far removed from the “primitive nothing” that Nicholson threatened to reduce them to. They had built their fortunes over the past generation or two through forced labor whose origins were not far from kidnapping—the sweat of not just the English indentured servants that aroused Nicholson’s indignation, but also the Africans and the Indians taken from Carolina villages who made up the majority of field workers after 1700.
Nicholson’s dismissive descriptions would have seemed even more plausible in the years before his first arrival in 1690. Particularly after the restoration of England’s monarchy in 1660, Virginia’s gentlemen struggled (often unsuccessfully) both to establish authority in the colony and resist the power of a resurgent empire. Holding power in Virginia was difficult enough. Colonial leaders had worried about the presence of an enormous number of white indentured servants, particularly when several plans for rebellion were discovered in the 1660s. The growth of African slavery in succeeding decades, driven partly by these anxieties, only raised further fears about what Governor Berkeley termed “the giddy multitude.” Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675 posed the most direct challenge to the colony’s leadership. Though himself wealthy and powerful, Nathaniel Bacon had little respect for Virginia’s other leaders. Like Nicholson, he contrasted their “vile” backgrounds when “they first entered the country” with the “sudden rise of their estates” since. Bacon aroused such support that he was able to capture and burn Virginia’s capital city.62
Although Virginia’s gentry defeated the rebellion, they had to contend with unwelcome attention from the English government. The troops sent by imperial authorities in response to the Virginians’ call for aid arrived too late to be of use, and the commission of inquiry that accompanied them soon blamed the unrest not on the rebels but the regime they had rejected. Crown policy increasingly focused on taming unruly Virginia leaders, demanding permanent revenue for the colonial government, strict limits on the powers of the House of Burgesses, and even royal approval before passing legislation. Delay (and, at a crucial point, a sympathetic governor) prevented the most substantial structural changes. But Virginia’s leaders still lost significant power in these years. Governors in the 1680s assembled the legislature less than once a year.63
The provincial leaders who challenged Nicholson’s governorship at the turn of the century no longer faced such dire difficulties. They often belonged to wealthy and politically active families who had given them a broader education in the ways of the larger English world. Just as important, they were often strong enough to pass along their political status, a continuity seen in the growing number of leaders bearing their parent’s name. A Benjamin Harrison had served in the House of Burgesses as early as 1642. His son, Benjamin Harrison II, entered the body in the 1670s and was chosen for the council in the 1690s. Benjamin III in turn received an English legal education before serving as the colony’s attorney general, holding the position for five years before Nicholson turned him out in 1702.64
Robert Beverley II, who lost his post as clerk to the House of Burgesses a year later, belonged to a similarly significant family. Both his father and his elder brother had held the position, with the latter going on to become the speaker of the body. The father of his late wife served on the Council at the same time. Beverley’s trip to England in 1703 allowed Nicholson to choose another clerk. The outraged Beverley joined in the lobbying campaign against Nicholson, as well as publishing the first substantial history of a British colony by a native-born American.65
The man who emerged as the leader of the anti-Nicholson camp, James Blair, seems an unlikely member of this increasingly powerful and interconnected group. As a Scot, he belonged to a distrusted minority; as a parish minister, he held his position at the whim of local leaders. Yet within two years of his 1685 arrival, the young clergyman had convinced Sarah Harrison, daughter of Benjamin Harrison II, to marry him, even though she was already betrothed to another. This alliance with the wealthy and influential Harrison family gave Blair colonial ties that equaled his impressive British connections. Blair had gained the attention of the bishop of London after being forced to flee Scotland because of a political dispute. The bishop, whose responsibilities also included the colonies, soon appointed Blair his representative in Virginia. Blair’s lobbying for the college and its presidency, and his attack on Governor Andros all relied heavily on the bishop’s support. The crucial meeting in that case (in which Blair was supported by Benjamin Harrison III) took place before the bishop and the archbishop of Canterbury. By then, Blair had also developed close ties with John Locke, the philosopher and political thinker who served on the Board of Trade during those years. Nicholson’s own correspondence with Locke seems to have begun only because of Blair. In this broader world, it was not clear which of the two Virginia leaders was more important. William Byrd II, who opposed the minister’s lobbying for the return of Nicholson in both England and Virginia, considered Blair the primary figure in the relationship. He told the hearing that the minister expected to “be able to lead [Nicholson] by the nose as much as he pleases.”66
The returning governor was determined to resist such dependence. Unfortunately for Blair—and for the well-being of Virginia—the governor could only imagine a relationship involving superior and subordinates. Obedience was a common theme in the governor’s tirades. When Harrison’s successor as attorney general suggested that one of Nicholson’s commands might be illegal, “the Gov’r in great wrath took him by the Collar swearing that he knew of no Laws we had but would be obeyed without hesitation or reserve.” Angered by another gentleman, he complained that “he must hang one half of these rogues before the other would learn to obey his commands.”67 The governor delighted in an unlikely story he had heard about Blair’s wedding ceremony in which the bride three times refused the traditional promise to obey her new husband. Needless to say, Nicholson did not admire Sarah Blair’s supposed independence so much as the idea that the man who more than anyone else had challenged his leadership had himself faced insubordination within his own household.68
Figure 4. Sarah Harrison Blair, painted on a 1705 trip to London with her husband, was part of a prominent Virginia family that would include two nineteenth-century American presidents and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Her brother served as the colony’s attorney general until Governor Nicholson removed him from office. John Hargrave, English, Active 1693–c. 1719, Portrait of Mrs. James Blair, née Sarah Harrison (c. 1670–1713), c. 1705. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Mary M. Peachy, 1829.002 Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
The clash, however, was not just between two men who sought to command. It was also between two larger groups, the imperial government and colonial elites, with each side seeking greater control—and each believing the other side’s demands (at least at times) dangerous and illegitimate. And, although Virginia offered a particularly intriguing pair of central adversaries, similar controversies took place in all parts of British America.
A number of American colonies had also experienced crises of authority in the 1670s and 1680s. Jamaica, after being taken from the Spanish in the 1650s, became a haven for marauding pirates. Carolina’s government was briefly overthrown in 1677, while New England’s Indians began what was known as King Philip’s war two years earlier in 1675, the same year Chesapeake nations began their attacks on Maryland as well as Virginia—and the year before Nathaniel Bacon set up a force to fight back before turning on the latter’s government. For Massachusetts leaders just as much as for Virginia, these clashes raised the problem not only of physical survival during the war, but of political survival afterward—in the northern colony’s case, because of the high taxes necessary for recovery. A few years later, England’s 1688 Glorious Revolution set off another series of American upheavals as Boston elites overthrew the Dominion government, and New York and Maryland toppled their regimes as well.69
The aggressive colonial policies of Charles II and James II sought to rein in these problematic provincial elites. The attempt to remake Virginia’s
