Spencer Roane (April 4, 1762 – September 4, 1822) was a Virginia lawyer, politician and jurist. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates for six years and a year in the Commonwealth's small executive branch (Council of State). The majority of his public career was as a judge, first of the General Court and later (for 27 years) on the Court of Appeals (which later became the Supreme Court of Virginia).
Early life and education
Roane was born in Tappahannock on April 4, 1762. His grandfather, William Roane, of Scots-Irish descent, had emigrated from Ireland like his three brothers circa 1741 to Gloucester County, Virginia, and married a local woman, who bore him six children. The family moved slightly north to Tappahannock in what was then Rappahannock County and prospered: Spencer's father William (who owned plantations in what had become Essex County in 1692, as well as nearby King and Queen County) served in the House of Burgesses from 1769 until the American Revolutionary War, as the prosecutor (deputy King's attorney) for Essex County, and as a colonel of the county militia during the American Revolutionary War. As discussed further below, William married Judith Ball, who gave birth to a son Thomas, and then Spencer, who was named after a maternal relation.
Spencer Roane received his initial schooling at home, under a Scottish tutor named Bradfute. He then entered the College of William and Mary aged 14, to study law under the tutelage of George Wythe, from whom he gained great appreciation of Edward Coke and the English system of property rights, as well as constitutional law, but disliked studying equity. Roane also became a member of the relatively new Phi Beta Kappa Society, then a literary and oratory association, along with future U.S. Supreme Court justices Bushrod Washington and John Marshall. After graduating in January, 1780, as the college temporarily closed so its buildings could house French and American soldiers during the final Yorktown campaign of the American Revolutionary War, Roane traveled to Philadelphia for two years of additional legal studies in the then-nation's capitol.
Law and politics
After Roane returned to Virginia, he read law under John Warden. After examination by Henry Tazewell and John Taylor of Caroline, Roane was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1782, at age 20.
Both Spencer Roane and his former schoolmate John Marshall entered politics soon after beginning their legal careers, and each won election to the Virginia House of Delegates from different districts in 1783. Virginia law permitted legislators to continue private legal practices, and Roane did so. That year Tappahannock citizens had tarred and feathered merchant Joseph Williamson, a loyalist who had returned to the town several years after helping the British bring ships up the Rappahannock River and burn the town. One of Roane's first legislative proposals was a petition asking that charges against his constituents be dismissed because the peace treaty with Britain had been signed in the fall, months after the incident.
Roane was a Presbyterian, not a member of the formally established Episcopal Church, and religious freedom for Baptists and Presbyterians was a hot topic during legislative sessions of the new Commonwealth. Virginia's legislators had passed laws mandating religious toleration, and abolishing compulsory church tithes, in December 1776. In 1784 Virginia's legislators allowed incorporation of the Episcopal Church, as well as vested church property in ministers and vestries, subject to triennial inventory reports to county courts. Despite the urging of prominent Episcopalians Patrick Henry, John Marshall, Edmond Randolph and Richard Henry Lee, legislators refused to assess taxes to support Christian religion or collective worship. Roane had opposed both on religious establishment ground, although at the session's end Roane voted to allow incorporation of all societies of Christian religion. Moreover, following the lead of Jefferson and Madison (as well as young Roane), Virginia's legislators passed a law for the Establishment of Religious Freedom in 1785.
In November 1784, fellow legislators selected Roane to serve a one-year term on the Virginia Council of State. Roane thus helped advise Governor Patrick Henry during the year that began in May, 1785. His only recorded dissent concerned an attempted removal of a justice of the peace for misconduct, which Roane thought interfered with the separation of powers. After his resignation, Roane was elected to the Virginia Senate to represent the counties of Essex, King and Queen and King William.