Page 25 - MABE GENEALOGY

The Mabe genealogy line, from England (1600’s) to the United States (1700’s), Virginia and North Carolina.

more and better men to serve the colonial church and required all who
wished to serve a colonial cure to present a certificate from an English
bishop testifying to the individual's orthodoxy and good moral character. He
also introduced the commissary system to Virginia and several other
colonies. Commissaries acted as representatives of the bishop of London,
held some authority over the clergy, and, at least in Virginia, often served on
the governor's Council. They could not, however, ordain men to the
priesthood or the rank of deacon and did not have the authority to confirm
individuals. Colonial men who wished to become ministers in the Church of
England still had to make a dangerous journey to England to be ordained and
then travel back to North America. During the eighteenth century, about one
in six North American postulants died before completing a return journey to
the colonies.

James Blair, the colony's most important commissary, served in the position
from his appointment in 1689 until his death in 1743. He was instrumental in
founding the College of William and Mary, which began educating
growing numbers of ministers for Virginia's church, and he managed to
convince the General Assembly to raise clergy salaries to 16,000 pounds of
tobacco a year and to pass an act requiring all parishes to purchase glebe
lands and a "convenient dwelling house for the reception and aboad of the
minister of such parish." He was less successful at convincing the assembly
to require the induction of clergy. Blair, in fact, was never inducted into his
position at Bruton Parish and eventually came to side with the vestries on the
induction issue.

As a result of Blair and Compton's work, nearly 80 percent of Virginia
parishes were being served by clergy by 1703. This progress continued
throughout the remainder of the colonial period, although a series of clergy
deaths coupled with the expansion of the colony in the 1720s briefly slowed
the progress. Only when the American Revolution broke out—when
parishioners refused to support Loyalist clergy and the bishop of London,
Richard Terrick, refused to ordain rebels—did the established Church of
England in Virginia face a crisis that weakened it substantially. In fact,
despite the inroads made by dissenters such as the Baptists and the
Presbyterians, on the eve of revolution, Virginia's established church was
likely stronger than it ever had been.

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