There are some with the lost and the loved in the grave, And some-but they're gone, they are things of the Past, Too bright for existence, too blissful to last; I may search, I may call, in my moments of pain, well, In the breasts of the gay make a home where to dwell, cious industry he has made solid additions to the historic knowledge of the reading public. The author of every such work has a right to the acknowledgment of our gratitude. In returning to this work at the present time, we have an advantage which we should have lacked, had we attempted a complete review at the time of our introductory notice in February last. We have had facilities for the formation of a judgment, like those which the Persian king is recorded to have enjoyed in listening to the debate between Mardonius and Artabanus: "When various opinions are not heard we have no chance to choose the better, and must adopt that one which we hear (or which we entertain,) but when FOOTE'S SKETCHES OF VIRGINIA. various opinions have been uttered we have an We have read this book with unfeigned surprise at the immense labour it must have cost. Records of Civil Courts and Ecclesiastical Judicatories, in manuscript, have been examined, volume after volume. Private journals, diaries, memoranda, and family genealogies have been consulted and freely used. Magazines of unquestioned standing, and pamphlets to be relied on, have contributed largely." So says the author. The book shows that the Statutes at Large of Virginia, the Archives of New York, the records of more than one Presbytery, and of more than one Synod, the library of more than one seat of learning, the tombstones in many graveyards, and the memories of many living persons who could tell of the illustrious dead, have been laid under contribution with a diligence and a regard for accuracy which are worthy of high praise. There are provoking typographical errors in this book. They sometimes, by the strange places in which they occur, make the author murder Aristotle, Quintilian, and Lindley Murray outright. They have doubtless arisen from the remoteness of the author's residence from the place at which his book was printed. They may appropriately inspire the reader with the wish that the printer's knuckles were soundly rapped as those of school-boys are wont to be for such blunders. But the book will live. It exhibits very high claims to the boon of existence. A peculiar grace or elegance of composition is not among the claims of this book to the public attention. But marks, every where abundant, of the most thorough investigation, the exhibition of historic facts of capital importance, and a gentlemanly and Christian temper throughout the book, are among its claims. This author has made himself a benefactor to the Domain of History, by not contenting himself with a vamping up of the old modicum of information in lithe and sleek sentences with flying pen, and ycleping that a new History, but by protracted and tena election; as indeed we should not always know the excellence of pure gold by itself, but when we rub it against other gold we then know that which is better." The question for instance, whether this book of Dr. Foote's is a readable one-that vital question to the lazy skimmers of books, the enervated loungers of literature, the epicurean dreamers of gold and purple dreams of romance, in this age of shallow romance— that question is solved by the fact that many have read the book, and probably every one has regretted, when he came to the end, that it was not farther onward. The question whether the book will take its place, on the standard shelves of the well-informed man, by the side of Campbell's History of Virginia, and Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, all three of them thorough, excellent, Virginia books, well imbued as they ought to be, with the precious old Virginia spirit,—that question is answered by the fact that Dr. Foote's volume has certainly gone to that place in many a library, and is as infallibly on its way thither in many more. The question whether the obvious faults in the execution of this work will stand materially in the way of its solid value has also been readily solved by the fact that most or all of its readers-all who know any thing of the author's circumstances, are apologists for its small faults and decided honest eulogists of its greatly preponderating real worth. It is not a very easy task to furnish the means of a correct estimate of the book before us without trespassing upon grounds which are necessarily prohibited in such a Journal as this. The title of the book does not convey an accurate idea of what it is. It is in fact, a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Religious Liberty in Virginia, as connected with the instrumentality of the Presbyterians. That is about what it is, and might as well have been called. It is not an easy task to tell how this then entirely new pearl of mental and spiritual freedom was won by one Herodotus, Book I, 1. class of Christians who were not the favourites years for our jewels, we confess, at least by imof Cæsar, from another class who were the fa- plication, the worthlessness of the present genevourites of Cæsar, and who had formerly enjoy- ration. And however frequently this may coned exclusive possession of that pearl; to point tinue to