 | CHAPTER XXXI History of Virginia |  |
CHAPTER XXXI
ADMINISTRATION OF EFFINGHAM
Culpeper's successor, Lord Howard of Effingham,[1]
was of
a firmer and darker temper, and, while in Virginia, was more
occupied with the larger aspects of his office. This alone can
be said in extenuation of much of his conduct—that he was a
creature of the Stuart Government at its worst, and that,
unless he had been obedient, subservient, and zealous, he
could not have retained his position a single hour. Apparently,
however, it was perfectly congenial to him to enforce
the oppresive instructions which he received, whether promotive
of the best interests of the Virginians or the contrary.
He found in the House of Burgesses a resolute opponent, and
from the threshold of his administration, this body threw itself
across the path that he was pursuing with such a dogged
determination to set up an absolute government at Jamestown.
The tenacity with which the House had always clung
to certain privileges had only served to whet the desire of
the King and Privy Council to take those privileges away as
far as practicable; and into this selfish policy, Effingham
plunged without one scruple as to its injustice.
We have seen how obstinately the members of the Assembly
had refused to give up their exclusive right of taxation, and
how successful, in the long run, they had been in holding on
to it. But, in 1683, the English Government again sought the
destruction of that right. It had happened that, in 1662, the
Assembly had permitted the Governor and Council to lay a
special levy during a period of three years; and it was this
burgesses refused to discuss the proposed measure when it
was first brought up, and were still more emphatic in repelling
its second suggestion, though put in the specious form of
saving public expense by making it unnecessary to call them
together.
The Assembly had valued particularly its right to hear
appeals from the General Court, but this was a right which
had always acutely galled the King and Privy Council, for it
was supposed to have increased the arrogance and independence
of that body. Culpeper, acting upon instructions from
England, had endeavored to deprive the members of this great
function, but he had failed in the effort. Effingham, similarly
prompted, did not fail; and the change which he effected
could never be reversed by any influence which the colonists
could employ. The importance of the Governor and Council
was, in consequence, much enhanced, for they became thereby
the supreme judicial body in Virginia. It was they too who
had always appointed the occupants of the seats on the county
benches; and as there was no longer an appeal above the
heads of themselves, sitting as the General Court, the county
magistrates were more than ever under the thumb of the
executive administration at Jamestown.
The burgesses boldly petitioned Effingham to stop issuing
proclamations in repeal of their acts unless their consent had
been first obtained; and finding that the governor refused to
transmit their remonstrance against his action to the Privy
Council, they despatched Thomas Milner and William Sherwood
to London to submit this remonstrance in person. The
only reward of these distinguished men was to hear themselves
described by that body as "unknown persons," and to be told
on their return to Virginia that they had been deprived of
the offices of profit which they had been filling.
It is a proof of the keen discontent now prevailing in the
Colony, in consequence of these varied incidents, all looking
one way, that Effingham grew apprehensive that the news of
Virginia, would cause a popular uprising against King James,
who had now succeeded to the English throne, without any
disguise of his disloyalty to the Anglican Church. Roman
Catholics were still regarded in the Colony as enemies of its
welfare.
As if there were not already sufficient causes for dissatisfaction
and murmuring among the people, Effingham, by the
order of the English Government brought up the question of
a more thorough collection of the quitrents, always a distasteful
subject to the public mind. These rents, by the provisions
of an act passed in 1662, were to be paid in tobacco valued at
two pennies the pound; but a decline in the price of that commodity
had made the retention of the original ratio destructive
of the royal revenue from this source. In 1684, Effingham was
ordered to have the act of 1662 repealed, and the ratio properly
adjusted. The quitrents since the recall of the patent to Culpeper
and Arlington many years before, had been applied to
the support of the colonial government, and the English
authorities now proposed that the evil consequences of the
fluctuations in the value of tobacco should be removed by fixing
the payments to be made thereafter at two shillings for each
one hundred acres included in the area of a plantation. These
two shillings, however, were to be delivered in the form of
coin. This fact made the proposal impossible of enforcement,
as there was not enough metallic currency of any kind in
Virginia to settle the annual debt of each estate. The burgesses
insisted upon this fact until Effingham consented to
accept payment in tobacco at the rate of one penny the pound.
The law of 1680 providing for the erection of numerous
ports was reenacted in 1685 at the suggestion of the English
Government, and although an attempt was made, in spite of
public opposition, to create these ports, the scheme, for the
economic reasons already detailed, could not be fully carried
out. Few warehouses were built at the designated places by
the private wharves on the several rivers.
