Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  They went through the tower porch, and entered a wide hallway that ran through to tall, closed doors of the shallow north wing. While the men talked to a soldier standing guard by the door, Joseph looked through the open doors of the Council Chamber that took most of the detached end of this floor. A railing separated the large table and grand chairs from narrow benches, back near the doors. The fireplace roared with five-foot logs. As Joseph watched, elegant men and gentlemen in the richest of dress and wigs and sashes and swords and soft leather boots, gathered at their places to hold Court.

  The crowd had grown until Joseph was jostled and afraid of losing sight of his father. The hallway was full of people, and the yard was crowded. Eventually, Richard and Uncle John came from the soldier to tell Joseph that, at least, there would be only a short wait. John Biggs's friends had demanded him an early trial.

  Uncle John pointed out the gentlemen who were assembling. Joseph stared in awe at the old man who first came to Virginia as Governor in 1642. The boy tried to cipher in his head how long ago that was, but gave up. The old man wore an enormous wig of curls, and his eyes flamed like those of Joseph's mother when she was thwarted. The old Governor seemed not to be listening to the men speaking to him, concentrating instead on whatever it was that was upsetting him. Maybe he had a toothache, Joseph thought.

  Uncle John pointed out Colonel Nathaniel Bacon. He reminded Joseph that this man, though a relative of his younger namesake, was in no way sympathetic to the dangerous postings and threats of the young Nathaniel Bacon who seemed to be becoming the leader of this faction of troublemakers on the upper reaches of the rivers. The upstart Bacon, though a member of the Council, was not here.

  Mister Ralph Wormley, a neighbor and member of the vestry with Uncle John, was a member of the Council and waved to his friend when he saw the Williamses in the antechamber.

  Grandfather Biggs was led up the steps into the State House by two guards. He walked over to his son-in-law and grandson and reassured them.

  "Thee need not fear for me, my sons. These men know me; they wish me no ill. And they have larger problems at the moment than a poor Friend from the wilderness of the Southern Branch."

  "We can pay your fine, Father Biggs. I came prepared to help you pay a fine."

  "I thank thee, Richard, but I think my old friend Governor Berkeley will find a way for me to be relieved. He, it was, who reduced my fine last June by half, to only one thousand pounds. Poor Edwards-the-informer almost did himself harm in his anger at the loss!" Father Biggs laughed.

  Richard wondered at the resilience and humor of these Quakers. They were punished and came back for more. Their community was tight and firm, forged in the heat of constant harassment by the Church and Government: beatings, fines, banishment, jail.

  Richard's father-in-law was dressed in his finest. He even wore his black suit today, the quality of which would have pleased any intimate of Green Springs—Governor Berkeley's renowned manor—but for its simplicity. The finest wool and tailoring that could be found went into the garment—Quaker tailors were exacting in their standards—but there was no ribbon, band, or feather in the broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat. Hooks and eyes fastened the coat instead of buttons. The white, wool hose rose to meet his breeches and were not topped by ribbons, nor were his shoes, which were bound by dark strings. No lace at his cuffs nor at his neck. A square, white linen band draped his shoulders and top chest. He was emboldened to wear black, though. Was that his attempt at compromise?

  "I was not of the party that pressed to have harsh rule against you people," Uncle John interrupted.

  "John Williams, I have known thee as an honorable, truthful man for many years. Thee was much loved by my first wife, and are still held in high esteem by her family. It pleases me greatly that thee has opened up a place in thy heart for Richard and my grandson—thy grandnephew. It pleases me that, if not a friend of Friends, thy art not my enemy. But, we believe that no man is."

  "Your grandson…" Uncle John began.

  But the doors were swung open, and the name, "John Biggs," was hailed from the Courtroom.

  "To have waited longer for the trial might have helped."

  Uncle John spoke first when the three strolled away, alone, from the State House.

