The Qhurch 
 In the Province of North Carolina, 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr., D. D. 
 
 AS READ BEFORE 
 
 THE JOINT CENTENNIAL CONVENTION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Dioceses of North and East Carolina, 
 
 HELD AT ■ 
 
 Tarboro, N. C, May, 1890. 
 
 •■' 
 
»•* 
 
THE CHURCH IN 
 THE PROVINCE OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
 
 BY REV. JOS. BLOUNT CHESHIRE, JR. 
 
 Th e Church owes its first theoretical introdu ction into 
 North Carolin a to the Englishman's characterist ic desire 
 to reproduce English institut ions in every corner of the 
 eart h where he makes for himself a home: its real b egi n- 
 nings came from the christian zeal of a few promin ent 
 colonial Churchmen, co-operating with t he Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospe l , in endea v oring to supply th e 
 scatt ered colonists with the ministrations of their mother 
 Church. 
 
 The name Carolina was applied by the French Hugue- 
 not settlers of Florida in the years 1562 and 1564 to that 
 part of the American continent lying north of the Spanish 
 possessions, in honor of Charles IX. of France. In 1629 
 Charles I. of England granted to his Attorney General, 
 Sir Robert Heath, the territory between 31 ° and 36 
 north latitude, and erected the same into a Province by 
 the name of the Province of Carolina, reviving the old 
 French name, but doubtless with reference to his own. 
 This Province of Carolina was to be held of the King and 
 his successors in Capite by Knight's service, by rendering, 
 besides other things, "one circle of gold formed in the 
 fashion of a crown, of the weight of twenty ounces, with 
 this inscription iugraved upon it: DEUS Coronet Opus 
 Suum, whensoever and as often as it shall happen, that 
 we, our heirs or successors shall enter the said Region." 
 
 
Nothing was done towards the settlement of the country 
 under this Patent of Charles I. but it is interesting as 
 being the formal act whereby the name Carolina was 
 authoritatively affixed by the English Crown to the region 
 lying between Virginia and the Spanish settlements to the 
 southward. 
 
 The first attempt at the actual settlement of the country, 
 after the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh's schemes, so far as 
 we know, was made by a clergyman of the Church. In 
 1653 the Virginia Assembly passed an act for the encour- 
 agement of "Roger Green, Clark," i.e. clergyman, in set- 
 tling the Moratoc or Roanoke river and the south side of 
 Chowan river. Nothing, however, seems to have come of 
 this. 
 
 The permanent settlement of North Carolina is usually 
 reckoned from the date of George Durant's deed for 
 Durant'sNeck in Perquimans County, March, 1661--2. At 
 this time the Governor of Virginia seems to have exercised 
 some sort of authority over the territory, as representing the 
 English crown, but in 1663, and in 1665, Charles II. issued 
 his two Charters to the Lords Proprietors, granting them 
 the Province of Carolina; the limits in the former Charter 
 being identical with those of Sir Robert Heath's Patent 
 of 1629, while the latter extended those limits two degrees 
 on the south, and a half degree on the north, making the 
 bounds of the Province from 29 to 36°3o / north lati- 
 tude, and from the Atlantic Ocean westward to the South 
 Sea. 
 
 Both the Charters of Charles II. expressly provide for a 
 religious establishment, in accordanc e with the e cclesiast i- 
 cal laws of England, and for th e building and endowmen t 
 of Churches, Chapels and Oratories; though they permit 
 the Lords Proprietors to grant liberty of conscience and of 
 worship, upon such terms and under such restrictions as 
 they may think proper, to those persons who could not in 
 their private conscience conform to the Church of England. 
 
In accordance with the provisions of the Charters, the 
 Lords Proprietors in their "proposals" for settlers adver- 
 tised far and wide the advantages of their Colony of Caro- 
 lina on account of the religious liberty to be allowed all its 
 inhabitants, upon condition that they would not interfere 
 with the like liberty of others, and that they should be 
 obedient to the laws of the country, as well ecclesiastical 
 as civil. These proposals were industriously circulated, 
 especially in New England and Barbadoes, and the 
 general promise of religious toleration allowed by the 
 Charters became widely known before the Proprietors pub- 
 lished any scheme of government for their Province. In- 
 deed, the Lords Proprietors seem at one time to have con- 
 templated granting to the people the right of regulating 
 ecclesiastical affairs at their own pleasure. In 1667 their 
 instructions to Governor Stevens seem to go to this length, 
 as they offer to allow the Assembly of the Province to 
 choose such ministers as they may prefer, and pledge the 
 Lords Proprietors not to interfere with them. No such 
 action, however, was taken by the Assembly. 
 
 In j 669 the Lords Proprietors published their famous 
 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. Thes e 
 were never enforced in North Carolina, but they are to be 
 noted as being the first formal establishment of the Chur ch 
 in the C olony in theory. It has frequently been alleged 
 that those clauses of the Constitutions which provide that 
 the Church of England shall be the only Church supported 
 by grants from the public funds ( it "being the only true 
 and orthodox, and the national religion of all the King's 
 dominions"), are contrary to the privileges secured to the 
 people by the Charters. But it will be observed that these 
 Fundamental Constitutions, while giving this support to 
 the Church, are really much more explicit than either of 
 the Charters in securing the fullest religious liberty to all 
 who will subscribe themselves believers in God, even pro- 
 viding for the case of Jews and of the heathen. In provid- 
 
ing for the support of the Church they are but carrying 
 out the plain requirements of the Charters. Locke was 
 one of the most tolerant of men, and his hand is more 
 plainly seen in the provisions concerning religion than in 
 any other part of these "Constitutions;" but he believed 
 in the principle of a public religious establishment, and he 
 incorporated it in the instrument. It is further charac- 
 teristic of Locke that the Fundamental Constitutions deny 
 all civil privileges to atheists. 
 
 Thus in theory we see the Church established in the 
 Province of Carolina. Whether we take the Constitutions 
 of Locke and the Lords Proprietors, or the Charters of 
 Charles II. , to be the fundamental law— in either case the 
 Church was "by la w established" in the Province. Other 
 forms of religion were to be freely tolerated, but th is alone 
 was the true and orthodox Church, and the national re- 
 ligion of all the King's dominions. 
 
 But what of the people during all this time ? They had 
 nothing to do with all this prescribing of rights and duties 
 and liberties and toleration, and they probably cared very 
 little about it. The population in the first instance had 
 come mostly from Virginia and had followed the courses of 
 the creeks and rivers along the north side of Albemarle 
 Sound. Later they crossed over to Bath, and spread up 
 the Roanoke, and began to come into the southerly parts 
 of the Province from New England and Barbadoes. But 
 they were mostly men of small means, intent upon taking 
 up good lands, and careless of all forms of religion— though 
 owning some kind of allegiance to the Church of England, 
 where they had any religious preference. This is contrary 
 to the commonly accepted theory of our histories. They 
 would have us believe that the first Colonists were men of 
 great earnestness of religious feeling, chiefly Quakers and 
 Baptists, who for conscience sake had abandoned their for- 
 mer homes in New England and in Virginia, to escape 
 from the persecution of Puritans and Calvinists in the one 
 
and of Churchmen in the other. Every one of our »State 
 historians accepts this view of onr early settlement and 
 magnifies it. I undertake to say that is absolutely and 
 entirely false; that it not only lacks a preponderance of 
 testimony in its favor but that it is absolutely itithout any 
 contemporaneous evidence whatever. And not only so, 
 but such evidence as we have leads to the conclusion that 
 the great majority of onr first settlers along the north side 
 of Albemarle Sound, up the Roanoke, in Bath and Pamp- 
 lico, and along the mouth of the Cape Fear, were by descent 
 and by preference attached to the Church of their mother 
 country— so far as they had any religious convictions or 
 preferences. The space at command is too limited to al- 
 low of a satisfactory discussion of so difficnlt a question, 
 difficult not in itself, but because it has been so long and 
 so persistently misrepresented. Only a brief summary of 
 the evidence can be given. 
 
 "\j George Durant's settlement was in 1662; William Drum- 
 mond was appointed Governor by Sir William Berkley in 
 1663. By the year 1672 the number of the colonists had 
 very considerably increased on the streams flowing into the 
 north side of Albemarle Sound and on both sides of the 
 Chowan river; but the population was almost exclusively 
 confined to these localities. In the Spring of 1672 William 
 Edmundson, the first Quaker preacher who ever came to 
 North Carolina, made a dangerous and toilsome journey on 
 foot from the Virginia settlements to visit a family of 
 Quakers living on Perquimans river. They had removed 
 to North Carolina from New England in 1665. When 
 upon a Sunday morning in the end of March William Ed- 
 mundson appeared at their house, and they found that he 
 and his two companions were Quakers— or, in their 
 language, Friends, they were so overcome that they wept 
 for joy "not having seen a Friend for seven years be- 
 fore." They soon called together their neighbors, who 
 by Edmundson' s own testimony were utterly ignorant of 
 
his religious methods, and this Quaker preacher con- 
 ducted the first public religious service in Albemarle. 
 The next day he conducted another meeting a few miles 
 off across the Perquimans river, and Tuesday he and his 
 companions set out upon their return to Virginia, v Ed- 
 mundson made a number of converts at these two meetings, 
 but his journal makes it plain that Henry Phillips and his 
 family were the only Quakers whom he found in the set- 
 tlements. 
 
 In November of the same year George Fox also visited 
 the Colony of Albemarle. Instead of breaking through the 
 swamps and forests by a direct journey on foot to the mid- 
 dle of the settlements, as Edmundson had done, he traveled 
 from Nansemoud in Virginia by way of Sommertown to 
 "Bonner's Creek," i.e. Bennett's Creek, on horseback ; and 
 leaving their horses there, he and his companions took a 
 canoe and came in by way of the Chowan river. He held 
 a meeting at Hugh Smith's on the Chowan (which he calls 
 "Macocomoeock"), but he tells us in his journal that 
 there were "no Friends inhabiting this part of the country." 
 When he reached the region of Edmundson' s ministrations 
 he met with a very favorable reception, and found evidences 
 of Edmundson' s preaching in one or more persons who 
 had been indoctrinated with Quaker principles thereby. 
 Fox made a permanent impression upon the people along 
 the north side of Albemarle Sound, and from this time we 
 date the Quaker "meetings" in the region of Perquimans 
 and Pasquotank. But it is plain from the journals of 
 these two Quaker preachers, the first who visited this 
 region, that they found none of their brethren in Albemarle 
 save the single family of Phillips on Perquimans river. 
 Fox testifies in positive and unequivocal language that 
 there were none in the western section on Chowan river; 
 and his closing words with reference to this visit are con- 
 clusive as to the general condition of the whole Colony be- 
 fore his coming: "Having visited the north part of Caro- 
 
9 
 
 lina, and made a little entrance for the truth among the 
 people there, we began to return again toward Virginia." 
 
 These journals are indirectly of almost equal weight in 
 proving that the Colonists were not Baptists, as has some- 
 times been alleged. The fact that Fox and Edmnndson 
 met with no kind of religions worship or institutions 
 among the people, the admitted fact that for ten years after 
 the settlement of the country there was no public worship 
 whatever, shows that the inhabitants were not religions 
 refugees of an} - kind. Men who go out into the wilderness 
 for freedom of religion are men who care enough about 
 their religion to give public expression to it after they 
 have gained the freedom which they sought. If the men 
 who left Virginia and New England to come to Albemarle 
 professed to be Baptists and Quakers, and pretended to be 
 in search of liberty of conscience and of worship, — "free- 
 dom to worship God,"— we can have but little respect for 
 their sincerity, since in their new homes the)' neglected 
 the public worship of God altogether for so many years. 
 
