Conceived in Liberty (27 page)

Culpeper also faced the perennial tobacco problem. Tobacco had been suffering grievously from twofold government interference: a fall in prices due to trade restrictions imposed by the Navigation Acts, and the restrictions of compulsory cartels. The restrictions raised tobacco prices, but at the expense of the more efficient farmers and planters, of reducing trade for all, and of greatly injuring American and European consumers. Moreover, the bulk of the price fall had been because of increased tobacco production. The fact that annual tobacco output in Virginia and Maryland in the 1680s reached twenty-eight million pounds shows that, for all the complaining, tobacco was still the most profitable line of investment. The repeated attempts at compulsory cartels cannot be excused on pleas of poverty. The fact that Virginia governors repeatedly tried to force the reduction of tobacco planting without success demonstrates that the profitability of tobacco was enough to overcome even government prohibition and trade restrictions. Thus, in 1640 the planter-dominated government had passed a law compelling the burning of half the colony’s tobacco crop, fixing the price of tobacco, and relieving debtors from paying one-third of their debts for three years. In 1662, Berkeley and the leading Chesapeake planters petitioned the king to outlaw all planting and shipping of tobacco during the following year. In response, King Charles II, following the tradition of James and Charles I in wanting to compel a shift from tobacco planting, ordered the restriction of planting. Commissioners from Virginia and Maryland met in May 1663 and resolved to limit tobacco planting jointly; but though the Virginia Assembly obediently agreed, the Maryland Assembly refused. Undaunted, the Virginia planters managed to arrange a conference of commissioners from the three tobacco colonies—Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina—in the summer of 1666, and they agreed to outlaw all tobacco planting for the year of 1667. All three Assemblies then approved this plan for injuring the consumers in order to raise tobacco prices, but the colonies were saved at the last minute by the veto of Lord Baltimore for Maryland.

Now, in 1680, with tobacco crops even more bountiful, Culpeper resumed the old pressure by urging the king to prohibit all tobacco planting in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina during the following year. The plan for total prohibition, incidentally, would have particularly benefited tobacco speculators who had purchased the crop; their accumulated stocks would benefit most from the temporary price rise. Most gravely injured would be the most efficient, lowest-cost planters—as well as the consumers. When the king did not agree to total prohibition, the big planters put on pressure for a session of the Assembly to outlaw a year’s tobacco planting in Virginia alone. Crowds in each county, led by the prominent local planters, sent petitions and held meetings clamoring for an Assembly session. Under this pressure, the infirm Sir Henry Chicherley, again acting governor after Culpeper had returned to England, called a special Assembly session for April
1682. But Culpeper, at the last minute, vetoed the session, forcing it to wait until November, when he would be back in the colony.

Deprived suddenly of their Assembly session, the planters rose in the “plant cutters rebellion.” Beginning in Gloucester County on May 1, gangs of tobacco planters and their retinues engaged in an orgy of destroying tobacco plants, obviously the plants of those efficient and free-spirited planters who were willing to trust their fortunes to the marketplace. Despite arrests and patrols by the militia, the orgy of destruction spread to New Kent, Middlesex, and other counties. Lord Baltimore was moved to place armed guards along the Potomac to keep the frenzy from spreading to Maryland. The opponents of the plant cutting gained control of the Council and charged that the leader of the uprising was Major Robert Beverley, clerk of the Assembly and a leader of the Green Spring clique. They charged also—and with reason—that Chicherley was under Beverley influence. Chicherley agreed to imprison Beverley, but otherwise issued a general pardon to the criminals, with one exception: for his punishment, one tobacco saboteur was ordered to build a bridge—a bridge conveniently near Chicherley’s own plantation.

Returning to Virginia in December, Culpeper, understandably enraged at the soft treatment of the plant cutters, went overboard and declared that tobacco destruction was treason and thereupon hanged two of the leaders as an example to the people. Culpeper showed good economic sense in keeping secret and thus suppressing the king’s authorization to end tobacco planting; he realized that if the planting of tobacco were really excessive the inefficient producers would soon shift to other industries.