  "By the week's end His Excellency might have felt less pressure to appear firm with…." Uncle John faltered with his own amazement at the Court's decision. John Biggs was to be confined in the James Town jail for no less than two years, for failing to swear to the will of William Porter.

  "Swear not at all, but let your communication be yea, yea; Nay, nay." Richard quoted from the oft-repeated verse of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. "Friends believe in those words. And no one—not even a Quaker's enemy—doubts a Quaker's word! So why are they doing this, Uncle John! Your friends, why are they doing this to a good man?"

  John said nothing to his nephew.

  "And don't tell me, "The ways of the Lord are mysterious, or something will be hurt!" Richard warned in his anger.

  "I'll speak to Mister Warmly, tonight, Nephew. He must know examples that the Governor might use to intimidate the complainers. But the Governor must show strength and resolve, now, Nephew, to keep the border-men at bay."

  John Williams could do no more for the Quaker, Biggs. He wondered, even now, how he'd be viewed by the regal Mister Warmly, when he approached asking favors for a Quaker.

  Richard left Joseph with his Uncle John while he went to speak again with Father Biggs and the jailers. They would meet again this afternoon, he said, for an ale, so he could becalm himself before appearing before the Clerk to register his headrights and to claim the acreage he had had surveyed—four hundred acres on the opposing side of those three hundred he now owned on Deep Creek.

  Richard found his father-in-law after passing large notes of tobacco payment to the guards. That saw to it that Father Biggs would receive good food, would not be beaten, would have exercise and the treatment of respect due to a prominent planter of Lower Norfolk—and the former son-in-law of Mister Cade Ware.

  Richard saw his father-in-law before he was seen. The man seemed to be taller, even, than when Richard had first stood against him on the riverbank. And his naturally gray hair was as elegant as a London wig.

  John Biggs smiled when he saw Richard enter. His first words were to calm Richard and to say that he looked upon his jailing as an opportunity.

  "I may have the opportunity to speak with a visitor or a guard and have the words that help reveal, in them, the light and truth. I can live a simple life, thee knows, Richard. It was the simple life we had in the late years of the 60's that prepared me to accept my own simplicity and divinity when I heard George Fox. I pray thee and thine will see that light and not forget the happiness of those simpler, hard years.

  "Thy wife is my first-born child, Richard. She came from the best of my life before God sent me my goodwife, Sarah. Now I am young again, with a brood of unbaptized souls crawling about the house."

  "Mother Biggs and the children will be seen to," Richard assured him.

  "They will do their duty to the God in them by continuing to live His Will."

  "You will be dearly missed by them all," Richard said. "I, and many friends of Friends, will be working to secure your release, Father Biggs."

  "If God moves thee to work in that direction, who am I to say thee nay," John Biggs said with good humor.

  The Hawk and Dove was crowded again. The sun had broken through, and patrons' spirits seemed high. Most of them.

  Edward Harper sat with Uncle John and Joseph. The green suit Edward wore was a garment envied by every man in the tavern. Richard joined the table, paying no attention to the suit.

  "Ah, Edward, I see you remembered my Uncle John. And you have met my son, Joseph?"

  "Correct on both, and I must say that I am shocked at the cruel treatment accorded your father-in-law. Justice might ought be more understanding to her own children than to the savage heathen who are pillagin
g and killing them."

  "Poppa, your friend said, 'No bullets can pierce beaver skins.' What did that mean?" Joseph, nodding towards Edward Harper, asked his father.

  Richard smiled at his friend's audacity in repeating that current rumor. No militia bullets would be piercing the beaver skins that were the new trade monopoly of Governor Berkeley and his personal appointees. Indian trade must continue. The Governor would see to it.

  Uncle John twisted uncomfortably in his seat.

  "My old friend is crazy, Son. Take care you avoid such men as speak in riddles, and who wear apparel above their life's station." Richard spoke to his son, but looked to his friend and to his uncle. Both of them laughed, the older man thinking he shared an old joke with the other two, Edward, knowing that his friend could stick him through the gut for frustration.

