Questionable I think that New England can win its independence all by itself if Britain doesnt want to let it go and they don’t have the support of the other colonies. Not a foregone conclusion at least.
King's Dominion: a Fractured North American Timeline
- Thread starter vivala
- Start date
Questionable I think that New England can win its independence all by itself if Britain doesnt want to let it go and they don’t have the support of the other colonies. Not a foregone conclusion at least.
Agreed, even with all 13 colonies, or elements of them. The loyalists were not a tiny minority, and neutrals who just wanted it all over were probably the largest group., the ARW was only lost by the British due to French Dutch and Spanish intervention. Failing that the British could win and the French Revolution might be postponed or even cancelled.
Not sure how much the notorious dislike of say the Irish community in North America for Britain owes to Cromwell in the positive sense. A reaction against him maybe. The anti British and Anti monarchical sentiment was in fact not particularly strong prior to the 7 years war, except amongst certain minority communities ie the Irish. As for the tax policies interestingly a lot of Americans were themselves totally surprised by the speed at which this blew up. Franklin had in fact like a lot of Locals himself applied to be an Agent for the Stamp Act and it seems to have been only after Patrick Henry's notorious speech that he and many others decided that maybe it was not a great idea. It would not take much for that speech never to occur.
Chapter 6: Talkin' About Treason
Chapter 6: Talkin’ About Treason
6.1: England at War
Some would argue that England had been hurdling towards war since the start of Charles Stuart’s reign. A stubborn believer in the absolute authority of the monarchy at the time when Parliamentary power was on the rise, Charles I found himself in a spat of political conflicts with Parliament. From 1629 to 1640, he attempted to rule entirely without Parliament. This era of Personal Rule was characterized by a constant struggle for funds and an increasingly furious merchant class.
When religious conflicts with Scotland escalated into outright war in 1640, Charles I was forced to call Parliament in an effort to fund the English military. Parliament pounced on this opportunity and introduced a slew of bills aimed at preventing Personal Rule from ever happening again.
As Parliament legislatively raged against the King, Charles I finally began building up his armies both to take on the Scottish rebels and to put down a new Catholic revolt in Ireland. As tensions grew between the Crown and Parliament, Parliamentarians began to eye these armies suspiciously, fearing they would be turned on Parliament. Some even suspected that Charles’s Ireland-bound army was actually intended to lead a Catholic takeover of England. In response, Parliamentarians raised militias and armies of their own, just in case. The King, in turn, saw these Parliamentarian armies as conspiracies to overthrow him.
Regardless of whether either side initially intended to overthrow the other, the distrust over mounting forces proved too much to maintain peace. Aiming to stop what he perceived as a coup plot, Charles I marched on Parliamentarian forces in Hull. When that failed to produce a decisive victory for either side, Charles I declared war on the so-called rebel forces in August of 1642.
Despite hopes for a quick, decisive battle, the English Civil War would stretch on for years without a clear victor. Though Charles I’s side arguably had more legitimacy, the Parliamentarians had the powerful backing of the London merchant class, who in turn held the support of the Royal Navy and thus controlled international trade [1].
6.2: Expanding the House of Burgesses
While things were spiraling out of control in England in the summer of 1642, Virginia would remain in ignorant bliss over this until the end of the year when news of the war finally crossed the Atlantic. In the meantime, the House of Burgesses faced its own conflict, albeit one that would feel quaint compared to the incoming news.
Richard Bennett, the leader of the small Puritan faction of the House [2], raised a furious objection at the start of the session when the body attempted to seat its new members. That year, the House was set to add five new members: a second [3] Burgess representing the St. Mary’s region, a second Burgess representing the plantations of the Upper Chesapeake, a second Burgess representing Kent, a first Burgess representing Skanderborg, and a first Burgess representing Carolina [4].
Everyone knew that Bennett’s objections were based on religion, and he did very little to hide that fact. Catholics dominated all the districts of the Marianus Shire, save for Kent, and the Kent Burgesses were known to sympathize with their Catholic neighbors [5]. If they added these new Burgesses, Catholics would hold six of the body’s 46 [6] seats and known sympathizers would push the so-called “Catholic Bloc” up to eight.
Bennett’s concerns fell largely on deaf ears. Outside of the Puritan faction, even those who steadfastly refused to soften on Catholics in the years since Leonard Calvert first arrived in the Colony, a sixth of the House hardly seemed worth destroying the body over. Speaker Thomas Stegg asked Bennett if he had any legal objections and, hearing none, quickly turned to the business of the House.
6.3: News Reaches Virginia
Governor Berkeley’s call for an emergency meeting of the General Assembly was met with confusion and annoyance when it was first issued in December of 1642. Berkeley had largely trusted the House of Burgesses to conduct its own business so far, so this sudden order, particularly without a stated reason, looked to some like an overreach. However, as Burgesses trickled into Jamestown from across the Colony, they started to hear rumors. Soon, the initial anger at Berkeley was gone, and was replaced with a jumpy tension. Something huge had just happened.
When Berkeley finally assembled both houses in the statehouse, he broke the news which was all but an open secret at that point: Parliament was at war with the King. He relayed all that he could about the situation, but everyone there had made the arduous journey across the Atlantic and knew just how out of date the information likely was.
“I have called you all here for an impossible, but undeniably necessary task – a task I neither can nor should perform on my own,” the Governor said. Indeed, the task of determining Virginia’s stance on a war it knew very little about was not only difficult, but incredibly risky. Even neutrality could be seen as an affront to the winning side. Berkeley’s exact motivation for including the General Assembly in this process was debated both by his contemporaries and future academics. Some saw the move as a gesture of goodwill to a tense Assembly, while others saw it as a purely self-motivated attempt to cover his ass if things went wrong [7].
Leonard Calvert, normally willing to assert himself into a discussion and stand up for his own interests, chose to stay silent at the start of the debate. “If my countrymen were willing to turn on their own King, then my safety was of no guarantee,” he would later write to a friend in England. “I would let the Protestants shape the battlefield first, so that I could be sure I was not placed at the center.”
6.4: Debate Begins
The common assumption was that the Virginian elite was predominantly loyalist, but the news out of Europe threw that assumption into question. Even during previous disagreements between Charles I and Parliament, supporting the King was synonymous with supporting the law and a pragmatic desire not to incite the wrathful might of the motherland. This war opened questions about who was legally and morally correct, not to mention which side was the pragmatic one to back.
The faction that overthrew Governor John Harvey seven years ago was now viewed as the biggest wildcard. Though ostensibly loyal to the Crown, their earlier revolt led the stauncher loyalists to fear they would rebel again and seek greater power. Speaker of the House Thomas Stegg, a participant in the anti-Harvey revolt, would be first to speak. Given how he had shut down Richard Bennett earlier that year, it was expected that he would tow a moderate, legalist line. Instead, he opened the debate with a bombshell.
“The King has denied Parliament its right to govern, brought war to England, and murdered his own countrymen without provocation. If we are an institution meant for the betterment of England, we should not accept the leadership of those who only seek to abase it [8].” Stegg’s opening line left the General Assembly in stunned silence.
That silence was soon followed by a deafening uproar. Some Burgesses cried out at the shocking boldness of the assertion. Fierce loyalists called for his head. A select few Burgesses, including Richard Bennett, whooped in support. As different Burgesses took note of others’ more extreme reactions, shouts were lobbed in all directions. It took many bangs of the gavel and a mighty bellow from Governor Berkeley to quiet the Assembly and prevent a brawl.
Burgess John Carter was next to speak. Having just acquired vast tracts of land along the Rappahannock River, Carter was seen as a rising star and economic heavyweight within the Colony, though he was still seen as a green newcomer by those who had been in the Assembly since the days of Harvey.
“I would sooner remove myself from this Assembly than lend even tacit endorsement to such treasonous ideas,” Carter said. “Yet, even putting aside the questions of loyalty and morality, I cannot see the sense in endorsing a rogue Parliament. How can we expect to thrive when we are willingly inviting chaos to our shores? [9]”
“And how will our livelihoods fare if we make ourselves enemies of the Royal Navy and the great merchant families of London?” asked William Claiborne. In contrast with the fiery passion of previous statements, Claiborne was subdued and clearly troubled [10].
“Not one of those angry families will matter if the King succeeds and executes them for treason,” said Burgess Thomas Harwood. Murmurs spread across the statehouse once he spoke. He was another ringleader in the conspiracy to remove Harvey and now the first to indicate that the faction was split on the issue of the war [11]. “So many of you treat treason so lightly, as if the King has no chance of prevailing.”
“I have no intention of flying a rebel flag on my ship,” said Burgess Walter Chiles [12]. “If you are a merchant in Rotterdam, or Boston, or the West Indies, would you give preference to an agent of the English Crown or the representative of some earl playing warlord?”
“You would have to be a fool to think Boston would accept a ship bearing the flag of that papist king,” said Richard Bennett.
“I am sure I can find a sane man among the zealots up there,” responded Chiles. The ensuing shouting match once again nearly turned into a fight before Berkeley could bring the chamber back to order.
Burgess Benjamin Harrison spoke next, using the break of the chaos as an excuse to shift the subject. “This war is beyond any of our experiences, and I do not appreciate how confidently some of you speak about its results. If we really do wish to preserve the health of the Colony, as our job should be, we ought to presume the worst and assume that we will never back the winning side [13].”
6.5: The Shape of the Battlefield
Rather than reveal any sort of consensus among the General Assembly, the ongoing debate demonstrated the diversity of opinions in the Colony. It quickly became clear that opinions did not fall within a simple Royalist/Parliamentarian binary, nor even a Royalist/Parliamentarian/Neutral trinary. Instead, opinions fell along a spectrum of beliefs.
Discussions raged for days, covering every topic from trade policy to morality and theology, to battle tactics, and far more. As the debate entered its second week, key players had a solid understanding of the range of beliefs present in the Assembly and their principal advocates. However, what no one could quite get a grasp on was the levels of support for each belief. Pro-neutrality burgesses likely made up the biggest faction, but the margins were close enough that firm Parliamentarians and Royalists each felt that they could tip the scales in their favors.
Once he had a firm understanding of the state of the debate, Leonard Calvert finally stepped in to speak. Knowing the Colony’s continued loyalty to Charles I was necessary for his political (and possibly physical) survival, he was determined to quash the upstart Parliamentarian faction. However, it took until the second week for him to settle on an argument that could sway the most neutral Protestants. Every member of the General Assembly was a rich man. And even those who seemed tempted by moral arguments clearly kept their personal fortunes on their minds.
“Are we forgetting what happened when the Virginia Company ran this colony?” Leonard asked. His remark earned a few surprised whispers, as this was the first time he’d injected himself into the debate in a major way. “The Company almost ran the Colony into the ground, despite the advice of those actually living here. It was the King who showed true concern for the wellbeing of this venture and the King who was willing to elevate William Capps to the governorship at our advice. The merchants of London would raze the Colony in an instant if we looked to be a bad investment. The King sees us as a matter of pride. Should we turn our backs on the King, there is no guarantee that Parliament will not abandon us and let our plantations turn to dust.”
“And why should we listen to you?” Calvert was surprised to hear Richard Bennett speak up. While he had his occasional outburst, Bennett, like Calvert, had largely stayed quiet and patient. “Everyone here knows you’re trying to save your skin here,” Bennett continued.
Bennett was at least partially right, but Calvert wasn’t going to let him have that. “Do you intend to refute my argument, Bennett, or are personal attacks all you have?”
Bennett continued unfazed. “Why should we be letting Catholics control this decision?”
“This again? This is a long-settled issue,” said Calvert.
“Is it?” asked Bennett. “The only reason you set foot in the New World is because of Charles Stuart. Some may argue that defying his order is treason, but in that case this whole damn debate is treason! Will you all at least indulge me for one moment?”
