William Randolph deeded Stith 2,000 acres in Goochland County in 1740.37
The parson acquired an additional145 acres there later that same year.38 Gooch-
land continued to be a focus of his attention; in 1744 a consortium including
Stith obtained rights to survey a 20,000-acre tract in the county, and Stith ob-
tained patents for tracts of1,650 and 420 acres. His attention was also directed
toward Brunswick County, where in 1744 he and an associate laid claim to a
7,000-acre tract. Grants of 555, 1,172, and 939 acres in the Poplar Forest area
of Albemarle County were added in 1745. Four years later the council granted
Stith s petition to increase and consolidate his holdings at Poplar Forest into
one patent of 6,000 acres.39
When Stith moved outside his study, his gaze was directed not only west-
ward toward unsettled lands but also southeastward toward Williamsburg.
There, friendly contacts and political influence paid off in the granting of
lands. Stith served as chaplain of the House of Burgesses from the mid-1740s
until his death an appointment also signaling his family connections and in-
fluence.40 In the capital Stith gained notoriety by taking a lead in opposition
to the pistole fee that Governor Dinwiddie on his own authority imposed in
1752 for affixing the colony s seal on land patents. Virginians then and since
have interpreted this episode as prefiguring the resistance to parliamentary
taxation and arbitrary imperial mandates after 1763. A toast offered by Stith
at a gathering somewhere   upcountry     Liberty and Property and no Pis-
tole   became a popular rallying cry of the opposition. The Henrico parson
by no means stood alone in fighting the governor, but in the latter s judgment
he bore a special responsibility for arousing the people who had been   very
easy and well satisfied till an Evil Spirit entered into a High Priest, who was
supported by the Family of the Randolphs.  41
Several months following the eruption over the   pistole fee,  Stith moved to
Williamsburg. The occasion was his election to succeed Commissary William
Dawson his brother-in-law as president of William and Mary.42 The
choice of Stith as the school s third president may have reflected respect for
his scholarly achievements and Oxford degrees, pride in the accomplishments
of a native son, sympathy on the part of the electors for his Whiggish politi-
cal views and his willingness to take the lead on behalf of local liberty, or
the influence of the Randolph connection. Any, some, or all of these likely
were involved. The Stith appointment, however, was a bitter humiliation for
the governor. Dinwiddie portrayed the Henrico parson as a   turbulent spirit, 
a rabble-rouser of sorts who had raised a party among the   lower Class of
.
Clerical Lives 169