“Mr. Parks,“I have learnt my Book, so far as to be able to read plain English, when printed in your Papers, and finding in one of them my Papa’s name often mentioned by a scolding man called Edwin Conway, I asked my Papa whether he did not design to answer him. But he replyd: ‘No child, this is a better Contest for you that are a school Boy, for it will not become me to answer every Fool in his Folly, as the Lesson you learned the other day of the Lion and the Ass may teach you.’ This Hint being given me, I copied out the saidLesson and now send you the same for my Answer to Mr. Conway’s Hint from“Sir, your Humble Servant“John Spotswood.“Fab. 10. A Lion and an Ass.“An Ass was so hardy once as to fall a Mopping and Braying at a Lion. The Lion began at first to shew his Teeth and to stomach the Affront, But upon second Thoughts, Well, says he, Jeer on and be an Ass still, take notice only by the way, that it is the Baseness of your Character that has saved your Carcass.”
“Mr. Parks,
“I have learnt my Book, so far as to be able to read plain English, when printed in your Papers, and finding in one of them my Papa’s name often mentioned by a scolding man called Edwin Conway, I asked my Papa whether he did not design to answer him. But he replyd: ‘No child, this is a better Contest for you that are a school Boy, for it will not become me to answer every Fool in his Folly, as the Lesson you learned the other day of the Lion and the Ass may teach you.’ This Hint being given me, I copied out the saidLesson and now send you the same for my Answer to Mr. Conway’s Hint from
“Sir, your Humble Servant“John Spotswood.
“Fab. 10. A Lion and an Ass.
“An Ass was so hardy once as to fall a Mopping and Braying at a Lion. The Lion began at first to shew his Teeth and to stomach the Affront, But upon second Thoughts, Well, says he, Jeer on and be an Ass still, take notice only by the way, that it is the Baseness of your Character that has saved your Carcass.”
No doubt young John and Alexander treasured this piece of youthful audacity as a precious tradition to be told and retold to admiring schoolmates at Montem dinner, under the shadow of Eton Towers.
In the Bland letters, there is an itemized account of the charges for a colonial boy at boarding school. Master Bland’s expenses, when under the tuition of Mr. Clark, amounted to twenty-four pounds, ten shillings and two pence, and include the bills sent in by the apothecary, hosier, linen-draper, music-master and “taylor,” and also the charges for “weekly allowance and lent, shugar and black-shoe.”
The charge forshugaris twelve shillings andninepence, which seems exorbitant in our day of cheap sweets. Master Bland’s second half-year’s account charges for “milliner, board, coal and candles, pocket-money and stockener.”
There is no record of the profit Master Bland received from his schooling abroad, but it is to be feared that he shared the character of his young fellow-countrymen, of whom Jones reports that “they are noted to be more apt to spoil their school-fellows than improve themselves.” The wildness of the young colonial students this reverend apologist accounts for very ingeniously, by explaining that the trouble lies in their being “put to learn to persons that know little of their temper, who keep them drudging in pedantick methods, too tedious for their volatile genius.”
The young Colonial Cavaliers exercised theirvolatile geniusat home as well as abroad, as any one may know who turns the yellow pages of the manuscript college records at William and Mary. Under Stith’s presidency we find “Yefollowing orders unanimously agreed to”:
“1. Ordered ytno scholar belonging to any school in the college, of what age, rank or quality so ever, do keep any race horse at yecollege in yetown, or anywhere in the neighborhood, ytthey be not anyway concerned in making races or in backing or abetting those made by others, andytall race-horses kept in yeneighborhood of yecollege and belonging to any of yescholars, be immediately dispatched and sent off and never again brought back, and all this under pain of yeseverest animadversion and punishment.”
A second ordinance forbids any scholar belonging to the college, “to appear playing or betting at yebilliard or other gaming tables, or to be any way concerned in keeping or fighting cocks, under pain of yelike severe animadversions or punishments.”
They were an unruly and turbulent set of school-boys, these collegians, and the college records are full of their misdoings. Thomas Byrd, being brought before the Faculty on a charge of breaking windows “in a rude and riotous mannor,” was sentenced to submit to a whipping in the Grammar-School, or be expelled the college. The blood of the Byrds rebelled against such ignominy, and the boy refused to submit. His father then appeared before the Faculty and offered to compel him to obey, but this vicarious submission was considered inadequate, and he was dropped from the college. Again, it appears, that “whereas John Hyde Saunders has lately behaved himself in a very impudent and unheard-of mannor to the master of the Grammar-School,” he is directed to quit the college. The ushers are ordered to visitthe rooms of the young gentlemen at least three times a week, after nine o’clock at night, and report to the president any irregularities.
“No boy to presume to go into the kitchen.” “No victuals sent to private rooms.” “No boy to lounge upon the college steps.” So run the rules. They further provide “yta person be appointed to hear such boys as shall be recommended by their parents or guardians, a chapter in the Bible every school-day at 12 o’clock, and ythe have yeyearly salary of one pistole for each boy so recommended.” All these regulations, “animadversions,” and punishments make us realize that in spite of its high-sounding charter, William and Mary was, after all, only a big boarding-school.