 But we have other most weighty testimony directly in 
 point, and in part contemporary. Henderson Walker 
 came into the Colony about 1679. He a ^ one time or 
 another held nearly all the most important offices in the 
 government, dying in the office of Governor in 1704. He 
 was one of the most admirable men who ever administered 
 the affairs of Albemarle. He had been brought into per- 
 sonal contact and intercourse with the men associated with 
 Duraut in the settlement of 1662, and had made minute 
 official investigations into the circumstances of that settle- 
 ment. He had no motive to tempt him to misrepresent 
 the facts, and his character is too high to allow any sus- 
 picion of untruthfulness to attach to his testimony. And 
 though his testimony is direct, it is given incidentally. It 
 was a matter of no concern to him what might have been 
 the religious belief of the first settlers. Writing to the 
 Bishop of London in 1703, and describing the spiritual 
 
IO 
 
 destitution of the people, he says, ' 'George Fox, some years 
 ago, came into these parts, and by strange infatuations 
 did infuse the Quakers' principles into some small number 
 of the people; who did and hath continued to grow ever 
 since very numerous by reason of their yearly sending in 
 of men to encourage and exhort them to their wicked 
 principles. ' ' The first two missionaries sent to North Caro- 
 lina by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, for 
 permanent work, were the Rev. Win. Gordon and the Rev. 
 James Adams. They both test ify_tha t the only body __Qf 
 dissenters in the Colony were the Quakers. There were 
 none of these in Chowan, nor in Curratuck, and apparently 
 none south of the Sound in Pamplico. They were a 
 strong minority in Pasquotank, and possibly a majority in 
 Perquimans. Both these ministers met with a good deal 
 of opposition from the Quakers, and they write fully and 
 freely upon the subject. It is perfectly certain from their 
 letters that there were no Baptists at all in the Colony, no 
 Quakers to speak of outside of the two counties named, 
 and that the few Presbyterians scattered about among the 
 people willingly accepted the ministrations of the mission- 
 aries, and brought their children to be baptized into the 
 Church. The claim that the Quakers had been the 
 original settlers appears for the first time in Mr. Gordon's 
 report to the Society May 13th, 1709. Mr. Gordon says 
 he heard of such a "pretence" on their part; "but this," 
 he says, "(according to the best accounts I could get) 
 seems false in fact,— that religion being scarce heard of 
 there till some years after the settlement; it is true some of 
 the most ancient inhabitants, after George Fox went over, 
 did turn Quakers." Here is both the statement of the 
 fact and the explanation of the Quakers' claim. They could 
 truly claim that some of the first settlers were Quakers, 
 but they had become Quakers after their settlement in 
 Albemarle. Even here, however, there is no suggestion 
 that they had come as religious refugees. 
 
1 1 
 
 All the early authorities go to show that the first settlers 
 were very much the same class of men as those who on 
 our frontiers are to-day the pioneers of civilization; men of 
 small means, of restless spirit, of immense courage and 
 energy and independence; but careless in regard to the 
 outward observances of religion. They were mostly of 
 English blood, and by descent and by baptism members 
 of the Church of England, but ignorant of her principles 
 and indifferent to her claims, though accustomed to profess 
 a certain kind of allegiance to her worship and ministry. 
 Both the charters of King Charles provided for the estab- 
 lishment of the Chnrch ; the Fundamental Constitutions, 
 published in 1669, formally enacted that the Church of the 
 mother country should be the Church of Carolina. This 
 was known and recognized by all; but they were in no 
 hurry to lay taxes for the Church's support. They had 
 gotten along pretty well so far; meanwhile there were the 
 Quaker meetings, the pious could go to them. This was 
 the condition of things at the end of the 17th century. 
 With the beginning of the 18th there is a faint stir of life. 
 
 Un der Go d the Church in America owes more to the 
 Rev. Thomas Bray than to any other one man who ever 
 
 lived. He foun ded th e Society fo r P romotin g Christian 
 
 1 » ; — ■ — •. 
 
 Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of tljg 
 Gos pel in Foreign Parts: he established public librari es 
 throughout all the American Colonies; he was instrumen - 
 tal in supplying schools and teachers for Indians and 
 negroes as well as for the whites: and he came over him - 
 s elf and labored for the upbuilding of the ehnrch.^as com - 
 missary of the Bishop of London in Maryland. He seems 
 to have proposed visiting Albemarle, for under date of 
 December 20th, 1699, the Lords Proprietors wrote to the 
 Governor and Council concerning "the Reverend Doctor 
 Bray, a learned, pious, and charitable man, coming into 
 America Suffragan and Commissioner to the Bishop of 
 London, your Diocesan, and designing to give you a 
 

 12 
 
 visit." They are directed to entertain him, and to charge 
 the cost to the public account. He did not make the pur- 
 posed visit to Albemarle, but he sent a number of tracts 
 and catechisms for popular distribution, and a little later 
 he sent a clergyman, one Daniel Brett, and ^ioo worth 
 of books for a public library to be kept at Bath. We 
 know nothing of Mr. Brett, but that he proved to be an 
 unworthy man who brought great grief and shame to the 
 friends of the Church. After about six mouths service he 
 disappears from our view. 
 
 But t he incorporation of the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel and the mission of Dr. Bray stirred up t he - 
 friends of the Church in Albemarle, and gave them hop es 
 of seeing the Church at last set up in this new Colony . 
 In November, 1701, the Assembly passed an Act constitut - 
 ing each of the four precincts in Albemarle, i.e. Chowan , 
 Perquimans, Pasquotank and Curratuck, and also one 
 precinct, Painplico, in Bath County, parishes, and appoint - 
 ing a select vestry in each. The vestry were emp owere d 
 to lay a tax of not more than five shillings per poll t o 
 buil d churches, buy glebes, employ ministers, etc. ; th e 
 minister's salary was fixed at yC^o t>cr annum in comm o- 
 dities of the country, equivalent to about £\d sterlin g. 
 It may be interesting to see the names of the Chowan 
 vestry appointed by this act of 1701. They were the Hon. 
 Henderson Walker, Col. Thomas Pollock, William Duck- 
 enfield, Esq., Mr. Nicholas Crisp, Mr. Edward Smithwick, 
 Mr. John Blount, Mr. Nathaniel- Chevin, Mr. William 
 Banbury, Col. William Wilkinson, Capt. Thomas I/uten, 
 and Capt. Thomas Blount. A church was built near the 
 site of the present town of Edenton, and another was be- 
 gun in Perquimans, but not finished. 
 
 I11 1704 the Rev. Tohn Blair was sent out by the Society , 
 upon funds supplied by Lord Weymouth, that he migh t 
 see what could be done for the Church. _He remained 
 only a few months, and returned with a rather discouraging 
 
13 
 
 account of the pro spect. He reported that it was useless 
 to expect the people to provide a sufficient support for the 
 ministers who were needed. He had been by the Governor 
 appointed to take charge of the parish of Chowan, but 
 upon leaving for England, he requested the vestry to ex- 
 pend the salary due him in charity to the poor. 
 
 In 1708 the Rev. William Gordon and the Rev. Tames 
 Adams were sent out by the Society as permanent mission - 
 aries, with an annual stipend from the Socie ty. They 
 were put in charge of the four parishes of Albemarle ; 
 Chowan and Perquimans being assigned to Mr. Go rdon, 
 and Pasquotank and Curratuek to Mr. Adams . They 
 were both, as was also Mr. Blair, most exemplary men and 
 faithful ministers. Their labors are sufficiently described 
 in their letters, which may be read in the second volume of 
 Dr. Hawks's History of North Carolina. Mr. Gordon, 
 however, had remained but a few 7 months, when he felt 
 obliged to return to England. Mr. Adams labored most 
 faithfully for nearly three years, and died towards the end 
 of the year of 17 10, in consequence of the hardships and 
 trials which he had so faithfully borne. 
 
 The Act of 1 70 1, and the select vestries ap p ointed b yjt, 
 continued until the Act of March 12th, 1710— 11, whic h 
 appointed new vestries in all the parishes, and which 
 marks a new period in our ecclesiastical affairs. An act 
 had been passed in 1708 somewhat modifying that of 1701, 
 but not making any essential change, nor appointing new 
 vestries, though it somewhat enlarged the powers of t he 
 vestrv in employing and dismissing a minister . But there 
 was no important change in the ecclesiastical law during 
 the period from 1701 to 17 11. It is necessary to bear this 
 in mind. In 1704 a most unjust "Church Act" was 
 passed in South Carolina by the contrivance of Sir 
 Nathaniel Johnston. Though it professed to be highly 
 advantageous to the Church, it was really a political 
 measure. It was bitterly opposed by the only clergyman 
 
H 
 
 in South Carolina; and the Society for the Prop a gation o f 
 the Gospel held a special meeting in London upon hearing 
 of it, and resolved to send no more missionaries to Sout h 
 Carolina until it had been repealed,. Upon an appeal from 
 South Carolina, the House of Lords declared it void, as 
 being against the Charters; and proceedings were threaten- 
 ed, and even begun, for declaring that the Lords Proprie- 
 tors had forfeited their franchise. 
 
 Just at this juncture Henderson Walker died, in May, 
 1704, and Sir Nathaniel Johnston sent from South Caro- 
 lina Robert Daniel, a politician of rather doubtful antece- 
 dents, to succeed Walker as deputy Governor. It hap- 
 pened that at the beginning of Gov. Daniel's administra- 
 tion the Act of Parliament, passed in the first year of 
 Queen Anne, imposing the oaths of allegiance to the new 
 sovereign, was officially transmitted to the Governor of 
 North Carolina. Daniel tendered the oaths to the mem- 
 bers of the Council and of the Assembly. The Quakers 
 being unable to swear in the usual form, were thereby de- 
 prived of their places, and at once began a most bitter 
 attack upon Daniel, sending an agent to England to 
 represent their interests. For several years the govern- 
 ment of Albemarle was a scene of unceasing contention 
 and disorder. The Quakers, in order to have a handle by 
 which to move the popular mind, took up their old oppo- 
 sition to the Vestry Act of 1701, and in Perquimans and 
 Pasquotank created much feeling against the Church. On 
 this account our historians have confounded our troubles 
 in 1704 with those of the same date in South Carolina; 
 and it has been asserted, and repeated from one to another, 
 that Gov. Daniel had been sent by Sir Nathaniel Johnston 
 for the purpose of effecting in the northern Colony the 
 ecclesiastical arrangements just carried out in the southern; 
 and that a like Act for excluding dissenters from all places 
 of trust or of profit in the Colony was passed by our As- 
 sembly of 1704. Such a confounding of the two govern- 
 
*5 
 
 ments was perhaps natural fifty or seventy-five years ago, 
 but is inexcusable now. "The Colonial Records of North 
 Carolina," published by Col. Win. L. Saunders, show in- 
 directly, but still sufficiently, that there never was any 
 such legislation in North Carolina; and there is contem- 
 porary evidence that Gov. Daniel was extremely indifferent 
 to the interests of the Church, The troubles of 1704 in 
 North Carolina were of a political character. They arose 
 in the first place out of the exclusion of the Quaker mem- 
 bers of the Council and of the Assembly, by the imposition 
 of the oaths of allegiance, which were wholly political in 
 their origin and intention. Being thus forced into opposi- 
 tion to the administration, the Quakers revived their old 
 complaints against the Vestry Act of 1701, and strove to 
 make it appear that they were fighting the battle of the 
 people against ecclesiastical oppression. But that this was 
 not the real point at issue is proved by the fact that some 
 of the strongest and most zealous Churchmen, especially 
 Edward Moseley, were leaders against the party represented 
 successively by Govs. Daniel, Glover, and Hyde. In truth 
 the history of this period is exceedingly obscure; and it is 
 probable that whatever may have been the political princi- 
 ples or interests involved in its struggles, they soon became 
 inextricably mingled with local and personal prejudices 
 and passions, so that it is impossible for us now to disen- 
 tangle their confused threads. 
 
