Meade refers to the "liberty" and "variety" regarding the surplice that "has ever existed in the Church of Virginia". What is more, he also presents this as within the canonical context established and maintained by PECUSA:
As to the vestments, the same liberty and the same variety has ever existed in the Church of Virginia, without interruption to its harmony. It is well known that the controversy in our Mother Church concerning the use of the surplice was a long and bitter and most injurious one ... At the revision of the Prayer Book by our American fathers, this and other changes, which had long been desired by many in England, and still are, were at once made, and the dress of the clergy left to their own good sense, it being only required that it should be decent. I believe it has never been at tempted but once to renew the law enforcing clerical habits. Soon after I entered the House of Bishops some one in the other House proposed such a canon. A warm but short discussion ensued, which ended in the withdrawal of what found but little favour. During the discussion the subject was mentioned among the Bishops, who seemed all opposed to it, and one of whom, more disposed, perhaps, to such things than any other, cried out, "De minimis non curat lex."
He highlights how the architecture of churches in colonial Virginia would supposedly not have facilitated clergy retiring to the vestry after Morning Prayer in order to remove their surplice and don their gowns for preaching. This being so, Morning Prayer would have been read in the gown:
That the old clergy of Virginia should have been very uniform and particular in the use of the clerical vestments is most improbable, from the structure of the churches and the location of their vestry-rooms. The vestry-rooms formed no part of the old churches, but were separate places in the yard or neighbourhood, sometimes a mile or two off. They were designed for civil as well as religious purposes, and were located for the convenience of the vestrymen, who levied taxes and attended to all the secular as well as ecclesiastical business of the parish. The setting apart some portion of the old churches as robing or vestry-rooms is quite a modern thing, and it is not at all probable that the ministers would have gone backward and forward between the pulpits and the former vestry-rooms in the churchyards, to change their garments.
It is worth noting here Meade's use of "improbable", suggesting that he himself is not entirely sure that the architecture entailed the gown. That said, whether this historical account is accurate - and John K. Nelson's reading of the Church of England in colonial Virginia suggests otherwise (more of which below) - is beside the point. This is what Meade and, presumably, the clergy and laity of the diocese, believed to be so. It therefore provided them with a precedent for what had become the practice "at resuscitating the Church" in Virginia after the Revolutionary War and the consequences of the 1779 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom:
The clergy of Virginia, from the first efforts at resuscitating the Church, have been charged by some with being too indifferent to clerical garments; nor have they been very careful to repel the charge, thinking it better to err in this way than in the opposite. Bishop Hobart once taunted me with this, though at the same time he acknowledged that there were times and places when it would be folly to think of using the clerical garments, saying, that in his visitations, especially to Western New York, he sometimes dispensed not only with the Episcopal robes but even with the black gown. The Bishops of Virginia have sometimes been condemned for not requiring the candidates to be dressed in surplices at the time of their admission to deacons' orders, although there is no canon or rubric looking to such a thing.
From Meade's description, it is clear that PECUSA in Virginia - as late as the date of this work's publication, 1857 - was characterised by its clergy routinely not wearing the surplice. Indeed, so much was this the case that deacons received their orders not wearing the surplice. This need not necessarily imply that the surplice was therefore worn when receiving the order of presbyter. As being ordained deacon commenced an individual's exercise of ministry, the comment might actually imply that the surplice was not required for holy orders, whether as deacon or presbyter. Alternatively, if the surplice was required for ordination as a presbyter, this may have been viewed as an exception to normal ministerial vesture.
The statement with regard to the clergy of Virginia, "nor have they been very careful to repel the charge, thinking it better to err in this way than in the opposite", is also significant. It points to how their approach to the matter of gown or surplice was shaped by latitude, rather than pro- or anti-surplice enthusiasm. This in itself, however, indicates that in Virginia the surplice was not regarded as a distinguishing characteristic of Protestant Episcopal worship.
Meade also emphasises that PECUSA's canonical order did not require the surplice to be worn - unlike the 1604 Canons of the Church of England or those of the post-disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. As implied in the first extract quoted above, this was understood to reflect the character of PECUSA's foundation: the 1789 Prayer Book revision following much in the 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension and the removal of subscription both cohere with an understanding that the surplice could not be canonically required.
Finally, Meade also makes the point that there was a wider practice in the early- and mid-19th century PECUSA of dispensing with the surplice in circumstances where it was not regarded as appropriate. This, he states, illustrates how Virginia's practice, while it may have been distinctive as a norm, was not entirely unusual in PECUSA of this era.
Meade's account confirms 'the old Virginia tradition', of ministers in the gown officiating at divine service. While he states that this dated back to colonial days, his reference to "at resuscitating the Church" after the Revolutionary War may hint at this era, not colonial practice, being the origin of 'the old Virginia tradition'. This is also suggested by Nelson's study of the Church of England in colonial Virginia:
contrary to oft-repeated stories that Virginia Anglicans, either because of their low-church prejudices or their adaptation to frontier conditions, had forced their clergy to dispense with the surplice, they were in fact zealous in supplying, cleaning, and replacing surplices for their parsons.
As to why this practice may have emerged in the Virginia of the early Republic, we might speculate that if the surplice had become associated with the loyalism of a significant proportion of Church of England colonial clergy during the Revolutionary War, wearing the gown for divine service may have been an attempt to distance PECUSA in the commonwealth - now disestablished - from such perceptions of the surplice. The context described by Meade in his A Brief Review of The Episcopal Church in Virginia (1845) could, therefore, have encouraged the practice:
The attachment of some of the Clergy to the cause of the king subjected the Church itself to suspicion, and gave further occasion to its enemies to seek its destruction. The dispute about Church property now came on, and for twenty-seven years was waged with bitterness and violence. At the commencement of the war of the Revolution, Virginia had ninety-one Clergymen, officiating in one hundred and sixty-four Churches and Chapels; at its close only twenty-eight ministers were found laboring in the less desolate parishes of the State.
What Meade does not mention is that the vast majority of colonial Virginia's Church of England ministers - three-quarters - were Patriots. Meade's words, however, suggest that the one-quarter who were Loyalists clouded post-Revolutionary War memories and, perhaps, perceptions of the surplice. While this interpretation is speculative, what remains the case is that Episcopal ministers wearing the gown for divine service was clearly normative in early- and mid-19th century Virginia.
(The first picture is from the Facebook page of Pohick Church, after Evening Prayer on Ascension Day. The second is a version of 'The Last Communion of Henry Clay', 1852. Most versions of the painting show the Senate Chaplain, an Episcopal cleric, in a surplice. Other versions, however, also show him in a gown, suggestive of a diversity of PECUSA practice at the time.)
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