USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina under the proprietary government, 1670-1719, V.2 > Part 6
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I MISS. Journals Commons.
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garded by the Governor and Council themselves, though they now approved the measure.1
On the 30th of November, 1706. in pursuance of Gov- ernor Johnson's recommendation, all acts relating to the church were repealed2 and another general act upon the subject passed on the same day. The act of 1704 had pro- vided for the building of six churches, but had not laid out or defined the limits of the parishes. By this act the province was divided into ten defined parishes. The neck of land between Cooper and Ashley rivers was made into a distinct parish, to be called the parish of St. Philip's in Charles Town. The rest of Berkeley County was divided into six more parishes: one upon the southeast of Wando River, to be called the parish of Christ Church : one upon the neck of land between Wando and Cooper rivers, to be called by the name of St. Thomas's; one upon the western branch of Cooper. to be called by the name of St. John's; one upon Goose Creek, to be called by the name of St. James's, Goose Creek ; one upon the Ashley, to be called by the name of St. Andrew's; one in Orange Quarter, for the use of the French settlement there. to be called by the name of the parish of St. Dennis. Colleton County was divided into two parishes: one on the south side of the Stono River, to extend to the north side of South Edisto, to be called by the name of St. Paul's, and the other on the north of St. Helen's to be called by the name of St. Bartholomew's. The Huguenots on the Santee had peti- tioned that their settlement be made a parish, and that their minister should have the same allowance as ministers of other parishes, and so that part of Craven County known as the French settlement on the Santee was made into a parish. and the church built in Jamestown in that settlement was declared to be the parish church of St. James's. Santee.
1 Statutes of So. Ch., vol. II, 286.
2 Statutes of So. Ca., vol. II, 282.
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The influence of the Barbadian element in the province is noticeable in the names of these parishes. The names of these and those afterwards established are almost identi- cal with those of the parishes of Barbadoes.1
The act provided for the building of six churches and six houses for the rectors of the several parishes. and £2000. raised by the imposition of a tax on skins and furs, chief articles of commerce, was appropriated for the purpose. This was a very large sum of money, amount- ing possibly to 840,000 of our present currency. Com- missioners were appointed to take grants of land for the sites of the churches and churchyards and glebes, and for the houses for the rectors. Three of these were Hugue- nots.2 The rectors were incorporated as in the act of 1704. The rector of St. Philip's was to receive &150 per annum ; the several other rectors £50 each for three years and after three years £100. except the rector of St. Dennis, who was allowed €50 per annum. The rectors were to be chosen in the same manner as had been provided in the act of 1704, that is, by the inhabitants of the several parishes who were of the Church of England. The rector of St. Dennis, Orange Quarter, and of St. James's, Santee, were allowed to read the service in the French tongue according to a translation which had been approved by the Bishop of Lon- don. Orange Quarter was really a part of St. Thomas's
I The names of the parishes in Barbadoes were: St. Michael's, St. Peter's, St. Thomas's, St. John's. Christ Church, St. Lucy's, St. James's, St. Philip's. St. Andrew's. St. George's, St. Joseph's. Hist. of Barbadoes ( Poyer), 116. Hist. West Indies ( Bryan Edwards), vol. I, 321.
2 The names of the commissioners were : Sir Nathaniel Johnson, Kn't, Hon. Thomas Broughton, Nicholas Trott. Robert Gibbes, Henry Noble, Ralph Izard, James Risbee, William Rhett. George Logan, Arthur Mid- dleton, David Davis, Thomas Barton, John Abraham Motte, Robert Sea- brook, Hugh Hicks. John Woodward, Joseph Page, John Ashlv, Richard Beresford, Thomas Wilkinson, Jonathan Fitch, William Bull, Rene Race- nel. and Philip fiendron. Those in italics were Huguenots.
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Parish, but few of the inhabitants could attend the English Church, as they did not understand the English language, and most of them had been accustomed to meet together in a small church of their own; as they desired, however, to conform to the established church, upon their application they were incorporated into it.1
It was provided by this act that in each parish seven vestrymen and two churchwardens should be elected on Easter Monday in each year, who should be required to be sworn to the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and to subscribe the test against transubstantiation. They were required to serve under a penalty.
