USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, from the settlement of the colony to the death of Bishop Seabury > Part 3
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HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
"purely for the purposes of religion," might have returned a few years later and enjoyed comparative liberty. For the fires of Smithfield had ceased to be kindled, and there was no burning at the stake in England, nor persecution unto death in any form for the sake of religious opinions and practices, after 1611. The rites and ceremonies of the English Church then were substantially what they are now, and the quarrel between the opposing parties was . more over these than over Christian doctrines. The Protestant faith was struggling to maintain its life without casting aside all the good things which Rome had corrupted and abused, and the government was enforcing a recognition of the religion which by law had been established.
America, at this period, was attracting some of the most skilful European voyagers to her shores. The Spaniards and the Italians led the way in the earliest discoveries, and the Dutch and the French seem to have taken advantage of the time, while England was absorbed with her religious disputes, to acquire pos- sessions on this continent. But with the patents and charters granted by King James to different compa- nies of his subjects, the spirit of Anglo-Saxon enter- prise was awakened and greatly increased in the reign of his unfortunate son. Whether the plan of colonizing New England originated with the Puritans or with Sir Ferdinando Gorges is an inquiry which need not be settled here; but it is certain that, who- ever were the originators, the plan resulted as much from the commercial ideas and adventurous spirit of the age as from religious impulse. Perhaps we should say, as the cautious Humphrey did, that "it ought to
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be owned to the just honor of this people, that the first settlers who left their native country, England, appear to have done it out of a true principle of con- science, however erroneous."
Preparations for the settlement of Connecticut were begun in 1633, on the banks of the river which gives name to the State. Early in the autumn of that year, a company of explorers from the Colony of Plymouth „established a trading- house at Windsor, near the mouth of the Tunxis River, and carried on a brisk traffic in peltry with the native inhabitants. Shortly before, the Dutch from Manhattan had erected a fort at Hartford, six miles below, and claimed possession of the country by the right of being the original dis- coverers. They resisted with redoubtable threats, and some show of siege and assault, the movements of their new neighbors ; but all attempts to dislodge them proved unavailing, and the English colonists were soon left to the occupancy of the soil, and to the privilege of working out their deliverance both from the Indians and from the rigors of a winter in the wilderness. When their scheme of settling Connecti- cut came to be fully known in the Old Colony, it met with strong opposition, and permission to remove thither with their families was only granted after a warm debate in the General Court. In 1635, John Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, but a more accomplished and amiable man, arrived at Boston, with a commission from sundry noblemen and gentlemen interested in the Connecticut patent, and proceeded, according to his instructions, to erect forti- fications, build houses, and make a settlement at the mouth of the river.
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In the spring of 1638, John Davenport and his as- sociates - who had wintered at Boston, waiting there, to use his own words, for "the eye of God's Provi- dence " to "guide us to a place convenient for our families and for our friends," and resisting the induce- ments offered them to remain in Massachusetts and blend their influence and their wealth with the earlier emigrants - anchored their ships in Quinnipiack har- bor, and began the settlement of the Colony of New- Haven. Thus there were two jurisdictions or colonies in what constitute the present limits of Connecticut, with separate governors and councils; and this state of things continued until 1665, when New Haven was put under the broad and liberal charter granted to Connecticut by Charles the Second, and Winthrop the younger became Governor of the united colonies.
In all this time there is no evidence that Episcopacy was anywhere tolerated, or that it had any earnest friends in Connecticut to vindicate its claims. If here and there one was bold enough to avow his pref- erence for the Ritual of the Church, he was made so uncomfortable by it that he soon modified his opinion or sought a more quiet residence. William Pitkin and six others, signing themselves "professors of the Protestant Christian Religion, members of the Church of England, and subjects to our Sovereign Lord, Charles the Second, by God's grace King of England," did indeed address the General Assembly at the Octo- ber session in 1664, "declaring their aggrievances," and "petitioning for a redress of the same." Their grievances were, that they were not under the care of those who "administered in a due manner" the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper; that
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they "were as sheep scattered, having no shepherd"; and they asked for the establishment of " some whole- some law," by virtue of which they might both claim and receive their privileges; and "furthermore they humbly requested, that for the future no law might be of any force to make them pay or contribute to the maintenance of any minister or officer in the Church that will neglect or refuse to baptize their children, and take care of them " as church-members. The action which followed this humble petition was simply a rec- ommendation to the ministers and churches in the colony, "to consider whether it be not their duty to entertain all such persons, who are of an honest and god- ly conversation, having a competency of knowledge in the principles of religion," - entertain meaning in this place to receive into church-fellowship and treat ac- cordingly. The recommendation-which was ordered by the Court to be sent to the several ministers and churches in the colony - added, "that all the children of the Church be accepted and accounted real mem- bers," "and that the Church exercise a due Christian care and watch over them; and that, when they are grown up, being examined by the officer in the pres- ence of the church," and it appears, in the judgment of charity, they are duly qualified to participate in that great ordinance of the Lord's Supper, by their being able to examine themselves and to discern the Lord's body, such persons be admitted to full communion.
