The Colonial Cavalier Part 11

When its charter was granted, a curious condition was attached, providing that the president and professors should yearly offer two copies of Latin verses to the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia. The bargain seems to have been strictly kept, for _The Gazette_ records:

"On this day sen-night, the president, masters and scholars of William and Mary College went, according to their annual custom, in a body to the Governor's, to present His Honor with two copies of Latin verses in obedience to their charter, as a grateful acknowledgement for two valuable tracts of land given the said college by their late Majesties, King William and Queen Mary. Mr President delivered the verses to His Honor and two of the young gentlemen spoke them."

In 1700, the college authorities ushered in the century with a grand celebration, including prize declamations and various exercises. The novel and exciting entertainment roused such an interest that visitors came from Annapolis and the Maryland sh.o.r.e, and even from the far-away colony of New York, while Indians thronged the streets to watch the gayety. The town then was at the height of its prosperity.

Not content with a palace, a capitol, and a college, Williamsburg actually aspired to own a bookstore, which was after all not altogether unreasonable, since there was no considerable one south of Boston.

Accordingly the college authorities met to consider the matter, and finally resolved that--

"M{r} W{m} Parks intending to open a book-seller's shop in this Town, and having proposed to furnish the students of this College with such books at a reasonable price as the Masters shall direct him to send for, and likewise to take all the schoolbooks now in the College and pay 35 p. cent on the sterling cost to make it currency, his proposals are unanimously agreed to."

The first building of William and Mary College was planned, so they say, by Sir Christopher Wren, but it was burned down, one night only five years after the grand celebration, "the governor and all the gentlemen in town coming to the lamentable spectacle; many of them getting out of their beds." Again and again the building has suffered from the flames. Yet as it stands there to-day--with its stiff, straight walls stained and weather-beaten, its bricks laid up in the good old English fashion of stretchers and headers, its steps worn with the tread of generations--it is full of a pensive charm. Its record is one for Virginians to be proud of, since as one of them boasts:

"It has sent out for their work in the world twenty-seven soldiers of the Revolution, two attorney-generals, nearly twenty members of Congress, fifteen senators, seventeen governors, thirty-seven judges, a lieutenant-general, two commodores, twelve professors, four signers of the Declaration, seven cabinet officers, a chief justice, and three presidents of the United States."

If I was tempted at first, as I stood before the brick, barn-like building, to exclaim at its ugliness, my frivolous criticism was abashed, as this phantom procession filed through its doorway, for I too, who am not of their blood, claim a share in their greatness, and salute their names with reverent humility.

Laws, Punishments, and Politics

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAWS, PUNISHMENTS, _and_ POLITICS.

Y{e} Stocks.]

It is a far cry from Patrick Henry, pouring out defiance against the king, while his listeners as one man echoed his final words, "Liberty or death!"

back to the night of the arrival of the English ships in Chesapeake Bay, when the box given under the royal seal was opened, and the names of the council who were to govern Virginia were found within. It would have seemed to the group of men standing about the sacred casket on that April night incredible that, within their province of Virginia in the next century, the authority of the king and the power of all England should be openly and successfully set at defiance. Yet so it came to pa.s.s, naturally, gradually and inevitably.

The first settlers in Virginia lived in a political condition which may be described as a communism, subject to a despotism. Their goods were held in a common stock, and they drew their rations from "a common kettel," but all the time they felt the strong arm of royal authority stretched across the Atlantic, to rule their affairs without consent of the governed. Both communism and despotism worked badly for the settlers. The first promoted idleness, the second encouraged dissensions, discontent and tale-bearing, each party to a Colonial quarrel being eager to be the first to run home and lay his side of the story before the King. Sir Thomas Dale changed all this communistic living. "When our people were fed out of the common store," writes one of the earliest settlers, "glad was he who could slip from his labor, or slumber over his taske he cared not how; nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true paines in a weeke, as now for themselves they will doe in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever the harvest prospered, the generall store must maintain them, so that wee reaped not so much corne from the labours of thirtie, as now three or foure doe provide for themselves."

Dale allotted to every man three acres of ground, and compelled each to work both for himself and for the public store. His rule was, on the whole, beneficent though arbitrary; but the settlers constantly suffered from the lack of power to make laws, or arrange their simplest affairs without seeking permission from king and council.

