Every Sabbath we preach in the forenoon and catechize in the afternoon. Every Saturday at night I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale's house. Our Church affaires be consulted on by the minister and four of the most religious men. Once every month we have a communion, and once every year a solemn fast.
This method of daily and Sunday services, as the regular rule of the Church of England, was adopted in Virginia as far as colonial conditions would permit. But apart from Jamestown itself, and the schools which came into existence, there would not be many parishes in which daily services would be feasible. The people lived too far apart on their farms. They might drive or walk three or five miles to Church on Sundays, but could not give the time for that on work-days. The same objection worked against having two services on Sunday. So the custom became general of having a single service in every church and chapel every Sunday. The statement made by Rev. Alexander Whitaker, that he "catechized" every Sabbath afternoon, is illustrative of the usual method of instructing young people of the parish in the Church Catechism as preparation for admission to the Holy Communion. Such "catechetical classes" might be held as frequently on Sunday afternoons as the needs of the parish children, both white and Negro, might require: or perhaps sometimes, as frequently as the zeal, or lack of zeal of the incumbent minister might determine. When in 1724 the Bishop of London sent a questionary to every Anglican clergyman incumbent of a parish in America, one of the questions was, "At what times do you Catechize the Youth of your Parish?"
They have builded many pretty villages, faire houses and chapels which are growne good benefices of 120 pounds a yeare besides their own mundall [mundane] industry.
So wrote Captain John Smith a number of years after his return to England. There may have been an excess of imagination in describing new and raw settlements as "faire villages," but the salary which was to be paid to the ministers was a provable fact. Tithes from the culture of the land by the parishioners amounted to as much as £120, and the minister had a glebe of 100 acres from the cultivation of which his tenants and servants through "mundall industry" might greatly increase his income.
The London Company had carried to Virginia and fixed for the whole duration of the colonial period the parish system of the Church of England. Under that system each community became a parish and the people of the parish, as the land-owners of the community, supported the church and paid the salary of the minister by tithes from the produce of the land. There was, however, one change from the custom in England. There the tithes of a parish might produce a salary for the incumbent in any amount from ten pounds to hundreds of pounds per annum. In Virginia the amount of the salary was fixed by the General Assembly as a definite quantity of tobacco. There was also a glebe farm and a residence. Those who came to Virginia brought with them their Bible and their Book of Common Prayer and the Established Church of England became the Established Church of the Colony.
The all-pervading fact to be kept in mind in connection with the development of religious organization in Virginia is that the Church of England itself, during the period from 1600 to the Cromwellian era 1645-1660, was in a turmoil on account of two diverse schools of thought. One school within the Church desired to retain all the ancient forms of creed and worship from past centuries except those which had been perverted under the centuries of Roman Catholic domination. The other school within the Church desired to cast out all liturgical forms and the surplice, and also all power of the bishops. They wished to reduce worship to the forms of Calvinistic theology. There were also many who desired to make the Church broad enough to include both schools. The Calvinistic party was already forming dissenting congregations.
The Brownists, later to become the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, had already been driven out of England; and under King James, who had turned against the Calvinists to support the "high church" party, ecclesiastical courts were being formed to mete out severe punishment to leaders of dissent.
King James had declared he would "harry the dissenters" and force them to conform to the Established Church or be driven from the country. England's answer to that threat was to establish the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire; and the constantly growing power of dissent resulted in civil war, in execution of King Charles I, in the era of the Commonwealth; and in the abolition of Prayer Book worship for fifteen years from every church and chapel in England.
In 1606 when the Virginia Company was organized the Calvinistic party was in power in England, and there were many Calvinists, or Puritans, as they were then called, in the universities and elsewhere. The Virginia Company itself was under the influence of Puritan leaders; so much so, indeed, that this fact was one of the reasons which impelled the King to abolish the Virginia Company. He knew the freedom of self-government which the Company had established in Virginia and he no longer trusted its loyalty to the Monarchy.