Part 2 (2/2)

Just before dawn, three of the African men on board saw that the seamen on watch had fallen asleep. They lowered a boat from the s.h.i.+p's stern and drifted seaward. Captain Banning came on deck at dawn. He found the watch asleep and a boat missing. A quick search between decks revealed that three Africans were gone. As Banning and his men looked out to sea, the moon, setting in the west, cast a long stream of light across the water. In its glow they saw their boat and the Africans. The captain ordered out a boat in pursuit. The Africans could not hope to outrun the rowing seamen. Both were followed by sharks. As the sailors' boat closed, two Africans jumped into the sea. Sharks ripped them apart. The third man hesitated; he could not bring himself to jump, and fell into the sailors' hands. Weeks later, he was one of the five slaves Captain Banning took onto the wharf at Oxford, Maryland.

After a stormy winter voyage to London, Captain Banning left Anthony Bacon's service. Bacon, in his mid-forties, was a contractor for the government. He supplied provisions for soldiers in Senegal and for sailors of the Royal Navy in the West Indies. He kept an agent in Antigua, where the navy had its main port facilities and safest anchorage in English Harbor on the island's southern coast. His roving partner on the North American mainland, Gilbert Francklyn, arranged for s.h.i.+pments of 100 barrels of pork at a time from Norfolk to Antigua.

Bacon had other representatives along Chesapeake Bay and its rivers, seeking cargoes for his s.h.i.+ps King of Prussia, Desire, Unity, Peggy King of Prussia, Desire, Unity, Peggy, and Sarah Sarah. One was Fielding Lewis of Fredericksburg, to whom Bacon gave power of attorney in 1759. At the age of thirty-four, Lewis had been a big man in Fredericksburg since his twenties. The same year he allied with Bacon, he and Dr. Walker's colleague, Charles d.i.c.k, added a private gallery for their families in the Church of St. George's Parish. Into the gallery filed Lewis's daughter by his first wife, Catherine Was.h.i.+ngton Lewis, and four sons by his second wife, the late Catherine's cousin, Betty Was.h.i.+ngton Lewis, George Was.h.i.+ngton's sister. Owning thousands of acres in the Shenandoah Valley, Fielding Lewis helped elect Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton to the House of Burgesses from Frederick County. He joined his brother-in-law as a burgess in 1760.

Fielding Lewis began his career as a merchant at the upper end of Fredericksburg's main street with help from his father, John Lewis of Gloucester County. Fielding learned from his father's first representative, John Thornton. When Fielding was thirty-two, Thornton recommended him to the governor and Council to replace the drunken, foul-mouthed John Spotswood as county lieutenant for Spotsylvania County. Thornton's sister, Mildred, was Dr. Walker's wife. Of course, Walker and John Lewis, in founding the Loyal Company, had brought in Fielding Lewis and John Thornton. They all had reason to agree with Anthony Bacon and other London merchants who congratulated William Pitt on the fall of Fort Duquesne and Britain's reconquest of ”the extensive and fertile Lands of the Ohio.” Fielding and Betty Lewis also owned many acres in and around Fredericksburg. Their steady sale of lots marked the town's growth. They rode past their properties in their new post chariot, drawn by six horses. Despite advantages from allying with Fielding Lewis, Bacon had cause to complain: Lewis's imports from London exceeded in value cargoes he sent to Bacon.

Among Bacon's customers in his consignment trade was George Was.h.i.+ngton, who bought materials for fancy clothes, paying in tobacco. Bacon also s.h.i.+pped to Charles Carroll of Annapolis in return for pig iron and to George Braxton, son of Speaker Robinson's late colleague from King and Queen County. During the war Bacon supplied arms and ammunition to Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was versatile.

Anthony Bacon went from Whitehaven to Maryland as a boy. By the end of his stay, at the age of twenty-two, he ran a store at Dover, far enough up the Choptank for fresh water to kill marine clams known as boring worms in the hulls of tobacco vessels. Months after his return to England, he became Captain Anthony Bacon, master of the York York. In 1740 she bore 114 felons to Maryland as indentured servants, returning with a cargo of tobacco for the House of Hanbury.

After a few years, Bacon began to call himself a merchant, at an address in Threadneedle Street, between the Bank of England and the South Sea House. He still went to sea and visited Maryland, where he formed a partners.h.i.+p with James d.i.c.kinson at Dover. His older brother, the Reverend Thomas Bacon, had taken a parish at Dover. Thomas and the other wit-crackers of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis made Anthony their first honorary member, calling him Captain Comely Coppernose. After tobacco merchants in Whitehaven engaged him as their London agent in 1752, Bacon began to prosper. By 1757, he had moved to larger quarters on the west side of Copthall Court just off Throgmorton Street. Surrounded by merchants, bankers, and brokers, he no longer went to sea.

