Chapter XL
1681-1683.
Statistics of Virginia--Colonial Revenue--Courts of Law-- Ecclesiastical Affairs--Militia--Indians--Negroes--Riotous cutting up of Tobacco-plants--Culpepper returns--Declaration of Assembly expunged--The Governor alters the Value of Coin by Proclamation.
FROM a statistical account of Virginia, as reported by Culpepper to the committee of the colonies, in 1681, it appears that there were at that time forty-one burgesses, being two from each of twenty counties, and one from Jamestown. The colonial revenue consisted--First, of parish levies, "commonly managed by sly cheating fellows, that combine to cheat the public." Secondly, public levies raised by act of assembly, both derived from tithables or working hands, of which there were about fourteen thousand. The cost of collecting this part of the revenue was estimated at not less than twenty per centum. Thirdly, two shillings per hogshead on tobacco exported, which, together with some tonnage duties, amounted to three thousand pounds a year. The county courts held three sessions in the year, an appeal lying to the governor and council, and from them, in actions of three hundred pounds sterling value, to his majesty; in causes of less consequence, to the assembly.
The ecclesiastical affairs of the colony were subject to the control of the governor, who granted probates of wills, and had the right of presentation to all livings, the ordinary value of which was sixty pounds per annum; but at that particular time, owing to the impoverishment of the country and the low price of tobacco, not worth half that sum. The number of livings was seventy-six. Lord Culpepper adds: "And the parishes paying the ministers themselves, have used to claim the right of presentation, (or rather of not paying,) whether the governor will or not, which must not be allowed, and yet must be managed with great caution." There was no fort in Virginia defensible against a European enemy, nor any security for ships against a superior sea force. There were perhaps fifteen thousand fighting men in the country.[332:A]
His lordship describes the north part of Carolina as "the refuge of our renegades, and till in better order, dangerous to us." Yet it is certain that some of the early settlers of this part of North Carolina were of exemplary character, and were driven from Virginia by intolerance and persecution. According to his lordship, "Maryland is now in a ferment, and not only troubled with our disease, poverty, but in a great danger of falling to pieces." The colony of Virginia was at peace with the Indians; but long experience had taught, in regard to that treacherous race, that when there was the least suspicion then was there the greatest danger. But the most ruinous evil that afflicted the colony was the extreme low price of the sole commodity, tobacco. "For the market is overstocked, and every crop overstocks it more. Our thriving is our undoing, and our buying of blacks hath extremely contributed thereto by making more tobacco."[332:B]
Emancipated Indian or negro slaves were prohibited from buying Christian servants, but were allowed to buy those of their own nation. Negro children imported had their ages recorded by the court, and became tithable at the age of twelve years. In June, 1680, an act was passed for preventing an insurrection of the negro slaves, and it was ordered that it should be published twice a year at the county courts of the parish churches.[332:C] Negroes were not allowed to remain on another plantation more than four hours without leave of the owner or overseer.
After "his excellency," Lord Culpepper, went away from Virginia in August, 1680, leaving Sir Henry Chicheley deputy governor, tranquillity prevailed until the time for shipping tobacco in the following year, when the trade was greatly obstructed by the act for establishing towns, which required vessels to be laden at certain specified places. The act being found impracticable, was disobeyed, and much disturbance ensued. In compliance with the petitions of several dissatisfied counties, an assembly was called together in April, 1682, by Sir Henry Chicheley, without the consent of the council. The session being occupied in agitating debates, the body was dissolved, and another summoned, according to an order just received from the crown, to meet in November, 1682, by which time Culpepper was commanded to return to Virginia. The disaffected in the petitioning counties, Gloucester, New Kent, and Middlesex, in May proceeded riotously to cut up the tobacco-plants in the beds, especially the sweet-scented, which was produced nowhere else. To put a stop to this outbreak, the deputy governor issued sundry proclamations.[333:A]
Lord Culpepper having arrived, the assembly met shortly afterwards. He demanded of the council an account of their administration during his absence, and it was rendered. In his address to the assembly, he enlarged upon the king's generous and undeserved concessions to the colony; he announced the king's high displeasure at the declaration made by them that the seizing of their records by the king's commissioners was an unwarrantable violation of their privileges, and, in the king's name, ordered the same to be expunged from the journal of the house, and proposed to them a bill asserting the right of the king and his officers to call for all their records and journals whenever they should think it necessary for the public service.
The governor claiming authority to raise the value of the coin, the assembly warmly opposed it, as a dangerous encroachment on their constitutional rights; and a bill was brought in for regulating the value of coins, which was interrupted by the governor, who claimed that power as belonging to the royal prerogative. He issued a proclamation, in 1683, raising the value of crowns, rix dollars, and pieces of eight, from five to six shillings, half pieces to three shillings, quarter pieces to eighteen pence, and the New England coin to one shilling, declaring money at this rate a lawful tender, except for the duty of two shillings a hogshead on tobacco, the quit-rents, and other duties payable to his majesty, and for debts contracted for bills of exchange. His own salary and the king's revenues were, in this way, in a period of distress, exempted from the operation of the act, a proceeding characteristic of the reign of Charles the Second, in which official energy was mainly exhibited in measures of injustice and extortion.
The ringleaders in the plant cutting were arrested, and some of them hanged upon a charge of treason; and this, together with the enactment of a riot act, and making the offence high treason, put a stop to the practice.[334:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[332:A] The number of half-armed train-bands, in 1680, were 7268 foot and 1300 horse--total, 8568.--Chalmers' Annals, 357.
[332:B] Chalmers' Annals, 355.
[332:C] Hening, ii. 481, 492.
[333:A] Hening, ii. 561.
[334:A] Chalmers' Annals, 340; Hening, iii. 10.
Chapter XLI
1683-1688.
Persecution of Robert Beverley--Plots and Executions in England--Culpepper returns to England--Spencer, President-- Culpepper is displaced--Succeeded by Effingham--Beverley, found guilty, asks Pardon, and is released--Miscellaneous Affairs--Death of Charles the Second--Succeeded by James the Second--Beverley again Clerk--Duke of Monmouth beheaded-- Adherents of Monmouth sent Prisoners to Virginia--Instructions respecting them--Death of Robert Beverley--Despotism of James the Second--Servile Insurrection prevented--Virginia refuses to contribute to the erection of Forts in New York--Commotions in Virginia--Effingham's Corruption and Tyranny--He embarks for England--Ludwell dispatched to lay Virginia's Grievances before the Government--Abdication of James the Second.
THE vengeance of the government fell heavily upon Major Robert Beverley, clerk of the house of burgesses, as the chief instigator of these disturbances. He had incurred the displeasure of the governor and council by refusing to deliver up to them copies of the legislative journals, without permission of the house. Beverley had rendered important services in suppressing Bacon's rebellion, and had won the special favor of Sir William Berkley; but as circumstances change, men change with them, and now by a steady adherence to his duty to the assembly, he drew down upon his head unrelenting persecution. In the month of May, 1682, he was committed a close prisoner on board the ship Duke of York, lying in the Rappahannock.[335:A] Ralph Wormley, Matthew Kemp, and Christopher Wormley, were directed to seize the records in Beverley's possession, and to break open doors if necessary. He complained, in a note addressed to the captain, and claimed the rights of a freeborn Englishman. He was transferred from the Duke of York to Captain Jeffries, commander of the Concord, and a guard set over him. He was next sent on board of Colonel Custis's sloop, to be taken to Northampton. Escaping from the custody of the sheriff of York, the prisoner was retaken at his own house in Middlesex, and sent to Northampton, on the Eastern Shore. Some months after, he applied for a writ of habeas corpus, which was refused; and in a short time, being again found at large, he was remanded to Northampton. In January, 1683, new charges were brought against him: First, that he had broken open letters addressed to the secretary's office; Secondly, that he had made up the journal, and inserted his majesty's letter therein, notwithstanding it had first been presented at the time of the prorogation; Thirdly, that in 1682 he had refused copies of the journal to the governor and council, saying "he might not do it without leave of his masters."
In the year 1680, England was agitated and alarmed with the "Popish plot;" and the Earl of Stafford and divers others were executed on the information of Oates and other witnesses. In July, 1683, Lord Russell was beheaded on a charge of treason, and others suffered the same fate as being implicated in what was styled the "Protestant plot."
Culpepper, after staying about a year in Virginia, returned to England, leaving his kinsman, secretary Nicholas Spencer, president. Thus, again, quitting the colony in violation of his orders, he was arrested immediately on his arrival; and having received presents from the assembly, contrary to his instructions, a jury of Middlesex found that he had forfeited his commission. This example having shown that he who acts under independent authority will seldom obey even reasonable commands, no more governors were appointed for life.[336:A] Beverley[336:B] gives a different account: "The next year, being 1684, upon the Lord Culpepper refusing to return, Francis, Lord Howard of Effingham, was sent over governor." But Chalmers, having access to the records of the English government, appears to be the better authority.
Lord Culpepper having it in view, as was said, to purchase the propriety of the Northern Neck, lying between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, in order to further his design, had fomented a dispute between the house of burgesses and the council; and the quarrel running nigh, his lordship procured from the king instructions to abolish appeals from the general court to the assembly, and transfer them to the crown. However, Culpepper being a man of strong judgment, introduced some salutary amendments to the laws. During his time, instead of fixed garrisons, rangers were employed in guarding the frontier. In October died Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Clayborne, (son of Colonel William Clayborne,) mortally wounded in an engagement with the Indians, which took place near West Point, at the head of York River; he lies buried on the same spot, in compliance with his dying request. The son appears to have inherited the spirit of his father.
Lord Culpepper was succeeded by Francis, Lord Howard of Effingham, whose appointment was the last act of Charles the Second in relation to the colony of Virginia. Lord Effingham was appointed in August, 1683, the thirty-fifth year of the king's reign, commissioned in September, and arriving in Virginia during February, 1684, entered upon the duties of the office in April. The assembly met on the following day. Acts were passed to prevent plant cutting, and preserve the peace; to supply the inhabitants with arms and ammunition; to repeal the act for encouragement of domestic manufactures; to provide for the better defence of the colony; laying for the first time an impost on liquors imported from other English plantations; exempting such as were imported by Virginians for their own use, and in their own vessels. The burgesses, in behalf of the inhabitants of the Northern Neck, then called Potomac Neck, prayed the governor to secure them by patent in their titles to their lands, which had been invaded by Culpepper's charter. The governor replied that he was expecting a favorable decision on the matter from the king.
About this time the name of Zach. Taylor, a surveyor, is mentioned, an ancestor of General Zachary Taylor, some time President of the United States.[337:A]
In May, 1684, Robert Beverley was found guilty of high misdemeanors, but judgment being respited, and the prisoner asking pardon on his bended knees, was released, upon giving security for his good behavior. His counsel was William Fitzhugh, of Stafford County, a lawyer of reputation, and a planter. Beverley was charged with having led the people to believe that there would be a "cessation" of the tobacco crop in 1680, and such appears to have been the general impression in the summer of that year.[338:A] The abject terms in which he now sued for pardon form a singular contrast to his former constancy; and it is curious to find the loyal Beverley, the strenuous partizan of Berkley, now the victim of the tyranny which he had formerly defended with so much energy and success.
On the twentieth day of May, of this year, Lord Baltimore was at Jamestown on a visit to the governor, with a view of embarking there for England.
Owing to the incursions of the Five Nations upon the frontiers of Virginia, it was deemed expedient to treat with them through the governor of New York; and for this purpose Lord Effingham, Governor of Virginia, leaving the administration in the hands of Colonel Bacon, of the council, and accompanied by two councillors, sailed, June the twenty-third, in the "Quaker Ketch," to New York, and thence repaired to Albany, in July. There he met Governor Dongan, of New York, the agent of Massachusetts, the magistrates of Albany, and the chiefs of the warlike Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagos, and Cayugas. The tomahawk was buried, the chain of friendship brightened, and the tree of peace planted. It was during this year that the charter of Massachusetts was dissolved by a writ of quo warranto. In the same year Talbot, a kinsman of the Calverts, and a member of the Maryland Council, killed, in a private rencontre, Rousby, the collector of the customs for that province; he was tried in Virginia, and convicted, but subsequently pardoned by James the Second.
Evelyn[338:B] says: "I can never forget the inexpressible luxury, and profaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God, (it being Sunday evening,) which this day se'nnight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine, etc., a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, while about twenty of the great courtiers, and other dissolute persons, were at basset round a large table, a bank of at least two thousand pounds in gold before them; upon which two gentlemen, who were with me, made reflections with astonishment. Six days after, all was in the dust."
Rochester, in his epigram, described Charles the Second as one
Who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one.
But it is much easier to discover the foolish things that he did, than the wise things that he said. He was good-natured, free from vindictiveness, and had some appreciation of science.
The succession of James the Second to the throne was proclaimed in the Ancient Dominion of Virginia "with extraordinary joy." The enthusiasm of their loyalty was soon lowered, for the assembly meeting on the 1st day of October, 1685, and warmly resisting the negative power claimed by the governor, was prorogued on the same day to the second of November following. Robert Beverley was again clerk. Strong resolutions, complaining of the governor's veto, were passed. After sitting for some time this and other bills were presented to him for his signature, which he refused to give, and appearing suddenly in the house prorogued it again to the 20th of October, 1686.
The Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles the Second, failing in a rash insurrection, was beheaded, July the fourteenth of this year.
The first parliament of the new reign laid an impost on tobacco; the planters, in abject terms, supplicated James to suspend the duty imposed on their staple; but he refused to comply. They also took measures to encourage domestic manufactures, which were disapproved of by the lords of the committee of colonies, as contrary to the acts of navigation. Nevertheless, on the reception of the news of the defeat of the Duke of Monmouth, the Virginians sent a congratulatory address to the king.
A number of the prisoners taken with Monmouth, and who had escaped the cruelty of Jeffreys, were sent to Virginia; and King James instructed Effingham on this occasion in the following letter:[340:A]
"RIGHT TRUSTY AND WELL-BELOVED,--We greet you well. As it has pleased God to deliver into our hands such of our rebellious subjects as have taken up arms against us, for which traitorous practices some of them have suffered death according to law; so we have been graciously pleased to extend our mercy to many others by ordering their transportation to several parts of our dominions in America, where they are to be kept as servants to the inhabitants of the same; and to the end their punishment may in some measure answer their crimes, we do think fit hereby to signify our pleasure unto you, our governor and council of Virginia, that you take all necessary care that such convicted persons as were guilty of the late rebellion, that shall arrive within that our colony, whose names are hereunto annexed,[340:B] be kept there, and continue to serve their masters for the space of ten years at least. And that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. And for the better effecting hereof, you are to frame and propose a bill to the assembly of that our colony, with such provisions and clauses as shall be requisite for this purpose, to which you, our governor, are to give your assent, and to transmit the same unto us for our royal confirmation. Wherein expecting a ready compliance, we bid you heartily farewell. Given at our court at Whitehall, the 4th of October, 1685, in the first year of our reign.
"SUNDERLAND."
Virginia made no law conformable to the requisitions of the king.
James the Second, strongly resenting the too democratical proceedings of the Virginia assembly, ordered their dissolution, and that Robert Beverley, as chief promoter of these disputes, should be disfranchised and prosecuted,[340:C] and directed that in future the appointment of the clerk of the house of burgesses should be made by the governor. Several persons were punished about this time for seditious and treasonable conduct. In May, 1687, the assembly was dissolved. In the spring of this year Robert Beverley died--the victim of tyranny and martyr of constitutional liberty: long a distinguished loyalist, he lived to become still more distinguished as a patriot. It is thus in human inconsistency that extremes meet.
The English merchants engaged in the tobacco trade, in August, 1687, complained to the committee of the colonies of the mischiefs consequent upon the exportation of tobacco in bulk; and the committee advised the assembly to prohibit this practice. The assembly refused compliance; but the regulation was subsequently established by parliament. A meditated insurrection of the blacks was discovered in the Northern Neck just in time to prevent its explosion. In November a message had been received from the Governor of New York, communicating the king's instructions to him to build forts for the defence of that colony, and the king's desire that Virginia should contribute to that object, as being for the common defence of the colonies. This project of James, it was suspected, had its origin in his own proprietary interest in New York. The Virginians replied, that the Indians might invade Virginia without passing within a hundred miles of those forts, and the contribution was refused. In December, William Byrd succeeded Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., as auditor of the accounts of his majesty's revenue in Virginia; he continued to hold that place for seventeen years. His MS. accounts are still preserved.
James the Second, influenced by the counsels and the gold of France, and in violation of the most solemn pledges made to the parliament when he ascended the throne, showed himself incorrigibly bent upon introducing absolute government and establishing the Roman Catholic religion in England. In Virginia the council displayed, as usual, servility to power. Upon the dissolution of the assembly, the colony was agitated with apprehensions and alarm. Rumors were circulated of terrible plots, now of the Papists, then of the Indians. The County of Stafford was inflamed by the bold harangues of John Waugh, a preacher of the established church, and three councillors were dispatched to allay the commotions. Part of Rappahannock County was in arms. Colonel John Scarburgh, of the Eastern Shore, was prosecuted for saying to the governor that "his majesty King James would wear out the Church of England, for that when there were any vacant offices he supplied them with men of a different persuasion." Scarburgh was discharged by the council. Others were prosecuted and imprisoned; and James Collins was put in irons for treasonable words uttered against the king.
Effingham, no less avaricious and unscrupulous than his predecessor Culpepper, by his extortions and usurpations aroused a general spirit of indignation. He prorogued and dissolved the assembly; he erected a new court of chancery, making himself a petty lord chancellor; he multiplied fees, and stooped to share them with the clerks, and silenced the victims of his extortions by arbitrary imprisonment. The house of burgesses, preparing to petition the king against the new invention of a seal, by which his lordship extracted from the country one hundred thousand pounds of tobacco per annum of extraordinary fees and perquisites, and the governor getting wind of it, sent for them, and they, knowing that his object was to dissolve them, completed the petition, signed it, and ordered their clerk and one of their members to transmit it to Whitehall for the king. But instead of being delivered to his majesty, the original petition was sent back from England to the governor, with an account of the manner in which it had been transmitted. In consequence whereof, Colonel Thomas Milner, being a surveyor and clerk of the house, was removed from those offices, and the burgess being a lawyer, was prohibited from practising at the bar.[342:A]
At length, the complaints of the Virginians having reached England, Effingham embarked, in 1688, for that country, and the assembly dispatched Colonel Ludwell to lay their grievances before the government; but before they reached the mother country, the revolution had taken place, and James the Second[342:B] had closed a short and inglorious reign, spent in preposterous invasions of civil and religious liberty, by abdicating the crown.
FOOTNOTES:
[335:A] Hening, iii. 540.
[336:A] Chalmers' Annals, 345.
[336:B] Beverley, B. i. 89.
[337:A] One of the James River merchant-vessels mentioned by the first William Byrd, was called the "Zach. Taylor."
[338:A] Va. Hist. Reg., i. 166.
[338:B] Diary, ii. 211.
[340:A] Chalmers' Annals, 358
[340:B] The list is still preserved in the London state-paper office.
[340:C] Hening, iii. 40.
[342:A] Account of Virginia, in Mass. Hist. Coll., first series.
[342:B] Chalmers' Annals, 347.
Chapter XLII
1688-1696.
Accession of William and Mary--Proclaimed in Virginia--The House of Stuart--President Bacon--Colonel Francis Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor--The Rev. James Blair, Commissary--College of William and Mary chartered--Its Endowment, Objects, Professorships--Death of John Page--Nicholson succeeded by Andros--Post-office--Death of Queen Mary--William the Third-- Board of Trade.
WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, landed at Torbay in November, 1688, and he and Mary were proclaimed king and queen on the 13th day of February, 1689. The coronation took place on the eleventh day of April. They had been for several months seated on the throne before they were proclaimed in Virginia. The delay was owing to the reiterated pledges of fealty made by the council to James, and from an apprehension that he might be restored to the kingdom. Some of the Virginians insisted that, as there was no king in England, so there was also an interregnum in the government of the colony. At length, in compliance with the repeated commands of the privy council, William and Mary were proclaimed, at James City, in April, 1689, Lord and Lady of Virginia. This glorious event, with the circumstances connected with it, was duly announced to the lords commissioners of plantations, in a letter, dated on the twenty-ninth of that month, by Nicholas Spencer, secretary of state.
The accession of the Prince of Orange dispelled the clouds of discontent and alarm, and inspired the people of the colony with sincere joy. For about seventy years Virginia had been subject to the house of Stuart, and there was little in the retrospect to awaken regret at their downfall. They had cramped trade by monopolies and restrictions, lavished vast bodies of land on their profligate minions, and often entrusted the reigns of power to incompetent, corrupt, and tyrannical governors. The dynasty of the Stuarts fell buried in the ruins of misused power.
When the last of the Stuart governors, Lord Howard of Effingham, returned to England, he had left the administration in the hands of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., president of the council. Upon the accession of William and Mary, England being on the eve of a war with France, the president and council of Virginia were directed by the Duke of Shrewsbury to put the colony in a posture of defence.
Colonel Philip Ludwell, who had been sent out as an agent of the colony to prefer complaints against Lord Howard of Effingham before the privy council, now at length obtained a decision in some points rather favorable to the colony, but the question of prerogative was determined in favor of the crown, and it was declared that an act of 1680 was revived by the king's disallowing the act of repeal.
Bacon's administration was short; he had now obtained an advanced age. In his time the project of a college was renewed, but not carried into effect. President Bacon resided in York County. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Kingsmill, Esq., of James City County. Leaving no issue, by his will he bequeathed his estates to his niece, Abigail Burwell, and his "riding horse, Watt, to Lady Berkley," at that time wife of Colonel Philip Ludwell. President Bacon died on the 16th of March, 1692, in the seventy-third year of his age, and lies buries on King's Creek,[344:A] as does also Elizabeth, his wife, who died in the year 1691, aged sixty-seven.[344:B] The name of the wife of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., was likewise Elizabeth.
In the year 1690 Lord Effingham, reluctant to revisit a province where he was so unacceptable, being still absent from Virginia on the plea of ill health, Francis Nicholson, who had been driven from New York by a popular outbreak, came over as lieutenant-governor. He found the colony ready for revolt. The people were indignant at seeing Effingham still retained in the office of governor-in-chief, believing that Nicholson would become his tool. The revolution in England seemed as yet productive of no amendment in the colonial administration. Nicholson, however, now courted popularity; he instituted athletic games, and offered prizes to those who should excel in riding, running, shooting, wrestling, and fencing. The last alone could need any encouragement in such a country as Virginia. He proposed the establishment of a post-office, and recommended the erection of a college, but refused to call an assembly to further the scheme, being under obligations to Effingham to stave off assemblies as long as possible, for fear of complaints being renewed against his arbitrary administration.[345:A] Nevertheless, Nicholson and the council headed a private subscription, and twenty-five hundred pounds were raised, part of this sum being contributed by some London merchants. The new governor made a progress through the colony, mingling freely with the people, and he carried his indulgence to the common people so far as frequently to suffer them to enter the room where he was entertaining company at dinner, and diverted himself with their scrambling among one another and carrying off the viands from the table--like Sancho Panza's on the Island of Barataria. There is but one step from the courtier to the demagogue.
