of troops serving the Dominion of New England, King James II’s attempt to consolidate control over all the northern mainland colonies. The thirty-two-year-old officer had already served in the army for about a decade, in Holland, northern Africa, and England. In his new American post, Nicholson quickly advanced to become deputy governor of New York and the Jerseys (then divided into two colonies). One of the earliest American accounts of his anger comes from this period. A lieutenant who served under him testified in 1689 about the time he was ordered to report to Nicholson’s quarters. The officer, who presumably spoke primarily Dutch, asked his corporal to accompany him. The arrival of the second officer so outraged Nicholson that he threatened to shoot the corporal if he did not leave immediately.12 Nicholson’s anger could be as long-lived as it was sudden. Even after an unparalleled career that included governorship of four colonies from South Carolina to Canada, rank as general, and even a knighthood, he continued to nurse his grudges against Blair. The former governor (then seventy-two) published a collection of documents in 1727 refuting charges made by the college president some twenty-three years before.13
This combination of quick resentment and settled grievances made Nicholson formidable. Not long after the prosecution of Slye, the Maryland legislature objected to the governor’s demeanor. His belligerence in the courtroom, it complained, left jurors “unjustly vexed menaced overawed [and] Deterred.” The legislators admitted Nicholson’s aggressiveness frightened them as well. They “humbly Implore[d]” him that he would “neither Implicitely or Expressly … Menace Deterr or overawe the house or any member thereof from freely debateing.”14
Maryland legislators, already at odds with Nicholson politically, may have been particularly sensitive to his manner. But other people reported similar fears. The Virginia minister Jonathan Monroe told the colony’s council that he had been riding in the woods in 1704 when the governor appeared and “abused him.” Monroe traveled with him for four miles, fearful that Nicholson might shoot him if he tried to leave.15 Even the great gentlemen of Virginia’s Council, the proud leaders of the mainland’s wealthiest colony, found Nicholson frightening. “Nobody went near him,” Blair later testified, “but in dread & terour.”16
Yet Blair was wrong to suggest that Nicholson directed his “rage & fury” at “all sorts of people.” The governor treated his superiors with exquisite caution, proclaiming his loyalty at every turn. “I hope in God,” he wrote in 1697, “I shall never be so great a Rogue as to eat his Ma’tys Bread, & not to the utmost of my power serve him.”17 Even a request to procure birds for royal gardens led him to issue at least three official orders in two colonies.18 English officials clearly found such displays of loyalty appealing. Despite numerous complaints, Nicholson’s American career spanned almost forty years.19
Nicholson expected the same submission to authority from his subordinates that he gave his superiors—and his aggressive demeanor sought to make that expectation clear. Just as Slye needed to know his insolence was unacceptable, so too jurors and legislators needed to realize that they were being watched. Nicholson responded to the discontented Maryland legislators that he only sought to encourage people to do their duty. He asked incredulously whether they “desire to be despotick and [so much] above the Law so as not to be questioned?”20
Nicholson’s response to Slye’s accusation about the governor “Striking people” reveals the hierarchical vision that fed (and, he believed, justified) his anger. Nicholson readily admitted to beating two people. But when Slye raised the case of a “Burroughs,” the governor objected: “What if he had?” Burroughs was “his Servant and his Cook,” therefore his responsibility. The other two cases required more explanation. The first was that of Coode himself, who was not only the leader of the faction supported by his stepson Slye, but a prominent Maryland leader. Yet Coode’s transgression had been substantial. He first arrived drunk at a church service, making a “Disturbance,” and then he “affronted his Excellency in his own house.” Such insolence seemed just cause for physical discipline. Coode himself may have felt the same way. He quickly offered the governor a written apology.21 The final incident Nicholson noted suggests even more clearly his goal of upholding authority. While visiting a Captain Snowden, Nicholson observed some of Snowden’s men fighting with swords. Rather than reproving them, Nicholson turned his cane on the captain, the officer responsible for overseeing their behavior.22 The governor later threatened the members of the Virginia council in the same terms, promising that he “would beat them into better Manners.”23
This lively sense of authority also allowed Nicholson to be generous when his authority was fully accepted. His earlier anger was of a piece with his later magnanimous treatment of Slye after his submission. Nicholson remained popular with many Virginians during both his terms, even after many of the colony’s most prominent leaders turned against him.
Nicholson’s dedication to these larger responsibilities also encouraged his commitment to intellectual and cultural projects. He provided essential support for the new College of William and Mary, the second college chartered in British America. Blair called him “the greatest Encourager … of this Design” in the colony.24 Nicholson’s support of the college continued even after he was moved to Maryland, where he spearheaded the creation of that colony’s first free school. His extensive donations to Church of England ministers and building projects went far beyond his official duties. Virginia’s clergy lined up solidly behind him, even as Blair, the bishop’s official representative in Virginia, sought to have him removed. Ministers in other colonies showed similar support, sending numerous letters to London testifying of Nicholson’s encouragement. A New Jersey minister called him the colonial church’s “nursing Father.” The artist Mark Catesby, engaged in creating a pathbreaking volume describing and picturing American animals, found Nicholson similarly helpful in the 1720s when he arrived in South Carolina. The governor offered an annual pension as long as he held office.25
Like his encouragement of the Anglican Church, Nicholson’s designs for new capital cities in both Virginia and Maryland sought both to strengthen authority and to make plain the structures of power. Nicholson’s early plan for Williamsburg arranged the streets to form a “W,” a visual reminder of the new town’s namesake, King William. In Annapolis, named for William’s sister-in-law and successor, Nicholson placed the capitol, the center of political authority, and the Anglican church, the center of religious authority, on its two highest hills. The city’s other streets were arranged around or radiated from these two centers, representing topographically the significance of what he elsewhere called the “2 inseperables, the Church of Engl’d and monarchie.”26
Nicholson believed such authority, displayed in the streets of the capital (and, he would have said, in the person of the governor), was essential to proper government. When members of the Maryland assembly protested against his treatment of jurors and legislators in 1698, the upper house, clearly representing Nicholson’s position, responded by reminding them that they were responsible for preserving “the pe[a]ce and quiett of the Province.” To do this, the statement explained, government must be, as St. Paul wrote, a “Terror to Evill doers.” Just as jurors should not think that they would go unpunished if they erred, assembly members should not expect “to debate at Random without any reguard to the dignity of his Ma’ty and hon’r of his Governm’t.”27
Although Nicholson himself had scolded the legislators the previous day, he called them in again to accept one of their requests, the need to preserve the House journals: “he looked upon Records,” he told them, “Especially the Records of Supream authority next to the Divine Laws to be sacred.” But he also warned that the survival of government required respect for the governor: “All Rebellions were begun in all Kingdoms and States by scandalizing and makeing odious the p[er]sons in Authority.”28
Like his deep respect for church and monarchy, literally placing them above the people in Annapolis, Nicholson’s concern about uprisings recalled the problems that
