ommon Prayer_, his parishioners
were thereby absolved from paying him any further salary.

In England marriage was held to be a religious service to be performed
by no one other than a priest of the Church; and Parliament, after
abolishing the Prayer Book and the canons of the Anglican Church, was
compelled to enact another law making provision for the performance of
the marriage ceremony as a civil contract. The new law directed that
justices of the local courts perform marriages and record them, if
desired, in the court records. The people of Virginia paid no attention
to this law except, as far as is known, in one case in Northumberland
County. In the year 1656 a man and woman in Lancaster County, instead
of going to the minister, if there were one, or to the reader of the
parish, went to a county official of Northumberland and were married
according to the Act of Parliament. Their marriage was recorded in the
court order book and there nine months later the new incumbent, Samuel
Cole of Lancaster, found it. He thereupon declared openly that the law
of Virginia was in effect in his parish and not the Acts of Parliament.
The affair ended when the parson required the wedded couple to consider
themselves unwed until he could announce the banns of matrimony for
them on three separate Sundays and then perform a Christian marriage.
He then took occasion to go to the Northumberland county court and
record his certificate of marriage of the couple in the court order
book. The two certificates still appear in the order book of the county
court of Northumberland County in the following words:

Certificate of Marriage, 11 Sept. 1656. John Merryday [i.e.,
Meredith] and Mrs. Ann Nash, als. Mallet, were married by
Coll. Jno. Trussell, according to Act of Parliament, 24
August, 1653. Witnesses Geo. Colclough, Leonard Spencer and
Jno. Carter. Rec. 20 Sept. 1656.

To all such whom it may concern. These are to certifie that
John Meredith & Ann Nash, being three times Published
according to Law, were married at Currotomon on the 14th of
this instant July, 1657 per mee, Samuel Cole, minister,
_ibidem_ 20th July 1657 this certificate was recorded.

The colony of Virginia in affairs of both church and state exercised
more independence of action under the Commonwealth than it ever
exercised before or afterward until the Declaration of Independence in
1776. The General Assembly, after it made a tr