Historical Glossary (a-c)
Adam, Robert (1728-1792), English architect and furniture designer. Adam was one of four sons of architect William Adam. Robert went to Italy in 1754 and ten years later published The Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian. Much of his subsequent work reflected the influence of these studies. In 1773 Robert and his brother James began publishing Works In Architecture, which contained the designs of many of their works and was instrumental in popularizing the Adam style of ornament. He believed that the smallest detail of decoration and furnishing was within the field of the architect. He illustrated designs for furniture, carpets, lamps, andirons, and articles of silver. Hepplewhite and Sheraton derived much from the work of Adam, whose influence on the decorative arts prevailed from around 1760 until his death in 1792. 
With the arrival of Lord Botetourt in Williamsburg in October 1768, the neoclassical style in the decorative arts was introduced to Virginia. The ideas and style of Adam became part of the decor of the Palace and eventually of the homes of the gentry. 
Arne, Thomas A. (1710-1778), English-born composer. He is particularly well known for his contribution to English theater music of the eighteenth century. In 1740 he produced the masque Alfred with the song "Rule Britannia" that became a very popular patriotic song in Great Britain. Arne's ballad opera Love in a Village was produced successfully in Williamsburg in 1771, and the music from it was published in collections of songs sold here. Robert Carter ordered music from Love in a Village only four years after its American premiere at Charleston and almost a year before its first Williamsburg performance. 
Asbury, Francis (1745-1816), English-born Methodist leader. "Methodism" was named for a strictly disciplined religious group of Oxford students led by John and Charles Wesley. Sent to America by John Wesley in 1771, Asbury was the prototype circuit rider, traveling five to six thousand miles a year on horseback and preaching an estimated twenty thousand sermons. Asbury preached in Williamsburg on several occasions including December 1782 when he recorded in his journal that "worldly glory is departed [from Williamsburg] -- divine glory it never had any." 
American Methodists formally separated from the Episcopal Church in 1784 at a conference in Baltimore during which Asbury was consecrated bishop. The influence of the dissenting religions on the framers of the constitution went beyond religious tolerance and separation of church and state. The evangelical concept of individual responsibility and equality in the sight of God was significant in the development of this new governmental system. 
Bach, Johann Christian (1735-1782), composer and performer. The youngest son of Johann Sebastian, he came to England in 1762. In London he was appointed music master to the queen, and beginning in 1764 he and K. F. Abel performed in a series of concerts that established regular public concerts in London. That same year Johann Christian's music impressed a young visitor to London, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (who was eight years old at the time). The style of music composed by J. C. Bach would become the most important single influence on Mozart, just as that composed by his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-1788) was to be the primary influence on Haydn. 
We think of Johann Sebastian (1685-1750) as the famous Bach, but the name in eighteenth-century Europe and in the colonies would have suggested his sons, who were composing in the new monophonic styles (predominantly melody supported by harmony). Only much later did the "old-fashioned" polyphonic style of counterpoint used by their father become so well known. It was the music of J. C. and C.P.E. Bach, and not J.S. Bach, that the Jeffersons and other Virginia families owned. 
J. C. Bach is also important for his role in popularizing the piano (pianoforte). In 1768 at a concert at Thatched House Tavern in London he played a "Solo on the Pianoforte." Apparently this was the first time that the piano was publicly used as a solo instrument in London. 
Bacon's Rebellion (1676) was a reflection of the unstable and destructive character of Virginia's seventeenth-century society. From the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, the colony had been marked not only by a devastating death rate but also by tragic Indian relations and exploitive use of land and labor for tobacco production. Many Virginians became alarmed by Governor Berkeley's poor leadership and weak response in handling the Indian threat by merely suggesting a series of forts be built along the frontier rather than dispatching troops. 
In the spring of 1676 Nathaniel Bacon, a member of England's gentry newly arrived in Virginia, became the military leader of a band of Virginians who armed themselves against the Indians in defiance of the governor. Berkeley responded by unsuccessfully dispatching men to confront Bacon and declared him a rebel. 
Until Bacon's death from natural causes on October 26, 1676 he and Governor Berkeley struggled to control Virginia militarily and politically, embroiling Virginians in civil war. After the Assembly enacted many of Bacon's demands, Bacon with five hundred men captured the government and demanded from Berkeley the power to fight the Indians. That was granted on June 25 but later withdrawn. The governor, however, could not raise loyal troops to assert his authority and was forced to retreat to the Eastern Shore. Berkeley later returned to Jamestown to prepare for Bacon's attack but was forced to return to the Eastern Shore while Bacon burned the capital. Virginians, hesitant to fight one another, continued to vacillate in their support of Berkeley and Bacon in the ever-increasing confusion. Bacon's men, however, now turned to plundering loyalist plantations in Gloucester County and elsewhere. Bacon's sudden death left his men without a strong leader, and in January 1677 Berkeley returned to power and sought reparations for the loyalists. 
During the Rebellion the Indians probably suffered the most. Many were killed and a number of their villages were destroyed. Virginia changed character after Bacon's Rebellion becoming more stable as the Indian population was pushed farther west making more land available to free white men. At the same time the labor force shifted from white indentured servants to black slaves and white men united as racism developed to protect the master class. 
Beggar's Opera, The, which opened in London in 1728, was an overwhelming theatrical success, running for 32 consecutive nights. The work heralded a new form of musical drama -- the ballad opera. Unlike the prevalent Italian opera with its formal arias, librettist John Gay and musical arranger John Pepusch set the story of Macheath and Polly to popular contemporary ballads. The ballad opera was to become a very popular form of entertainment both in England and the colonies. Hundreds were written during the eighteenth century. 
Gay's opera was also a scathing social and political satire in which the questions of political self-interest and the double standards the aristocracy imposed on the rest of society are readily apparent. No doubt many in the audiences read allusions to the current ministry into the play, casting Whig leader Robert Walpole in none too favorable a light. Gay's subsequent ballad opera, Polly, was suppressed. 
The Beggar's Opera received its first American performance in New York in 1751. It is possible that the Hallam troupe staged it in Williamsburg as early as 1752, but the first known performance was in 1769 under the musical direction of Peter Pelham. 
Billings, William (1746-1800), American composer. Born in Boston, Billings, a hide tanner by trade, wrote hymns and anthems and was a popularizer of "fuguing tunes." He was one of the first to compose truly American music. Billings's song "Chester" was well known as a hymn and a marching tune during the Revolutionary War. 
Black Baptist Church, early black congregation in Williamsburg. Although not the first separate black church in Virginia or in America, the African American Baptist congregation formed in the Williamsburg area in the late 1770s or early 1780s was probably the earliest formed by black leaders without apparent assistance from white preachers. Two black preachers--first Moses, then Gowan Pamphlet--began preaching to "people of color" meeting in secret on the outskirts of Williamsburg. Gowan was a slave in Jane Vobe's household as early as 1783, and it is likely that Moses was also a slave. They both endured physical punishment as a result of their preaching activities. 
Moses' fate is unknown, but Gowan Pamphlet continued ministering to the congregation. In 1793, Pamphlet, by then a free man, gained membership in the regional (white) Dover Baptist Association for his African American church. Membership ranged as high as five to seven hundred in some years. By 1818 Jesse Cole of Williamsburg had given a carriage house on Nassau Street for their use. The church continued to flourish, apparently with minimal interference from whites, until events in the 1830s and 1840s brought reorganization under white ministers. In 1855 the carriage house was replaced by a brick church that was used until 1955. 
Blair, The Reverend James (1655-1743), Virginia clergyman and founder of the College of William and Mary. He was born in Banffshire, Scotland, one of five children of the Reverend Robert Blair. Educated at Marischal and Edinburgh, he was ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland in 1679. That same year he refused to subscribe to the test oath of James II (required of Scottish ministers) and accepted an invitation to go to England. There he became acquainted with Henry Compton, Bishop of London, who in 1685 sent him to Virginia to serve as an Anglican minister in Henrico Parish. Arriving in Virginia, Blair quickly allied himself with some of the most influential families in the colony. In 1687 he married Sarah Harrison of Charles City County. Sarah wrote her own chapter in history when she repeatedly refused to promise to obey in her wedding vows. 
Blair became Commissary (representative) to the Bishop of London in 1690, founder and president of the College of William and Mary in 1693 (a position he held for fifty years), member of the Virginia Council in 1694 (a position he held for forty nine years), and rector of Bruton Parish Church in 1710. Much of his life was involved in power struggles and historians credit him with the recall of three governors (Andros, Nicholson, and Spotswood). As a religious leader Blair was a strong preacher and writer with a down-to-earth moralistic, disciplined approach to living. The Foundation Library owns early copies of his five volumes of sermons: Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount. 
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, the ancestral home of the dukes of Marlborough and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. It is the only private house in England to be officially called a "Palace," a name usually reserved for the residences of royalty and bishops. Blenheim was the gift of a grateful nation to war hero William Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, for his outstanding victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) during the War of Spanish Succession. Queen Anne gave the duke her royal manor at Woodstock as a site for its construction. 
John Vanbrugh was the architect and construction began in 1705. He was assisted by his close friend Nicholas Hawksmoor, chief assistant of Christopher Wren. Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor collaborated on Blenheim as they had previously done on Castle Howard, Yorkshire. Blenheim Palace is a massive structure, its buildings and courts covering seven acres. It is in the baroque style, heavy and powerful, a fitting tribute to a hero. The gardens include a vast formal parterre at the south front with an immense park surrounding the other three sides. This type of garden was the basis for Alexander Spotswood's design for the construction of the Palace gardens in Williamsburg. 
Botetourt Statue (1773), memorial to Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt. The statue was commissioned nine months after his death and is tangible evidence of the affection and appreciation Virginians felt for this "best of governors and the best of men." English sculptor Richard Hayward was commissioned to create the statue. In 1773 the two thousand pound figure arrived in Williamsburg and was erected in the Capitol piazza. The college purchased it in 1797. It is appropriate that the statue stand at the college because Lord Botetourt enjoyed a special relationship with that institution. During his tenure as governor (1768-1770), he sponsored the Botetourt Medal, an award for academic excellence which is still presented. 
Boyle, Robert (1627-1691), father of modern chemistry. He separated chemistry from alchemy and gave the first precise definitions of a chemical element, a chemical reaction, and chemical analysis. An important law describing certain characteristics of natural gases bears his name. 
James Blair was in London when Boyle died in December 1691, leaving the bulk of his estate to be distributed for pious and charitable purposes. Blair secured funds from Boyle's executor for the Brafferton that housed the Indian school at the College of William and Mary. Annual rents from Brafferton Manor in Yorkshire, purchased as an investment for Boyle's estate, supported the Indian school until the Revolution. 
Brafferton, The (1723), the College of William and Mary's Indian school. It was named after the Brafferton estates in Yorkshire that had been purchased by Sir Robert Boyle's executors to carry out one of the physicist's bequests -- to provide funds from the estate to educate Indian youths in Christian religion so that they might eventually return to their tribes as missionaries. The school was called a "noble failure," and there is no record that a single Indian boy went back to his tribe and served in that capacity. With the onset of the American Revolution and the cut-off of funds from England, the Indian school ceased to function. 
Bray School (1760-1774), Williamsburg school for black children, slave and free. It was established on September 29, l760. The English philanthropic group known as Dr. Bray's Associates organized the school as an instructional attempt to christianize the slaves in colonial North America. 
Robert Carter Nicholas served as the school's trustee during most of the years of its operation. Likewise, Mrs. Anne Wager was the only teacher at the school. Upon her death in 1774, the school closed. There were about thirty students at the school at any given time. Most were from six to eight years old, although a few were as young as three or as old as ten. Masters who enrolled slaves in the school represented a cross section of local political leaders, craftsmen, and tavern keepers. 
