Part 3 (1/2)

Having missed the first meeting of the Dismal Swamp Company, John Syme in the following months chose not to remain a shareholder. He left his many debts unpaid, giving as his excuse the low price of tobacco and high rate of exchange. When his share of the expenses of starting to drain the swamp fell due, his inability to command cash would become obvious to his partners. By the first meeting or soon afterward, Syme found someone to take his share: Francis Farley.

Antigua suffered hard years in 1762, 1763, and 1764, years to make a planter think of leaving. Months of drought ruined sugar cane, yet the price of sugar remained low. Farley and his family fell ill in the fall of 1762, and one of his daughters died. After some refres.h.i.+ng rains in May 1763, another dry summer set in. Antigua was ”miserable.” Empty ponds showed cracked bottoms; the water level in reservoirs and cisterns dropped; rationing parched slaves. A mysterious disease spread among livestock, killing them quickly in large numbers. Smallpox returned to the island. At Christmastime, Farley lay confined in his chamber, weak with fever. Small wonder that planters should mention the falling value of land and regret that they could not sell, except at a low price.

Farley still believed in the Dismal Swamp. He sought a share in the new company, adding to his ”valuable property” in Virginia and North Carolina. He had learned that he could not rely on Virginians to take care of his interests while he lived many miles distant. He might worry less, as well as confidently venture into the Dismal Swamp Company, because members of his family were moving to Virginia: his daughter, Eleanor, and her new husband, Captain John Laforey of the Royal Navy.

Captain Laforey was one of the young naval heroes of the war with the French. In 1755, Commodore Augustus Keppel promoted him from first lieutenant to commander and gave him the sloop Ontario Ontario. During the next two years he commanded the sloop Hunter Hunter in the fleet off Cape Breton Island and the French fort at Louisburg. HMS in the fleet off Cape Breton Island and the French fort at Louisburg. HMS Namur Namur, Admiral Edward Boscawen's flags.h.i.+p, dropped anchor off Louisburg on June 2, 1758, and he soon gave Laforey an opportunity for glory.

General Sir Jeffery Amherst's army besieged Louisburg. His most advanced works were enfiladed by fire from the last two French men-of-war in the harbor, La Prudente La Prudente and and Le Bienfaisant Le Bienfaisant. The harbor wall of the fort could be scaled if those vessels were gone. Boscawen decided to take them. He chose John Laforey and George Balfour to command the parties, giving them six hundred sailors, with boats, pinnaces, and barges from every vessel in the fleet. In the early hours of Wednesday, July 26, Sir Jeffery stood in the trenches with his men, keeping up heavy fire on the fort to distract its defenders' attention from the harbor. Concealed by night and heavy fog, Laforey, Balfour, and their two divisions of boats closed with La Prudente La Prudente and and Le Bienfaisant Le Bienfaisant, unseen until within hailing distance. The watch challenged them. They gave no reply, and the watch opened fire. Laforey and Balfour ordered their sailors to give way alongside and board. The men began to cheer. Led by their commanders, they boarded the s.h.i.+ps, carrying cutla.s.ses, pistols, and muskets with fixed bayonets. French sailors rushed on deck. Fighting began, but everyone soon realized that French artillerymen ash.o.r.e were firing on their own s.h.i.+ps. The crews surrendered.

Attaching lines to Le Bienfaisant Le Bienfaisant, Balfour and his boats began to tow her across the harbor, away from Louisburg. Laforey tried to tow La Prudente La Prudente but found that she had stranded, with several feet of water in her hold. He and his men set fire to her, abandoned s.h.i.+p, and joined Balfour's boats in towing but found that she had stranded, with several feet of water in her hold. He and his men set fire to her, abandoned s.h.i.+p, and joined Balfour's boats in towing Le Bienfaisant Le Bienfaisant. Lit by the burning man-of-war, the British boats pulled away with their prize, fired upon from an island battery at Point Rochefort, from the town, and from the fort of Louisburg. With a loss of 7 men killed and 9 wounded, they had taken one s.h.i.+p, destroyed another, and captured 152 prisoners. Later that day the French surrendered. Admiral Boscawen promoted John Laforey and George Balfour to the rank of post-captain. Laforey was twenty-nine years old.

