-
3. The Economy
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
5 When Sir John Randolph died i n 1737, the same twenty-one families remained dominant in Virginia society. From their ranks came ten of the eleven members of the Council of State: William Byrd, John Carter, John Custis, Cole Digges, John Grymes, Thomas Lee, Philip Lightfoot, William Randolph, John Robinson, and John Tayloe. Commissary James Blair, from the second group of families, was the senior member of that august body. John Robinson Jr. succeeded Randolph as Speaker of the House of Burgesses, where nine others from the notable families joined him. These ten men controlled the standing committees of the house. Robinson, for example, chaired the most important committee , the eighteen-member Committee on Propositions and Grievances, on which the remaining nine also served. Their political power is e vident at all levels of Virginia society, including the county courts and a wide variety of other appointive offices. The basis of this power was wealth. All of the eleven councillors were very wealthy. Landholding provides an idea of their affluence. Reasonable estimates are available for eig ht of the eleven: together they held at least 325,000 ac res. William Byrd owned 181,299, but his colleagues were no pik ers. John Carter possessed at least 41,000 ac res, followed by William Randolph, Thomas Lee, and John Grymes with 28,829, 20,659, and 18,296 acres. John Custis, who may Th e Economy He that measures his expenses by his seven Last years getting in Virginia may Seven years hence have little [to] Spend. —Robe r t Car t er , 1702 The mystery[s] in trade are as great as those in religion. —Will ia m Byrd, 1 735 3 T he Economy 91 have been the wealthiest and pr obably the most solvent, owned 14,989 acres. John Tayloe owned between 13,000 and 14,000 acres. John Robinson Sr. was at the bottom of the list with an estimated 11,000 acres. Philip Lightfoot, who held unspecified amounts of land in seven counties, left £10,000 sterling to his three sons. Commissary Blair left an estate valued at £10,000. Little is known of the wealth of Cole Digges, for few of his family papers remain.1 Nine of the ten councillors were either second- or third-generation Virginians ; only John Custis IV represented the fourth generation in the colony. All of them had learned the lessons necessary for survival and growth in Virginia. John Carter is an example from the third generation. Educated at Trinity College , Cambridge, and the Middle Temple, by 1736 he had been secretary of state for fourteen years and a me mber of the council for t welve. He possessed two large estates, Corotoman in Lancaster County and, through marriage, Shirley in Charles City County. All of this had been made possible as a result of the accomplishments of his remarkable father, Robert.2 Born at Corotoman in 1663, Robert Carter’s career provides insight into how wealth was accumulated, protected, and dispersed. When he died in 1732, he was almost certainly the wealthiest man in the Old Dominion. His obituary may have exaggerated the size of h is estate when it indicated that “he has left among his children 300,000 ac res of Land , and ab ove 1,000 neg roes, besides 10,000 P ounds in Cash”—but not by much. It can be established that he possessed and d istributed among his children and g randchildren at least 218,000 acres of land and 734 slaves. But these figures do not include the Ripon Hall estate in York County or what he may have given his children before his death.3 Robert Carter was “born to be rich,” William Byrd remarked. He illustrates what it was possible to achieve in the Virginia of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but his success was not foreordained. Carter was a younger son, and he r eceived only a s mall portion of h is father’s estate and, probably in the 1670s, an E nglish grammar school education. By 1690, when his older brother, John, died, Robert already had at least 1,000 ac res of land and around ninety-five slaves and i ndentured servants. Slaves did not b ecome real estate in Virginia until 1705, so it appears that all of John Carter II’s slaves went to his widow, who m arried Christopher Wormeley, and h is daughter, who m arried Col. William Lloyd...