Virginia felt the embarrassments which war had brought upon England, and acts were passed for encouraging domestic manufactures, for which Nicholson found an apology in the scanty supplies imported. The assembly congratulated the Prince of Orange on his accession, and thanking him for his present of warlike stores, begged for further favors of the royal bounty.
When Colonel Nicholson entered on the duties of governor, the Rev. James Blair, a native of Scotland, newly appointed commissary of Virginia, assumed the supervision of the churches of the colony. He came over to this country in 1685, and settled in the County of Henrico, where he remained till 1694, when he removed to Jamestown. The functions of commissary, who was a deputy of the Bishop of London, had been previously discharged by the Rev. Mr. Temple, but he was not regularly commissioned.
At the instance of the Rev. Mr. Blair, in 1691 the assembly entered heartily into the scheme of a college, and in the same year he was dispatched with an address to their majesties, King William and Queen Mary, soliciting a charter.
The first assembly under the new dynasty met at James City, in April, 1691, being the third year of their reign. Acts were passed for putting the colony in a better state of defence, for reducing the poll tax, and laying a duty on liquors, and for appointing a treasurer. Colonel Edward Hill was appointed to that office. The same assembly met again by prorogation, in April of the ensuing year.
Commissary Blair was graciously received at court, and in February, 1692, their majesties granted the charter.[346:A] The college was named in honor of their majesties. The king gave about two thousand pounds toward the building, out of the quit-rents. Seymour, the English attorney-general, having received the royal commands to prepare the charter of the college, which was to be accompanied with a grant of money, remonstrated against this liberality, urging that the nation was engaged in an expensive war; that the money was wanted for better purposes, and that he did not see the slightest occasion for a college in Virginia. The Rev. Mr. Blair, in reply, represented to him that its intention was to educate and qualify young men to be ministers of the gospel; and begged Mr. Attorney would consider that the people of Virginia had souls to be saved as well as the people of England. "Souls!" exclaimed the imperious Seymour; "damn your souls!--make tobacco."[346:B]
The site selected for the college was in the Middle Plantation Old Fields, near the church. The college was endowed by the crown with twenty thousand acres of land in Pamunkey Neck, and on the south side of Blackwater Swamp; the patronage of the office of surveyor-general; together with the revenue arising from a duty of one penny a pound on all tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland to the other plantations, the nett proceeds being two hundred pounds. The college was also allowed to return a burgess to the assembly. The assembly afterwards added to the revenue a duty on skins and furs.[347:A] Dr. Blair was the first president of the college, being appointed under the charter to hold the office for life. The plan of the building was the composition of Sir Christopher Wren. The objects proposed by the establishment of the college were declared to be the furnishing of a seminary for the ministers of the gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian faith should be propagated among the Western Indians.[347:B] In addition to the five professorships of Greek and Latin, the mathematics, moral philosophy, and two of divinity provided for by the charter, a sixth, called the Brafferton, from an estate in England which secured the endowment, had been annexed by the celebrated Robert Boyle, for the instruction and conversion of the Indians.
The trustees met with many difficulties in their undertaking during the administration of Governor Andros, and were involved in a troublesome controversy concerning the lands appropriated to the institution, with Secretary Wormley, the most influential man in the colony, next to the governor.
In January, 1692, died John Page, of Rosewell, of the king's council in the colony, aged sixty--a learned and pious man; first of the name in Virginia, and father of the Honorable Colonel Matthew Page, who was also of the council. A religious work, entitled "A Deed of Gift for my Son," by this John Page, has been published.
During the same year Governor Nicholson was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros, whose high-handed course had rendered him so odious to the people of New England that they had lately imprisoned him. He was, nevertheless, kindly received by the Virginians, whose solicitations to King William for warlike stores he had promoted. He soon gave offence by ordering ships to cruise against vessels engaged in contraband trade. In the year 1693 an act was passed for the organizing of a post-office establishment in Virginia, to consist of a central office, and a sub-office in each county, fixing the rates of postage to be paid to Thomas Neale, Esq., who was authorized by an act of parliament to establish post-offices in the colonies. The postage on a letter consisting of one sheet, for a distance not exceeding eighty miles, was three pence. Four companies of rangers protected the frontiers, while English frigates guarded the coast; and the colony enjoyed a long repose.
The amiable and excellent Queen Mary died on the 28th day of December, 1694; and the king now assumed the title of William the Third. Since the dissolution of the Virginia Company, the superintendence of the colonies had been entrusted to a committee of the privy council; in 1696 the board of trade was established for that purpose.
FOOTNOTES:
[344:A] James City Records, cited in "Farmer's Register" for 1839, p. 407
[344:B] Dr. Williamson, of Williamsburg, obligingly sent me the inscription and the coat of arms, as copied by him from her tombstone, which was ploughed up on the banks of Queen's Creek.
[345:A] Beverley, B. i. 92.
[346:A] The following gentlemen, nominated by the assembly, were constituted a senate, or board of trustees: Francis Nicholson, lieutenant-governor of the colony; William Cole, Ralph Wormley, William Byrd, Esquires, of the council; John Leare, James Blair, John Farnifold, Stephen Fauce, and Samuel Gray, clerks (clergymen;) Thomas Milner, Christopher Robinson, Charles Scarburgh, John Smith, Benjamin Harrison, Miles Cary, Henry Hartwell, William Randolph, and Matthew Page, gentlemen and burgesses.
[346:B] Franklin's Correspondence.
[347:A] Hening, iii. 123, 241, 356: Catalogue of William and Mary College.
[347:B] Anderson's Hist. of Church of England in the Colonies, second ed., iii. 108.
Chapter XLIII
1696-1698.
State and Condition of Virginia--Exhausting Agriculture-- Depression of Mechanic Art--Merchants--Current Coin--Grants of Land--Powers of Governor--The Council--Court of Claims--County Courts--General Court--Secretary, Sheriffs, Collectors, and Vestries--Revenue--The Church.
THE following statistical account of Virginia appears to have been reported by Lord Culpepper, in 1781, to the Committee of the colonies. It is to be found in the Historical Collections of Massachusetts,[349:A] the manuscript having been communicated by Carter B. Harrison, Esq., of Virginia, by the hands of the Rev. John Jones Spooner, corresponding member. The picture is harsh, but drawn by a vigorous hand, without fear, favor, or affection.
In point of natural advantages Virginia was surpassed by few countries on the globe, but in commerce, manufactures, education, government in church and state, was one of the poorest and most miserable. The staple tobacco swallowed up every thing, so that the markets were often glutted with bad tobacco, which became a mere drug, and would not pay freight and customs. Perhaps not one hundredth part of the land was yet cleared, and none of the marsh or swamp drained. As fast as the soil was worn out by exhausting crops of tobacco and corn, it was left to grow up again in woods. The plough was not much used, in the first clearing the roots and stumps being left, and the ground tilled only with hoes, and by the time the stumps were decayed the ground was worn out. Manure was neglected. Of grain the planters usually raised only enough for home consumption, there being no market for it, and scarce any money. But their main labor in this crop being in the summer, they fell into habits of indolence for the rest of the year. The circumstances of the country, destitute of towns, and consisting of dispersed plantations, were unfavorable for mechanics, then called tradesmen. The depression of this useful and important class although lessened, continues in the present day, and appears to be inevitably connected with the system of negro slavery. It is a tax paid by the whites for the elevation of the black race. The merchants were the most prosperous class in the colony, but they labored under great disadvantages, being obliged to sell on credit, and to carry on "a pitiful retail trade," and to depend on the receivers who went about among the planters to receive the tobacco due, and this mode of collecting was subject to great delays and losses. The native-born Virginians, who for the most part had never been out of the colony, were averse to town life, and felt dissatisfied, like Daniel Boone in more modern times, whenever "the settlements became too thick." The scarcity of money was aggravated by the governor, who found it to his interest to be paid in tobacco. The current coin of the dominion of Virginia consisted of pieces of eight, the value of which was fixed by law at five shillings; and the value being made greater in Pennsylvania money, they were consequently drained from Virginia, as at the present day gold and silver are ostracised by a depreciated paper currency.
The method of settling the colonial territory was by the king's grant of fifty acres to every actual settler, but this rule was evaded and perverted in various ways, and rights for that quantity of land could easily be purchased from the clerks in the secretary's office at from one to five shillings each. The powers of the governor were extensive; he was a sort of viceroy, being commander-in-chief and vice-admiral, lord treasurer in issuing warrants for the paying of moneys, lord chancellor or lord keeper as passing grants under the colony's seal, president of the council, chief justice of the courts, with some powers of a bishop or ordinary. The governors managed to evade the king's instructions, and by official patronage to silence the opposition of the council, and even to hold the burgesses in check. The governor and councillors were all colonels and honorable, and their adherents monopolized the offices. The governor's salary was for many years one thousand pounds per annum, to which the assembly added perquisites, amounting to five hundred more, and a further addition of two hundred pounds was made to Sir William Berkley's salary, making the whole salary seventeen hundred pounds. The council, in effect the creatures and clients of the governor, being appointed at his nomination, and receiving office and place from him, had the powers of council of state, (in case of vacancy of the governor the oldest of them ex officio acting as president ad interim,) of upper house of assembly or house of lords, in the general court of supreme judges, and as colonels, answering to the English lord-lieutenants of counties. The councillors were also naval officers in the customs department, collectors of the revenue, farmers of the king's quit-rents; out of the council were chosen the secretary, auditor, and escheators; the councillors were exempt from arrests, and had a compensation of three hundred and fifty pounds divided among them, according to their attendance. They met together after the manner of the king and council. Their clerk received fifty pounds per annum salary, besides perquisites. The office of collector, held by members of the council, was indeed incompatible with their office of judge, and their office of councillor unfitted them for auditing their own accounts as collectors, and in different capacities they both bought and sold the royal quit-rents.[351:A]
Upon the election of burgesses there was commonly held a court, called a court of claims, where all who had any claims against the public might present them to the burgesses, together with any propositions or grievances, "all which the burgesses carry to the assembly." There was at that early day much confusion in the laws, and it was difficult to know what laws were in force and what were not. All causes were decided in the county court or in the general court. The county court consisted of eight or ten gentlemen, receiving their commission from the governor, who renewed it annually. They met once a month, or once in two months, and had cognizance of all causes exceeding in value twenty shillings, or two hundred pounds of tobacco. These country gentlemen, having no education in law, not unfrequently fell into mistakes in substance and in form. The insufficiency of these courts was now growing more apparent than formerly, since the old stock of gentry, who were educated in England, were better acquainted with law and with the business of the world than their sons and grandsons, who were brought up in Virginia, and commonly knew only reading, writing, and arithmetic, and were not very proficient in them.
The general court, so called because it had jurisdiction of causes from all parts of the colony, was held twice a year, in April and October, by the governor and council as judges, at Jamestown. This court was never commissioned, but grew up by custom or usurpation; from it there was no appeal, except in cases of over three hundred pounds sterling value, to the king, which was for most persons impracticable, on account of the distance and the expensiveness. Virginia appears to have been the only colony where the executive constituted the supreme court. The general court tried all causes of above sixteen pounds sterling, or sixteen hundred pounds of tobacco in value, and all appeals from the county courts, and it had cognizance of all causes in chancery, in king's bench, the common pleas, the exchequer, the admiralty, and spirituality. The forms of proceeding in the general court were quite irregular. The duties of the secretary were as multifarious as those of the governor; it was, however, for the most part a sinecure, the business being performed by a clerk, styled the clerk of the general court, who also employed one or two clerks under him. The secretary, who was properly the clerk of the court, yet sate as judge of that court.
The governor signed all patents or deeds of land, and there was a recital in them that he granted the land "by and with the consent of the council," yet the patents were never read by the governor, nor did the council take any notice of them. He likewise countersigned the patents after the words "compared, and agrees with the original," yet the secretary never read or compared them, and indeed the patent which he signed was itself the original. "Men make laws, but we live by custom." The sheriffs collected all money duties. The auditor audited the accounts of the collectors, and was receiver-general of all public moneys. The parish levy, for the support of the church and of the poor, was assessed by the vestry, about the month of October, when tobacco was ready; the whole amount assessed was divided by the number of tithables of the parish, and collected from the heads of families. The county levy for county expenses was assessed by the justices of the peace, and the sum divided by the number of tithables in the county. The public levy was assessed by the assembly for the general expenses of the colony, and the sum was divided by the number of tithables in the colony, amounting in the year 1690 to about twenty thousand. The three levies were all collected by the sheriffs; they averaged about one hundred pounds of tobacco for each tithable, the aggregate amounting to two millions of pounds per annum.
The revenues and customs that came into the auditor's hands were of four kinds: First, the quit-rents, being one shilling per annum on every fifty acres of land, payable in tobacco, at one penny per pound, or twenty-four pounds of tobacco for every hundred acres. In the Northern Neck, lying between the Potomac and Rappahannock, the quit-rents were paid by the heirs of Lord Culpepper. The tobacco due for quit-rents was sold by the auditor to the several members of the council, who paid for it in money, or bills of exchange, according to the quantity. The quit-rent revenue amounted to about eight hundred pounds sterling per annum. The second source of revenue consisted of two shillings per hogshead, export duty, on tobacco, and fort duties, being fifteen pence per ton on all vessels arriving. These amounted to three thousand pounds sterling per annum. Ten per cent. of this amount was paid to masters of vessels, to induce them to give a true account. The collectors received ten per cent. for collecting, and the auditor seven per cent. The third source of revenue was one penny per pound upon tobacco exported from Virginia to any other English plantation in America. This, as has been mentioned, was, in 1692, granted to the college of William and Mary. The college paid for collecting it no less than twenty per cent., and to the auditor five per cent. The nett proceeds were worth one hundred pounds annually. The fourth source of revenue was any money duty that might be raised by the assembly.
The governor was lieutenant-general, the councillors lieutenants of counties, with the title of colonel, and in counties where no councillor resided, some other person was appointed, with the rank of major. The people in general professed to be of the Church of England. The only dissenters were three or four meetings of Quakers and one of Presbyterians. There were fifty parishes, and in each two, and sometimes three, churches and chapels. The division of the parishes was unequal and inconvenient. The governor had always held the government of the church, as of everything else, in his hands. Ministers were obliged to produce their orders to him, and show that they had been episcopally ordained. The power of presentation was, by a colonial law, in the vestry, but by a custom of hiring preachers by the year, it came to pass that presentation rarely took place. The consequence was that a good minister either would not come to Virginia, or if he did, was soon driven away by the high-handed proceedings of the vestry. The minister was obliged to be careful how he preached against the vices that any great man of the vestry was guilty of, else he would be in danger of losing his living at the end of the year. They held them by a precarious tenure, like that of chaplains; they were mere tenants at sufferance. There were not half as many ministers in Virginia as parishes. The governor connived at this state of things. The minister's salary was sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco per annum. King Charles the Second gave the Bishop of London jurisdiction over the church in the plantations, in all matters except three, viz.: marriage licenses, probates of wills, and induction of ministers, which were reserved to the governor. The bishop's commissary made visitation of the churches and inspection of the clergy. He received no salary, but was allowed, by the king, one hundred pounds per annum out of the quit-rents.[355:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[349:A] First Series, v. 124.
[351:A] The council, in the time of Governor Andros, consisted of Ralph Wormley, collector and naval officer of Rappahannock River; Colonel Richard Lee, collector and naval officer of upper district of Potomac River--these two having been appointed while Sir William Berkley was governor; Colonel William Byrd, who was appointed auditor during Lord Culpepper's administration; Colonel Christopher Wormley, collector and naval officer of the lower district of the Potomac River, appointed while Lord Effingham was governor; Colonel Edward Hill, collector and naval officer of upper district of James River; Colonel Edmund Jennings, collector and naval officer of York River--these two being appointed in Lord Effingham's time; Colonel Daniel Parke, collector and naval officer of the lower district of James River, and escheator between York and Rappahannock Rivers; Colonel Charles Scarburgh, collector and naval officer on the Eastern Shore, and Mr. John Lightfoot, who had lately arrived in the country--these last four appointed while Sir Edmund Andros was governor.
[355:A] Account of Va., in Mass. Hist. Coll., first series.
Chapter XLIV
1698-1702.
Administration of Andros--Controversy with Blair--The Rev. Hugo Jones' Account of Maryland--Andros succeeded by Nicholson --Alteration in his Conduct--Supposed Cause--Williamsburg made the Seat of Government--His tyrannical Proceedings--Prejudice of Beverley, the Historian--Act against Pirates--Offices of Speaker and Treasurer combined--Capture of a piratical Vessel-- Death of Edward Hill--Commencement at William and Mary--Demise of William the Third--Succeeded by Anne--Nicholson's Description of the People of Virginia.
GOVERNOR ANDROS took singular pains in arranging and preserving the public records; and when, in 1698, the State-house was burned, he caused the papers that survived to be arranged with more exactness than before. He ordered that all the English statutes should be law in Virginia; this preposterous rule gave great dissatisfaction. He was a patron of manufactures; but the acts for establishing fulling-mills were rejected by the board of trade. He encouraged the culture of cotton, which, however, fell into disuse.
By royal instructions, Andros was invested with the powers of ordinary, or representative of the king and the bishop of London, in the affairs of the church. This brought him into collision with Commissary Blair, and in 1694 the governor arbitrarily suspended him from his place in the council, to which he had been appointed in the preceding year. While in England on the business of the college, in 1695, the doctor preferred charges against Andros as an enemy to religion, to the church, the clergy, and the college. The charges and the proofs covered thirty-two folio pages of manuscript, and were drawn up with ability. But Blair had to contend with formidable opposition, for Governor Andros sent over to London, in his defence, Colonel Byrd, of Westover, Mr. Harrison, of Surry County, Mr. Povey, who was high in office in the colony, and a Mr. Marshall, to arraign the Rev. Commissary himself before the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Two days were spent at Lambeth Palace, in the examination, the charges and answers filling fifty-seven folio pages of manuscript, and Dr. Blair's accusers were signally discomfited. Much of the prejudice against him was owing to his being a Scotchman--a prejudice at that time running very high in England. The result was that Blair returned after successfully accomplishing the object of his mission, and having been reinstated in the council by the king. He was, nevertheless, again removed upon a pretence equally frivolous.[357:A] Andros was sent back to England to answer in person the charges alleged against him, and eventually, they being substantiated, he was removed from his office of deputy governor of Virginia.[357:B]
William the Third, by the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, obtained an acknowledgment of his right to the crown, and vindicated the principles of constitutional freedom.
The Rev. Hugo Jones, author of a work entitled "Present State of Virginia," writing from Maryland in this year, says of the people there: "They are, generally speaking, crafty, knavish, litigious, dissemblers, and debauched. A gentleman (I mean one of a generous Cambro-Briton temper) is rara avis in terris. A man must be circumspect and prudent if he will maintain his reputation among them. Of dealing, it is very true what was told me by a man at London, that none is fit to deal with a Virginian but a Virginian; however, I having made it my business both in London and at sea to inquire into the nature of the people, that I might know the better how to behave myself among them, have gained as good a reputation as in modesty I could expect; neither have I been much imposed upon in my bargains. As to the people's disposition in matters of religion, they will follow none out of the path of interest, and they heartily embrace none but such as will fill the barn and the basket. Most sects are here professed, but in general they are practical atheists."[357:C]
The uncharitable judgments of this narrow-minded writer are not entitled to much weight. Among a people requiring so much ministerial care, he found ample time to devote to the study of natural history, and was curious in the examination of "fishes' bones" and "petrified mushrooms."
In the year 1698 died Thomas Ludwell, Esq., some time secretary of Virginia. He was born at Bruton, County Somerset, England. Sir Edmund Andros was succeeded in November, 1698, by Colonel Nicholson, transferred from the government of Maryland. He entertained a plan of confederating the colonies together, and aspired to become himself the viceroy of the contemplated union. Finding himself thwarted in these projects, his conduct became self-willed and overbearing. In a memorial sent to England, he stated that tobacco bore so low a price as not to yield even clothes to the planters; yet, in the same paper, advised parliament to prohibit the plantations from making their own clothing; in other words, proposing that they should be left to go naked.[358:A] Indeed, he appeared to be quite altered from what he had been during his former administration in Virginia; and the change was thought to be not a little owing to a disappointment in love. He had become passionately attached to a daughter of Lewis Burwell, Jr., and failing to win her favor or that of her parents, in his suit, he became infuriated, and persisted, Quixotically, for years in his fruitless purpose. The young lady's father, and her brothers, and Commissary Blair, and the Rev. Mr. Fouace, minister of the parish, were especial objects of his vengeance. To the young lady he threatened the death of her father and her brothers, if she did not yield to his suit. He committed other outrages no less extraordinary.
For the sake of a healthier situation, Governor Nicholson removed the seat of government from Jamestown, now containing only three or four good inhabited houses, to Middle Plantation, so called from its lying midway between James and York Rivers. Here he projected a large town, laying out the streets in the form of a W and M, in honor of King William and Queen Mary. This plan, however, appears to have been abandoned, or only partially carried out.[359:A] According to the contemporary historian Beverley, Nicholson declared openly to the lower order of people "that the gentlemen imposed upon them; that the servants had all been kidnapped, and had a lawful action against their masters." In the year 1700 Mr. Fowler, the king's attorney-general for the colony, declaring some piece of service against law, the governor seized him by the collar, and swore "that he knew no laws they had, and that his commands should be obeyed without hesitation or reserve." He committed gentlemen who offended him to prison without any complaint, and refused to allow bail; and some of them having intimated to him that such proceedings were illegal, he replied, "that they had no right at all to the liberties of English subjects, and that he would hang up those that should presume to oppose him, with magna charta about their necks." He often extolled the governments of Fez and Morocco, and at a meeting of the governors of the college, told them "that he knew how to govern the Moors, and would beat them into better manners." At another time he avowed that he knew how to govern the country without assemblies, and if they should deny him anything after he had obtained a standing army, "he would bring them to reason with halters about their necks." His outrages made him jealous, and to prevent complaints being sent to England against him, he is said to have intercepted letters, employed spies, and even played the eavesdropper himself. He sometimes held inquisitorial courts to find grounds of accusation against such as incurred his displeasure.[359:B]
Robert Beverley, author of a "History of Virginia," published the first edition of it in 1705. He was a son of Robert Beverley, the persecuted clerk, who died in 1687. This may account somewhat for his extreme acrimony against Culpepper and Effingham, who had persecuted his father, and against Nicholson, who was Effingham's deputy. In his second edition, when time had, perhaps, mitigated his animosities, Beverley omitted many of his accusations against these governors. In favor of Nicholson, it is also to be observed, that his administration in Maryland and in South Carolina was more satisfactory. But it is certain that he was an erratic, Quixotic, irascible man, who could not bear opposition, and an extreme high churchman.
