5.]

At the same time the Episcopal church itself had gradually come to be a
minority in the commonwealth. For more than half a century Scotch and
Welsh Presbyterians, German Lutherans, English Quakers, and Baptists,
had been working their way southward from Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
and had settled in the fertile country west of the Blue Ridge. Daniel
Morgan, who had won the most brilliant battle of the Revolution, was one
of these men, and sturdiness was a chief characteristic of most of them.
So long as these frontier settlers served as a much-needed bulwark
against the Indians, the church saw fit to ignore them and let them
build meeting-houses and carry on religious services as they pleased.
But when the peril of Indian attack had been thrust westward into the
Ohio valley, and these dissenting communities had waxed strong and
prosperous, the ecclesiastical party in the state undertook to lay taxes
on them for the support of the Church of England, and to compel them to
receive Episcopal clergymen to preach for them, to bless them in
marriage, and to bury their dead. The immediate consequence was a revolt
which not only overthrew the established church in Virginia, but nearly
effected its ruin. The troubles began in 1768, when the Baptists had
made their way into the centre of the state, and three of their
preachers were arrested by the sheriff of Spottsylvania. As the
indictment was read against these men for "preaching the gospel contrary
to law," a deep and solemn voice interrupted the proceedings. Patrick
Henry had come on horseback many a mile over roughest roads to listen to
the trial, and this phrase, which savoured of the religious despotisms
of old, was quite too much for him. "May it please your worships," he
exclaimed, "what did I hear read? Did I hear an expression that these
men, whom your worships are about to try for misdemeanour, are charged
with preaching the gospel of the Son of God!" The shamefast silence and
confusion which ensued was of ill omen for the success of an undertaking
so unwelcome to the growing liberalism of the time. The zeal of the
persecuted Baptists was presently reinforced by the learning and the
dialectic skill of the Presbyterian ministers. Unlike the Puritans of
New England, the Presbyterians were in favour of the total separation of
church from state. It was one of their cardinal principles that the
civil magistrate had no right to interfere in any way with matters of
reli