THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605030645
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
They don't make them any tougher than Col. Edmund Scarborough, the swashbuckling 17th century Eastern Shore Virginia bullyboy who represented his area in the assembly at Jamestown from 1643 to the time of his death in 1671, as well as serving as its speaker for the session of 1645-46.
Ruthlessly highhanded and imperious by nature - dubious traits that gained him the nickname of ``King Edmund'' - Scarborough was a rank individualist who brooked no opposition to his wishes. Actually, he was not much worse than many of the others of his class and generation who laid the foundations of Virginia's 18th century planter aristocracy. In his instance, however, he saw to it that he had better publicity.
Scarborough descended from a long-established landed gentry family in Norfolk, England. Interestingly, that was also the home territory of the Thoroughgoods, whose scion, Capt. Adam Thoroughgood, cut quite a swath in the early political and social history of the present Norfolk-Virginia Beach area.
Presumably born in London, since he was baptized in the church of St. Martin's in the Fields there on Oct. 6, 1617, Scarborough was a younger son of Edmund Scarborough Sr., a burgess for Accomack county in 1629-30. While still a child, he came to Virginia with his parents where his father settled on the Eastern Shore and began laying the foundation for the family fortune by cattle raising.
Scarborough's elder brother, Charles, never came to Virginia but grew up to be one of the most eminent English physicians of his time. He was also a staunch royalist, an sentiment that was shared by his Virginia kin. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, he became the king's private doctor and was knighted in 1669. Meanwhile, having the ear of British royalty, he was helpful in promoting his younger brother's interests in the then primitive wilds of Virginia.
Following his father's death in 1634, young Edmund, who was attending school in England, returned to Virginia. Even though he had not yet gained his majority, he took over his family holdings with such authority that it was soon realized that he was a person to be reckoned with.
Besides representing his county in the Assembly, where he cut quite a figure with his bluster, Scarborough also owned a fleet of vessels which he used to carry on a brisk trade with the New England and New Netherlands (later New York) colonies. One of his principal activities was the importing of enslaved Africans into Virginia to be used in the tobacco fields. Another of his enterprises was the operation of profitable salt works on the Atlantic seaboard, a monopoly he had obtained by political wire pulling at Jamestown.
Scarborough's commercial enterprises, aided and abetted by his brother, who had access to the royal ear in London, were carried on highhandedly enough. But it was his shameful dealings with the Eastern Shore Indians that still blackens his memory.
Firmly convinced that there were no good Native Americans but dead ones, and backed up with armed forces over which he had control, Scarborough carried on an escalating crusade to eliminate the Indians from Virginia's two Eastern counties. This caused his helpless victims to refer to him as ``Conjurer Scarborough.''
The old records contain numerous graphic accounts of Scarborough's cruelty, but one of them will suffice to make the point.
When he suspected that a tribe of Indians that lived near his estate was making inroads on his cattle, he sent them a message saying the Great Spirit would preach to them if they would gather in a certain ditch on his plantation the following Sunday.
Fearing not to obey, the Indians gathered at the time appointed in the deep ditch where Scarborough said the Great Spirit would address them. It did - with a vengeance! Before his victims arrived, the colonel secreted a brass cannon loaded with scrap iron behind some bushes at the other end of the ditch. When the Indians were assembled, he ignited the cannon with a live coal and the Great Spirit's fiery sermon was so lethal not many of the audience remained alive after the opening remark. by CNB