Alexander Spotswood arrived in Virginia June 20, 1710, aboard the warship _Deptford_, and spent the night at Green Spring, with his future enemy, Philip Ludwell. Two days later he met with the Council around the oval table in the beautiful Council Chamber in the new Capitol, and laid his commission before them. The new Lieutenant Governor was descended from a family of Scottish Anglicans. His great-grandfather had seconded Archbishop Laud's attempt to introduce the Prayer Book in Scotland; his grandfather had been put to death by the Presbyterians. Perhaps it was this tragedy which induced his father to desert his native land and take service in the English army. It was while he was with his regiment in Tangier that Alexander Spotswood was born. The son chose to follow in the father's footsteps, and in 1693 we find him serving in the Earl of Bath's regiment in Flanders. He fought gallantly, was wounded at Blenheim, and was captured at Oudenarde. It is possible that he served under the Earl of Orkney, also, and that was the reason he named him as his deputy in Virginia. "I must ever own gratefully that to your Lordship's good will I owe my station here," he wrote Orkney in 1718. Spotswood was one of the ablest Governors sent to America to represent the British Crown. He did much to open the West to Virginia, encouraged settlement in the Piedmont, and erected forts in the passes of the Blue Ridge. He wiped out a nest of pirates under the notorious Blackbeard and strung several of them up at Williamsburg. A man of artistic interests, he was responsible for the beautiful Palace gardens, with their wealth of boxwood, walks, walls, lake, ornate gates, flower beds; and designed charming Bruton Parish Church. In 1716 he led a party of gentlemen, accompanied by rangers, servants, and Indians, on an exploring expedition to the West. As they rode through the wilderness of the Piedmont, they shot deer and bears, camped in the open, roasted venison on wooden forks. On reaching the Blue Ridge they toiled to the summit, and there, looking out over the Valley of Virginia, drank the health of King George I and the royal family. After descending into the Valley and crossing the Shenandoah River, they turned their horses' heads homeward. Back in Williamsburg, the Governor presented each of his companions with a golden horseshoe, inscribed with _sic juvat transcendere montes_.