re value of many men's estates, it was complained.

So they employed agents to plead their cause in London. In the
meanwhile the patent had been assigned to the Earl of St. Albans, Lord
John Berkeley, Sir William Moreton, and John Trethney. When the agents
proposed that they surrender their rights in return for a large sum of
money to be raised by taxing the people of the colony, most of them
agreed. But at this point the King issued a patent to the Earl of
Arlington and Lord Culpeper, "which not only included the lands
formerly granted ... but all the rest of the colony." The Virginians
were in despair. The two lords were to have many powers rightly
belonging to the government. They were to pocket all escheats, quit
rents, and duties belonging to the Crown; they had the power to create
new counties and parishes, to issue patents for land; they could
appoint sheriffs, surveyors, and other officers, and induct ministers.
The Assembly complained that this nullified all previous charters and
promises and made the people subjects to their fellow subjects.

So negotiations had to begin again. In the end Arlington and Culpeper
agreed to give up their patent in return for a new one for the
Northern Neck assuring them the quit rents and escheated property.
Having gained this concession the agents then pleaded for a charter
for the colony guaranteeing the liberties of the colonists. In it
there were to be promises that they should continue to have their
immediate dependence on the Crown, and that no tax should be laid upon
them but by the consent of the Assembly. The King in Council assented
to the charter, and twice it reached the Great Seal. But there it was
held up. In the meanwhile news came of Bacon's Rebellion, and the King
reversed his order. Later he did grant letters patent, but they
contained little more than the promise that the colony should be
directly dependent on the Crown.

This whole affair caused universal resentment in the colony, and the
expense of the negotiations in England made the people "desperately
uneasy." Berkeley reported that "the two great taxes of sixty pounds
per poll to buy in the Northern patent made those that thought they
were not concerned in it ripe for mutiny." The agents, too, warned
that the Arlington and Culpeper grant might cause the common people to
rise in arms and perhaps bring about "the utter dispersion" of the
planters.

With the staple crop of the colony a drug on the market