took occasion to apply to the Puritan church government in
Massachusetts to send three ordained Puritan "missionaries" to their
fellow religionists in Virginia, but upon the arrival of the
missionaries their ship was met by government officials; the three
missionaries sent back to Massachusetts; and the master of the ship was
fined for bringing them to the colony. No one in official position in
Virginia could escape the conviction that the sending of Puritan
ministers to Virginia at such a time, whether upon request of the
Nansemond River group or upon suggestion from Boston, was for any
purpose other than to foment and organize Puritan opposition to the
King. For that reason Puritanism in Virginia came under suspicion, and
the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, with the full support of the
government and public opinion, treated all Puritans as enemies. He made
their situation so intolerable that the entire group accepted an
invitation from the proprietor of the Province of Maryland and migrated
to that colony. There, given land on the Severn River, they gained
control of the provincial government within a few years. The forcing of
the group out of Virginia was a political act of defense and was not
religious persecution.
The English Parliament in 1645 enacted a law abolishing the Church of
England as an active organization. The law enacted by Parliament drove
every bishop from his diocese, and forbade the use of the _Book of
Common Prayer_ in any church or chapel in England. The rectors of over
two thousand parishes were forced out and their places were filled by
Presbyterian and Independent or Baptist ministers.
The General Assembly of Virginia, upon learning the action of
Parliament, adopted an act in 1647 requiring the use of the _Prayer
Book_ in every church and chapel in Virginia each Sunday in the regular
forms prescribed in the _Prayer Book_. The Act made further provision
that in every parish in which the incumbent minister disobeyed the law
and continued disuse of the _Book of Common Prayer_, his parishioners
were thereby absolved from paying him any further salary.
In England marriage was held to be a religious service to be performed
by no one other than a priest of the Church; and Parliament, after
abolishing the Prayer Book and the canons of the Anglican Church, was
compelled to enact another law making provision for the performance of
the marriage ceremony as a civil contract. The new law directed that
justices of the local courts perform marriages and record them, if
desired, in the court records. The people of Virginia paid no attention
to this law except, as far as is known, in one case in Northumberland
County. In the year 1656 a man and woman in Lancaster County, instead
of going to the minister, if there were one, or to the reader of the
parish, went to a county official of Northumberland and were married
according to the Act of Parliament. Their marriage was recorded in the
court order book and there nine months later the new incumbent, Samuel
Cole of Lancaster, found it. He thereupon declared openly that the law
of Virginia was in effect in his parish and not the Acts of Parliament.
The affair ended when the parson required the wedded couple to consider
themselves unwed until he could announce the banns of matrimony for
them on three separate Sundays and then perform a Christian marriage.
He then took occasion to go to the Northumberland county court and
record his certificate of marriage of the couple in the court order
book. The two certificates still appear in the order book of the county
court of Northumberland County in the following words:
Certificate of Marriage, 11 Sept. 1656. John Merryday [i.e.,
Meredith] and Mrs. Ann Nash, als. Mallet, were married by
Coll. Jno. Trussell, according to Act of Parliament, 24
August, 1653. Witnesses Geo. Colclough, Leonard Spencer and
Jno. Carter. Rec. 20 Sept. 1656.
To all such whom it may concern. These are to certifie that
John Meredith & Ann Nash, being three times Published
according to Law, were married at Currotomon on the 14th of
this instant July, 1657 per mee, Samuel Cole, minister,
_ibidem_ 20th July 1657 this certificate was recorded.
The colony of Virginia in affairs of both church and state exercised
more independence of action under the Commonwealth than it ever
exercised before or afterward until the Declaration of Independence in
1776. The General Assembly, after it made a treaty of peace with
Cromwell's commissioners, elected the several governors of the colony
until the Restoration of Charles Second in 1660 took that authority
from them. The Burgesses had agreed to discontinue the use of prayers
for the King and the royal family in public services, and the General
Assembly enacted a law directing each parish to decide for itself
whether it would continue or discontinue the use of the _Book of Common
Prayer_. All questions of parish administration were left to the
several vestries. If a parish did not wish to use the old form of
worship it might use such form as it desired.
