At length eight members of the council, headed by Commissary Blair, complained to the government in London, that Governor Spotswood had infringed the charter of the colony by associating inferior men with them in criminal trials. It was unfortunate that the Commissary's position involved him in these political squabbles: he would have been, doubtless, more usefully employed in those spiritual functions which were his proper sphere, and which he adorned. The governor lamented to the board of trade "how much anonymous obloquy had been cast upon his character, in order to accomplish the designs of a party, which, by their success in removing other governors, are so far encouraged, that they are resolved no one shall sit easy who doth not resign his duty, his reason, and his honor to the government of their maxims and interests." The domineering ambition of the council was long the fruitful source of mischiefs to Virginia; and it is on this account that many of the complaints and accusations against the governors are to be received with many grains of allowance. The twelve members of the council had a negative upon the governor's acts; they were members of the assembly, judges of the highest court, and held command of the militia as county lieutenants. Stith, in his "History of Virginia," complains of their overweening power, and expresses his apprehensions of its evil consequences.
As early as the year 1692, William the Third had appointed Neal postmaster for the Northern Colonies, with authority to establish posts. The rates being afterwards fixed by act of parliament, the system was introduced into Virginia in the year 1718, and Spotswood wrote to the board of trade, that "the people were made to believe that the parliament could not lay any tax (for so they call the rates of postage) on them without the consent of the general assembly. This gave a handle for framing some grievance against the new office; and thereupon a bill was passed by both council and burgesses, which, though it acknowledged the act of parliament to be in force in Virginia, doth effectually prevent its ever being put in execution; whence your lordships may judge how well affected the major part of the assemblymen are toward the collection of this branch of the revenue." The act, nevertheless, was enforced.
The assembly refused to pass measures recommended by the governor; invaded his powers by investing the county courts with the appointment of their own clerks; endeavored, as has been seen, to render inoperative the new post-office system, and transmitted an address to the king, praying that the instruction which required that no acts should be passed affecting the British commerce or navigation without a clause of suspension, might be recalled, and that the governor's power of appointing judges of oyer and terminer should be limited; and they complained that the governor's attempts went to the subversion of the constitution, since he made daily encroachments on their ancient rights. The governor, perceiving that it was the design of his opponents to provoke him, and then make a handle of the ebullitions of his resentment, displayed moderation as well as ability in these disputes, and when the assembly had completed their charges, prorogued them. This effervescence of ill humor excited a reaction in favor of Spotswood, and in a short time addresses poured in from the clergy, the college, and most of the counties, reprobating the factious conduct of the legislature, and expressing the public happiness under an administration which had raised the colony from penury to prosperity. Meantime Colonel Byrd, who had been sent out to London as colonial agent, having rather failed in his efforts against Spotswood, begged the board of trade "to recommend forgiveness and moderation to both parties." The recommendation, enforced by the advice of Lord Orkney, the governor-in-chief, the Duke of Argyle, and other great men who patronized Spotswood, quieted these discords; and the governor, the council, and the burgesses now united harmoniously in promoting the public welfare.
The chief apple of discord between the governor and the Virginians was the old question relating to the powers of the vestry. About this time Governor Spotswood was engaged in a warm dispute with the vestry of St. Anne's Parish, Essex, in which he took very high ground. The Rev. Hugh Jones subsequently, while on a visit in England, reported to the Bishop of London some things against the rubrical exactness of Commissary Blair. Evil reports had also reached the mother country as to the moral character of some of the clergy. A convention of the Virginia clergy was, therefore, held in compliance with the direction of the Bishop of London, at the College of William and Mary, in April, 1719. The governor, in a letter addressed to this body, assails the commissary as denying "that the king's government has the right to collate ministers to ecclesiastical benefices within this colony," "deserting the cause of the church," and countenancing disorders in divine worship "destructive to the establishment of the church." To all this, Commissary Blair made a reply, vindicating himself triumphantly.[400:A] He appears to have sympathized on these matters with the vestries and the people. Governor Spotswood, on the contrary, was an extreme high churchman and supporter of royal prerogative, as might have been expected from the descendant of a long line of ancestors always found arrayed on the side of the crown, and the church as established, and never with the people. The journal of this convocation throws much light on the condition of the church and the clergy of Virginia at that time. The powers exercised by the vestries, indeed, often made the position of the clergy precarious; but it would, perhaps, have engendered far greater evils if the governor had been allowed to be the patron of all the livings. Governor Spotswood's letter to the vestry of St. Anne's presents an elaborate argument against the right of the vestry to appoint or remove the minister; but, notwithstanding the opposition of the governor, bishop, clergy, and crown, the vestries and the people still steadfastly maintained this right. This question was the embryo of the revolution; political freedom is the offspring of religious freedom; it takes its rise in the church.
