Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library

Station#1 - Portico (attendance, time, and weather permitting)

All this copy is optional and selective. At times, when a group has a long wait, the escort or hostess may wish to use it all.

This Capitol Square was the nerve center of eighteenth-century Williamsburg. Here, inside this imposing building, Virginia's legislators met during most of a crucial century. Here sat the Colony's highest court. And here, on these spacious public greens, gathered a cross section of colonial Virginians.

The importance of this station is -- when time permits --to give the visitor the feeling of the teeming life and activities which went on around the Capitol Square complex. When this station cannot be manned, some of this information can be used as the group leaves the last station in the General Court.

Merchants, tobacco planters, and ship captains often transacted their business in the open. Governor Fauquier remarked that during Public Times "all money business" was transacted on Capitol Square. Joining them on the scene were persons awaiting word of a court trial and the various lobbyists of those times. The crowd might include both frontiersmen, in buckskin breeches, and garishly painted Indians. Legislators in dark velvet suits with satin waistcoats must also have often stepped outside to this portico for a clay pipe of Virginia tobacco, especially in the early years of the century when smoking was strictly prohibited in the building.

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Within a stone's throw were at least a dozen inns, taverns, ordinaries, and coffee houses, serving everything from Virginia Brunswick Stew and corn liquor to Barbados sweetmeats and French brandy. The Capitol was likely to be deserted from two-thirty until four each afternoon when colonists would tackle as many as twelve courses in their heavy mid-day meal.

Near here stood the city's second theater where Shakespeare's MERCHANT OF VENICE was first introduced in America and which George Washington once attended for five successive days when the celebrated red-haired actress, Sarah Hallam, was on the boards. Stables were located convenient to the Square. And, for those who caroused too freely, the pillory and stocks at the Gaol were close at hand.

Capitol Square was a natural center for celebrations. In 1746, word reached Williamsburg that the Duke of Cumberland had finally routed Bonnie Prince Charlie and his dispirited Highlanders. That night there was a gala ball at the Capitol, where three tables were piled high with more than 100 dishes -- "after the most delicate taste." Outside, after each of the twenty toasts, volleys were discharged 3. from cannon pulled upon the green. Houses were lit up all over town, there was a big bonfire at Market Square, and three hogsheads of punch were distributed to rank-and-file revelers.

Some of this material is not specifically related to the Capitol, but is suggested because it helps to tie the building to the life of the community at large - -and therefore aid in conveying to the visitor an over -all under-standing of the town as a single living unit, not a collection of separate historic buildings.

The biggest celebration took place just after the Virginia Resolution for American Independence was adopted at the Capitol in May, 1776. A military parade was held over there in Waller's Grove, with the Committee of Safety and other legislators joining townspeople, children, and stray dogs in review. A train of artillery passed by, and General Lee's light dragoons, some men even carrying tomahawks. That evening, toasts were drunk to independence, Congress, and General Washington, and there were fireworks and "other demonstrations of joy." In Bruton Church, the Sunday sermon text was taken from 2 Chronicles -- "Harken ye, all Judah …be not afraid…the battle is not yours, but God's." And in local printing offices, Tom Paine's 47-page Common Sense was already a best seller at two shillings a copy.

This material is of course "natural" for the visitor who can understand it best when looking at the exterior of the building. Some repetition in the interior interpretation should not be of concern to anyone.

Before we move into the Capitol itself, notice for a moment the shape of the building. It was erected in the form of an H, not by 4. accident but because this was a true expression in brick and mortar of what went on inside.

In one wing -- this one -- met the popularly elected House of Burgesses. Their meeting hall is downstairs and their committee rooms are above.

In the other wing -- this one -- met the aristocratic Governor's Council whose members sometimes gathered in their formal paneled second floor Chamber as Councilors, or donned robes and wigs to sit as judges of the General Court below.

Above you, appropriately bridging the two wings, is the Conference Room, where representatives of the Burgesses and the Governor's Council met to resolve their differences.

Remarks to be revised when Grand Union flag being flown.

The original Capitol was built early in the eighteenth century. This period is indicated by the coat of arms of Queen Anne which is emblazoned on the tower, and by the Flag of the Great Union -- an early form of the British Union Jack -- which floats proudly overhead.

