sons in the Parish  attended his parish churches. Fulham Papers, 12:46. Extant records of individual
attendance are few and provide no basis for generalization. As discussed above, William Byrd II left
a diary record of his churchgoing. So did John Harrower, the indentured tutor serving the Dainger-
field family from late May1774 until late May1776.The nearest parish church was seven miles distant
in Fredericksburg. Lacking a saddle for much of the time and often prevented by other duties, Har-
rower, nonetheless, attended services seven times in 1774, five times in 1775, and eight times between
1 January and 26 May in 1776. Edward Miles Riley, ed., The Journal of John Harrower: An Indentured Servant
in the Colony of Virginia, 1773 1776 (Williamsburg, Va., and New York, 1963).
15. Laws, 1:123. Bruce believed that local authorities intensified the enforcement of such laws in
the closing decades of the seventeenth century. Philip Alexander Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia
in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Religious, Moral, Educational, Legal, Military, and Political Condition
of the People Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1910), 1:32, 35.
16. Hening, 2:48. This statute exempted Quakers from weekly attendance but mandated monthly
attendance at the parish church. Failure subjected offenders to the prohibitively large fine of Ł20
Sterling.
17. Ibid., 3:360.
18. Ibid., 5:226.
19. Ibid., 3:170 71.
20. Richmond County Court Order Book No. 5, 2 November 1709, 99. The House of Burgesses
early in the century resisted the efforts of the governor, acting upon instructions from the Board
of Trade, to reduce the minimum age for required attendance from twenty-one to fifteen years.
Burgesses took the position that many young persons would not have the means to pay their fines;
imposing corporal punishment in lieu of fines would foster unwelcome hostility to the church.
Popple to the Bishop of London, 28 May 1707, CSP, 23:440; EJC, 20 June 1706, 3:105.
21. John Walsh and Stephen Taylor,   Introduction,  in John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen
Taylor, eds., The Church of England, c.1689 c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993), 5 6.
See also Jacob, Lay People and Religion, 53, 142; Robert E. Rodes Jr., Law and Modernization in the Church of
England: Charles II to the Welfare State (South Bend, Ind., and London, 1991), 34. Does one dare conclude
that Virginia s Mother Church, without benefit of diocesan supervision, did a better job of seeing
that parish inhabitants attended Divine Service and that Virginia practices sustained the intent of
Anglican establishment more faithfully and successfully than the Church in England?
22. Brydon, 2:44. The qualifying phrase (  Except in cases  ) is found on the preceding page. Ibid.,
43. Upton concludes that presentments for nonattendance were rare. Upton, Holy Things and Profane,
184.
23. Laws, 2:204.
24. Ibid., 1:155. In Lancaster County in 1723, a presentment against Priscilla Palmer for nonatten-
dance was dismissed because she was in jail! Lancaster County Court Order Book No. 7,13 November
1723, 131.
25. Chesterfield County Court Order Book No. 1, 7 June 1751, 123.
26. Nonattendance presentments by decades:1700s, 46 (all males);1710s, 79 (74 men and 5 women);
1720s, 48 (47 men and 1 woman; 1730s, 149 (141 men and 8 women); 1740s, 37 (36 men and 1 woman);
1750s, 83 (78 men and 5 women); 1760s, 155 (144 men and 11 women); and 1770 75, 45 (43 men and
2 women). Northumberland County Court Order Books 1699 1713 (Parts 1 and 2), 1713 19, 1719
29, 1729 37, 1737 43, 1743 49, 1749 53, 1753 56, 1756 58, 1758 62, 1762 66, 1767 70, 1770 73, and 1773
83. Northumberland grand juries were still presenting persons for nonattendance as late as 1780.
Northumberland County Court Order Book 1773 83, 8 May 1780, 409.
27. Decade-by-decade presentments were as follows: 1700s, 41 (all men); 1710s, 93 (82 men and 11
women); 1720s, 132 (106 men and 26 women); 1730s, 68 (61 men and 7 women); 1740s, 35 (34 men and
1 woman); 1750s, 36 (all men); 1760s, 125 (123 men and 2 women); and 1770 75, 8 (7 men and 1 woman).
Richmond County Court Order Books 1 18, 1692 1776.
28. Rhys Isaac includes a vivid description of the disruption of a Baptist meeting in adjacent
Caroline County in 1771 in his   Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists Challenge to the
Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 1775,  WMQ 3d ser., 31 (1974): 347. The Caroline County grand
.
notes to pages 244 46 435