Speaker 1: We come into the front door. Right, you've got the
Speaker 1: main hallway, and then directly off the main hallway is
Speaker 1: this door, which is why I think it called parlor
Speaker 1: or a study, maybe a dining room. So it's now
Speaker 1: a guest bedroom where you can stay. But look at
Speaker 1: how big that fireplace is. This was meant to be
Speaker 1: a public space.
Speaker 2: Historian and interpreter Nicole Brown was my guide in Williamsburg,
Speaker 2: Virginia for a few days, and then after I left,
Speaker 2: she offered me a tour on FaceTime of Colonel John
Speaker 2: Chisel's sprawling home in the heart of the town. I
Speaker 2: had already left Virginia by the time she was given
Speaker 2: access to his property. His estate is now called the
Speaker 2: chisel Bucktrout House, and it's now a historical building where
Speaker 2: you can rent a room and enjoy an authentic home
Speaker 2: in colonial Williamsburg. Chisel's house has nine rooms on two floors,
Speaker 2: including several fireplaces. Nicole is the one who texted me
Speaker 2: about this story. She's helped me with the research, with scheduling, experts, everything.
Speaker 2: I've been very lucky because I've had so many relatives
Speaker 2: contact me over the years about the stories and their
Speaker 2: family histories and why they think it's important to tell
Speaker 2: these stories. Nicole is a historian who was also a
Speaker 2: big true crime fan, my favorite combination.
Speaker 1: So I should preface this by saying I'm deeply interested
Speaker 1: in this case because I love true crime, and to
Speaker 1: the point where that's pretty much all I listened to
Speaker 1: and think about when I'm not at work. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing about this case, both in the seventeen sixties as
Speaker 1: well as today, is that there's a lot of rumor, innuendo,
Speaker 1: and speculation surrounding the case.
Speaker 2: John Chisel and his gilded world were impressive on the surface,
Speaker 2: particularly to the guests inside this house in the seventeen sixties,
Speaker 2: Nicole describes the home for me.
Speaker 1: So he's definitely trying to whine and dine in the elite,
Speaker 1: continue to represent himself as elite, reflect his status in
Speaker 1: his house, and from looking at them, it's gorgeous, but
Speaker 1: that's definitely what he's trying to do.
Speaker 2: The architectural details in Chisel's home are really impressive. They
Speaker 2: all signal prosperity, or at least they're supposed to convince
Speaker 2: visitors that the Chisel family was excessively wealthy.
Speaker 1: So here's a great example. So you have this big fireplace. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not just the fireplace. To build the fireplace, you
Speaker 1: have to afford the bricks, you have to be able
Speaker 1: to import what you need in terms of tongs and
Speaker 1: fire dogs. And then you have enslaved labor. We're going
Speaker 1: to help run and clean and manage the fireplace. So,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the fireplace, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a very sort of essential basic human need.
Speaker 3: It provides heat.
Speaker 1: Right, it stops just being utilitarian, and it starts to
Speaker 1: define someone's status. And so I think it's actually a
Speaker 1: really good example of the whole house.
Speaker 2: John Chisel's obsession with status began with his father, Charles Chisel.
Speaker 2: Charles had gifted his son thousands of acres in Scotch
Speaker 2: Town in western Virginia, including a mansion house and numerous assets.
Speaker 2: He also left John a secure spot in the growing
Speaker 2: aristocracy of Virginia. He had been the Justice of the Peace,
Speaker 2: and he owned a horse named Edgecombe that had won
Speaker 2: a race in the Williamsburg Fair. I know that doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like a big deal, but it was to the gentry.
Speaker 2: John Chisel had been a member of the House of
Speaker 2: Burgesses for fifteen years, and by seventeen sixty six, his
Speaker 2: daughters had married well, which was unfortunately what was expected
Speaker 2: of them to become a bridge between two families. Marriage
Speaker 2: expanded a family's resources, and it might also increase their
Speaker 2: debt depending on the other family. Chisel's middle daughter, Susannah,
Speaker 2: had married John Robinson, the colon, the treasurer, and the
Speaker 2: speaker of the House of Burgesses, as well as one
Speaker 2: of the richest planters in Virginia. The second most influential
Speaker 2: lawmaker in the colony was Charles Carter, and Chisel's second
Speaker 2: eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had married him. Historian Julie Richter says
Speaker 2: that in seventeen sixty six Williamsburg status was incredibly important.
Speaker 3: So if somebody came to Chisel's house, he would want
Speaker 3: to be able to put on an elaborate meal that
Speaker 3: would be served on the right china, and you would
Speaker 3: eat with the right you tumsils. So if you're fearing debt,
Speaker 3: you're not going to be able to be a good
Speaker 3: host anymore. So that's going to strike it your ersonal honor.
Speaker 3: If you're a gentleman, part of your masculinity is controlling
Speaker 3: all parts of your life. And if you're in debt.
