Robert King Carter's Correspondence and Diary

   A Collection Transcribed
        and Digitized
   by Edmund Berkeley, Jr.

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Electronic Text Center , University of Virginia Library

Summary

ALS
August 16, 1705
Letter from St. John Shropshire to Robert Carter, August 16, 1705

     St. John Shropshire writes fromWestmoreland County to Robert Carter, August 16, 1705, to introduce "Richard Tankersly, . . . the son of Dr. Geo: Tankersly" whom he introduces to Carter as a suitable person to rent a plantation belonging to the estate of Ralph Wormeley. He adds in a postscript that he has heard rumors of the arrival of a new governor which he hopes is true, and mentions that he has suffered under Lt. Gov. Nicholson because he could not sign all the addresses, etc., which too many of his fellow ministers have.


Letter from St. John Shropshire to Robert Carter, August 16, 1705

Washington [Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia]
Augt. 16th. 1705.

Coll: Carter

     The Bearer hereof Richard
Tankersly, is the son of Dr. Geo: Tankersly,
who is lately married, & if your honour
pleases is willing to take Mr. Ralph --
Wormlys plantation, where Thomas --
Morris Shomaker lately Lived, he is
willing to pay you rent for it, or if --
your honour thinks fit, is capable of
taking Charge of any hands under him,
he is an honest civill young man, as --
farr as I ever hear, & has nothing but
his Labour to trust to, & therefore I make
bold to recomend him to your honour,
I have nothing more to add but my own, & my
wives humble respects to your honour, &
good Lady, remayn yor. honours


most humest humble &
obedient Servt.

ST. JOHN SHROPSHIRE
-2 -


     we have frequent rumors, & reports about the Arrivall
of a New Governour I should be very glad to heare
it confirmed; for my own part, I have reason --
enough to wish it may be so, having been upon
Suffering under Governour Nichollson , because I --
could not sign all adresses &c wch. I think in my --
Conscience too many of my Bretheren Have
done, but I ho[ [p]] e the seden will be allowed in
God's due tyme .


NOTES



Source copy consulted: Carter Papers, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. This is the recipient's copy; Carter inverted the leaf, and used the blank space on the verso to draft the letter to William Robinson of ca. August 20, 1705.

[1] St. John Shropshire (1666-1718) was a minister in Westmoreland County; he matriculated at Queens College, Oxford, in 1685 at age nineteen, and earned his B.A. in 1688. (Glencross, "Va. Gleanings in England," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , 32(1924): 351-359. See also , "Papers Relating to the Administration of Governor Nicholson . . . ." and John K. Nelson. A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishoners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776. [Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001]. p. 319.

[2] Sir Edward Nott had in fact landed in Virginia the day before Shropshire wrote, but was to be governor only until his death 23 August 1706.

[3] Shropshire seems to have written "seden" which means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary , the action of sowing or the state of being sown. What he meant is not entirely clear.


This text revised July 10, 2008.