The passage of this bill was the cause of a violent wrangle
between Effingham and the burgesses. Beverley, the clerk of
the House, was accused by the governor of omitting from the
bill as adopted an amendment offered by the upper chamber
to the effect that certain fees were to be paid to the officers
at the ports. This omission was not observed by Effingham
when he signed the document, and his threat to veto the act
failed to influence the burgesses to repair the error. On the
contrary, they firmly stood by Beverley, although aware that
the mistake had been one of design. The ultimate result of
the controversy was the withdrawal from the Assembly of the
right to elect their clerk; by royal order, the power to choose
that officer was bestowed on the governor, whose servant and
not the Assembly's, he now became; but the concession was
made to the burgesses that their proceedings so far as they
wished, should be held in secret.
These various successes caused Effingham to be more resolute
than ever to push further the prerogatives of the King
over the colonists, and to widen the scope of his own personal
power. In a dispute with the Assembly in 1686, he threw
Arthur Allen and John Smith, two men of high standing, out
of their public offices, because they had refused to obey his
direct command. Charles Scarborough, a magistrate, was
also deposed for some trivial offense, and William Andrews
clapped into jail and deprived of the right of the writ of
Habeas Corpus for a considerable period, though numerous
courts were in session at the time.
As the governor's conduct grew more arbitrary and arrogant,
the opposition of the burgesses and the county officials
of all grades to his acts sharply stiffened. His principal
antagonist was Philip Ludwell, who showed his animosity by
supporting a popular petition to the King which the governor
had condemned as undutiful, and in offering destructive
amendments to the bill for ports. Effingham endeavored to
of customs, but without success. Ludwell's flippant and sarcastic
tongue, which had so often belittled Jeffreys, could not
be turned away from the hide of his more vulnerable successor
by honors or profits. He pricked him with his pointed wit
indifferent to the consequences. In the end, the governor
dropped him from the council, and refused to recognize his
right to sit in the House, though legally elected to that body.
The ground for this decision was that Ludwell was an evicted
councillor, and, therefore, ineligible to any office. But as he
continued to haunt the lobby of the Assembly, the power of
this stormy petrel to harm his antagonist was not very much
diminished.
The House was constantly exasperated by the governor's
imposition of fees that fell heavily on the backs of the people,
but filled his own pocket. The burgesses were particularly
bitter against his patent fee, as they considered it a form of
indirect taxation. They were also very much excited by his
interpretation of the effect of a royal proclamation that
annulled an act which had repealed a previous act. The
governor asserted that the previous act was revived by the
annulment of the act that repealed it, whereas the burgesses
maintained with more reason that, if this view was correct,
then every law that had been repealed, because barren of
good, could be revived by a similar proclamation. So outraged
became the Assembly that its members decided to forward a
petition of grievances to the King, notwithstanding the fact
that the council had refused to join in it; and this petition was
actually delivered by Ludwell in 1688; but before James
could weigh its contents, he was driven from the throne—an
event that caused no regret in Virginia since his one measure
of liberality, the Act of Toleration, was thought to be devised
simply to encourage the Roman Catholics throughout his
dominions. The correctness of this belief seemed to be proved
by the admission of persons of that faith to the House of
allegiance and supremacy.
The news of the invasion of England by William raised a
popular demand in Virginia for Effingham's expulsion, and
this cry grew more insistent as the report spread that bands
of papists and Iroquois were descending upon the planters
from the north, and that a universal massacre of Protestants
was impending. The accession of William and Mary to the
throne created throughout the Colony as soon as known a
sense of profound relief. The people acted as if a weight had
been rolled away from their breasts; and they, like all other
Englishmen, were justified in this feeling, for, although they
did not recover the right to elect the clerk of the House of
Burgesses, or to carry appeals to their General Assembly, they
retained the exclusive right to tax, and were preserved from
all further abuse of power by the throne.
Ludwell, as the representative of the Assembly in its opposition
to Effingham, was graciously received by the Privy
Council, and the most poignant evils of which the petition in
his hands complained were removed. Every grievance was
carefully and sensibly investigated. Although Ludwell failed
to bring the governor to the bar of justice for his personal
oppressions, that official, who was now in England, was
ordered to remain there, and to send a deputy to occupy his
old seat at Jamestown.
| CHAPTER XXXI History of Virginia | |