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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 17 · 1 December 1763

One penny and a hero

A young man in a dark coat rides high on the shoulders of four men across a muddy yard, one hand raised, as a crowd of farmers and townsmen cheers and waves hats before a brick courthouse with arched doorways.
Hanover Courthouse, Virginia, December 1763. The jury awards the parson one penny, and the crowd, wild with delight, seizes twenty-seven-year-old Patrick Henry. They carry him on their shoulders around the yard. Rothbard says his speech pushed the quarrel straight up to the Crown, and it started his defiance of British authority. Chapter 17 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

Virginia paid its Anglican parsons in tobacco, and in 1758 a drought sent the price soaring. The Assembly answered with a law that fixed tobacco at twopence a pound for the year, which cut the parsons' pay. The Crown struck the law down, and the Reverend James Maury sued in Hanover County for what he said he was owed. On 5 November 1763 the judge ruled for him, and all that was left was a jury to set the damages. Maury was disgusted to find it made up of "the vulgar herd," two of them New Light Presbyterians. The defense turned, at the last minute, to the judge's own son, a young lawyer named Patrick Henry. He told the jurors that a king who strikes down good laws "degenerated into a tyrant," and Maury's lawyer cried treason. The jury gave the parson a penny. Judge John Henry, moved to tears, let the verdict stand. As Wirt told it in 1817, the crowd seized the young man and carried him out on their shoulders. Rothbard's point is what Henry had done: he took a fight over clergy pay and aimed it at the king. The next April, the Council of Virginia ruled against the parson John Camm, five votes to four.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 17, 'The Parsons' Cause', pp. 838-842. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1817), the Parsons' Cause chapter, as quoted in a search result (the passage on the crowd carrying Henry out). Wirt wrote from the recollections of men who had been at the trial. Secondary source
  3. Wikipedia, 'Parson's Cause' (read 2026-09-30): the jury 'called for in December 1763', Maury's letter of 12 December 1763 reporting that Henry argued a king who disallows salutary acts 'degenerated into a Tyrant', and the one-penny award. Secondary source
  4. Virginia Museum of History and Culture, 'Patrick Henry Arguing the Parsons' Cause' (the trial on 1 December 1763; found through a search summary; the page refused an automated fetch). Secondary source
  5. 'The Parson's Cause: Thomas Jefferson's Teacher, Patrick Henry, and Religious Freedom', Journal of the American Revolution (April 2018; read 2026-09-30): the single-story brick courthouse without seats, about twenty clergymen in clerical robes, the jury's make-up, the penny, the crowd that 'hoisted Patrick Henry on their shoulders'. Secondary source
  6. Wikipedia, 'Hanover County Courthouse' (built 1735; five arched bays; Flemish bond; a single-story brick building with a tall hipped roof and three chimneys; the site of the Parsons' Cause), read through a search summary on 2026-09-30. Secondary source
  7. Lawrence Sully, portrait miniature of Patrick Henry, 1795 (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College), and Thomas Sully's 1815 portrait after it, American Revolution Institute asset pages found through search. Secondary source