In 1710 the ablest of the royal governors came upon the scene, Alexander Spotswood, a man now in his early prime, since he was born in 1676. He bore a wound which he had got at this same Blenheim, for he had a decisive, soldierly spirit. It was a new thing to have a governor for whom the people could have any enthusiasm. He came with a peace-offering in the shape of the writ of _habeas corpus_, a boon the Virginians had been thus far denied. The burgesses reciprocated in devoting £2,000 to build him a palace, as it was called, as perhaps well they might, considering that their annual tobacco crop was now about 20,000,000 pounds. The happy relations between the governor and his people did not continue long without a rupture. The executive needed money to fortify the frontiers, and the assembly tightened the purse-strings; but they did pass a bill to appoint rangers to scour the country at the river heads.[608] Spotswood did the best he could with scant funds. He managed to prevent the tributary Indians from joining the Tuscaroras in their forays in Carolina,[609] and he induced the burgesses to take some action on the appeals of Governor Pollock.[610] He also gave his energy scope in developing the manufacture of iron and the growing of vineyards, and in the stately march which he made to find out something about the region beyond the Blue Ridge.[611] He was indeed always ready for any work which was required. [Illustration: ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD. After the engraving in the _Spotswood Letters_, vol. i., with a note on the portraits on p. viii. His arms are on p. vii. Cf. the _Century Magazine_, xxvii. 447.] If his burgesses revolted, he dissolved them with a sledge-hammer kind of rhetoric.[612] If Blackbeard, the pirate, appeared between the capes, he sent after him men whom he could trust, and they justified his measure of them when they came home with a bloody head on their bowsprit.[613] He had no sooner concluded a conference with the Five Nations, in August and September, 1722,[614] than the opposition to an assumption which he, like the other governors, could not resist, to be the head of the church as well as of the state, made progress enough to secure his removal from office.[615]