University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXI

THE INTERREGNUM

In June, 1650, Berkeley and his council received commissions
from Charles II that continued them in their respective
offices. These documents had been brought to Virginia by
Richard Lee, who, after the death of the first Charles on the
scaffold, had hired a Dutch vessel, and loading her with a cargo
of tobacco, had set sail for Holland, where the new King was
then in exile with his most faithful courtiers. Berkeley's
expectation proved to be correct—the Dutch vessels entered
the Bay without serious molestation, owing to the demand for
the English guardships on the home coasts. They brought in
a large quantity of merchandise, and they carried off to the
Low Countries the tobacco crops of the planters.

The English traders were quick to detect their loss through
the failure of the blockade, and they clamored for a more
powerful measure to bring the colonists to terms. In consequence
of these men's representation, palpably interested as
they were, and of the acknowledged ineffectiveness of the
blockade, the government of the Commonwealth sent out commissioners
to Virginia to demand its surrender, and they
despatched along with them a small fleet and a respectable
body of troops. These commissioners were authorized to
establish in the Colony a form of administration that would be
in harmony with the one which had been adopted in England.
They were men of ability and experience. Their names were
Richard Bennett, Thomas Stagge, William Claiborne, and
Captain Robert Dennis. Just before their arrival off the
Capes, the energetic governor—so it was charged by the local
partisans of Parliament—had been busy bending the various

bodies of militia to his will, and had talked of nothing else
but "burnings, hangings, and plunderings." He threatened
some, he flattered others—such was the assertion of these
partisans. "Actually," they remarked in words of sincere
but somewhat comical grievance, "he curbs and discountenances
all professions of godliness. He has induced the priests
to stir up the people, and he has lied about the King's strength
and successes."

All these caustic averments were, doubtless, not in the
smallest degree exaggerated, for it was admitted that, when
the commissioners arrived in the Bay, the whole country had
been put in a strong state of military defense by the governor's
indefatigable efforts. Parliament, impressed by his
belligerent attitude, and also by that of the General Assembly,
justly thought that the commissioners might need more support
than the fleet could give; and they were, therefore,
empowered, if they saw fit, to raise a large body of troops in
Virginia. It was the hope of the English Council of State
that the Puritans, and also the servants on a promise of freedom,
could be relied upon to be enrolled as recruits; but the
practicality of such help had been paralyzed, if it had ever
existed at all, by those activities of the governor which we
have described. When the presence of the fleet in the Bay was
reported to him, he called out the militia and assumed command
of the entire body, and in order to strengthen further
the defenses at Jamestown, he not only erected batteries on
the banks of the river and loaded the guns with heavy shot,
but he impressed several Dutch vessels lying in the stream
and turned the muzzles of their guns in the path of the
enemy's expected approach. In the privacy of his own
breast, Berkeley must have been aware that the armed resistance
which he proposed would, in the end, fail, and that, if
the present fleet was beaten off, another would, in time, appear
in the same waters. But whether he believed or not that he
could halt the Parliamentarians, his course was the one that
was best calculated to secure the most favorable terms from

the commissioners. Indeed, the front which he offered was
so formidable that they perceived at once that they must show
prudence and discretion in their plans for compelling the
submission of the Colony.

The commissioners early employed one advantage which
they possessed. On board of the fleet, there happened to be a
large quantity of merchandise assigned to certain members
of Berkeley's council. These men were informed by special
messenger that their goods would be confiscated if they took
any part in resistance to the fleet; and the impression created
by this threat was increased by the commissioners' intrigues
with prominent men on shore.

Finally, the two sides came to an agreement, which resembled
more a treaty of peace than articles of surrender. Its
most important provisions were: (1) that Virginia should
enjoy an unfettered right of free trade;[1] (2) that no taxes were
to be imposed on her people except through the General
Assembly; (3) that all fortifications to be erected in the Colony
were to be built only after the consent of that body had
been given; (4) that a general pardon was to be granted for
the hostility that had been displayed by so many towards
Parliament; (5) that anyone wishing to leave the Colony was
to be allowed one year in which to depart; and lastly (6), that,
during the whole of this year, the Book of Common Prayer
could be used in the churches. Berkeley and the members of
his council were included in all the privileges of these liberal
terms; nor were they prohibited from sending a full account
of the change of government to Charles in Holland.

