rous books on early Virginia history have been
published. But I believe that its main theses have not been shaken.
The old belief that the Virginia aristocracy had its origin in a
migration of Cavaliers after the defeat of the royalists in the
British Civil War has been relegated to the sphere of myths. It is
widely recognized that the leading Virginia families--the Carters, the
Ludwells, the Burwells, the Custises, the Lees, the Washingtons--were
shaped chiefly by conditions within the colony and by renewed contact
with Great Britain.

That the Virginia aristocracy was not part of the English aristocracy
transplanted in the colony is supported by contemporaneous evidence.
When Nathaniel Bacon, the rebel, the son of an English squire,
expressed surprise when Governor Berkeley appointed him to the Council
of State, Sir William replied: "When I had the first knowledge of you
I intended you and do now again all the services that are in my power
to serve, for gentlemen of your quality come very rarely into the
country, and therefore when they do come were used by me with all
respect."

Bacon was equally frank. "Consider ... the nature and quality of the
men in power ... as to their education, extraction, and learning, as
to their reputation for honor and honesty, see and consider whether
here, as in England, you can perceive men advanced for their noble
qualifications...."

Governor Francis Nicholson ridiculed the pretensions of the leading
planters to distinguished lineage. "This generation know too well from
whence they come," he wrote in a letter to the Lords of Trade, in
March 1703, "and the ordinary sort of planters that have land of their
own, though not much, look upon themselves to be as good as the best
of them, for he knows, at least has heard, from whence these mighty
Dons derive their originals ... and that he or his ancestors were
their equals if not superiors."

On the other side of the Potomac Henry Callister was frank in refuting
the similar claims of wealthy Marylanders. "Some of the proudest
families here vaunt themselves of a pedigree, at the same time they
know not their grandfather's name. I never knew a good honest
Marylander that was not got by a merchant."

That many prominent families in Virginia also were founded by
merchants is attested by the fact that they continued to be traders
after they came to the colony. "In every river here are from ten to
thirty men who by trade and industry have