SPOTSWOOD
Alexander Spotswood arrived in Virginia June 20, 1710, aboard the
warship _Deptford_, and spent the night at Green Spring, with his future
enemy, Philip Ludwell. Two days later he met with the Council around the
oval table in the beautiful Council Chamber in the new Capitol, and laid
his commission before them.
The new Lieutenant Governor was descended from a family of Scottish
Anglicans. His great-grandfather had seconded Archbishop Laud's attempt
to introduce the Prayer Book in Scotland; his grandfather had been put
to death by the Presbyterians. Perhaps it was this tragedy which induced
his father to desert his native land and take service in the English
army. It was while he was with his regiment in Tangier that Alexander
Spotswood was born.
The son chose to follow in the father's footsteps, and in 1693 we find
him serving in the Earl of Bath's regiment in Flanders. He fought
gallantly, was wounded at Blenheim, and was captured at Oudenarde. It is
possible that he served under the Earl of Orkney, also, and that was the
reason he named him as his deputy in Virginia. "I must ever own
gratefully that to your Lordship's good will I owe my station here," he
wrote Orkney in 1718.
Spotswood was one of the ablest Governors sent to America to represent
the British Crown. He did much to open the West to Virginia, encouraged
settlement in the Piedmont, and erected forts in the passes of the Blue
Ridge. He wiped out a nest of pirates under the notorious Blackbeard and
strung several of them up at Williamsburg. A man of artistic interests,
he was responsible for the beautiful Palace gardens, with their wealth
of boxwood, walks, walls, lake, ornate gates, flower beds; and designed
charming Bruton Parish Church.
In 1716 he led a party of gentlemen, accompanied by rangers, servants,
and Indians, on an exploring expedition to the West. As they rode
through the wilderness of the Piedmont, they shot deer and bears, camped
in the open, roasted venison on wooden forks. On reaching the Blue
Ridge they toiled to the summit, and there, looking out over the Valley
of Virginia, drank the health of King George I and the royal family.
After descending into the Valley and crossing the Shenandoah River, they
turned their horses' heads homeward. Back in Williamsburg, the Governor
presented each of his companions with a golden horseshoe, inscribed with
_sic juvat transcendere montes_.
Although Spotswood was accused of being haughty and implacable, he
lacked the fiery temper of Nicholson or the revengeful fury of Sir
William Berkeley. In his conflicts with the Council his astute mind and
his knowledge of English and Virginia constitutional law made it easy
for him to refute their arguments. Though he defended the powers of the
Crown, he was honestly concerned for the welfare of the colony. But he
hated democracy, and he had no patience with what he termed the follies
of the ignorant multitude. Despite his assaults on the Virginia
aristocracy, his ambition was to become one of them, and he used his
office to build up one of the greatest estates in the colony.
The instructions given Spotswood by the Lords of Trade were on the whole
wise and liberal. The people of Virginia were to have the full benefit
of the _habeas corpus_; fees and salaries must be moderate; no one must
be deprived of life, member, or property without due process of law;
martial law was forbidden; the people were to be supplied with arms. Yet
several clauses were loaded with trouble for the Lieutenant
Governor--one for appointing courts to try criminals; another for
preventing frauds in the accounts of governmental receipts and payments;
another for collecting arrears of quit rents; one to prevent the holding
of large tracts of unoccupied land.
When this last instruction was read to the Council, they must have
shifted uneasily in their seats, for most of them held land which they
did not cultivate. Fourteen years earlier Edward Randolph had reported
this to the Lords of Trade. The reason the colony was so thinly settled,
he thought, was that poor men would not go there "because members of the
Council and others who made an interest in the government, have from
time to time procured grants of very large tracts of land." Thus
newcomers and indentured workers on becoming free were forced to be
tenants or go to the utmost bounds of the colony. The remedy, he
suggested, was to force payment of arrears of quit rents and prohibit
for the future grants of more than 500 acres.[1]
Both Nott and Hunter had been instructed to cancel patents for land of
any who neglected to cultivate even a small part of their holdings. So
now Spotswood, in the face of bitter opposition, restricted all grants
to 400 acres unless the patentee showed that he was able to meet this
requirement. In 1710 he tried to satisfy the Lords of Trade by pushing
through a law stating what should be considered satisfactory seating,
and in 1713 another making the regulations still more specific.[2]
The chief effect of these acts was to arouse the resentment of the
Council. They assented to them in their capacity as the Upper House of
the Assembly because they dared not flaunt openly the commands of the
British government. But they found means to make them inoperative. The
rumor was spread throughout the colony that the attorney general in
England had ruled that no lands patented prior to the passage of these
acts was liable to forfeiture. To ease men's fears, several large
landholders purposely refused to pay quit rents. Even John Grymes, the
deputy auditor into whose hands the quit rents were paid, himself
remained in arrears "to show no danger in that law."[3] Spotswood
admitted that the law was a failure when he wrote in 1718: "No man in
Virginia has yet had land granted away for non-payment of quit rents."