The essential benefits to the colony arising from this act, observes Rivers, cause us to regret the violent and illegal measures by which it originated. Pious and learned men could now be induced to come to Carolina, whenever their services were needed. Education and Protestant Christianity, he continues, are so blended that a country must be destitute of both, if it be long in want of either. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel sent out missionaries not only to preach, but to "encourage the setting up of schools for the teaching of children." 2
There is preserved in the Charleston Library a manu- script volume containing eight charges delivered by Chief Justice Trott to the General Sessions ; one of these, deliv- ered at this time, is upon the subject of witchcraft. and is a most learned and elaborate defence of the theory of the existence of witchcraft as a crime. While not actually asserting that every one that doubts the existence of witches must necessarily deny the existence of spirits, the Chief Justice makes bold to assert that they who have given good proof of apparitions and witches have done
1 Humphrey's Noc. Prop. Gospel. 105; Dalcho's Ch. Hist., 288.
2 Dalcho's Ch. Hist. 47-50 ; Ilist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), 281.
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some service to the cause of religion : for, he ingeniously argues, if there be such creatures as witches, then there are certainly spirits by whose aid and assistance they act, and by consequence there is another invisible world of spirits. "Now, though I am not at all inclined to believe," he charges the jury, "every common idle story of apparitions and witches neither should I have you to be over credulous in things of ye nature especially when they come before you in a judicial manner." He goes on to tell the jury "yet that there are such creatures as witches I make no doubt; neither do I think they can be denied without denying the truth of the Holy Scriptures or most grossly perverting them. Now," he says, "that the Holy Scriptures do affirm that there are witches is evident from so many places that might be produced out of them that time will not permit me to cite them to you." The Chief Justice then proceeds to examine and discuss before the jury passages of Scripture upon which he relies for his belief, and in doing this he quotes, and endeavors to explain to the jury, the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament upon the subject. The juries must have been very different in those days from the present had they been able to follow his Honor. We have no in- formation that any action was taken upon this charge. Trott was not singular in his belief at the time. Indeed. he was but adding his classical learning to the charge of Sir Matthew Hale in the famous witchcraft trial at Bury St. Edmunds. thirty years before, in which that great judge declared his belief that there were such creatures ; for, said he, the Scriptures have affirmed as much.1 At the clos of the seventeenth century belief in witchcraft was wide- spread, and it continued, to a greater or less degree, for a hundred years after. The fanatical outbreak at Salem,
1 State Trials, vol. VI, 647-702.
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Massachusetts, in 1691-92. is one of the most striking incidents in the history of New England.1 The act of James I, c. 12. against witchcraft was one of the English Statutes which we shall soon see reenacted in this prov- ince, in 1712.2 It is said that in 1792 witches abounded in what is now Fairfield County in this State, and as late as 1813 or 1814, Stephen D. Miller, later one of the most distinguished men of the State, gravely maintained the defence to an indictment of assault, battery, and false im- prisonment that an old woman, the prosecutrix, residing in Chesterfield had maltreated by diabolical arts a poor girl residing in Lancaster, and had ridden her as a horse from town to town.3
The volume of manuscript charges of Chief Justice Trott concludes with one in which he sentences a woman to be burned under the provisions of the common law. which holds the murder of a husband by a wife to be petty treason, and therefore liable to that terrible punishment. We have, however, no record of the case nor account of the execution of the sentence. We may safely assume that the woman was not burned.
1 The Emancipation of Mass. ( Brooks Adams), 216-236.
2 Statutes, vol. II. 508.
3 See a most interesting note of Dr. Thomas Cooper, editor of the Statutes at Large. upon this subject. Statutes, vol. II. 780-743.
CHAPTER XX
1706-1709
IF the Tories in England had lost their influence by their lukewarmness to the war, those in Carolina. under the lead of Sir Nathaniel Johnson, had redeemed the char- acter of their party for loyalty and devotion to her Majesty the Queen, and to the cause of the mother coun- try against all her enemies. Putting aside all party strife and daring, not only the united forces of the French and Spaniards, but the danger of pestilential disease, they had hastened with their fellow-colonists, in the double expo- sure of their lives, to the defence of the infected and beleaguered town. They may not yet have heard of Marl- borough's glorious victory of Ramillies of the 23d of May ; but they remembered Blenheim, and as far as the opportun- ity and occasion had allowed in this extreme outpost of the kingdom, had likewise performed their duty, and added some fresh laurels to the glory of England of the year 1706. They had done at least their duty - as if at Namur.