Speaker 3: You've missed being able to control your finances, so you're
Speaker 3: not really in control.
Speaker 2: And John Chisel needed to stay in control. His wife
Speaker 2: and his four daughters depended on it.
Speaker 3: He is living beyond his means. He has investments that
Speaker 3: aren't going well. You've got daughters. You have to marry off.
Speaker 3: I know that term sounds terrible, but you usually provide
Speaker 3: the man who marries your daughter with money. You're not
Speaker 3: going to be giving your potential son in law land
Speaker 3: because you want to keep the land within your family.
Speaker 3: But yeah, by the seventeen sixties that the elite are
Speaker 3: many are in debt to their British, to their English merchants.
Speaker 2: Historian Robert Weathers says that debt wasn't particularly alarming to
Speaker 2: most colonists. Everybody was underwater.
Speaker 4: So you know, here's the thing. You know, we may
Speaker 4: mention of debt a moment ago. Chisel's in debt, but whooped,
Speaker 4: dee doo. Everyone in Virginia is in debt. As a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, the colony is in debt. That's the
Speaker 4: whole soctet. The system is designed to be dependent on
Speaker 4: the mother country. It is illegal to export gold and
Speaker 4: silver from the island of Great Britain.
Speaker 2: Chisel's ego thrived on his status, but when his finances
Speaker 2: were threatened, so was that status. His wife endured many
Speaker 2: of his setbacks because despite their apparent wealth, John Chisel
Speaker 2: constantly made poor business decisions. But before we talk about those,
Speaker 2: let's talk about who was making money in seventeen hundreds Virginia.
Speaker 2: Who exactly were the gentry. Virginia had several nicknames, but
Speaker 2: in the seventeen hundreds it was called Old Dominion because
Speaker 2: it was the first and oldest of the overseas dominions
Speaker 2: of England. The colony thrived on agriculture, and the gentry
Speaker 2: were landowners, and many of the wealthiest planters used their
Speaker 2: land to farm tobacco. The members of the Tobacco Jin,
Speaker 2: including John Chisel and John Robinson, along with several of
Speaker 2: the founding fathers, were firmly in control of the politics
Speaker 2: of Virginia, but tobacco farming had begun spreading and shifting
Speaker 2: westward in the Commonwealth. More planters were popping up and
Speaker 2: becoming wealthy, so the ranks of the gentry in Virginia
Speaker 2: were swelling. With more gentry came more power and John Robinson,
Speaker 2: as the colony's treasurer, became even more powerful. He controlled
Speaker 2: the colony's money, its debts, its profits, and its savings.
Speaker 2: But this new gentry class was determined to take away
Speaker 2: some of that power from the older planter aristocrats, and
Speaker 2: Robinson understood that if he slipped up, there were fledgling
Speaker 2: politicians just waiting to take his place. Men like Patrick Henry,
Speaker 2: who were relatively new members of the House of Burgesses,
Speaker 2: were threatening Robinson's old guard, and the introduction of new
Speaker 2: taxes like the Stamp Act created attention never really felt before.
Speaker 2: Robinson was seen as an insider, the epitome of the
Speaker 2: old entitled establishment, and he knew it. He held the debts
Speaker 2: of many of the men in the colony, including his
Speaker 2: own father in law, John Chisel. When Chisel moved to
Speaker 2: Williamsburg and purchased the large house on Francis Street, he
Speaker 2: was already in debt for several thousand pounds, which would
Speaker 2: be about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds today. There
Speaker 2: were lawsuits and leans against his home in the city
Speaker 2: and the one back in Scotch Town, but in seventeen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, his financial prospects finally changed. Remember that both
Speaker 2: he and his father were land surveyors, and Chisel had
Speaker 2: discovered led or in Augusta County, to the northwest of Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: The story of the mines is interesting. By seventeen fifty six,
Speaker 2: John Chisel had been engaged in mining near Fredericksburg, Virginia,
Speaker 2: but he wanted to expand his operation. He wanted to
Speaker 2: make more money. Chisel had no formal training in prospecting
Speaker 2: for or, so instead of doing something scientific, he began
Speaker 2: slowly walking around the New River, quietly searching for valuable minerals.
Speaker 2: With his eyes trained down to the ground. Chisel didn't
Speaker 2: hear them at first. The story goes that a group
Speaker 2: of Native Americans threatened him, and despite surely being armed,
Speaker 2: Chisel ran. He weaved through the trees until he found
Speaker 2: a cave to slip into. As Chisel caught his breath,
Speaker 2: he saw it a bounty of rich mineral deposits, the
Speaker 2: first significant deposit of LF in the colony of Virginia.
Speaker 2: Chisel's destiny, it seemed, was connected to these lead mines.
Speaker 2: Chisel gasped, smiled, and then listened. The Native Americans we
Speaker 2: don't know which group this was seemed to be gone.