In command of the Echo Echo in 1759, Captain Laforey accompanied the fleet under Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders as it sailed up the St. Lawrence River with General James Wolfe's army to take Quebec. In the West Indies in 1762 he served under Rear-Admiral George Brydges Rodney, cooperating with the army in the capture of the French island of Martinique in February. Laforey took command of the in 1759, Captain Laforey accompanied the fleet under Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders as it sailed up the St. Lawrence River with General James Wolfe's army to take Quebec. In the West Indies in 1762 he served under Rear-Admiral George Brydges Rodney, cooperating with the army in the capture of the French island of Martinique in February. Laforey took command of the Levant Levant. She called at St. Johns, Antigua, where he met Eleanor Farley. They were married in St. Johns on February 15, 1763. Late that year they sailed for England in the Levant Levant.

Captain Laforey and Francis Farley apparently reached an agreement. Laforey suddenly possessed ”a handsome fortune.” He took a leave of absence from the navy to settle in Virginia. In London, Eleanor Laforey gave birth to a daughter, Julia, in March 1764. Two months later the family sailed for Virginia. In the meantime, on April 27, 1764, John Syme resigned his share in the Dismal Swamp Company to Francis Farley. Farley's daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter moved to Mayc.o.x, a plantation on the south bank of the James, directly across from Westover. Captain Laforey received payments from Farley. William Byrd befriended him. One could find them in Mrs. Jane Vobe's tavern in Williamsburg, at a table among other gentlemen, with an active dicebox.

On the same day Syme pa.s.sed his share to Farley, William Waters resigned half his share to David Meade, son of the late David Meade, merchant of Suffolk. From the age of seven to seventeen David had attended school in England. His father died during that time. Just before his seventeenth birthday, he returned to Nansemond County, and the change did not please him. Instead of pleasure gardens he saw forests and the Dismal Swamp. Instead of his schoolmates and their t.i.tled parents, he met almost as many blacks as whites. He had forgotten the faces of his mother and sisters. Four months after his return, heavy rains flooded Nansemond and Norfolk counties, sweeping away bridges, further isolating scattered farms and plantations.

Having grown ”accustomed to good company” in England, Meade found living with his mother, looking out the windows at the Nansemond River, ”rather monotonous.” He began to visit plantations farther up the James, where he found ”more congenial” society. And he could attend b.a.l.l.s, plays, and races in Williamsburg during the public gatherings in April and October. David Dougla.s.s's traveling ”Company of Comedians from London,” with its repertoire of old favorites-The Provok'd Husband, The Mourning Bride, The Gamester, and The London Merchant The London Merchant-played in the Williamsburg theater in November 1762 and April and May 1763. George Was.h.i.+ngton saw them three weeks before his ride around the Dismal Swamp. In Williamsburg, David Meade attracted the notice of William Waters. Meade described himself as ”a youth brought up to no occupation” and ”a great builder of castles in the air.” Waters was nearing the end of such a life, as Meade was beginning. He, too, owned land in Nansemond County but would not live there.

Meade formed ties with ”many gentlemen, the most distinguished for wealth, talents and worth.” None showed him so much ”partiality” as did William Waters. Waters signed over to him one-half share in the Dismal Swamp Company and paid a.s.sessments for the whole share. Others saw, as Meade eventually did, that Waters wanted the young man to ask for his daughter's hand.

Though the estate of Meade's father and the firm Meade & Driver owed thousands of pounds to Robert Cary & Company in London and the elder Meade's will made all his estate liable for payment of these debts, David Meade thought of himself as ”inheriting a good patrimony.” He had not yet turned twenty when he began to buy land in Nansemond County. His first purchase came six weeks after he joined the Dismal Swamp Company. He acquired by inheritance and purchase about 5,000 acres and established himself as ”one of the leading Men in that Country.”

During the late spring and early summer of 1764, as George Was.h.i.+ngton prepared to collect slaves from members of the Dismal Swamp Company to begin work, the partners had many matters to think about. Fielding Lewis paid Was.h.i.+ngton 20 for the ”Dismal Adventure.” Thomas Walker's oldest son, John, was married to Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of Bernard Moore, at the Moore home, Chelsea, in King William County. Before the wedding Dr. Walker and Bernard Moore exchanged the customary letters, stating what each would give the couple. Walker said he could not be specific about the timing of his payments because ”My affairs are in an uncertain state.” Moore was in even more trouble, having invested ”much too greatly” in ”that terrible sinking Fund Indigo.” His bills of exchange came back from London protested. His letter was vaguer than Walker's. In the month of John's wedding, Thomas and Mildred Walker had their tenth child, a son they named Francis.

