The Colonial Cavalier Part 12

A Maryland statute enumerates among capital offences: manslaughter, malicious trespa.s.s, forgery, receiving stolen goods, and "stealth of one's self"--which is the unlawful departure of a servant out of service or out of the colony without the consent of his master or mistress--"offender to suffer pains of death by hanging except the offender can read clerk-like, and then he shall lose his hand, and be burned in the hand or forehead with a hot iron, and forfeit his lands at the time of the offense committed." This test of ability to read--"_legit aut non legit?_"--was manifestly a clause inserted to favor the clergy, and so woven into the tissue of mediaeval law, that the Reformation had been powerless to unravel it.

It is noticeable that the economical planters wisely preferred those forms of punishment, which cost the State nothing but the services of the constable and the executioner, to the confinement in prison, which involved the support of the criminal at public expense. Prisons, of course, existed almost from the beginning. In the Maryland archives of 1676, I read that "Cap{t} Quigly brought into this house the act for Building the State House and prisson at S{t} Maries, and desires to know what manner of Windowes the house shall have." It is at length decided accordingly by the a.s.sembly "that the windowes are to bee of Wood with substanciall Iron barres and th{t} the wood of the frame of the Windowes be layd in Oyle." For the safer guarding of the prisoners, it is also directed that the windows, which were to be only twenty by thirty inches in size, be protected by "Three Iron Barres upright, and two athwart."

The prisons found little occupation as compared with the pillory and the whipping-post. The latter was the common corrector of drunkenness, which was a too frequent offence in those old days in the Cavalier Colonies, when the gentry sipped their madeira over the polished dining-table and the poor man mixed his toddy in his noggin of pewter or wood. All men drank, and most men drank too much. Wines played an important part in the colonial imports. A Virginia statute of 1645 fixed the price of canary and sherry at thirty pounds of tobacco, madeira and "Fyall" at twenty pounds, while aqua-vitae and brandy ran up to forty. A few years later Master George Fletcher, his heirs and executors, were granted by statute, the sole right to brew in wooden vessels for fourteen years. Maryland laid a tax upon "Rhume, Perrie, Mola.s.ses, Sider, Quince Drink or Strong Beer Imported, each 5 lbs tob. per gal."

The State, having made a handsome profit from the selling of all these wines and "hot waters," straightway became very virtuous against the poor wight who took too much. He was sentenced to the joys of the whipping-post, or to be laid in the stocks, or to pay a fine; thus again making liquor pay a revenue to the State. We have an amusing description of what const.i.tutes drunkenness, from a Colonial Dogberry of the seventeenth century, who sapiently observes: "Now, for to know a drunken man the better, the Scripture describes them to stagger and reel to and fro; And so, where the same legs which carry a man into the house can not bring him out again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness." The difficulty in convicting these offenders with two pairs of legs, lay in the general sentiment of the community, that after all there was no great harm in taking a little too much of so good a thing as liquor.

The same public sentiment protected duelling, which was under the ban of the statute-books; but these old laws show the futility of attempting to legislate far in advance of public opinion. The law opposed it, but the prevailing sentiment sustained it. The number of duels fought at the South in colonial times has been grossly over-estimated, but they were fought; and the general feeling in regard to the practice was accurately expressed by Oglethorpe of Georgia, that typical Cavalier and true gentleman of the old school, who, when asked if he approved of duelling, made answer, "Of course a man must protect his honor." This curious notion that a man's honor was a vague but very sensitive article, worn about the person, and capable of being injured by any brawler who chanced to jostle against it at an "ordinary," or any vagabond who wished to pick a quarrel with his betters on the road, was a relic of feudal days, when hostile factions met and fought at every corner; and the Colonial Cavalier held to it loyally, never asking himself why or wherefore. This theory, which makes the individual and not the State the avenger of insult and injury, found its logical climax in the methods adopted by Colonel Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter before the Revolution, and the author of a quick and simple form of law called by his name, and very popular still, though, to do him justice, it must be said that his followers have carried his principles further than their author intended. He never took life, but aimed simply to vindicate his own honor and that of his country by inflicting lashes on those who differed with him politically, and thought he did G.o.d service when he strung up suspected Tories, and forced them to shout "Liberty forever!"

