against the persecution. An old record tells how John Washington, Esquire,
of Westmoreland County, in Virginia, having made complaint against Edward
Prescott, merchant, "Accusin s{d} Prescott of ffelony under the
Governm{t} of this Province (_i. e._ Maryland) Alleaging how that hee, the
s{d} Prescott, hanged a Witch on his ship as hee was outward bound from
England hither the last yeare. Uppon w{ch} complaynt of the s{d}
Washington, the Gov{r} caused the s{d} Edward Prescott to bee arrested."
Prescott admitted that one Elizabeth Richardson was hanged on his ship,
outward bound from England, but claimed that John Greene, being the master
of the vessel, was responsible, and not he. "Whereupon (standing upon his
Justificaon) Proclamacaon was made by the Sheriffe in these very words. O
yes, &c. Edward Prescott Prisoner at the Bar uppon suspition of ffelony
stand uppon his acquittall. If any person can give evidence against him,
lett him come in, for the Prisoner otherwise will be acquitt. And noe one
appearing, the Prisoner is acquitted by the Board." Yet, though there is
not a single conviction of witchcraft to stain the legal records of
Maryland, her statute-book in 1639 declared sorcery, blasphemy and
idolatry punishable with death; accessories before the fact to be treated
as principals. The accusation of blasphemy or idolatry was always a
serious one, and the more so on account of its vagueness. Scant proof was
required, and the punishment was severe.
A Virginia article of war enacted that swearing or drunkenness among the
soldiery, at the third offense be punished by riding the wooden-horse for
an hour, with a musket tied to each foot, and by asking forgiveness at the
next meeting for prayer and preaching. This sentence requiring the
offender to ask forgiveness is very common in the pages of the statute
books as a sequel to the infliction of punishment. Punishment was still
disciplinary. Society was a pedagogue and the criminal a naughty
school-boy, who must go down on his knees in a proper state of humility
before he can be pardoned.
After Bacon's Rebellion, the rebels were sentenced to go through this form
of begging forgiveness with a halter round the neck, as a symbol of the
right of the Governor to hang them all if he saw fit. One William Potts,
being of a haughty spirit, or perhaps possessed of a grim sense of humor,
wore round his neck instead of the hempen halter, "a Manchester binding,"
otherwise a piece of tape. But the jest, if jest it were, was not
apparently appreciated by the authorities, for it appears that the Sheriff
was straightway deputed to see "that said Potts performe the Law." On the
whole, the "said Potts" must have thought himself fortunate, for trifling
with magistrates was sternly dealt with in his day, and _answering back_
by no means tolerated.
From the times of Dale onward, a great many statutes were enacted,
designed to silence women's tongues. An old Virginia law runs: "Whereas
oftentimes many brabling women often slander and scandalize their
neighbors, for which their poore husbands are often brought into
chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages," it is enacted
that all women found guilty of the above offence be sentenced to ducking.
The punishment was undoubtedly successful for the time--that is, while the
criminal was underwater; but it is hard to believe that bad tempers or
gossiping habits were permanently cured by the ducking-stool. This curious
implement of discipline may still be seen in the old prints. It consists
of a chair bound to the end of a long board, which, when released on the
land side, plunged the occupant of the chair under water as many times as
the magistrate or "her poore husband" required.
Near the court-house, in every town, stood a ducking-stool, a
whipping-post, a pillory, and a pair of stocks. In the pillory the
criminal stood on a raised platform, with his hands and head thrust
through a board on the level with his shoulders, in helpless ignominy. At
Queenstown a man found guilty of selling short measure was compelled to
stand thus for hours, with the word _cheat_ written on his back, while the
populace pelted him with stones and eggs. The stocks, while equally
ignominious, were somewhat more comfortable, since the malefactor was
seated on a bench with his hands and feet pinioned by the jointed planks
before him. These were mild forms of punishment. For serious offences, far
harsher methods were adopted. Ears were cropped from bleeding heads, hands
and feet were cut off, or the offender was sentenced to whipping at the
cart's tail, whereupon he was tied to the back of a cart, slowly driven
through the town, and thus flogged, as he went, by the common executioner.
