son to believe they had rather pay their tax than lose that privilege."

But the system of universal suffrage could not permanently find favor with a usurping assembly which labored to reproduce in the new world the inequalities of English legislation. It was discovered that "the usual way of chusing burgesses by the votes of all freemen" produced "tumults and disturbance," and would lead to the "choyce of persons not fitly qualified for so greate a trust." The restrictions adopted in England were cited as a fit precedent for English colonies; and, in 1670, it was enacted that "none but freeholders and housekeepers shall hereafter have a voice in the election of any burgesses." The majority of the people of Virginia were disfranchised by the act of self-constituted representatives.

The unright holders of legislative power in the Old Dominion took care to do nothing for the culture of its people. "The almost general want of schools for their children was of most sad consideration, most of all bewailed of the parents there." "Every man," said Sir William Berkeley, in 1661, "instructs his children according to his ability;" a method which left the children of the ignorant to hopeless ignorance. "The ministers," continued Sir William, "should pray oftener and preach less. But, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.".

An assembly by its own vote continuing for an indefinite period at the pleasure of the governor, and decreeing to its members extravagant and burdensome emoluments; a royal governor, whose salary was established by a permanent system of taxation; a constituency restricted and diminished; religious liberty taken away almost as soon as it had been won; arbitrary taxation, in the parishes by close vestries, in the counties by uncontrolled magistrates; a hostility to popular education and to the press-these were the changes which, in a period of ten years, had been wrought by a usurping gov

ernment.

Meantime, the beauty and richness of the province were

becoming better known. Toward the end of May, 1670, the governor of Virginia sent out an exploring party to discover the country beyond the mountains, which, it was believed, would open a way to the South sea. The Blue Ridge they found high and rocky, and thickly grown with wood. Early in June they were stopped by a river, which they guessed to be four hundred and fifty yards wide. It was very rapid and full of rocks, running, so far as they could see, due north between the hills, "with banks in most places," according to their computation, "one thousand yards high." Beyond the river they reported other hills, naked of wood, broken by white cliffs, which in the morning were covered with a thick fog. The report of the explorers did not destroy the confidence that those mountains contained silver or gold, nor that there were rivers "falling the other way into the ocean.' In the autumn of the next year the exploration of the valley of Kanawha was continued.

The restoration of Charles II. was to Virginia a political revolution, reversing, in the interests of monarchy, the principles of popular and religious liberty, and the course of humane legislation on which she had entered during the period of the republic. It seemed to have gained a title to the favor of the king, and yet they found themselves more shamelessly neglected than any one of the more stubborn and less loyal colonies. Their rights and their property were unscrupulously trifled away by the wantonly careless and disreputable exercise of the royal prerogative. In 1649, just after the execu tion of Charles I., during the despair of the royalists, a patent for the Northern Neck, that is, for the country between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, had been granted to a company of cavaliers as a refuge. About nine years after the restoration, this patent was surrendered, that a new one might be issued to Lord Culpepper, who had succeeded in acquiring the shares of all the associates. The grant was extremely oppressive, for it included plantations which had long been cultivated. But the prodigality of the king was not exhausted. To Lord Culpepper, one of the most cunning and most covetous men in England, at the time a member of the commission for trade and plantations, and to Henry, earl of Arlington, the

best-bred person at the royal court, father-in-law to the king's son by Lady Castlemaine, ever in debt exceedingly, and passionately fond of things rich, polite, and princely, he gave, in 1673, "all the dominion of land and water called Virginia," for the term of thirty-one years.

The usurping assembly, composed in a great part of opulent landholders, was roused by these thoughtless grants; and, in September, 1674, Francis Moryson, Thomas Ludwell, and Robert Smith, were appointed agents to sail for England, and enter on the difficult duty of recovering for the king the supremacy which he had so foolishly dallied away. "We are unwilling," said the assembly, "and conceive we ought not to submit to those to whom his majesty, upon misinformation, hath granted the dominion over us, who do most contentedly pay to his majesty more than we have ourselves for our labor. Whilst we labor for the advantage of the crown, and do wish we could be yet more advantageous to the king and nation, we humbly request not to be subjected to our fellow-subjects, but, for the future, to be secured from our fears of being enslaved." Berkeley's commission as governor had expired; the legislature, which had already voted him a special increase of salary, and which had continued itself in power by his connivance, solicited his appointment as governor for life.