 It is in the midst of these sad disturbances that we get 
 our first account of the religious conditions of the people 
 of the new government. The letters and reports of the 
 Revs. Messrs. Blair, Gordon, and Adams set it forth with 
 sufficient fullness. There was no organized religious dis- 
 sent in the Colony except the Quakers, who were confined 
 to the two precincts of Perquimans and Pasquotank. Mr. 
 Gordon reckoned them as one-tenth of the whole popula- 
 tion; Mr. Adams, as perhaps a seventh. It is likely that 
 both these estimates apply only to Albemarle, leaving out 
 
[6 
 
 Bath, where there were no Quakers to speak of. A few 
 Presbyterians were in Pasquotank, bub-they all conformed 
 to the Church under the godly ministry of Mr. Adams. 
 A little Colony of Huguenots from Virginia had recently 
 settled in Bath County; these also conformed willingly to 
 the Church, as the Huguenots in America have usually 
 done. The rest of the population on both sides of Albe- 
 marle Sound and along the Pamplico were nominally 
 churchmen, though, as has already been said, they were 
 for the most part ignorant of church principles, and care- 
 less of religious obligations. Yet, with all their ignorance 
 and carelessness there was never a time from 1701 to 1776 
 when the people of North Carolina did not persist in assert- 
 ing through their legislative assemblies that the Church of 
 the mother country was the Church of the Province. 
 
 It may be said in reply, that this was not the Act of the 
 people of North Carolina, but only of a few individuals; 
 that the Act of 1701 was due to Henderson Walker, the 
 Act of 1708 to William Glover; and that the subsequent 
 legislation of the same character was due to the exertions 
 of Swanu, of Pollock, of Moseley, or of other particular 
 men. But these men were North Carolinians, and the 
 very best of North Carolinians. What they did was but 
 the expression of the highest and best feeling and thought 
 of the Colony. They exerted only such influence as such 
 men should exert, and always will exert, in the com- 
 munities of which they form a part. Certainly the church- 
 men of that day compare favorably with their opponents, 
 Carey, Porter, Lowe, ct id omne genus. Why did such 
 men insist upon the establishment and support of the 
 Church by the State ? We can see now that their system 
 was a false one, and that in the end the supposed state 
 support was really the ruin of the Church's cause. But 
 to them the Church was an essential part of a well ordered 
 commonwealth. In the midst of a half-reclaimed wilder- 
 ness, and under innumerable difficulties and perplexities 
 
57 
 
 and discouragements, they were endeavoring to reproduc e 
 English civilization and English institutions upon the 
 shores of America. They remembered the part so lately 
 taken by the Church in delivering England from the 
 tyranny of the Stuarts and from the superstition of Rome; 
 they appreciated her wide intellectual and spiritual liberty; 
 they were proud of her great scholars and divines. They 
 felt that the Church was best fitted to cultivate and to 
 develop the rude population which was growing up in 
 these western wilds, and at that same time to keep them 
 close to the best memories and traditions of their race. 
 The leading men in North Carolina at that day had suf- 
 ficient intelligence and taste to be repelled by the ignorance 
 and narrowness which to a very great extent characterized 
 the dissenters of the Colony; while, being themselves 
 active politicians, it is but too likely that they lacked that 
 impartial and discriminating spirit and that generous 
 religious sympathy, which would have enabled them to 
 recognize under its forbidding exterior the piety and godli- 
 ness which animated many an ignorant Quaker, who 
 seemed to them only a contentious opposer of truth and 
 common sense. While the leaders must be supposed to 
 have taken some such view of the situation, the mass of 
 the people accepted the establishment of the Church as 
 being part of the necessary machinery of civilization. 
 They were not forward to put the laws in operation, but it 
 was well to have at least some nominal religion for their 
 country. 
 
 Thus the ecclesiastical establishment was not only in 
 accordance with the fundamental law as set forth on the 
 two Charters; it also expressed the will of the people of the 
 infant commonwealth. But after all, nothing could have 
 been more disadvantageous to the Church in the end. 
 This legal establishment exasperated the opposition of dis- 
 senters, and gave them a handle against the Church, while 
 the pretended support was altogether illusory- The parish 
 
58 
 
 revenues provided by law were never adequate to the sup- 
 port of the minister or to the building of churches. 
 Private liberality always had to maintain the one and to 
 build the other. For example, it was only in the parish 
 of St. Paul's, Chowan, that the services of the Church 
 seem to have been kept up with anything like regularity 
 during the first part of the last century ; and from the best 
 data attainable it appears that the whole sum paid by that 
 parish to its ministers for the first ten years, from 1701 to 
 171 1, was only about fifty-five pounds, or possibly less, in 
 the commodities of the country, equivalent to not more 
 than twenty-five pounds sterling. An establishment 
 which practically met the wants of nine-tenths, or at least 
 six-sevenths of the people, could hardly be called very un- 
 reasonable or oppressive, upon the accepted principles of 
 those days. Pr om a purely selfish point of view the money 
 brought into the Colony by the missionarie s (during this 
 first period of ten years it must have been between ^300 
 and ^400 sterling), the advantag e of their c haracter and 
 intelligence, upon the_new settlements a nd the ignora n t 
 people, the benefit to the you ng of the schools here an d 
 there established by their ef forts and maintained asjgartfif 
 their work, and the books circulated among the peo ple, 
 were a very large return for the pitiful sums paid to n the 
 missionaries b y the people . 
 
 The year 171 1 was a notable, though not a happy one 
 for the Province of North Carolina. The new Governor, 
 Edward Hyde, had arrived towards the close of the preced- 
 ing year, and in March 1 710— 11 the Assembly met. 
 Having for years suffered from the uncertainties of the 
 Proprietary rule, with its deputy governors holding under 
 the Governor of the South Carolina, the Assembly, iipon 
 meeting under a Governor appointed for this Province 
 with no dependence upon the Governor or government to 
 the southward, passed an act ignoring the Charters, and 
 asserting that this Province was annexed to, and a member 
 
59 
 
 of, the Crown of England. They claimed their rights as 
 British subjects, and asserted that the constitution and 
 laws of England were the law of the Province, so far as 
 the same were "compatible with our way of living and 
 trade." The act goes on to provide that the English 
 laws for the establishment of the Church and for the tolera- 
 tion of Protestant Dissenters shall be in force in North 
 Carolina. This is the first enactment of our local As- 
 sembly ascertaining and declaring the position of dissenters 
 in the Province. The Charters had merely permitted the 
 Lords Proprietors to grant freedom of religion under such 
 restrictions as they might see fit. The Fundamental Con- 
 stitutions had contained specific regulations for carrying 
 this permission into effect; but the Fundamental Constitu- 
 tions had themselves never been put into effect in the 
 Province of North Carolina. This Act of 17 11 therefore 
 was the first law upon the subject. It put dissenters upo n 
 the same fo oting as dissenters in England, and settled the 
 question for the rest of our Provincial period. 
 
 The law referred to— -commonly known as the Act o f 
 Toleration — is I. William and Mary St. 1. c. 18. It is en- 
 titled An i\ct "for exempting their majesties' protestant 
 subjects, dissenting from the Church of England, from the 
 penalties of certain laws. " It does not profess to be an 
 act for granting freedom of religion or of worship in 
 general, but only to certain classes. It was framed ex - 
 pressly to exclude Romanists ^arrd Unitarians . But as 
 there were no Papists or Unitarians in the Province, it 
 practically covered the case of all dissenters in North 
 Carolina, and it had been drawn for the very purpose of 
 meeting the case of the classes to which they belonged. 
 The terms of the Act were, in brief, that all penalties im- 
 posed for non-conformity should be remitted in the case 
 of Protestant Dissenters who did not deny the doctrine of 
 the Trinity, upon their taking the oaths of allegiance and 
 the test oath (or affirming to the same, if Quakers); that 
 
6o 
 
 their places of worship should be registered in the Court of 
 the Bishop, the Arch-Deacon, or the County Sessions; and 
 that the doors of their places of meeting should be unbolt- 
 ed during their time of worship or other assembly. In 
 the case of their ministers, besides the oaths before 
 mentioned, they were to subscribe the Articles, with a 
 reservation as to those which related to ecclesiastical 
 government and infant baptism. This latter provision 
 was aimed against Romanists and Unitarians, as it was 
 understood that the doctrinal statements of the Articles were 
 in accordance with the belief of the great body of English 
 Protestants. 
 
 Thus the laws affecting dissenters continued until the 
 Revolution. It is probable that in very few cases were 
 dissenting ministers required to take the oaths or to register 
 the places of religious worship in the County Court, though 
 it was sometimes done. The records of the County Court 
 of Edgecombe contain an entry which illustrates this point, 
 and shows the practical application of the law. During 
 the September term of the County Court for the year 
 1761, on Thursday of Court, before Aquila Sugg, William 
 Haywood, Duncan Eamon, and Joseph Howell, the Justices 
 holding said Court, ' 'Johnathan Thomas, a Non-conforming 
 Preacher, produced an Ordination Writing signed by 
 George Graham, and John Moore, the Pastures of the 
 Baptists ordaining him to [go] forth and preach the Gospel 
 according to the Tenets of that Church, and he thereupon 
 took the Oaths of Allegiance and subscribed the Test, ap- 
 pointed for that Purpose." These oaths and test were 
 also required of all civil officers, and of ministers of the 
 Church at the time of their ordination. So far as they 
 had any religious significance they were directed against 
 the Roman Church, and were not objected to by Protestant 
 Dissenters. 
 
 Only one case has come to notice where it has been 
 charged that there was any attempt to make use of this 
 
6i 
 
 Act of Toleration to harass the dissenters in the Province. 
 In 1740— June term— a number of Baptists applied to the 
 County Court of Craven County for permission to build a 
 chapel. At the same time affidavits were made charging 
 them with sundry misdemeanors. The Court took their 
 recognizances to appear at the September term, and post- 
 poned their petition to the same time. At that term, 
 nothing appearing against them, their petition was granted, 
 and they took the oaths, subscribed the test, and assented 
 to the XXXIX Articles with certain reservations. It does 
 not appear that any wrong was done to any one in these 
 proceedings, though the Court certainly exceeded their 
 powers, when they undertook to examine these persons 
 upon the Articles. It seems likely that the misdemeanors 
 charged against the petitioners had reference only to some 
 irregularity in connection with their public worship; and 
 the Court, being convinced of this, very properly passed 
 over the matter, and granted the license prayed for upon 
 their compliance with the terms of the Act of Toleration. * 
 
 After this digression we turn again to the year 1711. 
 The Colony had lately been considerably increased by 
 the settlements made by the French, Swiss, and German 
 Protestants at Newbern, under Baron DeGraffenreid. 
 These, though of Calvinistic faith, signified their desire to 
 be included within the established Church, and took meas- 
 ures to have ministers ordained for them by the Bishop of 
 London, and also to introduce the Book of Common Prayer 
 in their own language. 
 
