Nevertheless, the town idea was hard to kill. In 1705 Stafford's port
town, along with those in the other counties, was given a new lease on
life when still another Act for Ports, introduced by Robert Beverley,
was passed. This Act repeated in substance the provisions of its
immediate forerunner, but provided in addition extravagant inducements
to settlement. Those who inhabited the towns were exempted from
three-quarters of the customs duties paid by others; they were freed of
poll taxes for 15 years; they were relieved from military mustering
outside the towns and from marching outside, excepting the "exigency" of
war (and then only for a distance of no more than 50 miles). Goods and
"dead provision" were not to be sold outside within a 5-mile radius, and
ordinaries (other than those within the towns) were not permitted closer
than 10 miles to the towns' boundaries, except at courthouses and ferry
landings. Each town was to be a free "burgh," and, when it had grown to
30 families "besides ordinary keepers," "eight principal inhabitants"
were to be chosen by vote of the "freeholders and inhabitants of the
town of twenty-one years of age and upwards, not being servants or
apprentices," to be called "benchers of the guild-hall." These eight
"benchers" would govern the town for life or until removal, selecting a
"director" from among themselves. When 60 families had settled,
"brethren assistants of the guild hall" were to be elected similarly to
serve as a common council. Each town was to have two market days a week
and an annual five-day fair. The towns listed under the Act were
virtually the same as before, but this time each was given an official
name, the hitherto anonymous town for Stafford being called Marlborough
in honor of the hero of the recent victory at Blenheim.[16]
The elaborate vision of the Act's sponsors never was realized in the
newly christened town, but there was in due course a slight resumption
of activity in it. George Mason and William Fitzhugh, Jr. (the son of
William Fitzhugh of Stafford County) were appointed feoffees in 1707,
and a new survey was made by Thomas Gregg. The following year seven more
lots were granted, and for an interval of two years Marlborough
functioned technically as an official port.[17]
Inevitably, perhaps, history repeated itself. In 1710 the Act for Ports,
like its predecessors, was rescinded. The reasons given in London were
brief and straightforward; the Act, it was explained, was "designed to
Encourage by great Priviledges the settling in Townships." These
settlements would encourage manufactures, which, in turn, would promote
"further Improvement of the said manufactures, And take them off from
the Planting of Tobacco, which would be of Very Ill consequence," thus
lessening the colony's dependence on the Kingdom, affecting the import
of tobacco, and prejudicing shipping.[18] Clearly, the Crown did not
want the towns to succeed, nor would it tolerate anything which might
stimulate colonial self-dependence. The Virginia colonists' dream of
corporate communities was not to be realized.
Most of the towns either died entirely or struggled on as crossroads
villages. A meager few have survived to the present, notably Norfolk,
Hampton, Yorktown, and Tappahannock. Marlborough lasted as a town until
about 1720, but in about 1718 the courthouse and several dwellings were
destroyed by fire and "A new Court House being built at another Place,
all or most of the Houses that had been built in the said Town, were
either burnt or suffered to go to ruin."[19]
The towns were artificial entities, created by acts of assembly, not by
economic or social necessity. In the few places where they filled a
need, notably in the populous areas of the lower James and York Rivers,
they flourished without regard to official status. In other places, by
contrast, no law or edict sufficed to make them live when conditions did
not warrant them. In sparsely settled Stafford especially there was
little to nurture a town. It was easier, and perhaps more exciting, to
grow tobacco and gamble on a successful crop, to go in debt when things
were bad or lend to the less fortunate when things were better. In the
latter case land became an acceptable medium for the payment of debts.
Land was wealth and power, its enlargement the means of greater
production of tobacco--tobacco again the great gamble by which one would
always hope to rise and not to fall. When one could own an empire, why
should one worry about a town?