Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library

The 179 years spanned by the Established Church of Virginia witnessed great changes in the social, economic, and political conditions of western civilization. Most significant of all, perhaps, was the impact of the Enlightenment — the Age of Reason, ushered in by such men as Bacon, Locke, Newton, and Descartes — upon the intellectual climate of opinion. These men represented a rationalistic and scientific approach to religious as well as to social, political, and economic issues. They opposed such medieval remnants as feudalism, censorship, religious intolerance, restrictions on trade, and, indeed, any kind of arbitrary and dogmatic authority, Despite its limitations, the Enlightenment had a profound effect upon western thought and left behind it a 3. liberal heritage which we are still enjoying. Thus, at the beginning of our story in 1607, kings ruled by divine right and religious conformity was the universal norm. But the yeast of rationalism was at work, and by the end of our story freedom and tolerance had triumphed. The central theme of our narrative, then, is how the Anglican Church in Virginia, starting out with the medieval concept of rigid conformity, gradually came around to the modern concept of religious freedom.

In some ways the Established Church of Virginia was defective — notably in its lack of resident bishops, and in the gulf which existed in too many cases between the clergy and people — and it had many faults. But taken as a whole, its story is a record of steady growth in tolerance. The Church underwent a considerable change of heart relative to the question of toleration from the third quarter of the seventeenth to the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It is scarcely remarkable when a persecuted dissenting minority espouses principles of religious freedom. It is much harder and more creditable for an Established Church with an inheritance of Catholic faith and order to do so. Yet, that is what happened in Anglican Virginia, and the Church upon its disestablishment bequeathed to modern America a notable example of a peaceful separation of Church and State so that the religious freedom of the individual might be protected against the power of the State acting in behalf of an established church, and the Church left free to attend to its affairs without 4. interference from a State which might one day be motivated by non-Anglican or even not-Christian objectives. Voluntary assent, henceforth, was to be the sole basis of religious conformity or, as the Rev. Devereux Jarratt put it, in a letter to a Methodist on May 31, 1785:

"Virginians may be led, but not drove; and will listen to Scripture and arguments from thence fairly derived, much sooner than to the hard words of thief, villain, unjustly without any Scripture to support them. This is not the way to convert men over to opinions, much less to seal Christianity."

I should like to pay tribute here to the excellent work that has been done by such scholars as the Rev. Dr. George MacLaren Brydon and Mr. George Carrington Mason in the field of Virginia ecclesiastical history. This book rests heavily upon the fruits of their labor. Their spade work has made it possible for us to obtain for the first time a clear and well-documented picture of the Church of colonial Virginia.

Finally, let me say that the subject matter of this book lies close to my heart. As a historian of colonial Virginia and as a priest of the Episcopal Church, I find that my two fields of special knowledge and interest converge in Anglican Virginia.

It has long been the practice to describe the founding of Virginia as a business proposition, a purely mercantile undertaking by a joint-stock company, in marked contrast to the religious reasons for which New England, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were founded. But additional research and mature scholarship have lately induced historians to abandon this generalization.

Religious objectives, it is true, played an important part in the establishment of the Puritan, Quaker, and Roman Catholic colonies. But so did economic ones! The promoters, especially of proprietary provinces like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, sought to create extensive family estates for themselves in the New World. Non-migrating investors, particularly English merchants, wished to turn an honest penny and develop new trade routes and sources of raw materials such as lumber, fur, and fish. 8. Individuals who came to settle in these colonies were frequently drawn to America by the opportunity of improving their lot in this world more expeditiously than seemed feasible in Europe.

If a generalization can be made about these colonies, it is that the impulse for their founding was both religious and secular. Some settlers doubtless were motivated entirely by a desire to escape religious repression in the Old World; others entirely by a desire to escape the economic repression of Europe with its well-intrenched society of landlords and merchants. Many more — probably a considerable majority — forsook their native shores for a combination of spiritual and material reasons in proportions that varied with each individual.

But what of Virginia? Was it not founded by a London joint-stock company? Surely its objectives were economic pure and simple. The answer, oddly enough, is no. Almost every promotional brochure issued by the Virginia Company in the early days of the Jamestown settlement set forth among its objectives the conversion of the Indians to Christianity, or in the quaint language of the time, "to recover out of the armes of the Divell, a number of poore and miserable soules, up unto death, in almost invincible ignorance." And it is for this reason, among others, that King James directed the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to cause sermons to be preached and offerings to be taken in all the churches in the kingdom for the furtherance of so godly a project. For this reason also many of the Anglican clergy and laity were moved to support 9. the undertaking not only with their prayers but also by purchasing shares in the Virginia Company. Many others gave bequests of Bibles, prayer books, altar frontals, and communion silver to the Church in the colony, and later contributed to the Indian school and college that in 1618 were proposed to be established far inland at Henricus, near the present site of Richmond. The founding of Virginia was, in a measure, the fruit of a crusade of the Church of England to carry Christianity to the "Western Indians."

A recent historian of Virginia's Mother Church, the Rev. Dr. George MacLaren Brydon, has pointed out that the religious terms and expressions so frequently used by the early leaders and participants in the undertaking both in England and Virginia would be "inexpressibly blasphemous" if they were insincere. And an authority on New England Puritanism, Professor Perry Miller of Harvard, has observed that the Virginia adventurers intimated that their principal concern was "neither the rate of interest nor the discovery of gold, but the will of God." In consequence, their professions "sound much like those of Massachusetts Puritans." Settlers and promoters considered themselves only secondarily as merchants, exploiters, and even Englishmen. In their own estimation they were first and foremost Christians, and more particularly militant Anglicans.

All this is not to say that religion was the only motive in the establishment of the colony of Virginia. Far from it! It was only one of several, the others being the extension of England with 10. its customs, traditions, and way of life beyond the seas, the establishment of a convenient base of operations against the Spanish in the Caribbean, the discovery of gold and other desirable commodities, the provision of a "vent" for the surplus population of the Mother Country, and the personal profit motive. The point to be made is that the religious impulse is now believed to have been far more important an ingredient in the mixture than nineteenth-century historians realized. And this is true even though Virginia was founded by a commercial company with the active interest of the king — for it also had the blessing and prayers of the Church of England. It is true even though the Virginia colony was not, like the Puritan, Quaker, and Roman Catholic colonies, intended as a resort for dissenters and drew few refugees from religious persecution in the Old World.

The explanation of this paradox is the great difference between the outlook of Englishmen in the early seventeenth century and of Americans today. Religion was then a more compelling force with the rank and file of the nation. The people were more carefully drilled in its basic principles. They were more reverently aware of the pervasiveness of God in His universe, and of their own solemn obligation, on pain of eternal damnation, to conform to His commandments. They took more seriously than many people today their membership in the Church and their positive duty to combat evil and conform to God's will on earth.

These good Christian views were by no means the exclusive property of the Church of England, or of the Puritans within or without it, but were common to Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Protestant dissenters. They were, in fact, characteristic of the prevailing theological climate of opinion shared alike in slightly varying degrees by all Europeans of that day. And they help to explain the otherwise inexplicable similarities of religious outlook, in matters other than ritual and ceremonial, of Virginia Anglicans, Massachusetts Puritans, Rhode Island Baptists, and Maryland and Canadian Roman Catholics in an age of aggravated ecclesiastical conflict and intolerance. True Christians in any age have more similarities than differences. In the seventeenth century, the so-called "theological century," all Europeans had a similar view of God and His universe in spite of the different communions to which they belonged.

Unlike business corporations we know today, the Virginia Company and its contemporary organizations had not yet entirely thrown off the leaven of spiritual concern. Men did not differentiate between the work they did to earn their daily bread and their other endeavors to glorify God. Each sought to serve God in his own calling, whether he was a priest, magistrate, farmer, or merchant. There was no doubt in the minds of the members of the Virginia Company that "God shall bring every work into judgment" (Ecclesiastes 12:14) . And this was supported by St. Paul's dictum, "whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31) . Profits were 12. their objective as befitted a self-respecting business undertaking, but the Virginia Company and its contemporaries were genuinely anxious to make them in a way that would please God and further His Kingdom on earth.

Religion was, likewise, a power in the lives of the early Jamestown settlers — not alone of the clergy, but of the rough-and-ready soldiers as well. Captain John Smith, who in a fit of impatience condemned the London Company for "making Religion their colour, when all their aime was nothing but present profit," revealed his own belief that the religious motive should predominate over the economic. And for his own part, he privately and publicly thanked God for His continual care and watchful providence over him through the whole course of his life to the end that he might make God's name "knowne in those remote parts of the world and his loving mercy to such a miserable sinner."

The early clergy at Jamestown were also moved by their unusual evangelical opportunities. The Rev. Robert Hunt, the first Vicar of James City Parish, whom Smith called "an honest, religious, and couragious Divine," and the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, known as "the Apostle to the Indians," labored ceaselessly among the sick and dying during the "starving time," preaching and exhorting the well to compose their quarrels, and experiencing all manner of personal hardship without complaint. Truly it may be said that Virginia history began with two saints who deserve annual commemoration in the church calendar.

The civil magistrates of early Virginia, like Smith and the clergy, willingly paid regular homage to religion. Governor Lord Delaware, arriving at Jamestown in 1610, attended divine service in the parish church even before he presented his commission and assumed the reins of government. And the grizzled veteran of the Flemish wars, Sir Thomas Dale, did likewise when he landed in 1611. Later he wrote to a London friend that he considered himself engaged in a "religious War" with no thought of reward "but from him in whose vineyard I labor, whose Church with greedy appetite I desire to erect."

During the frightful "starving time" at Jamestown, 1608-1609, every member of the garrison who was able to rise from his bed, dragged himself to divine service and sermon every Sunday. And when the supplies of wine grew low, the last two gallons by universal consent were ordered reserved for the sacrament of Holy Communion. When the guard was changed at Jamestown a prayer was said, rivalling in its length and solemnity anything used by the most devout Massachusetts Puritan or Spanish-American Jesuit. And when the first General Assembly of Virginia met in the Jamestown Church in 1619, it began its work with prayer, and its first acts were religious in character, requiring church attendance on Sunday, punishing excess in apparel, idleness, drunkenness, and gaming, imposing a tithe on the people for the support of the Church and clergy, and authorizing churchwardens to present offenders against the moral law.

The origin of the English Church is lost in the mists of antiquity. With the dissemination of the Gospel and the spread of the Church by the Apostolic and post-Apostolic generations, Christianity reached the British Isles at least as early as the second century, and according to a persistent but unauthenticated tradition, in the first century. St. Paul's journey to the furthest part of the west may have meant Britain, and the holy thorn of Glastonbury is traditionally supposed to have been planted there by Joseph of Arimathea. At any rate, Christianity reached Britain by the second century, and early in the next century England's first martyr, St. Alban, died for the Faith.

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire early in the fifth century there was a period of chaos during which the British Church became isolated from the rest of the Universal Church and developed some minor peculiarities not, however, amounting to deliberate heresy or schism. In 597 A.D. St. Augustine of Canterbury arrived in England at the head of a mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great, whose wisdom and tact made it possible to bring the British Church back into conformity with the essential habits and customs of the Western or Latin Church. Thus, the Church of England entered into full communion with the Church of Rome and so remained for nearly a thousand years until Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth and ordered Roman Catholics to withdraw from communion with it in 1570.

After the long night of the Dark Ages and the bright gleam of the high Middle Ages, the great fifteenth-century Renaissance broke upon Europe just at a time when the prestige of the papacy reached its lowest ebb and the Western Church was disfigured by many abuses. The resulting intellectual and religious ferment eventually led to the sixteenth-century Reformation during which the Church of England underwent changes that the amiable but forthright Sir Thomas Browne likened to a ship having barnacles scraped off her hull. These changes when viewed in retrospect were subtractive in character. It was the intention of the reformers that nothing new be added, and nothing that the undivided Holy Catholic Church considered essential be lost. Certain practices and beliefs of recent centuries were rejected as erroneous or uncertain, that is, "grounded upon no warranty of Scripture" and unknown to the "old Fathers" of the Church. That this refining of the old could possibly be interpreted as the founding of a new church seemed incredible to Anglicans. No such intention was in the minds of the men who wrought these changes, and no such intention was imputed to them by others until long afterwards.

The first of these changes occurred in 1534 when the Church of England reasserted its administrative autonomy, declaring that "the Bishop of Rome hath no more authority in England than any foreign bishop." This was not a bolt out of the blue, but the logical conclusion of a series of English protests through several centuries against growing papal interference in purely provincial Anglican affairs. It also brought the constitution, to the great satisfaction 16. of ecclesiastical scholars, more nearly into conformity with that of the early undivided Catholic Church of the Apostles and the Fathers before the papacy had developed its claim of supremacy. This change with respect to the Pope they insisted was merely a readjustment of the Church's constitution and in no way affected the continuity of the Church of England as an institution.

The other point to be remembered is that although the Church of England became Protestant at this time, its protest was the against "tyranny of the Bysshop of Rome and al hys detestable enormities" (Litany of 1552) and for — protestari means to bear witness for — the true Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In other words, the Church of England claimed to be Catholic even after it had become anti-papal. In rejecting papal supremacy, England declared that the Church and nation "intended not to decline or vary from the Congregation of Christ's Church, in things concerning the Catholic faith of Christendom, or declared by Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary to salvation." For this reason Anglicans have, since the Reformation, regarded themselves as being both Protestant and Catholic, two words which as they use them are not mutually exclusive.

In the ferment of the Reformation, Englishmen were driven to re-examine the Church and rethink its doctrine so that they might defend what was truly Catholic against irresponsible reformers and prevent the continuance of false or doubtful medieval accretions by sentimental or unenlightened conservatism. The Anglican Church 17. emerged from the welter of conflict and contention with a theological and ecclesiastical position described as the via media, or middle way, between the Roman Catholics on one hand and the Continental Protestants on the other.

Before discussing the differences which separated the Church of England from other communions, it is important to recognize the fact that they represented but a small part of the doctrine of the Church. Even after the conflicts of the Reformation there existed a much larger area of theological agreement than is commonly supposed. On such important matters as the doctrine of the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, and the resurrection of the dead, Anglican writers of the seventeenth century were almost wholly in agreement with their Roman Catholic and Protestant brethren. Similarly, with the exception of some of the smaller and more extreme groups, most Protestants found no fault with the doctrine of the Church of England with respect to the Atonement or to the nature of heaven and hell.

There were, in fact, only four major areas of doctrinal disagreement between the Church of England and Rome or Geneva: these had to do with (l) the source of religious authority; (2) the nature of the Church; (3) Holy Orders and the necessity of bishops; and (4} the Holy Eucharist.

The Church of England recognized three sources of religious authority: the Holy Scriptures, the tradition of the Church, and reason. By Holy Scriptures, it meant the Bible, composed of the universally accepted books of the Old and New Testaments plus the 18. books of the Apocrypha. But it assigned a lower value to the Apocrypha than to the rest of the Bible. Following St. Jerome who made the standard Latin translation of the Bible late in the fourth century, Anglicans held that "the Church doth read [the Apocryphal books] for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine." In making this distinction, the Church of England agreed with Luther who did likewise, but differed from the Calvinists who rejected the Apocrypha altogether, and from post-Reformation Roman Catholics who regarded the Apocrypha as an integral part of the Old Testament.

By tradition, the Church of England meant the historic Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, the common consent of the General Councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, and the writings of the "Fathers of the Church" from the earliest times down to St. Jerome and St. Augustine. The authority of the Councils and Fathers was not absolute. They were venerated as interpreters of the original deposit of Faith as recorded in the New Testament. In ascribing religious authority to tradition, or more exactly to Holy Scriptures as interpreted by early Church tradition, Anglicans parted company with the Continental Protestants most of whom rejected tradition as a source of authority. In limiting effective and reliable tradition to the days of the undivided Catholic Church — before the schism between the East and West — the Church of England and the Church of Rome were at variance. The latter claimed the right to define new dogma from its own continuing tradition.

Although the Church of England made no official pronouncement upon reason as a source of religious authority, Anglican theologians generally recognized it as a legitimate one. In doing so they continued the medieval tradition and followed St. Thomas Aquinas who in the thirteenth century defined the place of reason in Christian religious thought, and they opposed Calvin who declared that "In divine things our reason is totally blind and stupid." The Anglican view is best expressed in Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594): "The light of natural understanding, wit, and reason, is from God; he it is which thereby doth illuminate every man entering the world… He is the author of all that we think or do by virtue of that light which himself hath given." The law of reason, maintained, was God's law, and to "refuse the conduct of the light of nature" was to him not only folly but also impiety.

This concept of reason as God-given, and therefore a subsidiary of religious authority, inclined Anglican theologians to be sympathetic to the new discoveries of science that the Age of Reason brought. Hence, it is not surprising that two of the great fathers the Age of Reason, Bacon and Newton, were theologically orthodox whereas many of their Continental counterparts like Spinoza and Voltaire, being out of sympathy with the prevailing theology, became anticlerical if not agnostic. And in the eighteenth century many Anglican priests were learned in the natural sciences.

The attachment of the English Church to reason as one of the sources of religious authority helps to explain the steady growth 20. of toleration in eighteenth-century Anglican thought. By the same token, it also helps to explain the ease with which Deism — a mode of thought which accepted God's existence but allowed no other source of religious authority than reason — became prevalent and fashionable among the English intelligentsia of the eighteenth century. The Church of England set its face against Deism by insisting upon divine revelation and tradition as well as reason. Jeremy Taylor, the great Caroline divine and author of Holy Living and Holy Dying — which was a best-seller in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England — summed up the Anglican position in these words, "Scripture, Tradition, Councils, and Fathers are the evidence in question, but reason is the judge. "

On the subject of the nature of the Church, Anglican theologians were chiefly concerned with defending the claim of the Church of England to be a true branch of the Catholic Church. Their writings were directed against Roman Catholic controversialists who held that papal supremacy was an essential feature of the Catholic Church, and that any Christian body that denied it was no longer Catholic. Against this view the Anglican writers appealed to history for their argument. The Catholic Church, they pointed out, had held no such dogma in the days of the Apostles, the Fathers, and the General Councils. Therefore, they maintained, that papal supremacy, whatever its merits as an administrative expediency, could not be accounted essential to the constitution of the Catholic Church, and that the Church of England was Catholic even though it rejected 21. papal supremacy. The Anglican view is illustrated in Archbishop Laud's remarks, "We live in a Church reformed, not in one made new. Now all reformation that is good and orderly takes away nothing from the old but that which is faulty and erroneous," and "I die as I have lived, in the true orthodox profession of the Catholic faith of Christ … and a true member of his Catholic Church within the communion of a living part thereof, the present Church of England."

