TWO The Absence of Empire, 1770–1773

Two ships brought Lord Dunmore’s baggage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1770. One wrecked on its approach to Manhattan—an ill omen. That the other arrived safely was fortunate, for in addition to the new governor’s furniture it was carrying a four-thousand-pound gilt equestrian statue of George III. Ordered as a tribute to the king following the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, the statue was erected on the commons outside of Fort George in August 1770, just a few months before Dunmore’s arrival. A large celebration accompanied the unveiling at which New Yorkers danced to the music of a band, drank health after health in the king’s honor, and winced beneath the thunderclap of a thirty-two cannon salute.1

The affection for monarchy displayed on this and other occasions like it seems deeply rooted. The Hanoverian king—heir to the authors of the Glorious Revolution—was a father figure for colonists, providing protection from enemies outside the empire and constitutional justice within it. New Yorkers had turned to him for redress during the crisis over the Stamp Act, and they credited his intervention for its repeal. In an age when colonial nonimportation and nonexportation movements threatened the bonds of mercantile commerce, loyalty to the House of Hanover was a critical source of imperial unity. As the eldest son of William Murray well understood, it was also essential to being British.²

Dunmore, however, soon came to see how superficial the love of monarchs was in British America. While governor of New York and Virginia, he encountered contempt and defiance at nearly every turn. This was partly due to the declining influence of his office, which had lost much of its power over the years to provincial legislatures and the ministry in London.³ But the challenges Dunmore faced went deeper, indicating a widespread disregard for royal authority that surfaced quickly when local interests diverged from those of the king. By 1770, the leading families of New York had sufficient control over elected office to restrict what any governor was able to accomplish there. In Virginia, the problem was even worse. While the New York assembly contained an opposition party that was friendly to prerogative (that is, the discretionary power of the king), the Virginia House of Burgesses was united against the executive. Nor was resistance limited to provincial elites.4 In this atmosphere of impertinence, Dunmore himself found ways to disobey the king. And, much like the colonists who flouted his own commands, he was able to do so more or less without consequence.⁵

Professions of esteem for established authorities and displays of elite preeminence were commonplace in New York as well as Virginia, but they could rarely be taken at face value. More often than not, they reflected a system of deference in the patron-client tradition, in which hierarchy was founded upon mutually (though not equally) beneficial relationships.⁶ Even the most obsequious petition to a governor, for instance, would attempt to impress him with a sense not only of obligation but also of the consequences of noncompliance. When tools like the petition failed to achieve desired ends, colonists did not hesitate to publicly question the legitimacy of authority.

Historians have long viewed the years between the repeal of the Townshend duties in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in late 1773 as a period of calm before the storm. By focusing on tax policy and the resistance it produced, however, they have overlooked events in which the persistence of tension is clear.⁷ Similarly, historians have credited Thomas Paine’s Common Sense with inspiring the antimonarchical spirit of the Revolution almost as if from thin air, as did some contemporaries. But the tenuousness of royal authority and the vulnerability of the bond between subject and sovereign were evident much earlier than 1776, or even 1773. In light of Dunmore’s experience, it is not at all surprising that colonists were receptive to Paine’s message or that they were able to imagine a world without kings.⁸

Dunmore had a habit of making people wait. When New Yorkers learned that he was to succeed Henry Moore in February 1770, all indications were that he would be leaving England before the end of spring.⁹ In keeping with that timetable, what survived of his baggage reached Manhattan in late May. The governor was expected to follow soon thereafter, perhaps sometime in July, but the summer passed without any sign of him.¹⁰ Back in England, the ship he was to travel on, the Tweed, sat idle in a Portsmouth dock. It had been ready to go to sea for months before Dunmore finally came aboard in August. Many of the provisions and livestock prepared for the voyage were lost during the delay, so the Tweed had to stop in Madeira for supplies before crossing to America. Dunmore claimed that he had been too ill to travel that summer. In truth, he often tarried in old posts before reporting to new ones.11

What Dunmore knew about the people and politics of New York when he left England is hard to say. His most reliable guide on the voyage out would have been the set of instructions he received on his departure. Written by the Board of Trade and signed by the king, the instructions outlined his constitutional role, responsibilities, and powers. As governor, he would be New York’s chief executive, the embodiment of royal authority. Despite his lack of legal training, he would serve along with his advisory board, the council, as the colony’s highest court of appeals. With the strike of a pen, he could suspend an assembly session or dissolve it altogether and call new elections. He could veto any bill that he believed contravened the interests of the Crown. All of his predecessors had been paid by the assembly, but the instructions now expressly forbade him from accepting anything from that body. His annual salary of £2,000 was to come, instead, out of the tax on tea. These were important checks on the growing influence of the legislature, but what governors needed most was the ability to enrich others. Dunmore would be able to appoint and, in some cases, remove a variety of local officials—notably justices of the peace and judges—but the ministry now controlled a larger share of colonial patronage than ever before. There were also restrictions on his ability to grant lands, particularly large tracts. Dunmore, therefore, had a limited set of tools with which to build a loyal following.¹²

A veritable parade of humanity ran through the pages of the instructions. New York contained a higher level of religious and ethnic diversity than Dunmore had ever known in Britain. Some of these groups, though completely alien to him at the time of his departure, would come to profoundly influence the course and character of his American experience—and he theirs.

As far back as the seventeenth century, governors of New York were required to “permit liberty of conscience to all persons except Papists,” meaning Catholics.¹³ With this protection in place, New York became home to an unusually vibrant spiritual marketplace. In Manhattan alone there were places of worship for Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Moravians, Reformed German Protestants, and others. There was a French church, a synagogue, and something called the Old Church of Jesus Christ, to say nothing of the Church of England and the Dutch Church, the two largest religious institutions in the city.¹⁴ As these names suggest, myriad ethnic groups—Dutch, German, French, Scottish, and English—had gathered beneath the umbrella of toleration in Dunmore’s new government. Throughout the entire British Empire, perhaps only neighboring Pennsylvania rivaled New York’s ethnoreligious pluralism.15

No doubt, Dunmore knew that he was entering a society with slaves. As governor, he had to submit annual reports on the number of bondsmen and -women brought into the colony. He was also forbidden from signing any bills that increased the tax on slave imports or exports. (Atlantic slave-trading interests and the powerful London sugar lobby had seen to this.)¹⁶ Dunmore would be interacting with Africans and African Americans as never before. There were roughly 6,000 blacks scattered among the nearly one million people of London. By contrast, of the approximately 21,000 inhabitants of New York City—then limited to the southern tip of Manhattan—there were more than 3,000 blacks, virtually all of them unfree. It was in New York, therefore, that Dunmore first came face to face with slavery, the institution that would eventually come to define his career.¹⁷

In all likelihood, Dunmore had never laid eyes on an American Indian when he set sail in 1770. Soon after arriving, he was expected to meet with delegations from each of the nations in the vicinity of his government—Iroquois, Shacocks (River Indians), and others—in order to encourage them to continue trading with the British. Officials at Whitehall understood Indians to be both inside and outside the empire, simultaneously subject and sovereign, so the instructions introduced Dunmore to newly expansive conceptions of British subjecthood as well as new peoples. “Upon their renewing their submission to our government,” the instructions read, the governor was to offer assurances “that we will protect them as our subjects against the French king and his subjects.” A passage pertaining to white encroachment on Indian lands suggests that this status would hold even in conflicts with fellow Britons. The Indians were viewed as potential enemies as well, and Dunmore was required to occasionally report on the military strength of New York’s neighbors “be they Indians or others.”¹⁸

All of this diversity helped to make New York politics unusually complex and contentious, but on this topic the instructions were silent. The political culture was rooted in the colony’s quasi-feudal land-tenure system. Virtually the entire east side of the Hudson River Valley, from the northern tip of Manhattan all the way up to Albany, was owned by a handful of families and farmed by thousands of tenants. In the 1750s, New Englanders accustomed to land ownership began squatting on unoccupied manor lands near the Massachusetts and Connecticut borders. Violent conflicts ensued, but through it all the landlords maintained a firm grasp on political power. Time and again, men from the same coterie of families returned to places reserved for their estates in the legislature, often unopposed. With only twenty-seven seats, the assembly was an exclusive club made up of manor lords, upwardly mobile lawyers, and merchants at various points along the socioeconomic spectrum. Fealty to the ruling elite did not come about spontaneously or without conditions, and it certainly did not translate into automatically deferential attitudes toward representatives of the king.19

New York’s ruling class was deeply and variously divided. The sources of faction included region (upstate/downstate as well as east/west), economic interest (commercial/landed), profession (merchant/lawyer), ethnicity (English/Dutch), and religion (Anglican/dissenter). The most important factor in determining allegiance, however, was kinship. The leading families were continually vying with one another for a larger share of power, a process that ultimately resulted in the formation of two opposing parties. Typically, the division was expressed along country-court lines, with one side making concessions to “the people” and the other backing the establishment, but civic ideals were largely incidental to the promotion of the family.

