The Imperial Origins of the King's Church in Early America: 1607-1783 (Studies in Modern History)

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607–1783 James B. Bell

Studies in Modern History General Editor: J. C. D. Clark, Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of British History, University of Kansas Titles include: James B. Bell THE IMPERIAL ORIGINS OF THE KING’S CHURCH IN EARLY AMERICA, 1607–1783 Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (editors) SAMUEL JOHNSON IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT Bernard Cottret (editor) BOLINGBROKE’S POLITICAL WRITINGS The Conservative Enlightenment Richard R. Follett EVANGELICALISM, PENAL THEORY AND THE POLITICS OF CRIMINAL LAW REFORM IN ENGLAND, 1808–30 Andrew Godley JEWISH IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN NEW YORK AND LONDON 1880–1914 Philip Hicks NEOCLASSICAL HISTORY AND ENGLISH CULTURE From Clarendon to Hume Mark Keay WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S GOLDEN AGE THEORIES DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND, 1750–1850 William M. Kuhn DEMOCRATIC ROYALISM The Transformation of the British Monarchy, 1861–1914 Kim Lawes PATERNALISM AND POLITICS The Revival of Paternalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Marisa Linton THE POLITICS OF VIRTUE IN ENLIGHTENMENT FRANCE Nancy D. LoPatin POLITICAL UNIONS, POPULAR POLITICS AND THE GREAT REFORM ACT OF 1832 Karin J. MacHardy WAR, RELIGION AND COURT PATRONAGE IN HABSBURG AUSTRIA The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 Marjorie Morgan NATIONAL IDENTITIES AND TRAVEL IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN James Muldoon EMPIRE AND ORDER The Concept of Empire, 800–1800

W. D. Rubinstein and Hilary Rubinstein PHILOSEMITISM Admiration and Support for Jews in the English-Speaking World, 1840–1939 Julia Rudolph WHIG POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION James Tyrrell and the Theory of Resistance Lisa Steffen TREASON AND NATIONAL IDENTITY Defining a British State, 1608–1820 Lynne Taylor BETWEEN RESISTANCE AND COLLABORATION Popular Protest in Northern France, 1940–45 Doron Zimmerman THE JACOBITE MOVEMENT IN SCOTLAND AND IN EXILE, 1746–1759

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The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607–1783 James B. Bell

© James B. Bell 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–3219–0 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bell, James B., 1932– The imperial origins of the King’s church in early America, 1607–1783 / by James B. Bell. p. cm. — (Studies in modern history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–3219–0 (cloth) 1. Church of England—United States. 2. United States—Church history—17th century. 3. United States—Church history—18th century. 4. Great Britain—Colonies—Administration. 5. United States— History—To 1775. 6. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783. I. Title. II. Studies in modern history (Palgrave (Firm)) BX5881.B45 2004 283′.73′09032—dc22 10 13

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For Miriam, James, Scott, Elliott and Vanessa

Contents

x

List of Tables and Figures Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xx

Some Useful Dates

xxiii

Part I

The Origins of Imperial Ecclesiastical Policies

1 The National Church: a Servant of Imperial Interests, 1584–1660

1

3

2 Bishops and Statesmen: New Policies for an Imperial Church

10

3 Royal Government, Royal Officials and the Church

26

Part II The Implementation of Imperial Policies by Civil and Church Officials

41

4 The Royal Governors and Ecclesiastical Duties Francis Nicholson Robert Hunter and Alexander Spotswood Benning and John Wentworth

43 47 52 53

5 The Commissaries: Deputies of the Bishop of London Establishing the office in the colonies A profile of the commissaries Commissarial duties Commissarial courts Controversies with governors

58 60 60 62 65 71

6 Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments Provincial establishments: Virginia Maryland New York South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia

74 75 75 81 84 85

vii

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Contents

7 A Financial Lifeline from London: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Congregational support English livings, inheritance, and marriage Supplemental fees Comparative salaries: Massachusetts clergymen Comparative salaries: civil servants, schoolmasters, and lawyers Summary

102 103

Part III The American Experience Transforms the King’s Church

105

8 Conventions of the Clergy Anglican clergy conventions The work of conventions Charitable programs for widows and orphans

107 110 114 120

9 Local Parish Governance: the Americanization of the English Vestry

125

10 The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican Clergyman Collegiate education Post-collegiate preparation for the ministry The transatlantic crossing England and ordination The consequences of independence

142 147 150 157 158 164

11 New England Critics of Imperial Church Policy Summary

166 184

Part IV Consequences of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War

187

12 The King’s Church: a Casualty of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War Taking measure of the church in 1775: the national origins of the ministers The number of primary and secondary churches The ministers as casualties of the Independence movement and War 13 Epilogue

90 93 95 96 99

189 192 198 200 203

Contents

ix

Appendix A: Colonial American governors who were members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

210

Appendix B: Commissaries of the Bishops of London in America

211

Appendix C: Summary of S.P.G. financial aid to colonial clergymen

212

Notes

220

Bibliography

265

Index

293

List of Tables and Figures

Tables 5.1 Colonial Visitations Conducted by Commissaries 6.1 Value of Maryland Livings in 1698 8.1 Conventions of the Anglican Clergy 10.1 Provincial Origins of Graduates and Students of Colonial Colleges who became Anglican Clergymen 10.2 Graduates and Students of Colonial Colleges who Received Anglican Orders by Date of Ordination 12.1 The National Origins of the Clergymen active in 1775 12.2 Colleges and Universities Attended by Clergymen active in 1775 12.3 Primary and Secondary Churches in Use in 1775 12.4 The Number of Clergy in the Colonies in 1775 and 1783 Appendix A: Governors of the American colonies who were Elected to Membership of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Appendix B: Commissaries of the Bishops of London in Colonial America Figures Appendix C: Funds allocated to the American colonies by the S.P.G.

x

64 83 111 144 146 194 195 199 201

210 211

212

Preface The purpose of this book is to consider the imperial origins for the extension, supervision, and development of the Church of England, the King’s Church, in Early America. It is a study that examines the role of civil and ecclesiastical policies and officials for the advancement and governance of the provincial church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – a process that was shaped initially in the 1670s and early 1680s by the Restoration government of Charles II to strengthen and improve England’s imperial administration. The origin of the movement to advance the church overseas is anchored in the writings of the versatile, well-connected London ecclesiastical official and keen geographer, Richard Hakluyt. In company with Walter Raleigh and others he promoted a new foreign policy for the consideration of Queen Elizabeth I – a policy that championed the creation of a Protestant English empire as a foil for the expansionist activities of Catholic Spain and Portugal in the Western Hemisphere. One facet of Hakluyt’s overseas policy was for the extension of the church to new colonies. He believed that a colonial church would serve as an instrument for maintaining and binding settlers and settlements with English ways and government. For more than three decades during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries he pursued this policy at the highest levels of the church and state. Hakluyt’s vision for the extension of the English church to the New World was written into the earliest charters granted by the Crown to the Virginia joint-stock company. The principle was continued and included in the charters of several colonies granted to individuals or groups of proprietors later in the seventeenth century. Hakluyt’s vision and proposed national strategy played a strong hand in the cross accompanying the flag with the first English settlement to Virginia in 1607. In England the church had existed for centuries and the local church building was likely to have been built in the Middle Ages and might stand on the site of an earlier Saxon church. The Church of England had evolved out of a long history in which it could be maintained that instead of the nation setting up an established church, a church generated a nation. There was an Ecclesia Anglicana, governed by national synods, before there was a unified Kingdom of England. That long evolutionary development had allowed the church both to shape and be shaped by the kingdoms in which it existed. Extending the King’s church overseas was without precedent: officials of church and state had no model to guide their efforts and no strategy to implement their plan. Although England’s design for empire in America was to counterbalance the imperial strength of Spain, its efforts to extend the xi

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state church to the colonies was never as systematic as the accomplishments of the Spanish Roman Catholics in New Spain. The cross and flag were intertwined in Spanish national interests as Roman Catholic priests accompanied the voyages of exploration, discovery, and settlement. The Spanish church was at a strong advantage because it was able to delegate for its overseas missionary activity members of the Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, and other orders. Contrasting with the coherent Spanish program for extending the Catholic church to new overseas settlements English officials were faced with several unfamiliar tasks. From the beginnings in Virginia in 1607 there was a need to recruit ministers, find the means to underwrite their travel expenses, provide salaries, and cover the costs of outfitting the churches. These were essential obligations for the church that weighed on the attention of church and state leaders, some provincial legislatures, philanthropic agencies, and in time on members of congregations throughout the colonial era. The experience of the imperial King’s church in early America falls into four chronological divisions, each with distinctive characteristics. The initial phase covers the period from the founding of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607 until about 1675: decades that exposed the affairs of the thinly settled province to the fortunes of the rise and fall of the Virginia Company, the introduction of royal government, the distant impact of the English Revolution, and the Restoration government of King Charles II. During the era of the Virginia Company it was responsible for the recruitment of men to serve congregations in the colony and the payment of their salaries. The Company oversaw the legal establishment of the church by the House of Burgesses in 1618. Following the dissolution of the Company in 1624 and the recognition of Virginia as a royal colony, the accelerating political turmoil and civil war in England provided little opportunity for attention to the interests and needs of the church in the province. The situation was little different in Maryland, a proprietary colony founded in 1634. An occasional clergyman would appear in the colony after about 1650 and perform religious services; but it was not until 1676 that we find three resident ministers in the province, where the church was not yet legally established. Between 1675 and 1715 the colonial church entered its second period, indeed its most vigorous and ambitious stage of accomplishment. Officials in London, prompted by critical reports on the state of the church from ministers in Virginia and Maryland, turned their attention to the needs of the overseas church. The timing was fortunate, because this was an era of extraordinary civil and ecclesiastical leadership in London. The Board of Trade considered and implemented policies and procedures for stronger imperial administration. Royal governors were provided with a commission and detailed instructions relating to their duties as the Crown’s representative in the colonies and the bishop of London was granted a commission to exercise jurisdiction over the provincial church. The leadership of such royal officials in the colonies as Edmund Andros, Francis Nicholson, and Edward Randolph

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influenced the establishment of the King’s church in several colonies. In particular they aided the founding of individual congregations of the church in such key ports as Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charles Town between 1685 and 1700. The establishment of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in London in 1701 for the purpose of recruiting and assigning ministers to serve congregations in the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies significantly aided the extension of the church to these regions. Yet the efforts were not easy; after more than a decade of activity in America the Society noted in its 1714 Annual Report that its work was constrained by ‘The Remoteness of these Regions, the Uncertainty of Conveyance, the Difference of Reports, the Variety of Circumstances, the unavoidable alterations of Time and Place, the changeable Affections of Men, the force of Prejudice, the Strength of Interest, and other worldly Temptations’ – a complaint that would be repeated again and again during the decades before the American Revolution. Over the course of the eighteenth century the S.P.G. sponsored more than three hundred ministers in the provinces. During the second period of its colonial experience the structure of the church was further defined and refined. In every colony the local vestries, dominated by the prominent laymen of the congregation, became increasingly a more powerful force managing church affairs. These years also witnessed the first gatherings of clergymen in convention in several provinces to discuss matters of common concern. Yet despite the introduction of such local supervisory procedures the colonial church was at a disadvantage. Unlike the church in England the provincial church was not only without a resident prelate but it had not been organized into such familiar ecclesiastical territories as archdioceses or dioceses. In fact it was organized on the basis of civil jurisdictions, towns and townships, counties, and colonies. Not withstanding these shortcomings this period, in hindsight, was the golden age for the colonial King’s church, providing the distinguishing features that characterized its experience until the Revolutionary War. In part this was due to the passing of the old regime and of such influential advocates on behalf of the overseas church as Queen Anne, William Blathwayt, Secretary of the Board of Trade, and Bishop of London Henry Compton. More urgent was the need of the Walpole government to balance political forces and solidify the Hanoverian succession and the reign of King George I. For four decades after 1715 the church entered a period of consolidation. Nonetheless there was a steady increase in the number of congregations and clergymen, particularly in New England and the Middle Colonies. Unlike the Congregational church in New England and the Presbyterian church in the Middle Colonies, internal membership divisions caused by the Great Awakening did not split the King’s church. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some alienated members of religious groups convulsed by the Awakening found their way to the orderly practice of worship in the English

xiv Preface

church. A pattern is particularly evident in Connecticut where a number of Congregational ministers at the time converted to the King’s church. During these decades there were a gradually increasing number of native colonists, educated at the colonial colleges, who became Anglican clergymen. Their presence represented a dual significance for the young church. On the one hand they represented an indication of the anglicization of colonial society and on the other hand the steady process of the Americanization of the King’s church. These men replaced in colonial pulpits ministers born in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Between 1607 and 1783 more than 1,270 men served congregations of the King’s church as ministers from Maine to Georgia. About 58.2 per cent of the men were English-born, 18.6 per cent were native colonists, 10.2 per cent were Scots, 6.13 per cent were Irish and the remaining 6.8 per cent divided among persons of a variety of Continental European and Caribbean Islands origins. These men represented not only diverse cultural regions but also varying religious traditions within the episcopal church. This diversity of background marked the ministry of the colonial church, which after 1690 did not speak from one typical cultural and religious tradition. The absence of a common social, theological, and collegiate experience to foster personal and professional friendships placed the church at a disadvantage. Unlike Congregational ministers in Massachusetts and Connecticut, vast majorities of whom were graduates of either Harvard or Yale College, the Anglicans were representatives of different educational traditions in the colonies, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Nor was there a provincial alma mater for many of the men to return to at the annual commencement to renew old friendships or to hold clergy meetings as did New England Congregational ministers at Harvard and Yale. Articulate American non-Anglicans defined in large measure the final phase of the church’s colonial experience. From about 1750 until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, a barrage of pamphlets rolled from the pens of such leading New England Congregational ministers as Jonathan Mayhew, Noah Welles, and Charles Chauncy. These men disputed the fundamental purpose of the presence of the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in their communities and the prospect of the appointment of a colonial bishop. They viewed the increased activity of the S.P.G. and the rising number of Anglican ministers as an indication of a conspiracy by the leaders of the English government and church to impose the Anglican church in those provinces in which it was not established. This blunt challenge required the King’s church to orchestrate in London and in the provinces a response to the critics. Two consequences of the controversy were that the number of congregations and the number of native colonists entering the Anglican ministry did not increase. The controversial political events that unfolded during the 1760s and 1770s prompted English civil and ecclesiastical officials to give little attention to American religious affairs. Unlike a century earlier there were no civil or

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ecclesiastical leaders on the English scene of the caliber of Lord Clarendon, Lord Danby, Bishop Compton, or of Archbishops Sheldon and Tenison, to serve as advocates for the provincial church’s interests. The many changes of government in England and among the chief prelates during these decades hurt efforts to pursue a coherent policy for the overseas church. Nor was the situation much different in the provinces. Despite many capable spokesmen for the church in the colonies – particularly the Middle Colonies and including Thomas Bradbury Chandler, Samuel Seabury, and Charles Inglis – the King’s church here was not unified in a corporate sense. During these critical two decades of cascading political issues the church did not have a voice to represent the church’s position and interests in all of the colonies – it was the King’s church in this colony or that province rather than in ‘America’. In fact, it was an institution that may be described as the King’s church at worship in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Williamsburgh, Charles Town, or wherever. Unmistakably it was the English church, not the English-American, or American-English church, in the American colonies. A dramatic visual reminder of this association with the English government appeared on the west wall of many of the colonial churches with the display of the royal arms. The book is organized around four themes. The first part, Chapters 1 through 3, considers the development of an imperial ecclesiastical policy for the extension of the King’s church overseas from the late sixteenth to the last quarter of the seventeenth centuries. It traces the delegation and division of specific duties to royal and ecclesiastical officials. The second part, Chapters 4 through 7, discusses the implementation of the policies delegated by the Board of Trade to civil and church officials. In particular, these chapters are an examination of the roles exercised on behalf of the church’s interests by governors, commissaries of the bishop of London, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and several provincial legislatures. Also considered is the financial support of the clergymen and church by several colonial assemblies where the church was established and by the Londonbased Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The third part, Chapters 8 through 11, discusses the consequences of the American experience on the King’s church. Such issues are examined as the roles of the clergy conventions in governing church affairs, the vestries in supervising local matters, the education of native colonists for the ministry, and the criticism raised by New England Congregational ministers regarding certain policies of the church. The final segment examines the impact of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War on the state of the church and the experience of the institution reconstituting and re-establishing itself during several decades after 1783. In this book the phrases ‘King’s church’, ‘Church of England’, or ‘Anglican Church’, are references to the national church in England. In the provinces of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland there were established churches associated

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with the English church yet maintaining distinctive provincial identities. In Scotland the Episcopal Church (named since 1979 as the Scottish Episcopal Church) was outlawed between 1690 and 1832, replaced by the Presbyterian Church as the national church. The church in Wales was in many ways a stepchild of the Church of England, supervised by absentee English bishops and incessantly struggling with financially weak congregations. Circumstances were quite different in Ireland where under Henry VIII the Church of Ireland, not the Roman Catholic church, was established by the Irish Parliament. It always was and remains to this day a minority church. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries about 95 per cent of the population were Roman Catholics, while it is estimated that between 1 and 2 per cent of the people were members of the Church of Ireland. Despite differing situations each of these provincial churches enjoyed distinctive cultural, educational, and religious traditions that influenced the American church through their native sons who served posts in the colonies. The history of King’s church in colonial America has not wanted for a chronicler. The first significant efforts were undertaken in the 1830s, when Francis Lister Hawks (1798–1866) compiled his still useful Documents of the American Episcopal Church. Appointed by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1835 to compile documentation on the colonial history of the church, Hawks traveled to England in search of materials. He returned with a great mass of papers, some of which he used in Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States: Virginia (New York, 1836) and Maryland (New York, 1839). In view of the resources then available, Hawks’s efforts were remarkably accurate, sound, and substantial. Yet it should be fairly noted that the material represents neither a thorough nor a systematic selection of the manuscript deposits. The publication also fails to include any materials on the church in New York or North and South Carolina or elsewhere. Hawks’s most important publications, besides the Contributions, were: Journals of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, volume I (Philadelphia, 1861), covering the period between 1785 and 1808, and the two-volume Documentary History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (New York, 1863–64), both prepared in collaboration with William Stevens Perry (1832–98). Perry also made several trips to England to track down additional source materials relating to the church’s history during the colonial period. The successful fruits of his persistent research efforts were published in five large volumes (Hartford, 1870–78) under the general title Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church. The series provided reproduction of documents relating to the early history of the church in the colonies of Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Perry also published a substantial two-volume History of the American Episcopal Church, 1587–1883 (Boston, 1885), a work that remains of interest to historians today.

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Hawks and Perry were trailblazers; their publications shaped to the present day all subsequent histories of the denomination – including such admirable and useful works as William W. Manross’s History of the American Episcopal Church (New York, 1959), Raymond W. Albright’s History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York, 1964), and John F. Woolverton’s Colonial Anglicanism in North America (Detroit, 1984). During the past four decades several publications have contributed to a new understanding from varying perspectives of the church’s past. Included among these works are Lawrence Foushee London and Sarah McCulloh Lemmon’s The Episcopal Church in North Carolina, 1701–1959; S. Charles Bolton’s Southern Anglicanism: the Church of England in Colonial South Carolina; Carol van Vroost, The Anglican Clergy in Maryland, 1692–1776; Joan R. Gunderson, The Anglican Ministry in Virginia, 1723–1766; Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775; Frederick V. Mills, Sr., Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revolution; David C. Humphrey, From King’s College to Columbia, 1746–1800; Ann D. Gordon, The College of Philadelphia, 1749–1779; John Calam, Parsons and Pedagogues: The S.P.G. Adventure in American Education; and John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690–1776. Nelson’s excellent and comprehensive study of the everyday life of the parishes in the colony has not only generated new information about the vitality of the institution but also serves a model for similar research in other provinces. Since the publication of these works I have had the opportunity to draw on a number of resources on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean that were not available to earlier researchers on the general subject or not intensively considered in their works. In particular, I have examined the records of several agencies of the English government that were involved in the governance and supervision of colonial affairs, including the correspondence, account books, and minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations; the Privy Council; and the Treasury Office. I have also considered the holdings of the Lambeth Palace Library in London and consulted several significant collections including the forty-two volumes of correspondence between the several bishops of London and colonial clergymen between 1675 and 1783 known as the Fulham Palace Papers (nearly all of this material is available in microform); the manuscript correspondence and Act Books of the successive archbishops of Canterbury during the colonial era; and the Diocese of London papers by the various bishops of London relating to the supervision of the American church and clergy. At the Guildhall Library in the City of London, I have examined the Ordination Registers of the Bishops of London for the years between 1660 and 1783. At the University of Oxford, I have consulted the extensive materials of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts at the Rhodes House Library, including correspondence, financial records, and annual reports relating to the Society’s

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missionaries serving congregations in the American colonies between 1702 and 1783 (these materials are partly available in microform for use by researchers). As every person writing in American history today is indebted to a variety of bibliographical reference works, I am grateful for the works of Charles Evans, American Bibliography: A Chronological Dictionary of All Books, Pamphlets, and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States of America, 1639–1800 and for Clifford K. Shipton and James E. Mooney, eds, National Index of American Imprints through 1800. The Seventeenth Century Short Title Index and The Eighteenth Century Short Title Index have also been of great importance. In addition the extensive resources of the Research Library Information Network and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City have been valuable aids. Also, I have had the opportunity to examine the recent publications of the papers of several of the Founding Fathers who either were taught by Anglican schoolmasters, served on the parish councils of local congregations, or included in their circle of acquaintances prominent ministers of the church, and they include Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams. All of these resources were of great assistance to me in the compilation of my ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England, 1607–1783, Database’, relating to the social data, career profile, and publications of the 1,272 men who served as ministers between 1607 and 1783. I am indebted to the works of each of these authors for a richer understanding of the colonial past of the King’s church. My approach for the study of the King’s Church in early America differs, for example, from Woolverton’s Colonial Anglicanism in North America. He notes in his preface that in writing the book he followed his ‘own interests as a historian by dealing with the interaction of theology, politics, and the personality of individuals’. Further he declares that he ‘tried consistently to avoid a vast compilation of information gleaned from primary sources and the works of other scholars in favor of select lives, ideas, episodes and contemporary comments’. My scope has been different, exploring such questions as, what was the origin of the ideology for the church’s extension overseas? What were the roles of the state, the church, private individuals, and philanthropic societies for advancing the colonial church? What was the role of the Virginia Company? How were ministers recruited, their transportation expenses to the colonies paid, and salaries provided? Was the Church’s fortune intimately linked to evolving state imperial policies and administrative procedures? What was the role of civil and ecclesiastical authorities for church affairs? What kind of ecclesiastical supervision was provided for England’s first overseas church? What were the provisions for allowing native colonists to be ordained ministers without the presence of a resident bishop? This book does not address directly the complex issue of the proposed establishment of a colonial American bishopric. Historians have given

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considerable attention to this as a cause of the American Revolution: a controversial topic in the New England and Middle Colonies particularly during the 1750s and 1760s. The influential memory of the seventeenth-century Anglican Laudian opposition to Puritan preachers and practices lingering among New England and New York nonconformist preachers fueled the controversy. Alfred Lyon Cross’s The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (New York, 1902), and Carl Bridenbaugh’s Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York, 1962), both examine the controversy from differing perspectives. I have relatively briefly revisited in this book that vital, complicated, and controversial issue. My forthcoming book on Bishops, Parsons, and the American Revolution systematically examines the origins and life of the longstanding affair – a subject with a complex genealogy, challenged by the leaders of the reformed faction within the Church of England and as fervently upheld by orthodox Anglican spokesmen. The relentlessness of such Massachusetts critics as Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy against the establishment of an Anglican bishop in the colonies in the 1750s and 1760s was a continuing link in this reform tradition. That story, as this one, has many subtle variations, unusual occurrences, and consequences that I look forward to sharing with you.

Acknowledgements

As always when a book is finished at last, its author looks back on the long years of research and writing, and realizes with gratitude how many people have helped in its composition. I am particularly indebted to scholars and friends in both England and the United States who have encouraged and assisted my project. I thank at Oxford the continuing interest, assistance, and criticism of Dr. Anne Whiteman, Christopher Hill, John Walsh, Kevin Sharpe, and Jonathan C. D. Clarke, all of whom have enriched my efforts to comprehend the labyrinth of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English church and political history. For the past several years through the kindness of the former Master of my alma mater, Balliol College, and now Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Colin Lucas, I have enjoyed the privileges and courtesies of the College for extended periods of research. In the United States several scholars have freely and frequently answered my calls for assistance and criticism and for which I am most grateful. I am especially indebted to Dr. Mooney for his kindness, encouragement, and good sense with which he has aided my efforts on the book over several years. Exceeding the bounds of ordinary friendship, he has read each of the versions of the book and offered his thoughtful and trenchant criticisms. Without reservation I must admit that the book is stronger because of his wise counsel. Dr. James McLachlin has read certain portions of the manuscript in various stages of development and offered his helpful comments and suggestions particularly on details relating to the education of the parsons and the development of collegiate institutions in America. I am also indebted to Dr. Conrad E. Wright, Editor of Publications of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who kindly read the entire manuscript and offered the benefit of his wide-ranging understanding of colonial history and saved me from numerous errors of fact. Dr. James M. Banner has been a constant source of valuable criticism, information, and encouragement at every stage of the book’s development. Professor Otto Lohrenz has generously offered to me the benefit of his extraordinarily rich knowledge of Virginia parsons during the era of the American Revolution. I also owe my thanks to Evelyn Byrd Patterson for her interest in deciphering and translating the Latin commissions of the deputies of the bishops of London. Steve Barron of Philadelphia has provided invaluable and indispensable technological assistance for the development and management of the database of the men who were associated with the King’s church, ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England, 1607–1783’. Under his supervision biographical xx

Acknowledgements

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and professional details have been filed in a database of more that 1,270 men. The database is a rich resource for examining and interpreting the individual’s and the church’s experience in Early America. Steve Barron’s generous and supportive efforts have enhanced and enriched the book. During my years as the Director successively of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society and the New-York Historical Society I had the privilege and benefit of calling on the expertise of David C. Dearborn, Gary Boyd Roberts, and James E. Mooney respectively. Professor W. Michael Mathes of the University of San Francisco, a renowned authority on the history of the Spanish Colonial Empire, has read the complete book and offered valuable suggestions regarding the comparative similarities and differences of the administrative experiences of the Spanish and English empires. There are many other persons on both sides of the Atlantic who (perhaps without knowing it) have helped me to complete this work through their discussions and publications. I hope in some small way they know my gratitude. Nonetheless, the book remains of my doing and any errors that may remain in the text are my responsibility. In addition to scholars I am indebted to the unfailingly helpful staffs of many libraries and archives. In England, my research efforts have been aided at the Bodleian Library, Rhodes House Library, and Rothermere American Institute at Oxford; the Lambeth Palace Library, and the Guildhall Library in London. In the United States, the Princeton University Library, the Yale University Library, the Harvard University Library, the William and Mary College Library, the Library of Congress, the Princeton Theological Seminary Library, the Columbia University Library, the Episcopal Divinity School Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Archives of the Episcopal Church, and the Family History Library. The early stages of research were assisted by grants-in-aid from the Alfred E. Beit Fund and the American Philosophical Society, which I acknowledge with gratitude. I have benefited from the renewed interest by many scholars during the past twenty or thirty years in topics relating to the study of American religious history. The productive accomplishments of such scholars as Patricia U. Bonomi, Jon Butler, Harry S. Stout, and John K. Nelson have illuminated a variety of aspects of the American experience and assisted me in my particular research on the Church of England in colonial America. My wife and our children, all of whom have lived with and heard about this book for longer than they probably care to acknowledge, have been patient and supportive and I am grateful for that forbearance, encouragement, and kindness. I am obliged to Dr. Wright for granting me permission to publish my present Chapter 10, ‘The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican

xxii Acknowledgements

Clergyman’, which appeared in an earlier version in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume CVII (1995). Dates of the months and years are given here according to the New Style throughout the text; but when reference has been made to manuscript source materials in the footnotes, the Old Style system of dating has been maintained. Rothermere American Institute University of Oxford

Some Useful Dates 1558–1603 1584 1585 1603–25 1604–7 1607 1607–9 1610–11 1611–33 1611–21 1620 1621–28 1624 1625–49 1628–33 1630 1633–45 1633–60 1634 1636 1636 1637 1638 1642–49 1649–60 1660–85 1660–63 1660–63 1663–77 1663 1663–75 1664 1675–76 1675–1713 1676 1682 1684 1685

Elizabeth I, Queen of England Richard Hakluyt, Discourse on Western Planting Founding of Raleigh’s Colony, Roanoke Island James I, King of England Richard Vaughan, Bishop of London Settlement of Jamestown Thomas Ravis, Bishop of London George Abbot, Bishop of London George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury John King, Bishop of London Settlement of Plymouth Colony George Montaigne, Bishop of London Settlement of New Amsterdam Dissolution of the Virginia Company Charles I, King of England William Laud, Bishop of London Settlement of Massachusetts Bay Colony William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury William Juxon, Bishop of London Settlement of Maryland Settlement of Connecticut Settlement of Rhode Island Settlement of New Haven Settlement of New Sweden Civil War in England Commonwealth in England Charles II, King of England Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London William Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury Establishment of the Carolinas Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London Settlement of New Jersey King Philip’s War Henry Compton, Bishop of London Bacon’s Rebellion Settlement of Pennsylvania Massachusetts Bay Charter revoked Dominion of New England xxiii

xxiv Some Useful Dates

1685–88 1686 1688 1689 1689 1689 1689–97 1691

1691 1698 1701 1702 1702–14 1702–13 1713 1714–27 1714–23 1723–48 1727–60 1729 1732 1739–42 1739–45 1744–48 1748–61 1755–69 1754–63 1758–68 1760–1820 1761–62 1762–64 1763 1764–77 1765–66 1767 1770 1773

James II, King of England King’s Chapel, Boston, organized Glorious Revolution William (1689–1702) and Mary (1689–94), King and Queen of England Bishop of London, Henry Compton, appoints Commissaries to Virginia and Maryland Toleration Act King William’s War Royal charter issued for Massachusetts Bay Colony, which incorporated Maine and Plymouth Colony within its boundaries Royal charter issued for Maryland Colony Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge founded Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts authorized by Convocation and incorporated by Royal Charter East and West Jersey united as the royal colony of New Jersey Anne, Queen of England Queen Anne’s War Treaty of Utrecht: France lost valuable North American territory – Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Hudson’s Bay area George I, King of England John Robinson, Bishop of London Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London George II, King of England North and South Carolina established as royal colonies Settlement of Georgia War of Jenkins’ Ear Great Awakening King George’s War Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London Parson’s Cause The French and Indian War Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury George III, King of England Thomas Hayter, Bishop of London Richard Osbaldeston, Bishop of London Treaty of Paris: English control over North America east of the Mississippi confirmed Richard Terrick, Bishop of London Stamp Act Townshend Acts Boston Massacre Tea Act

Some Useful Dates

1774 1774 1775 1776 1778–87 1783

1784 1785

1786 1789

1790 1792 1796 1817 1823 1832 1840 1843 1847

xxv

Boston Tea Party Coercive Acts Continental Congress Lexington and Concord Battle of Bunker Hill Declaration of Independence Robert Lowth, Bishop of London Treaty of Paris Loyalists sail from New York British evacuate New York City Samuel Seabury of Connecticut consecrated as the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States Church of England renamed as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America First bishops consecrated for Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania Pennsylvania elects its first bishop New York elects its first bishop Constitution and Canons approved for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America American version of the Book of Common Prayer approved Virginia church elects its first bishop Maryland church elects its first bishop Massachusetts church elects its first bishop South Carolina church elects its first bishop North Carolina church elects its first bishop Vermont church elects its first bishop Georgia church elects its first bishop New Hampshire church elects its first bishop Maine church elects its first bishop

Part I The Origins of Imperial Ecclesiastical Policies

1 The National Church: a Servant of Imperial Policy, 1584–1660

From the era of Elizabeth I to the age of Thomas Paine the extension and expansion of the English church to the American colonies was integral to English imperial policy, a plan that was embedded in the evolving rhetoric of Elizabethan advocates for empire, in the words of visionary and experienced explorers and a politically astute geographer. The proposed national policy was vigorously endorsed by Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Hariot, and Richard Hakluyt, Jr., to counter the imperial advances of England’s continental foe, Spain. Raleigh and Hariot were seasoned explorers whose knowledge and opinions had been shaped by voyages to distant islands in the Caribbean Sea and the ill-fated venture at Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast.1 Raleigh’s circle of visionaries advocated an overseas policy that was nationalistic and imperialistic. Their ideas were framed by the opinions of John Foxe in his publication Acts and Monuments, a book that helped to shape the mythology that saw Englishmen as God’s chosen people courageously defending His truth through the sixteenth century. Popular and influential, it passed through four editions between 1563 and 1583.2 Foxe personified Spain as the Antichrist, and it was the anti-Spanish aspect of his nationalism that was most useful to the officially encouraged legend. For Raleigh, Hakluyt and their associates the message was simply and bluntly that England had been left behind by Spain and Portugal in claiming New World territory; moreover, on the stage of European politics these Iberian empires were threateningly united in 1580. Haklyut, an Oxford University graduate and a high-placed churchman, was a passionate student of the history of geography – unceasingly collecting and publishing narratives of voyages and discovery. Through his tracts he advanced England’s nationalistic interests as an emerging political, commercial, and sea power. His chief work, ‘A Discourse Concerning Western Planting,’ written in 1584 at the request of Sir Walter Raleigh, was the ideology for establishing English settlements overseas.3 Hakluyt’s purpose was to present compelling reasons to Elizabeth I for royal support of the colonies in 3

4

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

America and in particular for Raleigh’s colony planted on the coast of North Carolina. Declaiming the political, economic, commercial, and ecclesiastical advantages of colonies in North America he implied that Englishmen had international as well as national duties.4 For Hakluyt the colonies had several potential benefits: they would absorb England’s surplus population in an era of recession in the cloth trade; and provide raw materials for home industries thus initiating a long-term solution to a persistent problem.5 The object of economic policy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries should be to make England self-sufficient, an exporter of finished manufactured goods. North American plantations would yield dye-stuffs for the depressed cloth industry, the naval stores for which England was dependent on Baltic supplies, and timber to relieve England’s fuel shortage.6 Haklyut argued that England would benefit from a new market created by the reduction of Native Americans to civility, both in manners and garments.7 Yet the problem for England in the mid-1580s as Hakluyt and Raleigh understood, was that Spain blocked the path to North America. In fact, the whole American continent was closed by Spain to English settlers, goods, and religion. Thus, Hakluyt’s bold national policy risked war with Spain.8 For England’s national interests colonization was strategically vital: occupation of North America could command the Newfoundland fishing banks and the Spanish homeward route from the Indies.9 War against Spain was necessary, not only to preserve England’s national independence, but also to bring salvation to thousands if not millions of Native Americans, who had within recent memory been subjugated to popery and Spanish cruelty.10 Because of Spanish oppression, Hakluyt assumed that the Native Americans – ‘a poor and harmless people created of God’ – would offer willing allies against Spain. To minister to the conversion of the natives Hakluyt proposed settling in the colonies clergymen underemployed and restless at home.11 His comprehensive vision for England’s overseas settlements also recognized that the national church was a component of the expansion of the empire.12 Raleigh and Hakluyt’s view was to replace the Spanish Empire with an English empire.13 They advocated a national policy that offered something to all sections of the community. From the underemployed Puritan ministers within the Church of England eager to extend true religion and from the City merchants and county manufacturers to discontented younger sons of the landed class, all, it seemed, had something to gain. But for two generations the champions of the novel national program for an overseas empire persistently tried but failed to convince successive governments of its expediency and viability. Their grand imperial design encountered little interest: neither Elizabeth I, nor James I, nor Charles I had any use for this foreign policy. Neither James I nor Charles I ever sent a ship across the Atlantic. But to many merchants and government ministers and to a large group in the House of Commons over the years, the design was very compelling. After the English defeat of the Spanish Armada had opened up

The National Church: Servant of Imperial Interests

5

dazzling new prospects for the nation, a copy of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations was presented to the Queen in 1589. Under the terms of the Charter granted to the Virginia Company of London it was the responsibility of the Company rather than the duty of an English prelate to advance the state church in the new province. For nearly two decades the Company undertook the obligation of recruiting, transporting, and supporting the ministers for the settlement. In fact, the royal charters granted to late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century explorers, merchant adventurers, and colonial proprietors included obligations to propagate and support the polity, doctrine, and traditions of the national Church.14 Unlike the Spanish, Portuguese, and French efforts in the Western Hemisphere, the English had no religious orders that could undertake the mission to accompany the voyages of discovery, serve the first settlements, and evangelize the natives. For the English, trading activity was the primary purpose for the settlement rather than a zealous effort to convert the natives to Anglicanism.15 Officially, both the Spanish and Portuguese, as a part of their imperial strategies and organizations, had established the administrative apparatus, including bishoprics, dioceses, and colleges in their American colonies, to provide for the religious needs of their countrymen and pursue the conversion and education of the natives.16 The English experience overseas was launched without the sense of national mission ingrained in the Spanish and Portuguese ventures in the New World. First steps for the Anglican church were intimately tied to a commercial enterprise and were tentative and uncertain before Hakluyt. He was at the center of activity, becoming one of the chief promoters of the petition to James I for patents for the colonization of Virginia, serving as an Incorporator of Raleigh’s Virginia Company, and named in the charters granted by the King to the Company in 1606 and 1609. Hakluyt was named chaplain to the first fleet of ships that was sent by the Company to Virginia in December 1606, probably an honorific title rewarded for his support and services, as he was not in the party. In his place was the Reverend Robert Hunt, vicar of Heathfield in Sussex, the minister who conducted the first English Church services at Jamestown in May 1607. This ad hoc arrangement for the extension of the church to America had one serious shortcoming. No bishop in England was officially delegated responsibility for supervising the extension of the church overseas and consequently the procedures for the selection of ministers to serve in Virginia remained unclear. During the period of the Virginia Company’s existence several incorporators probably aided in the recruitment of clergymen, including George Abbot, John King, Matthew Sutcliffe, and Richard Hakluyt.17 Abbot was serving as the Master of University College in Oxford University and was also Dean of Winchester Cathedral and later Archbishop of Canterbury (1611–33), while Sutcliffe was Dean of Exeter Cathedral (1588–1629) and a founder and provost of Chelsea College.18 Both of these leaders were sympathetic Calvinists and strident critics of the

6

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

papacy and Catholic Spain.19 Their enlistment efforts may have been assisted by other shareholders of the Company who held similar views, such as Robert Rich, the second Earl of Warwick, and Sir Edwin Sandys, son of the archbishop of York of the same name. It seems likely that any clergymen selected for a Virginia assignment would hold similar ecclesiastical opinions.20 Captain Edward-Maria Wingfield, first president of the Council of Virginia, claimed that he enlisted the colony’s first clergyman, Robert Hunt, ‘a man not any waie to be touched with the rebellious humors of a popish spirit, not blemished with the least suspicion of a factious Scismatik’. 21 The first years for the Virginia Company’s settlers were precarious and unstable. Of the 775 persons sent to Virginia between 1607 and 1609, there were fewer than 100 survivors in 1609. This body increased by 150 in that year.22 During the first decade of the settlement seven ministers are known to have arrived and resided in the colony. Their length of service ranged from one to twenty years. Several of the men died within a year or two after their arrival in the province and a few returned to England.23 Thirteen more ministers arrived in the colony between 1618 and the dissolution of the Company in 1624. Their length of service varied: nearly half of the men served at least one year and one for twenty-three years. Seven men each served at least one year, and two for about two years, and one each resided in the colony three, seven, twelve, and twenty-three years. Two of the men were graduates of Cambridge and one of Oxford, while the colleges attended, if any, by ten of the men is unknown.24 Four of the clergymen served about one year during 1621 and 1622. Their fate is uncertain: they may have been victims of the 1622 Good Friday Massacre at Henrico, or died of other causes, or perhaps returned to England. The first generation of colonial ministers seemed aligned with the Puritan faction within the Church of England. Among the parsons who served in Virginia between 1607 and 1630 Alexander Whitaker stands out among his contemporaries. He was a son of the distinguished Cambridge University Puritan divine William Whitaker and may have been recruited for the colonial post by Matthew Sutcliffe, a contemporary of his father at Trinity College.25 Whitaker enlisted to serve the Company in Virginia for three years and, based on his local experience, became an enthusiastic and eloquent advocate of the young settlement’s goals. The aim of his Good Newes from Virginia, first preached in the colony and later published by the Company in London in 1613, was to entice settlers to the province with the twin prospects for personal financial reward and service in support of the national interest.26 Despite Whitaker’s attractive and inviting rhetoric, the colony faced difficult times. For a decade and a half the settlement of about 2,200 persons was exposed to sickness and turmoil.27 From 1612 the Virginia Company tried to implement the policies of Hakluyt, particularly during 1619 and 1620 when Sir Edwin Sandys was the Treasurer of the Company. A list of the motives of the Virginia Adventurers

The National Church: Servant of Imperial Interests

7

drafted at the time is a summary of the imperial design outlined by Hakluyt in his ‘Discourse on Western Planting’: to convert the Native Americas; to export surplus English population, ‘the rank multitude’; to supply England with naval stores and minerals; to provide a base for Atlantic shipping and explorations to reveal a Northwest passage to the Far East. During its nearly two decades of existence the Company sought to solve provincial problems by imitating practices of the English church and state. On the Chesapeake landscape itself the Company wrote the familiar names of borough, hundred, manor, estate, and the King’s church. The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates, as lieutenant governor of the colony in 1610, brought the introduction of a new code of statutes relating to religious affairs and moral discipline. Later the acts were known as ‘Dale’s Laws’ after Sir Thomas Dale who was in control of the province from May to August 1611 and again during the years between 1614 and 1616.28 The stern military laws of the Netherlands, where both Gates and Dale had served, were reflected in the new legislation, although the code of laws also embodied some of the religious ideals of the Company’s charter. Even if the statutes were not rigorously enforced, and they were not, they serve as a reminder that strict, rigid legislation on religious matters was found in Anglican Virginia as well as in Puritan New England. Following the example of the Dale Laws the Company required the governors and clergy to maintain religious and moral discipline and order in the parishes or face punitive consequences. A Proclamation issued by Governor Sir Samuel Argall, 10 May 1618, called for every person to attend church on Sundays and holidays or ‘lye neck & heels on the Corps du Guard the night following & be a slave the week following 2d offence a month 3d a year & a day’.29 The next year the General Assembly adopted legislation requiring the clergy and churchwardens to be aware of scandalous behavior in their parishes, exercising against the violators such punishments as warnings, suspension, and excommunication.30 Furthermore, the ministers were required to meet quarterly at St. Michael’s Day (September), Nativity time (December), Annunciation (March), and midsummer (June), at Jamestown, near the governor’s residence, to review the list of offenders and charges against persons in the colony, and present their recommendations for discipline to the governor.31 After the Company’s reorganization in 1619 the General Assembly established by law the Church of England in the colony, providing for its basic structure and system of financial maintenance for the remainder of the colonial period.32 Every minister was to receive a fixed income and a glebe. The Company was to recruit six tenants for every glebe to cultivate and harvest crops for support of the minister and themselves. Yet despite the Company’s encouragement the church was not a complete nor vigorous institution. There was no episcopal hierarchy – no resident or visiting bishop to ordain men, or to bestow confirmation rites to members, or to consecrate churches or churchyards, or to render supervision over the clergy and parish

8

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

practices. No dioceses had been created and no archdeacons or deans had been designated to offer administrative oversight within defined territorial areas. The distance from London and the slowness of communication impeded administration of church affairs in the sparsely settled colony, regardless of the urgency or complexity of matters. Inevitably these conditions marked and shaped the experience of the young church, giving rise to a sense of quasi-independence by the handful of parsons and lay persons who controlled local church affairs. These two distinguishing characteristics gave form to the institution for the remainder of the colonial era, during the Revolutionary War, and afterwards as it passed through a period of reorganization and reconstitution. For nearly two decades there had been a steady, if modest, increase in the number of clergymen sent to the colony, diminished to a few in the early 1620s. There may have been several causes for this situation. Doubtless the news of the Indian massacre at Henrico in 1622 deterred interest in recruiting men for the distant and potentially unsafe Virginia posts; or the continuing internal strife of the Virginia Company eroded interest and enthusiasm for ministers to risk a provincial assignment. Compounding the situation was the impaired influence and power of Archbishop of Canterbury George Abbot. His episcopal authority had been challenged and disabled by several church leaders, notably William Laud, following his misfortune of killing a gamekeeper during a hunting expedition. Abbot’s critics asserted that a homicide by a prelate under canon law made the archbishop irregular and incapable of exercising jurisdiction. The tragic accident shadowed the archbishop to his grave, interrupted his duties and terminated his efforts on behalf of the overseas church. A stalwart and longstanding advocate of the Virginia colony was effectively silenced. From 1625 until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 the course of the provincial church in the colony followed an independent course free from oversight of either civil or ecclesiastical authorities. A lone exception was the Privy Council’s Instruction to Captain Sir John Harvey on 6 August 1628, as he was preparing to sail for Virginia. The Council directed that every congregation should have a minister, a parsonage and 200 acres of glebe land. The governor was charged to ‘Suffer no innovation in matters of Religion, and be careful to appoint sufficient and conformable Ministers, to each congregation that may catechize and instruct them, in the grounds and principles of Religion’.33 With political and religious affairs in turmoil at home, officials in London gave little if any attention to Virginia interests. Yet in hindsight these four decades were critical for the development of the church’s unique American characteristics. An independence from the trappings and traditions of English ecclesiastical authority at home gave rise to an increase of lay authority over colonial congregational matters. From 1640 to 1643 Parliament generally respected the Crown’s prior dispensation in colonial matters. It did not interfere with Charles I’s

The National Church: Servant of Imperial Interests

9

Commission to Governor William Berkeley. In 1643 Parliament commissioned the Earl of Warwick and others to oversee the colonies’ governments. During the committee’s four years of existence these powers were generally exercised with restraint. Even in Virginia, where Governor Berkeley’s royalism obliged the committee to take some initiative, it acted cautiously. Under the oversight of the Earl of Warwick’s committee for plantations the empire continued to work in familiar ways. Several acts of the provincial Assembly – in 1629/30, 1642/43, and 1653 – defined the government of local congregations. Unfettered by external episcopal influences the duties and responsibilities of parishes and vestries were cast by law and practice into a form it would maintain until after the Revolutionary War. Yet without the assistance of London officials Virginia parishes encountered difficulty securing ministers.34 A handful of Puritan ministers arrived in the colony in the 1630s and 1640s although it is not clear how the men were recruited.35 Virginia was not a religiously homogeneous community; a large number of Puritans had settled on the Eastern Shore of the province until exiled to Maryland in 1647.36 Perhaps the ministers who came on their own volition were attracted by the adventure of the new colony, or possibly arrangements were made through the business contacts of local vestrymen and London merchants. In any event the influx of the handful of Puritan ministers may have prompted the Assembly in 1642/43 to enact the statute that all ministers must be conformable to the orders and constitutions of the Church of England.37 Although Parliament abolished in England the use of the Book of Common Prayer in 1645, replacing it with the Directory of Worship, the Common Prayer was used in Virginia parishes throughout the Interregnum period although prayers for the king were not used until after the Restoration.38 No doubt the steadfast experience of the church’s modest presence in the struggling and sparsely settled colony owed much to Governor Berkeley who remained loyal to King Charles I and, after his execution, to the Crown. The die was cast: the church was established by law in the province and, however weakened by a perennial shortage of ministers to serve congregations, it was a permanent institution.

2 Bishops and Statesmen: New Policies for an Imperial Church

Several converging factors in London and the colonies abruptly changed circumstances for the provincial King’s church beginning in the 1670s, and the major one was the government’s attention to imperial administration under the aegis of the Committee of Trade. Deliberations and decisions on overseas church affairs were led by a triumvirate of shrewd political leaders – Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Charles II’s Lord Treasurer; Archbishop of Canterbury Gilbert Sheldon; and Bishop of London Henry Compton. A staunch Anglican, Danby was committed to employing the national church as a means for strengthening and uniting the government of Charles II. In the wake of the Puritan Revolution these officials shared a turn of mind suspicious of the political influence of non-Anglicans and their worship and activity. They viewed all varieties of nonconformists as alienated from the laws of the land, the religious authority of the King as the Supreme Head of the church, and from the church itself. Danby, with the endorsement of Sheldon and Compton, undertook a program to enumerate the Nonconformists, Quakers, and recusant Catholics in every diocese of the Kingdom – a project supervised by Compton in 1676 and rife with political and ecclesiastical implications. As a state church the fortunes of the overseas King’s church was ultimately in the hands of secular authorities, the Committee of Trade and Plantations, for it carried the administrative burden to initiate, improve, and strengthen the imperial administration of the colonies. As a chief officer of state the bishop of London was an influential member of the body and his advice and guidance were sought on religious issues that came before the Committee. Although he seldom attended meetings the prelate was invariably sent draft copies of commissions, instructions, or policies under consideration for his comments. In this way he was supplied with first-hand knowledge of political, trade, and ecclesiastical conditions in America. In fact, the Committee took no action on any church-related matter without the consideration of the bishop of London. Besides introducing tighter economic and commercial regulations for the colonies, the body delegated unprecedented duties and 10

Bishops and Statesmen

11

responsibilities for ecclesiastical jurisdiction to royal governors and the bishop of London. Changing conditions in England were echoed in America between 1675 and 1700. The thinly settled colonies along the Atlantic coast experienced increasing numbers of new settlers and a growth of urban seaport centers. Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charles Town were the key communities of their colonies and became the headquarters for royal government and the expanding retinue of royal officials. The thrust of the new imperial policies emanating from Whitehall and the growth and expansion of the colonies unleashed battling political factions in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and South Carolina: factions identified as Anglicans and non-Anglicans. Against this vibrant yet unsettled background several colonies were founded and the King’s church was introduced into a few provinces during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In large measure the new interest by London civil and ecclesiastical leaders in the extension and development of the church in the colonies was linked to critical reports from the field. The detailed observations on religious affairs in Virginia in 1662 by Roger Green and by John Yeo in Maryland in 1676 aided Bishop Compton’s initiative for ecclesiastical jurisdiction overseas and the Committee’s formulation of policies for the governance of the church.1 After the mid-1670s the national church became a more active component of imperial policy and was set on a course from which it would not deviate until after the Revolutionary War. The King’s church was much more than a church in the strict religious sense of the word – it was a political and social institution and its position was little changed after the Toleration Act of 1690. The Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660 concluded two decades of Puritan political and religious primacy in Britain. At home the Church of England was speedily transformed; it made a rapid recovery, reasonably healthy parish life returned in a large number of parishes, bishops were restored to the House of Lords in 1661, the Prayer Book was revised, and Parliament approved the Act of Uniformity in 1662.2 The adoption of that statute marked the consolidation of Dissent. There was no longer any prospect of incorporating all the sects and denominations into a comprehensive national church. Echoes of Laud’s archiepiscopate reverberated because Archbishop of Canterbury Gilbert Sheldon, like his predecessor, was an inveterate opponent of both toleration and comprehension and an intractable pursuer of nonconformists. The Savoy Conference of 1661 did much to diminish goodwill and fraternity between the Anglican Church and the various forms of English Dissent.3 Ecclesiastical penal laws were imposed against Dissenters between 1664 and 1672 when the religious policy was reversed. Fear of popery, of France, and of arbitrary government started to replace fear of Dissent.4 This change in religious polity and practice does not mean that Dissent had been stamped out, since nonconformists were

12

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

permitted freedom of public worship provided that their ministers and their meeting places were licensed. The overwhelming majority of the English parish clergy endured the changes introduced between 1660 and 1662 as they had those of previous decades; but between 1660 and 1667 about 1,760 priests were forced to vacate their parishes.5 They could not in good conscience subscribe to the Thirty-nine articles, or renounce the obligation of the Solemn League and Covenant for themselves and others, or agree to the use of the Book of Common Prayer, or acknowledge they had been ordained by a bishop. In Virginia the General Assembly in 1662 reviewed and revised the laws of the colony enacted since 1619. Only church matters need concern us here. Previous ecclesiastical legislation was reaffirmed with a few important modifications. The duties and authority of the vestries and the number of members was firmly fixed and an attempt was made to secure clergy stipends at £80 sterling per year, tied to the value of 13,333 pounds of tobacco, and supplemented by the usual perquisites and the use of glebes.6 Fees for performing marriages were set at two hundred pounds of tobacco or twenty shillings and were to be paid by the bridegroom to both the governor and the minister who performed the ceremony.7 Seeking to curb the appointment of non-Anglican ministers, the General Assembly asserted lay and legal authority over the affairs of the church. The legislature required all clergymen to present to the governor a certificate of their ordination by a bishop of the Church of England before being permitted to hold a parish or to officiate in Virginia. Despite legal establishment the church in Virginia in the 1660s was an institution stronger on paper than in fact. Although the county commissioners had created between 45 and 48 parishes the sparsely settled colony in 1661 could not claim more than ten incumbent clergymen.8 A descriptive and analytical tract by one of the parsons – ‘R.G.’ [Roger Green] provides us with details of the provincial religious scene.9 A graduate of Cambridge University, he settled at West Parish (Nansemond) in 1653 and served in that post until he moved to Jamestown in 1671. Drawing on his experiences and observations in the colony for nearly a decade, he reported to Bishop of London Sheldon that after more than a half-century the church was struggling with several deficiencies. It lacked church buildings, a bishop, any town or county centers for its thin and scattered population, and clergymen.10 To alleviate this situation Green suggested that if a minister was unable to pay his passage to the colony, perhaps a merchant in London or a parish in Virginia could be enlisted to defray the £20 expense.11 Unmistakably his bleak observations pinpointed a vital problem for London officials: how was the distant colonial church to be supervised, developed, and professionally staffed? English civil and church leaders had no precedents for addressing these matters. The issues raised by Green in 1662 would plague the King’s church to one degree or another for the remainder of the colonial period.

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Green’s chronicle and plea had an impact in both Virginia and London.12 The Assembly sent to England the Reverend Philip Mallory to urge Bishop Sheldon to intercede with King Charles II to send additional ministers and establish a bishop in the province. By 1680 the situation had improved considerably – there were 48 parishes served by 34 parsons.13 Possibly with an eye on strengthening the fledgling Virginia church and doubtless in response to Green’s suggestion, procedures were set in motion in the early 1660s to appoint a bishop for America. Joining Sheldon, now Archbishop of Canterbury, in the effort seems to have been the Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, who maintained a strong personal interest in colonial affairs. He had a vested interest in the extension of the empire in America and the establishment of a permanent system of colonial administration, because Hyde was one of the eight proprietors to whom on 23 March 1663, the first Carolina charter was granted.14 The settlement established at Cape Fear, in what is today North Carolina, was named Clarendon County after him. Hyde pressed for the appointment of the Scottish-born Dr. Alexander Murray, as the first prelate for the colonies to serve under the supervision of the Archbishop of Canterbury. With a view to future colonial settlements and the extension of the church to other colonies, the appointment was to provide the Virginiabased bishop with jurisdiction over all Anglican congregations and clergy in all of the colonies from New England and New York to Barbados, Nevis, and the Caribbean.15 We know very little about the episcopal nominee, although he had been a dutiful and loyal supporter of the young Pretender. Murray had been with Charles II in his effort to regain the throne in 1651. Escaping along with the prince after the Battle of Worcester, Murray fled to Virginia, where he became the first minister of Ware Parish in Gloucester County and served the congregation until his death a short time after 1672.16 Clarendon’s proposed appointment of Murray as a bishop received the approval of the King in Council, with letters patent issued. For some unknown reason the plan languished and was not implemented. Perhaps it was because of the abrupt accession to power of the Cabal ministry and the dismissal of Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the official charged with the project. Possibly the proposed plan was shelved because the funds to support the bishopric were to be paid from the customs receipts and the crown was exploiting revenues from that source to meet the escalating costs of operating the government. Murray may also have been caught in a round of ‘false calumnies’ as he claimed, and seeking to vindicate himself, brought the matter to an end.17 In Maryland there was little evidence of the church’s activity until 1676. A handful of clergymen who resided in the colony before 1676 conducted services in the homes of church members, but there were no settled incumbents in parish livings.18 Following in the wake of Green’s account of the Virginia church fifteen years earlier, the Reverend John Yeo of Patuxent River in Calvert County reported to Archbishop Sheldon in May 1676 on

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religious conditions in the province.19 His message was clear and candid: there was an urgent need to supplement the three ministers in the colony and to legally establish the church. Social circumstances required immediate attention, he asserted, because there were ten or twelve counties in the province and a population of about 20,000 persons, and ‘The Lord’s day is profaned. Religion is despised, and all notorious vices are committed; so that it is become a Sodom of uncleanness and a pest-house of iniquity’.20 Inexplicably the critically informative letters of Green and Yeo were timely, arriving during the early period of the Privy Council’s Committee for Trade and Plantations efforts to improve and regulate the procedures for imperial administration in the colonies. Archbishop Sheldon immediately referred Yeo’s letter to Bishop of London Henry Compton, for consideration by the Committee.21 In light of Yeo’s critical account of religious affairs in the colony the Proprietor, Lord Baltimore, was requested by the Committee to elaborate on the matter.22 He complied and reported that no church was established in the province and no group held precedence over another in the province, that ‘a Toleration is given to all persons believing in Jesus Christ freely to exercise their Religion’.23 This incentive he added, had encouraged many diverse people to immigrate to Maryland with the expectation of providing for their ministers ‘by a voluntary contribution of those of their own persuasion’.24 His Lordship declared to the Committee members that it would prove to be ‘a most difficult task to draw such persons to consent unto a Law which shall compel them to maintain Ministers of a contrary persuasion to themselves’.25 The Proprietor was opposed to dismantling the current policy and establishing the King’s church. Regarding the financial situation of the three ministers in the province, Baltimore disputed Yeo’s account declaring that the men held plantations that offered them decent subsistence. After deliberation of Maryland matters the Committee requested Baltimore to take immediate steps to provide adequate stipends for the English clergy.26 He annually addressed the colonial Assembly for more than a decade to support salaries for the ministers but without success. Compton’s endeavors to increase the number of clergy in Maryland were not successful until the adoption of the controversial Church Act of 1692. Although the legality of the statute was debated for a decade there was immediately a significant increase in the number of ministers serving in the colony. At the death of Archbishop Sheldon on 9 November 1677, Compton assumed his mantle of leadership in English church and state affairs and became the chief architect and promoter of an ecclesiastical strategy for episcopal oversight of the church in America.27 Doubtless, he was aware of Bishop William Laud’s efforts in the late 1620s and early 1630s to supervise the English church at various outposts on the European continent, a foundation for providing the London prelate with authority for the overseas church.28 His well-honed political influence at home was extended by key imperial administrative policies and procedures. He shaped the instructions

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issued to colonial governors relating to religious affairs, and the charter granted to William Penn in 1681 that allowed for the establishment of English churches. Compton corresponded regularly with the civil officers on the state of ecclesiastical affairs in their respective provinces. He shrewdly recruited and appointed capable clergymen for key parish posts and launched the appointment of deputies – commissaries – to supervise church affairs in Virginia and Maryland. He stands alone as the most significant English ecclesiastical leader acting on behalf of the American church during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For much of his episcopate he exploited the opportunity to implement several administrative procedures intended to improve the supervision of the overseas church despite the distance from London. His position was unique because he enjoyed, for the first ten years of his episcopate, power in the church and at court. Regardless of their level of attention or sense of priorities all of Compton’s successors in the eighteenth century cautiously followed in his footsteps on American affairs. Only Edmund Gibson among these successors had the support of political leaders to carry forward stronger policies for the administration of the overseas church, and he enjoyed that confidence for only about half the period of his episcopate.29 The succeeding bishops of London during the colonial period could not draw on the accumulation of influential political capital, particularly during the critical decades of the 1760s and 1770s, and they were confronted with the political instability of frequent turnover of governments. A fascinating, complex, and powerful man, Compton was the sixth and youngest son of the second Earl of Northampton, a loyal soldier for Charles I who died for the royalist cause on the battlefield at Hopton Heath on 19 March, 1642–43.30 A graduate of Queen’s College in Oxford University, Compton traveled extensively on the continent after college observing the practices of the reformed and the Roman Catholic churches.31 During the first months of the restoration of the monarchy, in 1661, he had a brief stint in the military, serving as a lieutenant in the Oxford ‘Blues’ of the king’s army.32 Returning to Oxford Compton came under the beneficent patronage of the celebrated Dr. John Fell, vice-chancellor of the University and bishop of Oxford.33 Ordained deacon and priest in 1666 Compton began his swift climb up the ecclesiastical ladder.34 Eight years later, in December 1675, after serving for twelve months as the bishop of Oxford, he was elevated to the see of London. Now Compton was thrust to the center of national ecclesiastical and political authority: an ever-loyal ally of Lord Danby.35 He was appointed to the Privy Council and to the Committee on Trade and Plantations soon after his translation to London.36 His patron and mentor, Danby, demonstrated strong support for the Church of England and his policy was to protect it from two enemies at once, from the Dissenters and from the Roman Catholics.37 The latter church was generally believed to be growing more serious

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as a result of Charles’s flirtation with the king of France and the undisguised Romanism of James, Duke of York. To further his ends, Danby was particularly anxious to secure the cooperation of the Anglican church, especially the bishops, who sat in the House of Lords, and to use them in support of a policy that it was equally in their interest to pursue.38 He looked around the bench, made a shrewd judgment of character, and chose Compton as his political helpmate and at times his instrument. They had much in common. Both were Tories; both were ambitious; both were strongly anti-French, and alive to the Roman Catholic menace; both were devoted to the interests of the Church of England. Compton, the ‘protestant’ bishop, did not fail his patron, Danby. One of his first episcopal tasks in London was to oversee that enumeration of popish recusants and protestant dissenters in each parish throughout Britain, a procedure suggested by Danby but popularly known as the Compton Census,39 a policy that accompanied renewed government efforts to support the laws against conventicles and recusancy.40 After 1677 the pages of the official journals of the Board of Trade, the Privy Council, and the Treasury Office provide evidence of Compton’s attention to overseas ecclesiastical matters. He recruited ministers and obtained funds from the Treasury to defray their transportation expenses to America. Inevitably political events in England during the 1680s diverted his attention from religious affairs in the colonies. Although he exercised considerable influence at the court of Charles II, Compton’s outspokenness against Roman Catholics created a strained relationship with James, Duke of York.41 As the reign of Charles II came to a close Compton identified himself with the hopes of the future that rested in Protestant Mary and her Dutch husband.42 Compton was a relentless defender of the ‘Ecclesia Anglicana’ and applied his extraordinary diplomatic skills to protecting the church and state from the prospect of Charles II’s leanings toward the Roman Catholic faith and James’s conversion. Doubtless this was a strong reason why he did not succeed Gilbert Sheldon as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1677. The accession of James II to the throne in 1685 altered Compton’s position at court. His anti-Catholic opinions and conflict with the King came to a head in November 1685, in a debate in the House of Lords on James II’s claim to dispense with the Test Act and with the bishop of London’s refusal to silence a cleric critical of the policies of the monarch.43 Compton forthrightly declared that at issue was the English civil and ecclesiastical constitution and that his remarks reflected the opinion of the whole bench of bishops. Parliament was summarily prorogued the next day, and Compton was immediately dismissed from the Privy Council. Called before the court of ecclesiastical commission the London prelate was charged with failing to obey the royal command. Denying the court’s competency, Compton nonetheless was suspended from office and all episcopal duties for three years. Despite his sentence Compton had powerful allies: Prince William of Orange and popular opinion. In June 1688 Lord Danby suggested that Compton join the revolutionary committee that was in active contact with William of

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Orange.44 He joined the committee and was one of the seven – and the only bishop – who signed the invitation to William to occupy the English throne. He enjoyed a longtime association with the royal house for he served as the spiritual mentor of Prince William of Orange’s wife Mary, daughter of James II by his first wife, Ann Hyde. He had watched Mary and her sister grow up. As Dean of the Chapels Royal he superintended their education; had appointed their tutors, secured their confirmation against the wishes of their own father; and when the time came for Mary to be given a husband it was he who married her into the house of Orange.45 It fell to this bishop to perform the coronation ceremony on 11 April 1689 for William and Mary.46 During the last months of James II’s reign the king made overtures to Compton about the restoration of his episcopal office. Compton ignored the gesture and waited until a political settlement was arranged, recognizing that a period of political change ushered in an era of religious change. A Toleration Act passed by Parliament in 1689 granted freedom of worship to the Dissenters on certain prescribed conditions. They were required to accept thirty-five-and-a-half out of the Thirty-nine Articles. A consequence of this legislation was to change the status of the Church of England from a state church to a national church. Its real purpose was to unite all Protestants under William III against the deposed Roman Catholic, James II. After William assumed the throne Compton was restored to his episcopal office, reinstated as a privy councilor, and presided at the coronation of the king. Immediately he resumed his interests in the affairs of the church in America. Compton returned to office under new circumstances that cast a new path for the English church at home and in the colonies. At Compton’s insistence the royal instructions affecting religion that were issued by the Privy Council to colonial governors were revised in 1679. The civil officials were charged with several ecclesiastical duties. Central to their tasks was that The Book of Common Prayer should be read each Sunday, the Holy Communion celebrated according to the rites of the Church of England, and that no clergyman should be inducted into a benefice without a certificate from the bishop of London.47 A clause was added to the governors’ instructions at Compton’s prompting that directed them to see that suitable laws were enacted in their colonies for the punishment of blasphemy, profanity, adultery, polygamy, profanation of the Sabbath, and other crimes against common morality. The instructions also required that the laws be enforced by the civil courts upon testimony furnished by the churchwardens. Whenever new members of the provincial councils were to be appointed, their names were submitted to the bishop for any objections he might have to the religious principles of any of the men.48 Colonial laws touching on religion or religious questions were referred to Compton for his review as they may have encroached on his ecclesiastical jurisdiction, just as all statutes were sent to the crown attorneys for any objection ‘in point of law’. Without reservation, after the archbishop of Canterbury, the

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most powerful and influential member of the Priv y Council was the bishop of London. Assuming his new responsibilities over the American church Compton faced several pragmatic and logistical issues. Except for the construction of church buildings and the establishment of glebes, every aspect of the extension of the state church to the colonies during the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s was dependent on the financial support of the English government. Funds were not channeled from the Treasury through a bishop or other diocesan officer, or a church agency, but directly from the Treasury to the recipient. This procedure established a precedent for all clergymen to receive payment from the Treasury during the colonial era for their travel expenses to the provinces. Except for Virginia and Maryland (where the church was established after 1692), the men were dependent on the Treasury for their salaries during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Without this sustained assistance from the national Treasury during these formative decades efforts to transplant the church to America would have been severely if not completely restrained. Compton faced several difficult supervisory issues: How were men to be recruited to serve in the provinces? How were their transatlantic passages and annual salaries to be paid? For the few congregations established in 1680, and then only in Virginia and Maryland, how were the necessary worship service books for each parish to be supplied – Bibles, Books of Common Prayer, copies of the Thirty-nine Articles and Canons of the Church of England, and so forth, and at whose expense? Furthermore, there was the need to furnish plate and vessels for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on at least two or four occasions each year, but at whose bidding and cost? And finally, with a lack of books in the colonial parishes and no Anglican college established with a library for their use, how were ministers to be provided with requisite publications to enrich their professional competence? Searching for answers to these perplexing problems, Compton found the necessary resources at the Treasury. The national church was unfailingly coupled with the state for essential financial support. As a component of Anglican imperial policy the Treasury’s resources should be applied for overseas purposes. I turn now to an examination of the critical initial support provided by the English government for transporting ministers to the colonies, providing for the payment of their salaries, and for underwriting the costs for equipping congregations with prayer books, Bibles and the vessels for celebrating the Holy Communion. Between 1675 and 1690 civil and ecclesiastical policy for the overseas church was gradually formulated by the members of the Lords of Trade and Plantations.49 A civil agency, of which the bishop of London was an ex officio member as a great officer of state, developed and implemented policy for the King’s church rather than an assignment of an ecclesiastical body such as a convocation of prelates under the supervision of the archbishop of Canterbury.50

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In July 1677, Bishop Compton presented to the Lords of Trade and Plantations a ‘Memorial of Abuses which are crept into the Church of the Plantations’, a document that was a synthesis and distillation of the critical appraisals on religious affairs presented by Roger Green and John Yeo.51 The prelate reviewed reports of several irregular practices: including the denial of the Crown’s right of patronage and presentation of all clergymen to parishes, a procedure that was neither asserted nor acknowledged by the governors; that the salaries of the ministers were inadequate and precarious, and that some parishes were kept intentionally vacant to save the payment of a parson’s salary; the activity of lay readers at the expense of appointing a minister; and the appropriation by the vestries of ‘sole management of church affairs, to exercise an arbitrary power over the Ministers’.52 The vestry matter was the first issue to be addressed by the Committee for Trade. Contrary to the traditional practices in England, the presence of delegated episcopal supervision restrained such developments although the patron of a benefice – either a bishop, collegiate proprietor, or a local squire – could and did wield dominating influence. On the recommendation of the Committee for Trade King Charles II issued an Order in Council on 14 January 1680, instructing the royal governors that every minister within their government was to be a member of his parish’s vestry and in attendance at all meetings.53 As a means of ensuring the appointment of validly ordained men in the colonies Bishop Compton introduced about 1679 in Virginia an administrative requirement that all clergymen must be licensed by the London prelate before taking up their posts.54 A common practice in English dioceses, its application in the provinces was to be regulated by the governors who were not to induct any parson into a parish without a valid license to officiate. For all parsons appointed to colonial posts the State Treasury paid their transportation expenses. This arrangement continued until the Revolutionary War. As a national and established church such a practice seems appropriate and commonplace although today it would seem irregular. But during the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s these expenses were disbursed not from a government general services or church-related account but from the Crown’s Secret Service Account.55 It is difficult if not impossible to explain this connection because the arrangement raises more questions than it answers. Were the men sent to the colonies charged to exercise dual positions – as ministers of the national church practicing their religious duties on Sundays and providing some kind of intelligence for the state seven days a week? And if they played such a role, who were their targets – the royal governors, customs officers, or other imperial deputies? Or were the clergymen instructed to keep a watchful eye on Dissenters, Quakers, and Roman Catholics in their locality – reporting on their numbers, worship practices, and loyalty to the government? If the latter was the case, there was a precedent for such activity in England. For Archbishop of Canterbury Sheldon nonconformity and subversion were

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identical and he suspected the motives of non-Anglicans. As a skilled politician his view was that only ‘a resolute execution of the law [could] … cure this disease, all other remedies serve and will increase it’.56 Coincidentally, at the same time as the stepped-up activity to extend the church in the American colonies, Compton was supervising the census counting Catholic recusant, nonconformist, and Quaker noses in the kingdom. The church itself – including Sheldon – was not generally unfriendly to employing the ‘children of Judas’ in a variety of ways.57 Danby was no stranger to the use of undercover observation in foreign or domestic affairs and throughout his administration he expanded and strengthened the government’s secret service.58 As there were many Quaker, Puritan, and Catholic settlers in Virginia and Maryland during the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s it is plausible that the men assigned to colonial posts were orally asked by church officials to report to London leaders on the status and activity of such groups. Financial appropriations for special tasks were not uncommon in the seventeenth century. During the late 1660s and through the 1680s the king had power to dispose of monies for secret service purposes as he saw fit. There was no limitation on his power to dispose of such funds. After 1676 and Danby’s appointment as Lord Treasurer the greater part of secret service expenditures, formerly the special responsibility of the Secretary of State, passed to the Treasurer’s office.59 The sums expended for the secret service varied each year but generally increased during the 1670s and 1680s.60 Another explanation for the disbursement of the transportation expenses from the secret service account may be that this was an easy convenience to charge the expenditures to an account that would not come under the scrutiny of Parliament.61 If this was so, and it seems to be a shallow objection, why would Parliament be unwilling to allocate a relatively modest amount for the transportation of clergymen of the national church to overseas posts? The grant became a necessity for churchmen whether or not some or all of the men were initially instructed to keep an eye on local affairs and officials of imperial interest. In time the practice became commonplace and a necessary financial practice whether or not linked to espionage activity. When Bishop of London John Robinson in 1721 provided the Lords of the Treasury with an historical account of the transportation allowance for ministers to the colonies, he declared that without the financial support [of the Treasury], ‘it would be impossible to get the Colonies supplied’.62 Possibly the procedures for paying the ministers’ transportation expenses from the Treasury’s Secret Service Account can be laid at the feet of the intrepid reconnoiterer Archbishop Sheldon, who suggested the arrangement to Compton or Danby or to both men shortly before he died in November 1677. Admittedly, a number of men in the course of their occasional letters to Compton reported on the presence and activity of Quakers in their neighborhood – probably the English church’s most prominent dissident sect at home and in the colonies during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth

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centuries and a group that Anglican church leaders sought to recover and restore to the church. As in England the religious diversity of the colonial population offered an opportunity for some kind of observation, as there were many Quaker, Puritan, and Catholic settlers in Virginia and Maryland during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. It is plausible that the men assigned to colonial posts were urged by oral instructions by church officials, perhaps by Bishop Compton, to report on the status and activity of such religious groups. In fact a similar procedure later became embedded in the semi-annual reports of the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (founded in 1701) especially after 1707. A trail of documentary evidence for more than half-a-century discloses that the Society’s men were to report semi-annually to London officials on the status of their congregations and the religious character of their local communities. The Society’s missionaries in the colonies reported on such matters as the number of families that lived in their district, the number of families that were associated with either the Church of England, a Dissenting religious group, or were Quakers, or Roman Catholics. The parsons also indicated the number of slaves, heathens, and infidels who lived in the area. Furthermore, the men reported, or at least estimated, on the number of the population in the district that were baptized, that were communicants of the Anglican church, and those who were professors of the Church of England. They also provided such statistics as the number of adults and children that had been baptized in the previous six months, the number of marriages and burials performed, and the number of converts from ‘disorderly lives.’ In several instances the men reported the names of local residents who were practicing Dissenters, such as Lutherans, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, or members of other religious groups. Later, when Edmund Gibson became bishop of London in 1723, the administrative procedure was aggressively pursued by the S.P.G. until his death in 1748.63 The King’s Secret Service account was not the only source for the payment of colonial charges. Frequently the transportation allowance was allocated to one or another government account. In Boston the fare for the first minister was paid from the military account in 1686, and while following Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, the chaplain to the Governor, Lord Howard of Effingham, had his expenses attached to his Excellency’s official account.64 A brief an unsustained effort was undertaken by the Maryland Assembly in 1697, perhaps prompted by Governor Francis Nicholson, to induce ministers to serve provincial posts by paying a £20 travel allowance to meet expenses.65 Irrefutably this government allotment was crucial for the extension and maintenance of the church in America throughout the colonial period. The late-seventeenth-century colonial Anglican clergymen were wrapped in the cloak of the English Treasury as well as the lawn-sleeved grandeur and cope of the bishop of London.