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, forThe Gazetterecords:
“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 lateMajesties, 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 shore, 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—
“MrWmParks 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 Collegewas 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. Ye Stocks.
Itis 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 pass, 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. Bothcommunism 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 Yeardleycame 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 assemblie 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 assemblie 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 Assembly 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 Assembly, 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 Assembly of 1619 was forever to be memorable as the germ of representative government on this continent.
In theQuireof 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 God’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 speechagainst a worthy gentleman in Dale’s time, was condemned to have his tongue run through with an awl, to pass through a guard of forty men, and to be butted 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 space 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 seain 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 God, 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.
Ye 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 Assembly 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.
Superstition, 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 circumstances, 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 God.
On the whole, the inhabitants of the Southern Colonies, excepting always the negroes, were singularly free from superstition. 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 “JnoByrd and Anne his wife suing JnoPites” in an action of Defamation; their petition sets forth “that the Defendthad falsely & Scandalously Defamed them, saying they had rid him along thesea-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 Godby, the Wife of Tho. Godby hath contrary to an ordrof yeCourt bearing date in May 1655, concerning some slanders & scandalls cast upon women under yenotion of witches, hath contemptuously acted in abusing & Taking yegood name & Credit of nicoRobinson’s wife, terming her a witche, as by severall deposicons appeares. It is therefore orddthat yesdTho. Goodby shall pay three hundred pounds of Tobo& Caske fine for her contempt of yemenconed order (being yefirst time) & also pay & defray yecost of sute together wthyeWitnesses’ charges at twenty pounds tobop 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 sdPrescott of ffelony under the Governmtof this Province (i. e.Maryland) Alleaging how that hee, the sdPrescott, hanged a Witch on his ship as hee was outward bound from England hither the last yeare. Uppon wchcomplaynt of the sdWashington, the Govrcaused the sdEdward 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 principals. 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 swearingor 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, andanswering backby 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 wordcheatwritten on his back, while the populace pelted himwith 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 MDCCXXXIII for laying the County levey.Present:John ffleming, Daniel Sfoner, Tarlton ffleming, George Payne, William Cabbell, James Skelton, Gent. Justices.Goochland CountyDr. Tobacco.To Thomas Walker & Joseph Dabbs sub-sherifs fora mistake in the levey in 173210To Do. for going to Williamsburg for a Comission ofOyer & Terminer to try Champion, Lucy,Valentine, Sampson, Harry & George, Negros90 miles going at 2lb and 90 miles returning at 2lbp. mile360To Do. for sumoning the Justices and attending theCourt for the tryal of the said Negros.200To Do. for Executing Champion & Valentine, 250lbeach500To Do. for providing Tarr, burying the trunk, cuttingout the quarters a Pott, Carts & horses carryingand setting up the heads & quarters of the twoNegros at the places mentioned by order ofCourt2000
At a Court held for Goochland County the ninth day of October Anno Domi MDCCXXXIII for laying the County levey.
Present:
John ffleming, Daniel Sfoner, Tarlton ffleming, George Payne, William Cabbell, James Skelton, Gent. Justices.
Goochland CountyDr. Tobacco.
And this was in our own country, only a century and a half ago!
A Maryland statute enumerates among capital offences: manslaughter, malicious trespass, forgery, receiving stolen goods, and “stealth of one’s self”—which is the unlawful departure of a servantout of service or out of the colony without the consent of his master or mistress—“offender to suffer pains of death by hanging except the offender can read clerk-like, and then he shall lose his hand, and be burned in the hand or forehead with a hot iron, and forfeit his lands at the time of the offense committed.” This test of ability to read—“legit aut non legit?”—was manifestly a clause inserted to favor the clergy, and so woven into the tissue of mediæval law, that the Reformation had been powerless to unravel it.
It is noticeable that the economical planters wisely preferred those forms of punishment, which cost the State nothing but the services of the constable and the executioner, to the confinement in prison, which involved the support of the criminal at public expense. Prisons, of course, existed almost from the beginning. In the Maryland archives of 1676, I read that “CaptQuigly brought into this house the act for Building the State House and prisson at StMaries, and desires to know what manner of Windowes the house shall have.” It is at length decided accordingly by the Assembly “that the windowes are to bee of Wood with substanciall Iron barres and thtthe wood of the frame of the Windowes be layd in Oyle.” For the safer guarding of the prisoners, it is also directed that the windows, which were to be only twenty bythirty inches in size, be protected by “Three Iron Barres upright, and two athwart.”
The prisons found little occupation as compared with the pillory and the whipping-post. The latter was the common corrector of drunkenness, which was a too frequent offence in those old days in the Cavalier Colonies, when the gentry sipped their madeira over the polished dining-table and the poor man mixed his toddy in his noggin of pewter or wood. All men drank, and most men drank too much. Wines played an important part in the colonial imports. A Virginia statute of 1645 fixed the price of canary and sherry at thirty pounds of tobacco, madeira and “Fyall” at twenty pounds, while aqua-vitæ and brandy ran up to forty. A few years later Master George Fletcher, his heirs and executors, were granted by statute, the sole right to brew in wooden vessels for fourteen years. Maryland laid a tax upon “Rhume, Perrie, Molasses, Sider, Quince Drink or Strong Beer Imported, each 5 lbs tob. per gal.”
