Finally the October Assembly enacted the strictest and most democratic voting law ever made in Virginia. Not only were all freemen (as well as covenanted servants) allowed to vote, but they were fined 100 pounds of tobacco for failing to do so. This act seems to have continued in effect until 1655 when the Assembly prohibited freemen from voting unless they were also householders.
The Administration of Berkeley in 1647-1648: Trade and Expansion
Following the war Virginia returned to its two great peacetime interests—trade and expansion. In the Assembly of April 1647 Berkeley, the Council, and the Burgesses joined in a declaration which reveals the extent to which the colony relied on Dutch traders. It noted that "absolute necessities" had caused earlier Assemblies to invite the Dutch to trade with the inhabitants of Virginia, "which now for some few yeares they have injoyed with such content, comfort and releife that they esteeme the continuance thereof, of noe lesse consequence then as a relative to theire being and subsistence." Rumors had been raised, the declaration went on, that by a recent ordinance of Parliament, all foreigners were prohibited from trading with any of the English plantations "which wee conceive to bee the invention of some English merchants on purpose to affright and expell the Dutch, and make way for themselves to monopolize not onely our labours and fortunes, but even our persons." The declaration noted the baneful effects on the colony of the greed of the English merchants and pointed out that by ancient charter and right the inhabitants of Virginia were allowed to trade with any nation in amity with the King. It would be inconceivable that Parliament would abridge this right "especially without hearing of the parties principally interested, which infringeth noe lesse the libertye of the Collony and a right of deare esteeme to free borne persons: viz., that no lawe should bee established within the kingdome of England concerninge us without the consent of a grand Assembly here." But since they had heard nothing officially concerning the rumored act, "wee can interprett noe other thing from the report, then a forgerye of avaritious persons, whose sickle hath bin ever long in our harvest allreadye." To provide for Virginia's subsistence the Governor, Council, and Burgesses ordered that the right of the Dutch nation to trade with Virginia be reiterated and preserved, and her traders given every protection.
Virginia's other great problem, that of unregulated expansion, was dealt with by the Grand Assembly of November 1647 in an extraordinary way. The Governor, Council, and Burgesses ordered that persons inhabiting Northumberland and "other remote and straying plantations on the south side of Patomeck River, Wicokomoko, Rappahannock and Fleets Bay" be displanted and removed. They justified this act on the basis of frequent instructions from the King to Berkeley and the Council directing that the planters not be allowed to scatter themselves too widely, and also because they considered such settlement "pernicious" and "destructive" to the peace and safety of the colony, animating the Indians to attack, and thus imbroiling the country in troublesome and expensive wars. Since winter was approaching, the inhabitants were allowed one year to remove themselves to the south side of York River.
The same session of the Assembly authorized Capt. Edward Hill and others to establish, at the head of Rappahannock River, a military and trading outpost which was deemed valuable to the peace and safety of the colony. Hill and his associates were to provide forty men to man the fort which was not to exceed five acres at most, on pain of having the grant revoked.
It was a brave and sensible policy which Berkeley and the Assembly pursued, but one that was destined to be overridden by the power, self-interest, and numbers of the thousands of new members of the colony, both those being born in Virginia in ever-increasing numbers, and those who had left behind them the civil strife of England. In less than a year the Assembly enacted that the tract of land between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers should be called Northumberland and that it should have power to elect Burgesses. The reasons of "state" that had convinced the Assembly of November 1647 to order the utter dissolution of the Northumberland settlements were thus thrown to the winds by the next Assembly. No doubt the pressure of the inhabitants, would-be inhabitants, and speculators, in addition to the difficulty of enforcing the decision, caused the repeal of the act. The restraining hand of the Governor was never again to be felt as it had been in the period following the 1646 peace. The explosive growth of settlement in Virginia had proved impossible to control.
The justification of the settlement south of the Potomac River was not the only victory of the people in the Assembly of October 1648. Upon the representation of the Burgesses to the Governor and Council complaining of the worn-out lands and insufficient cattle ranges of the earlier settlements, the Governor and Council, after long debate, joined the Burgesses in authorizing settlement on the north side of the York and Rappahannock rivers. The act declared, however, that "for reasons of state to ... [the Governor and Council] appearing, importing the safety of the people in their seating," no one was to go there before the first of September of the following year. Surveys of the area were allowed at once, however, and land patents were authorized to be taken out. The act making it a felony to go to the north side of York River was repealed. The settlers' and speculators' victory was complete. Reasons of "policy" and "state" proved only of sufficient power to delay the inevitable.
Execution of Charles I and Capture of Colony by Parliamentary Forces, 1649-1652
On January 30, 1649, King Charles I was beheaded by the Parliamentary forces. It was a logical climax to the turmoil into which English institutions and values had been cast by the long years of civil war that preceded the deed. The execution of the King shocked Englishmen as well as foreigners. The reaction of the Virginians came in the form of Act I of the Assembly of October 1649 which hailed "the late most excellent and now undoubtedly sainted king," denounced the perpetrators of the deed, and declared that if any person in the colony should defend "the late traiterous proceedings ... under any notion of law and justice" by words or speeches, such person should be adjudged an accessory post factum to the death of the King. Anyone who expressed doubt, by words and speeches, as to the inherent right of Charles II to succeed his father as King of England and Virginia, was likewise to be adjudged guilty of high treason.
The death of Charles I left the Parliamentary forces supreme in England. Some royalists retired to the continent of Europe, and some came to Virginia. England became a Commonwealth without a King; Oliver Cromwell was later named Protector. The new government, after consolidating its power in England, attempted to extend its control over the colonies, some of which, like Virginia, continued to demonstrate their loyalty to royal authority. On October 3, 1650, Parliament, as a punitive measure, prohibited the trade of the colonies with foreign nations except as the Parliamentary government should allow. "This succession to the exercise of the kingly authority," wrote Jefferson later, "gave the first colour for parliamentary interference with the colonies, and produced that fatal precedent which they continued to follow after they had retired, in other respects, within their proper functions."