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.ÿþcluding England s North American colonies), Beat Kumin concludes: Clearly, whatever the context,local government cannot be studied without reference to parishes, nor should religious history bewritten without due attention to its urban or rural setting. Kumin, The English Parish in a Euro-pean Perspective, in Katherine L.French, Gary G.Gibbs, and Beat A.Kumin, eds., The Parish inEnglish Life, 1400 1600 (Manchester, Eng., and New York, 1997), 24.W.M.Jacob makes the pointsimply and emphatically: The parish was the basic unit of local government [in England]. Jacob,Lay People and Religion in the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 11.3.For statutory definition of the organization and jurisdiction of the county court, see Hening,3:504 16 (1710).4.Church, 248, 297 99.5.Hening, 2:103.See C.G.Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book and Register of St.Peter s Parish, New Kentand James City Counties, Virginia, 1684 1786 (Richmond, Va., 1937), 18 December 1697, 56 57; and C.G.Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book of St.Paul s Parish, Hanover County, Virginia, 1706 1786 (Richmond,Va., 1940), 1 October 1707, 24 and passim, for evidence of the vestry s role in assigning workforcesfor road maintenance.6.On church courts in eighteenth-century England, see John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, Intro-duction: The Church and Anglicanism in the Long Eighteenth Century, in John Walsh, ColinHaydon, and Stephen Taylor, eds., The Church of England, c.1689 c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism(Cambridge, 1993), 5 6.7.Princess Anne County Court Order Book No.1, 8 July 1703, 360.8.In 1747, the grand jury presented the churchwardens of St.Andrew s Parish for failing to pro-vide wine for the duly administring the sacrament at such Times as it is appointed.by theMinister of the said Parish. Brunswick County Court Order Book No.3, 5 November 1747, 302.The Reverend Archibald McRobert of Dale Parish was presented by the grand jury of Chester-field County for making use of Hymns or Poems in the Church Service, instead of David Psalmscontrary to Law. Chesterfield County Court Order Book No.5, 1 May 1772, 93.9.For Virginia processioning legislation (1662, 1673, 1691, 1705, 1710, and 1748), see Hening, 2:1012, 305; 3:82, 325, 530 32; 5:426 30.In 1662 the assembly noted: the surveighors being for the mostpart careles of seeing the trees marked, or the owners never renewing them, in a small time thechopps being growne up, or the trees fallen, the bounds become as uncertaine as at first, and upona new surveigh the least variation of a compasse alters the scituation of a whole neighbourhoodand deprives many persons of houses, orchards and all to their infinite losse and trouble. Hen-ing, 2:101.Initially (1662), processioning was scheduled for the period between Easter and Whit-sunday striking evidence of the way in which life was ordered by the church calendar but in1691 the assembly altered and extended the dates to the last day of September through the last dayof March.Hening, 3:82.The assembly reaffirmed this arrangement in 1748.Hening, 5:426 30.Foran example of processioning returns incorporated in parish records, see St.Paul s Parish Vestry Book,208 324.For the significance of processioning, see also Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia fromWhence Is Inferred a Short View of Maryland and North Carolina, ed.Richard L.Morton (Chapel Hill, N.C.,1956), 92 (Jones mistakenly asserts that processioning occurred every five or seven years); and Isaac,Transformation of Virginia, 19 20 (who also errs in stating that it took place every three years).For aninsightful discussion of the distinctive English concern with boundaries and perambulations, seePatricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe s Conquest of the New World, 1492 1640 (Cambridge, 1995),18 19.In neighboring Maryland, there appears to have been no regular provision for processioning,another instance of the puzzling divergence in the adaptation of English laws and customs.Jean B.Lee, The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County (New York and London, 1994), 2425.Processioning likely had its origins in the medieval practice of the springtime blessing of thefields that occurred on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day.It became linkedwith the fixing of boundaries sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries and, in the wakeof the Protestant Reformation, dropped its field-blessing origins.Ronald Hutton, The Stations of theSun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford and New York, 1996), 277 81.10.Some boundaries were demarcated by ditches. A few gentry landowners, including the Bur-.notes to pages 14 15 335
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