  Uncle John would dine with Mister Wormley this evening, then ride out first thing in the morning on his return to Gloucester County. The family parting was heartfelt; Uncle John issued an invitation to young Joseph then left to finish with his business and visits. Richard remembered his visits as a boy and reached over and slapped his son on the back. "You've a treat in store," he told Joseph.

  Richard Williams and George Dawes pushed off early in the morning. The sloop ran with the current and the breeze, leaving the men and Joseph to digest new memories.

  George had gambled at a cockfight and lost most of his portion from the sale. But, he'd spent the remainder on two night's food and drink and women that would give him bragging rights till the next trip. Life was easy in Lower Norfolk. He had nothing to save for. Food and shelter—and drink—came with a job, and there was no want for employment in this still-new land. Certainly not for a free, able, and seasoned man. Maybe he'd work for someone other than Richard Williams one day, but there was no hurry.

  Joseph's eyes traced the shoreline as he worried for his Grandfather Biggs. Joseph couldn't understand exactly why Grandfather Biggs was in jail. Greatgrandfather Ware, and many of the very old men who never thought that he was listening, were always talking of the "ungodly' generation of Joseph's father. Virginia was doomed because of his father and his father's friends, but these men weren't in jail. Grandfather Biggs was in jail and being punished because of God. The Friends were honest and helpful neighbors, but their problems seemed to come from showing-off their religion. Joseph worried for his grandfather, but, about religion, he already agreed more with his mother than with his grandparents. His father went to church because the law required him to. His mother went to church because it was her duty. "Because that's how you show solidarity with your King and your community," she'd taught him. Joseph wanted to help make Virginia an important part of England. Uncle John, a respected vestryman, was the man Joseph wanted to become.

  How wonderful, that he had an Uncle John Williams and that it was his father's uncle, too. Joseph loved his father more than anything. So did his brothers and sisters, even though they adored their mother and could even know what she was thinking, sometimes. Still, they loved their father more. He could make them any toy—he surprised them with gifts all the time. He could make them laugh. He was brave. And he made you feel safe when things were bad.

  Uncle John could see Bristol in Virginia. If Joseph repeated that, his father would just laugh and shake his head at the future Uncle John had described for Virginia: castles and lords, cities and great shipping harbors; highways to the mountains, even. Peaceful treaties with the Indians, and the expulsion of French and the few remaining Dutch traders. Some way, Joseph wanted to help that happen when he grew up.

  Richard Williams sat aft and ached for the hurt he was to take his wife. Her sainted Governor Berkeley had imprisoned Father Biggs. But why did he feel guilty? He'd done all he could do. Father Biggs would be well-maintained, and Richard would get word to Captain Carver and, maybe, to Captain Ingolbrietsen. They might help. This time the pain would not be Richard's fault. But most of the pain hadn't been anyone's fault, though he and Edward had admitted to each other yesterday that they both still wondered about the curse that Opeechcot had placed on them. Surely, the power of that old curse was gone.

  Surely. For, when Richard Williams arrived in Lower Norfolk County and wed the glorious Anne Biggs, life could have been no better.

  The three hundred acres Richard was patented in late 1665 were on the southern bank of Deep Creek, a western tributary of the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River. Richard's property went to just above the head of Deep Creek, and touched on the high, northwestern fringe of the mysterious great swamp.

  The heady days of his new life came back to him some times now, in the aroma of cedar and pine and cypress. Cedar and pine and cypress and holly and sweet-myrtle and live oak: a few of the evergreens that blessed this land and new marriage with life and color in that first winter seated on his own land.

  Richard's father-in-law and his neighbors warned him against expectations of making a fortune here with tobacco, though his grant was large enough to reap some profit from the weed if he cleared fresh fields every year. The soil here was depleted in one year only, and even then the quality of a plant was poor. But Richard had been just twenty-years old when he arrived in Lower Norfolk, and his life to that date had been a succession of disasters that became successes. Part of that was due to simply paying attention to experience—to his own and to others'.