The State, having made a handsome profit from the selling of all these wines and “hot waters,” straightway became very virtuous against the poor wight who took too much. He was sentenced to the joys of the whipping-post, or to be laid in the stocks, or to pay a fine; thus again makingliquor pay a revenue to the State. We have an amusing description of what constitutes drunkenness, from a Colonial Dogberry of the seventeenth century, who sapiently observes: “Now, for to know a drunken man the better, the Scripture describes them to stagger and reel to and fro; And so, where the same legs which carry a man into the house can not bring him out again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness.” The difficulty in convicting these offenders with two pairs of legs, lay in the general sentiment of the community, that after all there was no great harm in taking a little too much of so good a thing as liquor.
The same public sentiment protected duelling, which was under the ban of the statute-books; but these old laws show the futility of attempting to legislate far in advance of public opinion. The law opposed it, but the prevailing sentiment sustained it. The number of duels fought at the South in colonial times has been grossly over-estimated, but they were fought; and the general feeling in regard to the practice was accurately expressed by Oglethorpe of Georgia, that typical Cavalier and true gentleman of the old school, who, when asked if he approved of duelling, made answer, “Of course a man must protect his honor.” This curious notion that aman’s honor was a vague but very sensitive article, worn about the person, and capable of being injured by any brawler who chanced to jostle against it at an “ordinary,” or any vagabond who wished to pick a quarrel with his betters on the road, was a relic of feudal days, when hostile factions met and fought at every corner; and the Colonial Cavalier held to it loyally, never asking himself why or wherefore. This theory, which makes the individual and not the State the avenger of insult and injury, found its logical climax in the methods adopted by Colonel Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter before the Revolution, and the author of a quick and simple form of law called by his name, and very popular still, though, to do him justice, it must be said that his followers have carried his principles further than their author intended. He never took life, but aimed simply to vindicate his own honor and that of his country by inflicting lashes on those who differed with him politically, and thought he did God service when he strung up suspected Tories, and forced them to shout “Liberty forever!”
Thus our study of the lawmaking and law-breaking records has brought us all the way from that House of Burgesses sitting at James Cittie in 1619—their hearts full of loyalty to his Majesty King James the First, and full of gratitude forthe slender liberties he has seen fit to loan rather than grant them—to the brink of the Revolution, to parties of the Crown and of the people, to the hall in the Virginia Capitol where the Assembly is boiling with wrath and defiance against George the Third and his ministers, who have dared to insult the rights and liberties of a free people. It is a mighty transformation to have been brought about in a century and a half. The Southern Colonies did not give up their allegiance without a bitter struggle of reason against sentiment, a struggle which New England never knew; but at length the loyalty which had bowed down to fallen royalty at Breda and yielded Charles II. so early a recognition that he quartered the arms of Virginia with those of England, France, and Scotland, and spoke of it as the Old Dominion—at last, this generous, faithful, confiding loyalty had been outraged past endurance. But still the old traditions lingered. Gen. John Mason says: “So universal was the idea that it was treason and death to speak ill of the king, that I even now remember a scene in the garden at Springfield, when my father’s family were spending the day there on a certain Sunday, when I must have been very small. Several of the children having collected in the garden, after hearing in the house among our elders many complaints and distressingforebodings as to this oppressive course towards our country, we were talking the matter over in our own way, and Icursedthe King, but immediately begged and obtained the promise of the others not to tell on me.”
Yet at this moment, when the young rebel was trembling in the garden for the effects of his awful temerity, America was already on the eve of the outbreak which severed her forever from the King and the Kingdom of Great Britain. The allegiance of the loyal colonies could not have fallen so suddenly, but for the long years of sapping and mining which had gone on silently, yet surely, doing their work.
From the time of the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey and his return, backed by the authority of Charles the First, there had been a war waged by proxy between king and people. The governors represented tyranny, and the Assembly opposed each encroachment. Eye to eye they stood, like wrestlers, neither side yielding a point without a struggle, yet both expressing equal loyalty and love for the King, and equal reverence for his authority. Virginia long preserved “an after-dinner allegiance” to the Crown even when she openly defied its policy. Virginians drank his Majesty’s health, wiped their lips, and imprecated his Majesty’s Navigation Acts. If their political creed boundthem to the fiction that the King could do no wrong, they cherished no such delusion concerning his deputies.
When Sir William Berkeley, as despotic at heart as his Stuart master, undertook to play the tyrant in Virginia, the country blazed out into a rebellion, which died only with the death of Nathaniel Bacon, its leader. Bacon was a rebel, but a rebel of the type of Washington and Patrick Henry—one who believed in the motto which Jefferson engraved on his seal, “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.” What vigor and eloquence are thrown into his proclamations! They belong to the brightest pages of American literature. Read but the opening of
“NATHANIEL BACON ESQ’R, HIS MANIFESTO CONCERNING THE PRESENT TROUBLES IN VIRGINIA.
