Peter Thompson

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Peter Thompson | The Thief, the Householder, and the Commons: Languages of Class in Seventeenth-Century Virginia | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.2 | The History Cooperative

The Thief, the Householder, and the Commons: Languages of Class in Seventeenth-Century Virginia

JOHN Askew was probably born in Virginia. He and his wife lived on a tributary of the Pagan River called Reynolds Creek near Cypress Swamp in Isle of Wight County, Virginia (Figure I). Askew was cantankerous and functionally illiterate. He supported his household by raising hogs and cattle, by undertaking some tanning and carpentry, and allegedly by petty theft. He was accused of stealing corn from the local mill and of killing his neighbors' pigs. Nevertheless in 1663 vestryman Henry Pitt hired Askew to build the church at Pagan Point. Askew and his wife were seldom seen in any church. Their neighbors believed the pair preferred to spend their Sundays profanely by drinking in tippling houses. For Askew building the church offered fresh opportunities for petty theft and peculation. Before long he was charged with stealing lumber supplied to him by Pitt.

Daniel Miles and his kinsman John Brown produced in court testimony sordid details of the Askews' slatternly household. One day in the summer of 1663, Miles visited the Askews to find goodwife Askew "lying on the Bedd like a Beast" and "vomiting in an abundant measure with her child crying and the Mother not able to help." Miles asked the maid who looked after the Askews' cows what was going on. The maid told him that goodwife Askew had taken to bed complaining of a cough. "I think she is drunk," said Miles. The maid agreed, adding that a neighbor's wife had had to guide her home. Miles had already noticed a number of apples around the house and had previously seen goodwife Askew brewing cider. He would later testify that John Askew had ordered one of his indentured servants to "fetch" some apples from Ambrose Bennett's orchard and that the servant had returned at night with a full bag. Indentured servants knew the Askew household to be a place where a man could get a drink and a bed with few questions asked. In 1666 John Smyth, a servant of John Peirce's, spent five days on a binge at the Askews', paying for his drink with a piglet that was almost certainly stolen.¹

Figure I

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