William Reade, aged thirteen or fourteen years, convicted of manslaughter, when the verdict was read, and William Reade asked what he had to say for himself, that he ought not to die, demanded his clergy, whereupon he was delivered to the Ordinary.
William Reade, aged thirteen or fourteen years, convicted of manslaughter, when the verdict was read, and William Reade asked what he had to say for himself, that he ought not to die, demanded his clergy, whereupon he was delivered to the Ordinary.
There were many such instances. In Virginia the Governor was the Ordinary and as such had authority to accept the boy's plea, have him read the "neck verse," and thereby permit him to go free "after the burning."
The severity of the laws influenced the courts in many parts of England to permit or sentence an offender to escape deathby going to one of the American colonies, and it became the custom to sentence convicted criminals to serve for a period of years in an American colony as an indentured servant. A great number of such "convicts" were sent to Virginia because of the constant demand there for indentured servants to cultivate the fields and for other duties.
Many of the convicts became useful citizens of the colony after their terms of servitude ended; but many did not reform and in time became such a menace that for a period after 1670 the General Assembly forbade that any more convicts be brought into the colony.
It can be seen therefore that from the beginning the population of Virginia grew by immigration from various sources and that not all who came to the colony were of the best type. The New England colonies had the advantage that their immigrants came in large part from dissenters from the Established Church of England. They came for "conscience sake," however, and with their concept of theocratic government the New England colonists could make it difficult indeed for immigrants they did not welcome. After Roger Williams had been exiled to Rhode Island and a few Quakers had been hanged on Boston Common, it was made clear to Baptists and Quakers, to Anglicans and to witches that Virginia was a more favorable climate for them than Massachusetts.
In contrast to New England, Virginia was founded and developed as a cross-section of the whole life of the British Isles, with its evil as well as its good; with ideals of freedom of thought which made no attempt to control a man's conscience; and with an ever growing concept of self-government and human freedom as already developed during nearly a thousand years and set out by the common law and the statute law of the race. Virginia was not founded upon any theocratic concept of government under the influence of a priestly class.
The life and community consciousness that developed in Virginiainto the distinctive customs and ways of a well organized and firmly established commonwealth were necessarily different from those of the colonies in New England because of the differing conditions under which men lived. In the township system of New England a village normally became the township center and the people lived near enough to each other to enable them to meet frequently; to work and play together; to transact business; and to gossip of neighborhood affairs. In Virginia it was otherwise. In Virginia families lived on separate farms and each farm was of necessity a community within itself. Life was geared to the basic fact that tobacco was the money crop, and also was the real source of the financial strength and stability of the colony. Each family required a farm of sufficient acreage to raise tobacco as well as food-stuff and cattle; and throughout the whole colonial period the genius of Virginian life opposed the development of towns of greater population than was required for a shipping point and a warehouse, for the storing and grading of tobacco, and for a few agents of English and Scottish merchants.
John Hammond, in his pamphletLeah and Rachelsketched briefly conditions which existed in Virginia between the "starving time" of 1609-10 and the year 1656. His attempt was to correct an opinion widely held in England of the lawlessness of colonial life. He interpreted the great massacre of 1622 as the end of one phase and the beginning of another. He showed that in each phase there was an inevitable period of laxity of life and disregard of moral and legal conventions which was overcome finally by the better element of citizenry. His writing presents a dark picture of conditions, possibly too dark in some phases; but his picture of the power of the growing colony to establish and maintain general concepts of decency of life and conduct is impressive.
Of the period following the great massacre he wrote:
Receiving a supply of men, ammunition and victuals out of England, they again gathered heart, pursued their enemies, and so often worsted them, that the Indians were glad to sue for peace, and they, (desirous of a cessation) consented to it.They again began to bud forth, to spread further, to gather wealth, which they rather profusely spent (as gotten with ease) than providently husbanded, or aimed at any public good; or to make a country for posterity; but from hand to mouth, and for a present being; neglecting discoveries, planting orchards, providing for the winter preservation of their stocks, or thinking of anything stable or firm; and whilst tobacco, the only commodity they had to subsist on, bore a price, they wholly and eagerly followed that, neglecting their very planting of corn, and much relyed on England for the chiefest part of their provisions; so that being not alwayes amply supplied, they were often in such want, that their case and condition being relayted in England, it hindred and kept off many from going thither, who rather cast their eyes on the barren and freezing soyle of New-England, than to joyn with such an indigent and sottish people as were reported to be in Virginia.Yet was not Virginia all this while without divers honest and vertuous inhabitants, who, observing the general neglect and licensiousnesses there, caused Assemblies to be call'd and laws to be made tending to the glory of God, the severe suppression of vices, and the compelling them not to neglect (upon strickt punishments) planting and tending such quantities of corn, as would not onely serve themselves, their cattle and hogs plentifully, but to be enabled to supply New-England (then in want) with such proportions, as were extream reliefs to them in their necessities.From this industry of theirs and great plenty of corn, (the main staffe of life), proceeded that great plenty of cattle and hogs, (now innumerable) and out of which not only New-England hath been stocked and relieved, but all others parts of the Indies inhabited by Englishmen.The inhabitants now finding the benefit of their industries, began to look with delight on their increasing stocks; (as nothing more pleasurable than profit), to take pride in their plentifully furnished tables, to grow not onely civil, but great observers of the Sabbath, to stand upon their reputations, and to be ashamed of that notorious manner of life they had formerly lived and wallowed in....Then began the Gospel to flourish, civil, honourable, and men of great estates flocked in; famous buildings went forward, orchards innumerable were planted and preserved; tradesmen set on work and encouraged, staple commodities, as silk, flax, pot-ashes, etc., of which I shall speak further hereafter, attempted on, and with good success brought to perfection; so that this country which had a mean beginning, many back friends, two ruinous and bloody massacres, hath by God's grace out-grown all, and is become a place of pleasure and plenty.
