USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 43
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"As to the governor's consent being contrary to his majesty's instructions to him, it is imagined that his majesty's instructions to the governor are private directions for his conduct in his government, liable to be sometimes dispensed with upon extraor- dinary emergencies, the propriety of which he may be called to explain. The instructions are not addressed to the people nor promulgated among them; they are not public instruments, nor lodged among the public records of the province. The people know the governor's authority by his commission; his assent is virtually that of the crown, and by his assent the law is in force till his majesty's disapprobation arrives and is ratified, conse- quently everything done in the colony till then conformably thereto is legal.
"As to the order in council having declared the act void ab initio, it seems to have been a mistake, the order being as usual generally expressed that the act be disallowed, declared void, and of none effect, which purposely left the effect of the law, during the interval, open to its legal consequences.
"The king's commission to his governor directs him that he shall transmit all laws in three months after their passage. That when the laws are so signified, then such and so many of the said laws as shall be disallowed and signified to the governor should from thenceforth cease, etc. Upon appeal from the Cockpit to the privy council, the cause was put off sine die."
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When the clergy appealed to the king, they sent over the Rev. John Camm to plead their cause in England, and agents were employed by the assembly to resist it. Mr. Camm remained eighteen months in England in prosecution of the appeal. The king at length, by the unanimous advice of the lords of trade, denounced the Two Penny Act as an usurpation, and declared it null and void: and the governor, by express instructions, issued a proclamation to that effect. Fauquier was reprimanded for not having negatived the bill, and was threatened with recall; and he pleaded in excuse that he had subscribed the law in conformity with the advice of the council, and contrary to his own judgment. The board of trade deemed the apology unsatisfactory .*
But the king's decision not being retrospective, the repeal of the act not rendering it void from the beginning, was in effect futile, the act having been passed to be in force for only one year.
At Mr. Camm's instance a suit was brought against the vestry of his parish of York Hampton, for the recovery of the salary in tobacco, the assembly having, in the mean while, determined to support the vestries in their defence. The case was decided against the plaintiff, Mr. Camm, who, in accordance with the ad- vice of the board of trade, thereupon appealed to the king in council. The appeal was dismissed upon some informality. Camm experienced the perfidy of courtiers, and it being the policy of the government to avoid a collision with the assembly, the clergy were left in the lurch, to take their chances in the Virginia courts of law. The Rev. Mr. Warrington, grandfather of Commodore Lewis Warrington, endeavored to bring a suit for his salary, payable in tobacco, in the general court, but it was not permitted to be tried, the court awaiting the determina- tion of Camm's case in England, which was in effect an indefi- nite postponement. Mr. Warrington then brought suit in the county court of Elizabeth City, and the jury brought in a special verdict, allowing him some damages, but declaring the law valid, notwithstanding the king's decision to the contrary. The Rev. Alexander White, of King William County, brought a similar
* Old Churches of Va., i. 217.
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suit, and the court referring both the law and the fact to the jury, they gave the plaintiff trivial damages. The County of Hanover was selected as the scene of the most important trial of this ques- tion, and as all the causes stood on the same foot, the decision of this would determine all. This was the suit brought by the Rev. James Maury, of an adjoining parish. The county court of Hanover (November, 1763,) decided the point of law in favor of the minister, thus declaring the "Two Penny Act" to be no law, as having been annulled by the crown, and it was ordered that at the next court a jury, on a writ of inquiry, should deter- mine whether the plaintiff was entitled to damages, and if so, how much ? Maury's success before the jury seemed now inevitable, since there could be no dispute relative to the facts of the case. Mr. John Lewis, who had defended the popular side, retired from the cause as virtually decided, and as being now only a question of damages. The defendants, the collectors of that court, as a dernier resort, employed Patrick Henry, Jr., to appear in their behalf at the next hearing. The suit came to trial again on the first of December, a select jury being ordered to be summoned. On an occasion of such universal interest, an extraordinary con- course of people assembled at Hanover Court-house, not only from that county, but also from the counties adjoining. The