Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century / The Faith of Our Fathers

by G. MacLaren Brydon

The setting up of a vestry of laymen as temporal head of the Church in a parish or congregation was first developed in Virginia. It was extended later to other colonies as the Anglican Church spread through them all, and it came over into the life of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Great as the value of the vestry has been to the whole Episcopal Church, the vestry in Virginia was of still greater value, for by its extension to other colonies and states it has given one of its most distinctive features to the Church of today.

In England, with the exception of some few parishes formed within the past century or so, no parish has the right to elect its own rector. The rector is usually appointed by some institution or individual vested with that authority which is called "the advowson of a parish."

Moreover, no diocese in the Established Church of England has the power to select its own bishop. The King as temporal head of the Church appoints the bishops of all dioceses, and that power is exercised for the King by his prime minister. And during the colonial period in America the Governor of every colony other than Virginia and Pennsylvania appointed the rector of every Anglican parish and inducted him into office.

In Virginia the vestries of the parishes fought Governor after Governor until they won the right for the vestry itself to choose the minister to serve in its parish. That right has extended throughout the Episcopal Church today and has gone further so that today the laity of the Church have the right to representation in all diocesan conventions and councils, and in the general convention of the Church. Thus the laity have their part in every election of a clergyman to become the bishop of a diocese.

In the seventeenth century the General Assembly also put into effect in Virginia the constitutions and canons of the province of Canterbury "as far as they can be put into effect in this country." The General Assembly thereby made the "doctrine, discipline and worship" of the Anglican Church of England that of the Church in Virginia as far as it could be done without a bishop.

That was as far as the General Assembly could go. Throughout all the seventeenth century the Established Church of Virginia consisted of a group of parishes without connection with each other and without central spiritual authority. There was therefore no actual power of discipline, either of clergymen or laymen.

The situation was made all the more difficult because there was no sure way to secure ministers. When a parish became vacant some layman in the parish would have to write to his business agent in England, or to some friend or relative there and ask that he find a clergyman who would come to Virginia. Parishes, when they became vacant, remained vacant as a rule for a year or more; sometimes very much more. The vestries early adopted the custom of appointing godly laymen as readers whose duty it was to assist the minister by leading the congregation in the responses in the Church service, and in raising tunes for the singing of metrical version of the Psalms. Later, when it was found desirable to erect chapels of ease in populous parishes, enough readers were appointed in every parish to permit one of them to hold morning service each Sunday in each place of worship throughout the parish, while the minister went his usual round of service in each church or chapel upon regular schedule. Except in remote chapels the custom was to have service each Sunday in every church or chapel.

The reader was authorized to conduct morning and evening prayer and to read a printed sermon, or a "homily." He could not celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion. Rather frequently, and especially during the era of the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II, several adjoining parishes would be vacant at the same time; and at one time about the end of the Commonwealth period the statement was made that there were only some ten clergymen in Virginia to serve fifty parishes. Under such circumstances the reader was called upon to perform many duties. He might baptize a dying child, conduct a funeral, or perform a marriage ceremony.

There was also in those early days no way of screening out unworthy men who appeared occasionally as clergymen in the colony; men who perhaps had been forced out of parishes in England because of immorality or drunkenness; and occasionally men with forged credentials. Such men were occasionally appointed to parishes by vestries who had no way of learning their true status; and if the man was thenceforth morally decent and had no great fault except occasional drunkenness, he would be allowed to stay on because of the need of a priest to celebrate the sacraments.

The vestries protected their parishes from unworthy clergymen by the uncanonical appointment of a minister as incumbent of a parish for a year at a time, rather than present him canonically to the Governor of the colony for induction into the rectorship of the parish. Under the law of England, and under the law of the Church of England, no rector could be forced out of a parish after induction except after an ecclesiastical trial by the bishop or his commissary.