he colony shows that the best class of
settlers were of comparatively humble extraction. Had many men of
gentle blood come to Virginia during the first half of the 17th
century there would have been no chance for the "merchant" class to
acquire such prominence.

Nor did men of plain extraction cease to occupy prominent positions
after the Restoration, when the much misunderstood "Cavalier"
immigration had taken place, and the society of the colony had been
fixed. Amongst the leading planters was Isaac Allerton, a man
distinguished for his activities both in the House of Burgesses and
the Council, and the founder of a prominent family, who was the son of
an English merchant tailor.[23] The first of the famous family of
Byrds, which for nearly a century was noted for its wealth, its
influence, its social prominence, was the son of a London
goldsmith.[24] Oswald Cary, who settled in Middlesex in 1659 was the
son of an English merchant.[25] There was no man in the colony during
the second half of the 17th century that exerted a more powerful
influence in political affairs than Philip Ludwell. He was for years
the mainstay of the commons and he proved to be a thorn in the flesh
of more than one governor. He was admired for his ability, respected
for his wealth and feared for his power, an admitted leader socially
and politically in the colony, yet he was of humble extraction, his
father and uncle both being mercers. The noted Bland family sprang
from Adam Bland, a member of the skinners gild of London.[26] Thomas
Fitzhugh, one of the wealthiest and most prominent men of the colony,
was thought to have been the grandson of a maltster.

It was during the second half of the 17th century that occurred the
"Cavalier" immigration that took place as a consequence of the
overthrow of Charles I. Upon this subject there has been much
misapprehension. Many persons have supposed that the followers of the
unhappy monarch came to Virginia by the thousand to escape the
Puritans, and that it was from them that the aristocracy of the colony
in large part originated. Even so eminent a historian as John Fiske
has been led into the erroneous belief that this immigration was
chiefly responsible for the great increase in population that occurred
at this time. "The great Cavalier exodus," he says, "began with the
king's execution in 1649, and probably slackened after 1660. It must
have been a chief cause of the remarkable increase of the white