In Norfolk, Robert Tucker was planning a s.h.i.+pment of wheat and flour to Spain. Joanna Tucker got pregnant.

During a stay in Williamsburg, Secretary Thomas Nelson, suffering from gout, added to his substantial library a translation of Simon Paulli's A Treatise on Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate A Treatise on Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate. Written by a former smoker, it warned him against the ”narcotic Sulphur” of tobacco smoke. It urged rulers of all nations to prohibit the use of tobacco. In Paulli's list of dangers, use of tea was only slightly more tolerable ”than that of Chocolate Chocolate, and Coffee Coffee, which is of all others the worst.”

Secretary Nelson, William Nelson, Robert Burwell, some of their colleagues on the Council, and leading men of the House of Burgesses-Speaker Robinson, Peyton Randolph, George Wythe, and Robert Carter Nicholas-were drafting a letter to the colony's agent in London. It conveyed their thanks for his help in obtaining a bounty on hemp, their a.s.surance that the colony had resorted to paper currency only out of necessity, and their report on the Council's refusal to award damages to the Reverend John Camm for salary lost under the Twopenny Act. The letter also called ”truly alarming” a proposal that Parliament enact a stamp tax. Such a tax would violate ”the most vital Principle of the British Const.i.tution” by subjecting colonists to levies made without the consent of their representatives.

In London, Anthony Bacon, with two other merchants, was pet.i.tioning the Board of Trade for a grant of land and a thirty-year lease of coal mines on Cape Breton Island. These happily had come into His Majesty's possession through heroic efforts by many men, including Captain John Laforey.

In Hanover County, Samuel Gist bought a copy of Thomas Hale's A Compleat Body of Husbandry A Compleat Body of Husbandry. Book III of this work encouragingly described ”the Improvements of Land by Inclosing and Draining.” In the sixth chapter, ”Of draining boggy Lands,” Gist could find this advice: ”he must have Resolution to go through what he has undertaken, for all will be sure Profit in the End.” In May, Gist had placed an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Virginia Gazette Virginia Gazette, warning his debtors to pay. Two months later he prepared for their response by purchasing twelve blank bills of exchange and twelve blank penal notes, used to demand forfeit of debtors' bonds. Gist had in mind a large new store, built with brick.

Speaker Robinson wished to get t.i.tle to the lead mines he and his friend and father-in-law, John Chiswell, were developing. The land lay within the grant of the Loyal Company. The speaker paid the company's agent, Dr. Walker, 1,794 17S. 4d. in cash.

Robinson was preparing his report on the colony's paper currency: a list of past emissions and of taxes levied to retire the currency. His report said that provisions for removing treasury notes from circulation went far beyond the measures needed. He denied that the high rate of exchange, by which 100 sterling bought 160 currency, arose ”altogether” from the quant.i.ty of notes in circulation. He attributed it to ”the great scarcity of good Bills of Exchange owing to the poor distressed condition this Colony is at present in.”

The Dismal Swamp Company's preparations attracted notice. David Campbell obtained from Governor Fauquier, on August 15, a grant of 111 acres bordering the site of the company's first work.

From Mills Ridd.i.c.k the company rented a plantation of 402 acres, soon known as ”Dismal plantation,” six miles from Suffolk on the margin of the swamp. There slaves would build houses, grow corn, and tend livestock for their own support. The managers made George Was.h.i.+ngton's young kinsman John Was.h.i.+ngton the resident overseer.

George Was.h.i.+ngton received fifty-four slaves at Dismal Plantation in July: forty-three men, nine women, a boy, and a girl. He set a value on each. By this measure of a slave's capacity to produce profit, Was.h.i.+ngton saw that his partners had contributed less than he. The five adults he furnished were valued at 365. The five Samuel Gist sent had a value of 260. For William Nelson's five, the figure was 275. Speaker Robinson sent not five but three. The ten provided by Fielding Lewis for himself and Anthony Bacon were worth 635. Owners of half-shares each sent only two slaves. Robert Burwell offered a couple in their twenties: Jack and his wife, Venus. Jack was tall and slim, Venus short and stout. They had in common a gift for fast, smooth talk. They did not look like people who would devote themselves to draining a swamp; they looked like people Burwell wished to get rid of at his partners' expense. A resident of York Town saw the company's first workforce. He thought these slaves ”the worst collection that ever was made-they seemed to be the refuse of every one of the Estates from whence they were sent.” Virginians knew that Nansemond and Norfolk counties, especially the Dismal Swamp, were an unhealthy place to send valuable workers.

