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.ÿþprovincial scholarship, readers, though few and far between in recent times,have had no difficulty in identifying serious deficiencies in conception, organi-zation, and style.50 One of his earliest readers, a fellow Virginian who fully sub-scribed to Stith s political principles, summarized it well.Stith, wrote ThomasJefferson, had produced a large octavo volume of small print.He was a manof classical learning, and very exact, but of no taste in style.He is inelegant,therefore, and his details often too minute to be tolerable, even to a native ofthe country, whose history he writes. 51A Parson-Planter-Magistrate: James ScottWhen the Prince William County Court met in the late 1750s and during the1760s, included among the gentlemen justices was the Rev.James Scott, rectorof Dettingen Parish.52 Scott s membership on the bench was noteworthy, forit was hardly customary to appoint parsons to the magistracy.53 Despite thechurch s official status, clergymen played a limited role in the civil affairs ofthe Old Dominion.They were, to be sure, members of their respective parishvestries.But there was nothing in Virginia comparable to the lofty politicaloffices held by English archbishops and bishops or the influence they and lesserclergy exerted in public affairs and party politics.During the century leading to the Revolution, the Virginia Royal Coun-cil usually did include among its members the bishop of London s commis-sary.54 But as the sole ecclesiastic in the provincial administration, his presenceunderscored the seeming weakness of the church and the absence of a diocesanstructure.The commissary s political influence was personal, not institutional.Historians have seen in this state of affairs an unplanned but nonetheless sig-nificant source of the divorce of religious interests and concerns from the civil,a process that eventually would be elevated into the lofty principle of theseparation of church and state.James Scott s service as a justice of the peace in Prince William Countyin the decades immediately preceding the Revolution should raise questionsabout when and how Virginians began to distinguish civil from religious con-cerns.There is no evidence that the electors in Prince William discerned any-thing inappropriate about the presence of a parson on the bench.Within afew years, moreover, many of Virginia s Anglican parsons took their placeson county committees of safety in organizing resistance to British imperialpolicies and measures.Clerical Lives 171
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