Receiving a supply of men, ammunition and victuals out of England, they again gathered heart, pursued their enemies, and so often worsted them, that the Indians were glad to sue for peace, and they, (desirous of a cessation) consented to it.
They again began to bud forth, to spread further, to gather wealth, which they rather profusely spent (as gotten with ease) than providently husbanded, or aimed at any public good; or to make a country for posterity; but from hand to mouth, and for a present being; neglecting discoveries, planting orchards, providing for the winter preservation of their stocks, or thinking of anything stable or firm; and whilst tobacco, the only commodity they had to subsist on, bore a price, they wholly and eagerly followed that, neglecting their very planting of corn, and much relyed on England for the chiefest part of their provisions; so that being not alwayes amply supplied, they were often in such want, that their case and condition being relayted in England, it hindred and kept off many from going thither, who rather cast their eyes on the barren and freezing soyle of New-England, than to joyn with such an indigent and sottish people as were reported to be in Virginia.
Yet was not Virginia all this while without divers honest and vertuous inhabitants, who, observing the general neglect and licensiousnesses there, caused Assemblies to be call'd and laws to be made tending to the glory of God, the severe suppression of vices, and the compelling them not to neglect (upon strickt punishments) planting and tending such quantities of corn, as would not onely serve themselves, their cattle and hogs plentifully, but to be enabled to supply New-England (then in want) with such proportions, as were extream reliefs to them in their necessities.
From this industry of theirs and great plenty of corn, (the main staffe of life), proceeded that great plenty of cattle and hogs, (now innumerable) and out of which not only New-England hath been stocked and relieved, but all others parts of the Indies inhabited by Englishmen.
The inhabitants now finding the benefit of their industries, began to look with delight on their increasing stocks; (as nothing more pleasurable than profit), to take pride in their plentifully furnished tables, to grow not onely civil, but great observers of the Sabbath, to stand upon their reputations, and to be ashamed of that notorious manner of life they had formerly lived and wallowed in....
Then began the Gospel to flourish, civil, honourable, and men of great estates flocked in; famous buildings went forward, orchards innumerable were planted and preserved; tradesmen set on work and encouraged, staple commodities, as silk, flax, pot-ashes, etc., of which I shall speak further hereafter, attempted on, and with good success brought to perfection; so that this country which had a mean beginning, many back friends, two ruinous and bloody massacres, hath by God's grace out-grown all, and is become a place of pleasure and plenty.
It may possibly be worthwhile to compare the life of Virginia during its first two generations with the far west of the United States from the gold-rush days of 1849 to the end of the nineteenth century. There again, as in the Virginia of 1607, bona fide settlers of moral ideals and stability of life prevailed in the long run and developed self-governing states which maintained the moral code.
But Virginia had an advantage which the far west of the gold-rush days lacked. Virginia had an Established Church whichin spite of its own problems and difficulties created a parish in every section, and provided clergymen as far as they could be obtained. It is granted that some at least of the clergymen were unworthy. The vestries themselves ejected men of that kind and services could be maintained by readers. And so the Word of God was read and prayer was offered regularly; and every man who could read had the Ten Commandments staring him in the face from the tablets on the wall behind the Holy Table. The individual might scorn and sneer but in the end the Law of God became the law of the community.
Men came to church in those early days. For one reason, the law of the colony required it and there was the threat of punishment if absence from church was reported to the grand jury. But there was another reason also, even though men and women were compelled to walk five or six miles to attend. That other reason was the loneliness of farm life in the early days of colonial Virginia. The churchyard on a Sunday morning was then the meeting-place of the whole community, and the only place where all could meet on the same level. The only other meetings were when elections were held at the Court House, every three or four years. And men might attend the meetings of the county court; but women could not vote, and they did not go to elections; nor were they apt to attend meetings of the county court except in rare instances when they were engaged in litigation. And the amount of hard liquor consumed on election days and county court days was also a deterrent.
Before the day of parish aid societies and women's guilds, the church service of a Sunday morning was moreover the only meeting to which everybody might come as of right; and while at church the women discussed affairs and neighbors within the church building the men outside walked about or sat on stumps or logs and held their discussions before and after the service hour.
The church with its churchyard was the public forum at which matters of public policy and public interest were discussed. Itwas here also that business was transacted; and it was here that community spirit of fellowship, of sympathy and of understanding was developed. The colonial government recognized all this by directing that every public communication which had to be brought to the attention of the people as a whole be read to the congregation of every church or chapel in the colony. And the Church recognized the same thing by providing that such announcements should be made immediately after the reading of the second lesson or New Testament lesson in the morning service. The approaching worshipper never knew what interesting announcement might be made at that time; so there was always an element of expectancy and suspense; perhaps an announcement of the banns of matrimony; perhaps the reading of a new law, or of some proclamation by the Governor and Council; perhaps the baptism of a baby, or even a marriage.
