ties. It is very certain that all this had nothing to do with the question before the jury; but they readily imbibed sentiments so much in accordance with their interests, and so agreeable to their prejudices against the clergy; and, carried away by an eloquence as extraordinary as it was unexpected, (for it was Mr. Henry's first cause in any court,) they yielded to their feelings, and returned a verdict of one penny damages. The court, influenced as much as the jury by the fascinating powers of the advocate, unanimously refused to grant a new trial; and this refusal was received with a shout of acclamation by the crowd both within and without the house. The people, in fact, looked upon it as their cause; the triumph of Mr. Henry was their triumph: and a striking picture of the spirit of the populace in this matter is afforded in the fact, that as soon as the decision was made, the people, in spite of all efforts made by the officers to preserve order in the court, seized Mr. Henry at the bar, bore him out of the courthouse, and raising him on their shoulders, carried him, in a sort of triumphal procession, about the courtyard. It was, indeed, a sponta

* A picture of the scene here described, together with a sketch of this remarkable speech, has been preserved by one who witnessed its effect with the deepest interest, even by Mr. Maury himself. The report of Mr. Maury does not fully sustain the glowing description given by the biographer of Mr. Henry; but, with a degree of candour most honourable to Mr. Maury, it does show that the advocate possessed extraordinary powers of eloquence. It was in the course of this speech, says Mr. Maury, that, when Mr. Henry declared that a king who annulled and disallowed laws of a salutary nature, instead of being the father, degenerated into the tyrant of his people, that the opposing advocate cried out, "He has spoken treason." The bench, however, did not think so, and Mr. Henry proceeded without interruption in the delivery of as bold a philippic as ever subject uttered against his sovereign. Calling to mind the relation in which Virginia then stood to the crown of England, it must be confessed that the speech contained much more treason than logic: it was an appeal to men's passions, not to their understandings, and was managed with consummate address.-MS. letter from Mr. Maury to the reverend Mr. Camm, furnished to the author by James Maury, Esq.

neous though undignified tribute to the extraordinary powers of a very extraordinary man; but it was also the triumph of wrong over right.

The news of the defeat of the clergy, connected as it was with the unlooked-for display of Mr. Henry's eloquence, spread with rapidity through the colony; and so decided was public sentiment, that the clergy, hopeless of success, never brought any of the other cases to trial; they were all dismissed by the plaintiffs. In Mr. Maury's case no appeal was taken; and Mr. Camm assigns as the reason for this, that the legislature voted money to support the defendants in the appeal, and the clergy were too poor to contend against the wealth of the public treasury. It is not known with certainty that the assembly made provision to sustain the defendants in this particular case; though the journals show, in 1767, an engagement to defend all suits brought by the clergy for their salaries, payable on or before the last day of May, 1759.*

With all the prejudices which resulted from the transactions just related, operating against the church, no time could have been more inauspicious for agitating another question, to the history of which the course of events has now brought us. For many years, applications had been repeatedly made by members of the church in this country for a resident bishop. In the first instance, these applications issued alike from laity and clergy; a variety of circumstances, fully recorded in a future volume of this work, had conspired to defeat the success of the applications, and sometimes when they seemed to be on the eve of accomplishment.

Notwithstanding all disheartening events, they were, however, still continued, and principally by the clergy of some of the northern colonies. New-York and New-Jersey, with the occasional aid of Connecticut, were conspicu

* See Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, section 1.

ous in these solicitations. They spared no efforts to bring into their views their brethren of the other colonies, in the reasonable expectation that a unanimous appeal to the church of the mother country would not be disregarded. The clergy of New-York and New-Jersey entered into a voluntary union, known as "The United Convention of NewYork and New-Jersey ;" and from the manuscript records of that body kept by the late Bishop Seabury, who then resided in New-York, and was its secretary, the fact is ascertained that the reverend Dr. Cooper, then president of King's (now Columbia) College in New-York, and the reverend Mr. M'Kean, missionary at Amboy in NewJersey, were specially deputed to visit the southern part of the continent, for the purpose of securing the co-operation of their brethren in that region in procuring an American episcopate.*

