"SEVERAL UNHANDSOME WORDS": THE POLITICS OF GOSSIP IN EARLY VIRGINIA
Christine Eisel
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green
State University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
May 2012
Committee:
Ruth Wallis Herndon, Advisor
Timothy Messer-Kruse
Graduate Faculty Representative
Stephen Ortiz
Terri Snyder
Tiffany Trimmer
© 2012
Christine Eisel
All Rights Reserved
iii
ABSTRACT
Ruth Wallis Herndon, Advisor
This dissertation demonstrates how women’s gossip in influenced colonial Virginia’s
legal and political culture. The scandalous stories reported in women’s gossip form the
foundation of this study that examines who gossiped, the content of their gossip, and how their
gossip helped shape the colonial legal system. Focusing on the individuals involved and
recreating their lives as completely as possible has enabled me to compare distinct county
cultures. Reactionary in nature, Virginia lawmakers were influenced by both English cultural
values and actual events within their immediate communities. The local county courts
responded to women’s gossip in discretionary ways. The more intimate relations and immediate
concerns within local communities could trump colonial-level interests.
This examination of Accomack and York county court records from the 1630s through
1680, supported through an analysis of various colonial records, family histories, and popular
culture, shows that gender and law intersected in the following ways.
1. Status was a central organizing force in the lives of early Virginians. Englishmen
punished women who gossiped according to the status of their husbands and to the status
of the objects of their gossip.
2. English women used their gossip as a substitute for a formal political voice.
3. Englishmen considered women’s gossip disorderly, even dangerous, because it
threatened their efforts at maintaining order. At the same time, they treated gossips as
useful tools for maintaining community control.
This study helps us understand how gendered ideals were both enforced and challenged
at the county and colony level. It joins with other studies of early Virginia in illustrating how
iv
women were critical to the transformation of Virginia from a trading outpost governed by martial
law to a diverse, profitable, and ordered colony within the English empire.
v
For my dad, Howard Decker, and in memory of my mom, Elizabeth Decker
vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The completion of the work that follows would not have been possible without the
support of a community of scholars, friends, and family. I am extremely grateful for financial
support through a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Virginia Historical Society and through a
Phi Alpha Theta Doctoral Scholarship. My thanks also goes to the staff at the Eastern Shore
Historical Society for giving me access to Susie Ames’ papers; to Minor Weisiger at the Library
of Virginia for his assistance in locating deposition fees; to Brooks Miles Barnes at the Eastern
Shore Public Library for sharing with me his vast knowledge of Eastern Shore historiography; to
Juleigh Clark at the Rockefeller Library for her assistance with York County records; to E. Lee
Sheppard at the Virginia Historical Society for steering me toward John Hemphill’s work; and to
Brent Tarter at the Library of Virginia and Warren Billings for their timely and informative
correspondence regarding Hemphill’s scholarship. Thanks, also, to Sandra Treadway and Abby
M. Schrader, commentators at the Virginia Forum and The Berkshire Conference on the History
of Women, respectively, for their insights that helped shape this project in its early stages.
I owe many thanks, too, to DeeDee Wentland and Tina Amos at the BGSU history department
for all of their support. They are the unsung heroes of the department.
I am deeply grateful for the continued presence of the talented and generous colleagues
that read and re-read many of the following chapters while participating in our
“thesis/dissertation club,” especially Shirley Green, Kelly Watson, Eve Crandall, and Jim
Schaefer, whom I am privileged to call not only colleagues, but friends. Also, to my dear friends
Bruce Onweller and Fawn Nelson, and Billy, Luke, and Bryn for generously sharing their home
with me during my research trips to Virginia.
vii
I am deeply indebted to the members of my dissertation committee, Stephen Ortiz, Terri
Snyder, and Tiffany Trimmer, for their initial comments on my prospectus that helped to shape
and focus my work, their continued support throughout the writing process, and their questions
and comments on the final draft which will undoubtedly shape my future work. I have been truly
fortunate to have had the guidance and support of Ruth Wallis Herndon, my advisor, mentor, and
friend. She holds me to the highest standards in every idea I come up with and every word I put
on paper. Completing this project would not have been possible without her generosity and
expertise.
Finally, I thank my family, especially my parents, Howard and Elizabeth Decker, who
instilled in me a latent love of reading and history, and my husband Mark and our children,
Brittany and Evan, for their unending patience and support. Success is neither possible nor
fulfilling without you!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................
1
PROLOGUE…………………….. ........................................................................................
35
PART ONE. CREATING AND RESISTING PATRIARCHAL ORDER
Chapter One. The Threat of Disorderly Speech
In Early Virginia Government .......................................................................
37
Chapter Two. Gossip and Status in AccomackNorthampton County, 1632-1659 ..................................................................
56
Chapter Three. Gossip and Church Politics in
York County, 1640s-1660..............................................................................
84
PART TWO. MAINTAINING MASCULINE AUTHORITY IN VIRGINIA, 1660-1677
Chapter Four. Disorderly Speech and Gender
In Early Virginia Lawmaking ........................................................................ 120
Chapter Five. Women’s Gossip and the Politics
of Morality in Accomack County, 1660-1677............................................... 137
Chapter Six. The Danger of Women’s
Gossip in York County, 1660-1680 ............................................................... 171
CONCLUSION. THE POWER OF THE COUNTY COURT CLERKS.............................. 200
REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 217
APPENDICES……… ........................................................................................................... 230
ix
LIST OF FIGURES/TABLES
Figures
Page
1
Map of the Eastern Shore...........................................................................................
83
2
Map of York County Parishes.................................................................................... 119
3
Tobacco Producing Regions ...................................................................................... 134
Tables
1
Speech Crimes and Punishment under Martial Law..................................................
42
2
Virginia Laws Governing Speech, 1650s-1670s ....................................................... 128
3
Accomack County Cases of Disorderly Speech, 1663-1675 ..................................... 170
4
York County Cases of Disorderly Speech, 1661-1676.............................................. 174
5
Sex of Individuals Appearing before the York County Court, 1762-1676................ 198
1
INTRODUCTION
Francis Hathaway came to the September 1662 session of the York County court to
publicly apologize for having spoken “several unhandsome words” he believed had “impair[ed]
[James] Bray’s credit.” Hathaway explained to the court justices that his speech against Bray
(most likely slanderous in nature) was instigated by the gossip of his wife, Elizabeth, upon her
return from a previous court day. Feeling “heartily sorry…for the wrong done by me to him,”
Hathaway offered to pay court costs after begging James Bray’s forgiveness. 1
Francis Hathaway’s appearance at the September 1662 court session demonstrates the
perceived danger of women’s gossip in the world of early Virginia. A cursory reading of this
brief entry might lead one to believe that this episode was merely one among many mundane
activities recorded by county court clerks throughout the seventeenth century and has little
historical significance. Beverley Fleet, transcriber and abstracter of many of Virginia’s earliest
records, called the clerks’ entries “cruel, vulgar, trivial, or merely comical.” 2 But it is precisely
these seemingly trivial entries that allow for a clearer understanding of daily life in what now
seems a very foreign and distant world. Hathaway preempted James Bray from filing a slander
suit against him. Bray, a “gentleman” who frequently appeared as an attorney before the York
County court, would have been quick to file such a suit had word of Hathaway’s insult reached
him. Hathaway readily admitted that any slanderous words from his tongue were a direct result
of his wife’s gossip. Hoping to prove himself a good patriarch in the most public of early
Virginia’s spaces, the county court, Francis Hathaway humbled himself. He declared that he had
fallen victim to his wife’s gossip, a situation with which James Bray and the county court
1
Benjamin B. Weisiger, III, York County Virginia Colonial Records, 1659-1662 (Athens, GA: Iberian
Publishing Company, 1993), 142.
2
Beverley Fleet, Virginia Colonial Abstracts Vol. I, (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc.,
1988), 3.
2
commissioners would empathize, for women often appeared before the court for their unruly
gossip. Francis Hathaway’s strategy worked. James Bray did not initiate any action against
Francis or Elizabeth Hathaway.
This dissertation demonstrates how women’s gossip in colonial Virginia was influenced
by gendered ideals and in turn influenced local legal and political culture. I argue that the legal
and political structures of early Virginia recognized women’s gossip as both necessary and
problematic. English culture defined women’s gossip as trivial and irresponsible, yet by 1662,
Virginia’s colonial assemblymen, or burgesses, came to find women’s gossip so powerful and
dangerous to masculine authority that laws meant to curtail such behavior were strengthened in
ways that departed from the English cultural ideal of coverture. Reactionary in nature, Virginia
lawmakers were influenced by both English cultural values and actual events within their
immediate communities. Despite this reaction at the colonial level, the local county courts acted
in distinctive and discretionary ways in response to women’s gossip. The more intimate
relations and immediate concerns within a smaller community at the local level could trump the
interests of leaders at the colonial level.
Gossip mattered to early Virginians. Women’s gossip was considered disorderly, and
even dangerous, because it threatened Virginia leaders’ efforts to maintain order. Investigating
women’s speech and the related punishment helps illuminate women’s role in English society
and the adaptations of their role in Virginia society, as well as the interaction between women
and formal institutions. I analyze who gossiped, who and what they gossiped about, and the
manner in which local authorities dealt with women involved in gossip. Virginia’s women used
gossip in various ways: to morally police their neighborhoods, to shame their neighbors, and to
have a voice in politics. This study shows that local leaders’ punishment of female gossips
3
depended on the content of their gossip and about whom they gossiped. The county court
justices considered the status of the gossip and the gossip’s target when considering their
punishment.
This study is set in two distinct regions of Virginia and home to some of its earliest
English settlers: York County on Virginia’s mainland and Accomack County on its Eastern
Shore. Both York and Accomack counties boast extensive court records from the colonial
period. York’s earliest records date from the 1640s, while Accomack is home to Virginia’s
oldest uninterrupted court records in the country, dating from 1632. This is where I begin my
study. By 1700, the institutionalization of colonial ideas regarding gender is evident. This
coincides with a growing Virginia population whose sex ratio had become more balanced.
Moreover, society had become increasingly stratified. Wealth and political power had been
consolidated in the hands of an elite minority. At the same time, it has been assumed that
women became much more marginalized in the public sphere. With this in mind, I consider the
structural changes in the legal system in order to analyze any effects colonial laws aimed at
women’s speech had on residents of these two regions.
York and Accomack counties are excellent areas for community studies in their own
right, and also ideal for comparative analysis. Each had been settled in the first decade of the
seventeenth century, was named as two of the original eight counties (or shires) in 1634, and
was a notable point of entry into the colony of Virginia. Additionally, both are located on
peninsulas crossed with numerous natural waterways that made convenient the transportation of
agricultural produce for intercolonial and transatlantic trade. At the same time, this shared
geographic characteristic helped to retard the growth of towns, as port cities were not essential
to the continuation and growth of trade.
4
The two counties work well in a comparative analysis because of their similarities and
their distinctive characteristics York County, situated on the lower peninsula of the western shore
with the James River to its south, the York River to its north, and the Chesapeake Bay to its east,
became a tobacco-producing county. Home to some of the most fertile soil of Virginia, settlers
in York successfully cultivated the “highly valued sweet-scented tobacco” grown for the London
market, making the county one of the wealthiest of Virginia, yet it was not significantly involved
with inter-colonial trade. 3 Its reliance on tobacco production also led it to become the first
county in Virginia to experience a transition in its labor force from mainly white indentured
servants to mainly enslaved blacks. 4
Accomack County, in contrast, was situation o n the peninsula referred to as the Eastern
Shore, a very flat area of less than 800 square miles. 5 The climate was more temperate than that
of the Virginia mainland across the Chesapeake thanks to the low-lying land and ocean breezes.
The area was completely cut off from the rest of Virginia, to the south and west by the
Chesapeake and to the north by the border it shared with Maryland. While early historians
claimed that the Eastern Shore was politically, socially, and economically similar to the
mainland, more recent works have revealed important differences in Eastern Shore
3
April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 47.
4
Terri L. Snyder, Brabbling Women: Disorderly Speech & the Law in Early Virginia (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2003). 8-9;
5
The entire Eastern Shore peninsula was named Accowmacke at settlement and became one of the eight
original shires of Virginia in 1634. The name was changed to Northampton in 1642. By 1663, the county of
Northampton was divided in two, with the northern part called Accomack and the southern part retaining the name
of Northampton. The two counties were reunited in 1670 under the name Northampton, and divided for the final
time by 1673, reverting to their 1663 designations. Susie M Ames, “The Reunion of Two Virginia Counties,” The
Journal of Southern History, Vol. 8 (Nov., 1942): 536-537, 544-545. For histories on the Eastern Shore, see Susie
M. Ames, Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Russell & Russell, 1940);
James R. Perry, The Formation of a Society on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1615-1655 (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1990); Nora Miler Turman, The Eastern Shore of Virginia, 1603-1964 (Onancock, Va.: The
Eastern Shore News, Inc, 1964); Ralph T. Whitelaw, Virginia’s Eastern Shore: A History of Northampton and
Accomack Counties, 2 Vols. (Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1951); Jennings Cropper Wise, Ye Kingdome of
Accawmacke or the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: Regional Publishing
5
development. 6 The Eastern Shore had only poor-to-mediocre soil which helped lead it away
from reliance on tobacco cultivation and toward a more diversified system of agriculture which
included corn, wheat, hogs, and cattle. 7 It did not depend as heavily as mainland counties on
imported slave labor, although the Eastern Shore was home to a “small but significant” free
black population, which until the 1690s was not stifled by legislation limiting manumissions,
prohibiting intermarriage, and forcing black and mulatto women and children into indentured
servitude. 8 Along side the black population lived Dutch, Huguenot, and English colonists from
the Netherlands, New Netherlands, England, and New England, a diversity which supported the
region’s early and continuous involvement in maritime trade with these same regions. 9
The earliest court sessions in both York and Accomack counties were held in private
homes and ordinaries, dwellings that could best accommodate a jury. 10 These homes were
simple frame structures built of pine and typically consisted of a hall, hall chamber, parlor and
probably a couple of small chambers off the parlor. A kitchen and dairy would have been located
in separate structures detached from the home. 11 County residents milled about the home and
Company, 1967).
6
Ames, Susie M. “Law-in-Action: The Court Records of Virginia’s Eastern Shore,” The William and Mary
Quarterly 3rd ser, 4 (1947).
7
Hatfield, 43-45; James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century
Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 144.
8
Douglas Deal, “A Constricted World: Free Blacks on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1680-1750,” Colonial
Chesapeake Society, Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1988), 275-278. Also see T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom
on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
9
Hatfield, 88, 98.
10
Juries became required in 1632 as well. They were not compulsory for all cases, though; in fact, they
were only used if either party in a case requested one. The 1632 law required that a jury be called and available on
court days in case of a request. Wise, 47-48; Edward M. Riley, “The Colonial Courthouses of York County,
Virginia,” The William and Mary Quarterly 22 (Oct 1942): 399-400.
11
Wise, 235, 289-290. In Accomack County, the first structure to be built solely for the purpose of official
court business was most likely built between 1680 and 1681 when colonial officials ordered that towns be
established replete with an official court house. Ames, Studies of the Eastern Shore, 201-202. Drummondtown, the
site of the courthouse, became the county seat of Accomack in the 1690s, chosen because it was roughly equidistant
from the waterways on the east and west, it was generally the center of the county from north to south. Because of
the geography of the area, people were able to approach by boat and by land. L. Floyd Nock, III, Drummondtown,
“A One Horse Town,” Accomac Court House, Virginia. (Verona: McClure Press, 1976). York County was
6
socialized with neighbors both familiar and foreign while they waited to conduct their legal
business. From this gathering of neighbors, the justices recruited white males to serve on the
jury. 12
Virginia’s county courts were part of a larger English court system. By the seventeenth
century, the courts in England were multi-layered and consisted of the King’s courts, special
courts, and ecclesiastical courts. The King’s courts were superior courts that included the King’s
Bench (an appeals court), the Court of Common Pleas which heard most civil suits, the Courts of
Exchequer which dealt with royal financial matters, and the Court of Chancery which
investigated corrupt officials and gave remedy to injustices not covered in other courts. Special
courts included the Star Chamber, a court of inquisition that dealt with political libel and treason;
Parliament, considered the greatest of the courts; and county, or local, courts. The justices of the
local courts were commissioned by the king and acted as magistrates in assize circuit courts
twice a year. In this capacity, the justices heard cases dealing with serious crimes of “life and
limb.” They also held quarter sessions four times a year to enforce royal statutes, license
businesses, and keep roads in good order. 13
Except during the time of the Interregnum (1649-1660), ecclesiastical (church) courts
dealt with religious and moral issues and infractions. They supervised the conduct of clerics,
monks, and nuns; investigated heresy allegations; oversaw marriages; heard disputes over
originally called Charles River County, with its name changing to York by 1643. From 1633 to 1658, court day in
York was held in the homes of various justices. By 1658 and until at lest 1676, the court met at the house of Captain
Robert Baldrey, with Baldrey being reimbursed 1000 pounds tobacco for his trouble. The court moved several times
after Bacon’s Rebellion, but still using private residences. By 1697, a building specifically built to house the court
was erected in Yorktown by order of Virginia’ General Assembly. Riley, 399-401.
12
Appointment to a jury should not be considered a sign of status. Eighty-four percent of Eastern Shore
men who held what were considered minor positions in the community served at some point as a juror. Perry, 201.
Jurors held a position of convenience. After March 1661/62, the county courts were required to have a jury of twelve
men on hand at the start of each court session. They merely selected those who were found to be in the vicinity on
court days. Warren Billings, “Pleadings, Procedures, and Practice: The Meaning of Due Process if Law in
Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 47 (Nov., 1981): 575.
7
bequests of personal property; monitored sexual and moral conduct of parishioners, and heard
cases of defamation. In cases dealing with sex and morality, considered issues of “correction,”
the accused were brought to court by the church elders. 14 Many of these cases were based on
“fame,” meaning that rumor or gossip found credible by church authorities formed the basis of
the charge. Defamation cases heard before the church courts could be brought to court by either
church elders or the aggrieved party. Defendants who came before the church courts were
subjected to purgation, a system in which defendants in difficult-to-decide cases were required to
bring acquaintances to testify to their character so that court officials could more readily
determine guilt or innocence. 15
The rustic county courts of Virginia were neither physical nor organizational replicas of
the multi-level court structure in England, yet they became “the key governing institution at the
local level,” an example of the many “compromises and approximations” that were made in the
English colonies. This compromise was one made as a result of colonial leaders’ recognition
that they would not be able to “recreate, overnight, governing institutions that evolved over
centuries in England.” 16 Even so, as English subjects, colonists expected to retain their
traditional constitutional rights. In light of this, three principles of law were established: colonial
laws could not be ‘repugnant’ to English law; where colonial laws were silent, the law of
England applied in full force; and English laws were the colony’s laws except as modified by
local statute. According to local tradition, Virginia’s settlers adapted English law by simplifying
codes and procedures, including those governing treason, murder, rape, riot, fraud, and
13
Also included under special courts were the market fair courts and mayor’s courts, hold-overs from
manorial courts during feudalism. These courts dealt mainly with transactions between merchants.
14
Paul Hair, ed., Before the Bawdy Court: Selections from church court and other records relating to the
correction of moral offences in England, Scotland and New England, 1300-1800 (London: Paul Elek Books, Ltd.,
1972), 24-28.
15
Ibid, 15-20. The system of purgation was abolished in 1660, but letters, or “certificates of character”
were still used on a voluntary basis.
8
witchcraft. According to James Horn, from the colonist’s point of view, “the adherence to
English laws and privileges had a number of very important implications including the duty of
all those governed under English law to maintain social harmony and avoid conflict” while
maintaining a close association with “the hierarchy of courts and governing institutions in
England.” 17 So, while the Chesapeake colonists made adaptations to the English legal system,
what they created was not entirely unfamiliar.
These adaptations were made in colonial Virginia, in part, because of its geography and
demography. Virginia’s scattered settlements required establishment of a simpler organization of
courts that could act without close oversight of the colonial government. In Virginia, the
creation of the county courts moved the colonists away from the military style of rule that had
characterized Virginia until the 1620s, in favor of a form of government which emphasized the
leadership role of the local gentry. 18 Colonial leaders also created codes and procedures in order
to address specific Chesapeake conditions including laws dealing with Indians, indentures, and
slaves; moreover, due to the lack of church courts and a dearth of Anglican ministers up through
the latter part of the seventeenth century, it was practical and necessary for the local justices to
preside over cases dealing with morality and speech. 19 The highest Virginia courts answered to
England’s high courts, at least in theory. Seventeenth-century Virginia’s highest court was the
General Court over which the governor presided. This court, much like England’s assize courts,
16
Horn, Adapting to a New World, 148.
Ibid., 336-339.
18
Ibid., 337-338; David Ransome, “Village Tensions in Early Virginia: Sex, Land, and Status at the Neck
of Land in the 1620s,” The Historical Journal Vol 43 (June, 2000): 369.
19
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard
University Press, 1990), 50, 100. According to the author the entire colony of Virginia had only a dozen or so
Anglican ministers in the 1660s, with four-fifths of its parishes empty. By 1680, the number of ministers had
increased to thirty-five. From 1680 to 1724, the number of Anglican buildings in Virginia grew from thirty-five to
sixty-one.
17
9
heard cases involving high crime (rape, murder, treason) and appeals. 20 The governor appointed
commissioners or justices to sit on the county courts. 21 County residents elected a number of
these justices to the House of Burgesses.
By 1662, the Virginia’s General Assembly had significantly enhanced the authority of the
local courts by granting justices the same authority enjoyed by their English counterparts and by
enabling the courts to enact bylaws. 22 At the same time, Governor Berkeley limited the number
of justices for each county to eight, thereby consolidating political power into the hands of a few
county elite approved by the governor. 23 County courts in Virginia absorbed the jurisdictions of
a range of local courts in England, notably quarter and petty sessions and church and manorial
courts. In 1629, the Virginia Council stated that monthly courts were “to decide Controversies
of meum et tuum under one hundred weight of tobacco and to take into there Chardge the
conservacon of the peace soe far as is belonging to the Quarter Sessions of the justices in
England life only excepted.” 24 The county courts justices could not decide felony cases that
involved the loss of life or limb, although they did hear testimony related to felonious acts in
20
Decisions by the Accomack county court could not be appealed if the fines or awards were less than
3200 pounds of tobacco or £32 sterling. Breen, “Myne Owne Ground,” 42-44.
21
The office of “justice of the peace” originated, according to Michael Dalton in The Countrey Justice, with
a 1327 A.D. statute that “ordeyened…in every shire of the Realme certain persons should be assigned to keepe the
peace.” The actual term “justice of the peace” appears for the first time in a later statute and, as Dalton states, were
“called (Justice of the Peace) because they be Judges of Record, and withall to put them in minde (by heir name)
that they are to doe justice (which is, to yeelde to every man his owne by even portions and according to the lawes,
customes, and statutes of the Realme, without respect of person.).” Dalton also explains that they are “named also
Commissioners (of the peace) because they have their authority by the Kings commission.” Michael Dalton, The
Countrey Justice (1618; repr., Norwood, NJ: Walter J. Johnson, Inc., 1975), 4. Commissioners were called justices
after the Restoration. The title of county court commissioner was changed to justice of the peace by the General
Assembly of Virginia in 1662, and gave colonial justices the same authority as those in England, when the colony of
Virginia reverted to the royal authority of King Charles II. Nora Miller Turman, the Eastern Shore of Virginia,
1603-1964 (Onancock, Va.: Eastern Shore News, 1968), 62-63.
22
Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth-Century: A Documentation History of
Virginia, 1606-1689 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 76.
23
Warren M. Billings, A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century
Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2004), 44.
24
From H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 2d ed.
(Richmond, Va, 1979), 193 as quoted in Horn, Adapting to a New World, 351.
10
order to decide whether the offender should be sent to the General Court for trial.25
In this study, I analyze seventeenth-century Virginia women’s impact on the colonial
government’s making and carrying out public policy and the manner in which public policy was
applied at the local level by the county courts. My study focuses specifically on English women,
who were forced to negotiate their place within a new hierarchy of power in Virginia. They used
their gossip to challenge the authority of Englishmen which, in turn, influenced the adaptations
Englishmen had to make to the Old World order that was familiar to them. My goal is to bring
together colonial American historiography dealing with women and gender, law, and political
institutions in order to more accurately identify the adaptations to the English legal system made
by the colonial leaders of Virginia and those that county authorities made to colonial policy to
suit their particular needs. By reconstructing local court cases, this study reveals the connections
and conflicts between English culture, colonial law, and the local courts.
Women’s experience became one of the many topics explored by scholars of the “new”
social history that sprouted in the 1960s, but not until the 1970s did colonial women in particular
become a subject thought to be worthy of exploration. This study builds on previous work
dealing with early modern women’s role in society throughout the English empire. Bernard
Capp, in When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England,
discusses the manner in which English society viewed female gossips, including their social
function, and to some extent, the legal reaction to their words. In doing so he clearly confirms
women’s very public activities, especially non-elite women’s, which reveal the constant
negotiation in exercising political power, especially power that was reliant on reputation and
status. Dagmar Freist, in Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion, and the Dynamics of
Communication in Stuart London, 1637-1645, exposes women’s gossip in England as part of the
25
Horn, 353-4.
11
bigger issue of public opinion in the 1630s and 1640s, a time in which oral and print culture were
intersecting. Freist argues that women, who were more likely to express their views orally, were
quite capable in using their speech to comment on political and religious issues in England. In
Virginia, English colonists brought with them their propensity to gossip, and since Virginia was
primarily an oral culture during this same time period, their spoken word carried much weight.
My study shows that the English penchant to criticize political and religious leaders (often the
same people) is just as evident in colonial Virginia as it was in Stuart London.
When historians began to compare the experiences of women in England to those of
English women who had immigrated to Virginia, they found that colonial American women’s
lives differed significantly due to the peculiarities of the New World, including skewed sex ratios
and material conditions, which led to increased economic opportunities. 26 Significantly, it was
women of the colonial Chesapeake whose lives were unearthed in the work by historians Lois
Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh. In their essay, “The Planter’s Wife,” Carr and Walsh took on
the challenge of investigating women who had left few, if any, private records of their own;
however, through the use of extant public records, Carr and Walsh revealed women’s
experiences and their significance as participants in first-generation settlement. Carr and Walsh
conclude that women who arrived in the Chesapeake were better off than their English
counterparts, in large part due to the sex-ratio imbalance that existed in the Chesapeake. In a
society where men outnumbered women by at least 4 to 1, women were more likely to improve
their socio-economic position through marriage. 27 This upward mobility may have been limited
to those first generations, however. It has been argued that, at least in parts of Virginia, the
26
Roger Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974).
Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife,” Colonial America: Essays in Politics and
Social Development, Stanely N. Katz, John M. Murrin, Douglas Greenberg, eds. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2001), 154181.
27
12
daughters and granddaughters of those first immigrants did not experience the same
opportunities for socio-economic improvement. 28
Carr and Walsh opened the door to further study of colonial women, and their work made
clear that women’s impact on the story of America began long before the women-centered
reform movements of the nineteenth century which had become the predominant focus of
women’s history. From work that provided overviews of women’s experiences as wives and
mothers within colonial communities to detailed accounts and analysis of specific women’s
lives, our understanding about the conditions of early America has become more clear as the
scholarly literature has grown. 29 It is now evident that women did not live on the periphery of
colonial society as passive members of fledgling communities, but were central to the
development of colonial society and culture.
Colonial American history is often presented by distinguishing patterns of settlement
from region to region. Women were central to the demographic patterns and to the gendered
ideals that significantly influenced social, economic, political and judicial development. In
colonial Virginia, specifically, gender played an important role in the politics of community life
and in legitimizing political authority, as well as in regulating labor and developing meanings for
racial difference. 30 While regional comparisons give us a better understanding of the nature of
these developments, and while much can be extrapolated from investigations of multiple
Virginia counties, my aim is to combine comparative analysis with focused community
28
Krystyna Pu’c, “Leaving England Behind: The Experience of Women in Northampton County, Virginia,
1650-1699.” (PhD diss. The George Washington University, 1994).
29
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New
England, 1650-1750 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard,
Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1991).
30
Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in
Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). For a comparison between the
development of the Chesapeake and New England, see Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered
Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Alfred A. Kopf, 1996).
13
investigations in order to illuminate the differences in local legal and political culture. By using
gender as the analytical lens to compare two distinctive regions within Virginia, I can better
evaluate the ways in which local political and legal culture first diverged from and then
converged with the interests of the colony. My work expands earlier works by using differing
localities to illustrate colonial policy. In so doing, I show that differences in colonial policy were
based on the values of the immediate community.
Other historians have explored the colonial legal system and its connection to social
development. Women were often the catalysts for events that reveal the transformation of
English law in the colonies and the legal complexities that impacted familial and community
relations. 31 Additionally, women-centered studies have revealed the link between marital status
and power within communities. Women’s formal power was linked to their marital status.
Married women, despite their feme covert status, could, on behalf of their husbands, conduct
business in court through power-of-attorney; furthermore, through property ownership many
colonial women were able to “negotiate economic, cultural, and legal structures to benefit
themselves and their families.” 32 As “goodwives” of the community, married women also
wielded power through their presence on women’s juries. 33 These studies have reinforced the
argument that women’s experiences in colonial America were significantly impacted by the
unusual environment and gender imbalance, although the degree of opportunity this offered
31
Elaine Forman Crane, Killed Strangely: the Death of Rebecca Cornell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2002); John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003).
32
Linda L. Sturtz, Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia (New York: Routledge,
2002), 1; Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1986).
33
All-female juries were employed when knowledge of he female anatomy was pertinent to the case; for
example, a female defendant accused of infanticide or of conceiving or giving birth to a bastard child would face a
female jury because goodwives would be more able to consider the veracity of the defendant’s testimony, as well as
that of any witnesses. Noted Eastern Shore historian Susie Ames early on made special note of women serving on
juries in Northampton County. Her research papers include a loose paper marked “women” on which she noted, “In
14
married women and widows varied regionally.
Mary Beth Norton (“Gender and Defamation in Seventeenth Century Maryland” and
Founding Mothers and Fathers), Kathleen Brown (Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious
Patriarchs), and Jane Kamensky (Governing the Tongue) have each discussed women’s gossip
in colonial America, especially focusing on content, intent, and punishment and its relationship
to enforcing standards of gendered behavior. My work builds on these themes, while also
connecting the English desire for order and the status of gossips. Moreover, these historians, as
well as Terri L. Snyder, in Brabbling Women, have each noted the role women’s gossip played in
morally policing their communities. I connect this to larger ideas of state formation as I analyze
the sometimes strained connections between colonial law and local enforcement that relied on
the information that women’s gossip revealed.
A number of historians have examined women’s personal interactions with the law,
including cases that involved debt, divorce, property and inheritance, rape, fornication,
infanticide and slander. Many of these works have shed light on changes in colonial values,
providing a declension model for women’s colonial experiences. For example, Cornelia Hughes
Dayton has argued that as Puritan influence declined in Connecticut, so did women’s legal
standing as the courts became Anglicized; the more similar they became to the English
patriarchal model, the more peripheral women were to daily court proceedings. 34 Patriarchal
structures were enhanced in the Chesapeake as well, as illustrated by Kathleen Brown’s work on
early Virginia in which she argues that ideas about gender and race worked together, so that by
1661 to determine the truth of an accusation against a woman, the Northampton court ordered the sheriff to ‘impanel
a jury of women’ NCO 1657-64 124”. Susie Ames Papers, box 4, Eastern Shore Historical Society.
34
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). For an intriguing look at infanticide in England and early
America, see Peter Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England, 1558–
1803 (New York: New York University Press, 1981), which tracks factors that led to some women to commit
infanticide and the decline of such cases in the eighteenth century after the stigma of unwed pregnancy lessened.
15
the eighteenth century, “women of English descent embodied the privileges and virtues of
womanhood.” 35 Despite this seeming elevation in status shared by white women, these same
women became less evident in eighteenth-century court proceedings as the patriarchal plantation
society firmly took hold.
Prior to the eighteenth century, though, women were incredibly active and visible in the
historic record. Women’s speech, in particular, is evident in numerous court cases throughout the
colonies. In Puritan New England, church and court were at the center of tightly knit
communities. This structure created women-centered spaces and activities, and nurtured
gossip. 36 Puritan attitudes shaped the ways in which proper and improper speech were defined,
and women were often taken to task for their words as colonial leaders sought to maintain social
and political order. 37 Yet women’s speech was also an essential means of communication in an
oral world, a world in which information about one’s neighbors was readily passed from person
to person by word of mouth and could have a significant impact on members of the community.
The importance placed on women’s speech has been, perhaps, most commonly recognized in the
events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials. 38 Yet, contrary to the notions of some historians, the
significance of women’s gossip was not limited to the close knit communities of New England. 39
Gossip was a tradition colonists brought with them from England, and English women employed
gossip throughout the colonies, including the Chesapeake. While the demographics of
community development in Chesapeake communities certainly differed significantly from that of
New England towns, “neighborly intervention” in the form of gossip was still a frequent
35
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs, 2.
Ulrich, Good Wives, 66.
37
Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
38
For example, see Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Sale Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (Alfred A.
Knopf, 2002).
39
In Good Wives, Ulrich claims that “in a less close knit society” gossip regarding “the wife of a town
36
16
occurrence that could serve to “heighten rather than relieve tension” by challenging the authority
of the ruling elite, the embodiment of patriarchal ideals. 40 Gossip also defined and enforced
community mores.
This work seeks to integrate the social function of women and their gossip with legal and
policy history dealing with colonial institutions. In general, Virginia’s political and institutional
histories have had little to say about the activities of women, assuming women operated either
exclusively within the “private sphere” or considering their less formal participation in political
events as exceptional. Much has been written in this vein of colonial Virginia history, including
works by Philip A. Bruce, Warren M. Billings, Robert D. Mitchell, David Konig and others.
Following in the footsteps of Kathleen Brown, John Ruston Pagan (Anne Orthwood’s Bastard),
and Terri L. Snyder, this dissertation compares two early Virginia counties and the manner in
which each county’s local authorities applied colonial law. Both Pagan’s and Snyder’s work
considered the adaptations Virginians made to English law in Accomack and York counties,
respectively. Snyder, in particular, addresses laws passed by the General Assembly that
specifically targeted women’s speech; they seemed to stray from the English legal practice of
coverture. Holly Brewer, in “The Transformation of Domestic Law,” has written that English
notions of coverture were much more of an ideal than a practice. 41 I bring these ideas together.
At the same time that officials were making gender-specific laws, county officials were
reinforcing the laws’ gendered nature by punishing women according to their words, not their
status, a shift from previous practice. This work also considers the adaptations county courts
official would hardly deserve the dignity of attention.”
40
Lorena S. Walsh, “Community Networks in the Early Chesapeake,” Colonial Chesapeake Society. Lois
Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan and Jean B. Russo, eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988): 236238.
41
Holly Brewer, “The Transformation of Domestic Law,” The Cambridge History of Law in America,
vol.1, Early America, Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 228-323.
17
made in applying colonial law to their specific circumstances. And, while Snyder and Brown
both emphasize the political outcomes of women’s speech during Bacon’s Rebellion, my own
research shows that these activities were no fluke; women used gossip as political speech in a
way that had the potential to affect local leaders on a frequent basis.
Throughout this study, I consider the legal transformation of colonial Virginia. By the
late seventeenth century, Virginia women’s words are less evident in the official court records.
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, in Women before the Bar, recognizes a similar pattern in New England
courts in that women’s legal activities in general decreased by the eighteenth century. Dayton
argues that New England courts went through a process of Anglicization and, at the same time,
court officials became increasingly focused on economic matters in which women were
increasingly marginalized. My work considers a similar transformation of the Virginia courts,
but through an analysis of political processes, especially the professionalization of the county
court clerks. This coincides with economic, social, and political changes in Virginia addressed
by T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes in “Myne Own Ground,” Allan Kulikoff in Tobacco and
Slaves, Anthony S. Parent in Foul Means, and to some extent, Rhys Isaac in The Transformation
of Virginia. 42
Virginia’s place within the greater Atlantic World has been an issue for debate among
historians. In his essay, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in
Pre-Restoration Virginia,” author Jon Kukla reinterpreted historians Jack P. Greene’s and
Bernard Bailyn’s characterization of early Virginia as a chaotic society. Wesley F. Craven,
Sigmund Diamond, and James Perry share Kukla’s impression that early Virginia was an orderly
42
Breen, “Myne Own Ground;” Rhys Isaac, The Transformation in Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern
Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Anthony
Parent, Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740 (Chapel Hill: University of North
18
society due in large part to the presence of institutions and hierarchy based on English
precedents. My research supports this latter view, showing orderliness through women’s
activities as well as men’s, and especially focusing on the importance of women’s voices in
ensuring the stability and order in their communities. While women’s gossip might seem to
signify the extreme disruption and divisive tensions that numerous historians claim seventeenthcentury settlers experienced, I find that it signified the relative stability others have claimed more
accurately defined the Chesapeake region. 43 Although Virginia’s ruling elite viewed women’s
gossip as disorderly, the function of their gossip actually reinforced community order. Either
way, gossip was an important and meaningful activity, especially for women. 44
This dissertation also builds on the considerable body of work in women and gender
history, especially those who examine the gendered nature of speech, as discussed above. Like
the French peasant women in Natalie Zemon Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre, the women of
early Virginia continuously negotiated their place within hierarchies of power. 45 While earlier
works seemed to minimize the gendered nature of gossip, more recent works have included
discussions of gossip which have emphasized gender in general and the importance of women’s
speech in particular. It would be shortsighted and inaccurate to infer that men did not participate
in gossip, but for women “gossip was their major weapon, one employed primarily by and
against them.” 46 According to historian Elaine Forman Crane, men’s gossip was different from
Carolina Press, 2003).
43
Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration
Virginia,” The American Historical Review 90, no. 2 (April 1985): 275-298. For other arguments favoring Virginia
as a tumultuous colony, see Walsh, “Community Networks in the Early Chesapeake,” 24. For arguments promoting
the stability of colonial Virginia, see Darret B. Rutman and Anita H, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia,
1650-1750 (New York: Norton, 1984); , Elizabeth Stanton Haight, “Heirs of Tradition/Creators of Change: :Law
and Stability of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1633-1663” (PhD, diss., University of Virginia, 1987).
44
Ulrich and Carr both minimize the gendered nature of gossip, and instead focus on its importance for
both men and women and the dynamics of community formation.
45
Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
46
Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers, 277.
19
women’s. Men tended to talk more about the political and financial aspects of their neighbors’
lives, while women tended to center their attention on their neighbors’ personal lives, sexual
escapades and intimate relationships. 47 It is then reasonable to suppose that men did not
consider their political and financial discourses to be gossip as it had been understood in the
1600s. Certainly, imperative financial discussions and philosophical political debates did not fall
under the realm of “idle talk.” 48 Perhaps, then, if gendered differences existed in gossip, those
differences stemmed from a lack of authority women were able to secure in public matters.
Although privy to financial and political information through observations and eavesdropping,
women’s accepted sphere of influence remained in matters more personal. Brown has argued
that there were gendered aspects to the content of women’s gossip, as well, but based on who
they were gossiping about. Women were likely to gossip about other women by bringing into
question their “sexual honesty,” and were likely to slander men in ways that brought into
question their reputation and could affect their ability to carry out business within their
community, 49
This study shows that women’s gossip blurred the line between public
and private.
The connection between Virginia’s county courts and women’s gossip, then, becomes
significant. As Brown has pointed out, the General Court of Virginia could not effectively
monitor its people within the confines of their homes and immediate communities; therefore, it
had to rely on the authority it invested in the local county courts. 50 In turn, the local courts
formally relied on women. The courts employed goodwives and midwives as jurists to police
47
Crane, 170-172.
In the seventeenth century, gossip was had dual meanings: godparent, which was not gender-specific;
and “a person, mostly a woman, of light and trifling character, esp. one delights in idle talk.” Oxford English
Dictionary. Available online at http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry_main/ 50097121?query _type = word
&queryword=gossip.
49
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches an Anxious Patriarchs, 99-100.
50
Ibid., 97-100.
48
20
sexual behavior and, informally yet significantly, as informants to the local authorities through
their gossip. The justices had a difficult time in both controlling women’s speech and exploiting
it to the advantage of the court; I argue that this is a more localized issue in which differing
counties experienced different levels of dependence on women’s gossip, and, in turn, had
differing levels of success in exploiting the same, revealing the political and social culture of the
immediate community.
Women’s gossip not only reveals tensions within local communities, but also its
connection to formal institutions and the manner in which colonial officials used women’s
speech to “reinforce the boundaries of acceptable cultural practices” and patriarchal structures. 51
Women, through their disorderly speech, challenged formal colonial authority. Yet, by the midseventeenth century legal practice diverged from cultural practice as authorities at the colonial
level recognized women’s speech as so dangerous to their masculine authority, they passed laws
that diverged from English common law by singling out married women’s speech. Even after
the 1662 law was passed by the General Assembly that distinguished women’s speech as gossip
and imposed harsher penalties, women continued to gossip. 52 Brown examined slander cases in
three Virginia counties prior to 1662 law and after, and points out that although ducking (and
whipping in Lancaster County) was the General Assembly’s prescribed punishment for female
gossips, the county courts used corporal punishment more as a threat, with only a very few cases
in these counties in which the punishment was carried out. I seek to find an explanation for this
disconnect between the colonial government and local authorities. I find it significant that even
when the county justices had this punishment recommended through legislature, it was rarely
carried out. How did this differ from county to county? What were the contributing factors to
51
52
Snyder, Brabbling Women, 10.
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, an Anxious Patriarchs, 147-149.
21
this divergence? By exploring distinct regions of Virginia throughout the seventeenth century, I
shed light on the importance of local community development and the application of law as it
related to women’s gossip.
According to James Horn, the legal system in Virginia was “recognizably English in its
precepts, origins, and procedures” despite the local variations that occurred out of necessity. In
Virginia, as in England, “everyone had a duty under English law to maintain social harmony and
avoid conflict” and the adoption of English law linked Virginia’s legal system to that of
England. 53 In turn, Virginia’s House of Burgesses provided a “direct link between social and
political elites in early Virginia. Decisions made by the Assembly reflected its concerns about
the application of a familiar system of social and legal order to conditions in the Chesapeake.” 54
Yet, the social development of Virginia’s counties differed from that of England. With its diverse
population that included Africans and Indians, many men and few women, non-traditional family
structures, and no towns, a few individuals within each county rose to prominence, mainly
through their acquisition of land. These landed, wealthy men claimed the top level of the social
hierarchy and exercised authority within their neighborhoods, their counties (as court justices)
and their colony (as burgesses). At the same time, English indentured servants were relegated to
the bottom rungs of the social ladder yet showed a “willingness to fit into a social system that
allowed them varied opportunities for the accumulation of real and personal property.” 55
53
Horn, 338. In general, historians agree with Horn. For example, Robert D. Mitchell, in “American
Origins and Regional Institutions: The Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” wrote by 1625, “several key elements and
associated institutions were already in place in the lower tidewater” creating an “institutional environment,
including “an overwhelmingly English cast of characters, the presence of dependent Africans, expanding tobacco
cultivation, the beginnings of a new hybrid agricultural system, a distinctly stratified social system, and English
legal system of common and civil law, a representative political organization, English Protestantism, and a highly
dispersed settlement system based on private land ownership.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers
73 (September, 1983): 410.
54
Mitchell, 410.
55
Ibid, 414. In Myne Owne Ground, authors Breen and Innes also suggest that English immigrants on the
Eastern Shore, however humble their beginnings, could still claim a position of respect at the upper levels of
22
Perhaps, then, it is this very chance at socio-economic betterment that encouraged the
outspokenness of English women, and, by 1662, made them so dangerous to those who wanted
to preserve their own status.
Yet, Breen and Innes as well as Robert Mitchell and Krystyna Pu’c claim that by the
1670s, the opportunities for advancement were stifled due to a variety of factors including a
growing native-born population of which 40-50 percent were mid-level tobacco planters, fewer
English indentured servants, and, at least on the Eastern Shore, a reliance on primogeniture and
entail. 56 By this time, too, the 1662 “brabbling women” law had been in effect for several years.
This combination of factors lends itself to several questions that have yet to be explored. How
does economic and social change affect women’s speech and the application of the laws that
govern it? Is there more or less agitation among women, as evidenced by their gossip, after
1670?
While studying women’s interactions with the court through their use of gossip, I have
become increasingly intrigued by the connection between women’s informal activities, like
gossip, and the community’s formal institutions including the county court. As was evident in
the case of Francis and Elizabeth Hathaway, gossip in the community could potentially result in
defamation cases. Despite the accepted seventeenth-century definition of gossip, it was neither
idle nor trivial once it became recorded in the official court record. 57 Francis Hathaway’s effort
to prevent a slander suit reveals the power of gossiping women, not only in female relationships
but in male relationships that were dependent upon reputation.
My primary objective in this dissertation is to examine the ways women in seventeenthcolonial society, along side of the colonial gentry, for “the ranks of this group were still relatively open, and
newcomers occasionally gained admission to the county court.”
56
Mitchell, 414, Pu’c, 212, 225-226.
57
Norton, “Gender and Defamation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly 44,
23
century Virginia interacted with the colonial and local legal structures that governed them.
Because I deal with individual cases involving women from two distinct regions as well as with a
colonial government, I address several different historiographical areas and use several different
methodological tools. First, investigating various cases of women’s gossip on the local level
places this study within social history. Second, this is legal history because I examine the
connections and/or disconnections between separate county legal structures as well as between
those local structures and the colonial legal system. Third, this is gender history because I
analyze the impact of the legal system on women and vice-versa. Finally, this is Atlantic history
because I am mindful of the connections between the colony of Virginia and England. To
address these multiple fields, I have combined micro-historical, comparative, and sociological
approaches that best suit an analysis of the connections between gossip and law. The narrative
of the Nuthalls (see chapter two below) illustrates how these different histories intersect: in 1651,
Elizabeth and John Nuthall went to the county court to obtain legal documentation that would
counter an unpleasant rumor based on gossip. They did this on the eve of their departure for
England where they would pursue commercial interests and personal connections. Their concern
that a Virginia woman’s gossip would damage their reputation on the other side of the Atlantic,
and their resort to local documentation as remedy, demonstrates the way social, legal, gender,
and Atlantic history come together in this project.
Gossip is most evident in county court records. York County and the two counties of the
Eastern Shore, Accomack and Northampton, each have rich collections of county court records
that have survived and are available in manuscript, microfilm, and published form. York
County’s records date back to 1633; however, the records from 1633 through the mid-1640s are
incomplete, fragmentary, and in some cases, partly or wholly mutilated. After the mid 1640s, the
no. 1 (Jan, 1987): 5.
24
records are more descriptive and complete. The Eastern Shore records date back to 1632 and
have become well-known as the oldest continuous court records in the country. These records
give me the best view of women’s activities in their respective counties. By combining these
records with other available public documents, including land records, headrights, deeds, wills,
tithable listings, ship records, birth and death recordings, and marriage certificates, I have been
able to reconstruct the lives of individuals involved in various cases of gossip.
I also pay close attention to the actions of the colonial General Assembly and the local
county courts. I have examined the laws that were passed by assembly members and the
connection of these laws to English common law. Legal history and the manner in which laws
change are cogently described by Peter Charles Hoffer in Law and People in Colonial
America. 58 Hoffer describes two schools of thought on the subject. The first is a top-down
approach in which the law is considered by historians to be “autonomous” and self-contained.
The focus is on the rules of law and “doctrines” that lawyers, judges and legislators develop to
explain law to one another. In this school, the “key cause of change in law over time is the
professional lawmakers’ reading, or misreading, of the texts, manuals, cases, and statutes.”
Hoffer explains that theorists such as Alan Watson tend to see the structures of the legal system,
its major divisions, the approach to the sources of law, and the legal rules as markedly
independent of social, political, and economic factors. As explained by Hoffer, the human
sources of change are hegemonic because the elite (lawmakers/professionals) were the
channelers of the aspirations and shared morals of the people; moreover, elites manipulated the
law to serve themselves and subjugate common people. The second school of legal
historiography considers influence from the bottom-up: ordinary people have as much effect on
58
Peter Charles Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1998), xii-xiv.
25
the colonial legal system as the law, lawmakers, and county commissioners who interpret and
enforce the law. As Hoffer explains, this school is one of “sociological jurisprudence,” first put
forth by Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law School. Pound and others of this school consider more
strongly the significant connection between law and society. Simply put, historians should
consider not the law, but the legal system. Law-making and law enforcement are “ part of a
broader pattern of social interaction” in which human interaction is the source of change;
therefore, changes in law either reflect the competition between different economic and social
interest groups, or are popularly initiated reform and reaction responses to existing law. 59
While my research certainly indicates that there was an attempt by Virginia’s county
elites to manipulate the law in their favor, I am influenced more by the second school than the
first. Colonial law was not only about competition, but was also about cooperation between
economic and social interests. In Accomack County, residents without (or with limited) formal
power or authority interacted with the formal institution of the county court in ways that forced
the court officials to cooperate with the standards of local morality. Common law was adapted
to the smaller environment based on local morality, and while there were competing socioeconomic interests, there was also a negotiation that occurred between these interests that implies
cooperation.
This form of cooperation was not unique to Virginia. In fact, it was a tradition that the
English had brought with them and adapted to their New World environment. It is commonly
understood that law in America has its foundations in English law, for English immigrants to
Virginia understood themselves to be first and foremost subjects of England, despite their
location across the Atlantic. English law is viewed as two-pronged: statute law which comes
from the legislature and common law which comes from the courts. Where statute law is broad
59
Ibid., xii-xiv.
26
and determined by decree or legislative action, common law is specific and created by judges
through precedent. Hoffer explains that public law, law that was made by legislatures or
executive bodies, and private law, laws that concerned disputes resolved by the courts,
overlapped in the colonial era. In Virginia, their was no real separation between the two since
the General Court often determined disputes while the county courts legislated through the
passage of by-laws. 60
Integral to this study as well is the consideration of both informal and formal institutions.
Women who formed gossip networks created an informal institution, one through which they
often sought to enforce community mores. The activities of these networks, or informal
institutions, often resulted in the participants finding themselves at odds with the formal
institution of the county court. However, even though women’s speech frequently challenged
the authority of the court commissioners, it also supplemented their authority by informing the
court and the community-at-large of goings-on that might have otherwise been unknown or
ignored. So, even as women were punished for their scandalous speech, they brought to light
other infractions of community standards, resulting in punishment not just for the gossipers, but
also for the subject(s) of their “idle talk.” Yet, the gossipers were treated much less harshly than
women convicted of other forms of disorderly speech (slander, verbal abuse of a court justice,
etc). Perhaps this leniency indicates the court’s dependency on such informants and the
existence of a delicate balance between the informal and formal institutions. The question then
becomes, was gossip dangerous to patriarchal ideals as colonial leaders indicated in the passing
of gender-specific laws, or did it serve to uphold patriarchal ideals at the community level? By
answering this question, policy-making can be re-considered on a larger level when considering
whether laws are beneficial to the everyday activities of local communities. In answer to
60
Ibid., xv.
27
historian Herbert G. Gutman’s questions (c. 1981) regarding the usefulness of this form of
focused history, while a community study does not replace comprehensive meta-narratives, it is
essential if a new generation of historians is to create a meta-narrative that can offer an altered,
more accurate understanding of American history. 61
A few terms used throughout this study deserve clarification. I use the terms “status” and
“rank” interchangeably. As Mary Beth Norton has pointed out, “rank” was the term most often
employed by early modern Europeans when describing one’s position within the established
social and political hierarchy. “Status” was more frequently used during the eighteenth century,
but because it is generally understood by the modern-day reader to mean social position, I have
chosen to incorporate the term into my analysis.62 Historians of various topics on colonial
Virginia have employed similar terms, but have defined them differently. For example, both
Terri Snyder and James Horn examined the estates of early Virginia’s men and used an
accounting of the personal possessions they left behind as one measure of status. Julie Richter
included jury service as a benchmark of elite status, but records show that serving on a jury
required little more than being available and in the vicinity of the “courthouse” on court days. 63
When I discuss men of “elite” status, I am describing men who had acquired the combined
61
Herbert G. Gutman, “Whatever Happened to History?” The Nation. 223 (November, 1981): 554.
