Davyes-Pate Rebellion

The Davyes-Pate Rebellion was a short-lived rebellion that took place in Calvert County, Maryland in late 1676.  The rebels, lead by William Davyes and John Pate, gathered in resistance to high taxes and disenfranchisement.  Governor Thomas Notley had the rebel leaders hanged.

Quotes about the rebellion

• The last public levy was 297 lbs. (of tobacco) per poll, and the great levy the year before has given occasion for malignant spirits to mutter, and may cause some to mutiny, "for the common people will never be brought to understand the just reason of a public charge, or will they ever believe that the expense is for their own preservation."  Since General Davis and Pate were hanged the rabble have been much appalled.  Now enjoy peace among themselves, though never body was more replete with malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body.  The greatest revolution has occurred in Virginia affairs, for as their rebellion was grounded upon madness and folly, so the wheel has turned again as wonderfully and swiftly in the submission of all the chief rebels…
  • Thomas Notley, letter to Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (22 January 1677).

• The information of Timothy Biggs threw the Lords Proprietors into apprehensive confusion.  These were dangerous times for everyone engaged in colonization.  Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia had almost seemed to set a pattern for revolts.  The Davyes-Pate Rebellion in Maryland, although little more than a Sunday afternoon affair, had been considered so serious that its leaders suffered death by hanging.  And in London there were whispers that the King's Government were mentioning proprietary colonies in the same breath with Quo Warranto, the legal writ sometimes employed to revoke charters.
  • Hugh F. Rankin, "The Echoes of Rebellion", Ch. V of Upheaval in Albemarle: The Story of Culpeper's Rebellion (Raleigh, North Carolina: The Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission, 1962).

• As Bacon's Rebellion entered its radical phase, Bacon tried to spread the revolutionary movement to the neighboring colonies, each of which had severe and often similar grievances against its government and the Crown.  At the height of Bacon's Rebellion, in September 1676, sixty persons, led by William Davyes and John Pate, assembled in Calvert County, Maryland, to declare their opposition to crushing taxation and to Lord Baltimore's disfranchisement of the freemen.  They also declared their refusal to swear to a new loyalty oath proposed by the proprietor.  They refused to obey the governor's order to disband on promise to consider their grievances in the next Assembly, pointing out that the manipulated Assembly no longer represented the people.  But the death of Bacon caused the quick collapse of the embryo Davyes-Pate rebellion, and Davyes and Pate were hanged after being denounced as traitors.  The governor observed with satisfaction that the people were now suitably "terrified."  The threat was over, but the governor wrote in warning to Lord Baltimore that never had a people been "more replete with malignancy and frenzy."  Apparently, the Maryland regime had had a close call.  The result increased the bitterness in the colony against the proprietor.
  • Murray N. Rothbard, "The Aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion in the Other Southern Colonies," ch. 14, Pt. II of Conceived in Liberty vol. 1 (Arlington House, 1975), p. 126.