A series of five speeches were given by five students of the College of William & Mary's grammar school on May Day (1 May O.S.) 1699 as part of "Scholastick Exercises" before an audience of local political leaders with the purpose of convincing members of the Colony of Virginia's General Assembly to move the colony's capital from Jamestown to Middle Plantation and support the college. Organized by Virginia's governor Francis Nicholson and the college's president James Blair, the orations followed the burning of the statehouse in Jamestown in 1698. The speeches were well received by the representatives of the House of Burgesses, leading to the establishment of Williamsburg at Middle Plantation and the moving of the colony capital to the new city.
Nicholson, who had briefly served as Virginia's lieutenant governor before being replaced by Edmund Andros, had returned as Virginia's governor in 1698 after serving as the governor of Maryland. While in Maryland, Nicholson succeeding in moving that colony's capital to Annapolis. The College of William & Mary was chartered in 1693. Established in Middle Plantation under Blair, the college and its president had been opposed by Andros before his removal as governor. Upon Nicholson's return to Virginia, he allied with Blair in supporting moving the capital to Middle Plantation, where wealth and influence had gradually shifted over the preceding decades.
The five speeches were given at the Main Building (now the Wren Building) of the college in front of government officials, the college's trustees, and others. The May Day exercises were a well-organized event. The first speech discussed the importance of education and the second speech praised the presence of a school in Virginia. The third speech directly openly addressed the benefits of moving the capital of the colony to Middle Plantation. The fourth speech thanked the supporters of the college and the fifth speech encouraged the colonial government to support the college and promote its success.
The speeches succeeded in spurring the capital to be moved, establishing the city of Williamsburg, and developing the community around the college. The original manuscripts of the speeches have been held by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London. In 1999, a recreation of the event was held at William & Mary to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Williamsburg's establishment.
Background
Jamestown had served as the capital of the Colony of Virginia since 1607, when both were established by English settlers. Jamestown was located along the James River on a marshy site that the local Native Americans had considered not hospitable but was evaluated by the English as possessing good access to the water and reasonable defenses against a potential Spanish attack. In Jamestown was the statehouse, where the General Assembly of the Governor's Council and House of Burgesses met since their establishment in 1619.;
Another community of English settlers began nearby at Middle Plantation. This community, named for its location in the middle of the Virginia Peninsula between the James and York Rivers, was established after the General Assembly funded the construction of a palisade on the site in 1632, which was completed in 1634. The planter John Page moved to Middle Plantation in 1662, initiating the shift of wealth towards the new community. The same year, the Crown revoked Jamestown's status as the only legal port of entry to Virginia, reducing the economic and political power of the capital.
Interest in moving Virginia's capital from Jamestown was galvanized in 1676. On the night 19 September, members of Bacon's Rebellion burned most of Jamestown, including its statehouse. Many prominent and wealthy Virginians were already resident in Middle Plantation, and several members of the government lobbied for that community to become the colony's new capital. In 1677, Middle Plantation functioned as a temporary capital while Jamestown was being rebuilt. Proposals to make the move permanent were rejected by Charles II due to a desire to keep the capital on the James River, and the statehouse was rebuilt. A 1680 vote in the General Assembly narrowly favored Jamestown over another proposed new capital, Tyndale's Point (now Gloucester Point). Until the statehouse was rebuilt several years later, the government met in taverns and houses.;
Francis Nicholson served a brief stint as Virginia's lieutenant governor from 1690 to 1692, during which time he had collaborated with the Scottish Church of England clergyman and influential Virginian James Blair in lobbying for the establishment of a college in the colony.; Blair convinced King William III and Queen Mary II to charter the College of William & Mary for the colony in 1693. The General Assembly selected Middle Plantation at the site for this new school, which proved an important step in moving the capital there.
Nicholson left Virginia following his appointment as the governor of Maryland, a position he held between 1694 and 1698. In that office, he moved Maryland's capital from Saint Mary's City to Annapolis. Nicholson had an interest in city planning and education that had seen him assist in laying out Annapolis and establishing King William's School (now St. John's College) there.; Replacing him as governor in Virginia was Edmund Andros. Blair was the colony's ecclesiastical commissary had become part of the Governor's Council in 1694. While Andros had initially been a proponent of the College of William & Mary, Blair's temperament and political influence made Andros an opponent of both the school and its president. Despite this, in 1695, construction began on the college's Main Building (now the Wren Building) in Middle Plantation and the college's grammar school began operation in a nearby schoolhouse.
