At first everything seemed to be going smoothly. The quit rents were collected in tobacco notes, the price of the leaf rose in the English market. The clergy wrote Spotswood thanking him for the increased value of their salaries. "Their livings, which by the badness of the pay were sunk to little or nothing, begin now to be much more valuable by your wise and just contrivance to keep up the credit of the public payments."[4]
None the less, the law was unpopular. The debtor objected to paying in appreciated currency. It was a heavy expense for the planter to roll his hogsheads over the bad roads to the warehouses and then pay for inspection and storage. He was resentful if his tobacco was judged to be unfit for export. At the courthouses local politicians began to denounce the act to willing listeners. "He is the patriot who will not yield to whatever the government proposes," complained Spotswood. "Him they call a poor man's friend who always carries still-yards to weigh to the needy planter's advantage, and who never judges his tobacco to be trash."[5]
Spotswood said that the tobacco act was looked upon to be the most extraordinary one that ever passed a Virginia Assembly. When he first outlined his plans for it his friends assured him it would be impossible to persuade the Assembly to pass it. Yet it was adopted unanimously by the Council, and passed in the House "with some address and great struggle."
What the Governor meant by "address" is revealed by an examination of the list of fat jobs that he handed out to individual Burgesses. Of the fifty-one members, seventeen were justices of the peace. Fearing perhaps that this did not assure the passage of his bill, he was lavish in promising tobacco agents' places, and no less than twenty-five Burgesses cast their votes with this job in sight. Only nineteen members failed to get one or the other of these posts, and some got both.[6] "I have, in a great measure, I think, cleared the way for a Governor towards carrying any reasonable point in the House of Burgesses," Spotswood boasted, "for he will have in his disposal about forty agencies, which one with another are likely to yield nigh 250 pounds per annum each."[7]
But Spotswood would not have been so pleased with himself if he had realized the resentment which this open bribery of the people's representatives caused throughout the colony. The Assembly "gave him all things asked, and he them agent's places to pick our pockets," said one disgruntled planter. But what the officeholder had to expect if he opposed the measures urged by the Governor is shown by his treatment of Nicholas Meriwether. When Meriwether not only spoke against the tobacco bill in the Assembly, but by "many seditious speeches" denounced it to the people of New Kent County, Spotswood promptly removed him from his place as justice of the peace. This, he thought, would discourage others from following his example.
Having corrupted the Burgesses and made most of them his henchmen, Spotswood would have no doubt continued them indefinitely by successive adjournments, had they not been automatically dissolved by the death of Queen Anne. "By a good providence we were delivered from them, else they would have continued as long as he," wrote Joshua Gee.[8] Just how passively the people would have submitted to another long Assembly must remain a matter of speculation, but their resentment against both Spotswood and his puppets is shown by their selections for the House of Burgesses in 1715. Of the twenty-five members who had accepted agents' jobs, only one, William Armistead, of Elizabeth City, was returned. And the voters of New Kent showed their anger at Spotswood's treatment of Meriwether by returning him to the House. Altogether only sixteen Burgesses of the old House had seats in the new, and of these eleven had been neither agents nor justices.
Spotswood was deeply resentful. The new Burgesses, he thought, were a set of ignorant demagogues, determined to oppose anything he suggested. It was all the fault of the law which permitted any man to vote who owned any real estate, even half an acre. Just before an election reports were spread that the country was on the verge of ruin, and no one was qualified to save it but "some of their own mobbish politicians." It was no wonder that some of the Burgesses could not write grammatical English, since the ignorant people insisted on electing men of their own stamp.[9]
The new Assembly was as hostile to the Governor as their predecessors had been subservient. Everything he proposed they objected to, in some cases for no other reason than to thwart him. They were egged on by Gawin Corbin, who had been ousted from his job as naval officer; George Marable, whom Spotswood had removed from the James City County court; and Edwin Conway, of Lancaster County. But the whole atmosphere of the House was one of hostility.
No sooner had the House been organized than grievances from various counties poured in, most of them complaining against the tobacco law. The people of Surry prayed that the law be repealed, the people of Henrico wanted it repealed, the people of Essex wanted it repealed, the people of Warwick complained of the hardships of the law. It seemed that no more than two counties in all Virginia were satisfied.[10] Spotswood claimed that these grievances did not represent the views of a majority of the people. Many of them were drawn up by members of the House, some were signed at election fields, horse races, and drunken meetings. "Nor shall a seditious paper, signed by five obscure fellows who must have a scribe to write all their names, ever pass with me for a county grievance."[11]
When Richard Littlepage and Thomas Butts, two of the justices of New Kent, refused to certify the grievances of that county, they were arrested under the Speaker's warrant. Though the House voted them guilty of high misdemeanor and contempt, they refused to appear, claiming that the Burgesses had no legal authority over them. Thereupon the House appealed to the Governor to arrest them. "The freedom and privileges of this House are in danger of being utterly subverted," they said, "when justices ... assume a jurisdiction and by their judgment debar the people and their rightful representatives of the rightful ways ... for redressing their grievances ... we believe that such matters do concern the Burgesses in Assembly."[12] But Spotswood rebuffed them. They were exceeding their authority, he told them, when they persecuted justices and tried to punish them for their proceedings on the bench.