Until 1630, the settlements of the English in Virginia were confined to the Accomac Peninsula, on the other side of Chesapeake Bay, and to the valley of the James. In that year the Governor and Council determined to make a settlement in the Indian district of Chiskiack in the neighborhood of Yorktown. Soon after one of the leading men, Dr. John Pott, from Harop, in Yorkshire, England, observed the advantages of a location on the ridge between Jamestown and Chiskiack, obtained a patent for a plantation there, and called it “Harop.” The authorities endorsed his judgment and in 1632 sent settlers thither for the purpose of establishing a town upon the spot. This was the beginning of Williamsburg, which was called at first the “Middle Plantation,” because of its location midway between the York and the James. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF BRUTON PARISH CHURCH AT WILLIAMSBURG VA.] The Middle Plantation, though for many years a small village, was from the first a strategic point of much value. Two deep creeks, with wide morasses, penetrate to the spot from the James and York respectively, so that no hostile force can proceed up or down the Peninsula without passing through the place. The first settlement was walled in with palisades, and the corn-fields lay on the west of these. In the war with Opechancanough in 1644, the place was commanded by Captain Robert Higginson,[5] a soldier of credit and renown. When Bacon in 1676 drove Sir William Berkeley from Jamestown, here at Middle Plantation, just a hundred years before the American Revolution, the former, calling himself “General by consent of the People,” held his famous parliament of the leading men of the Colony, who published those papers which sound so much like the inspiring literature of the Revolution.[6] In preparing an oath to be administered to the people, the three articles proposed were read by James Minge, Clerk of the House of Burgesses: First, that they should aid General Bacon in the Indian war; second, that they would oppose Sir William Berkeley’s endeavor to hinder the same; third, that _they would oppose any power sent out from England, till terms were agreed to_.