always slow to load their fellow-citizens and themselves with duties and imports. Act 8th of the first assembly, whose records are preserved, 1623, 4, declares-"The Governor shall not lay any taxes or ympositions upon the colony their lands. or commodities other way than by the authority of the General Assembly, to be levyed and employed as the said assembly shall appoynt." And by the next act they declare that the Governor should not withdraw the inhabitants from their labours for his own services-"and in case the publick service require ymployments of many hands before the holding a General Assemblie to give order for the same, in that case the levying of men shall be done by order of the Governor and whole body of the counsell and that in such sorte as to be least burthensome to the people and most free from partiality." To save the expense of calling the assembly-"the charge of which doth most times equal itt, if not exceed all other taxes of the country"-the house gave permission in the years 1660 and 1661, to the governor and council to lay the taxes, provided he did not exceed twenty pounds of tobacco per poll. "November 9th, 1666, Die Jovis-The honourable Governour sent knowledge of his pleasure to the house that two or more of the councel might join with the house in granting and confirming the sums of the levy. The humble answer of the house is, that they conceive it their privilege to lay the levy in the house, and that the house will admit nothing without reference from the honourable Governour and councel unless it be before adjudged and confirmed by act or order, and after passing in the house shall be humbly presented to their honors for approbation or dissent. Mr. Ballard, major Weir and captain Bridger are appointed to present this answer to the honourable Governour and councel. This is willingly assented to and desired to remain on record for a rule to walk by for the future, which will be satisfactory to all. William Berkeley."

The Legislature of Virginia carly showed respect to age and enterprise. Act 10th, 1623, 4, says "That all the old planters that were here before or came in at the last coming of Sir Thomas Gates they and their posterity shall be exempted from their personal service to the warrs and any public charge (church duties excepted) that belong particularly to their persons (not exempting their families) except such as shall be ymployd to command in chief." In 1631 this act was amended by leaving out the words "they and their posterity." The spirit of this exemption law reserved an aged Quaker from the penalties of the law enacted against that sect,-as the Quaker accounts say that the first born male that grew to adult years became a Quaker, and in compliment to his birth was liberated from the penalties of the law.

Thus Virginia appeared in 1688. The inhabitants occupied but a small portion of her immense territories. They were rapidly increasing in wealth, and slowly extending their plantations toward the mountains. The protestant religion was universal. The forms of the church of England as general as the supply of ministers from England would allow; and were guarded by penal laws. The dissenters from the forms and creed of the State religion, oppressed by fines, and in some cases uncompromisingly driven from the colony. The rights of men in civil matters better understood than the rights of conscience. The Indian tribes East of the Blue Ridge broken in spirit and wasted. Not a congregation of them gathered for the worship of God, or civilization, from all the numerous tribes that once dwelt along the bay shore and the river banks. No college in the colony; and education but partially diffused. The citizens independent in their thoughts, habits and actions, enjoying the privileges of Englishmen, in their distant wilderness. With all the imperfections of society a foundation was laid for a great and noble State, that retains many traits of its colonial infancy. The community at large were sensible of some great defect in their religious matters, and desirous of a change. Averse to any fundamental revolution in creed or forms or State patronage, they longed for a purer ministry, and many desired more effect in ordinances, and more spiritual exposition of Scripture. In the preamble to the Revisal of 1661, 2, they say "And because it is impossible to honor the king as we should unlesse wee serve and feare God, as wee ought, and that they might show their equall care of church and state they have set downe certaine rules to be observed in the Government of the church, until God shall please to turne his majesties pious thoughts towards us and provide a better supply of ministers among us." And in the 18th Act entitled "provisions for a colledge," they say "Whereas the want of able and faithful ministers in this country deprives us of those great blessings and mercies that always attend upon the service of God; which want by reason of our great distance from our nation, cannot in probability be always supplied from thence: Bee it enacted that for the advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry, and promotion of piety, there be land taken up or purchased for a colledge and free school.” From the first source, the king, they never obtained "a better supply." From the second, the college, which was soon after reared by Commissary Blair, the State has been drinking, as from a fountain of pearls; she has gathered gems that sparkle in her crown as an independent State. Relief in matters of Religion and Conscience was sought in vain from England; help came from another quarter.

The causes that has wrought most strongly to make Virginia what she is, have been partly moral and partly physical. Those that made her what she was in 1688 were all in operation in 1619. Previous to that date, tobacco planting became the absorbing occupation of the colonists, and in its operation was hostile to towns and villages and mechanical arts. In 1619, the Company in London at the instance of Sir Edward Landys, took steps to make the colony permanent by sending the colonists wives. In the same year the King determined to send a company of dissolute persons to act as servants to the colonists, making labour disreputable, and rendering Virginia for a time the receptacle of malefactors. In 1619 the first cargo of Africans was brought to Virginia and sold to the colonists as slaves for life. The servitude of Englishmen had a bound; that of the Africans no limits, as his children were slaves. In 1619 the most vigorous efforts were made to christianize the Indians, and erect a college for the use of the colony. All these influences acting under the moulding power of a state religion made Virginia what she was on the accession of the Prince of Orange to the crown of England. After that event another element was infused, whose influence though last was not least, the Republicanism of the Religious principle. Its influence will be portrayed in the following sketches.

CHAPTER II.

