There is a stress in the wording of this order which makes one suspect that the faculty had encountered difficulty in suppressing horse-racing. Similar orders forbid students to take part in cock-fighting, to frequent “ye Ordinaries,” to bet, to play at billiards, or to bring cards or dice into the college. Punishment is most emphatically threatened for any student who may “presume to go out of ye Bounds of ye College, particularly towards the mill pond” without express leave; but why the mill pond was to be so sedulously shunned, we are left to conjecture. Finally, “to ye End yt no Person may pretend Ignorance of ye foregoing ... Regulations, ... it is Ordered ... yt a clear & legible copy of ym be posted up in every School of ye College.”[96]
The story of Parson Camm.
One of the brightest traditions in the history of the college is that which tells of the wooing and wedding of Parson Camm, a gentleman famous once, whose fame deserves to be revived. John Camm was born in 1718 and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a man of good scholarship and sturdy character, an uncompromising Tory, one of the leaders in that “Parsons’ Cause” which made Patrick Henry famous.[97] He lived to be the last president of William and Mary before the Revolution. After he had attained middle age, but while he was as yet only a preacher and professor, and like all professors in those days at William and Mary a bachelor, there came to him the romance which brightened his life. Among those who listened to his preaching was Miss Betsy Hansford, of the family of Hansford the rebel and martyr. A young friend, who had wooed Miss Betsy without success, persuaded the worthy parson to aid him with his eloquence. But it was in vain that Mr. Camm besieged the young lady with texts from the Bible enjoining matrimony as a duty. She proved herself able to beat him at his own game when she suggested that if the parson would go home and look at 2 Samuel xii. 7, he might be able to divine the reason of her obduracy. When Mr. Camm proceeded to search the Scriptures he found these significant words staring him in the face: “And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man!” The sequel is told in an item of the Virginia Gazette, announcing the marriage of Rev. John Camm and Miss Betsy Hansford.[98]
So, Virginia, too, had its Priscilla! In the words of the sweet mediæval poem:—
El fait que dame, et si fait bien,
Car sos ciel n’a si france rien
Com est dame qui violt amer,
Quant Deus la violt à ço torner:
Deus totes dames beneie.[99]
But this marriage was an infringement of the customs of the college, and was rebuked in an order that hereafter the marriage of a professor should ipso facto vacate his office.
Some interesting facts about the college.
The college founded by James Blair was a most valuable centre for culture for Virginia, and has been remarkable in many ways. It was the first college in America to introduce teaching by lectures, and the elective system of study; it was the first to unite a group of faculties into a university; it was the second in the English world to have a chair of Municipal Law, George Wythe coming to such a professorship a few years after Sir William Blackstone; it was the first in America to establish a chair of History and Political Science; and it was one of the first to pursue a thoroughly secular and unsectarian policy. Though until lately its number of students at any one time had never reached one hundred and fifty, it has given to our country fifteen senators and seventy representatives in congress; seventeen governors of states, and thirty-seven judges; three presidents of the United States,—Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler; and the great Chief Justice Marshall.[100] It was a noble work for America that was done by the Scotch parson, James Blair.
Nicholson’s schemes for a union of the colonies.
As for Governor Nicholson, who was so deeply interested in that work, he played a memorable part in the history of the United States, which deserves mention before we leave the subject of his connection with Virginia. When he was first transferred from the governorship of New York to that of the Old Dominion, with his head full of experiences gained in New York, he proposed a grand Union of the English colonies for mutual defence against the encroachments of the French. King William approved the scheme and recommended it to the favourable consideration of the colonial assemblies. But a desire for union was not strong in any of these bodies, and as for Virginia, she was too remote from the Canadian border to feel warmly interested in it. The act of 1695, authorizing the governor to apply £500 from the liquor excise to the relief of New York, shows a notably generous spirit in the Virginia burgesses, but the pressure which was to drive people into a Federal Union was still in the hidden future. The attitude of the several colonies so exasperated Nicholson as to lead him to recommend that they should all be placed under a single viceroy and taxed for the support of a standing army. When this plan was submitted to Queen Anne and her ministers, it was rejected as unwise, and no British ministry ever ventured to try any part of such a policy until the reign of George III. Francis Nicholson should be remembered as one of the very first to conceive and suggest the policy that afterward drove the colonies into their Declaration of Independence.