USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Annals of King's Chapel from the Puritan age of New England to the present day > Part 12
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1 The Proprietors' Records state that Messrs. William Prescott, Daniel Da- vis, William Sullivan, and Charles P. Curtis, our Counsel, were empowered,
Nov. 9, 1828, to compromise with Trinity Church. Mr. William Minot was also of counsel.
2 Baker vs. Fales, 16 Mass. 488.
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parishioners might choose a minister, although two thirds of the church-members remonstrated, and that a Congregational church had no legal existence apart from its parish. By this decision, the Unitarian majority in many parishes retained the possession of the church-property, and the Orthodox minority carried with them nothing of it to the new churches which they formed. But the Brookfield and the Federal Street cases, which were decided on the same principles, did not come before the court till a later period.
In the former of these, in 1830, Chief Justice Shaw gave the unanimous decision of the Court 1 that although the Orthodox minister of Brookfield had carried all but two of the church- members with him in seceding from the parish, those two by remaining in connection with the parish continued to be the church, and retained the property, records, and communion furniture. In 1854 the same great judge pronounced an opinion which still more emphatically confirmed the right of parishes to modify or change their doctrinal and ecclesiastical basis. This was in the case of "The Attorney General vs. The Proprietors of the Meeting-House in Federal Street in the Town of Bos- ton." 2 Here the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Synod of New York, the First Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and Society of Boston, and one of the parishioners of the Fed- eral Street meeting-house sought to recover that property for the Presbyterian body, to which the first founders of the said church had belonged. The trust deed of the land, in 1735, had conveyed it, " to hold the same unto the said congregation according to the tenures and after the same manner as the Church of Scotland hold and enjoy the lands whereon their meeting-houses are erected." But the Court held that though the Federal Street Society had ceased to be Presbyterian and had become Congregational and Unitarian, changing its disci- pline and doctrine, and abandoning the use of the Scotch ver- sion of the Psalms, the ecclesiastical law of Scotland did not hold in Massachusetts. " On the contrary," said Judge Shaw, " every religious society, unless restrained by some special trust, by the general law were at liberty to change their denomination, to profess and peaceably to inculcate any Christian faith or doc- trine, and adopt the form of worship most agreeable to them- selves; and by doing so, no forfeiture could be incurred." In the light of such decisions, it seems indubitable that the identity of King's Chapel with the same corporation as it existed before
1 Stebbins vs. Jennings, 10 Pick. 172. 2 Gray's Reports, iii. 1-65.
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the Revolution would have been affirmed by the Court, if the question had reached a judicial decision.
It is pleasant to record that the controversy left so little bitter- ness behind, that when Trinity Church was rebuilding, in 1829, the use of King's Chapel was tendered to it for the Price Lec- tures, - an offer which was declined with thanks by the wardens of Trinity Church, because they had already applied to St. Paul's. Forty-five years passed away, and the invitation was again given, when the great fire of Boston, in 1872, had burned Trinity Church, this time to be accepted; and the Lectures were once more given in King's Chapel to congregations larger than Mr. Price could ever have dreamed of.
The income from the Price estate in 1827 was $900; in 1836 a new lease was concluded, and again another in 1866. There seemed no reason to doubt that the compromise which had been made with Christian moderation and good feeling would be a permanent arrangement. The two churches had agreed for the sake of peace, and for the carrying out of Mr. Price's will, each to renounce a part of its claim; and they might well sup- pose, especially after the difficult nature of the questions at issue had been so thoroughly tested, that no one would afterward undertake to re-open the debate.