In the decades before the American Revolution, the rival DeLancey and Livingston families predominated. The Episcopalian DeLanceys had the support of the merchants and landowners of southern New York, while religious dissenters and the great landlords north of Westchester formed the Livingston base. Having controlled the assembly for years, the Livingstons lost the elections of 1768 and 1769. The DeLanceys had emerged as the more “popular” of the two parties during the controversy over the Townshend duties, but with the death of Governor Henry Moore, who had been a friend of the Livingstons, the DeLanceys allied with Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden.²⁰

Dunmore’s ability to lead in this environment generated considerable speculation in the months before his arrival. What little the colonists knew about their new governor suggested that he was an active, affable person of uncertain professional capacities. “By all Accounts,” one wrote, he was a “very good natured Jolly Fellow” who “loves his Bottle.”²¹ The colonists would soon see that this reputation was well earned, but most understood that the position required more than a winning personality. “We have strange party Work here,” wrote Manhattanite John Watts, who thought Dunmore would need “his Eye teeth and be a good State pilot in the Bargain, to steer clear of the shoals and quicksands that lye in his way.”²² While some toasted the prospect of “a total Abolition of all Party-Spirit, by the just and equal Administration of the Earl of Dunmore,” others took a more practical view.²³ William Johnson, the illustrious superintendent of Indian affairs, believed Dunmore would have to choose a side in order to be successful. Normally it was the faction “most Capable of rendering pecuniary Services” that secured the allegiance of the governor, he wrote, “but I know so little of the Character of the Nobleman appointed to the Government, that I cannot pretend to Judge of his principles.” Balancing party interests would “be a Masterly stroke in our New Ruler,” Watts concluded, one that would “require a reach of discretion and judgement that does not fall to every Mans share, more especially to great folks bred in the pride of life and us’d to implicit Obedience from their inferiors.”24

No question, the task ahead would be difficult. Restricted in his ability to cultivate a loyal following, Dunmore would have to preside over a staggering multiplicity of competing interests. And yet, New York was arguably the ideal place for him to pursue an American estate for his family. Although small and culturally primitive by his standards, the colony figured to feel like home in a number of respects. Oligarchy suited his political sensibilities, for one thing, and his time in Parliament had accustomed him to partisan rancor. Certainly, he could not have hoped for a more congenial land-tenure system outside of the British Isles. As an ambitious Scots aristocrat with years of London living under his belt, Dunmore would be encouraged to find that elite society in New York was as self-consciously English as it was anywhere in America. Leading provincials were eager to overcome the colony’s Dutch roots, and there was something kindred in this for Dunmore too: He could relate to the outsider’s yearning to fit in.²⁵

On a Thursday afternoon, 18 October, Dunmore finally disembarked at Sandy Point, New York. The colonists, who had been in daily anticipation of his arrival since August, seemed to take the delay in stride. The appearance of a new governor was always cause for celebration in British North America, and Dunmore received a typically warm reception. As soon as he landed, one newspaper reported, “the Battery Guns were fired, and all the Shipping in the Harbour displayed their Colours.” Lieutenant Governor Colden, General Thomas Gage, and other dignitaries accompanied the newcomer to Fort George, which was to be his home and primary place of business. “People of all Ranks” followed the procession, shouting acclamations over the sound of cannon fire. “The utmost Joy appeared in every Countenance,” wrote one observer. The following day, a corrected version of his commission was read (with “John” in place of “William”) and all the usual oaths taken. With this, the new administration officially began. That evening, Dunmore attended a dinner party and was toasted along with the king and royal family. As they dined, a large bonfire illuminated the commons outside the fort, where “the greatest Number of People ever seen” on such an occasion had assembled. Later, there was “a genteel Ball” in Dunmore’s honor at Bolton’s Tavern. With the weekend winding down, he attended services at the Old Episcopal Church.26 “I have the greatest reason to be pleased with the reception I have met with,” he told Secretary of State Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough, his primary contact in London, “and from the good humour that now appears amongst the people, I conceive hopes of an easy & peaceful administration.”²⁷

Still more encouraging signs followed soon after in the form of congratulatory addresses from the colony’s leading institutions. There were letters from the Chamber of Commerce, the College of New York, the Grand Jurors, the Marine Society, and a host of churches in Albany and New York City.²⁸ On the surface, the messages were humble and flattering, but they could be quite pushy with their praise. The commencement of a new administration provided an opportunity for organizations to affirm loyalty to the Crown while reasserting claims to customary rights and privileges. Often these letters served as introductions, complete with information about the function of a given group and its value to the community. But they also represented a form of political action. The corporation of New York City, for instance, expressed its gratitude to the king for appointing “a Nobleman eminently distinguished, by his Rank and Quality, and whose personal accomplishments afford the most pleasing prospect of an able and upright administration.”²⁹ These messages contained implicit instructions and warnings. When local officials claimed that Dunmore’s reputation made them optimistic for an “able and upright administration,” they were, in effect, demanding just that.

It was in this spirit that the assembly closed its first speech to Dunmore. “Your Solicitude for the welfare and Prosperity of this Colony,” the Speaker of the House said, “cannot fail of securing to your Lordship the Esteem and Affection of a grateful People.” The “Esteem and Affection” of subjects was not given uncritically, this implied, but earned in relation to the “welfare and Prosperity of the colony.”³⁰ Not one to read between the lines, Dunmore was delighted with his reception. “Nothing of a public nature has occurred within the little time I have been arrived,” he told Hillsborough, “except the addresses of congratulations on my arrival, which being full of sentiments of Loyalty and affection to His Majty’s person and Governt, I have thought proper to send copies of them, imagining they might be acceptable.”31 With their profusion of deferential regard, the greetings and good wishes were intoxicating.

It was common for British Americans to defy or twist the royal will in pursuit of their own best interests, and more often than not they did so with impunity. This created all sorts of embarrassing situations for royal officials, whose authority was limited not only by the power of the assemblies but also by an inability to inspire awe in subjects at all levels of the social structure. As one New Yorker declared around this time, “the power of the crown is no longer dreaded by the subject.”³² One wonders if it ever truly was.

Dunmore’s first lesson in all of this began with a controversy involving executive compensation. In addition to their annual salaries, colonial governors collected a variety of fees and perquisites in the course of their duties. Anyone with a document that required the seal of the colony—a land patent, say, or a marriage license—had to pay the governor to have it authorized. These proceeds made up a substantial portion of every executive’s income.³³ Before embarking for America, Dunmore received a letter from Hillsborough stating that it was “His Majty’s pleasure, that a mojety of the perquisites and Emoluments of the Governt of New York be accounted for and paid to your Lordp from the date of your Commission to the time of your arrival.”³⁴ This meant that Dunmore was entitled to half of what Lieutenant Governor Colden had made in office between 2 January, when Dunmore’s commission was signed, and 19 October, when he actually took office.³⁵

According to Hillsborough, King William had established this policy by declaration in 1698. Men in Dunmore’s position had previously had a claim to all, not half, of the executive income that postdated their appointments. Despite its original intent, the policy failed to elicit any gratitude from Colden. When Dunmore presented him with an extract of Hillsborough’s letter and a copy of King William’s declaration, Colden was unmoved. Standing firm in defiance of “His Majty’s pleasure,” Colden refused to yield anything at all.³⁶

In Colden, Dunmore faced an adversary who was his superior in age, experience, and intellect. Born in Scotland the son of a Presbyterian minister, Colden could look back with pride on a life full of achievements. Now eighty-two, he had been an important player in New York politics as far back as the 1720s. After serving as a top advisor to Governor George Clinton in the 1740s, Colden went on to become lieutenant governor. During the 1760s, he served as acting governor on three separate occasions. On top of his political accomplishments, he was an internationally known astronomer and botanist who corresponded regularly with the likes of Carolus Linnaeus and Peter Kalm. He also reputedly had a taste for conflict. Colden did “not dislike a little Controversy,” Thomas Gage observed, “which he has been engaged in for the greatest part of his life.”37 With fifty years in New York politics, it could hardly have been otherwise.

