George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[172] instance its ratification was opposed by the Bishop of

chap. IX.} 1763. Dec.

London, who remarked on ‘the great change in the temper of the people of Virginia in the compass of a few years, and the diminution of the prerogative of the crown.’ ‘The rights of the clergy and the authority of the king,’ said he, ‘must stand or fall together.’¹ And the Act was negatived by the king in council. The ‘Two-penny Act’ became, therefore, null and void from the beginning; and in the Virginia courts of law it remained only to inquire by a jury into the amount of damages which the complainants had sustained.²

Patrick Henry was one of those engaged to plead against ‘the parsons,’ whose cause was become a contest between the prerogative and the people of Virginia. When a boy, he had learned something of Latin; of Greek, the letters; but nothing methodically. It had been his delight to wander alone with the gun or the angling-rod; or by some sequestered stream to enjoy the ecstasy of meditative idleness. He married at eighteen; attempted trade; toiled unsuccessfully as a farmer; then with buoyant mind resolved on becoming a lawyer; and answering questions successfully by the aid of six weeks study of Coke upon Littleton and the Statutes of Virginia, he gained a license as a barrister. For three years the novice dwelt under the roof of his father-in-law, an inn-keeper near Hanover Courthouse, ignorant of the science of law, and slowly learning its forms.

On the first day of December, as Patrick Henry