It is said that; when his ship went
down the river, bonfires were lighted and cannon and muskets fired for joy.
And so beyond the eastward horizon fades the old reactionary.
Herbert Jeffreys and then Sir Henry Chicheley follow Berkeley as Governors
of Virginia; they are succeeded by Lord Culpeper and he by Lord Howard of
Effingham. King Charles dies and James the Second rules in England.
Culpeper and Effingham play the Governor merely for what they can get for
themselves out of Virginia.* The price of tobacco goes down, down. The
crops are too large; the old poor remedies of letting much acreage go
unplanted, or destroying and burning where the measure of production is
exceeded, and of petitions to the King, are all resorted to, but they
procure little relief. Virginia cannot be called prosperous. England hears
that the people are still disaffected and unquiet and England stolidly
wonders why.
* In 1684 the Crown purchased from Culpeper all his rights except in the
Northern Neck.
During the reign of the second Charles, Maryland had suffered from
political unrest somewhat less than Virginia. The autocracy of Maryland was
more benevolent and more temperate than that of her southern neighbor. The
name of Calvert is a better symbol of wisdom than the name of Berkeley.
Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dying in 1675, has a fair niche in
the temple of human enlightenment. His son Charles succeeded, third Lord
Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of Maryland.
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