exercised so well, the English parliament was in session; and a gleam of hope revived in the company, as in April, 1624, Ferrar presented their elaborate petition for redress to the grand inquest of the kingdom. The house of commons took up the business reluctantly, and appointed the twenty-eighth of April for its consideration. But on that day, before any progress was made, there came a letter from the king: "That he both already had, and would also hereafter take the affair of the Virginia company into his own most serious consideration and care; and that, by the next parliament, they should all see he would make it one of his masterpieces, as it well deserved to be." The house assented by a general silence, "but not without soft muttering that any other business might in the same way be taken out of the hands of parliament." Sir Edwin Sandys was able to secure for the staple of Virginia complete protection in the English market against foreign tobacco, by a petition from the commons, which was followed by a royal proclamation. On the sixteenth of June, 1624, the last day of the Trinity term, judgment was given against the treasurer and company, and the patents were cancelled; but not till the company had fulfilled its high destiny by conceding irrevocably a liberal form of government to Englishmen in Virginia.

Meantime, commissioners arrived from the colony, and made their report to the king. They enumerated the disasters which had befallen the infant settlement; they eulogized the soil and the climate; they held up the plantations as of great national importance, and an honorable monument of the reign of King James; and they expressed a preference for the original constitution of 1606. Supported by their advice, the king resolved himself to "take care for the government of the country." In its domestic government and franchises no immediate change was made. Sir Francis Wyatt, though he had been an ardent friend of the London company, was, in August, confirmed in office; and he and his council were only empowered to govern "as fully and amplye as any governor and council resident there, at any time within the space of five years now last past." This term of five years was precisely the period of representative government; and the limi

tation formally sanctioned the continuance of popular assemblies. The king, in appointing the council in Virginia, refused to nominate the embittered partisans of the court faction, and formed the administration on the principles of accommodation. But death prevented the royal legislator from preparing for the colony a code of fundamental laws.

CHAPTER IX.

RESTRICTIONS ON COLONIAL COMMERCE.

ASCENDING the throne on the twenty-seventh of March, 1625, in his twenty-fifth year, Charles I. inherited the principles and was governed by the favorite of his father. The rejoicings in consequence of his recent nuptials with a Bourbon princess, and preparations for a parliament, left him little leisure for American affairs. In his eager pursuit of a revenue for the crown, his first Virginia measure was a proclamation, issued within a fortnight of his accession; it confirmed to Virginia and the Somer isles the exclusive supply of the British market with tobacco. After a few days a new proclamation appeared, in which he announced his fixed resolution of becoming, through his agents, the sole factor of the planters. When, early in 1626, Wyatt retired, the reappointment of Sir George Yeardley was in itself a guarantee that, as "the former interests of Virginia were to be kept inviolate," so the representative government would be maintained; for by Yeardley it had been introduced. In his commission, in which William Clayborne, described as "a person of quality and trust," is named as secretary, the monarch expressed his desire to encourage and perfect the plantation; "the same means that were formerly thought fit for the maintenance of the colony" were continued; and the power of the governor and council was limited, as in the commission of Wyatt, by a reference to the usages of the last five years. The words were interpreted as favoring the wishes of the colonists; and King Charles, intent only on a revenue, confirmed the existence of a popular assembly. Virginia rose rapidly in public esteem; in 1627 a

thousand emigrants arrived; and there was an increasing demand for the products of its soil.

In November of that year the career of Yeardley was closed by death. Posterity retains a grateful recollection of the man who first convened a representative assembly in the western hemisphere; the colonists, in a letter to the privy council, pronounced a eulogy on his virtues. The day after his burial, and in the absence of John Harvey who was named in Yeardley's commission as his eventual successor, Francis West was elected governor; for the council was authorized to elect the governor, "from time to time, as often as the case should require."

In the preceding August the king, by a letter of instructions to the governor and council, offered to contract for the whole crop of tobacco, desiring, at the same time, that an assembly might be convened to consider his proposal. In March, 1628, the assembly, in its reply, which was signed by the governor, by five members of the council, and by thirtyone burgesses, acquiesced in the royal monopoly, but protested against its being farmed out to individuals. The Virginians, happier than the people of England, enjoyed a faithful representative government; and, through resident planters who composed the council, they repeatedly made choice of their own governor. When West designed to embark for Europe, his place was supplied by the election of John Pott, the best surgeon and physician in the colony.

No sooner had the news of the death of Yeardley reached England than the king issued a commission to Harvey as governor. The instrument, while it renewed the limitations which had previously been set to the executive authority, permitted the governor to supply all vacancies occurring in the council in Virginia, subject to approval.

In 1629, after the appointment of Harvey and before his return to America, Lord Baltimore visited Virginia. Its government pursued him as a Romanist, and would not suffer him to plant within its jurisdiction. On the other hand, the people of New Plymouth were invited to abandon their cold and sterile abode for the milder regions on Delaware bay-a plain indication that Puritans were not as yet molested.

Late in the year Harvey arrived in Virginia. He met his first assembly of burgesses in 1630, a week before Easter. As his first appearance in America had been with no friendly designs, so now he was the support of those who desired large grants of land and separate jurisdictions; and he preferred the interests of his partisans and patrons, especially Lord Baltimore, to the welfare of the colony. Moreover, he held a warrant to receive for himself all fines arising from any sentence of its courts of justice. In his proceedings he was rough and passionate, pronouncing hasty judgments and quarrelling with the council; yet, while arbitrary power was rapidly advancing in England, the Virginians uninterruptedly enjoyed independent legislation; through the agency of their representatives, they levied and appropriated taxes, secured the free industry of their citizens, guarded the forts with their own soldiers at their own charge, and gave publicity to their stat utes. When the defects and inconveniences of infant legislation were remedied by a revised code, which was published with the approbation of the governor and council, the privileges which the assembly had ever claimed were confirmed. Indeed, they had not been questioned. The governor had advised that he should have, for the time being, a negative voice on all acts of legislation; and the government, in its reply, had suggested that the laws made in Virginia should stand only as propositions until the king should ratify them under his great seal; but the limitation was not introduced into his commission. De Vries, who visited Virginia in 1632-33, found reason to praise the advanced condition of the settlement, the abundance of its products, and the liberality of its government.

The community was nevertheless disturbed because fines, now the perquisites of the governor, were rashly imposed, and relentlessly exacted. In 1635, the discontent of Virginia, at the dismemberment of its territory by the patent of Lord Baltimore, was at its height. While Clayborne, who had been superseded as secretary, resisted the jurisdiction of Maryland over Kent island and over trade in the Chesapeake, Harvey courted the favor of Baltimore. The colonists were fired with indignation that their governor, who was hateful to them for his self-will and violence, should betray their territorial interests.

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