Abstract
A topic that bridges the chronicle of the transfer and development of the Anglican Church in colonial Virginia is the payment of clergymen’s salaries. The payment of clergy stipends was an issue of regular complaint and debate in provincial Virginia, especially in the 1750s. Unlike their colleagues in England the parsons were vulnerable and without a strong and respected official spokesman to represent their interests, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. Williamsburg’s printer published works that represented the conflicting positions and argued the positions of laymen and parsons. A stalemate occurred on the matter in a province increasingly exposed to popular rhetoric objecting to imperial policies. It represented a deep and open fissure in the colony’s religious establishment.
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Notes
Geoffrey F. A. Best, Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne’s Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commission and the Church of England (Cambridge, 1964): 11-34; Alan Savidge, The Foundation and Early Years of Queen Anne’s Bounty (London, 1955): 1-70.
Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York, 1932): 135. Appendix II.
Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956): 77-8; Clara Ann Bowler, ‘The Litigious Career of William Cotton, Minister’, V.M.H.B. 86 (1978): 282-94.
For a discussion of the use of tithes in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church: From Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956): 77-131.
Ivor Noel Hume, Martin’s Hundred (New York, 1982): 65.
Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition (Philadelphia, 1949): 129-30; Bill J. Leonard, Baptists in America (New York, 2005): 15-16.
Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1960), II: 751-819; Bernhard Knollenberg, Origins of the American Revolution, 1759-1766 (New York, 1960): 53-64; Rhys Isaac, ‘Religion and Authority: Problems of the Anglican Establishment in Virginia in the Era of the Great Awakening and the Parson’s Cause’, W.M.Q., Third series. XXX (1973): 3-36; Bernard Bailyn, Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776 (Cambridge, 1965), I: 293-99; Bell, Imperial Origins of the King’s Church: 77-81.
Richard Bland, A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia, in which the Conduct of the General-Assembly is vindicated, Against the Reflexions contained in a Letter to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, from the Lord Bishop of London (Williamsburg, 1760): iii-iv. Journal of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, 1759-1763, 66:46.
Richard Bland, A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia (Williamsburg, 1760).
John Camm, A Single and Distinct View of the Act, Vulgarly entituled, The Two penny Act: Containing An Account of its beneficial and wholesome Effects in York Hampton Parish (Annapolis, 1763).
Landon Carter, The Rector Detected: Being a Just Defence of the Twopenny Act, Against the Misrepresentation of the Reverend John Camm, Rector of York-Hampton, in his Single and Distinct View. Containing also a plain Confutation of his several Hints, as a Specimen of the Justice and Charity of Colonel Landon Carter (Williamsburg, 1764); John Camm, A Review of the Rector Detected or the Colonel Reconnoitred (Williamsburg, 1764).
[Richard Bland] Colonel Dismounted: or the Rector Vindicated. In a Letter addressed to His Reverence. Containing a Dissertation upon the Constitution of the Colony. By Common Sense (Williamsburg, 1764); John Camm, Critical Remarks on a Letter ascribed to Common Sense containing an attempt to prove that the said Letter is an Imposition on Common Sense. With a Dissertation on Drowsiness, as the Cruel Cause of the Imposition (Williamsburg, 1765).
James B. Bell, The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607-1783 (London, 2004): 189.
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Bell, J.B. (2013). The Peace Disturbed: Salaries and Controversies, 1696–1777. In: Empire, Religion and Revolution in Early Virginia, 1607–1786. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137327925_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137327925_11
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