Church and State were as closely united here, at that period, as ever they were in England. The ecclesiastical and civil powers were blended together, and liberty of conscience and the theory of human rights existed more in name than in reality. The
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people were compelled to support the Congregational order, which was the order of faith established by the civil government. Nor was this all. None had lib- erty to worship publicly in any other way, nor could men vote or hold any civil office, except in the orig- inal Colony of Connecticut, unless they were members of some Congregational church. The settlement of New Haven was eminently a commercial project, and Theophilus Eaton, the first governor of it, had been, as Cotton Mather calls him, "a merchant of great credit and fashion in the city of London." He had been, too, the early friend and parishioner of John Davenport, who, before his emigration to this country, was Vicar of St. Stephen's Church, Coleman Street, London. The first planters of New Haven set up for independence, and recognized no human authority apart from themselves. They appear to have been very careful to avoid any mention of their native land, or any allusion to the question of allegiance to the King. Davenport, an Oxford divine, who must be regarded as the light that guided them in their religious organization, threw off all the liturgical forms to which in his youth he had been accus- tomed, and
" in Newman's barn laid down Scripture foundations for the town."
About the same time his brother Christopher, with a like temperament, also deserted the Church of Eng- land, but travelled in an opposite direction, and did not stop until he reached Rome, gave in his allegiance to the supremacy of the Pope, and became a high official in the Romish communion.
After the independent jurisdiction of New Haven
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had been extinguished by incorporating the colony with Connecticut, John Davenport accepted an invi- tation to remove to Boston, and he was the more willing to accept it, because the practice of restrict- ing the right of suffrage to church-members, for which he had honestly contended, was henceforth to be given up for the broader practice which had always obtained in the older colony.
It helped to strengthen the Puritan policy in New England, that events in the mother-country had led to the dethronement and execution of Charles the First, and to the overturn of the government both in Church and State. The removal of Episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer opened a floodgate through which errors and heresies of the wildest kind rushed in and overspread the land. More unlucky prophets never existed than the preachers of war and rebellion in the time of Oliver Cromwell, and a more complete system of tyranny never was set up than that which drove the Episcopal clergy from their liv- ings, and forbade the people, who still remembered their cherished customs, even to keep with religious wor- ship that "day of days " in the Calendar, the festival of the Nativity of our Lord. So wearied had the people become of these and other like things, and so little reason had the nation at large to be satisfied with that novel form of government imposed by the regicides, that, upon the death of the Protector, the Presbyterians themselves were quite ready to accept the restoration of Charles the Second, and the reestab- lishment of the ancient monarchy.
It is natural for the child to imitate the parent and espouse the family interests. Though remote from
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all the convulsions and intolerances of the home gov- ernment, the New-England Colonies felt their influ- ence, and shaped their policy with a view to perpet- uate rigid and severe discipline. They noted and punished departures from the established order of religion, and few were the favors and tender mercies shown in Massachusetts to the Baptists and the Quak- ers. " When the first New-England league was formed, in 1643, for better protection against savage warfare, the delegates of Maine were excluded because they were Churchmen, and those of Rhode Island, because they were Baptists." 1
Such was the clamor raised not only in America, but Europe, against the government of Massachusetts, for cruel treatment of the Quakers, that the mag- istrates were led to publish a declaration in defence of their conduct. Four of those unhappy religionists suffered death by virtue of the law of the Colony, - two of them on the 27th of October 1659; and Neal, the faithful historian of the Puritans, is free to confess that "these executions raised a great clamor against the government, and sullied the glory of their former sufferings from the bishops ; for now it appeared that the New-England Puritans were no better friends to liberty of conscience than their adversaries, and that the question between them was not, whether one party of Christians should have power to oppress an- other, but who should have that power. Great num- bers of the common people were offended at these proceedings, as well as the generality of sober persons in the several nations of Europe, which," he goes on to say, "obliged the magistrates to publish to the
1 Poor's English Civilization in America, p. 61.
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world their own vindication,"1 and which he gives at length, showing that they were still resolved to con- tinue the law in force, and two of the four executions mentioned above (one that of a woman) followed quickly upon the utterance of their public apology.
But as the Church in England revived with the monarchy, so here there was a revival of affection in the hearts of some for the ancient forms of faith, as well as an outspoken sense of the justice which belonged to them, after the restoration of the Royal family in 1660. The ministers who came over to this country with the earliest emigrants had re- ceived Episcopal ordination, and, as they passed to their final reward, their places were supplied in a way which must have excited doubt in the minds of those who had a spark of reverence for the past, or any lingering recollection of the formula, "It is evi- dent unto all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been three orders of ministers in Christ's Church, - Bishops, Priests, and Deacons."
