Give Me Liberty: the Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia

Volume 46

GIVE ME LIBERTY

The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia

THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER Edwards Professor Emeritus of American History Princeton University

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY INDEPENDENCE SQUARE PHILADELPHIA 1958

COPYRIGHT 1958 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-9093

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY J. H. FURST COMPANY, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Preface

None of the American colonies "will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and privileges which are essential to the happiness of every free state," George Washington wrote in October, 1774. Perhaps the British officer to whom he made this statement was startled to have him speak of the colonies as free. Yet at the time the American people were the freest in the world, freer even than the people of England. It was to defend this freedom, not to gain new rights, that the colonists rebelled against Great Britain. For decades they had been governing themselves, so when the British Ministry tried to govern them from London, they would not submit.

To understand what was in the minds and hearts of George Washington, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and the other patriots, it is necessary to know how the colonies became self-governing. One must follow the political battles and hard-earned victories of their fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers in the colonial Assemblies.

This volume treats of the struggle for self-government in Virginia from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the Declaration of Independence. The story of the gradual lessening of the King's prerogative, of the weakening of the power of the Governor, of the emergence of the Assembly as the ruling body could be paralleled in other colonies. But it is of especial importance in Virginia, where was held the first representative Assembly in the New World, and which gave so many leaders to the American Revolution.

I wish to express my appreciation to my Alma Mater, the University of Virginia, for its award of a Thomas Jefferson Research Fellowship, without which this volume would not have been written.

THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER.

Princeton, N. J. April 1, 1957.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Cornerstone of Liberty 1

II. Self-government 17

III. We Prefer Another Governor 36

IV. Royalty Overthrown 54

V. A Bacon! A Bacon! 76

VI. Reconstruction and Despotism 97

VII. The Glorious Revolution 122

VIII. The Virginia Hitler 133

IX. The Virginia House of Lords 151

X. Spotswood 160

XI. Peace and Prosperity 177

XII. At Stake--Liberty and a Continent 194

XIII. The Widening Rift 209

XIV. Independence 232

Essay on Sources 258

Index 265

Illustrations

Thomas Jefferson. Portrait by Thomas Sully in the Hall of the American Philosophical Society frontispiece

The Old Capitol at Williamsburg, showing the north elevation which is a duplicate of the historic Virginia Capitol originally completed in 1705. Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. facing page 134

The House of Burgesses in the Old Capitol at Williamsburg. Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. 134

Governor Dinwiddie. Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery of London 196

The General Court in the Old Capitol at Williamsburg. Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. 196

Lord Dunmore. From the copy in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society of the original portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds 238

The Governor's Palace, Williamsburg. Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. 238

CHAPTER I. The Cornerstone of Liberty

THE CORNERSTONE OF LIBERTY

Three little vessels--the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery--left England in December, 1606, under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, to found a colony on the distant shores of Virginia. Two decades earlier Sir Walter Raleigh had sent out a group of settlers to what is now North Carolina, and they had disappeared mysteriously. What had happened to them? men asked. Had they been killed by the Indians? Had they fallen victims to disease? Had they starved? Those who shared in this new venture must have wondered if a like fate awaited them in this strange new land.

But their spirits rose when they entered Chesapeake Bay. Landing parties were delighted with the "fair meddowes ... full of flowers of divers kinds and colors," the "goodly tall trees," and the streams of fresh water. It was a smiling country which seemed to bid them welcome. But when they entered the mouth of a broad river, which they called the James in honor of their King, and made their way up into the country, new doubts must have assailed them. They knew that savages lived in the dense forests which lined both banks; might not strange wild beasts live there also? Might there not be fatal diseases unknown in Europe?

Possibly they wondered what type of government Englishmen would live under here. In the charter granted the Virginia Company of London in 1606 it was promised that they should "enjoy all the liberties, franchises, and immunities" of Englishmen, "as if they had been abiding" in England. Even without this promise they would have taken it for granted that they were not surrendering the freedom derived from their ancestors. This was the view taken six decades later by Francis Moryson and Thomas Ludwell, agents for the colony. If the King planted a colony of Englishmen, they and their heirs ought by law to enjoy the "same liberties and privileges as Englishmen in England." After all, the colony would be but "an extension or dilation of the realm of England."

The men who came to Virginia had, in the mother country, participated in the government through representatives of their own choosing, so they insisted upon this right in their new home. They claimed, also, the habeas corpus, jury trial, and freedom from taxation save by their own consent. In England not even the King could take a man's money legally until it had been granted by the House of Commons. Upon this recognized principle English liberty was chiefly based; upon its acceptance in America depended the future of liberty there.

Yet when the first band of settlers stepped ashore at Jamestown, liberty in England still hung in the balance. At the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses the King was almost absolute. The people were desperately tired of anarchy; they were tired also of the oppressions of the barons. So long as the King put an end to both they had no desire to limit his power. The Commons ate out of his hand. Henry VIII might tear the Church from the Roman see, Mary might restore it, Edward might once more break with Rome--in each case the people submitted. Those who dared resist faced the headsman's block or the pyre.

But in time the memory of the Wars of the Roses grew dim. And the growth of the artisan class, the development of trade, the birth of a great literature, the work of the universities, the expansion of world horizons fired the imagination and awakened men to their own potentialities. Self-government is a tender plant which withers in the soil of poverty and ignorance, and it was the advance of prosperity and enlightenment under the Tudors which made possible the flowering of liberty under the Stuarts.

James I had been on the throne only three years when the little town which bore his name was founded. James has been called the wisest fool in Christendom; but he was neither wise nor a fool. His conception of the King's office was logical and simple. It was his function to rule; the duty of the people was to obey. If they did not, like bad children they should be scolded and perhaps punished, since it was not only illegal but wicked to question the King's authority. "As to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so it is sedition in subjects to dispute what a King may do," he said. Parliament he considered a nuisance. "I am surprised that my ancestors should have permitted such an institution to come into existence," he said. "I am a stranger and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of."

The House of Commons were not inclined to accept the King's theory of the relations between himself and Parliament. When James told them that they had no privileges save by royal grace, they replied that he had been misinformed. When in answer to James' demand that they refrain from meddling in foreign affairs, they entered on their journal a protestation of their right of free speech, he was so enraged that he sent for the book and with his own hands tore out the page.

The Commons considered it a precious privilege to be "governed by certain rules of law ... and not by uncertain or arbitrary form of government." There is a general fear among the people, they told James, that royal proclamations might eventually assume the nature of laws. Then their ancient freedom would be abridged, "if not quite taken away," and "a new form of arbitrary government" brought on the realm.

The conflict between King and Parliament foreshadowed the conflict between the Governors and the people of the colonies. The provincial Assemblies were not less determined to resist any infringement on their rights than was Parliament. And the fortunes of the contending forces in the mother country affected profoundly those in the colonies. Echoes of the First Stuart Despotism, the Civil War and Commonwealth, the Restoration, the Second Stuart Despotism, the Glorious Revolution, the laissez-faire period, and the reaction under George III reverberated in the colonies.

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