Virginia Assembly, 1619. Hart's Con temporaries, I, No. 65. Ordinance 32. Indentured şervants. inhabitants of each plantation or other convenient local unit. These representatives of the people, with the Governor and Council, were to form a General Assembly. Yeardley at once carried out his instructions, and the first representative legislative body in the history of America. met in the church at Jamestown in 1619. Dale's Laws were at once repealed and a much milder code substituted. Every one was still required to attend divine service according to the Church of England twice each Sunday, but the penalty for infraction of the rule was reduced to three shillings for each default. Many of the new laws restrained personal liberty; while others restricted the production of tobacco and encouraged the cultivation of food stuffs. In 1621 Sir Thomas Wyatt succeeded Yeardley as governor. He was directed by his instructions to hold annual assemblies and to send the laws as they were made to England for ratification by the company. It was further provided, however, that when the administration under the new order of affairs should become somewhat fixed, the General Court of the company in London and the General Assembly of the colony in Virginia should exercise each a negative on the acts of the other; but this provision never came into effective operation. 44. Introduction of Forced Labor. With increasing prosperity came a better class of colonists: many men of substance and ability emigrated to Virginia; they acquired large tracts of land and cultivated tobacco on an extensive scale. In this way was created an urgent demand for cheap, unskilled labor. The English recoiled instinctively from the task of enslaving the North American Indians; they preferred to live by the forced labor of their countrymen. Shiploads of convicts, of runaways, and of persons who had been kidnapped were sent to Virginia to be bound out as servants or apprentices for a term of years, or perhaps for their lives, as the case might be. These were the indentured servants, or "indented servants," as they were usually termed in the colony. Many poor persons 1619] Virginia under the Royal Governors 67 introduced, of reputable life voluntarily adopted this means to secure a new start in the world. The same year (1619) that saw Negro the establishment of representative institutions witnessed slavery also the introduction of negro slavery. The first negroes 1619. were brought to Jamestown in a Dutch vessel and may be regarded as a chance importation, not one made in any way to answer a demand already in existence. Employers appear to have preferred the forced labor of whites to that of blacks; slavery in consequence increased very slowly, and it was not until the middle of the century that slaves can be said to have formed an important element in the population. 45. Overthrow of the Virginia Company, 1624. — The Puritans, who were now in control of the Virginia Company, were not at all to the taste of King James; they did not always heed his requests, and the General Courts of the corporation afforded them a convenient opportunity to meet and concert plans for political opposition to the king's measures. It was determined to overthrow the company. James had now reached that part of his reign when he found himself obliged to proceed with great caution, as war with Spain had again broken out. With his habitual cunning, he appointed a commission to collect evidence and to excite animosity against the company in Virginia. This plan, however, was not successful; but an Indian massacre (1622) gave the government the opportunity to allege against the company that it could not protect its colonists. The charter was annulled in 1624 by a decree of the court of King's Bench; the mode of procedure was legal, but the act was one of Stuart despotism. 46. Virginia under the Royal Governors, 1624-52. - The fall of the Virginia Company brought slight change to Virginia: the royal governors enjoyed about the same powers that Yeardley and Wyatt had exercised; but it is not certain that assemblies were held in the years immediately following the downfall of the company. Meantime James had died, and the new king, Charles I, was greatly The end of the Virginia Company, 1624. The Assembly of 1629. Opposition to Governor Harvey. the charter. in need of funds to maintain the government of England without having recourse to Parliament (p. 81). He, or his ministers, conceived the idea that a handsome profit might be made from a monopoly of the tobacco trade. The cooperation of the Virginians was necessary to the successful working of the plan, and a General Assembly was held in Virginia (1629) to secure their consent to the scheme. The colonists refused to become parties to the arrangement, but the holding of the assembly was important, as it proved to be the precedent for the summoning of legislative bodies thereafter in all the royal provinces. The first of the royal governors to attract attention was