John Robinson estate scandal

The John Robinson estate scandal was a major financial scandal in Colonial Virginia.

After the 1766 death of John Robinson, the powerful and aristocratic Virginia planter who served as both Speaker of the House of Burgesses and the colony's treasurer, Robinson's protégé Edmund Pendleton discovered that Robinson's estate had significant debts. Robinson had been Speaker since 1738. Because of rumors concerning his handling of Treasury accounts, and because Robinson was widely considered one of the colony's richest men, the supervising judges appointed three executors and required an unprecedented bond of £250,000 (half as much as the colony had spent during the French and Indian War) from eight sureties (later shown to have been themselves indebted to the estate). Pendleton placed many notices in the Virginia Gazette and other venues, asking that all people in debt to Robinson "make immediate payment." However, the estate was not closed until 1808, and Pendleton's decision to pay debts owed the Commonwealth in depreciated currency produced a famous legal decision concerning federal/state relations.

The scandal smoldered long before Robinson's death. On January 10, 1764, Glasgow merchants trading in Virginia complained about unburned notes in the colony's treasury to the Lords of Trade. Not only was hard currency in short supply (causing prices to decrease over time), often aristocratic planters lived beyond their means. Many owed significant amounts to merchants on both sides of the Atlantic. Merchants and factors on the colonial side often extended liberal credit to secure rights to ship the planters' tobacco to their correspondents in London or Glasgow (which often offered better rates). On September 17, 1763, the colony's administrator, lieutenant governor Francis Fauquier, had explained to the same Lords of Trade that the offices had been combined because the Treasurer received a 2.5% commission on money raised and granted by the colony's Assembly, but "the advantages and profits from the Speakership being very inconsiderable, and inadequate for the great Trouble and Attendance of that Office."

In December, 1762, Pendleton had submitted a clean report on the Treasury's condition to the House of Burgesses. In May, 1763, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee and Benjamin Harrison had prepared a detailed report which again found nothing wrong, although Pendleton as executor later found the Treasury books had not been balanced for years. The report of yet another committee, established in December 1764, that Pendleton chaired and which included the previous committee members as well as John Page, Dudley Digges, Archibald Cary and Lewis Burwell, had been delayed until the following May. In the legislative session held during the spring of 1765, burgesses debated borrowing £100,000 sterling from Britain to lend within the colony. Shortly after Robinson died on May 11, 1766, burgess Bland proposed a similar bank with £200,000 to lend at 5% interest.

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