Laws, Punishments, and Politics
It is a far cry from Patrick Henry, pouring out defiance against the king, while his listeners as one man echoed his final words, “Liberty or death!” back to the night of the arrival of the English ships in Chesapeake Bay, when the box given under the royal seal was opened, and the names of the council who were to govern Virginia were found within. It would have seemed to the group of men standing about the sacred casket on that April night incredible that, within their province of Virginia in the next century, the authority of the king and the power of all England should be openly and successfully set at defiance. Yet so it came to pass, naturally, gradually and inevitably.
The first settlers in Virginia lived in a political condition which may be described as a communism, subject to a despotism. Their goods were held in a common stock, and they drew their rations from “a common kettel,” but all the time they felt the strong arm of royal authority stretched across the Atlantic, to rule their affairs without consent of the governed. Both communism and despotism worked badly for the settlers. The first promoted idleness, the second encouraged dissensions, discontent and tale-bearing, each party to a Colonial quarrel being eager to be the first to run home and lay his side of the story before the King. Sir Thomas Dale changed all this communistic living. “When our people were fed out of the common store,” writes one of the earliest settlers, “glad was he who could slip from his labor, or slumber over his taske he cared not how; nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true paines in a weeke, as now for themselves they will doe in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever the harvest prospered, the generall store must maintain them, so that wee reaped not so much corne from the labours of thirtie, as now three or foure doe provide for themselves.”
Dale allotted to every man three acres of ground, and compelled each to work both for himself and for the public store. His rule was, on the whole, beneficent though arbitrary; but the settlers constantly suffered from the lack of power to make laws, or arrange their simplest affairs without seeking permission from king and council.
Fortunately, after a few years a radical change was wrought; a change whose importance cannot be overestimated. In 1619 Sir George Yeardley came over as Governor of Virginia. He proclaimed that “those cruel laws by which the Ancient Planters had so long been governed” were now done away with, and henceforth they were to be ruled by English law, like all other English subjects. Nor was this all. Shortly after, followed one of those epoch-making declarations which posterity always wonders not to find printed in italics: “That the planters might have a hande in the governing of themselves, yt was grannted that a general assemblie shoulde be helde yearly once, whereat were to be present, the governor and counsell, with two burgesses from each plantation, freely to be elected by the inhabitants thereof, this assemblie to have power to make and ordaine whatsoever lawes and orders should by them be thought good and profitable for their subsistence.”
Thus the same year and almost the same month witnessed two events of deep significance to Virginia, the purchase of the first African slaves, and the establishment of the first free Assembly in America. So strangely are the threads of destiny blended! And thus, while the strife between king and people was just beginning to cast its shadow over England, there was quietly inaugurated here at James City a government essentially “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
The measures they adopted at this first free Assembly, the laws they made, the punishments they imposed, are of little importance. The fact of mighty moment is that they met, and though the scope of their power was limited, to be extended two years later, and though they were afterward to struggle on through varying fortunes to the heights of entire freedom, yet this Assembly of 1619 was forever to be memorable as the germ of representative government on this continent.
In the Quire of the old brick church, these Burgesses gathered, twenty-two of them, from James City, Charles City, Henrico, Kiccowtan (now Hampton), Martin-Brandon, Smythe’s Hundred, Martin’s Hundred, Argall’s Gift, Lawne’s Plantation, Ward’s Plantation, and Flowerda Hundred. First, led by Parson Bucke, they asked God’s guidance; and on the principle that heaven helps those who help themselves, they then set themselves to the task of framing laws to take the place of the “Iron Code” which Sir Thomas Dale had brought over from the Netherlands, and which strongly suggested the methods of the Inquisition.
Dale’s code declared absence from Sunday services a capital offense. One guilty of blasphemy a second time, was sentenced to have a bodkin thrust through his tongue. A Mr. Barnes, of Bermuda Hundred, having uttered a detracting speech against a worthy gentleman in Dale’s time, was condemned to have his tongue run through with an awl, to pass through a guard of forty men, and to be butted by every one of them, and at the head of the troop, knocked down, and footed out of the fort. A woman found guilty as a common scold, was sentenced to be ducked three times from a ship in the James River, and one mild statute declared that any person speaking disgraceful words of any person in the colony, should be tied, hand and foot together, upon the ground, every night for the space of one month. It must be said in excuse for the severities of Dale that he had a turbulent mob to discipline. He himself describes them as gathered in riotous or infected places, persons “so profane, of so riotous and treasonable intendments, that in a parcel of three hundred, not many gave testimony beside their name, that they were Christians.” Another point to be remembered in defence of this iron soldier, is that all punishments in those days were such as would seem to us cruel and unwarrantable in proportion to the offence. The gallows in London was never idle. Almost every crime was capital. I read in the story of the Virginia adventurers in the Somer Iles of a desperate fellow who, “being to be arraigned for stealing a Turky, rather than he would endure his triall, secretly conveighed himself to sea in a little boat, and never since was heard of.” I feel very confident that this poor “Turky”-stealer would never have tempted those stormy waters in a skiff, had he not known full well that a worse fate than drowning awaited him, if he stayed to stand his trial.