During all the turmoil of the Reformation, the Church of England steadfastly strove to preserve the continuity of its ministry from Apostolic times. Hence, it insisted upon a ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons and rigidly excluded from its chancels and pulpits all non-episcopally ordained ministers. On this point the Anglican position was identical with that of the Roman Church, and Anglican arguments about Holy Orders were directed principally against the Puritans and other Protestants who rejected the historic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons. "The ministry of things divine," said Hooker, "is a function which as God did himself institute, so neither may men undertake the same but by authority and power given them in lawful manner." Bishops, priests, and deacons are "ministers of God as from whom their authority is derived, and not from men." He continued, "If anything in the Church's government, surely the first institution of bishops was from heaven, was even of God; and the Holy Ghost was the author of it." The Church had always had bishops; therefore, Anglican writers cried out against the novelty of the idea that the Church 22. could exist without them. Episcopacy, wrote Hooker, is "taught by Christ and his Apostles in the word of God," and the government by bishops has been "observed everywhere throughout all generations and ages of the Christian world." To this Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter, in his Episcopacy by Divine Right (1637) added, "To depart from the judgment and practice of the universal Church of Christ ever since the Apostles' times, and to betake ourselves to a new invention, cannot but be, besides the danger, vehemently scandalous."

On the important question of the Eucharist reams were written. Here as in so many other ways the Church of England occupied a middle position between Rome and Geneva. The doctrine of transubstantiation, which was developed during the Middle Ages, held that at the instant of consecration the elements in Holy Communion cease to be bread and wine and quite literally become the body and blood of Christ, in substance the same physical body and blood that Christ had during His earthly life. This the Church of England rejected at the Reformation on the grounds that it could not be "proved by Holy Writ" and was not taught in the early centuries of the Church, and, therefore, could not be considered a belief necessary to salvation. On the contrary, as the twenty-eighth of the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 asserted, it was "repugnant to the plain words of Scripture," for St. Paul referred to the elements as bread and wine after consecration. And in any event, it continued, transubstantiation "overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament" in which there must be an outward and visible sign as well as an inward and spiritual grace, and "hath given occasion to 23. many superstitions." The Church of England, however, did not reject the ancient Catholic doctrine of the "real presence" of Christ in the Eucharist, implicit in the Scriptures and explicit in the writings of the Fathers. But the English Church laid down no further details as to the exact nature of the real presence, and Anglican theologians refused on principle to theorize at all on the mode of sacramental efficacy. Recognizing that there are limits to human understanding and that if further knowledge about the Eucharist were necessary to salvation, it would have been revealed in the Scriptures, they held that it is enough to receive the sacrament in certain knowledge that Christ commanded it and assured His Church that His body and blood would thereby be received. The Anglican position has been summarized by a modern scholar, Paul Elmer More, in these words: "The Anglicans widely admitted the 'real presence,' not corporal but spiritual, of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. In so far, they tended away from Reformation Eucharistic theology towards the Objectivism of Rome. But in a different respect, namely in their emphasis on the need for the cooperation of faith in the communicant, they leaned towards the Protestant position," The twenty-eighth of the Thirty-Nine Articles asserts, "The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten … only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten … is Faith."

The results of the sixteenth-century Reformation were generally well received in England. An overwhelming majority of the people went along with the Church as reformed, but as often happens to those 24. who strive for the golden mean, the Church proved too Protestant for some and too Catholic for others. Hence, two small groups of extremists withdrew from the communion of the Church and became dissenters. One group, the Roman Catholics, felt that in rejecting papal supremacy the Church had gone too far. The other, the Separatists, felt that in retaining Catholic faith and order the Church had not gone far enough. Larger numbers of people who remained within the Church leaned one way or the other, in consequence of which the Church has ever since been in a state of tension between its High Church and Low Church factions. In the early seventeenth century, however, the High Church interests were in control of the Church, especially when William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury (1633-44). As a result, the Puritan Nonconformists in the Church were exceedingly unhappy. Finally, the alliance between Laud's churchmanship and King Charles I's politics led to the English Civil War which resulted in the overthrow of both Church and Monarchy for a period of years. After the restoration of Church and Crown in 1660, the great mass of hitherto discontented Puritans seceded from the Church of England and formed their own churches. Then, for the first time, England had a considerable number of dissenters from the Established Church. The Protestant dissenters were given a substantial amount of toleration after 1689, and the Roman Catholics after 1778, but until the eighteenth-century Enlightenment had time to exert its full influence on the side of toleration, the religious picture in England was one of confusion and mutual recrimination. Dean Swift somewhat 25. sardonically remarked that there was just enough religion in the world to make men hate, but not enough to make them love one another.

After the death of Queen Anne, the Stuart dynasty was replaced by the Hanoverian dynasty from Germany, the first several kings of which lacked Queen Anne's piety and love for the Church. Under the early Georges the principal bishoprics in England went to easy-going or "Latitudinarian" Whig bishops, many of whom were men of more social and political pretension than evangelical zeal. Under their unfortunate leadership the Church suffered a temporary spiritual decline after 1713 which was later counteracted by the Evangelical and Tractarian movements. But these lie outside our period. The Virginia Church began during the lull before the Laudian storm, it weathered the hurricane of the Puritan Commonwealth, and later under Latitudinarian "salutary neglect" of the colonies developed its own attitude toward the dissenters who became increasingly numerous in the second half of the eighteenth century.

But enough of that for now. First, let us see how the Virginia Establishment worked, what kind of churches it built, how it worshipped God, and what its clergymen were like. Then we shall see what its relations were with those who shunned its communion and sought to overthrow the Establishment.

Elementary education is the most misunderstood aspect of colonial Virginia life. As a result of Sir William Berkeley's celebrated — and erroneous — statement that he thanked God there were no free schools in Virginia, and because no records of many small schools are extant, it is commonly assumed that local schools were practically nonexistent in the colony. It is true that there were no public schools in our modern sense and that the responsibility for educating a child was held to reside in the master of the household in which he lived rather than in the community. But despite this, there were 42. schools all over the more settled portions of the colony. Indeed, few parishes were without several of them.

Many of these small schools were kept by the rector of the parish, a few possibly by the parish clerk. It is probable that a majority of colonial rectors engaged in this kind of educational activity and taught children of parishioners in return for fees that varied with their ability to pay. Hugh Jones in 1724 wrote that "In most parishes are schools (little Houses being built on Purpose) where are taught English and Writing." Many eminent Virginians received their elementary education at these "Parsons' Schools." One of them, kept by the Rev. James Marye at Fredericksburg numbered Washington, Madison, and Monroe among its pupils. And it was in similar schools that Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall were educated. Most of these schools were small, but there were a few exceptions. The Rev. Jonathan Boucher in Hanover Parish and later in St. Mary1s Parish had thirty boys in his boarding school, including Washington's stepson, Jacky Custis. And these parsons' schools were not always limited to English and writing. One Anglican clergyman in Virginia in 1771 proposed to teach French, Latin, Greek, and English, book-keeping by double entry, algebra, geometry, surveying, mechanics, fortification, gunnery, and navigation. In his Virginia's Mother Church, Dr. Brydon states his opinion that "an appreciable part of the great contribution made by the clergy of the Anglican Church as a class to the life and development of the colony of Virginia was the lessons in culture and refinement 43. and the love of the finer things of life instilled by them through their labors as schoolmasters to the youth of their parishes."

English parishes frequently paid for the education of poor children in private schools. But for some unknown reason this practice was comparatively infrequent in Virginia. There were, of course, a few privately endowed charity schools that existed primarily for this purpose. But they were inadequate to meet the needs of the entire colony. Children of parents too poor to pay for their schooling sometimes were apprenticed to a planter or craftsman who contracted to teach the child to read and write as well as farming, domestic service, or a trade. But even poor parents were reluctant to part with their children, and although the law empowered the churchwardens to bind out such children by force if necessary, it was seldom done.

That the larger part of them received no education is clear from a report of Theodorick Bland of Bristol Parish, Prince George County in 1755, lamenting "the unhappy and indeed miserable circumstances of the many poor orphans and other poor children, whose parents are utterly unable to give them any education" and recommending the erection of a school and workhouse to serve three adjacent parishes "that such poor children should be brought up in a religious, virtuous and industrious course of life."

Apprenticeship was the usual way the parish authorities dealt with orphans, and with neglected and illegitimate children. This system was intended to augment the number of skilled workers, to 44. reduce poverty and vagabondage, to bring up uncared for children in a wholesome way, and to provide for the support and education of poor children without any cost to the taxpayers of the parish. A careful investigation of the statutes of the colony and the records of the parishes reveals that no one of these objectives was dominant. But as time went on, perhaps under the influence of the rising tide of humanitarianism in the eighteenth century, there was an increasing emphasis upon the welfare of the children. To that end the educational requirements were gradually increased and the illegitimates placed upon the same footing as other children. But, judging from the surviving records, it is probable that the apprentice system provided for only a very small number of the poor children of the colony. The greater portion grew up with no more education than their parents were able to give them, which in that day was often very little indeed.

The parish workhouse, which was so much a part of English life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was rare in Virginia, although it was becoming more common toward the end of the colonial period. In England they housed and educated the poor, and provided work suitable to the age and condition of each inmate so that they might have something with which to occupy their time and also help pay for their own support. Some of the workhouses, particularly in the early seventeenth century, offered intensive industrial training. Some contained endowed schools. But this function later diminished and in the following century they were populated chiefly 45. by the aged and infirm or by children too young to be apprenticed. At this stage of their development — or rather deterioration they have been memorably portrayed by Dickens in his Oliver Twist.

In Virginia the population was too widely scattered and wealth too slowly accumulated to make the parish workhouse a practicable solution. The poor were cared for in their own homes or boarded out on farms if they were too young or too old to be indentured as servants or apprentices. Two attempts by the General Assembly to set up workhouses failed. The first, in 1646, provided for a "flax house" at Jamestown where children of "such parents who by reason of their poverty are disabled to maintaine and educate them" might be sent from all over the colony. Here they were to be instructed and employed "in carding, knitting, and spinning… under such master or mistresse as shall there be appointed." Its objective, however, was principally educational and industrial, rather than to care for poor children, The parish apprentice system served well enough for the latter purpose. The second abortive attempt was an act in 1668 authorizing similar workhouses to be established by the joint action in the counties and parishes "for the better converting wool, flax, hempe, and other commodities into manufactures, and for the increase of artificers in the country." This act was permissive in character, and very few, if any, workhouses were built in pursuance of it.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the population of Virginia had grown greatly and the number of poor people and vagabonds began to be troublesome. To meet this condition an act in 1755 was passed authorizing the vestry of each parish to purchase, 46. hire, or build one or more houses in the parish "for the lodging, maintaininge, and employing of all such poor people as shall be upon the parish…, and to levy a reasonable allowance in their parish levies, for the education of such poor children as shall be placed in the said house, or houses, until they shall be bound out according to law." Beggars and vagabonds were to be sent to these workhouses, as well as all those who applied to the churchwardens for relief. Unlike its seventeenth-century counterparts, this law was obviously intended primarily for caring for the poor rather than for industrial or educational ends.

An interesting, although minor, feature of this act is the provision that parish levies were to be used for educating the poor children. This was the first time a Virginia statute made any provision for elementary education at public expense. Small though it was, it was the entering end of the wedge. At this point public education at the taxpayers' expense had its beginning. In England the practice of using parish levies for the education of poor children was well established by custom, but not by statute.

Under this act a number of Virginia parishes actually did establish workhouses for the poor, although the sparsity of population often led several parishes to join forces and build a single workhouse to serve them all, and thus to prevent unnecessary duplication of effort and to keep down the parish tithes. Most of them, however, made no provision for educating or employing their inmates. They were poorhouses, pure and simple.

As wealth accumulated in the older parishes, charity schools were sometimes endowed by benevolent individuals and the churchwardens and vestries occasionally designated as trustees of bequests. The best known instances of this are the Syms and Eaton academies founded in Elizabeth City Parish and Nattey Whaley's Free School in Bruton Parish.

Benjamin Syms's will of 1635 bequeathed 200 acres of land together with the mill and increase of eight cows "for the maintenance of a learned, honest man, to keep upon the said ground a free school for the education and instruction of the children of the adjoining parishes of Elizabeth City and Kiquotan." Trusteeship was conferred upon the justices of the peace of the county and the rector and churchwardens of the parish, who "when there should be a sufficient increase of the said cattle" were authorized to sell a part of them and build a schoolhouse. Syms died five or six years later, and his will was confirmed by an act of 1643 and the school actually began soon thereafter.

The other famous free school in the same parish was endowed by Thomas Eaton in a will dated 1659, with 500 acres of land, two Negroes, 12 cows and two bulls, 20 hogs, and a long list of household furniture and utensils . Like Syms, he appointed the county and parish officials to be its trustees. He further ordered that "no free education bee allowed but to such children as shall be borne within the said county." The school was in operation soon after 1659. In the eighteenth century the two were united under the name 48. Syms-Eaton Academy, and maintained a precarious existence until it became absorbed into the public school system. But it has preserved the identity of its name. The children of Hampton still attend the Syms-Eaton School, though it is now housed in a modern building.

Similar privately endowed charity schools were founded in a number of other Virginia parishes: the Peasley School in Abingdon and Ware Parishes in 1675, the Sandford School in Accomac Parish about 1710, the Horton School in Washington Parish sometime between 1700 and 1721, and the Yeates School in Suffolk Parish about 1731. When the Rev, John Farnefold, rector of St, Stephen's Parish, Northumberland County, died in 1702, he left part of his estate to endow a free parish school for poor children. It was to be called Winchester School and take "fower or five poore children belonging to ye parish," to board them gratis, and to teach them to read the Bible and write a legible hand. As soon as they could do that, the pupils were to be dismissed and new ones taken. We do not know whether the school was ever in operation or not. A private charity school, called Mattey Free School, was begun in Williamsburg about 1706 by Mrs. Mary Whaley, and named for her nine-year-old son who died that year. When she died in 1742, she endowed the school and bequeathed it to the rector and churchwardens of Bruton Parish, specifying that it should "teach the neediest children of the Same parish who shall be offered in the art of reading writing and arithmetic." The present public school of Williamsburg bears the name Matthew Whaley and as the modern representative of Mattey's Free School admirably fulfills the terms of Mrs. Whaley's will.

As these charity schools all had insufficient endowment, some of them, like Eaton and Mattey's schools, allowed the master to augment his wretched stipend by taking the sons of gentlemen who could pay tuition. This, of course, saved the schools from extinction, but it also changed their character and thwarted the purposes of the donors.

In retrospect the parish system of old England worked remarkably well when transferred to Virginia and proved to be a satisfactory means of administering the affairs of Church and State on a local level. The principal peculiarity of the Virginia parish was the evolution of the self-perpetuating vestry, which although an unrepresentative and aristocratic institution, proved to be an extremely useful one in the life of the colony. It greatly facilitated the work of the parish and it committed the affairs of the smallest unit of civil and ecclesiastical government to the best educated and most respected gentlemen of the community who willingly served without remuneration. It was also an excellent training ground for young statesmen, in that it acquainted them with the process of deliberation and also with the stark realities of life among the less fortunate classes of society.

The Virginia aristocracy of the eighteenth century was notably politically-minded. Familiar from early manhood with the problems of administering a plantation and ruling over a household of servants and slaves, its members almost always served on the vestry of their parish and as justices of their county court before going to 50. Williamsburg to take their seats in the House of Burgesses, and, ultimately, for the successful few, in the Council.

As a vestryman, the young gentleman who was already familiar with plantation management, enlarged the scope of his activities to include people of all walks of life, and not merely those of his household and slave quarters. In this position he could no longer act in an authoritarian way as lord of the manor, but rather had to learn, perhaps for the first time, how to deliberate with equals and superiors. Many of his fellow vestrymen were older, more prominent, and more experienced than himself. He had, therefore, to develop the talent of an effective presentation of his own point of view and of tactfully exposing the fallacy in his opponent's argument without injuring his sensibilities or drawing fire from the other vestrymen. All this was useful in teaching co-operation and excellent preparation for the House of Burgesses to which the young vestryman might in due course be sent to represent his county.

Service on the vestry also gave a man an extraordinary opportunity for acquiring insight into human nature. It enabled him to see in the course of his work the frailties and follies of human nature, the crippling effects of sin on the lives of the common people, and the nobility of soul with which some persons were able to face the calamities of poverty, sickness, and death. Also, by bringing him into close touch with the pressing needs of the poor, the sick, and the bereaved of his own community, it offered him opportunities for unostentatious almsgiving.

Documentary evidence is not available for everything that takes place in the mind and soul of men in all places and times, but it is reasonable to conjecture that years of conscientious duty as a colonial Virginia vestryman worked great changes in the hearts of the men who so freely gave of their time and energy to the service of their fellow-men. Doubtless it led to the reform of much that was amiss in the temper and disposition of their souls, especially with respect to their pride and arrogance, those characteristic sins of men born to wealth and intellect. It is not impossible that the contact with the unfortunate classes of the parish which membership on the vestry provided helped to foster the humanitarian aspirations of the society that before long addressed itself to mitigating ignorance, disease, and the rigors of eighteenth-century prisons and criminal codes, and even committed itself to the proposition that "all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The services of the Church of Virginia were, of course, those of the Book of Common Prayer which has changed only in detail since 1662, so that a modern Episcopalian, after the fashion of a Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, might attend mattins or Holy Communion two centuries ago in Bruton Parish Church without finding any appreciable difference in the ritual. But he would find notable differences in ceremonial and in the musical setting of the services.

