Virginia Under the Stuarts

1607-1688

By

THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER

New York
RUSSELL & RUSSELL
1959

COPYRIGHT 1914 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
COPYRIGHT 1958, 1959 BY THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 39-11229


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Dedicated

to my mother

PREFACE

It was in May, 1910, that the author came to Princeton for an interview with President Woodrow Wilson concerning an appointment as Instructor in the Department of History, Politics, and Economics. He was elated when President Wilson engaged him, though not happy over the $1,000 salary. Yet with this sum to fall back on he borrowed $200, and took a trip to England.

In London he went treasure hunting, the treasure of old documents relating to the history of colonial Virginia. He sought out the British Public Record Office, off Chauncery Lane, and was soon immersed in the mass of letters, official reports, journal of the Assembly, and other papers.

The author was prepared to find valuable historical materials in London, for he had spent the summer of 1908 studying the William Noel Sainsbury and the McDonald abstracts and transcripts of the documents in the Record Office deposited in the Virginia State Library. But he was staggered at the extent of the manuscript collection on Virginia history alone. Among the scores of volumes are thirty-two devoted to the correspondence of the Board of Trade, seventeen to the correspondence of the Secretary of State, twenty-two to entry books, letters, commissions, warrants, etc.

When the summer waned he left for America taking with him many pages of closely written notes. But what he had learned served to whet his appetite for more, so that in 1912 and again in 1914 he was back, going over volume after volume, searching eagerly for fear some important point would escape him. The mass of abstracts and notes which he accumulated formed the basis of this volume.

In fact, any political history of Virginia in the colonial period must be based on the documents in the Public Record Office, since most of the copies left in Virginia have been lost or destroyed. Today, however, colonial historians no longer have to visit London to consult them, since transcripts have been made and deposited in the Library of Congress.

In recent years the American Council of Learned Societies has made available other collections of manuscripts which have thrown new light on early Virginia history. The most important of these are the Coventry Papers at Longleat, the residence of the Marquess of Bath. Many of the letters deal with Bacon's Rebellion, and include the correspondence between Berkeley and Bacon, accounts of the Indian war, complaints of the misgovernment of Berkeley, the account of the evacuation of Jamestown written by Berkeley, accounts of Bacon's death and the collapse of the rebellion.

This new material adds new weight to the conclusions reached in this book—that the causes of Bacon's Rebellion were deep-seated, that it grew out of the discontent caused by the Navigation Acts, the heavy taxes, the corrupting of the Assembly by Berkeley, and the misuse of the courts. It in no way shakes the conviction expressed by Thomas Mathews, who himself was involved in the rebellion, that the Indian war was the excuse for it rather than the cause.

Yet certain recent historians have contended that this violent uprising was not a protest against injustice and misgovernment. One has gone so far as to call it merely a quarrel between a rash young man and an old fool. We could with equal justice call the American Revolution just a quarrel between George Washington and George III. Mathews tells us that it was the general opinion in Virginia at the time that it was not Bacon who was chiefly responsible for the uprising, but Thomas Lawrence. Bacon "was too young, too much a stranger there, and of a disposition too precipitate to manage things to that length they were carried," he pointed out, "had not thoughtful Mr. Lawrence been at the bottom."

But neither Lawrence's hatred of Berkeley, nor Bacon's rashness, nor Berkeley's folly, nor the Indian war suffice to explain the rebellion. When the news of the uprising reached Charles II, he thought it past belief that "so considerable body of men, without the least grievance or oppression, should rise up in arms and overthrow the government." He was quite right. Had there been no grievances and oppression there would have been no uprising.

That Bacon's Rebellion is explained in part by poverty and suffering is clear. Philip Ludwell said that the rebel army was composed of men "whose condition ... was such that a change could not make worse." The men who fought so valiantly against the Indians and Berkeley's forces, braved the King's anger, faced death on the gallows were called in contempt "the bases of the people," "the rabble," the "scum of the people," "idle and poor people," "rag, tag, and bobtail." The Council reported that there were "hardly two amongst them" who owned estates, or were persons of reputation. Berkeley complained that his was a miserable task to govern a people "where six parts of seven at least are poor, indebted, discontented, and armed."

So when Bacon sent out his agents to every part of Virginia to denounce the governor for not permitting an election for a new Assembly, accusing him of misgovernment, and complaining of the heavy and unequal taxes, they "infested the whole country." Berkeley stated that the contaigion spread "like a train of powder." Never before was there "so great a madness as this base people are generally seized with." When, in panic, he dissolved the Long Assembly and called for a new election, all except eight of those chosen were pro-Bacon men.

One cannot but ask why. Surely the voters would not have sided with this young man who had been in Virginia but a few months had he not taken the lead in protesting against the many wrongs to which they had been subjected. And had those who rushed to arms, risking their property, if not their necks, done so merely because of a quarrel between Bacon and Berkeley, they would have been more than base, they would have been fools.

What these wrongs were Bacon and his followers tell us in what they called the Declaration of the People. Berkeley and his favorites they denounced "for having upon specious pretences of public works raised great unjust taxes upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favorites and other sinister ends...; for having abused and rendered contemptible the magistrates of justice, by advancing to places of judicature scandalous and ignorant favorites...."

In a burning manifesto, denouncing the injustice and corruption of the ruling group, Bacon said: "We appeal to the country itself what and of what nature their oppressions have been, and by what cabal and mystery the design of many of those whom we call great men have been transacted and carried on.... See what sponges have sucked up the public wealth and whether it hath not been privately contrived away by unworthy favorites, by vile juggling parasites, whose tottering fortunes have been repaired and supported by the charge." The constant breach of laws, unjust prosecutions, excuses, and evasions, proved that the men in power were conducting public affairs "as if it were but to play a booty, game, or divide a spoil."

In view of these statements recent attempts to prove that Bacon was no true patriot and not interested