The most notorious abuse of the judicial power by Harvey was his prosecution of Dr. Pott. Charging the pleasure-loving physician with pardoning murder and marking other men's cattle for his own, he suspended him from the Council, and confined him to his plantation pending the day of his trial. When Pott defied the Governor's order and came to Elizabeth City, Harvey put him in prison and set a guard around it. In July, 1630, he was put on trial.
We have only one detail of the proceedings, but that like a flash is revealing of Pott's character and of the farcical character of the prosecution. When a certain Richard Kingswell testified against him, Pott declared that he was as great a liar and hypocrite as Gusman of Alfrach. He was referring to the book by Mateo Alemán, of Seville, in which Gusman is shown first as a scullion, then as an errand boy, then as a thief, then as a pretended gentleman who cheated his creditors.[7] But this thrust did not save him. He was convicted, and his entire estate confiscated.[8]
It would seem that in this case Harvey was actuated more by a desire to show his power than by avarice. If he could humble so prominent a man as Pott, one who had been acting Governor, others would stand in awe of him. "It will be a means to bring people to ... hold a better respect to the Governor than hitherto they have done," he wrote.[9] But having shown his power to ruin, he now sought to show that he could also restore. So he wrote the King suggesting clemency. "For as much as he is the only physician in the colony, and skilled in the epidemical diseases of the planters ... I am bound to entreat" your Majesty to pardon him.[10]
A more sincere plea came from the doctor's wife, Elizabeth. Getting up from a sick bed, she made the long and dangerous voyage to England to complain to the King "touching the wrong" done her husband. Charles referred the case to the Virginia Commissioners, who listened sympathetically as she poured out the story of injustice and persecution.[11] They concluded that there had been "some hard usage against" Pott, and recommended that the King pardon him. Accordingly, Charles forgave his "offences" and restored his property.[12] But the jovial doctor never regained his seat in the Council.