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In the early 1690s the accounting of payments of the transportation charges for clergymen was transferred from the Treasury’s ‘secret service’ ledger to the ‘Civil List’.66 This change occurred at a time of efforts to improve the administrative efficiency of the Treasury, but it does not explain whether there were qualifying subordinate requirements attached to the use of the funds. The ‘Civil List’ was a generic term that covered a range of classifications for which funds were allocated for internal and external government purposes. The ‘secret service’ account was one of the many categories of expenditure included under the umbrella of the ‘Civil List’. During the reigns of William III and Queen Anne the ‘Civil List’ was construed to mean the whole of what is now called in England the Civil Service proper – the ambassadorial system, the entire pensions, bounties, and secret service system, as well as the expenses connected with the royal state. This last includes such expenses as the Royal Household, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, the Works, Privy Purse, and so forth. Theoretically, as the Civil List revenues during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the King’s property, he could fix and determine, initiate or terminate, limit, mete and bound any and all of these establishments entirely according to his own mere will. In practice the King’s administration of his Civil List revenues was exercised entirely through the Treasury, and followed the lines of the forms which had been evolved through the centuries of growth of Exchequer checks and guarantees and routine.67 The payment of travel allotments to colonial parsons were later noted as distributed from the ‘King’s Bounty’ or ‘Queen’s Bounty’. Yet it is interesting that the exhaustive study of Queen Anne’s Bounty by Geoffrey Best makes no mention of that sovereign’s, or succeeding monarchs’, generosity to parsons removing to the colonies.68 After the accession of William III, Parliament came to play a more prominent role in financial affairs. In recent years it had become increasingly critical of the ‘secret service’ disbursements. At this time improved accounting methods for disbursal of funds at the Treasury prompted the transfer of payments to colonial parsons to the ‘Kings bounty’ account. Quite possibly this was merely a bookkeeping transaction or perhaps a procedure that was intended to clarify any confusing understandings of duplicitous activity. It is clear, however, that the Treasury’s payment of travel expenses for the men was confirmed as a legitimate expense of the government and after 1691 charged to the Crown’s bounty account under the ‘Civil List’. Another twist to the saga occurred in 1702. The recently established Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts decided to send the familiar and controversial Quaker and recently converted Anglican, George Keith, to the colonies to undertake a study of the state of religious affairs. To meet his expenses Bishop Compton applied to the Lord High Admiral requesting that Keith be appointed a chaplain on a naval vessel sailing for Boston. As the introduction of the church in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania had been surrounded with provincial dissension it is difficult to imagine a more imprudent and unfortunate appointment than sending

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Keith to the provinces under the auspices of the navy.69 Keith’s long career was marked by theological and personal controversy, amply demonstrated in earlier visits to Philadelphia and Boston. His assignment for the S.P.G. was to scout the colonial religious scene with a keen eye on Quaker activity and their numbers in the fashion of the Compton Census of 1676 in England: details that would be helpful for the implementation of a strategic program for sending missionaries to the colonies and attempts to reconvert Quakers especially in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The salaries of the men appointed to key colonial congregations in the 1680s and 1690s were paid from one account or another of the Treasury department. In Boston, Robert Radcliff’s annual stipend of £93 was drawn on the Treasury’s military account.70 The arrangement seems curious and inappropriate for a minister assigned to serving a lay congregation rather than a military chaplaincy.71 In Boston, the native-born and Harvard educated successor to Robert Radcliff, Samuel Myles, was paid from the Civil List via the account of the bishop of London.72 Prior to the establishment of the church in the four lower counties of New York in 1693 the stipends for the chaplains at the fort on lower Manhattan Island were drawn on the ‘revenue account’.73 A similar arrangement was made for Robert Jenney in 1717 when he served as chaplain to the fort.74 The story is slightly different in Philadelphia where the minister received an annual stipend of £50 drawn on the customs receipts at the port of Philadelphia. This source of income was for the sole use of the king.75 In Virginia, Commissary James Blair and his successors were paid a yearly salary of £100 from the colony’s quit-rent receipts,76 while in South Carolina, before the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1702 and the establishment of the church in the colony in 1706, the Proprietors were responsible for the clergyman’s stipend.77 It is clear that during the formative years of the national church’s extension to the colonies the financial support of the Treasury was vital and expected. Government funds aided the church in the provinces in other basic ways. Recently organized congregations received books for use in worship services paid from Treasury funds. As early as 1681 it became common practice for congregations in the colonies to receive basic copies of the Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Canons of the Church, and the Tables of Marriage.78 The practice seems to have become routine by late 1695 when Governor Francis Nicholson of Maryland, after a visit to Pennsylvania, urged Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison to send Bibles and Prayer Books for distribution in both colonies at the expense of the royal revenue.79 In 1697 Bishop of London Compton reminded William Blathwayt, Secretary of the Board of Trade, that it had been the ‘usual bounty of the King to bestow a set of books, Bible, Common Prayer Book, Homilies, Book of Articles and Canons, and Table of Marriages upon each Parish in the Plantations’. He asked that a collection of volumes be sent to each of the thirty new parishes in Maryland at the expense of the government.80 Presumably the request for funds to purchase these books came

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from the bishop of London or was a standing order of the Privy Council for equipping the overseas church. This was a financial program that inexorably underscores the use of the church as a vital and visible component of royal policy. After all, in every colonial community the church was at the center of urban life and by its presence and practice it was a reminder of imperial authority, serving as a vital element of the English government’s anglicization program.81 Following the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701 and until the American Revolution, that agency continued the arrangement and supplied such books to the congregations of its missionaries.82 The Treasury adopted a similar but more limited arrangement for the provision of necessary church plate and vessels for the celebration of Holy Communion.83 William Whiston, a controversial University of Cambridge academic, offered a novel proposal in 1707 for aiding the work of the Society in the colonies and extending financial support to its missionaries. He recommended to Bishop of London Henry Compton and to other officers of the S.P.G. that one prebend post in a diocesan cathedral and one Fellowship in an Oxford or Cambridge University college be designated for the benefit of a Society missionary. The income from such a position would supplement a man’s other sources of income. Whiston also suggested that two of the most valuable prebends, such as at Durham Cathedral or St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, be reserved for the support of a colonial American suffragan bishop. A distinguished mathematician, he anticipated that the funds from these English posts would generate an amount between £60,000 and 70,000 a year and assist the financial support of 60 to 70 appointees of the Society. He recommended that the supervision and payment of the program should be in the hands of either the government’s Treasury Department, the S.P.G., or a combination of both agencies.84 Whiston’s plan, like Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison’s efforts with Parliament a decade earlier, was unsuccessful and the issue was not mooted again during the colonial era. The provincial church would not be formally linked to the Parliamentary process for financially supporting the state church. Doubtless, without the financial support of the Treasury the national church would have made little if any progress in the colonies. Besides undertaking its regular schedule of parish activities – conducting worship services and providing baptismal, marriage, and burial ceremonies, London civil and ecclesiastical officials designed another role for the church, primarily in upper New York. As early as 1680 the colonial governors had received instructions to encourage the conversions of Indians to the Christian religion, that is, to the Church of England.85 Nonetheless the matter was not given priority consideration until the early years of the eighteenth century when Governor Bellomont of New York pressed London officials for the church to play an active religious and political role in the Mohawk Valley.86 A region long coveted and in dispute by the French and British authorities, it was an arena for diplomatic and military confrontation between the two nations for nearly a century. As a means to

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restrain the influence and advancement of French Jesuit missionaries among the Indians in the territory, the Board of Trade decided to send a minister to the area for the purposes of converting the Indians to the King’s church. The minister was also to provide basic educational instruction to children. It was hoped that these two strategies would win the loyalty of the Indians in the region to the English crown. In 1703 Governor Lord Cornbury received instructions from the Board of Trade to launch the project among members of the Iroquois Nation. His Lordship was charged by London officials to supervise the activity of two ministers selected by the archbishop of Canterbury, whose defined duties were to instruct the Indians in the ‘true’ religion and win their allegiance to the English crown.87 The task was not easy because the challenge of recruiting men with the necessary linguistic skills and interest for service among the natives was difficult and little was accomplished. On the occasion of the celebrated visit of the Mohawk Sachems to London in 1710 the program received a vital transfusion. Orchestrated by the inveterate imperial officer Francis Nicholson, Londoners were enchanted with the Native American visitors, reigniting the government’s ambitious plan to woo and win the loyalty of the Mohawk Nation. At every step of the Sachems’ visit the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, and the officers of the Society marked the path for the propagation of the gospel. To rekindle the program begun in 1703 the Treasury granted £150 to the S.P.G. for construction of a house, a chapel and a fort in the valley. It was the Society’s obligation to recruit and appoint men for the assignment.88 Underscoring the importance of the political strategy the Board of Trade emphasized to Governor Robert Hunter in 1715 that without the S.P.G.’s missionaries ‘it will be impossible to defeat the practices of the French Priests and Jesuits among our Indians’.89 In retrospect Governor Bellomont’s recommendation at the beginning of the eighteenth century for the deployment of ministers to the Mohawk River Valley produced mixed results. Many Indians were converted to the King’s church and students instructed in basic educational skills, but there were periods of extended lapses of providing these services, sometimes for more than a decade. Yet the program became a cornerstone of English policy with the Mohawks particularly during the period between 1745 and 1774 when Sir William Johnson was Superintendent of Indian Affairs.90 A faint replication of the New York program undertaken by the S.P.G. missionaries in South Carolina in the early years of the eighteenth century came to an end with the outbreak of the Yamassee War in 1715.91 Aside from the program’s political purpose its most noteworthy legacy was the accomplishment of translating and publishing the first Book of Common Prayer in America and in the Mohawk language. A project undertaken by William Andrews (1712–19) and continued by successive missionaries of the Society at the post – Dr. Thomas Barclay (1709–16), John Miln (1728–36), and John Ogilvie (1749–62). It included the Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, Baptism, Holy Communion, Matrimony, and Burial of the Dead, the Litany, Catechism and selections from the Old and New Testaments. Subsequent editions of the Book appeared in 1769 and 1780.

3 Royal Government, Royal Officials and the Church

Between 1675 and 1715 the extension of the church to New England and the Middle Colonies was designed and controlled by ecclesiastical and civil officials in London, particularly by the members of the Committee for Trade and Plantations and Bishop Compton.1 In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, the first appearance of the church was linked to the introduction of royal government and the implementation of imperial policies and appointment of crown officials. It was not an easy fit because the efforts in these seaport communities generated an incontrovertible swirl of contentious political opposition. During the last fifteen years of the seventeenth century two key and determined civil royal officials – Edward Randolph and Francis Nicholson – played prominent roles in planting the church in each of these major towns. Both men were extraordinarily confident, strong-willed, experienced, and forceful crown officers. They viewed the church as an essential component of assertive imperial administration: for the establishment of authority and the fashioning of loyalty. Until the establishment of the King’s church in Maryland in 1692 there was a shortage of clergymen. Ministers were not tempted to emigrate to the province without an assured and sufficient income. Governor Nicholson reported to the Board of Trade and Plantations that before the adoption of the Church Act there were seldom more than three or four clergymen in the province.2 During that period the few ministers and churches were maintained solely by voluntary contributions from local members of the congregation.3 In the wake of the 1689 Revolution in England and in part as a consequence of the arbitrary style of governance by Lord Baltimore in Maryland, proprietary rule was suspended in 1691 and the province came under royal control.4 In lockstep with the establishment of royal government Governor Lionel Copley the next year recommended to the Assembly the establishment of the church. The legislature responded by enacting the Church Act of 1692, creating twenty-five parishes and provided for funds for their maintenance – a tithe of 40lb per poll levied on the tobacco crop.5 26

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Although established by law the church in Maryland was not strong – only six men appear to have been serving as ministers of congregations in 1692. In addition the provisions of the Church Act of 1692 stirred up strong objections from the Quakers and Roman Catholics protesting the requirement of their members to pay tithes to support the Anglican church and its ministers. The Quakers militantly marshaled their forces and broadcast their dispute in Annapolis and London, a strategy that led to the disallowance of the 1692 Church Act and an additional act by Order in the King’s Council on 4 January 1695/96.6 Following Copley’s death in 1694 Francis Nicholson became governor of the province and asserted strong leadership on behalf of the church.7 Despite conflicting and changing civil leadership, by 1694 there were thirtynine parishes established in the colony, in which twenty-two had built churches, served by only nine ministers resident in the province.8 Taking steps to strengthen the recently established church and following the example in Virginia, Nicholson, at the request of the Assembly, entreated Bishop of London Henry Compton to appoint a commissary to provide leadership over the fledgling church.9 The London prelate selected for the post the energetic and widely known vicar of Sheldon in Warwickshire, Thomas Bray.10 His recently published Catechetical Lectures had won him deserved recognition for his sharply focused pastoral and educational interests.11 Bray moved to London to prepare for his assignment, serving as secretary to Compton and presumably discussing in detail a variety of matters regarding the church’s interests at home and in the colonies. Delayed in traveling to Maryland by the controversy and appeal relating to the Church Acts of 1692 and 1696, Bray spent the next four years recruiting men to serve the church in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina.12 This task proved difficult despite the 1679 Order of the King in Council that allowed ministers in England who served in the plantations to retain the ‘full profits of their fellowships or benefices while holding their colonial appointments’.13 If and when they returned to England they were entitled to occupy their former posts. This precedent was not new – Robert Hunt, the first minister at Jamestown in Virginia, continued to hold his living at Heathfield in Sussex from 1606 until his death in 1608. Also, Robert Radcliff, the initial Anglican minister in Boston maintained his fellowship at Exeter College in the University of Oxford during his three-year sojourn in Massachusetts.14 Perhaps as a consequence of the confusing legal status surrounding the Church Act, ministers were in short supply in Maryland and Governor Nicholson reported to London officials in 1697 that ministers and schoolmasters were needed.15 Although the church was established in the province and the clergymen received a set stipend based on the tobacco crop, a few men resided in parishes that produced tobacco of a lesser quality. To offset the diminished value of the incomes of several men Bray assisted them with a supplementary payment of £50 per year.16 After the founding of the

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Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701 he asked that organization to assume the financial obligation for the men.17 For at least one parson of modest means Bray dipped into his own purse to provide additional funds for the purchase of a ‘cassock and hat’.18 Based on his experience attempting to enlist ministers for colonial assignments Bray found that only the poorer clergy were inclined to accept posts overseas. That situation gave rise to an additional problem: How could poor ministers afford to acquire books and pamphlets of professional interest to sharpen their competence? At a time when many prominent church leaders were seeking to raise the educational standards of the clergy in England, there was a compelling need for some arrangement to be made for providing printed materials for the men in America. There was no Anglican college in the colonies to fill this gap: the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, founded in 1693, was struggling to establish itself and was not in a position to provide such service. Viewing this bleak predicament as an opportunity, Bray, with the endorsement of Compton and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, launched a campaign to raise funds to purchase and send books as free gifts to the colonies as packaged libraries. His efforts were at once an imaginative act of leadership, a significant community cultural contribution, and in time a rich personal legacy.19 Persistently, diligently, and systematically he refined and expanded his design for a provincial clerical library, producing in 1697 his impressive Bibliotheca Parochialis.20 Among the cast of financial contributors to Bray’s plan for colonial libraries were Bishop Compton, £13, Archbishop Tenison, £10, Colonel Francis Nicholson, £20, the Proprietors of Carolina, £30, and Bray himself, £54. The Maryland Assembly in 1699 contributed £150 as partial payment for the libraries established in the province.21 As Bray was planning for his departure to Maryland in late 1699 he was also formalizing his library program by undertaking the organization of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge.22 After receiving its charter in 1699 the Society assumed the duty of providing several libraries in the colonies but more particularly in England and Wales.23 Despite the strong opposition of the Quakers to the Church Act of 1696 – they spent over £20,000 in their attempts to defeat the bill – it was finally passed by Parliament in 1701.24 King William III signed the bill, inquiring: ‘Have the Quakers the benefit of Toleration? Let the Established Church have an Established Maintenance’. The new act gave toleration to the Quakers and Dissenters and provided a stipend for every minister of the English church in Maryland.25 Bray set sail for Maryland on 16 December 1699, arriving in the following March.26 On his arrival at Annapolis he found that Governor Nicholson had been transferred to Virginia and Nathaniel Blakiston had replaced him in Maryland. When Bray presented himself to the new governor, Blakiston promised to call the Assembly at once to draft a new bill to replace the

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disallowed Church Act of 1696 before the Quakers could muster opposition.27 Nicholson came from Virginia to offer his support, and he, along with Bray, Maryland’s Attorney-General William Dent, and Speaker of the Assembly Thomas Smithson, redrafted the legislation. While waiting for the Assembly to convene, Bray conducted a survey of provincial church affairs. The results showed that a large portion of the people were Anglicans and that the Quakers, instead of constituting the majority they claimed before the Board of Trade, actually made up only about 10 per cent of the population, with an estimated 8 per cent of the remainder Roman Catholic.28 On 7 May 1700, two days after a sermon by Bray before the Assembly urging the enactment of a new Church Act, the Assembly adopted the legislation.29 Immediately members of the Assembly recommended that Bray return to England with the bill to personally seek the approval of the king.30 Before his departure, he called a general visitation of the clergy of Maryland and eighteen men assembled in Annapolis on 23 May. The agenda included consideration of charges against two wayward parsons, a proposal for converting Quakers, and the need for a minister in Pennsylvania. After presenting his visitation charge the politically adept Bray urged the clergy to adopt resolutions thanking the Assembly and the governor for passing the Church Act.31 They joined with the Assembly in urging that Bray return immediately to England, where he could do more good for the Church. They also planned a visitation for the following year that they hoped Bray would attend.32 Political and church affairs were destined to follow a new course in Massachusetts with the arrival of Edward Randolph in Boston in June 1676. The Bay Colony’s leaders perceived that his presence represented the English government’s attempt to assert imperial power in the province.33 Randolph’s mission for Charles II was to investigate the colony’s adherence to the terms of its original charter. A professional civil servant, he implacably devoted his strong leadership talents to advancing royal authority in the province and to increasing the crown’s revenue. For Randolph, as for royal officials in Whitehall, the fundamental purpose of the colonies was the financial profit of England. Randolph recognized the religious and political leadership of the Puritan clergy on Massachusetts’ affairs and vigorously sought to diminish their role. He reported to the Committee for Trade that in the Bay colony free exercise of religion was not permitted. Anglican adherents were required to attend services of the Puritan church, and if absent without cause, they were liable to be fined. Furthermore, Anglicans were not admitted as freemen in the province, thereby qualifying for the magistracy and other public offices. To remedy this situation Randolph recommended to London officials that those persons in the colony declaring for the English church should be exempt from attending the services of the Massachusetts established church.34 His petition received consideration at the 6 February 1678/79 meeting of the Committee for Trade and Plantations and was accepted without amendment. The session also urged Compton to appoint a minister for Boston, but, for

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unclear reasons, the selection was delayed for nearly a decade.35 The bishop of London may have been too distracted with domestic political affairs to be concerned by overseas matters; he was in the midst of the exclusion crisis and the accession of James II to the throne. The tenacity and rigidity of the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts to protect their interests antagonized London government officials.36 The colonists’ undisguised suspicions of English policies and practices were accurate: during the next decade Randolph would challenge the self-governing character of the New England charters. In turn Massachusetts civil and church officials exploited every maneuver to defend the prospect of the revocation of the colony’s 1629 charter and to forestall the appointment of a royal governor.37 He could count on allies among the so-called ‘moderates’ of the Council of the Dominion.38 For the next ten years he shuttled between London and Boston on five occasions reporting on the turn of political affairs and fervently urging the Committee for Trade and Plantations to initiate more active imperial control over the Bay Colony’s government. After a periodic visit by Randolph to London in 1684 to report on Massachusetts’ affairs the colony’s original charter was revoked. Returning to Boston on 14 May 1686, Randolph carried with him two royal instruments: an exemplification of the revocation of the Massachusetts charter and King James II’s commission for a new government.39 The charter of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay had been nullified together with all the rights and privileges founded on it. In its place Massachusetts was established as a royal province, ruled by a council under a native son, Joseph Dudley, until the new governor arrived a few months later. Randolph also carried with him from London the commissions for the functionaries of the new government, appointing Dudley as president and himself a member of the council, with the power to establish the Church of England in Massachusetts by force.40 Randolph’s efforts for a decade to install imperial government in Massachusetts had come to a successful conclusion. Political affairs in the colony had changed drastically: the assembly was gone and the governor and council passed laws and levied taxes without the vote of elected representatives. Town meetings, the agency through which freemen and freeholders discussed and managed local affairs and business, were severely restricted. At the same time the issue of religious toleration undermined the authority and power of the colony’s Congregational church. Furthermore, the militia was reorganized and a few Anglicans replaced a number of church members and leaders of the old order in the top ranks.41 Sir Edmund Andros, James II’s long-time servant, arrived in Boston on 20 December 1686, as the new governor of the Dominion of New England, a territory that included Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Narragansett country. After 1688 his domain would expand to encompass Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and East and West Jersey. Andros, like Randolph, was a vigorous and commanding civil servant,

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pursuing an imperial policy that included the enforcement of the Navigation Acts and a conservative financial policy that stirred up opposition from the merchants. He also clashed with Massachusetts’ theocratic practices and the cadre of Boston Puritan clergymen. With a royal charter and appointment in hand Andros energetically pressed forward to establish the first English church in Boston.42 Michael G. Hall has persuasively argued that the church probably could have been introduced in the colony a decade earlier with little agitation or objection.43 Now it was established in the path of controversial political circumstances: after the institution of a royal charter, the arrival of a royal governor, and the impact of formidable imperial political and economic policies. In Boston the presence of the national church was inseparable from the instruments and officers of royal government. In London, the deft, wily, and politically shrewd Bishop Compton appointed as the first minister of the King’s Church in Boston the Reverend Robert Radcliff. It was a critical and astute decision. A graduate and fellow of Exeter College in Oxford University, Radcliff was recognized as a distinguished preacher.44 His learning and pulpit eloquence positioned him as a credible Anglican counterbalance to the company of learned Boston clergy educated at nearby Harvard College. Accompanying Randolph to Boston on the Rose in 1686, and amid popular confusion and controversy, Radcliff officiated at the first Anglican services held in the colony at the Town House on 6 June. The unique occasion attracted a large congregation, perhaps partly out of curiosity, or partly to be seen in the company of a handful of royal officials. One observer attending the service commented that Radcliff’s preaching was ‘Extraordinary; he being as well an Orator as a preacher’.45 Another attendant, the prominent London bookseller John Dunton, was in town and noted that he had heard Radcliff preach once or twice and that he read ‘the common prayer in his surplice’ both of which ‘were religious novelties in New England’.46 Two months later, on 5 August 1686, Judge Samuel Sewall noted in his diary that ‘William Harrison, the Bodies-maker is buried, which is the first that I know of buried with the Common Prayer Book in Boston’. Three days later he recorded that ‘the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is administered at the Town House’.47 For nearly a year Radcliff held services at the Exchange then at Easter 1687 Andros determined and insisted that the services of the Church of England would be held Sundays in the South Church. This proposed arrangement rekindled friction between the royal governor and Boston Congregational church leaders. Forthrightly, the tough-minded Andros had wedged the objectionable English church into the religious life of Boston.48 Symbolically and in reality the church was intrinsically associated with royal government and officials, due in large measure to Randolph’s and Andros’s trenchant tactics for more than ten years to establish a congregation, partly as a consequence of the government’s overall oppressive political policies and practices, and certainly by its name – King’s Chapel.49

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Under Andros’s administration, funds were raised for the construction of King’s Chapel, which opened for services in June 1689. Despite the organization of the new congregation and the institution of royal government Anglicans remained financially obligated to support the Puritan establishment through the town rates. Yet as Professor David S. Lovejoy has noted, ‘they still had sustained the malice, scorn, countless affronts, and indignities from the majority who charged them with idolatry and popery’.50 The Puritan community was incensed over the presence of the King’s church in Boston. For Increase and Cotton Mather the holy vision for the establishment of the colony more than half a century earlier had been betrayed. The turn of events in church and state affairs signaled for the Mathers a further example of the colony’s declension and waywardness from the purpose of its founders. Immediately Increase Mather took-up the battle-cry for the Puritan clergy and challenged the legitimacy and presence of the English church, publishing A Brief Discourse Concerning the Unlawfulness of the Common Prayer Worship. And of Laying the Hands on, and Kissing the Booke in Swearing ([Cambridge, 1686], London, 1689). He wove a tightly critical argument that linked The Book of Common Prayer to the offensive Catholic Breviary, Missal, and Ritual.51 It was a familiar theme for Puritan polemicists and it was recited repeatedly by his son Cotton. In a desperate effort to seek the restoration of the colony’s 1629 charter, Increase Mather traveled to London in 1690 as the representative of the Assembly but without success. Massachusetts had become a royal colony and so remained until the American Revolution. Samuel Myles, the son of a Massachusetts Baptist minister and a graduate of Harvard College, who presided over the church for nearly forty years, succeeded Radcliff as minister of King’s Chapel. In the first months after his appointment Myles demonstrated that he was politically astute and a fervent royal loyalist. Joined by the churchwardens of his congregation, the Bostonians reported to King William III the details surrounding the overthrow of the Andros regime.52 Their intention may have been to undermine Increase Mather’s political efforts in London.53 Without mincing their words Myles and his cohorts emphasized that the continuation of royal government in the province was essential for Anglican worship to survive in Boston.54 Efforts to establish the King’s church in other colonial towns – in New York, Philadelphia, and Newport – paled in comparison with the tactics and controversy in Boston. All the same the church in these seaport centers shared one common factor with the Boston community: their founding was due in large measure to the unflagging intervention of either Randolph, or Nicholson, or recently appointed royal governors. New York differed from the other provinces, because there were few Englishmen in the colony at the recapture of the province from the Dutch in 1674. In New York City there was already a settled and mixed European population. Dutch mingled with German, French with Flemish, Jews with Portuguese and with survivors of

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the Swedish colony on the Delaware, making this the most cosmopolitan American town: a small settlement and religiously diverse.55 Thomas Dongan, the Roman Catholic governor, in 1684 noted that the colony included: ‘not many of the Church of England, few Roman Catholicks, abundance of Quakers preachers men and women especially, singing Quakers, Ranting Quakers, Sabbatarians, Antisabbatarians, some Anabaptists, some independents, some Jews; in short of all sorts of opinions there are some and the most part of none at all’.56 Dongan’s successor, Governor Benjamin Fletcher, undertook the first efforts to establish the church in the province in 1693.57 Anglican worship was not a novelty in the settlement, for every English governor appointed to office in the colony during the late seventeenth century included in his entourage a chaplain.58 When Governor Andros arrived in August 1678, the Reverend Charles Wooley, a graduate of Emmanuel College in Cambridge University in 1673/74, had accompanied him. Ordained by the bishop of London in 1678, Wooley spent two years serving the chapel within Fort James.59 Moreover, toleration of worship was embedded in the hard-forged Charter of Liberties adopted ten years earlier.60 A string of churches dotted the countryside on Long Island and in the Hudson River Valley – fifteen Dutch Reformed congregations, thirteen Congregational-Presbyterian, four Huguenot, two Lutheran, several Quaker meetings, but only one Anglican chapel – located behind the barricades at Fort James at the southern tip of Manhattan Island.61 Outside of Long Island, however, the population was still predominately Dutch, and the majority of its English inhabitants had a Puritan heritage. Fletcher’s proposed church establishment was limited to the four counties surrounding New York City. Fletcher’s calculated legislation for the church drew fire over the provisions for the creation of parishes, elections of vestries, and the collection of church rates for the support of ‘good and sufficient Protestant ministers’. Nonetheless the governor’s proposal became law in 1693 and sharp local controversies followed when vestries with dissenting majorities attempted to place and provide for nonconforming clergymen.62 In 1697 Trinity Church, the first Anglican church in New York, was chartered, naming the bishop of London and his successors as titular rector.63 This was a curious arrangement and the only one of its kind in the colonies; it remains unclear why the London prelate was named to this position. As the bishop of London was a member of the Board of Trade, perhaps Fletcher recognized it would be useful to have an ally in the group – thus seeking to enhance his own imperial position or advancement with at least one person overseeing his career performance. William Vesey was called by the vestry to serve as ‘assistant’ minister. A native of Massachusetts and a 1693 graduate of Harvard College, he was then serving as an Independent minister on Long Island. Vesey was highly recommended by Samuel Myles, rector of King’s Chapel in Boston, and was elected to the post on condition that he

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obtain episcopal ordination in England.64 The new congregation received a munificent benefaction from Governor Fletcher, a gift that outstripped the generosity of any donor to the Anglican (or later Episcopal) church during the colonial period or to the present day. Fletcher granted the church a lease of farmland in lower Manhattan that ranges today around the neighborhood of Wall Street, New York’s financial district.65 In time Trinity Church became the wealthiest Episcopal church in America. Outside of Manhattan the church’s experience was quite different. In Westchester County and on Long Island in later years, the sustained financial support of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was an essential lifeline for the church’s planting and survival. Despite the leadership of the royal governor and the King’s church’s legal establishment in the lower four counties of the colony, its influence was largely limited to New York City – the seat of royal government and center of expanding trade and commerce.66 During the mid-1690s Randolph and Nicholson independently visited Philadelphia and Newport on official duty examining the practices of local customs officials.67 Both seaports were capitals of colonies that tolerated several religious groups. Immediately following their visits both imperial officers urged London leaders to extend the English church to these towns. The timing of their overtures was excellent: conditions were ripe, if contentious, in Philadelphia, for the planting of a congregation on two counts. First the Quakers were gripped in an intense internecine controversy. The religious quietness had been shattered by the advocacy of schismatic tenets by the Scotsman George Keith.68 Complicating matters further in 1691 was England’s war with France, a circumstance with reverberating consequences in Pennsylvania. Leaders in London, concerned with protecting imperial economic and strategic interest, recognized that the American provinces were crucially important in the competition with France for trade and empire. As a precaution for defense the English government in October 1691 placed Pennsylvania under royal government and appointed Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York as governor of the colony.69 Three years later Proprietary government was restored, although Penn did not return to the province as resident governor for another five years.70 Second, Proprietor William Penn and a faction within the Pennsylvania Assembly were locked in political conflict during the 1680s and early 1690s.71 At issue were not the finer points of theology or religious practices but rather a struggle for influence and power – seeking to replace proprietary government with royal government. To strengthen their position the Quakers did everything in their power to restrain the influence of the Anglicans – introducing stricter property requirements for city-dwellers; and a two-year residency qualification in 1696 was a strong attempt to keep the new immigrants from the polls.72 On the surface the challenge to Penn’s proprietorship was led by the Board of Trade, although in London it was acknowledged that Bishop Compton and his amanuensis and commissary for Maryland, Thomas Bray, had an

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active role in the affair.73 Both church leaders were energetic in seeking the conversion of Quakers to the Anglican fold. They sponsored the publication of George Keith’s steady stream of latter-day tracts, and his proselytizing tours among the Quaker communities in England and the colonies.74 Penn, recognizing the strategy in play, openly charged that Compton, Nicholson, and Quarry were conspiring to subvert proprietary government in Pennsylvania. His words had little impact. In Philadelphia and London, Anglican leaders pulled every lever they could in an attempt to obstruct Penn’s government.75 By the time of Penn’s arrival in London in December 1701, the members of the Board of Trade were discussing a proposed policy for the ‘unification’ of the colonies. A prime target for their consideration was Pennsylvania, a Quaker colony, a region of contentious political factions, a province slow in providing military defense, and allegedly a locale addicted to illegal trade. The province was a strong candidate for imperial reorganization.76 While the Anglican establishment in London mounted its offence, its chief representatives in the colonies joined in the attack. The ranks included Lord Cornbury and Chief Justice John Bridges of New York, Jeremiah Basse, former governor of East and West Jersey, Robert Quarry, and John Moore in Pennsylvania, and Nicholson and Sir Thomas Lawrence in Maryland. They all fed grist into the propaganda mill of imperial reorganization through appearances before Parliament and the Board of Trade and introduced a steady stream of reports discrediting proprietary governments. As Professor Nash has trenchantly concluded, more than pride of empire or love of church animated these men; although those factors were doubtless important, they were interwoven with thoughts of career advancement, which almost certainly could be expected in the event of colonial unification.77 Bishop Compton, as a member of the Committee for Trade and Plantations, had nimbly inserted in Penn’s 1681 charter a clause that provided that Anglican worship might be set up in any community where twenty or more persons desired it.78 Following in the wake of Governor Fletcher of New York’s appointment as the colony’s governor and in the shadow of his successful effort to establish the church in that colony, the first Anglican congregation in Philadelphia was organized the next year. Among the initial members were several prominent royal officials, including John Moore, Attorney-General, Register of Wills, and Collector of the Port, and Colonel Robert Quarry, Judge of the Admiralty.79 Their efforts were quickly fruitful. Within a year on the Philadelphia skyline was the Wren-styled Christ Church. Writing to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison in March 1695/96, Governor Francis Nicholson requested that the salaries of ministers and schoolmasters be paid from the customs receipts for the port of Philadelphia and that the English government meet the costs for Bibles and Prayer Books for the congregations in Philadelphia and Maryland.80 Before

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the decade was over Compton appointed a minister to serve the new parish and the church had a foothold in the province.81 Following in Fletcher’s footsteps as governor of New York, Richard, Earl of Bellomont, determined the fate of the church in Rhode Island. An able imperial administrator, he broadly gauged the potential of the provinces, reporting to the Board of Trade that the King had ‘a glorious empire in America that would be vastly serviceable to England under good management’.82 During September 1699, Bellomont visited Newport, Rhode Island, on official business and reported to the Board of Trade that no school or Anglican church had been established in the colony.83 The population of the settlement in 1690 is estimated at 1,352 persons, while ten years later the figure had increased to 1,886.84 Nonetheless, during his visit a band of Newport residents, perhaps orchestrated by Bellomont, petitioned London church and civil officials seeking the establishment of a church in the town with the minister’s salary to be paid by the Treasury.85 Compton was alerted immediately by the Board of the request by Newport’s residents and the wheels of ecclesiastical administration turned quickly.86 Within a few months the indefatigable Thomas Bray recruited David Bethune, a minister of the outlawed Scottish Episcopal Church, to serve as the first Anglican parson in Rhode Island. He served briefly (1700–01) before moving to New York, succeeded by John Lockier, an Englishman. It fell to Bray, Compton’s assistant, to raise the funds to pay the annual salaries for the first two Newport clergymen from among his wide circle of financial supporters. During 1703 and 1704, and perhaps earlier, the stipend was underwritten by fifteen or sixteen Gloucestershire men.87 Led by Bellomont’s initial efforts at the turn of the eighteenth century, the Newport congregation became the hub of the King’s church in Rhode Island until the American Revolution. The foundation of the King’s church in Carolina in the late 1690s was intimately associated with the implementation of stronger imperial supervision of provincial affairs. Its progenitor, as he was for the church in Boston twenty years earlier and more recently in Philadelphia, was Edward Randolph, the Crown’s Superintendent of Customs in America.88 During more than two decades of duty in the colonies he had earned a reputation as a toughminded and strong-willed royal official. His view of the church as a vital and integral element of imperial administration was undiminished. For Randolph the flag, governors, garrisons, and the church were indivisible and influential symbols of the English empire. Provision for the English church in the southern colonies of what is today North and South Carolina was set forth in the charter granted by King Charles I to his Attorney-General Robert Heath in 1639. The Proprietor was granted the ecclesiastical privileges common in England of patronage and advowsons of all churches that would be built in Carolina.89 More than twenty years passed without any settlement in the colony. In 1663 the Heath tract was granted by King Charles II to eight of his own supporters, including

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Sir William Berkeley, a former governor of Virginia, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, an outstanding colonial promoter, the Duke of Albemarle, and Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. The King made the new grantees the lords and proprietors of the region.90 Settlement of the Carolina territory was slow; it was about 1670 before a permanent colony was established in what is now South Carolina. 91 In 1669–70 the Proprietors issued the Fundamental Constitutions for the colony, generally attributed to John Locke, guaranteeing religious freedom for non-Anglicans but also establishing the Church of England.92 From the beginning the Proprietors encouraged Dissenters and Anglicans from settling in the province. The earliest wave of English settlers came by way of Barbados, arriving in the spring of 1670 and naming the settlement Charles Town. A decade later the Proprietors mounted an intensive recruiting drive for colonists aimed especially at Huguenots from France, English Dissenters, and Barbadians. To entice settlers attractive terms were offered for land grants accompanied with the assurance of religious toleration, a strategy that met with considerable success.93 By 1680 the settlement had 1,000 to 1,200 people; by 1700 it had nearly 16,000, including a number of Negro slaves. At the end of the seventeenth century the colony included nearly 500 Huguenots and about an equal number of English Presbyterians and Baptists. In hope of creating a thriving colony the Proprietors encouraged a settlement of diverse national and religious groups. Yet as M. Eugene Sirmans has convincingly described, the young colony was torn into bitter and protracted factionalism between proprietary and anti-proprietary groups.94 In dispute were the Proprietors’ efforts to introduce reforms, an issue that divided the community between the old and new immigrants. A majority of the old colonists were Barbadian Anglicans, while many of the recent immigrants were English and Scottish dissenters. Where a man came from and how he worshipped thus became matters of importance in South Carolina politics. Established political leaders particularly resented the new men who threatened to take over power with the backing of the Proprietors.95 On the one hand the proprietary party, led by English dissenters, supported the Proprietors for several reasons, including the policy of religious toleration, while, on the other hand, the anti-proprietary party was energetically committed to preserving the status quo in the province. Into this diverse national and religious mix a few Anglicans habitually supported the proprietors and some dissenters opposed them. Complicated political circumstances triggered twelve different administrations between 1680 and 1695. The overriding issue was a political question: who was to have the predominant voice in running the colony, and who among the colonists would control local policy. Inevitably the controversy between the two parties contributed to the creation of royal government in South Carolina in 1719 and in North Carolina in 1729.

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By the mid-1690s a number of Carolina issues were of concern to the Council of Trade and Plantations regarding the governance of the colony. In part the situation was prompted by continuing reports of the ineffective administration of the trade and navigation acts, of increasing piracy activity along the coast, the unsteady factional political turmoil, and the inattention of the Proprietors to these matters. Edward Randolph’s visit to London and his numerous consultations with the Council of Trade in 1697 brought these issues to a head. He recounted to the officials that the thriving irregular trade practices in Carolina were at the expense of the Crown’s revenue. Randolph recommended to the authorities sweeping reforms of imperial administration to correct the problem in Carolina and the other colonies. He urged a blanket replacement of the men holding the posts of attorney-general in the provinces and spoke of the need to establish admiralty courts. Randolph offered an account of the state of proprietary governments in America, including South Carolina. His words had an immediate impact. On advice of the Council of Trade, King William notified the Proprietors of Carolina in April 1697 that they must enforce the Acts of Trade and Navigation or face the loss of their Patent.96 After returning to the colonies in late 1697 Randolph continued his efforts to employ stronger imperial administration over trade affairs. He reported to the Council of Trade and Plantations in May 1698 that the problems of trade practices and piracy would not be remedied until Carolina and the other proprietary colonies of the Bahamas, Pennsylvania, and East and West Jersey were brought under royal government, as well as Connecticut and Rhode Island.97 He acknowledged that the colonies were exposed to the presence of French traders at the headwaters of rivers from Maine to Carolina and that the Spanish military force at St. Augustine in Florida was a constant threat for the Carolina settlement.98 He also asserted that, as the only land route to the French settlements in the Mississippi River Valley was through Carolina, the colony’s militia was inadequate to perform any essential service.99 Intertwined with affairs of trade, political and defense policies in Carolina was the state of the King’s church. After nearly four decades, despite the provisions for the national church in the charter and Fundamental Constitutions of the province, neither the Proprietors nor the bishop of London had undertaken efforts to establish a congregation.100 As he had in Boston and Philadelphia earlier, Randolph doubtless discussed the situation with Bishop of London Henry Compton and his secretary Thomas Bray during his 1697 visit to the city. Within a few months events suggest that Randolph had influenced the course of church affairs in Charles Town and London. The Dissenters and Anglicans in the Common House of Assembly dropped their political sparring and speedily enacted legislation providing for an annual salary drawn on the public revenue of £150 colonial currency per year for a minister of the King’s church in Charles Town.101 To satisfy objections to

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the statute the tax to support the minister was to be paid only by members of the Church of England. All other religious groups, except Roman Catholics, were allowed to impose a levy on their membership for the maintenance of their house of worship.102 In step with the Carolina Assembly’s legislation on behalf of the King’s church, Thomas Bray recruited a minister, Samuel Marshall, to serve in Charles Town. He arrived in the colony in 1698, serving St. Philip’s church until his death from yellow fever two years later.103 After 1702 appointees of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel filled the post. At the turn of the eighteenth century no one religious group outnumbered the others in Carolina. In a total white population of about 4,200, there were more than 2,000 Dissenters, of whom about 1,000 were Presbyterians and the rest Baptists, Quakers, and other sectarians. The King’s church would claim about 1,800 adherents. The remainder of the population were French Huguenots. Although technically dissenters, they had always tended to side with the Anglicans, and after the nonconformists had led the move to deprive the French immigrants of their political privileges in 1695 and 1696, the Huguenots threw their support to the Anglicans. Some of them – laymen and ministers – began to convert to the Church of England.104 During the next stage of the development of the Carolina church, partisans of the Proprietors in the Assembly contrived to establish the King’s church by law in 1704 with financial support by taxation. As in Maryland a decade earlier, opposition to the proposed statute was centered in the Quaker community. As early as 1672 the Friends had appeared in the colony and quickly converted many people to that faith. They objected to the establishment of the English church: protesting that a portion of their tax payments would support the maintenance of Anglican parsons and churches; and on principle opposed to the necessary oaths of officeholders of allegiance to the King as the head of the Church and State. For the Quakers the taking of oaths was anathema.105 Nonconformists, disfranchised, raised such a strong protest that the Church Act was modified in 1706.106 To settle the matter promptly the franchise was restored to non-Anglicans and the church established until after the Revolutionary War. Following the legislation of 1706 Charles Town became the religious center of the colony. If Dissenters had to pay taxes to support the state church, at least they were not prohibited from building their own. Although Anglicans and Dissenters disputed numerous issues in the early days of settlement neither party got around to building a church for fourteen years. After Edward Randolph’s arrival in Charles Town in late November 1698 he spent the winter there.107 His reports to the Board of Trade were sharply critical of the Proprietors’ administration of North and South Carolina and he persistently recommended that the Board require the appointment of new personnel and tighter policies and procedures. In league with the influential

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Secretary of the Board, William Blathwayt, Randolph was instrumental in bringing the bill before the House of Commons in 1701 for the revocation of the charters for all of the corporate and proprietary colonies. Doubtless in response to this initiative the Proprietors quickly turned their attention to refashioning their credibility by establishing the King’s church in both territories. Despite considerable objections from a sizable Quaker faction, the North Carolina legislature adopted the Vestry Act of 1701. It was disallowed by the Privy Council and replaced by a similar Act of 1704. Following the implementation of stronger policies for imperial administration in both North and South Carolina and the passage of legislation favorable to the church in the provinces the London-based Society immediately appointed several missionaries to serve a handful of Anglicans in the thinly settled colony of North Carolina. Although Randolph’s influence contributed to these developments, as he had advanced the church, years earlier in Boston and Philadelphia, for some unclear reason he was never elected a member of the S.P.G. as were several of his contemporary royal officers who were less vigorous advocates for the King’s church.

Part II The Implementation of Imperial Policies by Civil and Church Officials

4 The Royal Governors and Ecclesiastical Duties

As the Council of Trade formulated and implemented new and comprehensive policies for administering the overseas empire between 1675 and 1690 a program for the King’s church emerged.1 Guided by the Council, of which he was a member, the influential Bishop of London Henry Compton established a policy for the supervision of the church that divided authority between civil and ecclesiastical officers.2 This was a procedure without precedent in the English church; specific duties were delegated to the royal governors and to the deputies of the London prelate known as commissaries. The governors’ role was unique in that they were granted a limited supervisory role over church affairs in America that in England were reserved for a prelate. As the royal governor was the king’s chief representative in a colony it seemed appropriate that the official should administer civil and ecclesiastical responsibilities. Serving as the administrative head of the provincial government, the governors maintained communication on various details with the Council of Trade and Plantations in London and the bishop of London.3 The caliber of the men appointed to the highest provincial office varied. For some men appointed to the office it was a reward for distinguished and loyal military service on European battlefields. For others it reflected the power of family connections, the fruits of political fealty, and a familiar knowledge of the processes and power brokers at Whitehall. Some of the officials were men who by birth or long residence may be classified as provincials; leaders acquainted with colonial administration and men who understood the problems of government. Frequently the men appointed to the gubernatorial office were seeking to replenish diminished family fortunes, or to reduce debts, or to acquire wealth. As a group the men who held the office of colonial governor fall into several categories. Some were singularly tactless – Sloughter, Belcher, Shute, Cranfield, and Reynolds – and five were garishly greedy – Fletcher, Cornbury, Parke, Cosby, and Crowe. These appointees were counterbalanced and outnumbered by the honorable and able men who did their duty in difficult situations. For our interest such officials as Nicholson, Spotswood, and 43

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Gooch, Shirley, Pownal, and Bellomont, Eden, Wright, and the Wentworths, Hunter, Dobbs, Tryon, and Moore were vigorous and vital leaders on behalf of the church. Instructions on church affairs had been provided to Virginia governors as early as 1626 when Sir George Yardley was charged to see that ‘God be duly, and daily served’, although there was no specific reference to the national church.4 His successors, Sir Francis Wyatt in 1638 and Sir William Berkeley in 1650, received identical instructions that required them to see that God be ‘duly, and daily served according to the Form of Religion as established in the Church of England’. They were also to oversee that every settled minister was provided with a parsonage and glebe. The governors were granted authority to probate wills and issue letters of administration.5 In the late 1670s the Crown formalized the commission and instructions granted to royal governors.6 These detailed documents, prepared by the Admiralty, the Treasury, the Commissioners of the Customs, the AuditorGeneral of the Plantation Revenues, and the Bishop of London, contained the directives for each governor’s administration of provincial affairs.7 The instructions were private and not public documents and were meant for the eyes of the governor only. At the chief executive’s discretion specific paragraphs might be shown to members of the colonial council, but only those items that related to their functions. But their influence upon provincial government was more significant because of their constant use and the variety of matters with which they dealt. The instructions to governors were the most important of this type of official order since these were the formal expressions of the king’s will as to the manner in which the powers granted in the commission were to be executed. Of all the instruments used to enforce the royal prerogative in America, the governor’s commission and instructions were the most influential in the shaping of the provincial constitutions. The instructions provided an outline of the procedure for the governor’s induction into office and his administrative duties. It included such details as the names of the members of his legislature, guidance on provincial financial affairs, justice, religion and morals, the militia, local defense, maritime affairs, land system, and trade and commerce.8 We turn to an examination of the duties on religion and moral life in the colonies that were granted to the governors through their commission and royal instructions.9 The official was to ‘take especial care that God Almighty be devoutly and duly served’ throughout his government, ‘the Book of Common Prayer as by law established read each Sunday and Holy day, and the Blessed Sacrament administered according to the rites of the Church of England’.10 He was required to see that the churches be well kept and that as population and prosperity increased in the province additional houses of worship were built. The governor was charged to oversee that a ‘competent maintenance’ was to be assigned to each minister and that a parsonage and glebe were provided too. After 1683 in Virginia, the governors were directed

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to ensure that colonial tobacco acts adopted for the support of ministers were observed.11 But few leaders pursued that duty with zeal. When tobacco – the basis of the province’s economy – returned a low yield, all incomes dependent on the crop were depressed and the condition of the minister’s stipends received no special notice. A certificate from the bishop of London on a priest’s conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England and being of a ‘good life and conversation’ was necessary before a governor could prefer any minister to a benefice of the King’s church. If a person of poor character in doctrine or manners held a living the governor was ‘to use the best means for the removal of him’, and to supply the vacancy temporarily with nearby clergy.12 At Bishop Compton’s recommendation the governor’s instructions included a provision that each minister was allowed membership in the vestry of his parish as in England.13 The issue was complicated in Virginia where vestries throughout the eighteenth century till the Revolution reflected increasing lay power in local church affairs. Generally, the vestries were inclined not to present a minister for induction but rather retain him on a year-to-year basis without the full benefits of an instituted incumbent. Consequently, his status precluded a seat on the vestry. Controversy raged throughout the colonial period between the ministers and the vestrymen, but successive governors were reluctant to intervene in these affairs since the laymen took the position that it was their sole right to supervise and maintain their parish’s operation.14 The royal governors were required to endorse the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of London in their provinces, except that the authority to collate ministers to benefices, grant licenses for marriages, and probate wills was reserved for the governors.15 In addition the royal officers were granted authority to determine whether any man was exercising the priestly office in his province without episcopal orders and to report the situation to the London prelate. They were required to oversee the placement of the table of marriages in every Anglican church and urged to press the colonial assembly for the necessary legislation to uphold the principles of the table.16 In Virginia (1682–90) and New York (1668–88), the civil officials were required to observe that the Books of Homilies and Thirty-Nine Articles be placed, kept, and used within every Anglican Church in the province.17 In 1730 the Privy Council issued an order that further defined the responsibilities of governors for church affairs in the colonies.18 It stated that Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, was ‘empowered to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction by himself or by such commissaries as he shall appoint in our several plantations in America’. The governors were required to ‘give all countenance and due encouragement to the said Bishop of London or his commissaries in the legal exercise of such ecclesiastical jurisdiction according to the laws of the province under your government’. This instruction was dropped from the documents issued to royal governors after 1761, since the

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commission granted by the King in Council to Gibson was effective only during his tenure in the see of London. The successive bishops of London would have had to seek a similar grant if they had wished to follow Compton and Gibson in defining their legal authority over the church in America. None of them did so and why they did not remains obscure. Soon after his translation from Lincoln to London, Edmund Gibson spoke of his concern for the overseas church and sense of duty to acquaint himself of the places, persons, and matters entrusted to his care.19 The fact of distance from the diocese of London prompted Gibson all the more to become informed on provincial ecclesiastical affairs.20 He petitioned the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1725 to determine the extent of his authority and jurisdiction in the colonies and would not send commissaries to America until the issue was clarified. An order of the King in Council adopted on 9 August 1726, at Kensington Palace, demanding a Commission be passed under the Great Seal to establish the bishop of London’s prerogative in the colonies, was read on 7 September 1726, at a meeting of the Board of Trade and Plantations.21 The request was before the Board and Privy Council for nearly two years; finally on 29 April 1728, King George II granted Gibson a commission for jurisdiction over affairs of the King’s church in America. Ecclesiastical matters were but one of many compelling issues confronting governors. The officials continuously faced disputes with colonial councils and assemblies, urgent matters relating to the militia, defense, and colonial wars, details relating to regular and irregular trade and commerce practices, land policy, relations with the Indians, and the building of provincial roads. Clearly these pressing civil and economic problems took precedence over religious affairs. Candidly, only a handful of colonial governors demonstrated strong interest in the affairs and advancement of the King’s church, and those who did may have done so for a variety of reasons. Some of the officials may have supported the church as a means of underscoring their royal appointment as the King’s chief agent in the colony, representing the Crown’s prerogatives. Doubtless a few of the men may have acted on behalf of the church because of their own religious preferences, or more pragmatically to catch the approving eyes of London officials in hope of advancing their careers. No matter how well disposed some governors may have been towards the church, they may have faced divisive political consequences among the community if they forthrightly supported the interest of the King’s church. With a population that was becoming more diverse in national origins and religious affiliation after 1720 a governor’s public support of the church would have created political difficulties. The forty-year period between 1675 and 1715 shaped the course of the King’s church in America for the remainder of the colonial era. During this period strong and innovative civil and ecclesiastical leadership in London implemented policies, procedures, and appointments for governing an emerging empire. Advancing the church’s interests were the reigning

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monarchs, Lord Danby, Bishop of London Henry Compton, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, Secretary of the Board of Trade William Blathwayt, and in the colonies Edward Randolph, Edmund Andros, and Francis Nicholson. These were decades in which the church was established in Maryland, in the four lower counties of New York, and in North and South Carolina. Under the guidance of imperial officials the first congregations were established in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. In London bishops Compton and Tenison energetically endorsed the founding in 1701 of Thomas Bray’s Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. An agency that recruited, appointed, and supported for colonial posts 309 men between 1701 and 1783. During the colonial period more than 30 provincial officers – governors, customs officers, and judges – became members of the Society. The King’s church would have made little if any progress in the New England, Middle, or Southern Colonies without the financial support of the Society. More difficult to measure, yet a vital factor in the growth of the church during this era, was the rising anglicization of American society after 1690. Doubtless that cultural influence contributed to an increased acceptance of the church in the provinces, particularly in the key seaports and larger towns. A cavalcade of governors in the late seventeenth century, and throughout the eighteenth, aided the advancement of the King’s church. Included in these ranks were Andros, Dudley, Shirley, and Pownall in Massachusetts; the Wentworths in New Hampshire; Fletcher, Bellomont, Cornbury, Hunter, and Moore in New York; Nicholson in Maryland; Andros, Nicholson, Spotswood, and Gooch in Virginia; Eden, Dobbs, and Tryon in North Carolina; and Wright in Georgia. Their individual efforts were of varying intensity and duration. Nonetheless each governor made notable efforts. I turn now to an examination of the contributions of five imperial officers who more actively than their colleagues supported the cause of the King’s church in their provinces.

Francis Nicholson During the century before the outbreak of the American Revolution, Governor Francis Nicholson was the preeminent advocate of the King’s church in early America. He belongs to that small group of officials who might be classified as professional imperial administrators. Nicholson, in an American career that stretched across four decades, served as governor in four colonies and lieutenant governor in two provinces: Dominion of New England (lieutenant governor 1688–89), Maryland (governor 1692–98), Virginia (lieutenant governor 1690–92, governor 1698–1705), Nova Scotia (1713, military governor), and South Carolina (governor 1720–28). As one of the first wave of royal administrators during the new era for oversight of England’s distant

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empire, he brought an imperial vision to his several assignments in America. These values called for defending, preserving and extending the limits of Great Britain’s empire while maintaining social stability, tranquility, and prosperity within the provinces under his command. Throughout his career Nicholson’s efforts pointed toward the royalization of the provinces. His attacks on proprietorial and charter rights, on religious descent, and on economic license and legislative government, were balanced by services in defending the people and education. Nicholson’s goal as a governor was to establish royal authority and its concomitants, social order and security.22 As he put it, all his actions tended ‘to God’s Glory, to his Majesty’s Interest and service; and after those two most great and important affairs; to do the Country which he governs all the good he can.23 An imaginative and talented man, he planned the development of two colonial capitals, Annapolis and Williamsburg. Nicholson was born at Downholme Park near Richmond, in Yorkshire, on part of the large Bolton estate, on 12 November 1655; his parentage is unknown.24 He spent his youth as a page in the service of the Duchess of Bolton. In 1679 he entered the army and served several years in Tangier, as courier and aide-de-camp to the governor. He began his long association with the plantations, a relationship that was to last till his death in 1728, as captain of a company of infantrymen sent to New England in 1686 under Sir Edmund Andros, governor of the Dominion. In 1688 Nicholson was appointed by the king to be lieutenant governor of the province with his residence at New York. He served less than a year, for upon learning of the revolution in England he returned to London to report the rebellious movements of the supporters of Jacob Leisler, the outspoken proponent of the accession of William and Mary. An undocumented account claims that Nicholson, in 1686, had knelt when mass was celebrated in the king’s camp at Hounslow Heath, identifying himself with the many easy conformists who, for need and desire of office, maintained ambivalent religious commitments. But Nicholson probably fled from New York to avoid imprisonment rather than report on the uprising. The London officials did not reassign him to New York although they confirmed their support by naming him lieutenant governor of Virginia (1690–92) under the absentee Roman Catholic governor, Lord Howard of Effingham. It was in Virginia that Nicholson began what was probably his most masterful and popular administration. He promptly launched a survey of the officers and privates in the army and of guns and military stores, and sent interpreters to friendly Indians in an attempt to attract them to assist imperial policy against the French. Nicholson traveled up the many rivers visiting the outposts of his province and of Maryland and kept up correspondence with officials in New York and Massachusetts, informing and being informed on affairs throughout the colonies, an important means toward understanding and advancing imperial policy.

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Highly respected by London officials, Nicholson traveled to other colonies to gather information on the practice of colonial administration. After visits to Philadelphia and Newport in the 1690s he reported that there was a need to establish the English church in both communities. Soon afterwards ministers were recruited and appointed to fill both posts. Nicholson’s career demonstrates the oftentimes-symbiotic relations of Church and military leader in imposing royal authority on the empire. Doubtless his primary aim in his very generous benefactions to Anglican churches and church colleges in the colonies was to support the teaching of political obedience to a new generation of colonial leaders.25 Nicholson made substantial financial contributions to the building funds of churches in the New England, Middle, and Chesapeake colonies. George Keith, the former Quaker and first missionary sent by the S.P.G. to America, toured the colonies during 1702–03, reporting to the Society’s secretary, John Chamberlayne that Nicholson had contributed towards the erection of fourteen churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia £25 each, a total of £350. More than twenty years later, the Reverend Samuel Myles, longtime rector of King’s Chapel in Boston, wrote to Bishop of London Edmund Gibson that Nicholson had been a ‘kind of friend’ to King’s Chapel and has given ‘many scores of pounds’ to the churches in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.26 As governor of Maryland he contributed £100 towards the initial efforts of the College of William and Mary. Nicholson’s regard for the church was probably anchored on several foundations; in his personal commitment, his official duty, and on behalf of his concern to advance his career with government officials in London. In February 1692, Nicholson learned that he had been appointed lieutenant to the governor of Maryland, Colonel Lionel Copley. His appointment was due to his close association with the leader of the Church party in Parliament, Lord Nottingham. He, with the support of the Duke of Bolton, Secretary of the Lords of Trade William Blathwayt, and Henry Compton Bishop of London, arranged to send out Nicholson as governor of Maryland.27 For Nicholson loyalty to the state church and its political philosophy became a basis of his government. The governor encouraged the establishment of a free school at Annapolis, which later became St. John’s College, urged modification in the procedures of justice and revenue, strengthened the militia and eliminated the province’s public debt; administration became more efficient and systematic. During his second term as governor in Virginia (1698–1705) Nicholson was known for his piety, generous support of the clergy, and sponsorship for the fledgling College of William and Mary. The College was exposed to the secular and political uses of an Erastian church. It was supported as it was by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, sustained by county fund-raising committees (which the lieutenant governor converted into political support for his ‘Court’ party), and governed by a board headed

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by Governor Nicholson as Rector of the College. Nicholson’s activity in the colonies for twenty years as a member of the S.P.G. was a hallmark of royal support for the Society. He was the first of thirty colonial governors who became members of the Society during the seventy-five years preceding the Revolution.28 Elected at the eighth meeting of the Society on 21 November 1701, he annually made contributions to the organization.29 Nicholson returned to England in 1705 but little is known of him during the next four years. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1708 and consistently attended and participated in the monthly meetings of the S.P.G., and frequently attended the weekly sessions of the Society’s standing committee.30 He served as one of the S.P.G.’s auditors and signed the annual financial report whenever his presence in London coincided with the yearly anniversary meetings of the Society’s founding. In October 1712 Queen Anne commissioned Nicholson as General and Commander-in-Chief of the military forces in Nova Scotia. But it was not until August 1713, when all the Instructions had been drafted and granted to Nicholson, that he was able to sail for Boston. He also had a series of broad-gauged instructions to inquire into provincial finances, clandestine trade, prize money, and ecclesiastical affairs throughout the northern colonies. Nicholson’s assignment triggered alarm among the ranks of colonial governors. The Society, meeting on 26 September 1712, deputed Nicholson to survey and inspect the affairs of the S.P.G. in the provinces and to report his findings to that organization.31 It was a highly unusual appointment for a layman because Nicholson was undertaking duties that in England were always reserved for a diocesan bishop or his deputy. He was to receive accounts from the missionaries on the state of the parishes they served and the condition of their churches, parsonages, and libraries. The few schoolmasters and catechists subsidized by the Society were to report on their work to Nicholson too.32 The general carried with him sermons and pamphlets printed by the Society and other helpful theological and pastoral books for distribution to their missionaries who were especially located in the middle and New England colonies.33 Nicholson recommended to London officials that a colonial bishop should be appointed to settle quarrels among the clergy and to provide ecclesiastical order and discipline. His proposal was exhaustively considered by the Society during 1714 but came to nothing. He recommended also that additional missionaries, schoolmasters, and catechists were required and that there was a need to establish libraries and undertake evangelistic work among the Indians.34 Nicholson’s review of the King’s church in the colonies in 1713–14 on behalf of the Society provided London officials with a wealth of first-hand information. He gathered and forwarded to the S.P.G. letters and memorials from clergymen, churchwardens, and vestrymen. The detailed account allowed the Society to deploy its funds and missionaries in a more informed and strategic manner. In retrospect, Nicholson’s survey of the colonial church

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was of signal interest to London leaders because it represented the only occasion during the colonial period that a continental appraisal of the church was undertaken. After the accession of George I in 1714 General Nicholson’s various commissions were not renewed. He retired to England and for the next few years, advised the Board of Trade and Plantations and continued his twodecade interest in the affairs of the Society. In 1720, at the age of sixty-five, Nicholson undertook his last provincial appointment, as governor of South Carolina. Again, the S.P.G. turned to Nicholson for a report on the affairs of the church in South Carolina.35 Although for more than thirty years the proprietors were responsible under the terms of their charter for the building and maintenance of the church, little or nothing had been accomplished. After a longstanding and contentious controversy between Anglicans and nonconformists the Assembly established the King’s church in the province in 1706. Four years earlier the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had begun to send missionaries to the province and provide them with an annual stipend, yet the church developed slowly. Unquestionably the twin contributions of men and money by the Society was essential for the church to succeed in the colony. The Yamassee revolt of 1715–16 had drastically sapped the economic resources of the sparsely settled colony, and many of the colonists, including several parsons, had had their homes and possessions destroyed by the attacking Indians. The need for the population to carry the substantial public debt encumbered by the war prompted inflation and a monetary crisis. Governor Nicholson commended the church and its ministers to the colonial assembly in August 1721 for increased financial assistance to balance the higher cost of living.36 Nicholson reported to the Society, on 6 July 1722, that the statute had been enacted.37 In a Memorial presented to the S.P.G. on his return to London in 1723, Commissary Bull stated that the ‘church flourishes and Governor Nicholson takes every opportunity to promote its interest and those of the clergy’.38 He continuously informed the Society of the need for ministers, schoolmasters, and such printed materials as sermons and theological pamphlets. His efforts in South Carolina had been practiced earlier in every colony that he served. Nicholson exercized to a greater degree than any other colonial governor his royal instructions relating to ecclesiastical affairs. Yet he never emphasized religious affairs at the expense of his duties on legislative, judicial, financial, military, or land affairs. For Nicholson ecclesiastical affairs were an integral part of his understanding and practice of the office of an imperial administrator. The currency crisis in South Carolina and Nicholson’s neutral position on the issue prompted the merchants of Charles Town to petition the crown for his recall in 1725. In poor health and seventy-five years old, Nicholson requested a leave of absence and sailed for England on 17 May. During the

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remaining three years of his life he advised the Board of Trade and Plantations and the Society on colonial affairs. Upon his death on 5 March 1728, Nicholson granted in his will, drafted 24 March 1727, that his property in America should be sold for the benefit of the S.P.G. and for all persons who would come from New England for ordination and return to work as missionaries in America.39 Nicholson also designated the sale of ninety-two acres of land in an undisclosed area of Maryland with the proceeds for the benefit of the Society. Commissary James Blair informed the S.P.G. that Nicholson owned ‘only a few lots of land in Virginia, each [parcel] about one-half acre’.40

Robert Hunter and Alexander Spotswood Nearly a generation after Nicholson began his career as an American imperial officer Robert Hunter and Alexander Spotswood followed in his path: Hunter as governor of New York and New Jersey (1709–19), and Alexander Spotswood as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia (1710–22). Both men had distinguished military careers, serving with the forces of the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession and fighting in the battle of Blenheim in 1704.41 Their performances on the battlefield and wide acquaintances aided the advancement of their civil careers. The men entered their duties with a vigor disconcerting to people inclined to reduce government activity to a minimum.42 Both officials employed the King’s church as a vital agent in the implementation of their policies to anglicize the frontiers. As the War of the Spanish Succession continued until 1713, the defense of the frontier against the French in Canada was a major issue for Hunter. In Virginia Spotswood sought to stabilize the fur trade and establish an enlightened Indian policy. Hunter aimed to secure the powerful Iroquois to the British cause.43 His scheme to guarantee their allegiance was to bind them to the English by the shared cultural ties of religion and language. Hunter petitioned the Society to send missionaries and schoolmasters to New York not only to anglicize natives, but also to persuade Europeans to a ‘uniformity in worship’.44 The governor’s strategy was to introduce English culture and religion with the goal of minimizing differences and sources of conflict among diverse people. Hunter believed that colonial government would be aided by strengthening the church. Recruiting a minister for the assignment who understood, spoke, and wrote the Iroquois language was a difficult task for the Society. Between 1709 and 1762 four men served at irregular intervals in an attempt to fulfill Hunter’s design and that of a later imperial officer, Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs. While Hunter believed in religion as a means of social discipline, his own personal attitude toward the Anglican church was ambiguous. Perhaps his lack of strong conviction or attachment to the church was shaped by his earlier Scottish Presbyterian background or by ideas of the Enlightenment. While his fervor for the

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church’s interests was strong as measured against other officials, it nonetheless paled when compared to the efforts of Governor Nicholson. This circumstance was probably shaped by the local clergy’s intrigue challenging the governor’s authority. Launched by the minister of Trinity Church in New York City, William Vesey, the dispute simmered for two or three years.45 Hunter appealed to his old friend the aging Bishop of London Henry Compton to intercede and settle the matter. The prelate promptly urged Vesey and the other men to immediately reconcile with the governor. Spotswood’s program in Virginia was in part an imperial defense policy to protect the colony from marauding Indian forces.46 The governor recognized that behind the Indians were the Spanish and French interests. Spotswood attempted to implement a program to convert the Indians and to establish a school at the College of William and Mary for the education of their children.47 Bishop Compton and William Blathwayt, Secretary of the Board of Trade, supported his plan in London.48 As a member of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel he pleaded with the officers to assist the project by sending two missionaries to serve on two reservations instructing the local students. At his own expense Spotswood resettled one group of Indians on the southern boundary of Virginia in what later became Brunswick County and within two years seventy students were enrolled in the school.49 Support was not forthcoming from London. In a final proposal for assistance Spotswood suggested that a branch of the London-based Society should be organized in Virginia, consisting of the higher civil officials, the commissary, and clergymen. London officials were neither interested in nor supportive of the project.50 During his administration Spotswood encountered several disputes with the House of Burgess. Among the issues at stake were the Tobacco Act, the Indian Act, his land policy, and the newly created courts of oyer and terminer. Between 1717 and 1720 he was further embroiled in a dispute involving the Virginia vestries, Commissary James Blair, and the colonial Council regarding the rights and procedure for the induction of a minister into a parish.51 The governor claimed that his royal commission provided the right of collating ministers to benefices in the colony ‘as often as any of them shall happen to be void’.52 Pressure was brought to Spotswood from London civil and ecclesiastical officials and the dispute ended without resolution.

Benning and John Wentworth For nearly thirty years two successive governors of New Hampshire actively attempted to increase the presence of the King’s church in the province by proposing a unique land allotment policy. It was a curious strategy for the royal officials to pursue because the Congregational Church was established in the province and remained so until 1819. We must raise the question as

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to how Governors Benning and John Wentworth came to promote such a policy. The Wentworths were descended from early New Hampshire settlers who played an active role in the political and business life of the colony. Benning’s father, John, had served as a member of the Provincial Council and as lieutenant governor of the colony (1717–30). In 1732 Benning became a member of the Council and in 1741 he was appointed the royal governor.53 His nephew John followed him in the office and continued championing the royal prerogative in the province (1767–76).54 For nearly three-quarters of a century the Wentworths were a forceful and controversial political dynasty in New Hampshire. In contrast to earlier royal governors and advocates of the King’s church in America, such as Francis Nicholson, Robert Hunter and Alexander Spotswood, the Wentworths were not veterans of England’s wars and were unfamiliar with the political and bureaucratic network at Whitehall and the Board of Trade. Instead Benning and the second John were partners and beneficiaries of the family’s counting houses in Boston and Portsmouth and graduates of Harvard College. Their personal lives reflected the impact of the anglicization process for the family. Benning’s house at Little Harbor near Portsmouth was of the style and refinement of the estates of countless English gentry. Both men had spent several years in London observing and experiencing metropolitan ways, and forming commercial and political links with merchants in the City and officials in the government.55 Benning Wentworth was a convert from the Congregational church and had been married in Boston at Increase Mather’s church. Soon after his appointment to the New Hampshire Council he joined with other family members and a handful of associates to establish the first congregation of the King’s church in the colony at Portsmouth.56 It is possible that the action represented in part a token act of defiance toward Governor Jonathan Belcher of Massachusetts who had strenuously lobbied London officials at the Board of Trade against the appointment of Benning Wentworth to the New Hampshire Council, as the colony and Massachusetts were locked in a dispute over the boundary between the two colonies that may have contributed to the founding of the English church in the provincial capital. Another factor may have been that the Belcher and Wentworth families maintained influential commercial interests in Boston, businesses that may have been in competition. Soon after his appointment as royal governor of New Hampshire in 1741, Benning disclosed that he strongly viewed the national church as an integral factor in royal government. He wrote to the customs officer at Newport, Rhode Island, Joseph Harrison, that religion ‘is part of Man’s political character, and that a more active Anglican church in the province would produce desirable effects in the administration of civil government’. In accepting election to membership in the London-based Society for the

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Propagation of the Gospel in 1743 he declared that he hoped that succeeding royal governors would be ‘true sons of the Church’.57 Perhaps anticipating possible disputes, he distributed the Society’s numerous tracts in New Hampshire among the Indians rather than the Congregationalists, and perhaps tweaking Governor Belcher again he urged the S.P.G. to send additional missionaries to Massachusetts. Wentworth advocated a unique plan for the New Hampshire church, perhaps inspired by Bishop of Oxford Thomas Secker’s 1741 Anniversary Sermon before the London-based Society calling for the appointment of an American bishop. At his own expense Benning offered a grant of land for a colonial prelate if the Society would encourage King George III to make the appointment. Political circumstances in England, as on earlier occasions, precluded consideration by London officials of an American episcopate. In 1744 Governor Wentworth offered the S.P.G. land grants of 320 acres in each of about forty townships for the support of Society missionaries.58 A similar offer was made for the first Congregational minister in each town. Wentworth’s proposal attracted little attention from London officials. Perhaps it was felt that the colony’s thin population was not sufficient to support such a program, or funds were not available to meet the additional expense for the missionaries’ salaries, or that the risk of running into a dispute with the Congregationalists was not worth the trouble. Neither project was ever implemented. Advancing age, illness, and political complications prompted Benning Wentworth to step down from office in 1767. The Board of Trade appointed his nephew John to the governorship, a familiar figure in London and a distant relative and friend of the Marquis of Rockingham.59 In addition to his gubernatorial office Wentworth was appointed Judge of Admiralty, and in succession to his uncle, Surveyor of the King’s Woods in America. He immediately embossed his administration with a style more English than colonial in taste. A Rhode Islander passing through Portsmouth noted that ‘The Governor, who resides in town, is a gentleman of great affability and amiable in his manners, and lives in high style; and too many endeavor to imitate his mode of living, whose circumstances would forbid it’.60 Governor John Wentworth was faced with several political challenges.61 He embraced his uncle’s policy of applying the King’s church as an element of imperial policy.62 Writing to Joseph Harrison, the Collector of Customs in Boston in 1769, the governor enhanced his uncle’s plans for the King’s church in the province. He proposed to encourage the church by appointing a chaplain to the governor who would be the chief minister among a band of itinerant Anglican ministers.63 Wentworth claimed that the colony was not well supplied with ministers of any religious group and that several controversies raged among those present. In April 1770 Governor Wentworth reported to the Bishop of London Richard Terrick that as the population of the colony was rapidly increasing

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he believed that it could be won for the King’s church if the Society would immediately begin to send missionaries. To ease the financial burden for the S.P.G. he proposed a decreasing scale of financial assistance necessary as the settlements grew in strength.64 In retrospect, John Wentworth’s administration was handicapped from the beginning, overshadowed by a cloud of political problems. His first effort in 1767 was to keep New Hampshire from being involved in the intercolonial protest against the Townshend Acts. His success in keeping the province loyal, for which he was commended by the king himself, he laid to his policy of being absolutely open and frank, and of talking over with the popular leaders every possible source of trouble before it became a crisis. The Whigs and the Congregational clergy liked him.65 During his term in office he recognized that the expansion of the King’s church in America was a sensitive issue in all of the colonies. He counseled that his program would have to be initiated slowly and that the new missionaries should not make open attempts to proselytize. Wentworth concluded that the church would expand in New Hampshire if it followed this strategy and would prove to be a significant aid in securing allegiance to the crown.66 Overwhelmed by cascading revolutionary events in 1774 and 1775, Wentworth fled first to Boston and then to Long Island, to Newport in May 1777, and finally sailed for England on 7 February 1778.67 For more than three decades two generations of Wentworth governors attempted to extend the King’s church in New Hampshire. Yet at the opening of the American Revolution in 1776 the church had made little progress in the colony. It is a moot question whether the English church would have advanced in the province if the Society had responded in a more forthright manner to the challenges of Benning and John Wentworth and provided a stream of ministers to serve all or part of the proposed townships. For nearly a century before the American Revolution the governors were provided with instructions for their supervisory duties over the King’s church. Responsible to the Board of Trade, the chief provincial civil officers were also ordered to respect the jurisdiction of the bishop of London for the church. The period between the late 1670s and about 1720 represented the high-water mark for the leadership by the governors on behalf of the church, a circumstance fashioned by such factors as the expanding policies of the Board of Trade for imperial administration, the cooperative interest of the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury, and the founding of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. All strong-willed officials, the governors cajoled the legislatures to establish the church in Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and to strengthen its foundation in Virginia. The unyielding leadership of such colonial executives as Andros, Nicholson, and Fletcher, despite formidable opposition from nonconformist clergymen and politicians, laid the groundwork for the church in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and

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Virginia, and indeed the course for the church during the remainder of the colonial era. Unlike the commissaries, the bishop of London’s deputies, the governors could accomplish goals that they could not. As the chief civil officers they could persuade, influence, negotiate, and induce legislatures to act on ecclesiastical matters, while the commissaries, despite the historical and legal nature of their office in England, were limited in the colonies to striving to accomplish their programs by persuasion. After 1720 the tide turned and the royal governors played a diminished role in the advancement of the church. Doubtless this was due to pressing matters of defense, trade, and a steady stream of immigration that gave rise to a more diverse population nationally and religiously. A final flourish was exercised by Arthur Dobbs and William Tryon, successive governors of North Carolina in the 1750s and 1760s in their efforts to finally wrench from the legislature an act establishing the church.68 While it may be recognized as an accomplishment for imperial administration, by any measurement it was a token gesture in a colony dominated by the numbers of Quakers and Presbyterians. Despite establishment the church’s status in the province was little improved; it was a weak institution before 1765 and little changed afterwards.

5 The Commissaries: Deputies of the Bishop of London

The shared responsibilities for colonial church affairs delegated to the royal governors and successive bishops of London were shaped by Henry Compton.1 For the governors, their instructions required them to oversee that The Book of Common Prayer was read each Sunday, that the Holy Communion was celebrated according to the rites of the Church of England, and that no clergyman was to be inducted into a benefice in their governments without a certificate from the bishop of London. This delegation of partial oversight for the church to a civil officer was a departure from the regular practice in English dioceses. It diminished the authority of the London prelate responsible for ecclesiastical matters and effectively divided supervisory duties for the provincial church between civil and ecclesiastical officers. In hindsight it was a policy fraught with potential conflict. In Virginia in the late 1680s and in Maryland at the turn of the eighteenth century there was a need for supervision because the number of clergy and congregations were increasing in both provinces. A distinctively English response to the problem was the appointment by Bishop of London Henry Compton of commissaries to oversee the men and churches. It also seems to have been a policy born out of Compton’s recent suspension from episcopal office at the hands of civil officials. He had been at the center of a prolonged constitutional crisis that pitted him against the Catholic King James II. It was more than a conflict between a king and a bluntly anti-Catholic prelate. It became a dispute over the right of civil officials to countermand the authority and policy of a bishop of the national church. King James II suspended Compton from episcopal office in 1686 for not disciplining the attacks on Roman Catholicism by Dr. John Sharp, one of the clergymen of the London diocese.2 During Compton’s suspension, the administration of the diocese of London and of the church in the West Indies was in the hands of Bishops Thomas Sprat of Rochester, Nathaniel Crewe of Durham, and Thomas White of Peterborough. He was not reinstated until Prince William of Orange and Princess Mary became King and Queen in 1689. Compton’s confrontation with and estrangement from 58

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civil officials over ecclesiastical obligations and rights marked the remainder of his episcopate. Compton’s experience may have modified and sharpened his concern for the supervision of the American church. As the author of the provision in the governor’s royal instructions that had split supervision over the King’s church between civil and ecclesiastical officials, Compton now boldly stepped forward to appoint his own deputies. His decision testified to his active jurisdiction over matters that had not been delegated to the royal governors. It was a positive administrative step because the transplanted colonial church had many real disadvantages. The institution lacked either a resident or visiting prelate to fulfill such episcopal duties as confirmation, ordination, and consecration of church buildings. Furthermore, a colonial candidate for holy orders had to travel to England to receive ordination, a journey usually of four to seven weeks. The trip was expensive; it cost about £100 round trip, and was hazardous too, not only on the high seas but also in London where the smallpox scourge was then present. Under the Council of Trade’s jurisdiction over the colonial church the bishop had the right to appoint commissaries for overseer duties.3 Compton’s appointments represented the strongest possible official substitute for a resident bishop. Their primary duty was to provide clerical supervision over the American church and to serve as the main link for communication between the London prelate and the ministers in each colony. Although the commissary’s office was useful in England it proved difficult to establish in the colonies. The origin of the office of commissary is a legacy of the medieval English church’s diocesan ecclesiastical administration: a position that took recognized form in the diocese of Canterbury by the late thirteenth century and about 1350 in the diocese of Lincoln.4 Following the English Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer issued in 1547 a commissarial commission that allowed jurisdiction in all causes, including marriage and divorce. It further granted power to the appointee to sequester fruits, induct to benefices, issue dispensations for marriages without banns published, inquire and punish those charged with blasphemy and perjury, and hold testamentary jurisdiction over men dying within the diocese. Appointment to the office was for life. By 1575 the commissaries were allowed to visit clergy and parishes. By tradition the post was held by a priest, an equal in the ministerial office of those over whom he had jurisdiction. It was an office rooted in the diocesan administrative practices of the medieval church and it was passing from usage in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nonetheless, this was a significant precedent for Bishop of London Henry Compton and the men he appointed to commissaryships in the colonies. Over the course of four or five centuries the office had been defined and refined by experience and church law.5 A primary duty for the deputies was to conduct parish visitations.6 Bishops or their deputies were to visit the

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parishes in their jurisdictions at least once every three years and could, if necessary, preside over a lawful court. These proceedings included inspection of letters of orders and licenses of the parsons, vicars, curates and schoolmasters. Additionally, articles of inquiry were to be delivered to churchwardens, who were also to take their oath of office.7 It was also the custom to undertake an inspection of the furniture and fabric of the church and parsonage.

Establishing the office in the colonies Compton appointed James Blair commissary to Virginia on 15 December 1689, fifteen months after his reinstatement to episcopal office. Introduced to Compton by Gilbert Burnet sometime earlier, Blair was the first of seventeen men to be appointed commissaries of the bishops of London in the colonies prior to the American Revolution.8 His commission granted ‘all and every power of carrying out and performing . . . whatever pertains and belongs, or ought to pertain and belong, to the office . . . , by law or custom according to the laws, canons and constitutions followed and observed in the Church of England’.9 The traditional responsibilities of commissaries were delegated to summon the clergy, conduct visitations, administer oaths customary in ecclesiastical courts, and administer discipline or judicial proceedings to wayward clergy either by admonition, suspension, or excommunication. Appeals from any judgments, decrees, or sentences passed by the officer or an ecclesiastical court over which he presided in the colonies, however, were to be allowed before the Privy Council. The commissary was also allowed to appoint one or more of his ministerial colleagues as substitutes in his place whenever necessary.10 An important exception to the traditional English episcopal privileges was the authority and powers for granting licenses for marriages, proving wills, and conferring of benefices, reserved by the crown for the colonial governors and so stated in their royal instructions on ecclesiastical affairs.11 Unlike the commissaries in England, however, the colonial officials were not appointed for life. The commissions issued to the deputies were valid during the episcopal term of the grantor in the diocese of London. If a bishop died or was translated to another see, his successor decided whether or not to reappoint commissaries. The commission was terminated whenever the episcopal office became vacant.

A profile of the commissaries Throughout the colonial era the duties delegated to the deputies were not easily fulfilled. First, they were separated from their superior, the bishop of London, by 3,500 miles, and any communication of either a routine or an urgent matter encountered the delay of transatlantic communication.