When Spotswood came to Virginia there were many complaints of hard
times. The war in Europe had proved disastrous to the tobacco trade, the
flow of hogsheads to the continent of Europe had been reduced to a
trickle, tobacco piled up in the British warehouses, the merchants left
a part of each crop on the planters' hands, and the price dropped lower
and lower. Many of the poorer farmers were in rags, and some began to
raise sheep and to spin and weave. The salaried class, especially the
clergy, were in dire straits also, since they were paid in tobacco,
often of the lowest grade.
The fertile brain of Spotswood now thought out a scheme intended to
raise the price of tobacco, give the colony a convenient and stable
currency, make the collecting of quit rents easier, and prevent frauds
in shipping out tobacco. So he got one of his friends in the Assembly to
introduce a bill to require inspection of all tobacco at government
warehouses, and the issuing of tobacco notes which were to be legal
tender. This plan had much to recommend it, and a similar one was put
into successful operation later during the administration of Governor
Gooch.
Despite violent opposition in certain quarters, the tobacco bill passed
both Houses of Assembly and was signed by the Governor. So now there
were sounds of hammering and sawing as warehouses arose on the great
rivers. Soon the tobacco vessels were tying up at the adjacent wharves,
and the planters were rolling their hogsheads for the inspection. After
the agent had examined the leaf, he either rejected it as "trash" and
unfit for exportation, or stamped on the hogshead the weight and variety
of the tobacco, and gave the owner his certificate.
At first everything seemed to be going smoothly. The quit rents were
collected in tobacco notes, the price of the leaf rose in the English
market. The clergy wrote Spotswood thanking him for the increased value
of their salaries. "Their livings, which by the badness of the pay were
sunk to little or nothing, begin now to be much more valuable by your
wise and just contrivance to keep up the credit of the public
payments."[4]
None the less, the law was unpopular. The debtor objected to paying in
appreciated currency. It was a heavy expense for the planter to roll his
hogsheads over the bad roads to the warehouses and then pay for
inspection and storage. He was resentful if his tobacco was judged to be
unfit for export. At the courthouses local politicians began to denounce
the act to willing listeners. "He is the patriot who will not yield to
whatever the government proposes," complained Spotswood. "Him they call
a poor man's friend who always carries still-yards to weigh to the needy
planter's advantage, and who never judges his tobacco to be trash."[5]
Spotswood said that the tobacco act was looked upon to be the most
extraordinary one that ever passed a Virginia Assembly. When he first
outlined his plans for it his friends assured him it would be impossible
to persuade the Assembly to pass it. Yet it was adopted unanimously by
the Council, and passed in the House "with some address and great
struggle."
What the Governor meant by "address" is revealed by an examination of
the list of fat jobs that he handed out to individual Burgesses. Of the
fifty-one members, seventeen were justices of the peace. Fearing perhaps
that this did not assure the passage of his bill, he was lavish in
promising tobacco agents' places, and no less than twenty-five Burgesses
cast their votes with this job in sight. Only nineteen members failed to
get one or the other of these posts, and some got both.[6] "I have, in a
great measure, I think, cleared the way for a Governor towards carrying
any reasonable point in the House of Burgesses," Spotswood boasted, "for
he will have in his disposal about forty agencies, which one with
another are likely to yield nigh 250 pounds per annum each."[7]
But Spotswood would not have been so pleased with himself if he had
realized the resentment which this open bribery of the people's
representatives caused throughout the colony. The Assembly "gave him all
things asked, and he them agent's places to pick our pockets," said one
disgruntled planter. But what the officeholder had to expect if he
opposed the measures urged by the Governor is shown by his treatment of
Nicholas Meriwether. When Meriwether not only spoke against the tobacco
bill in the Assembly, but by "many seditious speeches" denounced it to
the people of New Kent County, Spotswood promptly removed him from his
place as justice of the peace. This, he thought, would discourage others
from following his example.