court-house (which is still standing, but somewhat altered,) and yard were thronged, and twenty clergymen sat on the bench to witness a contest in which they had so much at stake. The Rev. Patrick Henry, uncle to the youthful attorney, retired from the court and returned home, at his request, he saying that he should have to utter some harsh things toward the clergy, which he would not like to do in his presence. The presiding magistrate was the father of young Henry. The sheriff, according to Mr. Maury's own account, finding some gentlemen unwilling to serve on the jury, summoned men of the common people. Mr. Maury objected to them, but Patrick Henry insisting that "they were honest men," they were immediately called to the book and sworn. Three or four of them, it was said, were dissenters "of that denomination called 'New Lights.'" On the plaintiff's side the only evidence was that of Messrs. Gist and McDowall, tobacco- buyers, who testified that fifty shillings per hundred weight was
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the current price of tobacco at that time. On the defendant's side was produced the Rev. James Maury's receipt for one hun- dred and forty-four pounds paid him by Thomas Johnson, Jr. The case was opened for the plaintiff by Peter Lyons. When Patrick Henry rose to reply, his commencement was awkward, unpromising, embarrassed. In a few moments he began to warm with his subject, and catching inspiration from the surrounding scene, his attitude grew more erect, his gesture bolder, his eye kindled and dilated with the radiance of genius, his voice ceased to falter, and the witchery of its tones made the blood run cold and the hair stand on end. The people, charmed by the en- chanter's magnetic influence, hung with rapture upon his accents ; in every part of the house, on every bench, in every window, they stooped forward from their stands in breathless silence, astonished, delighted, riveted upon the youthful orator, whose eloquence blended the beauty of the rainbow with the terror of the cataract. He contended that the act of 1758 had every characteristic of a good law, and could not be annulled consis- tently with the original compact between king and people, and he declared that a king who disallowed laws so salutary, from being the father of his people degenerated into a tyrant, and for- feited all right to obedience. Some part of the audience were struck with horror at this declaration, and the opposing advocate, Mr. Lyons, exclaimed, in impassioned tones, "The gentleman has spoken treason!" and from some gentlemen in the crowd arose a . confused murmur of "Treason ! Treason!" Yet Henry, without any interruption from the court, proceeded in his bold philippic; and one of the jury was so carried away by his feelings as every now and then to give the speaker a nod of approbation. He urged that the clergy of the established church by thus refusing acquiescence in the law of the land counteracted the great object of their institution, and, therefore, instead of being regarded as useful members of the State, ought to be considered as enemies of the community. In the close of his speech of an hour's length, he called upon the jury, unless they were disposed to rivet the chains of bondage on their own necks, to teach the defendant such a lesson, by their decision of this case, as would be a warn- ing to him and his brethren not to have the temerity in future
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to dispute the validity of laws authenticated by the only author- ity which, in his opinion, could give force to laws for the govern- ment of this colony .* Amid the storm of his invective the dis- comfited and indignant clergy, feeling that the day was lost, retired. Young Henry's father sat on the bench bedewed with tears of conflicting emotions and fond surprise. The jury, in less than five minutes, returned a verdict of one penny damages. Mr. Lyons insisted that as the verdict was contrary to the evidence, the jury ought to be sent out again, but the court admitted the verdict without hesitation. The plaintiff's counsel then in vain endeavored to have the evidence in behalf of the plaintiff re- corded. His motion for a new trial met with the same fate. He then moved, "that it might be admitted to record, that he had made a motion for a new trial because he considered the verdict contrary to evidence, and that the motion had been rejected," which, after much altercation, was agreed to. He lastly moved for an appeal, which too was granted. Acclamations resounded within the house and without, and in spite of cries of "Order! Order!" Patrick Henry was reluctantly lifted up and borne in triumph on the shoulders of his excited admirers. He was now the man of the people. In after-years, aged men who had been present at the trial of this cause reckoned it the highest enco- mium that they could bestow upon an orator to say of him: "He is almost equal to Patrick when he pleadt against the parsons."#
This speech of Henry's was looked upon by the clergy and their supporters as pleading for the assumption of a power to bind the king's hands, as asserting such a supremacy in provincial legisla-
* Letter of Rev. James Maury, in Memoirs of Huguenot Family, 421, 422.
