Title: Alexander Spotswood
Source: Library of Virginia
More informationAlexander Spotswood served as
lieutenant governor of
Virginia from 1710 until 1722, ruling robustly in the absence of Governor George Hamilton, earl
of Orkney. Born in Tangier, Morocco, Spotswood moved with his mother to England in
1683 and joined the military in 1693. After a seventeen-year military career,
Spotswood was commissioned lieutenant governor of Virginia. Spotswood initially
sought to improve relations
with American Indians through regulated trade, to end piracy, and to
increase gubernatorial power. He frequently and publicly expressed his unbridled
contempt for those members of the House of Burgesses and governor's Council who disagreed with his policies and practices. But by
the end of his administration, Spotswood had shifted from seeking to impose imperial
will on Virginians to becoming a Virginian himself. He constructed ironworks in Spotsylvania County, making him the largest
iron producer in the thirteen colonies, and designed and constructed the Bruton Parish Church
building, a Williamsburg powder
magazine, and the Governor's
Palace. He also served as deputy postmaster general for North America after
1730. He died in 1740 in Annapolis, Maryland, while raising troops for the British
campaign against the Spanish in South America.
Spotswood was born in the English colony of Tangier, Morocco, in 1676, where his father, Robert Spotswood, was a surgeon for the English garrison. Alexander's mother, Catherine Spotswood, brought the young boy to England in 1683; his father died in 1688. In 1693 Spotswood began his military career as an ensign in the earl of Bath's infantry regiment in Flanders; he rose through the ranks to lieutenant colonel. Spotswood was seriously wounded at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714); legend has it that he was struck by a four-pound cannonball, which he kept as a souvenir and liked to show his guests. In 1708 he was taken prisoner in the Battle of Oudenarde, but John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, negotiated his release. By September 1709 Spotswood had become disappointed by failed promises of promotion and sought advancement outside the military, though he retained an interest in military matters throughout his life. On February 18, 1710, Queen Anne commissioned Spotswood as lieutenant governor of Virginia—a position he obtained either through Marlborough or through his friendship with George Hamilton, earl of Orkney and governor of Virginia (1704–1737).
Title: First House of
Burgesses
Source: Preservation Virginia
More informationIn his first years as acting governor,
Spotswood demonstrated his commitment to effective and efficient leadership,
immediately tackling the colony's major issues: security, Indian relations, and
economic depression. But as Spotswood confronted these challenges to Virginia's
security and prosperity, he faced the dilemma of many other eighteenth-century
colonial leaders: his responsibility to the colony exceeded his resources and his
power to effect real change. Spotswood in particular had little support from the
General Assembly. His
arrival in Virginia had ended a four-year period during which the governor's
Council, a group of twelve men appointed by the Crown, ruled the colony without
the assistance of a governor or the House of Burgesses. Spotswood made no effort
to conceal his low opinion of Virginia's government—especially the House of
Burgesses, which he famously called "a Set of Representatives, whom Heaven has not
generally endowed with the Ordinary Qualifications requisite to Legislators."
In 1713, in an attempt to ameliorate both Virginia's economy and his relationship
with the General Assembly, Spotswood created the Tobacco Inspection Act. The act
Title: Cartouche on
Fry-Jefferson Map
Source: Library of Virginia
More informationcalled for tobacco to be inspected before it entered the
European market, which would ideally result in a smaller amount of higher-quality
leaf that would increase demand and raise tobacco prices. To quell the anticipated
resistance from the assembly's planter elite—and to generate power for
himself—Spotswood created patronage positions: forty inspectorships, worth £250 a
year, which he awarded to twenty-nine of fifty-one sitting burgesses.
Unfortunately for the governor, his patronage scheme failed. Tobacco prices did
not increase immediately, and the inspection policy was unpopular with Virginia
farmers. In the next election, all but one of the Spotswood appointees lost their
legislative seats.
Spotswood also ran afoul of Virginians with the Indian Trade Act, which he established in 1714. The act granted the Virginia Indian Company, a joint-stock company, a twenty-year monopoly over American Indian trade, and charged the company with maintaining Fort Christanna, a settlement in southern Virginia for smaller Indian tribes. Establishing the company was Spotswood's attempt to circumvent any political opposition by shifting some of the financial burden of defense against Indians from the colonial government to private enterprise, but in doing so, he angered those who had invested in private trade, such as William Byrd II.
Title: Blackbeard
Source: Wikimedia Commons
More informationNot all of Spotswood's policies were so
vehemently opposed. He sent the Virginia militia to the North Carolina border when
Tuscarora Indian
uprisings in 1711 and 1712 threatened that colony, and he took an aggressive stand
against pirates, who were wreaking havoc on colonial trade in Virginia and North Carolina. It
was Spotswood who in 1718 dispatched the force that killed the notorious Edward
Teach, known as Blackbeard, in Ocracoke. Spotswood also strengthened and expanded
the colony's western frontier by leading an expedition in the summer of 1716 across
the Blue Ridge
Mountains and down into the Shenandoah Valley. He claimed these lands for
the king, and in the 1730s
the area was
settled as a buffer against French and Indian aggression. Similarly, he
established a fortified settlement at Germanna on the Rapidan River as a frontier outpost.