Having corrupted the Burgesses and made most of them his henchmen,
Spotswood would have no doubt continued them indefinitely by successive
adjournments, had they not been automatically dissolved by the death of
Queen Anne. "By a good providence we were delivered from them, else they
would have continued as long as he," wrote Joshua Gee.[8] Just how
passively the people would have submitted to another long Assembly must
remain a matter of speculation, but their resentment against both
Spotswood and his puppets is shown by their selections for the House of
Burgesses in 1715. Of the twenty-five members who had accepted agents'
jobs, only one, William Armistead, of Elizabeth City, was returned. And
the voters of New Kent showed their anger at Spotswood's treatment of
Meriwether by returning him to the House. Altogether only sixteen
Burgesses of the old House had seats in the new, and of these eleven had
been neither agents nor justices.
Spotswood was deeply resentful. The new Burgesses, he thought, were a
set of ignorant demagogues, determined to oppose anything he suggested.
It was all the fault of the law which permitted any man to vote who
owned any real estate, even half an acre. Just before an election
reports were spread that the country was on the verge of ruin, and no
one was qualified to save it but "some of their own mobbish
politicians." It was no wonder that some of the Burgesses could not
write grammatical English, since the ignorant people insisted on
electing men of their own stamp.[9]
The new Assembly was as hostile to the Governor as their predecessors
had been subservient. Everything he proposed they objected to, in some
cases for no other reason than to thwart him. They were egged on by
Gawin Corbin, who had been ousted from his job as naval officer; George
Marable, whom Spotswood had removed from the James City County court;
and Edwin Conway, of Lancaster County. But the whole atmosphere of the
House was one of hostility.
No sooner had the House been organized than grievances from various
counties poured in, most of them complaining against the tobacco law.
The people of Surry prayed that the law be repealed, the people of
Henrico wanted it repealed, the people of Essex wanted it repealed, the
people of Warwick complained of the hardships of the law. It seemed that
no more than two counties in all Virginia were satisfied.[10] Spotswood
claimed that these grievances did not represent the views of a majority
of the people. Many of them were drawn up by members of the House, some
were signed at election fields, horse races, and drunken meetings. "Nor
shall a seditious paper, signed by five obscure fellows who must have a
scribe to write all their names, ever pass with me for a county
grievance."[11]
When Richard Littlepage and Thomas Butts, two of the justices of New
Kent, refused to certify the grievances of that county, they were
arrested under the Speaker's warrant. Though the House voted them guilty
of high misdemeanor and contempt, they refused to appear, claiming that
the Burgesses had no legal authority over them. Thereupon the House
appealed to the Governor to arrest them. "The freedom and privileges of
this House are in danger of being utterly subverted," they said, "when
justices ... assume a jurisdiction and by their judgment debar the
people and their rightful representatives of the rightful ways ... for
redressing their grievances ... we believe that such matters do concern
the Burgesses in Assembly."[12] But Spotswood rebuffed them. They were
exceeding their authority, he told them, when they persecuted justices
and tried to punish them for their proceedings on the bench.
In his anger at not being able to control the Burgesses, Spotswood tried
to make the House less democratic by restricting the right to vote. But
not daring to reveal his intention, he approached the question in a
roundabout way. In September, 1715, he sent out a printed letter to all
of the county courts, questioning whether the justices should levy a tax
to pay the Burgesses' salaries when no law existed empowering them to do
so.[13] To the Lords of Trade he explained that if the justices declined
to pay the levy, "the Burgesses must have become suitors for an act
wherein might properly have been described the qualifications of the
electors and elected."[14] In other words, he was prepared to veto any
bill to legalize the collecting of salaries that did not disfranchise
the small landholder and restrict the right to sit in the House to the
well-to-do. So he kept mum on the fact that the salaries could be
assessed by the sheriffs on a writ, as was the practice in England.
