CHAPTER XLII.
1688-1696.
Accession of William and Mary—Proclaimed in Virginia—The House of Stuart—President Bacon—Colonel Francis Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor—The Rev. James Blair, Commissary—College of William and Mary chartered—Its Endowment, Objects, Professorships—Death of John Page—Nicholson succeeded by Andros—Post-office—Death of Queen Mary—William the Third—Board of Trade.
William, Prince of Orange, landed at Torbay in November, 1688, and he and Mary were proclaimed king and queen on the 13th day of February, 1689. The coronation took place on the eleventh day of April. They had been for several months seated on the throne before they were proclaimed in Virginia. The delay was owing to the reiterated pledges of fealty made by the council to James, and from an apprehension that he might be restored to the kingdom. Some of the Virginians insisted that, as there was no king in England, so there was also an interregnum in the government of the colony. At length, in compliance with the repeated commands of the privy council, William and Mary were proclaimed, at James City, in April, 1689, Lord and Lady of Virginia. This glorious event, with the circumstances connected with it, was duly announced to the lords commissioners of plantations, in a letter, dated on the twenty-ninth of that month, by Nicholas Spencer, secretary of state.
The accession of the Prince of Orange dispelled the clouds of discontent and alarm, and inspired the people of the colony with sincere joy. For about seventy years Virginia had been subject to the house of Stuart, and there was little in the retrospect to awaken regret at their downfall. They had cramped trade by monopolies and restrictions, lavished vast bodies of land on their profligate minions, and often entrusted the reigns of power to incompetent, corrupt, and tyrannical governors. The dynasty of the Stuarts fell buried in the ruins of misused power.
When the last of the Stuart governors, Lord Howard of Effingham, returned to England, he had left the administration in the hands of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., president of the council. Upon the accession of William and Mary, England being on the eve of a war with France, the president and council of Virginia were directed by the Duke of Shrewsbury to put the colony in a posture of defence.
Colonel Philip Ludwell, who had been sent out as an agent of the colony to prefer complaints against Lord Howard of Effingham before the privy council, now at length obtained a decision in some points rather favorable to the colony, but the question of prerogative was determined in favor of the crown, and it was declared that an act of 1680 was revived by the king's disallowing the act of repeal.
Bacon's administration was short; he had now obtained an advanced age. In his time the project of a college was renewed, but not carried into effect. President Bacon resided in York County. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Kingsmill, Esq., of James City County. Leaving no issue, by his will he bequeathed his estates to his niece, Abigail Burwell, and his "riding horse, Watt, to Lady Berkley," at that time wife of Colonel Philip Ludwell. President Bacon died on the 16th of March, 1692, in the seventy-third year of his age, and lies buries on King's Creek,[344:A] as does also Elizabeth, his wife, who died in the year 1691, aged sixty-seven.[344:B] The name of the wife of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., was likewise Elizabeth.
In the year 1690 Lord Effingham, reluctant to revisit a province where he was so unacceptable, being still absent from Virginia on the plea of ill health, Francis Nicholson, who had been driven from New York by a popular outbreak, came over as lieutenant-governor. He found the colony ready for revolt. The people were indignant at seeing Effingham still retained in the office of governor-in-chief, believing that Nicholson would become his tool. The revolution in England seemed as yet productive of no amendment in the colonial administration. Nicholson, however, now courted popularity; he instituted athletic games, and offered prizes to those who should excel in riding, running, shooting, wrestling, and fencing. The last alone could need any encouragement in such a country as Virginia. He proposed the establishment of a post-office, and recommended the erection of a college, but refused to call an assembly to further the scheme, being under obligations to Effingham to stave off assemblies as long as possible, for fear of complaints being renewed against his arbitrary administration.[345:A] Nevertheless, Nicholson and the council headed a private subscription, and twenty-five hundred pounds were raised, part of this sum being contributed by some London merchants. The new governor made a progress through the colony, mingling freely with the people, and he carried his indulgence to the common people so far as frequently to suffer them to enter the room where he was entertaining company at dinner, and diverted himself with their scrambling among one another and carrying off the viands from the table—like Sancho Panza's on the Island of Barataria. There is but one step from the courtier to the demagogue.
Virginia felt the embarrassments which war had brought upon England, and acts were passed for encouraging domestic manufactures, for which Nicholson found an apology in the scanty supplies imported. The assembly congratulated the Prince of Orange on his accession, and thanking him for his present of warlike stores, begged for further favors of the royal bounty.
When Colonel Nicholson entered on the duties of governor, the Rev. James Blair, a native of Scotland, newly appointed commissary of Virginia, assumed the supervision of the churches of the colony. He came over to this country in 1685, and settled in the County of Henrico, where he remained till 1694, when he removed to Jamestown. The functions of commissary, who was a deputy of the Bishop of London, had been previously discharged by the Rev. Mr. Temple, but he was not regularly commissioned.