A General Assembly was summoned to confer with the
commissioners upon the special form which should be given
to the new administration; and the central feature of the
framework adopted was that the acts of the House of Burgesses
should be subject to the veto of the Head and Council

of State in England alone. The House was not only to choose
the governor, but also the members of his council; and it was
empowered to define the functions of both, except that none
of the prerogatives of the old order were to be retained. While
Cromwell and his Council of State do not appear to have
conceded the House's right to select the governor, they were
too much absorbed in the still unsettled affairs of England
to interfere with any choice that had once been reached. At
least, the appointments which were made by the House were
not in any case superseded. The only pressure that seems
to have been employed was purely economic in its nature.
But the first Act of Navigation, which applied to all the
colonies, was not severe in its requirements. It did not, for
instance, prohibit the export of tobacco to Holland.

Richard Bennett, an earnest Puritan, was the first to be
selected as governor. He had been, as we have seen, a member
of the Parliamentary commission, and by his long residence
in Virginia, was fully versed as to its needs. His administration
was disturbed by only one incident of importance—this
was the menace of an uprising on the Eastern Shore. Somehow
the popular impression had got abroad there that this
entire region was independent of the government at Jamestown.
During several years, no election of burgesses was held
there, as no summons was issued; and when the General
Assembly included the Shore in the scope of its tax levy, a
protest was at once lodged against the supposed intrusion;
and so great was the commotion which followed, that the
Assembly was compelled to send its representatives there to
punish the persons who had instigated the revolt. This was
in June, 1653. During the previous year, the discontent
prevailing in that part of the Colony had been converted into
alarm by the rumor that the numerous Dutchmen among the
inhabitants were inviting the Indians to attack the plantations
there. The trade of the Shore too was injured to some degree
by the Act of Navigation. By prudent measures, peace was
finally restored.

The governor, remembering the former power of his office,
was disposed to kick against the limitations put upon it. The
question arose in March, 1657-58, whether he was authorized
to dissolve the Assembly. The House denied his right to do
this, and positively refused to refer the point in dispute to
the Protector. It went so far as to deprive Matthews and
his council of all their functions, and only restored them when
those officers consented to hold their posts subject to the
House's control. No power then in existence in Virginia, it
was declared, could dissolve the House in opposition to the
wishes of that body; and without its warrant, neither its own
sergeant-at-arms nor any sheriff in any of the counties could
perform the duties of their offices. This warrant had to be
signed by the speaker, but it always ran in the name of the
Protector.

The House refused to take the advice of the governor in
the election of its presiding officer. Bennett had warned its
members against the choice of Colonel Chiles as one that
would be highly inexpedient, and yet he was selected without
regard to that emphatic objection, as if the House desired to
show its independence of all dictation. Diggs was too discreet
to raise any point of controversy with so bold and determined
a public body, and his administration, in consequence, was
unmarred by serious antagonisms. But an impression had
been made on the government in England that the executive
and the legislature in Virginia were always wrangling with
each other. The Colony, it was asserted in a petition submitted
by persons hostile to the new powers of the House, was
"in a loose and distracted condition," and a more settled and
definite form of administration was called for. Cromwell
was now approaching the end of his great career (1658), and
it was doubtless with his approval that a letter was despatched
by the President of the Council of State to the Governor and
Council at Jamestown enjoining them to enforce the laws and
customs to which the people of Virginia had always been subject.
The reply to this communication was only despatched

after Richard's accession, and it earnestly petitioned for the
prolongation of the existing powers of the House. Governor,
councillors, and burgesses all appear to have united in this
prayer.

The House, convening about a year after Richard had
resigned the Protectorship, reasserted its right to an exclusive
authority and ordered that all writs should run in its name.
Other measures demonstrated equally clearly that this body
had not given up its claim to absolute independence. Its
final act, however, was soon to prove that the old order had
come back again in its most subservient form—the burgesses
elected Berkeley to the office of governor. During the interregnum,
he had remained in Virginia.