University of Virginia Library

LORD DUNMORE

John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, the last royal Governor of
the Colony of Virginia, was born in 1732. He was descended in the
female line from the royal house of Stuart, and succeeded to the
peerage in 1756. He was appointed Governor of New York in January,
1770, and of Virginia in July, 1771. He arrived in the Colony early
in 1772, and found that he had already incurred suspicion on account of
the appointment of Captain Edward Foy as his clerk or private secretary,
with a salary of five hundred pounds, which was to be derived from
newly created fees to be exacted from the colonists. The Governor,
however, relinquished the objectionable fees, and thus conciliated so
cordial a feeling that the Assembly expressed their gratitude in terms
of warmth and affection. They also endeavored to permanently honor
the family titles of Lord Dunmore and of his eldest son George, Lord
Fincastle, in creating from Frederick County those of Berkeley and
Dunmore, and from Botetourt that of Fincastle, by acts passed in
February, 1772. The flood of patriotic resentment, incident upon the
struggle for freedom, caused them subsequently, in October, 1776, to
obliterate Fincastle County, by dividing it into the counties of Kentucky,
Washington, and Montgomery, and to change, in October, 1777, the
name of Dunmore to "Shanandoa," now rendered Shenandoah. Captain
Peter Hog, a gallant soldier of the French and Indian War, an
intimate friend of Washington, was appointed Deputy Attorney-General
of Virginia for the county of Dunmore, by Lord Dunmore, April 10,
1772. Captain Hog became distinguished in the practice of law, and
his descendants in the name of Hoge, Hogg, Hall, Blair, Blackley,
Hawkins, McPherson, and others, are numerous in Virginia and West
Virginia, and are held in high social estimation. Fincastle, the county-seat
of Botetourt, is said by Howe (Historical Collections of Virginia,
p. 202) to have been named after the seat of Lord Botetourt in England;
but it is probable that it was a revival of the name of the obliterated
county.

The Assembly of February, 1772, passed also several important acts
for the promotion of internal improvements, in making roads and
canals, and clearing the navigation of the Potomac and Matapony rivers.
The Assembly was prorogued to the 10th of June. Dunmore, notwithstanding
his recent complaisance, evinced his regal proclivities and

jealousy of popular assemblies, by proroguing the Virginia Burgesses
from time to time, until at last a forgery of the paper currency of the
Colony compelled him to call the Assembly together again by proclamation,
March 4, 1773. The political horizon of America was again darkening
by gathering clouds. A British armed revenue vessel having
been burned in Narragansett Bay, an act of Parliament was passed,
making such offenses punishable by death, and authorizing the accused
to be transported to England for trial. Virginia had already, in 1769,
remonstrated against this last measure. Patrick Henry, Jefferson,
Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Dabney Carr, and others
were at this gloomy and threatening period in the habit of meeting
together in the evening in a private room in the old Raleigh Tavern,
to hold consultations on the state of affairs. In conformity with an
agreement entered into by them, Dabney Carr, the brother-in-law of
Jefferson, on the 12th of March, moved a series of resolutions, recommending
a committee of correspondence, and instructing them to inquire
in regard to the newly constituted court in Rhode Island. Richard
Henry Lee and Patrick Henry made speeches of memorable eloquence
on this occasion. Mr. Lee was the author of the plan of inter-colonial
committees of correspondence; and Virginia was the first Colony to
adopt it. The resolutions passed without opposition, and Dunmore
immediately dissolved the House of Burgesses. These resolutions
"struck a greater panic into the ministers" than any thing that had
taken place since the passage of the Stamp Act. The Committee of
Correspondence appointed were Peyton Randolph, Robert Carter Nicholas,
Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund
Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald
Cary, and Thomas Jefferson. On the day after the dissolution of the
Assembly, the Committee addressed a circular to the other American
Colonies.

In the Summer, Dunmore visited the frontiers of the Colony, on a
tour of observation. He remained sometime at Pittsburg, and endeavored,
with the aid of Dr. John Connolly, to extend the bounds of Virginia in
that quarter. Late in April, 1774, the Countess of Dunmore and her
family, George, Lord Fincastle, the Honorables Alexander and John
Murray, and the Ladies Catharine, Augusta, and Susan Murray, arrived
in Williamsburg, accompanied by Captain Foy and his wife. A younger
daughter of Lord Dunmore, born subsequently and during his residence
in the Colony, named Virginia, was formally adopted by the Assembly
as the daughter of the Dominion, with provision for her life support.
After the Revolution she reminded the State Assembly of its spontaneously
assumed obligations, and later in life, in the present century,
she petitioned the United States Congress in mediation or by its own act
to secure to her some provision, being infirm and in indigent circumstances;
but her prayers were unheeded. The visit to this country of

the present representative of the earldom of Dunmore during the past
year is fresh in the memory of the public. The three sons of Lord
Dunmore were students in the College of William and Mary in 1774.
Captain Foy had served with distinction in the battle of Minden, and,
subsequently, as Governor of New Hampshire. The arrival of the
family of Lord Dunmore was celebrated with an illumination of the
city of Williamsburg, and the people with acclamations welcomed
them to Virginia. When the Assembly met in May following, the
capital presented a scene of unwonted gayety, and a court-herald published
a code of etiquette for the regulation of the society of the viceregal
court. At the beginning of the session, the Burgesses, in an
address, congratulated the Governor on the arrival of his Lady, and
agreed to give a ball in her honor on the 27th of the month; but the
horizon was again suddenly overcast by intelligence of the act of Parliament
shutting up the port of Boston. The Assembly made an
indignant protest against this act, and set apart the 1st of June, appointed
for the closing of the port, as a day of fasting, prayer, and
humiliation, in which the divine interposition was to be implored to
protect the rights of the Colonies and avert the horrors of civil war,
and to unite the people of America in the common cause. On the
next day Dunmore dissolved the Assembly. The Burgesses repaired
immediately to the Raleigh Tavern, and in the room called "the
Apollo" adopted resolutions against the use of tea and other East India
commodities, and recommended an annual congress of representatives
of the Colonies. Notwithstanding the ominous aspect of affairs, Washington
dined with the Governor on the 25th of May, and attended the
ball, which was given, as proposed, to Lady Dunmore on the 27th. The
Burgesses, remaining in Williamsburg, on the 29th of the month held
a meeting, at which Peyton Randolph presided, and they issued a circular,
recommending a meeting of deputies to assemble in convention
there on the first of August following. In April, 1774, the Indians
renewed their hostilities upon the frontiers of Virginia. In September,
Dunmore, with two regiments under Colonels William Fleming and
Charles Lewis, marched to the relief of the inhabitants. General
Andrew Lewis later marched with eleven hundred men. Dunmore
concluded a peace with the Delawares in October; but a band of Delawares,
Mingoes, Cayugas, Iowas, Wyandots, and Shawnees, under the
Chief Cornstalk, had determined to surprise the camp of Lewis with an
attack. An engagement, known as the battle of Point Pleasant, took
place on the 10th of October, in which the Virginians lost between
forty and seventy-five in killed and one hundred and forty wounded.
The loss of the savages was unascertained. Dunmore, later, concluded
a treaty with the several Indian tribes. Logan, the Cayuga chief,
assented to the treaty, but, still indignant at the murder of his wife in
the preceding spring, refused to attend the camp. In the charge by
Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, that this tragic event was instigated
or committed by Captain Michael Cresap, when it was known to him
that one Greathouse was the author of the bloody deed, he most
unworthily maligned the memory of a brave soldier, a useful pioneer,
and an honorable man. In the beginning of 1775, the people of Virginia
were still in a state of anxious suspense, expecting civil war. The
second convention assembled at Richmond on the 20th of March. Here,
in the venerable St. John's Church, Patrick Henry sounded the tocsin
of liberty. Militia, called minute men, were established. On the 20th
of April, Lord Dunmore caused the removal of the powder from the
magazine at Williamsburg to an English ship. This proceeding produced
great excitement, the people took arms under Patrick Henry,
and Dunmore was forced to compromise the affair by paying for the
powder. June 6th, he fled with his family, and took refuge on board
the "Fowey" man-of-war. Rallying a band of tories, runaway negroes,
and British soldiers, he collected a naval force, and carried on a petty
warfare, plundering the inhabitants along the James and York rivers,
and carrying off their slaves. December 9th, 1775, his followers suffered
a severe defeat at the battle of Great Bridge, near Norfolk; and
on the following night Dunmore took refuge on board his fleet. January
1st, 1776, he set on fire and destroyed Norfolk, then the most
flourishing and populous town in Virginia. Continuing his predatory
warfare, he established himself early in June on Gwynn Island, in
the Chesapeake Bay, whence he was dislodged by the Virginians, July
8th, being wounded in the leg by a splinter. He shortly afterward
returned to England, and in 1786 was appointed Governor of Bermuda.
He died at Ramsgate, England, in May, 1809. He was a man of culture,
and possessed a large and valuable library, volumes from which
frequently appear in auction sales of books. The armorial book-plate
from one of these is reproduced in the illustrations in this work. His
portrait, which we also present, is from the portrait in oil in the State
library at Richmond, and has never before been engraved. It may be
trite to notice also, in connection with the last royal Governor of Virginia,
the chair of the Speaker of the Colonial House of Burgesses,
now also preserved in the State library at Richmond, and of which we
present a faithful semblance from a photograph specially made for us.
It has never before been pictured. According to a statement by Edmund
Randolph in a MS. and unpublished History of Virginia, in the
collections of the Virginia Historical Society, the Speaker's chair was
originally richly decorated with various insignia of royalty, of which it
was denuded in the beginning of our struggle for independence by the
hasty hands of fervent patriots, to whom all tokens of royalty were
obnoxious.