1

PATRON, POLITICS, AND PEWS: BOSTON ANGLICANS

AND

THE SHAPING OF THE ANGLO-ATLANTIC, 1686-1805

A dissertation presented by

Ross A. Newton

to

The Department of History

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the field of

History

Northeastern University

Boston, Massachusetts

February, 2016

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PATRON, POLITICS, AND PEWS: BOSTON ANGLICANS

AND

THE SHAPING OF THE ANGLO-ATLANTIC, 1686-1805

by

Ross A. Newton

ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History

in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of

Northeastern University

February, 2016

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This dissertation traces the establishment and expansion of the Church of England in

New England through Boston Massachusetts’ three interrelated Anglican Churches, from the

establishment of Boston’s King’s Chapel in 1686, as the first Anglican Church in New England,

until the formation of the American Protestant Episcopal Church in the years immediately

following the American Revolution. Using church vestry records, proprietor records, financial

records, correspondence, and material culture, such as pews and communion silver, this project

focuses on lay patrons and members of the community who participated in church governance

and financially supported or otherwise aided church institutions and fellow congregants. Though

rooted in Boston, this project examines a loose transatlantic network of patrons and interest

groups, who leveraged their commercial and political expertise for the benefit of individual

churches and the advancement of Anglicanism in New England. Working with imperial organs

such as the London-based Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Boston’s

Anglican societies profoundly reshaped the religious landscape of New England and provided for

the religious needs of a diverse body of elites and persons of middling and poor means, as well

as a sizable number of free and enslaved African Americans. Though the Church of England

stood as a symbol of royal authority and Anglicans often served as agents of royal authority,

Anglican political ideologies varied by class, occupation, and office, and was never synonymous

with loyalism. This project reexamines early protests against Parliamentary measures and

authority finding that lay Anglicans featured prominently in these debates and reacted

pragmatically as events unfolded in Boston and in the countryside. Even as a number of

Anglican loyalists removed to Halifax and England, Anglicans who remained in Boston rewrote

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the Book of Common Prayer to align with shifting allegiances and theologies and fashion lasting

American institutions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project grew from a summer research internship for the Old North Church

Foundation and docent and research experience at King’s Chapel’s interpretive program on

Boston’s Freedom Trail. Past and current staff and colleagues at both sites deserve thanks,

especially Elisabeth Nevin, Kristin Bezio, and Theresa Cooney. Librarians and archivists,

especially at the Massachusetts Historical Society, generously assisted me in my research. Over

the past years, I also spent time at the Massachusetts State Archives, the New England

Genealogical Society, The Baker Library at the Harvard Business School, the Houghton Library,

and Boston Athenaeum. Short term grants from Harvard’s Atlantic World Seminar and the

Historical Society of the Episcopal Church allowed several weeks of research at the British

National Archives in Kew and the British Library in London. Northeastern History Department’s

Gillis Family Fund also supported final research through British Online Archives.

My advisor Bill Fowler and committee members Anna Suranyi and Chris Parsons

provided great feedback on the eventual full draft. Thank you for your patience. I also owe Karin

Velez an enormous debt for helping me to take religion seriously and to appreciate the

awesomeness of Jesuits. Aspects of this project benefited from feedback at a variety of

conferences and workshops, including NYU’s Atlantic World Conference, the Massachusetts

Colonial Society Graduate Forum on Early American History, and the McNeil Center for Early

American History. Officemates, classmates, and friends at Northeastern made grad school

bearable. At various stages, my honorary twin, Satya Som, as well as Colleen McCormick,

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Amber Clifton, Marco Costantini, Malcolm Purinton, and Colin Sargent joined me in solidarity,

and at Punters. Stacy Fahrenthold deserves her own lines. Thanks, bud, for cheering me on and

joining me on an extraordinary number of coffee breaks and work parties.

Rachel knows my feelings regarding her. She is my dearest friend and ally. Thank you

for, among other things, joining me on awesome travel adventures and encouraging John and

Abigail references when we were routinely commuting between Boston and Philadelphia and in

daily life. Bless you for putting up with my loyalist obsession while we were in New Brunswick

and Nova Scotia following the wedding of the century. Please bear with me as I turn this into a

book manuscript and we enjoy more non-academic adventures. I cannot forget my longsuffering

parents. Thank you both for enduring and even supporting my history endeavors. Finally, my

favorite aunt and uncle with PhDs and one very special cousin-in-law get an answer to the age-

old question: is your dissertation finished yet?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract 2

Acknowledgements ` 4

Table of Contents 6

Introduction: New England Anglicanism and the Atlantic World 7

Chapter 1: Establishing the King’s Church in Massachusetts, 1660-1723 26

Chapter 2: Anglicans in the World: Building and Furnishing the Church 58

of England in Boston, 1724-1775

Chapter 3: Material Culture, Race, and the Construction of Community in 124

Anglican Boston, 1724-1775

Chapter 4: Anglicanism and Authority in Revolutionary Boston, 1763-1776 165

Chapter 5: Anglicanism and Allegiance in the American Republic, 1776-1805 211

Conclusion: Boston Anglicans and the Shaping of the Anglo-Atlantic 261

Bibliography 268

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INTRODUCTION: NEW ENGLAND ANGLICANISM AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD

Though the Church of England was the majority church of men and women in England

and its overseas colonies, English Protestantism remained contested throughout the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries, especially in Massachusetts, where, in the 1630s, members of

Massachusetts’s majority religious sect constructed a society centered on its Congregationalist

Puritan church. Puritanism began as a moral and ecclesiastical reform movement within the

Church of England to return the church to its biblical roots and strip from it all remaining

vestiges of Catholicism. The term “Puritan” was initially applied to members of this religious

group as a pejorative slur, which they eventually adopted as a badge of honor. Facing

persecution under Charles I and Bishop Laud, Puritans ultimately “pursued political hegemony

in the Puritan / parliamentarian synthesis of the Interregnum” and at sites in the Americas. For

example, following Massachusetts’ 1629 charter, a Puritan standing order emphasized the

establishment of ‘pure churches in a godly state” barred other Protestant sects from public

worship and office holding, chiefly Anglicans, Baptists, and Quakers. 1 Left largely autonomous

during the chaos of the English Civil War and the short-lived Commonwealth, New England’s

Puritan orthodoxy was “isolationist and suspicious of transatlantic or cosmopolitan ventures,

whether military, commercial, or missionary.”2 Rather than apply the term “Puritan”

anachronistically, I refer to the descendants of this religious group as their contemporaries did, as

1 Thomas Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004),

12. 2 Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism, 4.

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Congregationalists, after their method of organization, or Independents i.e. denominations

outside of the established Church of England.

Charles II’s return to the throne in 1660 signaled a failure of Puritan hegemony in

English politics. Thereafter, the Church of England or Anglican Church was once again the state

church. This Church encompassed a wide variety of theological opinions, but agreed on several

core tenets, chiefly the supremacy of the Bible, a form of worship centered on the Book of

Common Prayer, and governance which ultimately rested on the authority of bishops and the

king, who served as the head of the Church. Tensions remained within English Protestantism, as

some Anglicans rejected Calvinism, with its emphasis on predestination and conversion, and the

evangelical ethos often associated with that theology. Anglicans instead stressed the capacity of

humankind, enlightened by reason, to earn salvation by leading upright, moral lives. The term

“Anglican” has been commonly adopted to describe adherents of the Church of England in the

colonies. This project uses Anglican Church and Church of England interchangeably and defines

Anglicanism broadly as a church whose members recognized each other through their

acknowledgement of the episcopacy who alone had the power to ordain colonial ministers and

the Book of Common Prayer, which ordered weekly worship, annual festivals and celebrations,

and vital sacraments. Whereas colonial Anglicans referred on occasion to the Episcopacy I

restrict use of this term whenever possible until the creation of the United States’ Protestant

Episcopal Church following American independence.

Despite tensions within Puritanism, New England was quite exceptional in its resistance

to other Protestant sects, especially the Church of England with its religious manual, the Book of

Common Prayer, which Puritan theologians maligned as formulaic, unscriptural, and popish. The

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1660 Restoration of Charles II brought with it policy changes that emphasized dependence,

centrality, and the Anglicization of law and customs across the empire. The revocation of

Massachusetts’s original 1629 charter in 1684 eventually affected the colony’s autonomy and

relationship to the imperial center. In 1686 King’s Chapel formed in Boston, Massachusetts, as

the first Church of England in New England. Despite resistance from Puritan luminaries, over the

next century, the Anglican Church became ingrained into New England society to a far greater

degree than most historians have acknowledged.3 Nonetheless, seventeenth-century Puritans

continued largely to define studies of New England religion. As noted by historian John K.

Nelson, without recognizing or intending it, many scholars see early American religion as

synonymous with religious dissenters from the Church of England.4 As a result, historians

generally assign unitary meaning to the experiences of colonial Anglicans, with Anglicanism

often serving as a foil to the religiosity of Puritans and mid-eighteenth-century evangelicals.

Depending on historic interpretation, Anglicans were solely concerned with secular concerns and

social control or ardently pious as they worshiped according to their Book of Common Prayer

and other religious materials. Scholarship in this secular vein traces back to William K. Meade,

Old Ministers, Churches, and Families of Virginia (1857), which castigated Virginia’s

seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Church of England as corrupt and in decline. Pivotal mid-

twentieth-century works on early American culture, society, and slavery did little to rehabilitate

the reputation of colonial Anglicans. Rhys Isaac’s influential Transformation of Virginia

3 Jeremy Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England: The Church of England in British North America, c. 1680-

c. 1770,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 20 (2010): 85-112. 4 Edward L. Bond, Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (Macon, Ga.:

Mercer University Press, 2000); John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in

Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 9.

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interpreted Anglican ideology and sacred space in terms of anti-evangelicalism and social

control. The Anglican message, in Isaac’s telling, was secular domination by colonial elites, not

religion per se as practiced by Virginia Baptists.5

A number of religious historians have rebutted Isaac’s unflattering caricatures of

Anglicans. Edward Bond demonstrated that seventeenth-century Virginians were not devoid of

piety—that they practiced a more muted religion, more concerned with outward behavior. John

K. Nelson’s study of colonial Virginia parishes and parishioners shows a pervasive Anglican

culture that linked Anglicans there with co-religionists across the Atlantic and ancestors across

the centuries. Anglican liturgy, preaching, rites, and festivals communicated the nature of society

and authority, norms of behavior, and the purposes and ends of human life. Worship emphasized

the unity in society as well as its social divisions and hierarchies and appealed to a diverse range

of individuals. “Common prayer”—one of the most visible and vital aspects of Anglican

worship—affirmed social solidarity and the common concerns which all members of society

shared according to their “vocation, call, and office.”6

Though existing scholarly approaches to colonial Anglicanism tend to put forward

monolithic conclusions about the spiritual health of the church and its adherents, Anglicanism, in

fact, offered adherents a variety of cultural discourses including piety and social control.

Contemporary ministers readily acknowledged the presence of “unthinking” and “virtuous”

parishioners in their reports to church superiors. Churches operated as places of prayer, places of

5 William K. Meade, Old Ministers, Churches, and Families of Virginia (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1857); Rhys

Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 6 Nelson, A Blessed Company, 8-9, 291. On the significance of the Book of Common Prayer see Jeremy Gregory,

“‘For All Sorts and Conditions of Men’: The Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer during the Long Eighteenth

Century; Or, Bringing the History of Religion and Social History Together,’’ Social History 34, no. 1 (2009), 29-54.

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business, and places of refuge and social discipline. Though only a minority of persons of

African descent actively participated within these churches, elite, ordinary, poor, and enslaved

parishioners interpreted the church’s written and spoken messages in a myriad of ways. Building

off David D. Hall’s influential Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in

Early New England, this dissertation adopts a multivalent understanding of Anglicanism that

takes into account the great diversity of experience within the scope of religion in early America,

where piety and profanity, social welfare and social control coexisted and interacted.7 This

approach moves beyond debate over the lack of or abundance of piety in the colonial Anglican

Church to ask how the church and its adherents fit into and shaped colonial society.

Anglicanism was practiced in all of Britain’s American colonies by the early eighteenth

century. But scholarship on the colonial Church of England and its adherents nonetheless focuses

almost exclusively on colonies where this church was the de facto state church, such as Virginia

and South Carolina. In such colonies, taxation went directly to support the religious

establishment, and elected Church of England vestrymen possessed concomitant secular power

within the parish system. The bulk of scholarship privileges the lives and writings of Anglican

clergymen.8 Within the past several decades, however, scholars have addressed the Anglican

parish system, Anglican material culture, and religious practice within elite Anglican households.

7 David D. Hall, World of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York:

Alfred A Knopf, 1989), 18. For an overview of historiography and this multivalent approach see Jacob M. Blosser,

“Pursuing Happiness: Cultural Discourser and Popular Religion in Anglican Virginia, 1700-1770” (PhD diss.,

University of South Carolina, 2006). 8 Joan L. Gundersen The Anglican Ministry in Virginia, 1723-1766: A Study of a Social Class (New York: Garland

Publishing, 1989); James B. Bell, “The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican Clergyman,”

Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd series, vol. 106 (1994): 82-111; Nancy L. Rhoden,

Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the American Revolution (New York:

New York University Press,1999); Louis P. Nelson, The Beauty of Holiness: Anglicanism and Architecture in

Colonial South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); and Lauren F. Winners, A

Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practices in Elite Households in Eighteenth-century Virginia

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

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Work by Nicholas Beasley and Travis Glasson also situates the Church of England’s colonial

mission within the labor and commercial regimes of the British Empire, demonstrating a great

diversity of Anglican experiences. But not all geographies within the British Empire have

received the same attention. Jeremy Gregory's recent articles on the Church of England in New

England are notable exceptions to an overwhelming focus on colonies where the Church of

England enjoyed state support and was the majority church.9

Political events—such as the longstanding controversy over the appointment of an

American Anglican bishop and the American Revolution—also loom large in Anglican

historiography. Because this conflict affected the trajectory of the British Empire and the

Established Church of England in what became the United States, the outbreak of hostilities

between colonists and British regulars, the declared independence of the United States, or the

conclusion of the war serve to end most national studies of the colonial Anglican Church in

Britain’s thirteen mainland American colonies.10 National histories once viewed Anglicans

largely as loyalist apologists for empire. Recent reassessments show loyalty among Anglican

clergymen varied to a great degree by region. The most fruitful recent scholarship applies an

imperial and Atlantic perspective to the colonial Anglican Church, tracing connections between

communities, religious commodities, and individuals across the British Empire and the larger

9 Nicholas M. Beasley, Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650-1780 (Athens: University

of Georgia Press, 2009), draws attention to the importance of Christian liturgy in the British West Indies and South

Carolina. Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (New

York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” and “Transatlantic Anglican

Networks, c. 1680-c. 1770: Transplanting, Translating, and Transforming the Church of England,” in International

Religious Networks, ed. Jeremy Gregory and Hugh McLeod, Studies in Church History: Subsidia 14 (Woodbridge,

UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2012), 127-142. 10 Frederick V. Mills, Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1978); historian James B. Bell argues that religion was a cause of the American Revolution in A

War of Religion: Anglicans, Dissenters, and the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

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world. To date, however, few historians integrate the study of colonial Anglicanism with the

study of Atlantic commerce and voluntary trading networks. This omission is striking, given the

abundance of inquiry into minority religious communities such as Quakers and Jews in the

context of the commercial Atlantic.

The role of the colonial Anglicanism remains underexplored in several geographic

contexts, most notably New England, where the restoration policies of Charles II and revocation

of Massachusetts’s original 1629 charter enabled the establishment of King’s Chapel in Boston

Massachusetts in 1686. Sir Edmund Andros, an ardent Anglican who served as governor of the

Dominion of New England, personified the fears of persons opposed to the Anglicization of

Massachusetts’s governance, law, trade, and customs. The Andros regime brought a variety of

allegedly popish practices, including the celebration of Christmas, and from the perspective of

outspoken Puritans advanced the Church of England through arbitrary means. On Good Friday

1687, Andros forced members of the Puritan South Meetinghouse to share their building with the

Anglican congregation, and the governor ultimately appropriated a portion of the Puritan burial

ground on the corner of Tremont and School Streets for the purpose of building an Anglican

chapel. A focus on Puritans and polarizing politics has diverted scholars from giving equal

consideration to the religious experiences of Anglicans in early Massachusetts and the place of

Anglican adherents within England and its larger Atlantic Empire.11

Contrary to scholarship that views the Church of England as having been imposed on

New England, in fact the Anglican Church and its liturgy attracted Congregationalists as well as

11 For an overview of the various identities adopted by early eighteenth century New England Puritans as they

engaged with the commercial and political metropole and a faced a renewed French Catholic threat to themselves

and a Protestant International see Kidd, The Protestant Interest.

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migrant Huguenots and fellow Anglicans migrants and traders. Close to a quarter of Boston’s

eighteenth-century Anglican clergymen were converts from Congregationalism. Members of

Boston’s King’s Chapel aided co-religionists elsewhere in Massachusetts who sought to build

churches. In these efforts, they received assistance from a transatlantic network of lay patrons

and church leaders in England. By the early 1730s, Anglicans and other minority Protestant

groups received legal parity with Massachusetts’s Congregational establishment. Over the

following decades, the Church of England achieved marked gains in centers of population along

the coast and along the expanding frontier. On the eve of the American Revolution,

approximately 4 percent of New Englanders worshiped according to the Book of Common

Prayer.12

New England Anglicans asserted a sizable influence on local and imperial affairs. Boston

contained three of the most influential and diverse Anglican Churches in New England: King’s

Chapel (established 1686), Christ Church (1723), and Trinity Church (1733). Given the absence

of an American bishop, Boston’s Anglican clergymen held widely acknowledged supervisory

power over newer congregations and clergymen. In 1731, the Bishop of London appointed

King’s Chapel’s Reverend Roger Price as his commissary, his official representative in the

northern colonies. Reverend Henry Caner, who replaced Price as rector of King’s Chapel in

1747, served as the de facto leader of New England Anglicans until the American Revolution,

when he left Boston as a loyalist.13 Alongside a handful of self-published institutional studies,

12 Susan Martha Reed, Church and State in Colonial Massachusetts, 1691-1740 (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1914), remains a great study of minority religious group in the colony. On the Church of England’s growth

see Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1990); and Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” 199. 13 For a description of Caner’s “pseudo episcopacy” see Benton Earl Gates, “‘Anglican Frontiersmen’: The Life and

Ministries of Missionaries Serving the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Eighteenth-Century New

England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1997), 117-153.

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literature on New England Anglicanism has accordingly focused on the perspectives and roles of

ministers.14 Historian Jeremy Gregory demonstrates that the Anglican Church made dramatic

inroads in New England by the 1760s. He attributes this success to the acquisition of necessary

religious printed materials such as prayer books and devotionals, the indigenization of clergy,

and the aesthetic appeal of Anglican liturgy and worship. His analysis helpfully moves away

from dissenter’s fears of the Anglican Church and from Anglican aspirations to focus on what

the church was doing on the ground.

Boston’s interrelated Anglican Churches offer a unique window into the advancement of

Anglicanism in New England and the region’s integration into the larger Atlantic world. Though

grounded in Boston, members of this religious community depended on English sources for a

variety of religious materials and political support and conducted business across England’s

growing commercial empire. Building on prior scholarship that addresses the necessary

acquisition of ministers and their vital leadership, this project pays particular attention to patrons

who provided material and financial support to individual churches and the local and

transatlantic ties of politics and commerce that supported this community and its liturgical

practices.

Sources and Historiographic Inroads

14 For a socioeconomic breakdown of these churches and New England Anglicanism in general see Bruce Steiner,

“New England Anglicanism: A Genteel Faith?” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., vol. 27 (1970): 122-135.

Institutional studies include Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to

the Present Day, 2 vols. (1882-1896); and Charles K. Bolton, Christ Church, Salem Street Boston, 1723: A Guide

(Boston: The Church, 1923).

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This study makes extensive use of the records of Boston’s individual Anglican

congregations, which include a variety of written and material sources. Church vestry records, as

transcribed by elected officers, provide an understudied lay perspective through logs of votes,

expenditures, and correspondence related to sundry church business and political matters of

import to individual congregations and greater Anglican interests. Related financial records,

subscription lists, and lists of material and financial gifts illustrate a transatlantic network of lay

supporters and important links between the commercial and religious endeavors of church

members. Records of baptisms, marriages, and burials offer evidence of the religious practices of

a wide range of Anglicans, from commercial and political elites to enslaved Africans and free

blacks. Material artifacts such as pews, communion silver, and the Book of Common Prayer also

represent important evidence. Such materials were vital to Anglican worship, order, and social

performance, yet they have been largely overlooked by scholars or not fully integrated into

political and economic studies. As described by anthropologist Igor Kopytoff, such material

things carried layers of social and cultural meanings, as tangible evidence of human transactions

and motivations.15 The acquisition, circulation, and use of pews, communion silver, and other

materials thus provide valuable insight into power dynamics with individual congregations and

the place of Boston’s Anglican Churches and congregants within the Protestant British Empire.

Church architecture and seating within church sanctuaries displayed the power and prestige of

worshippers. Ownership of a full pew granted persons full membership and voting rights within

Anglican churches. Access and public celebration of communion was similarly restricted to

persons of perceived godliness, mainly elite members of congregations. Lay officers who

15 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in A Social Life of Things:

Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Ajun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64-93.

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controlled the sale of pews also made continued efforts to control the seating and behavior of

perceived troublemakers such as common sailors, boys, and enslaved and free blacks. This

project accordingly confronts the construction of racialized liturgical spaces and the experiences

of some free blacks and slaves who participated with Boston’s Anglican community.

Alongside its focus on lay Anglicans and use of material culture, this dissertation deals

with several key historiographical issues: the changing nature of Protestantism—and the Church

of England—within the British empire; the “spiritual economy” of Anglicanism, as seen through

lay efforts to expand the physical church and its religious mission in New England; the scope and

diversity of Anglican worship and rites as seen through the use of architecture and material

culture; and, lastly, the limitations of the categories of “loyalists” and “patriots” for describing

the political role of Anglicans in the American Revolution and the changes this conflict wrought

to Boston’s Anglican community. The completed project can be divided into two parts: the first

focusing on the establishment and growth of Anglican worship in Boston from 1686 to early

1775 (chapters 1, 2 and 3), the second examining religion and Anglicans and Anglicanism within

the imperial crises of the 1760s, ’70s, and ’80s (chapters 4 and 5).

On this first historiographic issue, my dissertation builds on studies of religion in New

England and the region’s political, social, and cultural integration into the British Empire.16

Chapter 1 explores the imperial and religious landscape of Massachusetts from the 1660

Restoration of Charles II through the establishment and growth of Anglican worship in Boston

16 On New England’s integration into the larger empire see Richard Johnson, Adjustment to Empire: The New

England Colonies, 1675-1715 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981); Owen Stanwood, “The Protestant

Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688–1689, the Making of an Anglo‐American Empire,” Journal of British

Studies 46, no. 3 (July 2007): 481-508, and The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious

Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); and Thomas Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New

England after Puritanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

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and a handful of towns across Puritan New England. This introductory chapter places the

standing Puritan order and religious liberty in Massachusetts within larger imperial moments,

most notably the 1688 Glorious Revolution and Parliament’s 1689 Act of Toleration, which

granted religious liberty to all Protestants within the English empire and affirmed religious

pluralism, even in New England. Nonconformist groups across the empire took advantage of

their newly gained legal status and cultivated powerful lobbies in London. Anglicans also

organized new ways to attract adherents as they competed for souls, resources, and political

power. The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1698, and

the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), founded in 1701, together

marshalled religious materials and resources to advance the Church of England in the colonies.

The SPG, in particular, provided indispensable financial and material support to numerous

missionaries and churches and recruited scores of clergymen for colonial positions over the

eighteenth century. However, the Church of England was not simply imposed on Massachusetts

nor can its expansion in New England be seen solely as antagonistic.17 As shown by historian

Thomas Kidd, Puritans embraced the Protestant British monarch as the chosen leader in the fight

against Catholicism, and Anglicans (especially elites) in New England did not let denominational

quibbles interfere with business. Religion nonetheless played an important cohesive role within

British society. In Boston, Anglicans formed a variety of voluntary associations. Together, they

funded and built a chapel and employed clergymen who took up pastoral care for their

congregation as well as co-religionists in nearby towns who initially lacked church buildings and

ministers of their own. Growing attendance at King’s Chapel eventually resulted in the

17 See Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” for a discussion of imperial mechanisms and local demand

for the church.

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construction of a second Anglican Church in Boston’s North End in 1723. Even as New England

Anglicans looked to England for leadership and necessary religious materials, the colonial

Anglican Church became Americanized. Over the eighteenth century colonial-born clergymen

served in unprecedented numbers, and lay leaders—church vestrymen and wardens—wielded far

greater influence over individual congregations than did their counterparts in England. Together,

lay leaders and subscribers “clubbed” together and formed numerous Anglican societies within

the symbolic heart of Puritan New England.

Chapter 2 explores the unprecedented expansion of the Church of England in New

England from the 1720s through 1760s through an examination of Boston’s growing Anglican

community. Beginning with the expansion of worship to Boston’s North End, this chapter

analyzes the mechanisms through which Anglicans funded and constructed their churches and

acquired necessary clergy and religious materials such as Books of Common Prayer and

communion silver. Though Natasha Glaisyer has examined the role Anglican ministers played in

reconciling material gain and piety by exhorting merchants to charity and honest dealings, she

gives short shrift to Anglican merchants and traders as religious and commercial actors. In

contract, historians Mark Valeri and Mark Peterson demonstrate how late-seventeenth-century

Puritans embraced the market economy as a moral imperative and how commerce and

geographic mobility generated the material resources to sustain and expand Massachusetts’s

Congregational Church in urban centers such as Boston as well as in more rural sites. Building

and maintaining Anglicans churches similarly required substantial economic investment.

Peterson’s study provides a useful model for approaching two related aspects of Anglican’s

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“spiritual economy”: the economic allocation of scarce resources and the relationship between

local and imperial Anglican governance.18

Anglicans in Boston received aid from multiple interest groups and voluntary

associations that operated within the religious and commercial Atlantic marketplace. The flow of

necessary religious goods were part of much larger circulations of European goods to the British

American colonies. Economic activity made possible the construction of Anglican Churches, and

Anglicans depended on existing commercial, political, and familial relationships as they

advocated for and lobbied on behalf of the Anglican congregations. In their commercial

endeavors and efforts on behalf of the Church, patrons relied on their good reputations. Christ

Church, for example, developed a unique relationship with a group of merchant patrons who

operated along the Bay of Honduras and received exclusive use of a special pew and political

standing within the church. Such patronage to the Church was one way in which Britons

cultivated or purchased respectability. Such actions helped individuals and groups foster and

maintain their positions in society. Their patronage and advocacy on behalf of Boston’s Anglican

Churches was no less religiously motivated than those of their Puritan and Quaker

contemporaries.19

18 Natasha Glaisyer, The Culture of Commerce in England, 1660-1720 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press,

2011); Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2010); Mark A. Peterson, The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan

New England (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 2-3. 19 Relevant works include Peterson, Price of Redemption; Phyllis Whitman Hunter, Purchasing Identity in the

Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–1780 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 128–46; Christine

Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690-1750 (New

York: W. W. Norton, 1984); S. D. Smith, “Gedney Clarke of Salem and Barbados: Super-Merchant,” New England

Quarterly 76 (2003): 529–31; and Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World

of the Lascelles, 1648-1834 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

21

Though elites played a disproportionate role in funding and directing worship at Boston’s

churches, Anglicanism appealed to a broad and diverse population. Chapter 3 concludes the first

part of this dissertation by drawing together scholarship on material culture and race and religion

within the colonial Church. This section builds on recent scholarship by Nicholas Beasley,

Travis Glasson, and Louis Nelson to confront the church’s overall relationship to slavery and the

ways in which lay leaders constructed a racialized liturgical space.20 Church liturgy, marriages,

and baptism sponsorship connected families and helped further network of alliances between

Anglo-American Anglican elites who dominated leadership roles at Anglican Churches across

the British Atlantic and supervised the behavior of perceived troublemakers—“boys” and

“Negroes”—within the physical church. However, Anglicans of elite and middling wealth and

status were not alone in their participation in church liturgy and use of religious materials.

Church records demonstrate that enslaved Africans and free blacks also attended services and

partook in religious rites. Though conversion did not lessen the bonds of slavery, baptisms,

marriages, and conversion arguably ameliorated the conditions of slaves. This largely

understudied story of New England slavery underpinned the more documented statuses of elite

Anglicans, many of whom played conflicting roles as slave owners and religious leaders. Though

the majority of slaves owned by individual Anglicans never received religious instruction, a

handful of slaveholders testified to the readiness of slaves to take baptism and communion and

acted as sponsors. This chapter pays particular attention to the women (wives, daughters, and

persons of more independent means) and poor and enslaved and free persons of color who

20 Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity; Beasley, Christian Ritual.

22

attained religious empowerment alongside powerful and prosperous, white, male members of

Boston’s Anglican society.21

Though recent studies have provided a more nuanced understanding of the mixed

loyalties of colonists during the American Revolution, colonial Anglicanism remains largely

defined by the political events of this conflict.22 Such chronologies tend to privilege politics over

communities, ignoring lasting commonalities of liturgy and theological substance, as well as

lasting connections between Anglicans who remained in the United States and so-called

“loyalists” who fled the colonies. The second thematic section of this dissertation examines the

politics of this era as they affected Anglicans and Anglican worship. Chapter 4 approaches the

commercial and political controversies of the 1760s and 1770s from the perspective of Anglican

laity. Anglicans looked to the British monarch as the secular head of the Church and offered

weekly prayers on his behalf. Many prominent Anglicans had close relationships with royally

appointed officials, and British officers and regulars billeted in town. Such affiliations, as well as

Samuel Adams’s Puritan opposition to the Church of England, led Adams to publically question

Anglicans’ loyalty to the colonial cause. Though the outbreak of the Revolution made numerous

changes to this community, this chapter departs from James B. Bell’s A War of Religion:

Anglicans, Dissenters, and the American Revolution (2008), which sees religion and

longstanding religious conflicts as a cause of the Revolution. Nonetheless, this section

21 On this topic see Michael Anesko “So Discreet a Zeal: Slavery and the Anglican Church in Virginia, 1680-1730”

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 93, no. 3 (1985): 247-278; and Ross A. Newton, “‘Persons of worthy

Character’: Slaves, Servants, and Masters at Boston’s Old North Church,” Journal of the North End Historical

Society 1, no. 1 (March 2012): 51-69. 22 The 1775 outbreak of hostilities, 1776 declaration of American independence, and 1783 peace treaty that resolved

the conflict typical serve as standard stopping points in most scholarship, while the formation of the American

Episcopal Church in 1785 formally ended the Church of England’s establishment within the thirteen former British

colonies.

23

interrogates the role of Anglicans in discourses and events surrounding the outbreak of

Revolution in Massachusetts. Building off John Tyler’s extensive analysis of Massachusetts’

traders, this section tracks the affiliations and experiences of nearly 150 Anglicans active in trade

and politics. This chapter challenges existing interpretations by showing that lay Anglicans lay

Anglicans participated commensurately with members of other religious groups in opposition to

Parliamentary actions.23

This imperial conflict had a disproportionate impact on Anglicans in Boston. The Church

of England stood as a symbol of authority, and Anglicans who openly served the government or

flouted the non-importation agreement proved easy targets of mass actions. This chapter

accordingly questions the use of labels—“patriot” and “loyalist”—to describe their complex and

ad hoc decisions, and instead traces allegiances as a process of negotiation over the course of the

1760 and 1770s. Prayers for the king and royal family took on added significance throughout

these debates. Before the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord and during the

subsequent siege, numerous Anglican clergy and lay members fled to the safety of the British

lines, and great numbers of British regulars worshiped alongside New England Anglicans. In

March of 1776 British regulars and a sizable number of Anglicans and clergymen evacuated

Boston. These events resulted in the closure of all but two Anglican churches in Massachusetts.

The fifth and final chapter approaches members of this community from the evacuation

of Boston into the decades following American independence. The outbreak of war hardened

categories such as “loyalist” and “patriot”—these allegiances, however, were far from static.

This section views allegiance as a process of negotiation and pays particular attention to persons

23 Bell, A War of Religion; John Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American

Revolution (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986).

24

disaffected from and by the war.24 Trinity Church never closed its doors during this period. In

July 1776 its minister and lay officers acquiesced to the new political regime by removing

prayers for the king. But many Anglicans who remained in Boston came under suspicion of

being inimical to the patriot cause following the evacuation of British troops and co-religionist

friends and family members. Many war refugees remained in contact with fellow Anglicans who

remained in Boston. By the close of the war, worship had resumed at Christ Church and King’s

Chapel, and in 1785 Boston’s Anglican congregations took part in the transatlantic reformulation

of the Church of England into the American Episcopal Church, which maintained an Anglican

liturgy without the political implications of the king as the temporal head of the church.25

Through this transition, Episcopalians benefited from past networks of exchange and created

new American religious institutions as they provided for the spiritual and material needs of their

diverse congregations. The break with England allowed for the much-desired presence of

resident bishops, both in the United States and British Canada. But laity at Boston’s historic

Anglican churches continued to assert their primacy in church affairs. Members of Christ Church

and Trinity incorporated themselves within the newly established Episcopal Church. In 1787

King’s Chapel’s proprietors voted to revise its liturgy to reflect the Unitarian views of its

minister, James Freeman. The chapel nonetheless retained Episcopalian rites and a revised Book

of Common Prayer. Its members worked assiduously to regain possession of precious church

24 For an overview of scholarship on loyalists see Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the

Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011); Janice Potter-McKinnon, The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist

Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); David E.

Maas, Divided Hearts, Massachusetts Loyalists, 1765-1790 (Society of Colonial Wars, 1980), provides the best

overview and analysis of Massachusetts loyalists; on allegiance as a process of negotiation see Kevin J. Dellape,

America’s First Chaplain: The Life and Times of Reverend Jacob Duché (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press,

2013), and Judith Van Buskirk, “They Didn't Join the Band: Disaffected Women in Revolutionary Philadelphia,”

Pennsylvania History 62, no. 3, Pennsylvania Loyalists (1995): 306-329. 25 For an overview of this transition see Mills, Bishops by Ballot.

25

items—communion silver and the register of baptisms, marriages, and burials—carried off by

former minister and avowed loyalist Henry Caner. As Boston’s historic Anglicans Churches

moved closer to the nineteenth century, these religious materials and rites continued to link them

with co-religionists throughout Britain’s empire and across the generations.

26

CHAPTER 1: ESTABLISHING THE KING’S CHURCH IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1660-1723

Imperial Consolidation and Religious Liberty after the Restoration

The 1660 Restoration of Charles II to the English crown brought renewed hopes for the

expansion of the Church of England across the empire. In the wake of the English Civil War,

many political and religious leaders saw the Established Church as a means for strengthening and

uniting the restored government. Parliament quickly restored bishops, revised the Book of

Common Prayer, and passed an Act of Uniformity (1662), requiring membership in the

Established Church as a condition to hold government and church office in England, as well as

the ordination of ministers by bishops. Nonconformists united in opposition to the Act of

Uniformity and resurgence of the Established Church. Even as Charles flirted with Catholicism,

he supported Protestant religious minorities against persecution, notably putting an end to the

execution of Quakers in Massachusetts. His government also did much to advance and

incorporate the Established Church of England into the larger empire. Though it came to

nothing, Charles II attempted to establish an Anglican bishopric in the colonies in 1673. That

same year saw the appointment of Dr. Henry Compton as Bishop of London. Compton sat as a

member of the Committee of Trade and Plantations, which held authority to improve, strengthen,

and reform colonial administration. Over time, the Board of Trade “delegated unprecedented

duties and responsibilities for ecclesiastical jurisdiction to royal governors and the bishop of

London.”1 Beginning in 1679, royal governors were instructed to give preference to ministers

bearing certificates from the Bishop of London. By 1685, Compton held broad religious

1 David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 26. James Bell, The

Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607-1783. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 11-

12.

27

authority, including the licensing of schoolmasters, while royal governors retained responsibility

over the appointment of benefices, granting of marriage licenses, and probating wills.2

Compton’s oversight extended to chartered colonies as they came under increased

scrutiny and control by the Board of Trade. Edward Randolph, an agent of Charles II’s

administration who arrived in Massachusetts in the spring of 1676 to investigate the colonies’

adherence to its original charter, noted the intransigence of Massachusetts’ Puritan clergy who

were involved in every aspect of governance and prevented non church members from voting in

civil matters and holding office. Randolph found Compton a sympathetic ally. In 1678, after

reviewing a petition from Randolph, the Committee for Trade and Plantations exempted persons

in Massachusetts from attending services of the colony’s established Congregationalist church

and granted non-Puritans every “Freedom of that Common Wealth,” principally voting and

holding public office. The Board of Trade further directed that the Bishop of London “appoint

forthwith some able Minister to goe and reside at Boston in New England and to appoint soe

many others from time to time as the Country shall bee willing to maintain.”3 Nothing, however,

came of this matter for another six years.

King’s Chapel and the Dominion of New England

Edward Randolph persisted in his duties working hand-in-hand with the Massachusetts

agent in London, Joseph Dudley, to undermine the colony’s original charter. By 1684, Randolph

and his allies in Massachusetts, seeking a closer relationship with the imperial center,

successfully lobbied the revocation of Massachusetts’ charter. As a result of the revocation, in

2 Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution, 28. 3 Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution, 28-29; see also Edward Randolph: Including His Letters and Official Papers from

the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies in America, and the West Indies, 1676–1703, (Randolph Papers) 5

volumes, eds. Robert N. Toppan and Alfred T. S. Goodrick, (Boston, 1898–1909), 3:36-38.

28

1686, Massachusetts became part of the Dominion of New England, an administrative union of

the colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Massachusetts

native and former London agent of the colony, Joseph Dudley served as acting president of the

Dominion until the arrival of King’s governor, Sir Edmund Andros. Dudley governed the

Dominion of New England with an appointed council, which included none other than Edward

Randolph. Randolph seized the moment to lobby the Bishop of London to send a suitable

minister to teach according to the rites of the Church of England. His efforts bore fruit. Reverend

Robert Ratcliff arrived at Boston in May 1686 on board the same vessel that brought the new

charter. Ratcliff promptly waited on Dudley and the Massachusetts Council to present letters

from the Board of Trade and request support for his mission. Mr. Robert Mason, grandson of one

of the original proprietors of New Hampshire, and Randolph, who alone out of the council

conformed to the Church of England, suggested that Ratcliff have one of the three Puritan houses

of worship in which to preach. The Council denied this request forcing the Anglicans instead to

continue holding services in a room in the Town-House.4 Not satisfied, Randolph dispatched

letters to the Committee on Trade and Foreign Plantations and the archbishop of Canterbury

complaining of ill-treatment by non-conformist clergy, members of the council, and President

Dudley, who allegedly forsook the King’s church after returning to Massachusetts.5 The recent

revocation of the colony’s charter created an exceptionally hostile environment for such an

imposition.6 Though Dudley’s commission specified “that liberty of Conscience shall be allowed

unto all persons, and that such especially as shall be Conformable to the Rights of the Church of

4 Samuel Sewall, The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674 – 1729, 3 volumes, in Collections of the Massachusetts

Historical Society, 5th series, vols. 5-7 (1878-1882) 1:138-140. 5 Randolph to Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 Aug. 1686, in Randolph Papers, 4:105. 6 Bell, Imperial Origins, 29-31; Michael Garibaldi Hall, Edward Randolph and the American colonies, 1676 – 1703.

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 111.

29

England shall be particularly Countenanced and encouraged,” he deferred to persons within

Massachusetts’ Puritan standing order resistant imperial reforms and the entrance of non-

Puritans actors into positions of civil and religious authority.7 Randolph wrongly expected that

the predominately Puritan population would contribute to the maintenance of the Established

Church and took Dudley’s actions distancing himself from the Church as a blatant political

maneuver and a personal affront.

Even without Dudley’s active support, persons of all backgrounds attended Anglican

services, with royally appointed members of government, naval officers, and merchants

especially visible. Presbyterian bookseller John Dunton, who had moved to Boston from

London, described Reverend Ratcliff as “a very Excellent Preacher whose Matter was good and

the Dress in which he put it Extraordinary he being as well an Orator as a Preacher.” The Sunday

following his landing, Radcliffe “preached in the Town house and read Common Prayer in his

Surplice which was so great a Novelty to the Bostonians that he had a very large Audience.”

News of unexpected conversion of a young man, Dr. Annesley’s son in law, was “told about

Town as a piece of Wonder.”8 Three of Dunton’s closest friends— pharmacist and attorney-

general under Andros, Dr. Edward Bullivant, linen-draper Edward Gouge, and merchant Mr.

Tryon were constant hearers at King’s Chapel. Dunton admired moderate Anglican theologians,

such as Dr. Tillotson whose sermons were “far from those bigotted and high flown Church men

who had rather the whole Frame of their Church Government shou[l]d be pull[e]d down than

part with one small Ceremony tho it shou[l]d be as inconsiderable and unnecessary as that of

bowing to the Altar or the Cross in Baptism.”9

7 Randolph Papers, 4:51-57. 8 John Dunton, Letters written from New-England, A.D. 1686, ed. W. H. Whitmore (Publications of the Prince

Society: Boston, 1867), 137-38 9 Dunton, Letters written from New-England, 94-97, 137-138, 157.

30

Beyond the public work of its minister, lay leaders at the new Anglican church also began

the work of governing the new church community. Meeting on 15 June 1686, prominent

parishioners elected two church wardens and discussed petitioned church superiors in England

for support. Members of this de facto church vestry likewise decided on Ratcliff’s salary,

advertised for “a sober and fitt p[er]son” to act as clerk, and furnished the Town-House with

twelve bench pews, a reading table, and a removable pulpit, which could be moved out of the

way between the three weekly services. Meeting again on 4 July, they similarly voted to address

a petition to the largely hostile Massachusetts Council for “Libertie and Authority… to passe

through the Whole territory of his Majestie in New England…to Collect and Receive all Such

voluntary Donations... towards ye Building of a Church in Boston, to be erected for the Service

of God, and for the use of the Church of England as by Law Established.”10

The Anglican congregation soon moved to the larger Exchange building which could

accommodate its growing numbers, but met with limited success gathering contributions towards

building a church. In late August after meeting with Randolph, Puritan Judge Samuel Sewall

recorded that the councilor “seemed to goe away displeased because I spake not up to

contributing towards the church.”11 While non-Anglicans were under no obligation to support the

construction of an Anglican house of worship financially, some actively worked to undermine

the churchmen’s efforts. In an October 1686 letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randolph

reported on the obstacles Anglicans faced in Boston: “Wee have at present 400 persons who are

daily frequenters of our church, and as many more would come over to us, but some being

tradesmen, others of mechanick professions, are threatened by the congregationall [sic] men to

be arrested by their creditors, or to be turned out of their work, if they offer to come to our

10 Vestry Records, 1686-1727, 15 June 1686, 22 June 1686, 4 July 1686, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 11 Sewall, Diary, 1:153-157

31

church; under such discouragements wee lye at present, and are forced to address your grace for

reliefe.”12 Congregational ministers vocally opposed the Anglican Church because it

“represented… a cultural challenge to tradition Puritan forms of behavior, a challenge that was

more dangerous because it was more enticing that the austere ways of Quakers and Baptists.”13

Proponents of the Church of England also possessed a powerful political lobby and newly

created positions in colonial administration, which made them a potent threat to Puritan

orthodoxy. With the exception of several Anglican appointees to the Massachusetts Council,

non-Congregationalists had little voice in provincial politics, and Puritan luminaries cast the

establishment of the Church of England in apocalyptic terms. Increase Mather’s Brief Discourse

concerning the Unlawfullness of the Common Prayer Worship (1686) attacked Anglican liturgy

as formulaic and popish. Anti-Catholicism resonated with many New Englanders who easily

perceived commonalities between an authoritarian and corrupt Roman Catholic Church and

proponents of the Anglican Church in Massachusetts. In A Testimony against Several Profane

and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New England (1687) Mather indicted

Anglicans in particular for their public adoption of heathen Roman customs such as feast days

and celebration of Christmas. However, his pamphlets broadly targeted New Englanders and

non-Anglicans who practiced or tolerated a wide range of cultural and religious customs. As

shown by historians Owen Stanwood and Jeremy Gregory, these discourses ultimately betrayed

Mather’s fears about the receptiveness of New Englanders to Anglican worship and the contents

of the Prayer Book, as well as the Anglicizing of the colony’s governance and legal system.14

12 Randolph to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 27 Oct., 1686, in Randolph Papers, 4:131. 13 Mark A. Peterson, The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England (Redwood City,

CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 164. 14 Jeremy Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England: The Church of England in British North America, c.

1680—c. 1770,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 20 (2010), 90-92; Owen Stanwood, “The Protestant

32

Arriving in December 1686 as Governor of the Dominion of New England, Sir Edmund

Andros personified these changes. Though Andros reported a great crowd which honored his

arrival and “Expressed themselves as satisfied & well disposed for his Maj[es]t[ie]s service,” he

quickly earned the ire of many in the colony, by requesting that Boston’s Puritan ministers share

one of their three buildings with the newly formed Anglican congregation.15 After meeting with

their congregations, these Puritan ministers responded, “[we] could not with a good conscience-

consent that our Meeting-Houses should be made use of for the Common-Prayer Worship.”16

Andros did not heed their concerns. Months later, on Easter Sunday, he ordered Randolph to take

charge of the keys of the Puritans’ South Meeting house so the Anglicans could share the

building. Two members of the Old South Meetinghouse—joiner William Smith and shoemaker

Edward Hill—pressured the Old South sextant to open its doors. Their advocacy in this matter

earned the scorn of diarist and fellow member of the Old South, Samuel Sewall, who saw their

defection as simply self-serving. Anglicans previously commissioned Mr. Smith to build and

move pews and the pulpit as needed before and after services and Mr. Hill, who later became

King’s Chapel’s clerk greatly benefited from Dominion’s new legal regime following his uncle’s

sudden and suspicious death and his collection of a sizable inheritance. But beyond the political

and financial motives of these two individuals, the Anglican Church offered Bostonians a new

and equally valid religious experience.17 Such public defections fed Puritans perceptions

regarding the grave threat, which the Church of England posed to their orthodoxy. The next

Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688–1689, and the Making of an Anglo‐American Empire,” Journal of

British Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3 (July 2007), 491. 15 Quoted in Stanwood, “Protestant Moment,” 491 16 Sewell, Diary, 1:162. 17 John M. Lund, “The Contested Will of ‘Goodman Penn’: Anglo-New England Politics, Culture, and Legalities,

1688-1716,” Law and History Review (Fall 2009), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/27.3/lund.html

(13 Feb. 2012). Para 14. Vestry Records, 1686-1727, 15 June 1686, 22 June 1686, 4 July 1686, King’s Chapel

records, MHS.

33

Sunday, members of the Old South furiously waited outside as the Anglicans’ late-morning

service went over the agreed upon time. Nonetheless, Sewall noted that shared the church posed

“little hindrance,” until July of 1688 when the governor decided Anglican services should

henceforward be held before Congregational services. Disagreement between members of the

meetinghouse and the governor were eventually diffused by an agreement that Anglican services

would begin at 8 am and end promptly at 9 am.18 As much as Andros seemed to enjoy conflict,

he recognized that Anglican use of the meetinghouse was a “temporary expedient.” He

accordingly ordered the collection of voluntary donations for the purchase of land and

construction of an Anglican Church. After Puritan landowners refused to sell land for this

purpose, Andros appropriated part of the Old Puritan Burial Ground on Tremont Street to build a

chapel. This arbitrary act and donations by ninety-six persons allowed construction of King’s

Chapel, New England’s first Anglican Church.19

Anglicanism and Massachusetts’ Glorious Revolution

When King’s Chapel opened for worship on Sunday 30 June 1689, Andros and Randolph

were noticeably absent. When word of William and Mary’s Glorious Revolution against the

Catholic Stuarts reached Boston in May 1689, persons hoping for a return to the colony’s

original charter and a resurgence of the Puritan standing order arrested Andros, Randolph, and

their closest associates, the vast majority of whom were Anglican. Over the next weeks,

opponents and proponents of the Andros administration presented their cases to the new monarch

18 Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637–1714. (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh

Dickinson University Press, 2002), 164-165. The original agreement specified that Anglican Sunday services would

be held from 11 to noon and from four in the afternoon 19 Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day, 2 vols.

(1882-1896), 1:69-76.

34

couching their written arguments in terms of loyalty and Protestant devotion as they sought

redress from the crown.20 Though at least one Anglican—merchant John Nelson—numbered

among persons who requested Andros’ surrender and in the militia, which arrested him, this

political upheaval threatened their recently acquired position in Massachusetts. The formation

and construction of their church had relied heavily on the political clout and financial means of

soldiers, customs officials, and administrators who disproportionally served in Stuart appointed

positions 21 Moreover, as Andros’s largely Anglican retinue languished in prison for fourteen

months before being shipped to England, Increase Mather blamed a series of military setbacks in

England’s ongoing war with France and its native allies on the presence of this Anglican Church

in New England. The General Council also removed merchant John Nelson from command of

the province’s expedition to Nova Scotia partly because of his Anglicanism. He had ironically

led the militia as it arrested Andros.22 Ratcliff also received constant harassment as he performed

his duties. In one instance, Reverend Joshua Moody of the First Church prevented the minister

from conducting a burial service for Major Anthony Howard, a member of the chapel’s fund-

raising committee. Meanwhile, rumors abounded that the majority Puritans would convert the

recently erected chapel to a school or give the building to French Protestants.23

The confluence of events following Andros’ arrest and imprisonment prompted Reverend

Ratcliff to return to England in July 1689. Ratcliff made the journey “to solicit for the

20 George Rawlyk. Nova Scotia's Massachusetts; a study of Massachusetts-Nova Scotia relations 1630 to 1784

(1973) 63; Richard R. Johnson, John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer: A Life between Empires, 32,54, 114,124;

Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1985) 39. 21 Dudley’s service in Andros’ council and enforcement of royal law similarly resulted in his imprisonment and trial

in England. 22 Lustig, Imperial Executive, 193,196; Foote, Annals, I:179; Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in

the Age of the Glorious Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) 155-156. 23 William H. Whitmore, ed. The Andros Tracts: Being a Collection of Pamphlets and Official Papers Issued during

the Period between the Overthrow of the Andros Government and the Establishment of the Second Charter of

Massachusetts. Vol. 1. (Boston: Prince Society, 1868). I:21-25.

35

enlargement of many of his constant hearers imprisoned for no other reason but because they

were of the Church of England.”24 In addition to his testimony, Ratcliff carried letters from

congregants telling their side of the insurrection. One parishioner, Anglican judge John Palmer,

used his time in prison to refute the restored government’s declarations to William III. Published

in London in 1690, his Impartial Account made clear the role of Puritan actors in the late

revolution and the continued ill-usage of Anglicans in the colony. In his telling, Reverend

Radliffe was “publickly affronted and hindred from doing of his Duty” and “scandalous

Pamphlets…Printed to villifie the Liturgy.” As Anglicans were “daily called Papist Doggs and

Rogues to their Faces,” King’s Chapel also received “the marks of their indignation and scorn by

having the Windows broken to pieces, and the Doors and Walls daubed and defiled with dung

and other filth.”25 Anglicans and other religious minorities in Massachusetts rightly feared that

the Glorious Revolution might allow Puritans to pass “laws against all other opinions of religion

except that of the Congregational churches.”26 In 1691, Samuel Myles who succeeded Ratcliff at

King’s Chapel following the senior minister’s removal to England joined church wardens in

asking King William’s protection from local interests who “have greatly damaged our Church

and threatened daily to put it down.”27 The son of a Baptist minister who was expelled from

Massachusetts for nonconformity and later served Swansea’s Baptist Church, Myles graduated

from Harvard in 1684 and taught school in Charlestown for several years before journeying to

24 Randolph to Archbishop of Canterbury (28 May 1689) and petition of Andros, Randolph presented at Council

trade meaning (29 July 1689), Randolph, Papers, 4:268 – 71, 289; Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America, 210. 25 Palmer, quoted in Andros Tracts, I:21-25. 26 Quoted in Lustig, Imperial Executive, 210 fn 7. 27 “Abstract of a letter from Mr. Samuel Myles, Minister at Boston. America and West Indies: December

1690,” Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, Volume 13: 689-1692 (1901), 368. “Young Mr.

Mather informs the people that the reason for our calamities is permitting the little chapel for the Church of England

among us. It is insufferable for it to stand, according to him, though it is battered and shattered most lamentably

already.”

36

England to receive deacon’s orders, which allowed him to preach and instruct from the Book of

Common Prayer, but not to administer communion.

Notwithstanding, continual insult to Myles and his congregation, their chapel remained

firmly established in Boston thanks in a large degree to the revolutionary settlement between

William and Parliament which vested unprecedented legal authority with that body, and

longstanding patrons, such as Andros’ lieutenant governor Francis Nicholson who gave over £50

for the completion of the chapel before he left the colonies under duress. King and Parliament

largely retained James II’s administrators and policies towards the colonies. Andros and his

lieutenant governor, for example, retained positions as colonial administrators, while their

leading Puritan opponents—Cotton Mather and Simon Bradstreet, “needed only to reassert

allegiance to the crown to regain a place in respectable society,” following Massachusetts’

Glorious Revolution.28 The Glorious Revolution settled longstanding religious tensions within

English Protestantism and worries regarding the threat of Catholicism in England and abroad.

The 1689 Act of Toleration ingrained Protestantism as a defining characteristic of the empire, by

granting freedom of religion to all Protestants except Unitarians. Though Nonconformists could

not hold government office, including Parliament, in England, their churches received legal

status on par with the Established Church. Though competition between Protestants remained the

norm, in light of the Williamite settlement, English Protestants largely perceived of the monarch

as protector of their religious liberties, as well as displaced and persecuted Protestants, such the

French Huguenots and Palatine Germans.29

28 Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1985) 39. 29 On the religious dimensions of the Glorious Revolution, see John Spurr, “The Church of England, Comprehension

and the Toleration Act of 1689,” The English Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 413 (Oct., 1989), 927-946, William

Gibson, “Anglicans and the Glorious Revolution: The Collection of Cases.” Seventeenth Century. Spring, 2007,

Vol. 22 Issue 1, 168-184, and Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious

Revolution. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

37

In Massachusetts, where Anglicans exercised limited civil authority, members of King’s

Chapel cultivated ties with key patrons and members of the church hierarchy. Numerous military

officers posted in Boston and nearby attended services at the chapel, and in 1694, naval officers

who had generously contributed towards King’s Chapel received use of a special pew. Like other

colonial Anglican congregations, King’s Chapel depended on English sources for Books of

Common Prayer, furnishings, vestments, and communion services. Such trappings were integral

for worship and served to distinguish Anglicans from other Protestants. In the absence of a

colonial Anglican bishop, persons seeking ordination had to embark on a long and expensive

voyage to London for ordination. For this reason, Samuel Myles waited until 1692 before

traveling to London, where he remained for several years to lobby on behalf of the colonial

church. He returned to Boston in 1696 as the first colonial born Anglican clergyman in the

Americas with ordination as a doctor of divinity and material evidence of the king’s favor:

cushions, damask carpets, a Bible, prayer-books, altar-cloth, and surplices. These necessary

accouterments were treasured gifts from the head of the church. Myles additionally obtained a

royal bounty of £100 per annum for the support of an assistant minister. Over the next years, the

Church received a communion table and engraved communion silver from the King, tablets

inscribed with the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostle’s Creed, and an

extensive theological library.30 Myles maintained correspondence with the Bishop of London.

Bolstered by Myles’ recommendation to the Bishop of London, William Vesey of Braintree, who

after briefly serving as assistant minister at King’s Chapel following his graduation from

Harvard, became the first rector at Trinity Church in New York City in 1697.31

30 Foote, Annals, I: 121-125. 31 James B. Bell, “The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican Clergyman,” Proceedings of the

Massachusetts Historical Society, third series, vol. 106 (1994), 86; John L. Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton et al.,

Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University (Cambridge and Boston, 1873- ), 3:287-293.

38

By the late 1690s, King’s Chapel relied on merchant Stephen Wesendunck to lobby

members of church hierarchy in England on their behalf. Wesendunck had attended several of

the earliest church meetings and subscribed towards the initial building of King’s Chapel before

permanently returned to London in 1694, giving his “Trusted friend” and former church warden

Francis Foxcroft power of attorney to resolve matters on his behalf. But Wesendunck maintained

numerous ties to Massachusetts. In 1695/96, he received money from Boston for the redemption

of white slaves held by Barbary pirates. One captive, Anthony Haywood, had extensive ties to

King’s Chapel, and members of the chapel contributed twenty-four pounds towards this

purpose.32 In 1698, church wardens sent a letter to the Bishop of London under cover of

Wesendunck requesting an assistant minister for Myles. After Bishop Compton appointed

Christopher Bridges as assistant minister, church wardens requested that the Bishop dispense the

King’s bounty (an annual sum of 100 pounds that went to support the King’s Lecturer) to

Wesendunck, “who will be carefull in conveying it to Us.” In a letter to Wesendunck, the

wardens advised him to convert the monies to trade goods, “sending it in such commodities as

you judge may turn best to accompt, by reason of [the] long passage.” Wesendunck did as

directed and purchased kersey, cotton, and serges, which church wardens sold for a profit of

close to 40% on the initial sum.33 From London, Wesendunck leveraged his extensive

commercial and political relationships and expertise to aid persons in Massachusetts, and

especially members of Boston’s King’s Chapel.

32 Foote, Annals, 1:45,48,89-90; William Blake Trask, ed. Suffolk deeds: Volume 14 [1629-87], (Boston, 1906), 242;

Sewall, Diary, I:284-285. By 1703 these captives were ultimately redeemed by the “National Charity” and Sewall

directed that Wesendunck deduct his charges and remit the remainder of the collection to the former captives 33 “King’s Chapel wardens to Coll Andrew Hammilton, King’s Chapel wardens to the bishop of London, 25 July,

1698,” quoted in Foote et al., Annals of King’s Chapel, 1:131.

39

Missionary Anglicanism and Puritan New England

Notwithstanding the establishment of Anglican worship in Philadelphia (1695), New

York City (1697), and Newport, Rhode Island (1698), many Anglicans were alarmed by the

overall weakness of the colonial church, especially in comparison to its competitors, which

developed powerful transatlantic lobbies following the Act of Toleration. Reverend Thomas

Bray who ministered in Virginia and Maryland where Anglicanism was established by law

advocated a new approach for supporting the colonial mission and confronting its competitors. In

1698, Bray spearheaded the formation of the royally chartered Society for the Propagation of

Christian Knowledge (SPCK), whose principal mission was to establish religious libraries

throughout the colonies. Among the first congregations to benefit from the SPCK, King’s Chapel

received two hundred twenty-two books valued at £100 and several hundred tracts to be

distributed within the province.34 Three years later, Bray and others formed the related Society

for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), which thereafter provided emotional

and financial assistance to colonial Anglican missionaries and churches.35 This crucial

missionary organ of the Church of England aided with the ordination of colonial clergymen and

frequently supplemented or supplied their salaries as they took up posts across the British

colonies.