Lord Culpeper’s troubles with Virginia were aggravated by his unpopularity, for Culpeper, along with Lord Arlington, had received in 1673 the proprietary grant of thirty-one years of quitrents and escheats in Virginia. He had not received the right to govern, but his gaining of the governorship had been an attempt to enforce his feudalistic, proprietary claims. In 1681 Culpeper bought out Lord Arlington’s share, but on being ousted by the king in mid-1683, he was happy in 1684 to sell his proprietary rights back to the Crown in return for a royal pension of 600 pounds a year for twenty-one years.

But Culpeper’s removal by no means meant the end of conflict in the colony. On the contrary, the appointment of the despotic Francis Lord Howard began a four-year struggle in Virginia. Howard promptly launched a determined drive to exalt the royal prerogative over the Assembly and over the liberties of Virginians. Howard demanded a law to authorize the governor and Council to levy a high poll tax, up to the sum of twenty pounds of tobacco. Such a bill would eliminate the need to keep returning to the Assembly for annual appropriations. The burgesses, however, turned down the plan. Howard also wanted to revive the compulsory town-building plan and disclosed the king’s instructions to eliminate the cherished custom of allowing judicial appeals from the (royally appointed) General Court to
the General Assembly. The change meant that the administration of justice was now completely under control of the governor and his appointed officials, including the Council. Furthermore, Howard, under royal instructions, demanded that the Assembly repeal all permission granted to county courts and parish officials to make local laws, and to replace it by insisting that all local laws receive approval of the central government. But the burgesses failed to act on this proposal.

The lower house, the House of Burgesses, was understandably disturbed at this comprehensive assault on their and Virginia’s liberties, and a general struggle ensued between governor and burgesses. Howard also refused to disclose his instructions, and thus to end rule by secrecy.

When the Catholic James II succeeded to the throne in February 1685, a new issue arose to exacerbate relations between Lord Howard and the people of Virginia. For Howard was a Catholic and he promptly proceeded to fire several officials of the colony and replace them with Catholics. To suppress the ground swell of criticism, Howard forbade all seditious discourses, and Colonel Charles Scarborough, a member of the House of Burgesses, was forcibly deprived of all his public offices. In addition, Howard persistently vetoed laws passed by the Assembly, persecuted its leaders, tried to bully it into meeting his demands. In all of this the majority of the governor’s creatures, the Council, supported his actions. Another disturbing threat facing the House of Burgesses was use of the royal veto to impose laws, in effect, by vetoing their repeal. The burgesses sent a vigorous protest to the king against this practice, but the king countered by ordering Robert Beverley’s removal as clerk of the House of Burgesses in late 1686, transforming the position into one appointed by the governor.

Now that the main threat to Virginian liberties had become the Crown and the royal prerogative, the displaced Green Spring clique, out of favor, shifted to take the lead of Virginians opposed to royal encroachments. The clique was now led by Robert Beverley and Philip Ludwell, and Ludwell assumed the leadership of the liberal popular opposition to royal tyranny in the Council. Ludwell was expelled from the Council by Howard in 1687, the year of Beverley’s ouster. Howard also dismissed two other leading burgesses from all public offices.

Lord Howard raised fierce opposition by imposing a large fee of 200 pounds of tobacco for stamping official papers, and by shifting payment of quitrents from tobacco to the higher-valued sterling. Furthermore, Howard quarreled with the burgesses over the military. Howard naturally advocated a bigger militia whereas the burgesses wanted to relieve the colonists of the oppressive tax-and-resource burdens of the armed forces, and urged disbandment of the troops of the colony. Howard also struck a grievous blow at local rights and Assembly powers by personally decreeing repeal of permission given local courts and officials to make their own bylaws.

After dissolving in disgust the Assembly at the end of 1686, Lord Howard determined to continue his rule while the Assembly met in session as
little as possible. In early 1688 royal orders compelled Howard to call the Assembly in the spring to pass a law prohibiting the export of bulk tobacco. Since tobacco was exported either in bulk or in hogshead, the scheme was clearly an attempt to grant special privileges to the tobacco merchants who packed their tobacco in hogsheads by outlawing their competition. The Assembly was also asked to aid New York in its projected war against the French. But the Assembly courageously and defiantly refused such aid, since New York—it saw perceptively—was in no real danger, and since it steadfastly refused to levy still higher taxes upon Virginia. The Burgesses persisted in their refusal to bow to the royal demands. The House of Burgesses also rejected the king’s bill to outlaw bulk tobacco exports, pointing out acidly and correctly that the bill was originated by London tobacco merchants, and not even by Virginia planters.

