tled parishes the burden upon each titheable became very heavy. The law required that each minister should receive "in the valuable and current commodityes of the countrey" at least £80, "besides the perquisites and glebe." If the payment were made in tobacco, the valuation was to be at the rate of twelve shillings a hundred pounds.

The law, when it was first passed, must have provided the clergy with a maintenance suited to their calling and their requirements. Unfortunately the Navigation Acts brought about, during the Restoration Period, a sharp decline in the price of tobacco and diminished the value of the ministers' salaries. The 13,333 pounds of leaf which the law allotted them had brought in the market not far from the £80 at which the act had set it, but thirty years later it was worth only half that sum. The clergy complained bitterly of this unfortunate development, and appealed to the Assembly to change the valuation of their tobacco so that it would approximate the true market price. In this they were unsuccessful. In 1696 the Assembly, under pressure from England, increased to 16,000 pounds the amount of tobacco paid each minister, but this by no means restored the income to its former value. In addition to his regular salary each clergyman was entitled to a parsonage and glebe, but the law in this respect was often evaded by the parishes. Some of the clergy received no glebes at all, and those given to others were of little value. It was asserted that "one with another" the glebes were "not worth above forty or fifty shillings per annum."

All in all, the livings furnished the Virginia clergy were most inadequate. Frequently they could not attend properly to their duties because they were harassed by poverty. They could not supply themselves with books. Many of them were compelled to remain single, for women of culture and refinement hesitated to mate with them. In 1692 James Blair represented to William III, probably with some exaggeration, that their condition was miserable in the extreme. "The Ministers' Salaries," he said, "are fallen above one half, and there is no more hope that they can live comfortably upon them, so that many of the better sort who can pay their passage, begin to desert the country."

The plantation system made it impossible for the clergy to conform fully to the liturgy. This was a matter of deep concern to many of the pastors who came to the colony, but they were powerless to remedy the evil. They discovered that rules and ordinances which were well suited to the Church in the mother country could not be enforced in the "wilderness of America." As we have seen, one of the most common breaches of the liturgy was the extensive use of lay readers in both churches and chapels. But the practice was unavoidable. The number of ordained priests was insufficient for the needs of the people, and laymen of "sober life and conversation" had to be employed frequently, or many allowed to go for weeks at a time without public worship. The colonists also violated the liturgy by burying their dead in private cemeteries. The clergy frowned upon the custom, but they found that it was made necessary by the isolation of the plantations. "It is a common thing all over the country," wrote James Blair, "(what thro' want of ministers, what by great distance. . . . ) both to bury at other places than Church yards, & to employ Laicks to read the funeral Service; till our circumstances and Laws are altered, we know not how to redress." More serious still was the necessity of administering the sacraments without the prescribed vestments and without "proper Ornaments and Vessels." In fact, both clergy and laity became lax in observing many things considered of importance by the Anglican Church. None of the Holy Days were observed except Christmas and Good Friday, the Lord's Supper was often administered to unconfirmed persons, marriages were solemnized in private residences.

The government of the Virginia Church was essentially different from that of the body from which it sprang. In the early years of the colony, when the inhabitants were but a few hundred in number, the king had commissioned his governor to take control of ecclesiastical matters. This he felt was all that was necessary, for the appointing of a bishop or the establishment of a hierarchy was not to be thought of for an infant colony. But the governor proved ill-suited to be the head of the Church. His other duties required his full attention, while his political interests at times conflicted with those of the clergy. Moreover,

as a layman he could never become in a real sense the Bishop of Virginia. During most of the seventeenth century the governors seem to have neglected their clerical duties, and left the Church to develop as time and local conditions should determine. This made possible that strange anomaly,-a democratic branch of the Anglican Church.

In Virginia the churches were built almost invariably by the people, and not, as was often the case in England, by wealthy patrons. Moreover, the clergy were paid, as we have seen, by the people by means of local taxation. The people, therefore, through their vestries, claimed a major part in the control of the Church. They were, they argued, the true patrons of the parishes, and as such had the right to select their own ministers. This pretense they made good. Throughout the entire colonial period most of the clergy officiated only as the salaried employees of the vestries. In a few cases, where the ministers showed themselves men of ability and true piety, the vestries presented them to the governors for induction. When this was done they held their places for life. But it is probable that not more than one-tenth of the clergy were thus honored by their parishes. In the meanwhile circumstances had been making the Bishop of London the diocesan of all the colonial Church. At first his duties in his new office seem to have been confined to sending ministers to the plantations. Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, he assumed a more direct control and appointed in several colonies commissaries to represent him and uphold his authority. In Virginia this officer never exercised great power, and by no means superseded the governor as the head of the local Church. He was empowered to hold conventions, make visitations, and supervise the conduct of the clergy. The governor claimed by his commission the power of giving licenses for marriages, probates of wills, and inductions of ministers. As this division of authority resulted in frequent clashes between the governor and the commissary, it brought discredit upon the Church, and was a source of great weakness in its government.