Arriving at a colonial parish church on a Sunday morning, the worshiper would find a little group of parishioners gathered in the churchyard busily exchanging greeting and news while their slaves or sons fastened the reins of the carriage horses to near-by trees. An English visitor who attended a service at Pohick Church 99. late in the eighteenth century wrote, "A Virginian church-yard on a Sunday, resembles rather a race-course than a sepulchral ground; the ladies come to it in carriages, and the men after dismounting from their horses make them fast to the trees." From the belfry would come the familiar tones of the bell being tolled by the sexton, as a signal that divine service was about to begin. And if the people continued to dawdle, the parish clerk might come out and summon them to enter.

The parish priest would arrive in his ordinary habit or street attire, which consisted of a long cassock, cincture (a sash), gown, tippet (a long black scarf), and soft black square cap (the distinctive headgear of Anglican clergymen, the forerunner of the academic mortarboard, and which is to the Anglican Communion what the later biretta is to the Church of Rome). Or he might have substituted a black cocked hat for his canonical square cap, and a black or grey coat for his priest's gown, in which case he would wear a shortened or tucked-up cassock so that he might ride a horse. And he would have worn a large wig and "bands" — a soft white linen neckcloth, later starched stiff to become our modern clerical collar, with two pendant tabs. Bands were evolved in the early seventeenth century and were worn by the clergy of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church, as well as by Lutheran and Calvinist ministers and by members of other learned professions — lawyers, physicians, and schoolmasters. They were universally worn by the Anglican clergy in Virginia and elsewhere until our grandfathers' day, and are still 100. occasionally to be seen in the English and American Episcopal Church. Though long since given up by the laity, they have left their legacy to the secular world in the word "bandbox."

The rector would remove his square cap or hat, enter the parish church, and walk informally down the aisle or "central alley," perhaps pausing to greet the parishioners and inquire of ill relatives. Upon reaching the rector's pew, usually near the crossing in cruciform churches and against the north or south wall in rectangular ones, he would lay aside his tippet and gown and put on his surplice. This linen garment was the principal Anglican vestment and in the seventeenth century, the object of the wrath of the Puritans who likened it to a "rag of Popery." In the eighteenth century when much of the rancor had subsided, the dissenters still disliked the surplice, and half humorously called it a "Canterbury nightgown."

The truth is that the surplice, though unknown in the Orthodox Communion, is very ancient in the Western or Latin Church, having been used since the tenth century at least, and possibly much earlier than that. Its origin, lost in the mists of the early Middle Ages, is the subject of speculation. As the word is derived from "super pelliceae" (over the fur), it is supposed that it began as an overgarment to protect the furs of the clergy from wear as they recited their daily offices seven times a day in the unheated stone churches of those early centuries of the Church.

From the earliest times until late in the nineteenth century, the surplice was extremely full and long, almost touching the ground. In 1767 the Lower Church of Blisland Parish purchased twelve yards of 101. linen, at a cost of £4:10:0, "for a Surplice," and there are other instances in which even more material was used. The surplice for centuries had been put on over the officiant's head, but in the late seventeenth century when the clergy began to wear large wigs, the surplice was altered, by being slit up the front and provided with buttons, so the priest could more easily put it on and take it off in the chancel in full view of the congregation without disarraying his wig. After the clergy gave up wigs, in the early nineteenth century, the surplice gradually regained its historic form without front opening or buttons.

Having put on "a decent and comely Surplisse with sleeves," and possibly also his hood and tippet as required by the Canons of l604, the priest now began mattins with a loud voice, and proceeded with the service known to modern Episcopalians as "Morning Prayer." The parish clerk, also in a cassock, bands, and wig, occupied a reading pew adjacent to, and often just below, the rector's pew, and led the congregational responses for the benefit of those who had no prayer books or could not read. The lessons from the Old and New Testament were read either by the churchwardens, vestrymen, or some other prominent layman such as a Councillor or the commander of the county militia, or perhaps more commonly by the parish clerk.

The other chief difference between a service then and now was in the music. A few churches, like Bruton Parish Church, had organs imported from England, but most of the country churches did not. The earliest known organ in a Virginia church dates to about 1735, 102. and even Bruton Church, the "chapel royal" of Virginia, did not have an organ until 1755. Churches without them had to sing without accompaniment, and the congregation was started off by the parish clerk "pitching" the tune. At the Reformation, hymns ceased to be used at divine service, and were entirely replaced for three centuries by the metrical version of the psalms.

The first version of the psalter "Collected into English meetre … with apt Notes to sing them withall" by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, was published in 1562 and became dear to the hearts of many generations of church people despite the poor quality of much of its verse and tunes. Queen Elizabeth pronounced them to be "Geneva jigs." The "stout-church-and-King-man," Thomas Fuller, said that two hammerers on an anvil would make better music. And an eighteenth-century English writer on church music lamented "the cold, the meagre, the disgusting Dulness of Sternhold" which, he said, "hath quenched all the poetic Fire and devout Majesty of the royal Psalmist." An example of this version is the twenty-third psalm :

The Lord is only my support,
and he that doth me feed:
How can I then lack any thing
whereof I stand in need?

In pastures green he feedeth me,
where I do safely lie:
And after leads me to the streams
which run most pleasantly.

Thou hast my table richly spread
in presence of my foe:
Thou hast my head with balm refresh'd,
my cup doth over flow.

And finally while breath doth last,
thy grace shall me defend:
And in the house of God will I
my life for ever spend.

Late in the seventeenth century, in 1696, a new version of the psalms by King William's chaplain-in-ordinary, Brady, and the Poet-Laureate, Tate, appeared that was greatly superior to the Sternhold-Hopkins 103. version. But the "old version" continued to be favored by the common folk, and ran through several hundred editions, the last in the middle of the nineteenth century. For a century and more Tate and Brady's version fought an uphill battle against its predecessor, only to succumb in due course to the rising tide of hymnody in the nineteenth century. Thus, if you entered a Virginia parish church two hundred years ago, the chances are that the old version rather than the new would be in use. Possibly Bruton Church, being the chapel royal for Virginia, might have been sufficiently sophisticated to prefer the Tate and Brady version. If so, it probably had few companions among the churches of the colony.

Another notable difference would be the absence of the vested choir preceded by a crucifer, now so invariable a part of Anglican Sunday services. Until the late eighteenth century, vested choirs were not found in Anglican parish churches, although cathedrals and collegiate churches often had them. The normal English parish church choir in the eighteenth century was composed of men, women, and children who sat unvested in the west end of the church — often in the west gallery — near the organ and whose musical efforts were calculated to lead and bolster the congregational singing. This was the practice in some Virginia parishes churches as well. Philip Fithian, a tutor at Nomini Hall, the handsome country seat of Councillor Robert Carter on the Northern Neck, recorded in his diary on Sunday, September 25, 1774, shortly after he had come to Virginia, that he attended Yeocomico Church and "was surprised when the Psalm begun to hear a large collection of voices singing at the same time, 104. from a Gallery, entirely contrary to what I have seen before in the Colony, for it is seldom in the fullest Congregations, that more sing than the Clerk, and about two others."

After mattins, the priest read the litany, and after that began the antecommunion, the portion of the Holy Communion that came before the invitation and confession. And if there was to be no sacrament, he concluded the service at this point with the blessing. Thus, the service, even when there was no communion, was much longer than we are accustomed to, and included the Old and New Testament lessons from mattins and the liturgical Epistle and Gospel for the day.

After the blessing, the priest removed his surplice, put on his gown and possibly his hood — especially if he boasted a doctor of divinity degree from Oxford or Cambridge — and ascended the narrow steps leading to the high, wine-glass pulpit, so characteristic of the time. The sermon or homily was introduced not by the invocation or collect so universal today, but by the Bidding Prayer prescribed by the 55th of the Canons of 1604. This began: "Ye shall pray for Christs holy Catholike Church" and went on to specify other objects of prayer — the king, queen, and other members of the royal family, the Privy Council, nobility, magistrates, and commons of the realm, "all those which are departed out of this life in the Faith of Christ," and finally that "we may have grace to direct our lives after their good example" and "this life ended, wee may be made partakers with them of the glorious Resurrection in the life Everlasting." Then the Bidding Prayer always concluded with the Lord's Prayer, said by all present.

The colonial sermon is unlikely to appeal to the modern churchman. It was generally very long, heavily freighted with quotations and citations from Holy Scripture and the early Fathers of the Church, and usually read verbatim from carefully prepared notes. The glorious good news of Christ's Gospel was not lost, but it was heavily overlaid with ecclesiastical scholarship, if not philosophical rationalism. One English parish priest who lived principally in his library and whose sermons smelt of the lamp was said to be "invisible on weekdays and incomprehensible on Sundays." He was, however, a caricature of the type. The rank and file were better than that. And, besides, our colonial ancestors had stronger stomachs than modern congregations for long and meaty sermons. Many colonial Virginia libraries contained whole sets of sermons by eminent Anglican divines, and it was worth the while of booksellers in Williamsburg to import and advertise for sale enormous numbers of works of this kind.

It is worth noting that a favorite modern church practice was wanting then: the gathering and presentation of alms at Morning Prayer. Alms were, of course, gathered as a part of the offertory in the rite of Holy Communion and every set of communion plate included a sterling silver almsbasin. But it would not have occurred to the colonial rector to make a ceremony of presenting alms at the altar during mattins. The Church, as has been seen in chapter 2, had no financial anxieties. It spent what it had to and apportioned the expenses among all the parishioners in the form of 106. parish levies, which were collected by law. Apart from the Eucharist, divine service was not to be interrupted by such unnecessary materialism. Poor boxes there were in every church, and the devout parishioner who wished to make a thank offering for some special instance of God's loving-kindness was encouraged to do so in that way.

Another difference between colonial and modern practice is in the use of flowers to decorate the altar. There is no precedent in either Virginia or England prior to the nineteenth century for altar flower vases. Flowers and greens were indeed used in Anglican churches at Easter and Christmas, and other great festivals, but they were hung about the walls in garlands, not placed in vases and never put on the altar. As altars were invariably hung with exquisite frontals of costly and beautiful material, often decorated with gold or silver fringe, no flowers were needed to dignify them or enhance their beauty. The use of plain and bare altars in the nineteenth century led people instinctively to try to correct the offence by crowding expensive flowers on their altars. In colonial days flowers and greens were used in churches only on great holy days, and then to decorate the building rather than the altar.

Still another difference is the seventeenth and eighteenth-century aversion to the use of brass and other inferior metals on the altar. Communion plate was almost always gold, silver-gilt, or sterling silver, the last mentioned being almost universal in the colonies. Occasionally poor churches used pewter as a temporary make shift, but in general anything less than pure silver was, before 107. the Industrial Revolution, regarded as unworthy of a decent and proper worship of Almighty God, "The Lord of lords and King of kings."

Holy Communion was by our standards received infrequently, but more frequently than had been the case prior to the Reformation. In the Middle Ages, communicants were obliged to receive the sacrament at least once a year — on Easter Day or within the octave of that great feast. Devout persons in many cases received it more often than that. The great objective of the Reformer was to revive the early practice of the Church by which Holy Communion was the principal service every Sunday, and all communicants received weekly. The medieval custom of infrequent reception of the sacrament proved too deeply intrenched, and the most the Reformers accomplished was to make Communion slightly more frequent. The Anglican Canons of 1604 required Holy Communion to be administered in every parish church and chapel "so often, and at such times as every Parishioner may Communicate at the least thrise in the yeere (whereof the Feast of Easter to bee one)." Professors, Masters, scholars, and students in colleges and universities were required to receive the sacrament at least four times a year. And the 1662 Prayer Book required all priests and deacons connected with cathedral churches and colleges to receive Holy Communion "with the Priest every Sunday at the least, except they have a reasonable cause to the contrary."

The answers to a questionnaire sent to Virginia parishes in 1724 by the Bishop of London indicate that Holy Communion was normally celebrated three or four times a year in most parishes, 108. but six or eight times a year in a few. In Christ Church Parish, Middlesex County, however, the rector in 1684 announced that "out of his pious Intentions to the good of the Soles of his Flock" he would administer the "blessed Sacrament … on the first Sunday in the Month" and, moreover, "that this great Solemn Mistry might as well Worthily as Frequently be observed," he promised to preach a sermon on Saturday afternoon before each Sacrament Sunday by way of preparation. The vestry duly recorded that this proposal was "Thankfully and Cheerfully Entertained" and "Did unanimously Concurr."

The practice of inviting all comers to receive Holy Communion, which Low Churchmen have favored since the nineteenth century, was unlawful in colonial days. The 1604 Canons are quite specific in ordering priests to exclude from the sacrament (1) all notorious and unrepentant offenders against the moral law and Church discipline, (2) all schismatics, (3) all who refuse to receive kneeling, (4) all impugners of the Church of England, its Prayer Book, its episcopal form of government, and (5) all strangers. Those intending to receive Holy Communion could not just present themselves at the sanctuary rail on Sacrament Sunday; the Prayer Book required them to "signify their names to the Curate, at least some time the day before." This was to enable the priest to consider whether or not they came under the above headings.

Confirmation, or the apostolic rite of laying on of hands by the bishop upon baptized persons who have come to years of discretion, was never performed in colonial America because there were no bishops here to do it. Instead, when the rector of a parish was 109. convinced that a baptized parishioner was sufficiently prepared, he admitted him to Holy Communion without Confirmation. The Prayer Book specifically stated that "there shall none be admitted to the Holy Communion, until such time as he be confirmed," but as this manifestly could not be complied with in the colonies, the Bishop of London ordered colonial clergy to ignore it. At the 1662 revision the rubric after the Confirmation service had the words "or be ready and desirous to be confirmed" added specifically for the benefit of churchmen in His Majesty's American plantations.

Under the terms of the English Test Acts of 1673 and 1678, all holders of public office were obliged to take certain oaths recognizing the ecclesiastical and political supremacy of the king, abjuring papal authority in England and her colonies, and denying the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, and also "receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, according to the Usage of the Church of England … in some publick church, upon some Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday, immediately after Divine Service and Sermon." In order to obtain the right to hold public office, many dissenters willingly received the sacrament at the hands of an Anglican priest, took office, and then continued to frequent a dissenting chapel. To correct this abuse, Parliament passed the Occasional Conformity Act in 1711 imposing a fine of £40 on any officeholder who, having received the sacrament, subsequently resorted to a dissenting conventicle which did not use the Prayer Book and forever incapacitated him from holding office, unless he repented, took the test again, and conformed to the Church of England for "the space of one year, without 110. having been present at any Conventicle." This act, however, was soon repealed. Thereafter no machinery existed for excluding from public office a dissenter who was prepared to take the oaths and receive the sacrament.

One of the most interesting documents that have survived from colonial Virginia is a treatise on religion, written by Col. John Page of Middle Plantation (subsequently renamed Williamsburg), and dated August 10, 1687. Page, a prominent resident of Bruton Parish, "was a Councillor, a churchwarden, and the donor of the present churchyard to the parish in 1678.^1674? Shortly before his death he wrote this treatise, under the title, "A Deed of Gift To my Dear Son, Captain Matt. Page, One of His Majesty's Justices for New Kent County, in Virginia," intending to leave behind him a reasoned account of his faith. It conforms in general to the tenor of the writings of the leading Caroline divines. The section on church services, which reflects the intensity of late seventeenth-century Anglican piety, says:

"Come therefore with joy and delight into the house of God, Come also with holiness. It is holy ground; not by any inherent holiness, but in regard of the religious use. Put off thy shoes (your carnal affections,) the place where thou standest is holy ground. Be the minister never so sinful; the word is holy; the action holy, the time holy, the place holy, ordained by the most Holy to make us holy.

"My son, be not you like some that when they come first into the church, sink down on their seats, clap their hats before their 111. eyes, and scarce bow their knees; as if they come to bless God, not to intreat God to bless them. Be not you ashamed of God's service; but in his house of prayer and praise, let your carriage there be decent and devout, full of reverence, kneeling on your knees in the time of prayer."

On the subject of praying and preaching, Col. Page had this to say:

"The Apostles gave themselves continually to prayer, and to the preaching of the word. Acts VI.4. There prayer is put in the first place; yet many come to those holy places, and are so transported with a desire of hearing, that they forget the fervency of praying and praising God. The end is ever more noble than the means that conduce it. Sin brought in ignorance, and ignorance takes away devotion. The word preached brings in knowledge, and knowledge rectifies devotion. So that preaching is but to beget your praying, to instruct you to praise and worship God… This is not written against frequent hearing of sermons, but to let you know that it is not the only exercise of a Christian to hear a sermon, nor is that Lord's day well spent, that dispatcheth no other business for heaven. In heaven there will be no sermons, yet in heaven there will be hallelujahs. All God's service is not to be narrowed up in hearing; it hath greater latitude; there must be prayer, praise, adoration, and worship of God."

In the course of the eighteenth century, the piety that characterized the previous century declined, but it did not disappear. Indeed, with the Wesleyan movement and the Great Awakening, it obtained a new force and wide currency among the lower classes, which were effectively reached by the wandering evangelical preachers. It even retained a hold upon the upper class, especially in colonial America. Worldly men like William Byrd II, who was well acquainted with sins of the flesh, nonetheless exhibited a surprising degree of piety when he spoke or wrote of things religious, as can be seen in his secret diary, in which he concludes the entry for almost every day with, "I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty." Similarly the royal governor, Sir William Gooch, although usually urbane and debonair, became most humble and pious in writing an account to his brother in England of the death of the governor's only son, William, in 1742. When the young man, aged twenty-six, lay on his deathbed in the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, the governor wished to send for a priest to administer the sacrament, but the physician urged him not to do so, "insisting the sight of him might sink his spirits." But, as the governor wrote, "that dear young man of himself desired one might be sent for, and his Mother saying to him, My Dear and you'l receive the Sacrament, even then he tried to conceal his Sentiments, giving her this answer, there is no occasion, but with all my Heart." The governor reported also of Bruton Parish Church, that "the whole Congregation were in Tears the Sunday he was prayed for at Church."

