W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1982 The Richard Corbin letterbook 1758-1760 Jeffrey Lynn -- editor's edition Scheib College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Scheib, Jeffrey Lynn -- editor's edition, "The Richard Corbin letterbook 1758-1760" (1982). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625163. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-en8z-z871 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. C-ent m n .- j c THE RICHARD CORBIN LETTERBOOK 1758— 1760 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Jeffrey L. Scheib 1982 ProQuest Number: 10626368 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10626368 Published by ProQuest LLC (2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 - 1346 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author Approved, August 1982 4 t U • / dJLL Thad W. Tate, Jr. James L. Axtell mes P. Whittenburg TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................. iv ABSTRACT ...... ............................... ... v A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RICHARD CORBIN OF "LANEVILLE," ca. 1708-1790 ........... 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE RICHARD CORBIN LETTERBOOK, 1758-1760 37 EDITORIAL METHOD . ....................... 48 THE RICHARD CORBIN LETTERBOOK, 1758-1760 51 A P P E N D I X .................. 133 NOTES ..................................................................... 134 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............. 165 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to express his appreciation to Kevin Kelly, of the Colonial Williamsburg Research Department, who first suggested this project; to John Hemphill and Harold Gill, also of the Colonial Wil­ liamsburg Research Department, who offered encouragement during the early stages of the project; and to John Ingraham, archivist of Colo­ nial Williamsburg, who provided the author with a microfilm of the original manuscript for use in transcribing the letterbook. The author is indebted to Professor Thad W. Tate, director of the Institute of Early American History and Culture, under whose direction this project was completed, for his patient guidance at all times, and to Professor James Axtell and Professor James Whittenburg for their careful reading and criticism of the manuscript. iv ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to provide an annotated, edited transcript of the letterbook of Richard Corbin of "Laneville," King and Queen County, Virginia, colonial councillor and deputy receiver general, for the years 1758 through 1760, along with a sketch of Corbin's life and career. The project was limited to the first three years of the letterbook because of time and size considerations (the complete letterbook is approximately three hundred pages long) and because of the content of the letters Corbin wrote from 1758 through 1760. After 1760 Corbin's letters focus largely on his work as deputy receiver general, and because of this they have been used by economic historians. The earlier letters contain more general material, including invoices of goods ordered from England and instructions to Corbin's estate man­ ager, as well as Corbin's dealings with his tobacco merchants and his reports as trustee for his friend Robert Dinwiddie and his cousin Edmund Jenings. The editor hopes this thesis will make this hitherto neglected material more readily available to students of the period. A biographical sketch of Corbin provides a background for the letters transcribed here. Although highly placed as a councillor and deputy receiver general and acquainted with or related to most prominent Virginians of the pre-Revolutionary era, Corbin is a largely neglected figure. No complete biography of him exists. A surprising amount of information about Corbin can be culled from published materials and secondary sources, although this information is widely scattered. The editor has attempted to pull this material together to form a useful summary of Corbin's life and career. v THE RICHARD CORBIN LETTERBOOK 1758— 1760 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RICHARD CORBIN OF "LANEVILLE" ca. 1708-1790 The life and career of Richard Corbin of "Laneville," King and Queen County, Virginia, corresponded so well to the image of the aristo­ crat of the Golden Age of the Chesapeake as to be almost stereotypical. A third-generation Virginian, Corbin was born into the ruling elite in the early years of the eighteenth century. He attended the College of William and Mary. He served on his parish vestry and his county court. He sat in the House of Burgesses and was appointed to the governor's council. He married a daughter of a distinguished aristocratic family. He saw his sons follow him into public life. He knew or was related to everybody who was anybody in eighteenth-century Virginia--Jeningses, Lees, Ludwells, Byrds, and Carters were numbered among his acquaintances and zealously cultivated cousinry. What distinguished Corbin from the stereotype and from many of his fellow aristocrats was his consistent adherence to the British, as opposed to the Virginian, viewpoint in the quarter-century preceding the American Revolution. In the pistole fee dispute of the Dinwiddie admin­ istration Corbin supported the governor. In the currency controversy of the 1750s and 1760s he supported the hard money-creditor interest of British merchants. He was horrified by the Stamp Act upheaval and wrote, "The interest of Great Britain and her colonys are to be 2 inseparably connected; what hurts the one must be injurious to the 2 other." At the outbreak of the Revolution he became a loyalist, although even in his loyalism there is an element of typicality. In common with most of the governor’s councillors, he was allowed to retire from public life and remain in Virginia, relatively unmolested, his 3 property undisturbed, throughout the Revolution. The reason for Corbin's adherence to the unpopular British view lay in his strong identification with England. Corbin considered himself a colonial Englishman; England remained "home." Corbin’s economic ties strengthened his identification with the imperial interest. As his let­ terbook shows, Corbin was a regular correspondent of several British firms trading in Virginia, including the Hanburys and Robert Cary, to whom he sent his tobacco on a consignment basis. Also, Corbin was debt collector for his good friend Governor Robert Dinwiddie. Finally, he was a royal official, not only a councillor but also, after 1762, deputy 4 receiver general and collector of the king’s quitrents. He took his duties as a Crown officer very seriously, as he took all business mat­ ters, performing them meticulously and scrupulously. Ultimately, how­ ever, his allegiance to the Crown yielded to a practical acceptance of the new order of Revolutionary Virginia. While two of his sons fled the commonwealth during the Revolution, Corbin remained in Virginia, thus safeguarding extensive properties built up in the colony over three generations. By the time of Richard Corbin’s birth, the Corbin family had been established in the colony for over fifty years. Like most of the great eighteenth-century families, the Corbins had their foundation in the immigration from the 1640s to the 1670s, which absorbed and supplanted 4 the earlier ruling elite in Virginia.^ The patriarch of the family in America was Richard's grandfather, Henry Corbin, who was born at Hall End, Warwickshire, in 1629 and settled on the Rappahannock River in 1654. Henry married Alice Eltonhead (7-1685), the widow of Rowland Burnham of Lancaster County. They had eight children.^ Henry rose swiftly in the colonial elite. In 1657 he was appointed a justice of the peace for Lancaster County. In 1659 and again in 1660 his neighbors elected him to the House of Burgesses. In 1663, a scant nine years after his arrival in Virginia, Henry was named to the gover­ nor's council.^ Meanwhile, Henry also served as vestryman of Lancaster Parish. Later, the first Upper Chapel of Christ Church Parish was built on Henry Corbin’s "Buckingham" plantation prior to 1669, when a private pew for the Corbins was built in the chancel. Some of the chapel's com- 8 munion silver reportedly bore the Corbin name and coat of arms. Henry laid the foundation for the family's future by accumulating substantial landholdings in the colony. At his death January 8, 1676, Henry possessed two plantations in Middlesex County, "Buckingham" (also known as "Buckingham House" and "Buckingham Lodge") and "Corbin Hall," and one estate, "Peckatone,"