1710-1714.
Spotswood, Lieutenant-Governor--His Lineage and Early Career--
Dissolves the Assembly--Assists North Carolina--Sends Cary and
others Prisoners to England--Death of Queen Anne--Accession of
George the First--German Settlement--Virginia's Economy--Church
Establishment--Statistics.
IN the year 1710 Colonel Alexander Spotswood was sent over as
lieutenant-governor, under the Earl of Orkney. He was descended from the
ancient Scottish family of Spottiswoode. The surname is local, and was
assumed by the proprietors of the lands and Barony of Spottiswoode, in
the Parish of Gordon, and County of Berwick, as soon as surnames became
hereditary in Scotland. The immediate ancestor of the family was Robert
de Spotswood, born during the reign of King Alexander the Third, who
succeeded to the crown of Scotland in 1249. Colonel Alexander Spotswood
was born in 1676, the year of Bacon's Rebellion, at Tangier, then an
English colony, in Africa, his father, Robert Spotswood, being physician
to the governor, the Earl of Middleton, and the garrison there. The
grandfather of Alexander was Sir Robert Spotswood, Lord President of the
College of Justice, and Secretary of Scotland in the time of Charles the
First, and author of "The Practicks of the Laws of Scotland." He was the
second son of John Spotswood, or Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St.
Andrews, and author of "The History of the Church of Scotland." The
mother of Colonel Alexander Spotswood was a widow, Catharine Elliott;
his father died at Tangier in 1688, leaving this his only child.[378:A]
Colonel Alexander Spotswood was bred in the army from his childhood, and
uniting genius with energy, served with distinction under the Duke of
Marlborough.
He was dangerously wounded in the breast by the first fire which the
French made on the Confederates at the battle of Blenheim. He served
during the heat of that sanguinary war as deputy quartermaster-general.
In after-life, while governor of Virginia, he sometimes showed to his
guests a four-pound ball that struck his coat. Blenheim Castle is
represented in the background of a portrait of him, preserved at
Chelsea, in the County of King William.
The arrival of Governor Spotswood in Virginia was hailed with joy,
because he brought with him the right of Habeas Corpus--a right
guaranteed to every Englishman by Magna Charta, but hitherto denied to
Virginians. He entered upon the duties of his office in June, 1710. The
two houses of the assembly severally returned thanks for an act
affording them "relief from long imprisonments," and appropriated
upwards of two thousand pounds for completing the governor's palace. In
the following year Spotswood wrote back to England: "This government is
in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due obedience to the royal
authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England." The
assembly was continued by several prorogations to November, 1711. During
the summer of this year, upon an alarm of an intended French invasion of
Virginia, the governor exerted himself to put the colony in the best
posture of defence. Upon the convening of the assembly their jealousy of
prerogative power revived, and they refused to pay the expense of
collecting the militia, or to discharge the colonial debt, because, as
Spotswood informed the ministry, "they hoped by their frugality to
recommend themselves to the populace." The assembly would only consent
to levy twenty thousand pounds, by duties laid chiefly on British
manufactures; and notwithstanding the governor's message, they insisted
on giving discriminating privileges to Virginia owners of vessels in
preference to British subjects proper, saying that the same exemption
had always existed. The governor declined the proffered levy, and
finding that nothing further could be obtained, dissolved the assembly,
and in anticipation of an Indian war was obliged to solicit supplies
from England.
About this time, the feuds that raged in the adjoining province of
North Carolina, threatening to subvert all regular government there,
Hyde, the governor, called upon Spotswood for aid. He at first sent
Clayton, a man of singular prudence, to endeavor to reconcile the
hostile factions. But Cary, the ringleader of the insurgents, having
refused to make terms, Spotswood ordered a detachment of militia toward
the frontier of North Carolina, while he sent a body of marines, from
the coast-guard ships, to destroy Cary's naval force. In a dispatch,
Spotswood complained to Lord Dartmouth of the reluctance that he found
in the inhabitants of the counties bordering on North Carolina, to march
to the relief of Governor Hyde. No blood was shed upon the occasion, and
Cary, Porter, and other leaders in those disturbances retiring to
Virginia, were apprehended by Spotswood in July, 1711, and sent
prisoners to England, charged with treason. In the ensuing year Lord
Dartmouth addressed letters to the colonies, directing the governors to
send over no more prisoners for crimes or misdemeanors, without proof of
their guilt.
In the Tuscarora war, commenced by a massacre on the frontier of North
Carolina in September of this year, Spotswood again made an effort to
relieve that colony, and prevented the tributary Indians from joining
the enemy. He felt that little honor was to be derived from a contest
with those who fought like wild beasts, and he rather endeavored to work
upon their hopes and fears by treaty. To allay the clamors of the public
creditors the governor convened the assembly in 1712, and demonstrated
to them that during the last twenty-two years the permanent revenue had
been so deficient as to require seven thousand pounds from the monarch's
private purse to supply it. In the month of January, 1714, he at length
concluded a peace with these ferocious tribes, who had been drawn into
the contest, and, blending humanity with vigor, he taught them that
while he could chastise their insolence he commiserated their fate.
On the seventeenth day of November the governor, in his address to the
assembly, announced the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart
monarchs, and the succession of George the First, the first of the
Guelfs, but maternally a grandson of James the First.
The frontier of the colony of Virginia was now undisturbed by Indian
incursions, so that the expenditure was reduced to one-third of what had
been previously required. A settlement of German Protestants had
recently been effected under the governor's auspices, in a region
hitherto unpeopled, on the Rapidan.[381:A] The place settled by these
Germans was called Germanna, afterwards the residence of Spotswood.
