COLONIAL PRESIDENTS AND GOVERNORS
65
tlie island of Derniuda, which position he held
till 1738, when in recognition of his exposing
a long practiced system of fraud in the col-
lecting of the customs of the West India
Islands, he received the appointment of "sur-
veyor-general of customs in the southern parts
of the continent of America."" He was named
as his predecessors had been a member of all
the councils of the American colonies. Though
his claim to sit in the \'irginia council was
resisted by the councillors, the board of trade
in May, 1742, ordered that the royal purpose
should be enforced. On August 17, 1746, he
was specially commissioned inspector general
to examine into the duties of the collector of
customs of the Island of Barbadoes. In the
discharge of his duties he exposed a great
defalcation in the revenues there. In 1749
he appears to have resided in London as a
merchant engaged in trade with the colonies.
He was appointed lieutenant-governor of \'ir-
ginia, July 29, 1751 and with his wnfe Rebecca
nee Affleck and two daughters, Elizabeth and
Rebecca, arrived in the colony November 20,
1 75 1. His administration began rather inaus-
picuously, as he almost immediately fell into
altercation with the house of burgesses over
the fee of a pistole which he required for
issuing patents. A similar fee had been exacted
b\ Lord Culpeper many years before, and the
remonstrance of the assembly had caused the
king to forbid its collection. The Virginians
regarded the present fee as a tax, and they sent
John Randolph to England to represent their
cause. The board of trade, after hearing the
argument on both sides, recommended a com-
promise, and the fee w^as only permitted to
be charged for large grants of land, and for
none whatever beyond the mountains, where
nearly all the ungranted land lay at this time.
VIR-5
This altercation had an important influence
upon the endeavors of Dinwiddie in another
direction. Dinwiddie had become a member of
the Ohio Company and he had a direct in-
terest in the destinies of the western coun-
try. W hen. therefore, the French began to
plant settlements on the Ohio and occupied
\'enango, an Indian trading post at the junc-
tion of the Alleghany river and French creek,
Dinwiddie sent (ieorge Washington to pro-
test to the l'>ench commandant at Fort Le
Boeuf. When no satisfactory answer was
brought back, he sent orders to Captain Wil-
liam Trent to build) a log fort at the junction
of the .Alleghany and Monongahela, where
Pittsburgh now stands. This position was
considered on all hands as the key to the
situation in the West. The French were not
long in driving the Virginians out and occupy-
ing the post themselves. While this was
occurring, Washington with some 300 troops
was marching to the assistance of Trent, when
meeting with a scouting party of the French
he attacked and killed some twenty of them,
with a loss of only one man. This w^as the
beginning of a war which was to spread prac-
tically over the whole civilized world. Din-
widdie more than any one else realized the sit-
uation, and he displayed prodigious energy in
his efTorts to arouse the British government
and the colonists to the importance of the
crisis. The home government was slow to
move and the other colonies generally were
indifferent, as was the Virginia assembly itself,
who distrusting the purposes of Dinwiddie
and deeming him too precipitate w'ould not
grant the money asked for, except on condi-
tions calculated to humble the pride of the
governor. So during the time that Dinwiddie
held the government of Virginia, the war with