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Station #2 -- Hall of Burgesses

This material is also only suggestive and should be used selectively. In general, we propose that the Hall of the House of Burgesses be used

• (1) to tell the over-all story of the growth of self-government and the importance of the Burgesses in this room;
• (2) to tie in men like Henry, Washington, and Jefferson to this particular room at an important historical moment;
• (3) to identify the key documents associated with the room; and
• (4) to indicate that this is the reconstructed first Capitol and make a brief statement about furnishings.

This is by far Williamsburg's most important building -- and this by far its most important room. Here for nearly 75 years met America's oldest representative assembly -- the House of Burgesses. This assembly was first convened in a crude wooden church on the sandy soil of Jamestown in 1619. These men and their successors survived famine, Indian attack, indifference in England, and internal quarrels to lay the groundwork for self-government in a truly brave new world.

In 1699, when Virginia was no longer a precarious foothold on the edge of the wilderness, but instead a flourishing tobacco-planting colony, the capital was moved inland to Williamsburg. For the following fourscore years, the ground-swell for self-government was nourished in this room until it burst forth in 1776 in the torrent of Revolution. After the House of Burgesses ceased to meet in 1775, various revolutionary Conventions, and then the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia used this room.

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This Hall speaks then of generations of American patriots who served the cause of self-government, and who believed with Locke that government is the servant and not the master of the people. Here sat George Washington, a young man of 27 but a battle-hardened veteran of the French and Indian War, who combined his first days of service as a Burgess with a honeymoon in Williamsburg with the attractive widow Custis. Here sat the serious minded Thomas Jefferson, who had first learned the meaning of liberty as a student at the College of William and Mary and as a protege of the hawk-nosed scholar and teacher, George Wythe, whose comfortable brick home still stands on Palace Green.

There were two Burgesses elected from each Virginia County. Twice each year they rode the long muddy miles to Williamsburg for sessions which kept them from family and business for as long as three months. In 1705, there were only 52 Burgesses; by 1775, the fast-growing colony had 130.

Also appropriate of course, for the Council Chamber.

Many Virginia families were represented in this room for generation after generation. As you drive to Williamsburg on the paved roads of the twentieth century, you pass near by 7. many of their family seats: The Lees of Stratford, the Pages of Rosewell, the Tayloes of Mt. Airy, the Carters of Shirley or Sabine Hall, the Ludwells of Green Spring. These men gave freely of their time to serve their church parish, which managed some local affairs, to serve as justices of the peace on the busy county courts, members of the militia, and Burgesses. They learned much from the management of their plantations which helped them to understand the management of government and of men. This legacy of public service was of enormous value when the time came for independence and the establishment of a new government for a new nation.

The story of the Governor proroguing the House either on this or other occasions can be cited. How ever, this will be a point of great emphasis at the Raleigh.

This room speaks of Patrick Henry, the red haired firebrand of Revolution who defied King and Parliament in 1765 when he stood up - perhaps just there bitterly to denounce the Stamp Tax. Henry, a tall, raw-boned man of 29 in buckskin breeches, a freshman legislator who had taken his seat as a Burgess only ten days earlier, introduced Resolves which set the colonies aflame and shocked the conservative leaders of the Tidewater. The principle he defended - - that of no taxation without 8. representation -- was one in the name of which the Revolution was to be fought.

Jefferson, then a law student, was standing just there in the lobby by a half opened door when Patrick Henry spoke, and was so carried away by the oratory that later he only half remembered what he had heard. At the climax of his speech, Patrick Henry thundered "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell and George III." Here he was interrupted by cries of "treason, treason!" Legend insists that he concluded "And George III may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!", although most historians scout this as fictitious bravado. But the effect of Henry's speech was the same, and, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "the ball of Revolution" had at that historic moment been set in motion.

We feel that it is desirable to describe and then qualify this legendary conclusion.

Yet this room had its finest moment in the difficult spring of 1776 when Virginia's representatives in the Convention that had superseded the House of Burgesses drew up the three documents which you see in replica on. this table. By then, the Royal Governor had fled Williamsburg but was still commanding a fleet of warships in the Chesapeake. Lexington and Concord were yet fresh memories, and Boston 9. had just suffered from siege. Rebellion against British authority flared all through the colonies which lay like a half-moon along the Atlantic coast. It was a time for leader-ship and decision.

It is planned to have facsimiles of these documents on permanent display on the table.

