While it is true that the clergy who came to Virginia between the dissolution
of the Virginia Company of London in 1624 and Henry Compton's appointment as
bishop of London in 1675 were something of a mixed bag, the same is not true
of Virginia's eighteenth-century clergy, the clergy sent to the colony by the
Virginia Company, or the vast majority of clergy in the late seventeenth
century.  Much of the odium cast on the clergy of Virginia's established
church rests on anecdotal evidence from a seventeenth-century pamphlet written
by John Hammond, an Eastern Shore minister who was acused of being a "Black
Cotted Rascal," and the notoriety of the few bad apples.  Joan Gundersen has
convincingly demonstrated that the vast majority of Virginia clergy were
beyond reproach.

      As for the pay of colonial clergymen, while it did not equal the salary
of a minister fortunate enough to hold a living in a London parish, it was
superior to the pay of many rural English ministers.  English bishops, in
fact, often turned a blind eye to pluralism in rural parts of their diocese
because this was the only way a rural pastor could make a living wage.  For
clergymen interested in science, as were many of Virginia's clergy, a New
World parish offered significant opportunities.

Edward L. Bond
Alabama A&M University

>===== Original Message From Discussion of research and writing about Virginia
history          <[log in to unmask]> =====
>In a message dated 4/1/2005 12:59:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>During the colonial period, while the Anglican Church was the state church of
>the UK and the Empire (the Duchy of Hanover excepted), no bishops were
>appointed to any of the 13 colonies.
>##The Bishop in England had full authority over the Church and its servants
>in Virginia, but he had a difficult time getting very many of the ablest
>priests to come to Virginia where the pay was not as good or as certain and
the
>living was far rougher.
>John Shroeder
>
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