On March 22, 1622, the Indians fell upon the whites and slew 35o persons. Sickness and famine once again visited the Colony, and the population was reduced by nearly one-half. These losses were repaired, however; the tobacco industry grew in importance and the settlers built their cabins far in the interior of lowland Virginia. This rapid growth was scarcely retarded by a second Indian attack, in April 1644, which resulted in the death of several hundred settlers. By 1648 the population was 15,000.
In her attitude toward the war in England between King Charles and parliament, Virginia sympathized with the king. How ever, though Sir William Berkeley, who had been governor since 1641, was absolutely loyal to the crown, it was considered the part of wisdom to surrender to a fleet sent over by parliament in 1652, after a slight show of resistance ; but substantial acknowledgments were made by the parliamentary commissioners of Virginia's rights. Richard Bennett, a Puritan, now ruled the province. He and his Puritan successors, Edward Digges and Samuel Mathews, made no serious change in the administration of the Colony. The return of Berkeley, who was restored to power in 166o, was the beginning of a reaction which concentrated authority in the hands of the older families and thus created a privileged class. The governor, supported by the privileged families, retained the same House of Burgesses for 16 years lest a new one might not be submissive. The increasing mass of the population who dwelt along the western border and on the less fertile ridges developed a feeling of hostility towards the oligarchy. They desired a freer land-grant system, protection against the inroads of the Indians along the border and frequent sessions of an assembly to be chosen by all the free-holders. In 1676 the Indians again attacked the border farmers, but the governor had refused assistance, being willing, it was charged, that the border population should suffer while he and his adherents enjoyed a lucrative fur trade with the Indians. Under these circumstances Nathaniel Bacon (1647-76), took up the cause of the borderers and severely punished the Indians at the battle of Bloody Run. Berkeley meanwhile had outlawed Bacon, whose forces now marched on the capital demand ing recognition as the authorized army of defence. This was refused and civil war began, in which the governor was defeated and Jamestown was burned. But Bacon fell a victim to malaria and died in October in Gloucester county. Berkeley closed the conflict with wholesale executions and confiscations. Censured by the king, he sailed to England to make his defence, but died in London in 1677 without having seen Charles. Until the accession of William and Mary there was continued unrest in Virginia and a bitter struggle between the popular party in Virginia and the English Government seeking to reduce the privileges of the House of Burgesses. In many respects the Government came off
victorious but the House retained the all important power of levy ing taxes. In 1689 James Blair was made commissary in Virginia of the Bishop of London and throughout a long life did valiant service for the Colony. In 1692 he obtained the charter for William and Mary college and became its first president. It was founded at Williamsburg, which in 1699 was made the capital. Westward Expansion.—By 170o the population of Virginia had reached 70,000, of whom 20,000 were negro slaves. The majority of whites were small farmers, who constantly encroached upon the Indian lands in the Rappahannock region or penetrated the forests south of the James, several thousand having reached North Carolina. Between 1707 and 1740 many Scottish immi grants (traders, teachers and tobacco-growers) settled along the upper Rappahannock, and, uniting with the borderers in general, they offered strong resistance to the older planters.
Tobacco-growing was the one vocation of Virginia, and many of the planters were able to spend their winters in London or Glasgow and to arrange for their sons to attend the finishing schools of the mother country. Negro slavery grew so rapidly during the first half of the 18th century that the blacks outnum bered the whites in 1740. In 1716 an expedition of Governor Alexander Spotswood over the mountains made known to the world the rich back-country, now known as the Valley of Virginia. A migration thither from Pennsylvania and from Europe followed in course of time which revolutionized the province. The majority of blacks over whites soon gave way before the influx of white immigrants, and in 1756 there was a population of 292,00o, of whom only 120,000 were negroes, and the small farmer class had grown so rapidly that the old tidewater aristocracy was in danger of being overwhelmed. The "West" had now appeared in American history. This first West, made up of the older small farmers, of the Scottish settlers, of the Germans from the Palatinate and the Scottish-Irish, far outnumbering the people of the old counties, demanded the creation of new counties and proportionate repre sentation in the Burgesses. They did not at first succeed, but when the Seven Years' War came on they proved their worth by fighting the battles of the community against the Indians and the French. When the war was over the prestige of the up-country had been greatly enhanced, and its people soon found eastern leaders in the persons of Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry. In the mean time the Presbyterians, who had been officially recognized in Virginia under the Toleration Act in 1699, and had been guaran teed religious autonomy in the Valley by Governor Gooch in 1738, had sent missionaries into the border counties of eastern Virginia. The Baptists somewhat later entered the Colony both from the north and the south and established scores of churches. The new denominations vigorously attacked the methods and immunities of the established church, whose clergy had grown somewhat luke warm in zeal and a few of them lax in morals. When the clergy, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the burgesses in reducing their stipends, and, appealing to the king against the assembly, entered the courts to recover damages from the vestries, Patrick Henry at Hanover court in 1763 easily convinced the jury and the people that the old church was well-nigh worthless. From this time the old order was doomed. The passage of the Stamp Act hastened the catastrophe and gave the leaders of the new combina tion, notably Henry, an opportunity to humiliate the British ministry, whom not even the tidewater party could defend. The Townshend scheme of indirect taxation displeased Virginia quite as much as had the former more direct system of taxation. When the burgesses undertook in May 1769 to discuss the right and power of taxation, the governor hastily dissolved them only to find the same men assembling in the Raleigh tavern in Williamsburg and issuing resolutions in defiance of executive authority.