be said in the quarters in which it is now out all the difficulties which attended the tardy said, and though it may be said hereafter even and reluctant divorce of Church and State; and more than it has been heretofore with a certain to show these things with any thing like the clear Sardonic piquancy of air, which betrays somestriking shape and sharp angularity of meaning, thing deeper and bitterer thau mere calm judgwith which they certainly occurred in fact in the ment, and though it should come to be said in far days of old-it is no easy task to do these things more respectable quarters than those from which as they ought to be done, and yet avoid as clearly it at present comes, yet it does not follow, and it as we would wish to avoid, the prohibited ground is not so. We have no occasion to be greatly trouof controversies. We cannot therefore adopt bled by these amiable accusations. Thank God, such a course of remark as the work before us we have a Past. We have a Past worthy of the would justify, but must be content with such an explorations of the Historic Muse. We have a one as is demanded at our hands by the proprie-Past rich in already written glories, and rich in ties of the circumstances under which we write. yet unwritten glories. And when civilization, so We have obtained the pearl, religious liberty. All called, shall roll forwards so fast and so far that voices are now joined in praising the pure lustre it becomes reproachful to have a history, reof the pearl. Few persons will now admit that proachful to think and speak of the spirits of the they do not prefer perfect religious liberty. To mighty who shed a golden light over that histomake such an admission would be to confess the ry, reproachful to render due honors to their lofty intrinsic weakness of the principles which they deeds and high daring and great virtues, then we hold who might make it, and which they would shall be well content and proud to receive such desire to see abetted by the civil arm; for the ad- reproach, and to part company with the car of vantage of a state of complete freedom of reli- such a picayune civilization. We shall willingly gion is, that religious principles then stand or become confessors and martyrs, so far as our fall, as they ought to do, by their own intrinsic shabby inquisitors can confer the crown of marstrength or weakness. In the great struggle which tyrdom, to that truth which is as old as Greek this volume records, both parties did indeed set civilization, that man is a being who looks at the a high value on the right to worship God, both past and the future, as well as that small segthose who then enjoyed a monopoly of that right, ment of time which lies beneath his nose. and those who struggled to share it in common. shall treat those wicked and silly Iconoclasts who They differed in this respect, that the one party would deface the Images of Glory which Time thought the privilege would not be less valuable and Nature and God have hung before our eyes to any, by being made common to all, while the in the Temple of History, with as keen a rebuff other party seem to have thought that their own as we would treat some spiritual saw bones, enjoyment of it might be taken away by making some surgical fiend, who should bring his saw others participants of it. But this mistake has and scalpel from the world of wicked spirits, to passed away, and all are now satisfied with the amputate memory from our minds, to dissect from result. It cannot therefore be just cause of of our spirits their high joys over the nobleness of fence to any truly Virginian heart, that we should souls in other days, to put out that eye of our take in hand at length and all too tardily as it has souls which gazes with delight on the loftiness been, to render due honor to the spiritual heroes of the virtues of other years. Thank God, we of our olden times and of the peculiar mould of have a past! Aye, we will indeed talk of Washour own State, not one of whom, we rejoice to ington and of Henry. We will remember Marsay, not a single one of whom, was a Yaukee shall and Jefferson. We will not forget Madison Puritan the great old men from the North of and Giles. We will mention Mason and RanIreland, from Scotland, from France, as well as dolph. Nor shall Makemie and Davies, and from the more liberty-loving parts of England, Waddell and Smith, and Graham and Hoge, be who strove so earnestly for the priceless pearl, unremembered and unhonored in our future hisand won it, and have left it to us all, in its native, tories. They are ours. We will not be cheated clear, shining purity. We of them. The right to claim them is ours. We The present people of the Commonwealth of shall assert that right. If this be weakness, then Virginia, are incessantly twitted, in certain quar- we are very weak. Neither are we as yet beters, with making empty and undue glorification come ashamed of our weakness. We yet dare over the great names with whose fresh and thick to say that we would rather read these deathless honors the annals of our Past so greatly abound. names in our annals, we would rather see these It is said that by this incessant pointing to former awful forms in our history, than to gaze on VOL. XVII-2 shabbier forms and stir our spirits with the exam- I soon as he becomes visible, anxious anticipations ple