htful climate and richest soil
imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and
sylvan scenes, lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water,
rich valleys, and majestic woods; the whole, interspersed with an
infinite variety of flowering shrubs, constitute the landscape
surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are generally
robust, and live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want, and
acquainted with but few vices; their inexperience of the elegancies of
life precludes any regret that they possess not the means of enjoying
them; but they possess what many princes would give their dominions
for--health, content, and tranquillity of mind."

In the year 1761 died the Rev. Thomas Dawson, President of the College
of William and Mary; he was succeeded by the Rev. William Yates. During
the same year died the Rev. Samuel Davies.[505:A] He accepted the
presidency of the College of New Jersey in 1759, and died on the 4th of
February, 1761. In this year was incorporated the town of Staunton, in
Augusta County, and in the following year Romney, in the County of
Hampshire.

During the tragic scenes of the French and Indian war, the persecutions
of the dissenting Presbyterians, whose aid was so necessary in defending
the frontiers, were essentially lessened. They were indebted to the
confusion and dangers of the times for a freedom in matters of religion
which was denied them in a period of tranquillity. Their ministers now
enjoyed the privilege of preaching where they pleased, and were no
longer restrained by the Virginia intolerant construction of the
toleration act. The Baptists began to multiply their number in Virginia,
and their new enthusiasm became the object of persecution. But events
were about to turn the tide of popular prejudice, and direct it against
the clergy of the established church, and to give to the dissenters a
stronger foothold and a higher vantage ground. Those ministers of the
establishment who had been vainly endeavoring to repress the progress of
dissent by ridicule, detraction, and insult, some of them combining with
and leading on a mob of "lewd fellows of the baser sort" in these
persecuting indignities, now began to find it necessary to defend
themselves against the rising storm of public indignation.

FOOTNOTES:

[500:A] The officers were Lieutenant-Colonel George Mercer, Major
William Peachy, Captains S. Munford, Thomas Cocke, Hancock Eustace, John