Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
Commissary Blair and Governor Nicholson produced a little body of
"literature" confined largely to this subject, including letters of accusation
by both principals and their individual supporters to such authorities back
in Britain as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, the
Privy Council, and the Lords of Trade and the Plantations. Then there was
the "Conference" at Lambeth Palace in which William Byrd II played his
first public role, in this instance supporting Governor Andros, then in
office, against Blair. Blair's alarmed protests a little later that Nicholson
and the students of the College of William and Mary had attempted to
burn him and the college building is comic reading for any day. But it is
the verse provoked among or in behalf of his clerical brethern, both pro
and con the Commissary, which is genuinely satiric.
Some of this burlesque verse is known solely from implications in
charges and countercharges in the General Assembly, Public Record Office,
British Museum, and Lambeth Palace collections. One piece, "The Loyal
Address of the Clergy of Virginia," printed in London in early 17°2, is
apparently a travesty on a March 12, 1701/2, letter from the Virginia
Council to King William III, signed by Governor Nicholson, James Blair,
and three other members. In the letter Blair and Nicholson were on the
same side, protesting their loyalty to the sovereign in the months before
the Commissary and the Governor reached the breaking point and before
Blair had reversed his earlier position (this he did in 17°3) that the clergy
must be inducted, a reversal which naturally brought him the enmity of
his clerical brethren and of their champion Nicholson. At any rate, from
this letter came "The Loyal Address" with the imprint "Williamsburg.
Printed by Fr. Maggot, at the sign of the Hickery-Tree in Queen Street,
1702" at a time when Williamsburg had no known press. The piece has
been hesitantly and mistakenly ascribed to no less a poet than Jonathan
Swift, who was not overfond of King William and had been disappointed
in his hopes of preferment. It begins in a tone contemptuous of Virginia
clergy (at one time Swift hoped for a bishopric in Virginia) : "May it please
you dread Sir, we the Clerks of Virginia, / Who pray for Tobacco, and
Preach for a Guinea" -and continues its innuendos regarding their drunkenness,
cowardice, and sycophancy, and calls the Williamsburg Rector
(presumably Blair-though he did not obtain that position until 1710,
he was already president of the College and member of the Council) the
Hector "Among all the Black [robed?] Guard." In an earlier line the clergy
are said to be "Under the Reverend ] ames Blare our Collonel." This broadside
was almost surely printed in London, and it thus reveals that Virginia
politico-ecclesiastical affairs were well known at least in some circles in the
mother country and that they were considered significant enough to be
satirized in print.69
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