Culpeper’s removal.
This was contracting the currency with a vengeance, but it produced the desired effect. In 1683 the purchasing power of tobacco was greatly increased, and a feeling of contentment returned. But the destruction of the plants served to heighten the king’s indignation at Culpeper’s ill success in curtailing the power of the burgesses. Culpeper tried to play a double part and appear complaisant to the assembly without offending the king. Consequently he pleased nobody, and early in 1684 he was removed. Shortly afterward the king confirmed him in the possession of the territory known as the Northern Neck, and he relinquished all proprietary claims upon the rest of Virginia, in exchange for a pension of £600 yearly for twenty years.
Lord Howard of Effingham.
Culpeper’s successor was Lord Howard of Effingham, an unworthy descendant of Elizabeth’s gallant admiral. He was as greedy and dishonest as Culpeper, without his conciliatory temper. The difference between the two has been aptly compared to the difference between Charles II. and his brother. Howard was indeed as domineering and wrong-headed as James II., and rapacious besides. He treated public opinion with contempt. His administration was noted for corruption and tyranny. No accounts were rendered of the use of public funds, and men were arbitrarily sent to jail. Howard went so far as to claim the right to repeal the acts of the assembly, and over this point there was hot contention. The subject of “plant-cutting,” or the destruction of growing tobacco, came up again, and the crown was enabled in one and the same act to wreak its vengeance upon an eminent victim and to aim a blow at the independence of the House of Burgesses.
More trouble for Beverley.
Robert Beverley, as we have seen, had incurred the royal displeasure by refusing to hand over to the commissioners the journals of the House of Burgesses. In 1682 he was strongly in favour of a cessation of planting, and accordingly it suited the purposes of his enemies to point to him as the prime instigator of the plant-cutting riots. On this accusation he was turned out of office and several times imprisoned. At last, just after Lord Howard’s arrival, he was set free after asking pardon on his bended knees and giving security for future good behaviour. A statute passed about this time made plant-cutting high treason, punishable with death and confiscation.[83]
As soon as Beverley was set free the House of Burgesses again chose him for its clerk. But presently Lord Howard tried to get the burgesses to allow him to levy a tax, and in the course of the quarrel sundry trumped-up charges were brought against Beverley, so that in 1686 James II. instructed Howard to declare him incapable of holding any office of public trust. The same letter ordered that henceforth the clerk of the House of Burgesses should be appointed by the governor.[84]
For stupid audacity James II. was outdone by George III.
It is worthy of note that the most despicable and lawless of modern English kings did not venture to deny the right of Virginians to tax themselves by their own representatives. Howard’s instructions merely authorized him to “recommend” certain measures to the assembly. His attempt to get permission to levy a tax independently of the burgesses was such a recommendation. However arrogant and illegal in spirit, it still conceded to the colonists the constitutional principle over which the fatuous George III. and his rotten-borough parliaments were to try to ride rough-shod.
Francis Nicholson.