these encounters
frequent mention beyond doubt would have been made of them. Any deaths
resulting from them could hardly have escaped mention in the records,
and the general interest that always attaches itself to such affairs
would have caused them to find a place in the writings of the day.
Beverley, Hugh Jones, John Clayton and other authors who described the
customs of colonial Virginia made no mention of duelling. Only a few
scattered instances of challenges and encounters have been collected,
gleaned largely from the county records, and these serve to show that
duelling met with but little favor. Most of the challenges were not
accepted and provoked usually summary and harsh punishment at the
hands of the law. In 1643 a commissioner was disabled from holding
office for having challenged a councillor.[83] Some years later Capt.
Thomas Hackett sent a challenge by his son-in-law, Richard Denham, to
Mr. Daniel Fox, while the latter was sitting in the Lancaster County
court. The message was most insulting in its wording and ended by
declaring that if Fox "had anything of a gentleman or manhood" in him
he would render satisfaction in a personal encounter with rapiers. One
of the justices, Major Carter, was horrified at these proceedings. He
addressed Denham in words of harsh reproval, "saying that he knew not
how his father would acquit himself of an action of that nature, which
he said he would not be ye owner of for a world." Denham answered in a
slighting way "that his father would answer it well enough ...
whereupon ye court conceivinge ye said Denham to be a partye with his
father-in-law ... adjudged ye said Denham to receive six stripes on
his bare shoulder with a whip." The course pursued by Fox in this
affair is of great interest. Had duelling been in vogue he would have
been compelled to accept the challenge or run the risk of receiving
popular contempt as a coward. He could not have ignored the message on
grounds of social superiority, for Hackett ranked as a gentleman. Yet
he requested the court to arrest Hackett, "him to detain in safe
custody without baile or mainprize," in order to save himself from the
risk of a personal attack.[84] A similar case occurred in 1730, when
Mr. Solomon White entered complaint in the Princess Anne County court
against Rodolphus Melborne for challenging him "with sword and
pistoll." The court ordered the sheriff to arrest Melborne and to keep
him in custody until he entered bond