d--
Board of Trade.

WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, landed at Torbay in November, 1688, and he
and Mary were proclaimed king and queen on the 13th day of February,
1689. The coronation took place on the eleventh day of April. They had
been for several months seated on the throne before they were proclaimed
in Virginia. The delay was owing to the reiterated pledges of fealty
made by the council to James, and from an apprehension that he might be
restored to the kingdom. Some of the Virginians insisted that, as there
was no king in England, so there was also an interregnum in the
government of the colony. At length, in compliance with the repeated
commands of the privy council, William and Mary were proclaimed, at
James City, in April, 1689, Lord and Lady of Virginia. This glorious
event, with the circumstances connected with it, was duly announced to
the lords commissioners of plantations, in a letter, dated on the
twenty-ninth of that month, by Nicholas Spencer, secretary of state.

The accession of the Prince of Orange dispelled the clouds of discontent
and alarm, and inspired the people of the colony with sincere joy. For
about seventy years Virginia had been subject to the house of Stuart,
and there was little in the retrospect to awaken regret at their
downfall. They had cramped trade by monopolies and restrictions,
lavished vast bodies of land on their profligate minions, and often
entrusted the reigns of power to incompetent, corrupt, and tyrannical
governors. The dynasty of the Stuarts fell buried in the ruins of
misused power.

When the last of the Stuart governors, Lord Howard of Effingham,
returned to England, he had left the administration in the hands of
Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., president of the council. Upon the
accession of William and Mary, England being on the eve of a war with
France, the president and council of Virginia were directed by the Duke
of Shrewsbury to put the colony in a posture of defence.

Colonel Philip Ludwell, who had been sent out as an agent of the colony
to prefer complaints against Lord Howard of Effingham before the privy
council, now at length obtained a decision in some points rather
favorable to the colony, but the question of prerogative was determined
in favor of the crown, and it was declared that an act of 1680 _was_
revived by the king's disallowing the act of repeal.

Bacon's administration was short; he had now obtained an advanced age.
In his time the proj