Bray, The Reverend Dr. Thomas (1656-1730), English clergymen, born in Marton, Shropshire, and educated at Oxford. He was the founder of and the prime mover behind the formation of three Anglican missionary and philanthropic organizations in England, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698), the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701), and the Associates of Dr. Bray (1723, reorganized in 1729). In the fall of 1695, Henry Compton, Bishop of London, selected Bray to be his commissary in Maryland. Bray returned to England after securing an act establishing the Church of England in Maryland in May 1702. 
Goals of the S.P.C.K. included supplying the colonies with missionaries, providing libraries for missionaries and clergy in England, and establishing charity schools in England. When Bray returned home from America, he obtained a charter for a missionary society, the S.P.G., to take over responsibility for sending missionaries to plantations. Thereafter, the S.P.C.K. devoted itself to educational endeavors in England. Conversion of Indians and blacks in America did not have high priority in the S.P.G. and was not to take institutional form until the establishment of the Associates of Dr. Bray in 1723. The Associates continued their efforts to instruct and convert slaves in America after Dr. Bray's death. It was this organization that established the Bray School in Williamsburg. 
Bridgeman, Charles (ca. 1680-1738), English gardener, surveyor, and landscape architect. He began his career as an apprentice to George London and Henry Wise and worked under Vanbrugh and Wise in the building of Blenheim Palace. Bridgeman began a profitable career on his own in 1713 with the design of a vast formal garden at Stowe for Lord Cobham. 
Bridgeman and his former fellow apprentice at Brompton Nursery, Stephen Switzer (1682-1745), were the innovators of a new transitional style of gardening called the "forest" style. It was characterized by long grand avenues and extensive plantings of forest trees. These avenues were called "rides" and were intended to ease and replace the critical timber shortage in England at that time. This new approach was a departure from the garden designs of their predecessors, who forced their formal, bilateral geometry on a site regardless of the topography or vegetation. 
Bridgeman's greatest innovation was popularizing the use of the "fosse" or sunken fence to enclose his gardens rather than a tall brick or stone wall. Though Walpole credits him with inventing this enclosure method in his design for the garden at Stowe in 1713, the fosse, or ha-ha, was documented in France as early as 1709. In 1728 Bridgeman became royal gardener to George II, a post he held until his death. Charles Bridgeman was a notable figure in the transition from formal to natural styles in English gardening, but both he and Switzer do not appear to have been forceful or imaginative enough to take their ideas further. 
Brown, Lancelot "Capability" (1715-1783), English gardener and landscape architect. He was born to a family of yeoman farmers in Northumberland in 1715. In 1732 Lancelot left school at age sixteen to start work at Kirkharle Hall for Sir William Loraine. While there he learned all the basic practicalities of estate improvement, including some garden management. 
After working briefly as a gardener at Benwell and Kiddington Hall estates, Brown assumed the position of head gardener at Stowe, home of Lord Cobham, in 1741. He proved to be so able an administrator and overseer that Cobham soon willingly lent Brown to his friends and acquaintances to advise and assist them with their own country house and garden developments. In 1751 he left Stowe and set up in practice on his own. 
Brown designed gardens that made the landscape simpler and barer than those laid out by his predecessors. He abolished the parterre, ornaments, and topiary. Brown gave the gentry what they so earnestly desired, a more "natural" looking landscape that was far less labor-intensive and cheaper to maintain. Above all, the house became all important in the garden. The garden was to be viewed from the house, and the house was also to be the garden's chief feature. 
Brown was nicknamed "Capability" because he was fond of using that term in describing to his clients the latent potentials of their estates -- "There are great capabilities here, Sir!" he would say. His obituary notice in 1783 concluded: "So closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken" for it. 
Carroll, Father John, (1735-1815), first Roman Catholic bishop in America and founder of Georgetown College in 1789. He was a member of a Maryland family that held great political and economic power during the eighteenth century. Although the Carrolls were Catholic, they influenced an overwhelmingly hostile Anglican colony in Maryland. This great family included Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Daniel Carroll, a signer of the Constitution. John Carroll was educated by Jesuit priests at Bohemian Manor, a famous plantation staffed by the Jesuit Order in northeastern Maryland. By the time he was sixteen, Carroll had resolved to pursue a religious vocation in the Jesuit community. With the blessings of his family he set sail for Flanders where he entered a Jesuit seminary and was ordained a priest by 1765. He spent the next eight years teaching and fulfilling his ministerial roles in Europe before returning to America. 
After the Revolutionary War the Catholic population of less than fifty thousand still was centered in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York. The Revolution had removed the humiliating penal legislation upon Catholics, but the community was not unified by the presence of a bishop. By 1790 many Catholics had immigrated from Europe to the United States and the Vatican realized that the growing Catholic community needed a native bishop. Without a bishop, some Catholic parishes practiced their own form of church government, hiring and firing priests at will. Carroll as superior could not stop the problem of trusteeism, as it became known. Pope Pius VI requested that Carroll become first bishop of his American flock. In 1790, Carroll was consecrated as bishop in England and Baltimore was proclaimed as the mother see of the diocese of America. Carroll remained bishop until his death in 1814. 
Cartwright, The Reverend Edmund (1743-1823), English inventor. By 1780 Cartwright had several inventions to his credit and in 1785 designed the first power loom. New mechanical means of carding and spinning had resulted in large quantities of loomable thread, but the hand looms of the period could not keep pace with these new machines. Cartwright had never seen a loom in operation and knew nothing about weaving when he patented his first loom in 1785. It worked with a vertical warp and a spring-operated mechanism and took two men to operate. The loom did weave cloth but not very well. Cartwright finally "condescended to see how other people wove" and redesigned his machine. A second loom was patented in 1786 and a third in 1787. They were still complex and not very successful; however, they did contain basic elements that were used on future looms. Power for Cartwright's looms was originally supplied by animals but he was using steam engines for power by 1789. He went on to develop additional machines and eventually became the owner of a mill in Doncaster. 
Catesby, Mark (1679-1749), illustrator and author of The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. He first came to Virginia in 1712 with his sister Elizabeth on her voyage from London to Williamsburg to join her husband, Dr. William Cocke. Catesby remained in Virginia for seven years collecting and illustrating natural history specimens. He returned to England long enough to procure financial sponsors for a second trip to the colonies, 1722-1726, when he collected information to finish his natural history publication. 
Back in England, Catesby found that hiring an engraver for his drawings was prohibitively expensive; therefore, as he explained in the preface of his two volume work, he learned the process of engraving himself. Of the 220 prints in The Natural History, Catesby engraved all but two. The prints beautifully illustrate plants, birds, fish, insects, snakes, and other forms of natural life and are accompanied by text in both English and French. 
Chatsworth (1687-1707), Derbyshire, ancestral home of the dukes of Devonshire. The original structure of 1553 was occupied by both sides during the English Civil War and was badly in need of repair when inherited in 1684 by William Cavendish, fourth earl of Devonshire. The earl was a leader in the movement to exclude Catholic James II from the throne and was one of the seven signers of the petition inviting William of Orange to rule England. He was made high steward of the new court and was created duke of Devonshire and marquis of Hartington in 1694. The duke's last public act was to assist in the Union of England and Scotland in 1707. 
What started out as a face-lift for a decaying Elizabethan structure resulted in the rebuilding of the entire house over a twenty-year period. The original architect was William Talman, whose work can be seen in the reconstruction of the south and east faces. It is a baroque structure typical of the reign of William III. The gardens still include formal parterres and enormous waterworks such as a great cascade with a series of fountains and a waterfall. 
Chippendale, Thomas, Sr. (1718-1779), English cabinetmaker. He was born in Worcester, son of a cabinetmaker and wood carver. He moved to London in 1727 where he opened his own shop in 1749 with James Rannie. The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director was first published in 1754 with a reprint the following year and a third edition in 1762. The Director contained 160 engraved plates of furniture designs in the French rococo, Chinese, and gothic styles; through it, Chippendale became a leading force in popularizing the rococo style in England. 
Thomas Haig joined Chippendale after the death of Rannie. Thomas, Jr. (1749-1822) also worked with Chippendale's cabinetmaking operation, a large and successful business that included furnishings for Nostell Priory and Harewood House (under Robert Adam's direction). Few pieces directly attributed to Thomas Chippendale, Sr., survive today. 
Clarendon Code (1661-1665), English laws repressing nonconformists. Upon the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England in 1660, Parliament returned the Church of England to the position of established church, a preeminence it had enjoyed in the years before the Civil War. It then enacted a series of harsh laws known as the Clarendon Code, named for Charles's chief minister Sir Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon. These statutes had as their principal objective the exclusion of nonconformists, both Protestant and Catholic, from all places and positions of public trust. Though unevenly enforced and softened through Declarations of Indulgence proclaimed by both Charles II and James II, the Clarendon Code was successful in keeping nonconformists from participating in national political life, municipal administration, and the universities, and largely prevented them from establishing their own schools. 
The grandees who chased the Catholic James II from England's throne and brought in William and Mary in his place were convinced that further religious strife would imperil their nation. Thus in May 1689 Parliament enacted the Toleration Act. Protestant dissenters were granted the right of free public worship, which they had been denied under the Clarendon Code. But they remained excluded from public life for decades to come. It was this model of Anglican Church establishment and the exclusion of dissenters and Catholics from public life that framed Virginia's political and religious life until after the Revolution. 
Commonwealth of Virginia Virginia is one of the fifty states as designated by the United States Constitution, but it has never officially called itself a "state." It adopted the term "commonwealth" soon after the Revolution began. 
Historically, the words "common" (shared by all) and "wealth" or "weal" (well-being or welfare) used together meant something like "public welfare." By the 16th century, "commonwealth" became an ordinary English term meaning the whole body of people constituting a nation or state, or the body politic in which the supreme power is vested in the people-a republic or democratic state. 
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Massachusetts are today the only states that officially designate themselves "commonwealths." 
Copley, John Singleton (1738-1815), Boston born American painter. Peter Pelham, Sr., father of Williamsburg organist and jailor, Peter Pelham, married Copley's mother in 1748 and taught his stepson the trade of mezzotint scraper. When he was nineteen Copley was regularly commissioned to produce portraits, but it was his painting of his half-brother, Henry Pelham, that brought him notice in London. 
In 1774 Copley went to England and the Continent to study. While in Italy the Revolution broke out and, like Benjamin West, he lived the remainder of his life with his family in England. Copley was self taught and received encouragement from painters like West. He is famous for both his portraits and historical paintings. 
Culloden, Battle of (1746), final defeat of the Stuarts in their bid to regain the English throne. Supporters of the deposed English king James II and his heirs were active for many years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Known as Jacobites (from the Latin for James, Jacobus), these rebels were mostly Scottish and Irish. English politicians also maintained contact with James and his son, James Edward Stuart, until the Hanoverian succession (George I) in 1714 ended any possibility that the Stuart line could return to the English throne peacefully. 
Open Jacobite rebellion in 1715-1716 (known as the Fifteen) failed. Subsequent risings and plots culminated in a final effort in 1745-1746 (known as the Forty-Five) by "Bonnie Prince Charlie" -- Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender -- and the Jacobites to retake the throne of England. Charles's highland army was crushed by the English in a short but decisive battle at Culloden Moor near Inverness, Scotland, on April 16, 1746. The last of the Stuart line died in 1807 without heirs. 

Historical Glossary (d-h)
Davies, Samuel (1723-1761), Virginia leader of the religious revival known as the Great Awakening. He was the first "new side" or "new light" minister to settle permanently in the colony. Davies attended a school at Chester, Pennsylvania. He continued at the school because of donations from Presbyterian dissenters in Hanover County, an act that later influenced his decision to accept permanent appointment to that congregation. Feeling it his duty to teach the principles of Christianity to all who would listen, Davies brought many slaves into that congregation, taught them to read, and purchased spelling books, catechisms, and hymnals for their use. Davies left Hanover when he was named President of Princeton University in 1759, a post he held until his death in 1761. 
