In general, government enforced the distinction separating servants and masters with an iron fist. Poor men complained that “nether the Governor nor Counsell could or would doe any poore men right, but that they would shew favor to great men and wronge the poore.” Most Chesapeake colonists, like most Europeans, assumed that “great men” should bear the responsibilities of government. Until 1670, all freemen could vote, and they routinely elected prosperous planters to the legislature. No former servant served in either the governor’s council or the House of Burgesses after 1640. Yet poor Virginians believed that the “great men” used their government offices to promote their selfish personal interests rather than governing impartially.

As discontent mounted among the poor during the 1660s and 1670s, colonial officials tried to keep political power in safe hands. Beginning in 1661, for example, Governor William Berkeley did not call an election for the House of Burgesses for fifteen years. In 1670, the House of Burgesses outlawed voting by poor men, permitting only men who were landowners and headed households to vote.

The king also began to tighten the royal government’s control of trade and to collect substantial revenue from the Chesapeake colonies. A series of English laws funneled the colonial trade exclusively into the hands of English merchants and shippers. The Navigation Acts of 1650 and 1651 specified that colonial goods had to be transported in English ships with predominantly English crews. A 1660 act required colonial products to be sent only to English ports, and a 1663 law stipulated further that all goods sent to the colonies must pass through English ports and be carried on English ships manned by English sailors. Taken together, these navigation acts reflected the English government’s mercantilist assumption that what was good for England (channeling all trade though English hands) should determine colonial policy.

Assumptions about mercantilism also underlay the import duty on tobacco inaugurated by the Navigation Act of 1660. The law assessed an import tax of two pence on every pound of colonial tobacco brought into England, about the price a Chesapeake tobacco farmer received. The tax gave the king a major financial interest in the size of the tobacco crop, which yielded about a quarter of all English customs revenues during the 1660s.