In answer to an inquiry made by the Bishop of London, the convention voted "that no member had any personal knowledge of the irregularity of any clergyman's life in this colony," a manifest equivocation.[401:A] In their address to the Bishop of London, the convention state that all the ministers in Virginia are episcopally ordained, except Mr. Commissary, of whose ordination a major part doubt;[401:B] that the circumstances of the country will not permit them to conform to the established liturgy as they would desire; that owing to the extent of the parishes they have service but once on Sunday, and but one sermon; that for the same reason the dead are not buried in churchyards, and the burial-service is usually performed by a layman; that the people observe no holidays except Christmas-day and Good Friday, being unwilling to leave their daily labor; and that of necessity the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is administered to persons who are not confirmed; that the ministers are obliged to baptize, and church women, marry, and bury at private houses, administer the Lord's Supper to a single sick person, perform in church the office of both sacraments without the habits, ornaments, and vessels required by the liturgy. The convention press upon his lordship's attention the precarious tenure of their livings, to which many of these deviations from the liturgy were attributable; they declare that the people are adverse to the induction of the clergy, which exposes them to the great oppression of the vestries. The clergy refer to Governor Spotswood as, under God, their chief support, whose efforts in their behalf were, as alleged by the governor, opposed by some of the council and Commissary Blair, who was himself accused of some irregularities.
The convention also stated that the commissary found great difficulty in making visitations, owing to the refusal of church wardens to take the official oath, or to make presentments, and from "the general aversion of the people to everything that looks like a spiritual court." The commissary refused to subscribe to it. The contending parties in these disputes were the governor and the clergy on the one side, and the commissary with the people on the other. According to the opinion of the attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey, given in 1703, "the right of presentation by the laws of Virginia was in the parishioners, and the right of lapse in the governor;" that is, if the vestry failed to choose a minister within six months, the governor had the right of appointing him; but it was a right which the governors, although reinforced by royal authority, could not enforce. Of the twenty-five members of this clerical convention only eight appear to have sided with the commissary. He held that the difference between him and the governor as to the right of collation was this: the governor claimed the right in the first instance, like that of the king of England, to bestow livings of which he himself is patron; the commissary was of opinion that the governor's power corresponded to that of the bishop, not being original, but only consequent upon a lapse; that is, a failure of the vestry to present within the time limited by law. Commissary Blair, throughout these angry controversies, in the course of which he was very badly treated by the governor and the clergy, bore himself with singular ability and excellent temper, and proved himself more than a match for his opponents.[402:A]
Predatory parties of the Five Nations were repelled by force, and conciliated by presents. The frontier of Virginia was extended to the foot of the Blue Ridge, and two new Piedmont counties, Spotsylvania and Brunswick, were established in 1720—the seventh year of George the First.[402:B] Spotsylvania included the northern pass through the mountains. At the special solicitation of the governor, the two counties were exempted from taxation for ten years. An act was passed imposing penalties on "whosoever shall weed, top, hill, succor, house, cure, strip or pack any seconds, suckers, or slips of tobacco." Two hundred pounds of tobacco were offered in reward for every wolf killed. Warehouses for storing tobacco and other merchandize, when first established in 1712, were denominated rolling-houses, from the mode of rolling the tobacco to market, before wagons came into general use or the navigation of the rivers improved. This mode of transporting tobacco prevailed generally in 1820, and later.[403:A] Tobacco warehouses in Virginia are now devoted exclusively to that commodity. In 1720, King George County was carved off from Richmond County, and Hanover from New Kent. A house for the governor was completed about this time. An act was passed to encourage the making of tar and hemp, and another to oblige ships coming from places infected with the plague to perform quarantine. The Indians of the Five Nations, warring with the Southern Indians for many years, had been in the habit of marching along the frontier of Virginia and committing depredations. To prevent this, a treaty was effected with them, whereby they bound themselves not to cross Potomac River, nor to pass to the eastward of the great ridge of mountains, without a passport from the Governor of New York; and, on the other hand, the Indians tributary to this government engaged not to pass over the Potomac, or go westward of the mountains, without a passport from the Governor of Virginia. This treaty was ratified at Albany, September, 1722. An act concerning servants and slaves was repealed by proclamation.
