churchmen. For, alas! these things are kept from your ears; nor dare they, had they opportunity, acquaint you with them, for fear of being used worse. And there being no superior clergyman, neither in council nor any place of authority, for them to address their complaints to, and by his means have their grievances brought to your excellency's knowledge, they are left without remedy. Again, two-thirds of the preachers are made up of leaden lay priests of the vestry's ordination; and are both the shame and grief of the rightly ordained clergy there. Nothing of this ever reaches your excellency's ear; these hungry patrons knowing better how to benefit by their vices than by the virtues of the other." And here Godwyn cites an instance of a writing-master, who came into Virginia, professing to be a doctor in divinity, showing feigned letters of orders, and under different names continuing in various places to carry on his work of fraud. He states also that owing to a law of the colony, which enacted that four years' servitude should be the penalty exacted of any one who permitted himself to be sent thither free of charge, some of the clergy, through ignorance of the law, were left thereby under the mastery of persons who had given them the means of gratuitous transport; and that they could only escape from such bondage by paying a ransom four or five times as large as that to which the expenses of their passage would have amounted. Moreover, he describes the parishes as extending, some of them, sixty or seventy miles in length, and lying void for many years together, to save charges. Jamestown, he distinctly states, had been left, with short intervals, in this destitute condition for twenty years. "Laymen," he adds, "were allowed to usurp the office of ministers, and deacons to undermine and thrust out presbyters; in a word, all things concerning the church and religion were left to the mercy of the people." And, last of all: "To propagate Christianity among the heathen--whether natives or slaves brought from other parts--although (as must piously be supposed) it were the only end of God's discovering those countries to us, yet is that looked upon by our new race of Christians, so idle and ridiculous, so utterly needless and unnecessary, that no man can forfeit his judgment more than by any proposal looking or tending that way." Such is the Rev. Mr. Godwyn's account of the state of religion and the condition of the clergy in Virginia during Sir William Berkley's administration.[279:A] FOOTNOTES: [279:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, first edition, ii. 558, 561. CHAPTER XXXIII. 1675. Lands at Greenspring settled on Sir William Berkley--Indian Incursions--Force put under command of Sir Henry Chicheley-- Disbanded by Governor's Order--The Long Parliament of Virginia --Colonial Grievances--Spirit of the Virginians--Elements of Disaffection.