In New England, where Congregationalism remained the de facto established church, the

SPG received sharp criticism from Cotton Mather, who complained that the society sent

missionaries to a land already “filled with holy churches and pastors,” when it instead should

34 Edgar Legare Pennington, “The Reverend Samuel Myles and his Boston Ministry,” Historical Magazine of the

Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 11, No. 2 (JUNE, 1942), 158. 35 Rowan Strong, “A Vision of an Anglican Imperialism: The Annual Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of

the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1714.” Journal of Religious History, Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 2006), 175-198 and

Anglicanism and the British Empire, c. 1700-1850. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

40

have been focusing on “ungospellized plantations.”36 Nonetheless, in 1704, James Honeyman

arrived in Newport, Rhode Island as the first SPG missionary to serve in New England.

Anglicans in New England lacked church taxes and political support taken for granted in

England and provinces where the Church of England was the established church. Given these

disadvantages, Anglicans cooperated with royal officials to establish and protect fledgling

Churches and worked with fellow religious minorities—Quakers, Huguenots, and Baptists—in

demanding the right to vote, hold office, and abstain from supporting the Congregationalist

establishment with taxes.

Given the primacy of Congregational membership and town meetings, individual

Anglican congregations quickly set up institutions to conduct church business. In 1699 at their

annual Easter Sunday meeting, members of King’s Chapel selected two wardens and a vestry of

nine individuals for the ensuing year. Members of this vestry would be chosen annually: “to

advise and Consult with ye Ministers and Wardens upon and concerning all matters and things as

shall by them be from time to time thought necessary to be done and performed relating to the

said Church and ye placing and seating of persons therein and to represent the whole

Congregation in all matters.” Such lay leadership was familiar to Anglicans new to Boston as

well as recent converts from the Congregational Church. Subsequently, King’s Chapel’s vestry

conducted church business, paying particular attention to the raising of funds and payment of

salaries to the ministers, clerk, and, sexton and otherwise enacted the will of the majority of the

congregation.37

36 James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Anglicans, Dissenters, and the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2008), 15. 37 Bordon W. Painter, Jr., “The Vestry In Colonial New England,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal

Church, Vol. 44, No. 4 (December, 1975), pp. 381-408; Quoted in Foote, Annals, I:133.

41

As the first established Church of England in the region, King’s Chapel’s clergy and lay

leaders frequently corresponded with the bishop of London and the Secretary of the SPG about

the needs of colonial churches. In 1708, Reverend Myles requested the SPG send a missionary to

Braintree, Massachusetts, where since 1702 a small number of Anglicans had resided without the

benefit of a regular clergyman.38 Though this request came to nothing, the Bishop of London

worked also to diffuse discord between Myles and his assistant, Christopher Bridges, who as the

King’s Lecturer received his salary from the crown. Compton resolved matter by appointing

Bridges as missionary to Narragansett, Rhode Island and later Rye, New York. Stephen

Westendunck acted as Bridges’ attorney and helped him attain his overdue salary from the SPG

as the minister moved on from the chapel.39 Bridge’s replacement, Reverend Henry Harris,

arrived in Boston in 1709, carrying a letter which the Bishop of London requested be read aloud

in front of the full vestry so that they might witness Myles’ “sincere conformity.” In Compton’s

words, Harris was “not to go under the absolute command of Mr Myles yet is he to pay a respect

to him in all reasonable things and take an equall share with him in supplying the Church,”

deferring to Myles’ prerequisite in performing marriages, burials, and baptisms.40 Like Bridges,

Harris’ background and ministerial training in England left him ill-equipped to play a

subordinate ill-defined part; nonetheless, the ministers divided duties at the chapel and visitation

of co-religionists elsewhere in Massachusetts and largely avoided the public conflict, which had

defined Bridges’ tenure as king’s lecturer.

38 Their request for a missionary went unanswered until 1711. 39 John Henry Hobart, The correspondence of John Henry Hobart. (New York: Priv. print, 1911-1912). 27-33;

Robert Bolton, History of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the County of Westchester, from Its Foundation, A.D.

1693, to A.D. 1853. (New York: Stanford & Swords, 1855), 195. Robert Hunter, governor of New York and a

member of the SPG also attested to Bridge’s character in correspondence with the SPG before Bridge removed to

Rye. 40 Quoted in Foote, Annals, I:195-196.

42

Over the next years Anglicans in Boston were drawn into a dispute between inhabitants

of Newbery who argued over the necessity of building of a new church on the “plains” at the

west end of the town. After a warrant from the general assembly stopped construction of this

church, Surveyor of the King’s Woods John Bridger, who was posted nearby in Portsmouth,

New Hampshire, promised proponents of the new church protection from the royal governor and

the Bishop of London if they called up an “orthodox” minister. Mr. Bridger further volunteered

to act as the Newbery churchmen’s agent to oversee and complete construction of the church and

requested that Reverend Harris journey to Newbery to offer religious instruction. After staying

two weeks during his first visit, Harris returned frequently, providing the churchmen “a dozen

common prayer Books at his own expence [sic]” as well as copies of several theological

pamphlets. In March of 1712, Mr. Bridger testified that Harris’ “methods succeeded so well

that…the number of his hearers often amounted to three hundred persons and upwards.” Bridger

firmly believed that “So considerable a body of people was thought worth the Church's care and

the Gov[ernment’s] protection.”41 Others held that these churchmen converted to the Established

Church simply to avoid paying rates to Newbery’s aging Puritan minister. Regardless, Bridger,

Reverend Myles, and Reverend Harris introduced Newbery churchman, Joseph Bailey, to

Massachusetts governor Joseph Dudley in November 1712. In this meeting, Bailey presented a

petition and requested the Governor intercede on their behalf. Dudley, who had signed the initial

warrant stopping construction, lifted the hold on construction and wrote to the Bishop of London

to request the appointment of a missionary to Newbery, promising that upon the minister’s

41 Quoted in Foote, Annals, 1:254.

43

arrival the congregation would be exempt from paying taxes to support the town’s resident

Congregational minister.42

In contrast to Bridger’s ad hoc advocacy, General Francis Nicholson returned to New

England in 1713 with authority as commissary for the Bishop of London. In this role, the former

lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and founding member of the SPG directed resources to

needy churches.43 In November 1713, for example, Nicholson appointed the Reverend John

Lambton, Chaplain of Her Majesty’s Ship Phoenix, to the congregation at Queen Anne’s Chapel,

in Newberry. When several leading Newbery churchmen were imprisoned for refusing to submit

taxes for the benefit of the Congregationalist establishment, Lambton reached out to Nicholson

for legal advice. The commissary paid for legal counsel for the imprisoned churchmen.44 The

town eventually resolved “to free all those persons that are or shall be for the Episcopal way of

worship in ye Precinct from paying any rates to the maintenance of ye ministry amongst us.”45

The following year, Nicholson assisted Anglicans in Marblehead with the construction of a

church, which they named St. Michael’s at his suggestion. Addressing him as the “Father and

founder” of their church, members of the congregation similarly requested Nicholson’s support

in procuring a minister through the SPG and legal advice as they too were taxed in support of

their town’s Congregational Churches.46 Writing to the Secretary of the SPG in May 1714,

42 Joshua Coffin, A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, from 1635 to 1845. (Boston:

Samuel D. Drake, 1845), 181-187; Perry, Historical Collections, 3:86-87; Foote, Annals, I: 234, 239, 245. Bridger

served as a vestryman at king’s Chapel (1701, 1709-1715, and 1718-1722). 43 Over his career, Nicholson posted in the military or served as an imperial administrator in Massachusetts, Nova

Scotia, Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina. On his religious and other benefaction see Bruce T. McCully, “Governor

Francis Nicholson, Patron ‘Par Excellence’ of Religion and Learning in Colonial America,” The William and Mary

Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Apr., 1982), 310-333. And James D. Kornwolf, “Doing Good to Posterity":

Francis Nicholson, First Patron of Architecture, Landscape Design, and Town Planning in Virginia, Maryland, and

South Carolina, 1688-1725 The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 101, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), 333-374. 44 Perry, Historical Collections, 3:87-91. 45 Quoted in Susan Martha Reed, Church and State in Massachusetts, 1691-1740 (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1914), 166. 46 “Church at Marblehead to General Nicholson, 27 November, 1714,” in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:113-14.

44

Dudley reported that he instructed the town magistrates in Newberry and Braintree to no longer

collect these taxes.47 However, having been led to believe that Governor Dudley had effected

permanent relief from such taxes, the SPG and the Bishop of London refrained from interfering.

These issues reemerged over the next decades as successive governors negotiated between the

Massachusetts legal regime which allowed for taxes to support the de facto state church and the

rights of minority religious societies.48

King’s Chapel and its sister congregations in Massachusetts maintained close relations

with royal officials, especially persons sympathetic to their position in the colony. In 1701, the

King’s Chapel vestry fitted a state pew for the royal governor, the Earl of Bellomont, and

selected him as first vestryman at the chapel’s annual Easter meeting. The selection of governors

to vestries was customary in royal colonies, but this appointment was not wholly symbolic. The

SPG recruited colonial governors as members in order to obtain information on provincial

churches. In turn, governors often garnered political favor from the Board of Trade and Bishop

of London by assisting Anglican societies. In Massachusetts, where governors vacillated

between supporting religious minorities and alienating the still politically connected

Congregationalist majority, members of King’s Chapel asserted influence over the selection and

appointment of governors. In February 1714, Reverends Myles and Harris provided the Bishop

of London a list of officials opposed to the Anglican Church, including Governor Dudley who

was not a member of King’s Chapel having exclusively attended an Independent meetinghouse

in Roxbury for over six years. A list of members and communicants of the chapel followed this

testimony. The following winter Harris travelled to London to lobby for the appointment of

47 Perry, Historical Collections, 3:97-98. 48 Reed, Church and State in Massachusetts, 167-170.

45

permanent missionaries to Braintree and Newbery.49 Harris undoubtedly also elaborated on how

Dudley misled Church leaders regarding his authority over town affairs. By 1715 Dudley stepped

down as governor and retired to Roxbury. Lieutenant Governor William Tailor, a long-serving

warden at King’s Chapel, acted as chief executive, until Jonathan Shute arrived from England.50

In addition to supporting Anglicans in nearby towns, officials at King’s Chapel expanded

the physical church to accommodate its growing numbers and better provide for active church

members and patrons. Naval officers, who in 1694 received exclusive use of a pew because of

their generous support for the initial construction of the chapel, contributed more than £400

towards its 1711/12 expansion, over half of the total funds raised.51 Their privileged seating

within King’s Chapel’s sanctuary reflected their collective power and status. Well-disposed

members of the congregation began to build box pews at their own expense in 1712. In October

of that year, the gentlemen of the vestry met to number the pews and assign each person a place

on a list. Henceforward, the sale of pews and annual pew taxes contributed to the chapel’s fiscal

well-being and gave owners of full pews a vote in church matters. In 1714, vestrymen resolved

that those who had not paid would lose the right to their pew, providing newcomers and persons

without pews thus gained opportunity to physically enter the church community.52 Vestrymen

also recognized the importance of certain parishioners, voting that year “that the Two long Pews

fronting the Pulpit be made into Two Square Pews,” for Lieutenant Governor Colonel William

Tailor and collector of customs for the port of Boston, John Jekyll, both members of the church.

49 Quoted in Foote, Annals, I: 241. The importance of supporting coreligionists in a town in “the center of the

Countrey” and a “town of the most Universall and Beneficiall Trade” prompted Harris “to waite upon the Society in

Person and urge this affair with the strongest arguments and represent it in the clearest light.” 50 Foote, ed. Annals, I: 239; For an overview of how religion impacted the appointment and administrations of

several colonial governors, see Alison Gilbert Olsen, Making the Empire Work: London and American Interest

Groups, 1690-1790, 76-86. 51 Foote, Annals, I: 143,199-205. 52 Foote et al., Annals of King’s Chapel, 1:229

46

The vestry similarly provided a double pew for the use of visiting “Masters of Vessells,” who

carried invaluable news and attractive cargoes to and from the bustling port.53

New England Anglicanism

By 1717, King’s Chapel expanded its seating capacity with newly constructed galleries,

painted columns, pillars, and cornices within the sanctuary, and installed an elaborately carved

wine-glass style pulpit. But even as many of Boston’s more affluent Congregational Church

emulated aspects of Anglican architecture, the sounds and substance of Anglican worship

distinguished Anglican Churches from their neighbors. From the establishment of King’s Chapel

church members sang from the Sternhold and Hopkins’ Psalmer, the first metered version of

psalms published in England directly after the break with Rome. This Psalmer remained popular

into the seventeenth century, except in New England where Puritan Churches put severe

limitations on the singing of psalms. In Massachusetts, leading Puritans channeled their ill-ease

towards choirs, harmonies, instrumental accompaniments, and alleged inexact translation of

psalms from the original Hebrew into the first book published in the American colonies, The

Whole Book of Psalms Translated Faithfully into English Metre (1640). Commonly referred to as

the Bay Psalm Book, it underwent over twenty-five printing over the next century. The ninth

edition, published in 1698, was the first to contain melodies. The adoption of melodies and

musical translation of the psalms remained a heated issue and corresponded with the

establishment of Anglican worship in New England.54 In 1696, the king endorsed the first edition

53 Foote, Annals, 1: 212. They additionally voted “that the Pew behind be for Eight old men as shall be there

placed.” 54 Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson eds., The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings (Dover Publications,

2001), 555-556; For an overview of music in colonial New England, see John Ogasapian, Music of the Colonial and

Revolutionary Era, (Greenwood Press, Westport, Ct: 2004), 29-43.

47

of a Psalmer by poet laureate Nahum Tate and royal chaplain Nicholas Brady, which largely

replaced Sternhold and Hopkins’ Psalmer. The bishop of London recommending Tate and

Brady’s 1698 edition, finding “it a work done with so much judgment and ingenuity, that I am

persuaded it may take off that unhappy objection, which has hitherto lain against the Singing

Psalms, and dispose that part of Divine Service to much more Devotion.55 More poetic lyrics and

suggestions for tunes distinguished this psalmer from others. At an April, 1713 meeting, King’s

Chapel’s vestry voted to use the Psalms of Tate and Brady, likely adopting the 1713 edition,

which had been published in Boston. At subsequently weekly services, the chapel’s clerk

selected and led the singing of psalms, reading them line by line or in alternating fashion as

members of the congregation learned the words and melody.56

Instrumental music further differentiated Anglican services from those of

Nonconformists. In 1714 King’s Chapel became the first church in New England with an organ

thanks to the generous bequest of merchant Thomas Brattle. Brattle’s obituary in the Boston

News-Letter observed that “He was known and valued for his Catholic Charity to all of the

reformed Religion, but more especially his gr[ea]t. Veneration for the Ch. Of Engl[an]d. altho his

genl. [sic] and more consistent communion was with the Nonconformists.” Accordingly, Brattle

willed that Brattle Square Church, which he had helped found in 1699, might take his four-stop

organ. Though Brattle Square was Boston’s most liberal Congregationalist Church, its members

respectfully declined the organ, seeing it not “proper to use the same [organ] in the publick

worship of God.”57 While organ music and instrumental music, in general, was acceptable in the

55 Quoted in Jeremy Gregory, “‘For All Sorts and Conditions of Men’: The Social Life of the Book of Common

Prayer during the Long Eighteenth Century; Or, Bringing the History of Religion and Social History Together,’’

Social History 34, no. 1 (2009), 35. fn 35. 56 Foote, Annals, 1: 204-207. 57 Quoted in Barbara Owen, The Organs and Music of King's Chapel, 2nd ed. (Boston: King's Chapel, 1993) 3.

Puritans were not wholly opposed to music. Many like Brattle played instruments in their homes

48

privacy of one’s home, it was not found in Congregational Churches in England or the American

colonies until the close of the eighth century.

Brattle Square’s refusal gave King’s Chapel, which was listed second on the will,

opportunity to receive the organ. The vestry promptly accepted the gift, paid for its transportation

to the chapel, and began a subscription for the maintenance and support of the organ. The vestry

further charged one of their own, Colonel John Redknap, who was in London with finding a

suitable organist and draw up articles of agreement. In September 1714, Redknap informed the

vestry that Edward Enstone “a person of sober life and Conversation” was bound for Boston.58

William Price, a book dealer, engraver, and amateur musician, as well as a leading member of

the congregation, served as interim organist until Enstone assumed his duties by Christmas of

1714. Enstone also branched out into the community. In February 1715, the organist petitioned

town selectmen to operate a dancing and music school. Enstone ignored their denial and taught

anyway. His position at King’s Chapel likely prevented interference with his school. But the

musician did not find universal acceptance. Judge Sewall noted in his diary that he and others

persuaded the governor not to attend a ball held at Enstone’s on 29 November 1716. Enstone

nonetheless remained active in Boston: selling, repairing, tuning instruments and teaching “all

sort of Needle-point and Musick and Dancing” until November 1723 when the vestry ordered

him to turn the organ keys over to William Price and Nathanial Gifford so they might practice.

Though church records give no reason for Enstone’s dismissal, charges brought by the town for

unlawfully cohabitating with a single woman likely influenced the vestry’s decision and the

organist’s subsequent return to England.59

58 Quoted in Foote, Annals, 1: 214. 59 Owen, Organs and Music, 3, 29-34. Quote on 34.

49

Beyond King’s Chapel’s ready incorporation of music into worship, Anglican Churches

brought a variety of customs and practices to New England. Celebration of Christmas remained a

sensitive subject into the eighteenth century. For Anglicans, Advent inaugurated a time of

reflection and penitence leading up to Christmas Day and its associated celebration and

merriment. Reverend Harris’ published 1712 Christmas sermon reflected not on pageantry but

the “benefits which Christ Purchas’d for his Church” through his death.60 Though

Congregationalists also believed in the substance of this message, they held that Christmas on

December the 25 was a pagan invention, not cause for a day away from temporal concerns. In

late December 1722, Anglican Governor Jonathan Shute suggested that the General Court

adjourn for Christmas. Judge Sewell objected and argued that the governor need not attend that

day. Sewell confided part of this conversation in his diary: “I said the Dissenters came a great

way for their Liberties and now the Church [of England] had theirs yet they could not be

contented except they might Tread all others down.”61 Like Christmas and feast days, a variety

of practices and rituals differentiated Anglicans from others in Massachusetts. Swearing on the

Bible, bowing at the name of Jesus, kneeling at the Sacrament, making the sign of the cross at

baptism, having godparents, and wearing the surplice were on the face of it anathematic to many

Puritan. But these and other Anglican practices and rituals found in the Book of Common Prayer

were not wholly unwanted or unattractive to New Englanders.62

Most New Englanders would have been aware of the trappings of Anglican worship if not

the content of the Book of Common Prayer. Structured in response to the recent religious conflict

60 Harris, Henry. A sermon preached at the Queen's Chappel in Boston, upon Christmas Day, the 25th. of December,

1712. Publish'd at the request of the gentlemen of the vestry. By Mr. Harris, one of the Ministers of the said chappel,

and fellow of Jesus-College, in Oxford. (Boston: Printed by B. Green: Sold by Joanna Perry, at her Shop in King

Street, 1712), 1712. 61 Sewell, Diary, 3:315. 62 Gregory, “Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer,” 29-54 and “Refashioning Puritan New England.”

50

within England, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer contained prayers “for all sorts and

conditions of man” and guided Anglican worship across the English Empire. Though detractors

claimed that this liturgy was formulaic and even dull, the repetition of passages from this manual

reinforced church doctrine and allowed illiterate and literate parishioners to participate in

communal worship and individual piety. The Prayer Book further proscribed the format for

taking the sacrament of communion. Those wanting to take Holy Communions would give their

names to the minister beforehand. The minister would then instruct “’open and notorious evil

livers’ not to come unless they amended their ‘naughty life’; and if they had fallen out with other

members of the parish community, they were to be reconciled with their neighbors before they

could receive.”63 Communion taking varied by parish and region, and distinctions between those

who received and did not were frequently reported to along social lines. Communion was a

“social event,” where wealthier congregants paraded to the altar in their finery. Communicants

often used silver plate donated by patrons and affluent members. The Book of Common Prayer

also proscribed that alms given during the offertory were given to the poor following service.

This perception frequently precluded persons who received charity from taking bread and wine.64

A minority of colonial Anglicans regularly took communion. In 1713, the ministers and

vestrymen at King’s Chapel reported the names of sixty principle gentlemen of the church,

twenty-three of whom were communicants, to the Bishop of London. Though the church officers

“omitted setting down a considerable number of our communicants because of small though

63 Gregory, “Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer,” 42. 64 On social class and communion, see Gregory, “Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer,” 42-44.

51

good families in the town” in this document, communion was likely limited to a third or fewer of

King’s Chapel’s 800 parishioners.65

In spite of minor participation in certain rites, Book of Common Prayer ceremonies and

rites and extra-church activities such as christening and wedding parties reinforced ideas of

family, kinship, and community within the Church. The Prayer Book established forms for

important rites of passage such as childbirths, baptisms, marriages, and burials. Ministers and

church officers at King’s Chapel began keeping a formal register of baptisms, burials, and

marriages, which date respectively from 1703, 1714, and 1718. Marriages and baptism

sponsorship created especially intimate links within Boston’s Anglican community and with

fellow Anglicans across the Atlantic World. Godparents or sponsors as they were named in the

registers of King’s Chapel played important roles in the spiritual and material lives of children.

Efforts by member of the church to document these significant events demonstrate a degree of

communal cohesion and connection between generations.66 The Book of Common Prayer

ordered services and rites of passage and proscribed scripture readings, psalms, and feasts

throughout the calendar year. The Prayer Book was also adapted to different circumstances,

including different forms for public and private baptisms and the baptism of children and adults.

The book similarly contained prayers and thanksgivings for multiple occasions, such as after

childbirth and while at sea. The Prayer Book likewise commemorated the death of Charles I, the

Restoration of Charles II, and the ascension of George I and provided daily prayers for the health

and safety of the British monarch and temporal governor of the Anglican Church.67 Altogether,

65 Foote, Annals, 1: 239-240. Since distinctions between those who received and did not were frequently reported to

be along social lines, it is difficult to estimate the total number of communicants. Assuming 20 to 30 additional

communicants from “good families,” I place the total number of communicants at between 6 and 9 % of the whole. 66 Gregory, “Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer,” 46-47; On godparentage and marriage see David Cressy,

Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1997), 149–172, 285-297. 67 Gregory, “Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer,” 44-47.

52

the Prayer Book’s structure and versatility contributed to its high demand through the eighteenth

century. Colonial Anglicans used an unaltered English Book of Common Prayer until the

separation with Great Britain.

By the first decades of the eighteenth century, the religious landscape of Puritan New

England had been transformed in obvious and sometimes subtle ways.68 In addition to the

planting of Anglican Churches and sending of missionaries and religious materials, the SPG

worked concurrently with the SPKN and donated hundreds of religious tracts and theological

works to Anglican congregations and private libraries. Theologians at Harvard and Yale

Colleges increasingly included moderate Anglicans in required curriculum, particularly Anglican

Archbishop John Tillotson (1630-1694), who provided early theological justification for William

and Mary in the Glorious Revolution. Long after his death, Tillotson was the most widely read

and copied sermonizer in the early-eighteenth-century English-speaking world.69 According to

historian Norman Fiering, “To slander the memory of ‘the great and good Archbishop Tillotson,’

as none other than Increase Mather had referred to him years before, was a major offense to New

England sensibilities.”70 Tillotson firmly believed that the papacy posed a real threat to England

and strove to minimize doctrinal differences within the empire. As Protestantism became a

critical characteristic of William III’s England, a renewed threat of “popery” brought numerous

New Englanders into England’s imperial orbit.71 Massachusetts natives and Harvard graduates

Benjamin Colman and Henry Newman exemplified the philosophical Protestantism advanced by

68 Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” 93. 69 For an overview of Tillotson’s popularity see Jacob M. Blosser, “Pursuing Happiness: Cultural Discourser and

Popular Religion in Anglican Virginia, 1700-1770.” Ph.D. diss. University of South Carolina, 2006. chapter 3. 70 Norman Fiering, “The First American Enlightenment: Tillotson, Leverett, and Philosophical Anglicanism” The

New England Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), 314. 71 Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2011), especially chapters 3,4 and 5; Thomas Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after

Puritanism (Yale University Press, 2004), chapter 2.

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Tillotson. After spending four years preaching in England, Colman return to Boston in 1699 to

become the first minister at Brattle Square Church. Through the Act of Union and Hanoverian

Succession, Colman affirmed Massachusetts’ allegiance to Britain and the Protestant Succession

and credited “the Care of Providence” which “from time to time guarded the Liberties and fill’d

the Throne of Britain.”72 Colman’s lifelong correspondent, Henry Newman, converted to

Anglicanism in the 1690s before or after permanently moving to London. In 1708 he became

secretary to the SPCK, which despite its affiliation with the Church of England largely refrained

from actively proselytizing for the Church.73 During Newman’s lengthy tenure, his innumerable

contacts with colonial nonconformists and churchmen, clerics and commercial figures benefited

the Society’s mission of establishing religious libraries. Newman also retained close ties with

leading Protestants across Europe and the British colonies, serving as agent for the colony of

New Hampshire and Harvard College.74

Despite the latitudinarian ideals of toleration and pan-Protestantism proffered by Colman

and Newman and striking evidence of cooperation and admiration across denominational lines,

converts from the Congregationalist Church to the Established Church still elicited strong

responses among many New Englanders. In 1722, for example, the so-called “Yale Apostasy” of

the president of Yale and several tutors sent ripples through New England. Timothy Cutler, the

most visible convert, was a native of Charlestown, Massachusetts and a graduate of Harvard,

who formerly ministered at a Congregational Church in Stratford, Connecticut before becoming

72 Kidd, The Protestant Interest, chapter 1, quote on 38. 73 John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor eds., The Church of England c.1689–c.1833: From Toleration to

Tractarianism (Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapter 7. 74 Leonard W. Cowie, Henry Newman, An American in London, I708-43 (The Macmillan Company, 1956) and

Mark A. Peterson, “Theopolis Americana: The City-State of Boston, The Republic of Letters, and the Protestant

International, 1689-1739,” in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1825,

ed. Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). 329-370.

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president of Yale College in 1719. Cutler, his tutor and assistant, and several former tutors began

meeting in secret to read and discuss pro-Episcopalian materials which Massachusetts’ London

agent, Jeremiah Dummer, donated to the Yale library in 1714.75 These activities aroused

suspicion among the college trustees. In September 1722 Cutler closed his commencement

sermon with language straight from the Book of Common Prayer: “and let all the people say,

amen.” The following day, Cutler and three tutors were called in front of the trustees and

publicly expressed concern over the validity of their ordinations and expressed their desire to

convert to the Established Church. Beyond the initial crisis of identity that the Yale apostasy

prompted in Congregationalist circles, these public defections testified to the attractiveness of

Anglican ordination, which the converts held as valid through the apostolic succession of

bishops, and the Book of Common Prayer as a liturgical manual for worship.76 This process

ironically reversed the seventeenth-century defections of many Puritans and other Non-

conformists who could no longer subscribe to from the Church of England

Anglican outreach into the heart of New England dovetailed with the growth of Boston’s

Anglican community. By 1722, many at King’s Chapel still found their building too small to

accommodate their growing numbers, and vestryman Anthony Blount and several other members

of the church purchased land in the North End for the proposed construction of a sister church.

Following this generous initiative, the chapel formed a committee to raise funds for its

construction. Fellow parishioners and coreligionists across the Atlantic subscribed towards

75 Pro-Episcopalian materials were also common at Harvard. In the early 1720s Benjamin Franklin published a

satirical article poking fun at the great extent Congregational ministers plagiarized Tilloton, and the Harvard’s Board

of Overseers found that works by Tillotson numbered among the most read at the college. 76 On colonial Anglican ministers see James B. Bell, “The Making of an Eighteenth-Century American Anglican

Clergyman,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 106 (1994), 82-111; On the

Yale apostasy see Robert E. Daggy, ‘Education, Church and State: Timothy Cutler and the Yale Apostasy of 1722’,

Journal of Church and State, 13 (1971), 43–67, quote on 47. For a perspective other than Cutler’s see D. F. M.

Geradi, “Samuel Johnson and the Yale ‘Apostacy’ of 1722: The Challenge of Anglican Sacramentalism to the New

England Way,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 47 (1978), 153–75.

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building the new church. The Honorable Earl of Thanet and Governor Francis Nicholson of

South Carolina, both members of the SPG, headed the subscription list. Other prominent

contributors included Charles Apthorp, Peter Faneuil, William Price, and Leonard Vassall, as

well as wealthy planters from Antigua and Barbados and individuals from England. Leonard

Vassall, a leading subscriber and member of Christ Church’s first vestry removed with his family

from Jamaica to Braintree in 1722, bringing a number of slaves “for the use of his family.” He

maintained ownership of several plantations in Hanover Country, Jamaica.77 Yet, scores of

smaller contributors also gave to this religious cause. Altogether, the committee raised £2,184,

and in April 1723, Reverend Myles, accompanied by gentlemen of King’s Chapel, laid the

cornerstone for Christ Church.78

Once planning for the building of Christ Church was underway, the committee solicited

Reverend Timothy Cutler to preside over the new congregation. Cutler was already known to

Boston’s close-knit Anglican community before his highly publicized defection from the

Congregationalist fold.79 Some of his detractors cited the open position at Christ Church as the

reason for his conversion. Regardless, his selection reflected a growing trend among Anglicans

to employ colonial-born ministers. Members of King’s Chapel paid for the three converts’

passage to England for Anglican ordination and provided for Cutler’s wife and children in his

77 Annie Haven Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800 and The Crooked and Narrow

Streets of Boston, 1630-1822, (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society and Massachusetts Historical

Society, 2001 [59063]) CD-ROM; Proprietors' record, 1724-1776, Old North (Christ Church in the City of Boston)

records, Vol. 8, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS). Hereafter ONC records, MHS. Elizabeth Donnan, ed.,

Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 4 volumes (Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co.,

Inc., 2002), 3:28. 78 Henry Burroughs, A Historical Account of Christ Church, Boston: An Address, Delivered on the One Hundred

and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Opening of the Church, December 29th, 1873. (Boston: A. Williams & Co, 1874). 2-

4. 79 During the turbulent administration and arrest of Edmund Andros, Cutler’s Congregationalist father remained

loyal to the governor.

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absence.80 Upon Cutler’s return, he preached at King’s Chapel, where the congregation voted

him to become the minister to Christ Church. This vote, as well as a written declaration by the

elected wardens and vestrymen held that they possessed the right of presentation to the rectory

and final authority over the appointment of their minister, which set a precedent of lay control

and governance at the new church. In accordance with growing custom in the colonies, Christ

Church’s first vestry also wrote into the by-laws of the church that only proprietors—owners of

full pews—could vote on church matters.81 Members of King’s Chapel made similar provisions

so that only persons who contributed financially to church had a vote in church matters. This

congregational form of governance was easily recognizable to Anglicans and non-Anglicans

alike.

The establishment of King’s Chapel, in Boston, coincided with larger imperial policy

changes that dramatically integrated Massachusetts into the commercial and cultural English

Empire. Lay support in Massachusetts and abroad ensured the survival and growth of this

church, in the face of resistance from the Congregationalist standing order and the turmoil of

Massachusetts’s participation in the Glorious Revolution. The Revolution shifted power from the

monarch to Parliament and ensured Protestantism as a defining characteristic of the English

empire. Though the Church of England remained the state church in England and many colonies,

the Act of Toleration empowered dissenting groups by granting greater freedom of religion and

lifted penalties for some, but not all, non-Anglican Protestants, continuing to exclude Catholics,

which had been the case anyway. However, only Anglicans could hold office. Ironically, to

80 Foote et al., Annals of King’s Chapel, 1:312–325; For more on Cutler’s experiences in England see Bell,

“American Anglican Clergyman,” 106-108 81 Burroughs, A Historical Account of Christ Church. 5; Vestry records, 1 December 1723, King’s Chapel records,

MHS.

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some degree, the positions of authority were reversed in New England, with the Anglican church

becoming the weaker minority institution. In Massachusetts, Anglicans (and other minority

groups) cultivated lasting relationships with the new monarch and a network of patrons and

friends as they sought redress from the Congregationalist standing order. The newly formed

SPCK and SPG assisted in the planting of sister churches and overall Anglicization of politics,

trade, and religion in New England. Distance from the church hierarchy reinforced the

importance of transatlantic ties and also left colonial Anglicans to their own initiatives. Colonial

vestries commanded significant power over church functions and the appointment and behavior

of ministers, who increasingly came from dissenting backgrounds. Moving further into the

eighteenth century, as Anglican liturgy and music differentiated their services from those of their

nonconformist neighbors Boston’s Anglican societies and patrons promoted further expansion by

the Church of England in Boston and across New England.

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CHAPTER 2: ANGLICANS IN THE WORLD: BUILDING AND FURNISHING THE

CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN BOSTON, 1724-1775

Religious Community, Charity, and Sociability in an Associated World

From its location on Salem Street in Boston’s North End, Christ Church towered above a

bustling commercial port when it opened for worship in late December 1723. Boston at that time

boasted a population of just over 10,500. The town’s two Anglican Churches competed for souls

with nine “Independent [Congregationalist] Congregations” and smaller French, Anabaptist, and

Quaker meetings.1 Though many New Englanders viewed the Christ Church’s first minister,

Timothy Cutler, as an apostate from Puritan orthodoxy, others embraced him as a well-spoken

advocate for the Anglican faith. Controversies aside, Cutler was a well-established and learned

theologian who applied himself zealously to his new church.2 In January 1724, Cutler reported to

the secretary of the SPG that his church was “very much crowded with hearers” with no

discernible decrease in attendance at King’s Chapel. Cutler estimated that the new church would

attract “upwards of 50 Families besides the share we expect of seafaring persons, which is a

great and growing article in this Town of very notable trade and business.” Though the common

sailors who attended services were in Cutler’s estimation “too much of the unthinking kind,” two

years later in a report to the SPG he “rejoice[d] in the religious and virtuous lives of many that

1 In 1722, the population was given as 10,567. David W. Conroy, In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of

Authority in Colonial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 116; Timothy Cutler

to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), 4 January 1724, 28

November 1726, 10 October 1727, William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Related to the American

Colonial Church, vol. 3, Massachusetts (Hartford, CT: Church Press, 1873), 142. 2 Donald L. Huber, “Timothy Cutler: The Convert as Controversialist,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant

Episcopal Church 44, no. 4 (1975): 489-496; Thomas C. Reeves, “John Checkley and the Emergence of The

Episcopal Church in New England,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 34, no. 4 (1965), 353-

358. Cutler found common ground with outspoken Anglican pamphleteer John Checkey, but their efforts to extend

the authority and scope of the Church of England alienated some more moderate Anglicans such as King’s Chapel’s

Reverend Harris, who had aspired to Cutler’s position at Christ Church.

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belong[ed]” to him. Cutler reported 94 communicants, “several who belong to the other parish in

this place, and communicate in both.” He noted also the attendance of “considerable numbers of

Dissenters,” attracted, no doubt, by the liturgy of the Church and his celebrity as an orator.3

Alongside these native New Englanders, transplants from Britain and its American colonies as

well as foreign Protestants, especially Huguenots, comprised Boston’s growing Anglican

society.4

On Easter Monday 1724, just months after Christ Church opened for worship, a group of

affluent Anglicans incorporated a mutual aid society to support needy persons within their

religious community. The aptly named Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (BECS) granted

monetary relief to persons “Reduced (by the Providence of God) to so great Necessities as to

need Charity,” most notably past and present members of the Society and their families and

widows and minor children of Anglican ministers within the colony.5 The eighty-three founding

members and sixty-five additional persons who joined in 1725 included merchants, doctors,

tradesmen, lawyers, judges, military officers, and imperial administrators, many of whom also

served concurrently as church wardens and vestrymen. Though the vast majority of Society

members resided in Massachusetts, they were all tied to the larger political and commercial

Atlantic world. Perhaps due to such transatlantic connections, they welcomed a Mr. Davis of

Barbados into the Society in 1725. Well-regarded collector of customs John Jeckyll served as the

3 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary of the SPG, 4 January1724, 28 November 1726, 10 October 1727, Perry,

Historical Collections, 3:142-44, 205, 228-231. 4 On the attraction of the Church of England to Congregationalist see Jeremy Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New

England: The Church of England in British North America, c. 1680–c. 1770,” Transactions of the Royal Historical

Society 20 (2010): 85–112. On the Huguenots who found refuge in British America following the revocation of the

Edict of Nantes (1686) see Robert McCune Kingdon, “Why Did the Huguenot Refugees in the American Colonies

Become Episcopalians?” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 49, no. 4 (1980): 317-35; and J.

F. Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century” William and Mary

Quarterly, 3rd ser., 52, no. 1 (1995): 77-102. 5 Boston Episcopal Charitable Society, “Original Constitution of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society,” pp. 6, 8,

11, Boston Episcopal Charitable Society records, 1724-1905 (Hereafter, BECS), MHS.

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society’s first treasurer, and the six trustees included fellow customs officer and judges George

Craddock, Thomas Graves, and Robert Auchmuty. These leaders met monthly, most frequently

at the Royal Exchange or Green Dragon Taverns, which were operated by fellow founding

BECS members Luke Vardy and William Patton. Meetings generally involved decisions over the

disbursement of monies to needy parishioners and heftier loans to members and nearby Anglican

churches with adequate collateral. As a rule, officers recommended persons, most often widows,

to receive relief and testified to their upright character. BECS minutes, which trustees recorded

from 1739 on in a minute book gifted to the society by William Price, a founding member and

lay official at Christ Church, show that officers also withheld aid and dismissed persons from the

Society. Church wardens also regularly gave out poor relief to needy and poor parishioners.6

Associational societies came in many forms and were a fixture of the late-seventeenth-

and eighteenth-century English speaking world. With approximately twenty percent of all adult

males belonging to at least one such group, Boston was arguably the most associated eighteenth-

century colonial town.7 Relationships between male heads of households and dependent adult

males magnified such associations. Apprentices, sons living at home, servants, and day laborers

and others without households, who could not join most, if not all, societies, were frequently

attached to associations through the membership of the male head-of-household. The BECS and

Boston’s Anglican vestries had much in common with contemporary associations. Some, like the

BECS, warded off economic ills and improved the lot of their members. Other associations

encouraged industry by favoring certain professions or aided the poor through charity or

6 Isaac Boyles, An Historical Memoir of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (Boston, 1840), 5-7; Boyles,

Constitution, Act of Incorporation, and By-laws of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (Boston, 1871), 39. See

chapter 3 for a discussion of poor relief provided by churches and the BECS. 7 Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 1580-1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2000), 389-90. In addition to freemasonry, Boston had seven fire brigades and a range of medical

and ethnic associations.

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employment. Though certain societies catered to specific ethnic or religious groups, some,

notably freemasonry, frequently transcended such divisions. Membership in the Freemasons and

other social and economic societies often involved mutual benefits of trade, providing middling

merchants and tradesmen opportunity to gain affluent customers and rub shoulders with the rich.

Regardless of a particular society’s larger aims, members could extend the orbit of their

acquaintances with like-minded individuals and celebrate communal togetherness with eating,

drinking, and ritual. Such gatherings reinforced shared values and often moved members to raise

funds, most commonly through subscription, and to enact change within their particular society

or community and in the larger world. Subscriptions importantly enabled persons with limited

and middling means to collectively exercise influence.8 This particular form of fundraising

especially served the needs of Anglican vestries and congregations in Boston and mitigated their

lack of institutional support from provincial and local government and distance from members of

the church hierarchy.

In addition to their religious and charitable functions, Boston’s Anglican associations

acted as commercial and social organizations. Lay officers conducting business in taverns and on

board vessels, and sending correspondence, money, and materials via trusted traders. Fellowship

and sociability did not end with business. The BECS funded an annual entertainment and

banquet for its members and related persons in the church and government. Whether members of

the BECS or church vestries or church committees met to conduct church business or gathered

socially as fellow Anglicans, their presence was a public display of their status as colonial elites

8 John Brewer, “Commercialization and Politics,” in The Birth of A Consumer Society: the Commercialization of

Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, especially 222-226. Though

Brewer focuses on political and trade clubs, his description of the mechanisms of such societies has relevance to

religious societies.

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and Anglicans.9 As Kathleen Wilson demonstrates in the context of voluntary hospitals in

Georgian England, such semi-public conviviality expressed the patrons’ status, benevolence, and

place in town and church life.10 In this regard, charity and benevolence were both functional

(concerned with social and material well-being) and performative (concerned with social

order).11 Participation in these religious societies and on behalf of individual churches and needy

co-religionists was an import aspect in the formation and display of a collective identity among

Boston’s Anglicans and served to distinguish Anglican patrons from persons who received

charity.12

Commercial endeavors underpinned the spiritual welfare and maintenance of Boston’s

Anglican community. Though King’s Chapel and Christ Church relied on assistance from

imperial organs such as the SPG, they required near-constant outlays of money and materials

from a broad base of patrons whose commercial success enabled them to financially and

materially support these churches. Churches rarely operated with excess funds. Two years after it

opened for worship, a lack of funds left Christ Church unfurnished, without an organ, bells,

communion silver, or a spire. Cutler nonetheless reported proudly to the SPG that from the

opening of worship the church had increased from about 400 persons to about 700 or 800.13

Writing again in October 1727 to thank the SPG for its continued support, Cutler promised to use

his “best prudence” in distributing Bibles and Books of Common Prayer the Society had ordered

9 On charities as an expressive domain see Lloyd, “Pleasing Spectacles and Elegant Dinners: Conviviality,

Benevolence, and Charity Anniversaries in Eighteenth-Century London,” Journal of British Studies 41, no. 1

(2002): 23-57, esp. 23-32. 10 Kathleen Wilson, “Urban Culture and Political Activism in Hanoverian England: The Example of Voluntary

Hospitals,” in The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century, ed.

Eckhart Hellmuth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 165-84. 11 Lloyd, “Pleasing Spectacles and Elegant Dinners,” 32. 12 Lloyd, “Pleasing Spectacles and Elegant Dinners,” 29-30. 13 Henry Burroughs, A Historical Account of Christ Church, Boston: An Address, Delivered on the One Hundred

and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Opening of the Church, December 29th, 1873 (Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1874), 4;

Timothy Cutler to the Secretary of the SPG, 28 November 1726, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:205.

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for him. This shipment was a small sample of the many thousands of Bibles, Common Prayer

Books, and religious tracts that the SPG shipped to the American colonies during the eighteenth

century. Alongside these highly demanded religious texts, Anglicans also required communion

tables, silver, and vestments.14 The “spiritual economies” of these colonial churches hinged on

the acquisition and allocation of scarce material and cultural resources. As noted by Mark

Peterson in his study of the spiritual economy of Puritan Churches, in a theological context,

economy also could mean “a dispensation,” a method or system of divine government, as well as

the organization and integration of various elements within Anglican society.15 Church vestries

stood at the center of Anglican governance and oversaw financial contributions and transactions.

Cutler drew attention to these matters in his written report to the society, enclosing a paper

listing “Contributors & Contributions to the Building” of the Church. Tellingly, he also included

a map engraved by Mr. William Price, a founding member and lay official at Christ Church, in

which the “Trade and Business of this Town is better represented than I can in a prospect of it.”

This sketch showed Boston’s thriving waterfront and the placement of its churches, including

Christ Church in the North End.16 Though geographically dispersed, the subscribers who clubbed

together to build Christ Church altered Boston’s religious landscape, prompting Price to include

it among Boston’s principal buildings, churches, warehouses, and wharves. Over the next

decades, an Atlantic community of Anglicans engaged with markets and polities to further

14 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary of the SPG, 10 October 1727, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:228–32. On the

influx of such materials to New England see Jeremy Gregory, “Trans-Atlantic Anglican Networks, c. 1680–c. 1770:

Translating, Transplanting, and Transforming the Church of England,” in International Religious Networks, ed.

Jeremy Gregory and Hugh McLeod (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer for the Ecclesiastical History Society,

2012), 132-142. 15 Mark Peterson, The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England (Redwood City, CA:

Stanford University Press, 1997), 2-3. 16 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary of the SPG, 10 October 1727, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:228–232. This plan

was likely William Burgis’s 1725 A South East View of ye Great town of Boston, in New England, which Price

printed at his shop.

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furnish and expand the Church of England in Boston. In doing so, they advanced a variety of

communal and familial interests and dramatically Americanized New England Anglicanism.

Interregional Anglicanism and the Atlantic Marketplace: Christ Church and the Gentlemen of

the Bay of Honduras

Anglican connections extended from Boston to the peripheries of Britain’s Atlantic

Empire. In October 1726 the minister and vestry at Christ Church wrote a letter to Captain

William Harris, a merchant operating in the Bay of Honduras, asking his assistance in getting

subscriptions to finish construction of the church.17 Boston at this time was a key intermediary

port in the transatlantic trade in logwood, a dyewood of high value found in the shallow rivers

along the Bay of Honduras in present-day Belize. Over the next six months, Harris gathered

subscriptions from of twenty-six merchants at the Old [Belize] River along the Bay of Honduras.

Together they pledged a total of fifty tons of logwood, “being given with a free good will &

Pious designe for helping to Carry on Compleat & finishing a Church in Boston in New

England.”18 The signers specified, however, that the monies from the sale of wood be “Applied

only to ye above Sacred use” and that the church would need to arrange its pickup and

transportation from the Bay.19 Harris also sent copies of the church’s letter to the New River

settlement, in the Bay of Honduras. In February 1726/7, he informed vestrymen Samuel Weekes

of his “good hopes” for their generosity, promising to “send them to you or else bring them

17 Vestry Records, 8 May 1727, Old North (Christ Church in the City of Boston), records, Massachusetts Historical

Society (MHS) (hereafter ONC records, MHS). 18 Subscription and contribution records, 1722–1962, “Bay Subscriptions, 30 December 1726, ONC records, MHS. 19 Subscription and contribution records, “Bay Subscriptions, 30 December 1726 and 3 March 1726/7,” ONC

records, MHS.

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myself and give you Particular directions how you shall charter” the wood.20 By early March

forty three individuals subscribed an additional 107 tons of logwood to be “ready heap’d together

at the Western Branch of this River for the order of Rev Timothy Cutler and his assignees.”21 By

facilitating contact and communications within a network of logwood merchants, Harris operated

as a vital chokepoint. He further bridged communication between these merchants and members

of Christ Church.22

Christ Church understood the considerable value of this relationship. Upon Harris’ return

to Boston the following spring, he received title to pew no. 1 in the south gallery from the

vestry.23 This exchange did not specify any payment, suggesting that the vestry gifted this pew as

a token of appreciation for Harris’s efforts obtaining the subscriptions and their recognition of

his expert knowledge of the logwood trade, which undoubtedly factored into their plans to pick

up the logwood. In early June the vestry created a committee to “procure a Vessel or Vessells

that are convenient to fetch the logwood., and as a lasting gesture of thanks, voted “That a Pew

be expeditiously built next to the Pulpit and lin’d handsomely for the use of the Gentlemen of the

Bay of Honduras who have been or shall be Benefactors to this Church.”24 The resulting double

pew was lined with red cherry, provided with six prayer books, and “Constantly kept for their

20Loose Administrative Records, 1722–1997, “William Harris to Sam Weekes, Bay of Honduras 8 Feb 1726/27,”

ONC records, MHS. 21 Subscription and contribution records, “Bay Subscriptions, 3 March 1726/7,” ONC records, MHS; For an

overview of the Baymen’s twenty-year relationship with Christ Church see Ross A. Newton, “‘Good and Kind

Benefactors’: British Logwood Merchants and Boston’s Christ Church,” Early American Studies 11, no. 1 (2013):

15-36. 22 For a discussion of expertise see Zachary Dorner, “’No one here knows half so much of this matter as yourself’:

The Deployment of Expertise in Silvester Gardiner's Surgical, Druggist, and Land Speculation Networks, 1734–83,”

The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 2 (April 2015), 287-322; on the value of chokepoints see John

Haggerty and Sheryllynne Haggerty, “Visual Analytics of an Eighteenth-Century Business Network,” Enterprise

and Society 11, no. 1 (March 2010): 1–25. 23 Vestry Records, 8 May 1727, Old North (Christ Church in the City of Boston), records, Massachusetts Historical

Society (MHS) (hereafter ONC records, MHS). Pews typically ranged in price from £10 to £30, 24 Vestry Book, June 9, 1727, ONC records, MHS.

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[the logwood merchants’] Use.”25 Material gifts such as this were not unheard of—governor of

South Carolina and SPG member Francis Nicholson similarly subscribed five cedar posts and

sixty-five planks, freight free, for the construction of the altar at Christ Church. However, in this

instance, even though the church needed to arrange a chartered vessel to pick up the gifted

logwood, they took extra steps to welcome these merchants into their religious society.26 The

exclusive use of a double pew by one commercial interest group was unique to Christ Church,

but akin to King’s Chapel’s earlier provisions for the seating of honored guests such as the royal

governor and visiting mariners and military officers.

Harris and other logwood donors, or Baymen, as they were known, continued to assist

members of the church while the “Bay Pew” was under construction. Over the summer, Weekes

pursued chartering a vessel in nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he had other business

ties and was obliged to become a part owner of a hundred-ton brigantine before the other owners

would consent to his chartering it. Fetching wood from the Bay of Honduras involved

considerable danger, and Weekes asked that the vestry give their security to the charter party to

keep him safe from financial risk. Weekes, however, was not completely honest with these co-

owners and omitted his intention for the vessel to pick up logwood at the New River. Reporting

his progress to the vestry, he cautioned them to use discretion and make no word of it, ‘‘for [I]

am very certain if ye other two owners know it they would not let her go.”27 The difficulty of

finding an alternative charter likely ensured their silence. As Weekes prepared to send this vessel

southward, he also struggled to adequately crew the vessel and requested also that the vestry

25 Vestry Book, June 9, 1727, ONC records, MHS. 26 Burroughs, A Historical Account of Christ Church. 5. 27 Loose Administrative Records, Sam Weekes to Christ Church vestry, Portsmouth June 18, 1727, ONC records,

MHS.

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consult ‘‘the gent of ye bay and see to get me four or 5 good hands.”28 A week later, the vestry

sought Harris’s advice on acquiring a shallow-draft craft for the bay, as the chartered vessel

would be unable to navigate the New River.29 In August 1727, the vestry gave Captain Nicolas

Winkley, master of the chartered vessel, written orders and a letter for the donors of logwood,

introducing Winkley as an agent of the church and requesting that the Baymen give their “best

and quickest assistance in ye loading of her [the vessel] as the season of the year seems to call

for.”30 The vestrymen closed on a heartfelt note: “Such good Friends as you are shall always be

remembered in our Prayers and Best offices in a manner agreeable to those Obligations you have

laid us under to be your Thankful Humble servants.”31

Soon after word of the Baymen’s subscriptions reached Boston, and months before

Winkley departed, the Baymen became players in the local contest between Anglicans and

Congregationalists in Massachusetts. In June 1728 a number of Baymen merchants in Boston

wrote to their associates along the Bay of Honduras to thank them for their generosity to the

church, which was, they noted, not only “in Great want” but also “much Hated and Envyed by

them who call themselves Puritans.”32 The enmity of Puritans toward the Boston Anglican

community testified to the ongoing competition between religious factions and to the Anglican

Church’s noticeable rise in popularity around Boston. The authors testified also to their

associates in Honduras that their pew in Christ Church “is one of the best & largest & in the best

28 Loose Administrative Records, Sam Weekes to Christ Church vestry, Portsmouth June 18, 1727, ONC records,

MHS. 29 Loose Administrative Records, Sam Weekes to Christ Church vestry, Portsmouth June 27, 1727, ONC records,

MHS. 30 Loose Administrative Records, “Vestry to Captain Nicholas Winkley, 4 August 1727,” “Letter to donors of

logwood, 4 August 1727,” ONC records, MHS. 31 Loose Administrative Records, “Vestry to Captain Nicholas Winkley, 4 August 1727,” “Letter to donors of

logwood, 4 August 1727,” ONC records, MHS. 32 Loose Administrative Records, “Baymen Gentlemen to fellow Gentlemen of the Bay, Boston, 20 June 1727,”

ONC records, MHS.

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manner sett out with handsome Common Prayer Books.”33 Though some outspoken New

England Congregationalists harbored resentment toward the Established Church of England and

vilified the Book of Common Prayer, this book shaped religious practice and social life for

Anglicans across the British Empire. Whereas the Baymen could have donated to one of

Boston’s numerous Congregational meeting houses, they publically chose to aid Christ Church

and showed appreciation for the prayer books. The multiple copies of this costly book in the Bay

Pew demonstrated not just the social status afforded these gentlemen by members of Christ

Church but, more importantly, the understanding that the Baymen—like fellow Anglicans across

the globe—would use these books for all manner of occasions.34

The Baymen’s subscriptions to Christ Church had considerable commercial and social

utility. Residing along the much contested margins of Spain’s American empire, Baymen

frequently acted in concert in military and commercial matters and maintained strong ties to parts

of the British Empire. Boston was an important intermediary port in the logwood trade, from

which the dyewood was shipped to European markets, most often Holland.35 This “Generous

Act,” the merchants told their fellow Baymen, “makes a great noise & appears to the Cred[it] &

Reputation of you there [in the Bay of Honduras] and us hereof.” Commercially minded Britons

depended on their reputations, and the authors of this letter stressed their political and

commercial position in Boston: “At pres[en]t we have a great many Enemies & seems to make a

Jest of this Our Pious & Charitable work believing it will come to nothing.” The authors

33 Loose Administrative Records, “Baymen Gentlemen to fellow Gentlemen of the Bay, Boston, 20 June 1727,”

ONC records, MHS. 34 On Anglican inroads and the Book of Common Prayer see Jeremy Gregory, “‘For All Sorts and Conditions of

Men’: The Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer during the Long Eighteenth Century; Or, Bringing the

History of Religion and Social History Together,” Social History 34, no. 1 (2009): 29–54, and “Refashioning

Puritan New England,” 86–87, 90; and Nicholas M. Beasley, Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave

Societies, 1650–1780 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). 35 Logwood became an enumerated product in 1764.

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accordingly urged speed in gathering and loading the logwood, lest their enemies in Boston see

this highly publicized donation come to nothing and take them to be “persons not of our

words.”36 Commonly caricatured as irreligious drunkards and pirates, Baymen—more than many

fellow Britons—felt the need to sanitize their image from some of its rougher associations and

assert themselves as gentlemen of note. In this task, they succeeded. The received gift garnered

the Baymen respectability within commercial circles in Boston and social status and physical

standing within Christ Church. Continuing the letter to their associates in Honduras, Baymen

merchants in Boston wrote charitably about their coreligionists: “These Gentlemen of the Church

are very greatly our friends and are ready & willing to serve all the Gentlemen of the Bay.”37

Referencing the double pew reserved for their use, these merchants were also well-aware of

potential business associates—Anglicans artisans, shopkeepers, merchants, and mariners

involved in coastal and overseas trade.

Atlantic trade relied on trust and the integrity of individual actors. By the time Winkley

returned from the Bay of Honduras in late April 1728, the co-owners of the chartered vessel had

learned of Weekes’s dishonesty, and the church now became liable to them. The vestry

responded quickly, voting “That its left to Mr Sam Weekes to make up with the owners of

Nicholas Winkley… [and] Indemnifie the Church Wardens and vestry from any charges

36 Loose Administrative Records, “Honduran Gentlemen to fellow Gentlemen of the Bay, Boston, 20 June 1727,”

ONC records, MHS; On the importance of reputation to business see Stephen Erickson, “‘To Obviate a Scandalous

Reflection’: Revisiting the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley,” New England Quarterly 83, no. 3 (2010): 375–412; S.

D. Smith, “Gedney Clarke of Salem and Barbados: Super-Merchant,” New England Quarterly 76, no. 4 (2003):

529–31; and Phyllis Whitman Hunter, Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670–

1780 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 128–46. On English caricatures of Baymen as pirates and irreligious

drunkards, see Gilbert M. Joseph, “British Loggers and Spanish Governors: The Logwood Trade and Its Settlements

in the Yucatan Peninsula: Part I,” Caribbean Studies 14, no. 2 (1974): 24–30; and Phillip Ashton, History of the

Strange Adventures and Signal Deliverances of Mr. Philip Ashton (Boston, 1725). 37 Loose Administrative Records, “Baymen Gentlemen to fellow Gentlemen of the Bay, Boston, 20 June 1727,”

ONC records, MHS.

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delivered up by chartered party.”38 The fate of the logwood remains unclear. In May 1728 the

customs office recorded Nicholas Winkley outward bound to Amsterdam, a likely place to

dispose of such a cargo. Church accounts, however, do not reflect any receipt or sale.39 While

Weekes was not voted a member of the vestry for the next four years, the disappearance of this

substantial cargo from the historical record did not noticeably dampen the church’s relationship

with the Baymen. Bayman Matthew Bond, the likely author of letters to the Baymen merchants,

knew firsthand about the Church’s fellowship. The following year, he became a member of the

BECS and gained further opportunity to socialize with merchants, planters, and churchmen from

Massachusetts, the West Indies, England, and elsewhere who similarly supported Boston’s

Anglican churches.40

Warfare with Spanish subjects ultimately affected the Baymen’s attendance at Christ

Church. Facing an intensification of hostilities, they evacuated their log works along the Bay of

Honduras in 1730. Several of the Baymen attended a December 1732 vestry meeting at which,

“perceiving the pew fix’t for them to be too Large and [they being too] few to Sitt therein,” they

consented to have it divided into two parts, one of which remained for their use.41 The Baymen’s

decision to downsize the Bay Pew reflected an undeclared war between English and Spanish

subjects. Over the next years, Spanish forces took captive numerous ships and mariners from

Boston, Bristol, and London. Andrew Woodbury and Matthew Bond, Baymen who were well-

known to Boston’s Anglican community, suffered brief captivities, and fellow mariners often

38 Loose Administrative Records, “Vestry meeting, 28 April 1728,” ONC records, MHS 39 Boston Gazette, 15–22 April 1728; Boston News-Letter, 2–9 and 16–23 May 1728; Warden’s and treasurer’s

accounts, 1722–1934, “Account Book ‘C,’ 1722–1729,” ONC records, MHS. 40 Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” 85–88; Newton, “Good and Kind Benefactors,” 24-25. Bond

married Abigail Lillie in 1728. She belonged to a notable trading family. In 1729 Bond gave assistance to a Boston

merchant with commercial dealings in the Bay of Honduras. 41 Vestry records, 26 December 1732, ONC records, MHS.

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sailed in convoy as they attempted to avoid

Spanish patrols while timing their arrival in

the bay with the floods that pushed logwood

downstream from logworks to the coast.42

These challenges prevented the Baymen

from donating further for the near term, but

Christ Church functioned on. Its vestry had

numbered its pews the year prior, and they

quickly rented the unused east portion of the

Bay Pew to mariner Captain John Beney.