A not unusual punishment was branding the cheek, forehead, or shoulder
with the first letter of the crime committed--as R., for running away; P.,
for perjury, or S. L., for Seditious Libel. Indeed, the man who escaped
with his life from the hands of colonial justice, might count himself
fortunate, though he were condemned to go through the remainder of his
existence minus a hand, a foot, or an ear; or to have the ignominy of his
sentence written on his face for all to read; for sterner punishment than
any of these was possible.
Death itself was meted out not infrequently, and the barbarities of
drawing and quartering in some instances, fortunately rare, added horror
to punishment, and the statistics we find quite calmly set down make the
blood run cold.
At a Court held for Goochland County the ninth day of October Anno
Domi MDCCXXXIII for laying the County levey.
Present:
John ffleming, Daniel Sfoner, Tarlton ffleming, George Payne, William
Cabbell, James Skelton, Gent. Justices.
Goochland County Dr. Tobacco.
To Thomas Walker & Joseph Dabbs sub-sherifs
for a mistake in the levey in 1732 10
To Do. for going to Williamsburg for a Comission
of Oyer & Terminer to try Champion,
Lucy, Valentine, Sampson, Harry &
George, Negros 90 miles going at 2lb and 90
miles returning at 2lb p. mile 360
To Do. for sumoning the Justices and attending
the Court for the tryal of the said Negros. 200
To Do. for Executing Champion & Valentine,
250lb each 500
To Do. for providing Tarr, burying the trunk,
cutting out the quarters a Pott, Carts &
horses carrying and setting up the heads &
quarters of the two Negros at the places mentioned
by order of Court 2000
And this was in our own country, only a century and a half ago!
A Maryland statute enumerates among capital offences: manslaughter,
malicious trespass, forgery, receiving stolen goods, and "stealth of one's
self"--which is the unlawful departure of a servant out of service or out
of the colony without the consent of his master or mistress--"offender to
suffer pains of death by hanging except the offender can read clerk-like,
and then he shall lose his hand, and be burned in the hand or forehead
with a hot iron, and forfeit his lands at the time of the offense
committed." This test of ability to read--"_legit aut non legit?_"--was
manifestly a clause inserted to favor the clergy, and so woven into the
tissue of mediæval law, that the Reformation had been powerless to unravel
it.
It is noticeable that the economical planters wisely preferred those forms
of punishment, which cost the State nothing but the services of the
constable and the executioner, to the confinement in prison, which
involved the support of the criminal at public expense. Prisons, of
course, existed almost from the beginning. In the Maryland archives of
1676, I read that "Cap{t} Quigly brought into this house the act for
Building the State House and prisson at S{t} Maries, and desires to know
what manner of Windowes the house shall have." It is at length decided
accordingly by the Assembly "that the windowes are to bee of Wood with
substanciall Iron barres and th{t} the wood of the frame of the Windowes
be layd in Oyle." For the safer guarding of the prisoners, it is also
directed that the windows, which were to be only twenty by thirty inches
in size, be protected by "Three Iron Barres upright, and two athwart."
The prisons found little occupation as compared with the pillory and the
whipping-post. The latter was the common corrector of drunkenness, which
was a too frequent offence in those old days in the Cavalier Colonies,
when the gentry sipped their madeira over the polished dining-table and
the poor man mixed his toddy in his noggin of pewter or wood. All men
drank, and most men drank too much. Wines played an important part in the
colonial imports. A Virginia statute of 1645 fixed the price of canary and
sherry at thirty pounds of tobacco, madeira and "Fyall" at twenty pounds,
while aqua-vitæ and brandy ran up to forty. A few years later Master
George Fletcher, his heirs and executors, were granted by statute, the
sole right to brew in wooden vessels for fourteen years. Maryland laid a
tax upon "Rhume, Perrie, Molasses, Sider, Quince Drink or Strong Beer
Imported, each 5 lbs tob. per gal."
The State, having made a handsome profit from the selling of all these
wines and "hot waters," straightway became very virtuous against the poor
wight who took too much. He was sentenced to the joys of the
whipping-post, or to be laid in the stocks, or to pay a fine; thus again
making liquor pay a revenue to the State. We have an amusing description
of what constitutes drunkenness, from a Colonial Dogberry of the
seventeenth century, who sapiently observes: "Now, for to know a drunken
man the better, the Scripture describes them to stagger and reel to and
fro; And so, where the same legs which carry a man into the house can not
bring him out again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness." The
difficulty in convicting these offenders with two pairs of legs, lay in
the general sentiment of the community, that after all there was no great
harm in taking a little too much of so good a thing as liquor.
