The Reverend James Maury was a participant with the notable lawsuit that became known as "The Parson's Cause" in 1763, in which the young attorney Patrick Henry argued that the colony had the right to establish its own method of payment to clergy (which had been vetoed by the Crown).
Born in Dublin of French Protestant "Huguenot" ancestry, James Maury came to the Virginia colony as an infant with his parents.
He was the son of Matthew Maury, a French Huguenot, who was born in Castel Mauron, in Gascony, and his wife, Mary Anne Fontaine, daughter of Rev.
[2] Soon after his birth, the family emigrated to the Virginia colony,[3] where hundreds of Huguenot refugees had settled above the falls of the James River during the early 1700s.
In 1749 Maury became enthusiastic about expeditions to the west and, together with Peter Jefferson, Dr. Thomas Walker, Joshua Fry, and others founded the Loyal Company of Virginia.
[8] Their children were: Maury opposed the colony's passage of the Two Penny Act of 1757, which proposed to pay clergy a set amount in cash rather than in tobacco, as had been the rule.
Maury sued the parish collectors, who gathered the payment required for the clergy, for the full amount of his salary in tobacco.
[9] The case was defended by Peter Lyons, afterward president of the Virginia Supreme Court, and opposed by Patrick Henry.
During this overseas appointment, both he and his nephew Matthew Fontaine Maury (born in 1806) had opportunities to discuss and study the natural philosophy lectures (mainly physics) of Thomas Young, published in 1807.