He exhibited here the same qualities that had characterized his government in New York and New England; intelligent aptitude for business, love of regularity and order, zeal for honest administration, and consequently some degree of severity upon offenders against the navigation laws who were often men of good birth and position, and last, though not least, a great dislike of the interference of meddling ecclesiastics with matters of state. He reduced the records of the province to order, finding that they had been seriously neglected; and when the State House was burned, he provided a building for them, and had them again carefully sorted and registered. He encouraged the introduction of manufactures and the planting of cotton, and established a legal size for the tobacco cask, an act which protected the merchants from arbitrary plundering by custom house officials in England, but which was used by his enemies to form the basis of an accusation of defrauding the revenue. He was on the best of terms with the prominent men of the Dominion, and he left behind him a pleasant memory in Virginia among the laity, and among those of the clergy who were not under the influence of Commissary Blair. The quarrel with Blair was an unfortunate one, for, though meddlesome and dogmatic, he was working for the higher interests of the colony; but the evidence he himself supplies of the temper of his proceedings explains Sir Edmund’s antipathy. He was recalled to England in 1698, and was worsted in his contest with Blair, having been unfortunate enough to bring upon himself the resentment of the Bishop of London. The record of the trial is preserved at Lambeth, and has been printed in this country, and a perusal of it will convince most readers that Sir Edmund received very hard usage, and might have complained, in the words of the lawyer who was defeated in a contest with Laud, that he had been “choked by a pair of lawn-sleeves.”[147] The rest of his life was passed at home. The government still showed their confidence in him by appointing him the Governor of Guernsey.[148] He lived quietly, passing a peaceful old age, and died in February, 1714 at the age of seventy-six. His continued interest in the welfare of the colonies, in the service of which he had passed so many years, is evidenced by the fact that his name appears among the members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.[149]