7 In Virginia to this day the preterite of "plead" is pronounced "pled." Wirt actually prints the word "pled," and has raised a smile at his expense. It is proper, however, to observe that "plead" and "read" followed the same analogies even in England in the seventeenth century. Many of the quaint words used by the common people, obsolete among the well educated, and usually set down as illiterate mistakes, are really grounded in traditional authority. Thus the word "gardein," for guardian, is the old law term: and the verb "learn," still often used actively, was, according to Trench, originally employed indifferently in a transitive sense as well as intransitive. The common people are often right without being able to prove it.
į Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry; Hawks, 124; Old Churches, etc., i. 219.
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tures as was incompatible with the dignity of the Church of Eng- land, and as manifestly tending to draw the people of the colonies away from their allegiance to the king. Mr. Cootes, merchant on James River, on coming out of the court, said that he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket rather than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of treason, but little, if any, less criminal than that which had brought Simon Lord Lovat to the block. The clergy and their adherents deemed. Henry's speech as exceeding the most inflammatory and sedi- tious harangues of the Roman tribunes of the common people. The Rev. Mr. Boucher, rector of Hanover Parish, in the County of King George, accounted one of the best preachers of his time, said: "The assembly was found to have done and the clergy to have suffered wrong. The aggrieved may, and we hope often do, forgive, but it has been observed that aggressors rarely forgive. Ever since this controversy, your clergy have experienced every kind of discourtesy and discouragement."*
It was evident that the municipal affairs of Virginia could not be rightly managed, or safely interfered with, by a slow-moving government three thousand miles distant. The act of 1758 appears to have been grounded on humanity, the law of nature, and necessity.
Henry's speech in "the Parsons' Cause," and the verdict of the jury, may be said in a certain sense to have been the com- mencement of the Revolution in Virginia; and Hanover, where dissent had appeared, was the starting-point. Wirt's description of the scene has rendered it classic, and notwithstanding the faults of a style sometimes too florid and extravagant, there is a charm in the biography of Henry which stamps it as one of those works of genius which "men will not willingly let die."
* Anderson's Hist. Col. Church, iii. 158.
CHAPTER LXVI.
PATRICK HENRY.
PATRICK HENRY, the second of nine children, was born on the 29th day of May, 1736, at Studley, in Hanover County. The dwelling-house is no longer standing; antique hedges of box and an avenue of aged trees recall recollections of the past. Studley farm, devoid of any picturesque scenery, is surrounded by woods; so that Henry was actually,-
"The forest-born Demosthenes, Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas."*
His parents were in moderate but easy circumstances. The father, John Henry, was a native of Aberdeen, in Scotland; he was a cousin of David Henry, who was a brother-in-law of Ed- ward Cave, and co-editor with him of the Gentleman's Magazine, and his successor. Some say that John Henry married Jane, sister of Dr. William Robertson, the historian, and that in this way Patrick Henry and Lord Brougham came to be related. John Henry, who emigrated to Virginia some time before 1730, enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Governor Dinwiddie, who introduced him to the acquaintance of Colonel John Syme, of Hanover, in whose family he became domesticated, and with whose widow he intermarried. Her maiden name was Sarah Winston, of a good old family. Colonel Byrd describes her as "a portly, handsome dame," "of a lively, cheerful conversation, with much less reserve than most of her countrywomen. It be- comes her very well, and sets off her other agreeable qualities to advantage." "The courteous widow invited me to rest myself there that good day, and to go to church with her; but I excused myself by telling her she would certainly spoil my devotion.
* Lord Byron so calls him, in the Age of Bronze.
