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James Innes.
IN the year 1751 there
sat at the council board of North Carolina Governor Gabriel Johnston and
seven councillors, among whom were James Innes, Francis Corbin, James
Murray, and John Rutherfurd, friends and associates, standing to each
other on varying terms of intimacy. Though Johnston and Corbin had been
political antagonists, nevertheless the five men belonged to a common
group. Innes and Murray were very intimate, for, next to Thomas Clarke,
Innes was Murray's best friend in the colony; Murray and Rutherfurd, as
we shall see, came to the Cape Fear together and worked together for
twenty-five years. Innes and Corbin were in constant touch personally
and officially, and Mrs. Corbin was the "great friend" of Rutherfurd and
his wife, named one of her slaves "Rutherfurd," and left her property to
the Rutherfurd children. It is a curious fact that two of the men who
sat at the council board, Corbin and Rutherfurd, should have married
eventually the widows of two of the others, lanes and Johnston.
Colonel James Innes, the
first husband of Jean Corbin,—the old lady mentioned in the Journal,—was
a Scotsman, born in Cannesby, county Caithness, a far-away region in
northern Scotland, from which others also migrated to North Carolina. He
probably came to the colony with Governor Johnston in September, 1734,
and with his wife, whom in his will he calls "the companion of my life,"
settled on the Cape Fear. He early became prominent in the province,
holding many offices of trust, civil and military, and winning the
esteem of his contemporaries as an honorable man and an honest and
efficient public servant. He served as captain of the Wilmington company
of North Carolina troops in the expedition against Cartagena in 1740
(Connor, History of North Carolina, I, 262), and was appointed after his
return colonel of militia in New Hanover county. In 1754 he was spoken
of as an old and experienced officer. His military service and close
intimacy with Governor 1)inwiddie of Virginia—they called each other by
their first names—led to his being selected to lead the provincial
troops in the Braddock expedition. His connection with that campaign is
well known.
limes played a prominent
part in civil life also and served his colony in many capacities, but
his aptitudes were military rather than civil and he never became a
political leader or a seeker for offices. Governor Johnston recommended
him for the council and he sat at the board under Johnston and his
successor, Dobbs, for nearly ten years. His relations with Corbin began
at least as early as 1750, when the latter, as land agent for Lord
Granville, associated him with himself as co-agent, and from that time
to 1754, when be was dismissed by Lord Granville, Innes acted with
Corbin in the Granville interest, journeying two hundred miles through
the wilderness, from the Cape Fear to Edenton, to perform his duties.
None of the charges brought against Corbin were ever seriously raised
against Innes, and he emerges scatheless from an employment which,
dependent as it was on fees and perquisites, created an irresistible
itch for money. Innes died September 5, and two years afterward Corbin
married his widow (shortly after October, 1761). Mrs. Jean Corbin was an
"old woman" in 1775; what her age was when she married her second
husband must be left to conjecture. People grew old early in colonial
days; one was already "an old aged man" at sixty-one (Maryland Archives,
X, 78, 16). Innes was born about 1700; she may have been a few years
younger.
Francis Corbin.
The Honorable Francis
Corbin, as he was frequently called, was appointed land agent for Lord
Granville, September, 1744, and came to North Carolina from London in
November of the same year, for the purpose of "setting off to Lord
Granville one-eighth part of the colony." He was associated in
succession with five co-agents, of whom Innes was one, and managed to
hold on to his own position success- fully till 1760. At one time or
another he was a justice of the peace, an assistant judge, commissary
and judge of vice-admiralty in 175, colonel of the Chowan militia in
1757, member of the council, deputy to the assembly, and a frequent
appointee on commissions and committees in the assembly and out. He was
prominent in the affairs of St. Paul's Church, Edenton, and it is
probable that his influence there was of material assistance in his
political career. He was keen, efficient, and aggressive even to
turbulence, but of a personality and character that has not endeared him
to posterity. He was probably honest enough in his way, for, as far as
we know, no charges of a dishonorable nature were ever made except in
connection with his fees as Granville's agent, and in this particular we
are not sure that he did anything strictly illegal; but at the same time
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he was deficient in some of
the qualities that make for moral uprightness and political stability.
One may be prejudiced, but it seems a fitting thing that Corbin should
have taken a liking for a woman whom Miss Schaw describes as not of the
best character or of the most amiable manners and whose evil deeds she
hopes will be forgiven. The wonder is that Jean Corbin should ever have
been Innes's "loving wife."
In the performance of
their duties as agents for Lord Granville, Corbin and his first
colleague, Child, were charged with acting "in concert to make the most
that they could of the fees and perquisites of his Lordship's office for
their own emolument, at the expense of the people, by which means they
procured great sums for themselves and little for his lordship." When
Bodley became co-agent, the complaints became so insistent and the
abuses apparently so flagrant that the assembly appointed a committee to
inquire into the matter. Though the committee reported that in the main
the charges were true, the assembly took no further action and in
consequence a number of Granville's grantees, exasperated because of
their failure to obtain legal redress, marched to Corbin's house near
Edenton, seized that gentleman, carried him off in his own chaise to
Enfield, the county seat some sixty or more miles away, and there
compelled him to sign a bond to disgorge. This riotous proceeding so
scandalized the assembly that at its next session, in May, 1759, it
sought to secure the punishment of "the authors of [the] several riots,
routs, and unlawful assemblies within Lord Granville's district." But
the effort came to nothing, and the chief interest in the incident lies
in its reflection upon Corbin's character and the attitude of the
assembly, and in its place in the history of the colony as a forerunner
of the Regulators' War.
Though unmolested by the
assembly, Corbin did not escape so easily in his conflict with the
governor. In 1748 he had joined with others in a letter to Secretary
Bedford, charging Johnston with misfeasance in office, but the secretary
took no action, the Privy Council dismissed the charge, and Corbin
continued to sit on Johnston's council. When, however, in 1758 he
espoused the cause of the assembly against Dobbs, that excitable
upholder of the prerogative suspended him from the council for
prevarication and non-attendance, and removed him from his positions as
assistant judge and colonel of Militia. In 1760 he was dismissed by
Granville from his post of agent also. Despite these humiliating
experiences, perhaps because of them, Corbin was immediately elected to
the assembly from Chowan county, and acting with Child, Barker, and
Jones, whom Dobbs characteri7ed as the "northern junto," resisted the
efforts which Dobbs was making, during the remaining years of his
administration, to maintain in unnecessarily arbitrary fashion the legal
claims of the crown. Though Tryon suggested that Corbin be restored to
the council in 1766, nothing came of the nomination, probably because of
his death, which took place sometime in 1766 or 1767. He left no will,
and his estate, except such portions as were given his wife in the
marriage settlement of 1761, was disposed of at auction, at which his
wife bid in some of her husband's personal property.
Corbin spent the greater
part of his life in Chowan county, on a plantation two or three miles
from Edenton. In 1758 he began the erection in Edenton of the Cupola
House, a famous old building which is still standing and which bears on
its gable-post or ornament the initials "F. C." and the date "1758," but
it is doubtful if he ever lived there.t When he went to the Cape Fear we
do not certainly know, but it was before his marriage with Mrs. Innes4
He could have continued to represent Chowan county, even though living
at "Point Pleasant," provided he retained in the county for which he
stood real estate to the extent of at least one hundred acres. He was
buried, as Miss Schaw says, at the bottom of the lawn on the "Point
Pleasant" plantation, not far from the grave of James Innes, between
whom and Corbin the old lady herself at last found rest "in a very
decent snug quarter." |
