The articles were signed March 12, 1652, and the commissioners soon after sailed to St. Mary’s and received the surrender of Maryland.  They returned in time to be present at a new meeting of the assembly held at Jamestown in April, at which it was unanimously voted that until the further pleasure of Parliament was known Richard Bennett should be governor and William Claiborne secretary of state.  To the burgesses, as the representatives of the people, was handed over the supreme power of thereafter electing all officers of the colony.[38] Then Virginia, the last of the British dominions to abandon the king, entered upon eight years of almost complete self-government, under the protection of the commonwealth of England.

In 1652 the settlements in Virginia were embraced in thirteen counties, of which Northampton, on the Accomack Peninsula, extended to the southern boundary of Maryland.  On the James River were nine counties:  Henrico, Charles City, James City, Surry, Warwick, Warascoyack, or Isle of Wight, Elizabeth City, Nansemond, and Lower Norfolk.  On York River were York County on the south side and Gloucester on the north side.[39] On the Rappahannock was Lancaster County, extending on both sides of the river from Pianketank to Dividing Creek in the Northern Neck; and on the Potomac was the county of Northumberland, first settled about 1638 at Chicacoan and Appomattox on the Potomac, by refugees from Maryland.[40]

Towards the south the plantations, following the watercourses, had spread to the heads of the creeks and rivers, tributaries of the James, and some persons more adventurous than the rest had even made explorations in North Carolina.[41] Westward the extension was, of course, greatest along the line of the James, reaching as far as the Falls where Richmond now stands.  The population was probably about twenty thousand, of whom as many as five thousand were white servants and five hundred were negroes.

The houses throughout the colony were generally of wood, a story and a half high, and were roofed with shingles.  The chimneys were of brick, and the wealthier people lived in houses constructed wholly of home-made brick.[42] “They had, besides, good English furniture” and a “good store of plate.”  By ordinary labor at making tobacco any person could clear annually L20 sterling, the equivalent of $500 to-day.  The condition of the servants had greatly improved, and their labor was not so hard nor of such continuance as that of farmers and mechanics in England.  Thefts were seldom committed, and an old writer asserts that “he was an eye-witness in England to more deceits and villanies in four months than he ever saw or heard mention of in Virginia in twenty years abode there."[43]

The plenty of everything made hospitality universal, and the health of the country was greatly promoted by the opening of the forests.  Indeed, so contented were the people with their new homes that the same writer declares, “Seldom (if ever) any that hath continued in Virginia any time will or do desire to live in England, but post back with what expedition they can, although many are landed men in England, and have good estates there, and divers wayes of preferments propounded to them to entice and perswade their continuance.”