USA > Virginia > Virginia colonial decisions : the reports by Sir John Randolph and by Edward Barradall, of decisions of the general court of Virginia, 1728-1741, v. I > Part 9
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We catch glimpses in the diary, of Mr. Thomas Smith, rector of the Parish, and a few other ministers named, devout and pious men, though not quite up to the standard set by Mr. Fithian. But, especially in the earlier times, there were too few shepherds for the increasing number of sheep, and we find a " scarcity of pastors " much complained of. Some even of them it was said " did give themselves to excess in drinking, or riot, playing at dice, cards, or any unlawful game but at all times convenient; here or read somewhat of the Holy Scriptures, always doing the things which appertain to honesty."1 And of a later period it is related2 of some of them that " they played cards and hunted the fox, and indulged in drink; and what was even worse, they had small love for their neighbors the Dissenters. It is true the Dissenters cordially returned this dislike and were quite as rancorous, but that was nothing to the purpose. The Church of Eng- land Clergyman denounced the New Light Preacher as a disturber, and the New Light Preacher denounced the Clergyman as a disgrace to his cloth."
Something of this was due, as was claimed, to the character of the imported minister, who, from lack of piety or sense, or both, unable to secure employment at home, had at first come to the ministry, and then to the colony. Something perhaps too was the reflex from the congregations to whom they ministered, who
1Cooke's History of Virginia, 169.
'Id., 332. Old Churches, Ministers, etc., of Virginia. Bishop Meade. Vol. II, 351.
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as a rule were not all given to very serious and heavenly minded modes of thought or life. But there was no lack of laws to regulate these matters of religion, for, as in both Old England and New, law was thought to be a cure for sin, and there were penalties for failing to attend service, for work, sport or travel on Sunday; and for swearing and drunkenness the pillory was the appointed punishment.1 These paternalistic laws show best, however, what were the besetting infirmities because of which they were enacted.
Partly on account of the lax religious character of some of the ministers and members of the Church, although those so open to criticism were really a small minority,2 or perhaps because it was forbidden both by law and by a strong public opinion, dissent, commencing with a vain attempt as early as 1643, when Sir William Berkeley stamped out the first impor- tation of puritanism with Act of Assembly,3 and bigoted persecution, got, after a while, a footing in the land and increased until presently the old order was itself much the smaller part.
Dissent from the established Church was spreading in England. It was natural that it should spread faster in the freer air of Virginia. Intolerant and discriminating laws, exiling of missionaries, social ostracism and denunciation, have always been the food to fatten the cause they persecute.
About the beginning of the eighteenth century, this spirit was flagrant in Great Britain and, especially, in Ireland. It had been the Presbyterians of Scotland who, coming to Ulster early in the seventeenth century, gave to the north of Ireland a Protestant population
1Report of Virginia State Bar Association. Vol. VI. 167.
"Post.
$Hening, Statutes at Large. Vol. I, 277.
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in excess of the Catholics and made them the controlling element of that part of the country.1 Scotch thrift made a garden out of a wilderness of bogs, and established fac- tories and other industries so successfully, that the north of Ireland has to this day, by contrast with the rest of that interesting but poverty afflicted land, seemed like a different state. These were the people who, coming to America, were called here the Scotch-Irish, and who have been mentioned as affecting so materi- ally, for its good, the settlement of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Now, a hundred years after their settlement in Ire- land, they were being subjected there to severe political discriminations. " They were forbidden to keep schools, marriages performed by their clergy were declared invalid, they were not allowed to hold any office higher than that of petty constable, and so on through a long list of silly and outrageous enactments."2 The consequence was a great emigration to America, which, beginning early in the century, continued until the passage of the Toleration Act of Ireland, in 1782. Mr. Fiske3 puts the emigration, between 1730 and 1770, at at least half a million souls, making about one-sixth part4 of the population of the colonies at the time of the Revolution. Most of them came to Phila- delphia and spread through Pennsylvania, and from there through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and into the Carolinas and west of the Alleghanies to the Ohio river.