“If vertue be a sin, if Piety be giult, all the Principles of morality goodness and Justice be perverted, Wee must confesse That those who are now called Rebells may be in danger of those high imputations, Those loud and severall Bulls would affright Innocents and render the defence of orBrethren and the enquiry into orsad and heavy oppressions, Treason. But if there bee, as sure there is, a just God to appeal too, if Religion and Justice be a sanctuary here, If to plead yecauseof the oppressed, If sincerely to aime at his MatiesHonour and the Publick good without any reservation or by Interest, If to stand in the Gap after soe much blood of ordear Brethren bought and sold, If after the losse of a great part of his MatiesColony deserted and dispeopled, freely with orlives and estates to indeavor to save the remaynders bee Treason, God Almighty Judge and lett guilty dye. But since wee cannot in orhearts find one single spott of Rebellion or Treason or that wee have in any manner aimed at the subverting yesetled Government or attempting of the person of any either magistrate or private man not with standing the severall Reproaches and Threats of some who for sinister ends were disaffected to us and censured orino[cent] and honest designes, and since all people in all places where wee have yet bin can attest orcivill, quiet, peaseable behaviour farre different from that of Rebellion and tumultuous persons, let Trueth be bold and all the world know the real Foundations of pretended giult.”
When this ardent and impetuous nature was vanquished as alone it could be vanquished—by death—Berkeley might, by judicious magnanimity, have healed the wounds of civil war; but, instead, he pursued the conquered rebels with a malignant perseverance, which seemed to growby what it fed on. “Mr. Drummond,” he said ironically to a follower of Bacon brought to him as a prisoner, “you are very welcome! I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. You shall be hanged in half an hour.”
Twenty-three leaders of this rebellion were thus executed before Berkeley stayed the bloody hand of his vengeance. “The old fool,” quoth the King, “hath taken more lives in that naked country, than I for my father’s murder!”
Bacon’s death remains one of the mysteries of history. Some said he died of miasma in the Virginia swamps; some hinted that his foes poisoned his food, so sudden and mysterious was his ending; and lest Berkeley’s revenge should extend to insulting the very corpse of his foe, Bacon’s followers buried him with the greatest secrecy, and no man knoweth the resting place of this first colonial champion of popular rights. But the spirit of popular liberty did not die with Bacon, nor vice-royal tyranny with Berkeley. Culpeper, Howard, and a score of others came over from England, one after another, all differing on many points of provincial policy, but united in the determination to fill their own pockets and the royal exchequer by means of colonial revenue. “Lord Colepepper,” commented Beverley, “reduced the greatest perquisite of his place to a certainty,which before was only gratuitous; that is, instead of the masters of ships making presents of Liquors or provisions toward the Governor’s housekeeping, as they were wont to do, he demanded a certain amount of money, remitting that custom.” Such petty exactions as this were a dangerous experiment with a vehement and high-spirited people, who were willing togivemuch, but toyieldnothing.
The justice and moderation of Spotswood’s government held back the tide of popular revolt for some time, and the French and Indian War roused a final flicker of loyalty to the mother-country; but England’s success in that struggle cost her the American provinces. When Quebec surrendered to Wolfe’s troops, and the French force was withdrawn from Canada, the Comte de Vergennes prophesied the coming revolution against England. “The colonies,” said he, “will no longer need her protection. She will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence.”
In 1768 affairs looked stormy in Virginia, and Lord Botetourt was sent over to prophesy smooth things and allay popular irritation, without committing the government by definite promises. The man was well chosen for the task. Junius described him as a cringing, bowing, fawning,sword-bearing courtier. Horace Walpole said his graciousness was enamelled on iron. He came, he saw, he conquered Virginia in a bloodless victory, but Virginia did not stay conquered. When the colonists presented an address which he was pleased to consider insubordinate, Botetourt dissolved the Assembly; but they retired to a private house, elected Peyton Randolph moderator, and prepared and signed a resolution to abstain from all merchandise taxed by Parliament.
The beginning of the end was at hand. The farce of the repeal of the Stamp Act and its reimposition went on. Botetourt went home, and Lord Dunmore, the last of the hated race of governors, came over. His imbecile policy, at once timid and tyrannous, hastened the march of events, but the end was inevitable. “Colonies,” said Turgot, “are like fruits, which cling to the tree only till they ripen.” So the event proved in America—Virginia and Massachusetts, Maryland and Rhode Island, travelling by different roads, reached the same point of determination at any cost to throw off the yoke of British oppression. Henceforth they were to be no more provincials, but patriots; and Cavalier and Puritan struck hands in the hearty good-will of a common cause.
SICKNESS and DEATH.
Pioneerlife is all very well when the adventurer is in high health and spirits; but when sickness comes, he must be stout of heart indeed if he does not sigh for the comforts of a civilized home. The poor settlers had a sorry time of it in that first fatal summer on the banks of the James, when they breathed in malaria from the marshes and drank the germs of fever and “fluxes” in the muddy water. “If there were any conscience in men,” wrote gallant George Percy, “it would make their hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without relief, every day and night for the space of six weeks; some departing out of the world, many times three or four in a night, in the morning their bodies trailed out of their cabins, like dogs, to be buried.”