But in this matter he was balked by the members of the Council. Carter,
Blair, Ludwell, and the others no doubt guessed what Spotswood was
aiming at, and they were unwilling to have him undermine the very
foundations of liberty in Virginia. So in the General Court they passed
"an unpreceded sentence" to levy the Burgesses' salary on the private
estates of the justices if they refused "to levy it on their
counties."[15]
The House asserted in no uncertain terms its right to judge of the
election and qualifications of its members. When they heard that William
Cole and Cole Digges, of Warwick County, had promised the voters that if
elected they would serve without salary, they refused to seat them. A
new election was held in which, presumably, no such promise was made,
and Cole and Digges were again elected, and this time permitted to take
their seats.[16] Spotswood taunted the House for not grasping at this
opportunity to reduce the heavy burden of the poll tax, and the Council
thought there was neither law nor practice to justify their action.[17]
Yet the Burgesses were right, not only in regarding Cole and Digges'
offer as bribery, but in claiming that it was contrary to a law passed
in October, 1705.[18]
The House now made a major assault upon the powers of the Governor. The
time had come, they thought, to put an end to the bribing of its members
with lucrative jobs, which had been done with such pernicious
consequences by Berkeley, Nicholson, and others. They passed an act
making it unlawful for any Burgess to be also a naval officer, tobacco
agent, clerk of a county court, or hold any other office of profit in
the government. They next tried to put an end to long Assemblies by
prohibiting their continuance for more than three years. A third measure
"for ascertaining secretaries', sheriffs', clerks' and constables' fees"
was designed to make the bait of office less attractive. These bills
aroused Spotswood's ire, for he saw immediately that they were designed
to strike the vital power of patronage from his hands and the hands of
his successors. So he vetoed all three.
The Governor's main purpose in calling the Assembly of 1715 was to have
them vote assistance to South Carolina in that colony's bloody struggle
with a powerful confederation of Indians. "We must appear to have
neither policy nor bowels of compassion, if this government can remain
unconcerned while savage pagans are overwhelming one of our adjacent
provinces, and inhumanly butchering and torturing our brethren," he told
the Burgesses in his opening address.[19] To them South Carolina seemed
a long way off. They had troubles enough at home without sending men and
money there, but, since the Governor was so set on it, they would yield
if he would consent to something they wanted.
They passed a bill to raise L450 for the purchase of supplies for South
Carolina, but tacked on a rider for the repeal of the hated tobacco act.
This, of course, Spotswood vetoed. To let it pass, he thought, would be
an act of high injustice, since upon the faith of the tobacco law at
least L7,000 had been spent in erecting warehouses and wharves, and in
the purchase of scales.[20] Neither he nor the Burgesses realized that
the law was under attack in England. The merchants were dissatisfied
with it, and Solicitor General William Thompson held that it was an act
in restraint of trade. In July, 1717, the act was vetoed by King George
I.[21]
Spotswood closed the session with an ill-natured and bitter denunciation
of the Burgesses. "The true interest of your country is not what you
have troubled your heads about," he said. "All your proceedings have
been calculated to answer the notions of the ignorant populace, and if
you can excuse yourselves to them, you matter not how you stand before
God, your Prince, and all judicious men or before any others to whom you
think you owe not your elections.... In fine, I cannot but attribute
those miscarriages to the people's mistaken choice of a set of
representatives whom Heaven has not generally endowed with the ordinary
qualifications requisite to legislators, for I observe that the grand
ruling party in your House has not furnished chairmen for two of your
standing committees who can spell English or write common sense. And to
keep such an Assembly on foot would be discrediting a country that has
many able and worthy gentlemen in it. And therefore I dissolve you."[22]
Having insulted the Burgesses and the people who had elected them,
Spotswood next incurred the enmity of a majority of the Council. The
trouble started when he laid before them the instruction requiring him
to see that fair books of accounts be kept of the Crown revenues.[23]
Since only the gross sums had been reported and itemized accounts kept
only on "loose papers," he demanded that the Auditor and the Receiver
General adopt more businesslike methods. To this Receiver General
William Byrd and Auditor Ludwell replied that they kept their accounts
as their predecessors had kept them and in accordance with instructions
from the Auditor General for all the colonies.
