Moore Fauntleroy

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Colonel Moore Fauntleroy
Member of the House of Burgesses for Rappahannock County
In office March 1659 – March 1660
Member of the House of Burgesses for Lancaster County
In office March 1652 – July 1653
Member of the House of Burgesses for Nansemond County
In office 1647–1648
Member of the House of Burgesses for Upper Norfolk County
In office October 1644 – February 1645
Personal details
Born	Early 1610s Crondall, Hampshire, England
Died	Between October 7, 1663, and March 28, 1664 Rappahannock County, Colony of Virginia
Occupation	Planter, merchant, politician, militia officer
Military service
Allegiance	Colony of Virginia
Branch/service	Virginia militia
Rank	Colonel

Moore Fauntleroy (born early 1610s – died between October 7, 1663, and March 28, 1664), whose surname was also written Fantleroy, was an English-born planter, merchant, militia officer, county justice, and politician in the Colony of Virginia. He represented Upper Norfolk, Nansemond, Lancaster, and Rappahannock counties in the House of Burgesses between 1644 and 1660. He also helped petition for the creation of Rappahannock County, presided over its county court, and rose to the rank of colonel in the colonial militia.

Fauntleroy accumulated more than 10,400 acres along the Rappahannock River, much of it through Virginia's headright system and a disputed 1651 conveyance from the Rappahannock people. His treatment of the Rappahannocks became one of the most serious controversies of his career. Colonial investigations concluded that he had failed to make the agreed payment for part of the land, and he was accused of seizing Rappahannock leaders and extorting shell money from the tribe. In 1662, the General Assembly removed him from his civil and military offices, restricted his use of the disputed land, and again ordered him to compensate the Rappahannocks.

Early life and family background

Fauntleroy was born at Crondall in Hampshire, England, early in the 1610s. His exact birth date is not recorded. His parents were John Fauntleroy and Phoebe Wilkinson Fauntleroy. Both Moore and an elder brother who was also named Moore appeared in the September 20, 1617, will of their mother's godfather. The existence of two brothers with the same given name has contributed to confusion in later genealogical accounts.

About 1618, the family moved from Crondall to Headley, Hampshire, where Fauntleroy received his education. On December 8, 1633, he acquired a coat of arms, affirming his recognized social status as a gentleman. The grant of arms and his later ability to finance Atlantic voyages, merchant shipping, and large land acquisitions indicate that he arrived in Virginia with social standing and access to substantial commercial resources.

Migration to Virginia

Fauntleroy may have made one or more voyages to Virginia before settling permanently there. He was established in Upper Norfolk County by February 1643. The county, created in 1637, was renamed Nansemond County in 1646.

On February 20, 1644, Fauntleroy patented nearly 2,000 acres (810 ha) in Upper Norfolk County. His patents included a 250-acre (100 ha) property called Royes Rest, where he established his residence. The tract lay in the vicinity of New Town Haven and Chuckatuck. Another large patent extended near Bentley Creek. The grants were based partly on purchased or accumulated headrights, under which a claimant could receive 50 acres (20 ha) for each person whose transportation to Virginia the claimant financed or claimed to have financed.

Fauntleroy was not solely a tobacco planter. He owned all or part of at least one merchant vessel and participated in trade between Virginia and other parts of the Chesapeake and Atlantic world. Surviving evidence suggests that he may have traded with residents of Maryland or with members and associates of the Calvert proprietary family.

Early political career

Fauntleroy entered colonial politics soon after establishing Royes Rest. He represented Upper Norfolk County at the sessions of the House of Burgesses that convened in October 1644 and February 1645. After the county was renamed, he represented Nansemond County during the 1647–1648 session.

Move to the Rappahannock

Beginning in the early 1650s, Fauntleroy acquired patents for more than 10,400 acres (4,200 ha) along the Rappahannock River. About 1651 he moved from Nansemond to a part of Northumberland County that became Lancaster County later that year.

Fauntleroy settled near Farnham Creek on the north side of the Rappahannock. His acquisitions included land between Farnham Creek, the Morattico or Morratico region, Totuskey Creek, and established Rappahannock settlements. These were not unoccupied lands: they included agricultural areas, waterways, paths, fishing places, and town sites used by the Rappahannock people.

The rapid expansion of English tobacco cultivation along the river placed increasing pressure on the Rappahannocks. English patents translated Indigenous landscapes into bounded, individually owned plantations even where Indigenous communities continued to live, farm, travel, and exercise political authority. Historian Jessica Lauren Taylor places Fauntleroy among a group of planter-officeholders who used county government, surveys, trade, and militia power to convert Indigenous places into colonial property.

The 1651 Rappahannock conveyance

On April 4, 1651, Fauntleroy obtained a deed at a place recorded as machcomacoi from Accopatough, the Rappahannock weroance, and members of his council. The deed described a large tract beginning around the Morattico area and extending along the Rappahannock River toward Totuskey Creek and a Rappahannock town. The consideration was described in terms of peake, roanoke, and other trade goods - forms of shell bead wealth that had economic, political, and diplomatic significance in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake.

The instrument gave Fauntleroy unusually broad authority to enforce his claim against people who entered the tract. A nineteenth-century transcription preserved the deed's language and the marks attributed to Accopatough and his councilors.