Colden also had history on his side in his dispute with Dunmore. When Governor William Cosby arrived in New York in 1732, he made the same demand of his predecessor, Rip Van Dam. Like Colden, Van Dam refused, and Cosby initially attempted to take him to court. Realizing that no provincial jury would find in his favor, Cosby sought to empower the New York Supreme Court to hear the case as a Court of Exchequer. When Chief Justice Lewis Morris publicly opposed the move, the governor replaced him.³⁸ Well before Dunmore’s time, Colden himself wrote a detailed account of these events in which he explained that Cosby and his pet justices ultimately dropped the matter in the belief that “it might be dangerous to their persons to proceed.” Colonists, Colden argued, would reject the authority of any administration that they suspected of using judicial power for its own benefit.³⁹ Since 1732, no one in Dunmore’s position had invoked King William’s declaration. This was key because, as Colden told Hillsborough, in the colonies “Usage and Custom” were considered “the Rule.”⁴⁰ As the leading living authority on the Van Dam affair, Colden understood better than anyone how difficult it would be for Dunmore to collect on the promise of the king.

The dispute was destined for the courts. Dunmore engaged attorney William Smith, Jr., a Livingston-allied councilman and longtime Colden antagonist. As Smith saw it, the whole question came down to the king’s right to dispose of imperial revenue as he wished. So, on Smith’s advice, Dunmore filed a bill of equity in the king’s name in the Court of Chancery. The immediate object was to force Colden to submit a precise account of what he had earned during the transition period, including assets acquired with the income and any outstanding debts. Never mind that Dunmore was himself the sole judge in Chancery and that he had a financial stake in the outcome of the case.⁴¹ Even Cosby had not been so bold or high-handed. Dunmore’s “ordering a suit which is solely for his advantage,” Colden wrote, “to be brought for Judgment, before himself, is such an instance of Injustice and Oppression, as must shock and alarm every honest Man.” Like Van Dam before him, Colden preferred a trial by jury in a court of common law, where the governor, not the king, would be the plaintiff. Dunmore’s demand was “an act of mere Power,” he wrote, and he was confident that a provincial jury would agree.⁴²

Both sides appealed to Whitehall before the Chancery proceedings began. Sensing the weakness of his position, Dunmore demanded intervention. “It is incumbent on Your Lordship,” he told Hillsborough, “not only to insist” that Colden comply with the order but also to require “in the name of his Majesty” that he account for all of his income as acting governor. These were strong words, to be sure, but Dunmore’s cause was the king’s cause, and from this perspective, the dignity of the Crown was at stake. Hoping to avoid unnecessary stress and expense, Colden asked the king (through Hillsborough) to drop the Chancery bill altogether. If the conflict of interest in the case was not persuasive enough, Colden hoped his long career in public service would be considered. Until recently, he had been a strong supporter of prerogative in New York. During the Stamp Act crisis, a mob had destroyed his Manhattan home for precisely that reason. Colden believed this trauma had entitled him to stay on as chief executive after Henry Moore’s death. He had come to accept Dunmore’s appointment, but surely, he pled, the king did not mean to deprive him of what little compensation his brief term in office had afforded him.43

Like the welcome addresses that greeted Dunmore on his arrival, there were implicit threats as well as supplications in Colden’s letters to the ministry. When he asked Hillsborough to consider the authoritarian impression that Dunmore’s pursuit of the case in Chancery would make on the minds of the people, Colden couched the threat of popular disfavor in an avowal of concern for the Crown. The suit should be dropped not only “in justice to myself,” he argued, “but likewise to remove the prejudices which the People otherwise may entertain of his Majesty’s Ministers and which may be prejudicial to his Majesty’s Service.” These pleas did nothing to soften the ministry’s position. As Colden’s London lawyer informed him, Hillsborough viewed the disputed sum as Dunmore’s “Property” and refused to ask the king to drop the case. The secretary considered it “a matter of Right, in which he could with no propriety interpose.” Still, Colden was not worried. He was confident that Hills-borough’s defense of Dunmore would only serve to further reduce the stature of the king in the eyes of the people.⁴⁴

When push came to shove, Colden had little regard for royal authority. “In the British Constitution,” he told his attorney, “the King cannot at his Pleasure dispose of the Property of any of his Subjects.”⁴⁵ That was beyond dispute, but Colden had reportedly gone further at his first meeting with Dunmore, declaring that “the Favor of the Crown was nothing to him now.” Dunmore told him to think of his children, but it did no good. Colden was not a fool. He understood, as Smith suspected, that if he did not care about “the frowns of the Crown there could be no method of forcing the Money he has recd out of his Hands.”46

The first Chancery hearing was held in Dunmore’s home at Fort George on 10 January 1771. “A good many Gen[tle]m[en] attended,” Colden wrote, “and many more would have” if the case had been heard at City Hall, as he had hoped. True to form, Dunmore made everyone wait for nearly an hour before getting started. Both sides made their arguments, and Dunmore adjourned without rendering a decision. Weeks passed. The governor had command over virtually every aspect of the trial but somehow never seemed to be in control. Bowing to public pressure, he chose to consult the four members of the Supreme Court before making a decision. Colden was elated. “The voice of the People is that the Cause is so clear,” he wrote, that “the Judges must give their opinion in my favour.”⁴⁷

And so it was. The justices based their decision on the origin of Colden’s salary. Dunmore’s pay came out of the tax on tea, but his predecessors, including Colden, had been paid by the assembly, not the king. It was therefore the justices’ unanimous view that, in Colden’s words, “the Crown could have no Right to any part of the Salary granted to me by the Legislature of the Province.”⁴⁸ They also determined that “the Law considers all fees, which includes Perquisites & Emoluments, as Recompence due to the officer for his Labour, and not as a bounty bestowed by the King.” Even the two Livingston-allied justices, natural enemies of Colden, had upheld his right to the money. The ultimate ruling lay with Dunmore, but more than a month later, he had yet to reconvene the Chancery court.⁴⁹ Colden took the opportunity to once again raise the specter of public opinion. The case, he reminded Hillsborough, “must make an impression on the Minds of the People favourable to Government, or very much other wise, especially in the Course Lord Dunmore has now put it.”⁵⁰

The general profile of the case—imperial placeman demands property from longstanding local leader—assured Colden of public support, but he was not without his critics. William Livingston published a satire of the salary dispute featuring Colden as a greedy tenant farmer who laments having to surrender half of his harvest to his landlord. “Why can’t I, for the first Time in my Life,” the farmer asks himself, “do that which is right, and pay the Gentleman his Money without any Litigation? I know very well that there is such a Clause in the Lease; and that I took the Farm upon that express Condition.” In the story, the answer was simple: greed. All his life, the farmer had followed his “old Practice of making Money, Money, my sole and only Friend.” The feudal analogy at the heart of the satire suggests that Livingston wrote it for an elite audience that would sympathize with established authority. Most Americans, after all, would have been inclined to identify with the farmer.51

