In the year 1761 died the Rev. Thomas Dawson, President of the College of William and Mary; he was succeeded by the Rev. William Yates. During the same year died the Rev. Samuel Davies.[505:A] He accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey in 1759, and died on the 4th of February, 1761. In this year was incorporated the town of Staunton, in Augusta County, and in the following year Romney, in the County of Hampshire.
During the tragic scenes of the French and Indian war, the persecutions of the dissenting Presbyterians, whose aid was so necessary in defending the frontiers, were essentially lessened. They were indebted to the confusion and dangers of the times for a freedom in matters of religion which was denied them in a period of tranquillity. Their ministers now enjoyed the privilege of preaching where they pleased, and were no longer restrained by the Virginia intolerant construction of the toleration act. The Baptists began to multiply their number in Virginia, and their new enthusiasm became the object of persecution. But events were about to turn the tide of popular prejudice, and direct it against the clergy of the established church, and to give to the dissenters a stronger foothold and a higher vantage ground. Those ministers of the establishment who had been vainly endeavoring to repress the progress of dissent by ridicule, detraction, and insult, some of them combining with and leading on a mob of "lewd fellows of the baser sort" in these persecuting indignities, now began to find it necessary to defend themselves against the rising storm of public indignation.
FOOTNOTES:
[500:A] The officers were Lieutenant-Colonel George Mercer, Major William Peachy, Captains S. Munford, Thomas Cocke, Hancock Eustace, John Field, John Posey, Thomas Fleming, John Roote, and Samuel Meredith.
[501:A] See in Bland Papers, i. 9, Robert Munford's letter, dated at the Camp near Fort Cumberland. He was father of the translator of Homer, and grandfather to George W. Munford, Esq., Secretary of the Commonwealth.
[505:A] John Rodgers Davies, his third son, was at Princeton College at the same time with Mr. Madison, and leaving it, at the commencement of the revolutionary war, became an officer in the army, and as such enjoyed the esteem of Washington. He is said to have been engaged in the auditor's office at Richmond. He removed to Sussex County, and died there.
