CHAPTER II.

Church and State under the Proprietors, 1711-1728.

The acts passed by the Assembly of 1711 in its efforts to settle the religious and political questions growing out of the troubles with the Dissenters came very near plunging the country into a real civil war, as we have already seen.¹ But this new rebellion was nipped by the Virginia troops sent in by Gov. Spotswood, and the laws of which the colonists were here complaining remained in force.

There was, however, one bright spot in this dark cloud of usurpation and oppression. These acts put the Dissenters of North Carolina on a legal basis. The colonists had grown tired of the uncertainties and sufferings attendant on the arbitrary will of the Proprietors, and boldly proclaimed that “this province is annexed to and declared to be a member of the Crown of England.” They enacted that the laws of England, “so far as they are compatible with our way of living and trade,” were to be the laws of the province, and that “all such laws made for the Establishment of the Church and the laws made for granting indulgences to Protestant Dissenters” were to be a part of the law of the colony.²

This was a great step forward. Before this time there had been no legal recognition of Dissenters at all. Provision had been made in the charters for toleration, but how, when and under what circumstances it was to be exercised were matters to be left completely in the hands of the Lords Proprietors. How arbitrary and capricious this recognition might be we have already seen.

The Dissenters in North Carolina were now on the same footing as the Dissenters in England. Their position had been defined by the Toleration Act which had been passed on May 24, 1689. Its title is “An Act for Exempting their Majesty’s Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of certaine Lawes.”¹ Under this act Protestant Dissenters were allowed to attend their own places of worship, and were protected by the law from disturbance, provided they took the oath of allegiance and supremacy and subscribed the declaration against transubstantiation; but their congregations had to be duly registered and the doors of their meeting-houses had to remain unlocked and unbarred. Their ministers had to subscribe to the doctrinal portions of the Anglican articles, except that Baptists were relieved from the section in regard to infant baptism, and ’the Quakers had only to affirm their adhesion to the government, to abjure transubstantiation, to profess faith in the Trinity and in the inspiration of the Bible.²

This act is technically described as an “Act of Indulgence.” It suspended in certain cases the operation of laws which still remained on the statute-book. It did not repeal these laws, and thus left the Dissenters more or less under the stigma of the law. They were still excluded from the universities; they could be married only by the Anglican ceremony, and the Corporation and Test acts prevented them from entering corporations and public offices without receiving the sacrament according to the Anglican rite. This act was the high-water mark of toleration in the seventeenth century. Its grants were considered as favors, not as

rights; it conferred a great practical advantage on the Dissenters, but Lecky doubts if the cause of religious liberty received anything from the Revolution of 1688. William earnestly desired complete toleration, if not equality, among Protestants, but this policy was not feasible after the fear of a Catholic sovereign was removed. Measures to abolish the sacramental test or to make the reception of the sacrament in any Protestant form a sufficient test were introduced into Parliament and defeated.¹

When the members of the Establishment in North Carolina drew nearer, in 1701 and 1704, to the model of the home government and undertook to force a development along these lines, the Dissenters tried the “virtue of rebellion. It is clear that their government de facto, 1707-10, was recognized by the Proprietors,² but a new wave of loyalty suddenly swept them out of power in the latter year. From that time the Dissenters, in characteristic English fashion, submitted to the will of the majority, and began to fight their battles along legal and technical lines. During the next sixty-six years North Carolina was not without discussion and agitation on ecclesiastical matters, and this discussion, culminating in the Mecklenburg instructions of 1775 and 1776, and crystallizing in the Constitution adopted at Halifax in December, 1776, put North Carolina close to Virginia, the first political organization in the world to solve the problem of a free church in a free State, each independent of the other.”³

The rebellion of Cary, moreover, had not been able to solve the question of tithes. We have the clearest testimony that the vestrymen found great difficulty in collecting church dues, and we know that the earlier church acts were repealed by the Proprietors; but in spite of these hindrances the Churchmen managed to keep some sort of an ecclesiastical law in existence. At no time within this period were the Dissenters quiet or regardless of their own interests; but from all the accounts we have of the religious inclinations of the colonists, a majority of them were of the Church of England. They had been reared within its communion, they were, therefore, naturally inclined toward it, and might be ready for that reason to connive at the efforts of their more zealous partizans. We are led to this conclusion from statements in the records. In 1704 Dr. Blair was promised 130 per annum “as the law provides”;¹ the next year Gerrard was

promised the same sum “which the law directs”;¹ and in 1708 Adams writes that each precinct by “act of Assembly” allows each minister £30.² The Proprietors had disallowed the law of 1701, and that of 1704 was evidently repealed; but in spite of all this the Churchmen managed to derive the same benefit from the law as if it had still continued in force. Urmstone tells us further that the Assembly had a way of reaffirming at the beginning of each session all acts of the preceding Assembly which they desired, and this obviated the trouble arising from any interference with their plans by the Lords Proprietors.³

