The Assembly was prorogued on March 4, 1771, and did not come together till Jan. 7, 1772, and we hear no more of the McDougall affair. About this time Parker died and as he was the principal witness in the case it was probably considered useless to bring up the indictment before the Court. From this time on, pamphlets, opposing the Crown and its policy of repression, continued to appear in ever increasing number, but the government made no serious sign of opposition, and seemed to have given up in despair the attempt to control a press which the majority of the people warmly supported. CHAPTER V THE PRESS IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES In the Southern colonies we find, as we should expect, an absence of any very important cases bearing on the subject under consideration. The ideas of Sir Wm. Berkeley, (for thirty-eight years Governor of Virginia), in regard to the dissemination of information, may be gathered from a reply made by him to some enquiries of the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations. The question being “What course is taken about the instructing the people, within your government in the Christian religion; and what provision is there made for the paying of your minister?” his answer is: “The same course that is taken in England out of towns: every man according to his ability instructing his children. We have forty-eight parishes, and our ministers are well paid, and by my consent should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But of all other commodities, so of this, the worst is sent us, and we had few that we could boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell’s tiranny drove divers worthy men hither. But, I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.”[10] At the beginning of the last quarter of the seventeenth century Virginia suffered from internal disorders (as Bacon’s Rebellion), due to political disturbances having their origin in the English Civil War. Lord Culpepper, the Governor, was inclined to stretch the royal prerogative to its furthest limit and met the murmurings of the Assembly with a cold and gloomy dignity.[11]