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[Illustration:




  WESTWARD GROWTH
  OF
  OLD VIRGINIA

THE M.-N. CO., BUFFALO, N. Y.]

  OLD VIRGINIA
  AND HER NEIGHBOURS

  BY

  JOHN FISKE

  Οὐ λίθοι, οὐδὲ ξύλα, οὐδὲ
  Τέχνη τεκτόνων αἱ πόλεις εἶσιν
  Ἀλλ’ ὅπού ποτ’ ἂν ὦσιν ἌΝΔΡΕΣ
  Αὑτοὺς σώζειν εἰδότες,
  Ἐνταῦθα τείχη καὶ πόλεις.

  _Alcæus_

[Illustration: The Riverside Press]

IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME II

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

<f>The Riverside Press Cambridge</f> */


COPYRIGHT 1897 BY JOHN FISKE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS.

VOLUME II.


  CHAPTER X.

  THE COMING OF THE CAVALIERS.

                                                                   PAGE

  Virginia depicted by an admirer                                     1

  Her domestic animals, game, and song-birds                          2

  Her agriculture                                                  2, 3

  Her nearness to the Northwest Passage                               3

  Her commercial rivals                                            3, 4

  Not so barren a country as New England                              4

  Life of body and soul were preserved in Virginia; Mr. Benjamin
  Symes and his school                                                5

  Worthy Captain Mathews and his household                            5

  Rapid growth in population                                          6

  Historical lessons in names of Virginia counties                    7

  Scarcity of royalist names on the map of New England             8, 9

  As to the Cavaliers in Virginia; some popular misconceptions    9, 10

  Some democratic protests                                       10, 11

  Sweeping statements are inadmissible                               11

  Difference between Cavaliers and Roundheads was political,
  not social                                                         12

  Popular misconceptions regarding the English nobility; England
  has never had a _noblesse_, or upper caste                         13

  Contrast with France in this respect                           13, 14

  Importance of the middle class                                     14

  Respect for industry in England                                    15

  The Cavalier exodus                                                16

  Political complexion of Virginia before 1649                   16, 17

  The great exchange of 1649                                     17, 18

  Political moderation shown in Virginia during the Commonwealth
  period                                                             18

  Richard Lee and his family                                         19

  How Berkeley was elected governor by the assembly                  20

  Lee’s visit to Brussels                                            20

  How Charles II. was proclaimed king in Virginia, but not
  before he had been proclaimed in England                           21

  The seal of Virginia                                           22, 23

  Significant increase in the size of land grants                23, 24

  Arrival of well-known Cavalier families                            25

  Ancestry of George Washington                                      25

  If the pedigrees of horses, dogs, and fancy pigeons are important,
  still more so are the pedigrees of men                             26

  Value of genealogical study to the historian                       26

  The Washington family tree                                         27

  How Sir William Jones paraphrased the epigram of Alcæus            28

  Historical importance of the Cavalier element in Virginia          28

  Differences between New England and Virginia were due
  not to differences in social quality of the settlers, but
  partly to ecclesiastical and still more to economical
  circumstances                                                  29, 30

  Settlement of New England by the migration of organized
  congregations                                                      30

  Land grants in Massachusetts                                       31

  Township and village                                           31, 32

  Social position of settlers in New England                         32

  Some merits of the town meeting                                    33

  Its educational value                                              34

  Primogeniture and entail in Virginia                               35

  Virginia parishes                                                  35

  The vestry a close corporation; its extensive powers               36

  The county was the unit of representation                          37

  The county court was virtually a close corporation                 38

  Powers of the county court                                         39

  The sheriff and his extensive powers                               40

  The county lieutenant                                              41

  Jefferson’s opinion of government by town meeting                  42

  Court day                                                      42, 43

  Summary                                                            43

  Virginia prolific in great leaders                                 44


  CHAPTER XI.

  BACON’S REBELLION.

  How the crude mediæval methods of robbery began to give
  place to more ingenious modern methods                             45

  The Navigation Act of 1651                                     45, 46

  Second Navigation Act                                              46

  John Bland’s remonstrance                                          47

  Some direct consequences of the Navigation Act                     47

  Some indirect consequences of the Navigation Act                   48

  Bland’s exposure of the protectionist humbug                   49, 50

  His own proposition                                            50, 51

  Effect of the Navigation Act upon Virginia and Maryland;
  disasters caused by low price of tobacco                       51, 52

  The Surry protest of 1673                                          52

  The Arlington-Culpeper grant                                       53

  Some of its effects                                                54

  Character of Sir William Berkeley                                  55

  Corruption and extortion under his government                      56

  The Long Assembly, 1661-1676                                       57

  Berkeley’s violent temper                                          57

  Beginning of the Indian war                                        58

  Colonel John Washington                                            59

  Affair of the five Susquehannock envoys                            60

  The killing of the envoys                                          61

  Berkeley’s perverseness in not calling out a military force        62

  Indian atrocities                                              62, 63

  Nathaniel Bacon and his family                                     64

  His friends William Drummond and Richard Lawrence                  65

  Bacon’s plantation is attacked by the Indians, May, 1676           65

  Bacon marches against the Indians and defeats them                 66

  Election of a new House of Burgesses                               66

  Arrest of Bacon                                                    67

  He is released and goes to lodge at the house of “thoughtful
  Mr. Lawrence”                                                      67

  Bacon is persuaded to make his submission and apologizes to
  the governor                                                   68, 69

  In spite of the governor’s unwillingness, the new assembly
  reforms many abuses                                            70, 71

  How the “Queen of Pamunkey” appeared before the House
  of Burgesses                                                    72-74

  The chairman’s rudeness                                            74

  Bacon’s flight                                                     74

  His speedy return                                                  75

  How the governor was intimidated                                   76

  Bacon crushes the Susquehannocks while Berkeley flies to
  Accomac and proclaims him a rebel                                  76

  Bacon’s march to Middle Plantation                                 77

  His manifesto                                                      78

  His arraignment of Berkeley; he specifies nineteen persons
  as “wicked counsellors”                                            80

  Oath at Middle Plantation                                          81

  Bacon defeats the Appomattox Indians                               82

  Startling conversation between Bacon and Goode                  82-86

  Perilous situation of Bacon                                        86

  The “White Aprons” at Jamestown                                    87

  Bacon’s speech at Green Spring                                     88

  Burning of Jamestown                                               89

  Persons who suffered at Bacon’s hands                          89, 90

  Bacon and his cousin                                               90

  Death of Bacon, Oct. 1, 1676                                       91

  Collapse of the rebellion                                          92

  Arrival of royal commissioners, January, 1677                      92

  Berkeley’s outrageous conduct                                      93

  Execution of Drummond                                              94

  Death of Berkeley                                                  95

  Significance of the rebellion                                      96

  How far Bacon represented popular sentiment in Virginia            97

  Political changes since 1660; close vestries                   98, 99

  Restriction of the suffrage                                  100, 101

  How the aristocrats regarded Bacon’s followers               102, 103

  The real state of the case                                        104

  Effect of hard times                                         104, 105

  Populist aspect of the rebellion                                  106

  Its sound aspects                                                 106

  Bacon must ever remain a bright and attractive figure             107


  CHAPTER XII.

  WILLIAM AND MARY.

  A century of political education                                  108

  Robert Beverley, clerk of the House of Burgesses                  109

  His refusal to give up the journals                               110

  Arrival of Lord Culpeper as governor                         110, 111

  The plant-cutters’ riot of 1682                              111, 112

  Contracting the currency with a vengeance                         112

  Culpeper is removed and Lord Howard of Effingham comes
  to govern in his stead                                            113

  More trouble for Beverley                                         114

  For stupid audacity James II., after all, was outdone by
  George III.                                                  114, 115

  Francis Nicholson comes to govern Virginia and exhibits
  eccentric manners                                                 115

  How James Blair founded William and Mary College             116, 117

  How Sir Edmund Andros came as Nicholson’s successor and
  quarrelled with Dr. Blair                                         118

  How young Daniel Parke one Sunday pulled Mrs. Blair out
  of her pew in church                                              119

  Removal of Andros                                                 119

  The Earl of Orkney draws a salary for governing Virginia
  for the next forty years without crossing the ocean,
  while the work is done by lieutenant-governors                    120

  The first of these was Nicholson once more                        120

  Who removed the capital from Jamestown to Middle Plantation,
  and called it Williamsburg                                        121

  How the blustering Nicholson, disappointed in love, behaved
  so badly that he was removed from office                     122, 123

  Fortunes of the college                                           123

  Indian students                                                   124

  Instructions to the housekeeper                                   125

  Horse-racing prohibited                                           126

  Other prohibitions                                                126

  The courtship of Parson Camm; a Virginia Priscilla           127, 128

  Some interesting facts about the college                     128, 129

  Nicholson’s schemes for a union of the colonies              129, 130


  CHAPTER XIII.

  MARYLAND’S VICISSITUDES.

  Maryland after the death of Oliver Cromwell                       131

  Fuller and Fendall                                                132

  The duty on tobacco                                               133

  Fendall’s plot                                                    134

  Temporary overthrow of Baltimore’s authority                      135

  Superficial resemblance to the action of Virginia                 136

  Profound difference in the situations                             137

  Collapse of Fendall’s rebellion                                   138

  Arrival of the Quakers                                       138, 139

  The Swedes and Dutch on the Delaware River                        139

  Augustine Herman                                                  140

  He makes a map of Maryland and is rewarded by the grant
  of Bohemia Manor                                                  141

  How the Labadists took refuge in Bohemia Manor               142, 143

  How the Duke of York took possession of all the Delaware
  settlements                                                       143

  And granted New Jersey to Lord Berkeley and Sir George
  Carteret                                                          144

  Which resulted in the bringing of William Penn upon the
  scene                                                             144

  Charter of Pennsylvania                                           145

  Boundaries between Penn and Baltimore                        145, 146

  Old manors in Maryland                                            146

  Life on the manors                                                147

  The court leet and court baron                                    148

  Changes wrought by slavery                                   148, 149

  A fierce spirit of liberty combined with ingrained respect for
  law                                                               149

  Cecilius Calvert and his son Charles                              150

  Sources of discontent in Maryland                                 150

  A pleasant little family party                                    151

  Conflict between the Council and the Burgesses               151, 152

  Burgesses claim to be a House of Commons, but the Council
  will not admit it                                                 152

  How Rev. Charles Nichollet was fined for preaching politics       153

  The Cessation Act of 1666                                         153

  Acts concerning the relief of Quakers and the appointment
  of sheriffs                                                  153, 154

  Restriction of suffrage in 1670                              154, 155

  Death of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore                                 155

  Rebellion of Davis and Pate, 1676; their execution                156

  How George Talbot, lord of Susquehanna Manor, slew a
  revenue collector and was carried to Virginia for trial           157

  How his wife took him from jail, and how he was kept hidden
  until a pardon was secured                                        158

  “A Complaint from Heaven with a Hue and Cry”                      159

  The anti-Catholic panic of 1689                                   159

  Causes of the panic                                               160

  How John Coode overthrew the palatinate government                161

  But did not thereby bring the millennium                          162

  How Nicholson removed the capital from St. Mary’s to
   Annapolis                                                   162, 163

  Unpopularity of the establishment of the Church of England        163

  Episcopal parsons                                                 164

  Exemption of Protestant dissenters from civil disabilities        165

  Seymour reprimands the Catholic priests                           166

  Cruel laws against Catholics                                      167

  Crown requisitions                                                168

  Benedict Calvert, fourth Lord Baltimore, becomes a Protestant
  and the palatinate is revived                                168, 169

  Change in the political situation                                 170

  Charles Carroll entertains a plan for a migration to the
    Mississippi Valley                                              171

  How the seeds of revolution were planted in Maryland              171

  End of the palatinate                                        172, 173


  CHAPTER XIV.

  SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION.

  How the history of tobacco has been connected with the history
  of liberty                                                        174

  Rapid growth of tobacco culture in Virginia                       175

  Legislative attempts to check it                                  176

  Need for cheap labour                                             176

  Indentured white servants                                         177

  How the notion grew up in England that Virginians were
  descended from convicts; Defoe’s novels, a comedy by
  Mrs. Behn, Postlethwayt’s Dictionary, and Gentleman’s
  Magazine                                                      178-180

  Who were the indentured white servants                            181

  Redemptioners                                                     182

  Distribution of convicts                                          183

  Prisoners of war                                                  184

  Summary                                                           185

  Careers of white freedmen                                         186

  Representative Virginia families were not descended from
  white freedmen                                                    187

  Some of the freedmen became small proprietors                     187

  Some became “mean whites”                                    188, 189

  Development of negro slavery; effect of the treaty of
  Utrecht                                                           190

  Anti-slavery sentiment in Virginia                                191

  Theory that negroes were non-human                                192

  Baptizing a slave did not work his emancipation                   193

  Negroes as real estate                                            194

  Tax on slaves                                                     194

  Treatment of slaves                                          195, 196

  Fears of insurrection                                             196

  Cruel laws                                                   197, 198

  Free blacks a source of danger                                    199

  Taking slaves to England; did it work their emancipation?         200

  Lord Mansfield’s famous decision                                  201

  Jefferson’s opinion of slavery                                    201

  Immoralities incident to the system                          202, 203

  Classes in Virginia society                                       204

  Huguenots in Virginia                                        204, 205

  Influence of the rivers upon society                              206

  Some exports and imports                                          207

  Some domestic industries                                          208

  Beverley complains of his countrymen as lazy, but perhaps
  his reproachful tone is a little overdone                         210

  Absence of town life                                         210, 211

  Futile attempts to make towns by legislation                      212

  The country store and its treasures                          213, 214

  Rivers and roads                                                  215

  Tobacco as currency                                               216

  Effect upon crafts and trades                                     217

  Effect upon planters’ accounts                                    218

  Universal hospitality                                             219

  Visit to a plantation; the negro quarter                          220

  Other appurtenances                                               221

  The Great House or Home House                                     222

  Brick and wooden houses                                      222, 223

  House architecture                                           223, 224

  The rooms                                                         224

  Bedrooms and their furniture                                      225

  The dinner table; napkins and forks                               226

  Silver plate; wainscots and tapestry                              227

  The kitchen                                                       228

  The abundance of wholesome and delicious food                228, 229

  The beverages, native and imported                           229, 230

  Smyth’s picture of the daily life on a plantation            230, 231

  Very different picture given by John Mason; the mode of
  life at Gunston Hall                                          232-234

  A glimpse of Mount Vernon                                         235

  Dress of planters and their wives                                 236

  Weddings and funerals                                             237

  Horses and horse-racing                                       237-239

  Fox-hunting                                                       239

  Gambling                                                     239, 240

  A rural entertainment of the olden time                      240, 241

  Music and musical instruments                                     242

  The theatre and other recreations                                 243

  Some interesting libraries                                    243-245

  Schools and printing                                         245, 246

  Private free schools                                              246

  Academies and tutors                                              247

  Convicts as tutors                                                248

  Virginians at Oxford                                              249

  James Madison and his tutors                                      250

  Contrast with New England in respect of educational advantages    251

  Causes of the difference                                     252, 253

  Illustrations from the history of American intellect              254

  Virginia’s historians; Robert Beverley                            255

  William Stith                                                255, 256

  William Byrd                                                  256-258

  Jefferson’s notes on Virginia; McClurg’s Belles of Williamsburg;
  Clayton the botanist                                              259

  Physicians, their prescriptions and charges                       260

  Washington’s last illness                                         260

  Some Virginia parsons, their tricks and manners              261, 263

  Free thinking; superstition and crime                             264

  Cruel punishments                                                 265

  Lawyers                                                           266

  A government of laws                                              267

  Some characteristics of Maryland                              267-269


  CHAPTER XV.

  THE CAROLINA FRONTIER.

  How South Carolina was a frontier against the Spaniards           270

  How North Carolina was a wilderness frontier                      271

  The grant of Carolina to eight lords proprietors                  272

  John Locke and Lord Shaftesbury                              272, 273

  “Fundamental Constitutions” of Carolina                           274

  The Carolina palatinate different from that of Maryland           275

  Titles of nobility                                                276

  Albemarle colony                                                  276

  New Englanders at Cape Fear                                       277

  Sir John Yeamans and Clarendon colony                             277

  The Ashley River colony and the founding of Charleston            278

  First legislation in Albemarle                                    279

  Troubles caused by the Navigation Act                             280

  The trade between Massachusetts and North Carolina                281

  Eastchurch and Miller                                             282

  Culpeper’s usurpation                                             283

  How Culpeper fared in London                                      284

  How Charleston was moved from Albemarle Point to Oyster
  Point                                                             285

  Seth Sothel’s tyranny in Albemarle and his banishment        286, 287

  Troubles in Ashley River colony                                   287

  The Scotch at Port Royal                                          288

  A state without laws                                              289

  Reappearance of Sothel, this time as the people’s friend          289

  His downfall and death                                            290

  Clarendon colony abandoned                                        290

  Philip Ludwell’s administration                              290, 291

  Joseph Archdale and his beneficent rule                           291

  Sir Nathaniel Johnson and the dissenters                          292

  Unsuccessful attempt of a French and Spanish fleet upon
  Charleston                                                        293

  Thomas Carey                                                      294

  Porter’s mission to England                                       295

  Edward Hyde comes to govern North Carolina                        296

  Carey’s rebellion                                            296, 297

  Expansion of the northern colony; arrival of Baron Graffenried
  with Germans and Swiss; founding of New
  Berne                                                             297

  Accusations against Carey and Porter of inciting the Indians
  against the colony                                                297

  These accusations are highly improbable and not well supported    298

  Survey of Carolina Indians                                    298-300

  Algonquin tribes                                                  298

  Sioux tribes; Iroquois tribes                                     299

  Muscogi tribes                                                    300

  Algonquin-Iroquois conspiracy against the North Carolina
  settlements                                                       300

  Capture of Lawson and Graffenried by the Tuscaroras; Lawson’s
  horrible death                                                    301

  The massacre of September, 1711                                   302

  Aid from Virginia and South Carolina                         302, 303

  Barnwell defeats the Tuscaroras                                   303

  Crushing defeat of the Tuscaroras by James Moore; their
  migration to New York                                             304

  Administration of Charles Eden                               304, 305

  Spanish intrigues with the Yamassees                              305

  Alliance of Indian tribes against the South Carolinians and
  nine months’ warfare                                              306

  Administration of Robert Johnson                                  306

  The revolution of 1719 in South Carolina; end of the proprietary
  government in both colonies                                       308

  Contrast between the two colonies                            308, 309

  Interior of North Carolina contrasted with the coast         310, 311

  Unkempt life                                                      311

  A genre picture by Colonel Byrd                              312, 313

  Industries of North Carolina                                      313

  Absence of towns                                             314, 315

  A frontier democracy                                              315

  Segregation and dispersal of Virginia poor whites                 316

  Spotswood’s account of the matter                                 317

  New peopling of North Carolina after 1720; the German
  immigration                                                       318

  Scotch Highlanders and Scotch-Irish                          318, 319

  Further dispersal of poor whites                             319, 320

  Barbarizing effects of isolation                                  321

  The settlers of South Carolina, churchmen and dissenters          323

  The open vestries                                                 323

  South Carolina parish, purely English in its origin, not
  French like the parishes of Louisiana                             324

  Free schools                                                      325

  Rice and indigo                                                   326

  Some characteristics of South Carolina slavery               327, 329

  Negro insurrection of 1740                                        329

  Cruelties connected with slavery                                  330

  Social life in Charleston                                         331

  Contrast between the two Carolinas                           332, 333

  The Spanish frontier and the founding of Georgia                  333

  James Oglethorpe and his philanthropic schemes                    334

  Beginnings of Georgia                                        335, 336

  Summary; Cavaliers and Puritans once more                         337


  CHAPTER XVI.

  THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRATES.

  The business of piracy has never thriven so greatly as in the
  seventeenth century                                               338

  Pompey and the pirates                                            338

  Chinese and Malay pirates on the Indian Ocean and Mussulman
  pirates on the Mediterranean Sea                                  339

  The Scandinavian Vikings cannot properly be termed pirates   339, 340

  Sir William Blackstone’s remarks about piracy                     340

  Character of piracy                                               341

  To call the Elizabethan sea-kings pirates is silly and
    outrageous                                                 341, 342

  Features of maritime warfare out of which piracy could
  grow                                                         342, 343

  Privateering                                                      343

  Fighting without declaring war                                    344

  Lack of protection for neutral ships                              344

  Origin of buccaneering; “Brethren of the Coast”                   345

  Illicit traffic in the West Indies                                346

  Buccaneers and filibusters                                        347

  The kind of people who became buccaneers                          348

  The honest man who took to buccaneering to satisfy his
  creditors                                                         349

  The deeds of Olonnois and other wretches                     349, 350

  Henry Morgan and his evil deeds                              350, 351

  Alexander Exquemeling and his entertaining book                   352

  How Morgan captured Maracaibo and Gibraltar in Venezuela          353

  The treaty of America of 1670 for the suppression of buccaneering
  and piracy                                                        353

  Sack of Panama by Morgan and his buccaneers                       354

  How Morgan absconded with most of the booty                       355

  How English and Spanish governors industriously scotched
  the snake                                                         355

  How the chief of pirates became Sir Henry Morgan, deputy-governor
  of Jamaica, and hanged his old comrades or
  sold them to the Spaniards                                        356

  How the treaty of America caused his downfall                     357

  Decline of buccaneering                                           357

  Pirates of the South Sea                                     358, 359

  Plunder of Peruvian towns                                         360

  Effects of the alliance between France and Spain in 1701          360

  Pirates in the Bahama Islands and on the Carolina coast           361

  Effect of the navigation laws in stimulating piracy          362, 363

  Effect of rice culture upon the relations between South
  Carolina settlers and the pirates                                 363

  Wholesale hanging of pirates at Charleston                        364

  How pirates swarmed on the North Carolina coast                   365

  Until Captain Woodes Rogers captured the Island of New
  Providence in 1718                                                365

  The North Carolina waters furnished the last lair for the
  pirates                                                           365

  How Blackbeard, the last of the pirates, levied blackmail
  upon Charleston                                              366, 367

  Epidemic character of piracy; cases of Kidd and Bonnet            368

  Fate of Bonnet and Blackbeard, and final suppression of
  piracy                                                            369


  CHAPTER XVII.

  FROM TIDEWATER TO THE MOUNTAINS.

  Family and early career of Alexander Spotswood                    370

  He brings the privilege of _habeas corpus_ to Virginia, but
  wrangles much with his burgesses                                  371

  His energy and public spirit                                      372

  How the Post-Office Act was resisted by the people           373, 375

  Disputes as to power of appointing parsons                        376

  Beginnings of continental politics in America                     376

  Beginning of the seventy years’ struggle with France              377

  How the continental situation in America was affected by
  the war of the Spanish succession                            378, 379

  Different views of Spotswood and the assembly with regard
  to sending aid to Carolina                                   379, 380

  How the royal governors became convinced that the thing
  most needed in English America was a continental government
  that could impose taxes                                           381

  Franklin’s plan for a federal union                          381, 383

  It was the failure of the colonies to adopt Franklin’s plan
  that led soon afterwards to the Stamp Act                    382, 383

  How Spotswood regarded the unknown West                           383

  Attempts to cross the Blue Ridge                                  384

  How the Blue Ridge was crossed by Spotswood                       385

  Knights of the Golden Horseshoe                                   386

  Spotswood’s plan for communicating between Virginia and
  Lake Erie                                                    387, 388

  Condition of the postal service in the English colonies under
  Spotswood’s administration                                        389

  Brief mention of Governors Gooch and Dinwiddie                    390

  Importance of the Scotch-Irish migration to America          390, 391

  In 1611 James I. began colonizing Ulster with settlers from
  Scotland and England                                              391

  In Ulster they established flourishing manufactures of woollens
  and linens                                                        392

  Which excited the jealousy of rival manufacturers in England      393

  Legislation against the Ulster manufacturers                      393

  Civil disabilities inflicted upon Presbyterians in Ulster         393

  These circumstances caused such a migration to America
  that by 1770 it amounted to more than half a million
  souls                                                             394

  Many Scotch-Irish settled in the Shenandoah Valley, and
  were closely followed by Germans                                  395

  This Shenandoah population exerted a most powerful democratizing
  influence upon the colony                                         396

  Jefferson found in them his most powerful supporters              396

  Lord Fairfax’s home at Greenway Court; Fairfax’s affection
  for Washington                                                    397

  How the surveying of Fairfax’s frontier estates led Washington
  on to his public career                                           398

  The advance of Virginians from tidewater to the mountains
  brought on the final struggle with France                    398, 399

  Advance of the French from Lake Erie                              399

  Washington goes to warn them from encroaching upon
  English territory                                                 399


  MAPS.

  Westward Growth of Old Virginia, _from a sketch by the
  author_                                              _Frontispiece_

  North Carolina Precincts in 1729, _after a map in Hawks’s
  History of North Carolina_                                        276

  A Map of y^e most Improved Part of Carolina, _from Winsor’s
  America_, vol. v. p. 351                                          306




OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.




CHAPTER X.

THE COMING OF THE CAVALIERS.


[Sidenote: Virginia depicted.]

“These things that follow in this ensuing relation are certified by
divers letters from Virginia, by men of worth and credit there, written
to a friend in England, that for his own and others’ satisfaction was
desirous to know these particulars and the present estate of that
country. And let no man doubt of the truth of it. There be many in
England, land and seamen, that can bear witness of it. And if this
plantation be not worth encouragement, let every true Englishman judge.”

[Sidenote: Animals.]

Such is the beginning of an enthusiastic little pamphlet, of unknown
authorship, published in London in 1649,[1] the year in which Charles
I. perished on the scaffold. It is entitled “A Perfect Description
of Virginia,” and one of its effects, if not its purpose, must have
been to attract immigrants to that colony from the mother country.
In Virginia “there is nothing wanting” to make people happy; there
are “plenty, health, and wealth.” Of English about 15,000 are settled
there, with 300 negro servants. Of kine, oxen, bulls, and calves, there
are 20,000, and there is plenty of good butter and cheese. There are
200 horses, 50 asses, 3,000 sheep with good wool, 5,000 goats, and
swine and poultry innumerable. Besides these European animals, there
are many deer, with “rackoons, as good meat as lamb,” and “passonnes”
[opossums], otters and beavers, foxes and dogs that “bark not.” In the
waters are “above thirty sorts” of fish “very excellent good in their
kinds.” The wild turkey sometimes weighs sixty pounds, and besides
partridges, ducks, geese, and pigeons, the woods abound in sweet
songsters and “most rare coloured parraketoes, and [we have] one bird
we call the mock-bird; for he will imitate all other birds’ notes and
cries, both day and night birds, yea, the owls and nightingales.”

[Sidenote: Agriculture.]

The farmers have under cultivation many hundred acres of excellent
wheat; their maize, or “Virginia corn,” yields an increase of 500 for
1, and makes “good bread and furmity” [porridge]; they have barley in
plenty, and six brew-houses which brew strong and well-flavoured beer.
There are fifteen kinds of fruit that for delicacy rival the fruits
of Italy; in the gardens grow potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips,
onions, artichokes, asparagus, beans, and better peas than those of
England, with all manner of herbs and “physick flowers.” The tobacco
is everywhere “much vented and esteemed,” but such immense crops are
raised that the price is but three pence a pound. There is also a hope
that indigo, hemp and flax, vines and silk-worms, can be cultivated
with profit, since it is chiefly hands that are wanted. It surely
would be better to grow silk here, where mulberry trees are so plenty,
than to fetch it as we do from Persia and China “with great charge and
expense and hazard,” thereby enriching “heathen and Mahumetans.”

[Sidenote: Northwest passage.]

At the same time they are hoping soon to discover a way to China,
“for Sir Francis Drake was on the back side of Virginia in his voyage
about the world in 37 degrees ... and now all the question is only
how broad the land may be to that place [_i. e._ California] from the
head of James River above the falls.” By prosecuting discovery in
this direction “the planters in Virginia shall gain the rich trade of
the East India, and so cause it to be driven through the continent of
Virginia, part by land and part by water, and in a most gainful way and
safe, and far less expenseful and dangerous, than now it is.”

[Sidenote: Commercial rivals.]

It behooves the English, says our pamphlet, to be more vigilant, and
to pay more heed to their colonies; for behold, “the Swedes have come
and crept into a river called Delawar, that is within the limits of
Virginia,” and they are driving “a great and secret trade of furs.”
Moreover, “the Hollanders have stolen into a river called Hudson’s
River, in the limits also of Virginia, ... they have built a strong
fort ... and drive a trade of fur there with the natives for above
£10,000 a year. These two plantations are ... on our side of Cape Cod
which parts us and New England. Thus are the English nosed in all
places, and out-traded by the Dutch. They would not suffer the English
to use them so; but they have vigilant statesmen, and advance all they
can for a common good, and will not spare any encouragements to their
people to discover.”

[Sidenote: New England.]

[Sidenote: Health of body and soul.]

“Concerning New England,” which is but four days’ sail from Virginia,
a trade goes to and fro; but except for the fishing, “there is not
much in that land,” which in respect of frost and snow is as Scotland
compared with England, and so barren withal that, “except a herring
be put into the hole that you set the corn or maize in, it will not
come up.” What a pity that the New England people, “being now about
20,000, did not seat themselves at first to the south of Virginia, in a
warm and rich country, where their industry would have produced sugar,
indigo, ginger, cotton, and the like commodities!” But here in Virginia
the land “produceth, with very great increase, whatsoever is committed
into the bowels of it; ... a fat rich soil everywhere watered with many
fine springs, small rivulets, and wholesome waters.” As to healthiness,
fewer people die in a year proportionately than in England; “since that
men are provided with all necessaries, have plenty of victual, bread,
and good beer, ... all which the Englishman loves full dearly.” Nor is
their spiritual welfare neglected, for there are twenty churches, with
“doctrine and orders after the church of England;” and “the ministers’
livings are esteemed worth at least £100 per annum; they are paid by
each planter so much tobacco per poll, and so many bushels of corn;
they live all in peace and love.”

[Sidenote: Schools.]

[Sidenote: Captain Mathews and his household.]

“I may not forget to tell you we have a free school, with 200 acres of
land, a fine house upon it, 40 milch kine, and other accommodations;
the benefactor deserves perpetual memory; his name, Mr. Benjamin Symes,
worthy to be chronicled; other petty schools also we have.” Various
details of orchards and vineyards, of Mr. Kinsman’s pure perry and Mr.
Pelton’s strong metheglin, entertain us; and a pleasant tribute is
paid to “worthy Captain Mathews,” the same who fourteen years before
had assisted at the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey. “He hath a fine
house, and all things answerable to it; he sows yearly store of hemp
and flax, and causes it to be spun; he keeps weavers, and hath a tan
house, causes leather to be dressed, hath eight shoemakers employed in
their trade, hath forty negro servants, brings them up to trades in
his house; he yearly sows abundance of wheat, barley, &c., the wheat
he selleth at four shillings the bushel, kills store of beeves, and
sells them to victual the ships when they come thither; hath abundance
of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poultry; he married the
daughter of Sir Thomas Hinton, and, in a word, keeps a good house,
lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia; he is worthy of much
honour.”

[Sidenote: Rapid growth of population.]

It will be observed that Captain Mathews possessed, in his forty black
servants, nearly one seventh part of the negro population. Of the
conditions under which wholesale negro slavery grew up, I shall treat
hereafter. In the third quarter of the seventeenth century it was still
in its beginnings. Between 1650 and 1670, along with an extraordinary
growth in the total population, we observe a marked increase in the
number of black slaves. In the latter year Berkeley estimated the
population at 32,000 free whites, 6,000 indentured white servants, and
2,000 negroes. Large estates, cultivated by wholesale slave labour,
were coming into existence, and a peculiar type of aristocratic or in
some respects patriarchal society was growing up in Virginia. It was
still for the most part confined to the peninsula between the James
and York rivers and the territory to the south of the former, from
Nansemond as far as the Appomattox, although in Gloucester likewise
there was a considerable population, and there were settlements
in Middlesex and Lancaster counties, on opposite banks of the
Rappahannock, and even as far as Northumberland and Westmoreland on the
Potomac. In the course of the disputes over Kent Island, settlements
began upon those shores and increased apace.

[Sidenote: Names of Virginia counties.]

Some significant history is fossilized in the names of Virginia
counties. When they are not the old shire names imported from England,
like those just mentioned, they are apt to be personal names indicating
the times when the counties were first settled, or when they acquired
a distinct existence as counties. For a long time such personal names
were chiefly taken from the royal household. Thus, while Charles
City County bears the name of Charles I., bestowed upon the region
before that king ascended the throne, the portion of it south of
James River, set off in 1702 as Prince George County, was named for
George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne. So King William County on
the south bank of the Mattapony, and King and Queen County on its
north bank, carry us straight to the times of William and Mary, and
indicate the position of the frontier in the days of Charles II.;
while to the west of them the names of Hanover and the two Hanoverian
princesses, Caroline and Louisa, carry us on to the days of the first
two Georges.[2] At the time with which our narrative is now concerned,
all that region to the south of Spottsylvania was unbroken wilderness.
In 1670 a careful estimate was made of the number of Indians comprised
within the immediate neighbourhood of the colony, and there were
counted up 725 warriors, of whom more than 400 were on the Appomattox
and Pamunkey frontiers, and nearly 200 between the Potomac and
Rappahannock.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of royalist names on the map of New England.]

The map of Virginia, in the light in which I have here considered it,
shows one remarkable point of contrast with the map of New England. On
the coast of the latter one finds a very few names commemorative of
royalty, such as Charles River, named by Captain John Smith, Cape Anne,
named by Charles I. when Prince of Wales, and the Elizabeth Islands,
named by Captain Gosnold still earlier and in the lifetime of the great
Queen. But when it comes to names given by the settlers themselves, one
cannot find in all New England a county name taken from any English
sovereign or prince, except Dukes for the island of Martha’s Vineyard,
and that simply recalls the fact that the island once formed a part of
the proprietary domain of James, Duke of York, and sent a delegate to
the first legislature that assembled at Manhattan. Except for this one
instance, we should never know from the county names of New England
that such a thing as kingship had ever existed. As for names of towns,
there is in Massachusetts a Lunenburg, which is said to have received
its name at the suggestion of a party of travellers from England in the
year 1726;[3] it was afterward copied in Vermont; and by diligently
searching the map of New England we may find half a dozen Hanovers and
Brunswicks, counting originals and copies. Between this showing and
that of Virginia, where the sequence of royal names is full enough to
preserve a rude record of the country’s expansion, the contrast is
surely striking. The difference between the Puritan temper and that of
the Cavaliers seems to be written ineffaceably upon the map.

[Sidenote: The Cavaliers in Virginia: some popular misconceptions.]

[Sidenote: Some democratic protests.]

We are thus brought to the question as to how far the Cavalier element
predominated in the composition of Old Virginia. It is a subject
concerning which current general statements are apt to be loose and
misleading. It has given rise to much discussion, and, like a good
deal of what passes for historical discussion, it has too often been
conducted under the influence of personal or sectional prejudices.
Half a century ago, in the days when the people of the slave states
and those of the free states found it difficult to think justly or
to speak kindly of one another, one used often to hear sweeping
generalizations. On the one hand, it was said that Southerners were
the descendants of Cavaliers, and therefore presumably of gentle
blood, while Northerners were descendants of Roundheads, and therefore
presumably of ignoble origin. Some such notion may have prompted the
famous remark of Robert Toombs, in 1860: “We [_i. e._ the Southerners]
are the gentlemen of this country.” On the other hand, it was retorted
that the people of the South were in great part descended from
indentured white servants sent from the jails and slums of England.[4]
This point will receive due attention in a future chapter. At present
we may note that descent from Cavaliers has not always been a matter
of pride with Southern speakers and writers. There was a time when the
fierce spirit of democracy was inclined to regard such a connection
as a stigma. The father of President Tyler “used to say that he cared
naught for any other ancestor than Wat Tyler the blacksmith, who had
asserted the rights of oppressed humanity, and that he would have no
other device on his shield than a sledge hammer raised in the act
of striking.”[5] On the subject of Cavaliers a well known Virginian
writer, Hugh Blair Grigsby, once grew very warm. “The Cavalier,” said
he, “was essentially a slave, a compound slave, a slave to the King
and a slave to the Church. I look with contempt on the miserable
figment which seeks to trace the distinguishing points of the Virginia
character to the influence of those butterflies of the British
aristocracy.”[6] Historical questions are often treated in this way.
We grow up with a vague conception of something in the past which
we feel in duty bound to condemn, and then if we are told that our
own forefathers were part and parcel of the hated thing we lose our
tempers. Mr. Grigsby’s remarks are an expression of American feeling
in what may be called its Elijah Pogram period, when the knowledge of
history was too slender and the historic sense too dull to be shocked
at the incongruity of classing such men as Strafford and Falkland with
“butterflies.” The study of history in such a mood is not likely to be
fruitful of much beside rhetoric.

[Sidenote: Sweeping statements are inadmissible.]

Before we proceed, a few further words are desirable concerning the
fallacies and misconceptions which abound in the opinions cited in
the foregoing paragraph. It is impossible to make any generalization
concerning the origin of the white people of the South as a whole, or
of the North as a whole, further than to say that their ancestors came
from Europe, and a large majority of them from the British islands. The
facts are too complicated to be embraced in any generalization more
definitely limited than this. When sweeping statements are made about
“the North” and “the South,” it is often apparent that the speaker
has in mind only Massachusetts and tidewater Virginia, making these
parts do duty for the whole. The present book will make it clear that
it is only in connection with tidewater Virginia that the migration of
Cavaliers from England to America has any historical significance.

[Sidenote: Difference between Cavaliers and Roundheads was political,
not social.]

It is a mistake to suppose that the contrast between Cavaliers
and Roundheads was in any wise parallel with the contrast between
high-born people and low-born. A majority of the landed gentry, titled
and untitled, supported Charles I., while the chief strength of the
Parliament lay in the smaller landholders and in the merchants of the
cities. But the Roundheads also included a large and powerful minority
of the landed aristocracy, headed by the Earls of Bedford, Warwick,
Manchester, Northumberland, Stamford, and Essex, the Lords Fairfax and
Brooke, and many others. The leaders of the party, Pym and Hampden,
Vane and Cromwell, were of gentle blood; and among the officers of the
New Model were such as Montagues, Pickerings, Fortescues, Sheffields,
and Sidneys. In short, the distinction between Cavalier and Roundhead
was no more a difference in respect of lineage or social rank than the
analogous distinction between Tory and Whig. The mere fact of a man’s
having belonged to the one party or the other raises no presumption as
to his “gentility.”

[Sidenote: England has never had a _noblesse_, or upper caste.]

[Sidenote: Contrast with France.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the middle class.]

It is worth while here to correct another error which is quite commonly
entertained in the United States. It is the error of supposing that
in Great Britain there are distinct orders of society, or that there
exists anything like a sharp and well defined line between the nobility
and the commonalty. The American reader is apt to imagine a “peerage,”
the members of which have from time immemorial constituted a kind of
caste clearly marked off from the great body of the people, and into
which it has always been very difficult for plain people to rise.
In this crude conception the social differences between England and
America are greatly exaggerated. In point of fact the British islands
are the one part of Europe where the existence of a peerage has not
resulted in creating a distinct upper class of society. The difference
will be most clearly explained by contrasting England with France.
In the latter country, before the Revolution of 1789, there was a
peerage consisting of great landholders, local rulers and magistrates,
and dignitaries of the church, just as in England. But in France
all the sons and brothers of a peer were nobles distinguished by a
title and reckoned among the peerage, and all were exempt from sundry
important political duties, including the payment of taxes. Thus they
constituted a real _noblesse_, or caste apart from the people, until
the Revolution at a single blow destroyed all their privileges. At
the present day French titles of nobility are merely courtesy titles,
and through excessive multiplication have become cheap. On the other
hand, in England, the families of peers have never been exempt from
their share of the public burdens. The “peerage,” or hereditary right
to sit in the House of Lords, belongs only to the head of the family;
all the other members of the family are commoners, though some may be
addressed by courtesy titles. During the formative period of modern
political society, from the fourteenth century onward, the sons of
peers habitually competed for seats in the House of Commons, side by
side with merchants and yeomen. This has prevented anything like a
severance between the interests of the higher and of the lower classes
in England, and has had much to do with the peaceful and healthy
political development which has so eminently characterized our mother
country. England has never had a _noblesse_. As the upper class has
never been sharply distinguished politically, so it has not held
itself separate socially. Families with titles have intermarried with
families that have none, the younger branches of a peer’s family become
untitled gentry, ancient peerages lapse while new ones are created, so
that there is a “circulation of gentle blood” that has thus far proved
eminently wholesome. More than two thirds of the present House of
Lords are the grandsons or great-grandsons of commoners. Of the 450 or
more hereditary peerages now existing, three date from the thirteenth
century and four from the fourteenth; of those existing in the days
of Thomas Becket not one now remains in the same family. It has
always been easy in England for ability and character to raise their
possessor in the social scale; and hence the middle class has long
been recognized as the abiding element in England’s strength. Voltaire
once compared the English people to their ale,--froth at the top and
dregs at the bottom, but sound and bright and strong in the middle. As
to the last he was surely right.

[Sidenote: Respect paid to industry in England.]

One further point calls for mention. In mediæval and early modern
England, great respect was paid to incorporated crafts and trades.
The influence and authority wielded by county magnates over the rural
population was paralleled by the power exercised in the cities by the
livery companies or guilds. Since the twelfth century, the municipal
franchise in the principal towns and cities of Great Britain has been
for the most part controlled by the various trade and craft guilds. In
the seventeenth century, when the migrations to America were beginning,
it was customary for members of noble families to enter these guilds as
apprentices in the crafts of the draper, the tailor, the vintner, or
the mason, etc. Many important consequences have flowed from this. Let
it suffice here to note that this fact of the rural aristocracy keeping
in touch with the tradesmen and artisans has been one of the safeguards
of English liberty; it has been one source of the power of the Commons,
one check upon the undue aspirations of the Crown. It indicates a kind
of public sentiment very different from that which afterward grew
up in our southern states under the malignant influence of slavery,
which proclaimed an antagonism between industry and gentility that is
contrary to the whole spirit of English civilization.

[Sidenote: The Cavalier exodus.]

With these points clear in our minds, we may understand the true
significance of the arrival of the Cavaliers in Virginia. The date
to be remembered in connection with that event is 1649, and it is
instructive to compare it with the exodus of Puritans to New England.
The little settlement of the Mayflower Pilgrims was merely a herald of
the great Puritan exodus, which really began in 1629, when Charles I.
entered upon his period of eleven years of rule without a parliament,
and continued until about 1642, when the Civil War broke out. During
those thirteen years more than 20,000 Puritans came to New England.
The great Cavalier exodus began with the king’s execution in 1649, and
probably slackened after 1660. It must have been a chief cause of the
remarkable increase of the white population of Virginia from 15,000 in
1649 to 38,000 in 1670.

[Sidenote: Political complexion of Virginia before 1649.]

[Sidenote: The great exchange of 1649.]

The period of the Commonwealth in England thus marks an important
epoch in Virginia, and we must be on our guard against confusing what
came after with what preceded it. As to the political complexion of
Virginia in the earliest time, it would be difficult to make a general
statement, except that there was a widespread feeling in favour of
the Company as managed by Sandys and Southampton. This meant that the
settlers knew when they were well governed. They did not approve of
a party that sent an Argall to fleece them, even though it were the
court party. So, too, in the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey in 1635
we see the temper of the councillors and burgesses flatly opposed to
the king’s unpopular representative. But such instances do not tell us
much concerning the attitude of the colonists upon questions of English
politics. The fortunes of the Puritan settlers in Virginia afford a
surer indication. At first, as we have seen, when the Puritans as a
body had not yet separated from the Church, there were a good many in
Virginia; and by 1640 they probably formed about seven per cent. of
the population. The legislation against them beginning in 1631 seems
to indicate that public sentiment in Virginia favoured the policy of
Laud; while the slackness with which such legislation was enforced
raises a suspicion that such sentiment was at first not very strong.
It seems probable that as the country party in England came more and
more completely under the control of Puritanism, and as Puritanism
grew more and more radical in temper, the reaction toward the royalist
side grew more and more pronounced in Virginia. If there ever was a
typical Cavalier of the more narrow-minded sort, it was Sir William
Berkeley, who at the same time was by no means the sort of person that
one might properly call a “butterfly.” If the eloquent Mr. Grigsby had
once got into those iron clutches, he would have sought some other term
of comparison. When Berkeley arrived in Virginia, and for a long time
afterward, he was extremely popular. We have seen him acting with so
much energy against the Puritans that in the course of the year 1649
not less than 1,000 of them left the colony. Upon the news of the
king’s death, Berkeley sent a message to England inviting royalists to
come to Virginia, and within a twelvemonth perhaps as many as 1,000
had arrived, picked men and women of excellent sort. Thus it curiously
happened that the same moment which saw Virginia lose most of her
Puritan population, also saw it replaced by an equal number of devoted
Cavaliers.

[Sidenote: Moderation shown in Virginia.]

From this moment we may date the beginnings of Cavalier ascendency
in Virginia. But for the next ten years that growing ascendency was
qualified by the necessity of submitting to the Puritan government in
England. In 1652 Berkeley was obliged to retire from the governorship,
and the king’s men in Virginia found it prudent to put some restraint
upon the expression of their feelings. But in this change, as we
have seen, there was no violence. It is probable that there was a
considerable body of colonists “comparatively indifferent to the
struggle of parties in England, anxious only to save Virginia from
spoliation and bloodshed, and for that end willing to throw in their
lot with the side whose success held out the speediest hopes of peace.
There is another consideration which helps to explain the moderation
of the combatants. In England each party was exasperated by grievous
wrongs, and hence its hour of triumph was also its hour of revenge. The
struggle in Virginia was embittered by no such recollections.”[7]

[Sidenote: Colonel Richard Lee.]

[Sidenote: Election of Berkeley by the assembly.]

A name inseparably associated with Berkeley is that of Colonel Richard
Lee, who is described as “a man of good stature, comely visage, an
enterprising genius, a sound head, vigorous spirit, and generous
nature,”[8] qualities that may be recognized in many of his famous
descendants. This Richard Lee belonged to an ancient family, the Lees
of Coton Hall, in Shropshire, whom we find from the beginning of
the thirteenth century in positions of honour and trust. He came to
Virginia about 1642, and obtained that year an estate which he called
Paradise, near the head of Poropotank Creek, on the York River. He
was from the first a man of much importance in the colony, serving
as justice, burgess, councillor, and secretary of state. In 1654 we
find him described as “faithful and useful to the interests of the
Commonwealth,” but, as Dr. Edmund Lee says, “it is only fair to observe
that this claim was made for him by a friend in his absence;”[9] or
perhaps it only means that he was not one of the tribe of fanatics who
love to kick against the pricks.[10] Certain it is that Colonel Lee was
no Puritan, though doubtless he submitted loyally to the arrangement
of 1652, as so many others did. There was nothing for the king’s men
to do but possess their souls in quiet until 1659, when news came of
the resignation of Richard Cromwell. “Worthy Captain Mathews,” whom the
assembly had chosen governor, died about the same time. Accordingly,
in March, 1660, the assembly resolved that, since there was then in
England no resident sovereign generally recognized, the supreme power
in Virginia must be regarded as lodged in the assembly, and that all
writs should issue in the name of the Grand Assembly of Virginia until
such a command should come from England as the assembly should judge
to be lawful. Having passed this resolution, the assembly showed its
political complexion by electing Sir William Berkeley for governor:
and in the same breath it revealed its independent spirit by providing
that he must call an assembly at least once in two years, and oftener
if need be; and that he must not dissolve it without the consent of a
majority of the members. On these terms Berkeley accepted office at the
hands of the assembly.

[Sidenote: Lee’s visit to Brussels.]

[Sidenote: Charles II. proclaimed king.]

Before this transaction, perhaps in 1658, Colonel Lee seems to have
visited Charles II. at Brussels, where he handed over to the still
exiled prince the old commission of Berkeley, and may have obtained
from him a new one for future use, reinstating him as governor.[11]
There is a vague tradition that on this occasion he asked how soon
Charles would be likely to be able to protect the colony in case it
should declare its allegiance to him; and from this source may have
arisen the wild statement, recorded by Beverley and promulgated by the
eminent historian Robertson, that Virginia proclaimed Charles II. as
sovereign a year or two before he was proclaimed in England.[12] The
absurdity of this story was long ago pointed out;[13] but since error
has as many lives as a cat, one may still hear it repeated. Charles II.
was proclaimed king in England on the 8th of May, 1660, and in Virginia
on the 20th of September following.[14] In October the royal commission
for Berkeley arrived, and the governor may thus have felt that the
conditions on which he accepted his office from the assembly were no
longer binding. Our next chapter will show how lightly he held them.

If one may judge from the public accounts of York County in 1660,
expressed in the arithmetic of a tobacco currency, the 20th of
September must have been a joyful occasion:--

Att the proclaiming of his sacred Maisty:

  To y^e Ho^{ble} Govn^r p a barrell powd^r, 112 lb.            .00996
  To Cap^t ffox six cases of drams                              .00900
  To Cap^t ffox for his great gunnes                            .00500
  To M^r Philip Malory                                          .00500
  To y^e trumpeters                                             .00800
  To M^r Hansford 176 Gallons Syd^r at 15
    & 35 gall at 20, caske 264                                  .03604

There can be no doubt that it was an occasion prolific in legend. The
historian Robert Beverley, who was born about fifteen years afterward,
tells us that Governor Berkeley’s proclamation named Charles II.
as “King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and Virginia.” The
document itself, however, calls him “our most gratious soveraigne,
Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, ffrance, & Ireland,” and
makes no mention of Virginia.

[Sidenote: The seal of Virginia.]

William Lee tells us that it was “in consequence of this step” that
the motto _En dat Virginia quintam_ was placed upon the seal of the
colony.[15] Since “this step” was never taken, the statement needs some
qualification. The idea of of designating Virginia as an additional
kingdom to those over which the English sovereign ruled in Europe was
already entertained in 1590 by Edmund Spenser, who dedicated his “Faëry
Queene” to Elizabeth as queen of “England, France,[16] and Ireland,
and of Virginia.”[17] As early as 1619 the London Company adopted a
coat-of-arms, upon which was the motto _En dat Virginia quintum_, in
which the unexpressed noun is _regnum_; “Behold, Virginia gives the
fifth [kingdom].” After the restoration of Charles II. a new seal for
Virginia, adopted about 1663, has the same motto, the effect of which
was to rank Virginia by the side of his Majesty’s other four dominions,
England, Scotland, “France,” and Ireland. We are told by the younger
Richard Henry Lee that in these circumstances originated the famous
epithet “Old Dominion.” In 1702, among several alterations in the
seal, the word _quintum_ was changed to _quintam_, to agree with the
unexpressed noun _coronam_; “Behold, Virginia gives the fifth [crown].”
After the legislative union of England with Scotland in 1707, another
seal, adopted in 1714, substituted _quartam_ for _quintam_.[18]

[Sidenote: Increase in the size of land grants.]

Just how many members of the royalist party came to Virginia while
their young king was off upon his travels, it would be difficult to
say. But there were unquestionably a great many. We have already
remarked upon the very rapid increase of white population, from about
15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670. Along with this there was a marked
increase in the size of the land grants, both the average size and the
maximum; and in this coupling of facts there is great significance, for
they show that the increase of population was predominantly an increase
in the numbers of the upper class, of the people who could afford to
have large estates. In these respects the year 1650 marks an abrupt
change,[19] which may best be shown by a tabular view of the figures:--

            Largest number of acres   Average number of
  Years.        in a single grant.    acres in a grant.

  1632                    350
  1634                  5,350                     719
  1635                  2,000                     380
  1636                  2,000                     351
  1637                  5,350                     445
  1638                  3,000                     423
  1640                  1,300                     405
  1641                    872                     343
  1642                  3,000                     559
  1643                  4,000                     595
  1644                    670                     370
  1645                  1,090                     333
  1646                  1,200                     360
  1647                    650                     361
  1648                  1,800                     412
  1649                  3,500                     522
  1650                  5,350                     677
  1651-55              10,000                     591
  1656-66              10,000                     671
  1667-79              20,000                     890
  1680-89              20,000                     607

Another way of showing the facts is still more striking:--

            Number of grants exceeding
   Years.   5,000 acres.

  1632-50           3
  1651-55           3
  1656-66          20
  1667-79          37
  1680-89          19

[Sidenote: Cavalier families.]

[Sidenote: Ancestry of George Washington.]

[Sidenote: Value of genealogy.]

The increase in the number of slaves after 1650 is a fact of similar
import with the greater size of the estates. All the circumstances
agree in showing that there was a large influx of eminently well-to-do
people. It is well known, moreover, who these people were. It is in the
reign of Charles II. that the student of Virginian history begins to
meet frequently with the familiar names, such as Randolph, Pendleton,
Madison, Mason, Monroe, Cary, Ludwell, Parke, Robinson, Marshall,
Washington, and so many others that have become eminent. All these
were Cavalier families that came to Virginia after the downfall of
Charles I. Whether President Tyler was right in claiming descent from
the Kentish rebel of 1381 is not clear, but there is no doubt that
his first American ancestor, who came to Virginia after the battle of
Worcester, was a gentleman and a royalist.[20] Until recently there
was some uncertainty as to the pedigree of George Washington, but
the researches of Mr. Fitz Gilbert Waters of Salem have conclusively
proved that he was descended from the Washingtons of Sulgrave, in
Northamptonshire, a family that had for generations worthily occupied
positions of honour and trust. In the Civil War the Washingtons were
distinguished royalists. The commander who surrendered Worcester in
1646 to the famous Edward Whalley was Colonel Henry Washington;[21] and
his cousin John, who came to Virginia in 1657, was great-grandfather
of George Washington. After the fashion that prevailed a hundred years
ago, the most illustrious of Americans felt little interest in his
ancestry; but with the keener historic sense and broader scientific
outlook of the present day, the importance of such matters is better
appreciated. The pedigrees of horses, dogs, and fancy pigeons have
a value that is quotable in terms of hard cash. Far more important,
for the student of human affairs, are the pedigrees of men. By no
possible ingenuity of constitution-making or of legislation can a
society made up of ruffians and boors be raised to the intellectual and
moral level of a society made up of well-bred merchants and yeomen,
parsons and lawyers. One might as well expect to see a dray horse
win the Derby. It is, moreover, only when we habitually bear in mind
the threads of individual relationship that connect one country with
another, that we get a really firm and concrete grasp of history.
Without genealogy the study of history is comparatively lifeless. No
excuse is needed, therefore, for giving in this connection a tabulated
abridgment of the discoveries of Mr. Waters concerning the forefathers
of George Washington.[22] Beside the personal interest attaching to
everything associated with that immortal name, this pedigree has
interest and value as being in large measure typical. It is a fair
sample of good English middle-class pedigrees, and it is typical as
regards the ancestry of leading Cavalier families in Virginia; an
inspection of many genealogies of those who came between 1649 and 1670
yields about the same general impression. Moreover, this pedigree is
equally typical as regards the ancestry of leading Puritan families
in New England. The genealogies, for example, of Winthrop, Dudley,
Saltonstall, Chauncey, or Baldwin give the same general impression as
those of Randolph, or Cary, or Cabell, or Lee. The settlers of Virginia
and of New England were opposed to each other in politics, but they
belonged to one and the same stratum of society, and in their personal
characteristics they were of the same excellent quality. To quote
the lines of Sir William Jones, written as a paraphrase of the Greek
epigram of Alcæus inscribed upon my title-page:--


ARMS.--_Argent, two bars and in chief three mullets Gules._

                John Washington,
            of Whitfield, Lancashire, time of Henry VI.
                     |
                     |
                Robert Washington,
            of Warton, Lancashire, 2d son.
                     |
                     |
                John Washington,
            of Warton, m. Margaret Kitson, sister of Sir Thomas Kitson,
            alderman of London.
                     |
                     |
                Lawrence Washington,
            of Gray’s Inn, mayor of Northampton, obtained grant of
            Sulgrave Manor, 1539, d. 1584; m. Anne Pargiter, of Gretworth.
                            |
       +--------------------+---------------------------------+
       |                                                      |
  Robert Washington,                                 Lawrence Washington,
of Sulgrave, b. 1544;                                of Gray’s Inn,
m. Elizabeth Light.                                  register of High
        |                                            Court of Chancery,
        |                                            d. 1619.
        |                                                     |
        |                                                     |
     Lawrence Washington,                            Sir Lawrence Washington,
     of Sulgrave and Brington,                       register of High Court of
     d. 1616; m. Margaret Butler.                    Chancery, d. 1643.
               |                                               |
      +--------+-----+--------------+                          |
      |              |              |                          |
Sir William        Sir John    Rev. Lawrence         Lawrence Washington,
Washington,       Washington,  Washington,           d. 1662; m. Eleanor Gyse.
d. 1643; m. Anne  d. 1678.     M. A., Fellow                   |
Villiers,                      of Brasenose                    |
half-sister of                 College, Oxford,                |
George Villiers,               Rector of Purleigh,             |
Duke of                        d. before 1655.                 |
Buckingham.                            |                       |
      |                                |                       |
      |              +-----------------+                       |
      |              |                 |                       |
Henry Washington,  John        Lawrence Washington,  Elizabeth Washington,
colonel in the    Washington,  b.1635, came to       heiress, d. 1693;
royalist army,    b. 1631,     Virginia, 1657.       m. Earl Ferrers.
governor of       d. 1677;
Worcester,        came to
d. 1664.          Virginia,
                  1657; m.
                  Anne Pope.
                     |
                  Lawrence Washington,
                  d. 1697; m. Mildred, dau. of Augustine Warner.
                     |
                     |
                  Augustine Washington,
                  b. 1694, d. 1749; m. Mary Ball.
                     |
                     |
                  GEORGE WASHINGTON,
                  b. 1732, d. 1799.
                  _First President of the United States._

        “What constitutes a State?
    Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound,
        Thick wall or moated gate;
    Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
        Not bays and broad-armed ports,
    Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
        Not starred and spangled courts
    Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
        No:--MEN, high-minded MEN,
           *       *       *       *       *
        “Men who their duties know,
    But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,
        Prevent the long-aimed blow,
    And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain:
        These constitute a State.”[23]

Such men were the Cavaliers of Virginia and the Puritans of New England.

[Sidenote: Importance of the Cavalier element in Virginia.]

There can be little doubt that these Cavaliers were the men who
made the greatness of Virginia. To them it is due that her history
represents ideas and enshrines events which mankind will always find
interesting. It is apt to be the case that men who leave their country
for reasons connected with conscience and principle, men who have once
consecrated themselves to a cause, are picked men for ability and
character. Such men are likely to exert upon any community which they
may enter an influence immeasurably greater than an equal number of men
taken at random. It matters little what side they may have espoused.
Very few of the causes for which brave men have fought one another have
been wholly right or wholly wrong. Our politics may be those of Samuel
Adams, but we must admit that the Thomas Hutchinson type of mind and
character is one which society could ill afford to lose. Of the gallant
Cavaliers who drew the sword for King Charles, there were many who no
more approved of his crooked methods and despotic aims than Hutchinson
approved of the Stamp Act. No better illustration could be found than
Lord Falkland, some of whose kinsmen emigrated to Virginia and played a
conspicuous part there. A proper combination of circumstances was all
that was required to bring the children of these royalists into active
political alliance with the children of the Cromwellians.

[Sidenote: Differences between New England and Virginia.]

Both in Virginia and in New England, then, the principal element of
the migration consisted of picked men and women of the same station in
life, and differing only in their views of civil and ecclesiastical
polity. The differences that grew up between the relatively
aristocratic type of society in Virginia and the relatively democratic
type in New England were due not at all to differences in the social
quality of the settlers, but in some degree to their differences in
church politics, and in a far greater degree to the different economic
circumstances of Virginia and New England. It is worth our while to
point out some of these contrasts and to indicate their effect upon the
local government, the nature of which, perhaps more than anything else,
determines the character of the community as aristocratic or democratic.

[Sidenote: Settlement of New England by congregations.]

That extreme Puritan theory of ecclesiastical polity, according to
which each congregation was to be a little self-governing republic,
had much to do with the way in which New England was colonized. The
settlers came in congregations, led by their favourite ministers,--such
men, for example, as Higginson and Cotton, Hooker and Davenport. When
such men, famous in England for their bold preaching and imperilled
thereby, decided to move to America, a considerable number of their
parishioners would decide to accompany them, and similarly minded
members of neighbouring churches would leave their own pastor and join
in the migration. Such a group of people, arriving on the coast of
Massachusetts, would naturally select some convenient locality, where
they might build their houses near together and all go to the same
church.

[Sidenote: Land grants in Massachusetts.]

This migration, therefore, was a movement, not of individuals or of
separate families, but of church-congregations, and it continued to
be so as the settlers made their way inland and westward. The first
river towns of Connecticut were thus founded by congregations coming
from Dorchester, Cambridge, and Watertown. This kind of settlement
was favoured by the government of Massachusetts, which made grants of
land, not to individuals but to companies of people who wished to live
together and attend the same church.

[Sidenote: Small farms.]

It was also favoured by economic circumstances. The soil of New England
was not favourable to the cultivation of great quantities of staple
articles, such as rice or tobacco, so that there was nothing to tempt
people to undertake extensive plantations. Most of the people lived
on small farms, each family raising but little more than enough food
for its own support; and the small size of the farms made it possible
to have a good many in a compact neighbourhood. It appeared also that
towns could be more easily defended against the Indians than scattered
plantations; and this doubtless helped to keep people together,
although if there had been any strong inducement for solitary pioneers
to plunge into the great woods, as in later years so often happened at
the West, it is not likely that any dread of the savages would have
hindered them.

[Sidenote: Township and village.]

Thus the early settlers of New England came to live in townships. A
township would consist of about as many farms as could be disposed
within convenient distance from the meeting-house, where all the
inhabitants, young and old, gathered every Sunday, coming on horseback
or afoot. The meeting-house was thus centrally situated, and near
it was the town pasture or “common,” with the school-house and the
blockhouse, or rude fortress for defence against the Indians. For the
latter building some commanding position was apt to be selected, and
hence we so often find the old village streets of New England running
along elevated ridges or climbing over beetling hilltops. Around the
meeting-house and common the dwellings gradually clustered into a
village, and after a while the tavern, store, and town-house made their
appearance.

[Sidenote: Social position of settlers in New England.]

Among the people who thus tilled the farms and built up the villages of
New England, the differences in what we should call social position,
though noticeable, were not extreme. While in England some had been
esquires or country magistrates, or “lords of the manor,”--a phrase
which does not mean a member of the peerage, but a landed proprietor
with dependent tenants,--some had been yeomen, or persons holding farms
by some free kind of tenure; some had been artisans or tradesmen in
cities. All had for many generations been more or less accustomed to
self-government and to public meetings for discussing local affairs.
That self-government, especially as far as church matters were
concerned, they were stoutly bent upon maintaining and extending.
Indeed, that was what they had crossed the ocean for. Under these
circumstances they developed a kind of government which has remained
practically unchanged down to the present day. In the town meeting the
government is the entire adult male population. Its merits, from a
genuine democratic point of view, have long been recognized, but in
these days of rampant political quackery they are worth recalling to
mind, even at the cost of a brief digression.

[Sidenote: Some merits of the town meeting.]

[Sidenote: The “magic fund” delusion.]

Within its proper sphere, government by town meeting is the form
of government most effectively under watch and control. Everything
is done in the full daylight of publicity. The specific objects
for which public money is to be appropriated are discussed in the
presence of everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these
objects, or of the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an
opportunity to declare his opinions. Under this form of government
people are not so liable to bewildering delusions as under other
forms. I refer especially to the delusion that “the Government” is a
sort of mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible fund of
wealth, and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of “the
People.” Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed,
is very common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is
the prolific root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug
upon which political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In
point of fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own,
has ever existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any
money for public purposes which it did not first take from its own
people,--unless when it may have plundered it from some other people in
victorious warfare.

The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that
“the Government” is “the People.” Although he may think loosely about
the government of his state or the still more remote government at
Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs
are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small
value.

[Sidenote: Educational value of the town meeting.]

In the kind of discussion which it provokes, in the necessity of facing
argument with argument and of keeping one’s temper under control, the
town meeting is the best political training school in existence. Its
educational value is far higher than that of the newspaper, which, in
spite of its many merits as a diffuser of information, is very apt
to do its best to bemuddle and sophisticate plain facts. The period
when town meetings were most important from the wide scope of their
transactions was the period of earnest and sometimes stormy discussion
that ushered in our Revolutionary War. In those days great principles
of government were discussed with a wealth of knowledge and stated with
masterly skill in town meeting.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Primogeniture and entail in Virginia.]

In Virginia the economic circumstances were very different from those
of New England, and the effects were seen in a different kind of local
institutions. In New England the system of small holdings facilitated
the change from primogeniture to the Kentish custom of gavelkind,
with which many of the settlers were already familiar, in which the
property of an intestate is equally divided among the children.[24] In
Virginia, on the other hand, the large estates, cultivated by servile
labour, were kept together by the combined customs of primogeniture and
entail, which lasted until they were overthrown by Thomas Jefferson in
1776. In this circumstance, more than in anything else, originated the
more aristocratic features in the local institutions of Virginia. To
this should be added the facts that before the eighteenth century there
was a large servile class of whites, to which there was nothing even
remotely analogous in New England; and that the introduction of negro
slavery, which was beginning to assume noticeable dimensions about
1670, served to affix a stigma upon manual labour.

[Sidenote: Virginia parishes.]

[Sidenote: The vestry a close corporation.]

In view of this group of circumstances we need not wonder that in Old
Virginia there were no town meetings. The distances between plantations
coöperated with the distinction between classes to prevent the growth
of such an institution. The English parish, with its churchwardens and
vestry and clerk, was reproduced in Virginia under the same name, but
with some noteworthy peculiarities. If the whole body of ratepayers had
assembled in vestry meeting, to enact by-laws and assess taxes, the
course of development would have been like that of the New England town
meeting. But instead of this the vestry, which exercised the chief
authority in the parish, was composed of twelve chosen men. This was
not government by a primary assembly, it was representative government.
At first the twelve vestrymen were elected by the people of the parish,
and thus resembled the selectmen of New England; but in 1662 “they
obtained the power of filling vacancies in their own number,” so that
they became what is called a “close corporation,” and the people had
nothing to do with choosing them. Strictly speaking, that was not
representative government; it was a step on the road that leads towards
oligarchical or despotic government. It was, as we shall see, one of
the steps ineffectually opposed in Bacon’s rebellion.

[Sidenote: Powers of the vestry.]

It was the vestry, thus constituted, that apportioned the parish taxes,
appointed the churchwardens, presented the minister for induction into
office, and acted as overseers of the poor. The minister presided in
all vestry meetings. His salary was paid in tobacco, and in 1696 it
was fixed by law at 16,000 pounds of tobacco yearly. In many parishes
the churchwardens were the collectors of the parish taxes. The other
officers, such as the sexton and the parish clerk, were appointed
either by the minister or by the vestry.

With the local government thus administered, we see that the larger
part of the people had little directly to do. Nevertheless, in those
small neighbourhoods government could be kept in full sight of the
people, and so long as its proceedings went on in broad daylight and
were sustained by public sentiment, all was well. As Jefferson said,
“The vestrymen are usually the most discreet farmers, so distributed
through the parish that every part of it may be under the immediate
eye of some one of them. They are well acquainted with the details
and economy of private life, and they find sufficient inducements to
execute their charge well, in their philanthropy, in the approbation of
their neighbours, and the distinction which that gives them.”[25]

[Sidenote: The county was the unit of representation.]

The difference, however, between the New England township and the
Virginia parish, in respect of self-government, was striking enough. We
have now to note a further difference. In New England, the township was
the unit of representation in the colonial legislature; but in Virginia
the parish was not the unit of representation. The county was that
unit. In the colonial legislature of Virginia the representatives sat,
not for parishes but for counties. The difference is very significant.
As the political life of New England was in a manner built up out of
the political life of the towns, so the political life of Virginia was
built up out of the political life of the counties. This was partly
because the vast plantations were not grouped about a compact village
nucleus like the small farms at the North, and partly because there was
not in Virginia that Puritan theory of the church according to which
each congregation is a self-governing democracy. The conditions which
made the New England town meeting were absent. The only alternative
was some kind of representative government, and for this the county
was a small enough area. The county in Virginia was much smaller
than in Massachusetts or Connecticut. In a few instances the county
consisted of only a single parish; in some cases it was divided into
two parishes, but oftener into three or more.

[Sidenote: The county court was virtually a close corporation.]

In Virginia, as in England and in New England, the county was an area
for the administration of justice. There were usually in each county
eight justices of the peace, and their court was the counterpart of the
quarter sessions in England. They were appointed by the governor, but
it was customary for them to nominate candidates for the governor to
appoint, so that practically the court filled its own vacancies and was
a close corporation, like the parish vestry. Such an arrangement tended
to keep the general supervision and control of things in the hands of
a few families.

[Sidenote: The county seat or Court House.]

This county court usually met as often as once a month in some
convenient spot answering to the shire town of England or New England.
More often than not, the place originally consisted of the court-house
and very little else, and was named accordingly from the name of
the county, as Hanover Court House or Fairfax Court House; and the
small shire towns that have grown up in such spots often retain these
names to the present day. Such names occur commonly in Virginia, West
Virginia, and South Carolina, and occasionally elsewhere. Their number
has diminished from the tendency to omit the phrase “Court House,”
leaving the name of the county for that of the shire town, as for
example in Culpeper, Va. In New England the process of naming has been
just the reverse; as in Hartford County, Conn., or Worcester County,
Mass., which have taken their names from the shire towns. Here, as in
so many cases, whole chapters of history are wrapped up in geographical
names.[26]

[Sidenote: Powers of the court.]

[Sidenote: The sheriff.]

The county court in Virginia had jurisdiction in criminal actions
not involving peril of life or limb, and in civil suits where the
sum at stake exceeded twenty-five shillings. Smaller suits could be
tried by a single justice. The court also had charge of the probate
and administration of wills. The court appointed its own clerk, who
kept the county records. It superintended the construction and repair
of bridges and highways, and for this purpose divided the county
into “precincts,” and appointed annually for each precinct a highway
surveyor. The court also seems to have appointed constables, one for
each precinct. The justices could themselves act as coroners, but
annually two or more coroners for each parish were appointed by the
governor. As we have seen that the parish taxes--so much for salaries
of minister and clerk, so much for care of church buildings, so much
for the relief of the poor, etc.--were computed and assessed by the
vestry; so the county taxes, for care of court-house and jail, roads
and bridges, coroner’s fees, and allowances to the representatives sent
to the colonial legislature, were computed and assessed by the county
court. The general taxes for the colony were estimated by a committee
of the legislature, as well as the county’s share of the colony tax.
The taxes for the county, and sometimes the taxes for the parish also,
were collected by the sheriff. They were usually paid, not in money,
but in tobacco; and the sheriff was the custodian of this tobacco,
responsible for its proper disposal. The sheriff was thus not only
the officer for executing the judgments of the court, but he was also
county treasurer and collector, and thus exercised powers almost as
great as those of the sheriff in England in the twelfth century. He
also presided over elections for representatives to the legislature. It
is interesting to observe how this very important officer was chosen.
“Each year the court presented the names of three of its members to
the governor, who appointed one, generally the senior justice, to be
the sheriff of the county for the ensuing year.”[27] Here again we see
this close corporation, the county court, keeping the control of things
within its own hands.

[Sidenote: The county lieutenant.]

One other important county officer needs to be mentioned. In early
New England each town had its train-band or company of militia, and
the companies in each county united to form the county regiment. In
Virginia it was just the other way. Each county raised a certain number
of troops, and because it was not convenient for the men to go many
miles from home in assembling for purposes of drill, the county was
subdivided into military districts, each with its company, according
to rules laid down by the governor. The military command in each
county was vested in the county lieutenant, an officer answering in
many respects to the lord lieutenant of the English shire at that
period. Usually he was a member of the governor’s council, and as such
exercised sundry judicial functions. He bore the honorary title of
“colonel,” and was to some extent regarded as the governor’s deputy;
but in later times his duties were confined entirely to military
matters.[28]

If now we sum up the contrasts between local government in Virginia and
that in New England, we observe:--

1. That in New England the management of local affairs was mostly in
the hands of town officers, the county being superadded for certain
purposes, chiefly judicial; while in Virginia the management was
chiefly in the hands of county officers, though certain functions,
chiefly ecclesiastical, were reserved to the parish.

2. That in New England the local magistrates were almost always, with
the exception of justices, chosen by the people; while in Virginia,
though some of them were nominally appointed by the governor, yet in
practice they generally contrived to appoint themselves,--in other
words, the local boards practically filled their own vacancies and were
self-perpetuating.

[Sidenote: Jefferson’s opinion of township government.]

These differences are striking and profound. There can be no doubt
that, as Thomas Jefferson clearly saw, in the long run the interests
of political liberty are much safer under the New England system
than under the Virginia system. Jefferson said: “Those wards, called
townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments,
and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the
wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its
preservation.[29] ... As Cato, then, concluded every speech with
the words _Carthago delenda est_, so do I every opinion with the
injunction: ‘Divide the counties into wards!’”[30]

[Sidenote: “Court-day.”]

We must, however, avoid the mistake of making too much of this
contrast. As already hinted, in those rural societies where people
generally knew one another, its effects were not so far-reaching
as they would be in the more complicated society of to-day. Even
though Virginia had not the town meeting, “it had its familiar
court-day,” which “was a holiday for all the countryside, especially
in the fall and spring. From all directions came in the people on
horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the court-house green assembled,
in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes,--the hunter from
the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the
grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were settled, and new ones made;
there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election times were
near, stump-speaking.”[31]

[Sidenote: Virginia prolific in great leaders.]

For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the
matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were
made on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were
discussed in Massachusetts town meetings when representatives were to
be chosen for the legislature. Such questions generally related to
some real or alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal
governor, who, being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to
have ideas and purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the
people. This perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented
British imperial interference with American local self-government, was
an excellent schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and
for Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two
leading colonies cordially supported each other, and their political
characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which
each was especially distinguished. The Virginia system, concentrating
the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county
families, was eminently favourable for developing skilful and vigorous
leadership. And while in the history of Massachusetts during the
Revolution we are chiefly impressed with the remarkable degree in
which the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training
that nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion
can impart; on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us--in
Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Madison, and Marshall, to mention
no others--such a group of leaders as has seldom been equalled.




CHAPTER XI.

BACON’S REBELLION.


[Sidenote: The Navigation Act of 1651.]

The rapid development of maritime commerce in the seventeenth century
soon furnished a new occasion for human folly and greed to assert
themselves in acts of legislation. Crude mediæval methods of robbery
began to give place to the ingenious modern methods in which men’s
pockets are picked under the specious guise of public policy. Your
mediæval baron would allow no ship or boat to pass his Rhenish castle
without paying what he saw fit to extort for the privilege, and at the
end of his evil career he was apt to compound with conscience and buy
a ticket to heaven by building a chapel to the Virgin. Your modern
manufacturer obtains legislative aid in fleecing his fellow-countrymen,
while he seeks popularity by bestowing upon the public a part of his
ill-gotten gains in the shape of a new college or a town library. This
change from the more brutal to the more subtle devices for living upon
the fruits of other men’s labour was conspicuous during the seventeenth
century, and one of the most glaring instances of it was the Navigation
Act of 1651, which forbade the importation of goods into England except
in English ships, or ships of the nation that produced the goods.
This foolish act was intended to cripple the Dutch carrying trade, and
speedily led to a lamentable and disgraceful war between England and
Holland. In its application to America it meant that English colonies
could trade only with England in English ships, and it was generally
greeted with indignation. Cromwell, however, did little or nothing to
enforce it in America. Charles II.’s government was more active in the
matter and soon became detested. One of the earliest causes of the
American Revolution was thus set in operation. The policy begun in the
Navigation Act was one of the grievances that kept Massachusetts in a
chronic quarrel with Charles II. during the whole of his reign, and it
was a source of no less irritation in Virginia.

[Sidenote: The second Navigation Act.]

A second Navigation Act, passed at the beginning of the reign of
Charles II., prescribed that “no goods or commodities whatsoever shall
be imported into or exported from any of the king’s lands, islands,
plantations, or territories in Asia, Africa, or America, in any other
than English, Irish, or plantation built ships, and whereof the master
and at least three-fourths of the mariners shall be Englishmen, under
forfeiture of ships and goods.” It was further provided that “no
sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic and other dyeing
woods, of the growth or manufacture of our Asian, African, or American
colonies, shall be shipped from the said colonies to any place but to
England, Ireland, or to some other of his Majesty’s said plantations,
there to be landed, under forfeiture of goods and ships.”

[Sidenote: Bland’s remonstrance.]

The motive in these restrictions is obvious enough. Their effects were
ably set forth in 1677, in a memorial by John Bland, a sagacious London
merchant, whose grasp of the principles of political economy was very
remarkable for that age.[32] In order that merchants in England might
buy Virginia tobacco very cheap, the demand for it was restricted by
cutting off the export to foreign markets. In order that they might
sell their goods to Virginia at exorbitant prices, the Virginians were
prohibited from buying anything elsewhere. The shameless rapacity
of these merchants was such as might have been expected under such
fostering circumstances. If the planter shipped his own tobacco to
England, the charges for freight would be put so high as to leave him
scarcely any margin of profit.

[Sidenote: Some direct consequences.]

Such restrictions were apt to have other effects than those
contemplated. The “protected” merchants chuckled over their sagacity
in keeping Dutchmen away from Virginia, for thus it would become
possible to make the Dutchmen pay three or four shillings in England
for tobacco that cost a ha’penny in the colony. But the worthy burghers
of the Netherlands took a different view of the matter. They began
planting tobacco for themselves in the East Indies, so that it became
less necessary to buy it of the English. Another somewhat curious
consequence may be stated in Bland’s own words: “Again, if the
Hollanders must not trade to Virginia, how shall the planters dispose
of their tobacco? The English will not buy it [all], for what the
Hollander carried thence was a sort of tobacco not ... used by us in
England, but merely to transport for Holland. Will it not then perish
on the planters’ hands? which undoubtedly is not only an apparent loss
of so much stock and commoditie to the plantations who suffer thereby,
but for want of its employment an infinite prejudice to the commerce in
general.”

[Sidenote: Some indirect consequences.]

There was yet another aspect of the matter. “I demand then, in the next
place, which way shall the charge of the governments be maintained, if
the Hollanders be debarred trade in Virginia and Maryland, or anything
raised to defray the constant and yearly levies for the securing the
inhabitants from invasions of the Indians? How shall the forts and
public places be built and repaired, with many other incident charges
daily arising, which must be taken care for, else all will come to
destruction? for when the Hollanders traded thither, they paid upon
every anchor of brandy (which is about 25 gallons) 5 shillings import
brought in by them, and upon every hogshead of tobacco carried thence
10 shillings; and since they were debarred trade, our English, as they
did not, whilst the Hollander traded there, pay anything, neither
would they when they traded not ...; so that all these charges being
taxed on the poor planters, it hath so impoverished them that they
scarce can recover wherewith to cover their nakedness. As foreign
trade makes rich and prosperous any country that hath within it any
staple commodities to invite them thither, so it makes men industrious,
striving with others to gather together into societies, and building of
towns, and nothing doth it sooner than the concourse of shipping, as we
may see before our eyes, Dover and Deal what they are grown into, the
one by the Flanders trade, the other by ships riding in the Downs.”

[Sidenote: Exposure of the humbug.]

But if in spite of all these arguments the Navigation Act must stand,
then, says this acute writer, “let me on the behalf of the said
colonies of Virginia and Maryland make these following proposals, which
I hope will appear but equitable:--

“_First_, that the traders to Virginia and Maryland from England shall
furnish and supply the planters and inhabitants of those colonies with
all sorts of commodities and necessaries which they may want or desire,
at as cheap rates and prices as the Hollanders used to have when the
Hollander was admitted to trade thither.

“_Secondly_, that the said traders out of England to those colonies
shall not only buy of the planters such tobacco ... as is fit for
England, but take off all that shall be yearly made by them, at as good
rates and prices as the Hollanders used to give for the same, by bills
of exchange or otherwise....

“_Thirdly_, that if any of the inhabitants or planters of the said
colonies shall desire to ship his tobacco or goods for England, that
the traders from England to Virginia and Maryland shall let them have
freight in their ships at as low and cheap rates as they used to have
when the Hollanders and other nations traded thither.

“_Fourthly_, that for maintenance of the governments, raising of forces
to withstand the invasions of the Indians, building of forts and other
public works needful in such new discovered countries, the traders
from England to pay there in Virginia and Maryland as much yearly as
was received of the Hollanders and strangers as did trade thither,
whereby the country may not have the whole burden to lie on their hard
and painful labour and industry, which ought to be encouraged but not
discouraged.