The Pennsylvanians did not like the Scotch-Irish, regarding them as a " pugnacious " people and un- desirable neighbors. The Secretary of the province
1Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Vol. II, 391.
*Id., 393.
$Id., 394.
About two-thirds of the population of Virginia.
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wrote of them when they began to come in such num- bers, that " The common fear is that if they thus continue to come, they will make themselves pro- prietors of the Province. It is strange that they thus crowd where they are not wanted."1 This want of welcome speeded their departure for the south, and it was the Virginians who later realized the anticipa- tion that had disturbed the Pennsylvanians.
The list of the names of Virginia families descended from these people is a distinguished one and includes among them that of Stonewall Jackson,2 whom Vir- ginians are proud to recognize as a typical product of that fine class of her population, as they also do General R. E. Lee as a type of the best element of that older colonial stock, which, swearing by the Church and King, yet were among the first in the fight for American independence. It was not to be wondered that such a people as these Scotch-Irish, having the power, refused to tolerate in America even the name of discrimination, which they had left their prosperous Irish homes to escape.
Persecutions of them in the colony had taken the aggravating form of humiliating restrictions upon the right to worship after their own method; requiring from them licenses and oaths not to teach heresy, and as to their behavior towards the government; disturbances of their meetings; debarring them from sitting as members of the legislature, owning church buildings, or graveyards; requiring them to read the book of Common Prayer in their services; to have their churches outside of the towns; and other equally intolerable and exasperating exactions.3 To them
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1The Planting of Presbyterianism. Rev. J. R. Graham, D.D., 13.
*Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Vol. II, 395.
The Planting of Presbyterianism, 127.
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too the English Parish law, transported to Virginia and giving to the Vestry, at first elected by the people and then made a close corporation, all control over local government, parish taxes, the processioning of the bounds of any person's land, control over land titles, etc., etc., were very like the discriminating laws which had driven them out of Ireland and not to be borne longer than they could help it.1
But the provocation was far from being on one side, and the brave and gentle old bishop, who has in such an interesting way recorded the events and weighed carefully the grievances of each side of these humanly natural but unfortunate controversies, shows that the aggravations were not near so one-sided as some zealous writers have contended.2
It was at first the vis inertic, and then the active and aggressive opposition of these people, which would in a little time, even without the Revolution, have produced the same results that with the Revolution, under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, secured the complete separation of Church and State, entire religious toleration so far as the law can ever produce that, and the abolition of primogeniture and entails.3
The date given4 for the earliest settlements of the Scotch-Irish and German Presbyterians in the lower (northern) end of the Valley is 1732 to 1735, but as early as 1720 there is record of putting "the people into Church order " at "Potomoke " in Virginia.5
In 1775-1776, Rev. Philip Vickers Fithian, then a regularly constituted Presbyterian minister, preached quite effectively to the Valley people, and, as when
1Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Vol. II, 98.
*Old Churches, Ministers, etc. Vol. I, 436.
3Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Vol. II, 396.
"The Planting of Presbyterianism, 6. BId., 7.
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at Normini Hall the preceding two years, kept a diary full of interesting incidents. He found the war spirit flagrant in the Valley, and at Winchester, June 6, 1776, he writes: "But here every presence is warlike- every sound is martial-drumms beating, pipes and bagpipes playing only sonorous and venic music. Every man has a hunting shirt, which is the uniform of each company. Almost all have a cockade and buck- tail in their hats to represent that they are hardy, resolute and invincible natives of the woods of America."1
On July 12, 1776, he himself enlisted as chaplain in a New Jersey brigade, and after serving under Washington in two battles, was taken sick and died October 8, 1776.2
But the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians did not confine themselves to the part of Virginia west of the Blue Ridge, for many of them went to Hanover, Charlotte and Prince Edward counties and there, as in the western part of the state, became the most influential element of the population.
Whatever of unfair discrimination still remained in the letter of the law, between the educated portions, at least, of two such populations as the older Church of England colonists and the new Scotch-Irish im- migrants, there could not long have remained a very serious antagonism. Social intercourse and inter- marriage, and, afterwards, the common perils of the
'The Planting of Presbyterianism, 49.
