The arrival of Governor Spotswood in Virginia was hailed with joy, because he brought with him the right of Habeas Corpus—a right guaranteed to every Englishman by Magna Charta, but hitherto denied to Virginians. He entered upon the duties of his office in June, 1710. The two houses of the assembly severally returned thanks for an act affording them "relief from long imprisonments," and appropriated upwards of two thousand pounds for completing the governor's palace. In the following year Spotswood wrote back to England: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due obedience to the royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England." The assembly was continued by several prorogations to November, 1711. During the summer of this year, upon an alarm of an intended French invasion of Virginia, the governor exerted himself to put the colony in the best posture of defence. Upon the convening of the assembly their jealousy of prerogative power revived, and they refused to pay the expense of collecting the militia, or to discharge the colonial debt, because, as Spotswood informed the ministry, "they hoped by their frugality to recommend themselves to the populace." The assembly would only consent to levy twenty thousand pounds, by duties laid chiefly on British manufactures; and notwithstanding the governor's message, they insisted on giving discriminating privileges to Virginia owners of vessels in preference to British subjects proper, saying that the same exemption had always existed. The governor declined the proffered levy, and finding that nothing further could be obtained, dissolved the assembly, and in anticipation of an Indian war was obliged to solicit supplies from England.
About this time, the feuds that raged in the adjoining province of North Carolina, threatening to subvert all regular government there, Hyde, the governor, called upon Spotswood for aid. He at first sent Clayton, a man of singular prudence, to endeavor to reconcile the hostile factions. But Cary, the ringleader of the insurgents, having refused to make terms, Spotswood ordered a detachment of militia toward the frontier of North Carolina, while he sent a body of marines, from the coast-guard ships, to destroy Cary's naval force. In a dispatch, Spotswood complained to Lord Dartmouth of the reluctance that he found in the inhabitants of the counties bordering on North Carolina, to march to the relief of Governor Hyde. No blood was shed upon the occasion, and Cary, Porter, and other leaders in those disturbances retiring to Virginia, were apprehended by Spotswood in July, 1711, and sent prisoners to England, charged with treason. In the ensuing year Lord Dartmouth addressed letters to the colonies, directing the governors to send over no more prisoners for crimes or misdemeanors, without proof of their guilt.
In the Tuscarora war, commenced by a massacre on the frontier of North Carolina in September of this year, Spotswood again made an effort to relieve that colony, and prevented the tributary Indians from joining the enemy. He felt that little honor was to be derived from a contest with those who fought like wild beasts, and he rather endeavored to work upon their hopes and fears by treaty. To allay the clamors of the public creditors the governor convened the assembly in 1712, and demonstrated to them that during the last twenty-two years the permanent revenue had been so deficient as to require seven thousand pounds from the monarch's private purse to supply it. In the month of January, 1714, he at length concluded a peace with these ferocious tribes, who had been drawn into the contest, and, blending humanity with vigor, he taught them that while he could chastise their insolence he commiserated their fate.
On the seventeenth day of November the governor, in his address to the assembly, announced the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs, and the succession of George the First, the first of the Guelfs, but maternally a grandson of James the First.
The frontier of the colony of Virginia was now undisturbed by Indian incursions, so that the expenditure was reduced to one-third of what had been previously required. A settlement of German Protestants had recently been effected under the governor's auspices, in a region hitherto unpeopled, on the Rapidan.[381:A] The place settled by these Germans was called Germanna, afterwards the residence of Spotswood. These immigrants, being countrymen of the new sovereign, could claim an additional title to the royal favor on that account. Spotswood was at the time endeavoring to extend the blessings of a Christian education to the children of the Indians, and although the beneficial result of this scheme might to some appear too remote, he declared that for him it was a sufficient encouragement to think that posterity might reap the benefit of it. The Indian troubles, by which the frontier of Virginia had of late years suffered so much, the governor attributed mainly to the clandestine trade carried on with them by unprincipled men. The same evil has continued down to the present day. In the before-mentioned address to the assembly, Spotswood informed them that since their preceding session he had received a supply of ammunition, arms, and other necessaries of war, sent out by the late Queen Anne.
During eleven years, from 1707 to 1718, while other colonies were burdened with taxation for extrinsic purposes, Virginia steadily adhered to a system of rigid economy, and during that interval eighty-three pounds of tobacco per poll was the sum-total levied by all acts of assembly.[381:B] The Virginians now began to scrutinize, with a jealous eye, the circumstances of the government, and the assembly "held itself entitled to all the rights and privileges of an English parliament."
The act of 1642, reserving the right of presentation to the parish, the license of the Bishop of London, and the recommendation of the governor, availed but little against the popular will, and there were not more than four inducted ministers in the colony. Republicanism was thus finding its way even into the church, and vestries were growing independent. The parish sometimes neglected to receive the minister; sometimes received but did not present him, the custom being to employ a minister by the year. In 1703 it was decided that the minister was an incumbent for life, and could not be displaced by the parish, but the vestries, by preventing his induction, excluded him from acquiring a freehold in his living, and he might be removed at pleasure. The ministers were not always men who could win the esteem of the people or command their respect. The Virginia parishes were so extensive that parishioners sometimes lived at the distance of fifty miles from the parish church, and the assembly would not augment the taxes by narrowing the bounds of the parishes, even to avoid the dangers of "paganism, atheism, or sectaries." Schism was threatening "to creep into the church, and to generate faction in the civil government."[382:A] "In Virginia," says the Rev. Hugh Jones,[382:B] "there is no ecclesiastical court, so that vice, profaneness, and immorality are not suppressed. The people hate the very name of bishop's court." "All which things," he adds, "make it absolutely necessary for a bishop to be settled there, to pave the way for mitres in English America."
There is preserved the record of the trial of Grace Sherwood, in the County of Princess Anne, for witchcraft. Being put in the water, with her hands bound, she was found to swim. A jury of old women having examined her, reported that "she was not like them." She was ordered by the court to be secured "by irons, or otherwise," in jail for farther trial. The picturesque inlet where she was put in the water is still known as "Witch Duck." The custom of nailing horse-shoes to the doors to keep out witches is not yet entirely obsolete.
The Virginians at this time were deterred from sending their children across the Atlantic to be educated, through fear of the smallpox.[382:C]
From the statistics of the year 1715, it appears that Virginia was, in population second only to Massachusetts,[383:A] which exceeded her in total number by one thousand, and in the number of whites by twenty-two thousand. All the colonies were at this time slave-holding; the seven Northern ones comprising an aggregate of 12,150 slaves, and the four Southern ones 46,700. The proportion of whites to negroes in Virginia was upwards of four to one. Their condition was one of rather rigorous servitude. The number of Africans imported into Virginia during the reign of George the First was upwards of ten thousand. In addition to the slaves, the Virginians had three kinds of white servants,—some hired in the ordinary way; others, called kids, bound by indenture for four or five years; the third class consisted of convicts. The two colonies, Virginia and Maryland, supplied the mother country, in exchange for her manufactures, with upwards of twenty-five millions of pounds of tobacco, of which there were afterwards exported more than seventeen millions, leaving for internal consumption more than eight millions. Besides the revenue which Great Britain derived from this source, in a commercial point of view, Virginia and Maryland were at this period of more consequence to the fatherland than all the other nine colonies combined. Virginia exchanged her corn, lumber, and salted provisions, for the sugar, rum, and wine of the West Indies and the Azores.