The insufficient salaries and the insecurity of tenure conspired to bring upon the Church another evil. It became a

matter of the greatest difficulty to secure able and pious ministers. It is always with reluctance that men leave their homes to migrate to a distant and strange land, and great advantages must be shown them before they will make the venture. These advantages the Virginia Church could not offer. As a result, it was forced, only too frequently, to be content with men of inferior ability and character. There were, of course, many good and earnest ministers in Virginia. Scores of instances could be cited of men who accepted without complaint the arduous task of upholding religion in the colony, and won the love and respect of their parishioners. But there can be little doubt that the Virginia parson was only too often ill-suited to his holy calling. Of ministers, as of "all other commodities," wrote Sir William Berkeley, with some bitterness, "the worst are sent us." Governor Nicholson declared "that the Clergy were all a Pack of Scandalous fellows." In 1704 the vestry of Varina parish complained that often the Virginia ministers were weak men or worse, "being given to many vices not agreeable to their Coates." Their own commissary testified that there were "enormities among them." In 1697, a certain Nicholas Moreau wrote that the clergy were "of a very ill example." Some of them had been so scandalous in their conduct that they had created a strong prejudice among the people against the clergy as a whole. Matters became so bad that in 1718 the Bishop of London felt it necessary to warn them that "the faults & miscarriages in the life and conversation of some" of them, must be corrected. This admonition accomplished little, and six years later it was declared necessary to take severe action against such vices on the part of the clery as "cursing, swearing, Drunkenness, or fighting." It was seriously proposed to establish a test to determine how far a minister might proceed in his cups before passing the limits of sobriety. "First, let the signs of Drunkenness be proved, such as sitting an hour or longer in the Company when they were a drinking strong drink and in the meantime drinking of healths or otherwise taking his cups as they came round . . . ; striking, challenging, threatening to fight, or laying aside any of his Garments for that purpose; staggering, reeling, vomiting, incoherent, impertinent, obscene or rude talking."

At first sight it seems strange that the people of Virginia should have submitted to conditions such as these; but they were forced to accept ministers of poor character or have none at all. The vestry of Christ Church parish, Lancaster County, declared that it was so hard for them to secure pastors that they were glad to accept any that offered, "let their lives be never so licentious or their qualifications so unfit."

Some parishes were forced for years to remain vacant. And throughout the entire colonial period there never was a time when the supply of ministers was equal to the demand for them. As early as 1611 we find the colonists begging for "godly and earnest" men to fill their pulpits. In 1620 there were only five ministers in the colony. Nine years later Governor Harvey, in a letter addressed to the Privy Council, tried to impress upon the English government the crying need for "able and grave" pastors to attend the spiritual needs of the people. "Do they not either wilfully hide their talents," complained another writer, "or keep themselves at home, for fear of losing a few pleasures? Be not there any among them of Moses and his mind, and of the Apostles, who forsook all to follow Christ?" During the Commonwealth period this want was still so severely felt that especial inducements were offered to ministers by the Assembly to migrate to the colony. In 1661 the king was implored to ask Oxford and Cambridge universities to furnish the Virginia Church with the ministers they so greatly needed. When Lord Culpeper became governor, thirty-four clergymen were ministering to forty-eight parishes, and seventeen years later there were fifty parishes, while the number of pastors was but twenty-two. letter from the vestry of Lawn's Creek parish to Governor Francis Nicholson, written in 1704, throws much light upon the troubles of the people in this matter. "Our condition here in

Virginia is very different from that of England," they said, "for there are always enough in orders there to supply vacancies. Here there has never yet been ministers enough to supply us, neither are there now incumbents in above half our parishes and none unbeneficed to be presented by those that are vacant. Neither can we get them, tho we have earnestly tried to procure them from England."