he country.

Berkeley, working with the Assembly of March 1643, obtained a law which
provided that the Rappahannock River region should remain "unseated,"
though grants might be tentatively claimed in the area, until the
Governor, Council, and Burgesses, that is, the Grand Assembly, should
authorize settlement there. The Governor was attempting to regulate the
expansion of the colony so that the twin goals of security for the
English and justice for the Indians could both be secured. In this he
was not entirely successful, since he could only guide, not arbitrarily
direct, the representatives of the people. The rich, virgin land of the
frontier exerted a continuing attraction to the tobacco planters, and
five years later, in 1648, the restrictions on settlement in the
Rappahannock region, as well as in the Potomac region, were officially
lifted.

Many other important policy decisions were made at the March 1643
meeting of the Grand Assembly. One of these decisions concerned church
government. The first act provided for the establishment of church
government according to the Anglican form. Virginia was not formed as a
protest against the Church of England, as were the Puritan colonies in
New England in large measure. Conformity in religious matters was
considered a virtue in Virginia. The Assembly, indeed, enacted that
nonconformist ministers be compelled to depart the colony, an act which
did much to sour Virginia's relations with New England. What was
significant about the act, however, was that, with certain exceptions
and qualifications, it gave the vestry of every parish power to elect
the minister of the parish. Because established landlords and nobles
did not exist to build and endow churches as in England, the
representatives of the people, in the vestry, had to assume the role of
patron, to build the church, and to provide for the support of the
minister. In such circumstances it was natural that much of the power
that remained in the hierarchy of church, state, and society in England
should, in Virginia, pass to the ordinary people and be exercised
through their representatives--the vestry and Burgesses. The people, not
the King, became the patron of the Church of England in Virginia.
Popular responsibility replaced clerical responsibility and added one
more phase of life to those controlled directly by the people in the New
World. It is significant that Patrick Henry, years before the
Revolution, should firs