This was the verdict of the people of Hanover Court House, Virginia, when Patrick Henry was a young man. When he was but a youth he had married the tavern-keeper’s daughter. He had tried farming and failed, people said, because he was “too lazy to do anything but go a-fishing.” But he was a great reader and had studied law in a random, listless way.
The door of opportunity opened one day before this young man of whom the neighbors had so little good to say. There was a case in court called “the Parsons’ Cause.” This famous lawsuit arose in the following way: An old law required each church in Virginia to pay its minister sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco as his yearly salary. Later the legislature of Virginia passed another law which permitted each parish to pay its minister a smaller salary in money. The King of England set this law aside and then the “parsons,” as the clergy were called, brought a lawsuit to collect the unpaid parts of their salaries. Young Patrick Henry’s sympathies were with the men who were sued and he offered his services in their defense.
When the people of Hanover Court House heard of this, they laughed as if it were a huge joke.
“The good-for-nothing! What can he do, with his low, tavern talk?” they asked in scorn. “His stories may do for a bar-room, but for such a fellow to speak in such an important case will be an insult to the court.”