In his days on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Maryland, Bacon knew the Waters family of Northampton in the Virginia section of the Eastern Sh.o.r.e. The family owned several plantations and vessels, as well as an estate in Britain. They gave Bacon power of attorney to act for them in England. After the elder William Waters died without leaving a will, Bacon served as administrator of the estate for the benefit of William Waters, the son. Retaining property in Northampton, Halifax, and Nansemond counties, the younger Waters spent most of his time after 1754 in Williamsburg. He was a ”most amiable” gentleman, living comfortably with his wife, Sarah, and young daughter, Sarah, in a house holding prints, maps, a few books, and a large stock of wine, madeira, and peach brandy.

Perhaps because William Waters lived conveniently at hand, the House of Burgesses chose him, with two other men, to oversee the printing of Virginia's new paper money in 1757. They numbered treasury notes and made sure the printer did not run off extras. Such currency alarmed and irritated Anthony Bacon and other British merchants. The burgesses made their notes legal tender; merchants feared that debts owed in sterling would be paid in paper ”of a local, incertain & fluctuating value,” causing creditors to lose by the exchange. Eventually, however, they saw that currency benefited their trade. Bacon studied ways to profit by the rate of exchange between currency and sterling.

Bacon joined other merchants in a pet.i.tion to the Board of Trade, opposing North Carolina's legal tender paper money. Their protest showed that the colony's law treated 133 6s. 8d. in paper as equivalent to 100 sterling; yet that amount of paper bought only 70 sterling. Speaker Samuel Swann and his allies in the a.s.sembly did not take offense. They wished to make Bacon the colony's agent in England in 1760. At the same time, their friend, Thomas Child, North Carolina's attorney general and Earl Granville's agent for the Granville proprietary, persuaded the earl to make Bacon his agent in London. Child and Bacon proposed to remit quitrents and fees from the proprietary to Granville. The system they devised would have profited them at the expense of the rent-payers, the colony, and the earl.

The quitrent was three s.h.i.+llings sterling per year for each 100 acres. Propertyholders paid, however, in North Carolina currency, while, at the London end, Granville wished to receive sterling. Bacon and Child intended to exploit a gap between the market rate of exchange of paper for sterling in North Carolina and the lower official rate set by a law pa.s.sed by their friends in the a.s.sembly. Thus, if part of Granville's proprietary paid the market equivalent of 578 sterling, this sum would come to the collector's hand as 1,000 in paper money at the market rate of 190 paper for 100 sterling. The colony, however, was obliged by law to redeem its currency with its sterling tax revenues at the official rate of 133 paper for 100 sterling. For his 1,000 in paper money quitrent payments, Bacon would receive 752 sterling from the treasury of North Carolina. But Bacon's agreement with Lord Granville called for him to remit to the earl only the original 578 at the market rate. Bacon could hold all the money for a year before paying the earl; he would charge Granville a commission of 5 percent on money he paid; and he would collect a salary of 200 sterling per year as the colony's agent, as well as 200 per year as Granville's agent.

Members of the North Carolina Council and Governor Arthur Dobbs saw through this scheme. They refused to concur in making Bacon the colony's agent, despite Thomas Child's a.s.surances of Bacon's ”unbiased integrity.” Dobbs also objected to Bacon's testimony to the Board of Trade, in which he accused the governor-falsely, Dobbs said-of misconduct. For part of 1760 and 1761 the a.s.sembly retained Bacon as its agent. He pet.i.tioned the king on behalf of the a.s.sembly, accusing the governor, the secretary of the colony, and the president of the Council of misapplying money appropriated for the war. After Thomas Child failed to get Bacon appointed as North Carolina's agent, Child moved to Suffolk, Virginia. There he continued to issue grants of land in the proprietary until news came that Earl Granville had died in January 1763.

With such examples before him as the growth of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Fredericksburg, Mann Page devised a scheme in 1761: a new town to rise on 100 acres of his property along the right bank of the Pamunkey River not far from Hanover Court House. A road parallel to the river pa.s.sed through the site, as did an intersecting road from the courthouse to the river. Two tobacco warehouses stood on the bank. A town ought to flourish.