George Was.h.i.+ngton stayed briefly at Dismal Plantation to ”set the People to work.” Before them lay a white marsh; beyond it stretched a sector of the swamp in which old cypress and cedar trees were fewer than large gum trees, red and white oaks, maples, and elms. Newer growths of these made the woods denser. Moving into the swamp, one waded in standing water the color of tea. Farther in, bamboo among the trees grew more thickly. Vines climbed trunks and hung from branches above huge, intricate ferns. Clouds of mosquitoes were so large as to make it hard to guess what kept all of them alive.

The slaves were to dig a ditch, beginning in sandy soil near Dismal Plantation and moving into black peat. Three feet deep, ten feet wide, and almost five miles long, running from the plantation to Lake Drummond, it was supposed to drain water from arable land into the lake. To provide some immediate income for the company the slaves felled the oldest white cedar trees and shaved tens of thousands of 18-inch s.h.i.+ngles.

Five months after work began, the partners met in Williamsburg. They voted to a.s.sess themselves 40 more per share. Each was also to provide five more slaves; four men and one woman. Perhaps the presence of twelve more women would reduce the inclination of men at Dismal Plantation to ”run about” in the night, visiting other slaves in Nansemond County. If any founders of the Dismal Swamp Company had gone to Westover to read the elder William Byrd's original proposal for draining, they had ignored his advice on this subject, and they met with the consequences he had predicted.

Days before the meeting of December 15, George Was.h.i.+ngton apparently visited Norfolk and Suffolk, perhaps accompanied by Dr. Walker. The three managers of the company-Was.h.i.+ngton, Walker, and Fielding Lewis-had agreed to buy land in Nansemond County in partners.h.i.+p. From several sellers they bought a little more than 1,000 acres along the road from Suffolk toward Norfolk, along the Nansemond River, and in the swamp. For one tract of 120 acres they paid almost 1 per acre. They envisioned a ca.n.a.l connecting the company's land to the Nansemond River, easing movement of supplies and s.h.i.+ngles. A visit to Dismal Plantation showed anyone that work moved slowly. Faster progress required more slaves. The managers expressed confidence in the undertaking by spending their own money for the company's future benefit. One of Was.h.i.+ngton's English correspondents, who took an interest in news of the Dismal Swamp Company, congratulated him on ”that truely great enterprise, not less calculated for public utility than your private Emolument.”

Robert Tucker also antic.i.p.ated success for ”the intended good purposes” of the company. His wife was carrying their eighteenth child. The baby, if healthy, would be the ninth to survive. Tucker foresaw that, upon his death, he would leave behind him several young children. He wrote his will, bequeathing the bulk of his property to his son, Robert. If the baby not yet born turned out to be a boy, he was to inherit one-half of Tucker's share in the Dismal Swamp Company. ”The other half of said Share,” Tucker wrote, ”I appropriate the Profits of toward the better Education and support of my unmarried Children who are under Age.” If the company called on Tucker's share for more money to continue its work, that money must come from the younger children's portions of Tucker's estate. Joanna Tucker gave birth to a girl. So the young Tuckers would have all of their father's share in the Dismal Swamp Company set aside for their benefit.

Throughout 1764 and 1765, Virginia planters complained of low prices for tobacco, high prices for merchandise, scarce cash, protested bills of exchange, and lawsuits to collect debts. British merchants responded to the depression by squeezing their debtors in Virginia. Suits filled the calendars of county courts. Merchants no longer extended generous credit by accepting bills of exchange for sums far greater than tobacco or other commodities s.h.i.+pped to Britain would bring. William Byrd sold four hundred slaves in April 1765, a desperate act for any planter. The price of slaves had fallen almost to half the level of three or four years earlier. Samuel Gist tried to profit from tight credit by letting people know that he could get a more favorable rate of exchange than the prevailing one, meaning that their Virginia currency would buy more in his store than in others, a claim his compet.i.tor denied. With goods selling retail at a markup of 200 percent, merchants had to think fast to attract customers.

Beginning in May, drought dried Virginia through the summer. Beautiful, cloudless days became a curse. Turpentine makers in Nansemond County and in North Carolina got no yield from pines. Oaks produced too few acorns for hogs. Newly planted tobacco withered and died. People worried that grain and other crops would fall short of the colony's need for food.

