Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/138

 dethronement, and the revolution of 1688—unlike other revolutions, without bloodshed—effected a complete change in affairs, not only at home, but also in the colonial dependencies of England. The fate of Andros was wrapped up in that of the weak tyrant his master, and his fall, so far as Massachusetts was concerned, was sudden and complete.

 

1660—1688.

resuming the history of Virginia from Chapter VIII., (p. 78,) it will be borne in mind that Sir William Berkeley, a staunch royalist, had been elected governor by the burgesses, in 1660. At that date, popular liberty and privileges were, to all appearance, well established, as before noted: during the twenty-five years or so following, important changes took place, by which the powers of the governor and counsellors were increased in the exact proportion that those of the Assembly and freemen were curtailed. Several causes helped to bring about this result. A brief glance at them is all that our space admits.

Originally settled by offshoots or adherents of the English nobility, Virginia had received a more decidedly aristocratic cast from the influx of Cavaliers during the civil war in England, who carried with them to the New World their hereditary prejudices in favor of the privileges conferred by birth and rank, and a contemptuous disregard of popular rights and pretensions. Underlying this class was another, consisting of free descendants of the first settlers of inferior lank, and also of indented servants who had been brought over by the planters, and who, bound to labor for a certain number of years, were, during that period, virtually in a state of serfdom. Negro slaves, as we have previously stated, had also been introduced into the colony; and partly from the supposed necessity of the case in the cultivation of tobacco and the general work on plantations, negroes had largely increased in Virginia: these were destitute of all the privileges and 