In the eleventh year of William the Third an act was passed for the restraining and punishing of pirates and privateers, the preamble reciting that "nothing can more conduce to the honor of his most sacred majesty than that such articles of peace as are concluded in all treaties should be kept and preserved inviolable by his majesty's subjects in and over all his majesty's territories and dominions, and that great mischief and depredations are daily done upon the high seas by pirates, privateers, and sea-robbers, in not only taking and pillaging several ships and vessels belonging to his majesty's subjects, but also in taking, destroying, and robbing several ships belonging to the subjects of foreign princes, in league and amity with his majesty;" and they prayed that crimes committed on the high seas should be punished as if committed on land, in Virginia.[360:A] A committee was appointed during the same session "to revise the laws of this his majesty's ancient and great colony and dominion of Virginia."[360:B]
Among the subjects upon which a tax was laid for the building of a capitol, were servants imported, not being natives of England or Wales, fifteen shillings per poll, and twenty shillings on every negro or other slave. Colonel Robert Carter, speaker of the house, was elected to fill the office of treasurer; and it came to be the custom for the two offices of speaker and treasurer to be held by the same person. The establishment of the office of a treasurer appointed by the assembly, giving that body control of the colonial purse, added much to the independence of its legislative power.
In the second year of Nicholson's administration a piratical vessel was captured within the capes of Virginia. She had taken some merchant-vessels in Lynhaven Bay, and a small vessel happening to witness an engagement between her and a merchantman, conveyed intelligence of it to the Shoram, a fifth-rate man-of-war, commanded by Captain Passenger, and newly arrived. Nicholson chanced to be at Kiquotan sealing up his letters, and, going on board the Shoram, was present in the engagement that followed. The Shoram, by daybreak, having got in between the capes and the pirate, intercepted her, and an action took place on the 29th of April, 1700, when the pirate surrendered upon condition of being referred to the king's mercy. In this affair fell Peter Heyman, grandson of Sir Peter Heyman, of Summerfield, in the County of Kent, England. Being collector of the customs in the lower district of James River, he volunteered to go on board the Shoram, and after behaving with undaunted courage, standing on the quarter-deck near the governor, was killed by a small shot.
During this year died the Honorable Colonel Edward Hill, of Shirley, on the James River, in the sixty-third year of his age; he was of the council, colonel and commander-in-chief of the Counties of Charles City and Surry, judge of his majesty's high court of admiralty, and some time treasurer of Virginia. He lies buried at Shirley, and a portrait of him and his wife is preserved there.
In the year preceding this, Protestant dissenters, qualified according to the toleration act of the first year of William and Mary, were exempted from penalties for not repairing to the parish church, if they attended some legal place of worship once in two months.[361:A] The press was not yet free in Virginia, and the writ of habeas corpus was still withheld.
There was a commencement at William and Mary College in the year 1700, at which there was a great concourse of people; several planters came thither in coaches, and others in sloops from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, it being a new thing in that part of America to hear graduates perform their exercises. The Indians themselves had the curiosity, some of them, to visit Williamsburg upon that occasion; and the whole country rejoiced as if they had some relish of learning. Fifty-eight years before this there had been celebrated a commencement at Harvard College, in Massachusetts.[362:A]
In the year 1701 Colonel Quarry, surveyor-general of the customs, wrote to the board of trade: "This malignant humor is not confined to Virginia, formerly the most remarkable for loyalty, but is universally diffused."
During the month of March of this year died William the Third. His manner was taciturn, reserved, haughty; his genius military; his decision inflexible. In his fondness of prerogative he showed himself a grandson of the first Charles; as the defender of the Protestant religion, and Prince of Orange, he displayed toleration toward all except Papists. The government of Virginia under him was not materially improved. He was succeeded by Anne, daughter of James the Second. Louis the Fourteenth having recognized the Pretender as lawful heir to the British crown, Anne, shortly after she succeeded to the throne, in 1702, declared war against France, and its ally Spain; but Virginia was not directly affected by the long conflict that ensued. In compliance with the requests of the assembly, the queen granted the colony warlike stores, to the value of three thousand and three hundred pounds, which the governor was directed to pay from the revenue of quit-rents. Her majesty, at the same time, renewed the requisition formerly made by the crown for an appropriation in aid of the defences of New York; but the burgesses still steadily refused.
During the reign of William the Third the commerce of Virginia had been seriously interrupted, and her customary supplies withheld; she, therefore, encouraged the domestic manufacture of linen and wool; but an act for the establishment of fulling-mills was rejected by the board of trade, as also was one for "the better securing the liberty of the subject." Governor Nicholson, in a memorial to the council of trade, described the people of Virginia as numerous, rich, and of republican principles, such as ought to be lowered in time; that then or never was the time to maintain the queen's prerogative, and put a stop to those pernicious notions, which were increasing daily, not only in Virginia, but in all her majesty's other governments, and that a frown from her majesty now would do more than an army thereafter; and he insisted on the necessity of a standing army.[363:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[357:A] Account of Va. in Mass. Hist. Coll., first series, v. 144.
[357:B] Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia, i. 157.
[357:C] European Magazine, 1796.
[358:A] Beverley, B. i. 98.
[359:A] Hugh Jones' Present State of Virginia; Beverley, B. i. 99; Va. Hist. Reg., vi. 15.
[359:B] Beverley, B. i. 97.
[360:A] Hening, iii. 177.
[360:B] The members of it were Edward Hill, Matthew Page, and Benjamin Harrison, Esquires, members of the council; and Miles Cary, John Taylor, Robert Beverley, Anthony Armistead, Henry Duke, and William Buckner, gentlemen of the house of burgesses.
[361:A] Hening, iii. 171.
[362:A] In 1701 the population of the colonies was as follows:--
Connecticut 30,000 Maryland 25,000 Massachusetts 70,000 New Hampshire 10,000 New Jersey 15,000 New York 30,000 North Carolina 5,000 Pennsylvania 20,000 Rhode Island 10,000 South Carolina 7,000 Virginia 40,000 ------- Total 202,000
(Compendium of United States Census.)
[363:A] Beverley, B. i. 104.
Chapter XLV
1703.
Assembly held in the College--Ceremony of opening the Session--The Governor's Speech.
A MEETING of the general assembly was held at her majesty's Royal College of William and Mary, in March, 1703, being the second year of Queen Anne's reign, and, by prorogation, again in April, 1704.[364:A] The clerk of the general assembly was ordered to wait upon the house of burgesses and inform them that his excellency commanded their immediate attendance on him in the council chamber. The burgesses having complied with this order, his excellency was pleased to let them know that her most sacred majesty having been pleased to renew his commission to be her majesty's lieutenant and governor-general of this her majesty's most ancient and great colony and dominion of Virginia, he would cause the said commission to be read to them. This being done, he read them that part of his instructions wherein the council are nominated, and informed the house that upon the death of Colonel Page, the number of councillors having fallen under nine, he had appointed one to supply that vacancy. The governor next mentioned to the house that he had commissioned some of her majesty's honorable council to administer the oath to the burgesses. Whereupon they withdrew, and the oath was administered by the Honorable William Byrd, John Lightfoot, and Benjamin Harrison. These gentlemen returning to the council chamber, the clerk of the assembly was ordered to wait again upon the house of burgesses, and acquaint them that his excellency commanded their immediate attendance on him. The house of burgesses complying with this order, the governor made the following speech:--
"HONORABLE GENTLEMEN,--
"God Almighty, I hope, will be graciously pleased so to direct, guide, and enable us, as that we may, to all intents and purposes, answer her majesty's writ by which this assembly was called, and by prorogation is now met in this her majesty Queen Anne her royal capitol; which being appointed by law for holding general assemblies and general courts, my hopes likewise are that they may continue to be held in this place for the promoting of God's glory, her majesty, and her successors' interest and service with that of the inhabitants of this her majesty's most ancient and great colony and dominion of Virginia, so long as the sun and moon endure. Gentlemen, her most sacred majesty having been graciously pleased to send me her royal picture and arms for this her colony and dominion, I think the properest place to have them kept in, will be this council chamber; but it not being as yet quite finished, I cannot have them so placed as I would.
"By private accounts which I have from England, I understand her majesty hath lately thought fit to appoint a day of public fasting and humiliation there; but I have not yet seen her majesty's royal proclamation for it, which makes me not willing to appoint one here till I have. And had it not been for this, I designed that her majesty's royal picture and arms should have been first seen by you on St. George his day, and to have kept it as a day of public thanksgiving, it being the day on which her majesty was crowned, and bearing the name of his royal highness the Prince of Denmark, and likewise of the patron of our mother kingdom of England.
"Honorable gentlemen, I don't in the least doubt but that you will join with me in paying our most humble and dutiful acknowledgments and thanks to her most sacred majesty for this great honor and favor which she hath been pleased to bestow upon your country, and in praying that she may have a long, prosperous, successful, and victorious reign, as also that she may in all respects not only equal, but even outdo her royal predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, of ever-glorious memory, in the latter end of whose reign this country was discovered, and in honor of her called Virginia.
"It is now within two years of a century since its being first seated, at which time, if God Almighty and her majesty shall be so pleased, I design to celebrate a jubilee, and that the inhabitants thereof may increase exceedingly, and also abound with riches and honors, and have extraordinary good success in all their undertakings, but chiefly that they may be exemplary in their lives and conversations, continue in their religion of the Church of England as by law established, loyal to the crown thereof, and that all these things may come to pass, I question not but you will most cordially join with me in our most unfeigned and hearty prayers to God Almighty for them."
At the close of this verbose speech, the burgesses returned to their house, and the council adjourned.[366:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[364:A] A meeting of the council was held, consisting of his Excellency Francis Nicholson, Esq., lieutenant and governor-general, and William Byrd, John Lightfoot, Benjamin Harrison, Robert Carter, John Custis, Philip Ludwell, William Basset, Henry Duke, Robert Quarry, and John Smith, Esquires.
[366:A] Documents in S. Literary Messenger, communicated by Wyndham Robertson, Esq., having been copied by his father, while he was clerk of the council, from old papers in the council chamber.
Chapter XLVI
1703-1705.
Quit-rents--Northy's Opinion against the Custom of the Vestry's employing a Minister by the Year--The Free Church Disruption in Scotland--Controversy between Blair and Nicholson--Convocation--Nicholson recalled--Notice of his Career--Huguenots.
BY the account of Colonel William Byrd, receiver-general, the nett proceeds of her majesty's revenue of quit-rents for the year 1703 amounted to five thousand seven hundred and forty-five pounds.
In the Church of England the people have no part in the choice of their minister; a patron appoints him, and a living supports him. In Virginia, on the contrary, the salary being levied directly from the people by the vestries, they fell upon the expedient, as has been repeatedly mentioned, of employing a minister for a year. Governor Nicholson, an extreme high-churchman, procured from the attorney-general, Northy, an opinion against this custom, and it was sent to all the vestries, with directions to put it on record. The vestries, nevertheless, pertinaciously resisted this construction of the law. In two important points the church establishment in Virginia differed from that in England--in the appointment of the minister by the vestry, according to the act of 1642, and in the absence of a bishop.
In recent times the disruption of the Scottish general assembly resulted in the Free Church of Scotland, which thus, by sacrificing the temporalities, vindicated its independence of the government in things spiritual. In Virginia the vestries virtually maintained a like independence. In Scotland the contest arrayed against each other schismatic parties in the established kirk, known as the Evangelical and the Moderates, whereas in Virginia it was a mere contest for power between the vestries and the government. The Free Church of Scotland, at the time of the disruption, was still in theory in favor of an establishment in which the clergy should be chosen by the people and paid by the government.[368:A] Even in England, under the constitution of the established church, the ministers of certain exceptional chapels were formerly elected by the freeholders of the parish, subject to the approval of the vicar, and the violation of their rights in this particular was sometimes resented in the ruder districts of Yorkshire, by outrageous insults offered to the new incumbent during the time of service, and by brutal personal assaults upon the minister.[368:B]
Before the beginning of the eighteenth century the proprietary government, granted by Charles the First to Lord Baltimore, had at length been abolished, and the Church of England established there. There was less tolerance under this establishment than before. In Maryland as in Virginia, the discipline of the church was loose, the clergy by no means exemplary, and their condition precarious and dependent.
The differences between Dr. Blair and Governor Nicholson led to a tedious controversy, in which charges of malfeasance in official duty and private misconduct, especially in the affair of his attachment for Miss Burwell, and his maltreatment of the Rev. Mr. Fouace, were transmitted to the government in England, covering forty-four pages folio of manuscript. The controversy produced no little excitement and disturbance in the colony; a number of the clergy adhered to the governor, being those with whom Commissary Blair was unpopular, and whom the governor had ingratiated by siding with them against the vestries, and by representing the commissary as less favorable to their cause. Governor Nicholson ordered a convocation to be assembled, and during its session held private interviews with his adherents among the clergy, who signed a paper denying the charges made by the commissary and the council. A public entertainment given to them was satirized in a ballad, setting forth their unclerical hilarity, and depicting some of them in unfavorable colors. This ballad soon appeared in London. In this convocation seventeen of the clergy were opposed to the commissary, and only six in his favor. Nevertheless his integrity and indomitable perseverance and energy triumphed; and at length, upon the complaint made by him, together with six members of the council and some of the clergy, particularly the Rev. Mr. Fouace, Colonel Nicholson was recalled.[369:A] He ceased to be governor in August, 1705. Before entering on the government of Virginia he had been lieutenant-governor of New York under Andros, and afterwards at the head of administration from 1687 to 1689, when he was expelled by a popular tumult. From 1690 to 1692 he was lieutenant-governor of Virginia. From 1694 to 1699 he held the government of Maryland, where, with the zealous assistance of Commissary Bray, he busied himself in establishing Episcopacy. Returning to the government of Virginia, Governor Nicholson remained until 1705. In the year 1710 he was appointed general and commander-in-chief of the forces sent against Fort Royal, in Acadia, which was surrendered to him. During the following year he headed the land force of another expedition directed against the French in Canada. The naval force on this occasion was commanded by the imbecile Brigadier Hill. The enterprise was corrupt in purpose, feeble in execution, and abortive in result. This failure was attributable to the mismanagement and inefficiency of the fleet. In 1713 Colonel Nicholson was governor of Nova Scotia. Having received the honor of knighthood in 1720, Sir Francis Nicholson was appointed governor of South Carolina, where during four years, it is said, he conducted himself with a judicious and spirited attention to the public welfare, and this threw a lustre over the closing scene of his long and active career in America. Returning to England, June, 1725, he died at London in March, 1728. He is described as an adept in colonial governments, trained by long experience in New York, Virginia, and Maryland; brave, and not penurious, but narrow and irascible; of loose morality, yet a fervent supporter of the church.[369:B]
Upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis the Fourteenth, in 1685, more than half a million of French Protestants, called Huguenots, fled from the jaws of persecution to foreign countries. About forty thousand took refuge in England. In 1690 William the Third sent over a number of them to Virginia, and lands were allotted to them on James River. During the year 1699 another body came over, conducted by their clergyman, Claude Philippe de Richebourg. He and others were naturalized some years afterwards. Others followed in succeeding years; the larger part of them settled at Manakintown, on the south bank of the James River, about twenty miles above the falls, on rich lands formerly occupied by the Monacan Indians. The rest dispersed themselves over the country, some on the James, some on the Rappahannock. The settlement at Manakintown was erected into the parish of King William, in the County of Henrico, and exempted from taxation for many years. The refugees received from the king and the assembly large donations of money and provisions; and they found in Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, a generous benefactor. Each settler was allowed a strip of land running back from the river to the foot of the hill. Here they raised cattle, undertook to domesticate the buffalo, manufactured cloth, and made claret wine from wild grapes. Their settlement extended about four miles along the river. In the centre they built a church; they conducted their public worship after the German manner, and repeated family worship three times a day. Manakintown was then on the frontier of Virginia, and there was no other settlement nearer than the falls of the James River, yet the Indians do not appear to have ever molested these pious refugees. There was no mill nearer than the mouth of Falling Creek, twenty miles distant, and the Huguenots, having no horses, were obliged to carry their corn on their backs to the mill.
Many worthy families of Virginia are descended from the Huguenots, among them the Maurys, Fontaines, Lacys, Munfords, Flournoys, Dupuys, Duvalls, Bondurants, Trents, Moncures, Ligons, and Le Grands. In the year 1714 the aggregate population of the Manakintown settlement was three hundred. The parish register of a subsequent date, in French, is preserved.
FOOTNOTES:
[368:A] Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers, iv. 287, 316.
[368:B] Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronté.
[369:A] Old Churches, etc., i. 158; ii. 291.
[369:B] Bancroft, ii. 82.
Chapter XLVII
1702-1708.
Parishes--The Rev. Francis Makemie--Dissenters--Toleration Act--Ministers--Commissary.
IN the year 1702 there were twenty-nine counties in Virginia, and forty-nine parishes, of which thirty-four were supplied with ministers, fifteen vacant. In each parish there was a church, of timber, brick, or stone; in the larger parishes, one or two Chapels of Ease; so that the whole number of places of worship, for a population of sixty thousand, was about seventy. In every parish a dwelling-house was provided for the minister, with a glebe of two hundred and fifty acres of land, and sometimes a few negroes, or a small stock of cattle. The salary of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was, in ordinary quality, equivalent to £80; in sweet-scented, to £160. It required the labor of twelve negroes to produce this amount. There were in Virginia, at this time, three Quaker congregations, and as many Presbyterian; two in Accomac under the care of Rev. Francis Makemie; the other on Elizabeth River.
The Rev. Francis Makemie, who is styled the father of the American Presbyterian Church, was settled in Accomac County before the year 1690, when his name first appears upon the county records. He appears to have been a native of the north of Ireland, being of Scotch extraction, and one of those called Scotch-Irish. Licensed by the presbytery of Lagan in 1680, and in two or three years ordained as an evangelist for America, he came over, and labored in Barbadoes, Maryland, and Virginia. The first mention of his name on the records of the county court of Accomac bears date in 1690, by which he appears to have brought suits for debts due him in the business of merchandise. He married Naomi, eldest daughter of William Anderson, a wealthy merchant of Accomac, and thus acquired an independent estate. In the year 1699 he obtained from the court of that county a certificate of qualification as a preacher under the toleration act, the first of the kind known to be on record in Virginia. At the same time, upon his petition, two houses belonging to him were licensed as places of public worship.[372:A] In a letter written in 1710 by the presbytery of Philadelphia to that of Dublin, it is said: "In all Virginia we have one small congregation on Elizabeth River, and some few families favoring our way in Rappahannock and York." Two years after, the Rev. John Macky was the pastor of the Elizabeth River congregation. It is probable that the congregations organized by Mr. Makemie, in 1690, were not able to give him a very ample support; but, prosperous in his worldly affairs, he appears to have contributed liberally from his own means to the promotion of the religious interests in which he was engaged. According to tradition, he suffered frequent annoyances from the intolerant spirit of the times in Virginia; but he declared that "he durst not deny preaching, and hoped he never should, while it was wanting and desired." Beverley, in his "History of Virginia," published in 1705, says: "They have no more than five conventicles among them, namely, three small meetings of Quakers, and two of Presbyterians. 'Tis observed that those counties where the Presbyterian meetings are produce very mean tobacco, and for that reason can't get an orthodox minister to stay among them; but whenever they could, the people very orderly went to church."
From this it may be inferred that the Eastern Shore, where Makemie was settled, produced poor tobacco, and that in consequence of it there was no minister of the established church in his neighborhood. He is supposed to have had four places of preaching; his labors proved acceptable; his hearers and congregations increased in number, and there was a demand for other ministers of the same denomination. Mr. Makemie, about the year 1704, returned to the mother country and remained there about a year. During the following year two ministers, styled his associates, were licensed, by authority of Governor Seymour, to preach in Somerset County, in Maryland, notwithstanding the opposition of the neighboring Episcopal minister. Makemie's imprisonment in New York (by Lord Cornbury) for preaching in that city, and his able defence upon his trial, are well known. He died in 1708, leaving a large estate. His library was much larger than was usually possessed by Virginia clergymen in that day, and included a number of law books. He appointed the Honorable Francis Jenkins, of Somerset County, Maryland, and Mary Jenkins, his lady, executors of his last will and testament, and guardians of his children.[373:A]
In 1699 a penalty of five shillings was imposed on such persons in Virginia as should not attend the parish church once in two months; but dissenters, qualified according to the toleration act of the first year of William and Mary, were exempted from this penalty, provided they should attend at "any congregation, or place of religious worship, permitted and allowed by the said act of parliament, once in two months."[373:B] Hening remarks of this law: "It is surely an abuse of terms to call a law a toleration act which imposes a religious test on the conscience, in order to avoid the penalties of another law equally violating every principle of religious freedom. The provisions of this act may be seen in the fourth volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, page 53. Nothing could be more intolerant than to impose the penalties by this act prescribed for not repairing to church, and then to hold out the idea of exemption, by a compliance with the provisions of such a law as the statute of 1 William and Mary, adopted by a mere general reference, when not one person in a thousand could possibly know its contents." It was an age when the state of religion was low in England, and of those ministers sent over to Virginia not a few were incompetent, some openly profligate; and religion slumbered in the languor of moral lectures, the maxims of Socrates and Seneca, and the stereotyped routine of accustomed forms. Altercations between minister and people were not unfrequent; the parson was a favorite butt for aristocratic ridicule. Sometimes a pastor more exemplary than the rest was removed from mercenary motives, or on account of a faithful discharge of his duties. More frequently the unfit were retained by popular indifference. The clergy, in effect, did not enjoy that permanent independency of the people which properly belongs to a hierarchy. The vestry, a self-perpetuated body of twelve gentlemen, thought themselves "the parson's master," and the clergy in vain deplored the precarious tenure of their livings. The commissary's powers were few, limited, and disputed; he was but the shadow of a bishop; he could not ordain nor confirm; he could not depose a minister. Yet the people, jealous of prelatical tyranny, watched his feeble movements with a vigilant and suspicious eye. The church in Virginia was destitute of an effective discipline.[374:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[372:A] It appears from his will, dated in 1708, that he also owned a house and lot in the new town in Princess Anne County, on the eastern branch of Elizabeth River, and a house and lot in the new town on Wormley's Creek, called Urbanna. Whether he used these houses for merchandise, or for public worship, is not known. It appears from Commissary Blair's report on the state of the church in Virginia, that the congregation on Elizabeth River existed before the year 1700. From the fact of Mr. Makemie's directing, in his will, that his dwelling-house and lot on that river should be sold, it has been inferred that he had resided there before he moved to the opposite shore of the Chesapeake, and that the church in question was gathered by him; if so, it must have been formed before 1690; for in that year he was residing on the Eastern Shore. Others have supposed that the congregation on Elizabeth River was composed of a small company of Scotch emigrants, whose descendants are still to be found in the neighborhood of Norfolk.
