When the Council met after Nott's death they opened his commission and listened intently as it was read. And there was great satisfaction when they found that in the event of a Governor's death the Council was to take on themselves the administration of the government. But they were far from happy that Colonel Edmund Jenings, as the senior Councillor, was to preside at their meetings with such powers as were necessary in "carrying on the public service." They insisted that the Attorney General of the colony, in drawing up the first proclamation under the new government, should issue it, not under the name of the President alone, but of the President and Council.[17]
Jenings wrote to the Lords of Trade to ask just what his status should be. Their answer was decisive. The instruction that the Council should take over the government upon the death of a Governor had caused many controversies between the President and the Councillors and had greatly hindered public business. So they altered it to read: "The eldest Councillor do take upon him the administration of the government ... in the same manner ... as other our Governor should do."[18]
Francis Nicholson had written the Lords of Trade some years previously expressing doubts as to the wisdom of making any member of the Council the chief executive. "There may happen great disputes about the person of the President and his powers. And may be when the President and the Council are all natives or else entirely settled here, nature and self-interest may sway them to do some things and pass some acts that may be (as they will imagine) for the good of their country and make and secure an interest with the people. This may be prejudicial to their Majesties' service."[19] No doubt the Lords of Trade saw the force of this reasoning, but they were not prepared to keep a Lieutenant Governor in Virginia whose only function it would be to wait around ready to step in when the Governor died or was recalled.
Although the other members of the Council seem to have regarded Jenings with something like scorn, and one of them had spoken of him as "the right noble little Colonel Jenings," the man had had a distinguished career. He had been clerk of the York County court, collector of the York River district, commissioner for the College of William and Mary, member of the Council, Attorney General, and Secretary. And now, as President of the Council, he seems to have laid aside former animosities, and considered himself merely first among equals.