68

and his queen. The metropolis of the Colony still perpetuates his name. Its great seminary, the charter of which was granted by William, and which received his fostering care, bore, as it bears still, his name and the name of his faithful consort. Incidents in his career were to be traced even in the nomenclature of the plantation. The light wherry bobbing on the waters of the York or the James, was called the Brill in honor of the gallant frigate in which the Deliverer sailed from Helvoetsluys to the harbor of Torbay. The love of the people long survived his natural life. A great county, created long after the death of William, and stretching far beyond the blue wall which now bounds it in the west to the shores of the Ohio, whether named from the colour of its soil, which is also the symbol of Protestant Christianity wherever the British race extends, or in honor of William, pleasingly recalls the name of the small principality. on the banks of the Rhone, from which the Prince derived his familiar title. An adjoining State has honored the name of Bertie, the first peer of the realm who joined the standard of William on the soil of Britain, and our own town of Abingdon illustrates the same event." 70 And the noble county of Halifax, though called apparently in honor of a man who filled a secretary's office in England at a later day, reminds us of that brilliant and accomplished statesman, the unfaltering enemy of the House of Bourbon of that age when the sway of that House was supreme at Whitehall; the friend of Protestant Christianity, from whose hand William received the Declaration of Right.

69

68 Two years after the accession of William, a county was called after the Princess Anne, in honor of her claim as the successor of William and Mary, in the event of her surviving them, according to the parliamentary settlement of the crown.

69 In the Topographical Analysis of Virginia for the year 1790–'1, in the Appendix of the last edition (published by J. W. Randolph, Richmond, 1853, 8vo.) of the Notes on Virginia left for publication by Mr. Jefferson, the county of Orange, which was cut off from Spotsylvania in 1734, almost a third of a century after the death of William, is put down without the expression of a doubt as called in honor of William. 70 The North Carolinians may say, and justly, that Bertie county was called in commemoration of the two Berties, in whom the proprietary rights of the Earl of Clarendon vested; but as it was formed within twenty years of the death of William, I always associate it with his history.

When the intelligence of Barclay's plot against the life of the king, which had well-nigh proved successful, reached the Colony, the excitement was great. The news flew from plantation to plantation. The Burgesses instantly prepared an address in which they denounced the plotters and congratulated the king on his escape from the daggers of the Jacobite faction. Planters spurred in haste from their homes to the capital, and, bespattered with mud, hastened to the secretary's office, there to record their horror of the assassins and their joy at the safety of the king. The address, engrossed on parchment and duly incased, was despatched to London by the first packet, and was immediately placed in the hands of William. The fate of the address was peculiar. When it had been read in common with kindred memorials from all parts of the British empire, it was laid aside and forgotten. Nor was it till William had been sleeping for more than one hundred and sixty years in his ancestral tomb at the Hague, far from the dust of her on whose pure brow the diadem of Elizabeth had pressed so queenly, and to whose devoted love more than to his own consummate statesmanship he owed his emperial crown, the venerable parchment was enrolled once more, and brought to public notice by a historian whose genius has invested the dim and distant past with the freshness of current time, and who has taught how the sober events of real life may be made as fascinating as the phantoms of romance or the dreams of poetry. Even to this hour the curious eye detects in the number of William Henrys that are still seen in the advertisements of the daily press, or the sign boards of the shops, and in our political and ecclesiastical bodies, the image of that strong affection with which our ancestors regarded the name of William Henry, Prince of Orange. One of his Virginia name-sakes has already received the honors of the Presidency of the United States. Another Virginia name-sake, but for extreme illness," might have reached the same exalted station. Thus it was that any omen derived from the life of William was hailed by our fathers with delight. Nor did the friends of the Constitution fail to perceive another coincidence which might well happen. Should Virginia sustain the Constitution, that instrument would certainly take effect, and the new government

71 William Henry Crawford.

would be inaugurated on the fourth of March of the following year, the centennial anniversary of the year, and almost the month when, in the banqueting room at Whitehall, Halifax at the head of the Lords, and Powle at the head of the Commons, presented to William and Mary the Declaration of Right, and when those sovereigns accepted that instrument which united for the first time in a common bond the title of the reigning dynasty and the liberties of the people of England."

On the other hand, no cheering sign greeted the opponents of the Constitution. Hitherto they had ever constituted a majority in the councils of the Commonwealth. They now heard bruited abroad the supposed majority by which that instrument would be carried," and the names of the individuals who would fill the principal offices to be created by it. Still they were sustained by that steadfast courage which buoys up the patriot when he wrestles in defence of his country. They saw, indeed, in that stern gathering of military men, who composed more than onefourth of the body, and of the not less formidable corps of judges, that their hopes of triumph were faint. They regarded the Constitution as the offspring of usurpation. They solemnly believed that of all the members of the Assembly who voted for the resolution convoking the Convention recently held in Philadelphia, not a single individual, so far as they knew, looked beyond a literal amendment of the Articles of Confederation; and that, if any radical change had been avowed in debate, the resolution would have been indignantly rejected. They felt that a great wrong had been perpetrated upon the people. It had been ingeniously contrived that the work of the Convention should

72 I was told of these congratulations among the members by a gentleman who heard them. The public men of the Revolution were more intimately acquainted with the minutest details of English history than their successors in the public councils of the present day. One reason may be that they had fewer books to read, and that, as colonists, it was their interest to know critically the remarkable epochs of English history. For an allusion to the address of the tobacco-planters of Virginia to William on his escape from the assassin, see Macaulay's History of England, IV, 478, Butler's octavo edition, 1856.

