The uprising met with only limited success, but Culpeper himself was acquitted of rebellion and became a hero, and the Lords Proprietor subsequently made efforts to strengthen the colony's government.
[1] Swamps and rivers made travel by land difficult, and the inlets and sounds were too shallow to allow big ships.
The economic theory of the time, called mercantilism, was that a country should export as much as possible and import as little as possible, and therefore store up as much money (gold and silver) as possible.
For example, the American colonies were expected to export wood but not furniture, naval stores but not ships, and crops such as tobacco and rice but not the tools needed to produce them.
To put these ideas into practice, Parliament passed a series of laws called Navigation Acts that controlled trade within the English colonial empire.
Worse, the taxes came on top of several years of bad harvests caused by major hurricanes, drought, and wild rains.
In 1672, the Assembly of Albemarle sent the governor, Peter Carteret, to England to ask the Lords Proprietor not to collect the taxes required by the Navigation Acts.
When Eastchurch was delayed in England, Miller also had himself appointed interim governor, and he used that power to interfere with elections and to imprison his opponents, including George Durant, a prominent settler who had lived in Albemarle since before 1663.
They were led by Durant, Valentine Bird, and John Culpeper, who had been thrown out of Charles Town and who, according to one historian, “had the reputation of a troublemaker who enjoyed a good fight.” They armed themselves, arrested Miller and other officials, and took over the government.
Acting as the colony's government, they tried Miller, convicted him, and imprisoned him, and they warned Thomas Eastchurch, who had recently arrived in Virginia, to stay away.
When Sothel finally arrived in North Carolina in 1683, he turned out to be so corrupt that the assembly removed him from office and banished him from the colony.
The lords ordered him to simplify the government, ignoring the Fundamental Constitutions in favor of the original charter.