[373:A] Foote's Sketches of Va., first series, 40, 58, 63, 84; and Force's Historical Tracts, iv.
[373:B] Hening, iii. 171.
[374:A] Hawks; Bancroft; Beverley, B. iv. 26.
Chapter XLVIII
1704-1710.
Edward Nott, Lieutenant-Governor--Earl of Orkney, Titular Governor-in-chief--Nott's Administration--Robert Hunter appointed Lieutenant-Governor--Captured by the French--The Rev. Samuel Sandford endows a Free School--Lord Baltimore.
ON the 13th day of August, 1704, the Duke of Marlborough gained a celebrated victory over the French and Bavarians at Blenheim.[375:A] During the same month Edward Nott came over to Virginia, lieutenant-governor under George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, who had been appointed governor-in-chief, and from this time the office became a pensionary sinecure, enjoyed by one residing in England, and who, out of a salary of two thousand pounds a year, received twelve hundred. The Earl of Orkney, who enjoyed this sinecure for forty years, having entered the army in his youth, was made a colonel in 1689-90, and in 1695-6 was created Earl of Orkney, in consideration of his merit and gallantry. He was present at the battles of the Boyne, Athlone, Limerick, Aghrim, Steinkirk, Lauden, Namur, and Blenheim, and was a great favorite of William the Third. In the first year of Queen Anne's reign he was made a major-general, and shortly after a Knight of the Thistle, and served with distinction in all the wars of her reign. As one of the sixteen peers of Scotland he was a member of the house of lords for many years. He married, in 1695, Elizabeth, daughter to Sir Edward Villiers, Knight, (Maid of Honor to Queen Mary,) sister to Edward, Earl of Jersey, by whom he had three daughters, Lady Anne, who married the Earl of Inchequin, Lady Frances, who married Sir Thomas Sanderson, Knight of the Bath, Knight of the Shire of Lincoln, and brother to the Earl of Scarborough, and Lady Harriet, married to the Earl of Orrery.
Nott, a mild, benevolent man, did not survive long enough to realize what the people hoped from his administration. In the fall after his arrival he called an assembly, which concluded a general revisal of the laws that had been long in hand. Some salutary acts went into operation, but those relating to the church and clergy proving unacceptable to the commissary, as encroaching on the confines of prerogative, were suspended by the governor, and thus fell through. Governor Nott procured the passage of an act providing for the building of a palace for the governor, and appropriating three thousand pounds to that object, and he dissented to an act infringing on the governor's right of appointing justices of the peace, by making the concurrence of five of the council necessary. An act establishing the general court was afterwards disallowed by the board of trade, because it did not recognize the appellate rights of the crown. This assembly passed a new act for the establishment of ports and towns, "grounding it only upon encouragements according to her majesty's letter;" but the Virginia merchants complaining against it, this measure also failed.
During the first year of Nott's administration the College of William and Mary was destroyed by fire.[376:A] The assembly had held their sessions in it for several years. Governor Nott died in August, 1706, aged forty-nine years. The assembly erected a monument to his memory in the graveyard of the church at Williamsburg. In the inscription he is styled, "His Excellency, Edward Nott, the late Governor of this Colony." It appears that he and his successors were allowed to retain the chief title, as giving them more authority with the people, the Earl of Orkney being quite content with a part of the salary.
England having now adopted the French policy of appointing military men for the colonial governments, in 1708 Robert Hunter, a brigadier-general, a scholar, and a wit--a friend of Addison and Swift--was appointed lieutenant-governor of Virginia; but he was captured on the voyage by the French. Dean Swift, in January, 1708-9, writes to him, then a prisoner in Paris, that unless he makes haste to return to England and get him appointed Bishop of Virginia, he will be persuaded by Addison, newly appointed secretary of state for Ireland, to accompany him.[377:A] Two months later he writes to him: "All my hopes now terminate in being made Bishop of Virginia." In the year 1710 Hunter became Governor of New York and the Jerseys, and his administration was happily conducted.
Samuel Sandford, who had been some time resident in Accomac County: by his will, dated at London in this year, he leaves a large tract of land, the rents and profits to be appropriated to the education of the children of the poor. It appears probable that he had served as a minister in Accomac, and at the time of the making of his will was a minister in the County of Gloucester, England.
About the year 1709, Benedict Calvert, Lord Baltimore, abandoned the Church of Rome and embraced Protestantism. To Charles Calvert, his son, likewise a Protestant, the full privileges of the Maryland charter were subsequently restored by George the First.[377:B]
FOOTNOTES:
[375:A] In the following year appeared the first American newspaper, "The Boston News-Letter."
[376:A] The same disaster has recently befallen this venerable institution, on the 8th of February, 1859. The library, comprising many rare and valuable works, shared the fate of the building. The walls are rising again on the same spot.
[377:A] Anderson's Hist. Col. Church, iii. 127.
[377:B] Ibid., iii. 183.
Chapter XLIX
1710-1714.
Spotswood, Lieutenant-Governor--His Lineage and Early Career-- Dissolves the Assembly--Assists North Carolina--Sends Cary and others Prisoners to England--Death of Queen Anne--Accession of George the First--German Settlement--Virginia's Economy--Church Establishment--Statistics.
IN the year 1710 Colonel Alexander Spotswood was sent over as lieutenant-governor, under the Earl of Orkney. He was descended from the ancient Scottish family of Spottiswoode. The surname is local, and was assumed by the proprietors of the lands and Barony of Spottiswoode, in the Parish of Gordon, and County of Berwick, as soon as surnames became hereditary in Scotland. The immediate ancestor of the family was Robert de Spotswood, born during the reign of King Alexander the Third, who succeeded to the crown of Scotland in 1249. Colonel Alexander Spotswood was born in 1676, the year of Bacon's Rebellion, at Tangier, then an English colony, in Africa, his father, Robert Spotswood, being physician to the governor, the Earl of Middleton, and the garrison there. The grandfather of Alexander was Sir Robert Spotswood, Lord President of the College of Justice, and Secretary of Scotland in the time of Charles the First, and author of "The Practicks of the Laws of Scotland." He was the second son of John Spotswood, or Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St. Andrews, and author of "The History of the Church of Scotland." The mother of Colonel Alexander Spotswood was a widow, Catharine Elliott; his father died at Tangier in 1688, leaving this his only child.[378:A] Colonel Alexander Spotswood was bred in the army from his childhood, and uniting genius with energy, served with distinction under the Duke of Marlborough.
He was dangerously wounded in the breast by the first fire which the French made on the Confederates at the battle of Blenheim. He served during the heat of that sanguinary war as deputy quartermaster-general. In after-life, while governor of Virginia, he sometimes showed to his guests a four-pound ball that struck his coat. Blenheim Castle is represented in the background of a portrait of him, preserved at Chelsea, in the County of King William.
The arrival of Governor Spotswood in Virginia was hailed with joy, because he brought with him the right of Habeas Corpus--a right guaranteed to every Englishman by Magna Charta, but hitherto denied to Virginians. He entered upon the duties of his office in June, 1710. The two houses of the assembly severally returned thanks for an act affording them "relief from long imprisonments," and appropriated upwards of two thousand pounds for completing the governor's palace. In the following year Spotswood wrote back to England: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due obedience to the royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England." The assembly was continued by several prorogations to November, 1711. During the summer of this year, upon an alarm of an intended French invasion of Virginia, the governor exerted himself to put the colony in the best posture of defence. Upon the convening of the assembly their jealousy of prerogative power revived, and they refused to pay the expense of collecting the militia, or to discharge the colonial debt, because, as Spotswood informed the ministry, "they hoped by their frugality to recommend themselves to the populace." The assembly would only consent to levy twenty thousand pounds, by duties laid chiefly on British manufactures; and notwithstanding the governor's message, they insisted on giving discriminating privileges to Virginia owners of vessels in preference to British subjects proper, saying that the same exemption had always existed. The governor declined the proffered levy, and finding that nothing further could be obtained, dissolved the assembly, and in anticipation of an Indian war was obliged to solicit supplies from England.
About this time, the feuds that raged in the adjoining province of North Carolina, threatening to subvert all regular government there, Hyde, the governor, called upon Spotswood for aid. He at first sent Clayton, a man of singular prudence, to endeavor to reconcile the hostile factions. But Cary, the ringleader of the insurgents, having refused to make terms, Spotswood ordered a detachment of militia toward the frontier of North Carolina, while he sent a body of marines, from the coast-guard ships, to destroy Cary's naval force. In a dispatch, Spotswood complained to Lord Dartmouth of the reluctance that he found in the inhabitants of the counties bordering on North Carolina, to march to the relief of Governor Hyde. No blood was shed upon the occasion, and Cary, Porter, and other leaders in those disturbances retiring to Virginia, were apprehended by Spotswood in July, 1711, and sent prisoners to England, charged with treason. In the ensuing year Lord Dartmouth addressed letters to the colonies, directing the governors to send over no more prisoners for crimes or misdemeanors, without proof of their guilt.
In the Tuscarora war, commenced by a massacre on the frontier of North Carolina in September of this year, Spotswood again made an effort to relieve that colony, and prevented the tributary Indians from joining the enemy. He felt that little honor was to be derived from a contest with those who fought like wild beasts, and he rather endeavored to work upon their hopes and fears by treaty. To allay the clamors of the public creditors the governor convened the assembly in 1712, and demonstrated to them that during the last twenty-two years the permanent revenue had been so deficient as to require seven thousand pounds from the monarch's private purse to supply it. In the month of January, 1714, he at length concluded a peace with these ferocious tribes, who had been drawn into the contest, and, blending humanity with vigor, he taught them that while he could chastise their insolence he commiserated their fate.
On the seventeenth day of November the governor, in his address to the assembly, announced the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs, and the succession of George the First, the first of the Guelfs, but maternally a grandson of James the First.
The frontier of the colony of Virginia was now undisturbed by Indian incursions, so that the expenditure was reduced to one-third of what had been previously required. A settlement of German Protestants had recently been effected under the governor's auspices, in a region hitherto unpeopled, on the Rapidan.[381:A] The place settled by these Germans was called Germanna, afterwards the residence of Spotswood. These immigrants, being countrymen of the new sovereign, could claim an additional title to the royal favor on that account. Spotswood was at the time endeavoring to extend the blessings of a Christian education to the children of the Indians, and although the beneficial result of this scheme might to some appear too remote, he declared that for him it was a sufficient encouragement to think that posterity might reap the benefit of it. The Indian troubles, by which the frontier of Virginia had of late years suffered so much, the governor attributed mainly to the clandestine trade carried on with them by unprincipled men. The same evil has continued down to the present day. In the before-mentioned address to the assembly, Spotswood informed them that since their preceding session he had received a supply of ammunition, arms, and other necessaries of war, sent out by the late Queen Anne.
During eleven years, from 1707 to 1718, while other colonies were burdened with taxation for extrinsic purposes, Virginia steadily adhered to a system of rigid economy, and during that interval eighty-three pounds of tobacco per poll was the sum-total levied by all acts of assembly.[381:B] The Virginians now began to scrutinize, with a jealous eye, the circumstances of the government, and the assembly "held itself entitled to all the rights and privileges of an English parliament."
The act of 1642, reserving the right of presentation to the parish, the license of the Bishop of London, and the recommendation of the governor, availed but little against the popular will, and there were not more than four inducted ministers in the colony. Republicanism was thus finding its way even into the church, and vestries were growing independent. The parish sometimes neglected to receive the minister; sometimes received but did not present him, the custom being to employ a minister by the year. In 1703 it was decided that the minister was an incumbent for life, and could not be displaced by the parish, but the vestries, by preventing his induction, excluded him from acquiring a freehold in his living, and he might be removed at pleasure. The ministers were not always men who could win the esteem of the people or command their respect. The Virginia parishes were so extensive that parishioners sometimes lived at the distance of fifty miles from the parish church, and the assembly would not augment the taxes by narrowing the bounds of the parishes, even to avoid the dangers of "paganism, atheism, or sectaries." Schism was threatening "to creep into the church, and to generate faction in the civil government."[382:A] "In Virginia," says the Rev. Hugh Jones,[382:B] "there is no ecclesiastical court, so that vice, profaneness, and immorality are not suppressed. The people hate the very name of bishop's court." "All which things," he adds, "make it absolutely necessary for a bishop to be settled there, to pave the way for mitres in English America."
There is preserved the record of the trial of Grace Sherwood, in the County of Princess Anne, for witchcraft. Being put in the water, with her hands bound, she was found to swim. A jury of old women having examined her, reported that "she was not like them." She was ordered by the court to be secured "by irons, or otherwise," in jail for farther trial. The picturesque inlet where she was put in the water is still known as "Witch Duck." The custom of nailing horse-shoes to the doors to keep out witches is not yet entirely obsolete.
The Virginians at this time were deterred from sending their children across the Atlantic to be educated, through fear of the smallpox.[382:C]
From the statistics of the year 1715, it appears that Virginia was, in population second only to Massachusetts,[383:A] which exceeded her in total number by one thousand, and in the number of whites by twenty-two thousand. All the colonies were at this time slave-holding; the seven Northern ones comprising an aggregate of 12,150 slaves, and the four Southern ones 46,700. The proportion of whites to negroes in Virginia was upwards of four to one. Their condition was one of rather rigorous servitude. The number of Africans imported into Virginia during the reign of George the First was upwards of ten thousand. In addition to the slaves, the Virginians had three kinds of white servants,--some hired in the ordinary way; others, called kids, bound by indenture for four or five years; the third class consisted of convicts. The two colonies, Virginia and Maryland, supplied the mother country, in exchange for her manufactures, with upwards of twenty-five millions of pounds of tobacco, of which there were afterwards exported more than seventeen millions, leaving for internal consumption more than eight millions. Besides the revenue which Great Britain derived from this source, in a commercial point of view, Virginia and Maryland were at this period of more consequence to the fatherland than all the other nine colonies combined. Virginia exchanged her corn, lumber, and salted provisions, for the sugar, rum, and wine of the West Indies and the Azores.
FOOTNOTES:
[378:A] Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; Burke's Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, ii., Art. SPOTTISWOODE; Chalmers' Introduction, i. 394; Keith's Hist. of Va., 173.
[381:A] There are several rivers in Virginia called after Queen Anne: the North Anna, South Anna, Rivanna, and Rapidan; and the word Fluvanna appears to be derived from the same source.
[381:B] Va. Hist. Reg., iv. 11.
[382:A] Bancroft, iii. 27, 28, citing Spotswood MS., an account of Virginia during his administration, composed by the governor; Hawks, p. 88.
[382:B] The Present State of Virginia.
[382:C] Bishop Meade's "Old Churches."
[383:A] The comparative population of the eleven Anglo-American colonies in 1715 was as follows:--
White Men. Negroes. Total.
New Hampshire 9,500 150 9,650 Massachusetts 94,000 2,000 96,000 Rhode Island 8,500 500 9,000 Connecticut 46,000 1,500 47,500 New York 27,000 4,000 31,000 New Jersey 21,000 1,500 22,500 Pennsylvania 43,300 2,500 45,800 Maryland 40,700 9,500 50,200 Virginia 72,000 23,000 95,000 North Carolina 7,500 3,700 11,200 South Carolina 6,250 10,500 16,750 ------- ------ ------- 375,750 58,850 434,600
(Chalmers' Amer. Colonies, ii. 7.)
Chapter L
1714-1716.
Indian School at Fort Christanna--The Rev. Mr. Griffin, Teacher--Governor Spotswood visits Christanna--Description of the School and of the Saponey Indians.
GOVERNOR SPOTSWOOD, who was a proficient in the mathematics, built the Octagon Magazine, rebuilt the College, and made improvements in the governor's house and gardens. He was an excellent judge on the bench. At his instance a grant of £1000 was made by the governors and visitors of William and Mary College in 1718, and a fund was established for instructing Indian children in Christianity,[384:A] and he erected a school for that purpose on the southern frontier, at fort Christanna, established on the south side of the Meherrin River, in what is now Southampton County.[384:B] This fort, built on a rising ground, was a pentagon enclosure of palisades, and instead of bastions, there were five houses, which defended each other; each side of the fort being about one hundred yards long. It was mounted with five cannon, and had a garrison of twelve men. The Rev. Charles Griffin had charge of the school here, being employed, in 1715, by Governor Spotswood to teach the Indian children, and to bring them to Christianity. The Rev. Hugh Jones[384:C] says that he had seen there "seventy-seven Indian children at school at a time, at the governor's sole expense, I think." This appears to be a mistake. The school-house was built at the expense of the Indian Company.[384:D] They were taught the English tongue, and to repeat the catechism, and to read the Bible and Common Prayers, and to write. These some of them learned tolerably well. The majority of them could repeat the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments, behaved reverently at prayers, and made the responses. The Indians became so fond of this worthy missionary, that they would sometimes lift him up in their arms; and they would have chosen him chief of their tribe, the Saponeys. They alone remained steadfastly at peace with the whites. They numbered about two hundred persons, and lived within musket-shot of Fort Christanna. They had recently been governed by a queen, but she dying they were now governed by twelve old men. When Governor Spotswood visited them in April, 1716, these old men waited on him at the Fort, and laid several skins at his feet, all bowing to him simultaneously. They complained through their interpreter of fifteen of their young men having been surprised, and murdered, by the Genitoes, and desired the governor's assistance in warring against them until they killed as many of them. They governor agreed that they might revenge themselves, and that he would furnish them with ammunition. He also made restitution to them for losses which they complained they had suffered by being cheated by the English. Sixty young men next made their appearance with feathers in their hair and run through their ears, their faces painted with blue and vermilion, their hair cut in fantastic forms, some looking like a cock's-comb; and they had blue and red blankets wrapped around them. This was their war-dress, and it made them look like furies. They made no speech. Next came the young women with long, straight, black hair reaching down to the waist, with a blanket tied round them, and hanging down like a petticoat. Most of them had nothing to cover them from the waist upwards; but some wore a mantle over the shoulders, made of two deer-skins sewed together. These Indians greased their bodies and heads with bear's oil, which, with the smoke of their cabins, gave them a disagreeable odor. They were very modest and faithful to their husbands. "They are straight and well-limbed, of good shape and extraordinary good features, as well the men as the women. They look wild, and are mighty shy of an Englishman, and will not let you touch them."[385:A]
The Saponey town was situated on the bank of the Meherrin, the houses all joining one another and making a circle. This circle could be entered by three passages, each about six feet wide. All the doors are on the inside of the circle, and the level area within was common for the diversion of the people. In the centre was a large stump of a tree, on which the head men stood when making a speech. The women bound their infants to a board cut in the shape of the child; the top of the board was round, and there was a hole for a string, by which it is hung to the limb of a tree, or to a pin in a post, and there swings and diverts himself out of harm's way. The Saponeys lived as lazily and as miserably as any people in the world. The boys with their bows shot at the eye of an axe, set up at twenty yards distance, and the governor rewarded their skill with knives and looking-glasses. They also danced the war-dance; after which the governor treated them to a luncheon, which they devoured with animal avidity.
FOOTNOTES:
[384:A] Keith's Hist of Va., 173.
[384:B] Huguenot Family, 271, and map opposite page 357. The names on this little map, taken from a letter by Peter Fontaine, are reversed, by mistake of the engraver.
[384:C] State and Condition of Virginia.
[384:D] Rev. C. Griffin's Letter, in Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 287.
[385:A] Huguenot Family, 272.
Chapter LI
1716.
Spotswood's Tramontane Expedition--His Companions--Details of the Exploration--They cross the Blue Ridge--The Tramontane Order--The Golden Horseshoe.
IT was in the year 1716 that Spotswood made the first complete discovery of a passage over the Blue Ridge of mountains. Robert Beverley, in the preface to the second edition of his "History of Virginia," published at London in 1722, says: "I was with the present governor[387:A] at the head-spring of both those rivers,[387:B] and their fountains are in the highest ridge of mountains." The governor, accompanied by John Fontaine, who had been an ensign in the British army, and who had recently come over to Virginia, started from Williamsburg, on his expedition over the Appalachian Mountains, as they were then called. Having crossed the York River at the Brick-house, they lodged that night at the seat of Austin Moore, now Chelsea, on the Matapony River, a few miles above its junction with the Pamunkey. On the following night they were hospitably entertained by Robert Beverley, the historian, at his residence in Middlesex. The governor left his chaise there, and mounted his horse for the rest of the journey; and Beverley accompanied him in the exploration. Proceeding along the Rappahannock they came to the Germantown, ten miles below the falls, where they halted for some days. On the twenty-sixth of August Spotswood was joined here by several gentlemen, two small companies of rangers, and four Meherrin Indians. The gentlemen of the party appear to have been Spotswood, Fontaine, Beverley, Colonel Robertson, Austin Smith, who returned home owing to a fever, Todd, Dr. Robinson, Taylor, Mason, Brooke, and Captains Clouder and Smith. The whole number of the party, including gentlemen, rangers, pioneers, Indians, and servants, was probably about fifty. They had with them a large number of riding and pack-horses, an abundant supply of provisions, and an extraordinary variety of liquors. Having had their horses shod, they left Germantown on the twenty-ninth of August, and encamped that night three miles from Germanna. The camps were named respectively after the gentlemen of the expedition, the first one being called "Camp Beverley," where "they made great fires, supped, and drank good punch."
Aroused in the morning by the trumpet, they proceeded westward, each day being diversified by the incidents and adventures of exploration. Some of the party encountered hornets; others were thrown from their horses; others killed rattlesnakes. Deer and bears were shot, and the venison and bear-meat were roasted before the fire upon wooden forks. At night they lay on the boughs of trees under tents. At the head of the Rappahannock they admired the rich virgin soil, the luxuriant grass, and the heavy timber of primitive forests. Thirty-six days after Spotswood had set out from Williamsburg, and on the fifth day of September, 1716, a clear day, at about one o'clock, he and his party, after a toilsome ascent, reached the top of the mountain. It is difficult to ascertain at what point they ascended, but probably it was Swift Run Gap.