Thus our study of the lawmaking and law-breaking records has brought us all the way from that House of Burgesses sitting at James Cittie in 1619--their hearts full of loyalty to his Majesty King James the First, and full of grat.i.tude for the slender liberties he has seen fit to loan rather than grant them--to the brink of the Revolution, to parties of the Crown and of the people, to the hall in the Virginia Capitol where the a.s.sembly is boiling with wrath and defiance against George the Third and his ministers, who have dared to insult the rights and liberties of a free people. It is a mighty transformation to have been brought about in a century and a half. The Southern Colonies did not give up their allegiance without a bitter struggle of reason against sentiment, a struggle which New England never knew; but at length the loyalty which had bowed down to fallen royalty at Breda and yielded Charles II. so early a recognition that he quartered the arms of Virginia with those of England, France, and Scotland, and spoke of it as the Old Dominion--at last, this generous, faithful, confiding loyalty had been outraged past endurance. But still the old traditions lingered. Gen. John Mason says: "So universal was the idea that it was treason and death to speak ill of the king, that I even now remember a scene in the garden at Springfield, when my father's family were spending the day there on a certain Sunday, when I must have been very small. Several of the children having collected in the garden, after hearing in the house among our elders many complaints and distressing forebodings as to this oppressive course towards our country, we were talking the matter over in our own way, and I _cursed_ the King, but immediately begged and obtained the promise of the others not to tell on me."

Yet at this moment, when the young rebel was trembling in the garden for the effects of his awful temerity, America was already on the eve of the outbreak which severed her forever from the King and the Kingdom of Great Britain. The allegiance of the loyal colonies could not have fallen so suddenly, but for the long years of sapping and mining which had gone on silently, yet surely, doing their work.

From the time of the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey and his return, backed by the authority of Charles the First, there had been a war waged by proxy between king and people. The governors represented tyranny, and the a.s.sembly opposed each encroachment. Eye to eye they stood, like wrestlers, neither side yielding a point without a struggle, yet both expressing equal loyalty and love for the King, and equal reverence for his authority. Virginia long preserved "an after-dinner allegiance" to the Crown even when she openly defied its policy. Virginians drank his Majesty's health, wiped their lips, and imprecated his Majesty's Navigation Acts. If their political creed bound them to the fiction that the King could do no wrong, they cherished no such delusion concerning his deputies.

When Sir William Berkeley, as despotic at heart as his Stuart master, undertook to play the tyrant in Virginia, the country blazed out into a rebellion, which died only with the death of Nathaniel Bacon, its leader.

Bacon was a rebel, but a rebel of the type of Was.h.i.+ngton and Patrick Henry--one who believed in the motto which Jefferson engraved on his seal, "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to G.o.d." What vigor and eloquence are thrown into his proclamations! They belong to the brightest pages of American literature. Read but the opening of

"NATHANIEL BACON ESQ'R, HIS MANIFESTO CONCERNING THE PRESENT TROUBLES IN VIRGINIA.

"If vertue be a sin, if Piety be giult, all the Principles of morality goodness and Justice be perverted, Wee must confesse That those who are now called Rebells may be in danger of those high imputations, Those loud and severall Bulls would affright Innocents and render the defence of o{r} Brethren and the enquiry into o{r} sad and heavy oppressions, Treason. But if there bee, as sure there is, a just G.o.d to appeal too, if Religion and Justice be a sanctuary here, If to plead y{e} cause of the oppressed, If sincerely to aime at his Mat{ies} Honour and the Publick good without any reservation or by Interest, If to stand in the Gap after soe much blood of o{r} dear Brethren bought and sold, If after the losse of a great part of his Ma{ties} Colony deserted and dispeopled, freely with o{r} lives and estates to indeavor to save the remaynders bee Treason, G.o.d Almighty Judge and lett guilty dye. But since wee cannot in o{r} hearts find one single spott of Rebellion or Treason or that wee have in any manner aimed at the subverting y{e} setled Government or attempting of the person of any either magistrate or private man not with standing the severall Reproaches and Threats of some who for sinister ends were disaffected to us and censured o{r} ino[cent] and honest designes, and since all people in all places where wee have yet bin can attest o{r} civill, quiet, peaseable behaviour farre different from that of Rebellion and tumultuous persons, let Trueth be bold and all the world know the real Foundations of pretended giult."

When this ardent and impetuous nature was vanquished as alone it could be vanquished--by death--Berkeley might, by judicious magnanimity, have healed the wounds of civil war; but, instead, he pursued the conquered rebels with a malignant perseverance, which seemed to grow by what it fed on. "Mr. Drummond," he said ironically to a follower of Bacon brought to him as a prisoner, "you are very welcome! I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. You shall be hanged in half an hour."

Twenty-three leaders of this rebellion were thus executed before Berkeley stayed the b.l.o.o.d.y hand of his vengeance. "The old fool," quoth the King, "hath taken more lives in that naked country, than I for my father's murder!"

