CHAPTER III.

CHURCH AND STATE UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT,
1728-1776.

In 1730 George Burrington became the first royal governor of North Carolina. His instructions in regard to the Church are voluminous and indicate a purpose to provide for an Establishment. North Carolina, along with the other American provinces, had already been put under the ecclesiastical control of the Bishop of London. Burrington had the right of collation,¹ and was instructed to “permit a liberty of conscience to all persons (except papists) so as they be contented with a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the same, not giving offence or scandal to the government.” He was directed to see that the “book of common prayer as by law established” be read each Sunday and holiday, and “the blessed sacrament administered according to the rites of the Church of England.” He was to see to it that “a competent maintenance be assigned to the minister of each orthodox church”; that “a convenient house be built at the common charge for each minister,” and that there be “a competent proportion of land assigned him for a glebe and exercise of his industry.” “The governor was not to prefer any minister to any benefice without a certificate from the Bishop of London “of his being conformable to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England and of good life and conversation.” No minister was to preach or to administer the sacrament in any “orthodox church” “without being in due orders.”

The requirement imposed by the eighty-second section of these instructions is fearful in its deliberate atrocity: “And we do further direct that no schoolmaster be henceforth permitted

to come from this kingdom and to keep school in that our said province without the license of the Lord Bishop of London, and that no other person now there or that shall come from other parts shall be admitted to keep school in North Carolina without your license first obtained.”¹

This clause of Burrington’s instructions reproduced the essential features of the English Schism Act. This act had been passed in 1714 to supplement the Occasional Conformity Bill which was intended to exclude Dissenters from all positions of power, dignity or profit. The Schism Act was to crush their seminaries and deprive them of the means of ’educating their children. Lecky² characterizes it as one of the most tyrannical measures of the century. It provided that no one, under pain of three months’ imprisonment, should keep either a public or a private school, or should even act as tutor or usher, unless he had obtained a license from the Bishop, had engaged to conform to the Anglican liturgy, and had received the sacrament in some Anglican church within the year. To prevent occasional conformity it was provided that a teacher so qualified who attended any other form of worship was to suffer the full term of imprisonment and to be forever incapacitated from acting as tutor or schoolmaster. The facility with which this act was passed shows the danger religious liberty was in during the closing years of Queen Anne. This act and the Occasional Conformity Bill were repealed in January, 1718.

This repeal only makes its re-enactment for the colony the more exasperating. School-teachers were few enough in North Carolina during the whole period of its colonial existence. Of those who did appear, some; no doubt, were Dissenters; but with fiendish atrocity the English government closes to them the avenue to greatest usefulness.

This is the greeting which the royal government sends out to the daughter rejoicing in her recent escape from the rule of the Proprietors. This was the precious heritage with which the first royal governor comes out to meet the subjects who had twenty years before boldly thrown off the rule of the Proprietors and claimed the King’s protection. It seemed that the new government was to be worse than the old, for the royal government now took the lead in ecclesiastical legislation and had, unfortunately, a large following in the colony.

Burrington, when he asked the provincial Assembly to make such laws as were necessary for him to carry out the royal instructions in relation to the Establishment of the Church,¹ does not include the Schism Act in his list; nor does he mention it in the resumé of his work in his letter to the Duke of Newcastle, July, 1731.² This absence of all mention might indicate one of two things: either that to did not dare to undertake to enforce the Schism Act, and therefore completely ignored this part of his instructions, or (2) that there was no occasion to enforce it because of the non-appearance of Dissenting schoolmasters. But there was certainly no reason for him to bring the matter before the Assembly; no provincial law was necessary; the execution was in his own hands. The records are silent in regard to any attempts to enforce its provisions, but we have no reason for expecting such reference. That there were few schoolmasters of any kind we know well enough, and that the most of these were the missionaries of the S. P. G., and would, therefore, have the license, we know from Brickell.³

If we judge from the experience of the New Bern Academy in 1766, of the Edenton Academy, in 1768, and of Queen’s Museum in 1773, the Schism Act was enforced in 1731, provided a case came up. If it was not enforced it

was because Burrington knew the temper of the people too well. It is just about this time he writes that “they are neither to be cajoled or outwitted, whenever a governor attempts to effect anything by these means he will lose his labor and show his ignorance.” “The inhabitants of North Carolina,” he says, “are not industrious, but subtle and crafty to admiration.” They always behaved insolently to their governors; “some they have imprisoned, drove others out of the country, at other times set up two or three supported by men under arms. All the governors that ever were in this province lived in fear of the people (except myself) and dreaded their assemblies.”¹ We can read clearly enough in this glowing tribute to the North Carolina democracy that spirit of fear which Burrington denies. And this wholesome fear no doubt went far in mitigating the harshness of the original instructions.

