Under the circumstances, the dating of the digging 

 of the pit must rely upon the evidence of nature 

 (sihing) and upon historical data. Since there are few 

 surviving written records of Rosewell and there are no 

 dal;i relating to the building or maintenance of the 

 house and no accounts of day-to-day life there,-" we 

 must fall ijack on elementary deductions — deductions 

 that can very easily be wrong. 



The presence of mortar-siu'faced brickbats in the 

 early silting of the pit indicates that there was a period 

 of remodeling at Rosewell. It seems possible that such 

 a change could have been occasioned by the advent of 

 John Page as m.aster of Rosewell in the niid-1760's. 

 If, as has been suggested, the pit was dug to obtain 

 clay for brickmaking, we have evidence of both con- 

 struction and destruction side by side. On the other 

 hand, we hav^e John Page's own words to show that he 

 had little money to spare for house repairs and that in 

 1770 he was forced to do something to Rosewell to put 

 it in "a saving Condition." It could therefore Ije 

 argued that the pit was dug at that time. The pres- 

 ence of fragments of cut window-glass and a bullion 

 from a crown is clearly indicativ'e of glazing and might 

 coincide with the advent of the "Glaziers Diamond of 

 20/Value" ordered in October 1771.2' ^Iso to be 

 taken into consideration is a small group of six Eng- 

 lish creamware sherds of good quality, one of them 

 coming from the first layer and the others from the 

 top of the second. Generally speaking, one does not 

 expect to find much creamware — or "Queen's ware" 

 as Josiah Wedgwood called it — in use in the colony 

 before about 1770. Nevertheless, there is evidence to 

 show that the Pages knew of creamware and owned 

 some by that date. Mann Page II's order requesting 

 that goods be shipped from England "to be landed 

 where I live near Fredericksburg" included "1 Dozn. 

 Tea Cups 1 Dozn. Saucers, 1 Dozn. Coffee Cups & 

 1 Dozn. Saucers, 1 Slop Bowl of Queen China." -- 

 Consequently, it need not be .surprising to find cream- 

 ware in use at Rosewell by 1770 or that sherds of such 

 ware should be present. But if the ante quem and 

 post quem dates for the pit are very close together, 

 then the creamware fragments are strong evidence in 

 favor of a date clo.se to 1770 or even 1772 for its filling. 

 The principal post quem dating is provided by a 

 pewter shoe buckle, found at the bottom of the 



-" Other than the brief references presiuusly quoted from the 

 Norton Papers, op. cit. (footnote 6). 



21 Norton Papers, op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 199. 



■^•^ Ibid., pp. 123, 125. The order was dated February 15, 

 1770. 



second layer, that is decorated with a jjair of molded 

 liarrels at the middle and with the legend "no 

 excise" at either end (fig. 7). This is almost certainly 

 an English political memento produced in the 1760's, 

 when the slogan was shouted by the same radicals 

 who cried out so loudly for "Wilkes and Liberty." 

 Use of the slogan can be traced liack as far as 1733 

 when Walpole's Excise Bill was abandoned and the 

 public took to wearing badges and cockades adorned 

 with the words "Lii:)erty, Property and No Excise." 

 It reappeared in 1763 following the passing of the 

 so-called Cyder Act, which became law in March of 

 that year. Hartshorne's Old English Glasses shows an 

 English cider glass with "no excise," a barrel, and a 

 cluster of apples engraved on the bowl.-' Dis- 

 cu.ssing this and another glass of its type Hartshorne 

 states that "These words are part of the old popular 

 cry which had Ijeen revived by the conduct of \\'ilkes 

 and the appearance in 1763 of No. 45 of the .\orth 

 Briton, and, as to cider, by the excise regulations of 

 the same year touching it." The blending of the 

 "Wilkes and Liberty" and the "No Excise" slogans is 

 to be seen in a ledger entry of August 1763 from a 

 Bristol glasshouse which reads: "To 6 Enamelled p- 

 Canns wrote Liberty and no Excise." -* 



If, as Hartshorne and others have inferred, the 

 "No Excise" slogan can be associated with Wilkes, 

 then its presence on a shoe buckle found in Mrginia 

 makes sense. Cast in the rough-and-ready mold of 

 Patrick Henry, John Wilkes was looked upon by 

 many colonists as the wind of freedom blowing 

 through the halls of Parliament. On April 23, 1763, 

 Wilkes published the 45th edition of his radical news- 

 paper, the North Briton, in which he attacked the 

 King's speech to the House of Commons claiming 

 that the recent Treaty of Paris had the full support 

 of England's ally, the King of Prussia. Wilkes, 

 contending that the Prussian monarch had, in fact, 

 been sold up the river, condemned both the treaty 

 and the government of the Earl of Bute. It was 

 Lord Bute and his Scots colleagues who had instituted 

 the levy on cider, a tax bitterly resented by the 

 English on the groimds that their Scots cousins 

 neither made nor drank cider. A broadside published 

 in March 1763 contained a vicious cartoon lampoon- 

 ing i)oth the King and Lord Bute and a sketch of a 

 happy Scotsman crying "By the Laird, this is a brae 

 sis:ht: I sal be Commissioner of Exceese in Time." 



23 Albert Hartshorne, Old English Glasses, London, 1897, 

 p. 312. 

 2< Ihid., p. 311. 



166 



BULLETIN 225: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY .•^ND TECHNOLOGY 



