4. CHAPTER IV.
A GLIMPSE OF HIS EXCELLENCY LORD DUNMORE.
Lord Dunmore was clad on this occasion with great
splendor. His short and somewhat corpulent person had
apparently been decorated by his valet with extraordinary
care.
He wore a full dress—silk stockings, gold embroidered
waistcoat, velvet surcoat, also embroidered, a bag wig, and
a profusion of ruffles. At his button hole fluttered an order
of nobility.
The red and somewhat coarse face did not prepossess
strangers in his lordship's favor. They seemed to feel that
this countenance must needs indicate a scheming and wholly
egotistical nature. And it is certain that reliable records
establish this view. Lord Dunmore was not proficient even
in intrigue. He bungled in the dark paths which he trod,
and stumbled. All his plans went ill. No one would rely
on him. More than once, when thrown in collision with the
growing spirit of liberty in the colonies, and its advocates
in the Burgesses, he had essayed to wheedle the members;
and for this purpose had descended, as he conceived, to undue
familiarity. But this manner did not set well upon him.
Essentially unreliable and scheming by nature, he could not
conceal his character, and generally ended by disgusting
those whom he desired to conciliate. He was not wanting
in those social attentions which his predecessors from the
time of Berkeley had found so useful; but the guest whom
he entertained generally went away distursting his uneasy
politeness, and doubting the reality and good faith of his
Excellency's protestations.
Lord Dunmore had little of that urbanity and cordial politeness
which characterized his amiable predecessor, Francis
Fauquier; he possessed none of the tranquil and well-bred
courtesy and ease of the justly popular Lord Botetourt, who
had coveted no other title than that of “Virginia gentleman.”
In Fauquier the planters of the colony could and
did easily pardon a mania for card playing and wine; they
had not the same charity for Lord Dunmore's less amiable
weaknesses. While the counties of “Fauquier” and “Botetourt”
still remain, and will always, the county of “Dunmore”
had its name changed unanimously to “Shenandoah.”
The people of Virginia at the period brought ugly charges
against his Excellency. They said that through his secret
agent, Conolly, he was embroiling the Virginians and Pennsylvanians
about the boundary line, to divert attention from
the designs of the ministry, and dissipate the increasing
spirit of rebellion. They added that he had a league with
the savages, whom he tempted to make incursions on the
Virginia frontier,[1]
and thus break the opposition to the
English Parliament by exhausting the colony's resources.
They finally declared that he was a traitor, inasmuch as he
attempted to betray Lewis into the hands of the enemy at
Point Pleasant. Colonel Bland charged his Excellency
with lying; said he held “lewd and filthy orgies in his palace;”
and the events which attended the last months of his
residence seem to support this view of his character.
His Excellency, indeed, was no favorite with the Virginians,
who pardon much if a man possesses refinement and
amiability. “Lord Dunmore,” says Mr. Wirt, “was not a
man of popular manners; he had nothing of the mildness,
the purity, the benevolence, and suavity of his predecessor.
On the contrary he is represented as having been rude and
offensive; coarse in his figure, his countenance and his manners.”
That his Excellency was both cruel and cowardly, the
events which attended his flight from Williamsburg, and
his piratical ravages on the shores of the Chesapeake, will
prove abundantly; defying all explanation or apology.