Burrington found the Assembly little inclined to pass the laws necessary for him to carry out the instructions in regard to Church affairs. When he asked that this be done, the Assembly replied that it had been provided for by an earlier vestry act.² He obtained nothing of the Assembly of 1731, and wrote home that he could not “observe much sense of religion among them.”³ His request was renewed

of the Assembly¹ of 1733, but this was equally disinclined to follow in the path marked out by the English government, and returned Burrington the same indefinite answer.

We do not know that any further effort was made by Burrington toward an Establishment. His poor success would indicate that the Dissenting element was large and powerful enough in the Assembly to prevent the enactment of extensive Church acts. The Church received certain fines,² and there was a poll tax of five shillings, but as this could be paid in “bill money,” little more than enough was collected to pay the readers who officiated on Sunday³ and the occasional clergyman who came out from Virginia to preach before the Assembly.⁴ The Established Church had sunk very low; there was no regular clergyman in the province,⁵ and those who had been there gave offense by their vicious lives.⁶ We must conclude that from the standpoint of the Establishment the state of the colony was deplorable: no “orthodox clergy,” no certain support from the colony, this still more uncertain in the collecting, and a numerous and aggressive body of Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and Quakers,⁷ who all knew how to make the best of their opportunity.

Gabriel Johnston became governor of North Carolina in 1734, and the instructions sent to Burrington, including the church acts and the Schism Act, were renewed for his successor.⁸

Gov. Johnston was zealous for the Church. He takes care to remind the Assembly that the instructions for Establishing the clergy were already on their books.⁹ He writes feelingly and eloquently in regard to “the deplorable and almost total want of divine worship throughout the province.”¹⁰ He had it “much at heart to obtain a legal Establishment of a competent maintenance,”¹¹ and we find that

the Assembly courteously laments “the want of Publick Divine worship,” but does nothing. The governor, bursting with anger because of its indifference, dissolves it (March, 1737).¹

His zeal even leads him to gloze and hide the true state of affairs to help the Establishment. In his address to the Assembly in 1739 he says: “The establishment of the public worship of Almighty God, as it is the great foundation of the happiness of society, and without which you cannot expect His protection, deserves your earliest care. That in such a wide extended province as this is, inhabited by British subjects, by persons professing themselves Christians, there should be but two places where divine service is regularly performed is really scandalous. It is a reproach peculiar to this part of His Majesty’s dominions which you ought to remove without loss of time.”²

In this address Gov. Johnston ignores entirely the Dissenters and their work. These were neither insignificant in numbers nor in the character of the work done. Burrington wrote in 1732 and 1733 that the Quakers had four meetinghouses and were “considerable for their numbers and substance; the regularity of their lives, hospitality to strangers, and kind offices to new settlers inducing many to be of their persuasion.”³ Presbyterians were now beginning their migrations to the province, and we know that they established churches almost from the first.⁴ Baptists had been in the colony as early as 1695. They were then, as now, energetic and aggressive, and a competent authority has recently said

that “from 1727 to 1755 the Baptists of North Carolina were the most prosperous body of Baptist Christians in the world.”¹

The object of the Governor was accomplished, however; the Council and the House of Burgesses make haste to answer his Excellency that they thought “the establishment of the worship of Almighty God in this province merits our chiefest care. We shall therefore apply ourselves to consider the most proper methods, to make farther provision for the maintaining of an orthodox clergy among us.”² In 1741 an act for “Establishing the Church, for appointing Parishes, and the method of electing Vestries, and for directing the Settlement of Parish Accounts,” was passed. Under its provisions the province was divided into sixteen parishes. The inhabitants of each were to choose their own vestry, who were to subscribe to a declaration not to oppose the liturgy of the Church of England as by law established, under penalty of £3 unless a known Dissenter. The vestry could raise money not exceeding five shillings proclamation,

per poll, under penalty of distress and sale of goods; they had power to build churches, purchase land for glebes, erect suitable buildings thereon and keep them in repair. They were to employ a minister “qualified according to the ecclesiastical laws of England,” at not less than £50 a year, and had power to dismiss him for cause. All former ecclesiastical acts were repealed.¹

There seems to have been considerable activity about this time in ecclesiastical legislation. A bill for an “Act for Liberty of Conscience” was presented to the Legislature of 1740,² but failed in passage, as it does not appear in Swarm’s Revisal. Whether it was a virtual re-enactment of the Liberty of Conscience Act of 1715 we do not know, but its defeat seems to have had a purpose, as we shall see in the case of Borden, the Quaker.

