Volume 3, Chapter 17, The Parsons' Cause
A particular area of trouble with England over the Anglican establishment appeared during
this period in the colony of Virginia. Of the seventy or so Anglican clergy in Virginia,
the bulk were moderate, liberal, and easygoing, in keeping with the low church moderation
In the western valley of Virginia, the local vestry, the important local political organ
in that province, included Presbyterians and other dissenters for many years since the
valley was almost exclusively dissenter. Local vestries furthermore selected their ministers
who rapidly fell into the tolerant and liberal spirit of religion in Virginia.
A little knot of high church Anglicans bitterly opposed to this condition and strove to bring
church and British control over ecclesiastical and other affairs of the colony.
These men, largely English-born, clustered in and around the faculty of the College of
of William & Mary. In the fall of 1755, Virginia passed the first of its two-penny acts. Since
Virginia's major currency was tobacco, its dues, contracts and obligations were generally
payable in that commodity or in more convenient warehouse receipts for quantities of tobacco.
In such a system, a poor tobacco crop and a consequent rise in tobacco prices injured
debtors and advantaged creditors.
In 1755, a year of high tobacco prices, there was inaugurated a Virginia practice of fixing
tobacco at an arbitrary price of two pence a pound.
This at a time when the market price of tobacco was far higher than that. Virginians generally
approved the measure because the main creditors or receivers of fixed obligations in tobacco
were the tax collectors and the receivers of government fees. The Two Penny Act caused
a welcome reduction in the real economic burden of taxation and government spending on the
of Virginians, and did this precisely during a time of economic crises when such relief
was most needed.
Government bureaucrats receiving fixed fees in tobacco lost a heavy windfall as a result
of the Two Penny Act, particularly affected with the Anglican Parsons who each received
a fixed sum of a little over 17,000 pounds of tobacco per year.
The knot of high church ministers zealously protested the two-penny law. A small clique
of Parsons, including four professors at William & Mary, sent several bitter protests
to the Bishop of London. They were led by the Reverend John Cam of York County, a professor
of divinity at William & Mary. The 1755 law was meant to be enforced for ten months only,
After which the crop crisis would be over. The most important of the Virginia two-penny
laws was passed in the fall of 1758, amid a catastrophic drought that lowered Virginia's
tobacco production by nearly 90 percent. A fixed maximum price of two pence a pound was
placed on tobacco for the following year. The Tory faction of the Virginia establishment
was embittered at the loss of its windfall gains. The market tobacco price had risen
to six pence a pound. Half of the Anglican clergy of the colony convened and with dispatch
sent John Cam to England to plead their parson's cause for royal disallowance of the law. Cam
took with him the minister's representation of the clergy of the Church of England. The
The representation bitterly and incorrectly denounced the Two-Penny Act as deliberately designed to injure the Anglican clergy and angered the Virginians by warning that the royal prerogative was being violated by the colony.
The Anglican clergy were thus urging a royal veto over the self-governing acts of the Virginians,
and went from there to urge the nullifying, rather than the mere setting aside of the law,
so that the two-penny act would be null and void from the beginning.
The importance of this stemmed from the short-term nature of the crisis
and of the law. If it could be voided from the beginning, Virginia would be liable for
a large retroactive salary to its established clergy. The Virginia assembly countered the
appointment of Cam in early 1759 by appointing its own agent in London and selecting a committee
of correspondents to carry on the struggle. The argument was now carried to England, where
Where Virginians were further embittered by a vicious attack upon them by Bishop Thomas
Sherlock of London, who had long been one of the prime movers in the scheme for an American
episcopate. Sherlock leveled false accusations of a deliberate attack on the Virginia clergy,
and then went on in a crescendo of calumny to charge the Virginia Assembly in its passing
Sherlock went on to denounce the increasing number of dissenters, largely Presbyterians,
in the colony. The CAM Petition, aided by Archbishop Secker, traveled favorably through
the ranks of the British bureaucracy. Finally, in August 1759, the Privy Council disallowed
The Two Two-Penny Acts It also went beyond this to order the Virginia
Governor not to sign in the future any such law that did not have a suspension clause delaying
execution of the law until the King should approve, a serious threat to the self-rule
of the colony. The Crown had merely disallowed the Two-Penny Act rather than nullified it
from the start. The outcome of the dispute was therefore still unclear, a fact that would
rankle Virginia-British relations for eight more years. The Reverend Mr. Kam and a few
other Tory Parsons immediately decided to sue in the courts for the missing back pay,
and if these cases were won, total nullification would be a fact. The Virginia taxpayers would
The assembly and its committee of correspondents decided to back the vestries in the court cases, and its committee of correspondents warned that the royal decision called into question the powers of the Virginia legislature to make temporary laws for the public wheel.
