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of New Plymouth were invited to abandon the cold
and sterile clime of
New England, and plant themselves in the milder regions on the
Delaware Bay;
1 a plain indication that Puritans were not then molested in
Virginia.
It was probably in the autumn of 1629 that
Harvey arrived in
Virginia.
2 Till October, the name of
Pott appears as governor;
Harvey met his first assembly
of burgesses in the following March.
3 He had for several years been a member of the council; and as, at a former day, he had been a willing instrument in the hands of the faction to which
Virginia ascribed its earliest griefs, and continued to bear a deep-rooted hostility, his appointment could not but be unpopular.
The colony had esteemed it a special favor from
King James, that, upon the substitution of the royal authority for the corporate supremacy, the government had been intrusted to impartial agents; and, after the death of
Yeardley, two successive chief magistrates had been elected in
Virginia.
The appointment of
Harvey implied a change of power among political parties; it gave authority to a man whose connections in
England were precisely those which the colony regarded with the utmost aversion.
As his first appearance in
America, in 1624, had been with no friendly designs, so now he was the support of those who desired large grants of land and unreasonable concessions of separate jurisdictions; and he preferred the interests of himself, his partisans and patrons, to the welfare and quiet of the colony.
The extravagant language, which exhibited him as a tyrant, without specifying his crimes, was the natural hyperbole of political
