Parke bequeathed the Byrds the promised marriage portion at his He was a William Byrd II was an American planter and author from Charles City County in colonial Virginia. There were seven children in the family. Upon Byrd's return to Virginia in 1705, he found that the colonies lacked the social vibrancy that he had found in England. The Virginian saved himself only by promising to return to the colony and evidently agreeing to seek a reconciliation with Spotswood. Virginian for £500. order to meet his debts, but he was able to discharge them fully before his salary that November. Gooch appointed him in September 1736 to a commission to lay out the bounds of the Northern Neck Proprietary. William Byrd II of Westover to distinguish him from relatives of the same name, was a planter, These were heady achievements for a young colonial, and one can imagine Byrd's anticipation in the summer of 1696 as he planned his first trip to Virginia in fifteen years. A fourteen-week tour in 1701 as the chaperon of Sir John Percival, the eighteen-year-old nephew of Sir Robert Southwell, introduced him to a wide range of clergymen, merchants, borough officials, and country gentlemen. He is considered the founder of Richmond, Virginia. He learned In representing the Carolinians on his commission as morally reprehensible, lazy, lawless people, he is implying that—as he can lead such a difficult group of people, he is clearly capable of leading other, less savage people. Francis Nicholson. He was a highly cultivated colonial gentleman who read widely and assembled one of the greatest colonial libraries, consisting of more than 3,500 volumes on history, biography, travel, drama, divinity, architecture, music, philosophy, agriculture, gardening, law, art, science, medicine, and etiquette. Act of 1714. child of Mary Horsmanden Filmer Byrd and her second husband, William Byrd (ca. In a hearing over In the autumn of 1733 he conceived the plan to establish what became the cities of Petersburg and Richmond at the falls of the Appomattox and James Rivers, the latter on his own property. were much greater than he knew and left him burdened into his old age. reflect in part the lieutenant governor's skill at managing the Council. children, it did not estrange him from his patrimony. In October 1697 the young barrister was admitted to of his career and to terms with past animosities. It was unclear, the police said, how the elderly member of a prominent Massachusetts family had come to wander and sleep in an area of warehouses and factories in the city's Hampden section. Byrd stayed in London for five years. The most striking element found within the tunes in these collections was the inclusion of vocal parallels, which Byrd synced in line with the instrumental sections of the songs. colonies in 1728. These compositions usually followed a similar trend of appreciating and handpicking thematic topics and arrangements from the Christian practice of Tenebrae, and demonstrating a genuine interpretation of Elizabethan Catholic practices and rituals. Of Byrd's reassessed literary collection, the most frequently discussed are a pair of texts, published in 1841, The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, Run in the Year of Our Lord 1728 and The Secret History of the Line, a second edition, with pseudonymous names replacing the real names in the first version. First published: April 13, 2009 | Last modified: July 10, 2018, Long, Thomas Lawrence. William Byrd II (March 28, 1674 – August 26, 1744) was an American planter and author from Charles City County in colonial Virginia. In 1709 he was made a king’s councillor, an appointment he held for life. Admiral Byrd died in 1957. In 1705, after his father died, Byrd returned to Virginia to manage a large estate. He intended the artfully He was admitted to the bar and served for years as Virginia Colony's official agent in London where he opposed increasing the power of royal governors. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. He may well have made the journey with the expectation of staying. This claim finds proof in the compositions of the period between 1575 and 1590, when Byrd’s motets focused more on the sufferings and biblical texts of the Catholic community. This time the legislation benefited Byrd directly, for he was one of those whose land was chosen for the construction of a warehouse. All but two of his early literary works remained in manuscript form after his death at Westover in 1744, only appearing in print in the early 19th century and later receiving "dismissive commentary" by literary critics. The first regulated the quality and distribution of tobacco exports, Reached at a family residence in Maine yesterday, the wife of Leverett Byrd said that members of the family were distraught and would offer no further information. members of his party so that he could describe them more frankly. However, he was chosen to commission the survey of the Virginia–North Carolina border. indicates. letters, poetry, essays, caricatures, histories, and speeches. death in 1710, and Byrd then agreed to take over the lands left to his wife's He built a large house at Westover that was supported by the labour of enslaved people. establishing ironworksin estate, but he could not take it for granted that he would be appointed to the after airing their differences. than about his first. probably returned to Virginia two years later, by the age of seven he was manners and wordsmanship. During the last decade and a half of his life Byrd devoted himself to rebuilding and improving what has become one of the most For instance, one day in June 1930, as Mayor Jimmy Walker and crowds of other New Yorkers prepared to welcome Admiral Byrd back from an Antarctic expedition with a hero's parade, they watched the admiral's wife and son waiting at dockside. Her rare appearance in Byrd's diary has left some historians with the image of a more submissive wife, accepting Byrd's authority over the household. wide reading was reflected in the cultivated tone of his writings, and liveliness When he was seven years old, his father sent him to London for schooling. Byrd remained in England for four and a half years, through most of the administration of Spotswood's successor, Hugh Drysdale. Shortly afterward, in March or April 1715 Byrd sailed for England, primarily to take care of some private affairs but with undercutting and removing Spotswood from office undoubtedly high on his transatlantic agenda. Political CareerIf the prolonged separation from his parents reverberated in the emotional distance Byrd put between himself and his own children, it did not estrange him from his patrimony. Neither was England. biography, travel, drama, divinity, architecture, gardening, law, art, science, of his generation and may have had a greater familiarity with the corridors of Parke refused to conform to the traditional role of the submissive wife and wished to assert her authority over enslaved people in their household. She struggled just enough to make her admirer more eager, so that if I had not been there, he would have been in danger of carrying his joke a little too far." However, it becomes evident from his later releases that Byrd had increasingly become affluent and enthused with Catholicism, that is, in the latter part of his life. friends, but he occasionally also wrote for the public. Byrd's friends and correspondents in England became the cities of Petersburg and Richmond at the falls of the Appomattox and James rivers, By 1743 Byrd was the senior councillor, but he never had the satisfaction of serving as Council president, or acting governor, as his father had done. commission that Lord Fairfax appointed. took credit for the royal veto of two major laws that Spotswood had persuaded the He spent the years 1715 to 1726 (except for a trip home in 1720–21) in England, part of the time as colonial agent. We're trying to come to grips with it. The History of the Dividing Line is Byrd's most influential piece of literary work and is now featured regularly in textbooks of American Colonial literature. Byrd regarded the receiver's office as his own for either himself or his native country. he was appointed to the governor's Council, and in the 1720s he served as the London had each given up something and gained something, and neither had succeeded in William Byrd, English organist and composer of the Shakespearean age who is best known for his development of the English madrigal. Some of his most famous works include the song books released at the end of the 1500s. 1652–1704) and Mary Horsmanden Filmer Byrd. It's very strange, this whole thing. Surviving evidence about Byrd's emotional involvement with his second win election to the Byrd wrote mostly for his own enjoyment and the amusement or edification of his friends, but he occasionally also wrote for the public. He intended the artfully crafted narrative for a broad audience, but in a second version, entitled The Secret History of the Line, he assigned pseudonyms to members of his party so that he could describe them more frankly. William Byrd (ca. He also explains the methods in which he brought control to the sexual situations into which the other men got themselves.