The king was never personally involved in matters like the salary dispute. The risk of embarrassment far outweighed any potential reward. With the best interests of the Crown in mind, Hillsborough eventually asked Colden’s London lawyer to consider settling the case out of court. Utterly assured of his eventual success, Colden refused. Compelling the disgorgement of profits had always been a legal challenge. As the farmer in Livingston’s satire said, “Possession is eleven Points of the Law.”⁵²

After weeks of inaction, Dunmore bundled up all of the case papers and shipped them to Whitehall. He was looking for a reason to find in favor of the king despite the (nonbinding) opinion of the Supreme Court. Following a comprehensive review, however, the ministry’s lawyers advised him to pursue the suit in his own name rather than the king’s. The sovereign himself had given up. Dunmore chose to carry on at his own expense but abandoned the effort when the tide of colonial resistance swept other concerns to the fore. Colden died in September 1776 never having surrendered a cent.⁵³

Some New Yorkers looked down on Dunmore even before the contest with Colden tarnished his reputation. Ironically, their disapproval was rooted in a sense of social superiority. Dunmore was still new to the city when he attended the feast of the Sons of St. Andrew in late November 1770. The following day, John Bradstreet told William Smith that the governor’s behavior had “ashamed” the entire gathering. Evidently, he had gotten drunk and become “noisy and clamorous in giving” what Bradstreet called “the vilest baudy” toasts. Even John Reid, a confidante of Dunmore’s, was reportedly “sunk into silent Astonishment.” Bradstreet came away thinking the earl “a damned Fool” and “a silly extravagant Buck,” who would surely “be lampooned and despised.” The story did not surprise Smith. Despite representing Dunmore against Colden, Smith had been critical of the earl from the start. The governor’s “Education and Abilities are equally beneath his Birth,” he wrote, and familiarity did nothing to change this view. Later he lamented, “This poor Creature exposes himself daily. How can the Dignity of Government be maintained by so helpless a Mortal, utterly ignorant of the Nature of Business of all Kinds.” At one point, he wondered if there had ever been “such a Blockhead.”⁵⁴

Nonetheless, with the help of his personal secretary, Edward Foy, Dun more managed to steer clear of catastrophe in the course of his duties. Before proroguing the assembly on 4 March 1771, he signed thirty-seven bills into law. Some were of great consequence. There was a controversial act committing £2,000 to the provision of the king’s troops then stationed in Manhattan, an act to emit £100,000 in loans (the interest from which was to pay down the colony’s debts), and another to discourage the illegal occupation of patented lands. Many more were local in orientation: an act “to prevent the taking and destroying of Salmon in Hudson’s River”; an act extending an existing law “for the better regulation of the Public Inns and Taverns” in Ulster and Orange counties; an act restricting the right to discharge guns, pistols, squibs, and other fireworks at particular times and places; an act “to encourage the taking and destroying of Wild Cats” in Suffolk County; and an act for the relief of “an Insolvent Debtor” named Elizabeth Seabury.55

Such was the work of provincial government, but in New York even the most mundane piece of business could be fraught with party implications. On 15 April 1771, the council discussed filling the position of potash inspector. The holder of this office was charged with controlling the quality of the colony’s potassium carbonate, a chemical used in the production of soap, glass, medicine, and other products. Dunmore recommended to the council a one-armed man named John Abeel for the job, but the DeLancey contingent elected a person named Montaigne in defiance of the governor. Smith recorded this embarrassing defeat in his diary with amazement: “Montaignie was appointed agt. Abeel tho’ he was recommended by the Earl—How daring they!—How weak the Govr.!” Smith considered Montaigne, who owned a public house “in the Fields where the DeLancey Party meet,” “a low Fellow, ignorant and a Tool.”⁵⁶ With the support of the DeLanceys, however, it hardly mattered that he knew more about whiskey than potash. The popular party’s ability to reward followers with such posts both reflected and reinforced its influence, which in New York far surpassed even the king’s.

In 1770, James DeLancey and his allies refused to admit Robert R. Livingston to his seat in the assembly on the grounds that he was also a member of the Supreme Court. Although repeatedly chosen to represent Livingston Manor in the legislature, the judge had already been turned away twice from the house. Colden had even signed a special law prohibiting justices from serving in the assembly. Despite the DeLanceys’ principled arguments about the need to separate the legislative and judicial branches of government, no one, including the ministry, doubted the primacy of partisanship in the affair. The king opposed Livingston’s exclusion and, in January 1770, repealed the law mandating it. But the DeLanceys were unfazed. In his loyalty to the Livingstons, Smith thought Dunmore should threaten to dissolve the assembly if the judge was not seated. To resolve the situation, Smith wrote, “His Lordship has only to declare that he will suffer no Party to invade the Prerogatives of the Crown.” If Dunmore did not make such a stand, Smith reasoned, he would be deemed a tool of the DeLanceys, for “what can account for a Desertion of the Interest of the Crown but the bias of Party.”57

Dunmore knew better. Hoping to avoid inflaming either side, he stalled and vacillated. Eventually, he took Livingston’s part and pled his case to the Speaker of the House, but to no avail. Already impatient, the judge came to suspect the governor of duplicity. “The Assembly are determined to resist me again,” Livingston told his wife, “owing I am sure to hints from the Governor that he thinks it right at the same Time that to me he says he will represent the whole matter home.”⁵⁸ Dunmore was not in a position to take a hard line. Dissolving the assembly would have been futile at best. There were no indications that the DeLanceys would lose ground in the resulting elections; more likely, they would have increased their majority by spinning the dissolution as an arbitrary act of executive power. So Livingston remained on the outside looking in. Although the controversy persisted well into 1774, he was never granted the seat that both he and the king believed to be rightfully his.⁵⁹

All governors had to weigh local, provincial, and imperial interests in the course of their duties, and this required a certain amount of flexibility. The doctrinaire enforcement of royal prerogative simply was not possible in the colonies. Governors could not veto every assembly bill that contravened the king’s commands, whatever their formal powers. By signing and defending acts that they knew the ministry would not allow, they might incur a manageable amount of disfavor in London while generating much-needed goodwill closer to home. But not all of Dunmore’s deviations from the royal script were the result of provincial pressure. He also defied the king when imperial policy stood in the way of his chief personal ambition—the establishment of an American seat for his family.

Dunmore was making arrangements to achieve precisely this when, in February 1771, unexpected news arrived from London. According to several New England newspapers, he had been chosen to replace the recently deceased Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt, as governor of Virginia.⁶⁰ Lord Gower, it seems, had remained active in his brother-in-law’s interest. On hearing the news, William Johnson congratulated Dunmore on his “promotion to the first American Government,” which he considered a far “more distinguish [in]g Mark of his Majesty’s favor” than New York.61 Virginia was indeed a more lucrative and prestigious post, but Dunmore wanted no part of it. He liked New York and wanted to stay. While not “the most considerable” colony in the empire, he told Hillsborough in a private letter, New York did “powerfully influence the Political conduct of the whole Continent.” He felt he was getting along well with the people, and men “of both parties” had assured him that he would be able “to maintain a perfect good agreement between them.” He also feared Virginia’s climate would compromise his health.⁶²

Dunmore did not confine these feelings to the pages of private correspondence. He told Councilman Hugh Wallace that he had no intention of going to Virginia, preferring “Health and good Society to a greater salary.”⁶³ Printer James Rivington knew enough of the situation to tell Johnson that the “Aguish Climate” of Virginia “would ill suit” the governor’s “Convivial Disposition.” As a consequence, Rivington wrote, Dunmore was “determined to try his weight at home for permission to Keep this Government.”⁶⁴

And so he would, but not for these reasons alone. He had also been preparing a large grant of land for himself in what is now the state of Vermont. Composed of 51,000 acres along the banks of Otter Creek near Lake Champlain, it was exactly what Dunmore wanted for his family’s future. Unfortunately, it was also illegal. Both the size and location of the grant violated his instructions. From an imperial perspective, large landholdings discouraged settlement and reduced agricultural produce and tax revenue. The ministry therefore prohibited all governors of New York from granting more than one thousand acres of land to any one person. This rule was easily circumvented, however, and such grants persisted up to the Revolution.⁶⁵ Dunmore’s approach to the Otter Creek grant was typical. As he later explained, he purchased “the Grants of fifty real Grantees,” each of whom had a right to one thousand acres, at the nominal price of five shillings apiece. To this, he added the acreage to which he was himself entitled under the law. Technically speaking, no single individual had been granted more than one thousand acres. Dunmore argued that the grant had been “a fair open and strictly legal acquisition, the practice of every Governor I dare say, and was allowed, I know, to every one of His Majesty’s Subjects without distinction.”⁶⁶ That schemes like this ran counter to the spirit of the king’s instructions did little to prevent them.

