USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 47
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In May, 1771, a great fresh occurred in Virginia, the James in three days rising twenty feet higher than ever was known before. The low grounds were inundated, standing crops destroyed, corn, fences, chattels, merchandise, cattle, and houses carried off, and ships forced from their moorings. Many of the inhabitants, masters and slaves, in endeavoring to rescue property, or to escape from danger, were drowned. Houses were seen drifting down the current, and people clinging to them, uttering fruitless cries for succor. Fertile fields were covered with a thick deposit of sand; islands were torn to pieces, bars accumulated, the chan- nel diverted, and the face of nature altered. At Turkey Island, on the James River, there is a monument bearing the following inscription: "The foundations of this pillar were laid in the calamitous year 1771, when all the great rivers of this country were swept by inundations never before experienced, which changed the face of nature and left traces of their violence that will remain for ages." One hundred and fifty persons were drowned by this rise in the rivers.
The assembly met in July, 1771. About this time the ques- tion of an American episcopate was agitated; and in some of the Northern colonies the measure was warmly contended for in the
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public papers. New York and New Jersey desired to secure the co-operation of Virginia in petitioning the king on this subject, and deputed the Rev. Dr. Cooper, President of King's College, New York, and the Rev. Mr. Mckean, deputies to visit the South in this behalf; and at their urgent solicitation, Commis- sary Horrocks, himself aspiring to the mitre, as was supposed, called a convocation of the clergy to take the matter into consi- deration. Only a few attended; but after some vacillation they determined to join in. the petition to the crown, the Rev. John Camm taking the lead in this proceeding. Four of the clergy in attendance, Henley and Gwatkin, professors in the College of William and Mary, and Hewitt and Bland, entered a protest against the scheme of introducing a bishop, as endangering the very existence of the British empire in America. The assembly having expressed its disapprobation of the project, and it being urged but by few, and resisted by some of the clergy, it fell to the ground; and the thanks of the house were presented, through Richard Henry Lee and Richard Bland, to the protesting clergy- men for their "wise and well-timed opposition." Churchmen naturally sided with the English government, and the bench of bishops were arrayed in opposition to the rights of the colonies. The protest of the four ministers gave rise to a controversy between them and the United Episcopal Conventions of New York and New Jersey; and a war of pamphlets and newspapers ensued in the Northern and Middle States; and the stamp act itself, according to some writers, did not evoke more bitter de- nunciations, nor more violent threats, than the project of an episcopate: New England was in a flame against it. It was be- lieved, that if bishops should be sent over they would unite with the governors in opposition to the rights of America. The laity of the Episcopal Church in America were, excepting a small minority, opposed to the measure. Neither the people of Virgi- nia, nor any of the American colonies, were at any time willing to receive a bishop appointed by the English government. Among the advocates of the scheme the Rev. Jonathan Boucher took a prominent part, and he sustained it ably from the pulpit. He held that the refusal of Virginia to consent to the appoint- ment of a bishop, was "to unchurch the church;" and his views
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on this subject were re-echoed by Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, in an anniversary sermon delivered before the Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. On this point of eccle- siastical government the members of the establishment in Virginia appear to have been looked upon as themselves dissenters. In one sense they were so; but their repugnance was to prelacy, not to the episcopate; a prelatical bishop was in their minds associated with ideas of expense beyond their means, and of opposition to tho principles of civil liberty. Boucher, in a sermon that he preached in this year at St. Mary's Church, in Caroline County, of which he was then rector, says of the dissenters in Virginia : "I might almost as well pretend to count the gnats that buzz around us in a summer's evening."
The scheme of sending over a bishop had been entertained more than a hundred years before; and Dean Swift at one time entertained hopes of being made Bishop of Virginia, with power, as is said, to ordain priests and deacons for all the colonies, and to parcel them out into deaneries, parishes, chapels, etc., and to recommend and present thereto. The favorite sermons of many of the Virginia clergy were Sterne's .*
During this year died the Rev. James Horrocks, President of the College and Commissary. He had been at the head of William and Mary since the death of Rev. William Yates, in 1764. Mr. Horrocks was succeeded in both places by the Rev. John Camm.
John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, was transferredt from the government of New York to that of Virginia. The town of Fincastle, the title of one of his sons, in Botetourt County, was now incorporated. The Honorable William Nelson, president, died in this year. About this time the Methodists appeared in Virginia; they still avowed that attachment to the Church of England which Wesley and Whitefield both, in the early years of their career, had uniformly professed. Although they allowed laymen to preach, the communion was received by them at the hands of the clergy only; and they even affirmed that "whoso- ever left the church left the Methodists." They, therefore, now were visited with a share of the odium which fell upon the established church.
