Tea Sets and Tyranny. Steven C. Bullock
situation when a leader could “force [the people] to obey at pleasure the exorbitant and unlimited Decrees of their sudden thoughts, or unrestrain’d, and till that moment unknown Wills without having any measures set down which may guide and justifie their actions.”91
The unpredictable Nicholson posed just such a danger. An English correspondent warned the governor in 1702 that his harsh words and actions were risky in the current political environment. In the past, he suggested, “a more violent treatment would not only have been endured even by Englishmen, but perhaps would have been well enough approved of.” But “the case is quite altered now,” especially since the Glorious Revolution. If you should be charged with “arbitrariness” in Parliament, he warned Nicholson, not even your merits or your friends “will be able to save you.”92
Nott by contrast seemed to embody the opposite ideals. He was known, a clergyman noted, for his “Exactness in doing Justice to all Persons” and his “great Moderation.”93 The last term had by then become central to discussions of governance. “Moderation” had previously referred to regulation and control. Massachusetts’s earliest law code provided that church elders “guided and moderated” church assemblies. By the middle of the century, moderation also came to mean something larger and more politically pressing, freedom from overt and harsh partisanship.94 Late seventeenth-century discussions of religion used the term to criticize a narrow orthodoxy that accepted only a limited range of Protestant beliefs, in particular noting the post-Restoration laws that pushed numerous Puritan-inclined ministers out of their Church of England pulpits. In calling for greater toleration, the Quaker leader William Penn in the 1680s wrote both “a plea for moderation” and “a perswasive to moderation.”95 Daniel Defoe twenty years later published “Moderation maintain’d.” The religious associations of the term may well have been part of the reason the enthusiastically high church Nicholson resented letters recommending moderation.96
As these letters also suggested, however, moderation referred to government as well as religion. A minister who had noted Nott’s death in Virginia also witnessed the aftermath of Governor Edward Tynte’s demise in South Carolina four years later. With partisans promoting competing elections to choose a temporary governor, “violent Proceedings” seemed a distinct possibility—until one of the contestants agreed to end the contest, earning the author’s commendation for “his Moderation.”97 Blair’s 1702 sermon on the death of King William similarly celebrated the same qualities in noting “the mildness and gentleness of the King’s reign.” As with Byrd’s use of the term “arbitrary,” this was not an apolitical argument. An angry Nicholson accused the clergyman of attacking William’s predecessors Charles II and James II—and suspected that Blair was also referring to him.98
The ideal of moderation included a distinct way of thinking about the boundaries of legitimate power. Earlier theories of authority tended to emphasize the broad powers and responsibilities of magistrates. In practice, however, common religious values, local connections, and personal ties often restrained the exercise of power. By the late seventeenth century, however, the balance between broad theory and limited practice became deeply problematic. English revolutions, American rebellions, and the expanding reach of the English state, all within an Atlantic world both drawn together and pulled apart by increasing trade and communication, made older conceptions of power difficult to defend except in extreme forms—although this did not stop people from trying to do so. Tory politicians and Anglican Church leaders endlessly preached the obligations of nonresistance and unlimited submission in the wake of the Civil War. Some political philosophers attempted to make the same case. Filmer, drawing on Jean Bodin’s argument about the indivisibility of sovereignty, rejected any restriction on monarchical authority. These proponents of absolutism found even Thomas Hobbes suspect. Although Hobbes (born the same year as Filmer) was gratifyingly clear on the obligation to obey government, he traced this duty to communal agreement rather than divine authority.99
Facing the new imperial demands, however, emerging Anglo-American leaders found political theories emphasizing obedience to central authority troubling.100 But they did not therefore turn to promoting the rebellions that Nicholson believed resulted from such opposition. Calling instead for moderation in exercising power and responding to diversity, the emerging ideals of politeness provided a means of opposing authoritarianism that proved widely popular. “It were to be wished indeed that we could all be of one opinion,” admitted South Carolina governor Charles Craven in the early 1710s, “but that is morally impossible.” Instead, he continued, people should “agree, to live amicably together,” by “consult[ing] the common good, [and] the tranquillity of our province.”101 The Boston minister Benjamin Colman provided a fuller description of such leadership in 1737. “The spirit of Constancy & Resolution, Authority & Government,” he told Harvard’s governing board in discussing the qualities of a college president, needed to be combined with “the Man of Prudence & Temper, Moderation, & Gentleness, Modesty humility & Humanity.”102
As Colman suggested, such attitudes also had implications beyond politics. Rather than (like Nicholson) seeking to emphasize authority and precedence at every turn, the ideals of politeness rejected the harshness of naked power. Instead, as a later author stated, politeness sought to “make persons easy in their behaviour, conciliating in their affections, and promoting every one’s benefit.” A student club at Harvard in 1722 called for meetings to “be Managed with Temper & Moderation.” Rather than “Contempt,” they commended “a Deference Paid to Each other.” Having experienced the “Feuds and Heart-burnings” that Beverley attributed to Nicholson’s administration, Blair similarly called on his parishioners to adopt “an … affable, courteous, kind, and friendly Behaviour to Men.” A properly controlled person, he suggested, would have “no Fierceness or Haughtiness in his Countenance, no Rudeness or Haughtiness in his Speech, [and] nothing that is insolent or affronting in his Action.”103
Soon after Nott arrived in August 1705, James Blair called a meeting of the colony’s clergy. He faced a difficult situation. His archenemy Nicholson remained in Virginia, waiting for a suitable ship to England, and continuing to meet with Virginia’s ministers. Their friendly relationship with the ex-governor contrasted sharply with their antagonism toward Blair. The commissary chose the text of his sermon with an eye toward reconciliation. The significance of Jesus’ call to “take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” would have been readily apparent to contemporaries. As Blair noted elsewhere, meekness was “a right Government of the Passion of Anger.”104
Despite his good intentions, Blair’s sermon did not go well. In praising the new governor “as studious of union & quiet,” Blair could not resist an invidious comparison with Nicholson who had instead sought “Party & faction.” A hostile clergyman present at the meeting later complained that, although Blair had criticized Nicholson, the commissary himself had used “overawing methods” in his “Sermon of meekness.”105
Polite ways of thinking about political and social relationships also recommended an emotional demeanor that best served these ideals. Even more than his ideas and perhaps even his actions, Nicholson’s unbounded anger had seemed to embody the harshness of arbitrary rule. Treating people generously through more carefully controlled expression, Blair and other people argued, worked better than seeking to frighten them into submission. Contemporary discussions of these issues by Blair and Boston’s Mather family reveal the relevance of Nicholson’s behavior to some of the central issues of personal and political relationships.
Blair addressed the issue of meekness more extensively (and less troublingly) in another sermon on meekness, a discussion of the beatitude “Blessed are the meek” that formed part of the lengthy series of addresses on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he published in 1722. Like Increase and Cotton Mather, Blair rejects the idea that anger is bad in itself, comparing it to sheep-herding dogs that can be dangerous but very useful if trained properly. The ministers differed, however, on the proper uses of anger. The Mathers both focused on what Cotton calls “holy Anger,” passionate hatred for sin. Blair instead presents it as a tool of government that should only be unleashed