USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. I > Part 22
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Mr. Beach, next to Dr. Johnson, was the ablest de- fender of the Church in the Colony of Connecticut. In some respects he rose above him, and was scarcely inferior to him in strength of intellect, in knowledge of the Church, and in the toils and trials of his vocation. 1 Johnson MSS.
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He kept his eye upon every rood of ground where the seed had been sown, and, as fearless as faultless, travelled by night and by day, amid storms and snow- drifts, and across deep and rushing streams, to preach the word, to visit and comfort the sick, and to bury the dead. He still lingered at the post where he had been in the employment of the Society now forty years; and, giving a brief account, May 5, 1772, of the manner in which he had spent his time and improved the charity of his benefactors, said: "Every Sunday I have performed divine service, and preached twice at Newtown and Redding, alternately. And in these forty years I have lost only two Sundays through sickness, although in all that time I have been af- flicted with a constant colic, which has not allowed me one day's case or freedom from pain. The dis- tance between the churches at Newtown and Redding is between eight and nine miles, and no very good road, yet have I never failed one time to attend each place according to custom, through the badness of the weather, but have rode it in the severest rains and snow-storms, even when there has been no track, and my horse near miring down in the snow-banks; which has had this good effect on my parishioners, that they are ashamed to stay from church on account of bad weather, so that they are remarkably forward to attend public worship. As to my labors without my parish, I have formerly performed divine service in many towns where the Common Prayer had never been heard, nor the Holy Scriptures read in public, and where now are flourishing congregations of the Church of England; and in some places where there never had been any public worship at all, nor any ser-
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mon preached by any preacher of any denomination." He followed the emigrants from his parishes into the northern provinces, as he found it convenient, until age and the public disturbances confined him to the limits of his own cure.
These disturbances had become so great in 1774, that fears began to prevail above hopes, and the terrors of civil war to be seen in the distance. Even as early as August in that year, Berkeley, of Can- terbury, wrote to Dr. William S. Johnson thus: "I have suffered greatly in my own mind on American affairs. I see nothing but clouds in the American sky, and I feel unfeignedly for that country to which I bear an hereditary love."1 In the same letter he said: "The clause in one of the late American Bills, subjecting persons accused of crimes alleged to be com- mitted in America, to a removal for trial to England at the will of the Governor, is extremely odious to the unprejudiced part of the people of the island. If I was retained at present as an American advocate, I would dwell very much on that arbitrary clause. I do sup- pose that it is resolved to support the claim of power to raise a revenue in America, and I do suppose that any long continued and consistent abstinence from importation would drive the ministry to their wits' end. If the Americans have public virtue enough to carry this scheme into execution, they may carry several material points; but I verily believe that the servants of Government judge rightly as to the im- probability of such an event."
A few days before the opening of the drama in Lex- ington, where the first British blood was shed in armed
1 Johnson MSS.
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resistance to the King's troops, Dibblee wrote to the Society these dismal words,-words as full of truth as they were of fear and feeling: "We view with the deep- . est anxiety, affliction, and concern the great dangers we are in, by reason of our unhappy divisions, and the amazing height to which the unfortunate disputes between Great Britain and these remote provinces have arisen, and the baneful influence they have upon the interest of true religion, and the wellbeing of the Church. Our duty, as ministers of religion, is now at- tended with peculiar difficulty: faithfully to discharge the duties of our office, and yet carefully to avoid taking any part in these political disputes; as I trust my brethren in this colony have done as much as possible, notwithstanding any representations to our prejudice to the contrary. We can only pray Al- mighty God, in compassion to our Church and nation, and the wellbeing of these provinces in particular, to avert these terrible calamities that are the natural result of such an unhappy contest with our parent State, to save us from the horrors of a civil war, and remove all groundless fears and jealousies, and what- soever else may hinder us from godly union and concord."