But great had been the calamities of the summer. The yellow fever had been most fatal. Five or six deaths a day among the small population of the town was not au uncommon occurrence. Among those who died were the restless and ambitious Colonel James Moore, the Rev. Samuel Thomas. who had just returned from England, where we have seen him in conference with the Society
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for the Propagation of the Gospel, Mr. Job Howes, the Speaker of the Assembly which had passed the laws that had occasioned so much contention, and many other worthy persons of both parties. Some dissenters, not contented with the defeat of the measure which would have excluded them from the government. but objecting to the establish- ment of the church at all, had abandoned the colony.
The number of the inhabitants was, nevertheless. in- creasing, and though most of the dissenters acquiesced in the establishing of the church, they renewed the struggle for the political control of the colony. and soon regained their ascendency in the Assembly.
During the distractions of the province and the confu- sion spread everywhere by the war with France and Spain. the traders among the Indians had carried matters with a high hand ; their abuses now occasioned fresh trouble and alarm. Though Colonel Rhett had succeeded Howes as Speaker, the Governor's party lost control of the Commons. and the Assembly determined to remodel the whole plan of conducting the Indian trade. It was proposed to ap- point commissioners with full power, executive and judi- cial, to settle without delay all difficulties in that business. The salary of the Governor was at that time $200 ster- ling; but this was augmented indirectly by allowances derived from the management of this trade. It was now proposed that the customary presents from the Indians. for which they expected special favors, should go into the pub- lic treasury, and an equivalent was offered to the Governor in lieu of these perquisites. Sir Nathaniel demurred to this as curtailing the only " considerable source of his income." and appealed to the Assembly : were not his services in the recent invasion "sufficient to excite their gratitude and liberality "? But the Assembly was obdurate. Instead of yielding, they sent a bill for his approval to prevent tu-
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mults at elections, which he rejected as contrary to his instructions. Notwithstanding the act continuing the present Assembly for two years, approved by him so shortly before. the Governor thereupon dissolved the body.1
At the election for a new Assembly the party in opposi- tion to the Governor gained complete ascendency, and at once elected as Speaker Thomas Smith, whom the former House had had in custody because of the libel of his letters to Ash. Mr. Marston had been continuously importuning the Governor and Assembly for his salary, of which he had been deprived : and upon the accession to the speakership of his friend, Mr. Smith, for visiting whom while he was in the custody of the Messenger he had been arraigned by the House. Mr. Marston at once renewed his applica- tion for payment. The Governor complained that he was affronted " by his saucy letter " and rejected it. But the House heard Mr. Marston favorably, and, on the 30th of October, 1707, sent an address to the Governor and Coun- cil asking for their reasons "why Dr. Marston ought not to be paid according to the directions of the Church act." The Governor and Council replied. November 6, that they wondered that the Assembly should ask. " when you may see the reasons very plainly in the words of the ordinance. where, after reciting his offences, it is expressly said that no more money shall be paid him out of the public treasury until such time as by an ordinance of the General Assembly upon his amendment, better behavior, and sub- mission to the government he be restored to the same." That so far from any amendment or submission. "he con- tinued his abuses and railing constantly in his sermons, so that neither the Governor nor no one of those concerned in the government could go to church except they would
1 Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), 243.
