For fifty-four years James Blair--parish rector, Anglican commissary, president of the College of William and Mary, and councillor--dominated church life and was a major force in political life in Virginia. One of the three ablest Anglican commissaries in the colonial South. Blair was politically powerful enough to effect the dismissal of three strong royal governors and has been called, for his period, "the most articulate spokesman in Virginia" against the exercise of royal authority. With friends in England such as John Locke, three successive Archbishops of Canterbury, and two Bishops of London, Blair ruthlessly destroyed those who opposed him. Tough-minded, impervious to criticism, iron-willed, ruthlessly ambitious, avaricious, solitary, imperious, articulate, idealistic, and pragmatic, Blair was a complex man of tireless abilities and a violent temper who also was a conscientious and effective pastor, a powerful speaker, and an able writer. As he left office in 1721, partially due to...