Fortunately, after a few years a radical change was wrought; a change whose importance cannot be overestimated. In 1619 Sir George Yeardley came over as Governor of Virginia. He proclaimed that "those cruel laws by which the Ancient Planters had so long been governed" were now done away with, and henceforth they were to be ruled by English law, like all other English subjects. Nor was this all. Shortly after, followed one of those epoch-making declarations which posterity always wonders not to find printed in italics: "That the planters might have a hande in the governing of themselves, yt was grannted that a general a.s.semblie shoulde be helde yearly once, whereat were to be present, the governor and counsell, with two burgesses from each plantation, freely to be elected by the inhabitants thereof, this a.s.semblie to have power to make and ordaine whatsoever lawes and orders should by them be thought good and profitable for their subsistence."

Thus the same year and almost the same month witnessed two events of deep significance to Virginia, the purchase of the first African slaves, and the establishment of the first free a.s.sembly in America. So strangely are the threads of destiny blended! And thus, while the strife between king and people was just beginning to cast its shadow over England, there was quietly inaugurated here at James City a government essentially "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

The measures they adopted at this first free a.s.sembly, the laws they made, the punishments they imposed, are of little importance. The fact of mighty moment is that they met, and though the scope of their power was limited, to be extended two years later, and though they were afterward to struggle on through varying fortunes to the heights of entire freedom, yet this a.s.sembly of 1619 was forever to be memorable as the germ of representative government on this continent.

In the _Quire_ of the old brick church, these Burgesses gathered, twenty-two of them, from James City, Charles City, Henrico, Kiccowtan (now Hampton), Martin-Brandon, Smythe's Hundred, Martin's Hundred, Argall's Gift, Lawne's Plantation, Ward's Plantation, and Flowerda Hundred. First, led by Parson Bucke, they asked G.o.d's guidance; and on the principle that heaven helps those who help themselves, they then set themselves to the task of framing laws to take the place of the "Iron Code" which Sir Thomas Dale had brought over from the Netherlands, and which strongly suggested the methods of the Inquisition.

Dale's code declared absence from Sunday services a capital offense. One guilty of blasphemy a second time, was sentenced to have a bodkin thrust through his tongue. A Mr. Barnes, of Bermuda Hundred, having uttered a detracting speech against a worthy gentleman in Dale's time, was condemned to have his tongue run through with an awl, to pa.s.s through a guard of forty men, and to be b.u.t.ted by every one of them, and at the head of the troop, knocked down, and footed out of the fort. A woman found guilty as a common scold, was sentenced to be ducked three times from a ship in the James River, and one mild statute declared that any person speaking disgraceful words of any person in the colony, should be tied, hand and foot together, upon the ground, every night for the s.p.a.ce of one month. It must be said in excuse for the severities of Dale that he had a turbulent mob to discipline. He himself describes them as gathered in riotous or infected places, persons "so profane, of so riotous and treasonable intendments, that in a parcel of three hundred, not many gave testimony beside their name, that they were Christians." Another point to be remembered in defence of this iron soldier, is that all punishments in those days were such as would seem to us cruel and unwarrantable in proportion to the offence. The gallows in London was never idle. Almost every crime was capital. I read in the story of the Virginia adventurers in the Somer Iles of a desperate fellow who, "being to be arraigned for stealing a Turky, rather than he would endure his triall, secretly conveighed himself to sea in a little boat, and never since was heard of." I feel very confident that this poor "Turky"-stealer would never have tempted those stormy waters in a skiff, had he not known full well that a worse fate than drowning awaited him, if he stayed to stand his trial.

The laws introduced by the House of Burgesses were strict enough, and their punishments sufficiently severe. The statutes enacted against "idlenesse" were so salutary that they would soon have exterminated such a social pest as the modern tramp. The law went even further than forbidding idleness, and undertook to discipline those guilty of any neglect of duty.

Thomas Garnett, who was accused by his master of wanton and profligate conduct, "and extreame neglect of his businesse" was condemned "to stand fower dayes with his eares nayled to the Pillory, and that he, every of those fower days, should be publiquely whipped."

The humiliation of the criminal was the special end and aim of the punishment. Richard Buckland, for writing a slanderous song concerning Ann Smith, was ordered to stand at the church-door during service with a paper round his hat, inscribed "_Inimicus Libellus_," and afterward to ask forgiveness of G.o.d, and also in particular of the defamed Ann Smith. Two convicted sinners were sentenced to stand in church with white sheets round their shoulders and white wands in their hands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Y{e} Pillory.]

