Even the conditions of ordinary life were different in the two great colonies. New England existence was from the first a segregation; there was a constant tendency to draw together in towns. In Virginia, on the other hand, there was a tendency to differentiation of residence; beginning as a chain of plantations the colony continued in this character. The consequence was a number of small feudalities in outward aspect and the assumption by the Virginia lady of the position of the _châtelaine_. Each of the great ladies was a little queen, ruling over a certain number of acres and subjects; and this attribute of the colony, at first accidental and of small scope, grew into a condition. Now, this existence, and the tendencies that brought it about, were far more English than were the conditions of the northern colonies; and so it is that in early Virginia we find far less individuality of femininity than we find in early New England. England held her influence in Virginia,--the England of the royal court; for it must be remembered that Virginia was strongly loyal. She never accepted the rule of the Roundhead; and the influx of the Cavaliers, some of their own wills and some on compulsion as political convicts, not only confirmed Virginian politics but Virginian manners. More English than England itself, these eager Carolists never acknowledged a hiatus in the rule of the Stuarts, and the Restoration found them entirely in accord with its returning theories and the majority of its practices. But not all, for Virginia had some morals left her even after the coming of the Cavaliers.