Among the more colorful of colonial Virginia parsons was Jonathan Boucher, who, happily, left behind him an autobiography, written in 1786, covering the years during which he was a schoolmaster and clergyman in Virginia and Maryland. Boucher was 121. born in the north of England of an old but impoverished family. He acquired a good education through his own intellectual ability and the help of the kindly Rev. Mr. James, headmaster of St. Bee's School in Cumberland, who employed him as an usher at the school where Arthur Lee and other notable Virginians were educated. During his years there, 1756-58, Boucher later wrote, "In all my life I never have spent my time, or lived more rationally, than I think I did for the two years that I was at Saint Bees." To the good Mr. James, he paid the highest compliment. By his conversation "I learned more than I had done in all my life before, or than, I fear, I have ever since done, in the same space of time. What I ought to value still more is, that here also I learned habits of virtue, and such principles of thinking and acting, as could alone have supported and carried me through the many severe trials to which I have since been exposed." To Mr. James's friendship, Boucher acknowledged that he owed "much, if not all, of either the knowledge or the virtue which I have since possessed."

When Mr. James was satisfied that young Boucher was "a decent scholar" and, what is more important, "a Tolerably decent man," he recommended him to a merchant in near by Whitehaven, who was in the tobacco trade and who had been commissioned by a Virginia gentleman to procure a tutor for his sons. Boucher got the appointment, and sailed from Whitehaven to Virginia in the summer of 1759, ultimately reaching Port Royal on the Rappahannock River, where his employer, Captain Dixon, a well-to-do merchant, lived.

In addition to tutoring Dixon's two sons, aged eight and ten, Boucher learned the business of managing a plantation, dabbled in the study of medicine and law, and engaged in a small way in trade on the side. None of these activities entirely satisfied him, and his thoughts occasionally turned to the ministry, which as a boy was his chosen profession. At this juncture, the rector of Hanover Parish, King George County, just opposite Port Royal, left to take another parish in Richmond County where his wife owned a large estate. The vestry of Hanover Parish, having formed a favorable opinion of young Boucher's character and ability, offered him the vacant cure. This profoundly moved him and led him finally to decide to go to England for holy orders. He made the long voyage to the Mother Country and went to London where he was ordained first deacon and then priest by the Bishop of London, and licensed to hold a Virginia parish.

Upon his return to the colony, he found that his former employer, whom he had inadvertently alienated, and his predecessor as rector of Hanover Parish had spread falsehoods about his unworthiness. But he found that he was not without friends. A prominent gentleman in the parish who scarcely knew him, "merely from a sense of honour and a love of justice," spoke in his behalf, and made his entrance upon his duties much easier than it otherwise would have been. Boucher's first sermon was based upon the text Psalm 109, verse 2 — "For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue." In his sermon, 123. as he later wrote, "I begged leave to waive any particular mention of the cruel treatment I had lately met with, but thanking them for having suspended their opinions, and listened to me with candour, I assured them I wished to rise or fall in their good opinion only as I should or should not be able to disprove all the vile calumnies that had been so industriously propagated against me during my absence." And in the years that followed the well-meaning Boucher won the hearts of his parishioners and was completely vindicated against his slanderers. He became popular almost at once. People vied with one another to show their kindness and affection. There being no glebe house, or rectory, Boucher rented a house called Smith's Mount, near Leeds-Town, where, in addition to his priestly duties, he kept school, and soon had half a dozen boys boarding with him. His reputation as a schoolmaster soon spread, and before long several gentlemen in Maryland sent their sons to Boucher's school.

When the rector of St. Mary's Parish, Caroline County, died, the vestry approached Boucher to offer him the cure. After some hesitation he accepted, but not until he put the matter before his parishioners in Hanover Parish and secured their free consent to his leaving them. This they gave him, and out of respect and affection for him voluntarily continued his stipend for an additional quarter of a year as a farewell present.

Boucher's reason for changing to St. Mary's was the inconvenience of having no glebe in Hanover. The parish allowed him an extra 4,000 pounds of tobacco in lieu of a glebe, but the only house 124. available for rent was without a good supply of water and could not easily be altered to suit the needs of a school. St. Mary's Parish, on the other hand, provided more suitable quarters for the purpose. He also undertook to farm the glebe, and bought stocks of cattle, horses, and slaves.

In his new parish, Boucher, in addition to managing his plantation himself, increased his boarding school to nearly thirty boys all of whom he taught without an assistant. His rectory was eleven miles from the parish church, which imposed upon him the necessity for a great deal of riding.

Despite these activities, it was at this time that Boucher began to rethink for himself the theological basis for the Church's doctrine. He was naturally of an inquisitive turn of mind, "eager to trace the causes and reasons of things, and, if possible, to come at the truth." Throughout his life he made it a habit to read on both sides of every question. In the course of his wide reading and re-examination of everything he had taken for granted, he became exposed to some of the deistic writings that were then becoming fashionable in literary circles. These for a while shook his intellectual acceptance of "the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity," and plunged him into a brief period of theological bewilderment. But more mature thought and meditation led him to embrace the orthodox teachings of the Church with renewed assurance and fervor. After a year of speculative doubt during which he somewhat neglected the sacerdotal functions of his order, he returned with new energy and conviction to those duties, and later in life thanked God for this period of doubt and 125. its outcome, for, he wrote, I "have ever since been an orthodox and diligent parish priest."

With a spirit renewed and refreshed, Boucher set about to recover the fallen and evangelize the infidels in his parish. There were many dissenters in that part of Virginia — not so much in St. Mary's as in the two neighboring parishes, one of which was without a rector and the other saddled with one who was himself weak and incapable of setting a good example and taking the lead in the spiritual life of the parish. By diligently seeking out those who had fallen into dissent and expounding the doctrines of the Church, Boucher was soon able to boast that St. Mary's had not a single dissenter. Indeed, "some of the thoughtful people of those less happy parishes applied to me to go amongst them, and endeavour to check the delusion," he wrote in his reminiscences. "Accordingly I prepared some sermons which I delivered among them, and by the blessing of God with such effect, that many who had been decoyed from the Church returned to it; and so, finding their congregations fall off, their leaders soon left them."

His method of dealing with dissenters is worth noticing. "I attributed much of my success in this to my avoiding all disputation with their ministers, whom I spoke of as beneath such condescension, on the score of their ignorance and their impudence. And when one of them publicly challenged me to a public debate I declined it, but at the same time set up one Daniel Barksdale, a carpenter in my parish, who had a good front and a voluble Tongue, and whom therefore 126. I easily qualified to defeat his opponent, as he effectually did. And I am still persuaded that this method of treating the preachers with well-judged ridicule and contempt, and their followers with gentleness, persuasion and attention, is a good one."

Boucher's attitude towards Roman Catholics, however, was friendly and charitable, and on at least one occasion he preached a sermon "On the Toleration of Papists," in order to counteract a prejudice he detected in his parish against them. He declared that people were intolerant "when in the common offices of friendly intercourse, [they] refuse to have any dealings with any respectable and worthy men, either as individuals, or in any corporate capacity, merely because they are of a different communion from ourselves." Furthermore, he opposed any form of coercion in the realm of religion. Truth, he held, must be embraced by conviction alone. Compulsion, he insisted, "is the worst way we could possibly take to produce conviction." There was only one way to do it — by "fair and strong argument." All that compulsion can produce is "hypocritical conformity."

When Parson Boucher's school had thirty boys, he decided it was time to engage an assistant master. His first, a Mr. Lewis, did not remain with him for long, and was succeeded by James Madison, later to become President of the College of William and Mary and Bishop of Virginia. At this time, too, Boucher had among his students Jackie Custis, the stepson of George Washington, and as a result "laid the foundation of a very particular intimacy and friendship" with Washington that lasted until they took different sides in the 127. Revolution. Boucher genuinely liked Colonel Washington even though they differed politically, but he did not entertain a very high opinion of the Colonel's greatness. Boucher described him as "shy, silent, stern, slow and cautious" with "no quickness of parts, extraordinary penetration, nor an elevated style of thinking." He felt obliged to admit that Washington was "regular, temperate, [and] strictly just and honest" in his moral character, and also that he was religious, having been "pretty constant, and even exemplary, in his attendance on public worship in the Church of England." But he found nothing "generous or affectionate in his nature," and concluded that "I cannot conceive how he could, otherwise than through the interested representations of party, have ever been spoken of as a great man." To the Tory-minded Boucher, the "most distinguished part of his character was that he was an admirable farmer."

Besides gathering the strays into the fold of the Established Church, and bringing up the youth of the parish in the fear and admonition of the Lord, Boucher also made a frontal attack on the paganism of the slaves who had been imported in large numbers from Africa. His predecessor as rector of St. Mary's had neglected the Church's mission to the slaves because of "the great fatigue and disagreeableness of the duty" and "on the pretence that the poor creatures were so extremely ignorant, and wholly uninstructed, and could get no proper sponsors." But what would have daunted lesser men, merely served as an additional stimulus to Boucher. He selected two or three intelligent Negroes and after adequate instruction sent 128. them as schoolmasters "to teach the children around them merely to read at their leisure hours, and chiefly on Sunday afternoons, something as Sunday schools now are here in England," he wrote in 1786. In this way large numbers of the slaves in his parish were instructed in preparation for baptism. As we have seen, on one day in 1765 he baptized 115 adult Negroes, and on Easter Monday 1766, some 313, and lectured extemporaneously to more than one thousand. In consequence, he had almost every Sunday twenty or thirty Negroes in church who could use their prayer books and make the responses, and towards the end of his ministry at St. Mary's he had thirteen Negroes who were sufficiently well instructed and devout to become regular communicants. It was Boucher's conviction that Negroes were as amenable to instruction as other races. "I had under my care many negroes as well-informed, as orderly and as regularly pious, as country people usually are, even in England."

Here we shall leave Parson Boucher, with only a word or two about his later career. In 1770 he left Virginia for the neighboring colony of Maryland where he was inducted into a good parish and married the daughter of a wealthy planter. As the Revolutionary movement progressed, Boucher became more and more staunchly a Tory, and his sermons increasingly unpopular. At a gathering dominated by patriots, a toast was proposed: "May the Americans all hang together in accord and concord," to which Boucher wittily gave a rejoinder: "in any cord, … so it be but a strong cord." These and his other forthright assertions brought him threats of violence 129. if he did not cease to pray for King George and change his tune to something more agreeable to the "friends of America." Not to be intimidated, he preached for six months with a pair of loaded pistols on the cushion of his pulpit which he vowed he would use to good effect if anyone endeavored to prevent him from "performing what in my conscience I believed and knew to be my duty to God and His Church." But, despite his courage and conviction, he could not stem the tide of revolt, and eventually found no other course open to him but to return to his native England, where he was appointed the Vicar of Epsom, and lived happily to a ripe old age, famous for his learning and celebrated for toughness of moral fibre.

The other eighteenth-century Anglican clergyman who left behind him a detailed autobiography, so that we can peer into his life and thoughts, was Devereux Jarratt, who in many ways was quite different from Jonathan Boucher. Jarratt was a Low Church or Evangelical Anglican who espoused the Revolution, whereas Boucher was an old-fashioned High Churchman of staunch monarchical and pro-British views. Yet, they have similarities as well as differences: both were born in humble circumstances, they were largely self-educated, they were intellectuals who never lost the common touch, and they ended their lives as well-to-do scholars and gentlemen.

Devereux Jarratt was born on January 6, 1733, in New Kent County, Virginia, the son of a simple but honest carpenter. His family, although claiming no distinguished ancestry and pretending to no cultural or social distinction, nonetheless enjoyed a reputation of 130. honesty and industry by which, he wrote, "they lived in credit among their neighbors, free from real want, and above the frowns of the world." They lived almost entirely upon the produce of their farm, drinking no tea or coffee, using very little sugar, and wearing plain homespun clothing suitable to their humble station. They looked upon "what we called gentle folks, as beings of a superior order," and as a child, Jarratt was shy of them, and "kept off at a humble distance." When he saw a gentleman wearing a wig, which was the badge of gentility, he would be so alarmed that he ran off and hid from him.

When Jarratt was six years old, his father died, leaving all of his land to an elder son, Robert, and only £25 to Devereux. From the age of 8 or 9, Devereux attended local schools, learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, until the age of 12 or 13, when his mother died, thus ending his formal education. For the next five or six years he lived successively with his two older brothers, Robert and Joseph. During this time he never saw or heard anything of a religious nature. The parish church of St. Peter's was only three miles away, and was well attended by the parishioners. But because of the lack of interest of his brothers in things of the spirit, young Jarratt rarely ever set foot in the church. And on the few occasions when he did, there was little to induce him to alter his ways, for the Rector of St. Peter's, the Rev. David Mossom, who is remembered today chiefly because he solemnized the marriage of George Washington and Martha Custis, was an ineffectual preacher. 131. Being near-sighted and preaching wholly from notes, Mr. Mossom kept his eyes fixed upon the paper and so near, that "what he said seemed rather addrest to the cushion, than to the congregation." The only time he straightened up and spoke out so that all might hear was when he had a grudge against someone, which often happened, for he had a reputation for being hot-tempered. On one occasion he was offended by the parish clerk, and boldly vilified him in a sermon. The clerk sat it out without a sign of discomfiture, but repaid the angry sermon by reading the psalm thus:

With restless and ungovern'd rage,
Why do the heathen storm?
Why in such rash attempts engage,
As they can ne'er perform.

In any event, young Devereux Jarratt grew to manhood largely "ignorant of God, and careless about religion." He followed the example of his elders and superiors, he later said, but, unfortunately, their example was a bad one. Yet, even in the days of his ungodliness, Jarratt had a conscience which frequently troubled him with "awful forebodings of a judgment to come." The thought of death was terrible to him. He somehow recognized his own unworthiness and earnestly desired to be "good." But his sheer ignorance proved a stumbling block: "what real goodness was, or how to attain unto it, I knew not, and therefore came to no settled purpose of going in pursuit of it." Instead, he dismissed these "uneasy sensations" as best he could, and tried to fill his thoughts with other interests.

One may well ask why he did not go to the parish priest for spiritual counselling. Jarratt himself supplied the answer. The 132. humble folk of colonial Virginia were commonly too much in awe of a clergyman to presume to carry their problems to him. In later life when he became a priest, Jarratt experienced difficulty in finding out the spiritual concerns of his humble parishioners because "at that time, people in the lower walks of life, had not been accustomed to converse with clergymen, whom they supposed to stand in the rank of gentlemen, and above the company and conversation of plebeians."

Having a good mind and a thirst for knowledge, Jarratt borrowed books on various subjects, and read them in the field while the horse with which he was plowing or harrowing grazed for an hour or two at noon. By continual application of this kind, he soon acquired an unusual amount of learning, for one in his circumstances, and an even great reputation for scholarship among his neighbors. When he was nineteen years old, an overseer named Jacob Moon, who had gone from New Kent to settle in Albemarle County, persuaded young Jarratt to open a school for the children in his neighborhood.

In his new environment Jarratt at first found his religious advantages worse rather than better. Jacob Moon's family, in which Jarratt lived, was quite as ignorant and careless of religion as he was. Moreover, as Albemarle was then nearly a frontier county, the people's manners were rougher and more uncivilized than those of the Tidewater. In New Kent and the neighboring counties there were well-established parishes with churches and clergymen to hold divine service every Sunday, if not on weekdays as well. But in Albemarle, "there was no minister of any persuasion, or any public worship, within many miles."

It chanced, however, that someone left a book at Jacob Moon's house, and the book proved to be the first of several, as we shall see, that were to be the turning point in Devereux Jarratt's life. It contained eight sermons preached in Glasgow by the famous Anglican divine, George Whitefield, whose remarkably effective preaching in Great Britain and America helped to bring about the Great Awakening and to extend the influence and numbers of the Methodists until, at length, they were transformed from a religious society within the Church of England into a denomination of their own.

Shortly after the book was left at the Moon house, Devereux took ill with the ague, which confined him to his bed for periods of time during some eight or nine months, and depressed his spirits. He read Whitefield's sermons, but could not understand very much of them. Because of his estrangement from God and his indifference to the salvation of his soul, as he later wrote, "blindness and insensibility had fallen upon me."

A little later, Jarratt went to board with a planter named Mr. Cannon, who was a wealthy and cultivated gentleman such as young Devereux had never before known. Mrs. Cannon was an extremely pious woman who had apparently been so much influenced by Whitefield and others like him, that "all levities of every kind must be banished from her presence, and every species of ungodliness must expect a sharp reproof from her." As Jarratt wished to win her approval, he undertook "to act the hypocrite," to pretend that he was religious 134. to the point of piety. In consequence, he affected to pay close attention to the sermon that she habitually read aloud every evening after dinner. And when she wearied of reading, he was asked to take his turn at it. At first, due to his total lack of religious education, he understood "not the tenth part of what was read." But after many weeks of exposure to Mrs. Canon's serenity of soul and to the strong dramatic imagery of the sermons of the eloquent Presbyterian divine, John Flavel (1630?-1691), who was a great favorite of hers, young Jarratt began to find that Christian doctrine made sense and exactly fitted his own case. One sermon in particular, on the text "Then opened he their understanding," made a great impression on his mind. And it proved to be a lasting one. It followed him to bed, it haunted him the next day. For the first time in his life he became convinced of his complete separation from God and resolved to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. He became aware of his complete immersion in things secular. He had no "sense of any particular sin, or sins in general," but "that I was a stranger to God and true religion, and was not prepared for death and judgment."

To make a long story short, Mrs. Cannon was the first vitally religious person that Devereux had ever come to know, and she was, on that account perhaps, the first person who felt any concern for nurturing young Jarratt's spiritual development. In the course of the next year Jarratt made rapid progress, but his "religion continued in a state of fluctuation for a great while." As he later put it, "I had religion enough to make me frequently uneasy — but 135. never to make me happy." His life was a round of "sinning and repenting — repenting and sinning." He had as yet "no conception of being justified by the righteousness of Christ, or any other righteousness but my own."

In the course of following his new interest, Jarratt borrowed and read a number of books on divinity, one of which delighted him, for it answered so many of his questions and opened to him for the first time the meaning of the Bible. It was William Burkitt's Expository Notes, with Practical Observations, on the New Testament, published in 1724. Having no candle, Jarratt sat down flat on the hearth in the evenings, propped the precious volume on the end of a chest, and by the light of the fire read until midnight. By this means he acquired "considerable views of the nature and plan of Salvation through Jesus Christ." And along with it, from the non-conformist writings he read, Jarratt acquired rigid ideals of behavior which led him to give up dancing, horse racing, and card playing. His easy-going relatives in New Kent, when he returned home for a visit, could scarcely understand their changed brother. They all agreed that they should be good, but said, "sure there can be no harm in innocent mirth, such as dancing, drinking and making merry." But Devereux would have none of their easy-going ways, and so found himself a stranger among his own people.

