CHAPTER SEVEN
The Last Decade
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 The law was not repealed until late in the eighteenth century and under it every person wherever possible was required to accept attendance at church as the duty of every citizen.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 Virginia law 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 Attendance Act 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.