Speaker 2: He ran from the cave, vowing to return to claim
Speaker 2: this incredible treasure, and soon he dubbed the cave Chisel's Hole.
Speaker 2: Chisel discovered more sources of lead around the cave, and
Speaker 2: he quickly applied to the colony for a grant to
Speaker 2: buy all that land. He soon owned it, and then
Speaker 2: Chisel approached both his son in law, John Robinson and
Speaker 2: Virginia's governor to establish a new company. The Lead Mining
Speaker 2: Company a very successful business venture, but it was also
Speaker 2: very speculative, and speculative ventures are often very risky.
Speaker 5: Chisel and a few other really itant guys, including the
Speaker 5: governor of Virginia, go in on a project. Did they
Speaker 5: talk about Chisel's mind anact? Okay, Chisel's mind.
Speaker 2: This mine was a big project. So here's how it worked.
Speaker 2: They began mining by digging out lead carbonate ore that
Speaker 2: was either already exposed or some that was just lying
Speaker 2: underneath the soil. Some of those minerals contained a huge
Speaker 2: amount of lead, according to historian John Bryan. A small
Speaker 2: smelting furnace was erected and soon packed trains of horses
Speaker 2: were carrying lead throughout the colonies. Situated in a remote
Speaker 2: and wild location. The operation progressed as smoothly as could
Speaker 2: be expected. In the seventeen hundreds, mines could be incredibly profitable.
Speaker 2: In seventeen sixty two, Chisel hired miners, he bought supplies,
Speaker 2: and he also bought enslaved people. Was his main source
Speaker 2: of funding, providing more than eight thousand pounds, which would
Speaker 2: be about two million dollars today. Soon, John Chisel was
Speaker 2: a financial success once again, and he helped create a
Speaker 2: strong local economy. But historian Nicole Brown says that the
Speaker 2: mine's workforce paid a very heavy price. Well, he was
Speaker 2: a large employer right with his mind's responsible for a
Speaker 2: lot of employment.
Speaker 1: Ay, they were responsible for a lot of enslaved labor.
Speaker 1: So most of the people working in the mines were
Speaker 1: enslaved and it was a brutal, brutal job. But if
Speaker 1: we're talking about most of those mines and lead being
Speaker 1: used in the colony for the benefit of the colony, yes,
Speaker 1: but the majority of people working in the mines were enslaved.
Speaker 2: Nicole says that Chisele forced thirty six enslaved people to
Speaker 2: work on the site. She says it was a massive workforce,
Speaker 2: and mining was a very dangerous job. That's a theme
Speaker 2: we'll talk about soon, the lives of enslaved people, how
Speaker 2: they were used abused, and also their role as witnesses
Speaker 2: in this case. Chisel and Robinson's Lead Mining Company seemed
Speaker 2: to move along well until seventeen sixty three, when King
Speaker 2: George the Third issued what would be called the Proclamation
Speaker 2: of seventeen sixty three. This was at the end of
Speaker 2: the French and Indian War. The crown set territorial limits
Speaker 2: on where colonists could settle in America. It was supposedly
Speaker 2: meant to appease Native Americans. The King had created a
Speaker 2: boundary known as the Proclamation Line, which prevented colonists from
Speaker 2: encroaching on indigenous lands. John Chisel's mind was now on
Speaker 2: Native American soil. This was really the beginning of Chisel's
Speaker 2: financial problems. The Lead Mining Company no longer had an
Speaker 2: official title to the land, yet they continued to mine,
Speaker 2: dismissing any threat from the surrounding Native Americans. The mines
Speaker 2: New River did continue production, but at great financial cost.
Speaker 2: The Lead Minds were becoming insolvent, but John Chisel was
Speaker 2: keeping that a secret. From everyone, and remember this season
Speaker 2: is all about secrets. By early seventeen sixty six, all
Speaker 2: seemed to be well with the Chisels to people who
Speaker 2: didn't understand their financial situation. John Chisel continued to pile
Speaker 2: on debts in hopes that the Lead Minds would soon
Speaker 2: turn a profit. Chisel might have had reason for hope.
Speaker 2: Carson Hudson, as a historian and author with Colonial Williamsburg.
Speaker 6: As far as his financial future, kind of looked like
Speaker 6: it might be bright because if the Lead Minds boom,
Speaker 6: that would be paying off a lot of debts for him.
Speaker 2: Chisel was always scrambling for money to pay off debts
Speaker 2: so his family wouldn't go into bankruptcy, but his spending
Speaker 2: habits didn't help because he was chronically short on cash.
