The Colonial Church in Virginia; With Biographical Sketches of the First Six Bishops of the Diocese of Virginia And Other Historical Papers together with Brief Biographical Sketches of the Colonial Clergy of Virginia

xxiv, 342, [2] pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Foreword by the Rt. Rev. William Cabell Brown. Introduction by the Rev. G. MacLaren Brydon. Frontispiece had become disbound and has been reglued in place. A parish in colonial Virginia was a unit of both civil and religious authority that covered a set geographical territory. Each Church of England parish in the colony was served by a single minister and governed by a vestry usually composed of local elites. As a religious institution, a parish contained a mother, or central, church, and frequently two or more so-called chapels of ease in outlying areas that the minister served on successive Sundays. As a civil institution, the parish vestry was charged with overseeing a wide range of responsibilities that included social welfare and presenting moral offenders to the courts. The contemporary understanding of parishes and vestries as institutions that deal primarily, if not exclusively, with internal parochial affairs is at odds with the extent of duties associated with the colonial parish. Indeed, according to the historian John Nelson, local government in early Virginia should be understood as ?parish-county? government, these two ?linked institutions sharing, dividing up, and intermingling their interests and responsibilities.? English settlers in Virginia introduced a parish system during the colony?s first few decades. The parish was the layer of government closest to the people, and for many it probably had a greater day-to-day impact on their lives than the county or colony-wide government. Local vestries had the authority to exempt poor people ?from all publique charges except the ministers? & parish duties.? Vestries were formally established by the General Assembly in 1642?1643, although these bodies were likely acting to control church affairs by 1635. The General Assembly, in fact, charged vestries with meeting to lay the annual parish levy in 1641. The parish vestries that developed in Virginia, like their English counterparts, engaged in a variety of civil and religious functions because the colonial church was not merely a religious institution but also the largest and most effective social welfare agency of the period. Virginia?s vestries, however, most closely reflected the ?select vestries? established by Parliament in 1598. A vestry then meant a meeting of all members of the parish to take care of the church property. In 1657?1658 the General Assembly passed a statute charging the leadership of Virginia?s colonial parishes with authority over ?all matters concerning the vestry, their agreements with their ministers, touching the church-wardens, the poore and other things concerninge the parish or parishoners respectively be referred to their owne ordering and disposeing from time to time as they shall think fitt.? One of the vestry?s most important duties was setting the annual parish levy, ?often the largest tax paid? by colonists in Virginia, a charge that paid the minister?s salary and provided for members of the parish poor and for other individuals who could not otherwise care for themselves. Funds expended on the parish poor often accounted for more than 25 to 30 percent of a parish?s budget. Parish leaders could be very creative when it came to aiding sick members of the parish. Vestries also appointed individuals to maintain local roads and provide ferry service over Virginia?s many rivers (although the county courts had largely taken over these tasks by the 1730s); to serve as ?tobacco viewers,? who ensured that the colonists were not planting too much tobacco; and to serve as churchwardens, who presented moral offenders to the county courts. Virginia vestries assumed responsibility for many of these duties until the Church of England was disestablished in 1784, existing vestries dissolved, and groups known as overseers of the poor elected to exercise civil powers of the former vestries, especially caring for the poor. As a division of ecclesiastica.…