Chapter SIX: Fighting Adverse Conditions

The political conditions in England throughout the middle of the seventeenth century bore heavily upon Virginia in religious as well as in civil matters. The period of civil war which began in 1642 lasted until the King was captured by the parliamentary forces, and Archbishop Laud, the hated persecutor of dissenters, was beheaded. After an imprisonment of four years the king was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell reigned as Protector of the Commonwealth. The civil war had lined up the dissenting bodies in England, and the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, against the King and the Church of England.

On the American scene the Puritan colonies in New England were in hearty sympathy with the dissenters in England. In Virginia the government and the great body of the people were in equal sympathy with King Charles and the Established Church. It is true there were in Virginia the goodly number of several hundred Puritan settlers. In the Church also there was some Puritan sympathy among a small group of the clergy. One of these, indeed, the Rev. Thomas Harrison, who became minister of Elizabeth River Parish (Norfolk) in 1640, was presented for trial in the county court in April 1645 "For not reading the Book of Common Prayer, and not administering the sacrament of baptism according to the canons and order prescribed, and for not catechizing on Sunday in the afternoon, according to the Act of Assembly." He was banished to Massachusetts in 1648, where he remained for two years and married. Afterward he returned to England and was given official position in the Commonwealth under Cromwell.

In the heated atmosphere of the times the Puritan group in Virginia 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.