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Second, the commissary was not a bishop but a minister charged by a prelate to administer among his peers. Their colleagues were generally less inclined to unquestioningly accept and support the officer and his duties. Without the full endorsement of their fellow ministers the commissaries found it difficult to exercise their office with either persistence or vigor. Third, the ecclesiastical responsibilities delegated to the royal governors collided with the authority of the bishop of London’s deputies and provided unceasing confusion and conflict, but the office was never transplanted to any of the colonies with the authority and reputation that it held in England. In South Carolina, Gideon Johnston’s reception as commissary among his fellow ministers was at best cool. He remarked that ‘the commission my Lord of London has favored me with is a great trust, but I must be plain and say that a Commissary here as far as I can yet see is but a mere empty title, vox et preterea nihil (a call and thereafter nothing)’.12 To colonial observers the appointment of commissaries reminded them of the worst features of the hierarchy and work of the English Church. They feared the political and social power of bishops, the prospect of ecclesiastical courts in secular and religious life, and that the commissary, a minor official of the national church, was in fact part of England’s overseas imperial-political organization. From the first appointment of a commissary to Virginia in 1689, to the last weak vestiges of the office and officer on the eve of the American Revolution, these sentiments shadowed the church’s presence. Consequently, throughout most of the eighteenth century the several commissaries, recognizing critical popular opinion, seldom exercised the English traditions and duties of the office. Despite the novelty, limitations, and peculiarities of the office the men appointed commissaries by the London prelates were able and well-educated ministers. All but two have been traced as having taken university degrees; five were graduates of Oxford, two from Cambridge, two from Trinity College in Dublin, one from Edinburgh, one from Glasgow, another from Aberdeen and one each from Yale and Harvard. Certainly two, and possibly three of the men were born in the colonies, seven were born in Britain, three in Ireland, two in Scotland, and the birthplace of two of the officials is unknown. At least seven of the clergy had held cures in England, Scotland, or Ireland. James Blair of Virginia had been rector of the parish of Cranston in the diocese of Edinburgh, while Gideon Johnston of South Carolina had held a cure in the province of Tuam in Ireland, and his successor, Alexander Garden, served as curate of Barking Church in London. In Maryland Christopher Wilkinson also held the position of curate at Armley in Yorkshire, while in Boston Roger Price was concurrently rector of Leigh, Essex, from 1726 until his death in 1762, and held livings at Durrington and Wiltshire, where he employed curates on his behalf.13 Presumably most if not all of these men were familiar with the purpose and function of the commissarial post before going out to the colonies. They, unlike William Vesey and

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Henry Barclay, who were colonial born and successive commissaries at New York, had studied, lived, and worked within the hierarchical structure of the Church of England. All of the commissaries in the colonies were incumbents of prominent parishes and most were located in the provincial capitals, centers of local politics, business, and culture. The governors, many of whom were Anglicans and eager to advance the church’s interests while promoting their own careers, usually attended Sunday services in one of these churches. In Boston the Reverend Roger Price served King’s Chapel (1729–46) before moving to Hopkinton for the closing years of his ministry in America (1746–53). While at New York, William Vesey, occupant of the pulpit at Trinity Church and commissary between 1714 and 1746, was succeeded in both offices by Henry Barclay (1748). Archibald Cummings, nephew of Edmund Gibson, and the only relative of an English bishop I have discovered who received the benefits of ecclesiastical patronage in America, was rector of the prominent and beautiful Wren-like Christ Church, Philadelphia (1726–41) and commissary of the Pennsylvania church (1732–41). Robert Jenney (1743–48) succeeded him in the post. In Maryland, Jacob Henderson was rector of St. Anne’s, Annapolis, and first appointed commissary of the western shore by Bishop John Robinson (1716–23); he was reappointed by Gibson in 1730 for all Maryland and served until his resignation from office in 1735. The Reverend Christopher Wilkinson served the Eastern Shore of the province (1716–23) only during Robinson’s tenure as bishop of London. In Virginia James Blair’s commissarial successors, William Dawson (1743–52), Thomas Dawson (1752–61), William Robinson (1761–67), James Horrocks (1768–72) and John Camm (1775–79) followed in his footsteps too as head of the College of William and Mary and as members of the Colonial Council. Furthermore, all of the Virginia commissaries except Horrocks served as rector of the local church, Bruton Parish, Williamsburg, during their terms of office. Gideon Johnston and Alexander Garden served successively as the minister of St. Philip’s Church in Charles Town, South Carolina between 1708 and 1753.14

Commissarial duties A keystone of the duties English commissaries conducted were provincial visitations, a familiar diocesan practice. After the Restoration of Charles II in England most of the bishops pursued their duty diligently in this respect. Visitations by bishops themselves probably became more frequent; Compton personally held six in the Diocese of London (1677, 1685, 1690, 1693–94, 1700, and 1706) in twenty-nine years.15 Edmund Gibson, a London prelate, continued the visitation pattern and inquiries of his distinguished predecessor William Wake, in the diocese of Lincoln, in May 1718, and August 1721. Bishop Gibson held his first visitation in the London diocese in 1724, less than a year after his translation from Lincoln. He had some years earlier

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been archdeacon of Surrey, and had issued in 1713 a pamphlet on ‘Visitations Parochial and General’. Questions asked related to the size of the parish; the number of church families and dissenters who resided in the parish; whether a public school, charity school, parochial library, almshouse, and hospital were established in the area; the frequency of public services, of the administration of Holy Communion, and the season for catechizing parishioners; and the condition of the church buildings, parsonages and glebes. It was not only a charge to the clergy and churchwardens on their duties, but in a learned fashion it traced the legal and historical development of their responsibilities, too.16 Simultaneous with the queries sent to clergy resident within London diocese in March and April 1724, Gibson also distributed a modified visitation questionnaire to ministers in the American colonies.17 The form of the colonial inquiries was necessarily different. The bishop wanted to know how long the men had been in the provinces, the location of their parishes and missions, whether they had received licenses to officiate from the previous bishops of London, and if they had been inducted into their livings. He was also interested in the methods of converting the Indians and slaves. Gibson’s initiative to gather information about the vitality and practices of the church in America indicates his sense of commitment to the supervision of colonial church affairs. Although he had reservations about his jurisdiction over the colonial church, which was not clarified until George II issued a Royal Commission in 1728 granting that authority to him, the prelate included the provinces within his administrative proceedings.18 Soon after receiving his royal instrument Gibson appointed deputies to New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. Only during his term as London diocesan were commissaries so widely appointed in the colonies. Commissaries in several colonies conducted twenty-four identifiable visitations, meetings distinct from clergy conventions.20 As Table 5.1(a) notes, the visitations were held in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. The proceedings were held from time to time between 1690 and 1748. In Virginia, New York, New England, and Pennsylvania the sessions were infrequent: James Blair held two visitations in the Old Dominion, in 1690 and 1700, while in New York parsons assembled only twice, in 1718 and 1748, and New England and Pennsylvania held only one session each, in 1743. Visitations were most frequently convened in Maryland during the period between 1700 and 1731 and in South Carolina between 1708 and 1740. Maryland accounts for ten (41.67 per cent) of the twenty-four sessions conducted during the colonial period, while South Carolina follows closely behind with eight (33.33 per cent) meetings. All but one of the sessions in Maryland were held between 1717 and 1731, and all but one in South Carolina during the eleven-year period between 1729 and 1740. In both Maryland,

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The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church Table 5.1(a) Colonial visitations conducted by commissaries Colony or region

Number

New England New York Pennsylvania Maryland (Eastern and Western Shore) Virginia South Carolina

1 2 1 10

Total

24

2 8

(b) Visitations conducted by decade 1690–99 1700–09 1710–19 1720–29 1730–39 1740–49 Total

1 3 5 4 7 4 2419

on the eastern and western shores of Chesapeake Bay in which commissarial jurisdictions were established, and in South Carolina, visitations were conducted during periods of strong commissarial leadership, and favorable and supportive leadership for the church in the office of the royal governor. The records of the visitation sessions indicate that the procedure in the colonies was quite similar to that employed in England. A sermon preached either by the commissary or a selected minister opened the meetings, followed either by a reading of the charge from the bishop of London or his deputy, or both, to the assembly. The commissary formally inspected the clergy’s essential letters of orders and licenses from the Bishop of London to officiate in the colonies and he also encouraged consultation on colonial church affairs. Thomas Bray’s visitation of the Maryland clergy in Annapolis, 23 May 1700, approved resolutions on methods of catechizing parishioners, raised a subscription to aid and settle a missionary in Pennsylvania, and heard a complaint of immorality against a fellow-provincial parson, George Tubman.21 Christopher Wilkinson, commissary of the Western Shore of Maryland, informed Bishop Robinson that he had read his commission in Latin at the visitation held 8 May 1717, delivered his charge to the clergy and articles of inquiry to the churchwardens, following ‘the method I observed in England’.22 In 1730 visitations in Maryland and South Carolina were concerned with the threat of Deism. The Deistical writers, who claimed

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that final authority rested not in the literal interpretation of Holy Scripture but in human reason, and who urged that the judgment of reason upon the Scriptures must be brought into harmony with the witnesses that it had discovered in the realm of Nature, had been vigorously spreading their views in London and the colonies. Bishop Gibson led a defense of Anglican Christology, publishing three Pastoral Letters to the people of his London diocese on the subject and issued a visitation charge to his clergy in defense of Christian theology and tradition against the Deists’ attack.23 In Virginia Commissary Blair received copies of the pastoral letters and distributed the tracts among colonists. It is likely that commissaries Henderson of Maryland and Alexander Garden of South Carolina had seen Gibson’s first pastoral letter printed in 1728, but not the second letter and visitation charge. It appeared in 1730, too late to have been sent to America for meetings of the clergy in the spring of that year.24 Bishop Gibson also forcefully addressed the need for the Anglican church to reach out and seek to convert to Christianity Negroes in the plantations, issuing a pastoral letter in May 1727.25 Ten thousand copies of the letter were printed by the S.P.G. and distributed in the colonies. Again Henderson, one of the most vigorous and effective deputies of the bishops of London ever to serve in the provinces, pursued his diocesan’s directive at visitations in 1730 and 1731. The clergy were instructed to catechize and baptize the Negro slaves within their parishes, but they met with little or no cooperation from the owners.26 Further attempts to evangelize slaves in Maryland were foiled. Candidly, no systematic attempt was ever made by the Anglicans during the eighteenth century to bring the Negroes within the bonds of the church. A few Negroes received religious instruction at the school maintained by Elias Neau in New York City, or at the free school established by Garden in 1742, at Charles Town. But the number was never significant since the concentration of the Negro population, about two-thirds, was in the tobacco, rice, and indigo colonies – Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina.

Commissarial courts Several irregular attempts were made by commissaries in Virginia and South Carolina to follow the English authority of their office and conduct ecclesiastical courts when necessary. Such duties had been a practice of the commissarial office in England since the medieval period. Causes, including marriage, divorce, and the crimes and defects of clergy and laymen, were the type brought before the court. Norman Sykes points out, though, that the ecclesiastical courts in England became less effective as the Post-Restoration period developed.27 Criticism of corrupt practices of minor officials, excessive fees, long delays, and multiplicity of rival courts and officers, came from the clergy and laity that objected to ecclesiastical discipline of all kinds.28

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In Virginia James Blair tried to establish a system of ecclesiastical courts throughout the province at a convention of the clergy in July 1690. His proposed plan would have provided for the creation of four judicial districts supervised by a surrogate. Within each jurisdiction were to be two court sessions each year.29 Following procedures in England, the planned court was to hear causes of moral law against clergy and laymen. Although the plan was in accord with Blair’s commission and historic commissarial practice in England, it was inconsistent with the democratic judicial processes and legal precedent of the Old Dominion. The scheme was an attempt to introduce into the colony the ecclesiastical courts that had proven such a bitter curse to the religious life of England for several centuries past. Blair’s proposed courts would have superseded the civil courts of the counties that had heretofore had jurisdiction in the trial of offenders against the moral law with courts in districts of his own creation before judges of his own appointment and answerable solely to himself.30 Furthermore, the commissary’s strategy overlooked the significance of the establishment of the Toleration Act in England in 1690 that was to put a stop to all legal persecution of dissenters. Nonetheless, Blair, with the endorsement of the clergy of the colony, proposed to go directly in the face of the expressed attitude of both England and Virginia by introducing ecclesiastical courts to try and punish dissenters. This bold plan failed. Reflecting on his ill-fated judicial efforts Blair wrote that ‘Civil Courts’ was the contributing factor. Public fears at the time that the court system would apply to both clergy and laity were unfounded. Blair disclosed that Bishop Compton had directed him to apply his authority only to restrain the irregularities of the clergy ‘without meddling with the laity’, except if allowed by provincial law and government.31 Commissary Blair’s ill-fated attempt was not ever considered in any other colony but at least five judicial proceedings were undertaken at irregular intervals during the colonial era in Virginia and South Carolina and with varying degrees of procedural success.32 During Blair’s long commissaryship in Virginia complaints against clergy were heard and determined before the Governor and Council, as a Council of State, and not as judges of the General Court, who by Virginia law had cognizance of all causes ecclesiastical and civil.33 Whether the church or the state had legal jurisdiction over allegedly errant parsons was at best confusing. At stake were the traditions and precedents of the canonical law as practiced by the Anglican church in England, and the rising interest of lay or secular determination of all matters including wayward clergymen in Virginia. This was not a major point in conflict, as church leaders seemed to defer strategically to the lay-political leaders who frequently controlled the clergymen’s incumbency and their purses and well-being in the parishes. The most celebrated court case in colonial America was held in Charles Town, South Carolina in July 1741, a proceeding that unfolded in a precipitous manner. Commissary Alexander Garden initiated the action against the

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itinerant evangelist George Whitefield. Arriving in Charles Town on 14 March 1740, to see his brother James who had recently come from England to superintend his business interests, Whitefield encountered a dramatic disagreement with Garden.34 Eighteen months earlier he had found congenial hospitality at the commissary’s home. Now at this meeting Whitefield met strong and bitter opposition to his evangelistic ministry, to his heralded criticism of the character of Anglican parsons, and to his revivalistic preaching style. The commissary, in an angry, agitated, and heated manner, put several questions to the itinerant and then charged him with enthusiasm, pride, speaking against the clergy, and violation of ecclesiastical canons and his ordination vows.35 Possibly Garden had mustered and shaped his criticism of Whitefield in advance from newspaper accounts or personal correspondence with Anglican colleagues in London, Philadelphia or Williamsburg. In a rage, according to Whitefield’s Journal, the commissary indicated that if Whitefield preached in any Anglican church in South Carolina, he would be suspended from his ministerial office. Whitefield no less candidly, firmly and pointedly rebutted, ‘I shall regard that as much as I would a Papal Bull’.36 The stage was set for a dramatic contest between the keeper of the old order and the leader of a popular religious movement, between the bishop of London’s deputy with his traditional authority, and the young, talented, and bold evangelist, the bearer of the timeless message in an unconventional manner. The legal proceedings neither impeded nor eclipsed the evangelist’s schedule. He preached at the meeting house in the afternoon on Friday, 14 March, and then twice each day until he left the following Wednesday morning. On at least one occasion the meetinghouse could not hold the crowd, and Whitefield delivered his sermon in the churchyard. He was delighted with the reception and left South Carolina with the feeling ‘that God intended to visit some in Charles Town with His salvation’. His performance was praised on the pages of The South Carolina Gazette. Both Whitefield and Garden immediately took their theological and ecclesiastical differences to the pulpit. They also debated in public through the pages of the local newspaper and penned letters to one another stating in terse doctrinal terms their positions.37 Whitefield returned to his orphan house in Savannah in late March, but was back in Charles Town four months later. On 6 July 1740, he attended St. Philip’s Church and heard Garden preach, in Whitefield’s words, a ‘virulent, unorthodox, and inconsistent sermon against Methodists and himself’.38 This confrontation of Garden, the most prominent Anglican divine in the southern colonies, against Whitefield and the revival represented a clash between the old and new orders. The leadership of Garden symbolized tradition, rationalism, social order, and the Establishment, while the evangelist spoke for the people residing in cities and on the frontier who were not a part of the provincial establishment. The encounter was also between the

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claims of ecclesiastical disciplines, between the liberties of individual ministers and people. Simply, Garden officially sought to prevent Whitefield from preaching in Charles Town, while Whitefield challenged the authority, custom, and canon law of the Anglican church of which he was an ordained minister. At a personal level it also represented a generational controversy between the fifty-five-year-old commissary and the twenty-six-year-old evangelist, a dispute between an experienced and mature parson and an errant, rebellious, and exceptional young minister. The Charles Town legal action against Whitefield must have seemed familiar, reminding him of the proceedings that the bishop of Gloucester had launched against him in 1739. A complex person, who viewed his numerous clashes with church authorities as persecutions, Whitefield looked for such encounters as a confirmation of successful preaching of the Gospel not only in himself but also in others. When Garden issued the warrant against him he declared, ‘Blessed be God for this further Honor! My soul rejoices in it. I think this may be called PERSECUTION’.39 It is likely that Garden had read Gibson’s Pastoral Letter and Whitefield’s Answer prior to summoning the itinerant preacher before the commissary’s court on 15 July 1740, to answer formally the charges Garden had pressed against him privately and in public. The fact that the bishop of London had openly rebuked Whitefield must have been of considerable support in prompting the commissary to exercise his judicial authority. The ecclesiastical court was composed of five clergymen appointed by Garden.40 Whitefield criticized what he felt was the biased composition of the tribunal, clearly representing the established church, and he also protested against Garden’s jurisdiction and the judicial authority of the bishop of London, for Whitefield was licensed to preach in Georgia and not in South Carolina. The court heard the case at St. Philip’s Church on 15 July. Whitefield was to answer charges against his behavior, in particular his failure to use The Book of Common Prayer during services. The evangelist appeared before his judges, Garden and the other clergymen, but immediately questioned the authority of the court. In response to the challenge Garden produced his commissarial commission from Bishop of London Gibson, and after more dispute he adjourned the court until the next day so Whitefield might assure himself the proceedings were justified in law. Garden’s understanding was that once the question of jurisdiction was established Whitefield would submit to a judicial ruling. Instead Whitefield responded with a plea of recusatio judicis, which claimed that Garden had shown himself to be unalterably prejudiced and asked that six arbitrators be appointed to rule on whether or not he was a fit judge in the case. Whitefield named three of the arbitrators, ‘two Independents and one French Calvinist and all of them his zealous Admirers’, according to the commissary. Garden found these candidates to be defective through their own interest in the case and rejected the recusatio plea. On the third morning of the trial

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the accused preacher appealed to Lords Commissioners appointed by the King for receiving and hearing appeals in spiritual causes.41 The appeal was granted, and a stay of a year and a day was allowed and further proceedings suspended. Reporting the affair to a friend in Philadelphia, Whitefield disclosed his view of the events, the consequences of the judicial action on his audience, and his calculated strategy to appeal the case, in effect suspending the proceedings for some time to allow him to continue his preaching tour.42 Whitefield did not follow up his plea, and the time for appeal passed. The court reassembled in July 1741, and the commissary delivered sentence of suspension from practicing the priestly office within the province of South Carolina. But Whitefield was not present nor did he send any word.43 Throughout the duration of the case Bishop of London Edmund Gibson, charged with jurisdiction over the colonial church and who had received numerous letters from both Garden and Whitefield on the affair, curiously played no active role in the proceedings. True to his word, Whitefield disregarded the commissarial court’s judgment. During subsequent visits to Charles Town he preached before dissenting congregations in their meetinghouses. The proceedings of Commissary Garden and the ecclesiastical court seemed at best futile, as they had no effect on the missionary’s evangelistic proceedings or his popular following within South Carolina or elsewhere. No doubt the inconclusiveness of the Whitefield trial and the public’s reaction influenced Garden’s involvement in the office of commissary. He never held another court nor suspended any other clergyman, and he called no more visitations. Certainly the proceedings had caught the attention, favor, and loyalties of the people not only in South Carolina, but also throughout the colonies. Another provincial ecclesiastical court proceeding took place in Virginia in 1745 and turned on the question of a parson’s moral probity. Undoubtedly the case is of interest for the prominence of the plaintiffs rather than the substance of the dispute. Charges were levied by Lawrence Washington, older half-brother of George, and William Fairfax, a prominent and extensive landowner of the northern neck of the province, against Charles Green, minister of Truro Parish, Fairfax County. Washington accused Green of ‘frequent attempts to debauch the lady’ who was his wife, Ann Fairfax, and with ‘unpeaceable behavior and neglect of duty’.44 The allegations were serious and the first complaints against Green during his thirteen-year incumbency. A graduate of Balliol College in Oxford University, in 1731, he seems to have served his congregation in a steadfast and responsible manner. After hearing the complaint of the two prominent provincial leaders, Commissary Dawson suggested that Green resign his post and take another position in the colony. Green responded forcefully by asking for a hearing in the Commissary’s ecclesiastical court and initiated a civil suit against Lawrence Washington in the General Court of Virginia.45

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Depositions were taken from the principals and from witnesses for both sides. The court convened at Williamsburg in the chapel of the College of William and Mary on 6 November 1745, with William Dawson presiding. Two colleagues, Chickley Thacher and William Robinson, assisted him. The court heard testimony each day until 14 November, when the proceedings were adjourned.46 For several months Governor Thomas Gooch, behind the scenes, urged Washington to drop his charges and attempted to dissuade Green from his intended civil prosecution. Reconvening on 21 April 1746 the court, probably influenced by Gooch’s negotiations, dismissed the suit, instructing each party to pay its own legal expenses.47 The pages of the parish council’s minute book are silent regarding the circumstances surrounding the unusual legal action. Writing to the Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock six years after the Green–Washington court case in Williamsburg, Commissary Dawson noted that he had ‘little skill in Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction’, that the ‘King’s Commission seems to give the Commissary greater power than is allowed by the 122nd Canon which directs that no sentence of deprivation shall be pronounced against a minister, but by the Bishops only’.48 The few ecclesiastical court proceedings that were held in the provinces were modest and imperfect replicas of English proceedings. An important difference between the two bodies was that the colonial courts were limited to only hearing cases against clergymen. Laymen were not to be tried for violation of moral offences before a church court. From Pennsylvania, Robert Jenney informed Bishop Sherlock that in his opinion ‘the patent of the late Bishop [Gibson] did not seem to justify his Commissary in any judicial proceeding. The laity laughed at it, and the clergy seemed to despise it, nor did there appear at home a disposition to show any regard to it. The commissary was no otherwise regarded there than to be made the instrument of conveying letters, books, and etc. to the missionaries, as he lives conveniently for that purpose in the chief place of commerce where the ships from and for London are for the most part only to be found’.49 As no ecclesiastical courts were established on a continuing basis, other methods of exercising clerical discipline had to be tried. The royal instructions to the governors gave authority to that officer to address such difficult matters. Governor Robert Dinwiddie and the Council of Virginia cited the Reverend John Brunskill, Jr., to appear before them in 1757 to answer charges of ‘drunkenness and immodest actions’; apparently this type of judicial review had been occasionally practiced during Blair’s tenure as commissary and member of the Council.50 Commissary Thomas Dawson, brother of William, objected to the procedure as a violation of canon law and the rights and privileges of the clergy. Dawson had admonished Brunskill but to no outward and visible sign of reform and felt that his authority of office went no further than to consult with the provincial clergy, discuss the problem, and submit a report to the bishop of London for judgment and action. This

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procedure was neither sufficient nor prompt enough for the governor, but Dawson was reluctant to act otherwise since he had never received a copy of his commission to demonstrate his authority before the clergy, governor, and people. Upon the advice of the Council, the governor’s royal instructions on ecclesiastical affairs were interpreted to allow removal of an errant minister. The interpretation was not broad; in fact, it was almost a literal understanding of the governor’s instructions.51 Accordingly, Dinwiddie dismissed Brunskill from his church living.52

Controversies with governors Occasionally deputies of the bishops of London were engaged in controversies with the governors, particularly during James Blair’s long tenure in office. Underlying the conflicts were the strong-willed temperaments of the combatants, men archly seeking to protect and advance the prerogatives of their offices. In England bishops were responsible for such necessary social legal documents and proceedings as the issuing of marriage licenses, proving of wills, and induction of ministers into livings. But in the colonies the governors had received these duties in their royal instructions. For the established church in Virginia many issues were susceptible for disagreement, such as the division of parishes by the colonial legislature; the erection and maintenance of church buildings; the powers exercised by the vestries; the recruitment and induction of ministers; the value of the parsons’ salaries; and the financial support of the young College of William and Mary. As early as the 1690s a fiery dispute erupted between Commissary Blair and Governor Edmund Andros and reverberated from Williamsburg to London. Andros was an unyielding Anglican who had polished his reputation with his relentless efforts to establish an English congregation during his governorship in Boston in the late 1680s. Surprisingly, Blair stridently complained in a 1697 ‘Memorial’ to the bishop of London that the governor neglected serving the needs of the church. The commissary argued that twenty-seven of the fifty congregations in the province were without ministers; that parsons’ salaries were deficient; and that the recently founded College of William and Mary needed provincial financial assistance.53 Blair also claimed that Andros had withheld granting the use of glebes to several ministers because the vestries had not presented the men to the livings, a situation that led Andros not to intercede and induct the clergymen.54 This latter issue would later drive Blair to a confrontation with Governor Alexander Spotswood in the early 1720s and lead to the governor’s resignation from office. A showdown between Blair and Andros took place in London in 1697 when both men were summoned by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison to Lambeth Palace to discuss the matter.55 Also in attendance were Bishop Compton and William Byrd, a member of the Colonial Council and agent of Virginia in London. Countering the commissary’s complaints

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Andros criticized Blair’s supervision of the provincial church: declaring that too many Scotsmen were appointed as instructors at the college; that Blair exercised little discipline over erring ministers; and that the deputy drew more than enough salary from college funds (£150 colonial currency annually). It remains unclear how the objections of both disputants were resolved. Nonetheless Andros resigned his governorship in 1697 while Blair continued at his posts as commissary and head of the College of William and Mary. Andros’s successor as governor, Francis Nicholson, came under an attack from Blair beginning in 1703. The governor had been a staunch friend and benefactor of the church in every colony with which he had been associated, but now Blair complained to Bishop Compton that Nicholson was marked with a personal streak of ‘hypocrisy and profaneness’.56 Yet the controversy was expanded and included a division of opinion between several members of the Colonial Council and the rank and file members of the provincial clergy. Commissary Blair, joined by five members of the Virginia Council, presented to Queen Anne in 1703 a ‘Memorial’ disparaging the arbitrariness and maladministration of Nicholson’s regime.57 The governor promptly and adroitly counterattacked by summoning the Virginia clergy to a session at Williamsburg on 25 August 1703, for a discussion of the dispute. After hearing a presentation of the two disputants twenty ministers in attendance supported Nicholson’s position and noted their satisfaction with his administration. The men concluded that Blair’s action had triggered from the public a sense of contempt for the clergy. They recommended to the Bishop of London that Blair should be required to confine his duties to furthering his ecclesiastical duties with the aid of the colony’s well-to-do planters rather than to participate so freely in political affairs.58 Nonetheless, Nicholson’s grip on office was brief; the unrelenting criticism from Blair and a few councilors forced his recall by the Board of Trade in 1705.59 For more than a half-century Commissary Blair served as a member of Virginia’s Colonial Council. Although the practice was waning in Restoration England it was not uncommon for prominent church leaders to occupy offices of state. Blair’s career was significantly enhanced when he became the protégé of two of the most accomplished and powerful prelates of the English church of the period, Bishop of London Henry Compton and Bishop of Salisbury Gilbert Burnet. He had ready access to both men and carried on a regular correspondence with them. In his round of clerical, educational, and civil duties he may have hoped to replicate their authority in provincial affairs. As a member of Colonial Council, Blair was privy to the details of unfolding political problems and issues as well as a witness and participant in factional political machinations. These influential interests were complemented by his marriage to Sarah, daughter of the prominent Benjamin Harrison II, of Wakefield in Surry County. Blair was linked to and familiar with other of the leading families of Virginia.60 Moreover, his brother

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Archibald and his nephew John were both leaders of the House of Burgesses and colonial Council. By his positions and his longevity he was a prominent public figure. During the absence of the governor from the colony Blair served for more than a year in the early 1740s as Acting Governor. From another perspective the several sharp controversies between Commissary Blair and Virginia governors may be viewed as reflecting his understanding of the legitimate role of the province’s chief civil officer to support the church’s interests. When appointed to their office the leaders were charged to exercise particular duties on behalf of the English church. For Blair, as the bishop of London’s deputy in the colony, the chief royal civil officer was expected to uphold his imperial duties in a dynamic, forceful, and active manner. A lack of official civil leadership on behalf of the church represented for Blair an indication of deficient honoring of, if not dereliction of, civil duty. The commissary expected the imperial officers to serve the church vigorously at all times. The transfer of the commissarial office from England to America was probably not as effective and successful as bishops of London Henry Compton and Edmund Gibson had hoped. Although the position enjoyed a long history in the English church hierarchy, undertaking delegated episcopal administrative and political duties, it was neither a substitute for an American prelate nor adaptable to the provincial scene of the King’s church. There are several reasons for this situation. Despite the officer’s status in the English church he was not generally accepted by the colonial ministers. Robert Jenney’s experience in Pennsylvania in the 1740s and 1750s was similar to Gideon Johnston’s in South Carolina in the early years of the eighteenth century. Efforts by such strong-willed officials as James Blair in Virginia, William Vesey in New York, and Alexander Garden in South Carolina met little support from their colleagues. In part, too, the commissarial office was diminished by the supervisory duties over church affairs assigned to the royal governors by the Board of Trade. Without the authority of a resident bishop the commissary’s position was compromised and circumscribed. The officer’s duties and limited authority were absorbed by the more democratic style of the clergy conventions. That process was more in keeping with the emerging Americanization process of the King’s church.

6 Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments

A vital aspect of the programs launched by London civil and ecclesiastical officials after about 1675 was the financial support for the church. Neither the Church of England nor Parliament provided the funds to underwrite the expense of transplanting the church to the colonies. Throughout the colonial period two primary sources sustained the church’s establishment and development: the provincial legislatures of the colonies in which the church was legally established and the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. During the relatively brief moment of the Virginia Company’s control of provincial affairs between 1607 and 1624 the Company was responsible for the payment of a minister’s salary. Despite this obligation the payment of annual stipends to the ministers was often in arrears. Following the Company’s dissolution in 1624 the local plantation owner was responsible for supporting the local parson and church. With the English government’s implementation of new policies and practices for the administration of the overseas empire in the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s church affairs were scrutinized, but the important matter of providing annual stipends for the clergymen was not so neatly circumscribed. As I have discussed earlier the transportation expenses for ministers traveling from London to their colonial assignments were paid from the Secret Service accounts of Charles II, James II, and William III and Mary. In Virginia since the 1630s and in Maryland after 1692, the legislatures authorized the payment of their salaries in tobacco levied on the tithables residing in the local parishes, while in the first congregations established in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia the ministers were paid from either the customs or military accounts. In Rhode Island the salaries of the first ministers were met by a handful of Thomas Bray’s friends in Gloucestershire. The founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701 led not only to a formalization of recruitment procedures for overseas appointments but also to regularization for the payment of their salaries. In the New England and Middle colonies, where the King’s church was not established, the stipends paid to parsons between 1701 and 1783 were, with 74

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a few exceptions, from the London-based Society. Such arrangements – initially intended by the S.P.G. to be brief, no longer than three years – became a permanent financial lifeline. Many New England critics such as Increase and Cotton Mather viewed this support for colonial parsons from the Society with alarm. They feared that the presence of the English church in their community was an offensive and divisive force in the religious life of the town. Yet at every stage of the experience of the King’s church in early America only a handful of congregations became self-sufficient and covered the expenses of the local church. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the members of Anglican congregations, like their Congregational and Presbyterian counterparts, were reticent about opening their purses and providing the necessary contributions annually to sustain a local parish’s activity. Despite the denomination’s reputation for being the church of the affluent, counting among its ranks prominent merchants, civil officials, and professional persons, not one church outside of a provincial capital gained financial independence during the colonial era.1 The King’s church’s existence in America was financially dependent on its favored relationships with the provincial legislatures and the assistance of the S.P.G. This was an economic lifeline that was vital for the English church’s existence in every province throughout the colonial era.

Provincial establishments Virginia As early as 1619 the Virginia Assembly under the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company enacted legislation to set the salary of ministers. In 1632 this obligation was further defined when the burgesses, following an English precedent, granted ministers ten pounds of tobacco and one bushel of corn from each tithable in the parish.2 Since the price of tobacco was depressed a further allowance was made for the parsons from the twentieth calves, goats, and pigs born on the plantations within the colony. The clergy’s fees were set in tobacco too; for marriages the parson was to receive a two-pound tobacco gratuity and one pound for either the churching of women after childbirth or for burying the dead. No baptismal fee was set.3 The statute remained on the province’s law books for two years, when the section covering the tithes of the twentieth calf, pig, or goat was repealed.4 In 1643 the legislature maintained the basic tobacco allowances of the ministers but revised the scale of fees for certain services. For performing a marriage ceremony without a license the ministers were to receive forty pounds of tobacco, while the duty was considerably higher – one hundred pounds, for those who had a license. Fees for burials and the churching of women were raised to ten pounds of tobacco.5 Whenever a parish was too sparsely settled

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to support a preacher on a tithe of ten pounds of tobacco per tithable, the assembly after 1646 gave the local governing body, the vestries, the power to augment the rate as they thought appropriate.6 In 1662, however, the legislature set the salaries of ministers at 13,333 pounds of tobacco that were to be assessed and collected under the supervision of the vestries. Clergy incomes were paid at this level until 1696, when after a three-year struggle the provincial clergy enlisted the aid of Governor Edmund Andros and members of the colonial Council to increase by exactly one-fifth the value of their stipends. The annual allowance for parsons was set at 16,000 pounds of tobacco.7 During the subsequent sixty years, except for minor modifications enacted by the legislature in 1728 and 1748, the incomes of the ministers were those set by the 1696 statute.8 In 1723 the salary issue erupted again when the Reverend Alexander Forbes, writing on behalf of the clergy on the south side of the James River, informed Governor Drysdale and members of the House of Burgesses that their tobacco allotments were often not collected in time for sale and shipment to England. Frequently, Forbes asserted, the tobacco was unfit for sale either to agents in England at the high price or to provincial dealers in Williamsburg who offered the men a lower cash allowance.9 The range of clergy stipends in Virginia in 1724 was similar to that in Maryland, sweeping from an annual maximum of £120 for one man, to £100–80 for ten men, to £70–50 for seven men, down to a minimum of £45–20 for four men. In 1732 Lieutenant-Governor William Gooch, Drysdale’s successor, informed Bishop Gibson that although in the past the stipends of ministers were calculated at £80 sterling annually, for many years the tobacco allotment brought no more than forty, thirty, or even twenty pounds income.10 It was common for taxable residents in the parishes of Virginia and Maryland to discharge their rates for the support of the clergy with poor-quality tobacco. Awkwardly the parsons were trapped on the one hand by the poor quality of tobacco they received as their allowances and on the other by the low return the crop usually brought at the market. This financial uncertainty and regular salary shortfall prompted a number of ministers to serve as schoolmasters in their homes or at nearby plantations in order to supplement incomes. During the colonial era at least 27 Maryland and 66 Virginia parsons served as schoolmasters and in the Old Dominion an additional 23 men served as tutors to the children of prominent families.11 The Virginia Assembly approved legislation in March 1728 that required better and quicker methods of transporting the tobacco allotments of the parsons to market, thus offering them a chance to sell it at a more competitive price.12 In Maryland the legislature adopted in the same year a statute to restrict production of tobacco and reduce from forty pounds to thirty pounds per poll the parish levy towards support of the ministers in an attempt to improve the economy. The fees of the attorneys and other public officials whose incomes were paid in tobacco were affected too. Although

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the act was intended to aid the small planters and traders, strong criticism was heard from the groups in the province whose incomes were hardest hit.13 The proprietor of the colony disallowed the law in 1730 but a new act was passed in the same year that was quite similar to the 1728 statute. Under the provisions of the 1730 law, one-quarter of the fees of clergymen and lawyers could be paid in certain grains set at fixed values. Perhaps the intention of the legislators was to aid the financial position of the parsons, but if so, they failed. The stipends of the clergy were paid in the proportion of 75 per cent tobacco and 25 per cent of another farm crop, which usually was oats, the commodity of least value.14 The celebrated Parson’s Cause, over the Two-Penny Acts of 1755 and 1758 in Virginia, gripped church affairs in the colony for more than a quartercentury. An economic issue of greater consequence than merely the payment of clergymen’s salaries, the controversy touched nearly every aspect of life in the colony, as Richard L. Morton has argued. Several factors contributed to the complex circumstance: the decline in the influence of the commissary and of the Established Church; the increased secular control over the Church and the College of William and Mary; opposition to the royal veto in provincial legislative affairs; opposition to a Virginia bishopric; and an increasing dissatisfaction with control by Great Britain.15 For many historians the dispute over the Two-Penny Acts was an early sign of the escalating movement to Virginia’s participation in the American Revolution.16 As we have seen, during the colonial period tobacco was a medium of exchange in Virginia, and minister’s salaries had been fixed at 16,000 pounds of tobacco a year. During the summer of 1755 the colony suffered a severe drought foreshadowing a short crop of tobacco. By September the price of tobacco had increased three times and was selling at about four and a halfpence per pound Virginia currency. The provincial legislature, in an attempt to avoid hardships among debtors, passed a law authorizing the liquidation of tobacco debts during the next year at sixteen shillings and eight pence per hundred pounds, the equivalent of two pence per pound. Importantly, the payment could be commuted from tobacco to paper money. As tobacco sold for sixpence a pound the ministers considered themselves losers; as their entire incomes were dependent upon tobacco, they immediately criticized the law in Virginia and England. The parsons felt that the statute was directly aiding the well-to-do tobacco planters who were willing to pay debts with colonial currency, since it was constantly decreasing in value while tobacco could be sold in London or Amsterdam at a large profit.17 Their incomes, the ministers declared, seldom provided a sterling stipend of £80 per year, which, they countered, was not the equivalent of a curate’s £40 stipend in England.18 The clergy’s grievances antedated the first of the Two-Penny Acts in 1755. They were embittered by the provincial Assembly’s 1748 act for the better support of the clergy that provided that the sole right of presentation of

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a minister to a parish shall be and remain in the hands of the vestries. The duty was recognized to be that of the lay-board rather than of the royal governors under the terms of his instructions or of the bishop of London. The procedure was a departure from the practice in England. The eviction in 1753 of William Kay, rector of Lunenberg Parish, from his post by a vestry guided by the mercurial Landon Carter, led to a lengthy court case that was finally decided in Kay’s favor. This was an incident with more than money at issue. It dramatically represented the power of the vestry over the appointment and tenure of the minister.19 It was not an isolated episode; the ministers were also disturbed by the removal of the Reverend John Brunskill, Jr., from Hamilton Parish in Prince William County by the Colonial Council, ‘for monstrous immoralities, profane swearing drunkenness and very immodest actions’. The event, regardless of the merits of the case, further illustrated the vulnerability of the church and its parsons and undermined ecclesiastical responsibility and authority.20 After the passage of the first Two-Penny Act in November 1755, only the clergymen in Virginia, and only a small group of them, opposed the measure and tried to secure Governor Dinwiddie’s veto of it. When they failed in this they urged Commissary Thomas Dawson, newly elected president of the College, to call at once a convention of the clergy to make a ‘public representation’ to the Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock, but the commissary preferred sending a ‘private report’.21 Unfortunately for the cause of the Church and of the College, eight ministers immediately went over the head of the Governor and Assembly with a complaint to British authorities. Four of the parsons were professors in the College and clergymen trained in the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge and had little sympathy with the rising ‘republican’ spirit in Virginia. These men – John Camm, William Preston, Thomas Robinson, and Richard Graham – wrote the Bishop of London on 29 November 1755, accusing the Virginia Assembly, with the Governor’s assent, of deliberately making a law ‘too glaringly inconsistent with natural equity, the rights of the Clergy, the common liberty of the subject and his Royal Majesty’s prerogative, to be spoken of without detestation’. This measure, which, they said, would ‘draw on the ruin of the Established Church’, would not aid the poor people; it would benefit only the ‘gentlemen of this Colony [who] have at present high notions of the advantage that will accrue to them by making indigo’. The act, they complained, was retroactive, since it regulated the amount of salary already due them. To the question why they opposed the act when others similarly affected were content, they answered that others had different means of support and while losing in one way by the act could gain in another; and they wrote spiritedly and convincingly of the high cost of living and the inadequate salaries of the Virginia clergymen.22 The first Two-Penny statute was only on the law books ten months. When a drought again curtailed tobacco production in 1758 a law similar to that adopted in 1755 was passed. Passage of the 1758 act immediately evoked

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strong opposition from the clergy. Again, had the law not been enacted, the high-priced tobacco would have meant a substantial addition to the income of clergymen. To avoid its loss a number of ministers, particularly those situated in Williamsburg and serving as members of the faculty of the College of William and Mary, were determined to resist the Two-Penny legislation under the leadership of John Camm. It was Governor Dinwiddie’s opinion that there would be ‘constant animosities between the clergy and the laity in every scarce year of tobacco’, should the clergy receive their full quota when the planters made small crops. As soon as the Assembly had adjourned, the disgruntled group of clergymen, led by Camm, urged Commissary Dawson to call a convention of the clergy to consider steps to oppose the act. When Dawson refused, they defiantly went over the head of the commissary and issued a call for a rump convention in their own names, as they had done in 1755. About thirty-five parsons out of a possible seventy in Virginia attended the rump session, and they were unanimous ‘in sending Mr. Camm as their agent to England’.23 Camm left for England in late 1758 and took with him a ‘Representation of the Clergy of the Church of England’ in Virginia. This paper described the act of 1748 and others fixing salaries of the clergy and the Two-Penny Act; accused the Governor and Assembly of having caused the vestries to break their contracts with the ministers, who, ordinarily underpaid, could not take advantage now of the rise in the price of tobacco; and stated that the Virginia government had ‘broken through’ laws confirmed by royal authority and had disobeyed royal instructions ‘to pass these pretended laws’. Finally, the clergy petitioned the Board of Trade to persuade the King to declare the acts null and void and to give ‘explicit instructions and commands’ to the Governor to pass no such ‘pretended’ acts changing in any way the act of 1748 regarding the salaries of the clergy. The Virginians did not underestimate the strength of the leader of the opposition. ‘Mr. Camm’, the Governor warned the Board of Trade, ‘is a man of abilities but a turbulent man who delights to live in a flame’.24 Armed with the aid of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker, Camm appeared before the Board of Trade early in 1759; and he later presented his cause before the Privy Council. The Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock sent a letter to the Board of Trade, 14 June 1759, which included many of the details contained in the ‘Representation’. The letter later was included with the Board’s report to the Privy Council.25 This letter is a remarkable document of misinformation, false interpretations, and misleading insinuations. It is apparent from this letter that the Bishop was not familiar with the laws that he condemned, and the motives of the Virginia lawmakers and governors. In fact, a study of the legislation since the revision of the laws in 1696 shows that instead of trying to weaken the Church and oppress the clergymen, the provincial laws tended to strengthen the Church and make more secure the position of the clergy.

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Camm’s affairs now moved rapidly to a successful conclusion. On 4 July 1759, the Board of Trade recommended to the King and Privy Council the disallowance of acts of 1753, 1755, and 1758 relating to the ministers’ salaries, as unjust in their principles and effects contrary to the King’s instructions. After hearing the arguments in the case the King in Council, on 10 August 1759, disallowed: all the acts of the Virginia Assembly permitting salaries to be paid in tobacco; acts of December 1753 for paying ministers in the frontier counties of Frederick, Augusta, and Hampshire; the acts of July 1755 regarding ministers’ salaries in the counties of Princess Anne and Norfolk; the Two-Penny Acts of 1755 and 1758; and the two private acts not in the forms required. To add a further blow to the Governor and Assembly in Virginia, the King appointed their chief adversary, John Camm, as his messenger to bring to them the official documents telling of their defeat.26 News of the disallowance of the Two-Penny Act greatly disturbed the Virginians and started a vigorous newspaper and pamphlet war chiefly between a pair of members of the House of Burgesses, Landon Carter and Richard Bland on one side, and Camm on the other. Carter, of Sabine Hall, fired the opening volley in the campaign in Richmond County. Familiar with the practice of contentious pamphlet warfare, he had published in London a decade earlier A Letter from a Gentleman in Virginia, to the Merchants of Great Britain, Trading in that Colony (London, 1754). Now, in his A Letter to Right Reverend Father in God, the Lord B[isho]p of L[ondon]n (Williamsburg, 1759), he wrote with resentment, an answer to the Bishop’s charge that the General Assembly had been disloyal and had encouraged dissent.27 Bland, educated at the College of William and Mary and a member of the House of Burgesses since 1742, was author of the Two-Penny Acts. He joined the fray with A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia (Williamsburg, 1760).28 This letter was also an answer to the Bishop of London’s letter to the Board of Trade; but it was addressed directly against those memorialists who had led the bishop astray. The pamphlets of Carter and Bland were ‘received with great applause’ in Virginia. Camm replied to Bland and Carter in similar tone and manner. He published a tough, direct, and lively pamphlet entitled A Single and Distinct View of the Act Vulgarly Called the Two-Penny Act (Annapolis, 1763). In this he condemned the ‘justice and charity’ ascribed to the act by Carter in his letter of 1759 and Bland’s salus populii argument for it in his letter of 1760. Camm, the Professor of Divinity at the College of William and Mary, concluded with the observation that he was ‘no less astonished at Col. Bland’s casting the Conduct of Archbishop Laud in our Teeth;’ and comparing the provincial clergymen ‘to Romish Inquisitors’, for their ‘secret Machinations’. 29 The debate continued when Carter rebutted with The Rector Detected (Williamsburg, 1764), a tract of persistent verbal sharpness, and Camm answered with Review of the Rector Detected, or the Colonel Reconnoitered (Williamsburg, 1764).30 The final round of the controversy included Bland’s

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trenchant contribution offered under the pseudonym, ‘Common Sense’, entitled the Colonel Dismounted: or the Rector Vindicated (Williamsburg, 1764), and Camm’s Critical Remarks on a Letter ascribed to Common Sense (Williamsburg, 1765).31 At least five of the Church of England parsons, including Camm, took their grievances to court for the recovery of the full market value of their assigned quota of tobacco. In Hanover County the court ruled the 1758 act was invalid from passage, and the Reverend James Maury, rector of a parish in Louisa County, brought suit to recover on his salary in 1762. Patrick Henry defended the parish in Louisa County, presenting no witnesses but assailing the ministers and the practice of vetoing laws necessary for the public good. The jury awarded Maury one-penny damages. In 1764 the General Court of the province held the law good until it was vetoed and left the ministers without any remedy. This was appealed to the Privy Council where the appeal was dismissed in 1767.32 The crucial decision in John Camm’s case, brought originally in the General Court on 10 October 1759, and deliberately delayed, it seems, was finally given on 10 April 1764. The Court, by a vote of five to four, rendered judgment against Camm. He appealed the decision to the Privy Council in London that heard the petition in 1767, and dismissed the suit on the ground that it was improperly drawn, doubtless a convenient excuse for avoiding a difficult and unpleasant decision.33 There are few traces of evidence relating to the opinions of Virginia ministers who opposed Camm’s overtures and attacks on Carter, Bland, and the Two-Penny Acts. Commissary Dawson’s unwillingness to call a convention of the clergy was a signal of the lack of support among the rank and file as well as with church leadership. A general Two-Penny Act was passed in 1769, and the ministers gave up the agitation. Maryland After becoming a royal colony in 1691 the Maryland legislature proceeded to enact a series of statutes during the 1690s and early 1700s in an attempt to establish the King’s church and to provide for its ministers in the province. Legislation adopted by the Assembly in June 1692, July 1696, and finally in March 1702, laid out the provincial parishes and by the terms sought to attract and maintain Anglican clergymen in the province. The legislation encountered strong opposition from Quakers and Roman Catholics in the colony who objected to the requirement to pay a tithe for the support of the King’s church and minister.34 The Assembly’s legislation for the church enacted in 1692 and 1694 was disallowed by the Privy Council but the 1696 statute received approval in 1702 and remained in force until the Revolution. Under a system quite similar to that in Virginia, the law required an annual assessment of forty pounds of tobacco upon every taxable person residing within the boundaries of each parish. The county sheriff was charged

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to collect the levy from every planter whose rates covered himself, his sons, his white male servants and Negro slaves (male and female) above the age of sixteen years. The vestry, as in Virginia, was responsible for the supervision of the assessment within their jurisdiction. The members of the parish council had power to receive, possess, and administer land holdings, tobacco revenue, bequests, cattle or other properties that were paid by parishioners to settle their taxes.35 However worthy the attempt to attract and support Anglican parsons appeared, their income from the tobacco tax was generally insufficient. In 1696 the parsons reported to Bishop Compton that their financial situation was bleak: the planters paid their tithe for the support of the church with tobacco of a poor quality. This was common in England where agricultural commodities were applied under similar circumstances.36 They remarked that only one parish in the province – at the capital, St. Mary’s – provided a parsonage and a glebe.37 At a convention of the clergy at Annapolis, the provincial capital since 1694, in May 1698 they reported to Compton again about their financial circumstances and of the recent efforts by the Assembly to establish the church. Two years later the parsons reported to the London prelate that their financial circumstances had not improved. They noted that their tobacco allowance was not comparable to the value set by law; they were paid in tobacco of a lesser quality: their extensive parishes required two horses, an expense that often absorbed 25 per cent of their incomes.38 A census by the seventeen parsons assembled at Annapolis was sent to Bishop Compton listing the number of tithables in each parish and the value of each living in pounds of tobacco. Table 6.1 is a duplicate of the minister’s report. A translation of the value of tobacco to sterling has been inserted based on the minister’s reckoning that one thousand pounds of public tobacco was worth about fifty shillings at the current rate in bills of exchange.39 At the time there were twenty-eight livings in Maryland, ranging in value from a maximum of £60.12s to a minimum of £12.16s; the mean income was at £36.14s, while the median stipend at £34 was slightly lower. Only one living was worth more than £60 annually, while five were valued at between £50 and £60; six parishes returned incomes ranging from £40 to £50, and eight men asserted their parishes were worth between £30 and £40 each year. An additional five livings returned incomes worth from £20 to £30 per annum while three parishes were in the lowest category with a value of £10 to £20 a year.40 Five clergymen, usually because of tenure in the province, held two livings in plurality of which all but one placed the incumbents as the highest paid parsons in the colony.41 Although the incomes of clergymen on the rolls of the S.P.G. during the colonial period were comparatively constant, about £50 annually, the salaries of ministers in Maryland and Virginia fluctuated with the rhythms of the climate and the rise or fall of the value of tobacco at market. Except for a few years in the mid-1720s and during the period between 1755 and 1760,

Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments Table 6.1

83

Value of Maryland livings in 1698

Counties

Parishes

Tithables

Value (hundreds of pounds tobacco)

Income in sterling

Incumbents

St. Mary’s

William and Mary King and Queen Christ Church All Saints

532

21,250

£53. 3.0

473

18,920

£47. 6.0

537 507

21,480 20,280

£53.13.0 £50.14.0

All Faiths

273

11,120

£27.16.0

Benjamin/ Nobbs Christopher Platts Hugh Jones Thomas Cockshutt Nicholas Moreau

St. Paul’s

500

20,000

£50. 0.0

254

10,320

£25.16.0

Charles

William and Mary Port Tobacco

Charles

Nanzemy

175

17,000

£42.10.0

Charles Arundel

Herring Creek South River

507 460

20,280 18,400

£50.14.0 £46. 0.0

(Annapolis in this county)

Middle Neck

374

14,960

£37. 8.0

Broad Neck

223

8,920

£22. 6.0

Baltimore

Patapsio

218

8,720

£21.16.0

Baltimore Baltimore Cecil

St. John’s St. George’s South Sasafras

128 137 350

5,120 5,430 14,000

£12.16.0 £13.14.0 £35. 0.0

North Sasafras

321

12,840

£32. 2.0

Kent Kent

Kent Island St. Paul’s

146 338

5,840 13,520

£14.12.0 £33.16.0

Talbot

St. Paul’s

606

24,240

£60.12.0

Talbot Talbot Dorchester

St. Peter’s St. Michael’s Choptank

453 485 407

18,120 19,400 16,280

£45. 6.0 £48.10.0 £42.14.0

Dorchester

Dorchester

221

8,840

£22. 2.0

St. Mary’s Calvert Calvert Prince George Prince George Prince George Charles

Piscattaway

George Tubman George Tubman Henry Hale Thomas Clayton Peregrine Cony Edward Topp Edward Topp

Richard Sewell Richard Sewell Stephen Boardley John Lillington John Leach John Leach Thomas Howell

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Table 6.1

(Continued)

Counties

Parishes

Tithables

Value (hundreds of pounds tobacco)

Income in sterling

Incumbents

Somerset

Somerset

304

12,160

£30. 8.0

George Trotter

Somerset Somerset

Coventry Stepney

369 362

14,760 14,480

£36.18.0 £36. 4.0

Somerset

Snowhill

358

14,240

£35.12.0

George Trotter James Brechin

the tobacco economy was generally depressed. It is at best difficult to reconcile the rather generous value of Maryland parishes for clergymen as traditionally recounted by historians with the actual comments on the matter by the ministers themselves. Writing to Bishop Compton in 1711, Alexander Adams of Stepney Parish in Somerset County noted that he ‘can’t subsist, without some assistance, for tobacco is worth nothing, and not one shirt to be had for tobacco this year . . . and [a] poor ten shillings is all the money I have received by my ministry and perquisite since October last’.42 The value of livings in Maryland in 1724, a good tobacco year, as reported in the replies to Bishop Gibson’s Queries, ranged from £30–60 for six men, to a maximum of £150 for one per annum. The parson reported, however, that they usually received a yearly stipend worth much less. Aubrey C. Land has noted that for the small Maryland planter the provincial quitrents, church tithes, and taxes represented a real burden. At the ballot box the planter cast his ballot for a provincial representative who would resist increased public expenses.43 Lawrence H. Gipson noted, ‘In no part of North America was better provision made for the Anglican clergy. The benefices of the thirty parishes in 1741 averaged in value about £200 sterling. The income varied at these livings according to a list prepared for the year 1767, ranging from All Saints of Frederick County, which was estimated at £452.13s to that of St. Augustine, placed at £76.4s.4d.’44 New York In the provinces north of Maryland only New York established the Anglican church, though the settlement did not extend beyond the four lower counties of the colony.45 Governor Benjamin Fletcher, implementing his royal instructions relating to ecclesiastical affairs, led the effort to strong-arm the legislature to adopt the Ministry Act of 1693. Although the colony had been seized from the Dutch in 1664, lost to them again in 1673, and regained finally in 1674, twenty years later there were few Englishmen residing in the province. New York city retained its Dutch characteristics and no English

Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments

85

church had been built. The Anglican chaplain at Fort James conducted worship services for members living within the city until Trinity Church was opened in 1697. Presumably the Ministry Act of 1693 was an intentionally vague piece of legislation that allowed for a ‘good sufficient Protestant minister’ to serve in each county.46 Governor Fletcher realized that to specify the Church of England as the religious institution to be settled in the colony would have raised the wrath of the Dutchmen who were a majority in the colonial assembly. But it is puzzling why members of the Dutch Reformed Church did not raise objections before the statute was passed, since the provision for churchwardens and vestrymen suggested an unfamiliar type of ecclesiastical organization; perhaps they intended from the beginning to try to profit from its vagueness. The members of the Dutch church certainly claimed later that since the act was broadly defined then they and their ministers had a share in the benefits of the law too. Governor Fletcher, however, declared that the law established only the Church of England and its clergymen. Members of the Dutch Church were furious over the governor’s high-handed tactics and directed sharp criticism toward him and his successors until their denomination in 1770 was given similar privileges. The salary that was set by the Act of 1693 was never sufficient to maintain clergymen. Only in New York City was an Anglican parson resident before the S.P.G. began to send missionaries to America. The ministers were to be paid from funds annually assessed against the taxpayers by the vestry of each parish and collected by the county constables. In New York City the total levy was not to exceed £100 colonial currency, while in Westchester and Richmond counties the value of the three livings was set at £40 and later increased to £50 each colonial currency and payable to the incumbent in country produce at market prices.47 A similar arrangement was adopted on Long Island though there the total tax was slightly higher; parishioners were required to pay their parson £60 annually in country produce.48 South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia In the three colonies south of Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, the King’s church was established after extensive political maneuvering and dissension. In South Carolina the Assembly, still under proprietary control, adopted on 30 November 1706 the church act that was in force until the Revolution. Under the provisions of this statute parishes and glebes were to be laid out and parsonages built and the clergy were to be paid set salaries from the public treasury. Six parishes were set up; one at Charles Town, the provincial capital, and five others in the rural communities along the seaboard. The rector of St. Philip’s Parish, Charles Town, the church of the colony’s most prominent merchant families, was to receive a stipend of £150 colonial currency annually, while the incomes of clergymen serving country parishes were set at £50 per year.49 After three years an

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The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

increase of £50 per year was granted to four rural parsons; the incumbent of St. Denis Parish, which served a Huguenot settlement, was limited to a £50 salary annually forever.50 These set incomes were not sufficient, however, to support Anglican ministers. Until 1759, when the colony assumed nearly all financial obligations, the S.P.G. contributed grants of aid similar to those it allowed to missionaries in other provinces. At least one South Carolina minister, Charles Woodmason, found his stipend woefully inadequate. He arrived in Charles Town about 1754 accompanied by his manservant.51 Woodmason, not yet a minister, set to work acquiring a plantation that by 1761 amounted to 1,200 acres of land. He was an energetic, entrepreneurial, intelligent, and curious man, but we know little of Woodmason’s English background, such as where he was born or where educated. He was probably born about 1720 and he was most likely from the gentry class. We do know that he had a deeply felt spiritual side to his temperament. In 1756, pursuing civic and religious responsibilities, Woodmason was named a churchwarden for the Parish of Prince Frederick Winyaw. As the church was without a rector the vestry asked him to read prayers and a sermon each Sunday, an assignment that he undertook with diligence and persistence for the next six years. Woodmason warmed to his tasks, visiting all parts of the parish as collector of the poor tax for the vestry. He was elected a vestryman himself in 1757, and in this office he kept the vestry minutes and acted as correspondent in the search for a resident minister. Woodmason maintained civic interests and connections. In 1757 he was chosen lieutenant of the local militia, and the following year he was appointed justice of the peace by Governor and Council, an office he filled with perseverance for seven years. Two years later the governor appointed him a constable, and in 1761 he was both coroner and collector of the general tax. Each office added to his knowledge of local government and prepared him for his later role of adviser to the backcountry and penman of the Regulators. Woodmason had easily and quickly adjusted to the ways and opportunities of South Carolina life. He was recognized in Charles Town political and business circles as a man of consequence, a member of the community on whom leaders could rely. In late 1762 or early 1763 Woodmason moved to Charles Town and began a quite different life. He continued to devote his time and energy to civic duties, becoming the clerk of two Assembly commissions. However, a swift fall from favor took place when, apparently unable to resist a new office, he applied for the post of stamp distributor. Like many others, he may not have anticipated the sharp popular reaction to the Stamp Act when its full implications were known. Whether his ill-fated design to be appointed a stamp distributor cast the die, Woodmason, late in 1765, made a decision that changed the course of his life: he applied for the position of itinerant Anglican minister in the

Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments

87

upper part of St. Mark’s Parish. What prompted his dramatic vocational shift is unclear because he had gained civic prominence and a degree of financial wealth. He abandoned the life of a planter, merchant, and minor bureaucratic political officer to carry the gospel to settlers on the frontier. Woodmason sailed for England and pursued the necessary requirements for ordination. After his ordination in London he returned to South Carolina and served the parish from 1766 to 1770. Parson Woodmason had strong opinions on a variety of issues and expressed them frequently in a volatile manner as he ministered in his jurisdiction. He was particularly sharp attacking the presence and views of Presbyterians, New Light Baptists, and Quakers in the neighborhood. On a personal level he gives us a clue of his financial condition as a traveling parson, whose circumstances were quite unlike his life on his plantation or as a lesser civic grandee in Charles Town. In a sermon preached at the homes of several church members on his circuit some time in 1769 or 1770, Woodmason declared that the stipends of the clergy were not sufficient, or enough to encourage them to marry, and if they did it was to women with wealth. Woodmason, unmarried, declared that his ‘income hardly clears the Expences of my constant Journeys here around’ his congregation. Remarking that ‘One fifth of my Stipend goes Yearly in Horse flesh – Another in Charity – A Third in Cloathing – A fourth in other Necessaries – And the Remainder in Contingent Expenses of Books and Stationary, Wares and the Like. So that I save Nothing’. He claimed that he could not survive without the contributions and assistance from his friends, for his salary does not meet his expenses as an itinerant preacher. Woodmason commented that he has ‘sacrific’d all to render You what Services, was in his Poor Power and for which Sacrifice he receives no thanks. . . . I speak not thus from any regard to Money because its well Known, that where persons are poor I demand Nothing, and where Two pay, Three do not’.52 Perhaps Woodmason’s outburst and plea were prompted by mixed feelings of having abandoned the comforts and prosperous ways of his former life. Possibly it was a straightforward plea for his auditors on the frontier to meet their obligations to him as their minister and to the church that served them. In any event, he, like so many parsons up and down the East Coast, whether of the Anglican church or another denomination, protested the meagerness of his congregation’s financial support. Woodmason’s entreaty seems to have fallen on deaf ears; he moved to Maryland in 1770 and the steadier cycle of an income based on tobacco and set by law. Circumstances for the King’s church in sparsely and diversely settled Georgia were less adequate than they were in South Carolina. A law adopted by the Georgia legislature in 1758 established the Church of England and divided the colony into eight parishes. Under the terms of the act the governor was to head a commission of twelve members that was empowered to purchase land for the laying out of churches, glebes, and burial grounds

88

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

to establish and support each parish. To financially support the church a personal and property tax assessment was made against landholders in each parish. However, the revenue was not to exceed a total amount of £30 per year in the towns of Savannah and Atlanta, and £10 annually in areas where no church was built. The funds raised from the tax were not to be applied toward payment of the parson’s salary but rather to meet other parish expenses, such as care for the poor or civil projects.53 It was the Society that paid the salaries of the few Anglican missionaries who served in this poor and sparsely populated colony before the Revolution. Since 1701 there were several unsuccessful attempts to settle the King’s church in North Carolina. Intense and persistent sectarian and political differences between the Quakers, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and others prevented the enactment of such legislation. Candidly, the English church was never strong in the colony before or after the 1765 statute established the church. Clement Hall, who arrived in North Carolina in 1744 and served St. Paul’s Church in Edenton as well as several outlying chapels, received a stipend of £60 local currency from the parish but enjoyed neither a house nor a glebe. When he asked for an increase in his salary in 1750 to £80, the vestry instead reduced the sum to £50.54 Six years later the vestry refused to pay his salary in full because Hall had only officiated on thirty-one Sundays during the preceding year at the church in Edenton. Eventually it allowed Hall £1.10.9 per sermon rather than an annual stipend. The vestry also established a rigorous preaching schedule for the minister that included a circuit of Edenton, Farley’s Chapel, Knotty Pine Chapel, and Costen’s Chapel, and threatened to discharge Hall if he failed to comply with the plan. When Hall responded by complaining that arrears of salary were due, the vestry determined that during the past decade it had actually overpaid the minister. Nevertheless, at Hall’s death, the parish owed the estate 3 £61.7.04- and the records show that Hall had preached forty sermons in the year before his death.55 Under the persistent leadership of the recently appointed royal governor, William Tryon, the assembly established the King’s church in 1765. Under the terms of the Act all residents of the province were to share in the cost of maintaining the English church, a point that prompted angry criticism from Presbyterians within the colony. The statute set aside £18,000 colonial money for the purchase of glebes and the building of public schools in the thirty-two parishes of the province, the boundaries of which were coterminous with the counties. Besides a glebe of not less than two hundred acres, each parish was to include a parsonage and carry an annual stipend of £133 colonial currency for the incumbent.56 While these provisions for the support of ministers allowed the Society substantially to reduce its contributions toward the maintenance of Anglican parsons in North Carolina the church was a minor faction among the diverse religious groups in the colony.

Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments

89

The status of the King’s church in Virginia during the colonial period reflected the gradual accomplishment of the first and second wave of interest by English officials in the overseas extension of the church during the seventeenth century. Shaped by the vision of the writings of Richard Hakluyt advancing the idea of an English overseas empire, the church was an instrument of colonization and accompanied the founders of Virginia at Jamestown in 1607. Under the aegis of the Virginia Company of London ministers were recruited and paid to serve congregations in America. The provincial legislature established the church in 1618, laid out parishes, and provided for the annual stipends of the ministers. Following the Restoration of Charles II to the throne and the elevation of Henry Compton to bishop of London the King’s church in the colony became a beneficiary of the Council of Trade’s active attention to new policies guiding imperial administration and ecclesiastical affairs. The legal establishment of the King’s church in Virginia, Maryland, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina provided financial support for the church and its clergy. Without that assistance it is arguable that the church would have made little headway in these provinces. Despite legal establishment the experience of the church was at times controversial and its progress uneven. Only in Maryland did the church emerge as a vigorous institution despite the initially strong opposition of Quakers and Roman Catholics to the various Church Acts of the 1690s. In the other provinces the religiously diverse populations conflicted with the advancement of the church. In New York, North and South Carolina, and Georgia the weakness of the King’s church required the continuing assistance of the London-based Society.

7 A Financial Lifeline from London: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

As early as the mid-1690s London church officials recognized the need for regular funding for the payment of the salaries of colonial clergymen and to meet other expenses. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, an enthusiastic champion of the extension of the church to the colonies, actively sought an appropriation from Parliament for the support of the church and its ministers.1 As a member of the Privy Council and the Board of Trade and Plantations, Tenison was familiar with the details of colonial affairs and policies. His position was that the establishment of the church overseas was a ‘national concern’.2 His efforts were driven by two factors – the forthcoming voyage of Commissary Thomas Bray to Maryland and a design to place the fledgling colonial church on a firm financial foundation. Despite his efforts for several years the archbishop’s plea to Parliament on behalf of the overseas church was unsuccessful. Perhaps that failed experience contributed to Tenison’s energetic endorsement of Bray’s efforts in 1701 to found the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts for the purpose of recruiting, appointing, and providing financial support for ministers assigned to posts in the colonies.3 Until his death in 1715 the archbishop took an active interest in the affairs of the Society and the monthly meetings were regularly held in his library at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London. The financial aid of the London-based Society for the Anglican church in Colonial America was significant and sustained during the colonial period. Although other sects – Swedish or German Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Quaker, received assistance from their associates in England and Europe – no religious group could match the S.P.G.’s efforts on behalf of the Anglicans. The Society’s interest in the provincial church stretched across eighty-three years (1701–83) and covered parishes from Maine to Georgia. While the S.P.G. was not a department of the State, it maintained frequent liaisons at the highest level with civil and ecclesiastical officials. It was a body of the 90

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national church, and the S.P.G.’s officers consulted with members of the Board of Trade before inaugurating any new program.4 Throughout its history the Society’s leadership was composed of many prelates, prominent public figures, and influential merchants. The network of high-level civil officials associated with the Society eased the way for the organization to press its interests with the Board of Trade or other state agencies. Founded by royal charter in 1701, the S.P.G. derived its annual income from voluntary subscriptions, gifts, bequests, investments, and public collections. It was not until 1814 that Parliament granted the Society funds for its overseas missionary enterprise. Regularly the Society’s expenditure exceeded its income and it was at these times that members of the S.P.G. approached the Crown to issue Royal Letters for public collections to cover the deficit. The first of such crises occurred in March 1708 when the Society decided against increasing the salaries of any men already in the provinces or of sending any further clergymen to America until the financial position improved.5 Even with this scheme of austerity the S.P.G. the next year, with an income of only £755, incurred a £646 deficit. Queen Anne authorized a public collection to be taken on behalf of the S.P.G. on Trinity Sunday, 1711 in the churches in the cities of London and Westminster. Over £3,060 was raised for the Society on this occasion, enough to ease for a few years pressures on the organization’s budget. The 1711 collection was the first of six authorized before 1783 by the Crown.6 During the second and third attempts to raise funds (1714 and 1718) the area of the campaign was extended beyond the cities of London and Westminster to include the eight principal seaport towns that carried on trading activity with the American colonies. Before each public solicitation the S.P.G. prepared a pamphlet briefly describing the history and aims of the organization and including a summary of its financial position. The popular promotional piece was circulated to all ministers of churches in which the collection was to be undertaken, in an attempt to gain the support of the clergymen for the work of the Society in America. A total sum of £65,110 was raised by the S.P.G. from these collections in the eighteenth century and represented a little less than one-third of the Society’s total expenditure in the colonies. Between 1701 and the close of the Revolution the S.P.G. paid all or a substantial portion of the salaries of over three hundred ministers, schoolmasters, and catechists who served in the colonies. These stipends ranged from a minimum of £10 per annum paid to schoolmasters to £150 to an itinerant preacher among the Indians in the Mohawk River Valley of New York.7 The average income of a minister sponsored by the Society during the eighteenth century was £49.18 shillings. Most of the missionaries received stipends of either fifty or sixty pounds, figures that were set in the first years of the Society’s operation and never increased before it withdrew its aid in 1783 at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. While the level of S.P.G. salaries remained relatively constant throughout the period the colonial

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economy tended to follow an inflationary course. Thus £50 sterling in 1710 would buy more goods and produce in the marketplace than a similar allowance in 1770 and that rate of exchange varied from colony to colony. Clergy salaries, whether paid by the S.P.G. or the congregations, seldom kept pace with the rising cost of living.8 The average income of a missionary of the Society was comparable to the median stipends of £48 received by incumbents of parishes in the diocese of Lincoln in England as reported in answer to visitation inquiries circulated by the bishops of Lincoln between 1705 and 1723. This figure is based on information supplied from six hundred and fifty-seven livings in the diocese. The value of the benefices ranged between £2 and 252 per annum.9 A comparison between English and American clergy salaries is much less favorable to the latter if a similar analysis is made for the diocese of Salisbury. Clergymen residing in that jurisdiction enjoyed, according to valuations probably valid for the first quarter or half of the eighteenth century, a median income of £125 per year. The value of the four hundred and twenty benefices in Salisbury diocese reached from £40 to £400 per year.10 The heaviest concentration of the S.P.G.’s disbursements in America was in the Middle Atlantic Provinces.11 Appropriations to clergy and schoolmasters was highest in New York (£42,127), followed by Pennsylvania (£31,750 of which £14,470 was designated for the men serving missions in the four lower counties now known as Delaware, an amount 46 per cent of the total), Connecticut (£26,115), and New Jersey (£25,381). Massachusetts’ clergy barely edged out South Carolina preachers, £21,462 and £20,217 respectively, in the total subsidies granted by the Society, although the legislature in the latter colony assumed after 1759 nearly all parochial financial obligations. Substantial amounts of funds were paid out, too, in Rhode Island (£16,647), North Carolina (£9,730), New Hampshire (£4,685), and Georgia (£3,560). The Society made token grants totaling £798 to a few clergymen in Virginia and Maryland during the first decade of the century. Regionally the S.P.G. allocated £68,909 to the New England colonies, £99,258 to the Middle Colonies, and £33,507 to the Southern Colonies. A total of £202,472 was appropriated by the S.P.G. toward the incomes of its appointees in the provinces between 1701 and 1783. Significantly, slightly less than fifty per cent of the total funds allocated by the Society for missionaries in America was expended for men assigned to posts in the Middle Colonies. We are prompted to ask why such a large sum of money was spent in the religiously diverse provinces of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York in which the church was a minority group. There may be several reasons for this situation. Perhaps it was due to the cavalcade of royal officials in the region who were also members of the Society, such as Charles Gookin, John Evans, William Keith, and Robert Quarry in Pennsylvania; Lewis Morris in New Jersey; and Lord Cornbury, Robert Hunter, William Burnet, and William Tryon in New York. Another factor

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may have been the coterie of outstanding and outspoken clergymen who served in the region including Evan Evans and William Smith in Pennsylvania, Thomas Bradbury Chandler in New Jersey, and William Vesey and Samuel Johnson in New York. During each decade of the eighteenth century the Society stepped up its total allotments to American clergymen.12 Between 1701 and 1710 £7,920 was earmarked for the colonies and in the next decade funds were more than doubled, to £16,612, for the support of the parsons. A slight growth, to £18,826, occurred in disbursements in the 1720s but a significant increase took place in the subsequent ten-year period, when £27,990 was spent. Expenditures were relatively constant during the two decades between 1740 and 1760, when the allocations ran up to £30,197 and £30,937 respectively. A number of new missions were opened in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and North Carolina, under the auspices of the society’s aid in the 1760s when £34,232 was appropriated for clergy salaries. While the Revolutionary War interrupted any further expansion of the Society’s missionary efforts, the organization allocated £31,335 between 1770 and 1779 and £4,373 between 1780 and 1783 toward the support of S.P.G. appointees who remained at their posts.13 The Society’s expenditures were not limited to the payment of salaries to missionaries. Every newly appointed missionary received a grant of £10 to assist towards setting up a parochial library and a further £5 for the purchase of religious tracts for distribution among their congregations. At this rate a minimum of £4,635 was spent by the S.P.G. in order to supply with books and pamphlets its three hundred and nine men active in America. Of course, the amount was considerably more, though probably not double the basic figure, since the clergymen often made repeated requests for prayer books, theological publications, and additional pamphlets. An occasional pension was paid by the Society to widows or orphans of deceased missionaries, but the amount never exceeded one full year’s allowance. Although these miscellaneous expenditures cannot be traced as accurately from the Society’s financial records as can clergy salaries, it is doubtful from the materials that have been consulted that the amount spent exceeded £8,000 in this category. Thus the total payments by the S.P.G. in support of the American church was about £210,000, nearly all of its income between 1701 and 1783.

Congregational support Upon receiving applications from residents of communities that wished to have the services of a clergyman, the Society urged the petitioners to assist the missionary enterprise by providing a church, parsonage, glebe, and £30 to £40 per year towards an incumbent’s maintenance.14 They irregularly fulfilled a portion of their obligation. Donald R. Friary, in his comprehensive study of Anglican church architecture in the colonies north of Delaware

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sheds valuable details regarding the construction of buildings.15 Between the decades of the 1680s and the 1770s churches were built and outfitted in 177 communities of the nine provinces. The sites included the key urban centers of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as such remote outposts as Kittery in Maine, Lanesborough in western Massachusetts, and Appoquinimink in Delaware. The buildings ranged from the visually attractive Christ Churches in Philadelphia and Boston, designed in the manner of Christopher Wren’s work in the City of London, to simple, hand-hewn log churches in country villages. Nearly every church, except in the primary colonial cities, took several years to build and finish. It was not unusual for five, ten, or even fifteen years to elapse between the launching of the subscription drive and the finished building. It remains unclear if these circumstances were due to the modest economic situation of Anglican congregations outside of the key urban centers or due to a tight-fisted tendency of members not to dip into their purses to support the construction of their local church. Possibly both factors were at work. The construction of new churches moved at a steady pace during the decades after 1700, reaching its highest levels in the 1740s and 1760s. Possibly the increased number of churches built in the 1740s, particularly in Connecticut, was due to the impact of the Great Awakening, although another factor may have been the number of local Congregational clergymen who were conforming to the Anglican church and young Yale graduates who were seeking ordination. The increased number of churches in the 1760s, especially in Connecticut West of the Connecticut River and in New York, followed the migrations of persons into new areas of settlement in northwestern Connecticut and the Hudson River valley region. The congregations seldom indicated that they would energetically seek to fulfill their responsibilities but rather declared that they were generally unable to contribute much toward the support of their ministers. The Reverend Samuel Johnson, the S.P.G. missionary at Stratford, Connecticut, stated that: ‘the people of our Church are mostly of the poorer sort’.16 Henry Caner, missionary at Fairfield, Connecticut, reported in 1732 that his parishioners paid him £10 per year and were too poor to give any more.17 The circumstances were similar in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and South Carolina.18 Even though the church was established in the four lower counties of New York clergymen there received little financial assistance from parishioners. The incumbent at New Rochelle claimed in 1724 that his congregation was unable to contribute more than an occasional bit of firewood while the missionaries at Staten Island and Jamaica reported they received no assistance from church members. Only in the parishes in Westchester and in New York City did the parsons receive the £40 and £100 colonial currency stipends respectively authorized to be paid by parishioners under the Ministry Act of 1693.19 In Connecticut, however, members of the Church of England

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congregations were generally able after 1740 to raise about £20 sterling annually toward the support of their ministers. The Society, upon advice of the Reverend Samuel Johnson, accordingly reduced stipends to their agents in the colony to reflect the financial contribution of local church members.20 This was the only province in America in which the Society was able to decrease its allowances to missionaries as a result of increased support among the congregations.

English livings, inheritance, and marriage Besides their salaries the financial position for a few parsons was enhanced by one or more additional sources. A few men simultaneously held livings in England; others received an inheritance or continuing assistance from their fathers, while well-placed marriages brought improved financial conditions to several parsons. Of more than 1,200 men I have identified who served as ministers of the King’s church in colonial America only five men held English appointments. The practice of holding more than one living was common in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England but it was not customary in the provinces. Its first appearance in Virginia and Massachusetts was an arrangement born of necessity to encourage men to accept an overseas assignment.21 Robert Hunt, who arrived at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607, continued to hold his living at Heathfield in Sussex until his death the next year.22 In Boston, Robert Radcliff (1686–89), the first Anglican minister to serve in that town, kept his fellowship at Exeter College in Oxford University. During the eighteenth century James Sclater (1657–1723) of Virginia, who was minister of Charles City Parish (1688–1723), also held two livings in England, while Zachariah Brooke, serving St. Paul’s Parish (1721–38), at the same time was vicar of Hawkston cum Newton in Cambridgeshire (1702– 24). Again in Boston, Roger Price, minister of King’s Chapel (1729–51), held the living at Leigh-on-Sea near Southend-on-Sea in Essex County from 1725 until his death in 1762.23 Price was prompted to resign his Boston position in response to Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock’s strong and persistent demand that clergymen under his jurisdiction cease to hold plural livings.24 At least twelve men were the beneficiaries of either substantial inheritance or continuing financial assistance from affluent families. Within this group seven of the parsons were members of prominent New England merchant families. Included in this band were John Usher, Jr., the minister at Bristol, Rhode Island, and the eldest son of a wealthy Boston bookseller, the colony treasurer under Governor Joseph Dudley, and later lieutenant governor of New Hampshire, of the same name; Edward Winslow who served at Braintree, Massachusetts, a scion of Joshua, a Boston distiller and merchant, who also served as a Justice of the Peace; and Peter Bours, the minister at Marblehead and son of a prominent Newport merchant who objected to his desire to enter the ministry.25 Bours’s father indicated to his son that he

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‘might be much better provided for, with regard to the good things of this life, than the [Anglican] Clergy are generally in this Cold climate’, where they could expect very little beyond their salary from the London-based Society.26 In similar circumstances was Jacob Duché of Philadelphia, while in Maryland, Jacob Henderson Hindman and Thomas Claggett both inherited large plantations from their fathers, and the Englishman John Eversfield arrived in the colony with considerable personal wealth. Virginians Emmanuel Jones, Jr., and James Maury were both beneficiaries of large fortunes. Addington Davenport, son of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of the same name, provides us with a glimpse of his inherited wealth. On leaving the S.P.G.’s post at Scituate to accept the position as rector of Trinity Church in Boston, he donated to the Society for the use of his successors in Scituate in perpetuity his house, out-houses, barn, and seven acres of land.27 A well-placed marriage with a daughter of a Boston or New York merchant, or a Maryland planter was an additional source of income for several men. In New England, William Walter, a grandson of Increase Mather, married Lydia Lynde, daughter of the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and her dowry amounted to £6,000. Addington Davenport married Anne Faneuil, the granddaughter of Judge Samuel Sewall. Her merchant father and prominent uncle, Benjamin Faneuil, each provided her with £2,000. On his ordination trip to England Ebenezer Miller married Martha Maitram of Addlethorp in Lincolnshire, England; she brought an estate to the union of between £3,000 and 4,000. In New York, Benjamin Moore, the father of Clement Clarke Moore, the author of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, married Charity Clarke who inherited from her father his estate ‘Chelsea’ in Greenwich Village. The marriage in Maryland of Henry Addison to Rachel, daughter of Daniel Dulany, brought together wealth from two prominent provincial families. Other noteworthy matches included Jonathan Boucher to Eleanor Addison, Thomas Craddock to Catherine Resteau, and Jacob Henderson to Mrs. Mary Duvall. In Virginia, James Blair’s career was enhanced socially, politically, and financially by his marriage to Sarah, the daughter of the prominent Benjamin Harrison II of Wakefield in Surry County.