A number of ministers of Presbyterian ordination, and some openly
acknowledged Puritans thereupon came into the colony and these became
incumbent ministers of parishes. The last known one was the Rev. Andrew
Jackson, incumbent of Christ Church Parish in Lancaster County from
some years after 1680 until his death in 1711. He was a godly and
devout minister, beloved by his parishioners. Tradition says that he
"stood up to read the Psalms, but remained seated when they said the
Creed."
For twenty-five or thirty years prior to 1675, to the distress of the
Church and the people as a whole, there was a desperate lack of
ordained ministers, and inability, to get clergymen from England. Some
few, driven out of parishes in England by the Parliamentary victors,
did come to Virginia, but never in sufficient number to supply the
need. Then, after the restoration of Charles, II, in 1660 and the
return of the Anglican Church to active life, there were so many
parishes in England from which non-conforming ministers were removed
because of refusal to use the _Book of Common Prayer_, that for nearly
a decade there were almost no clergymen to send overseas. Conditions
did begin to improve, however, before the end of the decade.
The improvement increased more rapidly after a new bishop of London
came into that diocese in 1675 and manifested active interest in the
affairs of the parishes in America.
During the decade 1660-70, shortly after King Charles had been received
and crowned King of England, the General Assembly of Virginia made
earnest effort to call the attention of the Crown and the people of
England to the needs of the Church in the colony. A committee of
clergymen was sent from Jamestown to London to present the matter to
the King. The committee published a pamphlet telling of the great need
and urging a definite programme to help improve religious conditions.
Three things ought to be done: first, a bishop should be sent at once
to visit the parishes and ordain as deacons devout laymen who had been
serving as readers so that there would be at least a deacon in every
parish; second, fellowships ought to be established at the universities
of Oxford and Cambridge for the support and training of men for the
ministry who would agree to serve the Church for a term of years in the
parishes of Virginia; third, and most important, a bishop ought to be
consecrated to organize a diocese in Virginia and bring the parishes
there into the full life of the Anglican Church.
No one knows what influence the pamphlet had in arousing interest.
Certainly no bishop was sent to ordain readers as deacons; and no
fellowships were established at the universities to train men to serve
in the ministry in Virginia. But a movement did start to organize a
diocese and consecrate a bishop. This occurred after 1670. The movement
won approval and a charter was prepared for the signature of King
Charles as the temporal head of the Church. The charter provided that
the diocese was to be called the Diocese of Virginia, and Jamestown was
to become the see-city where the bishop was to have his "Cathedral." A
clergyman was selected by the King to become the new bishop. He was the
Reverend Alexander Moray who had fled Scotland with Prince Charles and
had gone as chaplain with the ill-fated campaign ending in defeat at
the Battle of Worcester in 1652 in which Prince Charles sought to win
his throne from the Parliamentary conquerors. Mr. Moray then fled to
Virginia and became rector of Ware Parish in Gloucester County.
But something happened in 1672 after the King had announced publicly
that he had selected Mr. Moray to be bishop. Nobody knows what it was,
but the charter was never signed, and Mr. Moray was not made a bishop.
There is some evidence that he died just at that time and possibly that
caused the plan to fall through.
It would seem probable that the failure of the plan in 1672 aroused the
interest of Henry Compton who became Bishop of London in 1675, for in
that same year he secured from the Crown authority to select and
license men to serve as ministers of the parishes in America. And
shortly thereafter a fund called "The King's Bounty" was established,
from which each clergyman licensed to serve in America was given twenty
pounds sterling to pay the cost of his voyage. This plan continued
until the American Revolution. It did great good, for it gave to every
Anglican clergyman in the colonies a bishop whom he felt he knew, and
to whom he could write if necessary. The Bishop of London never at any
time had any authority whatsoever over the laity of the Church in
America, nor over the work of the vestries as temporal heads of the
parishes. But his influence with the clergy was of enormous value to
their morale.
