The church is believed to have been similar to the building of Lord Delaware's time, which it succeeded, and of which we have, happily, a complete description. This was sixty feet long by twenty-four feet wide. Fragrant cedars from the woods hard by had given of their red-veined timber for its pews, pulpit, chancel rail, and the framework of its ''fair, broad windows,'"' which were made to "shut and open as the weather shall occasion," and a goodly black walnut tree had fallen to provide its holy table. In the ''quire'' was a green velvet chair for the Governor to sit in and before it a green velvet cushion for him to kneel upon. The stone baptismal font was '"bowen hollow like a canoe," and in the steeple hung two bells. which rang daily at 10 o'clock and at 4 o'clock to call the townspeople to morning and evening prayer. Lord Delaware set the fashion of keeping the church ''passing sweet and trimmed up with divers flowers,"
Under its brick-paved floor and in the graves around it lay the bones of many of those who had given their lives to secure a foothold for Anglo-Saxon civilization in the New World. Sir George Yeardley himself, presiding over the Assembly in his throne-like chair on this history-making summer morning, would within a few years be sleeping under the tiled chancel, and there may still be seen a gravestone believed to be his, whose worn markings show that it covers the dust of a knight.
We can almost see the assembling, in this sweet place, of America's earliest legislators.
They are all in high feather, for the brightest day that the land of their adoption has yet seen is breaking. There are hearty greet- literal, ings, of course, and exchange of news of crops and home happenings. Here comes Governor Yeard-ley in all the state in which he fares to service on Sundays. He wears his "holiday attire,' and on both sides of him and behind march his bodyguard arrayed in his Excellency's livery and armed with halberds. He enters the choir and sits him down in his velvet chair. Next come the councillors (their good swords clanking at their sides and spurs ringing on the aisle as they walk), and take their seats on his Excellency's right and left. Similarly accoutred, follow the burgesses, in orderly procession—two by two, two by two.
"For as much as men's affaires doe little prosper where God's service is neglected, all the burgesses took their places in the Quire till a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister, that it would Please God to guide and sanctified all our proceedings to His owne glory and the good of this plantation. Prayer being ended, to the intente that as we had begun at God Almighty, so we might proceed with awfu] and due respect towards His lieutenant, our most gracious and dread sovereign, all the burgesses were entreated to retire themselves into the body of the church, which being done, before they were freely admitted, they were called to order by name, and so every man (none staggering at it) took the oath of supremacy, sail, then entered into the Assem-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.