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2
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION, AND THE ADHERENCE OF THE CLERGY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND TO THE CAUSE OF THE CROWN.
A. D. 1774-1776.
No sooner had the war of the Revolution commenced than the clergy of the Church of England with their flocks, especially in the northern provinces, became the objects of public suspicion and vigilance. Their ministerial fidelity, and the part which they had borne in the struggle to secure an American Episcopate, left no room to doubt that they would be fearless in avow- ing and vindicating what they conceived to be not only the essential rights of the British Crown, but the essential interests of their venerated communion. The duty which they owed to the Sovereign, for whom they had so long prayed, could not, therefore, be readily displaced by the love of liberty, nor by sym- pathy with the policy of the colonial assemblies in resisting the oppressive measures of the home Govern- ment. They would gladly have quenched the spark that kindled the conflagration. Some of them, in former years, had warned their friends on the other side, and gently remonstrated with them against the tendency of Parliamentary legislation; but when the shock of open revolt came, they espoused, for the most part, the cause of the mother-country, and thereby showed themselves loyal subjects of the King, at the
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same time that they conscientiously reverenced the teachings of the English Church. Used to misrep- resentation and trial, they were not privileged to escape them in this emergency, and the direful evils which they had too clearly apprehended soon began to be realized. The Missionary at Westchester, N. Y., Samuel Seabury, afterwards the first Bishop of Con- necticut, writing to the Society, May 30th, 1775, said: "We are here in a very alarming situation. Dr. Cooper and Dr. Chandler have been obliged to quit this community, and sailed for England last week. I have been obliged to retire a few days from the threatened vengeance of the New-England people who lately broke into this province. But I hope I shall be able to keep my station. The charge against the clergy here is a very extraordinary one,-that they have, in conjunction with the Society and the British Ministry, laid a plan for enslaving America. I do not think that those people who raised this calumny believe one syllable of it; but they intend it as an engine to turn the popular fury upon the Church, which, should the violent schemes of some of our eastern neighbors succeed, will probably fall a sac- rifice to the persecuting spirit of Independency."
Towards the end of the same year, the author of this letter was seized in Westchester by a company of "disaffected people in arms from Connecticut," and carried to New Haven, where he was kept under a military guard until two days before Christmas. The General Assembly of the colony was then in session at New Haven, by special order of Governor Trum- bull; and though not allowed to write freely to his wife, whom he had left behind with six children, yet
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he was indulged in the privilege of drawing up a memorial to the Honorable Assembly, setting forth the personal inconveniences and injuries to which his confinement subjected him, and asking "for relief from the heavy hand of oppression and tyranny." After stating that on Wednesday, the 22d day of Novem- ber, he "was seized at a house in Westchester, where he taught a Grammar School," he proceeded in his memorial to describe the manner of his introduction into New Haven: That on the Monday following his seizure, in company with two suspected gentlemen from his own neighborhood, he "was brought to this town and carried in triumph through a great part of it, accompanied by a large number of men on horse- back and in carriages, chiefly armed. That the whole company arranged themselves before the house of Cap- tain Sears. That, after firing two cannon and huzzaing, your memorialist was sent under a guard of four or five men to the house of Mrs. Lyman, where he has ever since been kept under guard. That during this time your memorialist hath been prevented from en- joying a free intercourse with his friends; forbidden to visit some of them, though in company with his guard; prohibited from reading prayers in the church, and performing any part of divine service, though invited by the Rev. Mr. Hubbard so to do; interdicted the use of pen, ink, and paper, except for the purpose of writing to his family, and then it was required that his letters should be examined and licensed before they were sent off."
The explicit charges against him were, that he had entered into a combination with six or seven others to apprehend Capt. Sears, as he was passing through
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the County of Westchester, and to carry him on board a man-of-war; that he had signed a Protest, at a public meeting in White Plains, against the proceedings of the Continental Congress; that he had neglected to open his church on the day of the Continental Fast, and had written pamphlets and papers against the liberties of America.
