<Dl> <Dd> The tobacco planters and farmers of Virginia adhered to the concept of a hierarchical society that they or their ancestors had brought with them from England . Most held to the general idea of a Great Chain of Being: at the top were God and his heavenly host; next came kings...who were divinely sanctioned to rule, then a hereditary aristocracy who were followed in descending order by wealthy landed gentry, small, independent farmers, tenant farmers, servants...Aspirations to rise above one's station in life were considered a sin . </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> The tobacco planters and farmers of Virginia adhered to the concept of a hierarchical society that they or their ancestors had brought with them from England . Most held to the general idea of a Great Chain of Being: at the top were God and his heavenly host; next came kings...who were divinely sanctioned to rule, then a hereditary aristocracy who were followed in descending order by wealthy landed gentry, small, independent farmers, tenant farmers, servants...Aspirations to rise above one's station in life were considered a sin . </Dd> <P> In actual practice, colonial Virginia never had a bishop to represent God nor a hereditary aristocracy with titles like' duke' or' baron' . However it did have a royal governor appointed by the king, as well as a powerful landed gentry . The status quo was strongly reinforced by what Jefferson called "feudal and unnatural distinctions" that were vital to the maintenance of aristocracy in Virginia . He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which the oldest son inherited all the land . As a result increasingly large plantations, worked by white tenant farmers and by black slaves, gained in size and wealth and political power in the eastern ("Tidewater") tobacco areas . Maryland and South Carolina had similar hierarchical systems, as did New York and Pennsylvania . During the Revolutionary era, all such laws were repealed by the new states . The most fervent Loyalists left for Canada or Britain or other parts of the Empire . They introduced primogeniture in Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1792, and it lasted until 1851 . Such laws lasted in England until 1926 . </P> <P> As the English expanded out from Jamestown, encroachment of the new arrivals and their ever - growing numbers on what had been Indian lands resulted in several conflicts with the Virginia Indians . For much of the 17th century, English contact and conflict was mostly with the Algonquian peoples that populated the coastal regions, primarily the Powhatan Confederacy . Following a series of wars and the decline of the Powhatan as a political entity, the colonists expanded westward in the late 17th and 18th centuries, encountering the Shawnee, Iroquoian - speaking peoples such as the Nottoway, Meherrin, Iroquois and Cherokee, as well as Siouan - speaking peoples such as the Tutelo, Saponi, and Occaneechi . </P>

Who chose the governor of the royal colony of virginia