gation Acts, as yet not an active factor in colonial 

 government, and therefore colonial matters did not 

 find much place in its debates. Its attention was 

 directed towards the King and towards England's 

 European neighbors. 



On November 22, 1675, Charles II prorogued his 

 Long Parliament for 15 months — until February 15, 

 1677. During these 15 months the King relied 

 heavily for funds on a secret agreement that had been 

 made with Louis XIV of France to pay the English 

 monarch £100,000 a year while Parliament was not 

 sitting.^' The interests of the French king were 

 served so long as the hostile English Parliament was 

 unable to align England actively with the conti- 

 nental allies resisting Louis XIV's campaigns of 

 aggrandizement in the Low Countries and elsewhere. 



While Parliament was in recess, financial disaster 

 struck the English government. A look at the reve- 

 nue figures for 1675, 1676, and 1677 tells the story 

 better than can words. In 1675 the yield from cus- 

 toms was £727,769. In 1676 this yield dropped to 

 £565,675; by 1677 it had climbed to £683,192. 

 Excise fell from £499,177 in 1675 to £301,785 in 

 1676 before it climbed somewhat in 1677 to £373,367. 

 Thus in 1676 the total income from customs and ex- 

 cise dropped to a low point of £867,460 from the 

 £1,228,946 that was received in 1675 and in contrast 

 to the respectable £1,056,559 collected in 1677.-^ 



The situation was particularly critical in the fall of 

 1676. Secretary Coventry wrote to the Earl of Essex 

 on October 2, 1676: 



Virginia is what taketh up our thoughts now where one 

 inconsiderable man one Bacon of a mean or no fortune 

 and of a Lesse Reputation as to any good qualitye hath 

 made himself head of a Rebellion and with that Successe 

 that in a few months he hath made himselfe Master of all 

 that Colony, possesseth and disposcth every mans Estate 

 as he pleaseth and how Long his Rule will Last I know 

 not but I feare he will have time enough and despcrate- 

 nesse ... to put that Colony past recovering it selfe in 

 many years. His majesty is sending away i,ooo men 

 immediately with good Officers. I hope it may turne the 

 Tide before it is become too strong for us but at the best 

 we can hope it will be a great blow to the revenue."' 



Antoine Courtin, the French ambassador to the 

 English court, reported that during the latter stages 



Figure 7. — Bronze bust of Louis XIV. This 

 bust is based on the marble bust of the French 

 king that was created by Lorenzo Bernini in 

 1665 and is now at Versailles. In National 

 Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection. 

 Reproduced, with permission, from National 

 Gallery of Art photo. 



of preparation for the expedition to subdue the 

 rebellious colony, "exevy day"' the English monarch 

 pressed him to hurry the payments of the subsidy 

 from Louis XIV. " William Harbord in a letter to 

 the Earl of Essex, December 17, 1676, wrote that "ill 

 news from Virginia and Mew England [then recovering 

 from King Philip's War] doth not only alarm us but 

 extreamly abate the customs so that notwithstanding all 

 the shifts Treasurer can make this Parliament or another 

 must sitt. . . . " ^li This extreme drop in rc\-cnuc 



2' Browning, op. cit. (footnote?), vol. 1, pp. 166, 184, 189-190. 

 ■- William .\. Shaw, ed., Calendar of Treasury Books, 1676-1679, 

 London, 1911, vol. 5, pt. 1, p. xiv. 

 23 Longleat, vol. 84, folios 47-48. 



PAPER 17: THE EFFECT OF BACON's REBELLION 



2* Antoine Courtin to King Louis XIV, November 9 and 30, 

 1676, and King Louis XIV to Antoine Courtin, December 8, 

 1676, in Corrcspondance Politique, Angleterre, vol. 120, pp. 

 174, 244. (In Foreign Office Archives, Paris; microfilmed by 

 Colonial Records Project of Virginia 350th Anniversary Cele- 

 bration Corporation.) 



■^ Clement Edwards Pike, ed.. Selections from the Correspondence 

 of Arl/tur Capet, Earl of Essex, 1673-1677, in Pubtications of the 

 Royal Historical Society, London, 1913, Camden Series, ser. 3, 

 vol. 24, p. 87. 



147 



