Rufus King finds Thomas Jefferson a Queen
Below is research into the Provenance, the chain of owners who held Thomas Mathew’s manuscript, and who published it.
Who is Thomas Mathew?
He was a member of the House of Burgesses.
Thomas Mathew writes about the Queen of the Pamunkeys visiting the House of Burgesses during Bacon's Rebellion.
He also writes about the larger story of Bacon's Rebellion.
See the story about that Queen's visit here.
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Now to the Provenance.
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Provenance is a chain of ownership.
In this first section,
Founders Online in 2 documents
shows this chain of owners.
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Founders Online Document 1
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1675-1676
is the time frame this document references.
It was written 30 years later in 1705
Rufus King has this manuscript authored by T.M.
Rufus King writes to Thomas Jefferson about this manuscript.
20 December 1803
To Thomas Jefferson from Rufus King,
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Touch or Click to Enlarge. A portrait of Rufus King (1820, Gilbert Stuart) located in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
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I have a manuscript account
of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675,
written by a member
of your assembly
for the County of Northumberland,
[Thomas Mathew
Stafford County VA]
and addressed to Sr. Robert Harley.
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As this account is more particular
than any other
of the same transaction
that I have seen,
and differs from that of our historians
in some important Circumstances,
I have thought that you might be gratified
in reading it:
should it be in your power,
I shall be obliged to you
to give me the name of the author, whose initials [T.M. ]
only are subscribed to the Dedication—
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Source for above:
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So, Rufus King (above) writes to Thomas Jefferson in 1803
enclosing a letter written by a T.M. to Robert Harley (below).
Touch or Click to Enlarge.
Painting after Richardson
1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661-1724),
Speaker of the House of Commons 1701-05.
Founders Online Footnote
about his letter
by T.M. to Robert Harley:
In the cover letter to Harley,
dated 13 July 1705,
the author of the account signed as “T. M.”
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Although TJ [Thomas Jefferson]
does not appear to have made the connection himself,
the initials stood for Thomas Mathew,
a planter and merchant
who lived in Northumberland County
for a couple of decades.
Mathew also owned land in Stafford County and represented that county, not Northumberland,
in the General Assembly
that met in 1676
in the midst of the
His account emphasized
his own efforts to avoid taking sides
in the conflict,
while indicating the unsteady
and often harsh leadership of Governor William Berkeley and portraying Bacon as a rash, honorable youth who had been influenced by some of the governor’s more experienced opponents.
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When asked by Harley to write his narrative, Mathew had been living in England for about 25 years
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Source for above:
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Founders Online Document 2
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In 1816,
the National Register, a short-lived weekly periodical published in Washington, printed the narrative along with TJ’s preface from a copy “in the hand writing of Mr. Jefferson.”
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1820
the Richmond-based Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine also published the narrative and preface “from a copy in the Library now belonging to Congress; but formerly the property of Mr. Jefferson.”
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In 1821,
the National Intelligencer reported the disappearance of the copy along with two other works from Jefferson’s former collection.
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Apparently the copy was returned, for in 1832,
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Touch or Click To Enlarge. [Edward B. Stelle; Assistant Librarian of Congress 1828-]
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an assistant librarian of Congress,
transcribed a version f
rom “Thomas Jefferson’s copy”
for John Tyler,
then serving as a U.S. senator.
Stelle explained that his version
was “a literal transcript”
and followed TJ’s own policy
for transcribing the narrative,
aside from the preface,
from which Stelle excluded
notice of TJ’s interlineations and corrections.
Other than those exclusions,
Stelle appears to have followed TJ’s spelling, capitalization, and abbreviations.
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TJ’s copy was lost in the 1851 Capitol fire
that destroyed much of his former collection
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Source for above:
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Above was Founders Online documenting the provenance of the T.M. manuscript.
Below is another history of that provenance about the T.M. manuscript:
A summary from
Stanford University
of the chain of owners
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Prefatory note signed: “T. M.”, 13 July 1705.The author was undoubtedly Thomas Mathew of Cherry Point, Northumberland, and there is apparently no ground for the conjecture of the historians Campbell and Fiske that it was Thomas, son of Gov. Samuel Matthews. cf. Va. mag. of hist. and biog., Oct. 1893, v. 1, p. 201.
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The original manuscript was purchased from a London bookseller in 1803 by Rufus King, minister to Great Britain. He sent it to Thomas Jefferson, who returned it after making a copy. cf. Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1853-54, v. 4, p. 528.
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The tract was first printed in the Richmomd (Va.) enquirer of the 1st, 5th and 8th of September 1804, from a transcript sent to Jefferson’s friend, Mr. Wyeth.
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Another copy of the original, made by Jefferson himself, and with a somewhat different introduction, was printed in the Virginia evangelical and literary magazine, Richmond, 1820, v. 3, p. 128-149; reprinted in the Virginia historical register and literary note book, 1850, v. 3, p. 61-75, 121-136.