Speaker 2: In seventeen fifty four, he ordered a large package of
Speaker 2: tobacco seed from a London mercantile house for fifteen hundred pounds,
Speaker 2: which is about four hundred thousand dollars today. Chisel wanted
Speaker 2: to grow it on his land in Scotch Town, but
Speaker 2: he had no money, so he requested a two thousand
Speaker 2: pounds loan at seven percent interest. He would never be
Speaker 2: able to pay that back. John Chisel was simply terrible
Speaker 2: at business. He owed friends money he had borrowed thirteen
Speaker 2: hundred pounds from another member of the House of Burgess's,
Speaker 2: William Bird the Third. He owed his son in law,
Speaker 2: John Robinson, many thousands of pounds. Robinson ordered Chisel to
Speaker 2: put numerous properties in his name to settle the debt,
Speaker 2: including the tavern Chisel owned. Chisel and Robinson had a
Speaker 2: transactional relationship. Robinson loaned him money and Robinson was also
Speaker 2: his chief partner in virtually all of Bizzel's businesses. Many
Speaker 2: people in the colonies, as well as in England, were
Speaker 2: in debt. It was almost impossible not to be in
Speaker 2: debt because there was a trickle down effect. If your
Speaker 2: employer was in debt and he couldn't pay you, then
Speaker 2: you couldn't pay your bills, and then your vendors couldn't
Speaker 2: pay theirs, and so on. It was a vicious cycle.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, John Robinson not only had power,
Speaker 2: but he had money, lots and lots of money. He
Speaker 2: always seemed to have money to loan out, and Chisel
Speaker 2: depended on it. But now John Robinson was gravely ill,
Speaker 2: lying in bed at his estate in King and Queen County.
Speaker 2: It was dark outside that night in May of seventeen
Speaker 2: sixty six, John Robinson was writhing in pain. He wasn't
Speaker 2: likely thinking of his father in law, but soon Robinson
Speaker 2: would consume all of Chisel's thoughts. Robinson would ruin his
Speaker 2: own family. And what would a ruined man do if
Speaker 2: given a terrible choice? As the colonies were headed toward war,
Speaker 2: Americans were defining who they were by taking sides. Were
Speaker 2: you loyal to the crown or to a brand new nation?
Speaker 2: Historian Cash Earhart sets the stage, are we starting to
Speaker 2: call it a divided nation?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, if you've ever seen the cartoon the
Speaker 7: illustration that Benjamin Franklin drew of a snake chopped into
Speaker 7: pieces and each one has a letter representing a colony
Speaker 7: or a region of the nation, and underneath it says
Speaker 7: unite or die. And he creates that early in the
Speaker 7: Frenchland Indian War to acknowledge the fact we are a
Speaker 7: divided people. Really, they think of themselves as subjects of
Speaker 7: the crown and residents of an individual colony. There is
Speaker 7: no common American identity for the most part.
Speaker 2: In seventeen seventy four, Patrick Henry attended the First Continental
Speaker 2: Congress in Philadelphia. He stood up and he gave a
Speaker 2: powerful speech about unity in the colonies. It was one
Speaker 2: of the most incredible speeches offered by Henry.
Speaker 7: He stands up and he gives a terrific speech, and
Speaker 7: he says, essentially, we need to do away with these
Speaker 7: petty self identifying names. I am not a Virginian, I
Speaker 7: am not a Carolinian, I am not a New Englander.
Speaker 7: I am an American.
Speaker 2: The problem was that in seventeen sixty six, all of
Speaker 2: the colonists were being ordered to pay expensive taxes thanks
Speaker 2: to a war that they never chose to take on,
Speaker 2: the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War.
Speaker 2: Historian Robert Weathers says that Parliament realized that they had
Speaker 2: made a different, difficult and potentially risky decision.
Speaker 4: So the British government looks around and they see the
Speaker 4: subjects on the island of Great Britain having already paid
Speaker 4: heavy taxes throughout the course of the war, which is
Speaker 4: never a popular thing no matter what century you're living in,
Speaker 4: and so they say to themselves, hey, we need to
Speaker 4: find people who benefited from the war who don't pay
Speaker 4: as high taxes and still fall within our jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: So Parliament looked three thousand miles across the Atlantic to
Speaker 2: the North American colonies. The colonies could help shoulder the
Speaker 2: Crown's financial burden, and it was difficult to complain when
Speaker 2: you couldn't protest in person outside Parliament. Taxing the colonies
Speaker 2: was an easy solution. Virginia was soon in debt and
Speaker 2: many Virginias couldn't pay those debts. The colonies planters faced
Speaker 2: a shortage of cash. The sheriffs couldn't collect those debts,
Speaker 2: which meant that the Treasure of Virginia couldn't pay the
Speaker 2: colony's debts. I asked historian Julie Richter to break down
Speaker 2: how we ended up at war based on several things,
Speaker 2: including the scandal that we have coming up. The colonists
Speaker 2: had had enough of high taxes, but they were also
Speaker 2: nervous about war.