Soon after this Byrd left for England, taking with him, if we may
believe Spotswood, "all the books of the revenue." The Governor then
demanded of Ludwell whether or not he intended to comply with the
instruction to keep account books. Ludwell replied that he could not
change the old method without orders from the Auditor General. Since
this was nothing less than setting up the authority of this officer
against that of the King, the Governor thought the excuse a very poor
one. So, in January, 1716, he ousted both Ludwell and Byrd from
office.[24]
No doubt there had been confusion in the accounts, and no doubt
Spotswood's insistence on having account books would have done much to
bring them into order. It is possible, also, that there had been much
remissness in paying taxes and some fraud. The Governor wrote the Lords
of Trade: "Notwithstanding all the contrivances of the family to justify
the late officers of the revenue, here is now demonstration, not only of
darkness and confusion in the manner of collecting the quit rents, but
likewise of frauds and errors in accounting for the King's revenue."[25]
Realizing that he had brought down on himself the hostility of the
Councillors, Spotswood now tried to undermine their power by setting up
courts of oyer and terminer to which he appointed persons other than
themselves. The General Court, on which all members of the Council and
none else sat, had long been the court of last appeal in the colony. The
Councillors prized their seats in this court not less than their seats
in the Upper House of Assembly or around the Council table. Spotswood
claimed that their power over the lives and property of the people made
all regard them with awe, and "kept the country in subjection to their
party."[26] "They know that they have now lodged wholly in their hands
that power that Absalom wanted for effectually securing the people in
his interest, when he longed to be the judge of every man's cause."[27]
It was to be expected, then, that they should insist that none but
themselves should sit on the new court of oyer and terminer. In May,
1717, eight of them met in secret and drew up a letter to the Lords of
Trade defending their position. The charter of 1676 expressly stated
that the Governor and Council had authority to try "all treasons,
murders, felonies." The laws of Virginia made the Governor and Council
the supreme court. They could not believe that a Governor could "break
through laws and charters and alter all the ancient usage and tradition
of the government."[28]
Spotswood also appealed to the Lords of Trade. And he was overjoyed when
this body wrote him that they could not see what reason the Council had
to insist upon being the sole judges of the new court since his
commission empowered him to "appoint judges."[29] They were backed by
Attorney General Edward Northy in his opinion of December 24, 1717.
Northy advised, however, that Governors be instructed not to hold courts
of oyer and terminer except in cases of "extraordinary emergency."[30]
The test came in December, 1718, when the court of oyer and terminer was
about to begin its session. Several Councillors had taken their seats
when Spotswood announced that he was joining with them Mr. Cole Digges
and Mr. Peter Beverley. Since neither was a member of the Council,
Ludwell and four others got up and left. The five then drew up a
remonstrance, which Ludwell presented to Spotswood in court, with a
"long harangue." Noticing that people were gathering, he turned around,
and raising his voice, addressed them. "The Governor's power of naming
other judges than the Councillors in life and death cases is of
dangerous consequence to the lives and liberties of free subjects," he
said. "For that reason I refuse to sit in the court of oyer and terminer
with those gentlemen."[31]
In London, Byrd pleaded the cause of the Council before the Lords of
Trade. It would be fatal, he argued, to permit a Governor to try any
person by what judges he thought proper. "Whoever has had the fortune to
live in the plantations knows that Governors are not in the least exempt
from human frailties, such as passionate love of money, resentment
against such as presume to oppose their designs, particularly to their
creatures and favorites."[32] To this Spotswood retorted: "What else
could tempt the ruling party in the Council so strenuously to insist on
a right, never claimed before, of being judges of oyer and terminer, but
the desire of gaining to one family an entire power over the lives, as
they now have over the estates, of the people of Virginia?"[33]
To the Earl of Orkney, Spotswood wrote bitterly. If he lost his battle
with the Council, future Governors would think it folly to oppose them.
"I take the power, interest, and reputation of the King's Governor in
this dominion to be now reduced to a desperate gasp, and if the present
efforts of the country cannot add new vigor to the same, then the
haughtiness of a Carter, the hypocrisy of a Blair, the inveteracy of a
Ludwell, the brutishness of a Smith, the malice of a Byrd, the
conceitedness of a Grymes, and the scurrility of a Corbin, with about a
score of base disloyalists and ungrateful Creolians for their adherents,
must for the future rule the province."[34]
Since the Virginia treasury was now overflowing as a result of peace in
Europe and the shipping out of vast quantities of tobacco, Spotswood
managed to get along without an Assembly for three years. He would
probably have continued to do so indefinitely, had he not wanted an act
to reimburse the Indian Company which had been dissolved by order of the
King. The trade with the Indians had recently become a mere trickle,
because South Carolina had confiscated the goods of some Virginia
traders, and lawless savages had robbed others. So an act was passed in
1714 under which a monopoly of the trade with the southern tribes was
lodged in the Virginia Indian Company.