The reaction to Bennett’s statement was mixed, but more positive than Leonard Calvert would’ve liked. He motioned for his fellow Catholics to stay silent for the time being. Sure, whatever argument Bennett had was dangerous, but trying to stop him here would only prove his point that Leonard just wanted to protect himself.
“Much appreciated,” said Bennett. “Over the past week, it has become clear that the matter of if and how we react to this war is a question of guaranteeing what’s best for the Colony and our own livelihoods. Calvert and his Catholic ilk are not asking the same question. They are concerned with what is best for themselves, which may or may not be what is best for the Colony as a whole.
John Lewger, senior Burgess from St. Mary’s City [14], spoke up, ignoring Calvert’s directive. “I urge my colleagues to think, even for a moment, about the precedent you would create by following Mr. Bennett’s advice. How do we determine this so-called ‘Colony as a whole’ that he describes? He states that those with separate interests from the majority ought to be ignored. Well then, should Mr. Baugh of Henrico be excluded from matters of military because he has a greater interest in the defense of our western border than the rest of us? Should Secretary Claiborne be excluded from matters of trade and agriculture because Kent Island relies less on tobacco than those of you who live along the James River?”
Bennett attempted to retort, but Lewger cut him off. “I am sure you wish to argue that the circumstances surrounding myself and my fellow Catholics is different, but do you have an objective standard which future lawmakers and judges may use? Who is to say that another John Harvey could not come along and use your reasoning to declare that he was the sole individual worthy of making decisions?”
“You’re talking about this like we’re passing some ordinary law,” said Bennett. “We are talking about civil war! This is uncharted territory and, God willing, territory we will never have to see again.”
“Is this really the last time we will face an event like this?” asked Walter Chiles. “If Parliament does succeed, can we trust a chaotic and untested government not to turn on itself within a generation?”
6.6: Virginia’s Stance
The debates continued on for another week and a half. Though many in the Assembly found Bennett’s arguments persuasive, Lewger successfully spooked them with the specter of another Harvey and the Catholics were allowed to participate in the vote in the name of rule of law.
Just as Lewger had hoped, one win for rule of law begot another. Ironically, despite the Parliamentarians in England asserting that the King had no respect for rule of law, Royalists in Virginia successfully framed support of the King as following the law. Following the law would, in turn, create a more stable political and economic society in the long run – or at least they hoped so.
Over the course of the final week of arguments, the Virginian Parliamentarians rapidly lost ground and the argument shifted to a debate over an explicitly Royalist standing or merely remaining neutral. Despite convincing arguments about the stability of the monarchy, the fact that the Parliamentarians could win the war cast a fog of uncertainty over the proceedings.
Before a final vote on the Colony’s stance, the pro-neutrality faction forced votes on a few measures that went in their favor. First, a resolution calling for freedom of opinion within the General Assembly. This was backed in full force by the pro-Parliamentarian faction who, as the tide of the debate shifted, feared being accused of treason. Berkeley also pushed hard for the resolution, fearing utter chaos if the pro-Parliamentary faction felt threatened. The resolution passed with broad support from all sides and ensured that no one would be prosecuted for what they had said over the past few weeks.
The second neutral guarantee was freedom of commerce. Regardless of who the Colony officially supported, merchants would be free to send their products to anyone in England, the colonies, or abroad. Many Royalists were enraged at the resolution, as it would significantly weaken any attempts to support the King, but they were ultimately outvoted by the significant portion of Burgesses concerned with their plantations first and foremost.
Third and finally, the Assembly voted on a resolution proclaiming that the Colony would not declare war on either side. Staunch Royalists were even more furious about this measure. What good would their support be if they sat on the sidelines? But uncertainty over the eventual winner of the Civil War proved frightening enough that the resolution passed by slim margins. Even if Virginia backed a side and got it wrong, they were in a better position to negotiate with the winner.
Lastly, Calvert and Lewger introduced resolutions in their respective chambers declaring Virginia’s support of King Charles I. The resolution easily passed the Council of State due to Governor Berkeley unsubtly showing his support for Charles throughout the proceedings. Stegg initially attempted to use his position as Speaker to delay or throw out the vote, but between pressure from the Governor and an uproar from much of the House, he ultimately let it come to a vote.
The vote was closer than anyone would have liked. 13 Burgesses outright voted against it and eight abstained from voting. However, with 25 votes in favor, the resolution passed [15]. Within days, news of Virginia’s support for King Charles I reached all corners of the Colony. Within weeks, the news reached Boston. Within months, the news reached England. No one was sure exactly how the rest of England and her colonies would react, but long before they would become a problem, Virginia would have to deal with backlash from within.
[1] This is almost exactly per OTL (albeit grossly oversimplified). The main difference is that the anti-Catholic conspiracies about Charles I are a little more extreme and a little more influential.
[2] OTL Bennett was no longer a Burgess at this point. ITTL, greater fears over Catholic influence keep him in power.
[3] Since the Colony was underdeveloped/not dense, House districts were a lot looser than today, resulting in multiple members being elected from broad districts like ten in OTL’s 1642 session, whose districts are all listed simply as “James City.”
[4] Like OTL, the region to the south of Virginia’s original shires is named Carolina after Charles I.
[5] Like OTL’s Maryland, TTL’s Marianus Shire is still majority Protestant by a wide margin; however, the wealthy landowners (i.e. the ones who can vote) are predominantly Catholic, allowing them to easily secure those seats. Kent Island’s elite are Protestants, but the neighboring Catholics have helped the trading post thrive, so they favor protections for Catholics.
[6] That’s 38 seats from OTL; 3 seats added earlier ITTL for St. Mary’s, Upper Chesapeake, and Kent; and the 5 seats to be added in this session.
[7] IOTL Berkeley ultimately opted to unilaterally declare neutrality. However, with TTL’s Virginia being larger and more politically tense (both due to the Catholic population and Burgesses emboldened by the greater success at replacing John Harvey), Berkeley decides to bring the issue to the General Assembly in an attempt to frontload the chaos in the legislature, rather than let tensions build and boil over across the Colony. We’ll see if he’s successful.
[8] OTL’s Stegg also sided with the Parliamentarians, even going so far as to seize royalist ships in the colonies with his personal vessel. His arguments ITTL are a mixture of arguments used in OTL’s trial of Charles I and TTL’s removal of John Harvey.
[9] John Carter, the founder of the powerful Carter dynasty of Virginia planters, was a staunch royalist IOTL. He even got himself thrown in jail over his opposition to Richard Cromwell. His comments here reflect both his moral opposition to the Parliamentarians but also the cunning economic pragmatism his family displayed over the years.
[10] IOTL Claiborne was a major opponent of Berkeley and the royalists. He allied himself with Richard Bennett and Thomas Stegg (his long-time business partner in both timelines) and used his newfound power to fight the Catholics in Maryland. However, so much of this was motivated by his personal grievances over losing Kent Island to Maryland. ITTL, he not only kept Kent Island, but actively profits from the Catholic presence in northern Virginia, so he’s left as a confused and worried moderate torn between his old Parliamentarian allies and his new Catholic trading partners.
[11] Harvey himself declared Harwood as one of the ringleaders of the coup. Harwood would later go on to claim that anyone who doubted the succession of Charles II was guilty of treason.
[12] Later IOTL he lost his political positions for trading at Dutch ports in defiance of Parliament’s orders.
[13] This is Benjamin Harrison I, who is indeed related to those other important Harrisons from American history. He was in the House at this time IOTL, but his position on the English Civil War is unknown, so I let him contribute something more cautious and neutral to the discussion.
[14] IOTL he was the first lawyer in Maryland and served in the Maryland House of Burgesses. He was an Anglican minister who converted to Catholicism in 1635, making him a good fit for managing the tense Protestant-Catholic relations of both OTL’s Maryland and TTL’s Virginia.
[15] Virginia was already predominantly pro-royalist IOTL, but the Catholic population and more entrenched Berkeley of TTL push that support over the edge to become the Colony’s official position.
And there we go, the English Civil War is off to a tense start in the colonies! I can promise that the drama is far from at its peak. This chapter was a bit different format-wise, focusing more on dialogue and narrative to highlight the tension and perspectives among Virginia’s political elite. Hope you enjoyed it!
6.1: England at War
Some would argue that England had been hurdling towards war since the start of Charles Stuart’s reign. A stubborn believer in the absolute authority of the monarchy at the time when Parliamentary power was on the rise, Charles I found himself in a spat of political conflicts with Parliament. From 1629 to 1640, he attempted to rule entirely without Parliament. This era of Personal Rule was characterized by a constant struggle for funds and an increasingly furious merchant class.
When religious conflicts with Scotland escalated into outright war in 1640, Charles I was forced to call Parliament in an effort to fund the English military. Parliament pounced on this opportunity and introduced a slew of bills aimed at preventing Personal Rule from ever happening again.
As Parliament legislatively raged against the King, Charles I finally began building up his armies both to take on the Scottish rebels and to put down a new Catholic revolt in Ireland. As tensions grew between the Crown and Parliament, Parliamentarians began to eye these armies suspiciously, fearing they would be turned on Parliament. Some even suspected that Charles’s Ireland-bound army was actually intended to lead a Catholic takeover of England. In response, Parliamentarians raised militias and armies of their own, just in case. The King, in turn, saw these Parliamentarian armies as conspiracies to overthrow him.
Regardless of whether either side initially intended to overthrow the other, the distrust over mounting forces proved too much to maintain peace. Aiming to stop what he perceived as a coup plot, Charles I marched on Parliamentarian forces in Hull. When that failed to produce a decisive victory for either side, Charles I declared war on the so-called rebel forces in August of 1642.
Despite hopes for a quick, decisive battle, the English Civil War would stretch on for years without a clear victor. Though Charles I’s side arguably had more legitimacy, the Parliamentarians had the powerful backing of the London merchant class, who in turn held the support of the Royal Navy and thus controlled international trade [1].
6.2: Expanding the House of Burgesses
While things were spiraling out of control in England in the summer of 1642, Virginia would remain in ignorant bliss over this until the end of the year when news of the war finally crossed the Atlantic. In the meantime, the House of Burgesses faced its own conflict, albeit one that would feel quaint compared to the incoming news.
Richard Bennett, the leader of the small Puritan faction of the House [2], raised a furious objection at the start of the session when the body attempted to seat its new members. That year, the House was set to add five new members: a second [3] Burgess representing the St. Mary’s region, a second Burgess representing the plantations of the Upper Chesapeake, a second Burgess representing Kent, a first Burgess representing Skanderborg, and a first Burgess representing Carolina [4].
Everyone knew that Bennett’s objections were based on religion, and he did very little to hide that fact. Catholics dominated all the districts of the Marianus Shire, save for Kent, and the Kent Burgesses were known to sympathize with their Catholic neighbors [5]. If they added these new Burgesses, Catholics would hold six of the body’s 46 [6] seats and known sympathizers would push the so-called “Catholic Bloc” up to eight.
Bennett’s concerns fell largely on deaf ears. Outside of the Puritan faction, even those who steadfastly refused to soften on Catholics in the years since Leonard Calvert first arrived in the Colony, a sixth of the House hardly seemed worth destroying the body over. Speaker Thomas Stegg asked Bennett if he had any legal objections and, hearing none, quickly turned to the business of the House.
6.3: News Reaches Virginia
Governor Berkeley’s call for an emergency meeting of the General Assembly was met with confusion and annoyance when it was first issued in December of 1642. Berkeley had largely trusted the House of Burgesses to conduct its own business so far, so this sudden order, particularly without a stated reason, looked to some like an overreach. However, as Burgesses trickled into Jamestown from across the Colony, they started to hear rumors. Soon, the initial anger at Berkeley was gone, and was replaced with a jumpy tension. Something huge had just happened.