Returning to the Cannon household in Albemarle, Jarratt continued his study of divinity, and acquired experience and skill in extemporaneous prayer , both at family prayers at the Cannons' house 136. and at the nearby Presbyterian meeting house when the minister was away. By degrees Jarratt came to be regarded as a suitable candidate for the ministry, and at length determined to seek ordination. Up to this point, he knew nothing of the doctrine of the Anglican Church, and, indeed, was prejudiced against it because of such clergymen as David Mossom. All that he knew of Christianity, he learned from the Presbyterians. Hence , he considered no other ministry than theirs. But the Presbyterian requirement of Latin and Greek for those who sought to enter the ministry presented an almost insuperable obstacle to one whose educational background was as meager as his. Mr. Cannon, however, cheerfully undertook to assist him financially, and a young scholar fresh from Princeton who was a tutor on a nearby estate, voluntarily offered to teach him what he needed to know of the classical tongues. So, at the age of twenty-four, Devereux Jarratt began his studies for the ministry in earnest, and in seven months began to read Suetonius, one of the most difficult Latin authors in prose.

Thereafter, in the spring of 1762 Jarratt changed his mind. Instead of entering the Presbyterian ministry, he resolved to go to England as a candidate for holy orders in the Anglican Church. The reason for the change was that as he read and studied more widely, he began to learn more about the Church, and he found "the writings of several churchmen, with which I was highly pleased, delighted, and edified." Because of his earlier prejudice against the Church and the cold and unedifying manner of preaching of many of the Church's 137. clergymen, Jarratt was at first "much set against the Prayer Book, and, indeed, against any public form of prayer." But as he came to revise his view of the Church, he took up an objective study of its liturgy. "The Prayer Book I had not examined, but had catched up a few scraps and detached sentences out of it, which were said to be objectionable, and which I thought were justly so. But, on mature consideration, and examination of the book on a larger scale, I saw, or thought I saw, that most of the objections were ill founded." Upon the whole, "I thought it contained an excellent system of doctrine and public worship — equal to any other in the world." On the doctrinal side, Jarratt thought the Church of England "no way inferior to the Presbyterian," but his mind "hung in a state of equilibrium between the two, respecting their theory."

Then he considered the advantages and disadvantages arising from the choice. If he chose the Established Church, he would have to take the trouble and risk of going to England for holy orders, whereas he could have Presbyterian ordination right in Virginia. But this "present and temporal inconvenience, was ballanced by the prospect of a more permanent support hereafter." The Presbyterian minister was dependent upon annual contributions — "a mode of support very precarious in itself, and which subjects the Minister to the caprice of so many people, and tends to bind his hands and hinder his usefulness." Another consideration was "the general prejudice of the people, at that time, against dissenters, and in favour of the church." These two combined to persuade him that he could do 138. more good in the Church than anywhere else. And so he traveled to Williamsburg, interviewed the governor and the Bishop's Commissary, and sailed to England carrying their testimonials and letters of recommendation, and a title (i.e., a promise of a parish upon his return).

Upon reaching London, he went to Fulham Palace, waited on the Bishop of London, and put all his papers in his hand. "He read them, and told me my credentials were very authentic, and refered me to his chaplain, Dr. Fortin, for examination." Having "past my trials before him with approbation," Jarratt was duly presented to the Bishop of London, and ordained deacon, in the King's Chapel, on Christmas Day, 1762, along with several Oxford and Cambridge graduates. In the afternoon they were received by the bishop at his palace and politely complimented upon their performance at their examinations. "All are well done," said the bishop, and fixing his eyes upon Jarratt , "especially yours from Virginia."

As canon law forbids the ordination of a candidate to the diaconate and priesthood on the same day, the Virginian was sent by the Bishop of London to the Bishop of Chester, then visiting London, where Jarratt had to undergo another examination by the bishop's chaplain. Then, one week after his ordination as deacon, Devereux Jarratt was ordained priest.

Before returning to Virginia, he had the opportunity of preaching in several London churches, before numerous congregations. Here his early non-conformist background made itself felt. "I preached in a manner, so different from what was customary with the clergy, that 139. it was strongly suspected I was a Methodist, or something else besides a churchman. Though, at that time, I had never seen, or conversed with a Methodist in all my life, nor did I know what the principles of the Methodists were."

While waiting for the frozen Thames to thaw before he could sail for home, Jarratt caught the smallpox, which was so much dreaded by Americans sojourning in eighteenth-century England. Jarratt rightly said that it "was extremely formidable to Virginians," because of the rural nature of their country and their almost complete lack of resistance to this disease which was particularly virulent in large cities. Jarratt had a hard time of it, suffering considerable pain, and running a high fever for five or six weeks. The eminent physician, Dr. Thomas Reeves, and the apothecary, Mr. John Walton, were in frequent attendance upon him, and out of respect for the priesthood, declined to accept a fee. This fact greatly impressed Jarratt, who declared that had he suffered the same illness in Petersburg, Richmond, or any other town in Virginia, "I must have paid, I suppose, fifty or sixty pounds, at least" for professional services.

Upon his recovery he found that his landlord, having less respect for holy orders, had cheated him out of all the money he had, including his Queen Anne's Bounty of £20 — a sum of money given to each clergyman who undertook to take a parish overseas as a result of an endowment created by the queen whose name it bore. But the Virginian's English friends came to his rescue and provided him with money to carry him to Liverpool and free passage 140. aboard a tobacco ship bound to Chesapeake Bay. And after an uneventful passage, Jarratt reached Virginia in July, 1763, after an absence of nine months. Landing at Yorktown, he breakfasted at an inn and took a boat up York River and Queen's Creek to Williamsburg, where he presented his credentials to the Bishop's Commissary and the Governor: his certificate of ordination to the priesthood and his license from the Bishop of London to receive a parish in Virginia.

Soon thereafter he heard that Bath Parish, Dinwiddie County, was vacant, and went there to meet the churchwardens and vestrymen. On the following two Sundays, at their invitation, he officiated at two of the parish churches, and on Thursday, being a thanksgiving day, appointed by the governor, for peace between France and England, at the third parish church. The following Monday the vestry met at the Glebe and unanimously offered him the cure of the parish, which he accepted. Thus began his incumbency, which lasted thirty-eight years, until his death in 1801.

At this point we shall leave the Rev. Mr. Devereux Jarratt, at the threshold of his ministry, but not for long, because he will soon appear again at the apex of his extraordinarily active and effective career.

We have considered the manifestations of the evangelical revival in the realm of dissent. We have now to consider what effect it had upon the Established Church. The Virginia Church like the colony at large was in close touch with what was going on in the Mother Country. The tobacco colonies enjoyed unusually good communication with Great Britain because their principal export, tobacco, went almost entirely to the wharves of London and other British seaports, and Virginians imported an abnormally large portion of their consumer goods from England. Moreover, the aristocratic nature and English tone of the ruling class in the Old Dominion made the well-to-do tobacco planters and their families long to keep up with the latest fashions of London. 168. Books made their appearance in the libraries of the great tobacco plantations along the James and Potomac within a few years of their appearance in London shops.

The same was true of the Virginia Church. All the various movements and parties within the Church of England were represented here. There were High and Low Churchmen, Latitudinarians, Erastians, and Evangelicals on the James River as well as on the Thames. All native-born Virginia clergy had traveled to England for ordination, and, in addition, a substantial number of beneficed clergy here were of British birth and education. Hence, the cultural tie between the Virginia clergy and England was, perhaps, even stronger than that between the people of the colony at large and the Mother Country.

In consequence, the Wesleyan movement in England soon had reverberations in Virginia, and the ideas it generated moved swiftly across the Atlantic, along with the other latest fashions from London, and found a receptive public in the far-flung parishes of the Chesapeake Tidewater. The Revival took a different form under Anglican auspices, than among the dissenters, but it was no less successful in deepening the faith and stirring the enthusiasm of those churchmen who came under its influence. Two priests of the Virginia Church, Devereux Jarratt and Archibald McRoberts, actually did take up the method of emotional preaching in open fields that won such a harvest for the Baptists and other itinerants. But this was exceptional. McRoberts ultimately abandoned holy orders for one of the revivalistic sects, and Jarratt, when he saw the Methodist movement headed for schism, changed his course and remained a priest 169. of the Church even though in so doing he lost much of his popular following to the new domination. In general, the Great Awakening produced a greater personal piety throughout the Virginia Church and bore fruit in the early nineteenth-century evangelical movement in the Episcopal Church.

The Wesleyan movement in England and America not only began within the Established Church but also remained within it from its origin in 1738 until after the American Revolution. The three principal founders of it, the two Wesley brothers and George Whitefield, lived and died priests of the Church and refused to leave its communion or to sanction any thought of schism. Yet, the Methodist movement reached countless persons among the lower classes who had theretofore been untouched by the normal ministrations of the Church and who had been left uninspired by the conventional academic preaching of the Anglican pulpits of the day. Many were so moved that without benefit of theological training or grace of episcopal ordination they took to the road and preached enthusiastically to crowds of listeners in barns, at village market crosses, or in open fields.

They soon ran into difficulties with English ecclesiastical law, which did not countenance public preaching without licenses from the bishop of each diocese. Yet withal, they remained loyal to the Church even while violating her discipline, rallied to her support when she was attacked by dissenters, and urged their followers to repair to the parish church for Holy Communion after hearing their open-air sermons.

As early as 1760 Methodist lay-preachers made their appearance in the American colonies, at first in New York, and then elsewhere. By 1769 there were enough of them to warrant John Wesley to appoint a personal representative in the colonies, Richard Boardman. In 1772 Francis Asbury held this post, and the next year the first Methodist Conference in the New World took place at Philadelphia.

The earlier missionary visits of the Rev. George Whitefield have already been mentioned. He came as a priest of the Church, and was accorded a warm welcome in Bruton Parish Church and elsewhere. It was a different story, however, when the Methodist lay-preachers appeared in the colony with no credentials of ordination and no license from the Bishop of London to officiate in Virginia. As Anglicans they could not claim the privilege of dissenters under the Toleration Act, and they had no lawful authority to minister within the Church. Hence, they fell between the upper and nether millstone.

The first of them to come to Virginia, Robert Williams, reached Norfolk in 1772 and preached on the steps of the court house at Portsmouth and in vacant lots in Norfolk, until his audience fitted up a warehouse as a meeting house. Williams soon moved on to other colonies, but was succeeded by others — Joseph Pilmore and William Watters. But their efforts bore little fruit, because their hearers were, for the most part, as Watters complained, "the most hardened and ill-behaved of any I have ever beheld."

The Methodist movement got a better hold in Southside Virginia, the area south of the James River. Here it had the helping hand of the evangelical priest, Devereux Jarratt, who was the rector of Bath Parish in Dinwiddie County from 1763 until his death in 1801, and of Archibald McRoberts, rector of Dale Parish, Chesterfield County from before 1769 until 1776. Under Jarratt and McRoberts the revival had a distinctively sacramental flavor. Sometimes as many as a thousand persons crowded into their parish churches to receive Holy Communion, and the two had to celebrate the sacrament on alternate Sundays, so each could assist the other in administering the paten and chalice to such unprecedented numbers of communicants.

But they also emphasized preaching and became so much in demand that they eventually went about the countryside, ignoring parish boundaries and preaching without permission of the rectors of other parishes to large gatherings in open fields. This indiscretion incurred the criticism and opposition of their fellow clergy and tended to alienate rater than conciliate the Established Church's attitude toward the movement.

Despite the Methodist practice of ignoring parish lines and not applying for preaching licenses, neither the Established Church nor the Colony's governmental authorities did anything to suppress the movement. Much as they disliked it, they recognized it as a legitimate one. Hence, no Methodist preachers were thrown into prison or otherwise hindered, even though they were unordained and unlicensed. The explanation of this extraordinary tolerance on the 172. part of the Church and State is probably the fact that the Methodists, unlike the Separate Baptists, never attacked the beliefs of others and rarely stirred up riots at their meetings. The Virginia authorities were generally inclined to be tolerant wherever dissenters were themselves charitable and peaceable. The presence or absence of those qualities rather than doctrinal orthodoxy or ecclesiastical conformity determined the kind of treatment dissenting preachers received at the hands of the constituted authorities.

Under these circumstances Methodism made rapid strides. The number of Methodists in Virginia increased from 100 in 1773 to nearly 2,500 in 1776. Every one agrees that the rise was due largely to the evangelical zeal of that extraordinary Anglican priest, Devereux Jarratt, who subsequently abandoned his numerous following rather than lead them into schism from the Church he loved. During the Revolution the Methodist movement was embarrassed by the fact that its leaders were loyalists and that the elderly John Wesley issued a pamphlet circulated in America calling upon every Methodist to stand by his allegiance to King George. In the North the spread of Methodism was retarded by its association with the Church of England and with political loyalism. But in Virginia where the members of the Established Church were overwhelmingly on the side of the Revolution, Methodism escaped from the odium it suffered in the North and continued to flourish during the war. When the Revolution was over, Virginia and North Carolina were the heart and center of the movement on this side of the Atlantic and contained more than half of all the Methodists in America.

The very success of Methodism in gaining converts created a problem which it could not solve within the Established Church. The need of clergymen to baptize and celebrate Holy Communion could not be satisfied during the war, when the colonies were in arms against the Mother Country. After the war, the English bishops were unable to consecrate American bishops until Parliament removed the requirement that all bishops-elect swear an oath of allegiance to the king. This was ultimately done in 1786. Meanwhile, however, the Church of Virginia and elsewhere in America languished for want of bishops and a fresh supply of priests which had been completely cut off after 1776. Hence, by the end of the Revolution more than half of the hundred parishes in Virginia had no rectors.

Because many Methodists were thus cut off from Anglican sacraments and because additional clergy could neither be ordained in America where there were no bishops nor procured from England because of the Revolution, there arose from them a strong demand for a non-episcopally ordained ministry. This, of course, the Anglican Church would not hear of. Therefore, the American Methodist movement, despite the protest of John Wesley in England and Devereux Jarratt in Virginia, took the bold step of separating from the Established Church and ordaining its own ministers. Meeting at Brokenbackt Church, Fluvanna County, Virginia, in 1779, a majority of the lay preachers declared that as they had been prevented from seeking ordination in the usual way they had a right to organize their own church and ordain ministers for their own people. Then 174. they chose four men and authorized them to administer the sacraments and ordain other ministers to do likewise. This action proved so great a shock to Wesley and Methodists in the North that at the Virginia Conference of 1780 Francis Asbury persuaded the newly-ordained ministers to give up their authority, and the General Conference of 1781 declared that any lay preacher who presumed to administer the sacraments would be excommunicated. But the rapid increase of Methodist converts after the end of the Revolution accentuated the need for clergymen. In consequence, Wesley was finally persuaded in 1784 to ordain several "deacons" and "elders" and to "set apart" Thomas Coke "as superintendent for the Church of God under our care in North America." This act in defiance of Church polity produced the Methodist schism. By it, Methodism left the fold of the Mother Church, and became a new Christian sect without the Apostolic Succession of the episcopate, and therefore, out of communion with the Church of England and its American counterpart, the Episcopal Church.

The Methodist schism, in retrospect, seems quite unnecessary. There was no irreconcilable doctrinal disagreement. Wesley and his American associates were too impatient. The same month that Weesley's "ordained" ministers arrived at Baltimore to organize the American Methodist Church as a new denomination, the American Episcopal Church received its first bishop. Samuel Seabury, who had been elected Bishop of Connecticut but denied consecration in England, went to Scotland and was consecrated bishop at Aberdeen on November 14, 175. 1784, by three bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Moreover, Parliament rescinded its former decision, and in 1786 authorized English bishops to extend the episcopate to America. In 1787 the Archbishop of Canterbury assisted by the Bishop of Bath and Wells and the Bishop of Peterborough consecrated two bishops for the American Episcopal Church, William White of Pennsylvania and Samuel Provoost of New York. And in 1790 James Madison, cousin of the famous statesman of the same name and president of the College of William and Mary, was consecrated Bishop of Virginia in England. Thereafter, the American Church had a full complement of bishops and was no longer dependent upon the Mother Country for a supply of clergy. But by this time the Methodists had flown the coop. The schism was beyond healing!

So far this chapter has dealt with toleration only as it related to freedom of worship. But there is a broader meaning of the word toleration as it relates to freedom of inquiry and thought. On this score Virginia's record in colonial days was admirable. The Church of Virginia never resorted to anything remotely resembling an inquisition in matters of faith and intellect. There was a restriction on worship and what one could teach publicly, but there was none whatever on what one could read or say privately. Thought was always free in colonial Virginia, and anyone could import, sell, buy, and read books on any subject, however unorthodox or subversive. In this respect there was a world of difference between English Virginia and Spanish-American colonies to the south, where a rigid 176. religious and political censorship existed.

Even Virginia's institution of higher learning, the Anglican College of William and Mary, was officially committed to the principle of free inquiry. If all truth, like goodness and beauty, as the Church held, proceeded from God, then truth must be pursued in an untrammelled fashion, no matter where it led. If followed objectively and honestly, it seemed clear it could only lead ultimately to God.

One of the College's statutes in 1727, renewed without alteration in 1757, specifically rejected the medieval strait jacket of Aristotelian logic and physics "which reigned so long alone in the Schools, and shut out all others," and, instead, left "to the President and Masters by the advice of the Chancellor, to teach what systems of Logick, Physicks, Ethicks and Mathematicks they think fit in their Schools." The same enlightened attitude was characteristic of elementary and secondary education, and of Virginia thought generally. The Enlightenment, which marked the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries in Europe, found a "safe lodging and a holy rest" in the hearts and minds of Virginians.

