by Edward Cline
These were blanket sanctions, similar in spirit and intent to general warrants, issued by courts under the authority of the king and Parliamentary law, that permitted customs officers, on mere suspicion of evasion, to search and ransack private homes and property for untaxed contraband or smuggled goods, and if found, to seize the same in lieu of paid duties, fines, and jury decisions. Otis argued that these writs were invalid because any act of Parliament or royally assented law “against the Constitution was void,” and warned that the writs represented a liberty-abridging power that “cost one King of England his head and another his throne.”
These words, had they been uttered in either House by a member of Parliament, would have cost him his seat in the Commons, or his title in Lords, and earned him imprisonment and a trial on the charge of treason. But they were spoken by a mere colonial lawyer in an “inferior” colonial court that subsequently demurred the issue in deference to Crown interpretation, and so they carried neither weight nor threat nor hint of unrest.
And while men in London were fulminating against Wilkes in December of 1763, and wondering whence came the unruly crowds that rallied to his support, the ministers and lords there were naturally oblivious to the address that month by another lawyer to a jury of another “inferior” court in faraway Hanover County, Virginia; very likely, too, they would have been unmoved even had the address been communicated to them.
The Privy Council had disallowed the General Assembly’s Two-Penny Act of 1758, which, as an emergency economic measure, fixed the salaries of the state-appointed clergy in Virginia below the market price of tobacco — or rather reduced the tax on a pound of sold tobacco, imposed to support the Anglican clergy, from six pence to four. These vestry-paid salaries were disbursed in the form of crop notes, transfer notes, and depreciating Virginia currency, all tied to the widening gulf in the exchange rate between Virginia paper and British sterling. The clergy not only felt cheated, but did not feel that they, God’s spokesmen, should be the recipients of curt reminders from London merchants about their mounting debts.
Reverend John Camm, divinity professor at William & Mary College and pastor of York-Hampton Parish, voyaged to London on their behalf and waged a successful campaign with the Privy Council and Board of Trade to have the Act repealed, or disallowed. Reverend James Maury of Hanover, emboldened by his colleague’s success, sued his parish for back pay. The Hanover County Court recognized the disallowance, and a jury was selected to determine what he was lawfully owed.
Patrick Henry, representing the parish, persuaded the jury that when “a King…degenerated into a Tyrant,” he forfeited “all right to his subjects’ Obedience.” He asserted the right of the colony to enact its own laws, and asked the jury to “make such an example of the plaintiff, as might hereafter be a warning.” His unambiguous hostility to the established Anglican Church was underscored by his reference to Maury and his colleagues as “rapacious harpies,” ready to snatch food and shelter from the poor and distressed.
The jury, charged with deciding the amount of Maury’s entitled back pay, awarded him the grand sum of one penny. The disallowed Act, passed by the colony’s own General Assembly, was a regulatory law, which, in the mercantilist scheme of things then, was complementary to and as intrusive and pernicious as any passed by Parliament. Still, it was an act of self-governance by Virginians that was arbitrarily annulled by the Crown. The Hanover jury both obeyed the Crown, and defied it.
Some historians date the first serious articulation of revolution to Otis; others, to Henry. It is a moot point. Their words, verging on the received definition of treason, were not “shots heard ’round the world,” but rather presageful alarms that stung the restive consciousness of any man accustomed to thought. They set the tone and terms for everything that was to follow.
Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick, rebels from two distinct strata of English society, and moved by differing visions of liberty, would now become dedicated revolutionaries: one imbued with a steady, quiet certitude; the other, with an articulate, impassioned patriotism.
About the Author:
Edward Cline is the author of two other novels: First Prize, a detective novel, and Whisper the Guns, a suspense novel, and has written for a variety of publications including the Colonial Williamsburg Journal and the Marine Corps League. His essay on John Locke was anthologized in McGraw-Hill's Western Civilization. He lives in Yorktown, Virginia
About the Book:
Third in the popular historical series, Sparrowhawk Book Three follows Jack Frake (Book One) and Hugh Kenrick (Book Two) as they meet in Colonial Virginia. Jack is a successful planter who has gained a lifetime of experience since he was brought to Virginia as an indentured felon. Hugh, after completing his education in Philadelphia, decides not to return to England but, instead, to buy a plantation. Both take extraordinary actions to preserve their lives, fortunes, and moral independence in the turbulent period following the French and Indian War.
Table of Contents
titles
contents
Foreword
Chapter 1: The Visitors
Chapter 2: The Town
Chapter 3: The Plantation
Chapter 4: The Ball
Chapter 5: The Encounter
Chapter 6: The Empty Houses
Chapter 7: The Empty Houses (ii)
Chapter 8: The Newcomer
Chapter 9: The Master
Chapter 10: The Host
Chapter 11: The Olympians
Chapter 12: The Governor
Chapter 13: The Freeman
Chapter 14: The Rivals
Chapter 15: The Conduit
Chapter 16: The Riddle
Chapter 17: The Hiatus
Chapter 18: The Journey Home
Chapter 19: The Homecoming
Chapter 20: The Member for Swansditch
Chapter 21: The Voyage Home
Chapter 22: The Bellwether
Chapter 23: The Autumn
Chapter 24: The News
Chapter 25: The Words
The author