1 Neal's History of New England, Vol. I. p. 329.
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CHAPTER II.
COMMISSIONERS OF CHARLES THE SECOND; AND ORIGIN OF EPIS- COPACY IN CONNECTICUT.
A. D. 1665-1722.
WHEN the Commissioners of Charles the Second visited Connecticut in 1665, they carried back a re- port that the colony "will not hinder any from en- joying the Sacraments and using the Common Prayer Book, provided they hinder not the maintenance of the public minister." But the Commissioners could not have meant by this statement that there was any legal provision for such liberty. They probably received private assurances, that, whenever any in the colony should desire to adopt in their worship the ritual and doctrines of the English Church, they would not be disturbed, and that the laws would be changed in conformity with such desire. For there was no letting up of the Puritan rigor, no relaxation of the rule that none should have liberty to worship God publicly except after the order of religion estab- lished by the civil government, until 1708. In that year the General Assembly of Connecticut passed what was called the "Act of Toleration," by which * all persons who soberly dissented from the worship and ministry by law established, -that is, the Congre- gational order,-were permitted to enjoy the same liberty of conscience with the Dissenters in England
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under the act of William and Mary. That act ex- empted Dissenters from punishment for non-conform- ity to the established Church, but did not exempt them from taxation for its maintenance. And so, by appearing before the County Court, and there in legal forms declaring their "sober dissent," any persons in the Colony of Connecticut could obtain permission to have public worship in their own way; but they were still obliged to pay for the support of the Con- gregational churches in the place of their respective residences.
This little relaxation of Puritan rigor must have been prompted by a growing feeling of uneasiness in the colony. As early as 1690, some half a cen- tury after the settlement of the place, " a considerable number of freeholders, inhabitants of the town of Stratford, professors of the faith of the Church of Eng- land, desired to worship God in the way of their fore- fathers." The communication between this and the mother-country had become so frequent that mer- chants and traders, as well as artisans and planters, were invited hither by the promise of rich gains, and of these adventurers the Church of England had a fair proportion of representatives in Stratford, then a town embracing a large section of the present County of Fairfield. They must have fed their faith and kept alive their churchmanship by private reading and a private use of the Liturgy, for they had no minister to whom they might flee for counsel and direction.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was chartered in England, June 16th, 1701, and among its first acts was that of sending to this and other British colonies on the American con-
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tinent a Missionary, to itinerate and make personal observations. The individual selected for this pur- pose was George Keith, a Scotchman by birth, who for twenty-eight years was a distinguished light among the Quakers. He proclaimed and defended their tenets in East Jersey and Philadelphia, and, according to his own account, " the burden of the Word of the Lord came upon him on the twenty-first day of the fourth month, 1688, in the town of Boston, in New England," and he there "boldly threw down the gauntlet, and challenged to theological combat the chosen cham- pions of Puritanism." Appearing again in Pennsyl- vania, he commenced his famous dispute with the Quakers, which ended in his separation from them, and in twenty-eight of their leading members issuing against him what they called " A Testimony of Dis- ownment," -a testimony confirmed by the Yearly Meeting of their brethren in London. In 1694 he went to England, and subsequently received Holy Orders in the established Church. The Society sent him back to this country, in company with Mr. Patrick Gordon, who was to be the Missionary for Long Isl- and. Mr. Gordon died, of a "violent fever," a few weeks after his arrival, and then Mr. Keith had for his assistant and associate in missionary travels and services the Rev. John Talbot, chaplain of the ship in · which they came over to America. The journal of the Missionary proves the extent of their labors, and the reception which they met with in different places. The only town in Connecticut mentioned as having been visited by them was New London, where they passed a Sunday; and both of them preached, being invited to do so by Mr. Gurdon Sal-
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tonstall, then the Congregational minister in that place, and afterwards the Governor of the colony. He "civilly entertained them at his house, and ex- pressed his good affection to the Church of Eng- land." In general, they reported of Connecticut that it contained "thirty thousand souls, [in] about thirty- three towns, all Dissenters, supplied with ministers and schools of their own persuasion."
But the introduction of Episcopacy into Connecti- cut stands closely connected with the name of a dis- tinguished layman, the Hon. CALEB HEATHCOTE, - a Christian gentleman, loving most warmly the Church and sustaining high and important responsibilities in " the New York government." As early as 1702 an application had been made to the Bishop of London for a Missionary at Stratford, but it met with no suc- cess ; and three years later, when the town was desti- tute of any minister, the members of the Church of England applied to the Rev. William Vesey, Rector of Trinity Church, New York, and desired him in vain to visit them in his official capacity. Both these ap- plications must have been prompted by Col. Heath- cote; for, writing in 1705 to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of which he was now a member, he says: "My principles and natural temper lead me to do the Church all the ser- vice I can everywhere; but I dare not promise for more than this County at present, and my best en- deavors in the westernmost towns in Connecticut Colony, when the Church is well rooted here. . ... As for Boston Colony, I never was in it, so can say little about it. But as for Connecticut, I am and have been pretty conversant with it, and always was as much in all their good graces as any man."