As the regular poll of five shillings was not enough for erecting houses of worship, the commissioners of certain towns were allowed by private acts to lay a special tax for the use of that parish in completing churches already begun. This was done in New Bern, Edenton, and Wilmington. For the New Bern church the tax was 1s. 6d. on the tithable for two years, and persons not paying were to forfeit 4s., besides costs. Sums subscribed were considered promissory notes, and in 1751 the sheriffs of Johnston and Craven were given power to levy by warrant on those who had not paid this tax.³

The act of 1741 was the only general church act passed during Johnston’s administration. It levied only a poll tax, the most unjust and burdensome of all taxes, but from the efforts to secure another law we may feel sure that it gave little satisfaction even to the Churchmen. Their attempts were renewed with the Assembly which met in September, 1741, but Moir says he soon discovered that “nothing was to be done for a proper encouragement of an established ministry.”¹ Garzia says they would pay him only £37 10s., the least allowed by “a new law.”² Moir who is only outgrowled by Urmstone, says that his salary is very ill paid and that “the essential branch of the constitution of this province is to do as little justice as possible to creditors.”³ Besides, he was paid in rated commodities of which he could not dispose. In 1746 the secretary of the S. P. G. writes Gov. Johnston in regard to the encouragement that can be given if more missionaries are sent out;⁴ but Moir saw no hope.⁵ He says many had turned Baptists for want of clergymen, while others were “much inclined to encourage missionaries, and often complain of their being pestered with sermons of Baptist teachers, whom I always found to be as grossly ignorant as those they pretend to teach.”⁶

Johnston exerted himself steadily in the interests of the Establishment. In his address to the Assembly in 1749 he points out the “want of a sufficient provision for maintaining the public service,”⁷ and urges that this be remedied. A bill for establishing the Church, erecting schools, etc., was introduced in 1752,⁸ but failed. It may be that the school clause was attached as a rider to secure the votes of Dissenters, but if so, the scheme did not work.

The death of Johnston in 1752 had no effect on the establishment of the Church. He was succeeded by Arthur Dobbs. The instructions of Dobbs were sent over in 1754.¹ It is interesting to compare the steady and stubborn opposition to an Establishment as manifested by the Dissenters, with the thoughts and desires of the authorities at home. In 1730 they had instructed Burrington to enforce the infamous Schism Act, a leading cause for the backward state of the province in education. In 1733 these instructions were renewed to Johnston. After twenty years of conflict with the colonists the home authorities are no wiser than before, and in 1754 renew their old instructions, including the Schism Act. It is evident that the home government was doing all in its power to restrict the growth, development and liberty of the colony; but if they expected the Dissenters there to be behind those in England they found themselves mistaken.

Dobbs began work for the Establishment at once. In his message to the Assembly of 1754 he recommends the providing a proper fund to support a sufficient number of learned, pious clergymen, who were to reside in the province. They were to be accommodated with houses, glebes and parish clerks, “to enable them to instruct the inhabitants and the rising generation in the principles of true religion and virtue.”² An act to this effect was passed by this Assembly, but was repealed by proclamation,³ although Dobbs writes that he thought it for the interest of both king and colonists “to get so good an establishment immediately fixed, considering the number of sectaries who are against all establishments, and the danger of their increasing if we don’t fix a parochial clergy.”⁴

This was but the beginning of a triangular fight between Dissenters, democratic Churchmen, and supporters of the rights of the Crown. The ecclesiastical history of the next ten years is of interest chiefly because of the stubborn

resistance to the enforcement of church laws by the Dissenters, the stubborn determination of the Churchmen to have an establishment with the right of presentation and the steady opposition of the Crown to both parties. In 1755 a proposition to purchase glebes met with failure.¹ The next year a recommendation for the support of clergy had the same fate.² In 1758 an act making better provision for the clergy was passed. It was repealed and included in the more comprehensive law of 1762.³ An act making provision for an orthodox clergy was passed in 1760 and repealed.⁴ The same year a vestry act was made, proved unsatisfactory, and was repealed; an act allowing separate parishes to elect vestries was passed, but it depended on the general vestry act, and so fell through.⁵ The same was the case in 1761.⁶ We must conclude that whatever legal allowance there may have been remained practically useless for lack of officers to collect it.⁷