Of the first and last charges he avowed his inno- cence, and stood ready to vindicate it as soon as he should be restored to his liberty in the Province of New York, to which alone, under the circumstances, he felt himself to be amenable. He considered it "a high infringement of the liberty for which the virtu- ous sons of America were then nobly struggling, to be carried by force out of one colony into another for the sake either of trial or imprisonment." As to the second charge, he admitted that he was one of more than three hundred persons, who, eight months before, had affixed their signatures to the Protest, not, however, with any thought of acting against the liberties of America, but rather "to support the meas- ures of the Representatives of the people, measures which he then hoped and expected would have had a good effect" in operating a change of policy by the British Government in reference to the welfare of the colonies. His neglect to open his church on the day of the Continental Fast arose from not receiving any notification of the appointment; and on the whole, he was quite sure that "nothing could be laid to his charge so repugnant to the regulations of the Con- gress as the conduct of the people, who, in an arbi- trary and hostile manner, forced him from his house, and had kept him now four weeks a prisoner, without
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any means or prospect of relief." He asked the privi- lege of appearing before the Assembly to answer for himself, or by his counsel. The President of the Pro- vincial Congress of New York had previously ad- dressed Governor Trumbull, and demanded "his im- mediate discharge"; and both this letter and the Memorial were placed for consideration in the hands of a Committee, of which Dr. William Samuel John- son, of Stratford, was the chairman. They reported in favor of granting the prayer of the petitioner; and though the question upon accepting the report was decided by the Lower House in the negative, Mr. Seabury was soon after released, and returning to his family, on the 2d day of January, found that his parish and private affairs had suffered in his absence, and that all his papers had been examined and thrown into confusion.
But the Revolution assumed larger proportions, and he showed himself by his subsequent acts a most thorough loyalist; or, to use the words of the New York Committee of Safety, "notoriously disaffected to the American cause," which brought on him fresh persecutions and severer trials. Unable to stem the popular torrent, he availed himself of the temporary withdrawal of the American forces from Westchester to escape to Long Island; and when they returned, they burned the pews in his church, converted it into a hospital, quartered the cavalry in his house, and consumed all the products of his farm. After this he was in New York and its vicinity, with his family, under the protection of the British arms, during the continuance of the war, and pursued the practice of medicine, a profession to which he had been educated VOL. I. 20
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in Scotland, and which, like several of his contem- poraries, he joined, in a limited degree, to his clerical duties. He was appointed in February, 1778, chap- lain of the Loyal American Regiment, commanded by Colonel Fanning, and delivered a sermon before the troops in camp at Kingsbridge, founded on the text, "Fear God, honor the King," which, by the request of Governor Tryon, was published.
Including Mr. Bostwick of Great Barrington, there was just a score of clergymen of the Church of Eng- land in Connecticut, with twice that number of Epis- copal churches, at the outbreak of hostilities; and these, with two or three exceptions, were natives of the colony, and knew all the prejudices, as they had shared all the hatred and uncharitableness, of the standing order. The Missionary at Hebron, Samuel Peters, was without doubt the most obnoxious of these clergymen, and so early as the summer of 1774 his imprudent conduct and intense loyalty had in- volved him in serious trouble. He was charged with communicating intemperate articles to the newspapers for publication, and with making false representations to his friends in England. A mob of about three hundred persons assembled at his house in August of that year, and again in the ensuing month, and made known their determination to obtain from him satis- faction and an acknowledgment of his errors. He met them, arrayed in his official robes for protection; but the exasperated mob had as little respect for these as for the wearer, and seizing him violently, to the damage of his garments, they carried him to the Meeting-house Green, where he was forced to read a confession which had been previously prepared for
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him, and with this offering their lawless patriotism was satisfied, and he was set at liberty. But after such indignities he felt that he could no longer re- main in comfort with his old friends and neighbors, and he left his home for Boston, from whence he wrote, "in high spirits," a letter to his mother, which was intercepted, and which contained this unpleasant information for his enemies: "Six regiments are now coming from England, and sundry men-of-war; so soon as they come, hanging work will go on, and de- struction will first attend the sea-port towns; the lintel sprinkled, and the side-posts, will preserve the faithful." A few days later, some time in October, he sailed for England, where he retaliated upon his countrymen with his pen; but his writings would have been received with more respect had he restrained his rashness, and never embellished them with ludi- crous and apocryphal statements.