So it was that men and women of all classes came under the influence of Christian teaching whether they would or no; and the constant teaching and stressing of moral and Christian ideals of life had their effect in changing and improving the character of the community life.
Old Church Tower, Jamestown, Virginia Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of CommerceOld Church Tower, Jamestown, VirginiaPhoto by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
Jamestown Church Communion Service Chalice and paten given by Governor Francis Moryson, in 1661. Both bearing the inscription: Mix not holy things with profane. Ex dono Francisco Morrison, Armigeri Anno Domi, 1661. Large paten at the right given by Sir Edmund Andros, Governor, 1694. Inscribed: In usum Ecclesiae Jacobi-Polis. Ex dono Dni Edmundi Andros, Equitis, Virginiae Gubernatoris, Anno Dom. MDCXCIV. Alms basin, London, 1739. Second on the right. Inscription: For the use of James City Parish Church. Given by the old church at Jamestown in 1758 to Bruton Parish Church. Courtesy Miss Emily HallJamestown Church Communion ServiceChalice and paten given by Governor Francis Moryson, in 1661. Both bearing the inscription: Mix not holy things with profane. Ex dono Francisco Morrison, Armigeri Anno Domi, 1661.Large paten at the right given by Sir Edmund Andros, Governor, 1694. Inscribed: In usum Ecclesiae Jacobi-Polis. Ex dono Dni Edmundi Andros, Equitis, Virginiae Gubernatoris, Anno Dom. MDCXCIV.Alms basin, London, 1739. Second on the right. Inscription: For the use of James City Parish Church. Given by the old church at Jamestown in 1758 to Bruton Parish Church.Courtesy Miss Emily Hall
COMMUNION SERVICE IN USE AT SMITH'S HUNDRED, 1618. This three piece communion service now at St. John's Church, Elizabeth City Parish, Hampton, Virginia, has the longest history of use in the United States of any church silver. The set, a gift to the church founded in 1618 at Smith's Hundred in Charles City County, was made possible by a legacy in the will (date 1617) of Mrs. Mary Robinson of London. Smith's Hundred renamed Southampton Hundred, 1620, was practically wiped out in the Indian Massacre of 1622. This communion set delivered in 1627 to the Court at Jamestown for safe keeping, supposedly, then was given to the second Elizabeth City Church built on Southampton (now Hampton) River. The inscription in one line on the base of the Chalice is: The Communion Cupp for Snt Marys Church in Smiths Hundred in Virginia. Hall marks on all three pieces bear London date-letters for 1618-19. Courtesy Mrs. L. T. Jester and Mrs. P. W. HidenCOMMUNION SERVICE IN USE AT SMITH'S HUNDRED, 1618.This three piece communion service now at St. John's Church, Elizabeth City Parish, Hampton, Virginia, has the longest history of use in the United States of any church silver. The set, a gift to the church founded in 1618 at Smith's Hundred in Charles City County, was made possible by a legacy in the will (date 1617) of Mrs. Mary Robinson of London. Smith's Hundred renamed Southampton Hundred, 1620, was practically wiped out in the Indian Massacre of 1622. This communion set delivered in 1627 to the Court at Jamestown for safe keeping, supposedly, then was given to the second Elizabeth City Church built on Southampton (now Hampton) River. The inscription in one line on the base of the Chalice is: The Communion Cupp for Snt Marys Church in Smiths Hundred in Virginia. Hall marks on all three pieces bear London date-letters for 1618-19.Courtesy Mrs. L. T. Jester and Mrs. P. W. Hiden
The Glebe House, Charles City County, Virginia Courtesy Valentine Museum, RichmondThe Glebe House, Charles City County, VirginiaCourtesy Valentine Museum, Richmond
Glebe House, Gloucester County, Virginia Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of CommerceGlebe House, Gloucester County, VirginiaPhoto by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
Christ Church, Middlesex County, Virginia Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of CommerceChrist Church, Middlesex County, VirginiaPhoto by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
Merchant's Hope Church, Prince George County, Virginia Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of CommerceMerchant's Hope Church, Prince George County, VirginiaPhoto by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
Saint Lukes Church, Isle of Wight County, Virginia Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of CommerceSaint Lukes Church, Isle of Wight County, VirginiaPhoto by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
Saint Peters Church, New Kent County, Virginia Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of CommerceSaint Peters Church, New Kent County, VirginiaPhoto by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
Robert Hunt Memorial Plaque Altar-piece. A bronze bas-relief representing the administration of the first Anglican communion in America, June 21, 1607. George T. Brewster, sc. Gorham Co., founders. Courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine MuseumRobert Hunt Memorial PlaqueAltar-piece. A bronze bas-relief representing the administration of the first Anglican communion in America, June 21, 1607. George T. Brewster, sc. Gorham Co., founders.Courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Museum
Robert Hunt Memorial Shrine Erected by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia. Presented to the Diocese of Southern Virginia of the Protestant Episcopal Church, June 15, 1922. It was placed in the perpetual care of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. Courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Museum and National Park ServiceRobert Hunt Memorial ShrineErected by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia. Presented to the Diocese of Southern Virginia of the Protestant Episcopal Church, June 15, 1922. It was placed in the perpetual care of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.Courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Museum and National Park Service
A new element came early into the life of Virginia, with permanent and continuous hurt to the welfare of the colony and later to the Commonwealth; an element to which the colony was compelled to adapt itself because it did not have the power to eradicate it after men perceived its danger. It was the element of human slavery.