In 1762 it was found that there was not sufficient maintenance for the clergy, and a new bill was passed. Under this law the minister was to receive a salary of £133 6s. 8d., proclamation money. He was to have in addition regular fees for marrying, publishing banns, and granting certificates, and for funeral sermons; he could demand and receive these perquisites, if he had not neglected or refused to perform the service, although another had actually officiated. The law made provisions for a glebe, and suitable houses were to be erected thereon; the sole right of presentation remained in the vestry, and a minister might be removed for cause by the Governor, with the advice of the Council.¹

This act seems to have been repealed at once by proclamation; for missionary Reed writes in June, 1763, that the clergy are still destitute of any legal provision or encouragement”;² and Governor Tryon recommends in 1765 the re-enactment of the law of 1762, without the objectionable clause relating to presentation, which was done.³

The central cause for all this trouble was the right of presentation to livings. The authorities in England were zealous for the supremacy of the Church and the Crown, and wished to retain it, while the democratic temper of the colonial Churchmen made them equally determined to secure it for the vestry, and caused them to clog their bills “with objections incompatible with the rights of the Crown and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”⁴ They excluded the Bishop from examining and correcting abuses, and the right of appeal was taken from the Crown. “After all these provisions,” writes the Bishop of London in regard to the Act of 1754, “what becomes of the king’s supremacy or the bishop’s jurisdiction?”⁵ He thought this model of government might have come from the Presbyterians and Independents of New England. He was astonished to see

such a statute in the laws of North Carolina, “where conformity is so strongly insisted on” that each vestryman is compelled to subscribe to the same declaration as is required of clergymen in England.¹

So keen was this jealousy on the part of the home government that the Rev. Alexander Stewart, missionary at Bath, writes in 1760 that within the last six years four acts for electing vestries and supporting the clergy had been passed only to be repealed by the authorities at home because unsatisfactory. To prevent the Church law that was enacted in 1760 from being repealed by proclamation, it was necessary to divide the clauses relating to vestry and clergy, and to pass them separately.² These were then referred to the Bishop of London. It was not enough for him that the vestrymen should take the oath of abjuration and subscribe the Test Act. The declaration required, a simple promise not to oppose the Church of England as by law established, he correctly claimed, might have been taken with equal propriety by Presbyterian, Anabaptist, Independent, Quaker, Jew, or pagan. The bishop demanded that the vestry be required to subscribe to the declaration of conformity laid down by the vestry act of 1755.³ He objected that there was no means provided for the minister to recover dues in case of refusal of payment, and the section in regard to the removal of the minister, he said, tended to take away “the little remains of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, if any is left in that province.” The law was repealed.⁴

These squabbles had a very baleful influence on the fortunes of the Establishment. It was difficult to get a church

law at all, and when such as could be secured were repealed by proclamation, the colonial clergy were left without resources. In 1758 they felt it necessary to petition the Leg islature for better support.¹ In 1762 Dobbs writes that their number is diminishing;² in 1764 there were but six orthodox clergymen in the province, “four of which are pious”;³ and to this lack of “an orthodox and pious clergy” the Assembly of 1758 ascribes much of the great immorality and profanity in the lives and manners of many of the people.⁴

Not only was the jealousy of the home government to be met by the Churchmen, but also the aggressive attacks of the Dissenters who wanted no establishment at all. Between these two antagonists the way of the colonial Churchman was hard, and the life of an ecclesiastical law hung by a slender thread. Further, the Establishment became relatively weaker as population increased, for nearly all of this incoming population was made up of Dissenters.⁵ In 1760 we have a summary of dissent from the Rev. James Reed: “Great number of Dissenters of all denominations came and settled amongst us from New England particularly, Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers, and Presbyterians; the Anabaptists are obstinate, illiterate, and grossly ignorant; the Methodists ignorant, censorious and uncharitable; the Quakers rigid; but the Presbyterians are pretty moderate, except here and there a bigot or rigid Calvinist. As for Papists, I cannot learn there are above nine or ten in the whole county. I have estimated the number of infidels and heathens to be about one thousand.”⁶

