Remote and inaccessible, uninhabited by individuals whose skills could have given it vigor, Marlborough no longer had any reason for being. It lingered on for a short time, but when John Mercer came to transform the abandoned village into a flourishing plantation, "Most of the other Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when your Petitioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House twenty-feet square was standing."[48]
[48] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17).
_John Mercer's Occupation of Marlborough, 1726-1730_
By 1723 Marlborough lay abandoned. George Mason (III), son of the late sheriff and ordinary keeper in the port town, held the now-empty title of feoffee, together with Rice Hooe. In that year Mason and Hooe petitioned the General Court "that Leave may be given to bring in a Bill to enable them to sell the said Land [of the town] the same not being built upon or Inhabited." The petition was put aside for consideration," but within a week--on May 21, 1723--it was "ordered That Rice Hooe & George Mason be at liberty to withdraw their petition ... and that the Committee to whom it was referred be discharged from proceeding thereon."[49]
This curious sequence remains unexplained. Had the committee informally advised the feoffees that their cause would be rejected, suggesting, therefore, that they withdraw their petition? Or had something unexpected occurred to provide an alternative solution to the problem of Marlborough?
Possibly it was the latter, and the unexpected occurrence may have been the arrival in Stafford County of young John Mercer. There is no direct evidence that Mercer was in the vicinity as early as 1723; but we know that he appeared before 1725, that he had by then become well acquainted with George Mason, and that he settled in Marlborough in 1726.
Mercer's remarkable career began with his arrival in Virginia at the age of 16. Born in Dublin in 1704, the son of a Church Street merchant of English descent--also named John Mercer--and of Grace Fenton Mercer, John was educated at Trinity College, and then sailed for the New World in 1720.[50] How Mercer arrived in Virginia or what means he brought with him are lost to the record. From his own words written toward the end of his life we know that he was not overburdened with wealth: