Charles Yorke noted "no determination [made] as to the disallowance of the 
Act of Assembly 1758, whether it avoided the act ab initio, nor whether it 
was void in law as being against natural justice." 526 But among the notes on 
the hearing taken by Council Clerk Robert Walpole the following appears: 
The Objection was to an Act of Assembly passed in the province which was alleged 
to be unjust and contrary to the principles of a former subsisting Act of Assembly 
and having been disapproved by the King in Council should be considered as void 
ab initio. This Objection was not allowed. The Act having passed regularly in the 
regular course of Legislation there, it is a Law with respect to the Province: till 
the disapprobation of the King in Council is signified in the Province. The Instructions 
to the Governor are private Directions from the King for his Conduct and 
are not published—if he acts contrary to them, he is answerable upon Complaint 
to the King in Council. 527 
On December 3, 1766, the final Order in Council issued. 528 The clergymen 
claimed that their failure to succeed on the appeal was due to the conduct of 
Lord Northington, President of the Council. 529 In addition to the clever stroke 
of obtaining the hearing before Northington, the colony agent was also alleged 
to have offset the presence of the conciliar clerical figures by obtaining the 
attendance at the hearing of certain judges unfavorably disposed to the 
church. 530 It was complained that no evidence of the procedural basis of the 
conciliar order appeared on its face and that enemies of the church would 
make full capital thereof, treating the order as in effect a victory for their 
contentions. 531 
In October, 1767, it was felt that a last hope for the clergy remained in the 
delayed suit by Warrington, which was regarded as providing a more suitable 
better laid, being done so at the advice of 
learned and astute Ferdinand John Paris 
(Perry, op. cit., 525). The objection, however, 
had been raised by counsel for respondent below; 
see ibid., 526-27; Fulham Palace MSS, 
Va., Box 1, #188. Cf. Campbell, History of 
the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia, 
514; 1 Henry, Henry, Life, Corres. and 
Speeches, 45-46; Cobb, Rise of Religious 
Liberty in America (1902), 109; 10 Va. Mag. 
Hist, and Biog., 355; Howard, Preliminaries 
of the Revolution (1905), 96; Eckenrode, 
Separation of Church and State in Virginia, 
26; L. G. Tyler, The Leadership of Virginia in 
the War of the Revolution, 19 Wm. and Mary 
College Quart., 12, 26-27; Scott, The Constitutional 
Aspects of the "Parson's Cause!' 574; 
Smith, The Parsons' Cause, 163. 
526 Add. MS, 36,220/58. 
527 \yq 1/404/66. Compare the statement of 
Smith that "the passage of the Twopenny 
Acts without a suspending clause was unconstitutional" 
{The Parsons' Cause, 305). 
Howard {Preliminaries of the Revolution, 100) 
declares that "the relief acts of 1755 and 1758 
were probably void from their inception." 
628 pC 2/112/113. 
529 Allegedly Lord Northington would not 
permit the merits of the cause to be tried or 
the grand question to be decided as of too 
high a nature for the Privy Council or the 
members then met to decide (Perry, ed., 
Hist. Coll. Rel. Amer. Col. Church, Virginia, 
525). Also Northington was reported to have 
declared that if the cause had been tried before 
him on Camm's earlier visit or before 
Lord Hardwicke recently, the clergy would 
have succeeded. 
530 Ibid., 525. 
531 Ibid., 525-26,