Davies was probably a familiar figure in Williamsburg. Only a few months after settling in Hanover, he married Jane Holt of Williamsburg, daughter of William Holt, former mayor of the city. Davies was careful to obtain the licenses required for dissenting ministers and meetinghouses from the government in Williamsburg before he began preaching. He repeatedly came to the Capitol on this matter, which brought him into direct conflict with Peyton Randolph, attorney general of the colony, to whom Davies reportedly proved himself the equal in his ability to argue points of the law regarding dissenters. Governor Gooch described Davies as "tall, slim, well-formed . . . pale and wasted by disease, dignified and courteous in manner." 
Samuel Davies became well known for his preaching; even Patrick Henry acknowledged Davies' influence on his own oratorical style. 
De Lamerie, Paul (1688-1751), French-born silversmith. His Huguenot family immigrated to England (see Edict of Nantes) when Paul was less than a year old and it is doubtful that he ever lived in France after that. His French style developed because it was the prevalent art form of the time and because he was apprenticed to Pierre Platel, master goldsmith, at the age of fifteen. 
De Lamerie was associated with William Hogarth, who had been apprenticed to a silversmith and engraved some outstanding pieces for De Lamerie, including a salver for Sir Robert Walpole in 1727. De Lamerie is credited with some of the finest and most elaborate silver work of the eighteenth century. A number of pieces by Paul De Lamerie can be seen at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery, including four columnar candlesticks that serve as the gallery logo. 
De Sequeyra, Dr. John (1712-1795), Williamsburg physician, was born in London of distinguished Portuguese-Jewish parentage. He attended the medical school at the University of Leiden in Holland, reportedly under the leading clinician, Hermann Boerhaave, and received his medical degree on February 3, l739. He settled in Williamsburg in 1745. 
In 1769 de Sequeyra attended George Washington's epileptic stepdaughter, Patsy. In 1770 he was called to attend Lord Botetourt during his fatal illness of bilious fever and St. Anthony's fire (erysipelas). In 1773 he was selected to be the first visiting physician to the Public Hospital for the Insane, a distinguished position that he kept until he died in 1795. He was also a member of the Hospital's Board of Directors from 1774 until his death. 
Diderot, Denis (1713-1784), French encyclopedist. He was also a philosopher, novelist, satirist, dramatist, and art critic but is best known for his Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1780. It was his intention to demystify preindustrial manufacturing techniques and to elevate the worker and recognize his importance. Jesuit-educated and a friend of Rousseau, Diderot believed that providing documentation and information would increase man's knowledge, broaden his experience, and in so doing further his understanding of the world in which he lived. The idea that artisans should be respected for their contribution to society was loathed by the French aristocracy, and Diderot's emphasis on material things was considered anti-Christian. Thus the encyclopedia met with serious criticism and opposition. 
Diderot's dedication to expanding public knowledge and his recognition of the value of the ordinary worker was reflected in the egalitarian society developing in Virginia. The importance of the common man was central to Diderot's theme. Thomas Jefferson subscribed to his encyclopedia and was undoubtedly sympathetic to the views expressed and fascinated by the wealth of technical detail it contained. 
Dilettanti, Society of (1732), informal organization of art-minded Englishmen. It was founded by Sir Francis Dashwood and other collectors to encourage the study of classical antiquity. Patrons, artists, and architects met to discuss and deliberate in a convivial atmosphere. Through their financial aid, enthusiasm, and taste, the society sponsored publications and sent expeditions to Italy, Asia Minor, and Greece. 
The ideal of the dilettanti appealed to many in a country where the amateur tradition had deep roots. Lord Burlington was one of those who had an interest in architecture as expressed in his pleasure house Chiswick. One was encouraged to "be one's own architect" and to promote an interest and understanding of music, literature, philosophy, painting, and the other arts to be considered a "gentleman of parts." Sir Joshua Reynolds painted two conversation pieces at the time of Sir William Hamilton's induction into the society that portray the intimacy of this cultured and creative circle. 
Edict of Nantes (1598), decree establishing Catholic-Protestant coexistence in France. It granted French Protestants, the Huguenots, full civil rights by Catholic courts. The implication of a Protestant state within a Catholic state led Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685. While most Huguenots remained in France and abjured Calvinism for Catholicism, an estimated 160,000 fled France to Geneva, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. 
This infusion of French refugees brought twenty to fifty thousand immigrants to England, many of whom practiced specialized occupations and crafts. French taste in fashion became more evident as refugee wigmakers, hairdressers, bootmakers, shoemakers, perfumers, fan makers, jewelers, furriers, and gunsmiths worked in London. French silversmiths brought new skills and more advanced designs. They used thicker silver with higher relief and engraved rather than applied ornament. Huguenot cabinetmakers moved from square or rectangular chair backs toward curvilinear backs. The English textile industry also benefitted. French weavers were more technologically advanced than English weavers and won fame for their pattern designs, flowered silks, and printed calicoes. As a result of these innovations, less linen and silk were imported from France, helping to reverse the English-French balance of trade in favor of the English by the 1690s. By 1700 it was said that, "the English have now so great an esteem for the workmanship of the French refugees, that hardly anything vends without a gallic name." 
Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1758), American theologian and philosopher. He is generally credited with stimulating the religious revival known as the Great Awakening. He attempted to revive Puritan idealism in a new age of science, secularism, and mercantile activity. Rigorously schooled at home, Edwards entered Yale at age thirteen, graduating in 1720 when he was seventeen. In 1729 Edwards was called to the Congregational church in Northampton, Massachusetts, which has been called the most powerful pulpit in New England. 
Possessed of a fascination with nature and an extremely analytical mind, Edwards discovered John Locke before any other American thinker. He later used theories gleaned from Locke to support such Calvinistic doctrines as predestination and the sovereignty of God. 
Late in 1734 Edwards was in the midst of a closely reasoned series of sermons on the necessity of salvation. His former congregation began to warm, leading Edwards to view dramatic conversions as evidence of the "peculiar and immediate" manifestations of God. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards's most famous sermon, presents only a fraction of the range of his thought, for Edwards was far more concerned with God's grace than His anger. He generally disapproved of extreme emotionalism in religion and went so far as to rebuke George Whitefield for the hysteria his sermons inspired. 
Dismissed after conflicts with his Northampton congregation in 1750, he became a missionary to the remnants of the Mohican Indians near Stockbridge. In 1758 he was invited to become president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). A few weeks later he died from the effects of a smallpox inoculation. 
F. H. C. Society (1750), first college fraternity in British America, founded at William and Mary. It faded from existence during the Revolution and little is known about its early years. Even the meaning (presumably Latin) of the letters "F.H.C." remains a mystery. The first reference to the society as the "Flat Hat Club" may date from the late nineteenth century, although it might reflect a contemporary nickname for the society. Surviving fraternity medals, a certificate of membership, and correspondence among members indicate that the objectives of the society included friendship, conviviality, charity, and science. Over the years members included Thomas Jefferson, John Page, Warner Lewis, Beverley Randolph, James Innes, and St. George Tucker. 
Fielding, Henry (1707-1755), English novelist. He began his literary career as a less than successful dramatist. In 1737 laws restricting the number of theaters led Fielding to an alternative career as a lawyer, and he eventually became London's first police magistrate. Tom Jones, which is considered one of the finest comic novels of the eighteenth century, was written during the period when Fielding faced large debts and death of his wife and child. His novels are peopled with young men who relish the pleasures of life; through them Fielding exposed his belief in the innate goodness of man. He used satire to poke fun at the hypocrisy he perceived in society, an effort in which he was joined by his good friend William Hogarth. Tom Jones was included in the libraries of Lord Botetourt, Robert Carter, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and St. George Tucker. 
Fox, George (1624-1691), English founder of the Society of Friends. In 1646 he underwent a mystical experience that convinced him that Christianity was an inner light by which Christ directly illumines the believing soul. Fox began preaching in 1647 and soon attracted a considerable following. Commonly called Quakers from the spiritual "trembling" experienced during meetings, his followers refused to take oaths or bear arms. They wanted to be free of all outward authorities, including ordained priests and ministers. Fox subscribed to the Reformation idea of a universal priesthood of all believers--the assumption that all men were potentially near enough to God to be their own priests. Quaker missionaries met with persecution and imprisonment on most of their travels. In America Quakerism was most prevalent in New England. 
From 1671 to 1672 Fox and William Edmundson, an important Quaker missionary, traveled in Virginia. Edmundson actually met with Governor Berkeley in order to speak to him about Friends' sufferings. Edmundson found Berkeley "peevish and brittle" and departed the meeting having made no progress in persuading the governor to be kind to Quakers in Virginia. While in America, Fox greatly strengthened the Quaker organization in the colonies, though they continued to meet with varying degrees of harassment in the southern colonies. 
Garrick, David (1717-1779), English actor. He is credited with developing a more naturalistic style of acting, moving away from the stylized practices in vogue earlier in the century. 
In 1747 he became a partner in the Drury Lane Theatre at Covent Garden and managed many of the productions. Garrick was credited with forbidding patrons from sitting on the stage itself because it was evident they cared more about being seen than seeing the play. He also influenced the development of more sophisticated set designs. Garrick also directed plays, wrote several, and by his death had amassed a fortune that has been estimated at £10,000. 
Geminiani, Francesco (1689-1762), eminent Italian violinist. His violin treatise of 1751 The Art of Playing on the Violin, has special significance for the tradition of domestic music in eighteenth-century Virginia. The predominance of the violin as the most popular instrument for the gentleman amateur during the period is well documented. Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph, and Patrick Henry all played the violin; in fact, Jefferson had a copy of Geminiani's influential Opus IX treatise in his private music library. 
Geminiani's work was a continuation of a long succession of instruction books for the violin. From 1658 to 1731 there were thirty such works printed in England. Geminiani's Art, however, departs from the earlier violin treatises in its thoroughness. His treatise sets down the performance techniques of the classical, or Roman, violin school as established by Archangelo Corelli in the late seventeenth century. 
Glorious Revolution (1688), period of English history when Catholic King James II was replaced by William III and Mary. William of Orange was a nephew of James II; Mary was his daughter and a niece of Charles II. They were invited to assume the throne by a group of influential noblemen. Unlike James, who believed in divine right of kings, William and Mary shared the duties and responsibilities of governance with Parliament. When the crown was offered to William and Mary, their assent to a Declaration of Rights was secured. The Declaration asserted that it was illegal to suspend laws, collect taxes, maintain a standing Army without consent of Parliament, interfere with Parliamentary elections, tamper with juries, or impose excessive fines. Parliament turned the agreement into a Bill of Rights with two additional provisions: No Catholic could succeed to the crown and succession thereafter would be the children of William and Mary, then those of Anne, Mary's younger sister, and finally the children of William if he should marry again. 
Goldsmith, Oliver (1730-1774), English writer. He was educated to pursue a career in the medical field and ultimately became one of England's most versatile authors. Goldsmith began writing essays and humorous sketches for British periodicals to improve his financial situation. His association with publisher John Newbery opened the door to a lasting friendship with Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Goldsmith became an important figure in the London literary scene. He could justifiably boast of his success in writing fiction (The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766), poetry (The Deserted Village, 1770), and drama (She Stoops to Conquer, 1774), yet he constantly worried about how his works would be received by the British public. Thomas Jefferson considered The Vicar of Wakefield one of his favorite novels, and it was also listed in the library of George Washington. 
Great Awakening, religious revivalism that occurred in the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The movement was a repudiation of Enlightenment rationalism, an antidote to religious complacence in established churches in the colonies, and a change from the formalism of Anglican liturgy. 
The Great Awakening is commonly held to have started in 1734 when Jonathan Edwards, jarred his congregation out of its apathy and into a frenzy of repentance of sin and rejoicing in salvation. The revival sparked hundreds of conversions. As news of this revival spread, so did its effects. Evangelist George Whitefield, travelling in America in 1739, added momentum to the spread of revivalism. His spellbinding sermons attracted large crowds as he journeyed from New England to Georgia. 