The laws introduced by the House of Burgesses were strict enough, and their punishments sufficiently severe. The statutes enacted against “idlenesse” were so salutary that they would soon have exterminated such a social pest as the modern tramp. The law went even further than forbidding idleness, and undertook to discipline those guilty of any neglect of duty. Thomas Garnett, who was accused by his master of wanton and profligate conduct, “and extreame neglect of his businesse” was condemned “to stand fower dayes with his eares nayled to the Pillory, and that he, every of those fower days, should be publiquely whipped.”
The humiliation of the criminal was the special end and aim of the punishment. Richard Buckland, for writing a slanderous song concerning Ann Smith, was ordered to stand at the church-door during service with a paper round his hat, inscribed “Inimicus Libellus,” and afterward to ask forgiveness of God, and also in particular of the defamed Ann Smith. Two convicted sinners were sentenced to stand in church with white sheets round their shoulders and white wands in their hands.
Throughout the century, the statute-books of Virginia and Maryland show a vindictiveness toward criminals which is out of accord with the degree of civilization existing in the colonies. The crime of hog-stealing is visited with special retributions. It is enacted by the Maryland Assembly that any person convicted as a hog-stealer “shall for the first offence stand in the pillory att the Provincial Court four Compleat Hours, & shall have his eares cropt, & pay treble damages; & for the second time, the offender shall be stigmatized in the forehead with the letter H, and pay treble damages; and for the third offence of Hogg stealing, he or they so offending shall be adjudged as fellons. And the Delinquent shall have noe Benefite of Clergy.” In another note in the Maryland archives I find: “Putt to the Vote. Whither a Law bee not necessary Prohibiting Negros or any other servants to keepe piggs, hoggs, or any other sort of Swyne uppon any pretence whatsoever.”
Hog-stealing seems to have ranked next to murder as an offence, and to have been punished almost as severely—perhaps on Shylock’s principle, that they took life who took the means of livelihood; and the hog in the early days was the chief wealth and maintenance of the settler.
Superstition, as well as cruelty, played its part in the old criminal processes. The blood-ordeal long survived, and the belief was general that a corpse would bleed beneath the murderer’s touch. On one occasion, when a serving-woman in Maryland had died under suspicious circumstances, her fellow-servants were summoned one by one to lay hands on the corpse; but as no blood appeared beneath their touch, the jury declared the woman’s death to be the act of God.
On the whole, the inhabitants of the Southern Colonies, excepting always the negroes, were singularly free from superstition. The witchcraft delusion, which played such havoc in New England, never obtained a foothold in the Cavalier Colonies. Grace Sherwood was, it is true, accused in Princess Anne County of being a witch, and sentenced to the test of sinking or floating when thrown into the water; but her case stands out quite alone in the annals of Virginia, whereas the same county records show several suits against accusers as defamers of character. Here we find “Jno Byrd and Anne his wife suing Jno Pites” in an action of Defamation; their petition sets forth “that the Defendt had falsely & Scandalously Defamed them, saying they had rid him along the sea-side & home to his own house, by which kind of Discourse they were Reported & rendered as if they were witches, or in league with the Devill, praying 100£ sterl. Damage with cost. The Deft. for answer acknowledgeth that to his thoughts, apprehension or best knowledge they did serve him soe.” The jury found for the defendant, but brought no action against the witches who did serve him so.
In lower Norfolk County the defamer did not escape so easily, for “Whereas Ann Godby, the Wife of Tho. Godby hath contrary to an ordr of ye Court bearing date in May 1655, concerning some slanders & scandalls cast upon women under ye notion of witches, hath contemptuously acted in abusing & Taking ye good name & Credit of nico Robinson’s wife, terming her a witche, as by severall deposicons appeares. It is therefore ordd that ye sd Tho. Goodby shall pay three hundred pounds of Tobo & Caske fine for her contempt of ye menconed order (being ye first time) & also pay & defray ye cost of sute together wth ye Witnesses’ charges at twenty pounds tobo p day.”
Maryland, too, may boast of an unstained record, and of a vigorous warfare against the persecution. An old record tells how John Washington, Esquire, of Westmoreland County, in Virginia, having made complaint against Edward Prescott, merchant, “Accusin sd Prescott of ffelony under the Governmt of this Province (i. e. Maryland) Alleaging how that hee, the sd Prescott, hanged a Witch on his ship as hee was outward bound from England hither the last yeare. Uppon wch complaynt of the sd Washington, the Govr caused the sd 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 “Capt Quigly brought into this house the act for Building the State House and prisson at St 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 tht 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 or Brethren and the enquiry into or 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 ye cause of the oppressed, If sincerely to aime at his Maties Honour and the Publick good without any reservation or by Interest, If to stand in the Gap after soe much blood of or dear Brethren bought and sold, If after the losse of a great part of his Maties Colony deserted and dispeopled, freely with or lives and estates to indeavor to save the remaynders bee Treason, God Almighty Judge and lett guilty dye. But since wee cannot in or hearts find one single spott of Rebellion or Treason or that wee have in any manner aimed at the subverting ye 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 or ino[cent] and honest designes, and since all people in all places where wee have yet bin can attest or 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.