As the company wound along, in perspective caravan line, through the shadowy defiles, the trumpet for the first time awoke the echoes of the mountains, and from the summit Spotswood and his companions beheld with rapture the boundless panorama that lay spread out before them, far as the eye could reach, robed in misty splendor. Here they drank the health of King George the First, and all the royal family. The highest summit was named by Spotswood Mount George, in honor of his majesty, and the gentlemen of the expedition, in honor of the governor, named the next in height, Mount Spotswood, according to Fontaine, and Mount Alexander, according to the Rev. Hugh Jones.[388:A] The explorers were on the water-shed, two streams rising there, the one flowing eastward and the other westward. Several of the company were desirous of returning, but the governor persuaded them to continue on. Descending the western side of the mountain, and proceeding about seven miles farther, they reached the Shenandoah, which they called the Euphrates, and encamped by the side of it. They observed trees blazed by the Indians, and the tracks of elks and buffaloes, and their lairs. They noticed a vine bearing a sort of wild cucumber, and a shrub with a fruit like the currant, and ate very good wild grapes. This place was called Spotswood Camp. The river was found fordable at one place, eighty yards wide in the narrowest part, and running north. It was here that the governor undertook to engrave the king's name on a rock, and not on Mount George.
Finding a ford they crossed the river, and this was the extreme point which the governor reached westward. Recrossing the river, some of the party using grasshoppers for bait, caught perch and chub fish; others went a hunting and killed deer and turkeys. Fontaine carved his name on a tree by the river-side; and the governor buried a bottle with a paper inclosed, on which he wrote that he took possession for King George the First of England. Dining here they fired volleys, and drank healths, they having on this occasion a variety of liquors--Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two kinds of rum, champagne, canary, cherry punch, cider, etc. On the seventh the rangers proceeded on a farther exploration, and the rest of the company set out on their return homeward. Governor Spotswood arrived at Williamsburg on the seventeenth of September, after an absence of about six weeks. The distance which they had gone was reckoned two hundred and nineteen miles, and the whole, going and returning, four hundred and thirty-eight. "For this expedition," says the Rev. Hugh Jones, "they were obliged to provide a great quantity of horseshoes, things seldom used in the eastern parts of Virginia, where there are no stones. Upon which account the governor upon his return presented each of his companions with a golden horseshoe, some of which I have seen covered with valuable stones resembling heads of nails, with the inscription on one side, 'Sic juvat transcendere montes.' This he instituted to encourage gentlemen to venture backward and make discoveries and settlements, any gentleman being entitled to wear this golden horseshoe on the breast who could prove that he had drank his majesty's health on Mount George." Spotswood instituted the Tramontane Order for this purpose; but it appears to have soon fallen through. According to Chalmers, the British government penuriously refused to pay the cost of the golden horseshoes. A novel called the "Knight of the Horseshoe," by Dr. William A. Caruthers, derives its name and subject from Spotswood's exploit.[390:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[387:A] Spotswood.
[387:B] York and Rappahannock.
[388:A] He says that Spotswood graved the king's name on a rock on Mount George; but, according to Fontaine, "the governor had graving-irons, but could not grave anything, the stones were so hard."
[390:A] Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, 281, 292; Introduction to Randolph's edition of Beverley's Hist. of Va., 5; Rev. Hugh Jones' Present State of Virginia. The miniature horseshoe that had belonged to Spotswood, according to a descendant of his, the late Mrs. Susan Bott, of Petersburg, who had seen it, was small enough to be worn on a watch-chain. Some of them were set with jewels. One of these horseshoes is said to be still preserved in the family of Brooke. A bit of colored glass, apparently the stopper of a small bottle, with a horseshoe stamped on it, was dug up some years ago in the yard at Chelsea, in King William County, the residence of Governor Spotswood's eldest daughter.
Chapter LII
1715-1718.
Condition of the Colonies--South Carolina appeals to Virginia for Succor against the Indians--Proceedings of the Council and the Assembly--Disputes between them--Dissensions of Governor and Burgesses--He dissolves them--Blackbeard, the Pirate-- Maynard's Engagement with him--His Death.
THE twenty-five counties of the Ancient Dominion were under a government consisting of a governor and twelve councillors appointed by the king, and fifty burgesses elected by the freeholders. The permanent revenue, established at the restoration, now amounted to four thousand pounds sterling, and this sum proving inadequate to the public expenditure, the deficit was eked out by three hundred pounds drawn from the quit-rents--private property of the king. Relieved from the dangers of Indian border warfare, and blessed with the able administration of Governor Spotswood, Virginia, under the tranquil reign of the first George, advanced in commerce, population, wealth, and power, more rapidly than any of her sister colonies.
A few of the principal families affected to establish an aristocracy or oligarchy, and Spotswood, at his first arrival, discovered that it was necessary "to have a balance on the Bench and the Board." He subsequently warned the ministers, "that a party was so encouraged by their success in removing former governors, that they are resolved no one shall sit easy who doth not entirely submit to their dictates; this is the case at present, and will continue, unless a stop is put to their growing power, to whom not any one particular governor, but government itself, is equally disagreeable."
At a council held at Williamsburg on the 26th day of May, 1715, the governor presented a letter, received by express, from Governor Craven, of South Carolina, representing the deplorable condition of that colony from the murderous inroads of the Indians, the several tribes having confederated together and threatened the total destruction of the inhabitants, and requesting a supply of arms and ammunition. The council unanimously agreed to the request, and, conceiving that Virginia was also in imminent danger of invasion, desired the Indian Company to take from the magazine so much ammunition as was necessary for South Carolina, and to return the same "by the first conveniency, that so this colony may not be unprovided for its necessary defence." It was further ordered, that the governors of Maryland, New York, and New England, be exhorted to send ships of war to Charleston, and that the governor of South Carolina be invited to send hither their women and children, and such other persons as are useless in the war. Three pieces of cannon were sent to Christanna, and ammunition to Germanna, these being the two frontier settlements. Colonel Nathaniel Harrison was empowered to disarm the Nottoway Indians.
In June, upon the application of the governor of North Carolina for preventing the inhabitants of that province from deserting it in that time of danger, a proclamation was issued by Governor Spotswood ordering all persons coming thence, without a passport, to be arrested and sent back.
A letter from the governor of South Carolina, brought by Arthur Middleton, Esq., requested assistance of men from Virginia. South Carolina proposed, in order to pay the men, to send to Virginia slaves to the number of the volunteers, to work on the plantations for their benefit. The council unanimously resolved to comply with the request, and to defray the charges incurred until the men should arrive in South Carolina, and for this purpose the governor and council agreed to postpone the payment of their own salaries. It was ordered that a party of Nottoway and Meherrin Indians should be sent to the assistance of the South Carolinians. An assembly was summoned to meet on the third of August. The duty of five pounds on slaves imported was suspended for the benefit of planters sending their slaves from South Carolina to Virginia as a place of safety. The contract entered into on this occasion between the two provinces, for the raising of forces, was styled "A treaty made between this government and the Province of South Carolina." Early in July, Spotswood dispatched a number of men and arms.
The king of the Saran Indians visited Williamsburg, and agreed to bring chiefs of the Catawbas and Cherokees to treat of peace, and to aid in cutting off the Yamasees and other enemies of South Carolina.
The assembly met on the 3d of August, 1715, being the first year of the reign of George the First. The members of the council were Robert Carter, James Blair, Philip Ludwell, John Smith, John Lewis, William Cocke, Nathaniel Harrison, Mann Page, and Robert Porteus, Esquires. Daniel McCarty, Esq., of Westmoreland, was elected speaker of the house of burgesses. The governor announced in his speech that the object of the session was to secure Virginia against the murders, massacres, and tortures of Indian invasion, and to succor South Carolina in her distress, and he made known his desire to treat with the Indian chiefs who were expected, at the head of a body of men, on the frontiers. The burgesses expressed their hope that as the people of Virginia were so unable to afford supplies, the king would supply the deficiency out of his quit-rents, and requested further information as to the treaty made with South Carolina, and the aid required. A bill was introduced in the house for amending an act for preventing frauds in tobacco payments, and improving the staple. The burgesses requested the governor's assistance in arresting Richard Littlepage and Thomas Butts, who defied their authority. It appears that these gentlemen, being justices of the peace, sitting in the court of claims, in which the people presented their grievances, had refused to certify some such as being false and seditious. The governor refused to aid in enforcing the warrant. The house sent up a bill making a small appropriation for the succor of South Carolina, but clogged with the repeal of parts of the tobacco act, and the council rejected it, "the tacking things of a different nature to a money bill" being "an encroachment on the privileges of the council."
A controversy next ensued between the council and the house as to the power of redressing the grievances of the people. A dispute also occurred between the governor and the burgesses relative to the removal of the court of James City County from Jamestown to Williamsburg. The governor said: "After five years' residence upon the borders of James City County, I think it hard I may not be allowed to be as good a judge as Mr. Marable's rabble, of a proper place for the court-house."
The burgesses declared their sympathy with the suffering Carolinians, but insisted upon the extreme poverty of the people of Virginia, and so excused themselves for clogging the appropriation bill with the repeal of parts of the tobacco act, their object being by one act to relieve Virginia and succor Carolina. Governor Spotswood, in his reply, remarked: "When you speak of poverty and engagements, you argue as if you knew the state of your own country no better than you do that of others, for as I, that have had the honor to preside for some years past over this government, do positively deny that any public engagements have drawn any more wealth out of this colony than what many a single person in it has on his own account expended in the time, so I do assert that there is scarce a country of its figure in the Christian world less burdened with public taxes. If yourselves sincerely believe that it is reduced to the last degree of poverty, I wonder the more that you should reject propositions for lessening the charges of assemblies; that you should expel gentlemen out of your house for only offering to serve their counties upon their own expense, and that while each day of your sitting is so costly to your country, you should spend time so fruitlessly, for now, after a session of twenty-five days, three bills only have come from your house, and even some of these framed as if you did not expect they should pass into acts."
On the seventh day of September the council sent to the burgesses a review of some of their resolutions reflecting upon them, and the governor, and the preceding assembly. This review is able and severe. On this day the governor dissolved the assembly, after a speech no less able, and still more severe. After animadverting upon the proceedings of the house at length, and paying a high tribute to the merit of the council, the governor concludes thus:--[394:A]
"But to be plain with you, the true interest of your country is not what you have troubled your heads about. All your proceedings have been calculated to answer the notions of the ignorant populace, and if you can excuse yourselves to them, you matter not how you stand before God, your prince, and all judicious men, or before any others to whom you think you owe not your elections. The new short method you have fallen upon to clear your conduct by your own resolves, will prove the censure to be just, for I appeal to all rational men who shall read the assembly journals, as well of the last session as of this, whether some of your resolves of your house of the second instant are not as wide from truth and fair reasoning as others are from good manners. In fine, I cannot but attribute these miscarriages to the people's mistaken choice of a set of representatives, whom Heaven has not generally endowed with the ordinary qualifications requisite to legislators, for I observe that the grand ruling party in your house has not furnished chairmen for two of your standing committees[395:A] who can spell English or write common sense, as the grievances under their own handwriting will manifest. And to keep such an assembly on foot would be the discrediting a country that has many able and worthy gentlemen in it. And therefore I now dissolve you."
These proceedings throw light on the practical working of the colonial government, of the vigorous and haughty spirit of Spotswood, who was not surpassed in ability or in character by any of the colonial governors, and of the liberty-loving but factious house of burgesses. They also exhibit the critical condition of South Carolina, and the imminent danger of Virginia at that period. On this last point Chalmers fell into an error, in stating that the Indians then had ceased to be objects of dread in Virginia.
The assembly, as has been seen, expelled two burgesses for serving without compensation, which they stigmatized as tantamount to bribery--thus seeming indirectly to charge bribery upon the members of the British house of commons, who receive no per diem compensation. After five weeks spent in fruitless altercations, Spotswood, conceiving the assembly to be actuated by factious motives, dissolved them with harsh and contemptuous expressions, offending the spirit of the burgesses. He had previously wounded the pride of the council, long the oligarchy of the Old Dominion, when "colonel, and member of his majesty's council of Virginia," was a sort of provincial title of nobility. Frequent anonymous letters were now transmitted to England, inveighing against Spotswood. While the board of trade commended his general conduct, they reproved him for the offensive language which he had used in his speech to the burgesses, "who, though mean, ignorant people, and did not comply with his desires, ought not to have been irritated by sharp expressions, which may not only incense them, but even their electors." In other points, Spotswood vindicated himself with vigor and success, and he insisted "that some men are always dissatisfied, like the tories, if they are not allowed to govern; men who look upon every one not born in the country as a foreigner."
When, in 1717, the ancient laws of the colony were revised, the acts of 1663, for preventing the recovery of foreign debts, and prohibiting the assemblage of Quakers, and that of 1676, (one of Bacon's laws,) excluding from office all persons who had not resided for three years in Virginia, were repealed by the king.
John Teach, a pirate, commonly called Blackbeard, in the year 1718 established his rendezvous at the mouth of Pamlico River, in North Carolina. He surrendered himself to Governor Eden, (who was suspected of being in collusion with him,) and took the oath of allegiance, in order to avail himself of a proclamation of pardon offered by the king. Wasting the fruits of sea-robbery in gambling and debauchery, Blackbeard again embarked in piracy; and having captured and brought in a valuable cargo, the Carolinians gave notice of it to the government of Virginia. Spotswood and the assembly immediately proclaimed a large reward for his apprehension, and Lieutenant Maynard, attached to a ship-of-war stationed in the Chesapeake Bay, was sent with two small vessels and a chosen crew in quest of him. An action ensued in Pamlico Bay on the 21st of November, 1718. Blackbeard, it is said, had posted one of his men with a lighted match over the powder-magazine, to prevent a capture by blowing up his vessel, but if so, this order failed to be executed. Blackbeard, surrounded by the slain, and bleeding from his wounds, in the act of cocking a pistol, fell on the bloody deck and expired. His surviving comrades surrendered, and Maynard returned with his prisoners to James River, with Blackbeard's head hanging from the bowsprit. The captured pirates were tried in the admiralty court at Williamsburg, March, 1718, and thirteen of them were hung. Benjamin Franklin, then an apprentice in a printing-office, composed a ballad on the death of Teach, which was sung through the streets of Boston.[397:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[394:A] Extracts from Journal of the Council of Virginia, sitting as the upper house of assembly, preserved in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, in S. Lit. Messr., xvii. 585.
[395:A] Privileges and Claims.
[397:A] Grahame's Col. Hist. U. S., ii. 56, citing Williamson's Hist. of N. C. See, also, A General History of the Pyrates, published at London, (1726,) and "Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers," by C. Macfarlane.
Chapter LIII
1718-1739.
Complaints against Spotswood--The Governor and the Council-- Dissension between Spotswood and the Assembly--Convocation of the Clergy--Controversy between Blair and Spotswood--Clergy address the Bishop of London--The Clergy side with Spotswood-- Miscellaneous Matters--Governor Spotswood displaced--Succeeded by Drysdale--Spotswood's Administration reviewed--Germanna-- Spotswood Deputy Postmaster General--Engaged in Iron Manufacture--His Account of it--Advertisement--Knighted-- Appointed Commander-in-chief of the Carthagena Expedition--His Death--Indian Boys at William and Mary College--Change in Spotswood's Political Views--His Marriage--His Children--His Widow--Spottiswoode, the Family Seat in Scotland--Portraits of Sir Alexander Spotswood and his Lady.
AT length eight members of the council, headed by Commissary Blair, complained to the government in London, that Governor Spotswood had infringed the charter of the colony by associating inferior men with them in criminal trials. It was unfortunate that the Commissary's position involved him in these political squabbles: he would have been, doubtless, more usefully employed in those spiritual functions which were his proper sphere, and which he adorned. The governor lamented to the board of trade "how much anonymous obloquy had been cast upon his character, in order to accomplish the designs of a party, which, by their success in removing other governors, are so far encouraged, that they are resolved no one shall sit easy who doth not resign his duty, his reason, and his honor to the government of their maxims and interests." The domineering ambition of the council was long the fruitful source of mischiefs to Virginia; and it is on this account that many of the complaints and accusations against the governors are to be received with many grains of allowance. The twelve members of the council had a negative upon the governor's acts; they were members of the assembly, judges of the highest court, and held command of the militia as county lieutenants. Stith, in his "History of Virginia," complains of their overweening power, and expresses his apprehensions of its evil consequences.
As early as the year 1692, William the Third had appointed Neal postmaster for the Northern Colonies, with authority to establish posts. The rates being afterwards fixed by act of parliament, the system was introduced into Virginia in the year 1718, and Spotswood wrote to the board of trade, that "the people were made to believe that the parliament could not lay any tax (for so they call the rates of postage) on them without the consent of the general assembly. This gave a handle for framing some grievance against the new office; and thereupon a bill was passed by both council and burgesses, which, though it acknowledged the act of parliament to be in force in Virginia, doth effectually prevent its ever being put in execution; whence your lordships may judge how well affected the major part of the assemblymen are toward the collection of this branch of the revenue." The act, nevertheless, was enforced.
The assembly refused to pass measures recommended by the governor; invaded his powers by investing the county courts with the appointment of their own clerks; endeavored, as has been seen, to render inoperative the new post-office system, and transmitted an address to the king, praying that the instruction which required that no acts should be passed affecting the British commerce or navigation without a clause of suspension, might be recalled, and that the governor's power of appointing judges of oyer and terminer should be limited; and they complained that the governor's attempts went to the subversion of the constitution, since he made daily encroachments on their ancient rights. The governor, perceiving that it was the design of his opponents to provoke him, and then make a handle of the ebullitions of his resentment, displayed moderation as well as ability in these disputes, and when the assembly had completed their charges, prorogued them. This effervescence of ill humor excited a reaction in favor of Spotswood, and in a short time addresses poured in from the clergy, the college, and most of the counties, reprobating the factious conduct of the legislature, and expressing the public happiness under an administration which had raised the colony from penury to prosperity. Meantime Colonel Byrd, who had been sent out to London as colonial agent, having rather failed in his efforts against Spotswood, begged the board of trade "to recommend forgiveness and moderation to both parties." The recommendation, enforced by the advice of Lord Orkney, the governor-in-chief, the Duke of Argyle, and other great men who patronized Spotswood, quieted these discords; and the governor, the council, and the burgesses now united harmoniously in promoting the public welfare.
The chief apple of discord between the governor and the Virginians was the old question relating to the powers of the vestry. About this time Governor Spotswood was engaged in a warm dispute with the vestry of St. Anne's Parish, Essex, in which he took very high ground. The Rev. Hugh Jones subsequently, while on a visit in England, reported to the Bishop of London some things against the rubrical exactness of Commissary Blair. Evil reports had also reached the mother country as to the moral character of some of the clergy. A convention of the Virginia clergy was, therefore, held in compliance with the direction of the Bishop of London, at the College of William and Mary, in April, 1719. The governor, in a letter addressed to this body, assails the commissary as denying "that the king's government has the right to collate ministers to ecclesiastical benefices within this colony," "deserting the cause of the church," and countenancing disorders in divine worship "destructive to the establishment of the church." To all this, Commissary Blair made a reply, vindicating himself triumphantly.[400:A] He appears to have sympathized on these matters with the vestries and the people. Governor Spotswood, on the contrary, was an extreme high churchman and supporter of royal prerogative, as might have been expected from the descendant of a long line of ancestors always found arrayed on the side of the crown, and the church as established, and never with the people. The journal of this convocation throws much light on the condition of the church and the clergy of Virginia at that time. The powers exercised by the vestries, indeed, often made the position of the clergy precarious; but it would, perhaps, have engendered far greater evils if the governor had been allowed to be the patron of all the livings. Governor Spotswood's letter to the vestry of St. Anne's presents an elaborate argument against the right of the vestry to appoint or remove the minister; but, notwithstanding the opposition of the governor, bishop, clergy, and crown, the vestries and the people still steadfastly maintained this right. This question was the embryo of the revolution; political freedom is the offspring of religious freedom; it takes its rise in the church.
In answer to an inquiry made by the Bishop of London, the convention voted "that no member had any personal knowledge of the irregularity of any clergyman's life in this colony," a manifest equivocation.[401:A] In their address to the Bishop of London, the convention state that all the ministers in Virginia are episcopally ordained, except Mr. Commissary, of whose ordination a major part doubt;[401:B] that the circumstances of the country will not permit them to conform to the established liturgy as they would desire; that owing to the extent of the parishes they have service but once on Sunday, and but one sermon; that for the same reason the dead are not buried in churchyards, and the burial-service is usually performed by a layman; that the people observe no holidays except Christmas-day and Good Friday, being unwilling to leave their daily labor; and that of necessity the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is administered to persons who are not confirmed; that the ministers are obliged to baptize, and church women, marry, and bury at private houses, administer the Lord's Supper to a single sick person, perform in church the office of both sacraments without the habits, ornaments, and vessels required by the liturgy. The convention press upon his lordship's attention the precarious tenure of their livings, to which many of these deviations from the liturgy were attributable; they declare that the people are adverse to the induction of the clergy, which exposes them to the great oppression of the vestries. The clergy refer to Governor Spotswood as, under God, their chief support, whose efforts in their behalf were, as alleged by the governor, opposed by some of the council and Commissary Blair, who was himself accused of some irregularities.
The convention also stated that the commissary found great difficulty in making visitations, owing to the refusal of church wardens to take the official oath, or to make presentments, and from "the general aversion of the people to everything that looks like a spiritual court." The commissary refused to subscribe to it. The contending parties in these disputes were the governor and the clergy on the one side, and the commissary with the people on the other. According to the opinion of the attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey, given in 1703, "the right of presentation by the laws of Virginia was in the parishioners, and the right of lapse in the governor;" that is, if the vestry failed to choose a minister within six months, the governor had the right of appointing him; but it was a right which the governors, although reinforced by royal authority, could not enforce. Of the twenty-five members of this clerical convention only eight appear to have sided with the commissary. He held that the difference between him and the governor as to the right of collation was this: the governor claimed the right in the first instance, like that of the king of England, to bestow livings of which he himself is patron; the commissary was of opinion that the governor's power corresponded to that of the bishop, not being original, but only consequent upon a lapse; that is, a failure of the vestry to present within the time limited by law. Commissary Blair, throughout these angry controversies, in the course of which he was very badly treated by the governor and the clergy, bore himself with singular ability and excellent temper, and proved himself more than a match for his opponents.[402:A]
Predatory parties of the Five Nations were repelled by force, and conciliated by presents. The frontier of Virginia was extended to the foot of the Blue Ridge, and two new Piedmont counties, Spotsylvania and Brunswick, were established in 1720--the seventh year of George the First.[402:B] Spotsylvania included the northern pass through the mountains. At the special solicitation of the governor, the two counties were exempted from taxation for ten years. An act was passed imposing penalties on "whosoever shall weed, top, hill, succor, house, cure, strip or pack any seconds, suckers, or slips of tobacco." Two hundred pounds of tobacco were offered in reward for every wolf killed. Warehouses for storing tobacco and other merchandize, when first established in 1712, were denominated rolling-houses, from the mode of rolling the tobacco to market, before wagons came into general use or the navigation of the rivers improved. This mode of transporting tobacco prevailed generally in 1820, and later.[403:A] Tobacco warehouses in Virginia are now devoted exclusively to that commodity. In 1720, King George County was carved off from Richmond County, and Hanover from New Kent. A house for the governor was completed about this time. An act was passed to encourage the making of tar and hemp, and another to oblige ships coming from places infected with the plague to perform quarantine. The Indians of the Five Nations, warring with the Southern Indians for many years, had been in the habit of marching along the frontier of Virginia and committing depredations. To prevent this, a treaty was effected with them, whereby they bound themselves not to cross Potomac River, nor to pass to the eastward of the great ridge of mountains, without a passport from the Governor of New York; and, on the other hand, the Indians tributary to this government engaged not to pass over the Potomac, or go westward of the mountains, without a passport from the Governor of Virginia. This treaty was ratified at Albany, September, 1722. An act concerning servants and slaves was repealed by proclamation.