Blair exerted his influence to force Andros's resignation in May 1698, claiming Andros's physical weakness following a fall from a horse put the colony at risk of another rebellion. Nicholson was appointed as Virginia's governor and returned to the colony in December that year. Before Nicholson's arrival, on 21 October 1698, the rebuilt Jamestown statehouse burned. The historian J. E. Morpurgo said the fire "was an accident but if Blair and Nicholson has come themselves with tar, torches, and bellows they could not have wrought better for themselves, for their policies, and for the college, than did the wind which fanned the flames on 21 October 1698". When the General Assembly crammed into two houses to begin its session on 27 April 1699, Nicholson's opening address called upon the gathered representatives to again consider moving the capital.; Capitalizing on the fire, Nicholson and Blair arranged for members of the Governor's Council, House of Burgesses, and college trustees to attend "Scholastick Exercises" speeches performed by students to celebrate a "public day of rejoicing" for the May Day holiday on 1 May 1699 (O.S.).
Speeches
The five speeches given by students of the College of William & Mary's grammar school were part of a well-staged event arranged by Nicholson and Blair.; Such orations were normal features in English schools of the era, with younger students typically responsible for speaking. The five speeches given by the grammar school master Mungo Inglis's students were written to convince the General Assembly to support the college, demonstrate its early success, and advocate for moving the capital to Middle Plantation and thus closer to the college.; ; They also addressed potential opposition to relocating the capital to Middle Plantation from both Jamestown landowners and those from other sites in the colony. While no records survive regarding its state in 1698, the Main Building of the college was sufficiently complete by 1699 to host the event.
Contrary to the norm for such orations, the speeches given during the event were given in English, rather than in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. This was possibly done to ensure that the listeners better comprehended the message that the speeches were intended to convey. However, the speeches were conventional in eschewing brevity. The five students assigned with delivering the speeches did so effectively, with each speaker responsible for a speech on different aspects of Nicholson and Blair's message. Each speech reflected 17th-century oratory tastes in the presence of classical allusions, but also contain colloquialisms that suggest that they may have been written by the teenage boys who read them. The historian Katherine Egner Gruber assessed the speeches as having been written by Nicholson and Blair. The historian Parke Rouse believed that the students had been coached by Blair and Inglis, pointing to the remarks in the speeches where the students said that they had been "commanded" and "directed" on what subjects to discuss. Morpurgo said that that "subject-matter is so shrewdly loaded" and the sequence of speeches "so logically developed, so complete, and so unanswerable" that the transcripts of the speeches were likely collaborations with "the subtle hands of Nicholson and Blair".
The first speech praised learning as a virtue that fostered both knowledge and good behavior. Playing to the values of the audience, this speaker also condemned ignorance as a vice while suggesting that learned men were more attractive to women. This speech contained several classical allusions, saying that learning allowed students to "converse with the most excellent men of all ages": Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and Cicero. The second speech took the universal goods of education discussed in the first speech and narrowed them to promote the benefits of Virginian students learning in Virginia. The student favorably compared receiving an education from the new college "to our childrens procureing of it abroad in England or other forreigne parts". A Virginia education, the speaker held, did not put students from the colony at a disadvantage among their peers and did not come with the expense of sending a child to an English school.
The third speech was the only of the five to directly address the issue of moving the capital from Jamestown to Middle Plantation. It was also the one that, according to the historian Marcus Whiffen, most likely drew inspiration from Nicholson. This speech was probably given by the grammar school student Orlando Jones, the son of the first rector at Middle Plantation's Bruton Parish and a grandfather of Martha Washington.; Almost three thousand words, the third speech probably took about half an hour to complete. The speaker listed seven reasons why Middle Plantation was the right site for a capital city independent of the college's presence. He first described Middle Plantation's sanitary qualities and solid and elevated ground, as opposed to somewhere with "moskitoes and the noisom stinks thick fogs of fenny, marshy, and swampy grounds". The speaker also noted that Middle Plantation was connected by Queen's Creek and Archer's Hope Creek (now College Creek), respectively, to the York and James Rivers, alongside other benefits to local business and security against Native American attacks. The third speaker also emphasized that establishing a capital city near the college would be beneficial to both institutions.