USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, from the settlement of the colony to the death of Bishop Seabury > Part 20
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The Missionaries throughout the colony, during the period while the last great struggle for the Episco- pate was going on, were diligent in the performance of their duties, and alive to all the opportunities for extending the Church. Some were removed to other spheres of labor, and their places supplied by those
1 Anderson's Colonial Church, Vol. III. p. 443.
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who had been recently ordained. Ebenezer Kneeland, ¿ graduate of Yale College in 1761, who went to England for ordination three years later, had re- turned to this country, and having served for a time is chaplain in a British regiment, had become settled it Stratford as an Assistant to Dr. Johnson. That enerable divine had conceived the plan of "holding" n the place of his retirement "a little Academy, or esource for young students of Divinity, to prepare hem for Holy Orders;" and Mr. Kneeland, who mar- ied his granddaughter, aided him both in the parish nd in giving classical and theological instruction. Iany were thus guided and improved in their knowl- dge of Hebrew, and in the study of systematic Divin- y. Writing to the Secretary of the Society, June 1th, 1770, Dr. Johnson said: "I have several times irected one or more in their studies, and have now ur here;" of which number, John Rutgers Marshall, orn in New York city, of parents who belonged to he Dutch Reformed persuasion, and a graduate of ing's College, crossed the Atlantic for Orders in mid- immer of the next year, and returned in the autumn ith the appointment of a Missionary to Woodbury. ohn Tyler, a native of Wallingford, and a graduate Yale College, also passed under his instruction in ebrew and Divinity, some two years earlier, and pro- eded to England with the desire of being ordained id appointed for Guilford, made vacant by the re- oval of Mr. Hubbard to New Haven; a removal, to note the language of the Church-wardens in their peal to the Society, "so distressing to the people, at words cannot express it." Dr. Johnson, in a mmunication bearing date September 27, 1767, has
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this paragraph: "The affair of Mr. Hubbard leaving Guilford was so tender and difficult that he was obliged to hold it in some suspense, till he could have the advice of the Convention we had lately at New Haven, when we counselled him to remove thither; but we advised the New Haven people to be content that he should visit Guilford two or three times in a year, which they seemed to acquiesce in; but I am humbly of opinion that it would be well for the Society to order this, and to order me to take care of Milford."1 Shortly before his removal, Mr. Hubbard reported up- wards of eighty families belonging to his cure in these three places, Guilford, North Guilford, and Killing. worth, and eighty communicants. He could "decently support himself with a small paternal interest of his own," without calling largely upon the people; but if Mr. Tyler was appointed his successor, Guilford mus be erected into a distinct Mission and have a generous appropriation, which the Venerable Board, in the pres ent aspect of things, and in the present state of thei finances, were unwilling to allow. Mr. Tyler, therefore was sent to Norwich, his second choice, a mission re cently vacated by the transfer of Mr. Beardsley, at hi own request, to Poughkeepsie, N. Y. In 1767, Abra ham Beach, born in Cheshire, and Richard Samue Clarke, born at West Haven, both Alumni of Yale Co lege, embarked for England to receive ordination; an while one of them, on their return, found his wor u within the limits of another province, Mr. Clarke pr ceeded to New Milford, and was occupied in that e: tensive region, where "the harvest was truly plent ous," though "the laborers were few." In 1769, the li
1 Johnson MSS.
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of Missionaries of the Society actually resident in Con- necticut had reached to seventeen, and to this list the name of Marshall only was added in the next two years.
The faithful pastor at Newtown, reporting his occa- sional services in the newly erected church at Dan- bury, an edifice "with a decent steeple," and large enough to "accommodate from 400 to 500 people," said with much feeling: "Alas! it is but little that so M up ese ng few of us can perform, to what is so greatly wanted. It is really melancholy to observe how many serious and very religious people of late, in these parts, pro- fess themselves of the Church of England, and ear- tl nestly desire to worship God in that way, yet are as hi sheep without a shepherd." A church appears to t ihave been erected earlier than this at Oxford, then aus a parish or district in the town of Derby, into which rou Mansfield had carried his ministrations.