The Assembly in late 1760 petitioned the Crown for power to pass such temporary measures,
but in vain. News of Bishop Sherlock's bitter blast particularly infuriated Virginians and
set off a pamphlet war in the colony. Two of Virginia's leading planter oligarchs,
Richard Bland, Jr. and Colonel Landon Carter, both Burgesses and both Anglicans, attacked
Sherlock and became involved in a series of exchanges with John Cam. The Bland family
was intermarried with such eminent planter families as the Randolphs and the Carters with
the Randolphs, Byrds and Harrison's. Bland's pamphlet, A Letter to the Clergy, 1760, was
notable for a sardonic statement on the royal prerogative. Like the King of Babylon's decree,
it may, for aught I know, almost force the people of the plantations to fall down and
Worship any image it shall please to set up. Moreover, as salis populi est suprema lex,
every consideration must give place to it, and even these royal instructions may be deviated
from with impunity. But the major threat lay in the court-suits
of the Reverend Mr. Cam and four of his fellow ministers, for their victory would mean that
The slow processes of the courts kept the whole issue alive and festering. The first
case to be decided was that of Reverend Alexander White of King William County. White's case
This case was turned over in Toto in the fall of 1762 to the jury, which naturally found
for Virginia. In the case of the Reverend Thomas Warrington, decided soon afterward,
the Elizabeth City County Court, headed by George Wythe, sustained the original validity
of the Two Penny Act. Furthermore, it also found for the defendant.
The third case to emerge was that of the Reverend James Murray of Louisa County and was decided
in Hanover County Court.
On November 5, 1763, Judge John Henry decreed that the two-penny act had been null and void
from the start.
The only problem remaining was a jury trial fixing the amount of damages due to Murray.
The trial was held in December. To Murray's disgust, the jury included the vulgar herd,
two of which were ardent New Light Presbyterians. Dissenters had obvious reason to be hostile
to levering taxes upon themselves for the benefit of an Anglican establishment.
The great significance of the Murray trial was the emergence upon the scene of the brilliant
Young Lawyer Patrick Henry Henry, son of Judge John Henry, a leading
planter of Hanover County, was a nephew of a venerable Anglican minister, the Reverend
Patrick Henry, who was one of the ministers filing suit against the colony.
Young Patrick had every family incentive to be on the Tory-Anglican side of the dispute.
Instead, hired despairingly at the last minute, Henry, presumably in a helpless situation,
radicalized the atmosphere and captured the imagination of the colony in a dramatic speech
to the jury. In short, Henry escalated the dispute straight up to the Crown. By annulling
Between the good and necessary two-penny act, the king had violated the original compact
between king and people, by which the latter had promised obedience in return for royal
protection of their rights. Therefore, concluded Henry inexorably, a king by disallowing acts
of Socialitarian Nature from being the father of his people degenerated into a tyrant and
forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience.
At that point, the Reverend Mr. Murray recounted that the more sober part of the audience was
struck with horror.
Peter Lyons, the leading lawyer of the area and Murray's counsel, cried out at this that
Henry had spoken treason, and murmurs of treason arose from the audience. But Henry, unruffled,
continued to denounce bitterly the Anglican clergy. The clergy of Virginia, on refusing
to acquiesce in the law, ought to be considered as enemies of the community, and Murray and
and his colleagues should be not rewarded but stripped of their appointments.