The first Negro captives were brought into the port of Jamestown in the year 1619. They were brought by a foreign ship then described as a "Dutch" ship, but presumably a Portuguese slaver seeking the enlargement of his market. The Portuguese had developed a market for Negro slaves in the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean where the enslaved Indians proved unable to perform the hard work demanded of them. Unhappily the slavers succeeded in widening their market to include Virginia and the other English colonies of the American continent and in the West Indies.
The first Negroes were brought to Jamestown in 1619 and sold to English masters as indentured servants. As such they were required to serve for a definite number of years and after that they would become freemen entitled to all the benefit of Virginia law. The goal set before them, as before immigrants from France and the Netherlands, was eventual freedom and naturalization as full citizens.
The tragedy of the Negro was that he had been procured by the Portuguese as a captive taken in war between the native Negro tribes, and he came into the life of Virginia utterly ignorant of every British ideal of human freedom and government under constitutional law. He knew nothing of the English language. The indentured Englishman or Scotsman who was sold intoservice came with inherited knowledge of Anglo-Saxon ideals of civil government and Christian faith; and the one great goal set before him was that he could become a legal citizen of Virginia after he completed his years of servitude. The Negro knew nothing of all this.
There would have been little difficulty if the few Negroes in the first ship had been all who came. The government could have provided for their care and for their instruction in English ideals and the Christian faith. But they were not all who came. The first indentured Negroes proved useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and they were capable of far more work in the fields than many of the Englishmen: and so the agrarian needs of the community where all men were farmers made the governmental authorities willing to admit more Negroes.
The authorities must have realized at once that if Negroes were brought into the colony in great number they could not be permitted to become freemen after any period of indenture. That would have brought into the life of Virginia a steadily growing population of men and women who knew nothing of English institutions, or of the English language, or of the Christian religion. The welfare of the colony required that if they were to be admitted at all, they could be admitted only as servants under a permanent status of servitude. So slavery was introduced into the British empire; and in America the enslavement of the Negro was permitted in New England as well as in Virginia, the Carolinas and in Georgia.
That was the first act in the great tragedy of Negro slavery in America. The second was that the enslavement and sale of Negroes proved so profitable that the people of England entered into it by chartering the Royal African Company, with authority to purchase captive Negroes throughout a large portion of Africa which was assigned to the Company for that purpose. At one time at least the King of England owned stock in the Company; and he gave his instruction to the royal Governors of Americancolonies that they should not permit the passage through a colonial legislature of any act which would interfere with the right to import Negroes and sell them into slavery within the colony.
The third act in the tragedy was that after Virginia and perhaps other colonies had made many unavailing efforts to check or forbid by legislation the bringing of more Negroes from Africa, the War of American Independence was fought and won. In the Constitutional Convention of the new sovereign states called to create a Federal Union of them all, the representatives of Virginia and other states fought bitterly for an immediate prohibition against further importation of Negro slaves, only to be defeated by the cotton-growing interests of some states and the shipping interests of others who demanded that the trade be continued for a period of years. And so the Constitution of the United States when first put into effect in the Federal Union permitted for twenty years the importation of captive Negroes from Africa and their sale into slavery.
The increase in the number of Negro slaves in those states where their labor proved profitable brought with it the constant fear of a Negro insurrection; a fear that continued until the ending of slavery in this country. The presence of the Negroes and of English convicts sold into servitude made it impossible upon any large plantation for the women and children of the master's household ever to be left without the protection of a slave-master who had the power of gun and lash to protect them from harm.
The preaching of the Christian faith to the heathen Indians, which was so strongly present in the purposes of the London Company at the first settlement of Virginia, must have been considered when the custom of admitting Negro slaves began but there is no recorded evidence bearing upon that subject. If there had been a bishop in the colony he could have made the conversion of the Negro to Christianity an important part of adiocesan program; but without a bishop nothing could be done in an organized way. The matter was perforce left to the consciences of the incumbent ministers of the several parishes.
It must be remembered that every first generation of the slaves had come to America as captives taken in war of one tribe against another. Their languages and dialects included perhaps every language in central and southern Africa; and their unfamiliar languages made it almost impossible for the average citizen or his parson to do much in the way of preaching the Christian faith; except perhaps in the observance of the universal law of kindness.
The birth of slave children, however, removed the barrier of language, for the children were taught English as their native tongue. The children therefore could be taught. All teaching of children, whether children of the master and mistress or those born as their slaves, was considered the duty of the whole family. And the teaching of the catechism and the duties of a Christian life to the slave children was as important a part of the family responsibility in a Christian home as the teaching of the children of the family itself. No clergyman of the Church would be willing to baptize a slave child unless there were responsible sponsors present who would assume the obligation to give steady Christian teaching. So it became a rule of the clergy, or most of them, that the master and mistress in the case of each such baptism must assume the obligation to give the child Christian training. The baptized children could then in early youth be permitted to attend the instruction classes which were held by the incumbent minister for them. The slave child and the master's child would share the privilege of admission to the Sacrament of the Holy Communion when each one had shown sufficient knowledge and understanding of right and wrong, and had been sufficiently instructed in "the things which a Christian should know and believe." No one knows how many or what percentage of slavechildren in Virginia or elsewhere were baptized, or how many became communicants because no record was kept. But there were enough baptisms to create a new problem.
