USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston : the Old North Church of Paul Revere fame : historical sketches, Colonial period, 1723-1775 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20
1 Thomas, sixth Earl of Thanet, was the largest contributor to the Building Fund. Highly connected and influential, he had been a member of the Privy Council and Lord Lieutenant. Through his chaplain he sent the three candidates 10 guineas apiece to buy books. He died in 1729.
[ 10]
well for we have just been reading your declaration for the Church !"
In the one day left to them, they were dined and wined, shown the great cathedral library and "again took a further view of the city, especially the churches, walls and Tower " and the next day took coach and came to Rochester and Chatham and there lodged.
In London on the 20th they settled down in Fetter Lane to the serious business before them. Their Christmas in London is characteristically described.
Dec' 25. This day, being Christmas, we went to church at St. Dunstan's, where we heard Dr Jenks from 85 Ps. 10, 11 " Mercy and Truth " etc. from whom we received the Holy Eucharist, after which we took coach and went to dine with Sir Edwd Blacket (having been invited by the Lady Blacket),1 from whence, in our return, we were at evening service in St. Ann's Church.2
Everywhere in London titled and influential persons swung into their ken. Mr. Cutler had brought with him a letter signed by the rector of King's Chapel and the committee recommending the three postulants, especially the former president of Yale, to the good offices of the Bishop of London. For more than a month, however, they went from interview to interview, invariably treated with kindness and condescension by those who "took notice of their affair." In this they were aided by a Boston acquaintance, John Checkley,8 who arrived in London early in January. Checkley, who had earned from his enemies such epithets as firebrand and highflyer, kept the Crown & Blue Gate, a book shop on the site of the present Sears Building, which was the rendezvous of
1 Lady Blacket's name appears on the list of subscribers to the Building Fund. Throughout their London sojourn the travelers received many courtesies at her hands. She was the daughter of Rev. Thomas Jekyll, D.D., of St. Margaret's, Westminster. Both the Rev. Thomas Jekyll and John Jekyll, collector of his Majesty's port of Boston, were nephews of Sir Joseph Jekyll, master of the rolls and John Jekyll was one of the signers of the letter to the bishop of London. Lady Blacket died in 1756.
2 St. Anne's, Blackfriars.
" For Checkley, see Edgar L. Pennington, The Reverend John Checkley (Hartford, Church Missions Publishing Co. Publication No. 180, 1935).
churchmen and wits. He enters the Christ Church story later on in one of those controversial storms which made him the target of the law. London born, he was a great addition to the party in their sightseeing tours.
It was January 18 before the candidates were pre- sented to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, under whose ægis all expected eventually to enroll, Checkley included. Johnson's description of this event is characteristic of many of the entries in his journal.
Sir William Dawes,1 Abp. of York was in the chair, who with the whole body of the clergy present received us with a most benign aspect, and treated us with all imaginable kindness. From thence we went with Dr. Berriman, chaplain, before Dr Jno. Robinson,2 Bp. of London, who received us very graciously and took kind notice of our affair.
Four days later, January 22, the heavy hand of sick- ness was laid on Mr. Cutler who fell sick of the smallpox, forcing his friends to seek other lodgings, which they did at the Two Fryars by the Bolt and Tun in near-by Fleet Street. It was March II when at last they took coach and went to Hampstead "to wait on Mr. Cutler home, who (I thank God) is recovered." They celebrated his return among them by going to the Lincoln's Inn Theatre where they " had the comedy of the Merchant." (By one W. Shakespeare, perhaps ?)
During Mr. Cutler's enforced absence Johnson and Brown had been baptized, " having grave doubts whether baptism among the Presbyterians is valid." It was now Mr. Cutler's turn to validate his Presbyterian baptism, which occurred at St. Sepulchre's on March 20. Two days later at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields after morning prayer they were first confirmed and then ordained deacons.
1 William Dawes, bishop of Chester (1708-1714); archbishop of York (1714-d. April 30, 1724).
John Robinson, bishop of Bristol (1710-1714) ; bishop of London (1714 -d. April 11, 1723).
[12]
On March 31, the great object of their journey was achieved. Johnson's journal records the day's events.
