To Brent's remarks, I'll add these: 
        Vestries met about once a year in formal session, in the fall to work out the annual parish budget. Much like the county government, vestries added up expenses for the previous year, in their case, for  repairing the church, building churches/chapels, providing poor relief for parish indigents (the only unit of government that did so), minister's salary (set by law at 16,000 pounds of tobacco, upkeep on the parish glebe, and so on. They divided the total expenses by the number of tithables in the parish to arrive at the amount of church tax due per tithable. Heads of households (Church of England and dissenters alike) were responsible for paying that amount times the number of tithables in their households. In some parishes churchwardens (elected from among the vestry) collected the parish levy. In Bruton Parish, for example, the county sheriff collected colony, county, and church taxes. 

        Churchwardens took information to county court grand juries about parishioners who failed to attend the established church according to law, for bastardy, swearing in public, and other breaches of the laws of the Virginia colony designed to engender moral behavior. They did much of the "footwork" during the year gathering information about needy persons in the parish, etc.

        Keep in mind that it was not at all unusual for county court justices to be vestrymen at the same time and for years on end.  

Linda Rowe
Historical Research
Colonial Williamsburg
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