It must not, however, be supposed that the unanimity which had marked the earlier applications on this subject still continued. The laity were now nearly ripe for the revolution which soon commenced; and bishops were an object of suspicion to many who truly loved the church, because, in their minds, the civil and ecclesiastical constitutions of the mother country were identified; the political aspect of affairs, therefore, presented to the laity a new and serious obstacle to the measure;† and in their opinions there were not wanting many of the clergy who concurred.

It was while affairs were in this posture, that, in April, 1771, Mr. Camm, the commissary, by public advertisement, requested a general attendance of the clergy of the colony at the college, on the fourth of May. There were at that time more than one hundred churches in Virginia, and most of them were furnished with ministers. On the appointed

Journals of the United Convention of 1767, pp. 32, 33, 34, 35; Seabury MSS.

+ Bishop White's Memoirs, p. 51.

day a number of the clergy met, and a proposition was made to address the king in behalf of an American episcopate. The whole number of clergymen in attendance was, however, so small, that most of them desired the commissary to convene another meeting, and to inform those summoned of the proposition which would be considered at the meeting. This was accordingly done; and on the fourth of June, the day appointed for the meeting, twelve clergymen only appeared. This number was less than that which had attended the previous meeting, and a question very naturally arose, whether so small a portion of the clergy could with propriety be deemed a convention of the Virginia clergy. This having been settled in the affirmative, though not without opposition, it was then proposed to address his majesty on the subject of the episcopate, and the proposition was rejected. A third question was then presented for consideration, on the propriety of addressing the Bishop of London for his opinion and advice, and all concurred in the adoption of such a measure.

The business of the meeting, it would seem, should here have terminated; but before adjournment, a successful effort was made to reconsider the vote upon the subject of an address to the king, and such an address was finally resolved on. This proposition to reconsider was very warmly opposed by the Rev. Messrs. Henly and Gwatkin, two of the professors in the college; but it is due to both these gentlemen to add, that their opposition was entirely on grounds unconnected with the question of church government or ministerial imparity: they distinctly avowed their cordial and conscientious approval of the episcopal system, and resisted the present effort on considerations of expediency alone. The arguments by which they sustained their opposition were founded upon, 1. respect for the Bishop of London; 2. the disturbances occasioned by the stamp act; 3. a recent rebellion in North Carolina, but just suppressed; and 4. the general clamour at that time

against the introduction of bishops. The vote to address the king was adopted, notwithstanding the opposition; a committee was appointed to apply to such of the clergy as were not present for their signatures to the purposed application, and Mr. Henly and Mr. Gwatkin solemnly protested against the whole proceeding in the following

terms:

"First, because, as the number of the clergy in this colony is at least a hundred, we cannot conceive that twelve clergymen are a sufficient representation of so large a body.

"Secondly, because the said resolution contradicts a former resolution of the same convention, which puts a negative upon the question, 'whether the king should be addressed upon an American episcopate.' And that an assembly met upon so an important an occasion, should rescind a resolution agreed to and entered down but a few minutes before, is in our apprehension contrary to all order and decorum.

"Thirdly, because the expression American episcopate includes a jurisdiction over the other colonies; and the clergy of Virginia cannot, with any propriety, petition for a measure which, for aught that appears to the contrary, will materially affect the natural rights and fundamental laws of the said colonies, without their consent and approbation.

"Fourthly, because the establishment of an American episcopate, at this time, would tend greatly to weaken the connection between the mother country and her colonies, to continue their present unhappy disputes, to infuse jealousies and fears into the minds of Protestant dissenters, and to give ill-disposed persons occasion to raise such disturbances as may endanger the very existence of the British empire in America.

"Fifthly, because we cannot help considering it as extremely indecent for the clergy to make such an applica