonard Calvert was fain to take refuge in Virginia. During two years of anarchy Ingle and his men roamed about " impressing " corn and tobacco, cattle and house- hold furniture, stuffing ships with plunder to be exported and turned into hard cash. The estates of Cornwallis were especially ill-treated, the In- dian mission was broken up, and good Father 1 Browne's Maryland, p. 60.
308 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
White, loaded with irons, was sent to England on a trumped-up charge of treason, of which he was promptly acquitted. Long afterward this Clai- borne-Ingle frolic was remembered in Maryland as the " plundering time."
In 1645 Sir William Berkeley returned to Vir- ginia, and from him the fugitive Calvert received effective aid and sympathy, so that late in 1646 he was able to invade his own territory with a force of Virginians and fugitive Marylanders.
Expulsion of Claiborne and Ingle were soon expelled, Claiborne
and Ingle.
and Leonard Calvert's authority was fully reestablished. Not long afterward, in June. 1647. this able governor died. For his brother Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, this was a trying time. He was a royalist at heart, with little sympathy for Puritans, but like many other Catholics he thought it wise to keep on good terms with Parliament, in the hope of seenring more toleration than heretofore. Such a course between Charybdis and Seylla. was at- Appoint- tended with perils. In 1648 Cecilius
ment of Wil-
liam Stone appointed to his governorship William as governor. Stone, a liberal-minded Protestant and supporter of Parliament. Soon after the king's beheading, the young Charles II., a fugitive in the island of Jersey, hearing of Stone's appointment. interpreted it as an act of disloyalty on Baltimore's part, and so in a fit of spite made out a grant hand- ing over the palatinate of Maryland to Sir Wil- liam Davenant, that poet-laureate who was said to resemble Shakespeare until ravening vanity made liim pretend to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son. Sir William actually set sail for America, but was
-
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
overhauled in the Channel by a Parliament cruiser and carried off to the Tower, where amid sore dis- tress be found a generous protector in John Milton. It was not very long before Charles II. came to realize his mistake about Lord Baltimore.
In Maryland the great event of the year 1649, which witnessed the death of Charles I., was the passage on April 21 of the Act concerning Reli- gion. This famous statute, commonly known as the " Toleration Act," tion Act of The Tolera- drawn up by Cecilius himself, and passed 1649.
the assembly exactly as it came from him, without amendment. With regard to Cecilius, therefore, it may be held to show, if not the ideas which he actually entertained, at least those which he deemed it prudent to embody in legislation. It is not likely to have surpassed his ideals, but it may easily have fallen somewhat short of them. The statute is so important that the pertinent sections of it deserve to be quoted at length : 1 -
" That whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto belonging, shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity, the ffather sonne and holy Ghost, or the God head of any of the said three persons of the Trinity, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproach- full speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shall be punished with death, and confisca-
I Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland', 1637-1664, pp. 244-240.
310 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
tion or forfeiture of all his or her lands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heires.
"That whatsoever person or persons shall from henceforth use or utter any reproachfull words, or speeches, concerning the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of our Saviour, or the holy apostles, or Evan- gelists, or any of them, shall in such case for the first offence forfeit to the said Lord Proprietary and his beires the sume of flive pound sterling." -
"That whatsoever person shall henceforth upon any occasion, declare, call, or denominate any per- son or persons whatsoever inhabiting, residing. traffiqueing, trading or commerceing within this Province, or within any of the Ports, Harbors. Creeks or Havens to the same belonging, an here- tick, Scismatick, Idolator, Puritan, Independent. Prespiterian, popish priest, Iesuit, Iesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvenist. Anabaptist, Brownist, Anti- nomian, Barronist, Roundhead, Sep'atist, or any other name or term in a reproachfull manner relat- ing to matter of Religion. shall for every such of- fence forfeit the sume of tenne shillings sterling. -
" Whereas the inforcing of the conscience in matters of Religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those common- wealths where it hath been practised. and for the more quiet and peaceble government of this Pro- vince, and the better to preserve mutuall Love and amity amongst the Inhabitants thereof ; Be it therefore also by the Lord Proprietary with the advice and consent of this Assembly, ordered and enacted (except as in this present act is before de- clared and sett forth,) that noe person or persons
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
whatsoever within this Province, or the Islands : Ports, Harbors, Creeks or havens thereunto be- longing, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth bee any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect to his or her religion."
A statute which threatens Unitarians with death leaves something to be desired in the way of tolera- tion, even though it fines a man ten shillings for calling his neighbour a Calvinist in a reproachful manner. Nevertheless, for the age when it was enacted this statute was eminently liberal, and it certainly reflects great credit upon Lord Baltimore. To be ruler over a country wherein no person pro- fessing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested in the name of religion was a worthy ambition, and one from which Baltimore's contemporaries in Massachusetts and elsewhere might have learned valuable lessons. Such a policy as was announced in this memorable Toleration Act was not easy to realize in the seventeenth century. The very year in which it was enacted saw the grim wolf of in- tolerance thrusting his paw in at the door.