In return the company was required to contribute L100 towards building a
public magazine at Williamsburg, to garrison and keep in repair a fort
at Christanna on the frontier, and erect a schoolhouse there for Indian
children. Some of the leading men in the colony became stockholders,
among them William Cocke, Mann Page, William Cole, Nathaniel Harrison,
and Cole Digges. They had spent large sums "in purchasing servants,
taking up land and making settlements on the frontier, clearing roads,
and building warehouses," when word came that the act under which they
operated had been vetoed by the King.[35] Since they were now left
holding the bag, they asked that the Assembly reimburse them.
The election which followed was one of the bitterest in Virginia
history. Spotswood made full use of the patronage. "Commissions flew
about to every fellow that could make two or three votes," wrote Joshua
Gee. "He gave the power to his friends to make a discreet use of [them].
And indeed never fouler play was by men, than at most of our
elections."[36] Political pamphlets were distributed at every
courthouse. One of them began: "Having seen a rascally paper which
contained advice to freeholders in favor of a court party and tools of
arbitrary power to enslave and ruin a free born people ... to prevent
which I thought it my duty to open your eyes.... You are to know,
brother electors, that this Assembly is called for no other reason but
to pay to the Indian Company their charges on Fort Christanna, if they
can get a set of men fit for that purpose to gull into that unjust
payment."[37]
The outcome of the election was another defeat for the Governor. No less
than thirty-four members of the hostile House of Burgesses of 1715 were
returned. Of the new members Gawin Corbin, John Grymes, Archibald Blair,
and others were bitter enemies of Spotswood. During the session the
Governor kept his temper, since he had been ordered to do so by the
Lords of Trade, but the Burgesses, remembering his former insults, did
everything they could to annoy him. Though his opening address was
conciliatory, it was greeted with "violent censures." One wrathful
member "shot his bolt" and cried out: "It is all stuff and calculated
only for the latitude of Whitehall." When Spotswood laid before the
House several letters from New York in regard to renewing a treaty with
the Indians, "they made it their jest, and setting up a great laugh ...
cried out in their vulgar language, 'A bite!'"[38]
Needless to say, Spotswood got practically nothing out of this Assembly.
They refused to repay the Indian Company for what they had laid out for
the defense of the colony. They refused to pay for a proposed trip to
New York by Spotswood to renew the treaty with the Iroquois. To his
request for payment of his expenses in making fatiguing journeys in the
service of the country, they replied, "we hope they will give you the
satisfaction of reflecting that you have deserved the salary allowed by
his Majesty."[39]
But the Burgesses were not yet done with him. Late in the session, when
it seemed that nothing more of importance was to come before them, and
some had gone home and others were at the race track, the "party
managers" brought in an address to the King with a long string of
accusations against him. Spotswood intimates that Blair and Ludwell were
responsible for this maneuver in order to have the House second the
complaints of the Council. Blair made his influence felt through his
brother, Archibald Blair, and Ludwell through his son-in-law, John
Grymes. "As during the last two sessions the one has scarce let a day
pass without dropping in the Assembly some scurrilous reflection upon
me," Spotswood wrote, "so the other can't keep his temper when he
perceives any matter agreeable to me is likely to be carried."[40]
The accusations, which were embodied in instructions to William Byrd II
as agent for the House, were carried by a vote of twenty-two to
fourteen. But when they were considered one by one most of them were
struck out. In their final form the accusations boiled down to little
more than that the Governor had misconstrued the laws, that he had tried
to keep the justices from levying the salaries of the Burgesses, and
that he had by provoking speeches and messages abused the House.[41]
Spotswood, in two long papers, had no difficulty in answering the
charges, but they remained as convincing evidence that there existed
widespread dissatisfaction with his administration.