Virginians learned in April that George Grenville and his supporters in Parliament, rejecting advice from Anthony Bacon and others, had enacted a stamp tax. It required that legal doc.u.ments, newspapers, and pamphlets be produced on paper bearing a stamp which indicated that a tax, ranging from twopence to 10, had been paid. The law was to take effect on November 1. Grenville sought to bring more order to the government's finances and to colonists' behavior. He felt especially distressed by smuggling. Colonists were not supposed to trade directly with other nations; yet they did so, by way of islands in the West Indies and other routes. Half a million pounds sterling per year: Grenville could not get that sum out of his head-the value of North Americans' clandestine trade with Europe. Of course, they paid no taxes on it. Britain lost twice: merchants lost business; the government lost revenue. Grenville meant to tighten enforcement of Customs regulations and to tax something colonists must use and could not hide. He ”fondly persuaded himself he could easily make it go down,” a London printer wrote, ”in any way he chose to administer it.”

As enactment of the tax became certain, applicants sought the position of stamp distributor in each colony. Richard Henry Lee, having failed to win a seat on the Council, saw this newly created post as ”a beneficial employment” and hastily offered himself. Peter Francklyn asked for the distributors.h.i.+p of Jamaica, giving as references his brother, Gilbert, and Gilbert's partner, Anthony Bacon. The government relied as usual on advice from merchants and colonial agents. Bacon and other merchants chose distributors for Quebec, Barbados, and New York. The Virginia appointment went to George Mercer, who had spent the last two years in London, representing the Ohio Company.

On March 1, some of Virginia's paper currency expired. People holding notes emitted in 1757 and 1758 were supposed to exchange them for notes of later emissions. After these old notes arrived in Williamsburg during court days in April, Speaker Robinson announced that the treasury did not have enough newer notes to replace them. More recent ones ought to have been preserved as they came in through collection of taxes, but ”considerable sums,” he said, had instead been burned. This explanation seemed odd, since the law did not call for burning the latest emissions. Only currency due to be retired by 1765 was to be destroyed. Hardly anyone believed Robinson. In the past, he had been too slow in destroying currency, not so hasty as to burn too much. People were more willing to believe that the speaker had shown unwise leniency toward sheriffs and inspectors of tobacco who did not promptly send the proceeds of taxes and fees to the treasury. The speaker was good-natured and kindly, everyone knew. That same month he sold Henry Fitzhugh ”very valuable” land for 1,160, telling Fitzhugh to take as much time as he liked before paying. A committee of burgesses later approved Robinson's accounts as treasurer, as did the House of Burgesses and the Council. At least 50,000 of expired currency remained in circulation.

Patrick Henry, Thomas Sully. Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society. The patriot spoke eloquently about liberty, law, and land.

Before the burgesses convened on May 22, Robinson, Peyton Randolph, and their allies devised a way to retire the colony's currency. Virginia would borrow 240,000 sterling from merchants and financiers in London at an annual interest of 5 percent. With 100,000 of this money, the treasury would redeem circulating currency and destroy it. With 140,000 in specie as a reserve, the colony could lend its own bank notes to borrowers at an interest of 5 percent. A new poll tax and tobacco tax would repay the London lenders. Who would borrow the colony's new bank notes and pay 5 percent to do so? Planters deeply in debt, pressed by their British creditors. In the eyes of its supporters, this could ”extricate our Country out of its present deplorable Circ.u.mstances.” To its opponents, it was a scheme to tax those not deeply in debt in order to rescue reckless debtors and ”to help the [speaker] out of the mire, in which he has plunged himself.”

During court days in April, more than 5,000 people filled streets and taverns in Williamsburg. Drinking rum punch and madeira, they caroused until dawn. The stamp tax was their favorite subject of conversation. Throughout the American colonies it excited resentment and determination to prevent enforcement. Much against the wishes of Speaker Robinson and his friends, Virginia gained a reputation as a leader of defiance.

Robinson and almost all burgesses thought the tax a breach of the British Const.i.tution and an infringement of colonists' liberty, as well as a financial blow on top of a depression. They had said as much in their remonstrances to the king, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons the past December. The speaker, Secretary Nelson, and others estimated the annual cost of the tax in Virginia. Their lowest figure was 35,000. The speaker set it at 45,000. Merchants said that the colony held only a fraction of that sum in coin. Nevertheless, Robinson and his friends disapproved of defiance of Parliament and the ministry. They had faith in less overt ways of changing the British government's conduct.

