Although Bacon attacked a royal governor, he did not seek independence from England. In 1676 no Virginian imagined that independence was feasible or desirable. Considering themselves English people who happened to live in America, the Virginians knew that their economically dependent colony could not survive in a world of hostile empires—Dutch, French, and Spanish—without protection from England and without access to the English market. Proclaiming their loyalty to England, Bacon and his supporters insisted that they acted only against a corrupt governor who had betrayed the king by
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