“Thus having proposed in my judgment what is both just and equal, to
all such as would not have the Hollanders permitted to trade into
Virginia and Maryland, I hope if they will not agree hereunto, it will
easily appear it is their own profits and interest they seek, not those
colonies’s nor your Majesty’s service, but in contrary the utter ruin
of all the inhabitants and planters there; and if they perish, that
vast territory must be left desolate, to the exceeding disadvantage of
this nation and your Majesty’s honour and revenue.”

[Sidenote: Bland’s own proposal.]

After this keen exposure of the protectionist humbug the author
concludes by offering his own proposal. “Let all Hollanders and other
nations whatsoever freely trade into Virginia and Maryland, and
bring thither and carry thence whatever they please,” with only one
qualification. It had been urged that, without legislative aid, English
shipping could not compete successfully with that of other countries.
Insatiableness of commercial greed begets a fidgetty, unreasoning
dread of anything like free competition. Just as the Frenchman puts
tariff duties upon German goods because he knows he cannot compete with
Germans in a free market, while at the same moment the German puts
tariff duties upon French goods because he knows he cannot compete
with Frenchmen in a free market, so it was with men’s arguments two
centuries ago. It was urged that French and Dutch ships could be
built and navigated at smaller expense than English ships; and this
point our author meets by suggesting a differential tonnage-duty “to
counterpoise the cheapness,” only great care must be taken not to make
it prohibitory.

[Sidenote: Distress caused by low price of tobacco.]

The principal effect of the Navigation Act upon Virginia and Maryland
was to lower the price of tobacco while it increased the cost of all
articles imported from England. As tobacco was the circulating medium
in these colonies, the effect was practically a depreciation of the
currency with the usual disastrous consequences. There was an inflation
of prices, and all commodities became harder to get. Efforts were
made from time to time to contract the currency by curtailing the
tobacco crop. It was proposed, for example, in 1662, that no tobacco
should be planted in Maryland or Virginia for the following year. Such
proposals recurred from time to time, but it proved impossible to
secure concerted action between the two colonies. In 1664 the whole
tobacco crop of Virginia was worth less than £3 15s. for each person
in the colony. In 1666 so much tobacco was left on the hands of the
planters that a determined effort was made to enforce the cessation of
planting, and after much discussion an agreement was reached between
Maryland, Virginia, and the new settlements in Carolina, but the plan
was defeated by disapproval in Maryland which led to a veto from Lord
Baltimore. In 1667 the price of tobacco fell to a ha’penny a pound,
and Thomas Ludwell, writing to Lord Berkeley in London, “declared that
there were but three influences restraining the smaller landowners of
Virginia from rising in rebellion, namely, faith in the mercy of God,
loyalty to the king, and affection for the government.”[33]

[Sidenote: The Surry protest, 1673.]

The discontent sometimes took the form of a disposition to resist the
collection of taxes, as in Surry, in December, 1673, when “a company of
seditious and rude people to y^e number of ffourteene did unlawfully
Assemble at y^e pish church of Lawnes Creeke, w^{th} Intent to declare
they would not pay theire publiq taxes, & y^t they Expected diverse
oth^{rs} to meete them, who faileing they did not put theire wicked
design in Execution.” Nevertheless these persons assembled again,
some three weeks later, in an old field “called y^e Divell’s field,”
where they passed divers lawless resolutions interspersed with heated
harangues. In particular one Roger Delke did say, “we will burne all
before one shall Suffer,” and when brought before the magistrates, “y^e
s^d Delke Acknowledged he said y^e same words, & being asked why they
meet at y^e church he said by reason theire taxes were soe unjust, &
they would not pay it.”[34] The ringleaders in this affair were fined,
but Governor Berkeley remitted the fines, provided “they acknowledged
their faults and pay the court charges.”

[Sidenote: The Arlington-Culpeper grant, 1673.]

Another cause of trouble was the king’s recklessness in rewarding
public services or gratifying favourites by extensive grants of wild
land in America. It was an easy way to pay debts, for it cost the king
nothing, and all the labour and expense of making the grant valuable
fell upon the grantee. To many of these grants there could, of course,
be no objection. Those that founded the Carolinas and Pennsylvania and
the Hudson Bay Company were all proper enough. The trouble began when
territory already granted and occupied by Englishmen was given away
again. There were some complicated and obscure instances of this in
New England, but a flagrant and exasperating case occurred in Virginia
in 1673, when Charles made a grant of the whole country to the Earl of
Arlington and Lord Culpeper, to hold for thirty-one years at a yearly
rent of 40 shillings to be paid at Michaelmas.

[Sidenote: Some of its effects.]

The practical effect of this grant was to convert Virginia into
something like a proprietary government, with Arlington and Culpeper
for proprietors. It was, of course, not the intention to disturb
individuals in the possession of lands already acquired by a valid
title; but escheated lands were to go to these proprietors instead of
the crown, and there was an opportunity for grievous injustice, for
many escheated lands were occupied by persons who had purchased them
in good faith. The lord proprietors were to receive the revenues of
the colony, to appoint all public officers, and to present pastors
for installation. In short, the entire control of the internal
administration of the colony was to be placed in their hands, and
against such favourites of the king an appeal at any time was likely
to be of little avail. It is needless to add that the grant was made
without consulting the Virginians. For people who had lavished so much
loyalty upon a worthless sovereign, this was a scurvy requital. To
find its match for ingratitude one must go to the story of Inkle and
Yarico. No sooner did the House of Burgesses hear of it than they sent
commissioners to England to make an energetic protest. They found the
king rather surprised to hear that the Virginians cared anything about
such a trifle; he promised to satisfy everybody, and that naturally
took some time, so that the matter was still under discussion when
things came to a blaze in Virginia.

[Sidenote: Character of Sir William Berkeley.]

The unprincipled government of Charles II. in England was matched in
some respects by the oppressive administration of Sir William Berkeley
in Virginia. We have already met this gentleman on several occasions;
it is now time to notice him more particularly. He was son of Sir
Maurice Berkeley, who was one of the members of the London Company
when it was first organized in 1606. Several members of the family
were interested in American affairs. Sir William’s elder brother, Lord
Berkeley of Stratton, was a favourite of Charles II., and one of the
group of proprietors to whom that king granted Carolina in 1663. Sir
William was an aristocrat to the ends of his fingers, a man of velvet
and gold lace, a brave soldier, a devoted husband, a chivalrous friend,
and withal as narrow and bigoted and stubborn a creature as one could
find anywhere. He had no sympathy with common people, nor any very
clear sense of duty toward them. When he first arrived in Virginia in
1642, at the age of thirty-four, he was considered very gracious and
affable in manners, and during the ten years of his first governorship
he seems to have been generally popular. From 1652 to 1660 he lived in
retirement on his rural estate of Greenspring near Jamestown, where he
had an orchard of more than 2,000 fruit trees--apples, pears, quinces,
peaches, and apricots--and a stable of seventy fine horses. There he
entertained Cavalier guests and drank healths to King Charles until he
was once more called to Jamestown to be governor. In 1661 he went to
London and stayed for a year, and it was afterwards thought that his
visit with his froward and hot-tempered brother[35] worked a change
in him for the worse. Berkeley’s errand in London was to oppose an
attempt which the old London Company was making to have its charter
restored; the people of Virginia had long ago passed the stage at which
they regretted the overthrow of the Company. During his stay in London,
Berkeley saw one of his own plays performed at the theatre, for this
courtier and Cavalier dabbled in literature. Of this tragi-comedy, “The
Lost Lady,” Pepys tells us in his Diary that at first he did not care
much for it, but liked it better the next time he saw it.[36]

[Sidenote: Corruption and extortion.]

[Sidenote: The Long Assembly, 1661-1676.]

[Sidenote: Berkeley’s violent temper.]

After Berkeley’s return to Virginia the evils of Charles’s
misgovernment soon began to show themselves. A swarm of place-hunters
beset the king, who carelessly gave them appointments in Virginia, or
recommended them to Berkeley for places. Judges and sheriffs, revenue
collectors and parsons, were thus appointed without reference to
fitness, with the natural results; the law was ill-administered, the
public money embezzled, and the church scandalized. The custom-house
charges on exported tobacco afforded chances for extortion and
blackmailing, of which abundant advantage was taken, and Berkeley was
not the sort of man who was quick to punish the rogues of his own
party. Enemies accused him of profiting by the maladministration of his
officials, and he himself confessed in a rather cynical letter to Lord
Arlington that, while advancing years had taken away his ambition, they
had left him covetous. A little group of wealthy planters, friends
of Berkeley, obtained places on the council, and contrived to have
everything their own way for several years. With their aid the governor
tried to do away with the popular election of representatives. Amid
the blaze of royalist exultation over the restoration of monarchy,
the House of Burgesses elected in 1661 contained a large majority
of members who believed in high prerogative and divine right; and
Berkeley, having thus secured a legislature that was quite to his mind,
kept it alive for fifteen years, until 1676, simply by the ingenious
expedient of _adjourning_ it from year to year, and refusing to issue
writs for a new election. The effect of such things was to carry more
than one staunch Cavalier over into what was by no means a Puritan
but none the less a strong opposition party. As this opposition could
not find adequate voice in the legislature, it became ready for an
explosion. As Berkeley’s old popularity ebbed away he grew arrogant
and cross, and now and then some instance of mean vindictiveness
swelled the rising tide of hatred against him. He became subject to
fits of violent passion. The famous Quaker preacher, William Edmundson,
who visited Virginia in 1672, called on the governor and sought to
intercede with him for the Society of Friends, the members of which
were shamefully treated in that colony. “He was very peevish and
brittle,” says Edmundson, “and I could fasten nothing on him, with all
the soft arguments I could use.... The next day was the men’s meeting
at William Wright’s house [where I met] Major-General Bennett....
He asked me ‘How I was treated by the governor?’ I told him ‘he was
brittle and peevish.’... He asked me ‘if the governor called me dog,
rogue, etc.’ I said ‘No.’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘you took him in his best
humour, those being his usual terms when he is angry, for he is an
enemy to every appearance of good.’”[37]

[Sidenote: Beginning of the Indian war, 1675.]

Such was the governor of Virginia and such the state of things there,
when to the many troubles that were goading the people to rebellion
the horrors of the tomahawk and scalping-knife were suddenly added.
In 1672, after a fearful struggle of twenty years’ duration, the Five
Nations of New York had completely overthrown and nearly annihilated
their kinsmen the Susquehannocks. The defeated barbarians, slowly
retreating southward, roamed on both sides of the Potomac, while
parties of the victors, mostly from the Seneca tribe, pursued and
harassed them. Early in the summer of 1675 some Algonquins of the
Doeg tribe, dwelling in Stafford County, not far from the site of
Fredericksburg, got into a dispute with one of the settlers and stole
some of his pigs. The thieves were pursued, and in the chase one or two
of them were shot. A few days afterward a herdsman was found mortally
wounded at the door of his cabin, and said with his dying breath that
it was Doegs who had done it. Then the county lieutenant of Stafford
turned out with his militia to punish the offenders. This officer
was Colonel George Mason, whose cavalry troop had gone down before
Cromwell’s resistless blows in the crowning mercy at Worcester. He was
great-grandfather of the George Mason who sat in the Federal Convention
of 1787. One party of Colonel Mason’s men overtook and slew eleven of
the Algonquins, and another party at some distance in the forest had
already shot fourteen red men, when a chief came running up to Colonel
Mason and told him that these latter were friendly Susquehannocks,
and that the murderers of the herdsman were neither Algonquins nor
Susquehannocks, but Senecas. The firing was instantly stopped, but the
unfortunate affair had evil consequences. Murders by Indians along the
Potomac became frequent. The Susquehannocks occupied an old blockhouse
on the Maryland side of the river, and a force of Marylanders,
commanded by Major Thomas Truman, marched out to dislodge them.

[Sidenote: John Washington.]

At the request of the Maryland government, Virginia sent a party
to coöperate in this task. Its commander bore a name which his
great-grandson was to make forever illustrious. Colonel John Washington
had come over from England in 1657, with his younger brother Lawrence,
and settled in Westmoreland County. He was now forty-four years old, a
man of wealth and influence, a leading judge, and member of the House
of Burgesses.

[Sidenote: The five Susquehannock envoys.]

When the Virginia troops crossed the Potomac they found their Maryland
allies assembled before the blockhouse, with five Susquehannocks in
custody. These Indians were envoys who had come out for a parley, but
had apparently taken alarm and sought to escape, whereupon Major Truman
seized and detained them until the Virginians should arrive. Then
Colonel Washington, with his next in command, Major Isaac Allerton,
proceeded to interrogate the Indians, while Major Truman listened in
silence. Washington demanded satisfaction for the murders and other
outrages committed in Virginia, but the Indians denied everything and
declared that their deadly enemies the Senecas were the sole offenders.
Washington then asked how it happened that several canoe-loads of
beef and pork, stolen from the plantations, had been carried into
the Susquehannock fort; was it their foes the Senecas who were thus
supplying them with food? And how did it happen that a party of
Susquehannocks just captured in Virginia were dressed in the clothes of
Englishmen lately murdered? The falsehood was too palpable. The guilt
of the Susquehannocks was plain, and they must either make amends or
taste the rigours of war.

There can be little doubt that Colonel Washington was right. Then,
as always until after 1763, the Long House was from end to end the
steadfast ally of the English, and nothing could be more unlikely than
that one of its tribes should have been guilty of these murders. It
is quite clear that the Susquehannocks lied, with the double purpose
of saving themselves and bringing down vengeance upon the Senecas.
The first murders had been committed by Algonquins, and evidently
the Susquehannocks had joined in the work in retaliation for the
unfortunate mistake committed by Colonel Mason’s men.

[Sidenote: The killing of the envoys.]

At the close of the conference Major Truman called to Colonel
Washington, asking if these were not impudent rogues to deny the
murders they had done, when at that very moment the corpses of nine of
their own tribe were lying unburied at Hurston’s plantation, where in
a fight the defenders of the place had just slain them. As the envoys
persisted in denying that these dead Indians were Susquehannocks,
Washington suggested that they should be taken to Hurston’s and
confronted with the bodies. So Truman’s men marched away with the five
envoys, and presently put them to death, “w^{ch} was occation,” says
one of the Virginian witnesses, “y^t much amaized & startled us & ou^r
Comanders, being a thing y^t was never imagined or expected.”[38]

The killing of these envoys was in violation of a rule that holds in
all warfare, whether savage or civilized, and Truman was impeached for
it in the Maryland assembly; but owing to an obstinate disagreement
between the two houses as to the penalty to be inflicted, he escaped
without further punishment than the loss of his seat in the council.

[Sidenote: Berkeley’s perverseness.]

[Sidenote: Indian atrocities.]

Colonel Washington’s force proved too small to hold in check the
infuriated Susquehannocks, who seem to have entered into alliance with
the Algonquins of the country. Soon the whole border, from the Potomac
to the falls of the James, was swarming with painted barbarians, and
day after day renewed the tale of burning homes and slaughtered wives
and children. This sort of thing went on through the fall and winter,
driving people into frenzy, but Berkeley would not call out a military
force for the occasion. He insisted that it was enough to instruct
the county lieutenants, each in his county, to keep his militia in
readiness. It was charged against him that fear of losing his share in
a very lucrative fur trade made him unwilling to engage in war with
the Indians. However this may have been, the spirit of the people had
become so mutinous that he was probably afraid to entrust himself
to the protection of a popular militia. Whatever the motive of his
conduct, its consequences were highly disastrous. On a single day in
January, 1676, within a circle of ten miles’ radius, thirty-six people
were murdered; and when the governor was notified, he coolly answered
that “nothing could be done until the assembly’s regular meeting in
March”![39] Meanwhile the work of firebrand and tomahawk went on. In
Essex County (then known as Rappahannock), sixty plantations were
destroyed within seventeen days. It was thought by some persons that
the Indians were stimulated by reports of the fearful havoc which
their brethren were making in New England, where King Philip’s war
was raging. Surely the wrath of the planters must have been redoubled
when they heard of the stalwart troop led by Josiah Winslow into the
Narragansett country, and noted the stern vengeance it wrought there
on a December day of 1675, and contrasted these things with what they
saw before them. As the Charles City people afterward declared with
bitterness, “we do acknowledge we were so unadvised then ... as to
believe it our duty incumbent on us both by the laws of God and nature,
and our duty to his sacred Majesty, notwithstanding ... Sir William
Berkeley’s prohibition, ... to take up arms ... for the just defence of
ourselves, wives, and children, and this his Majesty’s country.”[40]
At length, in March, the Long Assembly, as people called it, which had
been elected in 1661, was convened for the last time; a force of 500
men was gathered, and all things were in readiness for a campaign, when
Berkeley by proclamation disbanded the little army, declaring that
the frontier forts, if duly prepared and equipped, afforded all the
protection the country needed. To many people this seemed to be adding
insult to injury; for while no fortress could prevent the skulking
approach of the enemy through the tangled wilderness, it was widely
believed that the repairing of forts was simply a device for enabling
the governor’s friends to embezzle the money granted for the purpose.

[Sidenote: Nathaniel Bacon.]

[Sidenote: Drummond and Lawrence.]

At this time there was a young man of eight-and-twenty living on his
plantation on James River, hard by Curl’s Wharf. His name was Nathaniel
Bacon, son of Thomas Bacon, of Friston Hall, Suffolk, a kinsman of the
great Lord Bacon.[41] His mother was daughter of a Suffolk knight, Sir
Robert Brooke. He had studied law at Gray’s Inn, and after extensive
travel on the continent of Europe had come to Virginia with his young
wife shortly before the beginning of these Indian troubles. His
father’s cousin, Nathaniel Bacon, of King’s Creek, who had dwelt in
the colony since about 1650, was a man of large wealth and influence.
The abilities and character of the young Nathaniel were rated so high
that he already had a seat in the council. He was clearly an impetuous
youth, brave and cordial, fiery at times, and gifted with a persuasive
tongue. He was in person tall and lithe, with swarthy complexion
and melancholy eyes, and a somewhat lofty demeanour. One writer says
that his discourse was “pestilent and prevalent logical,” and that it
“tended to atheism,” which doubtless means that he criticised things
freely. Two other prominent men were much of his way of thinking.
One was a hard-headed and canny Scotchman, William Drummond, who had
been governor of the Albemarle colony in Carolina.[42] The other was
Richard Lawrence, an Oxford graduate of scholarly tastes, whom an old
chronicler has labelled for posterity as “thoughtful Mr. Lawrence.”
Both Drummond and Lawrence were wealthy men, and lived, it is said, in
the two best built and best furnished houses in Jamestown, which, it
should be remembered, had scarcely more than a score of houses all told.

[Sidenote: Bacon’s plantation attacked, May, 1676.]

[Sidenote: He defeats the Indians.]

Beside the estate where Bacon lived, he had another one farther up, on
the site still marked by the name “Bacon Quarter Branch” in the suburbs
of Richmond. “If the redskins meddle with me,” quoth the fiery young
man, “damn my blood but I’ll harry them, commission or no commission!”
One May morning in 1676 news came to Curl’s Wharf that the Indians had
attacked the upper estate, and killed Bacon’s overseer and one of his
servants. A crowd of armed planters on horseback assembled, and offered
to march under Bacon’s lead. He made an eloquent speech, accepted the
command, and sent a courier to the governor to ask for a commission.
Berkeley returned an evasive answer, whereupon Bacon sent him a polite
note, thanking him for the promised commission, and forthwith started
on his campaign. He had not gone many miles when a proclamation from
the governor overtook him, commanding the party to disperse. A few
obeyed; the rest kept on their way and inflicted a severe defeat upon
the Indians. Then Bacon and his volunteers marched homeward.[43]

[Sidenote: Election of a new House of Burgesses.]

[Sidenote: Arrest of Bacon.]

Meanwhile the indignant Berkeley had gathered a troop of horse and
taken the field in person to arrest this refractory young man. But
suddenly came the news that the whole York peninsula was in revolt. The
governor must needs hasten back to Jamestown, where he soon realized
that if he would avoid civil war he must dissolve his moss-grown House
of Burgesses and issue writs for a new election. This was done. In
anticipation of such an emergency, an act had been passed in 1670
restricting the suffrage by a property qualification, which had
called forth much indignation, since previously universal suffrage had
prevailed. In this excited election of 1676 the restriction was openly
disregarded in many places, and unqualified persons voted illegally.
Bacon offered himself as a candidate for Henrico County and was elected
by a large majority. As he drew near to Jamestown in his sloop with
thirty followers, a war-ship lay at anchor awaiting him, and the high
sheriff arrested him with his whole party. He was taken into the brick
State House and confronted with the governor, who simply said, “Mr.
Bacon, have you forgot to be a gentleman?” “No, may it please your
honour,” said Bacon. “Very well,” said Berkeley, “then I’ll take your
parole.” This was discreet in the governor, since the election had gone
so heavily against him. Bacon was released and went to lodge in the
house of Richard Lawrence.

[Sidenote: “Thoughtful” Mr. Lawrence.]

This “thoughtful” gentleman, the Oxford scholar, “for wit, learning,
and sobriety equalled by few,” is said to have “kept an ordinary,”
while his house was one of the best in Jamestown. It should be
remembered that the permanent residents in the town numbered less than
a hundred,[44] while the sessions of the assembly brought a great
influx of temporary sojourners, so that any or every house would be
made to serve as a tavern. Some years before, Mr. Lawrence had been
“partially treated at law, for a considerable estate on behalf of a
corrupt favourite” of Sir William Berkeley; a fact well certified by
the testimony of the governor’s friend, Colonel Lee. For this reason
Lawrence bore the governor a grudge and spoke of him as a treacherous
old villain. It was believed by some people that in the conduct of the
rebellion Lawrence was the Mephistopheles and Bacon simply the Faust
whom he prompted.

[Sidenote: Bacon’s submission.]

There seems to have been an understanding that, if Bacon were to
acknowledge his offence in marching without a commission, he should be
received back to his seat in the council, and the governor would give
him a commission to go and finish the Indian war. The old Nathaniel
Bacon, of King’s Creek, being “a very rich politic man and childless,”
and intending to leave his estates to young Nathaniel, succeeded in
persuading him, “not without much pains,” to accept the compromise. The
old gentleman wrote out a formal recantation, which his young kinsman
consented to read in public, and a scene was made of it. The State
House was a two-story building in which the burgesses had lately begun
sitting apart on the second floor, while the governor and council (in
point of dignity the “upper house”) held their session on the first
floor. On the 5th of June, 1676, the burgesses were summoned to attend
in the council chamber while Berkeley opened parliament. In his opening
speech the governor referred to the Indian troubles, and expressed
himself with strong emphasis on the slaying of the five envoys: “If
they had killed my grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother
and all my friends, yet if they had come to treat of peace they ought
to have gone in peace!”[45] Then, changing the subject, the governor
announced: “If there be joy in the presence of the angels over one
sinner that repenteth, there is joy now, for we have a penitent sinner
come before us. Call Mr. Bacon.” The young man knelt at the bar of the
assembly and read aloud the prepared paper in which he confessed that
he had acted illegally, and offered sureties for future good behaviour.
Then said the governor impressively, and thrice repeating the words,
“God forgive you! I forgive you.” “And all that were with him,”
interposed a member of the council. “Yea,” continued Berkeley, “and
all those that were with you.” The sheriff at once released Bacon’s
followers, and he took his old seat in the council, while the burgesses
filed off upstairs. Our informant, the member for Stafford, tells us
that while he was on his way up to the burgesses that afternoon, and
through the open door of the council chamber descried “Mr. Bacon on his
quondam seat,” it seemed “a marvellous indulgence” to one who had so
lately been proscribed as a rebel.

[Sidenote: Governor _vs._ Burgesses.]

[Sidenote: Reform of abuses.]

The governor’s chief dread was the free discussion of affairs in
general by a hostile assembly. Now that the Indian imbroglio had
brought these new burgesses together, he wanted them to confine their
talk to Indian affairs and then go home, but this was not their way
of thinking. They aimed, though feebly, at greater independence than
heretofore, and the governor’s intent was to frustrate this aim. It was
moved by one of his partisans in the House of Burgesses “to entreat
the governor would please to assign two of his council to sit with
and assist us in our debates, as had been usual.” At this the friends
of Bacon scowled, and the member for Stafford ventured to suggest
that such aid might not be necessary, whereat there was an uproar.
The Berkeleyans urged that “it had been customary and ought not to be
omitted,” but a shrewd old assemblyman named Presley replied, “’Tis
true it has been customary, but if we have any bad customs amongst
us, we are come here to mend ’em.”[46] This happy retort was greeted
with laughter, but the Cavalier feeling of loyalty to the king’s
representative was still strong, and Berkeley’s friends had their
way, apparently in a tumultuous fashion. As the member for Stafford
says, the affair “was huddled off without coming to a vote,” so that
the burgesses must “submit to be overawed and have every carped at
expression carried straight to the governor.” Nevertheless, they went
sturdily on to their work of reform, and the acts which they passed
most clearly reveal the nature of the evils from which the people had
been suffering. They restored universal suffrage; they enacted that
vestrymen should be elected by popular vote, and limited their term
of office to three years; they reduced the sheriff’s term to a single
year; they declared that no person should hold at one and the same time
any two of the offices of sheriff, surveyor, escheator, and clerk of
court; and they imposed penalties upon the delay of public business and
the taking of excessive fees. Councillors with their families, and the
families of clergymen, had been exempted from taxation; this odious
privilege was now abolished. Sundry trade monopolies were overthrown;
two magistrates, Edward Hill and John Stith, were disfranchised for
alleged misconduct; and provision was made for a general inspection of
public expenses and the proper auditing of accounts.[47]

[Sidenote: An Indian “princess.”]

The Indian troubles were not neglected. Arrangements were made for
raising and maintaining an army of 1,000 men, and the aid of friendly
Indians was solicited. There was a picturesque scene when the
“Queen of Pamunkey” was brought before the House of Burgesses. That
interesting squaw sachem appears to have been a descendant of the
fierce Opekankano. Her tribe was the same that John Smith had visited
on the winter day when he held his pistol to the old warrior’s head,
with the terse mandate, “Corn or your life!” That remnant of the
Powhatan confederacy was still flourishing in Bacon’s time, and indeed
it has survived to the present day, a mongrel compound of Indian and
negro, on two small reservations in King William County.[48] The “Queen
of Pamunkey” in Bacon’s time commanded about 150 warriors, and what
the assembly wanted was to secure their aid in suppressing the hostile
Indians. The dusky princess “entered the chamber with a comportment
graceful to admiration, bringing on her right hand an Englishman
interpreter, and on the left her son, a stripling twenty years of
age, she having round her head a plat of black and white wampum peag
three inches broad in imitation of a crown, and was clothed in a
mantle of dressed deerskins with the hair outwards and the edge cut
round six inches deep, which made strings resembling twisted fringe
from the shoulders to the feet; thus with grave courtlike gestures
and a majestic air in her face she walked up our long room to the
lower end of the table, where after a few entreaties she sat down; the
interpreter and her son standing by her on either side as they had
walked up. Our chairman asked her what men she would lend us for guides
in the wilderness and to assist us against our enemy Indians. She spake
to the interpreter to inform her what the chairman said (though we
believed she understood him). He told us she bid him ask [her] son to
whom the English tongue was familiar (and who was reputed the son of an
English colonel), yet neither would he speak to or seem to understand
the chairman, but, the interpreter told us, he referred all to his
mother, who being again urged, she, after a little musing, with an
earnest passionate countenance as if tears were ready to gush out, and
a fervent sort of expression, made a harangue about a quarter of an
hour, often interlacing (with a high shrill voice and vehement passion)
these words, _Totapotamoy chepiack!_ i. e. _Totapotamoy dead!_ Colonel
Hill, being next me, shook his head. I asked him what was the matter.
He told me all she said was too true, to our shame, and that his father
was general in that battle where divers years before[49] Totapotamoy
her husband had led a hundred of his Indians in help to the English
against our former enemy Indians, and was there slain with most of his
men; for which no compensation at all had been to that day rendered to
her, wherewith she now upbraided us.”

[Sidenote: The chairman’s rudeness.]

The candid member for Stafford calls the chairman of the committee
morose and rude for not so much as “advancing one cold word towards
assuaging the anger and grief” of the squaw sachem. Having once
obtained a favour and so ill requited it, the white men in an emergency
were now suppliants for further good offices of the same sort. But
disregarding all this, the chairman imperiously demanded to be informed
how many Indians she would now contribute. A look of angry disdain
passed over the cinnamon face; she turned her head away and “sat mute
till that same question being pressed a third time, she, not returning
her face to the board, answered with a low slighting voice in our own
language, _Six!_ but, being further importuned, she, sitting a little
while sullen, without uttering a word between, said, _Twelve!_ ... and
so rose up and walked gravely away, as not pleased with her treatment.”

[Sidenote: Bacon’s flight.]

[Sidenote: His return.]

Small wisdom was shown in this mean and discourteous treatment of a
useful ally, but men’s thoughts were at once abruptly turned from such
matters. “One morning early a bruit ran about the town, Bacon is fled!
Bacon is fled!” and for the moment Indian alliances and legislative
reforms were alike forgotten. Mr. Lawrence’s house was searched at
daybreak, but his lodger had gone. Not only had the governor withheld
the expected commission, but the air was heavy with suspicion of
treachery. The elder Bacon, of King’s Creek, who was fond of “this
uneasy cousin” without approving his conduct, secretly informed him
that his life was in danger at Jamestown. So the young man slipped
away to his estate at Curl’s, and within a few days marched back upon
Jamestown at the head of 600 men. Berkeley’s utmost efforts could
scarcely muster 100 men, of whom we are told that not half could be
relied on. Early in the warm June afternoon Bacon halted his troops
upon the green before the State House, and walked up toward the
building with a little guard of fusileers. The upper windows were
filled with peering burgesses, and crowds of expectant people stood
about the green. Out from the door came the old white-haired governor,
trembling with fury, and plucking open the rich lace upon his bosom,
shouted to Bacon, “Here I am! Shoot me! ’Fore God, a fair mark, a fair
mark--shoot!” Bacon answered mildly, “No, may it please your honour, we
have not come to hurt a hair of your head or of any man’s. We are come
for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so
often promised, and now we will have it before we go.”

[Sidenote: The governor intimidated, June, 1676.]

But we are told that after the old man had gone in to talk with his
council, Bacon fell into a rage and swore that he would kill them all
if the commission were not granted. The fusileers presented their
pieces at the windows and yelled, “We will have it! we will have it!”
till shortly one of the burgesses shook “a pacifick handkercher”
and called down, “you shall have it.” All was soon quiet again. The
assembly drew up a memorial to the king, setting forth the grievances
of the colony and Bacon’s valuable services; and it made out a
commission for him as general of an army to be sent against the
Indians. Next day the governor was browbeaten into signing both these
papers; but the same ship that carried the memorial to Charles II.
carried also a private letter wherein Berkeley told his own story in
his own way. The assembly was then dissolved.

[Sidenote: Bacon crushes the Susquehannocks.]

[Sidenote: Berkeley flies to Accomac, and proclaims Bacon a rebel.]

[Sidenote: Bacon’s march to Middle Plantation.]

Bacon was a commander who could move swiftly and strike hard. Within
four weeks the remnant of the Susquehannocks had been pretty nearly
wiped out of existence, when he heard that the governor had proclaimed
him and his followers rebels. It was like a cry of despair from the
old man, who felt his power and dignity gone while this young Cromwell
rode over him rough-shod. He tried to raise the people in Gloucester,
reputed the most loyal of the counties, but his efforts were vain.
Ominous groans and calls of “a Bacon! a Bacon!” greeted him, until in
anticipation of still worse difficulties he fled across Chesapeake Bay
to the Accomac peninsula, launching the proclamation behind him like a
Parthian arrow. This was on July 29, and Richard Lawrence carried the
news up-stream to Bacon, who was probably somewhere about the North
Anna River. The young leader was stung by what he felt to be cruel
injustice. “It vexed him to the heart for to think that while he was
hunting Indian wolves, tigers, and foxes, which daily destroyed our
harmless sheep and lambs, that he and those with him should be pursued
with a full cry, as a more savage or a no less ravenous beast.” He
quickly marched back at the head of his troops to Middle Plantation,
half way between Jamestown and York River, the site where Williamsburg
was afterward built. What had best be done was matter of discussion
between Bacon and his friends, and the affair began to assume a more
questionable and dangerous aspect than before. The Scotch adviser,
William Drummond, was a gentleman who did not believe in half measures.
When some friend warned him of the danger of rebellion he was heard to
reply, “I am in over shoes; I will be over boots!” His wife was equally
bold. It was suggested one day that King Charles might by and by have
something to say about these proceedings, whereupon Sarah Drummond
picked up a stick and broke it in two, exclaiming, “I care no more for
the power of England than for this broken straw!” Bacon was advised
by Drummond to have Berkeley deposed and the more placable Sir Henry
Chicheley put in his place; and as a precedent he cited the thrusting
out of Sir John Harvey, forty-one years before. But Bacon preferred a
different course of action. First, he issued a manifesto in rejoinder
to Berkeley’s proclamation. A few ringing sentences from it will serve
as a sample of his peculiar eloquence.

[Sidenote: His manifesto.]

“If virtue be a sin, if piety be guilt, all the principles of morality,
goodness and justice be perverted, we must confess that those who are
now called Rebels may be in danger of those high imputations. Those
loud and several bulls would affright innocents, and render the defence
of our brethren and the inquiry into our sad and heavy oppressions
Treason. But if there be (as sure there is) a just God to appeal to, if
religion and justice be a sanctuary here, if to plead the cause of the
oppressed, if sincerely to aim at his Majesty’s honour and the public
good without any reservation or by-interest, if to stand in the gap
after so much blood of our dear brethren bought and sold, if after the
loss of a great part of his Majesty’s colony deserted and dispeopled
freely with our lives and estates to endeavour to save the remainders,
be treason--God Almighty judge and let guilty die. But since we cannot
in our hearts find one single spot of rebellion or treason, or that
we have in any manner aimed at subverting the settled government or
attempting of the person of any either magistrate or private man,
notwithstanding the several reproaches and threats of some who for
sinister ends were disaffected to us and censured our innocent and
honest designs, and since all people in all places where we have yet
been can attest our civil, quiet, peaceable behaviour, far different
from that of rebellion [rebellious?] and tumultuous persons, let Truth
be bold and all the world know the real foundations of pretended
guilt. We appeal to the country itself, what and of what nature their
oppressions have been, or by what cabal and mystery the designs of many
of those whom we call great men have been transacted and carried on.
But let us trace these men in authority and favour to whose hands the
dispensation of the country’s wealth has been committed.”[50]

[Sidenote: His arraignment of Berkeley.]

This is the prose of the seventeenth century, which had not learned
how to smite the reader’s mind with the short incisive sentences to
which we are at the present day accustomed; but there is no mistaking
the writer’s passionate earnestness, his straightforward honesty and
dauntless courage. As we read, we seem to see the gleam of lightning
in those melancholy eyes, and we quite understand how the impetuous
youth was a born leader of men. With strong words tumbling from a full
heart the manifesto goes on to “trace these men in authority,” these
“juggling parasites whose tottering fortunes have been repaired at
the public charge.” He points out at some length the character of the
public grievances, and appeals to the king with a formal indictment of
Sir William Berkeley:--

“For having upon specious pretences of public works raised unjust taxes
upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favourites and other
sinister ends, but no visible effects in any measure adequate.

“For not having, during the long time of his government, in any
measure advanced this hopeful colony either by fortification, towns, or
trade.

“For having abused and rendered contemptible the majesty of justice, of
advancing to places of judicature scandalous and ignorant favourites.

“For having wronged his Majesty’s prerogative and interest by assuming
the monopoly of the beaver trade.

“[For] having in that unjust gain bartered and sold his Majesty’s
country and the lives of his loyal subjects to the barbarous heathen.

“For having protected, favoured, and emboldened the Indians against
his Majesty’s most loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring or
appointing any due or proper means of satisfaction for their many
invasions, murders, and robberies committed upon us.”

[Sidenote: “Wicked counsellors.”]

And so on through several further counts. At the close of the
indictment nineteen persons are mentioned by name as the governor’s
“wicked and pernicious counsellors, aiders and assisters against the
commonalty in these our cruel commotions.” Among these names we read
those of Sir Henry Chicheley, Richard Lee, Robert Beverley, Nicholas
Spencer, and the son of our old friend William Claiborne, who had
once been such a thorn in the side of Maryland. The manifesto ends by
demanding that Berkeley and all the persons on this list be promptly
arrested and confined at Middle Plantation until further orders. Let
no man dare aid or harbour any one of them, under penalty of being
declared a traitor and losing his estates.

[Sidenote: The oath at Middle Plantation.]

[Sidenote: Defeat of the Indians.]

When he had launched this manifesto Bacon called for a meeting of
notables at Middle Plantation, to concert measures for making it
effective. There on August 3, accordingly, were assembled “most of
the prime gentlemen of those parts,” including four members of the
council. The discussion lasted all day, and was kept up by the light
of torches until midnight. There were many who were not willing to go
all lengths with Bacon. All were willing to subscribe an agreement
not to aid Berkeley in molesting Bacon and his men, but all were not
prepared to promise military aid to Bacon in resisting Berkeley. Bacon
insisted upon this and even more. It was not unlikely that the king,
influenced by calumnies and misrepresentations, might send troops to
Virginia to suppress the so-called “rebellion.” In that case all must
unite in opposing the royal forces until his Majesty should be brought
to see these matters in their true light. Many demurred at this. It
was equivalent to armed rebellion. They would sign the first part
of the agreement, but not this. Bacon replied that the governor had
already proclaimed them rebels, and would hang them for signing any
part of the agreement; one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for
a lamb, and as for himself he was not going to be satisfied with half
support. They must choose between Berkeley and himself. It is said that
they might have argued all that summer night but for a sudden Indian
scare which emphasized the need for prompt action. Then the hesitating
gentlemen came forward and signed the entire paper, while the whole
company, and no one more emphatically than Bacon himself, asseverated
that these proceedings in no way impaired their allegiance. In other
words, they were ready if need be to make war on the king for his own
good. It was “We, the inhabitants of Virginia,” that drew up this
remarkable agreement, which Charles II. was presently to read. Writs
were then made out in the king’s name for a new election of burgesses
and signed by the four councilmen. Then Bacon crossed the James River
and defeated the Appomattox Indians near the spot where Petersburg now
stands. After this he moved about the country, capturing and dispersing
the barbarians, until early in September it might be said that every
homestead in the colony was safe.

[Sidenote: Startling conversation between Bacon and Goode.]

In the proceedings which attended the taking of the oath at Middle
Plantation it may be plainly seen that Bacon was in danger of
alienating his followers by pursuing too radical a policy. This is
strikingly confirmed by a document which has only lately attracted
attention, a letter from John Goode to Sir William Berkeley, dated
January 30, 1677. This John Goode was a veteran frontiersman of sixty
years, a man of importance in the colony. He seems to have been a
faithful adherent of Bacon from his first march against the Indians
in May until the beginning of September, when there occurred the
conversation which, after all was over, he reported to the governor as
follows. The affair is so important and so little known that I quote
the dialogue entire, with the original spelling and punctuation:[51]--

HON’D SR.--In obedient submission to your honours command directed
to me by Capt. Wm. Bird[52] I have written the full substance of a
discourse Nath: Bacon, deceased, propos’d to me on or about the 2d day
of September last, both in order and words as followeth:--

BACON.--There is a report Sir Wm. Berkeley hath sent to the king
for 2,000 Red Coates, and I doe believe it may be true, tell me
your opinion, may not 500 Virginians beat them, wee having the same
advantages against them the Indians have against us.

GOODE.--I rather conceive 500 Red Coats may either Subject or ruine
Virginia.

B.--You talk strangely, are not wee acquainted with the Country, can
lay Ambussadoes, and take Trees and putt them by, the use of their
discipline, and are doubtlesse as good or better shott than they.

G.--But they can accomplish what I have sayd without hazard or coming
into such disadvantages, by taking Opportunities of landing where
there shall bee noe opposition, firing out [our?] houses and Fences,
destroying our Stocks and preventing all Trade and supplyes to the
Country.

B.--There may bee such prevention that they shall not bee able to
make any great Progresse in Mischeifes, and the Country or Clime not
agreeing with their Constitutions, great mortality will happen amongst
them, in their Seasoning which will weare and weary them out.

G.--You see Sir that in a manner all the principall Men in the Countrey
dislike your manner of proceedings, they, you may bee sure will joine
with the Red Coates.

B.--But there shall none of them bee [permitted?].

G.--Sir, you speake as though you design’d a totall defection from
Majestie, and our native Country.

B.--Why (smiling) have not many Princes lost their Dominions soe.

G.--They have been such people as have been able to subsist without
their Prince. The poverty of Virginia is such, that the Major part of
the Inhabitants can scarce supply their wants from hand to mouth, and
many there are besides can hardly shift, without Supply one yeare,
and you may bee sure that this people which soe fondly follow you,
when they come to feele the miserable wants of food and rayment, will
bee in greater heate to leave you, then [than] they were to come
after you, besides here are many people in Virginia that receive
considerable benefitts, comforts, and advantages by Parents, Friends
and Correspondents in England, and many which expect patrimonyes and
Inheritances which they will by no meanes decline.

B.--For supply I know nothing: the Country will be able to provide it
selfe withall, in a little time, save Amunition and Iron, and I believe
the King of France or States of Holland would either of them entertaine
a Trade with us.

G.--Sir, our King is a great Prince, and his Amity is infinitely more
valuable to them, then [than] any advantage they can reape by Virginia,
they will not therefore provoke his displeasure by supporting his
Rebells here; besides I conceive that your followers do not think
themselves ingaged against the King’s Authority, but against the
Indians.

B.--But I think otherwise, and am confident of it, that it is the mind
of this country, and of Mary Land, and Carolina also, to cast off their
Governor and the Governors of Carolina have taken no notice of the
People, nor the People of them, a long time;[53] and the people are
resolv’d to own their Governour further; And if wee cannot prevaile by
Armes to make our Conditions for Peace, or obtaine the Priviledge to
elect our own Governour, we may retire to Roanoke.

And here hee fell into a discourse of seating a Plantation in a great
Island in the River, as a fitt place to retire to for Refuge.

G.--Sir, the prosecuting what you have discoursed will unavoidably
produce utter ruine and destruction to the people and Countrey, & I
dread the thoughts of putting my hand to the promoting a designe of
such miserable consequence, therefore hope you will not expect from me.

B.--I am glad I know your mind, but this proceeds from meer
Cowardlynesse.

G.--And I desire you should know my mind, for I desire to harbour noe
such thoughts, which I should fear to impart to any man.

B.--Then what should a Gentleman engaged as I am, doe, you doe as good
as tell me, I must fly or hang for it.

G.--I conceive a seasonable Submission to the Authority you have your
Commission from, acknowledging such Errors and Excesse, as are yett
past, there may bee hope of remission.

I perceived his cogitations were much on this discourse, hee nominated,
Carolina, for the watch word.

Three days after I asked his leave to goe home, hee sullenly Answered,
you may goe, and since that time, I thank God, I never saw or heard
from him.

[Sidenote: Bacon’s perilous situation.]

This interesting dialogue reveals the nature of the situation into
which Bacon had drifted. As the days went by, he could hardly fail to
see that the king was more likely to take Berkeley’s view of the case
than his. According to that view the deliverer of Virginia from the
Indians was a proscribed rebel who must “fly or hang for it.” There was
little hope for Bacon in “seasonable submission.” He would, therefore,
consider it safer and better for Virginia to hold out until the king
could be induced to take Bacon’s view of the case; or failing this,
it might still be possible to wear out the king’s troops and achieve
independence for Virginia, with the aid of the discontented people in
the neighbouring colonies. These were the speculations of a man whom
circumstances were making desperate, and the effect which they wrought
upon John Goode was likely to be repeated with many who had hitherto
loyally followed his fortunes.

[Sidenote: Berkeley takes the offensive.]

Thus far Bacon’s fighting had been against Indians. His quarrel with
the governor had been confined to fulminations. Now the two men were
to come into armed collision and give Virginia a brief taste of civil
war. Bacon sent Giles Bland, “a gentleman of an active and stirring
disposition,” with four armed vessels, to arrest Berkeley in Accomac,
but Colonel Philip Ludwell, aided by treachery, succeeded in capturing
Bland with his flotilla. Bland was put in irons, and one ship’s captain
was hanged for an example. Meanwhile Berkeley was enlisting troops by
promising as rewards the estates of all the gentlemen who had taken the
oath at Middle Plantation. He also sought to win over the indentured
servants of gentlemen fighting under Bacon by promising to give them
the estates of their masters. Many longshoremen also were enrolled.
Having in these ways scraped together about 1,000 men, the governor
sailed up the river to Jamestown and took possession of the place, from
which Lawrence and Drummond fled in the nick of time.

[Sidenote: The white aprons.]

When this news reached Bacon it found him at West Point, with the work
of subduing the red men practically finished. Not four months had yet
elapsed since the first attack on his plantation. It was clearly no
ordinary young man that had done that summer’s arduous work. Now he
advanced upon Jamestown, and made his headquarters in his adversary’s
comfortable mansion at Green Spring. Sir William had thrown an
earthwork across the neck of the promontory, and Bacon began building
a parallel. It is said that he compelled a number of ladies in white
aprons--wives of leading Berkeleyans--to stand upon the works, and
sent a message to the governor not to fire upon these guardian angels.
“The poor gentlewomen were mightily astonished,” says the chronicle,
“and neither were their bands void of amazement at this subtle
invention.”[54] The incident is an ugly spot in that brief career. One
would gladly disbelieve the story, but our contemporary authority for
it seems unimpeachable, and is friendly withal to Bacon.

[Sidenote: Bacon’s speech.]

The speech made by the young commander to his men at Green Spring
before the final assault is a good specimen of his eloquence:
“Gentlemen and Fellow Soldiers, how I am transported with gladness to
find you thus unanimous, bold and daring, brave and gallant. You have
the victory before the fight, the conquest before the battle.... Your
hardiness will invite all the country along as we march to come in
and second you.... The ignoring of their actions cannot but so much
reflect upon their spirit, as they will have no courage left to fight
you. I know you have the prayers and well wishes of all the people
in Virginia, while the others are loaded with their curses. Come
on, my hearts of gold; he that dies in the field lies in the bed of
honour!”[55]

[Sidenote: Burning of Jamestown.]

[Sidenote: Sufferers at Bacon’s hands.]

The governor’s motley force was indeed no match for these determined
men. In the desultory fighting that ensued about Jamestown he was
badly defeated and at last fled again to Accomac. Jamestown remained
at Bacon’s mercy, and he burned it to the ground, that it might no
longer “harbour the rogues.” We are told that Lawrence and Drummond
took the lead in this work by applying the torch to their own houses
with their own hands. At Green Spring an “oath of fidelity” was drawn
up, which was taken voluntarily by many people and forced upon others.
Bacon seems now to have shown more severity than formerly in sending
men to prison and seizing their property. One deserter he shot, but
from bloodthirstiness he was notably free. Among the gentlemen who
suffered most at his hands were Richard Lee and Sir Henry Chichely, who
were kept several weeks in prison, Philip and Thomas Ludwell, Nicholas
Spencer and Daniel Parke, Robert Beverley and Philip Lightfoot, whose
estates were at various times plundered. John Washington and others
who were denounced as “delinquents” saw their corn and tobacco, cattle
and horses, impressed and carried away. Colonel Augustine Warner,
another great-grandfather of George Washington, “was plundered as much
as any, and yet speaks little of his losses, though they were very
great.”[56] Among the sufferers appears “the good Queen of Pamunkey,”
who was “driven, out into the wild woods and there almost famished,
plundered of all she had, her people taken prisoners and sold; the
queen was also robbed of her rich watchcoat for which she had great
value, and offered to redeem at any rate.” The next paragraph in the
commissioners’ report is delightful: “We could not but present her case
to his Majesty, who, though he may not at present so well or readily
provide remedies or rewards for the other worthy sufferers, yet since a
present of small price may highly oblige and gratify this poor Indian
Queen, we humbly supplicate his Majesty to bestow it on her.”

[Sidenote: Bacon and his cousin.]

One of the accusations against Bacon was that to him a good Indian
meant a dead Indian, so that he did not take the trouble to
discriminate between friends and foes. But what shall we say when we
find him plundering his own kinsman, the affectionate cousin whose
timely warning had once perhaps saved his life? The commissioners
report the losses of Nathaniel Bacon the elder, at the hands of his
“unnatural kinsman,” as at least £1,000 sterling. The old gentleman
was “said to have been a person soe desirous and Industrious to divert
the evil consequences of his Rebell kinsman’s proceedings, that at
the beginning hee freely proposed and promised to invest him in a
considerable part of his Estate in present, and to leave him the
Remainder in Reversion after his and his wife’s death, offering him
other advantages upon condicion hee would lay downe his Armes, and
become a good subject to his Majestie, that that colony might not be
disturbed or destroyed, nor his owne ffamily stained with soe foule a
Blott.”

[Sidenote: Death of Bacon, Oct. 1, 1676.]

At the burning of Jamestown the end of Bacon and of his rebellion
was not far off. “This Prosperous Rebell, concluding now the day his
owne, marcheth with his army into Gloster County, intending to visit
all the northern part of Virginia ... and to settle affairs after his
own measures.... But before he could arrive to the Perfection of his
designes (w^{ch} none but the eye of omniscience could Penetrate)
Providence did that which noe other hand durst (or at least did) doe
and cut him off.” Malarious Jamestown wreaked its own vengeance upon
its destroyer. When Bacon marched away from it he was already ill
with fever, and on the first day of October, at the house of a friend
in Gloucester, he “surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to
keep, into the hands of the grim and all-conquering Captain, Death.”
Accusations of poison were raised, but it is not likely that any other
poison was concerned than impure water and marsh gases. The funeral
was conducted with extraordinary secrecy. If a sudden turn of fortune
should put Berkeley in possession of the body, he would surely hang it
on a gibbet; so thoughtful Mr. Lawrence took measures to prevent any
such indignity. One chronicler darkly hints that Bacon’s remains were
buried in some very secret place in the woods, but another mentions
stones laid in the coffin, which suggests that it was sunk beneath the
waves of York River, as Soto was buried in the Mississippi and mighty
Alaric in the Busento.

[Sidenote: Collapse of the Rebellion.]

[Sidenote: Arrival of royal commissioners, January, 1677.]

[Sidenote: Outrageous conduct of Berkeley.]

A strange meteoric career was that of young Bacon, begun and ended as
it was in the space of about twenty weeks. On the news of his death
the rebellion collapsed with surprising suddenness. His followers soon
began giving in their submissions to the governor; the few that held
out were dispersed or captured. Although it was not until January
that the work of suppression was regarded as complete, yet that work
consisted chiefly in catching fugitives. In January an English fleet
arrived, with a regiment of troops, and a commission for investigating
the affairs of Virginia. The commissioners were Sir John Berry, Sir
Herbert Jeffries, and Colonel Francis Morison, three worthy and
fair-minded gentlemen. They found nothing left for soldiers to do. They
had authority for trying rebels, but in that business Berkeley had been
beforehand. Soon after Bacon’s death one of his best officers, Colonel
Thomas Hansford, was captured by Robert Beverley, and carried over to
Accomac. He asked no favour save that he might be “shot like a soldier
and not hanged like a dog,” but this was not granted. Hansford has
been called “the first native martyr to American liberty.”[57] Soon
afterward two captains were hanged, and the affair of Major Edward
Cheesman seems to have occurred while Berkeley was still at Accomac. It
is the foulest incident recorded in Berkeley’s career. When Cheesman
was brought before him, the governor fiercely demanded, “Why did you
engage in Bacon’s designs?” Before the prisoner could answer, his
young wife stepped forward and said, “It was my provocations that made
my husband join the cause; but for me he had never done what he has
done.” Then falling on her knees before the governor, she implored him
that she might be hanged as the guilty one instead of her husband.[58]
The old wretch’s answer was an insult so atrocious that the royalist
chronicler can hardly abide it. “His Honour” must have been beside
himself with anger and could not have meant what he said; for no woman
could have “so small an affection for her husband as to dishonour him
by her dishonesty, and yet retain such a degree of love, that rather
than he should be hanged she will be content to submit her own life
to the sentence.” Perhaps the governor’s thirst for vengeance was
satisfied by his ruffian speech, for Major Cheesman was not put to
death, but remanded to jail, where he died of illness.

[Sidenote: Execution of Drummond.]

After Berkeley had occupied the York peninsula little work remained for
him but that of the hangman. Not all the leaders were easy to find.
Richard Lawrence, thoughtful as always, escaped from the scene. “The
last account of him,” says T. M., “was from an uppermost plantation,
whence he and four other desperadoes, with horses, pistols, etc.,
marched away in a snow ankle-deep.” Here the scholarly rebel vanishes
from our sight, and whether he perished in the wilderness or made his
way to some safer country, we do not know. On a cold day in January
his friend Drummond, hiding in White Oak Swamp was found and taken
to the governor. “Aha!” cried the old man, with a low bow, “you are
very welcome. I would rather see you just now than any other man in
Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour!” “What
your honour pleases,” said the undaunted Scotchman. He was strung up
that afternoon, but not until his wife’s ring had been pulled from
his finger, for rapacity vied with ferocity in the governor’s breast.
Before the end of January some twenty more had been hanged. An election
was then going on, and the newly-elected assembly called upon Berkeley
to desist from this carnival of blood. “If we had let him alone,” said
Presley, the venerable member for Northampton, to T. M., the member for
Stafford, “he would have hanged half the country!”

[Sidenote: Death of Berkeley.]

The governor’s rage had carried him too far. His conduct did not
meet with the approval of the commissioners, whose report on the
disturbances is written in a fair and impartial spirit. He treated the
commissioners with crazy rudeness. It is said that when they had called
on him at Green Spring and were about to return to their boat on the
river, he offered them his state-coach with the hangman for driver!
whereupon they preferred to walk to the landing-place. Fresh seeds
of contention were sown, to bear fruit in the future. The complaints
of Drummond’s widow and others found their way to the throne. “As I
live,” quoth the king, “the old fool has put to death more people in
that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father.” In the
spring the royal order for Berkeley’s removal arrived, and on April 27
he sailed for England, apparently expecting to return, for he left his
wife at Green Spring. Sir Herbert Jeffries, one of the commissioners,
succeeded him with a special commission as lieutenant governor.
Berkeley’s departure was joyfully celebrated with bonfires and salutes
of cannon. He cherished hopes of justifying himself in a personal
interview with the king, but the interview was delayed until, about the
middle of July, the old man fell sick and died. It was believed that
his death was caused by vexation and chagrin. A few weeks afterward the
other two commissioners, Sir John Berry and Colonel Morison, returned
to England; and we are told that one day the late governor’s brother,
Lord Berkeley, meeting Sir John Berry in the council chamber, told him
“with an angry voice and a Berkeleyan look,” that he and Morison had
murdered his brother.[59] In October a royal order for the relief of
Sarah Drummond declared that her husband “had been sentenced and put to
death contrary to the laws of the kingdom.”

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Significance of the rebellion.]

Thus ended the first serious and ominous tragedy in the history of
the United States, a story preserved for us in many of its details
with striking vividness, yet concerning the innermost significance of
which we would fain know more than we do. It may fairly be pronounced
the most interesting episode in our early history, surpassing in this
regard the Leisler affair at New York, which alone can be compared with
it for intensity of human interest. As ordinarily told, however, the
story of Bacon presents some features that are unintelligible. It is
customary to liken the little rebellion of 1676 to the great rebellion
of 1776, and we are thus led to contemplate Bacon and Virginia as
arrayed against Berkeley and England. In such a view the facts are
unduly simplified and strangely distorted. If it were possible thus
fully to identify Bacon’s cause with the cause of Virginia, it would
become impossible to explain the ease with which his followers were
suppressed by Virginians, without any aid from England. But when all
the facts are considered, we can see at once that such a result was
inevitable.

Careful inspection of the relevant facts will show us that Bacon was
contending against four things:--

1. The Indian depredations.

2. The misrule of Sir William Berkeley.

3. The English navigation laws.

4. The tendency toward oligarchical government which had been rapidly
growing since the beginning of the great influx of Cavaliers in 1649.

[Sidenote: How far Bacon represented public sentiment in Virginia.]

Under the first three heads little need be said. The facts have been
generally recognized. It was by Bacon’s zeal and success in suppressing
the Indian power that he acquired public favour. As for the peculation
and extortion practised or permitted by Berkeley, it cannot for a
moment be supposed that such men as John Washington, Richard Lee, etc.,
were inclined to tolerate or connive at it. As for the navigation laws,
it was a common remark, after the oath at Middle Plantation, that now
Virginians might look forward hopefully to trading with all countries.
It is therefore altogether probable that on all these grounds the
public sentiment of Virginia was overwhelmingly on the side of Bacon.

[Sidenote: The leading families were in general opposed to him.]

Under the fourth head some explanation is needed, for historians have
generally overlooked or disregarded it. One of the most conspicuous
facts in the story of Bacon’s rebellion is the fact that a great
majority of the wealthiest and most important men in the colony were
opposed to him from first to last. The list of those who were pillaged
by his followers is largely a list of the names most honoured in
Virginia, the great-grandfathers of the illustrious men who were among
the foremost in winning independence for the United States and in
building up our federal government. It is also largely a list of the
names of Cavaliers who had come from England to Virginia since 1649.
The political ideas of these men were surely not democratic. If they
were devout disbelievers in popular government, the fact is in nowise
to their discredit. Popular government is still on its trial in the
world, and the last word on the subject has not yet been said. In
our day the men who do the most to throw discredit upon it are often
those who prate most loudly in its favour; political blatherskites,
like the famous “Colonel Yell of Yellville,” whose accounts were
sadly delinquent though his heart beat with fervour for his native
land. The Cavaliers who came to Virginia were staunch and honourable
men who believed--with John Winthrop and Edmund Burke and Alexander
Hamilton--that society is most prosperous when a select portion of
the community governs the whole. Such a doctrine seems to me less
defensible than the democratic views of Samuel Adams and Thomas
Jefferson and Herbert Spencer, but it is still entitled to all the
courtesies of debate. Two centuries ago it was of course the prevailing
doctrine.

[Sidenote: Political changes since 1660; the close vestry.]

[Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage.]

In the preceding chapter I pointed out that the period of Cavalier
immigration, between 1650 and 1670, was characterized by a rapid
increase in the dimensions of landed estates and in the employment of
servile labour. The same period witnessed a change of an eminently
symptomatic kind in local government. In any state the local
institutions are the most vitally important part of the whole political
structure. Now, as I have already mentioned,[60] the English parish
was at an early time reproduced in Virginia, and its authority was
exercised by a few chosen men, usually twelve, who constituted a
vestry. At first, and until after 1645,[61] the vestrymen were elected
by the people of the parish, so that they were analogous to the
selectmen of New England. A vestry thus elected is called an open
vestry. Now soon after the Long Assembly had begun its sessions in
1661, in the fall tide of royalist reaction, we find on its records
a statute which transformed the open vestry into a close vestry.
In March, 1662, it was enacted that “in case of the death of any
vestryman, or his departure out of the parish, ... the minister and
vestry make choice of another to supply his room.”[62] The speedy
effect of this was to dispense with the popular election and to convert
the vestry into a self-perpetuating close corporation. When we consider
the great powers wielded by the vestry, we realize the importance
of this step. The vestry made up the parish budget, apportioned the
taxes, and elected the churchwardens, who were in many places the
tax-collectors. By its “processioning of the bounds of every person’s
land,” the vestry exercised control over the record of land-titles. Its
supervision of the counting of tobacco was also a function of no mean
importance. The vestry also presented the minister for induction. All
the local government not in the hands of the vestry was administered by
the county court, which consisted of eight justices appointed by the
governor. So that when the people lost the power of electing vestrymen
they parted with the only share they had in the local government.[63]
Nothing was left them except the right to vote for burgesses, and not
only was this curtailed in 1670 by a property qualification, but it was
of no avail while the Long Assembly lasted, since during those fifteen
years there were no elections. That political power should thus rapidly
become concentrated in the hands of the leading families was under the
circumstances but natural. That the deprivation of suffrage was by
many people felt to be a grievance is unquestionable.[64] No testimony
can outweigh that of the statute book, and two of the notable acts of
Bacon’s assembly in June, 1676, were those which restored universal
suffrage and the popular election of vestrymen, and limited the terms
of service of vestrymen to three years. The first assembly after the
rebellion, which met at Green Spring in February, 1677, with Augustine
Warner as speaker, declared all the acts of Bacon’s assembly null and
void. Then in the course of that year and the three years following
several of those wholesome acts were reënacted, especially those which
related to exorbitant fees and the misuse of public money. Great pains
were taken to guard against extortion and corruption,[65] but the
provisions concerning vestrymen were not reënacted. A law was passed
allowing the freeholders and housekeepers in each parish to elect six
“sober and discreet” representatives to sit with the vestry and have
equal votes with the vestrymen in assessing the parish taxes; in case
the parish should neglect to choose such representatives, or in case
they should fail to appear at the time appointed, the vestry was to
proceed without them.[66] This act seems to have had little effect, and
the law of 1662, which created the close vestry, still remained law
after more than a century had passed.[67] As for the right to vote for
burgesses, the royal instructions received from Charles II. in January,
1677, restricted it to “ffreeholders, as being more agreeable to the
custome of England, to which you are as nigh as you conveniently can
to conforme yourselves.”[68] According to the same instructions the
assembly was to be called together only once in two years, “unlesse
some emergent occasion shall make it necessary;” and it was to sit
“ffourteene days ... and noe longer, unlesse you find goode cause to
continue it beyond that tyme;” qualifications which could easily be
made to defeat the restriction.

[Sidenote: How the aristocrats regarded Bacon’s followers.]

The legislation of Bacon’s assembly concerning the suffrage and
the vestries proves that the people whom he represented were not
in sympathy with the political and social changes which had been
growing up since the middle of the century. These enactments were a
protest against the increasing tendency toward a more aristocratic
type of society. It was, therefore, natural that a large majority
of the aristocrats should have been opposed to Bacon. Doubtless
they sympathized with his protests against legislative oppression
and official corruption, but they did not approve of his levelling
schemes. Their language concerning Bacon’s followers shows how they
felt about them and toward them. William Sherwood calls them “y^e scum
of the Country.”[69] According to Philip Ludwell, deputy secretary and
member of the council, Bacon “gathers about him a Rabble of the basest
sort of People, whose Condicion was such, as by a chaunge could not
admitt of worse, w^{th} these he begins to stand at Defyance ag’t the
Governm’t.”[70] Again, “Mr. Bacon had Gotten at severall places about
500 men, whose fortune and Inclinations being equally desperate, were
ffit for y^e purpose there being not 20 in y^e whole Route, but what
were Idle & will not worke, or such whose Debaucherie or Ill Husbandry
has brought in Debt beyond hopes or thought of payment these are the
men that are sett up ffor the Good of ye Countrey; who for ye ease of
the poore will have noe taxes paied, though for ye most p^t of them,
they pay none themselves, would have all magistracie & Governm’nt
taken away & sett up one themselves, & to make their Good Intentions
more manifest _stick not to talk openly of shareing mens Estates among
themselves_,[71] with these (being Drawne together) Mr. Bacon marches
speedly toward the towne, etc.”[72] Governor Berkeley’s testimony
should not be omitted; he wrote to the king in June, “I have above
thirty-five years governed the most flourishing country the sun ever
shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters in every
respect like to that of Masaniello except their leader.”[73] In other
words, the rebels were a mere rabble, except their leader, who was not
a humble fisherman like the Italian, but a gentleman of high birth and
breeding. According to the careful and fair-minded commissioners, Bacon
“seduced the Vulgar and most ignorant People (two-thirds of each county
being of that Sort) Soe that theire whole hearts and hopes were set now
upon” him.[74]

[Sidenote: The real state of the case.]

Allowance for prejudice must of course be made in considering the
general statements of hostile witnesses, such as Berkeley and Sherwood
and Philip Ludwell. It is quite clear that Bacon’s followers were
by no means all of the baser sort. This is distinctly recognized in
a letter to the king by Thomas Ludwell and Robert Smith, containing
proposals for reducing the rebels. In a certain event, they say, “there
will be a speedy separation of the sound parts from the rabble.”[75]
Here we have an explicit admission that there was a “sound part.”
It will be remembered that Drummond had been a colonial governor,
and that his house and Lawrence’s were the best in Jamestown. The
officers we have met in the story, Hansford and Bland and Cheesman,
were men of good family; and among the foremost men in the colony we
are told that Colonel George Mason was inclined to sympathize with the
insurgents.[76] In this he was clearly by no means alone. On the whole,
however, there can be no doubt that Bacon’s cause was to a considerable
extent the cause of the poor against the rich, of the humble folk
against the grandees.

[Sidenote: Effect of hard times.]

[Sidenote: Populist aspects of the rebellion.]

[Sidenote: Its sound aspects.]

When we take into account this aspect of the case, which has never
received the attention it deserves, the whole story becomes consistent
and intelligible. The years preceding the rebellion were such as are
commonly called “hard times.” People felt poor and saw fortunes made
by corrupt officials; the fault was with the Navigation Act and with
the debauched civil service of Charles II. and Berkeley. Besides these
troubles, which were common to all, the poorer people felt oppressed by
taxation in regard to which they were not consulted and for which they
seemed to get no service in return.[77] The distribution of taxation
by polls, equal amounts for rich and for poor, was resented as a cruel
injustice.[78] The subject of taxation was closely connected with the
Indian troubles, for people paid large sums for military defence and
nevertheless saw their houses burned and their families massacred.
Under these circumstances the sudden appearance of the brave and
eloquent Bacon seemed to open the way of salvation. The indomitable
queller of Indians could also curb the tyrant. Naturally, along with
a more respectable element, the rabble gathered under his standard;
it is always the case in revolutions with the men who have little or
nothing to lose. It is likewise usual for men with much property at
stake to be conservative on such occasions. Philip Ludwell’s statement,
that some of the rebels entertained communistic notions, is just
what one might have expected. There is always more or less socialist
tomfoolery at such times. In some of its aspects there is a resemblance
between Bacon’s rebellion and that of Daniel Shays in Massachusetts one
hundred and ten years later. But the Massachusetts leader was a weak
and silly creature, and his resistance to government had nothing to
justify it, though there were palliating circumstances. The course of
Bacon, on the other hand, was in the main a justifiable protest against
misgovernment, and until after the oath at Middle Plantation a great
deal of the sound sentiment in Virginia must have sympathized with him.
In the unwillingness of some of the gentlemen present to take the oath,
we seem to see the first ebbing of the tide. Evidently there began to
be, as Thomas Ludwell had predicted, “a separation of the sound parts
from the rabble;” and this appears very distinctly in the defection of
Goode about four weeks later.

In the intention of resisting the king’s troops, which thus weakened
Bacon’s position, he certainly showed more zeal than judgment. It has
the look of the courage that comes from desperation. Had he lived to
persist in this course, the policy most likely to strengthen him would
have been to make his foremost demand the repeal of the Navigation Act
which all Virginians detested and even Berkeley disapproved. But it
is not likely that anything could have saved him from defeat and the
scaffold. Death seems to have intervened in kindness to him and to
Virginia.[79]

In the early history of our country Bacon must ever remain one of the
bright and attractive figures. Our heart is always with the man who
boldly stands out against corruption and oppression. To many persons
the name of rebel seems fraught with blame and reproach; but the career
of mankind so abounds in examples of heroic resistance to intolerable
wrongs that to any one familiar with history the name of rebel is often
a title of honour. Bacon’s brief career was an episode in the perennial
fight against taxation without representation, the ancient abuse of
living on other men’s labour. We cannot fail to admire his quick
incisiveness, his cool head, his determined courage; and the spectacle
of this young Cavalier taking the lead, like Tiberius Gracchus, in a
movement for justice and liberty will always make a pleasing picture.




CHAPTER XII.

WILLIAM AND MARY.


[Sidenote: Political education.]

Between the breaking out of Bacon’s rebellion in the summer of 1676
and the Declaration of Independence, the interval was exactly a
hundred years. It was for Virginia a century of political education.
It prepared her for the great work to come, and it brought her
into sympathy more or less effective with other colonies that
were struggling with similar political questions, especially with
Massachusetts. It was in that same year, 1676, that Charles II. sent
Edward Randolph to Boston, to enforce the Navigation Act and to report
upon New England affairs in general. This mission of Randolph led
to quarrels which resulted in the overthrow of the charter and the
sending of royal governors to Massachusetts. From that time forth
the legislatures of Massachusetts and Virginia had to contend with
similar questions concerning the powers and prerogatives of the
royal governors, so that the two colonies kept a close watch upon
each other’s proceedings, while both received a thorough training
in constitutional politics. Amid such circumstances came into
existence the necessary conditions for the establishment of political
independence and the formation of our Federal Union.

[Sidenote: Robert Beverley.]

[Sidenote: His refusal to give up the journals.]

The suppression of Bacon’s rebellion was far from equivalent to a
surrender to Charles II. or his representatives. Questions of privilege
soon arose, and it was not long before Berkeley’s most efficient
officer came himself to be regarded almost in the light of a rebel.
Major Robert Beverley, of Beverley in Yorkshire, an ardent royalist,
had come to Virginia in 1663. He was elected clerk of the House of
Burgesses in 1670, and held that office for many years. No one was
more active in stamping out rebellion in the autumn of 1677, but after
the arrival of the royal commissioners he was soon at feud with them.
As the disturbances had been quieted without the aid of their troops,
there was a disposition to resent their coming as an interference,
especially as they seemed to lend too ready an ear to the complaints
of the malcontents. In the list of grievances of Gloucester County we
find “a complaint against Major Robert Beverley that when the country
had (according to Order) raised 60 armed men to be an Out-guard for the
Governor--who not finding the Governor nor their appointed Comander
they were by Beverly comanded to goe to work, fall trees and maule
and toate railes, which many of them refusing to doe, he presently
disbanded them & sent them home at a tyme when the countrey were
infested by the Indians, who had a little before cut off six persons
in one family, and attempted others.” Upon this the commissioners
remarked, “Wee conceive this dealing of Beverly’s to be a notorious
abuse and Grievance, to take away the peoples armes while ther famlies
were cutt off by the Indians, and they deserve just reparation here.”
But Berkeley declared that what Beverley had done was by his orders,
and the newly elected House of Burgesses stood by its clerk. After
Berkeley had sailed for England, in April, 1677, the commissioners
called upon the House of Burgesses to give up its journals for their
inspection, and Beverley refused to comply with the demand. No king
in England, said the burgesses, would venture to make such a demand
of the House of Commons. Then the commissioners seized the journals,
and the burgesses indignantly voted that such an act was a violation
of privilege. This enraged the king, and in February, 1679, the privy
council ordered that Beverley should be removed from office.

[Sidenote: Lord Culpeper.]

A change of governors, however, altered the situation. After Jeffries
and Chichely, who served but a year each, came Lord Culpeper, whom
Charles II. had undertaken to make co-proprietor of Virginia, along
with the Earl of Arlington. Culpeper was an average specimen of
the public officials of the time, fairly agreeable and easy-going,
but rapacious and utterly unprincipled. In one respect he might be
contrasted unfavourably with all the governors since Harvey. Such men
as Bennett and Mathews and Berkeley looked upon Virginia as home. After
his own fashion the tyrannical Berkeley had the interest of Virginia
at heart. But Culpeper regarded the Virginians simply as people to be
fleeced. Through four years of chronic brawl he kept coming and going,
coming to manage the assembly and returning to consult with the king.
Charles wished to have the power of initiating legislation taken away
from the burgesses. All laws were to be drafted by the governor and
council, and then sent to England for the royal approval, before being
submitted to the burgesses. With such an arduous task before him, it
was wise for Culpeper to avoid giving needless offence; and seeing the
high regard in which Beverley was held, he caused the order for his
removal to be revoked.

[Sidenote: The Plant-cutter’s Riot, 1682.]

The evil effects of the Navigation Act still continued. In 1679 the
tobacco crop was so large that a considerable surplus was left over
till the next year unsold. In 1680 the surplus was still greater, so
that there was evidently more than enough to supply the English market
for two years. The assembly therefore proposed to order a cessation
of planting for the year 1681, but on account of the customs revenue
it was necessary to obtain the king’s assent to such an order. By the
same token the assent was refused, and great was the indignation in
Virginia. The price of tobacco had fallen so low that, according to
Nicholas Spencer, a whole year’s crop would not so much as buy the
clothes which people needed.[80] The distress was like that which was
caused in the War of Independence by the Continental currency and the
rag money issued by the several states. It was the kind of sickness
that has always come and always will come with “cheap money.” Culpeper
insisted that the only chance of relief was in exporting beef, pork,
and grain to the West Indies. A more effective measure would have
been the repeal of the Navigation Act. In the spring of 1682, on the
petition of several counties, the assembly was convened for the purpose
of ordering a cessation of planting. Amid great popular excitement the
assembly adjourned without taking any decisive action. Then a fury
for destroying the young plants seized upon the people. “The growing
tobacco of one plantation was no sooner destroyed than the owner,
having been deprived either with or without his consent of his crop,
was seized with the same frenzy and ran with the crowd as it marched to
destroy the crop of his neighbour.”[81] The contagion spread until ten
thousand hogsheads of tobacco had been destroyed. In Gloucester, where
the most damage was done, two hundred plantations were laid waste. The
riot was suppressed by the militia, three ringleaders were hung, and
the rest pardoned. One, we are told, received pardon on condition that
he should build a bridge.[82]

[Sidenote: Culpeper’s removal.]

This was contracting the currency with a vengeance, but it produced
the desired effect. In 1683 the purchasing power of tobacco was
greatly increased, and a feeling of contentment returned. But the
destruction of the plants served to heighten the king’s indignation
at Culpeper’s ill success in curtailing the power of the burgesses.
Culpeper tried to play a double part and appear complaisant to the
assembly without offending the king. Consequently he pleased nobody,
and early in 1684 he was removed. Shortly afterward the king confirmed
him in the possession of the territory known as the Northern Neck, and
he relinquished all proprietary claims upon the rest of Virginia, in
exchange for a pension of £600 yearly for twenty years.

[Sidenote: Lord Howard of Effingham.]

Culpeper’s successor was Lord Howard of Effingham, an unworthy
descendant of Elizabeth’s gallant admiral. He was as greedy and
dishonest as Culpeper, without his conciliatory temper. The difference
between the two has been aptly compared to the difference between
Charles II. and his brother. Howard was indeed as domineering and
wrong-headed as James II., and rapacious besides. He treated public
opinion with contempt. His administration was noted for corruption and
tyranny. No accounts were rendered of the use of public funds, and
men were arbitrarily sent to jail. Howard went so far as to claim the
right to repeal the acts of the assembly, and over this point there was
hot contention. The subject of “plant-cutting,” or the destruction of
growing tobacco, came up again, and the crown was enabled in one and
the same act to wreak its vengeance upon an eminent victim and to aim
a blow at the independence of the House of Burgesses.

[Sidenote: More trouble for Beverley.]

Robert Beverley, as we have seen, had incurred the royal displeasure
by refusing to hand over to the commissioners the journals of the
House of Burgesses. In 1682 he was strongly in favour of a cessation
of planting, and accordingly it suited the purposes of his enemies
to point to him as the prime instigator of the plant-cutting riots.
On this accusation he was turned out of office and several times
imprisoned. At last, just after Lord Howard’s arrival, he was set free
after asking pardon on his bended knees and giving security for future
good behaviour. A statute passed about this time made plant-cutting
high treason, punishable with death and confiscation.[83]

As soon as Beverley was set free the House of Burgesses again chose him
for its clerk. But presently Lord Howard tried to get the burgesses
to allow him to levy a tax, and in the course of the quarrel sundry
trumped-up charges were brought against Beverley, so that in 1686 James
II. instructed Howard to declare him incapable of holding any office of
public trust. The same letter ordered that henceforth the clerk of the
House of Burgesses should be appointed by the governor.[84]

[Sidenote: For stupid audacity James II. was outdone by George III.]

It is worthy of note that the most despicable and lawless of modern
English kings did not venture to deny the right of Virginians to tax
themselves by their own representatives. Howard’s instructions merely
authorized him to “recommend” certain measures to the assembly. His
attempt to get permission to levy a tax independently of the burgesses
was such a recommendation. However arrogant and illegal in spirit, it
still conceded to the colonists the constitutional principle over which
the fatuous George III. and his rotten-borough parliaments were to try
to ride rough-shod.

[Sidenote: Francis Nicholson.]

By 1688 Howard concluded that it would be pleasant and comfortable
for him to live on his governor’s salary in England and send out a
deputy-governor to deal with refractory burgesses. When he arrived in
England he found William and Mary on the throne, but they showed no
disposition to interfere with his plans. Just the right sort of man
for deputy-governor appeared at the right moment. Francis Nicholson
had held that position in New York under the viceroy of united New
York and New England, Sir Edmund Andros. When that unpopular viceroy
was deposed and cast into jail in Boston, Nicholson was deposed in New
York by Jacob Leisler, and went to England with the tale of his woes,
which King William sought to assuage by sending him to Virginia as
deputy-governor.

[Sidenote: His manners.]

Nicholson was a man of integrity and fair ability, though highly
eccentric and cantankerous. “Laws of Virginia,” he cried one day,
seizing the attorney-general by the lapel of his silk robe, “I know
no laws of Virginia! I know my commands are going to be obeyed here!”
At another time he told the council that they were “mere brutes who
understood not manners, ... that he would beat them into better
manners and make them feel that he was governor of Virginia.”[85]

[Sidenote: James Blair, founder of William and Mary College.]

In spite of his queer peppery ways, the rule of Nicholson was a decided
relief after such worthless creatures as Culpeper and Howard. It is
chiefly memorable for the founding of the second American college, a
work which encountered such obstacles on both sides of the ocean as
only an iron will could vanquish. Such was found in the person of James
Blair, a Scotch clergyman, who in 1689 was appointed commissioner of
the Church in Virginia. The need for a bishop was felt, and a little
later there was some talk of sending out the famous Jonathan Swift in
that capacity, but no Episcopal bishopric was created in America until
after the War of Independence. Dr. Blair had a seat in the colonial
council, presided at ecclesiastical trials, and exercised many of
the powers of a bishop. Since the old scheme of Nicholas Ferrar and
his friends for a college in Virginia had been extinguished amid
lurid scenes of Indian massacre, nearly seventy years had elapsed[86]
when Blair in 1691 revived it. He began by collecting some £2,500 by
subscription, and then went to England to get more money and obtain
a charter. He was aided by two famous divines, Tillotson, Archbishop
of Canterbury, and Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, but from the
treasury commissioner, Sir Edward Seymour, he received a coarse
rebuff, which shows the frankly materialistic view at that time
entertained by the British official mind regarding England’s colonies.
When Blair urged that a college was needed for training up clergymen,
Seymour thought it was no time to be sending money to America for
such purposes; every penny was wanted in Europe for carrying on the
necessary and righteous war against Louis XIV. Blair could not deny
that it was an eminently righteous war, but he was not thus to be
turned from his purpose. “You must not forget,” said he, “that people
in Virginia have souls to save, as well as people in England.” “Souls!”
cried Seymour, “damn your souls! Grow tobacco!” In spite of this
discouraging view of the case, the good doctor persevered until he
obtained from William and Mary the charter that founded the college
ever since known by their names.

[Sidenote: Nicholson succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros.]

The college was established in 1693, with Blair for its president.[87]
Governor Nicholson, with seventeen other persons appointed by the
assembly, formed the board of trustees. From the outset Nicholson
was warmly in sympathy with the enterprise, but now this friend was
called away for a time. In the anti-Catholic fervour which attended the
accession of King William and Queen Mary, the palatinate government in
Maryland had been overturned, and the new royal governor, Sir Lionel
Copley, died in 1693. Nicholson was then promoted from deputy-governor
of Virginia to be governor of Maryland. About the same time Lord
Howard of Effingham resigned or was removed, and Sir Edmund Andros was
sent out to Virginia as governor. It may seem a strange appointment in
view of the obloquy which Andros had incurred at the north. But in all
these appointments William III. seems to have acted upon a consistent
policy of not disturbing, except in cases of necessity, the state of
things which he found. As a rule he retained in his service the old
officials against whom no grave charges were brought; and while the
personality of Andros was not prepossessing, there can be no doubt as
to his integrity.

[Sidenote: Andros quarrels with Blair.]

