rginia (Duke University, 1926), 62-65.

In the early years there was a general appreciation of the difficulty
some Virginians had experienced in breaking with England and swearing
allegiance to a new nation. This switch was especially difficult for
members of the governor's council and the Anglican clergy who had taken
personal oaths of allegiance to the king, not a casual act in the 18th
Century. Most of these men and women had been respected leaders in
pre-Revolutionary Virginia, had many friends, brothers, and sons in the
patriot camp, and took no direct action to support the British. Generally
they were well treated.

As the war moved along, however, and the colonists suffered enormous
losses in the winters of 1777 and 1778, sympathy decreased and demands
for public declaration of allegiance to the patriot cause grew. Laws were
passed providing for heavy taxation and then confiscation of loyalist
properties. The fortunes of the war can almost be read in the evolution
of loyalist laws. After the battle of Great Bridge (1775) the convention
allowed those who had borne arms against Virginia to take an oath of
allegiance to the Committee of Safety. Most Norfolk area loyalists did.
But when Dunmore persisted in raiding Virginia that spring, the
convention, in May 1776, changed the law and declared those who aided the
"enemy" subject to imprisonment and their property to seizure. In
December 1776 the new General Assembly voted that those who joined the
enemy or gave aid and comfort were to be arrested for treason. If guilty,
they would be executed. Those guilty of adherence to the authority of the
king (as opposed to those who refused to support the new government) were
subject to heavy fines and imprisonment.

A major turning point occurred in 1777 when general patriot outcries
against those not supporting the Revolutionary cause forced the assembly
to pass a test oath. Washington and Jefferson were especially vocal on
this point. Every male over 16 was required to renounce his allegiance to
the king and to subscribe to a new oath of allegiance to Virginia. In
1778 those who refused to take the oath were subjected to double
taxation; in 1779 the tax was tripled. In 1779 legal procedures for the
sale of sequestered and confiscated property were established and sales
begun, although these sales never brought the income expected to the
financially hard pressed state.

A similar progression from toleration to harshness fa