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what it was so anxious to save. It was argued that CHAPTER submission would be a sin against God; and, with much. plausibility, that nothing could be gained by it. Increase 1683. Mather spoke to that effect in a Boston town meeting held to consider the subject. After a fortnight's debate, the deputies refused to concur. They voted, instead, an

address to the king, praying forbearance; but they authorized Robert Humphreys, a London attorney, and the legal adviser of the agents, to enter an appearance, and to retain counsel, requesting him "to leave no stone unturned that may be of service either in the case itself, or the spinning out the time as much as possibly may be.". No less than three successive letters were written to Humphreys; money was remitted; it was recommended that the counsel he might retain should consult "my Lord Coke, in his fourth part, about the Isle of Man and Guernsey." But all hopes of defense were futile. Before these letters arrived in London a default had already been recorded. That default could not be

got off, and judgment was entered up the next year, pro- 1684. nouncing the charter void.

Nov.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire was in a very unquiet state. Finding the Assembly unmanageable, Cranfield dissolved it, whereupon an insurrection followed. Gove, 1682. the leader, was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sent to England, but was there pardoned. Juries, selected" with some art" by a sheriff of the governor's appointment, returned verdicts in Mason's favor in actions of ejectment brought to establish his title. But to get possession under these verdicts was quite another matter. The sheriff and his officers were resisted and mobbed, beaten with clubs by the men, and attacked with spits and hot water by the women. Cranfield at first had courted the ministers, but, not finding so much countenance from them

CHAPTER as he had hoped, he had the imprudence to add a reliXIV gious to this civil quarrel. Pretending that the English 1684. ecclesiastical law was in force in the province, he forbade the church at Portsmouth to exercise discipline over an offending brother whom he had taken under his protection. He claimed, also, for himself and all others of "decent life and conversation," admission to the Lord's Supper, which he required Moody, minister of Portsmouth, to administer to him according to the Liturgy. Upon Moody's refusal, he was tried, deprived of his office, and imprisoned conduct which made Cranfield still more obnoxious. Discharged at length under a strict injunction to preach no more in the province, Moody came to Boston, and was rewarded for his firmness by being chosen assistant minister of the First Church. Between "factious preachers" and obstinate tenants, Cranfield feared, or pretended to fear, for his life. He retired to Boston, and the people of New Hampshire sent agents to England to complain of his conduct. Wearied out with the unsuccessful struggle, he presently solicited a recall, in order, as he alleged, "that the world might see that it was not him, but the royal commission they caviled at, and that his real offense was his attempt to put the king's commands in execution." Some of the charges against him being sustained, he departed for the West Indies, where he obtained the post of collector of Barbadoes.

1685. The government was left in the hands of Deputy-govJanuary ernor Barefoote, for twenty-five years a resident in the province. He complained, like his predecessor, of "factious preachers," and a "malignant party directed by the Massachusetts," and declared that "without some force to keep these people under," it would be a difficult if not impossible thing "to put in execution his majesty's orders or the laws of trade."

CHAPTER XV.

VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND UNDER CHARLES II. AND

JAMES II.

DURING the continuance of the English Common- CHAPTER

wealth, Virginia had enjoyed a very popular form of government. All tax-payers had the right to vote for burgesses. The Assembly, subject to frequent renewals, had assumed the right of electing the governor, counselors, and other principal officers; and, except a general conformity to the policy of the mother country, local affairs appear to have been managed with very little of externalcontrol.

Great changes in these respects presently took place. During the quarter of a century which followed the Restoration, a considerable part of the freemen of Virginia were deprived of the elective franchise-an invaluable privilege, which, even to this day, they have not regained. The Assembly's authority was also greatly curtailed; while a corresponding increase took place in the power and prerogatives of the governor and the counselors. These changes were occasioned, in part, by external pressure, but they sprung also, to a considerable extent, from internal causes, existing in the social organization of the colony.

The founders of Virginia, like those of New England, had brought with them from the mother country strong aristocratic prejudices and a marked distinction of ranks. Both in Virginia and New England the difference between "gentlemen" and "those of the common sort"

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CHAPTER was very palpable. Indented servants formed a still inferior class; not to mention negro and Indian slaves, of 1660. whom, however, for a long period after the planting of Virginia, the number was almost as inconsiderable in that colony as it always remained in New England.

But though starting, in these respects, from a common basis, the operation of different causes early produced different effects, resulting in a marked difference of local character. The want in New England of any staple product upon which hired or purchased labor could be profitably employed, discouraged immigration and the importation of indented servants or slaves. Hence the population soon became, in a great measure, home-born and home-bred.

The lands were granted by townships to companies who intended to settle together. The settlements were required to be made in villages, and every village had its meeting house, its schools, its military company, its municipal organization. In Virginia, on the other hand, plantations were isolated; each man settled where he found a convenient unoccupied spot. The parish churches, the county courts, the election of burgesses, brought the people together, and kept up something of adult education. But the parishes were very extensive; there were no schools; and parochial and political rights were soon greatly curtailed.

Even the theocratic form of government prevailing in New England tended to diminish the influence of wealth, by introducing a different basis of distinction; and still more so that activity of mind, the consequence of strong religious excitement, developing constantly new views of religion and politics, which an arrogant and supercilious theocracy strove in vain to suppress. Hence, in New England, a constant tendency toward social equality. In

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Virginia and Maryland, on the other hand, the manage- CHAPTER ment of provincial and local affairs fell more and more under the control of a few wealthy men, possessed of large 1660. tracts of land, which they cultivated by the labor partly of slaves, but principally of indented white servants.

Indented service existed, indeed, in all the American colonies; but the cultivation of tobacco created a special demand for it in Virginia and Maryland. A regular trade was early established in the transport of persons, who, for the sake of a passage to America, suffered themselves to be sold by the master of the vessel to serve for a term of years after their arrival. But the embarkation of these indented servants was not always voluntary. Sometimes they were entrapped by infamous arts, some times even kidnapped, and sometimes sentenced to transi portation for political and other offenses. We have al ready had occasion to mention the exportation of felons to Virginia, known among the colonists as "jail-birds." In the same way Cromwell disposed of many of his English, Scotch, and Irish prisoners of war, a few of whom were also sent to New England. On the expiration of their term of servitude, limited to four, five, or, more commonly, to seven years, these servants acquired all the rights of freemen, and, in Virginia, a claim, also, to the fifty acres of land to which all immigrants were entitled. But the lands most favorably situated were already taken up, and held in large tracts by the more wealthy planters. It was only on the outskirts of the cultivated country that these new freemen could locate their grants.

The rivers which intersected Lower Virginia, dividing the colony into a series of "necks," as they were called, served an excellent purpose for intercommunication. There was not a plantation at any great distance from tide

water.

Vessels, ascending the rivers, landed goods and

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