When Berkeley finally assembled both houses in the statehouse, he broke the news which was all but an open secret at that point: Parliament was at war with the King. He relayed all that he could about the situation, but everyone there had made the arduous journey across the Atlantic and knew just how out of date the information likely was.
“I have called you all here for an impossible, but undeniably necessary task – a task I neither can nor should perform on my own,” the Governor said. Indeed, the task of determining Virginia’s stance on a war it knew very little about was not only difficult, but incredibly risky. Even neutrality could be seen as an affront to the winning side. Berkeley’s exact motivation for including the General Assembly in this process was debated both by his contemporaries and future academics. Some saw the move as a gesture of goodwill to a tense Assembly, while others saw it as a purely self-motivated attempt to cover his ass if things went wrong [7].
Leonard Calvert, normally willing to assert himself into a discussion and stand up for his own interests, chose to stay silent at the start of the debate. “If my countrymen were willing to turn on their own King, then my safety was of no guarantee,” he would later write to a friend in England. “I would let the Protestants shape the battlefield first, so that I could be sure I was not placed at the center.”
6.4: Debate Begins
The common assumption was that the Virginian elite was predominantly loyalist, but the news out of Europe threw that assumption into question. Even during previous disagreements between Charles I and Parliament, supporting the King was synonymous with supporting the law and a pragmatic desire not to incite the wrathful might of the motherland. This war opened questions about who was legally and morally correct, not to mention which side was the pragmatic one to back.
The faction that overthrew Governor John Harvey seven years ago was now viewed as the biggest wildcard. Though ostensibly loyal to the Crown, their earlier revolt led the stauncher loyalists to fear they would rebel again and seek greater power. Speaker of the House Thomas Stegg, a participant in the anti-Harvey revolt, would be first to speak. Given how he had shut down Richard Bennett earlier that year, it was expected that he would tow a moderate, legalist line. Instead, he opened the debate with a bombshell.
“The King has denied Parliament its right to govern, brought war to England, and murdered his own countrymen without provocation. If we are an institution meant for the betterment of England, we should not accept the leadership of those who only seek to abase it [8].” Stegg’s opening line left the General Assembly in stunned silence.
That silence was soon followed by a deafening uproar. Some Burgesses cried out at the shocking boldness of the assertion. Fierce loyalists called for his head. A select few Burgesses, including Richard Bennett, whooped in support. As different Burgesses took note of others’ more extreme reactions, shouts were lobbed in all directions. It took many bangs of the gavel and a mighty bellow from Governor Berkeley to quiet the Assembly and prevent a brawl.
Burgess John Carter was next to speak. Having just acquired vast tracts of land along the Rappahannock River, Carter was seen as a rising star and economic heavyweight within the Colony, though he was still seen as a green newcomer by those who had been in the Assembly since the days of Harvey.
“I would sooner remove myself from this Assembly than lend even tacit endorsement to such treasonous ideas,” Carter said. “Yet, even putting aside the questions of loyalty and morality, I cannot see the sense in endorsing a rogue Parliament. How can we expect to thrive when we are willingly inviting chaos to our shores? [9]”
“And how will our livelihoods fare if we make ourselves enemies of the Royal Navy and the great merchant families of London?” asked William Claiborne. In contrast with the fiery passion of previous statements, Claiborne was subdued and clearly troubled [10].
“Not one of those angry families will matter if the King succeeds and executes them for treason,” said Burgess Thomas Harwood. Murmurs spread across the statehouse once he spoke. He was another ringleader in the conspiracy to remove Harvey and now the first to indicate that the faction was split on the issue of the war [11]. “So many of you treat treason so lightly, as if the King has no chance of prevailing.”
“I have no intention of flying a rebel flag on my ship,” said Burgess Walter Chiles [12]. “If you are a merchant in Rotterdam, or Boston, or the West Indies, would you give preference to an agent of the English Crown or the representative of some earl playing warlord?”
“You would have to be a fool to think Boston would accept a ship bearing the flag of that papist king,” said Richard Bennett.
“I am sure I can find a sane man among the zealots up there,” responded Chiles. The ensuing shouting match once again nearly turned into a fight before Berkeley could bring the chamber back to order.
Burgess Benjamin Harrison spoke next, using the break of the chaos as an excuse to shift the subject. “This war is beyond any of our experiences, and I do not appreciate how confidently some of you speak about its results. If we really do wish to preserve the health of the Colony, as our job should be, we ought to presume the worst and assume that we will never back the winning side [13].”
6.5: The Shape of the Battlefield
Rather than reveal any sort of consensus among the General Assembly, the ongoing debate demonstrated the diversity of opinions in the Colony. It quickly became clear that opinions did not fall within a simple Royalist/Parliamentarian binary, nor even a Royalist/Parliamentarian/Neutral trinary. Instead, opinions fell along a spectrum of beliefs.
Discussions raged for days, covering every topic from trade policy to morality and theology, to battle tactics, and far more. As the debate entered its second week, key players had a solid understanding of the range of beliefs present in the Assembly and their principal advocates. However, what no one could quite get a grasp on was the levels of support for each belief. Pro-neutrality burgesses likely made up the biggest faction, but the margins were close enough that firm Parliamentarians and Royalists each felt that they could tip the scales in their favors.
Spectrum of Beliefs in the 1642 General Assembly
| Position | Reasoning | Known Advocates |
| Most Loyal to King | Religion | Catholics |
| Highly Loyal to King | Moral belief in monarchy, personal loyalty to Charles I | William Berkeley, John Carter |
| Fairly Loyal to King | Fear of repercussions of treason | Thomas Harwood |
| Sides with King for Practicality | Value political/economic stability of monarchy | Walter Chiles, Benjamin Harrison |
| Neutral | War is too unpredicatble | William Claiborne, Plurality of Burgesses |
| Sides with Parliament for Practicality | Fears immediate economic fallout of siding with Charles I | Plurality of Anti-Harvey Faction |
| Fairly Loyal to Parliament | ||
| Highly Loyal to Parliament | Moral opposition to Charles I | Thomas Stegg |
| Most Loyal to Parliament | Religion | Puritans |
Once he had a firm understanding of the state of the debate, Leonard Calvert finally stepped in to speak. Knowing the Colony’s continued loyalty to Charles I was necessary for his political (and possibly physical) survival, he was determined to quash the upstart Parliamentarian faction. However, it took until the second week for him to settle on an argument that could sway the most neutral Protestants. Every member of the General Assembly was a rich man. And even those who seemed tempted by moral arguments clearly kept their personal fortunes on their minds.
“Are we forgetting what happened when the Virginia Company ran this colony?” Leonard asked. His remark earned a few surprised whispers, as this was the first time he’d injected himself into the debate in a major way. “The Company almost ran the Colony into the ground, despite the advice of those actually living here. It was the King who showed true concern for the wellbeing of this venture and the King who was willing to elevate William Capps to the governorship at our advice. The merchants of London would raze the Colony in an instant if we looked to be a bad investment. The King sees us as a matter of pride. Should we turn our backs on the King, there is no guarantee that Parliament will not abandon us and let our plantations turn to dust.”
“And why should we listen to you?” Calvert was surprised to hear Richard Bennett speak up. While he had his occasional outburst, Bennett, like Calvert, had largely stayed quiet and patient. “Everyone here knows you’re trying to save your skin here,” Bennett continued.
Bennett was at least partially right, but Calvert wasn’t going to let him have that. “Do you intend to refute my argument, Bennett, or are personal attacks all you have?”
Bennett continued unfazed. “Why should we be letting Catholics control this decision?”
“This again? This is a long-settled issue,” said Calvert.
“Is it?” asked Bennett. “The only reason you set foot in the New World is because of Charles Stuart. Some may argue that defying his order is treason, but in that case this whole damn debate is treason! Will you all at least indulge me for one moment?”
The reaction to Bennett’s statement was mixed, but more positive than Leonard Calvert would’ve liked. He motioned for his fellow Catholics to stay silent for the time being. Sure, whatever argument Bennett had was dangerous, but trying to stop him here would only prove his point that Leonard just wanted to protect himself.
“Much appreciated,” said Bennett. “Over the past week, it has become clear that the matter of if and how we react to this war is a question of guaranteeing what’s best for the Colony and our own livelihoods. Calvert and his Catholic ilk are not asking the same question. They are concerned with what is best for themselves, which may or may not be what is best for the Colony as a whole.
John Lewger, senior Burgess from St. Mary’s City [14], spoke up, ignoring Calvert’s directive. “I urge my colleagues to think, even for a moment, about the precedent you would create by following Mr. Bennett’s advice. How do we determine this so-called ‘Colony as a whole’ that he describes? He states that those with separate interests from the majority ought to be ignored. Well then, should Mr. Baugh of Henrico be excluded from matters of military because he has a greater interest in the defense of our western border than the rest of us? Should Secretary Claiborne be excluded from matters of trade and agriculture because Kent Island relies less on tobacco than those of you who live along the James River?”
Bennett attempted to retort, but Lewger cut him off. “I am sure you wish to argue that the circumstances surrounding myself and my fellow Catholics is different, but do you have an objective standard which future lawmakers and judges may use? Who is to say that another John Harvey could not come along and use your reasoning to declare that he was the sole individual worthy of making decisions?”
“You’re talking about this like we’re passing some ordinary law,” said Bennett. “We are talking about civil war! This is uncharted territory and, God willing, territory we will never have to see again.”
“Is this really the last time we will face an event like this?” asked Walter Chiles. “If Parliament does succeed, can we trust a chaotic and untested government not to turn on itself within a generation?”
6.6: Virginia’s Stance
The debates continued on for another week and a half. Though many in the Assembly found Bennett’s arguments persuasive, Lewger successfully spooked them with the specter of another Harvey and the Catholics were allowed to participate in the vote in the name of rule of law.
Just as Lewger had hoped, one win for rule of law begot another. Ironically, despite the Parliamentarians in England asserting that the King had no respect for rule of law, Royalists in Virginia successfully framed support of the King as following the law. Following the law would, in turn, create a more stable political and economic society in the long run – or at least they hoped so.
Over the course of the final week of arguments, the Virginian Parliamentarians rapidly lost ground and the argument shifted to a debate over an explicitly Royalist standing or merely remaining neutral. Despite convincing arguments about the stability of the monarchy, the fact that the Parliamentarians could win the war cast a fog of uncertainty over the proceedings.
Before a final vote on the Colony’s stance, the pro-neutrality faction forced votes on a few measures that went in their favor. First, a resolution calling for freedom of opinion within the General Assembly. This was backed in full force by the pro-Parliamentarian faction who, as the tide of the debate shifted, feared being accused of treason. Berkeley also pushed hard for the resolution, fearing utter chaos if the pro-Parliamentary faction felt threatened. The resolution passed with broad support from all sides and ensured that no one would be prosecuted for what they had said over the past few weeks.
The second neutral guarantee was freedom of commerce. Regardless of who the Colony officially supported, merchants would be free to send their products to anyone in England, the colonies, or abroad. Many Royalists were enraged at the resolution, as it would significantly weaken any attempts to support the King, but they were ultimately outvoted by the significant portion of Burgesses concerned with their plantations first and foremost.
Third and finally, the Assembly voted on a resolution proclaiming that the Colony would not declare war on either side. Staunch Royalists were even more furious about this measure. What good would their support be if they sat on the sidelines? But uncertainty over the eventual winner of the Civil War proved frightening enough that the resolution passed by slim margins. Even if Virginia backed a side and got it wrong, they were in a better position to negotiate with the winner.