There was no Negro slavery in England, and it was generally understood that when a Negro slave set foot upon the soil of England he became a free man. Somehow that concept of freedom became linked in common thinking with the concept of baptism into the Christian faith; and there arose in practically every slave-holding section of the English colonies a question whether the very act of baptizing a slave child did not set him free from slavery. Because of that question many slave-owners declined to permit the baptism of their slaves until the question was settled, and consequently in every slave-owning colony it became necessary to secure a legislative enactment establishing the legal status of a baptized slave. The question arose in Virginia, and in 1667 the following act was adopted by the General Assembly:
Whereas some doubts have risen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by virtue of their baptisme be made free;It is enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom; that diverse masters, freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament.
Whereas some doubts have risen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by virtue of their baptisme be made free;It is enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom; that diverse masters, freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament.
The question was settled likewise throughout all the slave-holding colonies of England, and human slavery was written into the laws of the various colonies of the British empire, there to remain until the ideals of the nineteenth century eliminated it from the constitution and the laws of every English-speaking nation.
The following incidents, although they occurred in the firsthalf of the eighteenth century, outside the period covered by this booklet, are yet of such interest in the continuing story of Negro slavery as to be worth recording here.
In 1724 the Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, sent a questionary to the incumbent minister of every Anglican parish in the American colonies. Among the questions he asked were two; one inquiring how many "infidels," either Indians or Negroes, there were in each parish; and two, what efforts were being made to convert them to the Christian faith. The answers revealed a serious situation, and the need of more definite and better organized efforts to convert the Negroes.
The first effort made by the Bishop of London was as strong a pastoral letter as he could write upon the need of more earnest effort to bring the Negro slaves into the Christian faith. He also prepared a pamphlet to be used for the instruction of Negroes. His pastoral letter and his pamphlet were sent to every incumbent minister, and copies were given to the heads of families.
Another effort was the organization in England in 1723 by the Rev. Thomas Bray of a company called "Dr. Bray's Associates." Dr. Thomas Bray was the bishop's commissary to the province of Maryland. The purpose of Dr. Bray's Associates was to establish in the colonies schools for the education and Christian instruction of Negro children, and it did a useful work. It did a notable work in the City of New York, and it conducted schools in other places; one of them at Williamsburg, in Virginia.
There was another and most unusual development in Virginia. Under the urge of the Bishop of London's pastoral letter there came a great increase in the number of baptisms of adult Negroes; so sudden an increase as to cause concern to Commissary Blair and to Governor Gooch. In some way a report had spread among the Negroes that ex-Governor Alexander Spotswood, upon his return from a voyage to England, had brought with him an order from the King directing that all baptized Negro slaves be set free. The story, improbable as it was to English ears, wasbelieved implicitly by the Negroes and it brought many of them to their parish clergy seeking for baptism. Time passed and there was no movement to set the baptized Negroes free. They became indignant, for they believed the colonial authorities had ignored the King's order. A plot for a Negro uprising was formed; but the plot was discovered and the ringleaders were punished.
Another incident occurred two years later. A woman slave who had been baptized was convicted of manslaughter in the Gloucester County Court which sentenced her to death. She thereupon plead the benefit of clergy. Her plea brought a new problem to the courts of Virginia for until that time no woman and no slave in the colony had ever been permitted to plead benefit of clergy. The County Court considered the plea and the vote was a tie between granting the plea and enforcement of the sentence. The County Court referred the matter to the General Court of the colony; and there again the vote resulted in a tie. The General Court therefore referred the case to the Attorney General of England. Meanwhile, the General Court ordered that the woman's plea be granted, and, in order not to set a precedent in an unsettled question, directed that she be sold out of the colony. At a subsequent meeting of the General Assembly the matter was settled so far as Virginia was concerned by enactment of a law that all persons convicted of a first offense of felony, whether male or female, bond or free, might plead benefit of clergy.
Slavery existed in the American colonies from Massachusetts and Connecticut to Virginia and the Carolinas at the end of the seventeenth century. It was alien to English ideals of human freedom. Yet out of it all one tremendously important fact has come to pass. The Negro came to America from almost every Negro tribe and dialect in central and southern Africa; he came without any connection except his connection with other slaves when more than one were sold to the same master. He came into a highly developed civilization with great organized power of leadership and government; and through the generations of slaverythe Negro in America wrought for himself a national and racial consciousness within the sphere of American life. The American Negro today is the most highly educated and the most advanced Negro in the world. As such he has the opportunity to make his own contribution to the culture and the civilization of the world. This their centuries of slavery and repression have brought them.
The political conditions in England throughout the middle of the seventeenth century bore heavily upon Virginia in religious as well as in civil matters. The period of civil war which began in 1642 lasted until the King was captured by the parliamentary forces, and Archbishop Laud, the hated persecutor of dissenters, was beheaded. After an imprisonment of four years the king was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell reigned as Protector of the Commonwealth. The civil war had lined up the dissenting bodies in England, and the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, against the King and the Church of England.
On the American scene the Puritan colonies in New England were in hearty sympathy with the dissenters in England. In Virginia the government and the great body of the people were in equal sympathy with King Charles and the Established Church. It is true there were in Virginia the goodly number of several hundred Puritan settlers. In the Church also there was some Puritan sympathy among a small group of the clergy. One of these, indeed, the Rev. Thomas Harrison, who became minister of Elizabeth River Parish (Norfolk) in 1640, was presented for trial in the county court in April 1645 "For not reading the Book of Common Prayer, and not administering the sacrament of baptism according to the canons and order prescribed, and for not catechizing on Sunday in the afternoon, according to the Act of Assembly." He was banished to Massachusetts in 1648, where he remained for two years and married. Afterward he returned to England and was given official position in the Commonwealth under Cromwell.