 In this year, or at the end of the preceding year, the Rev . 
 John Urmstone arrived in Albemarle and took up his 
 residence in Chowan precinct.^ 
 
 *The statement sometimes seen as a wandering paragraph in the news- 
 papers, that these persons, or some others in a like case, were imprisoned 
 or otherwise punished because they were Baptists, is absurd upon its 
 face. It would have been utterly illegal, and would have subjected the 
 perpetrators to heavy penalties by way of damages. 
 
62 
 
 Though Gov. Hyde met with some opposition at first, 
 it soon disappeared, and all seemed, to promise a happy 
 administration. At the Assembly in March, Good Friday 
 was set apart as a public fast day, and Mr. Urmstone 
 preached before them, and administered the Holy Com- 
 munion. The Vestry Act passed was probably not sub- 
 stantially different from the one previously in force, except 
 that it left out the provision concerning the annual hiring 
 of the minister, and abridged the power of dismissal. 
 But on the other hand it did not give the minister a seat in 
 the vestry, at which Urmstone made bitter complaint. 
 He gives a most unfavorable account of a meeting of the 
 vestry of some parish which he does not name. He is not 
 worthy of credit where he had any interest involved, and 
 his account is inconsistent with the character of at least 
 some of the members of the vestry. In truth Urmstone is 
 the most disgraceful character in the history of the Church 
 in America. He was scurrillous, profane, intemperate, and 
 mendacious. He did more harm to the cause of th e 
 C hurch in North Carolina than any man who has ever 
 figured in our history, and it is utterly incredible that h e 
 should have been allowed for ten years to blast the pros - 
 pects of the Church in the Province by his presence. Yet 
 so it was. His letters are a tissue of abuse, vulgarity, and 
 falsehood— -though not lacking in a certain coarse humor, 
 and considerable keenness of observation. His appearance 
 upon the stage of action is one of the events which mark 
 and which darken the records of 171 1. 
 
 Before Gov. Hyde had fairly gotten into the adminis- 
 tration of his government after the flight of Carey, came 
 the terrible Indian outbreak and massacre of September 
 22nd. We can hardly realize the horror and hopelessness 
 of the situation when from the Pamplico to the new settle- 
 ments on the Neuse all seemed swept away in blood in one 
 awful night. Reading the meagre accounts which have 
 come down to us it seems amazing that there should have 
 
*3 
 
 been anything saved from the wreck. The whole country 
 for weeks after seems to have been utterly unprotected, and 
 at the mercy of the merciless savages. 
 
 For a year or two it would have been impossible for the 
 most diligent missionaries to have accomplished anything. 
 The Rev. Giles Rainsford, sent by the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel, arrived in Albemarle in May , 
 17 1 2, and was kindly received by the new Governor, an d 
 other of the principal inhabitants. He and Mr. Urmstone 
 entered into an agreement whereby Mr. Rainsford was to 
 supply the country south and west of Albemarle Sound 
 and the Chowan river, while Mr. Urmstone was to confine 
 himself to the region north and east of the same waters. 
 This agreement, however, was not long observed by Mr. 
 Rainsford. He very soon removed from the south shore 
 to the upper part of Chowan, and thence, after a few 
 months to Virginia, where he took a cure from Lady Day 
 to Michaelmas 1713. He may have officiated within the 
 bounds of Albemarle after this time, and he seems to have 
 interested himself a good deal in the remains of the 
 Chowan and other Indian tribes living on the frontier 
 between the two governments, but he returned to England 
 in 1 7 16, and we hear no more of him. 
 
 Gov. Eden took the oath of office in May, 17 14. The 
 second session of the Assembly after the beginning of his 
 administration put forth in November, 1715, a revision of 
 the Laws of the Province, and among others a new and 
 enlarged Vestry Act. It was probably only a re-enactment 
 of the laws on the same subject passed in 1701, 1708, and 
 17 1 1, in its essential features, but it increased the number 
 of parishes from five to nine, and allowed the vestry to fix 
 the salary of the minister, at any sum not less than fifty 
 pounds in the currency of the Province. An act was also 
 passed for the suppression of vice and profaneness, and the 
 
6 4 
 
 better observance of the Lords' Day, January 30th, May 
 29th, and September 22nd. * 
 
 The Act of 1715 continued in force, new parishes being 
 from time to time erected by the Assembly, until 1741. 
 The provision thereby made for the Clergy was meagre 
 enough, though liberal, considering the condition of the 
 country. There was, however, little disposition on the 
 part of the vestries to put the law into operation; and 
 there were no clergymen to do the service required. 
 
 In October, 1718, Commissary Johnston of South Caip - 
 jina. by the direction of the Society for the Propagation o f 
 the Gospel, sent the Rev. E b enezer Taylor to Albemarle . 
 Mr. Taylor spent his first year upon the south-west shore 
 of Chowan, living with Mr. Duckenfield, and taking great 
 pains to instruct his negro and Indian slaves, several of 
 whom he baptized. He was stopped in this good work by 
 a popular prejudice, which shows itself again and again in 
 Colonial days, that the slave who was baptized was thereby 
 manumitted. From the south shore of Chowan Mr. Taylor 
 removed to Perquimans, and thence to Bath and the 
 country to the south. Mr. Urmstone says that he was 
 old and feeble, and very unfit for the work. He was 
 certainly diligent, faithful, and devout. He rejected the 
 legal provision made for the clergy and lived upon the 
 voluntary offerings of the people, as did others of our 
 Colonial clergy. He very much deplored the irreligion of 
 the people, and the carelessness of even the professed 
 Christians. They had been so long unaccustomed to the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, that he could not prevail 
 upon them to come to it; they seemed struck with fear 
 that it would be to their condemnation. Mr. Taylor's end 
 was a sad one. Making a missionary tour from Bath to 
 
 ^January 30th, and May 29th, in the English Calendar commemorate 
 respectively the Execution of Charles r., and the Restoration of Charles 
 II. September 22nd was by our Provincial Assembly appointed to be 
 observed as a day of fasting and prayer in commemoration of the awful 
 Indian massacre of September 22nd, 1711. 
 
65 
 
 Core Sound in February, J720, lie was exposed in an open 
 boat for ten days in very severe weather, and died on an 
 island near the mouth of Neuse river. He was buried on 
 Harbour Island by men who were there hunting hogs; and 
 there were very grave suspicions of foul play, since it was 
 afterwards discovered that they had taken possession of 
 money or other property which he had with him to the 
 amount of two hundred and ninety pounds. This was 
 eventually recovered by his administrators. 
 
 The death of Mr. Tavlor left Mr. Urmstone again th e 
 sole minister in the Colony . But to the happiness of all 
 parties he took a sudden leave in March, 1721, acquainting 
 no one with his intentions save Col. Moseley, in whose 
 hands he left his plantation and other interests in Albe- 
 marle. We are so thankful to be rid of him that we will 
 not pause to moralize upon his character. 
 
 Very little is known of the scattered congregations for 
 some years following Urmstone' s departure. JPhe Rev . 
 J ohn Newman was sent out by the Society in the Autum n 
 of 1 72 1 to succeed him in Chowan, but he died after only 
 six months' service, l eaving a widow who seems to have 
 been generously treated by the parish and by the people 
 generally. 
 
 In the stormy times of Burrington and Everard, two 
 ministers, Thomas Bailey and John Blacknall, appear for a 
 moment in the midst of the tumult, and come in for a 
 share of the scurrillous abuse of the period, which some of 
 our later writers have repeated. There is, however, no suf- 
 ficient evidence upon which to base an estimate of their 
 character or of their work. * 
 
 *The Vestry of St. Thomas' Church, Bath, and also the Vestry of Hyde 
 precinct in 1726 petitioned the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 in favor of Mr. Bailey, and testified of his character and work for the 
 three years which he spent in North Carolina. 
 
 As to Mr. Blacknall's having married a white man to a negro woman — 
 or a mulatto most likely — the fact that he informed against himself is in 
 his favor. He had probably been imposed upon; or being a new comer 
 
66 
 
 Again, in 1732, the Rev. Bevil Granville, a clergyman 
 induced by Lord Baltimore to leave England for Maryland, 
 happened to be landed in North Carolina, and was persuad- 
 ed to spend a year in Chowan, where his ministrations 
 seem to have been very acceptable to the people. 
 
 Upon the Cape Fear there was no organized parish until 
 1729. But the year previous the Rev. John Lapierre, a 
 French Huguenot, who had been ordained by the Bishop 
 of London in 1708, and for many years had served a 
 congregation of his own people in South Carolina, called 
 St. Dennis' Parish, came into the region of the Cape Fear 
 river upon the invitation of the people, and with the 
 consent of Commissary Garden. For a while he was sup- 
 ported by the voluntary gifts of the people. Afterwards 
 the newly appointed vestry laid a parish rate for his sup- 
 port. After a few years he was supplanted, according to 
 his own account, by the Rev. Richard Marsden, who 
 offered his services gratuitously. Mr. Marsden had him- 
 self been a minister in South Carolina from 1705 to 1709, 
 but had now become an inhabitant of New Hanover, and 
 was chiefly engaged in planting and trading. He was 
 anxious to be appointed to this field by the Society, but 
 his application seems not to have been favorably received. 
 He officiated also for a while in Onslow. At this same time, 
 1732, the Rev. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, officiated once a 
 month in Bertie. 
 
 It is during this period of transition from Proprietary to 
 Royal rule that we first find another body of dissenters 
 besides the Quakers rising to notice. Paul Palmer, of 
 Perquimans, the first Baptist preacher in North Carolina, 
 began his work about 1727, and from this date the Baptists 
 grew stronger and stronger in the Province. There was 
 
 in America, he may have been ignorant of the law. Having inadvertent- 
 ly committed a breach of the local law, he could only come forward and 
 submit to the Court, and lessen the penalty as much as possible by claim- 
 ing half of it. Save this one matter there is not a word against him. 
 
67 
 
 no real provision made for the spiritual wants of the peo- 
 ple, and so they gradually forgot their faint traditional 
 attachment to the Church, and went to such religious 
 meetings, Baptist or Quaker, as they could find. 
 
 One sign of life shows itself in this period of darkness. 
 Mr. John Boyd, a graduate of the Uniyersityof Glasgow^ 
 and for some years a physician in Virginia, went from 
 North Carolina, our first candidate for Holy Orders, in 17^2, 
 and after haying been ordained in England, returned, a nd 
 became the minister in the North-West Parish, of Bertie. 
 There were no dissenters in this parish, and the people 
 seemed eager for his services. He reported to the Society 
 that private subscriptions had been started to build four 
 chapels. In 1737 Commissary Garden wrote to the Bishop 
 of London that he heard bad reports of Mr. Boyd, that he 
 was intemperate and neglected his duties; but about this 
 time he seems to have died, still one of the Missionaries of 
 the Society. 
 
 Gov. Burrington was succeeded in 1734 by Gabriel 
 Johnston. There was no legislation under his administra- 
 tion affecting the general interests of the Church until the 
 Act of 17415 c. xxiii. 
 
