Eighteenth Century Virginia
In the spring of 1689, Virginians flocked to Jamestown to hear William and
Mary proclaimed Lord and Lady of Virginia. The next year there entered, as
Lieutenant Governor, Francis Nicholson, an odd character in whom an
immediate violence of temper went with a statesmanlike conception of
things to be. Two years he governed here, then was transferred to
Maryland, and then in seven years came back to the James. He had not been
liked there, but while he was gone Virginia had endured in his stead Sir
Edmund Andros. That had been swapping the witch for the devil. Virginia in
1698 seems to have welcomed the returning Nicholson.
Jamestown had been hastily rebuilt, after Bacon's burning, and then
by accident burned again. The word malaria was not in use, but all knew
that there had always been sickness on that low spit running out from the
marshes. The place might well seem haunted, so many had suffered there and
died there. Poetical imagination might have evoked a piece of sad
pageantry -- starving times, massacres, quarrels, executions, cruel and
unusual punishments, gliding Indians. A practical question, however, faced
the inhabitants, and all were willing to make elsewhere a new capital
city.
Seven miles back from the James, about halfway over to the blue
York, stood that cluster of houses called Middle Plantation, where Bacon's
men had taken his Oath. There was planned and built Williamsburg, which
was to be for nearly a hundred years the capital of Virginia. It was named
for King William, and there was in the minds of some loyal colonists the
notion, eventually abandoned, of running the streets in the lines of a
huge W and M. The long main street was called Duke of Gloucester Street,
for the short-lived son of that Anne who was soon to become Queen. At one
end of this thoroughfare stood a fair brick capitol. At the other end
nearly a mile away rose the brick William and Mary College. Its story is
worth the telling.
The formal acquisition of knowledge had long been a problem in
Virginia. Adult colonists came with their education, much or little,
gained already in the mother country. In most cases, doubtless, it was
little, but in many cases it was much. Books were brought in with other
household furnishing. When there began to be native-born Virginians, these
children received from parents and kindred some manner of training.
Ministers were supposed to catechize and teach. Well-to-do and educated
parents brought over tutors. Promising sons were sent to England to school
and university. But the lack of means to knowledge for the mass of the
colony began to be painfully apparent.
In the time of Charles the First one Benjamin Symms had left his
means for the founding of a free school in Elizabeth County, and his
action had been solemnly approved by the Assembly. By degrees there
appeared other similar free schools, though they were never many nor
adequate. But the first Assembly after the Restoration had made provision
for a college. Land was to have been purchased and the building completed
as speedily as might be. The intent had been good, but nothing more had
been done.
There was in Virginia, sent as Commissioner of the Established
Church, a Scotch ecclesiastic, Dr. James Blair. In virtue of his office he
had a seat in, the Council, and his integrity and force soon made him a
leader in the colony. A college in Virginia became Blair's dream. He was
supported by Virginia planters with sons to educate -- daughters'
education being purely a domestic affair. Before long Blair had raised in
promised subscriptions what was for the time a large sum. With this for a
nucleus he sailed to England and there collected more. Tillotson,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, helped
him much. The King and Queen inclined a favorable ear, and, though he met
with opposition in certain quarters, Blair at last obtained his charter.
There was to be built in Virginia and to be sustained by taxation a great
school, "a seminary of ministers of the gospel where youths may be piously
educated in good letters and manners; a certain place of universal study,
or perpetual college of divinity, philosophy, languages and other good
arts and sciences." Blair sailed back to Virginia with the charter of the
college, some money, a plan for the main building drawn by Christopher
Wren, and for himself the office of President.
The Assembly, for the benefit of the college, taxed raw and tanned
hides, dressed buckskin, skins of doe and elk, muskrat and raccoon. The
construction of the new seat of learning was begun at Williamsburg. When
it was completed and opened to students, it was named William and Mary.
Its name and record shine fair in old Virginia. Colonial worthies in
goodly number were educated at William and Mary, as were later
revolutionary soldiers and statesmen, and men of name and fame in the
United States. Three American Presidents -- Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler
-- were trained there, as well as Marshall, the Chief Justice, four
signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many another man of mark.
