control over the
judiciary, with great influence in administrative matters, it
threatened to become an oligarchy of almost unlimited power.

But it must not be supposed that the influence of the Council rendered
impotent the King's Governor. Great powers were lodged in the hands of
this officer by his various instructions and commissions. He was
commander of the militia, was the head of the colonial church, he
appointed most of the officers, attended to foreign affairs, and put the
laws into execution. His influence, however, resulted chiefly from the
fact that he was the representative of the King. In the days of Charles
I, in the Restoration Period and under James II, when the Stuarts were
combating liberal institutions, both in England and in the colonies, the
Governor exercised a powerful and dangerous control over affairs in
Virginia. But after the English Revolution his power declined. As the
people of England no longer dreaded a monarch whose authority now rested
solely upon acts of Parliament, so the Virginians ceased to fear his
viceroy.

The powers officially vested in the Governor were by no means solely
executive. He frequently made recommendations to the Assembly, either in
his own name or the name of the King, and these recommendations at times
assumed the nature of commands. If the Burgesses were reluctant to obey,
he had numerous weapons at hand with which to intimidate them and whip
them into line. Unscrupulous use of the patronage and threats of the
King's dire displeasure were frequently resorted to. The Governor
presided over the upper house, and voted there as any other member.
Moreover, he could veto all bills, even those upon which he had voted in
the affirmative in the Council. Thus he had a large influence in shaping
the laws of the colony, and an absolute power to block all legislation.

Such, in outline, was the government originated for Virginia by the
liberal leaders of the London Company, and put into operation by Sir
George Yeardley. It lasted, with the short intermission of the
Commonwealth Period, for more than one hundred and fifty years, and
under it Virginia became the most populous and wealthy of the English
colonies in America.

The successful cultivation of tobacco in Virginia, as we have seen, put
new life into the discouraged London Company. The shareholders, feeling
that now at last the colony would grow and prosper, exerted themselves
to the utmost to secure desirable sett