hurches
and offered no prayer in public; while a few appeared disposed, if
possible, to resist the popular tide, but were compelled eventually to
succumb to it. In 1775 Virginia contained sixty-one counties,
ninety-five parishes, one hundred and sixty-four churches and chapels,
and ninety-one clergymen of the establishment. During the interval of
the war part of the parishes were extinguished, and the greater number
of the rest were deprived of ministerial help; but few ministers were
able to weather the storm and remain at their former posts; the others
having been compelled to seek precarious shelter and support in other
parishes. Some of the churches, venerable for age and connected with so
many interesting associations, were left roofless and dismantled; others
used as barracks, or stables, or lodging-places of prisoners of war; and
the moss-grown walls of some were pulled down by sacrilegious hands, and
books and vessels appurtenant to holy services pillaged and carried off.

Until this year the British arms had been chiefly directed against the
Middle and Northern States; but they were now turned against the South.
Georgia soon fell a prey to the enemy, and South Carolina was invaded.
In May a squadron under Sir George Collier anchored in Hampton Roads,
and General Matthews took possession of Portsmouth. The enemy destroyed
the public stores at Gosport and Norfolk, burnt Suffolk, and destroyed
upwards of a hundred vessels, including several armed ones. The Virginia
navy had been reduced previously, and many of the vessels ordered to be
sold, and from this time the history of those remaining is a series of
disasters.

Upon the approach of six hundred British infantry upon Suffolk, the
militia and greater part of the inhabitants fled; few could save their
effects; some who remained for that purpose were made prisoners. The
enemy fired the town, and nearly the whole of it was consumed: hundreds
of barrels of tar, pitch, turpentine, and rum, lay on the wharves, and
their heads being staved, the contents flowing in commingled mass and
catching the blaze, descended to the river in torrents of liquid flame,
and the wind blowing violently, the splendid mass floated to the
opposite shore in a conflagration that rose and fell with the waves, and
there set on fire the dry grass of an extensive marsh. This broad sheet
of fire, the crackling flames of the town, the lurid smoke, and the
occasional explosion of gunpowder in the