The seventeenth century is about to pass. France and England are at
war. The colonial air vibrates with the struggle. There is to be a brief
lull after 1697, but the conflict will soon be resumed. The more northerly
colonies, the nearer to New France, feel the stronger pulsation, but
Virginia, too, is shaken. England and France alike play for the support of
the Native American. All the western side of America lies open to
incursion from that pressed-back Indian sea of unknown extent and volume.
Up and down, the people, who have had no part in making that European war,
are sensitive to the menace of its dangers. In Virginia they build
blockhouses and they keep rangers on guard far up the great rivers.
All the world is changing, and the changes are fraught with
significance for America. Feudalism has passed; scholasticism has gone;
politics, commerce, philosophy, religion, science, invention, music, art,
and literature are rapidly altering. In England William and Mary pass
away. Queen Anne begins her reign of twelve years. Then, in 1714, enters
the House of Hanover with George the First. It is the day of Newton and
Locke and Berkeley, of Hume, of Swift, Addison, Steele, Pope, Prior, and
Defoe. The great romantic sixteenth century, Elizabeth's spacious time, is
gone. The deep and narrow, the intense, religious, individualistic
seventeenth century is gone. The eighteenth century, immediate parent of
the nineteenth, grandparent of the twentieth, occupies the stage.
In the year 1704, just over a decade since Dr. Blair had obtained
the charter for his College, the erratic and able Governor of Virginia,
Francis Nicholson, was recalled. For all that he was a wild talker, he had
on the whole done well for Virginia. He was, as far as is known, the first
person actually to propose a federation or union of all those
English-speaking political divisions, royal provinces, dominions,
palatinates, or what not, that had been hewed away from the vast original
Virginia. He did what he could to forward the movement for education and
the fortunes of the William and Mary College. But he is quoted as having
on one occasion informed the body of the people that "the gentlemen
imposed upon them." Again, he is said to have remarked of the servant
population that they had all been kidnapped and had a lawful action
against their masters. "Sir," he stated to President Blair, who would have
given him advice from the Bishop of London, "Sir, I know how to govern
Virginia and Maryland better than all the bishops in England! If I had not
hampered them in Maryland and kept them under, I should never have been
able to govern them!" To which Blair had to say, "Sir, if I know anything
of Virginia, they are a good-natured, tractable people as any in the
world, and you may do anything with them by way of civility, but you will
never be able to manage them in that way you speak of, by hampering and
keeping them under!" (William and Mary College Quarterly, vol. I, p. 66.)
About this time arrived Claude de Richebourg with a number of
Huguenots who settled above the Falls. First and last, Virginia received
many of this good French strain. The Old Dominion had now a population of
over eighty thousand persons -- whites, Indians in no great number, and
negroes. The red men are mere scattered dwellers in the land east of the
mountains. There are Indian villages, but they are far apart. Save upon
the frontier fringe, the Indian attacks no more. But the African is here
to stay.
"The Negroes live in small Cottages called Quarters . . . under the
direction of an Overseer or Bailiff; who takes care that they tend such
Land as the Owner allots and orders, upon which they raise Hogs and Cattle
and plant Indian Corn, and Tobacco for the Use of their Master .... The
Negroes are very numerous, some Gentlemen having Hundreds of them of all
Sorts, to whom they bring great Profitt; for the Sake of which they are
obliged to keep them well, and not over-work, starve or famish them,
besides other Inducements to favour them; which is done in a great Degree,
to such especially that are laborious, careful and honest; tho' indeed
some Masters, careless of their own Interest or deputation, are too cruel
and negligent. The Negroes are not only encreased by fresh supplies from
Africa and the West India Islands, but also are very prolific among
themselves; and they that are born here talk good English and affect our
Language, Habits and Customs . . . . Their work or Chimerical (hard
Slavery) is not very laborious; their greatest Hardship consisting in that
they and their Posterity are not at their own Liberty or Disposal, but are
the Property of their Owners; and when they are free they know not how to
provide so well for themselves generally; neither did they live so
plentifully nor (many of them) so easily in their own Country where they
are made Slaves to one another, or taken Captive by their Ennemies." (Rev.
