USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 12
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For their share in inspiring such loyalty to throne and altar, the clergy often bore the full brunt of patriot wrath. As early as September, 1774, they could see the storm coming and convened to discuss what to do. After independence was declared, their situ- ation was peculiarly embarrassing. They only among colonial clergymen were required to take a special oath of allegiance to the king at ordination, acknowledging his supremacy over the Church of England. Their feelings were now all the more painful, because most were natives and three-quarters were Yale alumni.
After the Declaration, darkness shut down upon them for nearly a decade. They were forced to choose between abandoning services or breaking their oaths of allegiance by omitting passages in the Prayer Book which emphasized loyalty to the throne in phrases fit to make the Sons of Liberty foam at the mouth. They discussed the painful dilemma at a meeting in June, 1776, and about three weeks after the Declaration decided against omitting the unforgivable prayers - by closing the churches. Beach of New- town passed into legend by shouting that he would "preach and
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pray for the King, till the rebels cut out his tongue."9 He was bit- terly disgusted by the milk-and-water abbreviation of public wor- ship which was recommended. Before long, President Stiles of Yale recorded in his diary that all Episcopal churches in the state had been voluntarily closed.
THE TRIALS OF THE CLERGY
One would gladly leave unwritten the lives of the clergy during the next few years. It is a long chronicle of suffering, re- lieved only by the fidelity of parishioners who also had become pariahs in their homeland. Even gentle Ebenezer Kneeland fell afoul of the public temper. On the Sunday after the Battle of Lex- ington, a furious patriot rose in his pew and bawled that there would be no more prayers for the king in Stratford. Quietly the parson closed his Prayer Book, gave the benediction, and shut the church door. His short and unhappy life thereafter, confined by order to his house, symbolized the clergy's general fate.
It made little difference that a rector might have been popu- lar before the war. Richard Mansfield of Derby was proverbially charming and hospitable, and not a political parson. But he made the mistake of writing to Governor Tryon of New York about the sufferings of Connecticut Loyalists, and soon fled to Long Island to escape arrest, with little hope of ever seeing his wife and children again.
John Sayre came to Fairfield just in time to feel the besom of patriot resentment. The only sweetening in his bitter cup was the touching loyalty of parishioners who never forsook him, even when he was confined to his house and garden. The crowning blow fell during a British and Tory raid upon the town in 1779, when flames razed the church and rectory, melted the Communion plate, and destroyed the parish library. Sayre, his wife and eight children fled to Long Island with only the clothing on their backs. After years of privation, a land grant in the unbroken forest of New Brunswick must have seemed like a haven.
Jeremiah Leaming of Norwalk had infuriated patriots by his able literary defense of the Church and his opposition to the Stamp Act disorders. Sons of Liberty hung his portrait head down on a sign-post and flung him into jail, where lying on the damp floor made him lame for life. In Tryon's raid he lost everything and
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barely escaped to New York. The poor, thin, pallid little parson courageously returned, and in 1783 had the honor of declining election as Connecticut's first bishop.
Ebenezer Dibblee of Stamford suffered much for his faith, although he was willing to go almost any length to keep peace in Church and Empire. He stuck to his post throughout the war, yet so persecuted was he that even a trip to Sharon to be inoculated for small-pox was a welcome relief. In a letter to Samuel Peters, after the war, he declared that his and his people's woes "would fill a volume."10 His property was plundered or severely damaged, soldiers were quartered upon him, and his sons and many pa- rishioners fled for safety. Attempts were made to murder him and his daughter became insane from fright.
Samuel Andrews of Wallingford also ministered throughout the war, although he was forced to give bonds to stay within the parish bounds, and could not even make a call without permission. After the war he served for over thirty years in New Brunswick, and in a letter to Bishop Jarvis of Connecticut, in 1804, described his Loyalist parish as a "wilderness without roads."11
Scovil of Waterbury was a Loyalist but prudent enough to escape personal indignity. But even he received the usual atten- tions of patriot committees, and often slept away from home to avoid their sudden midnight visits. The people respected him for staying at his post. After the war he left them reluctantly to found a parish of exiles in New Brunswick, but for many years he returned occasionally to visit old friends.