Ten years later Bishop Compton went farther and secured authority to
appoint clergymen as his personal representatives in the colonies; to
confer with the clergy; and, if necessary, to remove from their
parishes clergymen who had proven to be unworthy men. The commissaries
lost their power some sixty years later when a new Bishop of London
appointed in 1748 refused to give his commissaries the authority which
earlier commissaries had exercised.
The first commissaries, James Blair for Virginia and Thomas Bray for
Maryland, made great contribution to the life of the Church of England
in the colonies and in England also. Commissary Bray was the moving
spirit in organizing three missionary societies in England: the Society
for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge; the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; and, in his old age, the
society of Dr. Bray's Associates for ministry to Negro slaves in all
the colonies. He also instituted a plan for sending libraries of
theological books to parishes in the colonies, an enormous help to
clergymen in far-off places.
James Blair served as Commissary in Virginia from his appointment in
1689 until his death in 1743. His greatest work was the establishment
and development of the Royal College of William and Mary in 1693. He
raised money for its establishment first by asking pledges from all
persons in Virginia who were able to give, and then in England where he
quickly gained the active interest of Queen Mary and King William. He
secured his charter for the College in 1693 and by 1695 the erection of
college buildings was well under way. He served as president of the
college until his death in 1743. He steered it through its early
difficulties; he fought for it against Governor and Council when
necessary; and he brought it to its full status as a College with six
professors and more than a hundred students in 1729. He lived long
enough to welcome Reverend George Whitefield, the first great leader of
the evangelical movement, when he came to Williamsburg in 1740, and had
the happiness to learn that his College had won the admiring approval
of his visitor. Whitefield wrote in his diary an account of what he
saw, and ended, "I rejoiced in seeing such a place in America."
Commissary Blair fought steadily and successfully for the rights and
privileges of the clergy, and secured real increase in clerical
salaries. He fought also for the right of the vestries to elect the
rectors of their own parishes, even as he strove when need was, to
secure the removal of the occasional unworthy clergyman.
The organization of the College of William and Mary in 1693 was indeed
the culmination of the plan of the London Company to establish a
University in Virginia. The first effort went up in smoke in 1622.
There was another effort in the days of Sir William Berkeley after the
Restoration, but the time was not then ripe. But the opportunity came
again. Already there were several endowed schools in Virginia: The Syms
School in Hampton, the Eaton School, also in that parish, the Peasley
School in Gloucester County, and others. Many parish clergymen also
became noted for the excellency of their schools. So the College which
began in 1693 came to head a group of schools which had already spread
through the colony.
From its beginning it held to the ideal of having a School of Divinity
to train men for the ministry of the Church of England, as well as a
school of philosophy or liberal arts as we now describe it, to train
men for secular life and leadership in the colonial life. When the
College reached its maturity it had a School of Divinity with two
professors, and a School of Philosophy with two, in addition to masters
in other departments. It had also a foundation which could support
eight men studying for the ministry. From that time until the
Revolution a steady stream of candidates went from the College to the
Bishop of London for ordination. But that is part of the story of the
next century. The beginning came in 1693.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Last Decade
The decade 1690-1700 was an era of steady growth in the religious and
cultural life of Virginia. New counties were created as population
spread further and further up the great rivers; and parishes increased
in numbers as the population grew. The first official list of "The
parishes and the clergymen in them" which has survived the wreckage of
time was the list of 1680, and the next is the list of 1702. These
lists show that in 1680 there were forty-eight parishes and thirty-six
clergymen incumbents. In the list of 1702 there were fifty parishes and
forty clergymen.
The one most notable event in the religious life of both England and
Virginia was enactment by Parliament in 1689 of the Edict of
Toleration. That act in the first year of the reign of King William and
Queen Mary was the first incident in the movement of the English people
through their legislature toward freedom of religion. The Act did not
repeal the severe laws against dissent adopted in the reign of King
Charles, II, but it did remove the penalties. It took the first step
along a new roadway into human freedom; and the English-speaking world
on both sides of the Atlantic hailed it as such.
