Note 24 — Chapter II

Peyton Randolph, President of the first and reëlected President of the second Congress, died very suddenly at Philadelphia on the 22d of October, 1775, and was succeeded in that office by John Hancock. Mr. Randolph was one of the most eminent of the Virginia patriots, and an intimate friend of Washington. Richard Henry Lee wrote to Washington, on the day after his death, that "in him American liberty lost a powerful advocate, and human nature a sincere friend." He was formerly Attorney-General of Virginia, and in 1753 went to England as agent of the House of Burgesses, to procure the abolition of a fee, known as the pistole fee, which it had been the custom of the Governors of Virginia to charge for signing land patents, as a perquisite of their office. He succeeded in getting the fee abolished in cases where the quantity of land exceeded one hundred acres. He was commander of a company of mounted volunteers called the Gentlemen Associators, who served in the French war. He was President of the Virginia Convention, as well as a Delegate in Congress, at the time of his death. Sparks's Washington, II. 58, 161; III. 139, 140; XII. 420.