In marked contrast to Scovil's tactful course was the blunt- spoken Toryism of hale old John Beach. He read the prayer for the king during the war, and for some time his church was the only one open. Patriots dreaded his influence and put him under bond not to bear arms or discourage enlistment in the American army. He openly boasted that there was hardly a non-Loyalist in his parishes. Repeatedly, he barely escaped death. While he was reading prayers for the king in Redding, a bullet sang through a window and sank into the sounding-board over the pulpit. Once a party of Patriots entered the church and pointed muskets at his head as he approached the prayer for the king, but he continued as if there were no danger within a thousand miles. A family tra- dition relates that a band of soldiers escorted him to a place where
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an axe and a block were ready for his execution. "Now you old sinner," said they, "say your last prayer." He knelt and prayed: "God bless King George, and forgive all his enemies and mine for Christ's sake!"12 - and so shamed them into releasing him. The Patriots had to respect the old fellow, who died peacefully in bed after half a century of devoted service.
John Rutgers Marshall of Woodbury made no effort to con- ceal his loyalism, and was summoned before the General Assemby to answer charges. He was waylaid and beaten, fired upon from ambush, insulted, and pelted with rotten vegetables. Several times men stormed into church to drag him from the pulpit during his sermon. The little door by which he escaped to hiding places in the Glebe House is still pointed out beside a great fireplace in the parlor.
James Nichols of Plymouth was equally obnoxious to patriots, and was tried for treason (but acquitted) at the same session of the Superior Court which condemned to death his parishioner, Moses Dunbar. He was imprisoned in a cellar at East Plymouth, tarred and feathered, dragged in a brook, and banished to Litch- field. Patriots forced him to close the church, and although he remained throughout the war, he thought it best to go with many other exiles to New Brunswick.
Much more diplomatic, but still not unscathed, was Abra- ham Jarvis of Middletown. He tried to be moderate and peace- able, even though he objected to omitting prayers for the king, and proposed the suspension of public worship. Once, while returning from a parish call, he met a man who had undertaken to murder him but lost heart when the parson spoke to him civilly. In 1781 he reopened his church and omitted prayers for the king.
Roger Viets of Simsbury was an ardent Loyalist and cared not who knew it. For helping Tories to escape from the Newgate mine and feeding them, he was heavily fined and lodged in the Hartford jail, where he ministered to other Loyalists and gave Communion to three condemned to death. He was released upon giving bond not to leave Simsbury or do anything against the United States. After ministering throughout the war, in 1786 he accepted a parish in Digby, Nova Scotia, but came back years later to visit old neighbors.
By far the most Toryish missionary was Samuel Peters of
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Hebron, who fairly outshone Lord North in devotion to the mon- archy. He was unpopular long before the Revolution, because of his pride and pomposity, and for opposing gifts for relief when the royal government closed the port of Boston. He was mobbed and fled to Boston, then to England, where he worked off his spleen by composing an abusive history of Connecticut. There is reason to believe that imagination liberally embellished his tales of suf- fering, and so his wild statements embarrassed some of his fellow clergymen into disowning him. In 1794 Peters was elected as bishop of Vermont, but could not obtain testimonials because he had not performed priestly duties for twenty years. After losing his English pension by squabbling with the Prime Minister, he re- turned to the United States to sell his land grants by questionable methods, and died in New York after depending for years upon the charity of friends.
English-born Matthew Graves was a natural Tory, and un- fortunately was estranged from the sympathy of his fellow priests by his sincere Methodist piety. A hasty temper betrayed his Tory- ism, and he stubbornly persisted in praying for the king in spite of warnings. Pulled from the pulpit by infuriated Patriots, he barely escaped mobbing by fleeing to the house of a warden. The war- dens refused to open the church unless he omitted the forbidden prayers. Later he fled to a country parish and eventually, under a flag of truce, to New York, where he died of a stroke while officiat- ing in St. George's Chapel. Arnold's raid in 1781 reduced his church to ashes.
One of the hardest fates was that of poor Epinetus Townsend, who was arrested for preaching loyalty, refusing to join the Patriot association and declining to furnish blankets to the American army. During his imprisonment his family was cruelly persecuted, but finally was ordered to go with him to the British on Long Island, where he taught school for a living. He embarked with his family for Nova Scotia but the ship was lost with all on board.
