USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 13
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Eden's successor was George Burrington, a native of that county of Devon, which gave to England so many of those great navigators and adventurers to whom she owed her Amer- ican empire, the home of Gilbert, Hawkins, Grenville, Drake, and Raleigh. Burrington himself was not without the high spirit and ability which distinguished these men, but he had serious defects of character which rendered it impos- sible for liim to rival their achievements. He had the aggres- sive spirit and dauntless courage that qualify men for leader-
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ship, but he was governed by a violent, uncontrollable temper that invariably drove high-spirited men from the ranks of his followers. He had the restless energy and boundless am- bition which inspire men to great enterprises, but he was pos- sessed of an overweening egotism that made him incapable of sinking his personal interests in the interest of a cause. He had the keen insight into current conditions and the resource- fulness of intellect which fit men for the tasks of statesman- ship, but he was controlled by a spirit of blind partisanship which destroyed his usefulness for the highest forms of pub- lic service.
Burrington was a bundle of contradictions. As governor he was zealous for the good of the province, but he was domi- neering and tyrannical in his conduct; he was fertile in ideas for its development, but tactless in presenting them to the con- sideration of others and intolerant of opposition; he was ener- getic in carrying his plans into execution, but ruthless and unscrupulous in his methods. His zeal for the public welfare was never unmixed with his personal interests for he had staked out for himself vast estates in the province and did not scruple to use his official position to enhance their value. In his relations with other men, he acknowledged no neutrals. There were only friends and enemies. But both his friend- ships and his enmities were as often dictated by genuine in- terest in the affairs of the province as by personal feelings; and to advance the one or indulge the other, he was as ready to sacrifice his friends as to crush his enemies, and he did both with equal efficiency. Dissimulation was utterly foreign to his character; he was open and frank in friendship and in enmity, and gave no man cause to doubt where he would stand in any controversy; but with his friends he was selfish and exacting, domineering and, if his interests so dictated, faith- less; while with his enemies he was quarrelsome and relent- less, vengeful and brutal. His official papers show an inti- mate knowledge of the country and the measures best adapted to promote its development and considered alone, unconnected with his quarrels, present him as an active, intelligent and efficient official; but they cannot be considered alone, and they reveal him, therefore, as a man of ability, indeed, but utterly disqualified by character for the position he occupied.
Burrington was appointed governor in February, 1723, but he did not arrive in North Carolina until January, 1724. It was characteristic of him that he should align himself with the popular party. Moseley, who was of his Council, received
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CHRISTOPHER GALE First Chief Justice of North Carolina
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from him numerous marks of confidence. When about to set out upon a journey to South Carolina, Burrington designated Moseley as acting-governor in his absence. He associated him- self with Moseley, Moore and other leaders of the popular party in planting settlements on the Cape Fear. The Assem- bly, too, found him responsive to its wishes. At its request he ordered the Carolina land office, which had been closed by order of the Lords Proprietors, to be re-opened; and although the Lords Proprietors had forbidden the sale of any land within twenty miles of Cape Fear, again at the instance of the Assembly he ordered this instruction to be disregarded. The government party, which considered the governor as its nat- ural head, keenly resented Burrington's desertion. Chief Jus- tice Gale now became its leader, and early came into hostile conflict with Burrington who threatened to slit Gale's nose, crop his ears, "lay him in irons," and blow up his house with gun-powder. Unable to make headway against the governor and the Assembly, Gale finally carried his case to the Lords Proprietors. He charged that Burrington had violently broken up the sittings of the General Court, thereby rendering the chief justice incapable of executing his office; that Burring- ton had made murderous assaults upon him forcing him "in bodily fear of his life" to flee the province; that Burrington had been guilty of malpractices in office whereby he had pre- vented the king's customs officers from performing their du- ties. These charges, which the Assembly denounced as "mali- cious," the Lords Proprietors, who were accustomed to such violent controversies in their province, might have been will- ing to overlook in view of the material prosperity which the colony was enjoying under Burrington's energetic adminis- tration; but a fourth count against him, hinted at rather than openly charged, was a more serious matter. It was suggested that Burrington "intended a Revolution in this Government as was some years ago in South Carolina." The reference of course was to the Revolution of 1719 in which the South Carolinians overthrew the proprietary government and in- vited the Crown to assume direct control of their affairs. Bur- rington's efforts to ingratiate himself with the popular party, his close association with Moseley and with Moore, whose brother had been a prominent leader in the South Carolina Revolution, his repudiation of the instructions of the Lords Proprietors, his zeal in opening the Cape Fear to settlements, and his visits to South Carolina, all gave color to the sugges- tion, and alarmed the Lords Proprietors, who in great haste
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removed him after he had been but a year in office, and ap- pointed to succeed him Sir Richard Everard, who qualified at Edenton, July 19, 1725.