The adventurers profited by the lesson of these troublous times; for as soon as the settlement was fairly re-established under Dale, they set to work upon a hospital. On the river opposite Henrico, they put up “a guest-house for ye sicke people, ahigh seat and wholesome aire,” and christened the place,Mount Malado. The chronicles are provokingly silent as to any details of this first American sanitorium. They say nothing of its arrangements, its comforts, or its conveniences. We do not know even the names of those who shared its rude shelter, or of the physicians who treated them. From time to time the mention of some doctor is interwoven with the history of the colonists, but he passes as a pale shadow, with none of the character and substance of the gallant captains, the doughty burgesses, and the tipsy parsons. Doctor Bohun, who is described as “brought up amongst the most learned Surgeons and Physitions in Netherlands,” came over and stayed with the settlers for a while, but Lord La Warre carried him off as his medical adviser to the “Western Iles,” that his Lordship’s gout might be “asswaged by the meanes of fresh dyet, especially Oranges and Limons, an undoubted remedie for that disease”; and a little later the good doctor perished in a sea-fight with Spaniards on the shipMargaret and John. Dr. Simons’ name is signed to one of the histories, but he too fades away and leaves no trace, and a Dr. Pot has survived only through honorable mention, as “our worthy physition.”
Either the country was too healthy, or theinhabitants too poor to encourage immigration among doctors, for they were few and far between, and we find men of other trades acting in the capacity of physician. There was Captain Norton, for instance, “a valiant, industrious gentleman adorned with many good qualities besides Physicke and Chirurgery, which for the publicke good, he freely imparted to allgratis, but most bountifully to yepoore.”
It was common for barbers to combine the use of the knife with that of the razor, and for the apothecary to prescribe, as well as mix, his own drugs. Colonel Byrd writes that in Fredericksburg, “besides Col. Willis, who is the top man of the place, there are only one merchant, a tailor, a smith, an ordinary-keeper, and a lady who acts both as doctress and coffee-house keeper.” A list of prominent citizens in Baltimore in the eighteenth century, includes a barber, two carpenters, a tailor, a parson, and an inn-keeper, but no doctor; unless we reckon as such Dame Hughes and Dame Littig, who are registered as midwives.
The isolation of plantation life made it doubly difficult to depend on doctors, and as a result, each family had its own medicine-chest, and its own recipes and prescriptions handed down from generation to generation, and brought oftentimes from across the sea. Herbs played an important partin the pharmacopœia, both because they were easily obtained, and because tradition endowed them with mysterious virtues. An old medical treatise assures its readers that “Nature has stamped on divers plants legible characters to discover their uses”; that baldness may be cured by hanging-moss, and freckles by spotted plants. Ragwort, and periwinkle, and Solomon’s Seal all had their special merits; but sage was prime favorite, and its votary declares it a question how one who grows it in his garden and uses it freely can ever die. Next to ease of preparation, the prime requisite of a medicine was strength. Violent purges and powerful doses of physic or of “The Bark” were always in favor. The simple ailments of childhood were dosed with such abominations as copperas and pewter-filings, and these unhappy infants were fed on beverages of snake-root or soot-tea. One vile compound, common as it was odious, wassnail pottage, made of garden shell-snails washed in small beer, mixed with earth-worms, and then fried in a concoction of ale, herbs, spices, and drugs.
Yet our ancestors knew how to brew good-tasting things. The letter book of Francis Jerdone, of Yorktown, Virginia, records under date 1746, “A receit how to make Burlington’s Universal Balsam.
To be bottled up and Set in the Sun for 20 or 30 days together, to be shaken twice or thrice a day. Take about 30 drops going to bed in Tea made of pennyroyal, Balm or Speer mint.”
This prescription has the great defect of being too good, and might have a tendency to tempt the young to acquire the disease in order to be treated to the remedy.Angelic Snuffwas another agreeable medicament, warranted to cure all head troubles and help the palsy, megrims, deafness, apoplexy, and gout. What a pity that only the name of this cure remains to our generation, whose megrims alone would empty so many boxes of the invaluable snuff!
The early settlers could, if they would, have learned some useful lessons in the treatment of disease from the Indians, who at least understood making the skin share the work of the stomach. A primitive, but very effective, way of treating fevers and similar ailments among the natives wasby the sweating-oven. The Indian patient would creep into these mounds, under which a fire had been lighted, while the medicine-man poured on water from above, creating a mighty steam, in which the patient would continue till even Indian fortitude could hold out no longer, when he would crawl out, and, rushing down to the nearest stream, plunge headlong into its cold waters. All this process was, of course, performed amid incantations as mysterious to the whites as the phraseology of a modern physician to a savage.
