Culpeper's Rebellion
II. Background (Part 1)

A succinct description of the whole process is provided by R. R. Palmer:

Another frequent problem is that the government tries to collect money from people who refuse to pay and that the revolution results from the intolerable gap between what people want and what they get. It is noteworthy that the revolutions in England, France, and the Netherlands were led by nobles.⁵ Similarly, the leaders of the uprising in Albemarle County were the elite of the county, just as a century later the American Revolution would be led by the local gentry of the various colonies. The euphoria of revolution is quickly replaced by the revolutionists becoming somewhat conservative since they must now govern. Their interest in the common folk also falls off quite rapidly as extremists move to take control of the revolution.⁶

According to Crane Brinton's model, what then follows is the thermidor or convalescence from the fever of revolution. The English thermidor is associated with the disestablishment of the Rump Parliament by Oliver Cromwell in April 1653. This period is characterized by the common people reverting to their observer status and some politically proscribed persons being allowed back into the community with some even resuming positions of power.⁷ The Albemarle County thermidor is associated with the death in Virginia of Governor-Appointee Eastchurch a few weeks after Miller's overthrow, but the recurrent internal strife in Albemarle County resulted in no apparent institutional decay.⁸

We see the common thread of revolution in England throughout the seventeenth century even as the inhabitants gradually saw an increase in the refinements of their living conditions.⁹ The dispute between parliament and King Charles I which would eventually erupt in civil war, began over financial matters. Previous kings had received from parliaments lifetime gifts of taxes called tonnage and poundage, but parliament gave only a one year grant to Charles I on his accession to the throne in 1625. The third parliament under Charles I attempted to establish a Petition of Right to codify the law and to obtain the king's agreement on what the law was, but this failed to pass prior to the king's adjourning parliament.¹⁰ Specifics of the Petition of Right included a prohibition on men paying taxes not voted by parliament, no freeman to be sent to prison without cause, no billeting of troops without consent of the householder, and a revocation of martial law for all time.¹¹

The dispute between king and parliament over control of the latter body during the first quarter of the seventeenth century resulted in parliament resorting to the device of committee of the whole to bypass the royally appointed speaker. It was not until 1642 that the speaker became a creature of parliament rather than of the king.¹² In this time parliament was seen to be more a point of contact between the central government and the local governments than as a legislative organization. The members of parliament were generally members of the local ruling group who, in the absence of a bureaucracy or police force, were responsible for enforcing in their local areas laws enacted by parliament. They depended on both friends at court and friends locally to accomplish their primary jobs which were local rather than in representing that area in parliament. Convening of the parliament was seen as evidence of a continued rule of law which was essential for the security of property.¹³ The Albemarle County Assembly at that time was primarily a lawmaking organization, and certain members of that assembly were also members of the General Court which was charged with the responsibility for enforcing the law.

Those temporarily out of favor with the king were sometimes not sent summons to parliament¹⁴ in an action which was a precursor of a technique to be used by Thomas Miller as he attempted to control those who would be allowed to serve in the Albemarle County Assembly.

Another English problem of the first quarter of the seventeenth century would be repeated in Albemarle County in the last quarter of the century. The system for the collection of taxes and levies imposed by parliament was frustrated by lax performance of their duties by local collectors. The king's issuance of general pardons at the end of each parliament (which included pardons for failure to pay levies) subverted the system even more. English sheriffs and customs officials were also exempted from being troubled by arrears after their final accounting.¹⁵ This general approach of leniency was also taken with those who had been major participants in the disturbance in Albemarle County.

To support the growing industrial base and its monopolies, the poor in England were treated little better than slaves, and their geographical movement without official license was restricted. The 1662 Act of Settlement was designed to restrict the geographic movement of wage laborers as other laws had prevented their movement without license before 1640.¹⁶ These limitations on movement meant to bolster profits of the rich were found later in South Carolina where they were apparently applied to all classes of people and played a role in John Culpeper's departure from that area.

By the time of the execution of Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell saw that the real point of the king's trial and execution was to prove that even monarchs were accountable to their subjects for what they did.¹⁷ The concept of accountability of the ruler had been the key to the Dutch action in 1581, and it was also central to the uprising in Albemarle County in 1677. Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, one of the eight original Lords Proprietors of Carolina and a historian, said that the revolution against Charles I may have been a conspiracy between a few disaffected men in severe financial difficulties.¹⁸ Similar conditions existed in Albemarle County in 1677.

