Robert King Carter's Correspondence and Diary

   A Collection Transcribed
        and Digitized
   by Edmund Berkeley, Jr.


List of Letters | About This Collection

Electronic Text Center , University of Virginia Library


Summary



Letter from Robert Carter to William Dawkins, 1717 August3

     Robert Carter writes to London merchant William Dawkins, August3, 1717, commenting on politics in England and disparaging theTories.



Letter from Robert Carter to WilliamDawkins, August 3,1717


-1 -

[Rappahannock, LancasterCounty, Virginia]

Augt 3, 1717

To William Dawkins

     x x x x x
x x x x
Pray God bless KingGeorge &
send him to crush all hisenemies at
home &abroad
If the Tories will
set up for a King of their ownand make
him above the controul of Law, pro=
vided they willwithdraw to a country
where they & their King may quietly
enjoy their mutual claims upon
one another according totheir hearts
content -- he his despotic, unreason=
ablesovereighty -- they their passive,
brutish subjection, lettbut us & our
legal King alone, I'll never envy
them. At the same time, whig=
gism, I must tell you under the
rose, has no abundance of patrons
among us. You know bythis time
what means the mightly change lately
made in this Ministry . Such ruptures
have too often badconsequences.
But I leave politics & conclude for thepresent.

Sir


NOTES



Source copy consulted: Minor-Blackford Papers, James Monroe Law Office and Museum, Fredericksburg,Virginia. These texts are all nineteenth-century copies. Apparentlythere was in existence a letter book of Robert Carter's -- nowlost -- from which the unknown copiest recorded these texts. Asthey are the only texts, the punctuation and "corrections"obviously supplied by the copiest have been retained. The copistused rows of the letter "x" to indicate material that he did not copyfrom the letter book.

Robert Carter generally used a return address of"Rappahannock" for the river on which he lived rather than"Corotoman," the name of his home, on his correspondence, especiallyto merchants abroad. The return address, county, and colony have beenadded for clarity on this unheaded letter.

[1] George I, who reigned from 1714 to 1727, the firstHanoverian.

[2] Carter refers to the struggle between the Whigsand the Tories which brought the Whigs to power in 1715, and resultedin a contest between factions of the Whigs for supremacy. Sir RobertWalpole and Viscount Townshend led one faction, and the earls ofStanhope and Sunderland led the other.

[3] James, first Earl Stanhope, replaced Charles ,second Viscount Townshend, as leading minister in 1717; both wereWhigs.


This text revised September 30, 2008.