But at the seventieth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Massachusetts, in May, 1860, a committee was appointed "to confer with the trustees under the will of the late William Price, to consider what legal and moral responsibility and duty are resting upon them to carry out and fulfil the pious design of the testator." The officers of Trinity Church, however, declined to comply with this request ; 1 which being reported to the next Annual Convention, that body appointed a committee to confer with the attorney-general of the State " for the instituting of proper proceedings to ascer-
1 It was stated in the " Information in the matter of the Price Charity," etc., (1862), that it was "hoped that said trus- tees would confer with said committee in a frank and friendly spirit." To this, in the " Answer " of Trinity Church, it was caustically replied : " The defendants ad- mit that this committee went through the solemn form of soliciting an interview with these defendants, for the purpose of having them confess themselves guilty of a breach of trust, in regard to their administration and expenditure of the
income of this estate; and these defend- ants do not intend to intimate that such communication was not made by said committee in as 'frank and friendly a spirit' as such communications are usu- ally made by gentlemen and Christians. But these defendants, regarding such pro- ceedings as conceived in an unfriendly spirit, and having no burden of con- science in regard to their conduct in the matter, did not choose either to confess themselves before said committee, or to seek absolution at their hands."
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tain and enforce the public charities established by the said William Price."
The motives avowed for this unusual action of a dignified ec- clesiastical body were twofold: (1) Dissatisfaction with the use of the considerable surplus of the income which remained after fulfilling Mr. Price's directions, for the ordinary uses of Trinity Church and especially of King's Chapel, which was denominated in the attorney-general's " Information " " a Congregational or Independent meeting-house; " and (2) The desire to have this surplus appropriated, either for charity to the Episcopal poor of Boston, or to rendering the Price Lectures more effective. An action was accordingly brought by the attorney-general be- fore the Supreme Judicial Court, in Equity, April 1862, praying the court to decree, after ordering proper repairs, etc., "that said trustees shall not pay any part of the income .. . to the Congregational and Unitarian Society occupying King's Chapel, or to the persons now claiming to be the minister and wardens of said King's Chapel, or to their successors in those offices, or to the poor of said society now occupying said Chapel; " that the income, after paying the £20 expressly provided in the will, should be invested as a permanent fund, and that the income of this permanent fund should be appropriated as indicated above.1
The case was argued by R. H. Dana, Jr., and C. H. Hill for the relators. They claimed that " three out of the four trusts de- clared by the testator were charities, and the intent was clear to appropriate the whole income of the estate, with the exception of a small portion distinctly carved out, to the charities therein declared; that the testator intended to extend the influence of the Church of England, and to assist the Episcopal poor. . . . Devoting a part of this fund to the ordinary uses of a Unitarian society is a breach of trust." They contended further that the compromise of 1828 could not affect this case.
The Answer of Trinity Church 2 rebutted all these points. A few paragraphs from it will show its force and scope : -
"They deny that he was desirous of providing for the poor of the Church of England in Boston, or that he expected to provide for such
1 "The Information in the matter of the Price Charity, filed in the Supreme Judicial Court by the Attorney-General, at the Relation of the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Massachusetts, and of certain poor of Christ Church, against the Rec- tor and Churchwardens of Trinity
Church ; the Vestrymen and Corpora- tion of that Church; certain persons claiming to be the Rector, Wardens, Vestrymen, and Proprietors of Pews in King's Chapel ; and the Rector and War- dens of Christ's Church." 1862.
2 This was prepared by Messrs. So- hier and Welch, solicitors.
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poor in his will, and especially in the devise now in question, otherwise than by providing a course of sermons in Lent, which should be free and accessible to all, whether rich or poor, and by giving five shillings to the collection of alms, at the offertory, on every occasion of the preaching of one of such sermons.
" .. . They insist and believe they will be able to show to the satis- faction of this honorable court, that the testator had not so much the expectation or desire of extending the limits of that communion, or of in- creasing its members in the city of Boston and vicinity, as to establish those who were then or should thereafter become members of that com- munion upon such sure and firm foundations in the true faith, as he believed, that they could not be thereafter perverted or led astray from the ancient creeds and wholesome doctrines of the Church of England.
" In proof of this" they refer the court to some of Price's subjects, " which it is obvious he could not have expected to become very popular in any place, or at any time, and especially among the inhabitants of . . . Boston at that date, where the unadulterated faith and undisguised doc- trines of the Church of England and its modes of worship were, and had been from the first settlement of the country, in special disfavor.
Among these subjects they name " fasting and abstinence," " the divine right of kings," etc., "by the earnest preaching of none of which could the testator, as a rational man, have expected to produce a very rapid enlargement of the boundaries of the Church of England in . . . Boston, or anywhere in New England ; but all of which were indispensable to the true faith of the members of that church and its continued purity, in the belief of the testator."
