"Sir John being ... laid flat," Wyatt next took up the case of Anthony Panton against Kemp.[48] This matter had been sifted out by the Privy Council, who reported that they could find no proof of the charges against the minister. It seemed strange to them that he should be accused of mutinous behavior throughout six or seven years, in view of the fact that ten months previously Harvey had presented him to a benefice. So they suspended the harsh sentence, and referred the matter to Governor Wyatt. The Virginia court promptly reversed the previous action, declared Panton guiltless, and restored his estate. So he returned in triumph and resumed his duties in his two parishes. To Kemp this was the crowning humiliation. "I am exceedingly injured, and shall suffer without guilt unless my friends now assist me," he wrote. "The Governor and Council aim at my ruin."[49]
The men employed to watch Harvey and Kemp must have relaxed their vigilance, for both escaped and made their way back to England. Thomas Stegg, who aided Kemp in getting away, had to pay dearly, for the Governor and Council fined him £50 and imprisoned him. In London, Harvey and Kemp sought influential friends, poured out their complaints to them, and tried to undermine Wyatt at Court. Kemp later returned to Virginia, where he resumed his place as Secretary, and his seat in the Council. Harvey seems to have given up politics as a bad business and returned to the sea as what he probably considered a less dangerous vocation. He died in 1650.
The thrusting out of Sir John Harvey is a landmark in the long struggle for self-government in Virginia. It showed that there was a point beyond which no Governor dared go in trampling upon the rights of the people. It was a daring thing for the Virginians to defy the King by deposing the man he had sent as their Governor, and notifying him in effect that they wanted him to make a better selection. That Charles sent Harvey back and that he was as tyrannical after his return as he had been before, does not obscure the meaning of this uprising as a clash between the royal assertion of despotic right and the American devotion to liberty.
Harvey based his claims to supreme power on the theory that he was the King's substitute, and as such should have the unquestioning obedience of the people. The Virginians contended that his power was limited by law. Even had his rule been marked by justice and moderation, they would have denied his pretensions. But when he made them the basis for an odious tyranny, they took a step unique in American colonial history, by laying violent hands on him, and sending him back to his royal master.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] CO1-4, p. 18.
[2] Virginia Magazine 13: 301.
[3] E. D. Neill, Virginia Company of London, 221.
[4] Ibid., 79.
[5] Virginia Magazine 7: 375-376.