According to their own account, these ministers met with much success till they were suddenly stopped in the work by Berkeley, who persuaded the assembly, in March, 1643, to pass severe laws against Nonconformists; and under this authority drove them out of the land in 1644.[22] In the same year occurred an Indian attack which these preachers and John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, thought to be a special visitation of Providence.

After the massacre in 1622 the war with the Indians had continued in a desultory way for over twelve years.

Year after year squads of soldiers were sent in various directions against the different tribes, and by 1634 the Indians were so punished that the whites thought it safe to make peace.

Now, after a repose of ten years, the fierce instincts of the savages for blood were once more excited.
April 18, 1644, was Good Friday, and Governor Berkeley ordered it to be kept as a special fast day to pray for King Charles; instead, it became a day of bloodshed and mourning.[23] The chief instigator of the massacre of 1622 was still alive, old Opechancanough, who, by the death of his brother Opitchapam, was now head chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.

Thinking the civil war in England a favorable occasion to repeat the bloody deeds of twenty-two years before, on the day before Good Friday he attacked the settlers, and continued the assault for two days, killing over three hundred whites.