of meaner names. And we would even rather of the most momentous and lasting consequenread far inferior names on the rolls of the past, ces. He comes as a stern, bold man, with a and see far inferior and less venerable forms in spirit full of life, and nerves strung for all events, the domain of history, than to look upon a past and sets his foot down among these rising coloof worthless, shabby, blank oblivion. nies, to try if liberty of soul may be had, and This work of Dr. Foote's, if we do not mis- what he deems pure truth may be spoken among take, has made permanent additions to the Vir- them. It is true that before his settlement in ginia Pantheon of illustrious historical charac- Virginia, the Revolution in England had occurters. Its attentive readers will long remember red, the royal fool who “lost three kingdoms for certain very striking tableaux almost vivants pre-a mass," the worst and last of the wretched dysented in it. They will often recall to their nasty of the Stuarts, had been hurled from the mind's eye, FRANCIS MAKEMIE standing before English throne to a piteous dependence on the Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, Governor of king of France, and William of Nassau was king New York, accused of preaching the Gospel- of Great Britain. And it is of course rememSAMUEL DAVIES Confronting Peyton Randolph to bered by every reader that the Act for the relief assert toleration in Virginia-and JAMES WAD- of their majesties' subjects dissenting from the DELL standing blind at the communion table with established church, commonly called the Act of William Wirt in the audience. The names of Toleration, was passed in the first year of the these men, with several others which may be reign of William and Mary. But the American seen in the book itself, will escape oblivion, not colonies had been so completely isolated from the only because they were illustrious confessors in great forty-six years' struggle, by which the hearts the cause of religious liberty, but on account of of men in the father land had been taught a disoriginal gifts of nature which made them illustrious taste for inquisitorial cruelties, that they on this confessors and made them much more besides. side the Atlantic had missed the precious lesson The admirer of historic curiosities will find the which had been learned there, and what was year 1683 a remarkable and memorable one in there the era of the end of the struggle, was both hemispheres. On that year occurred the here about the era of its commencement in good great siege of Vienna by the Turks, which was earnest. Severe Acts of Uniformity were passed raised by Sobiesky of Poland with the aid of a by the Virginia House of Burgesses as early as great eclipse of the moon, acting on the super-1659, 1660, 1661, and 1662, against Quakers and stitious fears of the besiegers. On that year other Separatists. A congregation of Puritans, Lord Russel and Algernon Sydney were behead- who had settled in the county of Nansemond as ed in London. On that year the first house was early as 1648, in the very hour of the power of built in the city of Philadelphia. And on that Cromwell, had been persecuted and scattered and year Francis Makemie, the father of the Pres- are not heard of afterwards. The great Act of byterian church in the United States, was ordain- Uniformity went into operation, in Eugland, on ed by a Presbytery in the North of Ireland and St. Bartholomew's day, (24th August,) 1662, designated for a mission to America. He first more than a year after the restoration of Charles went to the island of Barbadoes; and came II. So that it will be seen that the Virginia thence to the county of Accomac in Virginia, Statutes of Uniformity were actually in advance about the year 1690. His dwelling and also one of the English. Yet until the days of Makemie, of his points for preaching, was at a place called when the English Act of Toleration had given Pocomoke in that county. His chief preaching some foothold for liberty, there could hardly be place was Snow Hill, then in Somerset, now in said to be any contest of much consequence Worcester county, Maryland. With him the against the establishment, as there was no legal problem commenced to be wrought out, whether ground to wage one. The first colonists of Virthe blood which was even then flowing in Eng-ginia were not, like those of Massachusetts, refuland and in Scotland on religious accounts under gees from oppression, either civil or ecclesiastithe heel of the Sadducean tyrant, Charles II., cal. They came here, as their children have and the blood which was soon to flow so copi- since gone to Kentucky, to Missouri, to Alabama, ously in France by the Revocation of the Edict to Florida and to Texas, to obtain greater affluof Nantes under the still worse, because abler ence than they might have had at home. They and more respectable tyrant Louis XIV., should brought with them their attachment to the Church be followed by similar flowings of blood in America, on similar accounts. He looks almost like a mythical personage, making his appearance on the stage of history as it were unexpectedly to the beholders, and yet suggesting to all minds, as + Ibid, p. 31. *Foote, pp. 34-35. lier refugees who came here in the days of the English Commonwealth, some Puritans after the restoration, some Whigs at