This day at 6 in the morning, Sunday, at the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, at the continued appointment and desire of William,1 Lord Abp. of Canterbury, and John, Lord Bishop of London, we were ordained Priests most gravely by the Right Revd Thomas,2 Lord Bp. of Norwich, who afterwards preached an excellent sermon from Rom. II. 4,-" Or despisest thou," etc. I dined with Mr. Massey in company with Mr. Godly and Mr. Bull, clergymen. Afternoon I preached for Mr. Massey at St. Alban's, Wood Street, on Phil. I. 27. We all spent the evening with Mr. Low.
Sandwiched in between various appointments relative to the serious business in hand, we get tantalizing glimpses of ,social life in 18th century London. Even the names of inns and lodgings carry a flavor of the London that was to the colonials the center of civilization. And the tempo of their sojourn never slackens. They were indefatigable sightseers, as one day's record, many times repeated, will show. They "did" London with vigor and unflagging interest.
This day we were in the morning to wait on the Bishop of Norwich. Afternoon we were at Clerkenwell; from thence we went with Mr. Checkley to see the Tower, where we viewed the armory, both horse and foot, the artillery and regalia, and the trophies of Sir Francis Drake, and everything to be seen there; after that we ascended the monument, one hundred and two feet high, by three hundred and forty-five steps. Glorious things!
There were many a dish of tea and many a bottle drunk in their calls on clergy, friends, booksellers, their physi- cian, etc. They went to Tyburn to see Counselor Layer hanged; they rambled over Hampton Court and Windsor; visited the "good people at Bedlam;" they
1 William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury (1716-d. January 24, 1737).
Thomas Green, bishop of Norwich (1721-1723) ; transferred to Ely (1723-d. May 18, 1738).
[13]
1
kissed the young princesses' hands after prayers at the palace of St. James; gazed at Archbishop Laud's own handwriting at Westminster Abbey; they saw Dr. Edmund Gibson 1 confirmed as Bishop of London at St. Mary-le- Bow and later installed at St. Paul's; viewed with awe a remarkable gun that went off eleven times a minute, and a wondrous clock that performed all sorts of music; watched with the crowd the progress of the Bishop of Rochester 2 from the Tower to the House of Lords; strolled in the pleasant meadows beyond Moorfields, and I know not how many times they "took a view of the stupendous fabric of St. Paul's," or " ascended to the top of the dome by five hundred and fifty steps." To them it was not only an "amazing mass of stones " but "one of the finest buildings in the world." And here on March 5, 1723, in the evening, they were at Sir Christopher Wren's funeral. (Not Mr. Cutler, however, for he was not yet recovered. )
The smallpox was now to claim a second victim in the Christ Church party. On April 4, Daniel Brown was stricken. He lived until Easter Even, April 13, his death casting a gloom over their Easter joy. Classmate and friend of Johnson, the two were as David and Jonathan in their affection for each other. On Easter Tuesday he was buried at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, attended by a large number of the clergy.
Commenting on the death of his own son by smallpox on the same errand in 1756, Samuel Johnson writes :
Ten lives out of fifty-one lost in those who went to England
1 Edmund Gibson was bishop of Lincoln (1712-1723) ; bishop' of London (1723 -d. August 4, 1748).
2 Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), man of letters, politician, bishop of Rochester from 1713 until his deprivation, 1723. He had been arrested and sent to the Tower for conspiring in favor of the restoration of the Stuarts to the English throne. Parliament deprived him of his spiritual dignities and banished him for life. He died in exile in France. See Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition), Volume II, pp. 880-882, for a good biographical sketch.
[14]
for Ordination in a little more than forty years. It is a greater loss to the Church here in proportion than she suffered in the times of Popish persecution in England.
The travelers had now been in England four months. The object of their journey attained, they began to think of the return voyage. But first there were sermons to be preached, invitations gladly accepted to assist at church services and more sightseeing. I think no church then standing in London was left out of their itinerary. How their eyes must have been filled with the glories of the re-born London in which Wren had played such a part, soaring arches, dim distances, lofty naves, yet never one word of all this does Johnson drop into his swift-moving narrative. Once indeed, after Wren's funeral at St. Paul's, he adds the single word "statues." No mention of the English spring, the cuckoos and the daffodils and prim- roses, yet they must have been all about them in the "pleasant fields to walk in." Life was earnest, life was real to these men; there was one idea in their minds, one object in life-the Church, its offices, its mission and their relation to it all.
And then came a pleasing interlude, two journeys out of London. On May 20, Johnson records, "This day we took coach and came to Oxford and lodged at the Angel Inn," and here, as in London, they plunged into the business of seeing everything. One day's record shows that their rapid pace suffered no slackening.
