Abstract
The relationship between King Charles II and his subjects in the royal colony of Virginia rested on reciprocity. The monarch expected the colonists to remain loyal, generate customs revenue, and provide economic advantages to English merchants, mariners, and manufacturers. In return, the colonists expected the king to protect them and, when things went wrong, to redress their grievances. This chapter begins by describing the various forms of insecurity that caused Virginians to rely on the king for protection. Then it discusses their unsuccessful attempt, in 1677, to persuade Charles to use his dispensing prerogative to exempt them from a parliamentary tax statute that the colonists found unduly burdensome. The aim is to explore the colonial dimensions of the dispensing power and to examine the crown’s hostility to the use of grievance petitions as vehicles for questioning imperial policies formulated by the king and parliament.
The chapter concludes that Charles II viewed colonists as second-class subjects who were not entitled to the same prerogative relief from oppressive statutes that deserving English merchants and mariners had often received. The crown demanded that colonists bow to the will of a ‘national’ legislature in which they were unrepresented. Parliament insisted that overseas Englishmen subordinate their interests to those of metropolitan Englishmen. Despite frequent reminders of their inferior status within an empire founded on inequality and coercion, Virginians would remain loyal to the monarch for another century, a consequence of their enduring insecurity and their naïve faith in the benevolence of a distant king.
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06 April 2021
The original version of this chapter was revised as there was an error in the second line from the bottom of page 257 in Chapter 13.
Notes
- 1.
York County Deeds, Orders, Wills (1657–62), pp. 93r–93v. The county court records are available on microfilm at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia (afterwards LV).
- 2.
‘Some Acts Not in Hening’s Statutes: The Acts of Assembly, October 1660’, ed. J. Kukla, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83 (1975), p. 87.
- 3.
The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, ed. W. W. Hening, 13 vols. (Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, 1809–23), ii, p. 49.
- 4.
D. Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley, California, 1989), pp. 21, 64, 171; R. Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 153–4; T. Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London, 2005), p. 94.
- 5.
The Northampton justices made their appropriation on 29 October 1661. LV, Northampton County Order Book (1657–64), p. 111. Similarly, the magistrates of Lancaster County appropriated 600 pounds of tobacco on 23 October 1661 to reimburse their sheriff for the wine that he had provided at that county’s coronation celebration. LV, Lancaster County Orders (1655–66), p. 161.
- 6.
LV, Northampton County Order Book (1657–64), p. 128 (order issued 29 April 1662). The defendant apologised, and the court released him under a good-behaviour bond. Ibid., f. 132.
- 7.
Four of the five justices who entered the order punishing their fellow colonist’s lèse-majesté towards Charles II subscribed their names to the Engagement on 25 March 1652. LV, Northampton County Orders, Deeds, Wills (1651–54), f. 188, p. 189. All four served as magistrates during the Interregnum, as did the fifth, who joined the court in 1656.
- 8.
On the regicide’s role in shaping Virginians’ royalism, see J. McElligott, ‘Atlantic Royalism: Polemic, Censorship, and the “Declaration and Protestation of the Governour and Inhabitants of Virginia”’, in Royalists and Royalism During the Interregnum, ed. J. McElligott and D. L. Smith (Manchester, 2010), p. 229. In McElligott’s view, Virginians’ decision not to resist the Commonwealth stemmed not from a deficiency of Royalist sentiment, but from ‘an entirely rational desire… not to fight against overwhelming odds in the wake of the complete rout of Charles II’s forces at Worcester in September 1651’: Ibid.
- 9.
According to David Hackett Fischer, two-thirds of the founders of Virginia’s ‘high elite’ (defined as holders of major offices between 1680 and 1776) arrived in the colony between 1640 and 1669. A majority immigrated between 1647 and 1660. Many had served as officers during the British Civil Wars. ‘Of those whose opinions are known, 98% supported the king in the Civil War’: D. H. Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York, 1989), pp. 212–18 (quotation at p. 218). For a discussion of the economic and political factors that influenced Virginians’ allegiances during the Civil War and early Interregnum, see S. D. Crow, ‘“Your Majesty’s Good Subjects”: A Reconsideration of Royalism in Virginia, 1642–1652’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 87 (1979), 158–73.
- 10.
On the exploitation that created a volatile society in Virginia, see E. S. Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), pp. 215–49.
- 11.
