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History
: Historical Glossary (o-s)
Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), English pamphleteer and political
radical. Newtonian science influenced Paine's thinking along
progressive lines. He left England in 1774 with a letter of introduction
from Benjamin Franklin and settled in Philadelphia. He became
famous for his activities on behalf of the colonies during the
American Revolution and in France during the French Revolution.
More than 100,000 copies of his political treatise Common
Sense (1776) were published in America within a few months.
It was influential in bringing about the Declaration of Independence.
Other works by Paine include The Rights of Man and The
Age of Reason, for which he was called an atheist.
Paine lived a turbulent career. He held several offices in the
colonies during the Revolution but made enemies and subsequently
lost favor. In France he was made an honorary citizen by the
republican government in 1792 and was a delegate to the Convention
until imprisoned as an enemy during the Reign of Terror. Paine
died in the United States in poverty, denounced as a radical and
an atheist. In later years he came to be regarded as an American
patriot and an important crusader for democratic rights.
Peale, Charles Willson (1741-1827), American portrait and
genre painter. Born in Queen Anne's County, Maryland, he was
the son of a schoolmaster. Peale tried his hand at several crafts
including saddle making before attempting to earn a living at
sign painting. His interest in portrait painting began when he
learned that people would pay money for their likenesses.
At first Peale approached painting not as fine art but as a craft.
He bought himself a "how-to" book and traded John Hesselius
a saddle for some painting lessons. In 1765 Peale visited John
Smibert's old studio in Boston, where he met John Singleton Copley,
and then spent two years in London (1767-1769) under the tutelage
of Benjamin West. A marked change in his style is seen after
his exposure to the high style art of London, where his works
were hung alongside some of the great English pictures of the
day. Peale was particularly impressed by Gainsborough's portrait
of Captain Harvey, with his cross-legged stance of casual elegance.
This influence is apparent in his state portraits of George Washington.
The artist's other famous works include portraits of William
Pitt (1768), Nancy Hallam as Fidele in Cymbeline (1771),
The Cadwalader Family (1772) as well as Rachel Weeping
(1772), The Staircase Group (1795), and The Exhumation
of the Mastodon (1806-1808).
Peale's career was interrupted by the Revolution, during which
he fought in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. He also invented
mechanical devices, was a scholar of natural history, and founded
our first national museum in 1789 and the American Academy of
Fine Arts in 1794, both in Philadelphia. Peale's ability to capture
the character of his subjects and his industrious nature took
him from humble beginnings to a position of prosperity and social
position, making him the epitome of the American self-made man.
Pelham, Peter, Jr. (1721-1805), Williamsburg musician,
clerk, and jailor. He was born in London and immigrated to Boston
with his father and brothers. His father married John Singleton
Copley's widowed mother, making Pelham and the well-known artist
stepbrothers. Peter Pelham came to Williamsburg in 1751 after
serving as organist at Trinity Church in Boston. For the next
half century he blessed the city with his musical talents, acting
as organist at Bruton Parish Church (beginning in 1755), giving
instruction on organ and harpsichord and advice on ordering musical
instruments from London, and providing music for the theater,
including the 1768 performance of The Beggar's Opera.
This wide range of services helped him support his large family.
He also did clerical work for the House of Burgesses and for
at least two royal governors and served as the Public Gaoler from
1771 to 1780.
Peter Pelham received much of his education from his talented
father (Peter Pelham, Sr., best known as an engraver), who instilled
in him a deep appreciation for the arts that remained with him
throughout his life.
Polite Refusal (1784), satirical extract from Benjamin
Franklin's pamphlet, Remarks Concerning the Savage of North
America. "We know that you highly esteem the kind of
learning taught in those colleges . . . . But you, who are wise,
must know that different nations have different conceptions of
things: and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our ideas
of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours.
We have had some experience of it; several of our young people
were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces;
they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came
back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of
living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew
neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy,
spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for
hunters, warriors, nor councellors; they were totally good for
nothing.
"We are however not the less obligated by your kind offer,
though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense
of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their
sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them in all
we know, and make men of them."
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), English poet and satirist.
His boyhood interest in the great epic poems of Homer, Virgil,
and Milton was a springboard to his successful career as a poet.
