From the first settlement in 1607 the policy in Virginia was to let no question arise between high-churchman and Calvinist. The earlier laws required the minister of a parish to question every newcomer as to his religious beliefs, but there is no record of any Protestant dissenter or any Calvinist having been presented for trial before an ecclesiastical court. It is of course known as an historical fact that Sir Edwin Sandys labored long to secure from the King and the Archbishop permission to bring the Pilgrim Fathers from Holland, under the British flag again and establish them as a "hundred" in Virginia. It is of record also that such permission was obtained and that the Pilgrim Fathers set forth for the Chesapeake Bay but were diverted from their course by storms that carried them to a place which they named Plymouth. It is of record furthermore that the Reverend Henry Jacob, who founded the first Independent or Baptist congregation in London, was later forced out and came to Virginia where he found a home and peace until his death.
Reverend Alexander Whitaker, rector of the two adjoining parishes of Henrico and Charles City from 1611 until 1617, was the son of a famous Puritan divine. In a letter discussing conditions in Virginia he said: "I marvaile much—that so few of our English ministers that were so hot against the surplis and subscription come hither where neither are spoken of." Whitaker was rector of two parishes because William Wickham, the minister of one parish, was not of Anglican ordination and could not lawfully celebrate the Holy Communion. After the death of Whitaker the Governor of Virginia requested the London Company to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to authorize Mr. Wickham to celebrate the Sacrament, "there being no one else." Such authorization to a clergyman of Presbyterian ordination could have been given by the Archbishop at that time as it was permitted then by law. Wickham was not the only minister of Presbyterian ordination who served as incumbent of a parish of the Established Church in Virginia. In a report made to London in 1623 it was stated that in Virginia in 1619 "There were three ministers with orders and two without." The "two without" were unquestionably of Presbyterian ordination.
Among the first laws enacted in Virginia was one requiring every minister who came into the colony to take the oath of "conformity" to the Church of England. The law did not include laymen; it was the minister only who was required to take the oath. Later, the laws enacted by the General Assembly required every clergyman coming into the colony to subscribe to the Articles of the Christian Faith according to the Church of England and to be of Anglican ordination. By reason of sheer inability at times to provide sufficient Anglican clergymen for the parishes, clergymen of Presbyterian ordination were permitted to serve in Virginia parishes; and that was true throughout the whole seventeenth century. The last Presbyterian clergyman to hold an Anglican parish in Virginia, Rev. Andrew Jackson of Christ Church Parish, Lancaster County, died in 1710. Throughout the century the law required every citizen to attend the parish church, but there was never an ecclesiastical court in which a layman could be tried, convicted or punished as a dissenter.
CHAPTER THREE
Making Bricks Without Straw
The colony of Virginia, after the protective and guiding influence of the Virginia Company was taken away, found itself in an almost impossible situation so far as religious organization was concerned. The leaders of colonial life realized all the more clearly as time passed that King Charles I, who succeeded his father King James I in 1625, was not the least interested in the religious welfare of the colony. America was entirely outside the bounds of any diocese or province in England, and consequently there was no bishop of a diocese, or archbishop of a province with any personal responsibility for the guidance or help of the parishes which were being organized in the colony. The Church in Virginia was left to itself to live or to die. It believed, according to the teachings of the Church, that bishops were necessary for the ordination of men to the ministry and for the performance of the spiritual rite of confirmation, whereby alone under the law of the Church of England baptized Christians could be admitted to the sacrament of the Holy Communion. A bishop was also necessary for the organization and leadership of a diocese, which was the governing body to which every parish and congregation must belong. But no bishop was ever sent by the Church of England to Virginia or to any other part of America throughout the entire colonial period.
The lack of a bishop left the Anglican Church, which was the Established Church of the whole colony, unable to organize for the enactment of its own laws or the management of its own affairs. There being no diocesan organization the clergymen in charge of parishes had no ecclesiastical authority over them. That fact tended to have the effect of making each incumbent clergyman a virtually free lance with no responsibility to an ecclesiastical superior nor community of fellowship with other clergymen in the colony. This condition continued until near the end of the century.
The General Assembly of Virginia followed the example of the Parliament of England and asserted legislative authority by laws for the temporal government of the Church. It divided the occupied territory of the colony into parishes and it established new parishes as settlement extended steadily to the westward. Because of this fact there was never any section which was not part of a parish, and the usual rule when a new county was to be created was to establish a new parish covering the territory of the proposed county before the county was created. Church buildings might be far apart in new parishes, but no section of Virginia in which English people were settling was without the established forms of religious worship.
The General Assembly enacted laws directing the election of laymen in every parish as the governing body of the parish in temporal affairs. That group was called the "Vestry." It had authority to buy land for churches, churchyards and glebe farms, to erect church buildings and to build glebe-houses as residences for ministers. It was also charged with the care of the poor and the destitute sick, and orphaned children within the parish, with the duty of providing new homes for these children in responsible families. The money to pay for the land, the buildings, the care of the sick and needy, the salary of the minister, and other parish needs was collected from the parishioners through an annual "tithe" of so many pounds of tobacco per poll. The vestry upon occasion also had certain civil duties not within the scope of religious organization.