Supplemental fees As we have seen, the main source of income for English ministers in America lay either in appropriations by the Society or provincial legislatures. Additional fees for performing such services as baptisms, marriages, and burials returned very small amounts to the parsons. At Trinity Church in New York City, the vestry set the fees and perquisites due to the minister. The scale of fees prescribed in 1704 included nine pence for registering a christening, six shillings and six pence for performing a marriage, and an additional three shillings and six pence was to be charged for marrying persons who were

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strangers in the parish. The rector was also to receive five shillings and six pence for officiating at a funeral and burial fees of £5 if an adult was buried in the chancel of the church; the scale was considerably less for children.28 The Reverend William Vesey, minister of the church, wrote to the secretary of New York in 1709 requesting that £20 be added to his salary from the royal bounty as his income from professional fees had declined while the cost of living in the city had increased.29 In Maryland the ministers were to receive, according to the church act of 1702, no more than five shillings sterling for performing a marriage.30 The fees set for a similar service in North Carolina by the legislature in 1736 amounted to two shillings two pence of the total amount of fees received by incumbents in 1738 of six New England parishes. At the head of the list was the rector of Christ Church, Boston, Timothy Cutler, who declared an income from fees of £50, followed by the ministers at New London, £18.12s; Braintree, £13; Fairfield, £11; Narragansett, £7; and New Haven with £6.4s sterling currency.31 A similar report by Commissary Vesey of New York in 1739 indicates that the ministers in that province earned even less from fees. He noted that the incumbents in 1738 received perquisites at Hempstead totaling £10, while at Rye and Jamaica the figures stood at £3 and £2 respectively.32 Virginia ministers in 1751 received the same schedule of fees as they had twenty-seven years earlier. For the publication of banns for marriage they usually earned fifty pounds of tobacco, while to register the ceremony carried a fee of fifteen pounds of tobacco (or five shillings) or two hundred pounds of the staple if the rite was performed with a colonial license (or twenty shillings colonial currency). The returns for a funeral sermon ranged from 400 or 500 and 900 pounds of tobacco or forty shillings.33 At least by 1762 South Carolina parsons received their perquisites in colonial money. The rate for a marriage with banns was fifteen shillings or £1.10s with a license, while burials in the churchyard or in plantations carried fees of nine shillings and fifteen shillings respectively.34 A study of the emoluments of colonial ministers would be incomplete, of course, without consideration of the parsonages and glebes available for them. The main source of information here has been gathered from the circular issued in 1724 by Bishop Gibson to all of the English parsons in the provinces.35 This was the only comprehensive survey ever undertaken by a bishop of London among overseas ministers in an attempt to ascertain the size of their congregations, the frequency of services, the sources and amount of their incomes, and whether they had been provided with houses and glebe lands. The nine replies of clergy from New England to the survey in 1724 indicated that their congregations provided none with a house; and only one minister, at Providence, Rhode Island, had a glebe. The men usually rented accommodations for between £20 and £25 a year for themselves and their families; they received no allowance for this purpose from either the Society or their

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congregations and the obligation was to be met from their salary.36 Eight parsons in New York replied to Bishop Gibson’s Queries indicating a wide scope of arrangements with their congregations for houses and glebes. Six of the men reported that they had parsonages and glebes. William Harrison of Staten Island declared that his manse was an ‘old ruined house’, while Thomas Poyer of Jamaica noted that ‘there is a house and glebe, but a Dissenting Teacher is in it and I am obliged to pay hire for a house’. Poyer was referring to the celebrated conflict between Anglicans and Presbyterians in the town about which congregation had the right to the pulpit, perquisites, and tax monies for support of the local church under New York law. Vesey of Trinity Church stated that he did not have a house but was provided by the congregation with £26 annually to rent a parsonage. He also indicated that he had the benefits of the farm presented to the church by Queen Anne during Lord Cornbury’s term as governor of the province. Today the farm continues to generate funds for the congregation, as it is the basis for the church’s substantial real estate holdings in Lower Manhattan. The minister at Hempstead on Long Island, John Thomas, declared that his glebe was five or six miles from his house, but he had cleared the land for farming.37 In New Jersey the six glebes that are known to have been set up for ministers during the colonial period ranged in size from 9 acres to 250 acres.38 One clergyman in 1761 was living in military barracks at a rental fee of £20 annually since no parsonage was provided at his mission.39 Maryland parsons, at least in 1724, were a little better off than the clergy in the northern provinces was. Nine of the twenty-four ministers who replied to Gibson’s questions were provided with a house, though one parsonage was in such poor repair that it was uninhabitable. Only sixteen of the parishes had glebes, of which two and part of another were leased by the year, one was so small that it was still in forest, while two other glebes were vacant because the land was not fit to be occupied.40 In Virginia twenty-one of the twenty-nine parsons reporting to the bishop of London indicated that they were provided with parsonages, although five of the houses were leased because the properties were either too small or ‘good for nothing’. Only one clergyman owned his own house. Twenty-eight parishes had glebes laid out in the colony but five were considered to be worthless and were neither inhabited nor leased. Six glebes were leased on an annual basis; one at the rate of £6.5s. and another at forty shillings per year. The size of the glebes in the Old Dominion varied from 40 acres to 180 acres, to 300 acres, to 400 acres, to one that covered 1,500 acres and was leased.41 The situation in South Carolina was much the same as in Maryland and Virginia. Six of the nine parsons indicated that they occupied houses provided by the parishes, while two men had their own homes. In South Carolina all but one of the parsonages were kept in repair by the vestry, while in Virginia and Maryland about half of the incumbents paid for the maintenance

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of their houses. The size of the five glebes in South Carolina ranged from a minimum of seventeen acres to a maximum of six hundred acres.42

Comparative salaries: Massachusetts clergymen The financial experiences of the Anglican parsons in New England during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not unique. They shared with their Congregational colleagues a similar pattern of local financial support.43 In the Plymouth Colony some towns, attempting to avoid the burden of supporting a minister, waited for years after settlement to organize a church, for, once the church was established and the minister settled, the town was responsible for financial support. The legislation enacted in 1657 and amended in 1670 was designed to guarantee collection of clergymen’s salaries, but this intent was never realized. Even among the church members, who benefited directly when all taxpayers were forced to support the parsons, there existed a strong opposition to compulsory maintenance. As dissenters they could place no reliance upon the state to force contributions. Accordingly, they became accustomed to voluntary support for their churches. Even when the church was in a declining condition, churchmen did not want compulsory support. During his first year at Plymouth, the younger John Cotton received in 1667 a salary of £50 that rose the next year to £80. The town in 1668 agreed to provide for Cotton’s wife and children should he die prematurely. The salaries for other clergymen in the Old Colony ranged from £50 in Duxbury to £60 in Eastham. Generally the salaries ranged between £50 and £80 in the Plymouth Colony, not a very high level of income. In Charlestown the parson earned £100 per annum, while in Salem the incumbent received a stipend of £125. Frequently the clergymen had to endure the tardy payment of their salaries, a situation that they usually accepted with long-suffering patience.44 As early as 1662, with a salary of £50 a year, Increase Mather had a difficult time maintaining himself and his family. Two years later he noted in his ordination sermon the grudging reluctance on the part of his congregation, the North Church in Boston, to pay him an appropriate maintenance.45 By 1664, it was acceptable for ministers in New England to secure their future by entering into a written contract with their congregations regarding the terms of their employment and annual stipend.46 It was an issue that surfaced frequently among clergymen of his generation. He found his economic situation so difficult and discouraging during the first three years of his ministry that he considered abandoning Boston and moving with his family to Connecticut. A year after Increase Mather’s ordination and despite his written contract with his congregation, the church asked him to take a reduction in his annual salary. Disquieted by the congregation’s request Mather considered moving to Barbados and taking up a pastorate on the island. While he did not take leave of his Boston congregation Increase

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Mather through the years found himself short of money, in debt, and miserable because of what he believed to be shabby treatment by his church.47 In 1711, both Increase and Cotton Mather, who served the same congregation as his father, received salaries of £3 per week, raised from the weekly contributions that amounted to about £10. Over the next fourteen years increments brought Cotton Mather’s salary to £4 by 1725. These modest salaries were supplemented by free repairs and firewood for their homes and gifts of money that may have been bequeathed to them by wealthy congregants.48 As a comparative note, Samuel Myles, the first rector of King’s Chapel in Boston, had his salary increased by the congregation in 1698 after his marriage from £2 to £3 per week.49 By the beginning of the eighteenth century the New England ministers’ role was somewhat diminished in the popular eye. As Ola Elizabeth Winslow has noted, the changed attitude may have been linked to the clergy themselves, or to the people, but probably to the ‘changed climate – social, religious, political – into which the third and fourth American generation were born’.50 Nearly every New England town had a ‘Salary Dispute’ with its parson on its hands during the eighteenth century. Ordination sermons straightforwardly placed the issue on the pulpit desk and before the public: the need for a proper maintenance for the clergy. Many ministers published tracts urging a proper stipend for the men. Too often ministers had to deal with men, who concluded, in John Tuft’s words: ‘a Cheap Minister is the Best’.51 There was general financial strife in Massachusetts and Connecticut parishes where inhabitants were required by law to contribute toward the support of the minister, but the town was charged to fix his salary. Too frequently the town meeting expressed its disapproval of the parson’s marriage or his theology by cutting his salary. Rarely was the town willing to increase the amount of his pay to offset the decline in the value of money. Many Congregational clergymen were forced to supplement their income by farming or some other independent business. Jonathan Edward’s father sold liquor, and a clerical contemporary of his went into the real estate business and sold hundred-acre lots that turned out to contain eighty-six acres. Many of those with large families had to surrender their pulpits to younger parsons without dependents.52 After 1711, the legislatures passed special acts requiring the payment of particular clergymen, and in 1735 Connecticut ordered that no minister’s salary should be left more than two months unpaid. These laws had little effect other than to give the clergy a somewhat stronger case in their frequent suits at law to recover their back pay. If a minister did not quarrel with his congregation over his salary it was a fact likely to be noted in his obituary. Clifford K. Shipton has found that between 1680 and 1740, 12 per cent of the New England clergy were ‘seriously involved’ in financial disputes with their congregations and 5 per cent left their pastorates because of such controversies. For the parson raising a family the salary situation created

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considerable unease.53 The Reverend Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough observed, ‘the unhappy times we [clergymen] are fallen into in the Ingratitude of most of the people of the Country to their Ministers, very few besides the Boston ministers being able to support themselves with what they receive from their people’. Parkman was concerned about the consequences of low stipends on the professional relationship between the pastor and his people. ‘The people’s respect’, he declared, ‘is much proportioned to our external appearance; when therefore it becomes mean thro their neglect it will be in danger of becoming worse thro their contempt’.54 Andrew Eliot, minister of the New North Church of Boston, reported that he began his career with a salary of £50 sterling a year and even after it had doubled it was hardly sufficient to care for his eleven children. In addition he received rings for performing funeral services and the gloves that were given him at funerals, weddings, and baptisms. Eliot noted at one point in his career that he had received nearly three thousand pairs of gloves, which he had sold for £1,441.18s.1d. He handled the rings the same way.55 These circumstances were bound to have an effect upon the sort of men who became parsons in every denomination. During New England’s first century the ministerial career was very attractive for an ambitious young man. Then the decline of the power and influence of the clergy in secular affairs, the decline of popular interest in religious matters, and the expanding opportunities offered by trade, medicine, and law attracted from the church many talented men. Poor salaries discouraged prospective ordinands and the lack of funds for hospitality or proper attire would diminish public respect. The clergy from the beginning were seldom paid in cash; the usual means of support was the system of ‘Country Pay’. The people would give what they could spare when they could spare it. As the parson was a farmer too, with his own fields, when his acres yielded an abundant crop, he received abundance from his people, when the season was modest he received lean contributions. At best the ‘Country Pay’ system was irregular and initiated hard feelings and hardship. For most New England parsons throughout the eighteenth century their pastoral visits were in part seeking settlement of ‘Country Pay’ accounts. Such calls were meant to be for the purpose of ministering to the church members with prayer and instruction and not spent on the task of salary collection. As Winslow remarks, gradually the situation was eased, but even when salary increases were voted, there might be strings attached.56 The financial hardships of the clergy are clear enough, but, as many of them realized, the controversy over their financial plight eroded the influence and status of the pulpit in town life. The answer for the parsons was to undertake more ‘secular employment’, like farming or school teaching, to supplement their incomes. The model of the parson on his knees or in his study ‘free from the entanglements of Life’ is at best unusual and distorted.57 A member of

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the Anglican church in Virginia voiced similar concerns regarding the clergy’s need to supplement their incomes. He wrote that ‘It gives me great uneasiness to see the part of our Brethren taken up in farming and in buying slaves that in my humble opinion is unlawful for any Christian and in particular for a clergyman’.58

Comparative salaries: civil servants, schoolmasters, and lawyers I turn now to comparing the stipends of the parsons of the King’s church with other professional members of the community. William Eddis, a civil servant headquartered at Annapolis after 1769 and holding the post of surveyor and searcher of His Majesty’s customs, earned a salary of £60 sterling per year.59 Three years later he was appointed by the governor of the colony to the position of Commissioner of the Paper Currency Office that carried a stipend of £90 per annum plus £10 in fees. He also served as deputy to the Lord Proprietor’s agent and receiver general, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, and received an additional salary of £60 per year. Eddis enjoyed a record of steadily improving fortune.60 To the northwards, in Boston, the Reverend Andrew Burnaby observed in the course of his travels in 1760 that the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony received a salary of £1,300 sterling per year.61 In Annapolis, the distinguished lawyer, George Chalmers received an annual income in 1774 of about £500 sterling, while in Charles Town, South Carolina, the celebrated Scotsman and Edinburgh-educated Presbyterian minister, Alexander Hewat, reportedly received a salary of £250 sterling per year, plus the rent of a house worth £35.14s.2d. per annum, all of which amounted to about £2,000 Carolina currency, a substantial sum for a thrifty, unmarried parson. Schoolmasters’ salaries ranged in New England country towns from £20 to £75. Teachers at the ‘grammar’ schools, usually recent college graduates, earned an average of £40 per year. In Boston during the pre-Revolutionary years a Master could earn £100 per annum with other income from private tutoring. However, in the South, Deveraux Jarratt, at his school in western Virginia, received little support. He was paid some years at £15 like his counterparts in rural New England and New Jersey.62 In New England ministers were paid somewhat better than schoolmasters. A Boston preacher in 1767 earned a base salary of £150, ‘£390 additional pay, nearly £200 in wood, £64 in marriage fees, and £126 worth of presents, or a total of about £260 currency’. The average salary was about £70 with other benefits increasing the total to about £100.63 In 1776, the President of Harvard College, the Rev. Samuel Langdon, earned £250, as much as the rest of the faculty combined. Yale paid its president £150 plus a house; the professor of divinity also was provided with a house and £113.5s.8d., but the senior and junior tutors earned only £65.1s.4d. and £57.1s.4d., and all four of them had to petition occasionally for their money. These salaries, for

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the profession’s most respectable positions, barely sufficed to support a family in middle-class decency, and certainly did not encourage high living.64 Southern clergymen earned much more. Charles Town ministers received as much as £300 to £400 a year. One Presbyterian minister in New York earned over £950 per annum and lived in a genteel and high style.65 The income of lawyers is more difficult to determine. James Allen of Philadelphia earned £300 to £400 in 1773, and £600 in 1775 and in Virginia Paul Carrington earned nearly £600.66 Government officials’ salaries varied, some stipends were small while other servants of the King and people did well. Main notes the ‘judges, treasurer, and secretary of Massachusetts earned £250 to £375 annually, while the Governor earned about £2,300 before and £1,100 after the Revolution’.67 Customs officials seemed to have earned annually incomes comparable to colonial lawyers. By 1710 the coveted customs posts were held by Englishmen with prominent political connections and appointed by the crown. The base salaries of the officers remained constant throughout the eighteenth century, ranging annually from £40 at York River in Virginia to £60 at Charlestown, South Carolina, to £160 at Philadelphia and £100 at Boston plus certain fees for almost every transaction at the port that they supervised. The Surveyor (Customs) Generals for the Northern and Southern Departments received a substantial base salary of £495 per annum.68

Summary Fueled with funds raised in England, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was the lifeline for the King’s church in early America throughout the eighteenth century. The Society extended support to the overseas church in several ways: by the recruitment, appointment, and annual financial support of its missionaries, and by supplying congregations with the necessary books for worship and pamphlets for pastoral care. Without this elementary assistance the church would have made little or no headway in the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies. Except in the most populous towns the congregations in these provinces were either unable or unwilling to provide the necessary funds to sustain independently the local church. Only toward the end of the colonial period were there self-supporting parishes in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charles Town. In Newport, Rhode Island, the congregation of Trinity Church was able to assume its entire financial obligation in 1770, sixty-seven years after the first S.P.G. missionary began to serve the parish. There is no instance during the colonial era of a church in a small community or rural settlement in a position to sever its financial or other ties to the S.P.G. The situation was quite different in Virginia and Maryland. As early as the mid-seventeenth century clergy stipends had been set by law in the former province, while in the latter colony by the legislative acts of 1692, 1696, and 1702 followed Virginia in establishing

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the Anglican church and took on the maintenance of its parsons. Yet although the church had special recognition and financial assistance in these provinces, the preachers were little better off economically than the agents of the Society in the middle colonies and in New England were. The House of Burgesses of Virginia periodically between 1748 and 1775 heatedly debated the value of clergy stipends, finally reducing by 25 per cent the worth of their livings in 1755. The Society’s missionaries, on the other hand, insulated from the vagaries of public opinion and the ways of legislatures superintending the established church, never experienced a decrease in the size of their allowances. The salaries of ministers lagged behind inflation throughout the eighteenth century and accordingly their income and purchasing power steadily declined. The parsons’ incomes were little augmented by surplice fees or productive glebe lands at any time during the colonial era. The clergymen were seldom provided with parsonages in New England and the Middle Colonies while in the South about two-thirds of the men were supplied with houses though many were in poor repair. Complicating their financial situation were the ravages of inflation and drought, adverse factors that worked against the welfare of the ministers who were paid in a fixed currency, either sterling or tobacco. The King’s church in the American colonies outside of Virginia and Maryland required a substantial and continuing flow of funds from London, particularly between 1675 and the close of the American Revolutionary War.

Part III The American Experience Transforms the King’s Church

8 Conventions of the Clergy

Conventions of the colonial ministers supplemented the leadership and oversight role of the King’s church provided by royal governors and commissaries. These sessions were a uniquely American innovation, beginning in the 1690s and meeting with increasing frequency as the eighteenth century passed. Yet the three means for providing supervision over the church – two driven by guidance from London and one from within the ranks of the men in the colonies – held in common the need to apply some form of ecclesiastical leadership over the King’s church. Wherever these three intersecting procedures for superintending church affairs were present they worked together. Occasionally where one party was stronger than the others it became the dominant authority. Where no commissary of the bishop of London was present in a colony the conventions became the sole force for maintaining a sense of clerical collegiality, mission, and a forum for discussion of the church’s circumstances and requirements. Without a resident prelate the most significant legacy of the sessions was its contribution to the development of an Americanization process for the church and that provided a valuable experience for its reconstitution and reorganization after the Revolutionary War. Between 1690 and the mid-1770s the conventions became a gradual process for introducing a more democratic consultative procedure to the hierarchically organized transplanted church. This was a process that notably departed from traditional English polity and practice. After 1755 the agendas of the sessions were shaped by leading Congregational church ministers, including Jonathan Mayhew, Noah Welles, and Charles Chauncy. They were critical of the purpose of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the colonies and feared the rumored prospect of the appointment of an American bishop. One outspoken parson, Thomas Bradbury Chandler, a Yale-educated New Jersey convert to the church, remarked in 1767 that under the circumstances the most that the clergy could do when under attack was to hold voluntary conventions. These were sessions, he noted, that had ‘been regularly practiced, for a number of years in some of the Northern Colonies’.1 These were meetings that allowed the parsons to ‘meet together on Terms of Equality’, 107

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a practice ‘unknown to the Constitution of the Church of England’.2 Chandler strongly defended the necessity for conventions because the ministers were ‘left without a Bishop at their Head to superintend and govern them, . . . [a] thing equally unknown to the Constitution of any Episcopal Church upon Earth’.3 The first meetings of the Anglican clergy were summoned in different ways. Occasionally by strong-minded and active royal governors, sometimes by commissaries of the bishop of London, or by the early missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The S.P.G.’s appointees were urged by their London superiors to meet frequently, perhaps in response to the admonition of one of the Society’s primary leaders, Bishop of Salisbury Gilbert Burnet. He called and urged the clergy to meet regularly in his widely distributed publication A Discourse on Pastoral Care (London, 1692). From another perspective several royal governors viewed the church as an integral element of their imperial administration and summoned the clergy of their provinces into session. This link was reinforced by the several governors who became members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel between 1702 and 1710.4 Included in this cadre of officials were several of the most capable and forceful governors to serve during the colonial period. Francis Nicholson and Robert Hunter of New York, Lewis Morris of New Jersey, John Evans and Charles Gookin of Pennsylvania, and in South Carolina, Nathaniel Johnson, Robert Johnson, Edward Hyde, and Edward Tynte. In every instance the officers governed colonies that were primary recipients of the Society’s missionaries and witnessed an early introduction of clergy conventions. Strong civil leadership on behalf of the church coincided with vigorous attempts to impose royal government in largely Dutch-speaking New York, Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, and religiously diverse South Carolina during the final decade of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century. Astute and hard-driving governors attempted to enhance the English government’s unfolding process of anglicization in the provinces under their jurisdiction by actively mustering the King’s church. Leading this band of civil officials during the first two decades of the eighteenth century were Francis Nicholson during his service in several colonies (Maryland, New York, Virginia, and South Carolina), John Hart of Maryland, and Alexander Spotswood of Virginia. Nicholson was instrumental in summoning to convention clergymen in Maryland in 1695 and in New York and New Jersey in 1702.5 Assemblies of the ministers were not an experience unique to the Anglicans. Other religious groups during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries faced similar needs to administer church affairs and offered models of general meetings of members or clergy to consider church affairs. In New England there had been meetings of the clergy of the scattered settlements as early as 1633, and these voluntary sessions had continued for several years. By 1650, however, fears that the gatherings should result in the formation of

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a presbytery led to their abandonment.6 The conventions of the clergy that were scheduled annually at the time of the May session of the General Court had crystallized by about 1680 to have a moderator, a dinner, and a sermon. It was not a judicial assembly, or a body directly representative of the churches. The purpose of the convention was to discuss the state of religion in the Commonwealth and to apply its corporate power and offer suggestions on matters to the legislature and the churches.7 In Massachusetts the first formally convened synod of the clergy occurred in 1646 to write and adopt a platform of congregational worship. Clergy were invited from the four Puritan colonies – Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven – the ministers in Plymouth declined to join the session.8 Synods were held in Massachusetts in 1657 to discuss baptism, and in March 1662 to debate the requirements for church membership. A policy was formulated at the latter session since nicknamed the ‘Half-Way Covenant’. A 1679 synod met for the purpose of urging New England’s congregations to renew their covenants with God because there were signs of a great declension in recent events: King Philip’s War, the great fire in Boston, and the ravages of the smallpox epidemic. Building on nearly forty years of occasional meetings the Boston-area clergymen in 1680 were meeting informally weekly, usually at Samuel Willard’s house.9 Cotton Mather and his colleagues encouraged meetings of clerical associations in New England as occurred during the first four decades after settlement. Mather forcefully argued that these meetings would provide a useful process for the examination and evaluation of candidates for ordination in hope of preventing unqualified or fraudulent persons from the pulpit.10 In 1708 the Connecticut legislature ordered representatives of the established churches to meet in various county towns, establish consociations or standing councils to deal with discipline, clergy ordination, installation, and dismissions. All ministers of the colony were assigned to an association for consultation, licensure, and recommendation. Each county consociation was to send delegates to an annual ‘General Association’ of the whole colony. The first session was held in May 1709. During George Fox’s visit to America between 1671 and 1673 the founder of the Friends recounted in his Journal special meetings to conduct the business of the sect.11 During the middle years of the eighteenth century the Presbyterys and Synods of the Presbyterian Church in the middle colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York exercised responsibility for examining and approving candidates for the ministry and reviewing applications for the establishment of new congregations.12 Following that example the German and Swedish Lutheran ministers in Pennsylvania and Delaware began to meet in convention in 1748. These pastors were all responsible to the church authorities in either Halle or Uppsala who had commissioned them for service in America. Like the Anglican missionaries serving under the auspices of the S.P.G. the Lutheran ministers were required to transmit

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regular parochial reports to their superiors and were subject to their orders and discipline.13

Anglican clergy conventions For the provincial King’s church there was little need for an assembly of clergymen before 1690. Virginia was the only colony with a significant number of parsons, thirty-six in 1680, residing in scattered parishes along the water highways of the Potomac, York, and James Rivers, while in Maryland only three parsons resided in the province.14 These circumstances changed in the 1690s and first two decades of the eighteenth century. In part the change came with the expanding influence and duties of royal officials for the church’s interests in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. It was also because of the impact of the founding and activity of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The Society’s recruitment of royal governors as members, such as Nicholson, Hunter, and Spotswood, and the appointment of missionaries to key posts in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, fostered a nucleus of civil and ecclesiastical leaders concerned with the establishment and development of the church in their provinces. As the number of Anglican congregations supplied by S.P.G. men increased in the colonies north of Maryland and south of Virginia, the ministers followed the command of London officials to meet regularly to discuss church affairs. Table 8.1 traces the rising trend in the number of provincial clergy assemblies held between 1702 and 1719 in New York (7), South Carolina (7), and Pennsylvania (2). During the years from 1720 to 1740 the men in the region of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire held 9 joint meetings while the ministers in Connecticut met independently once. In South Carolina the clergy met on 10 occasions and in Pennsylvania they gathered 7 times. For unclear reasons the number of conventions in the colonies declined to merely 10 sessions during the decade between 1740 and 1749 – New England region parsons gathered jointly for 3 meetings, while the ministers in Connecticut and South Carolina met independently on 2 occasions each. This situation changed dramatically when political and economic events cast the sessions of the decades of the 1750s, 1760s, and 1770s into a different position. Between 1760 and 1769 forty-seven conventions were held – 7 joint sessions of New York and New Jersey clergymen, 3 in New York, 7 in New Jersey, 10 in South Carolina, 9 in Connecticut, 6 in Massachusetts, 3 in Pennsylvania, and 1 in Virginia. The meetings served as a fortress for the beleaguered clerics when the church was under siege on two fronts from the anti-episcopal rhetoric of Congregational church pamphleteers. First, it was attacked for persistently seeking from London officials the appointment of an American bishop, and

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Table 8.1 Conventions of the Anglican Clergy (a) 1700–1739 Colonies

Decades 1700–09

1710–19

1720–29

1730–39

Totals

– – – 4

– – – 3

3 – – 1

6 – 1 1

9 – 1 9

New England region: Joint meetings – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire Massachusetts Connecticut New York Joint meetings – New York and New Jersey New Jersey Pennsylvania Joint meetings – Pennsylvania and New Jersey Maryland Virginia South Carolina

– – –

– – 2

– – 5

1 – 2

1 – 9

– – 1 1

4 1 2 6

– 1 1 10

– – 2 –

4 2 6 17

Totals

6

18

21

13

58

(b) 1740–1781 Colonies

New England region: Joint meetings – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire Massachusetts Connecticut Joint meetings – Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey New York Joint meetings – New York and New Jersey New Jersey Pennsylvania Joint meetings – Pennsylvania and New Jersey Maryland Virginia South Carolina

Decades 1740–49

1750–59

1760–69

1770–81

Totals

3 – 2

– – 1

– 6 9

1 2 11

4 8 23

– 1

– 1

1 3

– 4

1 9

– – 1

– 2 –

7 7 3

– – 1

7 9 5

– – 1 2

– 2 2 10

– – 1 10

– – 4 1

– 2 8 23

Totals

10

18

47

24

99

Grand Total

16

36

68

37

157

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Table 8.1 (Continued) (c) Totals and percentages Colonial conventions New England region: Joint meetings – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire Massachusetts Connecticut Joint meetings – Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey New York Joint meetings – New York and New Jersey New Jersey Pennsylvania Joint meetings – Pennsylvania and New Jersey Maryland Virginia South Carolina Totals

Totals

Per cent of total meetings

13 8 24

8.28 5.09 15.28

1 18 8 9 14

0.63 11.46 5.09 5.73 8.91

4 4 14 40

2.54 2.54 8.91 25.47

15715

100.00

secondly, the church was vulnerable as a highly visible local English institution exposed to colonial challenges to imperial policies. Inevitably the episcopal structure of the church required that it maintain one foot in the Old World and the other in the New World. Throughout the colonial era its more than 1,200 clergymen, whether foreign-born or native colonists, were dependent on English bishops for ordination and licensing to allow them to practice their profession in the provinces. Furthermore, on the eve of the American Revolution, nearly all of the men outside of Virginia and Maryland were dependent for their salaries on the Society. For the parsons of the King’s church there was no refuge – legal, official, or ceremonial – from the clever and relentless arguments of critics. A handful of prominent provincial Anglicans including Samuel Johnson, Myles Cooper, Samuel Seabury, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler, desperately sought to mute the challenges without either public acclaim or success. Ironically, about one-half of the more than four hundred ministers who occupied pulpits of the King’s church during the decade before the Revolutionary War were native colonists. Their places of birth were of little consequence, as the King’s church was popularly perceived as a prominent representative of the English State and Crown. During the long decade between 1770 and 1781 assemblies were only held in Connecticut (11), in New York and Virginia (4 each) and under considerably different circumstances. New York remained a Loyalist stronghold and subject to the British troops throughout the war, becoming a haven for parsons fleeing for political asylum from nearby colonies; while in Virginia, where

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the clergy overwhelmingly sided with the Patriot cause, the church and clergy faced the grinding forces of legislative disestablishment and the loss of their tobacco-based stipends. The Connecticut experience was unlike either New York or Virginia – the province was compact, travel between towns and congregations easier and quicker, and the clergy were of similar social backgrounds. They were nearly all natives of the colony and graduates of Yale College. Between 1700 and 1781 there were held 157 conventions of the clergy. The meetings followed the routine pattern of Congregational sessions in New England during the colonial period. They were forums for the discussion of common interests within each province. Such issues were perennially considered as the establishment of new missions, conducting interviews of prospective candidates for the ministry, reviewing disciplinary problems among their colleagues, serving the benevolent needs of families of deceased parsons, and combating the ceaseless criticism of their requests for an American bishop. Among the rank and file of clergy a handful did not welcome convention sessions. Commissary Gideon Johnston of Charles Town, South Carolina, reported to officials of the Society that he had not called a meeting or held a visitation in the province, because ‘I am apt to believe some of them may fancy this would either lessen them or be an encroachment on their Christian liberty’. Before Johnston arrived in the province in 1707, by common consent quarterly meetings of the clergy were held, with a sermon, and an address by the governor. The commissary noted that since the ‘first time I called upon them and showed them my Commission we have never from that day met all together and I am sure they never shall (for me) till I have Instructions from my Lord of London for that purpose’.16 While in Maryland, at the height of the anti-episcopacy controversy in 1763, Governor Eden, a brother-in-law to the Proprietor, Francis Lord Baltimore, forbade the clergy to convene. He objected to the petition of the ministers sent to the bishop of London for a resident American bishop, a prospect that, if accomplished, would diminish the ecclesiastical power and patronage of the colony’s Proprietor and risk political criticism and enmity from the province’s nonconformist population.17 Convention sessions were most frequently held in the provinces of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. During the first half of the eighteenth century joint sessions were held with men in nearby colonies. In New England there were 17 such meetings during the colonial era, while New York and New Jersey parsons gathered together on 8 occasions, and Pennsylvania clergymen met jointly 4 times.18 The King’s church in New England was strongest and most numerous in Massachusetts and Connecticut and conventions were held independently in each province. In the Bay Colony eight meetings were held between 1761 and 1771, and in Connecticut, twenty-three sessions met

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between 1739 and 1781.19 New Jersey clergymen, under the aegis of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, after 1758 and until 1767, met annually.20 New York held eighteen conferences between 1702 and 1778.21 In Pennsylvania, fourteen meetings were held between 1711 and 1775.22 Despite the establishment of the church in Maryland and Virginia the parsons met on few occasions. This circumstance may have been caused by one or more factors. First, and not wholly convincing, was the difficulty and distance for some of the men to travel to meet in either Annapolis or Williamsburgh; second, the commissaries or governors may have been reluctant to encourage a session for fear of generating criticism regarding the state of the church within their jurisdiction and allowing such comments to reach London; and third, perhaps the men believed that their own relationships with their congregations would be stronger if they did not join in a provincial session of their colleagues. Whatever the situation the reason for the lack of meetings in the two colonies is unclear. In Maryland only four assemblies ever met, while in Virginia fourteen sessions occurred during the colonial period.23 South Carolina clergy met eighteen times between 1708 and 1740/41 and on twenty-two occasions from 1749 to 1770, representing 25 per cent of the total meetings in the provinces.24 The frequency of meetings varied from colony to colony. In Pennsylvania, for example, the clergy agreed in January 1713 to meet four times a year, and in South Carolina the men decided in 1712 to gather semi-annually, but in 1728 they were meeting quarterly.25 The Massachusetts Bay ministers were reported in 1737 to be meeting annually, and in 1765 they declared a voluntary annual convention would be held until a bishop or commissary was sent to the province.26 The Reverend James Wetmore, S.P.G. missionary at Rye, New York (1726–60) reported that the clergy of that colony gathered every year on Ascension Day.27 Connecticut ministers were meeting, at least by 1765, annually too.28

The work of conventions Governor John Hart of Maryland summoned a meeting of the ministers at Annapolis on 24 and 25 June 1714, to discuss the state of the church in the province; he addressed the clergy and included a series of inquiries that followed the time-honored visitation articles of bishops and commissaries in England. He asked if The Book of Common Prayer was used at worship services every Sunday and holy day and if the sacraments were administered according to the rites of the Church of England. The number of churches built, the amount of salary the clergy were paid and the condition of their parsonages and glebes was also information requested. Hart asked if every minister was a member of his parish vestry, or if any man served without episcopal orders; he asked the men to present their letters of orders and inquired if they had a ‘due sense of the Lord Bishop of London’s Ecclesiastical jurisdiction’ in the province. The governor also asked if any schoolmaster was serving in

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Maryland without a license from the bishop of London or governor; if the tables of Marriage and Canons were hung in every church, as in England, and if reprehensible behavior among colonists was appropriately punished. Because no commissary served in the colony, the governor took the initiative and urged the parsons to appoint one of their position to consult with him on ecclesiastical affairs.29 Replying to Hart’s queries the clergy noted that a sufficient number of churches had been built in the province, but that the glebes that were provided varied in quality from good to poor and some parishes had none. According to the twenty-one men at the meeting the maintenance of ministers in most livings was but a bare minimum. All other questions from the governor were affirmatively answered. The parsons pressed for additional schoolmasters, parish libraries, laws against moral degradation, and asked the governor to consider the increasing numbers of Roman Catholics and Quakers in the colony. Rather than appoint one of their ranks to advise the governor on church affairs the convention proposed that a six-man committee advise the chief executive on religious matters, a shared consultative arrangement that illustrates democratization or the process for providing oversight of a hierarchical institution.30 Despite the wide-reaching implication of the ministers’ suggestions for the improvement of church and moral affairs in the colony their plan came to nothing. In every colony conventions considered reports on the state of the church within their provinces. The sessions also reviewed requests from colonists in towns and villages for the establishment of an Anglican mission in their community and that a minister be sent to serve them. London officials relied on these reports before making a decision to support the creation of a new post, or the appointment of a minister. Additionally, the sessions constantly reviewed a variety of personnel problems: the need for men to fill vacant parishes and ministers to supply missions until new clergymen could take up the posts, and the transfers of men who were ill-suited for a particular parish.31 No less important were the interviews and recommendations of candidates for holy orders. Prospective ministers were required to submit to the sessions testimonials regarding their behavior and learning. Occasionally a candidate deficient in his education was not offered a recommendation to the bishop of London for ordination for a year while he studied theology, the Bible, or Church History under the guidance of one of the province’s ministers.32 The clergy meetings also alerted the Society and bishops of London to disreputable colonists who were going to England seeking ordination.33 The New York convention, which became highly organized in the 1760s, adopted a regulation at its meeting on 21 May 1766, that no person was to be recommended for ordination without an interview by the Standing Committee and a recommendation from the assembly.34 Connecticut ministers established a similar procedure at their meeting in Stamford on 24 January 1772.35 Placement of schoolmasters and catechists in Boston, New York, and

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Charles Town were also matters of interest. The discipline of fellow ministers was a rare occurrence in conventions; only six instances during the colonial period have been found. Neither the clergy nor the conventions had authority to judge or suspend one of their own order. In Pennsylvania, in 1716 an assembly held a quasi-ecclesiastical trial under the presidency of John Talbot of Burlington, New Jersey. The accused, Francis Philips, formerly the Society’s missionary at Stratford, Connecticut (1712–13), had been discharged from that organization for leaving the mission without approval. He was serving as assistant minister at Christ Church in Philadelphia when cited by the convention for immoral conduct.36 Rather than allow a Quaker-dominated civil court to try the case the assembly claimed jurisdiction over the matter and heard evidence. Philips did not plead for himself and a sentence was not passed, but, completely discredited, he left the ministry.37 In another situation the Pennsylvania clergy meeting at New Castle, Delaware, on 21 September 1727, urged the S.P.G. to remove Alexander Campbell of Appoquiniminck because of irregular behavior.38 The Society transferred Campbell to New York in 1729 and he was dismissed from their service and from the ministry in 1732 for similar immoral actions. Occasionally, conventions considering cases for discipline and punishment seem to take a more personal rather than a judicial turn. South Carolina ministers, in January 1715/16, responding in convention to a request of the Governor of North Carolina for an Anglican missionary in that province, sent the protesting Ebenezer Taylor to the thinly settled province. Taylor, a former Presbyterian preacher, had become, at least to his brethren and parishioners, temperamental and stubborn, and followed a ‘penurious and covetous rate of life’.39 Not actually in poverty, Taylor was lending out money at interest. Commissary Johnston urged the Society to withdraw Taylor’s license to officiate in the colonies, but to no avail. Taylor served in North Carolina until his death in 1719. Commonly in the colonies where the church was established, especially in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina, the sessions throughout the eighteenth century habitually discussed the inadequate salaries provided the men. In 1728 Maryland, where salaries were tied to the tobacco crop, parsons complained of the declining value of their incomes occasioned by the diminished market price of the commodity.40 A 1730 Act of the Assembly allowed for the clergy to be paid in either tobacco or grain. Controversy also defined agendas of clergy meetings, particularly in New England, confrontations that were probably driven by several factors. First, the need for the handful of clergy and congregations to establish their identity in communities overwhelmingly comprised of members of the Congregational church. Second, to exploit and embrace the protection of royal officials and the legal status of the national church. Finally, on a personal level, an outlet for animosities such as were unleashed in the 1720s by the imperious and confrontational temperament of Harvard-educated Timothy Cutler, a former

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rector of Yale College. One of the five ‘Yale Apostates’ of 1722 who converted to the Anglican church from the Congregational ministry, Cutler was the minister of Christ Church in Boston’s North End from 1722 until his death in 1765. In New England three heated issues enlivened the meetings in the mid1720s. The first was to halt the Congregationalist plans for a Synod in 1725.41 Since the granting of a colonial charter for Massachusetts by William and Mary in 1691, no synod had been held by the Congregational churches of New England. At a general convention in May 1725, under the leadership of Cotton Mather, an effort was made to revive the institution from which strength had been derived in the seventeenth century. The clergy were motivated to this proposal by the ‘great and visible decay of piety’, and the ‘growth of many miscarriages’, since the establishment of the Bay Colony one hundred years earlier, which they interpreted as distressing judgments from the Lord. Presumably the growth of the Anglican Church since 1686 and the perceived threat of an episcopate in their midst were included in the list. Cutler, joined by Samuel Myles, the rector of King’s Chapel, pulled every lever at their hands – civil and ecclesiastical – to advance their cause: they petitioned Lieutenant Governor William Dummer, the two houses of the colonial legislature, and Bishop Gibson in London, vigorously protesting the legality of the meeting. They contended, not unreasonably, that the synod would probably be concerned with Anglican church affairs, over which it had no authority. They feared that the meeting would support its claim to do so on the grounds that in the previous century, before an Anglican church was established in the province, synods had dealt with all ecclesiastical details in the colony.42 The position of Cutler and Myles was that in calling a synod, Mather’s memorial attempted to speak for all New England, and accordingly, treated the Anglican church as if it did not exist. As the controversial layman John Checkley wrote, the synod was summoned to arrest the establishment of new Anglican churches and as an effort toward renewing solidarity among the Congregationalists.43 Historical precedent did not seem to be wholly inconvenient to the petitioners. They wished to use the seventeenth-century custom of summoning all the colony’s clergy to the synod to support their own case to be present, claiming that they were equally concerned with other denominations in the religious and moral life of the colony and ought to be consulted. Their only doubt, so they said, was whether it would be irregular for them to participate without the approval of the bishop of London. This was a position guaranteed to spark opposition from the Congregational ministers. It was hardly a clever diplomatic ploy. Since the Church of England in all of the colonies was annexed to the see of London, the men reasoned, the synod could not be held until Bishop Gibson and the king had acknowledged their pleasure. The colonial council and Lower House of legislature dismissed the petition of the parsons of the King’s church on 22 and 23 June.

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Gibson, in London, interceded with the Duke of Newcastle to quash the New England assembly. Referring to the Act of Uniformity, the bishop asserted that the establishment of the Church of England extended to the provinces, and because of this fact, the Dissenter ministers were simply tolerated in New England as in England. The Bishop maintained that to allow them to hold a synod would be an injustice to both the established and the dissenting clergy in England, neither of whom were permitted by law to hold synods.44 The attorney-general and solicitor-general in England rendered an opinion on 29 September 1725, stating that there was no regular establishment of a national or provincial church in New England to warrant a synod or convention. If the clergy decided to hold a meeting without royal favor, the opinion continued, the king’s prerogative would be sufficient to declare the meeting illegal even though it had been authorized by the council and House of Representatives. But if the assembly was voluntary, and no attempts were made to pass authoritative acts, the meeting could not be construed as illegal.45 The controversy was over – the synod never met. As soon as this issue was settled, the Anglican parsons of Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1725 and 1726 complained of the double financial burden carried by members of the Church of England. They pressed London civil and church officials for relief from the payment of local taxes for the support of the Congregational church and minister. A few members of the church in Connecticut who took matters into their own hands and protested their circumstances had been jailed for not paying the provincial fees.46 Again, with assistance from Bishop Gibson and the governors of the two provinces, the rate assessment for support of the Independent clergy was eased for Anglicans in 1727 and 1728.47 Finally, the third controversial issue met was a petition in 1727 and 1730 to place Timothy Cutler and Samuel Myles on the Board of Overseers at Harvard College. Both men were graduates of Harvard, the academy for Congregational ministers and a stronghold of that Congregationalism that both men had renounced. In 1729 the two men individually presented petitions to the lieutenant governor and later to the Board of Overseers of Harvard requesting to be notified to attend their meetings. According to the college charter issued in 1642, the ‘teaching elders’ of six neighboring towns were automatically Overseers of the college. Apparently Cutler and Myles, and the assistant minister at King’s Chapel in Boston, Henry Harris, had been occasionally invited to past meetings. Harris infrequently attended the sessions but the others did not.48 The Overseers presented their case before the General Court and declared the ministers had no right to sit because they had never claimed to be ‘teaching elders’. Besides, the Board asserted, the Act of 1642 allowing ‘teaching elders’ to join the deliberation referred only to ‘teaching elders’ of the Congregational churches since no Anglican church at that time had been established in the province. Cutler and Myles

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retained the best lawyer in the colony, John Read, to present their case before the Court. Read argued that the plaintiffs were indeed ‘teaching elders’ in the same sense intended by the framers of the Act of 1642 and that restrictions by the Overseers were unjustified. The decision of the General Court, perhaps dictated by the long-standing Congregational affiliations of the majority, ruled against the request of the petitioners. Cutler appealed to Bishop Gibson and the Society to intercede with appropriate political pressure, but without success. Not deterred, he renewed his efforts to gain a seat on the Board of Overseers in 1730 but failed again.49 In Virginia, where the church was established by law, it was not immune from internal controversy, putting at odds with one another the commissary of the bishop of London, the royal governor, and a faction of the provincial ministers. The conventions of 1719 and 1727 publicly displayed a dispute between Governor Alexander Spotswood, Commissary James Blair and the ranks of the clergy. At issue was whether the local vestry or the governor had the authority to induct ministers into a living. Spotswood said that, as he was the king’s deputy in Virginia, and that the king was the supreme head of the national church, only he had the right to induct ministers into their parishes.50 Commissary Blair sided with the vestrymen of St. Anne’s parish, Essex County, who claimed that they held the authority to call a parson for their congregation. The vestrymen were persuaded that as Virginia parishes had built their churches they had the right to select their own minister.51 Both sides held their positions intractably and because the Virginia practice was unlike the custom in England the situation festered without resolution during the colonial era. Pleas to London ecclesiastical officials for the appointment of a colonial bishop were a regular petition of nearly every convention held after 1700. Changed circumstances in the mid-1750s, through the 1760s and until about 1772 escalated the number of requests for a prelate. In part this position was a response to the challenges raised by critical Congregational clergymen in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey regarding the role and purpose of the S.P.G.’s activity in the provinces north of Maryland and the feared appointment of a colonial episcopate. Leading the attack for the Congregationalists were Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy of Boston, Noah Hobart of Fairfield, Connecticut, and Jonathan Dickinson of Elizabethtown, New Jersey. During the period between 1755 and 1776 the number of conventions held in Massachusetts was 8; in Connecticut, 15; in New York, 6, New York and New Jersey parsons gathered jointly on 7 occasions; while in New Jersey there were 9 sessions; and in South Carolina 16 meetings were conducted. The meetings during these two decades served as a fortress for the beleaguered clerics when the church was under siege on two fronts from the anti-episcopal rhetoric of Congregational church pamphleteers. First, it was attacked for persistently seeking from London officials the appointment of an American bishop, and secondly, the church was vulnerable as a highly visible local

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English institution exposed and swept into the vortex of colonial challenges to imperial policies. Inevitably the episcopal structure of the church required that it maintain one foot in the Old World and the other in the New World. Throughout the colonial era its more than 1,270 clergymen, whether foreign-born or native colonists, were dependent on English bishops for ordination and licensing to allow them to practice their profession in the provinces. Furthermore, on the eve of the American Revolution, nearly all of the men outside of Virginia and Maryland were dependent for their salaries on the London-based Society. For the parsons of the King’s church there was no refuge – legal, official, or ceremonial – from the clever and relentless arguments of critics. A handful of prominent provincial Anglicans including Samuel Johnson, Myles Cooper, Samuel Seabury, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler desperately sought to mute the challenges without either public acclaim or success. Ironically, about one-half of the more than four hundred ministers who occupied pulpits of the King’s church during the decade before the Revolutionary War were native colonists. Their places of birth were of little consequence, as the King’s church was popularly perceived as a prominent representative of the English State and Crown. Seldom were conventions the scene of prolonged theological debate. A two-day session of the Connecticut clergy in October 1755 provided such a heated discussion. At issue was the Reverend John Beach’s theological definitions of the dead, the flesh, the resurrection, and the future life that he had raised in a sermon, A Modest Enquiry in to the State of the Dead. By which it appears there is no Intermediate State (New London). A graduate of Yale College and an ex-Congregational minister, Beach, a missionary of the S.P.G. at Newtown and Redding, Connecticut, for fifty years (1732–82), had questioned in his discourse the validity of a life after death, a basic tenet of Christian eschatology. The minutes of the convention do not provide a detailed account of the discussion but note that the deliberations closed on a note of reconciliation, that Beach understood the theological shortcomings of his sermon and that he was ‘far from disbelieving the future Resurrection’.52 No cases of violation of, or request for, interpretation of Canon Law are known to have been considered at a convention. Situations probably did arise in the provinces that would have tested ecclesiastical rules and regulations. The clergy, however, had no authority to decide upon petitions and appeal to the bishop of London entailed a substantial delay. Besides, the mode of life and thought in the American settlements and on the frontier was not such as to foster toleration of narrow restrictions or a strict interpretation of the Canon Law of the Church of England, even among Anglicans.

Charitable programs for widows and orphans In step with other religious groups the conventions of the King’s church recognized the need to provide benevolence to widows and orphans of

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clergymen. As early as 1717 the Philadelphia Synod had set up a Pious Fund for the relief of widows and children of Presbyterians that would later lead to the establishment of the Presbyterian Ministers Fund in 1759. The Moravian Church extended its charity program of assistance through the Brotherly Association for the Support of Widows.53 Another source of influence may have been the program that had flourished in the city of Norwich in England since 1684.54 Benevolent aid to sick or indigent clergy, or to widows and children of deceased ministers, was a common petition of colonial conventions to London officials.55 At this time, no insurance or protective societies flourished in the colonies to cover ministers and/or their survivors against natural or unnatural disasters. Certainly no clergyman who received the average annual stipend of about £50 from the Society could expect to withdraw and save much of that sum in anticipation of future personal or family hardship. Ministers in the tobacco, rice, and indigo provinces were no better off, though the conditions of the rectors of King’s Chapel, Boston, Trinity Church, New York, and Christ Church, Philadelphia, were much more satisfactory.56 The only recourse for unfortunate ministers or their survivors was the charity of their fellow clergy and the Society. Both sources, though briefly helpful, were seldom of assistance beyond the first year. As early as 1724, in Boston, a group of prominent Anglican laymen, led by the energetic and controversial layman John Checkley, founded the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society. Its purpose, however, was not limited to needy clergymen or their widows and orphans. Its fundamental charge was to provide relief for persons who were members of Anglican churches established within the boundaries of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.57 Over the years between 1724 and 1776 such prominent merchant and political names as Charles Apthorp, Dr. Thomas Crease, Benjamin Faneiul, Ralph Inman, Thomas Lechmere, Henry Vassall and Governors Francis Bernard, Thomas Pownal, and William Shirley appear on the Membership roster. Not until 1784 did the Society open its membership ranks to ministers.58 The Virginia clergy, in convention at the College of William and Mary from 30 October to 1 November 1754, had responded to Commissary Thomas Dawson’s request to set up a fund to aid the survivors of deceased clergy in that province. A committee, composed of Dawson, William Robinson, the commissary’s successor, John Camm, William Davis, and Thomas Warrington, was appointed to prepare a plan. These men, together with William Preston, were the first trustees of the relief fund. The committee presented its proposals for the organization and maintenance of the scheme to the convention on 31 October 1754.59 All Anglican clergy in Virginia were eligible for coverage upon payment of one pistole annually to the trustees. A treasurer was appointed by the convention to serve until 4 April 1756, after which date a majority of the contributors to the plan would annually choose that officer. The governor approved the program and fifty ministers subscribed

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a total sum of £76.10s.3d. provincial currency as initial members. The trustees and subscribers held their first annual meeting at the college in Williamsburg on 26 and 27 April 1755.60 The proceedings resembled those used fifteen years later by members of the similar relief association in the middle colonies. Furthermore, in the wake of the Parson’s Cause controversy in the late 1750s these sessions allowed the ministers to gather and discuss church-related issues in addition to charitable matters. Gleaning these precious few seeds of charity, we now know that awards of assistance were never more than token grants to a handful of women and children. For example: in 1767 £42 of colonial money was allotted to six widows and several children, and slightly increased to £50 in 1769. Two years later, in 1771, the benevolent society distributed £60.15s., which was increased to £68 and £75 in 1772, and 1773 respectively, yet only six or seven widows and several children were aided. The following year, 1774, total disbursements to six widows and four orphans amounted to £80, while in 1775, interrupted by the outbreak of war and impeded by apparent lack of interest among the ministers, the Society closed its books on a rather weak note. At the annual meeting, on 9 May £10.5s.3d. was collected from the congregations at the morning and afternoon services and £81 was ordered to be distributed to five widows and the orphans of six parsons.61 The South Carolina clergy established a similar plan in 1762 under the probable leadership of Robert Smith who served as Treasurer of the organization for the next thirty years.62 Following the lead of the Virginia and South Carolina parsons the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania conventions in 1769 founded a program for the ‘Relief of Widows and Orphans of Clergymen’. The origin and indeed initial promoter of the plan are uncertain. Dr. William Smith of Philadelphia was probably the main proponent of the scheme. His friend and colleague the Vice-Provost of the College of Philadelphia, Francis Alison, a Presbyterian divine and distinguished classicist whose philanthropic interests led him to found the Presbyterian Society for the Relief of Ministers and their Widows, might have influenced the program’s development.63 The S.P.G. encouraged the establishment of each provincial fund by granting £20 sterling annually. Bishop Richard Terrick of London also sent an initial sterling contribution of £20. However the basic source of income for the protective scheme came from subscribing ministers. Collections at annual anniversary meetings were helpful as well as a special collection in Bridgetown, Barbados, prompted by an enthusiastic priest, which netted £190 sterling. A legacy from the rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, Richard Peters, increased the Pennsylvania fund by £200 in 1776. The clergy in each colony where a fund was established were optionally to contribute on a basis of annual payments of between £3 to £6 toward annuity provisions. The sum for S.P.G. missionaries could, if they wished, be deducted from their allowances and deposited by the Society in their fund accounts.64 The plan

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adopted at the first meeting of the newly chartered New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania corporations at Burlington, New Jersey, on 3 October 1769, gave financial assistance to widows and children, and bound participating parsons to make a payment each year during their lives. Fifteen annual contributions were necessary to allow the survivors maximum benefits. A widow would be eligible for an annuity five times the annual subscription rate of her husband during the remainder of her life. If she remarried, her income from the fund would be two and a half times the annual payment. Whenever children were to share in the annuity’s proceeds, two-thirds of the amount was theirs and one third belonged to the widow for a period of thirteen years. But when only a widow and one child survived, each was to receive one half of the income. When only a child (or children) survived the death of a participant in the plan, he (or they) enjoyed equal entitlement to its income too, for thirteen years. Survivors received only 10 per cent of the annual fee paid by the subscriber for thirteen years if he had contributed fewer than five years to the fund. If the contributions had been paid for over more than five but less than fifteen years, the recipients were entitled to half of the full amount of the annuity until the half retained by the corporation, added to the five or more payments made by the deceased, together made a sum equal to fifteen yearly payments. At that time the full annuity became payable.65 The fund in October 1774 maintained the following balances: Pennsylvania, £1,411.6s.10d., New York, £1,106.7s.8-34d., and New Jersey, £232.6s.8d.; a total of £2,650.1s.234-d., a substantial growth in assets in six years. Naturally the number of participants varied: in 1771 the relief scheme had twenty-seven contributors, and in 1775, due to deaths, only twenty-three.66 After the Revolutionary War the fund was revived and reconstituted to meet the new political and ecclesiastical order. In 1806 three distinct corporations – one for each of the states, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania – were established to continue the scheme. The relief program, founded in 1769 from the prompting of the 1768 convention of the clergy of New York and New Jersey, continues to serve its original purpose. In hindsight the more than one hundred and fifty conventions of the colonial King’s church represent two aspects of its identity. On the one hand it was the English church in America attempting to provide an agency for discussion of common issues and a degree of onsite supervision. On the other hand the meetings dramatically illustrated a church in transition – neither wholly English nor fully American – it was rather in the process of Americanization, adapting to new circumstances and needs. This was an administrative process of necessity rather than of choice. Without a resident prelate to summon sessions, various officials exercised the initiative, sometimes by a royal governor, at other times by a commissary, but more frequently by the most senior minister or group of the most prominent leaders in a province. The sessions fulfilled several pragmatic institutional needs. They provided a forum for the men to meet and reinforce their professional bond, fostering

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a sense of collegiality. Agendas targeted the affairs and state of the church in the province, evaluated and recommended candidates for the ministry, and drafted reports for either the bishop of London or the officers of the Society. Unlike the synods or convocations of the Church of England, the colonial sessions had no legal authority under the laws of the English church. The conventions could not modify, introduce, or revoke the canon laws that governed the church. Nor did the meetings have the authority to hear complaints and discipline wayward clergymen. The sessions could not suspend or revoke an offending minister’s license to exercise his ministerial office. That power was reserved only for the London prelate. As we have seen, the conventions were held most frequently in the colonies where the church was a minority religious group and not in the provinces where it was the predominant sect. It was in the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies that a majority of the conventions occurred. Virginia and Maryland witnessed relatively few meetings of the parsons. There may have been several reasons for this circumstance. Possibly it was because the church was favored with a strong legal establishment in both provinces and the men felt there was little purpose in gathering. Only a handful of civil and ecclesiastical leaders in these colonies ever summoned the parsons to a convention and those few occasions were usually prompted by a crisis over either the process of induction or the payment of their salaries in tobacco. Consequently, there was little opportunity for the men to develop a sense of collegiality in these rural colonies and regularly conduct their business, as did their colleagues in the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies.

9 Local Parish Governance: the Americanization of the English Vestry

Governance of the King’s church in early America was divided in three ways, each intersecting and interdependent with the others. At the provincial level were the duties assigned to the royal governors and the commissaries, deputies of the bishop of London. To these civil and ecclesiastical officers were delegated responsibilities for the church’s interests throughout the colony as well as the duty to provide general supervision when necessary over local parish affairs. Either or both parties may have interceded on local matters on such occasions to examine an issue in dispute between an incumbent and the congregation, or to review and discipline if necessary an errant minister, or to resolve a controversy surrounding the induction of a clergyman. These procedures varied from practice in England where either the diocesan bishop, or his deputy, or the proprietor of the advowson had jurisdiction. From the beginning of the colonial experience the vestry’s supervision of the local congregation followed a modified English form. The powers and responsibilities of English parish councils, fashioned for a more organized and structured society, were too elaborate for the primitive needs of churches located in settlements on the edge of the wilderness. Changed social conditions, the absence of a resident bishop in the provinces, and the lack of a general or uniform format imposed on all of the vestries throughout the colonies contributed to the development of a uniquely American body. From colony to colony structural and procedural variations occurred in the operations of the parish councils and make difficult and inconclusive any generalization about vestries as a whole. Nonetheless as the colonial period passed the vestries everywhere claimed increased power, and more and more tried to control all aspects of church life. In general, the councils encountered few obstacles in their path to consolidate and expand lay authority over the affairs of the local churches.1 A colonial vestry had many duties, among them responsibility to recruit, pay, and oversee the work of the minister; to issue a parish levy to maintain 125

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the parson’s salary and other expenses relating to the construction and maintenance of the church, chapel, churchyard, parsonage, and glebe; and to supply the ornaments and fabrics necessary for worship.2 As the vestries were responsible for recruiting parsons to serve their congregations they sent requests to the bishops of London and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.3 Restrained by distance, the bishop of London took little interest in the structure and work of these councils and rarely interceded in controversies between the vestries and parsons. Few clergymen publicly opposed the increasing power of the vestry or complained of their own diminished authority in comparison to the experience of ministers in England. Qualifications for vestry membership in England during the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth century were property and wealth.4 Although all ratepayers could meet in vestry, in practice generally only the principal ratepayers of the community did so. This group of the more substantial resident ratepayers became the governing elite of the parish.5 They shared out the major local offices – churchwardens, overseers of the poor, and surveyors of the highways – between them, often serving in rotation.6 Farmers, respectable tradesmen, and resident clergy incumbents constituted a social elite that became the governing aristocracy of the parish.7 The pattern of vestry membership was similar in the colonies from the earliest settlements. In step with the Board of Trade’s renewed interest in imperial affairs in the 1670s Bishop of London Henry Compton reported to the Board in 1677 on the state of colonial ecclesiastical affairs.8 His remarks were based entirely on the reports of Roger Green in Virginia in 1662 and of John Yeo from Maryland in 1676.9 Compton’s report was bluntly critical of the supervision of local church affairs by vestries in both colonies, issues of parish governance that were not in accordance with English practice. In particular, he commented that the King’s right of patronage and presentment to benefices was not exercised by the Virginia governors; that some parishes were intentionally kept vacant to save parishioners from paying the church levy; and that inhabitants of vacant parishes were converting tithes to their own use rather than, as in England, maintaining the income in reserve for the next incumbent or some other religious purpose. Continuing, Compton declared that ministers in Virginia were hired on an annual basis rather than for life, as was the custom in England. Furthermore, as in England the clergy were paid in commodities, which fluctuated in value each year and, if the crop were worth a fair return one year, the parishioners would withhold their tithes until the next season when the produce might have declined in value. One of the most powerful figures at court and in the church during the period between 1675 and 1713, Compton was granted authority by the Board of Trade to supervise the overseas church, a responsibility that he undertook diligently, for the remainder of his episcopate. He drafted, proposed, and the Board of Trade adopted, an expansion of the royal instructions issued to governors on ecclesiastical matters.10 Among other matters the

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officers were required to be certain that all ministers were members of their vestries, and that no meeting should be held without their attendance.11 As early as 1662 the Virginia assembly authorized by statute that each vestry was to be composed of twelve members initially elected by parish freeholders. Subsequent vacancies were to be filled by a process of co-option by the members. The principle of twelve vestrymen for each parish was not rigidly followed and in 1758 the assembly renewed the statute of 1662 and allowed that seven members were a quorum.12 Among Virginia aristocrats the position of vestryman was an important symbol of social approval. Competition for the office at an election by the freeholders was usually vigorous; rare were the cases of those who refused to serve when elected.13 Length of service, at least in the Tidewater vestries, was long, and interrelationships of families dominated their membership.14 During the years before 1689 and the appointment of a commissary of the bishop of London, the vestries exercised complete administration over parish ecclesiastical affairs.15 Controlled by laymen, the composition of the vestry impeded a parson gaining an upper hand in parish affairs. Vacancies on parish councils in Virginia, and later in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia were filled at a special meeting summoned by the vestry. In North Carolina the vestries were allowed one month to fill vacancies on their boards; if no proceedings had been initiated to fill the positions the minister or governor could select and nominate a freeholder.16 Qualifications for office in other colonies were similar to those in Virginia. Only freeholders in Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina, men who annually paid public taxes, were eligible for membership on the parish board. The profile of a typical member of a vestry was usually that of a substantial landowner, trader, or merchant in the community. Although Virginia laws did not specify the property qualifications necessary to hold office on the parish council, such a tradition did develop. The clergymen of parishes in all colonies but Virginia were usually members of the vestry. In Maryland the parson became by custom the principal member of the parish council, presiding and keeping the record of the proceedings.17 The situation is not as clear in South Carolina and Georgia. By law the minister was a member of the vestry but it remains uncertain whether he or one of the churchwardens presided at meetings.18 Rarely a vestry might elect to honorary membership a distinguished colonial or English public servant. In Massachusetts the royal governor was regularly elected to the vestry of King’s Chapel in Boston although he seldom took an active role in the council’s affairs, while at St. Peter’s Church in Salem the Speaker of the English House of Commons was elected an honorary warden, a situation that must have riled members of the nearby Congregational church.19 The number of colonial vestry members varied from province to province. In New England and the middle colonies the number of members varied from congregation to congregation from seven persons to twenty-eight,

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although there were always two churchwardens. The size of Georgia vestries ranged from not less than five to not more than ten members, who served one-year terms.20 In all colonies the members were elected annually, frequently on the Monday after Easter. Virginia parish elections do not seem to have been set by law; only a notice to the parishioners by the minister, churchwardens, or head commissioners of the province was necessary.21 Select vestries, a form of parish organization occasionally utilized in England and numbering at least six members, were set up by the Church Act of 1702 in Maryland.22 Each year, at a general meeting of the freeholders, two vestrymen were to be elected to replace retiring members. Whenever a vacancy occurred on the board as a result of a member’s resignation, removal from the province, or death, a meeting of the freeholders was to be called to fill the post. Property qualifications were the same for vestrymen as for churchwardens: all candidates and office holders had to be freeholders.23 In North Carolina, after 1741, the term of office for the ten vestrymen and two churchwardens of each parish were two years. This was the only province in America to provide a term of more than one year for its vestrymen. At Trinity Church, New York, twenty men were elected for annual terms from the congregation’s membership to serve as vestrymen. In South Carolina freeholders of each parish who were Anglicans selected twelve vestrymen to fill one-year terms. Like Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, Georgia required no religious test of a candidate for parish office. All freeholders residing within the bounds of a parish were eligible to vote for vestrymen. But in South Carolina an additional stipulation was made that only freeholders of a parish who conformed to the Church of England could participate in the election of the vestry. As the structure of the vestry varied from England to the colonies and from province to province, so too did the requirements for voting rights in individual parishes. Christ Church of Philadelphia, in 1717, required that for a person to be in good standing and eligible to vote at a parish meeting he must have received Holy Communion during the preceding twelve months.24 At King’s Chapel in Boston, in the 1730s, only those laymen subscribing at least fifty-two shillings a year to the church were allowed to vote for the wardens. Later, in 1747, the congregation determined that no person would be eligible for election as a warden who was not a communicant of the church; that vestry elections would be conducted by ballot; and that only pew-holders who had paid their annual assessment were to have a vote at parish meetings.25 Upon taking office, churchwardens and vestrymen in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were required to take an oath to ‘truly execute the trust or office of vestryman’ and ‘not oppose the liturgy of the Church of England as established’. Perhaps church officials in New York and Virginia followed a similar procedure, for we know that George Washington did when he was elected a vestryman of Truro Parish in 1762, but the

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statute books do not lay down that legal requirement. The oaths varied from one colony to another. In Maryland the office holder stated: ‘I do solemnly swear and declare that I will justly and truly execute the trust or office of a vestryman of this Parish. According to my best skill and knowledge; without prejudice, favor or affection’.26 The oath administered by a Justice of the Peace in Georgia to a vestryman was essentially the same as the Maryland oath.27 Vestrymen in North Carolina swore: ‘I A.B. do declare, that I will not oppose the Liturgy of the Church of England as it is by law established’.28 In South Carolina, vestrymen were to take the oaths of office appointed by Parliament.29 Frequency of vestry meetings varied from colony to colony, too. The requirement of Virginia and Georgia that the parish gather annually to elect churchwardens and vestrymen is the only reference there to set meetings.30 In Maryland between 1692 and 1702 the vestry was not required by law to meet on a regular basis but after 1702 the Church Act required it to meet on the first Tuesday of every month or as often as needed upon public notice given by the incumbent. Special meetings of the parish council could be called with the consent of the minister and two or three other members.31 At St. Philip’s Parish in Charles Town, the vestrymen met as often as twice a week to fulfill their duties. A vestryman in Maryland who was absent from a meeting without a reasonable excuse was to be fined no more than one hundred pounds of tobacco. Absence from meetings was a persistent problem in the colony.32 In South Carolina the vestry was to meet on the first Tuesday in the months of January, April, July, and October. Additional sessions could be called upon public notice of the rector or by any three members of the board. Again a fine was imposed upon a vestryman absent without dispensation from a meeting; a sum not to exceed ten shillings proclamation money was laid down.33 The Vestry Act of 1741 in North Carolina granted to the churchwardens, or if they refused or neglected the duty, to any three or more members of the vestry, the right to assemble the meeting at any time they judged necessary. A fine similar to that applied in South Carolina was levied on absent vestrymen.34 In New England some parishes established a regular schedule for vestry meetings. Trinity Church of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1731 fixed sessions for the first Tuesday of every other month while in other churches the vestry would meet when there was business worthy of attention.35 At Christ Church, Philadelphia, the vestry met monthly, while at Immanuel Church, in nearby New Castle, Delaware, the body met only once or twice a year.36 The routine duties of churchwardens and vestrymen in colonial parishes were generally similar to the responsibilities exercised by their English counterparts, save a few distinctive exceptions.37 A 1704 statute recognized that some modification of duties might be necessary to serve different circumstances. Compared with the obligations of parish officials in England the civil and ecclesiastical services that the colonial vestrymen might perform

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were rudimentary. Briefly, eighteenth-century English vestries were required to oversee the maintenance of the church and its services, to assist toward keeping the peace in the community, and aid in the repression of vagrancy. They were also charged to relieve destitution, superintend the repair of roads, support the suppression of nuisances, and to promote the enforcement of religious and moral discipline in their jurisdiction.38 In fact, the parish was the unit of local government in England and Wales with the churchwardens, constable, surveyor of highways, and overseers of the poor as the principal officers. The 1603 Canon Law of the Church of England required that churchwardens should be chosen by the ministers and parishioners to serve a term of one year, and were also eligible for reelection. No property or other qualification, not even a religious test, was stipulated for a churchwarden. The churchwardens were sometimes selected by the parish as a whole, or by the vestry acting for the parish, or one such officer might be elected by the council and the other appointed by the incumbent. Usually, however, the vestry elected the wardens. Churchwardens in England were to present themselves and be sworn into office before the archdeacon on his annual visitation of the parish, but no mention is made of a similar procedure for vestrymen.39 The official was to report annually to the bishop at the time of his visitation of the parish regarding the performance of the minister, the condition of the church, parsonage, and churchyard, and any moral or religious delinquency by parishioners.40 The churchwarden’s performance was open to scrutiny and review by the members of the parish who were entitled to examine accounts and expenses and to fix the church rate. The parishioners were compelled by laws of the Church of England to underwrite parochial expenses and to maintain the church and its services whether they approved of affairs or not. In addition the members of the parish had the responsibility to make by-laws; to impose fines for refusal of parish offices; to administer the common pasture, pound, and wastes of the parish; and to perform all the miscellaneous services of public utility.41 These charges of the English vestry were more extensive and complex than the duties delegated to colonial parish councils. But that should be expected, since demands by the Crown and Parliament upon the English vestry to carry many burdens of local government were not duplicated to any large extent in any colonial province, including those in which the King’s church was established by statute. In Virginia the early establishment of the church offers us a detailed account of the development of the colonial vestry. The Vestry Act of 2 March 1643, formalizing precedents established as early as 1631, determined that churchwardens should be either appointed or elected – a procedure that varied from colony to colony. In Maryland all freeholders and taxpaying inhabitants of a parish could meet to select churchwardens regardless of their denominational membership.42 Similar property requirements prevailed in

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South Carolina,43 in North Carolina after 1741,44 and in Georgia.45 The legislative records of the Virginia colony are unclear about precisely who could participate in the selection of churchwardens. No property restriction or membership qualification in the church was stated in the act adopted by the Assembly in February 1645. A majority vote of the parishioners at first could determine who held the office, but later in the colonial period property factors determined the type of men placed as churchwardens. In New York the Ministry Act of 1693 also limited the selection of churchwardens to freeholders.46 It did not specify that the vestries were to serve the cause of the Anglican church, although presumably the later critics of the law, leaders of the Dutch Reform Church in the colony, might have expected that this was its object, since their churches had no similar governing structure. The purpose of the New York act was both civil and ecclesiastical. The first New York vestry, elected on 9 January 1694, included two churchwardens, neither of whom was Anglican. The English settlement was still relatively small, even after twenty years of uninterrupted rule, and no Anglican church had yet been built there. Church of England services were held at Fort James only when the governor brought with him from the homeland an English minister. In 1698 an ecclesiastical vestry was set up by the charter granted by the assembly to members of the Church of England who formed Trinity Church of New York.47 Thereafter, churchwardens were selected from the congregation’s membership, although a town vestry, unique to New York during the colonial era, continued and was comparable in duties to the Overseers of the Poor in each parish in England. The town vestry was required to execute its responsibilities without any regard for a person’s church affiliation.48 The Maryland Assembly was even more involved than was the South Carolina legislature overseeing the administration of parish affairs. Approval of acquisition of land by vestries for the building, expansion, or repair of churches was required of the assembly before plans could proceed. The task of setting parish boundaries or resetting the district limits if a new parish was to be established was another duty of the legislature. Even final approval of the placement of organs in churches was the responsibility of the assembly. Yet broad questions and problems of ecclesiastical administration were not presented or discussed by the provincial government; the comparatively routine matters of parochial affairs were all that captured the attention of the legislature.49 The parish councils of Maryland did perform duties more political and economic than the vestries in other provinces, including preserving all tobacco and other goods of the parish from misuse, damage, or sale at prices less than the current exchange. When funds were needed to cover certain parish expenses, the vestry would sell a portion of tobacco in storage. The vestry kept an annual list of taxable residents of the parish and this list was used by the sheriff to collect the assessment of 40 pounds of tobacco per poll

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for the incumbent’s salary. Also falling within the jurisdiction of the vestry was the supervision of tobacco planting and cultivation to prevent excessive production of that important crop. Vestries served in many instances as the bankers of the parish and lent money at 4 per cent interest.50 In Virginia, by the legislative acts of 1643 and 1662, the parish vestries as representatives of the laity were granted the right of engaging a minister on a year-to-year basis. This situation was without precedent in England where the bishop of a diocese confirmed the selection by instituting the rector or vicar and issuing a mandate of induction. In fact the archdeacon, commissary, or other minister residing within the archdeaconry of the parish usually did the formality of procedure.51 In Virginia it was presumed that the governor, under authority included in his royal instructions, instituted and inducted a provincial parson in his benefice, but the governor, who had certain other ecclesiastical duties, does not seem specifically to have had this power.52 He was limited to do no more than ‘prefer’ a minister to his benefice and this is unclear. If any colonial official had the power of induction it was the commissary, or a nearby minister, but the records do not indicate if such procedure was ever followed. Once inducted into the living, the incumbent was assured permanent tenure except for proved charges of misconduct or dereliction of duty, which had to be proved in an ecclesiastical court. For the period before 1680 and even afterwards, the scarcity of ministers in the colony meant that questions over the procedures for instituting and inducting parsons did not arise. Following a clergyman’s arrival in the province, he presented his certificate of ordination to the governor, who in turn sent a letter of recommendation with the parson to a vacant parish in the colony where he was received on an annual basis. Without a bishop or ecclesiastical court in Virginia, the governor and council occasionally sat as judges in proceedings against a minister accused of misconduct and had the power to remove him permanently and to revoke his salary. If the incumbent opposed the charges there was a definite prospect that a long process for removal would result. Later in the eighteenth century when the question of final judicial authority in ecclesiastical affairs was a matter of dispute, the problems were even more complex. Ministers of Virginia parishes were charged by statute to keep a register of baptisms, marriages, and burials. As early as 1632 the clergyman and at least one churchwarden from each parish were to present annually for review at the midsummer quarter court their parish registers and financial accounts of all levies, collections, and disbursements during the year.53 This civil procedure was at variance with Canon LXX of the ecclesiastical law of the Church of England, requiring churchwardens to present a copy of the parish register annually to the bishop of the diocese.54 Since no bishop, commissary, or archdeacon resided then in Virginia, these duties were vested in civil officials. A further provision, included in the Vestry Act of March 1643, granted to every parish council the right to levy and assess taxes for the repair of

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churches. The most important duty of a vestry was its right to elect a minister to serve its parish and to present the man of their choice to the governor for institution to the living. To be masters of the parish it was essential for the vestry to maintain control over the selection, appointment, and performance of its clergyman. The parson was hired, paid, and sometimes fired by the parish council and he was responsible to local lay persons rather than to the distant bishop of London. Out of personal interest the Virginia parson seldom risked following a controversial path independent of the parish council. To further establish its authority the vestries routinely practiced hiring ministers by business contract on an annual basis rather than following the English traditions of inducting a parson into a benefice with lifetime privileges. This point prompted, from time to time, conflict in Virginia with Governors Nicholson and Spotswood, who both claimed the right of collation of the minister to a post. Their position denied the vestries the right of presentation and justified the governor inducting a minister into the parish if the vestry had failed to make an institution within a reasonable period of time. Both governors lost the battle. From the late seventeenth century to the outbreak of the Revolution the vestry’s control of a parson’s appointment was assured. Neither the royal governors nor the bishops of London were able to modify or revise this practice of self-government: a vestry’s right to presentation was now taken for granted.55 The Virginia vestry was charged to exercise certain disciplinary tasks such as to hear complaints of the neglect of duties or misbehavior of an incumbent. Under such situations the council vestry could refer the matter to the governor and colonial council to proceed against such a minister by suspension or some other punishment as they thought the offense required. Removal of such ministers from office was to be left to the assembly.56 These disciplinary procedures departed from procedures followed in England, because no bishop resided in the provinces nor were there ecclesiastical courts to hear and judge complaints against errant clergymen. Only once during the colonial period did the governor and colonial council sit in judgment upon a preacher guilty of misbehavior. The colonial officials delivered a sentence in 1767 suspending the Reverend John Brunskill from exercising his ministry, a decision upheld by the bishop of London. Under English canon law an account of income and expenses for church uses was to be presented by the churchwardens to the parishioners.57 In every colony all of the vestries had the right to assess tithable parishioners to meet parochial expenses.58 Poor people, however, could petition the vestry and be relieved of all public charges except the rates levied for the salary of the minister and the expenses of the church.59 Parish costs in Maryland were to be underwritten by such gifts, goods, or chattels that came to the vestrymen’s hands for parish use. The 1702 law establishing the Anglican church in the province also provided for fines, forfeitures, and mulcts to be levied by the churchwardens in each parish against violators of the law. These returns