‘Berkeley to Thomas Ludwell, 1 July 1676’, in The Papers of Sir William Berkeley, 1605–1677, ed. W. M. Billings with the assistance of M. Kimberly (Richmond, Virginia, 2007), p. 537.
- 12.
Ibid., pp. 318–22, 422–5; W. M. Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2004), pp. 207–8, 224–5.
- 13.
W. M. Billings, A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century (Richmond, Virginia, 2004), p. 16 (discussing Charles I’s instructions to Governor Sir Francis Wyatt in 1639, authorising annual meetings of the General Assembly to enact laws for the colony).
- 14.
For more on this point, see J. R. Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (New York, 2003), pp. 149–50. I have borrowed the term ‘grandees’ from B. Tarter, The Grandees of Government: The Origins and Persistence of Undemocratic Politics in Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia, 2013).
- 15.
The historiography on Bacon’s Rebellion is extensive. See, e.g., T. J. Wertenbaker, Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon’s Rebellion and Its Leader (Princeton, New Jersey, 1940); W. E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1957); Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom, chapter 13; S. Saunders Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (New York, 1984); W. M. Billings, J. E. Selby and T. W. Tate, Colonial Virginia: A History (White Plains, New York, 1986), chapter 4; Billings, Sir William Berkeley, chapters 13–14; Samuel Wiseman’s Book of Record: The Official Account of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, 1676–1677, ed. M. L. Oberg (Lanham, Maryland, 2005), pp. 1–27; B. Tarter, ‘Bacon’s Rebellion, the Grievances of the People, and the Political Culture of Seventeenth-Century Virginia’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 119 (2011), 3–41; J. D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America (New York, 2012); and Tarter, The Grandees of Government, chapter 3.
- 16.
‘Sir John Barry and Colonel Francis Moryson to Berkeley, 8 February 1677’, in Samuel Wiseman’s Book of Record, ed. Oberg, p. 73.
- 17.
‘A Declaracion to his Majesties Loving Subjects of Virginia, 6 Feb. 1677’, in ibid., pp. 68–9.
- 18.
‘Commission from Charles II to Jeffreys, Berry, and Moryson, 10 Oct. 1676’, in ibid., p. 35. The king’s instructions, issued 9 November 1676, directed the commissioners to inform themselves ‘of all Grievances in general, but particularly of that which the people seem so much concerned in, the great Salary paid to the Members of the Assembly’. The commissioners were supposed to redress that grievance immediately. Ibid., p. 37.
- 19.
‘A Declaracion to his Majesties Loving Subjects of Virginia, 6 Feb. 1677’, in ibid., p. 69.
- 20.
Virginia had the following counties in 1677: Accomack, Charles City, Elizabeth City, Gloucester, Henrico, Isle of Wight, James City, Lancaster, Lower Norfolk, Middlesex, Nansemond, New Kent, Northampton, Northumberland, Rappahannock, Stafford, Surry, Warwick, Westmoreland, and York.
- 21.
Middlesex County did not respond, and Northumberland County answered that it did not have any grievances. Bacon’s Rebellion: Abstracts of Materials in the Colonial Records Project, ed. J. D. Neville (Jamestown, Virginia, 1976), pp. 64–6, 74, 338–68.
- 22.
Tarter, ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’, p. 5.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 21.
- 24.
‘Commissioners to Secretary of State Joseph Williamson, 27 Mar. 1677’, in Samuel Wiseman’s Book of Record, ed. Oberg, p. 104. Arnold was tried before a jury at a court of oyer and terminer held in Governor Berkeley’s house, Green Spring. Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, ed. H. R. McIlwaine (2nd edn., Richmond, Virginia, 1979), p. 457.
- 25.
This phrase comes from ‘William Sherwood’s Account of the Assembly’s Proceedings’, in The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1700, ed. W. M. Billings (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2007), p. 341.
- 26.
‘An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and for the Better Securing the Plantation Trade’, 25 Charles II, Cap. 7 (1673).
- 27.
‘An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation’, 12 Charles II, Cap. 18 (1660), confirmed by 13 Charles II, Cap. 14 (1661).
- 28.
See the expanded definition of ‘English’ in ‘An Act for Preventing Frauds and Regulating Abuses in His Majesties Customs’, 14 Charles II, Cap. 11, § 5 (1662).
- 29.
