History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia Part 31

A MEETING of the general a.s.sembly was held at her majesty's Royal College of William and Mary, in March, 1703, being the second year of Queen Anne's reign, and, by prorogation, again in April, 1704.[364:A]

The clerk of the general a.s.sembly was ordered to wait upon the house of burgesses and inform them that his excellency commanded their immediate attendance on him in the council chamber. The burgesses having complied with this order, his excellency was pleased to let them know that her most sacred majesty having been pleased to renew his commission to be her majesty's lieutenant and governor-general of this her majesty's most ancient and great colony and dominion of Virginia, he would cause the said commission to be read to them. This being done, he read them that part of his instructions wherein the council are nominated, and informed the house that upon the death of Colonel Page, the number of councillors having fallen under nine, he had appointed one to supply that vacancy.

The governor next mentioned to the house that he had commissioned some of her majesty's honorable council to administer the oath to the burgesses. Whereupon they withdrew, and the oath was administered by the Honorable William Byrd, John Lightfoot, and Benjamin Harrison. These gentlemen returning to the council chamber, the clerk of the a.s.sembly was ordered to wait again upon the house of burgesses, and acquaint them that his excellency commanded their immediate attendance on him. The house of burgesses complying with this order, the governor made the following speech:--

"HONORABLE GENTLEMEN,--

"G.o.d Almighty, I hope, will be graciously pleased so to direct, guide, and enable us, as that we may, to all intents and purposes, answer her majesty's writ by which this a.s.sembly was called, and by prorogation is now met in this her majesty Queen Anne her royal capitol; which being appointed by law for holding general a.s.semblies and general courts, my hopes likewise are that they may continue to be held in this place for the promoting of G.o.d's glory, her majesty, and her successors' interest and service with that of the inhabitants of this her majesty's most ancient and great colony and dominion of Virginia, so long as the sun and moon endure.

Gentlemen, her most sacred majesty having been graciously pleased to send me her royal picture and arms for this her colony and dominion, I think the properest place to have them kept in, will be this council chamber; but it not being as yet quite finished, I cannot have them so placed as I would.

"By private accounts which I have from England, I understand her majesty hath lately thought fit to appoint a day of public fasting and humiliation there; but I have not yet seen her majesty's royal proclamation for it, which makes me not willing to appoint one here till I have. And had it not been for this, I designed that her majesty's royal picture and arms should have been first seen by you on St. George his day, and to have kept it as a day of public thanksgiving, it being the day on which her majesty was crowned, and bearing the name of his royal highness the Prince of Denmark, and likewise of the patron of our mother kingdom of England.

"Honorable gentlemen, I don't in the least doubt but that you will join with me in paying our most humble and dutiful acknowledgments and thanks to her most sacred majesty for this great honor and favor which she hath been pleased to bestow upon your country, and in praying that she may have a long, prosperous, successful, and victorious reign, as also that she may in all respects not only equal, but even outdo her royal predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, of ever-glorious memory, in the latter end of whose reign this country was discovered, and in honor of her called Virginia.

"It is now within two years of a century since its being first seated, at which time, if G.o.d Almighty and her majesty shall be so pleased, I design to celebrate a jubilee, and that the inhabitants thereof may increase exceedingly, and also abound with riches and honors, and have extraordinary good success in all their undertakings, but chiefly that they may be exemplary in their lives and conversations, continue in their religion of the Church of England as by law established, loyal to the crown thereof, and that all these things may come to pa.s.s, I question not but you will most cordially join with me in our most unfeigned and hearty prayers to G.o.d Almighty for them."

At the close of this verbose speech, the burgesses returned to their house, and the council adjourned.[366:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[364:A] A meeting of the council was held, consisting of his Excellency Francis Nicholson, Esq., lieutenant and governor-general, and William Byrd, John Lightfoot, Benjamin Harrison, Robert Carter, John Custis, Philip Ludwell, William Ba.s.set, Henry Duke, Robert Quarry, and John Smith, Esquires.

[366:A] Doc.u.ments in S. Literary Messenger, communicated by Wyndham Robertson, Esq., having been copied by his father, while he was clerk of the council, from old papers in the council chamber.

CHAPTER XLVI.

1703-1705.

Quit-rents--Northy's Opinion against the Custom of the Vestry's employing a Minister by the Year--The Free Church Disruption in Scotland--Controversy between Blair and Nicholson--Convocation--Nicholson recalled--Notice of his Career--Huguenots.

