CHAP. alter the condition, or the affections of the Virginians. VI. The commissioners appointed by parliament, with 1643. unlimited authority over the plantations,' found no favor in Virginia. They promised, indeed, freedom from English taxation; but this immunity was already enjoyed. They gave the colony liberty to choose its own governor; but it had no dislike to Berkeley; and though there was a party for the parliament, yet the king's authority was maintained.2 The sovereignty of Charles had ever been mildly exercised. The greatest invasion of private rights was committed by the Virginians themselves; it was by their 1643. own act, that religious liberty was restrained. If Mar. the king had issued orders, that the oaths of allegiance and supremacy should be administered, the general assembly had ever, of its own accord, been zealous to preserve the unity of doctrine and worship after the forms of the English church.3 It was now specially ordered, that no minister should preach or teach, publicly or privately, except in conformity to the constitutions of the church of England, and non-conformists were banished from the colony. Strange intolerance, which attempted to shut the wildernesses of Virginia against dissenters, and could not suffer the untamed soil to be rendered arable by the discipline of puritan culture! The unsocial spirit of mutual intolerance prevented a frequent intercourse between Virginia and New-England. It was 1 Hazard, v. i. p. 533-535. 3 Hening's Statutes at Large, v. i. p. 268. 4 Act 64, Hening, v. i. p. 277. A SECOND MASSACRE. 223 VI. in vain, that the faithful ministers, who had been CHAP. invited from Boston by the puritan settlements in Virginia, carried letters from Winthrop, written to 1643. Berkeley and his council by order of the general court of Massachusetts. "The hearts of the people were much inflamed with desire after the ordinances;" but the missionaries were silenced by the state and ordered to leave the country. Sir William Berkeley was "a courtier and very malignant towards the way of the churches" in NewEngland. While Virginia thus displayed, though with comparatively little bitterness, the intolerance, which for centuries had almost universally prevailed throughout the Christian world, a scene of distress was prepared by the vindictive ferocity of the natives, with whom a state of hostility had been of long continuance. In 1643, it was enacted by the assembly, that no terms of peace should be entertained with the Indians; whom it was usual to distress by sudden marches against their settlements. But the Indians had now heard of the dissensions in 1644. England, and taking counsel of their passions, rather than of their prudence, they resolved on one more attempt at a general massacre; believing that, by midnight incursions, the destruction of the cattle and the fields of corn, they might succeed in famishing the remnant of the colonists, whom they should not be able to murder by surprise. On the eighteenth 1 Winthrop's Journal, v. ii. p. 77, 78. 95, 96, and 164, 165; Hubbard's New-England, p. 410, 411; Wonder-working Providence, b. CHAP. day of April,' the time appointed for the carnage, VI. the unexpected onset was begun upon the frontier 1644. settlements. But hardly had the Indians steeped their hands in blood, before they were dismayed by the recollection of their own comparative weakness; and trembling for the consequences of their treachery, they feared to continue their design, and fled to a distance from the colony. The number of victims had been three hundred. Measures were promptly taken by the English for protection and defence; and a war was vigorously conducted. The aged Opechancanough was easily made prisoner; and the venerated monarch of the sons of the forest, so long the undisputed lord of almost boundless hunting grounds, died in miserable captivity of wounds, inflicted by a brutal soldier. In his last moments, he chiefly regretted his exposure to the contemptuous gaze of his enemies.2 So little was apprehended, when the English were once on their guard, that, two months after the massacre, Berkeley embarked for England, leaving Richard Kemp as his successor.3 A border warfare continued; marches up and down the Indian country were ordered; yet so weak were the natives, that though the careless traveller and the straggling 1 The reader is cautioned against the inaccuracies of Beverley, Oldmixon, and, on this subject, of Burk. See Winthrop's Journal, v. ii. p. 165. Compare the note of Savage; whose sagacious conjecture is confirmed in Hening, v. i. p. 290, Act 4, session of February, 1645. 2 On the massacre, there are three contemporary guides: The statutes of the time, in Hening, v. i.; The Perfect Description of Virginia, in ii. Mass. Hist. Coll. v. ix. p. 115-117, and the Reports of the exiled Puritans, in Winthrop, v. ii. p. 165. 3 Hening, v. i. p. 4. 282, and 286. PEACE WITH THE INDIANS. 225 VI. huntsman were long in danger of being intercepted,' CHAP. yet ten men were considered a sufficient force to protect a place of danger.2 Oct. About fifteen months after Berkeley's return from 1646. England, articles of peace were established between the inhabitants of Virginia and Necotowance, the 3 successor of Opechancanough. Submission and a cession of lands were the terms, on which the treaty was purchased by the original possessors of the soil; who now began to vanish away from the immediate vicinity of the settlements of their too formidable invaders. It is one of the surprising results of moral power, that language, composed of fleeting sounds, retains and transmits the remembrance of past occurrences long after every other monument has passed away. Of the labors of the Indians on the soil of Virginia, there remains nothing so respectable as would be a common ditch for the draining of lands ;1 the memorials of their former existence are found only in the names of the rivers and the mountains. Unchanging nature retains the appellations, which were given by those, whose villages have disappeared, and whose tribes have become extinct. Thus the colony of Virginia acquired the management of all its concerns; war was levied, and peace concluded, and territory acquired, in conformity to the acts of the representatives of the people. Possessed of security and quiet, abundance of land, a 1 Hening, v. i. p. 300, 301, Act 3. 2 Ibid, p. 285, 286, Act 5. 3 Ibid, p. 323-326. Compare Drake's Indian Biography, b. iv. VOL. I. 29 p. 22-24; Johnson's Wonder- VI. CHAP. free market for their staple, and, practically, all the rights of an independent state, having England for 1646. its guardian against foreign oppression, rather than its ruler, the colonists enjoyed all the prosperity, which a virgin soil, equal laws, and general uniformity of condition and industry, could bestow. Their numbers increased; the cottages were filled with children, as the ports were with ships and emigrants. At Christmas, 1648, there were trading in Virginia, ten ships from London, two from Bristol, twelve Hollanders, and seven from New-England.1 The number of the colonists was already twenty thousand; and they, who had sustained no griefs, were not tempted to engage in the feuds, by which the mother country was divided. They were attached to the cause of Charles, not because they loved monarchy, but because they cherished the liberties, of which he had left them in the undisturbed possession; and, 1649. after his execution, though there were not wanting some who favored republicanism, the government recognized his son2 without dispute. The loyalty of the Virginians did not escape the attention of the royal exile; from his retreat in Breda he transmitted 1650.. to Berkeley a new commission, and Charles the Second, a fugitive from England, was still the sovereign of Virginia. June. Oct. 3. 3 But the parliament did not long permit its authority to be denied. Having, by the vigorous energy and fearless enthusiasm of republicanism, triumphed 1 New Description of Virginia, p. 15, in ii. Mass. Hist. Coll. v. ix. p. 118. 2 Hening's Statutes at Large, v. i. p. 359, 360, Act 1. 3 Chalmers, p. 122. |