As had happened before, the woes of the Vir- ginia Leah brought woe upon the Maryland Ra- chel. When Governor Berkeley returned from England, he did more than swear at the defiant chaplain Harrison and the other preachers of Puri- tanism sonth of James River. He banished the pastors and made life unendurable for the flocks. In 1648 two of the Nansemond elders, Richard Bennett and William Darand, fleeing to Mary- land, were kindly received by Governor Stone,
312 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
who extended a most hospitable invitation to their
Migration of people to leave Virginia and settle in the
Puritans Baltimore palatinate. Cecilius had com-
from Vir-
ginia to plained that settlers did not come fast
Maryland. enough and his colony was still too weak. whereupon Stone had promised to do his best to bring in 500 new people. His opportunity had now come; early in 1649 an advance body of 300 Puritans came from Nansemond. The rest of their brethren hesitated, fearing lest Catholics might be no pleasanter neighbours than the king's men, but the course of events soon decided them. The news of the execution of Charles I. was generally greeted in Virginia with indignation and horror, feelings which were greatly intensified by the arrival of the Cavaliers who in that year began to flock to Virginia. One ship in September brought 330 Cavaliers, and probably more than 1.000 came in the course of the year. In October the assembly declared that the beheading of the king was an act of treason which nobody in Virginia must dare to speak in defence of under penalty of death. It also spoke of the fugitive Charles II. as " his Ma- jesty that now is," and made it treason to call his authority in question. These were the last straws upon the back of the Puritan camel, and in the course of the next few months the emigration from Nansemond went on till as many as 1,000 persons had gone over to Maryland. They settled upon land belonging to the Susquehannoeks, near the mouth of a stream upon which they bestowed the name of the glorious English river that falls into the sea between Glamorgan and the Mendip Hills.
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
and the county through which this new-found Severn flowed they called Providence from feel- ings like those which had led Roger Williams to give that comforting name to his settlement on Narragansett Bav. Presently this new Providence became a county bearing Lady Baltimore's name, Anne Arundel, and the city which afterwards grew up in it was called Annapolis. This country had not been cleared for agriculture by the Indians, like the region about St. Mary's, and there was some ardnous pioneer work for the Puritan colony.
In changing the settlement or plantation of Prov- idence into the county of Anne Arundel, some- thing more than a question of naming was involved. The affair was full of political significance. These Puritans at first entertained an idea that they might be allowed to form an impe- Designs of the Puri- tans. rium in imperio, maintaining a kind of Greek autonomy on the banks of their Severn, instead of becoming an integral portion of Balti- more's palatinate. At first they refused to elect representatives to the assembly at St. Mary's; when presently they yielded to Governor Stone's urgency and sent two representatives in 1650. one of them was straightway chosen speaker of the House ; nevertheless, in the next year the Puritans again held aloof. They believed that the Puritan government in England would revoke Lord Balti- more's charter, and they wished to remain sepa- rated from his fortunes. Their willingness to settle within his territory was coupled with the belief that it would not much longer be his.
This belief was not wholly without reason. The
314 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS
war-ships of the Commonwealth were about to appear in Chesapeake Bay. Such andacious pro- ceedings as those of the Virginia Assembly could not be allowed to go unnoticed by Parliament, and early in 1652 four commissioners were sent to receive the submission of Berkeley and his colony. One of these commissioners was Richard Bennett, the Puritan elder who had been driven from Nanse- mond. Another was the irrepressible Claiborne, whom Berkeley had helped drive out of Maryland. The Virginians at first intended to defy the com- missioners and resist the fleet, but after some par- ley leading to negotiations, they changed their minds. It was not prudent to try to stand up
Submission
against Oliver Cromwell, and he, for his
of Virginia
to Crom- part, was no fanatic. Virginia must
well. submit, but she might call it a voluntary submission. She might keep her assembly, by which alone could she be taxed, all prohibitions upon her trade should be repealed, and her people might toast the late king in private as much as they pleased ; only no public stand against the Commonwealth would be tolerated. On these terms Virginia submitted. Sir William Berkeley resigned the governorship, sold his brick house in Jamestown, and went out to his noble plantation at Green Spring near by, there to bide his time. For the next eight years things moved along peace- ably under three successive Roundhead governors. all chosen by the House of Burgesses. The first was Richard Bennett, who was succeeded in March, 1655, by Edward Digges ; and after a year Digges was followed by that gallant Samuel Mathews
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
who had once given such a bear's hug to the arro- gant Sir John Harvey. As for Claiborne, he was restored to his old office of secretary of state.
