Charles Town’s last royal governor

By Peg Eastman

Lord William Campbell by Thomas Gainsborough.

Lord William Campbell (1730-1778) was the younger son of John Campbell, fourth Duke of Argyll. (Duke is a noble or royal ranking just below a king or prince, and the Campbells were one of the most powerful families in Scotland.) Unable to inherit due to the custom of primogeniture, William Campbell bought a commission in the Royal Navy in 1745 and served in India from 1752 to 1760. By August 1762, Lord William had risen to the rank of captain and commanded the warship Nightingale when he sailed into Charles Town harbor.

While there, he met Sarah Izard, a wealthy heiress who was about to marry another. Apparently, the dashing young nobleman changed her mind, and the Gazette noted on April 23, 1763: “On Saturday last the Right Hon. Lord William Campbell, fourth son to his present Grace the Duke of Argyle, and commander of his majesty’s ship the Nightingale was married to Miss Sarah Izard, daughter of the late Ralph Izard, Esq., a young lady esteemed one of most considerable fortunes in the province.”

The newlyweds settled in England after their marriage, and Captain Campbell separated from the Nightingale in July 1763. The newlyweds visited Inveraray, County Argyll, in the west of Scotland and stayed with the groom’s father, the duke, at Inveraray Castle, the ancestral home of the chiefs of Clan Campbell.

Young Campbell made a favorable impression on the local gentry, and when one of the members of Parliament for Argyllshire resigned his seat to accept another office, the constituents unanimously elected the duke’s youngest son to represent them. The couple returned to London and took up residence in fashionable Soho.

In 1765, Parliament ratified “An Act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other duties in the British colonies to defray the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same.” Commonly called the Stamp Act, it was extremely unpopular in the colonies. Loud complaints about taxation without representation resulted in the Stamp Act Congress in Philadelphia later that same year. While in Parliament, Lord William broke ranks with his father and older brothers and voted to repeal it.

When the governor of Nova Scotia died, a prominent London newspaper reported the government was considering 11 different candidates for a replacement. Through the influential Duke of Argyll, Lord William Campbell quickly emerged as the successful nominee. In mid-July, he resigned his command aboard the guardship Bellon and vacated his seat in the House of Commons.

Lord and Lady William, accompanied by their son, William, and infant daughter, Louisa, set out from London in early October and traveled by carriage to Portsmouth, where they boarded HMS Glasgow, which landed them at Halifax in November 1766.

In a report to the British government shortly after his arrival, Campbell stated that Nova Scotia was £23,000 in debt and contributed little to its annual expenditure.

Late in 1767, the assembly passed a bill raising the excise on locally produced rum and lowering the tax on spirits. Campbell had supported the measure to make cheaper rum available to the population and to break the monopoly of importers, but the Board of Trade accepted the merchants’ arguments and ordered the legislation annulled.

Campbell’s governorship has been described as uneventful. His relations with the assembly and the Council were generally good, and he was popular with the community at large. It was his misfortune that a corrupt economic climate thwarted his plans.

When Lord Charles Grenville Montagu resigned as governor of South Carolina, Campbell’s friends and family in government lobbied for his appointment. Campbell received news of his new commission, settled his affairs in Nova Scotia and left in October 1773.

The couple celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary in London in the spring of 1774. The family returned to their Soho townhouse, and the governor consulted with government officials about his future administration of the colony.

Trouble was already on the horizon. A colonial tax on tea, the last of the Townshend Duties imposed in 1767, led to a series of tea-related protests. News of the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 reached England in early 1774. Parliament retaliated by ratifying an act to close the port of Boston, the first in a series of punitive measures collectively known as the Coercive or Intolerable Acts, intended to suppress criticism of British colonial administration.

News of the Boston Port Act arrived in Charleston at the end of May 1774, followed by reports of other Parliamentary acts. This caused 12 American colonies (Georgia did not participate) to elect delegates to attend a convention in Philadelphia in October 1774.

The First Continental Congress adopted the Continental Association. The complicated agreement resolved not to import products from Britain, Ireland or the British West Indies, nor African slaves, after the first of December 1774. It pledged non-consumption of imports, especially tea, of which the East India Company, a politically connected British firm, had a monopoly. And it resolved to discontinue exporting American products to Britain, Ireland and the British West Indies, in the spring of 1775. An interesting exception was rice, mainly grown in S.C., and intended for the European market, which could continue to be exported. Various colonies, including South Carolina, adopted their own non-importation, non-consumption, non-exportation associations.