Established churches like the Anglican church in Virginia were largely gentry dominated. The evangelical message that all men are equal in the eyes of God attracted slaves and poor whites by the thousands. There was a proliferation of unschooled "New Light" itinerants -- including some blacks and women -- whose only credential was a call from God to preach to anyone who would listen, in the open air if necessary. 
A legacy of the Great Awakening was continued expansion of evangelical churches and increasing demand for, first, toleration of religious views outside those sanctioned by the established churches, and then full freedom of religion in America. Agitation for this right went hand in hand with the revolutionary thought developing in the political arena leading up to the American Revolution. 
Gregorian Calendar (1582), current calendar replacing the Julian calendar. In addition to new rules governing leap years, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that ten days be dropped from the year 1582 by designating October 5 as October 15 in order to correct inaccuracies in the Julian calendar. Although the Gregorian calendar (New Style) was technically superior, it was impossible for England (still embroiled in the intellectual and religious trauma of the Protestant Reformation) to accept a new calendar devised by the Catholic pope and adopted under the auspices of the Roman Church. England clung to the Julian (Old Style) calendar for another 170 years with the result that after 1582, English dates were ten days behind those used by other European countries. 
The English calendar for much of the colonial period was further complicated by an anomaly that developed in medieval England when the clergy began dating the new year from the Feast of the Annunciation--or Lady Day as the English styled it--March 25, making the last few days of March the first few days of the new year; that is, the dates January 1 through March 24 were still part of the previous year in England but part of the new year in the rest of Europe. Thus dates between January 1 and March 24 often appear in colonial documents with both Old Style and New Style years separated by a slash (for example, February 18, 1701/2) though not everyone in England and the colonies used this convention. 
An end was put to these confusions when a bill for the adoption of the Gregorian calendar passed Parliament. The act went into effect September 3, 1752 which was designated September 14 to correct for the now eleven-day difference that had accumulated between the old and new calendars. It also transferred the beginning of the new year in England from March 25 to January 1 starting in 1753. 
Griffin, The Reverend Charles (fl. 1715-1720), English missionary among the Indians. In 1715 he was hired and paid by Lieutenant Governor Spotswood to teach at the school at Fort Christanna in Brunswick County. His personality, skills, and dedication made him very popular with the Indians, and he created a thriving school with as many as seventy-five students at times. Later Griffin was called upon to be master of the Indian school at the College of William and Mary. 
Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759), German-born composer. He became kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover in 1710 and later that year made his first visit to England. Handel returned again in 1712 and took up permanent residence in 1714 when the Elector, now George I, ascended the English throne. In his early years in England he wrote and produced many Italian operas. In 1717 he wrote the popular Acis and Glatea, music of which was owned by many in Virginia. With John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in 1728 there was a decline in the popularity of Italian opera. Handel finally abandoned the form in 1741 and focused on the oratorio. He wrote and produced Messiah in Dublin in 1742. It was well received in England as well as in Ireland and he continued composing in this popular form until his death. 
Hepplewhite, George (?-d.1786), English cabinetmaker and designer. Biographical information about Hepplewhite is exceedingly meager. He is known to have served an apprenticeship in Lancaster and later to have conducted a business in London. In 1788 The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Guide was published. No claim was made for originality in the Guide. These designs were not the creation of any one particular person, but represented collectively the prevailing taste at that time. Consequently the name Hepplewhite is accepted as expressing the current fashion rather than the works of Hepplewhite. In fact, there has never been a single piece of furniture that could be directly attributed to Hepplewhite. The Guide gave a fine interpretation of Adam's style and adapted that style for the use of the cabinetmaker. 
Hogarth, William (1697-1764), English painter and engraver. He took great pride in being a native English artist in a sea of foreign competitors. He began his career as a silver engraver in 1713 but found the craft too tedious and restrictive on his imagination. Hogarth also worked as a book illustrator until his thirties, when he was able to establish himself as an independent artist. Founder of the Second St. Martin's Lane Academy, Hogarth held the radical belief that artists should not look to the work of other artists for inspiration but to nature itself. 
Hogarth's popularity, during both the eighteenth century and today, resulted not only from his great accomplishments as a painter but also from his extraordinary printmaking skills. His images were directed toward wide audiences and their compositions reflected the ideals of a social reformer, which are best seen in his "modern moral subjects." The artist was the instigator of the Engravers' Copyright Act of 1735. His theoretical work The Analysis of Beauty was published the same year. Some of Hogarth's famous works include The Harlot's Progress (1732), The Rake's Progress (1735), Before and After (1736), Marriage a la Mode (1745), and Industry and Idleness (1747). 
Hopkinson, Francis (1737-1791), Philadelphia-born lawyer, statesman, writer, composer, and signer of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote the first piece of music by a native-born American, "Ode to Music," in 1754 and the first original American song, "My Days have been so Wondrous Free," in 1759. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned copies of Hopkinson's music. In 1788 Hopkinson composed a set of songs dedicated to George Washington. 
Houghton (1722-1735), great country house in Norfolk, England, of Sir Robert Walpole. It was designed by Colen Campbell, who illustrated it in Vitruvius Brittanicus. The house is Palladian as interpreted from Inigo Jones's designs for Wilton and the Queen's House at Greenwich. Houghton was one of the "power houses" built from the 1720s to the 1740s. 
Many influential artisans and designers of the period worked at Houghton. Architect James Gibbs altered Campbell's plan for the four corner towers, adding domes. William Kent, Master Carpenter of the Board of Works, was commissioned in 1727 to do the interior design and decoration that was one of the most elaborate in England. Newly introduced mahogany was used for the stair balustrade, doors, and window shutters. John Michael Rysbrack (1693?-1770) provided stone work ornament and sculpture. Kent himself painted the murals. 
No expense was spared on the furnishings. Hundreds of yards of green silk velvet were woven to cover the walls of two rooms, to upholster over ninety chairs, and to hang the state bed designed by Kent. The bed's gold trimmings alone cost over £1,200! Architects were the influential tastemakers of the late baroque period; consequently, furnishings have strong architectural overtones. Kent's ponderous style relies heavily on scallop shell and eagle motifs. His furniture pieces look best in the rooms for which they were designed and seem out of context when moved to other interiors. 
Walpole fell from power in 1742 and died impoverished from building Houghton. His heirs were forced to sell the great picture collection in the house to Empress Catherine of Russia in 1779. Today Houghton is the seat of the marquess of Cholmondeley, whose family has restored much of its original splendor. 
Hume, David (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher and historian. He was extremely influential in British, German, and American philosophy and in the history of modern metaphysical thinking. 
Hume believed that there is no knowledge a priori (through reason) but that cause and effect are discovered by experience; all ideas come from impressions. Hume's skepticism led him to believe that the mind can have distinct impressions of distinct facts but that neither substance nor cause and effect can be verified; they can only be inferred on the basis of perceived probability. It followed that the laws we make are based on past experience and have nothing to do with the future. Hume presented the Christian faith with one of the greatest philosophical challenges it has ever faced. Though he did not openly deny the reality of God's existence, perfection, miracles, and providence, he did question whether belief in such things can be grounded in human experience and reason. His questions of "what we know" and "how we know" raised doubts that have remained the subject of lively controversy. 
Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1734-1740) was written while he was studying in France and was subsequently published in England. He later wrote An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) as well as a history of England and other philosophical treatises. 
Hutcheson, Francis (1694-1746), Irish-born philosopher. He was educated in Ireland and Scotland and in 1729 was elected to the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His work and teaching methods were a powerful stimulation to the spirit of inquiry in Scotland. William Small introduced Hutcheson's techniques at the College of William and Mary where they had a profound influence on Thomas Jefferson. 
Hutcheson's first work, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), established meaning for man's moral sense, a theme that dominated the Scottish Enlightenment and spread quickly to America and the Continent. He developed an entirely original approach to the problem of motivating man toward one another rather than by animal gratification. His starting point was aesthetics. He argued that one of the pleasures motivating man was his delight in order and harmony. This delight is as real as any pleasure of the senses yet is not limited to them. He called this the "internal sense." It is an appetite, though not a predatory one because humans like to see their delight in evidences of cosmic order extended to others. We reenact this order in our own lives, which explains the civilizing effect of the arts and the formation of graceful and delicate habits. 

Historical Glossary (i-n)
Jenkins' Ear, War of (1739), British-Spanish conflict. It was provoked by a series of incidents in the Americas such as border disagreements with Spain in Florida, Spanish naval hostilities and English logging activities in Honduras. When the British government decided to use colonial troops in its campaign against the Spanish provinces in the Americas, Lieutenant Governor William Gooch raised Virginia's quota of 400 men, known thereafter as "Colonel Gooch's American Regiment." They were part of a force of 3,000 colonials under the command of former Virginia governor Colonel Alexander Spotswood, quartermaster general of the forces from America. When Spotswood died in Annapolis in 1740, Gooch succeeded to his military posts. Departing in October 1740 from the Virginia capes, he led an expedition against the Spanish in Cartagena (present-day Colombia). Gooch was absent from Williamsburg for ten months, leaving the government in the hands of the Council. The attack on the Spanish at Cartagena was unsuccessful, and Gooch himself was severely wounded when he was struck by a cannonball that injured both legs. In spite of the disastrous nature of the campaign, Gooch reported that "the Virginians were mightily rejoiced at my return day and night firing guns, bonfires and illuminations." 
The conflict acquired its colorful name as a result of widespread public outrage when shipmaster Robert Jenkins reported to the House of Commons that the Spanish had cut off his ear for suspected smuggling activities. 
Jones, Hugh (1692-1760), mathematics professor at William and Mary and author of The Present State of Virginia (1724). He arrived in Virginia from England in 1716 shortly after receiving a master's degree from Oxford. In addition to his professorship, Jones was appointed to serve both as chaplain to the General Assembly and as minister at Jamestown. In 1719 he became entangled in a dispute between Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood and the Reverend James Blair, president of the College. At a gathering of ministers the motion was made that the bishop suspend Blair because of his Scottish ordination. Blair, no stranger to power struggles, won the dispute. The fact that he had sided with Spotswood created difficulties with Blair that led Jones to return to England in 1721. 
After a four-year absence, he returned to Virginia. Blair assigned him to preside over Saint Stephen's Parish in King and Queen County, which was known to be a difficult parish. Jones held this position for a year then moved to a series of Maryland parishes. Hugh Jones died in Maryland in 1760. 
His writings, especially The Present State of Virginia, are invaluable references to the natural, physical, intellectual, and emotional world of colonial Virginia. 
Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804), German philosopher. Through the influence of the pastor of the family's Lutheran Church, Kant obtained a classical education. The death of his father in 1746 cut short his college education. It was not until 1755, after several years as a private tutor, that Kant was awarded a doctor`s degree from the University of Königsberg, whereupon he became a lecturer at the university. Although he was known as an excellent teacher, Kant was not elevated to a full professorship of logic and metaphysics until 1770. He held this position until just before his death. 
Kant's early thinking was heavily influenced by the rationalism of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton. During the 1760s his close reading of the English philosophers John Locke and David Hume began to undercut his earlier belief in dogmatic rationalism. His meditations on these writers resulted in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Critique of Judgment (1790), among others. Kant's achievement was that he produced a synthesis of Leibniz's rationalism and Hume's skepticism. He argued a thing can be known only insofar as it conforms to the way the mind knows things. Objects can only be perceived through the senses and understood only in categories by which the mind makes sense of perceptions. Kant went on to say that even if some things are unknowable, for example, the existence of God cannot be scientifically proved, they must be presumed to exist a priori because they are necessary for certain universal laws to be binding on all people. 
Kant was the foremost philosopher of the late Enlightenment and his ideas structured the nature of philosophical debate throughout the nineteenth century. 