* Old Churches, i. 25.
+ 1772.
CHAPTER LXXII.
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 grand- mother 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. Jar- ratt, in his autobiography, describing his early days, says: "For my part, I was quite shy of them, and kept off at an humble dis- tance. 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, insubordi- nation, 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 per- sonal 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
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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 dol- lars and sixty cents. At eight or nine years of age young Jar- ratt 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 curricu- lum. 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 game- cocks 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, read- ing 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 ob- served to stand erect and face the audience, except when he de- nounced some individual in the congregation with whom he hap- pened 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 desidera- tum 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,
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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 gar- ment 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 con- fidence of his employer, who was an overseer for a lowland gen- tleman, 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 in- fluences 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 after- wards governor of North Carolina. Mr. Jarratt intended to be- come 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 esta- blished church, mainly because "he saw the Presbyterian minis- ters dependent on annual subscriptions-a mode of support very precarious in itself, and which subjects the minister to the caprice
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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. Em- barking 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 igno- rant 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 dis- senter, a Presbyterian. His preaching, although at first unac- ceptable, proved, ere long, effective, and crowded congregations attended his ministrations. The interest extending widely be- yond 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 at- tracted, 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 fre- quently threatened him with writs and prosecutions for the viola- tion 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.
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About the year 1769 the increase of the number of Baptists produced some divisions among Mr. Jarratt's people. The Me- thodists appearing in Virginia about the same time, and profess- ing 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 .*
* Life of Rev. Devereux Jarratt, 5, 107. His sermons were published in several volumes
CHAPTER LXXIII.
1773-1774.
Duty on Tea-Dunmore, Governor-Proceedings of Assembly-Private Meeting of Patriots-Committees of Correspondence-Washington-Dunmore visits the Frontier.
IN the year 1770, all the duties on articles imported into America having been repealed, save that on tea, the American merchants refused to import that commodity from England. Consequently a large stock of it was accumulated in the ware- houses of the East India Company; and the government in 1773 authorized the company to ship it to America free from any export duty. The light import duty payable in America being far less than that from which it was exempted in England, it was taken for granted that it would sell more readily in the colony than before it had been made a subject of taxation. It was, indeed, by some looked upon as now rather a question of com- merce than of taxation; the main object of the British govern- ment appears to have been to put an end to the trade between the colonies and Holland, (a trade contraband according to the letter of the law, but the law had been practically long obsolete,) and to give to the East India Company a monopoly of the colo- nial markets. But it was in general regarded in America as a test question of revenue.
The tea-ships arrived in America, and measures were taken to prevent the landing of the tea; at Boston several cargoes were thrown overboard in the night of December the eighteenth, into the sea, by a party of men disguised as Indians, acting under the advice of Samuel Adams, and other leading patriots. Other colonies either compelled the masters of the tea-ships to return with their cargoes, or excluded them from sale; and thus not a chest of it was sold for the benefit of the company. Tea had hitherto been imported by Pennsylvania, New York, and Massa-
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chusetts into the colonies to the value of three hundred thousand pounds annually from Holland and her dependencies. In Virgi- nia the use of this beverage was now generally abandoned .*
Intelligence of the occurrences at Boston having reached Eng- land, parliament ordered the port of that town to be closed on the fourth day of June; and other strong measures were adopted in order to reduce Massachusetts to submission. The colonies, like the captives in the cave of Polyphemus, were conscious of being involved in a common danger; and that if one should fall a victim, the destruction of the rest would be only a question of time.
When John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, the newly-appointed governor of Virginia, reached Williamsburg, early in 1772, he found that he had already incurred suspicion on account of the appointment of Captain Foy as his clerk, or private secretary, with a salary of five hundred pounds, to be derived from new- created fees. Foy had distinguished himself at the battle of Minden, and had been afterwards governor of New Hampshire. Dunmore summoned the assembly which met in February; and his apparent haughtiness at the first rather heightened the preju- dice against him. He, however, relinquished the objectionable fees, and thus conciliated so good a feeling that the assembly expressed their gratitude in warm and affectionate terms. Some important acts were passed during this session, including several for the promotion of internal improvement-for improving the navigation of the Potomac; for making a road from the Warm Spring to Jenning's Gap; for clearing the Matapony; for cir- cumventing the falls of James River by a canal from Westham; and for cutting a canal across from Archer's Hope Creek to Queen's Creek, through Williamsburg, to connect the James River with the York. The Counties of Berkley and Dunmore were carved out from Frederick. t
The assembly was prorogued to the tenth of June. Dunmore,
* Some of the loyal ladies adhered to the use of it. The wife of Bernard Moore, of Chelsea, in King William, daughter of a British governor, Spotswood, according to family tradition, continued to sip her tea in her closet after it was banished from the table.