In a stirring proration, Henry warned that unless the jury were disposed to rivet the
chains of bondage on their own necks, he hoped they would not let slip the opportunity which
now offered of making such an example of him, Murray, as might hereafter be a warning to
to himself and his brethren not to have the temerity for the future, to dispute the validity
of such laws.
The jury swayed and moved, brought in a verdict for token minimum damages, one penny.
Judge Henry moved to tears by his son's great speech, upheld the verdict, and the happy
John Cam's own case came to trial in April 1764. This critical case was decided by the
Council of Virginia, sitting as the Supreme General Court of the colony. The Council decided
against CAM by a vote of five to four. Voting against CAM were John Blair of Williamsburg,
sometime President of the Council, John Taylor, William Byrd III, Robert Burwell, and Presley
Thornton. Voting for CAM were Richard Corbin, Robert Carter, Peter Randolph, Surveyor General
of the Customs, and Philip Ludwell Lee. William and Thomas Nelson of York County excused themselves
from voting as parishioners of the Reverend Mr. Kamm. White, Warrington, and Morrie each
had appealed their cases to the Council, sitting as the Supreme General Court, and the Reverend
Mr. Henry's suit was dismissed when the Kamm case was decided. All the other cases were
were now ended, and the Parsons' cause rested on Cam's further appeal to the Privy Council
in England. Meanwhile, the pamphlet war between Cam, on the one hand, and Bland and Carter
on the other, had renewed in 1763 and 1764. Finally, Richard Bland published in August
August 1764, his famous The Colonel Dismounted, which the historian Lyon G. Tyler has called
the great critical paper of the revolution. Colonel Bland began by asserting that the
Virginians properly retain the rights of all Englishmen. He added, under an English government,
All men are born free, are only subject to laws made with their own consent. If then
Virginians are free-born and have the rights of Englishmen, then laws over them can be
made only by their own representatives. This, Bland declared, applied to internal laws,
whereas external laws are to be determined by Parliament. As for the royal prerogative,
and warned that submission, even to the supreme magistrate, is not the whole duty of a citizen.
Something is likewise due to the rights of our country and to the liberties of mankind.
To say that a royal instruction to a governor is to have the validity of a law and must
be obeyed without reserve is, at once, to strip us of all the rights and privileges
Thus, the strictures of Bland and Henry emphasized the importance of the Parsons' cause in expanding
the colonial conflict with Britain, from taxation by colonists themselves to legislation by
the colonists.
As historian Richard Morton puts it, from the principle of no taxation without representation,
Virginians had moved on to no legislation without representation.
During this debate, Virginians developed the great constitutional arguments, which they
were to use effectively a few years later to justify rebellion, and it started Patrick
Henry on his eloquent and outspoken defiance of British authority in America.
Nullifying the two-penny acts by the Crown irritated the Virginians in many ways. It
involved using royal power to annul a law popular in the colony. It attempted to impose
suspension clauses to restrict further Virginian legislation. It gave rise to the Parsons'
call for rendering such laws initially null and void. It rendered obnoxious to moderate
low church Virginia an influential portion of the Anglican clergy devoted to high church
and it recalled the Episcopal schemes of the leaders of the Church of England. Furthermore,
the Parsons' Cause polarized Virginian opinion, aligning the Anglican and dissenting laity
of Virginia against the reactionary wing of the local Anglican clergy, the English Church
and the Crown itself.
The Parsons' cause now rested on Kam's appeal to the Privy Council.
To combat Kam's case, the Virginia Assembly's Committee of Correspondence in July 1764 prepared
argumentation against Kam. The main brief was drawn up by Committee member Robert Carter
Nicholas of Williamsburg, who had been chief defense lawyer against Kam before the General
and by George Wythe of Williamsburg. The case dragged on unresolved until the end of 1766 when the Privy Council dismissed Cam's appeal on a legal technicality.
The Parsons' cause was ended, but even then, unclearly and inconclusively, it left a significant
Legacy of Opposition and Hostility by Virginians to the Crown.