Patrician and Plebeian: Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old DominionWertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson
History
Patrician and Plebeian: Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion
Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson
Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Virginia -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
Nor can the increased number of births in the colony be neglected in
accounting for the growth of population. The historian Bruce,
referring to the period from 1634 to 1649, in which the population
trebled, says: "The faster growth during this interval was due, not to
any increase in the number of new settlers seeking homes in Virginia,
but rather to the advance in the birth-rate among the inhabitants.
There was by the middle of the century a large native population
thoroughly seasoned to all the trying variations of the climate and
inured to every side of plantation life, however harsh and severe it
might be in the struggle to press the frontier further and further
outward."[28] It may then be asserted positively that the growth of
population between the dates 1649 and 1670 was not due to an influx of
Cavaliers.
Had many men of note fled to Virginia at this period their arrival
would scarcely have escaped being recorded. Their prominence and the
circumstances of their coming to the colony would have insured for
them a place in the writings of the day. A careful collection of the
names of those Cavaliers that were prominent enough to find a place in
the records, shows that their number was insignificant. The following
list includes nearly all of any note whatsoever: Sir Thomas Lunsford,
Col. Hammond, Sir Philip Honeywood, Col. Norwood, Stevens, Brodnax,
Welsford, Molesworth, Col. Moryson, John Woodward, Robert Jones,
Nicholas Dunn, Anthony Langston, Bishop, Culpeper, Peter Jenings, John
Washington, Lawrence Washington, Sir Dudley Wiat, Major Fox, Dr.
Jeremiah Harrison, Sir Gray Shipworth, Sir Henry Chiskeley and Col.
Joseph Bridger. Of this number a large part returned to England and
others failed to establish families in the colony. How few were their
numbers is shown by the assertions of colonial writers. Sir William
Berkeley reported in 1671 that Cromwell's "tyranny" had sent divers
worthy men to the colony. Hugh Jones, writing in 1722, speaks of the
civil wars in England as causing several families of good birth and
fortune to settle in Virginia. This language certainly gives no
indication of a wholesale immigration of Cavaliers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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