Speaker 3: They're doing okay, but even a lot of other people
Speaker 3: are not ready to rock the boat. You know uncertainty,
Speaker 3: and if you're a trades person who gets your raw
Speaker 3: materials from England, you want those items to be coming
Speaker 3: in to the colony so you can continue your livelihood,
Speaker 3: support your family.
Speaker 2: But soon those trades people could no longer afford to
Speaker 2: build houses or horse carts or machinery. What good is
Speaker 2: it to not rock the boat when you're being pushed
Speaker 2: out of it by the crown. But this realization takes
Speaker 2: more than a decade for the colonists to sort out.
Speaker 3: It takes years, really, from the end of the French
Speaker 3: nation in War seventeen sixty three to seventeen seventy six
Speaker 3: for the colonies to kind of ident realize that they
Speaker 3: need to work together, and then realize that they're not
Speaker 3: going to get what they want, so they declare independence.
Speaker 3: How's after the American Revolution simplified.
Speaker 2: Richter reminds us that the colony's treasurer was John Robinson,
Speaker 2: John Chisel's son in law. The crown had gifted Robinson
Speaker 2: with an incredible amount of power in the seventeen sixties.
Speaker 3: He held two very powerful offices. He was Treasurer of
Speaker 3: the colony and Speaker of the House of Burgesses, so
Speaker 3: he basically controlled everything that happened in the lower portion
Speaker 3: of the colonial government.
Speaker 2: In the seventeen fifties, the King of England recognized that
Speaker 2: Robinson had too much power, so he sent a representative
Speaker 2: to Virginia to force him out of one of those jobs.
Speaker 2: But the governor realized that Robinson was incredibly popular and
Speaker 2: he literally held the purse strings of the crown's wealthiest colony.
Speaker 2: Undermining him publicly would have been a mistake, so Robinson
Speaker 2: continued to have absolute power while other men in the
Speaker 2: colony struggled. Robinson owned several thousand acres of land in
Speaker 2: half a dozen counties, several houses in the city, and
Speaker 2: about four hundred enslaved people. Again, appearances mattered. When I
Speaker 2: write about the time period in America known as the
Speaker 2: Gilded Age in the late eighteen hundreds, that feels very
Speaker 2: much like seventeen hundreds Virginia. Opulence reigned there, and the
Speaker 2: more luxurious the good was, the more the gentry wanted it.
Speaker 2: Robinson cared very much about appearances.
Speaker 3: I think the money and shame are deeply interconnected. The
Speaker 3: elite of Virginia in the eighteenth century deeply needed to
Speaker 3: display who they were if you to come into Williams.
Speaker 3: For in the eighteenth century, they wanted you to know
Speaker 3: that they were rich by how they appeared, so their
Speaker 3: clothing how they arrived into town, whether it was on horseback,
Speaker 3: if you were a man, or if you were a family,
Speaker 3: you would come in a carriage. And part of this
Speaker 3: is connected to their idea of honor as well. And
Speaker 3: you were honorable if you had money, you were honorable,
Speaker 3: if you could be a bountiful host.
Speaker 2: Robinson could also be very generous. He loaned money to
Speaker 2: his cash strapped friends with very low interest, including his
Speaker 2: son in law, John Chisel. He loaned a lot of
Speaker 2: money to Chisel. Simon Robinson and Julie Richter explained the
Speaker 2: dynamic between Robinson and his father in law.
Speaker 8: My understanding is that when the scandal broke, Chisel may
Speaker 8: have been asset rich, but he was cash poor and
Speaker 8: possibly insolvent. So you know, it had a major backer
Speaker 8: through marriage with the Robinson family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is a window into the fragility of society
Speaker 3: at that point. On the surface, he would have certainly
Speaker 3: been considered gentry. He really would have been that super
Speaker 3: gentry because of that connection through his daughter to John Robinson,
Speaker 3: who was the most powerful colonist, well connected landowner, owner
Speaker 3: of enslaved men, women and children. But yeah, some of
Speaker 3: it was surface level and a good part of it
Speaker 3: was tied to his investments and his connection to his son.
Speaker 2: In law, but Chisel's connection to his chief financial backer
Speaker 2: was about to unexpectedly vanish. Early Sunday morning, on May eleventh,
Speaker 2: seventeen sixty six, John Robinson died at the age of
Speaker 2: sixty one. The local newspaper reported that he quote paid
Speaker 2: the last debt to nature after laboring some days with
Speaker 2: the most excruciating torments of the stone. It was probably
Speaker 2: kidney stones, which would have been very painful. I was
Speaker 2: a little surprised that someone could actually die of kidney stones,
Speaker 2: even back in the seventeen hundreds. I had always thought
Speaker 2: they were treatable, but they can be deadly if they're
Speaker 2: severe and if they aren't caught. Scientists have found kidney
Speaker 2: stones in Egyptian mummies, which likely led to their deaths,
Speaker 2: and those deaths would have been excruciating. John Robinson had
Speaker 2: died in immense pain. Susannah Robinson, Chisel's middle daughter, wept,
Speaker 2: and after a somber service, Robinson was laid to rest
Speaker 2: in his family's graveyard, but his secrets were about to
Speaker 2: be splashed across newspapers around the world. Now the first
Speaker 2: of three scandals in our story begins to be revealed.