pres thei efore on Some of the Missionaries went beyond the colony, and made occasional visits to those wide tracts of country which were wholly unsupplied with the min- strations of our Church. Andrews, at the earnest at hand repeated solicitations of several members of our Abracommunion, undertook, in 1767, a long journey into famue different towns and governments to the northward," le Collreaching, lecturing, and administering the sacraments 1; anes he passed from village to village. What had been 's work ncultivated districts at the conclusion of the late war, ke prdyrere now surprisingly filled up with inhabitants, and hat eshe blossoming of the rose was beginning to show plente self in "the wilderness and the solitary place." He the lisenetrated to Allington, in New Hampshire, one hun- red and fifty miles from his home; and though he
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was the first clergyman who had appeared among the settlers, he found that a layman from Connecticut had been there before him with the services of the Church of England, and had read prayers for them in his own house, constantly on Sundays, ever since their entrance into the region. In the next year, Mansfield of Derby followed his brother Missionary over much the same ground, and, like him, was em- ployed on the journey nearly three weeks. "The people," he said, in his report to the Society, "ex- pressed themselves very thankful to me for coming among them; but being new settlers, and generally poor, were not able to contribute to me half enough · to defray the expenses of my journey. On my way homewards, I preached at New Concord, within the Colony of New York, about twenty miles distant from Albany, where there are about twenty families of the Church of England, who hope that Mr. Bostwick, a candidate for Holy Orders, will be ordained and settled among them."
At this time there was but one Episcopal church in the Province of New Hampshire, and that was at Portsmouth, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Ar- thur Browne. A few conformists to the Church of England and inhabitants of Claremont, a newly settled town in the same province, memorialized the clergy of Connecticut, "convened at New Milford in Trinity week," 1769, reciting their state of spiritual destitu- tion, and asking to be represented to the Venerable Society as desirous, if they could have nothing more, of the appointment of a Catechist and Schoolmaster among them for a few years, until they had passed "the first difficulties and hardships of a wild, unculti-
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vated country." The individual for whose appoint- ment they asked was Samuel Cole, Esq., a graduate of Yale College in 1731. He had followed the voca- tion of a Schoolmaster for many years, and was at that time an inhabitant and proprietor of Claremont, where he died in 1777. The inscription upon his tombstone says: "He followed the work of the Min- istry for a number of years, and was the founder of several churches in Connecticut," - a remark which has reference to his services as lay reader in Litchfield County. It was by the advice of the same Conven- tion, assembled at Litchfield in June of the next year, that the Rev. Mr. Peters began a more extended jour- a ney into the northern provinces, penetrating farther the and wider, baptizing many children, and "preaching as often as every other day." He closed the minute the report of his journey with the exclamation, "God be praised for my preservation, and that I am alive to pity and to pray for those in the wilderness."
The Missionaries had under their charge a large uremnumber of families, though scattered and spread over is a great extent of territory; and some of them bap- .A ized from fifty to one hundred children in each year. A second and larger church arose at Cheshire in 1770, o take the place of the first edifice; but the only fresh round broken in the last lustrum was in the north- astern part of the colony, where the Missionaries ad sometimes penetrated, but where the doctrines f the Church of England had not hitherto taken root nd spread. In 1766 Godfrey Malbone, a gentleman f fortune from Newport, who had been educated at ueen's College, Oxford, and had returned to his na- ve land with all the tastes of a polished scholar and
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with an increased attachment to the rites and cere- monies of the established Church, retired to an ex- tensive estate in that part of Pomfret which is now called Brooklyn; and about the same time John Aplin, an eminent lawyer of Providence, and a zealous church- man, removed to live on his estate in the adjoining town of Plainfield. Each soon felt the want of the delightful and sublime service to which he had been accustomed, a want that could not be supplied with- out going to Norwich, a distance of twenty-two miles. The immediate origin of a movement for a church was the vote of a majority of the inhabitants, in that district of the town where Mr. Malbone resided, to re- build the Congregational meeting-house, and to levy, for that purpose, a tax upon the people in proportion to their estates. So great were the possessions of this gentleman, that about one eighth part of the whole ex- pense must fall to his share; and because no such new edifice was needed, and having no sympathy with the teachings of Congregationalism, never having entered one of its houses to worship, he firmly determined not to submit to the demand, but rather from his own purse, and with the assistance of his friends, to erect an Episcopal church on the confines of Pomfret, Can- terbury, and Plainfield. About forty families sub- scribed to this proposal in 1769, some of them doubt- less his own tenants, but the main expense devolved on Malbone, who bore it cheerfully; and the church, whose foundations were laid in the next year, was neatly finished, and opened for Divine service on the 12th of April, 1771, by Mr. Tyler, the Missionary at Norwich, and the sermon which he preached on that occasion was published. Few laymen in the colony
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had sharper opposition to contend with in upholding the distinctive religious faith of their fathers than Malbone. Quitting Newport, the place of his nativ- ity, to escape the noise and tumults which then pre- vailed in the large American towns, he promised him- self, in his rural retirement, calm and settled repose. He was not without eccentricities of character, but he endeared himself to those who were capable of appre- ciating his excellent qualities; and in the opinion of his most uncharitable Congregational adversaries, he was a very good man, except that he was "a church- man, and sometimes swore a little." The parish grew under his fostering care, and the church which he built is still standing, though inconveniently located to gather the people.