Spotswood urged upon the British government the policy of establishing a chain of posts beyond the Alleghanies, from the lakes to the Mississippi, to restrain the encroachments of the French. The ministry did not enter into his views on this subject, and it was not till after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that his wise, prophetic admonitions were heeded, and his plans adopted. He also failed in an effort to obtain from the government compensation for his companions in the Tramontane exploration. At length, owing, as his friends allege, to the intrigues and envious whispers of men far inferior to him in capacity and honesty, but according to others, on account of his high-handed encroachments on the rights of the colony, Spotswood was displaced in 1722, and succeeded by Hugh Drysdale. Chalmers,[404:A] also a native of Scotland, and as extreme a supporter of prerogative, thus eulogizes Spotswood: "Having reviewed the uninteresting conduct of the frivolous men who had ruled before him, the historian will dwell with pleasure on the merits of Spotswood. There was an utility in his designs, a vigor in his conduct, and an attachment to the true interest of the kingdom and the colony, which merit the greatest praise. Had he attended more to the courtly maxim of Charles the Second, 'to quarrel with no man, however great might be the provocation, since he knew not how soon he should be obliged to act with him,' that able officer might be recommended as the model of a provincial governor. The fabled heroes who had discovered the uses of the anvil and the axe, who introduced the labors of the plough, with the arts of the fisher, have been immortalized as the greatest benefactors of mankind; had Spotswood even invaded the privileges, while he only mortified the pride of the Virginians, they ought to have erected a statue to the memory of a ruler who gave them the manufacture of iron, and showed them by his active example that it is diligence and attention which can alone make a people great."
Governor Spotswood was the author of an act for improving the staple of tobacco, and making tobacco-notes the medium of ordinary circulation. Being a master of the military art, he kept the militia of Virginia under admirable discipline. In Spotsylvania, Spotswood, previous to the year 1724, had founded, on a horseshoe peninsula of four hundred acres, on the Rapidan, the little town of Germanna, so called after the Germans sent over by Queen Anne, and settled in that quarter, and at this place he resided. A church was built there mainly at his expense. In the year 1730 he was made deputy postmaster-general for the colonies, and held that office till 1739; and it was he who promoted Benjamin Franklin to the office of postmaster for the Province of Pennsylvania. Owning an extensive tract of forty-five thousand acres of land, and finding it to abound in iron ore, he engaged largely in partnership with Mr. Robert Cary, of England, and others in Virginia, in the manufacture of it. He is styled by Colonel Byrd the "Tubal Cain of Virginia;" he was, indeed, the first person that ever established a regular furnace in North America, leading the way and setting the example to New England and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, at this period, was unable to export iron, owing to the scarcity of ships, and made it only for domestic use. Spotswood expressed the hope that "he had done the country very great service by setting so good an example;" and stated "that the four furnaces now at work in Virginia circulated a great sum of money for provisions and all other necessaries in the adjacent counties; that they took off a great number of hands from planting tobacco, and employed them in works that produced a large sum of money in England to the persons concerned, whereby the country is so much the richer; that they are besides a considerable advantage to Great Britain, because it lessens the quantity of bar iron imported from Spain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and Muscovy, which used to be no less than twenty thousand tons yearly, though, at the same time, no sow iron is imported thither from any country, but only from the plantations. For most of this bar iron they do not only pay silver, but our friends in the Baltic are so nice they even expect to be paid all in crown pieces. On the contrary, all the iron they receive from the plantations, they pay for it in their own manufactures and send for it in their own shipping."[405:A]
There was as yet no forge set up in Virginia for the manufacture of bar iron. The duty in England upon it was twenty-four shillings a ton, and it sold there for from ten to sixteen pounds per ton, which paid the cost of forging it abundantly; but Spotswood "doubted; the parliament of England would soon forbid us that improvement, lest after that we should go farther, and manufacture our bars into all sorts of ironware, as they already do in New England and Pennsylvania. Nay, he questioned whether we should be suffered to cast any iron which they can do themselves at their furnaces."
The whole expense was computed at two pounds per ton of sow, (or pig iron,) and it sold for five or six pounds in England, leaving a nett profit of three pounds or more on a ton. It was estimated that a furnace would cost seven hundred pounds. One hundred negroes were requisite, but on good land these, besides the furnace-work, would raise corn and provisions sufficient for themselves and the cattle. The people to be hired were a founder, a mine-raiser, a collier, a stock-taker, a clerk, a smith, a carpenter, a wheelwright, and some carters, these altogether involving an annual charge of five hundred pounds.
At Massaponux, a plantation on the Rappahannock, belonging to Governor Spotswood, he had in operation an air-furnace for casting chimney-backs, andirons, fenders, plates for hearths, pots, mortars, rollers for gardeners, skillets, boxes for cart-wheels. These were sold at twenty shillings a ton and delivered at the purchaser's home, and being cast from the sow iron were much better than the English, which were made, for the most part, immediately from the ore.
In 1732, besides Colonel Willis, the principal person of the place, there were at Fredericksburg only one merchant, a tailor, a blacksmith, and an ordinary keeper.
The following advertisement is found in the "Virginia Gazette" for 1739: "Colonel Spotswood, intending next year to leave Virginia with his family, hereby gives notice that he shall, in April next, dispose of a quantity of choice household furniture, together with a coach, chariot, chaise, coach-horses, house-slaves, etc. And that the rich lands in Orange County, which he has hitherto reserved for his own seating, he now leases out for lives renewable till Christmas, 1775, admitting every tenant to the choice of his tenement, according to the priority of entry. He further gives notice that he is ready to treat with any person of good credit for farming out, for twenty-one years, Germanna and its contiguous lands, with the stock thereon, and some slaves. As also for farming out, for the like term of years, an extraordinary grist-mill and bolting-mill, lately built by one of the best millwrights in America, and both going by water taken by a long race out of the Rapidan, together with six hundred acres of seated land adjoining the said mill.
"N. B.--The chariot (which has been looked upon as one of the best made, handsomest, and easiest chariots in London,) is to be disposed of at any time, together with some other goods. No one will be received as a tenant who has not the character of an industrious man."
Major-General Sir Alexander Spotswood, when on the eve of embarking with the troops destined for Carthagena, died at Annapolis, on the 7th day of June, 1740. There is reason to believe that he lies buried at Temple Farm, his country residence near Yorktown, and so called from a sepulchral building erected by him in the garden there. It was in the dwelling-house at Temple Farm (called the Moore House) that Lord Cornwallis signed the capitulation. This spot, so associated with historical recollections, is also highly picturesque in its situation.[407:A]
Governor Spotswood left a historical account of Virginia during the period of his administration, and Mr. Bancroft had access to this valuable document, and refers to it in his history.[407:B]
During the sanguinary war with the Indians in which North Carolina had been engaged, Governor Spotswood demanded of the tribes tributary to Virginia a number of the sons of their chiefs, to be sent to the College of William and Mary, where they served as hostages to preserve peace, and enjoyed the advantage of learning to read and write English, and were instructed in the Christian religion. But on returning to their own people they relapsed into idolatry and barbarism.[407:C]
Governor Spotswood's long residence in Virginia, and the identity of his interests with those of the people of the colony, appear to have greatly changed his views of governmental prerogative and popular rights, for during this year he gave it as his opinion that "if the assembly in New England would stand bluff, he did not see how they could be forced to raise money against their will, for if they should direct it to be done by act of parliament, which they have threatened to do, (though it be against the right of Englishmen to be taxed but by their representatives,) yet they would find it no easy matter to put such an act in execution."[408:A]
Governor Spotswood married, in 1724, Miss Butler Bryan, (pronounced Brain,) daughter of Richard Bryan, Esq., of Westminster, an English lady, whose Christian name was taken from James Butler, Duke of Ormond, her godfather. Their children were John and Robert, Anne Catherine and Dorothea. John Spotswood married, in 1745, Mary Dandridge, daughter of William Dandridge, of the British navy, Commander of the Ludlow Castle ship-of-war, and their children were two sons, General Alexander Spotswood and Captain John Spotswood of the army of the Revolution, and two daughters, Mary and Anne. Robert, the younger son of the governor, an officer under Washington in the French and Indian war, being detached with a scouting party from Fort Cumberland, (1756,) was supposed to have been killed by the Indians. He died without issue.[408:B] His remains were found near Fort Du Quesne; and in an elegiac poem published in "Martin's Miscellany," in London, the writer assumes that young Spotswood was slain by the savages.
"Courageous youth! were now thine honored sire To breathe again, and rouse his wonted ire, Nor French nor Shawnee dare his rage provoke, From great Potomac's spring to Roanoke.
"May Forbes yet live the cruel debt to pay, And wash the blood of Braddock's field away; The fair Ohio's blushing waves may tell How Britons fought, and how each hero fell."[408:C]
Anne Catherine, the elder daughter of Governor Spotswood, married Bernard Moore, Esq., of Chelsea, in the County of King William. Dorothea, the other daughter, married Captain Nathaniel West Dandridge, of the British navy, son of Captain William Dandridge, of Elson Green.[409:A]
The governor's lady surviving him, and continuing to live at Germanna, November the 9th, 1742, married second the Rev. John Thompson, of Culpepper County, a minister of exemplary character. From this union was descended the late Commodore Thompson of the United States navy. Lady Spotswood's children objected to the match on the ground of his inferior rank, so that after an engagement she requested to be released; but he appears to have overcome her scruples by a curious letter addressed to her on the subject.[409:B]
The present representative of the family[409:C] is John Spottiswoode, Esq., M.P., Laird of Spottiswoode.[409:D] His brothers are George Spottiswoode, of Gladswood, County Berwick, lieutenant-colonel in the army, and Andrew Spottiswoode, of Broom Hall, County Surrey. The representative of the family resides during the greater portion of the year at Spottiswoode, on his extensive hereditary estate, the modern mansion being one of the finest in Southern Scotland. The old mansion still remains. Thirty miles of underground drains have been made on this estate, reclaiming hundreds of acres of land lying between the Blackadder and the Leader.[409:E]
Governor Spotswood[409:F] was half-brother to a General Elliott. The governor had a country-seat near Williamsburg, called Porto-Bello. Besides the portrait of him preserved at Chelsea, in the County of King William, there is another at the residence of William Spotswood, Esq., in Orange County, where there is also a portrait of Lady Spotswood, and one of General Elliott, half-brother of the governor, in complete armor. The descendants of Governor Spotswood in Virginia are numerous, and his memory is held in great respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[400:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 160, ii. Appendix, 393.
[401:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 162.
[401:B] A majority of one only.
[402:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 160, ii. Appendix, 1.
[402:B] Spotsylvania, named from the first syllable of the governor's name, compounded with a Latinized termination answering to the other syllable--a sort of conceit.
[403:A] Hening, iv. 32, 91.
[404:A] Introduction, ii. 78.
[405:A] Westover MSS., 132.
[407:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., 227.
[407:B] This MS., after remaining long in the Spotswood family of Virginia, was at length communicated to an English gentleman then in this country, and it is supposed to be still in his possession in Europe. It is much to be regretted that there is no copy of it in Virginia.
[407:C] Westover MSS., 36.
[408:A] Westover MSS., 135.
[408:B] Washington's Writings, ii. 239, 252.
[408:C] Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution, ii. 471. This work is a reservoir of valuable information.
[409:A] Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; Burke's Landed Gentry, ii., art. SPOTTISWOOD.
[409:B] See Hist. of St. George's Parish, by Rev. Philip Slaughter, 55, and Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., ii. 77.
[409:C] 1852.
[409:D] Letter of Andrew Spottiswoode, Esq., written in 1852, to Rev. John B. Spotswood, of New Castle, Delaware.
[409:E] Beattie's Scotland Illustrated, i. 31.
[409:F] Arms of Governor Spotswood.--Argent, a cheveron gules, between three oak-trees eradicate, vert. Supporters, two satyrs proper. Crest: an eagle displayed gules, looking to the sun in his splendor, proper. Motto: "Patior ut potiar." Chief seat: at the old Castle of Spotswood, in Berwickshire.--(Burke's Landed Gentry.)
Chapter LIV
1722-1726.
Drysdale, Governor--Intemperance among the Clergy--The Rev. Mr. Lang's Testimony--Acts of Assembly--Death of Governor Drysdale--Colonel Robert Carter, President--Called King Carter--Notice of his Family.
IN the month of September, 1722, Hugh Drysdale assumed the administration of Virginia, amid the prosperity bequeathed him by his predecessor, and being a man of mediocre calibre, yielded to the current of the day, solicitous only to retain his place. Commissary Blair wished the governor, when a vacancy of more than six months occurred, to send and induct a minister as by law directed; but what Spotswood had not been bold enough to do, Drysdale feared to undertake without the authority of a royal order. Opinion is queen of the world.
There were frequent complaints of the scandalous lives of some of the clergy; but it was difficult to obtain positive proof, there being many who would cry out against such, and yet would not appear as witnesses to convict them. Intemperance appears to have been the predominant evil among the clergy, as it was also among the laity.
The Rev. Mr. Lang, who was highly recommended by the governor and commissary, wrote, in 1726, to the Bishop of London: "I observe the people here are very zealous for our holy church, as it is established in England, so that (except some few inconsiderable Quakers) there are scarce any dissenters from our communion; and yet, at the same time, the people are supinely ignorant in the very principles of religion, and very debauched in morals. This, I apprehend, is owing to the general neglect of the clergy in not taking pains to instruct youth in the fundamentals of religion, or to examine people come to years of discretion, before they are permitted to come to church privileges." Referring to the prevailing evils he says: "The great cause of all which I humbly conceive to be in the clergy, the sober part being slothful and negligent, and others so debauched that they are the foremost and most bent on all manner of vices. Drunkenness is the common vice." Mr. Lang was minister of the parish of St. Peters, in New Kent County.[412:A] The religious instruction of the negroes was for the most part neglected. There were no schools for the education of the children of the common people; no parish libraries.
The assembly was held from time to time, according to long established custom, by writ of prorogation; the people being thus deprived of the right of frequent elections. An act regulating the importation of convicts was rejected by the board of trade. To relieve the people from a poll-tax a duty was laid on the importation of liquors and slaves, but owing to the opposition of the African Company and interested traders, the measure was repealed as an encroachment on the trade of England.
Acts prohibiting the importation of negro slaves were repeatedly passed by New York, Maryland, and South Carolina, and were invariably rejected in England. Governor Drysdale congratulated the Duke of Newcastle "that the benign influence of his auspicious sovereign was conspicuous here in a general harmony and contentment among all ranks of persons." Hugh Drysdale dying in July, 1726, and Colonel Edmund Jennings, next in order of succession, being suspended, (for what cause does not appear,) Colonel Robert Carter succeeded as president of the council. This gentleman, owing to the extent of his landed possessions, and to his being agent of Lord Fairfax, proprietary of a vast territory in the Northern Neck, between the Potomac and the Rappahannock, acquired the sobriquet of "King Carter." He was speaker of the house of burgesses for six years, treasurer of the colony, and for many years member of the council, and as president of that body he was at the head of the government upwards of a year. He lived at Corotoman, on the Rappahannock, in Lancaster County. Here a church was completed in the year 1670, under the direction of John Carter, first of the family in Virginia, who came over from England, 1649. A fine old church was built about 1732 by Robert Carter, on the site of the former one, and is still in good preservation. He married first Judith Armistead, second a widow, whose maiden name was Betty Landon, of the ancient family of that name, of Grednal, in Hereford County, England, by whom he left many children. His portrait and that of one of his wives, are preserved at Shirley, on James River, seat of Hill Carter, Esq.[413:A] The first John Carter was a member of the house of burgesses for Upper Norfolk County, now Nansemond, in 1649 and in 1654, and subsequently for Lancaster County. Colonel Edward Carter was, in 1658, burgess for Upper Norfolk, and in 1660 member of the council.
FOOTNOTES:
[412:A] Old Churches, i. 385.
[413:A] The Carter arms bear cart-wheels, vert.
Chapter LV
1727-1740.
William Gooch, Governor--The Dividing Line--Miscellaneous-- Colonel Byrd's Opinion of New England--John Holloway--William Hopkins--Earl of Orkney--Expedition against Carthagena--Gooch commands the Virginia Regiment--Lawrence Washington--Failure of attack on Carthagena--Georgia recruits Soldiers in Virginia to resist the Spaniards--Acts of Assembly--Printing in Virginia--In other Colonies--The Williamsburg Gazette-- Miscellaneous Items--Proceedings at opening of General Assembly--Sir John Randolph, Speaker--Governor Gooch's Speech-- Richmond laid off--Captain William Byrd--Bacon Quarter--Colonel Byrd and others plan Richmond and Petersburg in 1733--Virginia Gazette--The Mails.
IN June, 1727, George the Second succeeded his father in the throne of England. About the middle of October, William Gooch, a native of Scotland, who had been an officer in the British army, became Governor of Virginia. The council, without authority, allowed him three hundred pounds out of the royal quit-rents, and he in return resigned, in a great measure, the helm of government to them. Owing partly to this coalition, partly to a well-established revenue and a rigid economy, Virginia enjoyed prosperous repose during his long administration. There was at this time one Presbyterian congregation in Virginia, and preachers from the Philadelphia Synod visited the colony.
During the year 1728 the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina was run by Colonel Byrd and Messrs. Fitzwilliam and Dandridge, commissioners in behalf of Virginia, and others in behalf of North Carolina. "A History of the Dividing Line," by Colonel Byrd, has been published in a work entitled the "Westover MSS.;"[414:A] it contains graphic descriptions of the country passed through, its productions, and natural history. The author was a learned man and accurate observer.
There remained in their native seat two hundred Nottoway Indians, the only tribe of any consequence surviving in Virginia.
There were also still remains of the Pamunkey tribe, but reduced to a small number, and intermixed in blood. The rest of the native tribes had either removed beyond the limits of the colony, or dwindled to a mere handful by war, disease, and intemperance. An act of parliament prohibiting the exportation of stripped or stemmed tobacco was complained of by the planters as causing a decline of the trade. They undertook to enhance the value by improving its quality, and in July, 1732, sent John Randolph to lay their complaint before the crown.
With this accomplished and able man, afterwards knighted, and made attorney-general, Governor Spotswood was engaged in an angry personal controversy in the Williamsburg Gazette. The merits of the dispute cannot now be ascertained. Spotswood claims to have been Randolph's benefactor, and to have been the first to promote him in the world.
Virginia, notwithstanding some obstacles in the way of her trade, continued to prosper, and from the year 1700 her population doubled in twenty-five years. The New England Colonies improved still more. Colonel Byrd said of them: "Though these people may be ridiculed for some Pharisaical particularities in their worship and behavior, yet they were very useful subjects, as being frugal and industrious, giving no scandal or bad example, at least by any open and public vices. By which excellent qualities they had much the advantage of the Southern Colony, who thought their being members of the established church sufficient to sanctify very loose and profligate morals. For this reason New England improved much faster than Virginia, and in seven or eight years New Plymouth, like Switzerland, seemed too narrow a territory for its inhabitants."[415:A]
Boston, the principal town in the Anglo-American Colonies, founded in 1630, contained, in 1733, eight thousand houses and forty thousand inhabitants; and its shipping and trade were already extensive.
In 1734 died John Holloway, Esq., who for thirty years had practised the law with great reputation and success. He was for fourteen years speaker of the house of burgesses, and eleven years treasurer. A native of England, he had first served as a clerk, then went into the army in Ireland early in the reign of King William the Third; next came to be one of the attorneys of the Marshalsea Court; afterwards turned projector, and being unfortunate, came over to Maryland, and thence removed to Virginia. He is described by Sir John Randolph as more distinguished for industry than for learning, and as relying more upon the subtle artifice of an attorney, than the solid reasoning of a lawyer. His opinions, however, were looked upon as authoritative; and clients thought themselves fortunate if they could engage his services upon any terms, and his fees were often exorbitant. He is portrayed by Sir John as haughty, passionate, and inhospitable; yet it seems difficult to reconcile this with his acknowledged popularity and predominant influence. In friendship he was sincere but inconstant. His management of the treasury contributed to the ruin of his fortune, and involved him in disgrace. But this account of him must be taken with allowance.
About the same time died, in London, William Hopkins, Esq., another lawyer, who had practised in Virginia about twelve years. He was well educated, understanding Latin and French well, and gifted with a retentive memory, quick penetration, sound judgment, and a handsome person. In spite of some defects of manner, he acquired a large practice, which he neglected, owing to the versatility of a mind fond of various knowledge. In fees he was moderate, in argument candid and fair, never disputing plain points. He is taxed by Sir John Randolph with an overweening vanity, which made him jealous of any other standing on a level with him; but as there had been a personal falling out between them, his testimony in regard to this particular is entitled to the less weight. Mr. Hopkins appears to have been a man of high order; and his premature death, in the flower of his age, was a loss to be deplored by Virginia.[416:A]
The Earl of Orkney died at his house in Albemarle Street, London, January, 1737, in the seventy-first year of his age. His titles were Earl of Orkney, one of the Sixteen Scottish Peers, Governor of Virginia, Constable, Governor and Captain of Edinburgh Castle, Knight of the most ancient and most honorable order of the Thistle, one of his Majesty's Field Marshals, and Colonel of a regiment of foot. By his death his title became extinct. He left a very large fortune.
