THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT.
THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT was born in the County of New Kent, Virginia,
in January, 1733, of obscure parentage. His grandfather, an Englishman,
had served during the civil wars under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex,
and hence probably was derived the Christian name of the grandson. His
grandmother was a native of Ireland. His father was a carpenter, and
from the manner in which he and his family lived, some idea may be
formed of the condition of the common people in that day. Their food
consisted of the produce of the soil, except a little sugar, which was
used only on rare occasions. Their clothes were all of maternal
manufacture, except hats and shoes, and these last were worn only in the
winter. They not only used no tea or coffee themselves, but they knew no
family that did use them. Meat and bread and milk constituted the diet
of that class. They looked upon the gentry as a superior caste. Jarratt,
in his autobiography, describing his early days, says: "For my part, I
was quite shy of them, and kept off at an humble distance. A periwig in
those days was a distinguishing badge of gentle-folk, and when I saw a
man riding the road near our house with a wig on, it would so alarm my
fears and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that I dare say I would
run off as for my life." He lived to see society reduced to the
opposite, and, in his opinion, worse extreme of republican levelling,
insubordination, and irreverence. His early education was confined to
reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic, some short prayers, and the
church catechism. Upon his father's death, Robert, the eldest son,
inherited the land, and Devereux's share of the personal property was
twenty-five pounds, Virginia currency, which he was to receive when he
should reach the age of twenty-one. The relative value of money was four
times greater then than it was fifty years afterwards. A good horse
could be bought for five pounds, and a good cow and calf for a pistole,
or three dollars and sixty cents. At eight or nine years of age young
Jarratt was sent to school, and so continued, with great interruptions,
for three or four years. By this time he had learned to read the Bible
indifferently, to write a sorry hand, and had acquired some knowledge of
arithmetic, and this closed his educational curriculum. Being placed now
under the guardianship of his elder brother, his employments for some
years were threefold: 1st, taking care of and training race-horses; 2d,
taking care of gamecocks and preparing them for a match and main; 3d,
ploughing, harrowing, and other plantation work. At the age of seventeen
he undertook the business of a carpenter, under another brother, who
often had recourse to "hard words and severe blows," which he "did not
at all relish;" but he continued to labor in this way until about 1750.
During the five or six years while he lived with his brothers, he never
heard or saw anything of a religious nature, nor did he go to the parish
church once a year. The parish minister was a poor preacher, very
near-sighted, and, reading his sermons closely, he kept his eyes fixed
on the paper, and so near that what he said "seemed rather addressed to
the cushion than to the congregation." This parson was rarely observed
to stand erect and face the audience, except when he denounced some
individual in the congregation with whom he happened to have a quarrel.
Cards, dancing, racing, etc., were then the favorite pastimes, and young
Jarratt participated in them as far as his leisure and circumstances
would permit, and this as well on Sundays as on other days. Not being
content with his stock of learning, and skill in arithmetic being the
chief desideratum among the common people, he borrowed a book, and while
his plough-horse was grazing at noon applied himself to that study, and
made rapid progress. He felt conscious at this time that the plough and
the axe were not his element; and his skill in the division of crops, in
the rule of three, and in practice, soon became so widely known that he
was, unexpectedly, when at the age of nineteen, invited to set up a
school in Albemarle County, one hundred miles distant from New Kent. His
baggage appears to have constituted no considerable impediment to his
journey, for he says: "I think I carried the whole on my back except
one shirt." His entire wardrobe at this time consisted of a pair of
coarse breeches, one or two Oznaburg shirts, a pair of shoes and
stockings, an old felt hat, and a bear-skin coat, the first garment of
that kind that had ever been made for him. To improve the gentility of
his appearance he put on a cast-off wig, which he procured from a
servant. On setting out for Albemarle, young Jarratt had not a farthing
of money, and never had been master of as much as five shillings cash.
The income of the school scarce afforded him clothing of the coarsest
kind, but he gained the confidence of his employer, who was an overseer
for a lowland gentleman, so far, that he trusted him with "as much
checks as made him two new shirts." Albemarle was then a frontier
county; there was no minister or public worship within many miles, and
the Sabbath was spent in sports and amusements. Here he met with
Whitefield's Eight Sermons, delivered at Glasgow, the first book of
sermons that he ever saw. Jarratt went next to live with a wealthy
gentleman, whose wife was a pious Presbyterian, spoken of as a New
Light. It was while he was under Presbyterian influences that his
conversion took place. When upwards of twenty-five years old he
commenced the study of Latin under Alexander Martin, sent from Princeton
College, a private tutor in the family of a gentleman in Cumberland.
Martin was afterwards governor of North Carolina. Mr. Jarratt intended
to become a Presbyterian minister, but in 1762 changed his mind, and
began to prepare to take orders in the established church. Upon a
further acquaintance with the subject his prejudices against that church
and its liturgy were removed, and he came to be of opinion that the
Prayer Book contained, at the least, as good a system of doctrine and
public worship as the Presbyterian; the doctrinal articles he considered
the same, in substance, in both churches, and the different modes of
worship he held to be not essential. His mind hung in equilibrium
between the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church as regarded
their theory, and balancing the secular advantages, he decided in favor
of the established church, mainly because "he saw the Presbyterian
ministers dependent on annual subscriptions--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."
To this he adds: "The general prejudice of the people at that time
against dissenters and in favor of the church, gave me a full persuasion
that I could do more good in the church than anywhere else." The fact
is, however, that at that time the popular feeling was growing less
friendly to the clergy of the established church and more friendly to
dissenters. Embarking for England, in October, 1762, and being ordained
deacon by the Bishop of London, and priest by the Bishop of Chester, he
preached several times in London, and was "suspected of being a
Methodist." While in that city he heard Whitefield and Wesley. He
returned to Virginia in July. Shortly afterwards he was received as
minister of Bath Parish, in Dinwiddie, he being then in his thirty-first
year. He found his people as ignorant of true religion as if they had
never frequented a church or heard a sermon. As regarded other Episcopal
clergymen, he did not know of one in Virginia like-minded with himself.
He was indeed opposed and reproached by them as a fanatic, a dissenter,
a Presbyterian. His preaching, although at first unacceptable, proved,
ere long, effective, and crowded congregations attended his
ministrations. The interest extending widely beyond his parish, he spent
part of his time in itinerant preaching, going several hundred miles and
in every direction. The clergy in general being unwilling to open their
churches for him, and they being not large enough to contain the crowds
which he attracted, he was in the habit of preaching in the open air,
under trees, arbors, or booths, and he had the advantage of a voice
which was audible to his large congregations. The clergy frequently
threatened him with writs and prosecutions for the violation of
canonical order, but he retorted upon them successfully, and maintained
his ground. At length he met with sympathy and co-operation from the
Rev. Mr. McRoberts, and an intimacy continued between them for many
years. But as Mr. Jarratt, who was at first in effect a Presbyterian,
became a minister of the established church, so eventually, many years
afterwards, during the revolutionary war, his friend and coadjutor, Mr.
McRoberts, became a Presbyterian minister. Their friendship remained
uninterrupted.
About the year 1769 the increase of the number of Baptists produced
some divisions among Mr. Jarratt's people. The Methodists appearing in
Virginia about the same time, and professing to be virtually members of
the Church of England, Mr. Jarratt (in order to resist the encroachments
of the Baptists) co-operated with them in building up their societies;
but he found reason subsequently to repent of this step, and although
often styled a Methodist himself, yet he finally broke off entirely from
that denomination.[567:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[567:A] Life of Rev. Devereux Jarratt, 5, 107. His sermons were
published in several volumes.