There was little to be done by these Cavaliers while Parliament and Cromwell ruled. And then the wheel of history, after its fashion, completed another cycle. On the 3rd September, 1658, Cromwell died and soon the ruthless and efficient but never very cheerful control of England by the Puritans came to an end. In 1659 word came to Virginia of the resignation of Richard Cromwell and the Puritan Governor Mathews dying about the same time, the Virginia Assembly in March, 1660, proceeded to elect Sir William Berkeley to be their Governor again. On the 8th of the following May, Charles II was proclaimed King in England and in September a royal commission for Berkeley, already elected by the Assembly, arrived, the Virginians themselves welcoming the restoration of Stuart rule with great enthusiasm.
The owners of the patent of the Northern Neck believed that their patience was at length to be rewarded. Again they sent a representative to Virginia, this time with instructions from King to Governor to give his aid to the Proprietors to obtain possession of their domain. But during all the years of their forced inactivity, the settlement of Virginia had gone on apace. What had been in 1649 a thinly settled frontier, shewed now a largely increased population and land grants to these new settlers had been freely issued by Virginia's government. Many of those newly seated in the Northern Neck were very influential men and in their opposition to the claims of the patentees received popular sympathy and encouragement. As a result, Berkeley found himself confronted by a Council which obstructed his every effort to carry out the King's instructions and the endeavours of the Proprietors to gain possession of their grant being completely blocked, they were obliged to appeal to the home government for relief. The outcome of negotiations between them and Francis Moryson, then representing Virginia in London, was that the patent of 1649 was surrendered by its holders for a new grant carrying on its face substantial limitations of the earlier patent. This new grant was dated the 8th day of May, 1669, almost twenty years after the first, and contained provisions recognizing the title to lands already seated or occupied under other authority; generally limiting the Proprietors' title to such other lands as should be "inhabited or planted" within the ensuing twenty-one years, together with a constructive recognition of the political jurisdiction of the Virginia government within the Proprietary.[2]