or actually
aiding his enemies. When Sir William appealed for volunteers in
Gloucester county while Bacon was upon the Pamunkey expedition, he could
hardly muster a man.[6-48] And the forces which eventually he gathered
around him seem to have included only a handful of leading citizens,
such men as Philip Ludwell, Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., Giles Brent and Robert
Beverley, together with a mass of indentured servants and others who had
been forced into service. It is this which explains the apparent
cowardice of the loyal forces, who almost invariably took to their heels
at the first approach of the rebels, for men will not risk their lives
for a cause in which their hearts are not enlisted.

And though the small farmers lost their desperate fight, though their
leaders died upon the scaffold, though the oppressive Navigation Acts
remained in force, though taxes were heavier than ever, though the
governors continued to encroach upon their liberties, they were by no
means crushed and they continued in their legislative halls the conflict
that had gone against them upon the field of battle. But the political
struggle too was severe. It was in the decade from 1678 to 1688 that the
Stuart monarchs made their second attempt to crush Anglo-Saxon liberty,
an attempt fully as dangerous for the colonies as for England. The
dissolving of the three Whig Parliaments, and the acceptance of a
pension from Louis XIV were followed not only by the execution of
liberal leaders and the withdrawal of town charters in the mother
country, but by a deliberate attempt to suppress popular government in
America. It was not a mere coincidence that the attack upon the
Massachusetts charter, the misrule of Nicholson in New York, the
oppressions of the proprietor in Maryland and the tyranny of Culpeper
and Effingham in Virginia occurred simultaneously. They were all part
and parcel of the policy of Charles II and James II.

These attempts met with failure in Virginia because of the stubborn
resistance they encountered from the small farmer class and their
representatives in the House of Burgesses. The annulling of statutes by
proclamation they denounced as illegal; they protested bitterly against
the appointment of their clerk by the Governor; they fought long to
retain their ancient judicial privileges; they defeated all attempts of
the King and his representatives in Virginia to deprive them of the
right to initiate legislation and to control taxation