Virginia Cavaliers were royalist supporters (known as Cavaliers) in the Royal Colony of Virginia at various times during the era of the English Civil War and the Stuart Restoration in the mid-17th century. They are today seen as a state symbol of Virginia and the basis of the founding Cavalier myth of the Old South.
After a severe struggle with the Crown, the Virginia Company was deprived of its charter in 1624. The chief cause of this was that the Puritan element, which formed the backbone of the opposition in Parliament, had also gained the ascendency in the Virginia Company. Furthermore King James did not like the action of the company a few years earlier in extending representative government to the colonists. The result was the loss of the charter.
The Virginia Colony became a royal colony and so it continued until the Revolutionary War. But the change had little effect on the colony, for King Charles I was so occupied with troubles at home that he gave less attention to the government of Virginia than the company had done, and popular government continued to flourish. Of the 6,000 people who had come from England before 1625, only one fifth remained alive, but this number was rapidly augmented by immigration. Governor George Yeardley died in 1627, and John Harvey, a man of little ability or character, became governor. Harvey kept the Virginians in turmoil for some years, but the colony was so firmly established that his influence did not greatly affect its prosperity.
The longest rule of one man in its colonial history was that of Governor William Berkeley, who became governor of Virginia in 1642 and continued to hold the office until 1677, with the exception of a few years under the commonwealth. Berkeley was a rough, outspoken man with much common sense but with a hot temper and a narrow mind. [1] He was a Cavalier of the extreme type, and during the first period of his governorship he spent much of his energy in persecuting the Puritans, many of whom found refuge in Maryland.
About the time Berkeley assumed the office, a fierce war broke out in England between the royalist Cavaliers and the Parliamentarian Roundheads, factions over the governance of England. Parliamentarians included many Puritans (independent Protestant denominations). Over the course of the conflict, Oliver Cromwell, one of the strongest personalities in British history, rose to prominence through his generalship and was a grandee in the New Model Army. The second civil war started when Charles sought to gain power through an invasion of England by the Scots—the latter promised that Presbyterianism would be imposed on England. In 1649, following the defeat of the Scottish army and royalist revolts, Charles I was tried, convicted and beheaded by his own subjects.
Although the Puritan colonies, most notably Massachusetts, were dominated by Parliamentarians, the older colonies sided with the Crown. The Virginia Company's two settlements, Virginia and Bermuda (Bermuda's Puritans were expelled, settling the Bahamas under William Sayle), as well as Antigua and Barbados were conspicuous in their loyalty to the Crown, and singled out by the Rump Parliament in An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego in October, 1650. This dictated that
due punishment [be] inflicted upon the said Delinquents, do Declare all and every the said persons in Barbada's, Antego, Bermuda's and Virginia, that have contrived, abetted, aided or assisted those horrid Rebellions, or have since willingly joyned with them, to be notorious Robbers and Traitors, and such as by the Law of Nations are not to be permitted any maner of Commerce or Traffique with any people whatsoever; and do forbid to all maner of persons, Foreiners, and others, all maner of Commerce, Traffique and Correspondency whatsoever, to be used or held with the said Rebels in the Barbada's, Bermuda's, Virginia and Antego, or either of them.
The act authorised Parliamentary privateers to act against English vessels trading with the rebellious colonies:
All Ships that Trade with the Rebels may be surprized. Goods and tackle of such ships not to be embezeled, till judgement in the Admiralty.; Two or three of the Officers of every ship to be examined upon oath.
Berkeley, with most of the Virginians, was loyal to the Crown, and he invited the young son of the executed monarch to come to America and become king of Virginia. But Parliament would suffer no opposition from the colony and it sent a commission with a fleet to reduce the colony to allegiance. The Virginians were only mildly royalist, and they yielded without a struggle; but they lost nothing by yielding, for the commonwealth granted them greater freedom in self-government than they had ever before enjoyed under the auspices of the relatively popular Puritan Governor Richard Bennett.
In two ways the brief period of the commonwealth in England had a marked effect on the history of Virginia. For the first and only time during the colonial period, Virginia enjoyed absolute self-government. The assembly, governorship, and council were all elective for the time, and the people never forgot this taste of practical independence. The other respect in which the triumph of the Roundheads in England affected Virginia was that it caused a small number of Cavaliers to emigrate from England to the colony, bolstering the Cavalier elite led by Berkeley; whose political power was disproportionate to their number (estimated at approximately 10% of the population of Virginia.) [2] [3]
An anonymous pamphlet published in London in 1649 gives a glowing account of Virginia, describing it as a land where "there is nothing wanting," a land of 15,000 English and 300 negro slaves, 20,000 cattle, many kinds of wild animals, "above thirty sorts" of fish, farm products, fruits, and vegetables in great quantities, and the like. This was intended to induce home seekers to migrate to Virginia. Amongst those who migrated were the ancestors of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, and of many others of the First Families of Virginia. By 1670 the population of the colony had increased to 38,000, of whom 6,000 were indentured servants, while the African slaves had increased to 2,000.
The Restoration of 1660 brought the exiled Stuart to the British throne as Charles II, and Berkeley again became governor of Virginia. Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, had died in 1658, and Richard, his son and successor, was too weak to hold the reins of government and laid aside the heavy burden the next year, and Charles II became king. Charles was not a religious enthusiast, as his father had been. He is noted for his pursuit of pleasure, which many subjects applauded after the dry years of the Protectorate.