Such purchases and exchanges of pews by

members and newcomers to Christ Church

and King’s Chapel were common

occurrences, through which parishioners

contributed to the church finances and, by becoming proprietors, received a vote in the political

working of the church.43 Plan of Pews, Christ Church, 1731-1806

42 New-England Weekly Journal, 21 April 1735; Boston Post-Boy, 8 March 1736; Boston News-Letter, 26 February–

4 March 1736; Newport Weekly Rehearsal, 2 June 1735; Liberty Weekly Rehearsal, 2 February 1735; New York

Weekly Journal, 22 February 1736; Boston Gazette, 8–15 December 1735; American Weekly Journal, 23–30

December 1735; Boston News-Letter, 17–24 March 1737; American Weekly Mercury, 26 May–2 June 1737; Boston

Evening-Post, 29 August 1737 and 17 April 1738. 43 Vestry records, 26 December 1732, ONC records, MHS. Beney, who routinely shipped between Jamaica and

Boston, paid thirty pounds for this pew.

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Governing and Staffing the Church

As members of Christ Church worked to finish and furnish their building and provide

pews to paying parishioners, they held common interests with fellow Anglicans, often in

opposition to Massachusetts’s standing order. In July 1725, Reverends Cutler and Myles

questioned the right of Congregationalists to hold a church synod. In a memorial to the general

court, the clergymen argued that this scheme was designed to prejudice persons against the

Church of England. Furthermore, the synod would include only Congregational ministers, while

excluding all Anglicans, and it would be held without the approval of the Bishop of London and

the King. After Massachusetts’s authorities dismissed their case, the clergymen informed the

Bishop of London, who solicited legal advice. In October, the colony received notice that its

1691 charter prohibited an established church and that any such synod of the clergy would

require the king’s approval. This incident demonstrated the considerable political clout available

to this minority denomination and the importance of transatlantic Anglican networks. Even in its

weakened state vis-à-vis the established Congregational Church, Massachusetts Anglican Church

still enjoyed certain legal benefits.

While waiting on this case, Anglican clergy from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode

Island met in Newport to discuss the need for an American bishop and ongoing taxation of

churchmen to support Congregationalist ministers. On the latter subject, the six clergymen

present requested the Bishop of London forward their address to the king “for his Gracious

Countenance and Protection.”44 Subsequent conventions convened annually in Boston to discuss

other mutual concerns. In 1727, the group took up action against the Harvard College Board of

44 Edgar Legare Pennington, “Colonial Clergy Conventions,” in “‘The Development of the Church’s Constitution’:

Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Church’s Constitution,” special issue, Historical

Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 8, no. 3 (1939), 209.

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Overseers, who had ceased inviting Cutler and Myles to seats on the board and removed

Reverend Harris from his position as a “teaching elder,” which he had begun when the Anglican

Church was perceived as less of a threat. As their request for reinstatement met with no success,

they faced stiff opposition on other fronts. As the clergymen recounted in a July 1727 letter to

the secretary of the SPG, attempts to convert the sachem of the Narragansett Indians to the

Church of England “have already raised many fierce & unnatural resentments against us.”45 Lay

Anglicans perceived these resentments and understood many of the concerns raised by the clergy

to church superiors in England. That very summer, Christ Church’s Baymen patrons urged their

associates to make good on their donation to the church.

In the face of local resentments, Anglicans looked to members of the political and

religious hierarchy in London. In August, members of both church vestries met at Vardy’s Royal

Exchange Tavern to express their loyalty to the new monarch and governor of the Church,

George II, and to sign an address for the appointment of an American bishop “unless otherwise

determined by the Bishop of London.” They instructed their agent in London, merchant Thomas

Sandford, to forward their proclamation and petition to governor Francis Nicholson of South

Carolina and former Massachusetts governor Samuel Shute, both members of the SPG, in order

that they might present it to the bishop of London, who, in the absence of an American bishop,

held jurisdiction over the colonial church and ordained colonial ministers. Trusting also to

respected members of King’s Chapel and Christ Church, the committee asked co-religionists

with connections to England—Lieutenant Governor William Tailor, Major Leonard Vassal, and

Mr. George Craddock—to forward the address, which had been signed by 209 persons. The

Bishop of London received additional petitions from Anglicans in Newport and elsewhere;

45 Pennington, “Colonial Clergy Conventions,” 209-212; Huber, “Timothy Cutler,” 490-492; New England clergy to

the SPG, 21 July 1727, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:225.

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however, as an indication of the political headwinds opposing such an appointment, the Bishop

requested that the Board of Trade and Plantations, who took the matter under advisement, keep

mention of this request out of the newspapers.46 Years later, John Corybeare, Bishop of Bristol,

solicited information from William Vassall of Jamaica, Cambridge, and London on the on the

prospect of establishing a resident bishop in America. “And tho there is very little Prospect of

accomplishing it, yet as there is Reason to think ye Scheme proposed has been most unfairly

represented There, “Corybeare especially wished to know “how far you think it would be

approved or disapproved of in America.”47

With hope for the appointment of a resident bishop dashed, the Bishop of London

continued to oversee and assist colonial churches, especially regarding the appointment of

ministers. Following the 1728 death of Samuel Myles, King’s Chapel’s longtime minister, the

chapel’s congregation requested that Nicholson and Sandford present a qualified clergyman to

the bishop of London to succeed Myles. Though the bishop maintained authority to appoint

colonial ministers, colonial vestries had an interest in screening potential successors, and King’s

Chapel had a good claim for selecting Myles’s replacement since it supported its minister

without aid from the SPG. The vestry gave Sandford its proxy to consult with the bishop about

Myles’s replacement. The pair settled on Reverend Roger Price, an Englishman who had served

on the Guinea coast as a chaplain for the Royal African Company and had ministered to churches

in Jamaica and England. Price arrived in Boston in June 1729, carrying letters of introduction

from Sandford and the bishop of London, and took up his post as rector at King’s Chapel. One

46 Vestry records, 21 and 22 Aug 1727, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Henry Wilder Foote, ed., Annals of King’s

Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1882-1896),

1:350-355 (hereafter cited as Foote, Annals). Tailor at this time served on the Governor’s Council. 47 John Conybeare Bishop of Bristol to William Vassall, London, 29 June 1750, Series III: Vassall correspondence,

Temple, Nelson, Lloyd, Vassall, and Borland Family Papers, 1611-1862 (MS Am 1250), Houghton Library,

Harvard University.

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year later, Bishop Edmund Gibson of London charged Price with “inspecting the lives and

manners” of clergy in New England as the bishop’s commissary.48

Commissary Price quickly joined Boston’s Anglican community in its longstanding

disagreement over taxes that went for the support of Puritan church. An ongoing lawsuit

involving Matthew Ellis of Medford, one of Rev. Cutler’s congregants who had been jailed

following his refusal to pay such taxes, prompted the commissary to author a 1731 memorial to

the Massachusetts General Court protesting such taxes. Receiving little notice from the General

Court, a 24 February 1731/32 meeting of the joint vestries voted to defray “one third of

whatsoever charge has risen or may arise in pursuit” of justice and to empower Sandford “to

prosecute our Petition to His most Sacred Majesty & our other to our Diocesian [sic] the Bishop

of London & to Govern himself wherein by His Lordship’s direction & such advice & orders as

he shall from time to time receive from us.”49

Massachusetts’s Jonathon Belcher played a complicated role in the province’s religiously

infused politics. In 1730, after receiving his commission as governor of Massachusetts, he

carried with him from London tokens of the king’s favor: a bible, prayer books, and engraved

communion silver for King’s Chapel. An August vote by the King’s Chapel vestry ordered that

Belcher’s arms be painted over the Governor’s Pew, which he routinely left empty, preferring

membership at Boston’s Second Congregational Church. Members of Christ Church nonetheless

asked Belcher to help them secure similar gifts from the king. In letters to the crown, the Bishop

of London, and the king’s chamberlain, Belcher and Christ Church’s vestry and agents in

48 William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, or, Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American

Clergymen of Various Denominations From the Early Settlement of the Country to the Close of the Year Eighteen

Hundred and Fifty-Five (New York: R. Carter, 1970), 71. It should be noted that Harris was overlooked by Christ

Church and King’s Chapel, leading to a series of testy confrontations between 1722 and 1729. 49 17 December 1731, 26 January 1731, 24 February 1731, King’s Chapel Vestry Records, MHS.

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London drew comparisons between Christ Church and other Anglican churches and pointed to

the examples set by King’s Chapel, which had twice received the king’s bounty, and the

Mohawk Indians of the five Nations, who had received communion materials during the reign of

Queen Anne.50 By 1733, Christ Church too had received the king’s bounty, including new prayer

books, cushions, altar pieces, and fine damask cloth for the communion table.51 Both churches

incorporated the gifts into worship. King’s Chapel’s vestry and minister distributed new prayer

books, leaving one book at the altar, two at the reading desk, and two in the governor’s pew, and

allocating new books to the wardens, the clerk, and notable members of the congregation:

George Craddock, Jeremiah Gridley Esq., and Captain Cyprian Southack. Since prayer books

were highly prized possessions, the wardens also directed persons to return old books so they

could be redistributed. The engraved silver communion plates were similarly incorporated into

worship at both churches, in some cases replacing or supplementing existing silver.52

Belcher’s assistance in getting communion silver and occasional leveraging of

Anglicanism during his administration demonstrates the vital tie between civil and religious

authority and personal religious preference. In 1731 the governor, lieutenant governor, and three

Mohawk sachems attended service at King’s Chapel, sitting in the elaborately decorated

Governor’s Pew. King’s Chapel’s assistant minister George Harwood observed the great need to

minister to the Mohawk nation, and the governor advocated that Harwood travel with him the

following summer to learn the Mohawk language. Both men wrote to the Bishop of London to

50 Percival Merritt, “The King’s Gift to Christ Church, Boston, 1733,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts

Publications, vol. 19, Transactions, 1916‑1917 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1918): 299-331. 51 Merritt, “The King’s Gift to Christ Church,” 299-331. 52 Foote, Annals, 1:419. In 1733, King’s Chapel wardens inventoried four large flagons, three chalices with covers,

one basin, one receiver, and two servers, all of which were engraved with the date and name of its illustrious donor.

At Christ Church, the new communion silver joined earlier gifts from parishioners Arthur Savage and Leonard

Vassall which, like the king’s gifts, were engraved with their family arms.

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recommend the plan, but Reverend Price and the King’s Chapel’s vestry vehemently opposed the

proposition. They argued that the scheme was a thinly veiled attempt by “Enemies of our

Church” who advised the governor and hoped to weaken the Church in the event that the head

minister fell ill or travelled as part of his duties, leaving no one to conduct services.53 The

scheme to minister to the Mohawk came to nothing, and according to Cutler, Belcher later forbid

the marriage of his daughter to an Anglican until the young man forsook the church.

Nonetheless, Belcher’s other efforts on behalf of King’s Chapel and Christ Church, however,

helped gloss over some of these tensions between Anglicans and non-Anglicans in

Massachusetts and put him in good stead with the Bishop of London; such political connections

advanced his son going to school in England.54 Political pressure by Anglicans with political

connections in England ultimately helped resolve longstanding litigation over paying taxes for

the support of Independent Congregational ministers.55 By December 1735, the General Court

and governor Belcher granted Anglicans, Quakers, and Baptists across Massachusetts exemption

from such taxation.56

While Anglicans collectively agitated against unfair taxation, internal tensions between

ministers and vestries worked to define the roles of each party within church governance. The

presence of an independently funded assistant minister added to conflict within King’s Chapel.

At a July 1732 meeting of King’s Chapel’s ministers and vestry, Price and his assistant agreed to

53 See Foote, Annals, 1:412-14 for an overview of this affair. 54 Timothy Cutler to the Bishop of London, 24 February 1729/30, Governor Belcher to the Bishop of London, 24

July 1731 and 5 October 1733, and Memorial of Roger Price to Governor Jonathon Belcher and members of the

General Court, 1 October 1731, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:253-254, 270-273, 292-293. 55 Co-religionists included John Jeckyll Esq., George Cradock, Charles Apthorp, William Shirley, and Robert

Auchmuty Esq. Craddock, for example, joined Sandford in 1733 to petition church leaders. John A. Schutz, William

Shirley, King's Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, NC: Published for the Institute of Early American History

and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 8-11, 22, 28, 33-35, 72-79, 174,

179. 56 185-187. Belcher’s advocacy on behalf of Massachusetts’s Quakers eventually aided his bid to become governor

of New Jersey in the 1740s.

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equally perform the “Duty of Reading Prayers and Preaching.” Though Price maintained the

prerequisites of marrying, baptizing, and burying members of the chapel, the assistant would

perform these duties in his absence. Price’s appointment as bishop’s commissary required that he

travel frequently, but he quickly became at odds with members of the vestry when he did not

consult them before taking a trip to New York. During his absence, the vestry voted to withhold

his pay for the period in question and any future unauthorized trips.57 The following year, at

King’s Chapel’s annual Easter meeting, the congregation overruled Price’s claim to a right to

appoint a church warden. Price’s predecessor had nominated a warden on at least one occasion,

however, Price presumed too much as he advanced his preferred choice of warden.58 Reverend

Cutler faced similar opposition after he questioned the right of church wardens to call a meeting

of the vestry without his expressed leave. On 10 March 1734, the vestry acknowledged the

minister’s “Right of Calling a Vestry Meeting upon any Ecclesiastical Affairs” and affirmed its

continued “Power and Right” to call the vestry meeting “so often as they shall think proper for

the Service of this Church.” The vestry further resolved that this vote and “all other Votes

Concerning the Right of the Church Wardens and Vestry be all ways read by one of the Church

Wardens” to Reverend Cutler’s successors before they might be inducted as ministers.59

Lay authority came with many responsibilities. Church wardens acted as financial

officers, contracting essential maintenance and construction of the built church and recording

monetary and material contributions and purchases of pews and tombs. Financial contribution to

churches was the only sure method of gaining a voice in governance, and proprietors and

57 Vestry Records, 12 July 1732, 28 September 1732, 26 March 1733, King’s Chapel Records, MHS. Foote, Annals,

1:405. 58 26 March 1733, King’s Chapel Records, MHS. The Vestry approved Reverend Myles’s nominee, Thomas Selby,

in 1726. 59 Vestry Records, 10 March 1734, Christ Church Records, MHS.

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constant contributors received additional privileges within individual churches. At Christ

Church, only proprietors—owners of full pews—could cast their vote at annual church meetings.

Members of King’s Chapel at their 1733 proprietor’s meeting similarly resolved that only

persons who had paid a fifty-two-shillings-per-year contribution to the church could vote on

church matters. In October 1732, vestrymen at Christ Church voted that only proprietors of pews

who had “constantly contributed” would “have leave to buy or build any Tomb” under the

church.60 Church vestries nonetheless struggled to collect monies due the church. On 12

September 1733 King’s Chapel’s gave persons who had previously purchased pews four weeks

to pay for them before selling them to other parties. The vestry likewise announced that it would

collect money for all future pew purchases before giving possession to parishioners.61 Church

wardens also lent religious materials to sister congregations and fellow congregants. In 1733, for

example, the Reverend Addington of the Church at Scituate gave King’s Chapel’s wardens a

note promising to return a brass clock stand and linen napkins “whensoever this Church shall see

meet to demand them.” The following year, King’s Chapel’s wardens fixed a place in the belfry

for the church’s theological library and created a catalogue with which to monitor the lending of

books. The wardens later relinquished this library to Commissary Price, with the stipulation that

he give them a receipt for the entire collection and return it “when and So often as desired by the

Church.”62

Tensions between Reverend Price and lay leaders at King’s Chapel came to a head in

1734, when the minister resigned his position, intending to return to England. At the last minute,

Price decided to remain in Boston and seek rapprochement with his congregation. In late May,

60 26 March 1733, King’s Chapel Records, MHS; Vestry Records, October 1732, Christ Church Records, MHS. 61 Vestry Records, 12 September 1733, King’s Chapel Records, MHS. 62 Vestry Records, 11 October 1733, 22 May 1734, 7 April 1735, King’s Chapel Records, MHS.

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Price met with the vestry at Vardy's Tavern to negotiate his return. Following a successful vote

by the congregation, Price gave up pretentions to several church properties, church stock, the

church library, the appointment of wardens, and money for burying parishioners in the church

crypt and agreed to preach Sunday afternoons when possible. He further promised to “make due

Entrys of y Church Marriages Christenings and burials in the book provided for that purpose.”63

In July 1736, Price affirmed his consent to this agreement, clarifying “That I do not pretend to

any right of appointing either of the Church wardens or nominating him for the Congregation's

Election.” 64 Following the death of Price’s assistant, the commissary tellingly informed the

Bishop of London of his wish “to be joined with one of my own Countrymen[.] I find the New

England Ministers too overbearing and to want some balance.”65 In this letter and in

correspondence to his brother in England, Price sought a subservient curate, not an independent

chaplain. Unfortunately for Price, the congregation dispatched a series of letters to the bishop

and their agent in London, informing them of their various agreements with Price, his continued

negligence in recording marriages, baptisms, and burials in the church records, and his frequent

residence outside of Boston, which prevented him from fulfilling his obligations to perform

services and visit the sick.66 The bishop responded early the next year by appointing Addington

Davenport, a Massachusetts-born SPG missionary at St. Andrew’s Church in Scituate.

Davenport’s father (of the same name) was a prominent provincial officeholder and one of the

founders of Brattle Street Congregational Church, where his son was baptized; the son originally

trained as a lawyer before conforming to the Church of England. Leading clergymen in Boston

63 Vestry Records, 4 April 1734, 4 May 1734, 25 May 1734, King’s Chapel Records, MHS. 64 Vestry Records, 2 July 1736, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 65 Reverend Price to the Bishop of London, 16 October 1736, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:317. 66 Vestry Records, 19 November 1736, King’s Chapel records, MHS.

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and Connecticut recommended the younger Addington Davenport to the Bishop of London, from

whom he received ordination in 1732.67

Davenport’s background was not atypical. In the decade following the opening of

worship at Christ Church, the number of SPG-funded missionaries in Massachusetts doubled

from eight to sixteen and schoolmasters attached to congregations increased from one to four.

James Bell has documented the SPG’s increased reliance on locally born and educated ministers,

half of whom were educated at Harvard and Yale and converted to the Church of England before

traveling to London for ordination.68 The 1720s also saw Anglicans across New England

construct new church buildings, typically before engaging a regular minister. Cutler, Price, and

Davenport frequently served as itinerant ministers in communities that had solicited but not yet

received support from the SPG for a resident missionary.

Commercial Respectability and the Expansion of New England Anglicanism

Though the SPG financially supported the majority of Anglican clergymen serving New

England, church construction depended on local resources and initiative. In 1728, for example,

leading Anglicans in Boston began raising subscriptions for a third church to be built on Summer

Street in the South End of Boston, on land valued at over £400 that Leonard Vassall had donated

for that “Special use” and “no other Use Intent or Purpose whatsoever.”69 Commissary Price laid

the cornerstone of Trinity Church on 15 April 1734 in a ceremony that included the entire

67 Foote, Annals, 1:481. 68 James B. Bell, “Table III: Graduates and Students of Colonial Colleges who received Anglican Orders, 1680-

1782,” in The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607-1783 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2004), 146. 69 Andrew Oliver and James Bishop Peabody, eds., Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 55,

Collections: The Records of Trinity Church Boston, 1728-1830 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1980).

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Anglican community.70 Over the next years, the trustees and proprietors of Trinity Church

received generous support from local Anglican societies as they worked to finish and furnish the

physical church. On Easter Monday 1735 King’s Chapel’s proprietors “Voted That the Church

Stock be called in and lett out again To the Treasurer and Trustees of Trinity Church They

Giving Good Security for the Payment of the Principal Money and Lawfull Intrest on the

Same.”71 Between 1734 and 1741, members of Trinity’s building committee took out a series of

bonds totaling over £765 from the BECS. The vast majority of subscribers to the new church

were members of the society, whose treasurer, John Dowse, became a vestryman at Trinity in

1739. The new church also received loans from merchant Thomas Child, who served on the

building committee, and tavern-keeper William Patten, who frequently entertained the

committee. These lending parties received interest until the principle was fully repaid. Many

individual patrons further invested in the new church by purchasing one or more pews, thereby

gaining a vote at future church meetings.72

Building and furnishing Trinity was a thoroughly communal effort. William Price

designed the structure and interior. The committee frequently employed fellow Anglicans to

supply building materials and finish and furnish the construction. Hugh McDaniel, a ropemaker

and longtime vestryman at Christ Church, gave £20 for the use of the new church and informed

the committee of his interest in supplying them with lime, a vital ingredient for making mortar.

McDaniel offered to stay payment until after money was raised by the sale of pews if the

committee took “all the lime of him.” The committee purchased many other necessary materials,

such as boards, plank, nails, and stone from churchmen and gave employment to skilled

70 Foote, Annals, 1:431 71 Quoted in Foote, Annals, 1:426. 72 See Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 410-71, for church accounts from 1733-1768.

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craftsmen, including Anglicans such as plasterer Robert Kenton and painter Henry Stanbridge.73

In August 1735, the wardens of King’s Chapel lent their books and cushions for the first service

at Trinity Church while Rev. Charles Harward, the assistant at the chapel, read prayers that day

and Commissary Price delivered the sermon. Afterwards, all Anglican ministers in town that day,

as well as all gentlemen who had given or lent money to Trinity Church, were invited to a dinner

at Mr. Samuel Withered’s Bunch of Grapes Tavern. The governor, lieutenant governor, and

captain of the HMS Scarborough, as well as the three head carpenters, also attended this

entertainment, which cost the church £20.74

Without a regular minister and still lacking the money to finish furnishing the church

building, Trinity did not hold regular services over the next years. King’s Chapel’s two ministers

alternated delivering services at Trinity, whose proprietors remained indebted to fellow

Anglicans for their generosity. In September 1737, the committee applied to the other Anglican

churches in town to borrow “Books Vestments and plate.” Robert Jenkins and Edward Lutwich,

wardens at Christ Church, responded by loaning out two velvet cushions and covers, two folio

Common Prayer books, and two damask table cloths and napkins, which members of Trinity

promised to return by Easter.75

As Trinity’s building committee and proprietors worked toward holding weekly services

and establishing regular governance, members of its first elected vestry wrote church officials

and known associates in England for assistance. On 17 December 1737, the committee

dispatched letters to the Bishops of Canterbury and London, the secretary of the SPG, and

73 Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 21, 87. On the importance of lime see Paul B. Jenison, “The

Availability of Lime and Masonry Construction in New England: 1630-1733,” Old Time New England Magazine

16, no. 245 (Summer-Fall 1976): 21-26. 74 Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 27. 75 Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 35.

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Thomas Sandford, whom many at Trinity knew through his numerous services on behalf of the

town’s other Anglican churches. In their letter to the Bishop of London, Trinity’s leading voices

laid out their primacy in directing church affairs: “wee apprehend our Selves a Lay

Appropriation, wee humbly Presume, the Right of Presentation and the Choice of all Officers, IS

[sic] in the Proprietors of Pews who have a Right and no Other.”76 Though other colonial vestries

likely echoed many of these independent sentiments, disputes between commissary Price and

King’s Chapel’s proprietors over the appointment of wardens and the minister’s duties informed

the letter writers.77 The committee further described Reverend Addington Davenport, then

assistant minister at King’s Chapel, as the “most likely person” to guide their infant church,

beseeching the bishop to “Indulge us So farr as to give him liberty to be our Minister.”78 The

committee wrote separately to the secretary of the SPG to ask their assistance in paying

Davenport at least for several years, until the church was on firmer financial footing. In the

committee’s words, “as by the Bounty & Goodness Only of the Honourable Society for the

Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Under God) The Episcopal Church in New England

Subsists and Fleurishes.”79 The committee provided more information about Trinity’s place in

the town and about Davenport’s comportment to Sandford so that he could better represent their

interests. Trinity “which has been Lately built by Reason the Chaple was full & no Pews to be

bought by New Commers,” was a worthy object for support. Davenport’s background and links

to fellow elites also made him an effective spokesman for the new church, especially to

Congregationalists. Sandford’s informants claimed that “Many of the Dissenters Take a great

Liking to the Revd. Mr. Davenport… Therefore wee think it must be of Great Advantage to the

76 Quoted in Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 37-38. 77 For an overview of disputes see Foote, Annals, 1:421-25. 78 Quoted in Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 38-9. 79 Quoted in Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 38-9.

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Church In General… because Any Person that Comes Over to us may have Seats Assigned them

which is Like to be an Inducement to many.”80 Ownership of space in this and other churches

was, for Anglo-American elites, an important marker of their status, and served as a visible

demonstration of their belonging within a church community.

The Bishop of London and the SPG supported the proprietor’s choice of minister and

granted a small sum toward the church’s continued construction. However, upon news that

Davenport would leave his post at King’s Chapel, Commissary Price lamented to the Bishop of

London that Davenport's agreement with Trinity deprived Price of all power in the government

of the church. Coming from England to the colonies, Price viewed the power of the laity through

a different lens than ministers who grew up in New England and conformed to the church later in

life. In contrast, Davenport enjoyed support from lay leaders, such as Governor William Shirley,

and had married Ann Faneuil, the sister of Peter Fanueil, one of Boston’s leading merchants and

a fellow Anglican, in 1738. Davenport remained in good standing with members of the church

hierarchy. Following his appointment as assistant minister at King’s Chapel, he gave the SPG his

house and land at Scituate as parsonage and glebe for the appointment of a new missionary there.

To express their gratitude, the SPG elected him a member in 1744, making Davenport was one of

the few colonial ministers to enjoy membership in this society.

Pew holders at Trinity had many associations with King’s Chapel and Christ Church, but

Trinity Church had its own character, and its parishioners used their own networks of friendship

and commerce when fundraising to complete construction and ultimately acquire an organ. In

January 1737/8, Robert Thomlinson carried correspondence to George Clarke, a London

merchant who the church asked to intercede on their behalf with the Bishop of London.

80 Quoted in Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 38-9.

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Knowing Thomlinson’s “Good will to the Church of England in General, but more Especially to

Trinity Church where you are a Worthy Proprietor,” the committee further requested that

Thomlinson seek out well-disposed acquaintances in England who might contribute to the

church.81 Thomlinson was well suited for this task. He had moved from Antigua to Boston

(possibly via London) by 1730, when he married Elizabeth Gerot at Christ Church. In 1735

Thomlinson had become affiliated with Boston’s St. John’s Lodge of Freemasons, which fellow

Anglican Henry Price had established in 1733, succeeding Price as Provincial Grand Master of

North American Freemasons in April 1737. On 24 June, the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist, at

the St. John’s Lodge’s annual meeting, Thomlinson nominated and appointed Hugh McDaniel as

deputy grand master, Thomas Moffatt as senior grand warden, John Osborne as junior grand

warden, Benjamin Hallowell as grand treasurer, and Francis Beteillie as grand secretary.

Afterwards, the society walked in procession to Governor Belcher and attended him at the Royal

Exchange Tavern on King Street, where, they enjoyed “an elegant Entertainment.” As a

newspaper report described it, “It being the first Procession in America, they appeared in the

proper Badges of their Order, some Gold, the rest Silver.”82 While in London conducting

business and raising subscriptions for Trinity Church, Thomlinson attended the meeting of the

Grand Lodge of England, held at the Devil Tavern near Temple Bar. On his return trip, he

stopped briefly in Antigua and constituted a new lodge of “Old Boston’s Masons.” 83 Back in

81 Quoted in Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 40-1. 82 Melvin M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America: Containing a Reference to All that is Known of

Freemasonry in the Western Hemisphere prior to 1750, and Short Sketches of the Lives of Some of the Provincial

Grand Masters (Washington, DC: Masonic Service Association, 1924), chapters 10-13; Boston Gazette, 27 June

1737. 83Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire: Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927 (Chapel Hill,

NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 37; Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America, chapter

11. The meeting in London was likely quite the spectacle. The 12 September 1737 issue of the Boston Evening Post

reprinted a description of the Grand Master in London being drawn in a chariot in a grand procession of coaches and

musicians, and a lavish entertainment that cost over £200.

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Boston, on 26 June 1739, Thomlinson walked with his masonic brothers “proceeded by a

Compleat band of Mufick, confifting of Trumpets, Kettle Drums, &c.,” to the governor’s

residence. They were next “entertain'd with a fine Concert of Mufick” at the house of Stephen

Deblois, King’s Chapel’s longtime organist, before “they walk'd to the Royal Exchange Tavern

in King Street, where a sumptuous Supper was provided, to which were invited many Gentlemen

of Distinction, Civil, and Military.”84 The following year Trinity Church proprietors voted

Thomlinson a vestryman.

Though the St. John’s Lodge of Freemasons welcomed persons of all Protestant

backgrounds, it maintained a close relationship to the Anglican Church. Masons Henry Price,

Thomlinson, McDaniel, and Hallowell played leading roles within local Anglican Churches.

Luke Vardy likewise entertained his freemason brothers and local vestries and members of the

BECS in style at the Royal Exchange. In December 1749 Charles Brockwell, assistant minister at

the Chapel and ardent freemason, delivered a sermon titled “Brotherly Love Recommended” to

assembled masons at Christ Church. While Brockwell and a number of his fellow masonic

brothers were Anglicans, he recognized that though “in some points or rather modes of worship

we [masons] may differ or dissent from each other… whoever is an Upright Mason, can neither

be an Atheist, Deist, or Libertine. For he is under the strictest obligation to be a good man, a true

Christian, and to act with honour and honesty, however distinguished by different opinions in the

circumstantials of Religion.”85 To Brockwell, the foremost purpose in forming societies such as

the masons was

uniting men in the stricter bands of love; for men considered as social creatures,

must derive their happiness from each other: Every man being designed by

84 Boston Gazette, 2 July 1739. 85 Charles Brockwell, Brotherly Love Recommended in a Sermon Preached before the Ancient and Honourable

Society of Free and Accepted Masons, in Christ- Church, Boston, on Wednesday the 27th of December, 1749

(Boston: Printed by John Draper, 1750).

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Providence to promote the good of others, as he tenders his own advantage; and

by that intercourse to secure their good offices, by being as occasion may offer

serviceable unto them.86

Brockwell’s sermon had resonance beyond this fraternal society and exemplified the worldview

of Britons, especially Anglicans like Thomlinson. Just as masons aided each other, Anglicans in

Boston and abroad entered into social and charitable societies and collectively constructed a

loosely formed network of fellow patrons who worked to materially and financial support

Boston’s established and fledgling Anglican churches, and, on occasion, the Protestant mission

writ large.87

Robert Thomlinson did not embark on fundraising alone. John Thomlinson, likely

Robert’s brother, was a successful merchant and agent for the colony of New Hampshire and

Anglican interests in New England who resided in England and was selected as a member of the

SPG in 1738/9. John Thomlinson attended the September 1739 meeting of the SPG, during

which merchant and lobbyist Thomas Sandford became a member. Over the next years, John

Thomlinson and Sandford regularly attended the society’s quarterly meetings and represented

Boston’s Anglican churches to church officials, likely casting votes to support Davenport’s

ministry and provide £50 to the Trinity Church for its continued construction.88 Though church

records do not show what, if any, contributions Robert Thomlinson collected during his brief trip

to London, Captain Peter Kenwood, a fellow pew holder at Trinity, collected over £50 sterling

from persons in England, and Major John Murray of Antigua gave a quantity of sugar to John

Jones to be sold for the benefit of Trinity Church. More importantly, as they were able,

86 Charles Brockwell, Brotherly Love Recommended in a Sermon Preached before the Ancient and Honourable

Society of Free and Accepted Masons, in Christ- Church, Boston, on Wednesday the 27th of December, 1749

(Boston: Printed by John Draper, 1750). 87 On international Protestantism see Thomas Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 88 Journal of the SPG, 8:81, 109, 149, 168, 227.

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individuals from Boston and other locales donated small sums to the church, which were then

recorded on a larger list of contributors.89

Trinity Church attracted many leading Anglicans from Boston’s more established

Anglican congregations, especially after Addington Davenport was officially installed as

minister in 1740, but King’s Chapel and Christ Church did not stagnate. Several of the

community’s wealthiest families maintained pews at two or more of the town’s Anglican

Churches. Christ Church successfully fundraised to purchase an organ. Noted printer and patron

William Price served as Christ Church’s first organist from 1736-1741, and as the church raised

subscriptions to build a steeple, Price sketched a design for its construction.90 In early 1737 the

church received a gift of twenty-one tons of logwood from a group of sixteen Baymen. An

accompanying letter addressed to Robert Jarvis and Robert Jenkins, merchants and wardens at

Christ Church, contained specific conditions set forth by the donors. The author, Captain

William Richardson, specified how many tons each gentleman had donated and instructed the

recipients to give each man credit for his portion in the church’s register of gifts. The letter

further stipulated that “the Baymens Pew be entirely restored to the Baymens use and no others

by the consent and law of the undermentioned gentlemen.”91 Jarvis and Jenkins understood the

value of these patrons. They and other members of the vestry wrote a letter of thanks, assuring

the Baymen that the Bay Pew would be restored to its former size. The Baymen’s reputation

swelled as a result of this latest gift. In October 1737 the Christ Church vestry entertained several

Baymen at Luke Vardy’s Royal Exchange Tavern “to return thanks…for all past favours & also

89 Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 471-72. 90 Charles Knowles Bolton, Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston, 1723: A Guide (Boston: The Church, 1933), 52. 91 Loose Administrative Records, “Captain Richardson to Mssrs. Jarvis and Jenkins, 14 February, 1736,” ONC

records, MHS.

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for their further promise of Benevolence in favour of Christ Church.”92 By June 1738 their pew

was entirely restored. Thereafter, the bounty from a relatively small number of Baymen garnered

goodwill toward all Baymen and ensured the use of the full-sized Bay Pew for fellow members

of this loosely organized commercial interest group.93 The following year they contributed an

additional seventy-one tons of logwood. The proceeds of this shipment of logwood were used to

help finish the steeple, and the vestry lauded the “good & kind benefactors of the Gentlemen of

the Bay,” writing in their book of record, “it is hoped that none of the congregation will be

wanting in following so good & laudable [an] example.”94

Wardens Jarvis and Jenkins were responsible for church finances, and they took charge of

selling the donated logwood, corresponding about a bill of lading of logwood with Captain John

Connelly from Newbury and selling a quantity of logwood to local merchants, John and Thomas

Phillips, for a total of £323:10:8.95 But by the following March, John and Thomas Phillips still

owed Christ Church £80. The vestry requested that their church attorney, William Bollam,

pursue legal action. This prompted the Phillipses to make good with Christ Church. Although

Bollan and the Phillipses attended King’s Chapel and all parties were members of the BECS,

their shared Anglican faith did not preclude the need for litigation.96 Vestry records of all three

churches are replete with references to legal action and the collection of payments for pews and

92 Vestry records, 19 October 1737 ONC records, MHS 93 The vestry likewise voted “That Capt John Beney be immediately provided with a pew to the satisfaction of his

attorney Mr. Jn. Hooton, upon his resigning that part of the Bay-Pew, which is to be Restored.” Beney took Pew No.

2 in lieu of the pew he formerly possessed. 94 Justin Winsor and C. F. Jewett, eds., The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts,

1630–1880 (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1880), xix, 499; Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 2:201, 334; Vestry records, 19

October 1737 and 18 June 1739, ONC records, MHS. 95 General accounts and receipts, Captain John Connelly, 29 March 1738, ONC records, MHS; Vestry records, 19

April 1736, 3 August 1736, 5 June 1738, ONC records, MHS. In the 1730s and 1740s Connelly shipped between

Salem and Boston and the Azores, Madeira, Barbados, Jamaica, and Honduras; during the same period, Thomas

Phillips advertised going to Great Britain. Connelly and the Phillipses probably transported the bulk of this wood to

England or the Continent. 96 Vestry records, 3 August 1736, 7 March 1737, 20 March 1737, 25 March 1737, ONC records, MHS; Boyles,

Constitution of the BECS, 35, 45, 49.

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other services; in several instances, due to differences of opinion and religious attachment, the

executor of estates refused to make good on the subscriptions pledged by deceased persons to

certain churches.97 Even with the generosity of the Baymen, Christ Church borrowed £500 from

parishioner John Pigeon and took up £200 bond from the BECS to finish this construction.98

By 1739 Boston’s newest Anglican Church, Trinity Church, actively sought the

patronage of Christ Church’s logwood merchant benefactors. In December of that year, Trinity

Church vestrymen wrote a letter to Captain Andrew Woodbury, one of the recent Baymen

patrons, asking him to make “interest with the gentlemen there [in Honduras] to give something

towards” the church. Months later, the vestry asked a mariner member of Trinity Church bound

for the bay to request contributions toward their new building, promising that donors would have

“their Names enrolled among the Benefactors and a Seatt sett apart for them” in the church.99

The Baymen never received a pew at Trinity; despite being unable or unwilling to contribute to

Trinity, the Baymen nevertheless remained sociable with members of Boston’s three Anglican

churches. Church vestries routinely sent letters to friends across the Atlantic requesting

assistance, but receipt of such letters did not compel individuals to contribute to every worthy

cause. The request by members of Trinity demonstrated that they considered the Baymen part of

an interregional network of fellow Anglican patrons, who considered every opportunity to

financially and otherwise support Anglican churches in Boston.100

97 Foote, Annals, 2:87, 90, 95, 97. Peter Faneuil died in 1742 without a will, and King’s Chapel wardens sued

executor Benjamin Faneuil for £200 that his brother had subscribed for rebuilding the chapel. Due to the death of a

chief justice, this case dragged on in court until 1751 when it was settled in favor of the wardens. Robert Auchmuty

Esq., attorney to Benjamin Faneuil, also died before the case was settled. Since Auchmuty’s papers were in the

hands of his son and namesake, the committee gave the son a £10 retainer for this case and other church business. 98 Vestry records, 25 August 1740, ONC records, MHS; Wardens & Vestry bonds, 1724-1744, ONC records, MHS. 99 Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 70–72. 100 Smith, “Gedney Clarke of Salem and Barbados,” 522; Foote, Annals, 2:83; Gedney Clarke, a wealthy merchant

of Salem and Barbados, supported multiple Anglican causes in New England and the West Indies. He donated to St.

Paul’s in Salem and Christ Church in Boston and received a request from Boston’s King’s Chapel in 1749 to donate

toward the enlargement of the chapel.

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Even as the Baymen’s improved reputation went beyond one church, they occupied a

strikingly privileged place within Christ Church. Their initial gift, in fact, purchased space in the

Christ Church sanctuary and ultimately bought entry into the political workings of the church.

Captain William Richardson, the author of the Baymen’s request for the restoration of the Bay

Pew, resided in Boston for a time and was twice selected by members of the church to serve as a

church vestryman. As a lay official at the church, Richardson participated in everyday

governance and facilitated further gifts from the Baymen. In 1741 the vestry granted Richardson

a vote on behalf of himself and the other Baymen at the church’s annual Easter Sunday

proprietors’ meeting. Voting was limited to full members of the church—owners of whole

pews—and through Richardson, the Baymen had a collective say in church matters and

governance. As valued members of this community, Baymen also participated in important

rituals of worship. In 1739, for example, two unnamed deceased Baymen were interred at the

church. That these individual Baymen (or the mariners who brought their bodies to Boston)

chose burial in a particular community with a specific liturgy illustrates the lasting importance of

Anglican fellowship and ritual in life and death, and the importance of the Anglican community

in itself.101

The relationship between the Baymen and Christ Church continued even as tensions

between England and Spain escalated into the conflict known as the War of Jenkin’s Ear. In

1742 a number of Baymen sent a promissory note for a load of logwood to Captain Richardson

to pass along to his fellow vestrymen at Christ Church. Members of the vestry put considerable

thought toward dispatching a vessel to the bay to procure the promised cargo. Ultimately, in

101 Proprietors’ records, 1724–1776, 1741 and 1742, ONC records, MHS; Vestry Book, 24 March 1740/41, ONC

records, MHS. Clark’s register, 1723–1851, 8 November 1739, ONC records, MHS; Beasley, Christian Ritual and

the Creation of British Slave Societies.

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January 1742/43, church wardens John Hammock and Robert Temple met with a local merchant,

William Fletcher Jr., to discuss the transport of the logwood. Fletcher’s brig Prosperity was

bound from Boston to the Bay of Honduras, and it was agreed that the ship’s master, Brian

Selew, should, on the return voyage, take ‘‘as much Logwood (not exceeding Thirty Tons) as

shall be offered him by any Persons in the Bay . . . for the Use of the Church.’’ For their part, the

Baymen promised to load the wood on board; Selew was instructed not to wait for the logwood,

however, if it was not ready upon his arrival. The church vestry also agreed that Fletcher should

receive ‘‘Twelve Tons [of logwood] out of Twenty, for bringing said Wood home, and upon the

Vessel’s arrival here, the wood belonging to them is to be delivered as is Customary.’’ Fletcher’s

cut (60 percent) of the Church’s wood was substantial but understandable given the inherent

risks, now heightened by war. The church was privy to commercial custom and further supplied

Selew with a cask of brandy to treat potential church patrons (and his and his employer’s

business acquaintances). This gift of brandy—a more refined beverage than rum—harked back

to the seventeenth-century practice whereby visiting vessels liberally treated Baymen with

libations in order to obtain the best wood. Brigs such as the Prosperity could handle a cargo of

around 100 tons, so this particular treatment likely assisted Selew in acquiring additional

logwood for his employer.102

Even as inter-imperial conflicts in the Caribbean and on the high seas put individual

traders and commercial interests at risk, Boston’s Anglican Churches continued to receive gifts

and raise subscriptions for various projects and furnishings. In 1742, William Shirley, who had

102 Karl Offen deserves thanks for his generous help in understanding these transactions. Vestry records, April 15,

1742, 5 January 1742/43, ONC records, MHS; Loose Administrative Records, “Agreement between Wm. Fletcher

and Christ Church Vestry, 12 January 1742,” ONC records, MHS. Joseph, “British Loggers and Spanish Governors,

Part I,” 28. See Newton, “Good and Kind Benefactors,” 29-30, for more on how this war impacted New England

merchants and the logwood trade.

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succeeded Belcher in 1740 as governor of Massachusetts—thanks in part to his bone fides as an

Anglican and an imperial administrator and the lobbying efforts of SPG member and colonial

agent John Thomlinson—carried from England gifts from George II: communion plate and

books of Common Prayer for Trinity Church. Upon receiving this communion silver and

manuals for worship, Trinity’s vestry was able to return religious materials and furnishing that

they had borrowed from their sister churches, and they decided to create a state pew for the

governor to sit in when he attended services. Prayer books were costly and in high demand, and

likely because of Shirley’s station the vestry also granted him permission to take three prayer

books for his personal use at King’s Chapel, where he regularly attended and served as a lay

official.103

Shirley played a leading role within the town’s larger Anglican community. In 1742,

Christ Church sent two vestrymen to him and Peter Faneuil to ask for contributions towards a set

of bells. This followed an unsolicited gift on £100, also put toward the bell fund, sent by Gedney

Clarke of Barbados and delivered to the church by Captain George La Daine of pew No.7.104The

resulting set of eight sequentially pitched bells, tuned from tenor to treble and installed in 1744,

became the first set of bells in British North America. The bells were cast and inscribed by Abel

Rudhall of Gloucester, England for a total cost of £1,100. Inscriptions acknowledged important

103 Oliver and Peabody, Records of Trinity Church, 89-90. 104 These included Charles Apthorp, William Bollam, John Boutineau, Peter Faneuil, Hugh Hall, Benjamin

Hallowell, and Henry Vassall. See Arthur H. Nichols, “Christ Church Bells, Boston, Mass.,” New England

Historical and Genealogical Register 58 (1904): 63–71 for a list of subscribers; Clarke did not restrict his charity to

Christ Church. See S. D. Smith, “Gedney Clarke of Salem and Barbados: Transatlantic Super-Merchant” The New

England Quarterly Vol. 76, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 499-549; Annie Haven Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the

Town of Boston, 1630-1800 and The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, 1630-1822 (Boston: New England

Historic Genealogical Society and Massachusetts Historical Society, 2001) (59063) CD-ROM [30928] Although

Peter Faneuil never married, his siblings married into the Anglican establishment. Benjamin Faneuil married

Reverend Cutler’s daughter, Mary, in 1725 at Christ Church. Mary Faneuil married Gillam Phillips also in 1725.

Ann Faneuil married Addington Davenport in 1738. Susannah Faneuil wed James Boutineau also in 1738, and Mary

Ann Faneuil married John Jones in 1742.

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figures such as Governor Shirley and Rev. Timothy Cutler and commemorated the Church’s

place in New England. John Hammock, John Gould, Robert Jenkins, Robert Temple, William

Richardson, Hugh McDaniel, and William Price, all lay officials at Christ Church, also gave

handsomely. The inscription on bell no. 3 recorded the names of the church wardens who had

begun and completed the subscriptions. Most contributions were £20 or less. Among the

subscribers was one woman, Elizabeth Jackson. Several persons extended themselves on behalf

of the church, even if they did not contribute monetarily. In lieu of subscribing a sum of money

towards the bells, Boston merchant Thomas Gunter negotiated with Rudhall on the church’s

behalf and arranged the shipping. The vestry made a special point of thanking Gedney Clark and

Captain Jeramiah Jones for their support, commending the latter for his “Diligence in securing a

Large number of Subscriptions in London and Boston” towards the bells.105 Though not an

Anglican, Thomas Hancock also subscribed £20. Hancock partnered with two of King’s

Chapel’s leading proprietors, Charles Apthorp and Sir Henry Frankland, in numerous

commercial ventures. As noted by historian Phyllis Hunter, Hancock’s lavish mansion on the

edge of Beacon Hill and coach and four with emblazed coat of arms and Peter Fanueil’s later gift

of a town market broadcast their status as British-American commercial elites. Their religious

gifts similarly marked them as persons of politeness, piety, and standing within the

community.106 All told, the inscription on bell no. 2, “Since generosity has opened our mouths,

our tongues shall ring aloud its praise,” provided an apt testimony to those who donated to

105 Nichols, “Christ Church Bells”; Bolton, Christ Church Guide, 28-30; Vestry Book, 29 April 1742, 26 August

1742, 4 February 1743/44, ONC records, MHS. 106 Hunter, Purchasing Identity. 86-87, 112, 138-141. Faneuil’s central market was hardly used and resisted by local

sellers and he “is remembered not for generosity or gentility, but for a gesture that inscribed the commercial and

cultural authority of the merchant elite into the landscape of Boston.”

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Christ Church and understood the worth of contributing to public building, churches, and the

poor.107

War with France and its colonies created numerous commercial opportunities for

Anglicans affiliated with Boston’s Churches and brought potential patrons into their orbit. The

town served as a staging ground for several expeditions to Canada and the fortress at Louisbourg.

In 1736, naval officer Peter Warren became commander of the station at Boston, circumventing

the Navigation Laws by shipping foodstuffs to Louisbourg with Peter Fanueil. As an avid

investor in the American colonies, Warren conducted business with and lent sums of money to a

number of fellow Anglicans, including the DeLanceys of New York, to whom he was related by

marriage and commerce. In 1738, Captain Warren attended the BECS’s annual entertainment

and donated £5 to the society. The following year he extended a £105 loan to William Bollan at

6 percent interest. An English-born and educated lawyer, Bollan frequently gave legal assistance

to local Anglican churches. He later married a daughter of William Shirley and became

advocate-general for Massachusetts in 1742. Later when Warren returned to Boston, he took two

additional bonds of £100 from Bollan. Athorp, Frankland, and Hancock conducted the second

bond on Warren’s behalf and received payment by 1745. As American agent and later partner of

John Thomlinson, Charles Apthorp acted as provisioner and paymaster to British troops during

military campaigns across North America. In 1745, he became victualing agent for Admiral

Warren’s squadron. Over the next decade, he oversaw the maintenance and construction of naval

107 Old North Church, “Bell Ringing,” accessed 7 September 2015, http://oldnorth.com/bellringing/. The inscriptions

on bells four, five, six, seven, and eight respectively read “William Shirley, Esq., Governor of the Massachusetts

Bay, in New England / God preserve the Church of England. 1744 / We are the first ring of bells cast for the British

Empire in North America. A.R. 1744 / This Church was founded in the year 1723. Timothy Cutler, DD, the first

Rector, A.R. 1744 / This peal of eight bells is the gift of a number of generous persons to Christ Church, in Boston,

N.E. Anno 1744. A.R.” The inscription on bell three read: “The subscription for these bells was begun by John

Hannmock and Robert Temple, Church Wardens, Anno 1743; completed by Robert Jenkins and John Gould, church

Wardens.”

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vessels in Boston and Nova Scotia for Warren and supplied naval stores to New England, Nova

Scotia, and Jamaica. Apthorp worked closely with Mark Wentworth, brother to New

Hampshire’s royal governor, and merchant Samuel Wentworth, a fellow parishioner at King’s

Chapel, to provide masts, yards, bowsprits, pitch, turpentine, ash rafters, and lathes to the British

Navy.108 By 1745, the proceeds of several rich prizes taken off of Louisbourg and during the

capture of the fortress enabled Warren to extend extended further loans to persons he had met at

Boston, Louisbourg, and Newport.109

The War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748)—otherwise known as the War of Jenkin’s

Ear and King George’s War in the Caribbean and North America—created other obstacles and

opportunities for enterprising members of Boston’s Anglican community. In April of 1744,

newspapers reported how a Spanish privateer attacked and, after “a most desperate fight,” took

William Richardson’s vessel as it entered the Bay of Honduras, leaving part of the crew ashore

on a key and carrying Richardson and the remainder of the crew to Campeche. After

transportation to Havanna, the Christ Church vestryman and defacto spokesman for the Baymen

was freed as part of a prisoner exchange.110 Richardson arrived back in Boston soon after his

release but did not remain there for long. By November, as commander of a privateer, he took

several prizes off of Newfoundland. He died of wounds sustained in battle in early 1745 and was

108 Navy Board Records, National Archives, Kew (hereafter, ADM) 106/1006/226,338; ADM 106/1021/231; ADM

106/1029/30; ADM 106/1048/21; ADM 106/1066/106,262-4; ADM 106/1073/4, 273-5; 106/1076/151; ADM

106/1034/24,32,87; ADM 106/1100/14; ADM 106/1105/56; ADM 106/1116/228; ADM 354/131/174,177-8. To

varying degrees, fellow members of Boston’s Anglican churches Benjamin Hallowell, Hugh McDaniel, John Jones,

Henry Frankland, and William Shirley also maintained commerce with the navy, while prominent physician and

entrepreneur Sylvester Gardiner treated sick and wounded sailors in Boston and Nova Scotia. 109 In Boston, the majority of loans went to pillars in the Anglican and civil community, such as assistant minister at

King’s Chapel, Charles Brockwell, Estes and Nathaniel Hatch, Francis Brinley, and George Craddock. 110 They had first entered Providence from Havana under a flag of truce; because of insufficient Spanish prisoners

there, they were exchanged for an equal number of Spaniards in Jamaica.

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buried far from the church he served so graciously.111 Captain James Gruchy, a smuggler,

member of the BECS, and fellow vestryman at Christ Church, experienced a degree of success as

a privateer in the Caribbean. In June of 1746, he and the co-owners of the privateer Queen of

Hungary, all of who were vestrymen at Christ Church, donated a set of decorative carved

cherubim and a chandelier taken from a Spanish ship to the church. The church vestry promptly

placed the cherubim near the organ and hung the chandelier in the body of the church,

transforming religious materials bound for a cathedral in Catholic New France into refined

fixtures in a Protestant church in Boston’s North End.112

Religion constituted a vital part of Richardson, Gruchy, and Warren’s identities as

Britons, and they expressed their devotion to the Anglican Church by giving to specific causes

and privileging known associations and congregations. As the third son of a small landowning

Irish Catholic family, Warren’s early conversion to the Established Church likely sparked his

successful naval career. His chief biographer historian Julian Gwyn says surprisingly little about

his active Anglicanism.113 In addition to the admiral’s extensive commercial and social

connections to elite Anglicans in the Americas, Warren joined Sandford, Shirley, and

Thomlinson as a member of the SPG in January 1745. The following year, while serving as

Governor of Louisbourg, which he had helped capture in 1745, Warren journeyed to Boston to

discuss plans to invade Canada with Governor Shirley. On this visit, Warren became a member

111 Bostonians first read in the 23 April 1744 Boston Post-Boy that that Richardson had drowned when his vessel

went aground off of Bonaca before learning of his actual capture and ensuing exploits. American Weekly Mercury,

26 April-3 May 1744, 7-14 June 1744; Boston Evening-Post, 23 April 1744, 30 April 1744, 6 June 1744, 25 June

1744, 12 Nov. 1744, 19 May 1746; Boston News-Letter, 8 Nov. 1744, 21 March 1745; Boston Post-Boy, 25 March

1745. 112 Vestry records, 18 June 1746, ONC records, MHS. “Whereas Mssrs. Robert Jenkins, Captain Gruchia, Mr. Hugh

McDaniel, Mr. Jn. Gould (Gold), Mr. Jn Baker owners of Privateer Queen of Hungary hath made as present to

Christ Church in Boston of ye cherubims and glass branches taken by said vessel. Voted that the branches be hung

in ye body of the church and ye cherubims placed on ye top of the organ.” 113 Warren converted around 1712 following his father’s death. Julian Gwyn, The Enterprising Admiral: The

Personal Fortune of Sir Peter Warren (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1975), 197.

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of the BECS, his earlier gift likely paving the way for his selection by the society members.

Shirley had become a member of this society on Easter Tuesday 1742 at the society’s annual

dinner. The society allowed him entry without applying to the monthly meeting agreeable to

their common rule because he was the first governor of the province who desired to be admitted

a member. Both men, however, paid the required £5 dues before they were granted entry.114

Warren returned to London in November 1746 and was elected to Parliament the following year,

leaving his New England interests in the capable hands of Hancock and fellow Anglicans

Apthorp, Frankland, and attorney Henry Lloyd Jr.115 In London, Warren frequently attended SPG

meetings and remained attuned to the needs of colonial Anglican Churches, personally giving

towards the expansion of Boston’s King’s Chapel, St. George’s Chapel in New York, and the

later building of an Anglican church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.116

As Anglicans integrated patrons, gifts, and English-sourced religious materials into their

churches, the laity exhibited a great degree of localism in their choices of ministers. In 1746

following Reverend Davenport’s untimely death, Trinity Church’s vestry elected Reverend

William Hooper. Born and educated in Scotland, Hooper came to Massachusetts in 1734 as a lay

preacher before becoming first minister at Boston’s West Congregational Church in 1737. He

resigned this post the very same day that he was elected to succeed Davenport and traveled to

114 Boyles, Constitution of the BECS, 27; Boyle, Historical Memoir of the BECS, 9. Gifts from naval officers were

not uncommon. Captain Jonathon Bowman gave £5 at the same event, and on Easter Tuesday 21 April 1746 the

BECS received gift of £20 sterling from Warren’s successor as Governor of Louisbourg, His Excellency Charles

Knowles, Esq. Bowman and Knowles, however, never became members. 115 Boyles, Constitution of the BECS, 27; Gwyn, “Money Lending in New England: The Case of Admiral Sir Peter

Warren and His Heirs 1739-1805,” New England Quarterly 44, no. 1 (1971): 120n8; Gwyn, Enterprising Admiral,

109-115; S.D. Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the

Lascelles, 1648-1834 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 114, 120, 122, 127. 116 Gwyn, “Money Lending in New England,” 117-134, and Enterprising Admiral, 185; Foote, Annals, 2:50-51,63;

SPG journals, 10:198, Journal, annual sermons and reports of the SPG, 1701-1870, British Online Archives

(hereafter, BOA) https://www.britishonlinearchives.co.uk/,

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London for Anglican orders. Commissary Roger Price however, opposed Hooper’s ordination

in a sharply worded letter to Bishop Gibson of London:

I thought it my duty to inform your Lordship that Mr Hooper late a dissenting

teacher is going to Engl[an]d with a design of receiving Episcopal ordination

being appointed by the Congregation of Trinity Church to succeed Mr Davenport

His change has been so unusual and sudden as to allow me no time to know his

true character which has come to me hitherto only by common report This indeed

has not been at all favorable to him either in respect to his principles or morals I

told him this when he came to me for a recommendation to your Lordship and for

this reason refused it whereupon after some threatening language he left me. The

Governor & several lay Gentlemen espouse his cause very warmly but I have not

spared to tell them it was my opinion that instead of increasing the number of

Churchmen by taking such suspicious ministers into the Church it might rather be

a means of destroying Christianity which is already in this town too much

tinctured with base opinions My Brethren of the Clergy whom I have advised

with upon this affair have unanimously concur[e]d in these sentiments.117

In contrast, the vestry of King’s Chapel and Governor William Shirley strongly recommended

Hooper to the Bishop of London, testifying to the minister’s talent as “an Extraordinary

preacher” capable of drawing dissenters back into the Church’s fold.118

Over these considerable objections by Boston’s Anglican clergy, Hooper received

ordination without incident and arrived in Boston in August 1747 to a hearty welcome by

members of Trinity Church. In his first report to the SPG, the minister relayed that “The church

was crowded yesterday but I believe I performed but poorly not being used to the way of the

Church of England.” He happily reported his relief that dissenters and members of his former

congregation did not “resent my conforming so much as I imagined they would.” 119 The

convert’s lack of familiarity with the liturgy did not appear to alienate church members. After all,

Hooper’s conversion validated the superiority of their religion. Hooper’s Anglican supporters

sent letters vindicating his character against Commissary Price’s attacks to their agents,

117 Roger Price to Bishop Gibson, 22 November 1746, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:398. 118 Shirley to the Secretary of the SPG, 26 November 1746, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:399-402. 119 Hooper to the Secretary of the SPG, 31 August 1747, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:413-14.

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Tomlinson and Christopher Kilby, who were instructed to deliver them to the Bishop of London.

Hooper authorized Tomlinson and Kilby “to open all the Letters directed for me & to use them

as in prudence they shall think fit.”120 With these strokes of the pen, Hooper mobilized Boston’s

considerable Anglican lobby in the capital and effected quick relief. Finding himself without

support, Price offered to resign on 21 November 1746 but stayed on until 11 April 1747, when

he inducted his successor, Henry Caner.