Pope's early works imitated epic poetry, but he soon created
his own style. Pope felt that as a poet he occupied a unique
position to use satire to criticize the moral and political weaknesses
of the society in which he lived. The Rape of the Lock
(1712), his greatest work, used the framework of an epic to magnify
a trivial incident out of proportion. Less successful was An
Essay on Man (1733-1734), which deals with man's relation
to the universe, to himself, to society, and to happiness. He
engaged in a literary warfare of sorts with his one-time friend,
Joseph Addison, causing both contemporaries and biographers to
label him "waspish" and "vindictive." Nevertheless,
he probably was the only eighteenth-century writer to be financially
successful as a poet, success which he achieved in spite of the
restrictions placed on him as a result of his Catholicism and
physical deformity from infantile paralysis. Pope's works appeared
in the inventories of prominent eighteenth-century Virginians
including Robert Carter and Thomas Jefferson.
Pratt, Matthew (1734-1805), American painter who organized
the first recorded art exhibition in Williamsburg. According
to the March 4, 1773, Virginia Gazette, he "brought
with him . . . a small but very neat Collection of Paintings,
which [were exhibited] at Mrs. Vobe's near the Capitol."
By that time Pratt had been a professional painter for eighteen
years, working both in the colonies and abroad.
Born in Philadelphia, the artist was apprenticed to painter James
Claypoole. Pratt set up shop as a portrait painter in 1758, six
years later making the important artistic journey to London to
study with American-born Benjamin West. In 1768 Pratt reopened
his studio in Philadelphia and made excursions to New York and
Virginia. He was forced to revert to sign painting in the depressed
years after the Revolution.
Purcell, Henry (ca. 1659-1695), English-born composer.
He became composer for the King's band in 1677 and organist at
Westminster Abbey in 1679. His first printed composition appears
in John Playford's Choice Ayres, volume 1, in 1675. Purcell
was a prolific composer of baroque church music, chamber music,
masques such as The Fairy Queen (1692), and one opera,
Dido and Aeneas (1689), which reflected the direction of
English opera at that time because of its mixture of French and
Italian styles and many English idioms. His death at the age
of thirty-six halted the development of this style and led the
way for the domination of Italian opera in England in the early
eighteenth century.
Questionnaire, Parish (1724), report on Virginia's parish
activities to the Bishop of London. James Blair was the rector
of Bruton Parish Church at that time and his answer to the following
question is a good example of the type of information that was
collected.
"QUESTION -- How oft is the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper administered? And what is the usual number of Communicants?
"ANSWER -- I administer the Sacrament four times in
the year, viz; at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday and the nearest
Sunday to Michaelmas. There are about 50 communicants."
(Whitsunday is Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, and
Michaelmas Day is on September 29.)
There are also questions about the Sunday service, the catechizing
of the youth, the salary of the rector, and the church's educational
endeavors. The answers to these questions do not tell the entire
story but go a long way toward giving us an understanding of Anglican
practices in the local parish.
An original copy of the questionnaire with Blair's handwritten
answers can be seen on microfilm (reel M-286) in the Foundation
Library.
Radcliffe Camera, The, (1737 - 1747), one of the libraries
at Oxford University. Its dome is considered the chief distinctive
mark of the Oxford skyline. The architect was James Gibbs (1682-1754),
who also designed many of the churches called for in Sir Christopher
Wren's design for London, including St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.
The library is considered Gibbs's crowning achievement because
of the way it was integrated into the skyline and the campus.
The term camera comes from the Latin meaning "a vaulted
space"; thus, camera and rotunda are by definition
interchangeable terms.
Repton, Humphry (1752-1818), English landscape architect
and architect. He began his career comparatively late in life,
starting at age thirty six. When Repton married at the age of
twenty one his father set him up as a general merchant in Norwich,
but his heart was not in it; soon after his father's death he
sold the business and bought a small estate. He spent the next
five years gardening and making drawings of natural scenes and
the country houses nearby. His principal contribution was in
bringing back the flower garden to surround the house. Very often
this was made on a terrace, fenced or balustraded, which served
the function of a haha.
In the next thirty years Repton established himself as a fashionable
consultant of the period and traveled extensively, produced elegant
watercolor designs and meticulous descriptive proposals for his
various clients, called "Red Books", and wrote several
other books. His way of presenting pictorial views from his Red
Books in a "before and after" fashion was a novel and
ground-breaking presentational method in his day. Some of his
notable commissions and surviving landscapes may be seen today
at Corsham Court, Uppark, Hanworth, and Sheffield Park.
Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792), English portrait painter.
After an apprenticeship in London and a trip abroad to study
the masters, Reynolds returned to London to paint ambitious portraits
of society's elite. When the Royal Academy of Art was founded
in 1768, Reynolds was elected president. He was knighted by George
III in 1769, the same year his first Discourse on art was
published. After the death of Allan Ramsay in 1784, Reynolds
was made Painter to the King.
