o come to Elizabeth City. "Upon which contempt," wrote
Harvey, "I committed him close prisoner, attended with a guard." At the
earnest request of several gentlemen, the Governor finally consented
that he might return to his plantation, but only under bond. Pott,
however, refused to avail himself of the kindness of his friends, and so
was kept in confinement.[257] On the 9th of July he was brought to
trial, found guilty upon two indictments, and his entire estate
confiscated.[258]

That Pott was convicted by a jury of thirteen men, three of them
Councillors, is by no means conclusive evidence of his guilt. The close
connection between the executive and the courts at this time made it
quite possible for the Governor to obtain from a jury whatever verdict
he desired. In fact it became the custom for a new administration, as
soon as it was installed in power, to take revenge upon its enemies by
means of the courts.

Pott's guilt is made still more doubtful by the fact that execution of
the sentence was suspended "untill his Majesties pleasure might be
signified concerning him", while the Council united in giving their
security for his safe keeping.[259] Harvey himself wrote asking the
King's clemency. "For as much," he said, "as he is the only Physician in
the Colonie, and skilled in the Epidemicall diseases of the planters,
... I am bound to entreat" your Majesty to pardon him.[260] It would
seem quite inexplicable that Harvey should go to so much trouble to
convict Dr. Pott, and then write immediately to England for a pardon,
did not he himself give the clue to his conduct. "It will be," he said,
"a means to bring the people to ... hold a better respect to the
Governor than hitherto they have done."[261] Having shown the colonists
that he could humble the strongest of them, he now sought to teach them
that his intercession with the King could restore even the criminal to
his former position.

When Dr. Pott was at Elizabeth City his wife was reported to be ill, but
this did not deter her from making the long and dangerous voyage to
England to appeal to the King "touching the wrong" done her
husband.[262] Charles referred the matter to the Virginia commissioners,
who gave her a hearing in the presence of Harvey's agent. Finding no
justification for the proceedings against him, they wrote Harvey that
for aught they could tell Pott had demeaned himself well and that there
seemed to have been "some hard usage against him".[