In Maryland there was more trouble. As soon as Claiborne had disposed of the elder sister, Leah, he went to settle accounts with the youthful Rachel, who had so many wooers. There was Episcopal Virginia, whose preten- Claiborne and Bennett sions to the fair damsel were based on its in Maryland. old charter; there was the Catholic lord propri- etor, to whom Charles I. had solenmly betrothed her; there were the Congregational brethren of Providence on the Severn, whose new pretensions made light of these earlier vows ; but the master of the situation was Claiborne, with his commission from Parliament and his heavily armed frigate. Mighty little cared he, says a contemporary writer, for religion or for punctilios ; what he was after was that sweet and rich country. Claiborne's con- duct. however, did not quite merit such a slur. In this his hour of triumph he behaved without vio- lence, nor do we find him again laying hands upon Kent Island. On arriving with Bennett at St. Mary's, they demanded that Governor Stone and his council should sign a covenant "to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England as it is now established without King or House of Lords." To this demand no objection was made, but the further demand, that all writs and warrants should run no longer in Baltimore's name, but in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of Eng- land, was obstinately refused. For this refusal Stone was removed from office, a provisional gov-
316 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
ernment was established, and the commissioners sailed away. This was in April, 1652. After two months of meditation Stone sent word to James- town that he was willing to yield in the matter of the writs, whereupon Claiborne and Bennett promptly returned to St. Mary's and restored him to office.
But those were shifting times. Within a year, in April, 1653, Cromwell turned out of doors the Rump Parliament, otherwise called Keepers of the Liberty of England; and accordingly. as writs could no longer run in their name, Stone an- nounced that he should issue them, as formerly, in the name of Lord Baltimore. He did this by order of Cecilius himself. Trouble arose Renewal of the troubles. at the same time between Stone and the Puritans of Providence, and the result of all this was the reappearance of Bennett and Claiborne at St. Mary's, in July, 1654. Again they deposed Stone and placed the government in the hands of a council, with William Fuller as its president, Then they issued writs for the election of an as- sembly, and once more departed for Jamestown. According to the tenor of these writs, no Roman Catholic could either be elected as a burgess or vote at the election ; in this way a house was ob- tained that was almost unanimously Puritan, and in October this novel assembly so far forgot its sense of the ludicrous as to pass a new ". Toleration Act" securing to all persons freedom of con- science, provided- such liberty were not extended to " popery, prelacy. or licentionsness of opinion." In short, these liberal Puritans were ready to tol-
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LEAH AND RACHEL.
erate everybody except Catholics, Episcopalians, and anybody else who disagreed with them!
When Lord Baltimore heard how Stone had surrendered the government, he wrote a letter chiding him for it. The legal anthority of the commissioners, Bennett and Claiborne, had ex- pired with the Rump Parliament. Cromwell was now Lord Protector, and according to his own theory the Protectorate was virtually the assignee of the Crown and successor to all its rights and obligations. Baltimore's charter was therefore as sonnd under the Protectorate as it had ever been. Knowing that Cromwell favoured this view, Cecil- ius wrote to Stone to resume the government and withstand the Puritans. This led at once to civil
war. Governor Stone gathered a force of 130 men and marched against the settlement Battle of the at Providence, flying Baltimore's beauti- Severn.
ful flag of black and gold. Captain Fuller, with 175 men, was ready for him, and the two little armies met on the bank of the Severn, March 25, 1655. Besides his superiority in numbers, Fuller was helped by two armed merchant ships, the one British, the other from New England, which kept up a sharp fire from the river. Stone's men were put to flight, leaving one third of their number in killed and wounded. One old Puritan writer tells us with keen enjoyment that the field whence they fled was strewn with their "Papist beads." Among the prisoners taken was Stone himself, who was badly wounded. Fuller at once held a court- martial at which Stone and nine other leading men were sentenced to death. Four were executed,
318 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
but on the intercession of some kind-hearted women Stone and the others were pardoned.
The supremacy of the Puritans in Maryland thus seemed to be established. but it was of short duration. Some of the leading Puritans in Vir- ginia, such as Bennett and Mathews, visited Lon- don and tried to get Baltimore's charter annulled. Lord Balti- But their efforts soon revealed the fact
more sus- that Cromwell was not on their side of
tained by
Cromwell. the question, and so they gave up in de- spair, and the quarrel of nearly thirty years' stand- ing was at last settled by a compromise in 1657. Lord Baltimore promised complete amnesty for all offences against his government from the very beginning, and he gave his word never to consent to the repeal of his Toleration Act of 1649. Upon these terms Virginia withdrew her opposition to his charter, and indemnified Claiborne by extensive land grants for the loss of Kent Island. Balti- more appointed Captain Josias Fendall to be gov- ernor of Maryland and sent out his brother Philip Calvert to be secretary. The men of Providence were fain to accept toleration at the hands of those to whom they had refused to grant it, and in March, 1658, Governor Fendall's authority was acknowledged throughout the palatinate. Peace reigned on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. the claims of Leah and Rachel were adjusted, and the fair sisters quarrelled no more.
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