In the next year we find him complaining that the special study and endeavor of these Dissenters was to render

the ministers and liturgy of the Church of England as odious as possible, that they and their doctrines might meet with a better reception.¹ This seems to have been the case, for they took advantage of the technicalities of the acts to become vestrymen, and thus succeeded in making the laws null and void. They combined to elect only such vestries as would be favorable to their interests.² These vestrymen performed their civil duties and calmly ignored their ecclesiastical functions, and this they could do under their oath. In Rowan county they refused to qualify, and obstructed business.³ Dobbs could not get a vestry to lay a tax for building purposes;⁴ others threatened to dock the minister if he ever absented himself,⁵ and the steady purpose of all vestries was to make the minister dependent on themselves.⁶ They so hindered in various ways the raising of money that Dobbs thought it necessary to propose that clergymen be paid out of the common funds of the colony.⁷

This is probably the best way to explain and apologize for the vestry act of 1764, the severest of all the acts against the Dissenters, and which has as the only feature to redeem it from total infamy the exasperating circumstances in which the colonial Churchmen found themselves. The church acts were so displeasing that many electors refrained from going to the polls, and so took no part in the elections. To stop this practice the act provided that all qualified electors (except Quakers) should appear and vote for vestrymen, or incur a fine of twenty shillings, proclamation. In times past many of the vestry had neglected or refused to qualify.

They were now required to subscribe a declaration not to oppose the doctrine, discipline and liturgy of the Church of England as by law established; and a vestryman-elect refusing to qualify, “if he be a known Dissenter from the Church of England,” was to forfeit £3. The vestry were to lay a poll of ten shillings or less for building churches, paying the salary of ministers, clerks and vestries, purchasing glebes and erecting suitable houses thereon, encouraging schools and maintaining the poor, and this tax could be collected by distress.¹ This act was to last for five years. It made the minister a member of the vestry, which had not been the case formerly and had caused much dissatisfaction. We have little comment on this law, but we can judge from the character of the complaints that have come down to us that it was regarded with the bitterest hostility.

William Tryon succeeded to the work left unfinished by Dobbs. In 1765 he recommends the re-enactment of the law of 1762, without its objectionable clause, and adds: “If I have pointed out any consequences that are likely to attend the continuance of the neglect of our religion, I hope no persons of a different persuasion will imagine I am an enemy to toleration. I profess myself a warm advocate for it in the fullest sense of his Majesty’s indulgence, yet I must inform them I never heard of toleration in any country made use of as an argument to exempt Dissenters from bearing their share of the support of the established religion.”² Tryon professes himself in the beginning a strong supporter of the orthodox church, and well he might be, for in his instructions sent over in 1765 the sections relating to the Church and the infamous Schism Act are again renewed.³

But the mere statement of the Schism Act was not all. We have seen what a difficult thing it was to procure school advantages of any sort under the royal government. At last a school-house was finished in New Bern. In 1766 Mr. Reed writes that “it is a large and decent edifice for such a young country, forty-five feet in length and thirty in breadth, and has already cost upwards of £300, this currency.”¹ There was now to be a struggle for the enforcement of the Schism Act. The upper house insisted that a clause excluding all Dissenters from teaching in the school be inserted.² The Churchmen won in the struggle, and the Schism Act was enforced in North Carolina in 1766.³

Two years later the battle was fought again over the Edenton Academy. The lower house was democratic and liberal in its tendency. The Council was the opposite, and addresses them: “We observe that you have deled the following clause, viz. ‘Provided also that no person shall be admitted to be master of the said school, but who is of the Established Church of England and who at the recommendation of the trustees or directors or the majority of them

shall be duly licensed by the governor or commander-in-chief for the time being. Which clause we propose steting.”¹ The Commons objected and prayed that the bill be passed as it left them.² They won, and the bill was vetoed by the governor, “not esteeming the words ‘with the approbation of his Excellency the governor or commander-in-chief for the time being’” as equivalent to the restrictions quoted above.³ The school got no charter until 1770 and then with the restrictive clause inserted:⁴

We need not be surprised, then, when we find that North Carolina hated the Establishment and all it implied. We can understand the meaning of the words when Tryon writes that the people were “uneasy under the provisions of the clergy bill,”⁵ that the citizens of Pitt seemed “as jealous of any restraint put on their consciences” as they had recently shown themselves of that put on their property,⁶ and that the men of Mecklenburg thought an Establishment “as oppressive as the Stamp Act.”⁷ This was but the prelude to that drama of which the last scenes were to be enacted at Guilford Court House and Yorktown.