Bacon's death remains one of the mysteries of history. Some said he died of miasma in the Virginia swamps; some hinted that his foes poisoned his food, so sudden and mysterious was his ending; and lest Berkeley's revenge should extend to insulting the very corpse of his foe, Bacon's followers buried him with the greatest secrecy, and no man knoweth the resting place of this first colonial champion of popular rights. But the spirit of popular liberty did not die with Bacon, nor vice-royal tyranny with Berkeley. Culpeper, Howard, and a score of others came over from England, one after another, all differing on many points of provincial policy, but united in the determination to fill their own pockets and the royal exchequer by means of colonial revenue. "Lord Colepepper," commented Beverley, "reduced the greatest perquisite of his place to a certainty, which before was only gratuitous; that is, instead of the masters of s.h.i.+ps making presents of Liquors or provisions toward the Governor's housekeeping, as they were wont to do, he demanded a certain amount of money, remitting that custom." Such petty exactions as this were a dangerous experiment with a vehement and high-spirited people, who were willing to _give_ much, but to _yield_ nothing.

The justice and moderation of Spotswood's government held back the tide of popular revolt for some time, and the French and Indian War roused a final flicker of loyalty to the mother-country; but England's success in that struggle cost her the American provinces. When Quebec surrendered to Wolfe's troops, and the French force was withdrawn from Canada, the Comte de Vergennes prophesied the coming revolution against England. "The colonies," said he, "will no longer need her protection. She will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence."

In 1768 affairs looked stormy in Virginia, and Lord Botetourt was sent over to prophesy smooth things and allay popular irritation, without committing the government by definite promises. The man was well chosen for the task. Junius described him as a cringing, bowing, fawning, sword-bearing courtier. Horace Walpole said his graciousness was enamelled on iron. He came, he saw, he conquered Virginia in a bloodless victory, but Virginia did not stay conquered. When the colonists presented an address which he was pleased to consider insubordinate, Botetourt dissolved the a.s.sembly; but they retired to a private house, elected Peyton Randolph moderator, and prepared and signed a resolution to abstain from all merchandise taxed by Parliament.

The beginning of the end was at hand. The farce of the repeal of the Stamp Act and its reimposition went on. Botetourt went home, and Lord Dunmore, the last of the hated race of governors, came over. His imbecile policy, at once timid and tyrannous, hastened the march of events, but the end was inevitable. "Colonies," said Turgot, "are like fruits, which cling to the tree only till they ripen." So the event proved in America--Virginia and Ma.s.sachusetts, Maryland and Rhode Island, travelling by different roads, reached the same point of determination at any cost to throw off the yoke of British oppression. Henceforth they were to be no more provincials, but patriots; and Cavalier and Puritan struck hands in the hearty good-will of a common cause.

Sickness and Death

[Ill.u.s.tration: SICKNESS _and_ DEATH.]

Pioneer life is all very well when the adventurer is in high health and spirits; but when sickness comes, he must be stout of heart indeed if he does not sigh for the comforts of a civilized home. The poor settlers had a sorry time of it in that first fatal summer on the banks of the James, when they breathed in malaria from the marshes and drank the germs of fever and "fluxes" in the muddy water. "If there were any conscience in men," wrote gallant George Percy, "it would make their hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without relief, every day and night for the s.p.a.ce of six weeks; some departing out of the world, many times three or four in a night, in the morning their bodies trailed out of their cabins, like dogs, to be buried."

The adventurers profited by the lesson of these troublous times; for as soon as the settlement was fairly re-established under Dale, they set to work upon a hospital. On the river opposite Henrico, they put up "a guest-house for ye sicke people, a high seat and wholesome aire," and christened the place, _Mount Malado_. The chronicles are provokingly silent as to any details of this first American sanitorium. They say nothing of its arrangements, its comforts, or its conveniences. We do not know even the names of those who shared its rude shelter, or of the physicians who treated them. From time to time the mention of some doctor is interwoven with the history of the colonists, but he pa.s.ses as a pale shadow, with none of the character and substance of the gallant captains, the doughty burgesses, and the tipsy parsons. Doctor Bohun, who is described as "brought up amongst the most learned Surgeons and Physitions in Netherlands," came over and stayed with the settlers for a while, but Lord La Warre carried him off as his medical adviser to the "Western Iles," that his Lords.h.i.+p's gout might be "a.s.swaged by the meanes of fresh dyet, especially Oranges and Limons, an undoubted remedie for that disease"; and a little later the good doctor perished in a sea-fight with Spaniards on the s.h.i.+p _Margaret and John_. Dr. Simons' name is signed to one of the histories, but he too fades away and leaves no trace, and a Dr.