Lastly, Calvert and Lewger introduced resolutions in their respective chambers declaring Virginia’s support of King Charles I. The resolution easily passed the Council of State due to Governor Berkeley unsubtly showing his support for Charles throughout the proceedings. Stegg initially attempted to use his position as Speaker to delay or throw out the vote, but between pressure from the Governor and an uproar from much of the House, he ultimately let it come to a vote.
The vote was closer than anyone would have liked. 13 Burgesses outright voted against it and eight abstained from voting. However, with 25 votes in favor, the resolution passed [15]. Within days, news of Virginia’s support for King Charles I reached all corners of the Colony. Within weeks, the news reached Boston. Within months, the news reached England. No one was sure exactly how the rest of England and her colonies would react, but long before they would become a problem, Virginia would have to deal with backlash from within.
[1] This is almost exactly per OTL (albeit grossly oversimplified). The main difference is that the anti-Catholic conspiracies about Charles I are a little more extreme and a little more influential.
[2] OTL Bennett was no longer a Burgess at this point. ITTL, greater fears over Catholic influence keep him in power.
[3] Since the Colony was underdeveloped/not dense, House districts were a lot looser than today, resulting in multiple members being elected from broad districts like ten in OTL’s 1642 session, whose districts are all listed simply as “James City.”
[4] Like OTL, the region to the south of Virginia’s original shires is named Carolina after Charles I.
[5] Like OTL’s Maryland, TTL’s Marianus Shire is still majority Protestant by a wide margin; however, the wealthy landowners (i.e. the ones who can vote) are predominantly Catholic, allowing them to easily secure those seats. Kent Island’s elite are Protestants, but the neighboring Catholics have helped the trading post thrive, so they favor protections for Catholics.
[6] That’s 38 seats from OTL; 3 seats added earlier ITTL for St. Mary’s, Upper Chesapeake, and Kent; and the 5 seats to be added in this session.
[7] IOTL Berkeley ultimately opted to unilaterally declare neutrality. However, with TTL’s Virginia being larger and more politically tense (both due to the Catholic population and Burgesses emboldened by the greater success at replacing John Harvey), Berkeley decides to bring the issue to the General Assembly in an attempt to frontload the chaos in the legislature, rather than let tensions build and boil over across the Colony. We’ll see if he’s successful.
[8] OTL’s Stegg also sided with the Parliamentarians, even going so far as to seize royalist ships in the colonies with his personal vessel. His arguments ITTL are a mixture of arguments used in OTL’s trial of Charles I and TTL’s removal of John Harvey.
[9] John Carter, the founder of the powerful Carter dynasty of Virginia planters, was a staunch royalist IOTL. He even got himself thrown in jail over his opposition to Richard Cromwell. His comments here reflect both his moral opposition to the Parliamentarians but also the cunning economic pragmatism his family displayed over the years.
[10] IOTL Claiborne was a major opponent of Berkeley and the royalists. He allied himself with Richard Bennett and Thomas Stegg (his long-time business partner in both timelines) and used his newfound power to fight the Catholics in Maryland. However, so much of this was motivated by his personal grievances over losing Kent Island to Maryland. ITTL, he not only kept Kent Island, but actively profits from the Catholic presence in northern Virginia, so he’s left as a confused and worried moderate torn between his old Parliamentarian allies and his new Catholic trading partners.
[11] Harvey himself declared Harwood as one of the ringleaders of the coup. Harwood would later go on to claim that anyone who doubted the succession of Charles II was guilty of treason.
[12] Later IOTL he lost his political positions for trading at Dutch ports in defiance of Parliament’s orders.
[13] This is Benjamin Harrison I, who is indeed related to those other important Harrisons from American history. He was in the House at this time IOTL, but his position on the English Civil War is unknown, so I let him contribute something more cautious and neutral to the discussion.
[14] IOTL he was the first lawyer in Maryland and served in the Maryland House of Burgesses. He was an Anglican minister who converted to Catholicism in 1635, making him a good fit for managing the tense Protestant-Catholic relations of both OTL’s Maryland and TTL’s Virginia.
[15] Virginia was already predominantly pro-royalist IOTL, but the Catholic population and more entrenched Berkeley of TTL push that support over the edge to become the Colony’s official position.
And there we go, the English Civil War is off to a tense start in the colonies! I can promise that the drama is far from at its peak. This chapter was a bit different format-wise, focusing more on dialogue and narrative to highlight the tension and perspectives among Virginia’s political elite. Hope you enjoyed it!
Nice work! Very plausible changes to OTL. Very interesting. Can't wait to see how New England responds and how/if it leads to any tensions with their southern counterparts.
Just cannot see significant Royalism there, if things are anywhere close to OTL.
Certainly not. OTL there were a bunch of folks who were very directly involved in Parliamentarian efforts. I more wonder how far New England in general is willing to lean into that ITTL.
I think a more puritan Massachussetts would be less likely to back out from New England Confederation, leading to a more powerful New England during First-Anglo Dutch War which would conquer New Nederlands earlier and lead to New England Confederation's survival.
Chapter 7: Death of a Compromise
Chapter 7: Death of a Compromise
7.1: Parliamentarian Pushback
Though no member of the General Assembly would be held legally accountable for what they said during the debate over Virginia’s position in the English Civil War, plenty of men saw consequences for their rhetoric, perhaps none more clearly than Thomas Stegg. While mere months ago he was a respected and powerful politician at the head of the House of Burgesses, this new axis that erupted into Virginian politics suddenly put him in the minority.
By the time the 1644 session of the House of Burgesses commenced, the common sentiment was that Stegg didn’t represent the will of the average Burgess, and thus he lost the election for Speaker (by an admittedly narrow margin) to Thomas Harwood [1]. Stegg nearly resigned his position upon losing, but was ultimately convinced to stay due to two independent appeals - one by his old business partner, William Claiborne, who valued a diversity of opinion in the House, and the other by Richard Bennett.
Bennett, like Stegg, suffered politically following the debate. Though he never lost an office or titles, he went from the leader of a somewhat outspoken but mainstream faction to an infamous firebrand. Though his proposal to omit Catholics from the vote on the war was fairly popular, many respectable moderates acted as if they had never supported the position once it became clear that the Royalists would prevail. Their attempt to save face in turn made Bennett and his Puritans look far more radical.
Bennett, like Claiborne, saw Stegg’s value as a counterweight to the Royalist majority. However, where Claiborne valued Stegg mainly for his public speaking, Bennett envisioned a much more active role for Stegg: an opposition leader. Bennett was a political liability, but Stegg, despite his fall from grace, was still respected. If Bennett could appeal to Stegg’s Parliamentarian sympathies and resentment at losing the speakership, perhaps he could convince Stegg to lead a new band of anti-Catholic and pro-Parliament leaders. In time, Stegg would reveal his true value to Bennett – not as a leader, but as a scapegoat.
7.2: The Limits of Neutrality
For a few glorious months, Governor Berkeley thought he had struck a suitable peace throughout Virginia. He got his desired support of the King, but seemingly avoided a civil war in the colony by allowing each planter to trade with whomever he pleased.
While Berkeley thought the arrangement was brilliant, it seemed that the King disagreed.
A number of pro-Parliament planters used their personal vessels to ship resources to Parliamentarian forces in England. Berkeley, while not thrilled with his countrymen’s treason, was willing to look the other way while he worried about affairs on the continent. Yet, word inevitably got out about who was supplying the Parliamentarians, and Charles I wanted his royal governor to put a stop to it.
That is how Berkeley found himself staring at an arrest warrant for Captain Richard Ingle. Captain Ingle was a master shipper, responsible for hauling tobacco and other goods from the upper Chesapeake Bay to England. Few men in Virginia could say they had crossed the Atlantic more times than Ingle. As soon as war broke out, he began using his sailing prowess to run raw goods from the New World to the Parliamentarians. Wishing to nip any sedition in the colonies in the bud so he could focus on the home front, Charles I demanded Ingle be hanged and his ship be seized by the Virginian government [2].
Historians are split on Berkeley’s exact motivation for breaking the General Assembly’s 1642 compromise. Whether he was thinking primarily of his loyalty to the King, the stability of his royalist coalition, or a purely selfish desire to stay in power is up for debate, and one’s opinion on this issue tends to correlate with one’s broader view of this important figure in Virginian history.
7.3: Dead Man Walking
Ingle’s arrest proceeded without incident. While not out at sea, Ingle was a resident of St. Mary’s City, so his residence was known to all the local Catholic elite. Those elites were more than willing to see a Parliamentarian agent (and, as some historians argue, a rival businessman) removed from their city. This included Leonard Calvert, whose loyal militiamen aided the Governor’s forces in a quiet, but effective raid on the Ingle estate.
Despite King Charles clearly wishing to make an example of Captain Ingle, Governor Berkeley did not feel the same way. Going back on the 1642 compromise was enough to enrage the colony’s Parliamentarians, but making a cruel show out of executing a prolific sailor, trader, and businessman would very likely turn the moderates against him as well.
Ideally, Ingle’s execution would take place away from the gawking masses around Jamestown – perhaps up in the north of the colony. However, a crime such as treason could only be tried by the General Court in Jamestown. To keep Ingle away from the indignity of Jamestown’s jail, Berkeley allowed him to be kept under arrest at the estate of loyalist John Carter in Upper Norfolk [3].
There was a reason Berkeley was already thinking so deeply about the optics of Ingle’s execution: there was no doubt that he would be found guilty. Captain Ingle provided materials to warring enemies of the Crown, and his business records proved it. Not to mention the colony had already pledged itself (albeit loosely) to the Royalist cause, so to directly deny an order by the King to execute a traitor would undermine the benefit of that decision. No matter how much Berkeley tried to present a fair and humane trial, Ingle was doomed from the start.
7.4: Hanged Assembly
Despite the unorthodox setup, news of Ingle’s trial would inevitably get out. While Berkeley intended for the hushed trial and plantation imprisonment to be seen as humane treatment for Captain Ingle, the Parliamentarians – and especially the Puritans – accused him of trying to cover up his (and the King’s) tyranny.
Whether out of genuine moral outrage or a cynical desire to grow their power, Stegg and Bennett jumped on the trial and would never let Jamestown hear the end of it. When the General Assembly next convened, Stegg immediately launched into a speech lambasting Berkeley and calling for the release of Ingle. Not only did the speech make the moderates a bit hot under the collar, but it also disrupted the House’s agenda. The next day, Bennett took the floor and repeated the process.
Speaker Harwood was stuck in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, Stegg and Bennett’s faction were clearly intent on mucking up House affairs until they got what they want. On the other hand, denying them the floor would, to many, legitimize their claims that the colonial administration was suppressing Parliamentarian burgesses, which flew in the face of the freedom of opinion resolution they passed as part of the 1642 compromise.
The Puritan filibusters [4] went from a nuisance to a crisis when tensions once again flared between the colonists and natives. Residents of Delegate Edward Hill’s Shirley Plantation got into an altercation with the local Chickahominy people. The Chickahominy, who lived on the lands of Charles City Shire long, long before the English arrived, desired free movement through Hill’s undeveloped land, but Hill’s men saw them as trespassers. Fortunately, the incident did not escalate to violence, but the shouting match and posturing left both sides feeling uneasy.
Word of this incident soon reached the Chickahominy’s Powhatan allies and it all but confirmed Opechancanough’s fears. The incident occurred very close to the border established a mere six years ago and demonstrated the Englishmen’s drive to keep pushing farther and farther West. That said, it would be senseless to start a brutal war when no blood had been shed yet. Opechancanough sent a (very angry) delegation demanding the issue be resolved, lest relations deteriorate further.
