Lord North succeeded the Duke of Grafton as prime minister, in January, 1770, and in the ensuing March all the duties on the American imports were repealed, except that on tea. Lord North, at the same time, however, avowed the absolute determination of the government not to yield the right of taxing the colonies.
The first association appears not to have been adhered to, and the English merchants declared that the exports to Virginia of the prohibited articles were never greater.
On the 22d day of June, 1770, a second association was entered into at Williamsburg, by the burgesses and the merchants of the colony appointing committees, to be chosen by the associators of each county, to enforce the non-importation agreement; resolving to promote industry and frugality; enumerating the articles not to be imported or purchased after a certain day, specially mentioning slaves and wine; engaging not to advance the price of goods, wares, and merchandise; binding themselves not to import or purchase any article which should be taxed by parliament for the purpose of raising a revenue in America.
The estimable Botetourt died in October, 1770, in his fifty-third year, and after an administration of two years. Promoted to the peerage in 1764, he had succeeded Sir Jeffrey Amherst as governor-in-chief in 1768, and was the first of that title since Lord Culpepper, who had condescended to come over to the colony. On his arrival it was his purpose to reduce the Virginians to submission, either by persuasion or by force; but when he became better acquainted with the people he changed his views, and entreated the ministry to repeal the offensive acts. Such a promise was, indeed, held out to him; but finding himself deceived, he demanded his recall, and died shortly afterwards of a bilious fever, exacerbated by chagrin and disappointment. He was a patron of learning and the arts, giving out of his own purse silver and gold medals as prizes to the students of William and Mary College. His death was deeply lamented by the colony, and the assembly erected a statue in honor of him, which is still standing, somewhat mutilated, in front of the college. At his death the administration devolved upon William Nelson, president of the council.
In May, 1771, a great fresh occurred in Virginia, the James in three days rising twenty feet higher than ever was known before. The low grounds were inundated, standing crops destroyed, corn, fences, chattels, merchandise, cattle, and houses carried off, and ships forced from their moorings. Many of the inhabitants, masters and slaves, in endeavoring to rescue property, or to escape from danger, were drowned. Houses were seen drifting down the current, and people clinging to them, uttering fruitless cries for succor. Fertile fields were covered with a thick deposit of sand; islands were torn to pieces, bars accumulated, the channel diverted, and the face of nature altered. At Turkey Island, on the James River, there is a monument bearing the following inscription: "The foundations of this pillar were laid in the calamitous year 1771, when all the great rivers of this country were swept by inundations never before experienced, which changed the face of nature and left traces of their violence that will remain for ages." One hundred and fifty persons were drowned by this rise in the rivers.
The assembly met in July, 1771. About this time the question of an American episcopate was agitated; and in some of the Northern colonies the measure was warmly contended for in the public papers. New York and New Jersey desired to secure the co-operation of Virginia in petitioning the king on this subject, and deputed the Rev. Dr. Cooper, President of King's College, New York, and the Rev. Mr. McKean, deputies to visit the South in this behalf; and at their urgent solicitation, Commissary Horrocks, himself aspiring to the mitre, as was supposed, called a convocation of the clergy to take the matter into consideration. Only a few attended; but after some vacillation they determined to join in the petition to the crown, the Rev. John Camm taking the lead in this proceeding. Four of the clergy in attendance, Henley and Gwatkin, professors in the College of William and Mary, and Hewitt and Bland, entered a protest against the scheme of introducing a bishop, as endangering the very existence of the British empire in America. The assembly having expressed its disapprobation of the project, and it being urged but by few, and resisted by some of the clergy, it fell to the ground; and the thanks of the house were presented, through Richard Henry Lee and Richard Bland, to the protesting clergymen for their "wise and well-timed opposition." Churchmen naturally sided with the English government, and the bench of bishops were arrayed in opposition to the rights of the colonies. The protest of the four ministers gave rise to a controversy between them and the United Episcopal Conventions of New York and New Jersey; and a war of pamphlets and newspapers ensued in the Northern and Middle States; and the stamp act itself, according to some writers, did not evoke more bitter denunciations, nor more violent threats, than the project of an episcopate: New England was in a flame against it. It was believed, that if bishops should be sent over they would unite with the governors in opposition to the rights of America. The laity of the Episcopal Church in America were, excepting a small minority, opposed to the measure. Neither the people of Virginia, nor any of the American colonies, were at any time willing to receive a bishop appointed by the English government. Among the advocates of the scheme the Rev. Jonathan Boucher took a prominent part, and he sustained it ably from the pulpit. He held that the refusal of Virginia to consent to the appointment of a bishop, was "to unchurch the church;" and his views on this subject were re-echoed by Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, in an anniversary sermon delivered before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. On this point of ecclesiastical government the members of the establishment in Virginia appear to have been looked upon as themselves dissenters. In one sense they were so; but their repugnance was to prelacy, not to the episcopate; a prelatical bishop was in their minds associated with ideas of expense beyond their means, and of opposition to the principles of civil liberty. Boucher, in a sermon that he preached in this year at St. Mary's Church, in Caroline County, of which he was then rector, says of the dissenters in Virginia: "I might almost as well pretend to count the gnats that buzz around us in a summer's evening."
The scheme of sending over a bishop had been entertained more than a hundred years before; and Dean Swift at one time entertained hopes of being made Bishop of Virginia, with power, as is said, to ordain priests and deacons for all the colonies, and to parcel them out into deaneries, parishes, chapels, etc., and to recommend and present thereto. The favorite sermons of many of the Virginia clergy were Sterne's.[562:A]
During this year died the Rev. James Horrocks, President of the College and Commissary. He had been at the head of William and Mary since the death of Rev. William Yates, in 1764. Mr. Horrocks was succeeded in both places by the Rev. John Camm.
John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, was transferred[562:B] from the government of New York to that of Virginia. The town of Fincastle, the title of one of his sons, in Botetourt County, was now incorporated. The Honorable William Nelson, president, died in this year. About this time the Methodists appeared in Virginia; they still avowed that attachment to the Church of England which Wesley and Whitefield both, in the early years of their career, had uniformly professed. Although they allowed laymen to preach, the communion was received by them at the hands of the clergy only; and they even affirmed that "whosoever left the church left the Methodists." They, therefore, now were visited with a share of the odium which fell upon the established church.