His mansion at Rosewell had four more children running among its many rooms. Mann Page had reason to wonder whether he would be able to give each of his sons an estate and his daughter, Judith, a marriage portion. He owed thousands of pounds to the House of Hanbury. He had endorsed a bill of exchange drawn by William Byrd for 1,000. Unlike Byrd, Page did not send his oldest son, John, to England for schooling, though he had promised his first wife that he would. Page was nearing an indebted Virginian's last resort: a mortgage on land and slaves.

Two days after the House of Burgesses convened in November 1761, Page pet.i.tioned to dock the entail on land in Hanover and King William counties so that he could sell it, entailing other land for the benefit of his heir. These sales were to include lots in a new town, Hanover-Town. Speaker Robinson liked Page. To consider the pet.i.tion the speaker chose a committee, putting on it Peyton Randolph, the burgesses for King William County-Bernard Moore, Robinson's former brother-in-law, and Carter Braxton, Robinson's former ward-John Syme, burgess for Hanover County, and Benjamin Grymes, Page's partner in western land grants. The committee and the House of Burgesses acted within a week. Two days later the Council and Governor Fauquier gave their a.s.sent.

The following year, Page laid out Hanover-Town on paper. Surveyors marked and numbered 177 lots. Page announced his first sale for November 15, 1763. He and his friends had high expectations, relying on ”the anxiety of numbers to become Purchasers,” as one of them told Page's creditors. But bad weather ruined the day. So few of the many expected buyers appeared that Page took his friends' advice to put off a sale for three months.

Governor Fauquier and the Council met as usual on Friday, July 30, 1762. Present were John Blair, who had served on the Council for seventeen of his seventy-five years, the Nelson brothers, Richard Corbin, John Tayloe, Robert Carter of Nomini Hall, and Presley Thornton. To their surprise, they had received from London the king's warrant appointing the Nelsons' brother-in-law, Robert Burwell, to the Council. He stood before them. They must administer the oath and let him take his place.

The governor then presented a letter he proposed to send to the Board of Trade. It said that Burwell ought not to be on the Council because he was not mentally qualified for such a position and because he had ”an unwarrantable Impetuosity of Temper.” The councillors had ”prompted” Fauquier to write and to protest against letting ”private Friends.h.i.+ps” in England determine appointments. The Council found the governor's letter ”very proper and expedient to be sent immediately.” Thomas Nelson proposed a further measure, a request from the Council to the king that Burwell be removed and that ”some other more able and discreet person” be put in his place. The men decided to wait until they had fuller attendance before acting on Nelson's suggestion. Burwell's brothers-in-law and other councillors felt embarra.s.sed that the British government would put him on a level with them. After hearing that the king's warrant for Burwell's appointment was coming, they convinced Governor Fauquier that theirs was ”the concurrent Voice of the Colony.”

Richard Henry Lee expected Burwell to be removed ”on account of his extreme incapacity, to discharge the important duties of that station.” Lee wished to sit on the Council, as no Lee had done since the death of his father, Thomas Lee. In a letter to Virginia's agent in London he suggested himself as a replacement, saying: ”The desire I have to do my country service, is my only motive for this solicitation.” The agent knew that appointments more important than the Virginia Council were ”dayly done by particular Interests”; he worried that Fauquier would hurt himself in the eyes of the Board of Trade by this protest.

Robert Burwell, after hearing his kinsmen, the governor, and other leading Virginians publicly declare him unfit, wrote to his friends in London to tell them what Fauquier and the Council were doing. His friends were the heads of the House of Hanbury, Capel and Osgood Hanbury, and former Governor Robert Dinwiddie. They had persuaded Earl Granville, president of the Privy Council, to choose Burwell. Dinwiddie knew the Burwells; in the 1750s he had many chances to see what the family and its connections by marriage thought of Robert Burwell. Obviously, Dinwiddie had recommended him to insult the Virginia officials who had made his governors.h.i.+p so trying.

The new councillor's friends in London stood by him. The Board of Trade sent Fauquier a tart letter, telling him that they did not always need the governor's recommendation and that ”many very respectable persons” supported Burwell. Fauquier's letter, for which the Board of Trade chided him, had conveyed not only the councillors' opinion of Burwell but also their resentment of Robert Dinwiddie's insatiable desire for revenge. Through Fauquier they asked: ”if a private Man can obtain his Wishes to serve his Friend, will he not afterward laugh in his Sleeve and despise Consequences?”

