1704-1710.
Edward Nott, Lieutenant-Governor--Earl of Orkney, Titular
Governor-in-chief--Nott's Administration--Robert Hunter
appointed Lieutenant-Governor--Captured 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.[375:A]
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 residing 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.
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 encroaching on the confines of prerogative, were
suspended by the governor, 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 appointing
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.[376:A] 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 Williamsburg. 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 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 appointed secretary of state for Ireland, to accompany him.[377:A]
Two months later he writes to him: "All my hopes now terminate in being
made Bishop of Virginia." In the year 1710 Hunter became Governor of New
York and the Jerseys, and his administration 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, abandoned 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.[377:B]
FOOTNOTES:
[375:A] In the following year appeared the first American newspaper,
"The Boston News-Letter."
[376:A] 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.
[377:A] Anderson's Hist. Col. Church, iii. 127.
[377:B] Ibid., iii. 183.