REV. FRANCIS MAKEMIE AND HIS ASSOCIATES.

THE first minister, dissenting from the Church of England, that had leave, from the constituted authorities, to preach in Virginia, was a Presbyterian. He is the first, on the Geneva model, that is known to have taken his residence in Virginia, or the United States of America. This was Francis Makemie. The churches gathered by his labors, were in Barbadoes, in the West Indies, in that part of Maryland between the Atlantic and the Chesapeake, and in Accomac county, Virginia. He has no lineal descendant on earth. Not a sermon, or a page of a diary, and but a single letter, from his hand, is in existence. No biographical sketch, drawn by a cotemporary, has given a portraiture of the man, or a connected history of his services. What remains of him,-and there are remains,-is like the ruins of an ancient temple, that awakes admiration by the beauty of the fragments, and the symmetry of the particu

lar parts, while the uniqueness of the sculpture almost forbids an imagination of the grandeur of the whole.

Perhaps however it is not a matter of disquietude, that all that Makemie possessed in common with his race has passed away to the compend of all history, he was born, he lived, and died; or that all he possessed in common with preachers of the Gospel in every age, is preserved only in meager notices in the records of Ecclesiastical bodies. We are left to suppose that he had his share of the troubles and joys of life, in his person and his family; that he knew the perplexities and excitements of the ministerial race, and came to his end with hope triumphant over the fears, and troubles, and doubts, which beset the human soul in his course of purification for heaven. The history of a man's life becomes interesting to his own. generation, or to posterity, only as he has done uncommon things well, or common things better than his compeers. The interest attached to the name, birth place, and labours of Makemie arises from the circumstance, that he was, in all probability, the first consistent Presbyterian minister in the United States; certainly the first in Virginia. The Presbyterian ministers, mentioned by Mather and others as residing in Massachusetts, at an early date, were more or less Congregational in their forms and discipline. They were intermingled with Congregationalists, and ultimately became entirely blended with that denomination. Had Makemie been a man of less than mediocrity of talent, and had he been called only to the trials incident to a church of emigrants, his being first in a series of ministers, whose progression has been so noble, would encircle him with a halo bright from surrounding darkness.

First in the series of worthies is not the only honor of Makemie. Called to pass through scenes of trial and perplexity, such as cannot be the lot of the present generation, he acquitted himself with honor. His imitators were clothed with honor. "The Attorney has met his match to-day"-was the exclamation of the bar, when Davies stood before the Governor and Council of Virginia and plead, as Makemie did in Virginia and before Lord Cornbury in New York, the true meaning and extent of the Act of Toleration, and vindicated the rights of conscience as acknowledged, imperfectly indeed, yet acknowledged by the English law. Makemie established the great truth, that it was no crime against the State, or known law, for him to preach the gospel to those who desired to hear, and avowed that desire to the magistrates. Davies followed his example, and the bar said he was a "capital lawyer spoiled." Reed, in his history of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, tells us that Makemie was from the neighborhood of Ramilton in Donegal. His name, which has been spelled differently, by

different writers evidently meaning the same man,-Mackamy, -Mackamie,-and McKemie,-was, as appears from the records of Accomac Court, spelled by himself, Makemie. It indicates his origin from that race which emigrating from Scotland to Ireland and from Ireland to America, bears, in America, the appellation, Scotch Irish. There is no record of the condition or baptismal names of his parents. His mental exercises, in his early days are unknown, with one single exception. In reply to a charge brought against him in Virginia, of denying the influence of the Holy Spirit, because he rejected baptismal regeneration, he declared, that so far from denying the influence of the Spirit, he fully believed them to be indispensable to all religion; and that he had reason to thank God that at the age of fourteen, under the instruction of a pious schoolmaster, he felt their power on his own soul.

Mr. Reed informs us that he was introduced to the Presbytery of Lagan, by his pastor, the Rev. T. Drummond, in the year 1680, and that he was licensed by that Presbytery in the year 1681. Application had been made to that body, in 1678, by a Captain Archibald Johnson, for assistance in procuring a minister for Barbadoes. In December, 1680, Colonel Stevens from Maryland, "near Virginia," applied to the same Presbytery for a minister to settle in that colony. In consequence of these applications, Makemie was ordained as Evangelist for America. The precise date of his ordination is not known. There is a deficiency in the records of the Presbytery of Lagan arising from the imprisonment of the Stated Clerk and some other members. Their crime had been the holding a fast on account of the peculiar situation of the country. They were fined, they suffered imprisonment for months, and then gave security for good behaviour for an act which could be an offence only to a tyrant. Mr. Reed tells us that Makemie removed to America, resided for a time on the Eastern shore of Virginia; that the ministers from Europe uniting with him in the formation of the first Presbytery in America according to the Westminster Confession, were from the Province of Ulster, Ireland; and there he pauses.

From the circumstances of the case, it appears that he must have been ordained for his mission to America as early as 1682 or 3. He laboured in Barbadoes, in Maryland and Virginia. Mr. Spence in his Letters tells us, that the churches in Somerset county, Maryland, were organized at a period of time when there was no other Presbyterian minister to organize than Francis Makemie. Snowhill was established by act of the provincial assembly, 1684, then in Somerset, now in Worcester, the latter having been set off as a county in 1742. "It was,-Mr. Spence tells us,-settled by English Episcopalians, and Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, and it is