Kay, John (1704-1764), inventor of the fly shuttle in 1733. Horizontal looms had been in general use since the thirteenth century with no major improvements. Before Kay's invention the weaver had to use one hand to throw the shuttle, the other hand to receive it, and, finally, the beater had to be pulled down to put the thread into position. The fly shuttle device was an amazingly simple idea. By jerking a stick with one hand a weaver could propel and return a shuttle that carried the thread across the loom quickly. With Kay's invention the second hand was free to operate the beater and did not have to return the shuttle manually. The speed of weaving was greatly increased. The fly shuttle was first used in the woolen industry in the north of England. Kay's invention was adopted slowly by the very traditional industry, and not until his son Robert refined the invention did it begin to attain widespread use. 
Kent, William (1684-1748), English architect, landscape architect, and designer. Born in Yorkshire, he was apprenticed at age fourteen to a coach and house painter in Hull. Kent departed without permission for London before completing his apprenticeship. Several Yorkshire gentlemen recognized his talents and sent him to Italy around 1710. During his ten-year stay in Italy, he eventually came to the notice of Richard Boyle, third earl of Burlington, who later brought Kent back to England and set him up in his own dwelling for the remainder of his life. 
With Burlington's encouragement, Kent tried his hand at architectural and landscape designs. His approach to design was purely visual; pictorial views of his designs were his trademark. He never drew a plan of his proposed layouts, nor did he possess any training as a gardener. Kent was strongly influenced by the architecture of Andrea Palladio as well as by the designs of Inigo Jones. He also suggested furniture designs to complete his architectural creations. 
Kent's most enduring legacy and a project to which he devoted many years of continuing refinements was the house and gardens of Lord Burlington at Chiswick. 
According to Horace Walpole, Kent revolutionized English gardening, replacing the formal parterres of the previous generation with clumps of trees and serpentine lines of "pleasing nature." He recognized that the tastes of his English contemporaries were changing in favor of "natural," classical landscapes with temples, grottoes, cascades, and statuary. 
King George's War (1743-1748), English-French conflict over Canada. During the course of the War of Spanish Succession (called Queen Anne's War in America), French and Indian forces were in conflict with the English in Canada for settlements there. The Treaty of Utrecht ended Queen Anne's war in 1713 by granting certain territories to France and others to England, but ambiguities in the treaty led to subsequent hostilities between the two countries. By 1743 the French were again attacking settlements in Canada, Maine, and New York, precipitating King George's War, during the course of which (1743-1748) a New England force took Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island from the French. 
In July 1746 Governor Gooch convened the Virginia General Assembly in response to a call for troops in the colonies to march with British forces on Canada. Recruiting was difficult because officers and men who had taken part in the Cartagena expedition during the war of Jenkins Ear felt that they had not received fair treatment from the British authorities. King George II again chose Gooch to lead the troops from the colonies, but he declined saying that he was "fitter for an hospital than a camp." 
The attempt to add Canada to the English colonies failed, and King George's War ended in 1748 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Territories were restored as they had been before the conflict, but it was apparent that the treaty was only a truce, for hostilities broke out again only seven years later in the French and Indian War. 
Kneller, Godfrey (1646-1723), German-born portrait painter. He was taught by Rembrandt and his pupil Ferdinand Bol. Kneller went to Italy in the 1660s and/or 1670s, where he studied Raphael and the antique. He went to England in 1676 and soon became King Charles II's favorite painter. 
During the reign of James II, Kneller was not the only court painter and faced keen competition from others. During that period Kneller's full-length portraits were unequalled and engraved prints of them began appearing in the colonies. 
The reign of William and Mary was the zenith of Kneller's career. He maintained a studio similar in scope to Lely's. Kneller's royal portraits were more widely copied and distributed than any other artist's. Colonial Williamsburg's William Byrd II is an example of his studio work. Kneller was the first governor of the London Academy for Drawing and Painting from 1711 to 1718. 
Lely, Sir Peter (1618-1680), Dutch-born English portrait painter. Little is known of his early training, but he went to England in the early 1640s. Whether he was apolitical or politically shrewd is arguable, but the artist managed to work for Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles II. 
At the Restoration, Lely was the best painter in England, officially regarded as Van Dyck's successor. He was made Painter to the King in 1661. The next year he became an English citizen and was knighted in 1680. A prolific worker, Lely painted the heads of his sitters from life but merely sketched their poses and costumes, laying in the colors of the hands and garments to be completed later by his many assistants. The studio turned out portraits of everyone of importance, including Charles II's female associates, otherwise known as the "Hampton Court Beauties." 
Licensing Act, expiration of (1695), easing of government censorship. Since the introduction of printing into England in 1477, both the government and the Church of England had extensive powers of censorship on publications before they were printed. This power was granted through a series of Licensing Acts. In 1695 the last of the Licensing Acts was allowed to lapse and governmental control was limited to post-publication libel laws. The suspension of these acts spurred the development of a press that was at liberty to publish works without the consent of the authorities. In both Britain and the North American colonies a strong periodical and political press flourished (See Zenger). 
Linnaeus, Carl (1707-1778), Swedish botanist. He first revealed his system of classification that included all living things in Systema Naturae (1735) and Genera Plantarum (1737). In his classification system, every living thing has two names, one for genus and the other for species. Species Plantarum (1753) remains the basis for modern botanical nomenclature. 
Locke, John (1632-1704), English philosopher, teacher, physician, scholar, administrator, politician, and one of the early members of the Royal Society. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, Locke became interested in science and philosophy and ultimately examined theoretical questions about the nature of man and society. He also experienced the practical problems of government and economy first-hand when he served on the Board of Trade advising King William III on colonial policies. No small part of Locke's understanding of the colonies was gained through meetings and correspondance with Virginia Commissary James Blair. 
Locke wrote Two Treatises on Government (1690) as a defense of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It defended limited monarchy and stressed consent of the governed and the natural rights of the people. This written defense set a precedent for the Declaration of Independence. 
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) examined the basic characteristics of man as rational, free and equal, and living in a state of nature governed by law. Locke described the human mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa) without ideas, arguing that man acquires knowledge through experience (reflection and impressions of the external world derived through the senses). 
Locke's influential Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) began as a series of letters about education. Because Locke believed that perception was the source of knowledge and that the derivation of knowledge was through experience, he had several innovative ideas about the proper raising of children. For example, he suggested making tasks of learning pleasurable by turning them into games. His works were translated into several languages and even were mentioned in a letter by Eliza Lucas Pinckney from South Carolina asking a friend in England to send her young son "The new toy (a description of which I have carefully studied) to play himself into learning." Locke's ideas about education and his political views were influential in colonial America and the early Republic. 
London, George (ca. 1640-1714), English gardener, nurseryman, and landscape architect. Apprenticed to the Royal Gardener to Charles II at St. James's Palace in 1666, London was recognized for his talents and sent to France for study around 1672. He was one of over three hundred gardeners employed by Louis XIV at Versailles and elsewhere. In 1685 London traveled in Holland, where he studied Dutch landscape styles. Upon his return to England, he put this knowledge to use in designing formal gardens at a number of estates. 
The style of design of that day was very formal, with bilateral symmetry around one central axis. French features included radiating avenues of trees extending out at angles from a central point, ornate patterns of gravels or small plants, formally grouped trees, and the extensive use of statuary and fountains. The Dutch added a wide variety of topiary, canals, and reflecting pools. To these many features were often added additional touches in the form of mounts, mazes, water cascades, and even "treillage" (arches, pilasters, pediments, and friezes) a type of decorative wooden lattice work. 
In 1681 George London founded the Brompton Park Nursery in London with three other notable gardeners. After the retirement and deaths of his partners by 1687, nurseryman Henry Wise (1653-1738) joined the business. Thereafter, the nursery grew in fame as London and Wise achieved a virtual monopoly in the field. The purposes of the nursery were to provide plants of all types, to standardize the use of plant names, especially of fruit trees, and to design and construct gardens. 
In 1689 London became Royal Gardener and Deputy Superintendent of Works. In that capacity London dispatched an assistant to Williamsburg in 1694 "to make and plant the Garden designed for the New Colledge." This assistant may have been James Road, a gardener at Hampton Court, who is known to have come to Virginia in 1694. 
In 1702 William III died and his sister-in-law, Anne, ascended the throne. Soon after, in a review of expenditures for the royal gardens, she resolved to restrain further spending and seek ways to economize all of the royal gardening activities. London picked this very inopportune moment to present outstanding bills; he was promptly sacked and replaced by Wise. 
London and Wise continued with Brompton Nursery and in 1706 they jointly published a two volume work, taken from the French, called the Retir'd Gardener. 
Louvre, The (1793), French national museum of the arts. The museum, housed in a former palace modified into a picture gallery, exhibited the French royal collections. Francois I was the first French king to collect paintings, while Louis XIV increased the collection from two hundred to two thousand works. At the end of the eighteenth century the Louvre collections were again significantly enhanced, this time by Napoleon. He captured art objects from some countries (Egypt and Holland, for instance) and let the rulers of the Italian city-states use art rather than cash to pay war reparations. 
The Louvre is especially significant as a product of Enlightenment thinking. Its founders intended it as an encyclopedia of European art, and by 1793 it was opened to all citizens, making it the first major public art museum in Europe. 
Marot, Daniel (1661 - 1752), French Huguenot designer. He fled France in 1684 and entered the service of William of Orange bringing with him the idea of complete control of all aspects of design, particularly of interiors and furnishings so as to present a unified whole. Daniel Marot was the only person in Holland or England to take such a dictatorial stance before the end of the seventeenth century,. 
He was the primary designer of Het Loo, the small palace of William and Mary at Otterloo. Though Paris of the 1680s was a strong influence, he had to rely on his own inspiration once he was separated from his native country. 
When William of Orange became William III, Marot followed him to England and was responsible for much of the design of Kensington Palace and Hampton Court, bringing to England not only influence from Paris, but from Holland as well. Marot introduced an idea that completely captivated Queen Mary II--to furnish houses with chinaware--which increased to the point of piling it upon cabinets, scrutoires, and chimneypieces almost up to the ceiling. One of Marot's engravings shows just such an arrangement made for the Queen. 
Daniel Marot published many designs of furnishings and interior decorations, thus influencing many who were to follow in his footsteps. 
Masonic Lodge, Williamsburg (before 1751 - present), fraternal organization stressing charity and brotherly love. Some of its early members listed on the 1762-1763 treasurer's report include John Blair, Jr., Charles Carter, Peter Hay, and Peyton Randolph, Grand Master. Records of the local lodge pick up again in 1773 when minutes revealed that the Masons obtained a new charter from England. Minutes also record social activities such as balls and dinners as well as philanthropic projects. 
Other contemporary lodges in Virginia were at Norfolk, Fredericksburg, Kilwinning Crosse, and Blandford. The Williamsburg Lodge's membership in the 1770s included many familiar names: Benjamin Bucktrout, James Galt, John Minson Galt, Humphrey Harwood, William Hunter, James Madison, James McClurg, James Monroe, Peter Pelham, Edmund Randolph, George Reid, and St. George Tucker; Peyton Randolph was still Grand Master. In 1777 the Williamsburg Masons called for the formation of a Grand Lodge of Virginia. The next year John Blair, Jr., was elected the first Grand Master of Masons of the Grand Lodge of Virginia. 
Mattey's Free School (1706), local charity school. Mrs. Mary Whaley established it in memory of her son Matthew who died at about age nine. He is buried alongside his father, James Whaley, in Bruton Parish Churchyard. The institution named the Mattey's Free School was located on Capitol Landing Road and is illustrated on the College Map of about 1790 as consisting of a schoolhouse and dwelling house. Its purpose was to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to the neediest children of Bruton Parish. When Mary Whaley died in 1742, she bequeathed the property to Bruton Parish for administration by the minister and churchwardens. The school operated as late as 1768 according to Virginia Gazette advertisements, but how it functioned and where the money came from is not known. 
In 1865 the College of William and Mary was designated administrator of the endowment that due to legal technicalities had never been released to Bruton Parish officials. College officials used the money to build a school on the site of the Governor's Palace and called it the Grammar and Mattey School. To make way for reconstruction of the Palace, the school was relocated one block west of the present Palace. This school retains the Matthew Whaley name to memorialize this eighteenth-century Williamsburg resident. 
