Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/84

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

to languish on one of the dreadful "prison- hulks" lying ofY Brooklyn, but in 1780 they were exchanged, and Jonathan Bryan at once returned to his treasonable activities.

But while Jonathan Bryan is best known to us on his militant side, it should be added that he was a man of deep and fervid piety, as was also his brother Hugh, both of whom fell under the religious influ- ence of John Wesley, and later of George W'hitefield. and became their intimates. XVhitefield, as is well known, was a thorn in the flesh of the clergy of the Established Church, both in South Carolina and in Georgia, reviled the memory of Archbishop Tillotson as that of a hike warm "Laodi- cean," prayed extempore prayers in churches of his owm communion, preached in "Dis- senting" meeting houses, and generally scandalized the gentry as well as the clergy of both Provinces, who regarded him as "a fluent mountebank." But Hugh Bryan be- came his most extravagant disciple, and, in the matter of censuring the clergy, out- heroded Herod. Doyle, indeed, calls him ■'a reckless partisan" of Whitefield. who stopped at nothing in his religious zeal. Be- cause of a violent letter written by Hugh Bryan and corrected by Whitefield for the press, both of them (together with the printer) were threatened with criminal pro- ceedings in South Carolina. Nothing came of it, and Hugh Bryan eventually drifting into a sort of "Mysticism" wrote a book about it. which no one seems to have under- stood but himself, if indeed, he did.

The family grew apace in wealth and in- fluence, and Jonathan Bryan's grandson. Joseph (grandfather of the Joseph, afore- mentioned), being the only child and heir, was reckoned one of the richest planters in Georgia.

Joseph Bryan was a man of vigorous native parts, wdiich had been sedulously cul- tivated by training in the best schools at home and abroad. After completing his academic studies at the University of Cam- bridge in England, he returned to America, and in 1793 studied law in Philadelphia under Edmund Randolph, at that time Washington's attorney-general. Here, he had for his fellow-student (there were but these two), and room-mate, John Randolph, of Roanoke, between whom and himself there sprang up a friendshi]) that was romantic in its intensity. Mr. Randolph has

left us a picture of him as vivid as any that was ever drawn by the hand of that eccen- tric genius — of his fine bearing and notable beauty of person, adding (and this should arrest the interest of students of heredity), "he was brave even to rashness and his gen- erosity bordered .on profusion." He fur- ther descants on the brilliancy of his intel- lectual gifts and on his sobriety of judg- ment, and declares, "He has rendered me such service as one man can seldom ren- der another." He does not enlighten us as to what that service was. Apropos, Mon- cure D. Conway, speaking of John Ran- dolph, in his Omitted Chapters of History, Disclosed in the Life and Letters of Ed- mund Randolph (p. 137), says: "The At- torney-General's other student. John Bryan" (a slip for "Joseph") "got John Randolph out of a scrape so serious that neither would reveal it." This Joseph Bryan, after finish- ing his law course under Edmund Randolph, went again to Europe (this time for travel, not for study), "made the grand tour," and on his return to Georgia in 1802, was almost at once elected to Congress, in which he served for three sessions, but resigned on his marriage in 1805. and retired to one of his estates (known as "Nonchalence") on Wilmington Island, having decided that he would find his truest happiness in the do- mestic circle, and among his beloved books.

He died at the early age of thirty-nine, leaving a beautiful widow (who in time mar- ried Colonel Scriven, of Georgia), and five small children, the oldest of whom was Jona- than Randolph Bryan (Jonathan, after his great-grandfather, and Randolph after the father's bosom friend of Roanoke). The lad was always from the first called "Randolph'' and, in time, the "Jonathan" was changed to "John."

A year after his father's death ( 1812) Jonathan Randolph Bryan was sent by his mother to school in Savannah. There he boarded in the family of a Madame Cotti- neau. who with her children had fled to .\merica from the horrors of the negro in- surrection in San Domingo. Madame Cot- tineau's "s])iritual director" was a certain accomplished French ecclesiastic, the Abbe Carle, who had accompanied the family in their flight, and under his care little Ran- dolph learned to speak h'rench with elegance and precision, besides being taught the rudi- ments of Latin. .At ten years of age (1816).