All the parishes in Connecticut were now in a pros- esperous condition. Hubbard, in a letter to the Society e th re no OW rec Car sul oub olve urch lated July 8, 1771, said: "The number of families in New Haven is now, I believe, nearly one hundred, nd in the parish of West Haven about thirty-five .... continue occasionally to preach and give the Sacra- hent at Guilford, and have performed Sunday services, h parishes adjoining New Haven, to people well af- ected toward the Church." The venerable Beach, hree months afterwards, reported in his cure three undred and twenty-seven actual communicants; and h reference to the inhabitants of Newtown, he ob- rved: "Though, at the first setting up of the Church these parts, the dissenters discovered a very bitter irit, yet now we live in more friendship and amity ith them than they do among themselves."
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CHAPTER XXI.
SUPPORT OF THE CLERGY; RENEWAL OF THEIR APPEAL FOR A BISHOP; AND PROCEEDINGS OF DELEGATES FROM THE SYNOD OF NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA, AND FROM THE ASSOCI- ATIONS OF CONNECTICUT.
A. D. 1771-1772.
THE support of the clergy of the Church of England in the Colony of Connecticut was never so liberal as to excite the envy of their Congregational brethren. The annual stipend allowed to each one by the So- ciety was usually from £40 to £60 sterling, and unless the people provided a suitable parsonage and glebe, and contributed an equal amount yearly towards his maintenance, the clerical office was hardly surrounded in any place by a degree of dignity and decency suffi cient to command public respect. Few of the Mis- sionaries had any private means, and though they lived frugally, in conformity with the habits of the times, they were obliged occasionally to state their wants and the disadvantages of an inadequate sup port. "Clothe the office of Christ in rags," said Jarvis, "and it will sink into neglect and dishonor, and be as undesirable as He himself was. Experience gives but too melancholy a proof of this, exemplified in the Church among us, as more or less respected in par- ticular congregations, according as its maintenance is respectable."
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Mr. Jarvis had not yet been taken into the service of the Society, but he had ministered faithfully to the people at Middletown for eleven years, receiving only what they could raise for him, which was but a meagre support. In view of labors thus unrequited, Mr. Leaming, who "gave them all the lime with which they built their church, and £7 10s. towards purchas- ing a house and glebe," wrote in behalf of the Conven- tion in Connecticut, assembled September 8, 1773, und earnestly requested the Venerable Board to 'order one half of the salary formerly given the late Mr. Lamson, at Fairfield, to Mr. Jarvis, at Middletown." n the beginning of 1772 Mr. Lamson had contem- lated removing to a new Mission, which he was de- irous that the Society should establish in Duchess County, in the Province of New York, a region which e had visited during the previous summer in his fficial capacity; but his scheme was not readily en- ertained or carried into effect, probably for the rea- on already stated, that the Board was disinclined at at period to undertake the care of additional sta- ons. Mr. Lamson died the next year, and was suc- beded at Fairfield, in 1774, by the Rev. John Sayre, ho was transferred from Newburg, New York, where s ministry had received the commendation of his trons and been eminently successful.
