nterests
which men have settled when you were a corporation, should be impeached;
that for the present they may enjoy their estates with the same freedom
and privilege as they did before the recalling of their patents," and
authorizing the appropriation of lands to the planters, as had been the
former custom.[194:A]

Whether these concessions were inadequate in themselves, or were not
carried into effect by Harvey, upon the petition of many of the
inhabitants, an assembly was called to meet on the 7th of May, 1635, to
hear complaints against that obnoxious functionary. There is hardly any
point on which a people are more sensitive than in regard to their
territory, and it may therefore be concluded, that one of Harvey's chief
offences was his having sided with Lord Baltimore in his infraction of
the Virginia territory.

Burk, in his History of Virginia, has stigmatized Clayborne as "an
unprincipled incendiary" and "execrable villain;" other writers have
applied similar epithets to him. It appears to have been only his
resolute defence of his own rights and those of Virginia that subjected
him to this severe denunciation. He was long a member of the council;
long filled the office of secretary; was held in great esteem by the
people, and was for many years a leading spirit of the colony.
Burk[195:A] denounces Sir John Harvey for refusing to surrender the
fugitive Clayborne to the demand of the Maryland Commissioners, and
adds: "But the time was at hand when this rapacious and tyrannical
prefect (Harvey) would experience how vain and ineffectual are the
projects of tyranny when opposed to the indignation of freemen." Thus
the governor, who excited the indignation of the Virginians by his
collusion with the Marylanders, was afterwards reprobated by historians
for sympathizing with Clayborne in his defence of the rights of
Virginia, and opposition to the Marylanders. If Harvey, in violation of
the royal license granted to Clayborne in 1631, had surrendered him to
the Maryland Commissioners, he would have exposed himself to the royal
resentment; and nothing could have more inflamed the indignation of
freemen than such treatment of the intrepid vindicator of their
territorial rights.

Before the assembly (called to hear complaints against the governor)
met, Harvey, having consented to go to England to answer them, was
"thrust out of the government" by the council on the 28th of April,
1635, and Captain John West was autho