My first business in the world being among the public records of my country, the active thoughts of my youth put me upon taking notes of the general administration of the government; but with no other design, than the gratification of my own inquisitive mind; these lay by me for many years afterwards, obscure and secret, and would forever have done so, had not the following accident produced them:
In the year 1703, my affairs calling me to England, I was soon after my arrival, complimented by my bookseller with an intimation, that there was prepared for printing a general account of all her majesty's plantations in America, and his desire, that I would overlook it before it was put to the press; I agreed to overlook that part of it which related to Virginia.
Soon after this he brings me about six sheets of paper written, which contained the account of Virginia and Carolina. This it seems was to have answered a part of Mr. Oldmixion's British Empire in America. I very innocently, (when I began to read,) placed pen and paper by me, and made my observations upon the first page, but found it in the sequel so very faulty, and an abridgement only of some accounts that had been printed sixty or seventy years ago; in which also he had chosen the most strange and untrue parts, and left out the more sincere and faithful, so that I laid aside all thoughts of further observations, and gave it only a reading; and my bookseller for answer, that the account was too faulty and too imperfect to be mended; withal telling him, that seeing I had in my junior days taken some notes of the government, which I then had with me in England, I would make him an account of my own country, if I could find time, while I staid in London. And this I should the rather undertake in justice to so fine a country, because it has been so misrepresented to the common people of England, as to make them believe that the servants in Virginia are made to draw in cart and plow as horses and oxen do in England, and that the country turns all people black who go to live there, with other such prodigious phantasms.
Accordingly, before I left London, I gave him a short history of the country, from the first settlement, with an account of its then state; but I would not let him mingle it with Oldmixion's other account of the plantations, because I took them to be all of a piece with those I had seen of Virginia and Carolina, but desired mine to be printed by itself. And this I take to be the only reason of that gentleman's reflecting so severely upon me in his book, for I never saw him in my life that I know of.
But concerning that work of his, I may with great truth say, that (notwithstanding his boast of having the assistance of many original papers and memorials that I had not the opportunity of) he nowhere varies from the account that I gave, nor advances anything new of his own, but he commits so many errors, and imposes so many falsities upon the world, To instance some few out of the many:
Page 210, he says that they were near spent with cold, which is impossible in that hot country.
Page 220, he says that Captain Weymouth, in 1605, entered Powhatan river southward of the bay of Chesapeake;——whereas Powhatan river is now called James river, and lies within the mouth of Chesapeake bay some miles, on the west side of it; and Captain Weymouth's voyage was only to Hudson's river, which is in New York, much northward of the capes of Virginia.
Page 236, he jumbles the Potomac and eastern shore Indians as if they lived together, and never quarrelled with the English; whereas the last lived on the east side the great bay of Chesapeake, and the other on the west. The eastern shore Indians never had any quarrel with the English, but the Potomacs used many treacheries and enmities towards us, and joined in the intended general massacre, but by a timely discovery were prevented doing anything.
Page 245, he says that Morrison held an assembly, and procured that body of laws to be made; whereas Morrison only made an abridgement of the laws then in being, and compiled them into a regular body; and this he did by direction of Sir William Berkeley, who, upon his going to England, left Morrison his deputy governor.
Page 248, he says (viz: in Sir William Berkeley's time) the English could send seven thousand men into the field, and have twice as many at home; whereas at this day they cannot do that, and yet have three times as many people in the country as they had then.
By page 251, he seems altogether ignorant of the situation of Virginia, the head of the bay and New York, for he there says:
"When the Indians at the head of the bay traveled to New York, they past, going and coming, by the frontiers of Virginia, and traded with the Virginians, &c.;" whereas the head of the bay is in the common route of the Indians traveling from New York to Virginia, and much about halfway.
Page 255, he says Sir William Berkeley withdrew himself from his government; whereas he went not out of it, for the counties of Accomac and Northampton, to which he retired, when the rebels rose, were two counties of his government, and only divided from the rest by the bay of Chesapeake.
Page 266, he says, Dr. Thomas Bray went over to be president of the college in Virginia; whereas he was sent to Maryland, as the bishop's commissary there. And Mr. Blair, in the charter to the college, was made president during life, and is still alive. He also says, that all that was subscribed for the college came to nothing; whereas all the subscriptions were in a short time paid in, and expended upon the college, of which two or three stood suit, and were cast.
Page 269, he tells of camels brought by some Guiana ships to Virginia, but had not then heard how they throve with us. I don't know how he should, for there never was any such thing done.
Then his geography of the country is most absurd, notwithstanding the wonderful care he pretends to have of the maps, and his expert knowledge of the new surveys, (page 278) making almost as many faults as descriptions. For instance:
Page 272, Prince George county, which lies all on the southside of James river, he places on the north, and says that part of James City county, and four of the parishes of it, lie on the southside of James river; whereas not one inch of it has so done these sixty years.
Page 273, his account of Williamsburg is most romantic and untrue; and so is his account of the college, page 302, 303.
Page 274, he makes Elizabeth and Warwick counties to lie upon York river; whereas both of them lie upon James river, and neither of them comes near York river.
Page 275, he places King William county above New Kent, and on both sides Pamunkey river; whereas it lies side by side with New Kent, and all on the north side Pamunkey river. He places King and Queen county upon the south of New Kent, at the head of Chickahominy river, which he says rises in it; whereas that county lies north of New Kent from head to foot, and two large rivers and two entire counties are between the head of Chickahominy and King & Queen. Essex, Richmond and Stafford counties, are as much wrong placed.
He says that York and Rappahannock rivers issue out of low marshes, and not from the mountains as the other rivers, which note he has taken from some old maps; but is a false account from my own view, for I was with our present governor at the head spring of both those rivers, and their fountains are in the highest ridge of mountains.
Page 276, he says that the neck of land between Niccocomoco river and the bay, is what goes by the name of the northern neck; whereas it is not above the twentieth part of the northern neck, for that contains all that track of land which is between Rappahannock and Potomac rivers.
How unfaithful and frontless must such an historian be, who can upon guess work introduce such falsities for truth, and bottom them upon such bold assertions? It would make a book larger than his own to expose his errors, for even the most general offices of the government he misrecites.
Page 298, he says the general court is called the quarter court, and is held every quarter of a year; whereas it never was held but three