As it was a law of England, the act did not come into effect in
Virginia until it was included within the code of laws of the colony.
That was not done until 1699, although the Council of State had
approved the act in principle early in that decade. By that time
enforcement of law requiring attendance at church every Sunday had been
relaxed for it was impossible of enforcement under the conditions of
Virginian life. The law was not repealed until late in the eighteenth
century and under it every person wherever possible was required to
accept attendance at church as the duty of every citizen. In revisal of
the Virginia law in 1699 it was provided that every person must attend
worship in the parish church at least once every two months. The
General Assembly at the same time enacted a new proviso whereby
dissenters from the Established Church of Virginia, who could qualify
if in England as belonging to denominations or groups permitted under
the Toleration Act, were free in Virginia from any penalty for
non-attendance at the parish Church if they attended their own places
of dissenting worship at least once in the two months period.
In 1699 there were three denominations of dissent in Virginia; the
Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Quakers. The many thousands of
immigrants from Scotland who had belonged to the Established
(Presbyterian) Church of Scotland found little to object to in the
worship of the Established Church of Virginia, and entered into it
without difficulty or objection.
But the Presbyterians from England, as dissenters from the Established
Church of that country, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who began
their immigration to Virginia after the Restoration, brought with them
the determination to organize in America as a Presbyterian
denomination. They were especially strong in the counties of Princess
Anne and Norfolk; and the first Presbyterian congregation in Virginia
was organized in 1692 in that area. It is also of interest to note that
the Reverend Francis Makemie, who organized the first presbytery in
Philadelphia about 1705 and later the first Synod of the Presbyterian
Church in America, lived for many years in Accomac County, Virginia.
There was a Baptist minister in the village of Yorktown during the
decade 1690-1700 but little is known of his work, nor is it known
whether there were then one or more organized Baptist congregations.
The Quakers were the most widely scattered and in numbers probably the
strongest of the three groups. They were especially numerous in Henrico
County and the eastern section of Hanover County and on the Nansemond
river. The Church Attendance Act of 1699 and the Toleration Act of the
English Parliament applied to them as to other dissenters, but they
were still under suspicion as to their loyalty and also because they
continued their early custom of open and violent attacks on the
religion and worship of the orthodox Churches. They gave bitter offense
by their public announcements in time of war between England and France
or between England and Spain that they would give aid and furnish such
supplies as might be needed to any enemy fleet which should come with
hostile intent into the Virginian waters.
While the laws which punished interruption of religious services were
still necessary and were enforced, the adoption of the proviso in the
Virginian Act of 1699 was a real step forward on the way to the
ultimate goal of entire freedom of worship. It made the worship of the
dissenters as truly legal as that of the Established Church, and it
removed from the dissenters the requirement that they attend the
worship of the Anglican Church.
Thomas Story, the noted English Quaker, who wrote and published a
journal of his life and work as a Quaker preacher, gives an interesting
account of his two prolonged visits to Virginia in 1698/99 and in 1705.
In his daily journal for 1705 he comments at every stopping-place, with
manifest pleasure, upon the welcome given him and his friends and the
freedom of public preaching accorded him wherever he went. He was
welcomed and entertained over and again at Anglican homes and he
records occasionally the fact that a county sheriff or constable or
justice of the county court was present at his preaching. He does not
record any instance in which anyone in civil authority in the colony
protested against his preaching or attempted to stop him; and the high
point of his visit came when the Governor of Virginia, learning of his
approach, invited him and his friends to the Governor's mansion,
entertained them and gave them fruit to carry with them on their
journey toward Philadelphia.
