THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD.
The decade of 1650-60 corresponds to the period of the Commonwealth Government in England. Virginia, for the most part, appeared loyal to the crown, yet in 1652 the colony submitted to the new government when it demonstrated its power before Jamestown. Governor Berkeley withdrew to his home at Green Spring, just above Jamestown, and the General Assembly assumed the governing role, acting under the Parliament of England. Virginia was given liberal treatment, with considerable freedom in taxation and matters of government. The governors in this interval, elected by the assembly, were Richard Bennett, Edward Digges (an active supporter of the production of silk in Virginia), and Samuel Mathews. In 1660, on the death of Mathews, the assembly recalled Berkeley to the governor’s office, an act that was approved by Charles II, who was restored to the English throne in that year. The decade passed quietly for the colony, although, in the years that followed, it had occasion to remember the liberal control that it had enjoyed. It had witnessed an increased wave of immigration that brought some of those who were fleeing from England, and this more than offset the loss of the Puritans whom Berkeley had forced out of the colony prior to 1650.
In matters of religion, Virginia continued loyal to the Church of England, although there was considerable freedom for the individual. The Puritans found it uncomfortable to remain, however, and two Quaker preachers, William Cole and George Wilson, soon found themselves in prison at Jamestown. Writing “From that dirty dungeon in Jamestown,” in 1662, they described the prison as a place “... where we have not the benefit to do what nature requireth, nor so much as air, to blow in at a window, but close made up with brick and lime....” Lord Baltimore (George Calvert) did not find the colony hospitable when he visited Jamestown with his family in 1629, for, being a Roman Catholic, he could not take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy which denied the authority of the Pope.