Many in Jamestown saw Opechancanough’s delegation as the petulant demands of a tyrant. Hill hadn’t violated the treaty, so that tyrant could cram it. Not to mention it was England’s God-given right to colonize the land how she pleased. Despite a building pro-war fervor, Governor Berkeley urged caution. They would claim what was rightfully theirs in due time, but for now peace was better for everyone.
If Berkeley wanted to avoid another untimely war with the Powhatan and Chickahominy, he would need legislation to placate the uneasy Weroance. Legislation would require debate.
And debate would require the Puritans to shut up about Ingle’s execution.
Giving into Puritan demands still wasn’t an option. Justice had to be served. Plus, Berkeley wasn’t keen on rewarding such disruptive legislative tactics. Instead, he tried to reason with Stegg.
“We’ll be at war if you don’t drop this charade! Men will die!” argued Berkeley.
Stegg paused his impassioned, rambling filibuster to respond. “A man will die if I don’t stop.”
Things continued that way for a while, until Berkeley saw no choice but to raise the stakes. “If you do not cease these interruptions, I will be forced to hold you in contempt and remove you from this chamber!”
Bennett grinned to himself at this development. Berkeley was revealing himself for the tyrant he truly was. With any luck, the rest of the General Assembly would be willing to boot out Berkeley and his royalist ideology, just as they had done to Harvey only a few years ago. He nodded to Stegg, who took a deep breath and launched into another impassioned speech.
Seeing no other choice (and losing his patience), Governor Berkeley called on a few loyal delegates to help haul Stegg from the chamber. Several outraged Puritan delegates rose from their seats, but Bennett quickly stopped them from intervening. Instead, they loudly decried Berkeley as Stegg was dragged away.
Stegg’s contempt charge earned him a night in the local jail. Berkeley insisted that he did not want to resort to long-term consequences and that he was merely forcing Stegg to cool off and stop interfering with legislative affairs. Despite these reassurances, the Puritans raised hell for the remainder of the day, bemoaning their comrade’s fate. Not wanting to push his luck with additional contempt charges, Berkeley opted to end proceedings for the day and left the rabble rousers with a stern warning.
Onlookers saw a red-faced Governor Berkeley muttering furiously to himself as he left town that afternoon and returned to his plantation for the weekend.
7.5: The Jamestown Riot
They’d already thrown one coup, so why not try another?
Richard Bennett gathered with his supporters that night – some Puritans, some Parliamentarians, and some who just liked him on a personal level – outside the Jamestown jail. Those who owned weapons brought them, though they tried not to flaunt them, lest they scare away any newcomers.
Bennett delivered a fiery speech that put his filibusters to shame. It was a blend of a sermon, a political manifesto, and a call to arms. Though he made his Parliamentarian sympathies clear, he focused on issues in Virginia, particularly with Governor Berkeley. He admonished Berkeley for planning to execute a good Virginian sailor for the mere act of disobeying a tyrant and for imprisoning a respected politician for daring to criticize the injustice. Beyond that, he spent a long time dwelling on Berkeley’s tolerance towards the colony’s growing Catholic population.
Bennett’s passion attracted a good few observers (particularly those who had not been subjected to his and Stegg’s filibusters before) until he had a mob of a few dozen men, many of who were armed, whipped up into a frenzy in front of the jail.
Finally, he set them loose. “This injustice cannot stand! We must put an end to this tyranny and free the esteemed delegate ourselves!”
Having seen the growing mob, the jail’s guards quietly fled long before this moment. Therefore Bennett led his armed supporters to Stegg’s cell with no resistance.
Stegg looked up at Bennett and his men in nervous awe. “Richard, what in God’s name is this?”
“Parliament’s promise come to our shores,” replied Bennett. “An end to the tyrant Berkeley and his papist friends.”
While a few men worked on busting Stegg out of his cell, Bennett led the rest of his men back into the open. He was torn between three goals. On the one hand, he needed to hunt down certain delegates he planned on removing, particularly the Catholics and staunch royalists. If he didn’t do this quickly, they would surely flee town with their own loyal men. On the other hand, a garrison of militiamen were stationed at the palisade a few miles away. If he could meet them and plead his case before some rival painted him as a brigand, he could avoid a risky battle. And most importantly, he needed to capture Berkeley himself before he could shore up his support.
As much as he wished to finally knock those smug bastards Berkeley and Calvert down a peg, Bennett knew that they each travelled with a handful of loyal militiamen. The Harvey incident gave both of them, a governor and a Catholic, reasons to stay protected. While his mob of a few dozen men likely outnumbered either of his rivals, he could all too clearly imagine a scenario where he gets locked in some nasty battle with them, only for the garrison to march in and assume the worst of him. He couldn’t afford that risk.
Thus, the next phase of Bennett’s plan was twofold. First, he would leave a large detachment in the center of town. These would be the lower-class members of the militia who were running on pure mob mentality. He would point them towards a few spots to cause chaos, which would hopefully keep any potential hostiles occupied. Meanwhile, he and a group of delegates and militiamen would travel to the palisade to try and use a mixture of charisma and threats to bring more non-royalist guns to his side.
7.6: Recruitment on the Fly
Bennett provided a skewed picture to the militiamen he found at the palisade. While he didn’t outright say that Governor Berkeley was attacking the Assembly, a few less sharp-witted militiamen got that impression. Bennett went off about how poor Captain Ingle, who helped them all eat and profit, was being killed for no reason and how Berkeley was going against his rule and imposing absolute monarchy on the colony.
Like much of the colony, the militiamen at the palisade were cleanly split between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Thus, as Bennett’s speech came to a close, the militiamen eyed each other suspiciously, not knowing whether the others would try to join or stop the rebel force.
A Royalist threw the first punch, sparking a brawl. Unsure of the men’s loyalties, Bennett and his force stood back as the throng grew. Despite each man being armed, their guns were far too impractical to be used in a fistfight.
When the first Royalist was pinned down and forced to surrender, another, a boy barely older than 16, took off running towards God knows where. Bennett thought to stop him, but quickly pushed the idea away when he realized that would mean shooting someone so young. Grown politicians he could handle, but he didn’t need a boy on his conscience.
A few other Royalist men lost their nerve when they saw the boy run off. This was enough to turn the tide over time, until the remaining Royalist militiamen dropped their weapons and either accepted their fates or begged for mercy. Bennett’s Puritan army scooped up the fallen weapons, rallied their new allies, and turned around to march back to town.
7.7: Rallying Cry
Berkeley knew about Bennett’s riot before it even started. As soon as Bennett began making his provocative speech, even before the prison guards fled for their lives, a Royalist delegate heard the commotion and thought to warn the Governor. Since Berkeley’s Green Spring plantation was on the outskirts of town, he received word (along with a handful of additional militiamen guards) within the hour.
Berkeley would not take this treason lying down, but he also wasn’t stupid enough to ride in with his force of twenty or so armed men. Even as concerned moderates, Catholics, and Royalists fled the increasingly concerning scenes in town and met up at the plantation, guns in tow, Berkeley felt that he needed more.
Fortunately for Berkeley, his campaign to expand crop diversity in the colony came in handy. In his time evangelizing new crops, he had travelled to all of the local plantations and gotten to know the planters quite well. Thus, despite being a relative newcomer to the political scene, he knew which local politicians would balk at Bennett’s insurrection and knew exactly how to find them. While Bennett watched the brawl at the palisade, Berkeley was on a mad horse ride through the countryside, darting from plantation to plantation, summing each and every able-bodied man to his estate.
Berkeley’s charm had gotten him this job, and by God it would help him keep it. [5]
[1] IOTL Stegg was not re-elected to the House in 1644. However, he sticks around ITTL due to his importance in the previous year’s debates. IOTL Harwood ascended to the speakership in 1647. His outspoken role in the debate, particularly as a pragmatic, but not too zealous, royalist earns him the spot earlier.
[2] IOTL Ingle was a resident of Maryland whose ship was seized by Calvert for siding with the Parliamentarians. He would later go on to overthrow the Maryland government (along with Claiborne and other conspirators) and was eventually hanged for it. ITTL, his Parliamentarian sympathies result in earlier, harsher retribution due to a more powerful Royalist Virginia.
[3] Today’s Suffolk, Virginia.
[4] Not literally the legal mechanism of a filibuster we see in OTL’s US Senate – I’m just using the term to refer broadly to using speech to disrupt the legislature.
[5] This whole scenario is heavily inspired by OTL’s Plundering Times. This was a two year period in which Ingle and Claiborne overthrew Calvert’s Maryland government and raided the colony for all it was worth. During this time, Bennett assembled a Puritan army to liberate St. Mary’s City. Many of the Puritans stayed behind in the city, further diluting Maryland’s small Catholic population. So yeah, dramatic colonial coups, including Richard Bennett assembling a ragtag Puritan militia to dilute Catholic influence, are totally realistic. This event, despite being smaller scale than the Plundering Times, will prove to be much more impactful.
I’m back! It’s been what, seven months? Can’t say I have much of an excuse beyond life being busy and temporarily losing interest. I don’t want to commit to a particular update schedule so I don’t burn myself out, but I definitely want to keep working on this!
7.1: Parliamentarian Pushback
Though no member of the General Assembly would be held legally accountable for what they said during the debate over Virginia’s position in the English Civil War, plenty of men saw consequences for their rhetoric, perhaps none more clearly than Thomas Stegg. While mere months ago he was a respected and powerful politician at the head of the House of Burgesses, this new axis that erupted into Virginian politics suddenly put him in the minority.
By the time the 1644 session of the House of Burgesses commenced, the common sentiment was that Stegg didn’t represent the will of the average Burgess, and thus he lost the election for Speaker (by an admittedly narrow margin) to Thomas Harwood [1]. Stegg nearly resigned his position upon losing, but was ultimately convinced to stay due to two independent appeals - one by his old business partner, William Claiborne, who valued a diversity of opinion in the House, and the other by Richard Bennett.
Bennett, like Stegg, suffered politically following the debate. Though he never lost an office or titles, he went from the leader of a somewhat outspoken but mainstream faction to an infamous firebrand. Though his proposal to omit Catholics from the vote on the war was fairly popular, many respectable moderates acted as if they had never supported the position once it became clear that the Royalists would prevail. Their attempt to save face in turn made Bennett and his Puritans look far more radical.
Bennett, like Claiborne, saw Stegg’s value as a counterweight to the Royalist majority. However, where Claiborne valued Stegg mainly for his public speaking, Bennett envisioned a much more active role for Stegg: an opposition leader. Bennett was a political liability, but Stegg, despite his fall from grace, was still respected. If Bennett could appeal to Stegg’s Parliamentarian sympathies and resentment at losing the speakership, perhaps he could convince Stegg to lead a new band of anti-Catholic and pro-Parliament leaders. In time, Stegg would reveal his true value to Bennett – not as a leader, but as a scapegoat.
7.2: The Limits of Neutrality
For a few glorious months, Governor Berkeley thought he had struck a suitable peace throughout Virginia. He got his desired support of the King, but seemingly avoided a civil war in the colony by allowing each planter to trade with whomever he pleased.
While Berkeley thought the arrangement was brilliant, it seemed that the King disagreed.
A number of pro-Parliament planters used their personal vessels to ship resources to Parliamentarian forces in England. Berkeley, while not thrilled with his countrymen’s treason, was willing to look the other way while he worried about affairs on the continent. Yet, word inevitably got out about who was supplying the Parliamentarians, and Charles I wanted his royal governor to put a stop to it.
That is how Berkeley found himself staring at an arrest warrant for Captain Richard Ingle. Captain Ingle was a master shipper, responsible for hauling tobacco and other goods from the upper Chesapeake Bay to England. Few men in Virginia could say they had crossed the Atlantic more times than Ingle. As soon as war broke out, he began using his sailing prowess to run raw goods from the New World to the Parliamentarians. Wishing to nip any sedition in the colonies in the bud so he could focus on the home front, Charles I demanded Ingle be hanged and his ship be seized by the Virginian government [2].