Throughout the century, the statute-books of Virginia and Maryland show a vindictiveness toward criminals which is out of accord with the degree of civilization existing in the colonies. The crime of hog-stealing is visited with special retributions. It is enacted by the Maryland a.s.sembly that any person convicted as a hog-stealer "shall for the first offence stand in the pillory att the Provincial Court four Compleat Hours, & shall have his eares cropt, & pay treble damages; & for the second time, the offender shall be stigmatized in the forehead with the letter H, and pay treble damages; and for the third offence of Hogg stealing, he or they so offending shall be adjudged as fellons. And the Delinquent shall have noe Benefite of Clergy." In another note in the Maryland archives I find: "Putt to the Vote. Whither a Law bee not necessary Prohibiting Negros or any other servants to keepe piggs, hoggs, or any other sort of Swyne uppon any pretence whatsoever."

Hog-stealing seems to have ranked next to murder as an offence, and to have been punished almost as severely--perhaps on Shylock's principle, that they took life who took the means of livelihood; and the hog in the early days was the chief wealth and maintenance of the settler.

Superst.i.tion, as well as cruelty, played its part in the old criminal processes. The blood-ordeal long survived, and the belief was general that a corpse would bleed beneath the murderer's touch. On one occasion, when a serving-woman in Maryland had died under suspicious circ.u.mstances, her fellow-servants were summoned one by one to lay hands on the corpse; but as no blood appeared beneath their touch, the jury declared the woman's death to be the act of G.o.d.

On the whole, the inhabitants of the Southern Colonies, excepting always the negroes, were singularly free from superst.i.tion. The witchcraft delusion, which played such havoc in New England, never obtained a foothold in the Cavalier Colonies. Grace Sherwood was, it is true, accused in Princess Anne County of being a witch, and sentenced to the test of sinking or floating when thrown into the water; but her case stands out quite alone in the annals of Virginia, whereas the same county records show several suits against accusers as defamers of character. Here we find "Jn{o} Byrd and Anne his wife suing Jn{o} Pites" in an action of Defamation; their pet.i.tion sets forth "that the Defend{t} had falsely & Scandalously Defamed them, saying they had rid him along the sea-side & home to his own house, by which kind of Discourse they were Reported & rendered as if they were witches, or in league with the Devill, praying 100 sterl. Damage with cost. The Deft. for answer acknowledgeth that to his thoughts, apprehension or best knowledge they did serve him soe." The jury found for the defendant, but brought no action against the witches who did serve him so.

In lower Norfolk County the defamer did not escape so easily, for "Whereas Ann G.o.dby, the Wife of Tho. G.o.dby hath contrary to an ord{r} of y{e} Court bearing date in May 1655, concerning some slanders & scandalls cast upon women under y{e} notion of witches, hath contemptuously acted in abusing & Taking y{e} good name & Credit of nic{o} Robinson's wife, terming her a witche, as by severall deposicons appeares. It is therefore ord{d} that y{e} s{d} Tho. Goodby shall pay three hundred pounds of Tob{o} & Caske fine for her contempt of y{e} menconed order (being y{e} first time) & also pay & defray y{e} cost of sute together w{th} y{e} Witnesses' charges at twenty pounds tob{o} p day."

Maryland, too, may boast of an unstained record, and of a vigorous warfare against the persecution. An old record tells how John Washington, Esquire, of Westmoreland County, in Virginia, having made complaint against Edward Prescott, merchant, "Accusin s{d} Prescott of ffelony under the Governm{t} of this Province (_i. e._ Maryland) Alleaging how that hee, the s{d} Prescott, hanged a Witch on his ship as hee was outward bound from England hither the last yeare. Uppon w{ch} complaynt of the s{d} Washington, the Gov{r} caused the s{d} Edward Prescott to bee arrested."

Prescott admitted that one Elizabeth Richardson was hanged on his ship, outward bound from England, but claimed that John Greene, being the master of the vessel, was responsible, and not he. "Whereupon (standing upon his Justificaon) Proclamacaon was made by the Sheriffe in these very words. O yes, &c. Edward Prescott Prisoner at the Bar uppon suspition of ffelony stand uppon his acquittall. If any person can give evidence against him, lett him come in, for the Prisoner otherwise will be acquitt. And noe one appearing, the Prisoner is acquitted by the Board." Yet, though there is not a single conviction of witchcraft to stain the legal records of Maryland, her statute-book in 1639 declared sorcery, blasphemy and idolatry punishable with death; accessories before the fact to be treated as princ.i.p.als. The accusation of blasphemy or idolatry was always a serious one, and the more so on account of its vagueness. Scant proof was required, and the punishment was severe.