Nicholson’s career as royal governor of Maryland lasted until 1698,
while Andros was having a hard time in Virginia trying to enforce with
rigour the Navigation Act and to make life miserable for Dr. Blair.
His conduct was far more moderate than it had been in New England,
but he had his full share of trouble in Virginia. The moving cause of
his hostility to the college of William and Mary is not distinctly
assigned, but he is not unlikely to have believed, like many a dullard
of his stripe, that education is apt to encourage a seditious and
froward spirit. He did everything he could think of to thwart and
annoy President Blair. At the election of burgesses he predicted that
the establishment of a college would be sure to result in a terrible
increase of taxes. He tried to persuade subscribers to withhold the
payment of their subscriptions. He sought to arouse an absurd prejudice
against Scotchmen, for which it was rather late in the day. Finally he
connived at gross insults to the president and friends of the college.
Among the young men to whom Andros showed especial favour was Daniel
Parke, whose grandson, Daniel Parke Custis, is now remembered as the
first husband of Martha Washington. This young Daniel did some things
to which posterity could hardly point with pride. He is described as
a “sparkish gentleman,” or as some would say a slashing blade. He was
an expert with the rapier and anxious to thrust it between the ribs of
people who supported the college. His challenges were numerous, but
clergymen could not be reached in such a way. So “he set up a claim to
the pew in church in which Mrs. Blair sat, and one Sunday,” as we are
told, “with fury and violence he pulled her out of it in the presence
of the minister and congregation, who were greatly scandalized at this
ruffian and profane action.”[88]

[Sidenote: Removal of Andros.]

This was going too far. The stout Scotchman had powerful friends in
London; the outrage was discussed in Lambeth Palace; and Sir Edmund
Andros, for winking at such behaviour, was removed. He was evidently a
slow-witted official. His experiences in Boston, with Parson Willard
of the Old South, ought to have cured him of his propensity to quarrel
with aggressive and resolute clergymen. For two or three years after
going home, Sir Edmund governed the little channel island of Jersey,
and the rest of his days were spent in retirement, until his death in
1714.

[Sidenote: Earl of Orkney.]

The system of absentee governors, occasionally exemplified in such
cases as those of Lord Delaware and Lord Howard, was now to be
permanently adopted. A great favourite with William III. was George
Hamilton Douglas, whose distinguished gallantry at the battle of the
Boyne and other occasions had been rewarded with the earldom of Orkney.
In 1697 he was appointed governor-in-chief of Virginia, and for the
next forty years he drew his annual salary of £1,200 without ever
crossing the ocean. Henceforth the official who represented him in
Virginia was entitled lieutenant-governor, and the first was Francis
Nicholson, who was brought back from Maryland in 1698.

[Sidenote: Return of Nicholson.]

[Sidenote: Founding of Williamsburg.]

One of Nicholson’s achievements in Maryland, as we shall see in the
next chapter, had been the change of the seat of government from St.
Mary’s to Annapolis. He now proceeded to make a similar change in
Virginia. After perishing in Bacon’s rebellion, Jamestown was rebuilt
by Lord Culpeper, but in the last decade of the century it was again
destroyed by an accidental fire, and has never since risen from its
ashes. Of that sacred spot, the first abiding-place of Englishmen in
America, nothing now is left but the ivy-mantled ruins of the church
tower and a few cracked and crumbling tombstones. The site of the
hamlet is more than half submerged, and unless some kind of sea-wall
is built to protect it, the unresting tides will soon wash everything
away.[89] Jamestown had always a bad reputation for malaria, and after
its second burning people were not eager to restore it. Plans for
moving the government elsewhere had been considered on more than one
occasion. In 1699 the choice fell upon the site of Middle Plantation,
half way between James and York rivers, with its salubrious air and
wholesome water. It had already, in 1693, been selected as the site of
the new college.[90] Nicholson called the place Williamsburg, and began
building a town there with streets so laid out as to make W and M, the
initials of the king and queen, a plan soon abandoned as inconvenient.
The town thus founded by Nicholson remained the capital of Virginia
until 1780, when it was superseded by Richmond.

[Sidenote: Nicholson and Blair.]

Nicholson was in full sympathy with President Blair as regarded the
college, but occasions for disagreement between them were at hand. On
the lieutenant-governor’s arrival the wise parson read him a lesson
upon the need for moderation in the display of his powers. The career
of his predecessor Andros, in more than one colony, furnished abundant
examples of the need for such moderation. Blair offered him some good
advice tendered by the Bishop of London, whereupon Nicholson exclaimed,
with a big round oath, “I know how to govern Virginia and Maryland
better than all the bishops in England. If I had not hampered them in
Maryland and kept them under, I should never have been able to govern
them.” The doctor replied: “Sir, I do not pretend to [speak for]
Maryland, but if I know anything of Virginia, they are a good-natured
[and] tractable people as any in the world, and you may do anything
with them by way of civility, but you will never be able to manage them
in that way you speak of, by hampering and keeping them under.”[91] The
eccentric governor did not profit by this advice. Of actual tyranny
there was not much in his administration, but his blustering tongue
would give utterance to extravagant speeches whereat company would sit
“amazed and silent.”

[Sidenote: scolding swain.]

[Sidenote: Removal of Nicholson.]

At last in a laughable way this blustering habit proved his ruin.
Not far from Williamsburg lived Major Lewis Burwell, who had married
a cousin of the rebel Bacon and had a whole houseful of blooming
daughters. With one of these young ladies the worshipful governor
fell madly in love, but to his unspeakable chagrin she promptly and
decisively refused him. Poor Nicholson could not keep the matter to
himself, but raved about it in public. He suspected that Dr. Blair’s
brother was a favoured rival and threatened the whole family with
dire vengeance. He swore that if Miss Burwell should undertake to
marry anybody but himself, he would “cut the throats of three men: the
bridegroom, the minister, and the justice who issued the license.”
This truculent speech got reported in London, and one of Nicholson’s
friends wrote him a letter counselling him not to be so unreasonable,
but to remember that English women were the freest in the world, and
that Virginia was not like those heathen Turkish countries where tender
ladies were dragged into the arms of some pasha still reeking with the
blood of their nearest relatives. But nothing could quiet the fury
of a “governor scorned;” and one day when he suspected the minister
of Hampton parish of being his rival, he went up to him and knocked
his hat off. This sort of thing came to be too much for Dr. Blair; a
memorial was sent to Queen Anne, and Nicholson was recalled to England
in 1705. Afterwards we find him commanding the expedition which in
1710 captured the Acadian Port Royal from the French. He then served
as governor of the newly conquered Nova Scotia and afterwards of South
Carolina, was knighted, rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, and
died in 1728.

[Sidenote: The college.]

Meanwhile the college of William and Mary, in which Nicholson felt so
much interest, was flourishing. Unfortunately its first hall, designed
by Sir Christopher Wren, was destroyed by fire in 1705, but it was
before long replaced by another. Until 1712 the faculty consisted of
the president, a grammar master, writing master, and an usher; in
that year a professor of mathematics was added. By 1729 there were six
professors. Fifty years later the departments of law and medicine were
added, and the name “College” was replaced by “University.”[92]

[Sidenote: Indian students.]

As in the case of Harvard, it was hoped that this college might prove
effective in converting and educating Indians. In 1723 Brafferton Hall
was built for their use, from a fund given by Robert Boyle, the famous
chemist. It is still standing and used as a dormitory. We are told that
the “Queen of Pamunkey” sent her son to college with a boy to wait upon
him, and likewise two chiefs’ sons, “all handsomely cloathed after the
Indian fashion;”[93] but as to any effects wrought upon the barbarian
mind by this Christian institution of learning, there is nothing to
which we can point.

[Sidenote: Instructions to the housekeeper.]

The first Commencement exercises were held in the year 1700, and it is
said that not only were Virginians and Indians present on that gala
day, but so great was the fame of it that people came in sloops from
Maryland and Pennsylvania, and even from New York.[94] The journals of
what we may call the “faculty meetings” throw light upon the manner of
living at the college. There is a matron, or housekeeper, who is thus
carefully instructed: “1. That you never concern yourself with any
of the Boys only when you have a Complaint against any of them, and
then that you make it to his or their proper Master.--2. That there
be always both fresh and salt Meat for Dinner; and twice in the Week,
as well as on Sunday in particular, that there be either Puddings or
Pies besides; that there be always Plenty of Victuals; that Breakfast,
Dinner, and Supper be serv’d up in the cleanest and neatest manner
possible; and for this Reason the Society not only allow but desire
you to get a Cook; that the Boys Suppers be not as usual made up of
different Scraps, but that there be at each Table the same Sor^t: and
when there is cold fresh Meat enough, that it be often hashed for
them; that when they are sick, you yourself see their Victuals before
it be carry’d to them, that it be clean, decent, and fit for them;
that the Person appointed to take Care of them be constantly with
them, and give their Medicine regularly. The general Complaints of the
Visitors, and other Gentlemen throughout the whole Colony, plainly
shew the Necessity of a strict and regular Compliance with the above
Directions.... 4. That a proper Stocking-mender be procured to live in
or near the college, and as both Masters and Boys complain of losing
their Stockings, you are desired to look over their Notes given with
their Linnen to the Wash, both at the Delivery and Return of them....
5. That the Negroes be trusted with no keys; ... that fresh Butter be
look’d out for in Time, that the Boys may not be forced to eat salt in
Summer.--6. As we all know that Negroes will not perform their Duties
without the Mistress’ constant Eye, especially in so large a Family as
the College, and as we all observe You going abroad more frequently
then even the Mistress of a private Family can do without the affairs
of her province greatly suffering, We particularly request it of you,
that your visits for the future in Town and Country may not be so
frequent, by which Means we doubt not but Complaints will be greatly
lessened.”[95]

[Sidenote: Horse-racing prohibited.]

At another meeting it is ordered “y^t no scholar belonging to any
school in the College, of w^t Age, Rank, or Quality, soever, do keep
any race Horse at y^e College, in y^e Town--or any where in the
neighbourhood--y^t they be not anyway concerned in making races, or in
backing, or abetting, those made by others, and y^t all Race Horses,
kept in y^e neighbourhood of y^e College & belonging to any of y^e
scholars, be immediately dispatched & sent off, & never again brought
back, and all of this under Pain of y^e severest Animadversion and
Punishment.”

[Sidenote: Other prohibitions.]

There is a stress in the wording of this order which makes one
suspect that the faculty had encountered difficulty in suppressing
horse-racing. Similar orders forbid students to take part in
cock-fighting, to frequent “y^e Ordinaries,” to bet, to play at
billiards, or to bring cards or dice into the college. Punishment is
most emphatically threatened for any student who may “presume to go
out of y^e Bounds of y^e College, particularly towards the mill pond”
without express leave; but why the mill pond was to be so sedulously
shunned, we are left to conjecture. Finally, “to y^e End y^t no Person
may pretend Ignorance of y^e foregoing ... Regulations, ... it is
Ordered ... y^t a clear & legible copy of y^m be posted up in every
School of y^e College.”[96]

[Sidenote: The story of Parson Camm.]

One of the brightest traditions in the history of the college is that
which tells of the wooing and wedding of Parson Camm, a gentleman
famous once, whose fame deserves to be revived. John Camm was born in
1718 and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a man of good
scholarship and sturdy character, an uncompromising Tory, one of the
leaders in that “Parsons’ Cause” which made Patrick Henry famous.[97]
He lived to be the last president of William and Mary before the
Revolution. After he had attained middle age, but while he was as yet
only a preacher and professor, and like all professors in those days
at William and Mary a bachelor, there came to him the romance which
brightened his life. Among those who listened to his preaching was Miss
Betsy Hansford, of the family of Hansford the rebel and martyr. A young
friend, who had wooed Miss Betsy without success, persuaded the worthy
parson to aid him with his eloquence. But it was in vain that Mr. Camm
besieged the young lady with texts from the Bible enjoining matrimony
as a duty. She proved herself able to beat him at his own game when
she suggested that if the parson would go home and look at 2 Samuel
xii. 7, he might be able to divine the reason of her obduracy. When Mr.
Camm proceeded to search the Scriptures he found these significant
words staring him in the face: “And Nathan said to David, _Thou art
the man!_” The sequel is told in an item of the Virginia Gazette,
announcing the marriage of Rev. John Camm and Miss Betsy Hansford.[98]

So, Virginia, too, had its Priscilla! In the words of the sweet
mediæval poem:--

    El fait que dame, et si fait bien,
    Car sos ciel n’a si france rien
    Com est dame qui violt amer,
    Quant Deus la violt à ço torner:
    Deus totes dames beneie.[99]

But this marriage was an infringement of the customs of the college,
and was rebuked in an order that _hereafter_ the marriage of a
professor should _ipso facto_ vacate his office.

[Sidenote: Some interesting facts about the college.]

The college founded by James Blair was a most valuable centre for
culture for Virginia, and has been remarkable in many ways. It was
the first college in America to introduce teaching by lectures, and
the elective system of study; it was the first to unite a group
of faculties into a university; it was the second in the English
world to have a chair of Municipal Law, George Wythe coming to such
a professorship a few years after Sir William Blackstone; it was
the first in America to establish a chair of History and Political
Science; and it was one of the first to pursue a thoroughly secular
and unsectarian policy. Though until lately its number of students
at any one time had never reached one hundred and fifty, it has
given to our country fifteen senators and seventy representatives in
congress; seventeen governors of states, and thirty-seven judges; three
presidents of the United States,--Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler; and the
great Chief Justice Marshall.[100] It was a noble work for America that
was done by the Scotch parson, James Blair.

[Sidenote: Nicholson’s schemes for a union of the colonies.]

As for Governor Nicholson, who was so deeply interested in that work,
he played a memorable part in the history of the United States, which
deserves mention before we leave the subject of his connection with
Virginia. When he was first transferred from the governorship of New
York to that of the Old Dominion, with his head full of experiences
gained in New York, he proposed a grand Union of the English colonies
for mutual defence against the encroachments of the French. King
William approved the scheme and recommended it to the favourable
consideration of the colonial assemblies. But a desire for union was
not strong in any of these bodies, and as for Virginia, she was too
remote from the Canadian border to feel warmly interested in it. The
act of 1695, authorizing the governor to apply £500 from the liquor
excise to the relief of New York, shows a notably generous spirit in
the Virginia burgesses, but the pressure which was to drive people into
a Federal Union was still in the hidden future. The attitude of the
several colonies so exasperated Nicholson as to lead him to recommend
that they should all be placed under a single viceroy and taxed for
the support of a standing army. When this plan was submitted to Queen
Anne and her ministers, it was rejected as unwise, and no British
ministry ever ventured to try any part of such a policy until the reign
of George III. Francis Nicholson should be remembered as one of the
very first to conceive and suggest the policy that afterward drove the
colonies into their Declaration of Independence.




CHAPTER XIII.

MARYLAND’S VICISSITUDES.


[Sidenote: Virginia and Maryland.]

The accession of William and Mary, which wrought so little change in
Virginia, furnished the occasion for a revolution in the palatinate of
Maryland. To trace the causes of this revolution, we must return to
1658, the year which witnessed the death of Oliver Cromwell and saw
Lord Baltimore’s government firmly set upon its feet through the favour
of that mighty potentate. The compromises which were then adopted
put an end to the conflict between Virginia and Maryland, and from
that time forth the relations between the two colonies were nearly
always cordial. For the next century the constitutional development of
Maryland proceeded without interference from Virginia, although on many
occasions the smaller colony was profoundly influenced by what went on
in its larger neighbour, as well as by those currents of feeling that
from time to time pervaded the English world and swayed both colonies
alike. We shall presently see, for example, that marked effects were
wrought in Maryland by Bacon’s rebellion, and we shall observe what
various echoes of the political situation in England were heard in all
the colonies, from the wild scare of the Popish Plot in 1678 down to
the assured triumph of William III. in 1691, and even later.

[Sidenote: Fuller and Fendall.]

It will be remembered that when the Puritans of Providence, in March,
1658, gave in their assent to the compromises by which Lord Baltimore’s
authority was securely established in Maryland, only three years had
elapsed since their victory at the Severn had given them supreme
control over the country. While the defeated Governor Stone languished
in jail, the victorious leader, William Fuller, exercised complete sway
and for a moment could afford to laugh at the pretensions of Josias
Fendall, the new governor whom Baltimore appointed in 1656. But this
state of things came abruptly to an end when it was discovered that
Lord Baltimore was upheld by Cromwell. Virginia, with her Puritan
rulers, Bennett and Claiborne and Mathews, was thus at once detached
from the support of Fuller, so that nothing was left for him but to
come to terms. Fendall’s policy toward his late antagonists was pacific
and generous, so much so that in the assembly of 1659 we find the names
of Fuller and other Puritan leaders enrolled among the burgesses.
Associated with Fendall, and second to him in authority, was the
secretary and receiver-general, Philip Calvert, younger brother of
Cecilius, Lord Baltimore.

[Sidenote: The duty on tobacco.]

After the fires of civil dudgeon had briskly burned for so many years,
it was not strange that their smouldering embers should send forth a
few fitful gleams before dying. Apart from questions of religion or
of loyalty, there were difficulties in regard to taxation that can
hardly have been without their effect. There seems to have been more
or less widely diffused a feeling of uneasiness upon which agitators
could play. In 1647 the assembly had granted to the lord proprietor a
duty of ten shillings per hogshead on all tobacco exported from the
colony. This grant called forth remonstrances which seem to have had
their effect, as in 1649 the act was replaced by another which granted
to the proprietor for seven years a similar duty upon all tobacco
exported on Dutch vessels if not bound to some English port.[101] This
act seemed to carry with it the repeal of that of 1647, concerning
which it was silent; if the first act continued in force, the second
was meaningless. During the turbulence that ensued after 1650 it
is not likely that the revenue laws were rigidly enforced. In 1659
Baltimore directed Fendall to have the act of 1647 explicitly repealed
on condition that the assembly should grant him two shillings per
hogshead on tobacco when shipped to British ports and ten shillings
when shipped to foreign ports. Whether this demand was popular or not,
we may gather from dates that are more eloquent than words. The act of
1647 was repealed by the assembly in 1660, but no grant in return was
made to the proprietor until 1671, and then it was a uniform duty of
two shillings. Unless the demand had been unpopular it would not have
been resisted for eleven years.

[Sidenote: Fendall’s plot.]

When the assembly met on the last day of February, 1660, to consider
this and other questions, memorable changes had occurred in England.
The death of mighty Oliver, in September, 1658, threatened the realm
with anarchy; and the prospect for a moment grew darker when in May,
1659, his gentle son Richard dropped the burden which he had not
strength to carry. For nine months England seemed drifting without
compass or helm. When our assembly met, one notable thing had just
happened, early in February, when George Monk, “honest old George,”
entered London at the head of his army, and assumed control of affairs.
The news of this event had not yet crossed the ocean, and even if it
had, our Marylanders would not have understood what it portended. To
some of them it seemed as if in this season of chaos whoever should
seize upon the government of their little world would be likely to keep
it. So Governor Fendall seems to have thought, and with him Thomas
Gerrard, a member of the council and a Catholic, but disloyal to
Baltimore. Why should not the government be held independently of the
lord proprietor and all fees and duties to him be avoided? In this view
of the case Fendall had two or three sympathizers in the council, and
probably a good many in the House of Burgesses, especially among the
Puritan members, who were in number three fourths of the whole.

[Sidenote: Temporary overthrow of Baltimore’s authority.]

In the course of the discussion over the tobacco duty the burgesses
sent a message to Governor Fendall and the council, saying that they
judged themselves to be a lawful assembly without dependence upon any
other power now existing within the province, and if anybody had any
objections to this view of the case they should like to hear them.
The upper house answered by asking the lower house if they meant that
they were a complete assembly without the upper house, and also that
they were independent of the lord proprietor. These questions led to
a conference, in which, among other things, Fendall declared it to be
his opinion that laws passed by the assembly and published in the lord
proprietor’s name should at once be in full force. Two of the council,
Gerrard and Utie, agreed with this view, while the secretary, Philip
Calvert, and all the rest, dissented. In these proceedings the governor
was plainly in league with the lower house, and this vote demonstrated
the necessity of getting rid of the upper house. Accordingly the
burgesses sent word to the governor and council, that they would not
acknowledge them as an upper house, but they might come and take
seats in the lower house if they liked. Secretary Calvert observed
that in that case the governor would become president of the joint
assembly, and the speaker of the burgesses must give place to him.
A compromise was presently reached, according to which the governor
should preside, with a casting vote, but the right of adjourning or
dissolving the assembly should be exercised by the speaker. Hereupon
Calvert protested, and demanded that his protest be put on record,
but Fendall refused. Then Calvert and his most staunch adherent,
Councillor Brooke, requested permission to leave the room. “You may if
you please,” quoth Fendall, “we shall not force you to go or stay.”
With the departure of these gentlemen the upper house was virtually
abolished, and now Fendall quite threw off the mask by surrendering
his commission from Lord Baltimore and accepting a new one from the
assembly. Thus the palatinate government was overthrown, and it only
remained for Fendall and his assembly to declare it felony for anybody
in Maryland to acknowledge Lord Baltimore’s authority.

[Sidenote: Superficial resemblance to the action of Virginia.]

These proceedings in Maryland become perfectly intelligible if we
compare them with what was going on at the very same moment in
Virginia. In March, 1660, the assembly at Jamestown, in view of the
fact that there was no acknowledged supreme authority then resident
in England, declared that the supreme power in Virginia was in the
assembly, and that all writs should issue in its name, until such
command should come from England as the assembly should judge to
be lawful. This assembly then elected Sir William Berkeley to the
governorship, and he accepted from it provisionally his commission.[102]

[Sidenote: Profound difference in the situations.]

[Sidenote: Fendall’s error.]

[Sidenote: Collapse of the rebellion.]

Now in Maryland there was a superficial resemblance to these
proceedings, in so far as the supreme power was lodged in the assembly
and the governor accepted his commission from it. But there was a
profound difference in the two situations, and while the people of
Virginia read their own situation correctly, Fendall and his abettors
did not. The assembly at Jamestown was predominantly Cavalier in its
composition and in full sympathy with the expected restoration of the
monarchy; and its proceedings were promptly sanctioned by Charles
II., whose royal commission to Sir William Berkeley came in October
of the same year. On the other hand, the assembly at St. Mary’s
was predominantly Puritan in its composition, and one of its most
influential members was that William Fuller who five years before had
defeated Lord Baltimore’s governor in the battle of the Severn, and
executed drumhead justice upon several of his adherents. The election
had been managed in the interest of the Puritans, as is shown by
Fuller’s county, Anne Arundel, returning seven delegates, whereas it
was only entitled to four. The collusion between Fuller and Fendall
is unmistakable. For two years the Puritans had acquiesced in Lord
Baltimore’s rule, because they had not dared resist Cromwell. Now
if Puritanism were to remain uppermost in England, they might once
more hope to overthrow him; if the monarchy were to be restored, the
prospect was also good, for it did not seem likely that Charles II.
would befriend the man whom Cromwell had befriended. Here was the fatal
error of Fendall and his people. Charles II. had long ago recovered
from his little tiff with Cecilius for appointing a Parliamentarian
governor, and as a Romanist at heart he was more than ready to show
favour to Catholics. Thus with rare good fortune--defended in turn by
a king and a lord protector, and by another king, and aided at every
turn by his own consummate tact, did Cecilius triumphantly weather
all the storms. When the news of Fendall’s treachery reached London
it found Charles II. seated firmly on the throne. All persons were at
once instructed to respect Lord Baltimore’s authority over Maryland,
and Sir William Berkeley was ordered to bring the force of Virginia
to his aid if necessary; Cecilius appointed his brother Philip to the
governorship; the rebellion instantly collapsed, and its ringleaders
were seized. Vengeance was denounced against Fendall and Fuller and
all who had been concerned in the execution of Baltimore’s men after
the battle of the Severn. Philip Calvert was instructed to hang them
all, and to proclaim martial law if necessary, but on second thought
so much severity was deemed impolitic. Such punishments were inflicted
as banishment, confiscation, and loss of civil rights, but nobody was
put to death. Such was the end of Fendall’s rebellion. In the course of
the year 1661, Cecilius sent over his only son, Charles Calvert, to be
governor of the palatinate, while Philip remained as chancellor; and
this arrangement continued for many years.

[Sidenote: The Quakers.]

Fendall’s administration had witnessed two events of especial interest,
in the arrival of Quakers in the colony and of Dutchmen in a part of
its territory. Quakers came from Massachusetts and Virginia, where they
suffered so much ill usage, into Maryland, where they also got into
trouble, though it does not appear that the objections against them
were of a religious nature. The peculiar notions of the Quakers often
brought them into conflict with governments on purely civil grounds,
as when they refused to be enrolled in the militia, or to serve on
juries, or give testimony under oath. For such reasons, two zealous
Quaker preachers, Thurston and Cole, were arrested and tried in 1658,
but it does not appear that they were treated with harshness or that at
any time there was anything like persecution of Quakers in Maryland.
When George Fox visited the country in 1672, his followers there were
numerous and held regular meetings.

[Sidenote: The Swedes and Dutch.]

[Sidenote: Augustine Herman.]

[Sidenote: Bohemia Manor.]

With the arrival of Quakers there appeared on the northeastern horizon
a menace from the Dutch, and incidents occurred that curiously
affected the future growth of Lord Baltimore’s princely domain.
Since 1638 parties of Swedes had been establishing themselves on the
western bank of the Delaware River, on and about the present sites
of Newcastle and Wilmington. This region they called New Sweden,
but in 1655 Peter Stuyvesant despatched from Manhattan a force of
Dutchmen which speedily overcame the little colony. Stuyvesant then
divided his conquest into two provinces, which he called New Amstel
and Altona, and appointed a governor over each. It was now Maryland’s
turn to be aroused. The governor of New Netherland had no business to
be setting up jurisdictions west of Delaware River. That whole region
was expressly included in Lord Baltimore’s charter. Accordingly the
Dutch governors of New Amstel and Altona were politely informed that
they must either acknowledge Baltimore’s jurisdiction or leave the
country. This led to Stuyvesant’s sending an envoy to St. Mary’s, to
discuss the proprietorship of the territory in question. The person
selected for this business was a man of no ordinary mould, a native
of Prague, with the German name of Augustine Herman. He came to New
Amsterdam at some time before 1647, in which year he was appointed one
of the Nine Men whose business it was to advise the governor. This
Herman was a man of broad intelligence, rare executive ability, and
perfect courage. He was by profession a land surveyor and draughtsman,
but in the course of his life he accumulated a great fortune by trade.
His portrait, painted from life, shows us a masterful face, clean
shaven, with powerful jaw, firm-set lips, imperious eyes, and long hair
flowing upon his shoulders over a red coat richly ruffled.[103] Such
was the man whom Stuyvesant chose to dispute Lord Baltimore’s title to
the smiling fields of New Amstel and Altona. He well understood the
wisdom of claiming everything, and when the discovery of North America
by John Cabot was cited against him, he boldly set up the priority
of Christopher Columbus as giving the Spaniards a claim upon the
whole hemisphere. To the Dutch, he said, as victors over their wicked
stepmother Spain, her claims had naturally passed! One is inclined
to wonder if such an argument was announced without something like a
twinkle in those piercing eyes. At all events, it was not long before
the astute ambassador abandoned his logic and changed his allegiance.
Romantic tradition has assigned various grounds for Herman’s leaving
New Amsterdam. Whether it was because of a quarrel with Stuyvesant, and
whether the quarrel had its source in love of woman or love of pelf,
we know not; but in 1660 Herman wrote to Lord Baltimore, asking for
the grant of a manor, and offering to pay for it by making a map of
Maryland. The proposal was accepted. The map, which was completed after
careful surveys extending over ten years and was engraved in London in
1673, with a portrait of Herman attached, is still preserved in the
British Museum. For this important service the enterprising surveyor
received an estate on the Elk River, which by successive accretions
came to include more than 20,000 acres.[104] It is still called by
the name which Herman gave it, Bohemia Manor. There he grew immensely
rich by trade with the Indians along the very routes which Claiborne
had hoped to monopolize, and there in his great manor house, in spite
of matrimonial infelicities like those of Socrates and the elder Mr.
Weller, he lived to a good old age and dispensed a regal hospitality,
in which the items of rum and brandy, strong beer, sound wines, and
“best cider out of the orchard” were not forgotten. Herman’s tomb is
still to be seen hard by the vestiges of his house and his deer park.
Six of his descendants succeeded him as lords of Bohemia Manor, until
its legal existence came to an end in 1789. The fact is not without
interest that Margaret Shippen, wife of Benedict Arnold, counted among
her ancestors the sturdy Augustine Herman.

[Sidenote: The Labadists.]

A noteworthy episode in the history of Bohemia Manor is the settlement
of a small sect of Mystics, known as Labadists, from the name of their
French founder, Jean de Labadie. Their professed aim was to restore the
simplicity of life and doctrine attributed to the primitive Christians.
Their views of spiritual things were brightened by an inward light,
their drift of thought was toward antinomianism, they held all goods
in common, and their notions about marriage were such as to render
them liable to be molested on civil grounds. The persistent recurrence
of such little communities, age after age, each one ignorant of the
existence of its predecessors and supremely innocent of all knowledge
of the world, is one of the interesting freaks in religious history.
Even in the tolerant atmosphere of Holland these Labadists led an
uneasy life, and in 1679 two of their brethren, Sluyter and Dankers,
came over to New York, to make fresh converts and find a new home. One
of their first converts was Ephraim, the weak-minded son of Augustine
Herman, and it may have been through the son’s persuasion that the
father was induced to grant nearly 4,000 acres of his manor to the
community. A company settled there in 1683 and were joined by persons
from New York. As often happens in such communities the affair ended
in a despotism, in which the people were ruled with a rod of iron by
Brother Sluyter and his wife, who set themselves up as a kind of abbot
and abbess. On Sluyter’s death in 1722 the sect seems to have come to
an end, but to this day the land is known as “the Labadie tract.”

[Sidenote: The Duke of York takes possession of the Delaware
settlements.]

Long before Augustine Herman’s death, Lord Baltimore had granted him a
second estate, called the manor of St. Augustine, extending eastward
from Bohemia Manor to the shore of Delaware Bay; but to the greater
part of it the Herman family never succeeded in making good their
title, for the territory passed out of Lord Baltimore’s domain. Once
more the heedlessness and bad faith of the Stuart kings, in their
grants of American lands, was exhibited, and as Baltimore’s patent had
once encroached upon the Virginians, so now he was encroached upon by
the Duke of York and presently by William Penn. The province of New
Netherland, which Charles II. took from the Dutch in 1664 and bestowed
upon his brother as lord proprietor, extended from the upper waters
of the Hudson down to Cape May at the entrance to Delaware Bay, but
did not include a square foot of land on the west shore of the bay,
since all that was expressly included in the Maryland charter. It was
not to be expected that Swedes or Dutchmen would pay any heed to that
English charter; but it might have been supposed that Charles II. and
his brother James would have shown some respect for a contract made by
their father. Not so, however. The little Swedish and Dutch settlements
on the west shore were at once taken in charge by officers of the Duke
of York, as if they had belonged to his domain of New Netherland, while
the southern part of that domain was granted by him, under the name of
New Jersey, to his friends, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.

[Sidenote: Charter of Pennsylvania.]

Nothing more of consequence occurred for several years, in the course
of which interval, in 1675, Cecilius Calvert died and was succeeded
by his son Charles, third Lord Baltimore. Not long afterward William
Penn appeared on the scene, at first as trustee of certain Quaker
estates in New Jersey, but presently as ruler over a princely domain
of his own. The Quakers had been ill treated in many of the colonies;
why not found a colony in which they should be the leaders? The
suggestion offered to Charles II. an easy way of paying an old debt
of £16,000 owed by the crown to the estate of the late Admiral Penn,
and accordingly William was made lord proprietor of a spacious country
lying west of the Delaware River and between Maryland to the south and
the Five Nations to the north. His charter created a government very
similar to Lord Baltimore’s but far less independent, for laws passed
in Pennsylvania must be sent to England for the royal assent, and the
British government, which fifty years before had expressly renounced
the right to lay taxes upon Marylanders, now expressly asserted the
right to lay taxes upon Pennsylvanians. This change marks the growth
of the imperial and anti-feudal sentiment in England, the feeling that
privileges like those accorded to the Calverts were too extensive to be
enjoyed by subjects.

[Sidenote: Boundaries between Penn and Baltimore.]

According to Lord Baltimore’s charter his northern boundary was the
fortieth parallel of latitude, which runs a little north of the
site of Philadelphia. The latitude was marked by a fort erected on
the Susquehanna River, and when the crown lawyers consulted with
Baltimore’s attorneys, they were informed that all questions of
encroachment would be avoided if the line were to be run just north
of this fort, so as to leave it on the Maryland side.[105] Penn made
no objection to this, but when the charter was drawn up no allusion
was made to the Susquehanna fort. Penn’s southern boundary was made to
begin twelve miles north of Newcastle, thence to curve northwestward to
the fortieth parallel and follow that parallel. Measurement soon showed
that such a boundary would give Penn’s province inadequate access to
the sea. His position as a royal favourite enabled him to push the
whole line twenty miles to the south. Even then he was disappointed in
not gaining the head of Chesapeake Bay, and, being bent upon securing
somewhere a bit of seacoast, he persuaded the Duke of York to give
him the land on the west shore of Delaware Bay which the Dutch had
once taken from the Swedes. By further enlargement the area of this
grant became that of the present state of Delaware, the whole of which
was thus, in spite of vehement protest, carved out of the original
Maryland. In such matters there was not much profit in contending
against princes.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Old manors in Maryland.]

In the course of this narrative we have had occasion to mention the
grants of Bohemia and other manors. In order that we should understand
the course of Maryland history before and after the Revolution of 1689,
some description of the manorial system is desirable. One of the most
interesting features in the early history of English America is the way
in which different phases of English institutions were reproduced in
the different colonies. As the ancient English town meeting reached a
high development in New England, as the system of close vestries was
very thoroughly worked out in Virginia, so the old English manor was
best preserved in Maryland. In 1636 Lord Baltimore issued instructions
that every grant of 2,000 acres or more should be erected into a manor,
with court baron and court leet. “The manor was the land on which the
lord and his tenants lived, and bound up with the land were also the
rights of government which the lord possessed over the tenants, and
they over one another.”[106] Such manors were scattered all over
tidewater Maryland. Mr. Johnson, in his excellent essay on the subject,
cites at random the names of “George Evelin, lord of the manor of
Evelinton, in St. Mary’s county; Marmaduke Tilden, lord of Great Oak
Manor, and Major James Ringgold, lord of the manor on Eastern Neck,
both in Kent; Giles Brent, lord of Kent Fort, on Kent Island; George
Talbot, lord of Susquehanna Manor, in Cecil county,” and he mentions a
sale, in 1767, of “twenty-seven manors, embracing 100,000 acres.”

[Sidenote: Life in the manors.]

In the life upon these manors there was a kind of patriarchal
completeness; each was a little world in itself. There was the great
house with its generous dining-hall, its panelled wainscoat, and
its family portraits; there was the chapel, with the graves of the
lord’s family beneath its pavement and the graves of common folk out
in the churchyard; there were the smoke-houses, and the cabins of
negro slaves; and here and there one might come upon the dwellings of
white freehold tenants, with ample land about them held on leases of
one-and-twenty years. In establishing these manors, Lord Baltimore had
an eye to the military defence of his colony. It was enacted in 1641
that the grant of a manor should be the reward for every settler who
should bring with him from England twenty able-bodied men, each armed
with a musket, a sword and belt, a bandelier and flask, ten pounds of
powder, and forty pounds of bullets and shot.

[Sidenote: The court leet.]

These manors were little self-governing communities. The court leet was
like a town meeting. All freemen could take part in it. It enacted
by-laws, elected constables, bailiffs, and other local officers, set
up stocks and pillory, and sentenced offenders to stand there, for
judicial and legislative functions were united in this court leet. It
empanelled its jury, and with the steward of the manor presiding as
judge, it visited with fine or imprisonment the thief, the vagrant, the
poacher, the fraudulent dealer.

[Sidenote: The court baron.]

Side by side with the court leet was the court baron, an equally free
institution in which all the freehold tenants sat as judges determining
questions of law and of fact. This court decided all disputes between
the lord and his tenants concerning such matters as rents, or trespass,
or escheats. Here actions for debt were tried, and transfers of land
were made with the ancient formalities.

[Sidenote: Changes wrought by slavery.]

These admirable manorial institutions were brought to Maryland in
precisely the same shape in which they had long existed in England.
They were well adapted for preserving liberty and securing order in
rural communities before the days of denser population and more rapid
communication. In our progress away from those earlier times we have
gained vastly, but it is by no means sure that we have not also lost
something. In the decadence of the Maryland manors there was clearly an
element of loss, for that decadence was chiefly brought about by the
growth of negro slavery, which made it more profitable for the lord of
the manor to cultivate the whole of it himself, instead of leasing
the whole or parts of it to tenants. Slavery also affixed a stigma
upon free labour and drove it off the field, very much as a debased
currency invariably drives out a sound currency. From these causes the
class of freehold tenants gradually disappeared, “the feudal society
of the manor” was transformed into “the patriarchal society of the
plantation,”[107] and the arbitrary fiat of a master was substituted
for the argued judgments of the court leet.

[Sidenote: A fierce spirit of liberty.]

Among the people of Lord Baltimore’s colony, as among English-speaking
people in general, one might observe a fierce spirit of political
liberty coupled with engrained respect for law and a disposition to
achieve results by argument rather than by violence. Such a temper
leads to interminable parliamentary discussion, and in the reign of
Charles II. the tongues of the Maryland assembly were seldom quiet.
As compared with the stormy period before 1660, the later career of
Cecilius and that of his son Charles down to the Revolution of 1689
seem peaceful, and there are writers who would persuade us that when
the catastrophe arrived, it came quite unheralded, like lightning
from a cloudless sky. A perusal of the transactions in the Maryland
assembly, however, shows that the happy period was not so serene as we
have been told, but there were fleecy specks on the horizon, with now
and then a faint growl of distant thunder.

[Sidenote: Cecilius and Charles.]

That the proprietary government had many devoted friends is not
to be denied, and it is clear that some of the opposition to it
was merely factious. There is no doubt as to the lofty personal
qualities of the second Lord Baltimore, his courage and sagacity, his
disinterested public spirit, his devotion to the noble ideal which he
had inherited. As for Charles, the third lord, he seems to have been
a paler reflection of his father, like him for good intentions, but
far inferior in force. The period of eight-and-twenty years which we
are considering, from 1661 to 1689, is divided exactly in the middle
by the death of Cecilius in 1675. Before that date we have Charles
administering the affairs of Maryland subject to the approval of his
father in London; after that date Charles is supreme.

[Sidenote: Sources of discontent.]

[Sidenote: The family party]

Now the circumstances were such that father and son would have had
to be more than human to carry on the government without serious
opposition. In the first place, they were Catholics, ruling a
population in which about one twelfth part were Catholics, while
one sixth belonged to the Church of England, and three fourths were
dissenting Puritans. To most of the people the enforced toleration of
Papists must have seemed like keeping on terms of polite familiarity
with the devil. In the second place, the proprietor was apt to appoint
his own relatives and trusted friends to the highest offices, and such
persons were usually Catholics. As these high officers composed the
council, or upper house of the assembly, the proprietor had a permanent
and irreversible majority in that body. When we read the minutes of a
council composed of Governor Charles Calvert, his uncle Philip, his
cousin William, Mr. Baker Brooke, who had married cousin William’s
sister, Mr. William Talbot, who was another cousin, and Mr. Henry
Coursey, who was uncle Philip’s bosom friend, we seem to be assisting
at a pleasant little family party. Again, when the governor marries
a widow, and each of his five stepchildren marries, and we are told
that “every one who became related to the family soon obtained an
office,”[108] we begin to realize that there was coming to be quite a
clan to be supported from the revenues of a small province. Nepotism
may not be the blackest of crimes, but it is pretty certain to breed
trouble.

[Sidenote: Conflict in the assembly.]

The governing power opposed to this family party was the House of
Burgesses, or lower house of assembly. Those freeholding tenants
and small proprietors who had brought with them from England their
time-honoured habits of self-government in court leet and court baron,
represented the democratic element in the constitution of Maryland,
as the upper house represented the oligarchical element. The history
of the period we are considering is the history of a constitutional
struggle between the two houses. We have seen that it was not a part
of the proprietor’s original scheme that the assembly should take
an initiative in legislation, and that on this ground he refused
his assent to the first group of laws sent to him in 1635 for his
signature. Apparently it was his idea that his burgesses should simply
comment on acts passed by their betters, as on old Merovingian fields
of March the magnates legislated while the listening warriors clashed
their shields in token of approval. If such was the first notion of
Cecilius he promptly relinquished it and gracefully conceded the
claim of the assembly to take the initiative in legislation. But the
veto power, without any limitation of time, was a prerogative which
he would not give up. At any moment he could use this veto power to
repeal a law, and this was felt by the colonists to be a grievance.
On such constitutional matters, when we read of antagonism between
the proprietor and the assembly, it is the burgesses that we are to
understand as in opposition, since the council was almost sure to
uphold the proprietor.

[Sidenote: Rights of the burgesses.]

One point upon which the upper house always insisted was that the
burgesses were not a house of commons with inherent rights of
legislation, but that they owed their existence to the charter, with
powers that must be limited as strictly as possible. But this point the
burgesses would never concede. They were Englishmen, with the rights
and privileges of Englishmen, and it was an inherent right in English
representatives to make laws for their constituents; accordingly
they insisted that they were, to all intents and purposes, a house
of commons for Maryland.[109] On one occasion a clergyman, Charles
Nichollet, preached a sermon, in which he warned the burgesses not to
forget that they had no real liberty unless they could pass laws that
were agreeable to their conscience; as a house of commons they must
keep their hand upon the purse strings and consider if the taxes were
not too heavy. The family party of the upper house called such talk
seditious, and the parson was roundly fined for preaching politics.

[Sidenote: Cessation Act of 1668.]

But it would be grossly unfair to the proprietor to overlook the fact
that on some important occasions he took sides with the representatives
of the people against his own little family party. As an instance may
be cited the act of 1666 concerning the “Cessation of Tobacco.” As the
fees of public officials were paid in tobacco, a large crop was liable
to diminish their value, and accordingly the upper house wished to
contract the currency by an act stopping all planting of tobacco for
one year. The lower house objected to this, but after a long dispute
was induced to give consent, provided Virginia should pass a similar
act. The speaker, however, wrote to Cecilius urging him to veto the
act, and he did so.[110]

[Sidenote: Sheriffs.]

The occasions of difference between the two houses were many and
various. One concerned the relief of Quakers. In Rhode Island, New
Jersey, and Jamaica, they were allowed to make affirmations instead of
taking oaths. When the Quakers of Maryland petitioned for a similar
relief, the burgesses granted it, but the council refused to concur. A
more important matter was the appointment of sheriffs. In addition to
the ordinary functions of the sheriff, with which we are familiar in
more modern times, these officers collected all taxes, superintended
all elections, and made out the returns. These were formidable powers,
for a dishonest or intriguing sheriff might alter the composition of
the House of Burgesses. Sheriffs were appointed by the governor, and
were in no way responsible to the county courts. The burgesses tried to
establish a check upon them by enacting that the county court should
recommend three persons out of whom the governor should choose one, and
that the sheriff thus selected should serve for one year; but the upper
house declared that such an act infringed the proprietor’s prerogative.
No check upon the sheriffs, therefore, was left to the people except
the regulating of their fees, and upon this point the burgesses were
stiff.

[Sidenote: Restriction of suffrage, 1670.]

In 1669 the disputes between the houses were more stormy than usual,
and in the election of the next year the suffrage was restricted to
freemen owning plantations of fifty acres or more, or possessed of
personal property to the amount of £50 sterling. This restriction
was not accomplished by legislation; it must have been a sheer
assertion of prerogative, either by Cecilius or by Charles acting
on his own responsibility. All that is positively known is that the
sheriffs were instructed to that effect in their writs. It is worthy
of note that a similar restriction of suffrage had just occurred in
Virginia. Perhaps Charles Calvert was imprudently taking a lesson from
Berkeley. But still worse, in summoning to the assembly the members
who had been elected, he omitted a few names, presumably those of
persons whose opposition was likely to prove inconvenient. When the
burgesses demanded the reason for this omission, Charles made a
shuffling explanation which they saw fit to accept for the moment,
and thus a precedent was created of which he was not slow to avail
himself, and from which endless bickering ensued. For the present
a house of burgesses was obtained which was much to the governor’s
liking; accordingly, instead of allowing its term to expire at the
end of a year, he simply adjourned it, and thus kept it alive until
1676,--another lesson learned from Berkeley.

[Sidenote: Death of Cecilius, 1675.]

[Sidenote: Rebellion of Davis and Pate, 1676.]

[Sidenote: Execution of Davis and Pate.]

It was this comparatively submissive assembly that in 1671 passed
the act which for eleven years had been resisted, granting to the
proprietor a royalty of two shillings on every hogshead of tobacco
exported. In return for this grant, however, the lower house obtained
some concessions. With the death of Cecilius, in 1675, the situation
was certainly changed for the worse. Now for the first time the
people of Maryland had their lord proprietor dwelling among them and
not in England; but Charles was narrower and less public-spirited
than his father, his measures were more arbitrary, and the feeling
that the country was governed in the interests of a small coterie of
Papists rapidly increased. In 1676 Maryland seemed on the point of
following Virginia into rebellion. Lord Baltimore went to England in
the spring, and by midsummer it had become evident that Bacon had able
sympathizers in Maryland. A set of manuscript archives, recently
recovered from long oblivion,[111] make it probable that but for
Bacon’s sudden death in October and the collapse of the movement in
Virginia, there would have been bloodshed in the sister colony. In
August a seditious paper was circulated, alleging grievances similar
to those of Virginia, and threatening the proprietor’s government.
Two gentlemen named Davis and Pate, with others, gathered an armed
force in Calvert county with the design of intimidating the governor
and council, and extorting from them sundry concessions. When the
governor, Thomas Notley, ordered them to disband, promising that their
demands should be duly considered at the next assembly, they refused
on the ground that the assembly had been tampered with and no longer
represented the people. As Notley afterward wrote to Lord Baltimore,
never was there a people “more replete with malignancy and frenzy than
our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head
to their monstrous body.” But this incipient Davis and Pate rebellion
derived its strength from the Bacon rebellion, and the collapse of the
one extinguished the other. Davis and Pate were hanged, at which Notley
tells us the people were “terrified,” and so peace was preserved.

[Sidenote: George Talbot.]

An episode which occurred before the final catastrophe throws some
light upon the relations of parties at the time. An Irish kinsman of
Lord Baltimore’s, by name George Talbot, obtained in 1680 an extensive
grant of land on the Susquehanna River, where he lived in feudal
style, with a force of Irish retainers at his beck and call, hunting
venison, drinking strong waters, browbeating Indians, and picking
quarrels with William Penn’s newly arrived followers. In 1684 Lord
Baltimore went again to England, leaving his son, Benedict Calvert, in
the governorship; and as Benedict was a mere boy, there was a little
regency of which George Talbot was the head. Now the exemption of
Maryland from king’s taxes did not extend to custom-house duties. These
were collected by crown officers and paid into the royal treasury;
and the collectors were apt to behave themselves, as in all ages
and countries, like enemies of the human race. Between them and the
proprietary government there was deep-seated antipathy. They accused
Lord Baltimore of hindering them in their work, and this complaint
led the king to pounce upon him with a claim for £2,500 alleged to
have been lost to the revenue through his interferences. One of these
collectors, Christopher Rousby, was especially overbearing, and some
called him a rascal. Late in 1684 a small ship of the royal navy
was lying at St. Mary’s, and one day, while Rousby was in the cabin
drinking toddies with the captain, Talbot came on board, and a quarrel
ensued, in the course of which Talbot drew a dagger and plunged it into
Rousby’s heart. The captain refused to allow Talbot to go ashore to
be tried by a council of his relatives; he carried him to Virginia and
handed him over to the governor, Lord Howard of Effingham. Talbot was
imprisoned not far from the site where once had stood the red man’s
village, Werowocomoco, where he was in imminent danger of the gallows,
or perhaps of having to pay his whole fortune as a bribe to the greedy
Howard. But Talbot’s brave wife, with two trusty followers, sailed down
the whole length of Chesapeake Bay and up York River in a boat. On a
dark winter’s night they succeeded in freeing Talbot from his jail,
and returning as they came, carried him off exulting to Susquehanna
Manor. For the sake of appearances his friends in the Maryland council
thought it necessary to proclaim the hue and cry after him, and there
is a local tradition that he was for a while obliged to hide in a cave,
where a couple of his trained hawks kept him alive by fetching him
game--canvas-back ducks, perhaps, and terrapin--from the river! It is
not likely, however, that the search for him was zealous or thorough.
For some time he staid unmolested in his manor house, but presently
deemed it prudent to go and surrender himself. The council refused to
bring him to trial in any court held in the king’s name, until a royal
order came from England to send him over there for trial, but before
this was done Lord Baltimore interceded with James II. and secured a
pardon.

[Sidenote: A “Complaint from Heaven.”]

The general effect of this Talbot affair was to weaken the palatinate
government by making it appear lukewarm in its allegiance and remiss
in its duties to the crown. The custom-house became a subject of
hot discussion, and the charges of defrauding the royal revenue were
reiterated with effect. Some time before this, a remarkable pamphlet
had appeared with the title, “Complaint from Heaven with a Huy and Crye
and a petition out of Virginia and Maryland.” It was evidently written
by some Puritan friend of Fendall’s. After a bitter denunciation of the
palatinate administration some measures of relief were suggested, one
of which was that the king should assume the government of Maryland and
appoint the governors. The time was now at hand when this suggestion
was to bear fruit.

[Sidenote: The anti-Catholic panic.]

The forced abdication of James II. in 1688, with his flight to France,
was the occasion of an anti-Catholic panic throughout the greater part
of English America. It was as certain as anything future could be that
the antagonism between Louis XIV. and William of Orange would at once
break out in a great war, in which French armies from Canada would
invade the English colonies. There was a widespread fear that Papists
in these colonies would turn traitors and assist the enemy. It was in
this scare that Leisler’s rebellion in New York originated, although
there too a conflict between democracy and oligarchy was concerned,
somewhat as in Maryland. Everywhere the ordinary dread of Papists
became more acute. It was soon after this time that the clause of an
act depriving Roman Catholics of the franchise found its way into the
Rhode Island statutes, the only instance in which that commonwealth
ever allowed itself to depart from the noble principles of Roger
Williams.[112]

[Sidenote: Causes of the panic.]

While there were absurdities in this anti-Catholic panic, it contained
an element that was not unreasonable. Throughout the century the
Papist counter-reformation had made alarming progress. In France, the
strongest nation in the world, it had just scored a final victory in
the expulsion of the Huguenots. In Germany the Thirty Years’ War had
left Protestantism weaker than it had been at the death of Martin
Luther. England had barely escaped from having a Papist dynasty
settled upon her; nor was it yet sure that she had escaped. A caprice
of fortune might drive King William out as suddenly as he had come.
Ireland still held out for the Stuarts, and there in May, 1689,
James II. landed with French troops, in the hope of winning back his
crown. The officer who held Ireland for James was Richard Talbot,
Duke of Tyrconnel, a distant relative and intimate friend of Lord
Baltimore. Under these circumstances a panic was natural. There were
absurd rumours of a plot between Catholics and Indians to massacre
Protestants. More reasonable was the jealous eagerness with which men
watched the council to see what it would do about proclaiming William
and Mary. Lord Baltimore was prompt in sending from London directions
to the council to proclaim them; whatever his political leanings might
have been, he could in prudence hardly do less. But the messenger died
on the voyage, and a second messenger was too late.

[Sidenote: Coode’s _coup d’état_, 1689.]

[Sidenote: Overthrow of the palatinate, 1691.]

Meanwhile, in April, 1689, there was formed “An Association in arms for
the defense of the Protestant Religion, and for asserting the right of
King William and Queen Mary to the Province of Maryland and all the
English Dominions.” The president of this association was John Coode,
who had married a daughter of that Thomas Gerrard who took a part in
Fendall’s rebellion. Another leader, who had married another daughter
of Gerrard, was Nehemiah Blackiston, collector of customs, who had
been foremost in accusing the Calverts of obstructing his work. Others
were Kenelm Cheseldyn, speaker of the house, and Henry Jowles, colonel
of the militia. As the weeks passed by, and news of the proclaiming
of William and Mary by one colony after another arrived, and still
the council took no action in the matter, people grew impatient and
the association kept winning recruits. At last, toward the end of
July, Coode appeared before St. Mary’s at the head of 700 armed men.
No resistance was offered. The council fled to a fort on the Patuxent
River, where they were besieged and in a few days surrendered. Coode
detained all outward-bound ships until he had prepared an account of
these proceedings to send to King William in the name of the Protestant
inhabitants of Maryland. Like the insurrection in Boston, three months
earlier, which overthrew Sir Edmund Andros, this bold stroke wore the
aspect of a rising against the deposed king in favour of the king
actually reigning. William was asked to undertake the government of
Maryland, and the whole affair met with his approval. He issued a
_scire facias_ against the Baltimore charter, and before a decision had
been reached in the court of chancery he sent out Sir Lionel Copley in
1691, to be royal governor of Maryland. In such wise was the palatinate
overturned.

[Sidenote: Oppressive enactments.]

[Sidenote: Removal of the capital to Annapolis, 1694.]

If any party in Maryland expected the millennium to follow this
revolution, they were disappointed. Taxes were straightway levied
for the support of the Church of England, the further immigration
of Catholics was prohibited under heavy penalties, and the public
celebration of the mass was strictly forbidden within the limits of the
colony. When Governor Nicholson arrived upon the scene, in 1694, he
summoned his first assembly to meet at the Anne Arundel town formerly
known as Providence; and in the course of that session it was decided
to move the seat of government thither from St. Mary’s. The purpose
was to deal a blow at the old capital, the social and political centre
of Catholicism in Maryland. Bitter indignation was felt at St. Mary’s,
and a petition signed by the mayor and other municipal officers,
with a number of the freemen, was sent to the assembly, praying that
the change might be reconsidered. The House of Burgesses returned an
answer, brutal and vulgar in tone, which shows the wellnigh incredible
virulence of political passion in those days.[113] The blow was final,
so far as St. Mary’s was concerned. Her civic life had evidently
depended upon the presence of the government. At one time, with its
fifty or sixty houses, the little city founded by Leonard Calvert was
much larger than Jamestown; but after the removal it dwindled till
little was left save a memory. The name of the new capital on the
Severn was doubtless felt to be cumbrous, for it was presently changed
to Annapolis,[114] the first of a set of queer hybrid compounds with
which the map of the United States is besprinkled. Nicholson wished to
crown the work of founding a new capital by establishing a school or
college there, and accordingly in 1696 King William School was founded.
For many years the income for supporting this and other free schools
was derived from an export duty on furs.[115]

[Sidenote: Unpopularity of the establishment of the Episcopal church.]

[Sidenote: Episcopal parsons.]

The change of the capital was perhaps bewailed only by the Catholics
and others who were most strongly attached to the proprietary
government. But the change in ecclesiastical policy disgusted
everybody. Taxation for the support of the Episcopal church, of which
only a small part of the population were members, was as unpopular with
Puritans as with Papists. The Puritans, who had worked so zealously
to undermine the proprietary government, had not bargained for such a
result as this. The manner in which the church revenue was raised was
also extremely irritating. The rate was forty pounds of tobacco per
poll, so that rich and poor paid alike. A more inequitable and odious
measure could hardly have been devised. The statute, however, with the
dullness that usually characterizes the work of legislative bodies,
forgot to specify the quality of tobacco in which the rates should be
paid. Naturally, therefore, they were paid in the vilest unmarketable
stuff that could be found, and the Episcopal clergymen found it hard
to keep the wolf from the door. There was thus no inducement for
competent ministers to come to Maryland, and those that were sent from
England were of the poorest sort which the English Church in that
period of its degradation could provide. Dr. Thomas Chandler, of New
Jersey, who visited the eastern shore of Maryland in 1753, wrote to
the Bishop of London as follows: “The general character of the clergy
... is wretchedly bad.... It would really, my lord, make the ears of
a sober heathen tingle to hear the stories that were told me by many
serious persons of several clergymen in the neighbourhood of the parish
where I visited; but I still hope that some abatement may be fairly
made on account of the prejudices of those who related them.”[116] The
Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, who visited Maryland about the same time,
tells us that it was a common trick with a parson, when performing
the marriage service for a poor couple, to halt midway and refuse to
go on till a good round fee had been handed over to him.[117] On such
occasions it may be presumed that the tobacco was of unimpeachable
quality.

[Sidenote: Exemption of Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities.]

The last decade of the seventeenth century was a period of ceaseless
wrangling over church matters. Almost every year saw some new act
passed from which its opponents succeeded in causing the assent of
the crown to be withheld. The government of William III. was not
ill-disposed toward a policy of toleration, except toward Papists.
Accordingly, although the act of 1692 remained substantially in force
until the American Revolution, it was so qualified in 1702 as to exempt
Quakers and other Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities, and to
allow them the free exercise of public worship in their own churches or
meeting-houses. They were not exempted, however, from the poll tax for
the maintenance of the Episcopal church.

[Sidenote: Seymour’s reprimand to the Catholic priests.]

For the Catholics there was neither exemption nor privilege; they were
shamefully insulted and vexed. In the autumn of 1704 two priests were
summoned before the council: the one, William Hunter, was accused
of consecrating a chapel, which he answered with a plea that was
in part denial and in part “confession and avoidance;” the other,
Robert Brooke, acknowledged the truth of the charge that he had said
mass at the chapel of St. Mary’s. The request of these gentlemen
for legal counsel was refused. As the complaint against them was a
first complaint, they were let off with a reprimand, which the newly
installed governor, John Seymour, thus politely administered: “It is
the unhappy temper of you and all your tribe to grow insolent upon
civility and never know how to use it, and yet of all people you have
the least reason for considering that, if the necessary laws that are
made were let loose, they are sufficient to crush you, and which (if
your arrogant principles have not blinded you) you must need to dread.
You might, methinks, be content to live quietly as you may, and let
the exercise of your superstitious vanities be confined to yourselves,
without proclaiming them at public times and in public places, unless
you expect by your gaudy shows and serpentine policy to amuse the
multitude and beguile the unthinking, ... an act of deceit well known
to be amongst you. But, gentlemen, be not deceived.... In plain and
few words, if you intend to live here, let me hear no more of these
things; for if I do, and they are made good against you, be assured
I’ll chastise you.... I’ll remove the evil by sending you where you may
be dealt with as you deserve.... Pray take notice that I am an English
Protestant gentleman, and can never equivocate.” After this fulmination
the governor ordered the sheriff of St. Mary’s county to lock up
the Catholic chapel and “keep the key thereof;” and for all these
proceedings the House of Burgesses declared themselves “cheerfully
thankful” to his excellency, whom they found “so generously bent to
protect her majesty’s Protestant subjects here against insolence and
growth of Popery.”[118]

[Sidenote: Cruel laws against Catholics.]

From 1704 to 1718 several ferocious acts were passed against Catholics.
A reward of £100 was offered to any informer who should “apprehend
and take” a priest and convict him of saying mass, or performing any
of a priest’s duties; and the penalty for the priest so convicted
was perpetual imprisonment. Any Catholic found guilty of keeping a
school, or taking youth to educate, was to spend the rest of his life
in prison. Any person sending his child abroad to be educated as a
Catholic was to be fined £100. No Catholic could become a purchaser of
real estate. Certain impossible test oaths were to be administered to
every Papist youth within six months after his attaining majority, and
if he should refuse to take them he was to be declared incapable of
inheriting land, and his nearest kin of Protestant faith could supplant
him. The children of a Protestant father might be forcibly taken away
from their widowed mother and placed in charge of Protestant guardians.
When extra taxes were levied for emergencies, Catholics were assessed
at double rates.[119]

[Sidenote: Crown requisitions.]

These atrocities of the statute book were a symptom of the
inflammatory effect wrought upon the English mind by the gigantic war
against Louis XIV., and immediately afterward by the wild attempt of
the so-called James III. to seize the crown of Great Britain. From the
accession of William and Mary to the end of the reign of Anne, war
against France was perpetual except for the breathing spell after the
Peace of Ryswick. This state of things brought a fresh burden upon
Maryland. War between France and Great Britain meant war between the
Algonquin tribes and the English colonies aided by the Five Nations.
The new situation was heralded in the Congress which met at New York
in 1690, at Leisler’s invitation, when Maryland was called upon to
contribute men and money toward the invasion of Canada. With the advent
of the royal government came royal requisitions for military purposes;
and although this new burden was due to the new continental situation
rather than to the change in the provincial government, it was one
thing the more to make Marylanders look back with regret to the days of
the proprietary rule.

[Sidenote: Benedict Calvert becomes a Protestant.]

[Sidenote: Revival of the palatinate, 1715.]

For four-and-twenty years after 1691 the third Lord Baltimore lived
in England in the full enjoyment of his private rights and revenues,
though deprived of his government. His son, Benedict Leonard Calvert,
was a prince who took secular views of public policy, like the great
Henry of Navarre. He preferred his palatinate to his church, and
abjured the Catholic faith, much to the wrath and disgust of his aged
father, who at once withdrew his annual allowance of £450. Benedict
was obliged to apply to the crown for a pension, which was granted
by Anne and continued by George I. until on February 20, 1715, the
situation was completely changed by the father’s death. On the petition
of Benedict, fourth Lord Baltimore, the proprietary government of
Maryland was revived in his behalf. But Benedict survived his father
only six weeks, and on April 5 his son Charles Calvert became fifth
Lord Baltimore. As Charles was a lad of sixteen, whose Romanist faith
had been forsworn with his father’s, he was forthwith proclaimed Lord
Proprietor of Maryland, and royal governors no more vexed that colony.

[Sidenote: Change in the political situation.]

Despite all troubles it had thriven under their administration. The
population had doubled within less than twenty years, and on Charles’s
accession it was reckoned at 40,700 whites and 9,500 negroes.[120]
Oppressive statutes had not prevented the Catholics from increasing
in numbers and the influence which ability and character always wield.
They were preëminently the picked men of the colony. Entire suppression
of their forms of worship had been recognized as impracticable. An act
of 1704 had allowed priests to perform religious services in Roman
Catholic families, though not in public. From this permission advantage
was taken to build chapels as part of private mansions, so that the
family with their guests might worship God after their manner, relying
upon the principle that an Englishman’s house is his castle. By some of
these people it was hoped that the restoration of the palatinate would
revive their political rights and privileges. But this renewal of the
palatinate was far from restoring the old state of things. The position
of the fifth Lord Baltimore was very different from that of the second
and third. They were Catholic princes, and were steadily supported by
two Catholic kings of England. The new proprietor was a Protestant,
dependent upon the favour of a Protestant king. The features of the old
palatinate government, therefore, which lend the chief interest to its
history, were never restored. Catholic citizens remained disfranchised,
and continued to be taxed for the support of a church which they
disapproved.

[Sidenote: Charles Carroll.]

An interesting project was entertained about this time, by Charles
Carroll and other Catholic gentlemen, of leading a migration to the
Mississippi valley, thus transferring their allegiance from Great
Britain to France. Mr. Carroll, a descendant of the famous Irish
sept of O’Carrolls, and one of the foremost citizens of Maryland, had
long been agent and receiver of rents for the third Lord Baltimore.
The scheme which he was now contemplating might have led to curious
results, but it was soon abandoned. A grant of territory by the
Arkansas River was sought from the French government,[121] but it
proved impossible to agree upon terms, and that region remained a
wilderness until several questions of world-wide importance had been
settled.

[Sidenote: Seeds of revolution.]

Though the accession of the fifth Lord Baltimore did not reinstate
the Catholics in their civil rights, it nevertheless did much to
mitigate the operation of the oppressive statutes against them. An
early symptom of Charles’s temper was shown by his reappointment of
Carroll as his agent. He went on to do such justice to Catholics as
was in his power, and under his mild and equitable rule the fierceness
of political passion was much abated. The proprietary government
retained its popularity until it came to an end with the Declaration
of Independence. But the interval of crown government from 1691 to
1715 had for the first time made the connection with Great Britain
seem oppressive, and had planted the seeds of future sympathy with the
revolutionary party in Massachusetts and Virginia. As the long struggle
with France increased in dimensions, the political questions at issue
in the several colonies became more and more continental in character.
All were more or less assimilated one to another, and thus the way
toward federation was prepared. Thus the discussions in Maryland came
more and more to deal with the rights of the colonial legislature
and British interference with them. At the same time Maryland had a
grievance of her own in the poll tax for maintaining a foreign and
hated church. In 1772 an assault upon that tax was the occasion of one
of the most remarkable legal controversies in American annals; and
the leader in that assault, Charles Carroll’s grandson and namesake,
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, soon afterward signed his name to the
Declaration of Independence.

[Sidenote: End of the palatinate.]

In 1751, after a tranquil reign, only two years of which were spent in
Maryland, Charles Calvert died in London, and was succeeded by his son
Frederick, sixth and last Lord Baltimore. After a series of Antonines,
at last came the Commodus. Frederick was a miserable debauchee,
unworthy scion of a noble race. For Maryland he cared nothing except
to spend its revenues in riotous living in London. One adventure of
his, for which he was tried and acquitted on a mere technicality, fills
one of the most loathsome chapters of the Newgate Calendar.[122] But
this villain was represented in Maryland by two excellent governors,
Horatio Sharpe from 1753 to 1768, and then Sir Robert Eden, who had
married Frederick’s younger sister. Eden remained in authority until
June 24, 1776, when he embarked for England with the good wishes of
the people. The wretched Frederick died in 1771, without legitimate
children, and the barony of Baltimore became extinct. By the will
of Charles, the fifth baron, the proprietorship of Maryland was now
vested in Frederick’s elder sister, Louisa, wife of John Browning. But
Frederick had also left a will, in which he devised the province to
an illegitimate son, called Henry Harford. This young man laid claim
to the proprietorship, but before the chancery suit was ended the
Palatinate of Maryland had become one of the thirteen United States.




CHAPTER XIV.

SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION.


[Sidenote: Tobacco and liberty.]

A learned son of Old Virginia, who is fond of wrapping up a bookful of
meaning in a single pithy sentence, has declared that “a true history
of tobacco would be the history of English and American liberty.”
This remark occurs near the beginning of Mr. Moncure Conway’s dainty
volume printed for the Grolier Club, entitled “Barons of the Potomack
and the Rappahannock.” When construed liberally, as all such sweeping
statements need to be, it contains a kernel of truth. It was tobacco
that planted an English nation in Virginia, and made a corporation
in London so rich and powerful as to become a formidable seminary
of sedition: it was the desire to monopolize the tobacco trade that
induced Charles I. to recognize the House of Burgesses; discontent with
the Navigation Act and its effect upon the tobacco trade was potent
among the causes of Bacon’s Rebellion; and so on down to the eve of
Independence, when Patrick Henry won his first triumph in the famous
Parson’s Cause, in which the price of tobacco furnished the bone of
contention, the Indian weed has been strangely implicated with the
history of political freedom.

Furthermore, when we reflect upon the splendid part played by Virginia
in winning American independence and bringing into existence the
political framework of our Federal Republic; when we recollect that
of the five founders of this nation who were foremost in constructive
work--Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, and Marshall--four were
Virginians,--it becomes interesting to go back and study the social
features of the community in which such leaders of men were produced.
The economic basis of that community was the cultivation of tobacco on
large plantations, and from that single economic circumstance resulted
most of the social features which we have now to pass in review.

[Sidenote: Rapid growth of tobacco culture.]

[Sidenote: Attempts to check it.]

We have seen in a previous chapter how important was the cultivation
of tobacco in setting the infant colony at Jamestown upon its feet in
1614 and the following years. In the rapid development of the colony
during the reign of Charles I. other kinds of agriculture thrived,
there were good crops of wheat, and Indian corn was exported. But
tobacco culture increased rapidly and steadily until in the latter part
of the century it nearly extinguished all other kinds of activity,
except the raising of domestic animals and vegetables needed for food.
Long before this result was reached, the tendency was deplored by the
colonists themselves. To use a modern political phrase, it was “viewed
with alarm.” This is quite intelligible. “We know now that tobacco,
though not strictly a necessary of life, is one of those articles
whose consumption may be looked on as certain and permanent. In the
seventeenth century, men could hardly be blamed if they regarded the
use of tobacco as a precarious fashion.”[123] It was also felt that
in case of war it would be dangerous for Virginia to be forced to
rely upon importing the manufactured necessaries of life. Moreover,
the absorption of the colony’s industry in the production of a single
staple made it especially easy for the home government to depress
that industry by stupid legislation, as in the reign of Charles
II., when the Navigation Act so seriously diminished the purchasing
power of tobacco. For these various reasons many attempts were made
to check the cultivation of the Indian weed. The legislation of
the seventeenth century was full of instances. It was attempted to
establish rival industries and to produce silk, cotton, and iron; laws
were made forbidding any planter to raise more than 2,000 plants in one
year’s crop, and so on. All such attempts proved futile; in spite of
everything that could be done, tobacco drove all competitors from the
field.

[Sidenote: Need for cheap labour.]


[Sidenote: Indented white servants.]

This tobacco was generally cultivated upon large estates. The policy
of making extensive grants of land as an inducement to settlers was
begun at an early date, and all that was needed to develop the system
was an abundance of cheap labour. English yeomanry, such as came to
New England, was too intelligent and enterprising to furnish the right
sort. English yeomanry, coming to Virginia, came to own estates for
itself, not to work them for others. It soon became necessary to have
recourse to servile labour. We have seen negro slaves first brought
into the colony from Africa in 1619, but their numbers increased very
slowly, and it was only toward the end of the century that they began
to be numerous. In the early period the demand for servile labour was
supplied from other sources. Convicted criminals were sent over in
great numbers from the mother country, as in later times they were
sent to Botany Bay. On their arrival they were indented as servants
for a term of years. Kidnapping was also at that time in England an
extensive and lucrative business. Young boys and girls, usually but not
always of the lowest class of society, were seized by press-gangs on
the streets of London and Bristol and other English seaports, hurried
on board ship, and carried over to Virginia to work on the plantations
or as house servants. These poor wretches were not, indeed, sold into
hopeless slavery, but they passed into a state of servitude which might
be prolonged indefinitely by avaricious or cruel masters. The period
of their indenture was short,--usually not more than four years; but
the ordinary penalty for serious offences, such as were very likely to
be committed, was a lengthening of the time during which they were to
serve. Among such offences the most serious were insubordination or
attempts to escape, while of a more venial character were thievery,
or unchaste conduct,[124] or attempts to make money on their own
account. Their lives were in theory protected by law, but where an
indented servant came to his death from prolonged ill-usage, or from
excessive punishment, or even from sudden violence, it was not easy to
get a verdict against the master. In those days of frequent flogging,
the lash was inflicted upon the indented servant with scarcely less
compunction than upon the purchased slave; and in general the condition
of the former seems to have been nearly as miserable as that of the
latter, save that the servitude of the negro was perpetual, while that
of the white man was pretty sure to come to an end. For him, Pandora’s
box had not quite spilled out the last of its contents.

[Sidenote: Notion that Virginians are descended from convicts.]

In England the notion presently grew up that the aristocracy of
Virginia was recruited from the ranks of these kidnapped paupers and
convicts. This impression may have originated in statements, based
upon real but misconstrued facts, such as we find in Defoe’s widely
read stories, “Moll Flanders”[125] and “Colonel Jack.” So, too, in
Mrs. Aphra Behn’s comedy, “The Widow Ranter, or, The History of Bacon
in Virginia,” one of the personages, named Hazard, sails to Virginia,
and on arriving at Jamestown suddenly meets an old acquaintance, named
Friendly, whereupon the following conversation ensues:--

_Hazard._ This unexpected happiness o’erjoys me. Who could have
imagined to have found thee in Virginia?...

_Friendly._ My uncle dying here left me a considerable plantation....
But prithee what chance (fortunate to me) drove thee to this part of
the New World?

_Hazard._ Why, ’faith, ill company and that common vice of the town,
gaming.... I had rather starve abroad than live pitied and despised at
home.

_Friendly._ Would [the new governor] were landed; we hear he is a noble
gentleman.

_Hazard._ He has all the qualities of a gallant man. Besides, he is
nobly born.

_Friendly._ This country wants nothing but to be peopled with a
well-born race to make it one of the best colonies in the world; but
for want of a governor we are ruled by a council, some of whom have
been perhaps transported criminals, who having acquired great estates
are now become Your Honour and Right Worshipful, and possess all places
of authority.[126]

[Sidenote: Malachy Postlethwayt.]

[Sidenote: Dr. Johnson.]

It is not only in novels and plays, however, that we encounter such
statements. Malachy Postlethwayt, author of several valuable and
scholarly treatises on commerce, tells us: “Even your transported
felons, sent to Virginia instead of Tyburn, thousands of them, if we
are not misinformed, have, by turning their hands to industry and
improvement, and (which is best of all) to honesty, become rich,
substantial planters and merchants, settled large families, and been
famous in the country; nay, we have seen many of them made magistrates,
officers of militia, captains of good ships, and masters of good
estates.”[127] Either from the study of Postlethwayt, or perhaps simply
from reading “Moll Flanders,” we may suppose that Dr. Johnson got the
notion to which he gave vent in 1769 when quite out of patience because
the ministry seemed ready to make some concessions to the Americans.
“Why, they are a race of convicts,” cried the irate doctor, “and ought
to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging!”[128]
Thus we witness the progress of generalization: first it is some
Virginians that are jail-birds, or offspring of jail-birds, then it is
all Virginians, finally it is all Americans. A few years ago, in the
time of our Civil War, one used to find this grotesque notion still
surviving in occasional polite statements of European newspapers,
informing their readers that the citizens of the United States are the
“offspring of the vagabonds and felons of Europe.”[129]

[Sidenote: The real question.]

The statement of the worthy Postlethwayt seems based partly on
observation, partly on information, and has unquestionably been the
source of inferences much more sweeping than facts will sustain. In
order to arrive at clear views of the subject, we must distinguish
between two questions:--

1. What sort of people, on the whole, were the indented white servants
in Virginia?

2. How far did they ever succeed, as freedmen, in attaining to high
social position in the colony?

[Sidenote: Redemptioners.]

In answering the first question, a mere reference to “felons” and
“convicts” will carry us but little way. A considerable proportion
of the indented white servants were poor but honest persons who sold
themselves into slavery for a brief term to defray the cost of the
voyage from England. The ship-owner received from the planter the
passage-money in the shape of tobacco, and in exchange he handed over
the passenger to be the planter’s servant until the debt was wiped out.
Indented servants of this class were known as “redemptioners,” and
many of them were eminently industrious and of excellent character.
Such redemptioners came in large numbers to Virginia, Maryland, and the
middle colonies, and much more rarely to New England, where the demand
for any kind of servile labour was but small.

[Sidenote: Punishments for crime.]

Again, among the transported convicts were many who had been sentenced
to death for what would now be considered trivial offences; the poor
woman who stole a joint of meat to relieve her starving children was
not necessarily a hardened criminal, yet if the price of the joint were
more than a shilling she incurred the death penalty. For counterfeiting
a lottery ticket, or for personating the holder of a stock and
receiving the dividends due upon it, the punishment was the same as
for wilful murder.[130] The favourite remedy prescribed in law was
the gallows, as in medicine the lancet. Yet many judges and officers
of state were conscious of the excessive severity of the system, and
welcomed the device of sending the less hardened offenders out of the
kingdom instead of putting them to death. There is reason for believing
that murderers, burglars, and highwaymen continued to be summarily
sent to Tyburn, while for offences of a lighter sort and in cases with
extenuating circumstances the death penalty was often commuted to
transportation. As a rule it was not the worst sort of offenders who
were sent to the colonies.

[Sidenote: Number and distribution of convicts.]

The practice of sending rogues beyond sea began soon after the
founding of Virginia, and continued until it was cut short in America
by the War of Independence; thereafter the Australasian colonies were
made a receptacle for them until the practice came to an end soon
after the middle of the nineteenth century. It has been estimated that
between 1717 and 1775 not less than 10,000 “involuntary emigrants” were
sent from the Old Bailey alone;[131] and possibly the total number sent
to America from the British islands in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries may have been as high as 50,000.[132] In the lists of such
offenders their particular destinations are apt to be very loosely and
carelessly indicated; the name Virginia, for example, is often used
so vaguely as to include the West Indies.[133] The destinations most
commonly specified are Virginia, Maryland, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, but
it is certain that all English colonies outside of New England received
considerable numbers of convicts. Very few were brought to New England,
because the demand for such labour was less than elsewhere, and
therefore the prisoners would not fetch so high a price.[134] Stringent
laws were made against bringing in such people. In 1700 Massachusetts
enacted that every master of a ship arriving with passengers must
hand to the custom-house officer a written certificate of the “name,
character, and circumstances” of each passenger, under penalty of a
fine of £5 for every name omitted; and the custom-house officer was
obliged to deliver to the town clerk the full list of names with
the accompanying certificates.[135] The existence of this wholesome
statute indicates that undesirable persons had been brought into the
colony; and the reënactment of it in 1722, with the fine raised from
£5 to £100, is clear proof that the nuisance was not yet abated.
Nevertheless, partly because of such vigilant measures of prevention,
but much more because of the economic reason above alleged, the four
New England colonies received but few convicts.

[Sidenote: Prisoners of war.]

A very different class of transported persons consisted of those who
were not criminals at all, but merely political offenders, or even
prisoners of war. For example, of the Scotch prisoners taken at Dunbar
in 1650, Cromwell sent about 150 to Boston. The next year orders were
issued for sending 1,610 of the Worcester captives to Virginia, but
very few of them seem to have arrived there.[136] In 1652 a party
of 272 men captured at Worcester were landed in Boston, but so
small was the demand for their labour that they were soon exported
southward,--perhaps to the West Indies in exchange for sugar or rum.
After the restoration of the monarchy so many non-conformists were
sold into servitude in Virginia as to lead to an insurrection in 1663,
followed by legislation designed to keep all convicts out of the
colony.[137] On the whole, the number of political offenders brought to
those colonies that have since become the United States was certainly
much smaller than the number of criminal convicts, while the latter
were in all probability much less numerous than the redemptioners.
During the seventeenth century the demand for wholesale servile white
labour was much greater in Virginia and Maryland than elsewhere,
and there are many indications that they received more convicts and
redemptioners than the other colonies. In the eighteenth century,
however, the middle colonies, especially Pennsylvania, probably
received at least as large a share.

[Sidenote: Careers of white freedmen.]

[Sidenote: Representative Virginia families are not descended from
white freedmen.]

Our survey shows that in the class of indented white servants there was
a wide range of gradation, from thrifty redemptioners[138] and gallant
rebels at the one extreme down to ruffians and pickpockets at the
other. Bearing this in mind, we come to our second question, How far
did white freedmen succeed in attaining to high social position in such
a colony as Virginia? There is no doubt that, as Postlethwayt declares,
some of the best of them did work their way up to the ownership of
plantations. In the seventeenth century they were occasionally elected
to the House of Burgesses. The composition of that assembly for 1654
affords an interesting example. One of the two members for Warwick
was the worthy Samuel Mathews, soon to be elected governor; and one
of the four members for Charles City was Major Abraham Wood, who, as
a child of ten years, had been brought from England in 1620, and had
been a servant of Mathews. John Trussel, the member for Northumberland,
and William Worlidge, one of the two members for Elizabeth City,
had been servants brought over in 1622, aged respectively nineteen
and eighteen.[139] Whether these lads had been offenders against
the law does not appear, nor do we know whether the child had come
with parents not mentioned, or as the victim of kidnappers. We only
know that all three were servants,[140] and, if the word is to be
understood in the ordinary sense, it was much to their credit that
they rose to be burgesses. Cases of ordinary indented servants thus
rising were certainly exceptional in the seventeenth century, and
still more so in the eighteenth. Nothing can be more certain than
that the representative families of Virginia were not descended from
convicts, or from indented servants of any sort. Although family
records were until of late less carefully preserved than in New
England, yet the registered facts abundantly prove that the leading
families had precisely the same sort of origin as the leading families
in New England. For the most part they were either country squires, or
prosperous yeomen, or craftsmen from the numerous urban guilds; and
alike in Virginia and in New England there was a similar proportion of
persons connected with English families ennobled or otherwise eminent
for public service.

[Sidenote: Some white freedmen became small proprietors.]

As for the white freedmen, those of the better sort often acquired
small estates, while some became overseers of white servants and
black slaves. The kind of life which they led is described in
Defoe’s “Colonel Jack” with that great writer’s customary minuteness
of information. The class of small proprietors always remained in
Virginia, and included many other persons beside freedmen. With the
increasing tendency toward the predominance of great estates in
tidewater Virginia, there was a tendency for the smaller proprietors
to move westward into the Piedmont region or southward into North
Carolina, as will appear in the next chapter.

[Sidenote: Some became “mean whites.”]

