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the Governor and Council shall have their passes to go away from hence in any ship within a year." But Sir William's departure had been prevented, and he was therefore liable to arrest. To prevent this, the Assembly, in 1653, had passed a special act permitting him to remain eight months longer. And in 1656 his continued residence had been again sanctioned by an act of Assembly. Thus, under one pretext and another, his residence in Virginia appears to have been uninterrupted.

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On the 22d of April, 1659, Richard Cromwell's power came to an end, and soon after in that year resigned his office. Governor Matthews had deceased when the Virginia Assembly next met, on the 13th of March, 1660. They immediately passed an act, declaring that, as there was "noe resident absolute and generall confessed power in England," therefore the supreme government of the colony should vest in the Assembly. Their next act was the election of Sir William Berkeley as Governor, restricting him from dissolving the Assembly without their consent. When the office was offered to him, he said in reply: "I doe therefore, in the presence of God and you, make this safe protestation for us all, that if any supreame settled power appeares, I will immediately lay down my commission, but will live most submissively obedient to any power God shall set over me, as the experience of eight years have shewed I have done." There was no recognition of Charles II. in any of the acts of this Assembly; nor was there in an official letter of the Governor dated the 20th of August next, nearly three months after Charles II. had ascended the throne, though before the event was known in Virginia.*

* Campbell, 73, 74, 78.

In March, 1661, Berkeley received a new royal commission as Governor, dated July 31st, 1660.

1661.

Thus quietly did Virginia pass from the Crown to the Commonwealth, and again from the Commonwealth to the Crown; for the Assembly of this year -consisting, however, mainly of new members, and probably the new were royalists-sent a loyal address to the king.

1675.

CHAPTER XXII.

FRONTIER LIFE.

FOR fourteen successive years Virginia had been governed by Sir William Berkeley in the name of King Charles II. During this time the population had greatly increased; and, to a superficial observer, the colony had every sign of prosperity and content. For the most part, the administration of the Governor had been unexceptionable, and had been rewarded by the esteem and affection of the people at large. He had been with them thirty-five years, nearly all of which time he had been their chief magistrate, distinguished alike for his public spirit, his high principle, his amiable manners, and his generosity. He had devoted the strength of his days, and a large portion of his private estate, to promote the interests of the colony. In addition to his salary of £1,000 allowed by the Crown, the Assembly, in 1767, had voted him £ 200 per annum, and for life, as some compensation for his losses under the Commonwealth.

In 1671, according to his statement made to the Lords of the Commissioners of Colonies, the people of Virginia numbered forty thousand, of which two thousand were negro slaves, and six thousand white indented servants. They could muster for military service eight thousand cavalry; had two forts on the

James River, and one on each of the rivers Rappahannock, York, and Potomac. They had thirty cannon; and received into their ample waters eighty vessels yearly from England and Ireland, which came for tobacco, besides a few small vessels from New England.

In compliance with instructions from the king, an attempt had been made to establish towns as ports of entry; and in 1662 seventeen new houses had been added to the hitherto insignificant village of Jamestown. Of these, one was built by the Governor himself; a few, by members of the Council; others, by planters and traders, and at the expense of the counties.* For a while, the place had been the scene of considerable bustle. But this impulse, being from constrained and artificial means, and contrary to the genius of the people and the natural currents of trade, was but temporary; and Jamestown, for a long time, was but a cluster of thirty-two brick houses, most of which had been converted into taverns and hucksters' shops. Until 1664, the Quarter Courts, and even the Assembly, had met in taverns. But at that time it was resolved to purchase a house for the use of the courts, and to build a State-House for the Assembly.

But Jamestown was no specimen of Virginia. The thousands of her people were scattered thinly all along upon the banks of her noble rivers and her beautiful creeks. The planter seated himself, wherever he could effect a title, upon the rich bottom-lands, but

The settled territory of Virginia had been divided, in 1634, into eight shires or counties; in 1642, three had been added; in 1652, four; in 1653, one. In 1666, there were nineteen; in 1670, there were twenty. Burk, II. 43, 68, 95, 140; Campbell, 79.

lately the homes and the gardens of the banished natives, and devoted himself, in his romantic seclusion, to his family and his crops. The Virginia plantation usually extended back from the river's shore about an English mile; and along the shore a half-mile, or one, two, three miles, and sometimes more. Thus plantations of a thousand or two thousand acres, and even more, were not uncommon; for the Virginian had a passion for real estate, and the bounty of fifty acres to the transporter for every resident whom any one should transport from England, rendered the acquisition comparatively easy to settlers who could pay the trifling passage-money of servants. Thus situated, the planters were necessarily scattered, seldom meeting except upon public occasions, and caring for little else than the visit of the trading-ship at their doors, and a fair exchange for their tobacco. It was very natural, in a country watered by rivers some of which were navigable for a hundred miles, that its produce should be sought by the merchant, rather than that the producer should transport it to stated and distant marts in the colony. The ship which entered the Chesapeake for tobacco must be laden for traffic. She must ascend the rivers. She must pass along from plantation to plantation, bartering her miscellaneous cargo for the staple of the country. Thus the skipper on the James or the Potomac, "carrying all sorts of truck, could at the best drive, in the way of trade, only a sort of Scotch peddling"; while the planter, from his low-roofed but commodious dwelling, surrounded by "his flocks grazing, whisking, and skipping in his sight," looked out from his door-way or his "shuttered" window upon the "delightfull"

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