History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia Part 47

When, in Ma.s.sachusetts, the custom-house officers had demanded[557:A]

from the courts writs of a.s.sistance for enforcing the revenue act, the eloquent James Otis had resisted the application in a speech which gave a mighty impulse to the popular sentiment. The same question was now argued before Botetourt and the council, forming the general court, and he concurred in declaring them illegal. During this session, Mr.

Jefferson made an unsuccessful effort for the enactment of a law authorizing owners to manumit their slaves.

In February, parliament, refusing to consider a redress of American grievances, had advised his majesty to take vigorous measures against Ma.s.sachusetts, and to make inquisition there for treason, and, if sufficient ground should appear, to transport the accused to England for trial before a special commission; and George the Third, a king of exemplary character, but obstinate temper, heartily concurred in those views. Upon receiving intelligence of this fact, the burgesses of Virginia again[557:B] pa.s.sed resolutions unanimously, vindicating the rights of the colonies, claiming the sole right to levy taxes, and a.s.serting the right of bringing about a concert of the colonies in defence against the encroachments of parliament; exposing the injustice and tyranny of applying to America an obsolete act of the reign of Henry the Eighth, warning the king of the dangers that would ensue if any American should be transported to England for trial, and finally ordering the resolutions to be communicated to the legislatures of the other colonies, and requesting their concurrence. Even the merchants of peaceable Pennsylvania approved these resolutions; Delaware adopted them word for word; and the colonies south of Virginia eventually imitated her example. An address was also prepared to be laid before the king.

Botetourt took alarm at what he termed, in his correspondence with the government, "the abominable measure," and having convoked the a.s.sembly, addressed them thus: "Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the house of burgesses,--I have heard of your resolves, and augur ill of their effects. You have made it my duty to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."

The burgesses immediately repaired in a body to the Raleigh, and unanimously adopted a non-importation agreement, drawn by George Mason, and presented by George Washington. The resolutions included one not to import, or purchase any imported slaves, after the first day of November, until the objectionable acts of parliament should be repealed.

Mr. Mason, not yet a member of the a.s.sembly, was not present at this meeting. The moderate party in the a.s.sembly, while they had opposed measures which appeared to them injudicious and premature, nevertheless avowed themselves as firmly riveted to the main principle in dispute.

Their views, they averred, had been made public in the several memorials to government; and from the position so a.s.sumed they were resolved never to recede. They had not, indeed, expected that parliament would ever explicitly acknowledge itself in the wrong; but it had been their hope that the dispute would have been left to rest upon reciprocal protestations, and finally have died away. The late measures of the British government had extinguished such delusive hopes. That government claimed the right of subjecting America to every act of parliament as being part of the British dominions; and at the same time that Americans should be liable to punishment under an act of Henry the Eighth, made to punish offences committed _out of_ the realm. The deportation of Americans for trial, depriving them of the right of trial by a jury of the vicinage, appeared to be fraught with worse mischiefs than the stamp act, in as much as life is more precious than property.[558:A]

On the 9th of May, 1769, the king had, in his speech to parliament, re-echoed their determination to enforce the laws in every part of his dominions. Nevertheless, on the thirteenth the Earl of Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, wrote to Botetourt, a.s.suring him that it was not the intention of ministers to propose any further taxes, and that they intended to propose a repeal of the duties on gla.s.s, paper, and paints, not on the question of right, but upon the ground that those duties had been imposed contrary to the true principles of commerce. Botetourt, calling the a.s.sembly together, communicated these a.s.surances, adding: "It is my firm opinion that the plan I have stated to you will certainly take place, and that it will never be departed from; and so determined am I to abide by it, that I will be content to be declared infamous, if I do not to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places, and upon all occasions, exert every power with which I am, or ever shall be, legally invested, in order to obtain and maintain for the continent of America, that satisfaction which I have been authorized to promise this day by the confidential servant of our gracious sovereign, who, to my certain knowledge, rates his honor so high that he would rather part with his crown than preserve it by deceit." The council, in reply, advised the repeal of the existing parliamentary taxes; the burgesses expressed their grat.i.tude for "information sanctified by the royal word," and considered the king's influence as pledged "toward protecting the happiness of all his people." Botetourt, pleased with the address, wished them "freedom and happiness till time should be no more." William Lee regarded this as mere bombastic rant. During this year appeared a pamphlet, a.s.serting the rights of the colonies, ent.i.tled "The Monitor's Letters," by Arthur Lee.