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were to be applied to the operating expenses of the parish. If not enough funds were available to carry the annual costs of a parish’s operation, the vestry could, upon application to the justices of the county court, seek that body to assess the taxables in the parish in order to provide additional monies. The levy was not to exceed ten pounds of tobacco per poll.60 Vestries in North Carolina determined the levy upon taxables in the parish to carry the expenses of running the church; the assessment was never to exceed five shillings per poll per year.61 In South Carolina the vestries received annual grants from the assembly for their income and were to cover parish costs in a manner similar to that applied in Maryland.62 Needed additional funds could be raised from an assessment of the real and personal property of parish inhabitants, owners and occupiers of lands, tenements, and hereditaments. The total amount that could be levied among all the residents of the parish, however, was £100 colonial currency.63 Georgia followed the procedures of South Carolina in raising funds for the churches. But the tax was not to exceed the total value of thirty pounds in Christ Church parish and of ten pounds in any of the other parishes.64 New York vestries were allowed under the Ministry Act of 1693, in cooperation with the justices of the peace, to lay a tax to support a minister, but funds for the building and repair of churches were to be met out of the pockets of members of the congregation.65 In New England, the middle colonies, and Maryland, the primary source for revenues for the vestries was the rental of pews and because there were generally fewer pews available than persons seeking space, the matter became one of constant dispute. Such procedural details as the annual setting of pew charges, possession of pews, and the passing of pews to heirs were all points of potential disagreement.66 The income of the parishes in all of the colonies had to meet a variety of expenses including the salary of the parson; the expenses for the care and maintenance of the church building; and the stipends for the sexton, clerk, and catechist or schoolmaster. The purchase of an organ or bell; and furniture, fabrics, and sacramental ornaments necessary for worship were also legitimate expenses. The North Carolina vestries were to supply the parishes with ‘books and ornaments’, presumably the great Bible and The Book of Common Prayer, which churchwardens were to provide.67 Unlike those in any other colony, vestries in Georgia were to furnish bread and wine for the parish celebrations of the Holy Communion.68 In each of the colonies every parish had more operating needs than income to cover expenses. Only one parish enjoyed the luxury of greater parish income than expenses – King’s Chapel of Boston. That congregation’s vestry operated a profitable type of bank by loaning at interest surplus income to local church members and merchants. In England, parishes had the duty to aid indigent residents living within the bounds while in America only in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were the vestries charged to support the poor of the parish.69

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The problem of selection of men or families for welfare assistance was especially difficult among the rural parishes of South Carolina, since economic circumstances and conditions were much the same for all parishioners. Only in Charles Town, the seat of the colonial government, was the care of the poor entrusted to the vestry of St. Philip’s Parish. From 1712 until 1735 the vestry employed the out relief method, a system by which it would grant stipends to individuals who had taken into their homes, and given care to, poor or sick men and women or orphans.70 When pauper fugitives and discharged soldiers from Georgia poured into Charles Town after 1730, the burden of the poor increased rapidly. The vestry of St. Philip’s in 1734 hired a house and provided ‘proper attendance’ for ‘all such as are real objects of charity’.71 Annual parish rates increased from £625 in 1732 to £1,740 colonial currency in 1740. Additional funds were derived from fines for Sabbath-breaking and legacies from wealthy inhabitants. The assembly recognized the vestry’s expense and difficulties in maintaining its program of relief and in 1736 built a workhouse and hospital for the poor, to which the parish council transferred the inmates of its almshouse and all poor folk lodged with private families.72 In 1747 the legislature appropriated £150 for the vestry of St. Philip’s to aid poor widows and children of soldiers lost in colonial service.73 The churchwardens and vestrymen also petitioned the legislature on 25 May 1749, for the erection of a hospital outside the limits of Charles Town for those with yellow fever. This attempt to protect the public health, quarantining suspected carriers of the disease, provided that any sailor who arrived in the port and was taken sick while ashore was to be put in the hospital. No sailors were to be allowed off ships if it were known that they had been exposed to yellow fever.74 The King’s church was never a strong institution in North Carolina even after established by law in 1765. Vestries were charged to care for the poor but on an even more modest scale than in South Carolina and under different circumstances. The province had no large commercial town similar to Charles Town that might attract trade, commerce, and population, and in which the church might flourish with some semblance of affluence. North Carolina parishes were uniformly rural; serving men and women who lived by their hands and from the soil. As early as 1704 infrequent grants in aid were made by the colonial legislature to women who cared in their homes for orphans and the poor of the communities, but such assistance was never significant nor planned on a systematic basis. The vestries’ main tasks were the provision of a lectern Bible for reading purposes in the churches and, until 1741, of a standard of weights and measures.75 In Massachusetts and Connecticut the vestries were cast in a different role with civil authorities. In both colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century the vestries served as advocates for their congregation’s seeking relief for church members from the payment of taxes to support the Congregational ministry. From 1707 Anglicans in Connecticut sought redress on

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this matter from the colonial Assembly and achieved some consideration in 1727 and 1750. The assembly relieved the congregations in Newtown in 1752 and Fairfield (now Southport) in 1761 from paying taxes for the support of the Congregational ministry and allowed them to collect and pay their taxes for the support of the local Church of England congregation. The churchmen at Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1712 sought relief from Governor Dudley from the payment of such taxes and in 1722 the governor issued an executive order relieving the Anglican church members from paying for the support of a church other than their own. The parishioners at the church in Marblehead received similar consideration from the governor in 1717. Finally, in 1727 the members of the Church of England in the colony received general relief from the legislature with a few restrictions. The law was further modified in 1735 and in 1742 all restrictions on Anglican church members were eliminated.76 In the provinces where the church was established by law the vestries received their civil authority and powers from the colonial assemblies. In Virginia and South Carolina the vestries were responsible for the appointment of a representative from the parish to the colonial assembly. Under a South Carolina law of 1721 the governor and council were to issue election writs to the churchwardens of the several parishes forty days before the opening meeting of a general assembly session. In fulfilling this civil duty the churchwardens were required to take an oath before a justice of peace of their county that they would faithfully execute the writs. A public notice was to be given two Sundays before the election either at the door of the parish church or at some other convenient place. The churchwardens were to preside at the polls and notify the persons elected by posting their names on the door of the parish church within seven days after the election.77 The published records of South Carolina include many references to the churchwarden’s presentments to the assemblies of representatives elected to the legislature from their parishes.78 In other ways vital to the experience of a congregation and the development of the King’s church in a colony a vestry would initiate discussions with the provincial legislature. Parish representatives from time to time requested the assembly to set up or sub-divide parish boundaries for new districts.79 Since the Church of England had been established in the colony from 1706 on, the legislature often received petitions from parish vestries to grant funds for building or repairing churches and parsonages.80 Although the legislature annually appropriated £40 colonial currency to each of twelve parishes in the colony after 1737, and to each rural church as it was later set up, it granted £55 to St. Philip’s Parish, Charles Town, to cover parochial charges. The sums were insufficient to cover expenses, and the parishioners were unable to make up all of the difference.81 The parishioners of all the English churches in South Carolina and especially those residents of the rural areas were able to contribute little to the maintenance of the parish buildings. The

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assembly levied a special tax on imported rum in 1741 to underwrite the costs of reconstructing St. Philip’s church, which had been destroyed by fire.82 The vestries occasionally petitioned the legislature to grant funds for the purchase of glebe lands to provide a means of additional support for ministers. The colonial assembly honored the requests of the vestries and churchwardens for funds to meet the costs of parochial upkeep, and the S.P.G. paid the salaries of most of the ministers in the province between 1702 and 1759, when the provincial assembly assumed the responsibility of payment of clergy stipends. The continuing stream of Scotch-Irish immigrants arriving in the backcountry of North and South Carolina after 1740 changed social and religious conditions and escalated the criticism of the authority of the vestries of the established church in the provinces. Most of these people owed their allegiance to the Presbyterian church in Ulster-Ireland or in Scotland, so there was a need to found churches and recruit ministers to serve their needs. Soon after their arrival the new settlers objected angrily to the imposition of church rates on all residents set by the local vestries of the King’s church to meet parish expenses. They hoped to raise funds to bring Presbyterian ministers to live among them, perform their ministerial offices, and provide worship. The Presbyterian settlers used the law to get their way. North Carolina, unlike South Carolina, had no religious requirement for the men who were eligible to be elected vestrymen from among the parish’s taxable residents. Open conflict erupted between Anglicans and Presbyterians in 1770 over elections to the vestry of St. Luke’s Parish in Rowan County. Both parties presented at the annual parish meeting a list of twelve candidates to serve as vestrymen for the next year. The aim of the Presbyterian faction was to capture control of the vestry and never call another meeting, which would bring parish affairs to a halt. If the vestry did not meet, rates could not be levied or collected to maintain the church and its minister. They succeeded in their effort. The victorious Presbyterian faction offered to maintain the Anglican incumbent, Theodorus Swain Drage, by subscription from revenues raised among Church of England members, and not from funds received from Nonconformists and the poor.83As the church was established by law such a compromise was illegal.84 Drage requested Governor William Tryon to intervene and settle the dispute. For valid political reasons he was reluctant to enter the quarrel because Tryon had received essential support in the legislature from Presbyterian leaders at times of political need. The governor hoped that reason and judgment would prevail between the disputing parties and solve the problem.85 After two years the differences between the two factions remained unresolved. Parson Drage, caught in the middle, was forced to transfer to South Carolina because the vestry had withheld his salary during the controversy. Matters took another turn in North Carolina when Presbyterians in Guilford and Wake counties were not allowed by law to become members of their

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local vestries as in other sections of the colony.86 The Anglican faction was attempting to maintain the religious status quo and seeking to restrict the dissenters from airing their complaints about paying church rates. Governor Martin urged the colonial assembly in February 1773 to adopt the necessary legislation but without success. The one noteworthy action in this direction during the controversy was the dissolution by the legislature of the vestry of Unity Parish that had been illegally chosen.87 Unique to Maryland was the authority granted to the parish vestry by an Act of the Assembly in 1712 to serve as an unofficial spiritual court. Persons charged with immoral conduct were summoned before the vestry ‘to show cause why they should not be prosecuted’.88 Some of the defendants would agree to marry and others to cease co-habitation. If the immoral practices continued, information on the cases that was sent to the clerk of indictment at the county court where the fact of admonition already given was sufficient evidence to convict offenders.89 For certain misdemeanors, penance was done publicly at the Communion table. Other breaches of ecclesiastical law such as running a mill on Sunday carried a fine. The parishioners were kept informed of the penal laws of the province since every clergyman was required to read the code from the chancel steps four times a year. Controversies between a vestry and the parish’s incumbent parson occasionally would be reviewed and adjudicated by the Maryland Assembly. When such cases were before the House the interest of the legislature usually brought an appropriate reformation on the part of the accused ministers. On 6 September 1704, the Reverend Joseph Holt, rector of William and Mary Parish, St. Mary’s County, complained to the council of the colony that he had been locked out of his church. The vestry issued a counter-complaint charging Holt with behavior unbecoming a person in holy orders and alleging that he was unfit to continue in the pastoral office in their parish or anywhere else. After hearing evidence the Council suspended Holt from his priestly office and benefice and restrained him from holding any other living within the province. His clerical colleagues took up Holt’s cause and argued that, according to the canons of the Church of England, sentence against Holt could not be passed by any civil authority but only by his bishop. Unlike proceedings of a similar kind in England the judgment was authorized by the application of the governor’s royal instructions on ecclesiastical affairs. Holt petitioned the Lower House of the legislature for reinstatement and found favorable consideration, but the upper house was unwilling.90 The Council in 1716 heard a petition filed by the churchwardens of St. Paul’s Parish, Baltimore, against the Reverend William Tibbs, seeking his removal on the grounds of habitual drunkenness, indecent behavior when drunk, refusing to baptize sick children in their homes, and charging money for administering communion to the sick. Commissary Jacob Henderson wrote to Bishop of London John Robinson, complaining that the vestry had overstepped its powers in the dispute. Reporting that Tibbs’s case had

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far-reaching consequences because several other parishes in the colony would like to have their rectors removed. At bottom the contest was a conflict between the powers and authority of the incumbent and the vestry. Although Tibbs was summoned to appear, no record remains of his presence before the House or of a sentence passed against him.91 Fifteen years later Tibbs continued to hold his post despite renewed charges. Henderson informed Bishop of London Edmund Gibson that he dared not proceed against Tibbs until he received his official commission of reappointment because Tibbs was wealthy and would put up a strong legal battle. A similar charge was submitted to the Lower House of the legislature in 1746 against the Reverend Nathaniel Morell, who had served William and Mary Parish in Charles County since at least 1735 without a license from the bishop of London, but again, apparently, no decision was pronounced.92 The assembly did consider in 1748, however, a bill to restrain the misconduct of clergymen. It seems likely that the legislation was proposed by persons critical of the church on other grounds who found what were, in fact, the quite infrequent cases of scandalous ministers a vulnerable point. The bill did not pass the legislature. The Council never again acted so forthrightly in disciplining a minister as it had in the Holt case; in fact the assembly seems deliberately to have circumvented such decisions. In 1768 three of the legislature’s delegates from St. Mary’s County urged an examination into the conduct of the Reverend Richard Brown, rector of King and Queen Parish. A native of Trinity Parish, Charles County, Maryland, and educated in Scotland, Brown, the charge cited, had resided three years outside of the parish without officiating in person or procuring a curate to conduct services. It was claimed that he had a long course of gross behavior and had murdered a Negro, and that his parishioners would not come to church to hear him preach. The assembly took no final course of action on the case but instead proposed to investigate the causes for the ‘decay of the established religion, and the growth of popery and superstition’ not only in that case, but also throughout the colony.93 The traditional view of the Virginia’s vestry’s control over the incumbent minister has been challenged by Joan G. Gunderson.94 Before the Council of Trade’s introduction of policies for the supervision of the colonial church in the 1670s and 1680s the Virginia vestries by precedent selected and retained their ministers. This procedure was contrary to the English practice where, after a minister was presented to a living and inducted into it, he had a vested interest in the income of the position and could not be removed except after conviction of gross offences in a bishop’s court.95 Soon after James Blair’s appointment as the bishop of London’s commissary in Virginia, the clergy began to agitate for a restoration of the English custom of induction. For several decades the provincial vestries had used the fact that the minister was not inducted to deny the incumbent a full salary or the use of the parish glebe. The clergymen were complaining of job security. Blair and successive Virginia governors heatedly disagreed over the

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issue, contributing to the recall of three royal officers. The governors deemed that they had the right to induct ministers into their posts within a certain period of time, while the vestries claimed that they enjoyed that privilege. In 1748 a revision of the statutes of the colony finally assured the ministers of induction. The law allowed the vestry one year in which to find a minister and present him to the governor for induction. After that date the governor could present and induct immediately any minister he chose.96 The experience of Virginia’s vestries and clergymen was repeated in Boston in March 1727/28 when the parish council initiated an independent procedure to replace its minister of nearly forty years, Samuel Myles, who had died.97 Elsewhere in New England the story was the same. David Mossom, who served as minister at Marblehead in Massachusetts from 1718 to 1727, remarked in April 1724, that ‘We have no induction in this country, nor has the Governor, as I have heard, any power to induct. We take possession, and hold by the Bishop’s License’.98 Fifteen years later the vestry of recently organized Trinity Church in Boston took a firm position and voted that ‘The right of presentation shall be and remain in the proprietors of pews in the Church, convened’.99 The lay power of the Anglican congregations in New England was securely established at the expense of the clergy and the more traditional English model. In fact colonial parish business was conducted in a manner very similar to the proceedings exercised at the local Congregational meeting houses. The issue of selecting a minister took a slightly different turn in Philadelphia. At the organization of St. Paul’s Church in Philadelphia in 1760, the membership took an unusual step that challenged and departed from Anglican tradition and polity. The rules that the members subscribed to, ‘Articles of Agreement’, included details for the selection of a minister or assistant minister that clearly violated Church canons. The Articles required that all ministers and assistants be chosen by a majority of the congregation by ballot. It made no mention of the need for the minister to hold a license from the bishop of London or his Lordship’s approval for the appointment. The new parish’s novel practice confirmed the eighteenth-century trend toward more lay power over church affairs.100 Vestries of congregations in Boston, Marblehead, and Philadelphia were not alone in wresting control of parish affairs from the grip of their parsons. At New London, Connecticut, Matthew Graves who served the congregation as the S.P.G. missionary between 1748 and 1778, was told on his appointment that the minister has nothing to do in parish affairs, only to read and preach, that the Church is vested in lay patrons . . . ; that the Vestry and Churchwardens are the minister’s directors, and could place and displace him at their pleasure; that no minister can or shall do any duty in this Church . . . without the knowledge and consent of the Vestry.101

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At Derby, Connecticut, James Lyons, an Irish-born minister, who served St. James Church, also encountered conflict with the members of his parish who called him an ‘Irish Teague and Foreigner’. He declared that they had ‘asserted that they have no occasion to consult me, nor make me privy to their purposes’. Lyons did not feel that the laymen were attempting to take over the churches for themselves; rather that the vestries were ‘so fond of their countrymen’ that they were working in combination with them ‘to get rid of missionaries that are not country born’.102 A layman in Virginia, Graham Frank, who resided in the province between 1750 and 1761, provided Bishop Sherlock of London with a glimpse of vestry procedures – its work, tensions and conflicts in 1756.103 He commented that few members of the vestry made ecclesiastical affairs their study, ‘‘tis no wonder if many are admitted vestry-men who know very little of what belongs to the office and especially that of a Church-warden’.104 Frank remarked that this shortcoming of knowledge and experience prompted ‘many contests with the minister and as he is only allowed one vote, he is generally over ruled in some very important points’.105 Although Frank observed that ‘the Common Prayer and the Canons of the Church are establisht and made a part of the Country, yet few think of it their business to consult either; but whatever suits their capricious humour, that they will do without regard to Laws and Rules to the contrary’.106 Frank declared that a clergyman who attempted to comply with the rubrics of The Book of Common Prayer at worship services and in the exercise of church sacraments ‘is the least esteemed, let his conduct be ever so great’.107 Furthermore, he noted that the House of Burgesses was ‘not so careful in enacting Laws respecting these matters as might be wish’.108 In retrospect the parish vestry became the most Americanized element of the colonial King’s church. While broadly retaining the structure and purpose of its English model the colonial vestries quickly adopted new characteristics. From the beginning the bodies were dominated by laymen and free from episcopal control, a vital difference shaping not only the conduct and experience of the body for the remainder of the colonial period, but contributing to a more democratic reorganization of the church after the Revolutionary War. The absence of a resident prelate to review the work of the vestries allowed the bodies to develop without the traditional hierarchical oversight. Lacking episcopal oversight the men were more easily exposed to the whims and divisions of congregational interests. The distance from the headquarters of the bishop of London made it impossible to appeal conflicting local issues in a timely manner.

10 The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican Clergyman

A significant aspect of the gradual Americanization of the King’s church in the colonies was the continuous increase in the number of native colonists who entered the ministry after about 1720. This process may be partly attributed to the complex process of anglicization of provincial society that became more pronounced in the years following 1690. Among causes of this cultural influence and movement were the presence of English governing officials in provincial capitals, in particular the active role of royal governors in several colonies on behalf of the church, the effect of English laws of toleration, the fruitfulness of increased trade, essential military cooperation during the various colonial wars, and widespread reading in English letters.1 Bishop George Berkeley, who had spent the years between 1729 and 1731 in Newport, Rhode Island, observed in an anniversary sermon before the members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London in 1731/32 that ‘such is the vanity of Man, that no prejudice operates more powerfully than that in favour of fashion – and no fashions are so much followed by our Colonies, as those of the Mother Country, which they adopt in their Modes of living, to their great inconvenience, without allowing for the desparity of circumstance or climate’.2 The anglicization process may also be linked to the rising population and the growth of English influences in emerging urban centers. With these forces, shaped partly in London and in the colonies, there was an expansion of the church and a formation of new congregations between the mid-1680s and 1720. Between 1607 and the 1680s the church’s activities had been confined to the two Chesapeake provinces of Virginia and Maryland, a situation that changed dramatically after the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701 and the appointments of a steady stream of missionaries assigned to serve new parishes in the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies. During the colonial era more than twelve hundred men served as ministers of churches from Maine to Georgia. Initially colonial congregations were dependent on English officials to recruit men to serve their posts. Until the 142

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143

1680s men born, educated, and ordained in England served colonial congregations. After 1690 and the disestablishment of the Scottish Episcopal Church successive generations of men educated and ordained in Scotland migrated to posts in America, particularly in Virginia and Maryland. The Londonbased Society commissioned 309 – English, Scottish, Irish, and American colonists – to its service in the provinces during the seventy-five years before 1775. During the century before the American Revolution the clerical ranks were filled by ministers from England, Scotland, Ireland, and the provinces. The men, from the outermost regions of the English nation, represented a variety of social, cultural, academic, and ecclesiastical backgrounds. Among the 1,272 ministers of the colonial church there were 361 of English birth, 130 native Scots, 78 born in Ireland, 5 native Welsh, 237 native colonists, and 421 whose birthplaces are as yet unknown.3 Between 1680 and 1719 the first native-born men began to occupy American Anglican pulpits, and the need for clergymen was growing. The first generation of parsons English or Scottish or Irish had served churches in the colonies for ten, twenty, or thirty years and were being thinned by death. Their pulpits had to be filled. With the rise of the colonial towns, an increasing population, new churches established by the S.P.G., and enlarged political and social activity of the officers of royal government in these principal towns, additional ministers were needed. The dilemma for the King’s church was that only a baptized and confirmed man could be ordained to the office of priest in the Church of England, and only by a duly consecrated bishop, acting as the minister of Christ and the successor of the Apostles.4 The situation for the Anglican candidate for the ministry was unlike that of a New England minister whose status was not acquired by the laying on of priestly hands, but it was performed by a godly man in relation to a group of other men. To be a minister a man had to be ‘called’ by a group of Christians; when that relation ceased, he was no longer a minister. Because there was no bishop in America to perform the ancient rites of confirmation and ordination a colonial American seeking Anglican orders had to prepare himself to travel to England for examination and ordination. By the 1720s there was an increasing number of graduates of the colonial colleges seeking Anglican ordination. Yale, Harvard, the College of Philadelphia, King’s College, and the College of William and Mary contributed to this expanding stream of native colonists entering the ministry of the King’s church. The ranks were supplemented too, particularly in New England, by the conversion of a number of Congregational ministers to the King’s church. I turn now to examine the provincial origins, educational experience, theological preparation, and ordination procedures for the 206 men educated at colonial colleges who traveled to England to become Anglican ministers, about 17 per cent of those parsons who served colonial Church of England congregations between 1607 and 1783. At least 133 of the 206 men educated at colonial colleges were born into Anglican families, while 32 were converts

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from the Congregational and 8 from the Presbyterian churches. In any event the rise in the number of native colonists as clergymen had a profound impact on the church, especially during the controversy over the possible establishment of an American bishop in the 1750s and 1760s. Table 10.1 indicates that of those who sought episcopal ordination Massachusetts was the birthplace of 50 men, Connecticut of forty-six, Virginia of 42, Pennsylvania of 18, and New York of 17. The New England colonies, where Anglicanism was never the established church, ironically led all regions and contributed one hundred and four candidates for holy orders, more than the middle and Chesapeake Bay colonies combined. The southern colonies lagged far behind, producing only two native-born residents for ordination. Unlike other regions of the colonies, the Anglican church in New England was, from its beginning in 1686, nearly entirely staffed by native sons. Table 10.1 Provincial origins of graduates and students of colonial colleges who became Anglican clergymen Number New England colonies Connecticut Massachusetts New Hampshire Rhode Island Sub-Totals

46 50 3 5

% of total (206)

22.33 24.27 1.45 2.42

104

50.48%

Middle colonies New York New Jersey Pennsylvania

17 7 18

8.25 3.39 8.73

Sub-Totals

42

20.38%

Chesapeake Bay colonies Maryland Virginia

8 42

3.88 20.38

Sub-Totals

50

24.27

Southern colonies North Carolina South Carolina

1 1

0.48 0.48

Sub-Totals

2

0.97

Other West Indies England Ireland Unknown

2 1 3 2

0.97 0.48 1.45 0.97

Sub-Totals

8

Grand Total

206

3.88 5

100%

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An illuminating measurement of the impact of the anglicization process is mirrored in some of the Massachusetts men and Harvard graduates who stepped forward to seek and obtain episcopal ordination from the 1680s to the 1760s. It is a cavalcade of sons of prominent families in provincial church, political, and merchant life. Samuel Myles (Harvard 1684) was the first candidate to cross the threshold. He was the son of the Rev. John Myles, a Baptist minister who was ejected from the colony in 1662 for nonconformity and later served the oldest Baptist congregation in the province at Swansea. The younger Myles was ordained in 1687 and served King’s Chapel in Boston until his death in 1728. William Vesey (Harvard 1693), who served as an apprentice under Myles, was the son of a man whom Lord Bellomont characterized as ‘the most impudent and avowed Jacobite .. . known in America’. After Vesey was ordained in 1697 Increase Mather undoubtedly had him in mind when at the ordination of Benjamin Wadsworth he ‘spoke notably of some young men who had apostatized from New England principle, contrary to the Light of their education’. Timothy Cutler (Harvard 1701), sometime Rector of Yale College, was the son of Major John Cutler who was an anchorsmith and Andros adherent and one of the largest taxpayers of Charlestown. Addington Davenport (Harvard 1719), was the oldest son of the magistrate and judge and sometime Secretary of the Colony who had the same name and who was one of the founders of the Brattle Square Church. The younger Davenport was married to Jane Hirst, a granddaughter of Judge Samuel Sewall. Two of Increase Mather’s grandsons took episcopal orders: Mather Byles, Jr. (Harvard 1751), who had served as a Congregational minister in New London, Connecticut, and his brother-in-law William Walter (Harvard 1756). Both men were sons of Congregational parsons. Walter served as minister of Trinity Church in Boston and was married to Lydia Lynde, a daughter of Chief Justice Benjamin Lynde.6 The middle colonies produced forty-two native-born ordinands, about one in five. The establishment of the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and King’s College (later Columbia University), and the vigorous leadership of their heads, William Smith and Samuel Johnson, influenced and increased the number of local men seeking Anglican orders.7 The Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia contributed a total of fifty men seeking ordination, forty-two of them from Virginia. Students from Maryland seeking a college education had to enroll at the College of New Jersey or William and Mary, and the Williamsburg college, after the late 1720s, was the institution that educated most Virginia men for the ministry. North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia had no collegiate institution and relied nearly completely on men educated at Oxford, Cambridge, or the Scottish universities to occupy their pulpits. No natives of Delaware or Georgia are known to have been ordained as Anglican ministers.8 As Table 10.2 illustrates, the years between 1720 and 1759 saw the largest number of graduates entering the Anglican ministry from Harvard and Yale,

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Table 10.2 Graduates and students of colonial colleges who received Anglican orders by date of ordination Colleges (date founded) Harvard (1636) William and Mary (1693) Yale (1701) College of New Jersey (1745) College of Philadelphia (1753) King’s (1754) Rhode Island (1764) Log (1726) Totals

1680–1719

1720–59

1760–83

Totals

8 4 4 – – – – –

33 28 36 3 5 4 – 1

9 15 9 12 21 13 1 –

50 47 49 15 26 17 1 1

16

110

80

2069

for good reasons. First, there were opportunities to fill the pulpits of those who had died. Second, the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut were revised to allow Anglicans to be excused from supporting the established Congregational churches and support their own parishes. Third, the expansionist activities of the S.P.G. in key New England communities provided opportunities for clerical appointments. Fourth, the process of anglicization in the community influenced many young graduates to seek episcopal ordination and also encouraged some Congregational ministers. Circumstances changed between 1760 and 1783 when there was a decline in the number of Harvard and Yale graduates entering the Anglican ministry. Except for two or three candidates who went to London about the year 1776, ordinations of colonists ceased with the Revolutionary War. Beyond the events of the war, such outspoken critics as Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy of Boston made powerful attacks on episcopal government in the 1750s and 1760s. With their pens they reframed the historical criticism of episcopacy as a legitimate and New-Testament-based form of church government and effectively planted in the minds of their listeners the fear of the establishment of an Anglican bishopric within the precincts of New England’s Puritan communities. The fear of bishops was one of the reasons the founders of New England had fled the homeland in the 1620s and 1630s, and both Mayhew and Chauncy eloquently reminded their listeners of those riveting historical circumstances. In the Middle Atlantic and Virginia colonies, things were different. The establishment of the College of New Jersey in 1745, the College of Philadelphia in 1753, and King’s College in New York in 1754 meant a substantial number of students at each college for Anglican orders. Between 1760 and 1783 the College of New Jersey produced twelve graduates for the ministry, King’s thirteen, while Philadelphia counted twenty-one.

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In Virginia the stream of graduates of William and Mary remained relatively constant between 1720 and 1783. The college educated four students for ordination between its founding in 1693 and 1719. During the next forty years twenty-eight students entered the Anglican ministry, while fifteen men sought orders from 1760 to 1783. Yale and Harvard were virtually tied for the honor of educating and graduating the most men who became Anglican ministers – New Haven produced forty-nine while Cambridge contributed fifty men. Between 1701 and 1719 Yale contributed four men to the Anglican ministry, while for the period from 1720 to 1759 thirty-six graduates traveled to London for episcopal orders. A major crisis occurred at Yale in 1722 when Rector Timothy Cutler, Tutor Samuel Johnson, and several of the college’s alumni were converted to Anglicanism. The first two men were distinguished scholars and Congregational ministers of considerable intellectual attainment. Their action and example prompted a number of ministerial converts. This constant stream from the 1720s through the 1760s was probably aided by the active cultivation and proselytization efforts of Samuel Johnson, minister of the Stratford church, who took a keen interest in the educational progress of potential parsons. He had a similar impact on the men who fell under his tutelage and supervision while President of King’s College in New York and ten men went to London for ordination during his term there. The leadership of William Smith in Philadelphia in establishing the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and in encouraging and teaching promising graduates for the ministry was significant. A Scotsman and graduate of the University of Aberdeen, Smith wanted to raise the educational standards of the clergy who served the Philadelphia region. His efforts were at once constructive, positive, and valuable to the advancement of the church there. At the College of New Jersey, which was founded in 1745 with strong New-Side Presbyterian influence and support, fifteen graduates of the College entered the Anglican ministry between 1745 and 1775. After ordination the parsons were assigned to serve churches in New Jersey and Maryland. The College of Rhode Island in Providence and the Log College in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, each educated one student who became an Anglican ministers and served in New Hampshire and Maryland respectively.

Collegiate education Since their founding, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were the leading centers of theological exposition and the training grounds for the clergy of the English medieval Church and, since the Reformation, of the Church of England. Church leaders controlled both universities and their constituent colleges, and in turn these foundations owned or indirectly dominated many of the benefices throughout the realm for which parsons vied for

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patronage and preferment. It was also in the interest of the various colleges that they should energetically cultivate a close association with those of the landed gentry who had the right to place their clerical members in parishes throughout the country.10 For the advancement of his career it was politically and economically expedient for a ministerial candidate to earn a university degree and establish contacts for official support. Despite the heritage and distinctive role of the two universities, there was considerable concern by the church officials of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that Oxford and Cambridge were not properly preparing those students aspiring to the ministry. During the eighteenth century highminded reformist bishops sought to improve the quality of theological education. Archbishop Thomas Tenison had issued a circular letter to his suffragan bishops on 10 July 1695, urging them to require a university degree, adequate testimonials, and a proper title to a curacy or a living before they ordained a candidate for the ministry.11 Gilbert Burnet, the distinguished Bishop of Salisbury, a graduate of Marischall College of Aberdeen, felt so strongly about the situation that he launched in his diocese a theological college for ministerial candidates. It only flourished for five years, since, as Burnet acknowledged, it aroused ‘such hatred against me, especially at Oxford’.12 While Humphrey Prideaux, a celebrated orientalist, a graduate and student of Christ Church, Oxford, and archdeacon of Suffolk, deplored the current circumstances by noting ‘the excessive ignorance he had met with in such as offered themselves for ordination at their examinations. Young men frequently come to the universities without any knowledge or tincture of religion at all, and having little opportunity of improving themselves therein whilst undergraduates, because the course of their studies inclines them to philosophy and other kinds of learning, they are usually admitted to their first degree of B.A., with the same ignorance as to all sacred learning as when first admitted to the universities’.13 The undergraduate curriculum at Oxford was secular and humanistic during the eighteenth century. The study of divinity was to be pursued only after careful instruction in humane studies. After ‘the knowledge of the rules of proper reasoning, and of the moral and religious truths, which nature teaches; and of the state of the world in its earlier ages, and in that when Christianity first appeared then it was time to study divinity’. For that reason there were no formal requirements in theological study for the degrees of B.A. or M.A. Formal theological training was reserved for the graduate. Once the M.A. was earned, first the B.D. and then the D.D. could follow, though few of those entering the church proceeded to the higher degrees, and if they did they no longer obtained from the university the traditional instruction for it.14 Colonial colleges were not theological schools, although like the English and Scottish universities the clergy dominated the institutions; the curriculum produced merchants, magistrates, and physicians as well as ministers. While 52 per cent of the graduates of Harvard of the years 1642–1721 became ‘settled

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ministers’, only 27 per cent of the graduates of the next eight decades (1722–1801) did so.15 During the late seventeenth century and through the eighteenth the prescribed course of study for the B.A. degree varied slightly from institution to institution. Generally the academic curriculum had three elements: the ‘Seven Liberal Arts’ and the ‘Three Philosophies’ as studied at Oxford and Cambridge; the reading of classical belles-lettres; and the study of the ‘learned tongues’. Special emphasis was placed by the colleges on logic and rhetoric, Greek and Hebrew, ethics and metaphysics. Not until the mideighteenth century were there strong advances in the study of mathematics and natural science in the wake of the writings of Newton. The study of Latin was taken for granted, and nearly all of the textbooks were in that language.16 As in England the Master’s degree was taken three years after the Bachelor’s; the requirements were so few that most B.A.s proceed M.A. in course. The A.B.s at Harvard who were planning to become ministers resided in the college if they could afford it, or received a scholarship or fellowship; but they paid no tuition, and received no instruction, unless from the President. The candidates were to spend their time in independent study reading theology and philosophy in the college library. Not until 1784 was any provision made for special instruction in divinity for undergraduates who proposed to enter the ministry. In the two British universities the B.A. degree was in hand before a student’s study of theology. The Scottish church required from four to six years of professional study of divinity beyond the first university degree.17 Ninety-five per cent of the Congregational clergymen in New England between 1700 and 1750 had college degrees and followed a course of study in theology for an additional three years. Some of them lived with a minister and studied divinity and the texts of historical Christianity. A few potential parsons studied at home, those who could afford it continued their preparation at college, while some took up clerical apprenticeships in village churches, learning Christian doctrine from the books and practicing preaching and pastoral care on the congregation.18 The College of William and Mary was established in 1693 ‘for the breeding of good Ministers’, and its founder and first president for more than half a century was Commissary James Blair, the deputy of the bishop of London and the administrative head of the Church of Virginia. It never acquired that clerical or theological orientation that some of its English founders envisioned. Instead it became a bulwark of moderate, catholic, and secular culture, which was the life of Virginia in the eighteenth century.19 At least until the mid-1720s the institution was probably at the level of an English grammar school. One of the features of Blair’s curriculum, patterned after the model of his alma mater, Marischall College of Aberdeen, was that a student could enroll in the grammar school and proceed to the Philosophy School and, if so inclined, to the Divinity School.20

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The grammar school taught Latin and Greek grammar and classical authors. The books to be used as texts were to be the same ‘which by law and custom are used in schools in England’.21 All scholars were required to ‘learn the Church of England catechism in the vulgar tongue; and they who are further advanced learn it likewise in Latin’.22 Before proceeding to the Philosophy School those students who sought the benefits of a scholarship were required to ‘undergo an Examination before the President and Masters, and Ministers skilful in the learned languages; whether they have made due progress in their Latin and Greek. And let the Examination be undergone concerning their progress in the study of Philosophy, before they are promoted to the Divinity School. And let no Blockhead or lazy Fellow in his studies be elected’.23 Until 1756 a student was required to spend two years in the Philosophy School before attaining a B.A. degree and four years before obtaining an M.A. degree. The fields of study were common for the day: rhetoric, logic, ethics, physics, metaphysics, and mathematics.24 After 1756 the College followed the pattern of Oxford and Cambridge and required a four-year course of study for the B.A. degree and seven years before the awarding of the M.A. degree.25 The course of study followed by students who proceeded to the Divinity School included the study of Hebrew, and the literal examination of the Old and New Testaments. The history of theological controversies and issues was to be learned as well as a consideration of the role of heretics in the church’s story.26

Post-collegiate preparation for the ministry Men in America seeking orders were subject to the same educational and procedural requirements as their counterparts in England.27 In 1665 Archbishop of Canterbury Gilbert Sheldon forbade any bishop to ordain outside his diocese without archiepiscopal license, and required an annual return of names, titles, degrees, and orders of all persons ordained. Bishops were dependent for information about ordinands on the accuracy of the letters testimonial. Twenty years later the bishops of the province of Canterbury agreed upon ten articles to govern their conduct in conferring holy orders, embracing the canonical age for ordination, the possession of an academic degree, a bona fide title, testimonials of good conversation, due examination and ordination only at the four embertides, and a scrupulous observance of the prohibition against conferring both the orders of deacon and priest on any candidate on the same day.28 John Robinson, the distinguished diplomat and bishop of London (1713–23), at least as early as 1716 established ‘a Seminary for the Tryal and Probation of Ministers to be sent to serve the Cures of Churches under his care in America’.29 It is not known when the program was established or how long it existed, or the number of students who enrolled, or if there were faculty

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members in addition to Robinson. Presumably students resided at Fulham Palace, the residence of the bishop of London, and were under his frequent supervision or one of his chief deputies. The fees for room, board and tuition at the seminary amounted to £30 per annum. Some men prepared for ordination in the colonies in an apprenticeship to the local Church of England minister. William Vesey (Harvard, 1693) in 1696 studied under Samuel Myles (Harvard, 1684), rector of King’s Chapel in Boston, while in 1748 Samuel Seabury, Jr. (Yale 1748), was under the tutelage of his father, the Anglican minister at Hempstead, New York. The story is similar in Virginia where many young men, while serving as schoolmasters or tutors, were also reading theology and reaching the age required for ordination. Occasionally they studied under the supervision of nearby parsons or in the homes of ministers for whom they were serving as instructors for their children. Abner Waugh, a future leader in Virginia’s revolutionary movement, was taught by Jonathan Boucher, identified at the time of the Revolution as a key spokesman for Tory opinion, while William West and Robert Reade studied under John Fox. The canonical law of the Church of England required all candidates to be prepared to be examined on the contents of the Bible, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, the Latin language, and the New Testament in original Greek.30 In those colonies where clergy conventions were regularly held to screen and recommend men for ordination and to evaluate his preaching abilities the candidate then would be provided with a letter of recommendation to the bishop of London and, if appropriate, to the Society as worthy of further examination in London. This was required by ecclesiastical law and regularly exercised. No candidate for ordination was to sail from the colonies to London without prior approval of the bishop of London and, if appropriate, the Society’s executive officer. As the number of colonists seeking ordination increased substantially after 1720, Bishop of London Edmund Gibson (1723–48), renowned authority on ecclesiastical law, attempted to establish a systematic process for them. On 13 July 1743, he issued a proclamation to his commissaries in the provinces noting that as the number of persons ‘who have come from the Plantations for Holy Orders’ had increased, he would require that a candidate would not be accepted unless he carried with him a recommendation from the Bishop’s deputy in the colony of his residence. Furthermore, the commissary was also to provide details regarding the parish to which the candidate was to be assigned, the duties the new minister would perform, and his annual salary.31 In Virginia in 1769, the Commissary, and president of the College of William and Mary, James Horrocks, found it necessary to place an advertisement in the Williamsburg newspaper requesting all persons who, as candidates for holy orders, desired his recommendation, to notify him in time to enable him to make proper investigation.32 Such requests, he claimed, had come to him ‘sometimes so very late as to be within a few days of the ship’s sailing

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wherein they have passage, when it has been necessary either to admit irregularities, or put them to a trouble and expense which might be avoided’. The royal governors from time to time would provide a letter of support on behalf of a local candidate but it is unclear whether the governor was acquainted with the man or merely fulfilling in a perfunctory and bureaucratic manner one of the duties of his royal instructions regarding the supervision of the church.33 Another system, much more rigorous intellectually and more demanding in terms of time, was operated for a number of years in Connecticut by the Rev. Samuel Johnson and in Philadelphia by the Rev. William Smith. For nearly fifty years Johnson conducted a program of study for young graduates of Yale and nearby Congregational ministers who were considering the Anglican ministry. Smith carried on such a preparatory course of study for more than a decade, particularly for students who had passed through his Academy and College and were too young by church law for ordination. The academic curriculum provided by Johnson and Smith to fulfill the canonical requirements for the ministry antedated by a century the establishment of theological schools by the Episcopal Church.34 A graduate of Yale of the class of 1714, Johnson served as a tutor at the College between 1716 and 1719 and was one of the Anglican ‘Apostates’ of 1722.35 The foremost American Anglican intellectual of his day, his discourses and publications on philosophical and theological topics stand out today as the most significant work of a colonial Anglican divine. The Yale library had been enriched in 1714 with many important historical, philosophical, classical, and theological works with the contribution of the ‘Jeremiah Dummer’ collection. Johnson drew on these materials during his years as the College’s tutor and while he was anguishing over whether to leave the Congregational church and take orders in the Church of England. Despite his intellectual turmoil, Johnson proceeded to accept the call to the pastorate of the West Haven Congregational Church in 1720. He continued his discussions with his Yale colleagues regarding the nature of the ministry, and, with the other ‘Apostates’, he announced his conversion to Anglicanism at the College’s 1722 commencement.36 They sought episcopal ordination in London in 1723. After Johnson’s return from England he took up a post in Stratford, Connecticut, located only twelve miles from the College in New Haven where he was able frequently to use the resources of the ‘Dummer Library’ during his ministry. Between 1719 and 1756 he kept an annual log of his readings, an impressive document.37 His reading included such varied authors as the nonconformists Barclay and Penn, Anglican controversialists like King and Potter and Stillingfleet and Wake, such non-jurors as Robert Nelson and Thomas Ken, and traditionalists like Richard Hooker and such early Church fathers as Clement of Rome and Ignatius and St. John Chrysostom. Traveling often to New Haven to visit with longtime friends and to preach and to meet

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with students, Johnson reported in 1730 that he had ‘a very considerable influence in the college . . . and that a love to the Church gains ground greatly in it. Several young men that are graduates, and some young ministers, I have prevailed with to read and consider the matter so far, that they are very uneasy out of the communion of the Church, and some seem much disposed to come into her service; and those that are best affected to the Church are the brightest and most studious of any that are educated in the Country’.38 Johnson required the practice of lay preaching before Connecticut congregations by his theological students. Occasionally, one of the churches would then recruit the aspiring minister as its pastor on the basis of his performance as a lay preacher.39 Johnson had been chosen the Congregational minister of West Haven after he had proclaimed there while tutoring at Yale. During their time under Johnson’s supervision, candidates for orders would be assigned to a nearby parish that had expressed Anglican interests. The assignment served two helpful purposes: first, it gave the ministerial recruit an opportunity to practice his divine and pastoral duties and, second, at a time when there was a shortage of parsons to lead Anglican congregations, the services of candidates for holy orders helped fill the gap.40 Two years before his death in 1772, Johnson wrote to the Society in London about his nearly-fifty-year-old theological tutorial program, declaring that he had maintained ‘a little Academy or resource for young students of divinity to prepare them for Holy Orders; the design of which is chiefly to improve them in classical learning, Latin, and Greek, to teach them Hebrew, and direct and assist them in studying Divinity’.41 Johnson had taught and supervised many priests across the decades who served the church in the middle and northern colonies not only during the colonial period but also in the difficult days of the reorganization of the church following the Revolutionary War. During Johnson’s five decades of operating his ‘little Academy’, forty-two Yale graduates had become priests of the Church of England. While twenty-nine were converts from the Congregational Church, and twelve men had been licensed as Congregational preachers, forty-one of the parsons had direct associations with Johnson. At least forty of the ministers had been tutored by Johnson in their classical and theological studies. The legacies of Johnson’s school were many and were vital to the success of the church in Connecticut during the colonial and post-war years: the students became vigorous leaders advocating Anglican doctrine, traditions, and practices to their congregations and neighbors. The diaries, journals, and correspondence of clergymen that I have read do not list the books a candidate for the ministry was required to read and prepare for examination under the supervision of his tutor, but fortunately Samuel Johnson recorded the titles of the books that he read over nearly four decades. Bishop Gilbert Burnet’s A Discourse of the Pastoral Care was among them throughout the eighteenth century. Burnet stated that from

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his perspective he saw ‘imminent ruin hanging over this Church . . . the outward state of things is bad enough, God knows; but the inward is worse. Our Ember weeks are the burden and grief of my life. Candidates are ignorant of the Bible and can’t even say the Catechism. Those who come to be instituted have lost what little knowledge they had. Politics and party strife have eaten the heart out of religion. Scandal is rare, but an unthinking course of life, with little or no application to study . . . is but too common’.42 Ordinands were to form the study habit of reading two sermons every Sunday, especially from the works of Tillotson, Sharp, Atterbury, Sherlock, and Secker, the last being the most useful. ‘The Archbishop of Cambray’s Dialogues concerning Eloquence’ was to be read for preaching style and format, and Wheatly on the Common Prayer was noted as the best liturgical authority.43 In Pennsylvania, William Smith, the energetic, politically astute, and strong-willed provost of the College of Philadelphia, undertook to provide instruction to young men who had been his students at the College and were seeking Anglican ordination. Smith taught logic, rhetoric, and natural and moral philosophy at the college. A man of many parts, minister, educator, preacher, and businessman, Smith was also known for his irritable temper and love of drink. Yet he was one of the ablest, most versatile, and influential Pennsylvanians of his day. Benjamin Rush admitted that Smith possessed ‘genius, taste, and learning’. He was a clear, forceful writer and an eloquent public speaker. Smith’s program of studies was no less as exacting academically as that of the learned Johnson. In his autobiography, written nearly fifty years after his ordination, William White, a leader of the post-Revolution Episcopal Church and first bishop of Pennsylvania, wrote that from the time of his graduation in May 1765, to that of going to England for ordination in October 1770, he studied sacred and other literature. He noted that along with four other young men seeking ordination, Dr. Smith supervised a course of instruction that was held on Sunday evenings in the Hall of the College. The students were required to study the history of the Bible, theology, and church history. They also prepared compositions that were corrected by Smith, who would enlarge on the subjects. In hindsight White observed that this was far from being a complete course of ecclesiastical study; declaring that ‘it called to a Variety of Reading, & to a Concentration of what was read. There was also Use, in the Introduction to public Speaking’.44 Neither Samuel Johnson nor William Smith, nor any other colonial Anglican parson, followed in the footsteps of Boston’s Cotton Mather and published a useful primer for candidates for the ministry. In 1726 he published Manuductio ad Ministerium [A Guide to the Ministry] (Boston, 1726), a comprehensive Puritan manual on topics of pastoral care. In the tradition of learned seventeenth-century Puritan divines in both Old and New England, Mather cogently argued that the Puritan minister must be trained in all the arts and should be familiar with such languages as Hebrew, Greek, Latin,

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and Syriac, necessary for biblical and theological study. He urged candidates for the ministry to pursue a strong collegiate academic program to adequately prepare themselves for preaching and teaching the sound and rigid doctrines of old Calvinism and not the new theological movements of the early eighteenth century. Mather offered the student guidance on how to read the scriptures and how to effectively prepare sermons and use the pulpit for the instruction of the congregation. He also provided a list of books for a student’s library and rules for the maintenance of a minister’s health and conduct in his pastoral duties. Smith exercised administrative leadership over church affairs in Pennsylvania and Delaware in the 1760s and 1770s similar to Johnson’s role in Connecticut and New York and Caner’s efforts in Boston. He provided London officials with an account of each candidate’s educational background, testimonials from provincial parsons regarding worthiness for ordination, and confirmation that particular congregations had invited them to serve after their ordination. Joined by Dr. Richard Peters and the Rev. Jacob Duché, Smith sent a letter of endorsement for the ordination of John Montgomery and Thomas Coombe, both longtime students of his at the College of Philadelphia, and declared that the candidates for the ministry ‘have for two winters past attended Divinity Lectures under Dr. Smith, and having acquitted themselves so well in delivering their Sunday Evening Exercises, that seldom fewer than a thousand persons have attended to hear them’.45 Provost Smith also interceded, an act of expediency for the candidates as well as for the congregations, entreating the bishop of London to waive the canonical age requirement of twenty-three years for colonial postulants, for his students, who after completing their college degrees and theological instruction were a year or two younger than required. He was also ready candidly to inform church leaders in London about candidates Smith felt were not qualified for the ministry. His onetime friend and mentor in educational affairs in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, now an adversary in the rough and tumble arena of Pennsylvania provincial politics, recommended William Dunlap to the bishop of London for orders, a circumvention of Smith and the other clergy of the colony strongly condemned by Smith. He felt that any candidate from Pennsylvania for the ministry must have the endorsement of the local clergy. The Provost opposed Dunlap, a printer who had served in Franklin’s shop and had married a niece of Deborah Franklin but in Smith’s view was neither a learned man nor able to receive testimonials on his behalf from any of the Philadelphia clergy. Franklin had also recommended George Spencer for ordination, a person who, Smith reported, had been publicly carted through the streets of New York, an unsavory character. Despite his protests – and Smith was recognized as a controversial figure in Philadelphia to both friend and foe – Dunlap and Spencer were ordained as well as Joseph Shippen and James Sayre, Philadelphia natives who were characterized by Smith as ‘spendthrifts [who] behaved very wildly’.46

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A Virginia layman and observer of the provincial clergy and church, Graham Frank, offered Bishop Thomas Sherlock of London in 1756 his candid and less than encouraging assessment of the caliber of men from the colony who sought ordination. Generally, the men were of modest educational backgrounds, according to Frank, and seemed to be more interested in a church appointment for its financial rewards and stability rather than as an expression of service based on a heartfelt spiritual commitment. He noted that many of the men had come from among the ranks of tutors who served in the homes of Virginia planters. They had been recruited for these positions through a network of friends and business associates in Scotland ‘for the sake of cheapness’.47 Frank declared that the men came to Virginia with ‘violent prejudices against the church, as they can well have against that of Rome yet seeing the decent provision that’s made for the clergy here they soon reconcile themselves to the thought of becoming ministers in it’.48 He shrewdly noted that although some of the candidates for the ministry failed to obtain orders from the bishop of London they ‘get ordination from some other Bishops, finding them to be masters of a little Greek and Latin. But with submission to his Lordship, whoever he is, I think that but a small part of the qualifications necessary in a parish priest. If he is a moral and pious man with a good degree, of well-tempered zeal, which he can be no judge and can read the Bible well, with a tolerable skill in Divinity, which I fancy with diligence may be obtained without much of either of those languages and a knowledge of the Constitution of the Church, he will make a great figure, and be of more service in this part of the world where his abilities in the ancient authors, in Divinity especially, will seldom be called in question’.49 Bluntly critical of the educational background and moral character of some of the men traveling from Virginia to England for ordination, Frank remarked to Bishop Sherlock that in the colony ‘a good man would rather have an immoral man for a minister than none at all; but I am too much afraid that such a person will do more harm among the loose part of mankind than good, so that scarce as they are in some of the colonies, I believe they had better continue so, than Religion should be disgraced by such men’.50 In contrast to the American institutions British universities contributed little to the education of colonial-born Anglican parsons, although the few instances are worth noting. William Robinson of Virginia was sent to England at the age of ten and spent eight years at school before matriculating at Oriel College, Oxford. He earned his B.A. degree and spent three years before his ordination in further study on an exhibition named in honor of his distinguished granduncle. East Apthorp of Boston received both his B.A. and M.A. at Jesus College, Cambridge, in the 1750s and was elected a fellow of the college. Samuel Provoost, the first Bishop of New York, also held a Cambridge B.A. degree. Alexander Findlay of South Carolina was educated at King’s College in Aberdeen and served for two years as a schoolmaster in

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Charles Town before his ordination. Occasionally a man who possessed an American degree resided for a time at a British university. Seventeen candidates, such as Samuel Myles (Harvard, 1684; Oxford, 1693), with acceptable academic credentials and sufficient funds for the fees might apply for higher degrees from Oxford particularly without study or residence there.51 Samuel Johnson frequently sought the assistance of his Oxford acquaintances to arrange for the colonial-educated parson to receive either an M.A. or D.D. from the ancient institution. According to Bishop Secker the degree candidates had to provide for university officials ‘a certificate of the degree which he had received abroad’ to qualify for the honor.52

The transatlantic crossing The expense and risks of the transatlantic trip had deterred men seeking ordination in every decade of the eighteenth century. Samuel Thomas, early in the eighteenth century, noted that of ‘near 20 young men’ who were graduates of Harvard, ‘all or most . . . would gladly have accepted episcopal Ordination if we had a Bishop in America from whom they might have received it, but being discouraged at the trouble and charge of coming for England, they accepted of authoritys from the Dissenting Ministers and all are dispersed in that way’.53 In Connecticut the congregations at Hebron and Hartford knew first-hand about the disasters that candidates could meet on a voyage, as both posts lost at least two prospective ministers in the course of their London trips. Daniel Browne, one of the Yale ‘Apostates’ of 1722 and a member of the class of 1714, traveled to London with Timothy Cutler and Samuel Johnson in November 1722, contracted smallpox, and died; Jonathan Colton, Yale 1745, died at sea on his return voyage; twentynine-year-old William Johnson, Samuel’s son, an excellent classical scholar and a graduate of Yale in 1748, became infected with smallpox after his ordination and died in London on 12 June 1756; and Joseph Lamson, a Stratford native and Yale graduate of 1741, whose ship was captured on the high seas by French sailors and who was in turn transferred to a prison in France, released after a period of time, traveled to London, and continued his quest for ordination. Also accompanying Lamson was Richardson Miner, a former Congregational minister at Trumbull, Connecticut, and Yale graduate of 1726, who died on the last leg of the journey in Salisbury, England. Dudley Bradstreet, a Harvard graduate of the class of 1698, was a former Congregational minister at Groton, Massachusetts, who, it was alleged, had laid his hands on the wife of a member of the congregation and was forced to resign.54 His difficulties doomed prospects for another Massachusetts pulpit and forced him to consider episcopal ordination. The grandson of two leaders of the Massachusetts establishment in the seventeenth century, Governor Simon Bradstreet and the poet Anne Bradstreet, he sailed for England where he contracted smallpox and died in London shortly after receiving orders.55

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John Checkley, son of the noted former Boston bookseller, high churchman, pamphleteer, and priest of the same name, who graduated from Harvard in 1738, made the voyage to England in 1744 and was ordained by Bishop Gibson at Fulham Palace. Soon afterwards he contracted smallpox and died in London. The cost of the trip to London, according to Samuel Johnson, was not less than £100, while in 1775 John Wiswell, a former Congregational minister at Falmouth, Maine (1756–63), became an Anglican minister and served the church in the same town (1764–75), wrote to the S.P.G. that the ordination voyage cost him about £80. This was a heavy expense for most parsonsto-be whose salary would amount to about £100 per year, but assistance was available from several sources. Vestries frequently aided the transportation and living costs for candidates who were returning to serve their churches, while the College of William and Mary frequently provided £50 to its students who were leaving to obtain orders. Trinity Church in New York lent William Vesey £95 in 1696 to defray the expenses of a voyage to England to obtain episcopal ordination. In 1722 the new congregation of Christ Church, Boston, sponsored the trip of the Yale ‘Apostates’ to London for ordination, while four years later the church in Braintree, Massachusetts, contributed £100 to send Ebenezer Miller to London, stipulating to the S.P.G. that if it did not assign him to Braintree, Miller must refund the money in full.56 One of the ordinands of the colonial era, Jacob Bailey, a graduate of Harvard College in 1755, who was briefly licensed to preach in 1758 by the Association of Congregational Ministers in Exeter, New Hampshire, and who served as the ‘Frontier Missionary’ at Pownalborough, Maine, after returning from London described his departure from Boston for London on 19 January 1760, aboard the Hind, a twenty-gun ship, noting that ‘This morning, almost before daylight appeared, I awoke with the clangor of trumpets and the noise of whistles, and the bustling of all hands upon deck, by which I perceived that the ship was, at last, unmooring, and that we were preparing to sail . . . I stood with a melancholy feeling, to see the New England shores grow further and further distant till the tops of the mountains and at last, the whole country, entirely disappeared’.57

England and ordination While such candidates as William White and Samuel Seabury, Jr., spent several months in England seeking ordination and touring the countryside, others like Gershom Rawlins, did not return home, while Thomas Coombe returned for a brief period to America and then sailed again in 1777 for London to practice his ministry in England. Coombe, recognized by his associates in Philadelphia as a powerful, and effective preacher, became a distinguished figure in the English Church and was appointed Chaplain to King George III

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and a Prebend of Canterbury Cathedral. East Apthorp, born in Boston, the son of the well-to-do merchant Charles Apthorp, recipient of the Chancellor’s prize established by the Duke of Newcastle at Cambridge University in 1755, served briefly as the first S.P.G. missionary (1759–64) at Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He returned to England and climbed the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment with success and distinction serving as the Vicar of Croydon, 1756–93; Rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, London, 1778–92; Prebend of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1790–1816; and Chancellor of St. Paul’s, 1791–92. Usually not more than a few weeks were necessary for the candidate to spend on English soil. Peter Muhlenberg, son of the distinguished Pennsylvania German Lutheran church leader, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, arrived in London on 11 April 1772; on 14 April he called on the bishop of London and was examined; on 21 April he was ordained deacon and four days later he became a priest; on 8 May he received the King’s Bounty, and on 20 May he left London.58 Sometimes the bishop of London was not in town and the candidates waited for several weeks for his return and the necessary interviews and examinations. Not a few colonists complained of delays, perhaps a modest effort to mask their fears of contracting smallpox while in the city. Upon arriving in London all of the postulants had to meet the bishop of London and those who were seeking the assignment and support of the Society called on officers of that organization. Candidates were required to submit to an examination usually by the chaplain of the bishop of London, before approval was granted for their ordination. Jacob Bailey reported that his examination included questions regarding his homeland, family, and educational experience. The examiner, Dr. Samuel Nichols, required Bailey to translate a portion of the Greek New Testament into Latin or English; a portion of Grotius’s de Veritate was read from Latin into English; and to read the Thirty-nine Articles into Latin and then explain the various subjects.59 The ordination rites came next either at the hands of the bishop of London or another prelate designated by him. Occasionally the bishop of London was absent from the city or indisposed and unable to attend promptly to the ceremonies. Once more Jacob Bailey, the indefatigably descriptive observer, recounts in his journal the day of his trip to the redbrick, Tudor-style Fulham Palace, located on the Thames between the present-day Putney and Hammersmith bridges, and his ordination to the diaconate. After arising early on 2 March 1760, he traveled by coach to the Bishop of London’s residence, where several other candidates for ordination joined him. The Bishop of Rochester, Zachary Pearce, substituted for the ailing London prelate. After taking the oaths of allegiance and subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles the men were ushered into the chapel and were ordained deacons by the Bishop. After the service the new ministers ‘were conducted into a vast large hall, entirely composed of the finest marble. It was arched overhead, and was at least twenty feet high. All the walls, as well as the grand canopy, were covered with the most striking figures, so that this spacious

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apartment might truly be said to be fine without hangings, and beautiful without paint. In the middle stood a long table, covered with silver dishes. We sat down with his lordship of Rochester, the Bishop of London’s lady, and several others, being in all, twenty-one. We had ten servants to attend us, and were served with twenty-four different dishes, dressed in such an elegant manner, that many of us could scarce eat a mouthful. The drinking vessels were either of glass or of solid gold. The Bishop was very sociable at table, but was seen to behave with a very important gravity’.60 Bailey remarked that after dinner was concluded each man paid eleven shillings for his orders. Generally only a few days elapsed between a candidate’s ordination to the diaconate and to the priesthood. Following ordination the new priest was required to apply for a license to serve as a parish minister in America from the secretary of the bishop of London, upon the payment of £1.18s.6d. Jacob Duché, later destined to be the first Congressional Chaplain, was the only parson I have found who made two trips to England for the ordination rites. After graduating from the College of Philadelphia in 1757 Duché attended Clare College, Cambridge University. He returned to his native city of Philadelphia after receiving deacon’s orders in 1759 with a license to preach until he reached the required age of twenty-four for ordination as a priest. He returned to England in 1762 for his final orders. Except for men who expected benefices in Virginia and Maryland, most of those who returned to the colonies in orders did so as missionaries of the Society. In those two provinces the Church was established by law with their salaries set by the legislature, but elsewhere the annual stipend allowed by the S.P.G. for each minister’s support was his primary livelihood. The Society and its staff at headquarters were as vital to the interests of the church in America as Fulham Palace and the bishop of London. Before voting an appointment, the Society reviewed the applicant’s testimonials, certificate of ordination, and license, and heard him preach. The examiners were members of the Society; sometimes the bishop of London appointed them and provided the sermon text. Samuel Johnson tells us that he preached his ‘probation sermon’ in St. Dionis Back Church, at Lime Street and Fenchurch Street, before two members of the Society a few weeks after his ordination. If everything was in order, a missionary assignment soon followed ordination. Jacob Bailey was ordained 16 March, licensed the next day, and by 22 March, having been notified of his appointment, had drawn the customary first half of his annual salary.61 Each new missionary was formally instructed as to the conduct expected of him thereafter. He was not to lodge in taverns, ‘but at some Bookseller’s, or in other private and reputable Families’, until otherwise quartered by the organization. By a standing order of 1714 he was to maintain communication with the secretary, the chief executive officer of the organization, which accounts for the regular semi-annual correspondence between the parsons and the London-based Society regarding the state of their churches and

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their own well-being. Before returning to America he was to spend his time in private and public religious exercises, and in study. He was not to dally in London longer than necessary to secure a passage; in 1715 it was agreed that missionaries not departing by the spring and autumn sailings following their appointments would forfeit their posts. Before sailing for the New World they were expected to take leave of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, and receive from them the Church’s blessing upon their enterprise. For most of the parsons the ordination voyage was their only trip to England. While some of the ordinands may have spent most of their time in and around London during their brief sojourn in England others traveled throughout the countryside visiting the seats of learning, the ancient cathedral sites, the countryside, villages, and county centers. Whereas all of the men were on an errand to sanctify their holy calling, some of them were also inveterate and peripatetic tourists seeking to see and learn as much as possible about the homeland. Some of the men ventured to country villages searching for aunts, uncles, or distant cousins, links to the family’s transatlantic heritage, ties to the past and the present. Some men traveled to the English villages and farms from which their American progenitors migrated to settle in the New World. Many of the men fashioned personal and professional friendships during their trip to London that were to flourish the rest of their lives. Probably the keenest colonial Anglican observer of the English scene was the twenty-six-year-old Samuel Johnson who committed to the pages of his private journal his daily round of meetings with American friends and English officials, recounted his travels, and offered his impressions. Mindful of the politics of the church Johnson overlooked no opportunity to forge friendships at Oxford, Cambridge, and among the established leadership of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, associations that were to be regularly cultivated by correspondence for the rest of his life. In several instances the friendships were passed to the succeeding generation as the sons achieved status in either the church or the law. On 15 December 1722, the ship Mary carrying Johnson, Cutler, and Browne from Boston arrived at Ramsgate in the Isle of Thanet, the easternmost point in the County of Kent. Immediately they set off on horseback traveling fifteen miles to Canterbury. In a profound sense they were modern Canterbury pilgrims individually and collectively. The three sons of Puritan New England who had traveled from the edges of the empire were visiting the religious, civil, and educational centers of English civilization. At once bold and brash, diplomatic and charming, the men quickly introduced themselves to the powerful leaders of the church and universities. The account of their resignations at Yale had preceded them in the pages of the London newspapers and they were well known. They met with the Dean and canons of the Canterbury Cathedral Chapter, attended regular services, visited the ancient library, climbed the bell-tower for a commanding view of the cathedral, the

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town, and the Kentish countryside. They walked the medieval walls enclosing the city.62 Visiting London next the men continued their energetic sightseeing pace as well as tending to the details of their ordination and their appointments by the Society. London in 1722 was the political, legal, financial, social, and cultural center of the empire, crowded with government buildings, private homes, business centers, and markets. It was a city of striking contrasts, of elegance and horror, sophistication and sordidness, loveliness and squalor. The itinerary of the travelers included Westminster Abbey, Lambeth Palace, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Law Courts, the Guildhall, the Tower of London, and the Royal Naval Hospital and Observatory at Greenwich. On one occasion, after services at Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, Johnson noted that ‘we took a view of that stupendous fabric, ascended to the top of the dome by five hundred and fifty steps, which with the Cupola and Cross make four hundred feet in height. We were in the Library also, and sundry other parts; viewed the cells, etc. It is perhaps one of the finest buildings in the world – an amazing mass of stones!’63 Their days were filled with attendance at various London churches for morning and evening services and after their ordinations Cutler and Johnson occasionally conducted services and preached. Daily they met with church officials, made useful new acquaintances, dined with such prominent figures in church and public life as the Lord Mayor of London, and visited with friends in the informal atmosphere of the City’s coffee houses. As Johnson, Cutler, and Browne for some time had debated the efficacy of Presbyterian baptism, it is not surprising to note that Browne and Johnson stood as witnesses at Cutler’s Anglican baptism on 20 March 1722/23, at St. Sepulchre’s Church.64 For Cutler, a native New Englander and a distinguished student of the ancient languages and history, the ceremony must have evoked notable historical associations, traditions, and symbols. From the doorsteps of St. Sepulchre’s in Holborn in the City of London the Crusaders departed on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land more than five centuries earlier. And it was in this church in 1633 that the adventurer Captain John Smith, a participant in the settlement and first years of the Jamestown colony, and who in 1614 explored ‘New’ England and named the region, was laid to rest. They also witnessed extraordinary services symbolizing the close of an era in London’s story and the opening of an epoch of great significance for the King’s church in America. The men had visited and worshipped at many of the London churches designed by Christopher Wren and had been dazzled by his most noble achievement, St. Paul’s Cathedral. The new Anglican church rising in Boston’s north end, Christ Church, of which Cutler would serve as its first rector for more than forty years, owed much of its architectural distinctiveness and beauty to the legacy of Wren. Now the great architect was dead and Johnson, Browne, and Cutler joined with hundreds of distinguished public officials in honoring him at his funeral service at St. Paul’s.65

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Edmund Gibson succeeded John Robinson as bishop of London in 1723. The recently ordained parsons soon after called on Gibson to pay their respects and offer congratulations. They also attended the service of confirmation of Gibson as bishop at one of Wren’s most beautiful churches, St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. A few weeks later they joined the throng of Londoners at the formal service of installation of Gibson, as bishop at St. Paul’s, three among many of his clergy from throughout his diocese who joined the ceremonies.66 After Browne’s death from smallpox, Cutler and Johnson made three brief trips outside London before returning to America, excursions mirroring their own academic interests. On their first they traveled to Harrow School, a foundation established by Elizabeth I in 1571 atop Harrow-on-the-Hill; to Eton College, an institution founded by Henry VI in 1440; and to Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, residences of the monarchs. Their second was a visit to Oxford that brought to the men a warm welcome from the Vice-Chancellor of the University and the Bishop of Oxford, introductions to the heads of colleges, congenial hospitality, and, particularly for Johnson, the establishment of life-long professional friendships that seemed to be a cap on their English sojourn. Both men were awarded honorary M.A. degrees from the Convocation of the University and carried on a round of sightseeing that took them to the Bodleian Library, the University Museum and Press, and Wren’s Sheldonian Theater as well as to the colleges and University gardens. A side trip to Woodstock, ten miles north of Oxford, took them to the Duke of Marlborough’s countryseat, Blenheim Palace, a site that dazzled their imaginations. The architecture of the palace grounds caught Johnson’s appreciative eye.67 Later the two men made their third trip, a brief visit to Cambridge, and experienced a reception similar in cordiality to Oxford and complete with honorary degrees.68 While most of the clergy may not have been as intrepid sightseers as Johnson and Cutler, they must have been inspired and awed by the monuments of civil and ecclesiastical heritage and power in London and the provincial towns. For tourists from the far edge of the empire the spectacle of London and the ceremonial pageantry of the church must have struck an enthusiastic and patriotic response in their hearts and minds, a response of appreciation and joy that they were a part of the continuing process of England’s long institutional heritage as a civilization. The Americans found their way to London booksellers for conversation, to gain and exchange news about the colonies, to browse, and frequently to establish an overseas corresponding relationship for the purchase of books and pamphlets. They also attended the theater, for Samuel Johnson records a visit to the Theater in Drury Lane and to attend performances of The Drummer and The Merchant of Venice at the Theater at Lincoln’s Inn. There was also a need for the parsons to visit a tailor to be measured and have made the necessary clerical gowns for use at services in America.

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While the ordination journey to England was hazardous, expensive, and time-consuming for colonial Anglicans it was a necessary hardship that bore important fruits. The voyage intimately linked the Americans with the capital city of the empire. The men were introduced not only to the sights of the imperial city but also to the procedures and trappings of ancient civil and ecclesiastical institutions of which they would be a part and would represent in their provincial towns and parishes. The polity, traditions, and ethos of the English Church were carried to America by the parsons and daily exercised and expressed in the offices of the Book of Common Prayer, the Sunday and holy day observances of their churches, and in the clerical garb that they wore on their backs. The extension of the English Church to America was not to duplicate the hierarchy, power, and customs of the institution at home. It was destined to be for nearly two centuries a modest and incomplete offspring of the mother church adopting uniquely American organizational characteristics that would be formalized when the church was reconstituted following the War. Nonetheless the loyalty, respect, and friendship, which the colonists established with church officials during their excursions to London, proved to be a personal bond, which prompted strength and satisfaction, and sorrow, sadness, and anguish during the turbulent decade leading to and throughout the Revolutionary War.

The consequences of independence As a result of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 the traditional connection between the American Anglican churches and the Church of England was terminated. It was a transformed Church that survived, strong in the Anglican tradition, but strongly American too. American churchmen could no longer look to England for guidance or assistance. When the American Revolution made it impossible to maintain the connection with the bishop of London, the colonial clergy were deprived of their ecclesiastical superior and of their source for the ordination of candidates to the ministry. With the Revolution the S.P.G. gradually withdrew all financial support for the clergy on its rolls. For ministers serving parishes in New England and the middle colonies this turn of events was a particular hardship.69 During the war years the number of Anglican clergymen was reduced by nearly one-half, due in part to deaths and to the exile of many Loyalists and there were no immediate clergy replacements. After the Treaty of Paris of 1783 American candidates for holy orders would have to be ordained by an American bishop. The need of an American episcopate had long been felt by the colonial church, but partly through the indifference in England and partly through strong opposition in the colonies, no bishop had been sent. Attempts to preserve in Virginia and Maryland some of the privileges of an established Church proved to be fruitless, for the influence of the non-episcopal churches was too strong and the general temper of the

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Revolutionary leaders was opposed to any state aid for religion. The six states, in which the Church of England was established by law, all disestablished the church by 1784. No other religious body in America suffered so severely and extensively from the war, nor was any other religious group so suddenly thrown completely on its own. Yet in the six years between the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and the implementation of the Federal Constitution of the United States in 1789, the Episcopal churches successfully reorganized, resupplied their clerical ranks, developed a capacity for financial support, and consummated an ecclesiastical transformation in the area of episcopacy.70 The inability of English bishops to ordain American clerical candidates until after 13 August 1784 and the inappropriateness of their encouraging an American episcopate highlighted the problems of the Episcopal churches. The first step taken toward an American bishop was taken when Samuel Seabury of Connecticut arrived in England on 7 July 1783, seeking consecration as a bishop. For more than a year he earnestly sought the rite at the hands of English bishops. But the Church of England was not free to help the Church in America. Without an act of Parliament no bishop could be consecrated who would not take the oath of allegiance to the King. Moreover, since it was inconceivable that a bishop should not be a state official, it was observed with distrust that the legislature of Connecticut had not endorsed the election of Seabury. When it became clear at length that the Church of England could do nothing for him, Seabury proceeded to Scotland and found a welcome there among the non-juring bishops. Seabury was consecrated at Aberdeen on 14 November 1784, by the Bishop of Aberdeen, the Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen, and the Bishop of Ross and Moray. At the end of the following June the new bishop landed at Newport, and on 3 August 1785, he presided at the first convention in the State of Connecticut, and ordained at that time four candidates for the diaconate. Until the establishment of the General Theological Seminary in New York City in 1817 and the formalization of theological education, the preparation of candidates for the ministry continued in the pattern set forth in the eighteenth century. Every person seeking orders was expected to have a college education and to have served an apprenticeship under the watchful eye and tutelage of an experienced clergyman.71

11 New England Critics of Imperial Church Policy

External rhetoric shaped the course of the King’s church during the two decades before the outbreak of the American Revolution. It was a controversy launched by prominent Boston Congregational parsons who were critical of the manner in which the church was established in New England. It was a conflict that shaped the agendas of clergy conventions, the number of native colonists from the region who entered the Anglican ministry, and the number of new congregations formed in New England. In hindsight the controversy created a stalemate in the efforts to advance the King’s church in the region. The leading advocates for the Congregationalists were Jonathan Mayhew, the minister of the West Church in Boston, and Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Church in the city.1 Their objections were not new but argued cogently and persuasively with a comprehensive knowledge of the history of the English church in America. They questioned the legitimacy and purpose of the King’s church’s activity in New England, attacking in particular the program of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the uncertain prospect of the establishment of an American prelate. The issue was familiar since Cotton Mather as early as 1716 had confided to a colleague that the presence of the King’s church in New England was a conspiracy by English civil and ecclesiastical officials to undermine and erode the nearly century-old New England religious community. Writing to Anthony W. Boehme, the German chaplain to the court of George I in 1716, Mather remarked that ‘New England is the only country in America which has much of real and vital religion flourishing in it’. He reported that the S.P.G. missionaries ‘who are of little use but to propagate impiety, come to disturb well-ordered churches of God’. The Anglicans were not concerned with sending clergymen to the ‘ungospellized plantations’ of Virginia and Maryland but rather to send them to ‘a country filled with holy churches and pastors . . . to serve their political and vexatious purposes’.2 For a century before the American Revolution, Congregational preachers irregularly quarrelled with the historicity, authority, and supremacy of bishops. 166

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They were seeking to preserve a New England community free from the customs, pageantry, hierarchy, and the feared civil power of English bishops. The leading proponent of the Congregational position and an unremitting antagonist of the activity of the S.P.G. in New England communities and the rumoured appointment of an American prelate was Mayhew.3 A 1744 alumnus of Harvard, Mayhew was acclaimed as a powerful and persuasive theological thinker. On both sides of the Atlantic he was celebrated by liberal Dissenters and latitudinarian Anglicans like Bishop Benjamin Hoadly for the publication of his collection of Seven Sermons in 1749.4 Yet he encountered critics within his own church group. His direct attack on the doctrine of the Trinity stirred up much opposition from his colleagues. Mayhew’s radical theology and liberal politics made him one of the most controversial yet respected figures in all New England. He was one of the last great colonial preachers, yet trumpeting a new dawn for religious and political liberty. Mayhew led the intellectual forces for rationalism and whiggery in his day. In 1754 Jonathan Mayhew cleverly, forthrightly, and heatedly renewed Cotton Mather’s theme asserting that the London-based Society was applying funds intended for labor among the American Indians to proselytize among New England Dissenters. Echoing Increase Mather’s objections to the establishment of the first congregation of the King’s church in Boston in 1686 he claimed that the Church of England was akin to the Roman church. Mayhew pleaded with his readers not to be converted ‘to that apostate church which the scriptures sometimes intend by the name Babylon, we ought not to conform to, or symbolise with her, in any of her corruption’s, and idolatrous usage’s; but to keep at as great a distance from them as possible, by strictly adhering to the holy scriptures in doctrine, discipline, worship and practice’. As for the King’s church in eighteenth-century America, Mayhew concluded that he was ‘persuaded that there is not now, or has been for many generations past, any national church, wholly and absolutely free from corruptions’.5 From another perspective Ezra Stiles, a Congregational minister in Newport, Rhode Island, and later Rector of Yale College, supplemented Mayhew’s criticisms of the King’s church. In his Discourse on the Christian Union published in 1760, he reminded his reader ‘that when our Pious Ancestors came over into Land when an howling wilderness, to enjoy the Gospel in the purity & simplicity of it that the Chh of England should thrust it self in among us’.6 Stiles bluntly remarked that New Englanders ‘desire to live in peace and harmony with all – nor do we attempt to proselite from any communion. We desire only equal protestant liberty. And even our episcopal brethren must confess that we treat them with much greater lenity, charity, and christian benevolence, than they treat our congregational brethren in England’.7 Yet he felt that the King’s church posed a greater threat to liberty, both in England and in America, than any other single institution.

