In this Virginia History Blog, we explore the evolution of religious freedom surveying Virginia history “From Jamestown to Jefferson”. Virginia colonial history and environment is surveyed from pre-contact to the Age of Jefferson in “Nature and History in the Potomac Country”. The rise and decline of the Early Colonial gentry in the Late Colonial period is described in “A Topping People”. The residences they established is celebrated in “Prodigy Houses of Virginia”.
Current releases related to Virginia history in other eras from Spring 2018 journals can be found in previous Virginia History Blogs at Colonial Virginia – Spring 2018, Revolutionary Virginia – Spring 2018, and Civil War Virginia – Spring 2018, and New South and Modern Virginia – Spring 2018. We begin Summer 2018 reviews with Colonial Virginia — Summer 2018.
The TVH webpage for Early and Late Colonial Eras, 1600-1763, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years: two that are widely used in Virginia college courses, and one to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019. The page has a Table of Contents for Powhatan Virginia, Early Colonial Policy, Late Colonial Policy, Social History of Virginia, Gender in Virginia, Religious Virginia, African American Virginia, and Wars in Virginia 1600-1763.
From Jamestown to Jefferson
Paul Rasor and Richard E. Bond edited From Jamestown to Jefferson: The Evolution of Religious Freedom in Virginia in 2011. It is available from the University of Virginia Press and online new and used.
This is a collection of six essays that emphasizes the actual practice of religion in Virginia. The Virginia landscape evolved from religous establishment to toleration and from diversity to pluralism. The Anglican laity conducted services when they were without clergy, developing a congregational texture in Virginia’s Anglican services, relying on church seasons, the Book of Common Prayer and folk customs. Church attendance for minister-led communion, marriages and baptisms was substantial. Doctrinally, salvation was ambiguously a mixture of both faith and works.
The proliferation of Protestant faiths and their popular growth cumulatively weakened the Anglican establishment in Virginia. In the face of both legal harassment and extralegal violence, Presbyterians stayed within the bounds of the Act of Toleration (1690) with a pragmatic strategy that moderated any conflict with Anglican authority, and their dissenting faith gradually expanded. Separate Baptists and to a lesser degree Quakers pressed for rights beyond state-licensed toleration, insisting on a “domestic liberty of conscience” including women and blacks.
At the Revolution, an alliance of evangelicals and rationalists ended Anglican civil and ecclesiastical dominance in the state. Although it took some time to fully disentangle the successor Episcopal Church from its privileged glebes and so forth, there was a persistent notion that morality and civil order were inseparable from a Christian religious faith, that religion was necessary for good morals, and good morals were necessary for good government.
To buy “From Jamestown to Jefferson” on Amazon, click here.
Nature and History in the Potomac Country
James D. Rice wrote Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson in 2009. Available from the Johns Hopkins University Press, Kindle and online new and used. A TVH top 300 pick for Virginia history.
Rice studies both Native American and European economies, land use patterns and conceptions of the natural world. The narrative encompasses geological time, sociopolitical and economic developments, and historic moments for both natives and European settlers. With the introduction of agriculture, natives moved upland from the tidewater towards better soils. The “Little Ice Age” in the 1500s to 1700s found themselves in a middle zone between the Iroquois hunters to the north and Cherokee farmers to the south.
Complex and ever-changing alliances and conflicts developed not only among native groups but then on their arrival, among various European groups of Catholic, Puritan and Anglican, among Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Not until the 1700s did Europeans attempt substantial settlement above the Fall Line into the Piedmont, when Virginia and Maryland encouraged the non-English Swiss, Germans and Scots to settle as a frontier buffer against Indian attacks.
To buy “Nature and History in the Potomac Country” on Amazon, click here.
A Topping People
Emory G. Evans wrote A Topping People: The Rise and Decline of Virginia’s Old Political Elite, 1680-1790 in 2009. It is available from the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. A TVH top 300 pick for Virginia history.
Evans follows the emergence of twenty-one families prominently dominating the royal governor’s Council of State, then charts their decline due to “improvidence and incompetence” through the Revolutionary period, bringing about a new set of economic and political leadership.
Using Governor William Berkeley’s appointive powers in the mid-1600s to garner additional mercantile and county posts that allowed them to control Virginia society and economy. They extended to themselves large landholdings and used primogeniture, entail and intermarriage to ensure continued special treatment.
The families that once gained most of their wealth in commerce increasingly yielded economic control to Scottish factors trading with the expanding Virginia interior, and by the 1730s had become extravagant planters. Governor William Gooch and House of Burgesses Speaker John Randolph shifted power to the lower house under smaller planter control. The families of the Topping People could not sustain their dominance with western land speculation, and these led the Revolution.
To buy “A Topping People” on Amazon, click here.
Prodigy Houses of Virginia
Barbara Burlison Mooney wrote Prodigy Houses of Virginia: Architecture and the Native Elite in 2008. Available from the University of Virginia Press and online new and used. A TVH top 300 pick for Virginia history.
This book studies a group of twenty-five “prodigy houses” built in the extravagant Elizabethan manner between 1720 and 1770, many as surviving structures, some as archeological digs. Wealthy planters invested in homes marked by architectural distinction to maintain the prestige that they had secured in offices, titles and privileges. Wealth and kinship provided access to transatlantic trends in design and ornamentation.
Mooney also explores the female agency born of family use of the dowries that privileged eighteenth century women brought into their marriages. They influenced and directed financing, designing, building and furnishing elite houses of dynastic unions. In an era of fragmentary architectural drawings, the partnership between patron and skilled slave artisan was crucial.
To buy “Prodigy Houses” on Amazon, click here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Early and Late Colonial Eras, 1600-1763. Titles are organized by topics related to Powhatan Virginia, Political and Economic Virginia, Social, Gender, Religious, African American and Wars in Virginia.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.