Ireland s Trinity College (University of Dublin) the other major insti-
tution of higher education in the British Isles provided academic training
for at least nine of Virginia s parsons. Jonathan Swift claimed for Trinity s
students   a much greater discipline  than at Oxford or Cambridge.11
Colonial American colleges also figured importantly in the preparation of
men seeking Anglican ordination. Yale contributed fifty students and gradu-
ates; Harvard, forty-five; William and Mary, forty-two; Philadelphia (Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania), twenty-five; College of New Jersey (Princeton), four-
teen; King s (Columbia), thirteen, and College of Rhode Island (Brown), one.12
Among those who made their way to Virginia parishes, Yale prepared at least
two. Middle Colony colleges all newly founded in the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury added others. William Hanna, a Connecticut native who served as rec-
tor of Bromfield Parish (Culpeper) in the early 1770s, graduated from King s
College.13 Three College of Philadelphia alumni surfaced in Virginia parishes:
David Griffith, Thomas Hall, and Andrew Morton. Officially nondenomina-
tional, the College of Philadelphia, like King s in New York, was led in its
formative years by a Church of England clergyman. Samuel Johnson at King s
and William Smith at Philadelphia by force of mind and personality placed
an Anglican stamp upon these institutions.14
Presbyterians looked to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) for
the training of clergy and the maintenance of the denomination s doctrinal
integrity. There the foundations for Princeton s later antebellum connection
with southern evangelical Presbyterianism were laid. In1759 Samuel Davies was
called from his Virginia Presbyterian pastorate to its presidency.15 Nonethe-
less, at least four Virginia Anglican parsons attended the College of New Jer-
sey: John Milner, a New Yorker in the class of 1759 who later served Newport
Parish; Nathaniel Manning, a New Jersey native who studied medicine at the
College of Philadelphia following his graduation from Princeton in 1762 and
then abruptly abandoned that profession for the Anglican ministry and became
parson of the newly formed Hampshire Parish in 1772; Robert Yancey, who
served in Trinity Parish (Louisa) in the years 1768 74; and Thomas Martin.16
Martin deserves further notice because his brief Virginia ministry had sig-
nificant historical repercussions. Of Irish descent, Martin was born and raised
on a New Jersey farm. The College of New Jersey was a convenient choice
even though his religious ties already were to Canterbury rather than Edin-
burgh. Following ordination in1767, he was selected as minister of St. Thomas
Parish in Orange County, Virginia. The Madison family provided Martin, a
.
Preparations for Ministry 109