trol of the recruitment or selection of clergy and through refusal to present
for induction. On the first score the vestries asserted their rights and privi-
leges as patrons;   Besides the Law and uninterrupted possession, the Parishes
pretend for their title to the Patronage that they are the sole Founders of
the Churches and Glebes and Mansion houses. And it is really true in fact.  30
As the chosen representatives of the freeholders who maintained the parish
through their payment of annual taxes and as the body to whom by law and
custom the parish properties were entrusted, the vestries acted as patrons.
They were happy to have the assistance of the governor in referring candi-
dates to them but unwilling to concede his authority to tell them who their
minister was to be.31
At the end of the seventeenth century and in the early decades of the eigh-
teenth, when Virginia relied heavily on informal and sporadic recruitment of
ministers in the British Isles, vestries accepted a channeling function played
by the governor. Clergymen new to the ways of Virginia naturally applied
first to the governor.32 Even though vestries often accepted the men sent their
way, they consistently interpreted the governors actions as recommendations
only, maintained their right of election, and often required the candidate, on
trial, to preach and read the Service.33 Occasionally their independent role
was underscored by the rejection of a minister commended to them.34 From
the 1730s on, as recruitment increasingly took place in Virginia, the governor s
advisory role was further diminished. He was expected to provide the letter
of recommendation required for ordination but otherwise to stay out of the
parishes affairs. Following ordination, Devereux Jarratt, for example, returned
home to await news of a vacancy. When nearby Bath Parish became available,
he applied directly to a vestryman there, trial-preached at several of the parish
churches, and was quickly hired as parson. All of this the vestry transacted
locally without reference to the commissary or the governor.35
The vestries refusal to request induction was the second mode of defense.
There were a handful of ministers inducted between 1690 and 1720, but these
instances merely serve to point up the prevalent noncompliance.36 From the
perspective of English authorities, this avoidance of induction was disturbing
evidence of the incompleteness of the church s establishment in the colony.
Nevertheless, the disturbance was never sufficient to produce a bishop for
Chesapeake Anglicans. From the perspective of the Old Dominion s royal gov-
ernors, the refusal to present for induction signaled the narrow limits to their
power in ecclesiastical matters. Governors repeatedly made an effort to gain
.
Recruitment and Placement 129