While it was true that “the convicts ... sometimes prove very worthy
creatures and entirely forsake their former follies,”[141] it was
also true that many of them “have been and are the poorest, idlest,
and worst of mankind, the refuse of Great Britain and Ireland, and
the outcast of the people.”[142] These degraded freedmen were apt to
be irreclaimable vagabonds. According to Bishop Meade, they gave the
vestrymen a great deal of trouble. “The number of illegitimate children
born of them and thrown upon the parish led to much action on the part
of the vestries and the legislature. The lower order of persons in
Virginia in a great measure sprang from those apprenticed servants and
from poor exiled culprits. It is not wonderful that there should have
been much debasement of character among the poorest population, and
that the negroes of the first families should always have considered
themselves a more respectable class. To this day [1857] there are many
who look upon poor white folks (for so they call them) as much beneath
themselves; and, in truth, they are so in many respects.”[143] Indeed,
the fact that manual labour was a badge of servitude, while the white
freedmen of degraded type were by nature and experience unfitted to
perform any work of a higher sort, was of itself enough to keep them
from doing any work at all, unless driven by impending starvation.
As manual labour came to be more and more entirely relegated to men
of black and brown skins, this wretched position of the mean whites
grew worse and worse. The negro slave might take a certain sort of
pride in belonging to the grand establishment of a powerful or wealthy
master, and from this point of view society might be said to have a
place for him, even though he possessed no legal rights. There was no
such haven of security for the mean whites. If the negro was like a
Sudra, they were simply Pariahs. Crimes against person and property
were usually committed by persons of this class. They were loungers in
taverns and at horse-races, earning a precarious livelihood, or violent
death by gambling and thieving; or else they withdrew from the haunts
of civilization to lead half-savage lives in the backwoods. In these
people we may recognize a strain of the English race which has not yet
on American soil become extinct or absorbed. There can be little doubt
that the white freedmen of degraded type were the progenitors of a
considerable portion of what is often called the “white trash” of the
South. Originating in Virginia and Maryland, the greater part of it
seems to have been gradually sifted out by migration to wilder regions
westward and southward, much to the relief of those colonies. As to the
probable manner of its distribution, something will be said in the next
chapter.

[Sidenote: Development of negro slavery; treaty of Utrecht.]

[Sidenote: Anti-slavery sentiment in Virginia.]

Long before the end of the seventeenth century, Virginia and Maryland
had begun to protest against the policy of sending criminals from
England,[144] and as negro slaves became more numerous white servitude
was greatly diminished. The rapid increase of negroes began toward
the end of the century, and an immense impetus was given it by
the _asiento_ clause of the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. By way of
indemnifying herself for the cost of the War of the Spanish Succession,
victorious England bade Spain and France keep their hands off from
Africa, while she monopolized for herself the slave-trade. We are
reminded by Mr. Lecky that this was the one clause in the treaty that
seemed to give the most general satisfaction; and while an eminent
prelate affixed his name to the treaty and a magnificent _Te Deum_ by
Handel was sung in the churches, it occurred to nobody to denounce as
unchristian a national scheme for kidnapping thousands of black men
and selling them into slavery.[145] Before 1713 the part which English
ships had taken in the slave-trade was comparatively small; and it
is curious now to look back and think how Marlborough and Eugene at
Blenheim were unconsciously cutting out work for Grant and Sherman
at Vicksburg. In 1700 there were probably 60,000 Englishmen and 6,000
negroes in Virginia; by 1750 there were probably 250,000 whites and
250,000 blacks, while during that same half century the peopling of the
Carolinas was rapidly going on.[146] This portentous increase of the
slave population presently began to awaken serious alarm in Virginia.
Attempts were made to restrict the importation of negroes, and at the
time of the Revolutionary War the humanitarian spirit of the eighteenth
century showed itself in the rise of a party in favour of emancipation.
In 1784 Thomas Jefferson announced the principle upon which Abraham
Lincoln was elected to the presidency in 1860, the prohibition of
slavery in the national domain; Jefferson attempted to embody this
principle in an ordinance for establishing territorial government
west of the Alleghanies. In 1787 George Mason denounced the “infernal
traffic” in flesh and blood with phrases quite like those which his
grandchildren were to resent when they fell from the lips of Wendell
Phillips. The life of the anti-slavery party in Virginia was short.
After the abolition of the African slave-trade in 1808 had increased
the demand for Virginia-bred slaves in the states farther south, the
very idea of emancipation faded out of memory.

[Sidenote: Theory that negroes were non-human.]

I have already remarked upon the approval with which negro slavery
was by many people regarded in the days of Queen Elizabeth. To
bring black heathen within the pale of Christian civilization was
deemed a meritorious business.[147] But there were people who took
a lower and coarser view of the matter. They denied that the negro
was strictly human; it was therefore useless to try to make him a
Christian, but it was right to make him a beast of burden, like asses
and oxen.[148] This point of view was illustrated in the remark made
by a lady of Barbadoes, noted for her exemplary piety, to Godwyn,
the able author of “The Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate;” she told him
that “he might as well baptize puppies as negroes.”[149] This line of
thought was pursued to all sorts of grotesque conclusions. Some held
that mulattoes were made half human by the infusion of white blood,
and might accordingly be baptized. Others deemed it poor economy to
baptize the slave, since it would be incumbent on the master to feed
Christians better than heathen, and so flog them less. And there were
yet others who had heard the doctrine that Christians ought not to be
held in bondage, and feared lest baptism should be judged equivalent to
emancipation.[150] This notion was at first so prevalent in Virginia
that in 1667 it was enacted: “Whereas some doubts have risen whether
children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of
their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme,
should by vertue of their baptisme be made ffree; It is enacted and
declared by this grand assembly and the authority thereof, that the
conferringe of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as
to his bondage or ffreedom; that diverse masters, ffreed from this
doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of christianity
by permitting children, though, slaves, or those of greater growth if
capable, to be admitted to that sacrament.”[151]

[Sidenote: Negroes as real estate.]

During the seventeenth century the slave was regarded as personal
property, but a curious statute of 1705 declared him to be for most
purposes a kind of real estate. He could be sold, however, without the
registry of a deed; he could be recovered by an action of trover; and
he was not reckoned a part of the property qualification which entitled
his master to the political privileges of a freeholder.[152]

[Sidenote: Taxes on slaves.]

In the system of taxation white servants and negro slaves played an
important part. The primary tax upon all landholders was the quit-rent
of a shilling for every fifty acres, payable at Michaelmas. This
quit-rent was at first collected in the name of the Company, but after
1624 in the King’s name; and the proceeds were devoted to various
public uses. It was always an unpopular tax, inasmuch as there was
no feasible way (as now-a-days with our blessed tariffs) of making
dullards believe that “the foreigner paid it,” and there were frequent
complaints of delinquency. Another tax was the duty of two shillings
upon every hogshead of tobacco exported. A third was the tax upon
slaves and servants. At the close of the seventeenth century adult
negroes were valued at from £25 to £40, and children at £10 or £12;
there seems to have been little if any difference between the prices
of men and women.[153] The taxation of slave property was equitable,
inasmuch as it bore most heavily upon those best able to pay.

[Sidenote: Treatment of slaves.]

It is generally admitted that the treatment of slaves by their masters
was mild and humane. There were instances of cruelty, of course.
Cruelty forever lurks as a hideous possibility in the mildest system of
slavery; it is part of its innermost essence. In every community there
are brutes unfit to have the custody of their fellow-creatures. Such a
ruffian was the Rev. Samuel Gray, who had his runaway black boy tied
to a tree and flogged to death. Separation of families also occurred,
though much less frequently than in later times. But cases of cruelty
were on the whole rare. The cultivation of tobacco was not such a drain
upon human life as the cultivation of sugar in the West Indies, or the
raising of indigo and rice in South Carolina. It created a kind of
patriarchal society in which the master felt a genuine interest in the
welfare of his slaves. “The solicitude exhibited by John Page of York
was not uncommon: in his will he instructed his heirs to provide for
the old age of all the negroes who descended to them from him, with as
much care in point of food, clothing, and other necessaries as if they
were still capable of the most profitable labour.”[154] The historian,
Robert Beverley, writing in 1705, tells us that “the male servants and
the slaves of both sexes are employed together in tilling and manuring
the ground, in sowing and planting corn, tobacco, etc. Some distinction
indeed is made between them in their clothes and food; but the work of
both is no other than what the overseers, the freemen, and the planters
themselves do.... And I can assure you with a great deal of truth that
generally their slaves are not worked near so hard, nor so many hours
in a day, as the husbandmen and day-labourers in England.” As for
cruelty, he exclaims, with honest fervour, “no people more abhor the
thoughts of such usage than the Virginians, nor take more precaution to
prevent it.”[155]

[Sidenote: Fears of insurrection.]

[Sidenote: Cruel laws.]

Nevertheless, a state of enforced servitude is something which
human nature does not willingly endure. A slave-holding community
must provide for catching runaways and suppressing or preventing
insurrections. It is one of the remarkable facts in American history
that there have been so few insurrections of negroes. There have been,
however, occasional instances and symptoms which have kept slave-owners
in dread and given rise to harsh legislation. In 1687 a conspiracy
among the blacks on the Northern Neck was detected just in time to
prevent the explosion.[156] In 1710 a similar plot in Surry County
was betrayed by one of the conspirators, whom the assembly proceeded
to reward by giving him his freedom with permission to remain in the
colony.[157] The fears engendered by such discoveries are revealed
in the statute book. Slaves were not allowed to be absent from their
plantations without a ticket-of-leave signed by their master. The negro
who could not show such a passport must receive twenty lashes, and was
liable to be treated as a fugitive or “outlying” slave. Such runaways
were formally outlawed; a proclamation issued by two justices of the
peace was read on the next Sunday by the parish clerk from the door
of every church in the county, after which anybody might seize the
fugitive and bring him home, or kill him if he made any resistance. In
the latter event the master was indemnified from the public funds. At
the discretion of the county court, such mutilation might be inflicted
upon the outlying negro as to protect white women against the horrible
crime which then as now he was prone to commit.[158] In 1701 we find
an act of the assembly directed against “one negro man named Billy,”
who “has severall years unlawfully absented himselfe from his masters
services, lying out and lurking in obscure places, ... devouring and
destroying stocks and crops, robing the houses of and committing and
threatening other injuryes to severall of his majestye’s good and leige
people.” It was enacted that whosoever should bring in the said Billy
alive or dead should receive a thousand pounds of tobacco in reward,
and if dead, his master’s loss should be repaired with four thousand
pounds. Anybody who should aid or harbour Billy was to be adjudged
guilty of felony.[159] No penalty was attached to the murder of a slave
by his master; but if he were killed by any one else, the master could
recover his value, just as in case of damage done to a dog or a horse.
Slaves were not allowed to have fire-arms or other weapons in their
possession; “and whereas many negroes, under pretence of practising
physic, have prepared and exhibited poisonous medicines, by which
many persons have been murdered, and others have languished under
long and tedious indispositions, and it will be difficult to detect
such pernicious and dangerous practices if they should be permitted
to exhibit any sort of medicine,” it was enacted that any slave who
should prepare or administer any medicine whatsoever, save with the
full knowledge and consent of the master or mistress, should suffer
death.[160] The testimony of a slave could not be received in court
except when one of his own race was on trial for life; then, if he
should be found to testify falsely, he was to stand for an hour with
one ear nailed to the pillory, and then be released by slicing off the
ear; the same process was then repeated with the other ear, after which
the ceremony was finished at the whipping-post with nine-and-thirty
lashes on the bare back, “well laid on.”[161] Stealing a slave from
a plantation was a capital offence.[162] No master was allowed to
emancipate one of his slaves, except for meritorious services, in
which case he must obtain a license from the governor and council.
If a slave were set free without such a license, the church-wardens
could forthwith arrest him and sell him at auction, appropriating the
proceeds for the parish funds, and thereby lightening the taxes.[163]
When a license was granted, the master received the usual indemnity,
and by an act of 1699 the freedman was required to quit the colony
within six months;[164] for obviously the presence of a large number
of free blacks in the same community with their enslaved brethren
was a source of danger. They were apt, moreover, to become receivers
of stolen goods, and their shiftless habits made them paupers.[165]
Nevertheless there were some free negroes in the colony, and at one
time they even appear to have had the privilege of voting, for an act
of 1723 deprived them of it; but no free negroes, whether men or women,
were exempt from taxation.[166]

[Sidenote: Taking slaves to England.]

[Sidenote: Lord Mansfield’s decision.]

Since gentlemen from the North American colonies and from the West
Indies not unfrequently visited England, and sometimes remained
there for months or years, it was quite natural that they should
take with them household slaves to whose personal attendance they
were accustomed. In course of time the question thus arose whether
the arrival of a slave upon the free soil of England worked his
emancipation. According to Virginia law it did not.[167] The opinion
expressed in 1729 by Lord Talbot, the attorney-general, and supported
by Lord Hardwicke, agreed with the Virginia theory. These eminent
lawyers held that mere arrival in England was not enough to free a
slave without some specific act of emancipation, but Chief Justice
Holt expressed a contrary opinion. Meanwhile masters kept carrying
negroes to London until in 1764 the “Gentleman’s Magazine” asserted
(surely with wild exaggeration) that no less than 20,000 were domiciled
there. Escape was so easy for them that their owners felt obliged to
put collars on them, duly inscribed with name and address. In 1685
the “London Gazette” advertised Colonel Kirke’s runaway black boy,
upon whose silver collar the colonel’s arms and cipher were engraved;
in 1728 the “Daily Journal” informs us that a stray negro has on
his collar the inscription, “My Lady Bromfield’s black in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields;” and in the “London Advertiser,” 1756, a goldsmith in
Westminster announces that he makes “silver padlocks for Blacks’ or
Dogs’ collars.” Colonel Kirke and Lady Bromfield were not American
visitors, but residents in London, and there is evidence, not abundant
but sufficient, that negroes were now and then bought and sold there
for household service. When the forger John Rice was hanged at Tyburn
in 1763, his effects were sold at auction, and a black boy brought
£32. A similar sale at Richmond in 1771 was mentioned in terms of
severe condemnation by the “Stamford Mercury.”[168] However the English
people may have sanctioned the establishment of slavery beyond sea,
they were not disposed to tolerate it at home; and in the sixty years
withal since the treaty of Utrecht, the public conscience had grown
tender on the subject. The days of Clarkson and Wilberforce were at
hand. A cry was raised by the press, a test case was brought before
the King’s Bench, and in 1772 Lord Mansfield pronounced the immortal
decision that “as soon as a slave sets foot on the soil of the British
islands he becomes free.”

[Sidenote: Jefferson on slavery.]

It is not long after this that we find Thomas Jefferson--himself the
kindest of masters, and familiar with slavery in its mild Virginia
form--thus writing about it: “The whole commerce between master and
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most
unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the
other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.... The man must
be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances.... With the morals of the people their industry also is
destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labour for himself who can
make another labour for him. This is so true that of the proprietors
of slaves a very small proportion, indeed, are ever seen to labour.
And can the liberties of the nation be thought secure when we have
removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people
that these liberties are of the gift of God? that they are not to be
violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just.”[169]

[Sidenote: Sexual immoralities.]

In no respect was the system of slavery more reprehensible than in
the illicit sexual relations that grew out of it. The extent of the
evil may be realized when we simply reflect that the numerous race
of mulattoes and quadroons did not originate from wedlock. In 1691
it was enacted that any white man or woman, whether bond or free,
intermarrying with a negro, mulatto, or Indian, should be banished
for life. In 1705 the penalty was changed to fine and imprisonment,
and for any minister who should dare to perform the ceremony there
was prescribed a fine nearly equal to his whole year’s salary.[170]
Yet the “abominable mixture and spurious issue,” against which these
statutes were aimed, went on, unsanctioned by law and unblessed by
the church. Usually mulattoes were the children of negresses by white
fathers, but it was not always so. Some of the wretched women from
English jails seem to have had fancies as unaccountable as those of the
frail sultanas of the Arabian Nights. In such cases the white mother,
if free, was fined £15, or in default thereof was sold into servitude
for five years; if she were a bondwoman, the church-wardens waited for
her term of service to expire, and then sold her for five years; her
child was bound to service until thirty years of age.[171] The case of
the bastards of negresses was very simply disposed of by enacting that
the legal status of children was the same as that of their mother.[172]
This made them all slaves, from the prognathous and platyrrhine
creature with woolly hair to the handsome and stately octoroon, and
secured their labour to the master. At first the illicit relations
between masters and their female slaves were frowned at, and in some
instances visited with church discipline or punished by fines.[173] But
public opinion seems to have lost its sensitiveness in the presence
of a custom which lasted until slavery was abolished.[174] With the
signal advance in refinement which the nineteenth century ushered in,
there is reason to believe that in many a southern home there were
earnest hearts that deplored the dreadful evil, and welcomed at last
the downfall of the system that sustained it.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Classes in Virginia society.]

Some writers divide Old Virginia society into four classes,--the great
planters, the small planters, the white servants and freedmen, and the
negro slaves. The division is sound, provided we remember that between
the two upper classes no hard and fast line can be drawn. Already
in England the classes of rural gentry and yeomen shaded into one
another; in Virginia both alike became land-holders and slave-owners,
they mingled together in society, and their families intermarried.
A typical instance is that of the parents of Thomas Jefferson. His
paternal ancestors were yeomanry who in Virginia developed into country
squires. The first Jefferson in Virginia was a member of the first
House of Burgesses in 1619; Thomas’s father, who was also a burgess and
county lieutenant, owned about thirty slaves. Thomas’s mother, Jane
Randolph, whose grandfather migrated to Virginia in 1674, belonged to a
family that had been eminent in England since the thirteenth century,
including among its members a baron of the exchequer, a number of
knights, a foreign ambassador, a head of one of the colleges at Oxford,
etc.

[Sidenote: Huguenots in tidewater Virginia.]

There can be no doubt that the white blood of tidewater Virginia was
English almost without admixture until the end of the seventeenth
century, and of the very slight admixture nearly all was from the
British islands. There was a desultory sprinkling of Protestant
Frenchmen, Walloons, and Dutch, scarcely appreciable in the mass of
the population. But after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in
1685, Virginia received a small part of the Huguenot exodus from
France. The largest company, more than seven hundred in number, led by
the Breton nobleman, Olivier, Marquis de la Muce, arrived in the year
1700, and settled in various places, more particularly at Monacan
Town in Henrico County. A part of this company were Waldenses from
Piedmont, who had taken refuge in Switzerland, and thence made their
way through Alsace and the Low Countries to England.[175] Other parties
came from time to time, adding to Virginia many estimable citizens
whom France could ill afford to lose. Among the Huguenot names in
Virginia, the reader will recognize Maury, Flournoy, Jouet, Moncure,
Fontaine, Marye, Bertrand, and others.[176] Dabneys (_D’Aubigné_) and
Bowdoins (_Baudouin_) came to Virginia as well as to Boston. Such was
the principal foreign admixture while Virginia was still tidewater
Virginia, before the crossing of the Blue Ridge. The advent of Germans
and Scotch-Irish will be treated in a future chapter.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Influence of the rivers upon society.]

[Sidenote: Some exports and imports.]

Having thus considered the composition of society in its different
strata, as connected with wholesale tobacco culture, let us observe
one of the most conspicuous results of this industry as influenced
by the physical geography of the country. One might suppose that the
necessity for exporting the enormous crops of tobacco would have
called into existence a large class of thriving merchants, who would
naturally congregate at points favourable for shipping, and thus give
rise to towns. In most countries that is what would have happened.
But the manner in which the Virginia planter disposed of his crops was
peculiar. Most of the large plantations lay on or near the wide and
deep rivers of that tidewater country;[177] and each planter would have
his own wharf, from which his own slaves might load the tobacco on to
the vessels that were to carry it to England. If the plantation lay at
some distance from a navigable river, the tobacco was conveyed to the
nearest creek and tied down upon a raft of canoes, and so floated and
paddled down stream until some head of navigation was reached, where a
warehouse was ready to receive it. The vessels which carried away this
tobacco usually paid for it in all sorts of manufactured articles that
might be needed upon the plantations. Every manufactured article that
required skill or nicety of workmanship was brought from England, in
ships of which the owners, masters, and crews were for the most part
either natives of the British islands or of New England. Such a ship
would unload upon the planter’s wharf some part of its motley cargo of
mahogany tables, chairs covered with russia leather, wines in great
variety from the Azores and Madeira,[178] brandy, Gloucester cheeses,
linens and cottons, silks and dimity, quilts and featherbeds, carpets,
shoes, axes and hoes, hammers and nails, rope and canvas, painters’
white lead and colours, saddles, demijohns, mirrors, books,--pretty
much everything.[179] If she came from a New England port she was
likely to bring salted cod and mackerel, with fragrant rum, either
out of the distilleries at Newport and Boston,[180] or imported from
Antigua or Jamaica. Sometimes the rum came from Barbadoes, along with
sugar and molasses, and occasionally ginger and lime-juice, in return
for which the ship often carried away some of the planter’s live hogs
or packed pork, as well as butter, and corn, and tanned leather. The
landing of rum was sometimes private and confidential, for there were
duties on it which lent a charm to evasion.

[Sidenote: Some domestic industries.]

It would be too much to say that there was no manufacturing done
in colonial Virginia. There were probably few if any plantations
where the spinning-wheel and hand-loom were not busy. Female slaves
and white servants wove coarse cloth and made it up into suits of
clothes[181] for people of their sort, and doubtless for some of the
small planters. Such artisans as blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers,
shipwrights, tailors, tanners, and shoemakers were often to be found
among the indentured servants. Boys of this class were sometimes upon
their arrival made apprentices in these crafts. Occasionally negro
slaves became more or less skilled as workmen, especially as coopers
and joiners. There must always have been some demand for the labour
of white freedmen acquainted with any of the mechanical arts, and in
fact instances of free labourers in these departments are found. There
can be no doubt, however, that the style of work thus attained was apt
to be unsatisfactory; for we find such planters as Colonel Byrd and
Colonel Fitzhugh, late in the seventeenth century, sending to England
for skilled workmen, and offering to pay very high wages, on the ground
that it was wasting money to employ such workmen as were to be had in
the colony.[182]

[Sidenote: Beverley’s complaint against his countrymen.]

The historian Beverley, who sometimes indulged himself (like the late
Matthew Arnold) in upbraiding his fellow-countrymen for their own good,
says of the Virginians in 1705: “They have their Cloathing of all
sorts from _England_, as Linnen, Woollen, Silk, Hats, and Leather.
Yet Flax and Hemp grow no where in the World, better than there; their
Sheep yield a mighty Increase, and bear good Fleeces, but they shear
them only to cool them. The Mulberry-Tree, whose Leaf is the proper
Food of the Silk-worm, grows there like a Weed, and Silk-worms have
been observ’d to thrive extreamly, and without any hazard. The very
Furrs that their Hats are made of, perhaps go first from thence; and
most of their Hides lie and rot, or are made use of, only for covering
dry Goods, in a leaky House. Indeed some few Hides with much adoe
are tann’d, and made into Servants Shoes; but at so careless a rate,
that the Planters don’t care to buy them, if they can get others; and
sometimes perhaps a better manager than ordinary, will vouchsafe to
make a pair of Breeches of a Deer-Skin. Nay, they are such abominable
Ill-husbands, that tho’ their Country be over-run with Wood, yet they
have all their Wooden Ware from _England_; their Cabinets, Chairs,
Tables, Stools, Chests, Boxes, Cart-wheels, and all other things, even
so much as their Bowls, and Birchen Brooms, to the Eternal Reproach of
their Laziness.... Thus they depend altogether upon the Liberality of
Nature, without endeavoring to improve its Gifts, by Art or Industry.
They spunge upon the Blessings of a warm Sun, and a fruitful Soil, and
almost grutch the Pains of gathering in the Bounties of the Earth. I
should be asham’d to publish this slothful Indolence of my Countrymen,
but that I hope it will rouse them out of their Lethargy, and excite
them to make the most of all those happy Advantages which Nature has
given them; and if it does this, I am sure they will have the Goodness
to forgive me.”[183]

[Sidenote: True state of the case.]

It was not, however, as Mr. Bruce reminds us, from any “inherent
repugnance” that Englishmen in Virginia did not take kindly to
manufactures, and perhaps the good Beverley’s reproachful tone is a
trifle overdone. When the planter could get sharp knives, well-made
boots, and fine blankets at his own wharf, simply by handing over
to the skipper a few hogsheads of tobacco, he was not greatly to be
blamed for preferring them to such dull knives, clumsy boots, and
coarse blankets as could be made by the workmen within reach. Many
inconveniences, however, grew out of the absence of local means for
supplying local needs, and I have little doubt that sundry trades and
crafts could have been made to flourish much better than they did, had
it not been for the baneful effects of a tobacco currency, which we
shall presently have to consider.

[Sidenote: Absence of town life.]

The most conspicuous result of the absorption of all activities in
tobacco-planting, and the absence of developed arts and trades, was the
non-existence of town life. At the beginning of the eighteenth century
there was hardly so much as a village in Virginia, unless we make an
exception in honour of Williamsburg, the new seat of government and of
the college. By the middle of the century Williamsburg contained about
200 houses, chiefly wooden, and its streets were unpaved. Richmond,
founded in 1737, had a population of 3,761 in the census of 1790.
The growth of Norfolk, founded in 1705, was exceptional. The trade
with the West Indies, for sugar, molasses, and rum, tended to become
concentrated there, and the proximity of North Carolina made it a mart
for lumber at a time when Virginia forests in the lower tidewater
region had been largely cleared away. Colonel Byrd in 1728 says of the
Norfolk people: “They have a pretty deal of lumber from the borderers
on the Dismal, who make bold with the king’s land thereabouts, without
the least ceremony.” Besides boards and shingles, they sent beef
and pork to the West Indies, and it was not unusual to see a score
of sloops and brigantines riding in the noble harbour. Under these
favourable circumstances the population of Norfolk had come by 1776 to
be about 6,000. At that time Philadelphia had some 35,000 inhabitants,
and New York 25,000, though the population of their two states taken
together scarcely equalled that of Virginia.

[Sidenote: Futile attempts to make towns by legislation.]

The lack of urban life was deplored by the legislators at Jamestown
and Williamsburg, and assiduous efforts were made to correct the
evil; but neither bounties nor orders to build were of avail. To make
towns on paper was as easy as to make a promissory note, but nobody
would go and settle in the towns. Most of the county seats consisted
simply of the court-house, flanked by the jail, the dismal country
inn, and the nondescript country “store,” where the roving peddler
sometimes replenished his pack on his route through the plantations.
Among the legislative acts designed to encourage the building of
towns, three were especially important. The act of 1662 ordered that
thirty-two brick houses should be erected at Jamestown, and forbade
the building or repairing of wooden houses there; all tobacco grown in
the three counties of James City, Charles City, and Surry was to be
sent to Jamestown and stored there for shipping, and the penalty for
disobedience of this order was a fine of 1,000 lbs. of tobacco; every
ship, moreover, ascending the river above Mulberry Island, must land
its cargo at Jamestown and nowhere else, under penalty of forfeiting
the cargo. Half of these fines was to be paid to the town, the other
half to the informer.[184] The statute of 1680, commonly known as the
Cohabitation Act, undertook in somewhat similar fashion to establish
a town in every county; and the attempt was renewed on a larger scale
in 1691.[185] But all these acts were either disregarded or suspended.
When the Surry planter could effect an exchange at his own wharf,
without incidental expense or risk, it was useless to command him to
load his crop on shallops and send it to Jamestown, with a charge for
freight, a chance of capsizing, and warehouse dues at the end of the
journey. The skipper withal had no wish to be saddled with port dues,
or to be hindered from stopping and trading wherever a customer hove
in sight. So skipper and planter had their way, and towns refused to
grow.[186] When Thomas Jefferson entered William and Mary College in
1760, a lad of seventeen years, he had never seen so many as a dozen
houses grouped together.

[Sidenote: The country store.]

The country store was an important institution in Old Virginia.
Under some conditions it would have formed a nucleus around which a
town would have been developed, but in Virginia the store seems to
have been regarded as a kind of rival against which the town could
not compete.[187] It furnished a number of petty centres which did
away with the need for larger centres. The store was apt to be an
appendage to a plantation, unless its size became such as to reverse
the relationship, after the manner of Dundreary’s dog. It might be a
room in a planter’s house, or it might be a detached barn like building
on the estate. Mr. Bruce tells us that to enumerate its contents would
be to mention pretty much every article for which Virginians had any
use. For example, the inventory of the Hubbard store in York County,
taken in 1667, “contained lockram, canvas, dowlas, Scotch cloth,
blue linen, oznaburg, cotton, holland, serge, kersey, and flannel in
bales, full suits for adults and youths, bodices, bonnets, and laces
for women, shoes, ... gloves, hose, cloaks, cravats, handkerchiefs,
hats, and other articles of dress, ... hammers, hatchets, chisels,
augers, locks, staples, nails, sickles, bellows, froes,[188] saws,
axes, files, bed-cords, dishes, knives, flesh-forks, porringers,
sauce-pans, frying-pans, gridirons, tongs, shovels, hoes, iron posts,
tables, physic, wool-cards, gimlets, compasses, needles, stirrups,
looking-glasses, candlesticks, candles, funnels, 25 pounds of raisins,
100 gallons of brandy, 20 gallons of wine, and 10 gallons of aqua vitæ.
The contents of the Hubbard store were valued at £614 sterling, a sum
which represented about $15,000 in our present currency.”[189] One can
imagine how dazzling to youthful eyes must have been the miscellaneous
variety of desirable things. Not only were the manufactured articles
pretty sure to have come from England, but everything else, to be
salable, must be labelled English, “insomuch that fanciers used to sell
the songsters unknown to England, if they sang particularly well, as
_English mocking-birds_.”[190]

[Sidenote: Roads]

We have seen how the rivers and creeks were used as highways of
traffic; for a long time they were the only highways, and the sloop
or the canoe was the only kind of vehicle, public or private, in
which it was possible to get about with ease and safety.[191] Until
after the middle of the eighteenth century there were but few roads
save bridle-paths, and such as there were became impassable in rainy
weather. There were also but few bridges, and these were very likely
to be unsound, while the ferry-boats were apt to be leaky. It was
often necessary for the traveller to swim across the stream, with a
fair chance of getting drowned, and more than a fair chance of losing
his horse. The course of the bridle-path often became so obscure that
it was necessary to blaze the trees. It was not uncommon for people
to lose their way and find themselves obliged to stay overnight in
the woods, perhaps with the howls of the wolf and panther sounding in
their ears. The highway robber was even a more uncomfortable customer
to meet than such beasts of prey; and in those days, when banking was
in its infancy and travellers used to carry gold coins sewed under the
lining of their waistcoats, the highwayman enjoyed opportunities which
in this age of railways and check-books are denied him. Nevertheless
crime was far less common than in England or France, and travelling
was much safer than one might suppose. This was true of the whole
colonial period. In 1777 a young Rhode Island merchant, Elkanah Watson,
armed with a sabre and pair of pistols, journeyed from Providence to
Charleston in South Carolina, with several hundred pounds sterling
in gold quilted into his coat. In seventy days he accomplished the
distance of 1,243 miles, partly on horseback and partly in a sulky,
without encountering any more serious mishaps than being arrested
for a British spy in Pennsylvania, and meeting a large bear in North
Carolina; and he has left us a narrative of his journey, which is as
full of instruction as of interest.[192]

[Sidenote: Tobacco as currency.]

The traveller in Old Virginia, however, was not likely to carry large
sums of money concealed on his person, for he dealt in a circulating
medium too bulky for that. In the course of this book we have had
frequent occasions to observe that the Virginian’s current money was
tobacco. The prices of all articles of merchandise were quoted in
pounds of tobacco. In tobacco taxes were assessed and all wages and
salaries were paid. This use of tobacco as a circulating medium and
as a standard of values was begun in the earliest days of the colony,
when coin was scarce, and the structure of society was simple enough
to permit a temporary return toward the primitive practice of barter.
Under such circumstances tobacco was obviously the article most sure to
be used as money. It was exchangeable for whatever anybody wanted in
the shape of service or merchandise, and it was easily procured from
the bountiful earth. But as time went on this ease of attainment made
it an extremely vicious currency. In the course of our narrative we
have encountered some of the disastrous financial and social results
that flowed from the use of so cheap a substitute for money. Many
reasons have been alleged for the scarcity of coin throughout the whole
colonial period in Virginia;[193] but assuredly the chief reason was
the fact that tobacco was currency. The bad money drove away the good
money, as it always does. There are indications that there was always a
small stock of coin in the colony, but it was hoarded or sent to other
colonies or to England in the settlement of trade balances. Yet it was
not easy to demonetize tobacco without a radical revolution in the
industrial system and in the commercial relations of the colony.

[Sidenote: Effect upon crafts and trades.]

The nature of the currency evidently had much to do with the ill
success of the attempts to encourage manufactures. The carpenter or
shoemaker, after doing his work, must wait for his pay until the year’s
crop of tobacco was gathered and cured. Meanwhile he had nothing to
live on unless he raised it for himself; he might either plant grain
and rear cattle, or else grow tobacco wherewith to buy things. But the
time consumed in these agricultural operations was time taken from his
handicraft. The evil was attacked by legislation. “In 1633 brickmakers,
carpenters, joiners, sawyers, and turners were expressly forbidden to
take part in any form of tillage.” In 1662 tradesmen and artisans were
exempted from all taxes except church-rates, on condition that they
should abstain from all interest, direct or indirect, in the growing of
tobacco. But the evil was not cured.[194]

[Sidenote: Effect upon planters’ accounts.]

Further disaster came from the fact that tobacco was a highly
speculative crop. The fluctuations in its value were liable to be great
and sudden, and they affected the price of every article that was
bought and sold throughout the colony. No one could estimate from one
year to another, with any approach to accuracy, what the purchasing
power of his income was going to be. The inevitable results of this
were extravagance in living and chronic debt. The planter was drawn
into a situation from which it was almost impossible to extricate
himself. “The system of keeping open accounts in London was calculated
to encourage extravagance; and these accounts were habitually
overdrawn. Many of the merchants even made it a rule to encourage this
indebtedness, so as to assure the continuance of their customers.
It gave them a certain advantage in all their dealings with the
planters.”[195] They charged nearly twice as much for their goods sent
to Norfolk or Williamsburg as for the same goods sent to New York.[196]
In all this they were aided by the Navigation Act.

[Sidenote: Hospitality.]

Extravagance in living was further stimulated by the regal hospitality
for which the great planters early became famous. Although the life
upon their estates was much more busy than some writers seem to
suppose, yet the drudgery of business did not consume all their time;
and in their rural isolation, with none of the diversions of town
life, the entertainment of guests by the month together was regarded
both as a duty and as a privilege; and the example set by the large
plantations was followed by the smaller. Even the keeper of an inn, if
he wished to make a charge for food and shelter, must notify the guest
upon his arrival, for a statute of 1663 declared that in the absence of
such preliminary understanding not a penny could be recovered from the
guest, however long he might have staid in the house.[197] As a rule,
no person whose company was at all desirable was allowed to stop at an
inn, for the neighbours vied with one another in offering hospitality.
Every planter kept open house, and provided for his visitors with
unstinted hand.

[Sidenote: Visit to a plantation; the negro quarter.]

Let us put ourselves into the position of one of these visitors,
and get some glimpses of life upon the old plantation. Our host we
may suppose to be a vestryman, justice of the peace, and burgess,
dwelling upon a plantation of five or six thousand acres, with his
next neighbours at a distance of two or three miles.[198] The space is
in great part cleared for the planting of vast fields of tobacco, but
here and there are extensive stretches of woodland and coppice, with
noble forest trees and luxuriant undergrowth, much rougher and wilder
than an English park. The cabins for slaves present the appearance of
a hamlet. These are wooden structures of the humblest sort, built of
logs or undressed planks, and afflicted with chronic dilapidation. An
inventory of 1697 shows us that the cabin might contain a bed and a
few chairs, two or three pots and kettles, “a pair of pot-racks, a
pot-hook, a frying-pan, and a beer barrel;” and advertisements for
runaways describe Cuffy and Pompey as clad in red cotton, with canvas
drawers, waistcoat, and wide-brimmed black hat. Their victuals, of
“hog and hominy” with potatoes and green vegetables, were wholesome
and palatable. If there were white servants on the estate, they were
commonly but not necessarily somewhat better housed and clothed.

[Sidenote: Other appurtenances.]

[Sidenote: The Great House.]

Leaving the negro quarters, with their grinning mammies and swarms of
woolly pickaninnies, one would presently come upon other outbuildings;
the ample barns for tobacco and granaries for corn, the stable, the
cattle-pens, a hen-coop and a dove-cot, a dairy, and in some cases a
malt-house, or perhaps, as we have seen, a country store. There were
brick ovens for curing hams and bacon; and the kitchen likewise stood
apart from the mansion, which was thus free from kitchen odours and
from undue heating in summer time. There was a vegetable garden, with
“all the culinary plants that grow in England, and in far greater
perfection,” besides “roots, herbs, vine-fruits, and salad-flowers
peculiar to themselves,” and excellent for a relish with meat.[199]
Nearer to the house, among redolent flower-beds gay with varied
colours, some vine-clad arbour afforded shelter from the sun. A short
walk across the mown space shaded by large trees, called, as in New
England, the yard, would bring us to the mansion, very commonly known
as the Great House. From this epithet no sure inference can be drawn
as to the size of the building, for it simply served to contrast it
with its dependent cabins and outhouses. It was often called the Home
House. It was apt to stand upon a rising ground, and from its porch
you might look down at the blue river and the little wharf, known as
“the landing,” with pinnaces moored hard by and canoes lying lazily
on the bank or suddenly darting out upon the water. Turning away from
the river, the eye would rest upon an orchard bearing fruits in great
variety, and a pasture devoted to horses of some special breed.

[Sidenote: Brick and wooden houses.]

The planter’s mansion might be built of wood or brick, but was
comparatively seldom of stone. In tidewater Virginia, good stone for
building purposes was not readily found, but there was an abundance of
red clay from which excellent and durable brick could be made. A number
of brick houses were built in the seventeenth century, but wood was
much more commonly used, since the work of clearing away the forests
furnished great quantities of timber of the finest quality. Among
the many articles that were imported from England, bricks are not to
be reckoned.[200] Brickmaking went on from the earliest days of the
colony, and much of this work was done by white servants and freedmen.
In course of time there came to be many brick houses, and chimneys were
regularly of this material. For roofs the strong and durable cypress
shingle was the material most commonly used. Partition walls, covered
first with a tenacious clay and then white-washed, were very firm and
solid. The glass windows, for protection against storms of a violence
to which Englishmen had not been accustomed, had stout wooden shutters
outside, which gave the house somewhat the look of a stronghold.

[Sidenote: House architecture.]

During the seventeenth century not much architectural beauty was
attained. To any criticisms on this score the planters would have
replied, as the early settlers did to Captain Butler, that their houses
were for use and not for ornament.[201] During the eighteenth century
some progress was made in this respect, but for the architectural
effect of the mansions not much is to be said, though they were often
highly picturesque. The earliest type, the house of greater width than
depth, with an outside chimney at each end, is familiar to every one,
at least in pictures. It was as characteristic of Old Virginia as
the house of huge central chimney and small entryway with transverse
staircase was characteristic of early New England. Both are slightly
modified types of the smaller English manor houses of the Tudor
period. A more picturesque style, and somewhat more stately, is that of
Gunston Hall, the homestead of the Mason family; while scarcely less
attractive, and still more capacious, is that of Stratford Hall, the
home of the Lees. The well-known Mount Vernon shows a further departure
from English models; while in Monticello both the name and the house
present symptoms of the beginning of that so-called classical revival
when children were baptized Cyrus and Marcellus, and dwelt in the shade
of porticoes that simulated those of Greek temples.[202]

[Sidenote: The rooms.]

[Sidenote: Bedrooms and their furniture.]

The differentiation of rooms for specific uses had by no means
proceeded so far as in modern houses. One mediæval English feature
which was retained was the predominance of the Hall, or Great Room,
used for meals and for general purposes. Along with the hall, there
might be as few as five or six rooms, or as many as eighteen or twenty,
upstairs and down. Stratford Hall, built about 1725-30, contained
eighteen large rooms, exclusive of the central hall,[203] whereas
Governor Berkeley’s house at Green Spring, built three quarters of
a century earlier, had but six rooms altogether. Beside the central
hall, there might be a hall parlour, equivalent to reception room and
family sitting-room combined, and in this there might be chests and a
bed; the others were simply bedrooms. Beds were such as we are still
familiar with; their ticking might be stuffed with feathers or hair or
straw, but leathers were much more commonly used than now, as they are
now more commonly used in chilly England than in the fiery summers and
hot-house winters of America. With sheets, blankets, and counterpane,
pillows, curtains, and valances, the bed was dressed as at present,
save that curtains are now departing along with the brass warming-pans,
bequests from higher latitudes. Already the Virginia bed often had a
protection for which England could have no use, the mosquito net. For
such members of the household as were lazily inclined in the daytime
there was a couch, which might be plainly covered with calico, or more
expensively with russia leather or embroidered stuffs. The chairs might
be upholstered likewise, or be seated with cane, wicker, or rushwork.
In every bedroom was a chest for storing clothes not in immediate
use. There were also the ewer and basin, and the case of drawers with
looking-glass. If one of the big chimneys was accessible, there was a
fireplace for wooden logs, supported on andirons of iron or brass, and
guarded by iron or tin fenders; otherwise there was an open brazier,
such as we see to-day in Italy. Floors were usually ill-made in those
days, and woollen carpets faithfully accumulated dirt; so that the
sunbeam straggling through the dimity or printed calico window-curtains
would often gild long dusty rays.

[Sidenote: The dinner-table.]

[Sidenote: Napkins and forks.]

[Sidenote: Silver plate.]

[Sidenote: Wainscots and tapestry.]

In the Hall, or Great Room, the principal feature was the long
dining-table of walnut or oak or cedar, flanked either by benches or
by chairs. For daily use it was covered with a cloth of unbleached
linen, known as holland, while on extra occasions a damask cloth was
used. Napkins were abundant, and often of a fine fabric delicately
embroidered. Forks, on the other hand, were in the earlier days scarce.
Before the seventeenth century, forks were nowhere in general use, save
in Italy. Queen Elizabeth ate with her fingers. A satirical pamphlet,
aimed at certain luxurious favourites of Henry III. of France, derides
them for conveying bits of meat to their mouths on a little pronged
implement, rather than do it in the natural way.[204] Forks are nowhere
mentioned in Shakespeare. In 1608, while travelling in Italy, one
Thomas Coryat took a liking to them and introduced the fashion into
England, for which he was jocosely nicknamed _Furcifer_.[205] Naturally
the use of forks narrowed the functions of napkins.[206] Spoons were
in much more common use, and, in the New World as in the Old, were of
iron or pewter in the poor man’s house, and of silver in the rich
man’s. The dishes and plates were of earthenware or pewter, but in the
eighteenth century the use of chinaware increased. Pewter cups and
mugs were everywhere to be seen, and now and then a drinking-horn.
Well-to-do planters had silver tankards, sometimes marked with the
family arms, as well as silver salt-cellars, candlesticks, and
snuffers. A cupboard with glass doors, or light drapery, displayed the
store of cups and dishes; while about the walls sometimes hung family
portraits, and more rarely paintings of other sorts. This central hall
retained many marks of its mediæval miscellaneousness of use; capacious
linen-chests, guns and pistols, powder-horns, swords, saddles, bridles,
and riding-whips, in picturesque and cosy confusion. In the eighteenth
century a luxurious elegance was developed quite similar to that of
the “colonial mansions” at the North, such as the Philipse manor house
on the Hudson River, or Colonel Vassall’s house in Cambridge, where
Washington dwelt for a few months, and Longfellow for many years.
Panelled wainscots of oak and carved oaken chimney-pieces were common;
the walls were hung with tapestry; and artistic cabinets, screens, and
clocks adorned the spacious room. In the Lee homestead at Stratford the
hall added to its other functions that of library. The ceiling was very
high and vaulted, and parts of the panelled walls had bookshelves set
into them.[207] Such rooms were warmed by huge logs of hickory or oak,
burning in open fireplaces. They were lighted by candles, which might
be made of beef tallow or deer suet, but the favourite material was a
wax obtained by boiling the berries of a myrtle that grew profusely
in marshy land. It was extremely cheap and burned with a pleasant
fragrance, giving a brilliant light.

[Sidenote: The kitchen.]

The central object in the kitchen was, of course, the fireplace, which
was sometimes very large. At Stratford it was “twelve feet wide,
six high, and five deep, evidently capable of roasting a fair-sized
ox.”[208] In the days when pains were taken not to spoil good meat
with bad cooking, your haunch of venison, saddle of mutton, or stuffed
turkey was not baked to insipidity in an oven meant for better uses,
but was carefully turned about on an iron spit, catching rich aroma
from the caressing flame, while the basting was judiciously poured from
ladles, and dripping-pans caught the savoury juices. Then there was the
great copper boiler imbedded in brick and heated from underneath; there
were the kettles and sauce-pans, the swinging iron pot, the gridirons
and frying-pans, and the wooden trays for carrying the cooked dishes to
the dining-hall.

[Sidenote: Abundance of food.]

The settlers in the strange wilderness of the Powhatans had once had
their Starving Time, but it would be hard to point to any part of the
earth more bountifully supplied with wholesome and delicious food
than civilized Old Virginia. Venison, beef, and dairy products were
excellent and cheap. Mutton was less common, and was highly prized. The
pork in its various forms was pronounced equal to that of Yorkshire
or Westphalia. Succulent vegetables and toothsome fruits were grown
in bewildering variety. Good Henry of Navarre’s peasant, had he lived
in this favoured country, might have had every day a fowl in his pot;
while, as for game and fish, the fame of Chesapeake Bay is world-wide
for its canvas-backs, mallards, and red-heads, its terrapin, its soles,
bass, and shad, and, last not least, its oysters. The various cakes
which the cooks of the Old Dominion could make from their maize and
other grains have also won celebrity.

[Sidenote: Beverages, native and imported.]

To wash down these native viands the Virginian had divers drinks,
whereof all the best were imported. Englishmen could not in a
moment leave off beer-drinking, but the generous, full-bodied
and delicate-flavoured ale of the mother country has never been
successfully imitated on this side of the Atlantic, and indeed seems
hardly adapted to our sweltering summers. Concerning the beer brewed
in Old Virginia opinions varied; but since barley soon ceased to be
cultivated, and attempts were made to supply its place with maize or
pumpkins or persimmons, we need not greatly regret that we were not
there to be regaled with it. Cider, with its kindred beverages, was
abundant,[209] and doubtless of much better quality. Apple-jack and
peach brandy were distilled. Other beverages were imported, most
commonly sack, of which Falstaff was so fond; the name was applied to
such dry (Spanish _seco_) and strong wines as sherry and madeira. In
the cellars of wealthy planters were often found choice brands of red
wine from Bordeaux and white wine from the Rhineland. Cognacs were also
imported, and of rum we have already spoken. Evidently our friends, the
planters, had sturdy tipplers among them.[210] Fortunately for them,
the manufacture of coarse whiskey from maize and rye had not yet come
into vogue, while of the less harmful peaty “mountain dew” from Ireland
or Scotland we hear nothing.

[Sidenote: Smyth’s picture of a planter.]

Of the daily life of a rich planter we have a graphic account from John
Ferdinand Smyth, a British soldier who travelled through Virginia and
other colonies, and sojourned for some years in Maryland, about the
middle of the eighteenth century. I cite the description, because so
much has been made of it: “The gentleman of fortune rises about nine
o’clock; he may perhaps make an excursion to walk as far as his stable
to see his horses, which is seldom more than fifty yards from his
house; he returns to breakfast between nine and ten, which is generally
tea or coffee, bread-and-butter, and very thin slices of venison,
ham, or hung beef. He then lies down on a pallet on the floor, in the
coolest room in the house, in his shirt and trousers only, with a negro
at his head and another at his feet, to fan him and keep off the
flies; between twelve and one he takes a draught of bombo, or toddy, a
liquor composed of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg, which is made weak
and kept cool; he dines between two and three, and at every table,
whatever else there may be, a ham and greens, or cabbage, is always a
standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, toddy, punch, port, claret,
and madeira, which is generally excellent here; having drank [_sic_]
some few glasses of wine after dinner, he returns to his pallet, with
his two blacks to fan him, and continues to drink toddy, or sangaree,
all the afternoon; he does not always drink tea. Between nine and ten
in the evening he eats a light supper of milk and fruit, or wine,
sugar, and fruit, etc., and almost immediately retires to bed for the
night. This is his general way of living in his family, when he has no
company. No doubt many differ from it, some in one respect, some in
another; but more follow it than do not.”[211]

This extract seems to show that Rev. Samuel Peters was not the only
writer who liked to entertain his trustful British friends with queer
tales about their American cousins.[212] No doubt Mr. Smyth wrote it
with his tongue in his cheek; but if he meant what he said, we must
remember that the besetting sin of travellers is hasty generalization.
We will take Mr. Smyth’s word for it that one or more gentlemen were
in the habit of passing their days in the way he describes, and we may
freely admit that a good many gentlemen might thus make shift to keep
alive through some furious attack of the weather fiend in August; but
his concluding statement, that this way of living was customary, is not
to be taken seriously. An extract from the manuscript recollections
of General John Mason, son of the illustrious George Mason, gives a
different picture:--

[Sidenote: The mode of life at Gunston.]

“It was very much the practice with gentlemen of landed and slave
estates ... so to organize them as to have considerable resources
within themselves; to employ and pay but few tradesmen, and to buy
little or none of the coarse stuffs and materials used by them....
Thus my father had among his slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers,
blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, and
knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber and plank
for the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for the blacksmith; his
cattle killed for his own consumption and for sale supplied skins for
the tanners, curriers, and shoemakers; and his sheep gave wool and his
fields produced cotton and flax for the weavers and spinners, and his
orchards fruit for the distiller. His carpenters and sawyers built
and kept in repair all the dwelling-houses, barns, stables, ploughs,
harrows, gates, etc., on the plantations, and the outhouses at the
house. His coopers made the hogsheads the tobacco was prized in, and
the tight casks to hold the cider and other liquors. The tanners and
curriers, with the proper vats, etc., tanned and dressed the skins
as well for upper as for lower leather to the full amount of the
consumption of the estate, and the shoemakers made them into shoes
for the negroes. A professed shoemaker was hired for three or four
months in the year to come and make up the shoes for the white part
of the family. The blacksmiths did all the ironwork required by the
establishment, as making and repairing ploughs, harrows, teeth, chains,
bolts, etc. The spinners, weavers, and knitters made all the coarse
cloths and stockings used by the negroes, and some of finer texture
worn by the white family, nearly all worn by the children of it. The
distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach, and persimmon
brandy. The art of distilling from grain was not then among us, and
but few public distilleries. All these operations were carried on at
the home house, and their results distributed as occasion required
to the different plantations. Moreover, all the beeves and hogs for
consumption or sale were driven up and slaughtered there at the proper
seasons, and whatever was to be preserved was salted and packed away
for after distribution.

“My father kept no steward or clerk about him. He kept his own books
and superintended, with the assistance of a trusty slave or two, and
occasionally of some of his sons, all the operations at or about
the home house above described.... To carry on these operations to
the extent required, it will be seen that a considerable force was
necessary, besides the house servants, who for such a household,
a large family and entertaining a great deal of company, must be
numerous; and such a force was constantly kept there, independently
of any of the plantations, and besides occasional drafts from them of
labour for particular occasions. As I had during my youth constant
intercourse with all these people, I remember them all, and their
several employments as if it was yesterday.”[213]

Now when we consider that Colonel Mason had some 500 persons on his
estate, and was known to have sent from his private wharf as many as
23,000 bushels of wheat in a single shipment, it is clear that no
gentleman who spent the day lolling on a couch and sipping toddy could
have superintended the details of business which his son describes.
George Mason was, no doubt, a fair specimen of his class, and their
existence was clearly not an idle one. With the public interests of
parish, county, and commonwealth to look after besides, they surely
earned the leisure hours that were spent in social entertainments or in
field sports.

[Sidenote: A glimpse of Mount Vernon.]

A glimpse of the life of a planter’s wife, which Bishop Meade declares
to be typical, is given in a letter from Mrs. Edward Carrington to her
sister, about 1798. Colonel Carrington and his wife were visiting
at Mount Vernon. After telling how Washington and the Colonel sat
up together until midnight, absorbed in reminiscences of bivouac
and hard-fought field, she comes to Mrs. Washington, who alluded
to her days of public pomp and fashion as “her lost days.” Then
Mrs. Carrington continues: “Let us repair to the old lady’s [Mrs.
Washington’s] room, which is precisely in the style of our good old
aunt’s,--that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work. On one
side sits the chambermaid, with her knitting; on the other, a little
coloured pet, learning to sew. An old, decent woman is there, with
her table and shears, cutting out the negroes’ winter clothes, while
the good old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She
points out to me several pairs of nice coloured stockings and gloves
she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done, which she
begs I will finish and wear for her sake.” At this domestic picture
Bishop Meade exclaims: “If the wife of General Washington, having her
own and his wealth at command, should thus choose to live, how much
more the wives and mothers of Virginia with moderate fortunes and
numerous children! How often have I seen, added to the above-mentioned
scenes of the chamber, the instruction of several sons and daughters
going on, the churn, the reel, and other domestic operations all
in progress at the same time, and the mistress, too, lying on a
sick-bed!”[214]

[Sidenote: Dress of planters and their wives.]

Although Mrs. Carrington may have finished and worn the pair of knit
gloves, yet most articles of dress for well-to-do men and women were
imported. London fashions were strictly followed. In the time of
Bacon’s rebellion, your host would have appeared, perhaps, in a coat
and breeches of olive plush or dark red broadcloth, with embroidered
waistcoat, shirt of blue holland, long silk stockings, silver buttons
and shoe-buckles, lace ruffles about neck and wrists, and his head
encumbered with a flowing wig; while the lady of the house might have
worn a crimson satin bodice trimmed with point lace, a black tabby[215]
petticoat and silk hose, with shoes of fine leather gallooned; her lace
headdress would be secured with a gold bodkin, and she would be apt
to wear earrings, a pearl necklace, and finger-rings with rubies or
diamonds, and to carry a fan.[216]

[Sidenote: Weddings and funerals.]

[Sidenote: Horse-racing.]

The ordinary chances for the ladies to exhibit their garments of
flowered tabby, and beaux their new plush suits, were furnished by the
Sunday services at the parish church, and by the frequent gatherings
of friends at home. Weddings, of course, were high times, as everywhere
and always; and the gloom of funerals was relieved by feasting the
guests, who were likely to have come long distances over which they
must return.[217] These journeys, like the journeys to church and to
the court-house, might be made in boats; on land they were made on
horseback. Carriages were very rare in the seventeenth century, but
became much more common before the Revolution. In their fondness for
horses the Virginians were true children of England. In the stables of
wealthy planters were to be found specimens of the finest breeds, and
the interest in racing was universal. Common folk, however, were not
allowed to take part in the sport, except as lookers-on. One of the
earliest references to horse-racing is an order of the county court
of York in 1674: “James Bullocke, a Taylor, haveing made a race for
his mare to runn w’th a horse belonging to Mr. Mathew Slader for twoe
thousand pounds of tobacco and caske, it being contrary to Law for a
Labourer to make a race, being a sport only for Gentlemen, is fined
for the same one hundred pounds of tobacco and caske.”[218] Half a
century later, Hugh Jones tells us that the Virginians “are such lovers
of riding that almost every ordinary person keeps a horse; and I have
known some spend the morning in ranging several miles in the woods to
find and catch their horses only to ride two or three miles to church,
to the court-house, or to a horse-race.”[219] After 1740 there was a
systematic breeding from imported English thoroughbreds.[220] Thirty
years later, we are told that “there are races at Williamsburg twice a
year; that is, every spring and fall, or autumn. Adjoining to the town
is a very excellent course for either two, three, or four mile heats.
Their purses are generally raised by subscription, and are gained by
the horse that wins two four-mile heats out of three; they amount to
an hundred pounds each for the first day’s running, and fifty pounds
each every day after, the races commonly continuing for a week. There
are also matches and sweepstakes very often for considerable sums.
Besides ... there are races established annually almost at every town
and considerable place in Virginia; and frequent matches on which large
sums of money depend.... Very capital horses are started here, such
as would make no despicable figure at Newmarket; nor is their speed,
bottom, or blood inferior to their appearance.... Indeed, nothing can
be more elegant and beautiful than the horses here, either for the
turf, the field, the road, or the coach; ... but their carriage horses
seldom are possessed of that weight and power which distinguish those
of the same kind in England.”[221]

[Sidenote: Fox-hunting.]

[Sidenote: Gambling.]

Since the Virginians were excellent horsemen, it was but natural that
they should enjoy hunting. No sport was more dear than chasing the fox.
Washington’s extreme delight in riding to the hounds is well known;
he kept it up until his sixty-third year, when a slight injury to his
back made such exercise uncomfortable. Washington was a true Virginian
in his love for his dogs, to whom he gave such pretty names as Mopsey,
Truelove, Jupiter, Juno, Rover, Music, Sweetlips, Countess, Lady, and
Singer. Shooting and fishing were favourite diversions with Washington;
when he was President of the United States, the newspapers used to tell
of his great catches of blackfish and sea-bass.[222] In these tastes
his neighbours were like him. Less wholesome sports were cock-fighting,
and gambling with cards. The passion for gambling was far too strong
among the Virginians. Laws were enacted against it; gambling debts were
not recoverable; innkeepers who permitted any game of cards or dice,
except backgammon, were subject to a heavy fine besides forfeiting
their licenses.[223]

[Sidenote: A rural entertainment.]

An interesting newspaper notice, in the year 1737, shows that some of
the innocent open-air sports of mediæval England still survived: “We
have advice from Hanover County, that on St. Andrew’s Day there are
to be Horse Races and several other Diversions, for the entertainment
of the Gentlemen and Ladies, at the Old Field, near Captain John
Bickerton’s, in that county (if permitted by the Hon. Wm. Byrd,
Esquire, Proprietor of said land), the substance of which is as
follows, viz.: It is proposed that 20 Horses or Mares do run round a
three miles’ course for a prize of five pounds.

“That a Hat of the value of 20s be cudgelled for, and that after the
first challenge made the Drums are to beat every Quarter of an hour for
three challenges round the Ring, and none to play with their Left hand.

“That a violin be played for by 20 Fiddlers; no person to have the
liberty of playing unless he bring a fiddle with him. After the prize
is won they are all to play together, and each a different tune, and to
be treated by the company.

“That 12 Boys of 12 years of age do run 112 yards for a Hat of the cost
of 12 shillings.

“That a Flag be flying on said Day 30 feet high.

“That a handsome entertainment be provided for the subscribers and
their wives; and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives may
treat any other lady.

“That Drums, Trumpets, Hautboys, &c., be provided to play at said
entertainment.

“That after dinner the Royal Health, His Honour the Governor’s, &c.,
are to be drunk.

“That a Quire of ballads be sung for by a number of Songsters, all of
them to have liquor sufficient to clear their Wind Pipes.

“That a pair of Silver Buckles be wrestled for by a number of brisk
young men.

“That a pair of handsome Shoes be danced for.

“That a pair of handsome silk Stockings of one Pistole[224] value be
given to the handsomest young country maid that appears in the Field.
With many other Whimsical and Comical Diversions too numerous to
mention.

“And as this mirth is designed to be purely innocent and void of
offence, all persons resorting there are desired to behave themselves
with decency and sobriety; the subscribers being resolved to
discountenance all immorality with the utmost rigour.”[225]

[Sidenote: Music.]

The part played by violins in this quaint programme reminds us that
fiddling was an accomplishment highly esteemed in the Old Dominion. As
an accompaniment for dancing it was very useful in the home parties on
the plantations. The philosophic Thomas Jefferson, as a dead shot with
the rifle, a skilful horseman, and a clever violinist, was a typical
son of Virginia. As boys learned to play the violin, and sometimes
the violoncello, girls were taught to play the virginal, which was an
ancestral form of the piano. Virginals, and afterward harpsichords,
were commonly to be found in the houses of the gentry, and not
unfrequently hautboys, flutes, and recorders.[226] The music most
often played with these instruments was probably some form of dance or
the setting of a popular ballad; but what is called “classical music”
was not unknown. Among the effects of Cuthbert Ogle, a musician at
Williamsburg, who died in 1755, we find Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” and
“Apollo’s Feast,” four books of instrumental scores of his oratorios,
and ten books of his songs; also a manuscript score of Corelli’s
sonatas, and concertos by the English composers, William Felton and
Charles Avison, now wellnigh forgotten.[227]

[Sidenote: Other recreations.]

After 1716 there was a theatre at Williamsburg, and during the sessions
of the assembly, when planters with their families came from far and
wide, there was much gayety. At other seasons the monotony of rural
life was varied by the recreations above described, with an occasional
picnic in the woods, or a grand barbecue in honour of some English
victory or the accession of a new king.

[Sidenote: Wormeley’s library.]

Some time was found for reading. The inventories of personal estates
almost always include books, in some instances few and of little
worth, in others numerous and valuable. The library of Ralph Wormeley,
of Rosegill, contained about four hundred titles. Wormeley, who had
been educated at Oriel College, Oxford, was president of the council,
secretary of state, and a trustee of William and Mary College; he died
in 1701. Among his books were Burnet’s “History of the Reformation,” a
folio history of Spain, an ecclesiastical history in Latin, Camden’s
“Britannia,” Lord Bacon’s “History of Henry VII.,” and his “Natural
History,” histories of Scotland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and
the West Indies, biographies of Richard III., Charles I., and George
Castriot, Plutarch’s Lives, Burnet’s “Theory of the Earth,” Willis’s
“Practice of Physick,” Heylin’s “Cosmography,” “a chirurgical old
book,” “the Chyrurgans mate,” Galen’s “Art of Physick,” treatises on
gout, pancreatic juice, pharmacy, scurvy, and many other medical works,
Coke’s Reports and his “Institutes,” collections of Virginia and New
England laws, a history of tithes, “The Office of Justice of the
Peace,” a Latin treatise on maritime law, and many other law books,
Usher’s “Body of Divinity,” Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity,” Poole’s
“Annotations to the Bible,” “A Reply to the Jesuits,” Fuller’s “Holy
State” and his “Worthies,” a concordance to the Bible, Jeremy Taylor’s
“Holy Living and Dying,” “The Whole Duty of Man,” a biography of St.
Augustine, Baxter’s “Confession of Faith,” and many books of divinity,
a liberal assortment of dictionaries and grammars of English, French,
Spanish, Latin, and Greek, the essays of Montaigne and other French
books, Cæsar, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Thucydides, Josephus, Quintus
Curtius, Seneca, Terence, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Don Quixote,” “Hudibras,”
Quarles’s poems, George Herbert’s poems, Howell’s “Familiar Letters,”
Waller’s poems, the plays of Sir William Davenant, “ffifty Comodys
& tragedies in folio,” “The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft,” “An
Embersee from y^e East India Comp^a to y^e Grand Tartar,” “The Negro’s
and Indian’s Advocate,” “A Looking Glass for the Times,” and so
on.[228] Though not the library of a scholar, it indicates that its
owner was a thoughtful man and fairly well informed.

[Sidenote: Libraries of Byrd and Lee.]

A more remarkable library was that of William Byrd, of Westover. It
contained 3,625 volumes, classified nearly as follows: History, 700;
Classics, etc., 650; French, 550; Law, 350; Divinity, 300; Medicine,
200; Scientific, 225; Entertaining, etc., 650.[229] This must have
been one of the largest collections of books made in the colonial
period. That of the second Richard Lee, who died in 1715, contained
about 300 titles, among which we notice many more Greek and Latin
writers than in Wormeley’s, especially such names as Epictetus,
Aristotle de Anima, Diogenes Laertius, Lucian, Heliodorus, Claudian,
Arrian, and Orosius, besides such mediæval authors as Albertus Magnus
and Laurentius Valla.[230]

[Sidenote: Schools and printing.]

Such libraries were of course exceptional. In most planters’ houses
you would probably have found a few English classics, with perhaps
“Don Quixote” and “Gil Blas,” and an assortment of books on divinity,
manuals for magistrates, and helps in farming. Virginia was not
eminent as a literary or bookish community. There was no newspaper
until the establishment of the “Virginia Gazette” in 1736. As for
schools, the Lords Commissioners of Plantations sent over a series
of interrogatories to Sir William Berkeley in 1671, and asked him,
among other things, what provision was made for public instruction.
His reply was characteristic: “I thank God there are no free schools
nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for
learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world,
and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government.
God keep us from both!”[231] Lord Culpeper seems to have been much
of Berkeley’s way of thinking, for we read that, “February 21, 1682,
John Buckner [was] called before the Lord Culpeper and his council
for printing the laws of 1680 without his excellency’s license, and
he and the printer [were] ordered to enter into bond in £100 _not to
print anything_ thereafter until his majesty’s pleasure should be
known.”[232] The pleasure of Charles II. was, that nobody should use
a printing-press in Virginia, and so he instructed the next governor,
Lord Howard, in 1684.

[Sidenote: Private free schools.]

[Sidenote: Academies and tutors.]

The establishment of a system of schools such as flourished in New
England was prevented by the absence of town life and the long
distances between plantations. When Berkeley said there were no free
schools in Virginia, he may have had in mind the contrast with New
England. No such schools were founded in Virginia by the assembly,
but there were instances of free schools founded by individuals; as,
for example, the Symms school in 1636, Captain Moon’s school in 1655,
Richard Russell’s in 1667, Mr. King’s in 1669, the Eaton school some
time before 1689, and Edward Moseley’s in 1721.[233] Indeed, there was
after 1646[234] a considerable amount of compulsory primary education
in Virginia, much more than has been generally supposed, since the
records of it have been buried in the parish vestry-books. In the
eighteenth century we find evidences that pains were taken to educate
coloured people.[235] It was not unusual for the plantation to have
among its numerous outbuildings a school conducted by some rustic
dignitary of the neighbourhood. In the “old field schools” little more
was taught than “the three Rs,” but these humble institutions are not
to be despised; for it was in one of them, kept by “Hobby, the sexton,”
that George Washington learned to read, write, and cipher. His father
and his elder brother Lawrence had been educated at Appleby School,
in England; George himself, after an interval with a Mr. Williams,
near Wakefield, finished his school-days at an excellent academy in
Fredericksburg, of which Rev. James Marye was master. The sons of
George Mason studied two years at an academy in Stafford County kept
by a Scotch parson named Buchan, “a pious man and profound classical
scholar.” Afterwards John Mason was sent to study mathematics with
an expert named Hunter, “a Scotchman also and quite a recluse, who
kept a small school in a retired place in Calvert County, Maryland.”
Much teaching was also done by private tutors. In the Mason household
these were three Scotchmen in succession, of whom “the two last were
especially engaged [in Scotland] to come to America (as was the
practice in those times with families who had means) by my father
to live in his house and educate the children.... The tutoress of
my sisters was a Mrs. Newman. She remained in the family for some
time.”[236]

[Sidenote: Convicts as tutors.]

Sometimes the schoolmaster or private tutor was an indented white
servant who had come out as a redemptioner, or even as a convict.
Among the criminals there might be persons of rank, as Sir Charles
Burton, a Lincolnshire baronet, who was transported to America in
1722 for “stealing a cornelian ring set in gold;” or scholars, like
Henry Justice, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister, who in 1736 was
convicted of stealing from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge,
“a Field’s Bible with cuts, and Common-prayer, value £25, Newcastle’s
Horsemanship, value £10, several other books of great value, several
Tracts cut out of books, etc.” For this larceny, although Mr.
Justice begged hard to be allowed to stay in England for the sake of
his clients, “with several of whom he had great concerns,” he was
nevertheless sent to America for seven years, under penalty of death
if he were to return within that time.[237] From such examples we
see that, while the convict ships may not have brought many Eugene
Arams, they certainly brought men more likely to find employment in
teaching than in manual labour. Jonathan Boucher, rector at Annapolis
in 1768, declares that “not a ship arrives with either redemptioners
or convicts, in which schoolmasters are not as regularly advertised
for sale as weavers, tailors, or any other trade; with little other
difference that I can hear of, except perhaps that the former do not
usually fetch so good a price as the latter.”[238]

[Sidenote: Virginians at Oxford.]

Sometimes, as we have seen in the case of Augustine Washington
and his son Lawrence, the young Virginians were sent to school in
England. Oftener, perhaps, the education begun at the country school
or with private tutors was “finished” (as the phrase goes) at one of
the English universities. Oxford seems to have been the favourite
Alma Mater, doubtless for the same reason that caused Cambridge to
be chiefly represented among the founders of New England; Oxford
was ultra-royalist in sentiment, while Cambridge was deeply tinged
with Puritanism. This difference would readily establish habits and
associations among the early Virginians which would be followed.[239]

[Sidenote: James Madison.]

It was not in all cases necessary to go to England to obtain a thorough
education. James Madison’s tutors were the parish minister and an
excellent Scotch schoolmaster; he was graduated at Princeton College
in 1772, and never crossed the Atlantic; yet for the range, depth,
and minuteness of his knowledge of ancient and modern history and of
constitutional law, he has been rivalled by no other English-speaking
statesman save Edmund Burke. Such an instance, however, chiefly shows
how much more depends upon the individual than upon any institutions.
There are no rules by which you can explain the occurrence of a
heaven-sent genius.

[Sidenote: Contrast with New England in respect of educational
advantages.]

On the whole, the facilities for education, whether primary or
advanced, were very imperfect in the Old Dominion. This becomes
especially noticeable from the contrast with New England, which
inevitably suggests itself. It is no doubt customary with historical
writers to make too much of this contrast. The people of colonial New
England were not all well-educated, nor were all their country schools
better than old field schools. The farmer’s boy, who was taught for two
winter months by a man and two summer months by a woman, seldom learned
more in the district school than how to read, write, and cipher. For
Greek and Latin, if he would go to college, he had usually to obtain
the services of the minister or some other college-bred man in the
village. There was often a disposition on the part of the town meetings
to shirk the appropriation of a sum of money for school purposes, and
many Massachusetts towns were fined for such remissness.[240] This was
especially true of the early part of the eighteenth century, when the
isolated and sequestered life of two generations had lowered the high
level of education which the grandfathers had brought across the ocean.
In those dark days of New England, there might now and then be found
in rural communities men of substance who signed deeds and contracts
with their mark.

[Sidenote: Causes of the difference.]

After making all allowances, however, the contrast between the New
England colonies and the Old Dominion remains undeniable, and it is
full of interest. The contrast is primarily based upon the fact that
New England was settled by a migration of organized congregations,
analogous to that of the ancient Greek city-communities; whereas the
settlement of Virginia was effected by a migration of individuals and
families. These circumstances were closely connected with the Puritan
doctrine of the relations between church and state, and furthermore,
as I have elsewhere shown,[241] the Puritan theory of life made it
imperatively necessary, in New England as in Scotland, to set a high
value upon education. The compactness of New England life, which was
favoured by the agricultural system of small farms owned by independent
yeomen, made it easy to maintain efficient schools. In Virginia, on
the other hand, the agricultural conditions interposed grave obstacles
to such a result. There was no such pervasive organization as in New
England, where the different grades of school, from lowest to highest,
coöperated in sustaining each other. There were heroic friends of
education in Virginia. James Blair and the faithful scholars who
worked with him conferred a priceless boon upon the commonwealth; but
the vitality of William and Mary College often languished for lack
of sustenance that should have been afforded by lower schools, and it
was impossible for it to exercise such a widespread seminal influence
as Yale and Harvard, sending their graduates into every town and
village as ministers, lawyers, and doctors, schoolmasters and editors,
merchants and country squires.

[Sidenote: Illustrations from history of American intellect.]

Among the founders of New England were an extraordinary number of
clergymen noted for their learning, such as Hooker and Shepard, Cotton
and Williams, Eliot and the Mathers; together with such cultivated
laymen as Winthrop and Bradford, familiar with much of the best that
was written in the world, and to whom the pen was an easy and natural
instrument for expressing their thoughts. The character originally
impressed upon New England by such men was maintained by the powerful
influence of the colleges and schools, so that there was always more
attention devoted to scholarship and to writing than in any of the
other colonies. Communities of Europeans, thrust into a wilderness and
severed from Europe by the ocean, were naturally in danger of losing
their higher culture and lapsing into the crudeness of frontier life.
All the American colonies were deeply affected by this situation. While
there were many and great advantages in the freedom from sundry Old
World trammels, yet in some respects the influence of the wilderness
was barbarizing. It was due to the circumstances above mentioned that
the New England colonies were more successful than the others in
resisting this influence, and avoiding a breach of continuity in the
higher spiritual life of the community. This is strikingly illustrated
by the history of American literature. Among men of letters and science
born and educated in America before the Revolution, there were three
whose fame is more than national, whose names belong among the great
of all times and countries. Of these, Jonathan Edwards was a native
of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin and Count Rumford were natives of
Massachusetts. In such men we can trace the continuity between the
intellectual life of England in the seventeenth century and that
of America in the nineteenth. In Virginia, if we except political
writers, we find no names so high as these. But there is one political
book which must not be excepted, because it is a book for all time.
“The Federalist” is one of the world’s philosophical and literary
masterpieces, and of its three authors James Madison took by far the
deepest and most important part in creating it.[242]

[Sidenote: Virginia’s historians; Robert Beverley.]

Among books of a second order,--books which do not rank among
classics,--there are some which deserve and have won a reputation
that is more than local. Of such books, Hutchinson’s “History of
Massachusetts Bay” is a good example. In the colonial times historical
literature was of better quality than other kinds of writing; and
Virginia produced three historical writers of decided merit. With
Robert Beverley the reader has already made some acquaintance through
the extracts cited in these pages. His “History of Virginia,” published
in London in 1705, is a little book full of interesting details
concerning the country and the life of its red and white inhabitants.
The author’s love of nature is charming, and his style so simple,
direct, and sprightly that there is not a dull page in the book. It was
written during a visit to London, where Beverley happened to see the
proof-sheets of Oldmixon’s forthcoming “British Empire in America,”
and was disgusted with the silly blunders that swarmed on every page.
He wrote his little book as an antidote, and did it so well that many
coming generations will read it with pleasure.

[Sidenote: William Stith.]

A book of more pretension and of decided merit is the “History of
Virginia” by Rev. William Stith, who was president of William and Mary
College from 1752 to his death in 1755. The book, which was published
at Williamsburg in 1747, was but the first volume of a work which,
had it been completed on a similar scale, would have filled six or
eight. It covers only the earliest period, ending with the downfall
of the Virginia Company in 1624; and among its merits is the good use
to which the author put the minutes of the Company’s proceedings made
at the instance of Nicholas Ferrar.[243] Stith’s work is accurate
and scholarly, and his narrative is dignified and often graphic.
His account of James I. is pithy: “He had, in truth, all the forms
of wisdom,--forever erring very learnedly, with a wise saw or Latin
sentence in his mouth; for he had been bred up under Buchanan, one of
the brightest geniuses and most accomplished scholars of that age, who
had given him Greek and Latin in great waste and profusion, but it was
not in his power to give him good sense. That is the gift of God and
nature alone, and is not to be taught; and Greek and Latin without it
only cumber and overload a a weak head, and often render the fool more
abundantly foolish. I must, therefore, confess that I have ever had
... a most contemptible opinion of this monarch; which has, perhaps,
been much heightened and increased by my long studying and conning
over the materials of this history. For he appears in his dealings
with the Company to have acted with such mean arts and fraud ... as
highly misbecome majesty.”[244] From the refined simplicity of this
straightforward style it was a sad descent to the cumbrous and stilted
Johnsonese of the next generation, which too many Americans even now
mistake for fine writing.

[Sidenote: William Byrd.]

Contemporary with Beverley and Stith was William Byrd, one of the most
eminent men of affairs in Old Virginia, and eminent also--probably
without knowing it--as a man of letters. His father came to Virginia
a few years before Bacon’s rebellion, and bought the famous estate
of Westover, on the James River and in Charles City County, with the
mansion, which is still in the possession of his family, and is
considered one of the finest old houses in Virginia. From his uncle
Colonel Byrd inherited a vast estate which included the present site of
Richmond. He sympathized strongly with his neighbour, Nathaniel Bacon,
and held a command under him; but after the collapse of the rebellion
he succeeded in making his peace with the raging Berkeley. He became
one of the most important men in the colony, and was commissioned
receiver-general of the royal revenues. On his death, in 1704, his son
succeeded him in this office. The son had studied law in the Middle
Temple, and for proficiency in science was made a fellow of the Royal
Society. He was for many years a member of the colonial council, and
at length its president. He lived in much splendour on his estate of
Westover, and we have seen what a library he accumulated there. A
professional man of letters he was not, and perhaps his strong literary
tastes might never have led to literary production but for sundry
interesting personal experiences which he deemed it worth while to put
on record. In 1727 he was one of the commissioners for determining the
boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. In the journeys connected
with that work he selected the sites where the towns of Richmond and
Petersburg were afterwards built; and he wrote a narrative of his
proceedings so full of keen observations on the people and times as to
make it an extremely valuable contribution to history.[245] Among early
American writers Byrd is exceptional for animation of style. There is
a quaintness of phrase about him that is quite irrepressible. After a
dry season he visits a couple of mills, and “had the grief to find them
both stand as still for the want of water as a dead woman’s tongue for
want of breath. It had rained so little for many weeks above the falls
that the Naiads had hardly water enough left to wash their faces.”
He suggests, of course with a twinkle in his eye, that the early
settlers of Virginia ought to have formed matrimonial alliances with
the Indians: “Morals and all considered, I can’t think the Indians were
much greater heathens than the first adventurers, who, had they been
good Christians, would have had the charity to take this only method of
converting the natives to Christianity. For after all that can be said,
a sprightly lover is the most prevailing missionary that can be sent
among these, or any other infidels. Besides, the poor Indians would
have had less reason to complain that the English took away their land,
if they had received it by way of portion with their daughters.... Nor
would the shade of the skin have been any reproach at this day; for if
a Moor may be washed white in three generations, surely an Indian might
have been blanched in two.”[246] With such moralizing was this amiable
writer wont to relieve the tedium of historical discourse. We shall
again have occasion to quote him in the course of our narrative.

[Sidenote: Science; John Clayton.]

Among other works by writers reared before the Revolution, the
well-known “Notes on Virginia,” by Thomas Jefferson, deserves high
praise as an essay in descriptive sociology. Of American poetry before
the nineteenth century, scarcely a line worth preserving came from
any quarter. In 1777 James McClurg, an eminent physician, afterward a
member of the Federal Convention, wrote his “Belles of Williamsburg,”
a specimen of pleasant society verse; but it had not such vogue as its
author’s “Essay on the Human Bile,” which was translated into several
European languages. Science throve better than poetry, and was well
represented in Virginia by John Clayton, who came thither from England
in 1705, being then in his twentieth year, and dwelt there until his
death in 1773, on the eve of the famous day which saw the mixing of
tea with ice-water in Boston harbour. Clayton was attorney-general of
Virginia, and for fifty years clerk of Gloucester County. His name has
an honourable place in the history of botany; he was member of learned
societies in nearly all the countries of Europe; and in 1739 his “Flora
of Virginia” was edited and published by Linnæus and Gronovius.

[Sidenote: Physicians.]

[Sidenote: Washington’s last illness.]

In Old Virginia, as in all the other colonies, the scientific study
and practice of medicine had scarcely made a beginning. Those were
everywhere the days of “kill or cure” treatment, when there was small
hope for patients who had not enough vitality to withstand both
drugs and disease. In the light of the progress achieved since the
mighty work of Bichat (1798-1801), the two preceding centuries seem a
period of stagnation. Strong plasters, jalap, and bleeding were the
universal remedies. Mr. Bruce gives us the items of a bill rendered
by Dr. Haddon, of York, about 1660, for performing an amputation.
“They included one highly flavoured and two ordinary cordials, three
ointments for the wound, an ointment precipitate, the operation of
letting blood, a purge _per diem_, two purges electuaries, external
applications, a cordial and two astringent powders, phlebotomy, a
defensive and a large cloth.” On another occasion the same doctor
prescribed “a purging glister, a caphalick and a cordial electuary,
oil of spirits and sweet almonds, a purging and a cordial bolus,
purging pills, ursecatory, and oxymell. His charge for six visits
after dark was a hogshead of tobacco weighing 400 pounds.”[247] Of the
many thousand victims of these heroic methods, the most illustrious
was George Washington, who, but for medical treatment, might probably
have lived a dozen or fifteen years into the nineteenth century. When
Washington in full vigour found that he had caught a very bad cold he
sent for the doctors, and meanwhile had half a pint of blood taken from
him by one of his overseers. Of the three physicians in attendance, one
was his dear friend, the good Scotchman, Dr. James Craik, “who from
forty years’ experience,” said Washington, “is better qualified than
a dozen of them put together.” His colleague, Dr. Elisha Dick, said,
“Do not bleed the General; he needs all his strength.” But tradition
prevailed over common sense, and three copious bleedings followed, in
the last of which a quart of blood was taken. The third attendant,
Dr. Gustavus Brown, afterward expressed bitter regret that Dr. Dick’s
advice was not followed. Besides this wholesale bleeding, the patient
was dosed with calomel and tartar emetic and scarified with blisters
and poultices; or, as honest Tobias Lear said, in a letter written the
next day announcing the fatal result, “every medical assistance was
offered, but without the desired effect.”[248]

[Sidenote: Virginia parsons.]