Lord North succeeded the Duke of Grafton as prime minister, in January, 1770, and in the ensuing March all the duties on the American imports were repealed, except that on tea. Lord North, at the same time, however, avowed the absolute determination of the government not to yield the right of taxing the colonies.

The first a.s.sociation appears not to have been adhered to, and the English merchants declared that the exports to Virginia of the prohibited articles were never greater.

On the 22d day of June, 1770, a second a.s.sociation was entered into at Williamsburg, by the burgesses and the merchants of the colony appointing committees, to be chosen by the a.s.sociators of each county, to enforce the non-importation agreement; resolving to promote industry and frugality; enumerating the articles not to be imported or purchased after a certain day, specially mentioning slaves and wine; engaging not to advance the price of goods, wares, and merchandise; binding themselves not to import or purchase any article which should be taxed by parliament for the purpose of raising a revenue in America.

The estimable Botetourt died in October, 1770, in his fifty-third year, and after an administration of two years. Promoted to the peerage in 1764, he had succeeded Sir Jeffrey Amherst as governor-in-chief in 1768, and was the first of that t.i.tle since Lord Culpepper, who had condescended to come over to the colony. On his arrival it was his purpose to reduce the Virginians to submission, either by persuasion or by force; but when he became better acquainted with the people he changed his views, and entreated the ministry to repeal the offensive acts. Such a promise was, indeed, held out to him; but finding himself deceived, he demanded his recall, and died shortly afterwards of a bilious fever, exacerbated by chagrin and disappointment. He was a patron of learning and the arts, giving out of his own purse silver and gold medals as prizes to the students of William and Mary College. His death was deeply lamented by the colony, and the a.s.sembly erected a statue in honor of him, which is still standing, somewhat mutilated, in front of the college. At his death the administration devolved upon William Nelson, president of the council.

In May, 1771, a great fresh occurred in Virginia, the James in three days rising twenty feet higher than ever was known before. The low grounds were inundated, standing crops destroyed, corn, fences, chattels, merchandise, cattle, and houses carried off, and ships forced from their moorings. Many of the inhabitants, masters and slaves, in endeavoring to rescue property, or to escape from danger, were drowned.

Houses were seen drifting down the current, and people clinging to them, uttering fruitless cries for succor. Fertile fields were covered with a thick deposit of sand; islands were torn to pieces, bars acc.u.mulated, the channel diverted, and the face of nature altered. At Turkey Island, on the James River, there is a monument bearing the following inscription: "The foundations of this pillar were laid in the calamitous year 1771, when all the great rivers of this country were swept by inundations never before experienced, which changed the face of nature and left traces of their violence that will remain for ages." One hundred and fifty persons were drowned by this rise in the rivers.

The a.s.sembly met in July, 1771. About this time the question of an American episcopate was agitated; and in some of the Northern colonies the measure was warmly contended for in the public papers. New York and New Jersey desired to secure the co-operation of Virginia in pet.i.tioning the king on this subject, and deputed the Rev. Dr. Cooper, President of King's College, New York, and the Rev. Mr. McKean, deputies to visit the South in this behalf; and at their urgent solicitation, Commissary Horrocks, himself aspiring to the mitre, as was supposed, called a convocation of the clergy to take the matter into consideration. Only a few attended; but after some vacillation they determined to join in the pet.i.tion to the crown, the Rev. John Camm taking the lead in this proceeding. Four of the clergy in attendance, Henley and Gwatkin, professors in the College of William and Mary, and Hewitt and Bland, entered a protest against the scheme of introducing a bishop, as endangering the very existence of the British empire in America. The a.s.sembly having expressed its disapprobation of the project, and it being urged but by few, and resisted by some of the clergy, it fell to the ground; and the thanks of the house were presented, through Richard Henry Lee and Richard Bland, to the protesting clergymen for their "wise and well-timed opposition." Churchmen naturally sided with the English government, and the bench of bishops were arrayed in opposition to the rights of the colonies. The protest of the four ministers gave rise to a controversy between them and the United Episcopal Conventions of New York and New Jersey; and a war of pamphlets and newspapers ensued in the Northern and Middle States; and the stamp act itself, according to some writers, did not evoke more bitter denunciations, nor more violent threats, than the project of an episcopate: New England was in a flame against it. It was believed, that if bishops should be sent over they would unite with the governors in opposition to the rights of America.