Caner came to Boston having served as an SPG missionary to Fairfield, Norwalk,

and Stratford, Connecticut, for twenty years. Born into an Anglican family in England, Caner

graduated Yale in 1724 and briefly studied under Yale apostate Samuel Johnson before receiving

ordination as an SPG missionary. His long residence in the colonies and acquaintance with

leading clergy and laity made him an excellent choice to replace the controversial commissary;

Caner became the de facto leader of Anglican clergy in Massachusetts. Governor Shirley quickly

reported his satisfaction with Caner and recommended that the SPG provide him with a gratuity

for monthly lecture in the town.121 More patently, he suggested that the Society might allow

colonial clergy to send dually qualified persons “with recommendations for orders to supply

vacancies as they shall happen to arise without staying till they shall obtain the Society's leave

upon every particular one.” If followed, this request would greatly empower colonial churchmen

and speed up the appointment of ministers of their choosing. Shirley continued that such a

change “may be an acceptable maintenance to young men of this Country whose Families &

120 Hooper to the Secretary of the SPG, 31 August 1747, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:413-14. 121 Cutler recommended Caner for ordination in 1727. See Timothy Cutler to the Secretary of the SPG, 24 May

1727, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:222-23. Governor Shirley wrote the SPG on June 6, 1747 of his satisfaction

with Caner, who had come to King's Chapel after 20 years in Fairfield, CT, and recommended a gratuity from the

SPG. American material in the archives of the USPG, SPG Letterbook, Series B.15.16-19, BOA; SPG Journal,

12:339, Journal, annual sermons and reports of the SPG, 1701-1870, BOA. Shirley also recommended the

committee’s petition to the SPG.

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substance are here and who generally enter into the service of the Church chiefly upon a zeal for

promoting its welfare in this part of the world & Principles of Religion only.”122 In other words,

Anglican laity preferred clergymen already connected to their congregation by kinship,

friendship, and circumstances—persons born, educated, or at the very least acculturated in the

provinces. Trinity Church’s vestry similarly wrote the SPG in December 1747 to express their

thanks for the society’s kindness and to express their satisfaction with their appointed minister.123

Rebuilding King’s Chapel

Under Caner’s ministry, members of King’s Chapel focused on necessary projects, most

notably the rebuilding of King’s Chapel. Prominent pew holders at King’s Chapel accounted for

the majority of subscriptions towards the rebuilding, which was begun on 30 September 1747.

Governor William Shirley, Sir Charles Frankland, Admiral Charles Knowles, and Charles

Apthorp headed a list of twenty-three contributors who collectively donated £1100 sterling. As

seen in Chart I: Frequency Distribution of leading Subscribers for Rebuilding King’s Chapel,

September 1747 and Chart II: Percentage Frequency of leading Subscribers, initial subscribers

gave just under £48 on average, with 83 percent of the sample giving £50 or less.124 With the

exception of Knowles, All resided in Boston and attended King’s Chapel, except for Knowles.125

Since the rebuilding required considerable capital, especially using granite, church officers

122 Shirley to the Secretary of the SPG, 6 June 1747, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:408-412. 123 SPG Letterbook, B.15.66, BOA. 124 See Chart I: Frequency Distribution of leading Subscribers for Rebuilding King’s Chapel, September 1747 and

Chart II: Percentage Frequency of leading Subscribers.” Data taken from Subscribers for the Rebuilding of King’s

Chapel September 1747, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 125 Building Committee to Charles Knowles, 29 January 1747/48, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel Records,

MHS. See chapter 4 for more on Knowle’s subscription.

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agreed that if a sum of £2000 sterling was not raised in the next year and a half, all subscriptions

would be void and any monies paid to the church would be returned.

The building committee reached out to a network of friends and associates—military and

commercial cliques and lobbyists and church leaders—to request support for King’s extensive

rebuilding and renovation. Henry Frankland forwarded letters to his brother Thomas Frankland

and Admiral Knowles, both naval officers in the West Indies and friends of the church, and

carried correspondence to Thomlinson and church leaders as he went to London to conduct

01234

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200

Subscriptions in £ Sterling, n = 23, mean = £47.8

Chart I: Frequency Distribution of Leading Subscribers for Rebuilding King's

Chapel, begun 1747

Frequency

13

30

39

5759

70

83

9196

100

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200

Cumulative

Percentage

Frequency

Subscriptions in £ Sterling, N = 23, Mean = £47.8

Chart II: Percentage Frequency of leading Subscribers for Rebuilding King's

Chapel, begun September 1747

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business and raise subscriptions.126 The committee likewise asked Trinity Church vestryman

Peter Kenwood to raise subscriptions in England for King’s Chapel as he had for Trinity Church.

Pew holder Francis Johannot carried subscriptions to the garrison at Annapolis Royal in Nova

Scotia. William Vassall of Cambridge and Jamaica and Gedney Clarke of Salem and Barbados

were asked to apply to well-disposed planters in the islands.127

On top of their prospective financial support, these geographically distant patrons raised

the political profile of King’s Chapel and helped secure support from members of the church

hierarchy and the all-important SPG. The committee wrote to John Thomlinson in London,

asking him, as a member of the SPG, to aid the preservation of their church, “which, as it is the

Mother Church in these Parts must give Countenance or Discouragement to all the rest in

Proportion to its Increase or Decline.”128 The wooden chapel’s presence in Puritan New England

had, in part, inaugurated the religious pluralism and toleration of Protestants that characterized

the eighteenth-century British Empire. It must be maintained, lest the Anglican mission in New

England fail. The committee similarly stressed the chapel’s historic importance as they wrote to

associates and religious leaders in England and the West Indies requesting aid. Since the chapel

had lost numbers of members to Christ Church and Trinity Church, its members could ill-afford

the massive cost of rebuilding the chapel in a manner fitting its place in history. In their letter to

126 Though treatments of Frankland focus on his personal affairs with numerous women—Elias Nason’s Sir Charles

Henry Frankland, Baronet (1865) is particularly romanticized and inaccurate—he diligently supported the Church

of England while a consul in Portugal and as a customs officer in Boston. State Papers Foreign, Portugal, National

Archives, Kew (Hereafter, SP), 89/51 f.159-160; SP 89/58 f.88. 127 “Committee to Henry Frankland, 28 January 1747/48,” “Committee to William Vassall, 28 January 1747/48,”

“Committee to Gedney Clarke, 25 October 1749,” Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS; On the

Franklands, Clarkes, and Vassalls see S. D. Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic,

22-26, 91-138. Even after removing to the West Indies, Clarke maintained a pew at Salem’s St. Paul’s Anglican

Church and gave towards several charities in that town. Boston’s Anglican community knew him for his gift

towards Christ Church’s bells and his business dealings with Thomas Frankland and Peter Warren. Clarke

authorized his brother to give this and a similar entertainment in Salem. 128 Committee to John Thomlinson, 12 December 1748, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel Records, MHS.

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the Bishop of London, members of the committee expressed how the chapel was “constantly

drained by yielding Assistance to infant Churches.”129 Indeed, apart from a handful of persons

who owned pews at two or more of the town’s Anglican Churches, members of Christ and

Trinity Churches did not appear to financially support the proposed rebuilding.130

In addition to securing funds for the rebuilding, the appointed building committee faced a

number of practical and political challenges. Any expansion of the wooden chapel would need to

take up more of the burial ground, and the adjacent school house also stood in the way. Much

had changed since Edmund Andros had arbitrarily taken part of the Puritan burial ground for the

purpose of erecting King’s Chapel’s. Sixty years after this incident, the building committee

approached the town selectmen for permission to expand the building. A town committee was

appointed to examine the church’s petition, requested moving the school to a more suitable

location and addressed the subject of those interred in the burial ground, promising not to dig or

disturb the ground except to lay the foundation, “nor at any Time to exclude those with Vaults or

Tombs within the requested Limits the Liberty of free access.”131 Of the selectmen and members

of the town committee, Thomas Hancock and Andrew Oliver, as well as the moderator Thomas

Hutchinson, were sympathetic to the petitioners; others, however, obstructed the petition as it

went through a raucous debate. Responding to the church, the town committee drew up a draft

of the grant and the conditions for the chapel’s expansion. The church would fund a new school

house, pay for any damage to graves or monuments, and work with “Friends of those who may

129 Committee to John Thomlinson, 12 December 1748, Committee to Bishop of London, 25 October 1749, Loose

Correspondence, King’s Chapel Records, MHS; Many of these letters are transcribed or excerpted in Foote, Annals,

vol. 2. 130 Over the next years, for example, King’s Chapel sued Benjamin Fanueil, executor of Peter Fanueil’s estate, for

failing to pay his late brother’s subscription. 131 To the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston in General Town Meeting assembled 4 April

1748, in Foote, Annals, 2:57.

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lay buried in said Piece of Ground, and where no Friends appear, with the Selectmen, to remove

the Bodys in Manner as is herein provided for the other dead Bodys before mentioned.”132

With the final acceptance of terms put to a town vote, King’s Chapel’s officers notified

members of Boston’s extended Anglican community to attend the 18 April 1748 meeting. One

such individual, John Pigeon, paid a fine for stuffing the ballot with a handful of yea votes. After

restarting the ballot process, the vote narrowly fell in favor of King’s Chapel, 204 to 147.133

Despite this close vote, the political environment was vastly different in 1748 than it had been in

1686. Now, after King’s Chapel acquired the needed land by democratic ballot, the town

selectmen upheld the decision against dissatisfied persons who wanted to reconsider the matter.

Over the next month close to eighty bodies were reburied on the chapel’s account; the building

committee kept a record of those whom had no living relatives.134

While the committee obtained authority from the town to expand the chapel, eighty-three

other subscribers pledged an additional £993, half of which they promised to pay once

construction began.135 In addition to leading merchants, distillers, artisans, and gentlemen, broad

support came from persons of middling and lesser means, including a handful of female pew

owners—shop keepers and merchants—Alice Quick, Mary Jackson, Sarah McNeal, Joanna

Brooker, and Henrietta Maria East. As seen in Chart III: Frequency Distribution of Additional

Subscribers for Rebuilding King’s Chapel, September 1747 and Chart IV: Cumulative

Percentage Frequency of Additional Subscribers, these eighty-three subscriptions ranged from £2

132 Draft Response to the Petition of the Minister Wardens and Vestry of Kings Chapel for the enlargement of the

Church, in Foote, Annals, 2:58-60. 133 Foote, Annals, 2:61. 134 For an overview of these negotiations see Foote, Annals, 2:53-74. See 73-74 for an eloquently written letter by

William Andram of Providence in opposition to the town and chapel. 135 See Chart III: Frequency Distribution of Additional Subscribers for Rebuilding King’s Chapel, September 1747

and Chart IV: Percentage Frequency of Additional Subscribers.” Data taken from Subscribers for the Rebuilding of

King’s Chapel September 1747, King’s Chapel records, MHS.

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to £100 sterling. Donors gave an average of £12, with three-quarters of the sample giving £10 or

less. Having received adequate funds to begin collecting construction materials, in April 1749

the committee contacted amateur architect Peter Harrison of Newport to design the renovation.

Harrison had recently studied architecture in England and was, at the time, designing a private

library in Newport.136

Subscribers to the rebuilding understood that their efforts built onto those of the early

church founders. On 11 August 1749 Governor William Shirley, along with Reverend Caner,

136 Henry Caner to Peter Harrison, 5 April 1749, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Priscilla

Metcalf, “Boston before Bulfinch: Harrison’s King’s Chapel,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 13,

no. 1 (1954): 11-14.

3

28

4

27

15

9

1 1 1 2 105

1015202530

Subscriptions in £ Sterling, N = 83, Mean = £12, modes = 5 (28) & 10 (27)

Chart III: Frequency Distribution of additional Subscribers for Rebuilding King's

Chapel, begun 30 September 1747

Frequency

4

3742

757682

93 95 99 100

0102030405060708090

100

Cumulative

Percentage

Frequency

Subscriptions in £Sterling, N = 83, Mean = £12

Chart IV: Percentage Frequency of additional Subscribers for Rebuilding of

King's Chapel, September 1747

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King’s lecturer Brockwell, church wardens, vestrymen, and some fifty parishioners ceremonially

paraded from the Province house to the building site, where Shirley and Caner laid the first stone

for the chapel’s rebuilding in a newly dug trench. After Shirley knocked the stone four times

with a mason’s trowel and provided libations for the assembled workmen, Caner delivered a

prayer of dedication. The party then proceeded into the wooden chapel, where Caner delivered a

sermon titled “Upon the Piety of Founding Church for the Worship of God,” dedicated to

Governor Shirley, who had started the subscription and promised to promote the church’s

interest while in England. Referring his listeners to a printed essay on the topic that Dr. Pierce

delivered at the consecration of London’s St. Martins-in-the-field, Caner discussed the building

of the first temple in Jerusalem and the growth of the Christian Church through the centuries, all

of which had led up to “enlarging and rebuilding this house of God.” The minister hoped all

contributors gave with “pure and upright intention” and “a special eye to the honour of the God

and Savior we profess to adore.”137 In closing, Caner lauded the efforts of all donors, whether

they gave £2 or £200:

Blessed be God! He has already raised up a spirit of liberality to this good work, even

beyond expectation among ourselves and has moved the hearts of some, even in distant

parts, to countenance and promote it, by very bountiful donations—And blessed of God

be all, and every one from the highest to the lowest, who has set his hand to this work to

encourage its beginning.”138

Moved by this sermon, the vestry had it printed by J. Draper in Boston, who advertised it for sale

in the Boston Weekly Post-Boy. Members of the committee ordered three hundred copies,

distributing fifty copies to the governor, twenty copies to Reverend Caner, and one apiece to

137 Henry Caner, Upon the Piety of Founding Churches for the Worship of God: Being a Discourse on NeheiahII.

20. Preach’d at King’s Chapel in Boston, August 11, 1749 (Boston: J. Draper, 1749), 15. Emphasis added. 138 Caner, Upon the Piety of Founding Churches, 17.

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each subscriber.139 One month later, the building committee received a set of original plans,

which Harrison based on sketches of Christopher Wren’s new designs and his own observations

of English Palladian and Baroque architecture.140

Governor Shirley and Charles Apthorp counted among the biggest contributors. Their

repute extended to London. In 1748, Apthorp was proposed for membership in the SPG for a

third time, becoming a member the following year while Shirley was in London, likely because

of support from existing members (Shirley, Sandford, Thomlinson, and Admiral Warren) and his

proven record of service to the colonial church.141 Over the next years, friends and associates

helped raise additional funds and building materials. In 1751, the church learned from merchant

Thomas Gunter that Ralph Allen of Bath, England, offered to supply stone and workmen for the

new construction. Unfortunately, the committee could not afford the cost of transporting this gift,

which they valued at over £1000, so they made do with wood columns and stone acquired from

Braintree by Sylvester Gardiner.142 The following year, the building committee found it needed

an additional £2,233, six schillings, and eight pence lawful money. Six members of this

committee expressed their willingness to borrow this amount and requested security to protect

themselves and their heirs from exposure on the loan. Twenty-four individuals put up this

requested amount. The church received an additional £2000 old tenor from members of the

congregation, the SPG, the BECS, and merchant associates in England.143

139 Boston Weekly Post-Boy, 4 September 1749; Foote, Annals, 2:80-82. Not all Bostonians appreciated the

religiosity of this ceremony. Rogers & Daniel Fowles of the Independent Advertiser published an 1720 pamphlet

from the Independent Wigg titled “On Consecration,” attacking the allegedly popish blessing of stones, buildings,

and other materials. 140 Harrison to Caner, 15 September 1749, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Metcalf, “Boston

before Bulfinch.” 141SPG journal, 11:54, BOA. 142 Foote, Annals, 2:94-97; Milford, Gardiners of Massachusetts, 34. 143 The six gentlemen were Charles Apthorp, George Cradock, Eliakim Hutchinson, Thomas Hawding, John

Gibbins, and Silvester Gardiner.

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As construction neared completion and the old wooden chapel was torn down in the

spring of 1753, members of King’s Chapel negotiated with neighboring congregations so that

they could hold services during the rebuilding. Trinity Church’s minister and wardens agreed to

adjust Sunday services in order to share their building with members of King’s Chapel.144 King’s

Chapel’s wardens also contacted the minister and members of Boston’s Eleventh

Congregationalist Church, which met steps away from the chapel in the building formerly used

by French Huguenots, asking liberty to use that building for Wednesday, Friday, and weekday

prayers. Congregationalist minister Andrew Crosswell replied in the affirmative, describing the

arrangement as a “thing highly agreeable to Christianity and Humanity.”145 Thomas Brockwell,

King’s lecturer and assistant minister at King’s Chapel, completely disagreed with these

sentiments. During Passion Week, during which Caner fell ill and was unable to conduct

midweek services, Brockwell refused to conduct services at the Congregationalist meeting

house. As he explained himself to the Bishop of London: “I never in myself was in a meeting

house my conscience tells me that to perform any part of Divine Service there when here are 2

Episcopal Churches in the Town to which we are welcome is sin.” Brockwell objected to

Crosswell, a New Light follower of George Whitfield, referring to him as an “enthusiastic

Independent” and more broadly to the use of any unconsecrated place for Anglican services.

Reverend Caner and the chapel’s congregants, however, had no such objections. In Brockwell’s

telling, Caner “complaisantly told them [members of the vestry] he would go where they

pleased.”146

144 To the Vestry of Trinity Church in Boston, 4 March 1753, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 145 Reverend Andrew Crosswell to Caner, 30 March 1753, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 146 Brockwell to the Bishop of London, 4 May 1753, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:447-48.

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Despite Brockwell’s unwillingness to set foot in this meeting house, this cooperation with

Congregationalists demonstrates a clear advancement in relations. Caner and his congregation

held midweek services at Croswell’s meetinghouse for over a year while the chapel was under

construction. They also received permission to celebrate Christmas services at the

Congregational South Brick Meeting House, on the corner of Milk and Washington Streets, as

long as they did not “decorate it with Spruce etc.”147 Though Congregationalists still perceived

that Christmas celebration was an invented pagan and Roman Catholic custom not found in

scriptures, but they nonetheless offered space for Anglicans to celebrate the birth of Christ. On

16 August 1754, Reverend Caner and the church wardens thanked Crosswell for use of his

meetinghouse and informed him that the chapel would be reopened the following Wednesday.

They similarly wrote the minister and wardens at Trinity Church to thank them for “Indulging of

our Church” and assure them of “any Services in our power, if the Circumstances of your Church

should call for our Assistance.” In closing, they also notified Trinity that they would need use of

a clock and bell they had lent during renovations.148 In 1754, in light of a growing number of

Anglican churches across Massachusetts, the Assembly passed an act “for the Better Securing &

Rendering More Effectual Grants & Donations to Pious & Charitable Uses, & for the Better

Support & Maintenance of Ministers of the Gospel,” which for the first time legally recognized

Anglican Churches and their vestries. This paved the way for future advances across the colony

and perhaps led to more cordial relations with Congregationalists.149

147 King’s Chapel wardens to Proprietors of South Brick Meeting house, 5 December 1753, Loose Correspondence,

King’s Chapel records, MHS. The proprietors gave a verbal reply on 14 December with their conditions; for a

contemporary view on relations between Anglicans and Congregationalists see Extract from a letter from Reverend

Thomas Prince to Dr. Avery, 31 December 1753, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:448-50. 148 Caner and wardens at King’s Chapel to Reverend Casswell, 16 August 1754, Caner and wardens at King’s

Chapel to Reverend Hooper and wardens at Trinity Church, 16 August 1754, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel

records, MHS. 149 Bordon W. Painter Jr., “The Vestry in Colonial New England,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal

Church 44, no. 4 (1975): 391-392.

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Though the reopened King’s Chapel was far from finished, its expanded stone structure

and spacious interior well suited its congregation. The vestry numbered pews on the ground floor

from one to eighty-two, and pews in the north and south galleries eighty-three to one hundred

and thirteen, and offered them for sale for between £8 and £16. Purchasers of pews received

contracts, which specified an annual pew rent of 1 shilling per Sunday for pews on the floor level

and nine pence for gallery pews, plus any additional sum decided at the annual proprietor’s

meeting on Easter Sunday. These contracts stipulated that pew owners had three months

following Easter to pay the required amount; in the event of non-payment, the wardens could

resell pews and deduct the arrears from the proceeds. The wardens also had first opportunity and

thirty days to buy the pew for its initial purchase price if pew owners wished to sell. Otherwise,

the owner or his or her heir could offer the pew for sale to any interested party. A number of

affluent congregants also purchased all or part of twenty burial vaults underneath the renovated

chapel.150 By 1758, eighty pews had been sold, and donations had funded the completion of

capitals, pilasters, and Corinthian columns within the sanctuary and the purchase of a new organ.

Once it was installed, the vestry sold the Brattle organ to St. Paul’s Church in Newburyport. In

1755, eight wealthy female congregants gave over 40 guineas to finish the altar piece. Barlow

Trecothick, whose wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law, contributed to this cause, sent the

church a painting of the Last Supper by Benjamin West.151

150 For examples of these contracts see Foote, Annals, 2:117-18 (pew no. 3, which was purchased 15 August 1754 by

Henry Lloyd for £16) and Pew Contracts and Receipt for Vault under King’s Chapel, 6 December 1754, 24 July

1759, 20 October 1760, Temple, Nelson, Lloyd, Vassall, and Borland Family Papers, 1611-1862 (MS Am 1250),

Houghton Library, Harvard University (pew no. 78 purchased by William Vassall 6 December 1754 for £16, no. 109

purchased by Vassall 24 July 1759 for £13 6s. 8p., and vault no. 4 purchased by Vassall 20 October 1760 for £24). 151 Foote, Annals, 2:174-75.

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Plan of Pews, King’s Chapel, Boston, 1754-present

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Plan of Tombs under King’s Chapel, Boston 1754-present

Lay Anglicans, the SPG, and the Reemergence of the Bishop Controversy

A number of lay Anglicans exercised influence in London. In addition to heading the

rebuilding committee and their service as vestrymen and BECS, Silvester Gardiner and Charles

Apthorp routinely forwarded and carried correspondence to and from the SPG and the Bishop of

London and colonial clergymen.152 In 1743, Apthorp’s actions as Thomlinson’s agent received

mention in the journal of the SPG. The following year, Gardiner carried correspondence and a

box of books from the secretary of the SPG to schoolmaster Mr. Roe, who, Gardiner reported

152 James MacSparran, A Letter Book and Abstract of Our Services, ed. Daniel Goodwin (Boston: Merrymount

Press, 1899), 6, 34.

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had begun to teach “catechism [to] the Negros [on] Sunday and the white children on other

days.”153 These lay informants and activists provided vital intelligence to the Church hierarchy.

Gardiner additionally interceded with the SPG by recommending persons for Anglican orders.

Apthorp’s commercial concerns were enmeshed with advocacy for the Church of

England. His many sons and apprentice and future son-in-law, Barlow Trecothick, gained

valuable experience and made important contacts pursuing the family business during this

period.154 Trecothick married Grizzell Apthorp at King’s Chapel in 1747, and over the next

several years served as clerk on the committee headed by his father-in-law and Gardiner to raise

funds for King’s Chapel’s much-needed expansion.155 By 1750, Trecothick settled in London to

act as an agent in his father-in-law’s firm. He became particularly established in the imperial

center, assisting John Thomlinson in his duties as agent for the colony of New Hampshire and

Boston’s three Anglican Churches. Trecothick still maintained a pew at King’s Chapel, where

his mother worshiped. In 1753, Trecothick became a member of the SPG. Governor of New

Hampshire Benning Wentworth, whose brother Samuel worshipped at King’s Chapel, and

merchant Hugh Hall Jr. of Boston were also inducted into the society that year, making persons

with ties to New England (specifically, Boston and Portsmouth) a decided majority of colonial

153 SPG Letterbook, B13:79; Throughout Gardiner’s career as a physician and land investor, he constantly worked to

further the Church of England. Most dramatically, as an investor in the Kennebec Company, Gardiner used the votes

of absentee investors to appoint Rev. Jacob Bailey, a SPG-supported missionary, to Pownalboro. Gardiner also

erected St. Ann’s Church in Gardinerston at his own expense. See T. A. Milford, The Gardiners of Massachusetts:

Provincial Ambition and the British-American Career (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New Hampshire, 2005),

and James Leamon, The Reverend Jacob Bailey, Maine Loyalist: For God, King, Country, and for Self (Amherst,

MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012). 154 In addition to two pews at the chapel, which accommodated his family of eighteen, Apthorp owned two pews at

Trinity, where he attended services on occasion and served briefly as a vestryman. 155 D. H. Watson, “Barlow Trecothick,” Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies, New Series, vol. 1

(1960): 36-49, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100000218; Bryce E. Withrow, “A Biographical Study of Barlow

Trecothick, 1720-1775,” Emporia State Research Studies 38, no. 3 (1992): 8-10,

http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/399.

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members of the SPG.156 Hall came from a diverse religious background. His father of the same

name had converted from Quakerism to Anglicanism in the early eighteenth century, and the son

attended Harvard as a youth and developed a lifelong friendship with Benjamin Colman, whose

international Protestant vision attracted many adherents. Hall Jr. owned a pew at King’s Chapel

and supported numerous religious causes such as Christ Church’s bells and well as Boston’s

West Church.157

Apthorp’s children followed his lead in commerce and religion. Henry Caner personally

attended to the religious education of many of the Apthorp sons after he joined Boston’s

Anglican clergy. East Apthorp went on to attain degrees from Jesus College at the University of

Cambridge. Following Charles Apthorp’s sudden death in 1758, the SPG promptly elected four

of his sons as members: Charles Ward Apthorp of New York, John Apthorp of London, James

Apthorp of Boston, and East Apthorp of Cambridge, England.158 East Apthorp eventually gained

ordination and sought a position at home. To this end, Boston’s Anglican clergy informed the

SPG in April 1759 that Anglicans in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now had sufficient numbers to

support their own church. At this time, residents of Cambridge attended services at one of

Boston’s three Anglican churches, often encountering great difficulty in crossing the Charles

River. The authors noted that the key lay proponents of this mission were “Men of Great Interest

and Influence” who would quickly provide a church and parsonage. They recommended

Reverend Apthorp to lead the church, which promised “a good and extensive influence” on

156 SPG journal 12:197, BOA. Here I count Charles Apthorp, Hugh Hall, William Shirley, Barlow Trecothick, John

Thomlinson, and Wentworth. Wentworth’s brother Samuel attended King’s Chapel. Apthorp served as godfather to

Samuel’s son. 157 Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2010), 178-233. Valeri holds back from labeling Hall an Anglican and does not mention Hall’s

membership in the SPG. 158 SPG journal, 14:39, BOA

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Anglicans residing in Cambridge and on Harvard students who might be brought into the

Anglican fold.159 After the SPG unanimously approved this appointment, Apthorp took over

fundraising, reporting the following November that the fifty families within his church had raised

a considerable sum and hoped to erect a church building by following June.160

When Christ Church, Cambridge opened for worship in 1761, the finished building stood

within sight of “that nursery of Congregationalism, Harvard College.”161 Congregationalists

readily perceived that Reverend Apthorp was being groomed to become an American bishop.

Following Apthorp’s construction of a lavish mansion on Brattle Street, next to the homes of key

patrons and members of his church, outspoken Congregational minister Jonathan Mayhew of

Boston dubbed the residence the “Bishop’s Palace” and loudly trumpeted his belief that its true

purpose was to serve as the palace for the American bishop.162 After largely steering clear of

controversy, East Apthorp penned a short pamphlet, Considerations on the Institutions and

Conduct of the SPG (1763), which forcefully defended the society’s record in the colony and

further advocated for a resident bishop. Mayhew responded in critical fashion, accusing the SPG

of deliberately plotting “to root out all New England churches.”163 Though the British ministry

never seriously considered appointing an American bishop, the president of the SPG, the

Archbishop of Canterbury, responded to Mayhew’s accusations. Apthorp sailed to London in

early September 1764, on pretense of settling urgent personal affairs, and resigned his

159 Caner to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 April 1759, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:452-53. 160 SPG journal, 14:184-5, 254-6, BOA. The Apthorp, Inman, Lechmere, Royall, Temple, Phips, and Vassall

families generously supported the construction of Christ Church. The SPG and friends in London also donated bells,

communion silver, and prayer books. 161 Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2003), 202. 162 Chris Beneke, Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2006), 115-116; Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic

Books, 2010), 61-62. 163 Frederick Mills, Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1978), 31.

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missionary post at Cambridge. He remained in England for the rest of his life, which he devoted

to theological scholarship.164 As noted by historian Frederick Mills, henceforward “the issue of

establishing a bishop or bishops in America became the focal issue of controversy between

Dissenters and Anglicans for the first time, and differences between them over liturgy, theology,

and patristical interpretations dropped into the background.”165 Many Congregationalists still

remained suspicious of the SPG, which tended to send missionaries to places already filled with

churches, albeit, dissenting ones.

Apthorp’s well-publicized retreat from Cambridge belied the growth of Anglicanism

across New England. Between 1738 and 1756, the SPG funded missionaries for newly

established Anglican Churches in six Massachusetts towns: Hopkinton, Taunton, Marshfield,

Bridgewater, Stoughton, and Dedham. In November 1759, Silvester Gardiner, who served as

moderator of the Kennebec Company, helped gather over fifty signatures from settlers in

Frankfort (in present-day Maine), petitioning the Bishop of London to ordain Jacob Bailey and

assign him to their settlement. A recent Harvard graduate, Bailey served briefly as a

schoolmaster in Massachusetts and was encouraged by Reverend Caner and Gardiner to convert

to Anglicanism and seek orders. Led by Gardiner and Charles Ward Apthorp, who wrote

personal letters of recommendation, Anglican proprietors in the Kennebec Company supported

Bailey and funded his winter crossing to London. Bailey returned to Boston in early May. To the

chagrin of Congregational proprietors in the company who had been unable to entice a

Congregational minister to this post, Bailey began his ministry in July with a yearly salary of £50

from the SPG. Over the next year, in Frankfort renamed Pownalboro in honor of the recently

164 Samuel Francis Batcheldor, Christ Church, Cambridge: Some Account of Its History and Present

Condition (Cambridge, MA, 1893), 28; Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 31; Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven, 202. 165 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 31-32.

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appointed royal governor, Bailey worked to build a church and a home for his family and

preached sermons at Georgetown, Fort Western, Gardinerstown, and elsewhere along the

Kennebec River.166 In this role, Bailey ministered to a diverse set of settlers, many of whom

attended Anglican services primarily because their sects lacked the numbers and resources to

support their own minister.167

In addition to their attention to establishing new congregations, Anglicans in Boston

worked to support their ministers. As Reverend Timothy Cutler’s health failed in the late 1750s,

Reverend Caner and his assistant at King’s Chapel, John Troutbeck, routinely conducted services

at Christ Church, Boston, while the vestry solicited James Greaton of Boston to read prayers and

deliver a sermon so they could judge whether he would be a suitable person to assist Cutler.

Greaton’s father, John, attended King’s Chapel, and the son had attended Yale on Caner’s

recommendation. In October 1759, Caner and the Christ Church vestry separately wrote to the

Bishop of London to request he ordain James Greaton. The following spring, Greaton arrived

from London on board the same vessel that carried Jacob Bailey.168 As Boston’s Trinity Church

continued to grow, Reverend Hooper solicited information about William Walter, whom he

likewise hoped to appoint as his assistant at the church. A great-grandson of Increase Mather,

Walter served as a schoolmaster and later customs agent at Salem following his graduation from

Harvard. Though Anglicans suggested Walter as a likely candidate, a dissenting minister,

Thomas Barnard of Salem’s First Congregational church, generously testified to Walter’s

166 Gordon E. Kershaw “A Question of Orthodoxy: Religious Controversy in a Speculative Land Company: 1759-

1775,” New England Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1973): 205-235. 167 Kershaw “A Question of Orthodoxy,” 216. His congregation of 84 heads of families included 5 Presbyterians, 7

Catholics, 15 Lutherans, 25 Churchmen (Anglicans), 23 Independents (Congregationalists), 3 Quakers, 2 Calvinists,

3 Baptists, and 1 no preference. 168 Vestry Records, 3 October 1759, Christ Church records, MHS; Church Wardens and Vestry of Christ Church,

Boston, to Secretary of the SPG, 23 October 1759, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:454.

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cheerful temper, compassion, prudence, and learning. Acknowledging that he had formerly

attempted to persuade Walter to become a dissenting parson, Barnard noted a “particular

tenderness… in Mr Walter's complexion which will render him highly agreeable to [those] in

sickness and Distress”169 En route to London in November 1763, Walter carried copies of

Mayhew’s latest attack on the Church of England and correspondence from Caner to the Bishop

of London that pleaded with the diocesan to continue supporting missionaries in locales with

dissenting teachers.

Timothy Cutler’s death in September 1765 left a void at Christ Church, where he had

served for over forty years. His assistant, Jacob Greaton, pressed the SPG to appoint him as

Cutler’s successor. After a majority of proprietors voted in favor of Greaton, Robert Jenkins and

John Baker, both of whom served as wardens and longtime vestrymen, sent a remonstrance to

the Bishop of London strongly objecting to Greaton—who, they claimed, had not consulted a

single church member before advancing his claim to Cutler’s position. Throughout this

controversy, members of the church unanimously urged the SPG to continue their valuable

benefaction, without which the church would be unable to maintain a minister.170 Caner,

surprisingly, remained silent on the matter, leaving to Christ Church to settle the dispute. In

January 1767, nearly two years after the decisive vote to elevate Greaton, wardens Francis Shaw

wrote to the SPG to recommend Greaton as minister and clarify misinformation that Greaton’s

detractors had sent. This agreement fell through, and Greaton requested a reassignment the

following August.171 Though this prolonged affair reflected poorly on the church, clergy present

at Cutler’s funeral agreed to hold an annual convention in Boston “to promote mutual love &

169 Barnard to Hooper, 15 October 1763, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:506-508. 170 Wardens and vestry to Secretary of the SPG, 20 December 1765, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:520. 171 Jenkins and Baker to Secretary of the SPG, 20 December 1765, Churchwardens at Christ Church to the Secretary

of the SPG, 29 January 1767, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:520, 526-529.

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harmony amongst ourselves and to assist each other with advice in difficult cases.”172 Caner

presided over these annual conventions, which typically began with a service at King's Chapel,

followed by a dinner occasionally attended by the governor of the province.173 Eventually, in

May 1768, members of Christ Church’s vestry reported a “happy Union” among congregants

regarding the selection of Mather Byles Jr. as minister. Another great-grandson of Increase

Mather, Byles had formerly served as a Congregational minister in New London.174 His

defection to the Church of England elicited far less of a tumult than the infamous “Yale

apostasy” forty years before. During the interim the Church of England in Boston had also

undergone substantial changes, mostly at the behest of its lay voting members.

Despite firm ties to England and reliance on the SPG and Bishop of London for financial

and material support, colonial Anglican congregations frequently preferred ministers with

existing ties to their community, and increasingly recommended provincially born and educated

persons for ordination by the Bishop of London. New England contributed just under half of all

colonial clergymen ordained by the Bishop of London, with most coming from Massachusetts

and Connecticut. A quarter of these New Englanders converted to Anglicanism.175 New England

natives played a similar role within Boston’s Anglican community. As seen in Table I: Origins

and Education of Boston’s Anglican Clergymen, all but two of the 8 colonial born clergymen

who served in Boston and Cambridge were Massachusetts natives and educated at Harvard. Five

of these colonial born clergymen converted to Anglicanism after serving as Congregational

ministers. In contrast, only one of the fourteen English and Scottish born and educated

172 William McGilchrist to Secretary of the SPG, 27 June 1766, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:524. 173 Pennington, “Colonial Clergy Conventions,” 214-215; William McGilchrist to Secretary of the SPG, Perry,

Historical Collections, 3:524. 174 Churchwardens at Christ Church to the Secretary of the SPG, 10 May 1768, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:537-

538 175 Bell, Imperial Origins,144.

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clergyman converted to Anglicanism. The influence of native-born converts grew. For example,

by the late 1760s, two grandchildren of Cotton Mathers and converts to the Church of England,

William Walters and Mather Byles Jr., served Boston’s increasingly diverse Anglican

community.

Table I: Origins and Education of Boston's Anglican Clergymen, 1686-1775

Birthplace Number % of total Education % of total Converts

% of

converts

New England 8 36% 8 36% 5 83%

England 13 59% 13 59% 0 0%

Scotland 1 5% 1 5% 1 17%

22 100% 22 100% 6 100%

Provincial-Born Clergy in Focus

Massachusetts 6 75% 6 75% 5 100%

Connecticut 1 13% 2 25% 0 0%

New Hampshire 1 13% 0 0% 0 0%

8 100% 8 100% 5 100%

By the early 1770s Anglicanism had refashioned New England. Boston’s Anglican

societies were linked by leadership and common cause and benefited from associations with

military, commercial, and religious interests in Boston and abroad, and the expertise of key

agents and intermediaries who aided the acquisition of donations and necessary materials such as

communion silver and books of common prayer. The collective efforts created a church that was

both familiar to Anglicans from other regions and attractive to non-Anglicans in Boston.

The building of churches, the aesthetics of pews and furnishings, and the acquisition of

gifts and materials only tells half the story, however. Though these materials made it possible for

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Anglican societies to worship together, these societies were divided by wealth, privilege, and

even freedom; and as lay officials and more affluent parishioners distinguished themselves from

the less fortunate, they frequently intermarried with fellow elites. Chapter 3 concentrates on the

use and function of these buildings—how lay officials constructed churches as racialized spaces

and how free and enslaved blacks and Britons of all backgrounds interacted with the material

culture and liturgy and rites (including baptism, marriage, and burial) of Anglican worship.

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CHAPTER 3: MATERIAL CULTURE, RACE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF

COMMUNITY IN ANGLICAN BOSTON

“The Beauty of Holiness”

Dissenting Protestants thought of their church as a gathered body of believers, using the

term “meetinghouse” to name the space devoted to congregational and government meetings, but

for Anglicans, the term “church” specifically referred to the sacred space used for worship.1 With

this in mind, William Price, a cabinet maker, print seller, landlord, amateur architect and

organist, leading lay officer at King’s Chapel, and founding member of Christ Church took

inspiration from sketches and observations of religious architecture in England, and modeling his

plan for Christ Church after Christopher Wren’s St. James in Piccadilly, London. Arched

windows and vaulted ceilings associated Christ Church with the heavens. In his design of the

interior, Price’s identified the altar as an extra-sacred space. Above Christ Church’s chancel, text

read “THIS IS NONE OTHER THAN THE HOUSE OF GOD, AND THIS IS THE GATE OF

HEAVEN.” In the spandrels below the vaulted ceiling, painted cherubim looked downward,

referencing the invisible supernatural that animated Anglican belief and standing guard against

evil. After Christ Church acquired an organ in 1737, painter John Gibb Jr. decorated the loft and

gallery, according to Price’s instructions, with “6 Cherubims heads with festoons.” Gibbs

colored the gallery to simulate cedar, a precious and fragrant wood associated with the First

Temple Gibbs also decorated the chancel by writing the Commandments in gilt on panels topped

1 Louis P. Nelson. The Beauty of Holiness: Anglicanism and Architecture in Colonial South Carolina (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 147-155.

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with winged cherubs. For his work at Christ Church Gibbs received over £250.2 King’s Chapel’s

chancel similarly displayed the text of the Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments, and the Apostles’

and Nicene Creed which had been brought from England by Reverend Myles in 1694. In a

culture that relied on the spoken word, such written text had a power and authority. These

scriptures implied the presence of the divine author within the walls of the church and provided a

powerful backdrop for the pulpit and communion table.3 Over the following decades, Price

applied the same attention to detail on the building committee for Trinity Church. Here, as at

Christ Church, Gibbs painted various scenes of winged cherubim in clouds overlooking the

chancel and sanctuary.4

Anglican Churches possessed qualities that, in their designers’ and theologian’s

viewpoints, manifested the character of God and shaped the moral senses of adherents. Even as

eighteenth-century empiricism prompted many Britons to question the immediacy of God in the

physical space of the church and led churches to stress moral virtue over supernatural activity,

Anglican architecture and aesthetics invoked the divine through its simplicity of ornamentation.

King’s Chapel’s 1749 solicitation letter to amateur architect Peter Harrison echoed prevailing

Anglican sentiments about order and regularity. “As the chief Beauty and Strength of Building

depends upon a due Proportion of the several Members to each other,” the rebuilding committee

informed Harrison that they did “not require any great Expense of Ornament but chiefly aim at

Symmetry and Proportion which we entirely submit to your Judgment.”5 In his sermon that

2 Bettina A. Norton, “Anglican Embellishments: The Contributions of John Gibbs, Junior, and William Price to the

Church of England in Eighteenth-Century Boston,” in New England Meeting House and Church, 1630-1850, edited

by Peter Benes, (Boston: Boston University, 1979), 70-78 3 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 161-165, 167-169. 4 Norton, “Anglican Embellishments,” 70-78. 5 Rebuilding Committee to Peter Harrison, 5 April 1749, Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Nelson,

Beauty of Holiness, 224-25. Anglican attention to mathematics and proportionality also coincided with Anglican

involvement with freemasonry in Boston and across the empire.

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followed the ceremonial laying of the new foundation to dedicate the rebuilt Chapel, Reverend

Caner stressed similar tropes:

Our worship is grave and comely ‘tis pure and simple yet full of noble majesty

not superstitiously encumber]d nor indecently naked. Let every circumstance

attending it partake of the same genuine and native ornament. Let the house of

God in which it is perform’d rise up with the same majestic simplicity neither

encumber’d with vain and trifling decorations nor yet wanting in that native

grandure [sic] which becomes the beauty of holiness and which tends to beget

impressions of awe and reverence in all that shall approach it.6

Anglican services and architecture distinguished Anglicans from the superstitions of Catholicism

and the overly plain worship of English Nonconformists. Singing and organ music

complemented the simple majesty of the building by elevating services and evoking awe and

reverence. The organs at each of Boston’s Anglican Churches required large initial outlays of

funds, as well as money for maintenance and salaries for organists. The ringing of church bells

on Sundays and during the midweek similarly evoked awe. Church bells tolled at the beginning

of sacred time, marked apart from natural or clock time, when Anglicans met for prayers,

sermons, and sacraments, all of which reinforced virtuous moral living. As noted by Louis

Nelson, a “regularity in structure was foundational for visual beauty in similar ways that the

regularity of virtue was essential to the beauty of holiness.”7

The Book of Common Prayer regulated religious life by providing orderly instructions

for weekly services as well as crucial sacraments and rituals. At weekly services, parishioners

listened to readings from the Prayer Book and biblical passages and were expected to join in

prayers and responses and kneel, stand, and bow when appropriate. The arrangement of seating

6 Henry Caner, Upon the Piety of Founding Churches for the Worship of God: Being a Discourse on NeheiahII. 20.

Preach’d at King’s Chapel in Boston, August 11, 1749 (Boston: J. Draper, 1749). Without a bishop colonial

Anglican Churches could not be consecrated as in England. Colonial churches, nevertheless, found ways to

publically mark church’s sanctity and higher purpose. 7 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 231.

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within box pews, where many benches faced away from the reading desk from which the

minister and clerk led the liturgical and musical portions of the service, heightened the

importance of hearing. Many seated parishioners could only see the minister by cranking their

necks up to ninety degrees. Congregants stood to recite together the Commandments, Creed, and

Lord’s Prayer and sing psalms. Lay participation at Anglican services greatly exceeded that at

neighboring meeting houses.8 Anglican theologians defended against charges that Anglican

worship was formulaic by arguing for the importance of repetition so that the words would be

remembered and internalized. Anglicans across the Atlantic also frequently used devotionals and

other religious literature within their households.9

The Book of Common Prayer regulated forms for the most significant events in an

individual’s life baptism, burial, and marriage. Immediately following the baptism of a child, the

minister would hold the child aloft and consecrate him or her with the sign of the cross: “in

token, that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and

manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil.”10 In addition to the

clergy’s role in this sacrament, baptism sponsors frequently stood with parents and testified their

willingness to instruct youths in the fundamentals of the faith. During the ceremony, sponsors

answered on behalf of the child. At the end, the clergymen addressed them directly, exhorting

them to teach the child “what a solemn vow, promise, and profession, he hath here made by you”

and lead the child in hearing sermons and learning the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten

8 Jeremy Gregory, “‘For All Sorts and Conditions of Men’: The Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer during

the Long Eighteenth Century; Or, Bringing the History of Religion and Social History Together,’’ Social History 34

(2009) 48-49. 9 On the prevalence of home devotion see Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 187-188, and Lauren F. Winners, A Cheerful

and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practices in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-century Virginia (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 10 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 152-153, 184.

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Commandments “and all other things which a Christian ought to know.”11 This sacrament and

the ensuing education in the church laid the groundwork for salvation. At the end of life, burials

ceremonies prompted reflection on the ascension to heaven of Christians where they communed

with the body of believers

Marriage, with vows spoken between brides and grooms in God’s presence, similarly

signified the union between Christ and his church, which clergymen lauded as a model for

heterosexual relations. Beyond their religious implications, these essential rites and sacraments

helped construct and reinforce communities and social connections. Anglicans of middling and

affluent means frequently married within the faith and served as baptism sponsors for close

friends and family members within the church body. Marriages between the Apthorp, Gardiner,

Royall, Shirley, Temple, Vassall, and Wentworth families consolidated wealth and solemnized

longstanding common interests, but Anglican elites were not alone in taking advantage of the

social utility of religious rites and sacraments. Marriage offered entry into existing communities

and social groups and provided indispensable connections for persons on the make and on the

margins of society. Godparents similarly played a vital spiritual and material role in the lives of

children by connecting individuals to the wider community.12

Though Anglicans rejected transubstantiation, they highly valued the sacrament of Holy

Communion. During this sacrament, the body of believers on earth, ritualized the body and blood

as a way of repentantly communing with God and believers in heaven. This sacrament required

thorough vetting and preparation. Ministers were the ultimate arbiters of who was allowed to

take communion. Parishioners’ high regard for it and fear for consequences if they approached it

11 The ministrations of publick baptism, Book of Common Prayer, 1662. 12 Jeremy Gregory, “‘For All Sorts and Conditions of Men’: The Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer during

the Long Eighteenth Century; Or, Bringing the History of Religion and Social History Together,” Social History 34

(2009), 44-45.

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unworthily, not their indifference, also kept the number of communicants low.13 Gifts of

engraved silver communion plate by lay members demonstrated the esteem placed on this

sacrament, and how secular status manifested itself within church sacraments. Communion was

taken principally by church elites, but it was not out of reach from persons of lesser means and

even enslaved Africans. When preparing to take this sacrament, communicants kneeled at the

altar rail as equals before God, temporarily ignoring social distinctions between congregants.

This sacrament importantly emphasized social cohesion, most explicitly through the collection of

alms from the congregation to be given to the poor of the parish, which began the service.14

Pew ownership reflected the status and social position of elite and middling persons as

compared with parishioners of lesser means and those who relied on poor relief. Enslaved

Africans attended services with their masters and mistresses, and free blacks affiliated with

particular congregations, illustrating a great diversity within the scope of Anglicanism in early

America. Anglicanism offered these adherents a variety of messages, including piety, moral

virtue, social control, and social welfare.15 Over the eighteenth century, Boston’s Anglican

Churches addressed the changing religious and material needs of an increasingly diverse

community of elite, middling, ordinary, and poor and enslaved individuals. Despite the inherent

contradiction of slavery with the concept of spiritual equality, attention to the latter congregants

exposes a religious society that both reinforced social hierarchy and welcomed the lowest among

them into communion before God.

13 Gregory, “Social Life,” 41; Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 198-200. 14 Cutler to Secretary of the SPG, 23 September 1725, William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Related to

the American Colonial Church, vol. 3, Massachusetts (Hartford, CT: Church Press, 1873), 184 Hereafter cited as

Perry, Historical Collections. 15 David D. Hall, World of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York:

Alfred A Knopf, 1989), 18. For an overview of historiography and this multivalent approach see Jacob M. Blosser,

“Pursuing Happiness: Cultural Discourser and Popular Religion in Anglican Virginia, 1700-1770” (PhD diss.,

University of South Carolina, 2006).

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The “pious design of instructing the negroes”: Anglicanism and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century

Boston

The wealth and status of many leading Anglican patrons and church vestrymen and

wardens rested on the backs of enslaved Africans who toiled on plantations in the West Indies

and in homes, estates, and shops in Massachusetts.16 Many persons who helped found King’s

Chapel in 1686 had ties to plantations in the West Indies. King’s Chapel’s longtime minister

Samuel Myles owned at least two slaves. In 1711, the Boston News-Letter promised a sufficient

reward for apprehending Myles’ runaway slave “a Carolina Indian man nam[e]d Toby Aged

about 20 years of a middle stature.”17 Though Toby’s fate remains unclear, Myles’s 1728 will

left an adult black slave named Amboy to his wife, Ann.18 In 1712 its vestry employed an

unnamed “Negro” man to plaster the chapel, likely Joseph Jalla, a free black man whom the town

routinely assigned to cleaning and repairing the streets. Myles performed Jalla’s marriage to

Therese Alvise in January 1713 and baptized their daughter, Martha, the following year.19

Leading parishioners routinely owned and sold African slaves. In 1713, Anthony Blount,

a tallow chandler, church vestryman at King’s Chapel, and founding member of Christ Church,

advertised “A Likely Negro Boy, about 13 years old, to be Sold and seen” at his house”20

Leonard Vassall of Jamaica and Braintree, who contributed to the building of Christ Church and

16 The Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), Old South Leaflets (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, 1907)

7:261-267; Emanuel Downing to John Winthrop (1645), Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 4

(Boston, 1863), 64-65. Slavery in New England dated to the early seventeenth century when Indians captured in

“just warres” were enslaved or sold or traded in the West Indies for black Africans. In 1645 Emanuel Downing

corresponded his fears to Puritan Governor John Winthrop that New England could not thrive without a large

number of African slaves “to doe all our business,” for European servants would undoubtedly seek land for

themselves unless they were paid very large wages. Slaves would not have such a choice, and furthermore it was

possible to “mayntayne eleven Moores cheaper than one English servant.” 17 Boston News-Letter, 17 September 1711. 18 Samuel Myles, Suffolk County Wills, 10 Feb 1727/28. 19 Vestry records, 13 Dec. 1712, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Annie Haven Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the

Town of Boston, 1630-1800 and The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, 1630-1822 CD-ROM(Boston: New

England Historic Genealogical Society and Massachusetts Historical Society, 2001 [reference #2485]. 20 Boston News-Letter, 21-28 September 1713.

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was a member of its first vestry, brought a number of slaves “for the use of his family” in

Massachusetts in 1722. He passed several plantations in Hanover Country, Jamaica, to his heirs

upon his death.21 The trade in African slaves to Massachusetts increased in the 1720s and 1730s.

During this time, Boston’s “most active slave trader,” Jacob Royall, a wealthy member of Christ

Church, advertised slaves for sale in the Boston Gazette no fewer than nineteen times.22 In July

1734 Royall offered “A parcel of likely Negroes” and “NEGROES Males and Females, to be

sold…for Cash, good Bonds, or six or nine Months Credit.”23 He also catered to Boston’s upper

classes, importing “a Negro boy” specifically for Governor Jonathon Belcher.24 Following a

1732 slave revolt on Antigua, Royall’s brother and business partner, Isaac, resettled in

Massachusetts with his young family and worshipped at King’s Chapel.25

As economic reliance on African slaves increased in late seventeenth century,

Christianity and whiteness initially distinguished free from enslaved persons. Slaves’

conversions to Christianity threatened slaveholders’ ability to keep them in bondage, prompting

slaveholders to refine legal protections of slavery. In 1667 the Virginia Assembly ruled that

baptism did not alter the condition of enslaved persons. By the 1680s similar laws existed across

the English West Indies and continental colonies. However, concerns over the legal status of

baptized slaves carried into the eighteenth century, preventing many slaveholders from

instructing slaves in the gospel.

21 Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston [59063]; Proprietors' record, 1724-1776, Old North

(Christ Church in the City of Boston) records, Vol. 8, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS). Hereafter ONC

records, MHS. Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 3

(Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2002), 28. 22 Robert E. Desrochers, Jr., “Slave-for-Sale Advertisements and Slavery in Massachusetts, 1704-1781,” William

and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59, no. 3, Slaveries in the Atlantic World (Jul., 2002): 629. This figure draws from

newspapers between 1725 and 1734. 23 Boston Gazette, 15-22 July 1734. 24 Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 3, 348n. 25 Alexandra Chan, Slavery in the Age of Reason: Archaeology at a New England Farm. (Knoxville: University of

Tennessee Press, 2007), 54.

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Slaveholding interests within the Anglican Church shaped its approach to spreading the

gospel to slave owners and slaves. In 1710, for example, Barbadian planter Christopher

Codrington bequeathed two plantations and over 260 African slaves to the SPG.26 Beginning in

1723, Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson solicited annual reports from colonial ministers,

including the numbers of infidels and “bond or free” persons within their parish as well as the

means “used for their conversion.” Responses from across the British Atlantic demonstrated the

vast degree to which slaveholding had outpaced the efforts of missionaries. In May 1727 Gibson

addressed fears that baptism would lead to manumission and the loss of human property:

Christianity and the embracing of the Gospel does not make the least

Alteration in Civil Property or in any of the Duties which belong to Civil

Relations but in all these Respects it continues Persons just in the same

State as it found them The Freedom which Christianity gives is a Freedom

from the Bondage of Sin and Satan and from the Dominion of Mens Lusts

and Passions and inordinate Desires but as to their outward Condition

whatever that was before whether bond or free their being baptized and

becoming Christians makes no manner of Change in it.27

Under Gibson’s direction, SPG charged its missionaries to baptize slaves within their households

and educate slaveholders among their parishioners on the importance of doing the same. The

Society emphasized the positive attributes conversion would, it was hoped instill in slaves:

increased obedience and deference for persons set over them. Church teachings, they believed,

tempered the violent realities of slavery. As the Bishop of London stated in 1727 instructions to

masters and mistresses: “The general Law both of Humanity and of Christianity is Kindness

Gentleness and Compassion . . . and therefore we are to make the Exercise of those amiable

26 Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2012). 27 Bishop Gibson to Masters & Mistresses, 19 May 1727, in David Humphreys An Historical Account of the

Incorporated Society for the of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: Printed by Joseph Downing, 1730), 257- 270.

Quote on 265.

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Virtues our Choice and Desire and to have Recourse to severe and rigorous Methods unwillingly

and only out of Necessity.” Gibson reminded slaveholders that “the greatest Hardships that the

most severe Master can inflict upon them [slaves] is not to be compared to the Cruelty of

keeping them in the State of Heathenism and depriving them of the Means of Salvation as

reached forth to all Mankind in the Gospel of Christ.”28

The SPG’s efforts to profitably operate the Codrington plantation and fund a college to

educate West Indian missionaries frequently contradicted its goal of Christianizing the

plantation’s enslaved workforce. Between 1724 and 1732, enslaved Africans there had

“SOCIETY” branded on their persons to prevent runaways. The SPG further condoned everyday

threats of violence and punishment by the plantation’s whip-wielding drivers.29 Though SPG

clergymen protested and reported acts of violence and planter cruelty to the Society and the

Bishop of London, historian Travis Glasson convincingly shows how members of the SPG too

“participated in the forms of repression and violence that were endemic to Atlantic slavery.”30

The opening of worship at Christ Church in December 1724 coincided with reinvigorated

efforts to spread the gospel among African slaves within Massachusetts. At the first service,

Reverend Timothy Cutler reported fifty families in attendance, as well as seafarers from out of

town and a few unbaptized slaves who came with the families to which they belonged to.31 By

1726, Cutler reported to the Secretary of the SPG the state of his congregation. Of 800

parishioners, Cutler allowed 94 to partake of the important sacrament of Holy Communion, an

increase of nineteen communicants from the previous year. There were, however, other limits to

28 Bishop Gibson to Masters & Mistresses, 19 May 1727, in Humphreys An Historical Account of the Incorporated

SPG, 267-68. 29 On the Codrington plantation see Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity, 104-105, 141-171. 30 Glasson, Mastering Christianity. 99-105. Quote on 103. 31 Timothy Cutler, Answer to Queries, 1724, in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:148.

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this success. In Cutler’s opinion, common sailors who attended service were “too much of the

unthinking kind.”32 In 1727, the minister reported thirty-two “Negro & Indian Slaves” belonging

to his parish. “Their Education & Instruction is according to the Houses they belong to… But I

know of the Masters of some others, who are disposed to this important good of their Slaves, &

are preparing them for it; however here is too great a remissness upon this article [baptism].”33

At the time of Cutler’s writing only two of these thirty-two individuals had been baptized:

Charles and Ishmael, an adult and child owned by Arthur Savage.34

Cutler himself owned two slaves. In April 1726, Cutler wrote the Secretary of the SPG

acknowledging receipt of forty copies of a sermon promoting the conversion of slaves, which he

distributed to the slaveholders among his congregation. Cutler further relayed to the secretary his

frustrations over his two unbaptized slaves. Cutler’s long time male slave showed an

“Indifference to Religion,” which barred him from the “Benefit” of baptism.35 Lax “Morals”

rendered the other, a female slave, “unworthy of that holy ordinance.”36 Cutler, however,

promised to baptize her expected child and renew his efforts to reach the adults. Ultimately,

despite stated concerns over the spiritual health of Africans in his household, Cutler was

concerned with his reputation: “I know it is a Scandal that my house is in this instance exemplary

to my Parish, but the difficulty of parting with them [his slaves], & getting help in this country in

lieu of them will I hope in some Measure excuse me.”37 No doubt, Cutler wished he could

function without enslaved labor or wished to replace them with better Christians; however since

slave ownership among Anglican clergymen was commonplace. Unlike infants who received

32 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 28 November 1726; Perry, Historical Collections, 3:205. 33 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 10 October 1727, Perry, Historical Collections, 3: 231. 34 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary of the SPG, 23 September 1725; Perry, Historical Collections, 3:184; Baptism

records, 17 May 1725, ONC records, MHS. 35 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary, 4 April 1726, SPG Journals, A19 / 441-442. 36 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary, 4 April 1726, SPG Journals, A19 / 441-442. 37 Timothy Cutler to the Secretary, 4 April 1726, SPG Journals, A19 / 441-442.

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baptism under the promise of future religious instruction, adults were required to demonstrate

understanding of church catechisms and practice moral behavior before baptism.38 From the

perspective of the clergy, this proved a difficult task for many enslaved persons. James

MacSparran, SPG missionary to Narragansett, Rhode Island, for thirty-seven years, recorded his

struggles in his diary. Like Cutler, MacSparran’s attempts to convert African slaves converged

with the day-to-day management and control of slaves in his household. Physical punishments

coincided with his attempts to educate his slaves in religious and maintain their morals,

especially regarding sexual liaisons which did not conform to English cultural norms.39 These

norms also contained a sexual double standard, in which slaves were blamed for the sexual

predation of masters, while the latter were seen as sowing wild oats. This must have been a

limiting factor in slaves’ acceptance of a Christian value system. Many slaves also retained

African folk traditions and other spiritual practices, including Islam, which were at odds with

Protestant Christianity.40

Limited numbers of baptisms of slaves at Christ Church, even coupled with the Bishop of

London’s 1727 pastoral letter on the importance of slave baptism, did not assuage the fears of

some Anglicans who relied on slave labor. In a 1731 sermon before the SPG that was later

circulated in the colonies, Dean William Berkeley of Rhode Island described how planters there

viewed African slaves “as creatures of another Species, who had no right to be instructed or

admitted to the Sacraments.”41 Many such planters feared that religious instruction would breed

38 On requirements for baptism see Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 185. 39 Glasson, Mastering Christianity, 113-118. 40 On African folk traditions, accommodation and resistance in New England see William D. Piersen, Black

Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (Amherst, MA:

University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), and Alexandra Chan, Slavery in the Age of Reason: Archaeology at a New

England Farm (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010). 41 Quoted in Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Days to the Last Royalist Rector

(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1882), vol. 1, 407-8.