  Richard wondered how many of his fellow passengers on the Deliverance were alive today. He'd paid attention to those who were successful, from Mister Ware to Sawyer to Captain Ingolbreitsen. John Biggs had been successful, now he was destroying himself. Uncle John was a success, but he had married into it— Richard smiled at that family resemblance.

  Richard had few peers when he settled on Deep Creek. From servant to master, from cooper to planter, from orphan to parent, married to a seasoned heiress—all this before his twenty-second birthday.

  In the first full year of their marriage—1666—the new couple's energies went to directing and working with their servants to clear land, to build a wharf and, with the help of her father's men and some occasional advice from the visiting Captain Ingolbrietsen, he and Anne built their first home.

  Though Anne cautioned against spending so much of his worth in a first house, Richard was pleased with himself and knew the importance of show in demanding one's place in the community. He insisted on a costly foundation of bricks that were necessarily brought in from a distance.

  The house stood on a low bluff, fifty feet from the Creek, and faced it, eastward. Anne dug up her valued tulip bulbs and planted them in front of her new house. As an extravagant present for her birthday, glass panes were put into the front windows to that Anne might see the Spring sun rise on her blossoms. Pine floors and cedar siding and shingles mingled with her bayberry candles to give the house an air of cleanliness and good health.

  The year 1666 was a most glorious year in Virginia. The only sadness to touch the couple was news of the death of Anne's two uncles in London, of that most horrible plague. But, in Virginia, there was sunshine until the wish for rain. The temperature, too, seemed to work with the will. Richard and his bride basked in that year and watched their neighbors' flowers and fruit bear in abundance—as did their tobacco fields.

  Thinking of it as the empty, high-riding sloop merged with the James River into Hampton Roads, Richard was back aboard the Deliverance hearing, "an overabundance of honey is as deadly as the lack, thereof." Were they still paying for that perfect year of 1666?

  Virginia had its largest crop of tobacco, ever, in 1666. There was such a harvest that, though one hundred ships sailed—laden with hogsheads—half the crop was left behind in storage, enough for three year's market. London merchants bought only the highest grades, and at the lowest price. For Richard and Anne, that was no disaster. His land was not yet cleared for planting and his skills at cooperage were in demand when he had the time and inclination to separate himself from the self-indulgence of wedded bliss and the demands of build
ing his new manor house. There was additional pressure for space with the arrival of their first child, a son they easily agreed to name, John.

  Richard looked to his second son, Joseph, alert in the bow, and thought how different the times of the two boys' births had been, even though they were just short of a year apart in age. John, now approaching ten, already carried himself like the heir apparent, the lord of the manor. Though cocky, like Richard himself, John eagerly assumed the responsibilities of eldest child, competing only with a new-born Biggs uncle for the family's attention. It was a time of plenty.

  The very beginning of the new year, 1667, presaged the horrors that were to come. Word arrived from London of the fire that had swept through the center of that great city in September, leaving more than four hundred and fifty acres in ashes and ruins. Hundreds died in the flames that burned for seven full days.

  Grief throughout the colony for friends and relatives at home overshadowed, only briefly, the anger with Lord Baltimore in Maryland. In the previous, lustrous year, Commissioners of Carolina, Virginia and Maryland had finally agreed to limit the production of tobacco. That was an answered prayer. There was great rejoicing throughout, when all three Assemblies approved the plan. But then, Lord Baltimore vetoed the agreement, and the Virginians were again tending expanded fields and plant-beds when, in April, a hail storm hit. Stones as big as turkey eggs destroyed fruit trees and flattened the early wheat and oats. It knocked off shingles and killed hundreds of hogs and cattle. Anne's glass windows were destroyed, though she comforted her husband with a hail of kisses for the sight of the last month's view of the luscious petals.