to think that the ability,
zeal and fidelity of these ministers who occupied the pulpit at
Jamestown were overshadowing as compared with the same qualities in the
clergymen who, one after another, occupied any of the more important
benefices in York, Surry, Elizabeth City, or Gloucester Counties, or
the counties situated in the Northern Neck, or Eastern Shore.... All
the surviving records of the seventeenth century go to show that,
whatever during that long period may have been the infirmities or
unworthy acts of individual clergymen, the great body of those
officiating in Virginia were men who performed all the duties of their
sacred calling in a manner entitling them to the respect, reverence and
gratitude of their parishioners.

Very little is known of the activities of the clergy outside of their
professional duties beyond the fact that a great many of them conducted
schools at their homes; and these "parsons schools" became a widespread
influence for good upon the youth of their day. In the generations
before the founding of the College these schools became the great
agency throughout the colony for the education of the sons of the
gentry, and of the occasional youth of a lesser privileged family who
was taken free by the parson, or supported by a school endowment given
by some charitable person. In the later days there were many such
parish funds. We read of George Washington, in the following generation
attending the school conducted by Parson Marye in Fredericksburg, and
of his future wife, Martha Dandridge attending another.

It is a notable fact that throughout the whole seventeenth century the
ideal shown by the General Assembly was to provide for the clergy an
adequate salary for the comfortable home of an educated man. In 1695
when the question of increase in clerical salaries was raised, the
House of Burgesses made a report to Governor Andros upon the purchasing
value of salaries paid in tobacco, and stated, "They have duly weighed
the present provision made for the ministers of this country in their
respective parishes together with their other considerable perquisites
by marriages, burials, etc., and glebes,----that most if not all the
ministers of this country are in as good a condition in point of
livelihood as a gentleman that is well seated and hath twelve or
fourteen servants." They had previously stated that the tobacco salary
of the parson would in normal years in the past yield eighty pounds
st