Fithian's Journal and Letters. Introduction. XIII.
Fithian came to Virginia full of prejudices implanted in him by his religious friends in New Jersey. He says they besought him not to go because " the people are exceedingly wicked. ... That I shall read no Calvinistic Books nor hear any Presbyterian Sermons."
He came, however, and this is what he writes in his Journal after spending some time in Virginia: " The people are extremely hospitable and very polite, both of which are now certainly universal Characteristics of the Gentlemen of Virginia - Some swear bitterly, but the practice seems to be generally disapproved. I have heard that this Country is notorious for gaming, however that be I have not seen a Pack of Cards nor a Die since I left home, nor gaming or Betting of any kind except at the Richmond race." Fithian's Journal, pages 51, 58.
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revolution, doubtless had this fine effect at last; and, indeed, a growing tolerance for differences of opinion, political and religious, before many years smoothed the sharp edge of dissension, and I doubt not that even as early as 1773 the opinion of Mrs. Col. Carter, as expressed by our friend Mr. Fithian in his diary, was that of most people of her class. He writes there this record of a wet Sunday talk with her: "None thinks of going to Church this day - Mrs. Carter and I after Breakfast had a long conversation on religious affairs - Particularly on differing Denominations of Protestants - She thinks the Religion of the estab- lished Church without exception the best of any in- vented or practised in the world & indeed she converses with great propriety on these things & discovers her very extensive knowledge. She allows the Difference between this Church & Presbyterians to be only exceed- ing small & wishes they were both intirely United."
But this was not so at an earlier time, and it was then far from being universal, nor ever was, nor will it ever so be; and then the heat of the immediately pre-revolutionary times begot intolerance and bitter- ness far more intense than had for many years been exhibited by the Church of England people against the dissenters.
While the Presbyterians were far the largest and most influential body of those who differed from the . established Church, they were not all of them. Whit- field came to America, and after preaching on Boston Common to twenty thousand people, he arrived, in December, 1739, at Williamsburg, and preached there in Bruton Church to a great multitude, producing great excitement.1 In his diary2 he says that Commis-
1Cooke's History of Virginia, 336.
"" Williamsburg." Tyler, 141. Old Churches, Ministers, etc. Vol. I., 431.
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sary Blair " received me with joy, asked me to preach, and wished my stay was to be longer." And he did preach, going through the country as a swift and skillful sower over well-plowed ground, scattering his seed, while Methodism sprung up like the green wheat in his tracks. There were some Catholics, not many, and of Baptists not a few. Lutherans in the Valley, Mennonites and Dunkards, Quakers and others, op- posed to each other, but all opposed to the establish- ment. Against all these, their opinions and practices, the old order stood aghast and amazed. Disloyalty and hostility to Church was the same to the King; there could be no difference; and those who would disturb the fixed order of things were iconoclasts and public enemies. Among these "New Lights," no doubt, then as sometimes now, were some noisy, mouthy apostles, unctuous, tearful and slobbery, who excited the deep and quick antipathy of the old Vir- ginians, and gave, in prejudiced eyes, their name and character to all. It was not to be expected that those of that period, accustomed to the solemn and dignified worship of the ancient establishment, would regard with equal respect those who, to them, were figura- tively beating their tambourines upon the street corners.
The old order saw with alarm and indignation the little fences of the law soon broken down, and the fair gardens of their ancient enclosures trodden over by strange and ruthless feet.
Why should there be any new teachers or adminis- trators of religion? Did not they already have daily family prayers at home, and grace at meals; did they not go to church on Sundays, and repeat the creed, standing by every word of it; were they not fair in their dealings with other men, hospitable to the last
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crumb, good and affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors and more than kind to their slaves, always telling the truth, paying their taxes, true to the State and ever ready to fight and die for the public weal? What more of religion could any man ask, and who were these people, these "New Lights," who talked with such irreverent familiarity about " the Word "? These were the questions these descendants of the Cavaliers put to themselves.