John Harvey, who won the colonists' dislike by his arbitrary and extortionate conduct. Besides, the Virginians were incensed by his kind treatment of Lord Baltimore's colonists when they came to settle Maryland, for that province had been carved out of territory granted to the Virginia Company. To understand the point at issue, it is Effects of the necessary to examine the effect of the revocation of the revocation of Virginia charter. According to the theory under which the crown acted, all lands still owned by the company reverted to the king and might be disposed of by him at his pleasure. In this case, he granted the northern part of Virginia to Cecilius Calvert, second Baron Baltimore. Harvey, as representative of the king in America, was obliged to do what he could to forward his master's wishes, but this only increased the hatred with which the Virginians regarded their ruler. Some of the bolder among them arrested him, sent him to England to answer their complaints, and a few of them even went to England to lay their case before the king. Harvey was soon sent back, but, on the other hand, nothing was done to punish the Virginians for their contempt of the king's representative. Sir William In 1642 Sir William Berkeley arrived in Virginia as governor. His rule was the longest in colonial history, lasting from 1642 to 1652, and again from 1659 to 1676. During the first of these periods the Puritans appeared in 1629] Virginia during Puritan Supremacy 69 Virginia and made many converts to their peculiar beliefs. Berkeley and the leading men were alarmed at their success and made sharp laws against them. In the end most of them crossed the Potomac to Maryland. 47. Virginia during the Puritan Supremacy. - While Berkeley had been governing faithfully for king and church. in Virginia, both king and church had succumbed to the Puritans (p. 82) in England. The execution of Charles I aroused no answering echo in the Old Dominion. On the contrary, Berkeley sought to convert the colony into an asylum for the party which had suffered defeat in England; but the second Charles and his followers generally preferred the license and luxury of European exile to the wilderness of America, and few cavaliers came to Virginia. As Execution of The Puritans and Virginia. The Puritans, now supreme in England, offered most generous terms to the colonists of Virginia, Maryland, and New England,-nothing less than free trade between the colonies and the mother country, on condition that the colonists would confine their commerce to England. the case then stood, the proposition was for free trade within the British Empire, much as there is now free trade within the United States, in both cases trade with foreign countries being restricted in order to build up certain industries. The Virginians would have none of it. For a few years the affairs of Ireland and Scotland occupied the energies of the Puritan rulers of England. In 1652 they Hart's Conturned their attention for a moment to the rebellious temporaries, I, No. 69. colony; a small fleet sailed across the Atlantic, and the Virginians surrendered without striking a blow. The terms offered by the conquerors were singularly liberal: the colonists were required to recognize the authority of the Commonwealth; in other respects they were left to govern themselves. For six years the Virginians elected their own governors, enjoyed the most complete independence they ever had before 1776, and were very prosperous. In Stedman and 1659, on the fall of the Protectorate in England, they Hutchinson, chose Berkeley as governor, and he was in office in 1660. Hammond's "Leah and I, 343. Reasons for founding Maryland. Winsor's 517-529; Browne's 48. The Calverts and Maryland. — Maryland owed its rise to the action of two remarkable men,- George and Cecilius Calvert, father and son. They desired to build America, III, up for the benefit of their family a great landed estate in America and also hoped that their fellow Catholics would find an asylum in the colony. The Calverts were men of broad and statesmanlike views, and deserve the greatest credit for the liberal spirit which they displayed in the management of their colonies. Calverts, ch. ii; Hart's Contemporaries, I, No. 72. 185 George Calvert, the father, was a prominent man in England during the certain, George Calvert became a Roman Catholic; in 1625 he withdrew from office, announcing his conversion; but the real reason for his resignation was a distrust of the abilities of Buckingham - the king's favorite - and a dislike of his capricious mode of treatment of those around the king. Calvert now actively embarked in schemes of colonization. His first venture, a settlement in Newfoundland, ended in failure, and seriously affected his financial position. He then determined to transfer the scene of his colonial enterprise to the more genial climate of Virginia, and obtained from the king a grant of the unoccupied land north of the Potomac. George Calvert died before the |