May 24th .- This day we were first at Queen's College with Mr. Trognair; thence we went to Merton to wait on Mr. Moseley; thence to Trinity College to dine with Dr. Dobson, President, who brought us into the schools where Dr. Potter,1 Bp. of Oxford, was Moderator to a Theological Dispute on Baptism and Prayers for the Dead; thence we went with Mr. Atkinson to the Printing House and the Museum, where we saw
1 John Potter, bishop of Oxford (1715-1737) ; archbishop of Canterbury (1737-October 10, 1747).
[ 15]
-
all the curiosities of the air-pump and other engines, the skeletons, mummies, medals, jewels, antiquities, etc. ...
The 26th, Mr. Cutler and Samuel Johnson "received their diplomas for the degrees." (S.T.D. for Mr. Cutler, an A.M. for Samuel Johnson.) Blenheim, the Bodleian Library, the "glorious theatre," picture galleries, the printing house, dinners with "sundry bishops," filled their days. They supped and dined with the fellows of Queen's College and Corpus Christi and on May 31 "took coach and came to London."
On Thursday in Whitsun-week after a dish of tea with Mr. Berriman (of the S. P. G.), in company with a great number of the clergy at Gresham where the charity children meet, they went in procession before the children to St. Sepulchre's where they listened to a sermon and " the children to the number of 4 or 5000 sung gloriously -the finest emblem of heaven in the world." And the next day they were off to Cambridge.
The Cambridge experiences were crowded into a week, more dishes of tea were drunk, more dinners and bottles consumed; they saw everything and on June II they re- ceived the same degrees as from Oxford pro forma, with other recipients, and were back in London on the 1 5th.
On June 26, the Bishop of London gave them their license certificates as missionaries of the S. P. G., Christ Church, Boston, for Dr. Cutler; the church in Stratford (not yet built), for Samuel Johnson. This was the last formality necessary before their impending departure, but on July 4, James Wetmore,1 one of the co-signers of the famous letter to the Yale trustees, surprised them by his arrival in London.
They delayed long enough to assist him to complete all the necessary business dependent on securing his license as an S. P. G. missionary and while waiting dropped in
1 James Wetmore (December 31, 1695-May 15, 1760) was ordained deacon and priest by the bishop of London in 1723. He was an S.P.G. missionary in New York, especially at Rye (1726-1760).
[16]
to the Bishop of Man's "Tryal" 1 at Westminster Abbey, received the solemn apostolical benediction of the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, took part in Mr. Wetmore's ordination, and on Friday, the 26th of July, Johnson makes his final London entry.
This day we took our leave of London and came down to Gravesend, Mr. Manning and Mr. Wetmore with us.
Windbound after a bad storm, they landed on the Isle of Wight and viewed Newport and Carisbrook Castle, scenes associated with the martyr king, Charles I. As they finally sailed out of sight of land, Johnson wrote, somewhat sadly perhaps, Farewell to England.
On September 23, after eight weeks of storm after storm on the gale-driven Atlantic, Captain Ruggles made port at Piscataqua in New Hampshire and the weary passengers made haste for Boston overland. Bad weather still followed them, for Sewall notes in his diary on
1 Thomas Wilson (1663-1755), bishop of Sodor and Man (1698-1755), to whom J. S. M. Anderson in his History of the Colonial Church (Vol. II, p. 502) applies the term " saintly," was one of the leaders of the Church who modify the exaggerated charges concerning the religious decline of 18th century England. His episcopate was marked by a number of reforms in the Isle of Man.
In order to restore discipline in the island he drew up in 1704 his well-known Ecclesiastical Constitutions. The judgments of his courts often brought him into conflict with the governors of the island, and in 1722 he was imprisoned for a time. Wilson appealed to the Crown, and it was the "Tryal" in connection with this controversy which Cutler and Johnson attended. The governor was replaced, the jurisdiction of the civil and ecclesiastical courts was better defined by statutes, and Wilson and later governors got along together amicably.
Bishop Wilson was a loyal supporter of the S.P.G. and a warm friend of the colonial Church in America. His Essay Towards an Instruction for Indians, published 1740, was much in demand by the S. P. G. missionaries. The book was prompted by his interest in Ogle- thorpe's founding of the colony of Georgia. Anderson (Vol. III, pp. 324-325) ends a summary by saying: "The Essay is characterized throughout by the simple language, and lucid reasoning, and glowing piety, which mark the other writings of Bishop Wilson; and the fervor and unction of its concluding prayers impart to it a value which is beyond all price."
