English homes alone were the abodes of men who made their own local laws and levied their own taxes. In that fact may be seen the germ of American independence.

47. Virginia loses part of her territory; civil war in England; cavaliers; loyalty of Virginia. - After Virginia lost her charter (§ 43) she also lost part of her territory through the King's grant (1632) of Maryland on the north and (1663) of the Carolinas on the south.

Shortly after Charles I. appointed Sir William Berkeley Governor of Virginia (1642), civil war broke out in England; the Puritan party suppressed the established Church of England for a time, and set up a short-lived republic.

Though the people of Virginia were divided in their political and religious opinions, yet the ruling element staunchly upheld the Church and the Crown. The Assembly enacted (1643) that "all non-conformists (that is, persons who would not attend the service of the Episcopal Church) should, when notified, be compelled to depart out of the colony." 66 Again, when Charles I. was beheaded (1649) the Assembly declared his executioners traitors, and threatened death to those who should defend them. 67

But in the end Virginia found it policy to submit to the authority of the English Republic. Governor Berkeley retired from office, but gave princely receptions to the Cavaliers or "King's Men," who had fought for Charles I. and who now fled to Virginia. Among those who came were the ancestors of the illustrious families of the Washingtons and the Lees.8

Great was the rejoicing in the "Old Dominion" when (1660) monarchy was restored in England, and "the King came back to his own again." Governor Berkeley again put on his silk robe of office, and the Assembly begged the pardon of Charles II. for having yielded for a time to the "execrable power that so bloodily massacred the late King Charles the First of blessed and glorious memory.'

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48. Navigation laws and other commercial restrictions. Under Cromwell the English Parliament enacted navigation laws

which forbade the importation into England of any products or goods not brought in British vessels. The object of those laws was to strike a blow at the Dutch, who had the control of the carrying trade of the world, and to secure a large part of the commerce to English shipowners. Charles II. (1660) signed a bill which made the navigation laws far more stringent. In their revised form they forbade the Virginians exporting their tobacco their only really profitable product to any country except Great Britain and her dependencies. A few years later (1663) a new statute prohibited the colonists from purchasing manufactured goods from any country but England. Finally, this restrictive legislation reached its climax in the enactment of a third law (1673) which prohibited the colonies from trading with each other in any article of importance.70

These laws were intended to protect the interests of the mother-country. They made it possible for English merchants to fix the price at which the Virginia and other colonial planters must sell their produce, and secondly to determine the price which the colonists must pay for whatever they imported. The Virginians would have been badly off indeed if they had not managed to smuggle their tobacco out in Dutch vessels and to smuggle European goods in.

49. Charles II. grants Virginia to two of his favorites. We have seen (§ 47) that the English sovereigns had carved huge slices out of Virginia, both on the north and the south. The people were dismayed at the loss, but congratulated themselves that the King had not taken all, when by a sudden act (1673) Charles did take all. That monarch had two rapacious favorites, the Earl of Arlington and Lord Culpepper; both wished to fill their pockets at the expense of the New World. Charles took pity on them and granted "that entire tract of land and water commonly called Virginia" to have and to hold for thirty-one years. He empowered these two noblemen to collect all landrents and receive all revenues; and though they could not actually dispossess any settler who held his estate by a clear

title, they could compel him to prove his title. These powers made Arlington and Culpepper the owners and masters of the whole commonwealth of Virginia.

50. The Perpetual Legislature"; the parish committees; taxes; war with the Indians. To add to the miseries

been held since Gov

of the colonists, no general election had ernor Berkeley's restoration to office a period of thirteen years. Such a state of things virtually deprived the colonists of representation in the Assembly. Furthermore, the vestries or church committees, which had the control of the affairs of each parish, had gradually become self-elective bodies or close corporations. This change deprived the majority of the parishioners of any voice in the management of local interests. Meanwhile the "Perpetual Legislature," as it might well be named, demanded heavy taxes to keep up the forts, and called on the planters for large levies of tobacco in order to raise a fund to buy out the claims of Arlington and Culpepper.