 A Vestry Act had been passed in 1729, but it is doubt- 
 ful whether it was ever operative. We are unacquainted 
 with its precise character, as it has never been printed. 
 It seems most probable that up to 1741 the original Vestry 
 Act of 1 77 1, as modified by the Acts of 1708, 1711, and 
 1 716, remained in force. None of these acts made any 
 provision for the election of vestrymen by the people. 
 The vestrymen for each parish were named in those acts, 
 and each parish vestry was a close corporation, independ- 
 ent and irresponsible. 
 
 The Act of 1 74 1 provided that the Vestry should be 
 chosen on Easter Monday of every alternate year beginning 
 in 1742, by the freeholders of the parish in an election to 
 be held by the Sherff. Besides the five parishes created 
 by the Act of 1701, the four added in 17 15, and six by 
 
special acts from 1715 to 1740, the act of 1741 added two 
 new ones, making the whole number seventeen. The ves- 
 trymen were required to take the usual oaths and to sub- 
 scribe a declaration that they would not oppose the liturgy 
 of the Church. Professed dissenters were, as in former 
 legislation, allowed to decline to serve, if elected upon the 
 vestry, though they were free to serve, if they chose to do 
 so. In short, the act of 1741 is substantially the same as 
 the former law, except as regards the biennial election of 
 the vestry by the freeholders of the parish, and the power 
 now given the vestry to withdraw the stipend from a min- 
 ister guilty of scandalous immorality. The provision of 
 17 1 5, allowing the vestry to fix the minister's salary, but 
 setting the minimum at fifty pounds in the currency of the 
 country, was continued in this act of 1741. 
 
 The marriage act passed the same year, 1741, c. I., has 
 been quoted as if it conferred upon clergymen of the Church 
 the privilege of performing marriages, which it witheld from 
 other ministers; but a careful examination of our legisla- 
 tion will show that the Assembly of the Province never 
 professed to give to the clergy such a right, but only recog- 
 nized a right which rested upon prescription. Our earliest 
 colonial legislation provided that the civil magistrate 
 might perform this office, ?ipon the express ground of neces- 
 sity, because there ivere no clergy. As soon as ministers 
 of the Church came into the Province they were recognized 
 as having this right, without any act of the Assembly. 
 The act of 17 15 distinctly recognizes this, and only gives 
 the magistrates the right to join persons in marriage in 
 cases where no minister is to be had. The act of 1741 c. 
 I. simply brings forward this feature of the former legisla- 
 tion in slightly altered phraseology, and declares the right 
 to be in the clergy. Furthermore, in 1741 there was no 
 organized body of dissenters in the Province, and, so far as 
 we know, not a single dissenting minister who claimed any 
 
6 9 
 
 ministerial authority to perform the marriage ceremony, or 
 considered that a part of his pastoral duties or functions. * 
 
 The ministers of the Church in the Province of North 
 Carolina in 1741 were the Rev. Mr. Garzia of St. Thomas's 
 Church, Bath; the Rev. James Moir, who had lately come 
 from South Carolina to St. James's Church, New Hanover; 
 the Rev. Richard Marsden, who by this time had ceased 
 officiating', and who died about the end of the year 1742; 
 and the Rev. John Lapierre before mentioned, who, being- 
 ousted from New Hanover by Mr. Marsden' s gratuitous 
 ministrations, seems to have gone to Newbern about 1735, 
 and to have remained in those parts until his death, which 
 did not occur, as we have reason to believe, earlier than 
 the year 1755. It may be mentioned here, though this is an- 
 ticipating the proper order of events, that there was at this 
 time on the Cape Fear, where he had lived since 1729, a 
 certain Christopher Bevis, in Holy Orders, who in 1748, 
 after Mr. Moir's departure, for a moment resumed the min- 
 isterial character, and was forced by the necessities of the 
 people to exercise the sacred functions which ill health had 
 caused him to lay aside since 1728. But he relapsed as 
 suddenly into oblivion after a single letter to the Secretary 
 of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
 
 *It seems probable that all through the Colonial period the people acted 
 upon the Common Law principle that consent, in whatever public and 
 formal manner expressed, followed by cohabitation, constituted a valid 
 marriage; and though the law might prescribe some special manner of 
 consent, and provide a means of its certification, and the preservation of 
 the evidence thereof, it would not deny validity to such marriages, how- 
 ever defective the contract might be in regard to legal formalities. We 
 know that from the beginning of the Quaker meetings they married after 
 their own fashion, calling in neither minister nor magistrate. And the 
 Presbyterian marriages, performed by their own ministers before the 
 enabling act of 1766 c. IX., and in direct violation of the law, which re- 
 quired all marriages to be either by license or by publication of banns, 
 were held to be legal. It is more than probable that the law upon the 
 subject was but carelessly observed in the settlements remote from court 
 houses and clerks. The sanctity of marriage depends not upon the mode 
 of solemnization, but arises out of the relation itself. 
 
7 o 
 
 Mr. Garzia had come to St. Thomas's Church, Bath, about 
 1735. He was a faithful and devoted minister. He died 
 November 29th, 1744, from injuries received by a fall from 
 his horse in returning from a visit to a sick parishioner. 
 He left a wife and three children but ill provided for, who 
 seem to have been recipients of the bounty of the Society, 
 which had enrolled him upon its list of missionaries sev- 
 eral years before his death. It was probably during- his 
 incumbency that St. Thomas's acquired its glebe of three 
 hundred acres and its glebe house, the only one ever owned 
 by any parish during the provincial period. 
 
 Mr. Moir continued in New Hanover, first at St. James's, 
 Wilmington, and then at St. Philip's, Brunswick, until 
 about the beginning of 1747, when he removed to Edge- 
 combe upon the invitation of the inhabitants of that large 
 and populous parish, at that time perhaps the most popu- 
 lous in the Province. 
 
 In 1743, or early in 1744, Clement Hall, Esq., of Per- 
 quimans, in the Commission of the Peace, with a reputa- 
 tion for "honour, diligence and fidelity," who had been 
 for several years a lay reader in his parish, laid before the 
 Bishop of London testimonials of his character, and applied 
 for Holy Orders. After being examined he was ordaine d 
 Deacon and Priest in 1744, and returned at once to 
 North Carolina with a commissi on from the Society as 
 their itinerant missionary. He found his patrimony 
 much wasted from want of proper care during his ab- 
 sence. He at once set about the work of his holy call- 
 ing with the same "honour, diligence and fidelity" which 
 had marked his secular life. Two Sundays in each month 
 he officiated in St. Paul Church, Edenton, and the other 
 Sundays in distant parts of the parish. But regularly every 
 year, in fulfilment of his duty to the wider field, he took 
 his journeys east and west. From the old settlements of 
 Perquimans and Pasquotank, to the distant frontiers of 
 Granville, this eager messenger made his annual or semi- 
 
7 1 
 
 annual tours, baptizing infants and adults, catechising the 
 children, churching' women, and administering the Holy 
 Communion to the rude folk, who learned to love and 
 trust this holy man. Everywhere he preached to such 
 crowds that no house would hold them, but they were 
 forced to seek the shelter of the groves, where the birds 
 were the choristers, and where, in the pauses between their 
 music, they "heard the bass of heaven's deep organ blow." 
 Upon one of these tours, during the pleasant September 
 and October weather of the year 1753, he reports that in 
 thirty-five days he traveled 536 miles, officiated in 23 con- 
 gregations, baptized 467 white and 21 black children, and 
 2 white women. Such zeal as this bore fruit in the people 
 upon whom it was poured out. Where other missionaries 
 could find only misery and discouragenent, profane people 
 and contentious vestrymen, he found happiness and hope, 
 and some measure of response to his own goodness. The 
 work upon St. Paul's Church, Eden ton, was renewed with 
 vigor; even Corbin, Earl Granville's unpopular agent, as- 
 sured him that he would spare no pains to accomplish the 
 work; and he lived to see it put in a fair way of being com- 
 pleted. In 1755 he lost his house, his books, and pretty 
 much all his personal property, by fire. He went to his 
 reward in 1759, after a ministry of fifteen years. We have 
 no exact account of all his labors, but we may judge the 
 whole from his account of a part. In 1752, when he had 
 run half his course, he estimated that he had travelled 
 14,000 miles, preached nearly 700 sermons, and baptized 
 more than 6,000 persons, (including several hundred negroes 
 and Indians). He reckoned the number of communicants 
 in his circuit at 400, which, considering the backwardness 
 of the people in those days to come to the Holy Commun- 
 ion, was a wonderful number. In Anderson's "History 
 of the Church of England in the Colonies' ' the account of 
 him closes with these words: "In weariness and painful- 
 ness, yet with faith and hope unbroken, he persevered unto 
 
72 
 
 the end; and * * * worn out with sickness and hard 
 toil, Clement Hall closed, in the bosom of an affectionate 
 and grateful people, a career of pions usefulness which has 
 rarely, if ever, been equalled. ' ' 
 
 The Rev. James Moir, in Edgecombe, had also a labor- 
 ious life, and for a while he travelled and preached exten- 
 sively. A church was built on. Tar River, about eight 
 miles above the present town of Tafborough, and also two 
 chapels in other parts of the county, one of which was prob- 
 ably old Couacanara in Halifax. The vestry also took 
 orders for building four others. In 1756 the lower part of 
 the county was made a separate parish, called St. Mary's 
 Parish, which became Mr. Moir's charge. The upper part 
 remained Edgecombe Parish, but soon after became a sep- 
 arate county by the name of Halifax. Mr. Moir is an 
 example of the Establishment idea applied to the facts 
 of American colonial life. His case illustrates the whole 
 story of the failure of the Church in the Province. He 
 did not lack abilities or worth, but he was all the time 
 vexing himself and railing at his circumstances because he 
 could not make the established system work. Clement 
 Hall, born in the new country, and desirous simply of 
 bringing the Gospel to bear upon the people, found the 
 system no insuperable barrier, because he was not working 
 the system. James Moir, side by side with him, accom- 
 plished little or nothing, because he was fettered by that 
 system under which he had been brought up. He re- 
 mained in Edgecombe until the summer of 1762, when he 
 removed to St. George's Parish, Northampton county, 
 where there was a church, and also three chapels, though he 
 continued to officiate in St. Mary's until his death in Feb- 
 ruary, 1767. He was one of the Commissioners appointed 
 in 1760 to lay out the town of Tarborough, and perhaps it 
 is to him that we owe the ecclesiastical nomenclature of 
 the streets— St. George's, St. Patrick's, St. David's, and 
 St. Joshua' 's. He also, like Mr. Hall, reports a wonderful 
 
73 
 
 number of baptisms, but is not so exact in his statistics. 
 In one report he excuses himself for this by saying that he 
 had no one to count the children as he baptized them, and so 
 could not tell the exact number. 
 
