lxx Introduction.

the Established Church, all of whom owed their appointments to the Lord Pro-
prietary. Under the law the vestries of the several parishes had no say in the
selection of the rector or curate, nor when once inducted, did either the Pro-
prietary, or the Governor, or the vestry have power to remove them. While
the great majority of the clergymen of the established church holding benefices
in the Province were conscientious and God-fearing men, at this perioid an un-
usually large number of disreputable clergymen were an offence to the public.
The most conspicuous and notorious of these was the Reverend Bennett Allen,
then Rector of All Saints' Parish, Frederick County, and other parishes, who
for years kept religious and political affairs in Maryland in an uproar. Another
flagrant offender was the Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker, Rector of Coventry
Parish, Somerset and Worcester Counties, who had recently died, and who
to quote Sharpe, writing in 1768, "by his Sottiness & immoral Behavior had
long been considered an intolerable Burthen by the Parishioners" (Arch. Md.
XIV, 480). We also owe to Sharpe the following picturesque descriptions of
three other contemporary clergymen: the Reverend Neill McCullum of Dor-
chester Parish, Dorchester County; the Reverend Andrew Lendrum, of St.
George's Parish, Baltimore County; and the Reverend Richard Brown of
King and Queen Parish, St. Mary's County. McCullum who "by reason of
his Sottishness has for many years been absolutely unable to officiate in the
Church or to discharge any part of his Duty"; Lendrum was "said to be not
only an habitual Drunkard but also to live in Adultery"; Brown had been "lately
accused of murdering one of his Slaves & actually fled thereupon to Virginia
where he remained several Months till his Son, who could be the only positive
Witness against him could be ship't away thence to Scotland ... his Parish-
ioners consider him as a very bad man none of them will even yet attend Divine
Service at his Church" (Arch. Md. XIV, 480, 507). The immoralities of the
Reverend Richard Brown, a native of Charles County, Maryland, are also to be
found fully narrated in the report upon him by the Committee on Aggrievances
and Courts of Justice, filed in the Lower House on June 22, 1768. It appears
that Brown, who had become Rector of King and Queen Parish, in 1751, had
lived out of his parish for more than three years, and this without employing a
curate to officiate in his stead. Lately returned to his parish "his long course of
immoral conduct and his being under a prosecution for the supposed murder of
a negro has determined his parishioners universally not to hear him; that the
growth of Popery and superstition are, as may be expected, attendant conse-
quences of such remiss and immoral conduct on the part of a clergyman." The
committee concluded by saying that their attention had been directed to the
matter so late that it could not make as full an inquiry and examination as was
called for, but that it felt a "strict inquiry into the causes of the apparent decay
of the established religion" in the Province should be made (pp. 410-411).
It will be remembered that St. Mary's County was the stronghold of Roman
Catholicism in the Province.

The case of the Reverend John Macpherson, a native of Scotland and the
Rector of William and Mary Parish, Charles County, who for some time, had
been in prison for debt, seems to have involved financial carelessness, rather