Monmouth's rebellion. It is of course admitted that there were some Cava of England, and indeed ministers of that church to civil affairs. "All the elements of the Virginia as their chaplains and pastors. According to character," says Dr. Foote, "in its excellencies Governor Berkeley in 1670, however, they were and follies were in operation in 1688, wealth, generally the worst of the Church of England love of ease, profusion of expense, generosity, ministers who were sent here. Perfect unifor- unrestrained passions, chivalric attention to the mity in religion was the golden dream of men fair, high sense of honour, personal independence, every where in that age,-in Holland, in Scot-carelessness of money, sense of superiority, and land, in France, in England, in Massachusetts easy manners." As early indeed as the year and in Virginia. They had not yet learned the 1666, one hundred and ten years before the great wickedness of such a requirement by any earthly revolutionary struggle, the House of Burgesses power. The great mind of Oliver Cromwell of Virginia had claimed against Sir William first conceived, in modern times, the idea of a Berkeley the right to lay the levy of their own general toleration; and even he excluded from taxes, in their own House, and had successfully it the Papists. maintained that right by obtaining from under the Governor's own hand his written assent to this claim, "to remain on record for a rule to walk by for the future." But this spirit of independence of English Laws never appears among astical matters. Their loyalty to the King as Head of the Church is unquestionable. The great legal question which Makemie, Davies and others brought up before the courts in the colonies was, Whether the Act of Toleration applied to the colonies. That act was passed for the relief of Dissenters from the the cavaliers of Virginia in reference to ecclesiChurch of England. It permitted them to enjoy their own modes of worship, provided they adopted the Articles of Religion of the StateChurch, except the 34th concerning Traditions, the 35th concerning the Homilies, the 36th concerning the consecration of Bishops and Ministers, and so much of the 20th as declares that "the Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith." That is, the Dissenters agreed to the doctrinal articles of the State-Church, but rejected the ceremonial articles and those concerning Church power. They held unanimously that "power to decree rites and ceremonies" and "authority in controversies" were divine prerogatives belonging to the Head of the Church. They were required by the Act of Toleration not to lock, bolt or bar their houses of worship; and also to make known their places of worship to the Bishop, Archdeacon, or Justices of the Quarter Sessions. On their complying with these conditions, the Clerk or Register gave them a written certificate of the fact that they had complied with the terms of the Act, and that certificate was the license of a preaching place. The Legislature of Virginia distinctly recognized the application of this Act to their Colony when in 1699, ten reluctant years after it passed at home, they provided for the exemption of dissenters from penalties according to its provisions. They also recognized it in their Revisal in 1705.* It does seem to us that this recognition, by the Legislative authority, of the Act of Toleration, ought at once and conclusively to have settled the question which we shall afterwards see to have been so tediously mooted between Davies and Peyton Randolph. There was, it is true, among the Colonists about this time a sort of spirit of independence of English Laws, manifested in reference *Foote p. 49. Makemie obtained from the county court of Accomac the license of two preaching places in October, 1699. But his main trial was in the city of New York. There was no religious establishment in that Colony. This was in 1707. Queen Anne was on the British throne, and Edward Hyde, her own cousin, was Governor of New York, under the title of Lord Cornbury. This man Cornbury was the grandson of the great Earl of Clarendon, the historian, and son of that Earl of Clarendon who figures in the pages of Macaulay in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. He came to America with a very sorry character, and did nothing to improve it after his coming. "A young man of loose principles, slender abilities and violent temper," he had been among the earliest to desert his Royal Uncle, James II., on the landing of the Prince of Orange. Blake, in his Biographical Dictionary, records the following characteristic anecdote of Cornbury after he came to New York: "A great sickness prevailed in New York in 1703. Lord Cornbury retired to Jamaica on Long Island; and as Mr. Hubbard, the Presbyterian minister, lived in the best house in the town, his lordship requested the use of it during his short residence there. Mr. Hubbard put himself to great inconvenience to oblige the governor, and the governor in return delivered the parsonage into the hands of the episcopal party, and seized upon the glebe."