Description
This study of the life and times of James Blair sheds new light on a major figure in the political and religious life of Colonial British North America. Commissary (or representative of the Bishop of London), college president, and member of the governor's council, Blair played a significant role in the development and evolution of the Virginia colony from ca. 1689 until his death in 1743. It focuses on his theology, his support of religious toleration, his goal of ending Erastianism (or the linking of church and state), and his hiterto unstudied role in Virginia politics. It also includes other well known aspects of Blair's career, such as his running feuds with a series of colonial governors and the fact that he and the Anglican clergy he supervised were often at odds. But these more traditional facets of Blair's life are set here in a larger interpretive framework. Seen as part of a conflict over an emerging colonial (or Virginian) identity, these disputes reveal less a self-serving commissary than a debate over whether Virginians or the Crown, the Parliament, and the English Church would shape the colony's future. In this debate, Blair by 1703 had become a zealous defender of colonial rights against the mother country, a shift away from his earlier view of himself as administrator of English policy. Understanding this context helps to study Blair and his times in a new light and encourages historians to reevaluate their understanding of religion, society, and politics in colonial Virginia. Further, it offers an opportunity through the study of Blair's career to investigate the ambiguities inherent in being both a Virginian and a member of England's empire.