Like Lely and Kneller before him, Reynolds maintained a large
and profitable studio with many assistants. His popularity as
a portraitist may in part be explained by his genius for enhancing
nature, often supplying character or psychological depth where
little actually existed. His well-known works include Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire, and her Daughter (1786); George
August Eliott, Lord Heathfield (1788); Sarah Siddons as
the Tragic Muse (1784); and David Garric Between Tragedy
and Comedy (1762).
Rosetta Stone, Discovery of (1799), key to understanding
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs had fallen into disuse after
the decline of ancient Egypt, and the language remained indecipherable
for over a thousand years. In 1799 some of Napoleon's soldiers
found a rock slab in the rubble of a wall near the Egyptian town
of Rosetta. It was inscribed in three languages--hieroglyphic,
demotic, and Greek. The writings were versions of the same text,
a decree made at Memphis, capital of ancient Egypt, in 195 B.C.
to commemorate the coronation of Ptolemy V, providing the key
to the eventual translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Napoleon took an immediate interest in the tablet and ordered
impressions from the stone sent to scholars in Europe, who were
able to translate the Greek but only a fraction of the hieroglyphs.
In 1801 a French boy, Jean François Champollion (1790
- 1832), was shown fragments of papyrus and stone tablets with
hieroglyphs and was told that no one understood their meaning.
Vowing to read them one day, he prepared himself by learning
a dozen languages including Greek, Hebrew, and Coptic (a later
version of the Egyptian language still used in Coptic-Egyptian
Christian church services). In 1822 Champollion unlocked the
mystery of the ancient Egyptian language. When he deciphered
the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone his discovery ushered in
the era of modern Egyptology. The Rosetta Stone is on display
at the British Museum in London.
Rosewell (ca.1721-ca.1740), Page family home in Gloucester
County. An imposing brick mansion, three stories in height over
a full cellar, the building's form was derived from well-to-do
English merchant houses of the first quarter of the eighteenth
century, as indicated by its segmental window arches, stone dressings,
fenestration patterns, and proportions.
Mann Page I began construction of the house, but it was probably
not completed until the tenure of his son Mann Page II. The interior
layout of the house included an off-centered hall with major and
minor stairs and three other rooms on the first floor. Its unusual
arrangement apparently was not emulated by Page's peers, possibly
because it did not allow for public vs. private needs within architectural
spaces as they developed throughout the course of the century.
The house was further distinguished by the use of a flat roof
covered with lead and graced with two cupolas. Rosewell was altered
in the nineteenth century and gutted by fire in 1916. The ruins
have been stabilized by the Gloucester County Historical Society
and are occasionally open to the public.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher,
author, and political theorist. At age sixteen he left Geneva
and eventually settled in Parish where he became acquainted with
Denis Diderot and joined the group of intellectuals writing the
Encyclopédie, with whom he soon quarrelled. Rousseau
moved to the countryside in 1765, but his work stirred up such
controversy in France that he accepted David Hume's invitation
to live in England. Suspicious of everyone around him, Rousseau
moved back to France in 1767 and spent most of his final years
in Paris.
Rousseau was the foremost social theorist of the eighteenth century.
A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750) introduced
his thoughts on the nature of man and society. In it and the
essay The Origin of Inequality (1754) Rousseau argued that
society corrupted man's inherent goodness and that the more sophisticated
the society, the more harmful it was. Man's natural goodness
became the keystone of Rousseau's theories. In society men gradually
give unwarranted value to natural differences in talent, an initial
step toward social inequality compounded when the notion of private
property was introduced. Thereafter, laws and governments were
created to protect property ownership. Rousseau did not believe
men could return to a happier state of nature, but in The Social
Contract (1762) he offered a model of society he believed
was less corrupting. Civil society was based on a social contract
wherein one gave up individual independence to live in obedience
to the general will. Law and government worked to equate the
general will with the wishes of individuals, and a government's
sovereignty rested with the people who could withdraw it. In
his essay Emile (1762) Rousseau proposed a system of education
designed to strengthen man's basic goodness in preparation for
republican citizenship. Following Locke, Rousseau argued that
children learned through their senses from experience, which the
teacher should manipulate to reinforce students' natural tendencies.
Rousseau is also well known for his Confessions (1782-1789).
In this highly personal, emotional apology for his life, he created
a new form of autobiography. This work was a bridge from the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the romantic age of the early
nineteenth century.
Royal Society, The (more fully, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge) is usally considered to have been founded in 1660. A nucleus had been formed some years earlier, however, by "divers worthy persons, inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning, and particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy." the charter of incorporation was granted in 1662.
