ved
ten per cent. for collecting, and the auditor seven per cent. The third
source of revenue was one penny per pound upon tobacco exported from
Virginia to any other English plantation in America. This, as has been
mentioned, was, in 1692, granted to the college of William and Mary. The
college paid for collecting it no less than twenty per cent., and to the
auditor five per cent. The nett proceeds were worth one hundred pounds
annually. The fourth source of revenue was any money duty that might be
raised by the assembly.

The governor was lieutenant-general, the councillors lieutenants of
counties, with the title of colonel, and in counties where no councillor
resided, some other person was appointed, with the rank of major. The
people in general professed to be of the Church of England. The only
dissenters were three or four meetings of Quakers and one of
Presbyterians. There were fifty parishes, and in each two, and sometimes
three, churches and chapels. The division of the parishes was unequal
and inconvenient. The governor had always held the government of the
church, as of everything else, in his hands. Ministers were obliged to
produce their orders to him, and show that they had been episcopally
ordained. The power of presentation was, by a colonial law, in the
vestry, but by a custom of hiring preachers by the year, it came to pass
that presentation rarely took place. The consequence was that a good
minister either would not come to Virginia, or if he did, was soon
driven away by the high-handed proceedings of the vestry. The minister
was obliged to be careful how he preached against the vices that any
great man of the vestry was guilty of, else he would be in danger of
losing his living at the end of the year. They held them by a precarious
tenure, like that of chaplains; they were mere tenants at sufferance.
There were not half as many ministers in Virginia as parishes. The
governor connived at this state of things. The minister's salary was
sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco per annum. King Charles the Second
gave the Bishop of London jurisdiction over the church in the
plantations, in all matters except three, viz.: marriage licenses,
probates of wills, and induction of ministers, which were reserved to
the governor. The bishop's commissary made visitation of the churches
and inspection of the clergy. He received no salary, but was allowed, by
the king, one hundred pounds per annum out of the quit-rents.[35