There is a problem here of bridging the gap between 1765 and 1776, including reference to the Boston Massacre, the "tea parties" all along the coast, the "liberty or death" speech, and the Battle of Lexington and Concord, etc. This can be done as time permits.

In this crisis, Virginia's delegates responded with rare courage. On May 15, without a single dissenting vote, they instructed their delegation at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to speak out for full freedom from England. We call this the Virginia Resolution for American Independence, and by its mandate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia on June 7 stood up in Independence Hall to move for severance of all ties from the mother country. A committee was formed to draw up a Declaration, and of course the final document written largely by Thomas Jefferson - - won approval and on July 4 a new nation was born. Other colonies went along willingly, no matter what the cost, but from Williamsburg had come the spark of leadership for that great day.

The second document which you see here, and which was drafted in the crucial weeks of May and June, 1776, was the Constitution of Virginia, one of the first and most influential 10. plans of government drawn up in the colonies which suddenly had become sovereign states. Most other successful early state constitutions are modeled on it.

The Declaration of Rights is described last here as a matter of interpretative emphasis, although the constitution can be described last if this is preferred.

The third document -- it was actually drafted before the Constitution -- is the greatest and most influential of all Williamsburg documents -- George Mason's Declaration of Rights. At the very moment when Virginians were breaking away from England, Mason and his colleagues paid homage to those rights which they had long possessed as free Englishmen --freedom of election, freedom from arbitrary punishment, freedom of the press and religion, and many others. Mason, the ailing, retiring master of Gunston Hall, realized that independence without these safeguards was a sham. Virginians would not accept a constitution without a Bill of Rights, and a few years later his fellow Americans demanded a Bill of Rights for the Federal Constitution. The First Ten Amendments were largely taken from this document before you.

This is all very optional --perhaps useful on Saturday evenings when the weather and candle-lit atmosphere permit more oratorical flourishes.

The Declaration of Rights is a reminder that Williamsburg is not only to be remembered as the seat of patriots who fought England for their freedom -- but as a place where the 11. heritage of individual rights planted in Jamestown in 1607 was carried forward into the fabric of government of a new free Republic. This heritage reaches back even beyond the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights -- it has its roots in Judean-Christian culture. It also has come down through the years not as the heritage of America alone, but as that of all free men, wherever they may be; George Mason could claim part authorship, if he chose, in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Uruguayan Constitution, and even the Constitution of India and the Philippines.

When Williamsburg was restored, there was nothing at this site but bare foundations, preserved by the foresight of the Society for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and marked by a simple plaque. However, the careful and cost-conscious Burgesses of the early eighteenth century made it possible for the Capitol to be rebuilt exactly as it was, for they left voluminous records of their dealings with Henry Cary, the Master Builder. This building is a reconstruction of the first of two Capitol buildings which were erected here. The foundations were laid in 1701, and 12. the builder's keys were broken in a ceremony four years later before the Speaker of the House of Burgesses. The original Capitol was destroyed by fire in 1747, and a second Capitol rebuilt shortly afterward. The second building fell into disrepair after 1780 and was itself gutted by fire in 1832.

The furnishings you will see follow the specifications of the early Burgesses. It has been necessary in many cases to use reproductions, since suitable original pieces could not be located. This is not the case in our other exhibition buildings, which are furnished almost entirely with antiques.

In this room, however, is one important survivor of the eighteenth century -- the original high-backed Speaker's Chair. In this chair once sat the portly, affable John Robinson, and -- in the years just prior to Revolution the able and distinguished Peyton Randolph, later to become President of the First Continental Congress. The chair was rescued from the fire of 1747 and taken to Richmond when the capital was moved there in 1780; it was returned to Williamsburg as a loan by the State of Virginia when this building was first opened to the public in 1934.

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The wooden ballot box, not yet moved here, is only a symbol. We should get a replica of the glass voting container which Wythe wrote to London about. However, voting was rarely secret in eighteenth-century Virginia.

On this table are two other symbols of the political heritage of this building: a silver mace, token of the authority of government; and a wooden ballot box, which reminds us of the importance of casting a vote in an election of that time or of this.

Surveying this room from either side of the entrance door is the Royal couple William and Mary for whom our College is named: at your left is William, painted by Sir Peter Lely; and at your right Mary, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. The coat of arms overhead is that of the Colony of Virginia.