During the administration of Governor Gooch, troops for the first time were transported from the colonies to co-operate with the forces of the mother country in offensive war. An attack upon Carthagena being determined on, Gooch raised four hundred men as Virginia's quota, and the assembly appropriated five thousand pounds for their support. Major-General Sir Alexander Spotswood, who had been appointed to the command of the troops raised in the colonies, consisting of a regiment of four battalions, dying at Annapolis, when on the eve of embarcation, Governor Gooch assumed command of the expedition. The colonial troops joined those sent out from England, at Jamaica. The amount of Virginia's appropriation on this occasion exceeding the sum in the treasury, the remainder was borrowed from wealthy men, with a view to avoid the frauds of depreciation, and to secure the benefits of circulation. Lawrence Washington, half-brother of George, and fourteen years older, obtained a captain's commission in the newly-raised regiment, and, being now twenty years of age, embarked with it for the West Indies in 1740.[417:A] An accomplished gentleman, educated in England, he acquired the esteem of General Wentworth and Admiral Vernon, the commanders of the British forces, and after the latter named his seat on the Potomac. The attack upon Carthagena was unsuccessful; the ships not getting near enough to throw their shells into the town, and the scaling-ladders of the soldiers proving to be too short. That part of the attack in which Lawrence Washington was present, sustained, unflinching, a destructive fire for several hours. The small land force engaged on this occasion lost no less than six hundred killed and wounded.
Shortly after the failure at Carthagena, an express from South Carolina brought tidings that the Spaniards had made a descent upon Georgia; and Captain Dandridge, commander of the South Sea Castle, together with the "snows" Hawk and Swift, was dispatched to the assistance of General Oglethorpe. The Spaniards were repulsed. Georgia being still threatened by a Spanish force concentrated at St. Augustine, in Florida, Oglethorpe sent Lieutenant-Colonel Heron to recruit a regiment in Virginia. Captain Lawrence Washington, with a number of officers and soldiers of Gooch's Carthagena Regiment, recently discharged, just now arriving at Hampton, and meeting with Heron, many of them enlisted again under him.
About this time apprehensions were felt of foreign invasion by sea, of Indian incursions, and of servile insurrections. An act was passed to prevent excessive and deceitful gaming, making all gaming obligations void, imposing heavy penalties upon persons cheating at games, and declaring them infamous, authorizing justices of the peace to bind common gamblers over to their good behavior. Means were adopted for encouraging adventurers in iron works. The towns of Fredericksburg and Falmouth were established at the head of tide-water, on the Rappahannock. Caroline County was formed, and Goochland carved out from Henrico. Long and elaborate acts were passed for amending the staple of tobacco. The tending of seconds was prohibited; all tobacco exported to be inspected; to be exported from warehouses only; the planter to receive from the inspectors a promissory note specifying the quantity of tobacco deposited, and the quality, whether sweet-scented or Oronoko, stemmed or leaf; these tobacco-notes were made current within the county or other adjacent county. This salutary measure of making tobacco the basis of a currency was devised by Governor Spotswood.[418:A] Tobacco-notes were still in use in Virginia at the beginning of the present century. In the year 1730 Prince William County was established.
Sir William Berkley (1671) "thanked God that there were no free schools nor printing in Virginia." In 1682 John Buckner was called before the Lord Culpepper and his council for printing the laws of 1680 without his excellency's license, and he and the printer ordered to enter into bond in one hundred pounds, not to print anything thereafter, until his majesty's pleasure should be known.[419:A] The earliest surviving evidence of printing done in Virginia is the edition of "The Revised Laws," published in 1733. In 1719 two newspapers were issued at Boston; in 1725 one at New York, and in the following year a printing-press was introduced into Maryland. One had been established at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, before 1647. A printing-press was first established in South Carolina, and a newspaper published in 1734. The first Virginia newspaper, "The Virginia Gazette," appeared at Williamsburg, in August, 1736, published by William Parks, weekly, at fifteen shillings per annum. It was a small sheet, on dingy paper, but well printed. It was in the interest of the government, and for a long time the only journal of the colony. Parks printed "Stith's History of Virginia" and "The Laws of Virginia."
In 1732, in accordance with royal instructions, a duty was laid of five per centum on the purchase-money of slaves, to be paid by the purchaser. The difference between sterling money and the ordinary currency was twenty per centum. Stealing of slaves was made felony, without benefit of clergy.
The Nottoway Indians (1734) still possessed a large tract of land on the river of that name, in Isle of Wight County. They were much reduced by wars and disease, and were allowed to sell part of their lands for their better support. The tributary Indians now speaking the English language, the use of interpreters was dispensed with.
An act for regulating the fees of "the practisers in physic," recites that the practice is commonly in the hands of surgeons, apothecaries, or such as have only served apprenticeships to those trades, who often prove very unskilful, and yet demand excessive fees and prices for their medicines.
The general assembly met at Williamsburg, in August, 1736, and sixty burgesses appearing, and it being the first session of this assembly, they were qualified by taking the oaths and subscribing the test. The burgesses having attended the governor in the council-chamber, and having returned, in compliance with the governor's commands, a speaker was elected, and the choice fell upon Sir John Randolph. He being conducted to the chair by two members, made a speech to the house. On the next day the burgesses waited on the governor in the council-chamber again, and presented their new speaker to his honor, and the speaker made an address to the governor, giving a concise history of the constitution of Virginia, from the first period of arbitrary government and martial law to the charter granted by the Virginia Company, establishing an assembly, consisting of a council of state and a house of burgesses, which legislative constitution was confirmed by James the First, Charles the First, and their successors. Under it the house of burgesses claimed, as undoubted rights, freedom of speech, exemption from arrests, protection of their estates, jurisdiction over their own body, and the sole right of determining all questions concerning elections. The speaker next eulogized the administration of Governor Gooch.
The governor then addressed the gentlemen of the council, Mr. Speaker, and the gentlemen of the house of burgesses. He recommended the better regulation of the militia for the preventing of servile insurrections, the danger of which was increased by the large importation of negroes; mentions that his majesty had been graciously pleased to confirm an act for the better support and encouragement of the College of William and Mary, and another facilitating the barring of entails of small value, to perpetuate which, in a new country like Virginia, could serve only to impoverish the present possessor. Governor Gooch's reply closed this long series of addresses.[420:A]
The borough of Norfolk was incorporated in 1736. Sir John Randolph, Knight, was made recorder, although not a resident.[420:B]
In the year 1737 the town of Richmond was laid off near the falls of James River, by Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, who was proprietor of an extensive tract of land there. Shoccoe Warehouse had been already established there for a good many years. Fort Charles, called after the prince royal, afterwards Charles the Second, was erected (1645) at the falls of James River. A tract of land there, extending five miles in length and three in breadth, and lying on both sides of the river, was claimed (1679) by Captain William Byrd, father of the first Colonel William Byrd, of Westover.[421:A] This Captain Byrd was born in London about the year 1653, and came over to Virginia probably about 1674. He was a merchant and planter. His residence, appropriately named Belvidere, was on the north side of the river, opposite the falls. A large part of this land had, a few years before, belonged to Nathaniel Bacon, Jr. The names "Bacon Quarter" and "Bacon Quarter Branch," are still preserved there. The word Quarter thus used, means land owned and cultivated, but not resided on--a place where servants are quartered, and is still in common use in the tobacco-growing counties. Captain Byrd had been active in bringing some of the rebels to punishment. Bacon's confiscated land at the falls, perhaps, may have been given to him in reward for his loyal services on that occasion. He was a burgess from Henrico.[421:B] His letter-book, containing letters from 1683 to 1691, is preserved in the library of the Virginia Historical Society.
Colonel Byrd, second of the name, made a visit to his plantations on the Roanoke River, (1733,) accompanied by Major Mayo, Major Munford, Mr. Banister, and Mr. Peter Jones. While here, he says: "We laid the foundation of two large cities, one at Shoccoe's, to be called Richmond, and the other at the Point of Appomattox, to be called Petersburg. These Major Mayo offered to lay out in lots without fee or reward. The truth of it is these two places, being the uppermost landing of James and Appomattox Rivers, are naturally intended for marts where the traffic of the outer inhabitants must centre. Thus we did not build castles only, but cities in the air."[421:C] The following advertisement appeared in April, 1737, in "The Virginia Gazette:"
"This is to give notice that on the north side of James River, near the uppermost landing, and a little below the falls, is lately laid off by Major Mayo, a town called Richmond, with streets sixty-five feet wide, in a pleasant and healthy situation, and well supplied with springs and good water. It lies near the public warehouse at Shoccoe's, and in the midst of great quantities of grain and all kinds of provisions. The lots will be granted in fee simple on condition only of building a house in three years' time, of twenty-four by sixteen feet, fronting within five feet of the street. The lots to be rated according to the convenience of their situation, and to be sold after this April general court by me, William Byrd." Richmond is said to be named from Richmond, near London, or, as others think, from the Duke of Richmond, whom Byrd may have known in England; but this is less probable.
Among the arrivals about this time is mentioned the ship Carter, with forty-four pipes of wine, "for gentlemen in this country;" and a ship arrived in the Potomac with a load of convicts. The Hector man-of-war, Sir Yelverton Peyton commander, arrived in the James River from England, by way of Georgia, whither he had accompanied the Blandford man-of-war, and the transport-ships which conveyed General Oglethorpe and his regiment. Captain Dandridge is mentioned as commanding his majesty's ship Wolf. "Warner's Almanac" was advertised for sale. According to a new regulation adopted by the deputy postmaster-general, Spotswood, the mail from the north arrived at Williamsburg weekly, and William Parks, printer of "The Virginia Gazette," was commissioned to convey the mail monthly from Williamsburg, by way of Nansemond Court-house and Norfolktown, to Edenton, in North Carolina. The general post-office was then at New Post, a few miles below Fredericksburg.
FOOTNOTES:
[414:A] By Edmund and Julian C. Ruffin, at Petersburg, 1841.
[415:A] Westover MSS., 4.
[416:A] Va. Hist. Reg., i. 119.
[417:A] He took with him a number of his neighbors, who had thus an opportunity of seeing something of war. Some of these men, on their return, soon emigrated to the Valley of Virginia, and afterwards were engaged in the Revolution. Among them was John Grigsby, of Stafford, progenitor of the family of that name in Western Virginia.
[418:A] Keith, 173.
[419:A] Hening, ii. 518.
[420:A] Va. Hist. Register, iv. 121, where a list of the members may be seen.
[420:B] In the colony, residence was not necessary to render a candidate eligible to a seat in the house of burgesses. The same practice continues to this day in England.
[421:A] Hening, ii. 453.
[421:B] Va. Hist. Register, i. 61.
[421:C] Westover MSS., 107.
Chapter LVI
1733-1749.
Scotch-Irish Settlers--Death of Sir John Randolph--Settlement of the Valley of Shenandoah--Physical Geography of Virginia-- John Lewis, a Pioneer in Augusta--Burden's Grant--First Settlers of Rockbridge--Character of the Scotch-Irish--German Settlers of Valley of Shenandoah.
DURING the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the disaffected and turbulent Province of Ulster, in Ireland, suffered pre-eminently the ravages of civil war. Quieted for a time by the sword, insurrection again burst forth in the second year of James the First, and repeated rebellions crushed in 1605, left a large tract of country desolate, and fast declining into barbarism. Almost the whole of six counties of Ulster thus, by forfeiture, fell into the hands of the king. A London company, under his auspices, colonized this unhappy district with settlers, partly English, principally Scotch--one of the few wise and salutary measures of his feeble reign. The descendants of these colonists of the plantation of Ulster, as it was now called, came to be distinguished by the name of Scotch-Irish. Archbishop Usher, who was disposed to reconcile the differences between the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, consented to a compromise of them, in consequence of which there was no formal separation from the established church. But it was not long before the persecutions of the house of Stuart, inflicted by the hands of Strafford and Laud, augmented the numbers of the non-conformists, riveted them more closely to their own political and religious principles, and compelled them to turn their eyes to America as a place of refuge for the oppressed. The civil war of England ensuing, they were for a time relieved from this necessity. Their unbending opposition to the proceedings of Cromwell drew down upon them (1649) the sarcastic denunciation of Milton.[423:A]
The persecutions that followed the restoration (1679) and afterwards, at length compelled the Scotch-Irish to seek refuge in the New World, and many of them came over from the north of Ireland, and settled in several of the colonies, especially in Pennsylvania. From thence a portion of them gradually migrated to the western parts of Virginia and North Carolina, inhabiting the frontier of civilization, and forming a barrier between the red men and the whites of the older settlements. The Scotch-Irish enjoyed entire freedom of religion, for which they were indebted to their remote situation.[424:A] The people of eastern, or old Virginia, were distinguished by the name of Tuckahoes, said to be derived from the name of a small stream; while the hardy mountaineers, west of the Blue Ridge, were styled Cohees, according to tradition, from their frequent use of the term "Quoth he," or "Quo-he."
In the month of March, 1737, died the Honorable Sir John Randolph, Knight, speaker of the house of burgesses, treasurer of the colony, and representative for William and Mary College. He was interred in the chapel of the college, his body being borne there at his own request, by six honest, industrious, poor housekeepers, of Bruton Parish, who had twenty pounds divided among them. His funeral oration in Latin was pronounced by the Rev. Mr. Dawson, a professor in the college. Sir John was, at the time of his death, in his forty-fourth year. His father, William Randolph, a native of Warwickshire, England, came over to seek his fortunes in Virginia some time subsequent to the year 1670. He was poor, and it is said, for a time "made his living by building barns." By industry, integrity, and good fortune, he acquired a large landed estate, and became a burgess for the County of Henrico.[424:B] On the maternal side, Sir John Randolph was descended from the Ishams, an ancient family of Northamptonshire, in England, which had emigrated to the colony. A love of learning which he early evinced was improved by the tuition of a Protestant clergyman, a French refugee. His education was completed at William and Mary College, for which he retained a grateful attachment. He studied the law at Gray's Inn and the Temple; and, after assuming the barrister's gown, returned to Virginia, where he soon became distinguished at the bar. He was gifted with a handsome person, and a senatorial dignity. With extraordinary talents he united extensive learning; in his writings he indulged rather too much the native luxuriance of his genius. In his domestic relations he is described as exemplary; his income was ample, and his hospitality proportionate. Blessed with an excellent judgment, he filled his public stations with signal ability. He was buried in the chapel of William and Mary; and his elegant marble tablet, graced with a Latin inscription, after having endured one hundred and twenty-three years, was recently destroyed by the fire which consumed the college. Sir John Randolph was succeeded in the office of treasurer by John Robinson, Jr.
From the preamble to the act for the better preservation of deer, it appears that in the upper country they were so numerous that they were killed (as buffalo often are in the far West) for their skins. They were shot while feeding on the moss growing on the rocks in the rivers; and their carcases attracted wolves and other wild beasts to the destruction of cattle, hogs, and sheep. Many deer were also killed by hounds running at large, and by fire-hunting, that is, by setting on fire, in large circles, the coverts where the deer lodged, which likewise destroyed the young timber, and the food for cattle.
From the settlement of Jamestown a century elapsed before Virginia began to extend her settlements to the foot of the Blue Ridge. Governor Spotswood (1716) explored those mountains beyond the head-springs of the confluents of the Rappahannock. After a good many years, Joist Hite, of Pennsylvania, obtained from the original patentees a warrant for forty thousand acres of land lying among the beautiful prairies at the northern or lower end of the valley of the Shenandoah. Hite, with his own and a number of other families, removed (1632) from Pennsylvania, and seated themselves on the banks of the Opeckon, a few miles south of the site of Winchester. This handful of settlers could venture more securely into this remote country, as coming from Pennsylvania, a province endeared to the Indians by the gentle and humane policy of its first founder, William Penn. Toward the Virginians--the "Long Knives"--the Indians bore an implacable hostility, and warmly opposed their settling in the valley.[426:A]
In her physical geography Virginia is divided into four sections: the first, the alluvial section, from the sea-coast to the head of tide-water; the second, the hilly, or undulating section, from the head of tide-water to the Blue Ridge; the third, the valley section, lying between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies; and the fourth, the Trans-Alleghany or western section, the waters of which empty into the Ohio. The mountains of Virginia are arranged in ridges, one behind another, nearly parallel to the sea-coast, rather bending toward it to the northeast. The name Apalachian, borrowed from the country bordering on the Gulf of Mexico to the southwest, was applied to the mountains of Virginia in different ways, by the European maps; but none of these ridges was in fact ever known to the inhabitants of Virginia by that name. These mountains extend from northeast to southwest, as also do the limestone, coal, and other geological strata. So also range the falls of the principal rivers, the courses of which are at right angles with the line of the mountains, the James and the Potomac making their way through all the ridges of mountains eastward of the Alleghany range. The Alleghanies are broken by no water-course, being the spine of the country between the Atlantic and the Mississippi River. The spectacle presented at Harper's Ferry--so called after the first settler--impresses the beholder with the opinion that the mountains were first upraised, the very signification of the word in the Greek, and the rivers began to flow afterwards; that here they were dammed up by the Blue Ridge, and thus formed a sea, or lake, filling the whole valley lying between that ridge and the Alleghanies. The waters continuing to rise, they at length burst their way through the mountain, the shattered fragments of this disruption still remaining to attest the fact. As the observer lifts his eye from this scene of grandeur, he catches through the fissure of the mountain a glimpse of the placid blue horizon in the distant perspective, inviting him, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around to pass through the breach and participate in the calm below.[427:A]
A settlement was effected (1734) on the north branch of the Shenandoah, about twelve miles south of the present town of Woodstock. Other adventurers gradually extended the settlements, until they reached the tributaries of the Monongahela. Two cabins erected (1738) near the Shawnee Springs, formed the embryo of the town of Winchester, long the frontier out-post of the colony in that quarter. The glowing reports of the charms of the tramontane country induced other pioneers to plant themselves in that wild, picturesque region. For the want of towns and roads the first settlers were supplied by pedlars who went from house to house. Shortly after the first settlement of Winchester, John Marlin, a pedlar, who traded from Williamsburg to this new country, and John Salling, a weaver, two adventurous spirits, set out from that place to explore the "upper country," then almost unknown. Proceeding up the valley of the Shenandoah they crossed the James River, and had reached the Roanoke River, when a party of Cherokees surprised them, and took Salling prisoner, while Marlin escaped. Carried captive into Tennessee, Salling remained with those Indians for several years, and became domesticated among them. While on a buffalo-hunting excursion to the Salt Licks of Kentucky, a middle or debateable ground of hunting and war, the Flanders of the Northern and Southern Indians, with a party of them, he was at length captured by a band of Illinois Indians. They carried him to Kaskaskia, where an old squaw adopted him for a son. Hence he accompanied the tribe on many distant expeditions, once as far as the Gulf of Mexico. But after two years the squaw sold him to some Spaniards from the Lower Mississippi, who wanted him as an interpreter. He was taken by them northward, and finally, after six years of captivity and wanderings through strange tribes and distant countries, he was ransomed by the Governor of Canada, and transferred to New York. Thence he made his way to Williamsburg, in Virginia. About the same time a considerable number of immigrants had arrived there--among them John Lewis and John Mackey. Lewis was a native of Ireland. In an affray that occurred in the County of Dublin, with an oppressive landlord and his retainers, seeing a brother, an officer in the king's army, who lay sick at his house, slain before his eyes, he slew one or two of the assailants. Escaping, he found refuge in Portugal, and after some years came over to Virginia with his family, consisting of Margaret Lynn, daughter of the Laird of Loch Lynn, in Scotland, his wife, four sons, Thomas, William, Andrew, and Charles, and one daughter. Pleased with Salling's glowing picture of the country beyond the mountains, Lewis and Mackey visited it under his guidance. Crossing the Blue Ridge and descending into the lovely valley beyond, where virgin nature reposes in all her native charms, the three determined to fix their abode in that delightful region. Lewis selected a residence near the Middle River, on the border of a creek which yet bears his name, in what was denominated Beverley Manor; Mackey chose a spot farther up that river, near the Buffalo Gap; and Salling built his log cabin fifty miles beyond, on a beautiful tract overshadowed by mountains in the forks of the James River.[428:A] John Lewis erected on the spot selected for his home a stone-house, still standing, and it came to be known as Lewis's Fort. It is a few miles from Staunton, of which town he was the founder. It is the oldest town in the valley. He obtained patents for a hundred thousand acres of land in different parts of the circumjacent country, and left an ample inheritance to his children.
In the spring of 1736 John Lewis, the pioneer of Augusta, visiting Williamsburg, met there with Burden, who had recently come to Virginia as agent for Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck. Burden, in compliance with Lewis's invitation, visited him at his sequestered home in the backwoods; and the visit of several months was occupied in exploring the teeming beauties of the Eden-like valley, and in hunting, in company with Lewis and his sons, Samuel and Andrew. A captured buffalo calf was given to Burden, and he, on returning to Lower Virginia, where that animal was not found, presented it to Governor Gooch, who, thus propitiated, authorized him to locate five hundred thousand acres of land in the vast Counties of Frederick and Augusta, (formed two years thereafter,) on condition that within ten years he should settle one hundred families there, in which case he should be entitled to one thousand acres adjacent to every house, with the privilege of entering as much more at one shilling per acre. This grant covered one-half of what is now Rockbridge County, from the North Mountain to the Blue Ridge. The grantee was required to import and place on the land one settler for every thousand acres. For this purpose he brought over from England (1737) upwards of one hundred families from the north of Ireland, Scotland, and the border counties of England, and it is said that he resorted to stratagem to comply apparently with the conditions.[429:A] The first settlers of this Rockbridge tract were Ephraim McDowell (ancestor of Governor James McDowell) and James Greenlee, in 1737. Mary Greenlee, his sister, attained the age of one hundred years and upwards, and was known to two or three generations. The Scotch-Irish retained much of the superstitious nature of the Highlanders of Scotland, and Mary Greenlee was by many believed to be a witch. At a very advanced age she rode erect on horseback. Robert and Archibald Alexander also settled in the Rockbridge region. Robert, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, taught the first classical school west of the Blue Ridge. Archibald, who was agent of Burden and drew up all his complex conveyances, was grandfather of the Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander. Besides these, among the early settlers of this part of Virginia, were the families of Moore, Paxton, Telford, Lyle, Stuart, Crawford, Matthews, Brown, Wilson, Cummins, Caruthers, Campbell, McCampbell, McClung, McKee, McCue, Grigsby, and others.[429:B]
An austere, thoughtful race, they constituted a manly, virtuous population. Their remote situation secured to them religious freedom, but little interrupted by the ruling powers. Of the stern school of Calvin and Knox, so much derided for their Puritanical tenets, they were more distinguished for their simplicity and integrity, their religious education, and their uniform attendance on the exercises and ordinances of religion, than for the graceful and courteous manners which lend a charm to the intercourse of a more aristocratic society. Trained in a severe discipline, they expressed less than they felt; and keeping their feelings under habitual restraint, they could call forth exertions equal to whatever exigencies might arise. In the wilderness they devoted themselves to agriculture, domestic pursuits, and the arts of peace; they were content to live at home. Pascal says that the cause of most of the trouble in the world is that people are not content to live at home. As soon as practicable they erected churches; and all within ten or twelve miles, young and old, repaired on horseback to the place of worship. Their social intercourse was chiefly at religious meetings. The gay and fashionable amusements of Eastern Virginia were unknown among them.[430:A] Other colonies, emanating from the same quarters, followed the first, and settled that portion of the valley intervening between the German settlements and the borders of the James River. The first Presbyterian minister settled west of the Blue Ridge was the Rev. John Craig, a native of the north of Ireland. His congregation was that of the church then known as the Stone Meeting House, since Augusta Church, near Staunton, in the County of Augusta. He became pastor there in the year 1740. Augusta was then a wilderness with a handful of Christian settlers in it; the Indians travelling through the country among them in small parties, unless supplied with whatever victuals they called for, became their own purveyors and cooks, and spared nothing that they chose to eat or drink. In general they were harmless; sometimes they committed murders. Such was the school in which the tramontane population were to be moulded and trained, civilizing the wilderness, and defending themselves against the savages. In the month of December, 1743, Captain John McDowell, surveyor of the lands in Burden's grant, falling into an ambush, was slain, together with eight comrades, in a skirmish with a party of Shawnee Indians. This occurred at the junction of the North River with the James. The alarmed inhabitants of Timber-ridge[431:A] hastened to the spot, and, removing the dead bodies, sorrowfully performed the rites of burial, while the savages, frightened at their own success, escaped beyond the mountains.