BY the account of Colonel William Byrd, receiver-general, the nett proceeds of her majesty's revenue of quit-rents for the year 1703 amounted to five thousand seven hundred and forty-five pounds.

In the Church of England the people have no part in the choice of their minister; a patron appoints him, and a living supports him. In Virginia, on the contrary, the salary being levied directly from the people by the vestries, they fell upon the expedient, as has been repeatedly mentioned, of employing a minister for a year. Governor Nicholson, an extreme high-churchman, procured from the attorney-general, Northy, an opinion against this custom, and it was sent to all the vestries, with directions to put it on record. The vestries, nevertheless, pertinaciously resisted this construction of the law. In two important points the church establishment in Virginia differed from that in England--in the appointment of the minister by the vestry, according to the act of 1642, and in the absence of a bishop.

In recent times the disruption of the Scottish general a.s.sembly resulted in the Free Church of Scotland, which thus, by sacrificing the temporalities, vindicated its independence of the government in things spiritual. In Virginia the vestries virtually maintained a like independence. In Scotland the contest arrayed against each other schismatic parties in the established kirk, known as the Evangelical and the Moderates, whereas in Virginia it was a mere contest for power between the vestries and the government. The Free Church of Scotland, at the time of the disruption, was still in theory in favor of an establishment in which the clergy should be chosen by the people and paid by the government.[368:A] Even in England, under the const.i.tution of the established church, the ministers of certain exceptional chapels were formerly elected by the freeholders of the parish, subject to the approval of the vicar, and the violation of their rights in this particular was sometimes resented in the ruder districts of Yorks.h.i.+re, by outrageous insults offered to the new inc.u.mbent during the time of service, and by brutal personal a.s.saults upon the minister.[368:B]

Before the beginning of the eighteenth century the proprietary government, granted by Charles the First to Lord Baltimore, had at length been abolished, and the Church of England established there.

There was less tolerance under this establishment than before. In Maryland as in Virginia, the discipline of the church was loose, the clergy by no means exemplary, and their condition precarious and dependent.

The differences between Dr. Blair and Governor Nicholson led to a tedious controversy, in which charges of malfeasance in official duty and private misconduct, especially in the affair of his attachment for Miss Burwell, and his maltreatment of the Rev. Mr. Fouace, were transmitted to the government in England, covering forty-four pages folio of ma.n.u.script. The controversy produced no little excitement and disturbance in the colony; a number of the clergy adhered to the governor, being those with whom Commissary Blair was unpopular, and whom the governor had ingratiated by siding with them against the vestries, and by representing the commissary as less favorable to their cause.

Governor Nicholson ordered a convocation to be a.s.sembled, and during its session held private interviews with his adherents among the clergy, who signed a paper denying the charges made by the commissary and the council. A public entertainment given to them was satirized in a ballad, setting forth their unclerical hilarity, and depicting some of them in unfavorable colors. This ballad soon appeared in London. In this convocation seventeen of the clergy were opposed to the commissary, and only six in his favor. Nevertheless his integrity and indomitable perseverance and energy triumphed; and at length, upon the complaint made by him, together with six members of the council and some of the clergy, particularly the Rev. Mr. Fouace, Colonel Nicholson was recalled.[369:A] He ceased to be governor in August, 1705. Before entering on the government of Virginia he had been lieutenant-governor of New York under Andros, and afterwards at the head of administration from 1687 to 1689, when he was expelled by a popular tumult. From 1690 to 1692 he was lieutenant-governor of Virginia. From 1694 to 1699 he held the government of Maryland, where, with the zealous a.s.sistance of Commissary Bray, he busied himself in establis.h.i.+ng Episcopacy. Returning to the government of Virginia, Governor Nicholson remained until 1705.

In the year 1710 he was appointed general and commander-in-chief of the forces sent against Fort Royal, in Acadia, which was surrendered to him.

During the following year he headed the land force of another expedition directed against the French in Canada. The naval force on this occasion was commanded by the imbecile Brigadier Hill. The enterprise was corrupt in purpose, feeble in execution, and abortive in result. This failure was attributable to the mismanagement and inefficiency of the fleet. In 1713 Colonel Nicholson was governor of Nova Scotia. Having received the honor of knighthood in 1720, Sir Francis Nicholson was appointed governor of South Carolina, where during four years, it is said, he conducted himself with a judicious and spirited attention to the public welfare, and this threw a l.u.s.tre over the closing scene of his long and active career in America. Returning to England, June, 1725, he died at London in March, 1728. He is described as an adept in colonial governments, trained by long experience in New York, Virginia, and Maryland; brave, and not penurious, but narrow and irascible; of loose morality, yet a fervent supporter of the church.[369:B]

Upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis the Fourteenth, in 1685, more than half a million of French Protestants, called Huguenots, fled from the jaws of persecution to foreign countries. About forty thousand took refuge in England. In 1690 William the Third sent over a number of them to Virginia, and lands were allotted to them on James River. During the year 1699 another body came over, conducted by their clergyman, Claude Philippe de Richebourg. He and others were naturalized some years afterwards. Others followed in succeeding years; the larger part of them settled at Manakintown, on the south bank of the James River, about twenty miles above the falls, on rich lands formerly occupied by the Monacan Indians. The rest dispersed themselves over the country, some on the James, some on the Rappahannock. The settlement at Manakintown was erected into the parish of King William, in the County of Henrico, and exempted from taxation for many years. The refugees received from the king and the a.s.sembly large donations of money and provisions; and they found in Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, a generous benefactor. Each settler was allowed a strip of land running back from the river to the foot of the hill. Here they raised cattle, undertook to domesticate the buffalo, manufactured cloth, and made claret wine from wild grapes. Their settlement extended about four miles along the river. In the centre they built a church; they conducted their public wors.h.i.+p after the German manner, and repeated family wors.h.i.+p three times a day. Manakintown was then on the frontier of Virginia, and there was no other settlement nearer than the falls of the James River, yet the Indians do not appear to have ever molested these pious refugees. There was no mill nearer than the mouth of Falling Creek, twenty miles distant, and the Huguenots, having no horses, were obliged to carry their corn on their backs to the mill.

Many worthy families of Virginia are descended from the Huguenots, among them the Maurys, Fontaines, Lacys, Munfords, Flournoys, Dupuys, Duvalls, Bondurants, Trents, Moncures, Ligons, and Le Grands. In the year 1714 the aggregate population of the Manakintown settlement was three hundred. The parish register of a subsequent date, in French, is preserved.

FOOTNOTES:

[368:A] Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers, iv. 287, 316.

[368:B] Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte.

[369:A] Old Churches, etc., i. 158; ii. 291.

[369:B] Bancroft, ii. 82.

CHAPTER XLVII.

1702-1708.

Parishes--The Rev. Francis Makemie--Dissenters--Toleration Act--Ministers--Commissary.

IN the year 1702 there were twenty-nine counties in Virginia, and forty-nine parishes, of which thirty-four were supplied with ministers, fifteen vacant. In each parish there was a church, of timber, brick, or stone; in the larger parishes, one or two Chapels of Ease; so that the whole number of places of wors.h.i.+p, for a population of sixty thousand, was about seventy. In every parish a dwelling-house was provided for the minister, with a glebe of two hundred and fifty acres of land, and sometimes a few negroes, or a small stock of cattle. The salary of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was, in ordinary quality, equivalent to 80; in sweet-scented, to 160. It required the labor of twelve negroes to produce this amount. There were in Virginia, at this time, three Quaker congregations, and as many Presbyterian; two in Accomac under the care of Rev. Francis Makemie; the other on Elizabeth River.

The Rev. Francis Makemie, who is styled the father of the American Presbyterian Church, was settled in Accomac County before the year 1690, when his name first appears upon the county records. He appears to have been a native of the north of Ireland, being of Scotch extraction, and one of those called Scotch-Irish. Licensed by the presbytery of Lagan in 1680, and in two or three years ordained as an evangelist for America, he came over, and labored in Barbadoes, Maryland, and Virginia. The first mention of his name on the records of the county court of Accomac bears date in 1690, by which he appears to have brought suits for debts due him in the business of merchandise. He married Naomi, eldest daughter of William Anderson, a wealthy merchant of Accomac, and thus acquired an independent estate. In the year 1699 he obtained from the court of that county a certificate of qualification as a preacher under the toleration act, the first of the kind known to be on record in Virginia. At the same time, upon his pet.i.tion, two houses belonging to him were licensed as places of public wors.h.i.+p.[372:A] In a letter written in 1710 by the presbytery of Philadelphia to that of Dublin, it is said: "In all Virginia we have one small congregation on Elizabeth River, and some few families favoring our way in Rappahannock and York."

