The following year (1623) the Indians combined against the whites, who had persistently maltreated them, and more than three hundred settlers were killed. |Virginia becomes a royal province.| This loss, which was a serious blow to the colony, was one of the grounds urged by James in annulling the company's charter (1624). Thereupon the settlers passed under the immediate control of the king,—which was, on principle, an improvement over government by a profit-seeking commercial company, however liberal the tendencies of the latter. The growing of tobacco had by this time become an important industry in Virginia,—forty thousand pounds being shipped to England in 1620,—and both James and his son and successor, Charles, received a considerable revenue from taxes on the product.
31. Virginia during the English Revolution (1624-1660).
Harvey's administration.
After a succession of inefficient governors, Sir John Harvey came out in 1629, being the first serving under direct royal appointment. Harvey proved obnoxious to the colonists because of his despotic rule and constant attempt to browbeat the house of burgesses; by the latter he was "thrust out of his government" in 1635, whereupon he hastened to England to plead his cause before Charles. The king, much incensed at the unruly temper of his people, ordered the governor back; but four years later, desirous of mollifying the Virginians, upon the profits of whose tobacco-raising he had an eye, the king supplanted Harvey, and again sent out Wyatt. Under his mild rule the colony once more lifted its head.
Berkeley's first term.
Sir William Berkeley succeeded Wyatt in 1642. While frequently quarrelling with the assembly, as all the royal governors did, and eager for the spoils of office, he was an educated, courtly gentleman and a courageous statesman, though often unscrupulous and overbearing. A man of strong passions and convictions, he was a pitiless hater of enemies of the State; and in his estimation Puritans and Catholics were more prominent in that category than the marauding savages who skulked in the forests. A second Indian uprising (1644) was vigorously suppressed by the governor.
During the Long Parliament.
During the great struggle in England between Charles I. and the Long Parliament (1642-1649), public sentiment in Virginia was with the king. There were but few Puritans in or about Jamestown, and they had for the most part come in from New England under Harvey's administration; their missionary labors in the conservative South were unwelcome, and they were warned "to depart the collony with all conveniencie,"—while the Papists, who had settled Maryland in 1634 under Lord Baltimore, were not tolerated in Virginia under any conditions. |Virginia a refuge for Cavaliers.| The execution of Charles (1649) naturally aroused deep indignation among the colonists, refugee Cavaliers from England soon joined them by thousands, and Berkeley seriously, but in vain, invited Charles II. to take up his abode among his American subjects. The extent of this sudden influx of Cavalier immigration to the colony was so great that while the population of Virginia was but fifteen thousand in 1650, it had increased to forty thousand by 1670.
Parliamentary commissioners take possession.
Parliament, however, was not disposed to allow Virginia to become a breeding-place for disloyalty to the Commonwealth, and appointed commissioners (1652), to whom the colony was surrendered possession with surprising promptness. "No sooner," wrote Lord Clarendon, "had the 'Guinea' frigate anchored in the waters of the Chesapeake than all thoughts of resistance were laid aside." The Puritan party at once took charge of the government, ruling with moderation and wisdom; and the colony, now allowed the utmost freedom in the conduct of its home affairs, prospered politically and financially under the Protectorate.