USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 32
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This aroused the hostility of members of the opposite faction who did not hesitate to assail Mr. Bacon, as attempting to foist into his book of laws certain statutes-particularly the tonnage law, and the act of 1704 for the support of the government-which they claimed were not in force. Nor did his private character escape aspersion, his personal failings being held up to public reprobation. Besides the impediments from this source, he was in a measure forestalled by the publication in 1759 of a smaller and cheaper abridgment of the laws by Mr. James Bisset of the Baltimore bar, which had obtained a long list of subscribers, and thus withdrawn a large patronage upon which he had confidently counted. At this juncture, however, he succeeded in securing the ap- proval of the General Assembly and an authoritative recognition. At the October session of the year 1760 an Act was passed entitled "An Act for encouraging a collection and publication of the Laws of this Province," by which a committee was appointed, of which the Hon. Matthew Tilghman of Talbot county was one, to inspect the collect of laws made by the Reverend Thomas Bacon, and to compare them with the originals. In case the General Assembly should approve the said collection, after its due examination, and to report thereon, then Mr. Bacon was to proceed to the printing and publishing the same. It was further provided, that while the laws as published in this collection were to be regarded as authoritative copies, the collection was not to be regarded in the light of a code, abrogating and setting aside any laws that may not have been embraced, yet were in force. As an encouragement to Mr. Bacon the General Assembly allowed him three hundred pounds current money for eighteen copies of his collection, which copies were to be delivered to certain of the provincial officers, including the clerks of all the counties.16 Encouraged by this recognition by the Assembly, and the promise of substantial aid, the purposes of Mr. Bacon were further promoted by the exceedingly liberal subscriptions of many pub- lic spirited gentlemen of the province, both those occupying official relations to the government and those who held an entirely private sta- tion. Of those connected with the government, the Lord Proprietary subscribed one hundred pounds sterling, the Governor one hundred pounds currency, the gentlemen of the Council, of whom Mr. Edward
16 Maryland Gazette, Oct. 30, 1760. As this act is not to be found in Mr. Bacon's collection, nor does he refer to it in his preface to his Laws, some doubt remains as to its having ever passed, notwithstanding the positive statement of the news- papers quoted. There is no other evidence whatever that he received assistance from the provincial treasury.
.
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Lloyd and Mr. Sam'l Chamberlaine of this county were two, fifty pound currency each. Many legal gentlemen subscribed a like sum, of the same kind of money. The liberality of these patrons enabled Mr. Bacon to proceed with the printing. Again delay was caused by unexpected difficulties in obtaining the paper and type from London, for it was necessary that these materials should be imported, as the typographical resources of the province were not sufficient to print a book of the mag- nitude, and in the style proposed, of the one about to be issued. Finally, however, all difficulties having been surmounted and all impediments removed, the volume was put to press, and in the year 1765 it made its appearance as that magnificent folio which to this day graces the library of many a Maryland gentleman, and remains a lasting honor to Mr. Green, the printer and publisher, as well as to Mr. Bacon, its author and editor.
It will be perceived that at least twelve years had been spent in the preparation and printing of the work. A considerable portion of this time had been consumed in useless delays; but those who know the character of the book, and are acquainted with the embarrassments under which it was compiled, some of which Mr. Bacon mentions in his preface, can readily understand why so long a time was required. This preface in accounting for the imperfections of the public records of the province and the loss of the original texts of many of the earlier laws, gives a very valuable though brief historical sketch of Maryland. This is succeeded by a copy of the charter in the original Latin, accom- panied with an excellent English translation. The body of the work is made up of the full text of all the laws or almost all, in operation up to and including those of 1763.17 In addition the titles of all laws whatso- ever are given, from the organization of the province which had either lapsed by provisions contained in them, or had been abolished by sub- sequent enactments. To render these texts perfectly trustworthy they were collated with the originals of the laws contained in the office of the clerk of the council at Annapolis. Following the text of the laws is an exceedingly full index, amounting almost to an abstract, with the subjects arranged alphabetically, and with references to the chapters and sections of the laws treating of those subjects. This index appears to be, indeed it almost certainly is, the "Abridgment" which Mr. Bacon originally intended should comprise the whole of his work. It is admir- ably well done, and its value can hardly be overestimated. To this is appended an index of private, parochial and town laws. The work is
17 Of those not given in full, excellent abstracts were made.
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dedicated to Frederick, Lord Baltimore, and Mr. Bacon signs himself still the "domestic chaplain" of his Lordship. The whole makes a magnificent volume of nearly eight hundred folio pages, printed from clear and beautiful type, upon strong, calendered paper. At the time of its publication, and for many years after, this book was invaluable as a compendium of Maryland law; and now that other works of like charac- ter, or authorized codes have impaired its value in this regard, it has become a precious treasure from which the student of Maryland his- tory draws his most valuable materials. The account of the preparation, publication and character of this book has been given with the more particularity in as much as it was the magnum opus of Mr. Bacon's life, the one for which Marylanders must be most grateful to him, and that by which he must be remembered if his name escape oblivion.