The laity of the Episcopal Church in America were, excepting a small minority, opposed to the measure. Neither the people of Virginia, nor any of the American colonies, were at any time willing to receive a bishop appointed by the English government. Among the advocates of the scheme the Rev. Jonathan Boucher took a prominent part, and he sustained it ably from the pulpit. He held that the refusal of Virginia to consent to the appointment of a bishop, was "to unchurch the church;" and his views on this subject were re-echoed by Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, in an anniversary sermon delivered before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. On this point of ecclesiastical government the members of the establishment in Virginia appear to have been looked upon as themselves dissenters. In one sense they were so; but their repugnance was to prelacy, not to the episcopate; a prelatical bishop was in their minds a.s.sociated with ideas of expense beyond their means, and of opposition to the principles of civil liberty. Boucher, in a sermon that he preached in this year at St. Mary's Church, in Caroline County, of which he was then rector, says of the dissenters in Virginia: "I might almost as well pretend to count the gnats that buzz around us in a summer's evening."

The scheme of sending over a bishop had been entertained more than a hundred years before; and Dean Swift at one time entertained hopes of being made Bishop of Virginia, with power, as is said, to ordain priests and deacons for all the colonies, and to parcel them out into deaneries, parishes, chapels, etc., and to recommend and present thereto. The favorite sermons of many of the Virginia clergy were Sterne's.[562:A]

During this year died the Rev. James Horrocks, President of the College and Commissary. He had been at the head of William and Mary since the death of Rev. William Yates, in 1764. Mr. Horrocks was succeeded in both places by the Rev. John Camm.

John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, was transferred[562:B] from the government of New York to that of Virginia. The town of Fincastle, the t.i.tle of one of his sons, in Botetourt County, was now incorporated. The Honorable William Nelson, president, died in this year. About this time the Methodists appeared in Virginia; they still avowed that attachment to the Church of England which Wesley and Whitefield both, in the early years of their career, had uniformly professed. Although they allowed laymen to preach, the communion was received by them at the hands of the clergy only; and they even affirmed that "whosoever left the church left the Methodists." They, therefore, now were visited with a share of the odium which fell upon the established church.

FOOTNOTES:

[556:A] Bancroft, vi. 228.

[557:A] 1769.

[557:B] May 16th.

[558:A] Letter of R. C. Nicholas to Arthur Lee, _S. Lit. Messenger_, 1858, p. 184.

[562:A] Old Churches, i. 25.

[562:B] 1772.

CHAPTER LXXII.

THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT.

THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT was born in the County of New Kent, Virginia, in January, 1733, of obscure parentage. His grandfather, an Englishman, had served during the civil wars under Robert Devereux, Earl of Ess.e.x, and hence probably was derived the Christian name of the grandson. His grandmother was a native of Ireland. His father was a carpenter, and from the manner in which he and his family lived, some idea may be formed of the condition of the common people in that day. Their food consisted of the produce of the soil, except a little sugar, which was used only on rare occasions. Their clothes were all of maternal manufacture, except hats and shoes, and these last were worn only in the winter. They not only used no tea or coffee themselves, but they knew no family that did use them. Meat and bread and milk const.i.tuted the diet of that cla.s.s. They looked upon the gentry as a superior caste. Jarratt, in his autobiography, describing his early days, says: "For my part, I was quite shy of them, and kept off at an humble distance. A periwig in those days was a distinguishing badge of gentle-folk, and when I saw a man riding the road near our house with a wig on, it would so alarm my fears and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that I dare say I would run off as for my life." He lived to see society reduced to the opposite, and, in his opinion, worse extreme of republican levelling, insubordination, and irreverence. His early education was confined to reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic, some short prayers, and the church catechism. Upon his father's death, Robert, the eldest son, inherited the land, and Devereux's share of the personal property was twenty-five pounds, Virginia currency, which he was to receive when he should reach the age of twenty-one. The relative value of money was four times greater then than it was fifty years afterwards. A good horse could be bought for five pounds, and a good cow and calf for a pistole, or three dollars and sixty cents. At eight or nine years of age young Jarratt was sent to school, and so continued, with great interruptions, for three or four years. By this time he had learned to read the Bible indifferently, to write a sorry hand, and had acquired some knowledge of arithmetic, and this closed his educational curriculum. Being placed now under the guardianship of his elder brother, his employments for some years were threefold: 1st, taking care of and training race-horses; 2d, taking care of gamec.o.c.ks and preparing them for a match and main; 3d, ploughing, harrowing, and other plantation work. At the age of seventeen he undertook the business of a carpenter, under another brother, who often had recourse to "hard words and severe blows," which he "did not at all relish;" but he continued to labor in this way until about 1750.

During the five or six years while he lived with his brothers, he never heard or saw anything of a religious nature, nor did he go to the parish church once a year. The parish minister was a poor preacher, very near-sighted, and, reading his sermons closely, he kept his eyes fixed on the paper, and so near that what he said "seemed rather addressed to the cushion than to the congregation." This parson was rarely observed to stand erect and face the audience, except when he denounced some individual in the congregation with whom he happened to have a quarrel.

Cards, dancing, racing, etc., were then the favorite pastimes, and young Jarratt partic.i.p.ated in them as far as his leisure and circ.u.mstances would permit, and this as well on Sundays as on other days. Not being content with his stock of learning, and skill in arithmetic being the chief desideratum among the common people, he borrowed a book, and while his plough-horse was grazing at noon applied himself to that study, and made rapid progress. He felt conscious at this time that the plough and the axe were not his element; and his skill in the division of crops, in the rule of three, and in practice, soon became so widely known that he was, unexpectedly, when at the age of nineteen, invited to set up a school in Albemarle County, one hundred miles distant from New Kent. His baggage appears to have const.i.tuted no considerable impediment to his journey, for he says: "I think I carried the whole on my back except one shirt." His entire wardrobe at this time consisted of a pair of coa.r.s.e breeches, one or two Oznaburg shirts, a pair of shoes and stockings, an old felt hat, and a bear-skin coat, the first garment of that kind that had ever been made for him. To improve the gentility of his appearance he put on a cast-off wig, which he procured from a servant. On setting out for Albemarle, young Jarratt had not a farthing of money, and never had been master of as much as five shillings cash.

The income of the school scarce afforded him clothing of the coa.r.s.est kind, but he gained the confidence of his employer, who was an overseer for a lowland gentleman, so far, that he trusted him with "as much checks as made him two new shirts." Albemarle was then a frontier county; there was no minister or public worship within many miles, and the Sabbath was spent in sports and amus.e.m.e.nts. Here he met with Whitefield's Eight Sermons, delivered at Glasgow, the first book of sermons that he ever saw. Jarratt went next to live with a wealthy gentleman, whose wife was a pious Presbyterian, spoken of as a New Light. It was while he was under Presbyterian influences that his conversion took place. When upwards of twenty-five years old he commenced the study of Latin under Alexander Martin, sent from Princeton College, a private tutor in the family of a gentleman in c.u.mberland.

Martin was afterwards governor of North Carolina. Mr. Jarratt intended to become a Presbyterian minister, but in 1762 changed his mind, and began to prepare to take orders in the established church. Upon a further acquaintance with the subject his prejudices against that church and its liturgy were removed, and he came to be of opinion that the Prayer Book contained, at the least, as good a system of doctrine and public worship as the Presbyterian; the doctrinal articles he considered the same, in substance, in both churches, and the different modes of worship he held to be not essential. His mind hung in equilibrium between the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church as regarded their theory, and balancing the secular advantages, he decided in favor of the established church, mainly because "he saw the Presbyterian ministers dependent on annual subscriptions--a mode of support very precarious in itself, and which subjects the minister to the caprice of so many people, and tends to bind his hands and hinder his usefulness."

