The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-01-18
THE PRESS
THURSDAY MORNING, JAN. Is, 1872.
Virginia Clergy In the Olden Time.
BY JAMES PARTON.

oI JAMES IAhAON.
The clergymen of Virginia were in a posi-
tlon SO false and demoralizing, that as a body
they could not but become indolent and dis
solute. The law gave them sixteen thousand
pounds OF tobacco per annum; which might
be worth two hundred pounds a wear. if the
quality were high, and the incumbent lucky
and skilful in selling it; or it might be worth
sixty pounds year, if the quality were low
and the crop superabundant. They were fur
ther allowed by law four hundred pounds of
tobacco, or forty shillings, for preaching a
funeral sermon; two hundred pounds of to-
bacco for marriage by license; fifty for a
marriage by banns; and fee for baptism,
which custom appears to have fixed at a
guinea for the rich, and five shilings for 9TH
ers. To these revenues was added a glebe
sufficient for good farm, which liberal ves-
try, we are told, were sometimes kind enough
to ''stock"with one or two families of slaves.
The clergy, appointed without much regard
to their fitness, were subjected to little super
vision. The parishes were of great extent,
stretching sometimes as much as thirty miles
along a river, and yet so thinly inhabited that
they could scarcely furnish congregation;
and such was the scarcity of candidates, that
commissary Ee'itated to suspend clergyman
even for notorious vice, because the parish
might remain vacant for two or three years.
Thus circumstanced, each Clergyman behay-
ed according to his disposition. A few of
them, men OF learning and virtue, did their
duty, and eked out their slender and chang
ing incomes by taking pupils; and it was
these few who saved civilization in the Col
ony. Others, men Of rude energy and exec
utive force, pushed the cultivation of their
globes, bought more slaves, raised more to-
bacco, speculated sometimes in both, grew
rich, reduced their parish duty to the mini
mum, and performed that minimum with
haste and fOrmality. But the greater num-
Der lived as idle hangers-on of the weather.
houses, assisting their fellow idlers, the plant
ers, to kill time and run through their estates,
not always dlssolute, but easy-going, selfin-
dulgent, good natured men of the world. 1t
was not very uncommon for the clergyman
of parish to be president of its jockey-club,
and personally assist in the details of the race
course, such as weighing the men and timing
the horses. 1t was common for clergymen to
ride after the hounds in fox-hunting, and they
were as apt to nail the trophy of the days
chase to their stable door as any other men.
The names of clergymen figured among the
patrons of balls, and they were rather noted
for their skill at cards. All of which was just
as proper for clergymen as for planters, and
more necessary. But in those days the bot
tie was the vitiating accompaniment of every
delight. The race must end in a
dinner, and the dinner must end under the
table. The days hunt must be followed by a
nights debauch. The christening of a child
must be the pretext of days revel. This
single element of mischief converted all festal
days, all honest mirth, all joyous recreation,
into injury, shame, and ruin. Nothing can
make any headway against the potency of
wine, for it suspends the operation of that
within us which enables us to resist, and fin
ally destroys it. 1t vitiates the texture of the
brain ITSELF the seat of life, and the citadel of
all the superior forces. And the wine that
flows so freely from the planters tables was
Madeira, strongest of wines, so enriched by
time and two long voyages, that the uncock-
ing of one bottle filled large house with fra
GRANGE. -.,.
The tales we read of the clergy of old vir-
ginia stagger belief, though it is clergymen
who report them. The reverend rector of
Wicomico, We read, not approving the bread
placed upon the communicable, cried out
from the altar, in the midst of the service, to
one of the church warlens: ''George, this
bread is not fit for a. dog We read of an
other who was invited after church to dinner
at a planters house, where he drank so much
that he had to be tied in his gig, and ser
want sent to lead his horse home, One jolly
parson comes down to us reeling I'D and
down the porch of a tavern, bawling to the
passers-by to come and drink with him. An
other lives in the memory of his county be-
cause he fought duel within sight of the
church in which he had formerly of1iciated.
Another is remembered as the jovial hunter
who died cheering ON the hounds to the chase.
One is spoken of as pocketing annually hun
dred dollars, the revenue of a legacy, for
preaching four sermons a year against athe-
ism, gambling, racing, and swearing, though
himself a notorious swearer, racer, and gam
bier. Another is the hero of a story that one
day parson and vestry differed in opinion,
quarreled, and came to blows. The parson,
a giant in strength, put them to flight. Not
content with his victory, he renewed the bat
tie on Sunday morning in church, when from
the vantage ground of the pulpit he hurled at
them this text from Nehemiah: "And con-
tended with them, and cursed~them, and
smote certain of them, and plucked off their
hair" which had the keen sting of literal
truth.-Fr0m the Atlantic Monthly for Feb
.1f0