USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 31
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* Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers, iv. 287, 316.
Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte.
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and only six in his favor. Nevertheless his integrity and in- domitable perseverance and energy triumphed; and at length, upon the complaint made by him, together with six members of the council and some of the clergy, particularly the Rev. Mr. Fouace, Colonel Nicholson was recalled .* He ceased to be governor in August, 1705. Before entering on the government of Virginia he had been lieutenant-governor of New York under Andros, and afterwards at the head of administration from 1687 to 1689, when he was expelled by a popular tumult. From 1690 to 1692 he was lieutenant-governor of Virginia. From 1694 to 1699 he held the government of Maryland, where, with the zealous assistance of Commissary Bray, he busied himself in establishing Episcopacy. Returning to the government of Vir- ginia, Governor Nicholson remained until 1705. In the year 1710 he was appointed general and commander-in-chief of the forces sent against Fort Royal, in Acadia, which was surrendered to him. During the following year he headed the land force of another expedition directed against the French in Canada. The naval force on this occasion was commanded by the imbecile Brigadier Hill. The enterprise was corrupt in purpose, feeble in execution, and abortive in result. This failure was attributable to the mismanagement and inefficiency of the fleet. In 1713 Colonel Nicholson was governor of Nova Scotia. Having re- ceived the honor of knighthood in 1720, Sir Francis Nicholson was appointed governor of South Carolina, where during four years, it is said, he conducted himself with a judicious and spirited attention to the public welfare, and this threw a lustre over the closing scene of his long and active career in America. Return- ing to England, June, 1725, he died at London in March, 1728. He is described as an adept in colonial governments, trained by long experience in New York, Virginia, and Maryland; brave, and not penurious, but narrow and irascible; of loose morality, yet a fervent supporter of the church.t
Upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis the Four- teenth, in 1685, more than half a million of French Protestants, called Huguenots, fled from the jaws of persecution to foreign
* Old Churches, etc., i. 158; ii. 291.
¡ Bancroft, ii. 82.
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countries. About forty thousand took refuge in England. In 1690 William the Third sent over a number of them to Virginia, and lands were allotted to them on James River. During the year 1699 another body came over, conducted by their clergyman, Claude Philippe de Richebourg. He and others were naturalized some years afterwards. Others followed in succeeding years; the larger part of them settled at Manakin- town, on the south bank of the James River, about twenty miles above the falls, on rich lands formerly occupied by the Monacan Indians. The rest dispersed themselves over the country, some on the James, some on the Rappahannock. The settlement at Manakintown was erected into the parish of King William, in the County of Henrico, and exempted from taxation for many years. The refugees received from the king and the assembly large dona- tions of money and provisions; and they found in Colonel Wil- liam Byrd, of Westover, a generous benefactor. Each settler was allowed a strip of land running back from the river to the foot of the hill. Here they raised cattle, undertook to domesti- cate the buffalo, manufactured cloth, and made claret wine from wild grapes. Their settlement extended about four miles along the river. In the centre they built a church; they conducted their public worship after the German manner, and repeated family worship three times a day. Manakintown was then on the frontier of Virginia, and there was no other settlement nearer than the falls of the James River, yet the Indians do not appear to have ever molested these pious refugees. There was no mill nearer than the mouth of Falling Creek, twenty miles distant, and the Huguenots, having no horses, were obliged to carry their corn on their backs to the mill.
Many worthy families of Virginia are descended from the Huguenots, among them the Maurys, Fontaines, Lacys, Mun- fords, Flournoys, Dupuys, Duvalls, Bondurants, Trents, Mon- cures, Ligons, and Le Grands. In the year 1714 the aggregate population of the Manakintown settlement was three hundred. The parish register of a subsequent date, in French, is preserved.
CHAPTER XLVII.
1702-1708.
Parishes-The Rev. Francis Makemie-Dissenters-Toleration Act-Ministers- Commissary.
IN the year 1702 there were twenty-nine counties in Virginia, and forty-nine parishes, of which thirty-four were supplied with ministers, fifteen vacant. In each parish there was a church, of timber, brick, or stone; in the larger parishes, one or two Chapels of Ease; so that the whole number of places of worship, for a population of sixty thousand, was about seventy. In every parish a dwelling-house was provided for the minister, with a glebe of two hundred and fifty acres of land, and sometimes a few ne- groes, or a small stock of cattle. The salary of sixteen thou- sand pounds of tobacco was, in ordinary quality, equivalent to £80; in sweet-scented, to £160. It required the labor of twelve negroes to produce this amount. There were in Virginia, at this time, three Quaker congregations, and as many Presbyterian; two in Accomac under the care of Rev. Francis Makemie; the other on Elizabeth River.
