th vigor: papists may not hold any public place;
all statutes against them shall be duly executed; popish priests by
chance or intent arriving within the bounds of Virginia shall be given
five days' warning, and, if at the end of this time they are yet upon
Virginian soil, action shall be brought against them. Berkeley sweeps
with an impatient broom.

The Kingdom is cared for not less than the Church in Virginia. Any
and all persons coming into the colony by land and by sea shall have
administered to them the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance. "Which if any
shall refuse to take," the commander of the fort at Point Comfort
shall "committ him or them to prison." Foreigners in birth and tongue,
foreigners in thought, must have found the place and time narrow indeed.

On the eve of civil war there arose on the part of some in England a
project to revive and restore the old Virginia Company by procuring from
Charles, now deep in troubles of his own, a renewal of the old letters
patent and the transference of the direct government of the colony into
the hands of a reorganized and vast corporation. Virginia, which a score
of years before had defended the Company, now protested vigorously, and,
with regard to the long view of things, it may be thought wisely. The
project died a natural death. The petition sent from Virginia shows
plainly enough the pen of Berkeley. There are a multitude of reasons
why Virginia should not pass from King to Company, among which these
are worthy of note: "We may not admit of so unnatural a distance as a
Company will interpose between his sacred majesty and us his subjects
from whose immediate protection we have received so many royal favours
and gracious blessings. For, by such admissions, we shall degenerate
from the condition of our birth, being naturalized under a monarchical
government and not a popular and tumultuary government depending
upon the greatest number of votes of persons of several humours and
dispositions."

When this paper reached England, it came to a country at civil war. The
Long Parliament was in session. Stafford had been beheaded, the Star
Chamber swept away, the Grand Remonstrance presented. On Edgehill
bloomed flowers that would soon be trampled by Rupert's cavalry. In
Virginia the Assembly took notice of these "unkind differences now
in England," and provided by tithing for the Governor's pension and
allowance, which were for the present suspended and endangered by the