Tag: Lord Baltimore

Virginia During the Interregnum

Published on by Robert Van Ness2 Comments

The Commonwealth came to Virginia in 1652. Berkeley was out. The Virginia General Assembly then elected Richard Bennett, one of Parliament’s approved commissioners who was sent to force Virginia and Maryland into submission. Bennett was an extremely well connected man in both colonies, therefore he was the perfect person to answer Parliament’s call. But that call took slightly longer to answer than expected.

Once Berkeley surrendered his position, Bennett had little trouble in steering an increasingly-distant-from-England Virginia under the Protectorate. There were outliers, such as the Eastern Shore; however, who wanted to be separated from the colonial mainland. The best that could be done there was grant a form of semi-autonomy that many from the peninsula across the bay  benefited.

Most did indeed prosper during this time, largely because of increasingly decentralized government that gave power into the smaller, local courts. But there were some who suffered.

Indians, mostly those who were out of state that began moving into lands left uninhabited by the shrinking Powhatan Confederacy, came into contact with English settlers on the frontiers during this period, and violence plagued both English and Indian settlements. The Assembly wanted to ensure peace, but they had little power to enforce their authority on the frontier lands so distant from Jamestown.

In time, the Assembly lifted many trade restrictions formerly existing between the English and Indians, which would go a long way to lessening tensions – though not completely.

Bennett’s finished his Parliamentary commissioned work after his gubernatorial tenure ran out. The second part of his commission was to subdue Maryland, a colony in which Bennett was quite familiar, since he and other Puritans fled there in the late 1640s.

Maryland’s proprietor, Lord Baltimore, a Royalist installed Puritan William Stone as his colony’s governor in 1648. Regardless of Stone’s religious stance, Parliament wanted to remove Baltimore from controlling the colony, because of his support for Charles II. Bennett and William Claiborne successfully removed Stone, and fended him off after the Battle of Severn in 1655, which allowed Parliament to reign supreme over the Chesapeake colonies.

But Parliament really didn’t care too much about Virginia and Maryland, at least that’s the impression both lands felt due to such scanty correspondence from London after 1652. Colonists decided that this was a good thing, and only increased their self-government, often in opposition to the government’s desire, as the Interregnum’s last governor, Samuel Matthews, Jr. discovered.

Perhaps in time Matthews and Parliament would have turned the screws on Virginia’s growing independence, but Matthews died soon after the Assembly overruled his command to dissolve, and Richard Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s son and heir chose to resign his position as Lord Protector in 1659. The Interregnum was over, and a familiar face soon returned to govern Virginia once again.

LINKS TO THE PODCAST:

Governor Digg’s Bellfield Plantation Marker on the York River
Coastline along the York River near Bellfield Plantation just northwest of Yorktown, Virginia.
This APVA Marker shows just how layered Virginia’s History is. On it you have 3 very distinct eras 1. Colonial 17th Century 2. Colonial 18th Century 3. American Civil War. Photo Credit – Historical Marker Database
Battle of Bloody Run Marker in Richmond, VA Photo Credit – Historican Marker Database
APVA Commemoration Marker in Richmond, VA Photo Credit – rvahub.com
The Battle of the Severn, 1656 by artist James Edward Kelley was a depiction of essentially the last battle of the English Civil Wars, and it was fought in Maryland. Photo Credit – Wikipedia

SOURCES:

  1. Billings, Warren M.; Selby, John E.; and Tate, Thad W. Colonial Virginia: A History. White Plains, NY: KTO Press. 1986.
  2. Billings, Warren M. Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2004.
  3. Billings, Warren. A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century. Richmond, VA: Library of Virginia, 2004.
  4. Breen, T.H. and Innes, Stephen. Myne Owne Ground: Race & Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
  5. Craven, Wesley Frank. White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth Century Virginian. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977.
  6. Craven, Wesley Frank. The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century: 1607-1689. LSU Press, 1949.
  7. Dabney, Virginius. Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1971.
  8. Horn, James. Adapting to A New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
  9. Mapp, Alfred J. Virginia Experiment: The Old Dominion’s Role in the Making of America, 1607-1781. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2006.
  10. Neill, Edward D. Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles The First and Second, A.D. 1625-A.D. 1685. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s and Sons, 1886.
  11. Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1999.
  12. Tyler, Lyon Gardiner. The Cradle of the Republic: Jamestown and the James River. Richmond, VA: The Hermitage Press, 1906.
  13. Wallenstein, Peter. Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
  14. Walsh, Lorena S. Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
  15. Washburn, Wilcomb E. Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell 1625-1660. Kindle Edition.
  16. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. Virginia Under the Stuarts: 1607-1688. New York: Russell and Russell, 1959.
  17. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. The Planters of Colonial Virginia. Kindle Edition.
  18. Wise, Jennings Cropper. Ye Kingdom Of Accawmacke: Or The Eastern Shore Of Virginia In The Seventeenth Century. Richmond, VA: The Bell Book and Stationary, CO. 1911.

ADDITIONAL LINK:

 

 

All photography used on this site is owned and copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted. The featured image is of Colonel Edward Hill and Pamunkey Chieftan Totopotomoi.

Music used for this episode – Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers,”Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” available on iTunes, and “Edges Run” by Mipso, also available on iTunes.

John Harvey’s Virginia Quagmire

Published on by Robert Van NessLeave a comment
William_Claiborne_(1600_–_1677)
William Claiborne

Virginians exerted a measure of some independence in electing their own governors for a short time during the 1620s. But King Charles and his privy council as well as a cabal of London merchants wanted to take some power back for themselves. These groups accomplished their goal by appointing Captain John Harvey to be governor in 1628.

Harvey arrived in Virginia sometime during late winter, early spring 1630. He tried to impose a more centralized authority on the colony, but the Virginian’s wanted none of it.

When another well connected merchant entered into the mix, a wide rift separated Virginians from newly arriving Maryland settlers. John Harvey fell on the wrong side of that ever widening chasm, and lost it all. What became Harvey’s loss, however, became Virginia’s gain.

Kent Island.png
Kent Island’s location well northward in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay

LINKS TO THE PODCAST:

SOURCES:

  1. Billings, Warren M.; Selby, John E.; and Tate, Thad W. Colonial Virginia: A History. White Plains, NY: KTO Press. 1986.
  2. Billings, Warren M. Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2004.
  3. Craven, Wesley Frank. White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth Century Virginian. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977.
  4. Craven, Wesley Frank. The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century: 1607-1689. LSU Press, 1949.
  5. Craven, Wesley Frank. The Virginia Company of London: 1606-1624. Williamsburg, VA: Jamestown 350th Anniversary, 1957.
  6. Dabney, Virginius. Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1971.
  7. Hatch, Charles. The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1991.
  8. Horn, James. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
  9. Horn, James. Adapting to A New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
  10. Hume, Ivor Noel. Here Lies Virginia. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963.
  11. Mapp, Alfred J. Virginia Experiment: The Old Dominion’s Role in the Making of America, 1607-1781. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2006.
  12. Neill, Edward D. Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles The First and Second, A.D. 1625-A.D. 1685. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s and Sons, 1886.
  13. Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1999.
  14. Tyler, Lyon Gardiner. The Cradle of the Republic: Jamestown and the James River. Richmond, VA: The Hermitage Press, 1906.
  15. Wallenstein, Peter. Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
  16. Walsh, Lorena S. Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
  17. Washburn, Wilcomb E. Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell 1625-1660. Kindle Edition.
  18. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. Virginia Under the Stuarts: 1607-1688. New York: Russell and Russell, 1959.
  19. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. The Planters of Colonial Virginia. Kindle Edition.
St. Mary's City.jpg
The Founding of Maryland, 1634 by Emmanuel Leutze, 1860

 

 

 

All photography used on this site is owned and copyrighted by the author. The Featured Image is the New Towne section at Historic Jamestowne.

Music used for this episode – Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers,”Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” available on iTunes, and “Silver” by the Gray Havens, also available on iTunes.