This treatment was more in harmony with modern ideas than the methods which prevailed among the English. When the two Spotswood boys were sent across the sea to Eton, to school, they spent their vacations with their aunt, Mrs. Campbell, who writes to their landlady at the end of their stay: “I am very Sorry, Madam, to send them back with such bad coughs, though I have nursed Jack who was so bad that we were obliged to Bleed him, and physick him, that he is much better. I can’t judge how they got them (the coughs). My son came home with one, and has never been out of the house but once since, and these children have always laid warm, and lived constantly in the house.” These poor little victims of the coddling system would probably have recovered rapidly in the steam-bath of their nativeVirginia and the fresh air of her pine forests, but instead, they are sent back from one hothouse to another. “I beg,” adds their affectionate, but misguided aunt, “that they may be kept in a very warm room, and take the drops I send every night, and the pectoral drink several times a day, and that they eat no meat or drink anything but warm barley water and lemon juice, and, if Aleck increases, to get Blooded.” It is a great relief, and something of a surprise, to learn that Aleck and his brother John lived to come back to America and figure in the Revolution. Perhaps their recollections of the dosing and “blooding” they received in their youth threw additional energy into their opposition to the oppression of England.
Cupping, leeching, and all sorts of blood-letting were the chief dependence in olden times in all cases of fever. The free use of water, now so universal, would then have been thought fatal. The poor patient dreaded the doctor more than the disease, and often with reason. Anæsthetics, that best gift of science to a suffering world, were unknown, and surgery was vivisection with the victim looking on, conscious and quivering.
The doctor in the Cavalier Colonies was regarded with almost as much suspicion as the parson—as a cormorant, ready and anxious to prey on the community, and to be held in check by all the severitiesof the law. Virginia in 1657 passed statutes regulating surgeons’ fees. In 1680 physicians were compelled to declare under oath the value of their drugs, and the court allowed them fifty per cent advance on the cost. If any physician was found guilty of neglecting a patient, he was liable to fine and punishment.
In the eighteenth century, still stricter laws were framed, “because of surgeons, apothecaries and unskillful apprentices who exacted unreasonable fees, and loading their patients with medicine.” The fees fixed by this statute are “one shilling per mile and all medicines to be set forth in the bill.” The price for attending a common fracture is set down at two pounds, and double the sum for attending a compound fracture. A university degree entitled the practitioner to higher charges, but its possession was rare. Most doctors were trained up in the offices of older men as apprentices, pounders of drugs, and cleaners of instruments, as the old painters began by preparing paints and brushes for the master.
A modern man of science would smile at the titles of the old medical works solemnly consulted by our forbears. “A Chirurgicall Booke” sounds interesting, and “The Universall Body of Physick”; but they are not so alluring as “The Way to Health, long life and Happiness,” nor so attractiveto the ignorant as “The Unlearned Keymiss.” Perhaps the struggling physicians and chirurgians who doctored by these old books and their common-sense, helped as many and harmed no more than the chemist of to-day, with his endless pharmacopœia of coal-tar products, tonics, and stimulants; or the specialist who, instead of “the Whole Body of Physick,” devotes himself wholly to a single muscle, or nerve-ganglion.
In spite of the chill of popular disfavor and of the difficulties of professional training, good and noble men worked on faithfully at the business of helping the sick and suffering in the colonies. The Maryland annals tell of a Dr. Henry Stevenson, who built him a house near the York road so elegant, that the neighbors called it “Stevenson’s Folly.” If there was any envy in their hearts, however, it changed to gratitude and admiration when the small-pox appeared in their midst, and the large-hearted doctor turned his mansion into a hospital. It is hard for us who live after the days of Jenner, to appreciate the terror of the wordsmall-pox. In the eighteenth century pitted faces were the rule. Fathers feared to send their sons to England, so prevalent was the disease there. An old journal advertises: “Wanted, a man between twenty and thirty years of age, to be a footman and under-butler in a great family; he must beof the Church of England, and have had the small-pox in the natural way.”
This enlightened Dr. Stevenson, of Stevenson’s Folly, made Maryland familiar with the process of inoculation, which antedated vaccination. He advertises inThe Maryland Gazetteof 1765 that he is ready to inoculate “any gentlemen that are pleased to favor him in that way,” and that his fees are two pistoles for inoculating, and twenty shillings per week board, the average cost to each patient being £5 14s.
Ryland Randolph writes to his brother at a time when inoculation is still a new thing: “I wrote to my Mother for her consent to be inoculated for the small-pox, but since see that she thinks it a piece of presumption. When you favor me with a line, pray let me have your opinion of it!”
In 1768, we find the authorities atWilliam and Maryresolving “that an ad. be inserted in the Gazette to inform the Publick that the College is now clear of small-pox,” and a few days later they frame another resolution that “fifty pounds be allowed to Dr. Carter for his care and attendance on those afflicted with said disorder at the College.”
Meanwhile the colonists had not followed up their good beginning at Mount Malado. Hospitals had not grown with the growth of the community. Doctors had none of the advantages of the studyof surgery and medicine which are given by the hospital system, but the sick were tenderly cared for, nevertheless. In Jefferson’s notes on the advantages enjoyed by the Virginians, he speaks of: “their condition too when sick, in the family of a good farmer where every member is emulous to do them kind offices, where they are visited by all the neighbors, who bring them the little rarities which their sickly appetites may crave, and who take by rotation the nightly watch over them, without comparison better than in a general hospital where the sick, the dying and the dead are crammed together in the same room, and often in the same bed.” When we read the accounts of hospitals in the eighteenth century, antiseptics unknown, and even ordinary cleanliness uncommon, we can readily agree with the conclusion that “Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller expense, and with less abuse.”