The Libraries of the clergy, furnished, to some ex- nt, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- el and by individual munificence in England, were hall. That of Viets at Simsbury was one of the rgest and best selected in the colony; and though excellent scholar, and a man of considerable cul- tre and refined taste, yet his salary was so slender
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that he was compelled, besides his clerical duties, to attend to agricultural pursuits in the summer, and oc- cupy himself in teaching a sort of parochial school in the winter. The people among whom his lot was cast were for the most part poor, but "honest and well- behaved"; and being the only Missionary in what now constitutes Hartford County, he had a wide field to watch and cultivate, and was, therefore, like St. Paul, "in labors abundant." The Congregational ministry around him was intellectually strong, and the oppo- sition with which he was forced to contend was charged with all the bitterness which had been mani- fested in other parts of the colony. As the storms which preceded the Revolution gathered in blackness, he continued, like his brethren, to devote himself to his sacred duties, and found occasion to support the hopes of his parishioners living within the limits of adjoining towns, because "of late they had been dis- trained of their goods, and some of them imprisoned, for dissenting taxes or rates." But so much did the people under his pastoral care multiply, that, with the exception of Newtown and New Haven, the number of Episcopalians in Simsbury in 1774 was greater than in any other town of Connecticut.
The effort to establish the Church in Hartford was not attended with the same measure of prosperity. There disaster befell the enterprise begun in 1762; for after the lot had been secured, and the foundations of an edifice in which to worship God had been laid, the work languished, and was finally suspended. One of the committee "of the associated brethren of the Episcopal Church, commonly called the Church of England," having the matter in charge, was a surgeon
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of considerable eminence, who had advanced funds for its prosecution, but he became embarrassed in his pecuniary affairs, and "was visited with mental de- rangement." In this condition of mind, he appears to have "believed himself at liberty to dispose of what he had assisted to purchase," and so the stones passed into the possession of a neighboring proprietor, who used them as the foundation of his own dwelling. The land was transferred to one of his creditors, who held and occupied it until after the Revolution. The Rev. Mr. Dibblee, "at the earnest request of the Church- wardens," visited Hartford and preached there on Trinity Sunday in 1770; and writing to the Society in the autumn of the same year, he thus referred to the embarrassments of the people: "They have ap- plied for advice and assistance, being involved in a contentious lawsuit, in defence of the rights of their Church; an encroachment having been made on a piece of land lately bought and sequestered to build church upon, and a beautiful foundation of hewn stone laid in place of the one removed. It appeared to us in Convention to be a wicked design of a pow- erful family so to demolish the Church there that it might never rise; and as we judged the claimant had no right, in law or equity, and as such conduct, as we were told, was disapproved of by many of the lissenters, we could not but approve of the professors of the Church seeking a redress of such a sacrilegious alienation. In the mean time, to support their efforts, the Rev. Mr. Leaming preached there Sunday after Convention, and the clergy in general engaged to ake their turns; but we particularly recommended them to the care of the Rev. Mr. Peters."
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The suit was prolonged until after the Revolution, when the Superior Court pronounced the sale illegal, and the land reverted to its rightful claimants, not until the occupant, however, had applied to the Gen- eral Assembly, acting as a Court of Chancery, and ob- tained a decree in his favor of about sixty pounds, -the value of an established lien upon the property.
Signs of increased interest in the services of the Church appeared in other places. Mr. Graves, at New London, where his parishioners increased but slowly, had not only long watched to promote the spiritual welfare of the Indian tribes in his vicinity, but he had frequently gone to the borders of the Connecticut River; and at Middle Haddam, and Chatham and in- termediate towns, he had officiated in private dwell- ings and gained adherents to Episcopacy. The more he was hindered and opposed in these Missionary ex- cursions, the more his zeal was excited, and his reso- lution invigorated to persevere and obey the com- mands of his Divine Master. "I cannot," said he, in a letter to the Society, dated New Year's day, 1772, "fight long under His banner; but while I exist, I will, by grace, redeem the time, and double my diligence in His vineyard. I must not conceal the Christian resolution of my hearers in Chatham and the adjacent places; the audience increases daily. Though they are not able to build a church, they have begun to erect a large shell of a house among themselves. I hope, should my life be spared, to send you an ac- count of a church being erected at a place called Colchester, about twelve miles from Chatham, where it is highly probable I shall have a large number of conformists added to our Zion."