Still, the more difficult question of the grant’s location remained. Jurisdiction over the region west of the Connecticut River had long been contested by New York and New Hampshire. In 1764, the king and Privy Council decided the dispute in New York’s favor, but by that time New Hampshire had issued patents amounting to nearly three million acres in the area, a small portion of which had already been occupied and improved under its authority. The king intended to honor these efforts. In order to prevent the eviction of actual settlers with New Hampshire titles, he put a moratorium on all Vermont grants in 1770, pending the identification of truly unsettled areas.67 But Dunmore needed these lands for the hundreds of Seven Years’ War veterans who were clamoring for the grants promised in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Privately, he also acknowledged a personal interest in the matter. In a draft of a letter to Lord Gower, he wrote, “There is one more reason that I shall mention to your Lordship, and you will perhaps think that it weighs more than all the others with me, and I will own to your Lordship it does weigh and that not a little. It is this—if I am permitted to grant these lands, I hope I shall be able to provide something for my younger Children. If I am not, I doubt I shall rather be a looser than a Gainer in point of fortune by comeing to New York.”⁶⁸

In truth, Dunmore had already decided to proceed without the permission of the king. In March 1771, the same month he drafted the letter to Gower, he presented in council a petition for the land on behalf of himself and his fifty partners. When Smith argued that it would be illegal to comply with the request, the governor reportedly “seemed to be amused—and looked like a Fool.” But just as Smith expected, Dunmore eventually “put the Seal to the Patent,” an act that only the king himself could undo.⁶⁹

Part of what made a transgression of this kind possible was the irregularity of correspondence between London and the colonies. Dunmore had been governor of New York for nearly six months before he received a single personalized dispatch from his superiors at Whitehall. When a letter finally did arrive in March, it merely confirmed his transfer to Virginia.⁷⁰ A second dispatch containing his new commission and instructions arrived in June and informed him of “the King’s Pleasure that” he waste “no time in repairing to your Government in Virginia.”⁷¹ Rather than obey this directive, Dunmore offered an alternative solution. He proposed giving the Virginia job to William Tryon, who had been tapped to replace him in New York. He pledged not to leave, in any event, until he received a response to his initial letter on the matter, dated 9 March. So much for not wasting time. Dunmore’s receipt of a third letter from Hillsborough in early July merely prompted a restatement of his preference for New York. This time he portrayed himself as a frustrated family man. He had been separated from his wife and children for nearly a year already, he noted, and feared that the Virginia climate would “oblige” him to live without them still longer. This would make his “residence in that Country, where there is little or no society, so tiresome that I cannot be certain I should be able to stay there any time.”72

William Tryon arrived in Manhattan without warning on 8 July. He had impressed the king as governor of North Carolina by suppressing the Regulator movement in the colony’s backcountry. His reception in New York, however, was unenthusiastic.⁷³ Dunmore was in New Jersey scouting lands when Tryon arrived, but he returned soon enough to escort the newcomer to Fort George. Here, one observer reported seeing “Dunmore walking the Room and reading a Newspaper,” while Tryon read another and his wife sat “neglected in a Couch.”⁷⁴ Although he had recently lobbied for the Virginia job himself, Tryon now flatly refused Dunmore’s offer of an exchange. He also had health concerns about Williamsburg.⁷⁵ Frustrated, Dunmore suggested that they await the arrival of the next packet boat before reading Tryon’s commission, but Tryon balked. Eventually, Dunmore gave in, and Tryon was sworn into office on 9 July.⁷⁶

The whole awkward ordeal came to a head that evening. At the dinner following the day’s ceremonies, Dunmore got drunk. According to Smith’s (mostly secondhand) account, the following scene ensued:

My Lord took too Chearful a Glass and forced it upon his Company—I escaped by a Cold for which he excused me—but the Company did not part without Blows—His Ld. struck [Councilman Charles Ward] Apthorpe and Colo. [Edmund] Fanning[,] the New Govrs. Sec[re]t[ar]y—[He also] called Tryon a Coward who had never seen Flanders, and ran about in the Night assaulting one and another in spite of Capt Gordon who was sober, and his Servants who followed out of Sight, for Fear of Accidents—under Dr Mallet’s Window, he was heard to say ‘Damn Virginia—Did I ever seek it? Why is it forced upon me? I ask’d for New York—New York I took, and they have robb[e]d me of it without my Consent’—This was a drunken Solliloquy, but shews exactly the true State of Ld. Dunmore’s Mind at that Moment.⁷⁷

While this account is likely fraught with embellishments, Dunmore had a reputation for drunken mischief, even violence. Around this time, a Virginia burgess returned home from a trip to Manhattan and related that “His Lordship, with a set of his Drunken companions, sallied about midnight from his Palace, and attacked Chief Justice Horsmanden’s coach & horses. The coach was destroyed & the poor horses lost their tails.” This was what the aged Daniel Horsmanden got for the prideful presumption of owning an extravagant six-horse coach.⁷⁸

Yet Smith’s description of the evening of 9 July suggests more than Dunmore’s capacity for open-air excess. Whether they were actually protecting their master, as Smith believed, the slaves lurking in the shadows of the story symbolize the elusive part that people at the bottom of the social structure played in political life. Faint as it is here, the role of such individuals would become far clearer with the onset of the Revolution.

At some point before the heavy drinking began on 9 July, Dunmore took a moment to assure the ministry that he was preparing “with all diligence” to leave for Virginia.79 It was untrue. As his alleged behavior later that evening suggests, he had not fully accepted the transfer. More than a week after Tryon was sworn in, Dunmore reportedly continued to indulge “the delusive hope of being reinstated in his favorite Government.”⁸⁰ Just as he had put off his voyage to New York the year before, he now found reason to delay his trip to Williamsburg. He dispatched a shipment of his belongings to Virginia, including his numerous dogs, but instead of heading south himself, he decided to go ahead with a previously planned tour of his new property around Lake Champlain.⁸¹

Secretly hoping to be greeted with news of his reinstatement on his return, Dunmore sailed up the Hudson River in late July. Nothing is known about the tour itself, but Dunmore came away confident enough in his claim to include the lands, years later, among his losses in the American Revolution.⁸² On his way back from Vermont, he visited William Johnson and wrote to thank him in late August for his hospitality. The note mentioned two men, John and Abraham, who had served as Dunmore’s guides from Johnson Hall to Albany. He was “much obliged” to Johnson “for their services,” which he described as “perfectly sober, faithfull, and indefatigable.”⁸³ Almost certainly either Indians or black slaves, John and Abraham show, once again, how integral such people were in the lives of the political elite. With the help of John and Abraham, and no doubt many others, the journey was a success.

Upon returning to Manhattan, Dunmore discovered that nothing had changed. He was to be governor of Virginia, and that was that.