A few parsons lived through the war unscathed, simply by keeping quiet. In New Haven and West Haven parish life flowed serenely under sober, steady, benevolent Bela Hubbard, a lukewarm Loyalist. In the fall of 1778 he quietly unlocked his church doors, and prayed for "Congress and the free and independent states of America." While the Bishop of London certainly took a dim view
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of independence, Hubbard was only following his official permis- sion to open the churches and omit the hated prayers for George III - as President Ezra Stiles of Yale duly noted in his all-observ- ant diary. When General Tryon's raiders descended upon New Haven, they treated Hubbard most respectfully and never even touched his church. His mission prospered and his death in 1812 caused unfeigned sorrow, especially among those who recalled his brave ministrations during the hideous yellow fever epidemic of 1795.
Richard Clarke of New Milford also was little molested, and ministered quietly. In 1787 he sailed to New Brunswick, where he served many years and died as the oldest missionary in the British colonies, much beloved by the people. Equally quiet, sober and dutiful were Christopher Newton of Ripton and Daniel Fogg of Pomfret. The former stayed throughout the war and served until his death in 1787. Fogg quietly held services in Colonel Malbone's home when the church was closed, but was so suspiciously re- garded that the selectmen refused to let him visit New York. He served, bravely and lonesomely, until his death in 1815. Tyler of Norwich also was more fortunate than most of the clergy, although he had enemies and feared that his well had been poisoned. In 1776 the parish voted to discontinue worship, but in the autumn of 1778 Tyler felt that "the cause of religion ought not to be an- nihilated on a civil account,"13 and the people voted to reopen the church and forget prayers for the king and Parliament. The other clergy protested in 1780, but within three years all followed his example. Tyler died in 1823, after a ministry of fifty-five years as priest and physician.
He typified most of the native-born clergy, who in spite of their hardships resolved to stay in their homeland after the war. Sad was the desolation most of them confronted, as depicted by Consider Tiffany, a moderate Loyalist of Hartland, who wrote an account of the war and described the plunder and wrecking of many churches. But Connecticut's policy toward Loyalists was milder than that of some other states, and after 1777 the state of- fered conciliation and a pardon to those who would return and take the oath of allegiance. Many Connecticut Churchmen joined the great Loyalist migration, most going to the St. John River re- gion of New Brunswick. Remarkably few of the clergy joined
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them, in spite of inducements of higher salaries and land grants. Connecticut's conciliatory policy influenced them, and although they encountered social ostracism, there was no prolonged, official persecution. Their neighbors gradually became interested in other matters and accepted them as fellow citizens.
Their most difficult problem was to set the prostrate Church on its feet. Several churches had been destroyed, while others were damaged and dilapidated, and many pulpits were vacant. The S. P. G. abruptly cut off all salaries after the peace treaty acknowl- edged American independence. Diminished congregations rallied loyally to the clergy, and the Church found towers of strength in a few eminent and respected laymen like William Samuel Johnson, who had been a very passive Loyalist. His adjustment to the new order was emulated by many moderates who loved Connecticut too much to leave. They were courted by conservative Patriots who wanted peace, reconciliation and stability, and in 1787 secured the annulment of much anti-Tory legislation. Many Anglicans be- came firm supporters of the new Federal Constitution, and of the Federalist Party.
Even ardent Tories did not find it too hard to become good American citizens, and among them was Samuel Seabury, Junior." Few had suffered such indignities of revenge, including parading, imprisonment, and threats of torture. Yet love for his Church and native state prevailed, and his courage and abilities marked him for a great part in establishing the Church upon its new republi- can and purely religious foundation. When frail Jeremiah Leaming declined election as a bishop, the clergy naturally turned to Sea- bury. A new and hopeful chapter then opened for the Church in America. But a bishop in Connecticut - "the eighth wonder of the world" - was the result of a long struggle.
*For a biographical sketch, see Appendix I.