Historians are split on Berkeley’s exact motivation for breaking the General Assembly’s 1642 compromise. Whether he was thinking primarily of his loyalty to the King, the stability of his royalist coalition, or a purely selfish desire to stay in power is up for debate, and one’s opinion on this issue tends to correlate with one’s broader view of this important figure in Virginian history.
7.3: Dead Man Walking
Ingle’s arrest proceeded without incident. While not out at sea, Ingle was a resident of St. Mary’s City, so his residence was known to all the local Catholic elite. Those elites were more than willing to see a Parliamentarian agent (and, as some historians argue, a rival businessman) removed from their city. This included Leonard Calvert, whose loyal militiamen aided the Governor’s forces in a quiet, but effective raid on the Ingle estate.
Despite King Charles clearly wishing to make an example of Captain Ingle, Governor Berkeley did not feel the same way. Going back on the 1642 compromise was enough to enrage the colony’s Parliamentarians, but making a cruel show out of executing a prolific sailor, trader, and businessman would very likely turn the moderates against him as well.
Ideally, Ingle’s execution would take place away from the gawking masses around Jamestown – perhaps up in the north of the colony. However, a crime such as treason could only be tried by the General Court in Jamestown. To keep Ingle away from the indignity of Jamestown’s jail, Berkeley allowed him to be kept under arrest at the estate of loyalist John Carter in Upper Norfolk [3].
There was a reason Berkeley was already thinking so deeply about the optics of Ingle’s execution: there was no doubt that he would be found guilty. Captain Ingle provided materials to warring enemies of the Crown, and his business records proved it. Not to mention the colony had already pledged itself (albeit loosely) to the Royalist cause, so to directly deny an order by the King to execute a traitor would undermine the benefit of that decision. No matter how much Berkeley tried to present a fair and humane trial, Ingle was doomed from the start.
7.4: Hanged Assembly
Despite the unorthodox setup, news of Ingle’s trial would inevitably get out. While Berkeley intended for the hushed trial and plantation imprisonment to be seen as humane treatment for Captain Ingle, the Parliamentarians – and especially the Puritans – accused him of trying to cover up his (and the King’s) tyranny.
Whether out of genuine moral outrage or a cynical desire to grow their power, Stegg and Bennett jumped on the trial and would never let Jamestown hear the end of it. When the General Assembly next convened, Stegg immediately launched into a speech lambasting Berkeley and calling for the release of Ingle. Not only did the speech make the moderates a bit hot under the collar, but it also disrupted the House’s agenda. The next day, Bennett took the floor and repeated the process.
Speaker Harwood was stuck in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, Stegg and Bennett’s faction were clearly intent on mucking up House affairs until they got what they want. On the other hand, denying them the floor would, to many, legitimize their claims that the colonial administration was suppressing Parliamentarian burgesses, which flew in the face of the freedom of opinion resolution they passed as part of the 1642 compromise.
The Puritan filibusters [4] went from a nuisance to a crisis when tensions once again flared between the colonists and natives. Residents of Delegate Edward Hill’s Shirley Plantation got into an altercation with the local Chickahominy people. The Chickahominy, who lived on the lands of Charles City Shire long, long before the English arrived, desired free movement through Hill’s undeveloped land, but Hill’s men saw them as trespassers. Fortunately, the incident did not escalate to violence, but the shouting match and posturing left both sides feeling uneasy.
Word of this incident soon reached the Chickahominy’s Powhatan allies and it all but confirmed Opechancanough’s fears. The incident occurred very close to the border established a mere six years ago and demonstrated the Englishmen’s drive to keep pushing farther and farther West. That said, it would be senseless to start a brutal war when no blood had been shed yet. Opechancanough sent a (very angry) delegation demanding the issue be resolved, lest relations deteriorate further.
Many in Jamestown saw Opechancanough’s delegation as the petulant demands of a tyrant. Hill hadn’t violated the treaty, so that tyrant could cram it. Not to mention it was England’s God-given right to colonize the land how she pleased. Despite a building pro-war fervor, Governor Berkeley urged caution. They would claim what was rightfully theirs in due time, but for now peace was better for everyone.
If Berkeley wanted to avoid another untimely war with the Powhatan and Chickahominy, he would need legislation to placate the uneasy Weroance. Legislation would require debate.
And debate would require the Puritans to shut up about Ingle’s execution.
Giving into Puritan demands still wasn’t an option. Justice had to be served. Plus, Berkeley wasn’t keen on rewarding such disruptive legislative tactics. Instead, he tried to reason with Stegg.
“We’ll be at war if you don’t drop this charade! Men will die!” argued Berkeley.
Stegg paused his impassioned, rambling filibuster to respond. “A man will die if I don’t stop.”
Things continued that way for a while, until Berkeley saw no choice but to raise the stakes. “If you do not cease these interruptions, I will be forced to hold you in contempt and remove you from this chamber!”
Bennett grinned to himself at this development. Berkeley was revealing himself for the tyrant he truly was. With any luck, the rest of the General Assembly would be willing to boot out Berkeley and his royalist ideology, just as they had done to Harvey only a few years ago. He nodded to Stegg, who took a deep breath and launched into another impassioned speech.
Seeing no other choice (and losing his patience), Governor Berkeley called on a few loyal delegates to help haul Stegg from the chamber. Several outraged Puritan delegates rose from their seats, but Bennett quickly stopped them from intervening. Instead, they loudly decried Berkeley as Stegg was dragged away.
Stegg’s contempt charge earned him a night in the local jail. Berkeley insisted that he did not want to resort to long-term consequences and that he was merely forcing Stegg to cool off and stop interfering with legislative affairs. Despite these reassurances, the Puritans raised hell for the remainder of the day, bemoaning their comrade’s fate. Not wanting to push his luck with additional contempt charges, Berkeley opted to end proceedings for the day and left the rabble rousers with a stern warning.
Onlookers saw a red-faced Governor Berkeley muttering furiously to himself as he left town that afternoon and returned to his plantation for the weekend.
7.5: The Jamestown Riot
They’d already thrown one coup, so why not try another?
Richard Bennett gathered with his supporters that night – some Puritans, some Parliamentarians, and some who just liked him on a personal level – outside the Jamestown jail. Those who owned weapons brought them, though they tried not to flaunt them, lest they scare away any newcomers.
Bennett delivered a fiery speech that put his filibusters to shame. It was a blend of a sermon, a political manifesto, and a call to arms. Though he made his Parliamentarian sympathies clear, he focused on issues in Virginia, particularly with Governor Berkeley. He admonished Berkeley for planning to execute a good Virginian sailor for the mere act of disobeying a tyrant and for imprisoning a respected politician for daring to criticize the injustice. Beyond that, he spent a long time dwelling on Berkeley’s tolerance towards the colony’s growing Catholic population.
Bennett’s passion attracted a good few observers (particularly those who had not been subjected to his and Stegg’s filibusters before) until he had a mob of a few dozen men, many of who were armed, whipped up into a frenzy in front of the jail.
Finally, he set them loose. “This injustice cannot stand! We must put an end to this tyranny and free the esteemed delegate ourselves!”
Having seen the growing mob, the jail’s guards quietly fled long before this moment. Therefore Bennett led his armed supporters to Stegg’s cell with no resistance.
Stegg looked up at Bennett and his men in nervous awe. “Richard, what in God’s name is this?”
“Parliament’s promise come to our shores,” replied Bennett. “An end to the tyrant Berkeley and his papist friends.”
While a few men worked on busting Stegg out of his cell, Bennett led the rest of his men back into the open. He was torn between three goals. On the one hand, he needed to hunt down certain delegates he planned on removing, particularly the Catholics and staunch royalists. If he didn’t do this quickly, they would surely flee town with their own loyal men. On the other hand, a garrison of militiamen were stationed at the palisade a few miles away. If he could meet them and plead his case before some rival painted him as a brigand, he could avoid a risky battle. And most importantly, he needed to capture Berkeley himself before he could shore up his support.
As much as he wished to finally knock those smug bastards Berkeley and Calvert down a peg, Bennett knew that they each travelled with a handful of loyal militiamen. The Harvey incident gave both of them, a governor and a Catholic, reasons to stay protected. While his mob of a few dozen men likely outnumbered either of his rivals, he could all too clearly imagine a scenario where he gets locked in some nasty battle with them, only for the garrison to march in and assume the worst of him. He couldn’t afford that risk.
Thus, the next phase of Bennett’s plan was twofold. First, he would leave a large detachment in the center of town. These would be the lower-class members of the militia who were running on pure mob mentality. He would point them towards a few spots to cause chaos, which would hopefully keep any potential hostiles occupied. Meanwhile, he and a group of delegates and militiamen would travel to the palisade to try and use a mixture of charisma and threats to bring more non-royalist guns to his side.
7.6: Recruitment on the Fly
Bennett provided a skewed picture to the militiamen he found at the palisade. While he didn’t outright say that Governor Berkeley was attacking the Assembly, a few less sharp-witted militiamen got that impression. Bennett went off about how poor Captain Ingle, who helped them all eat and profit, was being killed for no reason and how Berkeley was going against his rule and imposing absolute monarchy on the colony.
Like much of the colony, the militiamen at the palisade were cleanly split between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Thus, as Bennett’s speech came to a close, the militiamen eyed each other suspiciously, not knowing whether the others would try to join or stop the rebel force.
A Royalist threw the first punch, sparking a brawl. Unsure of the men’s loyalties, Bennett and his force stood back as the throng grew. Despite each man being armed, their guns were far too impractical to be used in a fistfight.
When the first Royalist was pinned down and forced to surrender, another, a boy barely older than 16, took off running towards God knows where. Bennett thought to stop him, but quickly pushed the idea away when he realized that would mean shooting someone so young. Grown politicians he could handle, but he didn’t need a boy on his conscience.
A few other Royalist men lost their nerve when they saw the boy run off. This was enough to turn the tide over time, until the remaining Royalist militiamen dropped their weapons and either accepted their fates or begged for mercy. Bennett’s Puritan army scooped up the fallen weapons, rallied their new allies, and turned around to march back to town.
7.7: Rallying Cry
Berkeley knew about Bennett’s riot before it even started. As soon as Bennett began making his provocative speech, even before the prison guards fled for their lives, a Royalist delegate heard the commotion and thought to warn the Governor. Since Berkeley’s Green Spring plantation was on the outskirts of town, he received word (along with a handful of additional militiamen guards) within the hour.
Berkeley would not take this treason lying down, but he also wasn’t stupid enough to ride in with his force of twenty or so armed men. Even as concerned moderates, Catholics, and Royalists fled the increasingly concerning scenes in town and met up at the plantation, guns in tow, Berkeley felt that he needed more.
Fortunately for Berkeley, his campaign to expand crop diversity in the colony came in handy. In his time evangelizing new crops, he had travelled to all of the local plantations and gotten to know the planters quite well. Thus, despite being a relative newcomer to the political scene, he knew which local politicians would balk at Bennett’s insurrection and knew exactly how to find them. While Bennett watched the brawl at the palisade, Berkeley was on a mad horse ride through the countryside, darting from plantation to plantation, summing each and every able-bodied man to his estate.
Berkeley’s charm had gotten him this job, and by God it would help him keep it. [5]
[1] IOTL Stegg was not re-elected to the House in 1644. However, he sticks around ITTL due to his importance in the previous year’s debates. IOTL Harwood ascended to the speakership in 1647. His outspoken role in the debate, particularly as a pragmatic, but not too zealous, royalist earns him the spot earlier.