These immigrants, being countrymen of the new sovereign, could claim an
additional title to the royal favor on that account. Spotswood was at
the time endeavoring to extend the blessings of a Christian education to
the children of the Indians, and although the beneficial result of this
scheme might to some appear too remote, he declared that for him it was
a sufficient encouragement to think that posterity might reap the
benefit of it. The Indian troubles, by which the frontier of Virginia
had of late years suffered so much, the governor attributed mainly to
the clandestine trade carried on with them by unprincipled men. The same
evil has continued down to the present day. In the before-mentioned
address to the assembly, Spotswood informed them that since their
preceding session he had received a supply of ammunition, arms, and
other necessaries of war, sent out by the late Queen Anne.
During eleven years, from 1707 to 1718, while other colonies were
burdened with taxation for extrinsic purposes, Virginia steadily adhered
to a system of rigid economy, and during that interval eighty-three
pounds of tobacco per poll was the sum-total levied by all acts of
assembly.[381:B] The Virginians now began to scrutinize, with a jealous
eye, the circumstances of the government, and the assembly "held itself
entitled to all the rights and privileges of an English parliament."
The act of 1642, reserving the right of presentation to the parish, the
license of the Bishop of London, and the recommendation of the governor,
availed but little against the popular will, and there were not more
than four inducted ministers in the colony. Republicanism was thus
finding its way even into the church, and vestries were growing
independent. The parish sometimes neglected to receive the minister;
sometimes received but did not present him, the custom being to employ a
minister by the year. In 1703 it was decided that the minister was an
incumbent for life, and could not be displaced by the parish, but the
vestries, by preventing his induction, excluded him from acquiring a
freehold in his living, and he might be removed at pleasure. The
ministers were not always men who could win the esteem of the people or
command their respect. The Virginia parishes were so extensive that
parishioners sometimes lived at the distance of fifty miles from the
parish church, and the assembly would not augment the taxes by narrowing
the bounds of the parishes, even to avoid the dangers of "paganism,
atheism, or sectaries." Schism was threatening "to creep into the
church, and to generate faction in the civil government."[382:A] "In
Virginia," says the Rev. Hugh Jones,[382:B] "there is no ecclesiastical
court, so that vice, profaneness, and immorality are not suppressed. The
people hate the very name of bishop's court." "All which things," he
adds, "make it absolutely necessary for a bishop to be settled there, to
pave the way for mitres in English America."
There is preserved the record of the trial of Grace Sherwood, in the
County of Princess Anne, for witchcraft. Being put in the water, with
her hands bound, she was found to swim. A jury of old women having
examined her, reported that "she was not like them." She was ordered by
the court to be secured "by irons, or otherwise," in jail for farther
trial. The picturesque inlet where she was put in the water is still
known as "Witch Duck." The custom of nailing horse-shoes to the doors to
keep out witches is not yet entirely obsolete.
The Virginians at this time were deterred from sending their children
across the Atlantic to be educated, through fear of the smallpox.[382:C]
From the statistics of the year 1715, it appears that Virginia was, in
population second only to Massachusetts,[383:A] which exceeded her in
total number by one thousand, and in the number of whites by twenty-two
thousand. All the colonies were at this time slave-holding; the seven
Northern ones comprising an aggregate of 12,150 slaves, and the four
Southern ones 46,700. The proportion of whites to negroes in Virginia
was upwards of four to one. Their condition was one of rather rigorous
servitude. The number of Africans imported into Virginia during the
reign of George the First was upwards of ten thousand. In addition to
the slaves, the Virginians had three kinds of white servants,--some
hired in the ordinary way; others, called kids, bound by indenture for
four or five years; the third class consisted of convicts. The two
colonies, Virginia and Maryland, supplied the mother country, in
exchange for her manufactures, with upwards of twenty-five millions of
pounds of tobacco, of which there were afterwards exported more than
seventeen millions, leaving for internal consumption more than eight
millions. Besides the revenue which Great Britain derived from this
source, in a commercial point of view, Virginia and Maryland were at
this period of more consequence to the fatherland than all the other
nine colonies combined. Virginia exchanged her corn, lumber, and salted
provisions, for the sugar, rum, and wine of the West Indies and the
Azores.
FOOTNOTES:
[378:A] Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; Burke's Landed Gentry of Great
Britain and Ireland, ii., Art. SPOTTISWOODE; Chalmers' Introduction, i.
394; Keith's Hist. of Va., 173.
[381:A] There are several rivers in Virginia called after Queen Anne:
the North Anna, South Anna, Rivanna, and Rapidan; and the word Fluvanna
appears to be derived from the same source.
[381:B] Va. Hist. Reg., iv. 11.
[382:A] Bancroft, iii. 27, 28, citing Spotswood MS., an account of
Virginia during his administration, composed by the governor; Hawks, p.
88.
[382:B] The Present State of Virginia.
[382:C] Bishop Meade's "Old Churches."
[383:A] The comparative population of the eleven Anglo-American colonies
in 1715 was as follows:--
White Men. Negroes. Total.
New Hampshire 9,500 150 9,650
Massachusetts 94,000 2,000 96,000
Rhode Island 8,500 500 9,000
Connecticut 46,000 1,500 47,500
New York 27,000 4,000 31,000
New Jersey 21,000 1,500 22,500
Pennsylvania 43,300 2,500 45,800
Maryland 40,700 9,500 50,200
Virginia 72,000 23,000 95,000
North Carolina 7,500 3,700 11,200
South Carolina 6,250 10,500 16,750
------- ------ -------
375,750 58,850 434,600
(_Chalmers' Amer. Colonies_, ii. 7.)