Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/43

 both of his study of the law and the practice of the first two or three years, with his father-in-law, Mr. Shelton, who then kept the tavern at Hanover court house. Whenever Mr. Shelton was from home, Mr. Henry sup- pHed his place in the tavern, received the guests, and at- tended to their entertainment. All this was very natural in Mr. Henry^s situation, and seems to have been purely the voluntary movement of his naturally kind and obliging disposition. Hence, however, a story has arisen, that in the early part of his life, he was a bar-keeper by pro- fession. The fact seems not to have been so: but if it had been, it would certainly have redounded much more to his honour than to his discredit; for as Mr. Hemy owed no part of his distinction either to birth or fortune, but wholly to himself, the deeper the obscurity and pov- erty from which he emerged, the stronger is the evidence which it bears to his powers, and the greater glory does it shed around him.

About the time of Mr. Henry ^s coming to the bar, a controversy arose in Virginia, which gradually produced a very strong excitement, and called to it, at length, the attention of the whole state.

This was the famous controversy between the clergy on the one hand, and the legislature and people of the colony on the other, touching the stipend claimed by the former; and as this was the occasion on which Mr. Henry ^s genius first broke forth, those who take an interest in his life, will not be displeased by a particular account of the nature and grounds of the dispute. It will be borne in mind, that the church of England was at this period, the established church of Virginia; and, by an act of assembly passed so far back as the year 1696, each minister of a parish had been provided with an annual stipend of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco

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