Virginia’s Great Migration: Religious Origins

Religion was not as central to the origins of the Chesapeake colonies as it had been in New England. But the founders of Virginia shared the religious obsessions of their age, and they were sent upon their way with an abundance of spiritual exhortation. John Donne, the poet dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, called himself “an adventurer; if not to Virginia, then for Virginia”. He preached a sermon to departing planters, and told them:

Your principal end is not gain, nor glory, but to gain souls to the glory of God. This seals the great seal, this justifies itself, this authorises authority, and gives power to strength itself. … you shall have made this island, which is but the Suburbs of the old world, a Bridge, a Gallery to the new; to join all to that world that shall never grow old, the kingdom of heaven.¹

John Donne had mainly in mind the salvation of Indian souls. Others suggested that the founding of Virginia might also be a means of redeeming a few unregenerate Englishmen. The Reverend William Crashaw delivered another departure sermon for the Virginia Company, in which he declared:

As long as we have wise, courageous and discreet Governours, together with the preaching of God’s word, we much care not what the generality is of them that go in person, considering we find that the most disordered men that can be raked up out of thesuperflaitie, or, if you will, the very excrements of a full and swelling state, if they be removed … from the licentiousness and too much liberty of the states where they have lived, into a more base and barren soil, as every country is at first, and to a harder course of life, wanting pleasures, and subject to some pinching miseries, and to a strict form of government and severe discipline, do often become new men, even as it were cast in a new mold.²

This advice was addressed to one “discreet governor” in particular, Lord De la Warr, who did as he was urged. One of his first acts in the New World was to open a “pretty chapel” decorated every day with fresh flowers, complete with a chancel of Virginia cedar, a communion table of black walnut, and a font in the shape of an Indian canoe. Lord De la Warr required every Virginian to assemble for prayers twice a day “at the ringing of a bell.” Every Sunday all the settlers were compelled to attend two services conducted with high ceremony. The governor himself sat on a splendid green velvet throne, surrounded by “all the Councilors, Captains, other officers, and all the gentlemen, and with a guard of Halberdiers in his Lordship’s Livery.”³

For more than a century, the religious life of Virginia developed along these lines. It was ceremonial, liturgical, hierarchical, ritualist—and very different from New England. Each individual was not expected to share the same opinions. But all were compelled to join in the same rituals. The gentry who came from southwestern England had long favored “an uniform government of the Church in all points.”⁴

During its first few decades, Virginia’s immigrants held many varieties of Protestant belief. A few laymen and clergy had puritanical leanings. The marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe was performed by Richard Buck, a staunch Puritan. But Virginia did not attract many of that persuasion. In 1613, one clergyman marveled that “so few of our English ministers that were so hot against the surplice and subscription, come hither, where neither are spoken of.”⁵

After Virginia became a royal colony, an ideal of Anglican conformity began to be more actively pursued. In 1632 the Assembly enacted seventeen laws which required “uniformity throughout this colony, both in substance and circumstance to the canons and constitutions of the Church of England.” Each minister was compelled to preach every Sabbath, to give communion three times a year, to “examine, catechise and instruct” all the children in his parish, and to “excel all others in puritie of life.” Parishioners were required to attend church on Sundays and holidays, or to pay a shilling for each absence. They also had to pay tithes, and were forbidden to “disparage” their ministers.⁶

After 1642 Governor William Berkeley added other laws which required “all nonconformists … to depart the colony with all conveniency.” Several small Puritan communities had been founded before he arrived, and nonconformist ministers had been sent to serve them. Berkeley scattered these settlements, and banished the Puritans from Virginia. More than 300 fled to Maryland, and others departed for New England. After the Civil War, the Protectorate was unable to break the Anglican establishment in Virginia. The Book of Common Prayer was specially permitted in the colony, as long as prayers to the King and Royal family were omitted.⁷

When Quakers began to appear the authorities moved quickly against them. A law in 1658 ordered all Quakers to be banished. Shipmasters who brought them were required to remove them in close confinement. One defiant female Friend was ordered to be whipped twenty strokes upon her bare back, and (more painful to a Quaker conscience) she was also required to confess her error upon bended knee. The whipping was remitted when she promised to conform. Quakers were also fined for failing to attend Anglican services and for refusing to pay tithes. In 1661 other laws punished Anglicans who were merely “loving to Quakers.”⁸

This persecution worked. Puritan congregations were virtually eliminated from Virginia, and Quakers were reduced to a few small meetings. By the end of the seventeenth century, religious belief was remarkably uniform in the colony. Robert Beverley reported in 1705 that dissenters were “very few,” with “not more than five conventicles amongst them, namely three small meetings of Quakers, and two of Presbyterians.”⁹

A religious survey of Virginia in 1724 showed that the Anglican establishment was strong and healthy throughout the colony—more so than in the mother country. Most clergy reported that their services were well attended every Sunday by most white adults in the parish, and that a larger proportion took holy communion than in England. Dissenters were reported to be few, and in some parishes nonexistent.¹⁰

Later in the eighteenth century, this pattern rapidly changed with the increase of Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists. But through the Old Dominion’s first six generations Anglican orthodoxy was strong, and growing stronger. Here was a fact of high importance for the history of Virginia, for the culture of this colony, no less than Massachusetts, was shaped by its religion.