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notions of equality, insubordination, and even insurrection. Corresponding with the SPG

secretary in 1739, Reverend Roger Price, bishop’s commissary and rector at Boston’s King’s

Chapel, wrote that missionizing to slaves would “meet with so many obstructions as is much to

be feared will render it abortive.” Price gloomily observed “the want of ministers properly

qualified for this undertaking” and “the low ebb of Christianity at this day throughout the

world.”42 As Price observed the following year: “Till masters can be persuaded to have a greater

value for their own souls, we have but small hopes they will be very anxious about the salvation

of their negroes. I shall take the first opportunity of acquainting the delinquent Gentlemen of

their neglect.”43

From the early eighteenth century Anglican leaders perceived the need to control

potential troublemakers within their congregations. Free and enslaved Africans were considered

members of this suspect class. In addition to keeping the church clean and guiding guests to

seats, King’s Chapel’s first clerk’s duties included monitoring and confronting “Boys & Negros

& and Disorderly persons.”44 Preaching in Anglican churches tended to emphasize obedience

rather than freedom in God. This theological emphasis on order meshed well with a growing

number of municipal laws that regulated the lives of Boston’s white bonded laborers (apprentices

and indentured servants), slaves, and free blacks. Such laws limited the movement of slaves on

the Sabbath and after dark and the purchase of alcohol by servants without “Certificates from

their Masters”; they also banned African funeral processions.45 Church attendance brought slaves

42 Mr. Price to Secretary S.P.G., March 2, 1739, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:325. 43 Mr. Price to Secretary S.P.G., June 28, 1740, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:341. See also Foote, Annals of

King’s Chapel, 1: 408-411. 44 Vestry records, 24 July 1701, King’s Chapel, MHS. 45 On the differences and commonalities between bonded and unfree labor see Lawrence William Turner, A Good

Master Well Served: Masters and Servants in Colonial Massachusetts, 1620-1750 (New York: Garland Publishing,

Inc., 1998), 103-115, 163-209; see also Scott Hancock, “‘The Law Will Make You Smart’: Legal Consciousness,

Rights Rhetoric, and African American Identity Formation in Massachusetts, 1641-1855” (PhD diss., University of

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under the jurisdiction of individual congregations. For example, shortly after Christ Church

opened for services, its vestry voted that “for the future the Sexton shall keep ye rails to the Altar

clear from Boys & Negroes sitting there.”46 This rail separated the sacred altar space from the

rest of the sanctuary. Communicants often kneeled there before approaching the table. Even with

the chancel off limits, the vestry recorded its intention to pay sextant James Fraizier three pounds

per annum to “take care that no disturbance happen by the boys or any other unruly persons in

the gallery as also within the Church limits during divine services.”47 King’s Chapel’s vestry

routinely addressed the need “to keep the Boys and Negros in good order,” mentioning the

subject twice in 1737 and again in 1739, 1740, and 1741.48

This heightened attention to order within the church corresponded was quite possibly a

byproduct of the Great Awakening, which was sweeping through colonial America at this time,

appealing especially to persons on the margins of society.49 Though Cutler himself was initially

curious about itinerant evangelicals, allowing Charles Wesley to preach at Christ Church in

1736, he was leery of “Infidelity,” which he attributed to “bad books imported and greedily

bought and read.”50 Boston, at this time, had nine large Congregational Meetings, three Anglican

Churches—although Trinity Church lacked a regular minister until 1739—one small

Presbyterian Meetings, smaller French, Anabapist, and Quaker congregations, and negligible

numbers of “Papists” and foreigners. Writing his superiors, Cutler acknowledged that Boston

was “not without Infidels, but they are under cover except slaves who (generally speaking) show

New Hampshire, September 1999), 71-76 for a discussion of African American identity and knowledge of the legal

system. 46 Vestry Book, 1724-1802, 12 Nov. 1726, ONC records, MHS. 47 Vestry Book, 1724-1802, 26 June 1733, ONC records, MHS. The vestry similarly voted on 1 July 1760 “that the

wardens apply to Mr. Webber and offer him” a schilling per week to “Keep boys and Negroes in order.” 48 Vestry Records, 22 April 1739, 11 May 1737, 22 April 1739, 7 April 1740, and 30 March 1741, King’s Chapel

Records, MHS. 49 On slave religion and the appeal of this evangelical outpouring see Piersen, Black Yankees, 49-61, 65-73. 50 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., Feb. 5, 1738. Perry, Historical Collections, 3:322.

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very little respect to religion or virtue.”51 Cutler ultimately expressed grave concern with open

air-lectures and their dangerous potential: “Here Children and Servants stroll, withdrawing

themselves from Family care and Subjection; and Day Labourers spend much of their Time,

expecting notwithstanding full Wages.”52 Charles Brockwell, a fellow Anglican minister at

Salem and Boston, similarly reported to London that “Men, Women, Children, Servants, &

Nigros are now become (as they phrase it) Exhorters...they tell you they saw ye Joys of Heaven,

can describe its situation, inhabitants, employments, & have seen their names entered into the

Book of Life & can point out the writer, character & pen.” In his estimation, the Great

Awakening fractured societal bonds and led “Servants and Slaves [to] pretend to extraordinary

inspiration” and substitute idleness “in lieu of dutifully minding their respective businesses.”53

Despite anxiety over the impact of the Great Awakening, Cutler testified to the SPG his belief

that his congregation would “be gainers in the long Run.”54 On Christmas day in 1746, “a day of

extreme cold,” Cutler reported “64 communicants, besides a very crowded congregation.” With

apparent satisfaction, Cutler noted that Dissenters, “who generally think the better of our church

under Mr. Whitefield’s Invectives against it,” were present “in great numbers.”55

Beyond the social upheaval brought about by the Great Awakening, Cutler still described

most slaves as “stupid and unconcerned about Religion, and very deficient in moral virtue, but

some of them are serious and sober Christians, Baptized and Communicants.”56 Growing

numbers of Africans in the colony, however, made cultural and religious differences all the more

51 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., Feb. 5, 1738. Perry, Historical Collections, 3:321. 52 Douglas C. Stenerson, “An Anglican Critique of the Early Phase of the Great Awakening in New England: A

Letter by Timothy Cutler,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 30, no. 3 (1973): 475-488; Timothy Cutler to

Secretary S.P.G., 14 January 1741. Perry, ed., Historical Collections, 3:350-351. 53 Brockwell to Secretary S.P.G., 15 June 1741, in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:357 54 Timothy Cutler to Bishop of London, 14 January 1741, in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:350-351. 55 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 26 December 1746, in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:404. 56 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 11 December 1740, in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:348.

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evident. In late August 1754, after the first Sunday service in the rebuild King’s Chapel,

vestrymen decided “That no Negro's be admitted to Sitt or Stand in any of the Isles dureing [sic]

the time of Divine Service but that the Sexton be directed to order them up into the Gallery.”57

While records do not indicate the extent to which persons of color occupied the aisles, it was

common at other colonial churches for slaves to sit outside the pews of their masters. This vote,

which implied more concern with order and decorum than behavior, segregated slaves and free

blacks into the galleries.

Anglican religious rites and persons of color

Baptisms and burials played a critical part in the lives of all Anglicans, welcoming

children and adults into spiritual communion and laying loved ones to rest. As seen in Table:

African American Baptisms, between 1712 and 1776, close to two hundred Africans slaves,

twenty free blacks and mulattos and a handful of Indians, transients, indentured servants, and

prisoners received baptism at one of Boston’s Anglican churches. Many slaveholders believed

that Africans imported into the colonies held pagan beliefs, whereas those born in the colonies or

taken at a young age were capable of conversion. Enslaved children were also cheaper. For these

reasons, New England slaveholders often bought slaves as children. Such slaves were not as

immediately productive, but were in the eyes of many masters more easily assimilated, perhaps

providing a rationale for large number of enslaved infants and children baptized at Boston’s

Anglican churches. Tables II: Enslaved Baptisms shows that just under half of all baptisms

involved infants and children. Even after factoring in slaves of unknown age, adult African

American slaves were baptized in significant numbers especially when compared to white

57 Vestry records, 21 Aug. 1754, King’s Chapel records, MHS.

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parishioners who with the exception of adult converts were overwhelmingly baptized as

infants.58

Table I: African American Baptisms, 1712-177659

Baptisms by Condition of Servitude

King's Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Enslaved African

Americans 56 79 51 186

Free African

Americans* 2 15 3 20

Other** 6 2 1 9

Subtotal 64 96 55 215

Percentage of Baptisms by Condition and Location

King's Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Enslaved African

Americans 26% 37% 24% 87%

Free African

Americans* 0% 7% 1% 9%

Other 3% 0% 0% 4%

Subtotal 30% 45% 25% 100%

Table II: Enslaved Baptisms

Baptisms of Enslaved African Americans by Age and Location

King's Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Infants & Children 35 30 24 89

Adults 18 22 17 57

Unknown 3 27 10 30

Subtotal 56 79 51 186

58 Michael Anesko, “So Discreet a Zeal: Slavery and the Anglican Church in Virginia, 1680-1730,” Virginia

Magazine of History and Biography 93, no. 3 (Jul., 1985): 265; Piersen, Black Yankees, 5, 37-48; Descrochers, Jr.

“Slave-for-Sale Advertisements,” 631-632. 59 Unless otherwise specified table data compiled from Baptism, Marriage, and Burial records of Christ Church and

King’s Chapel, MHS, and Andrew Oliver and James Bishop Peabody, eds., Publications of the Colonial Society of

Massachusetts, vol. 56, Collections: The Records of Trinity Church Boston, 1728-1830 (Boston: Colonial Society of

Massachusetts, 1980).

* Free mulattoes are included as free African-Americans

** Free indians, transients, indentured servants, and prisoners are included as Others

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Percentage Baptisms by Age and Location

King's Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Infants & Children 19% 16% 13% 48%

Adults 10% 12% 9% 31%

Unknown 2% 15% 5% 22%

Subtotal 28% 46% 26% 100%

Just as baptism initiated infants and adults into the Church’s spiritual community, burial

ceremonies laid parishioners to rest in anticipation of ultimate resurrection. As seen in Table II:

African American and Other Burials, nearly eighty persons of color and other marginalized

individuals were laid to rest in an Anglican ceremony. Baptism and burial were necessarily

linked. Baptism was often given more freely, however, during sickness, often in a private

ceremony, presumably because individuals were too ill to attend church. Over a third of the fifty-

four slaves buried in an Anglican ceremony died within days or weeks of baptism. For Pheby

and Exeter, adult slaves of George Skinner and his wife; John, adult Negro slave to merchant

John Rowe Esq.; and Carr, adult slave to Dr. John Gibbons, baptism was likely given with the

knowledge that death was close at hand.60

Table III: African American and Other Burials, 1725-1776

Burials by Condition of Servitude and Location

King's

Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Enslaved African

Americans 24 20 12 56

Free African Americans 3 5 6 14

Other 5 0 2 7

Subtotal 32 25 20 77

Percentage Burials by Condition of Servitude

60 Piersen, Black Yankees, 20-21; Christ Church burials, 1723-1851, 7 Dec. 1744, 10 Dec. 1744, 9 April 1749, 28

April 1749, ONC records, MHS.

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King's

Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Enslaved African

Americans 31% 26% 16% 73%

Free African Americans 4% 6% 8% 18%

Other 6% 0% 3% 9%

Subtotal 42% 32% 26% 100%

Burials of African American slaves as last rites

King's

Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Burials 24 20 12 56

Last rite 6 7 6 19

% burials 25% 35% 50% 34%

New England slavery had its share paternalism and violence.61 Though slaveholders and

slaves approached religion from different perspectives baptism was a defining ritual that bound

members of the community together in common cause and ensured the salvation of participants.

Slaveholders who embraced the religious instruction of slaves routinely attested to their slaves’

character and recommended them for advancement within the church, stressing biblical messages

of obedience, deference, and morality. Slaves understood the importance of churches in Boston

society and the “value of using the language of salvation… in an attempt to better integrate

themselves into white society and build or repair their reputation with their masters, their

community, or with the town of Boston.”62 In September 1730, for example, Cutler performed

baptized Mehitable, daughter to leading parishioners Robert and Mehitable Temple and “Also

Anne Their Slave.”63 This ceremony linked the spiritual welfare of the infant daughter of a key

church benefactor with an African of unknown age who may well have served as the child’s

61 Pierson, Black Yankees, see chapters 3, 4, and 5. 62 Jared Hardesty, “An Angry God in the Hands of Sinners: Enslaved Africans and the Uses of Protestant

Christianity in Pre-Revolutionary Boston” Slavery and Abolition 35, no. 1 (2014): 72. 63 Baptism records, 20 September 1730, ONC records, MHS.

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personal slave. It also may have simply been cheaper or more convenience for Cutler to baptize

Mehitable and Anne on the same day.

Correspondence with the SPG provides more context regarding the religious lives of

Cutler’s congregation and relationships between slaves and masters. 1736, for example, Cutler

described how conversion led a Negro man (Henry, slave to Mary Gibbs) “in the reformation of

his temper and carriage, his fidelity in his business, and abandoning all loose and dangerous

conversation.”64 After baptism in June of 1743, Cook, a black servant of Robert and Mehitable

Temple, and Tacker or Tackee, negro man servant to Mr. Ivers, gave “all evidence of their

sincere engagement to a Christian life, even in instances very opposite to their former Practice.”

One of them, Cutler recorded, was “signally penitent and reformed, after habitual miscarriages,

as his master informs me.”65 Cutler received a contrasting account from George Skinner

regarding the “excellent Character” of his adult slave Anthony, “who has been of much visible

Seriousness and good behaviour, long before his baptism.”66 Testimonials from masters and

mistresses verified slaves’ ongoing religious qualifications for rites such as communion. In this

fashion, Cutler described a female enslaved communicant as “both Religious & Faithful and

acceptable to her Mistress” in a 1742 report to the SPG.67 Regardless of their sincerity of

conversion, slaves used religion to leverage their limited power within white society.

The appeal of Anglicanism even extended to persons enslaved by non-Anglicans. In

September 1734 Cutler baptized numerous infants “& one [adult] negro slave… seriously

desirous of, and receiving that ordinance.” In a letter to the SPG, Cutler described the unnamed

64 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., Sept. 6, 1736, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3 , 315. Though unnamed

in the letter, Henry received e identity 65 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., June 30, 1743, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3 , 369-370. 66 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., Dec. 26, 1748, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3 , 427. 67 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 30 June 1742, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3 , 363.

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man as “much reformed in his life and having a worthy character of seriousness and religion

from the Dissenting family he belongs to.”68 Neighboring Congregational churches had small

numbers of African American parishioners, suggesting that this particular slave frequented Christ

Church of his own volition, with his master’s permission, and was allowed baptism. Likely

draws included the music and liturgy that distinguished Anglican services from

Congregationalist meetings, as well as a community of fellow slaves some of whom became

immersed in the Church’s most important sacraments. In the same letter Cutler described eight

new communicants—including “an ancient negro woman” whom he formerly baptized—who

were “to all appearance, governed by the best motives, and worthy of their standing in the

Church of Christ.”69 Two years later, “a negro servant to a Dissenter, and in the prime of life,”

also took communion. This servant—who, Cutler recorded, “from great irregularities, is become

a serious & sober man, & now bears a worthy character from his Master & Mistress, who have

encouraged him in these good dispositions and have recommended him to me”—received a

laudatory testimony from Cutler, demonstrating that Boston’s Anglican community extended

beyond Anglican households and into the slave quarters of non-Anglican masters.70

The involvement of small numbers of Africans in Holy Communion upset the power

relationships central to society, but was not unique to Boston. Recent scholarship acknowledges

that Anglicans never attempted to convert broad masses of African slaves. Slaveholders and

ministers instead concentrated on favored slaves and those whom they could educate. This

focused outreach garnered real results across British America. In some South Carolina parishes,

slaves accounted for 20 percent of communicants. As noted by Louis Nelson “This sacrament

68 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 9 Sept. 1734, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3, 297. 69 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 9 Sept. 1734, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3, 297. 70 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 23 Feb. 1735/36, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3, 307.

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meant that for a brief time, whites and blacks were not masters and slaves but redeemed sinners

equally beholden to the mercy of God.”71 Even though the community achieved at the Lord’s

Supper was only temporary, many slave owners in South Carolina refused to entertain the

prospect of standing with their slaves on equal footing around the communion table. Church

records and clergy letters to superiors do not specify how white parishioners in Boston reacted to

the inclusion of persons of color. After the cleansing of Communion, the enslaved returned to

their labor and masters to their houses. But neither was unchanged from the experience: “This

was for house slaves a meal entirely different from dinner in their master’s house, where they did

not share the same table but, in the words of one observer, ‘surround the table like a cohort of

black guards.’”72 In a culture where shared drinking vessels forged communal values with groups

of men, drinking from a common precious vessel left an impression, especially on poor and

enslaved communicants, who all other times were absent or ignored.73

Ritual objects—silver flagons, patens, chalices, and alms basins—assisted Anglicans in

taking communion.74 The chalice which held wine signifying God’s blood was the most

important vessel. Standing in the chancel around the communion table, communicants passed

and drank from this common vessel, constructing a community that looked to God for

forgiveness and remembered the Church Triumphant. The use of ancient plate associated

communicants to the longer history of the Church. Boston’s Anglican Churches incorporated

silver from a variety of donors, including William and Mary, George II, and George III. These

sets of flagons, patens, chalices, and alms basins were engraved with the name of maker, donor,

71 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 200. 72 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 200. 73 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 208 74 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 207. Their Communion plate differed from that found in Congregational Meeting

houses. Instead of “variations in forms and materials” that “reinforced social and political hierarchies during the

feast,” Anglicans used the same set for high and low communicants.

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inscription, date, and the royal arms. King’s Chapel’s first set was inscribed “The gift of K

William and & Q Mary to ye Reverend Sam[ue]l Myles for ye use of their Majesties Chappel in

N: England: 1694.” The inscriptions expressly recognized the king as the source of the church's

authority and beneficence and rooted the material objects within the chapel’s first tenuous years.

Many inscriptions acknowledged the role of royal governors in acquiring gifts from the crown

and more generally mediating between the king and his subjects.

During the prayers and sermon preceding the sacrament, the elaborate communion

service remained covered, in most cases, by a red damask cloth. Its unveiling and the communal

partaking of communion by a select body demonstrated to the assembled congregation the

fleeting presence of God.75 Lay Anglicans also donated silver objects that signified the largess of

individuals and their local authority. In 1730 Leonard Vassall, who generously contributed to the

founding of Christ and Trinity Churches, gave Christ Church a paten made by John Read of

London. Arthur Savage, whose infant slaves were the first Africans baptized at Christ Church,

donated a silver baptismal basin to the church. Both gifts were engraved with the family arms of

the donor.76 As described by historians Dell Upton and Louis Nelson, these precious gifts

corresponded directly to social status, remembered through ritual drinking, and also “reinforced

the exclusivity of the gathered.”77 In both contexts, participation in this religious rite had

different meanings to persons gathered around the table and observing from the pews and

galleries.

75 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 196-215. 76 Charles Knowles Bolton, Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston 1723: A Guide (Boston: Christ Church, 1912), 31. 77 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 211-212.

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Education, Marriage, and Community in the Black Anglican Atlantic

The involvement of Africans at Christ Church through the 1720s and 1730s stood in

sharp contrast to events at her sister church. Commissary Price notoriously neglected to update

King’s Chapel’s records of baptisms, but the absence of persons of color in King’s Chapel

records prior to 1738 affirmed his testimony to the SPG “on the many obstructions” to this

purpose and the lack of interest among masters “about the salvation of their negroes.”78 By the

1740s, however, a number of enslaved infants, children, and adults, as well as free Africans,

received baptism at King’s Chapel and the newly opened Trinity Church.79 The SPG supported

this renewed effort to reach the enslaved. In 1744, Sylvester Gardiner carried from London

correspondence and a box of books from the secretary of the SPG to schoolmaster Stephen Roe.

After Roe took the books and began to teach the “catechism [to] the Negros” on Sundays and

“the white children on other days.”80 Gardiner’s reply to the SPG exuded confidence that Roe’s

work would prove effective. William Vassall of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the owner of

multiple sugar plantations in Jamaica, spend much time in London and provided expert

testimony on efforts to convert slaves. In July 1750, John Corybeare, Bishop of Bristol, wrote the

planter a detailed letter soliciting his opinions on the lawfulness of slavery and the instruction of

“Negroes in religion.”81 While Vassall’s reply in unknown, a number of slaves owned by

William or his brother John received baptism at Trinity Church in the 1750s. Less is known

78 Mr. Price to Secretary S.P.G., 2 March 1739, Mr. Price to Secretary S.P.G., 28 June 1740, in Perry, Historical

Collections, Vol. 3, 325, 441; See also Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, Vol. 1, 408-411. 79 Price took up the ministry in 1729. Between 1738 and 1746, Price baptized a total of 9 slaves at King’s Chapel

between 1738 and 1746; Prior to Addington Davenport’s appointment as head minister at Trinity Church, he and

Price baptized 8 slaves.

80 SPG, B13:79.

81 John Conybeare Bishop of Bristol to William Vassall, London, 29 June 1750, Series III: Vassall correspondence,

Temple, Nelson, Lloyd, Vassall, and Borland Family Papers, 1611-1862 (MS Am 1250), Houghton Library,

Harvard University.

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about their Jamaican ventures. Historian Trevor Burnard’s analysis of Thomas Thistlewood, who

served as an overseer at one of Florentius Vassall’s Jamaican plantations, demonstrates how

inattention to religion and brutal physical and sexual violence supported the economic

dominance of the planter class and non-elite whites. In contrast, historian Nicholas Beasley

shows the importance of liturgical Christianity in creating a racialized slave society in the British

Caribbean.82

Though Anglican outlooks on slavery and attempts to convert African slaves varied.

Beyond the promise of eternal salvation that inured slaves to racial/social inequalities,

conversion raised the prestige of individual Africans and had the potential to better their daily

positions. Education particularly equipped slaves by providing a powerful Christian vocabulary

and acculturated them to white norms so that they could better affiliate themselves with white

social institutions. Recent scholarship by Jared Hardesty shows how Africans harnessed

institutional support from churches, gained literacy, and used this knowledge to “decode the

world in which they lived” and “pursue a variety of objectives, not just the fight for liberty.”83

While Anglican masters—like all slaveholders—worked to maintain this institution by

punishing slaves within their households and capturing and returning runaways, the church

provided an important bridge to spiritual fulfilment and material and personal security. Many

obstacles stood before Africans, however, as they attempted to fashion communities and build

families. Ministers throughout the Americas monitored slave marriages with great difficulty.

John Bartow, a SPG minister in New York, wrote in 1725 that slaves “will not or cannot live up

to the Christian covenant in one notorious instant at least, viz., matrimony, for they marry after

82 See Trevor Burnard. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo Jamaican

World. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Nicholas M. Beasley. Christian Ritual and the

Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650–1780. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). 83 Hardesty, “An Angry God in the Hands of Sinners,” 66–83.

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their heathen way and divorce and take others as often as they please.”84 Many African societies

had different standards of premarital contact—for example, encouraging sexual encounters

before marriage—and allowed for multiple marriages. New England masters viewed any

deviations from the Christian norm as immoral promiscuity and encouraged monogamy between

slaves—a tall task when most couples owed obedience to different masters and resided

separately. Since slave women and their children were owned and maintained by their master,

historian William Pierson believed that female slaves were often “less tightly bound to their

husbands,” especially if treated badly or when their spouse was of lower status. Slave women

also remained vulnerable to sexual advances and assault by their masters and other white men.85

Church services provided opportunity for African Americans from different households

to socialize and meet family members.86 Boston’s Anglican churches fostered black community

by allowing and even encouraging persons of color participate in vital rites and ceremonies.

From 1736 to 1775, Boston’s Anglican clergy conducted thirty-six marriages between Africans.

Six additional couples with common law or less formal arrangements entered the church

community through baptism of themselves or children.87 As seen in Table IV, the greatest

number of African marriages involved two enslaved persons (43%), followed by marriages

between two free blacks (31%), and marriages involving spouse of varied status i.e. one enslaved

and one free black or mulatto spouse (27%). Nearly two-thirds of these couples resided

separately due to the enslavement of one or both spouse, which generally denied couples privacy

84 John Barlow to the Secretary of the SPG, 1725 in Pierson, Black Yankees, 89. 85 Pierson, Black Yankees, 89-95, quote on 89. 86 Timothy Ford, “Diary of Timothy Ford 1785-1786,” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine,

Vol. 13, No. 3 (Jul., 1912), 145. South Carolinian Timothy Ford traveled 6 miles to church services, where his

enslaved companion Billy “meets with many of his friends & relations.” 87 Two enslaved couples married elsewhere and four slave couples whose liaisons were presumably approved by

their masters were baptized or had children baptized at Christ Church. On the three states of sexual relationships

Christian marriage, negro marriage i.e. common law, and less formal arrangements see Pierson, Black Yankees, 90.

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or control over visitation. All but three marriages between enslaved spouses involved persons

from different Anglican households. In these cases, social associations between such

slaveholders and regular gatherings at churches likely helped mitigate the physical distance

between enslaved husbands and wives.

Table IV: African American Marriages, 1712-1776

Marriages by Condition of Spouses and Location

King's

Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Total

Enslaved 2 13 3 18

Varied 3 6 2 11

Free 5 4 4 13

Total 10 23 9 42

Percentage of Marriages by Condition of Spouse and Location

King's

Chapel

Christ

Church

Trinity

Church Subtotal

Enslaved 5% 31% 7% 43%

Varied 7% 14% 5% 26%

Free 10% 10% 10% 31%

Total 21% 55% 21% 100%

African American Marriages and Residence

Split Together Subtotal

Enslaved 15 3 18

Varied 11 - 11

Free - 13 13

Total 26 3 42

Percentage African American Marriages by Residence

Split Together Subtotal

Enslaved 36% 7% 43%

Varied 26% - 26%

Free - 31% 31%

Total 62% 38% 100%

Over half of all African American marriages took place at Christ Church. This included

thirteen of eighteen (72%) marriages between enslaved African Americans and six of eleven

(55%) marriages involving varied spouse. The first marriages between two slaves at Christ

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Church took place in 1736 and 1737, when two male slaves belonging to Widow Mary Gibbs

married enslaved women from other households. Henry married Cecilia, slave to James Green,

while Peter married Susanna, slave to Daniel Ballard.88 In 1755, Cutler performed a marriage

between his servant Ann and John, slave to Jacob Royall. John had received baptism the year

prior. Even as Royall imported and advertised slaves for sale, he allowed—and possibly

encouraged—the baptism and marriage of his favored slaves. For Cutler’s part, he must also

have approved the marriage, which likely allowed Jon and Anne limited visitations during the

week.89 Dinah, a servant to Mrs. John Greaton, similarly received baptism two months before her

marriage to Neptune, a servant of John Jones Esq.90

Religion played a role in the lives of unmarried enslaved couples and those who married

outside the Anglican Church in civil ceremonies or had common law marriages. The legitimacy

of African American children had no bearing on their status, which was inherited from their

mothers. Nonetheless, slave masters may have eased their conscience by ensuring that enslaved

children were born within the bounds of a recognized Christian marriage or given the benefits of

baptism. In 1731, for example, Cutler baptized Zipphora, the daughter of Scipio and Mary,

slaves to Captain John Diamond, a parishioner at Christ Church. The following year, a second

daughter, Jane, received baptism. Unfortunately, Jane lived for less than a year and was buried

by Cutler.91 While Scipio and Mary were not recorded as wed in church or town records,

historian James Sweet shows that participation of couples out of Christian wedlock in the

88 Marriage records, 21 February 1736/7, 25 June 1737, ONC records, MHS. 89 Marriage records, 16 April 1755, ONC records, MHS. Baptism records, 18 April 1754, ONC records, MHS. 90 Baptism records, 25 November 1763, ONC records, MHS; Marriage records, 20 January 1765, ONC records,

MHS. 91 Baptism records, 2 January, 1732, 1 April 1733, ONC, MHS; Burial records, 24 April 1733, ONC, MHS.

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baptism of their children implied a unity and continuity between the parents and child.92

Bringing Zipphora and Jane into the church sanctioned this longstanding union with a religious

veneer and made it more difficult for Diamond to justify separating the family. In 1746, for

example, Cutler remarked upon the baptism of Metumbo/Tom Bow and Duchess, slaves of

Robert Temple who wed elsewhere in 1725, noting that the each appeared “worthily, principled

and Spirited towards that Ordinance.”93 Their residence in the same household was an exception

to the separate living situations experienced by fifteen of eighteen marriages between two slaves

and all eleven marriages involving varied spouse.94

Henry Caner, Price’s 1748 replacement at King’s Chapel, applied considerable attention

to slaves within his congregation. His record of baptisms sponsors for thirty-seven persons of

color gives insight into the social worlds of enslaved and free Africans and their agency. While

adult baptism required knowledge of church teachings, common practice included the presence

of sponsors, godparents, who would afterwards guide the baptized individual in his or her

Christian profession and duties. Infant baptism placed an even greater burden on the religious

literacy of sponsors. Typically, two out of three godparents were the same sex as the child and

one of the opposite sex. Per the Book of Common Prayer, sponsors stood with the intended child

or adult in front of the entire congregation, bearing witness and participating in their entry into

the church body. During the ceremony, then sponsors answered on the child’s behalf his or her

renunciation of the devil, belief in the Trinity, desire to be baptized, and promise to “obediently

keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life.” Lastly,

92 James H. Sweet, “Defying Social Death: The Multiple Configurations of African Slave Family in the Atlantic

World,” William and Mary Quarterly 70, no. 2, Centering Families in Atlantic Histories (2013): 251-272, especially

261. 93 Timothy Cutler to Secretary S.P.G., 26 Dec. 1746, in Perry, Historical Collections, Vol. 3 , 404. 94 See Table X above.

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following the physical baptism, sponsors testified their commitment to educating the child in the

faith.95

The lasting impact of sponsors in the lives of children varied to a great degree. Among

Anglican elites, godparents were frequently chosen from close family members and friends of

equal status. In contrast, slave baptisms typically involved both masters and mistresses as

sponsors, often accompanied by a close family relation of the slaveholder of the proper sex.

Masters and mistresses served as de facto parents who disciplined and educated infant and adult

slaves according to prescribed white Christian norms. Henry and Anne Caner, James and

Elizabeth Gordon, George and Catherine Craddock, and Nathaniel and Ann Hutchinson all

sponsored multiple slaves from their households. On one Sunday, the Gordons sponsored the

baptism of six adult slaves who had presumably had ample religious instruction to answer

Caner’s queries and internalize his call to follow Christ’s example. Lay officers also provided

spiritual guidance to enslaved persons. Chapel clerks Thomas Hase and John Moody and

longtime vestryman John Box served, respectively, as sponsors on eleven and six occasions.96

Box’s unpaid service fell within the assorted charitable acts and responsibilities expected of lay

officers. Paid church employees, Hase and Moody, likewise juggled their responsibility to keep

order during services from perceived troublemakers with that of inculcating Africans in essential

church teachings.

Remaining sponsors largely came from humbler backgrounds. Though their motives are

unclear, their lives were often intertwined with poor congregants. In the 1750s Patience Murray

joined clerk John Moody and hatter Levi Jennings to sponsor Crispin, an adult slave owned by

95 Nelson, Beauty of Holiness, 184-186. 96 See Baptism records, King’s Chapel, MHS. Caner selectively recorded baptism sponsors of Africans from 1747 to

1773.

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Thomas Hase. Moody and Murray also sponsored a transient man named James Knowles.

Patience Murray gave birth to an illegitimate child that was baptized by Caner in July 1749 and

buried the following September. The mother eventually ingratiated herself to Caner who willed

her an annuity of £12.97 Widow Dorothy Manning, who sponsored an enslaved infant, later

received poor relief from the Chapel when she lost use of her limbs.98 In February 1752, widow

Christian Wainwright helped sponsor three adult female slaved owned by James and Ann

Gordon. Later, Wainwright found herself in need of financial support. Shopkeeper and key

financial supporter of the chapel, Joanna Brooker left £10 for Wainwright to be distributed “at

[the] discretion of Sylvester Gardiner.99 In both cases, dispensation of relief was left at the

discretion of persons of higher status. Milliner Henrietta Maria had different kind of troubles due

to her 1747 marriage to Hugh Caine, who already had a wife in London. In 1751 he left town

with much of her hard-earned property. Some traders avoided her because of her connection to a

bigamist. Henrietta still sponsored Flora, an enslaved infant owned by George and Mary Arthur

in August 1753. The following year, she remained legally trapped in this marriage, and the town

advertised sale of her stock and household goods to go towards debts her husband had

accrued.100 Religious instruction by ordinary and sometimes troubled Anglicans demonstrated

their commitment to charity the religious upbringing of the lowest among them.

The number of African Americans in Boston fluctuated from between 10 and 15 percent

of Boston’s total population, as vessels made port with free and enslaved seamen and masters

97 Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 10, Transactions 1904-1906, (Boston: Colonial

society of Massachusetts, 1907), 70. 98 Poor rolls, 9 February & 9 March 1773, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 99 Will of Joanna Brooker, 11 May 1759, F. Apthorp Foster ed. The New England Historical and Genealogical

Register, Volume 62. (Boston: New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 1908), 119. 100 King’s Chapel Marriages, 4 April 1747, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Patricia Cleary, Elizabeth Murray: A

Woman's Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,

2000), 45-46, 57, 60, 62-63, 241n.

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sent slaves into town to work. The small numbers of free blacks within this population came

under increased scrutiny from local officials, who saw free blacks as a potential charge on the

town. In 1742, for example, over 7 percent of Boston’s black population was free but living in

the almshouse—this rate was over thirty-six times that of the white population. For this reason,

the colony required that slaveholders post a surety for any slaves they manumitted.101 Free

blacks, nevertheless, played a key role in the local economy and within the larger African

community. Like their enslaved fellow Africans, free blacks looked to churches and other

institutions to better their families’ positions. Anglican clergymen performed thirteen marriages

between two free spouses and eleven between a free and an enslaved African. With one

exception, all twenty-four ceremonies took place between 1742 and 1775. In these marriages,

free Africans demonstrated significant autonomy and devotion to family. In varied marriages, for

example, free black men wed enslaved women only two times (18%), meaning that the majority

of children produced in these marriages would be born free.102

Freedom was not the only aim of enslaved Africans as they affiliated with religious

institutions and entered into marriages. Lancaster Hill moved from Charlestown to Boston as a

free man sometime in 1751, when for unknown reasons town politician and merchant Thomas

Flucker paid his initial surety to the town. Four years later in April 1755, Lancaster married

Margaret, black servant to Silvester Gardiner, at King’s Chapel.103 While Lancaster’s marriage to

a slave placed potential children at risk, Gardiner’s position in Anglican society and the broader

commercial world stood to benefit Lancaster. The couple welcomed five children, four of whom

101 Pierson, Black Yankees, 47; Hardesty, “Angry God in the Hands of Sinners.” 102 These two exceptions were Lancaster Hill and Margaret, servant of Sylvester Gardiner, and Jerremy and Tamuse,

servant to Captain James Gruchy. 103 Marriage register, 9 April 1755, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Boston Record Commissioners, A Report of the

Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, later, Records Relating to the Early History of Boston (Boston,

Massachusetts: Municipal Printing Office, 1876-1909), 39 Volumes. 19:47. (Hereafter BTR)

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received baptism. While records show the names of eleven individuals who stood sponsors to

these children, apart from the occupations of three males sponsors—a painter, a rigger, and the

church clerk—little evidence remains about these men and women.104 Judging from Gardiner’s

attention to religion in his public and private life, he likely encouraged religious education.

Margaret Hill remained a slave for the duration of her life. Two sons, named after their father,

died before the age of two and were buried by Reverend Caner. By 1762, Lancaster had set up

shop as a lemon merchant on Marlborough Street, nearly across from Gardiner’s house. Close by

his wife and children, Lancaster sold odds and ends to people traveling the only road to and from

Boston by land. By 1770, the family had moved to Trinity Church from King’s Chapel, possibly

following Gardiner. There, they buried Margaret’s nine-year-old namesake.105

“For the benefit of the Church poor”: Poverty, Patronage, and Race in Eighteenth Century

Boston

By the mid-eighteenth century Boston’s North End housed a sizable free black population

of laborers, mariners, and domestic workers, some of whom participated at Christ Church. Free

blacks John and Elizabeth Humphreys baptized nine children there and socialized with others at

and outside the church. On 21 May 1743, the Overseers of the Poor were charged to bury Jerusha

Will, an Indian woman from Barnstable, whose body was temporarily housed at the Humphrey’s

residence in the North End. Poverty disproportionally affected free blacks and Indians, and

Will’s relationship to the Humphreys could have been formed at an almshouse or at Christ

104 Baptism records, 2 September 1757, 24 July 1761, 24 December 1762, 25 October 1765, 16 December 1766,

King’s Chapel records, MHS; Burial records, 1 September 1759, King’s Chapel records, MHS; Thwing, 61943.

Elias Williamson painter, James Phillips rigger, John Moody clerk. 105 BTR, 19:195, 240; Eric M. Hanson Plass, "“So Succeeded by a Kind Providence”: Communities of Color in

Eighteenth Century Boston" (2014). Graduate Masters Theses. Paper 270, 109-113.

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Church, where Will was baptized two weeks prior to her death.106 Town authorities felt justified

in maintaining tabs on Indians and free blacks who often sought public relief. Relief often

included residence at the town’s almshouse, but healthy individuals could be indentured or

bound to an artisan. On August 1756 overseers at the almshouse bound two free blacks, James

and Thomas, for terms of nine and eleven years to sailmaker Alexander Chamberlain. During

these years of service, they became, for all intents and purposes, Chamberlain’s slaves.107 The

Boston Overseers of the Poor similarly indentured free black man Robert Humphreys (likely

Elizabeth Humpheys’s son, who received baptism as an adult in 1748) to three successive

masters between 1756 and 1768 “to learn the trade of a cooper.”108 These terms were

substantially longer than the typical four year indentures of many white servants. Unfortunately,

without the extant contracts it is difficult to speculate about how Humphreys fared before being

freed from service in 1771, after twelve years as a bonded laborer.109

Baptism and marriage gave persons of color standing within the church, which opened up

opportunities for material and social advancement and in certain cases qualified them for poor

relief and other assistance. Betty, or Elizabeth, Humphreys received small sums from Christ

Church at four documented occasions: after Easter 1752, and the day after Christmas in 1752,

1753, and 1754. Betty’s husband John had likely died some time before this. Betty’s adult

daughter, Catherine, received several pounds from the church in 1757 and 1758.110 On 2 January

1759, King’s Chapel’s vestry and minister met at Doctor Gardiner’s house to distribute poor

106 Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston (30193). 107 Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston (9344 & 10008); Between 1748 and 1765 Chamberlain

owned four slaves (three adult males and one girl) who were baptized, married, and/or buried at Christ Church. 108 Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston (47980). 109 Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston (47980). 110 Poor rolls, 1752-1757, ONC, MHS; Marriage records, ONC, MHS. Another daughter, Elizabeth, married Robert

Hunter, a slave to Josua Davis, in 1765. Nian-Shen Huang, “Financing Poor Relief in Colonial Boston,”

Massachusetts Historical Review 8 (2006): 82. Boston lost close to three quarters of all business at this time. This

greatly impacted day laborers and the poor.

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relief. Like their contemporaries at Christ and Trinity Churches, they gave out sums to a range of

needy person, most often widows. Recipients often had the recommendation of a vestryman or

minister. Records of their meetings show that they largely limited support to unmarried women,

except in cases where husbands were at sea or incapacitated by sickness or disability.111 King’s

Chapel gave out upwards of £400 per year.112 The Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (BECS)

chiefly loaned money to wealthy members of the society and individual churches for necessary

infrastructure improvements, but it also gave small sums to widows of members and members

“in great necessity.” Trustees recommended recipients and monitored their moral behavior. In

January 1739, they charged a woman “not to apply again to this Society being of ill fame.”113 For

example, in January 1739, after giving Mrs. Pecker a small sum, they “charged [her] not to apply

again to this Society being of ill fame.” Records, unfortunately, do not identify her exact moral

failure. That same month, trustees Stephen Deblois and William Speakman distributed £20 to the

family of William Hyslop, a member since 1727, whom they represented “to be in great

necessity.” For unknown—possibly prideful—reasons, Hyslop refused the relief and, requesting

back all dues he had paid the society, was dismissed from the group. The society similarly

dismissed William Ivers, a member since 1736 who never attended and was substantially behind

on dues.114 All recipients of the BECS and the vast majority of persons documented in the poor

rolls were white parishioners. Slave masters were legally obligated to support and maintain

African slaves within their households. The inclusion of free black Anglicans in extant records

demonstrates that religious charity helped them subsist through poverty, illness, and the death of

loved ones, and avoid work houses and indenture.

111 Poor Accounts, 1758- ,King’s Chapel records, MHS. 112 Foote, Annals, 2:184. 113 Book of Minutes, 1739-17, BECS records, MHS. 114 Isaac Boyles, An Historical Memoir of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (Boston, 1840), 5-7.

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Slaves and free blacks found ways to employ the law in their favor, including petitioning

for better treatment and preserving hard-earned wealth.115 A small number of free blacks

attended to the welfare of loved ones through wills. Thomas Simmett, a free black labourer, put

his personal estate “into the hands & Custody” of his “good Friend & Executor Mr. Anthony

Blount,” in order to assure that his house and land would “be Improved for my wife's best

Advantage during her natural life.”116 While Simmett does not enter into any church documents,

his executor helped found Christ Church and served in its vestry. Free blacks like Simmett

learned to negotiate within the law and passed on this knowledge. In March of 1741 prior to

shipping out of Boston to an unspecified destination, a man named Alderman Crankey made up

his last will and testament. “Being very Sensible of the Dangers,” he first bequeathed his soul

“into the hands of Almighty God.” Alderman then certified “the Love and good will” that he

bore unto Lydia Woodbey, to whom he left all “Estate both real and personell” and all wages due

him. Crankey trusted Woodbey as executor, granting her “full power of attorney to sue and

demand all manner of Rights Title and interest” belonging to him.117 Alderman and Lydia

ultimately married at the church. Reverend Cutler baptized their free daughter Mary as a child

and later officiated her wedding to Timothy, slave to Alexander Chamberlain. In 1773, the

couple welcomed a free child, Rosanna, who received baptism at the church.118 These

circumstances were not unusual. In April 1763, John Fortune, a black laborer who received his

freedom and 50 dollars upon his mistress’s death, was baptized at Christ Church. Two months

later, he married Jane/Jenney, a black slave to Margaret Chick who had been baptized as an adult

115 Hancock, “The Law Will Make You Smart,” chapter 1, especially 35-52. 116 Thwing, Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston (54688). 117 Alderman Crankey will, 1741, Suffolk Probate Records (SPR), 39:249-250. 118 Baptism records, 28 Feb. 1743/44, 8 September 1765, 19 September 1773, ONC, MHS; Marriage records, 28

Dec. 1742, 5 Nov. 1765, 17 Sept. 1773, ONC records, MHS;

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twelve years prior. Upon his untimely death in November of 1764, Fortune left his estate “in

trust” for Jenney Chick. At her death the remainder was to be given to her daughter Jenny, a

slave of Captain Samuel Dashwood.”119 Fortune’s widow eventually remarried in the church, this

time to Jo, slave to Edward Brinley of Roxbury.120 Free and enslaved Anglicans understood and

exercised their legal rights and formed meaningful relations that were publically validated and

expressed in religious ceremonies. Even in death, those with means passed their estates to loved

ones.

By the mid-1770s Boston had vibrant African American Anglican community. As seen in

Chart V: Enslaved and Free African Americans at Boston's Anglican Churches, 1701-1776,

Christ Church drew the largest number of slaves and free blacks, and its ministers performed

close to half of all ceremonies and sacraments involving African Americans. Its location in the

North End, the relative modest means of its white parishioners, and early outreach by Reverend

Cutler during his long minister (1724-1767) likely drew free blacks there. Substantial numbers of

enslaved and free blacks also participated in religious life at King’s Chapel and Trinity Church.

Though segregated to the galleries, persons of color, at each church, created communities and

raised families. The majority of Africans enslaved by Anglicans never embraced this faith.

Nonetheless the baptisms of children and adults and marriages between free and enslaved

persons demonstrate the broad appeal of Anglicanism and the importance of Boston’s key

Anglican institutions. Testifying to the strength of this community of color, on 6 March 1771,

Jack, Margaret, and Hannah “all free Negros” stood sponsors for Phoebe, the infant child of

119 SPR 63:463. 120 Baptism records, 16 September 1750, 17 April 1763, ONC records, MHS; Marriage records, 28 June 1763, 18

December 1768, ONC records, MHS; Burial records, 13 November 1764, ONC records, MHS.

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Thomas and Catherine, when she received baptism at King’s Chapel.121 A week later, Trinity’s

Reverend Walters buried Dick, “a free Negro many years a communicant.”122

Chart V: Enslaved and Free African Americans at Boston's Anglican Churches, 1701-1776

African American Participants and Attendees

King's Chapel Christ Church Trinity Church Total

Individuals 101 152 82 335

% total 30% 45% 25% 100%

Enslaved African American Religious Ceremonies

King's Chapel Christ Church Trinity Church Total

Baptisms 56 79 51 186

Spouse 7 32 8 47

Burials 24 20 12 56

Subtotal 87 131 71 289

% enslaved 30% 45% 25% 100%

Free African American Religious Ceremonies

King's Chapel Christ Church Trinity Church Total

Baptisms 2 15 3 20

Spouse 13 14 10 37

Burials 3 5 6 14

subtotal 18 34 19 71

% free African 25% 48% 27% 100%

Church concerns over the spiritual and material well-being of less fortunate parishioners

were related to the commercial affairs of more affluent patrons and parishioners. In the case of

persons of moderate means and status, ownership of slaves and material security often went hand

in hand. In January 1752, Reverend Brockwell, assistant minister at King’s Chapel, wrote to the

Bishop of London to beg for money, explaining that he had recently “lost my only Negro who

but 9 months ago cost me 35 Sterl so that within 12 months I have lost 2 Negros who cost me 70

Sterl.” This loss, combined with his wife’s rheumatism and the fact that he had not received his

121 Baptism records, 6 March 1771, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 122 Burials, 13 May 1771, Oliver, ed. Records of Trinity Church, Vol. 56.

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salary for the year, he wrote, “must prodigiously embarrass my affairs soon to my utter

ruin.”123Amid these forlorn circumstances Brockwell remained in Boston during a smallpox

outbreak.124 That spring, trustees of the BECS donated £250 old tenor to support those affected.

This action was “something out of the common way.” 125 In late June, members of the society

assembled and reviewed the circumstances, voting “that the treasurer and trustees’ management

at this extraordinary time is hereby approved.”126 As seen in Chapter 2, the BECS ordinarily

directed most of its resources as loans to members in good standing and churches for the

improvement of Anglican buildings and furnishings. Regardless of status, white parishioners had

much greater access to Anglican charity.

Religious relief was also intertwined with civil relief. In May of 1733, for example,

vestrymen at the Christ Church recorded an anonymous contribution of two forty-shilling bills

with an attached paper “Directing & Desiring the same to be delivered for the use of the Poors in

ye Almshouse in Boston.”127 Over the eighteenth-century, town selectmen routinely approached

ministers and religious societies to make collections for the welfare of the town and its citizens.

In 1767, following a devastating fire, selectmen requested that Caner solicit donations from his

congregation. Caner sent £40 for the relief of sufferers and relayed his congregation’s

conditional willingness to contribute more. He did have a few notes on the transparency of the

process, however. The warden and vestry of King’s “were of opinion that a List of the Sufferers

should have been published with a Computation of each Mans loss opposite to his Name &

afterwards an Acd of the Total Sum Collected & how much was distributed to each Sufferer.” He

123 Brockwell to the Bishop of London, 21 January 1752, in Perry, Historical Collections 3:441-442. 124 Vestry records, 18 April 1752, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 125 Isaac Boyle, An Historical Memoir of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (Boston: I.R. Butts, printer,

1840), 9. 126 Boyle, An Historical Memoir of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society, 9. 127 Vestry Book, 1724-1802, 7 May 1733, ONC records, MHS.

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reasoned that “Something of this kind…would be Satisfactory to the publick & remove”

objections from persons who thought the money misallocated. Caner further explained that the

vestry had formed a committee within the church to distribute its “own Charities unless

Something of the Nature of What is mention’d above should be Adopted.”128 While it is unclear

who distributed future collections, on 17 November 1759 the vestry recorded in its book of

record collection of £925 towards the relief of “the late unhappy sufferers by fire.”129 Relief for

the underserved “poors” and townspeople who had suffered misfortune all fell within the

purview of Anglican charity.

Even in death, leading and ordinary Anglican directed support for church and town poor

and Anglican ministers and institutions. Gentleman and land investor Robert Temple left

Reverend Cutler ten pounds “as a Token of my great Value and Esteem for him,” as well twenty

pounds apiece for church poor and the ten poorest in Charlestown, where he resided.130 Cooper

and retailer Samuel Marshall left sums to three Anglican ministers and the Episcopal Charitable

Society.131 Window and shopkeeper Alice Quick gave sums of money to church wardens and

close family members. To her goddaughters, whose baptisms she has sponsored at King’s

Chapel, Quick gave half her pew and a small sum of money.132 While Joanna Brooker similarly

provided for the town poor and windows and needy person at King’s Chapel, she designated

between £10 and £15 Sterling to Reverends Price, Caner, and Walters, and left Reverend

Troutbeck “my Topaz Ring as a Token of my Respect to him.” She left all of her real estate in

the North End of Boston in trust of the wardens for the use of King’s Chapel. The SPG received

128 Town Selectmen to Rev. Caner and Troutbeck, 2 April 1767, Caner to Selectmen, April 1767, Loose

Correspondence, King’s Chapel Records, MHS. 129 Vestry records, 17 November 1759, king’s Chapel records, MHS. 130 Robert Temple will, 1754, Legacies and bequests, 1735-1959, ONC records, MHS; Thwing, Inhabitants and

Estates of the Town of Boston (45972). 131 SPR 35:140. 132 SPR 59:416.

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part of her South Sea Stock “as a fund for any episcopal minister that shall preach to the Indians

in N America.”133 From his sickbed, Thomas Greene expressed his desire to donate £500 for a

fund to support an assistant minister at Trinity Church. Though Greene’s will said nothing on the

matter, his heirs established a foundation in his honor with the stated amount, which was

promptly matched by fellow proprietors. In a touching funeral sermon, Reverend Hooper lauded

Greene’s love and tenderness to his family, sincerity and even-temperedness in business,

attention to the welfare of the town, and, especially, his support of religion.134

In death, William Price, who had designed the structures and interiors of Christ and

Trinity Church and served as organist, vestryman, and warden at multiple churches, similarly

provided for the welfare of his family and church poor. Following a funeral sermon delivered by

Caner, the eighty-seven-year-old Price was interred in his tomb under Trinity Church. In his will,

Price directed that his wife and nieces retain his pew No. 60 at Trinity. He returned his pew at

King’s Chapel to its wardens, pending payment of £16. His will also put aside his valuable estate

in Cornwall in trust to King’s Chapel. The proceeds from this trust would go toward an annual

sermon series from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, during which collections would be divided

between the town’s Anglican churches for the benefit of the poor.135 Such bequests from

ordinary and elite Anglicans attended to the needy and poor and fostered the continuation and

development of vital Anglican institutions in Boston and abroad that would carry on even after

the chaos and displacement experienced by Anglicans in the American Revolution.

133 SPR 54:425; Foote, Annals, 2:419-420.This property was afterward known as Clarke's ship yard. It was sold in

1794 for $2,100, which was applied to church debt. 134 William Hooper, A sermon preached in Trinity Church, at the funeral of Thomas Greene, Esq; August 5. 1763,

(Boston: Printed by Richard and Samuel Draper, and Thomas and John Fleet,1763). 135 Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 55:483-486. Quote on 484.

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CHAPTER 4: ANGLICANISM AND AUTHORITY IN REVOLUTIONARY BOSTON

British Protestantism and Royal Governance

After Parliament ensured England’s Protestant Succession in 1688 and again in 1713

when George I of Hanover became King of Great Britain and its oversea dominions, Protestants

around the globe looked to British monarchs for protection and religious sanctuary. Anglicans

enthusiastically celebrated the monarchy and the history that led to it through annual rites.

Communal activities such as marching in procession, toasting the monarchy, drinking around

bonfires, fireworks, and nighttime feasting combined, particularly in the colonies, “to establish

an emotional tie between the most distant colonist and the empire's Protestant ruler.”1 As

demonstrated in Richard Bushman’s valuable study of the king and people in provincial

Massachusetts, royal governors, members of the General Council, clergymen, military officers,

and principal gentlemen of Boston and other towns played ceremonial roles in processions and

pageants held to celebrate birthdays and coronations and mourn deaths in the royal family. The

influence of Dissenters, especially Puritans, who initially resisted such rites diminished over

time. Englishmen and Scots further acknowledged the supremacy of the crown in letters and

addresses to governors and distant rulers. Though seemingly commonplace and formulaic, such

materials were integral to dialogue between royal officials and colonial subjects who saw the

king as both protector of British liberties and dispenser of justice.2

The political and religious landscape of British America underwent several concrete

changes in the decades following the Glorious Revolution. Parliamentary authority constrained

1 Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill,

Uniersity of North Carolina Press, 2007), 49. 2 Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1985), 30-32.

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the monarchy, but largely left local interests to run their own affairs. Though accustomed to

responding to the Board of Trade and Parliamentary statutes, colonists were largely self-

governed. Unrelated to political developments, religious upheaval—most notably, the Great

Awakening—fed congregational democracy. Though Anglicans weathered the Awakening better

than dissenting denominations, clergymen strongly denounced its leveling influence and a

breakdown of deference to traditional authorities. Across the colonies, Englishmen embraced

enlightenment and whiggish understandings of liberty to a degree not seen in England.

Whiggism, in particular, which stemmed from theological and political justifications for the

Glorious Revolution framed colonial understanding of English liberties and the role of

government; chiefly that a moral decay of the people would invite the intrusion of evil despotic

rulers and the encroachment of executive power on the legislature.3

Though colonists across Great Britain’s mid-eighteenth-century empire saw themselves

as Englishmen, Scotsmen, or British citizens, imperial requirements of men and materials

occasionally placed administrators in conflict with provincial interests.4 On 14 November 1747,

for example—barely two years after provincials and regular troops cooperated in the conquest of

the French fortress at Louisbourg—the indiscriminate impressment of fifty-odd Massachusetts

sailors by officers under Admiral Charles Knowles’s command sparked the largest impressment

riot in British America and a three-day stand-off during which Knowles threatened to bombard

3 For an overview of the colonies see Robert Middlekauff. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763-

1789. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 7-48. 4 Denver Alexander Brunsman, “The Knowles Impressment Riots of the 1740s,” Early American Studies 5 (2007):

349, 351-52. Impressment was the most common cause of crowd violence directed at imperial officers during the

near-continuous warfare of the mid-eighteenth century. To prevent such riots, Shirley deputizing sheriffs to impress

navy deserters and nonresidents of the colony and gave warrants to the royal navy on the condition that they limit

impressment to non-Massachusetts inhabitants on inbound, non–coasting vessels.” However, when the Boston town

meeting petitioned the House of Representatives for an end to forced maritime labor, Shirley’s provincial Council

objected to “the seditious Spirit of this Memorial” Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts

(Boston, 1919-1990), 22:210-211.

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the town and Shirley fled Boston for the safety of the garrison at Castle William. In a publically

printed letter, Governor Shirley blamed the mob for its seizing of naval officers, whom they

detained as hostages, “subject… to the Violent of their lawless arbitrary Will”; excoriated

members of the militia who, by refusing to assemble when called, failed to maintain the “King’s

Authority”; and laid blame on colonial elites and members of the House of Representatives and

Council, those “ill minded Inhabitants and Persons of Influence in the Town” who failed to

defuse the crowd.5 Under threat of the mob’s violence, however, Shirley begrudgingly negotiated

on behalf of the mob and brokered a deal for the mob to release its hostage naval officers and

Knowles to release all the non-“foreign” impressed sailors.6 By 30 November, the situation was

resolved, but not forgotten.

These riotous events and their aftermath could not be divorced from Shirley’s and

Knowles’s imperial positions and the present religious situation in Boston, where Anglicans

requested additional land from the Puritan Burial Ground on which to rebuild King’s Chapel’s

dilapidated wooden structure. At the outbreak of the Knowles impressment riot, Shirley headed

the list of contributors to the rebuilding of King’s Chapel with a subscription of £200 and was en

route to London to solicit aid from fellow members of the Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Knowles, before leaving Boston, had subscribed £100 toward the

rebuilding.7

Contemporary pamphleteer James Allen, in a letter to freeholders and qualified voters in

Boston, recalled the “uncommon Stretch of Arbitrary Power” during the rule of Stuart-appointed

governor Edmund Andros, in which “the Ashes of the Dead were inhumanely disturbed, in order

5 William Shirley to Josiah Willard, Castle Island, 19 and 20 November 1747, Boston Weekly Post-Boy, 14

December 14 1747. 6 Brunsman, “Knowles Impressment Riots,” 357-59. 7 On 4 October 1747, a month before the infamous “Knowles Riot,” Knowles gave King’s Chapel a coin worth £13

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to build the original wooden chapel.”8 The author referenced the fact that because none in the

town would sell the organizers of King’s Chapel land for the purpose of erecting a Church of

England, Andros used his “arbitrary power” to take part of the old Puritan burial ground on

which to build.9 As the author and audience of this pamphlet knew, King’s Chapel’s ongoing

reconstruction would similarly disturb the interred bodies of Puritan’s past. It did not require

much imagination to link Andros’s arbitrary act to recent events involving Governor Shirley and

Admiral Knowles.

Knowles’s recent actions had not dampened his reputation with leading members of

King’s Chapel, however. The vestry and minister wrote Knowles the following January to thank

him for his subscription for the rebuilding of their chapel: “Your Departure from hence so soon

after we were notified of this Favour prevented us of the Pleasure of waiting upon you and

paying the proper complements of Gratitude. This was what we should particularly have chosen

at that critical Juncture as a Testimony of our dislike of the Tumultuous Proceedings w[hi]ch

unaccountably took Place about that Time.”10 In the committee’s estimation, the snatching up of

Boston’s sailors necessitated dutiful obedience—perhaps a strongly worded petition, but never

threats and acts of violence. Members of King’s Chapel’s vestry joined Shirley in outrage at

many of Boston’s office holders, fellow elites who had sanctioned the crowd’s proceedings.

