Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century Part 5

Gloucester County Petsoe (Petsworth) Parish Emmanuel Jones Abingdon Parish Guy Smith Ware Parish James Clack

Henrico County Bristol Parish (part) George Robinson Varina als Henrico Parish James Ware King William Parish Benjamin De Joux

James City County Wallingford Parish Wilmington Parish John Gordon James City Parish James Blair Martin's Hundred Parish Stephen Fouace Bruton Parish (part) Cope D'Oyley

Isle of Wight County Warrosqueake Parish Thomas Sharpe Newport Parish Andrew Monroe

King and Queen County St. Stephen's Parish Ralph Bowker Stratton-Major Parish Edward Portlock

King William County St. John's Parish John Monroe

Lancaster County Christ Church Parish Andrew Jackson St. Mary's White Chapel Parish John Carnegie

Middles.e.x County Christ Church Parish Robert Yates

Nansemond County Upper Parish Lower Parish Chuchatuck Parish

Norfolk County Elizabeth River Parish William Rudd

New Kent County Blisland Parish St. Peter's Parish James Bowker

Northumberland County Fairfield Parish John Farnifold Wiccocomico Parish John Urquhart

Northampton County Hungars Parish Peter Collier

Princess Anne County Lynnhaven Parish Solomon Wheatley

Richmond County Sittenbourn Parish (part) Bartholomew Yates North Farnham Parish Peter Kippax

Surry County Southwark Parish Alexander Walker Lawne's Creek Parish Thomas Burnet

Stafford County St. Paul's Parish Overwharton Parish John Frazier

Warwick County Mulberry Island Parish Denbigh Parish

Westmoreland County Cople Parish Washington Parish James Breechin

York County Bruton Parish (part) Yorke Parish Cope D'Oyley Hampton Parish Stephen Fouace Charles Parish James Slater

James Blair, Commissary to the Bishop of London

Peregrine Cony, Chaplain to the Governor.

It will be noted that the above list reports fifty-one parishes, or after deducting three which appear as partly in two counties, a total of forty-eight parishes. These covered the whole territory in which English settlers lived. The inc.u.mbent clergymen total thirty-five but some five or six of the parishes for which no inc.u.mbent was named were very small in extent or population, and looked to the minister of an adjoining parish for services and sacraments. Probably this list includes five or six parishes which were vacant. Because of the great length of time required to secure clergymen from England this fact is evidence of the growing strength and organization of the Church under the influence of the Commissary.

Most of the clergymen who came to Virginia were graduates of the English and Scottish universities, and brought an element and influence of education and culture to the growing life of the Colony. Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce, in his notable _Inst.i.tutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, makes the following statement:

If we consider as a body the ministers who performed the various duties of their calling in Virginia during the Seventeenth Century, there is no reason to think they fell below the standard of conscientiousness governing the conduct of the English clergyman in the same age. The early history of the New World was adorned by no n.o.bler group of divines than the group which gives so much distinction from the point of view of character and achievement to the years in which the foundation of the colony at Jamestown was being permanently laid.

From the middle of the century to the end as from the beginning to the middle, a large proportion of the clergymen were not only graduates of English universities, but also men of more or less distinguished social connections in England. Outside the great towns in England, or the wealthiest and most populous of the English rural parishes, there was in the course of the century, perhaps no single English living filled by a succession of clergymen superior to this body of men, (i.e., inc.u.mbents at Jamestown) in combined learning, talents, piety, and devotion to duty. And yet there is no reason to think that the ability, zeal and fidelity of these ministers who occupied the pulpit at Jamestown were overshadowing as compared with the same qualities in the clergymen who, one after another, occupied any of the more important benefices in York, Surry, Elizabeth City, or Gloucester Counties, or the counties situated in the Northern Neck, or Eastern Sh.o.r.e.... All the surviving records of the seventeenth century go to show that, whatever during that long period may have been the infirmities or unworthy acts of individual clergymen, the great body of those officiating in Virginia were men who performed all the duties of their sacred calling in a manner ent.i.tling them to the respect, reverence and grat.i.tude of their parishioners.

Very little is known of the activities of the clergy outside of their professional duties beyond the fact that a great many of them conducted schools at their homes; and these "parsons schools" became a widespread influence for good upon the youth of their day. In the generations before the founding of the College these schools became the great agency throughout the colony for the education of the sons of the gentry, and of the occasional youth of a lesser privileged family who was taken free by the parson, or supported by a school endowment given by some charitable person. In the later days there were many such parish funds. We read of George Washington, in the following generation attending the school conducted by Parson Marye in Fredericksburg, and of his future wife, Martha Dandridge attending another.

It is a notable fact that throughout the whole seventeenth century the ideal shown by the General a.s.sembly was to provide for the clergy an adequate salary for the comfortable home of an educated man. In 1695 when the question of increase in clerical salaries was raised, the House of Burgesses made a report to Governor Andros upon the purchasing value of salaries paid in tobacco, and stated, "They have duly weighed the present provision made for the ministers of this country in their respective parishes together with their other considerable perquisites by marriages, burials, etc., and glebes,----that most if not all the ministers of this country are in as good a condition in point of livelihood as a gentleman that is well seated and hath twelve or fourteen servants." They had previously stated that the tobacco salary of the parson would in normal years in the past yield eighty pounds sterling when sold.

In contrast with this salary of the clergymen in Virginia attention may be called to the statement made in England in 1714, that there were in England at that time "5,082 livings under eighty pounds in annual value, of which more than 3,000 were under forty pounds, and 471 under ten pounds. This report was made to show the importance of the fund established by Queen Anne, called Queen Anne's Bounty, for increasing the endowment of these weak parishes."