To this he adds: "The general prejudice of the people at that time against dissenters and in favor of the church, gave me a full persuasion that I could do more good in the church than anywhere else." The fact is, however, that at that time the popular feeling was growing less friendly to the clergy of the established church and more friendly to dissenters. Embarking for England, in October, 1762, and being ordained deacon by the Bishop of London, and priest by the Bishop of Chester, he preached several times in London, and was "suspected of being a Methodist." While in that city he heard Whitefield and Wesley. He returned to Virginia in July. Shortly afterwards he was received as minister of Bath Parish, in Dinwiddie, he being then in his thirty-first year. He found his people as ignorant of true religion as if they had never frequented a church or heard a sermon. As regarded other Episcopal clergymen, he did not know of one in Virginia like-minded with himself.

He was indeed opposed and reproached by them as a fanatic, a dissenter, a Presbyterian. His preaching, although at first unacceptable, proved, ere long, effective, and crowded congregations attended his ministrations. The interest extending widely beyond his parish, he spent part of his time in itinerant preaching, going several hundred miles and in every direction. The clergy in general being unwilling to open their churches for him, and they being not large enough to contain the crowds which he attracted, he was in the habit of preaching in the open air, under trees, arbors, or booths, and he had the advantage of a voice which was audible to his large congregations. The clergy frequently threatened him with writs and prosecutions for the violation of canonical order, but he retorted upon them successfully, and maintained his ground. At length he met with sympathy and co-operation from the Rev. Mr. McRoberts, and an intimacy continued between them for many years. But as Mr. Jarratt, who was at first in effect a Presbyterian, became a minister of the established church, so eventually, many years afterwards, during the revolutionary war, his friend and coadjutor, Mr.

McRoberts, became a Presbyterian minister. Their friendship remained uninterrupted.

About the year 1769 the increase of the number of Baptists produced some divisions among Mr. Jarratt's people. The Methodists appearing in Virginia about the same time, and professing to be virtually members of the Church of England, Mr. Jarratt (in order to resist the encroachments of the Baptists) co-operated with them in building up their societies; but he found reason subsequently to repent of this step, and although often styled a Methodist himself, yet he finally broke off entirely from that denomination.[567:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[567:A] Life of Rev. Devereux Jarratt, 5, 107. His sermons were published in several volumes.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

1773-1774.

Duty on Tea--Dunmore, Governor--Proceedings of a.s.sembly-- Private Meeting of Patriots--Committees of Correspondence-- Washington--Dunmore visits the Frontier.

IN the year 1770, all the duties on articles imported into America having been repealed, save that on tea, the American merchants refused to import that commodity from England. Consequently a large stock of it was acc.u.mulated in the warehouses of the East India Company; and the government in 1773 authorized the company to ship it to America free from any export duty. The light import duty payable in America being far less than that from which it was exempted in England, it was taken for granted that it would sell more readily in the colony than before it had been made a subject of taxation. It was, indeed, by some looked upon as now rather a question of commerce than of taxation; the main object of the British government appears to have been to put an end to the trade between the colonies and Holland, (a trade contraband according to the letter of the law, but the law had been practically long obsolete,) and to give to the East India Company a monopoly of the colonial markets.

But it was in general regarded in America as a test question of revenue.

The tea-ships arrived in America, and measures were taken to prevent the landing of the tea; at Boston several cargoes were thrown overboard in the night of December the eighteenth, into the sea, by a party of men disguised as Indians, acting under the advice of Samuel Adams, and other leading patriots. Other colonies either compelled the masters of the tea-ships to return with their cargoes, or excluded them from sale; and thus not a chest of it was sold for the benefit of the company. Tea had hitherto been imported by Pennsylvania, New York, and Ma.s.sachusetts into the colonies to the value of three hundred thousand pounds annually from Holland and her dependencies. In Virginia the use of this beverage was now generally abandoned.[569:A]

Intelligence of the occurrences at Boston having reached England, parliament ordered the port of that town to be closed on the fourth day of June; and other strong measures were adopted in order to reduce Ma.s.sachusetts to submission. The colonies, like the captives in the cave of Polyphemus, were conscious of being involved in a common danger; and that if one should fall a victim, the destruction of the rest would be only a question of time.