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CHAPTER TEN
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EPISCOPATE
YEARS OF CONTROVERSY
T THE Church's remarkable growth after 1740 would have been greater with a resident bishop. The colonial Church had always been an anachronism - an episcopal church without a head. Lack of local ordinations naturally meant a chronic shortage of clergy. Archbishop Laud of Canterbury, the bugbear of Puritan New England, foresaw the situation, and while still Bishop of Lon- don intended to make that diocese include the colonies. In 1638 he proposed to send a bishop to the American wilderness, but was thwarted by the anti-episcopal rebellion against King Charles I. Circumstances, especially the delays of officialdom, blocked re- peated efforts to appoint a bishop in Virginia. One of the candi- dates was Jonathan Swift, and one's imagination is challenged to picture the author of Gulliver's Travels pontificating among the tobacco planters.
Episcopalians were less fortunate in Connecticut than in the royal colonies, where governors, in the absence of a bishop, ap- pointed clergymen to parishes. Governors, however, were bound by orders to respect the rights of the Bishop of London, who never set foot in America. His nominal authority had been recognized since the Virginia legislature established the Church in 1619. The bishop had tried to secure priests for colonial parishes, but his powers were questioned by some, who declared that they could not be transmitted and had to be renewed by each succeeding king.
Successive Bishops of London eased their consciences and tried to fill the vacuum of authority by appointing "Commissaries," empowered to discipline the clergy, visit churches and hold church courts, but not to confirm, consecrate or ordain. Their official pres- tige was thus slight and the extent of their power doubtful. A re- fractory priest, like Whitefield, could defy them and "get away with it." In the northern colonies after 1750 the office practically
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lapsed, in spite of efforts to revive it. New England had had only one Commissary, the Rev. Roger Price, who served for eighteen years (1730-1748) and stimulated such growth as the Church never knew before or after him. He was so respected in Connecticut that the clergy wanted their own Commissary, and vainly recommended the appointment of Doctor Samuel Johnson.
The Connecticut clergy openly and persistently advocated an American diocese. S. P. G. missionaries had favored the idea since the formidable John Talbot of New Jersey had voyaged to England for the cause. He was dismissed for accepting consecra- tion from English Non-juring bishops. Talbot expressed the argu- ments for a colonial diocese as fully as anyone ever did, and was earnestly seconded by Pigot and Johnson. After enduring a voy- age to England for ordination, Johnson fired the opening gun in his perennial campaign for an American bishop. He agreed with a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, who lamented the shocking loss of life among colonial ordinands. "There never was a persecu- tion upon earth that destroyed a fifth part of the clergy."1
Connecticut Churchmen did not question the authority of an English bishop, the parishioners of Bristol declaring in 1747 that they were "under the bishop of London." But Churchmen wanted a local authority, which was never more needed than in the turbulent 1740's, when Whitefield and his admirers defied bishops and commissaries alike. From 1742 until 1750 the missionaries poured letters upon the Bishop of London and the Society, be- moaning the injurious effects of having no bishop. Bishop Sher- lock informed Johnson that he had already advocated one or two colonial bishops. This correspondence did not escape the lynx eyes of the Congregational clergy, who flew to arms forthwith.
The political leaders of Connecticut jumped into the fray and concerted their efforts with the English Nonconformists to un- dermine the plan for an American diocese. The colony's agent in England, in 1749, apprized Governor Jonathan Law of his efforts to block "a Measure which has so Direct a Tendency to Introduce Ecclesiastical Tyranny amongst a people whose Ancestors have so severely felt the bad Effects of it as ours have done."2 The Gover- nor's correspondence in this period reveals the alarm of Puritan politicians and business men and the machinations of the Noncon- formist lobby in England to checkmate the bishops.
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BISHOP SEABURY'S HOUSE, NEW LONDON. The old Rectory of St. James's Church. (From Lucy Cushing Jarvis, Sketches of Church Life in Colonial Connecticut.)
CHRIST CHURCH, HARTFORD, CHANCEL, 1829-1879. Before Re- modeling. (From Gurdon W. Russell, History of the Parish of Christ Church, Hartford.)
