d experience no
difficulty in avoiding them in their murderous raids. They could
approach the remote plantations, or even those far within the frontiers,
without fear of detection by the soldiers, for the numerous swamps and
dense woods afforded them ample covert. It was not intended that the
forts should be used as bases for expeditions into the enemy's country;
nor could the soldiers leave them to pursue and punish the plundering
savages. What then, it was asked, could be the value of fortresses, if
they were to defend only the ground upon which they stood?[499]

The event proved the people right. The forts, when built, were but
slight obstacles to the invasions of the Indians. The murders became
more frequent than before. The impotency of the defenses of the colony
seems to have inspired them to more terrible and vigorous attacks. The
cry against the forts became more bitter. "It was a design," the people
thought, "of the grandees to engross all their tobacco into their own
hands".[500] As the cries of their women and children grew more piteous
and distressing, the men of the frontier spoke openly of disobedience.
Rather than pay the taxes for the accursed forts they would plant no
more tobacco. If the Governor would not send an expedition against the
Indians, they themselves would march out to avenge their wrongs. The
forts must be dismantled, the garrisons dismissed.[501]

From all parts of the colony came the insistent demand that the
Assembly, which had so long been but a mockery of representative
government, should be dissolved and the people given a free
election.[502] But Berkeley was not the man to yield readily to this
clamor. Never, in all the long years that he had ruled over Virginia,
had he allowed the rabble to dictate his policies. He would not do so
now. When petitions came from the frontiersmen, asking leave to go out
against the Indians, he returned a brusk and angry refusal.[503] A
delegation from Charles City county met with a typical reception from
the irritable old man. As they stood humbly before him, presenting their
request for a commission, they spoke of themselves as the Governor's
subjects. Upon this Berkeley blurted out that they were all "fools and
loggerheads". They were subjects of the King, and so was he. He would
grant them no commission, and bade them be gone, and a pox take
them.[504] Later he issued a proclamation forbidding under heavy
penalties all such petitions.[505]

Unfor