The plan called for a brick structure of two wings, connected by a gallery, the whole to be two stories high, with a sharply rising roof pierced with dormers and surmounted by a high cupola. The floors of the first story were to be laid in flagstones, while the roof was to be covered with cyprus shingles. Inside were to be rooms for the Council, the General Court, the House of Burgesses, and several committee rooms.
The gratitude of the Virginians to Nicholson for founding their new capital and adorning it with beautiful buildings did not blind them to his violence, his injustice, and his persecution of innocent men. Does he think he is governing the Moors or some other slavish people? they asked. He seems to think it a crime in us to demand the liberties of Englishmen. "That which bears up their spirits under all the heavy customs on their commodities, and restraints in point of trade, is that they have the happiness to enjoy the British laws and constitution, which they reckon the best of Governments," said Philip Ludwell, Senior. "But if once their Governors be suffered to break in upon them in this tender point, and to treat them with the arbitrariness of France, or the insolence of Morocco, as this gentleman has done, it is not to be imagined how ill this will go down with Englishmen that have not forgot the liberty of their mother country. The least that can be expected from it is that men of substance, if they find no redress, will remove themselves and their effects out of the colony to any other part of the world where they may enjoy peace and quietness."[31]
At last six members of the Council—Lightfoot, Page, Harrison, Carter, Blair, and Ludwell—drew up charges against Nicholson. Though they were careful to keep the matter secret the Governor suspected that something was up. In July, 1703, he wrote the Lords of Trade: "It hath been industriously reported here that ... I was turned out of the government for maladministration.... I hope in God, I shall not only be able to clear myself, but to make my accusers appear ill people."[32]
Nicholson might have surmised that it was Blair who would present charges against him when, several weeks later, the Commissary left for England. But he could not have anticipated the strategem which the shrewd Scot was to adopt. Though he arrived in November, 1703, he did not present the charges of the six Councillors to the Queen in the Council until late in the following March, after the tobacco fleet had sailed for Virginia. Thus months would elapse before Nicholson could have word of them and prepare his answers.
The Privy Council referred the charges to the Lords of Trade and Plantations. It must have been with surprise that they listened as the petition was read. We appeal to "your Majesty for relief of ourselves and other subjects of Virginia from many great grievances and pressures we lie under by reason of the unusual, insolent, and arbitrary methods of government, as well as wicked and scandalous examples of life, which have been now for divers years past put in practice by Nicholson, which we have hitherto in vain endeavored by more soft and gentle applications to himself to remedy and prevent. But to our unspeakable grief we have reaped no other fruit ... but that thereby we have so highly exasperated the revengeful mind of Nicholson to the height of implacable malice and enmity against ourselves and the better part of the people ... that without your Majesty's seasonable interposition we fear the dangerous consequences, not only in fomenting lasting feuds and acrimonies among the people here, but in endangering the public peace of Virginia."[33]
During the summer Blair had not been idle. It is probable that the little colony of Virginians in London got together to plan their strategy. When the matter came before the Lords of Trade, the Commissary was armed with affidavits from Fouace, Captain James Moodie, and others, and letters from Philip Ludwell, Junior, and Benjamin Harrison to the elder Ludwell, accusing Nicholson of tyranny. At the hearing Wallace, George Luke, and Robert Beverley were called on to tell their stories of persecution and injustice.
Hearing that John Thrale was agent for Nicholson, the Lords called him in. He made the best defense he could, but he was ignorant of the whole matter, and he had not witnesses to refute the charges. When he demanded particular instances of misgovernment and injustice, Blair and Beverley overwhelmed him with them.[34] To make the Governor's case hopeless, Thrale died in the midst of the hearings, leaving him without anyone to defend him.[35]
Late in October, 1704, when the first word of the petition reached Nicholson he was heard "to make a terrible imprecation, vowing to the living God that he would pursue the petitioners with eternal vengeance." At a meeting of the Council he glared at the members. "Whoever they were that signed that petition I hope they will be obliged to stand by it in England and that such of them as are there will be obliged to stay and those here to go thither, where it is my desire to come to a fair hearing," he told them.[36]
He defended himself in several long letters to the Board. He had done no more than defend the Queen's prerogative against the assaults of the Council, he said. If everything they asked were granted them, "her Majesty would have but a skeleton of a government left, and hardly the power of a Doge of Genoa. And I think the question may be put to them as the wise King Solomon did to his mother, why don't they ask the kingdom or the government also?" As for Commissary Blair, he "and his little faction now set up to have the power and interest of turning out and putting in Governors, and affect the title that the great Earl of Warwick had." If he were ousted, he would present himself to the Board, "when I hope I shall not be found to have a cloven foot, to be a fury, or to have snakes instead of hair."[37]
If we may credit the reports from Virginia which reached Blair, Ludwell, and Fouace in England in January, 1705, Nicholson began proceedings to "terrify all people" from discussing his conduct. "He sets up inquisition courts, giving commissions to some of his creatures to examine all persons on oath if ever they heard such a man reflect upon the Governor ... which practice is very terrible to all, there being few in Virginia who have not sometimes in private spoke of him as he deserves ... If witnesses are backward they are threatened by the Governor himself and terrified into depositions." When anyone was accused of complaining of him, even in private, he ordered the Attorney General to prosecute him under the law against defaming the Governor passed after Bacon's Rebellion.[38]