See Mary Beth Norton’s explanation of terms in Founding Mothers and Fathers, 18-19.
63
Caroline Julia Richter, “A Community and Its Neighborhoods: Charles Parish, York County, Virginia,
1630-1740” (PhD diss.,College of William and Mary, 1992). Richter uses jury service as one measurement of status,
yet Warren Billings, in “Pleadings and Proceedings,” explains that in order to comply with a 1661/2 colonial statute
requiring county courts to call petty juries at the start of each session, they “merely impaneled twelve men from the
bystanders from around the courthouse and brought cases before them as needed.” 575. In my own research I have
not found any instructions from the Assembly to the county courts indicating qualifications fro jury service. Prior to
the 1661/2 statute, the Assembly allowed for jury trials if a defendant petitioned for one but did not give any
instructions on impaneling juries. See William Waller Hening, Statutes at Large vol. I,(available online:
http://vagenweb.org/hening/), 272-273 for 1642/3 law. In 1657/8 the Assembly instructed that grand juries were to
be impaneled to “receive all presentments and informations and to enquire of the breach of all penall lawes and other
crimes and misdemanours not touching life or memver, and to present the same to the couirte,” yet no instructions
on who should serve. Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 463 for 1657/8 law. In 1661/2, the Assembly required that men serve
as juries at the General Court (formerly known as the Quarter Court) from the counties where an offense took place.
The Assembly’s requirement noted that six men from the county were to be paid 20lb. tobacco per day of
62
28
attributes of land, control of labor, office-holding, military title and social connections. Men like
Obedience Robins and Edmund Scarburgh II of Accomack County and Joseph Croshaw and
Thomas Beale of York County exemplify the men for whom I use the term elite. Other Virginia
men I discuss throughout this work were middling men who had some of the attributes listed, but
not all. It is also important to note that I recognize that the meaning of status throughout the
seventeenth century was constantly being negotiated as seen in what Peter Burke refers to as the
“unconscious as well as the conscious adaptation of the attitudes of one group to those of
another” 64 Those of elite status who dominated colonial Virginia government were constantly
challenged by others- women, servants, slaves, non-Anglicans, Dutch, Indians- and individually
and collectively reacted to those challenges, sometimes through violence, sometimes through
enacting laws, sometimes in administering those laws.
As for the word “gossip,” I have never come across the word itself in the county court
records. The county court clerks used other terms to describe women’s disorderly speech,
including “scandalous,” slanderous,” “depraved,” etc. It is clear, though, that the word “gossip”
was understood by seventeenth-century English subjects and it appears throughout the medieval
and early modern period in religious tracts, ballads, and literature. I use the term to describe the
speech, as well as women who were accused of disorderly speech. When I use the term “gossip”
as a person, I am not implying I am using the term to describe how the accused women were
viewed culturally by those within their community at that time.
In medieval English literature, two or more friends having a confidential relationship
were termed “gossips” or “gossybs” 65 The term derived from the word godsib, meaning “one
attendance. Hening, Statutes, vol. II, 63-64.
64
Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 11.
65
Margaret Hallissy, Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer’s Women and Medieval Codes
of Conduct (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993) 76.
29
who has contracted spiritual affinity with another by acting as a sponsor at a baptism: a godfather
or mother; a sponsor,” a definition that was understood from the eleventh through the late
nineteenth centuries, as well as “a familiar acquaintance” especially “applied to a woman’s
female friends invited to be present at birth.” 66 The “familiar acquaintance” initially could have
been male or female, derived from the idea of a godparent or sponsor, and was in use from the
fourteenth century, but became more specifically feminized throughout the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The action gossiping has been defined as “to act like a
gossip, or familiar acquaintance” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; “to be a gossip or
sponsor” in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; and “to talk idly, mostly about other
people’s affairs” throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. 67 In a circa
1630 ballad, Four Wittie Gossips, the women that are the subject of the ballad are merrily
passing the time in an alehouse, illustrating that the term gossip was not at first a negative one,
but simply meant a woman among her friends. 68
During the lifetimes of the men and women described throughout this study, the term
gossip seems to have shared two popular meanings in English culture; one was not gendered, the
other was. Perhaps the dual meaning of the term gossip is the reason county court clerks utilized
other terms, words with a definite derogatory connotation, to describe the talk in which women
engaged to make it abundantly clear that this was activity inappropriate in an orderly society.
Thus, the meaning of the term gossip changed over time so that both the gossip as a person and
gossip as an act acquired a derogatory connotation. 69
As the term became more associated with women, it took on a more derogatory tone.
66
Ibid.
Ibid.
68
Ibid., 59-60.
69
Ibid. Spellings varied and include godsib, godsyb, gossib, godsip and gossippe.
67
30
The talk of women gathered during childbirth became idle chatter, an unflattering comment on
one of the most important roles for seventeenth-century women. The term was then understood
to mean talk that occurred wherever women met without the supervision of men, including the
church, the alehouse, and the field. 70 The concern over women’s gossip is apparent throughout
scripture and other Christian treatises. For example, a goodwife was defined in early Christian
sources as “meek, quiet, gentle, sincere, free from anger, not talkative, not clamorous, not hasty
of speech, not given to evil-speaking, not captious, not double-tongued, not a busybody.” 71
The term gossip mutated to a negative connotation as men grew suspicious of women
who met without male supervision. Anxious in their distrust, they viewed women’s speech as
naturally disorderly, and any woman who dared to speak was just this side of a shrew. 72 Henry
Parrot, in “The Gossips Greeting,” called gossips a
lewd disdainefull idle lott, who full or fasting never are content,
To scold at home, they hold it but a sport,
Their chiefe delight a broad merriment. 73
As English men and women left from the ports of London and Bristol, their reaction to
the new world shaped their attitudes, their mentalités. Arriving in Virginia, whether on its
Eastern Shore or its mainland, they were forced to adapt to their new and very different
surroundings. Despite David Hackett Fischer’s claims in Albion’s Seed, replication of their
institutions and culture would not be possible. 74 Making comparisons between two of Virginia’s
earliest counties and putting them within the context of the greater Atlantic world will help to
explain the interactions between women and colonial policy-makers as they all reacted to new
70
Ibid.
Ibid., 60-61.
72
Alan Haynes, Untam’d Desire: Sex in Elizabethan England (Thrupp: Sutton Publications, 1997), 77.
73
Thomas Parrot, The Gossips Greeting or A New Discovery of Such Females Meeting (London: B.A. for
Henry Bell, 1620) np.
74
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
71
31
environments while still subjects of England. As historian Lara Putnam explains, Atlantic
history and microhistory only appear to be “radically different”:
The first sounds very, very big; the latter very small. The geographic scope of the
historical processes Atlantic history seeks to understand covers roughly third of
the globe; the scale of observation within microhistory is frequently no larger than
a town, sometimes no larger than a miller's bookshelf. Yet scope and scale are
two separate matters. Like Atlantic history, microhistory has attempted to
elucidate historical processes transcontinental in scope… Like microhistory,
Atlantic history has been characterized by researchers' purposive manipulation of
their scale of observation... (There are) three ways that Atlantic history and
microhistory are linked: firstly, in the significant role played in each by the
"telling example" that proves the existence of connections heretofore denied;
secondly, in attempts to write prosopographical studies of specific cohorts whose
lives crossed the Atlantic stage; thirdly, in Atlantic history's unspoken reliance on
micro historical methods to establish the spatial frame of reference and
geographic unit of study for individual inquiries. 75
I also pay careful attention to sociologic methods because, above all, gossip is a social
behavior. Max Gluckman described this alternative view of gossip in the 1960s in stating that
gossip is a “culturally determined process which has its own customary rules.” Through gossip,
participants compete for honor and, in part, hold the community together and maintain its values.
Furthermore, it enables one group to control competing groups as well as “aspiring individuals”
within groups. 76 Women in seventeenth-century Virginia were a minority group, and in many
ways isolated from traditional lifeways they had experienced in England. Yet, they were also
part of a bigger community that, in some cases, was isolated because of geographic location,
possibly making gossip more effective. In the first half of the seventeenth century, when class
gradations were subtle and social mobility was possible, gossip often was either used to enforce
whatever subtleties existed, or to reinforce that notion that a community member had not
75
Lara Putnam,.” To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World.” Journal of Social
History. 39 (Spring, 2006):625-630.
76
Max Gluckman, “Gossip and Scandal,” Current Anthropology, 4 (1963): 307-316. Gossip had formerly
been described as behavior that served the individual ego as opposed to a social phenomenon.
32
achieved enough to justify his/her position. Gluckman also notes that because gossip is a
reassertion of community values, if the gossip stops, so do the values. 77 In this respect the
decreasing evidence of women’s gossip at the close of the seventeenth century is an important
marker of social, cultural, and political change within communities, and ultimately, the colonyat-large.
My periodization for this work is based on women’s gossip in court and how that gossip
was viewed by both makers and implementers of law. From the 1630s, the years the courts were
established, through the 1650s, women and their gossip are evident in court record even in the
earliest recordings by the court clerks. Women continued to gossip; beginning in the 1660s and
through the 1680s, the General Assembly passed laws that specifically targeted women’s speech.
After 1680, women’s gossip becomes less evident in the official court record. Based on the
changing views of women’s speech evident in statutes and documentation, I have organized my
work both chronologically and thematically.
Chapter one, “The Threat of Disorderly Speech to Early Virginia Government,” serves as an
introduction to the first half of the dissertation. In this chapter, I examine the establishment of
Virginia’s counties and the county court system as well as the laws that governed them. This is
essential to understanding women’s gossip in the first half of the seventeenth-century.
In chapter two, “Gossip and Status in Accomack County,” I utilize Accomack County court
records from their beginning in the 1630s through the 1650s to demonstrate the ways in which
punishment for women’s gossip reflected status in Accomack County. Throughout Virginia’s
formative years, English immigrants brought with them to the New World an understanding of
hierarchy and status. In English culture, identifying status was essential to creating and
maintaining order. Englishmen were preoccupied with notions of an orderly world based on
77
Ibid.
33
hierarchy and their place in it. This is evident in the court justices’ punishment of female
gossips. If a gossip’s husband was equal in status to her victim and/or court justices, the sentence
was fairly mild. If a gossip’s husband was lower in status than her victim and/or the justices, or if
she was unmarried, the punishment was more harsh.
In chapter three, “Gossip and Church Politics in York County,” I analyze records from York
County from roughly the same time period as the previous chapter on Accomack County. I
demonstrate that, while status was still a salient factor in the punishment of gossiping women,
the records more importantly reveal how women used their gossip as a substitution for more
formal political participation. Courts dealt harshly with gossips’ attempts to influence the
political process, yet their status protected them from corporal punishment.
Chapter four, “Disorderly Speech and Gender in Early Virginia Lawmaking,” serves as the
introduction to the second half of the dissertation. In this chapter I examine the changes in the
General Assembly that took place in the Restoration era (1660 through 1680), and how those
changes affected the treatment of women’s gossip.
In chapter five, “Gossip and the Politics of Morality in Accomack County,” I return to the
Accomack County records in an examination of court cases from 1660 through 1680. Despite
the General Assembly’s attempts to curtail women’s gossip through passing specifically pointed
statutes and encouraging harsher punishment, local authorities still found women’s gossip useful
as a tool for community control, rarely doling out the harsh punishment prescribed by the
Assembly. This demonstrates the often ambiguous condition of early Virginian womenpassionate and disorderly on one hand, moral and instructive on the other.
My focus returns to York County in chapter six, “The Danger of Women’s Gossip in York
County.” From the 1660s through 1680, colonial authorities continued to consider women’s
34
gossip disorderly, but also saw it as increasingly dangerous and subversive as indicated in
numerous new laws that specifically targeted the activity. Women’s gossip came under more
careful scrutiny and gossips were subjected to punishment that indicated the justices considered
their words bordering on seditious. Women were punished, not only according to economic
status, but according to the perceived gendered danger of their words. This trend reflects an
adaptation to English cultural ideals of coverture, and gives a more realistic look into the law and
the disconnect between cultural ideals and the reality of life in colonial America.
In the conclusion, “Women’s Gossip and the Power of the County Court Clerks,” I comment
on records from both Accomack and York counties from the 1680s to 1700. During these
decades, the office of the court clerk became more professionalized. Cases against women for
gossip and testimony that included women’s gossip are less evident in the records as the work of
county clerks became standardized through the supervision of the colonial clerk’s office. The
court clerks in both counties seem to be following a pattern of shortened depositions, despite the
fact that they continued to be paid per deposition recorded. Without the more detailed testimony
of previous court clerks, women’s words in court either become less evident to the recordkeepers, or were not considered important enough to include in official record.
It is true that women had few opportunities to exert power in communities that were
based on the cultural ideal of patriarchal authority. It is not my intention to exaggerate women’s
power in these particular places or at these specific times. However, by introducing various
seventeenth-century court cases, I have placed colonial women’s limited power of gossip in an
appropriate context of time, place, and culture with the hope that this research will answer as
well as invite more questions about the lives of early Americans.
35
PROLOGUE
Jamestown, Virginia in 1610 was a tiny, miserable speck on the map of the New World. It
was a poorly fortified English bulwark set amid a mosquito-infested marshland of brackish water
contaminated with human waste. The densely wooded land provided necessary resources for the
Jamestown settlers, but was also home to the powerful and unfriendly center of the Powhatan
empire that dwelled nearby, a constant source of trepidation for the English settlers. Of the
approximately 700 settlers who had made the voyage from England since Jamestown’s founding
in 1607, only 200 were still alive upon the 1610 arrival of Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, the
newly appointed governor of the Virginia colony. 1 The governor, informed that Jamestown was
on the verge of being abandoned, found the fort in shambles and the surviving settlers sick,
hungry, and unhappy. The Virginia Company’s vision of a profitable settlement in the New
World had turned into a nightmare for the settlers the company had planted there. The settlers
would have to rely on their own initiative in order to bring profit to the Company, but they had
few skills or the stamina to survive in a wilderness. They were nobles and gentleman, seamen
and craftsman, and unskilled laborers. 2 They were not farmers who could harness the abundant
resources at their feet by making use of the arable land. They were weak from near starvation
and desperately ill from dysentery, typhoid and salt-poisoning, making many unwilling and/or
unable to carry out hard labor. 3 It would take a return to strict military rule, as had briefly
1
Thomas West was the third Baron De La Warr, a title he ha inherited a few years before setting off for
Jamestown. He was Oxford educated an had fought in the English military against he Spaniards in the Netherlands.
Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith, The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the
Fate of America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008), 197; Virginia Barnhard, A Tale of Two Colonies:
What Really Happene in Virginia and Bermua? (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 18.
2
For a list of the occupations of the earliest Jamestown settlers, see “Historic Jamestown” (available:
http://www.preservationvirginia.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=31)
3
Warren M. Billings, John E Selby, That W. Tate, Colonial Virginia: A History (White Plains, NY: KTO
Press, 1986), 27-39. Carville V. Earle, “Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia,” The Chesapeake in
the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society, Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds. (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 96-111. For a brief analysis of the varying, and often opposing
36
existed under John Smith and had been attempted by Thomas Gates, to create order out of
desperate chaos and misery.
De La Warr used the authority vested in him by the Virginia Company council to
establish himself as both secular and spiritual leader of Jamestown. He reinstated military rule
to coerce labor and instill order. His orders included mandatory attendance at morning prayers
and thrice-a-week sermons. To reinforce his authority, a guard of over fifty men stood watch as
Lord De La Warr, lieutenant governor Thomas Gates, “councilors, captains and other officers,
and all the gentlemen” processed every Sunday into the simple wood-framed structure that
served as the Jamestown chapel. As he sat perched atop his green velvet chair, a matching
kneeling cushion in close proximity, the Virginia colony’s governor was in full view of the
congregation, a collection of motley, half-starved English men, women, and children. The
procession, the guards, and De La Warr dressed in his finery all served as visual cues to the
colonists of the governor’s authority over them and the Virginia Company’s attempts at
establishing social order. These religious practices served to affirm civil authority. West, Gates,
and the Virginia Company’s leaders understood that social order was necessary to the survival
of Jamestown. 4
descriptions of the early Chesapeake, see James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the SeventeenthCentury Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 124-130. For an analysis of the
ongoing problems of ill-equipped immigrants sent by the Virginia Company until its dissolution in 1624, see
Edmund Morgan, “The First American Boom, 1618-1630,” The William and Mary Quarterly Volume 28 (April,
1971): 170-198. For a description of the first Virginia Company settlers, see Sigmund Diamond, “From
Organization to Society: Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,” The American Journal of Sociology Volume 63, No.
5 (1958): 457-475.
4
Glover, 196-2004.
37
PART I
CREATING AND RESISTING PATRIARCHAL ORDER, 1630S- 1660
Chapter One
The Threat of Disorderly Speech to Early Virginia Government
…and that all orders and proclamations be kept and observed, and according to the same, and
as neere as may be according to the lawes of the realme of England… 1
Colonial leaders in seventeenth-century Virginia were constantly faced with events that
easily could have disrupted their attempts at implementing and retaining order if left unchecked.
Agitation over Indians, anxiety over status and class, generational conflict, religious differences,
concerns over gender roles, and disorderly speech all threatened order that English leaders in the
New World so desperately sought. 2 By the 1630s, local institutions such as county courts and
church parishes served as the most immediate enforcers of order. Because of their
responsibilities and efforts, they played a central role creating order in an English New World.
Very simply, Virginia’s General Assembly quickly made county court commissioners and parish
churchwardens the gatekeepers of moral law.
Gossip was of particular concern to these officials. The following two chapters analyze
gossip in county court records of Accomack/Northampton County and York County from the
1630s through the 1650s. I show how women’s participation in gossip created difficulties for
1
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 169. T Sir John Harvey, Knt. Governor, and captayne generall of Virginia,
February 1631/32. Taken from the oath given to the newly appointed county commissioners at the February, 1631/2
General Assembly.
2
For fear of Indian uprisings in Virginia, see Helen C. Rountree, “The Powhatans and the English: A Case
of Multiple Agendas,” in Powhatan Foreign Relations, 1500-1722, Helen C. Roundtree, ed. (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1993), 173-20. For anxiety over status and class, see Brown, Good Wives, Nasty
Wenches, and Anxious Patriarch, and Pagan, Ann Orthwood‘s Bastard. For English and colonial patterns of
generational conflict, see Stephanie Gearhard, Dramas an the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare’s
England (Feb 2010 draft of unpulbished manuscript) and Crane, Killed Strangely. For religious conflict see Edward
L. Bond, Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000). For concerns over
gender roles, see Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs and Norton, Founding Mothers and
38
Virginia’s leaders trying to build orderly communities. The court commissioners and parish
leaders strove to control women’s gossip because disorderly speech was especially dangerous in
a world where creating order was necessary for the survival of the colony and to those who had a
financial stake in its success. The different responses in these two counties reveal how the
immediate environment affected the formation and function of local institutional structures.
Women’s words moved from a local audience to a regional audience when they actively
participated in civil and criminal cases, including defamation cases heard by the county courts. 3
Their words challenged county leaders’ attempts to create order, and this struggle emerges in the
written record through the presentation of women’s gossip within the county records, the nature
of the speech recorded, and the punishment that authorities meted out to women convicted of
gossip.
Although women were active in the county courts, lawmakers and record keepers rarely
mentioned women in the documents that created the legal and political structures of Virginia
during this formative period. The General Assembly passed laws that affected women without
referring to women specifically. Very likely, these English lawmakers subscribed to the cultural
ideal of coverture in which women were politically and legally subsumed into the identity of
their husbands, fathers, or masters. Further, few women settled in Virginia in its formative years.
While they did not immigrate to the colony in the same numbers as men (4:1 ratio), women
actively participated within the newly forming systems of court and parish. 4 They frequently
served as plaintiffs and defendants, witnesses and matron jurors. They represented their
Fathers. For dealing with disorderly speech, see Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs;
Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers; and Snyder, Brabbling Women.
3
Mary Beth Norton states that while women in seventeenth-century Maryland were involved in 19% of all
civil cases heard by county courts, they were involved in over 50% of defamation cases heard by the court. Norton,
“Defamation,” 4-5.
4
Carr, “The Planter’s Wife,” 545.
39
husbands, their children, and themselves on a frequent basis. And they gossiped.
Disorderly speech breached religious beliefs and practice which were central in the lives
of the English, and essential in the minds of the Jamestown’s leaders who sought to sustain an
orderly organization. Their religious ideas originated in classical philosophy and medieval
Christian thought on order. Classic Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato both commented on
the virtue of order and hierarchy. By the Middle Ages, Christian beliefs reinforced the classical
notions of order. Religious ideas legitimated the social order; an ordered and harmonious society
was inherently virtuous, while disorder and chaos were based in dangerous vice, such as pride. 5
Seventeenth-century English Christians understood that the “emanation of existence from
its fount (God) descended by degrees through all the levels of potentiality.” 6 They still clung to
the medieval idea of “The Great Chain of Being” as the root organizational scheme. Dependent
(imperfect) beings depended on more perfect causes than themselves; every point on the chain
above the bottom link (described as “nothingness”) had some degree of perfection.7 These early
modern English and Virginia Christians considered social hierarchy good because it was
"ordained by God" and analogous to the overarching hierarchy of the Created Universe with the
all-powerful God in control. Obedience "flowed upwards": less-perfect beings that represented
the lower links on the chain were expected to obey more-perfect beings above them in the social
order. Conversely, authority "flowed downwards": beings who represented higher links
commanded those below them. Many Christians believed that this was direct evidence of divine
will since it reflected relationships in the Universe itself, where God commanded and everything
5
25
6
William Rowley, A New Wonder, A Women Never Vext, (London: J. Cumberland, 1824), introduction 24-
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1936 and 1964) 68-9.
7
David B. Manley and Charles S. Taylor, eds., Descartes’ Meditations 106.3 (available online:
http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/).
40
and everybody else obeyed. To many, the king was “the divinely mandated representative of
God on earth; therefore to disobey the king was to disobey God.” The demand for obedience
was applied, then, to anyone who acted as an agent of the king’s rule. Sir Robert Filmer was one
of the most influential English philosophers to support this theory of absolutism and order. 8
In the seventeenth century, many cherished the notions of order described in the Great
Chain of Being, but their ideas came under attack. In England, while Anglican ministers
preached obedience to the sovereign, calling it "the very root of all virtues," the leaders of the
Protestant Reformation questioned the authority of the Church and its clergy. 9 Since the King
was head of the Church, reformers subsequently questioned the authority of the King (at least in
spiritual matters). At the same time, others were questioning the traditional order, although fear
of disorder remained a great concern; questioning a long-accepted order could create chaos.
These were issues that philosophers of religion, politics, and science grappled with throughout
the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The debate over how to create and maintain order,
preventing chaotic disorder, was nowhere more evident than in the founding of the Virginia
colony.
The English brought with them to Virginia these old notions of order that were under
attack in England. Yet, creating order in the colony of Virginia proved to be a challenge to the
Virginia Company and its emissaries to the New World. Within two years of its initial
settlement, the Virginia Company had placed its struggling colony under the strict military
leadership of Governor Thomas Gates, quite literally martial law. The Virginia Company’s
newly-expanded council hand-picked Gates to coerce its motley band of colonists to build a
8
Murray N. Rothbard, Economic Thought before Adam Smith vol. 1(Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises
Institute, 1995), 279. Also see Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers for an analysis of Robert Filmer’s
philosophy on patriarchal order.
9
Rothbard, 279.
41
proper fortification and provide for themselves. Gates, De La Warr and the several governors
who followed them over the next nine years manipulated the authority bestowed upon them by
King James I and the Church of England (via the king as head of the church) through the king’s
charter to the Virginia Company in an attempt to make the failing colony profitable for its
investors. 10
Controlling disorderly speech concerned Virginia’s leaders from the beginning of
settlement. In their instructions to one of Virginia’s early governors, Sir Thomas Gates, “his
majesties Counsell for the Direccon of the affaires” of the colony bestowed upon Gates broad
authority over the colonists, writing that he was to “proceede by Martiall law according to yor
comission” when dealing “in all matters of Civill Justice,” yet cautioned him to act as a
“Chauncelor,” or counselor, rather than as a “Judge,” relieving him of any duty to exactly apply
English law to the peculiar circumstances of the colony, and allowing him to use his “discrecon”
that might “seem aptest for you and that place.” 11 These directions were reiterated to the next
governor, Lord de la Warr, the following year. 12 While the Virginia Company’s instructions to
Gates and de la Warr were broad and vague when it came to naming offenses, by 1612, laws
governing Virginia’s colonists became more specific with the implementation of Thomas Dale’s
Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, otherwise known as “Dale’s Laws.” 13 Disorderly speech
10
England’s King James issued a new charter to the Virginia Company in 1609. The council of the
company was expanded to fifty men who set out to restructure both the company and the colony in response to
troubling correspondences from John Smith and Christopher Newport. The council had the “full and absolute power
and authority, to correct, punish, pardon, govern, and rule” the colonists residing in Virginia. With this authority,
they stripped the current colonial president and council of all authority, and entrusted the future of the colony to Sir
Thomas Gates and to a newly appointed council, with the colonial council subordinate to Gates. Once Gates arrived
in Jamestown, he posted new laws in an attempt to being order to chaos. These regulations were continued, and even
expanded with Gates successors, Lord De La Warr, and Sir Thomas Dale, and became known as Lawes Divine,
Morall and Martiall. These laws implemented martial law throughout the colony and continued through 1618.
Glover, 52-53, 192, 227-228.
11
Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed,. Records of the Virginia Company, 1606-26: Miscellaneous Records,
Volume III (Washington, D.C.; Government Printing Office, 1933), 15.
12
Ibid., 27-28.
13
William Strachey, For the colony in Virginea Britannia: lawes divine, morall, and martiall,etc.
42
followed immediately after religious belief and practice in these early laws. 14
Table 1. Speech Crimes and Punishment under Martial Law
Crime
Punishment
Blasphemy
Bodkin thrust through the tongue; death
Traitorous Words against “his Majesties Person or
royall authority”
Death
Derision of preachers or ministers
Whipped three times and ask public forgiveness in
the church three Sabath days
Take false oath; bear false witness
Death
Detract, slander, calumniate, or utter unseemly,
and unfitting speeches against the Virginia
Company Council and its agents in England and
Virginia
First offense: whipped three times and ask
forgiveness
Second offense: condemned to Galle (jail) for
three years
Third offense: death
Giving disgraceful words or commit any act to the
disgrace of any person in the colony
Tied head and feet together upon the guard every
night for one month and prevented from owning
land or holding any office
Source: William Strachey, For the colony in Virginea Britannia: lawes divine, morall, and martiall, etc.
Military rule segued into representative governance by 1619 when the Virginia Company
replaced Sir Thomas Dale’s Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall with laws that were more closely
patterned after legal and social patterns of England in an attempt to attract more colonists. 15 At
that time, the Virginia Company named Sir George Yeardley as governor, and upon his arrival in
the colony, he issued writs that called for the election of representatives from each settlement
(“plantation” or “hundred”) and for those who were elected to meet with him in Jamestown. 16
(London: Walter Burre, 1612), 7 (hereafter referred to as “Dale’s Laws). Available online:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1056.
14
Dale’s Laws, 9-13.
15
Billings, Colonial Virginia), 43; Billings, A Little Parliament, 5-7; Hening, Statutes, Vol. I, 169.
16
“Hundreds” were land grants of 100 acres given to planters who had arrived in Virginia before 1616 and
had paid their own passage. Later arrivals or those who had fulfilled their financial obligation to the Virginia
Company were also encouraged to set up “plantations.” In each case, the landowner was encouraged to fill their
43
The twenty newly-elected representatives, called burgesses throughout the colonial period, met
with the governor and his appointed council from 30 July through 4 August of 1619. John Pory
recounted the initiation of the burgesses that emphasized their duty to both God and country, as
well as the prestige of their new office:
But forasmuch as men’s affaires doe little to prosper where God’s service is neglected, all
the Burgesses tooke their places in the Quire till a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the
Minister, that it would please God to sanctifie all our proceedings to his owne glory and
the good of this Plantation. Prayer being ended, to the intente that as we had begun at
God Almighty, so we might proceed with awful and due respecte towards the Lieutenant,
our most gratious and dread Soveraigne, all the Burgesses were intreatted to retyre
themselves into the body of the Churche, which being done, before they were fully
admitted, they were called in order by name, and so every man…tooke the oathe of
Supremacy, and entered the Assembly. 17
Once the General Assembly was formed in 1619, the burgesses continued Thomas Dale’s
intent to police colonists’ speech, evident in their first edicts, warning colonists that men “of evil
minde” might attempt to “raise faction or dissention” or “spread false rumors, upon sinister
intent, to the wrong of the Counseil, Companie, or Colonie.” With the end of martial law,
though, came a softening of punishment for what was deemed seditious speech. Offenders no
longer faced specific orders of corporal punishment, nor death, but instead for the “first time be
admonished by the Court or Counseil, and at the second, disenfranchised.” 18
Pory’s account of the first assembly indicates that social order, including controlling
settlement with either servants or tenants (servants would then owe labor to the landowner, while tenants would owe
part of their proceeds to the landowner, each until the cost of passage had been covered. Like the headright system
that, granting of hundreds and encouraging plantations was an attempt by colonial leaders to encourage immigration.
Morgan, “The First American Boom, 169-170.
17
John Pory. “A Reporte of the Manner of Proceeding in the General Assembly Convened at James City,”
The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Series 8, 1606-1737. Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed. Records of the Virginia Company,
1606-1626, Vol III, 155; Governor Yeardley appointed Pory speaker of the first assembly, probably because of his
previous experience serving in the House of Commons. He spent his time during the assembly performing primarily
clerical functions that included preparing the agenda, organizing the governor’s paperwork, writing orders and
drafting, overseeing the taking of minutes. Billings, A Little Parliament, 7-10.
18
“Orders and Constitutions, Partly collected out of Majesties Letters Patents, and partly obtained upon
mature deliberation, by the Treasurer, Counsel, and Companie of Virginia, for the better governing of the Actions
and affaires of the said Companie here in England residing. Anno 1619 and 1620,” in Kingsbury, ed,. Records of the
Virginia Company, 1606-26: Miscellaneous Records, Volume III, 357.
44
disorderly speech, was an immediate concern for the new assembly. On the fourth day of its
initial meeting, the burgesses passed laws “Against Idleness, drunkeness, and excesses in
apparell.” 19 The assembly of burgesses adjourned on 4 August, but not before instructing all
ministers in the colony to “bring to the Secretary of Estate a true account of all Christenings,
burials, and marriages, upon paine, if they fail, to be censured for their negligence.” Moreover,
ministers and churchwardens were instructed to present all “ungodly disorders” to settlement
leaders. 20
In March 1623/4, new colonial leadership began a process that decentralized Virginia
government and made local courts the locus of authority over colonists. The Virginia Company
was bankrupt and had been dissolved. The colony came under direct control of the King who
appointed a new governor, Sir Francis Wyatt. He, in turn, appointed commissioners to govern the
various settlements that had formed throughout Virginia’s Tidewater and Eastern Shore.
Governor Wyatt instructed the commissioners to hold monthly court sessions in the most remote
areas of the colony that were out of reach of the immediate authority and influence of the
General Assembly. 21 They would remain the court of law and chancery in most cases
19
Pory, 164-5.
Ibid., 171-2.
21
Ibid, 41-43; Robert Wheeler, “The County Court in Colonial Virginia ,” Town and Country: Essays on
the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978),
112. Burgesses continued to be elected throughout the colonial period. In 1624 and 1628, the only years in which
records exist to ascertain the procedure for issuing writs ordering elections, there was an approximately two week
period between the time the governor issued the writ and the time of the election. Voter qualifications from 1619
stated that every free man and company tenant could vote, regardless of landholding status (essentially all adult
males). According to Warren M. Billings, this remained the standard until 1630. Billings describes the elected
burgesses as men who “demonstrated capacities for prospering in Virginia.” The number of burgesses sitting in the
assembly varied, with some representing counties and some representing “older constituencies” such as hundreds or
plantations. As Billings states that there “was little rhyme or reason to the areas or groups of colonists they
represented.” By 1640, burgesses were limited to up to five from James City county, four from each of the
remaining counties, and one from Jamestown. Sheriffs were authorized to conduct elections, giving six days notice
to the electorate. Billings states that this essentially allowed the county court commissioners to monopolize
membership in the House of Burgesses, leading toe “the counties becoming the basis of representation.” The
members of the house also dismissed elected burgesses they “deemed unqualified. Billings, A Little Parliament, 1819, 32-35.
20
45
throughout the colonial period and beyond, with the General Court mainly serving as a court of
appeal and the court in which cases involving life and limb were to be heard. 22 Creating order
throughout the colony in the absence of martial law fell to the monthly court, making them
institutions central to the very survival of the colony.
The 1632 meeting of the General Assembly at Jamestown reiterated the governor’s order
of 1623/4 in its edict requiring monthly court sessions to be held throughout the growing colony,
specifying the remote locations of “Warwicke River, Elizabeth-City, and Accomack,” as well as
Charles City and Henrico, and Warrosquyoake. At this time, the General Assembly appointed
commissioners to serve at each court, with anywhere from five to seven commissioners
appointed for each location specified. While the General Assembly held the authority to appoint
commissioners and give instructions on quorum, they deferred to the local courts’ desires
regarding who would serve, allowing the sitting commissioners to recommend appointments and
removals. 23 Recognizing the importance of recording the compulsory monthly court
proceedings, the assembly also established the office of the court clerk who served by
appointment of the governor.
The General Assembly reaffirmed their concerns over the dangers of disorderly speech.
The burgesses dictated the types of moral infractions that they expected local officials to
regulate. Laws written by the General Assembly in 1632 stated that churchwardens were to
sweare that you shall make presentments of all such persons as shall lead a prophayne or
ungodlie life, of such as shall be common swearers, drunkards or blasphemers, that shall
ordinarilie profane the saboth dayes or contemne Gods holy word or sacraments. You
22
A. G. Roeber, Faithful Magistrates and Republican Lawyers: Creators of Virginia Legal Culture, 16801810 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981)
23
Hening,, Statutes, vol. I, 154, 168-170. Susie M. Ames, County Court Records of AccomackNorthampton County, 1632-1640 (Washington D. C.: The American Historical Association, 1954), ix. In Francis S.
Philbrick’s preface to Ames’ court record abstracts, he states that “‘courts’ were first provided for…in Accomack in
1634.” Hening indicates that the governor ordered a monthly court in Accomack two years earlier, in 1632. The title
“commissioner” was used by the General Assembly, and in turn by the county courts, until 1661. Hening, Statutes,
vol. II, 70; Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, xxiv.
46
shall also present all adulterers or fornicators, or shall as abuse theire neighbors by
slanderinge tale carryinge or back bitinge, or that shall not behave themselves orderlie
and soberlie in the church duringe devyne servise. Likewise they shall present such
maysters and mistrisses as shall be delinquent in the catechisinge the youth and ignorant
persons. So helpe yow God! 24
When they created the courts, Virginia’s leaders adapted the more complicated web of
English secular and ecclesiastic courts to the Virginia environment and colonial needs. Initially,
the law prescribed that, for the above infractions, churchwardens present offenders yearly at the
June meeting of the colony’s Quarter Court. By 1640, the Assembly instructed presentations to
be carried out at the county courts’ monthly meetings. The use of monthly courts in disciplining
colonists for moral misdeeds deviated from English tradition. In England, ecclesiastic court
officials most often monitored such transgressions. The main function of the English ecclesiastic
courts was to deal with issues of religion and morality. They supervised the conduct of clerics,
monks, and nuns; investigated heresy allegations; oversaw marriages; heard disputes over
bequests of personal property; monitored sexual and moral conduct of parishioners, and heard
cases of defamation. 25 There was some overlap between England’s church and secular courts.
In some instances, cases were referred by church courts to secular courts; in other instances,
church courts picked up the slack for overburdened secular courts. Secular courts of common
law often heard defamation cases if the speech could lead to damages or to a criminal indictment.
Over time, these cases included defamation that involved damage to the plaintiff, including
accusations of crime, being infected with a contagious disease, or professional corruption and
competence. Otherwise, church courts heard defamation cases when the defamer required
correction through church discipline. 26 If a defamer’s allegations could lead to presentation
24
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 156.
In England, the most common moral offenses were heard at the lowest level of the ecclesiastical courts,
the archdeacon’s court. Hair,15.
26
Ibid. Also see Clara Ann Bowler, “Carted Whores and White Shrouded Apologies: Slander in the County
25
47
before a church court, the defamer was to be tried in a church court. Secular courts heard
defamations cases if a defamer’s allegations included both “spiritual and temporal” issues. In
summary, the church courts were to hear only defamation cases dealing with spirituality. Yet,
lines of jurisdiction were blurred, in part because the offense was often accepted as a spiritual
matter regardless of content in acceptance of the continuing “medieval concept of slander as a
breach of Christian charity among members of a community.” 27
The Virginia system of governing evolved differently from England’s. English subjects
living in Virginia had a different reference point for how they developed laws governing speech.
Churchwardens were members of the parish vestry. Originally in England, all males of a parish
comprised the Anglican parish vestry, called an open vestry. Virginia, though, adopted a
strategy of parish governance that developed over centuries in England in which a smaller group
of parish leaders, or a closed vestry, consolidated control. Codified early in the Lawes Divine,
Morall and Martiall, Virginia leaders stipulated that “every Minister where he is resident…shall
chuse unto him foure of the most religious and better disposed [residents] as well to informe of
the abuses and neglects of the people in their duties, and service to God, as also to the due
reparation, and keeping of the Church handsome, and fitted with all reverent observances
thereunto belonging.” 28 Virginia vestries had the combined administrative responsibilities of a
traditional English vestry with the “moral policing” duties of a traditional English churchwarden.
According to statute (1642), Virginia’s parish vestries were initially composed of the minister
and “two or more churchwardens” and those chosen were to be “the most sufficient and selected
Courts of Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 85 (October 1977).
27
J. A. Sharpe, Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York, The
Borthwick Papers No.58 (York: The University of York, 1980), 7-8.
28
Strachey, 7.
48
men.” 29 With no oversight from the English Anglican hierarchy, Virginia’s leaders had put the
church “in the hands of the laity.”30 In 1645, the Assembly allowed for the election of the
vestrymen by the freemen of the parish. During the years of the Interregnum (1649-1660), the
Virginia House of Burgesses delegated control of church policy to the local parishes,
strengthening parish authority. Vestrymen often held other local and colonial office, including
court commissioner and burgess. When new parishes were formed due to expansion (sometimes
these were entirely new, sometimes consolidations of old parishes), the vestries were dissolved
and elections were held. It was often the case that the creation of a parish preceded the creation
of a county, and so the men who had been elected as vestrymen became likely appointees to the
county court as well, since they had experience in local governance. 31
The office of vestryman was important to the functioning of church and community in
Virginia. Duties of the vestry included hiring ministers, although by statute it was up to the
governor to confirm appointments. Because of a shortage of ministers in the colonies, vestries
hired ministers on a “year-to-year” basis. Prior to 1680, because of scarcity, ministers who had
just arrived in the colony presented their credentials directly to the governor who then sent the
minister, along with a letter of recommendation, to a parish with a vacancy where the vestry
would accept the appointment for a year’s time. 32 Vestrymen were also responsible for
determining the tax for the church (poll tax) by first determining the church’s expenses, and then
the amount taxed per tithable. The assembly charged the vestry with making arrangements for
care of indigent parishioners, providing necessary church “ornaments” for services, and selecting
a custodian/sexton and a clerk. Churchwardens, generally two per parish, were chosen from the
29
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 240.
Dell Upton, Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Church Parishes in Colonial Virginia (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1968), 6-7.
31
Upton, 140; Horn, 196.
30
49
vestrymen on a yearly basis. Among other duties, churchwardens were responsible for collecting
tithes and presenting to the county court parishioners who had committed moral offenses that
included fornication, bastard-bearing, absence from church services, and speech crimes. 33
Parish and court were the two most important local institutions and instilled a sense of
order and stability linking colonial institutions with society. 34 The county courts oversaw
churches by imposing taxes and acquiring land for buildings and cemeteries, and hiring clergy.
The General Assembly explicitly assigned ecclesiastical duties to the local courts, broadly
directing “Church wardens to present to monthly courts, and the court is to inflict punishments if
within their cognizance.” 35 The parish vestry, churchwardens and clergy, were subordinate to
the county court, and dealt mainly with the ecclesiastical affairs in the local parish, although the
vestry did acquire administrative responsibilities for some civil duties. 36
The Assembly considered ministers and churchwardens to be an extension of their civil
authority to protect order. In fact, the first fifteen acts passed at the Assembly’s 1631/32 meeting
dealt specifically with the duties and obligations of ministers and church wardens. To protect the
authority of Virginia’s ministers, and by extension their own, the Assembly ruled at their 1631/2
meeting that stated “NOE man shall disparage a mynister whereby the myndes of his parisoners
may be alienated from him and his mynistrie prove less effectuall upon payne of severe censure
of the governor and councell.” 37
Speech crimes such as slander and defamation were some of the most common offenses
32
33
tithes.
34
Upton, 142.
After mid-seventeenth century, sometimes the sheriff , who might also be a churchwarden, collected the
Horn, 198.
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 227.
36
William H Seiler, “The Anglican Church: A Basic Institution of Local Government in Colonial
Virginia,” in Town and Country: Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies, Bruce
Daniels, ed. (Mddletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), 137.
37
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 156.
35
50
dealt with by English church courts in the seventeenth century, and were also commonly
prosecuted in Virginia’s courts. Slander suits often resulted from incidents that often grew out of
“rumor or gossip.” Plaintiff who considered themselves “the victims of the scolds and
dissenters” sought the court’s interventions to uphold their status and seek legal remedy. 38
Women’s gossip, in particular was frequently the subject of the defamation cases heard by the
county commissioners, include episodes of sexual slander and other situations in which the
victims’ honor was at stake. Defending one’s good name, regardless of one’s socio-economic
rank, was essential to maintaining one’s standing in the community. This was an issue of
holding onto the respect of one’s neighbors in order to carry on one’s work within the
community.
Churchwardens and ministers in Virginia continued the English tradition of presentment,
although their presentments were made, not to an ecclesiastic court, but by 1640, to
commissioners in the county courts. Virginia’s booming tobacco industry stimulated a flood of
immigration, with new arrivals flocking to the land along the colony’s many navigable
waterways that were essential to trade. 39 Accomack/Northampton and York counties were
particularly affected as Virginia’s population center shifted away from James River settlements
to areas north and east, like the Eastern Shore and York County. 40 The Eastern Shore population
had grown to 396 tithables, while the York River region had grown to 510 tithables, or 8 percent
and 10 percent, respectively, of Virginia’s overall population. Despite the civil demands of a
growing population, especially issues relating to the tobacco trade and land transactions,
38
Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America, 18.
Tobacco production increased from 50,000 pounds produced in 1620 to 30,000,000 pounds produced by
1700. Hatfield, 39; Kevin Kelly, “‘In dispers’d Country Plantations’: Settlement Patterns in Seventeenth-Century
Surry County, Virginia,” The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society, Thad W.
Tate and David. L Ammerman, eds. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 183-205; 192.
40
Horn, 163.
39
51
Virginia’s county court commissioners continued interceding in matters of morality as Virginia’s
local courts fully absorbed the functions of the English church courts. According to James Horn,
“while the ruling elite wished to create a robust religious presence in the colony, they had no
intention of erecting a church sufficiently strong to challenge their own power; hence: their
resistance throughout the century to the establishment of church courts in Virginia.” 41
In Virginia, the local courts absorbed functions of the English church courts. Although
the commissioners who reigned over the courts were quite occupied with civil issues, the lack of
English institutions forced the General Assembly to instruct the commissioners to intercede in
matters of morality as well. This included monitoring and sanctioning gossips. The local courts
continued their oversight of churches by imposing taxes and acquiring land for buildings and
cemeteries, and hiring clergy. The clergy remained subordinate to the justices in that they were
expected to inform the court of violators of fornication laws, report the birth of bastard children,
and compile the names of those who broke the Sabbath by not attending services. 42
While specific in its presentment instructions to churchwardens, the 1632 Assembly was
silent when it came to prescribing particular punishments. This stands in contrast to their earlier
orders and certainly in contrast to the Virginia Company’s orders while the colony was under
martial law. Historian Sigmund Diamond claims that, after 1619, “the General Assembly found
that ‘persons of qualitie’ were ‘not fitt to undergoe corporall punishment.’” Prior to 1619, under
41
Ibid., 386.
Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 43. Butler identifies the court commissioners as the men responsible for
hiring clergy, while Edward L. Bond claims the church vestry had this responsibility. Damned Souls in a Tobacco
Colony, 203-204. Perhaps this confusion is, in part, a result of the fact that commissioners and vestrymen were often
one-in-the-same. Moreover, according to William H. Seiler, the General Assembly’s first mention of a governing
body for the parish church is found in a 1632 statute which calls for a “committee” (Seiler’s term) to be “composed
of the commissioners (later justices of the peace), minister, churchwardens, ‘and chiefe of the parish.’" According to
Seiler, this constituted a “lay board” which was “obviously a transitional step to the formal recognition of the parish
vestry.” “The Anglican Parish Vestry in Colonial Virginia,” The Journal of Southern History Vol. 22 (August 1956),
311. The commissioners, however, do seem to bear the brunt of the parish responsibilities at this point, for,
according to this statute, if the “commissioners” were found to be “deficient in their duties” they were to “forfeite
42
52
martial law, most of the settlers in Virginia were unmarried male employees of the Virginia
Company; their employee rank was their only relationship to the company and so they were
punished according to their particular offense. After 1619, individuals interacted with each other
from many interconnected ranks: landowner or tenant, master or servant, married or single, rich
or poor, ancient planter or newcomer, male or female. They no longer followed the militarystyle chain of command that had been implemented under the authority of the Virginia
Company. The colony now had a representative government, albeit one in which the governor
had extraordinary powers to veto the actions of the Assembly. Nevertheless, a new system of
status had been put into place and women, too, were punished accordingly. 43
The county court acted as a middleman between the central government in Jamestown
and local inhabitants that had settled in dispersed communities in order to exploit Virginia’s land
and what it produced, its most important commodities. The General Assembly officially named
the first shires, or counties, of Virginia at their 1634 meeting. Numbering eight in all, the were
called: Accomack (changed in 1642 to Northampton) with a population of 396;, Charles City,
population 511; Charles River (changed in 1623/24 to York), population 510; Henrico,
population 419; James City, population 886; Warrosquyoake (name changed to Isle of Wight in
1637), population 522; and Elizabeth City and Warwick, counties, whose combined population
was 1670. The counties were formed around the settlements, plantations, hundreds, fortifications,
and/or parishes as well as the monthly courts that had been previously established. 44 At the time
of the Assembly‘s 1634 meeting, Virginia’s population had grown to approximately 5,000
inhabitants, compared to about 1,300 in 1625. The Assembly believed that creating counties
£. 50 in money.” Hening Statutes vol. I, 185.
43
Diamond, 471-472.
44
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 224. The assembly initially referred to counties as “shires,” and ordered that they
were to “governed as the shires in England.”
53
would ease the workload of colonial authorities by formally placing local government and law in
the hands of the court commissioners. 45 The Assembly instructed the monthly (now county)
court commissioners to hear all suits not in excess of 200 lbs tobacco in value, and to conserve
peace, enforce all laws, inflict appropriate punishment except in cases involving life and limb,
and keep records of their proceedings. 46 In their attempts to create and keep order, the courts
became the judicial, political and ecclesiastical centers of each county. 47 Because of the
convenience of the county court, the commissioners were given broad judicial and administrative
power. 48 As the colony grew in the first half of the seventeenth century, local institutions
became the “most important…of the political constellation”and throughout the colonial period,
colonists“related more to the close neighborhood institutions than to the more remote central
ones.” These courts were the local government, performing all three functions of government:
executive, legislative, and judicial, blurring the lines between these functions. Historian Bruce
C. Daniels describes the courts as “governments in the main, devoid of sharply argued or deeply
felt ideologies - governments that existed to keep society functioning smoothly.” 49 Court
commissioners would be responsible for controlling disorderly speech within their communities.
The courts were the centerpiece of the General Assembly’s plan for county formation.
The governor and his councilors recognized that the county courts needed to be in close
proximity to existing populations so residents could attend court day with the least
45
Morgan, “The First American Boom,” 170; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1975), 404.
46
Billings, Colonial Virginia, 55; Wheeler, 111-113. Cases involving murder, treason, mutiny, piracy, rape
and suits involving more than 200 lbs. tobacco were heard by Virginia’s General Court comprised of the governor,
and his councilors, although depositions could be taken, and evidence gathered, by county officials. The county
courts jurisdiction was increased from cases not in excess of 100 lbs tobacco to cases valued at up to 200 lbs.
tobacco. Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, ix; Hening, Statutes, vol.I, 224.
47
Kelly, “‘In dispers’d Country Plantations.’” 183.
48
Wheeler, 112.
49
Bruce C. Daniels, ed., introduction to Town and Country, 7- 9. Daniels states that by 1725, colonists
related more closely to the county courts than to central authorities, but I would argue that this was the case
54
inconvenience, so they established county boundaries according to the spaces in which
settlements and their courts already existed. 50 Individuals associated with the courts became the
nexus between neighborhood and local government. Early Virginia was without typical English
“nodal points” like marketplaces and port cities. Neighborhoods that developed were comprised
of scattered households generally situated within two to three miles of each other and, at the
most, within five miles. Far-flung residents sought out “prominent” neighbors for “help and
support.” Settlers in Virginia organized their communities differently from what they knew in
England. The homes of these prominent community members became central to community
building in the absence of traditional English towns with marketplaces, fairs, theaters, etc., the
public spaces of England. These homes became the nodal points of Virginia neighborhoods.
Commissioners on the county court served this purpose. The colonial government purposely
scattered commissioners throughout Virginia’s dispersed communities so that justice was
convenient to county residents. They intervened when gossiping women troubled their
neighbors. County residents sought them out to resolve disputes among neighbors, give oaths,
and take depositions when their neighbors’ behavior threatened order, because above all, early
Virginia’s leaders sought order. 51 The county courts were essential institutions in a world in
which judicial, political and religious concerns bound dispersed settlements into “intricate
networks of relationships.” 52
While Jamestown’s male leaders both in the New World and back in England wrestled
throughout the colonial period, as the county courts offered the most immediate remedy to local problems and were
the institutions with which the majority of colonists were most familiar.
50
James Horn explains that “early neighborhoods became foci for the subsequent settlement as new arrivals
sought land in proximity to established plantations. Population increases led small groups of households to evolve
into parishes, and in some cases, separate counties.” 199.
51
Kelly, “‘In dispers’d Country Plantations,’” 183-205; James R. Perry, The Formation of a Society on
Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1615-1655 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) 173; Rutman, A Place
in Time, 112; Wheeler, 116.
52
Kelly, “In dispers’d Country Plantations,” 191.
