Empire (26 page)

He sighed and spoke. “The gentleman will please read again
his
resolutions to the committee, so that they may be discussed and voted on by the House, in accordance with proper form.” He composed himself as best he could, bracing himself for the violence he was certain would erupt.

Henry rose and read the resolves. After each was read and seconded by George Johnston and others in Henry’s party, a lively debate ensued, and Randolph, torn between a desire to seem fair and impartial, and an instinct for judging the time right to end debate and call for a vote he hoped would defeat each resolve, became visibly agitated at the acrimony and course of events.

“I object to these resolutions for two reasons,” proclaimed Wythe.
“They are redundant, for they merely reiterate our protests of last fall! And those protests have now been cast in imprudent and, one may say,
insolent
language!”

George Johnston replied, “The gentleman complains that the Roman geese are too noisy, and disturb his sleep!”

“The language of these resolves is abhorrent and bellicose!” insisted Bland.

Henry replied, “I saw no purpose in the sham piety of this House’s former protests — and I see no consequence!”

“
Sham piety
?” retorted Landon Carter, burgess for Richmond. “Do you doubt our loyalty to His Majesty? That is more likely a description of your own dearth of respect for the Crown!”

“My respect for the Crown is not a whit less than that which I have for British liberty and the Constitution, sir!” roared Henry.

“Sham piety may amuse us in a farce,” said Colonel Munford, “where it is held to ridicule and produces laughter! But that mawkish behavior has never protected a man’s property or person from a highwayman, and it will not serve that purpose now!”

“If our past protests were written in sham piety, sir,
I
have not heard the timbers of this House crack or shake from the rollicking gaiety of its members!”

“These resolves are riddled with ungenerous insinuations that cannot but be noticed and marked by their lordships and our brothers in the Commons.”

“These resolves are near treasonous!”

“And not this act?”

“His Majesty will protect this colony, and all his dominions, once he perceives the folly of this act!” said another burgess. “But were he to read the language of these resolves, he may think the devil may take us, and who would blame him?”

“Who is to instruct him in that folly, sir? That phalanx of philosophers on the Privy Council? That synod of sages on the Board of Trade? Lord Bute? That man seems to have instructed his pupil well in the role of king.”

“You go too far, sir!”

“May I remind the gentleman that His Majesty commissioned the Privy Seal, Lord Marlborough, to endorse this act, and in so doing confessed his approval of it as a mode of ‘protecting’ his dominions, as surely as if it bore his own signature!”

“And may I
also
remind that gentleman that his late Proclamation erected
the walls of a prison here, and that this act represents the first of
many
fees we are likely to be charged for inhabiting this prison? The analogy of that young gentleman to Bridewell Prison is quite appropriate!”

“You asperse the character of the king, sir!”

“Then I asperse what is not there, sir! Hardly an offense!”

“We are represented in Parliament, gentlemen, by the Constitution and the king! If we were not, would Parliament have dared pass this act?”

“We are
not
represented, sir, and this act is extralegal in that context!”

“Why all this fuss and noise over a few pence and shillings?”

“Our liberty is worth at least a few pence and shillings, sir! Ought we to wait until it is worth a few pounds or guineas to make a fuss? A sack of Spanish dollars? Perhaps, our very lives?”

“You gentlemen and these resolves build a bonfire to roast a pigeon! That is all I am saying.”

“You may depend on it —
I
will not surrender my liberty for a farthing, never mind a penny! No stamps will ever blot my life!”

“Brave words, sir, but they sound like bluster! Wait until you are caught between idealism and inconvenience!”

“I am a veteran of the late war, sir, and if I could do it, I would call as witnesses to my ‘bluster’ the score of Frenchmen and Indians I killed in personal combat! Decorum forbids me from showing the House the scars of battle that map my body!”

The House forgot to recess for dinner that afternoon, so engrossed were the members by the necessity or danger of the resolves. At one point, when Peyton Randolph was discouraged by the bitter exchanges and the ominous course of the voting, he pulled out his watch and saw with a gasp that it was nearly six o’clock. He conceded defeat, ignored a number of members who had risen on both sides of the House, and abruptly called for a vote on the fifth resolve. John Randolph, William Ferguson, and Clough Anderson, who had recorded the resolves and the first four votes, prepared themselves for the last.