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Then she civilly entreated me to make her house my home when- ever I visited my plantations, which made me bow low, and thank her very kindly." She possessed a mild and benevolent disposi- tion, undeviating probity, correct understanding, and easy elocu- tion. Colonel Syme had represented the County of Hanover in the house of burgesses. He left a son who, according to Colonel Byrd, inherited all the strong features of his sire, not softened in the least by those of his mother .*
John Henry, father of Patrick Henry, Jr., was colonel of his regiment, county surveyor, and, for many years, presiding ma- gistrate of Hanover County. He was a loyal subject, and took pleasure in drinking the king's health at the head of his regi- ment. He enjoyed the advantage of a liberal education; his un- derstanding was plain but solid. He was a member of the established church, but was supposed to be more conversant with
* Several persons of the name of Winston came over from Yorkshire, Eng- land, and settled in Hanover. Isaac Winston, one of these, or a son of one of them, had children: 1. William, father of Judge Edmund Winston. 2. Sarah, mother of Patrick Henry, Jr., the orator. 3. Geddes. 4. Mary, who married John Coles. 5. A daughter who married - Cole. She was grandmother to Dorothea or Dolly Payne, who married James Madison, President of the United States. Of these five children, William, the eldest, called Langaloo William, married Alice Taylor, of Caroline, He was a great hunter; had a quarter in Bedford or Albemarle, where he spent much time in hunting deer. He was fond of the Indians, dressed in their costume, and was a favorite with them. He was also distinguished as an Indian-fighter. He is said to have been endowed with that rare kind of magnetic eloquence which rendered his nephew, Patrick Henry, so famous. Indeed it was the opinion of some that he alone excelled him in eloquence. During the French and Indian war, shortly after Braddock's defeat, when the militia were marched to the frontier, this William Winston was a lieu- tenant of a company, which, being poorly clothed, without tents, and exposed to the rigors of an inclement season, became very much dissatisfied, and were clamorous to return to their homes. At this juncture, Lieutenant Winston, mounting a stump, made to them an appeal so patriotic and overpowering that when he concluded, the general cry was, "Let us march on; lead us against the enemy !" This maternal uncle of Patrick Henry, Jr., being so gifted with na- tive eloquence, it may be inferred that he derived his genius from his mother. William Winston's children were: 1. Elizabeth, who married Rev. Peter Fontaine. 2. Fanny, who married Dr. Walker. 3. Edmund, the judge, who married, first, Sarah, daughter of Isaac Winston; second, the widow of Patrick Henry, the orator, (Dolly Dandridge that was.)
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Livy and Horace than with the Bible. He appears to have made a map of Virginia which was published in London in 1770 .*
When James Waddel first came to Virginia he visited the Rev. Samuel Davies in Hanover, near where Colonel John Henry lived, and being introduced to him, on a Sunday, he accepted an invitation to accompany him home. At parting, Mr. Davies re- marked to young Waddel, that he would not find the Sabbath observed in Virginia as in Pennsylvania; and he would have to bear with many things which he would wish to be otherwise. Soon after the settlement of Colonel John Henry in Virginia, Patrick, his brother, followed him, and after some interval be- came, by his brother's interest, (April, 1733,) rector of St. George's Parish, in the new County of Spotsylvania, where he remained only one year. He afterwards became rector of St. Paul's Church in Hanover. John Henry, in a few years after the birth of his son Patrick, removed from Studley to Mount Brilliant, now the Retreat, in the same county; and it was here that the future orator was principally educated. The father, a good classical scholar, had opened a grammar-school in his own house, and Patrick, after learning the first rudiments at an "old field school" in the neighborhood, at ten years of age com- menced his studies under his father, with whom he acquired an English education, and at the age of fifteen had advanced in Latin so far as to read Virgil and Livy; had learned to read the Greek characters, and attained some proficiency in the mathema- tics. At this age his scholastic education appears to have ended, and, as he mentioned to John Adams in 1774, he never read a Latin book after that. His attainments, however, evince that he could not have been so deficient in application to study as has been commonly supposed. With a taste so prevalent, and for which his kinsmen, the Winstons, were peculiarly distinguished, he was fond of hunting and angling. He would, it is said, recline under the shade of a tree overhanging the sequestered stream, watching in indolent repose the motionless cork of his fishing-
* A copy of this rare map is in possession of Joseph Horner, Esq., of War- renton, Virginia. Appended to it is an epitome of the state and condition of Virginia. The marginal illustration is profuse, and, like the map, well executed.
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line. He loved solitude, and in hunting chose not to accompany the noisy set that drove the deer, but preferred to occupy the silent "stand," where for hours he might muse alone and indulge "the pleasing solitariness of thought." The glowing fancy of Wirt has, perhaps, thrown over these particulars some prismatic coloring. Young Henry, probably, after all, fished and hunted pretty much like other lads in his neighborhood. It would, per- haps, not be easy to prove that he was fonder of fishing and hunting than George Mason, George Washington, and many other of his cotemporaries. From his eleventh to his twenty- second year he lived in the neighborhood where Davies preached, and occasionally accompanied his mother to hear him. His elo- quence made a deep impression on young Henry, and he always spoke of Davies and Waddel as the greatest orators that he had ever heard. Whether he ever heard Whitefield does not appear.