So Virginia came to the end of its first century, having fought
through the various adverse conditions which its people found along the
way. The colony had come into an era of opportunity and growth with a
well established government, a seaborne trade which brought prosperity,
and a concept of religion which made room for all forms of the
Christian faith that would remain at peace with each other, and as
citizens be loyal to their government. As the people approached their
first centennial anniversary celebration in 1707 they looked forward
with a confidence born of past experience to the new century upon which
they were to enter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In addition to the titles in the following brief list the reader will
find many references to official papers, and other important and useful
works, in the author's _Virginia's Mother Church_, volumes one and two.
A great many of the statements herein made are based upon these two
volumes.
Anderson, James S. M. _A History of the Colonial Church_.
London: 1843. 3 vols.
Andrews, Matthew Page. _The Soul of a Nation, The Founding
of Virginia and the Projection of New England_. New York:
Doubleday, 1943.
Brydon, George MacLaren. _Virginia's Mother Church and the
Political Conditions Under Which It Grew_. Richmond,
Virginia: Virginia Historical Society, 1947. Vol. I,
1607-1727; Vol. II, 1725-1814.
Fiske, John. _Old Virginia and Her Neighbors_. Boston and
New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899. 2 vols.
Goodwin, Edward L. _The Colonial Church in Virginia_.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Morehouse Publishing Company, 1927.
With appendix giving list of Anglican clergymen who served
in Virginia in the Colonial period.
Hening, W. W. _Statutes of Virginia_, 1619-1792. 13 vols.
Mason, George C. _Colonial Churches of Tidewater, Virginia_.
Richmond, Virginia: Whittet and Shepperson, 1945.
Meade, William. _Old Churches, Ministers, and Families in
Virginia_. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1857. 2 vols.
This is the old standard work upon this subject, and is
still of great value, but must be used with the
understanding that records and other original sources made
available since his day disprove many of his statements
about local conditions. This is especially true regarding
his statements concerning the unworthiness of the colonial
clergy. His expressed conviction that most of them were
unworthy morally has been entirely disproved by the evidence
of records now available.
Perry, W. S. _History of the American Episcopal Church_.
Boston and New York: Osgood, 1899. 2 vols.
--_Historical Collections Relating to America's Colonial
Church. Virginia_: Privately printed, 1870.
Swem, E. G. _Virginia Historical Index_. Roanoke, Virginia:
Stone Printing Co., 1934-36. 2 vols.
APPENDIX A
The following extracts from the Journal of the Life of Thomas Story,
during his visit to Virginia in 1698 are indicative of the attitude of
the people of Virginia toward religious toleration:
8th Day of the 12th Month, we landed in Mockjack Bay----
Next Fourth Day being the 1st day of the 1st month (i.e.
January, 1698/99) we went again by water to a monthly meeting
at Chuckatuck, where came our friend Elizabeth Webb from
Gloucestershire in England, who had been through all the
English colonies on the Continent of America and was now
about to depart for England. The meeting was large and the
Sheriff of the County, a Colonel, and some of others of note
in that county were there, and very sober and attentive.
On the 22nd we had a pretty large meeting at Southern Branch,
at the house of Robert Burgess. He was not a Friend by
profession, but a Justice of the Peace, and of good account
in these parts. There had never been a meeting there before;
yet the people were generally solid and several of them
tendered; and after the meeting the Justice and his wife were
very respectful, and treated us to beer and wine, and would
gladly have had us to have eaten with them and lodged in
their house that night, but being otherwise engaged in the
course of the service.
The next day [several days later] we had a meeting at
Romancock, which was large and open. Many persons of note
from those parts were there, as Major Palmer, Captain
Clayborn, Doctor Walker, and others, all very attentive.
APPENDIX B
A List of Parishes in Virginia, and the Clergy in them under date of
July 8, 1702.
Parishes and Incumbent Ministers
Charles City County.
Bristol Parish, (part)
George Robertson [Robinson]
Westover Parish
Charles Anderson
Martin's Brandon Parish
Weyanoke Parish
James Bushell
Elizabeth City County
Elizabeth City Parish
James Wallace