The Rev. Francis Makemie, who is styled the father of the American Presbyterian Church, was settled in Accomac County before the year 1690, when his name first appears upon the county records. He appears to have been a native of the north of Ireland, being of Scotch extraction, and one of those called Scotch-Irish. Licensed by the presbytery of Lagan in 1680, and in two or three years ordained as an evangelist for America, he came over, and labored in Barbadoes, Maryland, and Virginia. The first mention of his name on the records of the county court of Accomac bears date in 1690, by which he appears to have brought suits for debts due him in the business of merchandise. He married Naomi, eldest daughter of William Anderson, a wealthy merchant of Accomac, and thus acquired an independent
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estate. In the year 1699 he obtained from the court of that county a certificate of qualification as a preacher under the toleration act, the first of the kind known to be on record in Virginia. At the same time, upon his petition, two houses be- longing to him were licensed as places of public worship .* In a letter written in 1710 by the presbytery of Philadelphia to that of Dublin, it is said: "In all Virginia we have one small congre- gation on Elizabeth River, and some few families favoring our way in Rappahannock and York." Two years after, the Rev. John Macky was the pastor of the Elizabeth River congregation. It is probable that the congregations organized by Mr. Makemie, in 1690, were not able to give him a very ample support; but, prosperous in his worldly affairs, he appears to have contributed liberally from his own means to the promotion of the religious interests in which he was engaged. According to tradition, he suffered frequent annoyances from the intolerant spirit of the times in Virginia; but he declared that "he durst not deny preaching, and hoped he never should, while it was wanting and desired." Beverley, in his "History of Virginia," published in 1705, says: "They have no more than five conventicles among them, namely, three small meetings of Quakers, and two of Presbyterians. 'Tis observed that those counties where the Pres- byterian meetings are produce very mean tobacco, and for that reason can't get an orthodox minister to stay among them; but whenever they could, the people very orderly went to church."
* It appears from his will, dated in 1708, that he also owned a house and lot in the new town in Princess Anne County, on the eastern branch of Elizabeth River, and a house and lot in the new town on Wormley's Creek, called Urbanna. Whether he used these houses for merchandise, or for public worship, is not known. It appears from Commissary Blair's report on the state of the church in Virginia, that the congregation on Elizabeth River existed before the year 1700. From the fact of Mr. Makemie's directing, in his will, that his dwelling- house and lot on that river should be sold, it has been inferred that he had re- sided there before he moved to the opposite shore of the Chesapeake, and that the church in question was gathered by him; if so, it must have been formed before 1690; for in that year he was residing on the Eastern Shore. Others have supposed that the congregation on Elizabeth River was composed of a small company of Scotch emigrants, whose descendants are still to be found in the neighborhood of Norfolk.
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From this it may be inferred that the Eastern Shore, where Makemie was settled, produced poor tobacco, and that in conse- quence of it there was no minister of the established church in his neighborhood. He is supposed to have had four places of preaching; his labors proved acceptable; his hearers and congre- gations increased in number, and there was a demand for other ministers of the same denomination. Mr. Makemie, about the year 1704, returned to the mother country and remained there about a year. During the following year two ministers, styled his associates, were licensed, by authority of Governor Seymour, to preach in Somerset County, in Maryland, notwithstanding the opposition of the neighboring Episcopal minister. Makemie's imprisonment in New York (by Lord Cornbury) for preaching in that city, and his able defence upon his trial, are well known. He died in 1708, leaving a large estate. His library was much larger than was usually possessed by Virginia clergymen in that day, and included a number of law books. He appointed the Honorable Francis Jenkins, of Somerset County, Maryland, and Mary Jenkins, his lady, executors of his last will and testament, and guardians of his children .*
In 1699 a penalty of five shillings was imposed on such per- sons in Virginia as should not attend the parish church once in two months; but dissenters, qualified according to the toleration act of the first year of William and Mary, were exempted from this penalty, provided they should attend at "any congregation, or place of religious worship, permitted and allowed by the said act of parliament, once in two months."} Hening remarks of this law: "It is surely an abuse of terms to call a law a toleration act which imposes a religious test on the conscience, in order to avoid the penalties of another law equally violating every princi- ple of religious freedom. The provisions of this act may be seen in the fourth volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, page 53. Nothing could be more intolerant than to impose the penalties by this act prescribed for not repairing to church, and then to hold
* Foote's Sketches of Va., first series, 40, 58, 63, 84; and Force's Historical Tracts, iv.
