rginia has often been pictured as the land of the
aristocratic planter, the owner of thousands of acres and hundreds of
slaves. Scant attention has been paid to the far more numerous middle
class. Yet this class was the backbone of the colony. It is true that
most of the leaders came from the aristocracy, but it was the small
farmer who owned the bulk of the land, produced the larger part of the
tobacco crop, could outvote the aristocrat fifty to one, made up the
rank and file of the army in the colonial wars.

Among the thousands of Englishmen who left their homes to seek their
fortunes in Virginia there were no dukes, no earls, rarely a knight,
or even the son of a knight. They were, most of them, ragged farm
workers, deserters from the manor, ill paid day laborers, yeomen who
had been forced off their land by the enclosures, youthful tradesmen
tempted by the cheapness of land or by the opportunities for commerce,
now and then a lad who had taken a mug of doctored grog and awakened
to find himself a prisoner aboard a tobacco ship. But Virginia claimed
them all, moulded them into her own pattern, made them Virginians.

_Princeton, New Jersey_ THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER
_August, 1957_

PART ONE

THE ARISTOCRACY

The aristocratic character of Virginia society was the result of
development within the colony. It proceeded from economic, political
and social causes. On its economic side it was built up by the system
of large plantations, by the necessity for indentured or slave labor,
by the direct trade with England; politically it was engendered by the
lack of a vigorous middle class in the first half of the 17th century,
and was sustained by the method of appointment to office; on its
social side it was fostered by the increasing wealth of the planters
and by the ideal of the English gentleman.

It will be necessary, in explaining this development, to determine the
origin of the men that composed this aristocracy; for it will be
impossible to understand the action of the forces which prevailed in
Virginia during the colonial period unless we have a knowledge of the
material upon which they worked. Much error has prevailed upon this
subject. It was for years the general belief, and is still the belief
of many, that the wealthy families, whose culture, elegance and power
added such luster to Virginia in the 18th century, were the
descendants of cavalier or aristocratic settlers. It was so