So, determined to stand by their old order, they planted their backs against the wall of Church and State, and defied the innovators. But State and Church had come to be, perhaps had always been, a bad combine,1 and political events, hastening the serious issues towards revolution and independence, lessened the sense of difference in minor matters. So, before they knew it, the old order found that the wall had fallen behind them, thrown down, too, largely by their own hands; for in opposition to Eng- lish usurpation, to stamp taxes, taxed tea, etc., religion and Church allegiance had made little difference save possibly to a few of the time-serving, or to some of the really conscientious clergy. And what came of it all we will tell about presently, but it must not be thought that the old order ever suffered these things gladly. They never did kiss the hands that spoiled their altars and threw down their temples. . But they afterwards built them again much better than they were before.
It is naturally less pleasant to talk about the Church than about the churches and the people who said their prayers and listened to short sermons in them. Taken altogether, they were, perhaps, not so strictly pious as their religious adversaries, but they were
"" Monstrous," John Marshall called it.
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certainly much more delightful to read about, and probably to have lived with.
It is hard to pass by, without special notice, Bland- ford Church, with all its attractive surroundings; the early churches at Hampton and Cape Henry; Curls Neck Church, Smithfield, Pohick and the many others1 whose associations and environment tell so much of those early days. But such a narrative is beyond the limited compass of this writing. We must select one church only for special mention, and that because it, more than any other, was connected with the social, political and law history of the colony in the last seventy-five years of its existence as such,- the years of the eighteenth century that preceded the Revolution. That one is Bruton Church at Williams- burg.2
In another chapter3 we have seen that Williamsburg was the successor in name and place of the Middle Plantations, and that it was situated on the highest part of the ridge of land that lies between the James and York rivers, about seven miles from one, and twelve from the other. Before the name of King William had taken the place of the original title, there had been wooden churches there, and in 1677 some move was made to build a brick church, which, however, did not manifest itself until 1683, when it was erected "on the horse path in Middle Planta- tions' old fields."4
This church is said to have cost £800 sterling and was built largely by private subscription, although a
1Yeocomico, still standing, and beautiful in the woods, was the church that Fithian frequently attended with the Carters.
"The story of this, though written here before reading the Rev. W. A. R. Goodwin's attractive book, has been since revised, and that book plentifully used for corrections and additions.
3The City. Chapter VI.
^Williamsburg. Tyler, 18. Old Churches, Ministers, etc. Vol. I, 146.
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considerable levy in tobacco was made upon each tithable towards that object. It was dedicated in January, 1684, and besides such consecration services of the church as were used, tar barrels were burned,- this not because of its suggestiveness, but, it is said, because there being no bishop in the colony the regular church consecration service could not be used.1 Later we find the Vestry considering a pro- position to have a steeple and "a ring of bells " furnished for the church, the cost of which and the subscription to be taken up being the matters to be first determined-all of which reads very familiarly to modern eyes.
There seems to have been quite a number of min- isters on short time contracts, and agreeing to preach sermons every other Sunday in the afternoons if the weather permitted, and to administer the sacrament twice in six months. The church building, then of brick, could not have been very substantial, for as early as 1694 there is talk about rectifying and repairing it, and the church wardens were directed to have this done as soon as they could.
The removal of the seat of government in 1699 from Jamestown to Williamsburg had its effect upon this church as well as upon the town generally, and we find repairs being made in 1699, 1702, and 1703, and in the latter year a new pulpit, the floor raised, etc.
This begins a more interesting period for us, because in 1704 Edward Barradall, Jr., the author of the re- ports to which all this is a mere introduction, was born. Sir John Randolph, the sixth son of William Randolph of Turkey Island, was born in 1693, so at this time he was eleven years old. They were both
'Bruton Church. Goodwin, 16.
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afterwards vestrymen of Bruton Church and were probably baptized there;1 but of these more partic- ularly presently,-only events about this time become more interesting when we know that they lived in the midst of them.
