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choked on his daughter’s words. He could not find any words with which to reply. He sat blinking at his daughter, more frightened for her than offended by her.
    Etáin frowned again, and did not pursue the subject. In the back of her mind, as a measure against Reverend Acland’s sermons and notorious piety, were the two men who were, to her, exemplars of moral action and worth. They were, for her, treasures of the earth, and she would not renounce them.
    * * *
    Lieutenant-Governor Francis Fauquier understood the intent of the proclamation at least as well as did the minister. Unlike that man, however, he possessed more than one particle, if not of Christ’s benevolence, then of humanist concern for the edict’s implications and for the grace of his colonial subjects. In February, after reading its velvety paragraphs and pondering their explicit meanings, he wrote to the Board of Trade, profusely praising the ukase on one hand, and on the other humbly contradicting his praise by broaching the issues which he sincerely believed that His Majesty, his Privy Council, and their lordships of the Board might not have given their full attention. He inquired about the status of all the legal settlers west of the demarcation line, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of acres of land that had been patented by individuals and land companies decades ago, on much of which taxes and quitrents had already been paid. Many of these patents had been granted by past royal governors and approved by the king, the Council, and the Board. In fact, he tactfully pointed out, both the settlements and the patents had been encouraged by the Crown’s own policies. The new policy, he gently reminded his superiors, was truly a reversal, and could not be implemented without risking grave consequences or with any hope of success.
    Fauquier was skittish, for while he felt it was his duty to raise the subject, he did not want to risk still another reprimand from the Board. Their lordships were not pleased, he knew, with his habit of signing acts and legislationpassed by the General Assembly but to which had not been appended suspending clauses, which allowed the Board or Privy Council to nullify legislation they did not like. They did not tire of reminding him that it was not his prerogative to endorse such laws and thus violate their explicit instructions to veto any law sent up from the House of Burgesses and his Council that did not carry the mandatory suspending clause. And they were especially not happy with his practice of exercising his own judgment and defending both a clause-less law and his oversight by pleading the colony’s extenuating circumstances in long, apologetic, and irrelevant discourses.
    The Board of Trade received their delinquent governor’s letter in late March, but did not read it until early July. In their tardy reply, their lordships offered no concrete guidance to Fauquier except to urge that he abide “by the obvious sense and spirit of His Majesty’s Proclamation.” The Board devoted many more words, however, to a request for an abstract of all patented land in Virginia from which quitrents — an ancient feudal levy on freeholders paid in lieu of service to a king or lord — might be drawn, to more accurately calculate such revenue due the Crown. The Board wished this detailed abstract to include all land patented, bought, and sold, together with names, dates, numbers of acres, and locations, from the founding of the colony a century and a half ago to the present.
    Fauquier reluctantly, and privately, conceded to himself that their lordships were neither blind nor insensitive to the consequences of the proclamation, that they were indifferent to both reason and practicality. He balked at their request for the abstract, and instructed his deputy auditor and deputy secretary to compose memorials to the Board stating the difficulties of the task. He himself did not reply to the Board until late December of that