[2] IOTL Ingle was a resident of Maryland whose ship was seized by Calvert for siding with the Parliamentarians. He would later go on to overthrow the Maryland government (along with Claiborne and other conspirators) and was eventually hanged for it. ITTL, his Parliamentarian sympathies result in earlier, harsher retribution due to a more powerful Royalist Virginia.
[3] Today’s Suffolk, Virginia.
[4] Not literally the legal mechanism of a filibuster we see in OTL’s US Senate – I’m just using the term to refer broadly to using speech to disrupt the legislature.
[5] This whole scenario is heavily inspired by OTL’s Plundering Times. This was a two year period in which Ingle and Claiborne overthrew Calvert’s Maryland government and raided the colony for all it was worth. During this time, Bennett assembled a Puritan army to liberate St. Mary’s City. Many of the Puritans stayed behind in the city, further diluting Maryland’s small Catholic population. So yeah, dramatic colonial coups, including Richard Bennett assembling a ragtag Puritan militia to dilute Catholic influence, are totally realistic. This event, despite being smaller scale than the Plundering Times, will prove to be much more impactful.
I’m back! It’s been what, seven months? Can’t say I have much of an excuse beyond life being busy and temporarily losing interest. I don’t want to commit to a particular update schedule so I don’t burn myself out, but I definitely want to keep working on this!
So ECW comes to New World...
So it seems that Parliamentary New England and Royalist Virigina might develope bad blood out of this, resulting in the namesake.
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Just catching up on this TL and loving it so far.
I was wondering if you've ever read Cyprian Davis' "Black Catholics" - it strikes me that with a stronge presense of Catholics in Virginia, there is also going to be a much larger number of African-American Catholics as well. Which is going to have some interesting culural effects in time.
I was wondering if you've ever read Cyprian Davis' "Black Catholics" - it strikes me that with a stronge presense of Catholics in Virginia, there is also going to be a much larger number of African-American Catholics as well. Which is going to have some interesting culural effects in time.
Interesting, I haven't read that, but I'll definitely have to track it down!
Chapter 8: Battle of Green Spring
Chapter 8: Battle of Green Spring
8.1: Laying the Bait
Green Spring plantation gained its name from the abundant water on the property. While it made the plantation beautiful and easy to irrigate (if a bit mosquito-infested), it also made it hard for newcomers to navigate. An invading force would struggle to find a way to sneak around the property and would likely resort to marching down the main road. From there, the nearby forest, creekside foliage, and recently sprouted crops would provide plenty of places for defenders to lay in ambush.
Given these advantages, it was paramount to Governor Berkeley that the battle against Richard Bennett’s Puritan/Parliamentarian mob take place on his turf (literally). In order to legitimize his little rebellion, Bennett would likely want to march on the plantation and arrest Berkeley. Of course, Bennett wasn’t an idiot. If he suspected he was outmatched, he would surely turn back and occupy Jamestown instead, forcing Berkeley to come to him. Such a battle would be far too risky. He would have to make Bennett believe he only had a small garrison.
Berkeley decided to hide most of the men in his home. It was a risky maneuver, as they would be forced through a bottleneck when fighting began, but it was necessary. He also picked a few trusted groups of men, including Leonard Calvert and his loyal Catholics, to hide in strategic points throughout the estate. Beyond that, he ordered his usual guardsmen to wait outside, so as to not arouse suspicion.
Soon enough, Calvert caught sight of one of Bennett’s scouts creeping down the road towards the plantation. He motioned for his men to stay down. If they attacked this man here and now, Bennett would surely stay in Jamestown. After a few tense moments, the scout took off back towards the town. Calvert swore he hadn’t been seen, but they would have to wait and see Bennett’s next moves.
8.2: War!
Richard Bennett marched towards Green Spring Plantation with a mob of around a hundred armed supporters. To his contemporaries in Europe, the force would look pathetic, but in the rural, disorganized colony it may as well have been a legion. Having lived through wars with the Powhatan, Bennett knew how advantageous the woods could be for an attack. He sent a few detachments of men to branch out to the sides and lay in wait for surprise support. He then took the bulk of his force down the main road. With any luck, Berkeley would see all the men he had assembled and promptly surrender.
Just as the plantation house came into full view, a scream erupted from the forest, followed by a cacophony of gunfire. What Bennett didn’t realize at the time was that some of his men had passed by a group of Berkeley’s militiamen hidden in the riverside shrubs. Berkeley’s men promptly burst forward and gunned them down.
The battle had started earlier than Berkeley wished, but there was no time for regrets. While Bennett’s men’s attention was drawn towards the forest, Berkeley commanded his men forward. The loyalist forces burst from the home and their cover in the fields, charging towards the startled Parliamentarians with muskets aimed. Of course, even in the hands of more battle-hardened men, the muskets of the time were far from the most accurate. The charge was terrifying and struck down a handful of men, but it was far from the blow needed to break Bennett’s forces. The Parliamentarians took cover in the crop fields and dug in, preparing for a counter volley.
Both Berkeley and Bennett had assembled forces of roughly even size, but they were distributed far differently. With the exception of the detachments now fleeing from the forest in a panic, Bennett’s men were primarily concentrated in one area. Berkely’s men, meanwhile were spread across the property. This meant that Berkeley could still wield the element of surprise, but Bennett’s mob was still the largest, most dangerous group in the battle.
This was Berkeley’s first taste of battle. He had heard many tales from family friends of the glory of combat and he soon realized how wrong those tales were. That night, his plantation was nothing but a discombobulating mess of smoke, mud, and flashes. The roaring of blood in ones ears that veterans lauded as a sign of being alive instead stood only to remind Berkeley of his own terror. Despite all this, Berkeley forced himself to charge alongside his men. No man would fight for him if he cowered in his home. If he were to earn and keep the respect of his fellow colonists, he would have to put his life on the line with them [1].
Noble as Berkeley’s decision to fight with his men may have been, it also gave Bennett a target. He ordered his line of men forward. Their volley struck one loyalist in the thigh and pushed the rest of them back closer to the house. Fragments of brick exploded out behind them as stray shots struck the property. If they kept losing ground, they would be pinned against the building and surely killed. Even if they took shelter in the building, they’d merely be stepping into a makeshift prison.
As Bennett’s men reloaded, Berkeley ordered his men to march to the side away from the building, hoping he could draw Bennett’s forces forward and pin them either against the house or the woods. Unfortunately for him, Bennett didn’t take the bait. Where he and his men stood, on a path running between two crop fields, they had moderate cover on either side, and two easy lanes to shoot down in front and behind them. It wasn’t an incredible defensive position by any means, but in the chaotic mess of the plantation battle, it was better than anywhere nearby.
For the next while, the battle remained in a stalemate. The main forces stood among the crops in front of Berkeley’s home, hoping to strike or push back the other side with their volleys. Meanwhile, the sounds of panicked, vicious brawling erupted erratically from the woods nearby.
It was those skirmishes in the woods that finally turned the tide of the battle. Finally sure he wasn’t about to be jumped by a group of Parliamentarians, Delegate Edward Hill led a group of five royalists out into the clearing. Spotting the standoff at the heart of the property, he led his men on a charge towards the Parliamentarian rear.
Bennett’s men head the commotion and the back rank swung around to fire on the interlopers. In their surprise, their aim was mostly off. Musket balls tore through the tall tobacco plants, splattered in the mud, and whizzed past the ears of the charging men. All except for one lucky shot which ripped through the ear of a middle-aged man near the center of the group. He fell to his knees, clutching his bloody ear as he let out an agonized wail. Yet the other four men kept running.
Seeing Hill’s advance, Berkeley urged his men forward, and before they could even fire a shot, the morale of the ragtag Puritan force shattered. The man closest to the tobacco field chucked his weapon at the rushing men and dashed at full speed towards the woods. As soon as they saw this, Bennett’s force flew into chaos. Half of the men took off running immediately, while others dropped to the ground in surrender.
Richard Bennett saw the writing on the wall and was among the first to flee. With all of the commotion involved in the surrender of his men, he was able to wrangle a dozen or so men to follow him through the woods and slip back towards Jamestown, where a small contingent of loyal militiamen and riled up townsfolk remained. Tonight was an unmitigated disaster, but Bennett had no intention of dying at Berkeley’s hand. It was just a shame that they never freed Captain Ingle – he would’ve been very useful for what was to come.
8.3: Fallout and Vengeance
When the fighting died down, 27 men were dead and another 33 were wounded [2]. The vast majority of Bennett’s men surrendered, either at Green Springs or later when they couldn’t bare hiding in the woods for longer. Among the captured was Thomas Stegg. Despite his imprisonment starting the riot, Bennett had neglected to take him with him, a fact Stegg bitterly lamented.
Richard Bennett was nowhere to be found, along with a dozen other men and a small ship once harbored in the James River. Over the next few days, Berkeley would send search parties out to hopefully intercept the rebel delegate, but to no avail.
Instead, Berkeley turned his ire towards Thomas Stegg. Stegg was a leader in Bennett’s political faction and his imprisonment sparked the riot, so surely he was a ringleader on par with Bennett. Stegg vehemently denied the accusation, claiming that he was a pawn in Bennett’s plans. Berkeley either did not believe the defense or simply did not care. If he could not charge Bennett for the attempt on his life than Stegg would feel the full brunt of his gubernatorial power.
Stegg pleaded for a milder punishment. In particular, he sought exile and argued that it would have the same effect as execution – he would be out of Berkeley’s hair and the Puritan/Parliamentarian faction would be headless. Berkeley partially considered the proposition. He was already certain that Stegg would die, but exile wasn’t a bad idea for the rest of Bennett’s rioters and allies. No sense in turning the whole colony against him with a barbaric mass execution. The blood of one man would be enough to satiate his desire for vengeance, he hoped.
Well, the blood of two men. Bennett and his men never took the time to visit Upper Norfolk and free Captain Ingle, despite the whole conflict ultimately stemming back to his looming execution. Thus, Berkeley opted to enact Ingle and Stegg’s punishment together. And since some folks clearly needed a lesson on the dangers of treason, the execution was changed from a dignified private affair to a public event for all to see. By the end of May, Richard Ingle and Thomas Stegg would hang.
The fate of the remaining rebels was decided on a case-by-case basis. A few were executed, others imprisoned, but most were sentenced to exile. They would not be the only ones to leave the colony, however. Berkeley would soon push for a bill in the General Assembly expelling nonconformist faiths [3]. Though not every rebel was a Puritan, the Puritan faction was at the heart of the deadly conflict (and if word from England was to be believed, Puritans were largely siding with Parliament anyways). The bill passed with a resounding majority, though the reasoning varied from delegate to delegate. Some, like Leonard Calvert, wanted the Puritans gone from the start. Some, like William Claiborne, could not tolerate the chaos and carnage Bennett had brought to the colony. And some, like John Cheesman, wished to avoid Berkeley’s wrath, despite their own beliefs [4].
Fearing the worst, many Virginian Puritans began fleeing the colony as soon as news of the Battle of Green Spring broke. Once the Expulsion Act was passed, they piled into whatever trade ships would be willing to take them. Some headed home to England but others, wary of the Civil War, instead set a course for New England. Each boat that docked in the harbors of the north brought with it tales of wrongful imprisonment, a wrathful tyrant of a governor, and a land that favored the Pope over the true light of the Lord.
[1] In OTL, Berkeley fought in the Bishops’ War in 1639, during which he earned a knighthood for his bravery, but also became greatly disillusioned towards war. He was already governor by that point in TTL, so he doesn’t see combat until now. With the stakes of this war being much more personal, he would undoubtedly show that same bravery he displayed in OTL’s Bishops’ War, though he wouldn’t necessarily like war any more than he did in OTL.