The envoys of Virginia were instructed to ask for the colony the immunities of a corporation which could resist further encroachments, and, according to the forms of English law, purchase of the grantees their rights to the country. The agents fulfilled their instructions, and asserted the natural liberties of the colonists.

We arrive at the moment when almost for the last time the old spirit of English liberty, such as had been cherished by Sir Edwin Sandys and Southampton and Ferrar, flashed up in the government of the Stuarts. Among the heads of the charter which the agents of Virginia were commanded by their instructions to entreat of the king, it was proposed "that there should be no tax or imposition laid on the people of Virginia but by their own consent, expressed by their representatives in assembly as formerly provided by many acts." "This," wrote Lord Coventry, or one who ex

pressed his opinion, "this I judge absolutely necessary for their well-being, and what in effect Magna Charta gives; and besides, as they conceive, will secure them from being subject to a double jurisdiction, viz., the lawes of an English parlia`ment where they have noe representatives." The subject was referred by an order in council to Sir William Jones and Francis Winnington, the attorney and solicitor general; and, in their report of the twelfth of October, 1675, they adopted the clause in its fullest extent, with no restriction except the provision" that the concession bee noe bar to any imposition that may bee laid by acts of parliament here," that is, in England, "on the commodities which come from that country.' At Whitehall, on the nineteenth of November, this report was submitted to the king in council, who declared himself inclined to give his subjects in Virginia all due encouragement; and directed letters-patent to be prepared confirming all things in the report. The charter was prepared as decreed, and, on the nineteenth of April, 1676, it was ordered by the king in council "that the lord chancellor doe cause the said grant to pass under the great seale of England accordingly." In the progress of their suit, the agents of Virginia were thankful for the support of Coventry, whom they extolled as one of the worthiest of men. They owned the aid of Jones and Winnington; and they had the voices "of many great friends," won by a sense of humanity, or submitting to be bribed. But a stronger influence was secretly and permanently embodied in favor of a despotic administration of the colonies, with the consequent chances of great emoluments to courtiers. On the thirty-first of May, the king in council reversed his decree, and ordered that "the lord high chancellor of England doe forbeare putting the great seale to the patent concerning Virginia, notwithstanding the late order of the nineteenth April last past.”

The irrevocable decision against the grant of a charter was made before the news reached England of events which involved the Ancient Dominion in gloom.

CHAPTER XI.

THE GREAT REBELLION IN VIRGINIA.

AT the time when the envoys were appointed, Virginia was rocking with the griefs that grew out of its domestic oppressions. The rapid and effectual abridgment of its popular liberties, joined to the uncertain tenure of property that followed the announcement of the royal grants, would have roused any nation; how much more a people like the Virginians! The generation now in existence were chiefly the children of the soil, nurtured in the freedom of the wilderness. Of able-bodied freemen, the number was estimated at not far from eight thousand. No newspapers entered their houses; no printing-press furnished them a book. They had no recreations but such as nature provides in her wilds; no education but such as parents in the desert would give their offspring. The paths were bridleways rather than roads; and the highway surveyors aimed at nothing more than to keep them clear of logs and fallen trees. There was not an engineer in the country. I doubt if there existed what we should call a bridge in the whole dominion. Visits were made in boats or on horseback; and the Virginian, travelling with his pouch of tobacco for currency, swam the rivers, where there was neither ferry nor ford. Almost every planter was his own mechanic. The houses, for the most part of but one story, and made of wood, often of logs, the windows closed by shutters for want of glass, were sprinkled at great distances on both sides of the Chesapeake. There was hardly such a sight as a cluster of three dwellings. Jamestown was but a place of a state house, one church, and eighteen houses, occupied by about a dozen families. Till very recently, the legislature