The rest of the clergy in Connecticut still lingered at their Missions, and soon, in the turmoils of civil war, their experience approached that of their more officious and impetuous brother. The voice of relig- ion is seldom heard in the clamors of party, and the violence which only provokes resistance is the natural result of allowing no room for exercising the rights of conscience. Civil war unhappily carries in its train numberless evils, and often effects alienations and hatreds in society and among friends, which years will not obliterate. During its progress, entire silence excites suspicion; and the man, therefore, who cannot or will not follow ex animo the triumphant populace in all its extravagances and ungracious requirements, need not be surprised to find himself accounted an
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enemy to his country, and reproach and scurrility plentifully heaped upon his head. "People," said the Rev. Mr. Inglis of New York, referring to the perse- cutions of the time, "were not at liberty to speak their sentiments, and even silence was construed as a mark of disaffection."
Aside from their unpopularity with the partisans of independence, the clergy of the Church of Eng- land in this colony were exposed to all the wrongs and suspicions and oppressions which arose in the prosecution of the Revolutionary war. Some of them, who clung steadily to the cause of the Crown and freely spoke out their sentiments, were drawn at once into embarrassments and perils; and others, whom no words of their own would criminate, found very little comfort from the prophetic promise, "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." The Rev. Mr. Mansfield of Derby, the guileless pastor, who thought he must do his duty to his people in every emergency, undertook, as soon as "the sparks of civil dissension appeared," to inculcate upon them, both from the pulpit and in private conversation, a peace- ful submission to the King and to the parent state ; and so successful were his efforts and his influence, that, out of one hundred and thirty families which at- tended divine service in his two churches, he reported (December 29th, 1775) one hundred and ten to be "firm, steadfast friends of the Government," having no sympathy with the popular measures, and detesting the "unnatural rebellion." Five or six persons, pro- fessors of the Church of England, plunged themselves into it, guided, as he thought, by the influence of Captain John Holbrook, who "for many years past
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had entertained a disgust against him and his breth- ren of the Church, and seemed to have meditated re- venge, merely because they did not gratify some pri- vate views he had about the place on which to build the Oxford church." Several officers of the militia, having collected a number of soldiers and volunteers from different towns, undertook, late in the autumn of 1775, to subdue the Tories in Connecticut, and for this purpose proceeded first to Newtown, where they put the Rev. Mr. Beach, the Selectmen, and other principal inhabitants, under strict guard, and urged them to sign the articles of association prescribed by the Congress in Philadelphia; but when they could prevail upon them neither by persuasions nor by threats, they accepted from them a bond, with a large pecuniary penalty inserted, not to take up arms against the colonies, as well as not to discourage enlistments into the American forces. They used greater severity in other places which they visited, and fixed upon the first week in December to disarm the loyalists in Derby, and annihilate their influence. With a view of checking such violent proceedings, a number of his most respectable parishioners waited upon Mr. Mansfield at that critical juncture, and requested him to send to Governor Tryon of New York an account of the sufferings of the loyalists in Connecticut, and a list of the names of those who were known to be such in his Mission. He complied with their request, and added some suggestions of his own about the manner of reducing the colony to subjection and obedience. The day after his letter was dispatched, a friend, to whom he had communicated the knowledge of it, was seized and carried before the Committee of In-
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spection, who compelled him to disclose the contents, and thus Mr. Mansfield was criminated in a way that he least expected. To escape outrage, imprisonment, or death, which was meditated against him, he fled from his churches, his family, and his home, and found a temporary asylum in the town of Hempstead, on Long Island. His own narrative of his misfortunes is very touching, especially the part which relates to his do- mestic affairs. "At a somewhat advanced stage of life," said he, "being fifty-two years old, when I hoped to have spent my remaining years in an agreeable manner, in peace and tranquillity with my family, parishioners, and friends, and vainly imagined that death only would make any lasting separation, I was forced to flee from home, leaving behind a virtuous, good wife, with one young child newly weaned from the breast; four other children which are small, and not of sufficient age to support themselves; and four others which are adults, and all of them overwhelmed with grief, and bathed in tears, and but very slenderly provided with the means of support."