¡ Hening, iii. 171.
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out the idea of exemption, by a compliance with the provisions of such a law as the statute of 1 William and Mary, adopted by a mere general reference, when not one person in a thousand could possibly know its contents." It was an age when the state of religion was low in England, and of those ministers sent over to Virginia not a few were incompetent, some openly profligate; and religion slumbered in the languor of moral lectures, the maxims of Socrates and Seneca, and the stereotyped routine of accustomed forms. Altercations between minister and people were not unfrequent; the parson was a favorite butt for aristo- cratic ridicule. Sometimes a pastor more exemplary than the rest was removed from mercenary motives, or on account of a faithful discharge of his duties. More frequently the unfit were retained by popular indifference. The clergy, in effect, did not enjoy that permanent independency of the people which properly belongs to a hierarchy. The vestry, a self-perpetuated body of twelve gentlemen, thought themselves "the parson's master," and the clergy in vain deplored the precarious tenure of their livings. The commissary's powers were few, limited, and disputed; he was but the shadow of a bishop; he could not ordain nor confirm; he could not depose a minister. Yet the people, jealous of prelati- cal tyranny, watched his feeble movements with a vigilant and suspicious eye. The church in Virginia was destitute of an effec- tive discipline .*
* Hawks; Bancroft; Beverley, B. iv. 26.
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CHAPTER XLVIII.
1704-1710.
Edward Nott, Lieutenant-Governor-Earl of Orkney, Titular Governor-in-chief- Nott's Administration-Robert Hunter appointed Lieutenant-Governor-Cap- tured by the French-The Rev. Samuel Sandford endows a Free School-Lord Baltimore.
ON the 13th day of August, 1704, the Duke of Marlborough gained a celebrated victory over the French and Bavarians at Blenheim .* During the same month Edward Nott came over to Virginia, lieutenant-governor under George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, who had been appointed governor-in-chief, and from this time the office became a pensionary sinecure, enjoyed by one re- siding in England, and who, out of a salary of two thousand pounds a year, received twelve hundred. The Earl of Orkney, who enjoyed this sinecure for forty years, having entered the army in his youth, was made a colonel in 1689-90, and in 1695-6 was created Earl of Orkney, in consideration of his merit and gallantry. He was present at the battles of the Boyne, Athlone, Limerick, Aghrim, Steinkirk, Lauden, Namur, and Blenheim, and was a great favorite of William the Third. In the first year of Queen Anne's reign he was made a major-general, and shortly after a Knight of the Thistle, and served with distinction in all the wars of her reign. As one of the sixteen peers of Scotland he was a member of the house of lords for many years. He married, in 1695, Elizabeth, daughter to Sir Edward Villiers, Knight, (Maid of Honor to Queen Mary,) sister to Edward, Earl of Jersey, by whom he had three daughters, Lady Anne, who married the Earl of Inchequin, Lady Frances, who married Sir Thomas Sanderson, Knight of the Bath, Knight of the Shire of Lincoln, and brother to the Earl of Scarborough, and Lady Harriet, married to the .
Earl of Orrery.
* In the following year appeared the first American newspaper, "The Boston News-Letter."
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Nott, a mild, benevolent man, did not survive long enough to realize what the people hoped from his administration. In the fall after his arrival he called an assembly, which concluded a general revisal of the laws that had been long in hand. Some salutary acts went into operation, but those relating to the church and clergy proving unacceptable to the commissary, as encroach- ing on the confines of prerogative, were suspended by the gover- nor, and thus fell through. Governor Nott procured the passage of an act providing for the building of a palace for the governor, and appropriating three thousand pounds to that object, and he dissented to an act infringing on the governor's right of appoint- ing justices of the peace, by making the concurrence of five of the council necessary. An act establishing the general court was afterwards disallowed by the board of trade, because it did not recognize the appellate rights of the crown. This assembly passed a new act for the establishment of ports and towns, "grounding it only upon encouragements according to her majesty's letter;" but the Virginia merchants complaining against it, this measure also failed.
