ess than L2,000.[950] In addition, he was allowed L150 a year in
lieu of a residence, received pay as captain of infantry and claimed
large sums under the provisions of the Arlington-Culpeper grant.

Nor did he scruple to resort to open fraud in satisfying his greed.
There were, in 1680, two companies remaining in Virginia of the troops
sent over to suppress Bacon's Rebellion. Having received no pay for many
months, the soldiers were discontented and mutinous.[951] The Privy
Council entrusted to Culpeper, upon his first departure for the colony,
money to satisfy them, and to compensate the householders with whom they
had been quartered.[952] At this period, as always in the seventeenth
century, there was a great scarcity of specie in Virginia. But there
circulated, usually by weight, various foreign coins, the most common of
which was the Spanish piece of eight, about equal in value to five
shillings in English money. My Lord, upon his arrival, industriously
bought up all the worn coins he could secure, arbitrarily proclaimed
them legal tender at the ratio of six shillings to one piece of eight,
and then paid the soldiers and the landlords. This ingenious trick
probably netted him over L1,000. Later he restored the ratio to five to
one, so that he would lose nothing when his own salary became due. Of
such stuff were some of the Virginia colonial governors.[953]

But Culpeper's many defects were not wholly unfortunate for the colony,
for they rendered him unfit to carry out the designs of the King. His
frequent absences from his government made it impossible for him to
become thoroughly acquainted with conditions in the colony, or to bind
the wealthy to him by a judicious use of the patronage. He was too weak,
too careless to pursue a long continued attack upon the established
privileges of the people.

It boded ill, therefore, for Virginia, when he was removed, and a
commission granted to Lord Howard. The new Governor was well fitted for
the task of oppression and coercion. Unscrupulous,
deceitful, overbearing, resentful, persistent, he proved a dangerous foe
to the representative institutions of the colony, and an able defender
of royal prerogative. Had he not encountered throughout his entire
administration, the united and determined resistance of the Burgesses,
he might have overthrown all constitutional government. Well it was for
Virginia that at this moment of imminent danger, the Burgesses should
have been so c