Old Virginia and her neighbours

262 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.enough for the colonies. The royal governor,as vicegerent of the sovereign, was head of thecolonial church, while ecclesiastical affairs weresuperintended by a commissary apj^ointed by theBishop of London. The first commissary. Dr.Blair, as we have seen, was president of the college,and in his successors those two offices wereusually united. Several attempts were made tosubstitute a bishop for the commissary, but theonly result of the attempts was to alienate people'ssympathies from thechurch, while the conduct ofthe clergy was such as to destroy their respect forit.Bishop Meade has queer stories to tell of someof these parsons. One of them was for years thepresident of a jockey club. Another fought a duelwithin sight of his own church. A third, who wasevidently a mj^scularChristian, got into a roughand-tumblefight with his vestrymen and flooredthem ; and then justified himself to his congregationnext Sunday in a sermon from a text ofNehemiah, " And I contended with them, andcursed them, and smote certain of them, andplucked off their hair." In 1711 a bequest of