Some of these same persons opposed King’s Chapel’s petition to expand the chapel further onto

the graveyard and land occupied by Boston Latin School. After 402 ballots were cast, King’s

Chapel’s petition for the necessary lands for the new building passed by eight votes. Despite this

8 New England Man [James Allen], A Letter to the Freeholders, and Qualified Voters, Relating to the Ensuing

Election (Boston, 1749), 2-3. 9 On the building and rebuilding, see Foote, Annals, 1:81-82, 2:58-61. 10 Building Committee to Charles Knowles, Jan., 29, 1747/48, Loose Correspondence, King’s Chapel Records,

MHS.

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close vote, the political environment was vastly different from 1688. King’s Chapel acquired the

needed land by democratic ballot, not arbitrary act. Further, unlike in the era preceding the

establishment of King’s Chapel, Anglicans also worshipped relatively unmolested at churches in

Boston’s North and South Ends and towns throughout New England. Anglican clergy in Boston

and elsewhere delivered a vision of a religiously united (Anglican) empire wherein subjects

traded obedience for protection and welcomed closer ties to Britain.11

With the exception of Quakers who believed in pacifism, the patriotism of Anglicans

differed little, if at all, Dissenting Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists.12 British

American colonists greeted Britain’s victories over the French with particular joy during the

Seven Years War (1756-1763), which centered in North America.13 In 1763, after years of

negotiation and a global conflict on land and sea, peals of bells and ministers of all

denominations across the empire extolled the removal of the French from the North American

continent. On 11 August, a day of Thanksgiving throughout of British America, King’s Chapel’s

Henry Caner delivered a sermon entitled On the Blessing of Stable Times: Together with the

Means of Procuring It, which was printed at the request of Massachusetts governor Francis

Bernard. In Caner’s dedication to the governor, he addressed the officer’s motives “to excite in

11 For an opposing view on authority see Chris Beneke, “The Critical Turn: Jonathan Mayhew, the British Empire,

and the Idea of Resistance in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Boston,” Massachusetts Historical Review 10 (2008): 23-29,

35-39. Though only a minority of persons adopted Congregationalist Jonathan Mayhew’s radical views, his 1750

sermon, “A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers” justified

revolution itself. Mayhew, Jonathan A.M., D.D. and Royster, Paul, Editor & Depositor, “A Discourse concerning

Unlimited Submission and Non Resistance to the Higher Powers: With some Reflections on the Resistance made to

King Charles I. And on the Anniversary of his Death: In which the Mysterious Doctrine of that Prince's Saintship

and Martyrdom is Unriddled (1750). An Online Electronic Text Edition.” (1750). Electronic Texts in American

Studies. Paper 44. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/44 12 See Linda Colley, Britons, and Thomas Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England After Puritanism. Even in

New England, Protestantism overcame many factional divisions and served to unify Britain’s subjects in common

purpose, often against Catholic France, with whom Britain waged near constant war. 13 Oliver, ed., Records of Trinity Church, 55: 128. In December 1759 Trinity Church purchased and erected a bell

brought back by Colonel George Williamson of his Majesty’s Regiment from the reduction of Quebec the summer

prior.

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those that heard me the spirit of Gratitude to God, for his distinguished favours to this nation and

land; and to promote that loyalty and obedience to government on which the stability of our

present happiness doth so much depend.”14 The defeat of the French in North America

inaugurated a short period of imperial reintegration and reorganization, and Caner alluded to

ongoing debates over taxation and the regulation of colonial trade by Parliament, as it attempted

to consolidate the empire by making up debts from the recent war and securing the loyalty of

French Catholics remaining in North America.

Colonists perceived these developments with mixed emotions. At King’s Chapel, as in

Anglican churches across the British Empire, worshippers routinely lifted up prayers for the

king, the royal family, and the crown’s officers, and clergymen cautioned submission and

obedience. Caner’s ministrations, however, resonated to differing degrees with various

constituencies within Boston’s lay Anglican community. The Church of England stood as a

symbol of royal authority. Boston’s churches catered to British military and naval officers,

whom they counted among their most honored patrons. Royal governors and Anglican officers in

the customs office and judiciary expected obedience as they performed their appointed duties.

Anglican families often intermarried and specialized in certain trades and vocations, but their

religious affiliation and theological understandings did not altogether define their social and

commercial worlds. Anglican merchants, traders, shopkeepers, and factors weighed their

commercial interests against the letter and spirit of the Navigation Acts. Anglicans frequently

viewed hierarchy and authority through a conservative lens, but many held more Whiggish

understandings of English liberties. While this conflict largely centered on secular matters,

patriot rhetoric, which exploited powerful religious divides and anxieties, disproportionately

14 Henry Caner, On the Blessing of Stable Times: Together With the Means of Procuring it (Boston: Fleet, 1763).

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targeted Anglicans as enemies to the American cause. These tensions and longstanding

affiliations with organs of imperial authority shaped Anglican participation through the events of

the 1760s and 1770s.

Contesting Imperial Authority: Smuggling, Customs, and the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765

British merchants and importers operated within an imperial system intended to keep

trade and products within the empire, but the colonial custom officials who monitored shipping

had been historically lax in their enforcement of various Navigation Acts, allowing smugglers to

avoid the duty on foreign molasses and bring ashore European manufactures that had not been

imported through Great Britain. Few merchants saw anything wrong with carrying contraband

such as molasses from the French West Indies, and importers carrying merchandise directly from

non-British ports hid their activities and on occasion bribed customs officers to look the other

way. Customs officials rarely prosecuted offenses.15

Although Congregationalists greatly outnumbered Anglicans in Massachusetts and

monopolized elected posts in local government, Anglicans dominated royally appointed posts in

customs there. Longtime collector for the port of Boston John Jekyll typified the many early

eighteenth-century customs officers who monitored colonial trade and maintained cordial

relations with traders. Upon his death in 1733, the Boston Weekly News-Letter, a royalist

newspaper, testified to “his faithfulness and application in his Duty to the Crown” and celebrated

how, “by his courteous Behavior to the Merchant, he became the Darling of all fair Traders; he

was not of an avaricious, sordid Temper, but with much Humanity took pleasure in directing

Masters of Vessels how they ought to avoid the Breach of the Acts of Trade.” As the obituary

15 John W. Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the Revolutionary War (Boston:

Northeastern University Press, 1986), 12-13.

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observed, Jeckyll’s religion mattered: it “was tempered with much Moderation, no narrow-

soul’d, ill-natured Bigotry…no cant and hypocrisy of an affected Devotee.” 16 Jeckyll served

with distinction as a vestryman and warden at King’s Chapel. But whereas his controversial

predecessor in customs, Edward Randolph, helped orchestrate the revocation of Massachusetts

Bay’s original charter and antagonized the standing Puritan order by helping to found King’s

Chapels, Jeckyll—and his son of the same name, who succeeded him in this post—eschewed

Randolph’s provocative example, were better able to maintain the amity of both sides.

Into the mid-eighteenth century, as Anglican and Congregational merchant elites shared

considerable common interests, customs officials frequently worshiped at Anglican places of

worship and socialized within Anglican circles. Charles Paxton, a parishioner at King’s Chapel

and marshal of the vice admiralty court, long-desired appointment as Surveyor and Searcher to

the Port of Boston. In 1743, Governor Shirley recommended Paxton to this post, citing Paxton’s

“Diligence, Fidelity, and good conduct.” However, Paxton quickly received notoriety for his

attentiveness and selective prosecution of infractions. While customs suits and documents are

silent on Paxton’s religious worldview, he remained in good standing at Kings Chapel where he

served as a leading lay officer. His Anglican faith and understanding of obedience to secular

authority may have given his “diligence” a veneer of righteousness. Customs officers who

brought seizures to court generally received one-third of the proceeds, with the remaining two-

thirds evenly divided between the crown and the governor, so Paxton also received financial

recompense for his diligence.17 Paxton’s attentiveness was a part of a larger imperial effort to

16 Bushman, King and People, 135-154; Boston Weekly News-Letter, 28 December 1733-4 January 1734; See

Charles E. Clark, “Boston and the Nurturing of Newspapers: Dimensions of the Cradle, 1690-1741,” The New

England Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), 243-271, for a discussion of the Newsletter. 17 Maurice H. Smith, “Charles Paxton, Founding Stepfather” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,

Third Series, Vol. 94 (1982), 15-20, quote on 18.

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control colonial trade and crack down on smuggling, throughout which colonial traders became

increasingly concerned about the consistency of enforcement and customs seizures. While

disagreements over the prosecution of smugglers were a recurring aspect of colonial politics,

economic woes of the late 1750s coincided with more zealous enforcement of the Navigation

Acts by customs officials, prompting action by affected traders of all religious backgrounds.

As early as 1751, Boston’s merchants began meeting together at the British Coffee House

to discuss community actions. In 1756, the Boston Gazette published the first of many scathing

personal attacks on Paxton, whom these merchants referred to as “Mr. Froth.” Opposition to the

customs service, however, was neither unified nor restricted to members of one religious faith.

The same year, the Boston Evening Post published the names of forty-three merchants who

signed an agreement to inform on smuggles (AIS), persons engaged in illegal trade with Holland

after a respite of six months. As seen in Table I, Anglican merchant activities, 1756-1765, sixty

percent of these signers were active Anglicans, but obedience was not the primary motivator for

their public declaration. Since the signers engaged in legal trade with Holland, by informing on

all competitors who flouted regulations they thereby received an advantage.18

More ominously for Massachusetts’s merchants, in December 1759 Thomas Lechmere,

Surveyor General of the Northern Customs District and valued parishioner at King’s Chapel,

suspended Benjamin Barons, a recently appointed “congenial and tractable” collector of customs

for the port of Boston, who let importers pass through without charges. Barons promptly

appealed the divisive decision to newly appointed Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard, who

initially upheld the suspension.19 The following spring, even as the Barons affair unfolded,

18 Charles M. Andrews, “The Boston Merchants and the Non importation Acts,” (1917), 159-161; Boston Evening

Post, 6 December 1756. 19 For an overview of the Baron affair see John W. Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent

of the Revolutionary War (Boston, 1986), 25-64.

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collector of customs George Craddock seized John Erving Sr.’s vessel Sarah for bypassing Great

Britain with a cargo of European goods. Other traders plotting their own suits looked on in

anticipation to see how Erving fared in court. Justice Hutchinson ultimately found in favor of

Craddock, only to be overturned by a Boston jury, which awarded £740 in damages to Erving.20

As editorialized in a December 1761 issue of the rather partisan Boston-Gazette, such juries

supported “fair traders” against the “Officer of the Customs, who were tho’t by many Persons, to

have had full Power enough over us before [the writs of assistance] and their “well paid”

informers.21 These issues polarized Boston, and the judiciary’s decisions, which increasingly

supported the government in these proceedings, lent credibility to accusations of arbitrary power

and corruption. As a result, Whig merchants and officials increasingly enlisted popular support

again crown policies and officers.22 Though historian John Tyler suggests that Anglicans were

“Anglophone in sensibilities and psychologically attuned to the obedience to established

authority that Anglicanism demanded,” a significant number of Anglican merchants, brokers,

and factors resisted seizures by customs officers who oftentimes were co-religionists. In fact, the

Erving case pitted an Anglican merchant and member of the Council against an Anglican

judge.23

In Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the Revolutionary War,

Tyler analyzes a sample of 427 active merchants and compiles a number of “Whig” identifiers

20 Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots, 30,48-49. In this suit, chief justice Thomas Hutchinson, whose brother Eliakim

attended King’s Chapel and was wed to former governor Shirley’s daughter, found in favor of customs. 21 Quoted in Smith, “Charles Paxton,” 20; On writs of assistance see Maurice H. Smith, The Writs of Assistance

Case, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1978). 22 Neil R. Stout, “The Missing Temple-Whately Papers,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third

Series, Vol. 104 (1992), 125-126. Though Thomas Hutchinson and Anglicans Judge Robert Auchmuty Jr., Nathaniel

Hatch, and George Craddock supported customs in legal battles over ongoing seizures and the legality of writs of

assistance; not all agents were at odds with merchants. John Temple, who replaced the deceased Lechmere, accused

then governor Francis Bernard and John Cockles, collector of customs at Salem, of corruption. His older brother

Robert Temple assisted Paxton in 1762 seizing the Swallow. 23 Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots,19.

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based on petitions and membership in the Boston Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce

(BSETC), which was formally organized in 1763 to resist the writs of assistance and imperial

regulation of trade. Building on Tyler’s extensive research, I identified over one hundred seventy

Anglicans active in business and politics. As seen in Table I: Anglican merchants’ activities,

1756-1763, sixty-one Anglican were especially active during this period. For example, in

December 1760 fifteen Anglicans signed a petition (GP) in an ongoing case, Gray v. Paxton. The

following month, seventeen Anglicans, including James Boutineau, Thomas Greene, Shrimpton

Hutchinson (whose brother Thomas became governor in 1773), Daniel Malcom, John Rowe, and

Samuel Wentworth, signed a petition (WP) protesting the writs of assistance, open-ended search

warrants that allowed custom agents unprecedented powers. Anglicans made up over 20 percent

of the total signers of these petitions.24 Over the next years, Anglicans comprised close to a third

of the signers on a later petition (BP) to reinstate Barons and over a third of the persons who

petitioned that the province’s ship be used only to guard the coast, not interdict illegal trade. Of

identified Anglican merchants and shopkeepers, almost half of the sixty-one Anglicans who

signed one of these petitions went on to join the BSETC in 1763, where they made up 28 percent

of charter members. Just over two-fifths of this sample of politically active Anglican merchants

signed three or more petitions. By these measures, John Rowe, John Pigeon, Thomas Greene,

James Perkins, Samuel Hughes Senior, Samuel Grant, John Gooch, George Erving, David

Edwards, Gilbert Deblois, and Jonathon Amory numbered among the most active Bostonians (let

alone Anglicans) with publically demonstrated sympathies towards the popular whig party or at

the very least free trade. Considering that Anglicans comprised at most 10 percent of

Massachusetts’s population, these Anglicans numbered significantly among the

24 For a list of signers see Josiah Quincy and Horace Gray, Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Superior

Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Between 1761 and 1772, 412-413.

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Congregationalists merchants and smugglers who, by many interpretations, led these early

moderate protests against the authority and tactics of Britain’s customs agents.

Table I: Anglican merchant’s activities and membership, 1756-

1763

Merchant Petitions and Clubs

AIS GP WP BP PSP BSETC

Anglican

participants 25 15 17 27 35 30

Total

participants 43 67 67 85 93 106

% Anglicans 58% 22% 25% 32% 38% 28%

Key:

AIS: Agreement to Inform on Smugglers (1756)

GP: Gray vs. Paxton (1760)

WP: Writs Petition (1761)

BP: Baron Petition (1760)

PSP: Province Ship Petition (1764)

BSETC: Boston Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce

(1763)

Frequency of Anglican Activity

Number of

petitions 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total

Participants 22 13 10 11 3 2 61

% total 36% 21% 16% 18% 5% 3% 100%

Cumulative

Frequency

Number % total

1 100%

2 or more 64%

3 or more 43%

4 or more 26%

5 or more 8%

6 3%

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The passage of the Stamp Act in early 1765, which generated revenue through a tax on

official documents, prompted many of the same merchants who protested trade enforcement and

the writs of assistance to boycott British manufactures. Within weeks, 250 Boston merchants

signed the first of several non-importation agreements. Many put added pressure on London

merchants by sending orders contingent on the repeal of the Act, and delegates from most

mainland colonies assembled a Stamp Act Congress to collectively lobby its repeal.25 The Stamp

Act galvanized popular support unlike any earlier disagreement over colonial trade had done. On

14 August 1765, members of the Sons of Liberty hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the newly

appointed stamp collector, on the “Liberty Tree.” At sunset, a mob of thousands leveled Oliver’s

new building, the supposed stamp office, on Kirby Street. An order to disperse so incensed the

crowd that they destroyed the windows and furniture in Oliver’s home and the residences of

several other crown officials, prompting Oliver to resign his commission the following day.26

Though the leaders of the Sons of Liberty downplayed the violence of mobs,

representatives of the government reported events in unvarnished words. Writing to General

Thomas Gage, then commander of British forces in North America, Governor Bernard recounted

that “the Mob was so general & so supported that all civil Power ceased in an instant & I had not

the least authority to oppose or quiet [it].” The governor described an escalation of violence. The

mob, he wrote “destroyed & rifled” the contents of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s

residence “from Top to Bottom,” so that “all his Cash Papers furniture Cloaths &c are carried off

& wasted and burned.” The houses and possessions of Comptroller of Customs Hollowell and

25 Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots, 65-91. 26 On the Stamp Act, see Edmund and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (1953). These

events in Boston quickly spawned similar actions in major cities throughout the mainland British-America colonies

and the British West Indies. See Donna J. Spindel, “The Stamp Act Crisis in the British West Indies,” Journal of

American Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Aug., 1977), 203-221.

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Register of the Admiralty Story met the same fate. At Story’s house, all his “Papers & Books

among which were all the records of the records of the Admiralty were burnt before his door.”27

The residence of notorious customs officer and longtime King’s Chapel vestryman and warden

Charles Paxton only escaped damage thanks to a quick-thinking landlord who plied the would-be

vandals with alcohol. After a day of reflection, Bernard wrote again to Gage, expressing his

frustration at the Council, which, in his words, decided that “there is no Occasion for the

Assistance of the Kings Troops.” Bernard was hamstrung: “I cannot ask for them nor can I with

Safety declare my own thoughts on this Occasion[.] The Town has been kept quiet for two

Nights Past by Parties of Militia in which the commanding Officers to do them Justice have been

very active So that I hope that Peace will be restored by internal Means only but I can[’]t be

answerable for it.” Gage took Bernard’s fears to heart and promptly ordered one hundred

regulars from Halifax to reinforce Castle Island and hold it against any popular attempts to

obtain the controversial stamp paper lodged there.28

On 1 September, the day the Act went into effect in Boston, the town behaved as if

attending a funeral. Many shops remained closed, and a crowd hanged and later burned effigies

of the two perpetrators of the tax, George Grenville and John Huske. On the following Pope’s

Day, 5 November 1765, observers marveled as rival North End and South End gangs dispensed

with their usual violence to join in a “Union” ceremony with fellow opponents of the Act. By the

end of the evening, sympathetic merchants entertained both gangs in a “UNION FEAST at the

Royal Exchange Tavern.”29 Yet Despite a largely negative view of the Stamp Act, many in

27 Governor Bernard to Major General Gage, Castle Island, 27 Aug., 1765, in Edward Channing and Archibald Cary

Coolidge, eds., The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence and Illustrative Matter, 1760-1770 (Cambridge, Mass.,

1912; repr. New York, 1970). 227-228. 28 Bernard to Gage, Castle Island, 29 Aug., 1765, in Coolidge, eds., The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence, 230-

232. See 233-252 for correspondence regarding troop movements. 29 Richard Archer, As If an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution, 34-

35.

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Massachusetts supported the government and peace and order. Bernard and his predecessors as

royal governors referred frequently to “friends of government,” persons whose sympathies

generally lay with the royal governor, or those who resisted the ongoing Whig protest movement.

From historian Colin Nicholson’s analysis of Bernard’s administration, such “friends of

government” included a broad if not unified group of representatives in the assembly as well as

appointed judges, justices of peace, members of the council, merchants, and lawyers, all of

varied religious backgrounds.30

Anglican high churchmen remained among the best friends to royal governance in

America. Anglicans rarely served in town elected offices. In Boston, however, Anglicans served

as justices of the peace and counselors as well as in numerous appointed posts within customs

and the judiciary. Writing to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Seeker in early September 1765,

Reverend Henry Caner blamed the recent riots on the influence of dissenters: “as they possess a

dislike of the ecclesiastical [they] are generally led to prefer a republican to our civic

Constitution.”31 While dissenting groups typically stressed obedience to earthly authorities, the

recent attacks on crown officers had, ominously, followed a rousing sermon by Congregational

minister Jonathon Mayhew at the West Meetinghouse. Caner stressed that his followers were not

involved in the riots. In Caner’s words, “the greatest Security the Government has in the

Attachment of the Colonies derives from the Church People who are among them, & who are

always friends to the whole Constitution as united in Church & State.”32

30 Colin Nicholson, “Governor Francis Bernard, the Massachusetts Friends of Government, and the Advent of the

Revolution” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 103 (1991), 28-39. 31 “Caner to Archbishop of Canterbury, 4 Sept., 1765,” Kenneth Walter Cameron, ed., Letterbook of the Rev. Henry

Caner (Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1972). 123. Hereafter cited as Caner Letterbook. 32 “Caner to Archbishop of Canterbury, 4 Sept., 1765,” Caner Letterbook, 123.

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Caner understood the Stamp Act riots to be a result of undermined civil and ecclesiastical

authority in Massachusetts. He knew firsthand of ongoing pamphlet disputes between Anglicans

and Congregational minister Jonathan Mayhew, the controversial author of a 1750 sermon that

justified rebellion against the crown and present minister at Boston’s West Church. This newest

battle of words between Rev. East Apthorp, minister at Christ Church, Cambridge, and Mayhew

centered on their opposing views on the SPG and its alleged plan to implement an American

bishop.33 Mayhew’s views were not widely adopted at first. By 1764, however, following the

publication of a response by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Mayhew’s attack on the SPG, John

Adams embraced Mayhew’s fear of an American bishop.34 Anglicans and dissenters agreed that

an American bishop’s powers would not be restricted to ecclesiastic matters. Religiously partisan

opponents of the Stamp Act perceived it, alongside the bishop controversy, to be part of a plot

against provincial churches and assemblies. As summarized in the St. James Chronicle on 14

April 1766, “the Stamping and Episcopizing our Colonies were understood to be only different

Branches of the same Plan of Power.”35 As the British placed an Anglican Lord Bishop in

Quebec in 1766 to oversee an optimistic and unsuccessful plan of converting French Catholics to

Anglicanism and binding their loyalty to the crown, this understanding of Britain’s alleged plan

for religious domination was increasingly shared by non-Anglicans throughout the British

American Colonies.36

33 Benake, “Mayhew;” Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 31-32, 56. 34 In 1756, John Adams, of Braintree, wrote in his diary that Mayhew “was a smart man, but he embraced some

doctrines, not generally approved.” John Adams diary 1, 12 Oct., 1756 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers:

An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/; Bell, A War of

Religion, 92-93. 35 Quoted in Bridenbaugh, Mitre and sceptre: transatlantic faiths, ideas, personalities, and politics, 1689-1775, 138-

39. 36 Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745-

1795, 66-154. Even as the Paris talks ended the Seven Years War, Caner and his Congregational counterparts saw

French Canada as a fertile ground for proselytization. See correspondence between Caner and the Archbishop of

Canterbury in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:489-490, 494.

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Though Caner understood correctly that Anglicans generally supported the government,

notable exceptions existed even within Boston’s churches. On 20 August 1765 Caner delivered a

funeral sermon for Christ Church’s Reverend Timothy Cutler, entitled The Firm Belief of a

Future Reward: A Powerful Motive to Obedience and a Good Life. As tokens of thanks and

appreciation, the vestry gave Caner a mourning ring and published his remarks on the example

set by Christ Church’s first minister. The minister exhorted his brethren with the Apostle Paul’s

words: “be ye steadfast [and] unmoveable always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing

that your labor shall not be in vain in the Lord.”37 For Caner, dutiful obedience of God

anticipated future reward and involved meekly submitting also to earthly authority. Several of

Christ Church’s leading parishioners thought otherwise. The following month, comptroller of

customs Benjamin Hallowell searched the North End home of Christ Church junior warden and

merchant Captain Daniel Malcom, looking for illegal wine. Malcom, however, refused to open

his locked cellar. The officers went off to consult the government and sheriff. By late afternoon,

John Pigeon, a fellow member and warden of Christ Church, joined Malcom inside his home to

await the customs agents. Eventually, a crowd gathered outside, and the sheriff overheard plans

for the group to ring the bells in the nearby Old North Congregational Meetinghouse to alert the

people if the agents forced their way into the cellar. Knowing well the danger of such mobs, the

officers left the scene frustrated. Bernard quickly sent a one-sided perspective on the events, to

London, enclosing depositions of only the agents of the crown. Malcom supplemented the record

with additional depositions, which he sent directly to Massachusetts’s agent in London. In these,

37 Henry Caner, The Firm Belief of a future Reward a powerful Motive to Obedience and a Good life (Boston,

1765); Vestry Records, 26 Aug., 1765, ONC, MHS.

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Pigeon and others testified to Malcom’s principled resistance to the search of his cellar and the

peacefulness of the crowd.38

Support for the colonial cause in the North End extended from the Congregationalist

North Meeting Houses to members of Christ Church’s vestry, as these wardens of Christ Church

resisted the allegedly unlawful search of Malcom’s cellar, leaving the “friends of government”

with little recourse.39 For his part, Malcom remained in good standing as Christ Church’s vestry

socialized with members of King’s Chapel. In early October, the Christ Church vestry selected

Malcom, Thomas Ivers, Hugh McDaniel, William Shippard, and Alexander Chamberlain as a

committee to wait on Caner to discuss Cutler’s replacement and “find out what he [Caner] has to

Communicate from the Society [the SPG] to this Church.”40 Of these men, Malcom, Ivers, and

Jenkins had demonstrated Whig sympathies.41 But despite any disagreements over to what

degree they owed obedience to authorities in government, Caner remained the best conduit

through which these lay officials gained knowledge of and solicited support from the SPG.42

They further continued to welcome support from the SPG even as this explicitly imperial organ

of the Church of England received harsh criticism by Congregationalists, who felt that its

38 Richard Archer, As If an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution, (New

York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 60-63; For the transcribed depositions see Wolkins, “Daniel Malcom and

Writs of Assistance,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 58 (Oct., 1924 - Jun.,

1925), 5-57. 39 On September 24 and 25, 1765, John Rowe notes how the governor and Council “examined many evidences, but

could make nothing of it.” 40 Vestry Records, 7 Oct., 1765, ONC, MHS. 41 Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots, 268-269; Rowe, Diary, Dec., 3, 1764. The previous December at a meeting of the

merchant’s club recorded by John Rowe in his diary, present members voted that “Mr. Ivers bring an action at this

Court against Mr. Collector for taking the duty of five shilling ster[ling] per hundred on loaf sugar cleared out at his

office.” 42 Correspondence between Christ Church and the SPG over the appointment of an assistant to help the ailing Cutler

went back to 1759. “The Churchwardens & Vestry of Christ Church in Boston to the Secretary of the SPG, October

23d 1759 in Perry, Historical Collections, 3:454. They wrote detailed letters to the SPG in Dec. 1765, Jan. 1767, and

May 1768 elaborating on their need (Perry, 3: 257-9,537-8).

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mission should be confined towards converting persons without religion, such as Indians and

slaves, not colonists with developed churches.

Other members of Boston’s Anglican community played prominent roles resisting the

Stamp Act. Merchant John Rowe sympathized with the popular party and was a highly active

member of the merchant’s club, but this did not preclude him from taking a consignment of

stamped paper. This controversial cargo arrived after the riots and public resignation by

Massachusetts’s stamp agent and was brought to Castle William to prevent its destruction.43

Barlow Trecothick of London, who maintained pew no. 1 at King’s Chapel and friends and

family in Boston, similarly opposed the Stamp Act as a means of generating revenue. Yet he too

failed to initially understand the antipathy felt toward the act. From London, he helped secure the

appointment of several stamp collectors (in Trecothick’s case, a brother-in-law, James McEvens

of New York, and George Meserve, who was appointed to New Hampshire), both of whom

resigned their commissions following news of Oliver’s experience. Over the next months,

Trecothick acted to rectify his misapprehensions about colonial reactions to the Stamp Act. In

early December, Trecothick became chairman of a committee of London’s American merchants

who gathered to oppose the Act. Through petitions from colonial and manufacturing interests,

letters to key figures Parliament, and, ultimately, Trecothick’s testimony before Parliament in

February 1766, this committee stressed the grievous economic consequences of the Stamp Act to

North American merchants, West Indian merchants, and British manufactures as well as the

infeasibility of enforcement. Trecothick unequivocally stated that he was holding orders to

Britain’s manufacturers until repeal. These arguments were convincing to key members of

Parliament, and in the immediate aftermath, Trecothick advised moderation once news of the

43 Colin Nicholson ed., The Papers of Francis Bernard, Governor of Colonial Massachusetts, 1760-1769, Volume

II: 1764-1765. (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2012), 2:446-7.

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repeal reached the colonies, lest they give the impression of celebrating a triumph over

Parliament. He additionally cautioned the Americans: “You must know better than to imagine

any well regulated government will suffer laws, enacted with a view to public good, to be

disputed by lawless rioters, with impunity.”44

Though the repeal did not signify any lessening of Parliament’s right to levy taxes,

Bostonians and many Britons reacted to the news of the repeal with great excitement. On 14

April 1766, a day the merchants’ club chose to celebrate the repeal, John Rowe recorded in his

diary: “This day is the joyfull day indeed for all America, and all the people are to rejoyce this

day for the joyfull news brought by these vessells from Loudon, that the Stamp Act is repealed.”

That evening, Rowe and twenty-eight fellow members of the merchants’ club “drank fifteen

toasts; and very loyal they were, and suited to the occasion.”45 Several weeks later Rowe noted

celebrations of the king’s birthday. In July 1766, after the repeal of the dreaded Stamp Act,

Florentius Vassall presented King’s Chapel with a monument that memorialized his great

grandfather Samuel Vassall, one of the original investors in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Once

installed, the inscribed marble gift stood as testament to the donor, whose name was also

inscribed on it, and the Vassall family—most notably Samuel Vassall ,who in 1628 played a

leading role against Charles I’s extra-parliamentary taxation: “he was the first who boldly

refused to submit to the tax / of Tonnage and Poundage, / an unconstitutional claim of the Crown

/ arbitrarily imposed: / For which (to the ruin of his family) / his goods were seized and his

person imprisoned by the / Star Chamber Court.”46 The timing of this gift and the monument’s

44 Withrow, “A Biographical Study of Barlow Trecothick,” 11-30, quoted on 28. 45 Rowe, Diary, 14 April, 1766. 46 Greenwood, A History of King’s Chapel, 231-32. Though Vassall resided in Jamaica and England, he had family

and commercial interests in New England. He requested that Sylvester Gardiner, who often represented Vassall’s

interests in the Kennebec Company, erect the monument in the chapel. Gardiner brought this to the vestry and

received permission to place the monument in the north side of the west door, providing that Vassall pay the cost of

pew no. 43, which the monument replaced.

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features hinted towards Florentius’s sympathies regarding ongoing debates over taxation and

representation. Below the bust, the sculptor depicted a collection of manuscripts including the

Magna Carta, the memoirs of Jonathon Churloe (Oliver Cromwell’s Secretary of State), and

John Rushwood’s Historical Collections, which chronicled the late English Civil War. The

Vassall family motto, Saepe pro rege, semper pro republica / often for king, always for the

republic, resonated with persons seeking redress from the crown.47

Most individuals hoped for a resolution to the crisis. After Parliament’s adoption of the

1766 Revenue Act, which conceded most of the colonials’ wishes, John Powell, who held a navy

supply contract and worshipped at King’s Chapel, recorded his hope that “the Trade…will prove

advantageous & induce [the colonists] that the Mother Country never Intended an Injury To

Them.”48 Many Bostonians remained agitated against individuals such as Charles Paxton and

Parliament, which they perceived as more and more disinclined to listen to colonists’ legitimate

concerns. In July of 1766 Charles Paxton fled to England just ahead of a mob carrying letters

from Rev. Caner and an introduction to Barlow Trecothick as a person “whose worth and Honor

are too well known to you to need my recommendation. And excepting the little invidiousness to

which his office sometimes exposes him, I suppose no man is better beloved or perhaps better

deserves it.”49 Though Anglicans and Congregationalists often debated theological issues and

many of the latter group feared the imposition of an American bishop, they mostly reviled

Paxton because of his office and the way he fulfilled it.

47 Foote, ed., Annals, 2:224-5; Greenwood, A History of King’s Chapel, 231-2; S.D. Smith, Slavery and Gentry

Capitalism, 25. Samuel Vassall ultimately represented London in two successive Parliaments in April and November

1640, receiving some compensation from that body in 1641. The monument also noted that Samuel’s father John

Vassall outfitted two ships at his own expense and joined the Royal Navy against the Spanish armada. 48 Quoted in Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots, 101. Tyler argues that this Act was less well received than historians

have assumed. 49 Caner to Trecothick, 21 July 1766, Caner Letterbook, 127.

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Anglicans Experience Non-Importation

During Paxton’s stay in London, Parliament reasserted its right to regulate colonial trade

by passing a new set of duties on glass, lead, painter’s colors, and paper manufactured in

England and tea re-exported from England to the colonies. These Townshend Acts, named after

their main architect, chancellor of the exchequer Charles Townshend, as well as the creation of a

new American board of commissioners of customs to be headquartered in Boston, sparked

renewed debate there. At a 28 October 1767 town meeting, selectmen encouraged the use and

consumption of glass and paper manufactured in the British colonies, especially Massachusetts,

and discussed a boycott these and numerous other items imported from abroad. Well aware that

Bernard’s ongoing correspondence with the ministry indirectly called for troops to keep “unruly”

Bostonians in order, the selectmen gave instructions regarding the townspeople’s “Conduct at

this very critical junction of our affair” and voted that the town would “take proper

Measures…to prevent the disturbances which have sometimes happened on or about the Fifth

Day of November,” the fateful day when Charles Paxton, Henry Hulton, and William Burch,

three of the new commissioners, arrived in Boston to begin supervising the collection of customs

duties.50 Though Henry Hulton “laughed at em [the Pope’s Day mobs] with the rest,” these

participants carried more than the usual figures of the devil, the Pope, and pretenders. Popular

opinion held that Paxton had conceived of the American board with his associate Townshend.51

The designers of one float fittingly placed an effigy of Paxton between the devil and the pope

50 Boston Town Records, 28 Oct., 1767; Archer, As if an Enemy’s Country, 66-69. 51 Dora Mae Clark, “The American Board of Customs, 1767-1783,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 45, No. 4

(Jul., 1940), 777-780.

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with a label: “Every man's ser-vant, but no man’s friend.” Many of the mob carried labels on

their breasts that read: “liberty, and property, and no commissioners.”52 Happily for the

commissioners, none sustained injuries.

Within several weeks John Robinson, former collector at Newport, and John Temple,

former surveyor general of North America, were sworn in as commissioners. While Robinson

brought an already tarnished reputation to this new position, Temple sympathized with the

Whigs and enjoyed the support of his father-in-law, James Bowdoin. Temple further saw this

promotion as a step down in status and pay.53 But both the popular party and friends of

government attempted to moderate interactions. On 20 November, town selectmen voted that

that James Otis and other leading opposition figures should move quickly to “to assist the

Selectmen and Magistrates in the suppression of all Disorders.” Town selectmen cared about the

town’s reputation and advocated townspeople to “keep your Tempers and study Moderation

when you meet with incitements artfully thrown out to beguile you into illegal measures.”

Governor Bernard further avoided organized dissent by refusing to call the General Court in the

fall and early winter of 1767.54

Even with Whigs on the defensive, friends of government lacked the proper force to

enforce the new board’s authority. In February 1768, Paxton explicitly requested military support

from his superior in England, complaining: “The Merchants of the first Character in this place

openly run whole Cargoes of Wines and Molasses &c. in defiance of the Law and the Custom-

house officers, and there is no power in the Government to prevent them. Tis the opinion of the

wisest men here that unless we have immediately three or four men of rank and at least one

52 Ann Hulton, Letters of a Loyalist Lady: Being the Letters of Anne Hulton, Sister of Henty Hulton Commissioner of

Customs at Boston 1767-1777, Cambridge, Mass., 1927). 8. 53 Clark, “The American Board,” 782. 54 Archer, As if an Enemy’s Country, 69.

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Regiment every thing will be in the greatest confusion and disorder.” 55 The following month,

after he seized the cargo of one of John Hancock’s vessels, Bostonians hanged effigies of Paxton

and another colleague in customs from the Liberty Tree. These hangings and gatherings outside

the homes of the governor and customs officials coincided with St. Patrick’s Day and the

anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act. Figures so targeted quickly pleaded for troops.56

In early May 1768, fellow proprietor at King’s Chapel and customs tidewaiter Thomas

Kirk went on board John Hancock’s sloop Liberty and found a quantity of smuggled wine. After

Kirk refused a bribe, the crew confined him while they unloaded the contraband. One of

Hancock’s employees, Captain James Marshall, threated Kirk with physical harm if he disclosed

what happened that night. Kirk did not tell his superiors until a month after Marshall’s

unexpected death. On 10 June marines from the warship Romney aided customs officers as they

seized the Liberty. Daniel Malcom ran to confront the officers from his store on Hancock’s wharf

and recounted the alleged unlawfulness of this seizure in a later deposition. While the facts of

this case remained undetermined, the customs officials came under attack as they towed the

Liberty under the guns of the Romney and, after a fearful night, moved onto the safety of the

Romney. With the notable exception of John Temple, who never found himself in danger from

the mob, the commissioners and their families moved into Castle William for the next five

months.57

55 Sabine, 153-55; “Charles Paxton to Charles Townsend, February 24, 1768,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts

Historical Society, 56 (June 1923), 349. 56 Archer, As if an Enemy’s Country, chapter 5. 57 For an overviews see Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763-

1776. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 280-283 and Archer, As if an Enemy’s Country, 82-91; For

Malcom’s and others depositions see, anon., The American gazette, a Collection of all the Authentic Addresses,

Memorials, Petitions, and Other Papers (London: G. Kearsley, at No. 1 at Ludgate Street, 1770), 101-3; for a

discussion of imperial versus whig facts and the impressment of sailors by the Romney as cause for riot, see John P.

Reid, In a Rebellious Spirit. The Argument of Facts, the “Liberty” Riot, and the Coming of the American

Revolution. (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979).

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This incident provided Bernard and Paxton definitive proof of the need for troops to keep

the peace and protect customs officials as they performed their duties. The ensuing trial between

Hancock, a leading figure in the popular movement, and customs went on for months. Bernard

shared his frustrations in a September letter to Lords Hillsborough:

The next day when the Court was opened the Grand Jury was found to have among them

several of the abettors of the Boston mobs and particularly the famous Capt Malcolm

who having twice in a forcible manner set the laws of trade at defiance with success has

thereby raised himself to be a Mob Captain and was actually the raiser of the mob which

abused the Custom House officers on the 1oth of June last[.] This man was thought a fit

person to be upon the Grand Jury before whom his own riots were to be inquired into.58

As Bernard well knew, Whig juries entered Whig verdicts. Escalating threats and violence

against crown officers and informers further polarized opinions within Boston, moving some

more moderate merchants into to ranks of the friends of government or at the least into

opposition with the goals and tactics of the mob.

On 4 April 1768 Samuel Adams published the first of three letters in the Boston Gazette.

Under the pseudonym of “A Puritan,” Adams railed against bishops and Popery. Describing the

alleged growth of popery in towns with Anglican congregations, Adams explicitly questioned

Anglicans’ commitment to civil liberties. In his second letter, he declared his fears that “much

more [was] to be dreaded from the growth of POPERY in America, than the Stamp Act or any

other Acts destructive of men’s civil rights,” further elaborating his belief “that the Stamp-Act

itself was contrived with a design only to lure the people to the habit of contemplating

themselves as slaves of men; and the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan, is mightily

easy.”59 As Adams drew a distinction between virtuous protesters and persons plotting their

enslavement to Satan, these accusations heightened prior resentments against the commissioner,

58 Governor Bernard to Lord Hillsborough, 9 September 1768, in Letters to the Ministry from Governor Bernard,

General Gage, and Commodore Hood, Volume III (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1769), 68. 59 Bell, A War of Religion, 93-96; 4, 11, and 18 April 1768, Boston Gazette. Quoted from April 11.

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crown officers, and all others who attended Anglican services. Fearing ill treatment, Paxton and

his fellow commissioners remained out of public sight until the first of several regiments arrived

in late October 1768.60 Merchant John Rowe observed in his diary on 13 November, “the

Commissioners & their officers all at [Trinity] church this day—& the first time they have

appeared in Publick.”61 Such religious ties mattered as opposition leaders protested imperial

policies, and religious language resonated powerfully with New Englanders, even when the

issues at stake seemed to principally involve secular issues. These “Puritan Letters,” and a

subsequent letter also written by Adams under the pseudonym, “A Layman,” expressed the

anxieties of some Congregationalists who witnessed the conversions of two of Increase Mather’s

great-grandsons to the episcopacy: William Walters, who became assistant minister at Trinity in

1764, succeeding Reverend William Hooper following his sudden death in 1767, and Mather

Byles Jr., who in April 1768 left his Congregational church in New London, Connecticut, to

receive episcopal ordination and take up the ministry at Christ Church, Boston. These

accusations made it increasingly difficult for Anglicans to not take a firm stand in the ongoing

dispute with Great Britain.62

The politics of John Temple, a member of Trinity Church, differed from those of his

fellow commissioners, and his friendship with his father-in-law, noted Whig merchant James

Bowdoin, shielded him from the ire of Boston’s mob. But ongoing events placed Temple under

closer scrutiny. On 10 November 1768 a Philadelphia newspaper reprinted Temple’s son’s 1764

baptism notice with a poem protesting the boy’s namesake, the originator of the Stamp Act, Lord

60 While onlookers linked the arrival of regular troops to recent events the Liberty incident, the ministry’s orders

actually predated the seizure of this particular vessel. 61 Rowe, Diary, 13 Nov., .1768, 179. 62 James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Anglicans, Dissenters, and the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2008), 96fn.

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George Grenville, “By whose fell Policy was brought to Light, / Taxation, Child of Tyranny and

Night.” Like many colonists in positions of authority and prestige, Temple owed much to British

patrons. The poet further criticized John Temple’s political aspirations: “But you, forever, Sir,

have fix’d your Claim, / You’ve rais’d a living Temple to your Fame, / [illegible], done when

Grenville first you made / a Christian Name.”63 In the wake of the military landing in Boston,

John Temple’s choice of name for his son took on added significance. As much as Temple’s

rhetoric placed him with the popular Whigs, his government position and familial and social ties

to fellow Anglican elites and the powerful Grenville clique marked him among the friends of

government.

By 1769, commissioners Henry Hulton and William Burch joined Paxton, Kirk, and

solicitor to customs Samuel Fitch as proprietors at King’s Chapel. Receiver general and customs

cashier Nathaniel Coffin similarly owned a pew at Trinity Church. In the North End, James

Barrick, clerk and inspector for customs, served on the Christ Church vestry along with the likes

of Captain Daniel Malcom, whose actions against customs drew comment from Governor

Bernard. While tensions certainly existed towards crown officers, John Rowe’s diary entries

make it clear that that Anglicans remained active members of the merchant’s club and socialized

frequently with persons readily identified as friends of government. Rowe, curiously, seemed

welcome in most circles. Rifts widened during the late 1760s, however. As attested by Caner,

contemporary events compelled Nathanial Rogers to leave the faith of his Puritan ancestors to

worship at King’s Chapel. Traveling to London in October 1767, Rogers asked for the honor of

bearing letters from Caner to the archbishop of Canterbury. As Caner wrote of Rogers, he “is

63 Anonymous, “From the Boston papers, 24 October 1764, Last week the Lady of the Honorable John Temple, Esq;

was delivered of a son, and yesterday forenoon was baptised in Trinity Church by the name of Grenville. His

Excellency General Gage and Robert Temple Esq; were sponsors.” (Philadelphia: s.n., 1768), Early American

Imprints, Series 1, no. 41825.

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warmly attach’d to the cause of liberty & partie. To that of the Colonys, yet firm in his Duty &

loyalty to the King & the british Government, and an Enemy to the factious proceedings which

have taken place here and are still cherished by too many among us,” adding, “As he is but new

in the Church of England I am persuaded that your Grace’s Condescention [sic] in permitting

him the Honor to wait on you will greatly tend to establish him in his present Choice, which is

the principle motive of my complying with his request.”64 At Anglican services, Rogers found

persons attached to order and deference to authority. The following spring, militia cadets told

the governor they would not appear in arms if he invited the commissioners to dinner.65 These

same persons remained welcome at Anglican services.

By early fall 1768 members of the popular party issued a non-importation agreement and

publically pressured Boston’s merchants, shopkeepers, and traders to sign onto it, pledging not to

order any merchandise from Great Britain, from 1 January 1769 to 1 January 1770. While

organizers boasted “great unanimity” in support of these measures, Bernard felt that

nonsubscribers would defeat the scheme “if they are sufficiently secured from Mobs.”66 The

boycott received support from Whig merchant John Hancock, as well as outspoken advocates for

colonial rights, James Otis and Samuel Adams, and the majority of merchants pledged—either

enthusiastically or begrudgingly due to public pressure—to abide by the non-importation

agreement. Anglican merchants John Erving Jr. and John Rowe served on a committee with

Hancock to enforce the embargo. Colonists depended on European goods, and proponents of the

non-importation agreement asked merchants, factors, and shopkeepers of all religious affiliations

to forgo Boston’s most lucrative trading partners.67 Of thirty-one known Anglican traders

64 Rev. Caner to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 23 Oct. 1767, Cameron, Letter-book of Henry Caner, 133. 65 Caner to Nathaniel Rogers, 5 May 1768, Letter-book of Henry Caner, 135 66 Quoted in Archer, As if An Enemy’s Country, 97. 67 See Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots, and Nicholson, “Friends of Government,” 30-31.

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approached to sign this agreement, twenty signed outright. Gilbert Deblois and Benjamin Greene

agreed to sign should it “become general.” Nine other individuals refused to sign. As seen in

Table II: Signers and Refusers of the Non-Importation Agreement, 1768-1770, whereas

Anglicans made up only 15 percent of the total sample of persons who publically signed or

refused, they comprised a third of the individuals who refused to sign this agreement.

Table II: Signers and Refusers of the Non-Importation Agreement, 1768-

1770

Religious Affiliation and the Non-Importation Agreement

Signed % of Signers Refused % of Refusals Subtotal % total

Anglicans 22 13% 9 32% 31 15%

Others 152 87% 19 68% 171 85%

Total 174 100% 28 100% 202 100%

The proposed embargo on British goods influenced the lasting political trajectories of

Bostonians more than any prior act of resistance. In the wake of these public declarations for or

against non-importation, smaller shopkeepers and certain cliques of Scottish and Anglicans

traders disproportionately felt the wrath of the merchant’s committee that enforced non-

importation. Many such traders easily viewed non-importation as a thinly veiled attempt by

prominent Whig merchants to drive competing importing retailers from the market in British

goods. Historian Colin Nicholson convincingly showed that latent tensions against Scots and

imperial Britons were manifested in mob actions against Scottish retailer Patrick McMasters and

lead commissioner Henry Hulton, whose office fostered ill-will.68 1769 also witnessed increased

violence in general as Whig merchants and popular leaders tried to compel compliance and

68 Nicolson, “’A Plan to Banish All the Scotchmen’: Victimization and Political Mobilization in Pre-Revolutionary

Boston,” Massachusetts Historical Review, Vol. 9 (2007), 55-64.

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lashed out against customs agents and informers.69 Earlier in October, a mob accosted importer

and outspoken Tory printer of the Boston Chronicle John Mein outside the residence of milliner

sisters Ame and Elizabeth Cumings. Elizabeth related that upon hearing a “violent Skreeming”

of “Kill him Kill him,” she flew to the window and saw “Mr. Meen at the head of a larg Crowd

of those who Call themselves Gentlemen, but in reality they ware no other thin Murderers for

their designe was entirely on his life.” The mob then proceeded to tar and feather a man whom

Elizabeth recognized as George Gailor, a customs informer. Elizabeth witnessed the crowd

disperse after someone fired a gun from a nearby chamber window, allowing Mein to escape.

The printer remained maligned as he published reports of Whig merchants, like John Rowe, who

violated non-importation without the types of punishment reserved for himself, McMasters, and

others.70

Like Scotsmen and newly arrived imperial administrators, Anglicans in Boston were a

minority population who were singled out for non-compliance. As seen in Table III: Violators of

the Non-Importation Agreement, eleven Anglican signers of the agreement and eight individuals

who refused to sign the agreement were later listed as violators. Gilbert Deblois and Benjamin

Greene Jr., who agreed if it was generally accepted, were also major violators. Nine additional

Anglicans—smalltime shopkeepers and traders who had not been asked to sign the agreement—

received harassment over alleged violations.71 Of these latter types, Ame and Betsy Cuming

owed much of their success to successful she-merchant and fellow Anglican Elizabeth Smith

69 Rowe, Diary, 5 & 6 Sept. 1769. In an “Affray” between James Otis and Commissioner Robinson, “Otis was badly

bruised;” See also James Murray, Extract of a letter to New York, Boston, September 30th, 1769 in James Murray

Robbins family papers, 1638-1899 (Hereafter, JMR Papers), MHS. 70 Elizabeth Cuming to Mrs Elizabeth Murray Smith, 28 October 1769, JMR Papers, MHS. On 30 Oct., 1769

Elizabeth further reported that Mr. Mein secreted himself on board the Rose; Nicholson, “A plan to banish all the

Scotchmen,” 65-67, 86; Rowe similarly imported port and received criticism from the club. Rowe, Diary, 4 Aug.

1769. 71 This data is compiled from Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots.

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(nee Murray) who gave them advice and socialized with them and other Anglican families such

as the Barneses and Debloises. The Cumings owned pew no. 36 in King’s Chapel, where they

voted in church business and met likely clients, whom they served at their nearby shop across

from the Brick Meeting House. Since they could not find colonial-made substitutes for most of

their wares, they carried on business as usual even after the merchant’s agreement. In early

November 1769 the sisters received “£300 worth of seasonable goods from Messrs. Hayley &

Hopkins at a good market.”72 Though the Cumings ordered these goods before the embargo,

members of the merchants’ committee censured them on the grounds that “that contrary to the

agreement of the Merchants of the town [the Cuming sisters] had imported goods.” As Elizabeth

complained to Mrs. Smith, however, she and her sister “had never entred into eney agreement

not to import for it was very trifling our business but that little we must do to enable us to suport

[sic] our family.” Upon the committee’s demand for the sisters to “deliver up the Goods,”

Elizabeth replied that the wares had already been unpacked and partially sold, lamenting that she

and her sister did not expect that the committee “would take [notice] or try to [injure] two

industrious girls who were Striving in an honest way to [get] their Bread.” In retaliation,

Elizabeth reported, “they have published Mr. Barnes & us in the papers.”73 Rather than serving

as a punishment, however, the newspaper report led to an increase in business for the sisters; it

was “so far from being a Disadvantage to us,” for it “Spirits up our friends to purchess from us.”

As she defiantly recounted, “I wish we had had s[e]nt for six times” the imported goods, for “if

well sorted they would soon have sold.” Elizabeth went on to inform her dear friend of the silks,

72 James Murray to Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, 12 Nov., 1769, JMR papers, MHS. 73 Elizabeth Cuming to Mrs. Smith, 20 Nov., 1769, JMR papers, MHS.

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bengals, and calicoes she hoped to soon have in stock, anticipating that “we Should find Good

sail for them in the Spring.”74

Table III: Violators of the Non-Importation Agreement, 1768-1770

Religious Affiliation and Violation of Non-Imortation

Major

violators % Major

Minor

violators % Minor Subtotal % Total

Anglicans 9 26% 21 21% 30 23%

Others 26 74% 72 73% 93 73%

Total 35 100% 98 100% 128 100%

Anglican Violators of Non-Importation

Anglican

importers

Major

violators

Minor

violators Total violators

Signed 20 2 9 11

Agreed if

general 2 2 0 2

Refused 9 2 6 8

Other -- 3 6 9

Total -- 9 21 30

Beginning in December 1769 the Cuming sisters found themselves “published” in

Boston’s Whig newspapers under the title, “A LIST of the Names of those who audaciously

continue to counteract the united Sentiments of the Body of Merchants throughout NORTH-

AMERICA; by importing British Goods contrary to the Agreement.” According to the list, these

sisters and five other individuals “preferred their own little private Advantage to the Welfare of

America.” The papers further deemed the sisters “enemies to the country” and warned that

“those who afford them their Countenance, or give them their Custom, must expect to be

considered in the same disagreeable light.”75 By providing the locations of violator’s shops,

proponents of non-importation enlisted the aid of Bostonians in pressuring and harassing named

74 Elizabeth Cuming to Mrs. Smith, 20 Nov., 1769, JMR papers, MHS. 75 Boston Evening Post, 11 December 1769.

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violators, but for the Cumings, these tactics had the opposite effect. As Elizabeth Cuming

assured Elizabeth Smith: “I dare say you are at presant anxious about us if you have sean the

Boston Pappers you have sean us mentioned as importers but dont be uneasy on our account, it

has not hurt us at all in our Business, but the revers.” Optimistically, she continued: “I think we

have mor[e] custom then before and trust in god we s[h]all make our way throu the world and

pay our debts honestly.”76

Non-importation proved a turning point for a number of moderate Anglicans who saw

friends and family, neighbors and co-religionists prosecuted for attempting to maintain their

business. After fifty dissident merchants led by Anglicans John and Jonathon Amory failed to

end non-importation, a crowd of angry Bostonians targeted the McMasters, non-natives with

presumable fewer allies. The interrelated Barnes, Coffin, Amory, and Deblois families emerged

from this experience more dedicated to upholding government against the “Body of Trade,”

gathering of hundreds of townspeople, merchants, artisans, craftsmen, and women who inspected

the conduct of traders and meted out physical intimidations. The presence of British regulars did

little to protect importers and customs agents and informers from popular justice. Indeed, many

in Boston (and even nine Anglicans) protested the arrival of the regulars. From their landing in

1768 to the outbreak of hostilities in April 1775, Anglicans experienced this occupation much

differently from their Congregational neighbors.77

76 Elizabeth Cummings to Mrs. Smith, 27 Dec. 1769, JMR papers, MHS. 77 Nicolson, “A plan to banish all the Scotchmen,” 82-83 and Nicolson, “’McIntosh, Otis &Adams Are Our

Demagogues’: Nathaniel Coffin and the Loyalist Interpretation of the Origins of the American Revolution,”

Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 108 (1996), 72-114.

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Religion and the British “Occupation” of Boston

When British naval officer William Senhouse arrived in Boston in 1768, he observed a

population “disatisfy’d with the political conduct of Great-Britain” and “greatly animated”

against the government and those in power. Senhouse and other naval officer tasked with

assisting the Commissioners in prosecuting smuggling cooperated under “penalty of 500 each for

the faithful discharge of our trust.” Senhouse observed that “the same republican & religious

opinions, introduc’d by the original settlers of New England, seem still to prevail” in Boston, but

this did not preclude him from enjoying aspects of his station. During the summer of 1768, he

met up with his former shipmate, Lieutenant Cromwell, who now lived at Boston with his step-

mother, Lady Frankland. Although much of the population saw the British as an occupying

force, some Bostonians welcomed British officers and soldiers into their homes and churches. As

noted by Senhouse, “Our time was very agre[e]ably spent at Boston, having been introduced by

Mr. [Lieut. Rupert] George to some families in the Town who shew’d us much civility and

hospitality agre[e]ably to the custom of the country.”78 Several British officers boarded at the

house of Anglican merchant Jolley Allen, who earned the ire of local patriots for his outspoken

opposition to non-importation. As Allen flagrantly imported British goods and tea, he likely saw

the officers as a necessary defense from further targeting.

Baptism, marriage, and burial records show the frequent involvement of military men in

Boston’s Anglican Churches, and such involvement only increased in 1769, when various

regiments descended on the town, camping on the Common, in barracks, warehouses, and the

homes of private citizens.79 In late March of that year, Mr. Forbes, Chaplain of the 29th

78 James C. Brandow and William Senhouse, “Memoirs of a British Naval Officer At Boston, 1768-1769: Extracts

from the Autobiography of William Senhouse,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series,

Vol. 105 (1993), 77-78, 80-81, 85-89. 79 Stark, Loyalists of Massachusetts, 258

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Regiment, whom John Rowe described as a “most delightful & charming preacher,” delivered a

sermon at Trinity Church. Two days later, Rowe, in his capacity as treasurer of the Boston

Episcopal Charitable Society, dined with prominent lay Anglicans and clergymen as well as the

Governor, Colonel Pomroy and Commodore Hood.80 At a time when many townspeople saw the

regulars as an occupying force, Anglicans welcomed members of the military into their churches.

Between 1769 and 1776, seven baptisms of military children, eleven marriages to military men,

and a handful of burials were recorded at Trinity Church. King Chapel’s Reverend Caner

similarly baptized over a dozen military children, often at Castle William, and performed eight

marriages involving soldier grooms and often local wives.81

Military participation in Anglican services and rites was a routine occurrence; however,

the Church of England remained a contested symbol of imperial authority. In 1771, for example,

after Governor Thomas Hutchinson stood as godfather to Commodore Gambier’s son and

witness for James Apthorp’s son’s christening at Christ Church, Cambridge, local newspapers

crowed about the governor’s supposed defection from the Congregational Church. Hutchinson,

of course, maintained a close friendship with Paxton. His participation at local Anglican

Churches seemed to verify longstanding suspicions regarding his religious sympathies. Four

years later the publication of one of Hutchinson’s letters confirmed that he stayed with the

church of his birth for pragmatic reasons.82 But his actions were in no way atypical. One-year

prior, Governor of New Hampshire John Wentworth Esq. and Customs Commissioner William

Burch and his wife sponsored the baptism of William Sober of John and Penelope Sober at

83 26 March 1769. 81 Between 1769 and 1776, seven baptisms of military children, eleven marriages to military men, and a handful of

burials were recorded at Trinity Church. See Andrew Oliver and James Bishop Peabody, eds.,

The records of Trinity Church, Boston,1728-1830, Vol. 56, (Boston, 1980). 82 Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, 184;

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Trinity Church.83 On 27 July 1770, Jesse Lindley, a soldier in the Fourteenth Regiment, married

Elizabeth Hillman at King’s Chapel. Lindley had been attacked months early by ‘Inhabitants”

angry at being forced to pass through a checkpoint. In a deposition after the incident, Lindley

recalled that the townspeople had said that “the damn'd Sentry had no business there, and that

they would soon drive them and all the Rest Of the Damn'd Vilians belonging to the King out of

Town.” Interestingly, though Lindsay hailed from elsewhere and his regiment had moved from

town to barracks erected at the Castle, church records noted that Lindley and Hillman were “both

of Boston.”84 As observed by historian Serena Zabin, this description of residence was a legal

definition that granted soldiers certain rights and privileges. In this case, Anglicans observed the

joining of two community members, not the marriage of a local to an unwanted outsider. The

1772 marriage of John Rowe’s niece, Susanne (Sucky) Inman, to Captain John Linzee, was

cause for a well-attended dinner and dance at the Inman residence in Cambridge. The burial of a

Captain Hay at King’s Chapel in late March 1773 also involved a procession by the Governor,

customs agents, military, and leading citizens, including Rowe.85 Later in October, Rowe met

with other Trinity vestrymen to discuss changing the time of service so that members of the 5th

and 59th regiments could attend. Reverend Walter subsequently “preached a most charming

Sermon Suitable to this Order of Government” from the 92nd Psalm.86

In response to the 1773 destruction of the tea in Boston harbor and breakdown of order,

Parliament passed a series of punitive measures in early 1774: The Boston Port Act, the

Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, the Quartering Act, and the

86 Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 56:103-104. 87 King’s Chapel marriages, 27 July 1770, King’s Chapel Records, MHS; 29 October 1769 Deposition quoted from

Zabin, 20-21 (Original in CO 5/88/196, TNA). 88 Anne Rowe Cunningham, ed., Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant: 1759-1762, 1764-1779

(Boston, 1903), 240-241. 86 Cunningham, ed., Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 255, 285-286.