The same public sentiment protected duelling, which was under the ban of
the statute-books; but these old laws show the futility of attempting to
legislate far in advance of public opinion. The law opposed it, but the
prevailing sentiment sustained it. The number of duels fought at the South
in colonial times has been grossly over-estimated, but they were fought;
and the general feeling in regard to the practice was accurately expressed
by Oglethorpe of Georgia, that typical Cavalier and true gentleman of the
old school, who, when asked if he approved of duelling, made answer, "Of
course a man must protect his honor." This curious notion that a man's
honor was a vague but very sensitive article, worn about the person, and
capable of being injured by any brawler who chanced to jostle against it
at an "ordinary," or any vagabond who wished to pick a quarrel with his
betters on the road, was a relic of feudal days, when hostile factions met
and fought at every corner; and the Colonial Cavalier held to it loyally,
never asking himself why or wherefore. This theory, which makes the
individual and not the State the avenger of insult and injury, found its
logical climax in the methods adopted by Colonel Charles Lynch, a Virginia
planter before the Revolution, and the author of a quick and simple form
of law called by his name, and very popular still, though, to do him
justice, it must be said that his followers have carried his principles
further than their author intended. He never took life, but aimed simply
to vindicate his own honor and that of his country by inflicting lashes on
those who differed with him politically, and thought he did God service
when he strung up suspected Tories, and forced them to shout "Liberty
forever!"
Thus our study of the lawmaking and law-breaking records has brought us
all the way from that House of Burgesses sitting at James Cittie in
1619--their hearts full of loyalty to his Majesty King James the First,
and full of gratitude for the slender liberties he has seen fit to loan
rather than grant them--to the brink of the Revolution, to parties of the
Crown and of the people, to the hall in the Virginia Capitol where the
Assembly is boiling with wrath and defiance against George the Third and
his ministers, who have dared to insult the rights and liberties of a free
people. It is a mighty transformation to have been brought about in a
century and a half. The Southern Colonies did not give up their allegiance
without a bitter struggle of reason against sentiment, a struggle which
New England never knew; but at length the loyalty which had bowed down to
fallen royalty at Breda and yielded Charles II. so early a recognition
that he quartered the arms of Virginia with those of England, France, and
Scotland, and spoke of it as the Old Dominion--at last, this generous,
faithful, confiding loyalty had been outraged past endurance. But still
the old traditions lingered. Gen. John Mason says: "So universal was the
idea that it was treason and death to speak ill of the king, that I even
now remember a scene in the garden at Springfield, when my father's family
were spending the day there on a certain Sunday, when I must have been
very small. Several of the children having collected in the garden, after
hearing in the house among our elders many complaints and distressing
forebodings as to this oppressive course towards our country, we were
talking the matter over in our own way, and I _cursed_ the King, but
immediately begged and obtained the promise of the others not to tell on
me."
Yet at this moment, when the young rebel was trembling in the garden for
the effects of his awful temerity, America was already on the eve of the
outbreak which severed her forever from the King and the Kingdom of Great
Britain. The allegiance of the loyal colonies could not have fallen so
suddenly, but for the long years of sapping and mining which had gone on
silently, yet surely, doing their work.
From the time of the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey and his return,
backed by the authority of Charles the First, there had been a war waged
by proxy between king and people. The governors represented tyranny, and
the Assembly opposed each encroachment. Eye to eye they stood, like
wrestlers, neither side yielding a point without a struggle, yet both
expressing equal loyalty and love for the King, and equal reverence for
his authority. Virginia long preserved "an after-dinner allegiance" to the
Crown even when she openly defied its policy. Virginians drank his
Majesty's health, wiped their lips, and imprecated his Majesty's
Navigation Acts. If their political creed bound them to the fiction that
the King could do no wrong, they cherished no such delusion concerning his
deputies.
