In the year 1698 died Thomas Ludwell, Esq., some time secretary of Virginia. He was born at Bruton, County Somerset, England. Sir Edmund Andros was succeeded in November, 1698, by Colonel Nicholson, transferred from the government of Maryland. He entertained a plan of confederating the colonies together, and aspired to become himself the viceroy of the contemplated union. Finding himself thwarted in these projects, his conduct became self-willed and overbearing. In a memorial sent to England, he stated that tobacco bore so low a price as not to yield even clothes to the planters; yet, in the same paper, advised parliament to prohibit the plantations from making their own clothing; in other words, proposing that they should be left to go naked.[358:A] Indeed, he appeared to be quite altered from what he had been during his former administration in Virginia; and the change was thought to be not a little owing to a disappointment in love. He had become passionately attached to a daughter of Lewis Burwell, Jr., and failing to win her favor or that of her parents, in his suit, he became infuriated, and persisted, Quixotically, for years in his fruitless purpose. The young lady's father, and her brothers, and Commissary Blair, and the Rev. Mr. Fouace, minister of the parish, were especial objects of his vengeance. To the young lady he threatened the death of her father and her brothers, if she did not yield to his suit. He committed other outrages no less extraordinary.
For the sake of a healthier situation, Governor Nicholson removed the seat of government from Jamestown, now containing only three or four good inhabited houses, to Middle Plantation, so called from its lying midway between James and York Rivers. Here he projected a large town, laying out the streets in the form of a W and M, in honor of King William and Queen Mary. This plan, however, appears to have been abandoned, or only partially carried out.[359:A] According to the contemporary historian Beverley, Nicholson declared openly to the lower order of people "that the gentlemen imposed upon them; that the servants had all been kidnapped, and had a lawful action against their masters." In the year 1700 Mr. Fowler, the king's attorney-general for the colony, declaring some piece of service against law, the governor seized him by the collar, and swore "that he knew no laws they had, and that his commands should be obeyed without hesitation or reserve." He committed gentlemen who offended him to prison without any complaint, and refused to allow bail; and some of them having intimated to him that such proceedings were illegal, he replied, "that they had no right at all to the liberties of English subjects, and that he would hang up those that should presume to oppose him, with magna charta about their necks." He often extolled the governments of Fez and Morocco, and at a meeting of the governors of the college, told them "that he knew how to govern the Moors, and would beat them into better manners." At another time he avowed that he knew how to govern the country without assemblies, and if they should deny him anything after he had obtained a standing army, "he would bring them to reason with halters about their necks." His outrages made him jealous, and to prevent complaints being sent to England against him, he is said to have intercepted letters, employed spies, and even played the eavesdropper himself. He sometimes held inquisitorial courts to find grounds of accusation against such as incurred his displeasure.[359:B]
Robert Beverley, author of a "History of Virginia," published the first edition of it in 1705. He was a son of Robert Beverley, the persecuted clerk, who died in 1687. This may account somewhat for his extreme acrimony against Culpepper and Effingham, who had persecuted his father, and against Nicholson, who was Effingham's deputy. In his second edition, when time had, perhaps, mitigated his animosities, Beverley omitted many of his accusations against these governors. In favor of Nicholson, it is also to be observed, that his administration in Maryland and in South Carolina was more satisfactory. But it is certain that he was an erratic, Quixotic, irascible man, who could not bear opposition, and an extreme high churchman.
In the eleventh year of William the Third an act was passed for the restraining and punishing of pirates and privateers, the preamble reciting that "nothing can more conduce to the honor of his most sacred majesty than that such articles of peace as are concluded in all treaties should be kept and preserved inviolable by his majesty's subjects in and over all his majesty's territories and dominions, and that great mischief and depredations are daily done upon the high seas by pirates, privateers, and sea-robbers, in not only taking and pillaging several ships and vessels belonging to his majesty's subjects, but also in taking, destroying, and robbing several ships belonging to the subjects of foreign princes, in league and amity with his majesty;" and they prayed that crimes committed on the high seas should be punished as if committed on land, in Virginia.[360:A] A committee was appointed during the same session "to revise the laws of this his majesty's ancient and great colony and dominion of Virginia."[360:B]
Among the subjects upon which a tax was laid for the building of a capitol, were servants imported, not being natives of England or Wales, fifteen shillings per poll, and twenty shillings on every negro or other slave. Colonel Robert Carter, speaker of the house, was elected to fill the office of treasurer; and it came to be the custom for the two offices of speaker and treasurer to be held by the same person. The establishment of the office of a treasurer appointed by the assembly, giving that body control of the colonial purse, added much to the independence of its legislative power.
In the second year of Nicholson's administration a piratical vessel was captured within the capes of Virginia. She had taken some merchant-vessels in Lynhaven Bay, and a small vessel happening to witness an engagement between her and a merchantman, conveyed intelligence of it to the Shoram, a fifth-rate man-of-war, commanded by Captain Passenger, and newly arrived. Nicholson chanced to be at Kiquotan sealing up his letters, and, going on board the Shoram, was present in the engagement that followed. The Shoram, by daybreak, having got in between the capes and the pirate, intercepted her, and an action took place on the 29th of April, 1700, when the pirate surrendered upon condition of being referred to the king's mercy. In this affair fell Peter Heyman, grandson of Sir Peter Heyman, of Summerfield, in the County of Kent, England. Being collector of the customs in the lower district of James River, he volunteered to go on board the Shoram, and after behaving with undaunted courage, standing on the quarter-deck near the governor, was killed by a small shot.
During this year died the Honorable Colonel Edward Hill, of Shirley, on the James River, in the sixty-third year of his age; he was of the council, colonel and commander-in-chief of the Counties of Charles City and Surry, judge of his majesty's high court of admiralty, and some time treasurer of Virginia. He lies buried at Shirley, and a portrait of him and his wife is preserved there.
In the year preceding this, Protestant dissenters, qualified according to the toleration act of the first year of William and Mary, were exempted from penalties for not repairing to the parish church, if they attended some legal place of worship once in two months.[361:A] The press was not yet free in Virginia, and the writ of habeas corpus was still withheld.
There was a commencement at William and Mary College in the year 1700, at which there was a great concourse of people; several planters came thither in coaches, and others in sloops from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, it being a new thing in that part of America to hear graduates perform their exercises. The Indians themselves had the curiosity, some of them, to visit Williamsburg upon that occasion; and the whole country rejoiced as if they had some relish of learning. Fifty-eight years before this there had been celebrated a commencement at Harvard College, in Massachusetts.[362:A]
In the year 1701 Colonel Quarry, surveyor-general of the customs, wrote to the board of trade: "This malignant humor is not confined to Virginia, formerly the most remarkable for loyalty, but is universally diffused."