FAUQUIER, Francis, colonial governor of Virginia, born about 1720; died in Virginia, 3 March 1768. He was a man of a cultivated mind and liberal religious views, who counted Thomas Jefferson among his friends, and was greatly respected in the colony for his private worth. He succeeded Dinwiddie in 1758, and was lieutenant governor until his death. He dissolved the assembly in 1764 after it had adopted Patrick Henry's resolutions declaring that the sole right of taxation resided in the colonial legislature; and when Massachusetts invited the other colonies to join in a general congress, in 1765, he refused to summon the newly elected house of burgesses in order that it might appoint delegates.

Except in combating disloyalty, he sympathized with the colonists, and was one of the ablest and most popular of the royal governors. He published several financial essays, among them "Raising Money for Support of the War" (London, 1757).