As you leave this Hall of the House of Burgesses and turn to go upstairs, glance for a moment over the clerk's desk. There is hung the Peale portrait of George Washington -- a big man, in every way, and a man who learned much of the meaning of self-government here in the Capitol in Williamsburg.

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Station #3 -- Large Committee Room

Our suggestion here is that we use this station to tell something of the everyday business of the House of Burgesses. They were not always in historic session, listening to someone like Patrick Henry.

This room and the one next to it -- and the one across the hall -- were committee rooms for the Burgesses. In the eighteenth century as in our own time most of the business of government was carried out in committee. Around simple baize-covered tables like these the Burgesses met to iron out differences, draw up legislation, or draft petitions to their Governor or to Parliament. Here were prepared bills on everything from the proper bounty for wolves to the procedure for naturalizing German ironworkers in the Northern Neck.

Much legislation was needed as the Colony grew. Virginia was pushing westward. New counties and towns had to be chartered. Roads had to be improved, ferries encouraged, rivers cleared for navigation. Land rights had to be protected, and the militia strengthened as it patrolled the Colony's distant borders against hostile Indians.

To keep the Colony's economy on an even keel, the tobacco market was protected; a tight inspection system insured that only top grade tobacco was shipped to England. Virginia's coins and paper currency needed regulation. 15. Taxes had to be assessed. Some activities needed encouragement by Burgess-approved bounties -- for example, the search in the Dismal Swamp for naval stores like pitch, tar, and turpentine to meet the growing demands of the English fleet.

There were six standing committees, whose bailiwick is indicated by their titles: Elections and Privileges; Public Claims; Propositions and Grievances; Courts and Justice; Trade; and Religion.

These paragraphs have to be amended until the portraits are moved here from the Conference Room. Meanwhile, this material can be used either in the Conference Room or the portraits can sometimes be anticipated by mention in the Committee Room.

The half-dozen portraits you see here commemorate the services of six legislators who spent long hours here. There is Patrick Henry, called by one admirer "the very devil in politics - a son of thunder." Some considered Patrick Henry lazy; he didn't read much, and he boned up for his bar exam in three short months; but he was probably the most influential of all the Burgesses in the decade before Revolution. There is Speaker Robinson, the amiable and courtly political spokesman for Tidewater conservatism, whose death revealed some rather shocking loans to friends from public funds. There is Edmund Pendleton, perhaps the most astute politician of pre-Revolutionary Virginia, chairman of revolutionary Conventions, and first Speaker of the 16. Virginia House of Delegates set up under the Constitution of 1776.

Then we have the three famous Gilbert Stuart portraits. Here is George Washington, who drafted bills both important and less important -- including a bill to keep hogs from running wild on the streets of Winchester; a hard-working Burgess for 16 years, and a man whose political experience as a Virginia legislator is often forgotten but was useful both to him and to the new nation he was to serve. Here is Thomas Jefferson, aristocratic philosopher turned revolutionary, who like Patrick Henry was to serve as a war-time Governor of Virginia. And there is James Madison, the young protégé of Jefferson who served here in the Virginia Convention and House of Delegates. He later helped to frame and then introduced Jefferson's Statute for Religious Liberty.

The portraits of Jefferson and Madison should probably be kept in the Conference Room until the last, where they can also be used to refer to the Statute of Religious Liberty.

The hour glass reminds us of the extra-ordinary services of these men when decisions were necessary and the sands of time were quickly running out. For Landon Carter, the Burgesses were "the bellowing club," and even gentle George Mason was unhappy at the hubbub of the wrangling delegates. Yet when the 17. hour came, Virginia's Burgesses spoke out for freedom and individual rights. These three rooms were their workhouse; here with toil and logic they hammered out the planks which were to build a house of freedom.

Station #4 -- The Conference Room

Here we propose

• (1) to describe the use of the Conference Room,
• (2) to explain at this convenient site the functional layout of the building, and
• (3) to describe the role of Madison and Jefferson in the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty.

This is the Conference Room, so called because members of the House of Burgesses and the Governor's Council met here to try to iron out differences of opinion about legislation. Since the Council could disallow any bill passed by the Burgesses, this conferring process was an important one.

Such a conference, as you will at once recognize, is much like the joint committee sessions held today in Congress by members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Notice how appropriately this room is placed in the building. In one wing met the popularly elected Burgesses, with their Hall below and their committee rooms above. In the other wing, which you will soon see and which is much more elaborately furnished, sat the aristocratic, appointed Governor's Council, either -- on this floor -- as members of the 18. Council, or -- on the first floor -- as be-wigged members of the General Court. Thus this Conference Room both figuratively and literally bridges the gap between Burgesses and Governor's Council.