 In 1753 there came into the Province the Rev. Alexan- 
 der Stewart, a missionary of the Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel and minister of St. Thomas' Church, 
 Bath. His name deserves to be put alongside of that of 
 Clement Hall. Until the spring of 1771, through much 
 sickness and fatigue, and amid vexations and hardships, 
 he spoke the word of God to the people of Beaufort, Hyde 
 and Pitt counties, serving thirteen chapels besides his par- 
 ish church. The negroes and Indians claimed his special 
 care. He visited the remains of the " Attamuskeets, " 
 Hatteras and Roanoke tribes of Indians in Hyde county, 
 and endeavored to teach them the principles of Christian- 
 ity. As agent and superintendent for North Carolina of 
 the society called "Dr. Bray's Associates," he established 
 a school for their benefit. He paid a school-mistress to 
 teach Indian boys and girls, and also one or two negro 
 children, to read, and supplied them with books. The 
 church at Bath, though begun some years before, was not 
 entirely finished until 1762. He suffered much from sick- 
 ness during the latter part of his life, and upon one occa- 
 sion had to be carried from Bath to Newbern in a horse 
 litter to consult physicians in regard to a dreadful attack of 
 rheumatism which had deprived him of the use of his 
 limbs. He crowned his work in Bath by sending forward 
 two notable men to England as candidates for Holy Orders, 
 Mr. Peter Blinn and Mr. Nathaniel Blount. The latter 
 did not go over until the second year after Mr. Stewart's 
 death, but we can not doubt that it was his influence which 
 helped to prepare so worthy a successor to stand in his 
 place when he was gone, and to hand down, almost to our 
 day, his testimony to the truth. 
 
 The same year which brought Mr. Stewart to Bath gave 
 
74 
 
 the Rev. James Reed to Christ Church, Newbern. He 
 came over from England with his family in response to an 
 offer and appeal sent to England by "the vestry of Craven 
 Parish. The special agreement between him and his ves- 
 try was confirmed by Act of the Assembly 1754 c. XVI. 
 In 1758 he was made one of the missionaries of the Society. 
 He well deserved the appointment, for besides his church 
 in Newbern he served nine chapels in Craven and Carteret 
 Counties. His long and faithful services can not be ade- 
 quately presented in a summary. He acted as Chaplain to 
 the Assembly; he built and carried through to such meas- 
 ure of success as it attained, the Newbern Academy. Mr. 
 Reed saw the troubles of 1776 coming on, but he stood to 
 his royalist principles, and he disappears from our North 
 Carolina annals praying heartily for King George, while 
 the drums of marching soldiers drown his voice and the 
 clouds of war wrap him from our view. He left behind 
 him the memory of a man of honor and a faithful minister 
 of God. The patriotic churchmen of Newbern, Nash, and 
 Speight and Leech, thought not the worse of him for 
 bravely siding with the country of his birth. 
 
 The Rev. John McDowell in 1754 became minister at 
 Wilmington, by that time grown to be the largest town in 
 in the Province. He was put into orders upon Gov. Dobbs's 
 recommendation, and spent the whole of his ministry in 
 New Hanover, at St. James', s Wilmington, and St. Phil- 
 ip's, Brunswick. In 1760 he was made a missionary of 
 the Society. Handsome churches had some years before 
 this been begun both in Wilmington and in Brunswick, 
 though the latter was not finished until 1768, while the 
 former was still longer in building. Mr. McDowell died 
 in 1763, and was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Barnett in 
 1765. The Rev. John Mills became the minister in 1769, 
 and in 1774 the Rev. Nicholas Christian was in charge; 
 we know very little of either of them. 
 
 In Edenton the Rev. Clement Hall was succeeded in 
 
75 
 
 1759) immediately upon his death, by the Rev. Daniel 
 Earl. The large and handsome parish church, begun by 
 private subscription before the year 1740, towards which 
 the Lords Proprietors had given ^200, was probably so 
 far finished in Mr. Hall's time as to be occupied, but was 
 not completed until many years after. Mr. Earl frequently 
 speaks of its being in a dilapidated condition. He con- 
 fined his ministrations chiefly to St. Paul's Church, and 
 continued in charge for the greater part, if not the whole, 
 df the Revolution. 
 
 The Rev. Thomas Burges became the minister of Edge- 
 combe Parish, Halifax county, in October, 1759. His 
 special agreements made with the vestry of that parish 
 were confirmed by two private acts of the Provincial As- 
 sembly, the first by the Act of 1760 c. VII. ; the second by 
 Act of J 764, 2d Sess. , c. XVII. He continued rector of 
 this parish till the Revolution, or thereabouts. It may be 
 mentioned that when the town of Tarborough was laid off 
 in 1760, and the lots sold, parson Burges bought the lot 
 upon which Calvary Church was erected in 1834. When 
 the church came to be built his grandson, Thomas Burges, 
 Esq., conveyed the lot to the vestry for that purpose. 
 
 With the administration of Gov. Tryon a new era of 
 activity in ecclesiastical affairs begins. Gabriel Johnston 
 and Arthur Dobbs were both zealous churchmen, but Try- 
 on's activity in seeking to advance the cause of the Church 
 and of religion in the Province, was quite beyond anything 
 which had been seen before. Yet it was not the zeal of a 
 mere sectarian bigotry. All our historians have admitted 
 that he met the dissenting interests of the country with a 
 generous appreciation and tolerance which to a very great 
 extent won their good will. Upon the outbreak of the 
 first Regulation troubles in 1768 the Presbyterian ministers 
 united in an address to him, in which they declared that 
 they had the highest sense of the justice and benevolence 
 of his administration, under which they say that they en- 
 
7 6 
 
 joyed all the blessings of civil and religions liberty, or 
 words to that effect. They also put^ forth a pastoral let- 
 ter to their people, quite as ardent in its expressions of 
 loyalty to King George as was parson Micklejohn's sermon 
 before the troops at Hillsboro' upon the text, ' 'The powers 
 that be are ordained of God." Gov. Try on, on his part, 
 always speaks of the Presbyterians, and also of the Quakers, 
 with the highest respect. As a civil administrator, bred in 
 the school of military discipline, he had less respect for 
 the ruder and more extravagant forms of religions enthu- 
 siasm—the "New Lights" and the "Separatists" — who 
 were becoming so numerous in some quarters. But no 
 complaint has come down to us from any religious body 
 against his ecclesiastical administration. His zeal for the 
 Church, and his great interest in the business of the Soci- 
 ety for the Propagation of the Gospel, probably had their 
 origin in some close relationship to that work. In 1730 the 
 treasurer of the Society was "William Try on, Merchant, 
 Lime Street, London;" a few years later "William and 
 Thomas Tryon" shared the office. It is probable that 
 Gov. Tryon was a son of one of these, and that his boyhood 
 had been nurtured in close association with the venerable 
 Missionary Society of the Church of England. Certain it 
 is that he zealously promoted the interests of the Church in 
 North Carolina, and all her ministers found in his house 
 hospitality and hearty sympathy, and in him a ready and 
 indefatigable friend. 
 
 The exact state of the ecclesiastical laws during Dobbs's 
 administration is not very clear, owing to the repeal of some 
 laws by royal proclamation, and the consequent failure of 
 other laws dependent upon them. As well as I can under- 
 stand, it was about as follows: A number of acts were 
 passed from 1754 to 1764, but from one cause or another 
 they were repealed by the Assembly or disallowed by the 
 King in Council, until in 1762 the Province was somehow 
 left without any legal vestries whatever, and the ministers 
 
77 
 
 had to manage as they could. This was remedied, how- 
 ever, by the passage of the act of 1764 c. II., making 
 elaborate provision for the election of vestrymen and the 
 support of the ministers, etc. , which was to continue only 
 five years, but which, with some slight amendments, re- 
 mained the law of the land until the close of the royal gov- 
 ernment. This law raised the minister's salary to ^133 
 per annnm, and provided better security for his getting it. 
 It still, however, left the election of vestrymen to the free- 
 holders of the parish, and thereby winked at the disregard 
 of the law in those parishes where the inhabitants did not 
 desire to have the services of the Church. But the vicious 
 system of a legal establishment was bearing its fruit, and 
 we see a sign of it, in this act of 1764, in the provision 
 that any person elected a vestryman who should refuse to 
 qualify, if a known dissenter, should be fined three pounds. 
 Heretofore, dissenters had been excused from serving; now 
 they alone are forced by a penalty to serve if elected. This 
 points to the fact that the law had been defeated by dis- 
 senters taking advantage of the former indulgence of the 
 law, and procuring themselves to be elected vestrymen, in 
 order that by refusing to serve they might render the law 
 ineffectual. 
 
 So far as we know only one contest took place under 
 these acts between churchmen and dissenters in regard to 
 the enforcement of the law. It happened most fortunately 
 for peace and harmony that each section of the Province 
 had been settled by a homogeneous population. In the 
 northern counties, from Orange to the seacoast, and gen- 
 erally throughout the seaboard, the people were almost 
 wholly English, and professed an allegiance to the Church. 
 West of these counties the Presbyterians had their settle- 
 ments, and the Lutherans and Dutch Reformed theirs, but 
 each in separate and distinct communities. The upper 
 Cape Fear country was wholly Presbyterian. In the dis- 
 senting communities vestrymen were elected and performed 
 
78 
 
 their civil duties, but as they wanted no Episcopal clergy 
 or services they ignored their ecclesiastical functions. The 
 Moravians, upon their own request, were organized into a 
 separate parish called Dobbs Parish, and transacted their 
 own parish business by themselves. This order of things was 
 usually respected by the Governor, the Assembly, and the 
 Episcopal clergy. When in 1766 the Rev. Andrew Mor- 
 ton was sent out from England by the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel to take charge of St. Martin's 
 Parish, Mecklenburg County, he wrote back to the Society 
 that upon inquiry he learned that the inhabitants of that 
 parish were all Covenanters and Seceders, and therefore, 
 with the consent of Gov. Tryon, he had agreed to take 
 charge of St. George's Parish in Bertie. 
 
 But in Rowan, where there were many Presbyterians, 
 there was also a strong colony of churchmen, men of Eng- 
 lish blood, who had come from Maryland and Pennsylvania. 
 They desired a minister, and in 1 769, or at the very begin- 
 ning of 1770, the Rev. Theodoras Swaine Drage, who had 
 been licensed for North Carolina by the Bishop of London 
 the 29th of the preceding May, came to Salisbury and un- 
 dertook to have a vestry elected. On Easter Monday a 
 vestry was elected, but it was composed largely of Presby- 
 terian elders, and all its members were pledged not to 
 enforce the laws. Mr. Drage, in his letters to Gov. Try- 
 on, asserted that his party were in a numerical majority, 
 and, as the Lutherans seem to have acted with him, he was 
 possibly correct in this estimate. But he says that most 
 of his people were new-comers into the Province, and that 
 on account of the troubles in the Earl of Granville's land 
 office, they had been unable to get patents for their land, 
 and so were not technically freeholders. Mr. Drage under- 
 took to argue the question with the Presbyterian elders, 
 alleging that as they had chosen to come into the Province 
 knowing its laws, they ought to obey those laws until they 
 could procure their repeal. Failing of converting them, he 
 
79 
 
 appealed to the Governor, and then got the Governor to 
 lay the case before the General x\ssembly; they declined 
 to interfere, and Mr. Drage seems to have left Salisbury 
 after a year or two. 
 