From its founding the society encouraged collectors in North America. Correspondence with continental philosophers and naturalists was an important part of the society's work. Selections from this correspondence, describing some of the "present undertakings, studies and labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the world," were published in the society's highly important Philosophical Transactions. Much of the information was received from Mark Catesby, John Mitchell, and Alexander Garden.
The Royal Society burgeoned into an exclusive club whose membership included eminent men in Britain and in the North American colonies. Exclusiveness did not rest merely on birth and fortune; talent and ability were carefully weighed. The names of fellows of the Royal Society, men concerned with the miracles of nature in new lands overseas, were well known in households that shared the same interest.
Servants, and Slaves, Act Concerning (1705), Virginia law
summarizing seventeenth-century legislation on slaves and free
blacks. The act codified earlier proscriptions against Indians,
Jews, "Mahometans," and blacks owning any white or Christian
servant (1670); prohibitions on interracial marriages and sex
(1691); provisions and procedures for dealing with runaways (1670);
restrictions on permitting slaves to gather without permission
(1682); the stripping of weapons (1680) and livestock (1692) from
slaves; the elimination of prosecution for killing a slave while
under correction (1669) or in taking an outlawed slave (1680 and
1691) but making owners liable for damages done by slaves on unsupervised
quarters (1692); establishing corporal punishment for any black,
slave or free, who physically resisted any white (1680); declaring
that children inherit the status of their mothers (1662) and that
baptism does not free the converted slave (1667) are among the
important restatements appearing in the 1705 legislation. The
law also declared for the first time that a slave's presence in
England did not bring freedom.
Similar efforts to control indentured servants but also to define
the limitations of a master's power over them are major parts
of this act. The latter provisions reveal the different legal
status of servant and slave clearly evident by the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Subsequent laws (particularly in 1723
and 1748) also summarize and collate as well as modify this and
other legislation on slavery and free blacks.
Sheraton, Thomas (1751-1806), English cabinetmaker and
furniture designer. While he possessed great artistic talent,
his life was one of poverty and disappointment because of his
eccentricity. About 1770 Sheraton settled in London. From about
1793 he supported his family by publishing directories about cabinetmaking.
The popular conception of the Sheraton style is based on a book
of designs, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book.
The delicate details he introduced have never been surpassed
in English furniture design, and his early work was greatly influenced
by the classic forms of Robert Adam and the Louis XVI style.
Because it is of a later period, Sheraton's influence was not
seen in colonial Virginia.
Small, William (1734-1775), influential philosophical professor
at the College of William and Mary. Educated in Scotland, Small
came to Williamsburg in 1758 and was asked to take over the College's
instruction in Natural Philosophy (science and mathematics) and
Moral Philosophy (ethics, rhetoric, and belles lettres). As an
apostle of the Enlightenment, he brought to his teaching a liberal
mind and a way of viewing the world that made a great impression
on his pupils. Among them was Thomas Jefferson, whose intellectual
curiosity and enthusiasm for learning brought about a friendship
between them and with Governor Francis Fauquier and the classical
scholar and lawyer George Wythe. During dinners with the governor
at the Palace, they held profound philosophical discussions that
left a lasting impression on Jefferson, who credited Small with
guiding him in his study of the "system of things in which
we are placed." In ultimate tribute Jefferson declared that
William Small "fixed the destinies of my life."
Smallpox Riots (1768), Norfolk, Virginia, demonstrations
against inoculation. They were instigated when a local doctor
wanted to inoculate a group of friends and their families against
smallpox. Public sentiment was against them, but the gentlemen
proceeded with arrangements to be inoculated on a plantation on
Tanner Creek three miles outside of town. Factions opposing the
practice rose up and asked the magistrate to restrain the party.
He refused. Those in protest met with the pro-inoculationists
and achieved a postponement until after the Court of Oyer and
Terminer met in Williamsburg on June 14. When nothing was heard
from the court, the inoculations took place on June 25 as previously
planned. Angry mobs then drove those who had been inoculated
through the streets during a thunderstorm to the pesthouse and
on June 27 full-scale rioting broke out, complete with destruction
to the inoculants' homes.
Throughout the summer court battles raged between the two factions.
The pro-inoculationists engaged young Thomas Jefferson as their
counsel and were cleared. A second riot the next year involved
basically the same people; however, the inoculation issue was
latent and the tense political relations with England were becoming
more predominant.
