An even more significant indication of the shift in power in the government was the provision in one of the acts of the Assembly of 1643 that appeals from the General Court (composed of the Governor and Council, all appointees of the Crown) should be made to the Grand Assembly (composed of the representatives of the people plus the Governor and Council).
Still another demonstration of the de facto shift in power from the Crown to the people was the third act of the 1643 Assembly which declared that the Governor and Council "shall not lay any taxes or impositions upon this collonie their lands or comodities otherwise then by the authority of the Grand Assembly to be leavied and imployed as by the Assembly shall be appointed." The first such law had been passed in March 1624 and renewed in February 1632. The process of wresting control of the purse strings from the representatives of the Crown was to be a long-drawn-out process in America, as indeed it was in England. In Virginia the battle was won without a fight either because the Governors were unable to oppose the power of the Burgesses or because they identified their interests with those of the people. In the case of the rights won by the people of Virginia during Sir William Berkeley's governorship, these seem to have been the results as much of the Governor's benevolence as of the Burgesses' power.
The colony also took its economic welfare into its own hands in the early years of Berkeley's administration. Dutch traders were encouraged by an act which made it free and lawful for any Dutch merchant or shipowner to bring merchandise into the colony and to take tobacco out of it. Means were provided to ease the difficulty caused by the requirement that the Dutch give security for payment of the King's customs at the port of London.
The Great Massacre and Indian War, 1644-1646
On April 18, 1644, occurred the second great Indian massacre in Virginia's history. Opechancanough, King of the Pamunkey Indian confederation, planned and executed the massacre, which most historians attribute to the steadily increasing pressure exerted by the English on the Indians' lands. The white population had increased from 3,000 in 1630 to 8,000 in 1640, and more were pouring in yearly. Nearly four hundred English, living in exposed areas of the colony, reportedly lost their lives in the massacre. The gallant young Berkeley, as proficient a soldier as he was a playwright and courtier, struck back hard at the Indians. The entire colony was put on a war footing. Campaigns, usually by small mobile forces, were conducted against the Indians where they could be found. The June Assembly passed an act for "perpetuall warre with the Indians" promising to "pursue and root out those which have any way had theire hands in the shedding of our blood and massacring of our people."
As in the case of so many Indian wars, there was a difference of opinion as to which Indian nations were guilty of the attack. The Assembly's act attempted to restrict reprisals to those who had actually perpetrated the massacre. Some individuals, however, like Col. William Claiborne, seem to have desired to extend the reprisals to the Indians living between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, where the land interests of Claiborne and others were concentrated at this time.
Little progress was made in defeating the enemy in the early months of the war. The Assembly, meeting in June 1644, foreseeing ruin and desolation unless the colony could be furnished with a greater supply of arms and ammunition, entreated Governor Berkeley to return to England and implore His Majesty for assistance to the country. The Assembly also commissioned Mr. Cornelius Lloyd as agent for the colony to obtain what supplies he could from the Dutch plantation in Hudson's River, from the Swedish plantation on the Delaware, and from the New England settlements.
It does not seem, from the records available, that either mission was successful. Governor Berkeley found England involved in full-scale war between the forces of the King and those of Parliament. Instead of receiving aid from the King, Berkeley lent his own assistance to the King's cause in his English campaigns. Berkeley returned to Virginia a year later.
The mission of Virginia's agent to the northern colonies apparently met with similar lack of success. Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay attributed the massacre to Virginia's expulsion of certain "godly ministers" sent from New England a short time before, and told the Virginia agent that Massachusetts could not spare the powder requested. When Massachusetts' principal powder store shortly thereafter blew up, Winthrop wondered whether God's wrath might not have been kindled against the Bay Colony for her refusal to provide powder to fellow Englishmen in need.
The war with Opechancanough continued throughout the fall and winter of 1644 and into the spring of 1645. At the Assembly of February 1645 provision was made for sending out the usual military parties. But in addition three forts were ordered built: one in the Pamunkey territory, one at the falls of the James, and a third along the Chickahominy.