![]() ![]() ![]() The Parson’s Cause established Patrick Henry as a leader in the emerging movement for American independence. The Anglican clergy appealed to Britain’s King George III, who overturned the law and encouraged ministers to sue for back pay. In response, the Virginia legislature passed the Two-Penny Act, which set the value of the Anglican ministers’ annual salaries at two pennies per pound of tobacco, rather than the inflated price, which was closer to six pennies per pound. A tobacco shortage caused by drought led to price increases in the late 1750s. Ministers of the Church of England in Virginia were paid their annual salaries in tobacco. The case – one of the first legal attempts to challenge the limits of England’s power over the American colonies – is often viewed as an important event leading up to the American Revolution. Henry’s first major legal case was known as the Parson’s Cause in 1763, a dispute involving Anglican clergy in colonial Virginia. Many of Henry’s contemporaries likened his rhetorical style to the evangelical preachers of the Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. He taught himself law while working as a tavern keeper at his father-in-law’s inn and opened a law practice in Hanover County in 1760.Īs a lawyer and politician, Patrick Henry was known for his persuasive and passionate speeches, which appealed as much to emotion as to reason. He failed in several attempts as a storeowner and a planter. Henry struggled to find a profession as a young adult. ![]() He was educated mostly at home by his father, a Scottish-born planter who had attended college in Scotland. Patrick Henry was born in 1736 to John and Sarah Winston Henry on his family’s farm in Hanover County, Virginia. ![]()
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