The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the RevolutionGoodwin, Maud Wilder
History
The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the Revolution
Goodwin, Maud Wilder
Southern States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Upper class -- Southern States
"Yes," others murmured disconsolately, "No." The good priest then said:
"You who have money can get your corn anywhere, but these poor fellows
with no money shall have my corn."
He was quite human, this old parson, and liked his glass of "Fyal" or
Madeira, but he knew when to stop, and he feared not to rebuke the rich
and great among his parishioners when he saw them making too merry. He
enters in his journal the date of a call on one of his leading families,
when he found the father absent at a cock-fight. The rector adds the
significant memorandum: "Suffer it no more!"
In spite of a few bright exceptions like this, it is idle to deny that the
relations between parish and clergy in the Southern church ill bore
comparison with those of the Puritan and his minister; and this not
because of doctrine, but chiefly because the Puritan minister represented
the free choice of the people, who supported him willingly, and looked
upon him with reverence, as the messenger of the Lord. In South Carolina,
where the clergy were chosen by the vestries, the same harmony and
good-will existed, but the church in Virginia writhed under the injustice
of taxation without representation.
The parishioners were expected to receive and maintain the clergyman
appointed them without criticism or question. How any attempt on the part
of these vestries to discipline or dismiss the minister they supported
was received, we may judge from this letter, sent by Governor Spotswood to
the churchwardens and vestry of South Farnham parish in 1716:
"Gentlemen: I'm not a little surprised at the sight of an order of yours,
wherein you take upon you to suspend from his office a clergyman who for
near sixteen years has served as your minister.... As no vestry in England
has ever pretended to set themselves up as judges over their ministers, so
I know no law of this country that has given such authority to the vestry
here. If a clergyman transgresses against the canons of the church, he is
to be tried before a proper judicature, and though in this country there
be no bishops to apply to, yet there is a substitute for a bishop in your
diocesan.... In case of the misbehavior of your clergyman, you may be his
accusers, but in no case his judges; but much less are you empowered to
turn him out without showing cause."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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