However little value they might set on Gospel privileges, these Danyell Tanner’s Creek men meant to have what they paid for, or cease their payments.
A Virginia statue of 1696 declared that each minister of a parish should receive an annual stipend of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. This amounted to about £140, as tobacco sold for many years at two-pence the pound. But, in the year 1755, there was a shortage in the tobacco crop, and the legislature passed an act enabling the inhabitants of the county to discharge their tobacco-debts in money for the present year. The clergy seem to have made no active opposition; but five years later, when a similar law was passed, and tobacco rose sharply in price, they took alarm, and started a violent campaign in defence of their rights. The Reverend John Camm published a sarcastic pamphlet on “The Two Penny Act.” This was answered by Colonel Bland and Colonel Carter in two very plain-spoken documents. Camm again rode a tilt against them in a pamphlet called “The Colonels Dismounted.”
The community began by laughing, but ended by getting angry. Mr. Camm could find no more printers in Virginia, and was obliged to go to Maryland to carry on the war. The contest grew to larger proportions. It crossed the ocean and was laid before the king, who, always glad of an opportunity to repress anything which looked like popular sovereignty, declared in favor of the clergy. Armed thus by royal approbation, the parsons brought their case to trial. The Rev. James Maury brought suit in Hanover County against the collector. The defendants pleaded the law of 1758, but the plaintiff demurred on the ground that that law, never having been confirmed by the king, was null and void. The case was tried, Mr. Lyons arguing for the plaintiff and Mr. Lewis for the defendant. The court sustained the demurrer, and the clergy looked upon their case as won. Lewis was so sure of it that he retired from the cause, telling his clients that there was nothing more to be done in the matter. Nothing remained but for a jury to fix the amount of damages.
In this desperate state of affairs, Patrick Henry, though almost unknown at the bar, was called in, and he agreed to argue the case at the next term. On the first of December, accordingly, he came into the court-room, to find it densely packed with an excited throng of listeners. The bench was filled with clergymen. In the magistrate’s seat sat the young orator’s own father. The occasion might well have tried the nerve of an older and more experienced speaker. Lyons opened the cause for the clergy, with the easy assurance of one who sees his case already won. He told the jury that the law of 1758 had been set aside, and that it only remained for them to enforce the law of 1748 by awarding suitable damages to his clients, whom he exalted to the skies in a eulogy which might have better fitted better men. Lyons sat down, and young Henry rose. Awkwardly and falteringly he began, in painful contrast to the easy address of Lyons. The plaintiffs on the bench looked at each other with smiles of derision. The people, who realized that his cause was theirs, hung their heads; but only for a moment. The young orator, whose timid commencement had caused winks and nods of satisfaction to pass along the bench of the clergy, suddenly changed his whole attitude. All at once he shook off embarrassment, and roused himself like a lion brought to bay. The people at first were cheered, then became intoxicated with his eloquence. The clergy listened to the flood of sarcasm and invective till they could bear no more, and fled from the bench as from a pillory. Henry’s eloquence swept the jury, who returned at once with a verdict of one penny damages for the clergy. The people, wild with delight, seized their hero and carried him out on their shoulders. Henceforward he was a marked man, and for years, Wirt tells us, when the old people wished to praise any one’s eloquence, they would say: “He is almost equal to Patrick when he pled against the parsons.”
With so much hostile feeling toward their clergy, how shall we account for the strong affection felt by the Virginians for their church? I find the explanation in that loyalty to lost causes and that aristocratic conservatism which always marked the Cavalier. These, in spite of the debasement of the clergy, the zeal of the “New Lights,” the allurements of Rome, and the eloquence of Whitefield, Fox, and the Wesleys, long kept the Cavalier Colonies true to the church of their fathers. It was not till the church allied itself with the king against the people in the Revolutionary struggle, that its doom fell.
It was a matter of course that self-interest as well as sentiment should lead the clergy to espouse the cause of England. In a letter, dated 1766, the Rev. John Camm writes from Virginia to a Mrs. McClurg in the mother-country. He begins, as is natural, with what is nearest his heart, namely his own affairs, and requests the lady to use her influence with Mr. Pitt to secure him a Living of one hundred pounds a year. Fearing that his request is too modest: “Observe,” he says, “tho’ a Living of one hundred nett will do, I care not how much larger the Living shall be. If by conversing with the Great, you have learnt their manners, and are unwilling to bestow so considerable a favour on a friend without some way or other finding your account in the transaction, which the unpolished call a bribe, you shall make your own terms with me. I will submit to what you think reasonable, and then, you know, the larger the Living or Post is, the better for both.”
This pious worthy, having thus disposed of the affairs of the church, next deals in the same public spirited manner with the affairs of the colonial politics:
“One of our most active, flaming and applauded sons of liberty, Col. Rich’d Henry Lee, who burnt poor Mercer in effigy, raised a mob on Archy Ritchie, etc., etc., etc., has been lately blown up in the Publick Prints, it is said, by Mr. James Mercer. It appears that Lee, previous to his Patriotism, had made interest to be made Stamp Master himself, from letters it seems now in the possession of Col. Mercer, so that Lee will find it difficult hereafter to deceive anybody into an opinion of his Patriotism.”
Posterity has quite definitely settled the question of the comparative patriotism of Col. Lee and the Rev. John Camm, and only wonders that a shrewd people tolerated that ecclesiastical fraud so long. Peace to his ashes! since he and his fellows have given way to good and sincere men who have purged the church of her disgrace and brought her back to her older and better traditions.
A gentleman of the old school, in cocked hat and knee-breeches, once said to Madison that a man might be a Christian in any church, but a gentleman must belong to the Church of England.