Burwell stayed on the Council. Richard Henry Lee turned his eye to other offices. He began to suggest that John Robinson, as speaker and treasurer, held too much power. Governor Fauquier a.s.sured the Board of Trade that, among the councillors, ”all is quiet.” The Nelsons were willing to include Robert Burwell in their new Dismal Swamp Company.

The few people who had filed papers with the surveyor of Norfolk County to obtain land in the Dismal Swamp had sought plots of 100 acres, 300 acres, 400 acres. Robert Tucker claimed 1,000 acres in May 1762. He began a causeway through the eastern margin of the swamp. Since the expiration of his and Francis Farley's grant, ways to improve the swamp had occupied his thoughts. He was part of ”a scheme” becoming public in March 1763: some men organized to drain the Dismal Swamp ”at a small Expence,” then profit from the ”extremely Valuable” land they would hold as proprietors. A North Carolinian heard that the group consisted of ”the two Nelsons Colo. Was.h.i.+ngton Colo. Fielding Lewis one Doctor Walker” and others, perhaps even Governor Fauquier. Rumor said they had ”certain a.s.surances” of a grant free of quitrents on the Virginia side of the line, and that they had made overtures to Thomas Child, Earl Granville's sometime agent living in Suffolk, for a grant on the North Carolina side.

Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Dismal Swamp. Courtesy of the William L. Clements Library. Drawn during the Revolutionary War by a British Army cartographer who depicted the region surrounding the northern part of the Dismal Swamp.

The Dismal Swamp Company announced itself on Wednesday, May 25, 1763. William Nelson presented to his colleagues on the Council a pet.i.tion for a grant of the swamp, signed with 151 names. The Crown lately had confined grants to 1,000 acres per person. The partners, with most of the work done by Was.h.i.+ngton, Lewis, and Walker, drew up a list of names equal to the number of thousands of acres they sought. All but a few of these signers had no interest in the project. The company would have only twelve shares and twelve members: William Nelson, Thomas Nelson, Thomas Walker, George Was.h.i.+ngton, Fielding Lewis, Robert Tucker, John Robinson, Robert Burwell, William Waters, John Syme, Anthony Bacon, and Samuel Gist. The Council postponed consideration of Nelson's pet.i.tion, but his partners expressed no fear of failing.

While Nelson dealt with the Council, Was.h.i.+ngton, with his brother-in-law, Fielding Lewis, his cousin's husband, Dr. Walker, and another brother-in-law, Burwell Ba.s.sett, left Williamsburg, taking a ferry to Norfolk. They were going to ride around the Dismal Swamp. After a visit to the Norfolk ropewalk to see hemp fibers made into cordage, they crossed the Elizabeth River to Portsmouth and headed toward Suffolk and the swamp.

For two days the four men, with servants and a guide, rode southward along the road bordering the Dismal Swamp, then eastward in North Carolina, crossing the Pasquotank and Perquimans rivers, then northward back into Virginia, cutting through part of the swamp along the new road. As they began, just south of Suffolk among plantations of the large Ridd.i.c.k family, they rea.s.sured themselves that the swamp was pa.s.sable, riding half a mile into it, their horses wading in water a few inches deep. The company would begin its work there, in the northwestern sector, among white cedars, gums, and cypresses. Most soil along the road into North Carolina was sandy and poor. Yet Was.h.i.+ngton was sure that within the swamp all was black and fertile. He tried to discern subtle contours in the almost level terrain, with an eye to channels for draining. Their shortcut while riding northward on the other side took them through the Green Sea, the vast, open tract of tall, waving reeds which had impressed William Byrd thirty-five years earlier. Though local people thought it ”a low sunken Mora.s.s, not fit for any of the purposes of Agriculture,” Was.h.i.+ngton felt certain that it was ”excessive Rich.” Pa.s.sing Robert Tucker's mills and returning to Norfolk, Was.h.i.+ngton, Lewis, Walker, and Ba.s.sett spent the night at Reinsburg's Tavern, then went on board a ferry for Hampton.

In October, Was.h.i.+ngton briefly visited the Dismal Swamp again, and Robert Tucker made entries with the surveyor of Norfolk County for 2,000 more acres. At the Council's meeting on November 1, William Nelson renewed the pet.i.tion ”of himself and many others” for a grant of more than 150,000 acres. Since the postponement in May, the first pet.i.tion had been mislaid, but the Council approved Nelson's new one. Governor Fauquier was away from Williamsburg, meeting with Indians in South Carolina and Georgia. Upon his return, the partners he called ”Gentlemen of large Fortunes and great Consequence in this Colony” convinced him that their ”warm Expectations” were sound.

