forty-two years."

And then to the right of the door entering from the east, another
bearing the following:

"Departed this life, January 17, 1806, the Rev. BENJAMIN BROWN,
Rector of Elizabeth City Parish, aged thirty-nine years."

On November 17, 1806, the vestry elected the Rev. Robert Seymour Sims,
and August 11, 1810, they elected the Rev. George Holson. During the
last war with Great Britain (1813), Hampton was sacked, its inhabitants
pillaged--one of its aged citizens sick and infirm, wantonly murdered in
the arms of his wife--and other crimes committed by hireling soldiers,
and by brutalized officers, over which the chaste historian must draw a
veil. The church of God itself was not spared during the saturnalia of
lust and violence. His temple was profaned, and His altars desecrated.
What British ruthlessness had left scathed and prostrate, was soon
looked upon with neglect. The moles and the bats held their revels
undisturbed within its once hallowed courts, and the "obscene owl
nestled and brought forth in the ark of the covenant." The church in
which our fathers worshipped, stabled the horse and stalled the ox. The
very tombs of the dead, sacred in all lands, became a slaughter ground
of the butcher, and an arena for pugilistic contests. A few faithful
ones wept when they remembered Zion, in her day of prosperity, and
beheld her in her hour of homeless travail, and to their cry, "How long,
oh Lord how long!" the following preamble, accompanying a subscription
list, tells the story of her woes, and breathes the language of her
returning hope:

"Whereas, from a variety of circumstances, the Episcopal Church
in the town of Hampton, is in a state of dilapidation, and will
ere long moulder into ruins, unless some friendly hand be
extended to its relief, and in the opinion of the vestry, the
only method that can be pursued to accomplish the laudable
design of restoring it to the order in which our forefathers
bequeathed it to their children, is to resort to subscription;
and they do earnestly solicit pecuniary aid from all its
friends in the full belief, that an appeal will not be made in
vain. And hoping that God will put it into the hearts of the
people to be benevolently disposed toward our long neglected
Zion."

This bears date April 28, 1826.

A committee of the citizens of Hampton was appointed to wait on the
venerable Bishop Moore,