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.ÿþ8.Originsin his biography of Henry Compton, bishop of London from 1675 to 1713,Edward Carpenter observes that the clergymen recruited for overseas postswere a mixed bag of missionary idealists, adventurers, French refugees, dis-placed Scottish Episcopalians, and the generally disillusioned. 1 About the mixed character of the colonial Anglican clergy, there can be no doubt.Di-versity in ethnic origins and birthplace characterizes Virginia s eighteenth-century parsons.Whether that justifies aspersions on their talent, conduct, ormotivation remains to be seen.2 In the following pages this diversity will be ex-plored by looking at nations or regions of origin England, Wales, Scotland,Ireland, France, Germany, and colonial British America, by charting their dis-tinctive relationships to the Church of England and by introducing Virginiaparsons representative of these varied origins.EnglandSlightly more than one in four of Virginia s Anglican clergy for whom birth-places can be ascertained were English.From Virginia s perspective at the be-ginning of the eighteenth century, the number of English-born clergy fell farshort of ideal.The colony s seventeenth-century white settlers had been over-whelmingly English in origin.Not until the 1730s with the in-migrations oflarge numbers of Germans and Scots-Irish did Virginia s white populationitself become markedly mixed. But by then the colony s institutional andcultural forms and norms, English in derivation, were deeply rooted.For theAnglo-Virginian ruling gentry, an English-bred minister with an Oxford orCambridge degree was the preferred person to preside over each parish. We87
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