Such were the signs of the thick gathering storm, the beginning of the horrors and calamities, which befell the Church in Connecticut. Up to this time, the laity, for the most part, had stood by the clergy, and sup- ported them in their views of Christian obedience and public duty.
There were notable exceptions; for as early as 1774 not a man in Stratford was ready to dissent from revo- lutionary measures, and from the movements, in vari- ous places, expressive of sympathy for those who suf- fered from the oppressive acts of the British Govern- ment. Undoubtedly the influence of Johnson, the
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patriot and statesman, was felt in shaping the popular sentiment of his native town, and in guiding the course of churchmen there to a quiet and inoffensive neutrality. He was a member of the Council of Con- necticut, and one of the three, first chosen to repre- sent the colony in the General Congress which met at Philadelphia, September 5th, 1774. But having pre- viously accepted the office of an arbitrator on the estate of Van Rensselaer, he was excused from serv- ing, and Silas Deane was appointed in his place. The General Assembly of Connecticut was convened im- mediately after the battle of Lexington; and he and a gentleman of the Lower House were deputed to visit General Gage, then in command of the British troops at Boston, and see if some means could not be devised by which the horrors of war might be averted and peace secured. Starting on their journey with a pacific letter from the Governor, they met at En- field a part of the Boston delegation to Congress, and found them warm in the cause of the colonies, and one of them even rejoicing that hostilities had com- menced. In due time, Dr. Johnson returned to Hart- ford with the answer of General Gage to the Legisla- ture; but that body had adjourned ; and so far from leaving any directions for the Committee, they had adopted resolutions of a very contrary nature and tendency, and voted men and money for the war. This change was effected by the instrumentality of the Delegates from Massachusetts. Finding himself thus deserted, he returned solitarily to his home ; and retiring from the Council after the Declaration of In- dependence, he set himself quietly down to his studies, persuaded that he could not conscientiously join in a
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war against England, much less in a war against his own country. The progress of events brought him again before the public, and he resumed the practice of his profession, and was subsequently reinstated in his seat in the Legislative Council.
Though two of the clergy of Connecticut had been compelled to flee from their missions, the people were not yet deprived of the privilege of assembling in their own houses of worship, and of honoring God and praying to him in the venerable forms of the Liturgy. If they desired the suppression of the re- bellion and the establishment of the King's authority in the land, it was because they felt that churchmen, as the weaker party, could only in this way hope for encouragement and permanent security. They gen- erally conceived the measures of the colonies to be unwise, if not unjust, and destined to end either in defeat or ruin on the one hand, or the overthrow of the Church on the other. It was inferred from the history of the past, that, if successful, few would be the tender mercies shown by the Independents in New England to a form of Protestant religion which was in their eyes "dissent," and which nothing but the want of power hitherto had prevented them from fully destroying. It was the remark of a Presbyte- rian deacon, made in the hearing of one who put it upon record, "that if the colonies carried their point, there would not be a church in the New-England States," 1-meaning an Episcopal church, for at that period it was customary to designate the Congrega- tional edifices by the name of "meeting-houses."
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