Full Citation

Title: Quarterly Courts in Backcountry Counties of Colonial Virginia

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2012

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: As of 1710, Virginia law required county courts to convene each month, a routine that with one notable exception persisted through the remainder of the colonial period.2 From 1749 to 1752, Virginians experimented with quarterly courts on a limited basis; six backcountry counties were allowed to schedule court every three months instead of monthly. Backcountry petitioners were confident of the exception’s merits, but influential eastern political leaders disagreed. After a contentious debate over renewing the quarterly act, the House of Burgesses let it lapse and thereafter repeatedly refused renewal. The quarterly court experiment offers fresh insights into mid-eighteenth-century Virginia. At one level, the court calendar issue was a political tussle between backcountry burgesses and Tidewater grandees. The opposition to quarterly courts likely also reflected an overt antipathy toward lawyers by conservative planters like Landon Carter. Most intriguingly, however, close scrutiny of lawsuits from the experimental period suggests that the fight over a quarterly schedule pitted the economic interests of lawyers practicing in backcountry courts against comparable interests of Tidewater merchants.

Url: http://www.partnershipsjournal.org/index.php/jbc/article/download/570/330

User Submitted?: No

Authors: MCCLESKEY, TURK

Periodical (Full): Journal of Backcountry Studies

Issue: 1

Volume: 7

Pages: 47-57

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Other

Countries: United States