[Gutenberg 48258] • The Old Dominion

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to [www.million-books.com](http://www.million-books.com) where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IH A COLONIAL, DINNER PABTT Three days later the master of Verney Manor gave a dinner party. At Jamestown, twenty miles away, the Assembly had just adjourned after a busy session. A law debarring that turbulent people the Quakers from further admittance into the colony, and providing cold comfort for those already within its doors, was passed with acclamation, as was another against Anabaptists, and a third concerning the hue and cry for absconding servants and slaves. The selling rates for wines and strong waters were fixed, a proper penalty attached to the planting of tobacco contrary to the statute, a regulation for the mending of the highways adopted, a fine imposed for non-attendance at church, the Navigation Act formally protested against, the trainbands strengthened, an appropriation made for the erection of new whipping-posts and pillories, a cruel mistress deprived of the slave she had mistreated, a harborer of schismatics publicly reproved, and a conciliatory message and present sent to the up- river Indians ? when the Assembly adjourned with the consciousness of having nobly done its duty. The only measure upon which there was not unanimity of opinion was one proposing the erection of school- houses at convenient cross-roads, and the Governor's weight being thrown into the balance against it, it was promptly quashed. The burgesses from the fourteen counties filled the twenty houses that constituted the town to suffocation. Up-river planters, too, had come in, choosing the time the Assembly was in session to attend to their interests in the city. Several ships were in harbor, and their captains, professing themselves tired of salt water, threw themselves upon the hospitality of their friends ashore. The crowded population overflowed into the ho...