This is an interesting and very ill-understood subject. I strongly recommend that everybody who gets curious about this subject read two recent books, Edward L. Bond's DAMNED SOULS IN A TOBACCO COLONY: RELIGION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VIRIGNIA (Mercer Univeristy Press, 2000), and John K. Nelson's A BLESSED COMPANY: PARISHES, PARSONS, AND PARISHIONERS IN ANGLICAN VIRGINIA, 1690-1776 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Those volumes show that most of what we have thought that we understood about religious beliefs and practices and about the Church of England in the colony is incorrect, including many of the generalizations that have appeared on this list in the last few days. Brent Tarter The Library of Virginia [log in to unmask] Visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html