The first four resolves were passed by the Committee of the Whole House by twenty-two to seventeen. The fifth passed by a single vote. Peyton Randolph announced, “The Committee has seen fit to adopt Mr. Henry’s resolutions, which will be reported to the House on the morrow. The hour being so late, the House will recess until the bell at ten o’clock.”

It was a stream of angry, sour-faced older burgesses that first filed out past the spectators from the chamber, leaving first by courtesy of the
younger members out of deference to age and wisdom. Henry and his party lingered behind on the benches, in a manner of having won and held the field of battle.

Hugh Kenrick stepped down from his seat and held out his hand to Patrick Henry, who took it. They shook with a feeling of triumph. “My congratulations, sir,” said Hugh. “You wield an effective sword. I have much to learn from you.”

Henry laughed. “No, sir, you do not. But I tolerate sham modesty more than I do sham piety!” He paused when Johnston, Munford, Fleming, and the others who had voted for the resolves and who had gathered around him all laughed. Then he said, “Sirs, I fear that we may still have a fight to face, especially over the fifth resolve. Be prepared. Those other gentlemen are moved by fear, and that can be just as powerful a force as certitude. I beg you to recall Mr. Kenrick’s remarks on Phocensian despair. Our work will be completed when the House adopts all five resolves, and God willing, the sixth and seventh.”

* * *

As the remaining burgesses left the chamber with a boisterous crowd of spectators, Hugh was met at the railing by his friends. His mind was still spinning from the victory and his role in it. He was only dimly aware of what his friends were saying.

“You acquitted yourself magnificently, Hugh,” said Etáin, who leaned up to buss him on the cheek.

“Well done, son!” laughed Wendel Barret. “I don’t care if the Governor revokes my license for it, but I shall print those resolves and send them to every newspaper in these colonies! They ought to light more fireworks like we saw here!”

“By God, Jack,” exclaimed John Ramshaw as he slapped and gripped Hugh’s shoulder, “this lad and Mr. Henry blew the heads of those nay-sayers as surely as you ended Paul Robichaux’s career! They are dead in the water!”

Hugh shook his head. “You over-credit me, sir. I was merely the linstock. Mr. Henry was the gun.”

John Proudlocks shook Hugh’s hand and said, “That Mr. Henry, sir, he is the sachem of a band of warriors new to me…warriors of the mind. You are all…brave! I am glad I witnessed this day. Thank you.”

Jack Frake could do little else but beam proudly at Hugh. He was lost in a wonder he had not felt in years, not since he found himself in the caves of Marvel in Cornwall, and met a crew of heroes called the Skelly Gang. The words, emotions, and spirit he had experienced here in this chamber somehow matched the words and spirit he had known in the caves. He was thinking of the night, long ago, when he sat on a beach with other men, waiting for a galley to land contraband goods, and he had turned over in his mind the cruel irony of being a free man only in the night, and in the caves.
We must move in darkness, and exile ourselves to the shadows
. And here were men who were stepping boldly from the caves, from the darkness, and from the shadows! What a moment! he thought. What a leap, from the caves to the sunshine of this chamber!

Etáin glanced at her husband, and noticed a special, almost wistful kind of happiness in his face, and was happy for him.

Jack offered his hand to Hugh. “Well done, my friend.”

Hugh felt, besides his own pride, an odd, almost incongruous vindication. He, too, saw the happiness in Jack’s eyes, and in his entire manner, and as he reached out to grasp his friend’s hand, sensed that he was reaching across all their years to congratulate the boy he had never known but whose story he knew. For a long moment, which was only a half-second, he was confused by the phenomenon of congratulating Jack, when it was Jack who was congratulating him. Then it became clear to him: He was congratulating himself for the story of his own youth, whose victories now included this day. In that timeless moment, he was the boy Hugh Kenrick meeting the boy Jack Frake; they recognized and saluted each other, then parted to live their lives and become what each was now, up to and including this moment. He saw in Jack’s eyes that he felt this meeting, too.

Their hands clasped, and they shook twice. “Thank you, Jack,” said Hugh.