In the heated atmosphere of the times the Puritan group in Virginia took occasion to apply to the Puritan church governmentin Massachusetts to send three ordained Puritan "missionaries" to their fellow religionists in Virginia, but upon the arrival of the missionaries their ship was met by government officials; the three missionaries sent back to Massachusetts; and the master of the ship was fined for bringing them to the colony. No one in official position in Virginia could escape the conviction that the sending of Puritan ministers to Virginia at such a time, whether upon request of the Nansemond River group or upon suggestion from Boston, was for any purpose other than to foment and organize Puritan opposition to the King. For that reason Puritanism in Virginia came under suspicion, and the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, with the full support of the government and public opinion, treated all Puritans as enemies. He made their situation so intolerable that the entire group accepted an invitation from the proprietor of the Province of Maryland and migrated to that colony. There, given land on the Severn River, they gained control of the provincial government within a few years. The forcing of the group out of Virginia was a political act of defense and was not religious persecution.
The English Parliament in 1645 enacted a law abolishing the Church of England as an active organization. The law enacted by Parliament drove every bishop from his diocese, and forbade the use of theBook of Common Prayerin any church or chapel in England. The rectors of over two thousand parishes were forced out and their places were filled by Presbyterian and Independent or Baptist ministers.
The General Assembly of Virginia, upon learning the action of Parliament, adopted an act in 1647 requiring the use of thePrayer Bookin every church and chapel in Virginia each Sunday in the regular forms prescribed in thePrayer Book. The Act made further provision that in every parish in which the incumbent minister disobeyed the law and continued disuse of theBook of Common Prayer, his parishioners were thereby absolved from paying him any further salary.
In England marriage was held to be a religious service to be performed by no one other than a priest of the Church; and Parliament, after abolishing the Prayer Book and the canons of the Anglican Church, was compelled to enact another law making provision for the performance of the marriage ceremony as a civil contract. The new law directed that justices of the local courts perform marriages and record them, if desired, in the court records. The people of Virginia paid no attention to this law except, as far as is known, in one case in Northumberland County. In the year 1656 a man and woman in Lancaster County, instead of going to the minister, if there were one, or to the reader of the parish, went to a county official of Northumberland and were married according to the Act of Parliament. Their marriage was recorded in the court order book and there nine months later the new incumbent, Samuel Cole of Lancaster, found it. He thereupon declared openly that the law of Virginia was in effect in his parish and not the Acts of Parliament. The affair ended when the parson required the wedded couple to consider themselves unwed until he could announce the banns of matrimony for them on three separate Sundays and then perform a Christian marriage. He then took occasion to go to the Northumberland county court and record his certificate of marriage of the couple in the court order book. The two certificates still appear in the order book of the county court of Northumberland County in the following words:
Certificate of Marriage, 11 Sept. 1656. John Merryday [i.e., Meredith] and Mrs. Ann Nash, als. Mallet, were married by Coll. Jno. Trussell, according to Act of Parliament, 24 August, 1653. Witnesses Geo. Colclough, Leonard Spencer and Jno. Carter. Rec. 20 Sept. 1656.To all such whom it may concern. These are to certifie that John Meredith & Ann Nash, being three times Published according to Law, were married at Currotomon on the 14th of this instant July, 1657 per mee, Samuel Cole, minister,ibidem20th July 1657 this certificate was recorded.
Certificate of Marriage, 11 Sept. 1656. John Merryday [i.e., Meredith] and Mrs. Ann Nash, als. Mallet, were married by Coll. Jno. Trussell, according to Act of Parliament, 24 August, 1653. Witnesses Geo. Colclough, Leonard Spencer and Jno. Carter. Rec. 20 Sept. 1656.
To all such whom it may concern. These are to certifie that John Meredith & Ann Nash, being three times Published according to Law, were married at Currotomon on the 14th of this instant July, 1657 per mee, Samuel Cole, minister,ibidem20th July 1657 this certificate was recorded.
The colony of Virginia in affairs of both church and state exercised more independence of action under the Commonwealth than it ever exercised before or afterward until the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The General Assembly, after it made a treaty of peace with Cromwell's commissioners, elected the several governors of the colony until the Restoration of Charles Second in 1660 took that authority from them. The Burgesses had agreed to discontinue the use of prayers for the King and the royal family in public services, and the General Assembly enacted a law directing each parish to decide for itself whether it would continue or discontinue the use of theBook of Common Prayer. All questions of parish administration were left to the several vestries. If a parish did not wish to use the old form of worship it might use such form as it desired.
A number of ministers of Presbyterian ordination, and some openly acknowledged Puritans thereupon came into the colony and these became incumbent ministers of parishes. The last known one was the Rev. Andrew Jackson, incumbent of Christ Church Parish in Lancaster County from some years after 1680 until his death in 1711. He was a godly and devout minister, beloved by his parishioners. Tradition says that he "stood up to read the Psalms, but remained seated when they said the Creed."
