University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXX

ADMINISTRATION OF CULPEPER

In the midst of a political atmosphere that had not yet
had time to calm down, Lord Culpeper, the new governor,
arrived. This was in 1680. The old coterie of Jeffreys's enemies
had heard of his appointment with great satisfaction
because they thought that, as Lady Berkeley's kinsman, he
would quite likely bend very decidedly to their faction's
wishes. The ground swell of the rebellion still perceptibly
heaved. The survivors on either side of the great controversy
were still exasperated by implacable memories—one party
recalled the heavy taxes, the confiscations, and the executions;
the other, the plunderings by irresponsible troopers and the
supposed shielding of the wrong-doers by Jeffreys.

Perhaps, the most curious phenomenon that sprang out of
this witches' caldron of black passions was the reversal of
leadership. Some of the men who were most active as
Berkeley's lieutenants in oppressing the people, both before
and after the rebellion, gradually assumed, with perfect sincerity,
the character of their defenders from the strokes of
official tyranny. The House of Burgesses, in consequence of
this unexpected change of attitude on the part of individuals,
became, in a few years, a more popular and a more independent
body. How did this new attitude come about? It arose from
the disposition of the English Government, acting through
the Privy Council and Board of Trade and Plantations, to
supervise the Colony's affairs more closely, and to interfere
with them more arbitrarily. Conflicts with the General
Assembly resulted from the annulments of its acts, denial of
its exclusive right of taxation, the withdrawal of its right to

Lord Culpeper

elect its own clerk, and the questioning of other privileges of
that body of which it was equally jealous. This attitude on
the part of the English Government very naturally solidified
all classes of Virginians and united them by new ties of
sympathy and concurrent action. The ablest men in the
community became the leaders of the people as a body; and
such men were found chiefly in the ranks of Berkeley's former
partisans.

Culpeper was the first in the long line of subservient governors
whom the more intrusive spirit of the King and Privy
Council sought so unscrupulously to use. Poor creature in
character as he was, it should not be forgotten in his favor
that absolute obedience to the illiberal and arbitrary government
in England was the condition of his retention of his
office. His policy was not his own. It was dictated by the
men in power across the water who were steeped in the selfishness
and blindness of the Stuart dynasty. It is probable
that even Culpeper, if he had been left to act on his own
observations, would have been more responsive to influences
promotive of the Colony's welfare.

There were two clauses in his commission which in themselves
alone demonstrated the need of co-operation on the
part of the Virginians, if privileges which they had considered
to be inalienable were to be preserved. First, the right of
summoning the General Assembly was taken away from the
governor and lodged in the king. Not until the latter had
assented to the necessity of a session and authorized the
governor to issue the writs, could that body legally convene,
should this clause in the commission be put in force.

But the second clause was still more subversive of the
Assembly's dignity and independence. When it had been
called together—which might occur only at long intervals—all
its bills were to be dictated by the governor, who was, however,
required beforehand to send the drafts to England for
approval. It was only after this approval had been obtained
that they could be laid before the burgesses. A wide ocean

alone thwarted the consummation of these arbitrary regulations.
Distance made their enforcement practically impossible;
and this fact the King, the Privy Council, and the Board
of Trade were in time constrained to acknowledge. Even they
hesitated to deprive the General Assembly of all right over
the levying of taxes; and in the end, they seem to have contented
themselves with an occasional transmission of a revenue
bill—such, for instance, as the one for the imposition of
two shillings on the exported hogshead, which the Assembly
was instructed to enact into law.

In the beginning, Culpeper leaned as expected towards the
former partisans of Berkeley. Ludwell was restored to his
seat in the council in spite of his exclusion by royal order; and
Robert Beverley, though he had been deprived of the right
to hold any office, was reelected to the clerkship of the House.
The General Assembly was chiefly drawn from the ranks of
those who had opposed Governor Jeffreys' measures; and yet
that body resisted with indignant firmness an attempt on
Culpeper's part to dictate the passage of a revenue bill which
he had submitted for adoption. When he submitted it for
the second time, the members declined to discuss it. He then
endeavored to mould them to his will by threats, promises, and
bribes; but they continued to turn a deaf ear until he warned
them that, unless the bill became a law, the collection of quitrents
would have to be more rigidly enforced; and they only
consented then upon his assurance that he would ask for the
repeal of the tobacco export tax, which was subsequently
granted by the Board of Trade.

Culpeper showed no affection for the Colony. He did not
go out to Virginia until the second year after his appointment,
and he only went then under a threat from the King that, if he
did not depart at once, his commission would be cancelled. A
brief sojourn at Jamestown whetted his desire to return to the
amusements of London, and in August, 1680, he embarked for
home, with the complacent announcement that the Colony's
peace and prosperity were now such that he could leave without

detriment to the public interests. But he had simply
glossed over the true state of affairs. A feeling of depression
really prevailed, owing to the low price of tobacco, which
was said to be now so unprofitable that it did not sell for
enough to defray the cost of the necessaries of life. It was
even feared that the pangs of hunger would cause the servants
to rise and plunder the stores for food. Not only the planters
in Virginia, but their merchants in England urged the Assembly
to pass an act that would provide for the general cessation
of tobacco culture for the period of one year.