Neither the Proprietors nor the colony reaped any benefit from the change. It resulted, for the former, in hastening the transfer of their property to the Crown; for the latter, in six years of bad government. Everard had all the vices and none of the virtues of Burrington. His intellect was mean, his character contemptible. As a man he was vain, selfish and cowardly ; as governor he practiced nepotism, tyrannized over his colleagues, and accepted bribes. Besides these disqualifi- cations for his place he was strongly suspected of Jacobitism. Upon the death of George I, it is said, he exclaimed with an air of exultation: "Now adieu to the Hanover family; we have done with them !" He had administered the government but a few months before Chief Justice Gale, Thomas Pollock, and other leaders who had hailed his appointment as a great party triumph, were clamoring for his removal. Because of his "great Incapacity and Weakness," they declared, the gov- ernment had "grown so weak and Feeble" that but for its transfer to the Crown "it could not have subsisted much longer, but must have Dwindled and sunk into the utmost Con- fusion and Disorder." Everard was the last of the proprie- tary governors. During his administration the Lords Propri- etors surrendered their charter to the Crown,-a step which, though inevitable sooner or later, was doubtless hastened by the utter breakdown of the proprietary government under Everard's direction.
The period covered by the administrations of Eden, Bur- rington, and Everard, in spite of bad government, was a peri- od of growth and improvement. Immigration increased rap- idly, settlements expanded to the west and the south, and four new precincts were erected for the convenience of the new settlers. By 1720 settlements had ceased to hug the coast. Now and then some adventurer, more daring than the rest, with axe in one hand and rifle in the other, had dared to turn his back upon the older communities and plunge into the great unexplored forests to the westward. Along the bank of some stream he would select a fertile spot, clear away the trees, and build his rude cabin. Scores of such cabins were soon scat- tered throughout the interior. North of Albemarle Sound and Roanoke River, such settlers early pushed across the broad placid waters of Chowan River into the wilderness be- yond. In 1722, the Assembly found that "that part of Albe-
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marle County lying on the West side of Chowan River, being part of Chowan Precinct, is now inhabited almost to the ut- most of the said County Westward" and that the inhabitants were daily "growing very numerous"; for their convenience, therefore, it erected that region into the precinct of Bertie. Settlers were also pushing southward. The overthrow of the Tuscarora along the Neuse had removed the most serious ob- stacle to the expansion of the province in that direction, and during the decade from 1713 to 1723, a few scattered adven- turers cut their way through the wilderness as far south as White Oak and New rivers in what is now Onslow County. In 1724-25, more than 1,000 families came into the province, most of whom pushed on across the Albemarle Sound into Bath County which filled up so rapidly that before 1730 three new precincts-Tyrrell (1729) at the extreme north end of the county, Carteret (1722) at the extreme east, and New Han- over (1729) embracing the infant settlement on the Cape Fear River, in the extreme south-were found necessary for the accommodation of the people.