For twenty-five or thirty years prior to 1675, to the distress of the Church and the people as a whole, there was a desperate lack of ordained ministers, and inability, to get clergymen from England. Some few, driven out of parishes in England by the Parliamentary victors, did come to Virginia, but never in sufficient number to supply the need. Then, after the restoration of Charles, II, in 1660 and the return of the Anglican Church to active life, there were so many parishes in England from which non-conforming ministers were removed because of refusal to use theBook of Common Prayer, that for nearly a decade there were almost no clergymen to send overseas. Conditions did begin to improve, however, before the end of the decade.
The improvement increased more rapidly after a new bishop of London came into that diocese in 1675 and manifested active interest in the affairs of the parishes in America.
During the decade 1660-70, shortly after King Charles had been received and crowned King of England, the General Assembly of Virginia made earnest effort to call the attention of the Crown and the people of England to the needs of the Church in the colony. A committee of clergymen was sent from Jamestown to London to present the matter to the King. The committee published a pamphlet telling of the great need and urging a definite programme to help improve religious conditions. Three things ought to be done: first, a bishop should be sent at once to visit the parishes and ordain as deacons devout laymen who had been serving as readers so that there would be at least a deacon in every parish; second, fellowships ought to be established at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge for the support and training of men for the ministry who would agree to serve the Church for a term of years in the parishes of Virginia; third, and most important, a bishop ought to be consecrated to organize a diocese in Virginia and bring the parishes there into the full life of the Anglican Church.
No one knows what influence the pamphlet had in arousing interest. Certainly no bishop was sent to ordain readers as deacons; and no fellowships were established at the universities to train men to serve in the ministry in Virginia. But a movement did start to organize a diocese and consecrate a bishop. This occurred after 1670. The movement won approval and a charter was prepared for the signature of King Charles as the temporal head of the Church. The charter provided that the diocese was to be called the Diocese of Virginia, and Jamestown was to become the see-city where the bishop was to have his "Cathedral." A clergyman was selected by the King to become the new bishop. He was the Reverend Alexander Moray who had fled Scotland with Prince Charles and had gone as chaplain with the ill-fatedcampaign ending in defeat at the Battle of Worcester in 1652 in which Prince Charles sought to win his throne from the Parliamentary conquerors. Mr. Moray then fled to Virginia and became rector of Ware Parish in Gloucester County.
But something happened in 1672 after the King had announced publicly that he had selected Mr. Moray to be bishop. Nobody knows what it was, but the charter was never signed, and Mr. Moray was not made a bishop. There is some evidence that he died just at that time and possibly that caused the plan to fall through.
It would seem probable that the failure of the plan in 1672 aroused the interest of Henry Compton who became Bishop of London in 1675, for in that same year he secured from the Crown authority to select and license men to serve as ministers of the parishes in America. And shortly thereafter a fund called "The King's Bounty" was established, from which each clergyman licensed to serve in America was given twenty pounds sterling to pay the cost of his voyage. This plan continued until the American Revolution. It did great good, for it gave to every Anglican clergyman in the colonies a bishop whom he felt he knew, and to whom he could write if necessary. The Bishop of London never at any time had any authority whatsoever over the laity of the Church in America, nor over the work of the vestries as temporal heads of the parishes. But his influence with the clergy was of enormous value to their morale.
Ten years later Bishop Compton went farther and secured authority to appoint clergymen as his personal representatives in the colonies; to confer with the clergy; and, if necessary, to remove from their parishes clergymen who had proven to be unworthy men. The commissaries lost their power some sixty years later when a new Bishop of London appointed in 1748 refused to give his commissaries the authority which earlier commissaries had exercised.
The first commissaries, James Blair for Virginia and ThomasBray for Maryland, made great contribution to the life of the Church of England in the colonies and in England also. Commissary Bray was the moving spirit in organizing three missionary societies in England: the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; and, in his old age, the society of Dr. Bray's Associates for ministry to Negro slaves in all the colonies. He also instituted a plan for sending libraries of theological books to parishes in the colonies, an enormous help to clergymen in far-off places.
James Blair served as Commissary in Virginia from his appointment in 1689 until his death in 1743. His greatest work was the establishment and development of the Royal College of William and Mary in 1693. He raised money for its establishment first by asking pledges from all persons in Virginia who were able to give, and then in England where he quickly gained the active interest of Queen Mary and King William. He secured his charter for the College in 1693 and by 1695 the erection of college buildings was well under way. He served as president of the college until his death in 1743. He steered it through its early difficulties; he fought for it against Governor and Council when necessary; and he brought it to its full status as a College with six professors and more than a hundred students in 1729. He lived long enough to welcome Reverend George Whitefield, the first great leader of the evangelical movement, when he came to Williamsburg in 1740, and had the happiness to learn that his College had won the admiring approval of his visitor. Whitefield wrote in his diary an account of what he saw, and ended, "I rejoiced in seeing such a place in America."
Commissary Blair fought steadily and successfully for the rights and privileges of the clergy, and secured real increase in clerical salaries. He fought also for the right of the vestries to elect the rectors of their own parishes, even as he strove whenneed was, to secure the removal of the occasional unworthy clergyman.
The organization of the College of William and Mary in 1693 was indeed the culmination of the plan of the London Company to establish a University in Virginia. The first effort went up in smoke in 1622. There was another effort in the days of Sir William Berkeley after the Restoration, but the time was not then ripe. But the opportunity came again. Already there were several endowed schools in Virginia: The Syms School in Hampton, the Eaton School, also in that parish, the Peasley School in Gloucester County, and others. Many parish clergymen also became noted for the excellency of their schools. So the College which began in 1693 came to head a group of schools which had already spread through the colony.
