ginia to consent
to the appointment of a bishop, was "to unchurch the church;" and his
views on this subject were re-echoed by Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, in an
anniversary sermon delivered before the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts. On this point of ecclesiastical government
the members of the establishment in Virginia appear to have been looked
upon as themselves dissenters. In one sense they were so; but their
repugnance was to prelacy, not to the episcopate; a prelatical bishop
was in their minds associated with ideas of expense beyond their means,
and of opposition to the principles of civil liberty. Boucher, in a
sermon that he preached in this year at St. Mary's Church, in Caroline
County, of which he was then rector, says of the dissenters in Virginia:
"I might almost as well pretend to count the gnats that buzz around us
in a summer's evening."

The scheme of sending over a bishop had been entertained more than a
hundred years before; and Dean Swift at one time entertained hopes of
being made Bishop of Virginia, with power, as is said, to ordain priests
and deacons for all the colonies, and to parcel them out into deaneries,
parishes, chapels, etc., and to recommend and present thereto. The
favorite sermons of many of the Virginia clergy were Sterne's.[562:A]

During this year died the Rev. James Horrocks, President of the College
and Commissary. He had been at the head of William and Mary since the
death of Rev. William Yates, in 1764. Mr. Horrocks was succeeded in both
places by the Rev. John Camm.

John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, was transferred[562:B] from the government
of New York to that of Virginia. The town of Fincastle, the title of one
of his sons, in Botetourt County, was now incorporated. The Honorable
William Nelson, president, died in this year. About this time the
Methodists appeared in Virginia; they still avowed that attachment to
the Church of England which Wesley and Whitefield both, in the early
years of their career, had uniformly professed. Although they allowed
laymen to preach, the communion was received by them at the hands of the
clergy only; and they even affirmed that "whosoever left the church left
the Methodists." They, therefore, now were visited with a share of the
odium which fell upon the established church.

FOOTNOTES:

[556:A] Bancroft, vi. 228.

[557:A] 1769.

[557:B] May 16th.

[558:A] Letter of R. C. Nicholas to Arthur Lee, _S. Lit. Messe