Carter tried to return to Virginia the next year, but the Spanish plate fleet captured the ship Elizabeth and took it and its passengers to Cadiz.
Major John Carter led the Lancaster County militia on a retaliatory expedition against the Rappahannock tribe the next year, which led Governor William Berkeley to make a treaty restricting White settlers to lands south of the York River, although Carter's land was considerably north.
By 1649 Governor Berkeley withdrew from that provision and again allowed settlements north of the York and even Rappahannock River, which eventually led to the French and Indian War.
[8] In October 1665, Carter received his largest land grant, for 4,000 acres because Captain Samuel Mathews (the Cromwellian governor) had died and abandoned his claim,[9] as well as based on Carter's paying for eighty people to emigrate to Virginia, including 21 of African origin or descent.
[13] The following year Carter was one of the Justices of the Peace for neighboring Northumberland County, together with Richard Lee and Toby Fleet, and the General Assembly also named Carter Commander-in-Chief of the militias of Northumberland, Lancaster and Rappahannock Counties -- all of which continued to face native American raids.
[19] On March 13, 1658, fellow Burgesses elected Carter to the Governor's Council, generally a lifetime appointment, but Carter was a Royalist during this era of the English Civil War, so the Burgesses postponed his re-election on March 19, 1659 until the following year, during which interval news reached Virginia concerning Oliver Cromwell's death and his succession as Lord Protector by his son Richard Cromwell.
Carter won reappointment to the Governor's Council and probably served the rest of his life, although many of those records were lost or destroyed.
[21] He married his first wife, Jane Glynn, in England, and she bore two sons (George and John Jr.) and a daughter (Elizabeth) before she died.
[22] While George died at age 18 (before reaching legal adulthood), John Carter Jr. (d. 1690) would also serve in the Virginia House of Burgesses.