who had been more numerous among the clergy in the seventeenth century. At the time of his appointment, he was already in Virginia, where he would serve.12 Clayton’s term as a commissary was brief; he left the colony in May of 1686. He did make one claim to have introduced significant change during his tenure; he believed himself to “have been the first minister at his Jamestown parish to wear the surplice.”13 In 1689 Compton appointed the first long-term commissary, James Blair (1656–1743). Like his predecessor, Blair was already in Virginia. A Scot who had come to England with the support of latitudinarian Gilbert Burnet, Blair had escaped the uncomfortable reign of James II by volunteering for the mission field. He had quickly established roots in the colony, gaining an entry into the local gentry by marrying Sarah Harrison.14
As commissary in Virginia, Blair began to establish some order in the church. He set up a convocation system, sought to enforce morality laws, called annual conferences, proposed—but did not receive—ecclesiastical courts, and attempted to standardize the value of the tobacco in which clergy were paid. In 1693, Blair founded the College of William and Mary—second in age among colonial schools of higher education only to Congregationalist Harvard (1636). The Virginia House of Burgesses agreed to the idea, and English contributors, whose number included Gilbert Burnet, John Tillotson, and Robert Boyle, provided needed financial resources. Blair planned for his school to educate both future clergy and Native Americans.
Blair’s early efforts to educate Native Americans had the support of Governor Alexander Spotswood (1676–1740), who established and financed a Native American feeder school at Fort Christanna. By 1712 there were twenty Native Americans at William and Mary, and three years later the student body at Fort Christanna had risen to seventy. The Members of the House of Burgesses opposed the schools, however, and tried to ban all attempts to evangelize Native Americans. By 1717 both efforts at educating Native Americans had collapsed. A contemporaneous effort by Francis Le Jau (d. 1717) to educate and evangelize Creek and Yamasee children in South Carolina by inviting their families to live with him also was short-lived.15
The College of William and Mary proved more successful in the education of future clergy. By the 1720s a number of those who had studied at the institution were entering the ordained ministry of the Church of England. At least thirty-one would serve in colonial Virginia, with eleven others serving in other colonies.16
Blair’s success convinced Bishop Compton of the usefulness of the commissary system in the colonies. Compton and his successors not only appointed commissaries for Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, in which the Church of England was established, but also for Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. The commissary system reached its apogee during the episcopate of Edmund Gibson (Bishop of London, 1724–49). By the 1740s, commissaries were supervising Church of England clergy in nine of the colonies.17
The commissary system had certain inherent weaknesses, however. So long as the colonial clergy were in relative agreement, the commissaries were effective spokesmen. In a number of circumstances, they were able to lobby effectively for the removal of colonial governors with whose policies they disagreed. They lacked, however, the canonical authority of a bishop, could not ordain new candidates for the ministry, and were able to discipline errant clergy with only the greatest of difficulty.18
Within a few years of the introduction of the first commissaries, therefore, some members of the colonial Church of England were already calling for resident bishops. In 1706, for example, fourteen New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania clergy sent one of their number to England to plead for a colonial episcopate.19 By 1713, such advocates had caught the attention of Queen Anne. She instructed her chief minister to prepare legislation that would have authorized consecration of bishops for the colonies. Unfortunately, she died before any action could be taken.20
With Anne’s death in 1714, any real possibility for a colonial episcopate was lost. Anne’s successor, George I, had a limited knowledge of either the English language or the English church. He delegated his right to appoint bishops to his prime minister and left other issues of religious policy to the Parliament. When the clergy convocation began in 1717 to discuss the legitimacy of George’s accession to the throne, Parliament suspended meetings of the body. The Whig party, which gained a majority in Parliament in the following year, advised the king to make that decision permanent. No further royal licenses would be issued for the assembly of the convocation until the middle of the nineteenth century, though there were informal meetings, and bishops continued to sit in the House of Lords.21
Some individuals continued, however, the campaign for a bishop after 1714. In 1718, for example, a number of clergy from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland signed a petition to the English bishops and archbishops requesting the appointment of a prelate.22 Six years later, a call by New England clergy for a bishop brought philosopher and later bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) to Rhode Island as part of an unsuccessful effort to create a second Church of England college and, the New England clergy hoped, a resident episcopate.23 Others on both sides of the Atlantic would sound similar calls throughout the remainder of the colonial period. It would only be after the American Revolution, however, that the Whigs in the English Parliament reversed their opposition to resident bishops. So long as the American colonies were part of the British Empire, they feared that an expanded episcopate would only support the authoritarian policies of the Tory party. An episcopate in a separate nation, however, would present no challenge to liberties back at home.
| Table 1. A Partial List of Colonial Commissaries | ||
| Virginia | ||
| John Clayton | 1684–86 | (Rector, James City Parish) |
| James Blair | 1689–1743 | (Pres. W & M, 1693–1743) |
| William Dawson | 1743–52 | (Pres. W & M, 1743–52) |
| Thomas Dawson | 1752–61 | (Pres. W & M, 1755–61) |
| William Robinson | 1761–68 | (Visitor W & M, 1759–68) |
| James Horrocks | 1771–71 | (Pres. W & M, 1764–71) |
| John Carum | 1772–77 | (Pres. W & M, 1771–77) |
| (W & M=the College of William and Mary). | ||
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