was given because the act pleased the people, and that its injustice and 
contrariety to instructions were therefore regarded as irrelevant. 456 A convention 
of the clergy was then called, at which it was agreed to send John 
Camm, rector of York-Hampton parish, to England with complaints against 
the act. Camm carried the first copy of the act to reach England, and there is 
some reason to suspect that it had not been intended to present the act there 
as required by the governor's commission. 457 
In May, 1759, the Virginia clergy, through the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
memorialized the King in Council, complaining of the 1758 act as discharging 
salaries formerly payable in tobacco at half their value in paper currency of 
no intrinsic worth and of no value at all outside the colony. 458 A petition of 
the merchants of London also prayed that the act be declared null and void 
ab initio and that an order be given to prevent such acts in futuro. iio The 
Board of Trade to which the matter was referred consulted the Bishop of 
London thereon. 400 This ecclesiastic represented in strong terms that the attempt 
to repeal a confirmed act by a lesser power was an act inconsistent with 
the dignity of the crown and destructive of the allegiance due the King. The 
approach employed was the identification of the interests of the clergy and the 
prerogative of the crown —growth of dissent was related to lessening of the 
prerogative. As to the lack of justice and equity in the act, the Bishop felt it 
was unnecessary to elaborate thereon. 401 
Following a hearing before the Board of Trade, James Abercromby, Virginia 
agent, who appeared for the colony wrote that 
in support of the Act, I advanced precedents of former Acts that had passed on 
the Deficiency of Tobacco, also Precedents, where the General Assembly had, on 
their part in 1753, increased the Clergy Allowance, where the Price of Tobacco was 
low, as in Fredrick and Augusta Parishes also in Hampshire Bedford and Halifax 
Parishes, that in the present Case, the Legislature had not deviated from the Rules 
and Principles of reciprocal Justice, nor had this Act any partial Tendency to the 
Prejudice of the Clergy alone, that it was a General Remedy against a general 
Calamity of which the Clergy as such, from Principles of Christianity ought to be 
first to acquiesce under, that the Fact of a Deficiency of Tobacco must be allowed, 
456 p err y ; o p. dt., 474, 490, 509. Cf. Fulham 
Palace MSS, Va., Box 1, #188. It was later alleged 
that the speaker during debate had declared 
that if such bills were to pass into acts 
of assembly, they could not be deemed laws 
(Camm, A Review of the Rector Detected 
[1764], 24-25). 
457 Perry, op. cit., 509-10. The clerk of the 
House of Burgesses was much blamed in the 
colony for furnishing a copy of the act. 
*"SPC 2/106/505. 
459 Fulham Palace MSS, Va., Box 2, #133- 
460/GTP, 1759-63, 39. 
481 Perry, op. cit., 461-63. On the growth of 
dissent see Gcwehr, The Great Awakening in 
Virginia (1930), c. iv; Eckenrode, Separation 
of Church and State in Virginia, c. in.