During the Howard administration, the burgesses and the Virginians had lost the right to receive judicial appeals, to appoint their clerk, and to control certain revenues and fees. But the fierce struggle also helped retain many liberties for Virginians and the House of Burgesses—especially the general taxing power. Furthermore, a host of oppressive laws were spurned by the independent-minded Assembly.

The battle between Lord Howard and the bulk of Virginians came rudely to an end with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Howard happened to be in England when the news came of James II’s overthrow and the president of the Council became acting governor.

The Glorious Revolution had an unusually mild impact upon Virginia as compared with its effect on the other colonies, south and north. Rumors fed by anti-Catholic hysteria led the people of the Northern Neck, already disgruntled from opposing the Culpeper proprietary, to take up arms in their “defense.” The new climate meant the Crown would grant a much friendlier hearing to Virginia’s numerous grievances, and to Virginia’s agent in England, Philip Ludwell. Howard made a determined attempt to stay in office, but Ludwell finally prevailed, and the Crown ordered the end of the hated fee of 200 pounds of tobacco for the official stamping of documents. Howard kept the nominal title of governor, but Capt. Francis Nicholson, lately lieutenant governor of New York, was sent to Virginia to rule as lieutenant governor. During the Nicholson administration of 1690–92, the governor managed to harmonize with and reconcile the opposition, although no fundamental reforms were passed.

Increasingly coming to the fore was one of Virginia’s most bitter grievances—the problem of land monopoly in the Northern Neck. In 1649 Charles II had arbitrarily granted the enormous tract of land between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers to Lord Hopton and a group of his friends, including Sir John Berkeley. Hopton’s circle now had proprietary control of revenues from the area, but not of political power. In 1669, however, a renewed grant gave control of the local governmental policies at Northern Neck to
the proprietors. The proprietary menace to the Northern Neck could well have been ended when Lord Culpeper sold his proprietary claim to Virginia in 1684. But not only did the king refuse to buy the Northern Neck claim, he transformed the thirty-one-year grant into a permanent charter.

Philip Ludwell was not destined to remain long in his new role as champion of the liberties of the people. Ludwell joined the employ of Lord Culpeper as agent for managing the Neck, and soon Ludwell began to appoint government officials in the Neck area.

In early 1692, Lord Howard resigned from his nominal post as governor of Virginia and was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros, formerly head of the Dominion of New England who now came to Virginia to assume the reins of power. Andros was an arch-Tory, fond of the royal prerogative, and so he resumed all the oppressions and conflicts of the Howard era. Andros insisted on a forced town-and-port creation program, but this and another revived bill to prohibit the export of bulk tobacco failed to pass the House of Burgesses. The burgesses also refused once more to send aid to New York, pointing out incisively that New York was not Virginia’s first line of defense and indeed that the Iroquois—staunch allies of New York—were a most severe threat to Virginia. Finally, however, in 1695 the burgesses gave in to Andros’ pressure and sent military aid to New York, paying for it by a temporary liquor tax.

Andros also introduced a frightening new note into his struggle with the colonists: continued hints that Virginia land titles were really invalid. Nothing could have been better calculated to inflame the opposition of the landowners.

One of the most important men in Virginia beginning in the 1690s was the Reverend James Blair, a young Scottish Anglican who had been appointed in 1689 as representative, or “commissary,” in Virginia of the bishop of London. This was the first such appointment in America. Blair was instrumental in inducing the Assembly in 1691 to create a free governmental college, the College of William and Mary, rooted in the Anglican faith. Money for construction was raised from the Crown and the bulk of the governing trustees were selected by the Assembly, which also paid its operating support. Reverend Blair received a life appointment as president from the Assembly and was so confirmed by the bishop of London.