In the session of late May, most burgesses regarded their work as finished after they had pa.s.sed bills, including one for the loan office, and approved Robinson's treasury accounts on May 29. The Council, including such firm opponents of all paper money as Richard Corbin and the Nelson brothers, rejected the loan office. By May 30, as two burgesses who had ridiculed the loan office, George Johnston and Patrick Henry, urged opposition to the stamp tax, only 39 of 116 members remained in the chamber. With narrow majorities they pa.s.sed four resolutions a.s.serting elected representatives' exclusive right to tax. Peyton Randolph and the speaker's friends opposed these as redundant, a repet.i.tion of the colony's earlier remonstrances. Johnston and Henry's fifth resolution said that colonists were not bound to obey any law taxing them except laws enacted in Virginia. It aroused ”very strong” debate, during which Robinson accused Henry of speaking treason. The resolution pa.s.sed by one vote. The next day, after Henry left Williamsburg, Peyton Randolph moved that the resolutions be stricken from the journal. He could not get a majority to expunge all of them, but he won a vote to expunge one. The printer of the Virginia Gazette Virginia Gazette did not publish things to which Governor Fauquier objected, but newspapers in other colonies printed not only all five resolutions, but also the draft of a sixth, declaring that anyone who a.s.serted Parliament's right to tax colonists was an enemy. George Grenville, after reading them, said they ”exceed any notions which I could entertain of that extravagance.” did not publish things to which Governor Fauquier objected, but newspapers in other colonies printed not only all five resolutions, but also the draft of a sixth, declaring that anyone who a.s.serted Parliament's right to tax colonists was an enemy. George Grenville, after reading them, said they ”exceed any notions which I could entertain of that extravagance.”

Much more extravagance followed throughout the continent. Colonists promised to press British merchants by refusing to buy goods and by beginning compet.i.tive American manufacture. Crowds destroyed property of officials and of friends of government. No stamped paper was safe, and all distributors must be forcibly invited to resign. George Mercer arrived in Williamsburg on October 30, about thirty-six hours before the tax was to take effect. Just outside the capitol almost all the leading planters and merchants in town for court days demanded that he resign. A crowd outside the coffeehouse seemed to menace him, but Speaker Robinson, members of the Council, and Governor Fauquier stood with him. He went home with the governor. In another part of the colony Richard Henry Lee denounced Mercer as a betrayer of Virginians' liberty by his acceptance of the distributors.h.i.+p, and burned him in effigy. By November 1, Mercer had decided to resign and return to England. The governor and Council unanimously adjourned the General Court because they had no stamped paper and could not lawfully act without it.

Late in 1765 and early in 1766, Virginia's courts remained closed. Suits for debt stood still. Vessels could not be cleared in or out. Trade partially resumed, risking confiscation of any vessel sailing without stamped doc.u.ments. Planters in Antigua, who opposed but did not defy the tax, ran short of supplies from the mainland. They feared famine among slaves and a lack of staves for hogsheads. In Virginia, after many people stopped paying their British debts and reduced their purchases of goods, the rate of exchange fell sharply. By the end of 1765, 100 in currency bought 100 sterling.

Somewhere at sea in mid-October 1765 two vessels, probably far out of each other's sight, crossed the same line of longitude at the same time, sailing opposite courses. One bore George Mercer and stamped paper from London to Virginia. The other bore Samuel Gist from Virginia to London. Gist had visited Williamsburg during the April and May court days. He had seen the usual ”vast Concourse of people” hurrying between the taverns and the capitol, thronging the street known as the Exchange just beyond the capitol. He could not avoid hearing about Speaker Robinson's embarra.s.sing shortage of treasury notes or watching the fiasco of the loan office. Everywhere people had talked about the stamp tax. Gist had bought some blank bills of exchange.

When Gist came back to Williamsburg late in September, he stayed only briefly and never returned. He was bound for London at last. In that city he expected, as his wife wrote him, to ”injoy all the health and satisfaction you often promised yr self when you got there.” He placed an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Virginia Gazette Virginia Gazette, naming the men who held his power of attorney and announcing his imminent departure. By October 9 he booked pa.s.sage. His wife asked him to send her a good bra.s.s kettle and some magazines, apparently not expecting to follow him. She added that their daughters often had cried over his departure. Six or eight weeks after Gist reached England, George Mercer arrived back in London. He estimated his expenses as stamp distributor for Virginia at 1,113 0s. 8d.