Every wind that swept the sick-room in those colonial farm houses, brought balm from the pines, or vigor from the sea. Three thousand miles of uncontaminated air stretched behind them and before. This pure, balmy, bracing air cured the sick, and kept the well in health, in spite of general disregard of hygiene, which prevailed almost universally, especially in all matters ofdiet. “We may venture to affirm,” exclaims a horrified Frenchman, fresh from the land of scientific cookery, “that if a premium were offered for a regimen most destructive to the teeth, the stomach and the health in general, none could be desired more efficacious for these ends than that in use among this people. At breakfast they deluge the stomach with a pint of hot water slightly impregnated with tea, or slightly tinctured, or rather coloured with coffee; and they swallow, without mastication, hot bread half-baked, soaked in melted butter, with the grossest cheese and salt or hung beef, pickled pork, or fish, all which can with difficulty be dissolved. At dinner, they devour boiled pastes, called absurdly puddings, garnished with the most luscious sauces. Their turnips and other vegetables are floated in lard or butter. Their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste imperfectly baked.”
The entire day, according to this cheerful observer, is passed in heaping one indigestible mass on another, and spurring the exhausted stomach to meet the strain, by wines and liquors of all sorts. The population who lived on such a diet, ought to have died young, to point the moral of the hygienist; but Nature pardons much to those who live in the open air. If digestions were taxed, nerves remained unstrained. Even inour age of hurry and bustle, anything like nervous prostration is rare, south of Mason and Dixon’s line. The soft air and the easy life soothe the susceptibilities, and oil the wheels of existence. It is for these reasons, perchance, that the records of the burying-grounds in the Southern colonies show such a proportion of names of octogenarians who had survived to a ripe old age, in spite of hot breads washed down with hotter liquors.
These burying-grounds of the old South are robbed of much of the dreariness of their kind by being generally laid out in close proximity to the living world, as if the chill of the tomb were beaten back by the fire-light falling on it from the familiar hearth stone close at hand. It is a comfort to think of genial Colonel Byrd, who loved so well the good things of this world, resting under a monument which duly sets forth his virtues, on the edge of the garden at Westover, beneath an arbor screened only by vines from the door where he passed in and out for so many years.
Hugh Jones, that conservative son of the church, lamented that the Virginians did not prefer to lie in the church-yard for their last long sleep. “It is customary,” he says regretfully, “to bury in garden, or orchards, where whole families lye interred together, in a spot, generally handsomely enclosed, planted with evergreens,and the graves kept decently. Hence, likewise, arises the occasion of preaching funeral sermons in houses where, at funerals, are assembled a great congregation of neighbors and friends; and if you insist on having the service and ceremony at church, they’ll say they will be without it, unless performed after their own manner.”
Here we have a flash of the spirit of resistance to undue encroachments from church or state, which flamed up half a century later into open revolt. There is something touching in this clinging to the home round which so many memories cluster, in this desire to lay the dead there close to all they had loved, and when their own time came, to lie down beside them under the shadow of the old walls which had sheltered their infancy, and youth, and age.
If the burying-grounds were cheerful, still more so were the funerals. They partook, in fact, of the nature of an Irish wake. Wine was freely drunk, and funeral baked meats demolished, while the firing of guns was so common that many asked by will that it be omitted, as friends to-day are “kindly requested to omit flowers.”
The funeral expenses of a gentleman of Baltimore town in the eighteenth century were somewhat heavy, as any one may judge from an itemized account preserved to us, which includes: “Coffin£6 16s, 41 yds. crape, 32 yds. black Tiffany, 11 yds. black crape, 5½ broadcloth, 7½ yards of black Shaloon, 16½ yds. linen, 3 yds. sheeting, 3 doz. pairs men’s black silk gloves, 2 doz. pairs women’s do., 6 pairs men’s blk. gloves (cheaper), 1 pr. women’s do., black silk handkerchiefs, 8½ yards calamanco, mohair and buckram, 13½ yds. ribbon, 47½ lbs. loaf sugar, 14 doz. eggs, 10 oz. nutmegs, 1½ pounds alspice, 20⅝ gallons white wine, 12 bottles red wine, 10⅜ gallons rum.” The total cost of these preparations amounts to upward of fifty pounds sterling, besides the two pounds to be paid to Dame Hannah Gash and Mr. Ireland for attendance, while ten shillings additional were allowed for “coffin furniture.”
When a Thomas Jefferson, ancestor oftheThomas Jefferson, died in Virginia in 1698, his funeral expenses included the items:
The list of expenses closes with unconscious satire, thus: “Previous item—to Dr. Bowman for Phisick, 60 lbs. tobacco,” showing that every arrangement for the taking under was complete.