From its beginning it held to the ideal of having a School of Divinity to train men for the ministry of the Church of England, as well as a school of philosophy or liberal arts as we now describe it, to train men for secular life and leadership in the colonial life. When the College reached its maturity it had a School of Divinity with two professors, and a School of Philosophy with two, in addition to masters in other departments. It had also a foundation which could support eight men studying for the ministry. From that time until the Revolution a steady stream of candidates went from the College to the Bishop of London for ordination. But that is part of the story of the next century. The beginning came in 1693.
The decade 1690-1700 was an era of steady growth in the religious and cultural life of Virginia. New counties were created as population spread further and further up the great rivers; and parishes increased in numbers as the population grew. The first official list of "The parishes and the clergymen in them" which has survived the wreckage of time was the list of 1680, and the next is the list of 1702. These lists show that in 1680 there were forty-eight parishes and thirty-six clergymen incumbents. In the list of 1702 there were fifty parishes and forty clergymen.
The one most notable event in the religious life of both England and Virginia was enactment by Parliament in 1689 of the Edict of Toleration. That act in the first year of the reign of King William and Queen Mary was the first incident in the movement of the English people through their legislature toward freedom of religion. The Act did not repeal the severe laws against dissent adopted in the reign of King Charles, II, but it did remove the penalties. It took the first step along a new roadway into human freedom; and the English-speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic hailed it as such.
As it was a law of England, the act did not come into effect in Virginia until it was included within the code of laws of the colony. That was not done until 1699, although the Council of State had approved the act in principle early in that decade. By that time enforcement of law requiring attendance at church every Sunday had been relaxed for it was impossible of enforcement under the conditions of Virginian life. The law was not repealed until late in the eighteenth century and under it every person wherever possible was required to accept attendance at church as the duty of every citizen. In revisal of the Virginialaw in 1699 it was provided that every person must attend worship in the parish church at least once every two months. The General Assembly at the same time enacted a new proviso whereby dissenters from the Established Church of Virginia, who could qualify if in England as belonging to denominations or groups permitted under the Toleration Act, were free in Virginia from any penalty for non-attendance at the parish Church if they attended their own places of dissenting worship at least once in the two months period.
In 1699 there were three denominations of dissent in Virginia; the Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Quakers. The many thousands of immigrants from Scotland who had belonged to the Established (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland found little to object to in the worship of the Established Church of Virginia, and entered into it without difficulty or objection.
But the Presbyterians from England, as dissenters from the Established Church of that country, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who began their immigration to Virginia after the Restoration, brought with them the determination to organize in America as a Presbyterian denomination. They were especially strong in the counties of Princess Anne and Norfolk; and the first Presbyterian congregation in Virginia was organized in 1692 in that area. It is also of interest to note that the Reverend Francis Makemie, who organized the first presbytery in Philadelphia about 1705 and later the first Synod of the Presbyterian Church in America, lived for many years in Accomac County, Virginia.
There was a Baptist minister in the village of Yorktown during the decade 1690-1700 but little is known of his work, nor is it known whether there were then one or more organized Baptist congregations.
The Quakers were the most widely scattered and in numbers probably the strongest of the three groups. They were especially numerous in Henrico County and the eastern section of Hanover County and on the Nansemond river. The Church AttendanceAct of 1699 and the Toleration Act of the English Parliament applied to them as to other dissenters, but they were still under suspicion as to their loyalty and also because they continued their early custom of open and violent attacks on the religion and worship of the orthodox Churches. They gave bitter offense by their public announcements in time of war between England and France or between England and Spain that they would give aid and furnish such supplies as might be needed to any enemy fleet which should come with hostile intent into the Virginian waters.
While the laws which punished interruption of religious services were still necessary and were enforced, the adoption of the proviso in the Virginian Act of 1699 was a real step forward on the way to the ultimate goal of entire freedom of worship. It made the worship of the dissenters as truly legal as that of the Established Church, and it removed from the dissenters the requirement that they attend the worship of the Anglican Church.
Thomas Story, the noted English Quaker, who wrote and published a journal of his life and work as a Quaker preacher, gives an interesting account of his two prolonged visits to Virginia in 1698/99 and in 1705. In his daily journal for 1705 he comments at every stopping-place, with manifest pleasure, upon the welcome given him and his friends and the freedom of public preaching accorded him wherever he went. He was welcomed and entertained over and again at Anglican homes and he records occasionally the fact that a county sheriff or constable or justice of the county court was present at his preaching. He does not record any instance in which anyone in civil authority in the colony protested against his preaching or attempted to stop him; and the high point of his visit came when the Governor of Virginia, learning of his approach, invited him and his friends to the Governor's mansion, entertained them and gave them fruit to carry with them on their journey toward Philadelphia.
So Virginia came to the end of its first century, having foughtthrough the various adverse conditions which its people found along the way. The colony had come into an era of opportunity and growth with a well established government, a seaborne trade which brought prosperity, and a concept of religion which made room for all forms of the Christian faith that would remain at peace with each other, and as citizens be loyal to their government. As the people approached their first centennial anniversary celebration in 1707 they looked forward with a confidence born of past experience to the new century upon which they were to enter.
In addition to the titles in the following brief list the reader will find many references to official papers, and other important and useful works, in the author'sVirginia's Mother Church, volumes one and two. A great many of the statements herein made are based upon these two volumes.