Two years after, the Rev. John Macky was the pastor of the Elizabeth River congregation. It is probable that the congregations organized by Mr. Makemie, in 1690, were not able to give him a very ample support; but, prosperous in his worldly affairs, he appears to have contributed liberally from his own means to the promotion of the religious interests in which he was engaged. According to tradition, he suffered frequent annoyances from the intolerant spirit of the times in Virginia; but he declared that "he durst not deny preaching, and hoped he never should, while it was wanting and desired." Beverley, in his "History of Virginia," published in 1705, says: "They have no more than five conventicles among them, namely, three small meetings of Quakers, and two of Presbyterians. 'Tis observed that those counties where the Presbyterian meetings are produce very mean tobacco, and for that reason can't get an orthodox minister to stay among them; but whenever they could, the people very orderly went to church."

From this it may be inferred that the Eastern Sh.o.r.e, where Makemie was settled, produced poor tobacco, and that in consequence of it there was no minister of the established church in his neighborhood. He is supposed to have had four places of preaching; his labors proved acceptable; his hearers and congregations increased in number, and there was a demand for other ministers of the same denomination. Mr. Makemie, about the year 1704, returned to the mother country and remained there about a year. During the following year two ministers, styled his a.s.sociates, were licensed, by authority of Governor Seymour, to preach in Somerset County, in Maryland, notwithstanding the opposition of the neighboring Episcopal minister. Makemie's imprisonment in New York (by Lord Cornbury) for preaching in that city, and his able defence upon his trial, are well known. He died in 1708, leaving a large estate. His library was much larger than was usually possessed by Virginia clergymen in that day, and included a number of law books. He appointed the Honorable Francis Jenkins, of Somerset County, Maryland, and Mary Jenkins, his lady, executors of his last will and testament, and guardians of his children.[373:A]

In 1699 a penalty of five s.h.i.+llings was imposed on such persons in Virginia as should not attend the parish church once in two months; but dissenters, qualified according to the toleration act of the first year of William and Mary, were exempted from this penalty, provided they should attend at "any congregation, or place of religious wors.h.i.+p, permitted and allowed by the said act of parliament, once in two months."[373:B] Hening remarks of this law: "It is surely an abuse of terms to call a law a toleration act which imposes a religious test on the conscience, in order to avoid the penalties of another law equally violating every principle of religious freedom. The provisions of this act may be seen in the fourth volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, page 53. Nothing could be more intolerant than to impose the penalties by this act prescribed for not repairing to church, and then to hold out the idea of exemption, by a compliance with the provisions of such a law as the statute of 1 William and Mary, adopted by a mere general reference, when not one person in a thousand could possibly know its contents." It was an age when the state of religion was low in England, and of those ministers sent over to Virginia not a few were incompetent, some openly profligate; and religion slumbered in the languor of moral lectures, the maxims of Socrates and Seneca, and the stereotyped routine of accustomed forms. Altercations between minister and people were not unfrequent; the parson was a favorite b.u.t.t for aristocratic ridicule.

Sometimes a pastor more exemplary than the rest was removed from mercenary motives, or on account of a faithful discharge of his duties.

More frequently the unfit were retained by popular indifference. The clergy, in effect, did not enjoy that permanent independency of the people which properly belongs to a hierarchy. The vestry, a self-perpetuated body of twelve gentlemen, thought themselves "the parson's master," and the clergy in vain deplored the precarious tenure of their livings. The commissary's powers were few, limited, and disputed; he was but the shadow of a bishop; he could not ordain nor confirm; he could not depose a minister. Yet the people, jealous of prelatical tyranny, watched his feeble movements with a vigilant and suspicious eye. The church in Virginia was dest.i.tute of an effective discipline.[374:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[372:A] It appears from his will, dated in 1708, that he also owned a house and lot in the new town in Princess Anne County, on the eastern branch of Elizabeth River, and a house and lot in the new town on Wormley's Creek, called Urbanna. Whether he used these houses for merchandise, or for public wors.h.i.+p, is not known. It appears from Commissary Blair's report on the state of the church in Virginia, that the congregation on Elizabeth River existed before the year 1700. From the fact of Mr. Makemie's directing, in his will, that his dwelling-house and lot on that river should be sold, it has been inferred that he had resided there before he moved to the opposite sh.o.r.e of the Chesapeake, and that the church in question was gathered by him; if so, it must have been formed before 1690; for in that year he was residing on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e. Others have supposed that the congregation on Elizabeth River was composed of a small company of Scotch emigrants, whose descendants are still to be found in the neighborhood of Norfolk.

[373:A] Foote's Sketches of Va., first series, 40, 58, 63, 84; and Force's Historical Tracts, iv.

[373:B] Hening, iii. 171.

[374:A] Hawks; Bancroft; Beverley, B. iv. 26.

CHAPTER XLVIII.