Byrd, William, II (1674–1744), Virginia landowner, political leader, writer, diarist.Born in Henrico County, Virginia, Byrd was sent to Felsted School in England at age seven. He mastered several languages, studied law, and was admitted to the bar and even to the Royal Society, England's premier scientific organization, by age twenty‐two. Between 1692 and 1705, and again from 1714 to 1726, he was often in London as Virginia's agent on mercantile and political issues. In 1704, Byrd inherited the estate Westover on the James River, with other plantations and many slaves. Here he and Lucy Parke Byrd shared an affectionate but often tempestuous marriage from 1706 until Lucy's death in 1716. In 1724, he married Maria Taylor. He built an elegant brick manor house; planned the city of Richmond on a part of his land; and won respect as a gentleman tobacco planter and political leader, serving in Virginia's House of Burgesses and Council of State. At his death he owned more than 100,000 acres and one of America's two largest private libraries.
A lifelong author, Byrd wrote two posthumously published accounts of a 1728 expedition to establish the North Carolina–Virginia line: the entertaining
Secret History of the Line (1929), composed in cipher with satiric names for all characters, and the longer, less ribald
History of the Dividing Line (1841), sometimes called a Virginia “epic.” Besides poems, travel narratives, natural history, and extensive correspondence, Byrd's most intriguing literary product is his cipher‐encoded secret diary, which survives for 1709–1712, 1717–1721 (
the London Diary), and 1739–1741. Although repetitive and formulaic, it reveals much about Byrd and about gentry life in England and colonial Virginia.
See also
Colonial Era;
Literature: Colonial Era;
Slavery: Development and Expansion of Slavery;
Tobacco Industry.
Bibliography
Pierre Marambaud , William Byrd of Westover, 1674–1744, 1971.
Kenneth A. Lockridge , The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674–1744, 1987.
Sargent Bush