The first one of the church acts to come down to us is the Vestry Act of 1715.⁴ This was no doubt in some respects similar to the acts of 1701, 1704 and 1711, but how far they were alike we do not know. By it the right of Dissenters to exist is recognized; but the preamble beginning, “This province of North Carolina being a member of the Kingdom of Great Britain; and the Church of England being appointed by the charter from the crown to be the only Established Church to have public encouragement in it,” etc., indicates clearly enough that the right to dissent was not yet recognized as natural and inalienable.

The act divided the province into nine parishes, and vestrymen were appointed in each. Provisions were made for them to meet and organize, and an oath was required wherein each declared that it was unlawful to take up arms against the king “upon any pretext whatever,”⁵ and that he would

“not apugn the liturgy of the Church of England as is by law established.” Every vestryman who refused to subscribe to this ironclad declaration of the divine right of kings was fined £3, “if such person is not a known and publick Dissenter from the Church of England.” Each vestry was empowered to employ “a person of a sober life and conversation to be clerk,” to employ a minister in each precinct for not less than £50, “and that in the raising thereof and all other parish charges, the whole do not exceed five shillings per poll on all taxable persons in the parish.” The churchwardens and vestrymen were given power to purchase a glebe, build a church and one or more chapels in each precinct, and “to raise and levy money by the poll,” under penalty of double distress in case of refusal or neglect of payment.

This was the last act relating to the establishment of the Church passed during the Proprietary régime.¹ It remained in force until 1741, when it was superseded by a new and fuller provision. We have no means of learning the amount of disturbance and confusion created by it; the records are silent on this point, for the Dissenters have few representatives in its pages. The Dissenters were the men of action, not of talk; but we can get side-lights now and then as to its effects. Quakers exhort each other faithfully to keep up their “testimony against the anti-Christian yoke of tithes,” and the continual and bitter quarrels which Urmstone was always waging against his vestries, and the heartless abuse he pours out upon the colonists in general, indicate that the tithe law brought him very little gain. The vestrymen were empowered by law to distrain in case of refusal, but this seems to have been seldom resorted to. They no doubt fully appreciated the feeling which had raised such deep opposition to former church acts, and cared less for the howls and curses of the blasphemous missionary

than for the hatred and contempt of their neighbors and kinsmen. Laws are hard to enforce in any country when the moral sentiment of the whole people does not sustain them, and Col. Byrd bears involuntary witness to the freedom and independence of North Carolina when he sneeringly remarks that these people pay tribute neither to God nor to Caesar. Why should the Proprietors expect willing tribute from a province which they valued only as a source of revenue? Why should Churchmen pay to the support of a ministry when they were given such men as Urmstone, and why should Dissenters pay to the support of any church save their own?

The Establishment and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had begun their work in North Carolina almost simultaneously; they had been of mutual assistance to each other; this assistance might have been many-fold greater had the character of the missionaries of the S. P. G. been better. Never, perhaps, did the average standard of devotion, purity and piety fall lower than it did in the case of these men. They were worse than the people whom they came to instruct. Their presence did harm to the cause of religion and morality. Some were weak men, others were positively vicious. A few biographies will be sufficient to establish the truth of these assertions.

The first of these missionaries was Daniel Brett, who turned out in six months to be a scoundrel.¹ Dr. Blair came next. He was pious, but faint-hearted, and in six months was gone.² Henry Gerrard was not sent out by the Society, but his career was in eminent keeping with that of the average missionary, for in a few months after his appointment the vestry record that they have heard of “several debauched practices which (if true) tends highly to the dishonor of Almighty God and the scandal of the church.”³ Rev. Giles Rainsford came out in 1712, and Rev. Ebenezer

Taylor in 1717. These men were pious and upright in conduct, but weak and vacillating in disposition. They served the colony only a few years, and Newman, who came out in 1722, died within a few months. We must add to this list the names of Blacknall, a knave of superior rank, and Bailey, a drunkard,¹ who were the last to appear in the colony under the Proprietary regime.