-Art: CORNBURY. Before this man as Royal Governor, came Francis Makemie under the charge of having preached a sermon in an open and public manuer, at the dwelling house of William Jackson *Foote, p. 37-38. † Macaulay, vol. 2, p. 461. In the county of Hanover in Virginia, a preparation had been going on for seven years, for the coming of such a man as Davies, and for the influences which such a man as Davies would bring with him, in which it would seem that any eye, which ever sees such a hand at all in human affairs, might see a higher hand than that of man. George Whitfield had passed through the state on Pearl Street, New York. The provincial infancy, but which would be mighty, and should Assembly of that colony had in 1693, passed a not know decease. law for the settlement of a "good and sufficient At this point we are constrained to pass unnoProtestant Minister" each in the city of New ticed several chapters containing matters of deep York, and in the counties of Richmond, West moment to the main design of the work, that we Chester and Queen's. This Lord Cornbury in- may at once advance to another capital figure in terpreted to mean an Episcopalian minister, ex- the great drama of coming liberty-clarum ac clusively. In addition to this he had received venerabile nomen-we advance at once to the life private instructions from Queen Anne based on and times of SAMUEL DAVIES. The parents of her ecclesiastical supremacy. Such were the Davies were of Welsh extraction. He was born laws which Makemie had violated-Cornbury's in the year 1723, in the county of New-Castle, interpretation of the act of the provincial Assem- Delaware, and was educated at Blair's famous bly, which was indeed a very Cornburyish inter- school at Fagg's Manor, in Pennsylvania. In pretation, and certain unpromulgated instructions 1747 the Presbytery of New-Castle ordained him of Queen Anne to her Governor. The trial may as an Evangelist for Virginia. be found in Foote's Sketches, p. 66, and in 4th Force, and indeed has often before, at least in part, been before the public. It is impossible to quote any part of it here without spoiling it. We must earnestly refer the reader who loves the sublimity of manliness, to the pages of our author for the whole trial. A jury under judge Mompessou discharged Makemie, June 1707, after mulcting him with the whole expenses of in 1740. the trial. When Makemie stood before Lord Reports had reached certain men in HanCornbury, the latter and his Attorney General, over of the great increase in parts of Marymaintained that neither the Act of Uniformity, land, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New nor the Act of Toleration, which was intended England of a more vital spirit of religion than to take off its edge, extended to the colonies, prevailed in Virginia. They had been regular and he relied on the Queen's instructions based attendants at the parish churches. But they on her supremacy. But when Makemie stood did not find at the parish churches, what their before Judge Mompesson, the attorney gave to newly awakened spirits craved. Some stray the jury as in poiut the Statutes of Elizabeth and leaves of Boston's Fourfold State fell into the Charles II. for Uniformity, omitting all mention hauds of one. He sent to England by the next of the Act of Toleration! which, he had before ship for the whole book; and when it was obadmitted, extended as far as the acts for uniform-tained, he professed the faith exhibited in that ity. Truly this was the age of Judge Jeffries. book. A copy of Luther on the Galatians fell Were we requested by some American historical into the hands of another with the same result. painter-some one who had the soul to under- A third obtained somehow a volume of Whitestand fully what an American historical painter field's Glasgow Sermons. Without any concert, and an American historical painting should be—four gentlemen absented themselves from the some one who would not bind himself to the ex- parish church on the same sabbath, and for the amples of the tame and soulless things which have same reason: that they might direct their attenhitherto gone by those names, we could not pro- tion at home to subjects more to their taste than bably do better than to indicate to him Makemie those presented at the parish church. For their and Cornbury confronted. The old world and the delinquency they were summoned to answer on new world stood face to face. The old Stuartism the same day before the same magistrates; and and the new western spirit were placed in an- not until they met to be punished as culprits, did tagonism. The one was connected with nobles either of them know that he had three fellows and with Kings, who had played their parts ac- in this strange offence. It is not positively cording to their characters in the great religious known who these four men were. One of them drama of the seventeenth century. The other, certainly was Samuel Morris. Huut, the father was to be connected in a future succession, of the Rev. Mr. Hunt of Maryland, (who gave with brave stout spirits, who would kindle up a very minute account of the affair to a gensacred liberty in America for the great drama of tleman of Albemarle in 1792) was pretty certhe eighteenth century. The representative of tainly another. We are probably to look for a spirit once mighty, but approaching a death the other two among the persons who afterwhich should know not resurrection, stood before wards obtained license for houses of worship on the representative of a spirit which was now in their lands: David Rice and Stephen Lacy, of |