This room was also used for morning prayers. Hugh Jones, the versatile clergyman who doubled as mathematics teacher at the College, has noted that he came here each morning at eight to conduct a brief service for the Burgesses. We know that prayer books and a folio Bible were ordered for use here, and you will see these again on the table.

Kneeling cushions can also be mentioned if they are acquired.

The Church of England -- or Anglican Church -- was the State Church of colonial Virginia. Only its members could hold public office. All must subscribe to "the Test" --sworn belief in the sacraments of this Church --Baptism and Communion.

The separation of Church and State in Virginia was largely the work of two men whose portraits by Gilbert Stuart you see here --Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

It was the 26-year-old Madison who helped to draft Article 16 in George Mason's Declaration of Rights which granted absolute freedom of worship and paved the way to the disestablishment of the Church. It was Jefferson 19. who drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, first introduced in this Capitol in 1779 but not adopted until 1786 when the assembly was meeting in Richmond. Madison acted as legislative midwife for this statute, which Jefferson considered second only to the Declaration of Independence in his own works.

Now, of course, the portraits in this room require identification. When these are moved into the Committee Rooms, we are suggesting that the only portraits to be hung in the Conference Room be those of members of the Council or perhaps a Clerk of the Council, This is a long-range problem, however, because we do not have such portraits now in our possession.

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Station #5 -- Council Chamber

Here met what someone has very properly described as "the most exclusive club in the colony" -- the Governor's Council. Appointed for life by the King upon nomination of the Royal Governor, the 12 men who made up the Council invariably represented the wealthy, well-born, conservative elements of colonial society.

The decor of the Chamber is appropriately elaborate, in contrast to the simple pine benches of the Burgesses. The marbleized woodwork was a favorite deceit of the early eighteenth century. Note also the elegant turkey-work table covering and the handsome carved high back chairs -- this one reserved for the Governor himself. Respect for the Crown is indicated in the portrait of Queen Anne and by her coat or arms. Queen Anne was on the throne when this first Capitol Building was completed.

The story of the request to the Queen for such a portrait can be told when time permits.

Council members really wore three hats. First, they formed a personal cabinet for the Governor. Second, they acted as a colonial House of Lords, or upper house of the legislature, with authority to veto bills passed by 21. Burgesses and to review petitions, approve government appointments, regulate the Anglican clergy, and administer Indian affairs and inter-colonial relations. Third, and finally, when they convened below in the General Courtroom, they sat as the Highest Court of the Colony.

Perhaps this is too long an enumeration of responsibilities, but it seems important to give the visitor a real feeling of what the Council did when it sat here.

Councilors were paid little, but they often held other lucrative provincial offices and as merchants, planters, and land speculators they could take excellent advantage of the advance information which reached them as Council members to help build their personal fortunes.

Lucrative positions in the Colony were also open to the Councilors.

Members of the Council were not often on the side of England or the Governor in colonial disputes. As residents and landowners of the Colony they knew local conditions far better than the Governor. But sometimes they acted as a buffer between him and the "hot and giddy" patriots among the Burgesses.

The Council was drawn almost invariably from the leading Tidewater families. Of the 12 Councilors on the eve of Revolution, ten were related and all but two were sons or grandsons of former Councilors.

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This material and that following is of course optional. Again, the effort is made at thumbnail sketches of men associated with the building. This builds on early reference to Tidewater families suggested in the Hall of Burgesses.

For example, the Page family of Rosewell, just across the York River in Gloucester, contributed five Councilors, including John Page, a sometime Governor of Virginia who was Jefferson's closest friend through life. Page, an active Church leader and an amateur scientist who liked to measure dewfall, had 12 children, of whom no less than five married sons or daughters of his fellow Councilor, Thomas Nelson of Yorktown.

Nelson's role is well described in the Dictionary of American Biography.

This same Thomas Nelson was the son and nephew of members of the Council. known for his girth and good humor as well as his speaking ability, Nelson was one of the three members of the Council in 1775 who was an active patriot. It was he who introduced Pendleton's famous Resolution for American Independence before the Virginia Convention of Delegates of 1776, and it was he who carried it by hand to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Nelson commanded the Virginia militia during the Revolution and served at the seige of Yorktown. He was to die eight years later after severe asthma attacks, his fortune wiped out by the war.