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Like many New England Congregational ministers Stiles sensed an English ecclesiastical conspiracy and feared that when the Anglicans had enough power they would achieve what they thought was their long-sought ambition for the American church, to establish the bishops, archbishops, and all the other officers of the English church. If the Anglicans established a hierarchy in America, the Newport parson forecast that their bishops would claim superiority by divine right over other religious groups. Furthermore, he presumed that the American prelates would expect all the rights and privileges enjoyed by their English colleagues, including state support, civil powers, and courts exercising jurisdiction over morals and the probate of wills. Should an episcopate be established, Stiles observed, it would be a step back in the trend towards religious liberty. For Stiles political freedom and religious freedom were inseparable concomitants of free inquiry and a free society.8 Parson Stiles recognized that the Anglicans could not establish bishops in America without the approval of the English government. He understood that the declining fortunes of the church in England during the eighteenth century could prompt a more dynamic institution in America. He feared that with a bishop in every colony the King’s church would have at its disposal many offices of the kind on which political power is built and maintained, and would curtail the freedom that would otherwise restrain them. He noted that in the Chesapeake colonies and in South Carolina nearly all political offices were held by members of the King’s church, while in the Middle and New England colonies under royal control they held only those offices filled by appointment from London.9 Mayhew and Stiles had not only framed the debate between Congregationalists and Anglicans during the last two decades of the colonial era, but their straightforward attack of the programs of the London-based Society and of the appointment of a prelate triggered confusion among parsons of the King’s church in America and ecclesiastical officials in London. Neither Samuel Johnson in New York nor William Smith in Philadelphia, founders of King’s College and the College of Philadelphia respectively, attempted to respond to Mayhew’s or Stiles’s attack. It remains puzzling why two of the most prominent leaders of the English church in the colonies failed to promptly rebut the sharply pointed criticism of the Congregational pamphleteers. The issues were allowed to fester, gain credibility, gather support, and encourage the publication of tracts from other ministers. Stiles was certainly known to Johnson because several members of his congregation in Stratford, Connecticut, had sought the appointment of the Newport parson as Johnson’s successor when he assumed the presidency of the college in New York. The failure of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Herring, also the president of the S.P.G., to respond was probably determined by his serious health problems. Struck by a fever in 1753 he never fully recovered his physical capacity and retired to the country at Croydon and seemed to give little

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attention to church affairs either in England or overseas. No other ecclesiastical leader stepped into the breech to undertake a reply to Mayhew’s criticisms. Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock, the prelate assigned with jurisdiction over the colonial church by the Board of Trade, had been incapacitated with a paralytic stroke in 1753, affecting his speech and mobility and severely limiting his official duties.10 Seven years passed before a colonial parson mustered his thoughts and rebutted Mayhew’s charges regarding the purpose of the S.P.G.: East Apthorp, son of the rich Boston merchant Charles Apthorp. Educated at Cambridge University, Apthorp was appointed the first Society missionary in Cambridge, near Harvard College in 1759. It remains unclear how a young and recently appointed minister came to publish the first tract in defense of the S.P.G. against the charges of the popular and prominent Mayhew. Perhaps he discussed the situation with his father whose fortune was greatly enhanced by his service as commissary for the British forces in North America during the French and Indian War. If so, possibly the elder Apthorp discussed the matter with his influential London partner, Barlow Trecothick, a member of the S.P.G., an alderman of the City of London, and agent for the interests of the New Hampshire colony.11 Trecothick was the most powerful of all the London merchants trading to America.12 Doubtless some communication occurred between Boston and London over the Mayhew controversy as to the best way to proceed, particularly during the incapacitation of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. Nearly a decade after the appearance of Mayhew’s pamphlet he published a defense of the Society entitled Considerations of the Institution and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Boston, 1763).13 Apthorp argued that the underlying purpose of the Society was ‘to maintain a public religion in the English colonies, among the natural subjects of Great Britain; and to provide a maintenance for an orthodox clergy, which (as the charter was obtained by the members of the Church of England) must, in all reasonable construction, mean a clergy of their own church . . . to instruct our own people in the Christian Religion, and that they may live amongst them as their settled and resident ministers’.14 Secondarily, asserted Apthorp, the Society was to carry the gospel to all heathens who would receive it, with no specific assignment or restriction to serve the Indians.15 He noted that the Society was given large latitude by its charter to govern its own affairs, providing as an example the longstanding mission of educational and religious training of the organization among the Mohawk Indians in New York.16 A small band of New England Anglican parsons followed Apthorp’s rejoinder to Mayhew but did not expand upon his position.17 The ink was hardly dry on the pamphlets when Mayhew replied to their defense with his Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society (Boston, 1763).18 He rhetorically flashed that while ‘the constitution, worship and discipline of the Church of England [is] much less agreeable to the word of God than our

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own’; yet he had ‘a high veneration for many persons of that communion, as persons of great learning and wisdom, candor and piety’.19 He admitted that there was no essential theological difference between the Church of England and the New England churches, but conceded that the latter were more inclined to Calvinism.20 Yet he pointedly suggested that the Society was neglecting its missionary purpose in order to promote religious division in the community. Indeed, he remarked that the Society should have been called ‘The Society for propagating the church of England in those parts where the administration of God’s word and sacraments is provided for after the congregational and presbyterian modes’.21 In one respect his argument was less than honest, pointing out that the New England system did not establish the Congregational Church but only required towns to have learned and orthodox ministers of their own choice. Correctly he indicated that in this regard the laws used the word ‘orthodox’ to mean ‘Protestant’. Mayhew’s primary argument was that the parishes of the King’s church that had been established in New England towns and villages at the Society’s expense, ‘have in short all the appearance of entering wedges; or rather of little lodgements made in carrying on the crusade, or spiritual siege of our churches, with the hope that they will one day submit to an episcopal sovereign. And it will appear at least probable in the sequel that it is the true plan and grand mystery of their operations in New England’.22 He forcefully concluded ‘that the Society have long had a formal design to root out Presbyterianism and to establish both Episcopacy and Bishops in the colonies. In pursuance of which favorite project they have in a great measure neglected the important ends of their institution. . . . It is hardly possible to account for the Society’s conduct without supposing them to have had such a design’.23 Mayhew strongly concluded that the Society’s work represented a religious conspiracy, employing the national church with the approval of the English government. Bernard Bailyn has contended that conspiratorial reasoning became a commonplace way of thinking in the eighteenth century. He has noted that the escalating political events of the 1760s and 1770s – the Stamp Act crisis, Townshend duties, the Boston Tea Party, and the Coercive Acts – were linked and carried an overarching purpose. The colonial leaders ‘saw about them, with increasing clarity not merely mistaken, or evil, policies, violating the principles upon which freedom rested, but what appeared to be evidence of nothing less than a deliberate assault launched surreptitiously by plotters against liberty both in England and in America’. Bailyn concludes that it was the weighty evidence of a ‘design’ – a conspiracy – which was signaled, to the colonial political leaders after 1763 and ‘it was this above all else that in the end propelled them into Revolution’.24 Referring to recent efforts in London to appoint a bishop in the colonies, and the construction of Apthorp’s grand house in Cambridge at his father’s expense, Mayhew suggested that ‘it is supposed by many that in a certain superb edifice in a neighboring town [Cambridge], was even from the foundation

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designed for the Palace of one of the humble successors of the apostles’.25 Recognizing the incendiary character of Mayhew’s attack on the S.P.G., the venerable Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, informed the Society’s Secretary Daniel Burton of the latest publication. Not mincing his words, Johnson remarked that Mayhew was ‘a rough, ludicrous, audacious and malicious man, equally disliked by most of the Dissenters and us, and equally an enemy of the Trinity, to Royalty and Episcopacy’.26 Johnson wrote that he would send a copy of the pamphlet to Archbishop Secker and that ‘an answer should be made immediately by some able man’.27 The revered Connecticut parson wrote to Secker on 20 September 1764 declaring that the message of Mayhew’s latest tract was now in ‘your Grace’s hands, and you are the fittest judge whether any reply is necessary’.28 Not all New England Congregational leaders were as vociferously opposed to the London-based Society’s efforts as Parson Mayhew. The President and Fellows of Harvard College proved to be congenial and neighbors of East Apthorp while he served as the first missionary in Cambridge. In the aftermath of the devastating fire that destroyed the College’s library in 1764, the officials turned to Apthorp to request assistance from the S.P.G. to meet the costs of replacing lost books.29 Without hesitation the Society responded with a gift of £100.30 The heat of the dispute in the 1750s, 1760s, and early 1770s was generated by prominent Congregational and Anglican ministers concentrated in Boston, New York, and Elizabethtown in New Jersey. At bottom the controversy was an effort by parsons in both denominations to maintain the ‘old order’. Giving rise to the debate over a colonial prelate were several factors that coincided in the colonies and in England. A primary cause was the change of leadership in both the church and state. Thomas Secker, bishop of Oxford, was translated on 21 April 1758 to the see of Canterbury in succession to Archbishop Thomas Herring, and the appointment immediately signalled the prospect of strong official interest in American affairs. Secker maintained a long-time interest in the overseas church and had championed the cause of an American episcopate as early as 1741 in his celebrated Anniversary Sermon before the members of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The colonial parsons had renewed hopes that their quest for an American bishop would soon be fulfilled. Their sentiments were not misplaced because Secker was an influential figure in civil and ecclesiastical affairs and served at the highest level of the King’s government as a Great Officer of State and as a member of the Privy Council. Besides his mitre Secker wore another hat: he also served ex officio as president of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. A new era for England was launched with the accession of the young prince, George III, to the throne on 25 October 1760, in succession to his grandfather King George II. His new reign was greeted with strong popular approval, a growing sense of patriotism, and a public euphoria that civil

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affairs would take an improved course over the government of George II. This enthusiastic burst of national pride was shaped by the favorable news arriving almost daily in London of military victories on distant battlefields – in America, the West Indies, and on the continent.31 Accompanying the new era of leadership of the church and state was the English government’s vigorous strategy to implement stronger imperial economic and military policies overseas. Not since the era of Bishop of London Henry Compton and Queen Anne fifty years earlier had there been a convergence of civil and ecclesiastical leadership and policies that potentially favoured the King’s church in America and the appointment of an American prelate. Britain in 1758 had been locked in war on two fronts, in Europe (the Seven Years War), and in America (the French and Indian War). William Pitt, secretary of state responsible for war and foreign affairs, committed the home government to unlimited warfare, requiring army reinforcements in America, subsidies to the continental allies, and necessitating higher taxes and war loans. In New York, British forces were defeated by the French after a fierce battle at Fort Ticonderoga on 8 July 1758, suffering great casualties, yet less than three weeks later the tide of events turned and the French were decisively defeated on 26 July at Louisbourg. During the following year British troops successfully launched a campaign to capture Fort Niagara in order to sever the West from the St. Lawrence, mounted an attack through the Lake Champlain waterway to the St. Lawrence Valley, and undertook a campaign against Quebec, which fell into English hands on 18 September. By the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which concluded the war, all of French Canada and the Spanish Floridas were ceded to Great Britain. France yielded to Spain all territory east of the Mississippi except the city of New Orleans. All North America to the Central Basin was now under the British flag. The end of the French and Indian War also concluded an era of ‘Salutary Neglect’ by the British government toward American affairs. Faced by a large post-war debt, heavy taxes at home, and the necessity of supporting an army in America, several steps were taken to strengthen imperial administration.32 The ministry of the Earl of Bute launched such new policies in search of revenue as the Sugar and Currency Act of 1764, and the Quartering and Stamp Acts of 1765, marking a new epoch in Anglo-American relations. Despite the riots that followed the imposition of the Stamp Act the English government proceeded to implement the Townshend duties. Such events as the Boston Massacre in 1770, that town’s Tea Party in 1773 and the passage of the Intolerable Acts by Parliament in 1774, created controversy among political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. Cascading political events during the 1760s and 1770s placed the church in a vulnerable and irreconcilable situation. As the English national church, it was linked by critics to objectionable policies of the English government. In tandem with the royal governors, customs officials, admiralty court judges, and other civil officials, the King’s church represented English authority

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from Maine to Florida. Among their neighbors many parsons were viewed suspiciously as deputies of the state rather than merely ministers of a minority religious group. During an era of rapidly shifting political opinions, the most radical in history, the church became identified with the ancien regime of government and represented a legacy of the corrupt ecclesiastical practices of western Christendom’s distant past, arguably more Catholic than Protestant in doctrine and polity. Coinciding with the military and territorial fortunes of the British in North America and the implementation of new imperial policies, the King’s church faced increased criticism from colonists. Possibly it was the easiest target to attack, without leadership or the civil and ecclesiastical hierarchical trappings of the church at home. Several Congregational ministers in New England pointedly questioned the purpose of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and openly expressed their dismay at the prospect of the appointment of a colonial bishop. At mid-eighteenth century the cast of Congregational critics included such influential ministers as Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy in Boston, Jonathan Dickinson in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and Noah Welles and Noah Hobart in Connecticut.33 As soon as Archbishop Secker read Mayhew’s Observations, he wrote to the Society’s missionaries in New England urging them to conciliate with the Boston minister. As a result, their bitterest remarks were not aimed at the Congregationalist but confined to their mutual correspondence, in which they came to the conclusion that the Doctor was ‘equally an enemy to the Trinity, to Loyalty and to Episcopacy’. They decided that he was frightened by the growth of the Anglican church in the colonies and was trying to whip up public prejudice against it. Mayhew had cleverly circumscribed the argument, lunging at the very being of the King’s church in the American colonies by attacking both the intentions of the London-based Society and the possible establishment of an American episcopate. As the leading prelate of the Church of England, Secker without hesitation joined the front-line of Anglican combatants, scripting articles that were planted in London newspapers in support of a colonial prelate.34 He also put his hand to publishing in London and Boston in 1764 An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society.35 The archbishop, himself a one-time dissenter, asserted that Mayhew’s tract was written ‘partly against the Church of England in general, partly against the conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in settling ministers of that Church in Massachusetts and Connecticut; partly against appointing bishops to reside in His Majesty’s American colonies’.36 He fervently refuted Mayhew’s charges: that the Constitution and worship of the Church of England were unscriptural; that many of its clergymen were corrupt; and the criticism of the placement of S.P.G. missionaries in Massachusetts and Connecticut towns.37 Writing also as president of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Secker unequivocally defended its

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purpose. Declaring that its missionaries had not been sent to New England or any of the provinces ‘with a formal design which they have long had, to root out Presbyterianism, &c., from the colonies’. He attempted to refute Mayhew’s claim, that contrary to the provisions delineated in the S.P.G.’s charter, the organization had done little to minister to and convert the Negroes and Indians.38 The archbishop gibed Mayhew, suggesting that the leaders of the S.P.G. would undoubtedly be very glad, ‘if all the inhabitants of the colonies were of the Communion of the Church of England, as undoubtedly the Doctor would, if they were all of his Communion, but they have sent no persons to effect this’.39 Archbishop Secker emphasized that the work of the Society was to ‘contribute towards supporting public worship and instruction amongst such members of the Church of England, as cannot in conscience comply with the worship and instruction of other congregations in their neighborhood, and yet cannot wholly maintain ministers for themselves. . . . Missionaries are not sent to New England for the purpose of making proselytes to episcopacy’.40 Pressing his argument further, Secker proclaimed that there are many Anglicans needing the church’s ministrations; and that, in a land where there is any pretence of toleration, the members of the church should enjoy that privilege in full and should have bishops and other necessary officers.41 He vehemently countered that all members of every church are, according to the ‘Principles of Liberty intitled to every Part of what they conceive to be the Benefits of it, entire and complete, so far as consists with the Welfare of Civil Government’. Secker observed that the members of the King’s church in America do not enjoy its ‘Benefits, having no Protestant Bishop within 3,000 miles of them; a Case, which never had its Parallel before in the Christian World’. He bluntly stated that two or more Bishops may be appointed for the colonial church, ‘to reside where His Majesty shall think most convenient; that they may have no concern in the least with any person who do not profess themselves to be of the Church of England, but may ordain Ministers for such as do; may confirm their Children, when brought to them at a fit age for that purpose, and take such oversight of the episcopal clergy, as the Bishop of London’s Commissaries in those parts have been empowered to take, and have taken, without offence’. Archbishop of Canterbury Secker further remarked that ‘it is not desired in the least that they should hold Courts to try Matrimonial or Testamentary Causes, or be vested with any Authority, now exercised by provincial Governors or subordinate Magistrates, infringe or diminish any Privileges and Liberties enjoyed by any of the Laity, even of our own Communion’.42 The archbishop’s plan was not new; in fact it reflected several years of distillation. His childhood friend, Bishop Joseph Butler of Durham, had advanced the basic features of the proposal in 1750 when Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock sought unsuccessfully for American prelates. As late as 1767 Secker and the Archbishop of York Robert Hay Drummond waited on

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Lord Shelburne, Secretary of State, to recommend ‘the appointment of Bishops in America’, but ‘could make no impression at all upon him.43 Charitably and in hindsight, we conclude that the archbishop’s proposal was too little and too late. While today Secker’s statement may seem to be conciliatory and moderate, clearly it was Mayhew who had eloquently shaped the debate. He had single-handedly placed the King’s church and the Society on the defensive and neither organization would recover before the American Revolution. Rebutting his critics Mayhew replied to the charges of the minister of King’s Chapel in Boston, Henry Caner, and to Archbishop Secker.44 Mayhew recognized Secker’s position for the need of a colonial episcopate to superintend the church, clergy, and laity. He also found ‘more plausible’ that the prelates were not to meddle with non-Anglicans; nor were they to have any power in matrimonial or testamentary cases. Furthermore, the bishops were not to infringe on the functions of the governors and magistrates, or in any way diminish the powers of the laity, and would be settled only in colonies in which the church was established by law.45 With good cause Mayhew held notions that if episcopacy came to the provinces it would be a conspiratorial threat to the civil and religious liberties of the colonists. Despite the overture that such bishops would serve without the civil and political duties of their English colleagues, he believed it was unlikely that they would long be contented without the temporal power and grandeur of prelates in England. He also feared that with the establishment of prelates the number of Anglicans might increase to such an extent as to attain a majority in the legislatures. Such a situation could possibly lead to an establishment of the Church of England and taxes levied for the support of bishops, establishment of test acts and ecclesiastical courts, and what not. Unsurprisingly, after several rounds of publications and unceasingly debating the issue the Boston minister concluded that the colonists were much safer without bishops. In 1765 Apthorp left Massachusetts and returned to England, where he spent the remainder of his life rising in prominence in the church. As an S.P.G. appointee he reported to the Society’s officers, including the archbishop of Canterbury, regarding the state of the Massachusetts church and of Mayhew’s strongly worded charges. In any event two striking accomplishments quickly followed. Secker appointed Apthorp to a living within his gift as vicar of Croydon and he, in turn, took an immediate and vigorous interest in Mayhew’s attack on the church in Massachusetts.46 Despite the distance Apthorp did not drop his interest in colonial church affairs or stop advising Secker on provincial matters. Apthorp provided London officials with guidance on the situation and soon published a Review of Mr. Mayhew’s Remarks (London, 1765). He argued that the S.P.G.’s Charter did not exclude the organization from undertaking missionary work in those colonies.47 Apthorp proclaimed that the

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Church of England was allowed to serve its members everywhere without restrictions.48 Challenging Mayhew’s critical characterization of the Anglican parsons, Apthorp caustically but accurately noted that ‘Many of our Missionaries are proselytes from nonconformity; many of them the sons of congregational Ministers; several of them have even received presbyterian ordination. These on all accounts may be supposed to have weighed the Controversy well. And their characters both for probity and knowledge are superior to the Doctor’s censure, and have even extorted his commendation’.49 He defended the presence of an S.P.G.-sponsored congregation in Cambridge, near the Harvard College Yard, concluding that it was ‘The Animosities and divisions of the Dissenters among themselves, I believe is often a real reason for their joining us; but I never heard of any accessions to their communion, from divisions in ours. Yet we take no more pains to divide them, than they do to divide us. And there fore this cause of our increase is so little to their credit, that they had better, if they could, conceal it’.50 The clergy of the King’s church were slow to organize a more or less united response to the sharp criticisms of Jonathan Mayhew and his Congregational colleagues. There was no minister of the King’s church in Boston or nearby with the temperament, skill, or propensity to do battle with the West church’s minister’s contentious pen. Nor was there an intercolonial agency that could muster and serve as a rallying platform for an official rebuttal by the leaders of the King’s church to the charges of Congregational ministers regarding the activity of the S.P.G. and the rumours of a colonial prelate. It was merely the King’s church at worship in Boston, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Charles Town, and elsewhere in the colonies. A band of clergymen within easy distance of one another in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey were capable of defending the church’s position. Included in this coterie were the talented protégés of Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut and the first president of King’s College in New York City. He was one of the six ‘Yale Apostates’ of 1722 who converted from Congregationalism to the Church of England. Johnson included among his entourage several fellow Yale College graduates: Thomas Bradbury Chandler of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, a convert to the King’s church too, and Samuel Seabury, Jr., of Burlington, New Jersey and later of parishes in Westchester County, New York. An Englishman and Oxford University graduate Myles Cooper, Johnson’s successor as President of King’s College in New York City, joined the company. These four men during the 1750s, 1760s, and 1770s were the primary leaders of the church in the middle colonies. Strong-willed and intellectually competent, they were unmatched upholders of the church not only in their region but also throughout colonial America. However, it remains unclear if this coterie of leaders of the church decided among themselves to summon a convention of their colleagues in the middle colonies in 1765 or if the task

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fell on the shoulders of the shrewdly confrontational Chandler to initiate the call. He may have harbored an interest in summoning the meeting to subtly promote himself with the archbishop for a colonial mitre. Perhaps the publication of Archbishop Secker’s tract in reply to Mayhew’s attack on the activity of the S.P.G. and the possible appointment of an American bishop shaped the session. In any event numerous conventions were held in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey during the two decades before the American Revolution. In New Jersey fifteen gatherings took place between 1758 and 1765. The meeting held at Perth Amboy in October 1765 focused on one issue – the urgent need for an American bishop. Seeking to set the historical record straight the convention drafted and forwarded to the Londonbased Society a summary of sixty-five years of repeated requests by provincial clergy meetings for an American prelate. Gathered in an atmosphere of the escalating political turmoil surrounding the implementation of the Stamp Act, the participants bluntly criticized the short-sightedness of the various administrations of the English government in fulfilling the needs of the overseas national church. Since the early years of the eighteenth century little if any progress had been made to strengthen the overseas church. This lamentable situation, they argued, was all the more despicable as the King’s church had been a vital national instrument for teaching loyalty to the crown and government to their congregations. They reminded London officials that their efforts were in contrast to the Congregational ministers who urged a separation both of church and state from England. The discussion of the New Jersey convention, like the clergy meetings that occurred in the other Middle and New England colonies during the 1760s, focused on the question of an American bishop. A plan was presented to the bishop of London for a colonial episcopate with limited ecclesiastical duties and with no civil responsibilities. A departure from episcopal practices in England, the responsibilities of the proposed official followed to a letter the 1764 suggestions of Archbishop Secker. In his subsequent tracts in response to Congregational critics Chandler revisited this refrain during the decade prior to the Revolutionary War. Conventions of the parsons in other colonies embraced Chandler’s position on an American episcopate. In Connecticut the men pleaded for a prelate at their meetings in 1764, 1765, 1766, and 1771 but took the matter one important step further. Recognizing that a bishop would not be acceptable in certain provinces and doubtless with an eye to defusing, at least partially, the criticism of Congregational clergymen, the Connecticut clergymen judiciously urged that a prelate be sent to a colony outside New England. The gesture may have been a subtle tactic to urge and support the appointment of Chandler, of Elizabeth Town in New Jersey, as an American bishop. The Massachusetts ministers, a tiny minority in an overwhelmingly Congregational colony, reported to the bishop of London in 1768 that the state of the church in New England was as good as could be expected under

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the conditions. They declared that ‘all that we are able to do in these times is only to cultivate among the people committed to our care a spirit of peace and patience under the various insults to which they are exposed for refusing to join in the popular clamours that now prevail’. The delegates did not mask the King’s church’s need for a prelate in the region. They reported to the bishop of London that ‘we are neither allowed to speak nor scarcely to be silent unless we join with those who we believe to be labouring in the destruction of our constitution, civil and religious. The civil Government is too weak to afford us protection; and ecclesiastical superior we have none on this side of the Atlantic, from whom we may receive timely advice or direction under our present trials’.51 The dilemma for the parsons in the New England and Middle Colonies was not new in the 1760s. It was reminiscent of Bishop of London Henry Compton’s and New York and New Jersey Governor Robert Hunter’s efforts during the first decade of the eighteenth century to establish an episcopate at Burlington, New Jersey. However, now there seemed to be a significant difference: imperial political circumstances seemed more congenial for such an appointment. The clergymen in conventions were allying their initiatives with the escalating implementation from London of stronger and more active imperial economic, political, and military policies. At every turn in its colonial experience the King’s church was the beneficiary, however modest, of imperial policy. Differing from earlier pleas for a bishop the ministers in the 1760s and 1770s pursued a more comprehensive path. They were ambitiously seeking an ecclesiastical official to conveniently ordain native-colonists, consecrate local churches and cemeteries, and an officer whose presence and responsibilities would complete the replication of the transplanted English church in colonial America. Thomas Bradbury Chandler proved to be the Anglican parson with the temperament and persistence to effectively communicate the Anglican position for the episcopate. He was a good match for Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy. A native of what is today Thompson, Connecticut, and a 1745 alumnus of Yale, he was raised as a Congregationalist. According to Ezra Stiles, he came under the influence of Samuel Johnson during his undergraduate years and after his graduation, and took his theological training under Johnson’s tutelage at Stratford, Connecticut. They became and remained strong friends and professional confidants until Johnson’s death in 1770. Ordained in 1751, Chandler was immediately appointed the Society’s missionary to the congregation at Elizabeth Town, a community that was largely Presbyterian. In time his congregation became one of the largest of the King’s church in New Jersey. Seeking to broaden the audience for the debate with Congregationalists over a proposed American bishop, Chandler cleverly addressed his remarks to the general public and published in 1767 an Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Church of England in America (New York, 1767).52 He informed his

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mentor Samuel Johnson that he had drafted the essay at the urging of the clergy of the middle colonies at the convention in 1763 and sent a copy to Johnson to read, mark and offer his comments.53 The pamphlet was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker, perhaps as an attempt by Chandler to acknowledge Secker’s welcomed contribution to the controversy, or possibly to advance his own career in the eyes of the prelate, or as a pointed means of stirring and angering his opposition. After a discussion of the historical validity of the office of bishop and an enumeration of the powers peculiar to the position in the church, Chandler declaimed that ‘the Church in America, without an Episcopate, is necessarily destitute of a regular Government, and cannot enjoy the Benefits of Ordination and Confirmation’.54 His purpose was to present to the ‘Public, the Necessity and Importance of Episcopacy, in the Opinion of Episcopalians, and to shew the wretched Condition of the Church of England for Want of Bishops’.55 Chandler strenuously argued that such prelates would be merely addressing such tasks as governing, confirming, and ordaining ministers.56 He further pleaded that the office of bishop is needed for two sorts of clergy: the good, who need his advice and encouragement, and the bad, who need his coercive hand. Moreover, the laws and canons of the Church of England enjoin a strict episcopal discipline and oversight of the clergy, which in colonial America was impossible without a prelate. He recited the data that Johnson had included and revised from time to time in his many letters to London church officials: with regard to ordination, under the existing conditions the difficulties were almost insurmountable, owing to the expense and hardship involved in crossing the Atlantic. The trip cost no less than £100; and out of the fiftytwo candidates who had gone to England from Connecticut for orders only forty-two had returned in safety. This situation, according to Chandler, was the primary cause for the lack of clergy in the colonies.57 The Elizabeth Town parson cited three historic reasons why bishops had not been established heretofore in the colonies. First, as private adventurers chiefly of a dissenting faith originally settled the country, Anglican bishops had not been needed. Secondly, the troubles overseas had kept the home government too occupied to attend to the spiritual wants of the clergy. Finally, because the officers of state had time to consider the question, they would of their own accord take no steps for fear of infringing on the religious liberties of the dissenters.58 Chandler had in mind that he was publishing his tract for those persons who, while friendly to religion in general, feared that the extension of bishops would be prejudicial to the integrity of their property or religious liberty. Addressing this concern he noted ‘That the Bishops to be sent to America, shall have no Authority, but purely of a Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Nature, such as is derived altogether from the Church and not from the State. That this Authority shall operate only upon the Clergy of the Church, and neither upon the Laity nor dissenters of any Denomination. That the Bishops shall

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not interfere with the Property or Privileges, whether civil or religious, of Churchmen or Dissenters. That in particular, they shall have no Concern with the Probate of Wills, Letters of Guardianship and Administration, or Marriage-Licenses, nor be Judges of any Cases relating thereto. But, that they shall only exercise the original Powers of their Office as before stated, i.e., ordain and govern the Clergy, and administer Confirmation to those who shall desire it’.59 Following the design of Archbishop Secker for the American officer, Chandler noted that the prelate would not enjoy any political duties. No bishop would sit in the upper house of the provincial legislature, or be funded by a tax on all colonists, or have any jurisdiction on any matters over nonAnglicans. The plan proposed for America for a bishop, Chandler pleaded, was advanced without a ‘Desire to molest the Dissenters, or any Denominations of Christians, in the Enjoyment of their present religious Privileges’, and to assure its readers ‘that we have carefully consulted their Safety and Security, and studied not to injure, but oblige them’.60 He acknowledged the intense opposition to the prospects of an Anglican bishop in the colonies and observed that it ‘has the Nature of Persecution, and deserves the Name’.61 He proclaimed that the Church of England was being unfairly punished for its adherence to traditional historical religious principles. London newspapers reported at the time of the Stamp Act crisis that the discontent and uneasiness manifested by the colonists was due in a great measure to the fear that bishops would be settled in America. Chandler, rejecting the idea, asked for proof, declaring that the public response to the Stamp Act was generated by an ‘unconstitutional oppressive Act’, a point of view expressed by many Anglican and Dissenting clergy alike.62 Attempting to put critics of an American episcopate at ease right away Chandler noted that there would be no ecclesiastical courts set up in America; that any fears about tithes to be levied was ungrounded; that the colonists would not be taxed to support the bishops; and if they were, the amount would be very small, the latter point a qualification that did not sit well with critics of the plan.63 He claimed that the ‘sensible Dissenters’ who had considered the plan are not opposed to it. In England, Chandler noted, the dissenters find that they can live with Bishops, ‘the English Bishops have, for a long course of years, exercised their authority with so much mildness, tenderness and moderation, as scarcely to have afforded an instance of reasonable complaint, especially to Dissenters; and many of the latter have been so generous as to confess it’.64 Yet he acknowledged that in earlier times bishops misused their power but that fact must be understood in the context of the times. If bishops were not established in the colonies Chandler offered a dire prediction: he could ‘forsee nothing but the ruin of the Church in this Country . . . the Causes indeed, which destroy it here may be local, and not immediately operate in England; but then, that Inattention and negligence in our national Superiors, which would suffer it to be destroyed in the Colonies,

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must have a general effect, and can produce no Good to the same Church in the Mother Country’.65 Chandler mirrored on the pages of his pamphlet the writing of William Warburton’s Alliance of Church and State when he declared that ‘the Church of England, in its external Polity, is so happily connected and interwoven with the Civil Constitution, that each mutually supports and is supported by the other’.66 He asserted that the present times, following the Stamp Act crisis, were not the former times of Laud and Charles I. Opponents of episcopacy could be champions of the civil constitution yet dissent from the national religion.67 Chandler persuasively argued that ‘Episcopacy and monarch are, in their Frame and Constitution, best suited to each other. Episcopacy can never thrive in a Republican Government, nor Republican Principles in an Episcopal Church. For the same Reasons, in a mixed Monarchy, no Form of Ecclesiastical Government can so exactly harmonize with the State, as that of a qualified Episcopacy’.68 Urging that bishops be speedily appointed in the colonies, Chandler was persuaded that ‘the ill effects of delaying it, may be irretrievable. The present favourable opportunity may be soon lost, and then despair will succeed our disappointed expectation. If all the religious Denominations in America, by the general Constitution of the British Colonies, are to be treated on the footing of a perfect Equality, for which some have contended; then the Church of England is as fully intitled to the compleat enjoyment of its own Discipline and Institutions, as any other Christians. If any one Denomination is intitled to a Superiority above others, as is believed by many, then, the claim of the Church of England to this Preference, is not to be disputed. One of these must be undoubtedly the Case; and on either Supposition, to endeavour to prevent the Episcopate we have asked for, is Injustice and Cruelty’.69 As the controversy wound down Chandler took aim on Charles Chauncy’s recent tract, Appeal Farther Defended (New York, 1771), which appeared in answer to A Reply to Dr. Chandler’s ‘Appeal Defended’.70 Chauncy conceded that those of his party do not wish to oppose the Anglicans in the exercise of their religion, even under bishops, provided the latter be purely spiritual shepherds. Chandler maintained that his opponents have given up the point in dispute but that is not so. As in his first and second pamphlets, he is full of assurances: the proposed bishops are to have ‘no Authority, but such is derived altogether from the Church. The Government is not expected or desired to give them any Support or peculiar Protection; and consequently they are not to be on the Footing of a State Establishment’.71 On one point in this connection, however, Chandler succeeded in confuting Chauncy, and in a negative way, at least, added strength to his own assurances; he printed in his book the petitions for American bishops sent, on 2 October 1765, by the convention held at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to the king and the archbishop of Canterbury.72

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In the face of contrary evidence Chandler sought to show that the tendency toward a favorable consideration of the plan is much more marked than formerly. ‘There were many Members of the Church’, he said, ‘that were, upon the whole, averse to an Episcopalian in this country, imagining it would either expose them to considerable Expence for its Support, or put them to some other inconvenience. But when they came to see that every Thing of this kind had been carefully guarded against, and that from its Design and Tendency it would be mild and beneficial in its Operation, which appeared as soon as it was explained to them, their Aversion immediately ceased, and from that Time they have generally viewed it in the same Light with that wherein it is seen by the Clergy’.73 This statement was not in accordance with the facts; for, as later events showed, a considerable body of Anglicans in Virginia came out against the plan. The Virginians were not inclined to supplant the authority of the Bishop of London with that of a provincial bishop, and in some of the other colonies they showed hardly any support. The final publication in the long-standing episcopal debate came from Thomas Bradbury Chandler’s pen. A Free Examination of the Critical Commentary (New York, 1774), was an historical survey of the attempt to appoint a colonial bishop throughout the eighteenth century that added no new details.74 He recited extracts of sermons by English bishops before the London-based Society calling for the need of an American bishop. He attempted to demonstrate, from the professions of the leaders of the church, that political interests played no part in their efforts to secure bishops for America. It was not a strong argument. After the untimely death of Jonathan Mayhew in 1766, the influential voice of Congregational criticism of a bishop in the colonies and the agenda of the S.P.G. had been stilled. Pamphleteering in support of an American episcopate continued from London under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Between 1767 and the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, spokesmen for the S.P.G. championed the cause. This outpouring of interest was not coincidental, as the president of the organization was Archbishop of Canterbury Secker. He played an active role in the day-to-day governance of the Society and most likely gave final approval for the preachers who delivered the annual anniversary sermon before the membership. These occasions kept the issue of an American bishop in the public eye in London and the colonies. Bishop of Llandaff John Ewer led the cavalcade of spokesmen on the need for an American prelate. Delivering the February 1767 anniversary sermon on the text of Romans 10:14, ‘How shall they believe in him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a Preacher?’75 Ewer offered his observations on the state of religion in the colonies, particularly in New England. His remarks were not calculated to extend an olive branch of peace to Dissenters but rather designed to elicit a vigorous and critical response.76 He asserted that irreligion has grown in the colonies, branding them as ‘infidels and barbarians . . . living without

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remembrance or knowledge of God, without any divine worship in dissolute wickedness, and the most brutal profligacy of manners’, adding the extraordinary statement, ‘That their neglect of religion was contrary to the pretences and conditions under which they obtained royal grants and public authority to their adventures, such pretences and conditions being the enlargement of commerce and the propagation of the faith. The former they executed with sincerity and zeal, and in the latter most notoriously failed’.77 He declaimed that there was a need for seminaries to be established in the colonies to educate prospective candidates for the Anglican ministry, and a bishop should be established to avoid the hazard and expense of a transatlantic voyage for ordination.78 Despite his inflammatory rhetoric Ewer attempted to defuse potential critics of an American bishop, among Dissenters in London, Boston, and New York, by asking why there was such fear and distrust of a colonial prelate. He recited the now familiar litany that the bishop would only have the ‘authority to ordain ministers, to confirm youth, and to visit their own clergy’. The bishop of Llandaff doubted that ‘two or three persons, restrained to these spiritual functions’, could be dangerous to any in any matter.79 The proposed bishops could not invade the rights and jurisdictions of magistrates nor could they infringe the liberties of the people. Ewer proclaimed that colonial prelates could not ‘weaken, or be thought disposed to weaken, the fidelity of the colonies to His Majesty, or their dependence’ on England.80 He declared that to ‘these duties, if there be any difference, the members of this church, as such, are bound by one special motive, besides the many motives common to them with other subjects. But if old grudges and jealousies be the obstacles, can it be imagined, that obsolete piques, and groundless fears, long since extinct here, and which ought there also to be extinguished, will be suffered for ever to prevail against reason, equity and piety?’81 Bishop Ewer’s observations were easily and quickly disposed of by Charles Chauncy, a leading Congregational minister of Boston, in A Letter to a Friend (Boston, 1767), and in a spirited Letter . . . to the Bishop of Llandaff (Boston, 1768), by William Livingston, governor of New Jersey.82 Chauncy was the successor to Mayhew’s mantle in the episcopacy controversy and he challenged Ewer’s position at every point. He declared that candidates for orders do not go to England at their own expense and unknown, they receive financial assistance from sponsoring parishes and the Society and can easily establish acquaintances among the clergy, all of which was true. Picking up Mayhew’s thread of criticism Chauncy felt that the real purpose for the introduction of prelates was to prompt the colonists to convert to the Anglican creed, in order that the Church of England may obtain an upper hand over the other denominations and thus ‘make use of their superiority’ to force the establishment on the inhabitants.83 Ewer proclaimed in his S.P.G. anniversary sermon that if bishops were settled in America, ‘the American Church will soon go out of its infant

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state; be able to stand upon its own legs; and without foreign help support and spread itself. Then the business of this Society will have been brought to the happy issue intended’.84 Chauncy held a quite different interpretation of circumstances and concluded, in the tradition of Noah Hobart and Jonathan Mayhew, that ‘The conduct of the Society has, for many years, given us reason to suspect their Main View Was to Episcopize the colonies; but we were never before, that I know of, told so in direct terms’.85 This conclusion was hardly the one to be drawn from Ewer’s statement, for it might very well have been the purpose of the Society to build up its church and make it self-supporting in order that its sphere of usefulness might be as broad as possible. After the death of Archbishop Secker the fuel fanning the Anglican position seemed to diminish a notch or two. Ewer’s successors as preacher of the Society’s annual anniversary sermon echoed his remarks although in less strident words: John Green, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1768; the Bishop of Bristol Thomas Newton in 1769, a strong opponent of the repeal of the Stamp Act; Frederick Keppel, bishop of Exeter in 1770, the lone prelate who recommended peace with the American colonies in 1776; and Bishop of Oxford Robert Lowth in 1771. They all decried, as did Secker thirty years earlier, that ‘The proper and only remedy hath long since been pointed out; the Appointment of one or more resident Bishops, for the Exercise of Offices purely Episcopal in the American Church of England, for administering the solemn and edifying Rites of Confirmation; for ordaining Ministers, and superintending their Conduct; Offices, to which the Members of the Church of England have an undeniable Claim, and from which they cannot be precluded without manifest Injustice and Oppression’.86

Summary The sustained controversy for nearly twenty years between leading Congregational and Anglican ministers regarding the purpose of the S.P.G. and the possible appointment of an American bishop irreparably restrained the development of the colonial church. As a national institution, the church was a visible target for attack by Boston’s Congregational leaders. Along with the royal governor of a colony, customs officials, admiralty court judges, and other civil officials, the church was an English presence in many communities from Maine to Florida. Inviting and accentuating criticism was the clergymen’s association with the state, based on the fact that they were required at their ordinations to take an oath of loyalty and allegiance to the Crown and Parliament. All worship services underscored the link between the church and state, for the parsons and their congregations were required to offer prayers on behalf of the King and members of the royal family. In an era of rapidly shifting political opinions, the most radical in history, the church became identified politically with the ancien regime. It was further

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burdened with its inherited legacy of the corrupt ecclesiastical practices of western Christendom’s distant past, arguably more Catholic than Protestant in doctrine and a polity that was associated in the present with the imperial policies of the English government. The dispute was not merely a debate between strong-minded men of differing faiths who maintained contrary opinions regarding substantive issues relating to links between the church and state and concerned with varying historical interpretations regarding the nature of the ministry. It was the climax to a long-festering conflict, a complex movement intertwined in the web of English seventeenth- and eighteenth-century church and state politics, ideas, personalities, and power. Extraordinary efforts by Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker in the 1750s and 1760s to introduce the episcopal office in the colonies failed to generate essential support from civil officials and misjudged the intensity and politicization of colonial opposition to the office.

Part IV Consequences of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War

12 The King’s Church: a Casualty of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War

The Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the outbreak of the Revolutionary War marked a dramatic reversal in the fortunes of the King’s church. No other colonial religious group encountered such a drastic change in its situation. With the collapse of imperial organization, the withdrawal of royal officials from colonial posts, and the outbreak of military campaigns the institution quickly became a casualty of fast-changing political events and its fate was in the hands of uncontrollable circumstances and persons. The fragility of the colonial experience for the King’s church was demonstrated in every colony – churches were closed, occasionally for brief periods, at other times for extended intervals. Worship services ceased for several reasons. Sometimes because the minister and congregation were unwilling to revise the liturgy and drop all references to the English royal family and government; or because the minister had retired or gone into exile. Occasionally churches were closed in a desperate but resigned response to the vigorous expressions of anti-English opinions in the local community. Infrequent reports to London officials from men serving congregations in the rebelling colonies confirmed the unsettling status of their lives and congregations during the Revolutionary War years. In Perth Amboy, New Jersey, John Preston, who had arrived in American in 1768 as a chaplain to the 26th Regiment of the British army, also served as minister of the nearby congregation. Scottish-born and Oxford-educated, he reported that rebel forces had on occasion intercepted his mail and carried off some of his household furniture, books, and the parish register.1 Preston’s near neighbor, Abraham Beach at Elizabeth Town, noted in February 1777 that his church was closed and that it was deemed by civil officials high treason to offer prayers for the king. The Yale College graduate and Connecticut native declared that his house was surrounded by American troops but that he ‘could not violate his ordination oath and succumb to the current political situation’ and delete the prayers for the royal family at 189

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services of worship. Nevertheless Beach continued to perform pastoral duties privately for members of his own and nearby Anglican congregations.2 At Savannah, Georgia, James Seymour, a graduate of King’s College in Aberdeen, Scotland, commented in 1781 that ‘since the year 1775 the confused situation of affairs has prevented the Church of England from raising its head’. He trenchantly stated that ‘the liturgy of the church became at last so offensive to the generality of the people they deserted from attending publick service and many were afraid of going to church for fear of being damned to what was generally called Tories and treated accordingly’.3 This was an assessment of the church’s experience shared in 1784 by Ebenezer Dibblee at Norwalk, Connecticut, who remarked that ‘in the time of our late troubles an Episcopalian and a Tory were looked upon as synonymous terms’.4 For nearly two centuries the church’s extension and survival in the American colonies was dependent on the favorable and protective policies of the Board of Trade; the influence of provincial royal governors; the supervision of the bishop of London; the financial support of the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; and the legal establishment of the church in certain colonies. All of these factors were either abruptly or steadily diminished or finally dismantled after 1776.5 Immediately, the institution that had been sustained by the financial support of the provincial assemblies in the colonies in which it was established was required to depend on the uncertainty of voluntary contributions for maintenance. After three-quarters of a century of service the London-based Society no longer recruited and appointed men to serve as either new or replacement ministers in congregations in the colonies north of Maryland and south of Virginia. For the men who had served for many years as the Society’s missionaries to American congregations from Maine to Georgia, the new situation was dire. In every instance their livelihood was dependent on their annual stipend from the Society. They now faced immediate financial hardship and uncertainty, as their congregations were unable to gather the funds to replace the S.P.G.’s support. Officials of the Society in London, recognizing the distressed circumstance of the men, continued to provide assistance until September 1785.6 Yet after nearly two centuries in America the church remained an incomplete institution. Unlike its progenitor, the Church of England, the institution was without a resident bishop and the traditional episcopal apparatus of organization and supervision. Absent were the familiar matrix of rural deaneries, archdeaconries, dioceses, archdioceses, and cathedrals. There were no ‘patrons of livings’, such as bishops, colleges, or landed gentry, overseeing local parish affairs. Instead there was an elected vestry of prominent community members providing oversight of congregational matters. Despite the experience of seventeen decades and the implementation of adaptive supervisory and practical procedures, the harsh fact remained that the King’s church was the English church in the colonies, not the English-American, or the American-English church.

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191

For many ministers the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 was the watershed political event that determined their opinions as either patriots or Loyalists. As a group the ministers’ political opinions were as divided as those of their countrymen by the course of the independence movement and the Revolutionary War. Some men who were Patriots before July 1776 became Loyalists after that date. Their position is understandable as their livelihood was at stake, whether their salaries were met by the statutes and appropriations of provincial legislatures or out of the purse of the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Perhaps out of a sense of cautious and prudent thinking, some of the men were sincerely committed to the status quo, to the idea of the British empire, and the government established in America, to political and social matters as they knew them. Change for this group of ministers was neither easily entertained nor welcome. The alternative was unknown and uncertain at the time; civil anarchy, political instability, and public chaos realistically seemed to be the substitute for British rule. In the wake of the Declaration of Independence and the outbreak of the War an exodus of capable Anglican church leaders occurred, particularly in New England and the Middle Colonies. Locally acclaimed ministers and preachers, accompanied by lesser-known colleagues, reluctantly sought political refuge in exile either in England or the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Among the band of fleeing parsons were the redoubtable, seventyfive-year-old Henry Caner, minister of the King’s Chapel in Boston; the young graduate and faculty member of King’s College in New York City, John Vardill, who in London provided espionage information to the British government; the Connecticut-born and Yale-educated Thomas Bradbury Chandler, of Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, who during the previous decade had been an energetic proponent of an American episcopate; the distinguished Philadelphia preachers Jacob Duché and Thomas Coombe; and in Maryland, the eloquent spokesman for the Tory cause, Jonathan Boucher.7 Few of the 296 active ministers of the King’s church in 1775 became vigorous spokesmen for the Patriot cause and republican ideology. Many men quietly continued to serve their congregations whether or not state or local officials closed their churches. In retrospect the leading ideologue of the group was an obscure clergyman from Maryland, Isaac Campbell, who at the time enjoyed neither a following within or without the colony. Our knowledge of him is thin and based on his only surviving publication, A Rational Enquiry into the Origin, Foundation, Nature, and End of Civil Government, showing it to be a Divine Institution (Annapolis, date unknown). Nonetheless Campbell justified the American Revolution by claiming that monarchy was destructive of God-given human liberty and a usurpation of the authority of legitimate government vested in all. When a copy of his book arrived in England, it was publicly burned because of its rampant republicanism.8 The range of sentiments by parsons varied significantly on behalf of the American cause from fervid Loyalists to strong-willed Patriots. Undoubtedly

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the most colorful of the Patriot clergy was the Virginia parson John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, a son of the distinguished Pennsylvania Lutheran minister Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. The younger Muhlenberg, abandoning the ministry and patriotically responding to the call to arms, raised a German Regiment and rose in the ranks from Colonel to Brigadier-General in the Continental Army. His military career was quickly seasoned by battles at Brandywine and Germantown in Pennsylvania, at Monmouth Court House in New Jersey, and at Yorktown in Virginia. Pursuing a less dramatic course a young contemporary of Muhlenberg’s, William White, a twentyseven-year-old Philadelphian and assistant minister at Christ Church, astutely seemed publicly to take little interest in politics. But it seems unlikely that he could avoid discussion of political matters at home because a brother-in-law, Robert Morris, was the financier of the Revolution. White in 1776 immediately recognized the independence of the United States, took the oath of loyalty, and omitted from the worship services the prayers for the King. He served as a chaplain of Congress (1776–86, 1789–1801) and became an intimate with the early leaders of the new nation. A colleague in New York, the native colonist and graduate of King’s College, Samuel Provoost, took another path as political issues became more divisive and controversial. After his ordination to the ministry in England in 1766 Provoost returned to New York and became an assistant minister of Trinity Church. He was an ardent Whig, and his political sentiments came under the scrutiny of the Loyalist members of the congregation; as a result Provoost was forced to resign his position in 1771. He retreated to East Camp in Dutchess County where he quietly remained until 1784 when he returned to Trinity Church as its duly elected rector.9 It must be noted that the political sentiments of these men were exceptional and that most of their colleagues, particularly in the two colonies where the church was strongest, Virginia and Maryland, attempted to carry out their regular round of ministerial duties.

Taking measure of the church in 1775: the national origins of the ministers Taking measure of the state of the King’s church at the outbreak of the American Revolution is at once a partly precise and partly incomplete task. On the one hand we are able to identify the men who had been licensed by the bishop of London and were serving as ministers in each colony. We also have a fairly accurate idea of the number of churches that provided regular or irregular services. On the other hand, we have little explicit information about the number of active or inactive members of congregations, or their gender, in towns or rural communities. Based on the semi-annual reports that the missionaries of the Society sent to London officials we have details regarding the number of baptisms, marriages, and burials that had occurred at their churches. However, for the ministers who were not under the supervision

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of the S.P.G., the men who held posts in the colonies where the church was legally established, the information is less abundant, for they were not required to file a report every six months with the London prelate. In 1775 there were 296 ministers in the thirteen provinces while eight years later the figure stood at 130, a decline of 56 per cent. Their ranks were reduced by men fleeing into exile, by retirements, and by death. These men represented a variety of national origins and educational backgrounds. Nearly one-half of the men were native colonists, with the balance comprised of men from England, Scotland, and Ireland. In every community where the church flourished from Maine to Georgia the ministers were recognized as the leaders of the English church, not of the English-American church, or the Church of England in this or that colony. Regardless of their national origins the men were acknowledged to be stewards of the King’s church, England’s state church, and neighbors suspiciously questioned their political sympathies. These popular suspicions were raised partly because at the time of their ordination as ministers the men had been required to take an oath of allegiance to the crown and parliament. For many of the men the taking of the oath was a moral commitment that they could not easily compromise or forfeit. Some men retired from duty without expressing their political opinions regarding public affairs. I turn now to an examination of the state of the church at the beginning and during the Revolutionary War. In particular I will consider the national origins and educational backgrounds of the nearly 300 active ministers, the number and activity of the congregations, and an analysis of the impact of the War on the clergymen in each colony/state. As Table 12.1 indicates, the 296 ministers active in the American colonies in 1775 represented a diverse background of nationalities. During the decades since Richard Hakluyt’s call to send English ministers overseas to serve the settlers in the plantations the ranks had become less homogeneous; England was no longer the sole source of men. Throughout the colonies nearly onehalf (145) of the men were native-colonists, followed by 58 Englishmen, 44 Scotsmen, 9 of Irish birth, 3 of other nationalities, and 37 for whom their origins are not known at this time. Throughout the eighteenth century there was a gradual increase in the number of native-colonists entering the ministry, reaching its peak during the decade before the outbreak of the War, a measure of the slow process of the Americanization of the King’s church. Examined regionally Table 12.1 yields contrasting details regarding the national origins of the men. English natives represented about 14 per cent of the corps in New England, 11 per cent in the Middle Colonies, 28 per cent in the Chesapeake provinces, and 47 per cent in the Southern Colonies, while the ministers of Scottish origins were most prevalent in the Middle and Chesapeake colonies at 13 and 19 per cent of the ranks respectively. In the New England and Southern colonies Scotsmen numbered less than one per cent of the ministers. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War 83 per cent of the New England clergymen were native colonists, while in

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Table 12.1

The national origins of the clergymen active in 1775 NativeEngland Scotland Ireland Other Unknown Total Colonists

New England Colonies Massachusetts District of Maine New Hampshire Rhode Island Connecticut Total

9 2 2 2 19 34

3 – – 2 1 6

1 – – – – 1

– – – – – –

– – – – – –

– – – – – –

15 2 2 4 20 41

Middle Colonies New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Total

14 7 4 5 30

2 1 2 1 6

1 2 4 – 7

3 – 1 – 4

1 – – – 1

1 1 2 – 4

22 11 13 6 52

Chesapeake Colonies Maryland Virginia Total

22 52 74

11 19 30

11 22 33

1 4 5

– – –

6 20 26

51 117 168

4 2 1 7

1 13 2 16

1 1 1 3

– – – –

– 1 1 2

4 3 – 7

10 20 5 35

145

58

44

9

3

37

Southern Colonies North Carolina South Carolina Georgia Total Grand Total

29610

the Middle, Chesapeake, and Southern provinces the figures were 60, 40, and 12 per cent respectively. Several factors contributed to this situation, including the gradual anglicization in the eighteenth century of the key communities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia; and the strength and influence of provincial collegiate institutions educating candidates for the ministry. In the Southern colonies there remained throughout the colonial era a dependence on London officials to supply ministers.

The collegiate affiliations of the ministers The collegiate affiliations of the ministers were as diverse as their national backgrounds. Table 12.2 records the colleges and universities attended by the ministers active in 1775, in the colonies, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Unlike their New England Congregational counterparts who had nearly all attended either Harvard or Yale College there were regional variations in the Anglican representation of colleges. It should be emphasized that the Anglican ministers did not share a common academic experience or preparation for

The King’s Church: a Casualty Table 12.2 (a)

195

Colleges and universities attended by clergymen active in 1775

New England Colonies

New Hampshire

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Connecticut

Total

Colonial Colleges Harvard (1636) Yale (1701) King’s (1754) College of Rhode Island (1764)

1 – –

10 2 –

2 – –

2 15 2

15 17 2

1

–

–

–

1

English Universities Oxford Unknown

– –

2 1

– 2

– 1

2 4

Total

2

15

4

20

41

Middle Colonies

New York

New Jersey

Pennsylvania

Delaware

Total

Colonial Colleges Harvard Yale King’s College of New Jersey (1746) Philadelphia (1753)

1 5 9

– 3 –

– – –

– – 1

1 8 10

– 1

2 1

– 3

– 1

2 6

English Universities Oxford Cambridge

1 1

1 1

2 –

1 –

5 2

Scottish Universities Aberdeen Glasgow St. Andrews

– – 1

2 – –

3 1 –

1 – –

6 1 1

Irish College Dublin Unknown

– 3

– 1

2 2

– 2

2 8

22

11

13

6

52

Total

Chesapeake Colonies Colonial Colleges Yale King’s College of New Jersey

Maryland

– 1 3

Virginia

1 – 2

Total

1 1 5

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Table 12.2 (a)

(Continued)

Maryland

Chesapeake Colonies

Virginia

Total

Philadelphia William & Mary (1693) Log (1736)

6 3 1

3 29 –

9 32 1

English Universities Oxford Cambridge

8 2

6 7

14 9

Scottish Universities Aberdeen Edinburgh Glasgow St. Andrews

6 1 1 –

8 3 2 1

14 4 3 1

Irish College Dublin Unknown

– 19

5 50

5 69

Total

51

117

168

Southern Colonies

North Carolina

South Carolina

Georgia

Total

English Universities Oxford Cambridge

– –

7 4

2 –

9 4

Scottish Universities Aberdeen Edinburgh Glasgow St. Andrews Unknown

– 1 – 1 8

1 – 1 – 7

2 – – – 1

3 1 1 1 16

10

20

5

35

Total

(b) Summary of the colleges attended: Colonial Colleges Harvard William & Mary Yale King’s College of New Jersey Philadelphia College of Rhode Island

16 32 26 13 7 15 1

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197

English Universities Oxford Cambridge

30 15

Scottish Universities Aberdeen Edinburgh Glasgow St. Andrews

23 5 5 3

Irish College Dublin Unknown

7 97

Total

29611

their posts, a shortcoming that restrained the development of a unified sense of collegiality among them. In the New England colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, Harvard was the favored college of the Anglican clergymen while Yale was predominant in Connecticut. Of the 41 ministers in the region 32 were graduates of either Harvard (15) or Yale (17) colleges. Following in train were King’s College in New York and Oxford University with two graduates each, and the recently founded College of Rhode Island, now known as Brown University, with one. The college affiliation of 4 ministers is unknown. As the two oldest institutions in the region the representation of Harvard and Yale may be due to several additional factors. Doubtless the gradual anglicization of colonial society in the eighteenth century, especially in the Boston community had an impact. As a seat of royal provincial government and a center for trade and commerce, the Boston public was exposed to a continuing flow of English authorities and policies, publications, ideas, tastes, and manners. While these influences may have been less pronounced in Connecticut there was nonetheless the influential personal leadership of Samuel Johnson of Stratford, one of the legendary Yale Apostates of 1722. The college profile for the men in the Middle Colonies was quite different. The King’s church was served by 52 ministers, including 27 who were graduates of colonial colleges – including King’s (10), Yale (8), Philadelphia (6), Princeton (2), and Harvard (1). Other colleges and universities represented were Oxford (5), Cambridge (2), Aberdeen (6), and Glasgow and St. Andrews with 1 each. Trinity College in Dublin was represented with 2 graduates. The college affiliation of 8 of the 52 ministers is not known. In the Chesapeake and Southern colonies the educational experience of the ministers varied from that in either the New England or the Middle provinces. Although William and Mary was the only colonial college in the two regions its influence was limited to Virginia. In Virginia and Maryland 29 and 3 of the 168 men respectively had attended the College of William and Mary, while the College of Philadelphia and the College of New Jersey

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(now Princeton University) were represented with 9 and 5 alumni each. The English universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the Scottish University of Aberdeen were represented by 14, 9, and 14 graduates. However, for a large pool of the ministers, 69 of the 168 men, the collegiate affiliation, if any, is not known. Among the 35 active ministers in the Southern Colonies, Oxford and Cambridge were predominant, represented by 9 and 4 alumni respectively, followed by Aberdeen with 3 graduates. The colleges attended by 16 of the men is unknown. Throughout the colonial period the Southern Colonies were dependent on ministers born and educated in England, a situation shaped in part by the fact that no collegiate institution had been established in North or South Carolina, or Georgia.

The number of primary and secondary churches Another measure of the state of the church in 1775 is to consider the number of congregations active in each colony. Despite the seeming simplicity of the task it remains unclear precisely how many churches were flourishing at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. During the period between 1775 and 1783, in every colony, some of the King’s churches were closed for varying periods of time, occasionally briefly, sometimes for longer periods, and in a few instances for the duration of the War. During times when church services were suspended members of congregations would gather for worship in the home of a member. Frederic Lewis Weis, a trail-blazing and systematic enumerator of the colonial clergymen and churches, found that 416 Anglican churches, missions, and chapels of ease from Maine to Georgia flourished at one time or another during the provincial era.12 My review of this detail suggests that the number is understated if it is understood to represent the total number of sites that provided services in the course of the entire colonial period. Weis’s valuable work does not determine the churches that were active in 1775. In fact, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many localities held worship services for relatively short periods of time, experiencing interruptions for lack of congregational interest or the assistance of a minister. Some church sites ceased operations after a short spell. If all of the 416 churches noted by Weis as Anglican sites of worship were active and conducting services, in 1775 at least 120 of the churches were without a resident minister. My effort to identify the number of congregations holding services on a more or less regular basis in each colony has been defined by separating the churches in each colony into two categories – as either a primary or secondary church. My definition of a primary church is one that conducted weekly worship services and had a minister in residence. A secondary church was maintained without a resident minister and may have held weekly services conducted by a lay reader. It was common for the clergyman of the closest parish to visit and conduct services and the sacraments no more frequently than once a month, or quarterly, or less often.

The King’s Church: a Casualty Table 12.3

Primary and secondary churches in use in 1775

New England Colonies

Primary

Secondary

Total

New Hampshire Massachusetts District of Maine Rhode Island Connecticut

2 10 2 3 17

1 5 2 1 23

3 15 4 4 40

Total

34

32

66

Primary

Secondary

Total

Middle Colonies New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware

16 8 6 4

7 9 2 11

23 17 8 15

Total

34

29

63

Chesapeake Colonies Maryland Virginia

55 95 13

28 15414

83 249

182

332

Total

150

Southern Colonies

Primary

North Carolina South Carolina Georgia Total Grand Total

199

2 11 3

Secondary 8 5 2

Total 10 16 5

16

15

31

234

258

49215

Throughout the thirteen colonies there were a total of 234 primary and an estimated 258 secondary churches. Regionally, the English church was not of uniform strength but varied significantly. The number of congregations was most numerous in the Chesapeake colonies where the church had been long favored by legal establishment. Maryland and Virginia included 150 of the 234 primary churches active in 1775 and 182 of the 258 secondary congregations, or nearly 70 per cent of the churches in the thirteen colonies. Elsewhere the situation was quite different. The New England and Middle Colonies were nearly equal in the number of primary and secondary churches with 34 and 32 and 34 and 29, or 13.41 and 12.8 per cent of the total number of congregations respectively. In the sparsely settled Southern provinces of North and South Carolina, and Georgia there were only 16 primary and 15 secondary congregations, representing 6.3 per cent of the total Anglican churches. Viewed from another perspective, in the eleven colonies outside

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The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

of Maryland and Virginia there were only 84 primary and 76 secondary churches for a total of 151 sites, about 30.69 per cent of the total number of the King’s churches in the colonies. Despite the protective and active policies of the Board of Trade, the leadership of several bishops of London, and the financial support of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the number of primary and secondary churches active in 1775 indicates that the King’s church was one of the smallest religious groups in the colonies. It was overshadowed in the New England provinces by the Congregational church, in New York and New Jersey by the Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian churches, and increasingly after about 1720 in Pennsylvania, the Chesapeake and Southern provinces, by a variety of religious groups.16 Yet, undeniably, the congregations located in the provincial capitals and major seaports, such as Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charles Town gained prominence with membership drawn from the ranks of royal and civic officials and well-to-do merchants. Despite the advantages of imperial policy and leadership, and the sustained resources of London philanthropy, after nearly two centuries of development the King’s church in America was merely a shadow of the mother church. Although there was no colonial diocesan jurisdiction as in England, the number of congregations from Maine to Georgia would have unmistakably comprised only a small diocese in the Church of England. The Diocese of Lincoln according to the Compton Census of 1676, was the largest of such ecclesiastical districts in England, comprising 1,259 churches, with 484 alone in the archdeaconry of Lincoln.17 Two geographically smaller dioceses, Lichfield and Coventry, and Winchester, included 442 and 432 churches respectively.18 These two divisions, at least in terms of total numbers of churches, compare favorably with the colonial institution. Examining the number of parishes within the boundaries of counties, Lincolnshire and Norfolk included 591 and 717 churches respectively, while in London 541 parishes and chapels were counted.19

The ministers as casualties of the Independence movement and War Political and military affairs placed the men in an awkward and vulnerable position. In every colony the movement towards Independence provoked an assortment of political divisions among the clergymen. Some of the men actively supported the Patriot cause, while others, mindful of their sworn oaths of allegiance to the Crown and Parliament required at their ordinations remained loyal to England. The intensity of their political opinions varied – for some men their loyalty was unswerving, for others their sentiments changed with the changing fortunes of warfare. Many Loyalist parsons in every region took flight during the course of the War and sought refuge in England, or the Maritime Provinces of Canada, or elsewhere. A large group of men did not publicly take sides on the current political issues; they

The King’s Church: a Casualty

201

continued to perform their duties and earned an income to provide for their families, while a significant minority of ministers retired from active service without leaving a trace of their political opinions. For other men the inevitable course of natural events occurred and many died. In 1775 there were 296 ministers of the King’s church resident in the thirteen colonies. At the close of the War eight years later the number stood at 130 men in the thirteen new states, a decline of 56 per cent. Several factors contributed to the decline in the number of clergymen. At least 57 men had gone into exile, 15 had moved from their pre-war assignment to a post in another state, 22 had retired from professional activity, 49 had died, and the whereabouts of 16 men remains unknown. The course of the Revolutionary War period was particularly difficult on the state of the church and its ministers of the New England and Middle Colonies. In 1775 there were 41 parsons in New England – Massachusetts, which included the District of Maine, included 15 men; 2 in New Hampshire, 4 in Rhode Island, and 20 in Connecticut. At the close of the War the ranks in the region had been diminished by nearly 60 per cent, to 17 ministers. Massachusetts could claim only 3 active men, there were none in either Table 12.4

The number of clergy in the colonies in 1775 and 1783 Moved to another state

Retired

Died

1775

1783

Who fled to England, etc.

New England Colonies Massachusetts New Hampshire Rhode Island Connecticut Total

15 2 4 20 41

3 – 1 13 17

9 1 1 3 14

1 1 – – 2

– – – – –

2 – 1 4 7

Middle Colonies New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Total

22 11 13 6 52

4 4 3 1 12

8 4 4 – 16

3 – 1 3 7

– 2 2 – 4

5 1 2 2 10

51 117 168

28 65 93

8 10 18

1 5 6

4 12 16

8 17 25

10 20 5 35

4 9 2 15

1 5 3 9

– – – –

2 – – 2

2 5 – 7

296

137

57

15

22

4920

Chesapeake Colonies Maryland Virginia Total Southern Colonies North Carolina South Carolina Georgia Total Grand Total

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The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

Maine or New Hampshire, Rhode Island had one, while Connecticut fared the best of the New England states with 13 clergymen on duty. Among the pre-war ministerial ranks 14 had gone into exile, 2 moved to another state, 7 had died, and the whereabouts of one minister is unknown. In the ranks of every state or colony except Connecticut the number of New England parsons had been drastically reduced during the war years. Circumstances in the Middle colonies were little different from those in New England. In 1775 there were 52 ministers serving congregations or associated with the two Anglican-related colleges in the area: 22 in New York, 11 in New Jersey, 13 in Pennsylvania, and 6 in Delaware. At the close of hostilities in 1783 the number of men had dwindled to only 12 active in the area – four each in New York and New Jersey, three in Pennsylvania, and one in Delaware. Among the corps 16 Loyalists went into exile, 7 men had moved to other states, 4 had retired, and ten ministers had died. The preRevolutionary War church had suffered a loss of 75 per cent of its ministers. The story is quite different for the ministers in the Chesapeake colonies than for their colleagues in the New England and Middle colonies. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War there were 168 parsons active in the region – 51 in Maryland and 117 in Virginia. Eight years later the numbers had diminished to 93 ministers in the two states – 28 in Maryland and 65 in Virginia. Among the 168 ministers 18 went into exile, 6 had moved to another state, 12 had retired, and 17 had died. The whereabouts of 9 men in Virginia after 1775 is unknown – they disappear from sight; possibly they retired from their posts, or perhaps died. In the Southern Colonies of North and South Carolina and Georgia there were a total of 34 ministers in 1775: 10 in North Carolina, 19 in South Carolina, and 5 in Georgia. By 1783 the ranks had been significantly thinned: there were only 15 men serving in the entire region: 4 in North Carolina, 9 in South Carolina, and 2 in Georgia. The intervening years had taken a toll in the area: 9 parsons had gone into exile, 2 had retired, and 7 had died. For nearly two centuries the state church had been an element of the English government’s imperial policy for the overseas settlements. At the close of the Revolutionary War in 1783 the King’s church by every measure was in shattered disarray. The ministers’ ranks had been reduced by one-half, churches had been shuttered and were in disrepair in every new state, and congregations diminished from Maine to Georgia. Despite the uncertain bleakness of the situation the issue at hand was not, would the church survive, but rather how would it be transformed and adapted to meet new circumstances in an independent republic? The complex and complicated task facing such leaders as William White of Pennsylvania, William Smith of Maryland, Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, and Samuel Provoost of New York, was to formulate the procedure for reconstructing the colonial English church to serve its members in a new age of national and state governments in the United States.

13 Epilogue

Following the Revolutionary War, the remnant of the colonial Church of England in the new United States had to be reorganized and reconstituted in each state and nationally.1 The tumultuous military and political events launched with the battles of Lexington Green and Concord Bridge, and the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia had dispossessed the institution of all support. Swept away were the imperial and ecclesiastical ties to London officials, the financial support of colonial legislatures in the provinces where it was established, and the salaries of the missionaries of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. English law prohibited the bishop of London from exercising supervision over the church in the newly independent nation. During the formative years of the new Republic each state and the nation grappled with the tasks of drafting and approving constitutions and organizing the elements of government. The church too faced a similar assignment. As Frederick V. Mills, Jr. has systematically chronicled, the church did not speak with one voice on matters of institutional structure but rather expressed varying shades of opinions.2 The central issue of debate was the nature and authority of episcopacy and the method of continuing the hierarchical tradition in the recently independent institution. Neither the clergymen nor laymen participating in the efforts to reconstitute the church in the 1780s and 1790s were of one mind on the matter. Some persons may have been influenced by the penetrating criticism of the episcopal office expressed in the pamphlets of Boston Congregational ministers during the 1750s and 1760s. Others may have recognized that the familiar and essentially congregational manner of governing the church during the colonial era remained a useful practice. Perhaps other church leaders were gripped by the wave of popular anti-British feelings and were reluctant to replicate an English ecclesiastical tradition in the American church. The reconstruction of the Episcopal church immediately after the War and the diplomatic and coalescing leadership of William White of Philadelphia is a familiar story and it is not necessary to recite it here. Yet we must be reminded that to ensure the tradition of an historic ministry for the religious 203

204

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

group in the chain of apostolic succession a link to the episcopal office was essential. After the formal cessation of hostilities between England and the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, under English law a prelate of the Church of England could not ordain American candidates for Holy Orders. There was an urgent need to replenish the ranks of clergymen; to revise The Book of Common Prayer for an American audience; and adopt ecclesiastical Canons for the provision of legal governance of the church. No longer could the church be known as the Church of England; a change of name was necessary and in 1785 it became the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.3 During the course of the war many congregations had suspended services for brief or longer intervals; members had drifted off to join other churches; and men who had sought exile, or retired, or died had diminished the clerical ranks by more than one-half. Each congregation in the thirteen new states faced the bleak and novel uncertainty of relying solely on voluntary financial support for the maintenance and support of the minister and church. Despite the inevitable movement during the 1770s and 1780s to disestablish the church in Virginia and Maryland, attempts were vainly undertaken by church leaders to preserve some of the privileges of the pre-Revolutionary War establishment. Their position was out of step with the general temper of the times and of political leaders who were opposed to any state aid for religion. In the Old Dominion, the state in which the colonial church had been most numerous and strongest, the celebrated jurist John Marshall thought the church was ‘too far gone ever to be revived’. By 1800 Bishop James Madison, a nephew of the future president, found his Virginia diocese so diminished by the loss of clergy and communicants that after several years of attempting to revive interest in the church he abandoned the struggle. He limited his efforts to serving as president of the College of William and Mary.4 Gradually during the 1780s and 1790s state and national conventions comprised of clerical and lay delegates formulated and established a distinctively American episcopal church, an institution based on the one hand on the historical and traditional episcopal and liturgical practices and customs of the English church while on the other hand modified to serve congregations in the new era of an independent United States. The first step taken toward an American bishop was when ten Connecticut parsons in 1783 elected Samuel Seabury to seek consecration as a bishop in England.5 He traveled to London seeking the endorsement of the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury; but English law prevented the prelates from consecrating a person who did not take the oath of allegiance to the Crown and Parliament.6 To overcome this restriction Seabury traveled to Scotland where such an oath was not required, and was consecrated at Aberdeen on 14 November 1784, by the Bishop of Aberdeen, the Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen, and the Bishop of Ross and Moray.7 His quest

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205

accomplished, Seabury sailed for America in June 1785, landing at Newport. On August 3, he presided as the first Episcopal bishop in the United States at the first convention in Connecticut, ordaining four candidates for the diaconate.8 Seabury was the first of fifteen men consecrated prelates of the Episcopal church between 1784 and 1814.9 He was the only one who had held zealous Tory sympathies before the Revolution. Such American church leaders as William White of Pennsylvania, William Smith of Maryland, Samuel Provoost of New York, and Samuel Parker of Massachusetts received the news of his episcopal consecration at the hands of Non-juring Scottish prelates with caution and alarm.10 As these men held reservations regarding the historical legitimacy of the Scottish episcopacy they hoped somehow to obtain and continue the English office.11 A man filled with self-confidence, self-importance, and self-interest, Seabury entertained either a romantic strain of temperament or a grasping reach for authority. He began to sign himself as the ‘Bishop of All America’, not merely of Connecticut. Seabury may have mused on designs to firmly establish his episcopal primacy in the New World no matter who followed in his wake or he may have sought to bait the Episcopalians of the Chesapeake and Southern states.12 Our knowledge of the experience of the Episcopal Church in each state during the years of the Early Republic is limited. It was not an era for systematically gathering descriptive statistics on a local, state, or national basis detailing the church’s activities and experience. We know little of the frequency and kinds of worship services that were conducted, or the number of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials that were performed either on a parish basis or within each state. Nor is there information available about the number or gender of members of each congregation or particulars of parish finances. Despite these shortcomings there are several key factors that provide an overview of the institution’s vigor, vitality, and achievements in each state. Throughout the new thirteen United States the experience of the church was similar; it had been disrupted and weakened by the war. Everywhere the congregations were smaller, the church buildings in disrepair, and the ranks of the parsons significantly reduced. One astute observer of the church in Massachusetts, William Bentley, a Congregational minister in Salem, noted in 1791 that only one congregation in the state – Trinity Church in Boston – provided a good living for a clergyman,13 a dire financial situation that continued until at least 1811.14 Massachusetts clergy and lay leaders met in convention in 1784 to renew the church’s presence in the state, but by 1790 it was reported that the meetings were ‘rent by factions’.15 At issue was the demand by lay members to participate equally with the clergymen in the deliberations and election of a prelate.16 It was not until 1796 that the first bishop was elected to office.17 The pattern was similar elsewhere in the New England region: Rhode Island’s church was organized in 1790, New Hampshire’s in 1802, and Vermont’s

206

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

in 1810.18 But in each of these states the church was financially unable to support the office of a bishop. Bishop Seabury of Connecticut provided episcopal oversight in Rhode Island from 1790 until his death six years later, while Massachusetts, which had an episcopal officer from 1797 to 1804, was without a bishop between 1804 and 1811. On the election of Alexander V. Griswold as bishop of Massachusetts in the latter year he led the effort to organize and supervise the church in that state and in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont to form the Eastern Diocese.19 In 1811, nearly forty years after the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, there were only 22 active congregations’ churches and 16 ministers throughout the jurisdiction. The weakness of the church in the region restrained the development of episcopal organization. Vermont elected a prelate in 1832, New Hampshire followed in 1843, and Maine, a district of Massachusetts until 1820, remained under the supervision of Griswold until 1843, and between 1843 and 1847 it came under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rhode Island. Maine elected its first bishop in 1847.20 Circumstances were similar in the middle states. In Delaware, where the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists flourished, there were only two parsons of the Episcopal church active in 1785. A convention was held in 1791 to organize the church in the state but without a bishop. Between 1828 and 1841 the assistant bishop of Pennsylvania was vested as the Provisional Bishop of Delaware. The first bishop of the Delaware church was elected in 1841.21 The reduced numbers of ministers in every state in the decades following the Revolutionary War slowly recovered to the levels of 1775. The General Convention of the national church held in New York City in 1792 included only 19 clerical and 14 lay delegates and five recently consecrated bishops.22 According to a census of the church’s ministers conducted for the session there were 179 clergy enumerated although there was no report from authorities in either Massachusetts or New Hampshire.23 It is not possible to glean from the official Journal of the proceedings how many of the parsons were active in the ministry, or the number of churches served in each state, or the frequency and kinds of worship services that were conducted. In 1804 the situation was little improved, the national Convention included 20 clerical and 9 lay deputies and five bishops, with no representation from the church in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia.24 For that year the convention Journal noted that there were 203 ministers on the national roster.25 Statistics alone do not provide a comprehensive account of the strengths or weaknesses of an institution struggling to reconstruct itself. As early as 1804 the church in each state or diocese was required to submit a report to the triennial national General Convention regarding the status of the institution within its jurisdiction.26 The first reports appeared in 1811 and underscored that the church remained in a weakened condition everywhere. In Massachusetts the church in some areas was described, as ‘in a state of

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derangement and decay’ while in other communities there had been some growth. Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania were acknowledged to be thriving with several new churches built in each state. In Maryland the church was identified as in a ‘deplorable condition’, yet hoping that ‘she will rise again and become a distinguished part of the Church in the United States’. As there was no representation at the convention from Delaware, Virginia, and South Carolina, and no reports submitted on the behalf of the church in those states the official comments of the Journal for those states are necessarily impressionistic. It was noted that ‘the Church in Virginia is from various causes, so depressed, that there is danger of her total ruin, unless great exertions . . . are employed to raise her’.27 At a convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1814 attended by 29 clerical, 20 lay deputies, and five bishops, there was modest improvement.28 There was no representation from the states of New Hampshire, North Carolina, Georgia, or any of the new states admitted to the Union since 1790 except Vermont (Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana) or any of the recently established territories (Mississippi, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri). The official number of clergy on the national rolls had declined from 203 a decade earlier to 186 although at this session the church in Virginia did not report the number of ministers either residing or serving within the state.29 It is estimated that perhaps as many as 50 parsons were serving in the Old Dominion. While the early nineteenth-century church was struggling in Virginia and Maryland where it had been established by law during the colonial era, its center of strength was shifting to other states in the Northeast, in particular to New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. In New York there were 56 ministers, of whom 8 did not have a parish, and 3 of whom were associated with educational institutions; Connecticut counted 34; Pennsylvania, 22; Maryland, 25; and South Carolina, 18, four of whom held no parish assignment. Trailing these states were Massachusetts with 10 men on its rolls; New Jersey with 9; New Hampshire, 5; Rhode Island, 4; and Vermont, 1. In New Jersey and Delaware the status of the church reflected the situation elsewhere. Nine ministers served New Jersey’s 27 congregations, of which only 7 held regular services while in Delaware where there were 11 congregations but only two were served by a resident parson in 1814 and one by a minister who traveled from nearby Maryland.30 Reports from Maryland indicated that the church continued ‘in a state of depression’, with many parishes without ministers and a number of churches in need of repair.31 Only in Baltimore and Georgetown, now a section of Washington, D.C., were the churches strong and the stipends paid by the congregations for the clergy adequate, while in Virginia the saga was unchanged with one observer noting that the institution had ‘fallen into a deplorable condition; in many places her ministers have thrown off their sacred profession; her liturgy is either contemned or unknown, and her sanctuaries are desolate. It would rend any feeling to heart, to see spacious

208

The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church

temples venerable even in their dilapidation and ruins, now the habitations of the wild beasts of the forest’.32 The legislature in North Carolina disestablished the church in 1776 and it remained in declension for the next forty years. Church buildings were in disrepair, congregations dwindled, and new ministers appeared rarely in the state and stayed briefly. Several other denominations benefited from the deterioration of the Episcopal church. Whenever necessary the Virginia prelate provided services that required a bishop. The first convention of the church in the state occurred in 1790 with only four persons in attendance – two ministers and two laymen. Not until 1817 was the Diocese of North Carolina established and six years later the first bishop elected the dynamic and magnetic John Stark Ravenscroft.33 The first convention of the post-Revolutionary War period in South Carolina was held in 1785. A decade passed before the first bishop, Robert Smith, was elected, serving until his death in 1801. Based on the historical record he does not appear to have been an active official as there were no confirmations or visitations during his tenure and only a few ordinations. Not until 1812 was the second bishop elected to office – Theodore Dehon, who served until his death five years later. The Journal of the 1814 General Convention of the church notes that in South Carolina the state of the church ‘had sunk very low’, although now there was a sense of new beginnings for the institution.34 Congregations were attempting to provide financially for their ministers, vacant parishes were being served from time to time, and a few young men were entering the ministry. In Georgia the situation was bleaker. Between 1783 and 1800 there was no Episcopal clergyman active in the state. Whenever official ceremonies were required, the South Carolina prelates were called upon to preside. Indeed, it was not until 1823 that a diocese was formed although the first bishop was not elected until 1840.35 Efforts to establish church-related colleges were slowly rekindled by local leaders in the 1820s. Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York, was founded in 1822, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the next year, and Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1824. The professional education of candidates for the ministry engendered a debate within the national church lasting for more than two decades and was not settled until the founding of the General Theological Seminary in New York City in 1817. Although there was a steady movement of peoples after the 1790s into the trans-Appalachian Northwest and Southwest territories the national Episcopal church slowly formulated a strategy for expanding the institution westward into the newly organized states and territories. A program was finally formulated by the church in 1835. There was a flurry of renewal within the church during the 1840s and 1850s when the national population was rapidly changing with the rising tide of German and Irish immigration to American port cities and the states

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of the Middle West. The movement was partly related to the appearance of the Nativist movement and the rise of the Know-Nothing political party. During those years the church symbolized for many persons a tie to an earlier America populated primarily by men and women of English origins, an America in sharp contrast to the changing character of the nation’s population. Not until the ‘Gilded Age’ when the emerging affluent and socially ambitious men and women in urban centers of the nation vigorously renewed an interest in English taste, style, and culture would the Episcopal Church regain its prominent position in local communities.36 America’s newly rich families enthusiastically embraced the traditions and ceremonies of the English church. Membership increased in the Episcopal churches in the rising major cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and elsewhere. New church buildings were constructed, usually in the English Gothic style, a testimony to an appreciation for transatlantic ties. The fashion was further extended by the construction of English-styled country houses in the Hudson River valley, on Long Island, and at Newport, Rhode Island, and other communities where the rich gathered. English ways were followed also in the founding of boarding schools, in the acquisition of fine arts for private collections, and the marriages of socially prominent American daughters to scions of the English peerage. Yet there was no American architectural counterpart to the most visible local English symbol of episcopal authority, power, and tradition – the cathedrals at Canterbury, Salisbury, or any other principal provincial English city. The first American cathedral was not built until nearly a century after the Revolutionary War and it did not ornament the skylines of such East Coast centers as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Charleston. It was built on the Great Plains, in the frontier trading settlement of Faribault, Minnesota, fourteen hundred miles from New York City and sixteen hundred miles from Boston. The cornerstone for the modest sandstone building was laid in 1862, during the Civil War and at a time of Indian uprisings in the region, and it was completed seven years later. The Americanization of the English Church was finally completed in the United States, eighty-six years after the close of the Revolutionary War.