55
with creating Old World order in Virginia, the women who had settled in the colony used the
power of their gossip to disrupt that order. The actions of many women, the majority of whom
were English immigrants, seem to indicate that women understood the difficult prospect of recreating English patriarchal order in Virginia. Virginia’s men may have understood this as well,
yet they did not want to give up an arrangement that historically had privileged them. The
following chapters on Accomack/Northampton and York counties show how women used gossip
to undermine English men’s attempts at establishing an order with which they were most
familiar. Women were familiar with this order as well, but their actions indicate they did not like
it. Bess Gaskins of Accomack-Northampton County and Elizabeth Frith Woods of York County
are examples of women who, through their gossip, challenged elites in their respective
communities.
56
Chapter Two
Gossip and Status in Accomack-Northampton County, Virginia, 1632-1659
As women challenged Eastern Shore elites with their gossip, elites responded in ways
meant to protect their own status. Status mattered in early Accomack-Northampton County,
Virginia. Despite its geographic obscurity and cultural backwardness relative to the metropole of
London, the county’s residents created their own local hierarchy based on material wealth,
community connections, and influence with “worthies” back home. 1 Gossip was an extremely
powerful leveler in this society. The words of women who gossiped brought into question the
reputations of elite men and women. County leaders tried to minimize gossip’s power when it
threatened the status of elite citizens and the hierarchy they created. Many elites turned to the
courts to vigorously defend the status they had achieved in Virginia, an elevation they never
could have reached in England. The court commissioners’ official acknowledgment that subjects
of gossips had been wronged went a long way to preserve damaged reputation and secure socioeconomic status. The county court records show women used gossip to challenge the status of
elites within their communities by causing them public humiliation. County court commissioners
stepped in to protect the status and reputations of the victims of gossip with whom they most
closely identified. The county commissioners’ actions reinforced their own authority and the
authority of those who shared a similar socio-economic status.
John and Elizabeth Nuthall went to the county court on 3 November 1651 in an effort to
preserve their reputations and status. They were leaving Accomack-Northampton County,
1
For the relationship between connections in England, political appointment and land acquisition, see
Emory G. Evans, A Topping People: The Rise and Decline of Virginia’s Old Political Elite (Charlottesville:
Univeristy of Virginia Press, 2009). Carole Shammas argues that elites in early Virginia believed that a relationship
with some “person of quality” in England gave them “immediate access” to status. “English-Born and Creole Elites
in Turn-of-the-Century Virginia” in The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays in Anglo-American Society
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 281.
57
Virginia to conduct business overseas. As the twenty-three year old Elizabeth prepared for the
couple’s departure, John saw to some business at the county court’s monthly session. 2 John
asked the court commissioners for a certificate exonerating Elizabeth from “incision, reproach,
and false scandal most unwanting, cast upon her by the venomous accusations of Elizabeth
(“Bess”), the wife of William Gaskins.” 3 The couple did not want any accusations spread
through Bess Gaskins’ ugly gossip to follow them to London, and they believed that a piece of
paper from the county court commissioners had the power to minimize the power of Bess’
words. With the intention of restoring Elizabeth’s “reputation and known credit,” the court
commissioners granted the certificate to the Nuthalls, believing that Bess’ gossip had the
potential to “enlarge tertiary to the tenth” should the gossip spread to London. 4 Clearly, the
court commissioners believed that even the Atlantic Ocean was not large enough to drown nasty
rumors from Virginia unless the commissioners documented their official judgment that the
rumors were false.
John and Elizabeth Nuthall worried that Bess Gaskins’ scandalous gossip would greatly
damage Elizabeth’s reputation. Sometime during the previous summer, Bess claimed she had
pulled her husband, William, out of Elizabeth’s bed. In the months of August and September,
this bit of gossip spread throughout their neighborhood. Frances Morgan, one of the Gaskins’
neighbors, stated that while in the Gaskins’ home she heard Bess “in an exclaiming manner” say
that she had taken her husband “out of the naked bed from Mrs. Nuthall.” Frances cautioned
2
Frank Walczyk, Northampton County VA Orders, Deeds & Wills 1651-1654, (Coram, NY: Peter’s
1998Row), 35; Northampton County Deeds, Wills, Etc., No. 4, 1651 – 1654, microfilm reel 3 (available at Library
of Virginia, Richmond, Va), p46.
3
Walczyk, 32-36; NCODW No. 4, microfilm reel 3, p42-46. Elizabeth, wife of William Gaskins, was
frequently identified in court depositions as “Bess.” For the sake of clarity, I also will refer to her as Bess.
Accomack-Northampton County’s name was changed in 1645 to Northampton. The county still covered the entire
Virginia Eastern Shore at this time. Because the era discussed in this chapter covers years before and after the name
change, I will refer to the county as Accomack-Northampton.
4
Walczyk, 35; NCODW No. 4, microfilm reel 3, p46. I have added punctuation for clarity.
58
Bess to hold her tongue. “For shame that was a very lie,” she told Bess, but Bess replied that
Frances was mistaken and Elizabeth Nuthall was a “whore.” 5 Another female neighbor also
claimed to have heard Bess say that Elizabeth had bedded Bess’ husband. 6 The court
commissioners did not look favorably on Bess Gaskins; they sentenced her to 20 lashes on her
bare shoulders. Additionally, the commissioners ordered Bess to make a public confession to the
church congregation on the following Sabbath. 7
The clerk documented in the Accomack-Northampton County records the problems
between the Nuthalls and the Gaskins. A careful examination of records such as those
surrounding John Nuthall’s petition reveals the manner in which county commissioners viewed
women’s gossip; moreover, their treatment of women’s gossip reveals these Englishmen’s
concern with status. 8 In early Virginia, status influenced social, economic, and political
relationships. This is evident in the county commissioners’ application of the General
Assembly’s laws governing moral offenses. The commissioners considered the status of gossips
and of the gossips’ targets. The burgesses of the General Assembly had passed legislation that
made explicit their concern with creating order and civility. The Accomack-Northampton County
commissioners applied the Assembly’s laws in ways that would preserve elite status, a reflection
of their concern with their own precarious positions in their communities. Conflicts certainly
developed between elite members of Eastern Shore society, described as “tough-minded
individuals” who had their own personal ambitions and continually tested “their standing in
society.” Despite the social, economic, and political competition that developed between elite
5
Walczyk, 32-35; NCODW No.4, microfilm reel 3, p42-f46.
Ibid. The unnamed female witness is mentioned in a deposition given by Thomas Price.
7
Ibid.
8
Until 1662, the General Assembly gave the title of “commissioner” to the Englishmen who sat on the
county courts. In 1662, the Assembly changed the title to “justice of the peace” and gave county justices the same
authority as those in England, when the colony of Virginia reverted to the royal authority of King Charles II.
Turman, 62-63.
6
59
men, they still found commonalities with those of similar rank, affecting the outcomes for those
who slighted them. 9
Court records show that the English men who led Accomack-Northampton County
punished women who gossiped according to the status of their husbands and the status of the
objects of their gossip. The county commissioners who embodied local authority sought to
reinforce status through their interpretation and implementation of colonial law. From the time
the General Assembly was first formed through mid-century, the majority of English immigrants
in Virginia came to the colony as servants. After completing their contracts, they sought social
mobility and, over time, many became Virginia’s middling sorts. Early in the seventeenth
century, Englishmen anxiously sought land through the headright system and access to political
office. The better sorts who succeeded established the planter elite that emerged by the last
quarter of the century. But this new system of gaining status was unfamiliar, and early settlers
were unsure of their status and wanted to protect it. The acquisition of both land and office, keys
to one’s status, was based on wealth and reputation. 10 The middling and better sort believed that
creating and keeping order in Virginia was dependent on protecting their reputations. To
reinforce this, commissioners assessed women’s status, as well as the status of their husbands
and their target before deciding punishment for their gossip.
In Accomack-Northampton County’s court records, the clerks documented the sensitivity
9
Breen, Myne Owne Ground, 15.Virginia men actively competed for appointments that paid well,
including to the office of high sheriff. One sheriff served in each county. This was a lucrative position: sheriffs
added 10 percent for themselves to the taxes they collected, and charged assorted fees for serving warrants and
making arrests. Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom, 207.
10
Mitchell, 413-415. Possession of land and wealth indicated that the landholder possessed the “skills,
sagaciousness, trustworthiness and stature” needed for office holding. “Those without land were virtually excluded
from public tasks. Those who achieved positions of vestrymen, justices, sheriffs, churchwardens, coroners, and
burgesses controlled and average of 828 acres and left estates valued at an average of £ 616. Those achieving lowlevel offices such as petit jurors and appraisers controlled on average 180 acres of land and left estates valued at £
85. Rutman, 143-146.
60
for reputation many Eastern Shore residents shared early in its history. 11 The Eastern Shore’s
Accomack-Northampton County was part of the larger English empire. The commissioners who
governed the county were influenced by English notions of hierarchy and order. While personal
reputation and status mattered particularly for residents of seventeenth-century Virginia, early
English immigrants to Accomack-Northampton County and the rest of Virginia lacked many of
the visual cues that might indicate socioeconomic position. For most of its residents, housing
and clothing, the most obvious signifiers of status in the English world, were rudimentary at best.
A typical Chesapeake home is described by James Horn in Adapting to a New World as
a wooden frame attached to heavy posts was sent into holes in the ground, and riven
clapboards several feet long were nailed onto the outside, providing an exterior surface
and structural support. Roofs were made of wooden shingles, a convenient and cheap
solution to the lack of thatch, tile, and stone (that was used in England). Floors sometimes
had planking laid over them but more often were simply left as beaten dirt. Occasionally,
clay was used to plaster inside walls and fill gaps between clapboards to keep out drafts
and rain. Partitions and ceilings provided a few rudimentary rooms in the main part of the
house, and lean-tos and outhouses could be added when needed. Since bricklaying was a
skill beyond most planters, the majority of houses had “Welsh” chimneys, usually made
of wattle and daub, attached to the gable end of the dwelling. Few were larger than about
sixteen by twenty feet, and the vast majority had only a couple of rooms. 12
Virginians homes differed only slightly based on socio-economic status, and were substandard
compared to those owned by people of the same status in England. 13 Although homes of the
elite were adequate for Virginia living, immigrants considered them “meane and Little”
11
For example, see Edward Drew’s suit against William Whithart in which Drew claimed Whithart had
called him a rogue. Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 2.
12
Horn, 303-304. Also see Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, 89-90.
13
Horn claims that these structures most resembled the “flimsy English huts erected on commons and
wastes” in England built by “English itinerants” and were not built to be permanent structures since tobacco farmers
often “moved to another part of their land” and built a new structure once the land they were farming became
exhausted from tobacco production.. By the eighteenth century, Chesapeake elite more commonly built the “brick
mansions” commonly associated with the colonial tidewater. Virginia’s lower sort, or individuals whose estates
were worth less than £50 built homes consisting of one or two rooms. The middling sort, with estates worth £50150, had three-room homes. The elites built homes with five or more rooms including rooms used for “storage,
making clothing, carpentry, and dairying” and buildings used as “storehouses, a smithy, a tannery yard, a barn, and a
dock.” 306.
61
compared to English housing, making them unreliable markers of social position. 14
As for material culture in England, clothing was the most noticeable evidence of one’s
social status. 15 Although Virginians copied many English dressing customs, distinctions
between social groups were less extreme. While Virginia’s early gentlemen “strutted through the
muddy streets of Jamestown and Williamsburg in gaudy costumes,” servants and the lower sort
wore clothing made from canvas and frieze. Still, the Virginia elite complained that social
distinctions of dress were not sufficiently respected in the colony, resulting in the passage of
sumptuary laws. The objective of the burgesses in creating these laws was to “support a spirit of
social inequality” among Virginia residents, although the laws were generally ignored by
Virginia’s court commissioners. 16
Obedience Robins was one of Accomack-Northampton County’s elites who achieved
both material wealth and political power early in the county’s history and expected deference
from those who had not. He established himself as a leading member of AccomackNorthampton County during its formative years. Born in 1600 in Northamptonshire, England, he
had settled on the Eastern Shore by 1627. He became a court commissioner in the same year
Accomack-Northampton was officially named a county and remained a commissioner until his
death in 1662. 17 His fellow commissioners appointed him to the parish vestry in 1635, the first
formal vestry named in Accomack-Northampton County. Holding dual offices was a common
occurrence in early Virginia. 18 Robins represented Accomack-Northampton County in the
14
Lorena Walsh, “Urban Amenities and Rural Sufficiency: Living Standards and Consumer Behavior in
the Colonial Chesapeake, 1643-1777,” The Journal of Economic History 43 (March, 1983), 110.
15
Michael J. Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, David Armitage
and Michael J. Braddick, eds. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 97.
16
Fischer, 355-360.
17
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, xxi; Susie M. Ames, ed., County Court Records of AccomackNorthampton, Virginia, 1640-1645 (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 1973), xii.
18
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 39. All five of the county commissioners at court on the day of
appointment, 14 September 1635, became members of the vestry, made up of twelve men in all (one of whom was
62
General Assembly House of Burgesses in 1629-1630 and served in the Governor’s Council in
1655. While there is no surviving description of the home of Robins and his wife, Grace O’Neill
Waters Robins, the records note that he had acquired a vast amount of Eastern Shore land along
Cherrystone Creek, King’s Creek, and later, in the northern part of the peninsula. He owned at
least 500 acres by the time of his marriage to Grace in 1630. Between 1640 and 1662 he added
at least 3000 acres to his holdings, bringing his entire estate to 4450 acres, placing him firmly
within the planting elite. 19 As Robins’ case illustrates, land was the most obvious evidence of
one’s status in Virginia, but acquiring land required knowing the right people. Access to
headrights was integral to land acquisition. The governor of Virginia awarded headrights to
those who paid for the transportation of immigrants to the colony (50 acres per head) or to those
who purchased headrights from others. 20 Robins, like many other of Virginia’s early inhabitants,
earned the bulk of his estate through the exploitation of this system.
Some of Accomack-Northampton County’s most prominent residents, including
Obedience Robins, gained wealth and status not only through land, but also through their
involvement with trade. Like land acquisition, knowing the right people and establishing good
credit were essential to trade. Records indicate that Robins was involved in trade with Argoll
Yeardley and John Wilkins, both of whom also served as Accomack-Northampton County court
commissioners. Williams Waters, Robins’ stepson, acted as a “factor” for the three men during
an “extended mercantile voyage” during which he visited Holland, Hamburg, and the West
Indies.” 21 Robins was one of several Accomack-Northampton County residents who actively
the minister William Cotton),
19
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, xxxvii; Perry, 37.
20
The date headrights were recorded in the county records indicates when they were claimed. This is not
necessarily indicative of the year someone was transported from England to Virginia. According to Breen and Innes,
some men claimed headrights “saved or purchased headrights [purchased other’s certificates] until they could make
a sizeable claim.” Breen, Myne Owne Ground, 10.
21
Perry, 121, 157.
63
traded with the Dutch despite trade wars that developed between England and the Netherlands in
the mid-seventeenth century. In 1653, Northampton County commissioners, including
Obedience Robins, grew concerned that Dutch traders residing on the Eastern Shore were in
danger because of the war. The asked the governor and council to issue an order protecting
them, believing this would prevent a greater disturbance.22
As illustrated by Robins’ life, landholding and commercial activity were essential steps to
political offices such as county court commissioner, vestryman, burgess, and councilor. 23 When
landholding, business activity, and political office were combined, they intensified the power of
each and they magnified one’s status in early Virginia. These attributes were interconnected and
dependent on one’s reputation in the community; for men like Robins, protecting one’s
reputation was essential to maintaining one’s status.
Accomack-Northampton County records show the lengths to which English colonists
would go to protect their reputations, the key to their social position within their community.
Gestures of deference and interactions between individuals of differing social groups
distinguished social rank; they were “signifiers of social position,” projecting both status and
political authority. 24 But deference was not always freely given. Despite their prominence in
Accomack-Northampton County, elites in England often characterized men like Robins as those
who left for Virginia because they were unable to compete in their home country, or worse, were
the “ragges” and “scumme” of England; moreover, they were not necessarily respected by their
neighbors in Virginia. 25 Reputations were dependent on honor, described as the
22
John Ruston Pagan, “Dutch Maritime and Commercial Activity in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Virginia,”
The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 83 (1982), 496-497.
23
Ames also notes other factors that led to office-holding, including age (maturity), experience, education,
and interest. Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, xxxviii-xxxix; Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, 51.
24
Armitage, 96.
25
T. H. Breen, ed., “George Donne’s ‘Virginia Reviewed’: A 1638 Plan to Reform Colonial Society,”
William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXX 91973), 453 as quoted in Brown, 89; Carole Shammas, “English-Born
64
“reverence…which one man yieldeth to another.” 26 Left unchecked, scandalous gossip and
slander that implied less-than-honorable behavior could result in the loss of status.
The Nuthalls were following the example of the Robinses. Both elite couples used the
court to protect their reputation and status. On 18 February 1650/51, Grace Robins filed a
complaint with the court that Ann Higby had, in a “scandalous defamatory” manner called her
“gin red person,” indicating a penchant for drinking alcohol. Ann, the wife of minister Thomas
Higby, was ordered to publicly acknowledge her transgression in court and before the church
congregation. Ten days later, the court ordered the sheriff to take Ann Higby into custody and
“keep her prisoner until she shall perform the order entered against her.” 27
The Robins’ case was one of many similar cases recorded during the AccomackNorthampton County court sessions which began 7 January 1632/3 and convened with
remarkable regularity throughout the colonial period. At the very outset the prominence of
speech crimes, including those committed by gossiping women was evident in the AccomackNorthampton County records. 28 The minister and/or churchwardens presented AccomackNorthampton residents multiple times for offenses such as swearing and individuals brought
claims of speech crimes committed by women to the attention of the court in its first year of
recorded court proceedings and continued throughout the next two decades. The presentments
alone are quite remarkable, for the General Assembly, in its 1632 statute governing moral
and Creole Elites in Turn-of-the-Century Virginia,” The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on AngloAmerican Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 275. English contempt for Virginians was
especially critical towards people in positions of authority.
26
Fischer, 396. Fischer refers to a 1616 English moralist quoted by historian Louis B. Wright in The First
Gentlemen of Virginia, 10.
27
Ames, County Court Records, 1640-45, xiv; Walczyk, 8, 10, 11, 141. Ann Higby was the widow of John
Wilkins whose will was probated on 29 January 1650/51. Ann married Higby sometime between the fall of 1650
and the date of this case. Obedience Robins filed a complaint against Thomas Higby in December 1652 for “many
abusive carriages, speeches and other misdemeanors acted against him” which the court considered to be “word and
actions” that “reflect to the dishonor of the government” and “public scandal of all the magistrates in the county.”
28
For examples, see Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 3-4; Ames, County Court Records, 1640-
65
infractions, directed that churchwardens make their presentments yearly at the June Quarter
Court in Jamestown. Because travel from the Eastern Shore to Jamestown was time-consuming
and difficult, local county justices had decided to hear churchwardens’ presentments long before
it was mandated by the General Assembly in 1640.
One of these early cases, noted by the clerk in September 1634, reveals that Edward
Drew filed a petition in the Accomack-Northampton County court against Joane Butler for
calling his wife, Mary, a “common Carted hoare,” with two male witnesses giving oath that
Joane did indeed use those words. 29 For Joane, the case resulted in a choice: be “drawen over
the kings Creeke at the starne of a boate or Canew from one cowpen to the other” or make an
apology to Mary Drew in front of the parish congregation the next Sabbath. 30 It is quite
possible that Joane’s name-calling was in retaliation for Mary Drew’s gossip about Thomas
Butler, Joane’s husband. The record of 8 September 1634 includes a petition filed by Thomas
Butler against Mary Drew in which he complained that Mary had gossiped about Thomas’ sexual
exploits with Bridgett Wilkins, wife of John Wilkins. One deponent even alleged Thomas Butler
had bragged to his own wife about the sexual encounter with Bridgett for which Bridgett
1645, 18, 20, 25, 27.
29
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 22-23. Bowler, 411-412. In Bowler’s analysis, she points out
that this particular case exemplifies the adaptations Virginia’s leaders made to English law. The case began as a civil
suit, but the commissioners ordered punishments that were common in English criminal and ecclesiastic cases.
Water was often involved in the punishment of women, especially those whose “violent tongues or slanderous habits
disturbed the peace and quiet of the neighborhood.” Methods included ducking, immersion, and dragging an
offender across a creek while tied to the back of a boat. Susie M. Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, liv.
Brown describes ducking as a common form of punishment, especially for women, in the seventeenth century. The
“offender sat astride a wooden seesaw and was repeatedly submerged in a pond or river until submitting to the will
of the court.” Brown also discusses Drew’s adulterous affairs as a choice women made to hedge their bets in case of
a husband’s death, having their next husband lined up. Brown, 29, 96. Mary Drew’s name is spelled both “Mary”
and “Marie” in court records. I will refer to her as Mary throughout this work for clarity.
30
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 20, 34. Commissioners occasionally sentenced Virginia’s
women to ducking and other water-related punishments. For more descriptions of punishments involving water,
including a description of a ducking stool, see Julia Cherry Spruill, Women’s Life & Work in the Southern Colonies
(New York: W. W . Norton & Co., 1972; Philip Alexander Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 50-54.
66
promised Butler “as much Cloth as would make him a shert.” 31
The lives of Edward Drew and John Wilkins followed a similar trajectory during their
time in Virginia. Both the Drews and the Wilkins were prominent couples in AccomackNorthampton County at the time. Edward Drew was among the men appointed to the first parish
vestry on 14 September 1635, along with Obedience Robins. John Wilkins was appointed to that
same vestry, and served as a county commissioner from 30 December 1633 through 31 August
1643. 32 Drew and Wilkins were both nominated to the office of sheriff. 33 John Wilkins also
represented the Eastern Shore in the House of Burgesses in 1633 and 1641. Drew and Wilkins
each amassed impressive amounts of land as well. Between 1636 and 1645, Drew had acquired
at least 1750 acres of land, while Wilkins patented at least 1800 acres between 1635 and 1640. 34
Both men died in early 1650/1. 35 If a rivalry developed between Drew and Wilkins, it was not
apparent in these court cases, for they never sued each other. Edward Drew focused on the
Butlers.
Apparently the commissioners did not place much stock in the story about Thomas Butler
31
In calling Mary Drew a “carted whore,” Joane Butler claimed that Drew was not just a whore, but had
been prosecuted as one. This was a common epithet employed by English subjects. Also called “bridewell whores” a
carted whore indicated a woman who had been taken away in a cart to a “bridewell” or jail, or whipped behind a cart
for her sexual impropriety. Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family an Neighbourhoo in Early Modern
England (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003), 191.
32
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 8; Ames, County Court Records, 1640-1645, 197. John
Wilkins was one of several men appointed to the county court because “divers of the Commissioners of
Acchawmacke are deceased and gone from the plantation”. I have found no records of John Wilkins serving as a
commissioner after this date August 1643.
33
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 58, 96. Drew was nominated in September 1636 and again in
November 1637, the same day Wilkins was nominated; however, there is no evidence that either man served in this
capacity. The court commissioners submitted names to the governor, who then appointed a sheriff from that list. The
General Assembly enacted legislation in 1660/61 that required county sheriffs to be seated members of the county
court. It then became custom for justices to serve in an annual rotation. Bruce, 595-596.
34
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 44. Land grant, awarded 23 November 1640 to Edward Drew
for an unspecified number of acres, reads “It is thought fitt and soe ordered by the Court that Edward Drewe shall
have all the land between Phillip Taylor gentleman and Obedience Robbins gentleman att the Seaboard side he the
said Drew making it appeare to be justlie due unto him.” Nugent, 46, 84, 117. Ames, County Court Records, 16401645, xiv
35
Walczyk, 4, 4, 10-11. Wilkins’ will was proved 28 January, 1650/1651.35 Drew was deceased by March
1650/51.
67
and Bridget Wilkins, for there was no further mention of the episode. Neither Thomas nor
Bridgett was ever presented for adultery. Why John Wilkins did not file a defamation suit
against Joane Butler or Mary Drew is something of a mystery. Protecting a woman’s sexual
reputation, especially a woman married to a prominent member of Accomack-Northampton
society, was quite common. A week following Joane Butler’s appearance, the Butlers and
Drews were in court once again: Thomas Butler filed another suit against Mary Drew, this time
for calling Joane "a carted hoare,” claiming she had seen Joane carted in England. 36 For this,
Mary was sentenced to make a public apology to Joane in front of the parish congregation, just
as Joane had the option to do a week before (which punishment Joane Butler chose was not
recorded). Furthermore, Edward Drew was fined 50 lbs. tobacco, payable to the county
“chyurgion,” or physician, for the care of another Accomack-Northampton resident, for calling
one of Thomas Butler’s witnesses a “foresworne fellow,” accusing him of taking a false oath. 37
The gossip and name-calling that took place between the Drews, Butlers, and their
associates reveal much about relationships and status in early Accomack-Northampton County.
Mary Drew spread an ugly story about Thomas Butler told to her by a neighbor. As unflattering
as the story was in regard to Thomas Butler, it put Bridgett Wilkins in an even less flattering
light, seemingly willing to trade shirt cloth for sex. Thomas Butler and his wife were below the
status of the Drews and Wilkinses and therefore owed them deference. Thomas Butler owned no
property, held no office and lacked political connections, three benchmarks of status. He tried to
use the court to protect himself, but the court commissioners did not identify with him because of
his low status. The commissioners did not consider Mary’s allegations regarding Butler and
Bridget Wilkins credible, yet they sentenced her to a mere apology, a punishment much less
36
37
Bowles, 411-426.
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 23.
68
harsh than being dragged over a pond or creek, as the commissioners had ordered for Joane
Butler. The commissioners were more willing to be lenient because the Drews and Wilkins were
of the same status. Mary Drew gossiped about Thomas Butler to keep Joane Butler in her place.
Joane Butler called Mary Drew names to bring Mary down. The court interceded in a way that
maintained each woman’s status.
Mary Drew left the county court with the shame of a public apology upon her. This was
a common fate for women who gossiped and defamed their neighbors, especially when the
neighbors were of similar ranks within their communities. When, in 1653, Barbara Winbery
gossiped about Barbara Hudson, claiming she was “drunk and played the whore” while traveling
to Virginia aboard the ship Peter and John, the county commissioners ordered that Winbery “at
the next court publicly before the people make an acknowledgment of her offence and scandal,”
post a bond to secure her “good…and civil demeanor,” and pay the costs of the suit. 38 Barbara
Winbery’s gossip, to which three deponents testified, attacked a woman of similar standing to
her own, at least in the eyes of one of the deponents. As John Edwards swore to his knowledge
of the case in open court on 28 September 1653, he referred to both Barbara Winbery and
Barbara Hudson as “Goodwife,” and referred to Richard Hudson, Barbara’s husband, as
“Goodman.” The court commissioners recognized that Barbara Winbery’s gossip had the
potential to create disorder in their community and needed correction, but she gossiped about
38
Walczyk, 175-176, 180. Requiring a defendant to post a bond for good behavior was a common practice
in the English legal system. According to Dalton’s The Countrey Justice, justices of the peace had the power to
require a “suretie (surety) for…good Behavior” or “good abearing.” Justices could act in concert during a court
session in requiring a bond to be posted, or, in “unusual” circumstances” for some “great and sudden danger,” could
act individually outside of a court session, “either by their owne discretion, or upon the complaint of others.” Dalton
cautioned that justices should have “sufficient cause seene to themselves, or upon the suit and complaint of divers
others…and (based upon) the fame verie honest and credible persons.” Dalton explained that bonds for good
behavior were a form of “Suretie for the Peace,” and while similar in nature, surety of peace was to be used only
when a “batterie, assault, imprisoning, or extremitie of menacing” had occurred.” A bond for good behavior could
be commanded even though “no actuall breach of the peace” had occurred. Dalton defines a surety as “the
acknowledging of a Recognizance (or bond) to the King (taken by a Judge of Record) for the keeping of the Peace.
69
someone of the same status, resulting in the court’s leniency. Still, Barbara Hudson, a relatively
new arrival to Accomack-Northampton County, fought back by using the court to protect her
good name. 39
Unlike Mary Drew or Barbara Winbery, Bess Gaskins, the thorn in the side of John and
Elizabeth Nuthall, faced corporal punishment because, like Joane Butler, she had gossiped about
someone above her status. Mrs. Elizabeth Nuthall was the mistress of a home that was a
neighborhood center of activity in an area devoid of the usual gathering places or “central nodal
points” around which society was structured in England. 40 Individual homes such as the
Nuthalls’ filled this void. This may be a reflection of John Nuthall’s standing as a “gentleman”
in the county, yet Elizabeth’s position may have played a more pivotal role. Prior to her
marriage to John Nuthall, Elizabeth had been married to John Holloway, who ranked among the
Accomack-Northampton county middling sort before his death in August 1643. 41 He was a
landowner, having patented at least 1100 acres of land within a two month period in 1639. 42 He
And it is called suretie, because the partie that was in feare, is thereby the more secure and safe.” 127-164.
39
Walczyk, 175-176. Krystyna Puć includes a brief discussion of the Hudson case in her dissertation,
“Leaving England Behind,” as it relates to the interactions of passengers during transatlantic voyages and the
residual effects upon settlement in Virginia, 54-55.
40
Rutman, 120.
41
Ames, County Court Records, 1640-1645, 10, 302-304. Elizabeth’s first husband, John Holloway
appears to have died between 25 August 1643 (the date he signed his will) and 31 August 1643 (the date the court
clerk recorded his will). Although under the date 6 July 1640, the court appointed John Nuthall as administrator of
Holloway’s estate, I believe that this entry is out of order. Several of the pages at the beginning of this set of court
records are damaged. Original page numbers are obscured or missing and had been reassembled and bound in the
1930s. All other evidence points to John Holloway’s death in 1643. In the Northampton County records, the clerk
noted on 25 February 1645/6 that the commissioners named John Nuthall the administrator of Holloway’s estate
According to his will, Holloway’s estate was “to be divided equally between Elizabeth and the child with whom she
was then pregnant; if the child should die then his land was to go to Alexander Mountney Junior and Elizabeth
Turner, split equally. Holloway also left Elizabeth and his unborn child his estate in England, to be equally divided,
with she as the child’s guardian, and she was to have use of his plantation until “Legatees come to Age” Holloway
bequeathed several items indicating he was a doctor, including all his “Physick and Chirurgery, with the Chest
Instruments and Lancetts, and all my Phisicall and Chirurgicall bookes Latin and English” as well as a mortar and
pestle. Holloway left bequests to several people that included hundreds of acres of land, numerous and various
livestock, books, clothing and household items. Holloway had left to Elizabeth his corn and tobacco crops, a servant
Edward Reevs, other “goods, Chattles, Swine, etc. whatsoever else I stand now possesss’d of (only my Land
excepted).
42
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 149, 156. In September 1639, Holloway patented 550 acres of
70
was also a physician. 43 As his wife, Elizabeth may have been accustomed to tending to the
medical needs of county residents, and there is evidence in the court records that after marrying
John Nuthall, her home was used to tend to sick neighbors. In the scattered neighborhoods of the
Eastern Shore, and of the Chesapeake region in general, it was common for neighbors to gather
for significant events including births, deaths, weddings and illnesses, and AccomackNorthampton County court records bear witness to the Nuthall’s home being the central
gathering point for this neighborhood. 44
John Nuthall’s marriage to the widowed Elizabeth Holloway, sometime between August
1643 and January 1644/5, helped to secure his status within his community. Like many of
Virginia’s women, Elizabeth had outlived her husband and, upon his death, was in possession of
his property. 45 Upon his marriage to Elizabeth, he became administrator of John Holloway’s
estate and eventually guardian to her young child, Prisilla. 46 John gained control of land left to
Elizabeth by her first husband, and patented land in his own right. 47 He was a planter- merchant
land for the importation of himself and 10 others, and 550 more acres November, 1639 for the “transportation of
several persons.”
43
See fn173 for information regarding medical equipment listed in Holloway’s will. Also see Fleet,
Virginia Colonial Abstracts vol. I, 22 for money due to Holloway for performing surgery. According to Edmund S.
Morgan, Virginia was a “land of opportunity” for physicians who more often than not charged “outrageous” fees,
often collected from the estates of recently deceased patients. Morgan, American Slavery- American Freedom, 163.
44
Ames, County Court Records, 1632-1640, 149-150, 156.
45
Snyder, “‘Rich Widows are the Best Commodity This Country Affords': Gender Relations and the
Rehabilitation of Patriarchy in Seventeenth-Century Virginia," (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1992), 55. For a
discussion on women’s inheritance opportunities, also see Carr, “The Planter’s Wife,” 555; Haight; Puć, 200-226.
46
See fn 173. Originally, the court commissioners appointed an overseer for Prisilla so “hir estate by
rightly knowne from the rest of the estate of the Relict. Howard Mackey and Marlene A. Grove, eds., Northampton
County, Virginia Record Book Orders, Deeds, Wills, &c, 1645-1651 Vol. 3 (Rockport, ME: Picton Press, 2000),
253, 369. On 29 November 1649, the court granted Nuthall guardianship over Prisilla Holloway, calling him her
father-in-law (a term for stepfather) and allowed him control of her estate, ordered to provide for her, ensure that
“she may bee Educated in ye feare of god, and that upon her marriage or at age 15yrs, whichever comes first, given
20 sufficient cows or heifers with calves, one bull and one ox.” In 1651, at the same court session that the
commissioners granted John and Elizabeth Nuthall their certificate, John also presented, “according to order of the
court formerly entered) Rich. Smyth, Capt. Stephen Charlton, and himself as security for the estate of Prissilla
Holloway, orphan, and the court approved the security since the persons presented were “persons of ability and
sufficiency to be responsible for the estate.” Walczyk, 35; NCODW microfilm reel 3, p46.
47
Ames, County Court Records, 1640-1645, 398. Nuthall patented 250 acres on 7 Jan 1644/5 for the
transportation of himself, his wife, and two others.
71
involved in overseas trade, including trade of beaver skins, which explains his frequent absences
from home. 48 On 27 July 1653, John Nuthall was named as a county commissioner and served
until April 1655. 49 Elizabeth reigned as mistress of a considerable estate, caring for her child,
overseeing household duties carried out by several servants, and giving shelter to neighbors and
passers-by, as was the custom in a neighborhood that consisted of scattered farms and
plantations. 50 She traded goods, tended to sick neighbors, and harbored day-laborers.
Considering that the events about which Bess Gaskins gossiped occurred during the autumn
months, it is likely that some of men staying the night at the Nuthalls’ were working for them
either as servants or hired-hands for the harvest. John’s business travels left Elizabeth vulnerable
to the advances of those men and to the nasty gossip of her neighbors.
Bess’ husband, William Gaskins, vacillated between protecting the reputation of his wife
and protecting the reputation of Mrs. Nuthall. According to various recorded accounts, at times
William claimed his wife would never have made such a statement, and even visited the victim
to convince her of his wife’s innocence. On other occasions, William nearly admitted to his
48
The beaver trade had been an important part of Virginia’s intercolonial trade with New England.
Virginians traded Chesapeake tobacco, corn, beef, cattle, pork, and beaver skins for New England salt, wine, liquor,
beer and fish. The beaver trade was lucrative and beaver skins, like tobacco, were used as a currency of exchange.
Beaver skins were valued at 10 shillings per pound in 1634. The use of beaver as currency continued into the second
half of the seventeenth century. See Kukla, “Order and Chaos,” 284-285, for information on the fur trade in early
Virginia; and Martha Hiden, “The Money of Colonial Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
51 (January 1943), 37-38. Nuthall went to court on several occasions to collect debt for beaver skins: on Jan
1640/41, 5 ½# of “good merchantable beaver or the value thereof” from the estate of Nicholas Whit, and on Dec
1643 10# “Marchantable Beaver.” Ames, County Court Records, 1640-1645, 55. 315. He was owed 41 pounds
beaver from the estate of Argoll Yeardley, recorded in November 1655. Mackey, NCODW vol. 3, 18. The clerk
identified Nuthall as a merchant in 1650, and a “London Merchant” in 1658. At that time he was in London,
readying himself for a trip back to Virginia. Nicholas Jackson and London draper Joseph Kenyon named John
Nuthall as their attorney and deputy in Virginia. Mackey, NCODW vol. 3, 416; Howard Mackey and Marlene A
Groves, eds., Northampton County Record Book 1657-1664 vol. 8, (Rockport, ME: Picton Press, 1999), 44, 63-64.
49
On 27 July 1653, John Nuthall was added to the commission for Northampton County along with
Thomas Hunt, Capt Samuell Goldsmyth, Capt Francis Pott. Walczyk, 155, 186, 190, . He served from 29 Aug 1653
until April of 1655; Howard Mackey and Marlene A. Groves, eds., Northampton County Virginia Record Book:
Orders, Deeds, Wills, &c, 1654-1655 vol. 5 (Rockport, ME: Picton Press, 2000), 1, 21, 31, 38, 55, 68, 108, 121,
129, 212, 173. On several occasions, Nuthall he took depositions from his neighbors. For example see Mackey,
NCODW vol. 3, 215-216, 218-221 and Mackey NCODW vol. 5, 151.
50
Several of Nuthall’s servants gave depositions in the death of another servant in September 1647.
72
wife’s gossiping, stating he “wished his wife did not know so much as she doth now in that
business,” and feared they would both be punished. As for Elizabeth Nuthall, Gaskins stated to
several deponents that Mrs. Nuthall was “as honest a woman as any was in the land.” Yet, he
also complained to deponent Frances Morgan that it was Mrs. Nuthall who should “hold her
tongue.” 51
The evidence indicates that it was Bess Gaskins who could not hold her tongue, and that
this was not the first time her words had caused problems for her husband. On the very night
that Bess claimed she had pulled her husband out of Mrs. Nuthall’s bed, William Gaskins had
gone to the Nuthall home to find refuge because he was afraid to go home “for fear he should do
[his wife] some mischief because she doth abuse me with her tongue.” 52 When Bess showed up
screaming that Mrs. Nuthall was “harboring” her husband, she was allowed in. But her verbal
attack against Mrs. Nuthall grew stronger while in the house, claiming that “Mrs. Nuthall
entertained her husband in her bed chamber.” The Gaskinses were forced to leave the Nuthall
home together, but as they did, they continued “reviling” Mrs. Nuthall with “base speeches.” 53
This was also not the first time Bess had gossiped about impropriety on the part of her
neighbor, Elizabeth Nuthall.54 A year earlier, Bess and brothers Robert and William Andrews
had been at the Nuthall home to help care for a sick neighbor, Elizabeth Turner. The three sat up
in Mrs. Nuthall’s room talking after supper when William fell into a deep sleep and could not be
awakened. According to Robert’s deposition, Robert went to the room that had been prepared
for the brothers and fell asleep, leaving Bess and Mrs. Nuthall talking while William slept in
Mackey, NCODW vol. 3.
51
Walczyk,, 33, 34; NCODW microfilm reel 3, pp 43, 45.
52
Walczyk, 33; NCODW microfilm reel 3, p 43.
53
Walczyk, 34; NCODW microfilm reel 3, p 44.
54
Court records indicate the Nuthalls and Gaskins lived within close proximity to each other. Each couple
owned land on Hungars Creek. Howard Mackey and Marlene A. Groves, eds., Northampton county, Virginia
Record Book: Deeds, Wills, &c vol. 7 (Rockport, ME: Pircton Press, 1999), 312, 342.
73
their midst. Finally, at midnight, William awoke and retired to the proper sleeping quarters with
Robert. Robert awoke at this time and was told by Bess that William had been in bed with Mrs.
Nuthall. In response to this tale, Robert went into Mrs. Nuthall’s room, climbed in her bed, put
his arm around her and turned her towards him. Robert claimed that Mrs. Nuthall thought he
was William still in her bed, and warned him that someone might see them together and report
them. According to Robert’s deposition, when she realized he was Robert, not William, she
scolded him. He responded that he meant her no harm and that Bess Gaskins had encouraged
him with her gossip.
Numerous court depositions indicate Bess’ gossip about that October night spread
throughout the community. Perhaps as a direct result of the gossip, Elizabeth Nuthall was forced
to ward off another Eastern Shoreman’s unwanted sexual advance. Several months after the
Andrews brother incident, in March 1651, Samuel Jones also tried to climb into bed with
Elizabeth while a guest in the Nuthall home. She told him she would see him hanged first before
letting him in her bed. James Barnaby, who was also a guest that night, concerned that Mrs.
Nuthall’s hospitality was endangering her reputation, warned her that “this was all she got by
entertaining idle fellows.” 55 Due to Virginia’s settlement patterns, the Nuthalls’s home had been
transformed from a private safe haven that protected Elizabeth’s virtue to a public space where
neighbors often gathered and worked, leaving her vulnerable to Bess’ gossip and multiple
unwanted sexual advances. 56 Had Samuel Jones heard the story about the Andrews brothers?
Had Bess Gaskins’ gossip spread and encouraged such behavior? Bess, the only other witness
that October night, seems to have entertained herself by causing mischief for others with her
gossip, and she did so at the expense of Elizabeth Nuthall’s reputation.
55
56
Walczyk, 33; NCODW microfilm reel 3, f42.
For a description of female virtue and architectural spaces, see Hallissy, chapter 7.
74
The court commissioners took this matter very seriously indeed. They recorded no less
than fifteen depositions that shed light on this case. A number of Northampton residents rallied
around Elizabeth Nuthall in order to protect her reputation. The number of depositions recorded
also indicates the degree to which the Nuthalls’ were concerned with protecting their reputations.
They were effectively rebutting the accusations contained within Bess Gaskins’ gossip in the
most public of colonial Virginia’s spaces, a strategy employed by many plaintiffs and defendants
alike. 57 In this case the court did not find Bess Gaskins’ tale credible; she was taken to task for
the gossip. In their decision, the commissioners found Mrs. Nuthall, through her witnesses, more
credible than Bess Gaskins. They also were concerned with the disorder this type of gossip had
the potential for creating. The court punished Bess Gaskins and her husband for their disorderly
behavior, a threat to the harmony of their neighborhoods, and to the county. The commissioners
effectively protected the sexual reputation of Elizabeth Nuthall, something of a feat considering
the difficulty colonial women often faced in protecting their own reputations. 58 The court also
found Williams Gaskins to be ultimately responsible for his wife’s words, evident in the
harshness of his punishment. As the expected patriarch of the household, it was William’s
responsibility to control his wife’s behavior, and by his own admission, he could not.
This case illustrates several important points. First, it clearly affirms other historians’
findings regarding the sensitivity Eastern Shore residents felt concerning their reputations. 59
Reputations and status were essential to order in the world of early Virginians; they did not
hesitate to file suit against those whose words could damage them. For John Nuthall, his
57
For examples, consider defendant John Kendall in Pagan, Ann Orthwood’s Bastard.
For more information, see Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2006; Norton, “Gender and Defamation;” Snyder, Brabbling Women, 45-62.
59
Examples include the defamation of Argoll Yeardley’s “good name” as discussed in Breen, Myne Own
Ground, 58, and Pagan’s examination of examined litigant JohnKendall’s efforts to relieve himself from support
Orthwood’s bastard child and to “save face” in the community.Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, 114-115 .
58
75
reputation and status in the community was linked to his wife’s for it is quite probable that he
achieved his status, at least in part, through marriage to Elizabeth, the widow of John Holloway.
As her second husband, John Nuthall gained control of all of his wife’s property, including her
interest in the property of her first husband. As a New World widow, Elizabeth received a “more
generous legacy” than widows in England. 60 The second husband generally could use his new
wife’s property as he saw fit, although he could not sell it without her consent. By questioning
Elizabeth Nuthall’s sexual honesty, Bess Gaskins questioned her honesty in general, since a
woman’s sexual honesty and overall trustworthiness were inseparable in English culture. 61 Since
a wife’s dishonest behavior reflected poorly on her husband as the patriarch of the household,
Bess’ gossip could affect John Nuthall’s status in the community. Protecting his status was
necessary in carrying out business in an economy that was dependent upon credit and trust.
Second, Bess whispered tales of sexual impropriety to guests in the Nuthall home in an
apparent attempt to induce exactly the behavior about which she gossiped. Bess’ behind-theback whispering about Elizabeth may have been most common form slander among Virginia’s
women. According to historian Mary Beth Norton in her study of defamation in seventeenthcentury Maryland, women were more likely to engage in a pattern of “behind-the-back gossip”
in which participants formed a gossip network that went beyond the litigants. Yet, in English
culture, gossip by its very nature was female-oriented. Gossip networks became more associated
with women because authorities went to greater lengths to expose them as networks than they
did with men. English culture assumed that men did not gossip. Conversely, English culture
60
Carr, 555-557. Also see Salmon, and Michel Dahlin, Inheritance in America: from Colonial Times to the
Present (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), and Terri L. Snyder, “Rich Widows” for a discussion
of inheritance law in Virginia and other American colonies.
61
Capp, 188. Mary Beth Norton uses the term “sexual honesty” in “Gender and Defamation” when
describing the difference between the content of women’s gossip versus men’s. Norton argues that men were most
involved in slander that attacked the trustworthiness of other men, while women attacked other women’s “sexual
honesty” in their slanderous claims of promiscuity. 9.
76
assumed that women, who by their very nature were disorderly and in need of control, disrupted
order within their households and had the potential to disrupt order in the neighborhood as
initiators of gossip. This, in turn, would encourage the disorderly conduct of women who were
members of the network, thereby causing disobedience and disorder in the homes of other
patriarchs. In the words of English historian Bernard Capp, “women’s talk was stigmatized as
gossip not because it differed in character from men’s but because it was perceived as the
subversive behavior of subordinates.” 62
Bess also openly confronted Elizabeth Nuthall. Bess’ confrontation with Elizabeth more
resembled gender-patterned slander that Norton identifies with men, arguing that open
accusation was a device most often used by male litigants. 63 Perhaps Virginia women became
more associated with ‘behind the back’ gossip because they lacked many of the traditional
gathering places where public confrontations could take place. Still, the English women who
immigrated to Virginia would have been very familiar with the “street theater” of women’s open
gossip. In his study on seventeenth century gossips in England, Capp describes English women’s
insults intentionally thrown at one another in public spaces, akin to a “verbal prizefight.” Capp
argues that these episodes were common among the lower sorts in England who were dependent
upon an oral culture of communication. Public verbal exchanges and taunting often included
innuendo, especially of a sexual nature, that was meant to humiliate the subject of the gossip. It
made the accusations public, which could encourage further, more private, backbiting. 64 Bess
Gaskins’s gossip illustrates Capp’s argument; further, her gossip makes it clear that private backbiting could also lead to open accusations. Clearly, female English immigrants in Virginia did
both. Their public spaces were not the bustling streets of London or Bristol, but instead were
62
63
Capp, 63.
Norton, “Gender and Defamation,” 13, 17.
77
Virginia’s homes, ordinaries, barnyards, and churchyards.
Third, the harsh punishment doled out to the Gaskinses represents local officials’
attempts at creating an English patriarchal order in Virginia. William’s inability to govern his
wife’s tongue was a worse offense than others’ participation in Bess’ schemes against Elizabeth
Nuthall; moreover, it was even more abhorrent to the commissioners than his own participation
in the gossip. Bess Gaskins had been a “tale-bearer and “back-biter” in the worst possible way,
but, more importantly to the county commissioners, Bess’ husband, William, was a poor excuse
for a patriarch, evident in his inability to control his wife’s tongue and his complicity in the
gossip. Edmund S. Morgan points out that slander, “whether of the high or low, called for
punishment.” But the status and sex of the participants mattered to county court officials.
Morgan discusses servants Francis Millicent and Mary Jolly. Francis slandered Mary by
spreading stories that Jolly “If she was not with child, she was lately with child.” He was
sentenced to 30 lashes, ask public forgiveness. 65 The harshness of his punishment, like William
Gaskins’, was based on two things. First, he was a servant who gossiped about the servant of Mr.
John Neale. Millicent’s crime was against Neale, not Jolly. It was Neale who brought the suit
against Millicent. Millicent’s lowly status mattered to the court commissioners. Second, Francis
gossiped like a woman, so like Gaskins, he was punished like a woman.
English notions of patriarchy were prescriptive at best. 66 Bernard Capp and Holly
Brewer have argued that England and its colonies did not have a patriarchal system in place in
the seventeenth century, but a patriarchal culture which was made up of an “interlocking set of
beliefs, assumptions, traditions, and practices” and that laws that developed and changed over
64
Capp, 197-202.
Northampton County Records Book I as cited by Morgan in American Slavery-American Freedom, 152.
66
Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early
Modern France ( University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), introduction.
65
78
time reflected that society’s dynamic understanding of patriarchal order at any particular time. 67
Brewer argues that in England and its colonies, women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
had “more freedoms and legal responsibilities than the common law supposedly allowed.” 68
Although numerous conduct books advised men to control their wives’ loose tongues, Bess
Gaskins’ behavior is an example of just how difficult it was for some men to maintain authority
and order within their households.
Women were disorderly with their gossip, yet at the same time, their gossip helped to
reinforce a sense of order and Virginia’s culture of patriarchy. Two other men who had acted on
the gossip, Robert Andrews and Samuel Jones, merely made an apology in court on the day the
case was heard. 69 Yet, the Gaskinses faced corporal punishment. Accomack-Northampton
County commissioners considered the gossip itself more dangerous to the social order than
Andrews’ and Jones’ attempts at engaging Mrs. Nuthall in some sort of sexual impropriety.
Most dangerous, though, was William’s poor patriarchal skills. Bess’ gossip needed to be
curtailed for the good of the community, and William needed to be made an example of to ensure
other husbands would control their wives. In order to ensure masculine authority within the
household, the Accomack-Northampton County commissioners established themselves as the
“fathers” of their community. The treatment of moral offenders on the Eastern Shore, including
those involved in gossip and slander, deviated from the treatment they were most likely to
receive in England’s church courts. 70 Even though the majority of female offenders in
67
Capp, 2.
Holly Brewer, 297-300.
69
Walczyk, 35; NCODW microfilm reel 3, f45, p46.
70
In early Virginia, court commissioners often ordered ecclesiastical punishments, such as public penance,
since the county courts took on the functions of England’s church courts as well as the secular courts. After 1662,
punishments for a crime might combine a traditional ecclesiastical punishment with a secular one. Brown, 189.
According to Ames, punishments usually included one or more of the following: “the infliction of pain, the payment
of money or its equivalent, some form of labor, and unfavorable publicity.” Ames, County Court Records, 16321640, lii.
68
79
Accomack-Northampton were sentenced to either an apology or fine, the court also implemented
corporal punishment and public humiliation for offenses which were infrequently treated with
such harshness in England. Accomack-Northampton residents readily brought their neighbors to
court for speech crimes and the commissioners doled out corporal punishment often.
Significantly, though, county commissioners meted out the harshest punishments to non-elite
women. 71 The harsh punishments were an attempt by the commissioners to make clear their
positions of masculine authority in a world that lacked the visual evidence of that authority, “the
ritual and theater” of court days, that existed in England. The harsh punishment served to reaffirm the county commissioners as “fathers of their communities.” 72 The commissioners
performed “mastery” over county residents just as heads-of-households were expected to
perform over their dependents. In English society, “violence was legitimate when used by
superiors against inferiors.” 73 Punishment constituted authority.
The residents of Accomack-Northampton County recognized the power the county
commissioners possessed. They expected the court commissioners to properly sanction
disorderly behavior by punishing offenders. Some, like John Nuthall, believed that the written
word of the court held sway even as far away as London. To ensure that he could continue
conducting business that was built on trust, Nuthall asked for and received a certificate
exonerating his wife from any wrong-doing implied by Bess Gaskins’ gossip. This was not the
71
The most severe sentences tended to be handed down to those who abused court officials. Such cases
would not have been heard by the ecclesiastical courts of England, but by the county court or, if the abuse was so
serious as to be considered treasonous, by one of the King’s courts.
72
Horn, 188, 341-342.
