John Randolph was born in 1693 at "Turkey Island" plantation, Henrico County, Virginia, the son of William and Mary (Isham) Randolph. With the favor of the fortune and position inherited from his father, and through his own unusual mental powers and varied gifts, he became the lawyer most distinguished in the first half of the eighteenth century in Virginia for his talents and learning.
To a private tutor's early discipline he added the general knowledge to be gained as a student at the College of William and Mary.
He entered Gray's Inn, May 17, 1715, and was called to the bar on November 25, 1717. Through his brief span of mature years, for he died in his prime, he held offices of political preferment but always those in which his keen intellect and legal knowledge would have outlet. When less than twenty years old he was appointed by Governor Spotswood in 1712 to represent the Crown in the county courts of Charles City, Henrico, and Prince George counties in the absence of the attorney-general.
He substituted for Attorney-General John Clayton for a year during the latter's absence in England in 1727 and at the same time served as clerk of the Council. He was King's attorney just long enough to continue the precedent set by his father and carried on by his sons, Peyton and John Randolph, 1727-1784.
He became clerk of the House of Burgesses in 1718 and served in that remunerative and influential office until 1734. In 1728 Randolph went to England on a threefold mission. The sea voyage was expected to better his health. He was instructed by the College of William and Mary to ask either for the better collection of the penny-a-pound export tax on tobacco or the substitution for it of a certain valuable yearly consideration out of the quit rents of Virginia.
He was also to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to sanction the use by the College of part of the Boyle fund for the education of the Indians for the purchase of books and was to select the books. By the Virginia Assembly he was authorized to present their address to the King and their petition to Parliament asking repeal of the act of Parliament prohibiting the shipping of stripped tobacco. The obnoxious act was repealed and a grateful Assembly voted Randolph a thousand pounds for his diplomatic efforts.
Again, in 1732, the Assembly sent Randolph to England to urge their plan for an excise collected through a bonded warehouse system in substitution for the import duties on tobacco. While not gaining the concession, he was rewarded by the Burgesses with double his previous remuneration for his efforts.
In 1734, when it was clear that the speakership of the House of Burgesses would be vacant through the resignation of John Holloway, Randolph gave up his clerkship, was chosen by the faculty of the College of William and Mary as their representative, was seated, and was elected speaker within the record span of three days. Later in the session he was also made treasurer of the colony.
He was reëlected speaker in 1736, though with some opposition, and filled that position until his death the following year.
The newly chartered borough of Norfolk honored him in 1736 by naming him recorder and gave him a warm demonstration of their esteem on the occasion of his visit to be sworn into that office.
In sketches he wrote of his colleagues at the Williamsburg bar he revealed the high standards of learning and charactor that he deemed desirable in members of his profession. He left reports of cases in the General Court of Virginia between 1728 and 1732 that show something of his legal talents. His speeches as presiding officer of the House of Burgesses revealed his understanding of and faith in representative government, though he was a conservative in his interpretation of the rights of the burgesses and of the people. In his will, neither his other property nor the disposition of his own body was so carefully provided for as the care of his remarkable library which he left to his son Peyton.
Randolph was knighted, presumably in 1732, in recognition of his legal abilities and diplomatic skill; he was the only Virginian to be given such rank in the colonial period. As a lawyer, Randolph's preëminence was attested by his contemporaries, among whom he was known as a man of distinguished bearing, wide learning, fidelity in office, impartiality, justice, and high character. In his cultural interests Sir John Randolph was one of the first self-conscious Virginians, and his engraved armorial book plate is one of the earliest preserved of a native Virginian. At one time he gathered together documentary material with a view to writing the history of the political development of Virginia as a preface to an edition of the laws. Though he did not fulfil his purpose, his nephew, William Stith, later used these collected sources for his history of the colony. Randolph did aid in the publication of the laws of Virginia in 1733. While he owned lands and even speculated in them on a large scale, he was unique in the first half of the eighteenth century in the province as being, in his interests and attainments, a scholar rather than a planter.
He was a vestryman of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg and in his will declared his faith in God and Christ, though expressing greater concern for virtue than theological wrangles.
He was among the first of the eighteenth-century Virginia scholars in public life to be suspect by the clergy as a deist and heretic.
Before 1721 he was married to Susanna Beverly and the couple had at least four children who reached adulthood.