This gets far afield but links Williamsburg and Yorktown.

Council members were linked not only by family ties, wealth, and social position, but 23. by geography -- because most of them came from plantations near Williamsburg. Councilors had frequent assignments as justices of the court, and it was not practical to live far away. Some of the Councilors for this reason even maintained a town house in Williamsburg --Robert Carter of Nomini Hall moved to the Carter-Saunders House on Palace Green, although as his family grew (he eventually had seventeen children) he understandably went back to his more specious country mansion; William Byrd III of Westover, a poor businessman and unlucky gambler who ran through his family fortune, for some years held the Allen-Byrd House on Francis Street. The fabulously wealthy John Tayloe of Mt. Airy, the friend of Washington who could not quite bring himself to go along for independence, bought the Tayloe House on Nicholson Street, one of the homes most recently restored.

Again, the purpose is to help develop an appreciation of the whole town. Any such cross referencing possible helps, we believe.

Now I will ask you to step across the hall to the office of the Clerk of the Council. The map on the wall will remind you again of the vast extent of Virginia in colonial times.

However, as you leave this room you might wish first to look out of the window at the and of this hall. From this high window 24. Virginia's legislators could look proudly down upon the broad and handsome main street of their capital town -- the spacious thorough-fare which was a central feature of Governor Nicholson's town plan of 1699, one of the first town plans of this country. This street, in a later decade, was to be called by President Roosevelt "the most historic avenue in all America." The Duke of Gloucester Street was named for the tragic little son of Queen Anne who died in childhood.

When you have seen the Clerk's office, please go downstairs to the Secretary's Office, which is just below it.

Station#6 -- Secretary's Office

There were, of course, government officials -- I suppose you could call them bureaucrats --in the eighteenth century. His Majesty's Colony needed men to administer it, especially when its claims extended to the Great lakes and the Mississippi. This was the office of the Secretary of the Colony, next to the Governor the most important appointed official. The Secretary, incidentally, was also always a member of the Governor's Council.

Obviously, our hope here is to cite the importance and responsibilities of the - chief appointed government officials other than Councilors.

Here was kept the impressive seal of the Colony, and therefore here were issued and 25. authorized all documents requiring this seal, such as land grants, proclamations, and patents. Here were granted naturalization papers to foreigners who had lived in Virginia seven years and were prepared to take the oath of allegiance and the Test -- the sworn statement that they believed in the sacraments of the Anglican Church. Here travelers applied for passports -- or passes, as they were then called.

We hope to be able to get piles of ribbon-bound documents for this room --added evidence of its use. It must have been literally littered with such papers at times.

The Secretary had wide powers of appointment -- and therefore political patronage. For example, he appointed the clerks of all the county courts in Virginia. Also, he appointed the clerk of the General Court, who was really the Secretary's chief deputy.

After the first Capitol burned down in the mid-eighteenth century, the legislators honored the Secretary and his storage problems by building the Public Records Office -- the small brick building which still stands just next door off Duke of Gloucester Street.

The last Secretary of the Colony was Thomas Nelson of Yorktown, uncle of the more famous namesake who became a wartime governor and militia commander of Virginia. Secretary Nelson was one of the most prominent and popular men in the Colony and was himself almost 26. elected first Governor in 1776 when Patrice Henry won by a narrow margin. Soon afterwards, Secretary Nelson bowed to old age and gout and left public life.

A second headquarters in Williamsburg for Secretary Nelson must have been the home just down Blair Street of his brother, William Nelson, a Councilor who was a strong advocate both of horseracing and the church, and later the home of William's famous son, Thomas.

Only as time permits

While we are in this room, we might also recall three other chief officials of His Majesty's Government in Virginia: the Receiver-General, who collected Royal revenues from quitrents and taxes on tobacco; the Auditor, who audited these revenues; and the Attorney-General. The last attorney-general was John Randolph, "the Tory," one of the few prominent Virginians who remained a Loyalist and a man who promised to leave his fine violin to Jefferson if he ever left for England -- and who kept his bargain in 1776 when he did.

Offices for officials such as these were located on the third floor of this building.

Now I will ask you to step across to the General Courtroom of the Colony.

