host of servants a certain proportion
only, a proportion probably less than fifty per cent, could hope even in
the most favorable times to become freeholders. If they survived the
hardships and dangers of the service with their masters, it still
remained for them to acquire property and win for themselves a place in
the life of the colony. And to accomplish this they must display
determination, intelligence, industry and thrift, qualities by no means
universal among the classes in England from which the servants were
chiefly drawn. But for the free immigrant there need be no period of
probation. He might at once purchase his farm, erect his home, secure
all necessary tools and put out his crop of tobacco. And whereas the
servant usually found it possible to maintain a family only after many
years of hard work, perhaps not at all, the free settler often married
before leaving England and brought his wife and children with him.

In conclusion it may be said that in the first fifty years of the
colony's existence conditions were very favorable for the graduation of
the servant into the class of small freeholders, that the records amply
prove that many succeeded in doing so, but that at this period a fair
proportion of free immigrants also came to the colony. Before the
expiration of the Commonwealth period was formed from these two
sources, perhaps in not unequal proportions, a vigorous, intelligent,
independent yeomanry, comprising fully 90 percent of all the
landowners.

_CHAPTER V_

THE RESTORATION PERIOD

The people of Virginia hailed the Restoration with unaffected joy. Not
only did they anticipate that the termination of the long period of
civil war and unrest in England would react favorably upon their own
prosperity, but they felt that Sir William Berkeley's well known loyalty
and his action in proclaiming Charles II immediately after the execution
of his father, might assure them the King's especial favor now that he
at last had come into undisputed possession of his throne. They were
doomed to bitter disappointment, however, for the Restoration brought
them only hardship and suffering, discontent and rebellion.

No sooner had the royal Government been safely installed than it set to
work to perfect and to enforce the colonial policy which in principle
had been accepted from the first. The ties which united the colonies
with the mother country were strengthened, those which gave them a
common intere