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Read Ebook: Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century The Faith of Our Fathers by Brydon G MacLaren George MacLaren
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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 Sitt?nbourn Parish 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 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 incumbent clergymen total thirty-five but some five or six of the parishes for which no incumbent 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.
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 nobler 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, 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 Shore.... 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 entitling them to the respect, reverence and gratitude 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.
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."
Transcriber's Notes
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The Table of Contents was added for convenience.
Page 3: Guilt is an obsolete form of gilt .
Page 16: Changed ecclestiastical to ecclesiastical .
Page 23: Changed cattel to cattle .
Page 50: Changed priviliged to privileged .
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