About the same time that the opening of the Cape Fear added that fertile region to the province in the South, an im- portant addition was made in the North by the settlement of the long-standing boundary-line dispute with Virginia. Credit for this result was due chiefly to Governor Eden, who in 1716, in a spirit of compromise, reached an agreement witli Gov- ernor Spotswood of Virginia, which made the settlement pos- sible. It will be remembered that the charter of 1665 called for the line to be run from "the north end of Currituck river or inlet" in a direct westerly direction "to Wyonoak Creek" in 36 degrees, 30 minutes, north latitude. The question in dispute was the location of Weyanoke Creek, Virginia main- taining its identity with Wicocon Creek, North Carolina with Nottoway River. Since this question could never be settled with absolute certainty, the interests of both colonies sug- gested a compromise. Eden and Spotswood, therefore, agreed upon one of three courses, viz: beginning at the north shore of Currituck Inlet the line should run due west to Chowan River; if it cut the Chowan between the mouths of Nottoway River and Wicocon Creek, it should continue in the same course to the mountains; if it cut the Chowan south of its con- junction with Wicocon Creek, it should run from that point up the river to the creek, thence west; if it cut Blackwater River north of Nottoway River, it should run down the Blackwater to the Nottoway, thence west. This agreement was signed by
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both governors and transmitted by Eden to the Lords Propri- etors, by Spotswood to the Crown for ratification. Spotswood urged ratification upon the Crown, saying that the compromise contained "the only Overture which has been made from ye beginning, wherein both Governments could be brought to ac- quiesce"; that while both sides adhered to their original claims, "it was not easy to foresee an end to this contest, though the Inconveniencys to both Governments by the con- tinuance of this dispute is very obvious, and likely still to increase, many people settling themselves in those contro- verted Lands who own obedience to ye laws of neither Prov- ince." Both the king and the Lords Proprietors ratified the agreement and directed the line to be run accordingly. These directions were not given, however, until after the death of Eden and the removal of Spotswood from office.
The line was run in 1728. On the part of North Carolina the commissioners were Christopher Gale, John Lovick, Wil- liam Little, and Edward Moseley; on the part of Virginia, William Byrd, Richard Fitz-Williams, and William Dand- ridge. The Virginians, desiring to turn their arduous enter- prise into a triumphant pageant through the wilderness, made elaborate preparations in keeping with the dignity of the great province they represented. That the Carolina commissioners might come similarly prepared, they took pains to notify them of their plans. Besides themselves and their retinue of per- sonal servants, they said, their party would embrace a chap- lain, scientists and mathematicians, Indian traders, expert woodsmen, and a company of soldiers. "We shall have with us a Tent and Marques for the convenience of ourselves and our Servants. We bring as much wine and rum as will enable us and our men to drink every night to the good Success of the following day. And because we understand there are many Gentiles on the frontier who never had oppertunity of being Baptized we shall have a Chaplain with us to make them Christians." The Carolina commissioners, who had not con- sidered any pomp and ceremony as necessary in connection with their undertaking, were astonished by this announcement and somewhat perplexed as to the course they should adopt. Their hard common sense, however, came to their rescue. "We are at a Loss, Gentlemen," they wrote, "whether to thank you for the particulars you give us of your Tent Stores and the manner you design to meet us. Had you been silent about it we had not wanted an Excuse for not meeting you in the same manner but now you force us to Expose the naked-
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ness of our Country and to tell you we cant possibly meet you in the manner our great respect to you would make us glad to do whom we are not Emulous of outdoing unless in Care & Dilligence in the affair we come to meet you about. So all we can answer to that article is that we will Endeavour to pro- vide as well as the Circumstances of things will admit us and what we may want in necessaries we hope will be made up in the Spiritual Comfort we expect from your Chaplain of whom we shall give notice as you desire to all Lovers of Novelty and doubt not of a great many Boundary Christians." "That keen thrust under the guard," comments George Davis, "de- livered too with all the glowing courtesy of knighthood, is ex- quisite. * If the Virginians were as familiar with sweet Will as they undoubtedly were with the value of tent stores, they must have had an uncomfortable remembrance of Sir Andrew Aguecheek-'An I thought he had been so cun- ning in fence, I'd have seen him damned ere I'd have chal- lenged him.' "'