When Sir William Berkeley, as despotic at heart as his Stuart master,
undertook to play the tyrant in Virginia, the country blazed out into a
rebellion, which died only with the death of Nathaniel Bacon, its leader.
Bacon was a rebel, but a rebel of the type of Washington and Patrick
Henry--one who believed in the motto which Jefferson engraved on his seal,
"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." What vigor and eloquence
are thrown into his proclamations! They belong to the brightest pages of
American literature. Read but the opening of
"NATHANIEL BACON ESQ'R, HIS MANIFESTO CONCERNING THE PRESENT TROUBLES
IN VIRGINIA.
"If vertue be a sin, if Piety be giult, all the Principles of morality
goodness and Justice be perverted, Wee must confesse That those who are
now called Rebells may be in danger of those high imputations, Those loud
and severall Bulls would affright Innocents and render the defence of o{r}
Brethren and the enquiry into o{r} sad and heavy oppressions, Treason. But
if there bee, as sure there is, a just God to appeal too, if Religion and
Justice be a sanctuary here, If to plead y{e} cause of the oppressed, If
sincerely to aime at his Mat{ies} Honour and the Publick good without any
reservation or by Interest, If to stand in the Gap after soe much blood of
o{r} dear Brethren bought and sold, If after the losse of a great part of
his Ma{ties} Colony deserted and dispeopled, freely with o{r} lives and
estates to indeavor to save the remaynders bee Treason, God Almighty Judge
and lett guilty dye. But since wee cannot in o{r} hearts find one single
spott of Rebellion or Treason or that wee have in any manner aimed at the
subverting y{e} setled Government or attempting of the person of any
either magistrate or private man not with standing the severall Reproaches
and Threats of some who for sinister ends were disaffected to us and
censured o{r} ino[cent] and honest designes, and since all people in all
places where wee have yet bin can attest o{r} civill, quiet, peaseable
behaviour farre different from that of Rebellion and tumultuous persons,
let Trueth be bold and all the world know the real Foundations of
pretended giult."
When this ardent and impetuous nature was vanquished as alone it could be
vanquished--by death--Berkeley might, by judicious magnanimity, have
healed the wounds of civil war; but, instead, he pursued the conquered
rebels with a malignant perseverance, which seemed to grow by what it fed
on. "Mr. Drummond," he said ironically to a follower of Bacon brought to
him as a prisoner, "you are very welcome! I am more glad to see you than
any man in Virginia. You shall be hanged in half an hour."
Twenty-three leaders of this rebellion were thus executed before Berkeley
stayed the bloody hand of his vengeance. "The old fool," quoth the King,
"hath taken more lives in that naked country, than I for my father's
murder!"
Bacon's death remains one of the mysteries of history. Some said he died
of miasma in the Virginia swamps; some hinted that his foes poisoned his
food, so sudden and mysterious was his ending; and lest Berkeley's revenge
should extend to insulting the very corpse of his foe, Bacon's followers
buried him with the greatest secrecy, and no man knoweth the resting place
of this first colonial champion of popular rights. But the spirit of
popular liberty did not die with Bacon, nor vice-royal tyranny with
Berkeley. Culpeper, Howard, and a score of others came over from England,
one after another, all differing on many points of provincial policy, but
united in the determination to fill their own pockets and the royal
exchequer by means of colonial revenue. "Lord Colepepper," commented
Beverley, "reduced the greatest perquisite of his place to a certainty,
which before was only gratuitous; that is, instead of the masters of ships
making presents of Liquors or provisions toward the Governor's
housekeeping, as they were wont to do, he demanded a certain amount of
money, remitting that custom." Such petty exactions as this were a
dangerous experiment with a vehement and high-spirited people, who were
willing to _give_ much, but to _yield_ nothing.
The justice and moderation of Spotswood's government held back the tide of
popular revolt for some time, and the French and Indian War roused a final
flicker of loyalty to the mother-country; but England's success in that
struggle cost her the American provinces. When Quebec surrendered to
Wolfe's troops, and the French force was withdrawn from Canada, the Comte
de Vergennes prophesied the coming revolution against England. "The
colonies," said he, "will no longer need her protection. She will call on
them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring
on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence."