To counteract this impression he now followed the precedent set by
Nicholson of seeking flattering addresses. "To support his cause tools
were picked to make up grand juries to deliver fulsome addresses to the
Governor and abuse the Council and Assembly," Joshua Gee tells us. "The
same tools made addresses from the courts and even engaged every
barefooted fellow to sign addresses from the counties."[42] The address
from Middlesex spoke of Spotswood's wise and moderate government; that
of the "justices, clergy, and principal inhabitants" of New Kent
declared that his character had been traduced; that of King and Queen
County that the charges against him were false. All in all, the
addresses came from twenty-one of the twenty-five counties.[43]
This deluge of praise must have had its influence with the Lords of
Trade and the Earl of Orkney. But more convincing was the logic of
Spotswood's letters in which he answered the charges against him. He had
brought down on his head the hostility of the Councillors and Burgesses
through his efforts to carry out their Lordships' orders and uphold the
prerogative of the King, he said. To remove him for doing his duty would
render the situation hopeless for future Governors.
So, despite the arguments and pleading of William Byrd, both Orkney and
the Lords of Trade gave Spotswood their support. Orkney thought that no
essential complaint had been brought against him, and praised him for
putting the government of Virginia upon a much improved footing.[44] The
Board of Trade wrote Spotswood, in June, 1719: "You may depend upon all
the countenance and support which we can give you which we think you
have deserved."[45] It was rumored in Virginia, also, that the Board was
considering removing from the Council some of the Governor's bitterest
enemies.
Yet at the moment of triumph, Spotswood, instead of lauding it over the
Councillors and forcing them to submit, seemed anxious to compromise all
differences. The key to his moderation is found in his opening address
to the Burgesses in November, 1720: "To consider the stake I have among
you and the free choice I've made to fix it under this government, you
have not surely any grounds to suspect me of injurious designs against
the welfare of this colony."[46] Then he indulged in a metaphor to show
that the interests of Virginia and Great Britain did not conflict. "I
look upon Virginia as a rib taken from Britain's side, and believe that
while they both proceed as living under the marriage contract, this Eve
must thrive as long as her Adam flourishes."
In other words, Spotswood did not want to continue his differences with
the planter aristocracy because he planned to become one of them. In
1716 he had acquired 3,229 acres on the Rappahannock, known as the
Germanna Tract, and peopled it with German tenants. Three years later he
granted 3,065 acres, the so-called Wilderness Tract, to a certain
Richard Hickman, who transferred it to him. He next acquired the Fork
Tract, the Barrows Tract, the Mine Tract of 15,000 acres, the Lower
Massaponax Tract, and the Upper Massaponax Tract. In 1729, when the new
county of Spotsylvania was created, the Governor owned 25,000 acres
within its borders.[47] On his Mine Tract he had invested so heavily in
an iron foundry that Byrd called him the Tubal Cain of Virginia.
So, when Nathaniel Harrison approached him with proposals for a
reconciliation, Spotswood was quite willing to do his part. But there
were long negotiations before peace was concluded. On May 16, 1718, when
the Governor made new overtures, they were greeted by stiffness and
reserve. Yet the Councillors at his invitation, went from the Capitol to
the Palace, and there gathered around a bowl of arrack, drinking until
midnight. On the other hand, the hostile eight shunned Spotswood's
celebration of the King's birthday, "got together all the turbulent and
disaffected Burgesses, had an entertainment of their own in the
Burgesses House, and invited all the mob to a bonfire, where they were
plentifully supplied with liquors."[48]
In the end the Councillors came to terms. Smith and Berkeley were dead,
while Carter, Blair, Ludwell, Lewis, Byrd, and Harrison had seen the
handwriting on the wall. At a meeting in the Council Chamber of the
Capitol, in April 1720, with Spotswood at the head of the table, it was
agreed that all past controversies be forgotten, and that in the future
there should be no other contention than who should most promote the
King's service and the public benefit of the colony.[49]
For some months there was comparative quiet in Virginia. But in 1721
Spotswood became uneasy when James Blair decided to visit England. "He
is continually assuring me of all the service he can do me at home," the
Governor wrote to the Bishop of London, "but ... I shall be contented
with his not offering to do me any disservice."[50] These fears were
well-grounded, for there is reason to think that the Commissary was
instrumental in having him removed from office, just how is not known.
