benevolent and patriot Governor." You'll observe I do not pretend to remember his words, but take this to have been the sum and substance of this part of his labored oration. When he came to that part of it where he undertook to assert, "that a King, by annulling or disallowing acts of so salutary a nature, from being the Father of his people degenerated into a Tyrant, and forfeits all right to his subjects obedience;" the more sober part of the audience were struck with horror. Mr. Lyons called out aloud, and with an honest warmth, to the Bench, "That the gentleman had spoken treason," and expressed his astonishment "that their worships could hear it without emotion, or any mark of dissatisfaction." At the same instant, too, amongst some gentlemen in the crowd behind me, was a confused murmur of Treason, Treason! Yet Mr. Henry went on in the same treasonable and licentious strain, without interruption from the Bench, nay, even without receiving the least exterior notice of their disapprobation. One of the jury, too, was so highly pleased with these doctrines, that, as I was afterwards told, he every now and then gave the traitorous declaimer a nod of approbation. After the Court was adjourned, he apologised to me for what he had said, alleging that his sole view in engaging in the cause, and in saying what he had, was to render himself popular. You see, then, it is so clear a point in this person s opinion, that the ready road to popularity here, is, to trample under foot the interests of religion, the rights of the church, and the prerogative of the Crown. If this be not pleading for the "assumption of a power to bind the King s hands," if it be not asserting "such supremacy in provincial Legislatures" as is inconsistent with the dignity of the Church of England, and manifestly tends to draw the people of these plantations from their allegiance to the King, tell me, my dear sir, what is so, if you can. Mr. Cootes, merchant on James River, after Court, said " he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket, rather than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of a crime, but little, if any thing inferior to that which brought Simon Lord Lovatt to the block; " and justly observed that he exceeded the most seditious and inflammatory harangues of the Tribunes of old Rome. My warmest wishes and prayers ever attend you. And besides these there is little else in the power of, my dear Camm,
Ann Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (New York, 1872), 418-424.