From the onset of the Great Awakening until the Revolution, the Established Church became involved in one way or another in a series of incidents which put the Church in a bad light and which received widespread publicity. The Church, as we should say today, suffered from a bad press. As late as 1748 the Church was still strongly entrenched in public favor. The Act for the Better Support of the Clergy, adopted that year, was the high water mark of colonial legislation favoring the Church. Over and above the annual stipend of 16,000 pounds of tobacco prescribed by earlier acts, the rector of a parish was allowed an additional eight per cent for the collection and prizing of the tobacco and an additional four per cent to cover tobacco paid in tithes which was of such poor grade as to be unmerchantable. The law also prescribed that the rector's glebe consist of at least 200 acres of "good and convenient land," as well as a dwelling house, dependencies, and farm buildings. Thereafter, the tide turned, and one thing after another served to lessen the esteem in which the Church was held.

From 1689 until the Revolution, the Bishop of London appointed a clergyman in Virginia as his "Commissary," or representative and agent. The commissary was not in bishop's orders, and, therefore, could not confirm or ordain, but in other respects he was much like a suffragan or assistant bishop. He convened the Convocation of the clergy, held visitations, corrected erring priests, and made recommendations to the Bishop of London concerning the fitness of Virginia candidates for holy orders, and other matters relating to 179. the Church in the Old Dominion. The first commissary in Virginia was James Blair, a man of forceful character and great ability, who held office for more than half a century. He was the founder and first president of the College of William and Mary (1693-1743), president of the Council and acting governor of the colony in 1740, and perhaps the most influential man in Virginia in his time. Upon his death in 1743, however, there followed a series of commissaries who fell short of him in stature and forcefulness of character, and who, as the Revolutionary movement progressed, became extremely unpopular because of outspoken sentiments of loyalty to King George III.

Dr. William Dawson, who served as commissary 1743-52, bitterly opposed one feature of the Act for the Better Support of the Clergy in 1748, the clause allowing the vestry twelve months, instead of six as was the practice in England, in which to choose a new rector when there was a vacancy, and sought to procure royal disallowance. His reason was simply that it represented a departure from English practice. The fact that conditions in the New World, especially the necessity of writing to England for possible candidates for a vacant parish, made a longer period of time imperative does not seem to have influenced his opinion. This and other examples of an unsympathetic attitude toward the peculiar needs of the Virginia Church put the commissary in an unfavorable light in the colony, and increased colonial dissatisfaction with the Establishment.

When William Dawson died in 1752, Governor Dinwiddie recommended the late commissary's brother Thomas to succeed him. But the governor 180. was in the midst of a constitutional quarrel with the House of Burgesses over his right to collect a fee of one pistole (a Spanish gold coin worth about $3.50 that circulated in Virginia) for every land patent granted. The Board of Visitors of the College instead of waiting for the Bishop of London to appoint a commissary and then elect him president of the College, proceeded immediately to elect an outspoken opponent of the pistole fee, the Rev. William Stith, who at once applied for appointment as commissary. But the Bishop of London acted on the recommendation of the governor, and appointed Thomas Dawson. Thus, for the first time the offices of commissary and president of the College were held by different men, and the commissary appeared to be a creature of the unpopular and arbitrary governor, whereas Stith personified the interests and objectives of the colony. The feud ended with Stith's death in 1755, whereupon the Board of Visitors chose Dawson to succeed him as president of the College. But the remainder of Dawson's tenure of office was darkened by the controversy which culminated in the Parson's Cause and by a strong dislike of him on the part of the College faculty. Although a man of exemplary character until the last years of his life, Dawson eventually took to drink to escape frustration. As his compassionate successor said of him, "inasmuch as he had been teazed by a contrariety of opinions … into the loss of his spirits, … it was no wonder that he should apply for consolation to Spirituous Liquors."

When Thomas Dawson was relieved of his sorrows by death in 1761, he was succeeded by William Robinson, rector of Stratton-Major Parish, l8l. King and Queen County, whose appointment was made over the opposition of Governor Fauquier with whom he was never on good terms. The College presidency was given to someone else, and Robinson alone of all the commissaries was not appointed to the Council. Hence, his distinction of being the only Virginia-born commissary proved to be an empty one. On the whole his administration of that office was characterized by inaction and lack of initiative. Robinson was a staunch Tory, and became increasingly out of touch with Virginia sentiment which rejoiced over Patrick Henry's victory in the Parson's Cause, opposed the Stamp Act, and resented the British government's attempt after 1763 to restrict western land settlement. Had he lived until the Revolution, he would undoubtedly have been a loyalist, but he died in 176S and so escaped the sorrow and frustration which the war for independence would have caused him.

The Parson's Cause, which stirred all Virginia and brought public wrath upon the clergy of the Established Church, was essentially a political rather than a religious protest. The real point at issue did not specifically relate to the Church, it concerned the injustice of unsympathetic British interference in domestic American affairs. Some of the clergy happened to be the group within the colony that unwittingly set off the controversy. The stipend of the clergy, as we have seen, was fixed in tobacco by the General Assembly in l748, and the act had received the king's assent. Therefore, it could neither be amended nor repealed without prior royal assent. In 1755, however, an abnormally short tobacco crop threatened to 182. send prices to an unprecedented height. In the public interest the Assembly passed an emergency relief act which allowed a person to pay any tax, fee, or debt in money instead of tobacco at the rate of two pence per pound of tobacco. The Two-Penny Act, as it was called, was to last only one year, and therefore expired before the London authorities had time to disallow it. In 1758 there was an even poorer crop, and the Assembly passed another Two-Penny Act similar to the last. This time some of the clergy, smarting under the injustice of being deprived of the rare advantage of a rise in the value of tobacco when they had suffered losses in previous years, appealed to the Bishop of London, who procured the royal disallowance of the act. This meant that the law was invalid from the start. Thereupon several Virginia clergymen sued their vestries for the amount by which the act of 1758 had illegally reduced their stipends. The courts had no choice but to find for the plaintiff in every case. All that remained was to determine the damages. In one of these suits, heard by the Hanover County Court on December 1, 1763, Patrick Henry, representing the parish vestry, made one of his most famous orations. Realizing how unpopular the clergy were for inviting royal interference, he virtually ignored the question of damages and, instead, delivered a polemic against the unsympathetic king and the hard-hearted clergy of the Established Church. His contention was that the colony faced a genuine emergency in 1758 and that the Two-Penny Act was a good law. The king should not have disallowed it, and the clergy were to blame for asking him to do so. He branded the king a tyrant and denounced the clergy as "enemies of the 183. community." Moved by his eloquence, the jury found for the plaintiff damages of only one penny. Thus, it was a legal victory for the parson but a moral victory for Patrick Henry.

The significance of the Parson's Cause was that it revealed the basic problem of imperial relations: where was the power of making laws to reside? The disagreement between Great Britain and the colonies over the answer to this question ultimately led to the Revolution. At the same time, the Established Church of Virginia was put in a bad light. Because of the Church-State connection, there appeared to be a selfish alliance between the arbitrary power of the Crown and the grasping clergy of the Established Church. Hence, the Parson's Cause injured the prestige of the Church and brought the clergy into a disesteem which was largely unwarranted, for the action which set off the whole affair was taken by a small minority of the clergy.

All the commissaries after William Dawson suffered from insufficient authority to summon convocations of the clergy and to discipline those guilty of misconduct. The explanation of this fact is that the then Bishop of London was endeavoring, by pleading inadequate powers over the Church in the colonies, to force the king and Ministry to establish an American episcopate. Unfortunately, the stratagem failed to achieve the desired result and did irreparable harm to the Church of Virginia. After 1752 the commissary lacked the legal power to try, remove, or otherwise discipline clergymen who neglected their duties or were guilty of misconduct. 184. In consequence, in the instances that occurred, the evil, instead of being nipped in the bud, was allowed to become full-blown before being dealt with at law, and then had to be carried into the civil courts. The facts of these cases received widespread notoriety and further diminished the reputation of the Established Church clergy and the popular confidence in the commissary whose function was to prevent such occurrences. The problem of discipline, of course, was one which could have been solved only by a resident bishop.

When Robinson died in 1768, the two leading contenders for the offices of Bishop's commissary and president of the College were John Camm and Richard Graham, both of whom were arch Tories and had been deeply implicated in the move to obtain royal disallowance of the Two-Penny Act. Governor Fauquier, who never forgave Camm for the part he played in humiliating him by procuring a letter of rebuke from the king, survived Commissary Robinson just long enough to recommend someone other than Camm for the office. The new commissary, James Horrocks, was not a very happy choice. Unlike Camm and Graham, he was not one of the leading clergymen in the colony. Indeed, he was an obscure young man, having been in Virginia only a short time as Master of the Grammar School at the College, and his career as commissary was not noteworthy except for a convention of the Virginia clergy in 1771 to discuss the proposal of a group of Anglican clergy in New York and New Jersey who sought their co-operation in requesting England to consecrate bishops for the American colonies.

This was an old subject. In 1672, in 1705, and again in 1713 a plan for sending a bishop to Virginia narrowly failed. In the first instance, a change of Ministry diverted attention to more pressing problems; in the second, the depression in Virginia caused by Queen Anne's War complicated the provision of financial support for a bishop; and in the third, Queen Anne died and was succeeded by Hanoverian kings who were less zealous for the welfare of the Church. In the northern colonies, because of ingrained Puritan hatred of prelacy, the idea of bishops was extremely unpopular with all except Anglicans who formed a small minority of the population. Even in the southern colonies, where the Church of England was established, the proposal to send English bishops to America was unwelcome, particularly at this difficult juncture of Anglo-American relations, when the colonies had so recently opposed the Stamp Act and Townshend duties. In England bishops were officials of State as well as Church, and many Americans feared that English bishops in the colonies would serve to strengthen British authority, rather than merely to strengthen the Established Church.

At the Convention, held at the College of William and Mary on June 4, 1771, only twelve of the hundred Virginia clergy were present, and they were divided on the proposal. Eight strongly favored it, feeling that to deny them a bishop was to "unchurch the Church." The others, however, considered the proposal unwise in view of all the circumstances. The whole subject was hotly debated in the columns of the Virginia Gazette, and probably also in every tavern 186. and coffee house in the colony. The former view prevailed with Commissary Horrocks and most of the College faculty. The latter view was widely held by the parish clergy and the laity. So far as the laity were concerned, a particularly galling feature of the proposal was that the clergy intended directly to address the king on the subject of a colonial bishop without first obtaining the concurrence of the General Assembly. The following month the House of Burgesses publicly thanked the four clergymen who formed the minority at the clergy convention "for the wise and well-timed Opposition they have made to the pernicious Project of a few mistaken Clergymen, for introducing an American Bishop; a Measure by which much Disturbance, great Anxiety and apprehension would certainly take place among his Majesty's faithful American People." Here again, as in the Parson's Cause, the bitterness of the quarrel and the seeming political alliance between the Church and Great Britain brought the Establishment into further disesteem in Virginia.

When Commissary Horrocks left for England soon after the clergy convention of 1771, because of his health, it was commonly rumored that he had gone home to be consecrated Bishop of Virginia. This, however, did not occur, and on his way back the next year he sickened and died. His successor, John Camm, was indeed the foremost clergyman in Virginia but he had taken a leading part in virtually every unpopular move from the Parson's Cause to the application for a colonial bishop, and his subsequent career as a loyalist served only to identify the Established Church more than ever before with the increasingly unpopular Mother Country.

On the eve of the Revolution the House of Burgesses was considering a new Toleration Act to amend and bring up to date the Act of 1699 which extended to the colony many of the features of the English Toleration Act of 1689. To that end the House created a new committee in 1769 to undertake to prepare a bill. This Committee for Religion, which had some of the leading Burgesses on it including Edmund Pendleton, Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, and Richard Henry Lee, continued its work for six years. Periodically it referred tentative proposals to the House for discussion and in 1772 published a draft of a bill in the Virginia Gazette. In the course of this prolonged consideration, the committee received a number of petitions from various religious bodies in the colony asking for certain privileges and exemptions. The most interesting of these came from the Presbytery of Hanover in the name, as the Journal of the House described it, of "all Presbyterians in Virginia, and all Protestant Dissenters elsewhere." Drawn up in November, 1774, it was presented to the Burgesses June 5, 1775, and stated the objectives of the petitioners "To have and enjoy the full and free exercise of our Religion without molestation or danger of incurring any penalty whatever," Although nothing was done as a result of this petition because the Burgesses ended their session June 24, 1775, and never again had a legal quorum, it gave expression to the conviction that no amount of toleration equals the right of religious freedom. The document, therefore, was a forerunner of the sixteenth article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights of June 12, 1776, which declared that "all men are equally 188. entitled to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience."

But let us return to June 24, 1775, when the House of Burgesses met for the last time. Lord Dunmore, the governor, fearing for his life, fled from the Governor's Palace on June 8, 1775, and went aboard HMS Fowey anchored off Yorktown, and tried to control the government from shipboard. When this proved impossible, he declared Virginia to be outside the king's protection. To meet the situation, a Convention of Delegates met in Williamsburg in July and created a provisional government, the Committee of Safety, which governed the colony for nearly a year. The Convention of 1776, meeting in Williamsburg from May 6 to July 5, terminated the provisional government and set up a permanent one based on a written constitution. This remarkable convention on May 15 unanimously instructed the colony's delegates to the Continental Congress to propose to that body that it declare the United Colonies free and independent states. Pursuant to these instructions Richard Henry Lee did so at Philadelphia on June 7, which proposal was ultimately agreed to on July 2 and resulted in the Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4. Meanwhile, the Virginia Convention also on May 15 appointed a committee to draw up a declaration of rights and a frame of government. George Mason's draft of a Declaration of Rights was adopted unanimously on June 12 and the Virginia Constitution on June 29. Patrick Henry was elected the first governor of the Commonwealth, and the Convention became the first House of Delegates under the new Constitution.

Before adjourning on July 5, the Convention attended to a piece of unfinished business. It assumed the right hitherto confined to Parliament to revise the Prayer Book. On the last day of its session it adopted an ordinance directing the omission of prayers for the king, queen, and royal family in Morning and Evening Prayer, the Litany, and Holy Communion, and substituting for them a prayer for the magistrates of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Church of England in Virginia had now become the Church of the Commonwealth of Virginia!

The Declaration of Rights with its clause favoring complete religious freedom was unanimously adopted by a Convention every member of which was an Anglican. This remarkable fact illustrates the rapidity with which men's minds were changing in the spring of 1776. The movement for independence in Virginia was the work principally of the same landed aristocracy that controlled the colony before 1776. Out of the ruling planter class only a handful remained loyalists after 1776, and of that few only John Randolph "the Tory" felt strongly enough about it to return to England. The Virginia aristocracy almost to a man supported the Revolution, and in turning their thoughts to the question of political rights and freedom, they came to perceive that they were inextricably bound up with religious freedom. The Virginia Anglicans, therefore, while struggling for American independence, came to believe that they should surrender the special privileges the law had formerly given their Church, so that civil and religious liberty might be inseparably united.

On June 12, 1776, when Mason's Declaration of Rights was adopted by the Convention, Virginia committed herself to the principle of complete religious freedom while the Church was still established. The translation of the principle into reality, however, required ten years to accomplish and involved the problem of resolving great differences of opinion as to the proper method of doing so.

When the House of Delegates under the new Constitution met in the Williamsburg Capitol on October 11, 1776, it received a number of petitions from dissenting bodies requesting the immediate disestablishment of the Church. The one which best expresses the sentiments of them all hailed the last article of the Declaration of Rights as "the rising sun of religious liberty" and requested the House "to complete what is so nobly done" by overturning the Establishment and abolishing "every tax upon conscience and private judgment." The Methodists, on the other hand, presented a petition on October 28, 1776, dissociating themselves from the dissenters, declaring themselves to be "a religious society in communion with the Church of England," and urging the continuance of the Establishment. But the most important petition in defense of the Church came from the clergy. Although denying any wish to encroach upon the religious rights of "any sect or denomination," they expressed their belief that "a religious establishment in a state is conducive to its peace and happiness." In support of this statement they pointed out that "the opinions of mankind have a very considerable influence upon 191. their practice," that "the doctrines of Christianity have a greater tendency to produce virtue amongst men than any human laws or institutions," and that "these can best be taught and preserved in purity in an established Church, which gives encouragement to men to study and acquire a competent knowledge of the Scriptures."

It is interesting to note that the defense of the Establishment came only from the clergy and the Methodists and not from the Anglican laity. Of the hundred parishes of the Church in Virginia only two or three sent petitions to the Assembly in favor of maintaining the Establishment. It is reasonable to conclude that by this time a great majority of Anglicans agreed with the sixteenth article of the Declaration of Rights and felt that the continuance of the Establishment was an anachronism and an impropriety in a commonwealth. The Anglicans were still in control of the legislature and, if the Methodists be numbered with them, commanded a majority of the population. If they chose, they might easily have continued the Established Church. But they thought otherwise. Even those who loved the Church, like Wythe, Mason, and Pendleton, would ask no special privilege for it. And the Rev. James Madison, president of the College of William and Mary and later first Bishop of Virginia, wrote to the president of Yale in 1780 that the professorship of divinity had been abolished at William and Mary because "it is now thought" that establishments in favor of any particular church "are incompatible with the Freedom of a Republic."

The bone of contention was not so much the continuance or disestablishment of the Church as it was what to do to provide for the support of the Church after disestablishment, or to compensate the clergy for the loss of their stipends. In English law and custom, which had prevailed in Virginia for 170 years, a clergyman once inducted as rector of a parish had what was called a "parson's freehold," which is to say, an indefeasible right to the economic remuneration of the post, which could not be terminated except by his death, resignation, or removal for misconduct. To deprive a rector of his stipend and glebe was equivalent to confiscating a man's property without due process of law. The petition from the clergy in favor of the Establishment pointed out that "when they undertook the change of parishes in Virginia they depended on the publick faith for receiving that recompense for their services during life or good behaviour, which the laws of the land promised; a tenure which to them appears of the same sacred nature as that by which every man in the state holds…his private property."