At the instance of the Rev. Mr. Blair, in 1691 the assembly entered heartily into the scheme of a college, and in the same year he was dispatched with an address to their majesties, King William and Queen Mary, soliciting a charter.
The first assembly under the new dynasty met at James City, in April, 1691, being the third year of their reign. Acts were passed for putting the colony in a better state of defence, for reducing the poll tax, and laying a duty on liquors, and for appointing a treasurer. Colonel Edward Hill was appointed to that office. The same assembly met again by prorogation, in April of the ensuing year.
Commissary Blair was graciously received at court, and in February, 1692, their majesties granted the charter.[346:A] The college was named in honor of their majesties. The king gave about two thousand pounds toward the building, out of the quit-rents. Seymour, the English attorney-general, having received the royal commands to prepare the charter of the college, which was to be accompanied with a grant of money, remonstrated against this liberality, urging that the nation was engaged in an expensive war; that the money was wanted for better purposes, and that he did not see the slightest occasion for a college in Virginia. The Rev. Mr. Blair, in reply, represented to him that its intention was to educate and qualify young men to be ministers of the gospel; and begged Mr. Attorney would consider that the people of Virginia had souls to be saved as well as the people of England. "Souls!" exclaimed the imperious Seymour; "damn your souls!—make tobacco."[346:B]
The site selected for the college was in the Middle Plantation Old Fields, near the church. The college was endowed by the crown with twenty thousand acres of land in Pamunkey Neck, and on the south side of Blackwater Swamp; the patronage of the office of surveyor-general; together with the revenue arising from a duty of one penny a pound on all tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland to the other plantations, the nett proceeds being two hundred pounds. The college was also allowed to return a burgess to the assembly. The assembly afterwards added to the revenue a duty on skins and furs.[347:A] Dr. Blair was the first president of the college, being appointed under the charter to hold the office for life. The plan of the building was the composition of Sir Christopher Wren. The objects proposed by the establishment of the college were declared to be the furnishing of a seminary for the ministers of the gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian faith should be propagated among the Western Indians.[347:B] In addition to the five professorships of Greek and Latin, the mathematics, moral philosophy, and two of divinity provided for by the charter, a sixth, called the Brafferton, from an estate in England which secured the endowment, had been annexed by the celebrated Robert Boyle, for the instruction and conversion of the Indians.
The trustees met with many difficulties in their undertaking during the administration of Governor Andros, and were involved in a troublesome controversy concerning the lands appropriated to the institution, with Secretary Wormley, the most influential man in the colony, next to the governor.
In January, 1692, died John Page, of Rosewell, of the king's council in the colony, aged sixty—a learned and pious man; first of the name in Virginia, and father of the Honorable Colonel Matthew Page, who was also of the council. A religious work, entitled "A Deed of Gift for my Son," by this John Page, has been published.
During the same year Governor Nicholson was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros, whose high-handed course had rendered him so odious to the people of New England that they had lately imprisoned him. He was, nevertheless, kindly received by the Virginians, whose solicitations to King William for warlike stores he had promoted. He soon gave offence by ordering ships to cruise against vessels engaged in contraband trade. In the year 1693 an act was passed for the organizing of a post-office establishment in Virginia, to consist of a central office, and a sub-office in each county, fixing the rates of postage to be paid to Thomas Neale, Esq., who was authorized by an act of parliament to establish post-offices in the colonies. The postage on a letter consisting of one sheet, for a distance not exceeding eighty miles, was three pence. Four companies of rangers protected the frontiers, while English frigates guarded the coast; and the colony enjoyed a long repose.
The amiable and excellent Queen Mary died on the 28th day of December, 1694; and the king now assumed the title of William the Third. Since the dissolution of the Virginia Company, the superintendence of the colonies had been entrusted to a committee of the privy council; in 1696 the board of trade was established for that purpose.
FOOTNOTES:
[344:A] James City Records, cited in "Farmer's Register" for 1839, p. 407
[344:B] Dr. Williamson, of Williamsburg, obligingly sent me the inscription and the coat of arms, as copied by him from her tombstone, which was ploughed up on the banks of Queen's Creek.
[345:A] Beverley, B. i. 92.
[346:A] The following gentlemen, nominated by the assembly, were constituted a senate, or board of trustees: Francis Nicholson, lieutenant-governor of the colony; William Cole, Ralph Wormley, William Byrd, Esquires, of the council; John Leare, James Blair, John Farnifold, Stephen Fauce, and Samuel Gray, clerks (clergymen;) Thomas Milner, Christopher Robinson, Charles Scarburgh, John Smith, Benjamin Harrison, Miles Cary, Henry Hartwell, William Randolph, and Matthew Page, gentlemen and burgesses.
[346:B] Franklin's Correspondence.
[347:A] Hening, iii. 123, 241, 356: Catalogue of William and Mary College.
[347:B] Anderson's Hist. of Church of England in the Colonies, second ed., iii. 108.