‘An Act for the Encouragement of Trade’, 15 Charles II, Cap. 7 (1663).
- 30.
For a discussion of the enforcement of these laws in late-Stuart Virginia, see J. R. Pagan, ‘English Statutes in Virginia, 1660–1714’, in ‘Esteemed Bookes of Lawe’ and the Legal Culture of Early Virginia, ed. W. M. Billings and B. Tarter (Charlottesville, Virginia, 2017), pp. 61–8.
- 31.
For the bonding requirements, see the Navigation Act, 12 Charles II, Cap. 18, § 19 (1660).
- 32.
Ibid., § 18. All quotations from acts of parliament come from The Statutes of the Realm, 12 vols. (London, 1810–25).
- 33.
Morgan, American Freedom-American Slavery, p. 277; M. G. Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1960), p. 19.
- 34.
‘Plantation Duties Act’, 25 Charles II, Cap. 7, § 5. The main aim of the 1673 Act was to enforce the Navigation Act rather than to generate large amounts of additional revenue. R. Bliss, Revolution and Empire: English Politics and the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Manchester, 1990), pp. 172–4.
- 35.
J. M. Sosin, English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Transatlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1980), p. 66.
- 36.
Rappahannock County was created in 1656 and went out of existence in 1692, when all of its territory north of the Rappahannock River was organised as Richmond County, and the part below the river became Essex County. Sittingbourne parish (which is referred to in the Bacon’s Rebellion documents as ‘Citternborne’ and ‘Citterbourne’) ceased to exist in 1732. At the time of the rebellion, the Sittingbourne parish church was located in what is now Essex County. G. C. Mason, ‘The Colonial Churches of Essex and Richmond Counties’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 53 (1945), pp. 4, 5, 11.
- 37.
TNA, CO 1/39, f. 201. I viewed this document on microfilm 93, Virginia Colonial Records Project (available in Richmond at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture and the Library of Virginia). The Rappahannock petition was addressed to the three royal commissioners. A transcription appears in ‘Causes of Discontent in Virginia, 1676’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 3 (1895), p. 38.
- 38.
TNA, CO 1/39, f. 245v (also on microfilm 93). The Lower Norfolk petition was addressed to Berkeley, the house of Burgesses, and the royal commissioners. Transcriptions appear in Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1659/60–1693, ed. H. R. McIlwaine (Richmond, Virginia, 1914), pp. 109–10, and Papers of Sir William Berkeley, ed. Billings, pp. 594–6.
- 39.
A person who did not ‘have moneyes wherewith to answere and pay’ the penny tax could give the customs collector ‘such a proportion of the Commodities to be shipped as shall amount to the Value’ of the total tax. 25 Charles II, Cap. 7, § 7.
- 40.
R. R. Menard, ‘The Tobacco Industry in the Chesapeake Colonies, 1617–1730: An Interpretation’, Research in Economic History 5 (1980), p. 159.
- 41.
TNA, CO 1/39, f. 245v.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
This understanding of legislative jurisdiction would change in the eighteenth century as a result of the rise of parliamentary sovereignty. See note 70 infra.
- 45.
K. MacMillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World: The Legal Foundations of Empire, 1576–1640 (New York, 2006), p. 6.
- 46.
For more on extension, see Pagan, ‘English Statutes’, pp. 60–1.
- 47.
TNA, CO 1/39 f. 245v.
- 48.
C. A. Edie, ‘Tactics and Strategies: Parliament’s Attack upon the Royal Dispensing Power 1597–1689’, American Journal of Legal History 29 (1985), p. 198.
- 49.
25 Charles II, Cap. 7, § 5; 14 Charles II, Cap. 11.
- 50.
Perceived abuses of the suspending and dispensing powers by Charles II and James II, especially in regard to ecclesiastical statutes, eventually led to the abolition of those powers in 1689. ‘An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown’, 1 William and Mary, Sess. 2, Cap. 2 (1689). Under this statute, ‘the pretended Power of Suspending of Laws or the Execution of Laws by Regall Authority without Consent of Parlyament is illegall’, and ‘the pretended Power of Dispensing with Laws or the Execution of Laws by Regall Authoritie as it hath beene assumed and exercised of late is illegall’. On the controversies leading to the abolition of the suspending and dispensing prerogatives, see Edie, ‘Tactics and Strategies’, p. 209, note 25, pp. 220–34.
