1675.
The Reverend Morgan Godwyn's Letter describing Condition of
the Church in Virginia.
THE Bishop of Winchester, during the whole negotiation, lent his
assistance to the agents; he also brought to their notice a libel which
had been published against all the Anglo-American plantations,
especially Virginia. It was written by the Rev. Morgan Godwyn, who had
served some time in Virginia; and he had given a copy of it to each of
the bishops. The agents make mention of him as "the fellow," and "the
inconsiderable wretch." They sent a copy of it to Virginia, thinking it
necessary that a reply should be prepared, and addressed to the Bishop
of Winchester and the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is probable that this
pamphlet is no longer extant; but the character of its contents may be
inferred from a letter addressed by the author to Sir William Berkley,
and appended to a pamphlet published by him in 1680, entitled the
"Negro's and Indian's Advocate." Indeed this letter may have been itself
the libellous pamphlet circulated in England in 1674, and referred to by
the Virginia agents. In this letter Godwyn gives the following account
of the state of religion, as it was in that province some time before
the late rebellion, _i.e._ Bacon's, which occurred in 1676. Godwyn
acknowledges that Berkley had, "as a tender father, nourished and
preserved Virginia in her infancy and nonage. But as our blessed Lord,"
he reminds him, "once said to the young man in the gospel, 'Yet lackest
thou one thing;' so," he adds, "may we, and I fear too truly, say of
Virginia, that there is one thing, the propagation and establishing of
religion in her, wanting." And this he essays to prove in various ways:
saying that "the ministers are most miserably handled by their plebeian
juntos, the vestries, to whom the hiring (that is the usual word there)
and admission of ministers is solely left. And there being no law
obliging them to any more than to procure a lay reader, (to be obtained
at a very moderate rate,) they either resolve to have none at all, or
reduce them to their own terms; that is, to use them how they please,
pay them what they list, and to discard them whensoever they have a mind
to it. And this is the recompense of their leaving their hopes in
England, (far more considerable to the meanest curate than what can
possibly be apprehended there,) together with the friends and relations
and their native soil, to venture their lives into those parts among
strangers and enemies to their profession, who look upon them as a
burden; as being with their families (where they have any) to be
supported out of their labor. So that I dare boldly aver that our
discouragements there are much greater than ever they were here in
England under the usurper." After citing various evidences in support of
these statements, among which he specifies the hiring of the clergy from
year to year, and compelling them to accept of parishes at under-rates,
Godwyn thus proceeds: "I would not be thought to reflect herein upon
your excellency, who have always professed great tenderness for
churchmen. For, alas! these things are kept from your ears; nor dare
they, had they opportunity, acquaint you with them, for fear of being
used worse. And there being no superior clergyman, neither in council
nor any place of authority, for them to address their complaints to, and
by his means have their grievances brought to your excellency's
knowledge, they are left without remedy. Again, two-thirds of the
preachers are made up of leaden lay priests of the vestry's ordination;
and are both the shame and grief of the rightly ordained clergy there.
Nothing of this ever reaches your excellency's ear; these hungry patrons
knowing better how to benefit by their vices than by the virtues of the
other." And here Godwyn cites an instance of a writing-master, who came
into Virginia, professing to be a doctor in divinity, showing feigned
letters of orders, and under different names continuing in various
places to carry on his work of fraud. He states also that owing to a law
of the colony, which enacted that four years' servitude should be the
penalty exacted of any one who permitted himself to be sent thither free
of charge, some of the clergy, through ignorance of the law, were left
thereby under the mastery of persons who had given them the means of
gratuitous transport; and that they could only escape from such bondage
by paying a ransom four or five times as large as that to which the
expenses of their passage would have amounted. Moreover, he describes
the parishes as extending, some of them, sixty or seventy miles in
length, and lying void for many years together, to save charges.
Jamestown, he distinctly states, had been left, with short intervals, in
this destitute condition for twenty years. "Laymen," he adds, "were
allowed to usurp the office of ministers, and deacons to undermine and
thrust out presbyters; in a word, all things concerning the church and
religion were left to the mercy of the people." And, last of all: "To
propagate Christianity among the heathen--whether natives or slaves
brought from other parts--although (as must piously be supposed) it were
the only end of God's discovering those countries to us, yet is that
looked upon by our new race of Christians, so idle and ridiculous, so
utterly needless and unnecessary, that no man can forfeit his judgment
more than by any proposal looking or tending that way." Such is the Rev.
Mr. Godwyn's account of the state of religion and the condition of the
clergy in Virginia during Sir William Berkley's administration.[279:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[279:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, first edition, ii. 558, 561.