- fenders of the people against the claims of the Church. The
Church was disestablished by the champions of religious freedom, but, "the disestablishment of the Church in Virginia was the work of its own members, who, in laying the foundations of their country's liberty, believed that they should unselfishly sacrifice the privileges the law had hitherto secured to them, that civil and religious liberty might be found inseparably united"—(Rowland's Life of George Mason, Vol. I, p. 243). Of the five men appointed to revise the laws of the Commonwealth, namely, Jefferson, Pendleton, Wythe, George Mason and Thomas Ludwell Lee, four were active Vestrymen of the Episcopal Church, and Jefferson had also at one time been a Vestryman, and from papers extant it is in evidence that the very law in question was drafted prior to the time when George Mason resigned from the Committee. A marked distinction should be made between the disestablishment of the Church and her spoliation. The acts of the Legislature passed in 1787, 1799, and finally in 1802, were not inspired by a spirit of religious liberty. They were designed to confiscate the property of the Church, and resulted in the sale of her glebe lands. Against legislation looking to this end George Mason, Edmund Pendleton, and other Virginia Churchmen, did protest, because they believed that such procedure was contrary to the principles of common honesty. This left the Church stripped and impoverished. Her once wealthy members had sacrificed their fortunes in behalf of their country. Among the masses of the people there was a feeling of prejudice. It has been generally stated and believed that this was due to the fact that the clergy of the Church had been Tories. As a matter of fact the records show that the Virginia Clergy, led by Rev. Drs. Madison and Bracken, were, with very few exceptions, ardent supporters of the cause of liberty. The prejudice had a reasonable basis in the fact that prior to the disestablishment the people had been taxed by the State to support a Church to which some of them did not adhere, to which was added the dislike which at this time was felt against the