A Virginia article of war enacted that swearing or drunkenness among the soldiery, at the third offense be punished by riding the wooden-horse for an hour, with a musket tied to each foot, and by asking forgiveness at the next meeting for prayer and preaching. This sentence requiring the offender to ask forgiveness is very common in the pages of the statute books as a sequel to the infliction of punishment. Punishment was still disciplinary. Society was a pedagogue and the criminal a naughty school-boy, who must go down on his knees in a proper state of humility before he can be pardoned.

After Bacon's Rebellion, the rebels were sentenced to go through this form of begging forgiveness with a halter round the neck, as a symbol of the right of the Governor to hang them all if he saw fit. One William Potts, being of a haughty spirit, or perhaps possessed of a grim sense of humor, wore round his neck instead of the hempen halter, "a Manchester binding,"

otherwise a piece of tape. But the jest, if jest it were, was not apparently appreciated by the authorities, for it appears that the Sheriff was straightway deputed to see "that said Potts performe the Law." On the whole, the "said Potts" must have thought himself fortunate, for trifling with magistrates was sternly dealt with in his day, and _answering back_ by no means tolerated.

From the times of Dale onward, a great many statutes were enacted, designed to silence women's tongues. An old Virginia law runs: "Whereas oftentimes many brabling women often slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poore husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages," it is enacted that all women found guilty of the above offence be sentenced to ducking.

The punishment was undoubtedly successful for the time--that is, while the criminal was underwater; but it is hard to believe that bad tempers or gossiping habits were permanently cured by the ducking-stool. This curious implement of discipline may still be seen in the old prints. It consists of a chair bound to the end of a long board, which, when released on the land side, plunged the occupant of the chair under water as many times as the magistrate or "her poore husband" required.

Near the court-house, in every town, stood a ducking-stool, a whipping-post, a pillory, and a pair of stocks. In the pillory the criminal stood on a raised platform, with his hands and head thrust through a board on the level with his shoulders, in helpless ignominy. At Queenstown a man found guilty of selling short measure was compelled to stand thus for hours, with the word _cheat_ written on his back, while the populace pelted him with stones and eggs. The stocks, while equally ignominious, were somewhat more comfortable, since the malefactor was seated on a bench with his hands and feet pinioned by the jointed planks before him. These were mild forms of punishment. For serious offences, far harsher methods were adopted. Ears were cropped from bleeding heads, hands and feet were cut off, or the offender was sentenced to whipping at the cart's tail, whereupon he was tied to the back of a cart, slowly driven through the town, and thus flogged, as he went, by the common executioner.

A not unusual punishment was branding the cheek, forehead, or shoulder with the first letter of the crime committed--as R., for running away; P., for perjury, or S. L., for Seditious Libel. Indeed, the man who escaped with his life from the hands of colonial justice, might count himself fortunate, though he were condemned to go through the remainder of his existence minus a hand, a foot, or an ear; or to have the ignominy of his sentence written on his face for all to read; for sterner punishment than any of these was possible.

Death itself was meted out not infrequently, and the barbarities of drawing and quartering in some instances, fortunately rare, added horror to punishment, and the statistics we find quite calmly set down make the blood run cold.

At a Court held for Goochland County the ninth day of October Anno Domi MDCCx.x.xIII for laying the County levey.

Present:

John ffleming, Daniel Sfoner, Tarlton ffleming, George Payne, William Cabbell, James Skelton, Gent. Justices.

Goochland County Dr. Tobacco.

To Thomas Walker & Joseph Dabbs sub-sherifs for a mistake in the levey in 1732 10

To Do. for going to Williamsburg for a Comission of Oyer & Terminer to try Champion, Lucy, Valentine, Sampson, Harry & George, Negros 90 miles going at 2lb and 90 miles returning at 2lb p. mile 360

To Do. for sumoning the Justices and attending the Court for the tryal of the said Negros. 200

To Do. for Executing Champion & Valentine, 250lb each 500

To Do. for providing Tarr, burying the trunk, cutting out the quarters a Pott, Carts & horses carrying and setting up the heads & quarters of the two Negros at the places mentioned by order of Court 2000

And this was in our own country, only a century and a half ago!