Abstract
After 170 years the Anglican Church was not a fully-formed extension of the institution in Virginia nor was it an example of a distinctive American church. Its procedures and practices necessarily bridged the Atlantic; one foot was in England and one in the colony. The ministers were required to be ordained by a prelate of the English, Scottish, or Irish Episcopal Church and licensed by the Bishop of London to serve in the colony. It was placed in a difficult position. On the one hand it was an agent of a one-thousand-year-old legacy of the national church and state and on the other hand it faced an unknown, uncontrollable, and turbulent civil present and future.
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Notes
Richard L. Bushman, The Age of Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992): x. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the phrase ‘to anglicize’ first appeared in use about 1710.
Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York, 1986): 127-28.
James B. Bell, The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607-1783 (London, 2004): 43-57.
Ibid. 189-209. James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans and the American Revolution (Basingstoke, 2008): 195-221.
C. G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book of St. Paul’s Parish, Hanover County, Virginia, 1706-1786 (Richmond, 1940: 569-70; C. G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book of Stratton Major Parish, King and Queen County, Virginia, 1729-1783 (Richmond, 1931): 219-23, 229.
John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 (Chapel Hill, 2001): 35-7.
Alice Granbery Walter, ed., Vestry Book of Elizabeth River Parish, 1749-1761 (New York, 1961): 14; Bell, Imperial Origins of the King’s Church: 128-29; for the text of the oaths see C. G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book and Register of St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent, and James City Counties, Virginia, 1684-1786 (Richmond, 1937): 502-504, and C. G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book of Blisland (Blissland) Parish, New Kent and fames City Counties, Virginia, 1721-1786 (Richmond, 1935): 65.
William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large. Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the year 1619 (Richmond, 1821) 9: 97-8.
Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; in Thirteen Discourses, Preached in North America between the years 1763 and 1775 (London, 1797): 296.
Jonathan Bouchier, ed. Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738-1789. Being the Autobiography of the Revd. Jonathan Boucher, Rector of Annapolis in Maryland and afterwards Vicar of Epsom, Surrey, England (Boston, 1925): 102.
Howard C. Rice, Jr., ed., Travels in North America in 1780, 1781, and 1782 by the Marquis de Chastellaux (Chapel Hill, 1963) II: 442.
William Stevens Perry, ed., Journals of General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, 1785-1835 (Claremont, 1874) I: 416-18.
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer and Sketches of 18th Century America, Albert E. Stone, ed. (New York, 1981): 250-53.
Frederick V. Mills, Sr., Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York, 1978): 182-208.
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© 2013 James B. Bell
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Bell, J.B. (2013). Virginia’s Favoured Anglican Church Faces an Unknown Future, 1776. In: Empire, Religion and Revolution in Early Virginia, 1607–1786. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137327925_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137327925_12
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