e next is the list of 1702. These
lists show that in 1680 there were forty-eight parishes and thirty-six
clergymen incumbents. In the list of 1702 there were fifty parishes and
forty clergymen.

The one most notable event in the religious life of both England and
Virginia was enactment by Parliament in 1689 of the Edict of
Toleration. That act in the first year of the reign of King William and
Queen Mary was the first incident in the movement of the English people
through their legislature toward freedom of religion. The Act did not
repeal the severe laws against dissent adopted in the reign of King
Charles, II, but it did remove the penalties. It took the first step
along a new roadway into human freedom; and the English-speaking world
on both sides of the Atlantic hailed it as such.

As it was a law of England, the act did not come into effect in
Virginia until it was included within the code of laws of the colony.
That was not done until 1699, although the Council of State had
approved the act in principle early in that decade. By that time
enforcement of law requiring attendance at church every Sunday had been
relaxed for it was impossible of enforcement under the conditions of
Virginian life. The law was not repealed until late in the eighteenth
century and under it every person wherever possible was required to
accept attendance at church as the duty of every citizen. In revisal of
the Virginia law in 1699 it was provided that every person must attend
worship in the parish church at least once every two months. The
General Assembly at the same time enacted a new proviso whereby
dissenters from the Established Church of Virginia, who could qualify
if in England as belonging to denominations or groups permitted under
the Toleration Act, were free in Virginia from any penalty for
non-attendance at the parish Church if they attended their own places
of dissenting worship at least once in the two months period.

In 1699 there were three denominations of dissent in Virginia; the
Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Quakers. The many thousands of
immigrants from Scotland who had belonged to the Established
(Presbyterian) Church of Scotland found little to object to in the
worship of the Established Church of Virginia, and entered into it
without difficulty or objection.

But the Presbyterians from England, as dissenters from the Established
Church of that country, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who began
their im