2
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be content to hear themselves abused; he having his abusive papers, ready penned into his sermon notes, to make use of when he saw any one concerned in the gov- ernment come to church." In answer to the argument that Dr. Marston had officiated, they said that no one desired him to do so, and all would have been glad if he had left it alone: for it was his doing so drove them and others from the church. "And therefore," continued the Governor and Council, "we wonder to see you repeat your affronts to the Governor by siding with Mr. Marston by which we and every one may plainly see that a person need have no other qualification to entitle him to your favor but abusing the government." They concluded by assuring the Assembly : " We will never give consent that he shall have any money paid him out of the public treas- ury; neither will we spend any more time and pains in receiving or answering any more messages relating to him."1
Having failed to reinstate Mr. Marston, and disposed to be quarrelsome. the Assembly next turned upon the Governor's two friends, Colonel Rhett and Chief Justice Trott. They resolved that Rhett " should no longer be sole commissioner for the fortifications," and requested to be informed how Trott obtained his position as deputy in the Council. They had not, they said, been officially notified how Nicholas Trott, of London, had become Proprietor. Governor Johnson replied informing them that Claren- don's Proprietary share had been assigned to Sothell, and upon his death the Proprietors had assigned it to Amy, and that Amy had assigned it as a portion for his daughter upon her marriage with Nicholas Trott. of London, a cousin of the Chief Justice, whom he had appointed his deputy. The Commons were not satisfied.
1 Dalcho's Ch. Hist., 09-72.
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Indeed, they had probably been instigated from London to raise this question. They desired proof that the other Proprietors had sanctioned the claim of Mr. Trott of London, and declared the Chief Justice "an unfit man for any publie commission or office." 1
Without consulting the Governor, and in manifest disrespect to him, the Assembly sent Mr. Berresford under their authority to the Savannah Indians. The Governor and Council resented this as an additional slight and interference with their prerogatives, as they alone had power to make peace or war. Pursuing the same hostile course, the House renewed the question as to their right to elect a Receiver of the public money. James Moore. the Receiver. had died the summer before. and the Assembly now claimed the right to elect his successor, as they had ineffectually attempted before on the death of Mr. Ely. If the Proprietors or other deputies, said they. claim to appoint this officer under the charter, they can as well claim to appoint the Speaker of the Assembly. Was it not strange, they asked, that the greater power of disposing of the public money was in the people, and the lesser power, incidental to it, of choosing the Receiver of the money, should be denied them? They proceeded to nominate Colonel George Logan for the office. The Governor objected, but the House persisted and unani- mously elected him.2
The Board of Trade in England had eagerly listened to the mission of Mr. Boone as opening the way to a subversion of the Proprietors' charter and the establish- ment of an immediate Royal Government, and in so doing had given a new vent to the discontent with the Pro- prietors and their Governor and Council. The opposition
1 Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), 244.
2 Thid., 245.
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party, which had now the control of the Commons in South Carolina. at once availed themselves of this new opening to the ear of the Royal Government. They appointed a committee on grievances and sent their report to the Queen. They also prepared specific charges against Trott, and desired the Governor and Council to displace him from his office of Judge and asked that he be brought to trial before a court. " The whole body of the people," said they, "have such an aversion against him upon just grounds that they will neither hurry their actions nor serve as jurymen until he be either punished or legally cleared of what is laid against him." The Governor refused to remove Trott. as such an action on his part would be unprecedented and contrary to law. The House should impeach him before the Council. This the House refused to do; while Trott, on the other hand. declared that he could only be tried in England before the Proprietors from whom he held his commission.1
Had the condition of the province permitted it, Gov- ernor Johnson would long since have dissolved this refrac- tory House of Representatives. But a threat of invasion by the Savannah Indians obliged him to reconvene them. Upon their assembling, he requested that, before proceed- ing to business, they would rescind from their journals the complaints against himself. To this request they an- swered they did not consider themselves legally convened, because Trott's name on the proclamation just completed a quorum of the Council, and they did not recognize him as a deputy. The inconsistency of this position is ap- parent ; for. if not properly convened, they constituted no legal body to be sitting receiving and sending messages. But standing upon this point, it was with difficulty that the Assembly could be brought to the consideration of the
1 Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. ( Rivers), 245.
