The year 1634 also marked the establishment of the county form of local government in Virginia. The scattered plantations and settlements, rapidly expanding and hence more difficult to govern from James City, were now organized into eight counties. For each a monthly court was established by commission from the Governor and Council. Provision for separate courts in outlying areas had been made as early as 1618. Now the shift to decentralized government was formalized.
The "Thrusting Out" of Governor Harvey and Its Aftermath, 1635-1641
In 1635, in one of the most famous incidents in Virginia's early history, Governor Harvey was deposed by his Council. Many historians have assumed that Harvey was deposed by a spontaneous uprising of the people no longer able to bear his oppressive government. There is, however, little justification for this view. Many more accusations have been hurled at Harvey by later historians than by his contemporaries, and it is undoubtedly Harvey's position as a royal Governor and his quick temper that have caused historians to take such a hostile view of him. Ever since the successful American Revolution of 1776, American historians, in interpreting the events of the colonial period, have jumped at any evidence of discontent as an anticipation of, and justification for, the War for Independence. They have not stopped to determine whether the charges hurled at the royal Governors were true or not. It is enough that someone accused them of oppression.
The causes of the revolt against Harvey were various. Of first importance was the continual opposition that existed between the Governor and his Council. The revolt was not primarily a revolt of the people but a revolt by certain members of the Council who attempted to give their particular insubordination the appearance of a general rebellion.
Harvey's commission was such that he could do nothing except by majority vote of himself and the Council sitting as a single body. The Council frequently outvoted him, effectively blocking his proposals. Harvey bitterly disputed the Council's power to thwart his will. He pointed out that the King had sent him to Virginia not only as the new Governor but with the specific duty of correcting the abuses that were reported to have existed under previous Governors, especially those abuses for which members of the Council were responsible. Previous to his arrival the government had been in the hands of Francis West and Dr. John Pott, elected to office by the other members of the Council. Pott, whose reputation has been mentioned earlier, was not pleased to be brought to justice for his dishonest actions. Nor was Samuel Mathews, an important member of the Council, pleased to be brought to justice for withholding the cattle and property of other men. (Mathews, the richest man in the colony, successfully resisted all legal attempts to divest him of this property.) Nor were the Council members pleased when, in accordance with His Majesty's commands, Harvey attempted to punish those responsible for the ill treatment of William Capps, sent earlier by the King to start production of tar, potash, salt, pipe staves and other commodities. The Council had discouraged him from his mission, except in so far as it concerned the production of salt, and Pott had issued an order preventing him from leaving the colony to report to the King.
Another cause for grievance against Harvey was the peace he made with the local Indians. The colonists distrusted the Indians more than they distrusted other Europeans. The great massacre of 1622, when the Indians made a desperate attempt to destroy the English settlement, had placed Indian-white relations on a basis of perpetual enmity. Legally, the Indians had never been considered to have the same rights as the English. English law throughout the seventeenth century maintained the doctrine that between Christians and infidels there could exist nothing but perpetual enmity, a view which was a hangover from the period of the Crusades, wars against the Turks, and expansion by militant Christian nations into heathen lands during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is true that practical co-operation and on-the-spot recognition of Indian rights had developed in Virginia in the early years. The massacre of 1622, however, gave Virginians an excuse for abandoning all forms of co-operation with, and respect for, the Indians. Deceit and breach of faith were elevated into acknowledged instruments of policy. The right of the Indians even to occupy the land of their forefathers was denied. They were admitted to exist and to hold land in fact, but the English refused to recognize in law either their existence or their title to land. Total extirpation was resolved against those Indian nations which had taken part in the massacre. "Marches" were periodically ordered against the various tribes with the purpose of destroying or seizing their corn, burning their shelters, and killing as many members of the tribe as possible.
Governor Harvey reversed this policy and made peace with the Indians against the advice of Dr. Pott and other Councilors. He also attempted to see that some measure of equity was extended to Indian-white relations. As a result, the more aggressive planters accused him of promoting a second massacre.
What really set off the revolt against Harvey, however, was the injection of the hottest issue of the day into the controversy: whether Harvey was "soft" on Catholicism. This issue was brought to a head because of the grant of a portion of Virginia's original territory to George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore. Harvey had extended a helping hand to Baltimore's colonists. Although his actions in this regard were specifically required of him by the King, and although he received especially warm commendation from the English government for doing so, the Virginia colonists objected. The King's grant, for one thing, had been carved out of the Virginia Company's old bounds which had been left undisturbed when the Company lost its right to govern the area. Already Virginians were beginning to eye the benefits of settlement in the northern reaches of Chesapeake Bay. One, Colonel William Claiborne, Secretary of the colony, had obtained a royal commission to trade in the area and had established a settlement on Kent Island, opposite the present Annapolis, far up Chesapeake Bay. By acting on the King's instructions and supporting Baltimore's authority in the area against Claiborne's claims, Harvey turned the second most important man in the colony against him.
Harvey at first backed the Virginia Council's assertion that Kent Island was a part of Virginia, and not part of the supposedly uncultivated wilderness granted to Baltimore by the King. But in the face of Charles's obvious desire to take the area away from Virginia, and because Claiborne's patent authorized trade rather than settlement, Harvey soon accepted Lord Baltimore's position that Claiborne's trading post lay within the limits of Baltimore's jurisdiction. Irritation between the two men increased when Harvey attempted jointly with the Maryland authorities to conduct an examination of charges that Claiborne was stirring up Maryland's Indians against the new settlers. Claiborne was accused of telling the local Indians that the new settlers were not Englishmen but Spaniards. The investigation which ensued was hampered at every turn by Claiborne and his friends on the Virginia Council.