73
In “’To Seeke Justice’: Gender, Servitude, and Household Governance in the Early Modern Chesapeake”
Terri Snyder discusses the connection between mastery and disciplinary violence within Virginia households.
Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs, eds., Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). Susan Dwyer Amussen, "Punishment, Discipline, and Power:
The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England," Journal of British Studies 34 (1995): 1-34. Also see
Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers, 103-136; and Terri L. Snyder, “’As if there was not master or woman in the
land’: Gender, Dependency, and Household Violence in Virginia, 1646-1720,” Over the Threshold: Intimate
80
first time John Nuthall had sought such documentation from the county court. When a servant of
John Nuthall’s died under mysterious circumstances, the commissioners convened at a special
court held at Argoll Yeardley’s house on 8 Sept 1647 to inquire into the death. After recording
several witness depositions into the county record, the commissioners referred the case to the
General Court in James City. The depositions, mostly of Nuthall servants, cast suspicion for the
death upon a “Peter a Negro,” but also accused John Nuthall of being abusive towards his
dependents. Because of his servants’ testimony, Nuthall requested that the commissioners give
him a certificate that confirmed during his time in the county, he had “demeaned & behaved
himself very orderly, quietly, and discreetlye” 74
Finally, the commissioners identified more strongly with the Nuthalls than the Gaskinses,
resulting in their harsh punishment of the Gaskins. Much of the verbal abuse being bandied
about Eastern Shore neighborhoods, including sexual gossip, was aimed at the most prominent
members of the community. The court commissioners clearly considered John Nuthall and his
wife Elizabeth upstanding members of the community and of their sort. John was propertied and
well-connected. 75 John Ruston Pagan explains that commissioners employed “categorical
decision-making,” an efficient form of classifying their neighbors into groups based on
socioeconomic status, and presumed that all members of a group shared certain traits and
deserved equal treatment. 76 The records indicated that the Nuthalls shared more in common with
the elite county commissioners than with the Gaskinses. They owned a home with multiple
sleeping quarters and had the financial resources to travel back and forth to England. Elites like
the Nuthalls believed that the Gaskinses and their sort owed social deference to them.
Violence in Early America, Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., (New York, 1999), 219-36.
74
Mackey, NCODW vol. 3, 216.
75
Horn, 340-1. Commissioners held more land than most planters, and landholding indicated status.
76
Pagan, Ann Orthwood’s Bastard, 110-113.
81
Bess Gaskins’ gossip challenged the Nuthalls’ membership in the Accomack-Northampton elite.
The court served as an outlet for what Horn describes as “social friction.” 77 Through
their punishment of the Gaskinses, the commissioners upheld their responsibility for keeping
order and relative stability in Virginia. 78 As authority in Virginia shifted from military
commanders over men to “Master[s] of …famil[ies],” punishments for minor infractions such as
gossip took a new trajectory. In the first years of settlement, if a Virginia Company employee
committed an offense against the rules of the company, authorities punished the employee based
on sentences prescribed by martial laws, according to the offense. Once martial law ended and
the county courts were established, county commissioners were more likely to punish lawbreakers in accordance with their status in the community. 79 Julie Richter found a similar
pattern in the commissioners’ punishment of men who challenged the authority of officials in
York County’s Charles Parish. In one case the commissioners punished a laborer, a servant, and
a churchwarden according to their status. The laborer was ordered to build a bridge, the servant
to make a public apology, and the churchwarden escaped punishment. Like the AccomackNorthampton commissioners’ punishment of the Gaskinses, their sentences reinforced the social
distinctions among York county residents. 80 While the commissioners’ levying of punishment in
this manner may seem arbitrary to the modern-day reader, to seventeenth-century Virginians,
sentencing according to status balanced fairness with efficiency. 81
In a world where social competition was fierce, the commissioners’ findings confirmed
the Nuthalls’ place in Accomack-Northampton society, and consequently their own, despite the
77
Horn, 367.
Horn, 316, 366-367.
79
Diamond, 471-472.
80
Richter, 211.
81
Pagan, Ann Orthwood’s Bastard, 113-114.
78
82
challenges the Nuthalls faced from the likes of the Gaskinses. 82 In their application of the law,
the county commissioners acted in their own “political self-interest.” Protecting the reputation of
a neighbor of similar rank in essence protected their own rank, a cornerstone of their political
power. Had the commissioners ignored John Nuthall’s petition, they risked the ire of “taxpaying shoremen” who could have “shown their anger by…defiance of the court’s authority.” 83
Understanding the threat to the “fragility of the web” of community that gossip posed, the court
commissioners punished the Gaskinses for their disorderly speech to preserve what Virginia’s
settlers were trying to build and they did everything to “bolster mutual respect” and reinforce a
social hierarchy that those in charge had envisioned. 84
These episodes in Accomack-Northampton County show women using gossip to question
other women’s sexual honesty and cause public humiliation. The court commissioners stepped
in to protect the status and reputation of those women who were targeted and by extension their
husbands, by publicly punishing the women for gossiping. The county commissioners’ actions
reinforced their own authority and the authority of husbands who shared their status. AccomackNorthampton County commissioners sought to curtail women’s gossip because of the
community discord it caused as exemplified in the case of Bess Gaskins, as well as the earlier
cases involving the Drews and Butlers. Virginia women continued to gossip despite the courts’
efforts to curtail their disorderly speech. Indeed, the content of their gossip revealed their
neighbors’ sexual dalliances, but it could also reveal their dissatisfaction with various leaders of
their communities. As demonstrated in the following chapter, not even their own parish leaders
could escape their wagging tongues.
82
Horn, 367. Horn states that social competition “was played out within the court,” a place where “rank
was challenged and confirmed.”
83
Pagan, Ann Orthwood’s Bastard, 114.
84
Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom, 152.
83
Virginia’s Eastern Shore
Source: Susie M. Ames, Studies of the Eastern Shore, title page.
84
Chapter Three:
Gossip and Church Politics in York County, 1640s-1660
When women challenged elite men and their wives in Accomack County, the court
commissioners punished them in accordance with the each party’s social rank in ways that
affirmed masculine authority. Across the bay, women in York County also challenged elite men,
but in doing so questioned the authority of both religious and secular leaders at a time when the
stability of ecclesiastic and government institutions was in question. Elizabeth Frith Woods
provides an excellent example. In the fall of 1658, she conspired with two neighbors to publicize
a libelous document that maligned two members of the Marston parish vestry, Thomas
Bromfield and Robert Cobbs. Bromfield and Cobbs represented both religious and secular
masculine authority. In their office of vestryman, they were the bridge that connected the moral
to the civil through their presentations of moral offenses to the county courts, as well as their
responsibilities in running the parish of a state church essentially administered by the governor,
his council, and the General Assembly. These two Marston parish vestrymen, like so many
others in Virginia, tried to establish masculine authority in an outpost of the English empire, yet
they found that authority challenged by women who considered the men unfit for leadership
roles. Elizabeth Frith Woods and her associates gossiped about their displeasure with church
officials and in doing so exercised their political voices, albeit informally, during a time when
Virginia’s leaders excluded women from formal participation in their politics. 1
1
Woods story has served multiple analytical purposes in various historical works. A recent essay by
Alexander B. Haskell also refers to this case. In it, the author argues that the response to Elizabeth Frith Woods’
gossip reveals the “rather mundane pressure that increasingly dense kin and community networks [throughout
Virginia] placed upon individuals as they contemplated how to interpret charges of office abuse.” Haskell points out
that while some in the parish seemed to agree with the Elizabeth’s assessment of Bromfield and Cobbs, others
thought her behavior “base.” “Defamation, Defiance, and the Language of Office in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,”
Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs, Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2011), 172-177. As Kathleen Brown has also pointed out, Elizabeth’s own husband
attempted to distance himself from the gossip that threatened to create disharmony in the community. Good Wives,
85
Elizabeth Frith Woods’ case reveals how far women were willing to go to challenge and
rebuke men in positions of leadership. Woods’ actions were unusual and did not represent
women’s typical recorded activity for this time and place, but they had great power; they showed
women how to push back against masculine authority and they showed men in authority what
they had to fear. York County court clerks understood this threat. The clerks recorded very few
speech crimes from the 1640s through the 1650s. However, those cases they did record,
especially those involving women, included remarkable detail, indicating the court
commissioners’ displeasure and concern with women’s gossip. Elizabeth Frith Woods and her
co-conspirators used the tradition of libel to challenge masculine authority while the county court
commissioners used the traditions of precedent and common law to keep women in their place.
The commissioners had little if any formal legal training, and so they did not develop the skills
of professional lawyers. They did, however, understand how the law should work within the
world they were creating in Virginia. They utilized their practical, shared understanding of
English law and applied the law as they saw appropriate to their particular environment. In
essence, they created their own peculiar base of common law. 2
In October, 1658, Elizabeth Frith Woods, along with Johanna Poynter and Elianor
Cooper, plotted to post a libelous document on the Marston parish church door. As recorded by
the county court clerk, Elizabeth wrote:
Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs, 146-147. As I similarly argue in this chapter, Haskell states that her
accusations against these two church officials “was not an easy case to make in a culture in which attacks on
neighbors and authority figures were automatically viewed with suspicion because of their potential disruption to
hard-won order” in a time when Virginia was undergoing a period of relative stability and growth, and his essay
points out that issues of status, or “office” were constantly under negotiation. The fact that Elizabeth’s words were
given little credence was due to the fact that the colony overall was going through a time of stability in which
neighbors “looked warily” upon those “who might scrutinize official’s performance of office too severely.” While I
accept this, I also find it important to recognize the manner in which the York justices punished Elizabeth in context
of other punishments at the time, and how her background, sex, and status in relation to those whom she accused
played a role in the outcome. The fact that this incident occurred in an era in which male parishioners elected
vestrymen is also a significant factor.
86
Gentlemen this is to give you all notice that we have a new fine trade come up amongst
us. One of our Vestrymen is turned Mirkin maker. Thomas Bromfield by name, and also
his wife and goodwife Cobbs, one of our Churchwarden’s wife, they make one very
handsome Mirkin amongst them and sent it to ye neighbors. 3
The three women maligned Thomas Bromfield, Robert Cobbs (by implication) and their
wives by accusing them of making mirkens. Mirken was a slang term used to describe a “pubic
wig” for women. 4 The device was most often associated with prostitutes and sexually
promiscuous women of low standing. A mirken was designed to hide the deformities that could
occur from mercury treatment for syphilis and/or gonorrhea, or to temporarily replace pubic hair
that was shaved due to body lice. The women did not accuse anyone of wearing mirkens; they
accused them of making mirkens, an accusation that carried layers of meaning. They did not
imply that the Bromfields and Cobbses engaged in loose sexual activity themselves; rather, they
implied that the Bromfields and Cobbses associated with such people, who were beneath the
standing of proper vestrymen and their wives. The women also implied that the Bromfields and
Cobbses insulted their neighbors by sending mirkens to them. Further, Woods and her
conspirators implied that the Bromfields and Cobbses were covering up some improper and ugly
activity, just as a mirken was designed to cover or disguise a deformity. Anyone in the
community could report moral offenses to the churchwarden. It was then the churchwarden’s
duty to determine if accusations were justified and present moral offenders to the county court. 5
Had Cobbs or Bromfield neglected or refused to perform their duty, Elizabeth Frith Woods may
have retaliated. Parishioners expected their vestrymen to be “the most sufficient and selected
2
Allen D. Boyer, Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethan Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2003), 83-88.
3
Lindsay O. Duval, ed., Virginia Colonial Abstracts: Wills, Deeds, Orders of York County, Virginia vol. 5
(Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1978) 48, 50-51; York County Deeds, Orders and Wills, microfilm reel 2
(available at Library of Virginia) pp 37-38.
4
Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 894;
Oxford Companion to the Body (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Mirkin (alternatively, merkin or merken)
was a term used for “a pubic wig for women” or for female genitalia.
87
men” of the community. 6 The position of vestryman in Virginia was a quasi-political role
because of the connection between the parish church, county court and General Assembly. For
the English, accusations that a man in a position of authority behaved in a derelict or disorderly
manner created suspicions in the community and “robbed them of their ‘natural’ authority,” an
authority they possessed because of their sex and status. 7 The gossips accused Thomas
Bromfield and Robert Cobbs of behavior unacceptable for men entrusted to enforce community
mores. 8 Elizabeth’s accusation denied Bromfield’ and Cobbs’ “station” as vestrymen because of
their conduct, therefore, Elizabeth owed them no deference. 9
Robert Cobbs, the maligned Marston parish churchwarden, denied the accusation, stating
in his presentment to the court that Elizabeth, Johanna Poynter, and Elianor had dropped “several
written lybells…in ye sd Par Church, tending to scandal.” 10 Elizabeth was the scribe of the
scandalous notes, according to witness depositions. Perhaps she lost her nerve, perhaps she was
interrupted, perhaps some of the notes simply fell out of her pocket, or perhaps she had planned
to litter the churchyard path with her gossip as she made her way to the church door. In any case,
witnesses claimed Elizabeth intended to post at least one of her notes on the church door for the
entire parish to see. 11 In her notes, she asked the parishioners to consider whether men of such
“cariage be fitt to have any charge of Church business, yea, or noe.” 12
Elizabeth wanted immediate and wide notice of her claims. She wrote the indictment
against these parish leaders and intended to post them in one of the most public of places in the
county. The three women chose to post the claim on the church door despite the fact that by
5
Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom, 149.
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 240.
7
Braddick, 94-95.
8
Horn, 196.
9
For an analysis of Virginian’s understanding of deference, see Haskell, 158-164.
10
Duvall, 48; YCDOW microfilm reel 2, p37.
11
Duvall, 50; YCDOW microfilm reel 2, p38.
6
88
1657 the court was regularly meeting at a house owned by Robert Baldrey. 13 The parish church,
like the county court, was a place where people gathered regularly, but, because church services
were held weekly while court sessions generally convened only monthly, important notices,
including county levy announcements, were posted on the church door. 14 In one of the “grand
divisions of time” at church on Sunday, the time before services was spent talking business,
sharing gossip and “reading advertisements on the church door.” 15 A stated by historian Warren
M. Billings, “going to church was an opportunity for parishioners to catch up on the latest
gossip…the habit developed of tarrying a while in the churchyard after services to talk with
friends.” 16 Surely those parishioners “tarrying” in the churchyard would have had much to
gossip about had Elizabeth been successful in posting her scandalous note.
The depositions of several witnesses detailed for the court commissioners Elizabeth’s
role in the women’s plot. Woods’s neighbor Elizabeth Hall acknowledged that, while visiting
the Hall home, Woods pulled two notes from her pocket. One note she returned to her pocket
and proclaimed it was meant for the “great ones;” the other she showed to Hall, declaring that
she intended to “have itt set up at the Church door” so that the “beholders” of her note could
“judge” whether “such men are fit to bear office in ye Church.” 17 The testimony of accused
12
Ibid.
Riley gives 1658 as the date of the first courthouse at Baldrey’s home; however, there is a notation in the
accounts paid by the court that appears to be from an October 1657 court meeting that includes a payment of 1000
lb. tob. for “court house.” During the next few years the court ordered the erection of a prison, a ducking stool, and a
stock and pillory near the Baldrey courthouse. 399.
14
Court sessions were sometimes skipped in months during harvest. For example, York County did not
hold court in Novermber 1658. In A Place in Time, the Rutmans describe Sundays as essential to the social lives of
county residents. “It was, however, the face-to-face contact at services that was socially important, a necessary
addition to lives lived in neighborhood.” … “ the three grand divisions of time as the Church on Sundays, Viz,
before Service giving and receiving letters of business, reading Advertisements [on the church door], consulting
about the price of Tobacco, Grain, etc. and settling either the lineage, age, or qualities of favourite horses, but
always made up of sound morality…After service is over three quarters of an hour spend in strolling through the
Church among the Crowd.” 53, 125.
15
Rutman, 125.
16
Billings, The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, 297.
17
Duvall, 50; YCDOW microfilm reel 2, p38. The deposition is signed by both Elizabeth Hall and by
13
89
gossip Elianor Cooper concurred with Elizabeth Hall. Thomas Poynter, husband of Johanna
Poynter, also testified. Perhaps in an attempt to deflect the commissioners’ attention away from
his own wife’s wrongdoing, he claimed that on arriving at the Woods’ house with John Woods
after a trip to James City, Elizabeth Woods showed him “2 papers concerning lybell.” Stephen
Royston testified that while at the Poynter’s home, another neighbor asked Thomas Poynter if he
had written the libelous note. According to Royston, Poynter denied involvement, and once again
stated “they were of Mrs. Woods.” In addition to Hall, Poynter, and Royston, five more men
gave testimony, including Elizabeth Hall’s husband, Francis. 18 Elizabeth Hall had given her
deposition earlier, but Thomas Bromfield had requested that each of the other witnesses testify in
open court, evidenced by the court commissioners’ order commanding Bromfield to “pay his
severall witnesses 40 lb tob[acco] for attendance at Court.” The justices did not require that
Bromfield pay Elianor Cooper for her testimony, presumably because of her complicity in the
gossip. If the justices punished her in any way, the court clerk did not record it, indicating her
role in the scheme was minimal. As an unmarried woman, she had no husband from whom the
court commissioners could extract a fine. 19
The court commissioners did impose a weighty fine on both John Woods and Thomas
Poynter: 10,000 lbs tobacco each, “on demand.” The also ordered the women to abstain from
engaging in further unseemly behavior against their neighbors. When Robert Cobbs initially
Dame Parke, presumably Captain Daniel Parke’s wife. Daniel Parke (Park) was a seated justice on the 26 October
1658 court that heard the Woods’ case. The clerk does not record Dame Parke’s interest in the case, but because of
her status, indicated by her title and her marriage to a justice of the peace, her signature does seem to give extra
weight to Hall’s deposition.
18
Francis and Elizabeth Hall were murdered by their servant Huntington Ayres (Eyers) a short time after
being deposed for this case. On 21 January 1658/9 Ayres confessed to killing the couple in their sleep by
bludgeoning them with a hammer. Francis Wheeler was named administrator of the Hall estate. Vestryman Thomas
Bromfield served on the grand jury that indicted Ayres. Duvall, 61-62
19
The order for witness payments was recorded above the date that the court actually met (26 October
1658), but this was not unusual. It is clear throughout York’s records, as well as the records of other counties, that
orders were not always entered chronologically. Brown indicates Cooper was single. She does not appear in the
90
presented the three women to the court, the commissioners ordered that “their severall husbands
are to give bond for good behavior until 24 December next” or just over a year from their court
date. 20 The commissioners then ordered that if either Elizabeth Frith Woods or Johanna Poynter
“misbehaved” within “a year from this day” the bond would become a fine. Even so, John
Woods and Thomas Poynter had to come up with 10,000 pounds tobacco each on that October
day as security for their wives. According to Lorena Walsh, from 1650 to 1669, the annual
tobacco output for one person in the York basin area was 1067 lbs, while a planter’s annual gross
revenue per field hand (slave) from 1640-1680 was “very roughly” £15 sterling. 21 Russell
Menard documents that, in the late 1650s, tobacco was worth approximately 2 pence per
pound. 22 This would make 1000 pounds tobacco worth about £10 sterling, or 10,000 pounds
tobacco worth £100 sterling. 23
In relation to other bonds and fines imposed by the York County commissioners, the
bond required of the Woods and Poynters was a hefty amount in a time when most bonds and
fines ranged from a few pounds of tobacco to a few hundred pounds of tobacco. Generally in
these types of circumstances, the court required defendants to post a bond for good behavior, but,
York records under this name other than in this case. Good Wives, 147.
20
Dalton wrote that the chief offenders for which a bond could be commanded were “common Barretters,
common Quarrellers, and common breakers or perturbers of the peace,” but also enumerates a range of specific
offenses, including “Libellers…as disturbers of the peace, whether they be the contrivers, the procurers, or the
publishers of the Libell: for such libelling and defamation tendeth to the rayfing of quarrells; and the eccusion of
cloud, and are speciall meanes and occasions, tending and inciting greatly to the breach of the peace.”127-164.
21
Lorena S. Walsh, “Plantation Management in the Chesapeake, 1620-1820,” The Journal of Economic
History Vol. 49 (June 1989), 395. 400.
22
Russell Menard, “Plantation Empire: How Sugar and Tobacco Planters Built Their Industries and Raised
an Empire,” Agricultural History 83 (Summer 2007), 311.
23
Hiden, 39-40, 43, 74-77. “Since tobacco was currency, every care had to be taken to standardize the
quality as far as possible. Planters had to bring their crops by December 31 to warehouses where it was inspected
and graded, the poorest quality being burnt. "This was done once a week by men under oath. The tobacco considered
salable was stored away, the ownership recorded in accounts kept for that purpose, and tobacco was withdrawn only
to be loaded on a ship going out of the colony…Each hogshead, when brought to the warehouse, is opened in an
inspecting room in the presence of the inspectors and several samples taken from it in order to appraise its quality
correctly. If it passes inspection, the hogshead is coopered up again, "weighed, entered upon the public books and a
receipt or note given to the proprietor" By law "crop tobacco must at least weigh nine hundred and fifty nett
pounds, all under that weight are considered to be transfer or parcels which may be transferred to make full
91
in a two year period following this episode, the highest bond other than this was £40 sterling
levied by the commissioners against John Russell. The justices first required Russell to post a
bond for “keeping the peace and good bearings toward His Majesty’s liege people, especially
toward Mary [Rawlins],” his servant whom he was accused of beating. Russell forfeited his
bond when he verbally abused and physically threatened two of the justices, including Maj.
Joseph Croshaw. 24 Mary Rawlins arrived at Governor William Berkeley’s estate and
complained that Russell had “‘cruelly’ mistreated her.” Berkeley, in turn, informed York
commissioner Joseph Croshaw of the complaint and made clear his displeasure with the York
court commissioners in their failure to enforce laws that protected servants. The involvement of
the governor may account for the high bond and fine, yet it still pales in comparison to the bond
the commissioners required of Woods and Poynter.
Elizabeth Woods’ gossip undoubtedly angered and worried Thomas Bromfield and
Robert Cobbs, as well as the county commissioners as indicated by their imposition of the
10,000 lbs tobacco fine. Yet she faced no corporal punishment. Woods was well-connected, and
had the commissioners punished her more harshly, they would have risked a backlash from other
elites in their community. Those socio-economic connections may be the very reason John
Woods had married her. She was the widow of Robert Frith, and together, the couple had
become friends with Major Joseph Croshaw, one of the elite male figures that dominated York
County in the mid-seventeenth century. Croshaw was a native Virginian. He was born in 1610
in Elizabeth City, although it is likely that he was educated in England and may have had legal
training. 25 Throughout his lifetime he controlled, bought, and sold hundreds of acres of land and
hogsheads". The receipt or note could then be exchanged the same as was a bank note.
24
Snyder, Brabbling Women, 98-103; Weisiger III, ed., York County Records, 1659-1662 (Athens, GA:
Iberian Publishing Co., 1993) 80, 82-84; YCDOW microfilm reel 2, pp 121-124.
25
Annie Lash Jester and Martha Woodruff Hiden, eds., Adventurers of Purse and Person: Virginia, 1607-
92
was master to numerous “English” and “negro” servants. 26 He was a near constant presence in
the York County court as a plaintiff, defendant, and attorney. He was a long serving court justice
in York County, served as high sheriff, and, like his father before him, as a burgess in the
General Assembly. 27 He had been a Hampton parish church warden as well as a Marston parish
vestryman. 28
Joseph Croshaw had proven that he was quick to protect his own status as well as that of
fellow commissioners. In one instance, in the fall of 1647, he used the court to protect his
reputation when he sued Edward Adcock for defamation. 29 Years later, when York County
resident Jonathon Newell verbally challenged Croshaw’s fellow court commissioner Henry
Gooch, Crowshaw demanded that Newell “be brought to answer for the same,” stating that “it is
a thing of dangerous consequence to threaten a Commissioner.” 30 It is easy to imagine Croshaw
coming to the assistance of his friend Elizabeth Frith Woods in much the same way, especially
1625(Alexandria,Va.: Order of First Families of Virginia, 1964), 144-145. Raleigh Croshaw’s estate was
administered by Captain Francis West, but neither his widow nor his children are mentioned.
26
Joseph was the son of Raleigh Croshaw, an “ancient planter,” who earned a reputation as a “skilled
Indian fighter.”26 Father and son survived the Indian Massacre of 1622. Because of Raleigh’s status as an ancient
planter and possibly as a reward for his fearlessness, he was rewarded with a patent for 500 acres of land, probably
issued in 1623.Joseph Croshaw’s first land patent was for 600 acres in York County (called Charles River County at
the time of the patent) on 9 August 1637. Jester, 145. In 1639 he assigned his patent for 250 acre headright to
Samuel Watkins ; in 1643 he sold 250 acres in Queens Creek to Edw Adcocke . On 24 Jan 1647/48 Croshaw
patented a 750 acres headright. Fleet, Abstracts, III, 40, 44, 88. He sold 900 acres of land in the newly formed Kent
County (formerly the northern part of York County) to his brother, Richard Croshaw. Duvall, 80. Croshaw sold 700
acres of land in Kent County to William Claiborne on 24 May 1660. Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662,
30-31. In Croshaw’s will dated 11 April 1667 and recorded 24 July 1667, he names only his wife, Mary; his minor
son, Joseph; and his son-in-law John West. He willed 1/3 of his land at Poplar Neck in Marston parish to his wife
(the typical widow’s dower); to his sone Joseph he willed the interest in Poplar’s Neck as well as 800 acres in
Mattapony. He also will nine “negroes” to his wife, son, and son-in-law. According to an appraisal dated 10 April
1688, Croshaw’s estate included eight “negro” and four “English” servants. “Negroes” listed most likely indicate
slaves as each listing for the “English” servants include the number of months remaining on their contracts.
Weisiger, 1665-1672, 78, 182 (147, 388).
27
Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 506, 530; Fleet, Abstracts vol. III, 141.
28
Fleet, Abstracts vol. III, 102, 334.
29
Fleet, Abstracts, III, 77. Croshaw prevailed with the jury awarding him 1500 lbs tobacco.
30
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 111. Many of Virginia’s elite shared Croshaw’s sensitivity
to criticism. Emory G. Evans describes an 1688 outburst by Accomack County’s John Custis II in which he
“asserted that the ‘Inhabitants’ were ‘presuming on the dignity o fhis place & great authority’ and ‘expressed many
threatening and menacing words.’” Evans, 17.
93
considering Croshaw was godfather to Elizabeth’s son, Joseph. 31 In fact, he may have done just
that by lending money to John Woods for the bond imposed by the commissioners.
John Woods may well have borrowed from Joseph Croshaw to meet the court-imposed
obligation. Woods’ economic situation was fragile in the credit economy of early Virginia. 32 He
had been a merchant who travelled between London and Virginia and in doing so had acquired a
headright of 650 acres in return for passage for himself and nine other individuals. 33 Even so,
John Woods may have sought an improvement in his socio-economic status through his marriage
to Elizabeth Frith. When he married the widowed Elizabeth Frith soon after Robert Frith’s death
he was already indebted to his new wife, having owed her for “one seat of land now in (her)
possession.” Woods also owed Elizabeth Frith’s children, Joseph and Ann, a cow, a mare colt,
and two yearling heifers. He made arrangements for payment in June 1658. 34 Sometime
between June and October 1658, the month she was brought to court for gossiping, the twentysix year-old merchant married Elizabeth Frith. Soon after their marriage, the court
commissioners granted Woods the administration of Robert Frith’s estate, but at the following
court session, the court commissioners voided their previous order granting the estate to John
Woods, instead making the will subject to probate after two witnesses, Mr. John Ashworth and
Edward Burder, gave testimony that Robert Frith made a nuncupative (oral) will. 35 In doing so,
the court commissioners stymied John Woods’ attempts to control his new wife’s inheritance.
Elizabeth Frith Woods went to great lengths over the next several years to ensure that the
court commissioners protected her son’s inheritance. The court commissioners granted a
judgment against “the estate of her husband Mr. John Woods, in right of her son Joseph Frith,
31
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 9.
Duvall, 15.
33
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 16.
34
Duvall, 37.
32
94
heir of late husband Robert Frith, dec’d, for what is due his heirs.”36 According to Frith’s
deathbed wishes, he intended to leave his son a mare which was valued at 1300 lbs tobacco.
Either the court commissioners or John’s wife did not trust him to handle the estate that was due
to young Joseph. Within a year, the court commissioners assigned John Margetts (Margaretts)
trustee for Joseph, and later granted Elizabeth’s request and allowed Joseph to “remain with John
Frederick,” another guardian. 37 Elizabeth, with permission of the commissioners, then relied on
Maj. Joseph Croshaw and Capt. Daniel Parke, not her husband, “to dispose cattle of said child to
such person as they think fit till next Orphans Court.” 38 Perhaps John Woods had sold Joseph
Frith’s mare in order to post Elizabeth’s bond. Perhaps he sold it in order to conduct business as
a merchant. Whatever John was doing, he was indebted to a number of people, including his
minor stepson, Joseph, and was in court on numerous occasions promising to make good on his
debts, but with seemingly little success. 39 Some widows protected their children’s inheritance
through written agreements with heir new spouses. Richter cites several examples in Charles
Parish, including Margery Jolly Griggs, who secured an agreement with William Hay soon after
35
Duvall, 77. Weisiger, York County Records,1659-1662, 1.
Weisiger, York County Records, 6.
37
Ibid., 46.
38
Ibid., 74. Lothrop Withington, ed., Virginia Gleanings in England (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing,
Inc., 1980), 164-165; Jester, Adventurers of Purse and Person, 167. Captain Daniel Parke immigrated to Virginia by
1650. H served as a York County justice of the peace by 1653, sheriff in 1659, burgess by 1666, was appointed to
the Governor’s council 21 June 1670, served as a vestryman for Bruton Parish, and served as Secretary of State and
Treasurer from1678-79. He is noted in records as “gentleman.” He patented at least 580 acres land in York County
and 528 acres of land in James City County. By 1658, Parke married Rebecca Evelyn Knipe, daughter of George
Evelyn and widow of Bartholomew Knipe, gentleman. Rebecca was born in 1628 in Surry County, England but was
probably in Virginia as a child, although she seems to have travelled back and forth to England. She died in Virginia
2 January 1672. Daniel Parke died March 1679. Parke is buried near Bruton Church in Williamsburg. The couple
was survived by a son, Col. Daniel Parke, born in 1669, who was appointed to Virginia Council in 1692 but soon
after moved to England. He was appointed governor of the Leeward Islands and was killed in a riot in Antigua in
1710. The younger Daniel had two daughters; Lucy, who married Col. William Byrd of Westover, and Frances, who
married Col. John Custis. John and Frances Parke Custis’ son, John, married Martha Dandridge, who as a widow
would marry George Washington.
39
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 22-23, 76. Woods had acquired at least two servants, Edy
Sawyer and Robert Kempe, whose passage he paid and for whom he was granted headrights. Woods gave Edy
Sawyer to Robert Frith for 2.5 years left on contract, and Robert Kemp to Elizabeth Frith Woods for Joseph Frith’s
use in lieu of mare owed to him.
36
95
their 1655 wedding so “he did not waste their inheritance.” Other widows used a “deed of gift”
instead, ensuring that their children received the property and possessions left to them by their
fathers. 40 Elizabeth Frith Woods did not secure such an agreement. She relied on the court to
make sure her son’s inheritance remained intact. She joined other mothers and parentless
children in Virginia’s county courts who protested “spoliation” or “attempted spoliation” of their
estates by those who had been named guardians in fathers’ wills or by decision of the court.
Darrett and Anita Rutman claim such complaints were fairly frequent, but they were few relative
to the “extensiveness of parental loss.” 41 Elizabeth was not shy about bringing to the court’s
attention John’s misuse of her son’s estate.
Once John Woods married Elizabeth Frith, he was regularly in the York County court to
make good on debts he owed to Croshaw and others. On 24 August 1659, less than a year
following Elizabeth’s libel case, John Woods confessed he owed Maj. Joseph Croshaw over
9000 lbs tobacco. 42 On that same date the clerk recorded that Woods sold a heifer a month
earlier for an unknown amount of tobacco, perhaps to raise money to pay off the debt he owed to
Croshaw. At the end of the court session, Woods still remained indebted to Croshaw for 5025
pounds tobacco which was to be paid “out of my crop before October.” 43 By October, John
made good on ensuring the delivery of a mare to his stepson, but he did so through Joseph
Croshaw. Describing Joseph Frith as his godson, Croshaw ensured that the court clerk recorded
his delivery of a mare in exchange for 1800 lbs tobacco from John Woods. 44 Given the
40
Richter, 319-324.
Darrett B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, “ ‘Now-Wives and Sons-in-Law’: Parental Death in
Seventeenth-Century Virginia County,” The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American
Society, Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 164166.
42
Benjamin Weisiger, York County Court Records, 1659-1662, 1.
43
Weisiger, 4.
44
Weisiger,York County Records, 9. The lengthy ongoing dispute over Joseph Frith’s mare demonstrates
the importance of horses to York County residents. While only one-fifth of the residents in Charles Parish, York
41
96
relationship between Joseph Croshaw and Elizabeth that originated prior to her marriage to John
Woods, perhaps Elizabeth had turned to Croshaw to lend money to John for her bond. The court
clerk’s recordings do not clarify their financial relationship other than the fact that Woods owed
Croshaw a good deal of tobacco. There obviously had been a good relationship between the
Friths and the Croshaws, strong enough that Croshaw was willing to help when Elizabeth had
caused her new husband a financial burden. 45
The years following Elizabeth’s libel case were tumultuous ones for the Woods family as
they continued to deal with their domestic and financial issues in York County’s court. The
Woods’ marriage became so strained that Elizabeth sought relief from yet another member of the
York County elite. In Oct 1661, the court commissioners were “informed by Capt. Ralph
Langley” by order of the governor, of John’s “uncivil, barbarous behavior toward his wife.” The
court justices ordered the Woods couple to appear at next court.” 46 While there is no further
record of this domestic matter, over the next several years, the court clerk did record John
Woods’ continued battles over Robert Fith’s estate.
In June 1666, John Woods asked for and the court granted him payment for expenditures
related to the care of his stepson, only to have the order rescinded a few months later because the
court discovered he remained indebted to the boy for one cow, one heifer and one bull. 47 John
was in court often settling accounts, and shortly before his death, even remarked to another York
County owned watercraft to transport themselves and trade goods, at least half of the residents owned horses at midcentury. Traveling over the paths, roads, and highways on foot or by horse was more common than travel on
waterways. For more information on the geography of Charles Parish, see Richter, 82, 94.
45
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 40. Woods was ordered to pay two witnesses 40 lbs tobacco,
the standard payment for witnesses. John Woods sued Joseph Croshaw for “entertaining runaway servants.”
Although there is no further recording regarding this matter, it is possible that the friendship did not extend to John
Woods after he married the Widow Frith.
46
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 96.
47
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 14, 36, 65. By 1665, the court clerks indicated that John
Woods was Joseph Frith’s guardian.
97
resident that he “wished all his debts were as well paid.” 48 John Woods had difficulty dealing
with his finances, his new family, and their close associates, and his troubles had started with
Elizabeth’s gossip.
Elizabeth Frith Woods may have been resentful that her new husband was in charge of
her first husband’s estate or she may have merely been trying to protect the interests of her son
from a man she barely knew before their marriage. Married women were likely to outlive their
husbands, so remarrying quickly was not uncommon given the difficult circumstances widows,
especially those with children, faced. Elizabeth Frith was the mother of at least two children at
the time of Robert’s death, children whom she needed to feed, clothe and shelter. She had no
family in Virginia to help her. Elizabeth Frith’s best solution to her predicament was to find a
new husband. She found one in John Woods. For John Woods, marrying the Widow Frith gave
him control of her former’s husband estate, although Robert Frith had reserved particular
property for his children. Elizabeth Frith Woods went to great lengths to ensure that her son,
Joseph, received his just due, an issue that became a point of contention between the newly-wed
couple. 49 Elizabeth must have humiliated John when she took him to court and aired their
differences, especially after he had just been fined for Elizabeth’s gossiping. Elizabeth was
acutely aware that as a married woman, her gossip would cause trouble for husband, evidenced
by her attempt to remove her name from at least one of the notes and stating to her husband,
“your name being on itt (the note) I will rent it, but if my name were Thrice as formerly I would
not.” 50
Despite her social rank and connections to men of elite status through both of her
48
560.
49
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 179.
Widows generally retained ownership or life interest in a third of her former husband's estate. Carr, 555-
50
YCDOW microfilm 2, p38; Brown, Good Wives, 147; Haskell, 175.
98
marriages, Elizabeth Frith Woods had developed a less-than-stellar reputation. 51 She had
acquired sufficient social rank to be identified as “Mrs.” Woods, but her gossiping, her rocky
marriage, and unseemly behavior after John Woods’ death by 24 February 1670/71 caused
neighborly suspicions that resulted in court appearances. 52 In August 1675, Nicholas Toope
complained to the court that “Mrs. Elizabeth Woods, contrary to Act of Assembly, sells drink in
her house without a license.” 53 The commissioners dismissed Nicholas Toope’s claims because
he did not appear in court. 54 Perhaps Toope was absent from court because he and brothers Isaac
and John Vader had recently “committed several trespasses” against Elizabeth including
“breaking her glass windows and splitting her doors and other damage,” costing the men “£5 or
1000 lbs tob. toward reparations.” Within a few months, Toope, along with his wife Mary and
“several witnesses” once again informed the court of Elizabeth’s wrong-doing: her son had killed
a neighbor’s hog and she had lied about it. The commissioners found Elizabeth guilty of hog
stealing and ordered her to pay the neighbor 2000 lb. tobacco. In her deposition, Mary Toope
related that when Elizabeth’s daughter had visited the Toope home the past winter, Mary asked
her “What, your mother is in prison again?” No surviving record indicates that the
51
Ralph Langley and Elizabeth Woods each named Mr. William Swinnerton as their attorney on 24 April
1675, calling him their “loving friend.” Benjamin B. Weisiger, III, ed., York County Virginia Colonial Records,
1672- 1676 (Athens, GA: New Papyrus Publishing Co., 1991), 119.
52
John Woods was dead by February 1670/71. On that date Elizabeth was ordered to bring to the court an
inventory of her deceased husband’s estate. She was again summoned to court two months later. I do not find that
the court clerk ever recorded John Woods’ estate inventory. Benjamin B. Weisiger, III, ed., York County Virginia
Records, 1665- 1672 (Athens, GA: Iberian Publishing Company, 1987), 203, 221.
53
Weisiger, York County Records, 1672- 1676, 128-129. Elizabeth Woods was represented by Mr. Bryan
Smith and Mr. William Sherwood on the same date but in different matters. This was not the first time the Woods
had been summoned to court for illegally selling liquor . In January, 1669, the clerk recorded that John Woods
“having been by a former order of this court forewarned about retailing any drink in his house without a license, and
Martha Bullock, wife of James Bullock, informing the court the he still retails liquor” was found in contempt of the
court and fined 2000 lb tob. Woods contested the contempt order in court on 10 March 1668: “Mr. John Woods
representing to the court his poor condition occasioned by his losses by 5 sicknesses, and desiring he may have
liberty to vend what drink he hath in his house for discharge of his credit, the court grants him liberty to retail what
drink he has in his house provided he sell it by the last of June, and in the interim keep good order in his house, and
court has remitted the fine of 1000 lbs tob.” Weisiger, York County Records, 1665- 1672, 138, 146.
54
Weisiger, York County Records, 1672- 1676, 133. Elizabeth was granted a nonsuit and 50lb tob. from
Nicholas Toope for “no cause of action appearing.” At the same court session Elizabeth also has sent two attorneys
99
commissioners ever ordered Elizabeth Woods jailed, but Mary Toope’s comment certainly
indicates that Elizabeth Woods developed a poor reputation and had more than one run-in with
the law. 55 The widowed Elizabeth Woods could not escape the personal and economic woes of
her deceased husband John.
York County records reveal the financial position of the Woodses and Poynters. John and
Elizabeth Woods made frequent trips to the York County court, trips which reveal the precarious
financial position of the couple. During his marriage to Elizabeth, John was constantly scheming
to increase his wealth, or at the very least, pay his bills, making the 10,000 lb tobacco bond/fine
for Elizabeth’s gossip all the more significant. Thomas Poynter must have had difficulty paying
this fine/bond as well. Thomas did not have the same access to the financial assets and social
connections that the Woods had and his land transactions were few. 56 Thomas Poynter’s
associations with other York County residents are the only other clues to his status. He
associated with John Margetts and Stephen Royston, two of the witnesses who testified against
Elizabeth Woods. Both of these men were of modest means. Neither Margetts nor Royston
controlled more than 100 acres of land, each having purchased their Queens Creek acreage from
Thomas Price between 1653 and 1654. 57 Thomas Poynter witnessed several other bills of sale
that involved a London merchant. This may indicate that he was somehow involved with trade
to settle financial separate financial disputes in which she was resolved.
55
Weisiger, York County Records, 1672- 1676, 161, 162, 165. On the same day the court justices ordered
Elizabeth to pay Capt. Otho Thorpe 2124 lb tobacco, but no explanation was recorded. Elizabeth’s son, Joseph Frith,
died by 20 April 1673. His estate inventory included 13 head of cattle, 1 set of curtains & valances; and also except
what cattle was killed by Mr. John Woods, and other cattle (listed).”There is no other recording of Ann Frith,
Elizabeth and Robert’s daughter. It appears that John and Elizabeth Woods had two children together, an unnamed
son and a daughter, Mary.
56
Ibid. The very limited information on Thomas Poynter in the surviving records shows that he may have
owned as few as 100 acres in the years preceding this case. He acquired a 50 acre parcel and a house from Edward
Sympson on 10 July 1650.56 He also purchased a parcel of land of unknown acreage from James Harris 14 July
1652, but within a year, Poynter had signed over the same parcel to George Turner. The land transaction between
Thomas Poynter and George Turner was recorded on 24 July 1653.This parcel abutted property owned by the
Parkes.
57
There is no record of Stephen Royston after Elizabeth appeared on court in 1658, and John Margetts died
100
and that may be the connection between him and John Woods, since the two men had been in
James City, possibly on business, around the time of their gossiping wives’ conspiracy. 58
Poynter acquired few assets during his lifetime. He rarely appeared in court, had very few
financial transactions of his own recorded, and upon his death in 1659, the court commissioners
declared his estate “inconsiderable for administration.” 59 John Woods and Thomas Poynter had
been men of limited means in comparison to the elites of York County.
John Woods and Thomas Poynter stand in stark contrast to Thomas Bromfield and
Robert Cobbs, the two men Elizabeth and Johanna accused of mirken-making. Thomas
Bromfield is an example of an upwardly mobile Virginian hoping to use marriage to the
widowed Hannah Price and his appointment to the parish vestry as a gateway to political
office. 60 He had been in Virginia no more than a year before marrying Hannah sometime
between the death of her first husband, Thomas Price, in winter/spring 1655 and 1 May 1656. 61
Whatever property Thomas Bromfield acquired, it appears he did so through his marriage to
Hannah Price; Thomas claimed no headrights nor purchased any land. If one can be judged by
the friends one keeps, than Thomas Bromfield should be judged well. Bromfield had at least an
by 1661.
58
There is no mention of the two men the General Assembly records making it difficult to discern the
purpose of their trip. Certainly being involved with trade would not necessarily require one to possess large tracts of
land, if that was, indeed, the nature of his business.
59
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 10. Thomas Poynter was in the colony by October 1643, on
list of persons imported by Mr. John Hoddin (Hodin) or by April 1657, on list of persons imported by Lt. Col.
Edward Dowglas of Northampton County. But I’m leaning toward the first as there is a Thomas Poynter in York
County by March 1645/6 (witness to an IOU). Cavaliers and Pioneers, 148, 344; Virginia Colonial Abstracts, Vol 3,
pp. 22 (original pp. 61.)
60
Nell Marion Nugent, ed., Cavaliers and Pioneer: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 16231666 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1983), 303, 330. Virginia records list two Thomas Bromfields in
1655 headrights, one imported by Henry Barlow to an unknown county, and the other imported to James City
County by John Lynge. Duvall, 18. According to two land transactions, by 10 September 1657, Thomas and Hannah
were a married couple.
61
There is a Thomas Price in the York records for 1653, in which he sold land on two occasions with a
Maurice Price (presumably his brother). There is no mention of Hannah in these land sales, so I have deduced that
Thomas Price married Hannah sometime between September 1653 and his death in 1655. Fleet, vol. III, 120.
101
acquaintance with Maj. Joseph Croshaw, the same man who was godparent to Joseph Frith. 62 He
was in the company of churchwarden Robert Cobbs on several occasions, including one in which
Bromfield witnessed and Cobbs intervened in a brutal fight between several York County
residents. 63 Bromfield was also a friend to Mr. Henry Tiler. Little can be learned of Tiler for he
shows up infrequently in the York County records, but it is evident that he was master of at least
two servants and had acquired as a headright at least 1800 acres of land. 64 In the only instance in
which a York County neighbor sued him, the commissioners quickly set aside the bond that they
had required from him on the request of the plaintiff. 65
During his ten years in York County, Thomas Bromfield made the most of his marriage
and social connections that quickly led to his seat in the Marston parish vestry. This, in turn, led
to the York County court commissioners appointing him “Surveyor of Highways and
Churchways of Marston parish” and as a grand juror in the summer of 1662. 66 He also served as
the guardian of Anne Margrett, daughter of John Margrett. 67 Thomas Bromfield died before the
connections he made during his ten years in Virginia could propel him to a seat on the county
court or as a burgess in the General Assembly. 68
62
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 144; Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 12.
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659- 1662, 88.
64
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659- 1662, 75, 132; Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 7, 41.
Henry Tiler died by 13 April 1672; Mrs. Anne Tiler, his wife, granted administration of his estate. Weisiger, York
County Records, 1672-1676, 12.
65
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659- 1662, 130, 132. Thomas Bromfield had at least one servant whose
behavior caused Captain Daniel Parke to sue Thomas in court. The Bromfield’s servant, William Lewis “carried
off…Jane,” the servant of Parke. Bromfield posted a £20 bond for Lewis’ good behavior.
66
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659- 1662, 132. 134.
67
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 8, 12.
68
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 11, 12, 14, 16. Thomas Bromfield died sometime between
15 August 1665 and 2 October 1665, survived his wife, Mary, and daughter, Anne. These are the dates that
Bromfield made his will and the date the county clerk recorded the will. The court justices ordered Capt. Daniel
Parke, Samuel Crabtree, John Horlington, and Mr. Thomas Meekins to appraise Bromfield’s estate. In his will he
asked to be buried “in a decent manner.” The property he left to his daughter included a “feather bed, etc” and three
cows and a mare. To his brother, John Bromfield, he left one cow, four barrels of Indian corn and clothing. To his
godson John Tiler, the son of Henry Tiler, he left his “sealed ring.” He willed the remainder of his estate to his wife,
Mary and made her executrix with his friend Mr. Henry Tiler as overseer of the will.
63
102
Bromfield’s fellow vestryman and churchwarden Robert Cobbs certainly had the
credentials to rise to the level of county court justice and burgess. According to Cobbs family
genealogy, Robert Cobbs was born in Virginia to “ancient planter” Ambrose Cobbs around 1627.
He married Elizabeth Thorp, daughter of William and Ursula Smith Thorp. Together, Robert and
Elizabeth Cobbs had five children: Robert II, Edmund, Margaret, Ambrose, and Otho. 69 Like
Thomas Bromfield and Elizabeth Woods, Robert associated with well-to-do people. In his will, a
wealthy Robert Wilkinson instructed Cobbs to “bring up his children,” meaning his daughter
Sarah and his as yet unbaptized “young sonn.” Wilkinson’s wife preceded him in death, leaving
Cobbs as guardian to the Wilkinson children who equally inherited their father’s estate. Since
Cobbs was to raise the two children, he had access to the estate, which was quite considerable. 70
When Sarah Wilkinson married in 1669, the court commissioners relieved Robert Cobbs of his
guardianship over her, but noted that his accounts relating to Sarah were “very honest.” 71 Robert
Cobbs was also named in the will of Capt. Daniel Parke, one of the York County elite, called by
Parke one of several “friends” to whom he bequeathed “£5 apiece to buy them rings with,” and
along with attorney James Bray was named his “executor in trust for Virginia.” 72 That he was
never named as a commissioner may have more to do with the location of his property than with
his status or reputation. According to James R. Perry’s study of county commissioners on the
69
George Cabell Greer, ed., Early Virginia Immigrants, 1623-1666 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing
Co, Inc., 1982), 71. An Ambrose Cobbs, named in a list of Virginia immigrants to Henrico County, was responsible
for importing Robert Cobbs, his son; Margarett Cobbs, his daughter; and Ann Cobbs, his wife in 1639. This may be
the same family since it was not uncommon for immigrants to travel back and forth to England.
70
Fleet, Abstracts, III, 123. Wilkinon’s wife’s clothing is included in Robert Wilkinson’s estate inventory.
The inventory includes “one new suite of broad cloath well trimmed with points att the knees and silver and gold
buttons.”
71
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665- 1672, 108, 154. Cobbs was willing to exchange 5471 lb tob. due
to him from Sarah’s estate “for use of several goods and household stuff.” Sarah Wilkinson petitioned the York
County court through Maj. Daniel Parke in 20 April 1668 to have Robert Cobbs replaced as her guardian by Mr.
James Harris; Harris was appointed. Minor children over the age of fourteen could choose their own guardians with
court approval.
72
Jester, xxiii; Headright for Parke recorded 25 August 1662 for 1050 acres. Parke’s will was proved 1
September 1679Weisiger, York County Records, 1659- 1662, 135.
103
Eastern Shore, which he claims can apply to other Virginia counties, colonial officials dispersed
commissioners throughout areas of settlement in the county so that residents always had a person
of local authority living in their midst. Robert Cobbs lived within close proximity to Joseph
Croshaw, both within Marston parish borders. Cobbs would not have an opportunity to serve as a
commissioner until Croshaw died in the spring of 1668. 73
It is unlikely that the gossip of Elizabeth Frith Woods, Johanna Poynter and Elianor
Cooper sullied either vestryman’s reputation or forced him out of office, which certainly seems
to have been the women’s intention. The York County court commissioners continued assigning
Robert as appraiser of various estates and property. Together with the fact that the clerk still
identified him as a vestryman in Marston Parish in 1660 and in Bruton Parish in 1674 and 1676
prove that he was a trusted member of the community; his reputation remained intact. 74
Robert Cobbs and Thomas Bromfield fit the profile of a typical Virginia vestryman.
Cobbs secured his place among the elite of York County, helped by being the son of one of
Virginia’s ancient planters. Bromfield, despite being in Virginia for a relatively short period
before being named to the Marston parish vestry, was on his way to becoming a member of the
York County elite. The vestry was often the entry point. According to historian Warren
Billings, the vestry served as an agency that led men into further public service. Because of the
lack of church hierarchy in Virginia, the colonial parish vestry served more functions than
administering poor relief, as it was designed to do in England. Vestryman governed the parishes.
73
James R. Perry, The Formation of a Society on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1615-1655 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 166-171. Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 106, 182.
74
The General assembly created Bruton parish from parts of Marston and Middle Plantation parishes in
1674. On 24 October 1662, the York County court clerk recorded that Marston parish churchwardens were Ashaell
Batten and Thomas Whaley. This does not necessarily mean that Cobbs was no longer on the vestry, just that he no
longer served the vestry as a churchwarden; the vestry regularly elected two of their member to serve as
churchwardens. Seiler, 313. Weisiger, York County Records, 1672-1676, 1; 65, 80, 83, 85, 87, 120, 122, 130, 133,
145, 168. Oliver Perry Chitwood, Justice in Colonial Virginia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1905; reprint,
Memphis: General Books, 2010), 50. Marston Parish vestry records for the time period discussed do not survive.