Their alarm took fire from the ardent episcopal campaign which appeared in all the glowing pomp of officialdom. When the S. P. G. petitioned Queen Anne for American dioceses, it was not forgotten that the Society's governing committee was composed largely of bishops. Its published list of proposed functions for a colonial prelate was scanned with an unusually wary eye. Nor did New Englanders forget Archbishop Laud's attempt to extend his lawn sleeves into America. And his successors in the bishopric of London sometimes argued for an American diocese at a moment when the colonials were especially irritated by some other evidence of British "imperialism." Suspicion was anything but allayed by Doctor Johnson's pressure for immediate action. It was aggravated by his letters (which undoubtedly were opened and perused) urg- ing the abolition of Connecticut's charter in favor of a royal gov- ernment. After that, no Puritan colonial would believe the assur- ances of English prelates that they wanted only a suffragan, or a bishop without civil functions or coercive power over the laity.
Equally skeptical were the powerful English Whig poli- ticians, like the Duke of Newcastle and Horace Walpole, who de- pended upon dissenting votes to bolster their power. Even the persuasive Bishop Gibson of London could not budge the Duke. And when he wished to consecrate a Maryland priest as bishop, the colonial government forbade the man to sail for England.
For a few years after 1747, the matter was quiescent. But persistent Doctor Johnson had no thought of letting it sleep. He stirred it up in 1754-1763 by a prolonged correspondence with Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford and later Archbishop of Canter- bury. Fruitlessly, Secker tried to win the powerful influence of Horace Walpole, and wrote to Johnson his disheartened conclu- sion: "We have done all we can here, in vain; and must wait for more favorable times .. . "3 - which never came. His letters to Walpole and Johnson reveal his sincere desire for purely spiritual bishops. They also expound his idea that a colonial episcopate would promote loyalty to the Crown, which many colonials were beginning to regard as a questionable virtue. The letter to Wal- pole written in 1750 was published by its author in 1769, and blew up a cloud of controversial pamphlets.
By that time the dispute had become closely linked with urgent political and economic questions, which were widening the
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breach between Britain and America. The colonials had begun to view every mention of an American diocese as a part of the ab- horred new imperial policy of taxation and control. Colonial dis- senters became intensely irritable in the years 1764-1771, when they suspected a concerted "plot" to force a bishop upon them.
Nearly every year a British bishop would bring up the sore subject in the S. P. G. anniversary sermon. American opinion was especially incensed by the sermon of John Ewer of Llandaff in 1767, which was severely reprobated by colonial Presbyterian and Congregational ministers as insulting to Americans. It resulted in another long newspaper and pamphlet war, in which the Church was brilliantly defended by a son of Connecticut, Thomas Brad- bury Chandler, rector of St. John's Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. His opponent was Jonathan Mayhew, the Boston Congre- gational divine, who charged that there was a "plot" to eradicate the established New England churches. Archbishop Secker and Doctor Johnson vainly tried to calm the raging sea by pouring on the conciliatory oil of a "purely spiritual" episcopate.
The Connecticut clergy appeared to be aiding the "plot" by their incessant agitation, sometimes in collaboration with their brethren in other provinces, particularly New York and New Jer- sey. During the 1760's letters on the subject fairly streamed across the Atlantic. The same arguments were eloquently and sometimes heatedly exhausted by nearly every priest living in Connecticut, and in 1766 they all joined in convention with the New York clergy to plead with the Bishop of London. The most that they suc- ceeded in obtaining was to add more bitterness to the Mayhew controversy.
Mayhew lashed out furiously at "episcopal tyranny" in his widely circulated Observations, and in 1764 traded blows with Doctor Johnson's friend and correspondent, Archbishop Secker. He asserted that American bishops would be unnecessary, and would only open the way to royal tyranny and religious persecution, and truthfully stated that even many Episcopalians did not want them. Mayhew found an uncompromising ally in the Rev. Charles Chauncy of Boston, who pounced fiercely upon the Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Episcopalians in America, written by Chandler at Doctor Johnson's suggestion. In the ensuing pamph- let battle, Chandler received firm moral support from the Connecti-
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cut clergy. To the dissenters the whole episcopate "plot" smelled of Connecticut Loyalism.
For ten years reports from Connecticut missionaries rang the changes upon this ominous note - a premonitory rumbling of the Revolutionary tempest. The question was rapidly becoming so much a political matter that the Connecticut General Assembly in- structed their agent in England to oppose the plan for an American bishop. Roger Sherman, later a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, is believed to have written a letter against it.
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