[2] As far as I can tell, this is average for a battle of this era, given each side had roughly a hundred men. If I’m way off in either direction, let me know – I won’t change the results of this battle, but it’ll be good knowledge for the future!
[3] This is effectively the policy Governor Berkeley enacted during the English Civil War in OTL, though TTL’s policy tolerates Catholics. That being said, TTL’s policy comes with significantly more baggage due to the riot and tensions over Catholicism.
[4] Cheesman was possibly an open supporter of Parliament in OTL (though records are a bit unclear). Whereas the events of TTL galvanize some Parliamentarians, like Bennett, they convince others, like Cheesman, to keep their mouths shut and fall in line.
I felt like this significant increase in hostilities on the continent warranted a more in-depth combat chapter. If the fighting was underwhelming or the strategy was dumb, that’s totally due to the militias being disorganized and inexperienced and not due to my limits as a writer. Totally. For sure…
Next time, we’ll head back to New England to see what they’ve been up to and how they react to the exodus of Virginia Puritans.
8.1: Laying the Bait
Green Spring plantation gained its name from the abundant water on the property. While it made the plantation beautiful and easy to irrigate (if a bit mosquito-infested), it also made it hard for newcomers to navigate. An invading force would struggle to find a way to sneak around the property and would likely resort to marching down the main road. From there, the nearby forest, creekside foliage, and recently sprouted crops would provide plenty of places for defenders to lay in ambush.
Given these advantages, it was paramount to Governor Berkeley that the battle against Richard Bennett’s Puritan/Parliamentarian mob take place on his turf (literally). In order to legitimize his little rebellion, Bennett would likely want to march on the plantation and arrest Berkeley. Of course, Bennett wasn’t an idiot. If he suspected he was outmatched, he would surely turn back and occupy Jamestown instead, forcing Berkeley to come to him. Such a battle would be far too risky. He would have to make Bennett believe he only had a small garrison.
Berkeley decided to hide most of the men in his home. It was a risky maneuver, as they would be forced through a bottleneck when fighting began, but it was necessary. He also picked a few trusted groups of men, including Leonard Calvert and his loyal Catholics, to hide in strategic points throughout the estate. Beyond that, he ordered his usual guardsmen to wait outside, so as to not arouse suspicion.
Soon enough, Calvert caught sight of one of Bennett’s scouts creeping down the road towards the plantation. He motioned for his men to stay down. If they attacked this man here and now, Bennett would surely stay in Jamestown. After a few tense moments, the scout took off back towards the town. Calvert swore he hadn’t been seen, but they would have to wait and see Bennett’s next moves.
8.2: War!
Richard Bennett marched towards Green Spring Plantation with a mob of around a hundred armed supporters. To his contemporaries in Europe, the force would look pathetic, but in the rural, disorganized colony it may as well have been a legion. Having lived through wars with the Powhatan, Bennett knew how advantageous the woods could be for an attack. He sent a few detachments of men to branch out to the sides and lay in wait for surprise support. He then took the bulk of his force down the main road. With any luck, Berkeley would see all the men he had assembled and promptly surrender.
Just as the plantation house came into full view, a scream erupted from the forest, followed by a cacophony of gunfire. What Bennett didn’t realize at the time was that some of his men had passed by a group of Berkeley’s militiamen hidden in the riverside shrubs. Berkeley’s men promptly burst forward and gunned them down.
The battle had started earlier than Berkeley wished, but there was no time for regrets. While Bennett’s men’s attention was drawn towards the forest, Berkeley commanded his men forward. The loyalist forces burst from the home and their cover in the fields, charging towards the startled Parliamentarians with muskets aimed. Of course, even in the hands of more battle-hardened men, the muskets of the time were far from the most accurate. The charge was terrifying and struck down a handful of men, but it was far from the blow needed to break Bennett’s forces. The Parliamentarians took cover in the crop fields and dug in, preparing for a counter volley.
Both Berkeley and Bennett had assembled forces of roughly even size, but they were distributed far differently. With the exception of the detachments now fleeing from the forest in a panic, Bennett’s men were primarily concentrated in one area. Berkely’s men, meanwhile were spread across the property. This meant that Berkeley could still wield the element of surprise, but Bennett’s mob was still the largest, most dangerous group in the battle.
This was Berkeley’s first taste of battle. He had heard many tales from family friends of the glory of combat and he soon realized how wrong those tales were. That night, his plantation was nothing but a discombobulating mess of smoke, mud, and flashes. The roaring of blood in ones ears that veterans lauded as a sign of being alive instead stood only to remind Berkeley of his own terror. Despite all this, Berkeley forced himself to charge alongside his men. No man would fight for him if he cowered in his home. If he were to earn and keep the respect of his fellow colonists, he would have to put his life on the line with them [1].
Noble as Berkeley’s decision to fight with his men may have been, it also gave Bennett a target. He ordered his line of men forward. Their volley struck one loyalist in the thigh and pushed the rest of them back closer to the house. Fragments of brick exploded out behind them as stray shots struck the property. If they kept losing ground, they would be pinned against the building and surely killed. Even if they took shelter in the building, they’d merely be stepping into a makeshift prison.
As Bennett’s men reloaded, Berkeley ordered his men to march to the side away from the building, hoping he could draw Bennett’s forces forward and pin them either against the house or the woods. Unfortunately for him, Bennett didn’t take the bait. Where he and his men stood, on a path running between two crop fields, they had moderate cover on either side, and two easy lanes to shoot down in front and behind them. It wasn’t an incredible defensive position by any means, but in the chaotic mess of the plantation battle, it was better than anywhere nearby.
For the next while, the battle remained in a stalemate. The main forces stood among the crops in front of Berkeley’s home, hoping to strike or push back the other side with their volleys. Meanwhile, the sounds of panicked, vicious brawling erupted erratically from the woods nearby.
It was those skirmishes in the woods that finally turned the tide of the battle. Finally sure he wasn’t about to be jumped by a group of Parliamentarians, Delegate Edward Hill led a group of five royalists out into the clearing. Spotting the standoff at the heart of the property, he led his men on a charge towards the Parliamentarian rear.
Bennett’s men head the commotion and the back rank swung around to fire on the interlopers. In their surprise, their aim was mostly off. Musket balls tore through the tall tobacco plants, splattered in the mud, and whizzed past the ears of the charging men. All except for one lucky shot which ripped through the ear of a middle-aged man near the center of the group. He fell to his knees, clutching his bloody ear as he let out an agonized wail. Yet the other four men kept running.
Seeing Hill’s advance, Berkeley urged his men forward, and before they could even fire a shot, the morale of the ragtag Puritan force shattered. The man closest to the tobacco field chucked his weapon at the rushing men and dashed at full speed towards the woods. As soon as they saw this, Bennett’s force flew into chaos. Half of the men took off running immediately, while others dropped to the ground in surrender.
Richard Bennett saw the writing on the wall and was among the first to flee. With all of the commotion involved in the surrender of his men, he was able to wrangle a dozen or so men to follow him through the woods and slip back towards Jamestown, where a small contingent of loyal militiamen and riled up townsfolk remained. Tonight was an unmitigated disaster, but Bennett had no intention of dying at Berkeley’s hand. It was just a shame that they never freed Captain Ingle – he would’ve been very useful for what was to come.
8.3: Fallout and Vengeance
When the fighting died down, 27 men were dead and another 33 were wounded [2]. The vast majority of Bennett’s men surrendered, either at Green Springs or later when they couldn’t bare hiding in the woods for longer. Among the captured was Thomas Stegg. Despite his imprisonment starting the riot, Bennett had neglected to take him with him, a fact Stegg bitterly lamented.
Richard Bennett was nowhere to be found, along with a dozen other men and a small ship once harbored in the James River. Over the next few days, Berkeley would send search parties out to hopefully intercept the rebel delegate, but to no avail.
Instead, Berkeley turned his ire towards Thomas Stegg. Stegg was a leader in Bennett’s political faction and his imprisonment sparked the riot, so surely he was a ringleader on par with Bennett. Stegg vehemently denied the accusation, claiming that he was a pawn in Bennett’s plans. Berkeley either did not believe the defense or simply did not care. If he could not charge Bennett for the attempt on his life than Stegg would feel the full brunt of his gubernatorial power.
Stegg pleaded for a milder punishment. In particular, he sought exile and argued that it would have the same effect as execution – he would be out of Berkeley’s hair and the Puritan/Parliamentarian faction would be headless. Berkeley partially considered the proposition. He was already certain that Stegg would die, but exile wasn’t a bad idea for the rest of Bennett’s rioters and allies. No sense in turning the whole colony against him with a barbaric mass execution. The blood of one man would be enough to satiate his desire for vengeance, he hoped.
Well, the blood of two men. Bennett and his men never took the time to visit Upper Norfolk and free Captain Ingle, despite the whole conflict ultimately stemming back to his looming execution. Thus, Berkeley opted to enact Ingle and Stegg’s punishment together. And since some folks clearly needed a lesson on the dangers of treason, the execution was changed from a dignified private affair to a public event for all to see. By the end of May, Richard Ingle and Thomas Stegg would hang.
The fate of the remaining rebels was decided on a case-by-case basis. A few were executed, others imprisoned, but most were sentenced to exile. They would not be the only ones to leave the colony, however. Berkeley would soon push for a bill in the General Assembly expelling nonconformist faiths [3]. Though not every rebel was a Puritan, the Puritan faction was at the heart of the deadly conflict (and if word from England was to be believed, Puritans were largely siding with Parliament anyways). The bill passed with a resounding majority, though the reasoning varied from delegate to delegate. Some, like Leonard Calvert, wanted the Puritans gone from the start. Some, like William Claiborne, could not tolerate the chaos and carnage Bennett had brought to the colony. And some, like John Cheesman, wished to avoid Berkeley’s wrath, despite their own beliefs [4].
Fearing the worst, many Virginian Puritans began fleeing the colony as soon as news of the Battle of Green Spring broke. Once the Expulsion Act was passed, they piled into whatever trade ships would be willing to take them. Some headed home to England but others, wary of the Civil War, instead set a course for New England. Each boat that docked in the harbors of the north brought with it tales of wrongful imprisonment, a wrathful tyrant of a governor, and a land that favored the Pope over the true light of the Lord.
[1] In OTL, Berkeley fought in the Bishops’ War in 1639, during which he earned a knighthood for his bravery, but also became greatly disillusioned towards war. He was already governor by that point in TTL, so he doesn’t see combat until now. With the stakes of this war being much more personal, he would undoubtedly show that same bravery he displayed in OTL’s Bishops’ War, though he wouldn’t necessarily like war any more than he did in OTL.
[2] As far as I can tell, this is average for a battle of this era, given each side had roughly a hundred men. If I’m way off in either direction, let me know – I won’t change the results of this battle, but it’ll be good knowledge for the future!
[3] This is effectively the policy Governor Berkeley enacted during the English Civil War in OTL, though TTL’s policy tolerates Catholics. That being said, TTL’s policy comes with significantly more baggage due to the riot and tensions over Catholicism.
[4] Cheesman was possibly an open supporter of Parliament in OTL (though records are a bit unclear). Whereas the events of TTL galvanize some Parliamentarians, like Bennett, they convince others, like Cheesman, to keep their mouths shut and fall in line.
I felt like this significant increase in hostilities on the continent warranted a more in-depth combat chapter. If the fighting was underwhelming or the strategy was dumb, that’s totally due to the militias being disorganized and inexperienced and not due to my limits as a writer. Totally. For sure…
Next time, we’ll head back to New England to see what they’ve been up to and how they react to the exodus of Virginia Puritans.
Pretty much anyone other than Anglicans and Catholics. The Puritans are the only forbidden religious group with a significant enough presence to note at the moment, but it will also affect later religious migration to the continent, such as Quakers and Jews.