George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[210] against foreign oppression, rather than its ruler,

Chap. VI.} 1646.

the colonists enjoyed all the prosperity which a virgin soil, equal laws, and general uniformity of condition and industry, could bestow. Their numbers increaseed; the cottages were filled with children, as the ports were with ships and emigrants. At Christmas, 1648, there were trading in Virginia, ten ships from London, two from Bristol, twelve Hollanders, and seven from New England.¹ The number of the colonists was already twenty thousand; and they, who had sustained no griefs, were not tempted to engage in the feuds by which the mother country was divided. They were attached to the cause of Charles, not because they loved monarchy, but because they cherished the liberties of which he had left them in the undisturbed possession; and, after his execution, though

1649

there were not wanting some who, from ignorance, as the royalists affirmed, favored republicanism, the government recognized his son² without dispute. The disasters of the Cavaliers in England strengthened the party in the New World. Men of consideration ‘among the nobility, gentry, and clergy,’ struck ‘with horror and despair’ at the execution of Charles I., and desiring no reconciliation with the unrelenting ‘rebels,’ made their way to the shores of the Chesapeake, where every house was for them a ‘hostelry,’ and every planter a friend. The mansion and the purse of Berkeley were open to all; and at the hospitable dwellings that were scattered along the rivers and among the wilds of Virginia, the Cavaliers, exiles like their monarch, met in frequent groups to recount their toils, to sigh over defeats, and to nourish