The new assignment presented something of a public relations challenge for Dunmore. His predecessor, Lord Botetourt, had been extremely popular, as the elaborate, publicly funded funeral held in his honor made clear. Some doubted whether they would ever see Botetourt’s equal in the Governor’s Palace, and the early indications were that Dunmore would be a very poor substitute. According to one Norfolk merchant, the earl was rumored to be “a gamster a whoremaster and a Drunkard.” That he spent months tarrying in Manhattan and touring lands before assuming his duties seemed to confirm the worst. During the seven months that separated the news of his appointment from his arrival in Williamsburg, the suspicions and resentments only festered.84

Dunmore finally appeared on 25 September 1771. His route had taken him from Manhattan through New Jersey to Philadelphia, where he spent two days and three nights. From there, he sailed along the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, and then across Chesapeake Bay to Yorktown. When he reached the capital, he was met by several councilmen and accompanied to the Governor’s Palace, where he was immediately sworn into office. That evening, as he dined with local leaders, fireworks filled the night sky. According to the following day’s paper, the display served “as a Testimony of our Joy at his Excellency’s safe Arrival, and in Gratitude to his Majesty for appointing a Nobleman of his Abilities and good Character over us.” The initial misgivings had apparently given way, if only for a moment, to the optimism that so often accompanies new beginnings.⁸⁵

It was customary in Virginia for incoming executives to dissolve the General Assembly—composed of the governor, council, and House of Burgesses—and hold new assembly elections. In principle, Dunmore opposed the idea. He assumed the elections would cause as much “riot and disorder here as in England.” Nevertheless, he consented on the advice of the council. The elections would be “a pleasure to the people,” he told Hillsborough, “who are no doubt fond of the exercise of that power.” The secretary agreed that there was no real need for a new assembly but thought Dunmore’s decision to follow custom wise. “The unanimous Advice of the Council and the Wishes of the People,” he wrote, “were certainly the best Guides for your Lordship’s Judgement in that case.” Even when they were privately dismissive of it, imperial leaders recognized public participation as integral to the customs of renewal that set the rhythms of political life in the empire.⁸⁶

Things went well for Dunmore early on, in part because he aligned himself with provincial elites against the king on key issues, notably the Atlantic slave trade. Dunmore’s instructions forbade him, as they had in New York, from signing any act that raised the tax on slave imports. Existing law on this subject was confused, but the British government believed the duty stood at 10 percent. Shipping concerns in Britain had convinced imperial officials not to abide any interference with the slave trade. Less labor in Virginia meant higher tobacco prices as well as lower revenues for the Crown. Merchants and smallholders supported this policy because it increased trade volume and the accessibility of labor, but elite planters were strongly opposed. Eager to diversify Virginia’s economy, the gentry believed that a free-flowing traffic in slaves would deepen the colony’s dependence on volatile tobacco markets. Besides, Virginia was already home to a large, self-sustaining slave population. Imports diluted the value of existing holdings and undermined security. With these considerations in mind, the General Assembly tried repeatedly to raise the tax on slave imports. In 1769, Governor Botetourt had signed one such bill against his instructions, only to learn of the king’s disallowance a few months later. When Botetourt died, the ministry issued a special new instruction to Lieutenant Governor William Nelson, who served as governor until Dunmore’s arrival, reiterating the ban on any law that made it more expensive to bring slaves into the colony.87

Undaunted, the General Assembly soon tried again, passing another tariff in March 1772. In an appeal to the king, the burgesses couched their case in moral terms, referring to the “great Inhumanity” of the Atlantic slave trade. This reflected a broader trend in the political culture. Slavery took on new currency with the crisis over colonial rights. People on both sides sought the high ground, denouncing the slave trade in an effort to besmirch the opposition and ennoble their own claims to liberty. The Virginia gentry had genuine concerns about the evils of the slave trade, but these were secondary to the desire for economic independence and internal security.⁸⁸ Tellingly, the 1772 tax applied to slaves brought into Virginia from neighboring colonies and the Caribbean as well as those exposed to the horrors of the Middle Passage. At the close of their letter to the king, the burgesses argued that the trade would eventually “endanger the very Existance of your Majesty’s American Dominions,” presumably by encouraging economic stagnation and infusing volatile Africans and West Indians into the slave population.⁸⁹

At this stage, Dunmore was willing to vex the ministry in order to please leading Virginians. Despite the threat of the king’s “highest displeasure,” he signed the new slave tax and sent it to Whitehall for approval in May 1772. Dunmore’s support of the law was more than a stunt to curry favor in the tidewater. Most Scots in the Chesapeake were tobacco merchants who planned to return home after making money or contacts in America, but Dunmore was different.⁹⁰ He hoped to establish a permanent seat for his family in the colonies, and this strengthened his identification with the Virginia gentry.

Dunmore probably owned slaves while governor of New York (as the reference to “servants” in Smith’s account of 9 July suggests), but he embraced the institution with new vigor in Virginia. About a year after signing the slave import duty, he began purchasing lands in York County for a plantation known as the Old Farm. To perform the difficult work of “clearing out the Lands and grubbing up the Roots of Trees,” he bought and hired an unknown number of slaves. In his official account of property lost during the Revolution, he recalled that there were “from 100 to 150 Negroes” at work on the plantation at any one time. In June 1773, he purchased clothing for roughly fifty field slaves—one hundred pairs of shoes and “Strong Coarse Stockings” and fifty hats—along with livery for the black footmen who helped run the Governor’s Palace. He also bought six postilion whips and caps, indicating that there were six enslaved coachmen at the Palace. When Dunmore left Virginia, he claimed to own a total of fifty-seven slaves and twelve indentured servants.91

The evils of the slave trade played no part in Dunmore’s support for the tax on imports. Defending his deviation from imperial policy, he pointed instead to the military risks of a large slave population. The enslaved were “attached by no tye” to their owners or the colony, he told Hillsborough, and “the people … tremble” at the ease with which an enemy, such as Spain, might enlist their aid. He believed that slaves would rise up against their owners given the slightest opportunity for “revenge.” Were this to happen in wartime, he was sure it would result in British defeat, and the slave duty seemed a reasonable way to discourage such a catastrophe over the long term. Impervious to this or any other argument for increasing the tariff, Hillsborough informed Dunmore that the Privy Council’s rejection of the 1769 version of the act left little room to doubt that the new law would meet the same fate. But Dunmore remained convinced of slaves’ ability to influence the outcome of colonial wars. In less than three years’ time, in fact, he would stake his entire American future on it.⁹²

Although it gave him room to maneuver politically, the weakness of imperial authority in North America proved even more problematic for Dunmore in Williamsburg than it had in Manhattan. Symbols of social and political deference were legion in Virginia, as they had been in New York. Dunmore’s new home, the Governor’s Palace, was among the grandest structures on the continent. It was part of a constellation of public buildings in Williamsburg, including the Capitol and Bruton Parish Church, that simultaneously reflected and reinforced the preeminence of the elite and the power of the state.⁹³ The wealth, discipline, and strength of the British Empire were most impressive in the palace entry hall, the walls of which featured royal coats of arms and hundreds of the very finest firearms and swords in awe-inspiring array. Such displays rarely conveyed precisely what their authors intended. By Dunmore’s time, for instance, Virginians had come to regard the weapons in the hall as public property subject to popular seizure. Even if colonists had internalized the values expressed in these symbols, the vast majority lived at great remove from the provincial center. Some rarely even entered churches. So, while Dunmore may not have had an ocean separating him from his subjects as the king did, Williamsburg was itself too remote for him to exercise a high degree of command over the colony.