Portrait attributions will probably be necessary here and elsewhere. This basic paper makes no attempt to include such identifications except when it is possible to work directly from them to one of the points of emphasis suggested. We certainly defer to the hostesses in this; it may be possible to do this more frequently than we imagine with the present portraits.

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Station#7 -- The General Court

This part of the interpretation paper is unusually full and must be used selectively. We feel that the interpretation must vary unusually much in the General Court depending upon the visitors in the group.

Here sat the General Court of Virginia, the highest court in the Colony, with authority over all causes -- civil, criminal, even ecclesiastical. Here, in 1718, 13 of Blackbeard's pirates were sentenced to the gallows tree. Here were adjudicated all those familiar quarrels over matters of land and money and inheritance which always seem to fill the calendar of our courts of law.

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The business of the Court reflected the times. With the Colony pushing westward and land speculation rampant, there were many disputes involving land claims. The court often acted to protect orphans and wards. The clergy, being state-supported, was subject to the Court; one unfortunate rector, for example, was found often to be too intoxicated to baptize or marry, and was summarily dismissed from his parish. Debtors were hauled into court, and often thereafter sentenced to languish in the Public Gaol just down the hill.

Life in Virginia in those days was some-times rough, restless, and crude, especially along the frontier. Tempers flared easily. Into this turbulent society were plunged slaves brought in chains from remote African villages, and white indentured servants who were often convicted English criminals. It is no wonder that the Court had a heavy criminal docket. Justice was usually quick, because it was expensive to hold accused criminals for trial -- and in a day when labor was scarce, it was uneconomical to keep it behind bars. If judged guilty, the accused was either lashed or branded and sent back to work or led to the awesome gibbet on the outskirts of town. Pardons were occasionally granted by 29. the Governor; in 1727, for example, Governor Gooch bestowed Royal clemency upon a weeping and reformed pirate who promised never to go "a-pirating" again.

The judges of the General Court were exactly the same men who met upstairs as the Governor's Council. The Governor, as presiding justice, sat there, with his Councilors, impressively wigged and robed, in the high, canebacked chairs on either side. Separation of the judicial branch of government from the executive and legislative branches was not to come until the adoption of the Virginia Constitution in 1776. However, the Councilors were solemnly sworn to subordinate personal prejudice and do equal justice to all. They were even prohibited by law from accepting any gift, "except meat and drink, and that but of small value."

The method of selecting juries and the changing qualifications of jurors can be described when there is time.

All the established procedures of the English court were in evidence here. IA criminal cases, the accused -- unless he were a slave -- was entitled to trial by a jury of his peers: the 12-man jury sat on these three benches. The lawyers sat there, at that table -- although the accused criminal was granted counsel only by special permission. 30. The court clerks presumably sat there. The accused sat at that bench, along the wall.

Since few of the Councilors had legal training, the decisions of the Court were likely to be based on common sense rather than intricate law. There were of course exceptions, such as Councilor William Byrd II, the witty and cosmopolitan master of Westover, who had studied law in London, Holland and France.

This Courtroom was usually open to all the interested and the curious, as in our own times. The two balconies, however, were probably reserved for special guests of the Governor or guests of prominent Tidewater planters. The two chandeliers illumine the differences between eighteenth-century attitudes toward Court and onlookers. Over the august and aristocratic justices hangs a handsome crystal chandelier. Over the general populace and their uncomfortable benches hangs a simple iron lantern.

A description of civil cases originating here and those appealed here from lower courts can sometimes be added.

In civil cases, the General Court considered only controversies involving at least ten pounds -- the equivalent of perhaps three hundred dollars in purchasing power today. An appeal to the Privy Council in London was 31. possible only when at least five hundred pounds was at stake, and such appeals were so costly and time consuming that only about fifty were made throughout the entire colonial period.

The General Court met twice each year, in April and October, for 24 working days at each session. As the Colony grew, cases piled up. This was especially vexatious when criminals had to be held many weeks for trial.

Often there will be no need to explain these other courts, which must be confusing to many. If the visitor leaves with a knowledge of the role of the General Court, it is enough.

Therefore a Court of Oyer and Terminer --from the Norman words for "hear" and "decide" --was established, to meet between the sessions of the General Court. The jurisdiction of this new court was limited to criminal cases, and its docket was heavily loaded in later years with problems of unruly slaves.