In 1768 affairs looked stormy in Virginia, and Lord Botetourt was sent
over to prophesy smooth things and allay popular irritation, without
committing the government by definite promises. The man was well chosen
for the task. Junius described him as a cringing, bowing, fawning,
sword-bearing courtier. Horace Walpole said his graciousness was
enamelled on iron. He came, he saw, he conquered Virginia in a bloodless
victory, but Virginia did not stay conquered. When the colonists presented
an address which he was pleased to consider insubordinate, Botetourt
dissolved the Assembly; but they retired to a private house, elected
Peyton Randolph moderator, and prepared and signed a resolution to abstain
from all merchandise taxed by Parliament.
The beginning of the end was at hand. The farce of the repeal of the Stamp
Act and its reimposition went on. Botetourt went home, and Lord Dunmore,
the last of the hated race of governors, came over. His imbecile policy,
at once timid and tyrannous, hastened the march of events, but the end was
inevitable. "Colonies," said Turgot, "are like fruits, which cling to the
tree only till they ripen." So the event proved in America--Virginia and
Massachusetts, Maryland and Rhode Island, travelling by different roads,
reached the same point of determination at any cost to throw off the yoke
of British oppression. Henceforth they were to be no more provincials, but
patriots; and Cavalier and Puritan struck hands in the hearty good-will of
a common cause.
Sickness and Death
[Illustration: SICKNESS _and_ DEATH.]
Pioneer life is all very well when the adventurer is in high health and
spirits; but when sickness comes, he must be stout of heart indeed if he
does not sigh for the comforts of a civilized home. The poor settlers had
a sorry time of it in that first fatal summer on the banks of the James,
when they breathed in malaria from the marshes and drank the germs of
fever and "fluxes" in the muddy water. "If there were any conscience in
men," wrote gallant George Percy, "it would make their hearts bleed to
hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without relief,
every day and night for the space of six weeks; some departing out of the
world, many times three or four in a night, in the morning their bodies
trailed out of their cabins, like dogs, to be buried."
The adventurers profited by the lesson of these troublous times; for as
soon as the settlement was fairly re-established under Dale, they set to
work upon a hospital. On the river opposite Henrico, they put up "a
guest-house for ye sicke people, a high seat and wholesome aire," and
christened the place, _Mount Malado_. The chronicles are provokingly
silent as to any details of this first American sanitorium. They say
nothing of its arrangements, its comforts, or its conveniences. We do not
know even the names of those who shared its rude shelter, or of the
physicians who treated them. From time to time the mention of some doctor
is interwoven with the history of the colonists, but he passes as a pale
shadow, with none of the character and substance of the gallant captains,
the doughty burgesses, and the tipsy parsons. Doctor Bohun, who is
described as "brought up amongst the most learned Surgeons and Physitions
in Netherlands," came over and stayed with the settlers for a while, but
Lord La Warre carried him off as his medical adviser to the "Western
Iles," that his Lordship's gout might be "asswaged by the meanes of fresh
dyet, especially Oranges and Limons, an undoubted remedie for that
disease"; and a little later the good doctor perished in a sea-fight with
Spaniards on the ship _Margaret and John_. Dr. Simons' name is signed to
one of the histories, but he too fades away and leaves no trace, and a Dr.
Pot has survived only through honorable mention, as "our worthy
physition."
Either the country was too healthy, or the inhabitants too poor to
encourage immigration among doctors, for they were few and far between,
and we find men of other trades acting in the capacity of physician. There
was Captain Norton, for instance, "a valiant, industrious gentleman
adorned with many good qualities besides Physicke and Chirurgery, which
for the publicke good, he freely imparted to all _gratis_, but most
bountifully to y{e} poore."
It was common for barbers to combine the use of the knife with that of the
razor, and for the apothecary to prescribe, as well as mix, his own drugs.
Colonel Byrd writes that in Fredericksburg, "besides Col. Willis, who is
the top man of the place, there are only one merchant, a tailor, a smith,
an ordinary-keeper, and a lady who acts both as doctress and coffee-house
keeper." A list of prominent citizens in Baltimore in the eighteenth
century, includes a barber, two carpenters, a tailor, a parson, and an
inn-keeper, but no doctor; unless we reckon as such Dame Hughes and Dame
Littig, who are registered as midwives.