1678.

1681.

ince, his power was not in harmony with the political predilections of the colonists or the habits of the New World. The doctrine of the paramount authority of an hereditary sovereign was at war with the spirit which emigration fostered, and the principles of civil equality naturally grew up in all the British settlements. The insurrection of Bacon found friends north of the Potomac, and a rising was checked only by the prompt energy of the government. But the vague and undefined cravings after change, the tendency toward more popular forms of administration, could not be repressed. The assembly which was convened during the absence of the proprietary shared in this spirit; and the right of suffrage was established on a corresponding basis. The party of "Baconists" had obtained great influence on the public mind. Differences between the proprietary and the people became apparent. On his return to the province, he himself, by proclamation, annulled the rule which the representatives of Maryland had established respecting the elective franchise, and, by an arbitrary ordinance, limited the right of suffrage to freemen possessing a Sept. 6. freehold of fifty acres, or having a visible personal estate of forty pounds. No difference was made with respect to color. In Virginia, the negro, the mulatto, and the Indian were first disfranchised in 1723; in Maryland, they retained by law the right of suffrage till the time when the poorest white man recovered his equal franchise. The restrictions, which for one hundred and twenty-one years successfully resisted the principle of universal suffrage among freemen of the Caucasian race, were introduced in the midst of scenes of civil commotion. Fendall, the old republican, was again planning schemes of insurrection, and even of independence. The state was not only troubled with poverty, but was in danger of falling to pieces; for it was said, "The maxims of the old Lord Baltimore will not do in the present age."

The insurrection was for the time repressed; but its symptoms were the more alarming from the religious fanaticism with which the principle of popular power was com

bined. The discontents were increased by hostility toward the creed of papists; and, as Protestantism became a political sect, the proprietary government was in the issue easily subverted; for it had struck no deep roots either in the religious tenets, the political faith, or the social condition of the colony. It had rested only on a grateful deference, which was rapidly wearing away.

1676.

On the death of the first feudal sovereign of Maryland, the archbishop of Canterbury had been solicited to secure an establishment of the Anglican church, which clamored for favor in the province where it enjoyed equality. Misrepresentations were not spared. "Maryland,” said a clergyman of the church, "is a pest-house of iniquity." The cure for all evil was to be "an established support of a Protestant ministry." The prelates demanded not freedom, but privilege; an establishment to be maintained at the common expense of the province. Lord Baltimore resisted; the Roman Catholic was inflexible in his regard for freedom of worship.

1681.

The opposition to Lord Baltimore as a feudal sovereign easily united with Protestant bigotry. When an insurrection was suppressed by methods of clemency and forbearance, the government was accused of partiality towards papists; and the English ministry issued an order that offices of government in Maryland should be intrusted exclusively to Protestants. Roman Catholics were disfranchised in the province which they had planted.

With the colonists Lord Baltimore was at issue for his hereditary authority, with the English church for his relig ious faith; attempts to modify the unhappy effects of the navigation acts on colonial industry involved him in opposition to the commercial policy of England. His rights of jurisdiction had been disregarded; the custom-house officer of Maryland had been placed under the superintendence of the governor of Virginia; and the unwelcome relations, resisted by the officers of Lord Baltimore, had led to quarrels and bloodshed, which were followed by a controversy with Virginia. The accession of James II. seemed an auspicious event for a Roman Catholic

1685.

proprietary; but the first result from parliament was an increased burden on the industry of the colony, by means of a new tax on the consumption of its produce in England; while the king, who meditated the subversion of British freedom, resolved with impartial injustice to reduce all the colonies to a direct dependence on the crown. The

1687.

1688.

proprietary, hastening to England, vainly pleaded his irreproachable administration. His remonstrance was disregarded, his chartered rights despised; and a writ of quo warranto was ordered against his patent. But, before the legal forms could be brought to an issue, the people of England had sat in judgment on their king. The approach of the revolution effected no immediate benefit to Lord Baltimore. What though mutinous speeches and practices against the proprietary government were punishable by whipping, boring of the tongue, imprisonment, exile, death itself? The spirit of popular liberty, allied to Protestant bigotry and the clamor of a pretended popish plot, was too powerful an adversary for his colonial government. William Joseph, the president to whom he had intrusted the administration, convened an assembly. The address, on opening it, explains the character of the proprietary and of the insurrection which followed. "Divine Providence," said the representative of Lord Baltimore, "hath ordered us to meet. power by which we are assembled here is undoubtedly derived from God to the king, and from the king to his excellency, the lord proprietary, and from his said lordship to us. The power, therefore, whereof I speak, being, as said, firstly, in God and from God; secondly, in the king and from the king; thirdly, in his lordship; fourthly, in us, the end and duty of and for which this assembly is now

The

1688.