When John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, the newly-appointed governor of Virginia, reached Williamsburg, early in 1772, he found that he had already incurred suspicion on account of the appointment of Captain Foy as his clerk, or private secretary, with a salary of five hundred pounds, to be derived from new-created fees. Foy had distinguished himself at the battle of Minden, and had been afterwards governor of New Hampshire. Dunmore summoned the a.s.sembly which met in February; and his apparent haughtiness at the first rather heightened the prejudice against him. He, however, relinquished the objectionable fees, and thus conciliated so good a feeling that the a.s.sembly expressed their grat.i.tude in warm and affectionate terms. Some important acts were pa.s.sed during this session, including several for the promotion of internal improvement--for improving the navigation of the Potomac; for making a road from the Warm Spring to Jenning's Gap; for clearing the Matapony; for circ.u.mventing the falls of James River by a ca.n.a.l from Westham; and for cutting a ca.n.a.l across from Archer's Hope Creek to Queen's Creek, through Williamsburg, to connect the James River with the York. The Counties of Berkley and Dunmore were carved out from Frederick.[569:B]

The a.s.sembly was prorogued to the tenth of June. Dunmore, notwithstanding his recent complaisance, evinced his distaste for a.s.semblies by proroguing them from time to time, until at length a forgery of the paper-currency of the colony compelled him to call the legislature together again, by proclamation, March 4th, 1773--the thirteenth year of the reign of George the Third. His lordship's measures in apprehending the counterfeiters had been more energetic than legal, and the a.s.sembly, not diverted by their care for the treasury from a regard to personal rights, requested that his proceedings might not be drawn into a precedent.

The horizon was again darkened by gathering clouds. A British armed revenue vessel having been burnt in Narraganset Bay, an act of parliament was pa.s.sed making such offences punishable by death, and authorizing the accused to be transported to England for trial. Virginia had already, in 1709, remonstrated against this last measure. The conservatives, the _statu quo_ party in the a.s.sembly, as usual, differed with the movement party as to the proper measure to be adopted. Patrick Henry, Mr. Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Francis L. Lee, Dabney Carr, and perhaps one or two others were at this gloomy period in the habit of meeting together in the evening in a private room of the Raleigh, to consult on the state of affairs. In conformity with their agreement, Dabney Carr, on the twelfth of March, moved a series of resolutions, recommending a committee of correspondence, and instructing them to inquire in regard to the newly-const.i.tuted court in Rhode Island.

Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry made speeches of memorable eloquence on this occasion. Mr. Lee was the author of the plan of intercolonial committees of correspondence; and Virginia was the first colony that adopted it. The resolutions pa.s.sed without opposition, and Dunmore immediately dissolved the house. These resolutions "struck a greater panic into the ministers" than anything that had taken place since the pa.s.sage of the stamp act.[570:A]

The committee of correspondence appointed were Peyton Randolph, Robert C. Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson. On the day after the dissolution, this committee addressed a circular to the other colonies. Robert Carter Nicholas published, during this year, a pamphlet in defence of colonial rights.

Dabney Carr, although young, was, according to Mr. Jefferson, a formidable rival at the bar to Patrick Henry, and promised to become a distinguished statesman; but he died shortly after, in the thirtieth year of his age, greatly lamented. The judge of the same name was his son. Washington was a member of this a.s.sembly, and supported the patriotic measures, perhaps, however, as yet little dreaming that the colonies were on the verge of revolution and war. He was still on friendly terms with Governor Dunmore, who appreciated his abilities and character. He, indeed, intended about this time, in compliance with the governor's invitation, to accompany him in a tour of observation to the western frontier of Virginia, where both of them had an interest in lands; but this was prevented by the illness and death of Miss Custis, the daughter of Mrs. Washington by a former marriage.