Craig Kilby asked the other day about exemptions for Germans from taxes to support the Church of England in eighteenth century Virginia and about church attendance. The only legal exemption from local church levies that I recall was adopted in 1730 for the relief of "Certain German Protestants to the Number of twelve or Fourteen Familes, now settled at a Place called Licking Run in the Parish of Overwharton in the County of Stafford," Waverly K. Winfree, ed., The Laws of Virginia; Being a Suplement to Hening's The Statutes at Large, 1700-1750 (Virginia State Library, 1971), 340-341. Opinions varied whether the English Act of Toleration applied in Virginia, and in practice different dissenting congregations may have been treated differently in different areas and decades. This is an important subject that requires further research, although it appears to me that settled (as opposed to itinerating) ministers (at least among the Lutherans and Presbyterians) readily obtained licenses to permit them and their congregations to enjoy a measure of independence from the Church of England--but not in the matter of marriages, which were legal only if celebrated by a minister of the Church of England, and the laws remained on the books, I think, requiring public officers to take communion from time to time according to the service in the Book of Common Prayer. How often that law was invoked, I don't know. Brent Tarter The Library of Virginia [log in to unmask] Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at http://www.lva.virginia.gov ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html