But not even all these rumblings of discontent served to warn the infatuated British government of the folly of its course. In 1771 they renew in their instructions to Governor Martin the clause relative to the Schism Act⁸ It is very probable that in the formal instructions to a colonial governor, renewed at uncertain intervals, some of the phases of these laws should escape the attention of the authorities, but they were none the less real and burdensome to the citizens of North Carolina, as they were soon to discover to their cost.

In 1771 the Assembly chartered Queen’s Museum in Charlotte, an institution for higher education, of which

Governor Tryon says the necessity was obvious. The promoters of the movement yielded so far as to provide that the president should be of the Established Church and licensed by the governor, but the fellows, trustees and tutors would be, for the most part, Presbyterians. On this question the Board of Trade writes the King that “from the prevalency of the Presbyterian persuasion within the county of Mecklenburg we may venture to conclude that this College . . . will, in effect, operate as a seminary for the education and instruction of youth in the principles of the Presbyterian Church. Sensible as we are of the wisdom of that tolerating spirit, which generally prevails throughout your Majesty’s dominions . . . still we think it our duty to submit to your Majesty, whether it may be advisable for your Majesty to add encouragement to toleration by giving the royal assent to an establishment, which in its consequences promises with great and permanent advantages to a sect of Dissenters from the Established Church who have already extended themselves over that province in very considerable numbers.”¹ The recommendation of the Board of Trade was accepted and the King repealed the charter of Queen’s Museum in 1773.²

This is the third time, at least, that the Schism Act was enforced in North Carolina after its repeal in England. There was less freedom of education in North Carolina in 1773 than in 1673; a more rigid conformity was required in the province than in England. This was injustice and intolerance; persecution and tyranny. The history of colonial North Carolina is a continual struggle against a government which sought to repress all aspirations whether political, religious or intellectual; for her the War of Independence was not a Revolution only; it brought with it a Reformation, and made possible a Renaissance.

But the enforcement of the Schism Act was not all with which the soul of the Dissenter was vexed. In no way was the petty meanness of an Establishment brought out more clearly than in the regulations concerning marriages.

An act of 1669 had made marriage a civil contract, for lack of clergy.¹ By the vestry act of 1715 magistrates were empowered to perform the ceremony “in such parishes where no minister shall be resident.”² In 1741 a special marriage act was passed. By this act the performance of the marriage ceremony was confined to clergymen of the Church of England, and, for want of such, to magistrates; and the minister serving the cure of any parish was to have the marriage fee whether performing the ceremony or not, “if he do not neglect or refuse to do the service thereof.” This was the formal re-enactment of a clause of the vestry act of 1715. There is nc recognition of the rights of Dissenters in this law, unless we can call the clause forbidding them to marry whites to negroes and Indians a recognition.³ It is true that in this, as in the former cases, the Assembly did not undertake to give this right to the clergy, but simply recognized it as resting on prescription. But they might have granted this right to Dissenters as they proposed doing in the act of 1770. The Quakers seem to have been allowed to marry after their own fashion from the first, and why not allow this right to Presbyterians and Baptists?⁴ But by this act their preachers

were debarred from performing the ceremony even among their own flocks. They were thus put to grave inconvenience, and the law of 1766 recites that the Presbyterians refused to consider themselves as bound by its provisions. This law made dissent burdensome and humiliating; it put a premium on conformity; it was religious persecution.

The next feature of the marriage question was developed during the discussion of the clergy bill of 1762. The governor and Council tried to force on the lower house a clause by which it was enacted that “no Dissenting minister of any denomination whatsoever shall presume on any pretence to marry any person, under the penalty of forfeiting £50.” The law does not seem to have been successful,¹ but it is a clear statement of the tendency of the act of 1741, and shows the position of a certain element in the province.