FIGURE 3. From 1771 to 1775, Dunmore lived in the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia. A faithful reconstruction on the original site is pictured here. Although modest in comparison to the great homes of the British aristocracy, it was among the finest structures in North America. (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

Lessons in the limits of state power were at least as common in Virginia as were symbols of state supremacy. One conspicuous example involved the perennial problem of counterfeiting and the futility of state prosecution in what should have been open-and-shut cases. In January 1773, Treasurer Robert Carter Nicholas announced the discovery of “several very ingenious” forgeries of the five-pound notes emitted by the colony in 1769 and 1771.94 It was soon discovered that the marketplace was also flooded with counterfeit coins in the form of half-pistoles, pistoles, and Spanish dollars.⁹⁵ The fraudulence of most counterfeit currency in colonial America was easily detectable, but these forgeries had been produced in “so Masterly a Manner,” Dunmore wrote, that they were all but indistinguishable from the real thing. Nicholas admitted that it had taken a committee of experts, including himself, two full days of close examination to “fix any certain Criteria to distinguish the good from the forged Bills.”96 Because of their quality, the counterfeits set off a crisis of confidence that soon permeated the entire colony. After discussing the situation at a meeting in Williamsburg, one plantation steward suspended cash payments for his corn. Betting at a horse race in Leedes Town on the Potomac River reportedly dropped by 50 percent as Marylanders refused to stake their property against Virginia currency. In March, Nicholas reported that the circulation of money had nearly ceased. Making matters worse, all of this occurred in the midst of a severe downturn in the tobacco economy.⁹⁷

FIGURE 4. Designed to impress visitors with Great Britain’s military power, the Governor’s Palace entry hall featured a meticulous array of swords, firearms, and imperial iconography. (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

The emission of money was among the most basic powers of government. Undetected counterfeits devalued real money and drove inflation. When discovered, they impeded commercial exchange by undermining confidence in cash. Since the power to coin currency rested exclusively with the state and the institutions it empowered (notably the provincial government), moneymaking also represented the illegal assumption of public authority. Because of this, the Virginia government had long viewed counterfeiting as an act of “high treason.” Punishments varied widely throughout the colonies, but Virginia statute directed offenders to the gallows. The five-pound notes at issue in 1773 even bore the warning “To Counterfeit is Death.” The counterfeiters may not have given much thought to this message as they worked, however, for it often proved an empty threat.98

Not long after Nicholas’s discovery, a former constable from Pittsylvania County named John Short came forward with information. An admitted accomplice of the ring, he located its base of operation in southwestern Virginia and identified about fifteen of the men involved, some of whom, Dunmore later reported, were “people of fortune and credit.” Counterfeiters came from all walks of life in early modern Europe and North America and operated in increasingly sophisticated organizations. The Pittsylvania gang was known to have ties across the border in North Carolina, where by late February authorities had uncovered “a Nest of the same pernicious Crew.”⁹⁹

In response to the crisis, Dunmore called an emergency meeting of the General Assembly to convene on 4 March. If he did not act sooner, however, Short warned that the counterfeiters would either escape to neighboring provinces or “form so considerable a Body in that remote part of the Country, that it would be extremely dangerous, and difficult to apprehend them.” Since time was short and the council out of session, Dunmore consulted three of Williamsburg’s leading lawyers—Speaker of the House Peyton Randolph, Attorney General John Randolph, and Treasurer Nicholas. The group advised him to issue a warrant for the suspects’ apprehension and send an armed guard to execute it. It was mid-February, about two o’clock in the afternoon, when government agents approached the counterfeiters’ shop. The doors flung open to reveal an engraver, printer, papermaker, and coiner, all busy at their work. The agents seized the five men, their equipment, and a large quantity of finished product and hauled the lot to Williamsburg, where they returned on 23 February.¹⁰⁰

Nicholas and the Randolphs had advised bringing the suspects to Williamsburg in the belief that trying them in the county of their crimes would be “ineffectual.” A remarkable amount of sympathy for counterfeiting operations existed in remote, cash-poor regions like southwestern Virginia, where moneymakers were often the only ready source of paper currency. As weak as the state was in such places, people there often accepted and even celebrated outlaws, in the tradition of Robin Hood and other “social bandits.” Public support for counterfeiters was most evident in the ease and frequency with which they escaped from prison. In the weeks after the Pittsylvania counterfeiters were taken to Williamsburg, sheriffs arrested several other men who were suspected of passing forgeries for the ring. A few were sent to the capital, but most remained in the jurisdictions of their apprehension. A suspected passer named John Ford managed to escape from the Amelia County jail despite an eight-man guard. When this embarrassment came to light, Dunmore’s only recourse was to pursue charges against the guards. About a month later, Ford’s son, John, Jr., escaped from the same jail. The elusiveness of these fugitives was a function less of Ford family ingenuity than of the state’s feeble grasp on the hearts and minds of its subjects, whose cooperation was essential to the execution of law.101

FIGURE 5. The counterfeit £5 notes in circulation in Virginia in 1773 contained the futile warning, “To Counterfeit is Death.” (Stack’s Bowers Galleries)

As obvious as the risks involved in local prosecution were, the assembly criticized Dunmore for failing to secure grand jury indictments in Pittsylvania before bringing the prisoners to Williamsburg. Government must “be as attentive to the safety of the innocent as we are desirous of punishing the Guilty,” the burgesses declared. They worried that Dunmore’s actions threatened “the safety of innocent Men” and demanded that the case not be used to justify similar steps in the future. Dunmore’s apparent disregard for the sacred role of juries in the judicial process appeared all the more menacing in light of the king’s response to the burning of the Gaspee the previous summer. During that episode, a British ship had run aground off Rhode Island while enforcing unpopular trade laws. Locals quickly boarded the vessel, looted the valuables, and set it aflame, all the while abusing the captain and crew. The king dispatched a commission to investigate the case and empowered it, if necessary, to bring the culprits back to England for trial. This prospect had enraged colonists, and the burgesses saw the same injustice at work in Dunmore’s plan to try the forgery suspects at the General Court in Williamsburg. So, it was no coincidence that the assembly voted to reestablish a Committee of Correspondence during the counterfeiting controversy to monitor “various Rumours and Reports of proceedings tending to deprive them [Virginians] of their ancient, legal, and constitutional Rights.”102

Dunmore opted not to acknowledge the reestablishment of the committee, but he did respond to the burgesses’ criticism of his pursuit of the counterfeiters. “If I have done amiss,” he wrote, “the same method will not be repeated.” In the event that the ministry approved of his actions, however, he reserved the right to exert the full measure of his authority whenever necessary. Lord Dartmouth, who replaced Hillsborough as secretary of state for the colonies in 1772, was impressed by Dunmore’s handling of the affair. Seeking to assuage his concern about the burgesses’ reproach, Dartmouth noted that the speech had at least been delivered in respectful terms. Even to a perennial optimist like Dunmore, this must have seemed a slim reed.¹⁰³

Because it had been so widely dispersed and fallen into so many unsuspecting hands, the forged currency created a climate of accusation in which powerful people became vulnerable to public attack from below. In early March, Moses Terry was arrested for intentionally passing bad bills and taken to Williamsburg. After admitting his crime, he began informing on others. This cooperation earned him a pardon, but his testimony seems to have implicated a number of innocent people, including Prince Edward County burgess Paschal Greenhill. Assuming Greenhill was in fact innocent, as the records suggest, it is significant that Terry targeted a member of the political elite. One of Greenhill’s defenders was not at all surprised that someone in Terry’s position would try “to pull down, injure, or ruin the Characters of those that he with Mortification and Envy finds standing in a more exalted and respectable Situation than his own.” Much about the relationship between Terry and Greenhill remains obscure, but the counterfeiting controversy clearly created a space in which social resentments could be expressed, however obliquely, and elites targeted for public shame.¹⁰⁴

The trial of the Pittsylvania gang at the April General Court was a disaster for the government. The state’s star witness, Short, was quickly discredited and fled the capital after being threatened with perjury charges. Even if the prosecution had been able to recover from this, there was a mysterious “defect in the act of the Assembly” under which the counterfeiters were tried, and the defendants, standing before a gilt royal coat of arms, were finally acquitted. A New Bern, North Carolina, correspondent of the Virginia Gazette despaired that the counterfeiters were “again let loose as beasts of prey.” Despite the dehumanizing rhetoric and the rage it reflected, colonists of all kinds defied established authority with impunity during the counterfeiting controversy of 1773. No matter how tough the king and his representatives talked, even when they did so on the very bills being copied, their authority went only so far.105

Dunmore had not seen his family for nearly three years in the spring of 1773, and he seems to have taken some liberties in their absence. A reputation for carousing preceded him in Virginia, and as governor he did nothing to alter it.¹⁰⁶ In 1772, he was rumored to be having an affair with Kitty Eustace Blair, whose marriage to Dr. James Blair was the subject of a sensational court case in Williamsburg from 1771 to 1773. The Blairs never consummated their marriage, and much of the case focused, in lurid detail, on who was to blame. As the presiding judge at the trial, Dunmore attempted to reconcile the pair. Kitty agreed to allow her husband to “make a push,” as one Norfolk merchant put it, but when the time came, she reportedly ‘jumped out of bed & would not do anything.” Subsequently, Blair wrote a letter to Dunmore accusing him of sleeping with Kitty. The governor denied the charge and, through negotiations with Blair’s brother, secured an apology. James Blair died the following month before the case was resolved. Whatever the truth about the governor’s relationship with Kitty, Dunmore felt close enough to her family to pay for her younger brother to attend the College of William and Mary.¹⁰⁷