Hugh Jones,
The Present State of Virginia, pub. 1724)
The white Virginians lived both after the fashion of England and
after fashions made by their New World environment. They are said to have
been in general a handsome folk, tall, well-formed, and with a ready and
courteous manner. They were great lovers of riding, and of all country
life, and few folk in the world might overpass them in hospitality. They
were genial, they liked a good laugh, and they danced to good music. They
had by nature an excellent understanding. Yet, thinks at least the
Reverend Hugh Jones, they "are generally diverted by Business or
Inclination from profound Study, and prying into the Depth of Things . . .
.They are more inclinable to read Men by Business and Conversation, than
to dive into Books . . . they are apt to learn, yet they are fond of and
will follow their own Ways, Humours and Notions, being not easily brought
to new Projects and Schemes."
It was as Governor of these people that, in succession to Nicholson,
Edward Nott came to Virginia, the deputy of my Lord Orkney. Nott died soon
afterward, and in 1710 Orkney sent to Virginia in his stead Alexander
Spotswood. This man stands in Virginia history a manly, honorable, popular
figure. Of Scotch parentage, born in Morocco, soldier under Marlborough,
wounded at Blenheim, he was yet in his thirties when he sailed across the
Atlantic to the river James. Virginia liked him, and he liked Virginia. A
man of energy and vision, he first made himself at home with all, and then
after his own impulses and upon his own lines went about to develop and to
better the colony. He had his projects and his hobbies, mostly useful, and
many sounding with a strong modern tone. Now and again he quarreled with
the Assembly, and he made it many a cutting speech. But it, too, and all
Virginia and the world were growing modern. Issues were disengaging
themselves and were becoming distinct. In these early years of the
eighteenth century, Whig and Tory in England drew sharply over against
each other. In Virginia, too, as in Maryland, the Carolinas, and all the
rest of England-in-America, parties were emerging. The Virginian flair for
political life was thus early in evidence. To the careless eye the colony
might seem overwhelmingly for King and Church. "If New England be called a
Receptacle of Dissenters, and an Amsterdam of Religion, Pennsylvania the
Nursery of Quakers; Maryland the Retirement of Roman Catholicks, North
Carolina the Refuge of Runaways and South Carolina the Delight of
Buccaneers and Pyrates, Virginia may be justly esteemed the happy Retreat
of true Britons and true Churchmen for the most Part." This "for the most
part" paints the situation, for there existed an opposition, a minority,
which might grow to balance, and overbalance. In the meantime the House of
Burgesses at Williamsburg provided a School for Discussion.
At the time when Parson Jones with his shrewd eyes was observing
society in the Old Dominion, Williamsburg was still a small village, even
though it was the capital. Towns indeed, in any true sense, were nowhere
to be found in Virginia. Yet Williamsburg had a certain distinction.
Within it there arose, beneath and between old forest trees, the college,
an admirable church -- Bruton Church -- the capitol, the Governor's house
or "palace," and many very tolerable dwelling-houses of frame and brick.
There were also taverns, a marketplace, a bowling-green, an arsenal, and
presently a playhouse. The capitol at Williamsburg was a commodious one,
able to house most of the machinery of state. Here were the Council
Chamber, "where the Governor and Council sit in very great state, in
imitation of the King and Council, or the Lord Chancellor and House of
Lords," and the great room of the House of Burgesses, "not unlike the
House of Commons." Here, at the capitol, met the General Courts in April
and October, the Governor and Council acting as judges. There were also
Oyer and Terminer and Admiralty Courts. There were offices and committee
rooms, and on the cupola a great clock, and near the capitol was "a
strong, sweet Prison for Criminals; and on the other side of an open Court
another for Debtors . . . but such Prisoners are very rare, the Creditors
being generally very merciful . . . . At the Capitol, at publick Times,
may be seen a great Number of handsome, well-dressed, compleat Gentlemen.
And at the Governor's House upon Birth-Nights, and at Balls and
Assemblies, I have seen as fine an Appearance, as good Diversion, and as
splendid Entertainments, in Governor Spotswood's Time, as I have seen
anywhere else."
It is a far cry from the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the
Discovery, from those first booths at Jamestown, from the Starving Time,
from Christopher Newport and Edward-Maria Wingfield and Captain John Smith
to these days of Governor Spotswood. And yet, considering the changes
still to come, a century seems but a little time and the far cry not so
very far.
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