SIR JOHN HARVEY.
John Harvey was commissioned Governor of the Colony March 26,
1628, and knighted soon after. He had been one of the Commissioners
sent in 1623 to procure evidence to be used against the Virginia Company
to secure the annulling of the charter, and was a member of the
provisional government in 1625. He arrived in Virginia in March, 1630.
He was one of the most rapacious, tyrannical and unpopular of the
royal governors, and in the contest of Colonel William Claiborne with
George Calvert, of Maryland, for the possession of Kent Island, Harvey—actuated,
it was charged, by motives of private interest—sided with
Maryland in the disputes, and rendered himself so obnoxious that an
assembly was called for the 7th of May, 1635, to hear complaints against
him. Before it met, however, he consented to go to England to answer
the charges. He was remstated by Charles I. as Governor, by commission
dated April 2, 1634, but in November, 1639, was displaced by Sir Francis
Wyatt.