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exigencies of the province, and induced to enable the Gov- ernor to organize a force against the public enemies, and to raise money for its support.1
Thomas Smith, the present Speaker, had been arrested by the previous House, and taken into custody of the Messenger for libelling that body. The tables were now turned, and he was avenged. Colonel Risbee, a member of that House, the author of the bill against dissenters, was brought to the bar, before Smith as Speaker, on a charge of vilifying the present Assembly while over his bottle of wine in a tavern.2
The Governor saw that a compromise was necessary to allay the increasing excitement. Logan, having declined the office so that no personal objection to himself might embarrass the Assembly, the Governor yielded on his part, and approved an act which asserted the right of the House to elect the Receiver. The Assembly then agreed to allow the Governor £400 for relinquishing the Indian perquisites, besides £100 per annum, and at length sufficient harmony was restored for proceeding with enactments which the public interests demanded.3
At the next election the Governor's party regained their control. The new Assembly was organized with Colonel Risbee as Speaker. But changes had taken place in Eng- land which allowed his Excellency but a short enjoyment of his restored power. Lord Granville was dead, and was succeeded as Palatine by William Lord Craven ; + the Board of Proprietors was reorganized, and turned against him.
! Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers), 246 ; Statutes of So. Ca., vol. II, 320-324.
2 Hist. Sketches of So. Ca. (Rivers). 246.
3 Ibid .. 246 ; Statates of So. Ca., vol. II, 805-311.
4 Coll. Hist. Soc of So. Ca., vol. I, 153.
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The board, as now composed, consisted of William Lord Craven, who represented also the minor Lord Carteret, Sir John Colleton, Maurice Ashley, who represented also the minor Joseph Blake, and John Archdale. The share of the late Lord Granville was not represented, and Trott (who claimed not only the Clarendon-Sothell share. but that also originally of Sir William Berkeley, which Arch- dale was now admitted to represent) was not recognized at all by the other Proprietors. The board thus consti- tuted was reduced practically to but four members, - Lord Craven, Sir John Colleton, Maurice Ashley, and John Arch- dale. But Trott would not tamely submit to his exclusion. He instituted proceedings in chancery. It was upon this that the move was made in the Assembly in South Caro- lina against the deputation of his cousin, the Chief Justice, as his representative in the Council.
Trott's case was this: Thomas Amy, it will be recol- lected, had acted as the agent in procuring immigrants for the colony, and had been made use of as a trustee for them when they bought the share of Sir William Berkeley. This trusteeship they had changed without his consent or release, and had sold the share to Thomas Archdale with- out his concurrence or his joining in the conveyance. The legal title to the share, therefore, it was claimed, re- mained in Amy and this claim was really never confuted. The Proprietors had, however, in the place of that share, assigned to Amy the share late of Sothell. which they had sequestered; and Amy had settled it upon his daughter as a portion when she married Trott. Thomas Amy died Sep- tember 21, 1704. And upon his death, Trott, very probably at the suggestion of his kinsman the Chief Justice of Caro- lina, set up a claim, not only to the Sothell share which had been settled upon his wife, but also to a considerable sum alleged to have been advanced by Amy while he was acting
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as the agent of the Proprietors -- a sum ascertained by the courts to amount with interest to £2538 11: 3d. For this sum he claimed that the heirs of Amy. i.e. his wife, Ann Trott. and her sister, Elizabeth Moore, were entitled to hold the legal title of the share which had been sold to Archdale with- out Amy's concurrence or without his joining in the con- veyance. This contention of Trott we shall see sustained by the decree of the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, but afterwards reversed by the House of Lords : 1 that body still, however, recognizing that the legal title was yet in the heirs at law of Amy.
John Archdale, on the 22d of October, 1708, conveyed the share in dispute. the title to which he held, - that origi- nally of Sir William Berkeley, -- to his son-in-law, John Danson. for £200. But before doing so he avenged his party upon Sir Nathaniel Johnson, "whose chymical wit." he charged. had transmuted the civil differences in the colony into a religious controversy.2 The Clarendon- Sothell share. meanwhile, was not represented.
The late Palatine, says Hewatt. from a mixture of spirit- ual and political pride, despised all dissenters as the ene- mies of both hierarchy and monarchy. and believed the State could only be secure while the civil authority was lodged in the hands of High Churchmen. Lord Craven did not possess the same proud and intolerant spirit ; he considered that those Carolinians who maintained liberty of conscience merited greater indulgences from them, and though a friend to the Church of England, he doubted whether the minds of the people were ripe for the intro- duction of that establishment. He therefore urged lenity and toleration.3
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