Just at this critical period (1675) the Indians on the frontier rose against the settlers. King Philip's war was raging in Massachusetts and the planters had good reason to fear that the hideous atrocities committed by the savages in New England would soon be repeated in Virginia. Governor Berkeley took no decided measures to protect the colonists, and it was whispered that the profits he derived from trade with the Indians made him unwilling to act.

51. Bacon and the Indians; the "Bacon Rebellion." At this juncture Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy young planter, and a member of the Governor's council, asked for a commission to raise volunteers to defend the colony. The Governor refused his request. Bacon, whose plantation had been attacked by the Indians, raised a body of men on his own responsibility and marched against the savages. Berkeley denounced him as a traitor. Meanwhile the settlers in the lower counties sympathized with the young planter's energetic action. They rose

in arms and compelled the election (1676) of a new Assembly, the first that had been chosen for sixteen years. Bacon was elected a member. This Assembly broke up the close parish committees, re-granted to the freemen of each parish the right to manage its affairs, and repealed the law (§ 43) which limited the right of suffrage to freeholders and householders.

Governor Berkeley, yielding to the pressure brought by the people, not only pardoned Bacon, but promised him a commission to raise volunteers. The Governor did not keep his word, and Bacon, suspecting treachery, secretly left Jamestown and soon afterward reappeared at the head of five hundred men. Berkeley then gave him the commission he demanded, but shortly after proclaimed him a "rebel." This brought on civil war. Jamestown was besieged; the Governor fled, and the town was burned to the ground. A crumbling heap of ruins shows where the first American settlement stood; the capital of Virginia was removed (1690) to Williamsburg.

The leader of the rebellion suddenly died, the movement collapsed and the reforms with it. The "Bacon Laws," including freedom of suffrage, were repealed, and soon everything was back in the old ruts. Berkeley showed so little mercy in dealing with the Bacon party that even Charles II. said in disgust: "That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I did (in England) for the murder of my father." "

But Bacon's movement of reform perished only in appearance. From Berkeley's time onward we mark a rising spirit of resist ance to arbitrary rule. When Governor Spotswood (1710-1722) insisted on settling clergymen for life over the parishes, the people refused to settle a minister for more than a year. They claimed that since they were taxed to pay for preaching they had the right to choose the preacher. In the end the people gained the day, and the lordly Spotswood retired discomfited from the field.

Governor Dinwiddie (1752-1758) found the people just as stubborn on another point. He asked for contributions to fight

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the French and Indians on the western frontier, but the Assembly refused to vote them unless he would give up the exaction of illegal land-fees. Worn out with the long contest, the Governor wrote to a friend that the Virginians were "too much in a republican way of thinking." " Naturally the aristocratic planters of the "Old Dominion" stood squarely by Church and King, but none the less they were fully resolved to contest to the death any serious infringement of their rights. Edmund Burke believed that the ownership of slaves made the Virginians "proud and jealous of their liberty." In his famous speech on "Conciliation" (1775) he said: "In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it and renders it invincible."

52. The spirit of independence in Virginia; the warriorpreacher; the Continental Congress. But this spirit of freedom was not confined in any way to one class or section of Virginia. Late in the colonial period an industrious and thrifty population of Germans, Swedes, and Scotch-Irish - or emigrants of Scottish origin who came from the north of Ireland -settled in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. They were a God-fearing and liberty-loving people, too poor to own slaves, and so earning their daily bread by the sweat of their brows. From them sprang a class of men who made their influence felt in the Revolution and in the Civil War.

The Reverend John Muhlenberg, a clergyman of that section, voiced the feelings of the hardy patriots of the stirring days of 1775. At the close of a fervent discourse he said: "Brethren, there is a time for all things—a time to preach and a time to pray; but there is also a time to fight, and that time has now come!" Then throwing off his gown, he stood before his congregation a girded warrior, and coming down from the pulpit commanded the drummers at the church door to beat for recruits. Nearly three hundred of the congregation entered the ranks. It was the spirit of the "Bacon Rebellion" revived and intensified. This time it was not to be quelled.