very greatly, unless it be concluded that they were better and wiser than their successors, who in after times disfranchised the Roman Catholics in Maryland. Probably the pleasure of the Governor and the Proprietary was quite as influential with them as an intelligent love for tolerance. As respects the compass of the act of tolerance, it was drawn in very broad and generous terms for Trinitarian Christians; for Jews and Unitarians, on the contrary, it bespoke very scant charity, making them liable to capital punishment for any declaration of their special tenets.

But the

The act of toleration was renewed in 1676. Revolution of 1689 brought an unhappy change to the Roman Catholic minority. Through a large part of the next century they were restricted in the public exercise of their religion and placed under political disabilities.

The Revolutionary War was an era of emancipation for Roman Catholics, though still at its close the statute-books in a few of the States did not concede to them the right to hold political offices. It has been estimated that they numbered in 1783 about sixteen thousand in Maryland, seven thousand in Pennsylvania, fifteen hundred in the other States, and about four thousand in the western territories on the Ohio and the Mississippi, which at this time were ceded by Great Britain.1

The organization of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in this country dates from the year 1789, when the Pope authorized the erection of the episcopal see of

De Courcey and Shea, History of the Catholic Church in the United States, pp. 53, 54.

Baltimore.

The first bishop, John Carroll, belonged to a Maryland family which took an honored part in the struggle for nationality, and is justly remembered himself as a man of culture, discretion, and ability.

V.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

ESTABLISHMENTS, AND THE

FOUNDING OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

The Church of England in the colonies was, as respects spiritual jurisdiction, an extension of the bishopric of London. As respects its general character, it was a rather feeble reflection of the Establishment on English soil. It lacked the requisite number of ministers. This was especially the case before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts began its helpful activity (1701). About four fifths of the parishes in Virginia were vacant at the Restoration, and nearly half were in like destitution sixty years later. Carolina for almost twenty years had no clergyIn Maryland, before the reinforcement at the end of the seventeenth century, the Church of England had no more than three clerical representatives. Not more than six could be found at that time on the whole Atlantic border, outside of Virginia and Maryland. The aggregate for the entire country probably did not reach fifty. Nor was this the whole of the deficiency. Among those sent into the field, the proportion of men who possessed at once marked ability and spirituality was not large. Virginia, it is true, recorded in her early annals the name of Alexander Whitaker, whose talents and devotion promised a very useful career, had

man.

it not been closed by a premature death (1617). Later the colony had occasion to remember gratefully James Blair. To him was largely due the founding of William and Mary College, the first commencement of which was held in 1700. Near the same time the Church in Maryland obtained an efficient servant in James Bray, who, like Blair, acted as commissary of the Bishop of London. George Keith, the distinguished convert from Quakerism, in his missionary tour through the colonies (1702-1704) displayed enough controversial skill to vex the great majority of his former associates in faith, and to win a minority to his side. In New England, from the time that Timothy Cutler, the president of Yale College, became a convert to the episcopal theory (1722) Anglicanism had very creditable representatives in that quarter. Still, the statement must be allowed that through much of the colonial era the Church of England on this side of the Atlantic was but poorly blessed in the quality of its ministry. The conditions were not such as to attract men of talent and enterprise, except perchance the few who heard a Macedonian call in their hearts. A perfunctory discharge of the ordinary parish duties, supplemented by a life that was none too persuasive on the side of godliness, was all that could be expected of a great part of the candidates who presented themselves to the Bishop of London for the American field.

As Virginia was the oldest colony, so it preceded all others, by a considerable interval, in the matter of a church establishment affiliating with that of England. In harmony also with the time when it originated, the Virginia Establishment was distinguished by a greater

exclusiveness than any other of those under the episcopal régime in America. The "oath of supremacy" was early imposed upon emigrants to the colony, as a bar against Roman Catholics. When a reinforcement was about to embark in 1609, the spirited preacher William Crashaw, in a sermon before the patrons of the enterprise, deprecated the allowance of any Brownists or factious separatists within the settlement. In its earlier years the colony seems not to have been much troubled with foreign ingredients. But by 1642 it was found that men with nonconforming tastes had gained a foothold, and in such numbers that they thought it desirable to have some Puritan ministers imported from Boston. But the colonial legislature was not willing to tolerate this encroachment. By an act of 1643 it forbade any minister to teach or preach, in public or in private, except in conformity to the constitutions of the Church of England, and instructed the Governor and council to compel all nonconformists to depart "with all conveniencie.” 1 Six years later a considerable company found it necessary to make their exit from Virginia, and took refuge in Maryland. A cold reception was also accorded to the Quakers. Ordinances of 1661-63 subjected them to heavy fines for attending conventicles, and directed that a third offence should entail upon them, as also upon other separatists, the penalty of banishment. Shipmasters bringing Quakers into the country were to be visited with like punishments.2 The Baptists, who made their appearance in the next century, were not a whit more wel

1 W. W. Hening, Laws of Virginia, i. 277.

2 Ibid., ii. 48, 180, 181.

come to the Virginia churchmen, and received a liberal share of stripes and imprisonment. In short, the Establishment in Virginia proved very clearly its sense of exclusive right in that province. The remaining colonies, on the other hand, which had a Church of England establishment, being founded at a time when tolerance had obtained a larger recognition, did not in general place any serious restraint upon the worship of dissenting Protestants.

Ecclesiastical discipline in Virginia, had the practice followed the laws, would have been sufficiently strict. A code which had place between 1610 and 1619 would not seem feeble even when compared with that which Calvin and his associates introduced into Geneva. Among its provisions were the following: "No man shall speak any word, or do any act which may tend to the derision or despite of God's holy Word, upon pain of death. Nor shall any man unworthily demean himself unto any preacher or minister of the same, but generally hold them in all reverent regard and dutiful intreaty; otherwise he, the offender, shall openly be whipped three times, and ask public forgiveness in the assembly of the congregation three several Sabbath days. Every man and woman duly twice a day, upon the first tolling of the bell, shall upon the working days repair unto the church to hear divine service, upon pain of losing his or her day's allowance for the first omission; for the second to be whipped; and for the third to be condemned to the galleys for six months. Also every man and woman shall repair in the morning to divine service, and sermon preached upon the Sabbath day, and in the afternoon to divine service and