Pot has survived only through honorable mention, as "our worthy physition."

Either the country was too healthy, or the inhabitants too poor to encourage immigration among doctors, for they were few and far between, and we find men of other trades acting in the capacity of physician. There was Captain Norton, for instance, "a valiant, industrious gentleman adorned with many good qualities besides Physicke and Chirurgery, which for the publicke good, he freely imparted to all _gratis_, but most bountifully to y{e} poore."

It was common for barbers to combine the use of the knife with that of the razor, and for the apothecary to prescribe, as well as mix, his own drugs.

Colonel Byrd writes that in Fredericksburg, "besides Col. Willis, who is the top man of the place, there are only one merchant, a tailor, a smith, an ordinary-keeper, and a lady who acts both as doctress and coffee-house keeper." A list of prominent citizens in Baltimore in the eighteenth century, includes a barber, two carpenters, a tailor, a parson, and an inn-keeper, but no doctor; unless we reckon as such Dame Hughes and Dame Littig, who are registered as midwives.

The isolation of plantation life made it doubly difficult to depend on doctors, and as a result, each family had its own medicine-chest, and its own recipes and prescriptions handed down from generation to generation, and brought oftentimes from across the sea. Herbs played an important part in the pharmacopoeia, both because they were easily obtained, and because tradition endowed them with mysterious virtues. An old medical treatise a.s.sures its readers that "Nature has stamped on divers plants legible characters to discover their uses"; that baldness may be cured by hanging-moss, and freckles by spotted plants. Ragwort, and periwinkle, and Solomon's Seal all had their special merits; but sage was prime favorite, and its votary declares it a question how one who grows it in his garden and uses it freely can ever die. Next to ease of preparation, the prime requisite of a medicine was strength. Violent purges and powerful doses of physic or of "The Bark" were always in favor. The simple ailments of childhood were dosed with such abominations as copperas and pewter-filings, and these unhappy infants were fed on beverages of snake-root or soot-tea. One vile compound, common as it was odious, was _snail pottage_, made of garden sh.e.l.l-snails washed in small beer, mixed with earth-worms, and then fried in a concoction of ale, herbs, spices, and drugs.

Yet our ancestors knew how to brew good-tasting things. The letter book of Francis Jerdone, of Yorktown, Virginia, records under date 1746, "A receit how to make Burlington's Universal Balsam.

Balsam Peru 1 oz.

Best Storax 2 oz.

Benjamin, impregnated with sweet Almonds 3 oz.

Alloes Succatrinx 1/2 oz.

Myrrh Elect 1/2 oz.

Purest Frankincense 1/2 oz.

Roots of Angelica 1/2 oz.

Flowers of St. John Wort 1/2 oz.

One pint of the best Spirit of Wine.

To be bottled up and Set in the Sun for 20 or 30 days together, to be shaken twice or thrice a day. Take about 30 drops going to bed in Tea made of pennyroyal, Balm or Speer mint."

This prescription has the great defect of being too good, and might have a tendency to tempt the young to acquire the disease in order to be treated to the remedy. _Angelic Snuff_ was another agreeable medicament, warranted to cure all head troubles and help the palsy, megrims, deafness, apoplexy, and gout. What a pity that only the name of this cure remains to our generation, whose megrims alone would empty so many boxes of the invaluable snuff!

The early settlers could, if they would, have learned some useful lessons in the treatment of disease from the Indians, who at least understood making the skin share the work of the stomach. A primitive, but very effective, way of treating fevers and similar ailments among the natives was by the sweating-oven. The Indian patient would creep into these mounds, under which a fire had been lighted, while the medicine-man poured on water from above, creating a mighty steam, in which the patient would continue till even Indian fort.i.tude could hold out no longer, when he would crawl out, and, rus.h.i.+ng down to the nearest stream, plunge headlong into its cold waters. All this process was, of course, performed amid incantations as mysterious to the whites as the phraseology of a modern physician to a savage.