These men seem bad enough, but they sink into insignificance when compared with John Urmstone, whose presence, Dr. Hawks very frankly and very justly remarks, “did more to retard the spread of Christianity and the growth of the Church of England in Carolina than any and all other causes combined.”² This worthy was a native of Lancashire,³ and was born in 1662.⁴ He had received a liberal education, perhaps a university one; he had had the benefit of long travels, and knew something of French and Italian,⁵ he is perhaps the same as the “Mr. Urmstone” who was chaplain to the English factory at Archangel in 1703, and who became a corresponding member of the S. P. C. K.⁶ From the letters of Urmstone no one would ever charge him with having any of the spirit and meekness of Christ. He was unamiable and quarrelsome, he was haughty in disposition and ready to presume on the dignity of his sacred office. He had taken orders, no doubt, as too many of the clergy of that day had done, simply that he might live like a gentleman. He came to North Carolina not from a sense of duty to his divine Master, but with the hope and expectation of gain, for he complains in the most open and avowed manner that he and his predecessors had been laden with “calumnies, reproach and scandalous falsehoods instead of wealth.”⁷ He doubtless expected to

find well-ordered parishes, good churches, a people subservient to tithes and fat livings for missionaries, as he would have found in some of the West Indies; instead he found a scattered population living under the vampire-like dominion of the Proprietors, who cared more for quit-rents than for souls. Whatever progress had been made toward financial independence had been made in spite of bad governments and by honest toil; as a rule the people were poor; many of them were Dissenters, and the colony was just emerging from disturbances bordering on civil war due largely to the fixing of an Establishment. They paid scant respect then to the new clergyman from across the water, who soon showed that his own life was more immoral than the lives of the men whom he came to teach in religious things. The biting tongue of the missionary was unloosed in the first letter to the Society that has been preserved, and this may be taken as a fair sample of the voluminous correspondence that was to follow during the next ten dark and gloomy years from his heartless and unsympathetic pen. He is introduced to us with what was in that land of plenty a lie upon his lips: “Since my arrival here I . . . am at last together with my family in manifest danger of perishing for want of food, we have lived many a day only on a dry crust and a draught of salt water out of the sound.”¹ And thus with almost every letter this suffering missionary was on the point of being laid in the tomb from sheer starvation;² yet he alone of all the missionaries who came to North Carolina was able to buy a plantation,³ to bring white female servants with him from England, to buy English servants in Carolina, and buy negroes there;⁴ to send to

Guinea for negroes;¹ to buy canoes for his work, and to hire overseers for his slaves.² We may rest assured that no other missionary was able to furnish his farm with stock, with tools and agricultural implements;³ but all these things John Urmstone, the starving missionary, could afford. He not unfrequently closes his letters to the Society by an urgent request that his bills be allowed, which was not always done, and that they ship forthwith various and sundry articles of English goods, among them “Sugar the best sort—Molasses and Rum of each a barrel, the best pale or slack dried Malt, a hogshead, with hops together with spices, condiments and cider proportionable.”⁴ Then the pious and godly missionary goes on to inform the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel that “the three former are as precious here as gold of Arabia; with them I can buy provisions.”

It would be tiresome to follow this scapegoat through the mazes of a voluminous correspondence extending over ten years, the burden of which is always complaint against the people, not so much for any lack of religion, but because of a manifest unwillingness to pay him his dues. Urmstone missed his calling; he constantly complains that he has no English goods with which to trade; had these been furnished him, had he come out to Carolina as a merchant instead of a missionary, from all appearances and from his own testimony he would have grown very wealthy, and in consequence, instead of abuse he would have written home most flattering accounts of the country on which he had been able to prey. Unfortunately for the colony, during the greater part of his residence Urmstone was the only clergyman of the English Church in it. He resided in Chowan, but seems to have visited all sections. He left North Carolina suddenly in March, 1721.⁵ The cause of Christianity

had been the gainer had he never set foot within her borders. He never had a good word for the province, nor its people, nor did they have respect for him. Gov. Hyde says that his troubles were owing purely “to himself and his unfortunate temper.”¹ Rainsford said that “a lazy distemper had seized him.”² Gov. Eden expresses the hope that nothing Urmstone might have to say in his own defense would make any impression, and some of his parishioners said that he was “a very unfit missionary . . . his life is so wicked and scandalous, notorious drunkard and swearing and lewdness is also what he is occupied of.”³ Urmstone confesses himself that he administered the sacrament but twice in five years, and the court records show that he was punished for drunkenness and profanity.⁴ The wickedness of his life is only equaled by the malignity of his hate and the acrimonious bitterness of his speech toward those whom he dislikes, and his total unfitness for his sacred office, his utter want of Christian charity, is shown when he calls the colony “a hell of a hole,” and declares that he had rather be “Vicar to the Bear Garden than Bishop of North Carolina.”⁵