104
They determined boundaries, levied taxes to support the church, investigated moral offenses,
built churches and recruited ministers. The position was often used to “recruit men of promise
into the political system: service on the vestry provided training for higher office.” 75 This was a
position that demanded respect from parishioners. Historian Dell Upton explains that as parish
leaders, vestrymen “expected obedience to their orders as masters of the parish, along with the
acquiescence to their decisions about church building, taxation, ministerial hiring, and the
prerogatives of mastery in general. It required a massive uprising…or an appeal to higher
authorities in Jamestown… to change a vestry decision.” 76
For Elizabeth and her associates, spreading a salacious story about the vestrymen was a
much more expedient method of undermining their authority than appealing to the General Court
at Jamestown, and it had the potential of instigating an “uprising” of parishioners. The York
county records do not reveal Elizabeth Frith Woods’s specific motive for writing her
inflammatory accusation against the Bromfields and Cobbs; as a defendant, she could not be
forced to testify against herself and none of the witnesses who testified related any possible
motivation for the gossip. The court commissioners, curiously, did not require either Elizabeth
or Johanna to make a formal apology which might have indicated their motives. All in all, the
court officials seem to have given the gossip little credence and they did not dismiss from the
vestry either Bromfield or Cobbs. 77
By exacting a large fine against the gossips’ husbands, the court attempted to minimize
the effect of the scandalous accusations against Thomas Bromfield and Robert Cobbs and, as a
result, upheld the masculine authority of church leaders. Elizabeth’s gossip certainly held the
potential of damaging the vestrymen’s reputation by causing the community to raise their
75
76
Billings, The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, 296-297.
Upton, 168-169.
105
collective eyebrows. It most certainly made for some titillating conversation for Bromfield’s and
Cobbs’ neighbors. It is ironic that Robert Cobbs presented the women for their gossip in the first
place, since doing so spread their story to a much wider audience. Perhaps Cobbs sought to
prevent a parish rebellion in case Elizabeth, Johanna, and/or Elianor had shown the note to many
other York neighbors or widely talked about their plans before they attempted to post the note on
the church door. Nevertheless, the Virginia electoral process during the 1650s included the
election of vestrymen, and any community gossip of inappropriate behavior on the part of vestry
could have led to the elections of new vestrymen. The free male electorate’s control of
Virginia’s parishes, first implemented 1645, was reiterated just months before Elizabeth’s gossip
when, in a meeting of the General Assembly on March 13 1657/8, the burgesses legislated that
“of the vestry, ministers, churchwardens, poor and parochial matters, the people have the
disposal.” According to Virginia statute, each parish vestry answered to their parishioners. The
peculiar church governance of colonial Virginia created quite an opportunity for Elizabeth: the
colonial government officially had given the “people” of the parish power to govern the church,
including deciding who was to serve in the vestry. In that same March session, the burgesses
had reviewed all previous statutes and then ordered that the newly affirmed statutes of the
Assembly be circulated to the various counties to avoid any confusion over which laws were to
be enforced. 78 The General Assembly effectively reminded York County residents of the
political relationship between the vestry and the electorate. Because Virginia’s women,
including Elizabeth Frith Woods, were not enfranchised, they relied on the power of their gossip
78
Hening, Statutes, vol. I , 432, 433. The earliest recording of a vestry in colonial Virginia is in Accomack
County records. In 1635, the justices commented that there having been “no formal vestry nor vestrymen,” the
appointed eleven men. The General Assembly may have legislated formations of vestries prior to this, but the
records do not survive. The first act of Assembly that directed the appointment of parish vestries occurred the
following year. In 1645, the Assembly ordered that “the major part of the parishioners…to make choices of such
men as by plurality of voices.” Seiler, 312-313.
106
as an extralegal and informal way to voice their political concerns. By placing into question the
reputations of Thomas Bromfield and Robert Cobbs, Elizabeth may have hoped to influence the
York County electorate.
Elizabeth Frith Woods challenged church authority at a time when civil authorities were
especially sensitive to opposition to masculine authority. Quakerism, which in principle and
practice opposed all hierarchical authority, first made its appearance in Virginia by 1656 when
missionary Elizabeth Harris arrived in the colony. Since Quakers did not need a building or a
minister to hold a meeting of friends, they saw opportunity in Virginia’s peculiar scattered
communities that often-times lacked church buildings and ministers. 79 Virginia’s colonists who
were sometimes “unchurched by circumstance more than by choice” often welcomed Quakers
into their communities. Those who governed Virginia’s institutions did not. Government
officials at both the colonial and local level considered them subversives: a political threat and a
threat to “traditional ideas about proper social order.” In 1661, York County resident Thomas
Bushrod represented the turmoil that Virginia’s leaders feared Quakers would bring into their
colony, their fears based on Quakers’ “reputation for turbulence” in England. Bushrod verbally
abused minister Justinian Alymer, calling him “a lying knave, an ugly rogue & blind Rogue.”
He also insulted Alymer’s companion, Capt. Augustine Warner, a burgess and member of the
Council of state from neighboring Gloucester County, whom he called a “dogg and a rogue,” but
Bushrod’s ill-will was mainly aimed at minister Alymer, a representative of the Anglican church.
After insulting Warner the one time, Bushrod left him alone, stating that he “would not meddle
with him as a Councilor.” Bushrod then continued his attack against Alymer, calling him the
“antichrist” who “proceeded from the Pope” and dared him to send the sheriff “to apprehend” the
79
Bond, 162.
107
Friends at their meeting, a meeting that would include Bushrod’s wife. 80 Bushrod’s outburst was
just the kind of threat that concerned the local and colonial government.
Quakers in the area so concerned York County officials that by 10 September 1659 the
clerk recorded their order designed to limit Quaker activity and influence:
Whereas there are some dangerous persons now in this county called Quakers who by
their frequent private meetings in the nature of worship, have seduced and misled many
poor ignorant persons, which may be feared will prove the disturbance of the peace of the
country and government, for the preventing of which private meetings for the future
preservation of the peace, the court have thought fit that the High Sheriff and his Deputy
Constables and other officers of this county do from time to tome inquire after all persons
who are found to repair to such meetings and there forewarn them at his or their houses
or plantations, and proceeding from time to time to give account to the next adjoining
concerned that such are taken upon preservation of the peace and prevention of unlawful
assembly. 81
The following March (1659/1660), the burgesses of the General Assembly (sans Thomas
Bushrod) stated the colonial government’s concerns:
WHEREAS there is an vnreasonable and turbulent sort of people, comonly called
Quakers, who contrary to the law do dayly gather together vnto them vnlaw'll Assemblies
and congregations of people teaching and publishing, lies, miracles, false visions,
prophecies and doctrines, which have influence vpon the comunities of men both
ecclesiasticall and civil endeavouring and attemping thereby to destroy religion, lawes,
comunities and all bonds of civil societie, leaving it arbitrarie to everie vaine and vitious
person whether men shall be safe, lawes established, offenders punished, and Governours
rule, hereby disturbing the publique peace and just interest, to prevent and restrain which
mischiefe… 82
By 1661, the York County court justices singled out women in their concerns over Quakerism. In
a bylaw passed in August of that year, the commissioners, concerned over the continued
meetings of the sect, “especially women” declared that “all women who should continue said
80
Bond, 164-165; Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 92-93. Bushrod, who ironically also served
as a York County burgess at the March 1, 1658/59 session of the General Assembly. Hening, Statutes, vol. I 506.
Also see Brown, Good Wives, 140-144, for a discussion of Quakers, especially those in Norfolk County and the
“feminization” of religious radicalism. Thomas Bushrod’s stepdaughter, Lydia married into the Chisman family.
Mary Chisman, her mother-in-law, was known to have attended Quaker meetings with her slaves. Snyder,
Brabbling Women, 35.
81
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 6.
82
Hening, Statutes, vol I, 532-533.
108
unlawful meetings and broach their schismatical and heretical doctrine” would be forced to
swear “”the oath of Allegiancce & Supremacy.” Those who refused would be imprisoned. 83
Justinian Alymer, the York County justices, and the colonial burgesses all reacted to the
troublesome reputation of English Quakers and to their egalitarian tenets to which women in
particular were drawn. 84 Bushrod’s taunts in1661 make clear the presence of women at Quaker
meetings, making the religious sect all the more dangerous. Elizabeth Frith Wood’s attack on
the parish vestry came during a time when authority at all levels felt vulnerable to Quakers who
questioned hierarchies of all kind, including those that existed in government, religious faith
groups, and society at large. The extraordinary fine levied against the Woods and Poynters, and
the laws passed against the Quaker religion demonstrate the remarkable sensitivity of York
County leaders toward these types of challenges. The burgesses sitting in the General Assembly
followed suit.
Although the reaction of the York County commissioners toward the Woodses and
Poynters indicates their general concern with protecting parish authority figures and their
religious tenets that espoused a hierarchy based on masculine authority, the two gossips might
have had more mundane reasons for attacking Bromfield and Cobbs. The proximity of the
Poynter and Bromfield households suggests that Bromfield’s duties as a vestryman may have
sparked antagonism. Vestries were responsible for setting the tithe amount, ensuring that the
churchwardens appointed collected the tithe, hiring ministers, processioning lands, and settling
disputes within the parish and with other parish vestries.85 A parcel of land sold by the
83
84
Horn, 56.
85
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 85 (125).
Of the first fifty-nine Quaker immigrants to the British American colonies, nearly half were women.
An example of an order for determining parish boundaries: York County 30 December 1662, :It is
ordered, in obedience to Act of Assembly, concerning marks & bounds of land, that the vestries of the parishes of
this county, lay and divide parishes into convenient limits and appoint fittest persons in those limits, between Easter
and Whitsuntide, on motion of processioning to go around and view the bounds. Each person neglecting this is to
109
Bromfields to John Dickenson in September 1657 was described in part as lying east of Queen’s
Creek. This would put the Poynters and the Bromfields in the lower part of Marston Parish. At
the time the women were spreading their gossip, Marston had been a parish for no more than
four years. The General Assembly formed Marston parish in 1654 from a section of Chiskiak
parish and from a new settlement that stretched into the northern reaches of York county (see
map on page 121). Marston parishioners had built a church on land belonging to Joseph
Croshaw sometime before 26 October 1658, for on this date, the court clerk recorded the transfer
of the church building and one acre of land immediately surrounding it from Croshaw to the
parish.” 86 This is the same date on which the three gossiping women were brought before the
York county court. If the Poynters were once members of Chiskiack parish, they may have been
unhappy about being pushed into a new parish. They may have blamed their situation on
members of the vestry, especially vulnerable members like recently-arrived Thomas Bromfield.
There is no record of a boundary dispute between members of Marston and Chiskiack
parishes during this time, but boundary disputes were recorded between Marston and Middle
Plantation parishes, both of which drew from Chiskiack. The dispute between the respective
vestries was settled 25 August 1656 by the county court, “confirming Marston’s original
bounds.” 87 Boundary issues between York County parishes continued into at least 1661/62
when Joseph Croshaw and Capt. Robert Elliston took their dispute to the General Assembly.
Either Croshaw or Elliston was dissatisfied with the boundary between Marston and Middle
Plantation parishes. The burgesses, after “haveing seriously weighed and examined” the issue,
pay 305 lbs tob., and each vestry 1200 lbs.” Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 151.
86
Duvall, 51
87
The two parishes were united in 1674 by an act of assembly. Hening, Statutes, vol. I, 498. The parish was
then named Bruton.
110
ordered “that the bounds be continued” according to the 1656 York County order. 88
Choosing and supporting ministers could also erupt into protracted disputes between
parishioners and vestrymen. 89 According to legal historian Peter Hoffer, disputes between
vestrymen and minister were fairly common, especially disputes over minister salaries, and
sometimes ended in the civil courts where juries often sided with the vestrymen. 90 In York
County’s Charles Parish, where seventeenth-century vestry records survive, a dispute arose
between two factions of vestrymen. The situation found its way to the Council of State, which
voided at least three elections upon the petitions of one group or the other over a 15 month
period, from March, 1707/8 to June 1709. Even after the Council certified the last election, a
group protested, asking that five of the vestrymen be replaced by appointment because those
elected “had refused to take the oaths or to act as Vestrymen.” The council granted their request
and replaced the reluctant vestrymen. The two factions had disagreed on the hiring of the
minister, James Sclater. 91
It is also possible that Elizabeth’s gossip had nothing to do with the Bromfield’s and
Cobbs’s performance as vestrymen. She may have authored the note on behalf of one of the
other women named in the suit to right a perceived wrong. The Woods, Poynter, Bromfield, and
88
Hening, Statutes, vol II, 161.
Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia date from 1677 forward. Researching
seventeenth-century Virginia vestries is especially problematic. Few vestry records from this era survive and those
that do are generally limited birth, death, and marriage recordings. Any possible conclusions regarding the
motivation for the Woods-Poynter-Cooper gossip are based on vestry issues recorded in the county court records
and the records of the General Assembly. While the county records are more complete, they tend to give little
information on vestry affairs. General Assembly records for the period are limited to the statutes passed. The records
of the Governor’s Council, the forum in which vestry issues would have been documented, are scant for this period.
90
Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America, 111.
91
Landon C. Bell, Charles Parish, York County, Virginia History and Registers (Richmond: The Virginia
State Library Board, 1932), 4-5, 8-11 13-14, 16. Quoting from Executive Journals, Council of Colonial Virginia III,
H. R. McIlwaine, ed, Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, Vol. 3 (Richmond: Virginia State
Library, 1928), 168, 185-6, 197-8, 216. Dipsutes betweeen vestries and ministers, and parishioners and ministers
were common in seventeenth-century Virginia, though no records survive that indicate that there were specific
issues with ministers in York County parishes. For more information on disputes regarding James Sclater, see G.
MacLaren Brydon, “Parson Sclater and His Vestry,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 53 (October
89
111
Cobbs families’ paths crossed on several occasions, according to the county records. Of the two
other women involved, Johanna Poynter and her husband Thomas appear to have had the closest
relationship to at least one of the victims. The couple owned land adjacent to land acquired by
vestryman Thomas Bromfield through his marriage to the widowed Hannah Price, making them
neighbors. 92 Perhaps the Poynters had been snubbed or insulted in some way by Hannah and her
new husband, Thomas Bromfield. The Poynters were familiar with Hannah and her first
husband, Thomas Price, at least well enough for Thomas Poynter to witness a document on
behalf of Thomas Price in July, 1653. 93 Thomas Poynter had been in Virginia since at least
1643, yet Thomas Bromfield was a relatively new immigrant. Within a year of his arrival in
Virginia, Bromfield married a landed widow, assumed control of at least 315 acres of the
deceased Thomas Price’s land, was appointed or, more likely elected, to the vestry, and
appointed by the vestrymen to act as an estate appraiser.94 The relationship between Hannah
Price Bromfield and the Poynters may have been strained upon her marriage to Bromfield.
Historians Darren and Anita Rutman commented on early Virginia that “one sat in church
according to one’s status, and someone pushing into a place to which he or she was not entitled
sent reverberations through society.” 95 In just such a manner, Thomas Bromfield had quickly
secured a seat on the Marston parish vestry. In a nearby Charles Parish during the same era
(1630s-1660s), it took approximately eight years of residence and acquisition of property before
men secured a local office. Less than twenty percent were appointed within the first twelve
1945), 288-301.
92
Duvall, 18. The court clerk recorded the sale of the 100 acre parcel of land on Queen’s Creek belonging
to Thomas and Hannah Price Bromfield to John Dickenson in September 1657, a year before the mirkin-making
gossip occurred.
93
Fleet Abstracts, vol. III, 121.
94
The first mention of Thomas Bromfield as a vestryman is in the recording of Elizabeth Frith Wood’s
libel. He was named an appraiser of Robert Frith’s estate on 24 June 1569, as were Robert Cobbs, Jno. Margaretts,
and Richard Barnard. Duvall, 50, 77.
95
Rutman, A Place in Time, 129.
112
months of residency. Perhaps the Poynters and/or the Woodses were envious of Thomas
Bromfield’s rapid accession to the parish vestry, a position that commanded respect and opened
doors. A seat on the vestry indicated status since vestrymen were more likely to gain entry based
on their status in their parish than on their piety. 96 If so, Johanna Poynter may have used the
gossip to express displeasure with the situation, employing a literate neighbor, Elizabeth Frith
Woods, to do the writing.
Elizabeth Frith Woods’ ability to write, noted by witness Stephen Royston, was
remarkable in a time and place where literate women were few. That she authored the note
indicates she may have been the only one of the accused gossips with such ability. According to
Marsha Urban, women had little opportunity to write because of the English cultural ideal of
coverture that allowed men “legal dominion over the women in their lives and signed all legal
documents for them.” Only 10 to 25 percent of women in England were functionally literate, or
able to sign their names, although functional literacy rates were higher for middling social
groups and those in urban areas. This does not mean, however, the majority of English women
were completely illiterate, for some of even the very poorest English subjects could read since
reading was a skill that was taught before and considered more important than writing, especially
for women. Parents could teach reading at home or hire “dames” for a small sum to teach their
children. Writing lessons, on the other hand, were more expensive since it was a more
complicated skill to teach; moreover, the age children learned to write coincided with the age
they were able to earn money to contribute to the family economy. Learning to write could then
negatively impact the family earning capacity. English women who did learn to write probably
did so at a later age than men, and through informal schooling at home. Writing was not among
96
Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America, 111.
113
the desired skills for English girls; reading, sewing, and housewifery skills were.97 But Elizabeth
Frith Woods could clearly do more than read and sign her name, a rare skill in England, and
quite extraordinary in Virginia. She authored a libelous note that was meant for Marston
parishioners to see. She also had prepared a note meant for certain elite men of her community,
given her comment to Elizabeth Hall that the note in her pocket was for the “great ones.” 98
Elizabeth Frith Woods’ ability to both read and write indicates she was highly educated
compared to other English women living in Virginia during this time period.
Elizabeth Frith Woods and her co-conspirators put their gossip on paper, and in doing so
committed libel, according to Robert Cobbs. In this, the women continued a practice that was
common in England, carrying on a time honored tradition for people without formal power, a
tradition that was problematic for English leaders particularly during the Elizabethan and
Jacobean eras. According to English economic and social historian Adam Fox, English
authorities had traditionally treated libelers as they did slanderers. They had considered these
offenses moral in nature and, therefore, ecclesiastic officials dealt with offenders. But during the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, English officials began to define these previously
“moral offenses” as “criminal.” If the libel or slander was directed against persons in authority,
officials considered it seditious; if the words were directed at private individuals, officials
considered the crime a breach of the peace. In particular, the Star Chamber’s treatment of libel
created new common law, increasing “the gravity of offences of cunning, such as defamation, as
97
Barry Reay, ed., Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, (London: Croom Holm, 1985),
introduction, 4; Urban, 37. By the end of the eighteenth century, Urban claims that literacy rates for English women
improved to 48 percent. The wives of urban men from “literate occupations such as merchants and retailers were
more likely to be functionally literate. Burke, 49, 63.
98
During Bacon’s Rebellion, ordinary planter-petitioners used similar language, complaining that the
“great ones” and “great men” had robbed and cheated them. See Horn,157-158. Another example can be found in
Peter Thompson, “The Thief, the Householder, and the Commons: Languages of Class in Seventeenth-Century
Virginia,” WMQ 63 (April, 2006), 22, in which Thompson includes a reference to a 1677 petition that listed 26
grievances from “loyall subjects” of Isle of Wight County, who complained that Governor Berkeley and “all the
114
against those of force” and by 1600 libel prosecutions in the Star Chamber “rapidly increased,”
reflecting “Tudor and early Stuart anxieties about ‘disorder.’” 99
Elizabeth Woods Frith’s libelous note fit the pattern of common English libels that
included “derisive letters” rife with scandalous accusations. Michael Dalton, in the 1655 edition
of The Countrey Justice, enumerated “divers sorts” of libelous offenses that included libel
by pictures or signes, as by hanging of pictures of reproach, or signes or tokens of shame,
or disgrace neer the place where the party thereby traduced, doth most converse: as the
pictures of the Gallows, Pillory, Cucking-stool, Horns, or such like… 100
According to seventeenth-century English barrister William Hudson, libelous documents often
included:
…scoffing at the person of another in rhyme or prose or by the personating of him,
thereby to make him ridiculous; or by setting up horns at his gate, or picturing him or
describing him, or by writing of same base of defamatory letter, and publishing the same
to others, or some scurvy love-letter to himself, whereby it is not likely but he should
break the peace; or to publish disgraceful false speeches against any eminent man or
public officer. 101
Elizabeth Frith Woods wrote and conspired to post her note in order to damage the reputation of
Bromfield and Cobbs. Using the creative image of a mirken, the three gossips employed the
most common method of shaming neighbors, the use of sexual innuendo to claim some sort of
impropriety. As both Dalton and Hudson state, English men and women who engaged in
shaming their neighbors more often used animal horns as a sexual image. Martin Ingram
concurs that while “mocking rhymes and other libels” were often used to “humiliate various
great men” had gone aways and left them without leadership and protection.
99
Adam Fox, “Ballads, Libels, and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England,” Past and Present 145 (1994):
54-56. Fox quotes from English barrister William Hudson’s “A Treatise of the court of Star Chamber,” Collectanea
Juridica: Consisting of tracts Relative to the Law and Constitution Vol. 2, ed. F. Hargrave (London: Publisher?,
1791), 100.
100
Dalton, 161.
101
Ibid. Fox quotes from English barrister William Hudson’s “A Treatise of the Court of Star Chamber,”
Collectanea Juridica: Consisting of Tracts Relative to the Law and Constitution Vol. 2, ed. F. Hargrave (London:
Publisher?, 1791), 100.
115
kinds of delinquents,” the use of animal horns, horned heads, and other bestial images that had a
sexual connotation were common motifs used in public humiliation of English neighbors. 102
The righteous indignation that fueled Elizabeth’s gossip also fueled the commissioners’
duty to act. In punishing Elizabeth Frith Woods and Johanna Poynter, the York County court
commissioners followed English precedent that developed over the course of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Punishments levied against libelers included large fines, branding,
whipping, and, in extreme cases, cutting off the offender’s ears. The use of such severe corporal
punishment was evident in Virginia’s early years under martial law but, by 1658, punishment
had softened once civil authority replaced military authority. Dalton recommended that libelers
“be bound to their good behavior, as disturbers of the peace, whether they be the contrivers, the
procurers, or the publishers of the Libell: for such libeling and defamation tendeth to the raysing
of quarrels, and…to breach the peace.” 103 Yet, the fine of 10,000 pounds tobacco was staggering
in comparison to other fines the court justices levied. Had the commissioners considered them
elite women, their political activism may not have “provoke[d] criticism” based solely on their
sex. According to historian Mary Beth Norton, their sex did not necessarily exclude colonial
women from having a formal political voice (although had they been elites, they may not have
used such a seemingly vulgar accusation in order to promote their preferences in vestrymen).
But their status combined with their sex did. In exacting the fine they did, the court
commissioners confirmed to Elizabeth Frith Woods, despite her social connections, and to
Johanna Poynter, that they were not elites, and that targeting officeholders with such scandalous
words would not be tolerated. Ordinary women like Elizabeth Frith Woods were regarded much
102
Martin Ingram, “Ridings, Rough Music and the ‘Reform of Popular Culture’ in Early Modern England,”
Past and Present 105 (November, 1984), 82, 86.
103
161.
116
more harshly, revealing Virginia’s Englishmen’s pervasive concern with status. 104
That the court commissioners named the husbands as they ordered the fine seems to
follow the English ideal of coverture. The commissioners attached a condition to the fine for
both Woods and Poynter: “the obligation” that if the women should “misbehave, contrary to an
order past this day concerning any neighbors for a year from this day, this obligation is to
stand.” 105 The commissioners’ order made the husband responsible financially for the wife’s
behavior, for an able patriarch would have exerted his masculine authority over the dependents
in his household, including his wife. Like William Gaskins in Accomack County, John Woods
and Thomas Poynter failed to control their wives’ gossip. T hey were of a higher status than the
Gaskinses which probably saved their wives from corporal punishment, but the large fine was a
clear message to these men to control their households. The court commissioners imposed the
fine, seemingly following the cultural tradition of coverture. But was this really the tradition that
the English legal community expected the county commissioners to follow? Most of Virginia’s
commissioners had no formal legal training; they relied on manuals written for justices of the
peace like Michael Dalton’s Countrey Justice. Dalton’s manual guided unschooled justices in
applying English law. 106 The York County commissioners required a bond for good behavior as
suggested by Dalton, but they also could have held Elizabeth Frith Woods and Johanna Poynter
personally responsible for their actions. Dalton’s only mention of women covert in the 1618
edition of The Countrey Justice was under the heading “Ryotts: What persons may commit a
Ryott, etc.” In this section Dalton wrote:
104
Mary Beth Norton, Separate by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 3, 9-36; 41-70.
105
Duvall, \ 51.
106
In fact, the York County commissioners ordered their clerk to send for “Dalton’s Justice of Peace and
Office of a Sheriff” as well as “Swinborne’s Book of Will & Testaments.” Weisiger, York County Records, 16651772, 238.
117
If a woman covert shall commit any Ryott, or doe any trespasse or other wrong, shee is
punishable for it…if a woman covert without her husband be indicted of a Trespasse,
Ryott, or any other wrong, there the wife shall answer and be partie to the judgement
onely; and in such case the fine set upon the wife shall not be levied upon the
husband…” 107
Coverture as explained by Dalton in 1618 exempted husbands from responsibility for
their wives’ actions of riot, trespass, or “any other wrong.” Had the York County commissioners
followed Dalton’s recommendations for English justices, they would have held Elizabeth Frith
Woods and Johanna Poynter solely responsible for their transgression. Instead, they held the
husbands, John Woods and Thomas Poynter, responsible through the bond requirement. Though
Dalton was written in 1618, the explanation of women covert continued in later editions. By
1704, William Nelson’s The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace, recommended more
specific treatment of women covert. He limited their separate punishment to women who
committed felonies, removing Dalton’s inclusive “any trespasse or other wrong.” 108 The York
County justices held Woods and Poynter responsible for their wives’ gossip at a time when the
manuals they relied on for instruction were unclear. Even Dalton was unsure what to do with
gossips. In one section of his manual, he wrote that anyone who broke the peace with their
speech was subject to a bond for good behavior, yet in another section, he instructed that wives
in particular were responsible, both in body and in purse, for their own behavior. In the case of
Elizabeth Frith Woods, the York County commissioners applied justice with the ambiguity, or
flexibility, Dalton intended in a way that reaffirmed their authority and the authority of the
vestry.
Elizabeth Woods, Johanna Poynter and Elineaor Cooper believed that Thomas Bromfield
and Robert Cobbs were unfit for their leadership roles and believed they should have been
107
108
Dalton, 196-197.
William Nelson, The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace (London: Charles Harper, 1704; reprint
118
relieved of their duties. They wanted their accusations to be known in order to sway voting
members of the community to do just that. Although women were left out of formal political
processes, they still exercised their political voices during a time when freeholders of the parish
elected vestrymen. Their gossip was a political act. If the two men had acted in some way
unprofessionally in their official capacity as parish leaders, the gossip was the women’s avenue
to influence a vote. The York County case of Elizabeth Frith Woods and her co-conspirators
shows that women who have been historically anonymous because they lacked elite status and
political connections attempted to exert political power. The contrast between Bromfield and
Cobbs and Woods and Poynter also shows how pervasive the issue of social rank was throughout
Virginia in the early part of the seventeenth century. In the end, Elizabeth Frith Woods of York
County, Virginia, may have been unsuccessful in her demand for a formal political voice, but her
actions in 1658 demonstrate that ordinary women were as concerned with political issues as elite
men, using their gossip to challenge those they believed to be unfit for office.
ECCO), 239-240.
119
Map of York County Parishes
Source: George Carrington Mason, “The Colonial Churches of York County, Virginia,” WMQ 19
(April, 1939), 163.
120
PART TWO
MAINTAINING MASCULINE AUTHORITY IN VIRGINIA, 1660-1677
Chapter Four
Disorderly Speech and Gender in Early Virginia Law-making
In Part One, I showed the lengths to which some early Virginia residents went to protect
their own reputations and malign others’ between 1630 and 1660. In this part, I show the
inconsistencies that developed between the General Assembly’s efforts to control women’s
gossip through legislation that departed from the English ideals of coverture and county justices’
application of those laws as they developed their own county customs. By the 1660s, a newlyestablished elite emerged in Virginia and sought to protect masculine authority and socioeconomic rank through policy-making that attacked disorderly speech. During this period, the
burgesses of the General Assembly also attacked women’s speech in particular, revealing the
problems in the colony as they saw them, and the methods they could use to solve them. In the
first part, I showed Virginia leaders’ assumptions of coverture when they created laws and
inflicted punishment for women’s gossip. In this part, I show that the ideal of coverture stymied
Virginia leaders’ fundamental goal to have authority over women. They rewrote laws and
adjusted punishments in ways that revealed the gap between coverture as a prescription by legal
commentators and coverture as a description of gender and power relations in early Virginia
communities. This chapter examines the General Assembly’s changes in statute law in the 1660s
and 1670s. The following chapters examine how court justices of Accomack and York counties
applied the General Assembly’s laws. The justices’ discretionary actions reveal how they
adapted statutes to solve problems in their particular environments. Despite specific instructions
given by the General Assembly, the county courts applied colonial laws as they saw fit.
The growing pains suffered by Virginia in 1660s and 1670s resulted from a combination
121
of an increasing immigrant population and post-Restoration policymaking. The colony’s
population increased, mainly through white servant immigration. From 1660 to 1680 the
population grew from about 25,000 to about 60,000, the highest rate of immigration during the
seventeenth century. 1 Male servants and former servants who did not have the same access to
land and public office as their predecessors made up more than half the population. 2 The
General Assembly created no new counties after 1668, which limited the number of public
offices available to newcomers and new freemen. Moreover, colonial law and custom further
marginalized the political participation of white freemen. The actions of the post-Restoration
colonial government helped cement into place a colonial elite by consolidating power and
resources in fewer hands.
The restoration of the English monarchy significantly impacted the colony of Virginia at
the colonial and local levels. With Charles II’s reclamation of the throne, the Interregnum under
the Cromwells came to an end. During the Interregnum, the Virginia House of Burgesses
“reigned supreme,” although the processes that led to their power had started during William
Berkeley’s first tenure as governor. During his first administration, Berkeley cleverly forged
alliances with Virginia’s political elites, in part through urging the elected members of the
Assembly to meet separately from the Council of State, effectively creating a bicameral colonial
legislature. Following Berkeley’s departure from the governorship in 1652, the burgesses had
the power to delegate government responsibilities, including electing the governor, councilors,
and colonial secretary. Fundamentally, however, Virginia continued to function as it had under
Berkeley’s royal governorship. Most changes were “cosmetic” and included removing
1
Horn, 136-137. According to Horn, half the total number of immigrants who settled along the Chesapeake
in the seventeenth century did so from 1650-1680.
2
Billings, Colonial Virginia, 80.
122
references to the Crown from statutes, commissions, oaths, legal papers, and court procedures.3
With the restoration of the crown in 1660, and the nearly simultaneous return of Berkeley to the
governorship in Virginia, colonial leadership set out to re-align itself with England’s royal
government. 4
William Berkeley, a younger son of an English gentry family, was knighted in the 1630s.
He left England in 1641, disgruntled with Charles I, yet remained moderately royalist. He
employed his well-connected family in England, including his brother who was “personally close
to the king,” to pull strings, and perhaps grease a few palms, gaining his first governor’s
commission in Virginia, replacing an embattled Sir Francis Wyatt in 1641. He deftly combined
his well-honed manners, quick wit and superior intellect to forge alliances in Virginia. In
particular, he emphasized his similarity to other Virginia elites; he came to Virginia for
opportunities that were not available to him in England. 5 After nearly a decade-long exile, he
returned to the governorship in 1660 upon the death of Samuel Mathews, the third governor
during the Interregnum, after members of the Council had called upon him to serve as governor
pro tempore. Once he called the General Assembly into sessions, the burgess confirmed him as
governor. He remained Virginia’s governor until Bacon’s Rebellion, the culmination of fifteen
years of colonial tensions, resulted in his recall.
As the restored governor, Berkeley dealt with many problems in his second
administration. He and the colonial government faced threats to the social order that Virginia’s
leaders strove to create and maintain throughout the seventeenth century, an order that
3
Billings, A Little Parliament, 25- 35.
In large part, Berkeley called for a new election of burgesses in 1661 to transition from parliamentary to
royal government, to win favor with the new Assembly to push through his economic policies, and to gain authority
to negotiate with England over Navigation Acts. See Warren M. Billings, “Sir William Berkeley and the
Diversification of the Virginia Economy,” VMHB 104(Autumn, 1996), 446-447.
5
Billings, A Little Parliament, 73-76.
4
123
emphasized masculine authority. Many Virginians challenged elite masculine authority at a time
during Berkeley’s administration when Virginia suffered an economic depression, a result of
overproduction of tobacco, much of which was inferior in quality. Planters grew anxious over
falling tobacco prices and increasing debt due to the overproduction of tobacco, civil strife in
England, the implementation of navigation acts, and wars with the Dutch. To add to their
growing concerns, the Assembly and the county courts levied more taxes to fund the
administration of government. Bacon’s Rebellion was the result of what Kathleen Brown has
called a “crisis of leadership” as colonists struggled over “who constituted legitimate political
authority and about what it meant to be a male citizen.” The problems of the burgeoning colony
irritated ordinary men who became “unwilling to defer” to the established colonial elite. 6 Small
planters who had diminished access to land and authority questioned the elite masculine
authority figures who had established themselves during the first half of the century. When
women, servants, and slaves participated in rebellion alongside Bacon’s core followers, the
colonial government considered this a total disruption of social order. 7
Englishmen who immigrated to Virginia continued to use social connections in Virginia
and England to establish themselves as members of the colonial elite once they arrived. 8 These
men exerted their masculine authority through the acquisition of public office thanks to those
connections. By the 1660s, they monopolized public offices. Under Berkeley, colonial burgesses
held the only regularly elected offices in Virginia. 9 Most burgesses elected to the General
Assembly served simultaneously as county court justices, with the exception of those who were
6
Brown, Good Wives Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs,, 138-9.
Ibid., 140.
8
See Evans, 7-9.
9
Billings, A Little Parliament, 104. By this point, new vestrymen were generally appointed by those
already seated, although there is some evidence in Accomack County that parishioners continued to elect vestries
until at least March 1672/3 when twelve vestrymen were listed as “lately elected.” JoAnn Riley McKey, Accomack
County, Virginia Court Order Abstracts,1671-1673 vol. 3 ( Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1996), 120.
7
124
appointed justices-of-quorum and those who served as sheriff. This consolidated power into
fewer hands.
The make-up of the post-Restoration General Assembly buttressed the authority of the
elite males who served as burgesses. Composed of newly elected burgesses with only a few
remaining from the previous Assembly, they sat through seventeen consecutive sessions before
their dissolution, which made the General Assembly of March 1660/61 – May 1676 the longest
of any in the history of Virginia. Later historians have posited various arguments as to why
Governor William Berkeley kept this “Long Assembly” in session. 10 This particular group of
Berkeley’s favored burgesses remained together for over fifteen years. The duration of their
tenure served to entrench a white planter elite that dominated local politics. As Billings explains,
keeping the Assembly in session deepened their loyalty to the governor, augmented the stature of
the House of Burgesses, and eased the passage of Berkeley’s policies. 11 In this quid pro quo
relationship, Berkeley achieved his policy goals of renewing royalist loyalties and the ruling
planter elite were content to dominate local politics.
Through legislation, the new Assembly consolidated local power by making the county
court the most important local institution. First, the burgesses ordered their clerks to write a new
edition of Virginia’s laws to be sure that they conformed to the rule of the restored monarchy.
Many of the laws reiterated earlier colonial statutes; the clerks adapted others. The Assembly
accepted the revisions and then set about writing new statutes. 12 In the new statutes, the parish
became subordinate to the county and no longer served as the “bases of representation” in the
election of burgesses. 13 Voters were also limited to choosing only two burgesses per county.
10
For more information on the “Long Assembly” see Billings, A Little Parliament.
Billings, A Little Parliament, 152.
12
Hening, Statutes vol III,, iii-iv.
13
For an example of burgesses representing parishes, see Fleet, Abstracts Vol. III, 50. In 1646, John Chew
11
125
These decisions gave the county court justices more control over who would be elected to
represent them in Jamestown, and over time it became customary for only seated justices to serve
in this capacity. Berkeley had set out to establish a renewed sense of order following the
Interregnum, and his actions resulted in enhancement of the authority of the local courts. Few
men who were not also county justices served as burgesses after 1662. County residents elected
the best-known men in the county, those who already served as justices (with many
simultaneously serving as vestrymen). Together, the governor and the burgesses of the
Assembly wrote new policies that made county courts the center of local authority and the
colony decreasingly democratized. This shift is part of what David Hackett Fischer has
described as the “distinctive character” that the “culture of Virginia gradually took on…during
the second half of the seventeenth century.” 14
From 1660 through 1677, justices who also sat as burgesses in Virginia’s General
Assembly considered more precisely which types of disorderly speech most threatened the
preservation of an English culture of patriarchy and social order, particularly “false news”
against officials and women’s speech. They passed legislation they thought would silence the
gossips in their communities. In this post-Restoration period, the elites who governed Virginia
became firmly entrenched as a ruling oligarchy, passing laws that protected their political and
socio-economic status.
The issues the burgesses faced regarding speech crimes were twofold: their perception
that gossip and slander were on the rise, and the danger that gossip and slander posed to social
order. The burgesses’ concerns were reflected in the legislation they passed during a session of
the Assembly that lasted from 23 March 1660 through 23 December 1662. New laws limited
petitioned the court to demand payment from York Parish for his expenses incurred during his time as burgess “for
the said Parish.”
126
slander suits to only actionable words and then specifically targeted women who gossiped. In the
“brabling women” law, burgesses singled out women who slandered and scandalized their
neighbors, and sought to protect the “poore husbands” who were “caste in great damages” as a
result of litigation. The Assembly instructed the county court justices to duck women who
slandered their neighbors, regardless of the women’s marital status. Husbands of gossiping
women were no longer financially responsible for their wives’ disorderly speech. 15
Despite a skewed sex ratio that favored men throughout most of the seventeenth century,
Virginia’s elite men were clearly uncomfortable with the increasing number of women. 16 As the
number of women in the colony grew, they became the focus of more of the Assembly’s laws.
The “brabling women” statute meant to control gossip was one of the first of the 1662 session’s
laws enacted. Other laws concerning women followed. For example, for the first time
Virginia’s colonial government legislated that the status of children born to an “Englishman” and
“negro woman…slave or free,” was to follow the status (slave or free) of the mother, connecting
sex, race and socio-economic status. 17 The Assembly was concerned with the labor status of
white women as well, writing in two separate acts that white women who worked the fields were
tithable while white women who performed domestic labor were not. In the wake of Bacon’s
Rebellion, the 1677 Assembly further intertwined the issue of gender and status when they
enacted legislation that declared women’s speech potentially treasonous. 18 The burgesses
ordered that for a first offense in which a women covert “presume[d] to speake, write, disperse or
14
Fischer, 256.
Hening, Statutes, vol. II, 166-167. The statutes also stated that women were to be ducked once for each
500 lbs. tobacco awarded as damages if their husbands refused to pay. See Snyder, Brabbling Women, for a more
complete treatment of different forms of speech targeted. For an analysis of the new slander legislation see Bowles,
422-423. Bowles links the legislation to the increase in lawyers appearing in court and Berkeley’s desire to limit
their presence, as opposed to an actual increase in the number of slander suits.
16
Sex ratio remained around 3:1 in favor of men. Morgan, American Slavery- American Freedom, 407.
17
Hening, Statutes, vol. II, 170.
18
See Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs, 147-149 and Snyder, Brabbling
15
127
publish by words, writeing or otherwise any matter or thing tending to rebellion,” she would
receive twenty lashes, for a second offense thirty lashes, and for a third the Assembly would
prosecute her as a “rebell and traytor.” With these punishments the burgesses again singled out
married women. They treated unmarried women differently: 1000 lbs tobacco fine and standing
in the pillory for a first offense, double the fine for a second offense, and for a third, prosecution
for treason. As Krystyna Puć has pointed out, married women could escape the prescribed
whipping by paying a fine. This allowed women with husbands who were willing and able to
pay the fine to escape the more severe corporal punishment. Thus, a woman’s marital and socioeconomic status determined the severity of her punishment. 19
The statute designed to control female speech diverged from the English cultural
understanding of coverture in which women’s legal identity was transferred to their husbands’ or
masters’. This divergence reflects the difficulty the burgesses faced in creating laws that
followed the ideal while maintaining social order. Although their legislative actions diverge
from the cultural ideal of coverture, they preserved patriarchal ideals by asserting their own
masculine authority. Virginia’s elites believed that if the colony’s husbands could not control
their wives directly in their households, they government would do so indirectly through
legislation. This way, they reinforced a hierarchy of elite men ruling over all others. The laws
aided husbands by ensuring women’s subordinate status. From the point of view of Virginia’s
elite men, coverture was not always the answer in governing women.
Women, introduction. Hening, Statutes, Vol. II, 385.
19
Puć, 127, 128;
128
Table 2. Virginia Laws Governing Speech, 1650s-1670s
1657
Law against false news
March 1661/2
Reiteration of law on false news
March 1661/2
Law on limiting defamation suits
December 1662
“Brabling women” law
1677
Law on women’s speech as treason
Source: William Waller Hening, ed., Statues at Large vol. 1, 434; vol. 2, 73, 109, 166, and 384-385.
According to the “brabling women” policy and the 1677 statute that followed, married
women were no longer assured the protection of coverture in the matter of speech crimes. But in
actuality, English legal traditions dealing with women in misdemeanor cases had not strictly
followed coverture since at least 1618, a point conveyed in Michael Dalton’s manual for justices
of the peace, The Countrey Justice, and later in William Nelson’s guide for English justices of
the peace (See Appendices A and B). The laws the Assembly wrote during the 1660s reflected
long-standing common practice of English justices. The ideal of coverture dictated that a
woman’s legal identity be transferred to her husband at marriage. But, as noted in Dalton,
Nelson, and in the Virginia statutes, the legal standard was much more flexible. The more strict
application of coverture to married women was linked to the misinterpretation of Blackstone’s
Commentaries by men who wished to govern women’s behavior in the nineteenth century. 1 Yet,
even Blackstone’s work, written in the mid-eighteenth century, was ambiguous in its explanation
of coverture (See Appendix C). As Holly Brewer explains, by the nineteenth century, a
“devolved” legal status of women was placed onto colonial period statutes, when, in reality,
women’s status in Early Virginia was much more flexible.
Implementing the English cultural ideal of coverture was a difficult task for Virginia’s
1
See Brewer, 228-323.
129
leaders. Throughout the seventeenth century, women acted in ways that were outside of the
cultural ideal. Terri L. Snyder has argued that women from all levels of the social spectrum
strategically used their “brabbling” speeches to push against the “practice of mastery;” Linda
Sturtz, throughout her work, shows the flexibility of the understanding and application of
property law as married women fought to retain their inheritance from second spouses; and Mary
Beth Norton explains that social status, rather than sex, was the “key determinant” of both men’s
and women’s ability to exert political power in seventeenth-century Virginia. 2 My own research
reveals the activities of Goodwife Michall Huitt, the subject of the chapter that follows. As a
married woman, Michall acted on her own behalf in the county court and supervised the
transportation of servants from England. The Assembly’s policy-making efforts in the 1660s and
1670s reveal their own recognition of the difficulties in maintaining the English cultural ideal of
coverture in the growing colony. As they tried to maintain a society based on English ideals,
leaders used coverture as a tool that they shaped into whatever they needed it to be to maintain
masculine authority. As fathers of their communities, court justices took the place of masculine
authority within the household by controlling women’s speech. They used their commissions to
maintain direct impact on and authority over women, not through their husbands under strict
ideals of coverture.
Regardless of their reading of coverture and its precedents, the 1662 and 1677 statutes do
indicate that the Englishmen who controlled the General Assembly considered women’s gossip
dangerous. With the growing number of women in the colony, gossip increasingly challenged
men’s efforts at maintaining order when gossip was combined with other perceived threats. By
the 1660s, the Assemblymen passed laws specifically targeting women, willing to put aside the
cultural ideal of coverture when they believed circumstances called for it. The burgesses may
2
Snyder, Brabbling Women, 3; Sturtz, Within Her Power; Norton, Separated by Their Sex, 2.
130
have recognized that while statutes did not apply coverture, the practice of the county justices
seemed to. New legislation would serve as an instruction to the county justices to treat gossips
separately from their husbands.
Berkeley and the Long Assembly enhanced the power and prestige of the office of
county court justice. 3 The Assembly limited the number of justices to eight per county in order
to prevent factions from rising against each other and to better “preserve the peace.” 4 Berkeley
reserved the power to appoint commissioners but, by the late 1640s, this was mostly a formality;
he relied on the suggestions of sitting justices to make new appointments.
5
The justices also
recommended appointments for court clerk and sheriff. 6 In recognition of the distance between
the counties and the colonial government, the Assembly allowed the appointed justices to enact
bylaws in addition to their other judicial and administrative duties. By March 1661/2, the county
court justices formally acquired most duties of English secular justices of the peace and
ecclesiastical judges, although they had already carried out many of those duties for some time. 7
The enhancement of their duties and privileges and their distance from Jamestown limited the
colonial government’s direct control over the county courts. As the governor’s involvement with
local government lessened, control over local affairs was left to the county court justices who
had less legal experience than many of their predecessors. Most had to rely on “acquired
experience and common sense” in their adjudication and administration of county affairs.
During this same period elections for parish vestrymen were effectively ended. Since
many justices were already vestrymen, this act consolidated local power of church and state into
3
Billings, A Little Parliament, 27.
Ibid.; Hening, Statutes, vol. 2, 21.
5
Billings, A Little Parliament, 44.
6
Billings, The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, 74. Via their suggestion, the governor appointed
one justice from among them to serve as sheriff and then they generally served in rotation.
7
Billings, A Little Parliament, 43. Billings writes that in exchange for the burgesses passing the governor’s
legislative agenda, especially that which concerned the “colony’s economy and its external affairs,” the governor
4
131
hands of few with little-to-no representation at the local level. After the Restoration, the
Assembly limited each parish vestry to twelve men, designated the minister as their presiding
officer, and ordered the annual selection of two vestrymen to serve as churchwardens. 8 The
democratic nature of the vestry ended. Sitting vestrymen selected replacements to fill vacancies.
By eliminating parish elections, the burgesses of the General Assembly placed the authority of
the church parish in the hands of a self-appointed local elite who had sworn their allegiance to
the Church of England. Combined with the power invested in the county court justices, the
Assembly consolidated local authority in an entrenched colonial elite in an effort to maintain
authority and stability at the local level. 9
William Berkeley and the General Assembly believed the enhanced power of the county
court would relieve the colonial government of the tedious day-to-day administration of the
growing colony and make justice more convenient to the colonists. The abuse of that power was
a frequent consequence. County officials fought with one another as they sought to maintain
their power. Moreover, they showed little sensitivity to other county residents. As appointed
officials, they were not reliant on residents to maintain their office; nevertheless, residents, often
women, challenged them with their words. 10 The chapters that follow reveal the challenges
faced by county court justices throughout this period.
Accomack County underwent tremendous internal struggles in the midst of its
transformation from a tobacco economy to one more diversified. This shift was evident by the
1670s when tobacco export earnings per tithable had already dropped to less than half of those
gave them wide latitude in local governance.
8
Ibid, 138, Hening, Statutes vol. II, 25, 44-45.
9
Ibid, 139.
10
Billings, Colonial Virginia, 80.
132
elsewhere in the Chesapeake. 11 Eastern Shoremen did not have the same concerns as York
County over legislating slave labor, since the transition to slave labor was delayed in
comparison. From 1650 to 1660, slaves were imported to the Eastern Shore by Dutch traders,
but after 1660, when trade with Dutch was prohibited by England, fresh imports of slaves ceased.
Planters instead relied on indentured servants or slaves purchased from the York and James
River regions. 12 During this period, though, county residents faced conflicts with Indians, border
battles, and a rogue county justice who has come to personify the turbulence of the Eastern Shore
at mid-century. Accomack County residents were more concerned with local issues than with
problems in colonial government. Removed from the space of colonial government, their
concerns were with those who had the most immediate control over them. Residents had
transferred the geographic separation from the mainland onto their understanding of government.
While they still recognized the authority of the colonial government, the distance and difficulty
of traveling to the mainland made their own local government even more central in their lives. 13
On one hand, Accomack County residents had a greater stake in their local government, and
challenged its authority. On the other, court justices were more sensitive to those challenges and
needed to find a way to impose their authority on residents.
York County developed quite differently than the Eastern Shore. These differences
became more pronounced by mid-century. The county developed a tobacco economy which
further enriched prosperous planters and made the county one of the wealthiest in the colony. 14
Situated on some of the most fertile land in the tidewater region, the York elite enjoyed the
11
By 1687, tobacco made up only 4.2 percent of the Eastern Shore’s total harvest. Breen, Myne Owne
Ground, 39; Lorena S. Walsh, “Summing the Parts: Implications for Estimating Chesapeake Output and Income
Subregionally,” William and Mary Quarterly 56 (Jan 1999), 59.
12
Walsh, Motives of Honor, Pleasure and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake,
1607-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 330.
13
Breen, 44.
14
Bruce,433.
133
profits from the production of the desirable sweet-scented tobacco that was highly sought after in
European markets. Unlike the Eastern Shore, York County planters were not interested in
diversifying their economy. They remained almost singularly focused on tobacco production. As
a result, York planters found African slaves a more attractive labor source than the dwindling,
more expensive English indentured servants. 15 Home to a concentration of planter wealth, the
county became one of two Virginia areas where slavery was most evident by mid-century and
York County became one of the first slave societies in the British-American colonies. 16 The
social order of York became more stratified as slaves were considered, culturally and legally, as
chattel, a rank below even the lowliest white servant. The 1662 law that confirmed slavery as a
hereditary condition affirmed the practices and wishes of Virginia’s slave owners, many of
whom were York County planters. 17 The General Assembly’s statutes regulating the status and
behavior of slaves coincided with those regulating women, but in York County’s social and
economic environment, court officials seemed to have less concern with the petty differences
revealed in women’s words. They did act when women’s words were a direct threat to
masculine authority.
15
In “From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System,” Russell Menard
argues that planters turned to slave labor only after the indentured servant supply fell. Southern Studies XVI (1997),
362-390. Lorena Walsh argues that the Chesapeake’s elite planters could have afforded indentured servants, but
preferred African slaves, especially since Virginia lawmakers allowed African slaves as headright claims throughout
the seventeenth century. Motives of Honor, 142.
16
Lorena S. Walsh, Motives of Honor, 139-140.
17
Ibid., 138-139.
134
Tobacco Producing Regions
=== Sweet-scented tobacco subregion
…… Oronoco tobacco subregion
| | | Peripheral Subregion- diversified economy
Source: Lorena S. Walsh, “Summing the Parts: Implications for Estimating Chesapeake Output and Income
Subregionally,” WMQ 56 (Jan 1999), 54.
The next two chapters illustrate the following two points. First, despite the new statutes,
women who gossiped were rarely treated in the harsh manner the Assembly prescribed in their
statutes. In the few instances for which justices did order corporal punishment, their own status
as county leaders was at stake. Second, while there were very few cases of gossip written into
135
the county court records, most cases that the clerks did record included multiple depositions.
