Read Ebook: Give Me Liberty: The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia by Wertenbaker Thomas Jefferson

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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. "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."

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.

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.

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. 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."

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." 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. 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." 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."

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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."

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. 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.

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."

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." "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."

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."

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." 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."

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."

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." 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?"

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."

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 ?100 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. 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 . And indeed never fouler play was by men, than at most of our elections." 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."

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!'"

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."

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."

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. 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." 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.

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. 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." 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." 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. 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."

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.

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." 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.

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. 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." 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:

CO5-1315, Doc. 26.

CO5-1318.

CO5-1406, Dec. 7, 1714.

CO5-1319.

CO5-1318.

CO5-1318.

CO5-1313.

CO5-1416.

CO5-1318, Spotswood to the Lords of Trade, March 20, 1718.

Ludwell, Smith, Lewis, Bassett, Harrison, Berkeley, Carter, and Blair.

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