serving the consideration "of a
general assessment for the support of religion" to a future session, so
that the sense of the people on that subject might be, in the mean time,
collected.[675:A] This matter was debated for a day or two in the house,
and gave rise to some newspaper controversy. Religious freedom was
gaining ground; but, although all penal statutes were repealed, the
restrictions and penalties sanctioned by the common law remained.

In the struggle that preceded the Revolution more than two-thirds of the
Virginia clergy of the established church and a portion of the lay
members were loyalists. Of those clergymen who adhered to the patriotic
side several were men of note, such as Jarratt, Madison, (afterwards the
first bishop of Virginia,) Bracken, Muhlenburg, of the Valley of the
Shenandoah, who accepted a colonel's commission, raised a regiment, and
served throughout the war; and Thruston, who also became a colonel.

Congress having ordered the army to be augmented to eighty-eight
battalions, to serve during the continuance of the war, a quota of
fifteen battalions was assigned to Virginia; and to complete them the
assembly took measures to raise seven battalions in addition to those
already embodied. Attention was bestowed upon the building up of a naval
force, and men were transferred from the army to the marine service.
Infantry and cavalry, speedily raised and well officered, were sent to
join General Washington, and measures were adopted for calling forth the
resources of Virginia, and to strengthen her for the exigencies of war.
Courts of admiralty were established; entails abolished, the bill for
this purpose being framed by Mr. Jefferson; treason was defined, and
penalties denounced against such as should maintain and defend the
authority of the king or parliament, or should excite sedition in the
State; importation from Great Britain was prohibited; loyalist British
factors were ordered to depart from the commonwealth under a statute of
twenty-seventh year of Edward the Third.

Governor Henry, owing to the state of his health, retired, with the
concurrence of the assembly, to the country. An effort made at this time
by David Rogers, a member of the senate, and some other malecontents in
West Augusta, to erect themselves into a separate state, proved
abortive. Robert C. Nicholas, resigning the office of treasurer,
received the thanks of the legislature for his faithful discharge of the
duties o