The physician in Old Virginia was very much the same as elsewhere, but
the parson was a very different character from the grave ministers
and dominies of Boston and New York. He belonged to the class of
wine-bibbing, card-playing, fox-hunting parsons, of which there were
so many examples in the mother country after the reaction against
Puritanism had set in. The religious tone of the English church
during the first half of the eighteenth century was very low, and
it was customary to send out to Virginia and Maryland the poorest
specimens of clergymen that the mother country afforded. Men unfit for
any appointment at home were thought good enough for the colonies.
The royal governor, as vicegerent of the sovereign, was head of the
colonial church, while ecclesiastical affairs were superintended by a
commissary appointed by the Bishop of London. The first commissary,
Dr. Blair, as we have seen, was president of the college, and in his
successors those two offices were usually united. Several attempts
were made to substitute a bishop for the commissary, but the only
result of the attempts was to alienate people’s sympathies from the
church, while the conduct of the clergy was such as to destroy their
respect for it. Bishop Meade has queer stories to tell of some of
these parsons. One of them was for years the president of a jockey
club. Another fought a duel within sight of his own church. A third,
who was evidently a muscular Christian, got into a rough-and-tumble
fight with his vestrymen and floored them; and then justified himself
to his congregation next Sunday in a sermon from a text of Nehemiah,
“And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them,
and plucked off their hair.” In 1711 a bequest of £100 was made to
the vestry of Christ Church parish in Middlesex, providing that the
interest should be paid to the minister for preaching four sermons each
year against “the four reigning vices,--viz.: atheism and irreligion,
swearing and cursing, fornication and adultery, and drunkenness.”
Later in the century the living was held for eighteen years, and the
sermons were preached, by a minister who was notoriously guilty of all
the vices mentioned. He used to be seen in the tavern porch, reeling
to and fro with a bowl of toddy in his hand, while he called to some
passer-by to come in and have a drink. When this exemplary man of God
was dying in delirium, his last words were halloos to the hounds. In
1726 a thoughtful and worthy minister named Lang wrote to the Bishop of
London about the scandalous behaviour of the clergy, of whom the sober
part were “slothful and negligent,” while the rest were debauched and
“bent on all manner of vices.”[249] This testimony against the clergy,
it will be observed, comes from clergymen. Yet it seems clear that the
cases cited must have been extreme ones,--cases of the sort that make
a deep impression and are long remembered. A few such instances would
suffice to bring down condemnation upon the whole establishment; and
not unjustly, for a church in which such things could for a moment be
tolerated must needs have been in a degraded condition. This state
of things afforded an excellent field for the labours of Baptist and
Presbyterian revivalist preachers, and to such good purpose did they
work that by the time of the Revolution it was found that more than
half of the people in Virginia were Dissenters. At that time the
Episcopal clergy were not unnaturally inclined to the Tory side, and
this last ounce was all that was needed to break down the establishment
and cast upon it irredeemable discredit. The downfall of the Episcopal
church in Virginia and its resurrection under more wholesome conditions
make an interesting chapter of history.

[Sidenote: Freethinking.]

In imputing to his tipsy parson the “vice” of atheism, Bishop Meade
warns us that he does not mean a denial of the existence of God, but
merely irreligion, or “living without God in the world.” In 1724 the
Bishop of London was officially informed that there were no “infidels”
in Virginia, negroes and Indians excepted. A few years later, “when the
first infidel book was imported, ... it produced such an excitement
that the governor and commissary communicated on the subject with the
authorities in England.” In those days freethinkers, if prudent, kept
their thoughts to themselves. All over Christendom the atmosphere was
still murky with intolerance, and men’s conceptions of the universe
were only beginning to emerge from the barbaric stage. Virginia was no
exception to the general rule.

[Sidenote: Superstition and crime.]

In respect also of superstition and crime the Old Dominion seems to
have differed but little from other parts of English America. Belief
in witchcraft lasted into the eighteenth century, and the statute-book
reveals an abiding dread of what rebellious slaves might do; but there
were no epidemics of savage terror, as at Salem in 1692, or in the
negro panic of 1741 in New York. Of violent crime there was surely
much less than in the England of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, but
probably more than in the colonies north of Delaware Bay; and its
perpetrators seem to have been chiefly white freedmen and “outlying
negroes.”[250] Duelling seems to have been infrequent before the
Revolution.[251] Murder, rape, arson, and violent robbery were punished
with death; while pillory, stocks, whipping-post, and ducking-stool
were kept in readiness for minor offenders. The infliction of the
death penalty in a cruel or shocking manner was not common. Negroes
were occasionally burned at the stake, as in other colonies, north
and south; and an instance is on record in which negro murderers were
beheaded and quartered after hanging.[252] No white persons were ever
burned at the stake by any of the colonies.[253]

[Sidenote: Lawyers.]

In the early days of Virginia there was not much practice of law except
by the county magistrates in their work of maintaining the king’s
peace. The legal profession was at first held in somewhat low repute,
being sometimes recruited by white freedmen whose careers of rascality
as attorneys in England had suddenly ended in penal servitude. But
after the middle of the seventeenth century the profession grew rapidly
in importance and improved in character. During the eighteenth century
the development in legal learning and acumen, and in weight of judicial
authority, was remarkable. The profession was graced by such eminent
names as Pendleton, Wythe, and Henry, until in John Marshall the Old
Dominion gave to the world a name second to none among the great judges
of English race and speech.

[Sidenote: A government of laws.]

One cause of this splendid development of legal talent was doubtless
the necessarily close connection between legal and political activity.
The Virginia planter meant that his government should be one of
laws. With his extensive estates to superintend and country interests
to look after, his position was in many respects like that of the
country squire in England. In his House of Burgesses the planter
had a parliament; and in the royal governor, who was liable to
subordinate local to imperial interests, there was an abiding source
of antagonism and distrust, requiring him to keep his faculties
perpetually alert to remember all the legal maxims by which the
liberties of England had been guarded since the days of Glanvil and
Bracton. On the whole, it was a noble type of rural gentry that the
Old Dominion had to show. Manly simplicity, love of home and family,
breezy activity, disinterested public spirit, thorough wholesomeness
and integrity,--such were the features of the society whose consummate
flower was George Washington.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Some characteristics of Maryland.]

This chapter must not close without a brief mention of the social
features of Maryland, but a brief mention is all that is needed for
my purpose, since the portraiture just given of Leah will answer in
most respects for her younger sister Rachel. The English colonists in
Maryland were of the same excellent class as the Cavaliers who were
the strength of Virginia. Though tidewater Virginia at the beginning
of the eighteenth century contained but few people who did not belong
to the Church of England, on the other hand, in Maryland, not more
than one sixth of the white population belonged to that church, while
one twelfth were Roman Catholics, and three fourths were Puritans. But
these differences in religion did not run parallel with differences in
birth, refinement, or wealth. Naturally, from the circumstances under
which the colony was founded, some of the best human material was
always to be found among the Catholics; and they wielded an influence
disproportionately greater than their numbers.

For the first three generations tobacco played as important a part in
Maryland as in Virginia. Nearly all the people became planters. Cheap
labour was supplied at first by indented white servants and afterwards
by negro slaves, who never came, however, to number more than from
one fourth to one third of the whole population. There was the same
isolation, the same absence of towns, the same rudeness of roads and
preference for water-ways, as in Virginia. The facilities for education
were somewhat poorer; there was no university or college, no public
schools until 1728, no newspaper until 1745.

But early in the eighteenth century there came about an important
modification of industries, which was in large part due to the rapid
growth of Maryland’s neighbour, Pennsylvania. In the latter colony a
great deal of wheat was raised, and the export of flour became very
profitable. This wheat culture extended into Maryland, where wheat soon
became a vigorous rival of tobacco. In 1729 the town of Baltimore was
founded, and at once rose to importance as a point for exporting flour.
Moreover, as Pennsylvania exported various kinds of farm produce,
besides large quantities of valuable furs, and as she had no seacoast
and no convenient maritime outlet save Philadelphia, her export trade
soon came to exceed the capacities of that outlet, and a considerable
part of it went through Baltimore, which thus had a large and active
rural district dependent upon it, and grew so fast that by 1770 it
had become the fourth city in English America, with a population of
nearly 20,000. The growth of Annapolis was further stimulated by these
circumstances; and this development of town life, with the introduction
of a wealthy class of merchants and the continual intercommunication
with Pennsylvania, went far toward assimilating Maryland with the
middle colonies while it diminished to some extent her points of
resemblance to the Old Dominion.




CHAPTER XV.

THE CAROLINA FRONTIER.


[Sidenote: The Spanish frontier.]

[Sidenote: The wilderness frontier.]

“St. Augustine, a Spanish garrison, being planted to the southward
of us about a hundred leagues, makes Carolina a frontier to all
the English settlements on the Main.” These memorable words, from
the report of the governor and council at Charleston to the lords
proprietors of Carolina in London, in the year 1708, have a deeper
historic significance than was realized by the men who wrote them.
In a twofold sense Carolina was a frontier country. It was not only
the border region where English and Spanish America marched upon each
other, but it served for some time as a kind of backwoods for Virginia.
Until recently one of the most important factors in American history
has been the existence of a perpetually advancing frontier, where
new territory has often had to be won by hard fighting against its
barbarian occupants, where the life has been at once more romantic
and more sordid than on the civilized seaboard, and where democracy
has assumed its most distinctively American features. The cessation
of these circumstances will probably be one of the foremost among
the causes which are going to make America in the twentieth century
different from America in the nineteenth. Now for the full development
of this peculiar frontier life two conditions were requisite,--first,
the struggle with the wilderness; secondly, isolation from the currents
of European thought with which the commercial seaboard was kept in
contact. These conditions were first realized in North Carolina, and
there was originated the type of backwoods life which a century later
prevailed among the settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky. That was the
one point where the backwoods may be said to have started at the
coast; and in this light we shall have to consider it. On the other
hand, South Carolina, with the Georgia colony for its buffer, is to
be considered more in the light of a frontier against the Spaniard.
We shall have furthermore to contemplate the whole Carolina coast as
preeminently the frontier upon which were wrecked the last remnants
of the piracy and buccaneering that had grown out of the mighty
Elizabethan world-struggle between England and Spain. Without some
mention of all these points, our outline sketch of the complicated
drama begun by Drake and Raleigh would be incomplete.

[Sidenote: The grant of Carolina.]

The region long vaguely known as Carolina, or at least a portion of
it, had formed part of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Virginia; the Spaniards
had never ceased to regard it as part of Florida. In defiance of their
claims, Jean Ribaut planted his first ill-fated Huguenot colony at
Port Royal in 1562, and built a fort which he called Charlesfort,
after Charles IX. of France. Whether the name “Carolina” was applied
to the territory at that early time is doubtful,[254] but we find
it used in England, in the time of Charles I., when the first Lord
Baltimore was entertaining a plan for a new colony south of Virginia.
The name finally served to commemorate Charles II., who in 1663
granted the territory to eight “lords proprietors,” gentlemen who had
done him inestimable services. To the most eminent, George Monk, Duke
of Albemarle, he owed his restoration to the throne; the support of
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, had been invaluable; the others were
Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Craven,
Lord Berkeley, and his brother, Sir William Berkeley, governor of
Virginia, Sir George Carteret, and Sir John Colleton. All these names
appear to-day on the map,--Albemarle Sound, Hyde, Craven, and Carteret
counties in North Carolina; Clarendon and Colleton counties, Berkeley
parish, and the Ashley and Cooper rivers in South Carolina, while in
Charleston we have the name of the king.

[Sidenote: Shaftesbury and Locke.]

These gentlemen contemplated founding a colony which should emulate the
success of Virginia. The most actively engaged in the enterprise was
the one whom we know best by his title of Shaftesbury, and it was thus
that the founding of Carolina became connected for a moment with one
of the greatest names in the history of England. A charming story is
that of the residence of John Locke in the Ashley family, as physician,
private tutor, and general adviser and guardian angel; how he once
saved his lordship’s life by most daring and skilful surgery, how he
taught Greek to the young Ashley, how he took the boy at the age of
seventeen to Haddon Hall and made a happy match for him with pretty
Lady Dorothy Manners aged twenty, how he afterward assisted at the
birth of the grandson destined to become even more famous in literature
than the grandfather in political history,--all this is pleasantly told
by the grandson. “My father was too young and inexperienced to choose a
wife for himself, and my grandfather too much in business to choose one
for him. The affair was nice; for, though my grandfather required not a
great fortune, he insisted on good blood, good person and constitution,
and, above all, good education and a character as remote as possible
from that of court or town-bred lady. All this was thrown upon Mr.
Locke, who being ... so good a judge of men, my grandfather doubted not
of his equal judgment in women. He departed from him, entrusted and
sworn, as Abraham’s head servant that ruled over all that he had, and
went into a far country (the north of England) to seek for his son a
wife, whom he as successfully found.”[255]

[Sidenote: The Fundamental Constitutions.]

In the summer of 1669, while the great philosopher was engaged upon
this match-making expedition, he varied the proceedings by drawing
up a constitution for Carolina, the original draft of which, a small
neatly written volume of 75 pages bound in vellum, is still preserved
among the Shaftesbury papers. This constitution diverges widely in some
respects from such a document as would have expressed Locke’s own
ideas of the right sort of government. The scheme which it set forth
was in the main Ashley’s, with such modifications as were necessary
to secure the approval of the other proprietors. It is not worth
our while to recount its complicated provisions, inasmuch as it was
never anything but a dead letter, and civil government sprouted up as
spontaneously in Carolina as if neither statesman nor philosopher had
ever given thought to the subject. One provision, however, expressed
an idea of which Locke was one of the foremost representatives, and
herein Ashley agreed with him; it was the idea of complete liberty
of conscience in matters of religion. It was provided that any seven
or more persons who could agree among themselves upon any sort of
notion about God or any plan for worshipping him might set up a church
and be guaranteed against all interference or molestation. An ideal
so noble as this was never quite realized in the history of any of
the colonies; but there can be little doubt that the publication of
Locke’s “Fundamental Constitutions” in 1670, in 1682, and 1698 had
much influence in directing toward Carolina the stream of Huguenot
emigration from France, which was an event of the first importance.[256]

[Sidenote: The Carolina Palatinate.]

In its general character the government created by the Fundamental
Constitutions was a palatinate modelled after that of Durham. The
difference between Carolina and Maryland consisted chiefly in the fact
that the palatinate privileges were granted to eight co-proprietors
instead of a single proprietor. Those privileges were quasi-royal, but
they were limited by giving to the popular assembly the control over
all money bills. This limitation, however, was partly offset by giving
to the higher officers regular salaries payable from quit-rents or
the sales of public lands. These salaries went far toward making such
officers independent of the legislature, and thus led to much complaint
and dissatisfaction. Before the Revolution, questions concerning the
salaried independence of high public officials had in several of the
colonies come to be one of the most burning questions of the day.

[Sidenote: The Palatine.]

The lords proprietors, as tenants-in-chief of the crown, were feudal
sovereigns over Carolina. They could grant estates on any terms they
pleased, and subinfeudation, which had been forbidden in England since
1290, was expressly permitted here. The eldest of the proprietors was
called the Palatine; he presided at their meetings, and his vote with
those of three associates was reckoned a majority. As the proprietors
remained in England, it was arranged that each of them should be
represented in Carolina by a deputy; and the Palatine’s deputy,
sometimes called Vice-Palatine, was to be governor of the colony. But
any one of the proprietors coming into the colony, or the oldest of
those coming, if there were more than one, was to take precedence over
everybody and become at once Vice-Palatine.

[Sidenote: Titles of nobility.]

By a curious provision of the charter, the lords proprietors could
grant titles of nobility, provided they were unlike those used
in England. Hence the outlandish titles, such as “landgrave” and
“cacique,” which occur in the Fundamental Constitutions. With the
titles there was combined an artificial system of social gradations
which is not worth recounting. As for the political status of the
settlers, they were guaranteed in the possession of all the rights and
privileges enjoyed by Englishmen in England.

[Sidenote: The Albemarle colony.]

The planting of two distinct colonies in Carolina was no part of the
original scheme, but the early centres of colonization were so far
apart and communication between them was so difficult that they could
not well be united in a single community, although more than once there
was a single governor over the whole of Carolina. Emigration from
Virginia had begun as early as 1653, when Roger Greene with a hundred
men made a small settlement in the Chowan precinct, on the north shore
of Albemarle Sound.[257] In 1662 George Durant[258] followed, and
began a settlement in the Perquimans precinct, just east of Chowan.
In 1664 Governor Berkeley, of Virginia,--himself one of the eight
lords proprietors,--severed this newly settled region from Virginia,
and appointed William Drummond as its governor. Such were the
beginnings of Albemarle, the colony which in time was to develop into
North Carolina.

[Illustration:

  MAP OF
  NORTH CAROLINA
  PRECINCTS,
  1663-1729

THE M.-N. CO., BUFFALO, N. Y.]

[Sidenote: The visit of New Englanders.]

Meanwhile in 1660 a party from New England made a settlement at
the mouth of Cape Fear River; or perhaps we ought rather to call
it a visit. It lasted no longer than Thorfinn Karlsefni’s visit to
Vinland,[259] for the settlers had all departed by 1663. There is a
tradition that they were sorely harassed by the natives, in revenge
for their sending sundry Indian lads and girls aboard ship, to be
taken to Boston and “educated,” _i. e._ sold for slaves.[260] This
is not improbable. At all events, these New Englanders went off in a
mood not altogether amiable, leaving affixed to a post, at the mouth
of the river, a “scandalous writing ... the contents whereof tended
not only to the disparagement of the land ... but also to the great
discouragement of all such as should hereafter come into those parts to
settle.”[261]

[Sidenote: The Clarendon colony.]

But this emphatic warning did not frighten away Sir John Yeamans, who
arrived at Cape Fear early in October, 1663, and ascended the river for
more than a hundred and fifty miles. Sir John was the son of a gallant
Cavalier who had lost life and estate in the king’s service, and he
had come out to Barbadoes to repair his fortunes. His report of the
Cape Fear country was so favourable that by the end of May, 1665, we
find him there again, with several hundred settlers from Barbadoes, to
make the beginnings of the new colony of Clarendon, of which the lords
proprietors had appointed him governor. In the same year the colony of
Albemarle elected its first assembly.

[Sidenote: The Ashley River colony.]

[Sidenote: Founding of Charleston, 1670.]

In 1667 William Sayle, a Puritan from Bermuda, explored the coast, and
reported the value of the Bahama Islands for offensive and defensive
purposes in case of war with Spain. These islands were accordingly
appropriated and annexed to Carolina, as the Bermudas had once been
annexed to Virginia. It was decided to make a settlement at Port Royal;
the venerable Sayle, whose years were more than three-score-and-ten,
was appointed governor; and on March 17, 1670, the first colonists
arrived on the Carolina coast. On further inspection Port Royal seemed
too much exposed to the attacks of Spaniards from St. Augustine, and
accordingly the ships pursued their way northward till they reached and
entered the spacious bay formed by the junction of two noble rivers
since known as Ashley and Cooper. They proceeded up the Ashley as far
as an easily defensible highland at Albemarle Point, where they began
building a village which they called Charles Town. Their cautiousness
was soon justified. Spain and England were then at peace, but no sooner
were the Spaniards notified of these proceedings than a warship started
from St. Augustine and came as far as Stono Inlet, where it learned the
strength of the English position and concluded to retreat.[262] The
next year Governor Sayle died, and was succeeded by Sir John Yeamans,
who came in 1672, bringing from Barbadoes the first negro slaves ever
seen in Carolina. In 1674 Yeamans was superseded by Joseph West, under
whom the first assembly was elected.

Thus there were three small communities started on the coast of
Carolina: 1. Albemarle, on the Virginia border, constituted in 1664; 2.
Clarendon, on the Cape Fear River, in 1665; 3. The Ashley River colony,
in 1670.

[Sidenote: First legislation in Albemarle.]

For a moment we must follow the fortunes of Albemarle, where in 1667
Drummond was succeeded in the governorship by Samuel Stephens. Two
years later there was passed a statute which enacted that no subject
could be sued within five years for any cause of action that might have
arisen outside of the colony; that all debts contracted outside of the
colony were _ipso facto_ outlawed; and that all new settlers should
be exempted from taxes for one year.[263] Moreover, all “transient
persons,” not intending to remain in the colony, were forbidden to
trade with the Indians. It was furthermore provided that, since there
were no clergymen in the colony to perform the ceremony of marriage,
a declaration of mutual consent, before the governor and council and
in the presence of a few acquaintances, should be deemed a binding
contract.[264] These laws were of course intended to stimulate
immigration, and the effect of the first two was soon plainly indicated
in the indignant epithet, “Rogue’s Harbour,” bestowed by Virginia
people upon the colony of Albemarle.[265]

[Sidenote: Troubles caused by the Navigation Act.]

[Sidenote: The trade with New England.]

The desire of increasing the number of settlers, without regard
to their quality, induced the lords proprietors to sanction these
curiosities of legislation. But troubles, not of their own creating,
were at hand in this little forest community. In 1673 the Fundamental
Constitutions were promulgated by Governor Stephens, who soon afterward
died. Under his temporary successor, George Carteret, president of the
council, the troubles broke out, and it has been customary to ascribe
them to the attempt to enforce the Fundamental Constitutions upon an
unwilling community. It does not appear, however, that the official
promulgation of this frame of government was followed by any serious
attempts to enforce it.[266] The real source of the disturbances was
undoubtedly the Navigation Act,--that mischievous statute with which
the mother country was busily weaning from itself the affections of
its colonies all along the American seaboard. Sundry unfounded rumours
increased the bitter feeling. The king’s grant of Virginia to Arlington
and Culpeper in 1673 was part of the news of the day. It was reported
that the proprietors of Carolina were going to divide up the province
among themselves, and that Albemarle was to be the share of Sir William
Berkeley, a man especially hated by the Virginians of small means,
who were the larger part of the Albemarle population. Though these
reports were baseless, they found many believers. But the Navigation
Act and the attempts to break up the trade with Massachusetts were
very real grievances. Ships from Boston and Salem brought down to
Albemarle Sound all manner of articles needed by the planters, and
took their pay in cattle and lumber, which they carried to the West
Indies and exchanged for sugar, molasses, and rum. Often with this
cargo they returned to Albemarle and exchanged it for tobacco, which
they carried home and sent off to Europe at a good round profit, in
supreme defiance of the statutes. It was said that the new colony was
enriching Yankee merchants much faster than the lords proprietors.[267]
In truth the trade was profitable to merchants and planters alike,
and by the summer of 1676 sundry attempts to break it up had brought
the little colony into quite a rebellious frame of mind. We have
seen how Bacon looked forward to possible help from Carolina against
Sir William Berkeley. Bacon spoke of the desirableness of the people
electing their own governors.[268] New England furnished examples of
such elected governors who were in full sympathy with the people. The
men of Albemarle were likely to make trouble for governors appointed
in England to carry out an unpopular policy.

[Sidenote: Eastchurch and Miller.]

When Carteret resigned his position in 1676, two men, who were supposed
to represent the popular party, had lately gone over to England. One
of them, by name Eastchurch, had been speaker of the assembly; and so
anxious were the lords proprietors to have their intentions carried
out without irritating the people, that in the autumn of 1676 they
appointed him governor of Albemarle. The other was a person named
Miller, who had been illegally carried to Virginia and tried by
Governor Berkeley for making a seditious speech in Carolina. In England
he found it profitable to pose as a martyr. The proprietors made him
secretary of Albemarle, and the king’s commissioners of customs made
him collector of the revenues of that colony. Early in 1677 the new
governor and secretary sailed for America, and made a stop at the
little island of Nevis, famous in later years as the birthplace of
Alexander Hamilton. For Eastchurch it proved to be an isle of Calypso.
He fell in love with a fair Creole and staid to press his suit, while
he appointed Miller president of the council, and sent him on in that
capacity to govern Albemarle.

[Sidenote: The Culpeper usurpation, 1677-79.]

That little commonwealth of less than 3,000 souls had in the mean time
been enjoying the sweets of uncurbed liberty, when there was no king in
Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes. Miller, as
a martyr to free speech, was cordially welcomed, but as proprietary
governor and king’s collector, he found his popularity quickly waning.
He tried to suppress the trade with Massachusetts, and thus arrayed
against himself the Yankee skippers, aided by a “party within,” at
the head of which was the wealthy George Durant, the earliest settler
of Perquimans. The train was well laid for an insurrection when
a demagogue arrived with the match to fire it. This man was John
Culpeper, surveyor-general of Carolina, whose seditious conduct on the
Ashley River had lately made it necessary for him to flee northward
to escape the hangman. Culpeper’s proposal to resist the enforcement
of the odious Navigation Act brought him many followers. In December,
1677, a Yankee schooner, heavily armed and bearing a seductive cargo
of rum and molasses, appeared in Pasquotank River. Her skipper, whose
name was Gillam, had scarcely set foot on land when he was arrested by
the governor and held to bail in £1,000. The astute Yankee, with an air
of innocent surprise, meekly promised to weigh anchor at once and not
return. Hereupon a thirsty mob, maddening with the thought of losing
so much rum, beset Gillam with entreaties to stay. Governor Miller was
a man in whom bravery prevailed over prudence, and, hearing at this
moment that Durant was on the schooner, he straightway boarded her,
pistol in hand, and arrested that influential personage on a charge of
treason. This rash act was the signal for an explosion. Culpeper’s mob
arrested the governor and council, and locked them up. Then they took
possession of the public records, convened the assembly, appointed
new justices, made Culpeper governor, and, seizing upon £3,000 of
customs revenue collected by Miller for the king, they applied it to
the support of this revolutionary government.

For two years these adventurers exercised full sway over Albemarle.
During this time Governor Eastchurch arrived from the island of Nevis,
bringing with him the fair Creole as his bride. He met with a cold
reception, and lost no time in finding shelter in Virginia, where he
drank a friendly glass with Governor Chicheley, and asked for military
aid against the usurping Culpeper. The request was granted, but before
the troops were ready the unfortunate Eastchurch succumbed to chagrin,
or perhaps to malaria, and his Creole bride was left a widow.

[Sidenote: How Culpeper fared in London.]

[Sidenote: Charleston moved to a new site.]

Culpeper, however, remained in some dread of what Virginia might do.
He had issued a manifesto, accusing Miller of tyranny and peculation
and seeking to justify himself; but he thought it wise to play a still
bolder part. He went to England in the hope of persuading the lords
proprietors to sanction what he had done, and to confirm him in the
governorship. In London he was surprised at meeting the deposed Miller,
who had broken jail and arrived there before him. The twain forthwith
told their eloquent but conflicting tales of woe, and Culpeper’s tongue
proved the more persuasive with the lords proprietors. He seemed on
the point of returning in triumph to Carolina, when suddenly the
king’s officers arrested him for robbing the custom-house of £3,000.
This led to his trial for treason, in the summer of 1680, before the
King’s Bench, under the statute of Henry VIII. anent “treason committed
abroad;” the same statute under which it was sought, on a fine April
morning ninety-five years later, to arrest Samuel Adams and John
Hancock. The Earl of Shaftesbury ably defended Culpeper, and he was
acquitted but not restored to power.[269] He returned to Carolina, a
sadder if not a wiser man; and in his old capacity of surveyor, it is
said, laid out the plan of the city of Charleston on its present site.
The original Charles Town, as already mentioned, was begun at Albemarle
Point on Ashley River, in 1670. Another settlement was made two years
later at Oyster Point, on the extremity of the peninsula enclosed
between the two rivers. This new situation had greater advantages for a
seaport, and its cooler breezes were appreciated by sojourners in that
fiery climate. It grew at the expense of the older settlement, until
in 1680 it had a population of 2,500 souls, and took over the name of
Charles Town, while Albemarle Point was abandoned. So the autumn of
1680 had work at Oyster Point for a surveyor like Culpeper.

[Sidenote: Seth Sothel.]

[Sidenote: Banishment of Sothel.]

The governor who succeeded this usurper in the Albemarle colony was a
new lord proprietor, by name Seth Sothel, to whom the Earl of Clarendon
had sold out his rights and interests. On his way to America, early
in 1680, Sothel was captured by Algerine pirates and carried off into
slavery. Not until 1683 did Sothel obtain his freedom and arrive at
his destination. In five years of misrule over Albemarle he proved
himself one of the dirtiest knaves that ever held office in America.
A few specimens of his conduct may be cited. On the arrival of two
ships from Barbadoes on legitimate business, Sothel seized them as
pirates and threw their captains into jail, where one of them died of
ill-treatment. The dying man made a will in which he named one of the
most respected men in the colony, Thomas Pollock, as his executor;
but Sothel refused to let the will go to probate, and seized the dead
man’s effects; the executor then threatened to carry the story of all
this to England, whereupon the governor lodged him in jail and kept him
there. George Durant called such proceedings unlawful, whereupon Sothel
straightway imprisoned him and confiscated his whole estate. If he saw
anything that pleased his fancy, be it a cow or a negro or a pewter
dish, he just took it without ceremony, and if the owner objected he
locked him up. From criminals he took tips and saved them from the
gallows. The people of Albemarle endured this tyranny until 1688,--that
year when over all English lands the sky was so black with political
thunder-clouds. One day certain leading colonists laid hands upon Seth
Sothel, and prepared to send him to England to be tried for a long
list of felonies. Then this model for governors and lords proprietors,
suddenly realizing the dismal prospect before him, with Tyburn looming
up in the distance, begged with frantic sobs and tears that he might
be tried by the assembly, and not be sent to England; for he felt
sure that the assembly would hardly dare take the responsibility of
hanging him. In this he calculated correctly; he was banished from the
colony for one year, and declared forever incapable of holding the
governorship.[270]

[Sidenote: Troubles in the southern colony.]

[Sidenote: The Scotch at Port Royal, 1683-86.]

[Sidenote: A state without laws.]

The prudence of the assembly was well considered. The lords proprietors
in England, ill informed as to the affairs of their colony, wearied
with the everlasting series of complaints, and unwilling to believe
that one of their associates could be such a scoundrel, were inclined
to scold the colonists for their treatment of Sothel. As for that
worthy, his full career was not yet run. Scenes of turbulence were
awaiting him in the little settlement between the Ashley and Cooper
rivers. Joseph West had ruled there with a strong hand from 1674 to
1683, and the colony prospered during that time, but disagreements
arose between West and the proprietors which ended in his removal.
The next seven years were a period of anarchy. After five changes of
governors in quick succession, the office was given to James Colleton,
brother of Colleton the lord proprietor, but the situation was not
improved. The troubles arose partly from the practice of kidnapping
Indians for slaves, which invited bloody reprisals; partly from the
demand that quit-rents be paid in coin, which was very scarce in
Carolina; partly from the low character of many of the settlers and
their dealings with pirates; partly from the unwillingness of the
English settlers to admit the Huguenot immigrants to a share in the
franchise; and partly from the fitful and arbitrary manner in which
the lords proprietors tried from beyond sea to cure the complicated
evils. The muddle was aggravated by Spanish hostility. In 1683 a few
Scotch families were brought by Lord Cardross to Port Royal, where
they made the beginnings of a settlement. Those were the cruel days
of Claverhouse in Scotland, and a scheme was entertained for bringing
10,000 sturdy Covenanters to Carolina; but it came to nothing. Cardross
got into difficulties with the people at Charleston, and went back
to Scotland in disgust. In 1686, in time of peace, a Spanish force
pounced upon Port Royal, murdered some of the Scotchmen, flogged others
within an inch of their lives, carried off what booty they could
find, and left the place a smoking ruin. Dire was the indignation of
the Charleston men at these “bloody insolencies.” Two stout ships
with 400 men were just ready to sail against St. Augustine, when the
newly appointed Governor Colleton arrived upon the scene and forbade
their sailing. His mandate was obeyed with growls and curses. The
lords proprietors upheld him. “No man,” as they reasonably said, “can
think that the dependencies of England can have power to make war
upon the king’s allies without his knowledge or consent.”[271] It was
an inauspicious beginning for Colleton. The old troubles continued,
along with others growing out of the Navigation Act. The wrangling
between governor and assembly grew so hot that in 1689 the proprietors
instructed Colleton to summon no more parliaments in Carolina without
express orders from them. The effect of such an order was probably not
foreseen by those well-meaning gentlemen. It was a curious feature in
the Ashley River colony that the acts of its assembly expired at the
end of twenty-three months unless renewed. This term had so nearly
elapsed when the order arrived that “in 1690 not one statute law was in
force in the colony!”[272]

[Sidenote: Reappearance of Sothel.]

[Sidenote: His death.]

This heroic medicine did not cure the malady. Things grew worse in the
spring of 1690, when Colleton proclaimed martial law. The air was thick
with sedition when Sothel arrived in Charleston. As a lord proprietor
he had the right to act as governor over Colleton’s head. Several of
the leading colonists begged him to call a parliament, and forthwith
the exemplary Sothel posed as “the people’s friend.” He summoned a
parliament which banished Colleton and enacted sundry laws. A queer
spectacle it was, the victim of one popular revolution becoming the
ringleader of another, the banished playing the part of banisher! But
the lords proprietors had become aware of Sothel’s misdeeds; they
annulled the acts of his parliament, deposed him, and ordered him to
return to England to answer the charges against him. Sothel did not
relish this. His term of banishment from Albemarle had expired, and he
believed it to be a safer hiding-place than London. Where he skulked
or how he died is unknown. All we know is that his will was admitted
to probate February 5, 1694; and that his tombstone, which came from
England, was never paid for![273]

[Sidenote: Clarendon colony abandoned.]

Since the founding of the Ashley River colony it had fared ill with
the Clarendon colony on Cape Fear River, which under favouring
circumstances might perhaps have developed into a Middle Carolina.
There were not people enough, and there was not trade enough for
so many settlements. So Clarendon dwindled until 1690, when it was
abandoned. This left a wide interval of forest and stream between
Albemarle and the Ashley River colony, or North Carolina and South
Carolina, as they were beginning to be called. The formal separation
of Carolina into two provinces did not take place until 1729, but
the two colonies were from the outset, as we have seen, distinct and
independent growths; and by 1690 the epithets North and South were
commonly used.

[Sidenote: Philip Ludwell.]

Just at this time, however, the two were united under one governor.
Colonel Philip Ludwell, of Virginia, who had ably supported Berkeley
against Bacon, and had afterward married Berkeley’s widow, was Sothel’s
successor in Albemarle in 1689, and he was appointed to succeed him at
Charleston in 1691. The proprietors wished to bring all Carolina under
one government, and the Albemarle people were requested to send their
representatives to the assembly at Charleston, but distance made such a
scheme impracticable. The northern colony, however, was often governed
by a deputy appointed at Charleston. The troubles were not yet over.
Ludwell was an upright and able man, but the disagreements between the
settlers and the lords proprietors were more than he could cope with,
and in 1692 he was superseded.

[Sidenote: John Archdale.]

[Sidenote: Joseph Blake.]

[Sidenote: Sir Nathaniel Johnson and the Dissenters.]

It is not worth while to recount the names of all the men who served
as governors in the two Carolinas. In the world of history there is a
certain amount of meaningless mediocrity which a general survey like
the present may well pass by without notice. The brief administration
of John Archdale, in 1695, marks a kind of era. Archdale was a Quaker,
a man of broad intelligence and character at once strong and gentle.
He had become one of the lords proprietors, and in that capacity came
out to Carolina, where for one year he ruled the whole province with
such authority as no one had wielded before; for while he was backed
up by the proprietors, he conciliated the assemblies. In the matter of
the Indians and the quit-rents much was done, and the veto power of
the proprietors was curtailed. After a year Archdale felt able to go
home, leaving his friend Joseph Blake, a nephew of the great admiral,
as governor in Charleston. Under Blake still further progress was made
by admitting to full political rights and privileges the Huguenot
immigrants, who had come to be in some respects the most important
element in the population of South Carolina. But after Blake’s death,
in 1700, it grew stormy again. The new governor, James Moore, came
out to make money, and to that end he renewed the vile practice of
kidnapping Indians. This presently made it necessary to gather troops
and defeat the angry red men. Quarrels with the assembly were chronic.
When the war of the Spanish Succession broke out, Moore invaded
Florida, but accomplished nothing except the creation of a heavy public
debt. In 1703 he was superseded by Sir Nathaniel Johnson, a precious
bigot, who undertook to force through the assembly a law excluding from
it all Dissenters. This was effected by trickery; the act was passed by
a majority of one, in a house from which several members were absent.
After the fraud was discovered, the assembly by a large majority
voted to repeal the act, but the governor refused to sign the repeal.
The Dissenters were perhaps three fourths of the population. They
made complaint to the lords proprietors, but a majority of that body
sustained the governor. Then a successful appeal was made to the House
of Lords, and the proprietors suddenly found themselves threatened with
the loss of their charter. The result was a great victory for the South
Carolina assembly, which at its next session restored Dissenters to
their full privileges.

[Sidenote: Unsuccessful attempt of a French and Spanish fleet upon
Charleston.]

Like many another bigot, Governor Johnson was a good fighter. In
August, 1706, Charleston was attacked by a French and Spanish
squadron. A visitation of yellow fever, with half a dozen deaths
daily in a population of 3,000, had frightened many people away from
the town. On a broiling Saturday afternoon five columns of smoke
floating lazily up over Sullivan’s Island announced that five warships
were descried in the offing. They were French privateers with Spanish
reinforcements from Cuba and St. Augustine. When the signal was
reported to the governor at his country house, the militia were called
together from all quarters and the ships in the harbour were quickly
made ready for action. The evening air was vocal with alarm guns. But
the enemy approached with such excessive caution that Johnson had
ample time for preparation. It was not until Wednesday that the affair
matured. Then the French commander sent a flag of truce ashore and
demanded, in the name of Louis XIV., the surrender of the town and its
inhabitants; the governor, he said, might have an hour to consider his
answer. Johnson replied that he did not need a minute, and told the
Frenchman to go to the devil. The enemy then landed 150 men on the
north shore of the harbour, at Haddrell’s Beacon, but the militia soon
drove them into the water, with the loss of a dozen killed and more
than thirty prisoners. Many more were drowned in swimming to their
boats. Another detachment on the south shore was similarly discomfited.
On Thursday Colonel William Rhett, with six small craft heavily armed
and a fire-ship, bore down upon the enemy’s fleet. But instead of
waiting to fight, the French commander hastily stood out to sea. This
conduct, as well as his whole delay, may be explained by the fact that
an important part of his force had not come up. The best of the French
ships, carrying beside her marine force some 200 regular infantry,
did not arrive until Friday, when, in ignorance of the repulse of her
consorts, she entered Sewee Bay and landed her soldiers. It was rushing
into the lion’s jaws. The soldiers were promptly attacked and put to
flight with the loss of one third of their number, while at the same
time Colonel Rhett blockaded the bay and took the French ship with all
on board. Thus the ill-concerted attack ended in ignominious defeat,
with the loss of the best ship and 300 men out of 800.

[Sidenote: Thomas Carey and the Quakers in North Carolina.]

[Sidenote: Porter’s mission to England.]

[Sidenote: Alliance between Porter and Carey.]

[Sidenote: Edward Hyde.]

[Sidenote: Carey’s rebellion.]

After the halcyon days of Archdale there was quiet in North Carolina
until 1704, when Governor Johnson sent a deputy, Robert Daniel, to
rule there and set up the Church of England, while making it hot for
Dissenters. As nearly all the Albemarle people came within the latter
category, there was trouble at once. It was allayed for a moment by the
same proceedings in England which gave victory to the Dissenters of
South Carolina. The Quakers of Albemarle succeeded in getting Johnson
to appoint a new deputy, Thomas Carey, in whom they had confidence.
But their confidence proved to have been misplaced. A recent act of
Queen Anne’s Parliament had prescribed certain test oaths for all
public officials, without making any reservation in behalf of the
conscientious scruples of Quakers. Carey, as deputy governor of
North Carolina, undertook to administer these test oaths, and at once
disgusted the Quakers, who sent John Porter to England to plead with
the lords proprietors. This Porter, who was himself a Quaker, had a
persuasive tongue. Acts of Parliament had not usually been heeded by
the colonies; it was by no means clear that they were even intended to
apply to the colonies without some declaratory clause to that effect,
or without being supplemented by a royal order in council. The lords
proprietors virtually admitted that the Queen Anne test oath act did
not apply to the colonies, when in response to Porter’s petition they
removed Carey from office. At the same time they suspended Governor
Johnson’s authority over North Carolina. This action left that colony
without a head, and there ought to have been no delay in appointing
a new governor, but there was delay. On Porter’s return William
Glover was chosen president of the council, which made him temporary
governor. Glover belonged to the Church of England, but was believed
to be opposed to the test oaths. We can fancy, then, the wrath of the
Quakers when he insisted upon administering the oaths, precisely as
the deposed Carey had done! The remedy was an instance of political
homœopathy, or treatment with a hair of the dog that bit you. The
angry Porter at once turned to Carey and entered into an alliance with
him from which dire evils were to grow. Porter contrived to assemble
various resident deputies of the lords proprietors, and persuaded
them to depose Glover and reinstate Carey; but Glover refused to be
bound by these irregular proceedings. He continued to act as governor
and issued writs for the election of an assembly; Carey did likewise,
and anarchy reigned supreme. Several of the principal colonists fled
to Virginia for safety. In 1710, after a delay of more than three
years, the proprietors sent out Edward Hyde, a kinsman if the queen’s
grandfather, the first Earl of Clarendon, to govern North Carolina. His
commission needed the signature of the governor-in-chief at Charleston,
but that dignitary happened to die just before Hyde’s arrival, so that
further delay was entailed in completing his commission. Early in
1711, before receiving it, he issued writs for an election. Carey made
strenuous efforts to secure the election of a majority of his friends
and adherents to the Commons House of Assembly, or House of Commons, as
it came to be called. Failing in this attempt he maintained that the
election was illegal because Hyde had not received his vouchers. The
assembly retorted by summoning Carey to render an account of all the
public moneys which he had used, and presently it issued orders for his
arrest. Thus driven to bay, Carey set up a rival government and tried
to arrest Hyde, who appealed to Virginia for military aid. Virginia’s
response was prompt and effective. The discomfited Carey fled to the
wilderness between the heads of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. After
a while he ventured into Virginia, intending to take passage there
for England; but he was arrested and sent to England to be tried for
treason. For lack of accessible evidence he seems to have been released
without trial, and thereupon he made his way to the West Indies, where
history loses sight of him. With his disappearance from North Carolina
tranquillity seemed for the moment restored; but more terrible scenes
were at hand.

[Sidenote: Expansion of the northern colony; arrival of Graffenried.]

[Sidenote: Improbable charges against Carey and Porter.]

In spite of all the turmoil the little colony had received new
settlers, and had begun to expand until North Carolina was no longer
synonymous with Albemarle. In the first decade of the eighteenth
century, numbers of Huguenots settled in the neighbourhood of Bath,
where the Taw River widens into an arm of Pamlico Sound; and parties of
Swiss, with many Germans from the Rhenish Palatinate, under the lead of
Baron de Graffenried, founded the town of New Berne, where the Trent
River flows into the Neuse. The increase of population in Albemarle,
moreover, had carried the frontier from the Chowan to the Roanoke. All
this entailed some real and still more prospective displacement of
native tribes, and some kind of mild remonstrance, after the well-known
Indian fashion, was to be expected. It was believed by many persons at
the time that Carey, on the occasion of his flight to the wilderness
between the Roanoke and Taw rivers, solicited aid from the Indians,
and that his Quaker friend, John Porter, had gone as emissary to the
Tuscaroras, “promising great rewards to incite them to cut off all the
inhabitants of that part of Carolina that adhered to Mr. Hyde.”[274]
But a charge of such frightful character needs strong evidence to
make it credible, and in this case there is little but hearsay and
the vague beliefs of men hostile to Carey and Porter, in a season of
fierce political excitement. No such infernal wickedness is needed to
account for the Indian outbreak. The ordinary incidents connected with
the advance of the white man’s frontier into the red man’s country are
quite sufficient to explain it. But, without feeling it necessary to
accuse Carey and Porter of having urged the Indians to murder their
fellow-countrymen, we must still admit that the civil discord into
which they had plunged the colony had so weakened it as to offer the
watchful red men an excellent opportunity.

[Sidenote: Carolina Indians; Algonquin tribes.]

[Sidenote: Sioux tribes.]

[Sidenote: Iroquois tribes.]

[Sidenote: Muskogi tribes.]

The Indians of North Carolina at the time which we are treating
belonged to three ethnic families. Along the coast, northward from Cape
Lookout to the Virginia line, the Corees, Pamlicos, Mattamuskeets,
Pasquotanks, and Chowanoes all belonged to the Algonquin family, and
they could muster in all about 400 warriors. The coast territory
occupied by these tribes was continuous with that which had once been
controlled by the Powhatan Confederacy to the northward. The Corees, in
Carteret Precinct, were the southernmost of these Algonquin tribes. The
Cape Fear Indians, on the coast southwest of Carteret, belonged to the
great Sioux or Dakota family. From the meridian of 77° 30´ westward to
the Blue Ridge, and from the Santee River on the south to the Potomac
on the north, the country was occupied by Sioux tribes, of which the
names most familiarly known are the Waxhaws, Catawbas, Waterees,
Saponis and Tutelos, Monacans and Manahoacs.[275] Now deep into this
Sioux country, in North Carolina, there ran a powerful wedge of alien
stock. The thick end of the wedge covered the precincts of Bath and
Craven, with part of New Hanover; and from its centre, at the mouth of
Trent River, it ran northwestward more than a hundred miles, a little
beyond the site of Raleigh, with an average width of less than thirty
miles. This wedge of population consisted of the Tuscaroras, a large
tribe of the dreaded Iroquois family, able to send forth at least 1,200
warriors. Another tribe of Iroquois then dwelt in Bertie Precinct,
between the Chowan and Roanoke rivers. It was known as the Meherrins,
and was really the remnant of the fierce Susquehannocks, from whom
Bacon had delivered Virginia in 1676. Its fighting numbers can hardly
have been much over a hundred. Just north of the Meherrins was another
small Iroquois tribe called Nottoways. To frame our picture, although
it takes us away from the scene of action, we should add that the whole
Alpine region west of the Sioux country, from the Peaks of Otter as far
southwest as Lookout and Chickamauga mountains, belonged to the great
Iroquois tribe of Cherokees; while to the south of Santee River, from
Florida to the Mississippi River, we encounter a fourth ethnic family,
the Muskogi, represented by such tribes as Choctaws and Chickasaws, the
Creek Confederacy, the Yamassees, and others.

[Sidenote: Algonquin-Iroquois conspiracy.]

Between the Tuscaroras and the numerous Sioux tribes by which they
were partly surrounded there was incessant and murderous hostility. On
the other hand, there was amity and alliance, at least for the moment,
between the Tuscaroras and the Algonquin coast tribes whose lands the
palefaces were invading. The first murders of white settlers occurred
in Bertie Precinct at the hands of Meherrins, and seem to have been
isolated cases. But a general conspiracy of Iroquois and Algonquin
tribes was not long in forming, and the day before the new moon,
September 22, 1711, was appointed for a wholesale massacre.

[Sidenote: Capture of Graffenried and Lawson.]

[Sidenote: Lawson’s horrible death.]

A few days before the appointed time the Baron de Graffenried started
in his pinnace from New Berne to explore the Neuse River. His only
companions were a negro servant and John Lawson, a Scotchman who for
a dozen years had been surveyor-general of the colony. Lawson was the
author of an extremely valuable and fascinating book on Carolina and
its native races,--a book which one cannot read without loving the
writer and mourning his melancholy fate.[276] No man in the colony was
better known by the Indians, who had frequently observed and carefully
noted the fact that his appearance in the woods with his surveying
instruments was apt to be followed by some fresh encroachment upon
their lands. Lawson and Graffenried had advanced but little way into
the Tuscarora wilderness when they were surrounded by a host of Indians
and taken prisoners. The Indians were very curious to learn why they
had come up the river; perhaps it might indicate that the people at New
Berne had some suspicion of the intended massacre and had sent them
forward as scouts. If any such dread beset the minds of the red men,
it was probably soon allayed; for it is clear that, had there been any
suspicion, Graffenried and Lawson would not thus have ventured out of
all reach of support. The barbarians were two or three days in making
up their minds what to do. Then they took poor Lawson, and thrust into
his skin all over, from head to foot, sharp splinters of lightwood,
almost dripping with its own turpentine, and set him afire.[277] The
negro was also put to death with fiendish torments, but Graffenried was
kept a prisoner, perhaps in order to be burned on some festal occasion.

[Sidenote: The massacre, Sept. 22-24, 1711.]

[Sidenote: Aid from Virginia and South Carolina.]

[Sidenote: Barnwell defeats the Tuscaroras, Jan. 28. 1712.]

Before the news of this dreadful affair could reach New Berne, the blow
had fallen, not only there, but also at Bath and on the Roanoke River.
Some hundreds of settlers were massacred,--at New Berne 130 within two
hours from the signal. No circumstance of horror was wanting. Men were
gashed and scorched, children torn in pieces, women impaled on stakes.
The slaughter went on for three days. A war-chief called by the white
men Handcock seems to have been the leading spirit in this concerted
attack, but as usual in Indian warfare the concert was incomplete.[278]
An outlying detachment of Tuscaroras in Bertie Precinct, whose head
war-chief was called Tom Blunt, took no part in the massacre and
remained on good terms with the whites. Perhaps Blunt’s attitude may
have been affected by nearness to Virginia and its able governor,
Alexander Spotswood, who was certainly instrumental in keeping the
Nottoways and Meherrins quiet. Through Blunt’s intervention, Spotswood
secured the release of Graffenried, after five weeks of captivity, and
it was not the fault of this valiant governor that Virginia troops did
not march against Handcock; for his House of Burgesses, after advising
such a measure, behaved like a “whimsical multitude,” and refused to
vote the necessary funds.[279] Important aid, however, was obtained
from South Carolina, which had for the moment a more complaisant
assembly, and in Charles Craven a wise and able governor. Advantage
was taken of the deadly hatred which the Sioux and Muskogi tribes bore
to the Iroquois. With a small body of white men, supported by large
numbers of Muskogi Creeks and Yamassees, and of Sioux Catawbas, Colonel
John Barnwell made a long and arduous winter march through more than
250 miles of virgin forest to the Neuse River, where he encountered
the Tuscaroras, and in an obstinate battle defeated them with the loss
of 400 warriors. Then Handcock, retiring behind a stockade, sought
and obtained terms from Barnwell; a treaty was made, and the South
Carolina forces went home.

[Sidenote: Crushing defeat of the Tuscaroras; migration to New York.]

They had scarcely departed when the faithless red men renewed their
bloody work, and in March the distracted colony was again obliged to
ask for succour. Summer added to the other horrors the scourge of
yellow fever, which carried off some hundreds of victims, among them
Governor Hyde. In December a force of 50 white men and 1,000 Indians
from South Carolina, under Colonel James Moore, arrived on the scene,
and in March, 1713, Handcock was driven to cover on the site of the
present town of Snow Hill, in Greene County. His palisaded fort was
stormed with great slaughter, and that was the end of the Indian
power in eastern North Carolina. Their remnant of defeated Tuscaroras
withdrew to the upper waters of the Roanoke, and thence migrated
northward to central New York, where they were admitted into the great
confederacy of their kinsmen, the Iroquois of the Long House. Thus did
the celebrated Five Nations become the Six Nations.

[Sidenote: Charles Eden.]

After Hyde’s death the government was ably administered by one of the
leading colonists, Thomas Pollock, as president of the council. In 1714
Charles Eden came out as governor. Under the stress of war the colony
had begun to issue paper money, a curse from which it was destined long
to suffer. But some other evils were remedied. Liberty of conscience
was secured to Dissenters, and in the matter of test oaths the Quaker’s
affirmation was accepted as an equivalent. Eden was a very popular
governor and managed affairs with ability until his death in 1722. His
name is preserved in that of the town of Edenton, in Chowan County,
which was in his time the seat of government.

[Sidenote: The Yamassees and the Spaniards.]

We must now turn to South Carolina, where we have seen Governor Craven
using the Yamassee and Catawba warriors as allies to be sent against
the Tuscaroras. The year 1713, which witnessed the crushing defeat of
the Tuscaroras, was the year of the treaty of Utrecht, which ended the
long war of the Spanish Succession. Throughout that war the powerful
tribe of Yamassees had been steadfast friends of the English. From
time to time they made incursions into Florida and brought away many
a Spanish captive to be burned alive, until government checked their
cruelty by offering a ransom for Spanish prisoners delivered in safety
at Charleston; the prisoners were then sent home on payment of the
amount of their ransom by the government at St. Augustine.

[Sidenote: Alliance of Indian tribes against the South Carolinians.]

[Sidenote: The Indian war.]

The Yamassee country was the last quarter from which the South
Carolinians would have expected hostilities to come. But after 1713, in
spite of treaty obligations, the St. Augustine government bent all its
energies to stirring up all the frontier tribes to a concerted attack
upon the English. Bribes in the shape of gaudy coats, steel hatchets,
and firearms were distributed among the chiefs; the solemn palavers,
the banquets of boiled dog, the exchanges of wampum belts, the puffing
of red clay pipes, the beastly orgies of fire-water, may be left to
our imagination, for we have no such minute chroniclers here as the
Jesuits of Canada. The outcome of it all was a grand conspiracy of
Yamassees, Creeks, Catawbas, and Cherokees, with other less important
tribes, comprising perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 warriors, against the colony
of South Carolina. But, as in all such plans for concerted action among
Indians, the concert was very imperfect. Hostilities began in April,
1715, with the massacre of ninety persons at Pocotaligo, and lasted
until February, 1716, by which time 400 Christians had lost their
lives; while the red men were thoroughly vanquished, and the shattered
remnant of the Yamassees sought shelter in Florida.

[Sidenote: Robert Johnson.]

Governor Craven, who had conducted this war with great ability and
courage, was a man of high character, and when he returned to England
in 1717 his departure was mourned. His successor, Robert Johnson, was
son of Sir Nathaniel Johnson, who had formerly been governor. The
younger Johnson, an able and popular official, was the last governor of
South Carolina under the lords proprietors. His romantic experiences in
dealing with pirates will be recounted in my next chapter. The chain
of events which brought about a political revolution in 1719 admits
of brief description. The Indian war had laden South Carolina with
debt, and it was felt that the lords proprietors ought to contribute
something toward relieving the distress of a colony which had yielded
them a princely income. But the lords proprietors did not take
this view of the case. As a means of discharging the public debt, the
assembly laid a revenue tariff upon imports, but the lords proprietors
vetoed it. The assembly proposed to raise money by selling Yamassee
lands to settlers, but the lords proprietors laid claim to the
conquered territory for their own use and behoof. Thus the situation
was fast becoming unendurable.

[Illustration: A Map _of y^e most_ Improved Part of CAROLINA ]

[Sidenote: The revolution of 1719 in South Carolina.]

In December, 1718, war broke out again between Spain and England.
The Spaniards planned an expedition against Charleston, and Johnson
asked the assembly for money. They proposed to raise it by collecting
revenue under the tariff act, in disregard of the veto. Nicholas Trott,
the chief justice, declared that this would not do; the courts would
uphold delinquents who should refuse to pay. The assembly denied the
right of the proprietors to veto their acts. The members consulted
their constituents and were sustained by them. Finally the assembly
resolved itself into a revolutionary convention, deposed the lords
proprietors, and offered the governorship to Johnson as royal governor.
On his refusal to take part in such proceedings, the convention chose
for provisional royal governor Colonel James Moore, the hero of the
Tuscarora war. Johnson’s only reliance, in such an emergency, was the
militia; but the militia deserted him and went over to the convention,
and thus, in December, 1719, the popular revolution was complete. When
the news reached London, the course of the assembly was approved by the
crown, the proprietary charter was declared to be forfeited, and our
old friend Sir Francis Nicholson was sent out to South Carolina as
royal governor.

[Sidenote: End of the proprietary government.]

Three years later there was renewal of civil discord in North Carolina,
after the death of Governor Eden and the arrival of his successor,
George Burrington, a vulgar ruffian who had served a term in prison
for an infamous assault upon an old woman. Five years of turmoil,
with changes of governors, followed. In 1728 Parliament requested the
king to buy Carolina, and appropriated money for the purpose. The
proprietors were Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, and his brother,
Lord Charles Somerset; Lord Craven; Lord Carteret; John Cotton; the
heirs of Sir John Colleton; James and Henry Bertie; Mary Dawson and
Elizabeth Moore. Lord Carteret would not sell his share. All the others
consented to sell for a modest sum total scarcely amounting to £50,000;
and so in 1729 the many-headed palatinate founded by Charles II. came
to an end, and in its place were the two royal provinces of North and
South Carolina.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Contrasts between the two Carolinas.]

The careers of the two southern colonies whose beginnings we have thus
sketched were very different, and between their respective social
characteristics the contrasts were so great that it is impossible to
make general statements applicable alike to the two. In one respect the
contrast was different from that which one would observe in comparing
Virginia with New England. In New England a marked concentration
of social life in towns and villages co-existed with complete
democracy, while in Virginia the isolated life upon great plantations
was connected with an aristocratic structure of society. But between
the two Carolinas the contrast was just the reverse of this. Of all
the southern colonies, North Carolina was the one in which society
was the most scattered, and town life the least developed, while
it was also the one in which the general aspect of society was the
least aristocratic. On the other hand, in South Carolina there was a
peculiarly strong concentration of social life into a single focus
in Charleston; and in connection with this we find a type of society
in some respects more essentially aristocratic than in Virginia. We
shall find it worth our while to dwell for a moment upon some of the
immediate causes of these differences.

[Sidenote: Effects of geographical conditions.]

[Sidenote: Interior of North Carolina contrasted with the coast.]

The history of North America affords an interesting illustration
of the way in which the character of a community may be determined
for good or ill by geographical circumstances. There have been
historians and philosophers unable to see anything except such physical
conditions at work in determining the course of human affairs. With
such views I have small sympathy,[280] but it would be idle to deny
that physical conditions are very important, and the study of them
is highly instructive. But for the peculiar physical conformation
of its coast, North Carolina, rather than Virginia, would doubtless
have been the first American state. It was upon Roanoke Island that
the earliest attempts were made, but Ralph Lane in 1585 already came
to the conclusion that the Chesapeake region would afford better
opportunities. First and foremost, the harbourage was spoiled by the
prevalent sand-bars. Then huge pine barrens near the coast hindered
the first efforts of the planter, and extensive malarial swamps
imperilled his life.[281] The first attempts at cultivation increased
the danger, which was of a kind that would yield only to modern methods
of drainage. It was only by the coast that the conditions were thus
forbidding. No American state has greater natural advantages than North
Carolina. For diversity of eligible soils, for salubrity of climate,
for variety of flora and fauna, she is unsurpassed; while for beauty
and grandeur of scenery she may well claim to be first among the states
east of the Rocky Mountains.[282] John Lawson describes North Carolina
with enthusiasm as “a delicious country, being placed in that girdle of
the world which affords wine, oil, fruit, grain, and silk, with other
rich commodities, besides a sweet air, moderate climate, and fertile
soil. These are the blessings, under Heaven’s protection, that spin
out the thread of life to its utmost extent, and crown our days with
the sweets of health and plenty, which, when joined with content,
render the possessors the happiest race of men upon earth.”[283] The
good Lawson, who was somewhat inclined to see things in rose-colour,
praised even the gentleness of the Indians, who (as we have seen)
returned the compliment after their manner, by roasting him alive.
But, with all this beauty and richness of the interior country, the
obstacles presented at the coast turned the first great wave of English
colonization into Virginia; and thereafter the settlement of North
Carolina was determined largely, and by no means to its advantage, by
the social conditions of the older colony.

[Sidenote: Unkempt life.]

In its early days North Carolina was simply a portion of Virginia’s
frontier; and to this wild frontier the shiftless people who could not
make a place for themselves in Virginia society, including many of
the “mean whites,” flocked in large numbers. In their new home they
soon acquired the reputation of being very lawless in temper, holding
it to be the chief end of man to resist all constituted authority,
and above all things to pay no taxes. In some respects, as in the
administration of justice, one might have witnessed such scenes as
continued for generations to characterize American frontier life. The
courts sat oftentimes in taverns, where the tedium of business was
relieved by glasses of grog, while the judge’s decisions were not put
on record, but were simply shouted by the crier from the inn door or
at the nearest market-place. It was not until 1703 that a clergyman
was settled in the colony, though there were Quaker meetings before
that time. As late as 1729 Colonel Byrd writes of Edenton, the seat of
government: “I believe this is the only metropolis in the Christian
or Mohammedan world where there is neither church, chapel, mosque,
synagogue, or any other place of public worship, of any sect or
religion whatsoever.” In this country “they pay no tribute, either to
God or to Cæsar.”[284]

[Sidenote: A genre picture by Colonel Byrd.]

According to Colonel Byrd, these people were chargeable with laziness,
but more especially the men, who let their wives work for them. The
men, he says, “make their wives rise out of their beds early in the
morning, at the same time that they lie and snore till the sun has
run one third of his course and dispersed all the unwholesome damps.
Then, after stretching and yawning for half an hour, they light their
pipes, and under the protection of a cloud of smoke venture out into
the open air; though, if it happens to be never so little cold, they
quickly return shivering into the chimney corner. When the weather is
mild, they stand leaning with both their arms upon the cornfield fence,
and gravely consider whether they had best go and take a small heat at
the hoe, but generally find reasons to put it off until another time.
Thus they loiter away their lives, like Solomon’s sluggard, with their
arms across, and at the winding up of the year scarcely have bread
to eat.”[285] Every one has met with the type of man here described.
In Massachusetts to-day you may find sporadic examples of him in
decaying mountain villages, left high and dry by the railroads that
follow the winding valleys; or now and then you may find him clustered
in some tiny hamlet of crazy shanties nestling in a secluded area of
what Mr. Ricardo would have called “the worst land under cultivation,”
and bearing some such pithy local name as “Hardscrabble” or “Satan’s
Kingdom.” Such men do not make the strength of Massachusetts, or of any
commonwealth. They did not make the strength of North Carolina, and it
should not be forgotten that Byrd’s testimony is that of an unfriendly
or at least a satirical observer. Nevertheless there is strong reason
for believing that his portrait is one for which the old Albemarle
colony could have furnished many sitters. Such people were sure to be
drawn thither by the legislation which made the colony an Alsatia for
insolvent debtors.

[Sidenote: Industries.]

The industries of North Carolina in the early times were purely
agricultural. There were no manufactures. The simplest and commonest
articles of daily use were imported from the northern colonies or
from England. Agriculture was conducted more wastefully and with
less intelligence than in any of the other colonies. In the northern
counties tobacco was almost exclusively cultivated. In the Cape Fear
region there were flourishing rice-fields. A great deal of excellent
timber was cut; in particular the yellow pine of North Carolina
was then, as now, famous for its hardness and durability. Tar and
turpentine were also produced in large quantities. All this furnished
the basis for a flourishing foreign commerce; but the people did
not take kindly to the sea, and the carrying trade was monopolized
by New Englanders. The fisheries, which were of considerable value,
were altogether neglected. All business or traffic about the coast was
carried on under perilous conditions; for pirates were always hovering
about, secure in the sympathy of many of the people, like the brigands
of southern Italy in recent times.

[Sidenote: Absence of towns.]

In the absence of manufactures, and with commerce so little developed,
there was no town life. Byrd describes Edenton as containing forty
or fifty houses, small and cheaply built: “a citizen here is
counted extravagant if he has ambition enough to aspire to a brick
chimney.”[286] As late as 1776 New Berne and Wilmington were villages
of five or six hundred inhabitants each. Not only were there no towns,
but there were very few large plantations with stately manor houses
like those of Virginia. A great part of the country was covered with
its primeval forest, in which thousands of hogs, branded with their
owners’ marks, wandered and rooted until the time came for hunting them
out and slaughtering them. Where rude clearings had been made in the
wilderness there were small, ill-kept farms. Nearly all the people were
small farmers, whose work was done chiefly by black slaves or by white
servants. The treatment of the slaves is said to have been usually
mild, as in Virginia. The white servants fared better, and the general
state of society was so low that when their time of service was
ended they had here a good chance of rising to a position of equality
with their masters. The country swarmed with ruffians of all sorts,
who fled thither from South Carolina and Virginia; life and property
were insecure, and Lynch law was not unfrequently administered. The
small planters were apt to be hard drinkers, and among their social
amusements were scrimmages, in which noses were sometimes broken and
eyes gouged out. There was a great deal of gambling. But, except at
elections and other meetings for political purposes, people saw very
little of each other. The isolation of homesteads, which prevailed over
the South, reached its maximum in North Carolina. It is not strange,
then, that the colony was a century old before it could boast of a
printing-press, or that there were no schools until shortly before the
war for Independence. A mail from Virginia came some eight or ten times
in a year, but it only reached a few towns on the coast, and down to
the time of the Revolution the interior of the country had no mails at
all.

[Sidenote: A frontier democracy.]

[Sidenote: Segregation and dispersal of Virginia’s poor whites.]

[Sidenote: Spotswood’s account of the matter.]

All these consequences clearly followed from the character of the
emigration by which North Carolina was first peopled, and that
character was determined by its geographical position as a wilderness
frontier to such a commonwealth as Virginia. In the character of
this emigration we find the reasons for the comparatively democratic
state of society. As there were so few large plantations and wealthy
planters, while nearly all the white people were small land-owners,
and as the highest class was thus so much lower in dignity than the
corresponding class in Virginia, it became just so much the easier
for the “mean whites” to rise far enough to become a part of it.
North Carolina, therefore, was not simply an Alsatia for debtors
and criminals, but it afforded a home for the better portion of
Virginia’s poor people. We can thus see how there would come about a
natural segregation of Virginia’s white freedmen into four classes:
1. The most enterprising and thrifty would succeed in maintaining
a respectable existence in Virginia; 2. A much larger class, less
thrifty and enterprising, would find it easier to make a place for
themselves in the ruder society of North Carolina; 3. A lower stratum
would consist of persons without enterprise or thrift who remained
in Virginia to recruit the ranks of “white trash;” 4. The lowest
stratum would comprise the outlaws who fled into North Carolina to
escape the hangman. Of the third class the eighteenth century seems
to have witnessed a gradual exodus from Virginia, so that in 1773 it
was possible for the traveller, John Ferdinand Smyth, to declare that
there were fewer cases of poverty in proportion to the population than
anywhere else “in the universe.” The statement of Bishop Meade in 1857,
which was quoted in the preceding chapter,[287] shows that the class
of “mean whites” had not even then become extinct in Virginia; but it
is clear that the slow but steady exodus had been such as greatly to
diminish its numbers and its importance as a social feature. Some of
these freedmen went northward into Pennsylvania,[288] but most of them
sought the western and southern frontiers, and at first the southern
frontier was a far more eligible retreat than the western. Of this
outward movement of white freedmen the governor of Virginia wrote in
1717: “The Inhabitants of our ffrontiers are composed generally of such
as have been transported hither as Servants, and being out of their
time, ... settle themselves where Land is to be taken up ... that will
produce the necessarys of Life with little Labour. It is pretty well
known what Morals such people bring with them hither, which are not
like to be much mended by their Scituation, remote from all places of
worship; they are so little concerned about Religion, that the Children
of many of the Inhabitants of those ffrontier Settlements are 20, and
some 30 years of age before they are baptized, and some not at all....
These people, knowing the Indians to be lovers of strong liquors, make
no scruple of first making them drunk and then cheating them of their
skins; on the other hand, the Indians, being unacquainted with the
methods of obtaining reparation by Law, frequently revenged themselves
by the murder of the persons who thus treated them, or (according
to their notions of Satisfaction) of the next Englishman they could
most easily cutt off.”[289] In this description we may recognize some
features of frontier life in recent times.

[Sidenote: The German immigration.]

[Sidenote: The Scotch-Irish immigration.]

We have hitherto considered only the earliest period of North Carolina
history. From about 1720 marked changes began to be visible. There
was such a change in the character of the immigration as by and by to
result in more or less displacement of population. Since the barbarous
devastation of the Rhenish Palatinate by French troops in 1688-93 there
had been much distress among those worthy Germans, and after a while
they sought to mend their fortunes by coming to America. This migration
continued for many years. Some of these Germans settled in the Mohawk
valley, where their mark was placed upon the map in such town names
as Minden, Frankfort, and Oppenheim, and where they contributed to
our Revolutionary War one of its most picturesque figures in Nicholas
Herkimer. A great many came to the Susquehanna valley in what was then
the western part of Pennsylvania, where their descendants still speak
and write that sweet old-fashioned language which we ought hardly
to call Pennsylvania _Dutch_, since it is a dialect of High German
besprinkled with English. From Pennsylvania large numbers followed
the valleys between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies and made their
way as far as South Carolina. We have already noted the arrival of
Germans, Swiss, and Huguenots on the North Carolina seaboard early in
the century. Later on, in 1745, after the suppression of the Jacobite
rebellion, there came to North Carolina a powerful reinforcement of
Scotch Highlanders, among them many of the clan Macdonald, including
the romantic Flora Macdonald, who had done so much for the young
fugitive prince. But more important and far more numerous than all the
other elements in the population were the Scotch-Irish from Ulster,
who--goaded by unwise and unjust laws--began coming in large numbers
about 1719, and have played a much greater and more extensive part in
American history than has yet been recognized. There was hardly one of
the thirteen colonies upon which these Scotch-Irish did not leave their
mark. To the story of their coming I shall revert in my concluding
chapter, where it forms the most important part of the story of the
westward advance of Virginia. For the present it may suffice to point
out that in North Carolina they had come, before the Revolutionary War,
to be the strongest element in the population of the colony. Under the
influence of these various and excellent streams of immigration, the
character of the colony was gradually but effectively altered. Industry
and thrift came to prevail in the wilderness, and various earnest
Puritanic types of religion flourished side by side on friendly terms.

[Sidenote: Displacement and further dispersal of poor whites.]

As society in North Carolina became more and more orderly and
civilized, the old mean white element, or at least the more intractable
part of it, was gradually pushed out to the westward. This stream that
had started from Old Virginia flowed for a while southwestward into the
South Carolina back-country. But the southerly movement was gradually
turned more and more to the westward.

[Sidenote: “Crackers,” etc.]

Always clinging to the half-savage frontier, these poor white people
made their way from North Carolina westward through Tennessee, and
their descendants may still be found here and there in Arkansas,
southern Missouri, and what is sometimes known as the Egyptian
extremity of Illinois. From the South Carolina back-country, through
Georgia, they were scattered here and there among the states on the
Gulf of Mexico. Taken at its worst, this type of American citizen is
portrayed in Martin Chuzzlewit’s unwelcome visitor, the redoubtable
Hannibal Chollop. Specimens of him might have been found among the
border ruffians led by the savage Quantrell in 1863 to the cruel
massacre at Lawrence, and among the desperadoes whose dark deeds
used forty years ago to give such cities as Memphis an unenviable
prominence in the pages of the “Police Gazette.” But in the average
specimens of the type one would find not criminality of disposition
so much as shiftlessness. Of the stunted, gaunt, and cadaverous
“sand-hillers” of South Carolina and Georgia, a keen observer says that
“they are incapable of applying themselves steadily to any labour,
and their habits are very much like those of the old Indians.”[290]
The “clay-eaters,” who are said to sustain life on crude whiskey
and aluminous earth, are doubtless of similar type, as well as the
“conches,” “crackers,” and “corn-crackers” of various Southern
states. All these seem to represent a degraded variety or strain of
the English race. Concerning the origin of this degraded strain,
detailed documentary evidence is not easy to get; but the facts of its
distribution furnish data for valid inferences such as the naturalist
entertains concerning the origin and migrations of some species of
animal or plant.

There is, _first_, the importation of degraded English humanity in
large numbers to the two oldest colonies in which there is a demand
for wholesale cheap labour; _secondly_, the substitution of black
cheap labour for white; _thirdly_, the tendency of the degraded
white humanity to seek the frontier, as described by Spotswood, or
else to lodge in sequestered nooks outside of the main currents of
progress. These data are sufficient in general to explain the origin
and distribution of the “crackers,” but a word of qualification is
needed. It is not to be supposed that the ancestors of all the persons
designated as “crackers” were once white freedmen in Virginia and
Maryland; it is more probable that this class furnished a nucleus
about which various wrecks of decayed and broken-down humanity from
many quarters were gradually gathered. Nor are we bound to suppose
that every community of ignorant, semi-civilized white people in the
Southern states is descended from those white freedmen. Prolonged
isolation from the currents of thought and feeling that sway the great
world will account for almost any extent of ignorance and backwardness;
and there are few geographical situations east of the Mississippi River
more conducive to isolation than the southwestern portion of the great
Appalachian highlands. All these circumstances should be borne in mind
in dealing with what, from whatever point of view, is one of the
interesting problems of American history.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Settlers of South Carolina.]

The settlement of South Carolina took place under different
circumstances from those of the sister colony, and the resulting state
of society was very different. In the earliest days there were many
settlers of a rough and turbulent character, which their peculiar
dealings with pirates, to be recounted in the following chapter, did
not tend to improve. But the Huguenots, in whose veins flowed some
of the sturdiest blood of France, soon came in great numbers. From
the acquaintanceship of the Berkeleys, the Ashleys, the Hydes, and
others, there came a certain number of Cavaliers; but at the end of
the seventeenth century the impulse which had carried thousands of
Cavaliers to Virginia had quite died out, and on the whole the general
complexion of South Carolina, as regarded religion and politics, was
strongly Puritan.

[Sidenote: Churchmen and Dissenters.]

[Sidenote: The vestries.]

In one respect there is a resemblance by no means superficial between
the settlement of South Carolina and that of Massachusetts. Most
of the South Carolina settlers had left their homes in Europe for
reasons connected with religion; and emigrants who quit their homes
for such reasons are likely to show a higher average of intelligence
and energy than the great mass of their fellow-countrymen who stay at
home. Calvinism was the prevailing form of theology in South Carolina,
though there were some Lutherans, and perhaps one fifth of the people
may have belonged to the Church of England, which was established by
the proprietary charter, and remained the state church until 1776.
We have seen how much disturbance was caused by the attempts of the
High Churchmen early in the eighteenth century to enforce conformity
on the part of the Dissenters; but such attempts were soon abandoned
as hopeless, and a policy of toleration prevailed. Though the Church
of England was supported by public taxation, yet the clergymen were
not appointed to office, but were elected by their congregations like
the Dissenting clergymen. Their education was in general very good,
and their character lofty; and in all respects the tone of the church
in South Carolina was far higher than in Virginia. At the outbreak of
the Revolution the elected Episcopal clergy of South Carolina were
generally found on the side of the Whigs; a significant contrast to the
appointed Episcopal clergy of Virginia, whose Toryism was carried so
far as to ruin the reputation of their church. But the most interesting
feature connected with the establishment of the English Church was the
introduction of the parish system of local self-government in very much
the same form in which it existed in England. The vestries in South
Carolina discharged many of the functions which in New England were
performed by the town meeting,--the superintendence of the poor, the
maintenance of roads, the election of representatives to the Commons
House of Assembly, and the assessment of the local taxes.

[Sidenote: The South Carolina parish.]

In one fundamental respect the political constitution of South
Carolina was more democratic than that of Virginia. The vestrymen
were elected yearly by all the taxpayers of the parish. In this they
were analogous to the selectmen of New England. Parish government in
Virginia was in the hands of a close vestry; in South Carolina it was
administered by an open vestry. Moreover, while in Virginia the unit
of representation in the legislature was the county, in South Carolina
it was the parish. Now the South Carolina parish was of purely English
origin, not of French origin like the parishes of Louisiana. The
Louisiana parish is analogous to a county, that of South Carolina was
nearly equivalent to a township.[291] Although the colony had such a
large proportion of French settlers, and of such marked ability and
character, the development of its governmental institutions was as
thoroughly English as if no Frenchman had ever set foot upon its soil.
The approximation to the New England township is interesting. The
freemen of South Carolina, with their open vestry, possessed what the
smaller landed proprietors of Virginia in Bacon’s rebellion strove for
in vain.

[Sidenote: Free schools.]

In this connection it is worth while to observe that, from the first
decade of the eighteenth century, a strong interest in popular
education was felt in South Carolina. The same obstacles to schools in
the rural districts that we have already observed in Virginia prevented
the growth of anything like the public school system of New England.
But of private free schools in the colony of South Carolina there
were quite a number, and their quality was very good. The first was
established in Charleston in 1712, and it not only taught the three Rs,
along with bookkeeping, but it had classes in Greek and Latin. Private
donations were encouraged by a provision that every giver of £20 “could
nominate a scholar to be taught free for five years.” The commissioners
of the school also appointed twelve scholars. Free schools were
afterward erected by private bequests and subscriptions at Dorchester,
Beaufort, Ninety-Six, and in many other places. A noteworthy instance
was afforded by St. Thomas parish, where “James Childs bequeathed
£600 toward erecting a free school, and the parishioners, by local
subscription, increased the amount to £2,800.”[292] In such beginnings
there lay the possibilities of a more healthy development than can be
secured by the prevalent semi-socialist method of supporting schools by
public taxation;[293] but the influences of negro slavery were adverse
to any such development.

[Sidenote: Rice and indigo.]

The economic circumstance which chiefly determined the complexion of
society in South Carolina was the cultivation of rice and indigo. The
value of the former crop was discovered in 1693, when a ship from
Madagascar, accidentally stopping at Charleston, had on board a little
bag of rice, which was planted with very notable success. Rice was not
long in becoming the great staple of the colony. By 1740 it yielded
more than £200,000 yearly. Indigo was next in importance. Much corn was
raised, and cattle in large numbers were exported to the West Indies.
Some attention was paid to silk, flax, and hemp, tobacco, olives, and
oranges. Some cotton was raised, but that crop did not attain paramount
importance until after the invention of the gin and the development of
great factories in England.

Rice and indigo absorbed the principal attention of the colony, as
tobacco absorbed the attention of Virginia. Manufactures did not
thrive. Every article, great or small, whether a mere luxury or an
article of prime necessity, that had to be manufactured, was imported,
and paid for with rice or indigo. This created a very prosperous trade
in Charleston. The planters did not deal directly with the shipmasters,
as in Virginia, but sold their crops to the merchants in Charleston,
whence they were shipped, sometimes in British, sometimes in New
England vessels, to all parts of the world.

[Sidenote: Some characteristics of South Carolina slavery.]

Now the cultivation of rice and the cultivation of indigo are both very
unhealthy occupations. The work in the swamps is deadly to white men.
But after 1713 negroes were brought to South Carolina in such great
numbers that an athletic man could be had for £40 or less. Every such
negro could raise in a single year much more indigo or rice than would
repay the cost of his purchase, so that it was actually more profitable
to work him to death than to take care of him. Assuming, then, that
human nature in South Carolina was neither better nor worse than in
other parts of the civilized world, we need not be surprised when told
that the relations between master and slave were noticeably different
from what they were in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. The
negroes of the southern colony were reputed to be more brutal and
unmanageable than those to the northward, and for this there is a
twofold explanation. In the first place, slaves newly brought from
Africa, half-savage heathen, were less tractable than African slaves
who had lived many years under kindly treatment among white people,
and far less tractable than slaves of the next generation born in
America. Such newcomers as had been tribal chiefs or elders in their
country were noted as especially insolent and insubordinate.[294] In
many respects the negro has proved quickly amenable to the softening
influences of civilized life, and to the teachings of Christianity,
however imperfectly apprehended. In the second place, the type of
Virginia slavery was old-fashioned and patriarchal, while South
Carolina slavery was of the modern and commercial type. The slaves on
a Virginia plantation were like members of a great family, while in a
South Carolina rice swamp their position was much more analogous to
that of a gang of navvies. This circumstance was closely connected
with a peculiarity of South Carolina life, in which it afforded a
striking contrast to the slave states north of it. Except in the
immediate neighbourhood of Charleston, few if any planters lived on
their estates. The reason for this was doubtless the desire to escape
the intense heat and unwholesome air of the newly tilled lowlands.
The latitude of South Carolina is that of Morocco, and it was natural
for settlers coming from the cool or chilly climates of France and
England to seek such relief as the breezes of Charleston harbour could
afford.[295] As a rule, the planters had houses in Charleston and dwelt
there the year round, making occasional visits to their plantations,
but leaving them in the meanwhile to be managed by overseers. Thus the
slaves, while set to much harder labour than in Virginia, were in the
main left subject to the uncurbed tyranny of underlings, which is apt
to be a very harsh kind of tyranny. The diminutions in their numbers,
whether due to hardship or to whatever cause, were repaired by fresh
importations from Africa, so that there was much less improvement
in their quality than under the milder patriarchal system. The dog
that is used to kicks is prone to snarl and bite, and the slaves of
South Carolina were an object of dread to their masters, all the more
so because of their overwhelming numbers. Nothing can indicate more
forcibly the social difference between the two Carolinas than the
different ratios of their black to their white population. About 1760
the inhabitants of North Carolina were reckoned at 200,000, of whom
one fourth were slaves; those of South Carolina at 150,000, of whom
nearly or quite three fourths were slaves. In the former case the
typical picture is that of a few black men raising tobacco and corn on
the small plantation where the master lives; in the latter case it is
that of an immense gang toiling in a rice swamp under the lash of an
overseer. Care should always be taken not to exaggerate such contrasts,
but after making all allowances the nature of the difference is here,
I think, correctly indicated.

