Civil War
About the time Berkeley assumed the office, a fierce religious war broke out in England between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, or Puritans. The latter, led by Oliver Cromwell, one of the strongest personalities in British history, eventually triumphed over the Cavaliers and, in 1649, Charles I was beheaded by his own subjects.
Berkeley, with most of the Virginians, was loyal to the Crown, and he invited the young son of the executed monarch to come to America and become king of Virginia. But Parliament would suffer no opposition from the colony, and it sent a commission with a fleet to reduce the colony to allegiance. The Virginians were only mildly royalist and they yielded without a struggle; but they lost nothing by yielding, for the Commonwealth granted them greater freedom in self-government than they had ever before enjoyed.
In two ways the brief period of the commonwealth in England had a marked effect on the history of Virginia. For the first and only time during the colonial period, Virginia enjoyed absolute self-government. Not only the assembly, but the governor and council were elective for the time, and the people never forgot this taste of practical independence.
The other respect in which the triumph of the Roundheads in England affected Virginia was that it caused an exodus of Cavaliers from England to the colony, similar to the great Puritan migration to Massachusetts, caused by the triumph of the opposite party twenty years before.
Read more about this topic: Virginia Cavaliers (historical)
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)