During the first year of Nott's administration the College of William and Mary was destroyed by fire .* The assembly had held their sessions in it for several years. Governor Nott died in August, 1706, aged forty-nine years. The assembly erected a monument to his memory in the graveyard of the church at Wil- liamsburg. In the inscription he is styled, "His Excellency, Edward Nott, the late Governor of this Colony." It appears that he and his successors were allowed to retain the chief title, as giving them more authority with the people, the Earl of Orkney being quite content with a part of the salary.
England having now adopted the French policy of appointing military men for the colonial governments, in 1708 Robert Hunter, a brigadier-general, a scholar, and a wit-a friend of Addison and Swift-was appointed lieutenant-governor of Virginia; but he was captured on the voyage by the French. Dean Swift, in
* The same disaster has recently befallen this venerable institution, on the 8th of February, 1859. The library, comprising many rare and valuable works, shared the fate of the building. The walls are rising again on the same spot.
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January, 1708-9, writes to him, then a prisoner in Paris, that unless he makes haste to return to England and get him appointed Bishop of Virginia, he will be persuaded by Addison, newly ap- pointed secretary of state for Ireland, to accompany him .* Two months later he writes to him: "All my hopes now terminate in being made Bishop of Virginia." In the year 1710 Hunter be- came Governor of New York and the Jerseys, and his adminis- tration was happily conducted.
Samuel Sandford, who had been some time resident in Accomac County : by his will, dated at London in this year, he leaves a large tract of land, the rents and profits to be appropriated to the education of the children of the poor. It appears probable that he had served as a minister in Accomac, and at the time of the making of his will was a minister in the County of Gloucester, England.
About the year 1709, Benedict Calvert, Lord Baltimore, aban- doned the Church of Rome and embraced Protestantism. To Charles Calvert, his son, likewise a Protestant, the full privileges of the Maryland charter were subsequently restored by George the First.t
* Anderson's Hist. Col. Church, iii. 127.
+ Ibid., iii. 183.
CHAPTER XLIX.
1710-1714.
Spotswood, Lieutenant-Governor-His Lineage and Early Career-Dissolves the Assembly-Assists North Carolina-Sends Cary and others Prisoners to Eng- land-Death of Queen Anne-Accession of George the First-German Settle- ment-Virginia's Economy-Church Establishment-Statistics.
IN the year 1710 Colonel Alexander Spotswood was sent over as lieutenant-governor, under the Earl of Orkney. He was de- scended from the ancient Scottish family of Spottiswoode. The surname is local, and was assumed by the proprietors of the lands and Barony of Spottiswoode, in the Parish of Gordon, and County of Berwick, as soon as surnames became hereditary in Scotland. The immediate ancestor of the family was Robert de Spotswood; born during the reign of King Alexander the Third, who suc- ceeded to the crown of Scotland in 1249. Colonel Alexander Spotswood was born in 1676, the year of Bacon's Rebellion, at Tangier, then an English colony, in Africa, his father, Robert Spotswood, being physician to the governor, the Earl of Middle- ton, and the garrison there. The grandfather of Alexander was Sir Robert Spotswood, Lord President of the College of Justice, and Secretary of Scotland in the time of Charles the First, and author of "The Practicks of the Laws of Scotland." He was the second son of John Spotswood, or Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St. Andrews, and author of "The History of the Church of Scot- land." The mother of Colonel Alexander Spotswood was a widow, Catharine Elliott; his father died at Tangier in 1688, leaving this his only child .* Colonel Alexander Spotswood was bred in the army from his childhood, and uniting genius with energy, served with distinction under the Duke of Marlborough.
* Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; Burke's Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, ii., Art. SPOTTISWOODE; Chalmers' Introduction, i. 394; Keith's Hist. of Va., 173.
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He was dangerously wounded in the breast by the first fire which the French made on the Confederates at the battle of Blenheim. He served during the heat of that sanguinary war as deputy quartermaster-general. In after-life, while governor of Virginia, he sometimes showed to his guests a four-pound ball that struck his coat. Blenheim Castle is represented in the background of a portrait of him, preserved at Chelsea, in the County of King William.
