mer
solicitation: though all this while, and for many years afterwards, his
lordship did not pretend to lay public claim to any part of the
propriety.

It did not square with this project that appeals should be made to the
general assembly, as till then had been the custom. He feared the
burgesses would be too much in the interest of their countrymen, and
adjudge the inhabitants of the Northern Neck to have an equal liberty
and privilege in their estates with the rest of Virginia, as being
settled upon the same foot. In order therefore to make a better
pennyworth of those poor people, he studied to overturn this odious
method of appealing to the assembly, and to fix the last resort in
another court.

To bring this point about, his lordship contrived to blow up a
difference in the assembly between the council and the burgesses,
privately encouraging the burgesses to insist upon the privilege of
determining all appeals by themselves, exclusive of the council; because
they, having given their opinions before in the general court, were, for
that reason, unfit judges in appeals from themselves to the assembly.
This succeeded according to his wish, and the burgesses bit at the bait,
under the notion of privilege, never dreaming of the snake that lay in
the grass, nor considering the danger of altering an old constitution so
abruptly. Thus my lord gained his end; for he represented that quarrel
with so many aggravations, that he got an instruction from the king to
take away all appeals from the general court to the assembly, and cause
them to be made to himself in council, if the thing in demand was of
L300 value, otherwise no appeal from the general court.

Sec. 124. Of this his lordship made sufficient advantage; for in the
confusion that happened in the end of king James the Second's reign,
viz., in October 1688, he having got an assignment from the other
patentees, gained a favorable report from the king's council at law upon
his patent for the Northern Neck.

When he had succeeded in this, his lordship's next step was to engage
some noted inhabitant of the place to be on his side. Accordingly he
made use of his cousin Secretary Spencer, who lived in the said Neck,
and was esteemed as wise and great a man as any of the council. This
gentleman did but little in his lordship's service, and only gained some
few strays, that used to be claimed by the coroner, in behalf of the
king.

Upon the death of Mr. Secretary Spenc