In London, King George III issued an order prohibiting the delivery of gunpowder, arms, ammunition or any manner of military stores to the unruly colonies in North America. This empowered crown officials to search and seize any suspected maritime vessels transporting prohibited articles.

Back in S.C., in mid-October 1774, Lieutenant Governor William Bull postponed further meetings of the provincial Commons House of Assembly until the arrival of Lord William Campbell. But the governor was still in London, where Sarah Izard Campbell gave birth to her second daughter.

In December, Charlestonians gathered to hear from delegates who had returned from the Continental Congress. Their enthusiasm inspired the creation of a new assembly. Delegates from across the province gathered at the State House on Broad Street in January 1775. It elected Henry Laurens as president of the First S.C. Provincial Congress.

Meanwhile, Parliament declared that the province of Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion, and the unrest was rapidly spreading to other colonies. The chief ministers sought the king’s permission to pursue harsher measures to enforce obedience to laws enacted by Parliament. The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty then ordered several small warships to be readied for action. They also assigned Lord William to command the sloop-of-war Scorpion to Charles Town.

Captain Campbell’s departure was delayed. The four-year-old Scorpion arrived in Portsmouth, where crewmen prepared for the trans-Atlantic voyage. Campbell traveled to Portsmouth in March to inspect the vessel he now commanded.

The king’s ministers believed that the Southern colonies remained loyal to the crown but acknowledged that the rapid decline in political stability cast doubt on the future of Governor Campbell’s administration, and his poor reception in Charles Town reflected the political sentiment of the times.

In addition, the house intended for the new governor’s residence at 34 Meeting St. was not yet ready for occupancy. The mansion was one of the largest and finest homes built in pre-Revolutionary Charles Town. Comprising four rooms per floor, it sat on a high foundation and boasted a paneled central stair hall and three stories.

Consequently, the Campbells accepted the invitation of Miles Brewton to stay at 27 King St. (Brewton had married Mary Izard, a first cousin of Lady Campbell.)

Although personally popular, the new governor was unable to placate the revolutionary leaders. Rumors that he was bringing arms for British-instigated Indian attacks and slave insurrections abounded. However, it was the governor’s clandestine correspondence with Loyalists in the Backcountry that led to his downfall.

When the Committee on Safety had proof of Campbell’s negotiations for a rising of Backcountry loyalists, they considered taking the governor into custody and took possession of Fort Johnson on James Island.

Realizing that his power was gone, on September 15, 1775, the governor dissolved the Commons House of Assembly, and in the dark of night, fled on the creek behind his house, taking the great seal of the province with him. Lord Campbell took sanctuary on HMS Tamar. Days later, a delegation asked him to return, and he indignantly replied that he would never return until he could support the king’s authority.

Meanwhile, the captain of HMS Scorpion confiscated some money on an inbound ship and allegedly gave it to Lord William. In reprisal, the owners took a party of light infantry to the governor’s residence and took his horses and chariot. The Council repudiated their actions and ordered the property returned to Lady Campbell, who refused to receive them. The owners were later given permission to sell the chariot and horses to reimburse their losses.

On December 15, Lady Campbell joined her husband on HMS Cherokee, anchored in the harbor. The ship sailed away on January 10, 1776.

Lord Campbell later joined Sir Peter Parker’s fleet aboard his flagship HMS Bristol during the failed attack on Sullivan’s Island on June 28, 1776. In the battle, Campbell received a “contusion in his side” from a flying splinter.

In August 1776, Campbell joined Howe’s forces on Staten Island and left for England. In 1778, he was appointed to command a new ship but died at Southampton that September of “a painful and lingering consumption, which the physicians thought proceeded from the wounds he received at Sullivan’s Island.”

Lady Sarah Izard Campbell died September 4, 1784, either in London or in Argyllshire, the home county of the dukes of Argyll in Scotland. Born into one of the richest American families, she died impoverished, a poor relation of her husband’s family.

My appreciation to Bob Stockton and Lish Thompson for contributing to this article.

A Charlestonian by birth, Margaret (Peg) Middleton Rivers Eastman is actively involved in the preservation of Charleston’s rich cultural heritage. In addition to being a regular columnist for the Charleston Mercury, she has published through McGraw-Hill, The History Press, Evening Post Books, and Carologue, a publication of the South Carolina Historical Society. She is a member of the Charleston History Commission and serves on the Friends of the Old Exchange board.