- 51.
D. Dixon, ‘Godden v. Hales Revisited – James II and the Dispensing Power’, Journal of Legal History 27 (2006), pp. 134–5.
- 52.
Edie, ‘Tactics and Strategies’, p. 199.
- 53.
G. Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 197; Edie, ‘Tactics and Strategies’, pp. 199–200.
- 54.
On the slippery distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum, see Dixon, ‘Godden v. Hales’, pp. 144–7.
- 55.
Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, ed. W. L. Grant and J. Munro, 6 vols. (London, 1906–12), i, pp. 369–70 (1663).
- 56.
Ibid., pp. 638–9 (1675).
- 57.
Ibid., pp. 390–1 (1665).
- 58.
Ibid., pp. 392 (1665), 430, 434 (1667). Merchants whose foreign vessel arrived in England four days after the expiration of the general exemption received a further dispensation because their ship had been delayed by ‘contrary Winds’. Ibid., pp. 462–3 (1668).
- 59.
Ibid., pp. 576 (1672), 599, 612 (1674).
- 60.
Ibid., pp. 402–3 (1665), 568–9 (1671).
- 61.
Ibid., pp. 496–7 (1668).
- 62.
Ibid., pp. 318–20 (1661).
- 63.
Ibid., pp. 676–8 (1676).
- 64.
Ibid.; Samuel Wiseman’s Book of Record, ed. Oberg, pp. 36–8.
- 65.
‘The Answers, Most Humble Report, Opinion & Remarks of us His Majesties Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Grievances of his Majesties Plantation of Virginia’, in Samuel Wiseman’s Book of Record, ed. Oberg, p. 217.
- 66.
See ‘Berkeley to Thomas Ludwell, 16 Feb. 1676 and 1 Apr. 1676’, in Papers of Sir William Berkeley, ed. Billings, pp. 498–9, 507. Berkeley claimed that King Philip’s War had transformed New Englanders from sellers into buyers. They purchased so much ‘corne and provisions’ in Virginia that the General Assembly, in preparation for their own war against the Indians, banned exports of those commodities from early April to the end of July 1676: Statutes at Large, ed., Hening, ii, pp. 338–9.
- 67.
Samuel Wiseman’s Book of Record, ed. Oberg, p. 217.
- 68.
Ibid., p. 249.
- 69.
Tarter, ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’, p. 5.
- 70.
Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1765–69), i, pp. 105, 101. In 1766, parliament passed the Declaratory Act, which claimed that the king-in-parliament ‘had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever’. 6 George III, Cap. 12 (1766).
- 71.
See Wertenbaker, Torchbearer of the Revolution.
- 72.
Thomas Jefferson, ‘Draft of Instructions to the Virginia Delegates in the Continental Congress, July 1774’, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. J. Boyd, et al., 42 vols. (Princeton, New Jersey, 1950–present), i, p. 135. The draft was published in pamphlet form as A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Williamsburg, Virginia, 1774). Jefferson advocated a robust use of the royal veto to curb parliament’s encroachment on colonists’ liberties, but he strongly criticised the crown’s disallowance of colonial legislation. ‘Jefferson was happy to entertain the thought of the king vetoing parliamentary bills, but, in the case of the colonies, he concluded that the king’s “shameful” abuse of the negative voice would “if not reformed” require “some legal restrictions”’. E. Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014), p. 60 (quoting Summary View).
- 73.
‘Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence, June 1776’, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Boyd, et al., i, p. 425. The same charge appeared in the final version of the document, as amended by Congress. ‘The Declaration of Independence as Adopted by Congress, July 1776’, in ibid., p. 431.
- 74.
‘Jefferson’s “original Rough draught”’, in ibid., p. 426. The final version of the Declaration contained similar language. Ibid., p. 431.
- 75.
‘Jefferson’s “original Rough draught”’, ibid., p. 426. In the final version of the Declaration of Independence, Congress changed Jefferson’s wording slightly, denouncing George III as a ‘Tyrant’ who was ‘unfit to be the ruler of a free people’. Ibid., p. 431.
- 76.
‘The Declaration of Independence as Adopted by Congress’, ibid., p. 432.
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Pagan, J.R. (2020). Loyalty and Insecurity in Charles II’s Virginia. In: Ward, M., Hefferan, M. (eds) Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_13
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