 It will be remembered that the legislation of the Pro- 
 vince up to this time, while recognizing the right of the 
 clergy of the Church to perform the marriage ceremony, 
 had not authorized its performance by any other ministers. 
 At the time of this legislation this was no hardship, because 
 there were no other ministers in the Colony who considered 
 this a part of their ministerial functions; but when the 
 Presbyterian settlements were made in the up-country and 
 along the Cape Fear, the Presbyterian ministers continued 
 to marry their people as they had been accustomed to do. 
 One of the acts passed in Gov. Tryon's administration, and 
 generally believed to have passed by his procurement, was 
 an act (1766 c. IX.) to validate these marriages and to 
 make it lawful thereafter for dissenting or Presbyterian 
 ministers to perform this function. It is to be noted, how- 
 ever, that the preamble of the act recites that the validity 
 of these marriages had been called in question, (though in 
 law they were unquestionably valid), not because they had 
 been performed by Presbyterian clergymen. There is not 
 a particle of evidence that any one attacked them on this 
 ground; their validity was questioned because the Presby- 
 terian ministers, not being named in the Act of 1741, had 
 considered themselves at liberty to violate the terms of the 
 law in other respects, and had been in the habit of per- 
 forming marriages without publication of the banns or the 
 procuring of a license, as was required of all persons. It 
 seems an ungracious provision of this law, meant to be an 
 act of courtesy as well as of justice, to the growing settle- 
 ments along the Yadkin and the Catawba, that it provided 
 that the Episcopal minister in the parish where the mar- 
 riage was performed should be entitled to the fees, if he had 
 not refused to perform the service. This, however, was of 
 
8o 
 
 less consequence, as there was not a single minister in any 
 parish in the Province where a Presbyterian minister re- 
 sided. And when, a few years afterwards, the two bodies 
 did become mingled together in a few localities, there is no 
 reason to think that any minister of the Church ever so 
 far forgot Christian courtesy as to desire to take advantage 
 of this provision.* Indeed, it may be said that in no one 
 of the thirteen Colonies was there less ill feeling between 
 religious denominations. Whatever may have been the 
 theory of the law, or the provisions of our Colonial stat- 
 utes, Christian moderation and charity so controlled their 
 application that they never became a source of irritation 
 or of popular discontent. 
 
 The effect of Gov. Tryon's interest in the Church, and 
 of his constant correspondence with the Bishop of Lon- 
 don and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 
 was soon apparent. During the seven years of his admin- 
 istration the number of clergy in the Province rose from 
 five to eighteen. These were distributed in different parts 
 of the Province from Salisbury and Hillsboro' to the sea- 
 coast, some supported solely by their stipend from the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the volun- 
 tary offerings of the people, and devoting themselves to 
 gathering congregations in new parts of the field; others 
 settled over established congregations, and busy trying to 
 lay foundations of educational and other institutions. 
 
 It is hardly fair to find fault with men of those days for not 
 
 *This act of 1766 c. IX., speaks in the preamble of "Presbyterian or 
 Dissenting" ministers, evidently using the words as synonymous, and not 
 as representing two different classes; and in the enacting clauses it uses 
 the word "Presbyterian" alone. This was probably because at that time 
 the Presbyterian ministers were the only dissenting ministers in the Pro- 
 vince who considered the performance of the marriage ceremony for their 
 people part of their pastoral duty. It has sometimes been stated that 
 this act of 1766 c. IX. was repealed by royal proclamation, but there is 
 no note of such repeal in our statute books. It is brought forward in 
 every revisal and was the law of the land for the rest of our colonial 
 period, 
 
seeing with our eyes, but it seems strange to us that the 
 churchmen of the Province of North Carolina should not 
 have recognized how impossible it was to build up the 
 Church upon the English parochial system. The support 
 provided by the most liberal legislation was totally insuffi- 
 cient for the maintenance of the clergy and the building up 
 of church institutions. All sorts of shifts had to be re- , 
 sorted to by the vestries, even to finishing their churches 
 by selling the fee-simple of the pews, and by lotteries. It 
 is to the credit of the people of Bdenton that they pro- 
 tested against selling the pews in St. Paul's, and petitioned 
 the Assembly to finish it by a tax upon the parish, so that 
 all, paying equally, might have equal rights in their house 
 of worship. But while the laws were inadequate to the 
 support of the Church, they exasperated such opposition 
 as there might be to the Church in the several parishes 
 where its worship was maintained, and they kept the peo- 
 ple from realizing and performing their duty. 
 
 In another way the system was unnatural and pernicious. 
 In theory the right of presentation to a parish was clearly 
 in the King and his representative, the Governor. The 
 Charters of Charles II., under which the people or their 
 Assemblies were continually asserting their rights, had ex- 
 pressly provided that the right of presentation to all 
 churches, chapels and oratories should be in the proprie- 
 tors, and after 1728 the King stood in place of the propri- 
 etors; this right was also vested in the Crown by act of 
 the Assembly. But Try on' s exercise of this right of pre- 
 sentation provoked much opposition, and occasioned con- 
 troversies between himself and several of the parishes, even 
 where there was a perfect willingness to receive the minis- 
 ter whom he proposed to induct. 
 
 But for a time the affairs of the Church seemed to pros- 
 per, and all testimonies agree that it yet retained, and 
 continued to retain down to the Revolution, a majority of 
 the population of the Province. In large and populous 
 
82 
 
 sections there were no dissenters at all, and where they 
 were most numerous in the English settlements (as distin- 
 guished from the Scotch and Scotch-Irish,) many of them 
 declared that they were dissenters only because they had 
 no opportunity of enjoying the ministrations of the Church. 
 At the beginning of the Revolution there were only two 
 Baptist Associations in North Carolina. The Methodists 
 were becoming numerous, and had local preachers here and 
 there, but as a body they were still loyal to the Church. 
 When Mr. Whitefield preached at Newbern he publicly 
 proclaimed that he was a faithful minister and son of the 
 Church of England, and he found fault with Mr. Reed, 
 the minister at Newbern, because he gave the name of 
 Methodists to an extravagant sect in that part of the coun- 
 try who had separated from the Church. 
 
 One of the best remembered of the clergy who came into 
 the Province during Gov. Tryon's administration, is the 
 Rev. George Micklejohn, S. T. D. , minister of St. Mat- 
 thew's parish, Orange county, from 1766 to 1776. He 
 preached loyalty to the Regulators in 1768,* and so when, 
 following his teaching, the Regulators of Alamance, (which 
 was then in Orange county and a part of his parish,) 
 marched to join McDonald at Cross Creek, he seems to 
 have gone with them, probably as their chaplain, and to 
 have been captured with the other Tories, Highlanders and 
 
 *When Gov. Tryon and his militia forces, raised to put down the first 
 "Regulation," in 1768, were encamped at Hillsboro, Sunday, September 
 25th, Rev. George Micklejohn, rector of St. Matthew's, Hillsboro, and 
 Rev. Henry Patillo, an eminent Presbyterian minister of Granville Coun- 
 ty, were appointed to preach to the troops. Mr. Micklejohn took for 
 his text: "The powers that be are ordained of God," etc., Romans xiii. : 
 1-2. He was so well pleased with his effort that he had it printed by 
 James Davis, of Newbern, and presented one hundred copies to the next 
 Assembly. What was the character of Mr. Pattillo's discourse we know 
 not. He did not include that sermon among those published at Wilming- 
 ton in 1788. But we know that he was quite as stout a supporter of 
 government in 1768 as was Micklejohn himself, and in the pastoral letter 
 put out by him and his brother ministers, they bring to bear upon the 
 Regulators the same text, Romans xiii.: 1-2. 
 
83 
 
 Regulators, at Moore's Creeek in February 1776. The Pro- 
 vincial Congress at Halifax paroled him the 3d of May 
 following, but did not allow him to return to Hillsboro lest 
 he should corrupt the patriotism of his parishioners. He 
 was required to go to Perquimans County, and to remain 
 there on the south side of the river. We shall hear of him 
 again in the story of the Church in North Carolina. 
 
 Another well remembered name is Charles Cupples, min- 
 ister of St. John's parish, Bute county, (now Warren and 
 Franklin), from 1766 until some time during or after the 
 Revolution. Though an Englishman, he took the Amer- 
 ican side in the contest. While his name and character 
 are well remembered we know little of the particulars of 
 his life. He was specially interested in the welfare of the 
 slaves, and endeavored to impress upon their owners the 
 propriety of coming up with them to baptism, and of acting 
 as god-fathers and god-mothers for these poor people to 
 whom they owed such sacred duties. 
 
 We begin now to find a number of young men coming 
 forward among our people, and offering themselves for the 
 work of the ministry. We have no complete list, but a 
 number of names appear incidentally in the records of 
 those times. 
 
 First we have James Macartney. After having been an 
 assistant teacher in the Newbern Academy, he went to 
 England for Holy Orders in May, 1768, and the following 
 July he was ordained. Gov. Tryon placed him in Gran- 
 ville Parish, where he had Richard Henderson for one of 
 his vestrymen, and the Presbyterian divine, Henry Pattillo, 
 for one of his neighbors. He says he found many Presby- 
 terians in his parish, and he seems to have lived in peace 
 and charity with them. 
 
 In the same year Henry John Burges and Francis John- 
 ston went over, recommended by parson Burges, the father 
 of the former, and Gov. Tryon; the next year Edward 
 Jones, recommended by parson Micklejohn, and Peter 
 
8 4 
 
 Blinn, by parson Stewart, of Bath. Gov. Tryon joins Mr. 
 Stewart in giving Mr. Blinn the highest testimonials. 
 There were others, also, who went from this Province to 
 seek ordination to the same holy office. Their names may 
 be included in the clergy lists of this period, but the scanty 
 records of that day do not enable us to identify them. To 
 anticipate a year or two, so as to close this subject, it may 
 be added that Nathaniel Blount, another member of Mr. 
 Stewart's parish in Beaufort county, and Charles Pettigrew, 
 from St. Paul's Church, Edenton, were ordained shortly 
 after this time, and returned to serve the Church faithfully 
 and long in their native country. 
 
 The Rev. Henry John Burges, after his return from 
 England, was minister in St. Mary's Parish, Edgecombe, 
 for a year or two. He then moved to Virginia, and had a 
 school in Southampton county for many years, where a 
 number of eminent men were educated, among them the late 
 Dr. Simmons J. Baker and President Win. H. Harrison. 
 The Rev. Francis Johnston became the minister of Society 
 parish, Bertie, and Edward Jones of St. Stephen's parish, 
 Johnston county. Nathaniel Blount succeeded the Rev. 
 Alexander Stewart, who had died a year or two before 
 Mr. Blount's ordination, and Mr. Pettigrew, after a short 
 service in Berkely parish, Perquimans, succeeded the Rev. 
 Daniel Earl in St. Paul's Church, Edenton. 
 
 Of Mr. Peter Blinn I have seen no account after the 
 note of his ordination by the Bishop of London in Septem- 
 ber, 1769. It may be that he did not live to take up the 
 work of God in North Carolina as a minister. Many a 
 noble spirit crossed the ocean from America stirred by a 
 holy ambition of returning as a herald of the Cross, to 
 whom God, in His inscrutable wisdom, denied that privi- 
 lege. The perils of the ocean, the accidents of travel, the 
 infectious diseases then so terribly destructive, the great 
 length and expense of the journey, all these were a sad 
 hindrance to the increase of the number of native Ameri- 
 
85 
 
 can ministers upon this continent. It is said that at least 
 ten per cent, of those who undertook this journey for ordi- 
 nation died without having been able to return to take up 
 the work. Our own annals contain as pathetic a story 
 illustrating these difficulties and hardships as can well be 
 imagined. 
 
