Patriots by A. J. Langguth Read Free Book Online

parents the newlyweds had received only a tiny farm at a spot called Pine Slash and half a dozen slaves to help them work it. When the house burned down, Henry had sold the slaves to finance one of his unprofitable stores. As a shopkeeper he had learned the perils of depending on tobacco for a living: he was never paid until the crop came in.
    Yet Henry was willing to argue on behalf of the Two Penny Act and the profit it brought to Virginia’s richest planters. Until Parson Maury sued, those tobacco growers had been selling one of their best crops in history at fifty shillings per hundredweight and paying off their debts to tradesmen and the clergy at a rate of sixteen shillings. But the Anglican parsons also represented a ruling class in the colony, which was enough to set Henry against them. The Great Awakening that spread over New England had also reached tiny Hanover, Virginia, and as Patrick was growing up his mother and grandfather had become New Lights, dissenters from the established church. They had taken Patrick to hear a prominent evangelist, Samuel Davies, who argued that freemen should never be taxed to support a religion they might abhor. The Anglicans found Davies’ style of preaching tasteless and loud, but to Patrick the oratory was a revelation.
    —
    On the Monday morning of James Maury’s hearing for damages, twenty fellow parsons appeared at the small brick courthouse in Hanover to await vindication. Wealthy planters from nearby counties, or parishes, had also come, dressed in velvet and withtheir hair fashionably powdered. The lesser planters wore homespun, and the townspeople showed up in the sort of leather breeches and coarse linen shirts Patrick Henry wore when he wasn’t in court. Today, he had put on a black robe and the court wig that improved his sallow appearance. On his way into the courthouse, he met his uncle and asked him not to attend the hearing. The Reverend Henry asked why.
    “Because, sire,” said Patrick Henry, “I fear that I shall be too much overawed by your presence to be able to do my duty to my clients. Besides, sire, I shall be obliged to say some hard things of the clergy, and I am very unwilling to give pain to your feelings.”
    His uncle advised Henry that speaking ill of the clergy would do more harm to him than to them. He didn’t think his presence should matter—but since his nephew was asking him so earnestly to leave, Pastor Henry reined his horse about and rode home.
    Inside the courtroom, Patrick’s father, Colonel John Henry, took his seat as the presiding judge. He was one of the few men around Hanover who had been to college, and the judgeship had come to him by default. Many of his townsmen could barely write; women and slaves got no schooling at all. Judge Henry sent the sheriff out to summon twelve gentlemen to serve as jurors. When he returned, Parson Maury was indignant at the choices. Apparently the sheriff had gone to the one tavern where qualified gentlemen were known to congregate, but the first man had asked to be excused and the sheriff hadn’t approached the others. He had gone instead to the town green, where another gentleman also begged off. Then, Parson Maury complained afterward, “he went out among thevulgar herd.” Surveying the sheriff’s candidates, Maury protested that they were neither men of substance nor loyal Anglicans. Patrick Henry insisted that they were all honest men and got them sworn in at once. The spectators knew the reason for his haste. Three jurors were New Lights, and one of them was also Patrick Henry’s cousin.
    After the acrimony over the jury, the trial itself opened tamely. Peter Lyons was entirely at his ease as he summed up the verdict from the previous month. Lyons spoke pleasantly to his opposing counsel and called him “young Pat.”
    Rising for the defense, Patrick Henry submitted a receipt to show that in 1758 Parson Maury had accepted one hundred and forty-four pounds as his year’s salary. He