Montesquieu, Baron de (1689-1755), French lawyer, philosopher, and man of letters. Born Charles-Louis de Secondat, he came from a family of nobility, inherited large estates, was educated in the law, and held the office of chief justice of Bordeaux for ten years. Eventually he resigned in order to devote more time to his writing. 
Montesquieu wrote and published on a variety of subjects. His works include The Persian Letters (1721), a satire and criticism of French institutions, and his most famous composition, The Spirit of the Laws (1748). Montesquieu traveled widely and lived in Britain for several years. He became an ardent admirer of England's constitutional monarchy with its separation of powers. 
The Spirit of the Laws, a formidable compilation of material assembled from ancient texts, contemporary travelers, and Montesquieu's own observations, is a thorough study of governments, emphasizing freedom. He believed that social and political behavior is determined by climate and that physical environment and religion influence the politics of a country. This latter theory has earned Montesquieu the title of "Father of Sociology." 
No other modern French work was as well known in America during the colonial period. Political classes at Yale and Princeton used it as a textbook. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Montesquieu was frequently cited. All of his works were read by many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and were found in libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. 
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, legislation providing for the rapid and orderly expansion of the new nation across the continent. As the Constitutional Convention deliberated in secret sessions in Philadelphia, the Congress under the Articles of Confederation meeting in New York the same summer produced the Northwest Ordinance. It opened up the Northwest Territory for settlement, established a coherent plan for settling and governing the area, provided guidelines for the admission of new states, and protected the civil liberties of settlers. 
In addition to a comprehensive system for expansion, the Confederation Congress debated whether newer settlements would be equal or subservient to the thirteen original states; in other words, would western territories be colonies of the established eastern states? The 1787 Ordinance assured settlers in the West that a process existed for changing the territories into full fledged states of the Union. As well as dealing with status of the states, it dealt with the slavery issue in a very decisive way: slavery was forbidden in the Northwest. The Ordinance also provided for religious freedom. 
Drafted by Nathan Dane and based on a 1784 ordinance plan by Jefferson, the Northwest Ordinance covered the area that includes the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota. 
Historical Glossary (o-s)
Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), English pamphleteer and political radical. Newtonian science influenced Paine's thinking along progressive lines. He left England in 1774 with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin and settled in Philadelphia. He became famous for his activities on behalf of the colonies during the American Revolution and in France during the French Revolution. More than 100,000 copies of his political treatise Common Sense (1776) were published in America within a few months. It was influential in bringing about the Declaration of Independence. Other works by Paine include The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, for which he was called an atheist. 
Paine lived a turbulent career. He held several offices in the colonies during the Revolution but made enemies and subsequently lost favor. In France he was made an honorary citizen by the republican government in 1792 and was a delegate to the Convention until imprisoned as an enemy during the Reign of Terror. Paine died in the United States in poverty, denounced as a radical and an atheist. In later years he came to be regarded as an American patriot and an important crusader for democratic rights. 
Peale, Charles Willson (1741-1827), American portrait and genre painter. Born in Queen Anne's County, Maryland, he was the son of a schoolmaster. Peale tried his hand at several crafts including saddle making before attempting to earn a living at sign painting. His interest in portrait painting began when he learned that people would pay money for their likenesses. 
At first Peale approached painting not as fine art but as a craft. He bought himself a "how-to" book and traded John Hesselius a saddle for some painting lessons. In 1765 Peale visited John Smibert's old studio in Boston, where he met John Singleton Copley, and then spent two years in London (1767-1769) under the tutelage of Benjamin West. A marked change in his style is seen after his exposure to the high style art of London, where his works were hung alongside some of the great English pictures of the day. Peale was particularly impressed by Gainsborough's portrait of Captain Harvey, with his cross-legged stance of casual elegance. This influence is apparent in his state portraits of George Washington. The artist's other famous works include portraits of William Pitt (1768), Nancy Hallam as Fidele in Cymbeline (1771), The Cadwalader Family (1772) as well as Rachel Weeping (1772), The Staircase Group (1795), and The Exhumation of the Mastodon (1806-1808). 
Peale's career was interrupted by the Revolution, during which he fought in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. He also invented mechanical devices, was a scholar of natural history, and founded our first national museum in 1789 and the American Academy of Fine Arts in 1794, both in Philadelphia. Peale's ability to capture the character of his subjects and his industrious nature took him from humble beginnings to a position of prosperity and social position, making him the epitome of the American self-made man. 
Pelham, Peter, Jr. (1721-1805), Williamsburg musician, clerk, and jailor. He was born in London and immigrated to Boston with his father and brothers. His father married John Singleton Copley's widowed mother, making Pelham and the well-known artist stepbrothers. Peter Pelham came to Williamsburg in 1751 after serving as organist at Trinity Church in Boston. For the next half century he blessed the city with his musical talents, acting as organist at Bruton Parish Church (beginning in 1755), giving instruction on organ and harpsichord and advice on ordering musical instruments from London, and providing music for the theater, including the 1768 performance of The Beggar's Opera. This wide range of services helped him support his large family. He also did clerical work for the House of Burgesses and for at least two royal governors and served as the Public Gaoler from 1771 to 1780. 
Peter Pelham received much of his education from his talented father (Peter Pelham, Sr., best known as an engraver), who instilled in him a deep appreciation for the arts that remained with him throughout his life. 
Polite Refusal (1784), satirical extract from Benjamin Franklin's pamphlet, Remarks Concerning the Savage of North America. "We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges . . . . But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things: and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor councellors; they were totally good for nothing. 
"We are however not the less obligated by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." 
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), English poet and satirist. His boyhood interest in the great epic poems of Homer, Virgil, and Milton was a springboard to his successful career as a poet. Pope's early works imitated epic poetry, but he soon created his own style. Pope felt that as a poet he occupied a unique position to use satire to criticize the moral and political weaknesses of the society in which he lived. The Rape of the Lock (1712), his greatest work, used the framework of an epic to magnify a trivial incident out of proportion. Less successful was An Essay on Man (1733-1734), which deals with man's relation to the universe, to himself, to society, and to happiness. He engaged in a literary warfare of sorts with his one-time friend, Joseph Addison, causing both contemporaries and biographers to label him "waspish" and "vindictive." Nevertheless, he probably was the only eighteenth-century writer to be financially successful as a poet, success which he achieved in spite of the restrictions placed on him as a result of his Catholicism and physical deformity from infantile paralysis. Pope's works appeared in the inventories of prominent eighteenth-century Virginians including Robert Carter and Thomas Jefferson. 
Pratt, Matthew (1734-1805), American painter who organized the first recorded art exhibition in Williamsburg. According to the March 4, 1773, Virginia Gazette, he "brought with him . . . a small but very neat Collection of Paintings, which [were exhibited] at Mrs. Vobe's near the Capitol." By that time Pratt had been a professional painter for eighteen years, working both in the colonies and abroad. 
Born in Philadelphia, the artist was apprenticed to painter James Claypoole. Pratt set up shop as a portrait painter in 1758, six years later making the important artistic journey to London to study with American-born Benjamin West. In 1768 Pratt reopened his studio in Philadelphia and made excursions to New York and Virginia. He was forced to revert to sign painting in the depressed years after the Revolution. 
Purcell, Henry (ca. 1659-1695), English-born composer. He became composer for the King's band in 1677 and organist at Westminster Abbey in 1679. His first printed composition appears in John Playford's Choice Ayres, volume 1, in 1675. Purcell was a prolific composer of baroque church music, chamber music, masques such as The Fairy Queen (1692), and one opera, Dido and Aeneas (1689), which reflected the direction of English opera at that time because of its mixture of French and Italian styles and many English idioms. His death at the age of thirty-six halted the development of this style and led the way for the domination of Italian opera in England in the early eighteenth century. 
Questionnaire, Parish (1724), report on Virginia's parish activities to the Bishop of London. James Blair was the rector of Bruton Parish Church at that time and his answer to the following question is a good example of the type of information that was collected. 
"QUESTION -- How oft is the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper administered? And what is the usual number of Communicants? 
"ANSWER -- I administer the Sacrament four times in the year, viz; at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday and the nearest Sunday to Michaelmas. There are about 50 communicants." (Whitsunday is Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, and Michaelmas Day is on September 29.) 
There are also questions about the Sunday service, the catechizing of the youth, the salary of the rector, and the church's educational endeavors. The answers to these questions do not tell the entire story but go a long way toward giving us an understanding of Anglican practices in the local parish. 
An original copy of the questionnaire with Blair's handwritten answers can be seen on microfilm (reel M-286) in the Foundation Library. 
Radcliffe Camera, The, (1737 - 1747), one of the libraries at Oxford University. Its dome is considered the chief distinctive mark of the Oxford skyline. The architect was James Gibbs (1682-1754), who also designed many of the churches called for in Sir Christopher Wren's design for London, including St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The library is considered Gibbs's crowning achievement because of the way it was integrated into the skyline and the campus. 
The term camera comes from the Latin meaning "a vaulted space"; thus, camera and rotunda are by definition interchangeable terms. 
Repton, Humphry (1752-1818), English landscape architect and architect. He began his career comparatively late in life, starting at age thirty six. When Repton married at the age of twenty one his father set him up as a general merchant in Norwich, but his heart was not in it; soon after his father's death he sold the business and bought a small estate. He spent the next five years gardening and making drawings of natural scenes and the country houses nearby. His principal contribution was in bringing back the flower garden to surround the house. Very often this was made on a terrace, fenced or balustraded, which served the function of a haha. 
In the next thirty years Repton established himself as a fashionable consultant of the period and traveled extensively, produced elegant watercolor designs and meticulous descriptive proposals for his various clients, called "Red Books", and wrote several other books. His way of presenting pictorial views from his Red Books in a "before and after" fashion was a novel and ground-breaking presentational method in his day. Some of his notable commissions and surviving landscapes may be seen today at Corsham Court, Uppark, Hanworth, and Sheffield Park. 
Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792), English portrait painter. After an apprenticeship in London and a trip abroad to study the masters, Reynolds returned to London to paint ambitious portraits of society's elite. When the Royal Academy of Art was founded in 1768, Reynolds was elected president. He was knighted by George III in 1769, the same year his first Discourse on art was published. After the death of Allan Ramsay in 1784, Reynolds was made Painter to the King. 
Like Lely and Kneller before him, Reynolds maintained a large and profitable studio with many assistants. His popularity as a portraitist may in part be explained by his genius for enhancing nature, often supplying character or psychological depth where little actually existed. His well-known works include Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and her Daughter (1786); George August Eliott, Lord Heathfield (1788); Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse (1784); and David Garric Between Tragedy and Comedy (1762). 
Rosetta Stone, Discovery of (1799), key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs had fallen into disuse after the decline of ancient Egypt, and the language remained indecipherable for over a thousand years. In 1799 some of Napoleon's soldiers found a rock slab in the rubble of a wall near the Egyptian town of Rosetta. It was inscribed in three languages--hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. The writings were versions of the same text, a decree made at Memphis, capital of ancient Egypt, in 195 B.C. to commemorate the coronation of Ptolemy V, providing the key to the eventual translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
Napoleon took an immediate interest in the tablet and ordered impressions from the stone sent to scholars in Europe, who were able to translate the Greek but only a fraction of the hieroglyphs. In 1801 a French boy, Jean François Champollion (1790 - 1832), was shown fragments of papyrus and stone tablets with hieroglyphs and was told that no one understood their meaning. Vowing to read them one day, he prepared himself by learning a dozen languages including Greek, Hebrew, and Coptic (a later version of the Egyptian language still used in Coptic-Egyptian Christian church services). In 1822 Champollion unlocked the mystery of the ancient Egyptian language. When he deciphered the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone his discovery ushered in the era of modern Egyptology. The Rosetta Stone is on display at the British Museum in London. 