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Quebec Act. These Coercive Acts, referred to as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies, closed the

port of Boston after 31 March, limited the power of Massachusetts’ elected Assembly to appoint

Council members, limited the power of Massachusetts’ courts to prosecute royal officials, made

provisions for the quartering of troops in unoccupied buildings, and granted religious freedom to

French Catholics in Quebec. The latter Act fueled Dissenters’ fears of an American bishop.

Especially in New England, the recognition of Quebec’s Roman Catholic Church affirmed past

and present anxieties regarding a kinship between the Catholic and Anglican Churches.87

Anglicans throughout New England increasingly experienced a breakdown in authority as public

officials in Boston and London attempted to ward off further escalation. Accordingly, a

significant number of Anglicans signed a May 1774 farewell address to Governor Hutchinson

and a welcome address to General Gage when he became governor of Massachusetts in June. A

year later as Gage prepared to leave to city, a significant number of Anglicans signed a farewell

letter. As the conflict escalated, these public declarations and affiliations with government came

back to haunt many Anglicans.88

Table IV: Anglicans Petitioners in Revolutionary Boston, 1774 – 1775

Farewell to

Hutchinson

Welcome to

Gage Farewell to Gage

Anglican Signers 44 47 26

Total Signers 147 156 115

% Anglican 30% 30% 23%

For the Vassall family, this period presented a set of opportunities and conflicts. From

London, Florentius Vassall managed to secure his cousin, William Vassall of Cambridge, a seat

87 James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Anglicans, Dissenters, and the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2008). 91 See Table IV: Anglican Petitioners in Revolutionary Boston, 1774-1775.

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on the Massachusetts’s mandamus council, a body charged with upholding Parliament’s

authority that replaced the colony’s Council that had formerly been elected by the House of

Representatives. Writing from Oxford in July 1774, William Vassall Jr. urged his father to

accept the post, flattering him that his advice would have a “Tendency to reestablish that

Harmony & Good Government of it has been for a long Time past utterly destitute.” Like other

provincial elites, the Vassalls cared about their family reputation. William Vassall Jr. saw this

also as “the Means of your name being as handed down to Posterity with that Honor as a public

officer.”89 Fellow Anglican appointees to the mandamus council Lieutenant Governor Thomas

Oliver, George Erving, John Erving Jr., Joseph Lee, and Isaac Royall understood this sense of

duty, as did James Lloyd, who had named a justice of the peace two years prior. Events in

Boston also prompted several Anglican youths to join the army. John Lindall Borland, who

graduated Harvard in 1772, ultimately became a lieutenant colonel. William Drummer Powell,

the son of naval supplier John Powell, became a volunteer with the British garrison in Boston.90

However, given the unique pressures of the day, William Vassall and Richard Lechmere did not

accept their commissions to the mandamus councilors. By the end of summer 1774 nearly half of

this council had resigned. That September, elected representatives from Massachusetts and

eleven other colonies attended a Congressional Congress in Philadelphia, to discuss a unified

response to the Intolerable Acts and petition the King for redress.

Religious tensions between Anglicans and Dissenters infused political debates and

threatened to undermine early efforts to unite colonial opposition. In late September, well-

respected physician Joseph Warren wrote to the printers of the Boston Gazette with an extract of

89 William Vassall Jr. to William Vassall, 13 July 1774, Temple, Nelson, Lloyd, Vassall, and Borland Family

Papers, 1611-1862 (MS Am 1250). Houghton Library, Harvard University. 93

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a letter from Samuel Adams, a member of the Congress in Philadelphia, concerning the opening

of that body in prayer:

After settling the Mode of voting, which is by giving each Colony an equal Voice,

it was agreed to open the Business with Prayer. As many of our warmest friends

are Members of the Church of England, thought it prudent as well on that as on

some other Accounts to move that the Service should be performed by a

Clergyman of that Denomination. Accordingly the Lessons of the Day and

Prayers were read by the Reverend Doctor Duche, who afterwards made a most

excellent extemporary prayer, by which he discovered himself to be a Gentleman

of Sense and Piety, and a warm advocate for the religious and civil Rights of

America.91

Given the heated religious environment in Boston and outspoken voices of Massachusetts’

Anglican clergy against “republican demagogues,” Reverend Duché’s willingness and selection

to serve as congressional chaplain spoke volumes about the appeal of the growing protest

movement and the prominence of the Church of England. Speaking to the readership of the

Gazette, Warren acknowledged “the Conduct of some few Persons of the Episcopal

Denomination, in maintaining Principles inconsistent with the Rights and Liberties of Mankind,

[which] has given Offence to some zealous friends of this Country.” In spite of this, Warren felt

obliged to broadcast that ‘the Gentlemen of the Established Church of England [in Congress] are

Men of the most just and liberal Sentiments, and are high in the Esteem of the most sensible and

resolute Defenders of the Rights of the People of this Continent.” The physician urged his

“Countrymen to avoid any thing which our Enemies may make use of to prejudice our Episcopal

Brethren against us, by representing us as disposed to disturb them in the free exercise of their

religious Privileges, to which we know they have the most undoubted Claim; and which, from a

real Regard to the Honor and Interest of my Country, and the Rights of Mankind, I hope they

will enjoy as long as the Name of America is known to the World.”92 Adams and Warren

94 Boston Gazette, 27 September 1774.

95 Boston Gazette, 27 September 1774.

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understood the importance of cultivating Anglican allies from the middle and southern colonies,

especially Anglican whigs who served as delegates to Congress. Warren’s editorial and call for

moderation attested also to the powerful fearmongering that Adams had so artfully cultivated

years prior when writing as “A Puritan.”

Anglican support for the British government was not unified during this trying year. In

October 1774, General Gage disbanded the Massachusetts Assembly, which had been meeting in

Salem, under the authority of the Massachusetts Government Act. This body, however,

continued to meet as a Provincial Congress in nearby Concord. That December partisan

congregational minister Ezra Stiles recounted several disputes between Rev. Mather Byles Jr.

and his congregation at Christ Church, Boston, regarding his pay and opening the church on

Thanksgiving Day. Stiles smugly observed that Byles’s flock was “more for Liberty than any

Episco. congregation north of Maryland.93 Among Byles’s congregants, John Pigeon played

perhaps the most prominent role among the patriots, serving on the committee of safety at

Cambridge and on a committee to estimate losses to the province from the Port Act in the fall of

1774. By February 1775 Pigeon served on a committee to observe British movements.94 Along

with Christ Church sextant Robert Newman and Paul Revere, who rang bells at Christ Church,

Pigeon’s familiarity Boston’s Christ Church may have helped them devise the famous 18 April

signal, which preceded the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, which placed

Boston under siege and prompted persons to publically declare against Britain by taking up arms.

The events of April 19 placed Boston under siege and put many Anglicans in precarious

positions. Henry Caner reacted to the outbreak of war with pragmatic resolve. Several military

93Stiles, 502. 94 Lincoln, ed., The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee

of Safety, Boston, 1838, 576.

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officers recommended Caner for chaplain of Colonel Bruce’s 65th Regiment. Since many of his

parishioners had fled, Caner was worried about his financial support and accepted the position.

He supposed “that as the Troops expect shortly to march out & engage the Enemy, the Chaplains

will be oblig’d to march with” them.95 In late April, Reverend Byles “found so implacable a

temper prevailing among the proprietors of this [Christ] Church” that he communicated to them

his desire to accept the ministry at a Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The siege

prevented Byles from leaving Boston, and he served temporarily as chaplain to several British

regiments.96

For many Anglican residing outside of Boston, these first shots signaled that they were

unsafe in their homes. Caner steadily updated his superiors in London as SPG missionaries

flocked to Boston, driven from their missions. On 2 June, for example, Caner reported to the

Secretary of the SPG that Reverend Seargent and his family fled “for [their] lives from

Cambridge.” Seargent’s church, Caner reported, was turned into a barracks by the “rebels,” and

the “beautiful organ that was in it broke in pieces.”97 The Brattle Street homes of many of

Seargent’s wealthy parishioners suffered similar vandalism and confiscation as their owners fled

popular dislike. Many persons of means fled to Halifax, Quebec, the West Indies, and England.

William Vassall, who declined a position on the Council and refrained from public declarations

against the popular party, removed with his family to Nantucket, from where he could retain

communication with his plantations in Jamaica.98 From outside Boston, John Pigeon served as

commissary for the provincial troops and took hay and other items from the estates of those like

John Vassall, who, after addressing Hutchinson and Gage, had fled to the British lines. Vassall’s

95 Henry Caner to Reverend John Breynton, 9 May 1775, in Cameron, Letter-book of Henry Caner, 163. 96 Byles to Secretary of SPG, 29 April 1775, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:579-580. 97 Caner to Secretary of SPG, 2 June 1775, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:581 98 Rowe, Diary, 10 May, 1775.

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mansion ultimately became the headquarters for General Washington when the Virginian

assumed command of the Continental Army in early July 1775. The following year, Vassall’s

twelve-year-old son, Spencer Thomas, joined the British army at the rank of ensign.99

The burial of several British fatalities from Bunker Hill at King’s Chapel highlighted the

continued role of the Anglican Church as an organ of state power. Military efforts to weather the

siege also exacerbated the real and imagined divide between Congregationalists and

Anglicans.100 On 27 October Deacon Newell recorded in his diary that “the spacious Old South

meeting house taken possession of… The pulpit pews and seats all cut to pieces and carried off

in the most savage manner as can be expressed and destined for a riding school[.] The beautiful

carved pew with the silk furniture of Deacon Hubbard's was taken down and carried to [ ]’s

house by an officer and made a hog stye[.] The above was effected by the solicitation of General

Burgoyne.”101 In early December, General Howe ordered that one hundred unoccupied wooden

buildings including the Old North Meeting House be used for firewood. Christ Church, which

was spared destruction, later became known as the Old North. The steeple of the West Meeting

House met the same fate, while the Brattle Street Church and Hollis Church became barracks.102

Though these latter measures ensured that British regulars had sufficient firewood and shelter for

the winter, Congregational besiegers saw it as further insult. After all, much of the resistance to

the Stamp Act, commemoration of “massacre” on King Street, and the drama preceding the

destruction of the tea had emanated from the Congregationalist Old South Meeting House.

99 William Lincoln, ed., The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the

Committee of Safety, Boston, 1838, 576; Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of American Revolution, 3:282-

283. 100 Foote, Annals, 2:305. 101 Quoted in Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (1903), 328. 102 Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston , 328.

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Across the river in Cambridge, continental forces lifted their cause up in prayer. Since no

Anglican clergymen were present in the patriot camp, William Palfrey, a former member of

King’s Chapel and active patriot, led services at Christ Church, Cambridge, which after being

ransacked by provincial troops the previous spring was reopened on Sunday 1 January 1776 at

the request of Mrs. Washington. Palfrey altered the usual prayer for the king with a prayer of his

own that he reported was highly complimented by General Washington and others in attendance.

However, records do not show that Washington frequented this church, which was out of favor

due to its outspoken tory clergy and parishioners. Anglican services Several days later, Palfrey

enclosed a copy of this prayer in a letter to his wife:

O Lord our heavenly Father high and mighty King of kings and Lord of lords who hast

made of one blood all the nations upon earth and whose common bounty is liberally

bestowed upon thy unworthy creatures most heartily we beseech thee to look down with

mercy on his Majesty George the Third Open his eyes and enlighten his understanding

that he may pursue the true interest of the people over whom thou in thy providence hast

placed him Remove far from him all wicked corrupt men and evil counsel lore that his

throne may be established in justice and righteousness and so replenish him with the

grace of thy Holy Spirit that he may always incline to thy will and walk in thy way Have

pity O most merciful Father upon the distresses of the inhabitants of this Western World

Succeed and prosper their endeavors for the establishment of peace liberty and safety To

that end we humbly pray thee to bless the Continental Congress Preside over their

councils and may they be led to such measures as may tend to thy glory to the

advancement of true religion and to the happiness and prosperity of thy people We also

pray thee to bless our Provincial Assemblies magistrates and all in subordinate places of

power and trust Be with thy servant the Commander in chief of the American forces

Afford him thy presence in all his undertakings strengthen him that he may vanquish and

overcome all his enemies and grant that we may in thy due time be restored to the

enjoyment of those inestimable blessings we have been deprived of by the devices of

cruel and bloodthirsty men for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.103

103 William Palfrey to Susan Palfrey, 2 Jan 1776 in Jared Sparks ed. The Library of American Biography, Volume

7(Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1848),405-6.

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Regardless of religious affiliation, persons within besieged Boston suffered for lack of

supplies. On 14 January 1776 Reverend Caner informed the SPG that with the removal of the

wealthier part of his congregation his remaining parishioners could hardly retain him.104 Persons

who often relied on religious charity had even greater need. A week later, John Rowe wrote in

his diary that “Some Good Person Put in Mr Parker’s hands, a Quantity of Provisions, Wood &

Coals to be distributed for the Poor of Trinity Church.”105

Although Rowe sympathized with the popular cause, many of his associations counted

themselves friends of government. By March, when the town awoke to find fortifications on

Dorchester Heights, Rowe lamented that his friends “John Inman, Archy McNeil & Duncan are

determined to leave me.” Notwithstanding the spilled blood and deep political divisions, the

contest now known as the American Revolution was a family affair. The interrelated Coffin,

Amory, Barnes, and Deblois families shared many sentiments as the conflict escalated through

non-importation, popular protest, and armed rebellion. But their connections also went beyond

Boston’s Anglican community. Thomas Amory’s two sisters married patriots, Timothy Newell

and Edward Payne. Even during the siege, these familial connections fostered mediation between

opposing sides. On 8 March, Timothy Newell and three fellow selectmen requested that Thomas

and Jonathon Amory, along with Peter Johonnet, carry a letter to General Washington and the

Continental Army requesting a truce during the embarkation of British troops from Boston,

for “If such an Opposition should take place we have the greatest reason to expe[ct] the Town

will be exposed to Intire destruction.”106 Though Washington disregarded these messengers, the

104 “Caner to SPG, 14 Jan., 1776” Perry, Historical Collections, 3:584 105 Rowe, Diary, 21 Jan., 1776. 106 “To George Washington from the Boston Selectmen, 8 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives

(http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-03-02-0314, ver. 2013-08-02). Source: The Papers of

George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 3, 1 January 1776 – 31 March 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase.

Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988, pp. 434–435.

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continental army respected this truce, and the city was spared as the British regulars and over

nine hundred refugees evacuated Boston on 17 March 1776.

Caner penned a final entry in King’s Chapel’s register of marriages one week before

embarking to Halifax:

An unnatural Rebellion of the Colonies against his Majesties Government obliged

the Loyal Part of his subjects to evacuate their Dwellings and Substance and to

take refuge in Halifax London and elsewhere By which means the public Worship

at King's Chapel became suspended and is likely to remain so till it shall please

God in the Course of his Providence to change the hearts of the Rebels or give

Success to his Majesties arms for suppressing the Rebellion.107

Caner made sure to pack up King’s Chapel’s communion silver and registers of baptisms,

burials, and marriages, items that, along with its parishioners, constituted the church. Caner’s

condemnation of the rebellion rang true to his understanding of religious obedience. But his

congregation split according to political appointment and occupation. Commissioners, customs

officials, and royal appointees, especially those who became mandamus councilors, fled almost

to a man, as did persons who signed addresses to Hutchinson and Gage. Numerous merchants,

traders, and distillers with business interests in England and the larger British Atlantic fled, as

well as lesser shopkeepers such as Ame and Elizabeth Cumings.

Though Anglicans comprised at least a quarter of the 937 persons who sailed with the

British fleet to Halifax, Boston’s Anglican community remained rooted to its homes and

churches. Of Anglican clergy present in Boston during the siege, Reverend Samuel Parker alone

stayed in the town to minister to those who remained. Some of these individuals continued to

actively support the rebellion, but, not surprisingly, many identified as neutrals or passive

107 Register of marriages, 10 March 1776, King’s Chapel Records, MHS.

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loyalists unwilling to militarily aid either side in the conflict. Under Parker’s leadership, Trinity

Church remained open, as he and his parishioners confronted new revolutionary legal regimes

and the many uncertainties of war.

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CHAPTER 5: ANGLICANISM AND ALLEGIANCE IN THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1776-

1789

After the Siege

For Boston’s Anglican community, the 17 March 1776 evacuation marked the

culmination of a longer process of intimidation, isolation, and removal. As resistance to

Parliamentary measures moved from spirited debate to violence and armed revolt, many friends

of government—persons who served in customs, the judiciary, or the governor’s council—

removed from Boston as a matter of duty. Escalating violence alienated a number of moderate

Anglican Whigs who could not ultimately embrace armed rebellion against the crown. Just under

half of King’s Chapel’s sixty-three pew holders vacated with the British regulars. Trinity Church

also lost key parishioners.1 All but two of King’s Chapel’s elected lay officers and half of

Trinity’s vestrymen chose exile.2 Christ Church in Boston’s North End—arguably the most

radical pro-American Anglican congregation in New England—remained closed after April

1775, when Reverend Byles Jr. resigned. Nearly a third of its pewholders departed from town.

All but two male pew holders at Christ Church in Cambridge evacuated with the British.

Eighteen Anglican clergymen accompanied the British fleet to Halifax. Boston’s senior

ministers, reverends Caner and Walters, decided that Trinity’s assistant minister Samuel Parker,

1 For a list of proprietors see Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 2: 328. 2 Foote ed., Annals, 2:330, 604, 607-608. Wardens, Sylvester Gardiner and Gilbert Deblois, and vestrymen, Lewis

Deblois, Thomas Brinley, Richard Lechmere Esq., Henry Leddle, John Vassall Esq., and George Erving Esq. all

removed. Francis Johonnot died shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in March 1775. Only Thomas Bulfinch and

John Haskins remained.

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the youngest of those with Anglican ordination and least obnoxious to the patriot cause, stay to

minister to those Anglicans who remained in Boston.3

On 24 March, one week after the evacuation, Parker read prayers from the Book of

Common Prayer with added urgency, lifting up “especially thy Servant George our King, that

under him we may be godly & quietly governed, unto his whole Council & to all that are put in

Authority under him. …strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome his enemies.”4 Since

the outbreak of armed rebellion against the king, these formerly routine professions of loyalty

had added political significance and placed a cloud of suspicion over persons who remained in

Boston during the siege and had associations with the British government, troops, and refugees.

John Rowe, merchant and church warden at Trinity, remarked that, “considering the distressing

Time,” there were still “a Good Many People at Church.”5

Over the next weeks, Massachusetts’s revolutionary authorities scrutinized persons who

had signed addresses to Governor Hutchinson and General Gage or were suspected of opposing

the patriot cause in word or deed. On 4 April, the town directed justices to arrest and examine

eighty-eight individuals, “which are, or may be complained of, having designs to act, or having

acted against the rights of this or the other United Colonies, or of having in any manner aided,

abetted, or assisted, the enemies of the United Colonies, or either of them.”6 Depending on the

evidence against them, these persons either took bonds “for their good behaviour, or appearance

at some Court proper to try them,” or were “committed to Jail.” Despite Reverend Parker’s

3 William Buell Sprague, Annals of the American Episcopal Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1857),

296. Parker received Anglican orders in London returning to Boston in 1774 several months before the closure of

the port in that same year. 4 Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 55:167-68. The church later removed this and other “offense” prayers and

petitions for the sake of the church and its proprietor’s safety. 5 Rowe, Diary, 24 March 1776. 6 Order for the arrest of John Lovell, Jun., and others, of Boston, charged with assisting the enemies of the United

Colonies, 4 April 1776, American Archives, Documents of the American Revolutionary Period, 1774-1776.

http://amarch.lib.niu.edu/about. Series 4, Volume 5, Page 1263.

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insistence on reading controversial prayers, he was not among the twenty-five known Anglicans

questioned at this time.7 John Rowe, who imported coal from Great Britain contrary to a resolve

of Congress and denied selling it during the siege of Boston, however, faced scrutiny. The

General Court deliberated on the matter and eventually deleted his name from this list. Rowe

remained a controversial figure due to his many connections to political refugees and the fact

that he contracted to supply British troops during the occupation. 8

In the midst of these suspicions and arrests, Trinity’s minister and proprietors met on

Easter Sunday, 8 April 1776, to select new lay officers. Members of the congregation first chose

John Rowe and Daniel Hubbard as wardens and nine additional vestrymen. Five of these eleven

officers had not previously served in the vestry and replaced persons who removed from Boston.

Town selectmen suspected eight of these eleven officers to be enemies of the united colonies.9

Given their dwindled numbers—only twelve proprietors were present for a meeting after church

services on April 7—and the key loss of clerical leadership at King’s Chapel, both congregations

thought of joining together for services. King’s Chapel warden Thomas Bulfinch wrote to

Trinity’s proprietors to propose that Anglicans in town “join in one Communion” and request

that Parker perform divine services at King's Chapel, which “being situated nearly in the Centre

of the Town will accommodate each Church better than either of the other Churches would.”10

7 The twenty-five known Anglicans were Vincent Ambrose, Thomas Amory, Edward Wentworth, William Perry,

John Erving, Esq., Stephen Greenleaf, Esq., John Timmins, James Perkins, Ralph Inman, Richard Green, Daniel

Hubbard, Nathaniel Brindley, George Lush, Doctor Isaac Rand, Jun., Doctor James Lloyd, Doctor Thomas Cast,

Benjamin Phillips, John Haskins, Rufus Green, Benjamin Green, Benjamin Green, Jr., Edward Davis, Caleb

Blanchard, Thomas Clemens and Job Prince. 8 Of military contractors, Rowe alone declared for the patriot cause by remaining in Boston. David E. Maas, The

Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists. (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), 214. 9 Rowe, Diary, 7 April, 1776; Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 166-7. At least six former officers removed as

loyalist. The proprietors selected Stephen Greenleaf, Rufus Greene, James Perkins, John Cutler, John Timmins,

Richard Greene, Benjamin Greene jr., and Edward Davis as vestrymen for 1776. On suspicions related to these

officers, see fn 7 above. 10 Trinity Wardens to Proprietors of King’s Chapel, 8 April 1776, in Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 167-68.

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The Proprietors of Trinity considered the proposal advisable, noting: “It is with Grief & Concern

that we behold the Church of England thro the unhappy State of this Country reduced to so small

a Number in this Town & especially that a Sister Church of such a respectable Figure as yours

has always made is not only from the same Cause so much curtailed in its Numbers but also

deprived of both its Ministers.” However, they feared that “the Shutting up our own Church &

removing our stated Place of Worship would be attended with so much Inconvenience to

Individuals & as we apprehend Detriment to ourselves as a Society.”11 The proprietors could not

“with Justice to ourselves or the other Proprietors of this Church who are now absent” consent

that services be performed at King's Chapel.

The Siege of Boston devastated many of the town’s houses of worship. In a 9 April 1776

letter to Isaac Smith in London, Congregationalist minister Andrew Eliot enumerated “the

contempt thrown upon our places of worship”:

The Old North pulled down[,] Dr Sewall's made a riding school for the Light

Horse the house gutted & the inside totally destroyed[.] Dr Cooper's Mr Howard's

& Dr Byle's turned into barracks without any appearance of necessity[.] Mr Moor

head's filled with hay[.] Mr Stillman's made an Hospital[.] Such conduct would

disgrace barbarians[.] I am quite sick of armies & am determined if possible never

to live in the same place with any considerable body of forces.12

The destruction of prominent Congregational meetinghouses necessitated that the funeral of

General Doctor Joseph Warren, who had died at the battle of Bunker Hill, be held at King’s

Chapel. Congregational minister Dr. Cooper prayed at the service, while lawyer Mr. Perez

Morton delivered an oration in which he proclaimed America’s need for independence from Great

Britain. Leading patriot elites, including Samuel Adams and John Hancock, as well as less

affluent supporters of the American cause and outspoken and reticent Tories, numbered among

11 Trinity Wardens to Proprietors of King’s Chapel, 8 April 1776, in Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 167-68. 12 Andrew Eliot to Mr Isaac Smith, London, 9 April 1776, in Foote, Annals, 2:293-294.

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Cooper’s congregation. Cooper largely avoided discussing politics from his pulpit until the siege

of Boston, when he closed the church and attached himself to the provincial army. Following the

evacuation, he returned to Boston and alongside the majority of his congregation championed

independence.13

John Rowe attended the funeral by invitation of Joseph Webb, who was later elected

Grand Master of Boston’s Masonic Lodges. As the current Grand Provincial Master of

Freemasons in Boston, Rowe intended to “Attend & Walk in Procession with the Lodges under

my Jurisdiction with our Proper Jewells & Cloathing,” but found himself, to his “great

mortification . . . very much Insulted by some furious & hot Persons with the Least Provocation.”

The episode prompted “Uneasy Reflections in [Rowe’s] mind,” he recorded, “as I am not

Conscious to myself of doing anything Prejudicial to the Cause of America either by will or

deed.”14 Many of the patriots who triumphantly returned to town had little patience for persons

with presumed sympathies with friends of government. Within days, members of King’s Chapel

agreed to join with Trinity whose members promised to accommodate them with seats so that

they might join “in all the Ordinances of the Gospel.”15 This combined congregation worshiped

raising prayers for the king and Parliament. By late May, around fifty persons took communion

there.16 Elsewhere in Massachusetts, SPG missionaries in Marblehead, Dedham, Braintree, and

Salem also read public prayers for the king and suffered various degrees of intimidation and

harassment from patriot members of their communities.

13 Charles W. Akers, “Religion and the American Revolution: Samuel Cooper and the Brattle Street Church,”

William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Jul., 1978), pp. 477-498. 14 Rowe, Diary, 8 April 1776. 15 Trinity Wardens to Proprietors of King’s Chapel, 10 April 1776, quoted in Oliver, Records of Trinity Church,

55:169. 16 Rowe, Diary, 26 May 1776.

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Declaring Allegiance: Anglicanism and the New Nation

Word of the Continental Congress’s Declaration of Independence reached Boston on 13

July. Five days later, “Independency was Declared… from the Balcony of the Council

Chamber.” John Rowe observed “A great Confusion in Town.”17 Across the colonies, this

declaration forced Anglicans to make dramatic changes to their liturgy and worship. At a

meeting of the minister, wardens, and vestry of Trinity Church that day, Reverend Parker

informed the church officers “that he could not with Safety perform the Service of the Church for

the future as the continental Congress had declared the American Provinces free & independent

States had absolved them from all Allegiance to the British Crown & had dissolved all political

Connection between them & the Realm of England.” The Sunday prior, persons had publically

interrupted the service when Parker read the “Prayers in the Liturgy of the Church for the King.”

The minister received threats and intimations “that he would be interrupted & insulted in future

if the Prayers for the King should be again read in the church.” The wardens and vestry

concluded “that the Temper & Spirit of the People in this Town was such that they would not

suffer any Prayers for the King to be publickly read in Divine Service & that there was no other

Alternative but either to shut up the Church & have no public Worship or to omit that Part of the

Liturgy wherein the King is prayed for.” Since many Anglicans could not “conscientiously

attend the Worship of Dissenters,” the church officers resolved “that it would be more for the

Interest & Cause of Episcopacy & the least Evil of the two to omit Part of the Liturgy than to

shut up the Church.” Altering the liturgy became a “sad Alternative,” which the officers hoped

would “not be imputed to them as a Fault or construed as a Want of Affection for the Liturgy of

17 Rowe, Diary, 13 & 18 July 1776.

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the Church.” In order that they might “worship in Safety & without Interuption,” the vestry and

proprietors voted unanimously that Parker “omit that Part of the Liturgy of the Church which

relates to the King.”18 By this vote, the church took out “Oh Lord save the King, and mercifully

hear us when we call upon thee” from the response after the Lord’s Prayer and the morning and

evening prayers for the king and royal family, and substituted a prayer for the church militant

with the omission of one passage: “and especially thy Servant George our King, that under him

we may be godly & quietly governed, unto his whole Council & to all that are put in Authority

under him.”19 With many Anglican ministers and congregants in exile and the safety and

decorum of their services at risk, Trinity Church pragmatically excised the British monarchy

from the liturgy of the Church of England. As described by Rowe, at the following service, “Mr

Parker omitted the petitions in the Liturgy for the King & Royal Family thinking it Prudent.”20

The majority of Anglican Churches in New England closed rather than acquiesce to

Congress and local revolutionary authorities. Several churches remained shuttered from April

1775, when a number of ministers fled from angry mobs. Other churches remained closed from

20 July 1775, when clergymen shut their doors rather than comply with Congress’s request for a

day of fasting and prayer for the American cause.21 After the mass removal of clergymen from

Boston during the evacuation, Massachusetts’s remaining clergymen had no opportunity to meet

and collectively discuss the implications of American independence. SPG missionaries Gideon

Bostwick at Great Barrington, Edward Winslow at Braintree, William Clark at Dedham, Michel

McGilchrist at Salem, Joshua Weeks at Marblehead, and James Bailey at Pownalboro continued

18 Meeting of the Minister, Wardens, and Vestry of Trinity Church, 18 July 1776, quoted in Oliver, Records of

Trinity Church, 55:170-172. 19 Meeting of the Minister, Wardens, and Vestry of Trinity Church, 18 July 1776, quoted in Oliver, Records of

Trinity Church, 55: 171. They also took out the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th petitions of the Litany and the collects

for the King in the Communion service. 20 Rowe, Diary, 21 July 1776. 21 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 161. SPG missionaries at Scituate and Bristol died in April and were not replaced.

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to read the liturgy unaltered and suffered numerous instances of harassment. After Bostwick and

many of his congregants refused to subscribe to the Test Act, the town’s committee of safety

compelled him and others to resign their arms. Local committees of safety found Winslow

inimical for his refusal to dispense with prayers for the king. Winslow told the Braintree

committee “in explicit terms that so long as I was at liberty to officiate publicly I should think it

my duty to pray for my sovereign and was determined to do so,” and as a result his name was

turned over to the general assembly “as a contumacious fomenter of alienation from the united

colonies and an avowed enemy of my native country.” 22 Only Edward Bass, SPG missionary at

Newburyport, joined Parker in revising the liturgy for public worship.

The response by Anglican clergymen to revolution varied to a great degree by region.

Connecticut’s remaining Anglican ministers met in Hartford in late July 1776 to discuss

alterations to the liturgy. All but two ministers chose to close their churches. Matthew Graves of

New London refused to comply with his congregation’s request that he discontinue reading the

offensive part of the liturgy. The following Sunday, when Graves read prayers for the king and

Parliament, he was physically removed from the pulpit. Female congregants shielded him from

physical harm and allowed him to escape. He eventually found refuge with a Whig parishioner

who protected him from the mob. Graves remained in New London for the summer, but the

church remained shut. Reverend John Beach suffered similar harassment when he read from the

liturgy; however, due to his advanced age and Anglican strength in Newtown and Reading he

was allowed to stay at his post with little additional molestation.23 Outside of New England, the

Church split more equitably in support of independence. While Jacob Duché’s congregation in

22 Winslow to Secretary of the SPG, 15 August 1776, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:694-5. 23 Rena Vassar, “The Aftermath of Revolution: Letters of Anglican Clergymen in Connecticut, 1781-1785,”

Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 41, No. 4 (DECEMBER 1972), pp. 429-461

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Philadelphia supported independence, the majority of Anglican Churches in Pennsylvania, New

Jersey, and New York closed rather than alter their liturgy, and the minister at New York City’s

Trinity Church defiantly refused to alter public worship. In contrast, the Virginia legislature and

Maryland convention revised the established church’s liturgy to exclude all references to king

and parliament. North Carolina disestablished the church, freeing individual churches to modify

their order of worship. A minority of ministers across the southern colonies opposed

independence.24

Trinity Church’s proprietors joined with Anglicans elsewhere in the United States of

America in transforming the Church liturgy to accommodate the revolution, but it is unclear how

much support existed for independence. Church members remained highly suspected of

disloyalty. On 20 July the Committee of Correspondence, Inspection, and Safety submitted the

names of thirteen persons whom it suspected were inimical to the United States and had signed

addresses to Governor Hutchinson or General Gage. Of the ten Anglicans included on this list,

Daniel Hubbard served as warden at Trinity Church, while Stephen Greenleaf, John Timmins,

James Perkins, and Richard Green served as vestrymen. Having been similarly suspected in early

April, they had accommodated the revolutionary authorities by unanimously altering their liturgy

days earlier.25 Within two weeks, three of Trinity Church’s vestrymen and three other respected

Anglicans were sent to serve exiles of 2-4 months in Brookfield, Waltham, Medford, and

Framingham. The remaining suspects remained in town, where they undoubtedly tried to avoid

further controversy.26

24 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 161-163. 25 Boston Committee of Correspondence, 20 July 1776, New England Historical and Genealogical Register,

(Boston: 1876Vol. 30:442. The remaining Anglicans included John Erving, Thomas Amory, James Lloyd, and

Nathaniel Brindley. 26 Rowe, Diary, 5 Aug. 1776. Richard Green to Brookfield for 4 Months Exile, James Perkins for 4 Months to

Medfield; John Timmins and Tho Amory 2 months to Waltham; W Perry 4 months to Medford, Nat Brinley 4

months to Framingham, and (non-Anglican) Nat Cary 4 months to Dedham.

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Some congregants likely hoped for a reversal of fortunes that would allow them to

reinsert prayers for a monarch they still viewed as rightful ruler of the church and the British

state. Anglican ministers who remained in New England saw the English Civil War as an

example of similar conflict between duties to church and state. As noted by Winslow in a letter

to the Secretary of the SPG, in that conflict, some churchmen temporarily omitted certain words

in order to preserve worship and prevent its abolition.27 As he noted, Winslow’s “church at

Braintree and Mr Clarke's at Dedham agree with us in thinking it our duty to risque [sic]the

consequence of waiting till we know the resolution of the assembly. If besides omitting the

prayers for the king it be enjoined us to use those prayers for the present rulers we determine to

shut up our churches.”28 Trinity Church adopted a more pragmatic and preemptive acceptance of

the altered political order.

On Sunday 11 August, Parker publicly acquiesced to the new authority of the United

States of America by reading the Declaration of Independence to his congregation. Elizabeth

Inman recounted this event in a letter to a friend: “I went to Church yesterday afternoon & had

the satisfaction of seeing Mr Parker stand up at head of the Middle Isle to read the Declaration of

Independance happily it was not till the service was over so those that chose it came out of

Church of which number I was one.”29 At the time of Parker’s reading, Anglicans remained

intimately connected to exiled persons who supported the British or were suspected of doing so.

Gilbert Deblois’s wife, Ann Deblois’ (née Coffin), remained in Boston after he fled with the

British to Halifax. Her sister and fellow congregant, Elizabeth Coffin Amory, underwent a

27 Winslow to Secretary of the SPG, 15 August 1776, Perry, historical collections, 3:694-5. “As to the omission I

humbly presume we may be justified in complying so far in order to preserve the essential parts of our worship and

prevent its being wholly abolished I presume also that we are not without some precedents of venerable authority

from a similar practice under Cromwell's usurpation” 28 Winslow to Secretary of the SPG, 15 August 1776, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:694-5. 29 Mrs. Inman to Catherine [Goldwaithe?], 12 Aug. 1776, Murray-Robbins family papers, MHS.

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similarly agonizing experience. Her husband, Thomas Amory, served a two-month exile in

Waltham as punishment for his signing an address to Gage and unacceptable familiarity with

British troops. These women’s three brothers (distiller John Coffin, customs cashier Nathaniel,

and broker William Coffin Jr.) fled Boston with the British. Mrs. Inman’s brother James Murray

similarly fled, leaving his daughters under Mrs. Inman’s care.

Regardless of their feelings toward independence, Inman and her fellow congregants

wished for an end of hostilities. In the same letter, Inman confessed that “while this unhappy

War continues I feel that kind of restless anxiety which will never allow me one hours peace

while my mind is thus cruelly tortured… surely the Blessings of Peace will never compensate for

what we now suffer.” 30 Relatives living abroad felt similarly out of touch. In a 13 August 1776

letter to Mrs. Inman, another sibling, J. Bennet, wrote from Scotland asking for intelligence from

Boston. She “tremble[d] at the thoughts of what our friends & Countrymen may suffer, before

this affair is ended” and reported that several acquaintances serving in the military might be sent

to America. Bennet also relayed the troubling news that William Hooper, the son of Trinity’s

former minister and a fellow Scot, served as a delegate to the Continental Congress from North

Carolina. Having heard nothing from her friends in Boston, Bennett hoped her brother had

“found out a way of conveying our letters to Boston, and hearing of our friends there.”31

The Revolution created financial hardships for many who remained in Massachusetts.

Affluent Anglicans in hard economic straits called upon longstanding associations and new

authorities within the United States and Massachusetts. Harriet Temple, née Shirley, resided

outside of Boston at Ten Hill Farm, where, following her husband Robert’s removal to England

in May 1775, she received the protection of General Ward of the Continental Army. Despite Mr.

30 Mrs. Inman to Catherine [Goldwaithe?], 12 Aug. 1776, Murray-Robbins family papers, MHS. 31 J. Bennett to James Murray, 13 Aug 1776, Murray Robbins papers, MHS.

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Temple’s best efforts, many saw him as a Tory, especially when he left the colonies. By August

1776 Robert Temple worked from New York to gain permission from Sir William Howe and

General Washington to return to Massachusetts. Alone on the farm, Mrs. Temple made

numerous attempts to obtain compensation for trees that the continentals had cut down and used

for firewood during the winter of 1775/1776. After getting no response from Massachusetts

governor John Hancock, Mrs. Temple enlisted the help of fellow Massachusetts elites.32

Harriet Temple’s immediate circle of friends and her husband’s business associates were

largely Anglican. Many had fled with the British. Writing to delegate John Adams in

Philadelphia in August 1776, she explained her “present distrest Situation, without Money, and

without friends, most of my friends being fled to Halifax, as well as the Gentleman, on whom

Mr. Temple, left me a Credit, so that I have no Conections left behind that can releive me, till

Mr. Temple arrives which is rendered uncertain, if not impossible, by means of the present

War.”33 On 21 August Adams informed her that Congress had approved her husband’s return to

New England. Adams further reported that Hancock knew of her application for compensation

and had taken the matter up with General Washington: “The General expressed, the utmost

Concern for Mrs. Temple and her Family, and wished her Relief, but there were so many other

Persons in the Same unhappy Predicament, that he did not see, how one could be relieved

without establishing a Precedent for all.” However, Harriet had friends in Congress, and Adams

showed her letter to “Mr. Hooper of N. Carolina, and several other Gentlemen” and promised to

move that it be considered in Congress.34 James Bowdoin, whose daughter Elizabeth was

32 James Bowdoin, John Warren, Mercy Otis Warren, John Adams, and Abigail Adams. 33 Harriet Temple to John Adams, Ten Hills Farm, 10 Aug., 1776, Founding Families: Digital Editions of the

Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2007. 34 John Adams to Harriet Temple, Philadelphia, 21 Aug., 1776, Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of

the Winthrops and the Adamses.

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married to Robert’s brother provided testimony in favor of Temple. Upon Temple’s return to

Boston in August, a committee of safety found letters from enemies of the state, George Inman

and Captain Linzee, on his person. Linzee had married George’s sister, Sucky, before Lexington

and Concord. His father-in-law, Ralph Inman remained in Massachusetts despite his public

opposition to independence. By late September, Temple convinced authorities that he posed no

threat to the United States and rejoined his wife. 35

The closure of Anglican Churches and removal of principal patrons disrupted church

business and profoundly impacted congregants who relied on poor relief. The treasurer of the

Greene Foundation, which supported the assistant minister at Trinity, had removed from Boston

and had in his possession bonds and funds belonging to the foundation. At a September 1776

meeting the trustees appointed a new treasurer and directed him to request payment of interest

that bond holders indebted to the foundation “know or suppose to be now due on their several

Bonds or Obligations.”36 The new officer was empowered to give receipts that were “equally

binding as if the same were endorsed on the original Obligation.”37 This matter impacted

Parker’s livelihood, since he officiated in the capacity of assistant minister.

Trinity’s elected vestrymen and wardens continued to collect and distribute poor relief,

and female congregants—many of whose relatives and friends were in exile or suspected of

being inimical to the United States—played a key role in maintaining connections with church

patrons who had fled abroad. Writing in March of 1777, Elizabeth Inman informed Gilbert

Deblois that Reverend Sargent of Christ Church, Cambridge lay “in the agonys of death,”

35 Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, 1904–

1937; 34 vols. 5:699,713; Lorenzo Sabine, Lorenzo. Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution,

with an Historical Essay. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1864), 2:349; Rowe, Diary, 25 Sept., 1776. “Rob Temple

is come to Town by him we hear from Geo lnman Cap Linzee Mrs Linzee.” 36 Meeting of the Trustees of the Green Foundation, 15 September 1776, Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 55:489. 37 Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 55:483-486. Quote on 484.

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leaving a wife and “four children (three of them infants) destitute of every means of support.” 38

John Vassall, one of the church’s leading proprietors, had previously given the minister use of a

house and a small piece of land, which provincial soldiers took use of during the siege. Mrs.

Inman asked Deblois to ascertain “what compensation Mr. Vassall will make Mrs. Sargent in her

deplorable situation” and requested that Deblois “procure for her [Mrs. Sargent] a written

agreement and keep it in your own hands, only to make her acquainted with the purport of it in a

letter to Mrs. Deblois.”39 Correspondence with exiles exposed the Inmans to repercussions. In

Mrs. Inman’s letter to Mr. Deblois, she passed Mr. Ralph Inman’s greetings to all of his

acquaintances, noting that her husband’s “situation is such that he must not write.”40 Inman was

twice considered inimical to the American cause.

State and local authorities in Massachusetts instituted a legal measure to root out dissent

and resistance to independence. In March 1777 the General Court passed a law “forbidding all

expressions in preaching and praying that may discountenance the People's support of the

independency of these colonies on the British Empire on the Penalty of £50.”41 This act

prompted Anglican clergymen Henry McGilchrist, Samuel Weeks, Edward Winslow, and

William Clark to close their churches. In a statement to his congregation, Clark articulated the

seriousness of his allegiance:

My Brethren, I may now properly inform you that since we last met together for

public worship. I have seen an act lately passed our General Court. You all know

that in my preaching I have generally avoided these matters, and so far I could

reconcile my performances to the act. But by vows, oaths and subscriptions which

have been made on Earth and recorded in heaven I am obliged to act as a dutiful

subject of His most gracious Majesty, King George the Third, and to the constant

38 Mrs. Inman to Gilbert Deblois, Boston, 9 March, 1777, JMR papers. 39 Mrs. Inman to Gilbert Deblois, Boston, 9 March, 1777, JMR papers. 40 Mrs. Inman to Gilbert Deblois, Boston, 9 March, 1777, JMR papers. While Elizabeth Murray Smith and Ralph

Inman married at King’s Chapel, Mr. Inman served as the first treasurers of Christ Church, Cambridge and

maintained a pew there. 41 William Clark to Secretary of the SPG, Perry, Historical Collections, 3: 591-59.

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use of the Liturgy of the Church of which under God he is the head. I mean

whenever I perform publicly, and you all must know that there are various

expressions in this liturgy which plainly discountenance all kinds of rebellion and

opposition to his Kingly Government, and the very naming of him as our most

gracious Sovereign, is I suppose sufficient to break the law. To give up these

petitions or prayers while I use the other prayers is against the present light of my

own conscience. Both my oath of allegiance (which neither the Congress,

however respectable in their personal characters, nor the Pope himself can absolve

me from, - both my oath of allegiance I say) and my solemnly subscribing to use

the Liturgy strongly unite to oblige me to pray for the King's majesty till such

time as he shall be pleased to relinquish his right of Government or jurisdiction

over these Colonies. Then and not till then shall I think myself lawfully and

properly absolved from my oath of allegiance, and all obligations arising from my

subscription will fall of course.42

Speaking in all likelihood to a congregation with mixed political sentiments, Clark laid out a

principled stance, stopping short of refuting American colonial authority. Though Clark’s oath of

allegiance forbade him from modifying the liturgy, the minister made clear his willingness to

give up praying for the king if in the future the king relinquished his authority.

By mid-May 1777, Boston’s Committee of Safety drew up another list of suspected

disloyal persons whom it placed on trial. Twelve of the twenty-nine persons (40 percent) were

Anglicans. Thomas Amory, Richard Green, and James Perkins had all previously served periods

of exile. They all served as lay officials at Trinity, with fellow suspects George Bethune and

Daniel Hubbard.43 After the suspects vowed to refrain from contact with persons termed enemies

of the state, the town released most of the suspects on bond. However, several individuals faced

further prosecution. Doctor James Lloyd had formerly served as a vestryman at King’s Chapel

42 William Clark’s Address, March 1777, Perry, Historical Collections, 3: 591-592. 43 Proprietors chose these individuals at Trinity’s annual Proprietor’s meeting on 31 March, 1777, Oliver, Records of

Trinity Church, 172; For the May 1777 list of inimical persons see Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications

of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 5: Transactions 1897, 1898. 260-262. Doctor James Lloyd,

Doctor Isaac Rand, Doctor Thomas Kast, William Perry, John Erving, and Edward Wentworth were also Anglican.

War Board Minutes show that the military confiscated goods of numerous Anglicans, such as refugee, Gilbert

Deblois, and suspected loyalist, Thomas Amory. Ralph Inman also struggled to retain property even as he remained

in Massachusetts and Martin Brimmer acted as agent seeking to stop the state’s confiscation of Thomas Apthorp’s

property. See Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 189-192, 327 (fn 114)

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and was a well-respected physician. His brother, Henry, and many friends and business

associates had removed from the town as loyalists, and the committee relied on testimony from

neighbors and acquaintances regarding Lloyd’s character and fidelity. According to James

Bowdoin, “Before separation of 1776 Doctor Lloyd was reputed to be and I always conceived

him to be a true & faithful subject of the king of Great Britain; that judging by his conduct &

character he continued to be so to the time of and after the evacuation of the British troops.”

Bowdoin saw no reason to believe that this loyalty had changed: “my knowledge of him has ever

supported the character of a Gentleman of integrity and honor.”44

In addition to their pursuit of enemies of the country, the Committee of Safety required

individuals take an oath of allegiance and fidelity to the state. For men of honor, such oaths

mattered. Lloyd refused, declaring “that he never would take up arms against the king and

fight.”45 For his refusal, Constable Joseph Greenleaf placed him in jail. Eventually, Benjamin

Hitchborn, councilor of law, said Lloyd would swear the oath. According to Greenleaf’s

testimony, Lloyd “held up his hand (the custom in this country) for that purpose. When the

ceremony was half performed he withdrew his hand saying he would not fight against the king,

and thereby put an end to it—being again persuaded by said Hitchborn He again raised his hand

according to the usual mode and in this commonwealth and he was by me the said Justice

discharged from the custody of the Constable.”46

The irregularity of Lloyd’s oath prompted a review of this swearing and the doctor’s

character and honor. Several of Lloyd’s neighbors, as well as other persons similarly accused of

44 James Bowdoin deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown. Boston, 1777 – 1778,

(43), Temple, Nelson, Lloyd, Vassall, and Borland Family Papers, 1611-1862 (MS Am 1250). Houghton Library,

Harvard University (Hereafter, Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers, HL). 45 Bowdoin deposition, undated [1777-78], Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers, HL. 46 Joseph Greenleaf deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78],

(43), Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers, HL.

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disloyalty to the United States, provided testimony. Councilor John Lowell recalled that the

“Doctor was considered when the town was first opened [after evacuation] as a Tory or Friend to

the British Government & many people to my knowledge were clamorous at his being permitted

to remain.” Lowell, however, “esteemed [Lloyd] an honest open man without artifice & was

useful in his profession.” In conversation with Lowell, the doctor stated unequivocally that his

allegiance to the king “would not be dissolved without the consent of his Sovereign.” Lloyd

professed willingness to “endure Difficulties” rather than any act contrary to that allegiance, for

he was a “man of too much honour to betray that secret.” After Lloyd’s liberation, Lowell “found

him possessed of the Same Sentiments & considering his compliance with the terms presented as

produced by Duress.”47 Oliver Wendell of Boston knew Lloyd well, having lived next to him for

seven years and employed the physician for his family. Wendell “ever thought him firmly

attach’d to the Cause of the King, and never heard the least doubt of the fact.” Unlike Wendell

and “the greatest part of the Inhabitants that were attached to the American cause,” Lloyd

remained in Boston during the siege. But Wendell retained “the greatest confidence in his

honor.” As he elaborated: “I offered myself to be his Bondsman, and was accordingly surety to

him in a bond to the State, the condition of which was that he should refrain from corresponding

with his Brother Henry Lloyd and all other British Subjects—I have no reason to think that the

sentiments of Doctor Lloyd were changed after his imprisonment and I am auspicious that he

would have Suffered imprisonment, exile or any other punishment rather than take up arms

against the King of England.”48 Despite, Lloyd’s attachment to Britain, Wendell saw the

physician as a valuable member of the community, deserving leniency.

47 John Lowell deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78], (43),

Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers. 48 Oliver Wendell deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78],

(43), Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers.

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Fellow physicians Samuel Danforth and Isaac Rand also initially refused to swear the

oath of allegiance. Their remembrances of Lloyd’s predicament show the physician’s state of

mind during his imprisonment. Danforth recalled Lloyd’s resolve “to abide every consequence

rather than comply.” 49 However, Lloyd ultimately gave in: “The distress’d situation of his

family being represented to him by his friends & being assured” by a lawyer present at the jail

“that he was the Subject of duress & that he never could be responsible for any act necessarily

resulting from such a situation.” 50 While Justice Joseph Greenleaf administered the ensuing oath,

“the Doctor expressed the utmost reluctance & more than once interrupted the Esquire by

declaring that he would never bear arms against the British government.”51 Fellow Anglican,

Isaac Rand recalled a similar exchange after the judge tendered the oath to them: “Doctor Lloyd

pointedly declared that he would not bear arms against the British Nation, or words of a similar

import—Which expressions gave such umbrage to some of the Committee, that they observ’d,

Mr Greenleaf could not consistently administer the Oath to him. However[,] after some

conversation between the Justice and the Committee, Doctor Lloyd took the oath of Allegiance

[and Fidelity to this State] with the reservations he had made.”52

William Cooper, then secretary to the Committee, sympathized with his neighbor and

family doctor. Though “warmly attached to the American cause,” Cooper “could not help

recommending to the Doctor a much greater Reserve with Respect to his political Sentiments &

conduct, as I feared the overflowing of his Loyalty might deprive this Friend & the Town of a

49 Samuel Danforth deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78],

(43), Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers. 50 Samuel Danforth deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78],

(43), Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers. 51 Samuel Danforth deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, (43), Lloyd,

Vassall, Borland Papers. 52 Isaac Rand deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78], (43),

Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers.

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Physician & Citizen that had been highly esteemed.” Cooper further testified that “it was the

opinion of many others besides myself that he was indeed to take the oath at last, upon the legal

construction of such Oaths, that no one was bound in conscience to adhere to an Oath which he

had taken while under duress, tho’ at the same time I was persuaded, that the Doctor’s Honor

was too great to permit his afterwards Corresponding with the Enemy, or doing any Act in

opposition to the Authority” of Massachusetts.53 Not satisfied with Lloyd’s fidelity, several

members of the Committee angrily protested the “extra judicial Act of the Magistrate” who

released these prisoners. The case made its way to the Massachusetts House of Representatives,

which resolved on 15 February 1778 that James Lloyd, Samuel Danforth, Isaac Rand, and

George Lush were “entitled to the Benefits of said Act notwithstanding any Irregularities in the

Proceeding of the Justice who Administered the said Oath.”54 The irregularity of their oath

passed legal review and marked them as committed neutrals in the war with Great Britain.

The prospect of taking up arms against the British government was a point of anxiety for

passive loyalists and disaffected persons who remained in the United States during the conflict.

In January 1776 the Massachusetts legislature required men ages sixteen to fifty muster at least

eight times per year or pay a penalty. During his prosecution, Lloyd received several draft

notices and paid the Massachusetts government sixty shillings for three nonappearances at

musters.55 Massachusetts authorities drafted fellow Anglicans Isaac Rand, Ralph Inman, James

Perkins, John Erving, Daniel Hubbard, Benjamin Phillips, John Timmins, Thomas Cast, Stephen

Cleverly, Benjamin Green, Richard Green, Stephen Greenleaf, and Thomas Amory. Cast and

53 William Cooper deposition, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British crown, undated [1777-78],

Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers. 54 Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 120; Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British

crown, folder 43, Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers. 55 Receipts for fines paid for nonappearances at muster, in Papers concerning James Lloyd's loyalty to the British

crown, Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers, Houghton Library.

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Cleverly each paid a fine rather than bear arms. No record of military service exists for the other

men. After being drafted, listed as inimical to the state, and serving a two-month exile, Timmins

and his wife eventually removed to London.56

Anglican women—many of whose husbands were abroad as refugees—were never

required to declare loyalty to the new state. Elizabeth Inman actively aided Colonel Archibald

Campbell of the 71st Highlanders, who was captured in June 1776. In addition to providing food

and alcohol to Campbell and other prisoners, Inman secretly communicated the latest

intelligence of the war and facilitated a prisoner exchange—Campbell for Ethan Allen.57 Inman

embraced this opportunity to aid the enemy.

Other congregants took advantage of opportunities for freedom and profit. In January

1777, Lancaster Hill and seven fellow free blacks, including Prince Hall, petitioned the

Massachusetts legislature on behalf of “A Great Number of Blackes detained in a State of

slavery in the Bowels of a free & Christian Country.”58 Evoking their “Natural and Unaliable

Right” to freedom, the petitioners questioned the morality of their capture in Africa, describing

themselves as “Unjustly Dragged by the hand of cruel Power from their Derest friends and sum

of them Even torn from the Embraces of their tender Parents… Brough[t] hear Either to Be sold

Like Beast of Burthen & Like them Condemnd to Slavery for Life—Among A People Profesing

the mild Religion of Jesus.”59 While this petition was ignored, baptism and burial records show

continued participation by free and enslaved Africans from Christ Church and King’s Chapel.

56 Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 214; Sabine, Biographical Sketches, 2:356; Thwing, [15848]. 57 Kacy Tillman, “What is a Female Loyalist?” Common-place The Interactive Journal of Early American Life, Vol.

13, No. 4 (Summer, 2013), http://www.common-place.org/vol-13/no-04/tillman/ 58 Petition for freedom to Massachusetts legislature, 13 January 1777, Massachusetts Historical Collections, Fifth

Series, No. 3 (Boston, 1788). 59 Petition for freedom to Massachusetts legislature, 13 January 1777.

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Anglican worship remained controversial elsewhere in Massachusetts, yet clergymen

continued to serve the needs of their congregations. Dedham authorities arrested Reverend Clark

in June 1777 and confined him to house arrest. In a letter to the SPG, Clark confided his hopes

that his actions in shutting his church were agreeable to the Society. “I could not with integrity

and a good conscience omit those prayers at least I could not do it with so much comfort and

ease of mind without the direction of my diocesan and therefore thought it most prudent to shut

up my church.”60 However, even under house arrest, Clark read “constantly every Sunday so

much of the Liturgy as the times will bear in private where I suppose myself to have that liberty

in modelling the prayers that I have not in public and some that are not too fearful and disposed

for it join with me and I do all the parochial duty in other respects that I can do within a mile.” In

July Clark clarified his choice to close public worship: “I had not the least prospect of obtaining

my liberty unless I would renounce my allegiance and declare for independency which I could

not in conscience comply with till the King shall be pleased to declare the Colonies

independent.”61 After closing his church, Reverend Weeks remained at Marblehead: “After this I

frequently visited my flock from house to house instructed their children comforted them under

their troubles and endeavoured to encourage them in their religion and loyalty.”62 Beyond their

political inclinations toward the king, both ministers performed vital religious rites for members

of their congregations and Anglicans in nearby towns whose clergymen had fled abroad.

The fate of Anglican buildings in Boston remained in question as the Revolution

continued. In appreciation of Parker’s extraordinary service, his parishioners voted him a gratuity

of £75 and gave him the salary of their incumbent minister, William Wheeler, in addition to his

60 Clark to Secretary SPG, 9 January 1778, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:595. 61 Clark to Secretary SPG, 5 January & 6 July 1778, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:595-597. 62 Reverend Weeks, State of the Church in 1778, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:601.

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salary as assistant, provided Wheeler did not return.63 By the fall of 1777 Boston’s Old South

Society, whose meetinghouse had been misused as a riding school, received use of King’s

Chapel. This accommodation likely prevented damage to the chapel, which, since its

construction in 1688, served as a symbol of British authority. However, its refugee minister had

little faith that it would reopen. Writing from London in early 1778, Henry Caner requested that

Reverend John Breynton in Halifax ship him the Church plate that had been left their following

the evacuation of Boston. “As it may be some years before the Church at Boston will be open’d

again, if it ever be so,” Caner wished to deposit the materials with one of his church wardens in

England.64

The Anglican Church remained a target of popular rage. In early June 1778, a Cambridge

sentry shot and killed a British prisoner of war, Lieutenant Richard Browne, who was driving a

carriage with several local women. British officers requested use of Christ Church, Cambridge,

for the burial, and the church reopened for a sunset ceremony so that Browne could be interred in

the John Vassall tomb. Enraged locals seized this opportunity to loot the building, destroying the

pulpit, reading desk, and breaking up the pipes of the organ.65

Later that summer, Congress gave the French use of Christ Church, Boston, for services.

Concerned proprietors who remained in Boston persuaded Reverend Parker to read Sunday

afternoon prayers there to keep title to the church.66 In addition to reading prayers and delivering

sermons, Parker baptized scores of children in the years following independence. On 6 April of

1779, John Rowe stood sponsor to John Haskin’s son, Ralph, and later met with members of the

63 Trinity Proprietors Meeting, 31 March 1777, Records of Trinity Church, 55: 172-173. 64 Caner to Breynton, 10 January 1778, Cameron, Letterbook of Henry Caner, 175. 65 James H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution. (Boston: J.H.

Stark, 1910), 353. The British and Hessian prisoners encamped in Cambridge had been captured at the October 1777

battle of Saratoga. 66 Reverend Weeks, State of the Church in 1778, Perry, Historical Collections, 3:599-601.

