that would have made the colonial assembly virtually unnecessary. After this program failed, a new Jamaica governor deliberately removed established leaders from their position in favor of less wealthy and well-connected men who would presumably be more loyal. English rule in New York, recently captured from the Dutch, showed a similar disregard for the province’s notables. The duke of York did not even create a legislative body there—and he failed to include one in the Dominion of New England he established when he became king in 1685.70
Despite these difficulties, however, a number of other colonies besides Virginia also developed more stable local leadership. A powerful native-born elite emerged in Maryland and the Caribbean Leeward Islands during these same years. And Jamaica’s leaders, facing an intense imperial offensive against their power, grew strong enough to mount an English lobbying campaign on a scale that dwarfed Blair’s efforts—emerging with unprecedented control over English colonial policy. Other colonies, however, followed more troubled routes to stability. Provincial elites in both New York and (as Chapter 2 notes) the Carolinas remained weak until far into the new century.
Massachusetts, where provincial leadership developed earlier than in other colonies, offers a particularly telling comparison with Virginia. The contemporary governorship of Joseph Dudley created similar discontent. But Dudley had deeper roots in his colony. Son of a Massachusetts governor, Dudley had been part of the provincial leadership since his young adulthood, even serving in the London delegation that unsuccessfully opposed the revocation of the colony’s charter. But his decision to serve as the temporary governor of New England in the Dominion and then (alongside Nicholson) as a member of its council aroused intense anger. He was imprisoned along with Andros when Bostonians overthrew the government in 1689. Both were sent to England, where Dudley remained in virtual exile for more than a dozen years.
Although Dudley was a native rather than a newcomer, his 1703 return to Massachusetts as governor was more divisive than Nicholson’s restoration to Virginia five years earlier. While the latter’s reappointment was widely celebrated, Dudley’s commission reopened old political wounds. Still the two governors shared a common desire to strengthen royal government. Dudley collected more money during his governorship than the colony had raised in all its previous history. His opponents complained that impoverished New Englanders were being forced to sell even the feathers from their beds to discharge their tax bill.71 Both governors, furthermore, saw the Anglican Church as a central part of strengthening royal power. Although personally a Congregationalist, Dudley carefully steered patronage to church members. His strong sense of duty almost matched Nicholson’s. “The strongest command,” Dudley told colleagues, was “a request from a superior.”72
Like Nicholson as well, Dudley aroused strong ministerial opposition. He faced ferocious attacks from the father-and-son combination of Increase and Cotton Mather. Although the two ministers were Dissenters rather than members of the church, the elder Mather shared with Virginia’s commissary both strong English connections and a history of successful lobbying.73 The Mathers, however, failed to dislodge their governor. Dudley stayed in office for thirteen years and was finally removed only when the death of Queen Anne required an explicit renewal of his commission. Dudley’s greater success depended upon two significant advantages over Nicholson. The Massachusetts native’s 1690s exile helped him develop strong English ties that even Nicholson found difficult to match. By the time the latter returned to Virginia as governor in 1698, he had been in America for almost a dozen years, with only a single return visit lasting less than a year. Dudley moved back to Massachusetts in 1703 with the strong support of Lord Cutts, who had earlier given him the post of lieutenant governor of the Isle of Wight and sponsored his election to Parliament. No other mainland-born American colonial served in either position. Dudley’s support of the Church of England proved similarly astute, helping to keep his Dissenter opponents from developing the close ties to the ecclesiastical hierarchy that served as the foundation of Blair’s political strength.74
Dudley’s longevity rested on more than English ties. His relatively mild temper won him substantial support. Dudley occasionally displayed flashes of anger. He and his son drew their swords on some carters who refused to give way to their carriage in 1705—and, like Nicholson, he received advice from England suggesting that “moderation is a virtue.”75 But Dudley showed a sensitivity to the aspirations of the colony’s leaders that Nicholson never developed. As an early supporter noted, Dudley lacked his predecessor Phips’s “Natural passionateness.”76
Nicholson’s harsh demeanor, by contrast, intensified Virginia’s political difficulties, provoking a bitterness that led each side to work tirelessly to undermine the other. The governor complained that Blair and his group seemed to be following the “the old diabolical saying” (about excrement rather than soil): “Fling dirt enough and some will stick.”77 Yet he himself made numerous charges about his enemies’ “artfull trifling, malitious insinuations, and many notorious falsities.” He pressured the burgesses, grand juries, and ministers to prepare addresses of support.78 Nicholson’s opponents fought back by sending numerous affidavits, letters, and memorials to the home government, leading Nicholson to dub his opponents the “Affidavit Sparks.”79 They also circulated writings in both Virginia and England, including the “ballads, Pasquils & Lampoons … posted upon trees in high roads” cited by Virginia clergy. As they noted there were “Criminations & Recriminations on both sides (God knows).”80
The result was a lengthy standoff. Blair and his allies would not accept the subordinate role that Nicholson demanded of them. Such submission to the governor, Beverley argued, would mean “Slavery and utter ruine.”81 But Nicholson’s views of government allowed no other position, no other result. The contest ended only in spring 1705 when the Board of Trade removed Nicholson—and even then they refused to admit the dangers of his temper. Responding to the governor’s pleas, they issued a public statement that he had done nothing wrong.
Nicholson’s harshness had heightened the problems of an already difficult situation. The imperial government needed to renegotiate its relationship with colonial elites if it wished to expand its power. Virginia’s gentlemen needed not only to come to terms with British expectations but to reconsider how they presented themselves to the broader world as well as to other Virginians. As Nicholson’s supporters rightly complained, provincial leaders were hardly models of self-control. But (as the next section suggests) their difficulties encouraged them to define the link between government and personal demeanor in ways that Nicholson never did. While Virginia’s elite began to explore the ideals of politeness, the governor’s attempts at gaining support, as Blair came to recognize, “appeared more like a design of perpetrating a rape than obtaining a consent.”82
A Publick Callamity
Nicholson’s successor, Governor Edward Nott, seems aptly named. A former army officer of no particular distinction, he arrived in Virginia in August 1705 and died a year later. His list of accomplishments was as short as his tenure. Other than gaining funding for a governor’s mansion and encouraging passage of a widely popular port bill (a measure soon disallowed by the British government), Nott instituted no lasting change or policy initiative.
Yet Virginians found Nott irresistible. A minister just arriving from England about the time of his death observed that the late governor “is very much lamented.”83 Blair reported that the loss “put this poor Country in a great consternation.”84 Virginia’s House of Burgesses erected a monument to him more than a decade later. Cautious representatives removed William Byrd II’s dramatic peroration: “if a Stranger, pity the country: if a Virginian, thy self.” But even the revised inscription still observed that Nott “was deservedly Esteemed A Public Blessing while he Lived & when He Dyed a Publick Callamity.”85
The celebration of Nott went beyond the fact that he was not Nicholson. Many Virginians
