A number of the prisoners taken with Monmouth, and who had escaped the cruelty of Jeffreys, were sent to Virginia; and King James instructed Effingham on this occasion in the following letter:[340:A]
"Right trusty and well-beloved,—We greet you well. As it has pleased God to deliver into our hands such of our rebellious subjects as have taken up arms against us, for which traitorous practices some of them have suffered death according to law; so we have been graciously pleased to extend our mercy to many others by ordering their transportation to several parts of our dominions in America, where they are to be kept as servants to the inhabitants of the same; and to the end their punishment may in some measure answer their crimes, we do think fit hereby to signify our pleasure unto you, our governor and council of Virginia, that you take all necessary care that such convicted persons as were guilty of the late rebellion, that shall arrive within that our colony, whose names are hereunto annexed,[340:B] be kept there, and continue to serve their masters for the space of ten years at least. And that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. And for the better effecting hereof, you are to frame and propose a bill to the assembly of that our colony, with such provisions and clauses as shall be requisite for this purpose, to which you, our governor, are to give your assent, and to transmit the same unto us for our royal confirmation. Wherein expecting a ready compliance, we bid you heartily farewell. Given at our court at Whitehall, the 4th of October, 1685, in the first year of our reign.
"SUNDERLAND."
Virginia made no law conformable to the requisitions of the king.
James the Second, strongly resenting the too democratical proceedings of the Virginia assembly, ordered their dissolution, and that Robert Beverley, as chief promoter of these disputes, should be disfranchised and prosecuted,[340:C] and directed that in future the appointment of the clerk of the house of burgesses should be made by the governor. Several persons were punished about this time for seditious and treasonable conduct. In May, 1687, the assembly was dissolved. In the spring of this year Robert Beverley died—the victim of tyranny and martyr of constitutional liberty: long a distinguished loyalist, he lived to become still more distinguished as a patriot. It is thus in human inconsistency that extremes meet.
The English merchants engaged in the tobacco trade, in August, 1687, complained to the committee of the colonies of the mischiefs consequent upon the exportation of tobacco in bulk; and the committee advised the assembly to prohibit this practice. The assembly refused compliance; but the regulation was subsequently established by parliament. A meditated insurrection of the blacks was discovered in the Northern Neck just in time to prevent its explosion. In November a message had been received from the Governor of New York, communicating the king's instructions to him to build forts for the defence of that colony, and the king's desire that Virginia should contribute to that object, as being for the common defence of the colonies. This project of James, it was suspected, had its origin in his own proprietary interest in New York. The Virginians replied, that the Indians might invade Virginia without passing within a hundred miles of those forts, and the contribution was refused. In December, William Byrd succeeded Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., as auditor of the accounts of his majesty's revenue in Virginia; he continued to hold that place for seventeen years. His MS. accounts are still preserved.
James the Second, influenced by the counsels and the gold of France, and in violation of the most solemn pledges made to the parliament when he ascended the throne, showed himself incorrigibly bent upon introducing absolute government and establishing the Roman Catholic religion in England. In Virginia the council displayed, as usual, servility to power. Upon the dissolution of the assembly, the colony was agitated with apprehensions and alarm. Rumors were circulated of terrible plots, now of the Papists, then of the Indians. The County of Stafford was inflamed by the bold harangues of John Waugh, a preacher of the established church, and three councillors were dispatched to allay the commotions. Part of Rappahannock County was in arms. Colonel John Scarburgh, of the Eastern Shore, was prosecuted for saying to the governor that "his majesty King James would wear out the Church of England, for that when there were any vacant offices he supplied them with men of a different persuasion." Scarburgh was discharged by the council. Others were prosecuted and imprisoned; and James Collins was put in irons for treasonable words uttered against the king.
Effingham, no less avaricious and unscrupulous than his predecessor Culpepper, by his extortions and usurpations aroused a general spirit of indignation. He prorogued and dissolved the assembly; he erected a new court of chancery, making himself a petty lord chancellor; he multiplied fees, and stooped to share them with the clerks, and silenced the victims of his extortions by arbitrary imprisonment. The house of burgesses, preparing to petition the king against the new invention of a seal, by which his lordship extracted from the country one hundred thousand pounds of tobacco per annum of extraordinary fees and perquisites, and the governor getting wind of it, sent for them, and they, knowing that his object was to dissolve them, completed the petition, signed it, and ordered their clerk and one of their members to transmit it to Whitehall for the king. But instead of being delivered to his majesty, the original petition was sent back from England to the governor, with an account of the manner in which it had been transmitted. In consequence whereof, Colonel Thomas Milner, being a surveyor and clerk of the house, was removed from those offices, and the burgess being a lawyer, was prohibited from practising at the bar.[342:A]
At length, the complaints of the Virginians having reached England, Effingham embarked, in 1688, for that country, and the assembly dispatched Colonel Ludwell to lay their grievances before the government; but before they reached the mother country, the revolution had taken place, and James the Second[342:B] had closed a short and inglorious reign, spent in preposterous invasions of civil and religious liberty, by abdicating the crown.