Two years prior to this, the minister in charge having died, the Rev. Solomon Wheatley was invited by the Vestry to preach preparatory to a call, which call was soon after made. But his time expiring at Christ- mas, 1703, in November he wanted to know whether he was to be retained. No action was taken until February, when he was informed that the Vestry did not wish to keep him for another year, but, not to inconvenience him, they desired him to continue to officiate until the 25th of March. At the same time Col. Ludwell was requested to communicate with the Rev. Mr. Isaac Grace, who had just come over from England, and ask him to give the parish a sermon so that the Vestry could see how they liked him, al- though they did not in so many words tell Col. Ludwell to say all this to Mr. Grace.
Col. Ludwell did as he was requested, and reported that he had asked Mr. Grace to give the sermon, but he had replied that while he would be glad to get such a good parish, yet the Governor had forbidden him to be concerned in it. Turning down the Rev. Mr. Wheatley was the trouble, for it made a point, as the Governor thought, against his prerogative, and Gover- nor Francis Nicholson, being of a somewhat peppery disposition and given to standing up for his rights, determined to make the issue by retaining Mr. Wheatley
1Edward Barradall's pew was No. 10, in the nave and on the left hand side of the aisle as you enter from the west end. Sir John Randolph's was No. 25, on the right hand side of the aisle and the second pew from the top. Both are marked with the names of their famous owners in the unique and attractive restoration of this church to its colonial condition.
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in spite of the Vestry's dismissal, and so he had warned off Mr. Grace.
The Governor's contention was, that the English law determined the matter, and that he, as the repre- sentative of the sovereign, had the right of induction. The Vestry, on the other hand, claimed, that all this was their business, that they had a right to call whom they pleased and to contract to keep him as long as they wanted him, and that with the Rev. Mr. Wheatley (pronounced Whately) they had acted exactly up to their rights and his.
The controversy sharpened, and the Rev. Mr. Grace passed the lie to the Vestry, who seem to have returned it, the record being rather against the clergyman.1 But the attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey, was called on for his opinion and he gave it2 as follows: " Ye advowson and right of presentation to ye Churches is subject to the Law of England, there being no express law of that Plantation made further con- cerning the same."
And therefore, when the parishioners presented the clerk and he was inducted by the Governor, the incumbent was in for life and could not be displaced by the parishioners, and if within six months any cure should become vacant and the parishioners did not present a minister to the Governor, he could him- self by law name the minister, who should hold the place for life. The attorney-general further thought that if in such case the Vestry did not lay the tobacco for the minister's salary, the court must decree the same to be levied.3 So the Governor, sitting in council, sent this opinion to the Vestry and required them forth-
1Bruton Church, 23.
'It is the second of the cases reported by Barradall, and printed from his manuscript in this volume.
3See this record as Appendix A. Bruton Church, 77.
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with to read the same and enter it upon their books, " to ye end ye said Vestry may offer to his Excellency what they think proper therefor."
In response to this the Vestry requested Mr. John Page, one of its members, to draw an answer under certain heads, stating their position, not being content to accept this opinion of the attorney-general as the last word.
At this point the Rev. Solomon Wheatley took a hand in the proceedings, and on May 22, 1704, filed his petition, addressed to the Governor, but read before the Vestry in the Governor's presence.
Surely if the opinion of the attorney-general states the law correctly, the Rev. Mr. Wheatley makes a strong case and things look bad for the Vestry. But quite irrelevantly the Rev. Mr. Grace, who had no case at all, but seems to have wanted one, comes in now with a letter dated May 14, 1704, in which he utterly denies that he ever said any such thing as . that he would be glad of so good a parish, etc., as Col. Ludwell had reported to the Vestry. But either the Vestry was satisfied with the accuracy of Col. Ludwell's report, or else, which is very probable, they thought that neither the incident nor the Rev. Mr. Grace, mattered at all; so no replication, special or general, appears to have been filed to Mr. Grace's complaint.
But the Governor was determined to carry his point, so he reinforces the opinion of the law officer with some instructions sent from England which indicate that the whole matter belongs to the jurisdiction of the Lord Bishop of London, and among these he shows an order of Queen Anne, as late as December 12, 1702. These instructions, the Governor directs, shall be now recorded in the vestry book, which was done.
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