[Sidenote: Negro insurrection of 1740.]

In 1740, while war was going on between Spain and England, there was
a brief but startling insurrection of slaves in South Carolina. It
was suspected that Spanish emissaries were concerned in it. However
that may have been, the occasion of such a war might well seem to the
negroes to furnish a good opportunity. Under the lead of a fellow
named Cato the insurgents gathered near Stono Inlet and began an
indiscriminate massacre of men, women, children. The alarm was quickly
given and the affair was soon brought to an end, though not until too
many lives had been lost. The news arrived in Wilton while the people
were attending church. It was the custom of the planters to carry
rifles and pistols, and very little time was lost before Captain Bee
led forth a well-equipped body of militia in quest of the rebels.
They were overtaken in a large field, all in hilarious disorder,
celebrating their bloody achievement with potations of rum; in which
plight they were soon dispersed with slaughter, and their ringleaders
were summarily hanged.[296]

[Sidenote: Cruelties.]

The habit of carrying fire-arms to church was part of a general system
of patrol which grew out of the dread in which the planters lived. The
chief business of the patrol was to visit all the plantations within
its district at least once a fortnight and search the negro quarters
for concealed weapons or stolen goods.[297] The patrolmen also hunted
fugitives, and were authorized to flog stray negroes wherever found.
The ordinary death penalty for the black man was hanging. Burning at
the stake was not unknown, but, as I have already mentioned, there
is one instance of such an execution in Massachusetts, and there are
several in New York, so that it cannot be cited as illustrating any
peculiarity of the South Carolina type of slavery. The most hideous
instance of cruelty recorded of South Carolina is that of a slave who
for the murder of an overseer was left to starve in a cage suspended
to the bough of a tree, where insects swarmed over his naked flesh
and birds had picked his eyes out before the mercy of death overtook
him.[298] That such atrocities must have been condemned by public
opinion is shown by the act of 1740, prescribing a fine of £700 current
money for the wilful murder of a slave by his master or any other white
man; £350 for killing him in a sudden heat of passion, or by undue
correction; and £100 for inflicting mutilation or cruel punishment.[299]

[Sidenote: Life in Charleston.]

[Sidenote: Contrast between the two Carolinas.]

The circumstance that most of the great planters had houses in
Charleston went along with the brisk foreign trade to make it a very
important town, according to the American standards of those days. In
1776, with its population of 15,000 souls, it ranked as the fifth city
of the United States. Charleston had a theatre, while concerts, balls,
and dinner parties gave animation to its social life. It was a general
custom with the planters to send their children to Europe for an
education, and it was said that a knowledge of the world thus acquired
gave to society in South Carolina a somewhat less provincial aspect
than it wore in other parts of English America.[300] The sharpest
contrast, however, was with its next neighbour. As South Carolina may
have been in some respects the most cosmopolitan of the colonies south
of Pennsylvania, so on the other hand North Carolina was certainly the
most sequestered and provincial. As I observed at the beginning of
this chapter, for the development of the frontier or backwoods phase
of American life two conditions were requisite: first, the struggle
with the wilderness; secondly, isolation from European influences. This
combination of conditions was not realized in the case of the first
settlers of Virginia and Maryland, of the Puritans in New England,
or the Dutch in New Netherland, or the Quakers in Pennsylvania. In
all these cases there was more or less struggle with the wilderness,
but the contact with European influences was never broken. With North
Carolina it was different; the direct trade with England was from
the outset much less than that of the other colonies. For a time
its chief seaport was Norfolk in Virginia; European ideas reached
it chiefly through slow overland journeys; and it was practically
a part of Virginia’s backwoods. On the other hand, South Carolina,
focussing all its activities in the single seaport of Charleston, was
eminently accessible to European influences. Its life was not that of
a wilderness frontier, like its northern neighbour. But its military
position, with reference to the whole Atlantic seaboard, was that of an
English march or frontier against the Spaniards in Florida and the West
Indies.

The contrast above indicated applies only to lowland South Carolina,
the only part with which the earlier decades of the eighteenth century
are concerned. At that time the highlands of both Carolinas remained
in the possession of the Cherokees, so that they have nothing to do
with my comparison. At a later time that whole highland region became a
wilderness frontier, the scene of the civilized white man’s backwoods
life. All the way, indeed, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, along the
Appalachian chain, there was a strong similarity of conditions and of
life, in marked contrast with the divergencies along the coast region,
in stepping from Pennsylvania into Maryland, thence into Virginia, and
so on; but that life along the coast which approached most nearly to
the life of the interior wilderness was to be seen about Albemarle and
Pamlico sounds.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: The Spanish frontier.]

The mention of Georgia serves to introduce the statement that, with
the growth of civilization on the South Carolina coast, the need for a
buffer against the Spaniards began to be more and more strongly felt.
We have seen how the vexatious Yamassee war of 1715 was brought on by
Spanish intrigues. After the overthrow of the Yamassees the troubles
did not entirely cease. For some years the Indians continued to be a
source of annoyance, and in their misdeeds the secret hand of Spain was
discernible. The multitude of slaves, too, in regions accessible to
Spanish influence, greatly increased the danger.

[Sidenote: James Oglethorpe.]

[Sidenote: Beginnings of Georgia.]

In 1732 the state of affairs on the South Carolina frontier attracted
the attention of a gallant English soldier whose name deserves a
very high place among the heroes of early American history. James
Oglethorpe, an officer who in youth had served with distinction under
Prince Eugene against the Turks,[301] conceived the plan of freeing
the insolvent debtors who crowded English prisons by carrying them
over to America and establishing a colony which might serve as a
strong military outpost against the Spaniards. The scheme was an
opportune one, as the South Sea Bubble and other wild projects had
ruined hundreds of English families. The land between the Savannah
and Altamaha rivers, with the strip starting between their two main
sources and running westward to the Pacific Ocean,[302] was made over
to a board of trustees, and was named Georgia, in honour of the king,
George II. The charter created a kind of proprietary government, but
with powers less plenary and extensive than had been granted to the
proprietors of Maryland, Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Oglethorpe was
appointed governor; German Protestants and Highlanders from Scotland
were brought over in large numbers; and a few people from New England
joined in the enterprise, and founded the town of Sunbury. All laws
were to be made by the trustees, and the settlers were at first to have
no representative assembly and no voice in making the government. But
this despotic arrangement was merely temporary and provisional; it was
intended that after the lapse of one-and-twenty years the colony should
be held to have come of age, and should choose its own government.
Military drill was to be rigidly enforced. Slave-labour was absolutely
prohibited, as was also the sale of intoxicating liquors; so that Maine
cannot rightfully claim the doubtful honour of having been the first
American commonwealth to try the experiment of a “Maine Law.” Such were
the beginnings of Georgia, and in the Spanish war of 1739 it quite
justified the foresight of its founder. The valour of the Highlanders
and the admirable generalship of Oglethorpe were an efficient bulwark
for the older colonies. In 1742 the Spaniards were at last decisively
defeated at Frederica, and from that time forth until the Revolution
the frontier was more quiet. But proprietary government in Georgia
fared no better than in the Carolinas. In 1752, one year before the
coming of age, the government by trustees was abandoned. Georgia was
made a crown colony, and a representative government was introduced
simultaneously with negro slavery and Jamaica rum.

The social condition of colonial Georgia does not present many
distinctive or striking features. In 1770 the population numbered about
50,000, of which perhaps one half were slaves. There was no town life.
Rice and indigo were the principal crops, and there was a large export
of lumber. Near Savannah there were a few extensive plantations, with
fine houses, after the Virginia pattern; but most of the estates were
small, and their owners poor. The Church of England was supported by
the government, but the clergy had little influence. The condition
of the slaves differed but slightly, if at all, from their condition
in South Carolina. There were a good many “mean whites,” and there
was, perhaps, more crime and lawlessness than in the older colonies.
The roads were mere Indian trails, and there were neither schools,
nor mails, nor any kind of literature. Colonial Georgia, in short,
with many of the characteristics of a “wild West,” stood in relation
to South Carolina somewhat as North Carolina to Virginia. It was
essentially a frontier community, though the activity of Savannah as a
seaport somewhat qualified the situation.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: Cavaliers and Puritans once more.]

A comparative survey of Old Virginia’s neighbours shows how extremely
loose and inaccurate is the common habit of alluding to the old
Cavalier society of England as if it were characteristic of the
southern states in general. Equally loose and ignorant is the habit of
alluding to Puritanism as if it were peculiar to New England. In point
of fact the Cavalier society was reproduced nowhere save on Chesapeake
Bay. On the other hand, the English or Independent phase of Puritanism
was by no means confined to the New England colonies. Three fourths
of the people of Maryland were Puritans; English Puritanism, with the
closely kindred French Calvinism, swayed South Carolina; and in our
concluding chapter we shall see how the Scotch or Presbyterian phase
of Puritanism extended throughout the whole length of the Appalachian
region, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and has exercised in the
southwest an influence always great and often predominant. In the South
to-day there is much more Puritanism surviving than in New England.

But before we join in the westward progress from tidewater to the peaks
of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky range, we must look back upon the
ocean for a moment and see how it came to be infested with buccaneers
and pirates, and what effects they wrought upon our coasts.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRATES.


[Sidenote: Pompey and the pirates.]

[Sidenote: Piracy on the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.]

At no other time in the world’s history has the business of piracy
thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of
the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about
1650 to about 1720. In ancient times the seafaring was too limited
in its area to admit of such wholesale operations as went on after
the broad Atlantic had become a highway between the Old World and the
New. No doubt those Cretan and Cilician pirates who were suppressed
by the great Pompey were terrible fellows. After the destruction of
Carthage they controlled the Mediterranean from the coast of Judæa to
the Pillars of Hercules, and captured the cargoes of Egyptian grain
till at times Rome seemed threatened with famine. Roman commanders
one after another went down before them, until at length, in the year
B. C. 67, Pompey was appointed dictator over the Mediterranean and
all its coasts for fifty miles inland. The dimensions of his task are
indicated by the fact that in the course of that year he captured 3,000
vessels, hung or crucified 10,000 pirates, and made prisoners of 20,000
more, whom he hustled off to hard labour in places far from the sound
of surf. Nevertheless those ancient pirates worked on a much smaller
scale than the buccaneers of America. In the Indian Ocean adjacent
stretches of the Pacific there has always been much piracy until the
recent days when French and English ships have patrolled those waters.
The fame of the Chinese and Malays as sea robbers is well established.
So too with those vile communities north of Sahara which we used to
call the Barbary States, their eminence in crime is unsurpassed. From
the fifteenth century to the first years of the nineteenth, piracy was
one of their chief sources of revenue; their ships were a terror to the
coasts of Europe, and for devilish atrocity scarcely any human annals
are so black as those of Morocco and Algiers. But as these Mussulman
pirates and those of eastern Asia were as busily at work in the
seventeenth century as at any other time, their case does not impair my
statement that the age of the buccaneers was the Golden Age of piracy.
The deeds done in American waters greatly swelled, if they did not more
than double, the volume of maritime robbery already existing.

[Sidenote: The Vikings were not pirates in the strict sense.]

[Sidenote: Blackstone on the crime of piracy.]

If we look into mediæval history for examples to compare with those
already cited, we may observe that the Scandinavian Vikings, such men
as sailed with Rolf and Guthorm and Swegen Forkbeard, are sometimes
spoken of as pirates. If such a classification of them were correct,
we should be obliged to assign the Golden Age of piracy to the ninth
and tenth centuries, for surely all other slayings and plunderings
done by seafaring men shrink into insignificance beside the operations
of those mighty warriors of the North. But it is neither a just nor a
correct use of language that would count as pirates a race of men who
simply made war like all their contemporaries, only more effectively.
The warfare of the Vikings was that of barbarous heathen, but it was
not criminal unless it is a crime to be born a barbarian. The moral
difference between killing the enemy in battle and murdering your
neighbour is plain enough. If there is any word which implies thorough
and downright criminality, it is pirate. In the old English law the
pirate was declared an enemy to the human race, with whom no faith
need be kept. “As therefore,” says Blackstone, “he has renounced all
the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh
to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind,
all mankind must declare war against him, and every community hath a
right by the rule of self-defence to inflict that punishment upon him
which every individual would in a state of nature have been otherwise
entitled to do for any invasion of his person or property.”[303]
Pirates taken at sea were commonly hung from the yard-arm without the
formality of a trial, and on land neither church nor shrine could serve
them as sanctuary. It was also well understood that they were not
included in the benefit of a general declaration of pardon or amnesty.

[Sidenote: Character of piracy.]

The pirate thus elaborately outlawed was anybody who participated in
violent robbery on the high seas, or in criminal plunder along their
coasts. The details of such crimes were apt to be full of cruelty. The
capture of a merchant ship with more or less bloodshed was usually
involved, and such bloodshed was wholesale murder. If provisions were
less than ample, the survivors were thrown overboard, or set ashore on
some lonely island and left to starve, and this often happened. Murders
from sheer wantonness were not uncommon, and the sack of a coast town
or village was attended with nameless horrors. On the whole we cannot
wonder that public opinion should have branded the skippers and crews
who did such things as the very worst of criminals. One can see that
in old trials for piracy, as in trials for witchcraft, the dread and
detestation were often so great as to outweigh the ordinary English
presumption that an accused person must have the benefit of the doubt
until proved guilty. Desire to extirpate the crime became a stronger
feeling than reluctance to punish the innocent. The slightest suspicion
of complicity with pirates brought with it extreme peril.

[Sidenote: To call the Elizabethan sea kings “pirates” is silly and
outrageous.]

When we thus recall what the crime of piracy really was, we cannot
fail to see how reprehensible is the language sometimes applied, by
writers who should know better, to the noble sailors who in the days
of Queen Elizabeth saved England from the Spanish Inquisition.[304]
Had it not been for the group of devoted men among whom Sir Francis
Drake was foremost, there was imminent danger three hundred years ago
that human freedom might perish from off the face of the earth. The
name of Drake is one that should never be uttered without reverence,
especially by Americans, since it is clear that but for him our
history would not have begun in the days of Elizabeth’s successor.
His character was far loftier than that of Nelson, the only other sea
warrior whose achievements have equalled his. His performances never
transgressed the bounds of legitimate warfare as it was conducted in
the sixteenth century. Among his contemporaries he was exceptionally
humane, for he would not permit the wanton destruction of life or
property. To use language which even remotely alludes to such a man
as a pirate is to show sad confusion of ideas. As for Elizabeth’s
other great captains,--such as Raleigh, Cavendish, Hawkins, Gilbert,
Grenville, Frobisher, Winter, and the Howards,--few of them rose to
the moral stature of Drake, but they were very far above the level of
freebooters. It seems ridiculous that it should be necessary to say so.
Their business was warfare, not robbery.

[Sidenote: Features of maritime warfare out of which piracy could grow.]

[Sidenote: Privateering.]

It is nevertheless undeniable that naval warfare in the days of
Elizabeth stood on a lower moral plane than naval warfare in the days
of Victoria, and things were done without hesitation then that would
not be tolerated now. Wars are ugly things at best, but civilized
people have learned how to worry through them without inflicting
quite so much misery as formerly. Three centuries ago not only
were the usages more harsh than now, but the methods of conducting
maritime warfare contained a feature out of which, under favouring
circumstances, piracy afterward grew. There can be no doubt that
the seventeenth century was the golden age of pirates because it
came immediately after the age of Elizabeth. The circumstances of
the struggle of the Netherlands and England against the greatest
military power in the world made it necessary for the former to rely
largely, and the latter almost exclusively, upon naval operations.
Dutch ships on the Indian Ocean and English ships off the American
coasts effectually cut the Spaniard’s sinews of war. Now in that age
ocean navigation was still in its infancy, and the work of creating
great and permanent navies was only beginning. Government was glad to
have individuals join in the work of building and equipping ships of
war, and it was accordingly natural that individuals should expect to
reimburse themselves for the heavy risk and expense by taking a share
in the spoils of victory. In this way privateering came into existence,
and it played a much more extensive part in maritime warfare than it
now does. The navy was but incompletely nationalized. Into expeditions
that were strictly military in purpose there entered some of the
elements of a commercial speculation, and as we read them with our
modern ideas we detect the smack of buccaneering.

[Sidenote: Fighting without declaring war.]

To this it should be added that fighting between hostile states
occurred much more frequently than now without a formal declaration
of war. There were times in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
when the hatred between the commercial rivals, Venice and Genoa, was so
fierce that whenever their ships happened to meet on the Mediterranean
they went to fighting at sight, yet those bloody scrimmages did not
always lead to war. In the youth of Christopher Columbus it was
seldom that Christian and Turkish ships met without bloodshed, on the
assumption that war was the normal state of things between Crescent
and Cross. So when the Dutch were contending against Philip II. the
English often helped their heroic cousins by capturing Spanish ships
long before war was declared between Philip and Elizabeth. Such laxity
of international usage made it easy to cross the line which demarcates
privateering from piracy.

[Sidenote: Lack of protection for neutral ships.]

It should also be remembered that the ships of neutral nations had
no such protection as now. The utmost that is now permitted the
belligerent ship is to search the neutral ship for weapons or other
materials of war bound for an enemy’s port, and to confiscate such
materials without further injury to person or property. In the
sixteenth century it was allowable to confiscate the neutral ship bound
for an enemy’s port, sell her cargo for prize money, and hold her crew
and passengers for ransom. The milder doctrine that any kind of goods
might be seized, but not the ship and her people, had been propounded
but was not yet generally accepted.

[Sidenote: Spanish treasure.]

All the circumstances here mentioned were favourable to the growth
of piracy. At the same time the temptations were unusually strong.
There was a vague widespread belief that America was a land abounding
in treasure, and there were facts enough to explain such a belief.
Immense quantities of gold and silver were carried across the Atlantic
in Spanish ships, to say nothing of other articles of value. This
treasure was used to support a war which threatened English liberty,
and therefore English cruisers were right in seizing it wherever they
could. But it only needed that such cruising should fall into the hands
of knaves and ruffians, and that it should be kept up after Spain and
England were really at peace, for this semi-mediæval warfare to develop
into a gigantic carnival of robbery and murder. And so it happened.

[Sidenote: Origin of buccaneering.]

It was toward the end of the sixteenth century, in the course of
the great Elizabethan war, that the West Indies witnessed the first
appearance of the marauders known as “Brethren of the Coast.” They were
of various nationalities, chiefly French, English, and Dutch. They
all regarded Spain as the world’s great bully that must be teased.
The Spaniards had won such a reputation for tyranny and cruelty that
public opinion was not shocked when they were made to swallow a dose or
two of their own medicine. After peace had been declared, any foreign
adventurers coming to the West Indies were liable to be molested as
intruders, and their ships sometimes had to fight in self-defence.
Wherefore the more unscrupulous rovers, expecting ill-treatment,
used not to wait for it, but when they saw a good chance for robbing
Spaniards they promptly seized it. This they called, in the witty
phrase of a French captain, _se dédommager par avance_, or recouping
one’s self beforehand.

[Sidenote: Illicit traffic.]

It was not all the people of Spanish America, however, that frowned
upon foreigners. Among those who came were sundry small traders of the
illicit sort. Like all semi-barbarous governments, the court of Spain
pursued a highly protectionist policy. The colonists were not allowed
to receive European goods from any but Spanish ports, and thus the
Spanish exporters were enabled to charge exorbitant prices. Many of the
colonists therefore welcomed smugglers who brought European wares to
exchange for cargoes of sugar or hides. To suppress this traffic, the
authorities at San Domingo patrolled the coasts with small cruisers
known as _guardacostas_, and when they caught the intruders they
pitched them overboard, or strung them up to the yard-arm, without
the smallest ceremony. In revenge the intruders combined into fleets
and made descents upon the coasts, burning houses, plundering towns,
and committing all manner of outrages. Thus there grew up in the West
Indies a chronic state of hostilities quite independent of Europe. It
came to be understood among the intruders that, whether their countries
were at peace or war with one another, all persons coming to the West
Indies were friends and allies against that universal enemy, the
Spaniard. Thus these rovers took the name of “Brethren of the Coast.”

[Sidenote: Buccaneers and “flibustiers.”]

As the consequence of more than a century of frightful misrule the
beautiful island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, had come to be in many parts
deserted. Many good havens were unguarded, and everywhere there were
immense herds of cattle and swine running wild. Some of the brethren,
mostly Frenchmen, were thus led to settle in the island and do a
thriving business in hides, tallow, smoked beef, and salted pork, which
they bartered with their sailor brethren for things smuggled from
Europe. They drove away the Spaniards who tried to disturb them, and
amid perpetual fighting the island came to be more and more French.
Presently, from 1625 to 1630, they took possession of the little
islands of St. Christopher and Nevis, and built strong fortifications
at Tortuga. About this time they began to be called “boucaniers”
or “buccaneers.” To cure meat by smoking was called by the Indians
“boucanning” it. La Rochefort says of the Caribs that they used to
eat their prisoners well boucanned. In the days before cattle came to
the New World, Americus Vespucius saw boucanned human shoulders and
thighs hanging in Indian cabins as one would hang a flitch of bacon.
The buccaneers were named for the excellent boucanned beef and pork
which they sold. For their brethren on shipboard another name was at
first used. The English word “freebooter” became in French mouths
“flibustier,” in spelling which a silent _s_ was inserted after the _u_
by a false analogy, as so often happens. In recent times “flibustier”
has come back into English as “filibuster,” a name originally given
to such United States adventurers as William Walker, making raids upon
Spanish-American coasts in the interests of slavery. In the first use
of the epithets, if you lived on shore and smoked beef you were a
_boucanier_; but if you lived on ship and smuggled or stole wherewithal
to buy the beef you were a _flibustier_. Naturally, however, since so
many of these restless brethren passed back and forth from the one
occupation to the other, the names came to be applied indiscriminately,
and whether you called a scamp by the one or the other made no
difference.

[Sidenote: The kind of people that became buccaneers.]

Those “Brethren of the Coast” were recruited in every way that can be
imagined. Cutthroats and rioters, spendthrifts and debtors, thieves
and vagabonds, runaway apprentices, broken-down tradesmen, soldiers
out of a job, escaped convicts, religious cranks, youths crossed in
love, every sort of man that craved excitement or change of luck,
came to swell the numbers of the buccaneers. Graceless sons of good
families usually assumed some new name. Yet not all were ashamed of
their lawless occupation. Some gloried in it, and deemed themselves
pinks of propriety in matters pertaining to religion. One day, when
a certain sailor was behaving with unseemly levity in church while a
priest was saying mass, his captain suddenly stepped up and rebuked
him for his want of reverence, and then blew his brains out. It is
told of a Frenchman from Languedoc that his career was determined by
reading a book on the cruelties of the Spaniards in America, probably
“The Destruction of the Indies,” by Las Casas. This perusal inflamed
him with such furious hatred of Spaniards that he conceived it to
be his sacred mission to kill as many as he could. So he joined the
buccaneers, and murdered with such exemplary diligence that he came
to be known as Montbars the Exterminator. Another noted freebooter,
Raveneau de Lussan, joined the fraternity “because he was in debt, and
wished, as every honest man should do, to have wherewithal to satisfy
his creditors.”[305]

[Sidenote: Deeds of Olonnois.]

One of the early exploits of the brethren was performed by Pierre of
Dieppe, surnamed “the Great.” In a mere longboat, with a handful of
men, he surprised and captured the Spanish vice-admiral’s ship, heavily
freighted with treasure, set her people ashore in Hispaniola, and
took his prize to France. This exploit is said to have given quite an
impetus to buccaneering. In 1655 the buccaneers had grown so powerful
that they gave important aid to Cromwell’s troops in conquering
Jamaica. When any nation went to war with Spain, the buccaneers of that
nationality would get from the government letters of marque, which made
them privateers and entitled them to certain rights of belligerents.
Their aid was so liable to be useful in time of need that the English
and French governments connived at some of their performances. No
civilized government could countenance their cruelties. One monster,
called Olonnois, having captured a Spanish ship with a crew of ninety
men, beheaded them all with a sabre in his own hands. Four cases are
on record in which he threw the whole crew overboard, and it is said
that he sometimes tore out and devoured the bleeding hearts of his
victims, after the Indian fashion. In concert with another wretch,
Michel le Basque (whose name tells his origin), at the head of 650
men, he captured the towns of Gibraltar and Maracaibo, in the Gulf of
Venezuela, and carried off a booty of nearly half a million crowns,
equivalent to more than two million modern dollars. Prisoners were
tortured to disclose hidden treasure. But this precious Olonnois was
soon afterward paid in his own coin: he fell into the hands of a party
of hungry Indians, who cooked and ate him.

[Sidenote: Henry Morgan.]

Such incidents as these in Venezuela made many Spanish towns prefer to
buy off the buccaneers, and thus a system of blackmail was established.
It was for the buccaneer to decide for himself whether he deemed it
more profitable to end all in one mad frolic of plunder and slaughter,
or to accept a round sum and leave the town for the present unharmed.
Operations on a grand scale began about 1664, under a leader named
Mansvelt, who soon died and was succeeded by Henry Morgan, the most
famous of the buccaneers and one of the vilest of the fraternity. This
Welshman is said to have been of good family and well brought up. He
made his way to Barbadoes as a redemptioner, and after serving out
his term joined the pirates. He was a man of remarkable courage and
resource. For cruelty no Apache could surpass him, and his perfidy
equalled his cruelty. He paid so little heed to the maxims of
honour among thieves that it is a wonder he should have retained his
leadership through several expeditions.

One of Morgan’s early exploits was the capture of Puerto del Principe,
in Cuba. Then with 500 men he attacked Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of
Darien. Having taken a convent, he forced the nuns to carry scaling
ladders and plant them against the walls of the citadel, perhaps in
the hope that Spaniards would not fire upon Spanish women; but many of
the poor nuns were killed. After the garrison had surrendered, Morgan
set fire to the magazine and blew into fragments the fort with its
defenders. The scenes that followed must have won Satan’s approval.
With greed unsatisfied by the enormous booty, the monster devised
horrible tortures for the discovery of secret hoards that doubtless
existed only in his fancy. Many victims died under the infliction.

[Sidenote: Alexander Exquemeling.]

Soon afterward Morgan met in the Caribbean Sea a powerful French pirate
ship and invited her to join him. On the French captain’s refusal,
Morgan, with an air of supreme cordiality, invited him to come over to
dinner with all his officers. No sooner had these guests arrived than
they were seized and put in irons, while Morgan attacked their ship
and captured it. Then came a strange retribution. Morgan put some of
his own officers with 350 of his crew into the French ship; presently
the officers got drunk, and through accident or carelessness the ship
was blown up with all the English crew and the French prisoners.
This story is told by a pious and literary Dutch buccaneer, the
fraternity’s best historian, by name Alexander Exquemeling, sometimes
corrupted into Oexmelin. His well-written narrative was first published
at Amsterdam in 1678, entitled _De Americansche Zee Roovers_. It has
been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe, and ranks
among the most popular books of the last two centuries.[306] The pious
Exquemeling, in recounting the explosion of the captured ship, sees
in it a special divine judgment upon Morgan for treachery to guests,
a kind of philosophizing which is duly ridiculed by Voltaire in his
“Candide.”[307]

[Sidenote: Maracaibo and Gibraltar.]

The loss of 350 men and a ship better than any of his own was a serious
blow to Morgan, but it did not prevent him from capturing those unhappy
towns, Maracaibo and Gibraltar, where he shut up a crowd of prisoners
in a church and left them to die of starvation. His own escape from
capture, however, was a narrow one. Three Spanish galleons arrived at
the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela and strongly garrisoned a castle
that stood there, so that it began to look as if the day of reckoning
for Morgan had come. But he made one of his vessels into a fire-ship
and succeeded in burning two of the galleons. Then it became easy
for his little fleet to surround and capture the third, after which
a masterly series of stratagems enabled him to slip past the castle,
richer by a million dollars than when he entered the Gulf, and ready
for fresh deeds of wickedness.

[Sidenote: Treaty of America, 1670.]

[Sidenote: Sack of Panama.]

[Sidenote: Morgan absconds.]

The British government lamented these cruel aggressions upon people
whose only offence was that of having been born Spaniards, and in 1670
a treaty was made between Spain and Great Britain for the express
purpose of putting an end to buccaneering. This interesting treaty,
which was conceived in an unusually liberal and enlightened spirit,
was called the treaty of America. As soon as the buccaneers heard of
it, they resolved to make a defiant and startling exhibition of their
power. Thirty-seven ships, carrying more than 2,000 men of various
nationalities, were collected off the friendly meat-curing coast of
Hispaniola. Morgan was put in the chief command, and it was decided
to capture Panama. On arriving at the isthmus they stormed the castle
at the mouth of the river Chagres and put the garrison to the sword.
Thus they gained an excellent base of operations. Leaving part of his
force to guard castle and fleet, Morgan at the head of 1,200 men made
the difficult journey across the isthmus in nine days. Panama was not
fortified, but a force of 2,000 infantry and 400 horse confronted the
buccaneers. In an obstinate battle, without quarter asked or given, the
Spaniards lost 600 men and gave way. The city was then at the mercy
of the victors. It contained about 7,000 houses and some handsome
churches, but Morgan set fire to it in several places, and after a
couple of days nearly all these buildings were in ashes. By the light
of those flames most hideous atrocities were to be seen,--such a
carnival of cruelty and lust as would have disgraced the Middle Ages.
After three bestial weeks the buccaneers departed with a long train of
mules laden with booty, and several hundred prisoners, most of whom
were held for ransom. Among these were many gentlewomen and children,
whom Morgan treated savagely. He kept them half dead with hunger and
thirst, and swore that if they failed to secure a ransom he would sell
them for slaves in Jamaica. Exquemeling draws a pathetic picture of
the poor ladies kneeling and imploring at Morgan’s feet while their
starving children moaned and cried; the only effect upon the ruffian
was to make him ask them how much ransom they might hope to secure if
these things were made known to their friends. When the party arrived
at Chagres, there was a division of spoil, and the rascals were amazed
to find how little there seemed to be to distribute. Morgan was accused
of loading far more than his rightful share upon his own vessels,
whereupon, not wishing to argue the matter, he made up his mind to
withdraw from the scene, “which he did,” says our chronicler, “without
calling any council or bidding any one adieu, but went secretly on
board his own ship and put out to sea without giving notice, being
followed only by three or four vessels of the whole fleet, who it is
believed went shares with him in the greatest part of the spoil.” All
that can be said for him is that most of his comrades would gladly have
done the same by him.

[Sidenote: Scotching the snake.]

With Morgan’s departure the pirate fleet was scattered, and plenty
of strong language was used in reference to their tricksome
commodore.[308] The arrival of a new English governor at Jamaica, with
instructions to enforce the treaty of America, led to the hanging
of quite a number of buccaneers; and a crew of 300 French pirates,
shipwrecked on the coast of Porto Rico, were slaughtered by order of
the Spanish governor. But such casualties produced little effect upon
the swarming multitude of rovers, and within half a dozen years we find
the governor of Jamaica conniving at them and sharing in their plunder.
One pirate crew brought in a Spanish ship so richly freighted that
there was £400 for every man after a round sum in hush-money had been
handed to the governor. Then the pirates burned the ship and embarked
in respectable company for England, “where,” says Exquemeling, “some of
them live in good reputation to this day.”

[Sidenote: Morgan’s metamorphosis.]

But what shall we say when we find the devil turning monk, when we
see the arch-pirate Morgan administering the king’s justice upon his
quondam comrades and sending them by scores to the gallows! It reads
like a scene in comic opera, how this dirty fellow, after absconding
with a lion’s share of the Panama spoil and bringing it to Jamaica,
suddenly put on airs of righteousness, wooed and won the fair daughter
of one of the most eminent personages on the island, and was appointed
a judge of the admiralty court. The finishing touch was put upon the
farce when Charles II. decorated him with knighthood. It is not clear
how he won the king’s favour, but we know that Charles was not above
taking tips. After this our capacity for amazement is so far exhausted
that we read with benumbed acquiescence how in 1682 Sir Henry Morgan
was appointed deputy-governor of Jamaica.[309] But when we find him
handing over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards a whole crew of
English buccaneers who had fallen into his clutches, we seem to
recognize the old familiar touch, and cannot repress the suspicion that
he sold them for hard cash! He remained in office three years, until
James II. ascended the throne, when the Spanish government accused him
of secret complicity with the pirates. On this charge he was removed
from office and sent to England, where he was for some years imprisoned
but never met the fate which he deserved.

[Sidenote: Decline of buccaneering.]

Exquemeling expresses the opinion that, after the trick which
Morgan played upon his comrades at Chagres, he must have thought it
more prudent to be on the side of government than to stay with the
buccaneers. He may also have foreseen that sooner or later the treaty
of America was likely to interfere with the business of piracy. It
is curious that, after all his caution, his downfall on a charge
brought by Spain before the British government was due to the treaty
of America. Although imperfectly enforced, that treaty seems to have
marked the turning point in the history of buccaneering. The sack of
Panama was the apogee of the golden age of pirates; the events that
followed are incidents in a gradual but not slow decline. In 1684 the
number of French buccaneers in the West Indies and on adjacent coasts
was estimated at 3,000, and of other nationalities there were perhaps
as many more; but their operations were on a smaller and tamer scale
than those of Olonnois and Morgan.

[Sidenote: Buccaneers of the South Sea.]

About this time the South Sea began to be the favourite field of work
for some of the most famous buccaneers. In 1680 the first party
crossed the isthmus and set sail on the Bay of Panama in a swarm of
canoes, with which on the same day they captured a Spanish vessel of
30 tons. With this ship they captured another the next day, and so
on till at the end of the week they were in possession of quite a
fleet, comprising some ships of 400 tons. They cruised as far as the
island of Juan Fernandez and beyond, capturing many ships and much
treasure, but not doing much harm ashore. One of the officers, Basil
Ringrose, an educated man, left a journal of this cruise, the original
manuscript of which is in the British Museum. Other voyages followed
until the buccaneers had visited such remote places as the Ladrone
Islands, Easter Island, the coasts of Australia, and Tierra del Fuego.
Among their commanders were men of far better type than those that
have hitherto been mentioned; such were Ambrose Cowley, Edward Davis,
the surgeon Lionel Wafer, and the celebrated William Dampier, whom we
are more wont to remember as a great navigator and explorer than as a
pirate. Cowley, Wafer, and Dampier have left charming narratives of
their adventures, in which a mixture of scientific inquisitiveness
with the love of barbaric independence is more conspicuous than mere
greed. As Henry Morgan was a pirate of the worst type, so Edward Davis,
discoverer of Easter Island, was of the best. He never would permit
acts of cruelty or wanton bloodshed, and his loyalty and kindness to
his comrades won their affection, so that his mellowing influence over
rough natures was remarkable. In 1688 he took advantage of a royal
proclamation of amnesty to quit buccaneering and go to England, where
he was afterward counted as “respectable.”

[Sidenote: Plunder of Peruvian towns.]

As we read the journals of those remote voyages it is easy to forget
for a moment that the business is piracy. We seem to see the staunch
ships, superbly handled by their expert sailors, blithely cleaving the
blue waters under the Southern Cross; we breathe the cool salt breeze;
we watch with interest the gray cliffs, the strange foliage, the birds
and snakes and insects which arouse the curiosity of the mariners; we
follow them to the Galapagos Islands, which first suggested to Darwin
and afterward to Wallace the theory of natural selection; we note with
pleasure their description of the uncouth natives of Australia; and
we remember Thackeray when we encounter oysters so huge that Basil
Ringrose has to cut them in quarters.[310] In the careless freedom of
life on an unknown sea with each morrow bringing its new adventures, we
forget what company we are in, till suddenly the victim ship heaves in
sight, the brief chase ends in a deadly struggle, the Spanish colours
go down before the black flag, a few bodies are buried in the depths,
and a rich spoil is divided. It is vulgar robbery and murder after
all, and there was a good deal of it in the South Sea. The coast of
Peru, where there were the richest towns, suffered the most. The Lima
Almanacs for 1685-87, comprising an official record of events for each
year immediately preceding, mention the towns of Guayaquil, Santiago
de Miraflores, and five others as plundered by the pirates. When Davis
divided his booty at Juan Fernandez, there was enough to give every
man a sum equivalent to $20,000. Very often a pirate got more gold
and silver than he could handle or carry, but it was apt to slip away
easily. Many of Davis’s company quickly lost every dollar in gambling
with their comrades. Our friend Raveneau de Lussan, who took to piracy
in order to satisfy his creditors, tells his readers that his winnings
at play, added to his share of booty, amounted to 30,000 pieces of
eight, which would now be equivalent to at least $120,000; so we may
hope that he paid his debts like an honest man.

[Sidenote: Effects of the alliance between France and Spain.]

The event which did more than anything else to put an end to
buccaneering was the accession of a Bourbon prince, Philip V., to
the throne of Spain in 1701. It was then that his grandfather, Louis
XIV., declared there were no longer any Pyrenees. Ever since the days
of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain and France had been enemies. Their
relations now became so friendly that all the ports of Spanish America,
whether in the West Indies or on the Pacific coast, were thrown open
to French merchants. This made trade more profitable than piracy, and
united the French and Spanish navies in protecting it. The English and
Dutch fleets also put forth redoubled efforts, and during the next
score of years the decline of the pirates was rapid.

[Sidenote: Carolina and the Bahamas.]

The first English settlements south of Virginia were made at the time
when buccaneering was mighty and defiant. The colony of Sir John
Yeamans, on Cape Fear River, was begun in 1665, and it was in 1670,
the very year of the treaty of America, that Governor Sayle landed
at Port Royal. The earliest settlers in Carolina, as we have seen,
were not of such good quality as those who came a few years later.
They furnished a convenient market for the pirates, who were apt to
be open-handed customers, ready to pay good prices in Spanish gold,
whether for clothes, weapons, and brandy brought from Europe, or for
timber, tar, tobacco, rice, or corn raised in America. One of the
Bahama Islands, called New Providence, had been settled by the English.
Its remarkable facilities for anchorage and its convenient situation
made it a favourite haunt of pirates, whose evil communications
corrupted the good manners of the inhabitants. Rather than lose such
customers they befriended them in every possible way, so that the
island became notorious as one of the worst nests of desperadoes in the
American waters. The malady was not long in spreading to the mainland.
The Carolina coast, with its numerous sheltered harbours and inlets,
afforded excellent lurking-places, whither one might retreat from
pursuers, and where one might leisurely repair damages and make ready
for further mischief. The pirates, therefore, long haunted that coast,
and it was rather a help than a hindrance to them when settlements
began to be made there. For now instead of a wilderness it became a
market where they could buy food, medicines, tools, or most of such
things as they needed. So long as they behaved moderately well while
ashore, it was not necessary for the Carolinians to press them with
questions as to what they did on the high seas. For at least thirty
years after the founding of Carolina, nearly all the currency in the
colony consisted of Spanish gold and silver brought in by freebooters
from the West Indies.

[Sidenote: Effect of the Navigation Laws.]

Nothing went so far toward making the colonists tolerate piracy as the
Navigation Laws which we have already described. We have seen how they
enabled English merchants to charge exorbitant prices for goods shipped
to America, and to pay as little as possible for American exports. The
contrast between such customers and the pirates was entirely in favour
of the latter, who could afford to be liberal both with goods and with
cash that had cost them nothing but a little fighting.[311] After the
founding of Charleston, the dealings with pirates there were made the
subject of complaint in London. In 1684 Robert Quarry, acting governor
of Carolina, a man of marked ability and good reputation, was removed
from office for complicity with pirates. This did not, however, prevent
his being appointed to other responsible positions. His successor,
Joseph Morton, actually gave permission to two buccaneer captains to
bring their Spanish prizes into the harbour. Soon afterward John Boon,
a member of the council, was expelled for holding correspondence with
freebooters. At the close of Ludwell’s administration, it was said that
Charleston fairly swarmed with pirates, against whose ill-got gold
the law was powerless. Along with such commercial reasons, the terror
of their fame conspired to protect them. Desperadoes who had sacked
Maracaibo and Panama might do likewise to Charleston or New York. It
was not only in Carolina that such fears combined with the Navigation
Laws to sustain piracy. In Pennsylvania a son of the deputy-governor
Markham was elected to the Assembly, but not allowed to take a seat
because of dealings with the freebooters. Governor Fletcher, of New
York, was deeply implicated in such proceedings, and the record of
distant New England was far from stainless.

[Sidenote: Effect of rice culture.]

But at the end of the seventeenth century a marked change became
visible. In South Carolina the cultivation of rice had reached such
dimensions that tonnage enough could not be found to carry the crop of
1699 across the Atlantic. The colonists were allowed to sell in foreign
markets such goods as were not wanted in England, and England took
very little rice. Most of it went to Holland, Hamburg, Bremen, Sweden,
Denmark, and Portugal. As rice was thus becoming the chief source of
income for South Carolina, people began to be sorely vexed when pirates
captured their cargoes. Besides this, the character of the population
was entirely changed by the influx of steady, law-abiding English
dissenters under Blake, and by the immigration of large numbers of
Huguenots. The pirates became unpopular, and the year 1699 witnessed
the hanging of seven of them at Charleston. As the colony yearly grew
stronger and the administration firmer, such rigours increased, and the
great gallows on Execution Dock was decorated with corpses swinging in
chains, a dozen or more at a time, until the pirates came to think of
that harbour as a place to be shunned.

[Sidenote: North Carolina.]

There still remained for them, however, an excellent place of refuge in
the neighbourhood. In the year 1700 Edward Randolph reported that the
population of North Carolina consisted of smugglers, runaway servants,
and pirates. There is no doubt that for the latter it furnished a
favourite hiding-place.

[Sidenote: Swarms of pirates.]

For some years after 1700 the vigorous measures of South Carolina
kept her own coast comparatively safe, but the snake was as yet only
scotched. Swarms of buccaneers, though far thinner than of old, were
still harboured in the West Indies, and when occasion was offered
they came out of their dens. In 1715, when South Carolina was nearly
exhausted from her great Indian war, with crops damaged and treasury
empty and military gaze turned toward the frontier and away from the
coast, the pirates swarmed there again, with numbers swelled by rovers
and bandits turned adrift by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. James Logan,
Secretary of Pennsylvania, reported in 1717 that there were 1,500
pirates on our coasts, with their chief headquarters at Cape Fear and
New Providence, from which points they swept the sea from Newfoundland
to Brazil. For South Carolina there was ground of alarm lest wholesale
pillage of rice cargoes should bring ruin upon the colony. But that
year 1717 saw the arrival of the able governor Robert Johnson, who was
destined, after some humiliation, to suppress the nuisance of piracy.

[Sidenote: New Providence redeemed.]

The next year, 1718, was the beginning of the end. In midsummer
an English fleet, under Woodes Rogers, captured the island of New
Providence, expelled the freebooters, and established there a strong
company of law-abiding persons. Henceforth New Providence became a
smiter of the wicked instead of their hope and refuge. It was like
capturing a battery and turning it against the enemy. One of its
immediate effects, however, was to turn the whole remnant of the
scoundrels over to the North Carolina coast, where they took their
final stand. For a moment the mischief seemed to have increased. One
deed, in particular, is vivid in its insolence.

[Sidenote: Blackbeard, the “Last of the Pirates.”]

Among these corsairs one of the boldest was a fellow whose name appears
in court records as Robert Thatch, though some historians write it
Teach. He was a native of Bristol in England, and his real name seems
to have been Drummond. But the soubriquet by which he was most widely
known was “Blackbeard.” It was a name with which mothers and nurses
were wont to tame froward children. This man was a ruffian guilty of
all crimes known to the law, a desperate character who would stick at
nothing. For many years he had been a terror to the coast. In June,
1718, he appeared before Charleston harbour in command of a forty-gun
frigate, with three attendant sloops, manned in all by more than 400
men. Eight or ten vessels, rashly venturing out, were captured by him,
one after another, and in one of them were several prominent citizens
of Charleston, including a highly respected member of the council, all
bound for London. When Blackbeard learned the quality of his prisoners,
his fertile brain conceived a brilliant scheme. His ships were in need
of sundry medicines and other provisions, whereof a list was duly made
out and entrusted to a mate named Richards and a party of sailors, who
went up to Charleston in a boat, taking along one of the prisoners with
a message to Governor Johnson. The message was briefly this, that,
if the supplies mentioned were not delivered to Blackbeard within
eight-and-forty hours, that eminent commander would forthwith send to
Governor Johnson, with his compliments, the heads of all his prisoners.

[Sidenote: South Carolina government over-awed.]

It was a terrible humiliation, but the pirate had calculated correctly.
Governor and council saw that he had them completely at his mercy.
They knew better than he how defenceless the town was; they knew that
his ships could batter it to pieces without effective resistance. Not
a minute must be lost, for Richards and his ruffians were strutting
airily about the streets amid fierce uproar, and, if the mob should
venture to assault them, woe to Blackbeard’s captives. The supplies
were delivered with all possible haste, and Blackbeard released the
prisoners after robbing them of everything they had, even to their
clothing, so that they went ashore nearly naked. From one of them he
took $6,000 in coin. After this exploit Blackbeard retired to North
Carolina, where it is said that he bought the connivance of Charles
Eden, the governor, who is further said to have been present at the
ceremony of the pirate’s marriage to his fourteenth wife.[312]

[Sidenote: Epidemic of piracy; cases of Kidd and Bonnet.]

[Sidenote: Fate of Bonnet.]

While the arch-villain, thus befriended, was roaming the coast as
far as Philadelphia and bringing his prizes into Pamlico Sound,
another rover was making trouble for Charleston. Major Stede Bonnet,
of Barbadoes, had taken up the business of piracy scarcely two years
before. He had served with credit in the army and was now past middle
life, with a good reputation and plenty of money, when all at once
he must needs take the short road to the gallows. Some say it was
because his wife was a vixen, a droll reason for turning pirate. But
in truth there was a moral contagion in this business. The case of
William Kidd, a few years before Bonnet, is an illustration. Kidd was
an able merchant, with a reputation for integrity, when William III.
sent him with a swift and powerful ship to chase pirates; and, lo!
when with this fine accoutrement he brings down less game than he had
hoped, he thinks it will pay better to turn pirate himself. In this
new walk of life he goes on achieving eminence, until on a summer day
he rashly steps ashore in Boston, is arrested, sent to London, and
hung.[313] Evidently there was a spirit of buccaneering in the air,
as in the twelfth century there was a spirit of crusading. And even
as children once went on a crusade, so we find women climbing the
shrouds and tending the guns of pirate ships.[314] Major Bonnet soon
became distinguished in his profession, and committed depredations
all the way from Barbadoes to the coast of Maine. Late in the summer
of 1718 Governor Johnson learned that there was a pirate active in
his neighbourhood, and he sent Colonel William Rhett, with two armed
ships, to chase him. The affair ended in an obstinate fight at the
mouth of Cape Fear River, in the course of which all the ships got
aground on sand-bars. It was clear that whichever combatant should
first be set free by the rising tide would have the other at his mercy,
and we can fancy the dreadful eagerness with which every ripple was
watched. One of Rhett’s ships was first to float, and just as she was
preparing to board the pirate he surrendered. Then it was learned that
he was none other than the famous Stede Bonnet. At the last his brute
courage deserted him, and the ecstasy of terror with which he begged
for life reminds one of the captive in “Rob Roy” who was hurled into
Loch Lomond. But entreaty fell upon deaf ears. It was a gala day at
Execution Dock when Bonnet and all his crew were hung in chains.

[Sidenote: Fate of Blackbeard.]

A few weeks later, while Blackboard was lurking in Ocracoke Inlet, with
ship well armed and ready for some fresh errand, he was overhauled by
two stout cruisers sent after him by Governor Spotswood, of Virginia.
In a desperate and bloody fight the “Last of the Pirates” was killed.
All the survivors of his crew were hanged, and his severed head
decorated the bowsprit of the leading ship as she returned in triumph
to James River.

Such forceful measures went on till the waters of Carolina were cleared
of the enemy, and by 1730 the fear of pirates was extinguished. For
year after year the deeds of Kidd and Blackbeard were rehearsed at
village firesides, and tales of buried treasure caused many a greedy
spade to delve in vain, until with the lapse of time the memory of all
these things grew dim and faded away.




CHAPTER XVII.

FROM TIDEWATER TO THE MOUNTAINS.


[Sidenote: Alexander Spotswood.]

[Sidenote: Governor and burgesses.]

[Sidenote: A sharp rebuke.]

It is time for our narrative to return to Virginia, where in June,
1710, just a hundred years after the coming of Lord Delaware, there
arrived upon the scene one of the best and ablest of all the colonial
governors. Alexander Spotswood was a member of the old and honourable
Scottish family which took its name from the barony of Spottiswoode,
in Berwick. His great-great-grandfather had been archbishop of St.
Andrews and chancellor of Scotland. His great-grandfather, Sir Robert
Spottiswoode, as secretary of state, had signed the commission of
Montrose, for which he was beheaded by the Covenanters in 1646.[315]
Alexander himself had been brought up from childhood in the army, where
he had seen some hard fighting. Already at the age of eight-and-twenty
he had attained the rank of colonel, and in that year received an
ugly wound at Blenheim. Six years after that great battle he arrived
in Virginia, a tall, robust man, with gnarled and wrinkled face and
an air of dignity and power. He was greeted at Williamsburg with more
than ordinary cordiality, because he brought with him a writ confirming
the claim of the Virginians that they were as much entitled as other
Englishmen to the privilege of _habeas corpus_. Notwithstanding this
auspicious reception he had a good many wrangles with his burgesses,
chiefly over questions of taxation, and sometimes talked to them quite
plainly. On one occasion when, during the Yamassee war in Carolina,
he requested an appropriation for a force to be sent in aid of their
southern neighbours, he found the burgesses less liberal than he wished
and expected. They pleaded the poverty of the country as an excuse for
not doing more. The governor’s retort was a telling one, and might be
applied with effect to many a modern legislative body. If they felt the
poverty of the country so keenly, why did they persist in sitting there
day after day and drawing their pay, while they wasted the country’s
time in frivolities without passing laws that were much needed? for
in the last five-and-twenty days only three bills had come from them.
At the end of a stormy session he addressed them still more sharply:
“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,
or any others to whom you think you owe not your elections. In fine, I
cannot but attribute these miscarriages to the people’s mistaken choice
of a set of representatives whom Heaven has not ... endowed with the
ordinary qualifications requisite to legislators; and therefore I
dissolve you!”[316]

In spite of this stinging tongue Spotswood was greatly liked and
respected for his ability and honesty and his thoroughly good heart.
He was a man sound in every fibre, clear-sighted, shrewd, immensely
vigorous, and full of public spirit. One day we find him establishing
Indian missions; the next he is undertaking to smelt iron and grow
native wines; the next he is sending out ships to exterminate the
pirates. For his energy in establishing smelting furnaces he was
nicknamed “The Tubal Cain of Virginia.” For the making of native wines
he brought over a colony of Germans from the Rhine, and settled them in
the new county named for him Spottsylvania, hard by the Rapidan River,
where Germanna Ford still preserves a reminiscence of their coming.

[Sidenote: The Post-office Act.]

Some of Spotswood’s disputes with the assembly brought up questions
akin to those which agitated the country half a century later, in the
days of the Stamp Act. A recent act of Parliament had extended the
post-office system into Virginia, whereupon the burgesses declared
that Parliament had no authority to lay any tax (such as postage) upon
the people of Virginia without the consent of their representatives;
accordingly they showed their independence by exempting from postage
all merchants’ letters. But we may let Spotswood speak for himself:
“Some time last Fall the Post M’r Gen’ll of America, having thought
himself Obliged to endeavour the Settling a post through Virginia and
Maryland, in y^e same manner as they are settled in the other Northern
Plantations, pursu’t to the Act of Parliament of the 9th of Queen Anne,
gave out Commissions for that purpose, and a post was accordingly
established once a fortnight from W’msburg to Philadelphia, and for
the Conveyance of Letters bro’t hither by Sea through the several
Countys. In order to this, the Post M’r Set up printed Placards (such
as were sent in by the Post M’r Gen’ll of Great Britain) at all the
Posts, requiring the delivery of all Letters not excepted by the Act
of Parliament to be delivered to his Deputys there. No sooner was this
noised about but a great Clamour was raised against it. The people were
made to believe that the Parl’t could not Levy any Tax (for so they
call y^e Rates of Postage) here without the Consent of the General
Assembly. That, besides, all their _Laws_[317] were exempted, because
scarce any came in here but what some way or other concern’d Trade;
That tho’ M’rs should, for the reward of a penny a Letter, deliver
them, the Post M’r could Demand no Postage for the Conveyance of them,
and abundance more to the same purpose, as rediculous as Arrogant....
Thereupon a Bill is prepared and passed both Council and Burg’s’s,
w’ch, tho’ it acknowledges the Act of Parliam’t to be in force here,
does effectually prevent its being ever put in Execution. The first
Clause of that Bill Imposes an Obligation on the Post Master to w’ch
he is no ways liable by the Act of Parliament. The second Clause
lays a Penalty of no less than £5 for every Letter he demands or
takes from a Board any Ships that stand Decreed to be excepted by the
Act of Parliament; and the last Clause appoints y^e Stages and the
time of Conveyance of all Letters under an Extravagant Penalty. As
it is impossible for the Post Master to know whether the Letters he
receives be excepted or not, and y’t, according to the Interpreters,
Our Judges of the Act of Parl’t, all Letters sent from any Merch’t,
whether the same relate to Merchandize on board or not, are within the
exception of the Law, the Post M’r must meddle w’th no Letters at all,
or run the hazard of being ruin’d. And the last Clause, besides its
Contradiction to the Act of Parliament in applying the Stages, w’ch is
expressly Bestowed to the Post Master according to the Instruction of
the Soveraign, is so great an impossibility to be complyed w’th that,
considering the difficulty of passing the many gr’t Rivers, the Post
M’r must be liable to the penalty of 20s. for every Letter he takes
into his care during the whole Season of the Winter. From whence yo’r
Lo’ps may judge how well affected the Major part of Our Assembly men
are towards y^e Collecting this Branch of the King’s Revenue, and w’ll
therefore be pleas’d to Acquitt me of any Censure of Refusing Assent to
such a Bill.”[318]

[Sidenote: Appointment of parsons.]

With an assembly so adroit and so stubborn, the way of the postmaster
was hard indeed. Another source of irritation was the question as
to appointing parsons. In practice they were appointed by the close
vestries, but the governor wished to appoint them himself. It also
appeared that the king’s ministers would like to send a bishop to
Virginia. On these questions the worthy Spotswood got embroiled with
eight of the councilmen as well as with the burgesses, and complained
of being rather shabbily treated: “When in Order to the Solemnizing his
Maj’ty’s Birth-day,[319] I gave a publick Entertainment at my House,
all gent’n that would come were Admitted; These Eight Counsellors would
neither come to my House nor go to the Play w’ch was Acted on that
occasion, but got together all the Turbulent and disaffected Burg’s’s,
had an Entertainment of their own in the Burg’s House and invited
all y^e Mobb to a Bonfire, where they were plentifully Supplyed with
Liquors to Drink the same healths without as their M’rs did within,
w’ch were chiefly those of the Council and their Associated Burg’s,
without taking any [more] Notice of the Gov’r, than if there had been
none upon the place.”[320]

[Sidenote: Beginning of continental politics.]

In such disputes between the legislatures chosen at home and the
executive officials appointed beyond sea, Virginia, like the sister
colonies in their several ways, was getting the kind of political
education that bore fruit in 1776. In Virginia the appointment of
clergymen over parishes, in Maryland the forty per poll for a church
to which only one sixth of the people belonged, in Massachusetts the
perennial question of the governor’s salary,--all these were occasions
for disputes about matters of internal administration in which
far-reaching principles were involved. Other questions, like that of
postage just mentioned, showed that gradually but surely and steadily
a continental state of things was coming on. From the Penobscot to
the Savannah there was a continuous English world, albeit a strip so
narrow that it scarcely anywhere reached inland more than a hundred
and fifty miles from the coast. The work of establishing postal
communication throughout this region seemed to require some continental
authority independent of the dozen local colonial legislatures. We see
Parliament, with the best of intentions, stepping in and exercising
such continental authority; and we see the Virginians resisting such
action, on the ground that in laying the species of tax known as
postage rates Parliament was usurping functions which belonged only
to the colonial legislatures. Thus did the year 1718 witness a slight
presage of 1765.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the seventy years’ struggle with France.]

Nothing did so much toward bringing the several colonies face to face
with a great continental situation as the struggle with France which
began with the expulsion of the Stuarts in 1689 and was not to be
decided until seventy years later, when Wolfe climbed the Heights of
Abraham. The destruction of the Invincible Armada, a century before
the downfall of James II., had shown that Great Britain was to belong
to the Protestant Reformers; the latter event had shown that she was
not to be won back to the Catholic Counter-Reformation which, starting
with the election of Paul IV. in 1555, had gained formidable strength
in many quarters. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the
colony of Virginia was founded, the France of Henry IV. was in sympathy
with England and hostile to Spain. Before the end of that century the
France of Louis XIV. had been won over to the Counter-Reformation. The
dethronement of England’s Catholic king came almost like a rejoinder to
the expulsion of a million Protestants from France. The mighty struggle
which then began was to determine whether North America should be
controlled by Protestantism and Whiggery, or by the Counter-Reformation
and the Old Régime.

[Sidenote: The Continental Congress of 1690.]

The first notable effect wrought in English America by the outbreak of
hostilities was the assembling of a Continental Congress at New York
in 1690, the first meeting of that sort in America. The continental
aspects of the situation were not as yet apparent save to a few
prescient minds. The infant settlements in Carolina hardly counted
for much. Virginia was too far from Canada to feel deeply interested
in the organization of resistance to the schemes of Frontenac, and so
the southernmost colony represented in the first American Congress was
Maryland.

[Sidenote: Franklin’s plan for a Federal Union.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the Stamp Act.]

It was not long, however, before the continental aspects of the
situation began to grow more conspicuous. The reader will remember how,
in 1708, the government at Charleston, in an official report on the
military resources of the colony, laid stress upon the circumstance
that Carolina was a frontier to all the English settlements on the
mainland. The occasion for this emphasis was the great European war
that broke out in 1701, when Louis XIV. put his grandson, Philip of
Anjou, on the vacant throne of Spain. The alliance of Spain with France
threatened English America at both ends of the line. The destruction of
Deerfield by an expedition from Canada in 1704, and the attempt upon
Charleston by an expedition from Florida in 1706, were blows delivered
by the common enemy, Louis XIV., the persecutor of Huguenots, the
champion of the Counter-Reformation, the accomplice of the Stuarts.
From that moment we may date the first dawning consciousness of a
community of interests all the way from Massachusetts to Carolina. But
it was only a few clear-headed persons that were quick to understand
the situation. The average members of a legislature were not among
these; their thoughts were much more upon the constituencies “to
whom they owed their elections” than upon any wide or far-reaching
interests. Such of the royal governors as were honest and high-minded
men saw the situation much more clearly, since it was their business to
look at things from the imperial point of view. Especially such a man
as Spotswood, a soldier of noted ability, who had himself been scarred
in fighting the common enemy, could not fail to understand the needs
of the hour. His official letters abundantly show his disgust over the
froward and niggardly policy that refused prompt aid to hard-pressed
Carolina.[321] To sit wrangling over questions of prerogative while
firebrand and tomahawk were devouring their brethren on the frontier!
To our valiant soldier such behaviour seemed fit only for churls;
while waiting for the danger to come upon one, instead of marching
forth to attack the danger, was surely as impolitic as unchivalrous.
So, without waiting on the uncertain temper and devious arguments of
many-headed King Demos, the governor hurried his men on board ship as
fast as he could enlist and arm them, well knowing that in a “dangerous
conjuncture” the more precious minutes one loses, the more costly grow
those that are left. During half of the eighteenth century, as the
conflict with France was again and again renewed, such experiences
as those of Spotswood with his burgesses were repeated in most of
the colonies, until the royal governors became profoundly convinced
that the one thing most needed in English America was a Continental
Government that could impose taxes, according to some uniform
principle, upon the people of all the colonies for the common defence.
At the Albany Congress of 1754, when the war-clouds were blacker than
ever, Benjamin Franklin came forward with a scheme for creating such
a central government for purely federal purposes. That scheme would
have inaugurated a Federal Union, with president appointed by the
crown; it would have lodged the power of taxation, for continental
purposes, in a federal council representing the American people; and
it would have left with the several states all governmental functions
and prerogatives not explicitly granted to the central government. Had
Franklin’s plan been adopted and proved successful in its working, the
political separation between English America and English Britain would
not have occurred when it did, and possibly might not have occurred at
all. But Franklin’s plan failed of adoption just at the moment when
American politics were becoming more completely and conspicuously
continental than ever before. In the presence of a gigantic war that
extended “from the coast of Coromandel to the Great Lakes of North
America,”[322] the need for a continental government and the evils
that flowed from the want of it were felt with increasing severity;
the old difficulties which had beset honest Spotswood were renewed in
manifold ways; until, when the war was over, Parliament, with the best
of intentions but without due consideration, undertook in the Stamp Act
to provide a steady continental revenue for America. When the Americans
refused to accept Parliament as their continental legislature, and,
in alliance with Pitt and his New Whigs, won a noble victory in the
repeal of the Stamp Act, a great American question became entangled
in British politics, and a situation was thus created which enabled
the unscrupulous and half-crazy George III. to force upon America the
quarrel that parted the empire in twain. Nowhere in history is the
solidarity of events, in their causal relations, more conspicuous than
in America during the eighteenth century; and for this reason the
disputes of the royal governors with their refractory assemblies are
nearly always rich in political lessons.

[Sidenote: The unknown West.]

[Sidenote: Spotswood crosses the Blue Ridge, 1716.]

Looking back from the present time at Spotswood’s administration, we
find its incidents perpetually reminding us that the colonies were
already entering upon that long period of revolution from which they
were not to emerge until the adoption of our Federal Constitution. We
never lose consciousness of the French and Indian background against
which the events are projected. Toward this vast dim background
Spotswood set his face in 1716, in his memorable expedition across the
Blue Ridge. For more than a century since the founding of Jamestown had
the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah remained unknown to Virginians.
It was still part of the strange, unmeasured wilderness that stretched
away to the remote shores which Drake had once called by the name New
Albion.[323] Some of its most savage solitudes had in Spotswood’s youth
been traversed by the mighty La Salle, and other adventurous Frenchmen
kept up explorations among freshwater seas to the northwestward,
where English and Scotch officials of the Hudson Bay Company were
beginning to come into contact with them. What was to be found between
those freshwater seas and the Gulf of Mexico no Englishman could
tell, save that it had been found to be solid land, and not a Sea of
Verrazano.[324] So much might Spotswood have gathered from reading and
from hearsay, but not through any work done by Englishmen. In the early
days, as we have seen, Captain Newport had tried to reach the mountains
and failed.[325] In 1653 it was enacted that, “whereas divers gentlemen
have a voluntarie desire to discover the Mountains and supplicated
for lycence to this Assembly, ... that order be granted unto any for
soe doing, Provided they go with a considerable partie and strength
both of men and amunition.”[326] But nothing came of this permission.
In Spotswood’s time the very outposts of English civilization had not
crept inland beyond tidewater. A strip of forest fifty miles or more
in breadth still intervened between the Virginia frontier and those
blue peaks visible against the western sky. This stalwart governor
was not the man to gaze upon mountains and rest content without going
to see what was behind them. Especially since the French were laying
claim to the interior, since they had for some time possessed the Great
Lakes, and since they had lately been busy in erecting forts at divers
remote places in the western country,[327] it was worth while for
Englishmen to take a step toward them by crossing the mountains.[328]
The expedition was extremely popular in Virginia. A party of fifty
gentlemen, with black servants, Indian guides, and packhorses, started
out toward the end of August and made quite an autumn picnic of it. One
can fancy what prime shooting it was in the virgin forest all alive
with the finest of game. To wash down so much toothsome venison and
grouse, the governor brought along several casks of native wines--red
and white Rapidan, so to speak--made by his Spottsylvania Germans;
but cognac and cherry cordial were not forgotten, and champagne-corks
popped merrily in the wilderness. Crossing the Blue Ridge at Swift Run
Gap,[329] on nearly the same latitude as Fredericksburg, the party
entered the great valley a little north of the present site of Port
Republic, and about eighty miles southwest from Harper’s Ferry. The
exploits of Stonewall Jackson in 1862 have clothed the region with
undying fame. Spotswood called the river the Euphrates, an early
instance of the vicious naming by which the map of the United States
is so abundantly disfigured, but happily the melodious native name
of Shenandoah has held its place. On the bank of that fair stream one
of the empty bottles was buried, with a paper inside declaring that
the river and all the soil it drained were the property of the King of
Great Britain. Having thus taken formal possession of the valley, the
picnickers returned to their tidewater homes.

[Sidenote: Knights of the Golden Horseshoe.]

A letter of Rev. Hugh Jones, who preached in Bruton Church, says that
Spotswood cut the name of George I. upon a rock at the summit of the
highest peak which the party climbed, and named it Mount George,
whereupon some of the gentlemen called the next one Mount Alexander,
in honour of the governor. “For this expedition,” says Mr. Jones,
“they were obliged to provide a great quantity of horseshoes, things
seldom used in the lower parts of the country, where there are few
stones. Upon which account the governor upon their return presented
each of his companions with a golden horseshoe, some of which I have
seen, studded with valuable stones, resembling the heads of nails,
with this inscription ... _Sic juvat transcendere montes._[330] This
he instituted to encourage gentlemen to venture backwards and make
discoveries and new settlements, any gentleman being entitled to wear
this golden shoe that can prove his having drank [_sic_] his Majesty’s
health upon Mount George.”[331] In later times this incident was called
instituting the order of Knights of the Golden Horseshoe.

[Sidenote: Spotswood’s view of the situation.]

Spotswood’s letters to the Lords of Trade, in which he mentions this
expedition to the mountains, are testimony to the soundness of his
military foresight. In recent years, he says, the French have built
fortresses in such positions “that the Brittish Plantations are in
a manner Surrounded by their Commerce w’th the numerous Nations of
Indians seated on both sides of the Lakes; they may not only Engross
the whole Skin Trade, but may, when they please, Send out such Bodys
of Indians on the back of these Plantations as may greatly distress
his Maj’ty’s Subjects here, And should they multiply their settlem’ts
along these Lakes, so as to joyn their Dominions of Canada to their
new Colony of Louisiana, they might even possess themselves of any of
these Plantations they pleased. Nature, ’tis true, has formed a Barrier
for us by that long Chain of Mountains w’ch run from the back of South
Carolina as far as New York, and w’ch are only passable in some few
places, but even that Natural Defence may prove rather destructive to
us, if they are not possessed by us before they are known to them. To
prevent the dangers w’ch Threaten his Maj’ty’s Dominions here from
the growing power of these Neighbours, nothing seems to me of more
consequence than that now while the Nations are at peace, and while
the French are yet uncapable of possessing all that vast Tract w’ch
lies on the back of these Plantations, we should attempt to make some
Settlements on y^e Lakes, and at the same time possess our selves of
those passes of the great Mountains, w’ch are necessary to preserve a
Communication w’th such Settlements.”[332]

He goes on to say that the purpose of his late expedition across the
Blue Ridge was to ascertain whether Lake Erie, occupying as it did a
central position in the French line of communication between Canada and
Louisiana, was easily accessible from Virginia. Information gathered
from Indians led him to believe that it was thus accessible.[333] He
therefore proposed that an English settlement should be made on the
south shore of Lake Erie, whereby the English power might be thrust
like a wedge into the centre of the French position; and he offered to
take a suitable body of men across the mountains and reconnoitre the
country for the purpose of finding a site. As for the expense of such
an enterprise, the king need not be concerned about it; for there was
enough surplus from quitrents in the colonial treasury to defray it.
One cannot read such a letter without admiring the writer’s honest
frankness, his clear insight, his prudence, and his courage.

[Sidenote: Spotswood’s last years.]

But with all Spotswood’s virtues and talents, and in spite of his
popularity, he fell upon the same rock upon which Andros and Nicholson
had been wrecked: he quarrelled with Dr. Blair, who tells us that “he
was so wedded to his own notions that there was no quarter for them
that went not with him.”[334] With a change of name, perhaps the same
might have been said of the worthy doctor. The quarrel seems to have
originated in the question as to the right of appointing pastors,
and it ended, as Blair’s contests always ended, in the overthrow of
his antagonist. Nobody could stand up against that doughty Scotch
parson.[335] Spotswood was removed from his governorship in 1722, but
continued to live in the Virginia which he loved. As postmaster-general
for the American colonies, he had by 1738 got the mail running
regularly from New England as far south as James River. It took a
week to carry the mail from Philadelphia to Williamsburg; for points
further south the post-rider started at irregular intervals, whenever
enough mail had accumulated to make it worth while. In 1740 Spotswood
received a major-general’s commission, and was about to sail in Admiral
Vernon’s expedition against Cartagena,[336] when he suddenly died. He
was buried on his estate of Temple Farm, near Yorktown. In later days
the surrender of Lord Cornwallis was negotiated in the house which had
sheltered the last years of this noble governor.[337]

[Sidenote: Gooch and Dinwiddie.]

Spotswood was succeeded by Hugh Drysdale, who died in 1726, and next
came William Gooch, another military Scotchman, quiet, modest, and
shrewd, who managed things for twenty-two years, from 1727 to 1749,
with marked ability and success. After an interval, Gooch was followed
by Robert Dinwiddie, still another Scotchman, who came in 1751 and
staid until 1758, and whose administration is the last one that calls
for mention in the present narrative.

[Sidenote: The Scotch-Irish.]

The period of Gooch’s government was remarkable for the development of
the westward movement prefigured in Spotswood’s expedition across the
Blue Ridge. This development occurred in a way that even far-seeing
men could not have predicted. It introduced into Virginia a new set
of people, new forms of religion, new habits of life. It affected all
the colonies south of Pennsylvania most profoundly, and did more than
anything else to determine the character of all the states afterward
founded west of the Alleghanies and south of the latitude of middle
Illinois. Until recent years, little has been written about the coming
of the so-called Scotch-Irish to America, and yet it is an event of
scarcely less importance than the exodus of English Puritans to New
England and that of English Cavaliers to Virginia. It is impossible to
understand the drift which American history, social and political, has
taken since the time of Andrew Jackson, without studying the early life
of the Scotch-Irish population of the Alleghany regions, the pioneers
of the American backwoods. I do not mean to be understood as saying
that the whole of that population at the time of our Revolutionary War
was Scotch-Irish, for there was a considerable German element in it,
besides an infusion of English moving inward from the coast. But the
Scotch-Irish element was more numerous and far more important than
all the others. A detailed account of it belongs especially with the
history of Pennsylvania, since that colony was the principal centre of
its distribution throughout the south and west; but a brief mention
of its coming is indispensable in any sketch of Old Virginia and Her
Neighbours.[338]

[Sidenote: Colonization of Ulster by James I.]

Who were the people called by this rather awkward compound name,
Scotch-Irish? The answer carries us back to the year 1611, when James
I. began peopling Ulster with colonists from Scotland and the north of
England. The plan was to put into Ireland a Protestant population that
might ultimately outnumber the Catholics and become the controlling
element in the country. The settlers were picked men and women of the
most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there
were 300,000 of them in Ulster. That province had been the most
neglected part of the island, a wilderness of bogs and fens; they
transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of
woollens and linens which have ever since been famous throughout the
world. By the beginning of the eighteenth century their numbers had
risen to nearly a million. Their social condition was not that of
peasants; they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans. In a document
signed in 1718 by a miscellaneous group of 319 men, only 13 made their
mark, while 306 wrote their names in full. Nothing like that could have
happened at that time in any other part of the British Empire, hardly
even in New England.

When these people began coming to America, those families that had
been longest in Ireland had dwelt there but for three generations,
and confusion of mind seems to lurk in any nomenclature which couples
them with the true Irish. The antipathy between the Scotch-Irish as
a group and the true Irish as a group is perhaps unsurpassed for
bitterness and intensity. On the other hand, since love laughs at feuds
and schisms, intermarriages between the colonists of Ulster and the
native Irish were by no means unusual, and instances occur of Murphys
and McManuses of Presbyterian faith. It was common in Ulster to allude
to Presbyterians as “Scotch,” to Roman Catholics as “Irish,” and to
members of the English church as “Protestants,” without much reference
to pedigree. From this point of view the term “Scotch-Irish” may be
defensible, provided we do not let it conceal the fact that the people
to whom it applied are for the most part Lowland Scotch Presbyterians,
very slightly hibernicized in blood.

[Sidenote: Ulster’s grievances.]

The flourishing manufactures in Ulster aroused the jealousy of
rival manufacturers in England, who in 1698 succeeded in obtaining
legislation which seriously damaged the Irish linen and woollen
industries and threw many workmen out of employment. About the same
time it became apparent that an epidemic fever of persecution had
seized upon the English church. The violent reaction against the
Counter-Reformation, with the fierce war against Louis XIV., had
stimulated intolerance in all directions. The same persecuting spirit
which we have above witnessed as making trouble for the Carolinas and
Maryland found also a vent in the severe disabilities inflicted in 1704
and following years upon Presbyterians in Ireland. They were forbidden
to keep schools, marriages performed by their clergy were declared
invalid, they were not allowed to hold any office higher than that of
petty constable, and so on through a long list of silly and outrageous
enactments. For a few years this tyranny was endured in the hope that
it was but temporary. By 1719 this hope had worn away, and from that
year, until the passage of the Toleration Act for Ireland in 1782, the
people of Ulster kept flocking to America.

[Sidenote: The migration of Ulster men to America.]

[Sidenote: Scotch-Irish in the southwest.]

Of all the migrations to America previous to the days of steamships,
this was by far the largest in volume. One week of 1727 landed six
ship-loads at Philadelphia. In the two years 1773 and 1774 more than
30,000 came. In 1770 one third of the population of Pennsylvania was
Scotch-Irish. Altogether, between 1730 and 1770, I think it probable
that at least half a million souls were transferred from Ulster to
the American colonies, making not less than one sixth part of our
population at the time of the Revolution. Of these, very few came to
New England; among their descendants were the soldiers John Stark and
Henry Knox, and more lately the great naturalist Asa Gray. Those who
went to Pennsylvania received grants of land in the western mountain
region. The policy of the government was to interpose them as a buffer
between the expanding colony and the Indian frontier. Once planted
in the Alleghany region, they spread rapidly and in large numbers
toward the southwest along the mountain country through the Shenandoah
Valley and into the Carolinas. At a later time they formed almost the
entire population of West Virginia, and they were the men who chiefly
built up the commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee. Among these
Scotch-Irish were the Breckinridges, Alexanders, Lewises, Prestons,
Campbells, Pickenses, Stuarts, McDowells, Johnstons, and Rutledges;
Richard Montgomery, Anthony Wayne, Daniel Boone, James Robertson,
George Rogers Clark, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Benton, Samuel Houston,
John Caldwell Calhoun, Stonewall Jackson. It was chiefly Scotch-Irish
troops that won the pivotal battle at King’s Mountain, that crushed the
Indians of Alabama, and overthrew Wellington’s veterans of the Spanish
peninsula in that brief but acute agony at New Orleans. When our Civil
War came these men were a great power on both sides, but the influence
of the chief mass of them was exerted on the side of the Union; it held
Kentucky and a large part of Tennessee, and broke Virginia in twain.

[Sidenote: Settlement of the Shenandoah Valley.]

It was about 1730 that the Scotch-Irish began to pour into the
Shenandoah Valley. “Governor Gooch was then dispensing the Valley lands
so freely and indiscriminately that one Jacob Stover, it is said,
secured many acres by giving his cattle human names as settlers; and
a young woman, by dressing in various disguises of masculine attire,
obtained several large farms.”[339] Small farms, however, came to be
the rule. The first Scotch-Irish settled along the Opequon River;
and their very oldest churches, the Tuscarora Meeting-house near
Martinsburg and the Opequon Church near Winchester, are still standing.
The Germans were not long in following them, and we see their mark on
the map in such names as Strasburg and Hamburg.

[Sidenote: Profound effect upon Virginia.]

This settlement of the Valley soon began to work profound modifications
in the life of Old Virginia. Hitherto it had been purely English and
predominantly Episcopal, Cavalier, and aristocratic. There was now a
rapid invasion of Scotch Presbyterianism, with small farms, few slaves,
and democratic ideas, made more democratic by life in the backwoods.
It was impossible that two societies so different in habits and ideas
should coexist side by side, sending representatives to the same
House of Burgesses, without a stubborn conflict. For two generations
there was a ferment which resulted in the separation of church and
state, complete religious toleration, the abolition of primogeniture
and entails, and many other important changes, most of which were
consummated under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson between 1776 and
1785. Without the aid of the Valley population, these beginnings of
metamorphosis in tidewater Virginia would not have been accomplished.

[Sidenote: Frontier phase of democracy.]

Jefferson is often called the father of modern American democracy;
in a certain sense the Shenandoah Valley and adjacent Appalachian
regions may be called its cradle. In that rude frontier society, life
assumed many new aspects, old customs were forgotten, old distinctions
abolished, social equality acquired even more importance than unchecked
individualism. The notions, sometimes crude and noxious, sometimes
just and wholesome, which characterized Jacksonian democracy,
flourished greatly on the frontier and have thence been propagated
eastward through the older communities, affecting their legislation
and their politics more or less according to frequency of contact and
intercourse. Massachusetts, relatively remote and relatively ancient,
has been perhaps least affected by this group of ideas, but all parts
of the United States have felt its influence powerfully. This phase
of democracy, which is destined to continue so long as frontier
life retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its
beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian
region in the eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Lord Fairfax and George Washington.]

The Shenandoah Valley, however, was not absolutely given up to
Scotchmen and Germans; it was not entirely without English inhabitants
from the tidewater region. Among these, one specially interesting group
arrests our attention. At the northern end of the Valley was a little
English colony gathered about Lord Fairfax’s home at Greenway Court,
a dozen miles southwest from the site of Winchester. We have seen how
Lord Culpeper, in relinquishing his proprietary claims upon Virginia,
had retained the Northern Neck. This extensive territory passed as a
dowry with Culpeper’s daughter Catharine to her husband, the fifth Lord
Fairfax;[340] and in 1745 their son, the sixth Lord Fairfax, came to
spend the rest of his days in Virginia. There was much surveying to
be done, and the lord of Greenway Court gave this work to a young man
for whom he had conceived a strong affection. The name of Fairfax’s
youthful friend was George Washington, and it is impossible to couple
these two names without being reminded of a letter written a hundred
years before, in 1646, when Charles I. had been overthrown and taken
prisoner, and Henry Washington, royalist commander at Worcester, still
held out and refused to surrender the city without authority from the
king. Thus wrote the noble commander to the great General Fairfax,
commander of the Parliament army: “It is acknowledged by your books,
and by report of your own quarter, that the king is in some of your
armies. That granted, it may be easy for you to procure his Majesty’s
commands for the disposal of this garrison. Till then I shall make good
the trust reposed in me. As for conditions, if I shall be necessitated
I shall make the best I can. The worst I know and fear not; if I had,
the profession of a soldier had not been begun nor so long continued by
your Excellency’s humble servant,--Henry Washington.”[341]

[Sidenote: Effect of the Westward advance upon the military situation.]

[Sidenote: The Gateway of the West.]

[Sidenote: Advance of the French.]

There is a ring to this letter which sounds not unlike the utterance of
that scion of the writer’s family who was destined to win independence
for the United States. It is pleasant to know that General Fairfax
obtained the order from King Charles and granted most honourable terms
to the brave Colonel Washington. In the following century a member of
the house of Fairfax, in engaging the younger Washington to survey his
frontier estates, put him into a position which led up to his wonderful
public career. For this advance of the Virginians from tidewater to
the mountains served to bring on the final struggle with France.
The wholesale Scotch-Irish immigration was fast carrying Virginia’s
frontier toward the Ohio River, and making feasible the schemes of
Spotswood in a way that no man would have thought of. Hitherto the
struggle with the house of Bourbon had been confined to Canada at one
end of the line and Carolina at the other, while the centre had not
been directly implicated. In the first American Congress, convened
by Jacob Leisler at New York in 1690 for the purpose of concerting
measures of defence against the common enemy, Virginia (as we have
seen) took no part. The seat of war was then remote, and her strength
exerted at such a distance would have been of little avail. But in the
sixty years since 1690 the white population of Virginia had increased
fourfold, and her wealth had increased still more. Looking down the
Monongahela River to the point where its union with the Alleghany makes
the Ohio, she beheld there the gateway to the Great West, and felt a
yearning to possess it; for the westward movement was giving rise to
speculations in land, and a company was forming for the exploration and
settlement of all that Ohio country. But French eyes were not blind to
the situation, and it was their king’s pawns, not the English, that
opened the game on the mighty chess-board. French troops from Canada
crossed Lake Erie, and built their first fort where the city of Erie
now stands. Then they pushed forward down the wooded valley of the
Alleghany and built a second fortress and a third. Another stride would
bring them to the gateway. Something must be done at once.

[Sidenote: George Washington’s first appearance in history.]

