A PERIOD OF OPPRESSION.--The British Parliament enforced the Navigation Act (1660), which ordered that the commerce of the colony should be carried on in English vessels, and that their tobacco should be shipped to England. Besides this, their own assembly was composed mainly of royalists, who levied exorbitant taxes, refused to go out of office when their term had expired, fixed their own salary at 250 pounds of tobacco per day, restricted the right of voting to "freeholders and housekeepers," and imposed on Quakers a monthly fine of one hundred dollars for absence from worship in the English Church. Two parties gradually sprung up in their midst; one, the aristocratic party, was composed of the rich planters and the officeholders in the colony; the other comprised the liberty-loving portion of the people, who felt themselves deprived of their political rights. [Footnote: It is a curious fact that the royalists who fled from England in Cromwell's time took refuge in Virginia, and were hospitably entertained, while the "regicides" (the judges who condemned Charles I) fled to Massachusetts and were concealed from their pursuers.] BACON'S REBELLION.--These difficulties came to a crisis in 1676, when Governor Berkeley failed to provide for the defence of the settlements against the Indians. At this juncture, Nathaniel Bacon, a patriotic young lawyer, rallied a company, defeated the Indians, and then turned to meet the governor, who had denounced him as a traitor. During the contest which followed, Berkeley was driven out of Jamestown and the village itself burned. [Illustration: The Ruins at Jamestown.] [Footnote: Going up the James River, just before reaching City Point, one sees on the right-hand bank the ruins of an old church. The crumbling tower, with its arched doorways, is almost hidden by the profusion of shrubbery which surrounds it. Its moss covered walls, entwined with ivy planted by loving hands which have since crumbled into dust, look desolately out upon the old churchyard at its back. Here, pushing aside the rank vines and tangled bushes which conceal them, one finds a few weather--beaten tombstones A huge buttomwood tree, taking root below, has burst apart one of these old slabs and now, with its many fellows spreads its lofty branches high over the solitary dead. And this is all that remains of that Jamestown whose struggles we have here recorded.] In the midst of this success, Bacon died. No leader could be found worthy to take his place, and the people dispersed. Berkeley revenged himself with terrible severity. On hearing of the facts, Charles II. impatiently declared, "He has taken more lives in that naked country than I did for the murder of my father." * * * * * MASSACHUSETTS.