so
because they considered such settlement "pernicious" and "destructive"
to the peace and safety of the colony, animating the Indians to attack,
and thus imbroiling the country in troublesome and expensive wars. Since
winter was approaching, the inhabitants were allowed one year to remove
themselves to the south side of York River.

The same session of the Assembly authorized Capt. Edward Hill and others
to establish, at the head of Rappahannock River, a military and trading
outpost which was deemed valuable to the peace and safety of the colony.
Hill and his associates were to provide forty men to man the fort which
was not to exceed five acres at most, on pain of having the grant
revoked.

It was a brave and sensible policy which Berkeley and the Assembly
pursued, but one that was destined to be overridden by the power,
self-interest, and numbers of the thousands of new members of the
colony, both those being born in Virginia in ever-increasing numbers,
and those who had left behind them the civil strife of England. In less
than a year the Assembly enacted that the tract of land between the
Rappahannock and Potomac rivers should be called Northumberland and that
it should have power to elect Burgesses. The reasons of "state" that had
convinced the Assembly of November 1647 to order the utter dissolution
of the Northumberland settlements were thus thrown to the winds by the
next Assembly. No doubt the pressure of the inhabitants, would-be
inhabitants, and speculators, in addition to the difficulty of enforcing
the decision, caused the repeal of the act. The restraining hand of the
Governor was never again to be felt as it had been in the period
following the 1646 peace. The explosive growth of settlement in Virginia
had proved impossible to control.

The justification of the settlement south of the Potomac River was not
the only victory of the people in the Assembly of October 1648. Upon the
representation of the Burgesses to the Governor and Council complaining
of the worn-out lands and insufficient cattle ranges of the earlier
settlements, the Governor and Council, after long debate, joined the
Burgesses in authorizing settlement on the north side of the York and
Rappahannock rivers. The act declared, however, that "for reasons of
state to ... [the Governor and Council] appearing, importing the safety
of the people in their seating," no one was to go there before the first
of September of the following year. Surv