Actions within the English Long Parliament which convened in 1640 gradually tended toward the sovereignty of the people. Levellers in the army first tried to promote this approach, but Cromwell put down their efforts. The Levellers' actions included requests for annual parliaments and the elimination of tithes and imprisonment for debts.¹⁹ The Triennial Act of the Long Parliament was a precursor to the words in the Carolina Fundamental Constitutions in that the act provided that parliament was to be elected every three years whether called by the king or not.²⁰ This provision for automatic action to elect new representatives to the central government, as we shall see, was a key element used by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina in November 1680 as they cleared John Culpeper of participating in a rebellion.

At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the Corporation Act required all crown office holders to swear that it was unlawful "upon any pretense whatever" to take arms against the king.²¹ This provision was also to be important in considering whether a rebellion or only a local disturbance occurred in Albemarle County in 1677.

By 1677 the spate of rumors that Roman Catholics were taking over England were rampant, and the government devoted considerable time to this issue. Lord Shaftesbury, the acting palatine (senior executive) for the Lords Proprietors,²² was very active among those opposing the second Test Act, which would exclude both Roman Catholics and Puritans from public offices. He was especially adamant in his insistence that the Catholic Duke of York be excluded from succession to the throne. Despite this opposition, the king restructured his Privy Council as a smaller one, but included Shaftesbury in it. By 1679 Charles II was seriously ill and his death might have resulted in another civil war. The king survived, but Shaftesbury was removed from office in October 1679 and was finally defeated politically in 1681-2.²³ In January 1679 parliament was dissolved by Charles II, but from March to July 1679 Shaftesbury was Lord President of the Privy Council.²⁴ All these events have important bearing on the apparent casual approach of the Lords Proprietors in their slow response to the 1677 disturbance in Albemarle County, and in the nearly one year delay between the December 1679 arrest and the November 1680 trial of John Culpeper. Lord Shaftesbury was also busy trying to arrange for parliament to be called back into session while the king was trying to take the necessary actions to keep the country under control without reconvening parliament. Shaftesbury was seen at the time as the primary opponent of the king in the opposition party, and it is reasonable that his efforts were more concerned with events at home than in the distant Albemarle County, which by this time was also taking a distant second place to the Lords Proprietors' prime developments in South Carolina.

The 1677 uprising in Albemarle County was as much related to financial and trade problems as to the dislike of the political practices of Thomas Miller. Those problems had their roots in the first part of the seventeenth century as Charles I sold trade monopolies to raise money for his cash starved government. Industrial but not commercial monopolies were abolished during the period of Civil War in 1640-1660, but all monopolies were restored after 1660.²⁵ The colonies were only to profit incidentally from this monopoly trade. It was not the intention of the English merchants that the colonies be permitted to control their own economic life, since that would mean a loss of the advantages to English ownership of the colonies.²⁶

In an effort to assure that the king was more absolute in the colonies than at home, after 1675 the Lords of Trade began to convert the colonies to royal provinces. They specifically wanted to improve obedience to English laws.²⁷ The most intrusive actions, however, were the various navigation acts; the first comprehensive one of which was enacted in 1651.²⁸ These acts were initially directed against the colonies' trade with the Dutch, and were similar to action which had been recommended in early 1600 by Sir Walter Raleigh.²⁹ Even Sir William Berkeley, the autocratic royal governor of Virginia, was strongly opposed to these laws, and seeking changes to them was one of his reasons for returning to England in 1661.³⁰

Central to the problems in Albemarle County in 1677 was the Navigation Act of 1673 (Plantation Duty Act) which prohibited the colonies from trading withh each other without the payment of duties on certain enumerated products. Tobacco, the major money crop of Albemarle County, was one of the enumerated products. This act was intended to place inhabitants of the colonies on the same footing as the English subjects at home where similar action to tax internal trade had been taken in 1629 by Charles I when he imposed a tax on coal shipped from Newcastle to London.³¹ To avoid complications such as those in the 1670s in Albemarle County, the Navigation Act of 1696 declared null and void any colonial laws contrary to the navigation acts.³²