It would seem that in the years from the recall of Nicholson to the arrival of Spotswood, the danger to liberty in Virginia came less from the Throne than from the Council. A free people could not be quiet under the rule of a body of twelve men, not chosen by the voters but appointed by the sovereign.
The average planter, not only the owner of only a few acres, but the man of means had reason to be alarmed. Was it consistent with the principles of English liberty, they must have asked, for a clique of wealthy men, many of them united in one family, to have such power over their lives and their property? If the people were to rule, final authority must be vested in the House of Burgesses, not the Council.
[1] CO5-1315, Bassett to Perry & Co., Aug. 30, 1706.
[3] Hugh Jones, _The present state of Virginia_, ed. R. L. Morton, 93.
[4] P. A. Bruce, _Social life of Virginia_, 133
[5] T. J. Wertenbaker, _The planters of colonial Virginia_, 155-160.
[6] CO5-1318, Spotswood to Lords of Trade, March 20, 1718.
[11] _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1702-1712: 131.
[14] CO5-1315, Quary to Lordships, Sept. 1, 1706.
[17] _Executive journals of the Council_ 3: 119, 120.
Alexander Spotswood arrived in Virginia June 20, 1710, aboard the warship _Deptford_, and spent the night at Green Spring, with his future enemy, Philip Ludwell. Two days later he met with the Council around the oval table in the beautiful Council Chamber in the new Capitol, and laid his commission before them.
The new Lieutenant Governor was descended from a family of Scottish Anglicans. His great-grandfather had seconded Archbishop Laud's attempt to introduce the Prayer Book in Scotland; his grandfather had been put to death by the Presbyterians. Perhaps it was this tragedy which induced his father to desert his native land and take service in the English army. It was while he was with his regiment in Tangier that Alexander Spotswood was born.
The son chose to follow in the father's footsteps, and in 1693 we find him serving in the Earl of Bath's regiment in Flanders. He fought gallantly, was wounded at Blenheim, and was captured at Oudenarde. It is possible that he served under the Earl of Orkney, also, and that was the reason he named him as his deputy in Virginia. "I must ever own gratefully that to your Lordship's good will I owe my station here," he wrote Orkney in 1718.