the country will not permit them to conform to the established liturgy
as they would desire; that owing to the extent of the parishes they have
service but once on Sunday, and but one sermon; that for the same reason
the dead are not buried in churchyards, and the burial-service is
usually performed by a layman; that the people observe no holidays
except Christmas-day and Good Friday, being unwilling to leave their
daily labor; and that of necessity the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is
administered to persons who are not confirmed; that the ministers are
obliged to baptize, and church women, marry, and bury at private houses,
administer the Lord's Supper to a single sick person, perform in church
the office of both sacraments without the habits, ornaments, and vessels
required by the liturgy. The convention press upon his lordship's
attention the precarious tenure of their livings, to which many of these
deviations from the liturgy were attributable; they declare that the
people are adverse to the induction of the clergy, which exposes them to
the great oppression of the vestries. The clergy refer to Governor
Spotswood as, under God, their chief support, whose efforts in their
behalf were, as alleged by the governor, opposed by some of the council
and Commissary Blair, who was himself accused of some irregularities.

The convention also stated that the commissary found great difficulty
in making visitations, owing to the refusal of church wardens to take
the official oath, or to make presentments, and from "the general
aversion of the people to everything that looks like a spiritual court."
The commissary refused to subscribe to it. The contending parties in
these disputes were the governor and the clergy on the one side, and the
commissary with the people on the other. According to the opinion of the
attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey, given in 1703, "the right of
presentation by the laws of Virginia was in the parishioners, and the
right of lapse in the governor;" that is, if the vestry failed to choose
a minister within six months, the governor had the right of appointing
him; but it was a right which the governors, although reinforced by
royal authority, could not enforce. Of the twenty-five members of this
clerical convention only eight appear to have sided with the commissary.
He held that the difference between him and the governor as to the right
of collation was this: the governor claimed the right in the fi