Nov.

called and met is that from these four heads; to wit, from God, the king, our lord, and selves." Having thus established the divine right of the proprietary, he endeavored to confirm it by invading the privileges of the assembly, and exacting a special oath of fidelity to his dominion. The assembly resisted, and was prorogued. Is it strange that excitements increased; that they were height

ened by tidings of the invasion of England; that they were kindled into a flame by a delay in proclaiming the new sovereign? An organized insurrection was conducted by John Coode, a worthless man, of old an associate of Fendall; and

Aug.

"The Association in arms for the defence of the 1689. 23. Protestant religion" usurped the government. The party was strengthened by the most false and virulent calumnies against the absent proprietary, and the overthrow of liberty of conscience was menaced by the insurrection. But would the reformed English government suffer papists to be oppressed in the colony where they had taken some steps towards toleration? Would the new dynasty seek to appropriate to itself the power and the rights that had been wrested from Lord Baltimore by turbulent violence? The method pursued by the ministry of William and Mary towards Maryland would test their sincerity, and show whether they were governed by universal principles of justice, or had derived their inspiration for liberty from circumstances and times; whether they had made a revolution in favor of humanity or in behalf of established privileges.

1675. July 8.

About two years after Virginia had been granted to Arlington and Culpepper, the latter obtained an appointment as governor of Virginia for life, and was proclaimed soon after Berkeley's departure. The 1677 Ancient Dominion was changed into a proprietary Aug. 25. government, and the administration surrendered, as it were, to one of the proprietaries, who at the same time was sole possessor of the domain between the Rappahannock and the Potomac. Culpepper was disposed to regard his office as a sinecure, but the king chid him for remaining in England; and, embarking for Virginia, the governor, early in 1680, arrived in his province. He had no high-minded regard for Virginia; he valued his office and his patents only as property. Clothed by the royal clemency with power to bury past contests, he perverted the duty of humanity into a means of enriching himself and increasing his authority. Yet Culpepper was not singular in his selfishness; it was in harmony with the

1680.

maxims which prevailed in England. As the British merchant claimed the monopoly of colonial commerce, as the British manufacturer valued Virginia only as a market for his goods, so British courtiers looked to appointments in America as a source of revenue to themselves, or a provision for their dependants. Nothing but Lord Culpepper's avarice gives him a place in American history.

1680.

May 10.

Having taken the oath of office at Jamestown, and organized a council of members friendly to prerogative, the wilful followers of Bacon were disfranchised. Till this time the council and house sat together. To an assembly convened in June, three acts, framed in June 8. England and confirmed in advance by the great seal, were proposed for acceptance. The first was of indemnity and oblivion,-less clement than had been hoped, yet definitive, and therefore welcome. The second withdrew from the assembly the powers of naturalization, and declared it a prerogative of the governor. And the third, still more grievous to colonial liberty, constructed after an English precedent, yet so hateful to Virginians that it encountered severe opposition and was carried only from hope of pardon for the rebellion, authorized a perpetual export duty of two shillings a hogshead on tobacco, and granted the proceeds for the support of government, to be accounted for not to the assembly, but to the king. Thus the power of Virginia over colonial taxation, the only check on the administration, was voted away without condition. The royal revenue was ample and was perpetual. Is it strange that political parties in Virginia showed signs of change? that many who had been zealous among the Cavaliers learned to distrust the royal influence?

The salary of governor of Virginia had been a thousand pounds: for Lord Culpepper it was doubled, because he was a peer. A further grant was made for house-rent. Perquisites of every kind were sought for and increased. Nay, the peer was not an honest man. He defrauded the soldiers of a part of their wages by an arbitrary change in the value of current coin. Having made himself familiar with Virginia, and employed the summer profitably, in the