Charles was utterly without gratitude to the people of Virginia for their former loyalty, and indeed it may be said that his accession marks the beginning of a long period of turmoil, discontent, and political strife in Virginia. Charles immediately began to appoint to the offices of the colony a swarm of worthless place hunters, and some years later he gave away to his court favorites, the Earl of Arlington and Lord Culpeper, nearly all the soil of Virginia, a large portion of which was well settled and under cultivation.
The Navigation Acts, enacted ten years before, was re-enacted with amendments and put in force. By this the colonists were restricted to only exporting goods to England via English vessels. Imports also were to be brought from England only. The prices therefore of both exports and imports were set in London, and the arrangement enabled the English merchants to grow rich at the expense of the colonists. The result was a depreciation in the price of tobacco, the circulating medium, to such a degree as to impoverish many planters and almost to bring about insurrection.
Adding to the multiplying distresses of Virginia, Governor Berkeley, who had been fairly popular during his former ten-year governorship, seems to have changed decidedly for the worse. He became royalist to the core and appeared to have lost whatever sympathy with the people he ever had. He was accused of conniving with custom-house officials in schemes of extortion and blackmail, and even of profiting by their maladministration. Popular government thus suffered a long eclipse in Virginia. In 1661 Berkeley secured the election of a House of Burgesses to his liking, and he kept them in power for fifteen years, refusing to order another election.
The English Civil War refers to a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish War of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the Third English Civil War.
The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Grievances against the imperial government led the 13 colonies to begin uniting in 1774, and expelling British officials by 1775. Assembled at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to fight the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence as the United States of America. Defeating British armies with French help, the Thirteen Colonies gained sovereignty with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
Bermuda was first documented by a European in 1503 by Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez. In 1609, the English Virginia Company, which had established Jamestown in Virginia two years earlier, permanently settled Bermuda in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew and passengers of Sea Venture steered the ship onto the surrounding reef to prevent it from sinking, then landed ashore. Bermuda's first capital, St. George's, was established in 1612.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland and, after 1707, Great Britain. Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time. Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
Roundheads were the supporters of the Parliament of England during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Also known as Parliamentarians, they fought against King Charles I of England and his supporters, known as the Cavaliers or Royalists, who claimed rule by absolute monarchy and the principle of the divine right of kings. The goal of the Roundheads was to give to Parliament the supreme control over executive administration of the country/kingdom.
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to be known as the Interregnum (1649–1660).
The Colony of Virginia was an English, later British, colonial settlement in North America between 1606 and 1776.
Sir William Berkeley was an English colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1660 to 1677. One of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, as governor of Virginia he implemented policies that bred dissent among the colonists and sparked Bacon's Rebellion. A favourite of King Charles I, the king first granted him the governorship in 1642. Berkeley was unseated following the execution of Charles I, but his governorship was restored by King Charles II in 1660.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes known as the British Civil Wars, were a series of intertwined conflicts fought between 1639 and 1653 in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, then separate entities united in a personal union under Charles I. They include the 1639 to 1640 Bishops' Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650–1652. They resulted in victory for the Parliamentarian army, the execution of Charles I, the abolition of monarchy, and founding of the Commonwealth of England, a unitary state which controlled the British Isles until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.
The Eleutheran Adventurers were a group of English Puritans and religious Independents who left Bermuda to settle on the island of Eleuthera in The Bahamas in the late 1640s. The small group of Puritan settlers, led by William Sayle, were expelled from Bermuda for their failure to swear allegiance to the Crown and left in search of a place in which they could freely practice their faith. This group represented the first concerted European effort to colonize the Bahamas.
Captain William Sayle was a prominent English landholder who was Governor of Bermuda in 1643 and again in 1658. As an Independent in religion and politics, and an adherent of Oliver Cromwell, he was dissatisfied with life in Bermuda, and so founded the company of the Eleutheran Adventurers who became the first settlers of the Bahamas between 1646 and 1648. He later became the first governor of colonial South Carolina from 1670 to 1671.
The governor of Bermuda is the representative of the British monarch in the British overseas territory of Bermuda.
The Somers Isles Company was formed in 1615 to operate the English colony of the Somers Isles, also known as Bermuda, as a commercial venture. It held a royal charter for Bermuda until 1684, when it was dissolved, and the Crown assumed responsibility for the administration of Bermuda as a royal colony.
Richard Norwood was an English mathematician, diver, and surveyor. He has been called "Bermuda’s outstanding genius of the seventeenth century".
Between 1639 and 1651 English overseas possessions were involved in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars and wars that were fought in and between England, Scotland and in Ireland.
Philip Bell was Governor of Bermuda from 1626 to 1629, of the Providence Island colony from 1629 to 1636, and of Barbados from 1640 to 1650 during the English Civil War. During his terms of office in Providence and Barbados, the colonies moved from using indentured English workers to slaves imported from West Africa. The Providence Island colony, despite its puritan ideals, became a haven for privateers attacking ships in the Spanish Main.
An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego or Act prohibiting Commerce and Trade with the Barbodoes, Antigo, Virginia, and Bermudas alias Summer's Islands was an Act of law passed by the Rump Parliament of England during the Interregnum against English colonies which sided with the Crown in the English Civil War.
Old Stock Americans, Pioneer Stock, or Colonial Stock, are Americans who are descended from the original settlers of the Thirteen Colonies. They were mainly white Protestants from Northern Europe, who emigrated to British America in the 17th and the 18th centuries.