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Charitable Society at his home. Two days later, Mr. Greenlead, Mrs. Inman, and Mrs. Amory

sponsored Parker’s daughter, Elizabeth.67 As before the war, this sacrament welcomed children

into the church and paired them with adults responsible for their religious education.

Interestingly, free blacks played a more visible role as baptism sponsors for children born to

parishioners of color.

Many leading parishioners remained sympathetic to the plight of SPG missionaries. In

late July 1778, Reverend Jacob Bailey of Pownalborough, who since Independence had refused

to omit prayers for the king, made his way to Boston. After Reverend Parker and his wife

welcomed Bailey “with the highest tokens of tenderness and friendship,” Parker “gave a very

discouraging detail of publick affairs…that a large French fleet had certainly arrived… and that

it was apprehended that the Americans and French with their united efforts would be able to

expel the forces of the Crown from the Continent.”68 Bailey delivered divine services and a

prayer the following Sunday, presumably avoiding controversial passages from the liturgy.

During the week he socialized with numerous ladies and gentlemen and found them sympathetic

to his persecutions. On 27 July he called upon Mr. Haskins, who gave him fifteen dollars and

accompanied him to Mr. Inman’s. Haskins and Mrs. Inman introduced Bailey to other guests,

Mrs. William Coffin and her daughter Peggy, “as a distressed brother.” The minister quickly

perceived that Mrs. Coffin’s husband, William, and several of her sons were in the British

service at New York. The group discussed a rumor that a British fleet had arrived or were near

the coast of America, which “was some refreshment to our dejected spirits.”69 On the first

67 Rowe, Diary, 6 & 8 April, 13 & 20 June, 1779. 68 Jacob Bailey Journal 22 July, 1778, in Protestant Episcopal Historical Society, Collections of the Protestant

Episcopal Historical Society, Volume 2, The Frontier Missionary: A Memoir of the Life of Jacob Bailey (New York:

Stanford and Swords, 1853), 355. 69 Bailey Journal, 27 July, 1778, in A Memoir of the Life of Jacob Bailey, 356.

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Sunday in August, Bailey attended Trinity and was given a guinea by one of the congregants.

After evening service, he attended tea with a number of Anglicans. He especially relished his

conversation with William Cheever, who told him “that when the high sons [of liberty] perceived

that a number of Tories had taken the oath of allegiance they were so enraged as to threaten them

with immediate destruction calling them rogues villains &c.” Later that evening Parker

recounted a visit with Mrs. Hooper of Newbury, who had heard lately from Halifax about “such

intelligence as must give the friends of government the most ample satisfaction.”70 Lay

Anglicans generously donated to Bailey during his stay in Boston. He received several hundred

dollars from a number of individuals as well as thirty dollars from Trinity’s wardens.71 He

returned to Pownalborough with a favorable impression that the war was turning in the king’s

favor, directions from Mather Byles Jr. in Halifax to draw £50 from a London collection for the

suffering clergymen in America, and assurances from a close associate that “every person in

Canada who suffered by the ravages of the American rebels had their losses fully made up.”72

Knowledge of this fund for clergymen and assistance for loyalists prompted many, like Bailey, to

eventually remove to Halifax.

Loyalists and a Religious Cause of the Revolution

King’s Chapel book of baptisms, which Reverend Caner took with him from Boston,

made its way to Halifax and eventually Chelsea, England, where Reverend East Apthorp

recorded the 18 February 1777 baptism of his nephew, John Apthorp, son of William and Mary

70 Bailey Journal, 2 August, 1778, A Memoir of the Life of Jacob Bailey, 359. 71 Haskins, Thomas Amory, and James Lloyd all donated between 9 and fifteen dollars. Church wardens gave thirty

dollars. A Mr. Erskine, nephew to Sir William Erskine, Colonel of the Edinborough Regiment, gave Bailey two

hundred seventeen dollars. 72 Bailey, Journal, 4 August 1778, A Memoir of the Life of Jacob Bailey, 117, 360.

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Apthorp. Within this family, William Apthorp and his brother Thomas fled Boston as loyalists.

Siblings James Apthorp and Mrs. Susan (née Apthorp) Bulfinch remained in Boston; John and

East Apthorp and Grizzel Trecothick already resided in England; while Charles Ward Apthorp

and Elizabeth Bayard, née Apthorp, who remained in New York City under its British

occupation, served as baptism sponsors of their young nephew. On this occasion, William

Apthorp and Sarah Gore stood proxy for them. East, Charles Ward, and John Apthorp remained

members of the SPG. Though separated by distance and opposing armies, these siblings shared

an affinity for Boston. Their father was buried in the family crypt beneath King’s Chapel and

their mother, Grizzel Apthorp, who remained in Boston, and the Bulfinch family now worshiped

at Trinity Church, where the family also owned several pews. Numerous exiles, however,

experienced frustration as they contemplated life and death away from home. After the passage

of a series of laws that prevented the return of loyalists, ailing Charles Paxton confided to former

Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson that “he would give 100 guineas to be laid by his

father and mother under the Chapel in Boston.”73

Under the 1778 Test Act, absentees who had joined the British after 19 April 1775 were

barred from entering the state. Six months later, the legislature banned the return of 308

individuals. Under these laws, persons who voluntarily returned into the state without liberty first

from the general court would upon conviction “suffer the pains death without benefit of

clergy.”74 In April 1779, the state took on the confiscation of the “estates of certain notorious

conspirators against the government” and persons who left or aided the enemy since 19 April

73 Hutchinson, Peter Orlando ed. The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Volume II (Boston:

Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1886), 240-241. 74 Stark, Loyalists of Massachusetts, 140; Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 402-408.

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1775.75 While these acts succeeded in excising so-called loyalists from the new state, Anglicans

who were abroad remained in close touch with family and friends. John Amory, who since 1775

had been absent from Boston, his nine children, and his brothers, Jonathan and Thomas, tested

the law soon after its passage. After returning to Massachusetts, he offered to take the oath, pay

taxes, live peaceably, and not conspire, but refused to bear arms. The legislature unanimously

decided against him and ordered him to Rhode Island on punishment of death.76 Later that year,

James Murray in Halifax informed Gilbert Deblois in London about the course of the war and his

hope that “all may yet be well & soon.” However, the purpose of his letter remained personal.

Murray suggested that “Had you [Deblois] sent the shoes you mention & the Articles for Mrs.

Deblois to this place instead of New York, there would have been opportunities of forwarding

them by cartels.” Deblois’ wife and several sons remained in Boston, as did Murray’s sister, Mrs.

Elizabeth Inman, and two daughters. By neutral vessels, Murray had heard news that “your &

our Families were well.”77 Writing from Quebec in November 1779 John Coffin lamented the

distance between him and his brother-in-law and sister, Thomas and Elizabeth Amory: “I have a

strong inclination to see some of my particular Friends of Boston. I would meet you half way for

the sake of a few Hours conversation, but as I know you won[’]t agree to this proposal, must

defer our chat till Great Britain & America are in better humour with each other. I have a

thousand things to say to Sister Amory & you, but as this may be an open Letter before it reaches

you, can say no more than that your Family have our most sincere wishes for their Health &

75 Stark, Loyalists of Massachusetts, 140-144; Prior to these acts, patriots refused to pay debts owed to loyalists and

entered into litigation with absentees unable to appear in court. Leading patriots, politicians, and military officers

benefited taking spoils of war from departed loyalists. See Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 277-

318. 76 Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 400. 77 James Murray to Gilbert Deblois, Halifax, 3 Oct., 1778, Amory Family Papers, Personal papers, 1725-1890

(Hereafter, Amory Papers), MHS.

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happiness”78 John entrusted his brother-in-law to give his and Mrs. Coffin’s affectionate regards

to the several families and friends. He informed the Amorys that Mrs. Elizabeth Coffin, née

Childs, wrote her sister separately. John relayed his concerns for this sister: “I am anxious to

know what she [the sister] is doing, as I am apprehensive she feels a great share of the distress of

these disagreeable times” 79

Many Anglican exiles turned to religion for solace and understanding. In August 1779

Henry Caner counseled Silvester Gardiner: “be of good cheer my Friend & recollect by whose

fatherly Protection you have hitherto been conducted through life… As your troubles increase so

let your faith also increase & rest assured that your confidence in the hand that guides the

Universe will not finally be frustrated. ”80 Gardiner later told a friend: “What comforts me in my

distress is that God governs the world, Sees and Suffers these things, no doubt for Some good

and wise ends.”81 In the apt words of Reverend Samuel Peters of Connecticut, religion “conquers

Death Kings and congress.”82

Anglican clergy in New York, Halifax, London, and elsewhere crafted a narrative about

the causes and chief aims of the Americans. In letters to the SPG and Bishop of London, they

described a “deep rooted republicanism, democratic, levelling principles, ever unfriendly to

monarchy.” In their views, the Church and the state mutually supported each other. As observed

by Caner, “A republican spirit can never rest… the same levelling principles which induce them

to withdraw from the wholesome establishment of the Ch[urc]h operate with equal force in

78 Nathaniel Coffin to Thomas Amory, April 1778, Amory Papers, MHS. 79 Nathaniel Coffin to Thomas Amory, April 1778, Amory Family Papers, MHS. They begged to be remembered to

“your Brothers & Sisters the Miss[?] Johonnots the Brindley Family Unkle [sic] & Aunt Stewart the Lowdes Family

& Doct Lloyd & say you’l[l] not forget the same to Sister Deblois & Molly Coffin’s Families.” 80 Caner to Gardiner, 28 August 1779, Gardiner-Whipple-Allen Papers, MHS. 81 Gardiner to Col. Brown, [1780?], Gardiner-Whipple-Allen Papers, MHS; Norton, The British Americans, 126 82 Samuel Peters to [Jonathan Peters], July 20, 1783, (originals in Peters-Mann Papers, Connecticut State Library)

and Peters to John Tyler, Aug. 4, 1782, (Peters-Tyler Papers, CSL) in Norton, The British Americans, 127.

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throwing off the restraints of civil Govmt.”83 New York City’s Reverend Charles Inglis argued

that “one of the principal springs” of the rebels’ conduct was their desire to destroy the Anglican

church in America. These clergymen identified the loyalists’ chief villains to be republican

dissenters from the Church of England, chiefly New England Congregationalists, who had

desired independency from their first settlement in America.84 The mistreatment of ministers and

closure of Anglican churches that began in April 1775 illustrated such a plot against the Church.

The rhetoric of leading Anglican loyalist clerics has influenced scholarship on the

revolution that conflates Anglicanism with passive obedience. Anglicanism was a key

characteristic of Massachusetts loyalists. The numbers of Anglicans who fled was especially

significant given that ninety percent of the colony’s residents were Congregationalist. Fifteen of

Massachusetts’s twenty-four Anglican clergymen fled the colony and two-thirds of refugees who

referred to religious affiliation listed Anglicanism.85 Loyalism, however, did not define

Anglicans in Boston as they struggled to maintain their worship and balance their duties to God

and the state. From the outset of the war, a number supported independence. Martin Brimmer

and Nathaniel Greene both invested in privateers during the war.86

Regardless of their outlook on the Revolution, Anglicans who remained in the United

States refashioned the American Anglican Church with little oversight from traditional

powerbrokers such as the Bishop in London and the SPG. While Bailey was petitioning the

Massachusetts Council in July 1778 for liberty to remove to Nova Scotia with his family, a

83 Henry Caner to the Archbishop of London, 22 July 22 1775, Norton, The British Americans, 140 84 Norton, The British Americans, 140-142. 85 In Maas’ study of Massachusetts Loyalists, 72 of the 109 individuals who listed religious affiliation were

Anglican. Maas, The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 148-151; Only Sandemanians and possibly Quakers

chose loyalty at a higher rate per their population. See John Howard Smith, “’Sober Dissent’ and ‘Spirited Conduct’:

The Sandemanians and the American Revolution, 1765-1781,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 28, No.

2, (Summer 2000). 142-165. 86 Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 77, (Boston, 1927), 67,68,78, 120, 168, 174.

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messenger informed the Council “that a Mr Lewis a clergyman or chaplain of a regiment had

deserted from New York and having dined with the General was coming to lay something of the

utmost importance before the Council but ‘you may depend upon it’ continued the officer that

the gentleman is a spy.’”87 By August 1778, the proprietors of Christ Church, Boston, employed

Stephen Lewis as its regular minister. Lewis had formerly served as deputy Chaplain to General

Burgoyne’s Regiment of light Dragoons and was a prisoner of war in Cambridge for close to a

year before going to New York as part of a prisoner exchange. As Parker reported three years

later to the SPG, Lewis “offered to take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States… and made

such Alterations in the Liturgy as to accommodate to the present Rulers[.] This no other

Episcopal Clergyman in the New England Provinces has done[.]”88 In his telling, Parker inferred

that Lewis alone made a declaration in favor of the United States. Even with Parker’s alterations

to the liturgy and reading of the Declaration, he and SPG missionaries in Massachusetts never

pledged allegiance to the new state and thereby forfeited their loyalty to the king. Revolutionary

authorities were generally satisfied once ministers took out objectionable prayers. For this

reason, Reverend Edward Bass, who also modified the liturgy at St. Paul’s in Newburyport, was

unmolested. By 1779 Christ Church in Norwich, Connecticut voted to resume services omitting

objectionable prayers for king and parliament.

Avowed loyalist Reverend Samuel Seabury of Connecticut was similarly concerned

about the number of closed churches in New England and the middle colonies. From British-held

New York City, he requested permission from the Bishop of London to similarly revise the

liturgy. He heard back secondhand from Revered Chandler, who reported that the bishop thought

87 Bailey Journal, 31 July 1778, EHS, Collections, 2:358. 88 Parker to Secretary of the SPG, Rev. William Morice, 9 January 1781, in Daniel Delaney Addison, The life and

Times of Edward Bass: First Bishop of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1897), 147.

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individual clergymen should decide for themselves. As noted by Frederick Mills, “the basic

question each minister had to decide was whether his oath to the king was equal to or inherent in

his obligation to God and church.”89 However, ministers perceived to move too far to

accommodate their congregations or the “rebels” faced punitive charges from their colleagues

and the church hierarchy. Bass relied on funding from the SPG and, unlike Parker, came under

scrutiny from the SPG and a handful of clergymen who testified that he had made treasonous

accommodations to the new state. In January 1779, the SPG dismissed Bass from the society

after he allegedly “preached a sermon in favour of a collection for rebel soldiers & continued to

keep all the fasts & thanksgivings appointed by Congress.”90 Bass defended his record, saying

that his parishioners urged him to keep the church, which obliged him “to omit the prayers for

the King and Royal Family in the hope of doing some good in bad times and of preventing the

dispersion if not even the annihilation of his church…nothing having hitherto been required of

him but the above omission.”91

Later that spring, Trinity’s proprietors decided that their former minister was unlikely to

return and voted Parker their choice as the incumbent minister. Parker deliberated for months. He

worried about the “orphan State” of the church and his positon “at a time when so great a

Diversity of [political] Sentiment prevails.”92 Parker weighed his happiness and the welfare of

his family, as well as the future prospects for the Anglican Church in the United States before

accepting their offer. Throughout the war he traveled broadly, ministering to Anglicans across

the state. In May 1780 he delivered a funeral service for William McGilchrist, who, excluding

89 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 162. 90 State of the Evidence against Mr. Bass, January 1779, Perry, Historical Collections, 3: 602-604. 91 Bass to SPG, 15 November 1779, Addison, Edward Bass, 203; Perry, Historical Collections, 3:605-640. His

appeal carried on into 1785. 92 Parker to Proprietors, 26 June 1779, 23 July 1779, Records of Trinity Church, 55:186-187.

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the years the church was shut, had served the Church for over thirty years. The following

January, Parker provided an overview of the state of the Church in New England to the SPG,

defending the actions taken by Bass to keep his church together, informing them of churches that

remained closed or occupied by other congregations, and identifying clergymen and lay readers

who had taken over public services in the absence of SPG appointed missionaries: “Affairs here

as I could & I think I may safely add that the Prejudices of the People of this Country ag[ain]st

the Chh have so far subsided that could the several Churches be supplied with Ministers there is

no doubt that it would increase & flourish to a Degree it has never yet arrived to.”93

The following years proved Parker’s observations correct. In early 1782, Nathaniel

Fisher, who had spent the prior years as an SPG missionary in Annapolis, Nova Scotia, took an

oath of allegiance to the state of Massachusetts and became minister at St. Peter’s in Salem. St.

John’s Church in Rhode Island also voted to reopen and expelled their longtime minister when

he still refused to omit certain prayers.94 That October, members of King’s Chapel engaged a lay

reader, James Freeman, and resumed services at their chapel, which in light of prevailing

sentiments against the king they now referred to as the Stone Chapel. The two Anglican churches

agreed that Parker would administer the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper once a

month at the chapel since Freeman was not in orders.95

93 Parker to Secretary of the SPG, 9 January 1781, in Addison, Edward Bass, 147-151. 94 Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 328-329; Sabine, Biographical Sketch of Loyalists, 1:487. 95 Vestry meeting, 17 November 1782, Records of Trinity Church, 55:195-198. The Chapel warden’s later insistence

that Freeman “should be permitted to read the Communion Service in the Altar at Trinity,” disrupted this agreement

and foreshadowed future division between the two congregations.

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Forming an American Protestant Episcopal Church

The Revolution fundamentally altered the American Church’s hierarchy and made

dramatic changes possible. Towards the end of the war, Reverend William White, rector of

Christ and St. Peter’s Churches in Philadelphia, prepared a pamphlet entitled The Case of the

Protestant Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered, which was published several

months before the signing of a preliminary accord in November 1782 and the formal withdrawal

of SPG support for missionaries in the United States. White contended that former bonds were

effectively broken and “future continuance can only be provided for by voluntary associations

for union and good government.”96 Borrowing from revolutionary ideas about good and free

republican government, White proposed a convention where clergy and laity elected by their

parishes would decide matters. White thus suggested a temporary departure from episcopacy.

From the example of Protestants who fled England during the reign of Queen Mary and were

ordained in the Presbyterian tradition, he saw an alternative method of ordaining ministers, at

least until the church had reorganized and through cooperation with former adversaries ensured a

proper succession of bishops from the Church of England to an American Episcopal Church.97

With the final peace signed in October 1783, state conventions of clergy and laymen

from New York to South Carolina met openly that year to discuss such a reorganization. Laity in

Maryland vetoed the only plan to procure a bishop. Massachusetts clergymen favored procuring

a bishop before holding a state convention. They nonetheless met publically and communicated

their ideas with White and southern churchmen. In Connecticut, however, clergymen met to

discuss the procurement of a bishop, keeping no minutes and committing themselves to secrecy.

The only record of these meeting comes from correspondence between one of their members and

96 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 184. 97 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 182-188.

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Parker, who supported the idea of a bishop but had reservations about these ministers’ tactics.98

In the estimation of Connecticut clergymen, the Church could not effectively organize without a

bishop, and any reorganization in the absence of a bishop would only minimize his importance

and limit his power. They acted to head off this frightening alternative and settled on Samuel

Seabury, a refugee at New York who had been an outspoken advocate of the episcopacy in the

1760s and remained loyal during the war as their chosen bishop. Leading loyalist clergymen in

New York provided Seabury credentials and a letter of application for consecration to the leading

bishop in England, the archbishop of York, William Markham.

English bishops had severe reservations about consecrating Seabury. They worried about

the lack of lay support for a bishop and feared the negative appearance that might result from

appointing a bishop to Connecticut following the peace accord and while the American

Episcopal Church debated its reorganization. Ultimately, Seabury traveled to Aberdeen,

Scotland, where he was consecrated by three non-juror bishops from the Scottish Episcopal

Church, whose own lines of consecration had been unrecognized by the Church of England since

the first non-juror bishops had for a variety of reasons refused to swear allegiance to William III.

English bishops understandably refused to recognize Seabury’s consecration and closed their

pulpits to him. The American response from Anglicans in the southern and middle colonies,

many of whom had supported the American cause, was equally vehement. Seabury had also

signed an article acknowledging that his power as bishop was “independent of all Lay powers.”99

News of Seabury’s unorthodox consecration prompted a voluntary meeting of clergymen

and lay representatives from a majority of states in New York in October 1784. This meeting

was remarkable because of its inclusion of laymen in church government. Laymen controlled

98 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 185-213. 99 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 219-225.

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power in local congregations and parishes, but, as Frederick Mills points out, “it was the

Revolution and postwar reorganization that posed the necessity and provided the opportunity for

them to augment their influence on the state and national levels of the church.”100 This meeting

made little mention of bishops. It intended that a representative convention of clergy and laity

decide church matters, not bishops, control church matters.

Divided opinions resulted in divided meeting of churchmen. Upon Seabury’s return from

England, he held an August 1785 convention of Connecticut clergymen that was also attended by

Parker from Massachusetts and a representative from New York. Connecticut clergymen

auspiciously skipped a General Convention held the following month in Philadelphia.

Massachusetts Episcopalians also stayed at home. Likely because of Seabury’s interventions, the

September 1785 General Convention wrote out the powers and jurisdictions of bishops and the

right of every state to elect one. By 1786 Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York conventions had

elected three bishops, and a schism existed between New Englanders, who largely looked to

Seabury, and the rest of the Episcopal Church, whose leaders largely supported the American

cause in the late war. This bishop crisis mirrored in many ways the controversies of the past,

with one notable qualification: conflict over bishops in the 1780s existed only within the

Episcopal Church. Following the break with Great Britain, Nonconformists no longer feared the

extra-religious power of bishops. They rightly understood that Episcopal bishops held no civil

jurisdiction.101

Parker, who recognized a need for episcopacy, proved a key intermediary between

bishops and clerics in the reorganized but divided Protestant Episcopal Church. Parker advised

White to modify the restrictions on bishops’ powers in committee. He agreed also on the

100 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 231. 101 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 242-268

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importance of lay participation, but only if clergymen had an equal vote. But the opposing

factions failed to broker a deal that would unite the American Church. Despite, differing

opinions over the powers of bishops and lay members, the presence of an American bishop

allowed numerous individuals to obtain ordination. In the months following his return to

Connecticut, Seabury ordained more clergymen than his English equivalents had in the prior

seven years of conflict. Seabury also took a lead in moving the church forward. In November

1786, he and called upon clergymen and known patrons such as James Lloyd of Boston for

charitable assistance rebuilding the Anglican Church in New London, Connecticut that had been

burned along with much of the town late in the war.102

The Return of Massachusetts Loyalists

Though Boston was less lenient towards loyalists than other towns and uniformly barred

persons who openly aided British efforts or served as notorious mandamus councilors from

reentry, close to a quarter of Massachusetts loyalists returned at some point after the war.103

Trinity Church and the Stone Chapel similarly reintegrated into town life by holding benefit

concerts for the town poor. The town’s Episcopal societies readily welcomed former parishioners

and newcomers. The Boston Episcopal Charitable Society (BECS), which had met only once

during the war, resumed regular meetings after the war and was incorporated by an act of the

Massachusetts legislature in 1784. On Easter Tuesday 1784 Reverend Parker delivered a sermon

to members of the society and a collection was gathered to be distributed to the poor of the three

churches. At the subsequent meeting, members chose a president, treasurer, and trustees and

102 In the case of New London, the Episcopal Church had been burned with the town late in the war along with the

homes of many parishioners, a good number of whom chose not to return. Seabury to James Lloyd, 22 November

1786, (146) Lloyd, Vassall, Borland Papers, HL. 103 This figure comes from David Maas’ The Return of the Massachusetts Loyalists, 489-505.

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voted that if absent persons who formerly belonged to the Society again become inhabitants of

Boston, they would be invited to sign the by-laws and rejoin the Society.104

Individuals who remained in Massachusetts also kept lines of communication open and

helped exiled co-religionists litigate the confiscation of estates and in certain cases, where the

applicant had not openly opposed the American cause or held appointed office, return to

Massachusetts.105 John Haskins, who after standing trial as inimical to the United States had left

Boston and removed to Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, returned by 1784 and was selected a trustee of

the BECS. He resumed worship at the Stone Chapel where he had owned a pew in 1776.106 After

finally receiving permission from the legislature in 1784, John Amory took an oath of allegiance

and rejoined his extensive family. A special act of the legislature similarly naturalized John

Gardiner and his wife and children. Gardiner’s father, Silvester, had sent John, a minor at the

time, to England during the war.107 Silvester made repeated attempts to return to Massachusetts

but was denied due to his outspoken loyalism. As John Gardiner noted in a letter to his father:

“Persons who cherish monarchical Principles can never live easily in a Republican Government

My Principles accord more happily with the new State whose Constitution I think admirable &

here I hope to end my days.”108 The end of the war was a boon for commerce. A great number of

former Anglicans resumed mercantile endeavors or reconnected trade from Boston to Great

Britain. For members of Trinity, especially members of the interconnected Amory, Coffin, and

104 Isaac Boyle, An Historical Memoir of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society. Boston: [I.R. Butts, printer,

1840], 10-14. In 1783, the BESC had £1383, 7s, in bonds and money in the treasurer’s hands, about £460 interest

due. 105 Maas, Return of Masschusetts Loyalists, 521-539. 106 Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists, 3:537; Boyle, Memoir of the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society,

13. 107 Stark, Loyalists of Massachusetts, 315. 108 John Gardiner to Silvester Gardiner, 19 July 1783, Foote, Annals, 2:360.

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Cutler families who grew up during the war Parker provided letters of introduction to loyalist

ministers and others who might aid them in business.109

The end of the war also provided opportunity to collect church materials carried off by

exiles. King’s Chapel’s vestry renewed efforts to recoup church plate and linens that had been

taken by Reverend Caner when he fled Boston in March 1776. According to parishioner, John

Wheelwright, who waited on Caner when he was in England, the Doctor “refus’d to do [so] as

his Estate was taken from him here by the publick.” In July 1784 the vestry wrote East Apthorp

and gave him power attorney to demand the return of the Chapel’s property. The vestry asserted

“self Evident” justness of their claim and suggested that Apthorp apply to the bishop of London

if Caner intended to retain the plate.110

Members of Trinity likely commiserated with the chapel. Their attempts to recover

accounts from John Erving Jr., a loyalist living in England and the former treasurer of the Greene

Foundation, which financially supported the church’s assistant minister, netted a similar lack of

results. In a 1783 letter to trustees of this foundation, Erving expressed his happiness “to find a

Renewal of Correspondence between this & our Country. I dare say it must be a means of

restoring a perfect harmony in time & I hope you & I may live to forget many disagreeables we

have both of us felt in the Course of the last seven years.” 111 In the same letter, Erving promised

that he would deliver the papers to either John Callahan, the church’s agent in London on

business, or to a merchant firm well known to Trinity. Three years later, trustees of the

foundation had not received the promised accounts or funds from Erving and pursued legal

109 Amory Family Papers, Personal papers, 1725-1890, MHS. Loose Box 1. See especially letters between Parker

and James Cutler from 1780-1791. 110 Vestry to Rev. East Apthorp, Boston, 5 July 1784, Correspondence, 1698-1899, King’s Chapel Records, MHS. 111 Erving to Callahan, 25 August 1783, Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 55:489-491.

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action against his estate. That year, the same trustees decided to use a portion of the interest from

fellowship funds to support Christ Church, Boston’s minister.112

Fashioning the American Episcopal Church

With peace in sight, lay Episcopalians looked to their ministers and competing bishops as

they revised and innovated worship to meet the times. Writing in December 1782 to his father, a

loyalist in Quebec, James Freemen described the Chapel’s position within this change:

We can scarcely be called of the Church of England for we disclaim the authority of that

country in ecclesiastical as well as in civil matters. It seems to be the intention of the

Episcopalians here to form an American Church which shall be more free from

superstition than that of England. A plan for that purpose has been published in

Philadelphia in which the succession of bishops an idea highly grateful to churchmen is

given up.113

The upheaval of the revolution created new opportunity for liberal-minded thinkers. As Freeman

opined, “this is the age and America the country of innovations.”114 On the urging of his

parishioners, Freeman expanded the traditional practices of a lay reader and exercised “all the

functions of a clergyman except that of reading the absolution administering the two ordinances

and marrying.”115 Freeman held up the independent ecclesiastical government of New England

churches as a model establishment and hoped that Presbyterian ordination might be widely

adopted by the Episcopal Church. The minister believed that Episcopal congregations possessed

the authority to govern their societies and elect their leaders. As he confided to his father, “I am

endeavoring in private to bring the Proprietors of the Chapel to this opinion and meet with some

success. In entering into the Church of England I had no design to adopt all their tenets. Some of

112 This legal battle went on until 1790. Oliver, Records of Trinity Church, 55:492-99. 113 James Freeman to Freeman, 24 December 1782, Foote, James Freeman and King’s Chapel, 1782-87: A Chapter

in the Early History of the Unitarian Movement in New England. (Boston: L.C. Bowles, 1873), 7-8. 114 Freeman to his father, 2 August 1783, Foote, James Freeman, 8-9. 115 Freeman to his father, 2 August 1783, Foote, James Freeman, 8-9.

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them I believe to be absurd. The idea in particular of an uninterrupted succession of bishops… is

extravagant and ridiculous.”116

Not having been raised Anglican but wedded to the opinions of his parishioners at the

Stone Chapel, Freeman socialized in Boston with a growing body of liberal ministers (mostly

Congregationalists) who read the latest works by Unitarian thinkers Jonathan Priestly and

Theophilis Lyndsay regarding God’s divine unity. After the first English Unitarian Church

opened in London in April 1774, Unitarian theology became the cornerstone of a new

denomination outside of the established church. The movement remained ensconced in the

Christian faith through a belief in the authority of scripture, Jesus’s divinely appointed though

human role, and God’s future promise of salvation.117 By 1785, after much deliberation and

consultation of scripture, Freeman expressed reservations about the Trinity to his congregation

and feared dismissal, but after outlining his views in a series of sermons, the congregation moved

forward, writing Bishop Seabury to request ordination, albeit with certain condition: “We hope

and desire that you will require of the Candidate no other than a general declaration of Faith in

the Holy Scriptures leaving him and those under his pastoral Care in Creeds and all doctrinal

Questions to God and their Consciences ted that he outline his objections.”118

Waiting for Seabury’s response, the Chapel created a committee that consisted of two

wardens and seven gentlemen to revise the liturgy according to Lyndsay’s Book of Common

Prayer, reformed according to the plan of the late Dr. Samuel Clarke (1774).119 Changes

consisted of the omission of the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene creed, and the Thirty-Nine

116 Freeman to father, 2 August 1783, Foote, James Freeman, 8-9. 117 J.D. Bowers, Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America, (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State

University Press, 2007), 15-17. 118 Chapel wardens to Seabury, 7 February 1785, Foote, James Freeman, 14. 119 John Haskins, John Gardiner, Charles Williams, Perez Morton, Samuel Breck, Charles Miller, and John

Wheelwright

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articles, “and in general everything which is disputable.”120 The baptismal service was made

almost entirely new and the communion, burial and other services corrected in many particulars.

On 19 June 1785 the proprietors voted 20 to 7 to accept these revisions. The revised Book of

Common Prayer was printed later that year and made available to friends and potential allies

within the Episcopal fold. Joel Barlow of Hartfort responded to Perez Morton, who served on the

committee, with a glowing review: “The method you are adopting, especially as it is unattended

with the power & trappings of office which have attended the church of England, will greatly

tend to introduce harmony & friendship among all orders of Christians in this country, & I

heartily wish it success. May you & the rest of your committee have all the satisfaction of having

rendered essential service to mankind in this important business, and of being hereafter

considered as the father of a partial reformation & a coalition among the American Churches.”121

Despite their receptiveness to Unitarianism, members of the Stone Chapel worked to

maintain rapport with their sister churches in Boston and the new church hierarchy. Members of

the chapel joined representatives from Massachusetts Episcopal Churches in September 1785 to

propose a revised Book of Common Prayer. While no alterations were adopted, the meeting gave

members of the Chapel opportunity to explain their alterations to the form and substance of

worship. Writing to bishop Seabury the following month, chapel members solicited feedback and

identification of errors on their recently altered liturgy: “If any such should be observed they

would be far from being displeased in having them pointed out Truth is the real object of their

pursuit; and Truth they trust they are sincerely disposed to study & follow, Charity which

thinketh no Evil, but sufereth long and is kind they shall always endeavour to exercise towards

120 Freeman to Constant Freeman, 1 June 1785, Foote, James Freeman, 15. 121 Joel Barlow to Perez Morton, 18 June 1785, Correspondence, king’s Chapel records, MHS.

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all their fellow Christians, and especially towards their brethren of the Episcopal Church, with

whom they most ardently wish to Harmonize.”122

While Seabury never replied to this letter, the Chapel received negative feedback from

longtime patron, Silvester Gardiner, who had remained abroad since the evacuation of Boston. In

their response, Chapel wardens, Thomas Bulfinch and Shrimpton Hutchinson glossed over

Gardiner’s objections: “We pass over the part of yr letter wch relates to Religious Controversy as

we apprehend it was wrote in a hurry as some texts are quoted different from the expressions

contain’d in the Bible & others we think are misapplied all wch may be explain’d when we have

the pleasure of seeing you in Boston wch we most ardently wish may be soon as a purchaser has

for some time offered for ye remaining pew but is reserved in the expectation of seeing you

again a member of our Church.” 123 This response likely displeased Gardiner. The state had

refused to allow John Vassall, John Inman, and Gardiner and their families to return to Boston

several years prior; however, Gardiner received permission to return to his birthplace in

Newport, Rhode Island. On his death in 1786, he was buried under Trinity Church in Newport,

where he had received Anglican baptism as an infant. In a final indictment of Unitarianism,

Gardiner gave only one guinea to his son, John, who zealously led King’s Chapel adoption of

Unitarianism. The bulk of Gardiner’s wealth went to John’s son, John Sylvester Gardiner, who

eventually took Episcopal orders. King’s Chapel, which he had served his entire adult life,

received nothing. Instead, his will permanently endowed an Episcopal minister at St. Anne’s in

Gardinertown, Maine.124

122 Chapel Vestry to Seabury, 1 October 1785, Correspondence, King’s Chapel records, MHS. 123Thomas Bullfinch and Shrimpton Hutchinson to Sylvester Gardiner, 29 March 1786, Correspondence, King’s

Chapel records, MHS. 124 Will of Silvester Gardiner, John Wesley Hanson, History of Gardiner, Pittston, and West Gardiner, 92-94.

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Freeman himself was not fully satisfied with the degree of the Chapel’s acceptance of

Unitarianism. “I wish the work was more worthy of your approbation,” he wrote to Theophilus

Lindsey, a leader in the English Unitarian movement, in July 1786. “I can only say that I

endeavored to make it so by attempting to introduce your Liturgy entire. But the people of the

chapel were not ripe for so great a change, perhaps in some future day, when their minds become

enlightened, they may consent to a further alteration.”125

Freeman remained limited by the chapel’s attachment to heritage and doctrine and the

desire of its proprietors to remain part of a reformulated Episcopalian Church. In July of 1787

church wardens at the Chapel in Boston addressed Seabury regarding the ordination of their lay

reader. They pointed to the example of Reverend William Montague, current minister at Christ

Church, Boston, who had been ordained by Bishop White of Pennsylvania, subscribing a

declaration of faith in the holy scriptures and a solemn engagement to conform to the doctrines

and worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Massachusetts, which importantly

had no established doctrines or forms or worship at this date:

We beg leave humbly to inquire, whether it is not in your power to ordain Mr Freeman

upon the same conditions as Mr Montague? We are willing that he should make the same

subscription, provided he might be allowed to declare that he conceives his own Church

to be one of the Protestant Episcopal Churches of the State of Massachusetts, and might

be permitted to use the liturgy of this Church, a copy of which we do ourselves the

honour to present you.126

Seabury met with Freeman and discussed his theological views at length. Finding that Freeman

disbelieved the Trinity and held other heretical ideas, Seabury refused to ordain Freeman. The

Chapel next contacted the bishop of New York, Samuel Provost, who discussed the matter with

125 Freeman to Lindsey, 7 July 1786, in J.D. Bowers, Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America, 53-57.

Quote on 56. 126 Wardens and Vestry of the Chapel Church in Boston to Bishop Seabury, 29 July 1787, Correspondence, King’s

Chapel records, MHS.

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clergy and laymen and informed the Chapel that the matter was too important to “the church at

large” and should be considered at the next General Convention.127

Rather than wait for future deliberation, members of the Chapel decided to ordain

Freeman on their own authority. English Unitarian thinker William Hazlitt supported ordination

in scriptural terms and likely helped persuade Freeman of its legitimacy. He had first discussed

the topic with Freeman 1784 at a lecture in Boston. On 18 November 1787 Chapel congregants

selected Freeman “Rector Minister public Teacher Priest teaching Elder and Pastor… so long as

he shall continue to preach the word of God and dispense instructions in piety religion and

morality conformably to our opinions and sentiments of the Holy Scriptures.”128 If in their

judgment Freeman no longer conformed to their “religious sentiments and opinions” he could be

removed by the votes of three-fourths of the wardens and vestry and three-fourths of the

proprietors usually worshipping in the church. Proprietors unanimously raised their right hands

in support of Freeman’s election as minister.129 This vote created the first Unitarian Church in

the United States.

King’s Chapel’s embrace of Unitarianian and the ordination of Freemen split the

congregation. Former parishioners at the Chapel prepared a written protest before Freeman’s

ordination and requested that it be copied into the Chapel’s book of record. In their words, the

authors and signers represented “original proprietors” whose pews were forfeited and sold on

account of their absence “to persons who never were of the Episcopal Church and who hold

sentiments diametrically opposite to said Church.” These new proprietors “introduced a Liturgy

different from any now used in the Episcopal churches in the United States and articles of faith

127 Provost to wardens and vestry of the Stone Chapel, 13 August 1787, Greenwood, A History of King’s Chapel,

183. 128 Ordination of James Freeman, 18 November 1787, Greenwood, History, 192-198. 129 Ordination of James Freeman, 18 November 1787, Greenwood, History, 192-198.

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which in our opinion are unscriptural and heretical and have thereby deprived many of the

proprietors of said house of their property and the privilege of worshipping God therein

according to the dictates of their consciences.” The protesters expressed shock that these new

proprietors intended to themselves authorize Freeman to administer the sacraments of baptism

and the Lord's Supper and to receive him as a regular ordained minister. This step, they wrote, “

in our opinion is unprecedented irregular and contrary to apostolic and primitive usage and to the

common sentiments of almost every sect and denomination of Christians a step which may be

attended with fatal consequences to the interests of religion in general and that of the Episcopal

Church.” In closing, the subscribers voiced their dissent “against all such proceedings and

particularly against the settlement and pretended ordination of the said James Freeman declaring

our utter abhorrence of measures so contrary to the doctrine discipline and worship of an

Episcopal church and which will include in them a total alienation of the property of said house

from the use intended by the original donors or founders.”130 The seventeen signers of this

protest made a legal and religious argument based on their rights as proprietors and the very

intention of the Chapel’s original donors and founders, most pointedly regarding heretic changes

to the liturgy and the ordination of Freeman by the congregation.

Despite voiced opposition to Freemen, the Chapel’s embrace of a revised liturgy reflected

the strength of lay members. Chapel wardens Joseph May and Thomas Bulfinch rebutted the

protesters’ claims as original (and, in some cases, current) proprietors. They first offered

objections to the proxies who voted on behalf of Lewis Deblois, Henry Lloyd, James Trecothick,

130 Protest against the ordination of James Freemen, delivered by Gilbert Deblois, James Ivers, and Charles Williams

and recorded 16 November 1787, Greenwood, History of King’s Chapel, 183-185. The seventeen signers and

proxies were: James Ivers for himself and Jas Trecothick Esq.; Gilbert Deblois for himself Lewis Deblois and Henry

Leddell; James Lloyd for Wm Vassall Esq.; Henry Smith for Henry Lloyd; James Apthorp; Charles Williams;

Theodore Dehon; John Box; John Haskins; Lydia Box; Matthew Nazro; Ambrose Vincent; Grizzell Apthorp; and

Dorothy Forbes.

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Henry Leddel, and William Vassal, persons who no longer resided in Boston, who were unlikely

to permanently return, and who, in the church’s estimation, had not made good faith efforts to

retain their lawful claim on pews. A number of protestors had resided in Boston and attended the

Chapel since its reopening. Protesters John Haskins and Charles William served on the

committee to revise the liturgy and voted for all changes. James Ivers and John Box voted

against the alterations but remained members in good standing. James Apthorp, who left Boston

several years before and joined himself to the church at Braintree, never objected to amendments

of the liturgy while in attendance at the Chapel. Grizzel Apthorp and Ambrose Vincent were

frequent worshippers “since the alterations were made and therefore cannot be presumed to

object on that account but only on account of the mode of ordination.”131 Pew holders Dorothy

Forbes, Theodore Dehon, and Matthew Nazro continued worshipping at Trinity Church even

when the Chapel reopened. The elderly Mrs. Box had been unable to attend public worship for

several years past, and the wardens discounted Gilbert Deblois’s opinion because he had only

recently returned from abroad. According to the testimony of these wardens, not all the protesters

had a legitimate claim against the recent changes.

At the time of the ordination, over forty-four individuals occupied pews and, by paying

their dues, observed their right to vote in church matters. The wardens noted that twenty-four of

these persons had been parishioners before the war and rebutted the claim that non-Episcopalians

who purchased pews had steered the changes. “When a person has once become a purchaser we

wish to know by what authority he can be prohibited from giving his vote in any case whatever

and whether such a proprietor's vote is not as valid as even the first and most respectable of its

Founders… But look at the other Episcopal Churches in this town of whom do the far greater

131 Answer to the Protest by the Wardens, Greenwood, History of King’s Chapel, 185-192.

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part of them consist but of those who were educated in another persuasion And are they allowed

to have no vote at all.”132 Most importantly, the Chapel defended their revision of church liturgy:

“We hereby declare that we worship and adore one only living and true God the parent of

mankind the bountiful Giver of all Good that we offer our adorations to him in the name of his

dearly beloved Son the Redeemer of mankind and that we expect and hope for pardon and

acceptance and eternal happiness only through the mercies of God in Jesus Christ. And if this is

the doctrine which they call heresy we profess thus to worship the God of our fathers.”133

Abandoned by the separation from England, King’s Chapel was an example of how

Episcopalian worship could cease to exist—in this case, as a result of religious liberalism that

emphasized reason and individual morality.134 In December, clergymen from Boston’s two

Episcopal churches, as well as Newburyport, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, declared the

proceedings of the “Stone Chapel in Boston to be irregular, unconstitutional, diametrically

opposite to every principle adopted in any Episcopal Church, subversive of all order and

regularity and pregnant with consequences fatal to the interests of religion.” They further

cautioned all Episcopalians against receiving Freeman “as a clergyman of our church or holding

any communion with him.”135 Freeman pointedly avoided sharing pulpits with neighboring

Congregational ministers who also embraced Unitarianism in the hope of receiving Episcopal

ordination. This became a moot point after 1789, when factions within the Protestant Episcopal

Church reached a settlement regarding the rights and prerogatives of bishops, ministers, and lay

representatives. Alteration to the 1789 Prayer Book gave ministers a greater degree of flexibility

132 Answer to the Protest by the Wardens, Greenwood, History of King’s Chapel, 185-192. 133 Answer to the Protest by the Wardens, Greenwood, History of King’s Chapel, 185-192. 134 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 167-171. In the southern colonies, the rise of evangelicals and disestablishment of the

Church of England slowed the process of rebuilding after the war. 135 Massachusetts Sentinel, 28 January 1788.

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over aspects of the liturgy, such as the “hell” clause in the Apostles’ Creed and the sign of the

cross at baptisms. Lay delegates in the lower house of convocation, importantly, left this General

Convention with the power to override the bench of Bishops with four fifths of the votes.136

The lasting impact of the Stone Chapel’s adoption of Unitarianism on Bostonians

formerly associated with the Church of England varied greatly. Despite the objection of

Episcopalian ministers, the Chapel remained integrated in the political and cultural life of the

town. Its organist, William Selby achieved recognition for compositions and performances. As

part of Boston’s celebration of George Washington’s inaugural visit in October 1789, Selby

advertised an “Oratorio or Sacred music.” However, the event was delayed because of ill health

among the musicians.137 A number of proprietors at the Chapel and Trinity and Christ Church

remained linked through blood and marriage. In the 1792 John Gardiner’s son, John Sylvester

(J.S), became assistant minister at Trinity Church. The Unitarian father reportedly attended

services on occasion, reading along in his revised prayer book. Trinity’s former minister,

William Walters, returned from exile to take up the ministry at Christ Church. With all the

changes, the Stone Chapel and Christ and Trinity Churches remained focused on regular prayers

and vital rites, albeit from modified Books of Common Prayer. Within several decades of the

Revolution, the Chapel reclaimed its original moniker as tribute to its place in history: as the

King’s first Church of England in New England. As part of that legacy, lay officers resumed

recording baptisms, burials, and marriages in registers recovered in 1805 from the heirs of

Reverend Caner, who carried them off nineteen years earlier at the outset of the Revolution.138

136 Mills, Bishops by Ballot, 281-287. These two changes reflected efforts to both please English bishops by

reintroducing aspects that had been stricken from the English Prayer Book by early conventions and provide

American clergymen freedom to exclude or reword clauses such as “he descended into hell,” which had no biblical

backing. 137 John Ogasapian, Music of the Colonial and Revolutionary Era. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004) 146-147. 138 Baptism records, 15 October 1805, King’s Chapel records, MHS. Junior warden Joseph May recorded the

following: “After repeated efforts made during nineteen years last past by the officers & friends of King’s Chapel—

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Events surrounding the siege of Boston and eventual evacuation of the British garrison

and a great number of Anglicans in March 1776 left the town’s remaining Anglican in a

precarious position. Refugees left friends and family members, including wives and minor

children, behind. While Anglican women did not come under scrutiny, a disproportionate

number of Anglican men with ties to the government or persons outspoken against the patriot

cause were brought before revolutionary authorities on suspicion of being inimical to the

American cause. Though over half of Trinity Church’s lay officers and other leading Anglicans

served periods of forced exile, Reverend Parker, the only Anglican clergyman remaining in

Boston, continued to officiate at Trinity Church. Members of Trinity welcomed congregants

from their sister congregations whose ministers had fled town. Parker continued to read prayers

for the king, until fearing for their safety, he and his congregation modified the liturgy to

conform to political exigencies following Congress’s declaration of independence. The majority

of Anglican Churches across New England closed rather than modify their liturgy. Anglican

clergy remaining in the United States nonetheless tended to the needs of congregants according

to their consciences, while lay Anglicans in Boston and abroad made provisions to aid needy

parishioners and clergymen such as Jacob Bailey. Lacking direct oversight from the SPG, Trinity

Church’s Parker played a leading role shepherding Massachusetts’ Anglican churches. After

several years of conflict, lay leaders at many churches urged ministers to resume services. In

August 1778 Steven Lewis swore an oath of allegiance and took up ministry at Boston’s Christ

this volume one, other containing a Register of Burials, and a third one containing a Register of Marriages, were

received by me from Mr John Gore, merchant, who procured them from the heirs of the late Henry Caner DD in

England, whither they were carried by that late Gentleman, during the revolutionary war. See Dr Caner’s entry in the

Rgister of Marriages.”

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Church. Members of King’s Chapel similarly engaged a lay reader when they reopened several

years later. Over the course of the war, a number of exiles petitioned revolutionary authorities to

return from abroad. With the exception of flagrant loyalist, many exiles were reintegrated into

their former communities.

Peace with Great Britain prompted efforts to reformulate the Anglican Church in an

independent United States of America. As before the war, debate over the ordination and powers

of bishops created tensions. Many Anglican clergy and laity advocated republican ideals of lay

governance for the American Protestant Episcopal Church. Others believed strongly in the need

for an American bishop. Connecticut clergyman Samuel Seabury’s controversial 1784 ordination

by a non-juror Church of Scotland bishop divided the Protestant Episcopal Church in New

England from the rest of the country. Over the next years, English bishops ordained a handful of

Episcopal bishops who oversaw the still-divided Church. Eventually, in 1789, thanks in a large

part to outreach by Reverend Parker and fellow Massachusetts delegates, these factions broached

a compromise by agreeing on the role and power of bishops and lay members and an American

Book of Common Prayer.

The reorganization of the Anglican Church into an independent American Episcopal

Church ultimately provided continuity of worship and liturgy for the majority of colonial

congregations. But the Revolution also prompted ad hoc innovations to remove prayers for the

king and switch allegiance to the United States. The Stone Chapel’s embrace of Unitarianism

and ordination its minister in the Presbyterian fashion reflected the beliefs of a majority of its

proprietors, including a striking number of parishioners who remained in Boston during the war.

But their separation from the American Episcopal Church was a last resort, undertaken after

numerous attempts to gain Freeman’s ordination from Episcopal bishops. Even following

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Freeman’s ordination, the congregation stayed true to its Anglican heritage, modifying the Book

of Common Prayer and requisite rites to create a uniquely American form of worship that like its

predecessor found support from elite and ordinary Bostonians.

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CONCLUSION: BOSTON ANGLICANS AND THE SHAPING OF THE ANGLO-ATLANTIC

Historians have tended to view the Church of England from the perspective of non-

Anglicans and Anglican clergymen. This project uses Boston, Massachusetts’s interrelated

Anglican Churches and their lay parishioners to reassesses the role of the Church of England in

Massachusetts and the broader Atlantic World from the founding of King’s Chapel in 1686 until

the final union of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1789.

Imperial moments played a pivotal role in the establishment of Anglicanism in New

England. King’s Chapel’s 1686 founding followed with the crown and Parliament’s assertion of

control over overseas trade and governance and renewed calls for religious liberty across

England and its oversea holding. While politics loomed large during Edmund Andros’ short-

lived administration, King’s Chapel offered an alternative place of worship that proved attractive

to non-Anglicans in Massachusetts. Resistance to the Anglican’s religious manual, the Book of

Common Prayer, by leaders of the Congregationalist standing order was part and parcel of

resistance to the Anglicanization of governance and trade. The Glorious Revolution in

Massachusetts, which overthrew Andros and intimidated Anglicans, was a further expression of

these fears. After William and Mary’s Act of Toleration realigned religious politics in England

and its empire, imperial administrator Francis Nicholson and merchant advocate Stephen

Westendunct played a vital part advancing the interests of Boston’s Anglican community. The

weakness of the colonial Anglican Church in relation to its competitors prompted the creation of

durable institutions, chiefly the Society for the Propagation of the Christian knowledge (1698)

and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701). These networks

provided for the first time an apparatus for episcopal oversight and financial and material aid for

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colonial churches. Lay Anglicans with connections and frequently residence in the colony helped

direct this support to needy congregations and clusters of co-religionists elsewhere. The sending

of ministers and religious materials by the SPG and SPCK altered the religious landscape in New

England. In 1719 access to pro-episcopal theological writings and the Anglican Church’s

growing profile prompted the conversion of several leading Congregationalist ministers,

including the president of Yale College, Timothy Cutler.

As the site of New England’s first Anglican Church, Boston provides an apt case study

for New England Anglicanism. Growing numbers of Anglicans in the town prompted repeated

changes to the wooden chapel and the eventual construction of a sister church in Boston’s North

End. Members of King’s Chapel funded Cutler’s journey to London for Anglican ordination and

solicited subscriptions for the construction of Christ Church from local patrons and donors from

across the Atlantic. Even after opening for worship in December 1723, Christ Church required

improvements and necessary religious materials such as communion plate and Books of

Common Prayer. The economic costs of religious activity rarely factor into studies of religious

communities. Questions about the spiritual economy of Anglican worship reveal the importance

of individual patrons and interest groups, especially persons who possessed commercial expertise

that allowed them to link disparate networks and associations to benefit the Anglican Church.

This project attempts to analyze relationships between members of networks. The Gentlemen of

the Bay of Honduras for example, imbedded themselves into the physical sanctuary and political

workings of Christ Church. Their Bay Pew and the rebuilding of King’s Chapel demonstrate the

outsized power of leading parishioners such as Charles Apthorp and William Shirley. Their

prominence should not take away from the broad support from persons of far humbler means,

and the vital financial and political support that originated from outside Boston.

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Staffing and governing Massachusetts Anglican churches also required considerable

funds and political capital. Even with support from the SPG for colonial missionaries, many

Anglicans still paid taxes to support the Congregational Church. Conventions of clergymen and

legal activism by lay Anglicans ultimately resulted in the removal of these taxes. Even after the

Act of Toleration, the Church of England had a powerful lobby that royal governors of all

religious backgrounds frequently used. Colonial vestries exercised far more power over ministers

than their counterparts in England, and disputes between individual clergymen and vestries

ultimately empowered the laity. By the mid-eighteenth century vestries increasingly elected

locally born and educated converts to Anglicanism as their ministers. This emphasis on local ties

ironically correlated with growing involvement of Anglican merchants connected to Boston in

the SPG.

Anglican societies allocated enormous amounts of time and money constructing churches

and pews and acquiring necessary material objects, often from England. Religious architecture

and aesthetics held theological significance and demonstrated the sacred nature of churches and

inspired awe. The Book of Common Prayer ordered weekly services as well as vital rites of

religious passage that Anglicans frequently experienced as a community. Whereas patronage,

pew ownership, and religious rites helped differentiate societal and class difference, church

sacraments and church community also appealed to a diverse body of ordinary and even enslaved

parishioners. Attention to enslaved and free Africans especially highlights the range of messages

within the scope of colonial Anglicanism. The church and its ministers, vestrymen, and

slaveholders required that persons seeking baptism and communion demonstrate moral virtue

and deference to authority. Slaves and free blacks conversely acquired a powerful Christian

vocabulary and security for themselves and their families. In certain cases, participation in vital

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sacraments qualified free blacks for poor relief outside the almshouse and workhouse. Persons

seeking poor relief from the BECS or individual churches similarly belonged to an established

society. African marriages and wills demonstrate lasting bonds between persons of color and the

construction of a viable and empowering African Anglican community. By changing the scope

of conversion from all enslaved Africans to a group made up largely of favored slaves, this

project agrees with scholarship that sees Anglican outreach to slaves as a limited success. In

death, black and white parishioners provided to the best of their abilities for their families, the

poor, and in certain cases the institutional well-being of their church.

Another imperial moment—the American Revolution—prompted lasting change to the

colonial Anglican Church and the many aspects and constituencies of the British Empire that

helped sustain and support it. In Boston and across the empire, Anglicans engaged with the

growing debate over colonial taxation. The role of Anglican traders in challenging customs

officers and Parliament has been largely obscured, however, by a small but outspoken minority

of loyalists who saw religion as a cause of revolution. Religion certainly played an outsized role

in the Revolution. Writing as “A Puritan” Samuel Adams effectively questioned the loyalty of

Anglicans. Associations between Anglicans and the government, including the military after it

encamped in Boston, affirmed Adams’ hypothesis. The non-importation crisis and increase in

violence and intimidation prompted many moderate Anglicans to align with friends of

government and sign addresses to Hutchinson and Gage. Many persons of means left town

before the outbreak of hostilities in April 1775.

Though religion was not a cause of the Revolution, the destruction and closure of

Anglican churches in Massachusetts and dispersal of many ministers and congregants from

Boston in March 1776 furthered threatened the Church’s future there. Many of the Church’s

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265

principal adherents were disaffected by the war or suspected of disloyalty by new legal regimes

in the independent United States, prompting Reverend Parker and lay Anglicans in Boston to

pragmatically omit prayers for the king and parliament in order to continue worshiping. Their

choices in this matter placed them among a minority of Anglicans in Massachusetts. Religion

mitigated and filtered the wartime experiences of Anglicans in Boston and abroad. Anglicanism

was a defining characteristic of Massachusetts loyalists who fled the colony, but religion also

influenced a number of Anglican men who remained in Boston disaffected by the war and

refused to bear arms against the king. Parker and attendees at Trinity aided needy congregants

and called on longtime patrons for support. Anglicans in Boston financially and emotionally

aided the unapologetic Reverend Bailey, who refused on numerous occasions to revise prayers in

accommodation to the revolution. However, loyalism did not ultimately define the Anglican

experience. By 1778 lay pressure prompted many ministers to resume public services omitting

objectionable prayers. Ultimately, English bishops suggested that ministers follow their

conscience in accommodating the new state and looking after their congregations.

American Anglicans operated largely without oversight by traditional sources of power

such as the bishop of London and the SPG for the latter years of the war. As peace envoys made

arrangements to conclude the conflict, Episcopalians differed on how to best reorganize the

church. Advocates for church governance based on voluntary association and revolutionary

principles of lay participation—in other words, an Episcopal Church without bishops—clashed

most notably with clergymen in Connecticut, who saw a weakened Episcopacy incapable of

binding independent churches together. After the break with the king, non-Anglicans in the

United States noticeably did not raise an eye at the prospect of an American bishop. In 1789, the

Protestant Episcopal Church ultimately achieved union with disempowered bishops.

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266

During the interim, Parker and fellow ministers at the reopened Christ Church and King’s

Chapel cared for the needs of their congregations. Working with his congregation, James

Freeman, reader at King’s Chapel’s, rewrote the Book of Common Prayer to reflect his growing

Unitarian views. Failing to convince an American Episcopalian bishop to ordain Freeman, the

Chapel elected him their minister. Local Episcopalian ministers and former and exiled loyalists

protested and called upon the intentions of the church founders. In a striking American fashion,

King’s Chapel’s wardens replied that the vote of a new proprietor is as valid as “even the first

and most respectable of its Founders.” Over the next years, when the Protestant American

Episcopal Church revised its Book of Common Prayer it too catered to American tastes

regarding certain forms and phrases.

Attention to Boston’s lay Anglicans provides a much needed correction to scholarship

that focuses on dissenter in New England and clergy in general. This project advances an

Atlantic network of lay Anglican patrons and associates as a driving force in the establishment

and advancement of Anglicanism in New England. From its controversial planting in the late

seventeenth century, Anglicanism became ingrained in Boston’s commercial and political worlds

and Anglican churches and elites occupied civic roles commensurate with members of

Massachusetts majority Congregational churches. Though Anglicans subscribed and participated

unequally, the resulting community catered to the diverse spiritual and material needs of elite

and ordinary Anglicans. This project also provided a counterpoint to scholarship on colonial

Anglicanism that ends with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. Anglicans cannot be easily

categorized by terms such as patriots and loyalist, and this project seeks to deemphasize the

changes ushered in by the revolution. By focusing on intimate ties between Americans and exiles

and the ad hoc decisions of parishioners and ministers to remain in Boston and revise their

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267

liturgy, this project demonstrates the limitations of ideology in understanding the lived

experiences of persons during this conflict. Beyond the often heart-wrenching transference of

allegiance from king to country and state, the Revolution did not terribly alter existing

relationships within the Church and with co-religionists. Even after disestablishment in states

where the Anglican Church had been the state church, the Episcopal Church remained a leading

denomination. With the notable exception of King’s Chapel’s with its Unitarian innovations,

Episcopal worship remained highly compatible to Anglican worship elsewhere in the English

speaking world. Moving into the nineteenth century, liturgical Christianity remained a common

bond between the United States and Great Britain.

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268

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