In the spring of 1689, Virginians flocked to Jamestown to hear William and Mary proclaimed Lord and Lady of Virginia. The next year there entered, as LieutenantGovernor, Francis Nicholson, an odd character in whom an immediate violence of temper went with a statesmanlike conception of things to be. Two years he governed here, then was transferred to Maryland, and then in seven years came back to the James. He had not been liked there, but while he was gone Virginia had endured in his stead Sir Edmund Andros.
That had been swapping the witch for the devil. Virginia in 1698 seems to have welcomed the returning Nicholson.
Jamestown had been hastily rebuilt, after Bacon's burning, and then by accident burned again. The word malaria was not in use, but all knew that there had always been sickness on that low spit running out from the marshes. The place might well seem haunted, so many had suffered there and died there. Poetical imagination might have evoked a piece of sad pageantry--starving times, massacres, quarrels, executions, cruel and unusual punishments, gliding Indians. A practical question, however, faced the inhabitants, and all were willing to make elsewhere a new capital city.
Seven miles back from the James, about halfway over to the blue York, stood that cluster of houses called Middle Plantation, where Bacon's men had taken his Oath. There was planned and builded Williamsburg, which was to be for nearly a hundred years the capital of Virginia. It was named for King William, and there was in the minds of some loyal colonists the notion, eventually abandoned, of running the streets in the lines of a huge W and M. The long main street was called Duke of Gloucester Street, for the short-lived son of that Anne who was soon to become Queen. At one end of this thoroughfare stood a fair brick capitol. At the other end nearly a mile away rose the brick William and Mary College. Its story is worth the telling.
The formal acquisition of knowledge had long been a problem in Virginia.
Adult colonists came with their education, much or little, gained already in the mother country. In most cases, doubtless, it was little, but in many cases it was much. Books were brought in with other household furnishing.
When there began to be native-born Virginians, these children received from parents and kindred some manner of training. Ministers were supposed to catechise and teach. Well-to-do and educated parents brought over tutors.
Promising sons were sent to England to school and university. But the lack of means to knowledge for the mass of the colony began to be painfully apparent.
In the time of Charles the First one Benjamin Symms had left his means for the founding of a free school in Elizabeth County, and his action had been solemnly approved by the Assembly. By degrees there appeared other similar free schools, though they were never many nor adequate. But the first Assembly after the Restoration had made provision for a college. Land was to have been purchased and the building completed as speedily as might be.
The intent had been good, but nothing more had been done.
There was in Virginia, sent as Commissioner of the Established Church, a Scotch ecclesiastic, Dr. James Blair. In virtue of his office he had a seat in, the Council, and his integrity and force soon made him a leader in the colony. A college in Virginia became Blair's dream. He was supported by Virginia planters with sons to educate--daughters' education being purely a domestic affair. Before long Blair had raised in promised subscriptions what was for the time a large sum. With this for a nucleus he sailed to England and there collected more. Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, helped him much. The King and Queen inclined a favorable ear, and, though he met with opposition in certain quarters, Blair at last obtained his charter. There was to be built in Virginia and to be sustained by taxation a great school, "a seminary of ministers of the gospel where youths may be piously educated in good letters and manners; a certain place of universal study, or perpetual college of divinity, philosophy, languages and other good arts and sciences." Blair sailed back to Virginia with the charter of the college, some money, a plan for the main building drawn by Christopher Wren, and for himself the office of President.
The Assembly, for the benefit of the college, taxed raw and tanned hides, dressed buckskin, skins of doe and elk, muskrat and raccoon. The construction of the new seat of learning was begun at Williamsburg. When it was completed and opened to students, it was named William and Mary. Its name and record shine fair in old Virginia. Colonial worthies in goodly number were educated at William and Mary, as were later revolutionary soldiers and statesmen, and men of name and fame in the United States.
Three American Presidents--Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler--were trained there, as well as Marshall, the Chief Justice, four signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many another man of mark.
The seventeenth century is about to pass. France and England are at war.
The colonial air vibrates with the struggle. There is to be a brief lull after 1697, but the conflict will soon be resumed. The more northerly colonies, the nearer to New France, feel the stronger pulsation, but Virginia, too, is shaken. England and France alike play for the support of the red man. All the western side of America lies open to incursion from that pressed-back Indian sea of unknown extent and volume. Up and down, the people, who have had no part in making that European war, are sensitive to the menace of its dangers. In Virginia they build blockhouses and they keep rangers on guard far up the great rivers.