Wilson's episcopate of 57 years is one of the longest on record. That of Bishop William White in the American Church (1787-1836) was 49 years. [For Thomas Wilson, see Dictionary of National Biography, LXII, pp. 139-142.]
[17]
September 24, "D' Timº Cutler arrived today in the great Rain from Newbury."
Both men were invited to preach at King's Chapel where most of the contributors to their journey wor- shipped; Dr. Cutler, the elder and the more spectacular convert to episcopacy, preached first on September 29, and Mr. Johnson on the first Sunday in October. The texts chosen by each preacher shed a revealing light on their future accomplishments. Voiced from the pulpit of King's Chapel by the ex-Congregationalist, the pontifical pronouncements of Paul to Titus, "For this cause left I thee in Crete," may well have forced a wry smile to the lips of the Congregational hierarchy, remembering their familiarity with the Cretan beasts, gluttons and liars bewailed by the young missionary. Modest Mr. Johnson's text, "Only let your conversation be as be- cometh the Gospel of Christ," foreshadows the tactful approach of the young missionary to his task.
Respects having been paid to their benefactors, the real business for which the English sojourn had been the preparation pressed upon them. Dr. Cutler, urging on the completion of his half-finished church, was able to enter it on the last Sunday of 1723; and Mr. Johnson, laying plans for raising funds to build one in Stratford, Connecticut, to which he had been appointed as mission- ary by the S.P.G., opened his church on Christmas Day, 1724.
[ 18]
THE REVEREND SAMUEL JOHNSON, D).D). 1696-1772 Missionary of the S. P. G. in Connecticut First President of King's College (Columbia University)
From the Portrait by John Smibert, Courtesy of Columbia University
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES *
SAMUEL JOHNSON 1696-1772
Samuel Johnson, son of Samuel and grandson of William Johnson, both deacons in the Congregational church, was born October 14, 1696, in Guilford, Con- necticut. His immigrant ancestor, William Johnson, a Cambridge University graduate, came from Yorkshire, England, with his four sons and settled in Connecticut in 1641. Facilities for higher education in that colony were meager ; but after passing from one unsatisfactory tutor to another, Samuel Johnson received his bachelor of arts degree in 1714 from the Saybrook Institution. Like many college-bred youths of his generation, he became a school- master. When a college was located, after much con- troversy, in New Haven in 1718, Johnson, with Daniel Brown, a tutor, as colleague, served as faculty of what was to become Yale College. Diplomas granted by the Saybrook Institution were as of Yale by subsequent decree.
When it became necessary to have a resident head of the college, the Reverend Timothy Cutler of the Stratford church was appointed to the post in 1719, Daniel Brown remaining as tutor, the two forming the entire faculty. Johnson then returned to the Congregational church at Guilford, but with the other seekers after truth con- tinued the meetings in the Yale College library. The storm broke in 1722 when both Cutler and Brown were "excused " by the trustees from further service to the college. This severed all connection with Congregational orthodoxy and Johnson was included in the Boston in- vitation to seek ordination in the Church of England.
Back in America in 1723, Johnson had before him a much more difficult task than Dr. Cutler, for he had
* For notes on Dr. Cutler, see page 200.
[19]
not only to get a church built, but to organize missions in an unfriendly atmosphere. How well he succeeded is now a matter of Church history, for from the diocese of Connecticut came the first American bishop, Samuel Seabury. Throughout his life, Samuel Johnson kept up his English contacts, especially with the great lexicogra- pher whose name he shared, and the Bishop of Cloyne, with whom as Dean Berkeley in Newport, he had been privileged to exchange views on many aspects of Church life. But his influence extended even farther afield, for in 1754 he became the first president of another seat of learning, King's College in New York, now Columbia University. On the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1772, Samuel Johnson, great scholar, zealous missionary and servant of God, rested from his labors.
DANIEL BROWN 1698-1723
The third and youngest member of the trio whose journey to England for ordination was financed by the Christ Church committee was Daniel Brown, tutor under Timothy Cutler at Yale and co-signer of the famous declaration for episcopacy. His short life affords meager material for the biographer for although Johnson's diary reveals a personality of great charm and promise, what we actually know may be summed up in a few lines.