After prolonged consideration, the Assembly decided to postpone the matter of disestablishment until a later time. The war was under way; the times were uncertain. The Establishment with its parish system was woven into the fabric of Virginia life, and could not easily be eradicated. Instead, the Assembly passed a law in December, 1776, exempting all dissenters from levies and impositions for the support of the Church and its clergy, but requiring vestries 193. to continue to collect tithes for the support of the sick and the poor. It suspended the colonial act which fixed the stipend of the rectors of parishes. Hereafter, the Episcopalians in each parish would pay their rector what stipend they chose. The act also specifically reserved to the Church all churches and chapels, all private donations, all books, communion silver, and ornaments, and all glebes acquired by it prior to the passage of the act. The Assembly was temporizing in hopes that this interim measure would satisfy enough people to avoid a final solution at a time of crisis when a heated discussion might undermine the morale of the people and do a disservice to the war effort.

But it did not satisfy. Throughout the years 1777-1779 the House of Delegates was inundated with an increasing number of petitions on both sides of the question of whether ministers of all denominations should be supported by voluntary contributions or whether the state should impose a general assessment, like the old parish tithe, and merely allow the master of each household to designate to which minister and denomination it should be given. During these years while the Assembly was waiting for the people to think about the whole matter and reach some conclusion, several rather radical measures were introduced into the House and in each case voted down. One bill proposed to dissolve all vestries and end the Establishment. Another provided for a general assessment. A third, known to history as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, was introduced in 1779, debated, and tabled. Meanwhile, 194. parishes were falling vacant through the death or resignation of rectors, vestrymen were neglecting their duties because of the uncertainty of their position, and dissenters were refusing to pay tithes for the poor. The Church was still bound to the State but no longer derived any benefit from the connection.

On the eve of the Revolution there were 105 Anglican clergymen in Virginia. Most of these were rectors of the hundred parishes in the colony. A few were professors at the College of William and Mary, and a few were young men just back from England and serving as curates to older rectors, teaching school, or awaiting vacant parishes. Of this number, some fifteen are known to have been loyalists who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new Commonwealth after July 5, 1776, and who, therefore, were deprived of their public functions. Another five who were patriots to start with, later lost faith in the cause of American independence, and became loyalists. Another nineteen dropped out of view during the war years. Whether death of infirmity terminated their rectorships or poverty forced them to earn a living in some other way, or whether they too made their peace with the British authorities we do not know. The remaining sixty-six, however, are known to have been faithful to the American cause throughout. Those few who were conscientiously unable to take the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth in July, 1776, were forbidden to officiate at public services but were 195. allowed to remain rectors of parishes, to live on the glebes, and to officiate privately at weddings and funerals, provided they would give no help to the British troops in America. If they wished, they might return to England. And if they could not afford the passage, the Commonwealth was ready to assist them financially. Those at the College who were loyalists, however, were ejected from their posts, though allowed to remain in the country if they would live quietly. Only one Anglican clergyman in Virginia is known to have been roughly handled because of his politics. Christopher MacRae, rector of Littleton Parish, Cumberland County, was seized, bound, and badly beaten by a group of men while carrying the sacrament to an ill woman in a remote section one stormy night. Despite this, he remained in the parish throughout the war and resumed his duties as rector after the disestablishment without ever having taken an oath of allegiance against his conscience.

Not only were more than two-thirds of the clergy in Virginia supporters of the Revolution but many of them took an active part in it, signing non-importation agreements, serving on county committees of safety in more than twenty counties, and fighting with the armed forces. One Virginia clergyman, Charles Mynn Thruston, served as a colonel in the army and lost an arm in the war. Another, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, began as a colonel and ended as a major-general. Still another, Adam Smith, enlisted as a private in the militia in order to defend his frontier parish from the Cherokees in 1776-1777. The future Bishop of Virginia, 196. James Madison, served as captain of a militia company composed of college students. All thirteen of the known Virginia chaplains during the Revolution, with the exception of a Lutheran who served the German-speaking Eighth Virginia Regiment, were Anglican clergymen. When one considers that each regiment elected its chaplain, this is a tribute to the popularity and patriotism of the Established clergy.

Despite the fact that there were some Tories among them, the clergy of the Established Church played such a conspicuous role in the war for independence that in later years Chancellor George Wythe in handing down a judicial decision, paid a handsome compliment to the clergy: "At the commencement of our happy revolution that reverend body of men who then filled the pulpits in this country, far from inculcating the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance to the invaders of the rights of their country, were zealous in her cause… And if ever men in their station deserved the esteem of their country, that meed was due to the Established Church in Virginia at that period."

The College of William and Mary was founded primarily, as the royal charter of 1693 declares, "to the end that the Church of Virginia may be furnish'd with a Seminary of Ministers of the Gospel." And by 1776 it had come to supply many of the clergymen 197. of the colony, and those generally the best. On the eve of the Revolution the various endowments and duties devoted to the support of the College produced an annual income of more than £3,000, making it the richest college in America. When independence was declared, its president, John Camm, was an ardent loyalist, and so were several of its other professors, John Dixon, professor of divinity, and Emmanuel Jones, Jr., Master of the Indian School. Thomas Gwatkin and Samuel Henley, also Tories, had returned to England in 1775, disgusted by the raucous patriotism of the student body. Camm, Dixon, and Jones were dismissed as enemies of America by the Board of Visitors on May 6, 1777. This left only two professors at the College, James Madison, the new president, and John Bracken. To them was added Robert Andrews late in 1777 . Meanwhile, however, most of the students left their studies and joined the army. Thereafter the College concentrated upon the grammar school boys who were too young to bear arms. When the British raided Virginia in 1780-1781, President Madison organized the boys into a militia company, and on several occasions led them as its captain against the enemy.

In 1779 under the aegis of Governor Jefferson, a member of the Board of Visitors, the College was reorganized along modern lines. The professorship of divinity and that for Greek and Latin were abolished and replaced by new professorships of law and police, anatomy and medicine, and modern languages. As a result of this streamlining in the interests of utilitarian subjects, the College 198. virtually ceased to be Anglican, and no longer trained clergymen for the Church. Also after the Revolution, the intellectual atmosphere of the College became strongly deistic and opposed to all organized religion, so that men preparing for the ministry were inclined to go elsewhere rather than to William and Mary. An unsuccessful attempt in 1820-1821 to revive the professorship of divinity at the College ultimately led to the founding of the Virginia Theological Seminary at Alexandria in 1823.

In 1780 the Assembly received another flood of petitions, this time to remove legal discrimination against dissenting ministers. They were legally regarded as laymen, and therefore not exempt from jury and militia duty as were the Anglican clergy. Moreover, not being priests, dissenting ministers could not legally perform marriages in Virginia. In July, 1780, the House passed a bill to permit dissenting ministers to perform marriages, which was defeated by the Senate, but enacted into law in the autumn session of 1780. Unfortunately, the act made certain restrictions which greatly exasperated the dissenters. It provided that no more than four ministers of each denomination in any county might be selected and licensed by the county court to perform marriages, and that they might not exercise this function outside the county in which they were licensed. No such restrictions applied to the clergy of the Established Church, all of whom by virtue of their priesthood could 199. solemnize marriages in their own parishes and also in any other in Virginia subject to the assent of the rector or, if none, of the churchwardens. Why the Assembly framed an act like this one, with its petty restrictions on dissenting ministers, after the Commonwealth had committed itself to complete religious freedom in the Declaration of Rights, is hard to understand. Possibly the enthusiasm for liberty that was rampant in the spring and summer of 1776 led many conservative Virginians to concede so much that they later repented of it. Possibly the reverses of the American forces in the South in 1780 and the impending British invasion of Virginia in 1781 confused their thinking with respect to the religious settlement. In any event, Established Church life was rapidly deteriorating and the Assembly could not bring itself to administer the coup de grace. Consequently, it repeatedly ignored or voted down all petitions and bills designed to hasten the fall of the Establishment, and yet hesitated to act upon the counterproposals for some form of state support of religion.

The stalemate lasted until after the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in September, 1783, and which terminated the Revolution and recognized American independence. The American people, released from the strain of eight years of war, were setting about putting their new house in order. In other states Episcopalians were in process of forming dioceses and in the case of Connecticut, electing 200. their own bishop. But the Virginia Church, which had the largest number of adherents, was unable to reorganize itself or do anything to halt the rapid deterioration of its life because it was in bondage to a Commonwealth which refused to act.

At its spring session in 1784 the Virginia Assembly again took up the question of the religious settlement. Because of the intolerable situation in which the Church found itself, the Established Church clergy, who formerly had petitioned to preserve the Establishment, now requested the Assembly to release the Church from the burden of it, to free the vestries from civil duties, and to incorporate the Episcopal Church so that it might develop its own life free from state restrictions. In consequence of this petition and the fact that disestablishment would please the dissenters, the Assembly on December 28, 1784, passed an act which incorporated the Episcopal Church in Virginia and terminated the Establishment. It created the new post of Overseers of the Poor in each county to take over the civil duties formerly exercised by the parish vestries, and it freed the Church from the burden and embarrassment of political control.

One question yet remained, Should the Commonwealth impose a general assessment for the support of religion and allow each householder to designate the recipient, or should the State abandon the churches to their own devices? Action on this question was postponed until the session of November, 1785, and was not finally taken until January 16, 1786, when the Assembly passed the famous Statute for Religious Freedom, which put an end to all thoughts of 201. general assessment, and permanently committed Virginia to the principle of complete separation of Church and State.

Drawn up by a committee of five men, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, and Thomas Ludwell Lee, all of them at one time vestrymen of parishes, and introduced into the House of Delegates in 1779, this bill was tabled as a part of the Assembly's policy of putting off until the end of the war the final solution of the religious settlement. Jefferson later claimed to be the chief author and pronounced it one of the three accomplishments of his life worthy to be recorded on his gravestone. In recent time George Mason has been advanced as an important contributor to it. Regardless of the identity of the author, it is a great milestone in the history of religious liberty and ought to be cherished by all lovers of freedom. It amplified the terse sixteenth article of Mason's Declaration of Rights and granted complete religious freedom, not as a privilege, but as a right. The idea of toleration being merely a necessary compromise with error in order to assure peace and tranquility in the State was foreign to its theory. The truth, the bill declared, "is great and will prevail if left to herself; … she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."

The argument of the bill in favor of religious freedom was not that it conformed to the liberal principles of the Enlightenment or democratic thought, but that it rested upon orthodox theological concepts. The preamble asserted, "Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free: that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do…" Therefore, "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyranical." Moreover, "Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geography," and to confine public offices to those who profess a particular faith "tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing … with a monopoly of wordly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it."

Thus the Established Church of Virginia terminated its connection with the State and brought to an end the 179-year-old establishment. Its legacy on parting was the glorious principle of religious freedom so admirably stated in this act. It has become a cardinal principle of the American way of life and a beacon light in the history of civil rights, and of Western Civilization.

Attached are Xerox copies of sections from several books in the library speaking to the church/state relationship in colonial Virginia. Also I include a response to a query concerning the oath administered to Burgesses which you mentioned the other day. Finally, there are copies from our York County Project file of several cases involving non-attendance at church, swearing, etc. I could not locate the case I mentioned to you Monday: a fellow was excused by the York County Court from church services because he was found to be deaf. It was York County, seventeenth century, if you want to use it.

I hope these bits and pieces will be of help to you. Please call if you have questions. I will mention all of this to Harold on Friday. If he has anything to add I will call you then.

NEW FRONTIERS AND A MUTINY

[...]civil and criminal. In more important cases the justices sat as a group which until 1643 was called the monthly court. In that year it met every two months and was known as the county court.²¹ The defendant was given a trial by jury upon request. Appeals could be taken to the General Court, consisting of the Governor and Council sitting in quarterly judicial sessions at Jamestown. Appeals could also be made to the General Assembly. The verdicts of the justices were enforced at the jail, whipping post, stocks, pillory, ducking stool, and in certain cases in the churches, where public confession was made.

Like the justice courts in England the justices here had a wide variety of administrative duties which were added to from time to time. They looked after the peace and general welfare of the community, probated wills and granted letters of administration, established ferries and fixed their rates, licensed ordinaries and ferries, laid off parishes according to the Assembly's directions, and regulated the price of liquors from time to time as the price of tobacco fluctuated.22 The justices were chosen from the most influential men in the Colony. They received for their labor and pains in office their expenses and the satisfaction of knowing that they had done their duty as English gentlemen. Eventually the justices had the privilege of recommending other justices for the governor's approval.²³ The sheriff was chosen from among the members of the court. (Since Church and State in Virginia were two parts of the same body, it is not surprising to find the Church looking after the poor and unfortunate, and performing many other functions now belonging to the State. Churchwardens of every parish, as one of their duties, had to "deliver in a true presentment in writing of such misdemeanors as to their knowledge have been committed" during the previous year.²⁴ )

When the northern and westward movement began in 1630 there were upwards of twenty-five hundred people in Virginia.²⁵ Each year hundreds of emigrants left England for the new Virginia frontier, and by April 1635 the census showed a population of [...]

^{Source: Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia, Vol. I}

[...]vestry be in the power of the major part of the parishioners, who being warned, shall appear to make choice of such men as by plurality of voices shall be thought fit." This democratic method seems to have persisted until sometime during Berkeley's second administration. Then, at least some of the vestries began themselves to fill vacancies in their ranks, and thus to become self-perpetuating bodies.

The long continuance of vestries was presented as a grievance to the King's commissioners after 'Bacon's Rebellion. The people of Surry complained that they had "not had liberty to choose vestrymen," and asked that "the whole parish may have a free election." Northampton asked "that we may have liberty granted to choose a new vestry, and that every three years a vestry may be chosen." Isle of Wight made the same request. In response to like appeals, the Assembly of June, 1676, passed an act giving the freemen of every parish the right to elect vestrymen whenever they wished by a majority vote.

After this law was voided, there seem to have been elections only when a new parish was established. Beverley says that "the vestries were at first chosen by the vote of the parishioners, but upon the death of one, have been continued by the survivors' electing another in his place." Hartwell, Blair, and Chilton, in their The Present State of Virginia, make a similar statement. The vestry was chosen at first by all the masters of families, they say, but they had "power to continue themselves, for as one dies or removes out of the parish, the remaining vestrymen choose another in his room." We may follow this process in the VestryBook of St. Paul's Parish, of Hanover County. The vestry was elected by the freeholders and housekeepers in 1704, but after that it became a self-perpetuating body. When Mr. David Crawford died the vestry chose Mr. William England in his place, when Mr. England died they chose Mr. William Meriwether, when Mr. Robert Anderson died they elected Mr. Joseph Baughan. And so it continued until the vestry was dissolved by the Assembly during the Revolution, and a new one elected by the people.

The vestries were the dominant power in the established church. The Bishop of London, 1675, acted as diocesan of all the colonies, but in practice he had little authority. In 1689 he appointed the Reverend James Blair as his Commissary, with power to hold convocations, make visitations, and supervise the conduct of the clergy. Since the Governor claimed by his commission the right to induct and collate ministers, the Church had two heads, each with very limited authority. Consequently the vestries did pretty much what they pleased.

The basis of their power was their control of the parish purse. In England wealthy patrons, who had perhaps endowed a parish, presented the minister to the bishop for induction. But in Virginia the vestry, who had built the church and who paid the minister his salary, claimed the right to select him. In a few cases they did present clergymen for induction, but most of the clergy officiated only as their salaried employees.

Governor Nicholson made a determined effort to force the vestries to present their ministers, and even secured an opinion from Attorney-General Edward Northey, that in cases where they refused to do so he had the right to collate. But the vestries defied both Nicholson and Northey, and, one after the other, refused to obey. In the end the Governor had to submit, for had he forced his nominee on a parish, the vestry would have withheld his salary and starved him out.

Turning now to administrative positions other than that of Governor, we find that the President of the Council, Secretary of State, Attorney-General, Auditor, and Treasurer, were the most important. It was the custom for the Councillor having had the longest term of service to become President when the office of the Governor became temporarily vacant, until a new Governor arrived. For this reason one's rank in the Council was jealously guarded. The President exercised all the powers of [...]

[…]them in laying the county levy. The same representatives were to have an equal voice also in "making wholesome bylaws." But this attempt to make local government more democratic failed with the voiding of Bacon's Laws.

The county levy was often heavier than the public levy. In the period from 1685 to 1699 the public levy for Middlesex averaged 20,165 pounds a year, the county levy 26,759. The Essex public levy from 1692 to 1699 totaled 49,568, the county levy 224,632. The chief item of expense in the local budget was the salary and expenses of the county's representatives in the House of Burgesses.

Every county had one or more parishes, each under the direction of a vestry. To this body was entrusted the nomination of the minister, the payment of his salary, the erection of the church and one or more chapels, ecclesiastical discipline, the providing for the aged and poor, taking care of orphaned children, and laying the parish levy. The minister charged with "excess in drinking, or riot, or spending his time idly by day or night, playing at dice, cards, or any other unlawful game" would have to explain his conduct to his outraged vestry. If they preferred charges against him before the Governor and Council, he would be fortunate if he escaped suspension. Ecclesiastical discipline extended, not only to the clergy but to laymen. In 1639 Robert Sweet, who ranked as a gentleman, was ordered to appear in church in a white sheet, for improper relations with a servant girl. In Northampton, in 1648, the wife of a prominent citizen was accused before the vestry of infidelity to her husband, found guilty, and presented by the minister and churchwardens to the county court for punishment.

The power of the vestry to tax the parishioners, made it a matter of great importance that they should be elected by the people. The parish levy was always heavy, and in some instances exceeded that of either the public or county levy. In 1645 the Assembly passed an act providing "that the election of every[...]

[...]witnesses" was very great, "particularly by the multitude of places and other favors he has to promise in case they favor him in the trial, and partly by the certain ruin they must expect if they do otherwise." In the case of Swan versus Wilson Governor Nicholson so greatly abused Swan's attorney "that everybody cried out shame." Since the Governor appointed the justices of the peace who constituted the county courts, his influence over local justice was equally great.

The Governor was also the legal head of the established Church. He had the right to induct ministers after they had been presented by the vestries. He also claimed the right of collation to vacant parishes, but since this was bitterly opposed by the vestries, he seldom tried to exercise it. Late in the seventeenth century the Bishop of London, who acted as diocesan for the Anglican Church in the colonies, appointed a Commissary to represent him in Virginia. This led to divided authority in ecclesiastical affairs, and at times to bitter disputes between the Commissary and the Governor.