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But after the charter of the Propagation Society was publicly known, and after Keith and Talbot had itinerated through the land, the people seemed to awake from their lethargy, and great numbers of the inhabitants in different colonies began to contend zealously which should be first supplied with min- isters of the Church. Frequent and earnest letters went over to the Society from time to time, - the funds of which were insufficient to respond favorably to one half the appeals for aid which they contained.
The Rev. George Muirson was ordained by the Bishop of London in 1705, and sent over as a Mis- sionary to the church at Rye, - a good point in West Chester County from which to act upon this colony, and originally included within its jurisdiction. Rye was annexed to the Province of New York in 1683; but the lines between the two colonies, as they now exist, were not established until nearly half a century had elapsed. Some of the Connecticut people living near attended the services of Mr. Muirson, and thus he became acquainted with their feelings and inclina- tions. In the summer of 1706, after the drooping prospects of his own parish, by the Divine blessing, had revived, he and Colonel Heathcote set out upon a journey to explore the shore towns from Greenwich to Stratford. They rode into the latter village, - the Colonel "fully armed," - and finding a suitable place . for worship, Mr. Muirson, though threatened "with prison and hard usage," "preached to a very numer- ous congregation, and baptized about twenty-four, mostly grown people." Upon a repetition of the visit a few months later, their entrance was disputed and their object opposed. Each subsequent visit appeared
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to increase the popular hostility; for the settlers, though many of them were born and nurtured in the Church of England, had long been taught to look upon her as the Nazareth out of which no good thing could come. Hence all favor shown to her worship and missionaries, and all participation in her ordi- nances, were denounced, and the handful of church- men were greatly misused and persecuted, and subse- quently " distresses " were levied upon their estates to support the ministry and religion encouraged and legalized by the Provincial Government. But the churchmen did not despond. "A member of the council standing himself in the highway" on Sunday, and inciting and empowering several others to forbid persons to go to the Episcopal assemblies or church, and "threatening them with a fine of five pounds " each if they did, neither broke up the congregations nor lessened the number of baptisms. A spirit of inquiry was excited which could not be allayed. It reached out to other towns, and soon there were fami- lies in Fairfield, and back upon the hill-sides of the interior, which welcomed the sound of the pure and fervent Liturgy of the Church of England. The Con- gregational Society in Stratford was rocked to its very centre by the same spirit; for Mr. Reed, the minister, was so far from being horrified by Episco- pacy that he early manifested a friendship for her doctrines and worship, and expressed a willingness to receive Holy Orders, if provision, in the mean time, could be made for himself and his family. Colonel Heathcote, writing to the Society, thus speaks of him : "I acquainted you in my former letter that there was a very ingenious gentleman at Stratford, one Mr.
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Reed, the minister of that place, who is very inclin- able to come over to the Church; and if the charge can be dispensed with, he is well worth the gaining, being by much the most ingenious man they have amongst them, and would be very capable to serve the Church. By reason of the good inclination he shows for the Church, he has undergone persecution by his people, who do all which is in their power to starve him, and, being countenanced and encouraged therein by all the ministers round them, they have very near effected it, so that if any proposal could be made to encourage his coming over for ordination, his family, which is pretty large, must be taken care of in his absence." His pastoral relations in Stratford involved him in much trouble, and a council of neigh- boring elders was convened to consider "the wrongs of which he complained." It appears from the records of the town, that in their advice they "recommended the people to take all suitable care to purge and vin- dicate Mr. Reed from scurrilous and abusive reflec- tions." For some reason, not now known, he never went to England for Holy Orders; but he lost his living among the Congregationalists at Stratford, and was obliged to leave; and they endeavored to repair the mischief which had been done, and to weaken or destroy the increasing interest in favor of Episcopacy, by calling to their oversight, in 1709, the Rev. Timo- thy Cutler, " who lived then at Boston or Cambridge," and was "one of the best preachers both colonies afforded." He ministered among them for ten years, when his learning and popularity gained for him the appointment of Rector of Yale College, and a town- meeting was warned to consider the order of the
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Trustees for his removal to "the great work " of con- ducting that Institution. The people "passively" submitted to what they called "the overruling Provi- dence of God," and acquiesced in the removal of Mr. Cutler for the sake of peace, upon condition that he " returned the house and home lot which he received of the town," and provided that they were allowed " one hundred pounds money for and towards the charge of settling another minister amongst them." 1
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