The Anglican Church was established in both Maryland and Virginia. One of the definitive features of a religious establishment is that the public is compelled to support the state church through taxation. In both colonies, the vestry, churchwardens, and minister of every parish gathered in the late autumn to lay the levy or raise a tax on parishioners. The levy coincided with the tobacco-growing season; planters had finished their harvesting but not yet shipped their tobacco crop when their taxes were due.
The annual levy gave the parish liquid capital that was scarce in the colonies and allowed it to weather the boom and bust economic cycles that affected tobacco planters. Parishes raised funds annually in the levy and then invested much of this money in land and goods. Over the course of the eighteenth century, parishes amassed a significant amount wealth by buying land, building churches, and purchasing slaves. Lynnhaven Parish near present-day Virginia Beach, for example, owned at least 250 acres, three churches, three sets of silver, and five slaves in the mid-eighteenth century. Parishes played a vital role in disbursing public funds and facilitating local economic networks. Armed with significant resources, parishes paid salaries to religious officials but also compensated carpenters, cleaners, midwives, and many other individuals who performed services for the parish and its parishioners.
Parishes not only spent money but made loans to individuals. Parishes in both colonies lent money to vestrymen and parishioners using cash raised in the levy. St. James Parish in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, regularly extended loans with 8 percent annual interest. The vestry kept accounts of "debitors to the vestry" who had received payments in the vestry book. There are numerous notes of these transactions. The parish "lent Mr. Charles Drury 3500 pounds of tobacco" in 1754 and loaned 31,282 pounds of tobacco to Dr. William Chapman. Lending on interest could provide an additional source of revenue for the parish. It took the unlucky Dr. Chapman five and half years to repay his loan, and the parish received a whopping 13,764 pounds of tobacco in interest, in addition to the principal. While parishes continued to present parishioners for the moral crimes of usury and unfair dealing in the county court, they meanwhile profited handsomely off of their loans.
Parishes in the Old Dominion also served as creditors. An entry from 1751 in the vestry book of Saint Peter’s Parish in New Kent County "ordered that all persons indebted to the Parish do account with the Church Wardens and Pay to their Hands the Several Sums due from them, and in failure of Payment the church wardens are required to bring suit for the recovery of the same." Parishes could extend credit safely because they possessed the power to recover any unpaid debts in court. Parishes brought numerous suits for debt and breach of contract. Bristol Parish, for example, brought four lawsuits against debtors in just three years (between 1737 and 1740). With cash on hand, as well as the resources and legal authority to bring lawsuits for debt collection, parishes were well-positioned to act as powerful financial institutions in local communities.
Parishes also took out loans from parishioners from time to time. Churchwardens often had to spend their own money throughout the year to pay for the care of ill or poor parishioners. For example, in 1752, longtime churchwarden of Lynnhaven Parish Thomas Walke received 1,484 pounds of tobacco as a repayment for the money he had personally spent as a churchwarden the previous year. The frequency of these loans suggests that individuals were willing to advance money to the parish because they could be ensured of repayment the following year through the levy.
For better or worse, colonial parishes did not heed the adage, "neither a borrower nor a lender be." Parishes regularly acted as both a borrower and a lender. As a public institution with ready access to cash, the established church occupied a privileged and unique position in the colonial South. The financial resources of the church underscored the interwoven nature of religious, legal, and civic authority under the Anglican establishment. More broadly, these findings show how a religious establishment exercises power in many realms of daily life beyond what we think of as "religion."