The commissioners began their work at Currituck Inlet, March 6, 1728, and having ascertained the exact location of 36 degrees, 30 minutes, north latitude, they drove a cedar post in the seashore at that point to mark the beginning of the line. They then began their westward course. It is not necessary to follow them in their long and difficult task as they cut their way through the tangled wilderness, plunged through noxious swamps, and ferried deep and sluggish rivers. The experience of the surveyors in the Great Dismal Swamp, was full of ad- venture, hardships and dangers that called for a high degree of intelligence, endurance, and dauntless courage. They were the first white men to pass through that vast wilderness of water and network of trees and vines, through which even the rays of the sun could not penetrate. The survey brought to light many interesting facts and revealed situations full of surprises not only to the commissioners but to the inhabitants along the line. The line, for instance, "cut through William Speight's Plantation, taking the Tobacco House into Carolina and leaving the Dwelling House in Virginia." Several other planters had similar experiences. The intersection of the line with Blackwater River was found to be a half-mile north of the mouth of Nottoway River "which agreed to half a minute with the observation made formerly by Mr. Lawson." Pro- ceeding according to instructions down the Blackwater to the Nottoway, the commissioners ran the line due west from their confluence. Having thus settled the most acute phase of the
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dispute, the commissioners, on April 5, "considering the great fatigue already undergone, and the danger of Rattle snakes in this advanced season, determined to proceed no further with the Line till the Fall." On September 25th, they re- sumed their work. Upon reaching the Hycootee River, a trib- utary of the Roanoke, in what is now Person County, 168 miles from the starting point at Currituck Inlet, the Carolina commissioners resolved to proceed no farther saying that as the line then extended fifty miles beyond the remotest settle- ment and that many years would elapse before settlers would penetrate so far into the interior, it would involve needless trouble and expense to continue it. The Virginians protested against this step and announced their determination to pro- ceed alone until they should reach the foot of the mountains. This course the Carolina commissioners declared would be "irregular and invalid," contending that a line so run "would be no Boundary." Nevertheless the Virginians, showing more wisdom than their opponents, carried the line farther west- ward about seventy-two miles into the present county of Stokes. In all they ran it 241 miles from the beginning.
On the whole the settlement was favorable to North Caro- lina. It vindicated her commissioners of 1709 from the se- vere strictures cast upon them by their Virginian colleagues, and showed that the Virginia commissioners of that year had been in error 211/2 miles. "To the great surprise of all who had read the report of former [Virginia] Commissioners," wrote Lieutenant-Governor William Gooch of Virginia, an- nouncing the result to the Board of Trade, "it is now found that instead of gaining a large Tract of Land from North Car- olina, the line comes rather nearer to Virginia than that which Carolina has always allowed to be our bounds." The Caro- lina commissioners reported that "there was taken by the Line into Carolina a very great Quantity of Lands and Num- ber of Families that before had been under Verginia of which the time would not admit to take an Exact account but com- puted to be above One hundred Thousand acres and above Three hundred Tythables," i. e., above 1,200 inhabitants. The great gain to both provinces was in the removal of a cause of controversy, the quieting of titles to property, and the estab- lishment of the authority of government over a large number of persons who had taken advantage of the dispute to settle in a strip of territory "where the laws of neither Province could reach them."
The result of the survey was reported not to the Lords Pro-
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prietors but to officials of the Crown for when the survey was completed North Carolina had ceased to be a proprietary col- ony. This result had long been a foregone conclusion. For more than forty years crown officials and agents had carried on a propaganda against the proprietary colonies with the design of bringing them under the direct government of the Crown. The chief reason assigned for this policy was the failure of the proprietary governments to enforce the navi- gation laws, but other reasons were also given. It was charged that they had failed to accomplish "the chief design" for which they were established; that they enacted statutes "con- trary and repugnant to the Laws of England and directly prejudicial to Trade;" that they denied appeals from their courts to the king in Council; that they harbored smugglers and pirates ; that they debased their currency and by offering immigrants exemption from taxation, drew people from the crown colonies, thus "undermining the Trade and Welfare of the other Plantations;" that they promoted manufactures which were proper only to England; that they neglected their defenses against attack by Indians and foreign enemies "which is every day more and more to be apprehended, con- sidering how the French power encreases in those parts;" and, finally, that all these evils arose from their misuse of the powers granted in their charters "and the Independency which they pretend to." Accordingly the Board of Trade recommended as the remedy for these evils that "the Char- ters of the severall Proprietors and others intitling them to absolute Government be reassumed by the Crown and these Colonies be put into the same State and dependency as those of your Majesties other Plantations."