The attention they paid to the content of these depositions indicates that county officials
continued to consider women’s gossip disorderly. In the years that followed the 1662 statute, the
small number of cases heard before the country courts indicates that women’s gossip was not a
tremendous problem, but the justices still carefully scrutinized gossips and their words.
Evident in their newly written statutes, the burgesses of Virginia’s General Assembly
expected local officials to see that women were punished, not necessarily according to their or
their husbands’ socio-economic status, but according to the perceived gendered danger of their
words. Elites in Accomack and York counties, though, protected their authority over people of
lower status. In what Snyder calls the “rehabilitation of patriarchy,” elite males who governed
the colony sought to maintain social order that, in places, was becoming more stratified. Those
who had access to the cornerstones of status - land, connections, and political office - fashioned
laws to protect what they had gained. When women gossiped about non-elites, justices
continued to punish them according to status and often continued using the standard of coverture,
but when women gossiped about justices themselves, magistrates punished them after weighing
the utility or danger of their words, often ignoring the Assembly’s statutes concerning coverture.
In either case, as chapters five and six demonstrate, the justices reacted to women’s words in
ways that were meant to enhance their own status and maintain a social hierarchy that non-elites
continually challenged.
This trend reflects an adaptation of English cultural ideals of coverture, and gives a more
realistic look into the law and the disconnect between cultural ideals and the reality of life in
colonial America. The changes in colonial statute occurred at the same time the colony was
experience a growing population through continued immigration. The burgeoning colony’s
136
county courts had a growing body of civil issues on which to rule. Recognizing that “frivolous”
litigation brought about by slander had the potential to overwhelm the county courts, the General
Assembly set limits. At the same time, the burgesses became increasingly concerned with
women’s words. Their lack of concern with the frivolity of slander ended when female gossips
were involved, indicating their concern with maintaining elite masculine authority over an
ordered society. Berkeley and the royalist burgesses he helped position in the General Assembly
attempted to remove any sort of “leveling” sentiment that may have developed during the
Interregnum. The burgesses, through their legislative acts, conveyed what they believed society
should look like. The county court records, on the other hand, reflect what society actually did
look like, for the clerks documented the problems that actually concerned the justices and county
residents. This complicates the notion of law being generally reactionary. The General
Assembly’s growing concern over the danger of women’s speech only limitedly reflected the
county court justices’ concerns over gossips in their communities. When Accomack County’s
justices acted on cases of women’s gossip, they often did so with ambivalence, while York
County justices acted with fury when they acted at all. An examination of women’s speech as
recorded in Accomack and York counties from the 1660s through 1677 illustrates the
complicated relationship between the colonial government, the county courts, and the people
they governed.
137
Chapter Five
Women’s Gossip and the Politics of Morality in Accomack County, 1660s-1677
Each year between 1661 and Bacon’s Rebellion, elected representatives from every
county in Virginia gathered at Jamestown to create laws that were supposed to govern the entire
colony. Some of those laws specifically attacked women’s gossip. Back home in their own
counties, however, those same men faced difficulties applying the very laws they had helped
create. Accomack County provides an excellent example of this inconsistency. When face to
face with their constituents, Accomack County leaders were ambivalent in their treatment of
gossips. In some cases, these county justices sought to control gossips and their speech as
prescribed by the General Assembly. In other cases, the court justices used women’s gossip to
morally police their community and supplement their own authority. The latter cases reveal that,
in the eyes of the county court justices, colonial statutes did not address the needs of their
community. Because these local justices dealt with the problems of the community directly and
on a daily basis, they improvised policy as they went along. Their local adaptations of colonial
statutes regarding women’s speech were sometimes inconsistent, but they made these adaptations
to serve their community’s, and often their own, particular needs.
The cases of Marrion Cornelius and Mary White demonstrate how seventeenth-century
Accomack County court justices could and would adapt colonial law to protect their masculine
authority. Quite simply, Mary told Marrion some bits of salacious gossip regarding Mary’s aunt,
Goody Michall Huitt, and Marrion freely shared this gossip with their neighbors. As Marrion
spread the word, she embellished the central story: Robert Huitt’s wife had stolen clothing and
medical instruments before she arrived in Virginia, and Robert himself had stolen hogs. On 16
July 1663, the Accomack County court justices ruled that Marrion Cornelius “hath Repeatheth
138
sevril speeches” that were “much to the disparagement of the wife of Robert Huit” –speeches
that Marrion “confest” she had heard from Mary White.
1
The gossip had originated with Mary White, but Marrion Cornelius carried the story.
Marrion repeated Mary’s remarks in the presence of at least three different people: Daniell
Mackare, Joseph Pittman, and Susan Hall. The story changed as each of these witnesses testified
in open court, evident in the county clerk’s recording of the several depositions. Daniell
Mackare swore Marrion Cornelius told him that Mary White told her Michall Huitt, “when she
was last in England” stole a gown and a hood. Joseph Pittman, a servant to the Huitts, testified
that Marrion, on information passed by Mary, told him that Michall Huitt, “when she was in
England last” stole the items mentioned in the first deposition, but also included Goody Huitt’s
theft of “A Smoothing Iron” and Robert Huitt’s theft of between “thirteen and fourteene
hoggs.” Pittman also swore that Marrion, when confronted by Goody Huitt for her gossiping,
replied that she spoke “out of Spight.” Susan Hall, another of the Huitts’ servants, swore that a
spiteful Marrion Cornelius had indeed spread Mary’s gossip as related in the first two accounts,
but added “A Scarfe” to the items allegedly stolen by Goody Huitt. 2 Court records indicate that
Michall Huitt was Mary’s aunt, and that the Whites’ and Huitts’ homes were located near each
other, making the Huitts a convenient target for Mary White’s gossip.
In recording these three depositions, the county clerk did not clearly indicate whether
Marrion or the witnesses exaggerated Mary’s original story about Michall, but Marrion certainly
did embellish the story about Robert, declaring that he had stolen not just one, but “thirteen or
1
JoAnn Riley McKey, Accomack County, Virginia Court Orders, 1663-1666, vol.1 (Bowie, MD: Heritage
Books, 1996) 19 and Accomack County Deeds, Wills, Etc., microfilm, Reel 1 (available at Library of Virginia),
18b-19a. The ellipses in the transcription represent illegible words on the microfilmed copies of the original records.
2
McKey Court Orders, vol. 1, 19 and ACDW microfilm Reel 1, 19a
139
fourteen hoggs.” 3 Marrion initially stated that Mary told her Robert stole and butchered only
one hog that was not his own. 4 The depositions illustrate the power of gossip to level the social
playing field. As she gossiped, Marrion acted as an informant to neighbors and (ultimately)
county justices, repeating Mary White’s scandalous allegations to a larger audience.
When the justices summoned Marrion Cornelius to court, she did not behave demurely.
She did not quietly admit her guilt and accept the justice’s ruling. Instead, she put up a fight by
forcing her case to be tried openly. Warren Billings explains that “if a defendant responded with
an admission of guilt the case proceeded no further” but “if the defendant contested the
allegation the court called those persons who had witnessed the offense” and compelled them to
testify in open court. 5 Each of the three people who testified against Marrion Cornelius “was
sworn and examined in open Court” on 16 July 1663. Despite this effort to defend herself (or
her story), the court justices found Marrion guilty of spreading Mary’s “disparaging” story about
the Huitts. The justices required Marrion to make a public apology for her actions in court and
in both churches in the county. 6
Marrion Cornelius had started a local scandal that had many repercussions. On the same
day that the court justices passed judgment on Marrion Cornelius for gossiping about Goody
Michall Huitt, they also forced Michall’s husband Robert to defend himself against charges of
theft. Marrion and her husband Hugh to gave a joint deposition that detailed events surrounding
Robert’s alleged hog theft. Several other witnesses also testified to the charges of theft. Robert,
in turn, brought in his own witnesses to testify on his behalf, including an old friend, Robert
3
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 19, and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 18b-19a.
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 20 and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 19-20a.
5
According to Billings, if a “defendant responded with an admission of guilt, the case proceeded no
further. The justices pronounced sentence, ordered it executed by the sheriff, and directed the clerk to record the
case’s disposition. If the defendant contested the allegation the court called those persons who had witnessed the
offense. By act of assembly all witnesses were required to appear in open court and to give their testimony under
oath in the defendant’s presence.” Billings, “Pleading. Procedure, and Practice,” 575.
4
140
Bayly; his nephew, William White (Mary’s husband); his servant, Joseph Pittman; and several
others who defended Robert’s actions and his character. 7 Robert’s efforts at defending himself
proved futile. He was convicted of stealing hogs and cattle and fined 2000 pounds of tobacco. 8
In a subsequent court session, Marrion and her husband Hugh filed suits related to Marrion’s trial
for gossip. 9
The story continued to reverberate. Two months later, on 18 August 1663, the county
justices tried Mary White and held her accountable for originating the unflattering story that
“hath much Scandallized and abused (her Aunt) Goody Huitt.” Following Marrion’s lead, Mary
fought the charges against her, requiring an open trial with verbal testimony. One of the
witnesses was Marrion herself. The justices placed Mary in the sheriff’s custody until she made
a public apology in court and in the two county churches, just as they had required Marrion to
do. 10
At some point during the court proceedings Marrion Cornelius and her husband filed
suits against Mary White. 11 The court cases must have been momentous because Mary’s tales
regarding the scandalous activities of her aunt and uncle developed into an affair that took five
months to put behind her. Finally, on 17 December 1663, the court justices found no merit to
Marrion’s suit and dismissed the case. 12 Marrion Cornelius and Mary White stayed on the right
side of the county justices following this episode, at least on the Eastern Shore. They were
6
McKey, Court Orders, Vol. 1, 19, and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 18b-19a.
Ibid.
8
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 20. Cattle and hog hides with missing heads or ears indicated that the
person in possession of them may have stolen them, as the ownership of hogs and cows was indicated by ear
markings. An often-used excuse for possessing such an animal, one which Robert Huitt employed, was that dogs
attacked the animal, causing the defect. McKey, Court Orders, Vol. 1, v-vi.
9
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 33, and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 57. Marrion and Hugh Cornelius filed
separate suites against Mary White. The suits were dismissed by the court, Hugh’s on August 18th and Marrion’s on
December 17th.
10
Ibid.
11
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 57. The grounds for this case are obscured by the court clerk, who chose
7
141
involved in no further court cases in either Accomack or Northampton counties after 1663.
The formal judicial proceedings instigated by Marrion and Mary’s gossip in the summer
of 1663 shows the uneasiness felt by the Accomack County court justices as they tried to apply
colonial statute law about women’s speech. The 1661 statute that the Assembly designed to limit
slander suits created a problem for these Accomack county justices. By compelling the two
gossips to make a public apology for their story about Michaell Huitt, the justices implicitly
declared that story to be slanderous, meaning the story was untrue, unproven, or unsubstantiated.
According to the 1661 slander statute, the county justices should have considered Marrion’s and
Mary’s words slander, as theft was an “actionable” offense. Yet the justices did not require the
husbands of either Marrion or Mary to pay a fine for slander as the law stipulated. Moreover,
with the passage of the 1662 “brabling women” law, the Assemblymen instructed court justices
to duck married women who had slandered their neighbors. Yet the Accomack justices required
only an apology from Marrion and Mary. They were the only Accomack County residents to
receive such a punishment during the time period under study. (See Table 5.1). By prosecuting
Robert for thievery, the justices showed that they took Mary and Marrion’s words seriously.
The Accomack county justices exercised considerable discretion in this situation.
Perhaps the county justices punished Marrion and Mary mildly because they knew or suspected
that Robert was guilty of theft. The laws as written by the Assembly did not cover all instances
of women’s gossip. Although Englishmen considered gossip to be unruly by its very nature, the
Accomack County court justices found it helpful in bringing to light the crimes of Accomack
County residents. This legal tension created a predicament for the county justices. How could
they use the information they gained from the women’s gossip while still maintaining their own
not to record them.
12
Ibid.
142
masculine authority over their community? They had to hold Marrion and Mary accountable for
their gossip to make clear that they, not gossiping women, were in charge of their county. The
court justices created their own precedents in their punishment of Marrion and Mary to fit the
situations that were peculiar to their community.
Robert’s problems with the law were not laid to rest quite as neatly as those of Marrion
and Mary. On 17 December 1663, the court justices ordered Robert to pay a fee to Daniell and
Norah Mackare for providing evidence on his behalf, as well as court costs. 13 A month later, the
justices ordered Robert to pay a neighbor, James Atkinson, 346 lbs of tobacco as well as court
costs for “several charges in a suit.” 14 This was probably related to the hog-stealing case of July
since the court initially awarded James 1000 lbs of tobacco for “informing” on Robert. The court
rescinded the award a month later, stating that the award was made in error and that Robert
would be required to pay the 1000 lbs of tobacco to the court instead. 15 He also would have
incurred the cost of the jury. 16
Two years later, in January of 1665/66, Robert was again accused of stealing livestock;
this time the charges resulted from his attempt to sell cow hides with missing ears to Edmund
Scarburgh II. 17 And, again, he was convicted and fined. 18 It is likely that the charges against
Robert in the summer of 1663, the result of gossip in the community, cast a shadow over
Robert’s character and made his actions a year later appear suspicious. Robert felt the effects of
the gossip of Marrion and Mary, whether it was true or not, for a year and half after the story was
13
Ibid, 58.
Ibid, 66.
15
Ibid, 35.
16
Billings, “Pleadings, Procedure, and Practice,” 576. Jury trials were not automatic, but could be
requested by the defendant, with the defendant covering the expense. So, in addition to paying his witnesses and an
additional fine to James Atkinson, the court justices required Robert to pay for the jury that found him guilty.
17
Robert Huitt was accused of theft again on January 16, 1665/66, and convicted of the theft on February
16, 1665/66. McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 140, 147-148.
18
Ibid, 47-48.
14
143
initiated.
The gossip spread by Marrion Cornelius and Mary White reveals the difficulties faced by
Virginia’s county leaders who struggled to uphold familiar standards of masculine authority.
Throughout the seventeenth century, English leaders in Virginia attempted to build a society
based on masculine authority. The colonial leaders of Virginia actively attempted to ensure that
women, children, and servants respected men’s rule within the home. The strict authority of
martial law was but a distant memory for the residents of Accomack County by the 1660s. The
foundation of authority now clearly emanated from the colonial legislature through the county
courts. They ruled over a colony made up of households that included not just men, but women
and children too. Justices thought it necessary to intercede in community disputes, even if those
disputes were considered petty and frivolous at the colonial level. For Virginia’s men who did
not, or could not, establish firm rule within their households, court intervention was often
necessary. The court justices’ actions brought them face-to-face with the likes of Marrion
Cornelius, Mary White, and the other women described in this study. 19
As Marrion and Mary stood in court in the summer of 1663, they presented a challenge to
court justices who sat in judgment of them, justices like Edmund Scarburgh II, the embodiment
of masculine authority in Accomack County at mid-century. Edmund Scarburgh II exemplified
the men that dominated the county justice system. He possessed all of the attributes of the most
powerful males in seventeenth-century Virginia, combining land ownership, political office, and
economic connections in a way that allowed him incredible influence on the Eastern Shore. His
ability to consolidate the cornerstones of elite status derived in large part from his father,
Edmund Scarburgh I. Scarburgh I was a captain in the British Army who by 1620 had
19
Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers, 28-56. Norton claims that men o Virginia often rejected the
state’s attempts at governing their households, creating a more definitive division between private and public
144
immigrated to Virginia. He had settled on the Eastern Shore, and by 1628, was one of the first
commissioners named for the newly formed Accomack County. As his son would later, he sat as
a burgess representing the Eastern Shore until his death in 1635. Edmund Scarburgh II was his
second son, and the only one of his children to emigrate with him from England. The early
acquisition of land and political office by the father proved to be a great asset to the son as he
rose to become one of the most prominent residents present on the Eastern Shore during the
seventeenth century.
The social hierarchy of mid-seventeenth century Virginia was topped by absentee
governors, administrators, and merchants, followed by the elite “local gentry.” 20 Edmund
Scarburgh II was one of the “local gentry” and in this position he was able to manipulate the
power that the colonial assembly had bestowed upon the Eastern Shore court. Scarburgh had
received legal training in England prior to his emigration. Most of the county court justices had
no formal legal training, and instead relied on the directions given to them by the General
Assembly and on English Justice of the Peace manuals such as A Countrey Justice. Along with
his father’s status, Scarburgh’s English education and legal training certainly were instrumental
in obtaining the important offices to which he was appointed. He was a long-tenured justice on
the Eastern Shore. In his turn serving as sheriff during the July and August sessions in which
Marrion and Mary were tried, he would have been responsible for ensuring the women’s
presence in court in addition to presiding with his fellow justices over the case. 21
Although in many ways Scarburgh exemplifies the typical seventeenth-century court
justice, he went beyond the scope of most of the justices in his use and abuse of power in
matters and which actions should and should not come under the control of the local courts.
20
Ibid, 46.
21
Scarburgh II was high sheriff in 1663, a position that was held on an annually rotating basis by justices
of the county court. Ames, Studies of the Eastern Shore, 159-160.
145
Accomack County. In short, he was masculine authority in renegade form. Historian T.H. Breen
describes him as one of a “generation [of] hard-driving, grasping individuals,” his competitive
and materialistic attitude made him both successful and problematic to the residents of the
Eastern Shore and colonial leaders alike. 22 He combined his various and numerous political
positions as court justice, sheriff, surveyor general, and burgess to further his own financial
interests. Scarburgh deftly manipulated a young legal system for his own gain, enabling him to
patent thousands of acres of land, the most important financial asset in seventeenth century
Virginia. By mid-century, middling and lower class residents found it increasingly difficult to
acquire land in the county to which they initially had immigrated due to the land-grabbing of
speculators like Edmund Scarburgh II. Scarbugh, as one of the seated justices, certainly could
have used the information gleaned from cases such as Robert Huitt’s brought to light though the
gossip of Marrion Cornelius and Mary White, to enhance his own status and authority. The
women’s gossip led to the court’s prosecution of Robert for theft and hindered him from further
social progress through the acquisition of land and political office. As men like Edmund
Scarburgh II imposed the authority that the office of county justices gave to them on middling
men like Robert Huitt, middling men’s loss became elite men’s gain, an elevation of their own
masculine authority in their community.
Despite their powerful position, Scarburgh and other Eastern Shore gentry have been
described as being “still unsure of themselves” making them “quick to violence,” evident in
Scarburgh’s attack on the Eastern Shore indigenous inhabitants. Initial relations between
English settlers and Eastern Shore natives has been described as amicable due in large part to the
relationship Thomas Savage, one of Virginia’s earliest settlers, forged with area natives and their
22
Breen, Myne Own Ground, 48.
146
leader, “Laughing King.” 23 But, according to Eastern Shore historian Susie M. Ames, after
Laughing King’s death tensions rose as the increasing number of English settlers continually
pushed the indigenous population further north. Scarburgh was instrumental in provoking and
leading attacks on the Assateague tribe in his on-going efforts to extend the Eastern Shore’s
boundaries and increase his land holdings. Tensions culminated in a 1659 war between English
frontiersmen and the Assateagues. Along with rampant disease, this warfare greatly decreased
the native population on the Eastern Shore, thereby increasing the power of English settlers like
Scarburgh. 24
Although the Assateague War of 1659 was sanctioned by the colonial government of
Virginia, Scarburgh’s actions in the summer of 1670 were not. According to local tradition,
Scarburgh ruthlessly murdered several “leading Indians” whom he had lured to their demise
under the guise of a friendly meeting. 25 This time, local residents, concerned about the
worsening relationship between themselves and neighboring indigenous tribes, complained to the
colonial assembly. Scarburgh’s act led the assembly to pull in the reins, leading to the political
23
A thirteen-year old Thomas Savage arrived in Jamestown with Capt. John Smith in 1607. He lived for
several years with Powhatan, learning the language. By 1619, he was on the Eastern Shore having been given land
by Laughing King, leader of the Accomack Indians. Savage acted as a native interpreter for the colonial
government, but more importantly, the friendship he forged with Laughing King resulted in the chief gifting much
of the native land on the Eastern Shore to the earliest settlers as well as informing them of pending attacks other
tribes. Wise, 27-35; Ames, Studies of the Eastern Shore, 5-6.
24
Ibid., 6. According to James R. Perry, English colonists pushed the Mattawomes, the “major
concentration of Indians south of Occohannock Creek” (the eventual line that divided the Eastern Shore into two
counties), to a tract of land along Mattawomes Creek (39). The tract was patented to the tribe. The colonial
government made an effort to maintain a peaceful relationship with area natives, and the Eastern Shore courts
required land transactions between natives and colonists to only be carried out if “the majority in each Indian
‘towne’ agreed” (39). Despite this, some colonists continued to deal unfairly with the natives. The English continued
to push further north. According to Perry, in the early 1650s, English colonists became “excited” over the possibility
of an attack by Indians living north of the Occohannock and “launched a preemptive assault of their own and
crushed the Indians, who never thereafter posed a serious military challenge to white usurpation” (39, 40). Perry, 3840. I have not found any population statistics for Eastern Shore natives within the various studies of the area.
Natives were fairly active in the colonial courts, however. During this time period, care was taken to keep peace
with area natives. They were rewarded for returning run-away servants and they traded land for furs with the
colonists. The court gave them some concessions in land dealings. One native leader even received government
protection from his own men whom he claimed were trying to poison and rebel against him. McKey, Court Orders,
Vol. 1, xi.
147
downfall of this powerful leader.
The governor and general assembly perceived Scarburgh’s attack on the Eastern Shore
natives as the last straw of disorder in Accomack County. Under the leadership of Edmund
Scarburgh II, the county clearly lacked the proper masculine authority. Scarburgh had been
involved in other unlawful Indian attacks prior to this one, and had also used his considerable
influence to seize a ship during England’s first war with the Dutch. Trade between the
Netherlands and Eastern Shore residents boomed after 1640, leading to an influx of Dutch
immigrants to the area. In 1651, England forbade the importation to the colonies of goods other
than those that were carried in English ships in response to the trade which Virginia had been
conducting with the West Indies and the Netherlands, trade that was carried on outside of the
control of the government of England. Considered the first of England’s Navigation Acts toward
the colonies, this trade restriction led to the first of three wars between England and the
Netherlands by 1652. 26 On the Eastern Shore, fear of Dutch retaliation against English settlers
for rejecting an offer to continue trade despite the war, retaliation that might have included a
much-feared alliance with area natives, led the county court to pass an “injunction against Dutch
inhabitants of the county trading with the natives.” 27 English settlers remained suspicious of the
Dutch residents who allegedly conspired with natives to massacre Eastern Shore residents. It
was during this time that Scarburgh, a successful merchant as well as land speculator, was
personally insulted by a Dutch commander who had seized one of his trading ships. This
incident spurred Scarburgh to carry out a personal vendetta by encouraging suspicion among his
fellow Eastern Shore residents against the peninsula’s Dutch residents . It became necessary for
the General Assembly to pass legislation naturalizing Dutch residents in order to protect them
25
26
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 2, xiv.
Turman, 52.
148
from harm amid the growing tensions. 28 The war ended in 1654, but peace lasted barely a
decade as the second war between England and the Netherlands broke out in 1665, again over
the burgeoning trade with the colonies.
During the pinnacle of Scarburgh’s power, religious tensions were also heightened
within the community as numerous Quakers set up residence on the peninsula. Scarburgh and
the other justices were instrumental in driving Quakers from the Eastern Shore. Similar to the
York County proclamation against Quakers discussed in Chapter Three of this study, by 1660 the
Accomack county court commissioners passed legislation against members of the religious sect
whom they considered “an unreasonable and turbulent sort of people, who daily gather together
unlawful assembles [sic] of people, teaching lies, miracles, false visions, prophecies, and
doctrines, tending to disturb the peace, disorganize Society, and destroy all law, and government,
and religion.” 29 As a result of the legislation that prohibited further Quaker immigration as well
as the intermingling of Quakers with the rest of English Eastern Shore society, most of the
region’s Quaker population relocated to Maryland.
Boundary disputes abounded on the Eastern Shore, and, not surprisingly, Scarburgh was
at the center of them. The northern boundary the Virginia peninsula shared with Maryland had
been under dispute from the time of Maryland’s charter in 1632 until 1668 when a line of
compromise was drawn by the designated representatives of the respective colonies, Edmund
Scarbugh II for Virginia and Philip Calvert for Maryland. Interestingly, the boundary dispute
involved land on which Maryland had allowed Quakers to settle. 30 By 1670, Scarburgh was
attempting to push that boundary further north.
27
28
29
30
Wise, 48-49.
Ibid, 71, 125-150.
From the “Preamble to the Act of 1660,” quoted in Wise, 156-157.
Ames, Studies of the Eastern Shore, 6-7.
149
It was Scarburgh’s urging that led to another contentious boundary dispute, but this time
within the Eastern Shore itself. Scarburgh took advantage of northern shore residents’ request for
the separation of what was then Northampton County into two separate counties to allow for
more convenient court locations. He pushed for the division, requesting that the northern section
of the peninsula receive a larger portion of land than the southern section under the guise of an
equitable split of tithables. 31 The influence he wielded in the 1663 division of the Eastern Shore,
an act from which he reaped great financial gain while Northampton lost a considerable amount
of real estate, caused tension in the newly divided counties and it was common knowledge that
Scarburgh was not welcome in the lower county of Northampton. 32
In 1670, the assembly decided to reunite the Eastern Shore’s two counties, a decision
necessitated by the misuse of the very authority that the colonial assembly had earlier vested in
the county courts, abuses personified in the powerful Edmund Scarburgh II. Although Scarburgh
claimed a central role in many of the problems on the young Eastern Shore during its second
generation of existence, he was not alone in his abuse of political and economic power. It
became evident to the assembly in Jamestown that order needed to be implemented on the
peninsula. To take control of Accomack County in the north (where Scarburgh wielded his
considerable power), they reunited the county with Northampton in the south and made the
northern courts inferior to the southern courts. In their re-organization of the Eastern Shore, the
colonial government, prompted by Scarburgh’s abuse of power, reinforced the notion of what
they considered to be proper masculine authority.
The continued presence of differing “sorts” of people on the Eastern Shore in the second
half of the seventeenth century created an environment that allowed for persistent challenges to
31
32
In 1662, the number of tithables for the entire Eastern Shore was 707. Turman, 63.
Wise, 170-171.
150
the authority of the county elites. T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes point out, though, that the
majority of the Eastern Shore population, the small planters, persons ranging from the “destitute
to the moderately well-to-do,” “never challenged the authority of the local gentry” of which
Edmund Scarburgh II claimed membership. 33 Perhaps, if by “challenged” they mean rebelled
against the local gentry, this is true. Collectively, these small planters never staged a coup in an
attempt to overthrow the local government (the court). 34 This is evident in the relatively low
turnover in court justices during the time period of this study. 35 But cases of repeated disrespect
toward the court and county officials show that, in their day-to-day lives, Accomack County men
did on occasion resist local authority. These men were not alone, for women engaged in their
own form of resistance; furthermore, women sometimes found it necessary to supplement the
masculine authority of the local gentry. They did this through their use of gossip.
As Marrion Cornelius, and then Mary White, stood face-to-face with Edmund Scarburgh
II and the other Accomack County court justices, they challenged the masculine authority of the
county court. The court justices had little choice but to take seriously, at least in part, the
information they gained from the women’s gossip in order to bolster their authority over petty
men like Robert Huitt. The change in the Assembly’s law may account for the relatively low
number of cases involving women’s speech heard by the Accomack County court from 1663
to1666. But the adapted law did not entirely put an end to the problem of women’s speech.
33
Breen, Myne Own Ground, 52, 56-57. The authors state that “the limited scale of social organization
coupled with a low level of literacy meant that the small planter did not develop a consciousness of having political
and economic interests separate from those of the Scarboroughs and Robinses. The gentry expected and usually
received deference from the small planters, and since these gentlemen monopolized positions of authority and
knowledge of legal procedures, they did not find it too difficult to maintain dominance over the rest of the county
community” (57).
34
Nathaniel Bacon led Bacon’s Rebellion against Governor Berkley and the general assembly in 1676.
Berkley escaped the mainland for the Eastern Shore and remained there until after Bacon’s death in 1677. For a
more detailed account of Bacon and the rebellion he led see Billings, Colonial Virginia, 77-96.
35
From 1663-1666, a total of ten justices served on the Accomack County court. A. Hodgkins did not
serve after 1663 and Geo. Parker did not serve after 1665. Robert Pitt started serving in 1666. The other seven
151
Women still attempted to exert some power by engaging in gossip regarding matters that their
neighbors had attempted to shield from the community.
What drove Mary to supply the scandalous information about her aunt, fueling Marrion’s
wagging tongue, remains unclear. Culturally, gossiping represented women’s idleness.
According to Christian theologians, women visited other women in the absence of their husbands
for the purpose of speaking, and warned that “‘they (women) learn to be idlers, gadding about
from house to house, and not only idlers but gossips and busybodies, saying what they should
not.’” 36 The cases against Marrion and Mary certainly fit various historians’ characterization of
gossip as speech meant to identify misbehavior in the community. The women questioned
Huitt’s trustworthiness by reporting a less than admirable aspect of their lives. 37 Defining
gossip as idle talk does not make note of whether the content of gossip is necessarily true or
false, although English popular culture characterized gossips as devious and deceitful (see
Chapter 6 for a discussion on popular culture). This ambiguity is significant when considering
the case of Marrion and later of Mary, for the issue before the justices of the peace in these
particular Accomack County court sessions was two-pronged. First, the women had dared to
speak which was legally and culturally unacceptable. Second, the veracity of their speech was
an issue. This is in stark contrast to a related case in which a servant, Issabella Ware, was
convicted for her “lying and scandalous speech about the disagreement between Robert Huitt and
James Atkinson” over the allegedly stolen hogs. 38 In this case, the clerk clearly noted Issabella’s
speech to be a lie, and the fifteen lashes she was to receive she was more severe than the public
apologies Marrion and Mary were ordered to perform. The justices based her punishment on her
served as justices all four years. McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1.
36
From 1 Timothy 5:13 as quoted by Hallissy, 77.
37
Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers, 223.
38
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 14-15 and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 15a
152
lies and her servant status.
There were very few cases in Accomack County involving women’s gossip in the years
that followed the enactment of the “brabling women” law, yet women’s scandalous speeches
made up the majority of women’s speech crimes reported to the court. Other infractions reported
by the clerk included abuse of a court official, scolding, “mutinous words,” and verbal threats to
a non-office-holding citizen. Women charged with speech crimes became less evident in court
after 1666, however. The initial spell of prosecutions for women’s speech crimes in the years
immediately following the 1662 statute (1663-1666) reveal how the men who sat as justices on
the Accomack County court shared with the burgesses in the General Assembly a narrowing
focus on disorderly speech that implicated women more than men. During this time period there
were only four cases in which the justices brought men to court for slander or defamation. Of
these, the justices dismissed two cases for lack of cause, and dismissed another two when the
defendant apologized to the court. The majority of male speech crimes involved the abuse of a
government official. During this same time period, the justices heard nine cases involving
women’s disorderly speech. Marrion Cornelius and Mary White were two them. Of the other
seven women, the justices prosecuted one, not for defamation, but instead for “scandalous words
against the court,” a charge to which she admitted and promised not to repeat. The justices
charged another with disparaging speech against a fellow Eastern Shore resident, the case ending
in dismissal. The court justices heard cases against each of the other five women, in which
various residents of the county accused the defendant with outright lying. Along with Issabella
Ware, the court found two other female servants guilty. In stark contrast to the male defendants
in suits of defamation and slander and to Marrion’s and Mary’s gossip, each of the three female
153
servants was sentenced to receive from fifteen to twenty-five lashes.39 Just as in Issabella’s case,
the fact that they were convicted of lying along with their status as servants resulted in the court
justices’ harsh treatment of these gossiping women.
Given the court’s harsh chastisement of women convicted of defamation in 1663 and the
years immediately following, if the court justices believed that Mary White had been lying about
her aunt and uncle, they would have punished her more severely. Mary may have considered a
public apology not only tolerable but also satisfying, given her evident desire to bring the Huitts’
dishonest activities to the attention of the public. This would explain her defiance before the
justices. If it was her motivation, it was not without precedent in seventeenth century Virginia.
Terri Snyder has identified several York County cases in which women utilized gossip in order
to bring a private matter to the attention of the court, despite the personal consequences. In one
case, Joanna Delaney gossiped about Jane Hide’s sexual escapades that included multiple
adulterous affairs and a resulting pregnancy and abortion. Joanna’s community gossip resulted in
a defamation suit against her and her husband. Joanna’s motivation for gossiping about Hide was
to shame her publicly. She wanted to exact revenge on Jane, as Joanna’s husband was one of the
men with whom she accused Jane of conducting an illicit affair. The defamation suit brought the
matter to the attention of the court. The court and the community officially recognized Jane’s
immoral actions. Additionally, as Snyder explains, Joanna’s gossip successfully policed the Hide
household. Joanna’s gossip alerted Jane’s husband to her adulterous activities, possibly resulting
in the couple’s separation three years later. 40
Marrion Cornelius and Mary White participated in a network of gossip that led to their
respective appearances in front of the Accomack County court in the summer of 1663. The
39
40
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 19, 45, 60, 77, 121, 131.
Snyder, Brabbling Women, 81-86. Snyder does not give any information on the Hides’ life in the time
154
records do not reveal their personal motivations for shaming and humiliating the Huitts, but they
were successful. According to the depositions of Hugh and Marrion Cornelius, Michall
confronted Mary about her loose tongue, complaining that “if Mary had told her in private, she
would have liked Mary well, but now … everyone,” including their neighbor and dinner guest,
Richard Hill, “would hear it.” 41 Gossip about men tended to attack their trustworthiness, which
was certainly the case for Robert. This attack could have affected the Huitts’ financial stability,
jeopardizing Robert’s “ability to function effectively within the male community.” 42 The gossip
about his wife’s transgressions only exacerbated Robert’s problems. He would have been seen
by his peers not just as an untrustworthy thief (as if that were not bad enough) but as a man who
was incapable of keeping an orderly household, the foundation of an orderly society. Certainly
the rumor of a larcenous wife would have only further encumbered the reputation of Robert.
Whether Michall Huitt was concerned about her husband’s reputation or her own when
she confronted Mary about her scandalous words, she had the right to be concerned about both.
The loss of status of goodwife in the eyes of the community could have limited Michall’s access
to one of the few paths to public influence women found available.
The 1663 case in which Michall Huitt found herself the topic of community conversation
placed her in a familiar position. She had been through this before. In 1658, Michall’s husband
and a neighbor, Richard Hill, brought suit against David and Elizabeth Wheatly for language that
“Railed Abused & Scandalized & defamed” the two couples. 43 Unfortunately, the clerk did not
record the nature of the defamatory speech against the pairs. The case resulted in a court-ordered
agreement between the three parties: the Wheatlys would publicly “confess their offence” and
between the gossip and the separation, so the connection between the two is not clear.
41
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 20, and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 19b and 20a.
42
Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers, 210.
43
Howard Mackey, NCDWO vol. 7, 19-20.
155
promise not to repeat it. Additionally, they were required to bind themselves to the injured
parties with 10,000 pounds of tobacco to ensure their good behavior. According to the July 29th
court order, the justices considered this to be a lenient sentence, and acted accordingly based on
the persuasion of the Wheatlys’ friends, presumably the plaintiffs themselves. 44 The gossip
about Michall Huitt disseminated throughout the community in 1663 was also not the last issue
of character assassination that the goodwife faced. On August 20, 1678, Michall, a widow by
this date and represented by attorney Mr. Thomas Clayton, sued Dorment Sullivan for
defamation, complaining that Sullivan had called her a “whore and thief,” an insult that the
defendant claimed he could prove. 45
Prior to this case of gossip, Michall Huitt acted both as a goodwife and, on occasion,
independently from her husband. She had been appointed to a female jury on January 29,
1661/62. The women of this jury were ordered to examine the body of Philice Wollford to
determine if she had recently given birth. Michall’s presence on this jury may indicate that she
was considered to be one among the goodwives of the community. The women that served on
these special colonial juries were vested with a limited authority that garnered the respect of the
community because it allowed them to determine the outcome of legal cases in which a women’s
body needed to be examined, including those involving rape, the birth of a bastard child,
infanticide, witchcraft, and even gender identity. 46 Michall’s success at attaining the status of a
goodwife in her Eastern Shore community would have made the gossip wielded against her in
1663 all the more mortifying. Her opportunities to act as a midwife or assistant in childbirth and
to report cases of abuse that her watchful eye had observed might become limited once her
44
Ibid.
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 5, 48. Depositions were given on that date by witnesses to Sullivant’s
claims, but there are no further records concerning this suit.
46
Ibid, 183.
45
156
honesty and integrity had been questioned. Justices looked for these characteristics in women
who served on female juries; participation on the juries was a position of power.
Michall seems to have acted independently of her husband, or possibly on her husband’s
behalf, in her first appearance before the court. A thirty-five year old Michall Huitt first appears
in Eastern Shore court records on March 28, 1655/56. 47 In a brief entry by the court clerk,
Michall was awarded 540 pounds of tobacco in a suit against Thomas Bull. She was not
represented by her husband, but by an attorney, Jonathon Badham. 48 Although her husband is
mentioned in the brief court order, the award was clearly made to Michall. The limited
information left by the court clerk elicits more questions than it answers; the reason for the
complaint, the details of the suit, and the determining factors that resulted in an award for the
plaintiff were not recorded.
Another example of her seemingly independent behavior is evident in Michall Huitt’s
court deposition on October 29, 1661. 49 She testified before the justices that she had sailed from
London to Virginia on the Royall Oake, captained by Edward Baker. Her testimony revealed that
her husband had not been traveling with her on the trip. She had been entrusted by a Mr.
Ffawsett of London to care for and safely deliver to Ffawsett’s son, a fellow Eastern Shore
resident, some goods and a servant named Daniell Moore. Controversy arose during the trip as
the ship’s captain claimed that the servant’s passage had not been paid. Michall guaranteed
47
Howard Mackey, NCDWO, vol. 6, 62. The court clerk recorded, in September of 1665, that Michall was
about 45 years of age. McKey, Court Order Abstracts, vol. 1, 125.
48
Robert Huitt, Michall’s husband, is named in the court order, but only in terms of being the husband of
Michall, not as the plaintiff; also Robert is listed as the assigne of Robert Evein, meaning that he was acting on
behalf of Evein. The name “Evein” has a question mark next to it, indicating the editor was unsure of the name or
spelling. Mackey, NCDWO, vol. 6, 62. Attorney was not a professional designation, but rather could be “anyone
who represented another’s interest in a court proceeding.” Billings, “Pleadings, Procedure, and Practice,” 583. This
is an interesting event and somewhat anomalous in seventeenth century Virginia. Historian Mary Beth Norton
explains that, typically, married women were either represented by their husbands or filed suit in conjunction with
them. Married women, or femes coverte, were required to be represented in court proceedings by their husbands, or
to participate in proceeding in conjunction with their husbands. Norton, Founding Mothers & Father, 83.
157
payment for the servant, and cared for him during the trip. Further evidence of Michall’s
unescorted trip is apparent within her husband’s testimony on the same date in which he stated
that he met the ship upon or shortly after its arrival at Pungoteage on the Eastern Shore. 50
Immediately following the 1663 case, Michall Huitt’s court activity waned dramatically
for five years. Between 1663 and her husband’s death in 1677, she had made only two
appearances, once as a witness and once on a female jury. 51 After April, 1677, Michall’s court
activity escalated. As the Widow Huitt, Michall filed suit on behalf of her husband’s estate,
testified as to the parentage of a bastard child at whose birth she was present, paid a fine on
behalf of a female servant convicted of fornication, twice filed suit for breach of contract against
lessees of her plantation, and formalized a gift of a cow and heifer to her grandchildren. As the
head-of-household, she was charged with six to seven tithables from 1677 to 1679. 52
The decrease in Michall’s public activity also may have been due to the fact that her
husband was accused of being a thief as well, casting a shadow over both husband and wife.
Michall’s activity in the court system increased after her husband’s death in 1677, not unusual
for widows in this time period who were no longer considered feme coverte. 53
English women’s gossip in Accomack County, exemplified in the actions of Marrion
Cornelius and Mary White, enabled women to help establish and enforce community mores.
Their extralegal talk occasionally came to the court’s attention, whether or not this was the
49
Mackey, NC Records, vol. 8, 193.
Ibid, 193.
51
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 125, and Vol. 2, 123.
52
JoAnn Riley McKey, Accomack County, Virginia Court Order Abstracts, 1676-1678 vol. 5 ( Bowie,
MD: Heritage Books, 1997), 48 and Accomack County, Virginia Court Order Abstracts, 1678-1682 vol. 6 ( Bowie,
MD: Heritage Books, 1997), 11, 68. The tithable listings were not recorded in the court orders after 1679.
53
The date of Michall’s death is unknown. There was no will probated in her name in the Eastern Shore
records. This may be due to the fact that her husband had already stipulated in his will that the Choratock plantation
was to revert to his daughter in the event of Michall’s death. Nonetheless, Michall’s last court action was the
recorded gift to her grandchildren in 1691. JoAnn Riley McKey, Accomack County, Virginia Court Order Abstracts,
1691-1697 vol. 8 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1999), 225.
50
158
scandal-mongers’ intention, and sometimes resulted in protracted entanglements within the legal
system. Robert Huitt’s problems within the Accomack County court system is a perfect
example. His legal battles resulted from the gossip concerning whether or not he had stolen any
hogs. Multiple witnesses testified that Robert and/or his servants were seen running into “a little
room” with a hog’s head to avoid being caught with a neighbor’s stolen “barrow;” they were in
possession of “a singed hog with both ears cut off” hanging at the Huitts’ door; and they tried to
pass off a cowhide with “ears and cheek torn away.” 54 The legal proceedings ended with
Robert’s conviction for “killing hogs and cattle other than his own” and he was ordered to pay a
fine of 2000 pounds of tobacco. 55 He incurred multiple fines and associated costs in the summer
of 1663. But the damage to his reputation may have been integral to his later conviction, in
January of 1665/66, of attempting to sell two allegedly stolen cowhides from which the ears had
been removed. 56 Given these two convictions by a jury of his peers, it seems that Mary’s initial
accusations regarding her uncle’s illegal exploits were true, although in Virginia, as in England,
an accusation was often as good as a conviction; seventeenth century logic incorporated the
presumption that the claims against a defendant were true; there was no presumption of
innocence. 57 Perhaps Mary had counted on this fact when she made public her uncle’s private
actions.
The Accomack County court justices relied on other women’s gossip to inform them of
residents’ misdeeds throughout this period. Women show up often in court depositions and it
seems reasonable to believe that, although gossiping is not indicated by the court clerk, the
54
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 20, and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 19b-20a.
Ibid.
56
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 140, 147, 167, and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 108a, 114a-b, 125a.
57
According to Billings, court proceedings were merely “the ritual way of exacting a just penalty for [an]
offense against the laws of God and man, as well as providing a terrifying example to others. Pleading not guilty,
calling defense witnesses, presenting exculpatory evidence, defining rules of evidence, all merely prolonged the
inevitable” since “a man accused was a man guilty of the charges laid to him.” Billings, “Pleadings, Procedures, and
55
159
frequency with which court officials deposed them indicates that stories of their neighbors’
conduct were not limited to official court documents. Two cases in particular show that justices
continued to find women’s gossip informative. The first is a very long and complicated set of
related cases from 1668 to 1670 involving Henry Smith. Smith faced the accusations of
numerous women who either were related to him, were employed by him, or lived in close
proximity to him. The crimes reported ranged from fathering bastard children and abusing court
officials to kidnapping, rape, servant abuse, and domestic violence against his wife Joanne. In the
Smith case, women across the spectrum of social ranks acted collectively to inform on Smith
over a two year period. This case has been treated in detail by Irmina Wawrzyyczek and more
recently by Terri Snyder. 58 The records from this case are quite detailed because of the number
and nature of the allegations, Smith’s contempt for the court, and the involvement of both county
and colonial elite in the outcomes of the cases. From the depositions recorded, it is clear that the
justices relied on women’s stories to bring Henry Smith to justice. While the women in the Smith
case appeared to have acted in concert much of the time, lone women’s gossip also had an
impact on bringing county residents before the court. For example, in April of 1675, Mary
Thomas informed the court that she had witnessed sexual liaisons between Rhode Fawsett and
John Cropper on multiple occasions. 59
In 1663, the population of the frontier community of Accomack County totaled
Practice,” 580.
58
Irmina Wawrzyczek, “The Women of Accomack Versus Henry Smith: Gender, Legal Recourse, and the
Social Order in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 105 (1997): 5-26;
Snyder, “To Seeke for Justice”
59
The court clerk did not indicate whether Rhode’s and John’s appearance in court was a presentment of
the churchwarden, which leads me to believe it was not since the clerk regularly wrote the word “presentment” in
the many fornication cases that came before the Accomack County court. It seems more likely that Mary Thomas
had informed the court herself, or that she was pressed into signing a deposition based upon the rumors she had been
spreading by gossip.
160
approximately 1227 souls. 60 The 1663 population lived in widespread homesteads situated
throughout the peninsula; even so, the Corneliuses, the Whites, and the Huitts had a familiarity
with each other. The county was without towns, but residents did associate with the neighbors
and kin that were within their most immediate locality. 61 The relationships among the three
couples may give valuable information as to why Marrion and Mary gossiped about the Huitts.
Their gossip caused the Huitts’ to suffer public embarrassment, making it worthwhile to explore
the possible underlying reasons for their actions.
Court records indicate that Michall Huitt was Mary’s aunt, and that the Whites’ and
Huitts’ homes were located near each other. Jealousies may have developed if the Huitts had
successfully advanced economically while the younger couple struggled to establish a firm
financial footing. This may have caused an emotional rift between the two couples. If the Huitts’
advancement was enhanced by illegal activity, Mary may have resented them all the more.
Shaming them publicly may have been Mary’s only recourse if she was trying to even the
playing field by putting her thieving aunt and uncle in their rightful place. The Huitts’ social
position within the community of Accomack and the items that Mary claimed Michall had stolen
may be clues if this was, indeed, the basis of her desire to publicize a previously private matter.
Mary White’s allegations of the Huitts’ misdeeds, information made public via Marrion
Cornelius’s gossip, certainly would have stung if the couple had established an elite status within
the community. Had the Huitts been addressed in court as Mister and Mistress, it would have
60
In 1634, Accomack County’s population was listed at 396. This number would have reflected the
population of the entire Eastern Shore which was called Accomack in that year. There was no formal census taken
for the year 1663, only tithable listings. Historians have used triple the number of white tithables in each Virginia
county to estimate the total population. Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population before
the Federal Census of 1790 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1966), 145. McKey states total population is figured by
tripling the total number of tithables which total 409 in 1663. The Accomack County records do not differentiate
between white and black tithables; therefore my figures are based on the total number of tithables. McKey, Court
Orders, vol. 1, 41.
61
Perry, 90-92.
161
indicated that they were in the upper echelon of society. 62 This was not the case. Michall was
referred to as both “Goody” and “Dame” in the county court records.63 These designations
indicate that the Huitts were from the middle of colonial society, ranking lower than a Mister or
Mistress but higher than an indentured servant or slave. 64 The fact that no titles were used by the
court clerk in reference to Marrion or Mary may be irrelevant in that a person without a title was
considered of the same social ranking as a goodman or goodwife unless, of course, he/she was a
servant or slave. However, my review of court records shows that Robert Hutchinson, the court
clerk from 1663 to1670, tended to make the distinction when a servant or slave gave testimony
or was charged with a crime. 65 He referred to neither Marrion nor Mary as a servant. This fact,
in conjunction with the marital status of each of the women, makes it unlikely that either was a
servant in the summer of 1663. Since Michall was the only one of the three to whom he referred
as “Dame” and “Goody,” it is possible, that, for some reason, the clerk himself considered
Michall to be of higher rank than either Marrion or Mary, regardless of whether they shared a
similar socioeconomic status.
Further indication of the Huitts’ middling status is evident in the number of servants they
employed. According to the tithable listings, they had at various times from three to seven
servants in their employ. From 1663 through 1665, the vast majority of Eastern Shore residents
included in the tithable listings (over 70 percent) had four or fewer charged to them. 66 Those
charged with five to eight tithables accounted for barely 20 percent of the total number of
residents, while those charged with more than eight tithables accounted for only 2-3 percent of
62
Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers, 18-19.
McKey Court Orders, vol. 1, 19 and ACDW microfilm reel 1, 19a
64
According to Norton the term “dame” was used instead of “mistress” as in “master or mistress” of a
servant because the term “mistress implied a higher rank or status in the community,” one with considerable
authority. Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers, 18-19.
65
Turman, 274.
66
Population during this period ranged from approximately 1227 to 1404 based on tithable listings. See
63
162
the total listed. 67 During this period, Robert was charged with between six and eight tithables,
placing him above the majority of residents in Accomack County, but not in the very small
minority that formed the upper stratum of society. Court records show that, from December,
1664 to February, 1675/76, Robert Huitt brought at least five young servants in front of the court
to have their ages judged, further evidence that his tithables included servants under his
employ. 68 From 1671 through his death in 1677, Robert was charged with between five and six
tithables. Again, Robert was charged with more tithables than the large majority of Accomack
County residents. In fact, the company in which he found himself, those with between five and
eight tithables, shrunk to only 8-14 percent of the total number of householders, but he still was
left out of the top 2-3 percent of society who claimed nine or more. 69
The tithables charged to Robert Huitt clearly placed him in the minority of those in
Accomack County who had more than four tithables charged, even if he never claimed the
number of tithables the most politically and economically powerful residents of the area had
claimed. Like the county tithable listings, land records also give valuable information regarding
Accomack County residents’ financial transactions. Robert’s land purchases are further evidence
of his moderate-to-high socioeconomic status. According to various public records, by 1672 he
had purchased at least 800 acres of land, placing him squarely within the middling sector of
Virginia society. 70 But, like the tithable listings, the term “middling” was not indicative of the
note 103.
67
These numbers are based on the Accomack county tithable listings for 1663, 1664, and 1665. McKey,
Court Orders, vol. 1, 39-41, 89-90, 128-130.
68
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 104, 112; vol. 3, 41; JoAnn Riley McKey, Accomack County, Virginia
Court Order Abstracts, 1673-1676 vol. 4 ( Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1997), 4, 163.
69
Again, these numbers are based on the Accomack county tithable listings for the years stated. There are
no tithable listings in the court orders from 1666 through 1670. Huitt is listed in the Northampton tithables from
1671-1673, when the two counties were reunited. From 1674 through his death he is listed in the Accomack county
records. Of those with more nine or more tithables charged, some had well over that number, well into the twenties
and thirties. McKey, Court Orders, vol. 3, 23-25; vol. 4, 71-75, and 140-143; vol. 5, 27-30 and 46-50.
70
McKey, Court Orders, Vol. 1, 89, 104, 112; Vol. 3, 41, 118. Historian James Horn describes “men of
163
average resident of this county, for only 17 percent of immigrants who arrived in Accomack
County as servants between 1663 and 1697 (as most immigrants did) became landowners in the
area to which they had initially immigrated. 71 So, once again, Robert was actually in the small
minority that could be considered in today’s terms as middle class.
