John Camm

John Camm (1718–1778) was an Anglican priest who served as the seventh president of the College of William and Mary—the last before the American Revolution. He was a fierce Tory advocate of the prerogative of the Crown and the established Church.

Early life and education Camm was born in 1718, in Hornsea, Yorkshire, England to Thomas Camm and an unknown mother. He was educated in the school at nearby Beverley, and was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge at the age of 20.

College President During the summer and fall of 1771, Camm became president of the College of William & Mary, rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, commissary of the Bishop of London in Virginia, and a member of the Royal Council of Virginia. His small vocal group of Anglican clergy continued resistance to secular authority. A literary battle to which Camm lent his pen was waged in the Virginia Gazette in 1771–1774, and this dispute on the episcopate was lost, from the point of view of the established church in America.

Camm's outspoken Tory views did not require him to preach with pistols on his pulpit, as did his friend Jonathan Boucher. He died quietly in late 1778.

Personal life For most of the 18th century, faculty at William & Mary were required to be unmarried, and Camm observed this rule, remaining a bachelor into his 50s. The story of his marriage to Betsy Hansford, a relation of the Hansford family associated with Bacon's Rebellion, became something of a legend in Tidewater Virginia.

According to a version published by John Fiske's Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, the young Betsy Hansford, who Camm had baptized as an infant, was being courted by a suiter without success. The gold Botetourt Medal that Camm awarded to his nephew, John Camm White, in 1775 survives in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society.