Such a result, however, could not be brought about by summary proceedings; the consent of the Proprietors was necessary, but since the Proprietors did not seem inclined to give their consent voluntarily, the Crown determined upon a line of policy designed to compel compliance. Step by step it proceeded, always in the same direction, to loosen the hold of the Proprietors upon their possessions. As early as 1686 quo warranto proceedings were ordered to be instituted against them with the purpose of having their charter forfeited to the Crown. These proceedings failing, the Privy Council, in 1689, recommended action by Parliament to bring the pro- prietary colonies "under a nearer dependence on the Crown." In line with this recommendation Parliament, in 1696, passed an act requiring that the nominees of the Proprietors for
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governors of their colonies be approved by the Crown before assuming their duties, and, further, that they give bond to the Crown for the enforcement of the navigation and customs laws. To assure the punishment of violators of these laws, the Crown also proposed to appoint the attorneys-general of the proprietary colonies and to establish in them admiralty courts whose officials were to be appointed by the king. In 1701, upon the recommendation of the Board of Trade, a bill was introduced in Parliament "for remitting to the Crown the Government of several [proprietary] colonies and Plantations in America;" and the surveyor-general of His Majesty's customs, Edmund Randolph, who had been the Crown's most active agent in securing data against the pro- prietaries, was instructed to appear at the Bar of the House of Lords in support of the measure. But "by reason of the shortness of time and multiplicity of other business" before Parliament, the bill failed of passage; the Board of Trade, however, announced that it would "again come under consid- eration the next Session of Parliament," and appealed to Governor Nicholson of Virginia for information "relating to the conduct of Proprietary Governours and Governments, * * more especially in relation to Carolina and the Ba- hama Islands," which could be used in support of the bill. For some reason not revealed the bill was not pressed. In 1714, it was proposed to require the laws passed by the pro- prietary governments to be submitted to the Crown for ap- proval, but an inspection of their charters quickly con- vinced the king's advisers that this could not be done without an act of Parliament. Besides these official attacks, officials and agents of the Crown and of crown colonies poured forth a constantly flowing stream of abuse and misrepresentation of the proprietary colonies, all with the single purpose of wear- ing out the patience of the Proprietors and inducing them to surrender their charters.
For nearly half a century the Lords Proprietors of Caro- lina resisted these encroachments of the Crown upon their chartered rights. When quo warranto proceedings were begun in 1686, Shaftesbury wrote: "I shall bee as unwilling to dis- pute his Ma[jes]ties pleasure as any man but this being a Publique Concerne tis not in any perticular man's power to dispose of it." The Lords Proprietors complained that they were given "no oppertunity to rectifie or clear some misin- formations" about their colonies laid before the king by Randolph and the Board of Trade, upon which the bills for
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forfeiting their charter had been based; and they protested against the appointment of the attorney-general and the erec- tion of admiralty courts by the Crown as violations of the terms of their charter. As time passed, however, they realized that they were waging a losing battle. In 1719 came the Revo- lution in South Carolina, and the ease with which the people overthrew their authority and the eagerness with which the Crown recognized the rebel government revealed the slight hold they had on their provinces. When they considered, too, "the number of the Proprietors, their disunion, the frequency of minorities amongst them, their Inability to procure to them- selves Justice from South Carolina with respect to their Quit Rents and their Want of Power to correct the great Abuses committed by the settlement about the Paper Money and other Publick acts to the Prejudice of the British Com- merce and an apprehension that in Case of an Invasion the Colony would be lost to the great detriment of the Publick as well as to themselves," they realized the wisdom of yielding to the inevitable. In January, 1728, accordingly, they united in a memorial to the Crown offering to surrender their char- ter. Negotiations were accordingly opened which resulted in all of the Lords Proprietors agreeing to surrender their politi- cal rights, and in seven of them agreeing to sell their prop- erty interests for £2,500 each.1 In addition to the purchase price, the king consented to allow them £5000 for arrears of . quit rents due them. The agreement was submitted to Parlia- ment which promptly passed an act embodying the terms of the sale. The conveyance was duly executed on July 25, 1729, the colony passed under the direct authority of the Crown, and the rule of the Lords Proprietors came to an end.
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