Speaker 2: Shortly after Robinson's death, Chisel was notified about something terrible
Speaker 2: for him and for many of the gentry of Virginia.
Speaker 2: You may have guessed by now that it has to
Speaker 2: do with money.
Speaker 6: You know, they're all in there, They're all got their
Speaker 6: fingers in the pie. And the Robinson scandal, of course
Speaker 6: reaches everybody, including Patrick Henry, who owes like eleven pounds
Speaker 6: or something other. Yeah, he's still yeah, And everybody else
Speaker 6: owes money. You know, they're all caught. It's it's like
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, you know, the flashball went off,
Speaker 6: and everybody's caught. It's bad, and it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 6: make the gentry look good.
Speaker 2: Our first scandal was politely referred to in seventeen sixty
Speaker 2: six as the Robinson affair. Affair was too mild for
Speaker 2: what John Robinson did before he died. After his death
Speaker 2: in mid May, the Speaker of the House of Burgesses
Speaker 2: was mourned. His friends and family lamented their loss. But
Speaker 2: then the humdrum business of government had to resume, and
Speaker 2: to get an idea about the size of the colony's debt.
Speaker 2: The Treasury needed to take a look at John Robinson's
Speaker 2: financial books. There had been some whispers that these books
Speaker 2: might not be as clean as they should have been,
Speaker 2: so his record keeping and his accounts needed to be
Speaker 2: examined in detail.
Speaker 5: But they don't do it right away, like this is
Speaker 5: the kind of stuff that now, I mean, this is
Speaker 5: a big deal, we do it right away. Gentry people
Speaker 5: don't run from burning buildings, so they don't like run
Speaker 5: at major financial scandals fast, especially when they know it's
Speaker 5: affecting a lot of the other people who are their peers,
Speaker 5: who participated in this process.
Speaker 2: When they finally got around to it, Robinson's colleagues walked
Speaker 2: into his office, pulled out chairs, and began to examine
Speaker 2: his ledger books, his financial accounts.
Speaker 5: But they sit down with the books and they go,
Speaker 5: we got a problem.
Speaker 2: It seems that the most powerful man in Virginia, John Robinson,
Speaker 2: the man the entire colony had trusted to maintain their
Speaker 2: financial affairs, was a liar and a thief. But what
Speaker 2: he did is tricky, So I've asked a slew of
Speaker 2: historians to explain exactly what happened.
Speaker 6: The scheme that he was going under was to basically
Speaker 6: have the lower classes pay the debts of the upper
Speaker 6: classes by floating money.
Speaker 2: He did this by loaning his friend's banknotes that were
Speaker 2: supposed to have been destroyed when they had been read
Speaker 2: deemed by the owner.
Speaker 6: He was supposed to burn the notes which were being
Speaker 6: turned in, but he was lending them out to friends
Speaker 6: to reuse.
Speaker 4: He's lending them out to his friends at suspiciously low
Speaker 4: interest rates. And these are these are this is no
Speaker 4: small amount of money.
Speaker 6: So he was kind of like the money was like
Speaker 6: being double dipped.
Speaker 2: Basically, John Robinson was making money off of the colony's
Speaker 2: own expired banknotes. He was taking money meant for the
Speaker 2: colony and loaning the notes to his friends and also
Speaker 2: spending it himself.
Speaker 8: There had been an economic shock in Virginia in the
Speaker 8: mid seventeen sixties, and instead of burning the old banknotes
Speaker 8: that had been returned to the treasury, he lent out
Speaker 8: that money to his friends and acquaintances, trying to help
Speaker 8: them maintain their businesses and their plantation economy in Virginia.
Speaker 8: And on the basis that these friends in a quaint
Speaker 8: stances and colleagues would at some stage pay him back
Speaker 8: and everything would be fine and the economy of Virginia
Speaker 8: would be sustained.
Speaker 2: Of course, that didn't happen because just about everyone in
Speaker 2: Virginia's gentry class was in debt in the seventeen hundreds. Everyone.
Speaker 2: So I wondered if John Robinson would have gotten away
Speaker 2: with this, if he had lived, would he have gotten caught?
Speaker 3: Yes, hundreds of thousands of pounds and at least, you know,
Speaker 3: through surviving documents, it appears that few, if any, people
Speaker 3: knew what he was doing.
Speaker 2: Wow, no one knew what John Robinson had been doing.