There was no new marriage act between 1741 and 1766. The former had sought to prevent all Dissenters from celebrating the rite; but the Presbyterians did not consider themselves as coming under its provisions, and had joined couples without either license or publication. By the act of 1766 these marriages were legalized, and it was made lawful for any Presbyterian minister “regularly called to any congregation” to celebrate the rites of matrimony “in their usual and accustomed manner, under the same regulations and restrictions as any lawful magistrate.” These marriages were always to be by license, and the minister of the Church of England was to have the marriage fee in all cases, unless he refused to perform the same.²

This law showed no favor to Dissenters other than Presbyterians. They got no recognition at all, and were, according to Tryon’s fashion of looking at things, “enemies to society and a scandal to common sense.”¹ We are to understand, moreover, that the Presbyterians were not thus favored out of any sense of justice and right, but because, as Governor Tryon writes, under the circumstances it could not “be of any real prejudice to the Established Church, especially as the marriage fee is reserved to the ministers of the parish.”²

The law was liked little by the Presbyterians. It made no provisions for their missionaries who were laboring on the outskirts of the province but not in regular congregations. Those of Mecklenburg considered themselves “highly injured and aggrieved” by this law, “the preamble whereof scandalizes the Presbyterian clergy.”³ The Presbyterians of Tryon county were “much aggrieved” by this act. It took from them a privilege “which a million of our fellow-professors in America now enjoy . . . neither was it ever taken from Dissenters in America until it was taken from us by this act, of which we now complain.”⁴ The people of Anson petitioned against it,⁵ and the manly protest from the inhabitants of Orange and Rowan claims that the right of “dissenting ministers” to perform the marriage ceremony after their own fashion was “a privilege they were debarred of in no other part of his Majesty’s dominions; and as we humbly conceive a privilege they stand entitled to by the Act of Toleration, and, in fine, a privilege

granted even to the very Catholics in Ireland and the Protestants in France.”¹

The Churchmen could not wholly resist the pressure against this law. In December, 1770, an act was passed, but with a suspending clause, allowing Presbyterian ministers the right to celebrate marriage by publication of banns or by license, without “the payment of fees to the incumbent of the parish.”² It is interesting to note with what satanic disregard of the rights of man the leaders in the Establishment can write. Says Reed: “The bill was pushed by the dissenting interest, and [because of] the dangerous situation of the province from such a formidable number of malcontents [Regulators], the governor acted with the greatest prudence in passing the bill with a suspending clause. . . . Should this act receive the royal assent it would be a fatal stroke to the Church of England, but as the insurrection is entirely quelled, I flatter myself with hopes that the act will meet with a repulse.”³ Again the Board of Trade writes that this regulation appears to act as “a bounty to the tolerated religion”; they add their petition for its disallowance,⁴ and his Majesty graciously listens to the advice of his councilors, and his subjects in the wilds of Carolina were left without remedy. Not until the Revolution and the Constitution of 1776 had swept away the Establishment did the dissenting clergy have the legal right to perform the marriage ceremony.⁵

But the ills under which the colony suffered were not borne in silence, for the petition from Rowan and Orange, which I have just quoted, was presented to Governor Tryon

by Herman Husband, the leader of the Regulators.¹ It embodied the grievances against which those counties were complaining. The lack of religious liberty occupies a conspicuous place in the complaints of the inhabitants of Tryon, Rowan, and Orange counties, and the fight at Alamance, on the sixteenth of May, 1771, the first pitched battle of the Revolution, was not a struggle for civil liberty only; it was equally a struggle for religious liberty. The beginnings of the Establishment in North Carolina were marked by the “Cary Rebellion”; the struggles against it were continuous, and the close of its career follows hard on the War of the Regulation and the battle of Alamance.²

Again, the injustice of an Establishment was shown in the laws relating to mustering, and in this all Dissenters were concerned. The clergy of the Church of England had been exempted from this duty as early as 1746 at least; but not until 1764 were Presbyterian ministers, and then only those who were “regularly called to any congregation,” exempted from service.³ As early as 1755 an attempt

had been made to get a law exempting Quakers, but it was opposed by the Council, who offered to substitute in place of the regular equipment of the soldier that of the pioneer,—axe, spade, shovel or hoe.¹ This failed to become law; but by the terms of a special act passed in 1770 for five years the Quakers were released from attendance on general or private musters, provided that they were regularly listed and served in the regular militia in case of insurrection or invasion.² There seems to have been no general law of exemption for ministers. Presbyterians and Quakers were favored by special enactment, while Baptists were simply ignored.

