[678:A] Foote's Sketches of Va., 393.
[678:B] Among the ships and brigs are found the names of Oxford, Virginia, Loyalist, Pocahontas, Washington, Oliver Cromwell, Marquis La Fayette, Raleigh, Jefferson, Gloucester, Northampton, Sally Norton, Hampton, Liberty, Wilkes, American Fabius. Among the smaller were the Speedwell, Lewis, Nicholson, Harrison, Mayflower, Patriot, Congress, Accomac, Henry, Norfolk, Revenge, Manly, Caswell, Protector, Washington, Page, Lewis, York, and Richmond.
[680:A] Va. Navy of the Revolution, by Dr. Wm. P. Palmer, Secretary of Va. Hist. Society. (S. Lit. Messenger, 1857.)
CHAPTER XCII.
1777.
Commodore Hotham—Proceedings of Assembly—Charges against Richard Henry Lee—He demands an Enquiry—His Defence and Honorable Acquittal.
In January, 1777, when Commodore Hotham was cruising in the Chesapeake, the prisoners that fell into his hands were humanely treated and readily exchanged. In February, the Phœnix man-of-war came to Yorktown with a flag, and sent ashore a party of prisoners, among whom was Colonel Lawson, who had been long in captivity, and who was exchanged for Colonel Alexander Gordon, of Norfolk, a Scotch tory, who had been arrested in 1775 and released on parole. Captain Lilly, in the brig Liberty, captured off the coast of Virginia the British ship Jane with a valuable cargo. Captain Pasture, in the Molly, a small craft, returned from the southward with a supply of gunpowder. The schooner Henry was captured by the British man-of-war Seaford.
When the assembly again met in May, 1777, George Wythe was made speaker of the house of delegates; the oath of allegiance was prescribed; a loan-office was established, and acts passed to support the credit of the Continental and State paper currency. Benjamin Harrison, George Mason, Joseph Jones, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and John Harrison were elected delegates to congress, Richard Henry Lee having been left out. There were no little dissension and animosity in congress between the delegates of the movement party and the moderates; and, added to this, it was believed that an old grudge, harbored in Virginia against Mr. Lee for the prominent part he had taken many years before in disuniting the offices of speaker and treasurer, followed him to Philadelphia. The charges alleged against him by his enemies in Virginia were, first, that he had altered the mode in which his tenants should pay their rent from money to produce, with the design of depreciating the currency of the country; and secondly, that he had favored New England to the injury of Virginia; thirdly, that as a member of the secret committee in congress, he had opposed laying their proceedings before congress—it being thereby intended to insinuate that in so doing he had wished to conceal the embezzlement of the public money.