Speaker 2: He had been stealing the equivalent of millions and millions
Speaker 2: of dollars. The gentry were left stunned. John Chisel, Robinson's
Speaker 2: father in law, was silent. He was surely embarrassed, humiliated,
Speaker 2: and alarmed because oftentimes it had been the surviving family
Speaker 2: who would be responsible for any financial burdens. After the
Speaker 2: Crown discovered that John Robinson was a thief, that he
Speaker 2: had nearly crippled the colony, the repercussions for Virginia's government
Speaker 2: were swift.
Speaker 3: One of the results of the fraud that Robinson committed
Speaker 3: was that the two offices he held Speaker of the
Speaker 3: House of Burgesses to be like Speaker of the House
Speaker 3: of Representatives in our US government today, and then treasurer
Speaker 3: are separated. They're not going to put that much power
Speaker 3: in the hands of any one person.
Speaker 2: Again, the House of Burgesses did that six months after
Speaker 2: John Robinson's death, but Virginia was already reeling when the
Speaker 2: story leaked out to the newspapers and the middle class
Speaker 2: read the news the gentry had been stealing money, their money.
Speaker 8: It really reinforced that there was something rotten at the
Speaker 8: heart of the way they were being governed.
Speaker 2: Everyone who was anyone in the upper classes seemed to
Speaker 2: be in debt to John Robinson, say historians Carson Hudson
Speaker 2: and Robert Weathers, and that included future Founding fathers.
Speaker 6: The Robinson scandal, of course, reaches everybody, including Patrick Henry,
Speaker 6: who owes so like eleven pounds or something other. Yeah,
Speaker 6: he's still and everybody else owes money.
Speaker 2: Eleven pounds was about twenty three hundred dollars today, which
Speaker 2: might not seem like much, but remember Patrick Henry was
Speaker 2: the man who stood up in the House of Burgesses
Speaker 2: and declared that men like John Robinson shouldn't support the
Speaker 2: crown and its attempts to overtax the colonists. Doesn't that
Speaker 2: make Patrick Henry a little bit of a hypocrite? Other
Speaker 2: revelations followed when Robinson's financial records were revealed.
Speaker 4: One of the most famous debt cases in Virginia is
Speaker 4: out of William Bird the third. And I've heard rumors
Speaker 4: or red rumors of William Bird third taking anywhere up
Speaker 4: to thirty thousand pounds. To give you an idea of
Speaker 4: how much money that really is, a skilled tradesman in
Speaker 4: the city of Williamsburg, a journeyman tradesman might have between
Speaker 4: thirty and thirty five pounds in a year. So William
Speaker 4: Bird thirty thousand pounds an incredible amount of money. Even
Speaker 4: Patrick Henry is involved in this. He doesn't have nearly
Speaker 4: that much, but he is involved in the takes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: a lot of people are, including Chisel.
Speaker 2: Right, John Chisel was in debt to him too. Chisel's
Speaker 2: name was on the list of gentry who were now
Speaker 2: embroiled in this scandal. The middle and lower classes and
Speaker 2: the colonies were already furious over the Stamp Act, even
Speaker 2: if it had been repealed. Large taxes were just the beginning,
Speaker 2: and now the illustrious John Robinson had been stealing and
Speaker 2: virtually giving away money to his wealthy friends, but Chisel
Speaker 2: was now responsible, directly responsible for his son in law's estate.
Speaker 2: Because Chisel was Robinson's executor, that role came with a
Speaker 2: lot of responsibility in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 3: It puts a huge, huge burden on the people who
Speaker 3: were called to settle Robinson's state after he died. If
Speaker 3: you were in the colonial Virginia the executor of an estate,
Speaker 3: you were financially responsible for it.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: A good example of that family debt is founding father
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson suffered from huge debts that were eventually
Speaker 2: passed on to his grandson. He owed about one million
Speaker 2: dollars in today's money. At one point, he said that
Speaker 2: he was absolutely miserable because he couldn't pay it off.
Speaker 2: As we said earlier, debt was not unusual for Virginia
Speaker 2: tobacco planters. But Jefferson, it turns out, was also not
Speaker 2: a very good businessman, and his years in public service
Speaker 2: caused him to neglect his tobacco crops.
Speaker 3: Part but not all, of Thomas Jefferson's financial problems were
Speaker 3: due to the fact his father in law died deeply indebted.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, And Jefferson obviously had a little bit of
Speaker 3: debt problem that was his own, but he also was
Speaker 3: responsible for John Wales's debts. So Chisel being connected to
Speaker 3: John Robinson is just going to be overwhelming once you
Speaker 3: realize what had happened and what he had done with
Speaker 3: the money.
Speaker 2: In Virginia, family really mattered in colonial America. Family could
Speaker 2: make your life comfortable, or it could make your life hell.
