Burk[611:B] says: "The affair of the powder was decided before the battle of Lexington was ever talked of in Virginia." But as it appears that the express from Massachusetts reached Petersburg on Sunday, the first of May,[611:C] it is probable that Henry had already heard the news. Captain Meredith resigned in Henry's favor, and he was invested with the command, Meredith accepting the place of lieutenant. Having received orders from the committee consonant with his own suggestions, Captain Henry marched at once toward Williamsburg. Ensign Parke Goodall, with sixteen men, was detached into King and Queen County to Laneville, (on the Matapony,) the seat of Richard Corbin, the king's deputy receiver-general, to demand the estimated value of the powder, and in case of his refusal to make him a prisoner. The detachment reached Laneville about midnight, and a guard was stationed around the house. At daybreak Mrs. Corbin assured Goodall that the king's money was never kept there, but at Williamsburg, and that Colonel Corbin was then in that town. Henry had started from Hanovertown with only his own company, but the news of his march being speedily spread abroad, companies started up on all sides, and were in motion to join his standard, to the number, it was believed, of several, some say five thousand men. The colony was governed by county committees. Lady Dunmore, with her children, retired in dismay to the Fowey, lying at Yorktown. Even the patriots at Williamsburg were alarmed at the approach of this tornado; message after message was despatched, and Captain Henry was implored to desist from entering Williamsburg. The messengers were detained, and he marched on. The scene resembled that presented by Bacon marching against Berkley a hundred years before. Dunmore, in the mean time, issued a proclamation calling upon the people to resist Henry, and planted cannon at his palace, and ordered up a detachment of marines from the Fowey. Before daybreak on the fourth of May, Captain Montague, of that ship, landed the detachment, and addressed a note to President Nelson, saying that he had received certain information that Lord Dunmore was threatened with an attack to be made at daybreak on that morning at the palace, and requesting him to endeavor to prevent any assault upon the marines, as in case of it he should be compelled to fire upon the town of York.
Henry, with one hundred and fifty men, halted at Doncastle's Ordinary, (sixteen miles from Williamsburg,) where Goodall had been ordered to rejoin him. In the meanwhile the authorities of the town were concerting measures to prevent the threatened collision. Dunmore denounced Henry as a rebel and the author of all the disturbances, and poured out a tirade of profane threats and abuse. Nevertheless, at his instance, Carter Braxton, son-in-law to Colonel Corbin, repaired to Henry's headquarters on the third, and interposed his efforts to prevent matters from coming to extremities. Finding that Henry would not disband without receiving the powder or its equivalent, he returned to Williamsburg, and procured from Colonel Corbin, the deputy receiver-general, a bill of exchange for the amount demanded, and delivering it to Henry at sunrise of Wednesday the fourth, succeeded in warding off the impending blow.[612:A] In this pacific course Mr. Braxton coincided with the moderate councils of the leading men at Williamsburg.
Yorktown and Williamsburg being in commotion at the landing of the marines, and an attack upon the public treasury being apprehended, Henry wrote to Nicholas, the treasurer, offering the services of his force to remove the public treasury to any place in the colony which might be deemed a safer place of deposite than Williamsburg. The treasurer replied that he did not apprehend any necessity for such a guard, and that the people of Williamsburg "were perfectly quiet;" which, however, could hardly have been the case, because at that time more than a hundred citizens patroled the streets and guarded the treasury.[613:A]
Henry, having attained the object of his march, returned with his volunteers to Hanover. The committee presented their thanks to the party for their good conduct, and also to the numerous volunteers who were marching to lend their co-operation.
Parke Goodall was a member of the convention of 1788, and afterwards kept a tavern called the "Indian Queen," in the City of Richmond.[613:B]
The contest between Henry and Dunmore concerning the powder, is like that between Colonel Hutchinson and Lord Newark on a similar occasion in 1642, at Nottingham, as related by Mrs. Hutchinson in her charming memoirs of her husband—[613:C]the most beautiful monument ever erected by female affection.
Two days after Henry had received compensation for the powder, Dunmore issued a proclamation denouncing "a certain Patrick Henry, Jr., of Hanover," and a number of deluded followers, charging them with having unlawfully taken up arms, and by letters excited the people in divers parts of the country to join them in these outrageous and rebellious practices, extorting £330 from the king's receiver-general, and forbidding all persons to aid or abet "the said Patrick Henry, Jr.," or his confederates. The members of the council, with the exception of John Page, sided with the governor, and advised the issuing of the proclamation, and afterwards published an address, in which they expressed their "detestation and abhorrence for that licentious and ungovernable spirit that had gone forth and misled the once happy people of this country." The council now shared the public odium with Dunmore. There was a rumor that he intended to have Henry arrested on his way to the congress at Philadelphia; and it is also said that the governor denounced Henry as a coward for not having accompanied Randolph and Pendleton. Dunmore, writing to the ministry, described Henry as "a man of desperate circumstances, one who had been very active in encouraging disobedience and exciting a spirit of revolt among the people for many years past."[614:A] So in Massachusetts Samuel Adams, the model patriot of New England, was denounced by the British governor there. Henry set out for the congress May the eleventh, and was escorted in triumph by his admiring countrymen as far as Hooe's Ferry, on the Potomac, and was repeatedly stopped on the way to receive addresses full of thanks and applause.
FOOTNOTES:
[608:A] There had been an alarm of one from Surrey County.