Culpeper's Rebellion
V. Conclusion
John Culpeper may have moved in the social circles of the powerful in
Albemarle County because of his relationship with Governor Berkeley of Virginia. He was
not a powerful man in the politics of the county and never achieved a higher position than
that of collector customs, but he was apparently adept with a pen and at administrative
details. That his name was associated with the disturbance was simply an accident of his
being in England at the time Miller arrived, and he was thus easily captured and held for
the only trial known to come out of the event. That he was guilty of diverting the royal
customs monies from the king, there is no doubt: that he was the prime mover in the
overthrow of Miller, there is no evidence. It was more than 200 years before William
Saunders firmly attached the name "Culpeper's Rebellion" to the events of
December 1677 even though a better name for them would be "Miller's Debacle."
This event forced the public recognition in England that, at least in Albemarle County,
the colonists were successfully evading the navigation acts passed by the English
Parliament. The armed resistance to Miller was excused by the finding that Miller was
never legally authorized to act as governor. The question of armed resistance to
governor-designate Thomas Eastchurch, who had impeccable credentials from the Lords
Proprietors, was never raised and therefore never resolved. The latter resistance was
clearly a rebellion which can be more clearly identified with George Durant than John
Culpeper because of Durant's threat of rebellion spoken to the Lords Proprietors. It is
reasonable to assume that the natural sequel to Miller's removal was the rejection of
Eastchurch, and the arrival of Eastchurch at the height of emotions during Miller's trial
simply eased the problem of raising a resistance force. It was the fortuitous death of
Eastchurch shortly after the border guard was set that avoided the colonists being in
armed conflict with a 200 man force which even then Eastchurch was assembling in Virginia.
The obsessive concern of Miller for his own affairs probably deflected attention from the
far more serious matter of the resistance to Eastchurch, and the Lords Proprietors who
feared that they might lose their charter were willing accomplices in minimizing any
appearance of undue unrest in their colony. Lord Shaftesbury, who was acting as palatine
for the Lords Proprietors, already had more than enough problems in his dealings with the
king than to allow such an insignificant place as Albemarle County to further strain that
relationship.
The faction which Culpeper supported recognized that rules and appointments made three
thousand miles away simply did not work well on the frontier of a newly colonized land in
a widely scattered group of less than a thousand adult white males.199 The colony's inhabitants were successful in adapting many rules to meet
their needs. The Lords Proprietors tried to obtain good men to fill their government
positions, but the only type of individual who was willing to accept such a position and
be good at it had a natural aggressiveness, personal ambition, and low morals that
required a great deal more direct supervision than could be brought to bear from the far
away offices in London. The Lords Proprietors were remiss in often sending from England
men who were more interested in their own wealth than in justly governing Albemarle
County. They obviously were more concerned with their own positions in the rapidly
changing conditions around them in England than those in Albemarle County and as a result
were poor stewards of their charter.
The recently found depositions reveal five significant new points about these events.
First, Miller's demand that all the inhabitants turn in their weapons to him meant that
even prior to the arrival of Gillam and Durant the country was in turmoil. Second, Miller
had threatened to hang George Durant immediately on his return. Third, Miller's guard was
a personal force manned by fugitives from Bacon's Rebellion. Fourth, Miller did not pay
for the shallop which brought him to Albemarle County to be his armed custom's boat.
Fifth, George Durant may not have had as much political power in Albemarle County as he
has previously been credited with; in fact, the overthrow of Miller seems to have been
more of a grass roots movement with no single strong leader. Other minor points have also
been made clearer by these documents. Perhaps their greatest contribution is that they
present the other side of the story from that upon which most histories to date have had
to rely. The credibility of these depositions comes from the consistency of their contents
despite the fact that they were taken over a period of several months rather than all at
the same time from a group in close association with one another as was the case in the
previously used testimony related to John Culpeper's trial.
There are probably more manuscripts on these events that are still to be discovered.
Searches which seem most promising are in Barbados and the Sir William Berkeley records to
determine more about the Albemarle John Culpeper.
The causes of Culpeper's Rebellion can be reduced to two: 1) Miller's abuse of power in
attempting to obtain personal autonomy over the county and 2) the failure of the English
government to recognize that the tax rate imposed on tobacco by the Plantation Duty Act
was an intolerable burden to the planters of Albemarle County who had little access to
direct shipments to England. The factions which developed in Albemarle County were not
pro- or anti-proprietors but were power groups struggling for personal or financial
reasons. Edward Hyde pointed out that similar underlying flaws in government were at the
heart of the seventeenth-century revolutions in England. Thus the December 1677 events in
Albemarle County represented a continuation of similar disturbances in England rather than
the beginning of a new trend of independence movements in America.
