revolution, was
awaiting with anxiety the arrival of favorable news from the agents.
"There are divers," he wrote, "that would fain persuade the people that
al their high taxes will bring them no benefit, so that if the most
advantageous terms had been proposed to us it would have been impossible
to have persuaded the people to have parted with more tobacco til a
more certain demonstration had been given them of what is already done.
I appeased two mutinies this last year raysed by some secret villaines
that whispered amongst the people that there was nothing intended by the
fifty pounds levy but the enriching of some few people."[416] In 1677,
after Bacon's Rebellion, the King's commissioners heard from all sides
that the imposition of this tax was one of the main causes of
discontent.[417]

The wars of 1664 and 1672 with Holland added much to the distress in
Virginia. The bold Dutch mariners, angered at the injury done them by
the Navigation Acts, preyed upon the English merchantmen in every sea.
Woe to the tobacco ship that encountered a hostile privateer, in its
journey across the Atlantic! The English vessels were not safe even in
the Virginia rivers, under the guns of their forts. Twice the daring
Dutch came through the capes and into the James River itself, where they
wrought great damage to the shipping.

It was the custom, during these times of danger, for the merchant
vessels of Virginia and Maryland to cross the Atlantic in large fleets,
under the protection of English men-of-war. In May 1667, some twenty
vessels were anchored in the mouth of James River, near Newport News,
awaiting the remainder of their fleet before sailing. Three leagues
above them lay the _Elizabeth_, a frigate of forty-six guns, sent by the
King for the protection of the colony. She was undergoing repairs,
however, having become "soe disabled in her Maste and Leaky in her Hull
as that she could not keep at sea", and for the moment afforded little
proctection to the merchantmen riding below.[418]

At this juncture, a fleet of five Dutch warships, under the command of
Abraham Crimson, appeared off the coast, bent on mischief to the English
shipping. The Hollanders, learning of the exposed position of the
tobacco fleet from the crew of a shallop which fell into their hands,
determined upon a bold attack. On their way to the capes they
encountered a ship of London bound from Tangier to Virginia. The
English master, Captain Conway, "fought