Magna Charta. WM.
CLAYBORNE." The burgesses replied, that they could not see any such
prohibition contained in Magna Charta; that two former assemblies had
passed such a law, and that it had stood in force upwards of ten years.
It thus appears that Magna Charta was held to be in force in the colony.

The ground leaves of tobacco, or lugs, were declared to be not
merchantable; and it was ordered that no tobacco should be planted after
the tenth day of July, under the penalty of a fine of ten thousand
pounds of that staple. The exportation of hides, wool, and old iron, was
forbidden. The salary of the governor, derived from the impost duty on
tobacco exported, was fixed at sixteen hundred pounds sterling.

The burgesses having rescinded the order admitting the governor and
council as members of the house, and having voted an adjournment,
Matthews, on the 1st of April, 1658, declared a dissolution of the
assembly. The house resisted, and declared that any burgess who should
depart at this conjuncture, should be censured as betraying the trust
reposed in him by his country; and an oath of secrecy was administered
to the members. The governor, upon receiving an assurance that the
business of the house would be speedily and satisfactorily concluded,
revoked the order of dissolution, referring the question in dispute, as
to the dissolving power, to his Highness the Lord Protector. The
burgesses, still unsatisfied, appointed a committee, of which Colonel
John Carter, of Lancaster County, was chairman, to draw up a resolution
asserting their powers; and in consonance with their report the
burgesses made a declaration of popular sovereignty: that they had in
themselves the full power of appointing all officers, until they should
receive an order to the contrary from England; that the house was not
dissolvable by any power yet extant in Virginia but their own; that all
former elections of governor and council should be void; that the power
of governor for the future should be conferred on Colonel Samuel
Matthews, who by them was invested with all the rights and privileges
belonging to the governor and captain-general of Virginia; and that a
council should be appointed by the burgesses then convened, with the
advice of the governor.

The legislative records do not disclose the particular ground on which
the previous elections of governor and appointments of councillors under
the provisional government were annulled; but from the