28
HISTORY OF THE COLONIES.
[BOOK I.
appointing a governor and twelve counsellors, to whom the entire direction of its affairs was committed.[1] In this commission no representative assembly was mentioned; and there is little reason to suppose that James, who, besides his arbitrary notions of government, imputed the recent disasters to the existence of such an assembly, ever intended to revive it. While he was yet meditating upon a plan or code of government, his death put an end to his projects, which were better calculated to nourish his own pride and conceit, than to subserve the permanent interests of the province.[2] Henceforth, however, Virginia continued to be a royal province until the period of the American Revolution.[3]
§ 49. Charles the First adopted the notions and followed out in its full extent the colonial system of his father.[4] He declared the colony to be a part of the empire annexed to the crown, and immediately subordinate to its jurisdiction. During the greater part of his reign, Virginia knew no other law, than the will of the sovereign, or his delegated agents; and statutes were passed and taxes imposed without the slightest effort to convene a colonial assembly. It was not until the murmurs and complaints, which such a course of conduct was calculated to produce, had betrayed the inhabitants into acts of open resistance to the governor, and into a firm demand of redress from the crown against his oppressions, that the king was brought to more considerate measures. He did not at once yield- ↑ 1 Haz. Coll. 189.
- ↑ Marsh. Colon. ch. 2, p. 63, 64; 1 Haz. Coll. 189.
- ↑ 1 Haz. Coll. 220, 225.
- ↑ It seems that a charter was subsequently granted by Charles the Second on the 10th of October, 1676, but it contained little more than an acknowledgment of the colony as an immediate dependency of the crown. 2 Henning, Stat. 531, 532.