+ The name of Dunmore was, in 1777, changed to Shenandoah.
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notwithstanding his recent complaisance, evinced his distaste for assemblies by proroguing them from time to time, until at length a forgery of the paper-currency of the colony compelled him to call the legislature together again, by proclamation, March 4th, 1773-the thirteenth year of the reign of George the Third. His lordship's measures in apprehending the counterfeiters had been more energetic than legal, and the assembly, not diverted by their care for the treasury from a regard to personal rights, requested that his proceedings might not be drawn into a precedent.
The horizon was again darkened by gathering clouds. A British armed revenue vessel having been burnt in Narraganset Bay, an act of parliament was passed making such offences punishable by death, and authorizing the accused to be trans- ported to England for trial. Virginia had already, in 1769, re- monstrated against this last measure. The conservatives, the statu quo party in the assembly, as usual, differed with the movement party as to the proper measure to be adopted. Patrick Henry, Mr. Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Francis L. Lee, Dabney Carr, and perhaps one or two others were at this gloomy period in the habit of meeting together in the evening in a pri- vate room of the Raleigh, to consult on the state of affairs. In conformity with their agreement, Dabney Carr, on the twelfth of March, moved a series of resolutions, recommending a com- mittee of correspondence, and instructing them to inquire in regard to the newly-constituted court in Rhode Island. Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry made speeches of me- morable eloquence on this occasion. Mr. Lee was the author of the plan of intercolonial committees of correspondence; and Virginia was the first colony that adopted it. The reso- lutions passed without opposition, and Dunmore immediately dissolved the house. These resolutions "struck a greater panic into the ministers" than anything that had taken place since the passage of the stamp act .*
The committee of correspondence appointed were Peyton Ran- dolph, Robert C. Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley
* MS. letter of William Lee, dated at London, January 1st, 1774.
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Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson. On the day after the dissolution, this committee addressed a cir- cular to the other colonies. Robert Carter Nicholas published, during this year, a pamphlet in defence of colonial rights.
Dabney Carr, although young, was, according to Mr. Jefferson, a formidable rival at the bar to Patrick Henry, and promised to become a distinguished statesman; but he died shortly after, in the thirtieth year of his age, greatly lamented. The judge of the same name was his son. Washington was a member of this assembly, and supported the patriotic measures, perhaps, however, as yet little dreaming that the colonies were on the verge of revo- lution and war. He was still on friendly terms with Governor Dunmore, who appreciated his abilities and character. He, indeed, intended about this time, in compliance with the gover- nor's invitation, to accompany him in a tour of observation to the western frontier of Virginia, where both of them had an interest in lands; but this was prevented by the illness and death of Miss Custis, the daughter of Mrs. Washington by a former marriage.
Dunmore visited the frontier and remained some time at Pitts- burg, and endeavored, by the help of. Dr. Conolly, to extend the bounds of Virginia in that quarter; and this was attributed to a design to foment a quarrel between Virginia and Pennsylvania; but the suspicion was probably without sufficient foundation.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
1774.
Lady Dunmore and Children-Gayety of Williamsburg-Boston Port Bill-Fast- day appointed-Governor dissolves the Assembly-Resolutions of Burgesses- Convention called-The Raleigh-Mason's Opinion of Henry-Patriotic Mea- sures-Convention-Jefferson's "Summary View."
LATE in April there arrived at the palace in Williamsburg, the Right Honorable the Countess of Dunmore, with George, Lord Fincastle, the Honorable Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine, Augusta, and Susan Murray, accompanied by Captain Foy and his lady. On this occasion there was an illumination, and the people with acclamations welcomed her lady- ship and family to Virginia. The three sons of Lord Dunmore were students in the. College of William and Mary in that year.
When the assembly met in May, Williamsburg presented a scene of unwonted gayety, and a court-herald published a code of etiquette for the regulation of the society of the little metropolis. Washington, arriving there on the sixteenth, dined with Lord Dunmore. At the beginning of the session the burgesses made an address congratulating the governor on the arrival of his lady, and the members agreed to give a ball in her honor on the twenty-seventh; but the sky was again suddenly overcast by in- telligence of the act of parliament shutting up the port of Boston. The assembly made an indignant protest against this act, and,* imitating the example of the Puritans in the civil wars of Eng- land, set apart the first of June, appointed for closing the port, as a day of fasting, prayer, and humiliation, in which the Divine interposition was to be implored to protect the rights of the colo- nies, and avert the horrors of civil war, and to unite the people of America in the common cause.
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