This treatment was more in harmony with modern ideas than the methods which prevailed among the English. When the two Spotswood boys were sent across the sea to Eton, to school, they spent their vacations with their aunt, Mrs. Campbell, who writes to their landlady at the end of their stay: "I am very Sorry, Madam, to send them back with such bad coughs, though I have nursed Jack who was so bad that we were obliged to Bleed him, and physick him, that he is much better. I can't judge how they got them (the coughs). My son came home with one, and has never been out of the house but once since, and these children have always laid warm, and lived constantly in the house." These poor little victims of the coddling system would probably have recovered rapidly in the steam-bath of their native Virginia and the fresh air of her pine forests, but instead, they are sent back from one hothouse to another. "I beg," adds their affectionate, but misguided aunt, "that they may be kept in a very warm room, and take the drops I send every night, and the pectoral drink several times a day, and that they eat no meat or drink anything but warm barley water and lemon juice, and, if Aleck increases, to get Blooded." It is a great relief, and something of a surprise, to learn that Aleck and his brother John lived to come back to America and figure in the Revolution. Perhaps their recollections of the dosing and "blooding" they received in their youth threw additional energy into their opposition to the oppression of England.

Cupping, leeching, and all sorts of blood-letting were the chief dependence in olden times in all cases of fever. The free use of water, now so universal, would then have been thought fatal. The poor patient dreaded the doctor more than the disease, and often with reason.

Anaesthetics, that best gift of science to a suffering world, were unknown, and surgery was vivisection with the victim looking on, conscious and quivering.

The doctor in the Cavalier Colonies was regarded with almost as much suspicion as the parson--as a cormorant, ready and anxious to prey on the community, and to be held in check by all the severities of the law.

Virginia in 1657 pa.s.sed statutes regulating surgeons' fees. In 1680 physicians were compelled to declare under oath the value of their drugs, and the court allowed them fifty per cent advance on the cost. If any physician was found guilty of neglecting a patient, he was liable to fine and punishment.

In the eighteenth century, still stricter laws were framed, "because of surgeons, apothecaries and unskillful apprentices who exacted unreasonable fees, and loading their patients with medicine." The fees fixed by this statute are "one s.h.i.+lling per mile and all medicines to be set forth in the bill." The price for attending a common fracture is set down at two pounds, and double the sum for attending a compound fracture. A university degree ent.i.tled the pract.i.tioner to higher charges, but its possession was rare. Most doctors were trained up in the offices of older men as apprentices, pounders of drugs, and cleaners of instruments, as the old painters began by preparing paints and brushes for the master.

A modern man of science would smile at the t.i.tles of the old medical works solemnly consulted by our forbears. "A Chirurgicall Booke" sounds interesting, and "The Universall Body of Physick"; but they are not so alluring as "The Way to Health, long life and Happiness," nor so attractive to the ignorant as "The Unlearned Keymiss." Perhaps the struggling physicians and chirurgians who doctored by these old books and their common-sense, helped as many and harmed no more than the chemist of to-day, with his endless pharmacopoeia of coal-tar products, tonics, and stimulants; or the specialist who, instead of "the Whole Body of Physick,"

devotes himself wholly to a single muscle, or nerve-ganglion.

In spite of the chill of popular disfavor and of the difficulties of professional training, good and n.o.ble men worked on faithfully at the business of helping the sick and suffering in the colonies. The Maryland annals tell of a Dr. Henry Stevenson, who built him a house near the York road so elegant, that the neighbors called it "Stevenson's Folly." If there was any envy in their hearts, however, it changed to grat.i.tude and admiration when the small-pox appeared in their midst, and the large-hearted doctor turned his mansion into a hospital. It is hard for us who live after the days of Jenner, to appreciate the terror of the word _small-pox_. In the eighteenth century pitted faces were the rule. Fathers feared to send their sons to England, so prevalent was the disease there.

An old journal advertises: "Wanted, a man between twenty and thirty years of age, to be a footman and under-butler in a great family; he must be of the Church of England, and have had the small-pox in the natural way."

This enlightened Dr. Stevenson, of Stevenson's Folly, made Maryland familiar with the process of inoculation, which antedated vaccination. He advertises in _The Maryland Gazette_ of 1765 that he is ready to inoculate "any gentlemen that are pleased to favor him in that way," and that his fees are two pistoles for inoculating, and twenty s.h.i.+llings per week board, the average cost to each patient being 5 14s.

Ryland Randolph writes to his brother at a time when inoculation is still a new thing: "I wrote to my Mother for her consent to be inoculated for the small-pox, but since see that she thinks it a piece of presumption.

When you favor me with a line, pray let me have your opinion of it!"

In 1768, we find the authorities at _William and Mary_ resolving "that an ad. be inserted in the Gazette to inform the Publick that the College is now clear of small-pox," and a few days later they frame another resolution that "fifty pounds be allowed to Dr. Carter for his care and attendance on those afflicted with said disorder at the College."