Isaac Winston was one of the persons informed against in 1748 for allowing the Rev. John Roan to preach in his house. Two of the sisters of Patrick Henry-Lucy, who married Valen- tine Wood, and Jane, who married Colonel Samuel Meredith- were members of Davies' congregations.
At the age of fifteen Patrick Henry was placed, about the year 1751, in a store, to learn the mercantile business, and after a year so passed the father set up William, an elder brother, and Patrick together in trade. There is reason to believe that his alleged aversion to books and his indolence, have been exaggerated by Wirt's artistic romancing. There is no royal road to learn- ing; men do not acquire knowledge by intuition. Aversion to study is by no means unusual among the young; nor is it proba- ble that Patrick Henry was much more averse to it than the generality of youth; indeed, his domestic educational advantages were uncommonly good, and the early development of his mind proves that he did not neglect them. The mercantile adventure, after the experiment of a year, proving a failure, William, who, it would appear, had less energy than Patrick, retired from the concern, and the management was devolved upon the younger brother. Patrick, disgusted with an unpromising business, lis- tened impatiently to the hunter's horn, and the cry of hounds echoing in the neighboring woods. Debarred from these conge-
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nial sports, he sought a resource in music, and learned to play not unskilfully on the flute and the violin, the latter being the favorite instrument in Virginia. He found another source of entertainment in the conversation of the country people who met at his store, particularly on Saturday; and was fond of starting debates among them, and observed the workings of their minds; and by stories, real or fictitious, studied how to move the passions at his will. Many country storekeepers have done the same thing, but they were not Patrick Henrys. That he employed part of his leisure in storing his mind with information from books, cannot be doubted. Behind the counter he could con the news furnished by the Virginia Gazette, and he probably dipped sometimes into the Gentleman's Magazine. At the end of two or three years, a too generous indulgence to his customers, and negligence in business, together perhaps with the insuperable difficulties of the enterprise itself, in a period of war, disaster, and public distress, forced him to abandon his store almost in a state of insolvency. William Henry, the older brother, was then wild and dissipated; but became in after-life a member of the assembly from the County of Fluvanna, enjoyed the title of colonel, and had a competent estate. In the mean time Patrick had married the daughter of a poor but honest farmer of the neighborhood, named Shelton; and now by the joint assistance of his father and his father-in-law, furnished with a small farm and one or two slaves, he undertook to support himself by agriculture. Yet, although he tilled the ground with his own hands, whether owing to his negligent, unsystematic habits, much insisted on by Wirt and others, or to the sterility of the soil, or to both, or to nei- ther, after an experiment of two years he failed in this enter- prise, as utterly as in the former. It was a period of unexam- pled scarcity and distress in Virginia; and young Henry was suffering a reverse of fortune which befell many others at the same time; and it would be, perhaps, unjust to attribute his failure exclusively or even mainly to his neglect or incompetency. However that may be, selling his scanty property at a sacrifice for cash, for lack of more profitable occupation he returned to merchandise. Still displaying indifference to the business of his store, he resumed his violin, his flute, his books, and his curious
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inspection of human nature; and occasionally shut up his store to indulge his favorite sports. He studied geography, and be- came a proficient in it; he examined the charters and perused the history of the colony, and pored over the translated annals of Greece and Rome. Livy became his favorite, and in his early life he read it at least once in every year. Such a taste would hardly have developed itself in one who had wasted his school- boy days in the torpor of indolence. It is true that Mr. Jeffer- son said of him in after years, "He was the hardest man to get to read a book that he ever knew." Henry himself perhaps somewhat affected a distaste for book-learning, in compliance with the vulgar prejudice; but he probably read much more than he got credit for. He did not, indeed, read a large number of books, as very few in Virginia did then; but he appears to have read solid books, and to have read them thoroughly. He was fond of British history. Having himself a native touch of Cer- vantic humor, he was not unacquainted with the inimitable ro- mance of Don Quixote. But he did not read books to talk about them. Soame Jenyns was a favorite. He often read Puffendorf, and Butler's Analogy was his standard volume through life.
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