> On Thu, 2 Feb 2006 11:33:07 -0500, Lonny J. Watro wrote
>> Does no one else know of any other great women of Virginia? Or do
>> you just not want to take on Brent's challenge and play along? I'm
>> recovering from surgery here and need a good mind game. So humor me,
>> o.k?

Get well soon.
Two more favorite feisty women from colonial Virginia are

ONE Sarah Harrison at her 1687 marriage to the Rev. James Blair remained -
In response to the prayer book’s standard questions for the bride, Sarah
Harrison repeated her famous reply, “No obey” three times – a clear signal
to the formidable Commissary Blair that he had met his match. The story is
told, among other places, in Suzanne Lebsock, Virginia Women, 1600-1945:
“A Share of Honour” (Richmond, 1987), 21.

TWO Lucy Burwell Berkeley

  Born at Fairfield in November 1683, Lucy Burwell was perhaps the prize
of her father’s “whole houseful of blooming daughters” – nine girls by
his two wives. “Her eyes have enough fire to inflame the coldest saint,”
wrote William Byrd II, “and her virtue is pure enough to chill the
warmest sinner.”  Barely sixteen in the spring of 1799, Lucy innocently
caught the eye of Virginia’s forty-four-year-old Governor Francis
Nicholson, an able career soldier but a man known for his temper and
violent language. After a visit or two, Lucy showed no interest in
Nicholson. The governor, however, was utterly smitten. He regaled her
with letters. He addressed poems to his “Vertuous pretty Charming
Innocent Dove, the only Center of my Constant Love.” She spurned his
displays of passion with embarrassment, his displays of temper with
alarm. When Lucy declined to see him, Nicholson offered “Sacred Pledges
of true Love, Which Age nor time shall ever move” – but even Nicholson’s
love poems seemed fraught with menace. Lucy Burwell simply did not care
for Francis Nicholson.
  Lucy’s indifference drove Nicholson crazy. He offered her father a seat
on the Council. It was politely declined. Lucy’s father and Rebecca’s
great-grandfather was already a prominent member of the House of
Burgesses, and he was kin to a majority of the governor’s Council. “I
have often told you that I left my daughter to make her own choice as to
a husband,” Colonel Burwell reminded the governor. Even “to gain a
kingdom,” Burwell could never “be guilty of such a horrible piece of
Cruelty . . . as to force my daughter to marry against her will to the
best man alive.”
For more than two years Nicholson reacted with temper tantrums and threats
at reports that Lucy Burwell was being courted by younger rivals. His
obsessive behavior – “passion &c beyond the power of words to express” –
inevitably had political implications. When he learned that Lucy loved
some else, Nicholson threatened to slit the throat of “the bridegroom, the
minister, and the justice who issued the license.” A friend in London
warned Nicholson that his atrocious conduct was playing into the hands of
his enemies. Unlike “some barbarous countries where the tender Lady is
often dragged into the Sultan’s arms, just reaking in the blood of her
nearest relations,” his friend wrote, “English women . . . are the freest
in the world and will not be won by constraint.”
  Nicholson ignored the advice. News of Lucy Burwell’s engagement in 1703
to a promising young planter provoked the governor to violent threats
against the extended Burwell family. Unfortunately for Nicholson, the
family’s bonds of kinship reached into virtually every great mansion in
tidewater Virginia – and a few in England. Sir Robert Walpole regarded
himself as kin to the Burwells of Virginia. That spring, six members of
the royal council, four of them closely related to Lucy, petitioned
Queen Anne for Nicholson’s recall. They cited both his “unusuall,
insolent, and arbitrary methods of Government,” as well as the “wicked
and scandalous examples of [his] life.”  Enhanced by reports of
Nicholson’s unruly courtship, the petition soon hit its mark.  The
governor left Virginia early in 1705 and eventually died in 1728, far
away and unmarried. Nicholson was history.
   Lucy Burwell was legend. . . .


Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
1250 Red Hill Road
Brookneal, Virginia 24528
www.redhill.org
Phone 434-376-2044 or 800-514-7463

Fax 434-376-2647

- M. Lynn Davis, Office Manager
- Karen Gorham-Smith, Associate Curator
- Edith Poindexter, Curator

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