As the sergeant-at-arms and usher herded spectators out of the chamber, Thomas Jefferson shyly approached Hugh. “Mr. Kenrick,” he said, “I am in your debt, and Mr. Henry’s. What heroic oration! I could not help but think, as I listened to you and him,” he added haltingly, “that if Mr. Henry is a Jason of some new Argonauts in search of the golden fleece of liberty, then you are his Lynceus, who can see so many leagues ahead over the prow of the
Argos
! What an adventure lies in the future for us now!” He shook Hugh’s hand, almost as if it were a presumption to touch him. “I shall come tomorrow, to witness a further episode of this adventure!”
He bowed to Hugh and his party, then turned and rushed out.

Outside, in the Capitol courtyard, stood a number of planters and merchants, among them Reece Vishonn. Vishonn accosted Hugh and offered his compliments, which he qualified with fearful concern. “I don’t know if the Governor will stand for such talk, Mr. Kenrick,” he remarked. “He may postpone the next session until heads have cooled.”

Hugh shrugged. “These are our protests, sir, not his own. All he can do is dissolve the Assembly for our having made them.”

The party made its way down Duke of Gloucester Street into the evening sun. Etáin, walking between Jack and Hugh, linked her arms through theirs.

Edgar Cullis trailed behind them, convinced of the correctness of his votes, but wondering now what the consequences would be. He was afraid.

T
he bluntness of the resolves was not the only thing that moved the conservative leadership and membership of the House to oppose Henry and his party. It was also the twin fears of the abrupt challenge to their hegemony by the younger members, most of whom represented counties west of the fall line, and of reprisal by the powers in London. Even though they begrudgingly agreed with the resolves and the reasoning behind them, it was imperative that they work to defeat them. In that goal, however, lay a vexing conundrum: to support the resolves, in a public forum, would be to concede leadership to those who originated and advocated them; to oppose them would elicit the certain contempt and censure of the electorate, which would express that disapproval in the next elections.

Further, they knew that the king, on the advice of his Privy Council, as punishment for the resolves, could just as soon revoke the charter that allowed them to meet in political assembly, as allow the powers of the legislature to be whittled away over time by the Stamp Act and similar acts in the future. Hugh Kenrick’s prediction on this point was not lost on those who disagreed with him.

And so the older burgesses and their leaders cursed their predicament, and while cursing it fumed with each other and with themselves over the stark reality of that predicament and the best way to insulate themselves from it. Determined to maintain their hegemony, they chose to argue for civility, loyalty, tradition, and the preservation of the General Assembly against two potent enemies: those who wished to assert their rights and liberties, and those unseen men who could destroy them.

The next morning the lobby and public space were crowded with more spectators than had come the day before. Word had spread in the town that an unusually lively and rancorous debate took place over the Stamp Act, and people came to hear and see for themselves what the burgesses were saying and proposed to do. Peyton Randolph, John Robinson, and other
older burgesses looked askance at the larger mob that milled beyond the railing, and knew why its size had almost doubled: No mere political controversy could have or ever had attracted such interest; secretly, they knew that it was a moral issue, and that they were caught between the uncomfortably close poles of a moral dilemma.

In a mood of spite for Henry, his party, and the spectators, Robinson drew out the business of minor bills as long as he could, for hours, until there was nothing left to do but ask Peyton Randolph to report the committee’s resolves from the day before. The crowd, Robinson furtively noted, had not dwindled, but seemed to have grown.

Jack and Etáin Frake, John Ramshaw, John Proudlocks, and Wendel Barret had come early enough again to find seats on the same bench. Reece Vishonn and Ralph Cullis stood in the crowd behind them. Thomas Jefferson again found himself standing at the lobby door.

Well into the reading and voting on the resolves, more spectators arrived, among them a middle-aged Frenchman, the Chevalier d’Annemours, who entered Williamsburg at noon from Yorktown in a riding chair, and who went immediately to the Capitol because he had been told by an innkeeper that important things were happening there. Under the alias of Alphonse Croisset, commercial agent, the nobleman had been touring the colonies, and had spent the last month in Maryland and Virginia, on behalf of the French government, reappraising the colonies’ legal and illegal trade potential. Standing just outside in the House lobby with other spectators, he had to crane his neck and strain his ears to appreciate what was transpiring inside.

Hugh Kenrick and Edgar Cullis this time sat on the first tier of benches, several places down from Patrick Henry. Hugh was tired. He had sat up half the night before, after having supper with his friends, assuring his colleague from Queen Anne that all the resolves were worth voting for, and that he should not change his vote on any one of them. “If the House adopts these five, then the sixth and seventh stand a chance, too. The five alone will give Parliament pause for thought. The sixth and seventh will cause Mr. Grenville and his party to choke on their brandy. Remember what I said about bullies.”