In colonial Accomack County, like colonial Virginia in general, material possessions
were scarce and even most middling folk like the Huitts lived a meager lifestyle. In early
Virginia, the dearth of English women to produce cloth, a lack of local markets to encourage its
exchange, and a singular focus on tobacco production made cloth a limited commodity 72 Textiles
had to be imported from New England and Europe. Likely household possessions would have
included items such as a cast iron pot or kettle, wooden plates or platters called “trenchers,”
corn-grinding implements, and crude bedding. 73 Additional household items in upper middle
class homes included a chest or trunk, a table, a chair, and linens. 74
Mary White had accused her aunt of stealing several items that may have included a
gown, a hood, a scarf, and a smoothing iron. The court records offer no details about the
clothing items, making it difficult to ascertain their particular style. But in the absence of other
expressions of wealth, such as England’s “stately houses, carriages, and trappings of government
office,” English immigrants in Virginia considered clothing to be a “crucial signpost of status.” 75
The Virginia legislature passed laws that prohibited clothing excesses, ruling that none but “the
council and heads of hundreds” could wear “gold in their cloaths [sic], or to wear silk till they
middling rank” as those who owned between 500 and 1000 acres of land. Horn, 168.
71
According to Horn, some of those who had initially immigrated to the Accomack County may have
moved to other counties in the Chesapeake Bay area, but still makes the point that a very small minority of
immigrants was able to “achieve the status of independent planter in the locality where they had lived and worked as
bound laborers.” Horn, 154-155.
72
Brown,Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, 84.
73
Ibid.
74
Horn, 307-333.
75
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, 89-90.
164
ma[d]e it themselves.” 76 Moreover, English tradition held that goodwives should wear only
modest clothing to avoid raising the contention of their neighbors, especially those with “smaller
estates.” 77
The smoothing iron mentioned by the three witnesses who testified against Marrion
Cornelius may be the same household item as a clothing press. If so, then according to historian
James Horn’s study of English society in the Chesapeake, very few colonial Virginia households
of middling status (5.3 percent or less) included such an item, which was certainly not one of
necessity. 78 If the clothing items and the iron that Mary White accused Michall Huitt of stealing
were unusual items amongst the English immigrants of Accomack County, or the clothing items
were embellished with pretentious decoration, Mary’s gossip would have doubled Michall’s
humiliation. Mary had not only proclaimed her aunt to be a thief who was clearly acting outside
the mores of the community, but intimated that the goodwife had attained a social rank that she
did not rightfully deserve by illegally acquiring frivolous items that were unusual in their
community. Her intimation was not without precedent, although it was usually the upper class
that looked disapprovingly upon those who performed manual labor “dressing above their
station.” 79
Marrion Cornelius, Mary’s partner in gossip, declared that she gossiped about the Huitts
“out of Spight.” 80 Unfortunately, there is scant information on the Corneliuses from which to
glean evidence outside of their few brief appearances before the court justices. It is possible that
the reasons for Marrion’s spite were similar to those that have been posed about Mary. But first,
76
Quoted in Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, 89.
Ibid, 31.
78
Horn, 318-321.
79
Brown writes that colonial Virginians imitated their English counterparts, considering those who
“dressed above their station” to be a social threat, resulting in the passage of laws prohibiting “excess in clothing.”
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, 89-90.
80
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 19, and ACDW microfilm, reel 1, 18b-19a.
77
165
Marrion’s and Hugh’s backgrounds must be examined in order to uncover any possible clues that
might reveal what enticed Marrion to participate in the Huitts’ public shaming. According to
Wise, Hugh Cornelius (Corneliuson), Marrion’s husband, was a Dutch immigrant. 81 England
and the Netherlands experienced a strained relationship over the latter’s trade with the
burgeoning American colonies. In 1651, the English Parliament passed a Navigation Act that
prohibited Dutch trade with the colonies. Prior to this, the Dutch had been restricted from
trading with Native Americans out of fears that the immigrants might aid the natives in attacks
on settlers. Hostility between the Dutch and the English officially turned to war in 1652. This
first of England’s wars with the Dutch lasted until 1654. Robert Huitt twice found himself before
Accomack County’s court between the 1652 war a second Dutch war that started in 1665. The
first of those cases was brought to the attention of the court by the spiteful gossip of Marrion. It
is possible, then, that the Corneliuses had suffered mistreatment by members of the Accomack
community, including the Huitts, because of their Dutch origin.
Was Marrion Cornelius’s self-described malicious gossip an attempt to exact revenge on
the Huitts for past mistreatment? Although some English residents of the colony of Virginia
may have looked upon the Dutch with disdain, the Eastern Shore profited greatly from trade with
them. Despite this economic relationship, there is abundant evidence that Edmund Scarburgh II
went to great efforts to rile the community over the presence of Dutch settlers and merchants in
the area. Unfortunately, with the limited information recorded by the court clerk as the only
surviving evidence of the case, it is impossible to determine whether the Huitts shared this
sentiment and whether this was a factor for Marrion’s participation in Mary’s gossip.
The gossip of Marrion Cornelius and Mary White, at first glance, appears to have been
solely about the disparaging comments the women made in regards to Michall Huitt, for the
81
Wise, 71.
166
punishment that resulted from their chatter was based only on those remarks, at least according
to the clerk that recorded the order. However, further examination of the Accomack county
court records of 1663 reveals that Michall’s husband, Robert Huitt, was found guilty of killing
hogs and cattle that were not his own, a charge that came to light via the rumors spread by the
two convicted gossips and for which he was fined two-thousand pounds of tobacco. 82 This was
not the first time Robert found himself on the wrong side of the colonial legal system in a case
that resulted in a protracted entanglement with the county court, nor would it be his last.
Robert Huitt’s arrival on the Eastern Shore may have occurred in 1649, for a Robert
Huitt’s immigration, sponsored by Secretary of State Richard Kemp, is listed in early land
records. 83 From 1649 to 1657 there is no recorded activity for Robert which may indicate that he
was indentured during this time period. In 1657, Robert purchased land, possibly as much as 200
acres, from the Reverend Thomas Teackle. 84 Curiously, despite the land purchase, Robert did
not have any tithables charged to him in either Accomack or Northampton County until 1661,
when he is listed as having four. Between 1661 and his death in the spring of 1676/77, the
tithables charged to him fluctuated: four was the fewest while, in August, 1664, eight was the
most charged. 85 His next recorded land purchase, though, appears later, in 1672, when he
purchased 800 acres from mariner Ambrose White. 86
Robert Huitt made many appearances in Eastern Shore courts during his lifetime. Most
were for mundane affairs: he had the age of servants judged, served on juries, and made claims
against estates of deceased Accomack county residents. Records indicate he was appointed a
82
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 140, 147-148.
In this listing, the last name is spelled “Huet.” Greer, Early, 170. Nugent, vol. 1, 182.
84
Whitelaw, Virginia’s Eastern Shore, vol. 1, 643.
85
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 39-41, 89-90, 128-130; vol. 3, 23-25; vol. 4, 71-75, 140-143; and vol. 5,
27-30, 46-50.
86
Whitelaw, Eastern Shore, Vol. 1, 736.
83
167
constable twice, first in March of 1668/69 by court justice Edmund Scarburgh II, and again in
May of 1672, as replacement to William Eborne. 87 It is ironic that Scarburgh appointed Robert
to his first term as constable, for it was Scarburgh, in 1665/66, who had been an unwitting victim
in another of Robert’s brushes with the law in which he was convicted for selling cow hides that
were not his own. 88
Robert bore the distinction of having an alleged thief for a wife and of being a thief
himself. His 1663 conviction for hog stealing probably affected his credibility amongst his
neighbors, making his explanation for the earless cow hides in 1665/66 even less plausible to the
court, resulting in a second conviction. It is interesting that Robert shows up in a more flattering
light in later court records, serving on several juries and as a constable. 89 Ironically, he even
testified in a hog-stealing case against an Accomack County neighbor in 1673. 90 But with court
records giving only a small glimpse into the lives of these colonial Virginians, it is impossible to
know whether Robert ever reached his full potential status in the community after the gossip of
Marrion and Mary made his alleged crimes and those of his wife public knowledge.
Robert Huitt certainly did not advance at the rate his neighbors and friends did. Court
records clearly document his friendship with Richard Hill, and what seems to have been more
than just a casual acquaintance with John Ffawsett. These men surpassed Robert in both their
political and economic achievements. Richard Hill served as justice of the peace from 1675
87
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 2, 153 and vol. 3, 74.
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 140, 147-148.
89
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 2, 57, 62, 65, 75; vol. 3, 74, 122-123.
90
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 3, 122; vol. 7, 66, 342; vol. 9, 155-156, 159; vol. 10, 9. Robert died
sometime between March 16, 1667, the date of his will, and April 16, 1667, the date the will was probated in court.90
Robert’s will gives additional clues regarding the make-up of the immediate Huitt family. He left his plantation at
Choratock to his wife, Michall, and then to a daughter, Mary, a fairly standard arrangement in early Virginia.90 Mary
also inherited 200 acres at Pungoteage, and her husband, Richard Jones, Jr., inherited another 300 acres along the
same creek. This information, together with the gift that Michall willed to her grandchildren, Richard, Mary, and
Elizabeth Jones, makes it clear that the Huitts were survived by one daughter and three grandchildren. Further
research indicates that Mary Huitt Jones outlived her husband Richard, and married George Smith, with whom she
88
168
to1688. 91 John Ffawsett was the undersheriff in 1663, served as regiment clerk in 1665, and was
named “his Majesty’s attorney” or attorney general for the county, also in 1665, a position he
resigned because the profit from the position was “too small and inconsiderable to answer his
trouble.” 92 Ffawsett also purchased and patented nearly 1200 acres of land from 1663-1666
alone. 93 As Breen and Innes suggest, English immigrants on the Eastern Shore, however humble
their beginnings, could still claim a position of respect at the upper levels of colonial society,
along side the colonial gentry, for “the ranks of this group were still relatively open, and
newcomers occasionally gained admission to the county court.” 94 Robert never achieved this
admittance. He never served as a court justice even though his associates did. The highest level
he reached was as one of several constables on the Eastern Shore, and one of his appointments
was as a replacement for someone who had been removed from office. 95
Like Mary Thomas and the women in the Henry Smith case, Marrion Cornelius and Mary
White were successful in making public their neighbors’ transgressions. Marrion and Mary
subjected Michall and Robert Huitt to public shame and humiliation. The women would have
been punished regardless of whether they had readily confessed to their scandalous speech.
Making the most of the situation, though, both women defiantly fought the charges against them,
behavior that forced the court justices to call witnesses. It was through these witnesses that the
details of the Huitt’s activities were revealed widely. The county justices took notice, not just of
Marrion and Mary’s actions, but of the content of their gossip. They used the information as a
point from which to extract further information about Robert Huitt’s crimes. The commissioners
had two more children, George and John. She also outlived Smith , who was deceased by 1703, and married James
Fairfax.
91
Hill first appeared as a justice in May, 1675 and continued until June, 1688. McKey, Court Orders, vol.
4, 118, and vol. 7, 237.
92
Ames, Studies of the Eastern Shore,156, 168-169; Wise, 220.
93
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 1, 57, 95, 96, 123, 137; vol. 4, 123; vol. 7, 237.
94
Breen, Myne Own Ground, 47.
169
exploited the women’s disorderly speech in order to maintain order which rested on their
authority over Accomack County residents.
95
McKey, Court Orders, vol. 2, 153; vol. 3, 74.
170
Table 3. Cases of Disorderly Speech, April 1663 - February 1675
Date
7/16/1663
Defendant
Marrion Cornelius
Charge
Defamation
Sentence
Apology in church and court
7/16/1663
Issabella Ware
Lying
15 lashed on naked shoulders and court costs
8/17/1663
Elizabeth Leverett and
Alice Boucher
Mary White
Alice Boucher
Hannah Snowswell
Christopher Thompson
Timothy Coe
Scolding and fighting
on Sabbath
Defamation
Abuse of court
Defamation
Abuse of court
Abuse of Court
Ducked
William Chase
Abuse of sheriff
Elizabeth Leverett
Perjury
Rody Patrick
Jno Rogers
Robert Bayley
Defamation
Defamation
Abuse of Court
Phillip Fisher
Jno Picke
William Alworth
William Alworth
Randy Revell
Dorothy Longo
Thomas Roberts
Abuse of Court
Defamation
Defamation
Defamation
Abuse of Court
Defamation
Abuse of
Government
Abuse of Court
Abuse of Court
Abuse of Court
Contempt
8/18/1663
11/10/1663
12/17/1663
1/17/1665
1/17/1665
1/17/1665
4/17/1665 –
6/16/1665
8/16/1665
8/16/1665
8/16/1665
8/16/1665
9/16/1665
9/16/1665
9/16/1665
9/16/1665
11/16/1665
1/17/1665/6
1/17/1665/6
7/16/1666
1/16/1666/7
3/18/1666/7
8/16/1667
10/26/1667
6/16/1668
12/7/1669
12/17/1669
1/26/1669/70
3/17/1669/70
3/17/1669/70
8/18/16738/19/1673
7/16/1674
9/11/1674
Plaintiff
Mr. West
Devorax Browne
Jno West
Teague Andrews
Robert Bayley
Thomas Fowkes
Isaac Foxcroft
George Watson
Robert Bayley
Thomas Fowkes
Hugh Yeo
Robert Bayley
Teague Miscall
Thomas Fowkes
Elizabeth Robinson
Griffin Savage
Southy Littleton and
his wife
Richard Hill
Thomas Smith
Richard Buckland
Thomas Fowkes
James Fookes
John Rogers
Elizabeth Silverthorne
Margaret Moore
Jean Hill
Defamation
Mutinous behavior
Defamation
Lies. Slander, and
clamorous speeches
Ann Wright
Edmund Allen
Bridgett Savage
Martin Moore
Benjamin Salisbury
Swore in open court
Bad language
Verbal threat
Defamation
Defamation
Mary Thomas
Defamation
Rhode Fawset
Matthew Shippe
Source: Accomack County Court Records
Verbal threat
Apology in church and court
Apologized and acquitted
25 lashes on naked shoulders
Pay court costs
500 lbs tobacco and court costs, suspended on
Sept 16
Committed to sheriff's custody, post bond for
good behavior
21 lashes on bare back
Dismissed
Dismissed
one hour in pillory, detained by sheriff, and
post bond
removed from office of constable
Dismissed
Dismissed
Pay cost of suit
Dismissed
Dismissed
39 lashes on bare back, suspended after
deposition given in another case
taken into custody, post bond
Fined
Censured, apology, post bond
taken into custody until he could post bond for
good behavior
Dismissed
20 lashes after delivering baby
Dismissed
39 lashes on her bare back or to be the
common whipper for one year of "incorrigible
whores" when needed
sheriff's custody until further order
sheriff custody until bond poster
sheriff custody until bond posted
Dismissed
apologize in court upon his knees
immediately, 10,000lbs tob; stand at court
door for next three courts with his crime
written in capital letters on a paper on his hat
12 lashes upon her bare shoulders, sentence
suspended until further order
Unknown
171
Chapter Six
The Danger of Women’s Gossip in York County, 1660-1680
The York County court clerk recorded very few incidents of women’s disorderly speech
between the time the General Assembly enacted the “brabling women” statute in 1661/2 and
1680. In some of the episodes the clerk recorded, the details reveal that men did not usually
react to women’s gossip in ways meant to control it as prescribed by the General Assembly, nor
did women respect male authority when they did try. Within the context of York’s economic
development and demographic change, the county’s court justices paid little attention to
women’s gossip. In this chapter, I discuss the treatment of York County women accused of
gossip during this period with special attention to the small number of cases prosecuted. The
number stands in stark contrast to the General Assembly’s increasing concern over women’s
speech as indicated in the legislation they passed to control gossiping women during this period.
The few cases that York’s county court clerks did record allows for an analysis of York County
officials’ concerns with preserving a society governed by an understanding of masculine
authority and their willingness to either step in or turn to the colonial authorities when their
community did not respond to women’s gossip in a manner expected by local and colonial
authorities. A pattern developed in York County throughout the seventeenth century: local
officials paid little attention to women’s words except in the most extraordinary events.
In York County, a population shift occurred by the mid-seventeenth century which
resulted in York becoming dominated by large-scale planters, both English immigrant and the
native sons of Virginia’s first English immigrants. This shift was due to the success of York’s
tobacco economy. Throughout the seventeenth century, York County was home to some of the
most fertile tobacco-growing ground in Virginia. The rich soil enabled York’s planters to grow a
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highly sought-after and profitable sweet-scented tobacco for the Atlantic market. Large planters
had concentrated the county’s wealth and power into their few hands. The county, dominated by
large and powerful planters, witnessed diminishing numbers of English immigrant small-scale
planters and white indentured servants, and a growing number of African slaves.
Lt. Col. William Barbar and his fellow burgesses on the General Assembly made clear
their concerns over speech crimes in general, and women’s speech in particular when they
passed more restrictive laws that governed speech, including the “brabling women” law, between
1661 and 1677. Most of Virginia’s burgesses were pulled from the ranks of county court justice.
Their enactment of new colonial statutes reveals men’s anxiety over what they considered the
depraved behavior of residents in their local communities. 1 York County’s Lt. Col. William
Barbar followed the traditional pattern described above by simultaneously serving in Jamestown
as a colonial burgess representing York County and as a justice of the peace at home. Barbar
was a long-serving York County justice and the only burgess representing York County at the
September 1663 meeting of the General Assembly. A listing of the burgesses present for the
December 1662 meeting when the burgesses enacted the “brabling women” law (see chapter 4)
did not survive, but the September 1663 meeting was designated as a “prorogation” or
continuation, of the December session, making it likely that he was present at both sessions. 2
Despite the Assembly’s interest in controlling women’s speech, York County elites
showed little interest in the behavior of other “sorts” of people unless it directly conflicted with
their own notions of a civilized society, especially their own privileged place within Virginia
society. York County justices rarely heard cases concerning women’s speech over the twenty
years analyzed in this chapter. The cases they did hear are significant and their rarity is telling.
1
2
Crimes of speech were considered moral crimes in England…heard by church courts
Hening, Statutes, vol. II, 166, 196. Barbar was listed as a seated York County justice at the monthly court
173
The very few cases presented in the county court do not reflect a substantial statistical difference
between the number of cases of women’s speech and the number of women in York County.
Nor do the clerk’s records indicate an unusual amount of attention paid to the cases. The county
court clerk recorded depositions in these cases, but no more or less than in other cases. I argue
that the rarity of the cases recorded represents York County’s justices’ preoccupation with issues
they considered more important than women’s gossip. The recorded cases of women’s gossip
reveal the distinctiveness and separation of social “sorts.” The justices showed little interest in
policing the disorderly speech of their neighbors, nor did they seem interested in the bad
behavior reported in gossip in the way Accomack County court justices did during the same
period.
In this chapter I explore two cases involving three women who were clearly accused of
gossiping about their neighbors. 3 The York County justices summoned to court Mary Floyd,
Margaret Pierce, and Joane Wardley, each for “scandalous,” “base,” and/or “abusive” gossip
about their neighbors. 4 Their cases represent three of the eight York County women accused of
gossiping (see table 6.1). The justices’ interest in these cases demonstrates their concern for
maintaining their masculine authority by preserving order and hierarchy, revealing the norms of
the York community. When women stepped outside the established mores with their gossip,
elite men reacted in ways that they believed would maintain order and thereby uphold their
position of power.
session held 29 December 1662. Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 151.
3
A fifth case, entered by the clerk on November 1666, involved two women, Anne Dickeson and Jane
Wade, who were summoned to the following court for their “rude, indecent, uncivill carriage and deportment on the
Lord’s Day,” but the records for the next several month do not include an entry regarding these women, making it
unclear whether gossip was involved with this case. Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 52.
4
Margaret Pierce’s name is spelled Peirce in some of the court records.
174
Table 4. Cases of Disorderly Speech, March 1661/2-June 1676
Date
9/10/1662
8/24/1665
6/25/1666
Plaintiff
James Bray
Enis Mockentash
**
1/24/1667-8
2/24/1667-8
George Bridge
George Rough
11/12/1669
11/12/1669
Thomas Pinketham
and his wife
**
Defendant
Francis Hathaway*
John Prosser
Margaret Floyd and
Mary Pierce
Thomas Pinketham
Edward and Jane
Wade
Anthony Sands and
his wife
Thomas Keyball
11/13/1669
Thomas Beale
Rebecca Lawson
3/24/1670-71
8/26/1671***
James Moore
Thomas and Alice
Beale
William Allen
Thomas and Joane
Wardley****
11/25/1672
Anne Williams
Charge
Defamation
Slander
Gossip/assault
Defamation
Defamation
Sentence
Offered an apology
Unknown
Post bond for good
behavior
2000 lbs. tob.
Apology
Defamation
Dismissed
Mutinous words,
drunk
Scandalous language
13 lashes on bare
shoulders
Thrice ducked, bond
for good behavior;
sentence suspended
upon her submission
Apology
Apology to plaintiff
on her knee; “have a
paper on her breast
notoriously to
discover the fault at
that court, bond for
good behavior
Apology
Defamation
Disparagement
John Holroyd and
Defamation
Thomas Patterson
11/25/1672
Mary Chaddock
Mary Sharpe
Defamation
Apology
1/29/1672-3
Thomas Evans
John Medcalf
Defamation
1000 lbs. tob.
6/20/1676
John Meade
Anthony Reader
Scandalized plaintiff Apology
* Neither Francis Hathaway nor his wife was accused of gossip or slander. Francis Hathaway voluntarily appeared
in court to confess that he had defamed James Bray based on his wife’s gossip. I have included Francis as a male
who appeared in court in the number in the table below.
** The court clerk did not list a plaintiff indicating churchwardens presented these cases or disorderly speech
occurred while in court.
***The General Court in Jamestown heard this case; the York County clerk recorded the case in York record book
and imposed the sentence.
**** While the clerk recorded both husband and wife as defendants, the General Court was concerned with only
Joane’s disorderly speech. This stands in contrast to the other cases in which both husband and wife were
defendants; in those cases judgment is specifically directed toward both. I have included Joane as a female who
appeared in court in the Table 6.2
Source: York County Court Records
In the 1666 case involving Mary Floyd and Margarett Pierce, the two women exchanged
verbal assaults that quickly turned physical. Their appearance in court makes evident the York
County justices’ concerns with gossip’s potential for escalating disharmony in the home and in
the community. Furthermore, the lack of attention and unwillingness to intervene from the men
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nearby forced the justices to hear this case in court. Mary Floyd had gossiped about Margarett
Pierce, wife of Robert Pierce. The court clerk did not record the content of Mary’s gossip, but
according to one witness, the stories Mary told Robert caused a rift between the married couple.
Elizabeth Petters, the witness, confronted Robert, declaring, “I hear you abuse your wife because
of John Floyd’s wife telling you stories about her, persuading you not to go to her, nor eat with
her.” Robert replied that it was true Mary had told him stories about Margarett, but he had since
“found her out,” claiming that she had proven herself dishonest through her words as well as her
actions. 5
The conflict that arose from Mary Floyd’s stories moved from the Pierce home to the
community when Mary and Margarett confronted each other publicly. Margarett retaliated for
Mary’s mischief by calling her a “hominy pocket.” A bemused Mary asked Margarett what she
meant. Margarett retorted Mary used hominy in her pockets “to steal turkeys and chickens.”
Mary reacted to Margarett’s insult by attempting to involve two nearby men, Edmund Flanagan
and Dennis Roe, by asking them to “bear witness” to Margarett’s epithet, but the men refused,
replying, “We hear nothing.” Sixty year-old Edmund Flanagan held to that when the court
deposed him as a witness on behalf of John Floyd; however, the court clerk noted that Dennis
Roe did hear the two women’s argument. Roe supplied in his deposition to the court the nature
of the verbal exchange between the two women, yet he clearly wanted nothing to do with the
fracas as it was happening. 6 The verbal exchange developed into physical blows between Mary
and Margarett. According to deponent John Peacocke, while he was at work with Flanagan and
Roe he witnessed Mary Floyd beat Margarett Pierce “so much she was forced to cry out
5
6
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 35, 39; YCDW microfilm reel 2, 69-70, 93-93.
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 39; YCDW microfilm reel 2, p93-93.
176
‘murther’ and John Floyd came and took his wife away.” 7
The physical assault instigated by the women’s back-and-forth gossip brought this case to
the attention of the court justices. This was just the type of discord that English writers warned
of when they shaped the image of the female gossip. From the Roxburgh Ballad “Cuckhold’s
Haven, or The Married Man’s Misery,” seventeenth-century English listeners would have been
familiar with the problems gossips posed to the community:
When these good Gossips meet
In Alley, Lane, or Street,
(Poore men, we doe not see’t!)
With Wine and Sugar sweet,
They arme themselves, and then, beside,
their husbands must be hornify’d 8
The above stanza, c. 1620-1655, warned married men about the ways their wives conspired
against them. The author equated gossip with adultery, both of which emasculated the
unknowing husbands. The ballad reflected men’s wariness of women who gathered without
male supervision. Any married man was a potential cuckhold and vulnerable to what gossips
said about them, “notably about their aptitude (or failings) as lovers” according to Alan Haynes.
Gossips represented “male powerlessness.” 9 In Thomas Parrot’s epigram “The Gossips
Greeting” from the same era, the subversion of women’s desire to meet without male supervision
was apparent when one the gossips remarked:
but that we might together merry be,
Drinke and cause without respect or feare,
Our husbands dreame not of our being here 10
Parrot’s poem warned of the gossip’s predisposition for bedding her neighbor’s husband,
7
Ibid.
“Cuckhold’s Haven,” Merry Songs and Ballads: Prior to the Year A.D. 1800 Volume 3, John Stephen
Farmer, ed. (London, 1897), 42. See Chapter three for information on horn motifs in English culture.
9
Alan Haynes, 77.
10
Thomas Parrot, The Gossips Greeting or A New Discovery of Such Females Meeting (London: B.A. for
8
177
connecting gossiping to sexual dishonesty and an inversion of the household order by making her
husband a cuckhold. Parrot repeated earlier motifs of the social disorder gossips wreaked, such
as those heard in Samuel Rowlands 1613 poem, A Crew of Kind Gossips, All Mette to be Merrie,
in which the author advised husbands to “stand to it [gossip] stoutly, now as you are men” 11 Like
other commentators, Rowlands’ work indicated that husbands were the usual victims of women’s
gossip. English readers and listeners of such ballads and poem understood that men should fear
women gossiping as it could result in rebellion against husbands. Mary Floyd’s gossip was
naturally rebellious against her husband because she acted in a way that tarnished his reputation
as a patriarch who could control his household. But she also inserted herself into the relationship
of another married couple, the Pierces. As the women’s fight fell into the public arena, their
actions were symbolic of the disharmony that resulted from women’s gossip.
Englishmen understood gossips to be a common problem. Thomas Parrot explained in his
notes on his own observations of English culture that “when it doth concerne, vis., your
quotidian Gossips, showes ubiquitacy behaviour as it is most odious and detestable, so ought it in
some sort, if not reclaimed, to be reproved.” 12 Controlling women’s speech concerned
Englishmen throughout the early modern period. In fact, early modern legislation intended to
control gossips was a continuation of medieval men’s attempts at governing women’s tongues.
English literature scholar Margaret Hallissy explains that, in the fourteenth century, two English
towns attempted to legislate female silence. In one, it was “ordain[ed] by common consent that
all the women of the township control their tongues.” In the other, it was “enjoined upon all the
women in the township that they should restrain their tongues and not scold nor curse any
Henry Bell, 1620) np.
11
Samuel Rowlands, A Crew of Kind Gossips, All Mete to be Merrie (London: W. White for Johne Deane,
1613), np.
12
Parrot, np.
178
man.” 13
The fact that balladeers, poets, and legislators extensively and repeatedly commented on
the subversive nature of women’s unsupervised discourse reveals the real worries Englishmen
shared over the power of women’s words. English Quaker minister William Shewen warned
against the destructiveness of gossip in his late seventeenth-century sermon A Brief Testimony
Against Tale-Bearers, Whisperers, and Back-biters, remarking that “where [gossips] are given
ear unto amongst Friends, Neighbours, and Relations, or in any Christian Society, such can never
live in Peace, Concord, and Unity” 14 Shewen admonished both gossips and those who would
“lend their ears unto them, that receives and believes them.” 15 The York County justices heeded
such advice to “take great heed how thou hearest” a gossip. 16 Many of the men and women
discussed in previous chapters of this dissertation were guilty of “hearing” gossip, including the
men in proximity of the brawl between Mary Floyd and Margarett Pierce. Shewen remarked that
if “Tale-tellers had no Tale hearers and Receivers,” their gossiping would naturally come to an
end. Worry over the subversion of household authority was applied to the greater community
because gossiping often “soweth strife”… and “separateth chief friends,” while love and unity
resulted in “good order.” 17 Shewen recommended that, to end their penchant for gossiping,
potential “hearers” ignore gossips rather than punishing or casting them out as the law required
by the 1660s. Punishment, according to the homilist, was as divisive as the gossip. He put onus
13
Hallissy, 59-60.
William Shewen, A Brief Testimony Against Tale-Bearers, Whisperers, and Back-Biters (Philadelphia:
Reinier Jansen, 1701). The sermon was written sometime before Shewen’s death in 1695, but not published until
1701.
15
Ibid., np.
16
Ibid., np.
17
Ibid., np. Shewen cites multiple Bible verses and English proverbs, passages with which English subjects
would be familiar. While throughout Shewen’s sermon he refers to tale-bearers in the masculine. His postscript
refers to women specifically as he describes “young people…especially women” that “grew idle and wanton” and
“went from House to House” as “Tatlers, Busie bodies, and meddlers” (speaking of biblical times), he argues that
modern women cannot be religiously devout if they “have not a bridle to their Tongues.”
14
179
on the hearer to pursue the truth. The York justices saw that in this case the by-standing men
were not only incapable or uninterested in stopping the brawl, but also in stopping the gossip.
The court clerk did not record how Mary Floyd and Margarett Pierce came to the court’s
attention, but it is evident from his notations that this case was not the result of a slander suit. It
is one of only very few cases recorded in the court record over a twenty-year period, so either the
majority of York County’s women were incredibly well-behaved during this time period, or
Mary Floyd and Margarett Pierce fell so outside of the accepted norms the justices felt
compelled to act upon the women’s “common fame” or because the parish vestry felt compelled
to forward the case to the court. Perhaps the court justices used this case as a deterrent to other
women after the vestry performed a sort of triage in determining that this was an incident worth
the court’s time and attention. Women brawling as a result of their own gossip, and men
standing by passively, just would not do for those who were trying to make Virginia into a
civilized British colony. The by-standing men’s lack of attention to the fracas created by Mary
and Margarett leads me to conclude that this was a common enough occurrence that the women’s
physical blows did not necessarily draw their attention. In their “lower sort” world, perhaps it
was a familiar sight, but to York County’s elites it had to be stopped.
Unlike Accomack County’s court justices in the same time period, York’s justices did not
find the information contained within either Mary Floyd’s or Margarett Pierce’s speech useful in
policing the community. The York County court clerk did not record the allegations included in
Mary Floyd’s gossip, but he did record the Pierce couple’s accusation claiming Mary was a thief.
Other depositions recorded support their accusations, but the justices did not seem interested.
They were more concerned that the women “[broke] the peace” with their physical altercation
than they were with their disorderly speech that may have indicated other crimes had been
180
committed. 18
The case of Mary Floyd and Margarett Pierce shows that women in York County
continued to gossip despite new laws meant to prevent such events. Even so, the court justices
were reluctant to apply the 1662 “brabling women” statute when they punished the women.
Although it was one of the very few cases involving women’s gossip to come before the court,
York County’s justices heard this case because they deemed it particularly troublesome. The
women’s words progressed to physical blows; their disorderly speech got out of hand. When the
men in the community refused to become involved, the justices had to act. The York County
justices, the elites of the community, could ignore neither the wanton behavior of the two women
nor the laissez-faire attitude of the male witnesses. Notwithstanding their concerns with the
women’s behavior, the justices simply ordered the two women to post bond for good behavior.
They ordered neither corporal punishment nor public apology. They certainly did not apply the
“brabling women” statute as written by the General Assembly just four years earlier. Their
reluctance appeared to be shared by court justices in other counties as well. In her analysis of
records from York, Norfolk, and Lancaster counties, Kathleen Brown found that commissioners
in these communities incorporated the “brabling women” law into their “repertoire of threatened
punishments” but rarely carried out the sentence, applying it only in those cases “that had a
direct impact on local politics.” 19
My own analysis of York County court records shows that, despite the ‘brabling women’
law that allowed for the corporal punishment of women covert, the law was rarely applied,
supporting Marylynn Salmon’s conclusion that while “law treatises are certainly helpful for
outlining statutes and occasional judicial precedents [they] usually convey nothing about the
18
19
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 39; YCDW microfilm reel 2, p93-93
Brown, 147-148.
181
application of the law.” 20 For example, when Edward Wade and his wife Jane “falsely and
unjustly scandalized and defamed” plaintiff George Rough “by calling him a forsworne rogue, a
pure rogue, and thievish rogue,” they asked forgiveness and the charges were dropped. Anthony
Sands and wife defamed Thomas Pinketham and his wife, but the case was dismissed with no
explanation. The justices ordered Thomas Lewis and his wife to post a bond for good behavior
for scandalizing and defaming Francis Darsey. The court justices also ordered Mary Sharpe to
ask for forgiveness for defaming Mary Chaddock, while they ordered Sharpe’s husband to post
bond for her good behavior. These were among the only eight cases that involved women’s
speech as documented by the county court clerk; in seven of the cases women were named as
defendants, while in only four of the cases is it clear that women acted alone in their speech and
their husbands, if held responsible at all, were required to post bond. Despite the burgesses’
concern with the disorder gossips created, very few cases actually made it to court in York
County.
In only two cases from 1660-1676, did the officials sentence women more harshly than
they did in the Floyd – Pierce case, and in accordance with the 1662 law. In both cases, the same
elite York resident, county court justice Col. Thomas Beale, claimed to be a gossip’s victim.
Beale brought Rebecca Lawson to court on 13 November 1669 for her “base, abusive and
scandalous language” towards him. His fellow justices ordered Rebecca “thrice ducked,” and
instructed her husband to “give security for her good behavior.” Although the justices in this
instance initially applied the 1662 statute as written by the Assembly’s burgesses, Rebecca’s
sentence was “remitted” after “her submission.” 21 Perhaps the county court’s leniency is what
20
Marylynn Salmon, “The Legal Status of Women in Early America: A Reappraisal,” Law and History
Review Vol. 1(Spring, 1983), 135.
21
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 166; York County Deeds, Orders, Wills, 1665-1672
microfilm reel 2 (available at Library of Virginia), p374.
182
led Beale to circumvent the county court two years later, and instead complain to the General
Assembly in 1671 about the “scandalous words” Joane Wardley had uttered his wife. 22 The
clerk of the General Court in Jamestown first recorded Beale’s complaint on 26 May 1671:
In the difference between Lt Coll Thomas Beale and Alice his wife plts and one
Thomas Wardley and Joane his wife defendt concerning severall scandalous
words Spoke by the said Joan to the great disparagement and dishonor of the Said
Coll Beale and his wife. It is ordered she the said Joane Wardley shall on her
knees at the next County Court held for York acknowledge her hearty Sorrow and
repentance for the same and ask pardon of the said Coll Beale & his wife and to
have a paper on her breast notoriously to discover the fault and at that Court her
said husband give bond for his Said wives good behavior and pay costs of Suite,
which said Joane Wardley not performing is to have what other punishment the
court shall thinke most fitt either by imprisonment or otherwise” 23
Col. Thomas Beale believed that the General Court would take this matter more seriously than
the York County court justices based on his previous experience with Rebecca Lawson.
Although the General Court did not sentence Joane to corporal punishment as they could have
according the 1662 statute, the public humiliation was beyond anything the York County court
justices seemed willing to order and have carried out since the statute was enacted. A county
court justice who had been slandered sending a case to the General Court was not without
precedent in early Virginia. In 1643, Accomack County justice Argoll Yeardley, son of a former
Virginia governor, ordered Thomas Parks to appear before the General Court after he had
slandered Yeardley for casting “notorious aspersions” on Yeardley’s father and mother,
questioning their socio-economic position in England. Historian Clara Bowles categorizes
Thomas Parks’ words as seditious and therefore outside the purview of the county court’s
authority, since they were considered a threat to the authority of colonial leaders and not merely
slander. If that was the case, then Joane Wardley’s words, given the manner with which they
22
Presumably, the scandalous words Joane spoke wre in reference to Alice Beale, Thomas’ wife, since she
is named in he complaint. Thomas Beale brought the action to court on behalf of his wife as was the custom under
coverture.
183
were treated, were considered seditious or politically dangerous as well since she attacked Beale,
who was both a county justice and a colonial official. Bowles explains that the English Star
Chamber, defunct by the 1640s, had set a precedent in its philosophy that connected private
slander to sedition, in that any breach of the peace had the potential for threatening the authority
of the government. 24
The General Court still recognized the local court’s prerogative in dealing with their
residents. Colonial officials’ legislative actions certainly influenced county court justices’
application of law, but manuals written as guides to English justices were influential as well. In
his guide for English justices of the peace, The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace,
William Nelson built upon earlier English legal manuals and treatises that gave instructions for
dealing with “those who misbehave themselves before [a justice of the peace], those who speak
contemptible words of him, or abuse his Warrants,” recommending that they “enter in a
Recognizance with sureties or without them, according to the discretion of the Justice…and upon
refusal may be committed.” 25 Despite having to turn to the General Court to administer justice,
Beale still had to rely on the county court justices to punish Joane Wardley in whatever manner
they saw best fit.
The wheels of justice apparently moved quite slowly in York County, for the General
Court’s order was not read to Joane Wardley until two months later, on 26 July 1671. As
recorded in August 1671 by Richard Awborne, the York County court clerk, the county court
justices, including Col. Thomas Beale himself, demanded Joane’s “performance,” but she utterly
rebuked it, alleging the sense of the court mistaken, and [she] would not ask the Beale’s
23
McIlwaine, General Court Record, 262.
Bowler, “Carted Whores,” 418-419. For the Parks case, see Ames, County Court Records, 1640-1645, xixii, 313, 392-392, 395.
25
Nelson, 78-79.
24
184
forgiveness on her knees.” Joane further exclaimed that she would rather “be brought to the
whipping post.” 26 Historian Julia Spruill points out that Joane’s refusal to ask forgiveness on her
knees was not without precedent in Virginia, citing a1651 Northampton County case in which
John Williams refused to see his wife apologize on her knees to another as ordered by the court
“without it bee to God.” 27 John Williams spoke on behalf of his wife. Joane spoke for herself.
Although the court clerk named her husband Thomas in his initial recording of the incident, here
Joane acted independently which may have stirred Beale’s ire even further.
The York County court justices were unable to compel Joane Wardley’s submission.
They were not alone in their inability to carry out the General Court’s orders. Accomack County
court justices faced similar futility when trying to impose the higher court’s orders upon local
residents. In one instance, the Accomack officials appeared helpless in dealing with the
notorious Henry Smith. As discussed in chapter five, Smith was accused of abusing his wife and
his servants, carrying on adulterous affairs, and fathering at least one bastard child. When the
General court ordered that a portion of Smith's estate remain sequestered for the maintenance of
his dependents, Smith rebuked the local officials’ attempts to carry out the order. They were also
ineffective in their attempts to prevent Smith from moving almost all his property to Maryland. 28
When the York county justices were unable to compel Joane Wardley to comply with the
General Court’s orders, Beale again sought relief from the General Court. On 23 September
1671, the General Court clerk recorded that Joane had “most contemptuously refused” to
perform her punishment. As a result, the York County sheriff was ordered to produce Joane in
Jamestown at the next General Court meeting to “to receive her punishment according to the said
26
Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 229, YDCDWO microfilm reel 2, p453.
Spruill, 333. Spruill also offers Joane Wardley’s punishment as an example of public penance ordered by
the court. Kathleen Brown also mentions the Wardley cases, noting that Joane Wardley was an example of one of
the few “strong-willed” women who refused to be cowed” by the potential punishment. 149.
27
185
order.” 29 At the November court session, the General Court again ordered Joane to appear,
noting “she then and there refused,” the previous summons to appear. 30 There is no further
mention of this case in either the General Court or the York County court records after this date.
Perhaps Joane Wardley finally submitted; perhaps the General Court finally lost interest in
pursuing her for her gossip.
In the two cases involving Col. Thomas Beale, the county court initially applied the
“brabling women” law as did the General Court, but the county court justices remitted corporal
punishment after the defendant apologized, while the General Court increased the original
sentence when the defendant became belligerent. Remitting corporal punishment was reserved
for women accused of speech crimes. The York justices ordered corporal punishment for
female defendants for other moral offenses, though. For example, for bastard-bearing, the court
justices continued inflicting corporal punishment on women. The court ordered the York County
sheriff to take Mary Bell into custody and “whip her until the blood come.” Mary Plackett was
to receive 30 lashes on her “bared shoulders, well laid on” if her master Robert Baldry refused to
pay a fine to the parish. 31 Although the county court justices did not carry out the corporal
punishment prescribed by the General Assembly, they did apply the law as written in their initial
sentencing.
Thomas Beale’s status in York County may explain why the courts initially resorted to
applying the law as written. Beale was born around 1610 in Maidenstone, Kent, England, but
had been in the county for over thirty years at the time of Joane Wardley’s gossip. He and his
wife Alice, whom he married sometime before 1630, arrived in York County sometime prior to
28
Wawrzyczek, 21.
McIlwaine, General Court Records, 267.
30
Ibid., 292.
31
Weisiger, York County Records, 1672-1676, 81, 99, 134.
29
186
his headright claim in February 1645/6. Together they had two children, Ruth and Thomas. 32
Beale was landed and controlled the labor of numerous servants throughout his lifetime. County
records indicate that beyond his initial headright claim of 250 acres, Beale had an interest in 500
acres of land on Chewes Creek, had purchased 500 acres of land in adjacent Gloucester County,
and in 1665/6 claimed a headright of 2950 acres for importing fifty-nine persons into Virginia.
He made his living raising tobacco and cattle. 33 Numerous court recording indicate that he had
multiple servants over his lifetime, including one who drowned himself in 1661, and a pregnant
Anne Collins, who in 1662 accused Robert Pierce (who is discussed earlier in this chapter) of
sexual coercion. 34
Thomas Beale held several offices in York County and in the colonial government
throughout his time in Virginia. He served as sheriff in 1645-1646. He also served as a county
court justice from at least 1652 through 1669. He simultaneously served as a burgess
representing York county, and then as a member of the Governor’s Council by 1662. The court
clerks referred to Beale using several titles over his lifetimes, including esquire, lieutenant
colonel, colonel, and major. His political connections led to his appointment as the “governor of
the fort as Point Comfort” based on his “ability and prudence the King had long experienced.” 35
Although Thomas Beale rose to a prominent position in Virginia, in part through holding
multiple offices, early on in his political career he was looked upon with suspicion, or possibly
32
William Armstrong Crozier, ed., Virginia Heraldica: Being a Registry of Virginia Gentry Entitled to
Coat of Armor Vol. V (New York: The Genealogical Association, 1908), 13.
33
Weisiger, York County Virginia Colonial Records, 1665-1672, 22. Evidence of his economic
involvement in tobacco and cattle include notations in the county records of his use of a house for curing his
tobacco, using his tobacco crop as security on debts, and mortgaging and selling cattle. See Fleet, Colonial Virginia
Abstracts Vol. III, 39, 42, 79, and 106-7.
34
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 81, 133. See Snyder’s treatment of the case involving Ann
Collins and Robert Piece in Brabbling Women, chapter two. For other evidence of Beale’s servants, see Weisiger,
York County Records, 1665-1672, 35, 73, 373; and Weisiger, York County Records, 1672-1676, 96.
35
Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography Vol. I (New York: Lewis Historical
Publishing Company, 1915), 127-128; William G and Mary Newton Stanard, eds. Colonial Virginia Register
187
considered incompetent, by other members of the York community. In February of 1645/6, the
court clerk noted that when Beale was the York County sheriff he had failed to turn over to
county officials “severall sumes of tobacco due.” The court forbade him from collecting what
was due, instead instructing the new sheriff, Capt. William Taylor, to collect the taxes that Beale
had failed to do. At the next court session, Beale mortgaged his cattle as security for the 1200
lbs tobacco that was owed. Again, the court cautioned him against collecting anything due. 36
Despite his incompetence/indiscretion, as York County sheriff, Beale went on to secure other
county and colonial positions.
Thomas Beale became accustomed to using his status in York County to punish people
who crossed either him or those who shared his status, whether it was officially through his
position as a court justice or unofficially through bullying those whom he saw as his social
inferiors. His admonishment of Rebecca Lawson, as discussed earlier in this chapter, is a prime
example. Another incident two years earlier reveals the extent to which Thomas Beale would go
to make sure others knew their place. Two women testified that Beale, in the presence of
Beale’s wife, their son, a servant, and Mary Palmer, the mistress of the home they visited, struck
James Bailey at least twice and attempted to strike him a third time with his cane when Bailey
refused to sell sugar to the Beales because of a previous unsatisfactory exchange. Beale, upon
leaving the Palmer home, threatened that if he saw Bailey alone he would “break his bones.” 37
Thomas Beale was clearly a man who was used to getting what he wanted. The case went no
further; his fellow justices exacted no punishment. His status protected him from censure in this
case. Beale must have been equally angered with Joane Wardley’s gossip about his wife and he
used his office to bully her into submission.
(Albany: Clearfield Company, 1902), 38; Fleet, Abstracts vol. III, 62.
36
Fleet, Abstracts, vol. III, 27, 39.
188
In the Lawson and Wardley cases, the women’s gossip affected the same member of the
colonial elite, Thomas Beale. Each party’s status in relation to the other continued to determine
the punishment for women accused of gossip, as it had in earlier cases in York County, the cases
discussed previously in Accomack-Northampton County, and certainly throughout other counties
in Virginia during the seventeenth century. Court officials were willing to follow the 1662
statute when one of their own was the target, although the York County justices suspended
Lawson’s sentence once she acknowledged her wrong-doing, demonstrating that local custom
still supplanted statute in most cases involving women’s gossip.
As for Wardley, she defiantly opposed the General Court order, showing deference to
neither Beale nor the colonial government. She, like Elizabeth Frith Woods in 1659, openly
defied male authority in York County. They did not whisper or back-bite, but openly confronted
men in powerful and prestigious positions. Both women, Woods with her Martin Luther-esque
attempt at posting her protest on the church door, and Wardley in refusing to comply with either
county or colonial authority, questioned the authority of men in York County. Wardley attacked
an elite, a member of the county court and a colonial government appointee. His authority was
challenged. Like the vestrymen and commissioners in chapter three, Beale used his status to
seek punishment for Wardley. To demonstrate his power, he sought remedy from the General
Court. He used his office, still a cornerstone to status.
Thomas and Joane Wardley’s status in relation to the Beales’ helps explain why Thomas
Beale so fiercely demanded Joane’s submission. Thomas Wardley resided in York County,
Virginia by 1657, the first year he appears in county records. He was the son of Thomas
Wardley, a merchant-tailor in London. Upon the senior Thomas’ death in 1659, Thomas the
younger was willed rents and an annuity of £5 per year for life. Thomas, in turn, empowered his
37
Weisiger, York County Records,1665-1672, 77.
189
wife, Joane, “to sell houses, lands, tenements of said Wardley in England” and, in 1661, she
agreed to sell the annuity to spinsters Ann and Ellen Wardley (Thomas’s sisters) for £35, paying
them £5per year. Presumably, Thomas was in Virginia by this time and had entrusted his wife
with handling his affairs in London per his written instructions dated 24 January 1659/60. 38
Joane may have arrived in or returned to York County, Virginia, in the summer of 1661 via the
ship Waterhouse along with a chest of goods valued at £35 she shipped to Virginia as security
for the “performance of severall things” connected to the settlement of Thomas Wardley, Sr.’s
estate. 39
Thomas Wardley, while in Virginia, established himself in his community in several
petty offices, including constable and grand juror. 40 Most significantly, Wardley served as the
York Parish churchwarden by 1669. It is possible that he was a member of the parish vestry
prior to this, as he is named as an appraiser several times, including for the estate of John
Claxson. The duty of appraisals was a responsibility often given to vestrymen (see chapter three
above). Also named as an appraiser for the Claxson estate was Thomas Beale, making it likely
that both men served on the York parish vestry at the same time and were familiar with each
other. 41 Further evidence of the men’s familiarity with each other includes Wardley’s service
twice on a jury charged with determining the cause of death of York County servants. In the
earlier of the two cases, Wardley was part of the jury that determined that Walter Catford tied a
grindstone “about his middle and cross his thighs and most barbarously went and drowned
himself.” Catford was one of Thomas Beale’s servants at the time of his death. In the second
instance, Wardley was a member of the jury that was called to view the body of William Stenely,
38
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 102.
Ibid., 100-101.
40
Duvall, 25; Weisiger, York County Records ,1672-1676, 74.
41
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 4; Weisiger, York County Records, 1665-1672, 66, 164.
39
190
a servant who had drowned himself. Beale had summoned the jury, giving them the task of
determining Stenely’s cause of death. 42
While Thomas and Joane Wardley secured a middling status in York County during their
tenure in Virginia, their accomplishments certainly did not equal those of Thomas Beale. When
Thomas Beale sought Joane’s submission to his authority, he did so by wielding his elite status.
He went to great effort to ensure her public punishment. He used his status and Joane’s
punishment to ensure that he retained his status. Shaming Joane elevated him and diminished the
danger of her speech.
The Beale-Wardley cases reveals the relationship between sorts of people living in York
County. By the mid-seventeenth century, York was the wealthiest county in Virginia. In the
York River basin, planters produced sweet-scented tobacco that commanded higher prices than
the traditional oronoco variety and was “most favored” in the British domestic market. The York
planters who controlled the land where the most profitable tobacco thrived also controlled a
disproportionate amount of wealth and political power. By the turn of the eighteenth century,
those who grew sweet-scented tobacco were understood to represent the “privileged minority”
who would dominate Virginia government throughout the rest of the colonial period, while those
who grew the less profitable oronoco variety represented the viewpoint of a growing majority
who worked as or directed the work of bound laborers.” Historian Lorena Walsh writes that “the
split was less between rich and poor, long-settled areas versus newly settled one…than between
two diverging production systems.” 43 Yet the growing divide between the better sorts and the
rest of the population in York County is hard to deny.
Men of the middling and lower sorts found it increasingly difficult to secure one of the
42
43
Weisiger, York County Records, 1659-1662, 81; Weisiger, York County Records 1665-1672, 55.
Map from Lorena S. Walsh, “Summing the Parts,” 60.
191
most important markers of status: land. Edmund Morgan describes the transition of the tobacco
economy after 1660 as the “engrossment of tidewater land in thousands and tens of thousands of
acres by speculators, who recognized that the demand would rise. It brought huge expansion of
tobacco production, which helped depress the price of tobacco and earnings of men who planted
it.” This resulted in the presence of an increasing number of former indentured servants who
were unable to afford land of their own in the most desirable areas. By 1676, Virginia’s leaders
suggested that this was now “the normal condition of servants who had attained freedom.” 44
Edward Randolph, surveyor general of customs in the American colonies, remarked on the
continuing problem of speculation twenty years later when he wrote to the Lords of Trade in
London that “the members of Council and others who make an interest in the Government have
from time to time procured grants of very large tracts of land, so for many years there has been
no waste land to be taken up by…servants who have served their time.” 45 Virginia elites grew
increasingly concerned about the growing number of landless freemen, considered them
dangerous, and sought to control them. 46 This is evident in the York County court justices’
frequent correction of men for verbally abusing them and their position in court. Women like
Joane Wardley did not escape this- the court justices were just as willing to sanction women’s
gossip when it was considered seditious, mutinous, or dangerous to the social order.
