In March, 1652, the republican party in the mother-country determined on obtaining the concession of obedience from Virginia. Commissioners chosen from among the planters themselves were empowered to act as pacificators with their country, the submission of which, if their efforts failed, would be enforced by the severities of war. It was the reconciliation of parent and child; the offended parent assumed an attitude of displeasure and resentment; obedient submission was that which was demanded, and which, if needful, would be enforced by violence; yet, would but the child submit, the parent would concede much; and the child, seeing the parent in earnest, yielded at once, and obtained the offered concession. No sooner, therefore, had the war-frigate of the Commonwealth anchored in the Chesapeake, than all thoughts of resistance were laid aside. The colonists, however loyal might be their inclinations, were more disposed to establish the freedom of their own institutions than to assume a hostile attitude against the mother-country, even on behalf of an exiled monarch. There is something noble in the position which Virginia now assumed. It was not to force that she surrendered, but by “a voluntary deed and mutual compact; and in return she obtained, that her people should possess all the liberties of free-born people of England; should manage their business as formerly in their own assembly, and should have as free-trade as the people of England. No taxes nor customs were to be levied except by her own representatives, no forts erected nor garrisons maintained but by her consent.” These conditions, so favourable to liberty, worthy to be granted by the champions of political and civil liberty in England, were a cause of great satisfaction to Virginia; and so earnest was the spirit of her submission and her desire to establish an amicable understanding with the mother-country, that Richard Bennett, one of the commissioners of the Parliament, a merchant and a Roundhead, was unanimously elected governor in the place of Sir William Berkeley.