s on travel in far lands. He was
expected to remain in England and represent the needs of the colonists
and help, perhaps, to select clergymen to go to new parishes which
would be formed as settlements developed. The religious aspect of the
movement was approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he approved
also the selection of the Reverend Robert Hunt who came to Jamestown as
the vicar of the parish and the pastor of the colonists.
The London Company made a provision that each new settlement should
become a parish with its own rector. The first settlements were
established by the Company itself and were called "Cities" after the
ideal and pattern of Geneva. That city, the home of John Calvin and of
the Calvinistic theology which so strongly influenced the Church of
England in the Seventeenth Century, was a self-governing unit in the
Swiss Confederation. It consisted of the city and its suburban
territory and was the prototype from which the "City" or "Hundred" in
Virginia and the "Township" or "town" in Massachusetts were formed.
There were four Cities in Virginia: James City, Charles City, The City
of Henrico, and Elizabeth City. They were boroughs at the time of the
first meeting of the General Assembly of Virginia in 1619, each one
electing its own Burgesses. And as counties now, instead of cities,
each one elects its own Delegates to the Assembly. There were four
"cities," three "hundreds," and four "plantations" represented by
Burgesses in the first Assembly in 1619, and each one was a separate
parish. Official records have long been lost but the names are known of
some six clergymen who were incumbents of parishes in Virginia between
1607 and 1619.
The London Company had a rule that every clergyman who volunteered or
was invited to go to a parish in Virginia was to be investigated as to
character and fitness, and each one of them was taken by a committee to
a church to read the service and preach a sermon as part of the
investigation.
It is not generally known, perhaps, but plans for the immediate
development of the life of the colonists included the establishment of
a university which would set aside one hall or college for the
education of Indian youth and another for the education of sons of
English families. The London Company in 1618 made a grant of ten
thousand acres of land on the north side of the James River and
immediately to the east of the present-day City of Richmond. That grant
was to b
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