Some (lie says) have likened this ancient town to those of New England and Long Island, while others, zealous members of the Episcopal Church, have tried to make themselves and others believe that the town was a reproduction of an English parish of the eighteenth century, such as we read of in the Spectator or the tales of Fielding and Smollett. They fancy the squire in his high-backed pew, the parson in his wig, gown, and surplice, telling the congregation its duty to their Maker, and also as to the tithes, the royal family, the House of Hanover, and the Protestant succession. Neither is a correct similitude. The officials, though elected, were subject to the governor's approval, and no rigid rule as to church membership prevailed as in the New England towns. The town, not the church wardens and vestry, attended to most of the temporalities, such as highways and bridges, and though the vestry levied the church rates, the town built and paid for the church, and in very late colonial times released its interest in the church property to the rector, church wardens, and vestry. Though the church was supported partially by a tax, the schoolmaster was supported by the borough, but until post-Revolutionary times the poor were a parish charge. Though an act for settling orthodox ministers in the province was passed shortly after the establishment of the English colonial system (for of course, the English was the orthodox church in colonial times), those sons of Cromwellian soldiers, Quaker refugees, and Independents did not at first take kindly to a State church, and good Parson Bartow . . . did not even wear a surplice. Many of the people were gradually won over to mother church, so far as a student can judge from reading the good minister's letters to the Society in England, more by his own loving kindness and self-respect rather than any inherent love those hard-working farmers had for the Church of England.