Spotswood urged upon the British government the policy of establishing a chain of posts beyond the Alleghanies, from the lakes to the Mississippi, to restrain the encroachments of the French. The ministry did not enter into his views on this subject, and it was not till after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that his wise, prophetic admonitions were heeded, and his plans adopted. He also failed in an effort to obtain from the government compensation for his companions in the Tramontane exploration. At length, owing, as his friends allege, to the intrigues and envious whispers of men far inferior to him in capacity and honesty, but according to others, on account of his high-handed encroachments on the rights of the colony, Spotswood was displaced in 1722, and succeeded by Hugh Drysdale. Chalmers,[404:A] also a native of Scotland, and as extreme a supporter of prerogative, thus eulogizes Spotswood: "Having reviewed the uninteresting conduct of the frivolous men who had ruled before him, the historian will dwell with pleasure on the merits of Spotswood. There was an utility in his designs, a vigor in his conduct, and an attachment to the true interest of the kingdom and the colony, which merit the greatest praise. Had he attended more to the courtly maxim of Charles the Second, 'to quarrel with no man, however great might be the provocation, since he knew not how soon he should be obliged to act with him,' that able officer might be recommended as the model of a provincial governor. The fabled heroes who had discovered the uses of the anvil and the axe, who introduced the labors of the plough, with the arts of the fisher, have been immortalized as the greatest benefactors of mankind; had Spotswood even invaded the privileges, while he only mortified the pride of the Virginians, they ought to have erected a statue to the memory of a ruler who gave them the manufacture of iron, and showed them by his active example that it is diligence and attention which can alone make a people great."
Governor Spotswood was the author of an act for improving the staple of tobacco, and making tobacco-notes the medium of ordinary circulation. Being a master of the military art, he kept the militia of Virginia under admirable discipline. In Spotsylvania, Spotswood, previous to the year 1724, had founded, on a horseshoe peninsula of four hundred acres, on the Rapidan, the little town of Germanna, so called after the Germans sent over by Queen Anne, and settled in that quarter, and at this place he resided. A church was built there mainly at his expense. In the year 1730 he was made deputy postmaster-general for the colonies, and held that office till 1739; and it was he who promoted Benjamin Franklin to the office of postmaster for the Province of Pennsylvania. Owning an extensive tract of forty-five thousand acres of land, and finding it to abound in iron ore, he engaged largely in partnership with Mr. Robert Cary, of England, and others in Virginia, in the manufacture of it. He is styled by Colonel Byrd the "Tubal Cain of Virginia;" he was, indeed, the first person that ever established a regular furnace in North America, leading the way and setting the example to New England and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, at this period, was unable to export iron, owing to the scarcity of ships, and made it only for domestic use. Spotswood expressed the hope that "he had done the country very great service by setting so good an example;" and stated "that the four furnaces now at work in Virginia circulated a great sum of money for provisions and all other necessaries in the adjacent counties; that they took off a great number of hands from planting tobacco, and employed them in works that produced a large sum of money in England to the persons concerned, whereby the country is so much the richer; that they are besides a considerable advantage to Great Britain, because it lessens the quantity of bar iron imported from Spain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and Muscovy, which used to be no less than twenty thousand tons yearly, though, at the same time, no sow iron is imported thither from any country, but only from the plantations. For most of this bar iron they do not only pay silver, but our friends in the Baltic are so nice they even expect to be paid all in crown pieces. On the contrary, all the iron they receive from the plantations, they pay for it in their own manufactures and send for it in their own shipping."[405:A]
There was as yet no forge set up in Virginia for the manufacture of bar iron. The duty in England upon it was twenty-four shillings a ton, and it sold there for from ten to sixteen pounds per ton, which paid the cost of forging it abundantly; but Spotswood "doubted; the parliament of England would soon forbid us that improvement, lest after that we should go farther, and manufacture our bars into all sorts of ironware, as they already do in New England and Pennsylvania. Nay, he questioned whether we should be suffered to cast any iron which they can do themselves at their furnaces."