Chicheley was now again serving as deputy-governor, and
although forbidden to summon a new Assembly, before Culpeper's
return, to consider the question of cessation, he
thought it expedient to call that body together to decide
whether the Colony should support the soldiers sent over in
1676, now that the King had declined to provide for them any
longer. The burgesses convening refused to restrict their
discussions to so small a point, and asked Chicheley's permission
to pass an act legalizing a cessation, on the ground that
they dared not face their constituents unless they had by their
votes met the popular demand for it. The deputy-governor,
apprehensive of the Privy Council's disapproval, refused to
comply, and as the burgesses remained obstinate, he prorogued
the Assembly. On their return to their homes, the members
of that body aroused great anger among the people by their
report of the obstacles which had been thrown in their way
to prevent a ballot in favor of cessation, and large bodies of
men determined to carry out that policy by force. The plants
now springing in the field, they exclaimed, must be destroyed.

The crusade began in Gloucester, and was broken up by
soldiers only after enormous damage had been done. It began
again in New Kent, where persons with sticks and knives in
their hands slashed right and left among the stalks. This
crusade also was suppressed with troops. Then a third one,
on a still larger scale, started in Middlesex and the adjacent
counties, and as it was pressed with feverish energy during

the night as well as during the day it could not be so easily
halted.

While the plants were being shattered to tatters, a rumor
crept far and wide that many of the Colony's leading men were
secretly in sympathy with the outbreak. The finger pointed
most confidently to Robert Beverley, who had vehemently
opposed the adjournment of the last Assembly without agreeing
upon an act of cessation. The ardent supporter of Berkeley
in his wicked meanness, the enemy of Jeffreys in his
beneficent policies, had become—at least in the popular view
—the champion of popular rights. So strong was the suspicion
of instigation leveled at him that he was arrested by
the government at Jamestown and hurried to prison on board
of a ship in the Rappahannock River, and afterwards was
sent off to the Eastern Shore to avoid all chance of a rescue
by the angry planters. Evading the clutches of his guard, he
returned to his home in Middlesex; but was quickly recaptured
and clapped again into jail across the Bay, where he was
detained during several months, although he continued to
demand the writ of Habeas Corpus. He was finally released
on giving bail amounting in modern values to fifty thousand
dollars; and he was also deprived of his license as an attorney
and of the privilege of holding office. But the most careful
inquiry by Culpeper on his return in 1683 failed to convict him
of actual complicity with the rioters.

It was as rioters that Chicheley had treated even the
ringleaders of the commotion; but Culpeper, bringing up an
old English statute which punished lawlessness that led
directly or indirectly to the diminution of the English customs
as treason, had these ringleaders arraigned in court for that
crime and two of them condemned to the gallows. His
harshness—which had the approval of the English government—seems
all the more cruel in the light of the fact that
his new instructions permitted him to order a cessation, should
he find, on his arrival in Virginia, that the people's condition
really required it. But fearful lest his tenure of his office

should be jeopardized by the heavy decline in the volume of
the English customs, which was certain to follow such a
cessation, he advised and encouraged the planting of the
largest crop of tobacco that had been seen in the Colony for
a decade—one which, he boasted, would add fifty thousand
pounds sterling to the English revenues that year. It was
true, he confessed, that the price of the commodity would
fall still lower, and that the people, in consequence, would
probably again resort to plant-cutting as a remedy; but should
they do so, he could be trusted, he said, to put their lawlessness
down with an iron hand.

Overwhelmed by the monotony of life in Virginia, Culpeper,
without asking permission of the Privy Council,
returned to England in the spring of 1683. "I go home," he
said smugly, "for the King's service only;" but the English
Government was incredulous of his sincerity and abruptly
cancelled his letters-patent. Not even the gratification of a
gross cupidity had induced him to refrain from endangering
his tenure. The annual salary of the governor's office had
been one thousand pounds sterling, about twenty-five thousand
dollars in modern values. Culpeper bullied the General
Assembly into paying him two thousand pounds sterling—an
enormous drain on the resources of a colony then immersed
in the blackest poverty.

The moral caliber of the man was revealed in a stroke of
financial jugglery which he did not hesitate to commit during
his stay at Jamestown. He had brought over from England
the fund needed to cover the wages of the troops transported
to Virginia to suppress the rebellion—which were very much
in arrear—and also a large sum due numerous citizens for the
soldiers' board and lodging, which had been furnished by these
citizens without return during several years. Instead of
paying over this money at the normal rate of the pieces of
eight, the only coin then in circulation in the Colony, he used
it to buy up all the pieces of eight that he could lay his eager
fingers on, and although the ratio was then only five, he

announced that, thereafter, the ratio would be six, and at six
he settled the balances due the troops and the householders.
Then by proclamation the old ratio of five was restored, which
left the amount of his own salary, when paid, unreduced.

In the foul odor which this act of trickery created he
departed, with his pockets bulging with these and other
unscrupulous gains. He was not, however, of the stuff of
which a real tyrant is made. As a matter of fact, his calibre
was not big enough for such a character on an imposing scale.
At bottom, he was a corrupt man of pleasure, who was always
sighing for London. He gave rein to a mean greediness of
spirit while in the Colony in order to procure the money with
which to gratify his tastes so soon as he should return to
England.