Just as land became increasing elusive to those other than older elite families, political
office also became difficult to secure. The men who immigrated to Virginia after 1645 were able
to rise fairly rapidly. Men like Thomas Bromfield (see chapter three) and Thomas Beale attained
44
Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” Stanley N. Katz, John M. .Murrin
and Douglas Greenberg, eds., Colonial America: Essays in Political and Social Development (Boston: McGraw
Hill, 2001), 371
45
Robert Noxon Tappan and Alfred Thomas Scrope Goodrick, Edward Randolph – Including His Letters
and Official Papers…(Boston:, 1898-1909), Vol. VII, 486-492, as quoted in “Virginia at the Close of the
Seventeenth Century: An Appraisal by James Blair and John Locke,” Michael Kammen, ed., The Virginia Magazine
of History and Biography 74 (April 1966), 143.
192
public office quickly, often using family connections. The men who were in Virginia before
1645 also secured their positions quickly. As new counties were created, local offices needed
men to fill them, allowing for rapid social mobility for many immigrants and few challenges to
the old guard. But between 1668 and 1691, the colonial government named no new counties,
resulting in less opportunity for office-holding for newer immigrant men. Although the elites
were rarely seriously challenged, men like Beale did not know they would continue to dominate
Virginia society. Customs like the self-appointing of justices and vestrymen had just been
created through the massive review and rewriting of statutes by the 1661/2 assembly, so the men
that held these positions needed to continue protecting their political positions of privilege. 47
York County also emerged as a leading contributor of men to the General Assembly.
Because of its close proximity to Jamestown, still the center of Virginia government, sixteen men
received an appointment to the governor’s council in the years before 1676 compared to between
one and five men from other counties during the same period. Only James City County appointed
more men as councilors. This was a pragmatic strategy on the part of the colonial government
since men from counties in closest proximity to Jamestown were more able to attend sessions of
the General Assembly. The result, though, was a proliferation of powerful, well-connected men
in York County in the second half of the century.
Englishmen who immigrated to Virginia brought with them an understanding of social
hierarchy. English commentators divided the 'gentle' from the 'commons.' Commoners, whether
“”day labourers, poor husbandmen … retailers… copyholders … tailors, shoemakers, carpenters,
46
Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom,” 371.
See Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure,” James Kirby Martin, ed,. Inerpreting Colonial
America: Selected Readings (New York: Harper Row, 1978), 102. The Board of Trade sought to remedy the abuse
of political power and privilege by 1698 when they drew up new instructions upon commissioning Sir Francis
Nicholson’s governorship of Virginia. Kammen writes “the practice of engrossing vast tracts of land was to be
prevented,…existing holdings that were extensive and uncultivated were to be voided and returned to the
crown…[and] the terms of granting land were altered so that no one might acquire acreage merely by importing or
47
193
or brickmakers, had one thing in common: they were not elites. 48 While some historians use
Bacon’s Rebellion as the catalyst for an understanding of class distinctions in Virginia, class in
terms of how people conceived of themselves in relation to others within their communities, it is
clear from my analysis that these distinctions were becoming more pronounced in York County
prior to the revolt. 49 As York grew into the wealthiest county in this period, a divide between
the elites and everyone else emerged, and Thomas Beale represented this trend. Historians Peter
Thompson and Breen and Innes have argued that the middling sort may have share a world-view
with the elite, especially those middling men who held public office. 50 While middling men
may have seen themselves as more linked to elites than to the lower sorts, especially in light of
the social mobility that Virginia offered in comparison to England, the differentiation between
groups of people was still understood.
Virginia may have shaped the views of people of different sorts. While elites saw
middling men still as part of the “commons,” the middling sort themselves, especially those who
had accessed land and petty offices, thought they had more in common with the elites than those
devoid of land and office. They often had connections to the elites through business interactions,
and since conducting business depended upon a good reputation, they were as quick to protect
their status as were elites. They used the courts to affirm their social position and demand
deference. This is evident in the cases involving the vestrymen and Elizabeth Frith Woods (see
chapter three).
By the 1660s, though, the middling sort was disappearing from York County. In the
second half of the seventeenth century, York had become a county of the better sort, the lower
buying servants.” “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” 150-151.
48
H.R. French, “The Search for the ‘Middle Sort of People’ in England, 1600-1800,” The Historical
Journal Vol. 43 (2000), 278.
49
Thompson, “The Thief,” 31.
194
sort, and slaves, as middling men migrated out of the county in search of available arable land.
From 1662 through 1682 the York population was around 1000 tithables which represented
probably no more than 2500 people total. 51 The population of York County shrank during the
second half of the seventeenth century when the colonial government formed the new counties of
Gloucester and New Kent from parts of York in the 1650s, resulting in a significant outmigration of former servants and adult children of York planters as they looked for land outside
of the county.
As York County’s population growth slowed and freemen and the sons of planters moved
out of the county in order to find land of their own, York County’s population became more
divided. Landholders who had established themselves and consolidated power shared space with
lower sorts and, increasingly, slaves. 52 York County planters’ wealth grew at the same time its
African slave population increased. York planters became more reliant on slave labor earlier
than other counties in Virginia. In the 1650s when the slave population in Virginia is estimated
to have been about 3 percent of the total population (500 of 14,000), York County’s slave
population was already about 15 percent of its total population. Blacks probably became a
majority of the bound labor force sometime in the 1660s. 53
The diminishing middling sort, near absence of indentured servants, and increasing
number of slaves may help explain the relatively few speech crimes against elites in York
County in the period analyzed in this chapter. There were fewer people outside of the better sort
to challenge their authority. When elites like Thomas Beale were challenged, though, it was
50
Ibid., 31; Breen and Innnes, Myne Owne Ground
Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom, 407-413.
52
Kevin P. Kelly, “A Demographic Description…” According to Kelly’s often-cited population study,
York County had a population of 668 and in 1697, a population of 970, which represents a growth rate of only .003,
compated to .049 during the period between 1634 and 1644. This is also extremely low compared to Accomack
County, which had a much steadier rate of grown .025-.032 during roughly the same time period, 1663-1700. See
Table 1.
51
195
noted. While colonial authorities more frequently reacted to women’s gossip in other counties, in
York the issue was less of a concern. Kathleen Brown noted sixteen cases of women’s slander in
Norfolk County during the same period. 54 But the cases that were recorded represent elites
concern with rebellious behavior from people below them in status. It is possible that a servant
conspiracy strengthened the concerns of men like Beale over challenges to their authority. In
1663, Beale and other elites from in and near York County complained about rebellious servants
to the General Court. A rebellion conspiracy in Gloucester County, an area that once made up
the northern part of York County, was unveiled in September 1663 by a servant-informer
identified only as Berkenhead in the Assembly’s records. The General Assembly rewarded
Berkenhead with his freedom and 5000 lbs tobacco, and declared that the 13th of September was
to be commemorated as a holy day of remembrance. Governor William Berkeley and the
General Assembly, in their official recording of the event, referred to the conspiracy as “the
horred plot” and thanked God for “preserving all we have from so utter ruin.” 55 Those
responsible for plotting the rebellion were later described as “indentured white servants, the
refuse of the camps of the late civil war, and the alleys of London” who were planning to join
forces with “the heathen slaves, from the coast of Africa [who] were no so numerous as to be a
constant source of anxiety to the planters.” 56
When looking at the cases of women’s disorderly speech purely in numbers, the number
of cases reported in court cases in this period is greater than the number reported in the period
53
Walsh, “Summing the Parts,” 68.
Brown, Table 2., 147.
55
Ibid., 151; Hening, Statutes, vol II, 191, 195, 204; Horn, 156; Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The
Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston,
MA: Beacon Press, 2000), 136; H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1659/16601693 (Richmond, VA: The Colonial Press, E Waddey Co., 1914) , 24; Morgan, American Slavery- American
Freedom, 246; Junius P. Rodriguez, “Gloucester County, Virginia, Conspiracy,” Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance
and Rebellion Vol. I (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 2007), 219.
56
Edward D. Neill, Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles the First and Second, A.D.
54
196
under study in chapter three. This does not mean that women were better behaved, or that their
speech was better governed during the earlier period. Rather, this may be due to a lack of
documentation or, possibly, that the parish vestry was dealing with moral infractions as they did
in England, and did not present offenders to the courts unless they felt they were significant
enough to require civic intervention. 57 The General Assembly did not require county courts to
govern morality crimes until 1640. Prior to that date, churchwardens presented its immoral
residents to the colonial Quarter Court. The York County court records from 1633-1646 are very
fragmentary and incomplete, many even mutilated. Information contained within them is scant.
Once the records become more descriptive in the mid-1640s, most of the recordings deal with
land transactions and probate cases. The first notation in York County records of anything
resembling a moral infraction is, in fact, a speech crime committed by John Hartwell who noted
in writing on 31 July 1646 that he was “hartyly sorry for the scandall and aspersion by me layed
upon Wm Todd and his wife and Edward Adcocke and his wife.” He acknowledged his fault in
writing, witnessed by John Underwood, Lewis Burwell, Joseph Croshaw and Wm Gantlett. 58
None of the witnesses were justices at the time, so it is possible that they were vestrymen had
this entered into the record by the county clerk. Prior to this date, it is plausible that the vestry
had been hearing cases and recording them in their own records, or more likely, presenting them
every June to the Quarter Court in Jamestown. The close proximity of York County to
Jamestown allowed for this. Other vestry responsibilities were absent from the county court
records as well; for example, the first orphans’ court was not noted in the county court records
until 1646. Again, this may be due to the vestry’s handling of cases they similarly handled in
1625-1685 (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1886), 295-296
57
Bond writes of evidence that parish vestries sometimes acted at “extra-legal levels of the colony’s
judicial system.” He explains tha Hungar’s Parish, in Accomack County, “took care of some offenses without
recourse to the county courts, including a case of a gossiping woman in 1634. 134-135.
197
England. In this respect, the records are not indicative of an absence of gossips or men’s
disinterest in quieting them. It may indicate that only the most serious offenses, such as the
gossip of Elizabeth Frith Woods, were forwarded by the vestry to the county court.
The enactment of the “brabling women” in 1661/2 may have encouraged the county court
justices to pay more attention to women’s words. It also may represent a shift in who was
responsible for governing women’s gossip- the York County court justices over the parish
vestrymen. Even if colonial officials were reacting to the number of slander cases involving
women with the enactment of the 1662 “brabling women” law, it is doubtful that the same
concern was shared by York officials. There were no cases in the 1646-1662 period involving
women’s slander. In fact, the only woman held responsible for a crime involving her gossip
during the period was Elizabeth Frith Woods, although her gossip was certainly treated as
dangerous to the stability of her parish by the vestrymen accused and by the court officials who
punished her. After the 1662 law was passed, the number of gossiping women noted in the court
records rose compared to the earlier period although there are difficulties in quantifying such
cases do the missing records. York County records end in 1662 and do not pick again up until
1665.
Kathleen Brown claims that county justices were disproportionately concerned with the
danger of women’s speech in the years following the enactment of the “brabling women” law.
While there were few cases of women’s gossip recorded from 1662 through 1676, Brown claims
that women were overrepresented in the instances that did make it into the court record. My
investigation into these records does not support their over-representation in relation to their total
population in York County at the time and few cases were heard throughout the 1660s and
1670s. Edmund Morgan states that in later decades of the seventeenth century, Virginia’s sex
58
Fleet, Abstracts vol. III, 40.
198
ratio remained skewed, ranging between 330-410 men to 100 women- so from 3 to 4:1 over the
century. 59 Kevin Kelly’s demographic study of York County shows that from 1660 to 1680, the
total adult white population ran between 868 and 1008 with from 217 to 367 white adult women
present over the twenty year period. 60 This is a more balanced ratio than Morgan found in the
colony overall, with white women making up 25 percent of York County’s adult white
population in 1660 and 36 percent of its adult white population by 1680. The crimes involving
women’s speech that I have found showed that they made up 40 percent of the speech crimes
that were addressed by the county court justices. 61
Table 5. Sex of Individuals Appearing before the Court for Disorderly Speech 1662-1676*
N
20**
Men
12 (60%)
Women
8(40%)
Ratio M:W
3:2
* There are no extant York County records for January 1662/3 through March 1665.
** Of the men and women who appeared in court, the court clerk identified 3 men and 3 women as couples.
Source: York County Records
Only in the most extreme circumstances were the York County justices willing to ignore
the ideal of coverture and punish solely the wife as prescribed by the General Assembly in the
“brabling women” law. In England, church court officials rarely corporally punished such
offenses. By statute, burgesses were willing to ignore coverture in their enactment of such laws,
but in practice, justices acknowledged coverture for the most part. In the cases described and
analyzed in this chapter, the York County court justices and colonial officials found the few
women’s words and actions so repugnant they had to pay attention to them. Margarett Pierce and
59
Morgan, American Slavery-American Freedom, 407-410.
See Kevin Kelly’s, A Demographic Description…
61
Snyder has found that from 1660-1680, criminal and civil cases represent about 59% of all cases women
were involved in (others categorized as probate and deeds) but those cases never represent more than 13% of the
total population of adult white women- meaning, while 40% of adult white males in York County appeared in Court
for civil and criminal issues, only a small percentage of York’s women were present in court. Terri L. Snyder, “Rich
Widows,” 114-117, 134, fn 50.
60
199
Mary Floyd turned to physical violence when their gossip got out of hand. Joane Wardley
absolutely defied elite male authority to the extent that even the county courts could not extract
contrition from her. Beyond the most extreme cases, however, York county court justice did not
pay much attention to women’s gossip and certainly did not find it useful in policing their
communities. As the population of York County shifted to one of elites and slave laborers,
women’s words became insignificant unless they had the potential for causing more serious
disharmony or political unrest.
200
CONCLUSION
THE POWER OF COUNTY COURT CLERKS
Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth. 1
This study has argued that English immigrants brought with them to Virginia their
penchant for gossip and their desires to control it. In the absence of England’s complex court
structure that included multiple inferior and ecclesiastical courts, Virginia’s county courts served
as the arena in which plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses brought gossip to the attention of the
wider community. The consolidation of multiple secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions into the
simplified county courts allows for an analysis of the adaptations Virginians made to traditional
English institutions and their proceedings in the early years of settlement. Because they
performed the combined functions of several levels of the traditional English organizational
structure, the county courts of colonial Virginia enjoyed an authority that was without precedent
in England. Focusing on Accomack and York county court records, my study of women’s
gossip as it moved from a neighborhood audience to a county-wide audience reveals the extent to
which the immediate environment shaped the formation and function of local institutional
structures.
It is clear that women were extremely active in civil and criminal cases heard by the
county courts from the time of their creation through the mid 1670s. In many of these cases
gossiping was either the crime itself, including defamation cases, or was an important factor in
the outcome of a case. Within the county records, presentments of women’s gossip, the nature of
the recorded words, and the punishment that gossipers received reveal the ways in which gossip
challenged the efforts of each county’s leaders to create and maintain order, and help explain
why those leaders responded as they did.
1
Proverbs 26:20.
201
This study has also demonstrated that in Accomack and York counties, Englishmen
punished women who gossiped according to the status of their husbands and to the status of the
objects of their gossip. Whether English women used their gossip as a substitute for a voice in
formal politics or used it to morally police their communities, Englishmen considered women’s
gossip disorderly, even dangerous, because it threatened their efforts to maintain order. At the
same time, they treated gossips as useful tools for community control. Whether local county
court justices found women’s gossip disorderly, useful, or both, reflected the social, political, and
economic development of their communities.
In the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion, the Virginia General Assembly treated women’s words
as increasingly dangerous. To quiet them, the men of the Assembly wrote new laws that
strengthened the “brabling women” statute of 1662. They were concerned over women’s
participation in the rebellion (1675-1676), especially through their gossip that threatened the
ruling elite. The 1677 Act of Relief, which once again singled out women’s speech, came amidst
a flurry of assembly policymaking that included statutes that officially condemned the actions of
Nathaniel Bacon and the rebels who had been executed, defined the punishment for treasonous
activities, and remedied the losses of “loyal sufferers.” 2 Terri Snyder’s work in Brabbling
Women, discusses the Assembly’s reaction to women’s treasonous words as well as women’s
continuing use of disorderly speech in challenging masculine authority throughout the
seventeenth century. A further review of the records in post-Bacon Rebellion’s Virginia, when
leaders in both England and Virginia sought to restore an orderly society, would shed light on the
ways in which women were reacting to those new laws and how the new policies on women’s
speech continued to shape society in the colonial period.
2
Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 2004), 263.
202
As the seventeenth century drew to a close, significant changes took place in governing
the colony. William Berkeley faced pressure from an English commission sent to Virginia to
investigate the rebellion and from the county court commissioners who came to see Berkeley as
representative of all that was wrong with the privileged elite who dominated both houses of the
General Assembly. Amidst salutations from many of the Assemblymen who remained loyal to
Berkeley, negotiations with an investigative commission from England, and condemnations from
some of the middling ranks of county commissioners, Berkeley left office in May 1677 and
departed for England. He died there suddenly on 9 July 1677. In the years following Bacon’s
Rebellion, officials in England kept a careful watch on Virginia’s colonial government, and
intervened regularly in order to bring the General Assembly more in line with the practices of
English parliament. England’s intervention limited the autonomy of the burgesses in the General
Assembly and shifted the focus of lawmaking and politics away from local issues toward
provincial and imperial concerns. 3
Various historians of the colonial era have recognized the changes that colonial
Virginians experience in the last two decades of the seventeenth century. Russell Menard has
commented on the decline of the tobacco economy during this period while Lorena Walsh has
called it a time of “adaptation and change” in which Virginians were affected by warfare
between European countries which disrupted Virginia planters’ trade. Navigation Acts were
strengthened and enforced to control Chesapeake trade. Moreover, by the 1690s, large planters
throughout the colony had turned to African slavery as slaves’ availability increased and their
price decreased. 4
Like the historians above, I point to change as the appropriate focus for future
3
4
Billings, A Little Parliament, xviii.
Russell R Menard, “The Tobacco Industry in the Chesapeake Colonies, 1617-1730: An Interpretation,”
203
scholarship, specifically the changes in the training of county court clerks and the impact of that
training on the extant record. There was a noticeable decrease in the documentation of gossips
and their words in the official record as the seventeenth century came to a close, despite the
growing number of women in the colony. As the court clerkships became more professionalized,
county court clerks had the power, through their record-keeping, to present a now-civilized
colony.
Historians have recognized over the past several decades that court records tell us a story
beyond economic, legal and political institutions. Reading through the records, between the
lines, adds to the metanarrative by connecting people of different sorts to the larger institutional
story. When I turned to abstracts of colonial court cases on which to base my research, I
chuckled at Beverley Fleet’s comments in his transcriptions that remarked on the mundane
nature of the county court records he had transcribed. Nothing but land transactions, debt
collections, and hog registers, he lamented. More recently, historians (many of whom I have
cited throughout this work) have recognized the treasure of information that is contained within
those documents. Most significant for my own research were the women who seemed everpresent even from the earliest recordings of county activity, women who actively participated in
their county courts even when there were so few women. There were the widows that Lois Carr
and Lorena Walsh analyzed, present in court because they exercised legal rights that women
under coverture technically did not have. And there were the indentured servants, many of
whom were unhappy with their masters and mistresses; some were so unhappy they physically
assaulted or fled from the men and women who governed them. Terri Snyder, Kathleen Brown,
John Pagan, and others have given these servants deserved attention as they have assessed how
their experiences under indenture reveal more about the economic, legal and political activities in
Research in Economic History V (1980) 109-177; Walsh, Motives of Honor, 194, 199.
204
fledgling colonial communities and give us a clearer view of how Virginia developed.
Analyzing these records also tells us about the social and cultural attitudes of people at the time,
sometimes on the most intimate level, which are critical to understanding the formation of
Virginia. The records reveal who were these people, the cultural assumptions they brought with
them from England, and how they helped shape the colony.
As the seventeenth century came to a close, women’s words became less a part of the
official court record, an observation that has led some to conclude that the women of Virginia
experienced a decline in status that would become even more apparent throughout the eighteenth
century. 5 As I considered the records of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, I was
struck by the similarity in the Accomack and York county clerks’ recordings in the official
record. After discussing this at a presentation at the Virginia Historical Society, Lee Shepard
pointed me in the direction of an old article written by historians John Hemphill and Gail Terry
which, in part, discussed the professionalization of the county court clerks that seemed apparent
by the last quarter of the seventeenth century. During the early years of the colony, the governor
seems to have appointed the county clerks upon the suggestion of the counties’ court officials.
By the late 1640s under Governor Berkley, Secretary of State Richard Kemp acquired the power
of appointment. He and the secretaries that followed him sometimes accepted and other times
ignored the preferences of the local courts. It seems that Edmund Scarburgh II of Accomack
County may have used his considerable influence to secure Robert Hutchinson’s appointment to
the court clerkship, a position of vital importance in seventeenth century Virginia communities
5
Some works that have considered the decline of women’s status after the seventeenth century, including
Mary Beth Norton “Reflections on Women in the Age of the American Revolution,” Robert Hoffman and Peter J.
Albert, eds., Women in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989);
Norton, Separated by Their Sex; Dayton, Women Before the Bar; and Carr, “The Planter’s Wife.”
205
and one which Hutchinson held for over a decade. 6 On the other hand, in mid-1670s, the
Secretary Thomas Ludwell appointed John Washbourne to the Accomack County clerkship,
overriding the justices’ selection of another man for the position. Ludwell referred to
Washbourne as “honest, capable, and ready to please you.” 7
Thomas Ludwell’s choice of John Washbourne may be a reflection of the colonial
government’s desire to keep a tighter rein on the Accomack County court officials. The county
had just been re-established and its court justices’ commissions restored after a period of tumult
in which Northampton County controlled Accomack county business. The appointment also
may be indicative of Ludwell’s preference for a county clerk whom he had trained in the
secretary’s office. According to Hemphill and Terry, a “clerk apprentice system” had been in
operation since sometime in the late seventeenth century. Sons of prominent Virginians sought
after the clerkships and their £100 to £300 annual income. 8
Little is known about this system of apprenticeship in the secretary’s office.9 What is
known has been gleaned by Hemphill and Terry and A.G. Roeber from Lynda Rees Heaton’s
M.A. thesis in which she transcribed and edited “Littleton Waller Tazewell’s Sketch of His Own
Family…1837.” 10 Tazewell’s nineteenth-century memoir of his family’s involvement in
Virginia politics and law includes a recollection of his ancestor Littleton Tazewell, who served
an apprenticeship in the secretary’s office sometime during the colonial period. Lamenting over
the loss of this program in the nineteenth century, and the disorder and unprofessionalism that
6
According to Pagan, Hutchinson was nominated by the local magistrates and appointed by the governor.
Pagan, Ann Orthwood’s Bastard, 65. In 1659, Scarburgh was a commissioner and a burgess. Wise, 85.
7
McKey, County Court Records, vol 4 85-87.
8
Hemphill, John M. and Gail S Terry. “The Wheels of Government and the Machinery of Justice: The
Workings of Virginia’s Colonial Capitol.” Virginia Cavalcade. Vol 38, no 2 (1988): 56.
9
Hemphill and Terry cite Hemphill’s own work in progress on the clerk apprentice program in the
unpublished citations to the above mentioned article. A special thanks to Brent Tartar of the Library of Virginia for
supplying to me these citations.
10
Roeber, Faithful Magistrates, 47, 69.
206
ensued, Tazewell gave a description of the system in which his ancestor had been apprenticed.
According to Tazewell, as the colony enlarged, the Secretary grew increasingly reliant on a
growing army of clerks to carry out the duties of his office. In order to secure clerks, “every
respectable gentleman of the Country” was invited to send his son to the Secretary’s office, and
“to maintain him there at his own expense for a term of seven years.” The clerk-apprentices
received no compensation, but were trained under the watch of the Secretary and of the Clerk of
the General Court to prepare them for county court clerkships as they became available:
When any clerkship became vacant, he who stood first on the list…whether still
remaining in the secretary’s office or not, was generally permitted to claim it as a matter
of right…If he did not wish that appointment, but chose to wait for some other, he was at
liberty to decline it…and was offered the next….The effect of these wise regulations was,
that all the records being kept by those who had been trained up in the same school …
were not only uniformly alike, but all drawn after the most approved forms. 11
As this system of patronage took hold, the Secretary of the colony became the provincial official
holding the greatest number of subordinate appointments in naming the clerks of Virginia’s
courts. 12
Since the Secretary’s office provided one of the “most vital functions of provincial
government,” training clerks made sense. While there is no documentary evidence about when
colonial Virginia’s clerk-apprenticeship program was initiated, it is possible that it saw its
beginnings under the service of Secretary Thomas Ludwell in the 1660s. Thomas Ludwell,
probably through the support of Governor William Berkeley, secured the position of Secretary of
the colony in 1660. In England, a royal commission was drawn, giving him the same “Privileges,
Salary, Powers and entertainments…formerly enjoyed by…any other person exercising the
…place.” As Secretary, Ludwell brought order to the “cluttered and ill-kept records” in his
11
Lynda Rees Heaton, ed., “Littleton Waller Tazewell’s Sketch of His Own Family…1837” (M.A. thesis,
College of William and Mary, 1967), xxviii- xxix, 60-64.
12
Hemphill and Terry, 54.
207
office. The General Assembly recognized the problems disorder wrought, declaring in 1664 that
the demands of the growing colony necessitated improved organization because “well or ill
keeping of the records is of the highest consequences as being the only means to preserve the
rights and proprieties of all inhabitants.” 13
If the clerk-apprentice program had its beginnings in the 1660s as I suspect, the
uniformity with which the county court clerks in Accomack and York counties recorded the legal
activities of their community may have resulted in limiting women’s gossip in the official record.
Women’s words may still have been apparent in the original depositions recorded by the clerks,
since recording depositions was lucrative. The General Assembly assigned uniform fees to the
duties of the county clerks. At the close of the seventeenth century, the county court clerks
charged 10 lbs tobacco for each deposition taken and recorded, 5 lbs tobacco for recording each
deposition taken by another court official, and 3 lbs tobacco for endorsing and filing each
deposition regardless of who wrote it. Considering that taking depositions was still quite
lucrative, it seems fair to assume that the clerks continued to record them, even those that
contained or pertained to women’s gossip. It is also possible that the clerks, when they
transcribed their notations into the official court record, decided which cases to include in their
entirety and which cases to abbreviate, possibly leaving out the information which might point to
women’s ongoing gossiping.
If this is the case, Virginia’s seventeenth- and eighteenth- century county clerks wielded
13
From Conway Robinson, “Notes from Council and General Court Records,” Virginia Magazine of
History and Biography, XIV (January, 1907), 267 as quoted in Junius Rhodes Fishburne, “The Office of Secretary
of State of Colonial Virginia.” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1971), 170-177. The Secretary’s office was
responsible for records that the county court clerks forwarded to the colonial government, including tithable listings
and marriage records, and certificates of approval for headrights from the county courts; Probate of Wills and
Administrations…All Rights upon which Patents are grounded, are there entered. All Writs for chusing of Burgesses
issue from thence, and …are there returned…All Certificates of Births, marriages, and Burials, …All Fines and
Forfeitures…All Matters…of a Coroner…All Freedoms of Ships…All Naturalizations….All Certificates…of
Ordinary Keepers…All Matters relating to the Admiralty and ecclesiastical Courts are register’d here.”
208
tremendous power in presenting in the official record a Virginia that was becoming increasingly
civilized just as the legal and political system were becoming more Anglicized through the
control of English officials (Board of Trade). 14 Colonial Virginia leaders’ attempts at creating an
illusion of a civilized society through the court records mimics the ritual Lord de la Warr and his
attendants performed in the mud and muck of Jamestown in 1610 as they, too, sought to tame
their New World. Further work is needed to tease out the details of the clerk-apprentice system
and the manner in which county court clerks were trained in order to gain a better understanding
of the value of the records they left. When women’s words become no longer relevant in the
official record, how did this affect the concept of women’s place?
The body of scholarship on colonial Virginia will also benefit from a more in-depth
analysis of gossip as performance. In sociological and anthropological terms, performance is
understood as the process through which individuals display for others the meaning of a social
situation. Erving Goffman defined performance broadly as any public activity that influences
others and argues that the politics of identity are negotiated through the performance itself. 15
Like Alexander Haskell’s focus on the early modern English understanding of the language of
defiance and deference, I too focus on discourse and its social implications, specifically women’s
words and the reaction to them. In the first three quarters of the seventeenth century, women’s
gossip, the effects of status, acts of punishing and contriteness are woven together. Further
research into late seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century records will clarify the role of the
clerk-as-reporter and the identity and nature of his audience. 16 Judith Butler in Gender Trouble
14
In Justice in Colonial Virginia, Chitwood, actually considers that, based on comments made by
contemporaries at the turn of the century the county court justices serving were actually less qualified than justices
who served earlier in the century because many of the early justices had been raised in England and had “better
opportunities for acquiring knowledge of the common law than the Virginians of a later period who had been
brought up in the colony where there were few educational advantages.” 44.
15
Erving Goffman, The Performance of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959).
16
Dwight Conquergood considers not just the performer, but also the audience, the reporter, and the social
209
theorizes that as a social construction, a society’s understanding of gender is always at risk of
disruption and subversion and must be maintained through recurring sexual and gender
performance including discursive performance. Recognition of the gendered words of
punishment and the act of carrying them out will add to our understanding of women’s place in
Virginia society. From the research in this dissertation, it is clear that the seventeenth-century
concepts of gender are imbued with understandings of status as well. How might race contribute
to our understanding of this type of cultural performance? How might this connect to recent
work on an understanding of deference and defiance of elites?
The peculiarities of colonial Virginia include the absence of cultural traits such as
markets, fairs, and print. The dispersed pattern of settlement, the economic reliance on cash
crops, and the limited literacy of the English immigrants in Virginia help explain this. Other
cultural traits were missing, or at least not evident to date in the historical record, including the
tradition of skimmington rides, an important performance of masculine authority in English
communities. Europeans, including the English, had a rich tradition of acting outside of the legal
system in order to enforce the collective morality of the community; one of their methods was
the utilization of the charivari or skimmington. Brown uses the term “charivari” interchangeably
with that of “skimmington,” defining them as “carnivalesque processions featuring crossdressing men who ritually re-enacted the beating or cuckolding of a husband to punish
aggressive wives and their weak spouses.” 17 Historians of early modern England, such as Martin
Ingram and David Underdown, draw distinctions between the two terms, explaining that, in their
sixteenth and seventeenth century English form, charivaris (French term), commonly called
and political implications of the performance. “Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography
of Performance” Literature in Performance 5 no. 2 (April 1985): 1-14
17
Brown, 29.
210
“skimmingtons” or “skimmington rides” encompassed a range of activities varying in scale and
involving “a noisy, mocking demonstration, usually occasioned by some anomalous social
situation or infraction of community norms.” “Rough music” was another element of English
charivaris. 18
Ingram describes charivaris as a widespread and well known tradition in England that
included anywhere from a few to a few-hundred participants who processed to the offending
party’s house, making rough music on their way. The usual target of the charivari was a
husband-beater along with the weak, often cuckolded, spouse. Men dressed in drag re-created a
scene that members of the patriarchal community considered to be an inversion of the ideal
domestic situation: a wife beating her husband. Re-enactors, especially those in the dairy
producing areas of England, often wielded a skimming ladle in their theatrics (hence the name
“skimmington.”), a powerful statement considering the ladle was used in the processes of butterand cheese-making, which in the gendered division of labor was identified as women’s work. 19
The actual skimmington ride involved the crossed-dressed actors riding a horse or a pole, often
with the “husband” riding backwards behind the “wife,” symbolizing the unnatural inversion of
domestic authority that had occurred in the offending household. In an act symbolizing the “duty
of neighborly surveillance,” the offenders’ neighbors were sometimes pressed into service during
a skimmington ride, forced to act the parts of the offending couple. 20 Occasionally, the actual
offenders were made to ride and, according to Ingram, they were “pelted with filth and could end
up being ducked, with or without the aid of a ducking stool.” 21 “Rough music” was another
18
Ingram, 81-82, and David Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in
England, 1603-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 100-101.
19
Brown explains that “English women’s active “marketing of dairy goods” was not only important to the
household economies of England, but also a potential threat to community order in a patriarchal society. 29.
20
Ingram, 93
21
Ibid, 86.
211
element often identified with a charivari. The procession created a “cacophony [by the] ringing
(of) bells, the raucous playing of musical instruments, the beating of pots and pans and other
household utensils, and the discharge of guns and fireworks.” 22
While women and their weak husbands, whose actions were upsetting the traditional
gender hierarchy, were often the targets, they were not the exclusive recipients of this public
degradation. Together with the skimmington ride and sometimes elaborate procession that
accompanied it (often including armed men), the intent of the charivari participants was to shame
and humiliate members of the community that were in some way acting outside of the
established neighborhood morals. There are few documented cases of charivaris and
skimmingtons in the American colonies before 1730. While the motivation for the very few
early episodes in New England seem to be similar to those in England, the rough music and
charivaresque processions in New England and the middle colonies in the eighteenth century
were motivated by political dissention, not personal misconduct. So, just as the spelling and
meaning of the word “gossip” changed over time, such was the case for the word “charivari.” It
transformed over time to various spellings of “shivaree,” while the actions that the word
represented also changed with time as the “skimmingtons” and “rough music” of England
became the “riots” of the American Revolution.23
It is curious that that such a widely spread tradition like the charivari nearly ceased to
22
Ibid, 86
According to historian Bryan D. Palmer in his article, “Discordant Music: Charivaris and Whitecapping
in Nineteenth Century North America,” there have been only two cases of “rough music” thus far uncovered in the
British colonies prior to the eighteenth century, one in which a ship’s carpenter refused to complete his
apprenticeship and the other in which a man had carried on a “protracted and open adulterous affair.” Both of these
occurred in Boston. Cited in “Skimmington in the Middle and New England Colonies,” by Steven J. Stewart in Riot
and Revelry in Early America, William Pencak, Matthew Dennis and Simon P. Newman, eds. (University Park, Pa.:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 44. The charivaris of Europe and rough music of early America
share several attributes, as England’s charivaris were sometimes politically motivated as well, and in both places,
they often coincided with holidays or festivals. Ingram, 90. “Shivarees” were “the kind of serenade they give to a
newly-married couple” that were “especially common when the marriage was a second one, or when the couple
23
212
exist in England’s North American colonies, only to reappear over one-hundred years after
settlement, transforming into the forms of rough music and riots associated with revolution. The
absence of charivari evidence in Virginia is all the more intriguing when considering the
religious makeup of the region. It may be easier to understand the absence of this activity in
New England where the Puritan church had a great deal of influence on the lives of the colonists.
Puritans in England looked unfavorably on this specific form of extralegal moral policing. But
Puritans had much less influence in the Virginia colony, where the state-sponsored Anglican
religion is one of rich tradition and pageantry. If skimmington rides and rough music had a place
to flourish, it was certainly in Virginia. 24 Historians Breen and Innes give a possible explanation
for their absence:
The people who migrated to Virginia during this period left behind in England a rich
heritage of folk customs, local holidays and market days, special times for games and
fairs. The traditional Maytime games in Kent, for example, were greeted in the 1660s
with ‘a kind of rural triumph, expressed by the country swains in a morris-dance, with the
old music of tabor and pipe…with all the agility and cheerfulness imaginable.’ The
English agrarian calendar of the seventeenth century set aside times for work and for
pleasure, and as often as not, customary pleasures blended in with the performance of
farm work. According to Joan Thirsk, ‘Unlike leisure pastimes of today, the recreations
of Tudor and Stuart labourers were not merely a means of escape: they formed a kind of
inherited art or ritual, centring round [sic] their daily occupations, and based upon the
ordinary sights and sounds of the village.’ By comparison, the Virginia calendar seemed
dull, uneventful. The records contain no mention of games or songs or feasts. There were
no market days, towns did not exist. The year turned on making tobacco, a plant which
even Virginians contemptuously called a ‘stinking weed.’ In this world, drinking at
ordinaries may well have served as an escape from the lonely drudgery of field labor. 25
Charivari activities were often intricately linked with festivals and holidays. English residents
took advantage of the gatherings to practice the tradition. If the English rituals of various
holidays and festivals were adapted to the Virginian environment, perhaps the moral policing
were badly-matched because of age, or for some other reason.” Michael Quinion, World Wide Words, Online:
http://www.worldwidewords.org /wierdwords.ww-ski1.htm.
24
For a helpful discussion of religion in the Chesapeake, see Bond, Damned Souls.
25
Breen, Myne Own Ground, 56.
213
evident in the charivaris that were associated with those events were adapted as well.
Documentation, or lack of it, may be another explanation for the dearth of evidence,
especially in Virginia. England’s charivaris were fairly well documented in “chronicles, diaries,
letters, newspapers, and imaginative literature” as well as artwork, and gave Martin Ingram and
other historians “a reasonably satisfactory picture” of the European tradition. 26 Early Virginia
colonists, however, had a low literacy rate, making them less likely to keep diaries or journals.
And there were no newspapers published in the American colonies prior to 1690 when Publick
Occurences Both Forreign and Domestick was published for a brief time in Boston. 27 In fact,
the York area had no newspaper before William Park established the Virginia Gazette in
Williamsburg in 1730. 28 The Eastern Shore’s first paper appears to have been the National
Recorder, which was not published until 1860. 29 It is interesting, though, that descriptions of
charivari-like episodes have not been uncovered in court documents.
If there was indeed an absence of the raucous charivari tradition in the American
colonies, then seventeenth century English women’s gossip may have filled the void that this
absence created. English women who arrived on Virginia’s shore understood a “folkloric
tradition that the populace had the right to supplement the legal system” and utilized public
shame and humiliation as a social control. 30 Gossip was their answer to the male-dominated
activities of the charivari. When considering the purpose, activities, and results of charivaris, the
26
Ingram, 81.
“No other American newspaper was published until 1704 when the weekly Boston News-Letter began.
The first newspapers in America risked government suppression and censorship. That changed in 1735 when John
Peter Zenger was acquitted of libel, thus legitimizing the concept of a free press.” From “Newspapers in America,”
Questia Online Library (Available online: http://questia.com/index.jsp? CRID=newspapers-inamerica&OFFID=se1KEY=newspapers-history.
28
“A History of the Virginia Gazette,” Available online:
http://www.vagazette.com/our_newspaper/about_us/. Printer William Nuthead arrived in nearby Jamestown in 1682,
set up a press, and printed the Assembly’s acts. The Assembly quickly shut him down, and a law was enacted
shortly thereafter prohibiting printing “upon any occasion whatsoever.”
29
Turman, 256.
27
214
argument can be made that the gossip employed by English women in seventeenth-century
Accomack and York counties was an adaptation of these traditional English activities of
community policing. Roger Thompson explains that the motivations of gossips in colonial
America were similar to those who carried out skimmington rides in England. For example,
Bess Gaskins and Elizabeth Frith Woods spoke maliciously and, certainly in the case of Woods,
her gossip was premeditated, making them the “verbal equivalent of more physical forms of folk
ridicule- the charivari, rough music, riding the stang or rail, or the cuckhold’s horns.” 31
Reminiscent of Woods’ actions, Thompson cites a letter dated 18 March 1664 to the court from
the self-proclaimed “Commissioners for Small Causes of Concord,” indicating “two libels, both
obscene in subject matter and language, had been nailed up on the meeting house.” 32
Skimmingtons could be “anti-authoritarian mischief, completely unrelated to any domestic
situation” and used against individuals with secular and/or ecclesiastical authority – so the
activity can be political in nature (Elizabeth Woods) in which the actors’ intent is to “vilify” a
person in authority. Interestingly, Ingram describes a situation in which sexual impropriety is
used to indicate contempt for a person (magistrate or cleric) in authority. 33
Although women surely participated in England’s charivaris, their role was not central,
but instead one of support. They observed the procession and goings-on. They may have
whooped and hollered and encouraged the male participants. They provided clothing to the
crossed-dressed re-enactors or household utensils to the “rough” musicians. 34 Even so, this was
30
Ingram, 93.
Historian Roger Thompson describes “lampoon” and “malicious words” as the literary version of the
charivari, with the “main objective of the exercise…to have been to shame those who deviated from the acceptable
conventional behavior of the community” in his monograph on sexual deviancy in New England. Roger Thompson,
Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699 (Amherst: the University of Massachusetts
Press, 1986), 86, 188.
32
Thompson, 86.
33
Ingram, 90-91.
34
Women sometimes “took an active part, or served back-up functions as providing ale for refreshment or
31
215
an activity dominated by males whose purpose it was to shame a neighbor who had violated
community mores, mainly those related to gender and sex, but “sometimes aimed at violators of
other community standards” like “enclosing commons” and threatening other “customary rights”
including market regulations. 35 In comparison, gossip was a female dominated activity in which
men were often cast in supporting roles. Like charivaris, gossip was carried out to publicize
behavior that fell outside of the community norms. The gossip was often related to issues of
gender and sex, but could also revolve around the actions of those who breached other
neighborhood principles. Robert and Michall Huitt had been accused of committing acts of theft.
While Michall’s transgressions apparently happened in her homeland and on an English vessel,
Robert’ s occurred in Accomack County, and threatened the very agricultural community in
which they resided.
Diaries, journals, letters, pamphlets, and sermons have given us valuable insight into the
lives of seventeenth century colonists. Court records give us a different view of life in these
formative years. Where some primary sources give only the writers’ point of view, court records
reveal the means and manner in which colonists related to each other. The caveat, as with most
forms of communication, is that the court records of this time period are filtered through the
hand of the court clerks. Their biases must be taken into account when reviewing these records.
We must ask ourselves why they included certain information, what information they left out and
why. The clerks’ backgrounds, their own status in the community, and their relationships with
neighbors, county officials, and the colonial government must be considered. We can make
educated guesses based on their activities and known associations, much as has been done with
the main characters in this study. Of course, we can never know with absolute certainty how the
lending clothes for transvestite performances” (102). Ingram, 101-102.
35
Underdown, 102-107.
216
court clerks filtered their records and how their professionalization created those filters, but this
is a good direction for further study.
Although there are numerous instances of disorderly speech documented in the court
records, there are likely many more that went unrecorded by county officials. Women like Bess
Gaskins, Elizabeth Frith Woods, Marrion Cornelius and Mary White, Margarett Pierce and Mary
Floyd, and Joane Wardley each won the attention of the court justices, sometimes exposing their
targets’ true character and often subjecting them to public humiliation. Many historians have
argued that gossip was a significant feature in the gendered world of colonial English women;
consequently, we must recognize that there were other cases that escaped official notice. Still,
without the existing court records, we might be duped into believing that women truly lived in a
rigid patriarchal society that dictated their every move, leaving them powerless and completely
vulnerable to the will of the men that ruled them. Thanks to the preservation of women’s
activities in the court records of Accomack and York Counties, it is evident that this was not the
case at all. While men did officially hold authority in seventeenth-century Virginia, women both
challenged and supported their efforts at creating and maintaining that authority and their vision
of an orderly society via their “severall unhandsome words.”
217
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APPENDIX A
From Michael Dalton’s The Countrey Justice (1618) 1
Ryotts
What persons may commit a Ryott
If a number of women (or children, under the age of discretion) doe flock together for their
own cause; this is no assembly punishable by the statutes, unless a man of discretion moved
them to assemble for the doing of some unlawfull act, as Master Marrow held.
Yet certaine women, that had appareled themselves in mens apparel, and had pulled down
ryottously a lawful inclosure were worthily punished for the same in the Starre-Chamber.
Also women, and children, may commit a force; may commit Larcenie; and may be bound to
the peace, as breakers of the peace. Vide antea tit. Suretie for the Peace.
Also women covert are holden to be within the Statute of Merton cap.6. for ravishment of
Wards; and within the Statute of Westminster, 1 Eliz.cap.2 and 23 Eliz. for Recusancie, although
they be not named with any of these statutes.
Also if a woman covert shall commit any Ryott, or doe any trespasse or other wrong, shee is
punishable for it; and for a trespasse done by the wife, or a scandal published by her, the action
lieth against both, an action of trespasse, or of the case, shall be brought against the husband and
the wife, there the husband in chargeable to the damages, or fine, because he is partie to the
action and judgement, (See Paulo ant. Sub tit.Forcible Entrie) But if a women covert without her
husband be indicted of a Trespasse, Ryott, or any other wrong, there the wife shall answer and be
partie to the judgement only: and in such case the fine set upon the wife shall not be levied upon
the husband; yet after the husbands death it seemeth such damages or fine shall then be levied of
the wife her selfe, quere. And as for imprisonment or other corporall paine, it shalle be inflicted
uponthe wife, and not upon the husband for his wives act or default.
1
Michael Dalton, The Countrey Justice (London: The Society of Stationers, 1618; Reprint, Amsterdam:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ltd, 1975), 196-197.
231
APPENDIX B
From William Nelson’s The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace (1704) 1
Feme Covert
The Peace may be granted against her, or against an Infant, tho’ under 14 Years of Age, gut
them she must not be bound, tho’ with her Husband, for the Recognizance will be void as to her,
but she must find Sureties, which if she cannot do, she must be committed. If she commit a Riot
or Trespass without her Husband, she may be indicted and fine, but the Fine shall not be levied
on her Husband but on her after his death, and she shall be committed till ‘tis paid, 9 Rep 72 Dr.
Huffey’s Case, IIRep. Dr. Foster’s Case.
If she steals Goods by the Compulsion of her Husband ‘tis not Felony, in her because of the
Necessity of Obedience, but if it was at his Perswasion without and Constraint, she is then guilty
of Felony, and her Husband s accessary.
But this Priviledge doth not prevail in cases of Treason and Murder, because of the greatness
of the Offences.
It hath been held that if both Steal together, this shall be taken to be the Act of the Husband
alone, and that she cannot be so much as accessory to it, because of the necessity of Obedience
aforesaid, but I think Obedience should only extenuate to the Crime, for such it is, and she ought
not consent to it, if she doth, she may be indicted.
She cannot steal her Husband’s Goods, but if she is taken away with them against his
Consent, ‘tis Felony in him that takes her, so ‘tis if she deliver her husband’
1
William Nelson, The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace (London; Richard and Edward Adkins for
Charles Harper, 1704), 239-240.
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APPENDIX C
From William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), Book I,
Part XV 1
III. HAVING thus fhewn how marriages may be made, or diffolved, I come now, laftly, to
fpeak of the legal confequences of fuch making, or diffolultion.
By marriage, the hufband and wife are one perfon in law l : that is, the very being or legal
exiftence of the woman is fufpended during the marriage, or at leaft is incorporated and
confolidated into that of the hufband : under whofe wing, protection, and cover, fhe performs
every thing ; and is therefore called in our law-french a feme-covert ; is faid to be covert-baron,
or under the protection and influence of her hufband, her baron, or lord ; and her condition
during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of an union of perfon in hufband
and wife, depend almoft all the legal rights, duties, and difabilities, that either of them acquire by
the marriage. I fpeak not at prefent of the rights of property, but of fuch as are merely perfonal.
For this reafon, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her m : for
the grant would be to fuppofe her feparate exiftence ; and to covenant with her, would be only to
covenant with himfelf : and therefore it is alfo generally true, that all compacts made between
hufband and wife, when fingle, are voided by the intermarriage n. A woman indeed may be
attorney for her hufband o ; for that implies no feparation from, but is rather a reprefentation of,
her lord. And a hufband may alfo bequeath any thing to his wife by will ; for that cannot take
effect till the coverture is determined by his death p. The hufband is bound to provide his wife
with neceffaries by law, as much as himfelf ; and if the contracts debts for them, he is obliged to
pay themq : but for any thing befides neceffaries, he is not chargeable r. Alfo if a wife elopes, and
lives with another man, the hufband is not chargeable even for neceffaries g ; at laft if the perfon,
who furnifhes them, is fufficiently apprized of her elopement t. If the wife be indebted before
marriage, the hufband is bound afterwards to pay the debt ; for he has adopted her and her
circumftances together u. If the wife be injured in her perfon or her property, fhe can bring no
action for redrefs without her hufband's concurrence, and in his name, as well as her own w :
neither can fhe be fued, without making the hufband a defendant x. There is indeed one cafe
where the wife fhall fue and be fued as a feme fole, viz. where the hufband has abjured the
realm, or is banifhed y : for then he is dead in law ; and, the hufband being thus difabled to fue
for or defend the wife ; it would be moft unreafonable if fhe had no remedy, or could make no
defence at all. In criminal profecutions, it is true, the wife may be indicted and punifhed
feparately z ; for the union is only a civil union. But, in trials of any fort, they are not allowed to
be evidence for, or againft, each other a : partly becaufe it is impoffible their teftimony fhould be
indifferent ; but principally becaufe of the union of perfon : and therefore, if they were admitted
1
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England Vol. I (“The Avalon Project: Documents in
Law, History and Diplomacy. Accessed 6/26/2011: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/blackstone. asp).
233
to be witneffes for each other, they would contradict one maxim of law, “ nemo in propria caufa
teftis effe debet ;” and if againft each other, they would contradict another maxim, “nemo tenetur
feipfum accufare.” But where the offence is directly againft the perfon of the wife, this rule has
been ufually difpenfed with b : and therefore, by ftatute 3 Hen. VII. c. 2. in cafe a woman be
forcibly taken away, and married, fhe may be a witnefs againft fuch her hufband, in order to
convict him of felony. For in this cafe fhe can with no propriety be reckoned his wife ; becaufe a
main ingredient, her confent, was wanting to the contract : and alfo there is another maxim of
law, that no man fhall take advantage of his own wrong ; which the ravifher here would do, if by
forcibly marrying a woman, he could prevent her from being a witnefs, who is perhaps the only
witnefs, to that very fact.
IN the civil law the hufband and wife are confidered as two diftinct perfons ; and may have
feparate eftates, contracts, debts, and injuries c : and therefore, in our ecclefiaftical courts, a
woman may fue and be fued without her hufband d.
BUT, though our law in general confiders man and wife as one perfon, yet there are fone
inftances in which the is feparately confidered ; as inferior to him, and acting by his compulfion.
And therefore all deeds executed, and acts done, by her, during her converture, are void, or at
leaft voidable ; except it be a fine, or the like matter of record, in which cafe fhe muft be folely
and fecretly examined, to learn if her act be voluntary c. She cannot by will devife lands to her
hufband, unlefs under fpecial circumftances ; for at the time of making it fhe is fuppofed to be
under his coercion f. And in fome felonies, and other inferior crimes, committed by her, through
conftraint of her hufband, the law excufes her g : but this extends not to treafon or murder.
THE hufband alfo (by the old law) might give his wife moderate correction h. For, as he is to
anfwer for her mifbehaviour, the law thought it reafonable to intruft him with this power of
reftraining her, by domeftic chaftifement, in the fame moderation that a man is allowed to correct
his fervants or children ; for whom the mafter or parent is alfo liable in fome cafes to anfwer. But
this power of correction was confined within reafonable boundsi ; and the hufband was
prohibited to ufe any violence to his wife, aliter quam ad virum, ex caufa regiminis et
caftigationis uxoris fuae, licite et rationabiliter pertinet k. The civil law gave the hufband the
fame, or a larger, authority over his wife ; allowing him, for fome mifdemefnors, flagellis et
fuftibus acriter vering him, for fome mifdemefnors, flagellis et fuftibus acriter verberare uxorem
; for others, only modicam caftigationem adbibere l.
But, with us, in the politer reign of Charles the fecond, this power of correction began to be
doubted m : and a wife may now have fecurity of the peace againft her hufband n ; or, in return, a
hufband againft his wife o. Yet the lower rank of people, who were always fond of the old
common law, ftill claim and exert their antient privilege : and the courts of law will ftill permit a
hufband to reftrain a wife of her liberty, in cafe of any grofs mifbehaviour p.
234
THESE are the chief legal effects of marriage during the coverture ; upon which we may
obferve, that even the difabilities, which the wife lies under, are for the moft part intended for her
protection and benefit. So great a favourite is the female fex of the laws of England.