They considered it ". . . worthy of mention that in all this series of sermons for the instruction of the faithful in the cardinal doctrines and duties of the Church of England, that of almsgiving is not named ; the word 'charity' being used in connection with 'faith and hope' as a Christian grace."
They contended "that the testator . .. intended mainly the estab- lishment of a course of sermons in Lent, which should be calculated to increase devotion and invite faithful attendance upon divine service dur- ing that period, and especially to confirm and establish the faithful in those doctrines of the English Church which were difficult of compre- hension or mysterious in their nature, and, consequently, repulsive to that pride of speculation and of discovery which is slow to accept that which it cannot explain or comprehend ; and as the testator felt that the use- fulness of such a course of sermons must depend upon the character of the parish where they were preached, its church edifice, organ, music, and officiating clergy, and how far they were independent of the good will of the parishioners as to present pecuniary support, and feeling that he was to some extent laying upon his donee an onerous burden, desired to make an equivalent, . . . that that parish might, by increase in the value of the estate and constant accumulation, finally become wholly independ-
1
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ent of all external aid, as the testator knew was common in the mother Church of England, and which he therefore desired to produce here, [expecting] that his donee would thereby become wholly independent of that mercenary love of the popularity of the hour which in all ages has proved so fatal to the virtue of so many persons, both natural and corporate.
. A collection of alms on [these occasions was] one of the ordi- nary incidents regarded by the testator as necessary to the complete, orderly, and decent celebration of divine service . . .
" [They] believe that the said William Price, being a devout, earnest- minded, and dutiful son of the Church of England, . . . and fearing lest the tide of what he regarded as fatal and pernicious error, everywhere so overwhelmingly in the ascendant, might ultimately triumph to such an ex- tent as to overturn and utterly eradicate those feeble nurseries of what he regarded as the true faith, thinly planted in a soil so uncongenial to their growth and endurance, . . . felt it to be his duty to devote a portion of his estate to the erection and maintenance of some effectual barrier against the encroachment of false doctrines of every kind upon the law- ful and just dominion of what he believed to be the true faith ; . . . with the hope of being thereby able to hedge round and build up a few of the faithful, in such a manner and to such an extent, that they might be able to resist all the arts of the adversary, doctrines of the world even to the end of time."
They claimed that by the will a board of exclusive authority was created, and that the attorney-general had no right to in- terfere, unless the visitors had failed to do their duty.
" Trinity Church has been at great expense in maintaining her church edifice, during all the years wherein she has caused these Lenten sermons to be preached, . . . amounting, in fact, to more than all the income derived to it from the surplus of such fund. It has also, during all that time, been at great expense for music, each year far exceeding all that it derives from the income of such fund. It has also [in addition to its salaries ] expended large sums in missionary contributions, nearly, if not quite, equal to the revenue derived by it from the devise of William Price."
The Answer proceeded to defend the course of Trinity Church in making the indenture of 1828, and to say that in case for any cause the court should regard this as not binding in law, " which these defendants do not believe will ever come to pass," the es- tate " ought in good faith and honest dealing to be restored to King's Chapel,"-not, however, permanently ; since " said King's Chapel have been guilty of such permanent, marked, and essen- tial departures from their church polity and faith, as they ex-
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isted at the decease of Mr. Price, as wholly to disqualify them from performing the trusts." They contended, therefore, that in that case the estate ought finally to be restored again to Trinity Church, as " the only proper and competent parties named in the will." The Answer of Trinity Church concluded by deny- ing that the proposed redistribution of the income was within the proper functions of the honorable court.
But although the suit was brought directly against Trinity Church, it aimed no less at King's Chapel; and the latter was ac- cordingly associated in the defence. Their answer was more brief but not less forcible.1 They defended the interpretation which had always hitherto been put upon Mr. Price's will. They defended the right of the present Proprietors of King's Chapel to be re- garded as the successors of the church referred to in the will; and claimed that a proper acceptance had been made, and that they, their rector and wardens, " were and at all times have been capable of receiving, and did receive, the donation," and while in possession did faithfully perform all its duties. They stated the history of the " Indenture; " defended the management of the property by Trinity Church; claimed that both parties had an absolute right to make the " Indenture," and that any claim to reopen that question at so late a day was barred by the stat- ute for limitation of actions. They closed by denying the juris- diction of the court for such a disposition of the surplus income as was proposed.