Title: The Bodleian Plate
Source: The Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation
More informationSpotswood also left an indelible imprint
on Virginia architecture during his tenure as lieutenant governor. Colonial Williamsburg,
so familiar to latter-day tourists, features a town principally of his design: he
helped to restore the College of
William and Mary following a 1705 fire; he proposed a new Bruton Parish
Church in 1710 and then designed the structure, which served as a model for
numerous other churches in Virginia; and he constructed a powder magazine in
Williamsburg in 1715. For Spotswood, these buildings stood as a cultural and
military bulwark against Britain's foes. Between 1710 and 1722 he oversaw the
completion of the commanding Governor's Palace. Spotswood was criticized for the
project's high cost, but plantation owners began to emulate the building's Georgian architecture
in their own homes as early as the 1720s, and by the mid-eighteenth century, the
style was an indicator of wealth and power.
Spotswood learned too late that he had several masters to please, each with a different set of interests: English merchants, imperial bureaucrats, and the Virginia planter elite. The last were so well connected to Britain and the Privy Council that they brought considerable pressure on policies that did not meet their favor. Indeed, by 1717 the imperial government had disallowed the Tobacco Inspection Act and the Indian Trade Act. Though the governor tried a number of schemes to increase his power—appointing judges for his newly created court of oyer and terminer, calling for new elections, trying to remove certain members of the Council (including Byrd), insisting he could appoint new parish ministers without consulting the local vestry—his political position had been sorely weakened. As a soldier, Spotswood was accustomed to commanding and being obeyed. As a governor, he had discovered that he could not overcome the increasing power of Virginia planters as exhibited through the House of Burgesses and Council.
Spotswood and the Council achieved a détente on April 29, 1720, when both parties resolved "to act for the future as cordial friends in the administration of the government." Central to this change was Spotswood's commitment to becoming a permanent Virginia resident. Later that year, as part of a series of land grants awarded to settlers to create a buffer against the French, the Council granted Spotswood 86,000 acres in the newly created Spotsylvania County. In a letter dated June 11, 1722, Spotswood wrote to the Board of Trade that the "angry proceedings of the Assembly in 1718" were "balanced by their good agreement in 1722."
Title: Reverend James Blair
Source: Muscarelle Museum of Art at
the College of William & Mary
More informationDespite the Council's change of heart and
the apparent harmony that followed, Hugh Drysdale arrived in Virginia on September 25, 1722, to replace
Spotswood as lieutenant governor. Historians are uncertain as to exactly why
Spotswood was removed, but several factors may have contributed; the cumulative
effect of ten years of vocal opposition from members of the House of Burgesses and
the governor's Council certainly played a role. Some historians have suggested
that in accepting his massive land grant, Spotswood showed a disregard for Crown
policy that could not be ignored (according to the Board of Trade, no single
person or family was allowed to claim more than a thousand acres of land in
Virginia). Another theory is that two of Virginia's most powerful councillors,
Byrd and the Reverend James
Blair, were behind the dismissal. Byrd and Blair had never reconciled
with the governor, and both were in London when the decision to replace Spotswood
with Drysdale was made. If Blair did have a hand in Drysdale's gubernatorial
appointment, Spotswood would be the third consecutive Virginia governor Blair
helped to unseat. Spotswood's governorship demonstrated that cooperation with the
Virginia elite could make or break a political career—a lesson from which future
governors would benefit.
Title: Spotswood's Ironworks
Source: Virginia Historical Society
More informationSpotswood settled in Germanna on the
Rapidan River in Spotsylvania County, where he had constructed a house or, as Byrd
later described it, an "enchanted castle," larger even than the Governor's Palace
(archaeological evidence indicates that the house was later abandoned and
destroyed by 1750). He diverged from the Virginia norm of cultivating wealth
through tobacco by building the South's first ironworks—though he, too, relied on
slave labor to run his
business. Spotswood became a major producer of iron, which he exported primarily
to England while also manufacturing iron products for Virginia.
In 1724, Spotswood returned to England to secure title to his lands in Virginia
and to determine the taxes on the vast grants. That same year he married Anne
Butler Brayne of St. Margaret's Parish, Westminster, with whom he had two sons and
Title: Anne Spotswood
Source: Library of Virginia
More informationtwo daughters. With the final
confirmation of his large grants and clarification of his taxes in February 1729,
Spotswood was able to return to Virginia in the same year with his wife and her
sister. In 1730, imperial officials appointed him to a ten-year term as deputy
postmaster general for North America. In addition to bringing postal service as
far south as Williamsburg (it had previously extended only to Philadelphia), he
selected Benjamin Franklin as Philadelphia postmaster in 1737.
When war with Spain broke out in 1739, Spotswood resumed his military career. He was appointed a brigadier general in the British army and second in command to Major General Charles Cathcart. At long last, Spotswood had fulfilled his dream of military advancement. But he never saw battle: after suffering a short illness, he died on June 7, 1740, in Annapolis, Maryland, where he had traveled to organize troops and consult with colonial governors. His burial site is unknown.
First published: July 25, 2011 | Last modified: January 18, 2012
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