Expulsion of the ministers.
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 of incessant and successful preaching 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 Daniel whose conversion was from worldliness or perhaps 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."
Indian massacre of 1644.
The expulsion of the Boston ministers was the beginning of a systematic harassing of the Puritans in Virginia. It was strangely affected by the massacre perpetrated by the Indians in the spring of 1644.[146] We seem carried back to the times of John Smith when we encounter once more the grim figure of Opekankano 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 men 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. Opekankano 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 murdered by one of his guards. It was the end of the Powhatan confederacy.
Conflicting views of theodicy.
Some worthy people interpreted this massacre as a judgment of Heaven upon the kingdom of Virginia for the sin of harbouring Puritans; rather a tardy judgment, one would say, coming a year after the persecution of such heretics had begun in earnest. In Governor Winthrop's opinion,[147] 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 persecution, and upbraided the governor, who forthwith dismissed him. Then Harrison turned Puritan and went to preaching at Nansemond, in flat defiance of Berkeley, who ordered and threatened and swore till he was out of breath, when suddenly business called him over to England.
Invasion of Maryland by Claiborne and Ingle.
It was the year of Marston Moor, an inauspicious year for Cavaliers, but a hopeful time for that patient waiter, William Claiborne. The governor of Maryland, as well as the governor of Virginia, 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 tarrying in Maryland waters should forthwith be seized. When this order 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 of being a pirate. This incident caused some excitement and afforded the watchful Claiborne his opportunity of revenge. He made visits to Kent Island and tried to dispel the doubts of the inhabitants by assuring them that he had a commission from the king.[148] 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 logic 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, inasmuch 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 alliance 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 latter in reinstating himself in what he believed to be his right. The invasion was completely successful. 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 household furniture, stuffing ships with plunder to be exported and turned into hard cash. The estates of Cornwallis were especially ill-treated, the Indian mission was broken up, and good Father White, loaded with irons, was sent to England on a trumped-up charge of treason, of which he was promptly acquitted. Long afterward this Claiborne-Ingle frolic was remembered in Maryland as the "plundering time."
Expulsion of Claiborne and Ingle.