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Thomas Jefferson creator and publisher
of this Magazine
printed the document by TM
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Holt was a nationally-known religious leader. In 1813, he helped found the Virginia Bible Society 21 (of which Jefferson was a significant financial contributor 22); in 1818 he started the Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine to emphasize Christianizing the culture and report on various revivals across the country; in 1819, he was elected national moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church; and in 1822, he was offered the presidency of Princeton but instead accepted the Chair of Theology at Hampden-Sydney College. Rice – an evangelical Presbyterian – fully supported the University of Virginia 23 and worked diligently “in creating a popular sentiment favorable to the passage of the University bill [in the General Assembly].” 24
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Source is from Virginia Museum of History and Culture:
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More about the Thomas Mathew the author
provided by
Virginia Museum of History and Culture
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HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF DOCUMENT:
The beginning, progress and conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in the years 1675 & 1676, written in 1705, is a first-hand narrative account of Bacon’s Rebellion. The author, “T.M.,” is Thomas Mathew of Northumberland County, whose quarrel with the Doeg Indians in 1675 historians have attributed as the first in a series of disruptive incidents that led to the uprising. Dissent in the House of Burgesses over how to peacefully resolve this dispute prompted Bacon’s revolt.
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Touch or Click to Enlarge. Robert Harley by Jonathan Richardson, c. 1710.
The manuscript is addressed to
Lord Oxford, Minister of State
to Queen Anne,
and is believed to have been a part of his private library and written at his request.
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Although the collection of Harleian manuscripts was sold to the British Museum in 1753, this document was traded or sold elsewhere.
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In November 1801, American diplomat Rufus King bought the manuscript from a London bookseller. He sent it to President Thomas Jefferson in December 1803.
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Jefferson made a copy of the manuscript, which is now in the Library of Congress. A contemporary copy made from Jefferson’s manuscript is in the library of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. It belonged at one point to Presbyterian minister John Holt Rice and was bequeathed to the Virginia Historical Society by Nathan Pollard in 1834.
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THE SOURCE:
The beginning, progress and conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in the years 1675 & 1676 was written thirty years after the event. In the preface, Mathew informs [Robert Harley] Lord Oxford that he wanted to present the facts with accuracy, but notes that the lapse of thirty years led to inevitable shortcomings in recollection:
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“Beseeching yo’r hono’r will vouchsafe to allow, that in 30 years, divers occurrances are laps’d out of mind, and others imperfectly retained.”
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Despite drawing from memory and hearsay, Mathew was well-suited to write the narrative, having been an eye-witness to many of the events he describes.
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Mathew owned extensive land in Virginia. He was a county justice in Northumberland County, and served as a burgess in 1676 representing Stafford County. However, he remained outside the political infighting and twice refused an offer from Bacon to be made a lieutenant in his militia. While Mathew may have steered clear of taking sides in the Assembly, his narrative clearly places blame for the rebellion on the Indians. He begins his story by dramatically recalling ominous signs in 1675 that trouble was brewing:
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“The one was a large comet every evening for a week…Another was, fflights of pigeons in breadth nigh a quarter of the midhemisphere . . . his sight put the old planters under the more portentous apprehensions, because the like was seen (as they said) in the year 1640 when th’ Indians committed the last massacre . . . but not after, until that present year 1675. The third strange appearance was swarms of fflyes about an inch long . . . and in a month left us.”
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He links these superstitions to the event that started the war:
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“My dwelling was in Northumberland, the lowest county on Potomack river, Stafford being the upmost, where having also a plantation, servants, cattle &c, my overseer there had agreed with one Robt. Hen to come thither, and be my herdsman, who then lived ten miles above it; but on a Sabbath day morning in the sumer anno 1675. people in their way to church, saw this Hen lying thwart his threshold, and an Indian without the door, both chopt on their heads, arms and other parts, as if done with Indian hatchetts, th’ Indian was dead, but Hen when ask’d who did that? answered Doegs Doegs, and soon died, then a boy came out from under a bed, where he had hid himself, and told them, Indians had come at break of day and done those murders.”
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Not only were the Indians a threat to the colonists’ safety, but their sorcery had created a summer of drought.
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Mathew’s story struck a chord with President Jefferson.
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After reading the manuscript, Jefferson believed that Bacon and his followers were motivated by no less than self-preservation, and that the blame for the rebellion rested on Berkeley. Jefferson saw Mathew’s manuscript as proof that Bacon was a patriot whose actions were yet another example that “insurrections proceed oftener from the misconduct of those in power than from the factious and turbulent temper of the people.” Given Jefferson’s role in the Revolution, it is not difficult to understand why he held this opinion. However, the causes of the 1676 rebellion were not a cut and dry as Mathew, and Jefferson after him, believed.
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Source of above
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The Document itself:
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TRANSCRIPTS:
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Source of above
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