These inventories and wills cast wonderful sidelights on the manners and customs of “yeolden tyme.” To our age, accustomed to endless post-mortem litigation, there is a refreshing simplicity in these old documents, which seem to take for granted that it is only necessary to state the wishes of the testator. Richard Lightfoote, ancestor of the Virginia Lightfoots, who made his will in 1625, “in the first yeare of the raigne of our Soveraigne Lord King Charles,” feeling perhaps a little fearful of disputes among his heirs, appoints Thomas Jones “to bee overseer herof, to see the same formed in all things accordinge to my true meaninge; hereby requestinge all the parties legatees aforenamed to make him judge and decider of all controversies which shall arise between them or anie of them.” But there is no record that the services of Thomas Jones were needed as mediator, and when Jane Lightfoote, his wife, makes her will, she goes about it in a still more childlike and trustful fashion.
She leaves her “little cottage pott” to one, and her “little brasse pan” to another. No object is too trifling to be disposed of individually. The inventory of Colonel Ludlow, who departed this life in 1660, is a curious jumble of things small and large. Here we have “one rapier, one hanger, and black belt, three p’r of new gloves and onep’r of horn buckskin gloves, one small silver Tankard, one new silver hat-band, two pair of silver breeches buttons, one wedding Ring, one sealed Ring, a pcell of sweet powder and 2 p’r of band strings,” besides which is specially mentioned: “Judge Richardson to yeWast in a picture,” valued at fifty pounds of tobacco. In addition to these, Colonel Ludlow died possessed of “12 white servants and ten negroes, 43 cattle, 54 sheep and 4 horses.”
The favorite testimonial of affection to survivors was the mourning ring or seal. These gifts figure in almost every will we examine, one mentioning a bequest of money for the purchase of “thirty rings for relatives.” The keepsakes were carefully cherished, and the survivors in turn set up the memorial tablet, or carved the tombstone, or presented some piece of plate to the parish church, to keep fresh the name and memory of the deceased. In Christ Church, at Norfolk, is an old Alms Bason marked with a Lion Passant and a Leopard’s Head crowned, in the centre a coat of arms, three Griffins’ heads erased, and the inscription:
“The gift of Capt. Whitwell inmemory of Mrs. Whitwell who wasintered in the church at Norfolk,ye8thof March, 1749.”
The same church owns a flagon with a crest, “a demi-man ppr-crowned in dexter three ostrich feathers,” given by Charles Perkins as a memorial to his wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1762.
It was a pleasant thought thus to renew the memory of departed friends by flagon, and plate, and alms-basin—a wiser way, one feels, than the carving of long epitaphs on gloomy stones surmounted by skull and cross-bones. How often, as we read these dreary tributes, we long for some shock of truth to nature, among all this decorous conventionalism! What tales these old colonial graveyards might have told us if they would! Here lie men who, perchance, supped with Shakespeare, or jested with Jonson and Marlow atThe Mermaid.
Here rest gallants who closed round the royal standard on the fatal field of Marston Moor, or danced at Buckingham Palace with the free and fair dames of the merry court of Charles Second after the Restoration; but not a word of all this appears on the stones that represent them. Their epitaphs plaster them over with all the Christian virtues, and obscure their individuality as completely as the whitewash brushes of Cromwell’s soldiers obliterated the dark, quaintly carved oak of the cathedrals.De mortuis nil nisi bonummakes churchyard literature very dull reading,when it should be the most interesting and instructive in the world. Had the stones set forth the lives of those who rest beneath, we might learn much of such a man as Sir George Somers, whose strange experiences on theSea-Ventureand his adventures on the Bermudas make me want to know more of him. I want to know what caused the trouble between him and Gates; how he built his cedar ships; how he looked, and walked, and talked; and what manner of man he was, all in all. Instead of gratifying my innocent curiosity, his tombstone in Whitchurch, where he is buried, puts me off with a florid verse of poor poetry, and I am little better helped when I turn to the records of the island where he died. Here Capt. Nathaniel Butler, “finding accidentally” (so runs the old chronicle) “a little crosse erected in a by-place amongst a great many of bushes, understanding there was buried the heart and intrailes of Sir George Somers, hee resolved to have a better memory of so worthy a Souldier than that. So, finding also a great Marble Stone brought out of England, hee caused it to bee wrought handsomely, and laid over the place, which he invironed with a square wall of hewen stone, tombe-like, wherein hee caused to be graven this epitaph he had composed, and fixed it on the Marble Stone and thus it was:
“In the year1611Noble Sir George Summers went hence to HeavenWhose noble, well-tried worth that held him still imploidGave him the knowledge of the world so wide.Hence ’t was by heavens decree that to this placeHe brought new guests and name to mutual grace.At last his soule and body being to part,He here bequeathed his entrailes and his heart.”
Even this gives us more information about the dead than most of the epitaphs. They are composed, as a rule, with Jonsonian elaborateness, and might as well be set up over Rasselas, as over those they commemorate.
On the tomb of President Nelson of his Majesty’s Council, in the old York churchyard, a pompous inscription announces: “Reader, if you feel the spirit of that exalted ardor which aspires to the felicity of conscious virtue, animated by those consolations and divine admonitions, perform the task and expect the distinction of the righteous man!” The “distinction of the righteous” is a delightful phrase, and sets forth the instinctive belief of the Cavalier in aristocracy in heaven.