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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from William Glover to Henry Compton
Glover, William
September 25, 1708
Volume 01, Pages 689-690

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[From N. C. Letter Book. S. P. G.]
GOV. GLOVER TO LORD BISHOP OF LONDON

Hampton in Virginia
25 Sept 1708

My Lord:—

Beside my own obligations of duty and gratitude, I am engaged by the repeated applications of many of the inhabitants of this place, to offer thanks for your lordship's care over us, and especially in behalf of the parish of Pascotank, where an orderly congregation has been kept together by the industry of a young gentleman whom the parish employed to read the service of the Church, as the law of this place, for want of a minister, doth direct. This gentleman being of an unblemished life, by his decent behavior in that office, and by apt discourses from house to house, according to the capacities of an ignorant people, not only kept those he found, but gained many to the Church in the midst of its enemies, insomuch that the Reverend Richard Marsden, waiting here for a passage to South Carolina, thought it convenient to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is the first time I can learn of its being administered in this poor country; this was done on Trinity Sunday, 1706, and the same day, forty-five persons, infants and adults, were baptized.

If any thing, my lord, in this life was able to raise in my breast a joy without mixture, it was to see unbaptized parents, with their children in their arms, offering themselves to Christ, which I have seen, and therefore I ever will rejoice.

This, with the adjacent parish of Caratuck, is now under the care of the Reverend James Adams, to their general satisfaction, whom they have presented to the small provision of £30 per annum each, which our law appoints. The Reverend William Gordon did not find things in so good order in the other two parishes of Chowan and Perquimans, yet I hope the account he will give of his reception will be in some measure satisfactory. It lyeth somewhat on me to make an apology for the vestry of Perquimans, where I live; it is the place where Quakerism has mostly prevailed, and thereby attended with difficulties, for which cause their vestry adjourned their meeting, to have gained the little advantage of my company, till time insensibly slipped from them whilst I was engaged in the unhappy troubles which the enemy, alarmed at the coming over of these worthy gentlemen, has raised against me; under which I still labor,

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with patience, until the lords proprietors shall apply some remedy to the present disorders, to whom I have faithfully represented the whole matter. By the Reverend William Gordon, who is the bearer hereof (while we bewail his absence here), your lordship will have a more particular account of the state of affairs, as also a copy of the act passed here relating to the Church, in which there is one great error, which was not in my power to prevent, viz., “the subjecting the clergy to be judged by laymen;” although that clause was never interpreted, even by the most zealous assertors of it, to extend to a power of displacing those who were orderly presented and inducted, but only such as came by chance and were agreed with from year to year, as the manner has been formerly among our neighbors of Virginia. I shall only add further, that that clause had not been thought of by the composers of that law, had not the disorderly behavior of Mr. Brett given the occasion.

I most earnestly beg your lordship's pardon for this trouble, and your prayers for this poor country, and in it for me the most unworthy.

Your lordship's most dutiful
And ever bounden servant,
WILLIAM GLOVER.