Smith, Adam (1723-1790), Scottish moral philosopher and
political economist. He was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow,
and within this wide-ranging discipline he sought to determine
rational order and moral purpose in a chaotic world. In 1776
his book The Wealth of Nations was published. It is a
democratic philosophy of wealth--a revolutionary idea that held
that wealth consists of goods which all members of society consume.
This philosophy of free trade is governed by two primary laws
of behavior: the law of accumulation and the law of population.
Smith believed that as supplies of money, machinery, and goods
grew, increased numbers of workers would join the work force,
attracted by higher wages and improved working conditions. This
process would not require government control but would be self-regulating
through the forces of competition and would, through supply and
demand, achieve economic and social harmony.
Adam Smith's rational approach to societal organization was reflected
in the thinking of Virginia's colonial leaders. Jefferson stated
that "in political economy, I think Smith's Wealth of
Nations is the best book extant."
Statute for Religious Freedom, Virginia (1786), Thomas
Jefferson's radical bill for religious freedom. He first stated
publicly this principle in 1776 and introduced it in the Virginia
Assembly in 1779, but it was not enacted until seven years later.
The key provision holds "that all men shall be free to profess,
and by argument maintain, their opinions in matters of religion,
and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect
their civil capacities." This statute dissolved forever
the ancient practice of state support for Christianity and penalization
of nonconformism.
The disestablishment of Virginia's Anglican church began in Williamsburg
in 1776 with the adoption of Article 16 of the Virginia Declaration
of Rights. Drafted by George Mason and amended by James Madison,
this article declares that "all men are equally entitled
to the full and free exercise of religion, according to the dictates
of conscience." Dismantlement of the complicated scaffolding
of church establishment, however, required an equally complicated
process of revision and enactment of statute law. In October
1776 the Virginia Assembly enacted a bill for the wholesale revision
of the state's laws and named Thomas Jefferson along with four
others to undertake the revision. From this effort came an entire
new code of laws, first debated in 1779. Bill number 82 in the
proposed new code was Jefferson's bill for religious freedom.
Opposition to this radical measure, led by Patrick Henry, came
from those who believed that even independent, republican states
needed healthy religious organizations to be stable and free.
Their efforts were buried beneath the petitions of Virginia Baptists,
Quakers, Methodists, and Presbyterians and the skillful political
maneuvering of James Madison. The Assembly's enactment of the
bill for religious freedom in 1786 marked a revolutionary change
in Virginia society and prefigured the creation of a national
policy on religious freedom embodied in the First Amendment of
the Bill of Rights.
Stuart, Gilbert (1755-1828), American painter. He was
raised in Newport, Rhode Island. His early training was from
painter Cosmo Alexander, who took the boy on a painting trip through
the southern colonies, including Virginia. After a period of
itinerant portrait painting in the colonies, Stuart avoided the
war by going to London in 1775, where he became Benjamin West's
principal assistant.
Fame came to Stuart with his inspired portrait of The Skater,
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782, which ranked him equal
to Reynolds and Gainsborough. Unfortunately, Stuart's artistic
genius was not matched by financial acuity. The painter was forced
to flee his London creditors, returning home to America in 1793
where he painted portraits of many figures of the new republic
including George Washington, Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, Dolly Madison, James Monroe, Paul Revere, and John
Adams.
Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Jefferson's
proposed instructions to Virginia's delegates to the First Continental
Congress. It may have been first presented to a group of Virginia
legislators at the Peyton Randolph House. Central to the argument
were Jefferson's convictions that (1) American colonists were
freeborn Englishmen with all attendant rights and prerogatives,
(2) the colonies had established their own institutions of civil
government, and (3) colonial assemblies were equal to Parliament
in their powers.
It was not new to deny Parliamentary power based upon the "rights
of Englishmen," but Jefferson's line of argument in A
Summary View was something different. He reasoned that since
the colonists had established themselves by their own exertions
without material aid from the crown, they were free to adopt such
government and laws as they saw fit and that the legislature of
any one part of the empire was not to interfere in the government
of any other part. The king, however, was voluntarily acknowledged
by the colonists as their sovereign so he could exercise the prerogative
only insofar as it promoted the interests of the people. Jefferson
argued that the king was "no more than the chief officer
of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite
powers, to use, and consequently subject to their superintendence."
He also listed colonial grievances from the time of settlement.
Viewing Jefferson's A Summary View as too revolutionary,
the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg adopted a different set
of instructions for its delegates to a continental congress claiming
only the rights and privileges of British subjects. Nevertheless,
A Summary View was printed in several of the colonies and
in England marking Jefferson as a prominent formulator of colonial
revolutionary thought.
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Historic Triangle