The arrival of Governor Spotswood in Virginia was hailed with joy, because he brought with him the right of Habeas Cor- pus-a right guaranteed to every Englishman by Magna Charta, but hitherto denied to Virginians. He entered upon the duties of his office in June, 1710. The two houses of the assembly severally returned thanks for an act affording them "relief from long imprisonments," and appropriated upwards of two thousand pounds for completing the governor's palace. In the following year Spotswood wrote back to England: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due obedience to the royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the Church of Eng- land." The assembly was continued by several prorogations to November, 1711. During the summer of this year, upon an alarm of an intended French invasion of Virginia, the governor exerted himself to put the colony in the best posture of defence. Upon the convening of the assembly their jealousy of prerogative power revived, and they refused to pay the expense of collecting the militia, or to discharge the colonial debt, because, as Spots- wood informed the ministry, "they hoped by their frugality to recommend themselves to the populace." The assembly would only consent to levy twenty thousand pounds, by duties laid chiefly on British manufactures; and notwithstanding the gover- nor's message, they insisted on giving discriminating privileges to Virginia owners of vessels in preference to British subjects proper, saying that the same exemption had always existed. The governor declined the proffered levy, and finding that nothing further could be obtained, dissolved the assembly, and in antici- pation of an Indian war was obliged to solicit supplies from England.
About this time, the feuds that raged in the adjoining province
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of North Carolina, threatening to subvert all regular government there, Hyde, the governor, called upon Spotswood for aid. He at first sent Clayton, a man of singular prudence, to endeavor to reconcile the hostile factions. But Cary, the ringleader of the insurgents, having refused to make terms, Spotswood ordered a detachment of militia toward the frontier of North Carolina, while he sent a body of marines, from the coast-guard ships, to destroy Cary's naval force. In a dispatch, Spotswood complained to Lord Dartmouth of the reluctance that he found in the inhabit- ants of the counties bordering on North Carolina, to march to the relief of Governor Hyde. No blood was shed upon the occa- sion, and Cary, Porter, and other leaders in those disturbances retiring to Virginia, were apprehended by Spotswood in July, 1711, and sent prisoners to England, charged with treason. In the ensuing year Lord Dartmouth addressed letters to the colo- nies, directing the governors to send over no more prisoners for crimes or misdemeanors, without proof of their guilt.
In the Tuscarora war, commenced by a massacre on the fron- tier of North Carolina in September of this year, Spotswood again made an effort to relieve that colony, and prevented the tributary Indians from joining the enemy. He felt that little honor was to be derived from a contest with those who fought like wild beasts, and he rather endeavored to work upon their hopes and fears by treaty. To allay the clamors of the public creditors the governor convened the assembly in 1712, and de- monstrated to them that during the last twenty-two years the permanent revenue had been so deficient as to require seven thou- sand pounds from the monarch's private purse to supply it. In the month of January, 1714, he at length concluded a peace with these ferocious tribes, who had been drawn into the contest, and, blending humanity with vigor, he taught them that while he could chastise their insolence he commiserated their fate.
On the seventeenth day of November the governor, in his ad- dress to the assembly, announced the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs, and the succession of George the First, the first of the Guelfs, but maternally a grandson of James the First.
The frontier of the colony of Virginia was now undisturbed by
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Indian incursions, so that the expenditure was reduced to one- third of what had been previously required. A settlement of German Protestants had recently been effected under the gover- nor's auspices, in a region hitherto unpeopled, on the Rapidan .* The place settled by these Germans was called Germanna, after- wards the residence of Spotswood. These immigrants, being countrymen of the new sovereign, could claim an additional title to the royal favor on that account. Spotswood was at the time endeavoring to extend the blessings of a Christian education to the children of the Indians, and although the beneficial result of this scheme might to some appear too remote, he declared that for him it was a sufficient encouragement to think that posterity might reap the benefit of it. The Indian troubles, by which the frontier of Virginia had of late years suffered so much, the gover- nor attributed mainly to the clandestine trade carried on with them by unprincipled men. The same evil has continued down to the present day. In the before-mentioned address to the assembly, Spotswood informed them that since their preceding session he had received a supply of ammunition, arms, and other necessaries of war, sent out by the late Queen Anne.
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