There were other rumors as well. In 1773, “terrible … Stories” were circulating in Williamsburg about the governor and Sukey Randolph, the daughter of the attorney general. Some said that the girl’s parents knew about the relationship and were even subsidizing the governor’s “fun” at their home.¹⁰⁸ The Swiss-born British army officer Augustine Prevost had heard such stories when he visited the palace in the summer of 1774. “His Lordship is I believe a consummate rake,” he wrote in his diary, “& does not pay the attention to his Lady that she seems to deserve. She is extremely jealous I am told of a young lady, whom it was reported was very dear to him previous to her Ladyship’s arrival & the scandalous chronicle says his Lordship is very great there still.” Whether the reference here is to Kitty Eustace Blair or someone else is not known.109

Dunmore’s reputation for infidelity eventually reached transcolonial proportions. In a mock lamentation about the loss of British gallantry in America, a New Jersey patriot wrote, “Alas, how often shall we recall to mind those jovial and delicious hours, when our bucks experienced the inimitable conviviality, and our belles the not-to-be-told-of endearments of a Dunmore and a Sparks!”¹¹⁰ There is no definitive proof that Dunmore ever slept with anyone besides his wife, but given these rumors and the permissive mores of the British aristocracy in the late eighteenth century, it seems unlikely that he remained chaste during his first three years in America.¹¹¹

Be that as it may, the governor had grown impatient for the company of his wife and children. After being denied permission to return to England during a spell of sickness in the autumn of 1772, he began making arrangements for them to join him in Virginia.¹¹² Sadly, young William Murray did not live long enough to make the trip. Life was precarious for children in the eighteenth century. For that reason, the toddler Leveson, whom Dunmore had yet to meet, would stay behind with relatives. The other six children, aged five to thirteen, embarked with their mother for a new life in November 1773.¹¹³ After forty-four days at sea, they arrived in New York, where they charmed a number of Dunmore’s old acquaintances. The normally critical Gouverneur Morris was particularly impressed. The Countess was “a very elegant woman,” he wrote, who “looks, speaks and moves, and is a lady.” He likewise praised her daughters, calling them “fine, sprightly sweet girls” from whom “goodness of heart flushes … in every look.” Governor Tryon was also taken with the family and expressed amazement that Dunmore could have deprived himself of their company for as long as he did.¹¹⁴

In spite of all the contempt for established authority that Dunmore encountered in America, aristocratic refinement continued to inspire admiration there well into the revolutionary period.¹¹⁵ Virginians’ rhapsodic reception of Lady Dunmore and her children makes this quite clear. The colony prepared an elaborate celebration in advance of their arrival in February 1774. At Yorktown, overeager cannon operators caused an accident that gravely injured five men, three white and two black; Clementine Rind’s Virginia Gazette reported that the latter, possibly slaves, “were dreadfully mangled, one of them having lost three fingers off his right hand,” the other blinded and “much burnt in the face.” Oblivious to the grisly scene, the crowd reveled on. That night, the family processed to the Governor’s Palace amid the glow of lamp-lit houses.¹¹⁶

The evening’s enthusiasm filled the pages of the press. Alongside predictably effusive addresses from the College of William and Mary and the city of Williamsburg, several poetic tributes appeared. One entitled “On the Arrival of Lady DUNMORE” gave vent to a stream of provincial self-consciousness:

While Cannon roar to hail thee, Bonefires blaze,

And Joy ‘round every Heart exulting plays,

Our simple Swains, uncultur’d as their Meads,

Would swell the Transport with their artless Reeds;

Sincere their Welcome, though uncouth its Style,

Nor such as charm’d thee in thy native Isle,

Where Infant Genius all the Arts caress,

And Nature’s beauteous Form the Graces dress.

[…]

Fair MURRAY deigns to tread the savage Plain,

Each Muse, and soft-eyed Grace, are in her Train.117

When Virginians imagined themselves in the eyes of Old World aristocracy, some felt the need to apologize. The effect was compounded when that gaze belonged to a noblewoman, for it was supposed that she would find the “uncultur’d,” “uncouth,” and “savage” surroundings particularly offensive. The Countess of Dunmore was, thus, an embarrassing and exhilarating presence in the colony.

There was nothing inconsistent about praise for Lady Dunmore’s aristocratic refinement and the pushy appeals to power with which her husband was now all too familiar. Another poem published in the Virginia Gazette on her arrival begins with a typical profession of deferential regard. Hailing as she did from “polish’d Courts … Where Affability with graceful Mien / Adorns the Splendour of the British Queen,” the Countess would “scatter Blessings” of high metropolitan culture among the proud but provincial people of Virginia. Yet, in the final stanza, when the author turns to politics, the same old mock-deferential directives are on display:

Long may your Lord in publick Honours shine,

To grace those publick Honours long be thine.

Plac’d by his Sovereign in the Chair of State,

To guide the Helm, yet soothe the high Debate,

May his Example Liberty inspire,

And urge the Senate to a Patriot Fire,

That the Asserters of their Country’s Laws

May still unite in Freedom’s glorious Cause,

And most to bless the Spot wherein we live,

To Commerce true Stability give;

Warm in their Hearts that Principle to feel

That well, that best supports the common Weal;

That Constitution clearly to observe,

And with a firm though temperate Zeal preserve;

The Crown’s Prerogative, the People’s Right,

Equally pois’d, and ever in their Sight.118

Amidst all the excitement surrounding Lady Dunmore’s arrival, the passage was meant to serve as a gentle reminder that Virginians would not be distracted from their real interests by glittering metropolitan graces, lovely though they were.¹¹⁹

While celebrating the Declaration of Independence in New York City in July 1776, Continental troops helped to topple the equestrian statue of George III that had accompanied Dunmore’s baggage to America. After cheering its fall, a crowd of locals beheaded the statue. Similarly violent renunciations of the king took place all along the Atlantic seaboard. One historian has argued that these scenes resulted from the trauma of “unrequited monarchical love” and amounted to a “symbolic regicide” that signaled the abrupt end of “royalist culture” in North America. Dunmore encountered no such culture in New York and Virginia. In light of his experience, the toppling of George III’s statue seems less a radical departure from the pre-1773 order than the spectacular culmination of it. (In 1771, in fact, a fence had been erected around the statue following what one scholar calls “precocious acts of patriotic vandalism.”) This is not to say that the formal rejection of monarchy in 1776 was in any way inevitable; it is merely to acknowledge that substantial preconditions for it existed. The relationship between colonial subjects and their sovereign did not “suddenly and violently” collapse in “a few short years.” Allegiance to the king had been more instrumental than emotional for quite some time.¹²⁰

The inability of the imperial state to command consent in New York and Virginia from the fall of 1770 through the winter of 1773–74 made life difficult for Dunmore. Despite the drafting of detailed instructions, governance was an improvisational art in the colonies, one that forced executives to navigate through all sorts of gray areas. Matters that seemed straightforward on paper frequently turned out to be problematic in practice, and reliable advice or proper arbitrating entities were rarely close at hand. This created space for the unscrupulous pursuit of personal gain, to be sure, but more often than not autonomy was a burden rather than a boon for Lord Dunmore.

To what extent, then, did “empire” even exist in New York and Virginia on the eve of the American Revolution? Symbols of it were ubiquitous, of course—red coats in Manhattan, the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, even the venerated image of Lady Dunmore herself. But the inability of the imperial state to secure obedience or mobilize support in the colonies suggests that “monarchical love” was, even amidst an abundant array of its forms, largely an illusion.121