Rosewell (ca.1721-ca.1740), Page family home in Gloucester County. An imposing brick mansion, three stories in height over a full cellar, the building's form was derived from well-to-do English merchant houses of the first quarter of the eighteenth century, as indicated by its segmental window arches, stone dressings, fenestration patterns, and proportions. 
Mann Page I began construction of the house, but it was probably not completed until the tenure of his son Mann Page II. The interior layout of the house included an off-centered hall with major and minor stairs and three other rooms on the first floor. Its unusual arrangement apparently was not emulated by Page's peers, possibly because it did not allow for public vs. private needs within architectural spaces as they developed throughout the course of the century. The house was further distinguished by the use of a flat roof covered with lead and graced with two cupolas. Rosewell was altered in the nineteenth century and gutted by fire in 1916. The ruins have been stabilized by the Gloucester County Historical Society and are occasionally open to the public. 
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher, author, and political theorist. At age sixteen he left Geneva and eventually settled in Parish where he became acquainted with Denis Diderot and joined the group of intellectuals writing the Encyclopédie, with whom he soon quarrelled. Rousseau moved to the countryside in 1765, but his work stirred up such controversy in France that he accepted David Hume's invitation to live in England. Suspicious of everyone around him, Rousseau moved back to France in 1767 and spent most of his final years in Paris. 
Rousseau was the foremost social theorist of the eighteenth century. A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750) introduced his thoughts on the nature of man and society. In it and the essay The Origin of Inequality (1754) Rousseau argued that society corrupted man's inherent goodness and that the more sophisticated the society, the more harmful it was. Man's natural goodness became the keystone of Rousseau's theories. In society men gradually give unwarranted value to natural differences in talent, an initial step toward social inequality compounded when the notion of private property was introduced. Thereafter, laws and governments were created to protect property ownership. Rousseau did not believe men could return to a happier state of nature, but in The Social Contract (1762) he offered a model of society he believed was less corrupting. Civil society was based on a social contract wherein one gave up individual independence to live in obedience to the general will. Law and government worked to equate the general will with the wishes of individuals, and a government's sovereignty rested with the people who could withdraw it. In his essay Emile (1762) Rousseau proposed a system of education designed to strengthen man's basic goodness in preparation for republican citizenship. Following Locke, Rousseau argued that children learned through their senses from experience, which the teacher should manipulate to reinforce students' natural tendencies. Rousseau is also well known for his Confessions (1782-1789). In this highly personal, emotional apology for his life, he created a new form of autobiography. This work was a bridge from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the romantic age of the early nineteenth century. 
Servants, and Slaves, Act Concerning (1705), Virginia law summarizing seventeenth-century legislation on slaves and free blacks. The act codified earlier proscriptions against Indians, Jews, "Mahometans," and blacks owning any white or Christian servant (1670); prohibitions on interracial marriages and sex (1691); provisions and procedures for dealing with runaways (1670); restrictions on permitting slaves to gather without permission (1682); the stripping of weapons (1680) and livestock (1692) from slaves; the elimination of prosecution for killing a slave while under correction (1669) or in taking an outlawed slave (1680 and 1691) but making owners liable for damages done by slaves on unsupervised quarters (1692); establishing corporal punishment for any black, slave or free, who physically resisted any white (1680); declaring that children inherit the status of their mothers (1662) and that baptism does not free the converted slave (1667) are among the important restatements appearing in the 1705 legislation. The law also declared for the first time that a slave's presence in England did not bring freedom. 
Similar efforts to control indentured servants but also to define the limitations of a master's power over them are major parts of this act. The latter provisions reveal the different legal status of servant and slave clearly evident by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Subsequent laws (particularly in 1723 and 1748) also summarize and collate as well as modify this and other legislation on slavery and free blacks. 
Sheraton, Thomas (1751-1806), English cabinetmaker and furniture designer. While he possessed great artistic talent, his life was one of poverty and disappointment because of his eccentricity. About 1770 Sheraton settled in London. From about 1793 he supported his family by publishing directories about cabinetmaking. The popular conception of the Sheraton style is based on a book of designs, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book. The delicate details he introduced have never been surpassed in English furniture design, and his early work was greatly influenced by the classic forms of Robert Adam and the Louis XVI style. Because it is of a later period, Sheraton's influence was not seen in colonial Virginia. 
Small, William (1734-1775), influential philosophical professor at the College of William and Mary. Educated in Scotland, Small came to Williamsburg in 1758 and was asked to take over the College's instruction in Natural Philosophy (science and mathematics) and Moral Philosophy (ethics, rhetoric, and belles lettres). As an apostle of the Enlightenment, he brought to his teaching a liberal mind and a way of viewing the world that made a great impression on his pupils. Among them was Thomas Jefferson, whose intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for learning brought about a friendship between them and with Governor Francis Fauquier and the classical scholar and lawyer George Wythe. During dinners with the governor at the Palace, they held profound philosophical discussions that left a lasting impression on Jefferson, who credited Small with guiding him in his study of the "system of things in which we are placed." In ultimate tribute Jefferson declared that William Small "fixed the destinies of my life." 
Smallpox Riots (1768), Norfolk, Virginia, demonstrations against inoculation. They were instigated when a local doctor wanted to inoculate a group of friends and their families against smallpox. Public sentiment was against them, but the gentlemen proceeded with arrangements to be inoculated on a plantation on Tanner Creek three miles outside of town. Factions opposing the practice rose up and asked the magistrate to restrain the party. He refused. Those in protest met with the pro-inoculationists and achieved a postponement until after the Court of Oyer and Terminer met in Williamsburg on June 14. When nothing was heard from the court, the inoculations took place on June 25 as previously planned. Angry mobs then drove those who had been inoculated through the streets during a thunderstorm to the pesthouse and on June 27 full-scale rioting broke out, complete with destruction to the inoculants' homes. 
Throughout the summer court battles raged between the two factions. The pro-inoculationists engaged young Thomas Jefferson as their counsel and were cleared. A second riot the next year involved basically the same people; however, the inoculation issue was latent and the tense political relations with England were becoming more predominant. 
Smith, Adam (1723-1790), Scottish moral philosopher and political economist. He was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and within this wide-ranging discipline he sought to determine rational order and moral purpose in a chaotic world. In 1776 his book The Wealth of Nations was published. It is a democratic philosophy of wealth--a revolutionary idea that held that wealth consists of goods which all members of society consume. This philosophy of free trade is governed by two primary laws of behavior: the law of accumulation and the law of population. Smith believed that as supplies of money, machinery, and goods grew, increased numbers of workers would join the work force, attracted by higher wages and improved working conditions. This process would not require government control but would be self-regulating through the forces of competition and would, through supply and demand, achieve economic and social harmony. 
Adam Smith's rational approach to societal organization was reflected in the thinking of Virginia's colonial leaders. Jefferson stated that "in political economy, I think Smith's Wealth of Nations is the best book extant." 
Statute for Religious Freedom, Virginia (1786), Thomas Jefferson's radical bill for religious freedom. He first stated publicly this principle in 1776 and introduced it in the Virginia Assembly in 1779, but it was not enacted until seven years later. The key provision holds "that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities." This statute dissolved forever the ancient practice of state support for Christianity and penalization of nonconformism. 
The disestablishment of Virginia's Anglican church began in Williamsburg in 1776 with the adoption of Article 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Drafted by George Mason and amended by James Madison, this article declares that "all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience." Dismantlement of the complicated scaffolding of church establishment, however, required an equally complicated process of revision and enactment of statute law. In October 1776 the Virginia Assembly enacted a bill for the wholesale revision of the state's laws and named Thomas Jefferson along with four others to undertake the revision. From this effort came an entire new code of laws, first debated in 1779. Bill number 82 in the proposed new code was Jefferson's bill for religious freedom. Opposition to this radical measure, led by Patrick Henry, came from those who believed that even independent, republican states needed healthy religious organizations to be stable and free. Their efforts were buried beneath the petitions of Virginia Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and Presbyterians and the skillful political maneuvering of James Madison. The Assembly's enactment of the bill for religious freedom in 1786 marked a revolutionary change in Virginia society and prefigured the creation of a national policy on religious freedom embodied in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. 
Stuart, Gilbert (1755-1828), American painter. He was raised in Newport, Rhode Island. His early training was from painter Cosmo Alexander, who took the boy on a painting trip through the southern colonies, including Virginia. After a period of itinerant portrait painting in the colonies, Stuart avoided the war by going to London in 1775, where he became Benjamin West's principal assistant. 
Fame came to Stuart with his inspired portrait of The Skater, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782, which ranked him equal to Reynolds and Gainsborough. Unfortunately, Stuart's artistic genius was not matched by financial acuity. The painter was forced to flee his London creditors, returning home to America in 1793 where he painted portraits of many figures of the new republic including George Washington, Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Dolly Madison, James Monroe, Paul Revere, and John Adams. 
Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Jefferson's proposed instructions to Virginia's delegates to the First Continental Congress. It may have been first presented to a group of Virginia legislators at the Peyton Randolph House. Central to the argument were Jefferson's convictions that (1) American colonists were freeborn Englishmen with all attendant rights and prerogatives, (2) the colonies had established their own institutions of civil government, and (3) colonial assemblies were equal to Parliament in their powers. 
It was not new to deny Parliamentary power based upon the "rights of Englishmen," but Jefferson's line of argument in A Summary View was something different. He reasoned that since the colonists had established themselves by their own exertions without material aid from the crown, they were free to adopt such government and laws as they saw fit and that the legislature of any one part of the empire was not to interfere in the government of any other part. The king, however, was voluntarily acknowledged by the colonists as their sovereign so he could exercise the prerogative only insofar as it promoted the interests of the people. Jefferson argued that the king was "no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers, to use, and consequently subject to their superintendence." He also listed colonial grievances from the time of settlement. 
Viewing Jefferson's A Summary View as too revolutionary, the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg adopted a different set of instructions for its delegates to a continental congress claiming only the rights and privileges of British subjects. Nevertheless, A Summary View was printed in several of the colonies and in England marking Jefferson as a prominent formulator of colonial revolutionary thought. 
Historical Glossary (t-z)
Tillotson, John (1630-1694), English writer and Archbishop of Canterbury. Tillotson attended Cambridge University where he eventually taught as well as pursued theological studies. He was ordained by a Scottish bishop about 1661 and was identified with the Presbyterians until the Act of Uniformity in 1662. According to this act all ministers and teachers who did not agree to use the Book of Common Prayer would be expelled from English churches and schools. Tillotson studied the writings of the early church fathers and won the approval of a large following as well as Charles II for his clear, well-reasoned, and (for that time) brief sermons as well as his ability to counteract puritan ideas. He was a member of the liberal faction of the Church of England in the time of Charles II. Known as Latitudinarians, they opposed the doctrinal rigidity of both high church Anglicans and the Puritans. 
Many years after Tillotson's death, Virginia colonists such as William Byrd II and the Prentis family in Williamsburg had volumes of his sermons in their libraries. One historian calls Archbishop Tillotson "the most popular preacher of them all," noting that his works appear in nearly every southern colony. A favorite of monarchs William and Mary, Tillotson aided James Blair in getting a charter for the College of William and Mary. He was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1691 until his death three years later. 
Toleration, Act of (1689), legislation allowing Protestant dissenters from the Anglican church (nonconformists such as Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians) to worship as they pleased in premises licensed by Anglican bishops. Toleration was not extended to Roman Catholics. Both Catholics and dissenters continued to be effectively barred from holding public office because of the Test Act (1673). It required officeholders to receive communion according to Anglican doctrine, to swear allegiance to the monarch, and to affirm the monarch's supremacy as head of the Church of England. 
The first notice taken in Virginia of the Act of Toleration occurred in 1699 when the General Assembly passed "An act for the more effectual suppressing of Blasphemy, Swearing, Cursing, Drunkenness and Sabbath breaking," which included an exemption from penalties for not attending their Anglican parish churches for qualified dissenters. 
Transfer Day (1729), transference of authority to the president and faculty of the College of William and Mary. In 1693 when the charter for the College of William and Mary was granted, eighteen trustees were nominated to serve as the board of visitors and governors. They controlled the College's revenues, supervised expenditures, and provided guidance and direction. Once the College achieved its full complement of faculty (six masters or professors and a president) and was organized into a cohesive body, the charter, statutes, and authority were to be transferred to the President and his colleagues, who would then seat a representative in the House of Burgesses. Transfer Day occurred on August 15, 1729. Throughout the remainder of the eighteenth and on into the nineteenth century, Transfer Day was celebrated as an important day in the College calendar. By 1777 it had come to be called, inaccurately, Founder's Day. 
Voltaire (1694-1778), pen name of François Marie Arouet, French satirist, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Eschewing a career in law, Voltaire gained early fame as a playwright and later as a successful historian, biographer, and essayist. His wit and biting satires often earned Voltaire the displeasure of those he attacked. He was imprisoned in the Bastille at least twice and was forced into exile to England between 1726 and 1729. Voltaire eventually found refuge in Lorraine and took up residence in the court of Frederick the Great and at Geneva before moving to Ferney on the French-Swiss border in 1758. This remained his home until his death while visiting Paris in 1778. 
Voltaire was a rationalist whose goal was to teach people to think clearly. He admired the personal liberty of the English people, which he believed allowed such rational thinkers as John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton to emerge. In Lettres Philosophiques he introduced the French to English science and philosophy. In 1738 he further popularized the ideas of Isaac Newton in Elements de la philosophie de Newton. Candide (1759), his best known work today, is a satire on the optimistic philosophy of Leibniz and also a call for a practical philosophy. 
Although Voltaire was a noted anti-Christian for his attacks on religious institutions, which he characterized as intolerant and priest-dominated, he was not an atheist. He so strongly supported theism that he was viewed as a reactionary by some members of the Enlightenment. Because he campaigned tirelessly against tyranny, cruel punishment, and fanaticism of all types, Voltaire was able to maintain his leadership of the Enlightenment movement even as it passed from the rationalism he embraced toward the romanticism of the late eighteenth century. 
Walpole, Sir Robert (1676-1745), chief advisor and administrator to George I and George II, 1721-1742. Leader of the Whigs, twice chancellor of the exchequer, secretary of war, and treasurer of the navy, Walpole filled the position that was eventually to be called prime minister. He pursued a course of social and political stability for Great Britain that included the promotion of commercial prosperity and expansion of the state. 
Walpole's interest in efficient revenue collection brought Virginia to his notice. To increase revenue and discourage fraud, he proposed an excise scheme where complicated customs duties on tobacco were to be replaced by internal excise duties on tobacco warehoused and retailed in Great Britain. Evidence suggests Walpole prompted Virginia governor William Gooch to introduce the idea to the General Assembly. Planters favored the proposal because it transferred the taxes paid by the planters to the British consumers. The excise bill, finally introduced in March 1733, was greeted with hostility, and Walpole withdrew it. While this attempt at fiscal expansion of the state failed, Walpole's successors continued to extend financial control over the colonies. 
Walpole's ministry fell in 1742 because of his mismanagement of the war with Spain and also because of generally corrupt methods, particularly in rigged elections. He was the father of author Horace Walpole. 
Watt, James (1736-1819), Scottish engineer and inventor. He studied mathematical instrument making at the University of Glasgow. While there, he was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine. In 1765 Watt made the single most important improvement to steam engines by developing the principle of a separate condenser. This way the cylinder could be insulated to retain heat, the steam condensed outside of the cylinder, non-condensable gases pumped out, and the efficiency of the engine greatly increased. 
In 1775 Watt entered into partnership with Matthew Boulton and began producing steam engines on a large scale. In order for the engines to be more universally applicable, a method needed to be found to convert the linear piston motion to a rotative motion. In 1782 Watt introduced a double-acting steam engine that had steam alternately applied above and below a piston to provide a power stroke in both directions. While Watt cannot be credited with inventing the steam engine, his improvements made it wholly practical. 
Other important inventions of Watt's include a governor to regulate the speed of an engine and to produce an even motion even when the load varied, a throttle valve, and the concept of horsepower, precisely defined. Watt was a fellow of the royal societies of both London and Edinburgh. 
Watts, Issac (1674-1748), English clergyman, nonconformist theologian, and one of the most popular hymn writers of his day. He made hymn singing a strong, devotional force quite unlike the stern, unemotional canticles of Calvinism. Watts's hymns dealt with tender faith, serene piety, and joyousness. 
Before Watts's works were published, his hymns circulated in manuscript and were given out line by line to the congregations. When they appeared in print, they were immediately successful, reaching an annual output of 500,000 copies. His major collections were Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1706) and Psalms of David (1719), together containing approximately 600 tunes. He was also responsible for the first children's hymn book, Divine and Moral Songs (1720). Many of his hymns are still in use, such as "Joy to the World," "O God Our Help in Ages Past," and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." 
Wedgwood, Josiah (1730-1795), English potter and manufacturer. Born to a family of Staffordshire potters, he first reached acclaim with a uniform green glaze and "cauliflower ware" in the shape of various fruits and vegetables. In 1762 his experiments resulted in the perfection of a cream colored earthenware, a set of which so pleased Queen Charlotte that she allowed him to call it "Queen's Ware." The cream colored ware was universally successful and widely imitated. A 1771 inventory of the Raleigh Tavern lists Queen's Ware items. 
In 1775 Wedgwood perfected jasperware, which he considered one of his greatest achievements as it was the culmination of extensive experimentation. Jasperware is a fine semi-porcelain body that can be white or tinted with black or various pastel hues and is ideal for bas-relief decoration and cameos. 
Wedgwood was sympathetic to the American Revolution, and several of his works depict American themes and patriots. His discoveries and understanding of form, function, design, and marketing techniques helped revolutionize the pottery industry. 
Wesley, John (1703-1791) and Charles (1707-1788), English evangelists and founders of Methodism. In 1729 as students at Oxford University they formed a religious society (nicknamed the Holy Club) devoted to Bible study and prayer and the promotion of piety and morality. 
Later, at the insistence of James Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, the two were prevailed upon to minister to the spiritual needs of the colony and to act as missionaries to the displaced Indian tribes. This trip in 1736-1737 was their only visit to the colonies. 
Though ordained in the Anglican church, disapproval of their methods of preaching closed pulpits to John and Charles but they continued their ministry in the itinerate style of the Great Awakening. John Wesley assumed the role of preacher and Charles that of hymn writer. Some of his more familiar hymns include "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" and "Love Divine, All Love Excelling." 
Both John and Charles were concerned with their own salvation and had conversion experiences. Throughout their ministry, salvation by faith, social consciousness, and repentance were prominent themes in their preaching. George Whitefield wrote in 1768, "If you desire . . . a definition of Methodism . . . it is no more nor less than 'faith working by love.'" 
West, Benjamin (1738-1820), American painter. By age twelve he had sold several canvases of the folk art genre after studying with artist William Williams. He later studied with John Wollaston but was lacking in formal education. West began to develop his own style and ultimately went to New York in 1759; a year later, at age twenty-one, he went to Rome to study. 
In 1763 West was enthusiastically received in London and became official historical painter and friend to George III. He was president of the Royal Academy of Arts by 1792, where he taught many American artists: Stuart, Copley, Trumbull, Sully, Charles Willson Peale, and Rembrandt Peale. Because he brought more natural poses, originality, and reason to painting, he was an exceptional teacher as well as one of America's Old Masters. 
Whitefield, George (1714-1770), English evangelist. He was extremely popular during the revival movement known as the Great Awakening that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. 
Whitefield attended Oxford University, where he joined the Wesley brothers' "Holy Club," whose highly structured religious habits earned them the derisive name "Methodists." Ordained a deacon in 1736, Whitefield joined the Wesleys as a missionary to Georgia in 1738. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1739. Whitefield began open-air preaching and was soon threatened with excommunication by his superiors. Thereafter, he was barred from most Anglican pulpits. Whitefield embarked again for America a few months later and visited several colonies including Virginia on his way to Georgia. During this trip, Whitefield preached at Bruton Parish Church at the invitation of Commissary James Blair on December 14, 1739. 
Whitefield spent the remainder of his life journeying between the American colonies and England, preaching the "new light" message to large crowds. He stressed the need for each individual to experience a rebirth in Jesus. His preaching was so exciting and powerful that his audiences, which frequently included slaves, responded with great emotion. Whitefield continued to preach until his death in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770. 
Wilkes, John, (1727-1797), English politician and journalist. In both England and America he was as a symbol for constitutional rights and freedoms. He came to this distinction by attacking the king and ministers in several virulent articles that appeared in his periodical The North Briton. Wilkes was subsequently arrested and imprisoned and eventually lost his seat in Parliament. In 1768 he was reelected to the House of Commons as representative of Middlesex County but was denied his seat. This apparent arbitrary treatment of Wilkes by the king and his supporters rallied the populace of both England and America on his behalf. During this period he won several popular trials that had the effect of not only allowing him to reclaim his fortune but also reaffirmed in the popular mind the constitutional liberties of man. Because so many people felt that his constitutional rights had been violated, he was considered a virtual martyr to the cause of liberty. Wilkes supported the American cause. 
He eventually did represent Middlesex in Parliament and later became Lord Mayor of London, reconciling with the king. 
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797), English writer and feminist. She drew upon the tragic experiences of her sister and friends as material for her writings that focused on the education and rights of women. After witnessing her father's abuse of her mother and her brother-in-law's abuse of her sister, she published the Wrongs of Women. The death of a close friend in childbirth became the subject for a pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. In 1792 she published her most successful piece, Vindication of The Rights of Woman. Her first marriage ended in 1796 as a result of her husband's infidelity. The next year she married William Godwin when she was four months pregnant and later died in childbirth. 
Wollstonecraft is described as an "impulsive and enthusiastic woman, with great charms of person and manner." A follower of Rousseau, she appears to have assumed the role of an eighteenth-century "feminist." 
Wren, Sir Christopher (1632-1723), English architect. Wren is best known for rebuilding London in the baroque style after the great fire of 1666. Architecture, however, was his second career, following a period of scientific study. Wren finished at Oxford University in 1653, when he took the chair of astronomy at Gresham College in London. His rooms there served as a meeting place for men such as Newton, Halley, Boyle, and Evelyn. This group was instrumental in founding the Royal Society. Wren served as its president from 1680 to 1682. 
In 1660 Wren became professor of astronomy at Oxford. The next year he made his career change to architecture when Charles II asked him to be Surveyor General of his Majesty's Works. The tragic fire that destroyed medieval London in September 1666 provided Wren with the opportunity to become an immortal of English architecture. Before the fire was thoroughly quenched Wren had shown the king plans for rebuilding and redesigning the city plan. Over the next half century Wren designed not only St. Paul's Cathedral, but over fifty parish churches, thirty-six of the companies' halls, the customs house, and several private houses, including Marlborough House. Between 1670 and 1672 he rebuilt the Temple Bar. 
Wren was knighted in 1672 and served as a member of Parliament on several occasions. His official commissions and influence reached outside London, including the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1683, additions to Inigo Jones's Greenwich Hospital, the Chelsea Hospital, and modifications and additions to Hampton Court. 
It is unlikely that with so many official duties for the king Wren designed the new College of William and Mary in Virginia; it is possible, however, that one of his deputies designed the College in a modest adaptation of Wren's classical baroque style. 
Zenger, John Peter (1697-1746), German-born American printer and journalist. In the early 1730s he was established as the anti-administration editor and printer opposed to the New York governorship of William Cosby. In 1734 he was held responsible for polemical articles written by his reporters for the New York Weekly Journal. Zenger was arrested for seditious libel and jailed. The trial raised the issue of whether the truth of a libel was a valid defense and set the precedent of giving juries, not the court, final say in such matters. Zenger was found not guilty of libel. The trial resulted in the right to criticize freely the conduct of public men. 
Zenger eventually became public printer for New York and later for New Jersey as well.