At such a crisis Governor Dinwiddie had need of the ablest man Virginia
could afford, to undertake a journey of unwonted difficulty through
the wilderness, to negotiate with Indian tribes, and to warn the
advancing Frenchmen to trespass no further upon English territory. As
the best person to entrust with this arduous enterprise, the shrewd old
Scotchman selected a lad of one-and-twenty, Lord Fairfax’s surveyor,
George Washington. History does not record a more extraordinary choice,
nor one more completely justified.

       *       *       *       *       *

This year 1753 marks the end of the period when we can deal with the
history of Virginia by itself. The struggle against France, so long
sustained by New York and New England, acquires a truly Continental
character when Virginia comes to take part in it. Great public
questions forthwith come up for solution, some of which are not set
at rest until after that young land surveyor has become President of
the United States. With the first encounter between Frenchmen and
Englishmen in the Alleghanies, the stream of Virginia history becomes
an inseparable portion of the majestic stream in which flows the career
of our Federal Union.




INDEX.




INDEX.


  Abbot, George, i. 68.

  Abbot, Jeffrey, i. 135,165.

  Abraham, Heights of, i. 171; ii. 376.

  Absence of towns in North Carolina, ii. 314.

  Accomac peninsula, i. 224; ii. 87.

  Act of Uniformity, i. 304.

  Adam of Bremen, i. 18.

  Adams, C. F., i. 9.

  Adams, Henry, i. 112.

  Adams, Samuel, i. 31; ii. 29, 98, 285.

  Adelmare, Julius Cæsar, i. 68.

  Adoption of captives, i. 109-111,134.

  Æsop’s crow, i. 45.

  African slaves less tractable than those born in America, ii. 327.

  Agassiz, Louis, ii. 192.

  Agnese’s map, i. 61.

  Agriculture in North Carolina, ii. 313.

  Alaric, ii. 91.

  Albany congress, ii. 381.

  Albemarle Colony, ii. 276;
    Bacon looked for possible help from, ii. 281.

  Albemarle Sound, i. 265.

  Alcæus, epigram of, in Greek on title-page, English paraphrase,
    ii. 28.

  Alexander VI., i. 20, 30.

  Alexander, Sir William, i. 287.

  Algerine pirates, ii. 339.

  Algonquins, i. 94; ii. 58-62, 168, 274, 291, 298.

  Allerton, Isaac, ii. 60, 69.

  Altona, ii. 139, 140.

  Alva, Duke of, i. 21.

  Amadis, Philip, i. 31.

  America, first occurrence of the name in English, i. 13.

  American Antiquarian Society, i. 2.

  Americans not subject to Parliament, view of James I., i. 218.

  Ancient British drama, i. 59.

  Andros, Sir Edmund, ii. 115, 118, 119.

  Annapolis, i. 267, 313; ii. 120, 163, 249, 269.

  Anne Arundel County, ii. 137, 313.

  Anne of Denmark, Queen of James I., i. 104.

  Anne, Queen, ii. 123, 130.

  Anti-Catholic panic, ii. 159-161.

  Anti-slavery sentiment in Virginia, ii. 191.

  Antwerp, i. 45.

  Apaches, the, i. 107.

  Appalachian region the cradle of modern democracy, ii. 396.

  Appleby School, ii. 247.

  Appomattox Indians, ii. 82.

  Arabian Nights, i. 113; ii. 202.

  Aram, Eugene, ii. 249.

  Arber, Edward, i. 82, 112.

  Archdale, John, ii. 291.

  Archer, Gabriel, i. 124, 151.

  Archer’s Hope, i. 124.

  Argall, Samuel, i. 143, 161, 168, 170, 173, 174, 182, 186, 206, 207,
    216, 261; ii. 16.

  Argall’s Gift, i. 186.

  Ark, the ship, i. 273, 290.

  Arlington, Earl of, ii. 53, 54, 110, 280.

  Armada, the Invincible, i. 8, 34, 36-40, 50; ii. 377.

  _Armenica_, i. 13.

  Arundel, Lady Anne, wife of second Lord Baltimore, i. 268, 313.

  Arundel of Wardour, Lord, i. 56.

  Ashley River Colony, ii. 278.

  Ashley, Sir Anthony, i. 68.

  Ashley, W. J., i. 48.

  _Asiento_ agreement, ii. 190.

  Assembly,
    Maryland, i. 283, 313; ii. 134-138, 149-162;
    Massachusetts, i. 240;
    North Carolina, ii. 296;
    Virginia, i. 186, 216;
      its “Tragical Declaration,” i. 217, 240-251, 312, 314; ii. 20, 54,
        70, 101, 136, 186.

  Atheism, how defined by Bishop Meade, ii. 264.

  Australasian colonies, ii. 183.

  Avalon, proposed palatinate in Newfoundland, i. 260-263.

  Avison, Charles, ii. 242.

  Ayllon’s colony on James River, i. 93.

  Azov, Sea of, i. 88.

  Azores, i. 34, 148, 183.


  Backwoods life, ii. 271, 315.

  Bacon, Lord, i. 69, 144, 198, 207, 267; ii. 64.

  Bacon, Nathaniel, the elder, ii. 64, 68, 89.

  Bacon, Nathaniel, the rebel, his pedigree, ii. 64;
    his manifesto, ii. 78-80;
    his death, ii. 91.

  Bacon’s assembly, ii. 100, 102.

  Bacon’s rebellion, ii. 36, 45-107;
    sympathizers in Maryland, ii. 155, 156, 174.

  Baffin, William, i. 67.

  Bailiffs, i. 276.

  Baird, C. W., ii. 205.

  Bahama Islands, their military value, ii. 278.

  Balboa, i. 26.

  Ballagh, J. C., ii. 178.

  Baltimore, Lady, wife of first Lord, i. 263.

  Baltimore, Lord. See Calvert.

  Baltimore, the city, ii. 268, 269.

  Baltimore, the Irish village, i. 255.

  Bancroft, George, ii. 184.

  Barbadoes, i. 273; ii. 183, 192, 207, 277, 286.

  Barbecues, ii. 243.

  Barlow, Arthur, i. 31.

  Barns, ii. 221.

  Barnwell, John, defeats the Tuscaroras, ii. 303.

  Barrow, John, i. 26, 27.

  Bassett, J. S., ii. 274, 276, 280.

  Bates, H. W., i. 199.

  Beadell, Gabriel, i. 121.

  Beaumont, Francis, i. 54.

  Becket, Thomas, ii. 14.

  Bedford, Countess of, i. 184.

  Bedroom furniture, ii. 225.

  Bee, Captain, ii. 329.

  Beggars, i. 48.

  Behn, Mrs. Aphra, ii. 179, 180.

  Belknap, Jeremy, i. 2.

  Belles of Williamsburg, a poem, ii. 259.

  Bennett, Richard, i. 302, 311; ii. 58, 110.

  Berkeley Plantation, i. 190.

  Berkeley, Lord, i. 68; ii. 52, 55, 95, 144, 272.

  Berkeley, Sir Maurice, i. 68; ii. 55.

  Berkeley, Sir William, i. 68, 253, 303, 308, 311, 314; ii. 17, 18,
    20-22, 53-58, 62, 66-71, 76, 97, 103-107, 109, 110, 136, 137, 154,
    155, 224, 245, 272, 276, 281.

  Berkeleys, the, i. 163.

  Bermuda Hundred, i. 168, 224.

  Bermuda Islands, i. 149-151, 161, 208.

  Bermudez, Juan, i. 149.

  Berry, Sir John, ii. 92, 95.

  Bertrand, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Beverages, ii. 229.

  Beverley, Robert, clerk of assembly, ii. 80, 89, 92, 109-114.

  Beverley, Robert, the historian, ii. 21, 22, 70, 196, 208-210, 255.

  Bichat, Xavier, ii. 260.

  Billingsgate, i. 57.

  Billy, a runaway negro, ii. 197.

  Birds, ii. 214.

  Bishop, intention to appoint one in America, ii. 116.

  Blackbeard, the last of the pirates, ii. 366-369.

  Black Death, the, i. 22.

  Black-eyed Susan, i. 77.

  Blackiston, Nehemiah, ii. 161.

  Blackmail in the West Indies, ii. 350.

  Blackstone, William, ii. 128, 340.

  Blair, Francis Preston, ii. 389.

  Blair, James, i. 234; ii. 116-123, 129, 252, 262, 389.

  Blair, Mrs. James, ii. 119.

  Blake, Joseph, ii. 291, 363.

  Bland, Giles, ii. 86, 87, 104.

  Bland, John, ii. 47-51.

  Blenheim, battle of, ii. 190, 370.

  Bliss, Wm. R., ii. 251.

  Blood debt, Indian ideas of, i. 108.

  Blue Anchor tavern, i. 57.

  Blue Ridge, ii. 73, 205, 383;
    crossed by Spotswood, ii. 385.

  Blunt Point, i. 209.

  Blunt, Tom, a Tuscarora chief, ii. 302.

  Bodleian Library, i. 28.

  Bohemia, i. 90.

  Bohemia Manor, ii. 141.

  Bolivia, i. 25.

  Bolling family descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Bologna, i. 83.

  Bonnet, Stede, ii. 367-369.

  Boon, John, ii. 363.

  Boroughs, i. 226.

  Boston, Mass., i. 18.

  Boswell, James, ii. 334.

  Boucher, Jonathan, ii. 249.

  Boulogne, i. 36.

  Bowdoin, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Bowdoin College, i. 43.

  Boyle, Robert, ii. 124.

  Bradford, Win., ii. 253.

  Brafferton Hall, ii. 124.

  Brandt, Sebastian, i. 14.

  Braziers, ii. 225.

  Brazil, Huguenots in, i. 17.

  Breaking on the wheel, i. 165.

  Brent, F. P., ii. 92.

  Brent, Giles, i. 306; ii. 147.

  “Brethren of the Coast,” ii. 345, 348.

  Brick for building, ii. 222.

  Bright, J. F., i. 208.

  Bristol, i. 42, 56.

  Brock, R. A., ii. 205.

  Bromfield, Lady, ii. 200.

  Brooke, Baker, ii. 151.

  Brooke, Lord, ii. 12.

  Brooke, Robert, a priest, ii. 166.

  Brooke, Sir Robert, ii. 64.

  Brown, Alexander, i. 23, 30, 60, 105-112, 144, 184, 194.

  Browne, W. H., i. 261, 263, 267; ii. 61, 145.

  Browning, Louisa, ii. 172.

  Bruce, Philip, ii. 24, 52, 67, 111, 121, 184, 185-187, 192, 193, 195,
    199, 203, 207, 208, 214, 215, 218, 220, 222, 223, 230, 236, 237,
    242, 260, 327.

  Brunswick, ii. 9.

  Buccaneering, origin of, ii. 345.

  Buccaneers, i. 24;
    origin of the name, ii. 347.

  Buenos Ayres, i. 25.

  Burgesses, House of, i. 186.

  Burghley, Lord, i. 36.

  Burgundy, House of, i. 45.

  Burk, John, ii. 197, 265.

  Burke, Edmund, ii. 98, 250.

  Burney, James, ii. 349.

  Burning alive, i. 154; ii. 265, 266.

  Burrington, George, ii. 303.

  Burroughs, Anne, i. 113.

  Burton, Sir Charles, a convict, ii. 248.

  Burwell, Lewis, ii. 122.

  Butler, James, ii. 180, 183, 248.

  Butler, Nathaniel, his attack upon the London Company, i. 208-213, 229;
    ii. 223.

  Butterflies of the aristocracy, ii. 11, 17.

  Buzzard’s Bay, i. 55.

  Byrd, William, historian, ii. 83, 211, 240;
    his library, ii. 244, 245; 256-259;
    describes life in North Carolina, ii. 257, 312.

  Byrd, William, the elder, ii. 83, 208, 257.


  Cabot, John, i. 11; ii. 140.

  Cabot, Sebastian, i. 11-14.

  Cadiz, battle of, i. 38, 54, 65.

  Cadiz harbour, attacked by Drake, i. 34.

  Cæsar, Sir Julius, i. 68.

  Calderon, i. 11.

  Caliban, i. 15.

  California, i. 34, 61.

  Calvert, George, first Lord Baltimore, i. 255, 261, 267.

  Calvert, Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, i. 255, 266, 268, 273, 281,
    283-292, 311-313, 315-318; ii. 131, 132, 134-141, 143, 155.

  Calvert, Charles, third Lord Baltimore, ii. 138, 144, 150, 151,
    154-162.

  Calvert, Benedict, fourth Lord Baltimore, ii. 157, 168.

  Calvert, Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore, ii. 169-173.

  Calvert, Frederick, sixth Lord Baltimore, ii. 172.

  Calvert, George, brother of second Lord Baltimore, i. 273.

  Calvert, Leonard, i. 273, 274, 290-293, 300, 307, 308.

  Calvert, Philip, ii. 132, 135, 138.

  Calvert, William, ii. 151.

  Cambridge, Mass., i. 43.

  Cambridge University, i. 301; ii. 248.

  Camden, W., i. 26, 54.

  Camm, John, ii. 127, 128.

  Campbell, Lord, i. 81.

  Canada, i. 62, 113, 116, 193.

  Canary Islands, i. 91.

  Candles of myrtle wax, ii. 228.

  Cannibals, i. 149, 153.

  Canning, Elizabeth, ii. 183.

  Cape Breton, i. 12.

  Cape Charles, i. 168, 225.

  Cape Clear, i. 255.

  Cape Cod, i. 91, 161; ii. 4.

  Cape Fear River, i. 62, 63.

  Cape Finisterre, i. 59.

  Cape Henry, i. 92, 94.

  Cape Lookout, i. 31.

  Capetian monarchy in France, i. 256.

  Capital offences, i. 165.

  Cardross, Lord, ii. 288.

  Carey, Thomas, ii. 294.

  Carey’s rebellion, ii. 296.

  Carlton, Thomas, i. 91.

  Carolina, i. 63, 68, 265; ii. 53;
    Bacon’s watchword, ii. 86;
    palatinate government of, ii. 275;
    Algonquins in, ii. 298;
    Spanish gold and silver in, ii. 362.

  Caroni River, i. 197.

  Carriages, ii. 239.

  Carrington, Mrs. Edward, ii. 234-236.

  Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, ii. 172.

  Carroll, Charles, the elder, ii. 170-172.

  Cartagena, i. 33.

  Carter, i. 214.

  Carteret, Sir George, ii. 144, 272.

  Cary, Sir Henry, i. 68.

  Caspian Sea, i. 74.

  Cathay and its riches, i. 7, 12.

  Catholics in Maryland, i. 270-275; ii. 150;
    civil disabilities of, ii. 166-168.

  Cattle, i. 167, 230; ii. 2, 347.

  Cavalier families, ii. 25.

  Cavalier society reproduced only on Chesapeake Bay, ii. 337.

  Cavaliers in Virginia, ii. 9-29, 34-44;
    in South Carolina, ii. 322.

  Cavendish, Lord, i. 207, 214, 215, 220.

  Cavendish, Sir Thomas, circumnavigation of the earth by, i. 34;
    ii. 342.

  Caviar, i. 143.

  Cecil, Sir Robert, i. 40, 55, 144, 195, 225.

  Central America, i. 61.

  Cessation of tobacco crops, ii. 52, 153.

  Chamberlain, a court gossip, i. 207.

  Chain Lightning City, i. 226.

  Champlain, Samuel, i. 116.

  Chancellor of temporalities, i. 276.

  Chancery courts, i. 276.

  Chandler, Thomas, ii. 164.

  Chapman, George, i. 56.

  Channing, Edward, ii. 40, 100.

  Charatza Tragabigzanda, i. 88.

  Charcoal and its fumes, i. 141.

  Charlecote Hall, i. 69.

  Charles, old name for York River, i. 223.

  Charles I., i. 92, 195, 236, 238, 243, 251, 253, 263, 265, 288, 292,
    298, 307, 309, 312, 315; ii. 1, 7, 12, 16, 29, 272, 397.

  Charles II., i. 278, 302, 308, 309, 312; ii. 7, 20-24, 46, 53-56, 76,
    81, 101, 105, 108-113, 137, 138, 143, 144, 149, 174, 246, 272, 356.

  Charles V., the Emperor, i. 45, 46.

  Charles IX. of France, i. 265; ii. 272.

  Charles City, i. 186, 225, 228.

  Charleston, the city, founding of, ii. 278;
    removed to a new situation, ii. 285;
    commerce of, ii. 326;
    social life in, ii. 331;
    attacked by French and Spanish fleet, ii. 378.

  Charter of Massachusetts carried to New England, i. 236.

  Chastellux, Marquis de, i. 3; ii. 224.

  Cheesman, Edward, ii. 92, 93, 104.

  Cheesman, Mrs., insulted by Berkeley, ii. 93.

  Cheltenham, i. 43.

  Cherokees, the, ii. 300.

  Chesapeake Bay, i. 32, 56, 61, 112, 161, 190, 274.

  Cheseldyn, Kenelm, ii. 161.

  Chester, palatinate of, i. 257.

  Chicheley, Sir Henry, ii. 77, 80, 89, 284.

  Chickahominy, the river, i. 100, 225.

  Chickahominy, the tribe, i. 140.

  Childs, James, founder of a free school, ii. 325.

  Chili, i. 34.

  Chimneys, ii. 223.

  China, i. 41.

  Chinese pirates, ii. 339.

  Chollop, Hannibal, ii. 320.

  Chowan River, i. 265.

  Christiansen, Hendrick, i. 171.

  Christopher, the Syrian saint, i. 119.

  Church at Jamestown, i. 160, 169, 243.

  Church of England established in Maryland, ii. 162.

  Church wardens, ii. 35, 99.

  Chuzzlewit, Martin, ii. 320.

  Cintra, i. 34.

  Circumnavigation of the earth by Drake, i. 26-28.

  Claiborne, William, i. 251, 265, 286-295, 299-301, 306-308, 314-318;
    ii. 80, 141.

  Clarendon Colony, ii. 277;
    abandoned, ii. 290.

  Claret, American, i. 18; ii. 207.

  Clarkson, Thomas, ii. 201.

  Classical revival, ii. 224.

  Clay-eaters, ii. 320.

  Clayton, John, botanist, ii. 259.

  Clement VIII., i. 83.

  Clergymen in early New England, ii. 30, 253;
    in Virginia and Maryland, ii. 261;
    in South Carolina, how elected, ii. 323;
    contrast with those of Virginia, ii. 323.

  Clergymen’s salaries, i. 247; ii. 36.

  Climate of South Carolina, ii. 328;
    of Virginia, i. 4.

  Clobery & Co., fur traders, i. 287, 292, 299, 300.

  “Cloister and the Hearth,” the, i. 80.

  Cobham, Lord, i. 197.

  Cockatrice, the ship, i. 293.

  Code of laws in Dale’s time, i. 164.

  Codfish, ii. 207.

  Coke, Sir Edward, i. 273.

  Cold Harbor, i. 224.

  Coligny, Admiral, i. 17, 18, 30.

  Colleton, Sir John, ii. 272, 287.

  Collingwood, Edward, i. 221.

  Colonels in the South, why so common, ii. 41.

  Colonization of Ulster by James I., ii. 391.

  Columbia, S. C., i. 62.

  Columbine as a floral emblem, i. 156.

  Columbus, Christopher, his object in sailing westward, i. 7; ii. 140.

  Comanches, i. 107.

  Commons, House of, i. 244; ii. 14.

  Communal houses, i. 17.

  Communal lands, i. 94.

  Communism among the first settlers of Virginia, i. 142, 147, 159,
    166, 167.

  Communists and lager beer, i. 166;
    in Bacon’s rebellion, ii. 103.

  “Complaint from Heaven,” ii. 159.

  Conch, a kind of mean white, ii. 320.

  Congregations, migration of, ii. 30, 252.

  Congress of 1690, ii. 168.

  Conspiracy of the Carolina Indians, ii. 300.

  Constables, i. 276.

  Constantine the Great, i. 22.

  Continental Congress of 1690, ii. 377.

  Convicts sent to America, ii. 177-191;
    as schoolmasters, ii. 248, 249.

  Conway, Moncure, ii. 174, 214.

  Coode, John, ii. 161.

  Cook, Ebenezer, his poem “The Sot-Weed Factor,” ii. 220.

  Cooke, J. E., i. 247; ii. 11, 124.

  Cooper, A. A., Earl of Shaftesbury, ii. 272, 285.

  Copeland, Patrick, i. 233.

  Copley, Sir Lionel, ii. 117, 162.

  Cordilleras, i. 25.

  Corn crackers, a kind of mean white, ii. 320.

  Cornets and trumpets, ii. 242.

  Cornwallis, the Earl, i. 273.

  Cornwallis, Thomas, i. 273, 307.

  Coronado, expedition of, i. 61.

  Coroners, ii. 39.

  Corruption and extortion, ii. 56.

  Coruña, i. 34.

  Coryat, Thomas, introduces the use of forks into England, ii. 226.

  Cortez in Mexico, i. 101.

  Cotton crop in South Carolina, ii. 326.

  Counter-reformation, ii. 160, 379.

  Counties in Virginia, ii. 37.

  Count Palatine, meaning of the title, i. 257.

  County court, English, i. 187.

  County courts in Virginia, ii. 38.

  County lieutenants in Virginia, ii. 41.

  Coursey, Henry, ii. 151.

  Court day in Virginia, ii. 42.

  Court House in town names, ii. 38.

  Court Party, i. 182.

  Courts baron, ii. 146, 148, 282;
    leet, i. 282; ii. 146-148;
    quarter session, i. 276.

  Cowley, Abraham, i. 28.

  Cowley, Ambrose, a buccaneer, ii. 358.

  Crackers, a kind of mean white, ii. 320.

  Craft guilds, ii. 15;
    of London, i. 179.

  Craftsmen desired in Virginia, i. 162.

  Cranfield, Sir M., i. 214.

  Craven, Lord, ii. 272, 303.

  Creeks and rivers as roadways, i. 212.

  Crèvecœur, St. John de, ii. 330.

  Crimes and punishments, ii. 265.

  Croatan, i. 39.

  Cromwell, Oliver, Lord Protector, i. 144, 278, 314, 316-318;
    ii. 12, 46, 131, 134, 349.

  Cromwell, Richard, ii. 20, 134.

  Crown requisitions, ii. 168.

  Cruel punishments, ii. 330.

  Crusades, i. 8.

  Cuitlahuatzin, i. 101.

  Culpeper, John, and his rebellion, ii. 283.

  Culpeper, Lord, ii. 53, 54, 70, 110-113, 245, 280.

  Culpeper, the town, ii. 39.

  Cumana, i. 197.

  Curl’s Wharf, ii. 64, 65, 75.

  “Cursed be Canaan,” ii. 192.

  Custis, D. P., ii. 119.

  Cypress shingles, ii. 223.

  Cyprus, i. 83.


  Dabney, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Dale, Sir Thomas, i. 163-171;
    code of laws in Dale’s time, i. 164, 194, 223, 301.

  Dale’s Gift, i. 168, 225.

  Dampier, William, ii. 358.

  Daniel, Robert, ii. 294.

  Danvers, Sir J., i. 220.

  Dare of Virginia, i. 35, 39.

  Darien, the peak in, i. 26.

  Dartmouth, Eng., i. 53.

  Darwin, Charles, ii. 359.

  Davenant, Sir William, i. 308.

  Davis, a Maryland rebel, ii. 156.

  Davis, Edward, a buccaneer, ii. 358.

  Davis, John, i. 21, 52.

  Deane, Charles, i. 44, 112.

  Defoe, Daniel, ii. 178, 179, 187.

  Deerfield, destruction of, ii. 378.

  Delaware, i. 145.

  Delaware, Lady, i. 171.

  Delaware, Lord, i. 146-148, 152-155, 159-163, 166-177, 183, 243.

  Delaware, the colony, i. 235.

  Delaware, the river, i. 61.

  Delawares, the tribe, i. 146.

  Deliverance, the ship, i. 151.

  Delke, Roger, ii. 53.

  Demagogues, ii. 33.

  Demos, the many-headed king, ii. 381.

  Deptford, i. 27.

  Devil, the, is an Ass, a comedy, ii. 226.

  Devonshire, first Earl of, i. 207.

  Diderot, D., i. 2.

  Digges, Edward, i. 314.

  Dining-room furniture, ii. 226.

  Dinwiddie, Robert, ii. 390.

  Discovery, the ship, i. 71.

  Dismal Swamp, ii. 65, 211.

  Dissenters, i. 302; ii. 99, 165, 263, 292.

  Doeg, the tribe, ii. 58.

  Domestic industries, ii. 208.

  Dominica, the island, i. 91.

  Donne, John, i. 54, 221.

  Don Quixote, i. 53.

  Don, the river, i. 89.

  Douglas, Earl of Orkney, ii. 120.

  Dove, the ship, i. 273, 290.

  Doyle, J. A., i. 42, 117, 185; ii. 18, 176.

  Dragon, Spanish nickname for Drake, i. 33.

  Drake, Sir Francis, i. 19, 24, 26, 33, 34, 59; ii. 342, 383.

  Draper, Lyman, ii. 245.

  Drayton, Michael, i. 77-79, 232.

  Dress of planters and their wives, ii. 236;
    legislation concerning, i. 246.

  Drinking horns, ii. 227.

  Drummond Lake, ii. 65.

  Drummond, Sarah, ii. 77, 94, 95.

  Drummond, William, ii. 65, 77, 87, 89, 94, 276.

  Drunkards, i. 246.

  Drysdale, Hugh, ii. 390.

  Duelling, ii. 265.

  Dunkirk, i. 36, 37.

  Durand, William, i. 311.

  Durant, George, ii. 276, 286;
    and the Yankee skippers, ii. 283.

  Durham, palatinate of, its form of government, i. 257, 259, 260,
    275-279.

  Durham cathedral, i. 259.

  “Dust and Ashes,” pseudonym for Gabriel Barber, i. 234.

  Dutch commercial rivals of England, ii. 4, 46-51.

  Dutch in the East Indies, i. 10.

  Dutch Gap, i. 167.

  Dwina, the river, i. 74.


  Eastchurch, Governor of Albemarle and his Creole bride, ii. 282-284.

  East Greenwich, manor of, i. 65.

  East India Company, Dutch, i. 51.

  East India Company, English, i. 51, 66, 184.

  “Eastward Ho,” the comedy, i. 56.

  Eden, Charles, ii. 304, 367.

  Eden, Richard, i. 14, 15.

  Eden, Sir Robert, ii. 172.

  Edenton, the town, ii. 314.

  Edgar the Peaceful, i. 260.

  Edmund Ironside, i. 260.

  Edmundson, William, ii. 57.

  Education of Indians, i. 246.

  Education in Ulster, ii. 392.

  Edward III., i. 22, 259; ii. 22.

  Edward VI., i. 14, 51.

  Edwards, Jonathan, ii. 254.

  Egypt, i. 83.

  Egyptian extremity of Illinois, ii. 320.

  El Dorado, i. 54, 116, 192.

  Eldredge family, descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Elizabeth City, i. 225, 228.

  Elizabeth Islands, i. 55.

  Elizabeth, Queen, i. 9, 16, 21, 23, 27-29, 31, 36, 43, 48, 50,
    53-55, 59, 146, 200; ii. 22, 192, 226.

  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, i. 225.

  England never had a _noblesse_, or upper caste, ii. 13.

  England, population of, in Elizabeth’s time, i. 46.

  English colonies in America promised self-government by Queen
    Elizabeth, i. 31.

  English methods of colonization, i. 25.

  Episcopal Church in Virginia, its downfall, ii. 263.

  Escurial, i. 37.

  Essex, the Earl of, i. 38.

  Eugene, Prince, ii. 190, 334.

  Euxine, the sea, i. 74.

  Evelin, George, i. 299, 300.

  Evelinton Manor, ii. 147.

  Exodus of Cavaliers from England to Virginia, ii. 16.

  Exodus of Puritans from Virginia, ii. 17.

  Expedition of French and Spanish ships against Charleston, ii. 293.

  Exquemeling, Alexander, ii. 352, 354-357.


  Faculty meetings at William and Mary, ii. 124.

  Fairfax, first Lord, ii. 12.

  Fairfax, fifth Lord, ii. 397.

  Fairfax, sixth Lord, ii. 397.

  Fairfax, Sir Thomas, ii. 397.

  Falkland, Lord, i. 69; ii. 11, 29.

  Falling Creek, i. 225.

  Falstaff, ii. 230.

  Farnese, Alexander, i. 36.

  Farnese, Francesco, i. 87.

  Faust, ii. 68.

  Fayal, i. 29, 54.

  “Federalist, The,” one of the world’s masterpieces, ii. 254.

  Felton, William, ii. 242.

  Fendall, Josias, i. 318; ii. 132-138.

  Ferrar, Nicholas, the elder, i. 203.

  Ferrar, Nicholas, the younger, i. 184, 203-207, 214-216, 218, 220-222,
    231, 236; ii. 116, 255.

  Ferryland, i. 256.

  Festivities at proclamation of Charles II., ii. 21.

  Feudal lords, imperfect subordination of, i. 256.

  Fiery dragons, missiles invented by Smith, i. 84.

  Fighting without declaration of war, ii. 344.

  Filibuster, origin of the name, ii. 348.

  First supply for Virginia, i. 112, 122.

  Fitzhugh, William, ii. 208.

  Five Nations, the, ii. 58, 144, 168.

  Flanders, Moll, ii. 178.

  Flash, Sir Petronel, i. 56-59.

  Fleete, Henry, i. 291.

  Fleming family, descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Fletcher, Governor of New York, ii. 363.

  Fletcher, John, i. 54.

  Flibustiers, origin of the name, ii. 347.

  Flirting, prohibited by act of legislature, i. 247.

  Florence, i. 83.

  Florida, discovery of, i. 12, 60, 62, 265;
    Huguenots in, i. 17, 18;
      massacre of, i. 23, 194.

  Flournoy, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Flowerdieu Hundred, i. 186.

  Flower-gardens, ii. 221.

  Flutes, ii. 242.

  Folkmotes, i. 277.

  Fontaine, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Foote, W. H., ii. 203.

  Force, Peter, ii. 66.

  Ford, P. L., ii. 239, 240, 261.

  Ford, W. C., ii. 261.

  Forestallers, law against, i. 249, 250.

  Fort Duquesne, ii. 303.

  Fort James, i. 93.

  Fort Nassau, i. 254.

  Fox-Bourne, H. R., ii. 273.

  Fox, George, in Maryland, ii. 139.

  Fox-hunting, ii. 239.

  France once had a _noblesse_, or upper class, ii. 13.

  Franklin, Benjamin, ii. 254, 303;
    his plan for a federal union, ii. 381.

  Fredericksburg, ii. 58, 247.

  Frederica, battle of, ii. 335.

  Free negroes, ii. 199.

  Freethinking, ii. 264.

  French colonization, i. 193.

  French posts in Mississippi valley, ii. 384.

  Frobisher, Sir Martin, i. 21, 36; ii. 342.

  Frontenac, Count de, ii. 378.

  Frontier against Spaniards, ii. 270, 271.

  Frontier life, ii. 253;
    effects of in American history, ii. 270, 271.

  Frontier life in North Carolina, ii. 311.

  Froude, J. A., i. 16, 21, 35.

  Fuller, Thomas, i. 81, 158.

  Fuller, William, ii. 132, 137.

  Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, ii. 273, 274, 280.

  Fundy, Bay of, i. 63, 170.

  Funerals, ii. 237.

  Fur trade, the, i. 286, 289.


  Galapagos Islands, ii. 359.

  Gale, Christopher, ii. 302.

  Gama, Vasco de, i. 12.

  Game, ii. 229.

  Gardiner, S. R., i. 201, 272; ii. 184.

  Garrison, W. L., ii. 192.

  Gates, Sir Thomas, i. 65, 147, 148, 150, 154, 162, 163, 171.

  Gateway of the West, ii. 399.

  Gay family, descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Gayangos, Pascual de, i. 87.

  Geddes, Jennie, i. 236.

  Genealogy, importance of, ii. 26;
    of Washington, ii. 27.

  Genoa, ii. 344.

  Gentlemen as pioneers, i. 121.

  Genty, the Abbé, i. 4.

  Geographical conditions, influence of, ii. 309.

  Geographical knowledge, progress of, i. 41.

  George I., ii. 169.

  George III., i. 31, 130; ii. 115.

  Georgia, i. 63, 280;
    a frontier colony, ii. 333;
    slavery prohibited in, ii. 335;
    introduced there, ii. 336;
    Spaniards driven from, ii. 335;
    population of, ii. 336.

  Germanna Ford, ii. 372.

  German immigration to North Carolina, ii. 318.

  Germans at Werowocomoco, i. 131, 139;
    in Appalachian region, ii. 318;
    in the Mohawk Valley, ii. 318;
    in Shenandoah Valley, ii. 395;
    on the Rapidan River, ii. 372.

  Gerrard, Thomas, ii. 134, 161.

  Gibbon, John, ii. 20.

  Gibraltar, Venezuela, sack of by Le Basque, ii. 350;
    sacked by Morgan, ii. 353.

  Gift of God, the ship, i. 70.

  Gilbert, Bartholomew, i. 56, 102.

  Gilbert, Raleigh, i. 67, 70.

  Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, i. 19-23, 28; ii. 342;
    shipwreck of, i. 29.

  Gillam, a Yankee skipper, ii. 283.

  Glass, attempts to manufacture, i. 123, 230.

  Glastonbury Minster, i. 260.

  Glover, William, ii. 295.

  God Speed, the ship, i. 71.

  Goddard, Anthony, i. 20.

  Godwyn, ii. 192.

  Gog, i. 41.

  Gold, all that glitters is not, i. 122.

  Gold fever in Virginia, i. 122.

  Golden Hind, the ship, i. 26-28, 59.

  Gomez, i. 26.

  Gondomar, Count, i. 195, 196, 198, 199.

  Gooch, William, ii. 390, 395.

  Goode, G. B., ii. 83.

  Goode, John, his conversation with Bacon, ii. 82-86.

  Gookin, Daniel, the elder, i. 302.

  Gookin, Daniel, the younger, i. 304.

  Gorges, Robert, i. 288.

  Gorges, Sir F., i. 56, 67.

  Gorton, Samuel, i. 289.

  Gosnold, Bartholomew, his voyage to New England in 1602, i. 55;
    71, 90, 92, 98.

  Gourgues, Dominique de, i. 20, 73.

  Government of early settlers in Virginia, i. 160.

  Government of laws, ii. 267.

  Gracchus, Tiberius, ii. 107.

  Graffenried, Baron, leads a party of Swiss and Germans to North
      Carolina, ii. 297;
    captured by the Tuscaroras, ii. 300-303.

  Granaries, ii. 221.

  Grant, U. S., i. 88; ii. 191.

  Gratz in Styria, i. 84.

  Gray, Asa, ii. 394.

  Gray, Samuel, ii. 195.

  Gray’s Inn, i. 175.

  Graydon, Alexander, ii. 165.

  Great circle sailing, i. 91.

  Great Wighcocomoco, naval fight at, i. 293, 299.

  Greeks, the, i. 37.

  Green Spring, ii. 55, 87, 89, 100, 224.

  Greene, Roger, ii. 276.

  Greene, S. A., ii. 160.

  Grenville, Sir Richard, i. 33-35, 36.

  Greenway Court, ii. 397.

  Grigsby, H. B., ii. 10.

  Grimm, F. M., Baron, i. 3.

  Grolier Club, ii. 174.

  _Guardacostas_, small cruisers, ii. 346.

  Guiana, i. 54.

  Gunpowder explosion at Werowocomoco, i. 141.

  Gunpowder plot, i. 67.

  Gunston Hall, ii. 224;
    mode of life at, ii. 232-234.


  _Habeas corpus_ introduced into Virginia, ii. 371.

  Haddon, Dr., his prescriptions and bills, ii. 260.

  Haddon Hall, ii. 273.

  Hakluyt, Richard, the elder, i. 41.

  Hakluyt, Richard, the younger, i. 42-52, 65, 128.

  Hale, E. E., i. 2.

  Halidon Hill, battle of, i. 260.

  Halmote in Durham, i. 277.

  Hamilton, Alexander, ii. 98, 175, 254.

  Hammond, John, i. 289.

  Hamor, Ralph, i. 165;
    his “True Discourse,” i. 232.

  Hampden, John, i. 204;
    ii. 12.

  Hampton, i. 132, 167, 187, 225.

  Hampton Court, i. 198.

  Hampton Roads, i. 92, 155.

  Hancock, John, ii. 285.

  Handcock, a Tuscarora chief, ii. 302-304.

  Handel, G. F., ii. 190, 242.

  Hanham, Thomas, i. 67.

  Hannibal, i. 19.

  Hanover, ii. 9.

  Hansford, Betsey, ii. 127, 128.

  Hansford, Thomas, ii. 92, 95, 104.

  “Hardscrabble,” ii. 313.

  Hardwicke, Lord, ii. 200.

  Harford, Henry, ii. 173.

  Harpsichords, ii. 242.

  Harrison, Thomas, i. 306, 311.

  Harvard College, i. 147, 234, 235.

  Harvey, Sir John, i. 251, 253, 264, 274, 287, 293-299, 303;
    ii. 5, 16, 77.

  Hautboys, ii. 241.

  Hawkes, F. L., ii. 277, 281, 285, 287, 298.

  Hawkins, Sir John, i. 15-20, 24, 36, 59;
    ii. 342.

  Hawkins, William, i. 15.

  Hayden, H. E., ii. 205.

  Hayti, ii. 347.

  Hedges, dying under, i. 211.

  Heidelberg, i. 258.

  Hell Gate, i. 303.

  Hendren, S. R., ii. 72.

  Hening’s Statutes, i. 230, 248-250, 295, 304; ii. 21, 71, 98-100,
    114, 116, 121, 185, 186, 194, 195-200, 202, 203, 212, 219, 240,
    245, 246, 265.

  Henrico County, i. 168;
    ii. 67.

  Henricus, City of, i. 168, 186, 225, 227, 229, 234.

  Henriette Marie, Queen of Charles I., i. 266.

  Henry I., i. 256.

  Henry II., i. 256.

  Henry III., i. 258.

  Henry III. of France, ii. 226.

  Henry IV., i. 259;
    ii. 229.

  Henry IV. of France, ii. 168, 377.

  Henry VI., ii. 22.

  Henry VII., i. 50.

  Henry VIII., i. 22, 47, 48, 181, 259, 285;
    ii. 285.

  Henry the Navigator, i, 50.

  Henry, Patrick, i. 31;
    ii. 127, 266.

  Henry, Prince of Wales, i. 92, 163, 168, 195.

  Henry, W. W., i. 112.

  Heralds’ College, i. 86.

  Herbert, George, i. 220.

  Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, i. 220.

  Herbert, William, i. 68.

  Herkimer, Nicholas, ii. 318.

  Herman, Augustine, ii. 143.

  Herman, Ephraim, ii. 143.

  Hervey, Lord, i. 66.

  Highwaymen, amateur, i. 81;
    ii. 102.

  Hildreth, Richard, i. 305.

  Hill, Edward, ii. 71, 73.

  Hindustan, i. 25.

  Hinton, Sir Thomas, ii. 5.

  Hispaniola, ii. 347.

  Hobby the sexton, ii. 247.

  Hoe-cake, i. 17.

  Holinshed, i. 27.

  Holy Grail, the, i. 204.

  Holy Roman Empire, i. 258.

  Holy Staircase, i. 83.

  Hominy, i. 275.

  Hooker, Richard, i. 69, 235.

  Horse-racing, i. 232;
    ii. 237-239;
    prohibited at William and Mary, ii. 126.

  Horses, i. 230.

  Hospitality in Virginia and Maryland, ii. 219.

  Hotten, J. C., ii. 184, 186.

  Housekeeper’s instructions at William and Mary, ii. 124.

  Houses in Virginia, i. 211, 212.

  Howard of Effingham, Lord, governor of Virginia, ii. 113-116,
    158, 246.

  Howard of Effingham, Lord, the admiral, i. 36;
    ii. 342.

  Howard, Lord Thomas, i. 38;
    ii. 342.

  Hubbard’s store, an inventory of, ii. 214.

  Hudson Bay Company, ii. 53, 383.

  Hudson, Henry, i. 66.

  Hudson, the river, i. 61-63, 265.

  Hughson, S. C., ii. 362.

  Huguenots, in Florida, i. 17, 18;
    in Brazil, i. 17;
    massacre of, i. 18, 23, 73;
    expelled from France, ii. 160;
    in Virginia, ii. 204;
    in Carolina, ii. 274;
    in South Carolina, ii. 288, 292, 322;
    in North Carolina, ii. 297.

  Humboldt, Alexander, i. 54.

  Hume, David, i. 54.

  Hundreds and boroughs, i. 227, 228.

  Hundreds in Maryland, i. 284;
    in Virginia, i. 186.

  Hungary, i. 90.

  Hunt, Robert, i. 93.

  Hunter, school tutor, ii. 247.

  Hunter, William, a priest, ii. 165.

  Huntingdon School, i. 144.

  Huntingdonshire, i. 205.

  Hutchinson, Thomas, i. 240;
    ii. 29;
    his work in history, ii. 254.

  Hyde, Edward, Lord Clarendon, ii. 272, 285.

  Hyde, governor of Albemarle, ii. 296.


  Idaho, i. 187.

  “Il Penseroso,” i. 205.

  Independence, Declaration of, ii. 108, 171.

  Indian corn, as a floral emblem, i. 156;
    its importance in American history, i. 156;
    cultivated in Virginia, i. 231;
    raised in Maryland, i. 275;
    ii. 2.

  Indian girls dancing, i. 114.

  Indian troubles in Albemarle probably not incited by Carey and
    Porter, ii. 297.

  Indians in Virginia, number of, ii. 8.

  Indians of Carolina classified, ii. 298-300.

  Indians of North Carolina, i. 32;
    of Virginia, i. 56, 74.

  Indians sold for slaves, ii. 277.

  Indigo, an important staple of South Carolina, ii. 326.

  Industries, domestic, ii. 208.

  Infanta Maria, i. 195, 198, 200.

  Ingle, Edward, i. 228, 306-308; ii. 41, 43.

  Ingram, David, i. 20.

  Initiative in legislation, i. 284;
    ii. 151.

  Inns in Virginia, i. 211;
    in Maryland, ii. 219.

  Inquisition, the Spanish, i. 20, 36, 45.

  Insolvent debtors in North Carolina, ii. 313;
    Oglethorpe’s plan for relieving, ii. 334.

  Instructions for the Virginia colonists, i. 72-76.

  Insurrections of slaves, ii. 196;
    in South Carolina, ii. 329.

  Ireland, i. 66.

  Isabella, Queen, i. 51.

  Isle of Wight County, i. 302.

  Isles of Demons, i. 150.

  Isolation, barbarizing effects of, ii. 253, 321, 332, 333.


  Jack of the Feather, a chief, i. 190.

  Jackson, Andrew, ii. 391.

  Jamaica, ii. 183; conquest of, ii. 349.

  James I., i. 55, 62, 69, 104, 113, 147, 152, 218, 236-238, 255,
      256, 263;
    ii. 256, 391;
    censures Rolfe for marrying a princess, i. 171, 193;
    tries to get on without a parliament, i. 196;
    his hatred of Raleigh, i. 197;
    tries to interfere with election of treasurer of Virginia Company,
      i. 201-203;
    quarrels with Parliament, i. 208;
    attempts to corrupt Nicholas Ferrar, i. 216.

  James II., ii. 8, 144, 146, 159, 160, 334.

  James City, i. 186, 210.

  James, Duke of York. See James II.

  James River, fight in, i. 305.

  James, the Old Pretender, ii. 168.

  James, Thomas, of New Haven, i. 303.

  Jamestown, i. 39;
    founding of, i. 39, 140;
    famine at, i. 153, 229;
    burned by Bacon, ii. 89;
    ruins of, ii. 120.

  Jay, John, ii. 254.

  Jefferson, Thomas, i. 221;
    ii. 25, 37, 42, 66, 98, 128, 175, 191, 201, 202, 204, 213, 224,
      242, 259, 396.

  Jeffries, Sir Herbert, ii. 92, 95.

  Jewett, C., ii. 9.

  Johnson, C., ii. 368.

  Johnson, John, ii. 146.

  Johnson, Robert, ii. 306, 365-368.

  Johnson, Samuel, ii. 180.

  Johnson, Sir Nathaniel, ii. 292.

  Johnsonese writing, ii. 256.

  Joint-stock companies, i. 51, 62, 191, 280.

  Jonah, the prophet, i. 83.

  Jones, C. C., ii. 334.

  Jones, Hugh, i. 302; ii. 188, 238, 386.

  Jones, Sir William, ii. 28.

  Jonson, Ben, i. 54, 56; ii. 226.

  Jouet, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Jowles, Henry, ii. 161.

  Joyce, P. W., i. 255.

  Justice, Henry, barrister and convict, ii. 248.


  Kalm, Peter, ii. 164.

  Karlsefni, Thorfinn, ii. 277.

  Kawasha, patron of tobacco, i. 175.

  Kecoughtan, i. 186, 209.

  Kecoughtans, the tribe, i. 132.

  Keith, George, i. 302.

  Kemp, Richard, appointed secretary of state in Virginia, i. 295,
    298, 299.

  Kendall, George, i. 100.

  Kennebec River, i. 70.

  Kent, i. 65; palatinate of, i. 257.

  Kent Island, i. 287, 289-294, 296, 299-301, 307, 315, 318.

  Kentucky, its settlers, ii. 394, 395.

  Kidd, William, ii. 368.

  Kidnapping, ii. 177, 186;
    of Indians, ii. 292.

  King Philip’s War, ii. 63.

  King, Rufus, ii. 66.

  Kinship reckoned through females, i. 95.

  Kinsman, ii. 5.

  Kirke, Colonel, ii. 200.

  Kitchens, ii. 221, 228.

  Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, ii. 386.

  Knowles, John, of Watertown, i. 303.

  Knox, Henry, ii. 394.

  Kocoum, chieftain, said to have been first husband of Pocahontas, i.
    168.


  Labadie, Jean de, ii. 142.

  Labadists, ii. 142.

  La Belle Sauvage, name for London taverns, i. 172.

  Labrador, i. 12, 61.

  La Cosa, the pilot, i. 119.

  Lady of Barbadoes, a, ii. 192.

  Lake Erie, its strategic importance, ii. 387, 388.

  La Muce, Marquis de, ii. 204.

  Lancaster, palatinate of, i. 259.

  Land grants, ii. 176;
    in New England, ii. 31;
    in Virginia, ii. 23, 24, 36.

  Lane, Ralph, i. 32, 159.

  La Plata, the river, i. 25.

  Larned, J. N., ii. 201.

  La Roche, Captain, i. 83.

  La Rochefort, ii. 347.

  La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, ii. 331.

  La Salle, Robert de, ii. 383.

  Las Casas, i. 4; ii. 349.

  Latané, J. H., i. 302.

  Laud, William, Archbishop, i. 204, 298, 303;
    ii. 17.

  Laudonnière, René de, i. 17.

  Lawnes’ Plantation, i. 186.

  Lawrence, Richard, ii. 65, 67, 68, 76, 87, 89, 91, 93, 203.

  Lawson, John, surveyor, ii. 277;
    his history of Carolina, his charming style, captured by the
      Tuscaroras, his horrible death, ii. 301;
    his description of North Carolina, ii. 310.

  Lawyers in Virginia, ii. 266.

  Laydon, John, i. 113.

  Laziness, charge of, brought against Virginians, ii. 209, 210.

  Leaders of men, Virginia prolific in, ii. 44.

  Leah and Rachel, i. 289, 311, 315, 318; ii. 267.

  Lear, Tobias, ii. 261.

  Le Basque, Michel, a buccaneer, ii. 350.

  Lecky, W., ii. 190.

  Lee, Edmund, ii. 19.

  Lee, Richard, the first, ii. 19, 20.

  Lee, Richard, 2d, ii. 61, 80.

  Lee, Richard Henry, 2d, ii. 23.

  Lee, William, ii. 19, 22.

  Lees of Coton Hall, ii. 19.

  Legislation in Albemarle Colony, ii. 279.

  Legislature, first in America, i. 186.

  Legislatures, bicameral, i. 187.

  Leisler, Jacob, ii. 96, 115, 159, 399.

  Le Moine, the painter, i. 18, 30.

  Libraries in Virginia, ii. 243-245.

  Life of Virginia planters, ii. 230-234.

  Lightfoot, Philip, ii. 89.

  Lincoln, Abraham, ii. 191.

  Linen manufactures in the United States, ii. 392, 393.

  Liquors, price regulated by law, i. 249.

  Little Gidding, i. 205.

  Locke, John, i. 235; ii. 272-274.

  Logan, James, ii. 365.

  Lok, Captain, i. 16.

  Lok, Michael, i. 61, 68.

  London Company, the, i. 62-72, 80, 113, 129, 130;
    second charter of the, i. 144-146, 192;
    its third charter, i. 177;
    its quarter sessions, i. 178;
    factions form in, i. 182, 188;
    its overthrow, i. 196-222;
    some effects of its downfall, i. 238-240.

  Long Assembly, the, ii. 57-63, 99.

  Longfellow, H. W., ii. 227.

  Long Island Sound, i. 63.

  Lord lieutenant, i. 281.

  Lord Proprietor of Maryland, his powers, i. 270.

  Lords, House of, ii. 14.

  Lords of the manor, ii. 32.

  Lords of Trade, i. 301.

  “Lost Lady,” the, a comedy, ii. 56.

  Lotteries, i. 178.

  Louis XIV., i. 52;
    ii. 117, 159, 168, 360, 377, 378.

  Lucy, Sir Thomas, i. 69.

  Ludwell, Philip, ii. 87, 89, 102, 104, 290.

  Ludwell, Thomas, ii. 52, 89, 106.

  Lunenburg, ii. 9.

  Luther, Martin, i. 8; ii. 160.

  Lyly, John, i. 53.


  Macdonald, Flora, ii. 318.

  Mace, Samuel, i. 54.

  MacGregor, The, i. 94.

  Machiavelli, i. 82.

  McMaster, J. B., ii. 218.

  Madison, James, ii. 175, 250, 254.

  Madre de Dios, the ship, i. 54.

  Madrid, i. 194.

  Magellan, i. 26.

  Magog, i. 41.

  Maherrins, the tribe, last remnant of the Susquehannocks, ii. 299.

  Mahomet and the mountain, i. 114.

  Maine, i. 67.

  Maine Historical Society, i. 43.

  Maine Law, ii. 335.

  Makemie, Francis, ii. 206.

  Maitland, F. W., ii. 197.

  Malaria, ii. 121.

  Malay pirates, ii. 339.

  Malbone, Rodolphus, ii. 265.

  Malory, Philip, ii. 21.

  Manhattan Island, i. 253, 303;
    ii. 139.

  Manners, Lady Dorothy, ii. 273.

  Manorial courts, i. 276.

  Manor, lords of, ii. 32.

  Manors in Maryland, i. 282;
    ii. 146;
    transformed by slavery, ii. 148.

  Mansfield, Lord, his decision that slaves landing on British soil
    became free, ii. 201.

  Mansvelt, a buccaneer, ii. 350.

  Map of North Virginia, i. 55.

  Map of Virginia contrasted with that of New England, ii. 8, 9.

  Maracaibo, sack of, by Le Basque, ii. 350;
    by Morgan, ii. 353.

  Marcus Aurelius, i. 82.

  Marches or border counties, i. 257.

  Market, the American, i. 46.

  Marlborough, Duke of, ii. 190.

  Marquis, meaning of the title, i. 257.

  Marseilles, i. 82.

  Marshall, John, ii. 129, 175, 266.

  Martha’s Vineyard, i. 55, 56; ii. 8.

  Martian, Nicholas, i. 288.

  Martin Brandon, i. 186;
    and Flowerdieu Hundred, i. 225.

  Martin, John, i. 92, 245.

  Martin, Richard, his speech in the House of Commons, i. 181.

  Martin’s Hundred, i. 186, 209.

  Martyr, Peter, i. 15.

  Mary and John, the ship, i. 70.

  Marye, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Marye, James, ii. 247.

  Maryland, i. 63, 145;
    origin of the name, i. 265;
    called the Scarlet Woman, i. 295;
    Puritans in, ii. 137, 150;
    Quakers in, ii. 138;
    Catholics in, ii. 150;
    sheriffs in, ii. 153;
    parsons, ii. 165;
    wheat culture in, ii. 268;
    social features of, ii. 267, 269;
    poll tax in, ii. 376.

  Maryland Historical Society, i. 268.

  Marylanders mistaken for Spaniards, i. 292.

  Mary Tudor, i. 66.

  Masaniello, ii. 103.

  Mason, George, colonel of cavalry, ii. 59, 104, 234.

  Mason, George, statesman, ii. 59, 247;
    life on his plantation, ii. 232-234.

  Mason, James Murray, ii. 234.

  Mason, John, ii. 232-234, 247.

  Masquerade of Indians, i. 114.

  “Masque of Flowers,” a play, i. 175.

  Mass celebrated for the first time in English America, i. 274.

  Massachusetts, i. 63;
    ii. 12;
    laws concerning immigrants, ii. 184.

  Massachusetts Bay Company, i. 236;
    its first charter, i. 269.

  Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 1.

  Massacre by Indians in 1622, i. 190, 208, 302;
    in 1644, i. 305;
    in 1672, i. 236;
    in 1676, ii. 62;
    in 1711, ii. 302;
    in 1715, ii. 306.

  Massacre by border ruffians at Lawrence in 1863, ii. 320.

  Massacre of Huguenots, i. 18.

  Massasoit, i. 156.

  Mather, Cotton, i. 304.

  Mathews, Samuel, i. 295, 298, 314;
    ii. 20, 66, 110, 186.

  Mathews, Thomas, ii. 66, 69, 72-77, 87, 93, 94, 103, 107.

  Mattapony River, i. 139.

  Maury, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Mayflower pilgrims, the, i. 69, 156, 235, 253;
    ii. 16.

  Maxwell, W., ii. 1, 66.

  McClurg, James, ii. 259.

  Meade, Bishop, ii. 22, 164, 188, 235, 262, 263, 316.

  Medina-Celi, Duke of, i. 51.

  Memphis, Tenn., ii. 320.

  Memphremagog, i. 41.

  Menefie, George, i. 297, 299.

  Menendez, i. 18, 73-77.

  Mephistopheles, i. 193;
    ii. 68.

  Mercator, G., i. 89.

  Mermaid in St. John’s River, i. 261.

  Mermaid Tavern, i. 54.

  Merovingian kings, i. 257;
    legislation, ii. 152.

  “Merry Wives of Windsor,” i. 70.

  Mexico, i. 41.

  Middle Plantation, the oath at, ii. 81, 97, 106;
    name changed to Williamsburg, ii. 121.

  Middlesex, Earl of, i. 214.

  Middleton, member of Parliament attacks London Company’s charter,
    i. 180.

  Migration from Ulster to American colonies, ii. 394.

  Miller, the martyr and revenue collector, ii. 282.

  Milton, John, i. 205, 309.

  Ministers, appointment of, ii. 99.

  Molasses, ii. 211, 219, 281.

  Moncure, a Huguenot family, ii. 205.

  Monk, George, Duke of Albemarle, ii. 134, 272.

  Monroe, James, President, ii. 128.

  Montbars, the exterminator, ii. 349.

  Montague, Sergeant, i. 180.

  Montezuma, i. 101.

  Monticello, ii. 224.

  Mooney, James, ii. 299.

  Moore, J. W., ii. 280, 298.

  Moore, James, ii. 292.

  Moore, James, the younger, defeats the Tuscaroras, ii. 304.

  Moore’s house at Yorktown, ii. 390.

  More, Sir Thomas, i. 47.

  Morgan, Sir Henry, i. 24;
    ii. 350;
    his treachery and cruelty, ii. 351-353;
    Puerto del Principe captured by, ii. 351;
    Porto Bello captured by, ii. 351;
    Maracaibo sacked by, ii. 353;
    Gibraltar, Venezuela, sacked by, ii. 353;
    Panama sacked by, ii. 354;
    deserts his comrades at Chagres, ii. 355;
    knighted by Charles II., ii. 356;
    governor of Jamaica, ii. 356;
    thrown into prison, ii. 357.

  Morgan, Lewis, i. 111.

  Moriscos expelled from Spain, i. 9.

  Morison, Francis, ii. 92.

  Morley, Lord, i. 67.

  Morocco, i. 90.

  Morris, Robert, ii. 303.

  Morton, Joseph, ii. 362.

  Mosquitoes, ii. 225.

  Mount Desert Island, i. 170, 261.

  Mount Vernon, ii. 224, 389;
    mode of life at, ii. 235.

  Mulattoes, ii. 202.

  Mulberries, i. 231;
    ii. 3.

  Mulberry Island, i. 155.

  Münster, Sebastian, i. 61.

  Murray family descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Muscovy Company, i. 14, 51.

  Muskogi, the, in Carolina, ii. 300.

  Muster master-general, i. 282.

  Mystics at Bohemia Manor, ii. 142.

  Mytens, Daniel, i. 198, 267.


  Nalbrits, i. 89.

  Names, local, in Carolina, ii. 272.

  Nansemond, i. 302, 311.

  Napkins and forks, ii. 226.

  Napoleon I., i. 36, 37.

  Narragansett Indians, ii. 63.

  National floral emblem for the United States, i. 156.

  Navigation Act, ii. 46;
    its effect upon the price of tobacco, ii. 51, 106, 108;
    effects upon tobacco, ii. 176;
    effects upon Virginia commerce, ii. 218;
    mischievous effects in Albemarle Colony, ii. 280;
    its mischievous effects on South Carolina, ii. 289;
    its effect upon piracy, ii. 362.

  Navy, the English, i. 22, 44.

  Negro panic in New York, 1741, ii. 264.

  Negro quarters, ii. 221.

  Negro slaves, ii. 177, 189-203;
    treatment of, in Virginia, ii. 195-199;
    cruel laws concerning, ii. 197-199;
    effect of taking them to England, ii. 200, 201;
    in South Carolina, ii. 279, 326-331;
    in North Carolina, ii. 329.

  Negro slavery, ii. 35.

  Negro, the theory that he was not strictly human, ii. 192.

  “Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate,” ii. 192.

  Negroes as real estate, ii. 194.

  Negroes, number of, in Virginia, i. 253.

  Neill, E. D., i. 99, 105-112, 179, 180, 182, 212, 215, 245, 252, 273,
      294; ii. 58, 95, 186.

  Nelson, Thomas, i. 296.

  Netherlands, the, i. 21, 22, 45, 66, 163, 253, 267, 280.

  Neutral ships ill protected, ii. 344.

  Neville’s Cross, battle of, i. 260.

  Nevis, as an isle of Calypso, ii. 282.

  New Albion, i. 27;
    ii. 383.

  New Amstel, ii. 139, 140.

  New Amsterdam, i. 253; ii. 3.

  New Berne, ii. 297, 314.

  Newcastle, Delaware, ii. 139, 145.

  New Englanders attempt a settlement at Cape Fear River, ii. 277;
    in Georgia, ii. 335.

  Newfoundland fisheries, i. 13, 23, 29, 44, 154.

  New France, i. 52;
    ii. 399.

  Newgate Calendar, ii. 172.

  New Hampshire, i. 63.

  New Haven Colony, i. 280.

  New Jersey, i. 63;
    founding of, ii. 144.

  New Mexico, i. 25.

  Newport, Christopher, i. 53, 80, 90, 93-96, 112-114, 116-119, 122-131,
    135, 148, 154.

  Newport News, origin of the name, i. 92, 209.

  New Providence, island of, ii. 361, 365.

  New Style, i. 1.

  New Sweden, ii. 139.

  New York, i. 22, 61, 63;
    ii. 211.

  Nichols, J., i. 176.

  Nicholson, Sir Francis, ii. 115-118, 120-123, 129, 130, 162, 163.

  Nicot, Jean, i. 174.

  Nicotiana, name for tobacco, i. 174.

  Noble savage, the, i. 4.

  Nonesuch, i. 152, 226.

  North Carolina, i. 39;
    agriculture in, ii. 313;
    white trash in, ii. 315-317;
    German immigration to, ii. 318;
    negro slaves in, ii. 329.

  Northern Neck reserved by Culpeper, ii. 112.

  North Virginia, old name for New England, i. 55.

  Northwest Passage, attempts to find, i. 32, 44, 73, 113, 116, 126,
    226; ii. 3.

  Norumbega, i. 28, 55.

  Notley, Thomas, ii. 156.

  Nova Scotia, i. 287.


  Oath at Middle Plantation, ii. 81, 97, 106.

  Oath of supremacy tendered to Lord Baltimore, i. 264.

  Ocracoke Inlet, i. 32.

  Octoroons, ii. 203.

  Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, i. 258.

  Oexmelin. See Exquemeling.

  Ogle, Cuthbert, ii. 242.

  Oglethorpe, James, ii. 334.

  Old Bailey, ii. 183.

  Old Field Schools, ii. 247.

  Oldmixon’s “British Empire,” a book full of blunders, ii. 255.

  Old Style, i. 1.

  _Olonnois_, the buccaneer, ii. 349.

  O’Neill, The, i. 94.

  Opekankano, i. 100-102, 124, 139, 140, 189, 224, 305;
    ii. 72.

  Orator, an Indian, i. 137.

  Orchards, ii. 222.

  Oregon, i. 27.

  Orinoco, the river, i. 54.

  Outlying slaves, ii. 197.

  Ovid’s Metamorphoses, i. 232.

  Oxford, the university, i. 28, 42, 255, 268;
    ii. 65, 204, 249, 250.

  Oysters, i. 143.


  Pacific coast of South America, i. 25.

  Pacific Ocean, naval warfare in, i. 25.

  Page, John, ii. 195.

  Paige, Lucius, ii. 265.

  Palatinate, the Rhenish, i. 258; ii. 318.

  Palatinates, their origin and purpose, i. 256-260.

  Pamlico Sound, i. 31, 32.

  Pamunkey, Queen of, ii. 72-74, 89, 124.

  Pamunkey River, i. 101.

  Panama sacked by Morgan, ii. 354.

  Panton, Anthony, i. 295, 298, 299.

  Paper money, ii. 111;
    in North Carolina, ii. 304.

  Paradise, estate of, ii. 19.

  Paraguay, i. 26.

  Pardoning power, i. 281.

  Paris matins, the, i. 21.

  Parishes in Virginia, ii. 35;
    in Carolina of English origin, not French, ii. 324;
    in Louisiana analogous to counties, ii. 324.

  Parke, Daniel, ii. 89, 119.

  Parker, Theodore, ii. 192.

  Parker, William, i. 67.

  Parkman, Francis, i. 111.

  Parsons, Robert, i. 83.

  Parsons, appointment of, ii. 375.

  Parsons’ cause, ii. 127, 174.

  Partition walls, ii. 223.

  Partonopeus de Blois, ii. 128.

  Pass, Simon Van, i. 172.

  Passamagnus River, i. 265.

  Patagonia, i. 26.

  Patapsco River, i. 112, 255, 287.

  Pate, a Maryland rebel, ii. 156.

  Paternal government, i. 240.

  Patience, the ship, i. 150.

  Patuxents, the tribe, i. 291.

  Paul IV., ii. 377.

  Pauperism in England, i. 48.

  Peasants, English, in the 16th century, i. 47.

  Pedigrees, value of, ii. 26.

  Peerage, the English, ii. 13, 14.

  Pelican, the ship, i. 26.

  Pelton, ii. 5.

  Pembroke, Earl of, i. 184.

  Pembroke, palatinate of, i. 259.

  Pendleton, Edmund, ii. 266.

  Penn, William, ii. 144-146, 157.

  Pennington, Admiral, i. 273.

  Pennsylvania, i. 22, 63; ii. 53;
    distributing centre for Scotch-Irish immigrants, ii. 391-394.

  Pennsylvania Dutch, ii. 318.

  Pepys, Samuel, ii. 25, 55.

  Pequot War, i. 236.

  Percy, George, i. 97, 105, 131, 140, 152, 162, 164.

  Persecutions in Scotland, ii. 288.

  Persians, the, i. 37.

  Peruvian towns plundered by buccaneers, ii. 359.

  Peters, Samuel, ii. 231.

  Petersburg, ii. 82, 257.

  Pewter vessels, ii. 226.

  Phettiplace, William, i. 135.

  Philadelphia, ii. 211, 269.

  Philip II., i. 8-10, 22, 24, 34, 44; ii. 344.

  Philip III., i. 59, 76, 194, 200.

  Philip V., ii. 360, 378.

  Philip, chief of the Wampanoags, ii. 63.

  Philipse manor house, ii. 227.

  Phillips, Lee, ii. 140.

  Phillips, Sir Thomas, i. 43.

  Phillips, Wendell, ii. 191.

  Physicians in Virginia, ii. 259-261.

  Picked men, importance of, ii. 25.

  Picnics, ii. 243.

  Pierre of Dieppe, a buccaneer, ii. 349.

  Pike, L. O., ii. 182.

  Pillsbury, Parker, ii. 192.

  Pinzon, Vincent, i. 12, 149.

  Piracy, its Golden Age the 17th century, ii. 338, 339;
    definition of, ii. 340.

  Pirates, i. 24;
    Algerine, ii. 286, 339;
    on the Carolina coast, ii. 314, 361, 369;
    Chinese, ii. 339;
    Malay, ii. 339.

  Pitt, William, ii. 382.

  Plantation, a typical, ii. 5;
    description of a, ii. 220, 228.

  Plant cutters’ riot, ii. 111, 112.

  Plant cutting made high treason, ii. 114.

  Plymouth Colony, i. 280.

  Plymouth Company, the, i. 62-71, 145, 172.

  Plymouth, England, i. 15, 26, 56, 67, 70, 172.

  Plymouth, Mass., i. 29.

  Pocahontas, her rescue of Captain Smith, i. 102-111, 115;
    her visits to Jamestown, i. 130;
    reveals an Indian plot, i. 138;
    her abduction by Argall, i. 168;
    rescues Henry Spelman from tomahawk, i. 168;
    her marriage with John Rolfe, i. 169;
    takes the name of Rebekah, i. 169;
    her visit to London, i. 171;
    her portrait, i. 172;
    her death at Gravesend, i. 173.

  Pocomoke River, skirmish in, i. 293.

  Pogram, Elijah, ii. 11.

  Poindexter, Charles, i. 112.

  Point Comfort, i. 92, 143, 145, 155, 225, 274, 288, 290.

  Pole, Reginald, i. 66.

  Poles in Virginia, i. 230.

  Political homoeopathy, ii. 295.

  Poll tax in Maryland, ii. 376.

  Pollock, Thomas, ii. 197, 286, 304.

  Polonian or Baltic Sea, i. 74.

  Pompey and the Cilician pirates, ii. 338.

  Pone, i. 275.

  Poor law of 1601, i. 48.

  Popham, Sir John, i. 60, 68, 81, 159; ii. 102.

  Popular government, ii. 97.

  Population of England in Elizabeth’s time, i. 46.

  Population of New England, i. 253;
    of American colonies, ii. 169;
    of Georgia, ii. 336;
    of the two Carolinas, ii. 329.

  Pork, i. 161; ii. 207.

  Poropotank Creek, ii. 19.

  Porto Bello captured by Morgan, ii. 351.

  Port Royal, N. S., i. 170, 261; ii. 123.

  Port Royal, S. C., ii. 271, 278;
    burned by the Spaniards, ii. 288.

  Port St. Julian, i. 26.

  Porter, John, ii. 295.

  Postage rates, ii. 376.

  Postal service in America under Spotswood, ii. 389.

  Post-office Act, ii. 373-375.

  Postlethwayt, Malachy, ii. 180, 181-186.

  Potomac, the river, i. 63, 112, 161.

  Pott, Dr. John, i. 252, 253, 263, 287, 293, 297, 298.

  Pott, Francis, i. 296.

  Potts, Richard, i. 96.

  Poultry, a street in London, i. 203.

  Powhatan, The, i. 102-114, 116, 132-139, 168, 189.

  Powhatan, the village, i. 94, 127.

  Powhatans, the tribe, i. 94-111.

  Precious metals, effect of their increased quantity after the
    discovery of America, i. 9, 47.

  Presbyterians in Ulster, disabilities inflicted upon, ii. 393.

  Presley, a burgess, ii. 70, 94.

  Primary assemblies, i. 284.

  Pring, Martin, i. 56, 67.

  Priscilla, a Virginia, ii. 128.

  Prisoners of war, ii. 184.

  Privateering, ii. 343.

  Processioning of bounds, ii. 99.

  Proprietary governments, beginnings of, i. 269.

  Proprietors of Carolina sell out their interests, ii. 308.

  Prospero’s Isle, i. 150.

  Providence, a settlement in Maryland, i. 313, 315.

  Puerto del Principe sacked by Morgan, ii. 351.

  Pulpit encourages English colonization, i. 49.

  Punishments for crime, ii. 182.

  Purchas, Rev. S., i. 87, 302.

  Puritan families in New England, ii. 28.

  Puritanism widely spread in the South, ii. 337.

  Puritans in Virginia, i. 301; ii. 17;
    in Maryland, i. 312-318; ii. 137, 150;
    and education, ii. 252-254;
    in South Carolina, ii. 322.

  Putin Bay, i. 94.

  Pym, John, i. 204, 208, 235; ii, 12.


  Quadroons, ii. 202.

  Quaker relief acts, ii. 153;
    in North Carolina, ii. 304.

  Quakers in Maryland, ii. 138;
    in Albemarle Colony, ii. 294.

  Quantrell, a border ruffian, ii. 320.

  Quaritch, Bernard, ii. 1.

  Quarry, Robert, ii. 362.

  Quicksilver, Frank, i. 56.

  Quinine, i. 4.

  Quit rents, ii. 194.

  _Quo warranto_, writ of, i. 218.


  Raccoons, i. 114.

  Raleigh, Sir Walter, i. 19, 28-32, 35-40, 52-55, 71, 126, 163,
      197-200; ii. 271, 342;
    his verses just before death, i. 200;
    his “History of the World,” i. 197.

  Randall, D. R., i. 303.

  Randolph, Edward, ii. 108, 364.

  Randolph, Jane, ii. 204.

  Randolph, John, of Roanoke, i. 173.

  Randolph, Peyton, i. 221.

  Rappahannock River, i. 101.

  Ratcliffe, John, i. 71, 92, 99, 100, 113, 117, 124, 151-153, 168.

  Rats, i. 143.

  Raveneau de Lussan, the buccaneer, ii. 349, 360.

  Raynal, the Abbé, i. 2.

  Receiver-general, i. 276.

  Recorder, a musical instrument, ii. 242.

  Recouping one’s self beforehand, ii. 346.

  Redemptioners, ii. 181, 182, 185;
    as schoolmasters, ii. 249.

  Regal, a town in Transylvania, i. 84.

  Renaissance and Reformation, tendencies of, i. 205.

  Representative government in America established by Sir Edwin
    Sandys, i. 69.

  Revolution of 1719 in South Carolina, ii. 307.

  Rhett, William, defeats the French and Spanish fleet, ii. 294;
    defeats and captures the pirate Bonnet, ii. 368, 369.

  Rhode Island, i. 63, 280.

  Ribaut, Jean, i. 17; ii. 271.

  Ricahecrians, the tribe, ii. 73.

  Ricardo, David, ii. 313.

  Rice, the great staple of South Carolina, ii. 326, 363.

  Rice, John, hanged at Tyburn, ii. 200.

  Rich, H. C., ii. 241.

  Rich, Lady Isabella, i. 184.

  Rich, Robert, Lord Warwick, i. 182.

  Richard III., i. 296.

  Richmond, the city, i. 93, 189, 226; ii. 121, 211, 257.

  Ringgold, James, ii. 147.

  Ringrose, Basil, a buccaneer, ii. 358.

  Ripley, W. Z., ii. 218.

  Rivers as highways, ii. 214, 215.

  Rivers in Virginia, their effect upon society, ii. 206.

  Rivers, W. J., ii. 279, 288, 298, 302.

  Rives, W., ii. 241.

  Roanoke Island, i. 31, 33-35, 39-43, 54.

  Robber barons, ii. 45.

  Robertson, W., ii. 21.

  Robertson family, descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Rochambeau, Count, i. 3.

  Rogers, Woodes, captures New Providence, ii. 365.

  Rogues’ Harbour, a nickname of Albemarle Colony, ii. 280.

  Rolfe, John, i. 104;
    his marriage with Pocahontas, i. 169;
    makes experiments in raising tobacco, i. 176, 188.

  Rolfe, Thomas, son of Pocahontas, ancestor of many Virginia families,
    i. 173.

  Ronsard, Pierre, i. 53.

  Rothenthurm, battle of, i. 88.

  Roundheads, ii. 12.

  Rousby, Christopher, ii. 157.

  Rousseau, J. J., i. 4.

  Rowland, Miss K. M., ii. 104, 206, 234, 248.

  Royal governors and their legislatures, ii. 379-381.

  Rudolph II., Emperor, i. 84.

  Rum, ii. 207, 211, 281.

  Rumford, Count, ii. 254.

  Rump Parliament, i. 316.

  Rural entertainments, ii. 240, 241.

  Russell, John, i. 121, 135, 140.

  Russia, i. 37, 66, 89.

  Rynders, Isaiah, ii. 192.

  Ryswick, Peace of, ii. 168.


  Sabbath breaking, i. 248.

  Sack, a kind of wine, meaning of the name, ii. 230.

  St. Augustine, i. 33; ii. 270.

  St. Bartholomew, massacre of, i. 21.

  St. Bernard Archipelago, i. 149.

  St. Clement’s Island, i. 274.

  St. John’s River, i. 17.

  St. Lawrence, Gulf of, i. 170.

  St. Lawrence River, i. 41, 61, 62.

  St. Mary’s River, i. 274.

  St. Mary’s, the town, i. 291, 306, 307, 313, 315, 316; ii. 120,
    140, 161.

  St. Osyth’s Lane, i. 203.

  St. Paul’s Cathedral, i. 27.

  St. Paul’s Churchyard, i. 178.

  Salaries of governors, ii. 376.

  Salem witchcraft, ii. 264, 266.

  San Domingo, i. 33, 149.

  San Francisco, i. 27.

  San Juan de Ulua, i. 19, 26.

  Sandhillers, ii. 320.

  Salamis, battle of, i. 37.

  Sandys, George, i. 232, 252.

  Sandys, Sir Edwin, i. 69, 184-188, 190, 200-203, 214, 215, 218,
    220, 221, 233, 235, 236, 238; ii. 16.

  Sassafras, i. 123.

  Sayle, Wm., ii. 278, 361.

  Scandalous gossip, i. 247.

  Scapegraces in Virginia, i. 152, 163.

  Scapethrift, i. 57.

  Scharf, J. F., ii. 162, 167, 171.

  Schlosser, F. C., i. 84.

  Schools in New England, ii. 251-253;
    in Virginia, ii. 245-250;
    in South Carolina, ii. 325.

  _Scire facias_, writ of, ii. 162.

  Scotch Highlanders in North Carolina, ii. 318;
    in Georgia, ii. 335.

  Scotch-Irish immigration to America, ii. 319, 390-399.

  Scotch Presbyterianism, its effects upon Virginia, ii. 395.

  Seagull, Captain, i. 57.

  Sea kings of Elizabeth’s time were not pirates, ii. 341, 343.

  Seal of Virginia, ii. 22.

  Sea Venture, the ship, i. 67, 148, 149, 152.

  Second Supply for Virginia, i. 113, 120, 123-125.

  Security, money lender, i. 56.

  Segar, Sir W., i. 86.

  Segovia, Lake of, i. 34.

  Selden, John, i. 54.

  Senecas, ii. 58-60.

  Seneschals, i. 277.

  Separatists, i. 302.

  Serfdom, i. 48.

  Setebos, i. 15.

  Severn, the English river, i. 312.

  Severn, the Maryland river, i. 313;
    battle of the, i. 317.

  Seymour, Sir Edward, ii. 116, 117.

  Seymour, John, ii. 166.

  Shaftesbury, first Earl of, i. 68.

  Shakespeare, i. 11, 15, 54, 55, 66, 68, 187, 203, 232, 308;
      ii. 226;
    his “Tempest,” i. 150.

  Sharpe, Horatio, ii. 172.

  Sharpless, Edward, clerk of Assembly, i. 244.

  Sharplisse, Thomas, draws a prize in a lottery, i. 178.

  Shays, Daniel, ii. 106.

  Sheep-raising, i. 46.

  Shenandoah Valley, ii. 385, 386.

  Sheppard, Jack, ii. 264.

  Sheriffs, i. 282; ii. 40;
    in Maryland, ii. 153.

  Sherman, W. T., ii. 191.

  Sherwood, Grace, accused of witchcraft, ii. 266.

  Sherwood, William, ii. 102, 104.

  Shippen, Margaret, ii. 142.

  Shire-motes, i. 278.

  Shirley Hundred, i. 168.

  Sibyl, the Roman, i. 7.

  Sicklemore, an alias of President Ratcliffe, i. 117-128.

  Sidney, Sir Philip, i. 18, 30, 33, 42, 53, 61, 68.

  Sigismund, Prince of Transylvania, i. 84.

  Silenus, his conversation with Kawasha, i. 175.

  Silk culture, ii. 326.

  Silk-worms, i. 231; ii. 3.

  Silver vessels, ii. 227.

  Simancas, archives of, i. 194.

  Simms, W. G., ii. 330.

  Singeing the king of Spain’s beard, i. 34.

  Sioux tribes in Carolina, ii. 299.

  Sir Galahad, i. 204.

  Six Nations, ii. 304.

  Size Lane, i. 203.

  Skottowe, B. C., i. 243.

  Slader, M., ii. 238.

  Slavery, alleged beneficence of, i. 16;
    different types in Virginia and South Carolina, ii. 327;
    prohibited in Georgia, ii. 335;
    introduced there, ii. 336.

  Slave hunters, Spanish, i. 149.

  Slaves’ collars, ii. 200.

  Slaves, price of, ii. 194, 201.

  Slave trade, the African, i. 15;
    the Portuguese, i. 15.

  Sluyter, a Labadist, ii. 143.

  Smith, John, i. 80-118, 121, 143, 147, 151, 152-156, 159,
      164-166, 172, 173; ii. 72;
    fiery dragons invented by, i. 84;
    Turks’ heads cut off by, i. 84;
    name for Cape Ann, i. 88;
    is rescued by Pocahontas, i. 102-111;
    his “True Relation,” i. 102;
    his “History of Virginia,” i. 103;
    his map of Virginia, i. 118;
    his “Rude Answer,” i. 118, 125-128;
    drops into poetry, i. 121;
    as a worker of miracles, i. 141;
    says, “He that will not work shall not eat,” i. 142;
    leaves Virginia, i. 152;
    his faithful portrayal of Indians, i. 157;
    nobility of his nature, i. 157;
    touching tribute by one of his comrades, i. 158;
    his voyage to North Virginia, i. 172;
    changes the name to New England, i. 172;
    his last years, i. 232.

  Smith, Robert, ii. 104.

  Smith, Thomas, captain of a ship, i. 293;
    tried for piracy and hanged, i. 300.

  Smith, Sir Thomas, i. 52, 66, 146, 161, 178, 182-184, 196.

  Smith’s Hundred, i. 186.

  Smith’s name for Cape Ann, i. 88.

  Smith’s Sound, i. 67.

  Smugglers, ii. 346.

  Smyth, J. F., ii. 230, 231, 239, 316.

  Soap, i. 123, 230.

  Social features of Maryland, ii. 267-269.

  Socrates, ii. 142.

  Somers, Sir George, i. 65, 147, 148-151, 154, 155, 161.

  Sothel, Seth, ii. 285;
    as the people’s friend, ii. 289.

  Soto, F. de, i. 61; ii. 91.

  Souls and tobacco, comparative claims of, ii. 117.

  Southampton, Earl of, i. 55, 56, 66, 183, 202, 203, 206-208, 220,
    221; ii. 16.

  Southampton Hundred, i. 186.

  South Carolina, i. 62; ii. 123;
    back country of, ii. 320;
    early settlers of, ii. 322;
    Puritans in, ii. 322;
    Cavaliers in, ii. 322;
    clergymen in, how elected, ii. 323;
    contrast with those in Virginia, ii. 323;
    rice a great staple of, ii. 326;
    indigo, an important staple of, ii. 326;
    silk culture in, ii. 326;
    cotton crop in, ii. 326;
    negro slaves in, ii. 326-331;
    insurrection of slaves in, ii. 329.

  Southey, Robert, i, 53.

  South Sea Bubble, ii. 334.

  Spaniards driven from Georgia, ii. 335.

  Spanish marriage, i. 195, 198, 218, 255.

  Spanish methods of colonization, i. 25, 193.

  Spanish Succession, war of, ii. 190, 398.

  Spanish treasure, i. 6-11, 23, 44, 54; ii. 345.

  Sparks, F. E., i. 282; ii. 133.

  Spelman, Henry, i. 153;
    his rescue by Pocahontas, i. 168;
    his “Relation about Virginia,” i. 168.

