Could this poor village have survived had the courthouse not burned? It
was an unhappy contrast to the vision of a town governed by "benchers of
the guild hall," bustling with mercantile activity, swarming on busy
market days with ordinaries filled with people. This fantasy may have
pulsated briefly through the minds of a few. But, after the abrogation
of the Port Act in 1710, there was little left to justify the town's
existence other than the courthouse. So long as court kept, there was
need for ordinaries and ferries and for independent jacks-of-all-trades
like Andrews. But with neither courthouse nor port activity nor
manufacture, the town became a paradox in an economy and society of
planters.
Remote and inaccessible, uninhabited by individuals whose skills could
have given it vigor, Marlborough no longer had any reason for being. It
lingered on for a short time, but when John Mercer came to transform the
abandoned village into a flourishing plantation, "Most of the other
Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when
your Petitioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House
twenty-feet square was standing."[48]