James Madison (bishop) - Dual Career: Educator and Theologian

Dual Career: Educator and Theologian

Madison taught philosophy and mathematics at the college from 1773 to 1775, when he went to England to be ordained a priest of the Church of England. He returned to the Colony of Virginia, and was serving as an instructor at William and Mary as the hostilities which led to the American Revolutionary War broke out.

He was a cousin of James Madison (1751–1836), a member of the Virginia General Assembly, U.S. Representative in the first four sessions of the United States Congress, and the fourth President of the United States. Both Madisons were heavily involved in the issues of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.

In 1777, Madison served as chaplain of the Virginia House of Delegates and organized his students into a militia company. The same year, Loyalist sympathies of the college's president, the Reverend John Camm (who had been the initial litigant in the Parson's Cause case 1758-1764), brought about Madison's removal from the faculty. But later, Madison became the eighth president of the College of William and Mary in October 1777, the first after separation from England.

As the College's President, Madison worked with the new leaders of Virginia, most notably Thomas Jefferson, on a reorganization and changes for the College which included the abolition of the Divinity School and the Indian School, which was also known as the Brafferton School. The 1693 royal charter provided that Indian School of the College educate American Indian youth. The College's founder, Reverend Dr. James Blair had arranged financing for that purpose using dedicated income from England which was interrupted by the Revolutionary War. By 1779, the Brafferton School had permanently closed, although "The Brafferton", as it is known in modern times, remains a landmark building dating to the Colonial Period on the campus. Along with establishment of new, firmer financial footing, the creation of the graduate schools in law and medicine officially made the "College" a school meeting the contemporary definition of a "university" by 1779, notwithstanding the retention of the word College in the original name (as set forth in the 1693 Royal Charter).

The Reverend Dr. Madison also presided over the first convention of the newly formed Diocese of Virginia of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America in 1785 and was consecrated as a bishop on September 19, 1790, in Canterbury, England. Despite the concerns of some patriots, the Right Reverend Dr. Madison, or Bishop James Madison, as he came to be known, successfully served both the College of William and Mary and the Diocese of Virginia separately during the important transitional period.

He remained as President of the College of William and Mary for 35 years, serving until his death. When he died on March 6, 1812, he was interred in the chapel of the College in Williamsburg, Virginia.