 | A history of Caroline county, Virginia |  |
THE VESTRY
The parish vestry consisted of twelve of the most prominent
and substantial men of the parish, and divided with the court
the responsibility for the public welfare of their respective communities.
They exercised considerable civil authority, such as
processioning the bounds, or beating the bounds, of all farms and
plantations, and the making levies for the support of paupers
and unfortunate children. Every fourth year the vestry divided
the parish into precincts and appointed two honest and intelligent
freeholders of each precinct to see that the bounds of each farm
or plantation were processioned, and that the reports of such
surveying, or processioning, were registered with the parish clerk.
This was the only method of recording land titles in Virginia
before the war of the Revolution.
Each year the vestry laid the parish levy of a certain number
of pounds of tobacco upon each "tithable"—that is, every male
white person, and every negro or Indian servant above sixteen
years of age, the taxes of the family, and of the servants being
paid by the master, or head of the household. From these levies
purchase of glebes, salaries of ministers, salaries of sextons, and
support of indigent persons and illegitimate children.
Thus the county government of colonial Virginia was divided
into five branches—namely, executive, legislative, judicial,
ecclesiastical and military. The Governor, or executive, was
appointed by the Crown; the General Assembly, or legislative,
was elected by the people; the justices of the peace constituting
the County Court, or judicial, were appointed by the Governor;
the twelve men constituting the vestry, or ecclesiastical, were
appointed by their predecessors (a close corporation); and the
county lieutenant, or military, was appointed by the Governor.
It frequently happened that the county lieutenant, and the
justices of the peace were also members of the vestry, thus
centering all local authority in the hands of twelve men, none
of whom were elected by the people. Thus it was that the common
people, except when casting a ballot for a member of the House
of Burgesses, frequently found themselves as powerless to correct
irregularities of the local government under which they lived, as
the subjects of an absolute monarchy.
| A history of Caroline county, Virginia | |