His service in Virginia was interrupted by his career in Maryland, ending in 1698, during which Sir Edmund Andros ruled in the larger colony. This knight’s New England experience had told on him for the better; but it had not wholly weaned him from some of his pettish ways. He brought with him the charter of the College of William and Mary, and had the infelicity to find in Blair, its first president, the adversary who was to throw him. This Scotchman was combative and stubborn enough for his race, and equally its representative in good sense and uprightness. Blair insisted upon his prerogatives as the representative of the bishop, and taking the grounds of quarrel with the governor to England he carried his point, and Nicholson was recalled from Maryland to supply the place of Andros.
The new college graduated its first class in 1700, and at about the same time Claude Philippe de Richebourg and his Huguenots introduced a new strain into the blood of Virginia.
The accession of Queen Anne led to the conferring of the titular governorship in 1704 upon George Hamilton, the Earl of Orkney, who was to hold the office nominally for forty years. For five years the council ruled under Edward Jenings, their president, and when, December 15, 1704, he made his proclamation of the victory of Blenheim, it was a satisfaction to record that Colonel Parke, of Virginia, had been the officer sent by Marlborough to convey the news to the queen.[607]
In 1710 the ablest of the royal governors came upon the scene, Alexander Spotswood, a man now in his early prime, since he was born in 1676. He bore a wound which he had got at this same Blenheim, for he had a decisive, soldierly spirit. It was a new thing to have a governor for whom the people could have any enthusiasm. He came with a peace-offering in the shape of the writ of _habeas corpus_, a boon the Virginians had been thus far denied. The burgesses reciprocated in devoting £2,000 to build him a palace, as it was called, as perhaps well they might, considering that their annual tobacco crop was now about 20,000,000 pounds.
The happy relations between the governor and his people did not continue long without a rupture. The executive needed money to fortify the frontiers, and the assembly tightened the purse-strings; but they did pass a bill to appoint rangers to scour the country at the river heads.[608] Spotswood did the best he could with scant funds. He managed to prevent the tributary Indians from joining the Tuscaroras in their forays in Carolina,[609] and he induced the burgesses to take some action on the appeals of Governor Pollock.[610] He also gave his energy scope in developing the manufacture of iron and the growing of vineyards, and in the stately march which he made to find out something about the region beyond the Blue Ridge.[611] He was indeed always ready for any work which was required.