§ 110. While this intestine war was fomenting there, the agents of the country in England could not succeed in their remonstrance against the propriety grants, though they were told that those grants should be revoked. But the news of their civil war reaching England about the same time, the king would then proceed no farther in that matter. So the agents thought it their best way to compound with the proprietors. Accordingly they agreed with them for four hundred pounds a man, which was paid. And so all the clamor against those grants ended; neither was any more heard from them there till above a dozen years afterwards.
§ 111. But all those agents could obtain after their composition with the lords, was merely the name of a new charter, granting only so much of their former constitution as mentioned a residence of the governor or deputy; a granting of escheat lands for two pounds of tobacco per acre, composition; and that the lands should be held of the crown in the same tenure as East Greenwich, that is, free and common soccage, and have their immediate dependence on the crown.
§ 112. When this storm, occasioned by Bacon, was blown over, and all things quiet again, Sir William Berkeley called an assembly, for settling the affairs of the country, and for making reparation to such as had been oppressed. After which a regiment of soldiers arrived from England, which were sent to suppress the insurrection; but they, coming after the business was over, had no occasion to exercise their courage. However, they were kept on foot there about three years after, and in the Lord Colepepper's time, paid off and disbanded.
§ 113. The confusion occasioned by the civil war, and the advantage the Indians made of it in butchering the English upon all their frontiers, caused such a desolation, and put the country so far back, that to the year 1704 they had seated very little beyond the boundaries that were then inhabited. At that time Jamestown was again burnt down to the ground by Richard Laurence, one of Bacon's captains, who, when his own men, that abhorred such barbarity, refused to obey his command, he himself became the executioner, and fired the houses with his own hands. This unhappy town did never after arrive to the perfection it then had: and now it is almost deserted by removing in Governor Nicholson's time the assembly and general court from thence to Williamsburg, an inland place about seven miles from it.
§ 114. With the regiment above mentioned arrived commissioners, to enquire into the occasion and authors of this rebellion; and Sir William Berkeley came to England: where from the time of his arrival, his sickness obliged him to keep his chamber till he died; so that he had no opportunity of kissing the king's hand. But his majesty declared himself well satisfied with his conduct in Virginia, and was very kind to him during his sickness, often enquiring after his health, and commanding him not to hazard it by too early an endeavor to come to court.
§ 115. Upon Sir William Berkeley's voyage to England, Herbert Jeffreys, Esq., was appointed governor. He made formal articles of peace with the Indians, and held an assembly at Middle Plantation, wherein they settled and allowed a free trade with the Indians; but restrained it to certain marts, to which the Indians should bring their commodities: and this also to be under such certain rules as were by that assembly directed. But this method was not agreeable to the Indians, who had never before been under any regulation. They thought, that if all former usages were not restored, the peace was not perfect; and therefore did not much rely upon it, which made those new restrictions useless.
Governor Jeffreys his time was very short there, he being taken off by death the year following.
§ 116. After him Sir Henry Chicheley was made deputy governor, in the latter end of the year 1678. In his time the assembly, for the greater terror of the Indians, built magazines at the heads of the four great rivers, and furnished them with arms, ammunition and men in constant service.
This assembly also prohibited the importation of tobacco, which Carolina, and sometimes Maryland, were wont to send thither, in order to its being shipped off for England. But in that, I think, Virginia mistook her interest. For, had they permitted this custom to become habitual, and thus engrossed the shipping, as would soon have happened, they could easily have regulated the trade of tobacco at any time, without the concurrence of those other colonies, and without submitting to their perverse humors as formerly.
§ 117. The spring following, Thomas Lord Colepepper arrived there governor, and carried with him some laws, which had been drawn up in England, to be enacted in their assembly. And coming with the advantage of restoring peace to a troubled nation, it was not difficult for him to obtain whatever he pleased from the people. His influence too was the greater by the power he had of pardoning those who had a hand in the disorders committed in the late rebellion.