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The new church opened at Pomfret, now Brooklyn, in the spring of 1771, of which mention has already been made, received its first resident Missionary in the succeeding year, the Society having departed from its resolution and extended assistance, in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of this case. The Mis- sionary was the Rev. Richard Mosely, who " came out of England chaplain to the Salisbury man-of-war," and was allowed £30 sterling per annum from the date of commencing his duties in the parish. But after a continuance in it of only eight months, he relinquished his position, which he seems not to have desired, or intended to retain, even if the people had wished it, and by a new order of the Board was trans- ferred to Litchfield, then recently vacated by the death of that veteran Missionary, the Rev. Solomon Palmer. His ministrations in this place were at- tended with but little success, for a misunderstanding arose between him and the parishioners, which, be- sides speedily separating him from the Mission, caused a suspension of the usual appropriation by the Ven- erable Society. The suspension was removed after the lapse of twelve months, upon the earnest entreaty of the people, their "offence in the ill reception" of Mr. Mosely forgiven, and the Mission at Litchfield revived under the charge of another clergyman with a diminished stipend.
The Rev. Daniel Fogg, a graduate of Harvard Uni- versity in 1764, who had spent some time in North Carolina, was appointed, at the request of Mr. Mal- bone, to the pastoral care of Pomfret, and entered upon his duties in May, 1772, when the number of families
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composing the congregation did not exceed twenty- five. The other Missionaries in the eastern part of the colony remained at their posts, and toiled steadily on in the midst both of the popular uneasiness and of the religious disputes and contentions of the dissenting churches. The hope of securing an American Epis- copate still lingered in the prayers of all the clergy, and mention was occasionally made of it in the letters which they wrote home, even after the struggle to obtain it had been given up for the present as entirely unsuccessful. "The blessing of a Bishop," said Graves, with overheated zeal, in a postscript to his letter of New Year's day, "would make true religion and loy- alty overspread the land. Hasten, hasten, O Lord! a truly spiritual overseer to this despised, abused per- secuted part of the vineyard, for Christ Jesus' sake. Amen! Amen!" The clergy of Connecticut, in vol- untary Convention, assembled May 29th, 1771, again addressed the Bishop of London on the subject; and after stating that the plan had been so fully explained that "none opposed it," in this country, "but those who did it out of malice or mere wantonness," con- cluded the argument of their paper thus: "Should our application be judged unreasonable, we doubt not it will be remembered that necessity has no law. We believe Episcopacy to be of divine origin. We judge an American Episcopate to be essential, at least to the wellbeing of religion here. We therefore think it our duty to exert ourselves, in every proper way, to bring it into effect: and as we know of no way more harmless, nor any more likely to insure success, than importunate prayer to our God, to our King,
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and to our superiors, we believe it our duty to pray without ceasing, and hope our request will be an- swered in due time, if we faint not."1
The Missionaries, though aware of sleepless oppo- sition, were not fully acquainted with the nature of all the influences brought to bear against them, nor with all the obstacles to the success of their prayers. Reference has been made to a Convention of Dele- gates from the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, and from the Congregational Associations of Connec- ticut, held annually from 1766 to 1775, inclusive. These delegates met alternately at Elizabethtown, N. J., and in different towns of this colony; and while they professed to have in view the spread of the Gos- pel and the promotion of Christian friendship between the members of their respective bodies, the great ob- ject which rose above all others in their considera- tion was the prosecution of measures for "preserving the religious liberties of their churches," which they imagined to be threatened at that time by the vigor- ous efforts of the friends of the Church of England in this country and in Great Britain to secure an Amer- ican Episcopate. They had "Deputies for managing the affairs of Dissenters in England," with whom they opened a correspondence, and at each annual gathering a letter was prepared, read and approved, and then sent over as an expression of the feelings, the fears, and the opinions of this grave body convened, to use their own words, "on the most catholic foundation!" It is curious to note how they anticipated "unmerciful rigor and persecution" to follow the introduction of Diocesan Bishops into the colonies, and what a strip-
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