ho was named joint
executor with her of her husband's estate, also conveyed to her
power-of-attorney. She gathered the loose ends of the Bland holdings in
Virginia and divided them among the heirs. An entry in the Isle of Wight
County Court records, listing ten Bland plantations, indicates the
proportions of her task.

Divorce in Virginia rarely occurred. There was no Ecclesiastical Court
and, therefore, no source of authority to which dissatisfied couples
might turn. The Governor and Council were vested with the power to grant
separations, which were seldom sought. One of the very few cases of
separation and remarriage was that of Elizabeth, sister of Colonel
William Underwood and ex-wife of Doctor James Taylor. After petitioning
the Governor and Council for a separation, she married as her second
husband Francis Slaughter, merchant and planter of Rappahannock County,
who was deceased by 1656, his will naming his wife and mother-in-law.
Incidently, Elizabeth had, in all, four husbands before her death in
1673.

Lest conclusion be drawn that all women in Virginia were _ladies_,
women whose husbands had large plantations and who were to the manner
born, acknowledgement must be made that there were some who were not
gentlewomen. Some quarrelled outrageously with one another, some
gossiped endlessly, and a few went to the extremes of dragging their
husbands into Court to settle disputes with one another, thus,
cluttering up the busy calendar of the County Justices.

The Court sitting at Westover in Charles City County, 3 August 1664,
arrived at a means of disposing of these cases and silencing, perhaps,
public display of temper. The ducking stool on Herring Creek had just
been equipped, the year before, with new irons and so was in good
repair. Whereupon, the Justices ordered that "Goody" Spencer and "Goody"
Goodale for their "scurrilous brawls and frivilous litigations" be each
ducked three times at the public place prepared for that purpose, at or
near the next full tide, and that "each bear his own particular costs
and charges."

The costs levied, the discomfort of being immersed, not to speak of the
ridicule that such an event aroused on the part of the people assembled
to witness the punishment, no doubt had a very sobering effect on
tempers. There was also a ducking stool on Wormeley's Creek in York
County, and another at Lynnhaven in Lower Norfolk. It would thus seem
that these and similar cases were not altoge