A third type of court to meet here was the Court of the Vice-Admiralty, which was really a subordinate agency of the Admiralty Court in England. It was assigned oases involving ships, mariners, crimes on the high seas, piracy, and privateering. Its judges were appointed by the Governor and were paid from a percentage of the confiscated ships or goods which they re-assigned. At a time like the French and Indian War, when French vessels were often intercepted, a position on this court must have been lucrative indeed.

32.

All of Virginia's leading lawyers practiced in this General Courtroom. Among the most prominent was Richard Bland, the able political pamphleteer who became the foremost authority on constitutional law in these parts. Another was the heavy-set Peyton Randolph, trained in London's Middle Temple, who became Virginia's Attorney General and who never liked the drudgery of private practice.

Most of this material has been taken from Chapter 13 of Mays' Edmund Pendleton. It is titled "The General Court" and is essential reading for an interpretation of the room.

The most eminent lawyer of all, however, was Edmund Pendleton -- tall, handsome, hard-working, and popular, who had good legs in the days when it was men who had them. Pendleton's frequent opponent was that dedicated scholar, George Wythe, of lofty forehead and thoughtful blue-gray eyes, who always prepared a magnificent brief but who often could defend it only indifferently on his feet. Wythe was usually bested in court by Pendleton, who knew men and who knew Virginia; he would artfully and eloquently whittle away on Wythe's brief until it collapsed. After one particularly galling defeat, Wythe snapped to a friend that he was going to quit the bar, go home, take orders, and enter the pulpit. Wythe's friend warned him that if he did so Pendleton might follow his footsteps and beat him at his new trade.

33.

Two other well-known lawyers who practiced here were equally different in character and custom -- The red-haired Henry, who shared Randolph's aversion to homework, was rarely active in the complex civil cases which usually consumed the opening days of the General Court. He was, however, an effective and adroit advocate in the criminal cases which followed. He soon put aside his hunting shirt and homespun in favor of a well-cut and expensive black suit and a neat tie wig.

Jefferson, like his tutor Wythe, was a scholar who could draw a fine brief; but Jefferson unlike Wythe was at least adequate on his feet and recorded that he had appeared in 1000 cases and in the seven years before Revolution and politics swept him from his practice. Even here the abiding principles of Jefferson's personal philosophy were manifest. As early as 1770, he was speaking out against slavery, advocating the freedom of a third-generation mulatto on the ground that "under the law of nature, all men are born free." It should be added that the Court threw out Jefferson's brief without even bothering to hear opposing counsel.

34.

Another case here involved freedom of the press. When the hot-tempered Colonel John Chiswell, who lived just down Francis Sreet, in 1766 murdered a Scottish merchant in an up-country brawl, he was promptly released on bond by three close friends who were members of the General Court. The editors of the Virginia Gazette, protested this action as high-handed, and were at once hauled into court for libel. But the full Court threw out the indictment in recognition that there must always be freedom of the press within the law.

Chiswell died on the eve of his trial, apparently by his own hand.

The General Court also defiantly refused to issue England's famous Writs of Assistance, which gave customs collectors the right to search any man's home for contraband goods at any hour of day or night without a warrant. James Otis of Massachusetts is remembered in most history books as the foremost opponent of these writs, but nowhere were they fought more stubbornly than in Virginia. The right of any individual for protection from unwarranted search was later written into Virginia's Declaration of Rights by George Mason; it appears as the tenth article among sixteen.

35.

Some material from Station #1 could be used here when a portico station is impossible to man. The important point is to relate the building to the town at large and to its own central mission of - self-government as the visitor enters it and as he leaves it.

As you leave, you will step to the portico from which you entered the building. Before you move on, look about you and try to see in your mind's eye the crowded Capitol Square of the eighteenth-century Publick Times. It is true that the ideas of self-government were largely nourished and debated inside the Capitol itself; but when the time came to fight for freedom it was from people like those who gathered on these broad greens that the substance and spirit of resistance came. The frontiersman carried his rifle to the silent starving winter of Valley Forge; the bootmaker sewed the heavy boots which would someday march with Washington from Williamsburg to final victory on a pine-covered field at Yorktown. The small planter, ship captain, and merchant alike courted ruin by supporting a break from Great Britain. It was not only , the statesmen who were to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors for the cause of the Republic. As you go now to visit the Raleigh Tavern, or the Gaol, or to stroll through the streets of this historic town, we hope that you see such shadowy figures against the landscape of today.