tial account of service. Between these dates there were completed terms for
forty-two vestrymen. The latter held office for an average of sixteen years.
Thirty-six of sixty-six vestrymen (55 percent) served more than ten years each
 stunning evidence of continuity and control. Eleven (17 percent) served
thirty years or more each. Among them were four with forty-plus years each.29
Matthew Kemp, William Skipwith, Edmund Berkeley, Christopher Robinson,
and Henry Thacker, who served 41, 43, 41, 30, and 39 years respectively, joined
the vestry as young men. Once chosen, they persisted and thereby ensured
continuity to the institution and control of affairs for themselves and their
like.30
How active were these long-term vestrymen? Ten whose service exceeded
thirty years each in Christ Church Parish (Middlesex) participated regularly
in vestry meetings. Matthew Kemp, for example, attended sixty of ninety-two
meetings (65 percent) between 1690 and 1731. John Smith Sr. was present at
seventy-three of seventy-eight meetings (94 percent) between 1693 and 1727.
While an image of the Virginia vestry as an unchanging group of twelve men
holding sway decade after decade would exaggerate the case, the record of
Christ Church Parish (Middlesex) upholds the received tradition ascribing
lengthy tenure and commitment.31 Eighteenth-century Virginia vestries were
remarkably stable bodies. When one factors in the hazards to life and the great
material opportunities inviting mobility, it makes all the more impressive the
average tenure of twelve years for the 521vestrymen identified in a survey of ten
parishes.32 One consequence of new parish formation was that it steadily en-
larged office-holding opportunities for Virginia planters. Virginia s fifty-three
parishes in1730 afforded vestry seats to 636 men; seventy parishes by1750 meant
840 positions (an increase of 204 places); seventy-six parishes in1760 extended
membership to 912 men (a decade increase of 72 places); and the ninety-five
parishes in 1773 enlarged the pool to 1,140 men (504 more spaces than were
available in 1730).
Nothing goes further toward explaining vestry stability than the prevalent
practice of co-optation. Upon the formation of a new parish, the resident free-
holders (adult male property holders who met the colony s franchise require-
ments) elected twelve vestrymen.33 Thereafter when a vestryman died, retired,
or moved out of the parish, his successor was chosen by those remaining on
the body.34 That a few interrelated planter gentry families were able to sustain
a lock on the parish vestry should occasion no surprise. Theoretically, at least,
following inaugural seventeenth-century elections, older Tidewater parishes
had vestries perpetuated until the Revolution solely by in-house selection.
.
The Parish s   Twelve Bishops  37