Accopatough died while traveling to Jamestown shortly after the deed was made. On May 11, 1651, his successor, whose name appears in the records as Taweeren or Moratoerin, confirmed the conveyance. The colonial government issued Fauntleroy a patent on May 22. A Rappahannock leader identified as Naeheoopa and members of the tribal council stated in 1658 that the late Accopatough had wanted Fauntleroy to be permitted to occupy part of the land.

The surviving documents nevertheless reveal different understandings of the transaction. English records treated it as a permanent alienation of a surveyed tract. For the Rappahannocks, the shell beads and goods involved in such agreements also carried diplomatic meanings and affirmed continuing relationships and obligations. Archaeologist Rebecca J. Webster has cautioned that English documentary terminology often obscures the diplomatic and social functions of peake and roanoke in Chesapeake Indigenous societies.

Lancaster County leadership

On January 1, 1652, Fauntleroy, then holding the rank of captain, hosted the first recorded meeting of the Lancaster County Court at his home. County courts were central institutions of colonial government. Their justices handled land recording, estates, debts, minor criminal proceedings, taxes, roads, and the administration of bound labor.

Fauntleroy represented Lancaster County in four General Assembly sessions: March 1652, April–May 1652, November 1652, and July 1653. By April 1656 he was a justice of the peace and a lieutenant colonel in the militia. At the March 1656 assembly he presented a petition from residents of upper Lancaster requesting the establishment of a separate county. The petition contributed to the creation of Rappahannock County later that year.

The old Rappahannock County was created in 1656. It encompassed territory on both sides of the Rappahannock River and was abolished in 1692, when its territory was divided into Essex and Richmond counties. Fauntleroy became one of the new county's leading officeholders. He presided over its county court with the rank of colonel, purchased a gristmill, and represented Rappahannock County in the assemblies of March 1659 and March 1660. His place within the planter elite is also reflected in personal bequests. Francis Slaughter, described in the records as Fauntleroy's brother-in-law, left him a copy of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The bequest is evidence of book ownership and intellectual exchange among members of Virginia's seventeenth-century governing class.

Suspension from the House of Burgesses

In December 1656 and March 1659, Fauntleroy served on the House of Burgesses' Committee for Private Causes. The committee determined which civil appeals from the colony's Quarter Court should receive consideration by the General Assembly.

On March 1, 1659, the House suspended Fauntleroy after he avoided attending the election of the Speaker and subsequently accused the burgesses of “unwarrantable proceedings” in conducting the vote. He was readmitted approximately a week later after acknowledging his error.

The dispute may have led the burgesses to adopt five “Orders for observation of good order in the House.” These orders were among the earliest formal procedural rules recorded in the surviving Assembly journals. Historian Warren M. Billings has treated the episode as part of the House's gradual development of parliamentary practices and institutional discipline.

Conflict with the Rappahannock people

Failure to pay for land

The dispute over Fauntleroy's land acquisitions reemerged publicly in 1660. The Rappahannocks complained that he had not delivered the consideration promised for the 1651 conveyance. In July 1660, Governor Sir William Berkeley instructed the Lancaster County Court to investigate. Fauntleroy responded angrily to the inquiry. At the October 1660 session of the General Assembly, the court reported that it had found no proof that Fauntleroy had paid the Rappahannocks. In March 1661, the Assembly ordered him to provide thirty matchcoats, including a coat decorated with copper lace for the Rappahannock weroance.

Seizure of Rappahannock leaders

Modern research indicates that the conflict involved more than nonpayment. Fauntleroy and allied local officials seized or detained prominent Rappahannock men, including a new weroance recorded as Wachiopa, after accusing the tribe of failing to deliver its annual tribute. The Rappahannocks maintained that the tribute had been paid and that Fauntleroy demanded shell money for the release of their leaders.

Evidence reviewed by colonial authorities supported the Rappahannock complaint. The tribe had entrusted tribute in roanoke to Fauntleroy for delivery to Governor Berkeley, but he retained it and then represented the Rappahannocks as delinquent. Webster describes the episode as the kidnapping of a Rappahannock weroance who had been traveling to Jamestown to present tribute. The Rappahannocks also complained that Fauntleroy's livestock damaged their crops. Colonial authorities required him to keep his hogs from Indigenous fields by maintaining fences and employing a hog keeper.

Removal from office

In 1662 the General Assembly again ordered Fauntleroy to compensate the Rappahannocks. It prohibited him from using portions of the disputed land beyond the acreage he had already cleared and removed him from his civil and military offices for extorting property from the tribe.

The Assembly's surviving orders required payment in matchcoats and attempted to limit further encroachment. Published colonial statutes and records preserve the government's efforts to regulate settlement on Indigenous lands, although enforcement was often inconsistent and depended heavily on the same county elites who benefited from expansion.

Historian Taylor interprets the Fauntleroy affair as an example of the danger created when settlers combined private land interests with control of local courts and militia forces. In this instance, the Rappahannocks successfully carried their complaint beyond the county level, and the colonial government sided with them sufficiently to discipline one of the region's most powerful planters.

Further reading

• Billings, Warren M.; Kimberly, Maria, eds. (2007). The Papers of Sir William Berkeley, 1605–1677. Richmond: Library of Virginia. ISBN 9780884902140. Search this book on

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