The Dismal Swamp Company held its first meeting in Williamsburg on Thursday, November 3. In the room were William Nelson, presumably smiling, as he often did; his less voluble brother, Mr. Secretary; the restless, overworked Robert Tucker; Dr. Thomas Walker, glad to cooperate again with some of those men so understanding in the matter of the Loyal Company's surveys; George Was.h.i.+ngton, youngest man in the room and most confident of the new company's success; Fielding Lewis, a heavy, round-faced man; William Waters, living in Williamsburg, doing as little work as possible; and Robert Burwell-as everyone else in the room knew, he would rather have been at the racetrack. Dr. Walker had power to act on behalf of two absent partners, John Syme and Samuel Gist. The group already had decided to invite Speaker Robinson, but he had been too ill to do business since September. The company soon chose to gain a friend in London by making Anthony Bacon a partner.

These men agreed that they were starting a ”great undertaking”: ”draining Improving and Saving the Land.” The project needed managers to establish its claims with county surveyors, gather slaves and tools, and buy a plantation near the swamp to make the operation self-supporting, as William Byrd had recommended. To no one's surprise, Dr. Walker, George Was.h.i.+ngton, and Fielding Lewis volunteered. Byrd had written that draining could begin with ten slaves, but the partners voted to a.s.semble fifty ”able male labouring Slaves,” five from each of the ten signers. The managers must report on the progress of the work. Each shareholder must contribute to defray expenses. They issued no stock. Since the days of the South Sea Bubble, incorporated joint stock companies needed a charter from the Crown. The partners foresaw that one of them or his heir might sell his share, might even sell it to ”many Persons.” But each share would have one vote, and the founders intended to keep as many of those twelve votes within the original circle as they could. As the meeting closed, the partners appointed the absent Samuel Gist ”Clerk of the Company” and ordered him ”to register all the proceedings in a Book.” Dr. Walker and Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton, working together more smoothly than during the war, soon left Williamsburg to present proof of the Council's grant to the surveyors of Nansemond and Norfolk counties.

Samuel Gist once had been a clerk. He meant never to be a clerk again. He was eager to leave these provincials and return to England. No one again mentioned a book registering the company's proceedings. If Gist stayed away from the meeting because he expected to be insulted and if he read the word ”Clerk” as a sneer from William Nelson and others wis.h.i.+ng to freeze him out of the company, he saw truly. But Dr. Walker did not mind doing business with him, and if the Nelsons could bring in their shallow brother-in-law Burwell, Walker could bring Gist.

Samuel Gist was born in Bristol in January 1726. He apparently never spoke of his father, John Gist, or his mother. His uncle, Thomas Gist, was a weaver. Until his fourteenth year, Samuel was one of forty boys in a charity school, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. He rose every morning at five o'clock to a breakfast of bread and table beer. He wore a blue uniform with a scarlet cloth breastplate bearing the initials ”JC” in honor of the school's founder, John Carr. Samuel and the other boys were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and navigation to prepare them to be useful and morally respectable artisans. When a boy was ready to leave, the school paid 8 8s. to bind him out as an apprentice.

Samuel's turn to leave came late in 1739. Among the scores of vessels moored along Bristol's curving quay, lined with houses on both sides, the York York, the New Kent New Kent, and the Virginian Virginian were bound for Virginia. On board one of these, the small boy pa.s.sed from among Bristol's old wood and plaster houses, its new brick houses, its streets crowded with women, children, sailors, burdened animals, loaded drays, and movable goods, to a country store near the right bank of the Pamunkey River in Hanover County, Virginia. were bound for Virginia. On board one of these, the small boy pa.s.sed from among Bristol's old wood and plaster houses, its new brick houses, its streets crowded with women, children, sailors, burdened animals, loaded drays, and movable goods, to a country store near the right bank of the Pamunkey River in Hanover County, Virginia.

Years later, one of Francis Farley's friends in Antigua wrote: ”for my amus.e.m.e.nt I am writing to Bristol for an hospital boy, of a good temper and well qualified as Reader & Writer, whom I may breed up to a Planters.h.i.+p.” Similarly, a Bristol firm trading to Virginia sent Samuel Gist to its factor in Hanover, John Smith. At Gould Hill the boy learned storekeeping, selling the usual goods: hats, cloth, ribbon, thread, needles, salt, hoes, nails, seeds, traces, and rum. He learned well. He later said: ”Store keeping requires the utmost attention.” When Gist was twenty, John Smith died at the age of sixty, leaving a widow, Sarah, and two young sons. Gist took over Smith's affairs, paying doctor's bills and funeral expenses, running the store, and administering the estate of one of Sarah Smith's dead kinsmen, of which John Smith had been executor. Two years later, in May 1748, Gist and Sarah Smith were married. She was more than ten years older than he. They later had two daughters.