  Spelman, Sir Henry, the antiquary, i. 168.

  Spencer, Herbert, on state education, ii. 325.

  Spencer, Nicholas, ii. 61, 80, 89, 111.

  Spendall, i. 57.

  Spenser, Edmund, i. 53; ii. 22.

  Spinsters sent to Virginia, i. 188.

  Sports, old-fashioned, ii. 240, 241.

  Spotswood, Alexander, ii. 303, 370-390, 398;
    on the distribution of white freedmen, ii. 321.

  Spottiswoode, Sir Robert, ii. 370.

  Spottsylvania, ii. 8.

  Stamp Act, ii. 29, 303, 373, 382.

  Stanard, W. G., ii. 238, 249.

  Stanhope. James, ii. 372.

  Stanley, H. M., i. 98.

  Star Chamber, i. 273, 289.

  Stark, John, ii. 394.

  State education, ii. 325.

  State House in Jamestown, scenes in, ii. 67, 69, 76.

  States General in France dismissed, i. 196.

  Stebbing, William, i. 53, 199, 200.

  Stephens, Samuel, ii. 279.

  Stevens, Henry, i. 43, 112, 169.

  Stillingfleet, Bishop, ii. 116.

  Stith, John, ii. 71.

  Stith, William, i. 221, 255, 256.

  Stone Age, the men of, i. 107.

  Stone, William, i. 308, 311-313, 315-318.

  Stores, country, ii. 213.

  Stourton, Erasmus, i. 261.

  Stover, Jacob, how he secured many acres, ii. 395.

  Stowe’s Chronicle, i. 178.

  Strachey, William, i. 150, 168.

  Strafford County, ii. 58.

  Strafford, Earl of, i. 204, 220, 267, 303; ii. 11.

  Stratford Hall, its library, ii. 227;
    the kitchen, ii. 228, 234.

  Stuart, Lady Arabella, i. 197.

  Studley, Thomas, i. 94, 96.

  Stuyvesant, Peter, ii. 139, 140.

  Subinfeudation permitted in Carolina, ii. 275.

  Suffrage, restriction of, in Maryland, ii. 154;
    in Virginia, ii. 67, 154.

  Sugar, ii. 211.

  Superstition, ii. 264.

  Supper with Indians, i. 115.

  Surry protest, ii. 52.

  Surtees, i. 276.

  Surveyor, i. 282.

  Susan Constant, the ship, i. 71.

  Susquehanna Manor, ii. 147, 158.

  Susquehanna River, i. 112, 289.

  Susquehannock envoys, slaughter of, ii. 60, 61, 68.

  Susquehannock Indians, i. 112, 274; ii. 58-62.

  Swedes in Delaware, ii. 3.

  Swift, Jonathan, ii. 116.

  Swift Run Gap, ii. 385.

  Symes, Benjamin, ii. 5, 246.


  Tabby silk, meaning of the name, ii. 236.

  Talbot, George, ii. 147, 157, 158.

  Talbot, Lord, ii. 200.

  Talbot, Richard, Duke of Tyrconnel, ii. 160.

  Talbot, William, ii. 151.

  Tammany Society, i. 2.

  Tampico, i. 20.

  Tanais or Don River, i. 74.

  Tantalus and his grapes, i. 200.

  Tar, i. 123; ii. 313.

  Tariff logic, specimens of, ii. 51, 194.

  Tariffs, protective, ii. 45, 346.

  Taswell-Langmead, i. 243.

  Taxation without representation, ii. 115, 145.

  Taxes on slaves, ii. 194.

  Teach, Robert. See Blackbeard.

  Temple Farm, ii. 390.

  Tennessee, its settlers, ii. 394, 395.

  “Terence in English,” i. 176.

  Test oaths for public officials, ii. 294.

  Thatch, Robert. See Blackbeard.

  Theatres, ii. 243.

  Third Supply for Virginia, i. 151, 158.

  Thirlestane House, i. 43.

  Thirty Years’ War, ii. 160.

  Thompson, William, of Braintree, i. 303.

  Thomson, Sir Peter, i. 43.

  Thorpe, George, murdered by Indians, i. 234.

  Throckmorton, Elizabeth, i. 53.

  Thrusting out of Governor Harvey, i. 298.

  Tichfield, i. 221.

  Tidewater Virginia, i. 224.

  Tilden, Marmaduke, ii. 147.

  Tillotson, Archbishop, ii. 116.

  Timour, Pasha of Nalbrits, i. 89.

  Tindall, Thomas, put in the pillory, i. 264.

  Titles of nobility in Carolina, ii. 276.

  Tobacco, first recorded mention of, i. 174;
    bull of Urban VIII. against, i. 174;
    James I.’s Counterblast, i. 174;
    its tendency to crush out other forms of industry, i. 231;
    monopoly of, coveted by Charles I., i. 242, 243;
    planted by the Dutch in the East Indies, ii. 47;
    and liberty, ii. 174;
    as currency, ii. 111;
    effects of, ii. 210;
    duty on, in Maryland, ii. 133;
    attempts to check its cultivation, ii. 176.

  Tobacco currency, effects of, in Virginia, ii. 216;
    upon crafts and trades, ii. 217;
    upon planters’ accounts, ii. 218.

  Todkill, Anas, i. 116, 121, 135.

  Toleration, religious, in Maryland, i. 267, 271, 272, 309-311.

  Toleration Act, so-called, passed by Maryland Puritans, i. 316.

  Tomocomo, his attempt to take a census of England, i. 173.

  Toombs, Robert, ii. 10.

  Tories and Whigs, i. 182.

  Torture by slow fire, i. 108.

  Totapotamoy, ii. 73.

  Town meetings, ii. 32-34.

  Towns, absence of, in Virginia, ii. 211;
    attempts to build, ii. 213.

  Townships in England, ii. 31-34.

  Trade between Massachusetts and Albemarle Colony, ii. 281.

  Tragabigzanda, Charatza, i. 88.

  Train-bands in New England, ii. 40.

  Treachery of Indians, i. 129, 136, 138.

  Treason committed abroad, ii. 285.

  Treat, John, ii. 183.

  Treaty of America, ii. 353, 357.

  Trent, the British steamer, ii. 234.

  Trott, Nicholas, ii. 307.

  Truman, Thomas, ii. 59, 61, 69.

  Trussel, John, ii. 186.

  Tubal Cain, the, of Virginia, ii. 372.

  Tucker, Beverley, ii. 10.

  Turkeys, first that were taken to England, i. 122.

  Turkish treasure, i. 83.

  Turks’ heads cut off by Smith, i. 84, 88.

  Turks’ Heads, the islands, i. 88.

  Turks, desire of Columbus to drive them from Europe, i. 7.

  Turpentine, ii. 313.

  Tuscarora meeting-house, ii. 395.

  Tuscaroras in North Carolina, ii. 299;
    expelled from North Carolina, migrate to the Mohawk valley and add
      one more to the Five Nations, ii. 304.

  Twelfth Night, i. 175.

  Tyler, John, Governor of Virginia, ii. 10.

  Tyler, John, President of U. S., ii. 25, 129.

  Tyler, L. G., i. 296; ii. 19, 23, 61, 92, 128, 247.

  Tyler, M. C., ii. 265.

  Tyler, Wat, ii. 10, 25.

  Tzekely, Moses, i. 85.


  Union of the Colonies, schemes for, ii. 129.

  Unitarians threatened with death in Maryland Toleration Act, i. 311.

  University College of London, i. 112.

  “Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia,” i. 208-213.

  Urban VIII., his bull against tobacco, i. 174.

  Utie, John, i. 297, 298.

  Utrecht, treaty of, ii. 190.


  Valentia, Lord, i. 43.

  Vallandigham, E. H., ii. 140.

  Valparaiso, i. 27.

  Van Dyck, i. 268.

  Vane, Sir Harry, ii. 12.

  Vassall’s house in Cambridge, ii. 227.

  Vegetables, ii. 2, 221.

  Venetian argosy, fight with the Breton ship, i. 83.

  Venezuela, i. 198.

  Venice, i. 84; ii. 344.

  Venus and Adonis, the poem, i. 55.

  Vera Cruz, i. 19.

  Vermont, i. 62.

  Verrazano, Sea of, i. 61; ii. 384.

  Vespucius, Americus, i. 12-14, 91, 149; ii. 347.

  Vestry, close, ii. 36, 98, 375.

  Vestry, open, ii. 99;
    in South Carolina, ii. 323.

  Veto power, ii. 152.

  Vicksburg, ii. 191.

  Victoria, Queen, i. 259.

  Vikings not properly called pirates, ii. 339.

  Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, i. 197.

  Vinland, i. 18; ii. 277.

  Violins, ii. 241-242.

  Virginals, ii. 242.

  Virginia, origin of the name, i. 32;
    believed to abound in precious metals, i. 58, 122;
    first charter of, i. 60, 64;
    extent of the colony in 1624, i. 223;
    population of, i. 253; ii. 2, 4, 23, 24, 35;
    prolific in leaders of men, ii. 44;
    _habeas corpus_ introduced into, ii. 371.

  Virginia Historical Society, i. 112; ii. 298.

  Virginian historians, ii. 255.

  Virginians at Oxford, ii. 250.

  Volga River, i. 73.

  Voltaire, ii. 15, 352.


  Wafer, Lionel, a buccaneer, ii. 358.

  Wahunsunakok, i. 94.

  Waldenses, the, ii. 205.

  Wales, conquest of, i. 259.

  Walker, William, ii. 348.

  Walsingham, Sir F., i. 36.

  Walton, Izaak, i. 221.

  Wampum, i. 137.

  Ward’s Plantation, i. 186.

  Warner, Augustine, ii. 100.

  Warren, William, i. 296.

  Warrasqueak Bay, i. 131, 209.

  Washington, Augustine, ii. 249.

  Washington, George, i. 70, 273, 296; ii. 175, 227;
    his love for dogs, horses, hunting, and fishing, ii. 239, 240;
    killed by his doctors, ii. 260, 261;
    his intimacy with Lord Fairfax, ii. 397;
    sent to warn the French, ii. 399.

  Washington, Henry, ii. 25, 397.

  Washington, John, ii. 25, 59, 69, 97.

  Washington, Lawrence, brother of George, ii. 247, 249, 389.

  Washington, Lawrence, brother of John, ii. 59.

  Washington, Lawrence, of Sulgrave, i. 70.

  Washington, Martha, ii. 119;
    her life at home, ii. 235.

  Washington family tree, ii. 27.

  Waters, Fitz Gilbert, ii. 25, 26.

  Watson, Elkanah, ii. 215, 216.

  Wedding, the first in English America, i. 113.

  Weddings, ii. 237.

  Weeden, W. B., ii. 251.

  Weller, Tony, ii. 142.

  Weromocomoco, i. 94, 102, 112, 114, 119, 130-139, 165, 224; ii. 158.

  West, Francis, i. 131, 140, 146, 251.

  West, John, i. 297, 298.

  West, Joseph, ii. 279, 286.

  West, Penelope, i. 147.

  Westminster Abbey, i. 43.

  Westminster School, i. 42.

  Westover, i. 225; ii. 257.

  West Point, Va., i. 224.

  West Virginia, its settlers, ii. 394.

  Wetting one’s feet, i. 210.

  Weymouth, George, i. 56, 67.

  Whalley, Edward, the regicide, ii. 25.

  Wharves, private, ii. 206, 220.

  Wheat culture in Maryland, ii. 268.

  Whigs, ii. 382.

  Whigs and Tories, i. 182.

  Whitacres, a boon companion of Dr. Pott, i. 252.

  Whitaker, Alexander, the apostle, i. 167;
    his “Good News from Virginia,” i. 232, 301.

  Whitburne, Richard, i. 261.

  White, Andrew, a Jesuit father, i. 273-275, 308.

  White, John, i. 35, 38, 39, 52, 54, 58, 60,113.

  White, Solomon, ii. 265.

  White Aprons, the, ii. 87.

  White Oak Swamp, i. 100.

  White servants in Virginia, ii. 10, 177-191.

  “White trash,” origin of, ii. 188,189;
    in North Carolina, ii. 315-317;
    dispersal of, ii. 319-321.

  Whittle family descended from Pocahontas, i. 173.

  Whitmore, W. H., ii. 10, 35, 110.

  Whitney, E. L., ii. 274, 320.

  “Widow Ranter,” the comedy, ii. 179.

  Wiffen, Richard, i. 135.

  Wilberforce, W., ii. 201.

  Wilde, Jonathan, ii. 264.

  Willard, Samuel, ii. 119.

  William and Mary College, ii. 116-129, 234, 252.

  William the Conqueror, i. 259.

  William the Silent, i. 9.

  William III., ii. 120, 160, 165.

  William III. and Mary, ii. 115, 117.

  Williams, G. W., ii. 330.

  Williams, Roger, i. 272, 313; ii. 160.

  Williamsburg, ii. 121, 210, 234, 238, 242.

  Williamson, Hugh, ii. 279, 310.

  Williamson, Sir J., ii. 102.

  Willoughboy, Sarah, her wardrobe, ii. 236.

  Willoughby, Sir Hugh, i. 14.

  Willoughby, Eng., i. 82.

  Wilmington, Del., ii, 139.

  Wilmington, N. C., ii. 314.

  Window shutters, ii. 223.

  Wines, native, ii. 372, 385.

  Wingandacoa, i. 32.

  Wingfield, E. M., i. 65, 91, 92, 93, 95, 98-100, 102, 112, 124.

  Winslow, Josiah, ii. 63.

  Winsor, Justin, i. 13, 18, 275; ii. 1, 272, 298.

  Winter, Sir William, i. 36; ii. 342.

  Winthrop, John, i. 18, 66, 234, 303, 306; ii. 98, 253.

  Witenagemote, i. 278.

  Wolfe, James, i. 171.

  Wood, Abraham, ii. 186.

  Wooden houses, ii. 222, 223.

  Woods, Leonard, i. 43.

  Woollen industries of Ulster, ii. 392, 393.

  Woollen industry, i. 44.

  Workmen needed in Virginia, i. 128.

  Worlidge, William, ii. 186.

  Wormeley, Ralph, his library, ii. 243, 244.

  Wren, Sir Christopher, ii. 123.

  Wright, William, ii. 57.

  Wyanoke, i. 225.

  Wyatt, Sir Francis, i. 241, 253.

  Wythe, George, ii. 128, 266.


  Yale College, ii. 253.

  Yamassees, a Carolina tribe, ii. 300;
    and other tribes incited by the Spaniards attack South Carolina, ii. 305, 365;
    war in Carolina, ii. 371.

  Yang-tse-Kiang, the river, i. 41.

  Yeamans, Sir John, his colony at Cape Fear, ii. 277, 361.

  Yeardley, Sir George, i. 171, 176, 184, 241, 242.

  Yell of Yellville, ii. 98.

  Yellow fever, ii. 293.

  Yeomanry, in the 16th century, i. 47; ii. 204.

  York River, i. 132, 224.

  Yorktown, i. 273, 288.


  Zuñiga, i. 59, 76, 178, 194.




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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is reprinted in Force’s _Tracts_, vol. ii.; and in Maxwell’s
_Virginia Historical Register_, ii. 61-78. The original, of which there
is one in the library of Harvard University, was priced by Rich, in
1832, at £1 10 s., and by Quaritch, in 1879, at £20. See Winsor, _Narr.
and Crit. Hist._ iii. 157.

[2] The following list of Virginia counties bearing royal names,
founded between 1689 and 1765, is interesting:--

  King and Queen, 1691, after William and Mary.
  Princess Anne,  1691,       the princess who was afterwards Queen Anne.
  King William,   1701,       William III.
  Prince George,  1702,       the Prince Consort.
  King George,    1720,       George I.
  Hanover,        1720,       one of the king’s foreign dominions.
  Brunswick,      1720,           do.           do.
  Caroline,       1727,       the queen of George II.
  Prince William, 1730,       William, Duke of Cumberland.
  Orange,         1734,       the Prince of Orange, who in that
                              year married Anne, daughter of
                              George II.
  Amelia,         1734,       a daughter of George II.
  Frederick,      1738,       Frederick, Prince of Wales.
  Augusta,        1738, after the Princess of Wales.
  Louisa,         1742,       a daughter of George II.
  Lunenburg,      1746,       one of the king’s foreign dominions.
  Prince Edward,  1753,       a son of Frederick, Prince of Wales.
  Charlotte,      1764,       the queen of George III.
  Mecklenburg,    1764,       her father, Duke of Mecklenburg.


[3] Jewett’s _History of Worcester County, Massachusetts_, ii. 30.
Charlestown was named from the river at the mouth of which it stands.

[4] W. H. Whitmore, _The Cavalier Dismounted_, Salem, 1864.

[5] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 53. In the same connection
we are told that Beverley Tucker apologized for putting on record a
brief account of his family, saying “at this day it is deemed arrogant
to remember one’s ancestors. But the fashion may change,” etc.

[6] See Cooke’s _Virginia_, p. 161.

[7] Doyle’s _Virginia_, etc. p. 283.

[8] Written in 1771 by his great-grandson William Lee, alderman of
London, and quoted in Edmund Lee’s _Lee of Virginia_, Philadelphia,
1895, p. 49.

[9] “The petition of John Jeffreys, of London,” in Sainsbury’s
_Calendar of State Papers_, 1574-1660, p. 430; _Lee of Virginia_, p. 61.

[10] Compare L. G. Tyler’s remarks in _William and Mary College
Quarterly_, i. 155.

[11] See the testimony of John Gibbon, in _Lee of Virginia_, p. 60.

[12] Beverley, _History and Present State of Virginia_, London, 1705,
p. 56; Robertson, _History of America_, iv. 230.

[13] Hening’s _Statutes_, i. 526.

[14] The document is given in _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i.
158, where the bill of items quoted in the next paragraph may also be
found. Mr. Philip Malory was an officiating clergyman.

[15] Meade’s _Old Churches_, ii. 137.

[16] The claim to the French crown set up by Edward III. in 1328 led
to the so-called Hundred Years’ War, in the course of which Henry VI.
was crowned King of France in the church of Notre Dame at Paris in
1431. His sway there was practically ended in 1436, but the English
sovereigns continued absurdly to call themselves Kings of France until
1801.

[17] See above, vol. i. p. 250.

[18] See the able paper by Dr. L. G. Tyler on “The Seal of Virginia,”
_William and Mary College Quarterly_, iii. 81-96.

[19] For my data regarding land grants I am much indebted to the very
learned and scholarly work of Mr. Philip Bruce, _Economic History of
Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, i. 487-571.

[20] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, i. 41.

[21] He is mentioned by Pepys in his _Diary_, Oct. 12, 1660: “Office
day all the morning, and from thence with Sir W. Batten and the rest
of the officers to a venison party of his at the Dolphin, where dined
withal Colonel Washington, Sir Edward Brett, and Major Norwood, very
noble company.”

[22] Waters, _An Examination of the English Ancestry of George
Washington_, Boston, 1889.

[23] Sir William Jones’s _Works_, ed. Lord Teignmouth, London, 1807, x.
389.

[24] The change was somewhat gradual, _e. g._ in Massachusetts at first
the eldest son received a double portion. See _The Colonial Laws of
Massachusetts, reprinted from the edition of 1660_, ed. W. H. Whitmore,
Boston, 1889, pp. 51, 201.

[25] See Howard, _Local Constitutional History of the United States_,
i. 122.

[26] A few of the oldest Virginia counties, organized as such in 1634,
had arisen from the spreading and thinning of single settlements
originally intended to be cities and named accordingly. Hence the
curious names (at first sight unintelligible) of “James City County”
and “Charles City County.”

[27] Edward Channing, “Town and County Government in the English
Colonies of North America,” _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, vol. ii.

[28] For an excellent account of local government in Virginia before
the Revolution, see Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of the U. S._ i.
388-407; also Edward Ingle in _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, iii.
103-229. With regard to the county lieutenant’s honorary title, Mr.
Ingle suggests that it may help to explain the super-abundance of
military titles in the South, and he quotes from a writer in the
_London Magazine_ in 1745: “Wherever you travel in Maryland (as also
in Virginia and Carolina) your ears are astonished at the number of
colonels, majors, and captains that you hear mentioned.”

[29] Jefferson’s _Works_, vii. 13.

[30] _Id._ vi. 544.

[31] Ingle, in _J. H. U. Studies_, iii. 90.

[32] “The humble Remonstrance of John Bland, of London, Merchant, on
the behalf of the Inhabitants and Planters in Virginia and Mariland,”
reprinted in _Virginia Historical Magazine_, i. 142-155.

[33] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_,
i. 394.

[34] Papers from the Records of Surry County, _William and Mary College
Quarterly_, iii. 123-125.

[35] Pepys, _Diary_, Nov. 29, Dec. 3, 1664.

[36] _Diary_, Jan. 19 and 28, 1661.

[37] Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 341.

[38] In describing this affair I have relied chiefly upon the
affidavits from the records of Westmoreland County, reprinted by Dr.
L. G. Tyler, in his admirable _William and Mary College Quarterly_,
ii. 39-43. The affidavits were taken by Nicholas Spencer and Richard
Lee, son of the Richard Lee mentioned in the preceding chapter. In
Browne’s _Maryland_, p. 131, an attempt is made to throw the blame
for killing the envoys upon the Virginians, but the affidavits seem
to me trustworthy and conclusive. It is not likely that there was or
is any discernible difference between human nature in Virginia and
in Maryland, and public opinion in both colonies condemned Truman’s
conduct.

[39] “Cittenborne Parish Grievances, reprinted from Winder Papers,
Virginia State Library,” in _Virginia Magazine_, iii. 35.

[40] “Charles City County Grievances,” _Virginia Magazine_, iii. 137.

[41] The following abridged table shows the relationship (see _Virginia
Magazine_, ii. 125):--

  Robert Bacon, of Drinkstone, Suffolk.
               |
  +------------+--------------------+
  |            |                    |
Thomas    Sir Nicholas          James Bacon,
Bacon.    Bacon, Lord           alderman of
          Keeper of the         London, d. 1573.
          Great Seal,               |
          b. 1510, d. 1579.         |
               |                    |
          FRANCIS BACON,        Sir James Bacon,
          Viscount St. Albans   of Friston Hall,
          and Lord Chancellor,  d. 1618.
          b. 1561, d. 1626.         |
                           +--------+-----------+
                           |                    |
                    Nathaniel Bacon,      Rev. James Bacon,
                    b. 1593, d. 1644.     Rector of Burgate,
                           |              d. 1670.
                           |                    |
                    Thomas Bacon,               |
                   m. Elizabeth Brooke.   Nathaniel Bacon,
                           |              of King’s Creek,
                   NATHANIEL BACON,       b. 1620, d. 1692;
                     the Rebel,           came to Virginia
                   b. 1648, d. 1676.      cir. 1650, and
                                          settled at King’s
                                          Creek, York County.


[42] Drummond Lake, in the Dismal Swamp, was named for him.

[43] For the picturesque details of this narrative I have followed
the well-known document found by Rufus King when minister to Great
Britain in 1803, and published by President Jefferson in the _Richmond
Enquirer_ in 1804; since reprinted in Force’s _Tracts_, vol. i.,
Washington, 1836, and in Maxwell’s _Virginia Historical Register_, vol.
iii., Richmond, 1850. The original manuscript was written in 1705, and
addressed to Robert Harley, Queen Anne’s secretary of state, afterward
Earl of Oxford. The writer signs himself “T. M.,” and speaks of himself
as dwelling in Northumberland County and possessing a plantation also
in Stafford County, which he represented in the House of Burgesses.
From these indications it is pretty certain that he was Thomas Mathews,
son of Governor Samuel Mathews heretofore mentioned. His account of the
scenes of which he was an eye-witness is quite vivid.

[44] Bruce, _Economic History_, ii. 455.

[45] T. M. goes on to remark that “the two chief commanders ... who
slew the four Indian great men” were present among the burgesses. This
may seem to implicate Colonel Washington and Major Allerton in the
killing of the envoys; but T. M.’s recollection, thirty years after the
event, is of not much weight when contradicted by the sworn affidavits
above cited. The facts that, while Truman was impeached in Maryland,
no such action seems to have been undertaken in Virginia against
Washington and Allerton, and that, after the governor’s strong words
regarding the slaying, the friendly relations between him and these
gentlemen continued, would indicate that their skirts were clean.

[46] Beverley (_History and Present State of Virginia_, London, 1705,
bk. iv. p. 3) tells us that before 1680 the council and burgesses sat
together, like the Scotch parliament, and that the separation occurred
under Lord Culpeper’s administration; and his statement is generally
repeated by historians without qualification. Yet here in 1676 we find
the two houses sitting separately, and the discussion cited shows that
it had often been so before; otherwise the sending of two councillors
to sit with the burgesses could not have been customary. Beverley’s
date of 1680 was evidently intended as the final date of separation;
not as the date before which the two houses never sat separately, but
as the date after which they never sat together.

[47] The acts of this assembly, known as “Bacon’s Laws,” are given in
Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 341-365.

[48] “It is still their boast that they are the descendants of
Powhatan’s warriors. A good evidence of their present laudable ambition
is an application recently made by them for a share in the privileges
of the Hampton schools. These bands of Indians are known by two names:
the larger band is called the Pamunkeys (120 souls); the smaller
goes by the name of the Mattaponies (50). They are both governed by
chiefs and councillors, together with a board of white trustees chosen
by themselves.” Hendren, “Government and Religion of the Virginia
Indians,” _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, xiii. 591.

[49] In 1656 a tribe called Ricahecrians, about 700 in number, from
beyond the Blue Ridge, had advanced eastward as far as the falls of the
James River, where they encountered and defeated Hill and Totapotamoy.
After this the Ricahecrians may have retraced their steps westward; we
hear no more of them on the Atlantic seaboard.

[50] The original MS. of the manifesto is in the British State Paper
Office. It is printed in full in the _Virginia Magazine_, i. 55-61.

[51] The original is in the _Colonial Entry Book_, lxxi. 232-240. It is
printed in G. B. Goode’s _Virginia Cousins; a Study of the Ancestry and
Posterity of John Goode, of Whitby_, Richmond, 1887, pp. 30^A-30^D. A
brief summary is given in Doyle’s _Virginia_, p. 251.

[52] Bacon’s neighbour and adherent, William Byrd, purchaser of the
Westover estate, and father of William Byrd the historian.

[53] Bacon’s allusion is to the troubles in North Carolina which broke
out during the governorship of George Carteret and were chiefly due to
the Navigation Act. See below, p. 280; and as to Maryland, see p. 156.

[54] One of these ladies is said to have been the wife of the elder
Nathaniel Bacon!

[55] “A True Narrative of the Rise, Progresse, and Cessation of the
Late Rebellion in Virginia, most humbly and impartially reported by his
Majestyes Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Affairs of the
said Colony,” [Winder Papers, Virginia State Library], reprinted in
_Virginia Magazine_, iv. 117-154.

[56] “Persons who suffered by Bacon’s Rebellion; Commissioners Report,”
[Winder Papers], reprinted in _Virginia Magazine_, v. 64-70. See, also,
the extracts from the Westmoreland County records, in _William and Mary
College Quarterly_, ii. 43.

[57] See F. P. Brent, “Some unpublished facts relating to Bacon’s
Rebellion on the Eastern Shore of Virginia,” and Mrs. Tyler, “Thomas
Hansford, the First Native Martyr to American Liberty,” in _Virginia
Historical Society’s Collections_, vol. xi.

[58] Some interesting information about the Cheesmans may be found in
_William and Mary College Quarterly_, vol. i.

[59] Neill’s _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 379.

[60] See above, p. 35.

[61] Hening’s _Statutes_, i. 290.

[62] Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 45. In the same statute it was further
enacted “that none shall be admitted to be of the vestry that doth not
take the oath of allegiance and supremacy to his Majesty and subscribe
to be conformable to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of
England.” This effectually excluded Dissenters from taking a part in
local government.

[63] See Channing, “Town and County Government in the English Colonies
of North America,” _J. H. U. Studies_, ii. 484; Howard, _Local
Constitutional History of the United States_, i. 388-404.

[64] “We have not had liberty to choose vestrymen wee humbly desire
that the wholle parish may have a free election.” “Surry County
Grievances,” _Virginia Magazine_, ii. 172.

[65] See _e. g._ Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 402, 411, 412, 419, 421, 443,
445, 478, 486.

[66] Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 396.

[67] _Laws in Force in 1769_, p. 2.

[68] Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 425.

[69] Sherwood to Sir Joseph Williamson, June 28, 1676, _Virginia
Magazine_, i. 171. Sherwood was a gentleman, probably educated as a
lawyer, who had been convicted of robbery in England and pardoned
through the intercession of Sir Joseph Williamson, secretary of
state. (As to gentlemen robbers, compare the reference to Sir John
Popham, above, vol. i. p. 81 of the present work.) Sherwood became
attorney-general of Virginia in 1677, and was for thirty years an
esteemed member of society.

[70] Ludwell to Sir Joseph Williamson, June 28, 1676, _Virginia
Magazine_, i. 179.

[71] In other words, they entertained communistic ideas. I have
italicised the statement, to mark its importance.

[72] The same letter, _Virginia Magazine_, i. 183.

[73] T. M.’s Narrative, _Virginia Historical Register_, iii. 126. It
will be remembered that Masaniello’s insurrection occurred in 1647, and
was thus fresh in men’s memories. Masaniello was twenty-four years of
age, and was murdered in his hour of apparent triumph.

[74] “A True Narrative, etc.” _Virginia Magazine_, iv. 125.

[75] _Virginia Magazine_, i. 433.

[76] See Miss Rowland’s admirable _Life of George Mason_, 1725-1792,
New York, 1892, i. 17.

[77] From the list of Surry grievances we may cite “6. That the 2 s
per hhd Imposed by ye 128^{th} act for the payment of his majestyes
officers & other publique debts thereby to ease his majestyes poore
subjects of their great taxes: wee humblely desire that an account may
be given thereof.... 10. That it has been the custome of County Courts
att the laying of the levy to withdraw into a private Roome by w^{ch}
meanes the poore people not knowing for what they paid their levy did
allways admire how their taxes could be so high. Wee most humbly pray
that for the future the County levy may be laid publickly in the Court
house.” From the Isle of Wight grievances, “21. Wee doe also desire to
know for what purpose or use the late publique leavies of 50 pounds of
tobacco and cask per poll and the 12 pound per polle is for and what
benefit wee are to have for it.” _Virginia Magazine_, ii. 171, 172, 389.

[78] Isle of Wright grievances, “16. Also wee desire that evrie man may
be taxed according to the tracks [tracts] of Land they hold.” _Virginia
Magazine_, ii. 388.

[79] “One proclamation commanded all men in the land on pain of death
to joine him, and retire into the wildernesse upon arrival of the
forces expected from England, and oppose them untill they should
propose or accept to treat of an accomodation, which we who lived
comfortably could not have undergone, so as the whole land must have
become an Aceldama if god’s exceeding mercy had not timely removed
him.” So says T. M., whose narrative is by no means unfriendly to Bacon.

[80] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, i. 402.

[81] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, i. 405; Hening’s
_Statutes_, ii. 562.

[82] Doyle’s _Virginia_, p. 261.

[83] Hening’s _Statutes_, iii. 10.

[84] Doyle’s _Virginia_, pp. 259-265; Stanard, “Robert Beverley and his
Descendants,” _Virginia Magazine_, ii. 405-413; Hening’s _Statutes_,
iii. 41, 451-571.

[85] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 66.

[86] From time to time there had been futile attempts to take up the
matter afresh; see, for example, Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 30.

[87] Dr. Blair held the presidency for fifty years, until his death in
1743.

[88] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 65.

[89] I leave this as it was first written a few years ago, and take
pleasure in adding to it the following quotation from Mr. Bruce: “That
the entire site of the town will not finally sink beneath the waves of
the river will be due to the measures of protection which the National
Government have adopted at the earnest solicitation of the _Association
for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities_. This organization is
performing a noble and sacred work in rescuing so many of the ancient
landmarks of the state from ruin, a work into which it has thrown a
zeal, energy, and intelligence entitling it to the honour and gratitude
of all who are interested in the history, not merely of Virginia, but
of America itself.” _Economic History of Virginia_, ii. 562.

[90] Hening’s _Statutes_, iii. 122.

[91] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 66.

[92] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, ii. 65.

[93] _Id._ i. 187.

[94] Cooke’s _Virginia_, p. 306.

[95] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, iii. 263.

[96] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, ii. 55, 56.

[97] See my _American Revolution_, i. 18, 19.

[98] This charming story is only one of many good things for which I
am indebted to President L. G. Tyler; see _William and Mary College
Quarterly_, i. 11.

[99] _Partonopeus de Blois_, 1250, ed. Crapelet, tom. i. p. 45. “She
acts like a woman, and so does well, for under the heavens there is
nothing so daring as the woman who loves, when God wills to turn her
that way: God bless the ladies all!”

[100] _William and Mary College Annual Catalogue_, 1894-95.

[101] See Sparks, “Causes of the Maryland Revolution of 1689,” _Johns
Hopkins University Studies_, vol. xiv. p. 501, a valuable contribution
to our knowledge of the subject.

[102] See above, p. 20.

[103] For this description of Herman I am much indebted to E. H.
Vallandigham’s paper on “The Lord of Bohemia Manor,” reprinted in Lee
Phillips, _Virginia Cartography_, Washington, 1896, pp. 37-41.

[104] To enable him to hold real estate in Maryland, Herman received
letters of naturalization, the first ever issued in that province, and
he is supposed by some writers to have been the first foreign citizen
thus naturalized in America.

[105] See Browne’s _Maryland_, p. 137.

[106] Johnson, “Old Maryland Manors,” _Johns Hopkins University
Studies_, vol. i.

[107] Johnson, _op. cit._ p. 21.

[108] F. E. Sparks, _op. cit._ p. 65.

[109] _Archives of Maryland: Assembly_, ii. 64.

[110] _Archives of Maryland: Council_, ii. 18.

[111] _MSS. Archives of Maryland, Liber R. R. and R. R. R. and Council
Books 1677-1683, of the Council Proceedings_: Maryland Historical
Society.

[112] See Greene’s _History of Rhode Island_, ii. 490-494.

[113] The petition and answer are given in Scharf’s _History of
Maryland_, i. 345-348.

[114] Probably in honour of Princess Anne, the heiress presumptive,
afterward Queen Anne.

[115] Every bearskin paid 9d., elk 12d., deer or beaver 4d., raccoons
3 farthings, muskrats 4d. per dozen, etc. Scharf, i. 352.

[116] Meade’s _Old Churches_, ii. 352. Bishop Meade adds: “My own
recollection of statements made by faithful witnesses ... accords with
the above.”

[117] Alexander Graydon tells us that in his early days any jockeying,
fiddling, wine-bibbing clergyman, not over-scrupulous as to stealing
his sermons, was currently known as a “Maryland parson.” Graydon’s
_Memoirs_, Edinburgh, 1822, p. 102. This was in Pennsylvania, and any
sneering remark or phrase current in any of our states with reference
to its next neighbours is entitled to be taken _cum grano salis_. But
there was doubtless justification for what Graydon says.

[118] Scharf, i. 368.

[119] Scharf, i. 370, 383.

[120] The following estimate of the population of the twelve colonies
in 1715 (from Chalmer’s _American Colonies_, ii. 7) may be of
interest:--

                  White.  Black.  Total.
  Massachusetts   94,000   2,000  96,000
  Virginia        72,000  23,000  95,000
  Maryland        40,700   9,500  50,200
  Connecticut     46,000   1,500  47,500
  Pennsylvania}   43,300   2,500  45,800
  Delaware    }
  New York        27,000   4,000  31,000
  New Jersey.     21,000   1,500  22,500
  South Carolina   6,250  10,500  16,750
  North Carolina   7,500   3,700  11,200
  New Hampshire    9,500     150   9,650
  Rhode Island     8,500     500   9,000
                 -------  ------ -------
                 375,750  58,850 434,600


[121] Scharf, i. 390.

[122] Knapp and Baldwin, _Newgate Calendar_, ii. 385-397; Pelham,
_Chronicles of Crime_, i. 213-220.

[123] Doyle’s _Virginia_, p. 192.

[124] For runaways additional terms of from two to seven years were
sometimes prescribed. The birth of a bastard was punished by an
additional term of from one and a half to two and a half years for the
mother and a year for the father. See Ballagh, “White Servitude in the
Colony of Virginia,” _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, xiii. 315.

[125] “Among the rest, she often told me how the greatest part of
the inhabitants of that colony came thither in very indifferent
circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two
sorts: either, 1st, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be
sold as servants; or, 2nd, such as are transported after having been
found guilty of crimes punishable with death. When they come here ...
the planters buy them, and they work together in the field till their
time is out.... [Then] they have a certain number of acres of land
allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the
land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and
as the merchants will trust them with tools and necessaries upon the
credit of their crop before it is grown, so they again plant every year
a little more [etc.].... Hence, child, says she, many a Newgate-bird
becomes a great man, and we have ... several justices of the peace,
officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live
in, that have been burnt in the hand.... You need not think such a
thing strange; ... some of the best men in the country are burnt in the
hand, and they are not ashamed to own it; there’s Major ----, says she,
he was an eminent pickpocket; there’s Justice B---- was a shoplifter,
... and I could name you several such as they are.” _Moll Flanders_, p.
66.

[126] _Plays written by the late Ingenious Mrs. Behn_, London, 1724,
iv. 110-112.

[127] Postlethwayt’s _Dictionary of Commerce_, 3d ed., London, 1766,
vol. ii. fol. 4 M, 2 _recto_, col. 1.

[128] Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, ed. Birkbeck Hill, ii. 312.
Professor James Butler, in an excellent paper on “British Convicts
shipped to American Colonies,” _American Historical Review_, ii. 12-33,
suggests that Johnson’s impression may have been derived from his
long connection with the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, wherein the lists of
felons, reprieved from the gallows and sent to America were regularly
published.

[129] Whitmore, _The Cavalier Dismounted_, p. 17.

[130] Pike, _History of Crime in England_, ii. 447.

[131] _American Historical Review_, ii. 25.

[132] _Penny Cyclopædia_, xxv. 138.

[133] _Report of Royal Historical MSS. Commission_, xiii. 605.

[134] The only specific mention which Professor Butler has been able to
find of a criminal sent to New England is that of Elizabeth Canning,
who was sent out for seven years under penalty of death if she returned
to England during that time. She was brought to Connecticut in 1754,
married John Treat two years afterward, and died in Wethersfield in
1773. _American Historical Review_, ii. 32.

[135] _Massachusetts Acts and Resolves_, i. 452; ii. 245.

[136] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, i. 609; Gardiner, _History
of the Commonwealth_, i. 464. It is commonly said that many of the
prisoners condemned for taking part in Monmouth’s rebellion, 1685, were
sent to Virginia (see Bancroft, _Hist. of U. S._ i. 471; Ballagh, _J.
H. U. Studies_, xiii. 293). But an examination of the lists shows that
nearly all were sent to Barbadoes, and probably none to Virginia. See
Hotten, _Original Lists of Persons of Quality, Emigrants, Religious
Exiles, Political Rebels_, etc., pp. 315-344.

[137] Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 50.

[138] Mr. Bruce has well said that in the seventeenth century the white
servant was “the main pillar of the industrial fabric” of Virginia, and
“performed the most honourable work in establishing and sustaining”
that colony. “There can be no doubt, as he goes on to say, that the
work of colonization which has been performed by the people of England
surpasses, both in extent and beneficence, that of any other race
which has left an impression upon universal history, and the part the
manual labourers have taken in this work is not less memorable than the
part taken by the higher classes of the nation.” _Economic History of
Virginia_, i. 573, 582.

[139] Neill’s Virginia Carolorum, p. 279; Hotten’s _Original Lists_,
pp. 207, 233, 254; Hening’s _Statutes_, i. 386.

[140] In the absence of detailed specific knowledge it is unsafe to
base inferences upon the word “servant,” inasmuch as in the seventeenth
century it included not only menials but clerks and apprentices, even
articled students in a lawyer’s or doctor’s office, etc. See _William
and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 22; Bruce, _Economic History_, i.
573-575; ii. 45.

[141] “Tour through the British Plantations,” _London Magazine_, 1755.

[142] Hugh Jones, _Present State of Virginia_, 1724, p, 114.

[143] Meade’s _Old Churches_, i. 366.

[144] Before the Revolution this grievance had come to awaken fierce
resentment. A letter printed in 1751 exclaims: “In what can Britain
show a more sovereign contempt for us than by emptying their gaols into
our settlements, unless they would likewise empty their offal upon our
tables?... And what must we think of those merchants who for the sake
of a little paltry gain will be concerned in importing and disposing of
these abominable cargoes!”--_Virginia Gazette_, May 24, 1751.

[145] Lecky, _History of England_, i. 127.

[146] Smyth’s _Tour in the United States_, London, 1784, i. 72. In 1748
Maryland had 98,357 free whites, 6,870 redemptioners, 1,981 convicts,
and 42,764 negroes. See Williams, _History of the Negro Race in
America_, i. 247.

[147] See above, vol. i. p. 16.

[148] At the famous meeting in the Tabernacle at New York, in May,
1850, when Isaiah Rynders and his ruffians made a futile attempt to
silence Garrison, one of the speakers maintained “that the blacks were
not men, but belonged to the monkey tribe.” _William Lloyd Garrison:
the Story of his Life, told by his Children_, iii. 294. Defenders of
slavery at that time got much comfort from Agassiz’s opinion that the
different races of men had distinct origins. It was perhaps even more
effective than the favourite “cursed be Canaan” argument.

[149] Bruce, _Economic History_, ii. 94. About 1854 (I am not quite
sure as to the date) it was reported in Middletown, Conn., that the
“horrid infidel,” Rev. Theodore Parker, had, on a recent Sunday in the
Boston Music Hall, brought forward sundry cats and dogs and baptized
them in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!!! I shall never forget
the chill of horror which ran through the neighbourhood at this tale
of wanton blasphemy. In 1867 I found the belief in the story still
surviving among certain persons in Middletown with a tenacity that
no argument or explanation could shake. The origin of the ridiculous
tale was as follows: The famous abolitionist, Parker Pillsbury, made a
speech in which he quoted what the lady said to Godwyn, that “he might
as well baptize puppies as negroes.” In passing from mouth to mouth
the report of this incident underwent an astounding transformation.
First the speaker’s name was exchanged for that of another famous
abolitionist, the strong and lovely Christian saint, Theodore Parker;
and then the figure of speech was developed into an act and clothed
with circumstance. Thus from the true statement, that Parker Pillsbury
told a story in which an allusion was made to baptizing puppies, grew
the false statement that Theodore Parker actually baptized cats and
dogs. A great deal of what passes current as history has no better
foundation than this outrageous calumny.

[150] Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 96-98.

[151] Hening’s _Statutes_, ii. 260.

[152] Hening, iii. 333-335.

[153] For many of these details concerning slavery I am indebted to
Bruce’s _Economic History of Virginia_, chap, xi.,--a book which it
would be difficult to praise too highly.

[154] Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 107.

[155] Beverley, _History and Present State of Virginia_, London, 1705,
part iv. pp. 36-39. The historian was son of Major Robert Beverley
mentioned above, on pages 109-114 of the present volume.

[156] Burk’s _History of Virginia_, Petersburg, 1805, ii. 300.

[157] Hening’s _Statutes_, iii. 537. For the loss of this slave by
emancipation his master was indemnified by a payment of £40 from the
colonial treasury.

[158] Hening, iii. 461; vi. 111. In England in the Middle Ages such
mutilation was a common punishment for rape; sometimes, in addition,
the culprit’s eyes were put out. See Pollock and Maitland, _History of
English Law before the Time of Edward I._ ii. 489.

[159] Hening, iii. 210.

[160] Hening, vi. 105.

[161] Hening, vi. 107.

[162] Hening, v. 558.

[163] Hening, vi. 112.

[164] Hening, iii. 87, 88.

[165] Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 129.

[166] Hening, iv. 133, 134.

[167] Hening, iii. 448, act of 1705.

[168] See Larned’s excellent _History for Ready Reference_, iv. 2921,
where the case is ably summed up.

[169] Jefferson’s _Notes on Virginia_, 1782, Query xviii.

[170] Hening, iii. 87, 454.

[171] Hening, iii. 87.

[172] Hening, ii. 170, act of 1662.

[173] See Bruce, _Economic History_, ii. 109, where we are told that
Jamestown was sorely scandalized by the loose behaviour of “thoughtful
Mr. Lawrence.”

[174] “The gain from the African labour outweighed all fears of evil
from the intermixture.” Foote’s _Sketches of Virginia_, i. 23.

[175] Baird, _History of the Huguenot Emigration to America_, ii. 178.

[176] Brock, _Documents relating to the Huguenot Emigration to
Virginia_, Va. Hist. Soc. Coll. N. S. v.; cf. Hayden’s _Virginia
Genealogies_, Wilkes-Barré, 1891.

[177] Chesapeake Bay, says Rev. Francis Makemie, is “a bay in most
respects scarce to be outdone by the universe, having so many large
and spacious rivers, branching and running on both sides; ... and
each of these rivers richly supplied, and divided into sundry smaller
rivers, spreading themselves ... to innumerable creeks and coves,
admirably carved out and contrived by the omnipotent hand of our wise
Creator, for the advantage and conveniency of its inhabitants; ... so
that I have oft, with no small admiration, compared the many rivers,
creeks, and rivulets of water ... to veins in human bodies.” _A Plain
and Friendly Perswasive_, London, 1705, p. 5. “One receives the
impression in reading of colonial Virginia that all the world lived in
country-houses, on the banks of rivers. And the Virginia world did live
very much in this way.” Miss Rowland’s _Life of George Mason_, i. 90.

[178] The Huguenots seem to have preferred a French wine, for one of
the first things they did (in 1704) was to “begin an essay of wine,
which they made of the wild grapes gathered in the woods; the effect of
which was noble, strong-bodied claret, of a curious flavour.” Beverley,
_History of Virginia_, London, 1705, part iv. p. 46. This has the
earmark of truth. American clarets are to this day strong-bodied, with
a curious flavour!

[179] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, ii. 340-342.

[180] Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, ii. 501.

[181] Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 471, where we are also told that “in many
cases the wealthy planters imported from England the clothes worn by
these servants and slaves.”

[182] Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 395, 399, 403, 405.

[183] Beverley, _History and Present State of Virginia_, book iv. pp.
58, 83.

[184] Hening, ii. 172-176.

[185] Hening, ii. 471-478; iii. 53-69.

[186] There was much strong feeling and vehement writing on the subject
by those who were disgusted at the prevalent state of things: “I always
judged such as are averse to towns to be three sorts of persons: 1.
Fools, who cannot, neither will see their own interest and advantage in
having towns. 2. Knaves, who would still carry on fraudulent designs
and cheating tricks in a corner or secret trade, afraid of being
exposed at a public market. 3. Sluggards, who rather than be at labour
and at any charge in transporting their goods to market, though idle
at home, and lose double thereby rather than do it. To which I may add
a fourth, which are Sots, who may be best cured of their disease by a
pair of stocks in town.” Makemie’s _Plain and Friendly Perswasive_,
London, 1705, p. 16.

[187] _Present State of Virginia_, 1697, p. 12.

[188] A kind of cleaver.

[189] Bruce, _Economic History_, ii. 382-383.

[190] Conway, _Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock_, p. 116.

[191] Though the attempts to stimulate shipbuilding met with little
success, the manufacture of barges, pinnaces, and shallops was
sustained by imperative necessity. See Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 426-439.

[192] Elkanah Watson, _Men and Times of the Revolution_, 2d ed., New
York, 1856, chap. ii.

[193] See Ripley’s _Financial History of Virginia_, pp. 119-124.

[194] Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 411-416.

[195] Ripley, _Financial History of Virginia_, p. 122; cf. Bruce, _op.
cit._ ii. 368.

[196] McMaster, _History of the People of the United States_, i. 273.

[197] Hening, ii. 192. An old satirical writer mentions the same custom
at a Maryland inn, where, however, he did not seem in all respects to
relish his supper:--

    So after hearty Entertainment
    Of Drink and Victuals without Payment;
    For Planters Tables, you must know,
    Are free for all that come and go.
    While Pon and Milk, with Mush well stoar’d,
    In Wooden Dishes grac’d the Board;
    With Homine and Syder-pap,
    (Which scarce a hungry dog would lap)
    Well stuff’d with Fat from Bacon fry’d,
    Or with _Mollossus_ dulcify’d.
    Then out our Landlord pulls a Pouch
    As greasy as the Leather Couch
    On which he sat, and straight begun
    To load with Weed his _Indian_ Gun....
    His Pipe smoak’d out, with aweful Grace,
    With aspect grave and solemn pace,
    The reverend Sire walks to a Chest;...
    From thence he lugs a Cag of Rum.

The night had for our traveller its characteristic American nuisance:--

    Not yet from Plagues exempted quite,
    The Curst Muskitoes did me bite;
    Till rising Morn and blushing Day
    Drove both my Fears and Ills away;

but the morning-meal seems to have made amends:--

    I did to Planter’s Booth repair,
    And there at Breakfast nobly Fare
    On rashier broil’d of infant Bear:
    I thought the Cub delicious Meat,
    Which ne’er did ought but Chesnuts eat.

Ebenezer Cook, _The Sot-Weed Factor; or, a Voyage to Maryland_, London,
1708, pp. 5, 9.

[198] For the description of the planter’s house and its surroundings
I am much indebted to the admirable work of Mr. Bruce, chap. xii.

[199] Beverley, _History and Present State of Virginia_, book iv. p. 56.

[200] One often hears it said, of some old house or church in Virginia,
that it was built of bricks imported from England; but, according to
Mr. Bruce, all bricks used in Virginia during the seventeenth century
seem to have been made there. Bricks were 8 shillings per 1,000 in
Virginia when they were 18s. 8¼d. in London, to which the ocean
freight would have had to be added. It is not strange, therefore, that
Virginia exported bricks to Bermuda. As early as the Indian massacre of
1622 some of the Indians were driven away with brickbats. See Bruce,
_Economic History_, ii. 134, 137, 142.

[201] See above, vol. i. p. 212.

[202] The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited Monticello in 1782, says:
“We may safely aver that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has
consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the
weather.” See Randall’s _Life of Jefferson_, i. 373.

[203] _Lee of Virginia_, p. 116.

[204] Larousse, _Dictionnaire universel_, viii. 668.

[205] A _double entendre_, either “fork-bearer” or “gallows-bird.”

[206]

        _Meercraft._--Have I deserved this from you two, for all
        My pains at court to get you each a patent?

        _Gilthead._--For what?

        _Meercraft._--Upon my project o’ the forks.

        _Sledge._--Forks? what be they?

        _Meercraft._--The laudable use of forks,
        Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,
        To the sparing o’ napkins

        Ben Jonson, _The Devil is an Ass_, act v. scene 3.


[207] _Lee of Virginia_, p. 116.

[208] _Lee of Virginia_, _loc. cit._

[209]

    For Planters’ Cellars, you must know,
    Seldom with good _October_ flow,
    But Perry Quince and Apple Juice
    Spout from the Tap like any Sluce.

    Cook’s _Sot-Weed Factor_, p. 22.

[210] A minute account of the beverages and their use is given in
Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 211-231.

[211] Smyth’s _Tour in the United States_, London, 1784, i. 41.

[212] Samuel Peters, a Tory refugee, published in London, in 1781,
an absurd “History of Connecticut,” in which he started the story of
the “Blue Laws” of the New Haven Colony, which most people allude to
incorrectly as “Blue Laws of Connecticut.” These “Blue Laws” were
purely an invention of the mendacious Peters. There never were any such
laws. See my _Beginnings of New England_, p. 136.

[213] Miss Rowland’s _Life of George Mason_, i. 101, 102. This Mason,
author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, and member of the Federal
Convention of 1787, was great-grandson of the George Mason who figured
in Bacon’s rebellion. His son John, whose narrative I here quote, was
father of James Murray Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
and one of the Confederacy’s commissioners taken from the British
steamer Trent by Captain Wilkes in 1861.

[214] Meade’s _Old Churches_, i. 98.

[215] A rich Oriental silk, usually watered, first made in the
_Attabiya_ quarter of Bagdad, whence its name.

[216] Mr. Bruce gives many inventories taken from county records, of
which the following may serve as a specimen: “The wardrobe of Mrs.
Sarah Willoughby, of Lower Norfolk, consisted of a red, a blue, and
a black silk petticoat, a petticoat of India silk and of worsted
prunella, a striped linen and a calico petticoat, a black silk gown, a
scarlet waistcoat with silver lace, a white knit waistcoat, a striped
stuff jacket, a worsted prunella mantle, a sky-coloured satin bodice,
a pair of red paragon bodices, three fine and three coarse holland
aprons, seven handkerchiefs, and two hoods.” _Economic History_, ii.
194.

[217] The following specimen of a bill of funeral expenses is given in
Bruce, _op. cit._ ii. 237:--

                  lbs. tobacco.
  Funeral sermon       200
  For a briefe         400
   “  2 turkeys         80
   “  coffin           150
  2 geese               80
  1 hog                100
  2 bushels of flour    90
  Dunghill fowle       100
  20 lbs. butter       100
  Sugar and spice       50
  Dressing the dinner  100
  6 gallon sider        60
  6   “    rum         240


[218] _Virginia Magazine_, ii. 294; cf. _William and Mary College
Quarterly_, iii. 136.

[219] Jones’s _Present State of Virginia_, London, 1724, p. 48.

[220] Mr. W. G. Stanard, in an admirable paper on this subject,
gives some names of famous horses then imported, “many of them
being ancestors of horses on the turf at the present day;” such as
“Aristotle, Bolton, Childers, Dabster, Dottrell, Fearnaught, Jolly
Roger, Juniper, Justice, Merry Tom, Sober John, Vampire, Whittington,
James, Sterling, Valiant, etc.” _Virginia Magazine_, ii. 301.

[221] Smyth’s _Tour in the United States_, i. 20.

[222] Ford, _The True George Washington_, pp. 194-198.

[223] Hening, v. 102, 229-231; vi. 76-81. Washington was very fond of
playing at cards for small stakes, also at billiards; and he sometimes
bet moderately at horse-races. See Ford, _loc. cit._

[224] About four dollars.

[225] _Virginia Gazette_, October, 1737, cited in Rives’s _Life of
Madison_, i. 87, and Lodge’s _History of the English Colonies_, pp. 84,
85.

[226] The recorder was a member of the flute family, and its name may
be elucidated by Shakespeare’s charming lines (Pericles, act iv.,
prologue):--

                        To the lute
    She sang, and made the night-bird mute
    That still records with moan.

Mr. Bruce (_op. cit._ ii. 175) mentions _cornets_ as in use in Old
Virginia, but this of course means an obsolete instrument of the
hautboy family, not the modern brass cornet, which has so unhappily
superseded the noble trumpet.


[227] The inventory is printed in _William and Mary College Quarterly_,
iii. 251.

[228] The full list is given in _William and Mary College Quarterly_,
iii. 170-174.

[229] See Lyman Draper, in _Virginia Historical Register_, iv. 87-90.

[230] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, iii. 247-249.

[231] Hening, ii. 517.

[232] Hening, ii. 518.

[233] _Virginia Magazine_, i. 326, 348; _William and Mary College
Quarterly_, v. 113. Allusion has already been made, on page 5 of the
present volume, to the school founded by Benjamin Symms, or Symes.

[234] Hening, i. 336.

[235] President Tyler cites from the vestry-book of Petsworth Parish,
in Gloucester County, an indenture of October 30, 1716, wherein Ralph
Bevis agrees to “give George Petsworth, a molattoe boy of the age of
2 years, 3 years’ schooling, and carefully to Instruct him afterwards
that he may read well in any part of the Bible, also to Instruct and
Learn him y^e s^d molattoe boy such Lawfull way or ways that he may be
able, after his Indented time expired, to gitt his own Liveing, and
to allow him sufficient meat, Drink, washing, and apparill, until the
expiration of y^e s^d time, &c., and after y^e finishing of y^e s^d
time to pay y^e s^d George Petsworth all such allowances as y^e Law
Directs in such cases, as also to keep the afores^d Parish Dureing y^e
afores^d Indented time from all manner of Charges,” etc. _William and
Mary College Quarterly_, v. 219.

[236] Miss Rowland’s _Life of George Mason_, i. 97.

[237] Butler’s “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies,”
_American Historical Review_, ii. 27.

[238] The worthy pastor even goes so far as to exclaim, with a groan,
that two thirds of the schoolmasters in Maryland were convicts working
out a term of penal servitude! Boucher’s _Thirteen Sermons_, p. 182.
But in such declamatory statements it is never safe to depend upon
numbers and figures. In the present case we may conclude that the
number of such schoolmasters was noticeable; we are not justified in
going further.

[239] From the excellent papers by W. G. Stanard, on “Virginians at
Oxford,” _William and Mary College Quarterly_, ii. 22, 149, I have
culled a few items which may be of interest:--

John Lee, _armiger_ (son of 1st Richard, see above, p, 19), educated at
Queens, B. A. 1662, burgess.

Rowland Jones, _cler._, Merton, matric. 1663, pastor Bruton Parish.

Ralph Wormeley, _armiger_, of Rosegill (see above, p. 243), Oriel,
matric. 1665, secretary of state, etc.

Emanuel Jones, _cler._, Oriel, B. A. 1692, pastor Petsworth Parish.

Bartholomew Yates, _cler._, Brasenose, B. A. 1698, Prof. Divinity W. &
M.

Mann Page, _armiger_, St. John’s, matric. 1709, member of council.

William Dawson, _plebs._, Queens, matric. 1720, M. A. 1728, D. D. 1747,
Prof. Moral Phil. W. & M. 1729, Pres. W. & M. 1743-52.

Henry Fitzhugh, _gent._, Christ Church, matric. 1722, burgess.

Christopher Robinson, _gent._, Oriel, matric. 1724, studied at Middle
Temple.

Christopher Robinson, _gent._, Oriel, matric. 1721, M. A. 1729, Fellow
of Oriel.

Musgrave Dawson, _plebs._, Queens, B. A. 1747, pastor Raleigh Parish.

Lewis Burwell, _armiger_, Balliol, matric. 1765.

[240] Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, i. 282,
412, 419; ii. 861. For neglecting to “set up school” for the year, a
town would be presented by the grand jury of the county, and would
then try to make excuses. “In February, 1744, the usual routine was
repeated. The farmers were summoned ‘to know what the Town’s Mind is
for doing about a School for the insuing year.’ The school of the
previous year having cost £55 old tenor, which may have been equivalent
to 55 Spanish dollars, and it being necessary to raise this sum by a
general taxation, the Town’s Mind was for doing nothing; and not until
the following July did it consent to have a school opened.” Bliss,
_Colonial Times on Buzzard’s Bay_, p. 118.

[241] In my _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 148-153.

[242] Of the numbers in _The Federalist_, 51 were written by Hamilton,
29 by Madison, and 5 by Jay. But the frame of government which the
book was written to explain and defend was not at all the work of
Hamilton, whose part in the proceedings of the Federal Convention was
almost _nil_. It was very largely the work of Madison, and while _The
Federalist_ shows Hamilton’s marvellous flexibility of intelligence, it
is Madison who is master and Hamilton who is his expounder.

[243] See above, vol. i. p. 221.

[244] Stith, _History of Virginia_, preface, vi., vii.

[245] Byrd’s _History of the Dividing Line_, with his _Journey to the
Land of Eden_, and _A Progress to the Mines_, remained in MS. for more
than a century. They were published at Petersburg in 1841, under the
title of _Westover Manuscripts_. A better edition, edited by T. H.
Wynne, was published in 1866 under the title of _Byrd Manuscripts_.

[246] _Byrd MSS._ i. 5.

[247] Bruce, _Economic History_, ii. 234.

[248] See the history of the case, in Washington’s _Writings_, ed. W.
C. Ford, xiv. 255-260. According to Mr. Paul Ford, “there can scarcely
be a doubt that the treatment of his last illness by the doctors was
little short of murder.” _The True George Washington_, p. 58. The
question is suggested, if Washington had lived a dozen years longer,
would there have been a second war with England?

[249] Meade’s _Old Churches_, i. 18, 361, 385.

[250] It is difficult to obtain exact data. My impression is derived
from study of the statutes and from general reading.

[251] It is authoritatively stated in the _Virginia Magazine_, i. 347,
that from the time of the Company down to the time of the Revolution,
“there is no record of any duel in Virginia.” In the thirteen
volumes of Hening I find no allusion to duelling; for the mention of
“challenges to fight” in such a passage as vol. vi. p. 80, clearly
refers to chance affrays with fisticuffs at the gaming table, and not
to duels. Yet in 1731 Rodolphus Malbone, for challenging Solomon White,
a magistrate, “with sword and pistol,” was bound over in £50 to keep
the peace: see _Virginia Magazine_, iii. 89.

[252] _Virginia Magazine_, i. 128. A woman named Eve was burned in
Orange County in 1746 for petty treason, _i. e._ murdering her master.
_Id._ iii. 308. For poisoning the master’s family a man and woman were
burned at Charleston, S. C., in 1769. _Id._ iv. 341. For petty treason
a negro woman named Phillis was burned at the stake in Cambridge,
Mass., Sept. 18, 1755: see _Boston Evening Post_, Sept. 22, 1755;
Paige’s _History of Cambridge_, p. 217. For riotous murder in the city
of New York 21 negroes were executed in 1712, several of whom were
burned and one was broken on the wheel; and again in 1741, in the panic
over an imaginary plot, 13 negroes were burned at the stake: see _Acts
of Assembly, New York_, ann. 1712; _Documents relating to Colonial
History of New York_, vol. vi. ann. 1741. There may have been other
cases. These here cited were especially notable.

[253] Prof. M. C. Tyler (_History of American Literature_, i. 90)
quotes a statement of Burk (_History of Virginia_, Petersburg, 1805,
vol. ii. appendix, p. xxx.), to the effect that in Princess Anne County
a woman was once burned for witchcraft. But Burk makes the statement on
hearsay, and I have no doubt he refers to Grace Sherwood, who between
1698 and 1708 brought divers and sundry actions for slander against
persons who had called her a witch, but could not get a verdict in
her favour! She was searched for witch marks and imprisoned. It is a
long way from this sort of thing to getting burned at the stake! Mrs.
Sherwood made her will in 1733, and it was admitted to probate in 1741.
See _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 69; ii. 58; iii. 96, 190,
242; iv. 18.--There is a widespread popular belief that the victims
of the witchcraft delusion in Salem were burned; scarcely a fortnight
passes without some allusions to this “burning” in the newspapers. Of
the twenty victims at Salem, nineteen were hanged, one was pressed to
death; not one was burned. See Upham’s _History of Witchcraft and Salem
Village_, Boston, 1867, 2 vols.

[254] Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._ v. 286.

[255] Fox-Bourne’s _Life of John Locke_, i. 203.

[256] The Fundamental Constitutions are printed in Locke’s _Works_,
London, 1824, ix. 175-199. An excellent analysis of them is given by
Prof. Bassett, “The Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina,” _J.
H. U. Studies_, xii. 97-169; see, also, Whitney, “Government of the
Colony of South Carolina,” _Id._ xiii. 1-121.

[257] Hening, i. 380.

[258] He is commonly called a Quaker, but the tradition is ill
supported. See Weeks, _Southern Quakers and Slavery_, p. 33.

[259] See my _Discovery of America_, i. 167-169.

[260] Hawks, _History of North Carolina_, ii. 72.

[261] Lawson, _A Description of North Carolina_, London, 1718, p. 73.

[262] Rivers, _Early History of South Carolina_, Charleston, 1856, p.
96.

[263] Williamson, _History of North Carolina_, Philadelphia, 1812, p.
120.

[264] Williamson, _op. cit._ i. 121.

[265] Moore’s _History of North Carolina_, Raleigh, 1880, i. 18.

[266] I am glad to find this opinion corroborated by Professor Bassett
in his able paper above cited, _J. H. U. Studies_, xii. 109.

[267] Hawks, _History of North Carolina_, ii. 470.

[268] See above, p. 85 of the present volume.

[269] Dr. Hawks, in his _History of North Carolina_, ii. 463-483, gives
a detailed and very entertaining account of the Culpeper rebellion, to
which I am indebted for several particulars.

[270] Hawks, _op. cit._ ii. 489.

[271] Rivers, _Early History of South Carolina_, p. 145.

[272] _Id._ p. 153.

[273] _Records of General Court of Albemarle_, 1697; Hawks, _op. cit._
ii. 491.

[274] Spotswood’s _Official Letters_ (Va. Hist. Soc. Coll.), Richmond,
1882, i. 106. Several other passages in Spotswood’s letters of the
summer and autumn of 1711 express a similar belief. The opinion of
Spotswood is adopted in Hawks, _History of North Carolina_, ii.
522-533, who is followed by Moore, _History of North Carolina_, i. 35.
I am glad to find that my opinion of the inadequacy of the evidence is
shared by so great an authority as Professor Rivers, in Winsor, _Narr.
and Crit. Hist._ v. 298.

[275] See the learned essay by James Mooney, _The Siouan Tribes of
the East_ (Bureau of Ethnology, Bulletin 22), Washington, 1894. Until
recent years it was not known that there were ever any Sioux in the
Atlantic region. The Catawbas, etc., were supposed to be Muskogi.

[276] Lawson, _The History of Carolina; containing the Exact
Description and Natural History of that Country; together with the
Present State thereof. And a Journal of a Thousand Miles travelled
through several Nations of Indians, giving a particular Account of
their Customs, Manners, etc._ London, 1709, small quarto, 258 pages.

[277] For this and other atrocities see the letter of November 2,
1711, from Major Christopher Gale to his sister, printed in Nichols’s
_Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century_, iv.
489-492.

[278] In Professor Rivers’s version of the story there was either no
general conspiracy or only a sudden one conceived after the murder
of Lawson. He suggests that “being fearful of the consequences” of
that act, the Indians “were hurried into the design of a widespread
massacre,” etc. _Early History of South Carolina_, p. 253. It may be
so. Questions relating to concert between Indian tribes are apt to be
hard to settle. I think, however, that in this case the simultaneity of
attack at distant points is in favour of the generally accepted view of
a conspiracy arranged before Lawson’s death.

[279] Spotswood to the Lords of Trade and to Lord Dartmouth, December
28, 1711, _Official Letters_, i. 129-138. This was one of the early
instances of the extreme difficulty of obtaining money from “whimsical”
legislatures for the common defence, which in later years led
Parliament to the attempt to cure the evil by means of the Stamp Act.
Even in what he did accomplish on the border, Spotswood had to depend
upon voluntary contributions, just as money was raised by Franklin in
1758 for the expedition against Fort Duquesne, and by Robert Morris in
the great crisis of Washington’s Trenton-Princeton campaign.

[280] See my _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, ii. 200.

[281] Dr. Hugh Williamson, in his _History of North Carolina_,
Philadelphia, 1812, ii. 173-211, gives a very interesting account of
these malarial swamps, their geological causes, and their effects upon
the people.

[282] For a sprightly account of the Alpine region of North Carolina
and its inhabitants, see Zeigler and Grosscup, _The Heart of the
Alleghanies_, Raleigh, 1883.

[283] Lawson’s _History of Carolina_, London, 1718, p. 79.

[284] _Byrd MSS._ i. 59, 65.

[285] _Byrd MSS._ i. 56.

[286] _Byrd MSS._ i. 59.

[287] See above, p. 188 of the present volume.

[288] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, ii. 146.

[289] Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, April 5, 1717, _Official
Letters_, ii. 227.

[290] Olmsted’s _Slave States_, p. 507.

[291] Cf. Ramage, “Local Government and Free Schools in South
Carolina,” _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, vol. i.

[292] Ramage, _op. cit._

[293] The remarks of Herbert Spencer on state education, in his _Social
Statics_, revised ed., London, 1892, pp. 153-184, deserve most careful
consideration by all who are interested in the welfare of their
fellow-creatures.

[294] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, ii. 108.

[295] Americans are apt to forget how much nearer the equator the
familiar points in this country are than familiar points in Europe.
Although every family has an atlas, many persons are surprised when
their attention is called to the facts that Great Britain is in the
latitude of Hudson Bay, that Paris and Vienna are further north than
Quebec, that Montreal is nearly opposite to Venice, Boston to Rome,
Charleston to Tripoli, etc.

[296] Simms, _History of South Carolina_, p. 106; Williams, _History of
the Negro Race in America_, i. 299.

[297] Whitney, “Government of the Colony of South Carolina,” _Johns
Hopkins Univ. Studies_, xiii. 95; _Statutes of South Carolina_, iii.
395-399, 456-461, 568-573.

[298] The story is told by St. John de Crèvecœur, in his _Letters from
an American Farmer_, Philadelphia, 1793, pp. 178-180. Crèvecœur was
on his way to dine with a planter when he encountered the shocking
spectacle. He succeeded in passing a shell of water through the bars of
the cage to the lips of the poor wretch, who thanked him and begged to
be killed; but the Frenchman had no means at hand.

[299] _Statutes of South Carolina_, vii. 410, 411.

[300] “La plupart des riches habitans de la Caroline du Sud, ayant été
élevés en Europe, en ont apporté plus de gout, et des connaissances
plus analogues à nos mœurs, que les habitans des provinces du Nord, ce
qui doit leur donner généralement sur ceux-ci de l’avantage en société.
Les femmes semblent aussi plus animées que dans le Nord, prennent plus
de part à la conversation, sont davantage dans la société.... Elles
sont jolies, agréables, piquantes; mais ... les hommes et les femmes
vieillissent promptement dan ce climat.” La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
_Voyage dans les États-Unis_, Paris, 1799, iv. 13.

[301] Boswell has a characteristic anecdote of Oglethorpe, who was very
high-spirited, but extremely sensible. When a lad of nineteen or so, he
was dining one day with a certain Prince of Würtemberg and others, when
the insolent prince fillipped a few drops of wine into his face. “Here
was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly might have fixed a
quarrelsome character upon the young soldier; to have taken no notice
of it might have been considered as cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore,
keeping his eye upon the prince and smiling, ... said, ‘That’s a good
joke, but we do it much better in England,’ and threw a whole glass of
wine in the prince’s face. An old general, who sat by, said, ‘Il a bien
fait, mon prince, vous l’avez commencé,’ and thus all ended in good
humour.” _Life of Johnson_, ed. Birkbeck Hill, ii. 180.

[302] See the charter, in Jones’s _History of Georgia_, i. 90.

[303] Blackstone’s _Commentaries_, bk. iv. chap. 5.

[304] See above, vol. i. p. 24.

[305] Burney, _History of the Buccaneers of America_, p. 52.

[306] Exquemeling was sent to Tortuga in 1666, in one of the Dutch
West India Company’s ships, and on his arrival was sold for thirty
crowns into three years’ servitude. He says very neatly: “Je ne dis
rien de ce qui a donné lieu à mon embarquement, suivi d’un si fâcheux
esclavage, parce que cela seroit hors de propos, et ne pourroit estre
qu’ennuyeux.” He was cruelly treated. After gaining his freedom he
joined the buccaneers, apparently because there was nothing else to
do. He went home in 1674 in a Dutch ship, “remerciant Dieu de m’avoir
retiré de cette miserable vie, estant la première occasion de la
quitter que j’eusse rencontré depuis cinq années.” Oexmelin, _Histoire
des Avanturiers_, Paris, 1686, i. 13; ii. 312. The English version of
his book is entitled “History of the Bucaniers of America” (London,
1684). The Spanish version is known as “Los Piratas.” Not only do the
titles thus differ, but each translator has added more or less material
from other sources, in order to exalt the fame of the rascals of his
own nation.

[307] “Le capitaine ... du vaisseau submergé était un pirate
hollandais; c’était celui-là¡ même qui avait volé Candide. Les
richesses immenses dont ce célérat s’était emparé furent ensevelies
avec lui dans la mer, et il n’y eut qu’un mouton de sauvé. Vous voyez,
dit Candide à Martin, que le crime est puni quelquefois; ce coquin
de patron hollandais a en le sort qui’il méritait. Oui, dit Martin;
mais fallait-il que les passagers qui était sur son vaisseau périssent
aussi? Dieu a puni ce fripon, le diable a noyé les autres.” Voltaire,
_Œuvres_, Paris, 1785. tom, xliv. p. 294.

[308] _Histoire des avanturiers_, ii. 216.

[309] Exquemeling says: “A l’heure que je parle il est élevé aux plus
éminentes dignitez de la Jamaique; ce qui fait assez voir qu’un homme,
tel qu’il soit, est toujours estimé & bien receu par tout, pourveu
qu’il ait de l’argent.” _Histoire des avanturiers_, ii. 214.

[310] Ringrose’s _MS. Narrative_, British Museum, Sloane collection,
No. 3820.

[311] See Hughson, “The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce,” _Johns
Hopkins University Studies_, xii. 241-370.

[312] See Watson’s _Annals of Philadelphia_, ii. 222.

[313] In Kidd’s case there were many extenuating circumstances; he was
far from being such a scoundrel as most of the pirates.

[314] See the cases of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, in Johnson’s _History
of the Pirates_, London, 1724, 2 vols.

[315] Burton’s _History of Scotland_, vi. 403.

[316] In writing to James Stanhope, secretary of state, Spotswood
says: “Such is the unaccountable temper of the People that they have
generally chosen for their Representatives Persons of the meanest
Estates and Capacitys in their Countys, And as if the House of
Burgesses were resolved to copy after the patern of their Electors,
of the few Gentlemen that are among them, they have expelled two
for having the Generosity to serve their Country for nothing, w’ch
they term bribery.” _Official Letters_, ii. 129. This reminds
one of the language applied by Sherwood and Ludwell to Bacon’s
followers (see above, p. 102); and suggests the presence among the
burgesses of a considerable party which felt it necessary to contend
against aristocratizing tendencies. To establish the principle that
representatives might serve without pay would tend to disqualify poor
folk from serving in that capacity.

[317] There is evidently a slip of the pen here; _Letters_ must have
been the word intended.

[318] Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, June 24, 1718. _Official
Letters_, ii. 280, 281.

[319] The 58th birthday of George I., May 28, 1718.

[320] Spotswood, _Official Letters_, ii. 284.

[321] His feelings find temperate expression in his letters to the
Lords of Trade and to the secretary of state, James Stanhope; _e. g._,
in October, 1712: “This Unhappy State of her Maj’t’s Subjects in my
Neighbourhood is y^e more Affecting to me because I have very little
hopes of being enabled to relieve them by our Assembly, which I have
called to meet next Week.... No arguments I have used can prevail on
these people to make their Militia more Serviceable;” and in July,
1715: “I cannot forbear regretting y^t I must always have to do w’th
y^e Representatives of y^e Vulgar People, and mostly with such members
as are of their Stamp and Understanding, for so long as half an Acre
of Land ... qualifys a man to be an Elector, the meaner sort of People
will ever carry y^e Elections, and the humour generally runs to choose
such men as are their most familiar Companions, who very eagerly seek
to be Burgesses merely for the Lucre of the Salary, and who, for fear
of not being chosen again, dare in Assembly do nothing that may be
disrelished out of the House by y^e Common People.... However, as my
general Success hitherto with this sort of Assemblys is not to be
Complained of, and as I have brought them, in some particulars, to
place greater Trust in me than ever they did in any Governor before,
and seeing their Confidence in Me has encreased with their Knowledge
of me, I have great hopes to lead even this new Assembly into measures
that may be for the hon’r and safety of these parts of his Maj’t’s
Dominions.... Y^e Assembly of No. Carolina has already faulted their
Governor for dispatching away to y^e relief of his next Neighbours
a small reinforcement of Men, they alledging that their own danger
requir’d not to weaken themselves.... None of y^e Provinces on y^e
Continent have yet sent any Assistance of Men to So. Carolina, except
this Colony alone, and No. Carolina, and by w’t I understand from
Govern’r Hunter [of New York] I am afraid they may be diverted from
it, he writing me word y^t their Indians are grown very turbulent
and ungovernable. We are not here without our dangers, too, but yet
I judg’d it best, and y^e readiest way to save ourselves, to run
immediately to check the first kindling Flames, and even to stretch a
point to succour Carolina with Arms and ammunition; and I made such
dispatch in y^e first Succours of Men I sent thither y^t they pass’d
no more than 15 days between the Day of y^e Carolina Comm’rs coming
to me and y^e day of my embarking 118 Men listed for their Service.
I have since sent another Vessel with 40 or 50 Men more; and hope in
a short time to have y^e Complem’t raised w’ch this Government has
engag’d to furnish.... I need not offer, for my justification, to wound
his Maj’t’s Ears with particular relation of the miserys his Subjects
in Carolina labour under, and of y^e Inhuman butchering and horrid
Tortures many of them have been exposed to.” So in Oct. 1715: “Such
was the Temper and Understanding [of the House of Burgesses] that they
could not be reason’d into Wholesome Laws, and such their humour and
principles y^t they would aim at no other Acts than what invaded y^e
Prerogative or thwarted the Government. So that all their considerable
Bills Stopt in the Council.... On y^e 8 of Aug’st ... they plainly
declar’d they would do nothing ... till they had an Answer from his
Maj’tie to their Address about the Quitt rents. I need not repeat to
you, S’r, what I have formerly represented of the inconveniency a
Governm’t without money is expos’d to, especially in any dangerous
Conjuncture.... The bulk of the Ellectors of Assembly Men concists of
the meaner sort of People, who ... are more easily impos’d upon by
persons who are not restrain’d by any Principles of Truth or Hon’r
from publishing amongst them the most false reports, and have front
enough to assert for truth even the grossest Absurdities. [How well
this describes the blatant demagogues who thrive and multiply in the
cesspool of politics to-day, like maggots in carrion!] ... These mobish
Candidates always outbid the Gent’n of sence and Principles, for they
stick not to vow to their Electors that no consideration whatever shall
engage them to raise money, and some of them have so little shame as
publickly to declare that if, in Assembly, anything should be propos’d
w’ch they judg’d might be disagreeable to their Constituents, they
would oppose it, tho’ they knew in their consciences y^t it would be
for y^e good of the Country.” Spotswood’s _Official Letters_, ii. 1, 2,
124, 125, 130, 132, 164.

[322] The expression is suggested by a famous passage in Lord Macaulay,
who seems to think that it all happened in order that Frederick the
Great might keep his hold upon Silesia!

[323] See above, vol i. p. 27.

[324] See above, vol. i. p. 61.

[325] See above, vol. i. p. 116.

[326] Hening’s _Statutes_, i. 381.

[327] These were Kaskaskia and Cahokia in 1700, Detroit in 1701, Mobile
in 1702, and Vincennes in 1705; and Bienville was just about to found
New Orleans, which he did in 1718.

[328] “I have often regretted that after so many Years as these
Countrys have been Seated, no Attempts have been made to discover
the Sources of Our Rivers, nor to Establishing Correspondence w’th
those Nations of Indians to ye Westw’d of Us, even after the certain
Knowledge of the Progress made by French in Surrounding us w’th their
Settlements.” Spotswood, _Official Letters_, iii. 295. A reconnoissance
was made in 1710, which reported that the Blue Ridge was not, as had
been supposed, impassable. _Id._ i. 40.

[329] Fontaine’s journal of the expedition shows that the crossing was
not at Rockfish Gap, as formerly supposed. Cf. Peyton’s _History of
Augusta County_, Staunton, 1882, pp. 24, 29.

[330] “Thus it is a pleasure to cross the mountains.”

[331] Jones, _Present State of Virginia_, London, 1724, p. 14.

[332] Spotswood, _Official Letters_, ii. 297.

[333] He understood that from Swift Run Gap it was but three days’
march to a tribe of Indians living on a river which emptied into Lake
Erie; also that from a distant peak, which was pointed out to him, Lake
Erie was distinctly visible; so he estimated the total distance as five
days’ march. The river route thus vaguely indicated was probably down
the Youghiogheny or the Monongahela to the site of Pittsburgh, then up
the Alleghany and so on to the site of Erie, distant in a straight line
about 300 miles from Swift Run Gap. Braddock in 1755 was a month in
getting over less than one fourth of the actual route. But, in spite of
the false estimate, Spotswood’s general idea was sound.

[334] _William and Mary College Quarterly_, i. 7.

[335] In this respect one of his family in the days of our great Civil
War was like him. The noble statue at the entrance of Forest Park
in St. Louis stands there to remind us that it was chiefly the iron
will of Francis Preston Blair that in 1861 prevented the secessionist
government of Missouri from dragging that state over to the Southern
Confederacy.

[336] George Washington’s elder brother, Lawrence, served in this
expedition, and named his estate Mount Vernon after the admiral.

[337] In 1781 the mansion at Temple Farm was known as the Moore House.

[338] In my next following work, entitled “The Dutch and Quaker
Colonies in America,” I hope to give a more detailed and specific
account of the Scotch-Irish and their important work in this country.

[339] Conway’s Barons, p. 213; Kercheval’s _History of the Valley of
Virginia_, Winchester, 1833, p. 65.

[340] Cf. Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._ v. 276.

[341] Greene’s _Antiquities of Worcester_, p. 273.


[Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious printer errors corrected silently.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]





End of Project Gutenberg's Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, by John Fiske