Daniel Brown was born April 26, 1698, the son of Daniel and Mary (How) Brown, and was graduated from Yale in 1714. In 1715 he became assistant to Samuel Cooke, rector of Hopkins Grammar School, New Haven, and succeeded him at the end of the year. He was ap- pointed tutor in the College of New Haven (Yale) in September 1718. In this post he remained until, with Cutler and Johnson, he set forth on the momentous journey to England from which he was never to return.
[20]
That he was included in the Christ Church invitation betokens keen perception on the part of the committee of the young man's talents.
After Mr. Cutler's recovery from the smallpox, the three candidates were able to consummate the business for which they had been preparing since their arrival in England. In the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on March 31, 1723, all three were ordained priests at the hands of the Bishop of Norwich, acting for the Bishop of London.
But for Daniel Brown fate intervened. Four days later he came down with the same malady which had so nearly carried off Mr. Cutler. His friends, thinking him well on the road to recovery, at the end of Holy Week went off on a trip to Greenwich only to find on their return that their beloved friend had left them forever. In grief and humility Johnson bemoans the fact that he, so un- worthy, should be spared while his friend, the better man, was taken.
The Easter they had so eagerly anticipated was over- shadowed with their personal loss. On Tuesday in Easter week, 1723, in the churchyard of St. Dunstan's-in-the West, surrounded by some thirty of the neighboring clergy, Daniel Brown was laid to rest. It was a far cry from the quiet and peace of elm-shaded New Haven to noisy Fleet Street with its pent house stalls and raucous- voiced vendors crying continually, What d'ye lack, gentles? to the passers-by. Here were the churchyard bookstalls where the three friends had browsed, spend- ing the sovereigns which the generous Earl of Thanet had contributed to the three candidates to buy books. Perhaps it was not unfitting that these same bookstalls should be so near the lover of books.
All his life long Johnson mourned the friend of his youth. Nearly a quarter of a century later, writing to his only surviving son after the death of his other son
[21 ]
William of smallpox in London where he had gone for ordination, Johnson recalls the memory of his “dear friend Mr. Brown who was certainly the best of us three."
The loss to the Colonial Church of such potentially valuable material was but a small part of the enormous price paid for the withholding of missionary bishops by the refusal of the British government to allow the Mother Church, which had fostered the great enterprise of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to bestow the episcopate upon the American Church until after the Revolutionary War.
[22 ]
THE BEGINNINGS
T HE circumstances surrounding the entry of the first rector of Christ Church into the religious life of Boston were sufficiently volcanic to cause repercussions of quite differing character on both sides of the Atlantic. In England, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts1 viewed with high hopes its initial appearance in the largest colonial settlement of the British Crown. On the other hand, all New England was thrown into a ferment because of the defection of the president of Yale College, the Reverend Timothy Cutler, who had pronounced for episcopacy and had been invited to become rector of the new church. The gloomiest predictions, charges of apostasy, reversion to popery and treason to the cause of Christ, filled the pages of the press and were shouted from every pulpit. Printing presses worked overtime on ponderous volumes of re- buttal and scathing comment.
When the third decade of the 18th century opened, Boston, a thriving seaport of some 12,000 inhabitants, could boast that all of its houses of worship were crowded to overflowing on Sundays, with pews at a premium. Churchgoing was in the fashion and the weekly Thursday "lecture" and sermon reading was the literary pastime of all New England and of Boston in particular. Not without bitter opposition had the Church of England found a footing in the stronghold of Puritanism by the building of King's Chapel in 1689; yet now the small wooden building, crowded into a corner of the Burying
1Familiarly, the S.P.G. Founded in 1701, it is still the greatest mission- ary society of the Church of England. King's Chapel and Trinity Church were never under its jurisdiction, but Christ Church, until the Revolution, remained a mission of the Venerable Society.
[23]
Ground, was much too small to accommodate all those who wished to follow the Prayer Book service in their devotions.
Through the comments of such outspoken observers as Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, the best-known commen- tator of his day, one may realize the dread of "this popish tendency" and the disapproval and distrust of the Book of Common Prayer which were current in Puritan Boston. When, after many unsatisfactory ex- pedients including the use of the Town House and sharing of the Meeting House in order to assert their equal rights with the Puritans to worship God in their own way, the Church people tried to purchase of Judge Sewall a plot of land whereon to build, he had scornfully refused, saying :
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.