 Sometime in the year 1768 Mr. Edward Jones, of the 
 Province of North Carolina, applied to the Rev. George Mic- 
 klejohn of St. Matthew's, Hillsboro', who seems to have 
 been his pastor, and laid before him his desire to serve God 
 in the holy ministry. Upon examination, Mr. Micklejohn 
 approved his purpose of offering himself as a candidate for 
 orders, and gave him such information as he could, con- 
 cerning the time required for the journey, the expenses of 
 travel, and the like. Upon consideration, Mr. Jones found 
 that the expense of travel and of living during the time he 
 must remain in England, would require a much larger 
 sum than he could command; but as he had set this holy 
 calling before himself as the work of his life he determined 
 to keep back nothing. He therefore sold his patrimony, 
 notwithstanding the great loss incurred thereby in the 
 wretched condition of our Colonial currency, converted the 
 proceeds into available funds, and provided with letters and 
 testimonials from the Rev. Mr. Micklejohn, he set out for 
 England. In due time he arrived at Liverpool, but almost 
 immediately upon landing he was stricken down with sick- 
 ness, and lay for a long time helpless and suffering. Grad- 
 ually, as he lingered on, his money slipped away in the 
 many expenses of lodging, medicine and attendance, so 
 that, when able once more to resume his journey, he found 
 himself absolutely penniless and alone in a strange land. 
 He set out however to make the rest of his journey on foot, 
 and thus made his way to London, obtaining a scanty sup- 
 ply of food upon the journey by selling such articles of 
 clothing as were not indispensable. Footsore and weary 
 he at length reached London and made his way to the 
 
86 
 
 residence of the Bishop. He made know his business, 
 though not his sad plight, and laid before the Bishop the 
 letter and papers given him by Mr. Micklejohn. These 
 proved to be in some way informal or insufficient, and the 
 Bishop informed him that he must communicate with his 
 friends in North Carolina, and procure certain other docu- 
 ments before he could feel justified in ordaining him. Mr. 
 Jones, at this mortifying intelligence, left the Bishop, in 
 utter perplexity and discouragement. He wandered about 
 the streets in a state of desperation bordering on insanity. 
 He afterwards confessed, with expressions of shame, that 
 more than once he was on the point of committing suicide. 
 Penniless in a great city, of all places the most solitary to 
 him who is without friends, utterly ignorant of places and 
 of persons, we can imagine his forlorn state. Whether 
 this lasted a day or several days, we do not know. He 
 may have had some trifles of clothing or other property to 
 dispose of to keep him alive a day or two. His deliver- 
 ance from this depth of woe has a touch of romance which 
 sheds a soft light over the sad picture. While in the 
 depth of his misery, he hears by some accident that Gov. 
 Tryon has a sister in London, Miss Tryon. With a feeling 
 which a North Carolinian can still understand, it comes 
 to him that she must be interested in the country which 
 her brother governs. He finds out her abode and appeals 
 to her sympathy and compassion. He had not judged 
 amiss. Miss Tryon responded most graciously to his ap- 
 peal, and in a way which showed her tact as well as her 
 generosity. She introduced Mr. Jones to a certain Capt. 
 Collett, who had been in North Carolina, and they at 
 once put him out of his perplexity and distress by their 
 friendly interest and help. He wrote to Gov. Tryon, March 
 29th, 1769, giving this account of his experience since he 
 had arrived in England, and requesting the Governor to 
 send him such testimonials as should meet the demands of 
 the Bishop. But he did not have to wait for an answer to 
 
37 
 
 his letter. The record shows that Mr. Edward Jones was 
 licensed for North Carolina by the Bishop of London on 
 the 29th of May, 1769, just two months after the date of 
 his letter to Gov. Tryon. And very shortly thereafter we 
 find him minister of St. Stephen's Parish, Johnston 
 County. We may be very sure that he had always a good 
 word for the gracious ladies of the Governor's family. 
 
 With the administration of Gov. Martin there seems to 
 come a relaxing of the tension in the life of the community, 
 and our ecclesiastical affairs shared the general languor. 
 Whatever may be thought of Tryon, his vigor and admin- 
 istrative talents are not denied. Gov. Martin had neither 
 his force of character nor his address in the management 
 of men. Perhaps the very eagerness with which Gov. 
 Tryon had pushed the work of supplying vacant parishes 
 with clergymen caused a reaction when the vigorous hand 
 was removed from the helm. Almost without exception 
 the ministers who came in under Tryon' s administration 
 were men of force and of zeal. But there was a great 
 temptation to relax effort in a country where there was no 
 oversight exercised ; and the low tone of feeling and living 
 in the community must have had a depressing influence 
 upon the clergy. It had long been felt by persons through- 
 out the Colonies that an Episcopal Church without a Bishop 
 was an absurdity. The question need not be discussed 
 here. I will only say that the need of a Bishop was 
 apparent both to our Governors and to the clergy them- 
 selves. Time and again the y wrote to the Society and to 
 the Bishop of London that a Bishop was absolutely neces - 
 sary in order to the success of the Ch urc h in Ame rica. 
 The English Bishops saw it. George III. unlike his Han- 
 overian predecessors, loved the Church,, and was a most 
 religious and exemplary man. He would gladly have 
 seen the Church truly established in America and organ- 
 ized upon the Apostolic model. But, as under his grand- 
 father, George II. , Sir Robert Walpole had defeated the 
 
88 
 
 hopes and plans of such great men as Seeker, Butler and 
 Berkely, so the ministers of George III. hindered and 
 thwarted every scheme devised for the sending of Bishops 
 to the Colonies. To the miserable union of Church and 
 State in England we owe it that with all the appeals of 
 our clergy and of our Governors, and with all the many 
 acts of our people through their representatives in the 
 General Assembly in favor of the Church, the Church had 
 never its proper organization or constitution in the Province 
 of North Carolina. The Mother Church was enslaved and 
 her daughter was bound with her. When the politi- 
 cal changes of 1776 put an end to the civil status of the 
 Church, so thoroughly had State patronage done its evil 
 work, and so entirely had both people and clergy been 
 taught to lean upon a broken reed, that while a majority 
 of the people of the State were nominally her children, 
 and our great men of North Carolina were almost without 
 exception her own, the Church stood helpless, blind, para- 
 lyzed. Not until all the men who came out of Egypt had 
 died in the wilderness could Israel enter into the Land of 
 Promise; and not until a new generation of churchmen 
 had grown up in North Carolina, who looked upon the 
 Church as a spiritual kingdom, could any permanent 
 organization be effected, or the upward course begun. It 
 is a significant fact that the Diocese of North Carolina was 
 organized just seven months after the death of Nathaniel 
 Blount, the last survivor of our Colonial clergy. 
 
 One or two things need to be said before closing. In 
 the first place, such civil recognition as was given to the 
 clergy of the Church, and such support as was derived 
 from public taxation, was given by the people of North 
 Carolina themselves, acting through their representatives 
 in General Assembly. It has been affirmed by grave his- 
 torians, and repeated by all the generation of lesser 
 writers, that the clergy of the Church were paid by the 
 British government. This view is presented by writers of 
 
8 9 
 
 our local history and biography with perfect assurance of 
 its truth. There is not one particle of truth in it. Our 
 North Carolina people did what was done in giving- the 
 support of the State to the Church. But it is further to be 
 remembered that the laws were so framed that they were 
 inoperative except in those communities where the great 
 body of the people were attached to the Church. And 
 lastly, in this connection, there was practically no discon- 
 tent among the people. We have the testimony of the 
 whole body of the Presbyterian ministers, the largest and 
 most intelligent body of dissenters in the Province, that 
 under Tryon, the most masterful of the royal govorners, 
 they enjoyed the blessings of good government and civil 
 and religious freedom, according to the conception of 
 religious freedom prevalent at that day. 
 
 Another and a more serious popular misapprehension 
 needs to be corrected. It is frequently alleged that the 
 character of the Colonial clergy explains the decay of the 
 Church. Now from the nature of the case there were un- 
 worthy ministers during colonial times as there have been 
 since. And the want of any supervision of the clergy 
 aggravated the evil. But it is a most gross and ground- 
 less slander to represent the clergy of that period as being 
 on the whole an unworthy, much less an immoral or irre- 
 ligious class. I have not consciously omitted in this 
 paper the name of one clergyman against whom there is 
 serious evidence of grevious misconduct, nor have I failed 
 to point out the fact that there were charges against him. 
 True it is that as time went on, and various religious 
 bodies grew strong in the State, bodies which had bitter 
 prejudices against the Church, they did not spare the repu- 
 tation of her ministers, living or dead. There are yet 
 clergymen amongst the most honored in our conventions, 
 who can remember how in their early ministry the purest life 
 was no security against charges of immorality and dissipa- 
 tion. Happily we live in better times. Living men can 
 
9° 
 
 live down slanders. But who shall protect the dead ? I 
 have studied the history of our provincial period with 
 some attention. I have sought out, as well as I could, the 
 scQnly memorials of our brethren who first trod these 
 shores as ambassadors for Christ and stewards of the mys- 
 teries of God. And while I have seen and deplored sins 
 and follies here and there, I have thanked God for the good 
 examples, the faithful labors, the persevering zeal, the 
 holy devotion, of many of those, our brethren, who having 
 finished their course in faith, do now rest from their 
 labors. 
 
8 9 
 
 our local history and biography with perfect assurance of 
 its truth. There is not one particle of truth in it. Our 
 North Carolina people did what was done in giving the 
 support of the State to the Church. But it is further to be 
 remembered that the laws were so framed that they were 
 inoperative except in those communities where the great 
 body of the people were attached to the Church. And 
 lastly, in this connection, there was practically no discon- 
 tent among the people. We have the testimony of the 
 whole body of the Presbyterian ministers, the largest and 
 most intelligent body of dissenters in the Province, that 
 under Tryon, the most masterful of the royal govorners, 
 they enjoyed the blessings of good government and civil 
 and religious freedom, according to the conception of 
 religious freedom prevalent at that day. 
 
 Another and a more serious popular misapprehension 
 needs to be corrected. It is frequently alleged that the 
 character of the Colonial clergy explains the decay of the 
 Church. Now from the nature of the case there were un- 
 worthy ministers during colonial times as there have been 
 since. And the want of any supervision of the clergy 
 aggravated the evil. But it is a most gross and ground- 
 less slander to represent the clergy of that period as being 
 on the whole an unworthy, much less an immoral or irre- 
 ligious class. I have not consciously omitted in this 
 paper the name of one clergyman against whom there is 
 serious evidence of grevious misconduct, nor have I failed 
 to point out the fact that there were charges against him. 
 True it is that as time went on, and various religious 
 bodies grew strong in the State, bodies which had bitter 
 prejudices against the Church, they did not spare the repu- 
 tation of her ministers, living or dead. There are yet 
 clergymen amongst the most honored in our conventions, 
 who can remember how in their early ministry the purest life 
 was no security against charges of immorality and dissipa- 
 tion. Happily we live in better times. Living men can 
 
go 
 
 live down slanders. But who shall protect the dead ? I 
 have studied the history of our provincial period with 
 some attention. I have sought out, as well as I could, the 
 sc3nLy memorials of our brethren who first trod these 
 shores as ambassadors for Christ and stewards of the mys- 
 teries of God. And while I have seen and deplored sins 
 and follies here and there, I have thanked God for the good 
 examples, the faithful labors, the persevering zeal, the 
 holy devotion, of many of those, our brethren, who having 
 finished their course in faith, do now rest from their 
 labors.