The Quakers met with trouble in another way bearing on our subject. This was the question of the affirmation. Under the North Carolina act of 1715 every Quaker who was “required upon any lawful occasion to take an oath in any case” was permitted to make his affirmation instead.³ It seems this was intended to meet all conditions, for the preamble recites that the oath was to be taken in “courts of justice and other places.” We have no record of conflict under this law, but it would seem that the defeat of the liberty of conscience act in 1741 indicated a change in public opinion for the worse; and while there is nothing in the records of the Quakers to indicate that they were to be singled out, we have one case of persecution which comes under this rubric. In 1747 William Borden appears as a member of the Assembly duly elected from the county

of Carteret. He informed the authorities that he was a Quaker and “therefore desired his solemn affirmation might be taken,” which he evidently expected to be done. This affirmation a committee of the Council appointed to qualify the members of the lower house refused to receive, and a new election for a successor to Borden was ordered.¹

We may summarize the work done so far by saying that in 1776, by a slow and laborious process, some recognition of Dissenters had been wrung from the Churchmen. This recognition was confined to Presbyterians and Quakers; while the Baptists, although strong and vigorous, were entirely unrecognized.²

There was little direct persecution in North Carolina. There was no opportunity for it under the existing laws, and the Dissenters were aggressive and powerful. The manuscript records of the Friends show perfectly conclusively that while they suffered distraint for tithes and military levies, they were not imprisoned. They suffered no bodily violence. We have found no case, save that of Borden, where they were deprived of office because of religious views. But Dissenters were not prominent as officeholders during the royal period. They seem to have reached no higher than the lower house of the Assembly. They were, perhaps, never in the Council, and we may be certain that no Dissenter could have been appointed to the governorship, as had been done under the Proprietors. There was more religious liberty at the beginning than at the close of the colonial life of North Carolina, but there is no well authenticated case of bodily persecution in our annals, unless we count the imprisonment of the Quakers who refused to

bear arms in 1680 as such, and this seems to have been more political than religious in its character.¹

The persecution in North Carolina was indirect; men were not put in jail, but they were harassed and subjected to injury and loss in other ways.

(1) They were required to pay tithes, and thus help to support a clergy other than their own. The fact that these laws were passed by natives of North Carolina, rather than by the British government, does not relieve the odium of

the laws. They were none the less oppressive for that reason.¹ It is difficult for us to tell how extensive and burdensome these tithes were; but that is of small moment, as a matter of principle was involved rather than one of pounds, shillings and pence. We may, perhaps, take the Friends as representing the general success of the tithe law. Prior to 1700 they had ordered that a true account of sufferings for truth’s sake be kept. This was renewed in 1723 and again in 1756. In 1726 Friends in Perquimans complain of unlawful distraint, and report the case to the Meeting for Sufferings in London. In 1755 a committee was

appointed whose duty it was “to take the opportunity with some of the vestry so as to inform themselves on what account the levies are laid, before the time of the same, in order to prevent the like hereafter.” Sufferings in 1756, chiefly for the maintenance “of an hireling priest,” £10 14s. 5d.; two years later it was £14 17s. 6d., for same cause. The next year there was “a shortness in some Friends in respect to a compliance with the payment of the demand to support a hireling ministry. Friends are recommended to be more careful, diligent, watchful.” Sufferings, 1759, £85 and over; 1760, £23; 1761, “Friends have had no sufferings this year, part we believe is owing in a great measure to the moderation of the officers.” No sufferings in 1762, nor in 1765; 1768, fines reported amounted to £5 4s., “being for priests’ wages and repairing of their houses called churches.” In 1772, no suffering, except 30s., “church rates so-called”; none in 1773 or 1774.¹

The amount of tithes collected here is ridiculously small. The whole amount for half a century would hardly support two clergymen decently for a year; but in this small sum was wrapped the whole principle of liberty of conscience.

(2) They suffered under muster laws, where a distinction was made in favor of the clergymen of the Church of England and against dissenting ministers.

(3) Presbyterian ministers were not allowed to perform the marriage ceremony until 1766. Even then the fee went to the minister of the Church of England. Other Dissenters, Quakers excepted, were not allowed this right before 1776.

(4) The most infamous section of all, the continued re-enactment and enforcement of the Schism Act, which had been repealed in England in 1718. This act exasperated the Dissenters, throttled the few sickly schools that had begun to rise in the province, put a premium on the Establishment

and on ignorance, separated the different denominations from each other, hindered free political discussion by keeping men ignorant of political matters, and is directly responsible for the large percentage of ignorance and for the backwardness in intellectual life so characteristic of the State to-day.¹

For this state of affairs we must hold both the English and colonial governments responsible. The initiative was taken by the home government. It was sanctioned and carried to its literal fulfilment by a powerful set in the colony. Illiberal ecclesiastical acts could have been easily made a dead letter, if not repealed, had the colonists opposed them, since these colonists were not at a loss for expedients to circumvent the British authorities.