After such a repulsive and sickening picture as this, it is a relief and a pleasure to say that there were some men among these missionaries who would do honor to Christianity in any age or country. These men were James Adams and William Gordon. They were sent out by the S. P. G., and arrived in North Carolina in April, 1708,⁶ after the colony had been without a minister of the Establishment for two years. Mr. Gordon took charge of the precincts of Chowan and Perquimans.⁷ In Chowan the church sadly needed repairs. The people were ignorant, “there being few that can read and fewer write”; but to the minister they

seemed well inclined both in public and in private, “many of them being ready to embrace (as far as they could) all opportunities of being instructed.”¹ This precinct was very large, but the missionary went into every part of it, baptizing nearly a hundred children, distributed some tracts and “gave some books for the use of scholars.” In Perquimans he found a compact little church, “built with more care and expense, and better contrived than that in Chowan,” but as yet unfinished. Here the Quakers were numerous and their attacks furious. He found it necessary to preach against them, but was as moderate as was possible in his expressions and free from harsh reflections. He was also able to show them some favors through his knowledge of medicine. These means were more successful than the “rougher methods which it seems had been formerly used with them”; for they “not only became very civil, but respectful to me in their way,” and many times entertained him at their houses with “much freedom and kindness.” The Quakers, no doubt, had been strangers to such things as politeness or kindness from the churchmen, and were won by it at once. In Perquimans Gordon found that even the vestry were “very ignorant, loose in their lives and unconcerned as to religion . . . their ill example and the want of ministers and good books have occasioned many who were better disposed, through ignorance, to join with the Quakers; being willing to embrace anything that looks like religion, rather than have none at all . . . some having told me they owned their first departing from the church to the ill example and imprudent behavior of their ministers.”¹

On account of the disturbed state of the province, due to the “Cary rebellion,” Gordon found it expedient to return to England after four months.² He bore with him the testimony that he had been “universally approved”; that his “sweetness of disposition and spotless conversation” and his “practical way of preaching” had “prevailed even

with the very enemies of the church [Quakers] to be silent at his deserved applause.”¹

Adams was now alone, but he did not become discouraged. He settled in Pasquotank, which then included Camden, and besides this took care of Currituck.² There was no church in Pasquotank but after his coming the people at once resolved “to build a church and two chapels of ease.”³ He labored faithfully for two years, although suffering “a world of misery and trouble, both in body and mind.”⁴ He was exemplary in life and blameless in conversation,⁵ and thus kept the Dissenters, who were now in the ascendant in civil matters, from making capital out of his shortcomings, as had been done in the case of previous ministers. His work was blessed of God; he had the pleasure of celebrating the sacrament on several occasions, and administered baptism to nearly three hundred persons. His flock was steadily increasing, but they had not given him enough since his coming to pay for his “diet and lodging”⁶ This treatment was disheartening and undeserved, but he labored on for a while longer. At last he realized that he must seek a lighter field of labor, where the Church was better organized and where the difficulties did not seem so insurmountable as in North Carolina. The vestries of the churches in Pasquotank and Chowan bore witness that he had been a faithful man and had “behaved himself in all respects as a messenger of the mild Jesus,”⁷ and seem to have been deeply moved at his departure. His last letter comes to us dated “Va., 4 Sept., 1710.” He now prays the honorable Society to change his mission to South Carolina, “where I doubt not but, by God’s assistance, I shall be able to do more good “;⁸ but the work of the self-sacrificing and suffering missionary was ended, and the Master soon called him to his eternal home.

Adams was the most respectable and the most successful missionary sent to North Carolina by the S. P. G., but he arrived in troublesome times. Party contests were at their highest, the Dissenters were in possession of the government, and although a church law was in existence,¹ the churchmen could collect little under its provisions. Their private contributions were not large, and the result was that the missionary received but little for his labors. The churchmen were “a numerous and considerable body of people,” but all the evidence of the records goes to show that at this period in the struggle there was little religion among them.

The wickedness and carelessness of the people was induced in part, no doubt, by the badness of the missionaries. It is due to the manhood and character of the early settlers of the State that so much good has since come from such evil examples. Had the S. P. G. sent to North Carolina more men like Gordon and Adams, men with strong moral character, sound common sense, strong will power, and not entirely selfish, the results of their labors might have been far different; as it was, the chief fruit was civil dissensions and bloodshed, culminating in foisting on the colony an Establishment which was to be a constant source of annoyance and which is directly responsible for a large share of the backwardness of the State in education and intellectual pursuits. These missionaries did not have that enthusiasm for humanity which characterized the work of the apostles of Methodism. It was necessary for them to give up all, including almost even the necessities of life, for the safe of the cause. This they could not do. They still looked and hoped for good quarters and abundant supplies, and to obtain these relied on State aid. This aid made them less self-respecting and less self-reliant; at the same time it failed to accomplish the purpose for which it had been provided, and succeeded only in irritating the Dissenters.