Appendix A A list of the governors of the American colonies who were elected to membership of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; compiled from the Journals of the Society. Name

Colony

Date elected

Francis Bernard Lord William Campbell George Clinton Charles Craven Robert Dinwiddie Arthur Dobbs Joseph Dudley John Evans William Franklin William Gooch Charles Gookin James Grant James Hamilton Robert Hunter Edward Hyde Nathaniel Johnson Robert Johnson Gabriel Johnston George Johnstone Lewis Morris Francis Nicholson Thomas Pownall William Shirley Samuel Shute Alexander Spotswood William Tryon Edward Tynte Benning Wentworth John Wentworth James Wright

N.J.; Mass. S.C. N.Y. S.C. Va. N.C. Mass. Penn. N.J. Va. Penn. East Florida Penn. N.Y.; N.J. N.C. N.C. S.C. N.C. West Florida N.J. New England; Mary.; Va.; N.S.; S.C. Mass. Mass. Mass. Va. N.C.; N.Y. S.C. N.H. N.H. Ga.

19 May 1758 19 May 1769 10 April 1747 18 February 1714/15 15 December 1752 18 May 1753 20 March 1701/02 1704 17 August 1770 17 February 1743 17 June 1709 18 May 1764 21 November 1760 17 June 1709 3 June 1709 21 August 1702 18 July 1707 18 July 1746 18 May 1764 19 September 1701 21 November 1701 24 February 1758 19 March 1741/42 15 May 1719 19 October 1716 1766 3 June 1709 18 February 1742/43 21 October 1768 1771–72

210

Appendix B Commissaries of the Bishops of London in Colonial America. Colonies and names

Term of appointment

New England: Roger Price

1729–48

New York: William Vesey Henry Barclay

1714–46 1748–48

Pennsylvania: Archibald Cummings Robert Jenney

1732–41 1743–48

Maryland: Thomas Bray Jacob Henderson, to Western Shore to entire colony Christopher Wilkinson, to Eastern Shore

1696–? 1716–23 1730–35 1716–23

Virginia: James Blair

William Dawson Thomas Dawson William Robinson (First appointed 18 April 1761, by Bishop Sherlock; reappointed 28 November 1761, by Bishop Hayter.) James Horrocks (Appointed to ‘Act in Character of a Commissary’ by Bishop Terrick in 1768.) John Camm (Appointed by the Privy Council) South Carolina: Gideon Johnston William Treadwell Bull Alexander Garden

1689–1713 1714–23 1729–43 1743–48 1750–52 1752–61 1761–67

1768–72

1772–76?

1707–16 1717–23 1729–48

211

Appendix C: Funds Allocated to the American colonies by the S.P.G. The following charts are arranged regionally for the New England, the Middle, the Chesapeake, and the Southern Colonies to summarize, by decades, the funds allocated by the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for the salaries of its missionaries.

New England colonies £7,000 NH Mas Con RI

£6,000 £5,000 £4,000 £3,000 £2,000 £1,000 £0 1700 Fig. App.C. 1

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the New England Colonies

212

Appendix C

213

£7,000 NH Mas Con RI

£6,000 £5,000 £4,000 £3,000 £2,000 £1,000 £0 1700 Fig. App.C. 2

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the New England Colonies

NH

37.90%

Mass Conn RI

31.15%

24.16% 6.80%

Fig. App.C. 3

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. to the New England Colonies

214

Appendix C

NH Mass Conn RI Totals

1700

1710

1720

1730

-82 -412 £494

-785 160 880 £1,825

-2040 810 2450 £5,300

375 2930 2930 2840 £9,075

Fig. App.C. 4 Colonies

1740 750 3595 3880 3030 £11,255

1750 1050 3660 4475 2640 £11,825

1760 1030 4740 6400 2335 £14,505

1770 1285 3580 6210 1800 £12,875

1780 195 50 1250 260 £1,755

Totals £4685 £21,462 £26,115 £16,647 £68,909

Percentage of Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the New England

Middle Atlantic colonies £7,000

NY NJ A

£6,000 £5,000 £4,000 £3,000 £2,000 £1,000 £0

1700

Fig. App.C. 5

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G by decade to the Middle Colonies

Appendix C

£7,000

215

NY NJ Penn

£6,000 £5,000 £4,000 £3,000 £2,000 £1,000 £0 1700 Fig. App.C. 6

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the Middle Colonies

NY NJ Penn

25.57%

42.44%

31.99%

Fig. App.C. 7

1700 NY NJ Penn Totals

3,053 836 1,472 £5,361

Fig. App.C. 8

Percentage of funds allocated by the S.P.G. to the Middle Colonies

1710 5,935 2,020 2,062 £10,017

1720 4,160 2,470 2,626 £9,256

1730 5,145 3,010 4,540 £12,695

1740 5,457 3,320 5,040 £13,817

1750 5,522 3,790 5,240 £14,552

1760 5,387 4,605 5,070 £15,062

1770 6,120 4,500 4,970 £15,590

1780 748 830 730 £2,308

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the Middle Colonies

Totals £42,127 £25,381 £31,750 £99,258

216

Appendix C

Chesapeake colonies £800

VA MARY

£700 £600 £500 £400 £300 £200 £100 £0 1700 Fig. App.C. 9

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760 1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G by decade to the Chesapeake Colonies

Southern colonies £5,000

N S G

£4,500 £4,000 £3,500 £3,000 £2,500 £2,000 £1,500 £1,000 £500 £0 1700 Fig. App.C. 10

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the Southern Colonies

Appendix C £5,000

217

NC SC GA

£4,500 £4,000 £3,500 £3,000 £2,500 £2,000 £1,500 £1,000 £500 £0 1700

Fig. App.C. 11

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the Southern Colonies

NC

10.62%

SC

29.04%

GA

60.34%

Fig. App.C. 12

NC SC GA Totals

Percentage of funds allocated by the S.P.G. to the Southern Colonies

1700

1710

1720

1730

1740

1750

1760

1770

1780

310 957 -£1,272

1,300 3,470 -£4,770

340 3,930 -£4,270

780 4,490 350 £5,620

1,050 3,660 415 £5,125

1,650 2,160 750 £4,560

2,930 710 1,075 £4,715

1,320 700 850 £2870

50 140 120 £310

Fig. App.C. 13

Totals £9,730 £20,217 £3,560 £33,507

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to the Southern Colonies

218

Appendix C

Sub-totals £18,000

New Eng Mid-Atlantic Chesapeake Southern

£16,000 £14,000 £12,000 £10,000 £8,000 £6,000 £4,000 £2,000 £0 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 Fig. App.C. 14 regions

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to each of the four geographical

£18,000 New Eng Mid-Atlantic Chesapeake Southern

£16,000 £14,000 £12,000 £10,000 £8,000 £6,000 £4,000 £2,000 £0 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 Fig. App.C. 15 regions

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to each of the four geographical

Appendix C

16.55% 0.39% 34.03%

219

New England Mid-Atlantic Chesapeake Southern

49.02%

Fig. App.C. 16 Percentage of funds allocated by the S.P.G. to each of the four geographical regions

Sub-Totals 1700 New England 494 Mid-Atlantic 5,361 Chesapeake 798 Southern 1,272 Grand Total £7,920

Fig. App.C. 17 regions

1710 1,825 10,017 --4,770 £16,612

1720 5,300 9,256 --4,270 £18,826

1730 9,075 12,695 --5,620 £27,990

1740 11,255 13,817 --5,125 £30,197

1750 11,825 14,552 --4,560 £30,937

1760 14,505 15,062 --4,715 £34,282

1770 12,875 15,590 --2870 £31,335

1780 Totals 1,755 £68,909 2,308 £99,258 --£798 310 £33,507 £4,373 £202472

Funds allocated by the S.P.G. by decade to each of the four geographical

Notes

1

The National Church: a Servant of Imperial Policy, 1584–1660

1. David Stick, Roanoke Island: The Beginnings of English America (Chapel Hill, 1983). 2. Thomas Betteridge, Tudor Histories of the English Reformation, 1530–83 (Aldershot, 1999): 207–18. 3. Richard Hakluyt, ‘A Discourse Concerning Western Planting Written in the year 1584’. Collections of the Maine Historical Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1877). Second series. Vol. 2. George Bruner Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages, Second edition (New York, 1961): 87–98. 4. David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn, eds., A Particular Discourse Concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties that are like to Growe to this Realme of Englande by the Western Discoveries lately Attempted, Written in the Yere 1584. By Richard Hakluyt of Oxforde. Known as Discourse on Western Planting (London, 1993): 8–12. 5. Haklyut, Discourse: 19–41. 6. Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation made by sea or overland to the remote & farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1600 years (London, 1589, 1907 edition). VI: 60–62. 7. Ibid., 69. 8. Hakluyt, Discourse: 45–63. 9. Ibid., 7–12. 10. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI: 50–58. 11. Hakluyt, Discourse: 12. Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven, 1995): 88. 12. Klaus E. Knorr, British Colonial Theories, 1570–1850 (Toronto, 1944): 28–29. Pagden, Lords of all the World: 35–36. John Frederick Woolverton, Colonial Anglicans in North America (Detroit, 1984 ): 48–49. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000): 62–66. 13. Anthony McFarlane, The British in the Americas: 1480–1815 (London, 1994): 24–31. 14. Mattie E. E. Parker, ed., North Carolina Charters and Constitutions, 1578–1698 (Raleigh, 1963): 16, 21–22, 46–47, 72. See Edward L. Bond’s Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virgina (Macon, Ga., 2000), an excellent study of the religious impulse supporting the extension and experience of the church in the province. 15. Knorr, British Colonial Theories: 31–32. 16. J. H. Elliott, Spain and its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven, 1989): 13–14, 38–41, 44–45, 50–53, 5–61. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1710 (London, 1963): 59–62. Pagden, Lords of all the World: 32–33. 220

Notes

221

17. Alexander Brown, The First Republic in America (Boston, 1898): 386. King was Dean of Christ Church and vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford and subsequently became Bishop of London (1611–21). 18. Darley, John, The Glory of Chelsey Colledge Revived (London, 1662): 18. D. E. Kennedy, ‘King James I’s College of Controversial Divinity at Chelsea’, in D. E. Kennedy, Diana Robertson and Alexandra Walsham, Grounds of Controversy (Melbourne, 1989): 99–126. 19. On the Calvinist nature of the early-seventeenth-century church, see Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter Revolution’, in Conrad Russell, ed., The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973): 119–43. For Abbot, see Susan Holland, ‘Archbishop Abbot and the Problem of Puritanism’, The Historical Journal 37 (1994): 23–43; S. M. Holland, ‘George Abbot: The Wanted Archbishop’, Church History 56 (1987): 173; Kenneth Fincham, ‘Prelacy and Politics: Archbishop Abbot’s Defense of Protestant Orthodoxy’, Historical Research 61 (1988): 36–64; Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I’, Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 182–85. Kenneth Fincham. Prelate as Pastor: the Episcopate of James I (Oxford, 1990): 39, 46–48, 253–64, 269–70. C. M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford, 1983): 100–101, 191–92, 218–22, 228–29, 231–32, 237. Sutcliffe expressed early interest in New England and became a member of the Council of New England on 3 November 1620 and was a supporter of Captain John Smith’s General Historie (1624). He was one of the commissioners appointed to wind up the affairs of the Virginia Company in 1624. 20. Babette M. Levy, ‘Early Puritanism in the Southern and Island Colonies’, P.A.A.S. 70 (1960): 92–113. 21. Capt. Edward-Maria Wingfield, ‘A Discourse of Virginia’, Archaelogia Americana: Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society, IV (1860): 102. 22. George MacLaren Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Political Conditions under which It Grew (Richmond, 1947), I: 15. 23. The men were Robert Hunt, 1607–08; Richard Buck, 1610–24; William Meese, 1610–20; Alexander Whitaker, 1611–17; Nicholas Glover, 1611; Robert or John Poole, 1611–?; William Wickham, 1617–19. Three of the men served at least one year each, one each for two, four, ten, and fourteen years. All but Poole and Meese were graduates of Cambridge University colleges. Poole’s and Meeses’s colleges, if any, are unknown. This biographical information has been culled from a variety of sources including John Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses from the earliest times to 1751 (Cambridge, 1922, 1924, 1927); Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714 (Oxford, 1891, 1892); Brydon. Virginia’s Mother Church. I. 20–29; published sermons, letters and other works; and from my ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England Database’ of the 1,272 men who were associated with the King’s church in the colonies between 1607 and 1783. 24. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 47–49. 25. Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982): 93–115, 169–200. Alexander Whitaker, ‘To my verie deere and loving cosen M. G. Minister of the B. F. in London’, in A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia, ed. Ralph Hamaer (Richmond, 1957). Regarding Calvinist influence within the Virginia church see Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism: 41–43. 26. Andrew Fitzmaurice, ‘‘Everyman, that prints adventures’: the rhetoric of the Virginia Company Sermons’, in Lori Ann Ferrell and Peter McCullough, eds., The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History, 1600–1750 (Manchester, 2000): 27–29.

222

Notes

27. Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975): 1168. 28. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 16–18. 29. Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, 1933), 3: 93. 30. Ibid., 172. 31. Ibid. 32. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 61–69. 33. A.P.C.E. Col. Ser., 1613–1680, I: 127. 34. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 136–38. 35. Ibid., 131–32. 36. Levy, ‘Early Puritanism’, 122–44. 37. William A. R. Goodwin, ‘Laws relating to the Early Colonial Church in Virginia, from Volume I, Hening’s Statutes at Large’, H.M.P.E.C. 3 (1934): 45–47. 38. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 121.

2

Bishops and Statesmen: New Policies for an Imperial Church

1. For a contemporary discussion of the relationship between the church and state, see Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books VI, VII, VIII, ed. P. G. Stanwood (Cambridge, 1981): 315–31. 2. For a brief summary of this complex political and ecclesiastical period I am indebted to the works of many scholars. I have found particularly useful Ronald Hutton’s Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Oxford, 1991): 133–213, his The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1985): 125–184; and Anne Whiteman, ‘The Re-Establishment of the Church of England, 1660–1663’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Fifth Series. 5 (1955): 111–31. 3. Hutton, The Restoration: 166, 174. 4. Ibid., 185–284. 5. Ibid., 175–80. 6. It is interesting to note that £80 to £100 was regarded as the lowest possible stipend in England in 1660. King Charles II ordered in that year that ecclesiastical lessors should see that livings, wherever possible, should be augmented to £80 to £100. Edward Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reform Church of England (Oxford, 1844), II: 272–75. George MacLaren Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Political Conditions Under Which It Grew (Richmond, 1947), I: 452–81. 7. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 400–401. 8. Ibid., I: 173. 9. ‘R. G.’ [Roger Green], Virginia’s Cure: or an Advisive Narrative Concerning Virginia. Discovering the True Ground of that Churches Unhappiness, and the Only True Remedy. As it Was Presented to the Right Reverend Father in God Guilbert Lord Bishop of London, September 2, 1661. Now Published to Further the Welfare of That and the Like Plantations (London, 1662). Preface. Printed in Peter Force, Tracts and Other Papers, relating principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America, from the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1776 (Washington, D.C., 1844), III: No. 15, 3–19. 10. John C. Rainbolt, ‘The Absence of Towns in Seventeenth Century Virginia’, The Journal of Southern History 35 (1969): 343–61. 11. Ibid., 4, 8–9, 15–19.

Notes

223

12. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 174–84. 13. Ibid., I: 176, 190. V.M.H.B. 1 (1893): 242–44. 14. Mattie E. E. Parker, ed., North Carolina Charters and Constitutions, 1578–1698 (Raleigh, 1963): 76–89. 15. William Cabell Brown, ‘Draft for the Creation of a Bishoprick in Virginia’, V.M.H.B. 36 (1928): 45–53. This is a translation of a manuscript in the collection of the All Soul’s College library at Oxford University. See also probably a later draft of the Patent granting to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, and his successors, the responsibilities for administering the church in America and the Atlantic and Caribbean islands. This proposed Patent established a bishopric and diocese in Virginia with a cathedral to be fixed at Jamestown. Revisions and comments on the document were provided to the draft Patent by the Attorney General or one of his assistants. Another draft for the proposed bishopric is in the collections of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, Tanner MSS., 447, F-12, Draft Patent for Gilbert Sheldon Archbishop of Canterbury. Two of the more significant differences between the All Soul’s MSS as translated by Brown and the Bodleian Library’s copy of the document is that the Virginia bishop was not granted authority to supervise the church in New England and it also details the sources of financial support for the proposed Virginia bishop. 16. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 183–84. Arthur Lyon Cross, The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (New York, 1902): 89–90. 17. Lambeth Palace Library, London. MSS. S.P.G. Papers. XVII: 135–38. 18. Nelson Waite Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church (Baltimore, 1956): 14–19. Edwin A Gaustad. Historical Atlas of Religion in America (revised edn, New York, 1976): 2. Gaustad notes four Anglican churches in the settlement in 1650. 19. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1675–1676: 435–36. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 122. 20. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1675–1676: 435. 21. Ibid., 435–36. Cal. S.P.Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 121–22. 22. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 117–18. 23. Ibid., 121. 24. Ibid. Babette M. Levy. ‘Early Puritanism in the Southern and Island Colonies’, P.A.A.S. 70 (1960): 204–10. 25. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 121. 26. Ibid., 121–22. 27. Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop: being the life of Henry Compton, 1632–1713, Bishop of London (London, 1956): 250–55. 28. Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–1642 (London, 1886), VII: 314–18. Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus or, the History of the Life and Death of the Most Reverend and Renowned Prelate William by Divine Providence, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1671): 218–22. Jeremy Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Chiefly of England: From the First Planting of Christianity in this Island with a Brief Account of the Affairs of Religion in Ireland (London, 1714), II: 752–53. Cross, The Anglican Episcopate: 12–24. 29. Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson: Bishop of London, 1669–1748: A Study in Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1926): 83–182. 30. Carpenter, Henry Compton: 5–8. 31. Ibid., 10–12. 32. Ibid., 13–14. 33. Ibid., 16.

224

Notes

34. Ibid., 16–19. 35. Ibid., 25–51. Hutton, Charles the Second: 340–41. 36. Carpenter, Henry Compton: 256. Andrew Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds, 1632–1712 (Glasgow, 1951), I: 195. 37. Hutton, Charles the Second: 326–28. Browning, Thomas Osborne, I: 146–84. 38. Mark Goldie, ‘Danby, the Bishops and the Whigs’, in Tim Harris, Paul Seaward and Mark Goldie, eds., The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990): 75–105. 39. Browning, Thomas Osborne, I: 197–99. Carpenter, Henry Compton: 31–33. Anne Whiteman, The Compton Census of 1676: A Critical Edition (Oxford, 1986): xxiv–xxv. 40. John Miller, Charles II (London, 1991): 56–57; 156; 248–52. 41. Carpenter, Henry Compton: 59–61. 42. Ibid., 106–15. 43. Ibid., 78–103. 44. Ibid., 108–39. 45. Carpenter, Henry Compton: 105. David H. Hosford, ‘Bishop Compton and the Revolution of 1688’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23 (1972): 209–18. 46. Ibid., 140–52. 47. Leonard Woods Labaree, Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors, 1670–1776 (New Haven, 1935), II: 482–85. 48. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1710–1711: 560. J.C.T.P., February 1708/9 to March 1714/5: 284, 378. 49. This body was subsequently known as the Council of Trade and Plantations and the Board of Trade and Plantations. 50. Oliver M. Dickerson, American Colonial Government 1696–1765; A Study of the British Board of Trade in Its Relation to the American Colonies Political, Industrial, Administrative (Cleveland, 1912): 123–25, 181–89. Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, 1938), IV: 50–61, 272–73. 51. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 117–18. Darret B. Rutman, ‘The Evolution of Religious Life in Early Virginia’, Lex et Scientia. The International Journal of Law and Science 14 (1978): 197. Darett B. and Anita H. Rutman, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650–1750 (New York, 1984): 24–25. 52. The document is conveniently reprinted in Hugh Hastings, ed., E.R.S.N.Y. I: 693–94. Rutman and Rutman, A Place in Time: 56–7, 125–27. 53. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 469. 54. Labaree, Royal Instructions, II: 484–85. 55. Cal.T.B., 1676–79: 1329–30, 1334. Cal.T.B., 1702: 538, 540–44, 551, 571, 593, 622, 641, 676, 687–89, 691, 700. 56. Gilbert Sheldon quoted in John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, 1991): 47. 57. Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cambridge, 1994): 146. 58. Ibid., 64. 59. C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue, 1660–1688 (Oxford, 1975): 246. Stephen B. Baxter, The Development of the Treasury, 1660–1702 (London, 1957): 13, 183–84. Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage: 76. 60. Chandaman, English Public Revenue: 35–51, 354–55, 358–59, 362–63. 61. Baxter, Development of the Treasury: 186, 253. 62. Cal.T.P., 1720–28: 61–2.

Notes

225

63. S.P.G. MSS Series A, Series B, passim. 64. Cal.T.B., 1679–80: 212–13. Cal.T.P., 1685–89: 923. 65. James B. Bell, ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England Database’, Richard Sewall. 66. Cal.T.B., 1 September 1698 to 31 July 1699: 14, 398. Cal.T.B., 1702: 1052. Dora Mae Clark, The Rise of the British Treasury: Colonial Administration in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1960): 10–11. 67. Cal.T.B.P., 1742–1745: xxxix–xliv. Cal.T.P., January 1704–March 1705: xxii–xxiv. 68. Geoffrey F. A. Best, Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne’s Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the Church of England (Cambridge, 1964). Earlier accounts of the Bounty, such as John Ecton’s A State of the Proceedings of the Corporation of the Governors of the Bounty of Queen Anne, for the Augmentation of the maintenance of the Poor Clergy (London, 1724), and William R. Le Fanu’s Queen Anne’s Bounty: A Short Account of its History and Work (London, 1921), provide no notice of grants to clergymen bound for the colonies. 69. Ethyn Williams Kirby, George Keith (1638–1716) (New York, 1942): 123. 70. Cal.T.B., 1685–1689: 923. 71. Henry W. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Age to the Present Day (Boston, 1882), I: 42–43. 72. Cal.T.B., January 1693 to March 1696: 1227, 1259. Cal.T.B., 1 October 1700 to 31 December 1701: 56. Cal. T. B., 1703: 213. Cal. T. B., August 1714–December 1715: 678. 73. Cal.S.P. Col Ser., 1689–1692: 181. 74. Cal.S.P. Col Ser. August 1717–December 1718: 301. 75. A.P.C.E. Col. Ser., I. 1613–1618: 293. Cal.T.B., 1 September 1698 to 31 July 1699: 48. Cal.T.B., August 1699–September 1700: 402. Cal. T. B., 1 October 1700 to 31 December 1701: 370. Cal. T. P., 1714–1719: 19–20, 223–24. 76. Cal.T.B., 1685–1689: 1409. Cal.T.B., January 1693 to March 1696: 1258, 1261. Cal.T.B., 1 September 1698 to 31 July 1699: 110. Cal.T.B., 1703: 184, 202, 217, 272, 434. Cal.T.B., January 1704 to March 1705: 399. Cal.T.B.P., 1742–1745: 306. Cal.T.P., 1697–1701–2: 172–73. 77. Cal.T.B., 1695–1702: 214. 78. A.P.C.E. Col. Ser., 1613–1680, I: 18–19. Cal.T.P., 1556–7–1696: 470. Cal.T.P., 1697–1701–2: 276. Cal. T. P., 1702–1707: 43. Cal. T. B., 1 September 1698 to 31 July 1699: 382. Cal.T.B., 1702: 56. 79. F.P.P., II: 51–52. Gov. Francis Nicholson to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, Annapolis, 18 Mar. 1695/96. 80. Gloucestershire Record Office, Gloucester, England, MSS D 1799X5, Bishop of London Henry Compton to William Blaythwayt, 1697. I am grateful to Hilary McKee of Oxford for this information. 81. Morgan Dix, A History of Trinity Church in the City of New York (New York, 1898), Part I: 61–81, 134–51, 455–76. Deborah Mathias Gough, Christ Church, Philadelphia: The Nation’s Church in a Changing City (Philadelphia, 1995): 5–18. Foote, King’s Chapel, I: 58–94. 82. C. F. Pascoe, Three Hundred Years of the S.P.G.: An Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701–1900 (London, 1901): 798–800. 83. Cal. T. B., January 1693 to March 1696: 646, 648, 1261. Cal.T.B., January–December 1710: 20. Cal.T.B., January–December 1716: 273. Cal.T.B.P., 1735–1738: 120. 84. F.P.P., 41: 355–56. William Whiston, Cambridge, 9 May 1707, ‘A Proposal for the more effective Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts’.

226

Notes

85. Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Ithaca, 1960): 201–203. 86. Ibid., 254–363. 87. A.P.C.E. Col. Ser., 1680–1720: 435–36. 88. Cal.T.B., January–December, 1710: 52, 341. Richmond P. Bond, Queen Anne’s American King’s (Oxford, 1952): 7–9. 89. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., August 1714–December 1715: 269–70. Bond, Queen Anne’s American King’s: 17–65. 90. James Thomas Flexner, Lord of the Mohawk: A Biography of Sir William Johnson (Boston, 1979): 274, 300. 303. Alexander C. Flick, ed., The Papers of Sir William Johnson (Albany, 1927, 1928): 5: In passim. 6: In passim. 91. Charles Bolton, Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina (Westport, 1982): 104–108.

3

Royal Government, Royal Officials and the Church

1. Ian K. Steele, Politics of Colonial Policy: The Board of Trade in Colonial Administration, 1696–1720 (Oxford, 1968): Chapter 4. Alison G. Olson, ‘The Board of Trade and London-American Interest Groups in the Eighteenth Century’, in The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution, Peter Marshall and Glyn Williams, eds (London, 1980): 33–50. 2. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1696–97: 418. 3. Ibid., 419. 4. David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (Middletown, 1972): 364–66. Lois Green Carr and David William Jordan, Maryland’s Revolution of Government, 1689–1692 (Ithaca, 1974): 146–79. K. G. Davies, ‘The Revolutions in America’, in Robert Beddard, ed. The Revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991): 262–64. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 66–70. Carol van Voorst, The Anglican Clergy in Maryland, 1692–1776 (New York, 1989): 9–14. 5. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., January 1693–May 1696: 593, 611, 627, 636. Carr and Jordan, Maryland’s Revolution of Government: 203–205. Nelson Waite Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church (Baltimore, 1956): 20–25. 6. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., January 1693–May 1696: 593, 611, 627, 636. Van Vroost, Anglican Clergy in Maryland: 16. 7. For the controversy over a successor to Lionel Copley as governor see Christopher T. George, ‘The Feuding Governors: Andros and Nicholson at Odds in Colonial Maryland’, Maryland Historical Magazine 90 (1995): 335–48. 8. Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church: 25–27. 9. Van Vroost, Anglican Clergy in Maryland: 17–19. 10. John Wolfe Lydekker, ‘Thomas Bray (1658–1730), Founder of Missionary Enterprise’ H.M.P.E.C. XII (1943): 186–224. H. P. Thompson, Thomas Bray (London, 1954): 16–20, 22–24, 27–33. Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church: 37. 11. [Samuel Smith], Publick Spirit, illustrated in the Life and Designs of the Reverend Thomas Bray, D. D., late minister of St. Botolph without Aldgate (London, 1746): 8–9. 12. Thompson, Bray: 9–14. 62, 114. 13. A.P.C.E. Col. Ser., 1613–1680, I: 820. 14. Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714 (Oxford, 1891), III: 1228. 15. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1696–97: 419. 16. Thompson, Thomas Bray: 77. 17. Ibid.

Notes

227

18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 15–16. 20. Thomas Bray, Bibliotheca Parochialis: General and Particular, as are more peculiar requested or a Scheme of such Theological Heads both to be well studied by every Pastor of a Parish together with a Catalogue of Books which may be read upon each of those points (London, 1697). A second edition appeared in 1707 vastly expanded from 130 pages to 412 pages. 21. Thompson, Bray: 15–19, 28–29, 54. 22. W. K. Lowther Clarke, The History of the S.P.C.K. (London, 1959): 6–7, 9–14. 23. Thompson, Bray: 38. Lowther Clarke, History of the S.P.C.K.: 77–80. For a full discussion of Bray’s efforts, the content and number of libraries, see Charles T. Laugher’s Thomas Bray’s Grand Design: Libraries of the Church of England in America, 1695–1785 (Chicago, 1973). Samuel Clyde McCulloch, ‘Dr. Thomas Bray’s Commissary Work in London, 1696–1699’, W.M.Q. Third Series. II (1945): 333–48. 24. Van Vroost, Anglican Clergymen in Maryland: 21. Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church: 30–36. [Smith], Publick Spirit: 32–37. 25. Van Vroost, Anglican Clergy in Maryland: 23–24. Laugher, Thomas Bray’s Grand Design: 12–13. 26. Thompson, Bray: 43–49. Laugher, Thomas Bray’s Grand Design: 10–12. Samuel Clyde McCulloch, ‘Dr. Thomas Bray’s Trip to Maryland: A Study in Militant Anglican Humanitarianism’, W.M.Q. Third Series. II (1945): 15–20. 27. Van Vroost, Anglican Clergymen in Maryland: 22. McCulloch, ‘Dr. Bray’s Trip to Maryland’, 21. 28. Thomas Bray, ‘A Memorial representing the present state of religion on the continent of North America’ (London, 1700), conveniently reprinted in Bernard C. Steiner, Rev. Thomas Bray: His Life and Selected Works (Baltimore, 1901): 157–73. McCulloch, ‘Dr. Thomas Bray’s Trip to Maryland’, 21. Laugher, Thomas Bray’s Grand Design: 11–12. 29. The sermon is reprinted in Steiner, Thomas Bray: 99–122. 30. [Smith], Publick Spirit: 29–32. McCulloch, ‘Dr. Thomas Bray’s Trip to Maryland’, 21–23. Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church: 43–44. 31. Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church: 44–47. 32. Thompson, Bray: 52–55. The Acts of Dr. Bray’s Visitation held at Annopolis in Maryland, May 23, 24, 25. Anno. 1700 (London, 1700); Thomas Bray, A Circular Letter to the Clergy of Mary-Land, Subsequent to the late Visitation (no place, 1700). McCulloch, ‘Dr. Thomas Bray’s Trip to Maryland’, 23–26. 33. Michael Garibaldi Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703 (Chapel Hill, 1960): 21–52. 34. Ibid., 48. 35. Ibid., 47–48. 36. Ibid., 53–78. 37. Ibid., 79–97. 38. Ibid., 98–128. 39. Ibid., 79–97. 40. Ibid., 98–115. 41. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 180–81. 42. Henry W. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Age to the Present Day (Boston, 1882), I: 58–83. 43. Hall, Randolph: 115. 44. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714. III: 1228. 45. Foote, King’s Chapel, I: 33–47. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 192–93.

228

Notes

46. John Dunton, ‘John Dunton’s Journal in Massachusetts, 1686’, Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series (Boston, 1846 reprint). II: 106. 47. Halsey M. Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall (New York, 1973), I: 119. 48. Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York, 1984): 74. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 325. 49. Hall, Randolph. 115–70. 50. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 325. 51. Increase Mather, A Brief Discourse Concerning the Unlawfullness of the Common Prayer Worship. And of Laying the Hand on and Kissing the Booke in Swearing [Cambridge, 1686]: 2. 52. K. G. Davies, ‘The Revolutions in America’, in Robert Beddard, ed., The Revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991): 256–60. 53. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 340–48. 54. ‘Episcopal Ministers Address’, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series (Boston, 1838). VII: 192–95. 55. Patricia U. Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York, 1971): 17–26. 56. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 879–80. E. T. Corwin, J. H. Dubbs, J. T. Hamilton, A History of The Reformed Church, Dutch, The Reformed Church, German, and the Moravian Church in the United States (New York, 1895): 109. 57. Morgan Dix, A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York. (New York, 1898), I: 76–79. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 1073–79. 58. Dix, A History of the Parish of Trinity Church, I: 485. 59. John Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses. (Cambridge, 1927), Part I. IV: 447. James B. Bell, ‘Anglican Clergy in Colonial America Ordained by Bishops of London’, P.A.A.S. Vol. 83 (1973): 159. During his tenure Wooley compiled and published a Two Year Journal in New York (1701). 60. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 114–21. 61. Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Churches and the Colonial Clergy of the Middle and Southern Colonies, 1607–1776 (Lancaster, 1938): 18. 62. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 1112, 1114, 1133–34. Jean Paul Jordan, ‘The Anglican Establishment in Colonial New York, 1693–1783’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1971, 59–101. 63. Raymond W. Albright, A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York, 1964): 70. Dix, A History of Trinity Church, I: 93. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 1136–65. 64. Dix, A History of Trinity Church. I: 89–91, 96–107, 481–84. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Cambridge, 1933). IV: 173–79. Bell, ‘Anglican Clergy’, 156. 65. Dix, A History of Trinity Church, I: 145–51. 66. Jordan, ‘The Anglican Establishment in Colonial New York’, 1–58. 67. Hall, Randolph: 179–87. F.P.P., II: 51–52. Gov. Francis Nicholson to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, Annapolis, 18 Mar. 1695/96. 68. Hall, Randolph: 144–61. Ethyn Williams Kirby, George Keith (1638–1716) (New York, 1942): 47–94. 69. Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania 1681–1726 (Boston, 1993): 181–86. 70. Ibid., 198–224. 71. Ibid., 67–83. 72. Ibid., 206–08. 73. Ibid., 214–15. 74. Thompson, Bray: 74. Kirby, George Keith: 113–47. George Keith, A Journal of Travels from New-Hampshire to Cataract, on the continent of North America (London, 1706).

Notes

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

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W. O. B. Allen and Edmund McClure, Two Hundred Years: the History of The Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898 (London, 1898): 31, 33, 37, 60, 66–68. Nash, Quaker Politics: 218, 222. Ibid., 241–42. Ibid., 243–48. Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution: 29. Mary K. Geiter, William Penn (London, 2000): 108, 122. Nash, Quakers and Politics: 205–206. Deborah Mathias Gough, Christ Church, Philadelphia: The Nation’s Church in a Changing City (Philadelphia, 1995): 5–9. F.P.P., II: 51–52. Gov. Francis Nicholson to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, Annapolis, 18 Mar. 1695/96. For several years Christ Church was not on a regular weekly schedule of services until the Yorkshireman Thomas Clayton arrived in 1698 as the first incumbent. He served barely a year before succumbing to yellow fever in the epidemic of 1700. Shortly before his death he wrote that the congregation ‘in less than four years increased from very few to more than five hundred persons’. As quoted in Thompson, Bray: 22. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1700: 606–609. Bonomi, A Factious People: 77. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1699: 542–48. United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D. C., 1960): 756. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1700: 54, 58. Francis Nicholson also visited Newport and passed the same message to the members of the Board of Trade. George C. Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island, 1698–1821 (Newport, 1890): 10–13. Thompson, Bray: 76. David Bethune, a graduate of St. Andrews University, was succeeded by John Lockier in 1702, an alumnus of Trinity College in Cambridge University who served until his death two years later. Another Scot, James Honyman, was assigned by the S. P. G. to the post in 1704, serving until his death in 1750. University of Oxford, Rhodes House Library, MSS Collection of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Thomas Bray’s Account Book, Parts I and II. The bishop of London had ordained all of the men. Bell; ‘Anglican Clergy’, 113, 137, 132. F.P.P., VII: 14–17. Robert Snead to Francis Nicholson (?), Philadelphia, 20 Oct. 1698. Mattie E. E. Parker, ed., North Carolina Charters and Constitutions, 1578–1698 (Raleigh, 1963): 64–65. Ibid., 77, 88, 92, 103, 104, 114. M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill, 1966): 1–6. Wesley Frank Craven, The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607–1689 (Baton Rouge, 1949): 310–59. Parker, North Carolina Charters: 88, 114. Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: 17–18. Ibid., 40–41. Ibid. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1696–97: 459. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1698: 211. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1697–98: 217–18. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1699: 581. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1699: 104. For the history of the church in South Carolina I am indebted to S. Charles Bolton’s excellent book Southern Anglicanism: the Church of England in Colonial South

230

Notes

101.

102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107.

4

Carolina (Westport, 1982): 18. Lawrence Foushee London and Sarah McCulloh Lemmon, The Episcopal Church in North Carolina, 1701–1959 (Raleigh, 1987): 1–3. Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: 75–76. Bolton, Southern Anglicanism: 19. H. P. Thompson, Thomas Bray (London, 1954): 22. [Samuel Smith], Publick Spirit: 13–14. Parker, North Carolina Charters: 202–04. Bolton, Southern Anglicanism: 21–22. Ibid., 22–27. William A. Bultman, ‘The S.P.G. and the French Huguenots in Colonial America’, H.M.P.E.C. 20 (1951): 168–72. Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in New World Society (Cambridge, 1983): 111–20. Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: 86–88. Ibid., 89–90. Bolton, Southern Anglicanism: 28–29. Hall, Randolph: 191–92.

The Royal Governors and Ecclesiastical Duties

1. Oliver M. Dickerson, American Colonial Government 1696–1765: Study of the British Board of Trade (Cleveland, 1912): 22–28. 2. Leonard Woods Labaree, Royal Government (New Haven, 1930): 37–42. 3. Ibid. 4. F.P.P., XI: 1–2. Article 2 of the Instructions to Gov. Sir George Yardley, 19 April 1626. 5. F.P.P., XI: 3–4. Instructions to Sir Francis Wyatt and Sir William Berkeley. 6. Labaree, Royal Government: 8–18. 7. Ibid., 95. 8. Ibid., 115–18. 9. Ibid., 464. Alfred Lyon Cross, The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (New York, 1902): Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5. Dickerson, American Colonial Government 1696–1765: 123, 369. 10. Leonard W. Labaree, ed., Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors, 1670– 1776 (New York, 1935), II: 482–83. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 484–85. 13. Ibid., 486. 14. The instructions were omitted for all the governors of dissenting Massachusetts and from those to the governors of New Hampshire before 1761. The clause in the commission conferring the right of collating to benefices was omitted from all Massachusetts commissions and from those for New Hampshire before 1715. 15. Labaree, Royal Instructions, II: 489–90. 16. Ibid., 487. 17. Ibid., 487–88. 18. Circular instructions were issued to the governors of Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, 28 April 1730, and later in the same year to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North and South Carolina. 19. Cross, The Anglican Episcopate: 25–34. Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson Bishop of London, 1669–1748 (London, 1928): Chapter 10. 20. Ibid., 52. 21. Ibid., 56–58. 22. ‘Papers relating to the Administration of Governor Nicholson’, William G. Stanard, ed. V.M.H.B. VII (1900): 521.

Notes

231

23. Ibid., 531. 24. D.N.B., D.A.B., A.N.B. 25. Stephen Saunders Webb, ‘The Strange Career of Francis Nicholson’, W.M.Q. Third series. 23 (1966): 520–21. 26. At one time Nicholson contributed £41 to the parish at Narragansett and £25 to the church at Marblehead. 27. Stanard, ‘Papers relating to the Administration of Governor Nicholson’, 532. 28. See Appendix A for a list of Colonial Governors who were members of the Society. 29. In 1704 Nicholson contributed £50 to the Society in addition to his annual subscriptions. In 1716 he contributed £60, of which half was designated for the purchase of a headquarters in London for the Society and the balance to be employed to underwrite the initial expense in founding an American bishopric. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-12: 35, 14 February 1717/18. 30. During the period from 21 December 1705, to 21 March 1707, twenty-two meetings of the Society were held, at which Nicholson was present on nineteen occasions, and in 1712 he met with the members on twenty-six of the twenty-eight scheduled sessions. S.P.G. Journal, Vol. 1, 1701/11, 207–77; 21 December 1705; 21 March 1706/07; S.P.G. Journal, Vol. 2, 1710/11–14, 168–270; 15 February 1711/12, 168–70; 16 February 1710/11; 20 February 1712/13, 268–70. 31. S.P.G. Journal, Vol. 2, 1710/11–14, 220–21, 26 September 1712. Mary Lou Lustig, Robert Hunter, 1666–1734, New York’s Augustan Statesman (Syracuse, 1983): 110–11. 32. A copy of the deputation to Francis Nicholson in S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-7: 91–92, 17 October 1712; the Society’s Secretary sent letters to all its missionaries in the colonies requesting them to aid Nicholson in the gathering of the information desired; see S.P.G. MSS., Vols. A-7, 8, 9, passim. 33. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-8: 524–29, Francis Nicholson to Secretary William Taylor, Boston, 1 December 1713. 34. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-9: 352–54, Francis Nicholson to Secretary William Taylor, Boston, 11 May 1714; S.P.G. Journal, Vol. 2, 1710/11–14: 367–72, 30 March 1714. 35. S.P.G. MSS. Vol. A-14: 40–41, a deputation from the Society to General Francis Nicholson, 17 October 1720. 36. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-15: 53, Commissary William T. Bull to Secretary David Humphreys, Charles Town, 20 August 1721. 37. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-16: 73–75, Francis Nicholson to Secretary David Humphreys, Charles Town, 6 July 1722. 38. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-17: 36–41, Memorial of the Rev. William T. Bull to the Society, 16 August 1723. 39. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-21: 59–66, a copy of Francis Nicholson’s will. 40. S.P.G. MSS. Vol., A-22: 210–12, a certificate and other papers relating to Francis Nicholson’s lands in Annapolis, Maryland, attested to 3 April 1729. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-23: 151–53, papers concerning Francis Nicholson’s estate in Maryland enclosed in the Rev. James Henderson’s letter of 27 October 1730. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. A-22: 166–67, the Rev. James Blair to Secretary David Humphreys, Williamsburg, 9 June 1729. 41. Lustig, Hunter: 18–38. Walter Havighurst, Alexander Spotswood: Portrait of a Governor (Williamsburgh, 1967): 4. Leonidas Dodson, Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Colonial Virginia, 1710–1722 (Philadelphia, 1932): 5. 42. Hunter was exposed to attacks and criticism from the Anglican clergy in New York and New Jersey, who wanted him removed from office, particularly from Commissary William Vesey, minister of Trinity Church in New York City, while

232

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

5

Notes Spotswood battled the clergy and vestries over the right of the governor to induct parsons into parishes. Lustig, Robert Hunter: 106–11. Dodson, Spotswood: 192–201. Lustig, Hunter: 96. Ibid., 218–19. Ibid., 106–10. Morgan Dix, A History of Trinity Church in the City of New York (New York, 1898), Part I: 180–94. Dodson, Spotswood: 72. Ibid., 72–73. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 85. Ibid., 84–85, 110–11. For a systematic review of this controversy see Dodson, Alexander Spotwood: 192–201, and George McLaren Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Political Conditions under which It Grew (Philadelphia, 1947), I: 338–42, 344–53. Ibid., 195. Jere R. Daniell, Colonial New Hampshire; A History (Millwood, N.Y., 1981): 205–15. Also his Experiment in Republicanism: New Hampshire Politics and the American Revolution, 1741–1784 (Cambridge, 1970): 3–33. Daniell, Colonial New Hampshire: 217–44. Daniell, Experiment in Republicanism: 35–91. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1713–1721 (Boston, 1942). VI: 113–33. Daniel, Colonial New Hampshire: 191–215. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, John Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, 1767–1775 (Cambridge, 1921): 3–6. Paul W. Wilderson, Governor John Wentworth & the American Revolution: The English Connection (Hanover, 1994): 61–91. Shipton, Harvard Graduates, 1713–1721. VI: 119. John F. Looney, ‘The King’s Representative: Benning Wentworth, Colonial Governor, 1741–1767’, unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Lehigh University, 1961. Mayo, John Wentworth: 109–13. Wilderson, John Wentworth: 61–91. Mayo, John Wentworth: 15–17. Franklin B. Dexter, ed., Diary of David McClure, Doctor of Divinity, 1748–1820 (New York, 1899): 149. Daniel, Colonial New Hampshire: 217.44. Shipton, Harvard Graduates, 1751–1755 (Boston, 1965). XIII: 650–81. Wilderson, John Wentworth: 170. F.P.P., VI: 106–09. Gov. John Wentworth to Joseph Harrison, Wentworth House, 24 Sept. 1769. F.P.P., VI: 114–19. Gov. John Wentworth to Bishop Richard Terrick, Portsmouth, 28 April 1770. Shipton, Harvard Graduates. XIII: 662. Wilderson, John Wentworth: 170–71. Shipton, Harvard Graduates. XIII: 669. Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London, 1759, 1760, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1765): in passim.

The Commissaries: Deputies of the Bishop of London

1. Leonard W. Labaree, Royal Instructions to Colonial Governors, 1671–1776 (New Haven, 1935), II: 482–85. 2. Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop: Being the Life of Henry Compton, 1632–1713, Bishop of London (London, 1956): 78–103, 124–25, 140–52. The royal instructions

Notes

3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

233

to the governors of the continental American colonies were not amended to acknowledge the authority of the three bishops. In New York province a certificate was needed from the Archbishop of Canterbury for a clergyman to officiate during this period, but the requirement was not duplicated in the other colonies. Alfred Lyon Cross, The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (New York, 1902): 8–17. For a more recent assessment of the bishop of London’s authority for the church in the colonies see J. H. Bennett, ‘English Bishops and Imperial Jurisdiction 1660–1725’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church (hereinafter referred to as H.M.P.E.C.). 32 (1963): 175–188. Irene J. Churchill, Canterbury Administration (London, 1933), I: 54, 41–49, 611. Colin Morris, ‘The Commissary of the Bishop in the Diocese of Lincoln’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History. X (1959): 55–56, 63. Morris notes that the work of the commissaries cannot be definitely illustrated since the origin and purpose of that position varied in different dioceses and with the passing of time. Edmund Gibson, writing early in the eighteenth century, declared that according to tradition and canon law, commissaries usually exercised spiritual discipline and delivered the visitation articles. Edmund Gibson, Codex juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani: or the Statutes, Constitutions, Canons, Rubricks and Articles, of the Church of England, methodically digested under their proper heads, Second edition (Oxford, 1761), II: 959, 962–63. Under Canon 60 of the 1603 laws of the Church of England, bishops were to continue the ancient custom of the Christian church and hold visitations to govern and correct offenses in parishes and dioceses. Robert Phillimore, The Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England (London, 1895), II: 1049–53. Ibid., Canon 137, 1053; Canon 119, 1956. Commissaries of the Bishops of London in Colonial America: New England: Roger Price, 1729–48; New York: William Vesey, 1714–46; Henry Barclay, 1748; Pennsylvania: Archibald Cummings, 1732–41; Robert Jenney, 1743–48; Maryland: Thomas Bray, 1696–?; Jacob Henderson, to Western Shore, 1716–23; to entire colony, 1730–35; Christopher Wilkinson, to Eastern Shore, 1716–23. Virginia: James Blair, 1689–1713; 1714–23; 1729–43; William Dawson, 1743–48; 1750–52; Thomas Dawson, 1752–61; William Robinson, first appointed 18 April 1761 by Bishop Sherlock; reappointed 28 November 1761 by Bishop Hayter, 1761–67; James Horrocks, appointed to ‘Act in Character of a Commissary’, by Bishop Terrick in 1768, 1768– 72; William Willie, appointed Acting Commissary in 1771 (Virginia Gazette, 13 June 1771); John Camm, 1772–76? upon endorsement of the Bishop of London on the report of the death of Horrocks. On the recommendation of the Privy Council Camm was made a member of the Virginia Council: A.P.C.Col. Ser., V: 575. On Camm’s brief appointment, see Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 365–67, 386. South Carolina: Gideon Johnston, 1707–16; William Treadwell Bull, 1717–23; Alexander Garden, 1729–48. A copy of Bishop Henry Compton’s Latin commission to the Reverend James Blair translated into English is conveniently found in Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 277–78. A copy of Bishop Gibson’s commission to the Reverend William Dawson, Fulham Palace Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, XII: 309, is as follows (Fulham Palace Papers hereinafter referred to as F.P.P.): Edmund by divine permission Bishop of London to our beloved in Christ William Dawson Master of Arts greeting We do by these presents give and grant to you in whose learning and fidelity we fully confide, full powers and authority to

234

Notes exercise spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the colony of Virginia in America, according to the tenor of a commission of His Majesty King George the Second under his great seal bearing the date the twenty ninth day of April in the first year of his reign, and not otherwise or in any other manner and we do hereby make and constitute upon our commissary during pleasure for the purposes in the said commission contained and no other. In Witness whereof we have caused our episcopal seal to be hereunto affixed, this eighteenth day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty three and in the twenty first of our translation. EDM. LONDON.

10. Edmund Gibson in his study of the canon law of the Church of England, states that ‘the same persons [Chancellors, Commissaries, and Officials] have full power to transfer the remainder of the work, to such hands, and in such measures, as they shall judge to be most conducive to the main end’. Codex, I: xxii. 11. Labaree, Royal Instructions, II: 490. 12. S.P.G. MSS., A-6: CXXIV, Gideon Johnston to the Secretary, Charles Town, 20 April 1711. 13. Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Age to the Present Day (Boston, 1881), I: 387–90. 14. ‘Letters to the Bishop of London from the Commissaries in South Carolina’, George W. Williams, ed., in The South Carolina Historical Magazine 78 (1977): 1–31, 120–47; 213–42, 286–317. 15. Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker: Aspects of English Church History, 1660–1768 (Cambridge, 1959): 15–16. 16. Lincoln Record Society, Speculum Dioeceseos Lincolniensis Sub Episcopis Gul: Wake et Edm: Gibson A.D. 1705–1723, R.E.G. Cole, ed. (Lincoln, 1913), 4: ii–iv. 17. Edmund Gibson, Of Visitations Parochial and General: being the Charges, delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Surrey (London, 1717); The Charge of Edmund Lord Bishop of Lincoln, at his Primary Visitation, in the year 1717 (n.p., 1717); Directions given by Edmund Lord Bishop of London to the Clergy of his Diocese, in the year 1724 (London, 1724); Letters and Papers of Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Deposit C.238, 28–36, 1724 Visitation Returns; Deposit C.246.16; Articles of Visitations and Enquiry concerning Matters Ecclesiastical, Exhibited to the Ministers, Church-wardens, and Side-men of every Parish within the Diocese of London, At The Primary Visitation Of The Right Reverend Father in God, Edmund Lord Bishop of that Diocese, In the Year of Our Lord 1724 (London, 1724). Sykes, in his biography of Gibson, does not refer to the primary visitation of London Diocese in 1724, nor does he link the queries sent to men in the Plantations with similar questions circulated in London at that time. He refers only to Gibson’s 1741 Visitation of the London Diocese. Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London 1669–1748; A Study in Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1926). 18. Cross, The Anglican Episcopate: 55–57. For a reprinted text of the Commission, see Transactions, 1897–1898, Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston, 1902), V: 112–15; Collections, Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston, 1913), II: 341–53. 19. My compilation of the number, dates, and agendas of visitation proceedings is based on correspondence between colonial clergymen and the bishops of London and other church officials available in the Fulham Palace Papers at the Lambeth Palace Library in London, and in the papers of the United Society for the Propagation

Notes

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

235

of the Gospel (formerly known as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts) deposited at the Rhodes House Library at the University of Oxford. New England – 1743; New York – 1718, 1748; Pennsylvania – 1743; Maryland – 1700, 1730, 1731; Eastern Shore of Maryland – 1717, 1718, 1722, 1724; Western Shore of Maryland – 1717, 1718, 1720; Virginia – 1690, 1700; South Carolina – 1708, 1729, 1730, 1731, 1735, 1736, 1739, 1740. F.P.P., II: 142–59, ‘A Journal containing the Acts of Dr. Bray’s Visitation as Commissary of Bishop Compton, Annapolis, Thursday, May 23, 1700’. The charge, which referred to an indiscretion during Tubman’s long-past undergraduate days at Queen’s College, Oxford, however, was never brought before an ecclesiastical court. Edith E. MacQueen, ‘The Commissary in Colonial Maryland’, Maryland Historical Magazine. 25 (1930): 190–206. F.P.P., II: 230–31, the Rev. Christopher Wilkinson to Bishop John Robinson, St. Paul’s in Chester River, Maryland, 30 July 1717. Edmund Gibson, The Bishop of London’s Pastoral Letter to the People of his Diocese; Particularly, to those of the two great Cities of London and Westminster. Occasion’d by some late Writings in favor of Infidelity (London, 1728); The Bishop of London’s Second Pastoral Letter to the People of his Diocese; Particularly, to those of the two great Cities of London and Westminster. Occasion’d by some late Writings, in which it is asserted, ‘That Reason is a sufficient Guide in Matters of Religion, without the Help of Revelation’ (London, 1730); Bishop of London’s Third Pastoral Letter to the People of his Diocese, Particularly, to those of the Two great Cities of London and Westminster. Occasion’d by the Suggestions of Infidels against the Writings of the New Testament, consider’d as a Divine Rule of Faith and Manners (London, 1731); The Charge of Edmund, Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy of his Diocese; in his visitation Begun in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, the 28th day of May 1730. Concerning the proper Methods of Opposing and Defeating the present Attempts of Infidels against the Christian religion (London, 1731). F.P.P., III: 134–139-a, A visitation of the clergy of the Eastern Shore, 24 June 1730; 139-b–141, A visitation of the clergy of the Western Shore, 15 July 1730. F.P.P., IX: 254–55, the Rev. Alexander Garden to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Charles Town, 20 April 1731. Edmund Gibson, Two Letters of the Lord Bishop of London; The First, To the Masters and Mistresses of Families in the English Plantations abroad; Exhorting them to Encourage and Promote the Instruction of their Negroes in the Christian Faith (London, 1727); The Second, To the Missionaries there; Directing them to distribute the said letter, and Exhorting them to give their Assistance towards the Instruction of the Negroes within their several Parishes (London, 1727). F.P.P., III: 151–152a, Eastern Shore visitation at Oxford, 16 June 1731; 152b, Western Shore visitation at Annapolis, 21 July 1731. Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker: 19. Ibid. Parke Rouse, Jr., James Blair of Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1971): 39–42. Under Canon Law 128 the bishop’s deputy had the authority to appoint a ‘substitute or surrogate’, in distant parts of his jurisdiction for such purposes. Blair named Patrick Smith, who had officiated at his wedding, to serve in the counties south of the James River; Samuel Eburne of Bruton Parish at Middle Plantation, later named Williamsburg, for the peninsula parishes between the York and James rivers, along with the Eastern Shore. For Gloucester, Middlesex, and part of New Kent counties, Blair tapped Duell Pead of Christ Church in Middlesex County. John Farnifold of Fairfield

236

30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

Notes Parish in Northumberland was responsible for the northern neck, between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 280–87. Rouse, James Blair: 37–42. F.P.P., XI: 221–22, the Rev. James Blair to Bishop John Robinson, Williamsburg, 18 November 1714; ibid., XII: 3–4, the Rev. James Blair to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Williamsburg, 10 February 1723/24. The commissary presented a similar summary of his judicial rule to Bishop Gibson. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 287–88. Brydon views the failure of the Virginia colony to embrace ecclesiastical courts as a harsh rebuke to Blair. He declares that since the bishop of London had no legal authority, by act of Parliament, in the colonies, neither did his commissary. I take a different position on this point based on the crown’s privilege to initiate administrative procedures, grant royal instructions to the governors on ecclesiastical affairs, and to grant to Bishop Compton and his successors commissions for the jurisdiction of the church in the provinces. As more is known today of the administrative role of the office of the commissary in the medieval and early modern English church it is possible to consider a broader interpretation of the role of the office in the eighteenth century. The commissaries in England were not ‘halfbishops’ with all the duties and responsibilities of a bishop except those which consecration alone could confer nor should such associations be transferred to the deputies in the colonies. These officers had certain defined obligations conferred by the bishop and other duties that had evolved with the historical traditions of their office. Blair operated, probably from personal observation and experience in England, well within the usual pattern of the English commissarial office, in urging church courts. The point at which he was out of step was in failing to recognize the unsympathetic attitude of the colonists in Virginia toward ecclesiastical courts, a point of view consistent with the criticisms of clergy and laity towards the courts in England. During the colonial period four court sessions were held in South Carolina, 1729, 1731, 1736, and 1740; and one session in Virginia in 1745. F.P.P., XIII: 45–46, the Rev. William Dawson to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Wlliamsburgh, 15 July 1751. Philip A. Bruce, ed. ‘Virginia under Governor Gooch’, V.M.H.B. III (1895): 116. Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Reverend George Whitefield (New York, 1877), I: 354–55; 357. William V. Davis, George Whitefield’s Journals (1737–1741). To which is prefixed his ‘Short Account’ (1746) and ‘Further Account’ (1747) (Gainesville, 1969): 397–98. George Whitefield’s Journals (London, 1960): 400–03. Tyerman, Whitefield: 357–59. David Smith, ‘George Whitefield as Inter-Confessional Evangelist’, unpublished D. Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1992: 275–95. George Whitefield’s Journals (London, 1960): 401. Several months later Garden published his letters in a pamphlet, Six letters to the Rev. George Whitefield, reciting the charges against the accused revivalist that he had made at their meeting. The commissary claimed that the Church of England did teach that salvation came through faith, but the faith had to be ‘true and lively’ and therefore it must produce ‘good Fruits or Works’, which were a ‘necessary Condition’ of justification but not a ‘meritorious Cause’. Roderic Hall Pierce, ‘George Whitefield and His Critics’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1961: 48. Whitefield Journal (1960), VII: 439. 6 July, 1740. Tyerman, Whitefield: 396, prints in full the text of Garden’s warrant to Whitefield.

Notes

237

40. The qualifications stipulated by Canon Law 123 for a judge of an ecclesiastical court judge included that a judge must be not less than ‘twenty-six years old, learned in civil and ecclesiastical laws, at least a Master of Arts or Bachelor of Law graduate, reasonably well practised in the law, well affected and zealously bent to religion, and who has taken the Oath of Supremacy and subscribes to the Articles of Religion’. The members of the ecclesiastical court were: Alexander Garden, born ca. 1685, Scotland; King’s College, Aberdeen, M. A., 1707; D. D., 1726; St. Philip’s Church, Charles Town, 1719–53; Commissary, 1726–48. William Guy, born Nottinghamshire; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, A. B., 1694/95; St. Philip’s Church, Charles Town, 1711, 1713, 1716–17; St. Helena’s Church, Beaufort, 1713–17; St. Andrew’s, on the Ashley River near Charles Town, 1719–51. Timothy Millechamp, born 1696, Abdon, Salop; University College, Oxford, A. B., 1718; St. James Parish, at Goose Creek, 1732–46; returned to England, Colisbourne, Gloucestershire. William Orr, born, Ireland; A.M.; Presbyterian minister, New Castle, Delaware, before 1732; Lower Octorara Church, West Nottingham, Maryland; ordained Church of England, 1736; St. Philip’s Church, Charles Town, 1736–41; St. Paul’s Parish, Colleton, 1741–44; St. Helena’s Parish, Beaufort, 1746–47; St. John’s Parish, Colleton, 1750–55. Stephen Roe, born 1704, Kilford, Tipperary, Ireland; Trinity College, Dublin, A.B., 1726; A.M., 1729; St. George’s Parish, Dorchester, 1736–41; King’s Chapel, Boston, Mass., 1741–44. 41. Tyerman, Whitefield: 398–400, prints the full text of Garden’s order of suspension of Whitefield from all ministerial duties in the colony of South Carolina. 42. George Whitefield, The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, A M. (London, 1771). Letter to Mr. G. L. [Philadelphia], Charles Town, 10 July 1740, I: 200–01. 43. S.P.G. MSS., Vol. B-9: No. 136, the Rev. Stephen Roe to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, 15 Sept. 1741. Besides the Whitefield case Garden reported to Sherlock that he had begun proceedings against three clergymen: John Wintely, Thomas Morritt, and John Fulton. Wintely was charged with ‘frantick and immoral behaviour’ as well as drunkenness; Morritt was accused by his hopelessly divided parish with devoting too much time to trading and planting; both men resigned their posts rather than face a trial. Fulton, charged with habitual drunkenness, was brought to trial, found guilty, and suspended from serving his parish for two years. In fact Fulton did not officiate in a church again. 44. Library of Congress, Papers Relating to the Rev. Charles Green, Truro Parish, Fairfax County, Virginia, 1745–49: The Rev. William Dawson to the Rev. Charles Green, Williamsburgh, 4 May 1745. 45. Ibid., The Rev. Charles Green to the Rev. William Dawson, Truro Parish, 15 September 1745. 46. Ibid., passim. 47. Ibid., passim. 48. F.P.P., XIII: 45–46, the Rev. William Dawson to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, William and Mary College, 15 July 1751. 49. F.P.P., VII: 314–15. Robert Jenney to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Philadelphia, 23 May 1751. 50. Ibid. 51. Labaree, Royal Instructions, II: 484–85. 52. F.P.P., XIII: 240–41, Gov. Robert Dinwiddie to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Williamsburg, 12 September 1757. 53. Rouse, James Blair: 80–95. Besides his stipend from the College of William and Mary and from Bruton Parish Church, Blair also received income from his service

238

Notes

59. 60.

as a member of the Provincial Council and as Deputy Auditor. See ‘Appointment of James Blair as a Councillor’, V.M.H.B. XXII (1914): 29. Ibid., ‘Commission Pro-Tem of James Blair as Deputy Auditor’, XVII (1909): 41–42. Rouse, James Blair: 101–02. F.P.P., XI: 34–51, A Memorial concerning Sir Edmund Andros, Governor of Virginia, 1697, by the Rev. James Blair. Blair also attacked other areas of Andros’ colonial administration, in a document entitled, ‘A short character of Sir Edmund Andros’ conduct concerning the militia, General Court, Council, General Assembly, Revenue, good neighborhood with other government, obedience to the King’s instructions and private conversation relating to the Government of Virginia’. [1697] F.P.P., XI: 52–53. F.P.P., XI: 54–79, ‘A true account of a conference at Lambeth, 27 December 1697’. The document is not in the handwriting of either Tenison, Compton, or Blair. Quite possibly a secretary was present noting the discussion. Rouse, James Blair: 96–116. F.P.P., XI: 123–24, the Rev. James Blair to Bishop Henry Compton, Williamsburg, 13 July 1702. Rouse, James Blair: 128–29. F.P.P., XI: 125–26, Gov. Francis Nicholson to Bishop Henry Compton, Virginia, Kikotan, 22 July 1702. F.P.P., XI: 170–71, Clergy of Virginia in Convention to Bishop Henry Compton, Williamsburg, 25 August 1703. Rouse, James Blair: 136, 148–51. Rouse, James Blair: 32–37; 267–69. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 279.

6

Clerical Incomes: Provincial Establishments

54. 55.

56.

57.

58.

1. Bruce E. Steiner, ‘New England Anglicanism: A Genteel Faith?’ W.M.Q. Third series. 27 (1970): 122–35. 2. Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956): 77–78. Clara Ann Bowler, ‘The Litigious Career of William Cotton, Minister’, V.M.H.B. 86 (1978): 282–94. 3. W. W. Hening, Virginia Statutes at Large (Richmond, 1809), I: 159–60. 4. Ibid., 220. 5. Ibid., 240–43. 6. Ibid., 328. 7. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia 1695–1696, 1696–1697, 1698, 1699, 1700–1702, H. R. McIlwaine, ed. (Richmond, 1913): 94, 98–99, 100–102. 8. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia 1727–1734, 1736–1740, H. R. McIlwaine, ed. (Richmond, 1910): 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 40, 52. 9. F.P.P., XI: 305–308, the Rev. Alexander Forbes to Lt. Gov. Hugh Drysdale, Virginia, 9 May 1723. 10. F.P.P., XII: 188–89, Lt. Gov. William Gooch to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Williamsburg, 12 August 1732. 11. James B. Bell, ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England, 1607–1783 Database’. 12. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia 1727–1734, 1736–1740: 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 40, 52. 13. Vertrees J. Wyckoff, Tobacco Regulation in Colonial Maryland (Baltimore, 1936): 140–46. 14. Ibid., 151–52; F.P.P., III: 143–44, The Case of the Clergy in Maryland, 1730. 15. Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1960), II: 751–819. Bernhard Knollenberg, Origin of the American Revolution: 1759–1766 (New York, 1960): 53–64.

Notes

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

239

Rhys Isaac, ‘Religion and Authority: Problems of the Anglican Establishment in Virginia in the Era of the Great Awakening and the Parson’s Cause’, W.M.Q. Third series. XXX (1973): 3–36. Bernard Bailyn, Pamphlets of the American Revolution: 1750–1776 (Cambridge, 1965), I: 293–99. Thad W. Tate, ‘The Coming of the Revolution in Virginia: Britain’s Challenge to Virginia’s Ruling Class, 1763–1776’, W.M.Q. Third Series. XIX (1962): 333–43. F.P.P., XIII: 210–11, Clergy comments on a Bill which passed both Houses of Virginia Assembly, November 1755. F.P.P., XIII: 202–209, A Deputation of Seven Clergymen to the Bishop of London, Virginia, 29 November 1755. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 756–57. For a useful and detailed analysis of Kay’s case, see Rhys Isaac, ‘Religion and Authority:’ 8–9. George MacLaren Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Political Conditions under which it Grew (Philadelphia, 1952), II: 263–65. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 756–64. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 278. Isaac, ‘Religion and Authority’, 13–14. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 786. F.P.P., XIII: 202–209, A Deputation of Seven Clergymen to the Bishop of London, Virginia, 29 November 1755. Ibid., XIII: 210–11, Clergy comments on a Bill which passed both Houses of Virginia Assembly, November 1755. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II; 784–86. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 296–97. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 786–88. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 301. Richard Bland, A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia, in which the Conduct of the GeneralAssembly is vindicated, Against the Reflexions contained in a Letter to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, from the Lord Bishop of London (Williamsburg, 1760): iii–vi. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 756–97. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 301–302. Landon Carter, A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord B[isho]p of L[ondo]n. Occasioned by the Letter of his Lordship’s to the L[or]ds of Trade, on the Subject of the Act of Assembly passed in the Year 1758, intituled, An Act to enable the Inhabitants of this Colony to discharge their publick Dues, &c. in Money for the ensuing Year. From Virginia. (Williamsburg, 1759?). Isaac, ‘Religion and Authority:’ 17–18. Richard Bland, A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia. John Camm, A Single and Distinct View of the Act, Vulgarly entituled, The Two-penny Act: Containing An Account of its beneficial and wholesome Effects in York-Hampton Parish (Annapolis, 1763). Landon Carter, The Rector Detected: Being a just Defence of the Twopenny Act, Against the Misrepresentation of the Reverend John Camm, Rector of York-Hampton, in his Single and Distinct View. Containing also a plain Confutation of his several Hints, as a Specimen of the Justice and Charity of Colonel Landon Carter (Williamsburg, 1764). John Camm, A Review of the Rector Detected or the Colonel Reconnoitred (Williamsburg, 1764). [Richard Bland], Colonel Dismounted: or the Rector Vindicated. In a Letter addressed to His Reverence. Containing a Dissertation upon the Constitution of the Colony. By Common Sense (Williamsburg, 1764). John Camm, Critical Remarks on a Letter ascribed to Common Sense containing an attempt to prove that the said Letter is an Imposition on Common Sense. With a Dissertation on Drowsiness, as the Cruel Cause of that Imposition (Williamsburg, 1765). Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 807–14. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 302; 309–10. Isaac, ‘Religion and Authority:’ 19–21. Morton, Colonial Virginia, II: 814–19. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II: 302.

240

Notes

34. For the Quaker’s petition to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, see William S. Perry, ed. Historical Collections relating to the American Colonial Church (Hartford, 1878), IV: 4–7. 35. Archives of Maryland (Baltimore, 1899). XIX: 426–30. 36. N. J. G. Pounds, A History of the English Parish (Cambridge, 2000): 210–11. 37. Perry, Historical Collections, IV: 9–10. 38. F.P.P., II: 100–103, Report of the Clergy Conference at Annapolis, 14 May 1698. 39. Ibid. John J. McCusker notes in Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1978) that in 1702 £111.11 Maryland Hard Currency was the equivalent of £100 sterling: 197. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. The men below each held two livings returning the following incomes: the Rev. John Leach, £93.16s; the Rev. Richard Sewell, £67.2s; the Rev. Edward Topp, £44.2s; the Rev. George Trotter, £67.6s; the Rev. George Tubman, £69.6s. 42. S.P.G. MSS., A-6: CVII, the Rev. Alexander Adams to Bishop Henry Compton, Stepney Parish, Somerset County, 2 July 1711. 43. Aubrey C. Land, ‘Economic Base and Social Structure: The Northern Chesapeake in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Economic History. XXV (1965): 643. 44. Lawrence H. Gipson, The British Empire Before the Revolution (Caldwell, 1936), II: 71. 45. West Chester, New York, Richmond, and Queens Counties. 46. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 1076–79. 47. The value of colonial currency to sterling fluctuated during the eighteenth century. Ranging from £155 to £100 in 1709, £179.33 to £100 in 1750, and £171.67 to £100 in 1775. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America: 163–65. 48. E.R.S.N.Y., II: 1077. F.P.P., XLI: 93–95, 107–13, 118. Eight New York clergymen’s replies to Bishop Gibson’s 1724 Queries regarding the state of the church in the colonies confirm the amount of money received by the ministers under the terms of the provincial act of establishment of the church. 49. According to Leslie Van Horn Brock the relationship of South Carolina currency to English sterling was £161 to £100. Therefore the colonial currency salary of the minister of St. Philip’s in Charles Town was about £100 sterling while the £50 colonial currency stipends of country parsons was the equivalent of about £35 sterling. Leslie Van Horn Brock, ‘The Currency of the American Colonies, 1700–1764: A Study in Colonial Finance and Imperial Relations’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1941: 8. 50. F.P.P., IX: 3–10, Church Act of South Carolina 1706. The value of the South Carolina livings based on the 1708 rate of exchange of colonial currency to sterling of 161:100, indicates that the income of the incumbent at Charles Town was worth about £93 sterling annually, while the five rural parishes carried stipends worth nearly £26 sterling per year. Of course when the incomes of four rural parishes were increased twofold in 1709 the sterling value of the livings doubled too. For the schedule of the rate of exchange of colonial currency to sterling in several colonies in 1708 and the years following, see Curtis Putnam Nettels, ‘The Money Supply of the American Colonies before 1720’, University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History (Madison, 1934). XX: 248. 51. Richard J. Hooker, ed., The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: the Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant (Chapel Hill, 1953): xiii–xvi. 52. Ibid., 91.

Notes

241

53. C.R.Ga., XVIII: 258–72. See also Reba Carolyn Strickland, Religion and the State in Georgia in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1939): Chapter III. John J. McCusker notes that Georgia’s currency was effectively sterling, £100 to £100. Money and Exchange in Europe and America: 227–28. 54. The value of North Carolina currency to sterling fluctuated widely during the eighteenth century from £650 to £100 in 1731, to £133.33 to £100 in 1750, and from £175 to £100 in 1775. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America: 217–19. 55. Alan D. Watson, ‘The Anglican Parish in Royal North Carolina, 1729–1775’, H.M.P.E.C. 48 (1979): 310. 56. C.R.N.C., II: 41–44.

7

A Financial Lifeline from London: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

1. Patrick Gordon, Geograph Anatomized: or, a compleat Geographical Grammer. Being a short and exact analysis of the whole body of modern geography, after a new, plain and easie method whereby any person may in a short time attain the knowledge of that most noble and useful science, Seventh edition (London, 1716): Preface. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. Edward Carpenter, Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury: His Life and Times (London, 1948): 344–55. 4. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1702: 314–15, 323. 5. Collections under Royal Letters were authorized in 1711, 1714, 1718, 1741, 1751, and 1779. 6. The towns were: Exeter, Bristol, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Plymouth, Bideford, Barnstaple, Whitehaven, and Liverpool. 7. For a detailed presentation of the S.P.G’.s expenditures to missions in each province between 1701 and 1783, see Appendix C. This study was compiled from data taken from the Account Books of the Society. 8. John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1978): passim. 9. Lincoln Record Society, Speculum Dioecesos Lincolniensis sub Episcopis Gul: Wake et Edm. Gibson A.D. 1705–1723, R. E. G. Cole, ed. (Lincoln, 1913). For an excellent micro-study of the pay and perquisites of English clergy, see Noreen Vickers, Parson’s Pence: The Finances of 18th Century North Yorkshire Clergymen (Hull, 1994). 10. John Ecton, Thesaurus Rerum Ecclesiasticarum. Being an Account of the Valuations of All the Ecclesiastical Benefices In the Several Dioceses in England and Wales, As they now stand chargeable with, or lately were discharged from, the Payment of First-Fruits and Tenths, Second edition (London, 1754): 388–414. Such relatively up-to-date valuations are only supplied for Salisbury. Miss Anne Whiteman informs me that they closely follow similar valuations to be found among the Diocesan Records at Salisbury, dating from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Thomas Stackhouse. The Miseries and Great Hardships of the Inferior Clergy in and about London: And a Modest Plea for Their Rights and Better Usage. In a Letter to a Right Reverend Prelate (London, 1737): 90–178. Francis G. James, ‘Clerical Incomes in Eighteenth Century England’, H.M.P.E.C. 18 (1949): 311–25. A. Tindall Hart, Clergy and Society, 1600–1800 (London, 1968): 65–71. William Gibson, Church, State and Society, 1760–1850 (London, 1994): 28–30. 11. See Appendix C.

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Notes

12. I have gleaned these financial details from the Society’s published Annual Reports, 1702–84 and from its Account Books deposited in the Rhodes House Library at the University of Oxford. 13. Allowances were also continued during the duration of the war for the clergy who fled to Canada or England or until they found another living. 14. S.P.G. Journals: passim. 15. Donald Richard Friary, ‘The Architecture of the Anglican Church in the Northern Colonies: A Study of Religious, Social, and Cultural Expression’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1971. 16. S.P.G. MSS., B-1: 224, the Rev. Samuel Johnson to Secretary David Humphreys, Stratford, 20 September 1727. 17. F.P.P., I: 254, the Rev. Henry Caner to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Fairfield, 6 November 1732. 18. F. P. P., VI: 194, the Rev. John Miln to Bishop Edmund Gibson, New Jersey, 19 June 1736. S.P.G. MSS., A-4: LXXI, the Rev. Thomas Crawford to Secretary Chamberlain, Dover, 31 August 1708. William S. Perry, ed. Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church (Hartford, 1870), II: 260. S.P.G. MSS., B-7: 187, the Rev. John Pugh to Secretary David Humphreys, Appoquinimink, 28 November 1738. MSS. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Rev. William Beckett to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, 29 March 1742. S.P.G. MSS., B-9: 179, the Rev. George Ross to the Rev. Robert Jenney, New Castle, 17 September 1743. S.P.G. MSS., B-10: 157, the Rev. Levi Durand to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, South Carolina, 29 December 1741. 19. F.P.P., XXXVI: 54–58, A Survey of the S.P.G. Incomes in America, 1 July 1724. According to McCusker, the value of colonial currency to sterling in 1720 was £162.92 to £100. Money and Exchange in Europe and America: 163. 20. S.P.G. MSS., B-11: 36, the Rev. Samuel Johnson to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, Stratford, 30 September 1743. 21. A.P.C.Col.Ser., 1613–1680, I: 820. 22. On 24 November 1606, both Hakluyt and Hunt were granted a dispensation to hold livings in England and Virginia. Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown voyages under the first charter, 1606–1609: documents relating to the foundation of Jamestown and the history of the Jamestown Colony up to the departure of Captain John Smith, last president of the Council of Virginia under the first charter (London, 1968), I: 63–64. 23. Price displayed the transport habits of an English country gentleman with his chaise drawn by a horse in Boston and at his country house in Hopkinton. Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day (Boston, 1882), I: 421, 431. 24. F.P.P., VI: 3–4. Roger Price to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Hopkinton, 19 April 1751; ibid., VI: 15–16. Roger Price to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Boston, 16 (Month?) 1751; ibid., VI: 21–22. Roger Price to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Boston, 14 May 1752. Thomas Sherlock, Some Considerations upon Pluralities, Non-Residence, and Salaries of Curates (London, 1737): 15–21. Gibson, Church, State and Society: 19–25. 25. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Boston, 1942), VI: 344–48; ibid., XI: 97–99. 26. Ibid., XII: 110–11. 27. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Abstract of Proceedings, 1743 (London, 1744): 42–3. 28. E.R.S.N.Y. III: 1555. 29. Ibid., 1810–11. 30. Archives of Maryland (Baltimore, 1904). XXIV: 265–73.