The case was argued by Judge I. F. Redfield for Trinity Church, and by Sidney Bartlett, Esq., for Trinity Church and King's Chapel, dealing specially with the question whether Mr. Price intended to establish a public charity. " The testator con- templated a surplus," said Mr. Bartlett. "Under these circum- stances, it is an inflexible rule of law that such surplus goes to the trustees."
Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, for King's Chapel, stated strongly the ground on which the church had always stood : -
" The main inquiry in this case is, What was the intention of the testa- tor? The leading and general intention, as displayed in various parts of the will, was to benefit King's Chapel. . .. This construction was placed on the will contemporaneously with the inception of the trust, and has been acted on for more than fifty years. . . . This action was under the sanction of the visitors, and this construction of the will formed the
1 Charles P. Curtis, Jr., was solicitor, and Sidney Bartlett and B. R. Curtis were of counsel.
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basis of a compromise, nearly forty years ago, which was advised by the ablest counsel in the Commonwealth and approved by this court. . . . It is true that the testator was a member of the Church of Eng- land. But this is not enough. It does not follow that he thought he had attained to all light. Besides, he gave his donation to a church which had a right to change its doctrines, and he must be presumed to be aware that it might do so. Yet he imposed no conditions. And there is no one duty prescribed which could not conscientiously be per- formed in a Unitarian church. The subjects for the sermons are always prescribed in the alternative, and it might as well be argued that because the testator has set down as one subject the duty of obedience to kings, nobody can execute his directions since the Revolution. There is, there- fore, nothing in the will inconsistent with the construction here contended for."
The court " held that the church is entitled to this surplus for its own use." The decision was pronounced by Judge Dewey : 1 -
"The testator has strongly impressed upon this will, by the lan- guage he has used therein, that his leading purpose was to benefit King's Chapel. ...
"The result is that this bill must be dismissed, as, upon the case shown, no occasion exists for the intervention of the court. In coming to this result, we leave the parties in the exercise of their rights as to this property, and in the enjoyment of the same, as they have existed for more than forty years." 2
Thus terminated (it is to be hoped) the last stage of this long and vexatious controversy, in which the church had maintained with dignity and firmness not only its own rights, but those of free religious inquiry. The moral honesty of its position should be unquestioned by all who hold that the Church of England has a moral right to use the endowments which it has appropriated from the Roman Catholic heritage.
Religious endowments have their dangers, undoubtedly; but they also have their good. The dangers are obvious. They may lead the people to depend too little on themselves; they may lead to extravagance in spending ; they may be wasted, from having an eye to some near temporary need instead of to the dis- tant future. But these possibilities should not conceal from us their benefits. They ought to insure greater independence of
1 Chief-Justice Bigelow did not sit
in this case, being a member of King's Chapel.
2 A full report of the case is given in Allen's " Reports," ix. 422-447.
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worldly favor in the church; and they give a noble opportunity to regard the church not merely as an institution for the private benefit of its corporators, but as having public duties. In every effort to make the church more serviceable, it may well be that it acts in the spirit of Mr. Price's charity.
Moreover, in the case of a venerable landmark like King's Chapel, an endowment is an anchor to secure its permanence. It would be a benefit to the whole community, if by bequests, and by a husbanding of the Price fund, enough provision could be made to insure the church against any possibilities of chance or change in the distant future; and so the vote of the church in 1759 could be fulfilled.
The memory of Mr. Price is preserved by a marble tablet which the Wardens erected in 1822, in the Church, over the door leading to the Vestry : -
WILLIAM PRICE
A BENEFACTOR TO THIS CIIURCH : DIED MAY XIX MDCCLXXI. AGED LXXXVII YEARS.
R
YPENSE
DIEU.
