d dissolved the assembly; he erected a new
court of chancery, making himself a petty lord chancellor; he multiplied
fees, and stooped to share them with the clerks, and silenced the
victims of his extortions by arbitrary imprisonment. The house of
burgesses, preparing to petition the king against the new invention of a
seal, by which his lordship extracted from the country one hundred
thousand pounds of tobacco per annum of extraordinary fees and
perquisites, and the governor getting wind of it, sent for them, and
they, knowing that his object was to dissolve them, completed the
petition, signed it, and ordered their clerk and one of their members to
transmit it to Whitehall for the king. But instead of being delivered to
his majesty, the original petition was sent back from England to the
governor, with an account of the manner in which it had been
transmitted. In consequence whereof, Colonel Thomas Milner, being a
surveyor and clerk of the house, was removed from those offices, and the
burgess being a lawyer, was prohibited from practising at the
bar.[342:A]

At length, the complaints of the Virginians having reached England,
Effingham embarked, in 1688, for that country, and the assembly
dispatched Colonel Ludwell to lay their grievances before the
government; but before they reached the mother country, the revolution
had taken place, and James the Second[342:B] had closed a short and
inglorious reign, spent in preposterous invasions of civil and religious
liberty, by abdicating the crown.

FOOTNOTES:

[335:A] Hening, iii. 540.

[336:A] Chalmers' Annals, 345.

[336:B] Beverley, B. i. 89.

[337:A] One of the James River merchant-vessels mentioned by the first
William Byrd, was called the "Zach. Taylor."

[338:A] Va. Hist. Reg., i. 166.

[338:B] Diary, ii. 211.

[340:A] Chalmers' Annals, 358

[340:B] The list is still preserved in the London state-paper office.

[340:C] Hening, iii. 40.

[342:A] Account of Virginia, in Mass. Hist. Coll., first series.

[342:B] Chalmers' Annals, 347.

CHAPTER XLII.

1688-1696.

Accession of William and Mary--Proclaimed in Virginia--The
House of Stuart--President Bacon--Colonel Francis Nicholson,
Lieutenant-Governor--The Rev. James Blair, Commissary--College
of William and Mary chartered--Its Endowment, Objects,
Professorships--Death of John Page--Nicholson succeeded by
Andros--Post-office--Death of Queen Mary--William the Thir