“I remember,” said Cullis. “But these bullies have a navy, and an army not a week’s march from here! We…we could be hanged!”

Hugh had shrugged. “You are only conceding my argument, Mr. Cullis.”

Today, many older burgesses glared at Hugh from across the floor. He could not decide whether it was from pure malice, or resentment for having raised truths they had rather not have heard. He found himself imagining what Dogmael Jones must have endured in the Commons, a single man among hundreds, defying a political process manipulated by shrewder and less scrupulous men than any who practiced here.

Reluctantly, Peyton Randolph rose and read each of the resolves to the House as though he were reading obscene literature. Some desultory debate occurred between members on both sides of the chamber. The first three resolves passed by the same margin: twenty-two to seventeen. When Randolph finished reading the fourth, George Wythe rose again to protest. “I maintain that proper deference must be shown to Parliament, and I remind the gentlemen across the floor that, should these resolutions pass, they will be read by their lordships in the upper House, by His Majesty,
and
by eminences throughout the kingdom too numerous to name here. We will seem to be upstart renegades, not only by England, but also by our fellow colonials here. I cannot imagine a more distasteful consequence!”

Patrick Henry rose and was recognized by Robinson. He asked, “If
this
House elects to wait on Parliament, sir, may I ask in what capacity? Ought we to wait idle in the foyer of those eminences’ concerns, in the mental livery of a menial, while they complete the latest business of oppressing the good people of England, not daring to whisper the persecution of their own brethren, lest it somehow insinuate our own?” He turned sharply away from Wythe, whose eyes were wide with anger, and addressed the House. “Some men in this chamber may prefer to approach the bar of Parliament, hats in hand, on raw knees, as humble supplicants, in search of redress and restitution.
I
, sirs, prefer to wait for Parliament to call on me, to beg
my
forgiveness for that body’s attempt to dupe and enslave me
and
this my country!”

He was answered, not by anyone from the other side, but by an assenting murmur among the spectators. Henry did not seem to take notice of the sound, and sat down. Robinson, Bland, Wythe, and their party, however, all glanced in the direction of the spectators in a range of expressions from disgust to trepidation to indifference. The Speaker ordered the clerks to conduct a vote. William Ferguson rose and read the fourth resolve for a last time. His colleague, Clough Anderson, marked down the Ayes and Nays as each burgess rose and spoke. The fourth resolve passed and was adopted by the House by the same margin as the day before, twenty-two to seventeen.

Peyton Randolph rose and read the fifth resolve. The Speaker could not contain his emotion as he heard again the words of that resolve; he gripped the cane in his hand and the arm of his chair, eyes closed in agony, as though a physician were lancing a boil. Spectators who had not heard the resolve read yesterday gasped or groaned in surprise. Patrick Henry, Colonel Munford, and others in that party sat calmly as Randolph read from the document that had been prepared from Henry’s law book page. Edgar Cullis, next to Hugh, fidgeted nervously in his seat.

Immediately Randolph finished, almost all the older burgesses rose to be recognized. But Randolph had not taken his seat after his chore was finished, and Speaker Robinson nodded to him. Acting now not as Attorney-General or committee chairman but as burgess for the City of Williamsburg, Randolph said, in a somber, almost petulant tone, “The gentleman who authored this resolve and those that have already passed this House, together with the gentlemen who endorse them, accuse the steadier members of this body of wishing merely to suggest, not to affirm, of choosing to insinuate, not to state, the alleged means and ends of the act in question. I now most emphatically protest that view, because it denigrates not only the Crown, Parliament, and His Majesty, but the characters and motives of those here who have argued for the just independence of this body for perhaps many more years than certain of those gentlemen have trod the earth. I insist here that we are neither oblivious nor indifferent to the dangers to our liberty contained in this act. We are rendered a disservice by those who say we are, and our honor is consequently besmirched.”

Randolph exercised his privilege as the second most powerful man in the House to step away from his seat and stand near the Speaker’s chair. “However,” he continued, “I, for one, in a gesture of Christian virtue, am willing to forgive and forget those charges and that impetuous slander. I maintain, in agreement with another offended gentleman here, that this particular resolution, more than any of the others that have passed this House — resolutions whose adoption by us can only disgrace us — is nothing less than an invitation to tragedy! It imputes Parliament
and
His Majesty no honor, no room for doubt, no capacity for error, no quantum of dignity. It grants them no sphere for honorable concession or conciliation. There is no charity in any of these resolutions, no tolerance for human frailty, no allowance for misguided intention.”