If we turn now to the Council of State, intended originally to serve only as an advisory body for the Governor, we find that in time they assumed also other functions. Hartwell, Blair, and Chilton, in their The Present State of Virginia, thus summarize their duties and privileges: "They are the Council of State under the Governor, who always presides; and in the vacancy of a Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, the eldest of the Council is President. They are the Upper House of Assembly, answering to the House of Peers in England. They are by custom, but without commission, the supreme judges (together with the Governor who presides) in all causes, viz. in chancery, King's Bench, common pleas, exchequer, admiralty, and spirituality, and there lies no appeal from them but to the King in Council…They are colonels and commanders-in-chief of the several counties, in the nature of the Lords Lieutenants in England.

^{Source: Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The Government of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century}

CW(16)120

19th March 1721/2 [illegible]

Richd. King [presented] by the Grand Jury for not going to Church is fined five Shillings & ordered that [he pay] the Sd [fine] to the [Church] wardens of Bruton parish at their next levy with [Costs als.Exo.]

CW(16)101

15th January 1721/2 603

John Fossett presented by the Grand Jury for Swearing is fined five Shillings and ordered that he pay the same to the Church wardens of Charles parish at their next Levy with Costs als. Exo.

CW(16) 101

15th January 1721/2 [illegible]

Richd, King presented by the Grand Jury for not going to church according to Law being Summond and failing to appear Ordered that the Sheriff take him into Custody untill he gives Security for his appearance at the next Court to ansr. the sd presentment.

William Rogers the Same
Joseph Frith the Same

CW (16) 321

Birdson [Burdsong] Elizabeth 15 Feb 1724/5

2160
had a bastard child

Upon the information of James Parsons churchwarden of Charles Parish agt EB for having a bastard child ordered that the sheriff summon the sd E to appear' and answer the same at the next ct.

JO (2) 207

21 May 1753

Thomas Roberts, foreman	Ellyson Armistead
Merritt Moore	Robert Crawley
John Ferguson	Nathaniel Crawley Jr
Edward Tabb	Robert Smith
Edward Moss	Edward Cross
William Sheldon Sclater	John Richardson
Thomas Mountfort	Matthew Burt
John Wootten	John Hay
Alexander Craig	Edward Potter
William Moody	John Crawley
Frederick Bryan	Seymour Powell

were sworn a Grand Jury of Inquest for the body of this county and having received their charge went out of ct and after some time returned and made the following presentments viz:
John Tenham surveyor of the Brook road for not keeping it in repair.
Sarah Bratenham for having a bastard child.
William Gill for absenting himself from his parish church.
William Pierce for the same.
John Coman for the same
Mary Evans for the same,
John Wormley, William Willcox & John James Hulett for unlawful gaming.
Gerrard Roberts, Jr. for absenting himself from his parish church.
Samuel Roberts for the same.

987-2
JO (2) 207-208

21 May 1753

William Forgasson for the same,
Gawton Hunt for the same.
John Parsons for the same.
Robert Brown for the same.
Edward Mason for the same.
James Holloway for the same.
Nicholas Morris for the same.
John Hunt for the same.
John Moore for the same.
William Stanup as a common swearer.
James Mitchell for absenting himself from his parish church.
John Morgam for the same.
Robert Brodie for the same.
John Clark for the same.
William Britain for absenting himself from his parish church.
John Holloway for the same.'
Robert Willis for the same.
Robert Wise for the same.
Edmund Stuckey for the same.
and then the Grand Jury having nothing further to present were discharged.

^{Ch. of England
Burgesses (Laws of)}

Pardon my delay in answering your letter of November 3, 1953 concerning "the Test" which Virginia burgesses-elect had to subscribe before taking their Place in the Assembly.

The English Test Act of 1673 required holders of any office, civil or military, to receive within three months of their taking office the Sacrament of Holy Communion according to the rite of the Church of England "in some publick Church, upon some Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday, immediately after Divine Service and Sermon," and to deliver a certificate of their having done so, signed by the priest, churchwarden, and two credible witnesses.

The Test Act of 1678 (30 Car, II stat. 2, cap. 1) provided the text of a declaration that had to be audibly repeated and signed. This declaration is doubtless the one that all Virginia burgesses made when they "subscribed the Test." Here is the text of the declaration from D. Oswald Dykes, Source Book of Constitutional History From 1660, London, 1930, pp. 251-52:

"I, A.B., do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, That I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any Transubstantiation of the Elements of Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the Consecration thereof by any Person whatsoever: and that the Invocation or Adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous. And I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, that I do make this Declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the Words read unto 2 me, as they are commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever, and without any Dispensation already granted me for this purpose by the Pope, or any other Authority or Person whatsoever, or without any hope of any such Dispensation from any Person or Authority whatsoever, or without thinking that I am or can be acquitted before God or Man, or absolved of this Declaration, or any part thereof, although the Pope, or any other Person or Persons, or Power whatsoever, should dispense with or annul the same, or declare that it was null or void from the beginning."

An explanation of the purpose of this oath is seen in the fact that the Church of England at the Reformation retained the ancient catholic doctrine of the "real presence" of Christ in the Holy Communion, but rejected as heretical the distinctively Roman doctrine called "transubstantiation," which asserts that the bread and wine at the instant of consecration cease to be bread and wine and miraculously become the actual corporeal body and blood of Christ. Belief in transubstantiation after 1570, therefore, served as a kind of shibboleth whereby anyone who secretly was a Roman Catholic might be forced to reveal his ecclesiastical affiliation.

COUNTY GOVERNMENT IN VIRGINIA
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

The collector was ordered to sell the tobacco and make the money payments as levied. For another example of the currency inflation of the period, the budget for three years²⁰⁰ later shows the levy per poll at 48 pounds of tobacco, as against I4, and the cash levy at £2315 5s. as against £64, I4S. 7¼d.

Vestries, however, were beginning to go out of existence after the Declaration of Independence, especially in the Western part of the state. As early as 1777²⁰¹ the commissioners of the tax for Botetourt county were authorized to make a levy for the poor, due to the lack of a vestry, though a general law²⁰² in the same year ordered the sheriff to collect the parish levy when asked by the churchwardens to do so, at a 6% commission. The vestry was still missing in Botetourt county in 1782 when the first four justices were ordered²⁰³ to levy on the parish to pay the back salary of the minister. In the same year, all vestries were abolished by law²⁰⁴ in Shenandoah, Henry, Monongalia, Ohio, and Berkley counties Three vestries were also abolished in the East, but new elections ordered, in the cases of St. Anne,²⁰⁵ Antrim,²⁰⁶ and Westover.

The formal disestablishment of the Church came in 1784,²⁰⁷ thus ending its career as a branch of the government, and it became a private incorporated body. All laws concerning the church were repealed in toto, all vestries dissolved, and the new vestries to be formed were to be elected by the members of each individual church. The only government connection with the new organization was the requirement that the new vestries report to the county court every three years on the administration of their property. The outgoing vestry, however, was authorized to make one last levy, if any legal obligations remained unfulfilled. The next year the time for choosing new vestries was extended²⁰⁸ to Easter, 1786, because some of the churches were still unorganized.

The abolition of the vestry made it necessary to lodge its non-religious functions elsewhere, and of these the support of the poor by far the most important. The care of the poor, however, had been in a state of flux for some time before the disestablishment of the Church. In 1776²⁰⁹ the parish of Westover was allowed to sell its poorhouse and land as "being burdensome and not to answer the purpose thereby intended," but in 1779²¹⁰ the vestries were required to levy for the support of the poor even after the ministers' salaries had been abolished. With the discontinuance of the vestries in seven counties, in 1780,²¹¹ the Assembly created a board of five, elected by the freeholders for three years, to take care of the poor. This marks the origin of the overseers of the poor who were to be part of the Virginia scheme until the depression and the New Deal combined to abolish them in recent times. They were to be "… a body politick and corporate, to sue and be sued, and be invested with all the powers and subject to all the penalties that vestries and churchwardens were liable to, and vested with, before the passing of this act." The existing vestries were ordered to account to the overseers for all money and tobacco [...]

^{Source: Porter, County Gov't.}

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMENT

[...]to the sheriff of York county to hold an election in Charles Parish in which he was to limit the voting to householders and to avoid the "turmult and confusion which usually happens on such occasions."

The duties of the vestry remained a mixture of religious and civil. They were responsible for hiring and paying the minister, maintaining the church, parsonage, and glebe, and at the same time they were responsible for all poor relief. In order to raise money for these activities they could levy a tax on the people of the parish and, as the situation in Frederick revealed, were under no legal check or control in the amount collected or in the manner of spending it. Bacon's law requiring six men to be elected from the parish to sit with the vestry while laying the levy was repassed in 1677,²²⁹ but there is no evidence that it became the general practice or even went into effect. The parish taxes were collected by the sheriff and in 1727²³⁰ the commission was fixed at 10% if the tobacco was near a landing or at 8% if in cask. There was the usual provision for a fine on the vestry for refusal to make the levy and on the sheriff for negligence in collecting, while if the vestry did not trust the sheriff, it could appoint its own collector. This was occasionally done, as in Kingston Parish, in 1753,²³¹ when a special collector was appointed by the vestry and was required to give bond to the vestry for his collections.

While the appointment of the minister was a vestry function, there is considerable evidence that the vestry was not left alone an in this task. As was natural, the vestry of a rural parish could have little or no personal knowledge of ministerial candidates and due to the frequent shortages of ministers in the colony, vestrymen might have considerable difficulty in finding a candidate at all. Under these circumstances the Governor was the natural source of aid and assistance. In 1710²³² Governor [...]

^{Source: Porter, County Gov't.}

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMENT

[...] in the neighborhood of £400 instead of the £144 allowed by the law. While the ministers were probably worse off than other creditors, nevertheless the law hurt all those who received salary or fees, stated in tobacco, and there was considerable satisfaction among this group when the parsons appealed to England. The disallowance of this law brought in its train the famous Parsons' Cause, in which Patrick Henry burst upon the American scene and which was one of the incidents leading to the Revolution. The struggle between the ministers and the vestries was settled by an Act in 1769²³⁹ which allowed the vestry to make its own rate of exchange, and in the same year²⁴⁰ an act stated that the ministers did not have to receive their salaries in money, but might contract with the vestry to do so. In such case the vestry would levy on the people in money. If the minister refused to bargain with his vestry and insisted on the full salary in tobacco, the vestry might levy on the parish in money and buy the necessary tobacco in the market at the prevailing price.

In addition to his religious duties the minister was also the recorder of vital statistics. In 1712²⁴¹ he was required to keep a record of births and deaths and return a copy to the secretary of the Colony annually. All births and deaths were to be reported to him within twenty days, though if the parish maintained a clerk this duty might be handed over to him. Of course each parish kept a register of marriages. Many of these registers have survived as the happy hunting ground of those interested in Virginia genealogy.

Next to the church affairs, care of the poor was the chief duty of the vestry. Duties in this connection are outlined in a long series of acts. The form of relief granted was, in most of the cases, outdoor relief. The records of the vestries are full of allowances to those unable to help themselves, the first step [...]

^{Source: Porter, County Gov't.}

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMENT

[...]from another county, the court, on notice from the churchwardens, might send him home at county expense.

In the case of dependent children, a sharp distinction was made between those unfortunate enough to be orphans and from those even more unfortunate who were born out of wedlock. Orphans were under the control of the county court.²⁴⁸ If they had no property they might be bound out by the justices. If, however, they had property, the court appointed the guardian and checked his accounts.²⁴⁹ The Act of 1748²⁵⁰ gave the courts "full power and authority" to deal with orphans, to appoint guardians and put them under bond, and to check the accounts annually and have them entered by the clerk. There was a large fine imposed for failure to perform these duties and in addition the justices were personally liable for any damage or loss resulting from a dishonest guardian, if they had been negligent in their duty of supervision.

Bastards, however, were in a different category. In 1727²⁵¹ they could be bound out by the churchwardens under the supervision of the vestry, but in 1769²⁵² the whole matter was set out in detail. If the mother of a bastard named the father on oath before a justice, the father, on application by a churchwarden, might he committed to jail, unless he agreed at the next court to provide for the maintenance of the child, while the mother was fined 20s. for the offence. If the father was not named or refused to be responsible the child might be bound out by the churchwardens until the legal age, which was twenty-one for men and eighteen for women. The master of such apprentices agreed to supply food, clothing, lodging, and "accommodations" and to teach the child to read and write. When the indenture came to an end, the master was to make [...]

^{Source: Porter, County Gov't.}

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN EARLY SETTLEMENT

[...]tice in charge of each, and this justice was to make the list of tithables. The lists were to be made public in order that the people could make corrections and then the final lists were to be made up in August and returned to the Assembly in September. The tithables not only included all free males over sixteen, but all servants and Negroes, both male and female. At the same time¹⁸⁴ the revision continued the requirement that the sheriff collect the quitrents, public levies, officials' fees, and be bonded. In fairness to the sheriffs, however, it must be noted that all neglect and inefficiency was not due to them, for in 1667¹⁸⁵ the Assembly found it necessary to lay a fine on county courts which failed to lay the county levies as required.

In addition to the county, the other area of local government in colonial Virginia was the parish. In fact, the parish ante-dates the county for the first church in the Colony was founded with the settlement of Jamestown and as early as 1619 there is mention of the churchwardens and their election at a public meeting was noted as early as 1623. That other parishes had been established with the spread of settlement is shown by the Act¹⁸⁶ of the same year¹⁶²⁴ which required them to maintain a public granary. With the establishment of the county, the parish became a subordinate area, but there was no fixed rule determining the number or the size of the area. In a small and relatively compact county like Elizabeth City there was one parish, co-terminous with the county, while a large county might have several parishes, or a large parish might have several chapels in addition to its church. In general the number and boundaries of the parishes was decided by the county court, as in Northhampton county in 1643.¹⁸⁷ In 1657¹⁸⁸ the courts were definitely 38 and 39 charged with dividing the county into parishes and in 1660¹⁸⁹ the Assembly went farther and required the court to mark the boundaries of both the county and the parishes and to have them viewed each year at Easter. In 1667¹⁹⁰ the Assembly itself changed parish lines with the passage of an Act which united two parishes into one, but the usual practice seems to have been to leave this to the courts.

The governing body of the parish was the vestry. The name was in general use as early as 1635¹⁹¹ and there is a provision for their election by the parishioners in the law of 1644.¹⁹² The number of members in a vestry seems to have varied from parish to parish until 1660¹⁹³ when the number was set at twelve and their election by popular vote was provided, though with the development of the planter aristocracy this was later done away with. The executive officers of the parish were the church-wardens. Two in number, they were chosen in a variety of ways from election¹⁹⁴ to appointment¹⁹⁵ by the court until mid-century when the practice¹⁹⁶ became general of election by and from the vestry, each vestryman serving in rotation, and the election was fixed by law¹⁹⁷ at Easter.

The functions of the parish were twofold, religious and civil. They were responsible for securing and paying the minister, maintaining the church, and administering the glebe lands. In addition, they were charged with maintaining the moral tone of the parish and were to investigate immorality¹⁹⁸ and prosecute it before the county court. On the civil side they were responsible for all the administrative duties which now fall under the general head of public welfare, as well as certain other minor administrative functions. To support these functions they were allowed to levy a tax, called, after the English practice, rates, on the inhabitants of the parish, and for some time it was the duty of the churchwardens¹⁹⁹ to collect it, though it was later given to the sheriff²⁰⁰ who collected the rates along with the other levies In 1665²⁰¹ the Assembly gave to the vestry the duty of looking after the roads necessary for getting to church and this was added to the problems of the churchwardens. Keeping vital statistics was also a parish function. The minister was charged with keeping a register of births and deaths,^2021632 and the churchwardens reported the total,²⁰³ along with marriages, to the quarter court in June. In addition they were also to report the levies, collections, and payments, and continued to do so until relived of this duty by the clerk in 1659.

Following the English practice of the day, poor relief was the chief civil duty of the parishes, which were given this task as early as 1619,²⁰⁴ when they were authorized to levy rates for the purpose. In general, outdoor relief was the method used and there was no attempt at institutional care until 1646,²⁰⁵ when the building of a workhouse at Jamestown was authorized, with the appropriation of ten thousand pounds of tobacco to help the county defray the expense. The law further provided that flax should be raised and that knitting an spinning should be 40 and 41 taught. A general law in 1667^1668206 permitted counties to combine with parishes for the construction of workhouses for poor children, and separate parish or county workhouses were permitted the following year.²⁰⁷ It is doubtful if there was any great use of such institutions, however, during the seventeenth century, and even during the eighteenth century most of the parish records indicate that outdoor relief was the usual normal procedure. In 1642 the poor,²⁰⁸ who were receiving relief from the vestry, were exempt from the payment of county and public levies, and the vestry was required to notify the compiler of the list of tithables of the names.

Orphans, however, were entrusted to the county courts and the justices were to act as their trustees. If the orphan had no property he might be bound out²⁰⁹ by the justices, as might children from homes too²¹⁰ poor to take care of them, and also such bastards as²¹¹ came before the court. In 1657^2121658 the courts were specifically charged with taking care of the lands of "orphants," and the sheriff was ordered²¹³ to summon before the court for accounting all persons who had orphans in their care.

Of the present-day functions of county government, the only one not in existence in the first fifty years of the colony was that of public education, but private endowment for education began with the establishment of the county in 1634. In that year,²¹⁴ a farmer of Elizabeth City county provided in his will that his estate, consisting of two hundred acres of land and eight cows, should be used to found a free school for the children of the county, and four years later, in 1638, the will of Thomas Eaton added five hundred acres of land, twelve cows, and eight Negroes to another foundation. One of the remarkable things in American history is that this foundation is in existence today, having lasted through all the upheavals of three centuries, and the funds thus started by Benjamin Syms and Thomas Eaton are today providing an income for the schools of their county.

Aside from education, therefore, the seventeenth century county was exercising all the functions of the county of today, taxation and assessment, highways, election, records, welfare, and militia. The needs of that day were simple and the organization was accordingly simple and direct, but the problems which worried early Virginians were different only in degree, not in kind, from those which tax lawmakers today. The history of county government in Virginia, or in any other state for that matter, shows the growing complexity of local government and the problems which were vital parts of that growth.

^{Source: Albert Ogden Porter, County Government in Virginia}