It is significant that when it was rumored that a new Governor was
coming over, "it was understood that Parson Blair was likely to act as
prime minister." Significant, also, is it that Hugh Drysdale, who
succeeded Spotswood early in 1722, came to Virginia on the same vessel
as Blair, and remained on the most intimate terms with him throughout
his short administration.[51]
Spotswood's last act as Lieutenant Governor reflects no credit upon his
character, and did disservice both to the Crown and colony. Upon hearing
that he was to be removed, he made out patents for huge tracts of land
in Spotsylvania County to certain persons who immediately conveyed them
to him.[52] He later adopted a system of tenantry, leasing land in small
parcels for two generations, a system which was copied in the huge
Virginia manors developed in western Virginia late in the century.
Although tenantry hastened settlement, it was inconsistent with the
democratic spirit of the frontier, and was largely abolished by the
Revolution.
Nathaniel Blakiston said of Spotswood: "That gentleman has real capacity
and talents to manage in a high sphere, but he adheres too much to his
own sentiments, and thinks himself ill-treated if everybody does not
think as he does."[53] This weakness accounts in part for his inability
to get along with either the Council or the Burgesses. Many of the
policies which he advocated were wise, but his attempts to force them
through were unwise. When the Council opposed him he tried to break
their power; when the Burgesses thwarted him, he tried to bribe them
into submission.
Spotswood's administration was marked by several years of great
prosperity, by the expansion of the frontier, by the attempts to develop
manufactures, by the regulation of the tobacco trade; but more important
was the demonstration that the people would no longer permit their
representatives in the Assembly to be made submissive to the Governor by
the use of the patronage. The punishment which they meted out to the
faithless in the Assembly of 1714 marked a notable advance along the
road to liberty, and was a warning to future Governors not to attempt to
rule by corruption.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] CO5-1315, Doc. 26.
[2] W. W. Hening, _Statutes at large_ 3: 525.
[3] CO5-1318.
[4] CO5-1406, Dec. 7, 1714.
[5] _Spotswood letters_ 2: p. 50.
[6] _Virginia Magazine_ 2: 2-15.
[7] _Spotswood letters_ 2: 49.
[8] CO5-1319.
[9] CO5-1318.
[10] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1712-1726: 132, 133.
[11] _Ibid._, 167.
[12] _Ibid._, 147, 148.
[13] CO5-1318.
[14] _Ibid._
[15] _Ibid._
[16] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, xxxiii.
[17] _Ibid._, 153, 165, 168.
[18] W. W. Hening, _Statutes at large_ 3: 243.
[19] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1712-1726: 122.
[20] _Ibid._, 169.
[21] CO5-1313.
[22] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1712-1726: 170.
[23] CO5-1416.
[24] _Executive journals of the Council_ 3: 437.
[25] CO5-1318, Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, March 20, 1718.
[26] _Ibid._
[27] _Ibid._, Spotswood to Orkney, July 1, 1718.
[28] Ludwell, Smith, Lewis, Bassett, Harrison, Berkeley, Carter, and
Blair.
[29] CO5-1364.
[30] CO5-1318.
[31] CO5-1318, Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, March 5, 1719.
[32] _Ibid._, Byrd Concerning Courts.
[33] _Ibid._, Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, Dec. 22, 1718.
[34] _Ibid._, Spotswood to Orkney, Dec. 22, 1718.
[35] CO5-1317, Memorial of the Virginia Indian Company.
[36] CO5-1319, Letter of Mr. Gee, Oct. 5, 1721.
[37] CO5-1318, "Advice to Freeholders."
[38] CO5-1318, Answer to Lieutenant Governor Spotswood.
[39] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1712-1726: 213.
[40] CO5-1318, Spotswood to Orkney, Dec. 22, 1718.
[41] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1712-1726: 230, 231.
[42] CO5-1319, Letter of Mr. Gee.
[43] CO5-1318.
[44] _Board of Trade journal_, 1715-1718: 425, 426.
[45] CO5-1365, Lords of Trade to Spotswood, June 26, 1719.
[46] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1712-1726: 250.
[47] Leonidas Dodson, _Alexander Spotswood_, Chap. XIII.
[48] _Spotswood letters_ 2: 284.
[49] _Executive Journals of the Council_ 3: 524.
[50] Rawlinson manuscript.
[51] CO5-1319.
[52] Ludwell papers 2 (40).
[53] _Ibid._