DR
MON
ROYAL ARMS, FROM COVER OF PRAYER-BOOK GIVEN BY KING GEORGE III. TO KING'S CHAPEL.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MINISTRY OF FRANCIS WILLIAM PITT GREENWOOD.
HE ministry of FRANCIS WILLIAM PITT GREENWOOD continued from 1824, first as Associate with Dr. Free- man for eleven years, and then until his own death in 1843. He was the son of William Pitt Greenwood, a dentist by profession ; 1 was born in Boston, Feb. 5, 1797, and in his eighteenth year graduated from Harvard College in the class of 1814; 2 was twice settled in Boston, over two of its most important religious societies, and never left this city except when compelled by the frail health which finally ended his earthly career. He was the son of parents of strong and
1 In 1799 the registered dentists were three only, - Messrs. Isaac and William I'. Greenwood, and Josiah Flagg. Mr. Greenwood, says the Boston Mercury, of Jan. 6, 1797, " combines with his den- ta! profession the sale of piano-fortes and guitars."
Nathaniel Greenwood, said to have been the son of Myles Greenwood, of Norwich, Eng., died in 1684, and was buried on Copp's IIill. Ilis sons were Samuel and Isaac. Samuel married Eliza- beth, daughter of Richard Bronsson, and had Samuel, Isaac, Miles, Nathaniel, and Joseph, - of whom Isaac, born in 1702, was professor of mathematics at Ilar- vard College, and died Oct. 12, 1745. IIe married Sarah, daughter ef Ilon. John Clarke, M.D., and had Isaac, John, Thales, and two daughters. Of these, Isaac, born May 9, 1730, was grandfather of Rev. F. W. P. Greenwood. - Heraldic Journal, ii. 78.
Isaac Greenwood, the grandfather of Dr. Greenwood, was one of the parish- ioners here when this Church was opened for public worship. See ante, p. 154.
See also, for fuller accounts of the family, New-Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. xiv. 171-173; xxii. 303. There is a memoir of William Pitt Greenwood in the Memorial Biographies of the same Society, i. 268-271.
2 The list of his class contains a large proportion of eminent names, among them the following (those marked + constituting the entire first class that graduated from the Harvard Divinity School, in 1817) : - t John Allyn ; t An- drew Bigelow, I.D .; Gamaliel Bradford, M.D. ; Samuel D. Bradford, LL.D. ; Mar- tin Brimmer; Gorham Brooks; Thomas Bulfinch ; John Call Dalton, M.D .; Waldo Flint ; Benjamin Apthorp Gould ; + F. W. P. Greenwood, D.I) .; t Alvan Lamson, D.D .; Jairus Lincoln; Pliny Merrick, LL.D., Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; t Peter Os- good ; Elijah Paine, Justice of the Su- preme Court of New York; William Hickling Prescott, I.L.D. (the historian) ; t James Walker, LL.D., President of Harvard University.
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virtuous character, both of whom outlived him, and whose best traits were reproduced in their distinguished son. Espe- cially in him was verified the frequent rule that the mother's character survives in the child. For- tunate in this in- heritance, he was fortunate also in the carly impressions to which his tender religious nature was subject, from the Church to which his parents belonged. He was a child of UT PROSIM this Chapel, and F. W.Q. Green was baptized by Dr. Freeman, whose colleague he was one day to be. "The richly simple service to which his childhood was accustomed " formed the very habit of his mind ; while the preaching of Dr. Freeman - almost bare in its sim- plicity, and lacking the wonderful charm and grace which com- mended every product of his own genius - impressed its own simple seriousness, perfect transparency, and absolute loyalty to truth upon the very fibre of his intellectual nature. From the beginning, as his mother afterwards testified, she " never knew him discover the smallest degree of anger or pettishness when he was rebuked for a fault; the effect was always sorrow and amendment. He loved the truth and always spoke it; and he had a mind so pure and good that all who knew him ob- served and spoke of it as uncommon in a child of his years." The same sensitive purity marked his passage through college life, where the refined and exquisite tastes which were so marked a trait in him had already become prominent. His classmate, our friend Mr. Thomas Bulfinch, would describe the charm of his companionship at this time ; his sweet singing, the delight of his classmates; the cloudlessness of his moral and spiritual sky.
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