73 "The sanguine friends of the Constitution counted on a majority of twenty at their first meeting, which number they imagine will be greatly increased." Washington to Jay, June 8, 1788. Washington's Writings, IX, 374.

be referred to the action, not of the legislatures of the States, but to a convention to be called for the purpose; while a nominal compliance with the act of Virginia was evinced by reporting the new scheme to the Congress for its recommendation to the States. This important innovation did not escape the sagacity of Richard Henry Lee, who was at the time a member of Congress, nor of the Congress as a body; but, controlled by an extrinsic pressure, which it did not deem prudent to resist, it finally recommended the Constitution to the States, to be discussed in the mode prescribed by the Convention that framed it. Still, when the Constitution was laid before the General Assembly at its October session of 1787, victory was not wholly beyond its grasp. One of two methods of redress was yet within its reach. Either that body might refuse to receive the Constitution, and refer it back to the Congress as framed in palpable violation of the resolution of Congress, and of the resolution of Virginia instructing its delegates to the General Convention; or, overlooking the recommendation of a special Convention for its ratification as surplusage, and regarding the Constitution as a mere amendment of the Articles of Confederation, might have rejected it forthwith; but, unconscious of the crisis which impended over the country, or relying on its probable strength, the majority of the Assembly assented to the proposition contained in the new scheme, and called a Convention to pass upon it. The opponents of that scheme saw too late that this act was fatal. It mended all defects of form, and gave the instrument a legitimacy which it did not before possess. It not only took from the majority a weapon which, wielded by efficient hands, would have cloven down the defences of the minority, but it transferred the contest to a field in which the mighty influence of great names, heretofore the common property, would be exerted against it. That contest raged long and fiercely, and in whose favor it ultimately turned we shall presently see. But let us record the proceedings of the body in the order in which they occurred.

When the House was called to order, a motion was made that John Beckley" be appointed secretary to the Convention, who

74 John Beckley was at various times Clerk of the House of Delegates and of the Senate of Virginia. On the organization of the House

was accordingly chosen, and took his place at the table in front of the chair. Paul Carrington now rose, and in a short address nominated Edmund Pendleton as President.75 A few moments of anxious suspense followed.

The opinions of Pen

of Representatives of the United States, he was elected clerk, and served from April 1, 1789, to May 15, 1797, and from December 7, 1801, to October 26, 1807. If not born in England, he was educated at Eton, and I have heard Governor Tazewell say that he was a classmate of Fox.

[Beckley, or Bickley, was born in Virginia, and his full name was John James, and he thus subscribed himself as a member of the Phi-Beta-Kappa Society of William and Mary College, in 1776. He was descended from the family of Bickley, or Bickleigh, anciently seated at Bickleigh, upon the river Ex., in Devonshire. The elder branch of this family removed into Sussex, and settled at Chidham. Other branches settled in the counties of Cambridge, Warwick and Middlesex. Arms: Arg. a chev. embattled between three griffins' heads, erased gules. Henry Bickley of Chidham, county Essex, born 1503; died 1570. Joseph Bickley, seventh in descent from Henry, of Chidham, patented, 16th June, 1727, 400 acres of land in King William county, Virginia. John James Bickley was probably the son of Sir William Bickley, Baronet, who died in Louisa county, Virginia, March 9th, 1771. Bickley was not only the first Clerk of the House of Representatives, but also the first Librarian of Congress, serving from 1802 to 1807.-ED.]

75 Neither the Journal of the Convention nor Robertson reports the name of the member who nominated Pendleton. I heard, from a gentleman who was present at the time, that Judge Carrington made the motion; but I am wholly at a loss for the name of the seconder, who, I suppose, was Wythe, from the fact that he was the only member likely to be brought out against Pendleton, and that Pendleton almost invariably called him to the chair in Committee of the Whole. I do not find that any of our early deliberative bodies have ever elected the chairman of the Committee of the Whole, which was formerly the usual practice in the House of Commons. The nomination of Pendleton was fixed upon beforehand, beyond doubt, and there can be as little doubt that Wythe was party to it. In the Convention of 1829-30 it was arranged with the privity of Madison, and doubtless at his suggestion, that Mr. Monroe should be made president of the body, and he was so nominated by Mr. Madison himself; but the ablest members of the Convention were not aware of the design; and when Mr. Madison made the nomination, those who sate near John Randolph and observed his countenance, say that he was on the eve of rising to op pose it, not so much from hostility to Mr. Monroe as from a belief that the honor of the presidency should first be conferred on Madison.