None of the executors named in John Smith's will oversaw any part of his estate. Gist retained control. He did not keep separate accounts for that portion of the estate bequeathed to Smith's sons, as George Was.h.i.+ngton did for the children of Daniel Parke Custis and Martha Custis. On May 7, 1752, Gist sent an advertis.e.m.e.nt to the Virginia Gazette Virginia Gazette, announcing his intent to move to England, but he did not leave Virginia then. In June he obtained from Hanover County Court an order making him guardian of his stepsons. Their slaves worked their land; crops and income went to Gist. He bought land, much more than John Smith had owned. To the original three houses and 440 acres in Hanover County he added 1,960 acres. From his wife's relatives he bought plantations in Goochland and Amherst counties. He became the sole Virginia representative of the English firm, Brown & Parks. Late in 1752 he imported three apprentices from Bristol. Gist's dealings in tobacco and merchandise grew to be the most extensive in Hanover County. Account books and ledgers from John Smith's store disappeared. No final accounting or settlement ever closed Smith's estate. Smith's sons remained Gist's dependents. Gist had good reason to detect one of William Nelson's satirical cuts in the Dismal Swamp Company partners' order to him to register the company's proceedings in a book.

At the age of thirty-one, Samuel Gist chartered a new s.h.i.+p, the Peggy Peggy, to transport freight to England. His tobacco could not fill her, especially since he had lost three hogsheads in warehouse fires. To turn a profit on such a voyage he needed to load her quickly and fully. He solicited freight from merchants and planters so a.s.siduously that he agreed to s.h.i.+p more than the Peggy Peggy could hold. After she sailed, leaving hogsheads Gist had said she would take, a disappointed merchant wrote: ”I had his promise, but I believe he never intended to comply with it.” Gist had risen in a hard school. And he did not see these provincial planters and merchants, or even a room in Williamsburg holding the Nelsons, Dr. Walker, young George Was.h.i.+ngton, and various brothers-in-law, as the peak of his ambition. Nevertheless, if the Dismal Swamp Company expected immense profits, he could swallow an insult to get a share. could hold. After she sailed, leaving hogsheads Gist had said she would take, a disappointed merchant wrote: ”I had his promise, but I believe he never intended to comply with it.” Gist had risen in a hard school. And he did not see these provincial planters and merchants, or even a room in Williamsburg holding the Nelsons, Dr. Walker, young George Was.h.i.+ngton, and various brothers-in-law, as the peak of his ambition. Nevertheless, if the Dismal Swamp Company expected immense profits, he could swallow an insult to get a share.

Four weeks after the company's first meeting, Samuel Gist testified in a trial in Hanover County Court. The Reverend James Maury had sued collectors of t.i.thes in his parish for damages. While the Twopenny Act had been in force in 1759, he had received as his salary not the 16,000 pounds of tobacco prescribed for a minister of the established Church but paper money worth much less. Since the Twopenny Act had been disallowed by the Crown, Maury sought payment in full. This trial was to set the amount due him. Except for his attorney, Peter Lyons, and Lyons's friend, Gist, Maury had few supporters in the county seat. Instead of trying to impanel gentlemen, the sheriff rounded up jurors from ”the vulgar herd,” including several dissenters opposed to an established church and to taxes for its clergy's salaries. The justices on the bench accepted this jury. Gist was the first witness for the plaintiff. One of Hanover County's largest purchasers of tobacco, he testified that the price in May and June 1759 had been 50 s.h.i.+llings per hundredweight and that he had sold several hundred hogsheads. Testimony by another merchant confirmed the price of 50 s.h.i.+llings. With these witnesses Lyons had proven the loss Maury had sustained by being paid in currency as if tobacco had been worth twopence per pound, that is, 18s. 8d. per hundredweight.

Then a young attorney for the defendants, Patrick Henry-half brother of Gist's Dismal Swamp Company partner, John Syme-rose and spoke to the jury for an hour. Warming to his subject, he argued that the Twopenny Act had been a good law and that the king, by disallowing it, had broken the original compact between king and people, had d

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