A decision upon this point has in our day gained new interest from the values which attach to the modern oyster-beds. * * * * * The history of Virginia was left in an earlier chapter[601] with the suppression of Bacon’s Rebellion. The royal governors who succeeded Berkeley held office under Lord Culpepper, who himself assumed the government in 1679,[602] bringing with him a general amnesty for the actors in the late rebellion.[603] But pardon did not stop tobacco falling in price, nor was his lordship chary of the state, to maintain which involved grinding taxes. Towns would not grow where the people did not wish them, and even when the assembly endeavored to compel such settlements to thrive at fixed landing places, by what was called a Cohabitation Act (1680), they were not to be evoked, and existed only as ghosts in what were called “paper towns.” Tobacco, however, would grow if only planted, and when producers continued to plant it beyond what the mob thought proper to maintain fit prices, the wayward populace cut off the young plants, going about from plantation to plantation.[604] Culpepper kept up another sort of destruction in hanging the leaders of the mob, and in telling the people that a five-shilling piece, if it went for six, would make money plentier. When the people insisted that his salary should be paid in the same ratio, he revoked his somewhat frantic monetary scheme. When Culpepper ceased to be the Proprietary, in 1684, Virginia became a royal province, and Charles II. sent out Lord Howard of Effingham to continue the despotic rule. The new governor had instructions not to allow a printing-press.[605] He kept the hangman at his trade, for plant-cutting still continued. The assembly managed to despatch Ludwell to England to show how cruelly matters were going, and he got there just after William and Mary were proclaimed. The representations against Effingham sufficed to prevent the continuance of his personal rule, but not to put an end to his commission, and he continued to draw his salary as governor, despite his adherence to James, and after Francis Nicholson had been sent over as his deputy (1690). The new ruler was not unskilled in governing; but he had a temper that impelled him sometimes in wrong ways, and an ambition that made the people distrust him. He could cajole and domineer equally well, but he did not always choose the fit occasion. He was perhaps wiser now than he was when he nearly precipitated New York into a revolution; and he showed himself to the people as if to win their affections. He encouraged manufactures. He moved the capital from Jamestown, and created a small conspicuousness for Williamsburg[606] as he did for Annapolis, in Maryland. He followed up the pirates if they appeared in the bay. He tried to induce the burgesses to vote money to join the other colonies in the French war; but they did not care so much for maintaining