Randolph strode to the middle of the floor and pointed a finger at each of the burgesses on the opposite side. “You gentlemen,” he said with embittered
warning, “who rear your heads in anger and toy with the hilts of your swords, you, sirs, who by endorsing these resolutions confess an ignorance of the difference between foolishness and wisdom, mark my words: You will rue this day
and
your enthusiasm if this particular resolution is transmitted to London! You forget the virtue of moderation, you think only of yourselves, of your pride, of some book-bound, airy abstraction of liberty! In doing so, you also forget those who will surely suffer the same penalties as you will bring upon yourselves! And penalties there will be!”

He walked back in the direction of the Speaker, and paused across from Henry. He gestured to that burgess. “This particular resolution is presumed to rest on a rock foundation, when the gentleman here who authored it asserts himself that its substance depends on the Crown’s benevolent favor! This House has, in the past, met the Crown in the bountiful pasture of conciliation, and come away from it with the successful preservation of our independence here. But enter that field clad in the false armor of righteous certitude, and you will find ranged against you the lawful guns that will check your advance to folly and anarchy! I ask you gentlemen to remember what happened here not a century ago, when Nathaniel Bacon presumed to challenge the lawful authority of the Crown!” Randolph scoffed once, and glanced down at Henry with a withering look. “This, too, is
my
country, and I will do everything in my power to prevent a repetition of that chaos, misery, death, and destruction!”

Randolph returned to his place near the Speaker’s chair. “That curious colony to the north, Massachusetts, has a number of times in the past drunk the heady wine of revolt, but, in the end, settled for the calming beverage of accommodation, and has grown and prospered from the lesson. Are we to be less wise than that province?” He paused. “Accommodation, gentlemen! Only accommodation with the Crown as a partner in empire has brought about the liberty we enjoy today, and fruits of liberty. If, however, we presume to elevate ourselves above the Crown and its lofty ends, we can only guarantee our own ruin, and that of the Empire! The Empire may recover from that misadventure, but I can assure this House that our place in it will be its meanest and most pitiable element — and justly so. When once Virginia was great and prosperous, it will be poor and despised. Gentlemen, our future is in your hands.” The Attorney-General bowed slightly to both sides of the House, then strode purposefully to his seat.

Hugh Kenrick rose before any other burgesses could. Robinson was obliged to recognize him. Hugh said, “We who endorse these resolves are
neither ignorant of the difference between foolishness and wisdom, nor oblivious to the virtues of those who have trod the earth before many of us came into it. Virtue, said Socrates, springs not from possessions — and I mean here not merely our tangible wealth, but our liberties as well — not from possessions, but from virtue springs those possessions, and all other human blessings, whether for the individual or society. In these circumstances, the virtue which that gentleman accuses us of lacking has become a vice. Call it moderation, or charity, it will not serve us now. We exercise the virtue of righteous certitude, for it alone has the efficacy that conciliation and accommodation have not. That virtue is expressed — and I believe that the honorable Colonel Bland there will concur with me on this point — that virtue is expressed in one of the original charters of this colony, and in the first charter of Massachusetts, and has merely been reiterated in these resolves, but in clearer language. Moral certitude is a virtue itself, and in this instance is a glorious one, because it asserts and affirms, in all those charters and resolves, our natural liberty and the blessings it bestows upon us!”

Hugh’s mouth bent in a devilish grin, and he wagged a finger at the members on the other side. “Let us not imbibe the hemlock of humility, duty, or deference, sirs! Socrates did not have a choice in that regard.
We
have. Should we choose to rest on the virtue boasted of and advocated by that more experienced gentleman, that will be a more certain path to the despair, defeat, and regret he fears, and we will have nothing left that we can call our own!” Hugh glanced around once more, then took his seat.

“Damn that
boy
!” muttered Peyton Randolph to himself.

“Bravo!” whispered Etáin Frake.

“That was shot straight through their gunport!” chuckled John Ramshaw.

“My friend,” Jack Frake addressed the figure on the bench, “you are glorious in your own right.”