Notes

243

31. S.P.G. MSS., B-7: 19, the Rev. Roger Price to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, Boston, 9 July 1739. 32. S.P.G. MSS., B-7: 103–05, the Rev. William Vesey to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, New York, 2 April 1739. Morgan Dix, A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York (New York, 1898), I: 484–85. 33. F.P.P., XII: 42–45, the Rev. John Bagge to Bishop Edmund Gibson, St. Anne’s Parish, 1724; ibid., XIII: 45–46, the Rev. William Dawson to Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Williamsburg, 15 July 1751. 34. F.P.P., X: 153–54, the Rev. Charles Martyn to Bishop Richard Osbaldeston, South Carolina, 11 April 1762. 35. See Chapter 5 for comments on Bishop Edmund Gibson’s 1724 Queries of colonial clergymen. 36. F.P.P., I: 209, the Rev. Samuel Johnson’s reply to Queries of Bishop Edmund Gibson, Stratford, 1 July 1724; ibid., IV: 148–52, Replies of Clergy of Massachusetts to Queries of Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1724; ibid., VIII: 180–81, Replies of Clergy of Rhode Island, to Queries of Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1724. 37. F.P.P., XLI: 93–95, 101–13, 118. 38. New Jersey glebes were located at Burlington, 250 acres; Shrewsbury, 200 acres; Newtown, 27 acres; Gloucester and Waterford, 12 acres; Elizabethtown, 9 acres; and at Perth Amboy, one of undetermined size in the center of town that in 1762 was to be let in small lots on long leases, Nelson R. Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1954): 47–48, 57–59, 90, 131, 133, 149. 39. Ibid., 134. 40. F.P.P., III: 48–71, Replies of Clergy of Maryland to Queries of Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1724. 41. F.P.P., XII: 39–84. Replies of Clergy of Virginia to Queries of Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1724. 42. F.P.P., IX: 158–71, Replies of Clergy of South Carolina to Queries of Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1724. 43. Stephen Botein, ‘Incomes and Ideology: Harvard-Trained Clergymen in the Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth Century Studies 13 (1979–80): 396–443. 44. George D. Langdon, Jr., Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620–1691 (New Haven, 1966): 120, 123. Bruce A. Kimball, The ‘True Professional Ideal’ in America (Lanham, 1992): Table A1.2. 45. Michael G. Hall, The Last Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639–1723 (Middletown, 1988): 75, 93. 46. Ibid., 61–62, 64–65. 47. Ibid., 75, 93. 48. Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York, 1984): 9–10, 194, 267. Cotton Mather as early as 1700 in his pamphlet A Monitory Letter about the Maintenance of an Able and Faithful Ministry (Boston, 1700) pointedly noted the lack of financial support for ministers by church members. 49. Foote, King’s Chapel, I: 129. 50. Ola E. Winslow, Meetinghouse Hill, 1630–1783 (New York, 1952): 198. 51. J. William T. Youngs, Jr., God’s Messengers: Religious Leadership in Colonial New England, 1700–1750 (Baltimore, 1976): 104. 52. Clifford K. Shipton, ‘The New England Clergy of the “Glacial Age”’, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1933–1937, XXXII (1937): 48. 53. Ibid., 50. 54. Youngs, God’s Messengers: 107.

244

Notes

55. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Boston, 1958), X: 131. Winslow, Meetinghouse Hill: 214–17. 56. Winslow, Meetinghouse Hill: 217–18. 57. Gipson, British Empire before the Revolution, II: 43. 58. S. P. G. Journal, I, 1701–1710/11, 19 March 1707/08: 331–32. 59. William Eddis, Letters from America, Aubrey C. Land, ed. (Cambridge, 1969): xiii. 60. Ibid., xxv. 61. Andrew Burnaby, Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America in the years 1759 and 1760 with observations upon the state of the colonies (Ithaca, 1960): 99. 62. Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, 1965): 89–95. Jackson Turner Main, The Sovereign States, 1775–1783 (New York, 1973): 62. Robert Middlekauff, Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven, 1963): 177–79. 63. Main, Social Structure: 96. 64. Main, Sovereign States: 82–83. 65. Main, Social Structure: 97–98. 66. Ibid., 102–03. Main, Sovereign States: 84–85. 67. Main, Social Structure 103. Main, Sovereign States: 84–85. 68. Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: the British Customs Service in Colonial America (Cambridge, 1967): 261.

8

Conventions of the Clergy

1. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Church of England in America. Wherein the Original Nature of the Episcopal Office are briefly considered, Reasons for sending Bishops to America are Assigned, the Plan on which it is proposed to send them is stated, and the objections against sending them are obviated and confuted. With an Appendix, wherein is given some account of an anonymous pamphlet (New York, 1767): 28. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Governors elected members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts between 1701 and 1710 were: 1702 – Francis Nicholson, Joseph Dudley, Lewis Morris, Nathaniel Johnson; 1704 – John Evans; 1705 – Richard Johnson; 1709 – Robert Hunter; Edward Hyde; Edward Tynte. 5. Hugh Hastings, ed. Ecclesiastical Records State of New York (Albany, 1902), III: 1509. Morgan Dix, A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York (New York, 1898), I: 143–44. 6. Williston Walker, A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States (New York, 1894): 198. For a discussion of the origins and duties of the meetings of clerical consociations, rather than synods, in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century, see the informative article by Robert F. Scholz, ‘Clerical Consociation in Massachusetts Bay’, W.M.Q. Third Series. XXIX (1972): 391–414. 7. Ibid., 201–02. 8. George D. Langdon, Jr., Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620–1691 (New Haven, 1966): 132–37. Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan, The Life of Increase Mather (Middletown, 1988): 24. 9. Hall, Increase Mather: 58; 145; 155. 10. Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York, 1984): 141–42; 156. Hall, Increase Mather: 315–19.

Notes

245

11. George Fox, The Journal of George Fox, Rufus M. Jones, ed. (New York, 1963): 498–524. Fox recorded during his travels to Maryland, Rhode Island, Long Island, and Virginia, long meetings held quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly to discuss issues of general and particular interest. He noted that during the sessions at which general topics were discussed the public was invited to attend and frequently prominent public officials such as governors, deputy governors, justices of the peace, or speakers of assemblies, all non-members, would be in the audience. However, when Friends affairs were under review the public was excused and the meetings were only for church members. 12. Robert E. Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States (New York, 1895): 34–55. 13. Henry E. Jacobs, A History of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States (New York, 1893): 247–65. E. T. Corwin, J. H. Dubbs, J. T. Hamilton, A History of the Reformed Church, Dutch; The Reformed Church, German; and the Moravian Church, in the United States (New York, 1894): 447–73. 14. George Maclaren Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Political Conditions Under Which it Grew (Richmond, 1952), I: 225–28. V.M.H.B., I (1894): 373. Nelson Waite Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church (Baltimore, 1956): 16–18. 15. The figures in Table 8.1 are extracted from either minutes of the meetings sent to the bishop of London or the Secretary of the S.P.G., or references in letters from colonial ministers to London officials. The details are the best estimate of when and how many conventions were held in each province. Fulham Palace Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, London; Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Papers, Rhodes House Library, University of Oxford, Oxford. 16. S.P.G. MSS., A-6: CXXIV. Gideon Johnston to the Secretary, Charles Town, 20 April 1711. 17. Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York, 1962): 315–16. 18. New England regional conventions were held in 1725, 1726, 1727, 1731, 1733, 1734, 1735, 1736, 1737, 1740, 1741, 1745, and 1773; New York and New Jersey sessions were held in 1739, 1764, 1765, 1767 (3), 1768; and 1769; Pennsylvania and New Jersey meetings occurred in 1713, 1714/15, 1716, and 1717. 19. Massachusetts meetings took place in 1761, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1769, 1771, and 1774; Connecticut sessions occurred in 1739, 1742, 1743, 1757, 1761, 1764, 1765 (2), 1766, 1768 (2), 1769 (2), 1771, 1772, 1773 (2), 1774, 1776 (2), 1778, 1780, 1781, plus one not dated but surely before 1781. 20. New Jersey meetings took place in 1758, 1759, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1765, and 1766. 21. New York clergy met in convention in 1702, 1704, 1705, 1709, 1711, 1712, 1713, 1722, 1734, 1746, 1755, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1770, 1774, 1777, 1778. 22. Clergymen in Pennsylvania met in 1711, 1712/13, 1721/22, 1722, 1723, 1726, 1727, 1730, 1736, 1743, 1760, 1765, 1766, 1775. 23. Maryland: 1714, 1728, 1753 (2); Virginia: 1703, 1714, 1719, 1727, 1745/46, 1754, 1756, 1768, 1771 (3), 1772, and two not dated but probably held between 1730 and 1735. 24. South Carolina conventions of the ministers occurred in 1708, 1712, 1712/13, 1713, 1715, 1715/16, 1716, 1721, 1722, 1723, 1723/24, 1724, 1724/25, 1726, 1727, 1728, 1728/29, 1740/41, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1757, 1758, 1759, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1769, and 1770. Philip G. Clarke, Jr., compiler Anglicanism in South Carolina, 1660–1976

246

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Notes (Easley, 1976): 16–20. South Carolina Gazette, No. 1890, May 7, 1772. Besides these precise dates, the ministers, according to several letters, met more frequently but did not forward to London the dates or agendas of their sessions. S.P.G. MSS., A-8: 472–76, Clergy of Pennsylvania to S.P.G., Philadelphia, 29 January 1712/13; Ibid., A-7: 404–08, Rev. Francis Le Jau to Secretary William Taylor, Goose Creek, 26 May 1712; Ibid., A-21: 88, Clergy of South Carolina, 3 April 1728. F.P.P., V: 209–10. Rev. Roger Price to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Boston, 30 June 1737. Kenneth W. Cameron, ed., The Letter Book of the Rev. Henry Caner, S. P. G. Missionary in Colonial Connecticut and Massachusetts until the Revolution (Hartford, 1972): 64–65. The first meeting in this series of conventions was held with the approval of the Bishop of London Richard Terrick on 4 June 1766. The prelate’s role in the sessions is interesting, coming so soon after the Stamp Act crisis and riots as he was a chaplain and confidant to King George III and a member of the Privy Council. The appearance of fourteen Anglican parsons walking in their clerical dress in procession to King’s Chapel in Boston doubtless created a stir among townsmen. Dr. Caner preached the sermon and was chosen Moderator (an interesting adoption of a Presbyterian practice) and Secretary of the session. Governor Thomas Hutchinson joined the ministers for dinner. Cameron, Henry Caner: 64–65; 124; 125; 127. The parsonage for King’s Chapel was located on the north side of the burying ground, across Tremont Street from the Chapel at what was in the early nineteenth century 30 Tremont Street. Between 1810 and 1822 the house held the rooms of the Boston Athenaeum, and between 1822 and about 1833 it was the headquarters of the Massachusetts Historical Society. S.P.G. MSS., B-14: No. 111, Rev. James Wetmore to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, Rye, 18 September 1746. F.P.P., I: 300–01. Clergy of Connecticut, Hebron, 5 June 1765. F.P.P., II: 205–06. Gov. John Hart to Maryland Clergy, Annapolis, 24 June 1714. F.P.P., II: 207–08. The Humble Representation of the Clergy of Maryland concerning the state of the church in that province in answer to certain questions proposed by His Excellency the governor to them [Annapolis, 24–25 June 1714]. James B. Bell, ‘The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican Clergyman’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1995), CVI: 93–99. Ibid. S.P.G. MSS., B-3: Part 3, No. 333, Clergy of New York, New Jersey, New York, 9 April 1767. S.P.G. MSS., B-3: Part 3, No. 330, Clergy of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, New York, 22 May 1766. S.P.G. MSS., B-23: No. 207, A committee appointed by the convention to recommend candidates and the supply of vacant parishes, Stamford, 24 January 1772. Deborah Mathias Gough, Christ Church, Philadelphia: the Nation’s Church in a Changing City (Philadelphia, 1995): 31–35. S.P.G. MSS., A-10: 151–52, Proceedings of Meetings of Clergy of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 16 March 1716. S.P.G. MSS., A-20: 147–48, Clergy of Pennsylvania to S.P.G., Newcastle, 21 September 1727. Campbell turned up in New York in 1731 and was arrested by the governor for having married the civil officer’s daughter to the Duke of Grafton’s son without a license. Imprisoned, Campbell became the center of a minor pamphlet war. Commissary Vesey began to deal with the parson but Campbell disappeared after his lawyers abandoned his case. See Dix, A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City

Notes

39.

40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48.

247

of New York, I: 36–37; Robert E. Cray, Jr., ‘The Boundaries of Clerical Morality, The Reverend Alexander Campbell in the Middle Colonies, 1726–1734’, H.M.P.E.C. 59 (1990): 49–75. An amusing but illuminating exchange between the Anglican parsons in Pennsylvania, with some members of the New Light Presbyterian synod in Philadelphia, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker, in 1759 and 1760, sheds light on the dismissal of William Macclanechan from the pulpit of Christ Church in Philadelphia. A preacher in the style of George Whitefield, Macclanechan was in heart and mind a New Light and his most devoted supporters were eighteen Presbyterian ministers of the Philadelphia synod. The ministers of the King’s church in the area wanted nothing to do with Macclanechan and a convention of the clergy, meeting in Philadelphia on 30 April 1760, denied him the right to join the staff of Christ Church, despite the support of many members of the congregation. He moved to Maryland and a quieter career. Horace W. Smith, Life and Correspondence of William Smith (Philadelphia, 1880), I: 220–27. The schism in the congregation may be followed in the documents in William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church (Hartford, 1871): 295–311; 320–23. S.P.G. MSS., B-21: No. 248, Rev. William Smith to Secretary Philip Bearcroft, Philadelphia, 26 August 1760. Thomas Bradbury Chandler edited and published three documents relative to this incident in 1774, as an apology for the archbishop’s interest in Church of England affairs in the provinces: An Appendix to the American Edition of the Life of Archbishop Secker: containing His Grace’s Letter to the Revd. Macclanechan, on the Irregularity of his Conduct; with an Introductory Narrative (New York, 1774). S.P.G. MSS., B-4: No. 42, Clergy of South Carolina to Secretary William Taylor, 25 January 1715/16; S. P. G. MSS., A-1: 116–17, Rev. Gideon Johnston to Secretary William Taylor, Charles Town, 27 January 1715/16. Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church: 82–83. Tobacco served as commodity money from the earliest days of the colony until 1812. John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1978): 189. Clarence P. Gould, ‘Money and Transportation in Maryland, 1720–1765’, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science (Baltimore, 1915), Series XXXIII: 62–63. Thomas C. Reeves, ‘John Checkley and the Emergence of the Episcopal Church in New England’, H.M.P.E.C. 34 (1965): 349–60. Alfred Lyon Cross, The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (New York, 1902): 67–68. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 70. Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day (Boston, 1882), I: 342–45. S.P.G. MSS., A-19: 234–37, Clergy of New England to Secretary David Humphreys, Newport, 21 July 1725. F.P.P., IV: 184–85. Clergy in Convention, Boston, 2 May 1726. Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, 1967): 223–24. Francis L. Hawks, William Stevens Perry, eds., Documentary History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut, 1704–1789 (New York, 1863): 124–25. Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church (New York, 1871), III: 208–09, 252. Donald L. Huber, ‘Timothy Cutler: The Convert as Controversialist’, H.M.P.E.C. 44 (1975): 489–96. David C. Humphrey, ‘Anglican Infiltration of Eighteenth Century Harvard and Yale’, H.M.P.E.C. 43 (1974): 247–51.

248

Notes

49. F.P.P., IV: 221–22. Clergy of New England to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Boston, 20 July 1727. Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church (Hartford, 1871) III: 224–45. 50. F.P.P., XII: 114–15. Rev. James Blair to Bishop Edmund Gibson, Williamsburg, 18 October 1727. Parke Rouse, Jr., James Blair (Chapel Hill, 1971): 200. 51. Rouse, Blair: 200–02. 52. Marc Mappen, ‘Anglican Heresy in Eighteenth Century Connecticut: The Disciplining of John Beach’, H.M.P.E.C. 48 (1979): 465–72. 53. Carl Bridenbaugh and Jessica Bridenbaugh, Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin (New York, 1962): 242. 54. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner MSS 92, fol. 70: A printed broadside for The Meeting of the Society for Relief of Widows and Orphans of Clergymen in the City of Norwich, County of Norfolk (Norwich, 1713). 55. Throughout the eighteenth century there were close ties between ministers of the Swedish Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey with Anglican parsons. Whenever either denomination encountered a vacant parish either the local Swedish or Anglican minister would provide services until a replacement took up the post. After the American Revolution and the withdrawal of support of the Swedish Lutheran Church in Stockholm for its congregations in America several of the churches joined the Episcopal Church. By 1850 seven Swedish congregations had merged with the Episcopal Church. See Robert M. G. Libby, ‘Anglican–Lutheran Ecumenism in Early American History’, H.M.P.E.C. 36 (1967): 211–31; Joyce L. White, ‘The Affiliation of Seven Swedish Lutheran Churches with the Episcopal Church’, H.M.P.E.C. 44 (1975): 171–86; Suzanne B. Geissler, ‘A Step on the Swedish Lutheran Road to Anglicanism’, H.M.P.E.C. 54 (1985): 39–49. 56. A notable exception to the practice of providing continuing financial assistance to the widow of a clergyman was Trinity Church in Boston, which for several years after the death of William Hooper provided a stipend of not less than £42 sterling per annum. Anne Rowe Cunningham, ed., Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759–1762, 1764–1779 (Boston, 1903): 159; 187; 216. 57. The Articles and Rules of The Episcopal Charitable Society in Boston (Boston, 1743). Isaac Boyle, Constitution, Act of Incorporation, and By-Laws, of the Boston Charitable Society, Instituted in the Year of Grace 1724; With a List of the Officers and Members: and an Historical Memoir of the Society (Boston, 1860): 11. Ibid., 80. The Society published its Articles and Rules in 1743 and recorded that ‘All vagrants, idle and dissolute Persons of notorious evil Fame, are excepted or excluded as unworthy of this Charity’. Membership was limited to one hundred persons all of whom must reside within the town of Boston. The meetings of the Society were at once social occasions and business sessions. 58. The Articles and Rules of The Episcopal Charitable Society in Boston. 11. 59. Virginia Gazette, No. 200, November 7, 1754. F.P.P., XIII: 162–63. A Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention held at the College of William and Mary, 30 October 1754. 60. Virginia Gazette, No. 224, 25 April 1755; ibid., No. 225, 2 May 1755; ibid., No. 244, 12 September 1755. 61. Virginia Gazette, No. 832, 30 April 1767; ibid., No. 938, 11 May 1769; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), No. 1178, 5 May 1774; Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), No. 1240, 13 May 1775.

Notes

249

62. Clarke, Anglicanism in South Carolina: 18. Albert S. Thomas, A Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, 1820–1957 (Columbia, 1957): 10–11; 665–67. South Carolina Gazette, No. 1890, 7 May 1772. 63. S.P.G. MSS., B-3: Part 3, No. 336, Report of Committee from Convention of New York and New Jersey held 8 May 1768, 8 July 1768. S.P.G. MSS. B-24: No. 315, Clergy of New Jersey and New York to Secretary Daniel Burton, New Brunswick, 12 October 1769. 64. S.P.G., MSS. B-24: No. 316, Relief Plan for Widows and Children of Clergy, 1768. 65. Ibid. 66. Walter H. Stowe, ‘The Corporation for the relief of Widows and Children of Clergymen’, H.M.P.E.C. 3 (1934): 22–23. F.P.P., VIII: 66–69. Clergy of Pennsylvania to Bishop Richard Terrick, Philadelphia, 6 October 1775.

9

Local Parish Governance: the Americanization of the English Vestry

1. Recent research suggests that there remain many questions that should be raised and scrutinized about the nature and work of vestries locally for a richer understanding of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and accomplishments. For further details regarding the structure and responsibilities of vestries in various colonies, see: James K. Owen, ‘The Virginia Vestry: A Study in the Decline of a Ruling Class’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1947; Clive Raymond Hallman, ‘The Vestry as a Unit of Local Government in Colonial Virginia’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 1987; William H. Seiler, ‘The Anglican Parish Vestry in Colonial Virginia’, Journal of Southern History. 22 (1956): 310–37; Joan Rezner Gundersen, ‘The Myth of the Independent Virginia Vestry’, H.M.P.E.C. 44 (1975): 133–41; Gerald E. Hartdagen, ‘Vestry and Clergy in the Anglican Church of Colonial Maryland’, H.M.P.E.C. 37 (1968): 371–96; ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: Organizational Structure and Problems’, H.M.P.E.C. 38 (1969): 349–60; ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: A Study in Corporate Responsibility’, H.M.P.E.C. 40 (1971): 315–35; 461–79; Borden W. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, H.M.P.E.C. 40 (1971): 381–408; ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, H.M.P.E.C. 47 (1978): 5–36; Alan D. Watson, ‘The Anglican Parish in Royal North Carolina, 1729–1775’, H.M.P.E.C. 48 (1979): 303–19. 2. Hartdagen, ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: A Study in Corporate Responsibility’, 322–35. 3. Gundersen, ‘Virginia Vestry’, 134–41; Owen, 121, notes that on ten-year averages for the period between 1705 and 1764, the vestries of St. Peter’s Parish and St. Paul’s Parish met 2.3 times per year. 4. David Eastwood, Government and Continuity in the English Provinces, 1700–1870 (London, 1997): 42–43. 5. Ibid., 43. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 43–44. 8. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 117–18. 9. R.G. [Roger Green], Virginia’s Cure: or an Advisive Narrative Concerning Virginia. Discovering the True Ground of that Churches Unhappiness and the Only True Remedy. As it Was Presented to the Right Reverend Father in God Guilbert Lord Bishop of London, September 2, 1661. Now Published to Further the Welfare of That and the Like

250

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

Notes Plantations (London, 1662). Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1675–1676: 435–36. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 122. Leonard Woods Labaree, Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors (New Haven, 1935), II: 482–85. Cal.S.P. Col. Ser., 1677–1680: 469. Bradford Spangenberg, ‘Vestrymen in the House of Burgesses; Protection of Local Vestry Autonomy during James Blair’s term as Commissary (1690–1743)’, H.M.P.E.C. 32 (1963): 84. Seiler, ‘The Anglican Parish Vestry in Colonial Virginia’, 315–16; Hallman, ‘The Vestry as a Unit of Local Government’, 30–60. Hallman, ‘The Vestry as a Unit of Local Government’, 61–110. Spangenberg, ‘Vestrymen in the House of Burgesses’, 84. S.R.N.C.: 187. C.R.N.C. II: 875. C.R.Ga. XVIII: 270. Painter, ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 23–36. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, 383; ‘Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 7. C.R.Ga. XVIII: 265–66. W. W. Hening, ed. Virginia Statutes at Large (Richmond, 1809), I: 290–91; Gundersen, ‘The Myth of the Independent Virginia Vestry’, 133–41. M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina, A Political History, 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill, 1966): 250–51. Sydney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and the County (London, 1906): 175–211. Howard Mackey, ‘Social Welfare in Colonial Virginia: The Importance of the English Old Poor Law’, H.M.P.E.C. 36 (1967): 357–82. Hallman, ‘The Vestry as a Unit of Local Government’, 111–58; 182–220. Archives of Maryland, XXIV: 267. Hartdagen, ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: Organizational Structure and Problems’, 349–57. Painter, ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 7–8. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, 384. Archives of Maryland, XXIV: 267. C.R.Ga. XVIII: 266. S.R.N.C. 187. C.R.N.C. II: 876. Archives of Maryland, XXIV: 269. Hartdagen, ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: Organizational Structure and Problems’, 358–60. C.R.N.C. II: 879. S.R.N.C. XXIII: 188. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, 385. Painter, ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 8. W. Roy Smith, South Carolina as a Royal Province 1719–1776 (New York, 1903): 101. Under the terms of The Re-Incorporation Act of Trinity Church, New York, adopted by the provincial assembly in 1704, vestrymen were to enjoy ‘like Power, and Authority to do, execute and perform their said Offices’ as similar officers in England ‘unless some particular differences may happen’. Webb, English Local Government: 4. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 20–21. Hallman, ‘The Vestry as a Unit of Local Government’, 1–29. Webb, English Local Government: 39.

Notes

251

42. Archives of Maryland, Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, April 26, 1700–May 3, 1704 (Baltimore, 1904). XXIV: 270. 43. C.R.N.C. II: 876. 44. S.R.N.C. XXIII: 187. 45. C.R.Ga. XVIII: 265. 46. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 1077. 47. Ibid., III: 1551–52. 48. The town vestry was comprised of two members elected from each of the city’s seven wards. They served without pay or provision to defray expenses of office. The vestry assessed property values and levied taxes to support the poor. E.R.S.N.Y. III: 1553–66; Painter, ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 9–11. The responsibilities for the members of the town, or civil, vestry are recorded in A Guide to Vestrymen (New York, 1747). 49. Alan L. Clem, ‘The Vestries and Local Government in Colonial Maryland’, H.M.P.E.C. 33 (1964): 221–24. 50. Edward Ingle, Parish Institutions of Maryland (Baltimore, 1883): 20. Gerald E. Hartdagen, ‘The Vestry as a Unit of Local Government in Colonial Maryland’, Maryland Historical Magazine 67 (1972): 363–88. 51. Labaree, Royal Instructions: 484–85. 52. Edmund Gibson, Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani: or the Statutes, Constitutions, Canons, Rubricks and Articles, of the Church of England, methodically digested under their proper heads, Second edition (Oxford, 1761): 814–15. 53. Hening, Virginia Statutes: 155. 54. Gibson, Codex Juris: 204. 55. Owen, ‘The Virginia Vestry’, 42–65. 56. Hening, Virginia Statutes: 240–43. 57. Ibid., 215–16. 58. Ibid., 240–43. 59. Ibid. 60. Archives of Maryland, XXIV: 270. Hartdagen, ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: A Study in Corporate Responsibility’, 316–22; 467–79. 61. S.R.N.C. XXIII: 188–89. 62. C.R.N.C. II: 880. 63. C.R.Ga. XVIII: 267–69. 64. E.R.S.N.Y. II: 1077–78; III: 1551–52; 1563–66. 65. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, 392–93; ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 13–18; Hartdagen, ‘The Anglican Vestry in Colonial Maryland: A Study in Corporate Responsibility’, 461–67. 66. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, 392–96; ‘The Vestry in the Middle Colonies’, 18–23. Henry W. Foote, Annals of the King’s Chapel: from the Puritan Age to the Present Day (Boston, 1882), I: 355. 67. S.R.N.C. XXIII: 189. Gibson, Codex Juris: 201. 68. C.R.Ga. XVIII: 267–68. 69. By 1632 the churchwardens in Virginia were to report to the court any dissolute persons residing within the parish boundaries. 70. Ibid. Walter J. Fraser, Jr., ‘The City Elite, ‘Disorder’, and the Poor Culture of PreRevolutionary Charleston’, South Carolina Historical Magazine 84 (1983): 167–79. Walter J. Fraser, Jr., ‘Controlling the Poor in Colonial Charles Town’, South Carolina Historical Association Proceedings (1980): 13–20. Ibid., Barbara Ulmer, ‘Benevolence in Colonial Charleston’, 1–12.

252 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

97.

Notes Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York, 1938): 396. C.R.S.C. 1746–1747: 345. C.R.S.C. 1749–1750: 199–200. S.R.N.C. XXIII: 53–54. For a valuable discussion of parish operations in North Carolina see Alan D. Watson, ‘The Anglican Parish in Royal North Carolina, 1729–1775’, H.M.P.E.C. 48 (1979): 303–19. For a comparative study of the social services provided by St. Paul’s Parish, Chowan County, North Carolina, and Swainswick Parish, Somersetshire, England, see John M. Garland, ‘The Nonecclesiastical Activities of an English and a North Carolina Parish: A Comparative Study’, North Carolina Historical Review 50 (1973): 32–51. C.R.N.C. VIII: 202–10. Painter, ‘The Vestry in Colonial New England’, 385–92. C.R.S.C. 1736–1755: passim. Ibid., passim. For the altering of parish boundaries in Virginia between 1720 and 1769, see Raymond C. Bailey’s excellent study ‘Popular Petitions and Religion in EighteenthCentury Colonial Virginia’, H.M.P.E.C. 46 (1977): 419–28 and Paul K. Longmore, ‘From Supplicants to Constituents: Petitioning by Virginia Parishioners, 1701–1775’, V.M.H.B. 103 (1995): 407–42. Bailey and Longmore conclude that the regulation of parish affairs in the Old Dominion was much more responsive to the wishes of the people than historians have previously recognized. C.R.S.C. 1736–1739: 321. C.R.S.C. 1739–1741: 509, 526. Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: 396. Drage arrived in Philadelphia from England about 1753 and for sixteen years traded on the frontier. When he returned to England in 1769 for ordination Benjamin Franklin provided him with a testimonial. In a letter to Franklin on 2 March 1771, Drage recounted at length an account of his troubles in North Carolina. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1972, 1976), William B. Willcox, ed. 16: 70–72; 18: 38–50. C.R.N.C. VIII: 217–18. C.R.N.C. IX: 618–23. Ibid., 613–23. See Archives of Maryland: passim. Ingle, Parish Institutions of Maryland: 20. Gerald E. Hartdagen, ‘The Vestries and Morals in Colonial Maryland’, Maryland Historical Magazine. 63 (1968): 360–78. Archives of Maryland, XXVI: 31–33; 51–52; 118–21. Ibid., XXX: 19. F.P.P., II: 217–18; III: 161–62; 213–16. Archives of Maryland, XLIV: 291. Ibid., LXI: 410–11. Nelson Waite Rightmyer, Maryland’s Established Church (Baltimore, 1956): 104–05. Seiler, ‘The Anglican Parish Vestry’, 16–17; Owen, ‘The Virginia Vestry’, 69–100. Gundersen, ‘Virginia Vestry’, 133–41. Ibid., 133–34. George MacLaren Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Political Conditions Under which it Grew (Richmond, 1947), I: 238. Hening, Virginia Statutes, IV: 204–08; VI: 88–90. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, I: 390–92, 492; II: 19, discusses this process in detail.

Notes

253

98. F.P.P., IV: 151. David Mossom, Marblehead, 1724, to Bishop Edmund Gibson. 99. Deborah Mathias Gough, ‘Pluralism, Politics, and Power Struggles: The Church of England in Colonial Philadelphia, 1695–1789’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1978: 243–46. 100. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, I: 157. Deborah M. Gough reports that the King’s church adapted to its new environment in Pennsylvania by slowly developing novel and more complex governing structures. She notes that Christ Church, which was founded in 1695, and the other Anglican churches in the city that were established in the 1760s, did not follow the hierarchical pattern of the English vestry. After examining the role of the vestry in hiring and firing ministers, establishing the pay-scale for the parsons, and addressing issues of church discipline, Dr. Gough concludes that: ‘the church in Philadelphia developed an ecclesiastical authority structure that was, in reality, neither “democratic” nor “hierarchical”. The vestry at Christ Church created a system that rejected both the episcopal system as it existed in England and the “lay control” that purportedly dominated the Virginia church. Slowly and painfully, through compromise and conflict, Philadelphia churchmen evolved a new process system of government that combined the elements of the democratic and hierarchical, a system that contained some elements of the English system as well as others resulting from the American environment.’ Gough, ‘Pluralism, Politics, and Power Struggles’, 243–46. 101. See Maud O’Neil, ‘Matthew Graves: Anglican Missionary to the Puritans’, in Samuel C. McCulloch, British Humanitarianism (Philadelphia, 1950): 124–44, for an account of the cool reception that the New London church gave Graves on his appointment as the S.P.G. missionary for the post. Apparently the churchwardens and vestrymen had not been consulted by the London officials regarding the selection of a minister or informed that Graves had been appointed and was in transit. 102. Francis Lister Hawks, ed. Documentary History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (New York, 1863–64), I: 209. 103. Graham Frank, ‘Letter of a layman to Bishop Thomas Sherlock’, H.M.P.E.C. 26 (1957): 165. During his residence in Virginia Frank married in the fall of 1756 as his second wife Ann Staige, a daughter of the Reverend Theodosius Staige (d. 1747). She was raised in the family of the prominent William Nelson after the death of her father. 104. Ibid., 171. 105. Ibid. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid.

10

The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican Clergyman

1. The theme of anglicization is most fully discussed in John M. Murrin, ‘Anglicizing an American Colony: The Transformation of Provincial Massachusetts’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1966. See also Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York, 1986); John Clive and Bernard Bailyn, ‘England’s Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America’, W. M. Q. 11 (1954): 200–13; Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees:

254

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Notes The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (Princeton, 1962). T. H. Breen, The Character of a Good Ruler: Puritan Political Ideas in New England, 1630–1730 (New Haven, 1970): 210–26; and Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York, 1984): 138–90. George Berkeley, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, On Friday, February 18, 1731/32 (London, 1732): 23. There were natives of the following nations and regions represented among the clergy: France, 12; Switzerland, 7; Germany, 4; Holland and Barbados 2 each; and one each from Curacoa; Jamaica; Leeward Islands, Spain; Sweden; and the West Indies. I estimate that about 350 of the 421 persons whose birthplace is unknown were English born. Paul F. Bradshaw, The Anglican Ordinal. Its History and Development from the Reformation to the Present Day (London, 1971): 1–104. The statistical information relating to the men who attended or graduated from colonial colleges has been drawn from my ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England, 1607–1783 Database’. It is a compilation of biographical information of the 1,272 ministers who were licensed by the Bishop of London to serve the King’s church in America between 1607 and 1783. The database has been compiled from several major resources including the records of the Bishops of London as contained in the Fulham Palace Papers, the records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, local histories, genealogies, English and colonial newspapers, and the published records of matriculates and graduates of colleges and universities in the provinces, England, Scotland, and Ireland. The several publications relating to the colonial churches and ministers by Frederic Lewis Weis have been an indispensable foundation. John L. Sibley, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, III: 287–93; Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, IV: 174; ibid., V: 45; ibid., VI: 304–05; ibid., XIII: 6–25; ibid., XIV: 111–13. For the contributions of Smith and Johnson to the founding and development of the College of Philadelphia and King’s College respectively, see the following: Bruce R. Lively, ‘William Smith, The College and Academy of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Politics, 1753–1758’, H.M.P.E.C. 38 (1969): 237–58. Melvin H. Buxbaum, ‘Benjamin Franklin and William Smith, their School and their Disputes’, ibid., 39 (1970): 361–82. William A. Clebsch, ‘William Smith on Education: Religion, ‘The Soul of the Whole’’, ibid., 53 (1974): 45–59. Don R. Gerlach and George E. DeMille, ‘Samuel Johnson and the Founding of King’s College, 1751–1755, ibid., 44 (1975): 335–52; Gerlach and DeMille, ‘Samuel Johnson: Praeses Collegii Regis, 1755–1763’, ibid., 417–36. I am grateful to Dr. James McLachlan of Princeton, New Jersey, for making available to me the fruits of his extensive research on graduates of colonial colleges and in particular the data relating to the men who became Anglican parsons. For an interesting discussion of the migration of college graduates from New England to England see William L. Sachse, ‘Harvard Men in England, 1642–1714’, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston, 1951) XXXV: 119–44; and ‘The Migration of New Englanders to England, 1640–1660’, American Historical Review (New York, 1948) 53: 251–78. James B. Bell, ‘Anglican Clergy in Colonial America Ordained by Bishops of London’, P.A.A.S. 83 (1973): 103–06. Bell, ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England Database’.

Notes

255

10. G. V. Bennett, ‘University, Society and Church, 1688–1714’, in The History of the University of Oxford, L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell, eds. (Oxford, 1986), V: 383. 11. Bennett, ‘University’, 388. For further discussions of the preparation of eighteenthcentury Oxford students for holy orders, see Robert Greaves, ‘Religion in the University, 1717–1800’, and L. S. Sutherland, ‘The Curriculum’, in History of Oxford, V: 401–11; 469–91. E.G.W. Bill, Education at Christ Church, Oxford, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1988): 195–326. 12. Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker: Aspects of English Church History, 1660–1768 (Cambridge, 1959): 200. 13. Ibid. 14. Robert Greaves, ‘Religion in the University, 1715–1800’, in History of Oxford, V: 403. Lawrence Stone has noted in his essay ‘The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body, 1580–1910’, that ‘very little is known about either the contents and significance of the curriculum or the quality of the teaching provided; equally little is known about the background or the future careers of the students’. Lawrence Stone, ed., The University in Society, Oxford and Cambridge from the 14th to the Early 19th Century (Princeton, 1974), I: 3. For the circumstances and status of theological education at Cambridge University during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see John Gascoigne’s excellent study, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1989): 32–33, 94–95, 263–67. The Boston-born East Apthorp, educated at Jesus College of Cambridge University and a sometime fellow of the college (1758–61), who later served as the first S.P.G. missionary at Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides us with a glimpse of the theological education at Oxford and Cambridge in the last half of the eighteenth century. He has noted that candidates for a B.D. degree at the universities should be guided by a clergyman about the course and content of their reading which should include the writings of Plato, Cicero, the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, the leading theologians of the western church, the Latin and Greek Fathers, as well as the writings of Josephus and Eusebius. East Apthorp. A Sermon in Lambeth Chapel, at the Consecration of the Right Reverend Father in God Samuel Hallifax, D.D. Lord Bishop of Gloucester. On Sunday, October 28, 1781 (London, 1781): 13–17. 15. Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, 1936): 241. Roland H. Bainton, Yale and the Ministry. A History of Education for the Christian Ministry at Yale from the Founding in 1701 (New York, 1957): Chapters I and IV. Thomas Jay Siegel, ‘Governance and Curriculum at Harvard College in the 18th Century’, unpublished Harvard University Ph.D. Thesis, 1990. 16. See Timothy Dwight’s account of the Yale College curricula in the late eighteenth century in his Travels in New England and New York, Barbara Miller Solomon, ed. (Cambridge, 1969), I: 149–54. 17. Mary Latimer Gambrell, Ministerial Training in Eighteenth-Century New England (New York, 1937): 14–80. 18. J. William T. Youngs, Jr., God’s Messengers: Religious Leadership in Colonial New England, 1700–1750 (Baltimore, 1976): 1–24. 19. For an excellent summary of the founding and early years of the College of William and Mary, see Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1960). 20. James Scotland, The History of Scottish Education (London, 1969), I: 137–38, 142–44, 160–63. Jurgem Herbst, From Crisis to Crisis: American College Government, 1636–1819 (Cambridge, 1982): 29–37. 21. ‘The Charter and Statutes of the College of William and Mary’, W.M.Q. First Series. 22 (1913–14): 287.

256 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

Notes Ibid., 288. Ibid., 289. Ibid. ‘The Statutes of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, 1758’, W.M.Q. First Series. 16 (1907–08): 248. Ibid., 290. Norman Sykes, Church and State in England in the XVIIIth Century (Cambridge, 1934): 96–115. For a discussion of the preparation of candidates for the Congregational ministry under the apprenticeship system, see Bainton, Yale and the Ministry: Chap. V. Sykes, Sheldon to Secker: 12–13. Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Rawlinson MSS. B. 376, f. 101. A contract between Bishop John Robinson and John Prince for study at the seminary, 15 January 1716. The Ordinal Preface Book of Common Prayer, 1662; Canon 34 Canons Ecclesiastical of the Church of England, 1603. F.P.P., XXXVI: 131. Edmund Gibson to his Commissaries, 13 July 1743. Joan R. Gunderson’s interesting study, The Anglican Ministry in Virginia, 1723–1766, A Study of A Social Class (New York, 1989): Chapter II, particularly 42–43. The Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), 24 August 1769; (Rind’s), 21 September 1769. The systematic preservation of testimonials and other documents presented to the bishop of London by candidates for ordination was begun by Bishop Thomas Sherlock about 1748. The full set of documents required of a candidate includes: a testimonial from three or more clergymen who had known him personally for some time; a certificate showing date of birth or baptism; a certificate of education; a document known as a si quis which certified the candidate’s intention to seek ordination had been announced in his parish church on three successive Sundays and no objection had been raised; a firm promise of some ecclesiastical appointment, known technically as a ‘Title’. George E. DeMille, ‘One Man’s Seminary’, H.M.P.E.C., 28 (1959): 374. See Joseph Ellis’s excellent study of Johnson’s intellectual development, The New England Mind in Transition: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696–1772 (New Haven, 1973): 15–65. For Samuel Johnson’s intellectual pilgrimage to conversion to the Church of England see Donald F. Gerlach’s excellent study, ‘Samuel Johnson and the Yale “Apostasy” of 1722: the Challenge of Anglican Sacramentalism to the New England Way’, H.M.P.E.C. 47 (1978): 153–75. See also Samuel Johnson’s ‘My Present Thoughts of Episcopacy with what I conceive may justify me in accepting Presbyterial Ordination’, in Herbert and Carol Schneider, Samuel Johnson, President King’s College: His Career and Writings (New York, 1929), I: 3–8. An excellent analysis of the psychodynamics of Johnson’s conversion experience appears in Peter N. Carroll, The Other Samuel Johnson: A Psychohistory of Early New England (Rutherford, 1978): 36–48, 108–14. Schneider, Samuel Johnson, I: 497–526. DeMille, ‘Seminary’, 375–76. Ellis. Transition: 93. See Hector G. Kinloch, ‘Anglican Clergy in Connecticut, 1701–1785’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1959: 190–203; 214–16; 224e. This practice was not unanimously endorsed by the clergy of the church. James MacSparran, the S.P.G. missionary at Kingston, R. I., 1721–57, stated in 1752 that the European born and educated parsons were opposed to the custom of native colonists serving as lay readers in the New England churches despite the

Notes

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

257

continuing shortage of ministers. He felt that the men had neither the education or experience for the assignment. Wilkins Updike, History of the Episcopal Church, in Narragansett, Rhode Island (New York, 1847): 527. Ellis, Transition: 113–15. Regrettably there is no similar work for William Smith. DeMille, ‘Seminary’, 379. W. K. Lowther Clarke, Eighteenth-Century Piety (London, 1944): 22–24. Ibid., 378. ‘Autobiography of Bishop William White’, Walter Herbert Stowe, ed. H.M.P.E.C. 22 (1953): 392. Horace Wemyss Smith, Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith (Philadelphia, 1880), I: 393–95. Ibid., 400, 407, 412–13, 458–59. Ibid., 406–07. William Dunlap, who married Deborah Croker, a niece of Deborah Franklin, was apprenticed to printer William Bradford and served later as a printer in Lancaster from 1754 to 1757. He returned to Philadelphia and worked as a printer from 1758 to 1767; Franklin appointed him to the postmastership of Philadelphia in 1758 when he left for London as the province’s agent. Dunlap was removed from the office in 1764 for falling behind in settling his accounts. He left Philadelphia for Bridgetown, Barbados, where he had, at least since 1760, an interest in a printing office. He was licensed by the bishop of London to Barbados, 25 February 1766. He settled at Stratton-Major Parish in King and Queen County, Virginia, 1768–79, and settled at St. Paul’s Parish, Hanover County, Virginia, in 1779 where he died 25 September 1779. Mary D. Turnbull, ‘William Dunlap, Colonial Printer, Journalist and Minister’, P.M.H.B. 103 (1979): 143–65. George Spencer, who was ordained in London in 1767, served briefly for the S.P.G. at East Brunswick and Freehold, New Jersey, when he was dismissed from his post as being ‘disreputable’. He moved to North Carolina where he served until 1769 and his death at Prince Frederick Parish. Joseph Shippen, born in Philadelphia, 3 October 1743, graduated from the College of Philadelphia, A.B., 1761. He died in England, July 1766. James Sayre, born about 1745, was a graduate of the College of Philadelphia, A.B., 1765; A.M., 1770. He became a lawyer and afterward an Anglican minister. Ordained in London in 1774 he was assigned by the S.P.G. to Fredericksburg, Dutchess County, New York. He served later as rector of the church at Brooklyn, 1778–83; and at Newport, Rhode Island, 1786–88. He later became a Methodist Episcopal minister. Sayre served in 1777 as Chaplain, First Battalion de Lancey’s Brigade, British Army. He died at Fairfield, Conn., 1798. Graham Frank, ‘Letter of a Layman to Bishop Thomas Sherlock’, H.M.P.E.C. 26 (1957): 172. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The men were graduates of the following colonial colleges: Yale, 8; Harvard, 7; New Jersey, and King’s, one each; and one man who had not attended college. Schneider, Samuel Johnson, III: 245. William L. Sachse, The Colonial American in Britain (Madison, 1956): 71. For an account of Bradstreet’s troubles, see ‘Report of an Ecclesiastical Council Held to Resolve the Conflict between Mr. Bradstreet and the Congregation of Groton’, in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Second Series. 13 (1900): 299–302. Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, 1701–1778 (New York, 1885–1903) I: 118–19; 679–80; 330–31. II: 35–36; 166–67. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Cambridge, 1933–) IV: 394–98. X: 274–75. Bell, ‘Anglican Clergy in Colonial America’: 135, 137, 119. See also Albert Matthews, ‘Note on Gershom Rawlins

258

56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

11

Notes (Harvard College, 1705) and Dudley Bradstreet (Harvard College, 1698)’, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 24 (1923): 2–8. Sachse, Colonial American: 73. William S. Bartlet, The Frontier Missionary: A Memoir of the Life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, A.M. (New York, 1853): 56. Bell, ‘Anglican Clergy in Colonial America’: 143. I have found only four other first-hand accounts from the pens of a colonial Anglican traveling to London for ordination: MSS Diary, Edward Winslow, 16 December 1754–30 September 1755, ‘Journal of an intended Voyage on board the ship Earl of Halifax, John Philips Commander from Boston to London’, New York Public Library. New York, New York; ‘Journal of Rev. Joshua Weeks, Loyalist Rector of St. Michael’s Church, Marblehead, 1778–1779’, Essex Institute, Historical Collections 52: 351; John Tyler, The Rev. John Tyler’s Journal, May 4 to November 1, A. D. 1768 (Privately printed, San Francisco, 1894); Annotated Almanac, Ebenezer Miller, 7 May to 30 November 1726, Gay Collection, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. Bartlet, Frontier Missionary: 61–62. Dr. Samuel Nicolls, the bishop of London’s examining chaplain, was a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge University; Chaplain to the King 1746–69; Prebend of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1749–63; and Rector of St. James’s, Picadilly from 1759 until his death in 1763. Bartlet, Frontier Missionary: 61–63. Ibid., 62–66. E. Edwards Beardsley, Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D.D. (New York, 1874): 226. Ibid., 27–31. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 43, 45. Ibid., 45–48. Ibid., 49–50. For the story of the problems and procedures encountered reorganizing the church as the Protestant Episcopal Church following the American Revolution see Clara O. Loveland, The Critical Years: the Reconstitution of the Anglican Church in the United States of America, 1780–1789 (Greenwich, Conn., 1956); and Frederick V. Mills, Sr., Bishops by Ballot, An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York, 1978). Although I hold a differing view of the strength of the church’s recovery following the American Revolution, nonetheless, Frederick V. Mills, Sr.’s Bishops by Ballot is an excellent account of the struggle of the church to reorganize and reconstitute itself in the 1780s. William S. Perry, ed. Journals of General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, 1785–1835 (Claremont, 1874). ‘Course of Ecclesiastical Studies, established by the House of Bishops, 1804’. I. 315–20. For the education of Connecticut clergymen and their congregational appointments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Dwight, Travels in New England, Solomon, ed., IV. 291–94.

New England Critics of Imperial Church Policy

1. See Charles W. Akers’s excellent biography Called unto Liberty. A Life of Jonathan Mayhew, 1720–1766 (Cambridge, 1964). 2. Kenneth Silverman, Selected Letters of Cotton Mather (Baton Rouge, 1971): 216. 3. Akers, Mayhew: 167–68.

Notes

259

4. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Boston, 1960), XI. 452. Akers, Mayhew: 76–77. Bernard Bailyn, Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence (New York, 1990): 125–36. 5. Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse on Rev. XV 3d, 4th. Occasioned by the Earthquakes in November 1755 (Boston, 1755): 46. 6. Ezra Stiles, A Discourse on the Christian Union; the Substance of Which was Delivered before the Reverend Convention of the Congregational Clergy in the Colony of Rhode Island, Assembled at Bristol, April 23, 1760 (Boston, 1761): 36. 7. Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York, 1901) I: 125. 8. Stiles, Christian Union: 36. 9. Ibid. 10. Edward Carpenter, Thomas Sherlock, 1678–1761 (London, 1936): 325. 11. Jack M. Sosin, Agents and Merchants: British Colonial Policy and the Origins of the American Revolution (Lincoln, 1965): 4–5. 12. Ibid., 3. 13. East Apthorp, Considerations of the Institution and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Boston, 1763). 14. Ibid., 10–11. 15. Ibid., 11–12. 16. Ibid., 15–17. 17. [Arthur Browne], Remarks on Dr. Mayhew’s Incidental Reflections Relative to the Church of England, as Contained in his Observations on the Charter, and Conduct of the Society &c. By a Son of the Church of England (Portsmouth, 1763). [Henry Caner], A Candid Examination of Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. To Which is Added, A Letter to a Friend; Containing a Short Vindication of the said Society Against the Mistakes and Misrepresentations of the said Doctor in His Observations on the Conduct of the Society. By One of its Members (Boston, 1763). 18. Jonathan Mayhew, Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; Designed to Shew Their Non-Conformity to Each Other. With Remarks on the Mistakes of East Apthorp, M. A., Missionary at Cambridge, in Quoting and Representing the Sense of the Said Charter, &c. As also Various Incidental Reflections Relative to the Church of England, and the State of Religion in North-America, Particularly in New England (Boston, 1763). 19. Ibid., 7. 20. Ibid., 71. 21. Ibid., 30. 22. Ibid., 57. 23. Ibid., 103. 24. Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776 (Cambridge, 1965): 60. 25. Ibid., 107. 26. S.P.G. MSS, B-22, No. 170, Dr. Samuel Johnson to Secretary Daniel Burton, Stratford, Connecticut, 10 May 1765. 27. Ibid. 28. Herbert and Carol Schneider, Samuel Johnson, President of King’s College: His Career and Writings (New York, 1929), I: 345. 29. S.P.G. MSS, B-22, No. 9, East Apthorp to Secretary Daniel Burton, Cambridge, 2 March 1764. 30. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Annual Report (London, 1765): 52.

260

Notes

31. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1992): 340–47. 32. Ibid., 357–69. 33. Noah Welles, The Real Advantages Which Ministers and People May Enjoy Especially in the Colonies by Conforming to the Church of England; Faithfully Considered, and Impartially Represented in a Letter to a Young Gentleman ([New Haven], 1762). Noah Welles, The Divine Right of Presbyterian Ordination asserted, and the Ministerial Authority Claimed and Exercised in the Established Churches of New England, Vindicated and Proved: In a Discourse Delivered at Stanford [i.e. Stamford], Lord’s Day, April 10, 1763 (New York, 1763). 34. John S. Macauley and R. W. Greaves, eds, The Autobiography of Thomas Secker Archbishop of Canterbury (Lawrence, 1988): 58. 35. Thomas Secker, An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London, 1764; Boston, 1764). Macauley and Greaves, Autobiography of Thomas Secker: 48. 36. Secker, An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations: 3. 37. Ibid., 3–8. 38. Ibid., 32–44. 39. Ibid., 9. 40. Ibid., 11–12. 41. Ibid., 50–51. 42. Ibid., 51. 43. Macauley and Greaves, Autobiography of Thomas Secker: 58. 44. [Henry Caner], A Candid Examination of Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. To Which is Added, A Letter to a Friend; Containing a Short Vindication of the said Society Against the Mistakes and Misrepresentations of the said Doctor in His Observations on the Conduct of the Society. By One of its Members (Boston, 1763). Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1918) 74: xxv. Jonathan Mayhew, A Defense of the Observation on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Against an Anonymous Pamphlet Falsely Intitled A Candid Examination of Dr. Mayhew’s Observations, &c., and also Against the Letter to a Friend Annexed Thereto, said to Contain a Short Vindication of Said Society. By One of its Members (Boston, 1763). Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, Entitled An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Being a Second Defense of the said Observations (Boston, 1764, London, 1765). 45. Ibid., 56–57. 46. East Apthorp, A Review of Mr. Mayhew’s Remarks on the Answer to his Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London, 1765): 1–17. Bernard Knollenberg, ‘Thomas Hollis and Jonathan Mayhew: their Correspondence, 1759–1766’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1956) 69: 159. Macauley and Greaves, Autobiography of Thomas Secker: 51. 47. East Apthorp, A Review of Mr. Mayhew’s Remarks on the Answer to his Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London, 1765): 1–17. Knollenberg, ‘Thomas Hollis and Jonathan Mayhew: their Correspondence, 1759–1766’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1956) 69: 159. Macauley and Greaves, The Autobiography of Thomas Secker: 51. 48. Apthorp, A Review of Mayhew’s Remarks: 22.

Notes

261

49. Ibid., 24. 50. Ibid., 48. 51. F.P.P., 6: 68–69. Clergy of Massachusetts and Rhode Island to Bishop Richard Terrick, Boston, 22 September 1768. 52. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, An Appeal to the Public. 53. Ibid., ix–x. 54. Ibid., 26–27. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 27. 57. Ibid., 31–34. 58. Ibid., 47–48. 59. Ibid., 79. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., 82–83, 87–96. 62. Ibid., 89. 63. Ibid., 107–08. 64. Ibid., 90. 65. Ibid., 113–14. 66. Ibid., 115. 67. Ibid., 114–15. 68. Ibid., 115. 69. Ibid., 116–17. 70. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, The Appeal Farther Defended, In Answer to the Farther Misrepresentations of Dr. Chauncy (New York, 1771). 71. Ibid., 12. 72. Ibid., 18–27. 73. Ibid., 144. 74. Chandler, A Free Examination of the Critical Commentary (New York, 1774). 75. John Ewer, Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at Their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, On Friday February 20, 1767 (New York, 1768). 76. Ibid., 3–7. 77. Ibid., 5–6. 78. Ibid., 14–16. 79. Ibid., 18. 80. Ibid., 17. 81. Ibid. 82. Charles Chauncy, A Letter to a Friend, Containing Remarks on Certain Passages in a Sermon Preached by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Landaff, Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at Their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, February 20, 1767. In Which the Highest Reproach is Undeservedly Cast upon the American Colonies (Boston, 1767). William Livingston. A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Landaff; Occasioned by Some Passages in his Lordship’s Sermon on the 20th of February, 1767, in Which the American Colonies are Loaded with Great and Undeserved Reproach (New York, 1768). 83. Ibid., 42. 84. Ewer, Sermon Preached before the S.P.G.: 17. 85. Chauncy, A Letter to a Friend: 51. 86. Chandler, A Free Examination of the Critical Commentary.

262

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12

The King’s Church: a Casualty of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War

1. S.P.G. MSS. Vol. B-24. Rev. John Preston to Secretary Richard Hind, 2 January 1777, Perth Amboy, New Jersey. 2. S.P.G. MSS. Vol. B-24. Rev. Abraham Beach to Secretary Richard Hind, 15 February 1777, Elizabeth-Town, New Jersey. 3. S.P.G. MSS. C/Am.8. Rev. James Seymour to Secretary William Morice, 26 April 1781, Savannah, Georgia. 4. S.P.G. MSS. C/Am.3. Rev. Ebenezer Dibblee to Secretary William Morice, 6 Oct. 1784, Norwalk, Connecticut. 5. William Gibson. Church, State and Society, 1760–1850 (London, 1994): 41–48. 6. S.P.G. MSS. C/Am.3. Rev. Daniel Fogg to Secretary, William Morice, 6 December 1784, Brooklyn Center, Conn.; Rev. Roger Viets to Secretary, William Morice, 4 Aug. 1785, Simsbury, Conn.; Rev. Bela Hubbard to Secretary, William Morice, 9 May 1785, New Haven, Conn.; Rev. James Scovil to Secretary, William Morice, 25 May 1785, Waterbury, Conn.; Rev. Richard Clarke to Secretary, William Morice, 25 Sept. 1785, New Milford, Conn. S.P.G. MSS. Finance 24, folio 62, 11 Mar. 1785, ‘What to do about the Society’s American missionaries and their salaries.’ Ibid., folio 63, ‘Memorial of the Society to Lord Sydney’ [Thomas Townshend, Minister of State, Home Dept.], about the missionaries in North America, 15 April 1785. S.P.G. MSS. Finance 25. Plan of reduction of salaries to American missionaries [London, 1785]. 7. For Lewis Vardill’s role as an English spy, see Lewis Einstein, Divided Loyalties: Americans in England during the War of Independence (London, 1933): 51–71. 8. Rodney K. Miller, ‘The Political Ideology of the Anglican Clergy’, H.M.P.E.C. 45 (1976): 236. 9. Morgan Dix. The Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York (New York, 1898), I: 330; II: 2–19, 36–38. 10. The data for this statistical information is drawn from my ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England, 1607–1783 Database’, comprising biographical information relating to the 1,272 men who were associated with the King’s church between 1607 and 1783. 11. Ibid. 12. Weis, The Colonial Church and the Colonial Clergy of the Middle and Southern Colonies: 18. 13. For the number of primary parishes I have used the list as printed in The Virginia Almanack for the Year of our Lord God 1774 (Williamsburg, 1774). 14. For the number of secondary churches, commonly referred to as chapels in the contemporary records, I have relied on the estimates offered by John K. Nelson in A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690–1776 (Chapel Hill, 2001): 27–30. 15. Bell, ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England Database’. 16. My figures for the number of churches in the colonies is based on the research of Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Church and the Colonial Clergy of the Middle and Southern Colonies, 1607–1776 (Lancaster, 1938): 18; and the reports of clergymen as contained in the papers of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Bishop of London. For an additional account of the number of churches, see Edwin S. Gaustad, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York, 1976, rev. edn): 4–10. Also, Edwin Scott Gaustad, Philip L. Barlow, with Richard W. Dishno,

Notes

17. 18. 19. 20.

13

263

New Historical Atlas of Relgion in America (New York, 2001), 18. David Hackett Fisher concludes that there were 495 churches in 1775 in his work Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York, 1989): 423. Anne Whiteman, The Compton Census of 1676: a critical edition (Oxford, 1986): xc. Ibid., xc–xci. Ibid., 38. Bell, ‘The Colonial American Clergy of the Church of England Database’.

Epilogue

1. An excellent examination of the ideological and organizational tensions of the reorganization process of the church is Frederick V. Mills, Sr., Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York, 1978). However, my assessment of the various elements of the church’s recovery following the Revolutionary War differs in several respects from his. Nelson R. Burr, The Story of the Diocese of Connecticut: A New Branch of the Vine (Hartford, 1962): particularly chapters 9 and 10. See the excellent biography by Bruce E. Steiner, Samuel Seabury, 1729–1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Athens, 1971): especially chapters 4–6, and Gavin White, ‘The Consecration of Bishop Seabury’, The Scottish Historical Review 63 (1984): 37–49. 2. Mills, Bishops by Ballot: 157–287. 3. Raymond W. Albright, A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York, 1964): 215–26. 4. Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1921), I: 136. 5. Burr, Diocese of Connecticut: 133–34. Steiner, Seabury: 191–93. The circumstances surrounding the meeting and election of Seabury by ten Connecticut parsons was an act of strategic and pragmatic realism. The men were suspicious that the longstanding fear of episcopacy would erupt again and defeat their plan. No minutes were kept of the meeting and the full story of the session did not emerge until many years had passed. White, ‘The Consecration of Bishop Seabury’, 41–43. Burr, Diocese of Connecticut: 133. 6. Burr, Diocese of Connecticut: 134. Steiner, Seabury: 193–95. 7. Burr, Diocese of Connecticut: 136–39. Steiner, Seabury: 195–219. 8. White, ‘The Consecration of Bishop Seabury’, 44. Burr, Diocese of Connecticut: 140–42. 9. The Episcopal Church Annual (Harrisburg, 2000): 363. 10. Mills, Bishops by Ballot: 219–28. 11. Ibid., 242–63. 12. White, ‘The Consecration of Bishop Seabury’, 44. 13. William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, 1905), I: 251. 14. Ibid., III: 113; IV: 20–21. 15. Ibid., I: 196. 16. Ibid., I: 139–41, 196, 203, 206–09. 17. Joseph B. Berry, History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810–1872 (Boston, 1959): 1–11. 18. Ibid., 3–8. 19. Ibid., 16.

264

Notes

20. Calvin R. Batchelder, A History of the Eastern Diocese (Claremont, 1876), I: 97. 21. Charles A. Silliman, The Episcopal Church in Delaware, 1785–1954 (Wilmington, 1982): 3–53. 22. William Stevens Perry, ed., Journals of General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, 1785–1835 (Claremont, 1874), I: 147–48, 161, 164. 23. Ibid., 175–79. 24. Ibid., 291, 305. 25. Ibid., 327–32. 26. Ibid., 325. 27. Ibid., 378–81. 28. Ibid., 400–02, 428–29. 29. Ibid., 441–46. 30. Ibid., 410–16. 31. Ibid., 416. 32. Ibid., 416–18. 33. Lawrence Foushee London and Sarah McCulloh Lemmon, eds, The Episcopal Church in North Carolina (Raleigh, 1987): 61–99, 115–21. 34. Ibid., 418–19. Philip G. Clarke, Jr., Anglicanism in South Carolina, 1660–1976 (Easley, 1976): 24–31. Frederic Dalcho, An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina (New York, 1972 reprint): 465, 481–82, 513–19. 35. Doris Kirk Collins, ‘The Episcopal Church in Georgia from the Revolutionary War to 1860’. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Emory University, 1957: 4–34. 36. Edwin Scott Gaustad, Philip L. Barlow, with Richard W. Dishno, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York, 2001): 100, 390.

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Index

Abbot, George, 5, 8 Act of Uniformity, 11 Acts of Trade and Navigation, 31, 37 Adams, Alexander, 76, 84 Albemarle, Duke of, 37 Alison, Francis, 122 Andrews, William, 25 Andros, Sir Edmund, x, 21, 30, 31, 32, 33, 47, 56, 71–2, 76 Anne, Queen, 21, 50, 91, 98 Apthorp, East, 156, 159, 169, 170–1, 175–6, 255n. 14 Bailey, Jacob, 159–60 Baltimore, Lord, 14, 26, 113 Baptists, 37, 39, 87, 90 Barbadians, 37 Barclay, Henry, 62 Barclay, Thomas, 25 Basse, Jeremiah, 35 Beach, Abraham, 189–90 Beach, John, 120 Bellomont, Richard, Earl of, 24, 25, 36, 44, 47 Berkeley, George, 142 Berkeley, William, 9, 37, 44 Bernard, Francis, 210 Bethune, David, 36, 229n. 87 Blair, James, 23, 53, 60, 63, 66, 72–3, 119, 139, 149 commissary, 21, 61, 66 controversies with Governors Andros, 71–2; Nicholson, 72 Blakiston, Nathaniel, 28 Bland, Richard, 80 Blathwayt, William, xi, 23, 47, 49, 53 Board of Trade and Plantations, see Committee of Trade and Plantations Book of Common Prayer, 9, 11, 17, 23, 25, 31, 32, 35, 44, 114, 141, 164, 204 Bounty, Queen Anne, xi, 22 King’s, 22, 159 Bours, Peter, 95–6

Bray, Thomas, 27, 28, 29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 64, 90 Brooke, Zachariah, 95 Brunskill, John Jr., 70–1, 78 Burnet, Gilbert, 72, 108, 148, 153–4 Byles, Mather, Jr., 145 Camm, John, 62, 78–81 Campbell, Alexander, 246–7n. 38 Campbell, Lord William, 210 Caner, Henry, 94, 175 Carter, Landon, 78, 80–1 Chandler, Thomas Bradbury, xiii, 93, 108–9, 112, 114, 120, 176, 178–82 Charles I, 4, 36 Charles II, ix, x, 11, 19, 29, 36 Chauncy, Charles, xi, xvii, 107, 119, 146, 166, 178, 181, 184 Checkley, John, 121 Church Act (Maryland), 1692, 14, 26, 27; 1694, 27; 1696, 28, 29; 1700, 29 Civil List, 21, 22 Clergymen, see Ministers Clinton, George, 210 Colonial Bishop, 44, 55, 77, 119–20, 146, 166–85, 223ns 4, 15 Commissaries, 43, 58–73, 108, 113, 121 Commission, 233–4n. 9 courts, 65–70, 235–6n.29; 236n. 31; 237ns. 40, 43; in South Carolina, 66–9; in Virginia, 66, 69–70 duties, 62–3 establishment of the office in the colonies, 60 profile of, 60–2 visitations, 63–5 Committee of Trade and Plantations (also known as Lords of Trade and Plantations, Council of Trade and Plantations, and Board of Trade and Plantations), 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 29, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 54, 55, 56, 59, 73, 79, 90, 91, 190 293

294

Index

Compton Census of 1676, 10, 16, 199 Compton, Henry, Bishop of London, xi, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 43, 47, 49, 53, 58, 59, 60, 66, 71, 72, 73, 82, 84, 126–7 Congregational ministers’ salaries, 99–101 Congregational church, 30, 31, 33, 53, 54, 75, 117, 127, 152, 170, 171, 198 ministers, 56, 107, 110, 117, 143–4, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 157, 158, 166–8, 171, 173, 177, 178, 183, 184 meetings of ministers, 108, 109, 113 synods, 109, 117 Conventions, 107–24 number of, 110–13, 123 Connecticut, 112, 113, 119 Maryland, 82, 113, 114–15, 116 Massachusetts, 113, 119 New York, 112, 113, 114, 119, 122–3 New Jersey, 113, 114, 119, 122–3 Pennsylvania, 113, 114, 116, 122–3 South Carolina, 113, 114, 116, 119 Virginia, 112, 113, 114, 116, 121–2 pleas for a bishop, 119 relief for widows and orphans, 120–3 work of, 114–20 Coombe, Thomas, 158–9 Cooper, Sir Anthony Ashley, 37 Cooper, Myles, 112, 120, 176 Copley, Lionel, 26, 27, 48 Cornbury, Lord, 24, 47, 92 Cranmer, Thomas, 59 Craven, Charles, 210 Cummings, Archibald, 62 Cutler, Timothy, 97, 116–17, 118, 145, 147, 161–3 Dale, Sir Thomas, 7 Dale’s Laws, 7 Danby, Lord, see Osborne, Thomas Davenport, Addington, 145 Dawson, Thomas, 62, 70–1, 78, 79 Dawson, William, 62, 69–70

Declaration of Independence, 164–5, 190–1 Deism, 64–5 Dinwiddie, Robert, 210 Dissenters, 10, 11–12, 19, 33, 37, 38, 39, 118, 157, 171, 176, 179, 180, 182–3 Dobbs, Arthur, 44, 47, 57, 210 Dominion of New England, 30 Dongan, Thomas, 33 Drage, Theodorus Swain, 252n. 83 Drysdale, Hugh, 76 Duché, Jacob, 160 Dudley, Joseph, 47, 95, 210 Dunlap, William, 155, 257n. 46 Dunton, John, 31 Dutch Reformed Church, 33, 85, 198 Elizabeth I, ix, 3, 4 English livings, 61, 95 Episcopal Charitable Society, 121 Evans, John, 92, 108, 210 Ewer, John, 182–4 Fees, 75, 76–7, 96–7 Fletcher, Benjamin, 33, 34, 47, 56, 84, 85 Fox, George, 109 Foxe, John, 3 Franklin, Benjamin, 257n. 46 Franklin, William, 210 French, 24 French and Indian War, 172 Friends, Society of, see Quakers Fundamental Constitutions, 38 Garden, Alexander, 62, 65, 66–9, 73 Gates, Sir Thomas, 7 Gibson, Edmund, 15, 21, 45, 46, 48, 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 76, 117, 118, 151 Pastoral Letter on Negroes, 65 1724 Queries, 84, 97–8 Glebe, 44, 97 Gooch, William, 44, 47, 70, 76, 210 Gookin, Charles, 92, 108, 210 Graham, Richard, 78 Grant, James, 210 Green, Charles, court case, 69–70 Green, Roger, ‘G. R.’, 11, 12, 13, 19, 126

Index Hakluyt, Richard Jr., ix, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Hamilton, James, 210 Hariot, Thomas, 3 Harrison, Joseph, 54, 55 Hart, John, 108, 114–15 Harvard College, Overseers, 118–19 Harvey, Sir John, 8 Heath, Robert, 36 Henderson, Jacob, 62, 65 Henrico Massacre, 1622, 8 Herring, Thomas, 168–9, 171 Hobart, Noah, 119 Horrocks, James, 151 House of Lords, 11, 16 Howard, Lord of Effingham, 21, 48 Huguenots, 37 churches, 33 Hunt, Robert, 5, 6, 27, 95 Hunter, Robert, 25, 44, 47, 52–3, 54, 92, 108, 210, 231n. 42 Hyde, Edward, Lord Chancellor, 13, 37 Hyde, Edward, Governor, North Carolina, 108, 210 Inglis, Charles, xiii James I, 4 James II, 16, 30 Jenney, Robert, 22, 62, 73 Jews, 32, 33 Johnson, Nathaniel, 108, 210 Johnson, Robert, 108, 210 Johnson, Samuel, 93, 94, 112, 120, 145, 147, 152–4, 157, 160, 161–3, 171, 176, 178 Johnson, Sir William, 25 Johnston, Gideon, 62, 113, 73 Johnston, Gabriel, 210 Johnston, George, 210 Kay, William, 78 Keith, George, 22, 34, 35, 48 Keppel, Frederick, 184 King, John, 5, 220n. 17 King’s Chapel, Boston, 31, 32 Laud, William, 11 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 35 Lockier, John, 36, 229n. 87 Loyalist ministers, 112, 190

295

Lutheran churches, 33 German, 90, 109–10 Swedish, 90, 109–10, 248n. 55 Macclanechan, William, 247n. 38 Mallory, Philip, 13 Marshall, Samuel, 39 Maryland, 13, 26, 27 Mather, Cotton, 32, 100, 109, 117, 154–5, 166 Mather, Increase, 32, 99–100, 145 Maury, James, 81 Mayhew, Jonathan, xii, xvii, 107, 119, 146, 166, 167, 168, 169–71, 173, 175, 176, 178, 182, 184 Miln, John, 25 Ministers, 142–65 colleges attended, 145–7 collegiate education, 147–50, 156–7; in 1775, 194–7 comparative salaries, 99–103; civil servants, 102; customs officials, 103; lawyers, 102, 103; ministers, 102–3; schoolmasters, 102 consequences of Independence, 164–5 criticism of ministers, 156 discipline of ministers, 116, 132, 133, 138–9, 235n. 21 England and ordination, 158, 256n. 33 English livings, 95 fees, 96–7 induction, 132, 139–41 inheritance, 95–6 marriages, 96 national origins, 143; in 1775, 192–4 number of ministers, 1775 and 1783, 200–2 parsonages and glebes, 44, 97–9 post-collegiate preparation for the ministry, 150–7 provincial origins, xii, 143, 144–5 shortage of, 26, 27, 29, 55 transatlantic crossing, 157–8 vestries, 45 Mohawk Indian Nation, 24, 25, 91 Moore, John, 35, 44, 47 Morris, Lewis, 92, 108, 210 Muhlenberg, John Peter Gabriel, 159, 192

296

Index

Murray, Alexander, 13 Myles, Samuel, 22, 32, 48, 117, 118, 145, 151, 157 Native Americans, 4, 24, 25 New York City xi, 11, 32 New York Ministry Act of 1693, 85 Newcastle, Duke of, 159 New Spain, x, 4 Newton, Thomas, 184 Nicholson, Francis, x, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 35, 43, 47–53, 54, 56, 72, 108, 133, 210 financial contributions, 49–50, 231n. 29 Nonconformists, 10, 20, 39 North Carolina, Roanoke island, 3, 4 Vestry Acts, 1701, 1704, 40 Ogilvie, John, 25 Osborne, Thomas, Earl of Danby, 10, 15, 16, 20, 47 Parker, Samuel, 205 Parliament, 11, 16, 20, 22, 24, 48, 91, 165 Parson’s Cause, 77 Patriot Ministers, 113, 119 Penn, William, 15, 34, 35 Philadelphia, xi, 11 Philips, Francis, 116 Post-Revolutionary War Church (Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America), 203–9 Connecticut, 207 Delaware, 206, 207 Georgia, 207, 208 Maine, 206 Maryland, 207 Massachusetts, 206 New Hampshire, 205, 206 New York, 207 North Carolina, 207, 208 Pennsylvania, 207 Rhode Island, 205, 206 South Carolina, 207, 208 Vermont, 205, 206, 207 Virginia, 207, 208

General Convention, 1792, 206; 1814, 207 number of ministers, 207 establishment of colleges, 208 first cathedral, 209 General Theological Seminary, 208 Pownall, Thomas, 44, 47, 210 Presbyterian Church, 33, 37, 39, 52, 57, 75, 87, 88, 90, 109, 137–8, 143–4, 170, 174, 198 Ministers’ Fund, 121, 123 Preston, John, 189 Preston, William, 78 Price, Roger, 61, 62, 95 Prideaux, Humphrey, 148 Primary and Secondary churches, 1775, 197–200 Privy Council, 16, 45, 60, 79, 80, 81, 90 Provoost, Samuel, 156, 205 Puritan ministers, 4, 29–30, 31–2 Quakers (Society of Friends), 10, 19, 20, 27, 28–9, 33, 34–6, 39–40, 57, 81, 87, 88, 89, 90, 108, 109, 115, 116 Quarry, Robert, 35, 92 Radcliffe, Robert, 22, 31, 95 Raleigh, Sir Walter, ix, 3, 4, 5 Randolph, Edward, x, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 38, 39–40, 47 Robinson, John, 20, 64, 150–1, 163 Robinson, Thomas, 78 Robinson, William, 62, 70, 156 Roman Catholics, 10, 15, 16, 19, 20, 33, 39, 48, 58, 81, 89, 115 Royal governors, 12, 19, 24, 43–57, 73, 108, 114–15, 132, 152 commissions, 44 instructions, 17, 44, 45, 230ns 14, 18; 232n. 2 members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 210 Royal Letters, 91 Salaries of ministers, 7, 18, 19, 38, 44, 45, 74–89, 116 congregational support, 93–5 Civil List, 21

Index Customs Account, 23, 74 Military Account, 21, 22, 74 Quit rents and revenue, 22, 23 Secret Service, 19, 20, 21 S.P.G., 90–3, 95, 102–3, 137 tobacco, 26 (Maryland, 1692), 27, 45, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 131–2 transportation expenses of ministers, 18, 19 Treasury Department, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25 Georgia, 87–8 Maryland, 74, 75–81 New York, 84–5, 94 North Carolina, 88 South Carolina, 23, 38, 85–7 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 6 Savoy Conference, 11 Sclater, James, 95 Seabury, Samuel Jr. xiii, 112, 151, 165, 176, 204–5, 206 Secker, Thomas, 55, 79, 157, 171, 173–5, 184 Seymour, James, 190 Sheldon, Gilbert, 10, 11, 13, 14, 20, 150 Sherlock, Thomas, 70, 78, 79, 95, 169 Shirley, William, 44, 47, 210 Shute, Samuel, 210 Smith, William, 93, 122, 145, 147, 151, 154–5, 205 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Society, S.P.G.) 21, 22, 23, 28, 47, 50, 51, 54–5, 56, 74–5, 90, 108, 120, 126, 142, 143, 166, 167, 170, 171, 173–4, 190, 198 figures of financial expenditures: New England colonies, 212–14; Middle Atlantic colonies, 214–15; Chesapeake colonies, 216; Southern colonies, 216–17; salaries, 90–3 South Carolina, 37–9 Church Act of 1704, 39; 1706, 39 Spain, 4 Spotswood, Alexander, 43, 47, 52–3, 54, 71, 108, 119, 133, 210 Stiles, Ezra, 167–8 Sutcliffe, Matthew, 5, 221n. 19

297

Tables collegiate affiliation of clergymen in 1775, 195–7 colonial colleges attended by ministers, 146 conventions of clergy, 111–12 national origins of clergymen in 1775, 193 number of clergy in the colonies in 1775 and 1783, 201 primary and secondary churches in 1775, 199 provincial origins of ministers, 144 value of Maryland livings, 83–4 visitations by commissaries, 64 Tenison, Thomas, 23, 24, 28, 35, 47, 71, 90, 148 Terrick, Richard, 55, 122 Tibbs, William, 138–9 Trinity Church Boston, 205 New York, 33 Tryon, William, 44, 47, 57, 88, 92, 210 Two-Penny Acts, 77–81 Tynte, Edward, 108, 210 Usher, John Jr., 95 Vesey, William, 33, 62, 73, 93, 97, 145, 151 Vestry, 45, 82, 125–41 Church of England Canon Law of 1603, 130 controversies with incumbents, 133, 138–9 duties, 125–6, 129–30 fees, 96 frequency of meetings, 129 induction, 139–41 membership qualifications, 126–7 number of members, 127–8 oaths, 128–9 pew rentals, 134 recruitment of ministers, 133, 139 registers, 132 Select, 128 welfare assistance, 134–5 Connecticut, 135–6 Georgia, 131, 134 Maryland, 130–1, 133, 138

298

Index

Vestry – continued Massachusetts, 135–6 New York, Ministry Act of 1693, 131, 134 North Carolina Vestry Acts (1701, 1741, 1765), 131, 134, 135, 137–8 Virginia, General assembly, 7, 9, 12, 13 House of Burgesses, x Statutes of 1643, 1662, 1758, 134, 136 Virginia Company, x, 5, 6, 7, 8 Visitations, 64–5 Virginia Company of London, 74 Warburton, William, 181 Washington, Lawrence, Green case, 69–70 Welles, Noah, xii, 107 Wentworth, Benning, 44, 47, 53–5, 210 Wentworth, John, 44, 47, 55–6, 210

Wetmore, James, 114 Whiston, William, 23, 24 Whitaker, Alexander, 6 White, William, 154, 192, 205 Whitefield, George, court proceedings, 66–9 Wilkinson, Christopher, 61, 62, 64 William of Orange, Prince, 16, 58 William and Mary, college of, 28, 48, 49, 71, 77, 78, 79 William III, 17, 21, 32, 38 Wingfield, Edward-Maria, 6 Winslow, Edward, 95 Woodmason, Charles, 86–7 Wooley, Charles, 33 Woolverton, John, xvi Wright, James, 44, 47, 210 Wyatt, Francis, 44 Yamasee Revolt, 1715–16, 25, 51 Yardley, Sir George, 44 Yeo, John, 11, 13, 14, 19, 126