Speaker 2: John Chisel would be legally responsible for his father in
Speaker 2: law's debts, but how do you pay off the debts
Speaker 2: of a son in law when you owe him so
Speaker 2: much money? And how did all of this happen? It's
Speaker 2: easy to re examine history and detect missteps that altered
Speaker 2: the course of so many people. One large mistake that
Speaker 2: lawmakers in Virginia made, of course, was offering a man
Speaker 2: like John Robinson so much power without any real system
Speaker 2: of checks and balances.
Speaker 3: If I could put myself in the shoes of a
Speaker 3: member of the House of Burgesses at that time or
Speaker 3: the Council, so that the upper chamber of government have
Speaker 3: somebody watching the treasure, very closely. Yeah, you can't assume
Speaker 3: that economic stability will be there.
Speaker 2: Virginia was the most prosperous colony, but now, thanks to
Speaker 2: John Robinson, it was in deep financial trouble. There was
Speaker 2: the risk that the entire colony would go bankrupt.
Speaker 3: Even in the most prosperous of England's colonies. That Robinson
Speaker 3: chose to do what he did in the face of
Speaker 3: economic uncertainty the end of the French and Indian War,
Speaker 3: I think you have to you'd want to watch a
Speaker 3: little bit more closely. It's just the financial mess he
Speaker 3: created rippled through the revolution.
Speaker 2: While John Chisel would have been responsible for Robinson's debts
Speaker 2: regardless of the scandal, his son in laws corruption made
Speaker 2: it all so much worse for him.
Speaker 3: If Robinson had not embezzled us when he died, there
Speaker 3: might have been some debt, but it wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: dishonorable debt. It would have been the debt like all
Speaker 3: the other elite had, and his executors would still have
Speaker 3: been responsible for paying off his debt, but it wouldn't
Speaker 3: have been nearly as big.
Speaker 2: Julie's phrase, dishonorable debt is key here. Being subjected to
Speaker 2: dishonorable debt was humiliating for a man like Chisel and
Speaker 2: his daughter Susannah, because she was married to Robinson. Without
Speaker 2: the scandal, Susannah would have mourned her husband, but now
Speaker 2: she was also embroiled in Robinson's crimes.
Speaker 3: That stress would not have been in Chisel's life. That
Speaker 3: his daughter, Yes, she still would have been a widow,
Speaker 3: she was still most likely would have had debt, but
Speaker 3: again it wouldn't have been dishonorable debt. It wouldn't have
Speaker 3: been overwhelming debt. And if you know, thinking with our
Speaker 3: twenty first century medical knowledge, if you take that kind
Speaker 3: of stress off a person, it's yeah, it's not going
Speaker 3: to take. Chisel wouldn't have had the same physical and
Speaker 3: mental and emotional stress.
Speaker 2: John Chisel was in misery. He was hopelessly insolvent, his
Speaker 2: son in law was dead and then mired in a scandal.
Speaker 2: His family was on the brink of bankruptcy, and now
Speaker 2: the Chisel and Robinson names bore a black mark. Simon
Speaker 2: Robinson says that John Chisel seemed like a doomed man.
Speaker 8: I mean, just having that key relationship fall away with
Speaker 8: the death of Robinson, that was all immediately a shock.
Speaker 8: Then the unfolding financial scandal, that taint would have been
Speaker 8: on Chisel, and you know that rumor mill about, Oh
Speaker 8: it's all of the planters, all of the top people
Speaker 8: are in this together. You know they're doing fine, they're
Speaker 8: scratching each other's backs. All of that would have been
Speaker 8: poured over and would have really been a major issue
Speaker 8: for Chisel weighing on his mind.
Speaker 2: I would imagine as members of the House of Burgesses
Speaker 2: continued their investigation, John Chisel's nerves frayed. He was inconsolable, frantic,
Speaker 2: and very angry. What else could possibly happen to him?
Speaker 2: He thought quite a lot On the next episode of
Speaker 2: tenfold more Wicked on exactly right when you walk into
Speaker 2: this town, slavery should holler at you from every angle,
Speaker 2: because people will come here and look at the beautiful
Speaker 2: craftsmanship and.
Speaker 5: Will remark on it.
Speaker 1: And just as soon as you say, do you think,
Speaker 1: mister Randolph blank those boards? You can see it.
Speaker 5: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So Colonel Chisel, he's on his home from visiting his
Speaker 1: lead mines, and he stops at a tavern. While he
Speaker 1: is there, he encounters a merchant who knows and by
Speaker 1: the name of Robert Rutledge.
Speaker 5: Scottish merchants. They hate Scottish merchants because guess what they're
Speaker 5: good at it.
Speaker 6: Yes, Scotts are not well liked. Peter Emerger and especially
Speaker 6: the upper class who are supportive of King George. Scotts
Speaker 6: are rebels, barbarians and traders.
Speaker 5: He is a representation of these guys, these upsight guys,
Speaker 5: these guys who are not gentry having control over his life.
Speaker 4: Which puts us right at the scene of murder.
Speaker 6: Right.
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