Although England entered upon a policy of repression immediately after the submission of the insurgents, which for some years threatened to take from the common people every vestige of political liberty, it was at this very time that the House of Burgesses began that splendid struggle for its rights that was eventually to make it the supreme power in the colony. Even in the waning years of the 17th century it is evident that the middle class had become a power in political affairs that must always be taken into account. The discontented Berkeley party turned to it for support against the King's Commissioners after Bacon's Rebellion; Culpeper, at the risk of Charles' displeasure, compromised with it; Nicholson sought its support in his memorable struggle with the Virginia aristocracy. In the 18th century through the House of Burgesses its influence slowly but steadily advanced. Governor Spotswood had once to beg the pardon of the Burgesses for the insolence of the members of the Council in wearing their hats in the presence of a committee of the House.[73] Governor Dinwiddie expressed his surprise, when the mace bearer one day entered the supreme court, and demanded that one of the judges attend upon the House, whose servant he was.[74] Before the outbreak of the Revolution the House of Burgesses had become the greatest power in the colony. It is then a matter of no surprise that the rich planters lost the arrogant spirit which had formerly characterized them. Long years of vigorous opposition from a powerful middle class had taught them to respect the privileges and feelings of others. They were no longer at such a height above their humbler neighbors. The spirit of democracy, which was fostered by the long resistance to the English government, had so pervaded Virginia society, that even before the open rupture with the mother country many of the aristocratic privileges of the old families had been swept away. And when the war broke out, the common cause of liberty in a sense placed every man upon the same footing. An anecdote related by Major Anbury, one of the British officers captured at Saratoga and brought to Virginia, illustrates well the spirit of the times. "From my observations," he says, "in my late journey, it appeared to me, that before the war, the spirit of equality or levelling principle was not so prevalent in Virginia, as in the other provinces; and that the different classes of people in the former supported a greater distinction than those of the latter; but since the war, that principle seems to have gained great ground in Virginia; an instance of it I saw at Col. Randolph's at Tuckahoe, where three country peasants, who came upon business, entered the room where the Colonel and his company were sitting, took themselves chairs, drew near the fire, began spitting, pulling off their country boots all over mud, and then opened their business, which was simply about some continental flour to be ground at the