So rapid was the settlement of the valley about this time, that in this year it was found necessary to lay off the whole country west of the Blue Ridge into the two new counties, Frederick and Augusta. The picturesque and verdant valleys embosomed among the mountains were gradually dotted with farms. The fertile County of Frederick was first settled by Germans, Quakers, and Irish Presbyterians, from the adjoining province of Pennsylvania. A great part of the country lying between the North Mountain and the Shenandoah River, for one hundred and fifty miles, and embracing ten counties, now adorned with fine forest trees, was then an extensive open prairie--a sea of herbage--the pasture ground of buffalo, elk, and deer. It was a favorite hunting-ground, or middle ground of the Indians.[431:B] The rich lands bordering the Shenandoah, and its north and south branches, were settled by a German population which long retained its language, its simplicity of manners and dress. Augusta County was settled by Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania, (descendants of the Covenanters,) a race respectable for intelligence, energy, morality, and piety.
In compliance with the petition of John Caldwell and others, the synod of Philadelphia (1738) addressed a letter to Governor Gooch, soliciting his favor in behalf of such persons as should remove to Western Virginia, in allowing them "the free enjoyment of their civil and religious liberties;" and the governor gave a favorable answer. This John Caldwell, who was grandfather of John Caldwell Calhoun, of South Carolina, led the way in colonizing Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Campbell Counties.
Colonel James Patton, of Donegal, a man of property, commander and owner of a ship, emigrating to Virginia about this time, obtained from the governor, for himself and his associates, a grant of one hundred and twenty thousand acres of land in the valley. He settled on the south fork of the Shenandoah. John Preston, a shipmaster in Dublin, a brother-in-law of Patton, came over with him, and subsequently established himself near Staunton--the progenitor of a distinguished race of his own name, and of the Browns and Breckenridges.[432:A] While the first settlement of the valley took place in Hite's patent, nearer to Pennsylvania, the filling up of that region was somewhat retarded by a claim which Lord Fairfax set up for a region westward of the Blue Ridge, comprehending ten counties. This claim was grounded upon the terms of the conveyance which included all the country between the head of the Rappahannock and the head of the Potomac; and this river was found to have its source in the Alleghanies. Although the claim was not admitted by the Governor of Virginia, yet, as it involved settlers in the danger of a lawsuit, they preferred moving farther on to the tract of country in Augusta County, included in the grants to Beverley and to Burden.
FOOTNOTES:
[423:A] Milton's Prose Works, i. 422, 430, 437.
[424:A] Foote's Sketches of North Carolina; Grahame, ii. 57; Davidson's Hist. of Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, 16.
[424:B] Va. Convention of '76, by Hugh Blair Grigsby, 77, citing Carrington Memoranda. Mr. Grigsby has given an interesting account of several of the distinguished Randolphs in a newspaper article, entitled "The Dead of the Chapel of William and Mary."
[426:A] De Hass's Hist. of Western Va., 37; Kercheval, 70.
[427:A] Jefferson's Notes, 16.
[428:A] Ruffner, in Howe's Hist. Coll. of Va., 451.
[429:A] Ruffner, ubi supra.
[429:B] The Grigsbys, from whom is descended Hugh Blair Grigsby, removed into the valley from Eastern Virginia, having originally come into the colony at the time of the restoration.
[430:A] Ruffner.
[431:A] So called, being a high strip of timber in an open prairie, at the first settlement.
[431:B] Kercheval's Hist. of the Valley of Virginia, 69; Foote's Sketches, second series, 14.
[432:A] Foote's Sketches, ii. 36.
Chapter LVII
1744-1747.
Treaty with the Six Nations--Death and Character of Rev. James Blair--Colonel William Byrd--The Pretender's Rebellion-- Governor Gooch--Dissent in Virginia--Whitefield--Origin of Presbyterianism in Hanover--Morris--Missionaries--Rev. Samuel Davies--Gooch's Measures against Moravians, New Lights, and Methodists.
IN 1742 an act was passed to prevent lawyers from exacting or receiving exorbitant fees. In this year the town of Richmond was established by law, and the County of Louisa formed from a part of Hanover.
Governor Spotswood had effected a treaty (1722) with the Six Nations, by which they stipulated never to appear to the east of the Blue Ridge, nor south of the Potomac. As the Anglo-Saxon race gradually extended itself, like a vapor, beyond the western base of that range, collisions with the native tribes began to ensue. A treaty was concluded (July, 1744,) at Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, by which the Six Nations unwillingly relinquished, for four hundred pounds paid, and a further sum promised, the country lying westward of the frontier of Virginia to the River Ohio. The tomahawk was again buried, and the wampum belts of peace again delivered, to brighten the silver chain of friendship. The Virginia commissioners were men of high character, but they negotiated with the red men according to the custom of that day, and regaled them with punch, wine, and bumbo--that is, rum and water. The consideration apparently so inadequate, was yet perhaps equivalent to the value of their title and the fidelity of their pledge. The expense of this treaty was paid out of the royal quit-rents.
The Rev. Anthony Gavin, a zealous minister of St. James's Parish, Goochland, (1738,) complains to the Bishop of London of difficulties with Quakers, who were countenanced by men in high station, and of the disregard of Episcopal control in Virginia, the cognizance of spiritual affairs, by the laws of the colony, being in the hands of the governor and council, and that the greatest part of the ministers "are taken up in farming, and buying slaves." The ministers were compelled either to hire or buy slaves to cultivate their glebes, on which they depended for a livelihood.[434:A] The Rev. Mr. Gavin, besides his regular duties, appears to have performed a sort of missionary service, making distant journeys as far as to the country near the Blue Ridge.
Robert Dinwiddie having been appointed (1741) surveyor-general of the customs, was named, as his predecessors had been, a member of the several councils of the colonies. Gooch readily complied with the royal order, but the council, prompted both by jealousy of Dinwiddie's functions and by an aristocratic exclusiveness, refused to allow him to act with them, and sent the king a remonstrance against it. The board of trade decided the case in Dinwiddie's favor. We may see in this affair the germ of that mutual jealousy which afterwards grew up between him and some of the leading characters in Virginia.
In the year 1743 died Edward Barradall, Esq., an eminent lawyer; he held the office of attorney-general, judge of the admiralty court, and other high posts. He married Sarah, daughter of the Honorable William Fitzhugh. He was buried in the churchyard in Williamsburg, where a Latin epitaph records his worth.
In the same year died the Rev. James Blair, Commissary to the Bishop of London. Finding his ministry in Scotland obstructed by popular prejudice, he retired to London, whence he was sent over to Virginia as a missionary, (1685.) He was minister for Henrico Parish nine years; in 1689 was appointed commissary. From Henrico he removed to Jamestown, in order to be near the college, which he was raising up. He became (1710) the minister of Bruton Parish, and resided at Williamsburg. He was a minister in Virginia for about fifty-eight years, commissary for fifty-four years, and president of the college fifty years. His sermons, one hundred and seventeen in number, expository of the Sermon on the Mount, were published in England, (1722,) and passed through two editions. They are highly commended by Dr. Waterland and Dr. Doddridge. Dr. Blair appears to have been a plain-spoken preacher, who had the courage to speak the truth to an aristocratic congregation. Alluding in one of these sermons to the custom of swearing, he says: "I know of no vice that brings more scandal to our Church of England. The church may be in danger from many enemies, but perhaps she is not so much in danger from any as from the great number of profane persons that pretend to be of her, enough to make all serious people afraid of our society, and to bring down the judgments of God upon us: 'by reason of swearing the land mourneth.' But be not deceived: our church has no principles that lead to swearing more than the Dissenters; but whatever church is uppermost, there are always a great many who, having no religion at all, crowd into it, and bring it into disgrace and disreputation." Commissary Blair left his library and five hundred pounds to the college of which he was the founder, and ten thousand pounds to his nephew, John Blair, and his children.[435:A] Commissary Blair was alike eminent for energy, learning, talents, piety, and a catholic spirit; he was a sincere lover of Virginia and her benefactor; his name is identified with her history, and his memory deserves to be held in enduring respect and veneration.
In November, 1743, William Fairfax, son of Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck, was appointed one of the council in the place of Dr. Blair. The Rev. William Dawson succeeded him as president of the College of William and Mary, and as commissary.
About this time also died Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, second of the name, one of the council. A vast fortune enabled him to live in a style of hospitable splendor before unknown in Virginia. His extensive learning was improved by a keen observation, and refined by an acquaintance and correspondence with the wits and noblemen of his day in England. His writings display a thorough knowledge of the natural and civil history of the colony, and abound in photographic sketches of the manners of his age. His diffuse style is relieved by frequent ebullitions of humor, which, according to the spirit of his times, is often coarse and indelicate. His sarcasm is sometimes unjust, and his ridicule frequently misplaced, yet his writings are among the most valuable that have descended from his era, and to him is due the honor of having contributed more perhaps to the preservation of the historical materials of Virginia than any other of her sons, by the purchase of the Records of the Virginia Company. He lies buried in the garden at Westover, where a marble monument bears the following inscription: "Here lieth the Honorable William Byrd, Esq. Being born to one of the amplest fortunes in this country, he was sent early to England for his education, where, under the care and direction of Sir Robert Southwell, and ever favored with his particular instructions, he made a happy proficiency in polite and various learning. By the means of the same noble friend he was introduced to the acquaintance of many of the first persons of that age for knowledge, wit, virtue, birth, or high station, and particularly contracted a most intimate and bosom friendship with the learned and illustrious Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery. He was called to the bar in the Middle Temple; studied for some time in the Low Countries; visited the court of France, and was chosen Fellow of the Royal Society. Thus eminently fitted for the service and ornament of his country, he was made receiver-general of his majesty's revenues here; was thrice appointed public agent to the court and ministry of England; and being thirty-seven years a member, at last became president of the council of this colony. To all this were added a great elegancy of taste and life, the well-bred gentleman and polite companion, the splendid economist, and prudent father of a family, withal the constant enemy of all exorbitant power, and hearty friend to the liberties of his country. Nat. Mar. 28, 1674. Mort. Aug. 26, 1744. An. Ætat. 70." His portrait, a fine face, is preserved. Colonel Byrd amassed the finest private library which had then been seen in the New World, a catalogue of which, in quarto, is preserved in the Franklin Library, Philadelphia. Sir Robert Southwell was envoy extraordinary to Portugal in 1665, and to Brussels in 1671; was subsequently clerk of the privy council, and was repeatedly chosen president of the Royal Society. He died in 1702.
France, endeavoring to impose a popish pretender of the house of Stuart upon the people of England, the colonies were advised to put themselves in readiness against the threatened blow. Accordingly in the following year the assembly met, but still adhering to a rigid economy, the burgesses refused to make any appropriation of money for that purpose. About this time Edward Trelawney, governor of Jamaica, was authorized to recruit a regiment in Virginia. In 1745 a rebellion burst forth in Scotland in favor of the Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of James the Second. When intelligence of this event reached Virginia, the assembly was again called together, and the college, the clergy, and the assembly, unanimously pledged their private resources and those of the colony to support the house of Hanover. A proclamation was also issued against Romish priests, sent, it was alleged, as emissaries from Maryland, to seduce the people of Virginia from their allegiance. The tidings of the overthrow of the Pretender by the Duke of Cumberland, at Culloden, on the 16th of April, 1746, were joyfully received in the Ancient Dominion, and celebrated by burning the effigies of the unfortunate prince, and by bonfires, processions, and illuminations.
About this time the Rev. William Stith was engaged in composing his "History of Virginia," at Varina, on the James River. It is much to be regretted that this accurate, judicious, and faithful writer did not receive encouragement to complete the work down to his own times.
In May, 1746, the assembly appropriated four thousand pounds to the raising of Virginia's quota of troops for the invasion of Canada. They sailed from Hampton in June, under convoy of the Fowey man-of-war; the expedition proved abortive. Governor Gooch, who had been appointed commander, but had declined the appointment, was knighted during this year. Not long afterwards the capitol at Williamsburg was burnt, and the burgesses availed themselves of this conjuncture to propose the establishment of the metropolis at a point more favorable to commerce; but this scheme was rejected by the council. Governor Gooch, on this occasion, appears to have exhibited some duplicity: in his communications to the board of trade he extolled the enlarged views of the burgesses, while he censured the selfishness of the council; yet in public he blamed the burgesses, "as he thought this the best method to stifle the flame of contention." In this case he would seem not to have reckoned "honesty the best policy;" and it often is not, else there would perhaps be more of it in the world; but it is certainly always better than policy.
In the year 1748 Petersburg and Blandford were incorporated. In the same year the town of Staunton, in Augusta County, was laid off, and it was incorporated in the following year. This happened to be one of the acts repealed by the crown under subsequent protest of the house of burgesses; and another act of incorporation was not applied for until about 1762-63. Hence originated a mistake in all the histories as to the date of the charter.[438:A] Staunton thus appears to be the oldest town in the valley.
The assembly appointed a committee to revise the laws of Virginia; it consisted of Peyton Randolph, Philip Ludwell, Beverley Whiting, Carter Burwell, and Benjamin Waller. During this year the vestries were authorized to make presentation to benefices, an act which Bishop Sherlock complained of as a serious encroachment on the rights of the crown.
Dissent from the established church began to develope itself in Virginia. In 1740 the celebrated Whitefield, then about twenty-six years of age, preached at Williamsburg, by the invitation of Commissary Blair. The extraordinary religious excitement which took place at this time in America, and which was increased by the impassioned eloquence of Whitefield, was styled "the New Light Stir." It produced a temporary schism in the American Presbyterian Church, and the two parties were known as Old Side and New Side. The Synod of Philadelphia was Old Side; the Presbyteries of New Castle, New Brunswick, and New York, New Side. The preachers of the New Side were often styled "New Lights." A hundred years before, the Presbyterians of Ireland denounced the sectarian (or Cromwell) party of England, as those who "vilify public ordinances, speak evil of church government, and invent damnable errors, under the specious pretence of a gospel-way and new light."[439:A]
Between the years 1740 and 1743 a few families of Hanover County, in Lower Virginia, withdrawing themselves from attendance at the services of the established church, were accustomed to meet for worship at the house of Samuel Morris, the zealous leader of this little company of dissenters. One of these, a planter, had been first aroused by a few leaves of "Boston's Fourfold State," that fell into his hands. Morris, an obscure man, a bricklayer, of singular simplicity of character, sincere, devout, earnest, was in the habit of reading to his neighbors from a few favorite religious works, particularly "Luther on the Galatians," and his "Table-Talk," with the view of communicating to others impressions that had been made on himself. Having (1743) come into possession of a volume of Whitefield's Sermons, preached at Glasgow, he commenced reading them to his audience, who met to hear them on Sunday and on other days. The concern of some of the hearers on these occasions was such that they cried out and wept bitterly. Morris's dwelling-house being too small to contain his increasing congregation, it was determined to build a meeting-house merely for reading, and it came to be called "Morris's Reading-Room." None of them being in the habit of extemporaneous prayer no one dared to undertake it. Morris was soon invited to read these sermons in other parts of the country, and thus other reading-houses were established. Those who frequented them were fined for absenting themselves from church, and Morris himself often incurred this penalty. When called on by the general court to declare to what denomination they belonged, these unsophisticated dissenters, knowing little of any such except the Quakers, and not knowing what else to call themselves, assumed for the present the name of Lutherans, (unaware that this appellation had been appropriated by any others,) but shortly afterwards they relinquished that name.[439:B]
Partaking in the religious excitement which then pervaded the colonies, limited in information and in the means of obtaining it, these unorganized dissenters became bewildered by discordant opinions. Some of them seemed to be verging toward antinomianism; and it came to be a question among them whether it was right to pray, since prayer could not alter the Divine purposes, and it might be impious to desire that it should. At length, Morris and some of his associates were summoned to appear before the governor and council at Williamsburg. Having discarded the name of Lutherans, and not knowing what to call themselves, they were filled with apprehensions in the prospect of the interview. One of them making the journey to Williamsburg alone, met with, at a house on the way, an old Scotch Presbyterian "Confession of Faith," which he recognized as embodying his own creed. The book being given to him, upon rejoining his friends at Williamsburg they examined it together, and they determined to adopt it as their confession of faith. When called before the governor and council and interrogated, they exhibited the book as containing their creed. Gooch, being a Scotchman, and, as is said, having been educated a Presbyterian, immediately remarked, on seeing the book, "These men are Presbyterians," and recognized their right to the privileges of the toleration act. The interview between the governor and council and Morris and his friends, was interrupted by a thunder-storm of extraordinary fury; the council was softened; and this was one of a series of incidents which Morris and his companions looked upon as providentially instrumental in bringing about the favorable issue of this affair.
The Rev. William Robinson, a Presbyterian, was the first minister, not of the Church of England, that preached in Hanover. The son of a Quaker physician near Carlyle, in England, he emigrated to America, and (1743) sent out by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, visited the frontier settlements of Virginia and North Carolina. Near Winchester he was apprehended by the sheriff, to be sent to the governor to answer for preaching without license, but the sheriff soon released him. He preached among the Scotch-Irish settlers of Charlotte, Prince Edward, Campbell, and Albemarle, and in Charlotte established a congregation. Overtaken at Rockfish Gap by a deputation from Hanover, he was induced to return and visit that county, and he preached for some days to large congregations, some of his hearers publicly giving utterance to their emotions, and many being converted. Before his departure he corrected some of the errors into which the dissenters had fallen, and taught them to conduct public worship with better order, prayer and singing being now introduced, so that "he brought them into some kind of church order on the Presbyterian model."[441:A] He was followed shortly afterwards by the Rev. John Blair, whose preaching was equally impressive. Another missionary, the Rev. John Roan, from the New Castle Presbytery, preached to crowded congregations there and in the neighboring counties. The consequent excitement, and his speaking freely in public and in private of the delinquency of the parish ministers, and his denouncing them with unsparing invective, in spite of reproaches, ridicule, and threats, gave alarm to them and their supporters, and measures were concerted to arrest the inroads of these offensive innovations. To aggravate the indignation of the government a witness swore "that he heard Mr. Roan utter blasphemous expressions in his sermons," preached at the house of Joshua Morris, in James City County.
At the meeting of the general court in April, Governor Gooch, in his charge to the grand jury, denounced, in strong terms, "certain false teachers lately crept into this government, who, without order or license, or producing any testimonial of their education or sect, professing themselves ministers under the pretended influence of new light, extraordinary impulse, and such like satirical [sic] and enthusiastic knowledge, lead the innocent and ignorant people into all kinds of delusion." He even suspected them to be Romish emissaries, saying, "their religious professions are very justly suspected to be the result of jesuitical policy, which also is an iniquity to be punished by the judges." He calls upon the jury to present and indict these offenders. On the next day the jury presented John Roan for "reflecting upon and vilifying the established religion," and Thomas Watkins, of Henrico County, for saying "your churches and chapels are no better than the synagogues of Satan," and Joshua Morris, "for permitting John Roan, the aforementioned preacher, and very many people, to assemble in an unlawful manner at his house on the seventh, eighth, and ninth of January last past."
The intolerant spirit of the government continuing unabated, the Conjunct Presbyteries of New Castle and New Brunswick, at the instance of Morris and some of his friends, who were apprehensive of severe measures being adopted against them, sent an address in their behalf to Governor Gooch, by two clergymen, Gilbert Tennent and Samuel Finley. They were respectfully received, and allowed to preach in Hanover, where they remained for a week.
The Synod of Philadelphia being now apprehensive that their congregations in the valley of Virginia might also be involved in the penalties threatened by the governor, in May, 1745, in an address to him, disclaimed all connection with the Presbytery of New Castle, which had commissioned Mr. Roan, and expressed their deep regret that any who assume the name of Presbyterians should be guilty of conduct so uncharitable and so unchristian as that mentioned in his honor's charge to the grand jury; and they assure him that these persons never belonged to their body, but were missionaries sent out by some who, in May, 1741, had been excluded from the Synod of Philadelphia by reason of their divisive and uncharitable doctrines and practices, and whose object was, in a spirit of rivalry, "to divide and trouble the churches." To this address Gooch made a very kind and respectful reply.
In the summer of the ensuing year he issued a proclamation against the Moravians, New Lights, and Methodists, prohibiting their meetings under severe penalties. There would seem to be some inconsistency in bringing such harsh and sweeping charges against those ministers whom he had recently received so courteously, and had permitted to preach. Perhaps when he at first reckoned the visits of these missionaries transient, and their influence inconsiderable, he was willing to indulge his courtesy and obliging disposition toward them; but when dissent was found spreading with such unexpected rapidity, Gooch, together with the clergy and other friends of the establishment, became alarmed, and had recourse to measures of intolerance, which they would rather have avoided. Besides this, the address of the Synod of Philadelphia could not but confirm the unfavorable opinion at first formed of the missionaries.
FOOTNOTES:
[434:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 456.
[435:A] Old Churches, i. 154, 165; Evang. and Lit. Mag., ii. 341.
[438:A] Letter from Bolivar Christian, Esq., of Staunton, referring to the records of Augusta.
[439:A] Milton's Prose Works, i. 423.
[439:B] Memoir of Samuel Davies, in Evang. and Lit. Mag., (edited by Rev. Dr. John H. Rice,) ii. 113, 186, 201, 330, 353, 474. "Origin of Presbyterianism," ib., 346. "Sketch of Hist. of the Church in Va." (by Rev. Moses Hoge, President of Hampden Sidney College,) appended to J. W. Campbell's Hist. of Va., 290; Hawks, chap. 6: Burk, iii. 119: Hodge's Hist. of Presbyterian Church, part ii. 42, 284; Foote's Sketches of Va., 119.
[441:A] Evang. and Lit. Mag., ii. 351.