"
*Hening's "Statutes", vol. II, p. 280.
Three years later another woe befell the colony. That same Charles II -- to
whom in misfortune Virginia had so adhered that for her loyalty she had
received the name of the Old Dominion -- now granted "all that entire tract,
territory, region, and dominion of land and water commonly called Virginia,
together with the territory of Accomack," to Lord Culpeper and the Earl of
Arlington. For thirty-one years they were to hold it, paying to the King
the slight annual rent of forty shillings. They were not to disturb the
colonists in any guaranteed right of life or land or goods, but for the
rest they might farm Virginia. The country cried out in anger. The Assembly
hurried commissioners on board a ship in port and sent them to England to
besiege the ear of the King.
Distress and discontent increased, with good reason, among the mass of the
Virginians. The King in England, his councilors, and Parliament, played an
unfatherly role, while in Virginia economic hardships pressed ever harder and
the administration became more and more oppressive. By 1676 the gunpowder of
popular indignation was laid right and left, awaiting the match.
CHAPTER XII. NATHANIEL BACON
To add to the uncertainty of life in Virginia, Indian troubles flared up
again. In and around the main settlements the white man was safe enough
from savage attack. But it was not so on the edge of the English world,
where the white hue ran thin, where small clusters of folk and even single
families built cabins of logs and made lonely clearings in the wilderness.
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