While thus industriously employed upon his book of laws, he was not negligent of the work to which he had solemnly dedicated his life-the work of the sacred ministry. He was not solicitous for the prosperity of his own parish merely but for the whole church of the province, and even of the neighboring province. We find him present at a convention of the clergy of Maryland, held at Annapolis in August, 1753. Of this he was made the secretary, and he was appointed also one of a committee to draft an address to the Lord Proprietary in reply to certain communi- cations of his Lordship read to this convention. There are records of his preaching at distant churches, the journeying to which by the imper- fect means of travel employed at that period, afflicted as he was18 must have cost him much discomfort, if not suffering. Some of these visita- tions were made in the interest of his Charity School, which he had much at heart. He travelled into Virginia to attend a convention of the clergy of that province, held in 1754, where we find him aiding both with his advocacy and his purse the establishment of a fund for the support of the wives and children of deceased clergymen. This may be said to have been in return for aid afforded him by Virginians for his Charity School. He was not held in less esteem by his brethren of the ministry than by the people at large. One of them spoke of him as the fittest minister in all the province to be made the Lord Bishop of Lon- don's Commissary, but for the physical infirmity which would prevent him from undergoing the bodily exertion necessary to the discharge of that office. The Commissary was an ecclesiastical officer exercising many of the functions of a bishop but without the power of ordaining.
18 Mr. Bacon was afflicted with hernia.
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In the year 1755 he was called upon to suffer domestic bereavement in the loss by death of his wife who had accompanied him from England. In the year following, another affliction befell him of a similar character, his only son having been drowned at sea while on a voyage, as is prob- able, to visit his relatives in the old country. As troubles never come singly, he was, at or about this time, required to undergo still another trial, but of a kind which is as much more painful-good name and char- acter to all honorable minds is dearer than even wife or child. The shameful story may be dismissed in a few words. One Rachel Beck, a mulatto, in the year 1755, publicly charged him with an offence against the law and morals, which had it been substantiated would have involved him in infamy and ruin. Upon her evidence he was presented by the grand jury; but there is no evidence the case was ever brought to trial. If it were, he was acquitted of the charge. Probably, however, the indictment was quashed, and a nolle prosequi entered. But Mr. Ba- con was not content with this. For the purpose of clearing himself of the aspersion, he brought a civil suit against the woman at the August court of this year for slander, and after a trial, at which there was diffi- culty in obtaining a jury, owing to the defendants challenging the whole panel, on the ground, as she averred, of the sheriff, Mr. James Dickin- son, being a kinsman of the plaintiff, but really, it is probable, on ac- count of the respectability of the jurors. Mr. Bacon was completely vindicated, the woman was fined one hundred pounds sterling for her false clamor, and being unable to pay that sum was committed to jail. Upon the distress of mind caused by this affair, it is unnecessary to dilate. Such an accusation is painful to any man of sensibility, or one who values his reputation; it is doubly so to the clergyman who is ex- pected and believed to possess a purity of character beyond that of ordi- nary men.
In the year 1757 Mr. Bacon again married, and this time under cir- cumstances that had something of the hue of romance, tempered and subdued, however, afterwards by the sober colors of a common place law suit, or law suits. On the 10th of December 1755 he had acted as the officiating clergyman at the marriage of the Reverend John Bel- chier, a reputed but not a reputable minister of the Church of England, with Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel Thomas Bozman, of Oxford Neck, of this county; a gentleman of the first respectability. This John Belchier is represented to have come over to Maryland from England as the chaplain of a man-of-war. He was a man of education, having been at the University of Cambridge, and had been incumbent of a parish
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at Barton in Norfolkshire, but probably had been expelled from his cure for irregularities of life, when "he came to this province hearing no doubt that it was an asylum of men of his profession and character," to quote from a letter of Mr. Daniel Dulaney, now in the hands of Mr. Os- wald Tilghman. He is said, by the same authority to have been "a man of some letters," "insinuating in his address," and had "the semblance of great good nature and modesty." He was cordially received and hos- pitably entertained by the best people of the province and of this county. He paid his addresses to Miss Bozman, after having received a rebuff from the guardian of Miss Robins, a great fortune. He was accepted, and was married in the parish church at the time above mentioned. Belchier quickly squandered the fortune of this lady, and otherwise shamefully treated her. She accompanied him to Philadelphia under the pretence which he made of sailing for London by a ship from that port. Here she learned to her horror, that she had been cruelly imposed upon by this man who had a wife living in England. She immediately
forsook Belchier, although without means or friends and in a strange city. Her sufferings reaching the ears of Colonel Harrison of Virginia, then in Philadelphia, who had an acquaintance with her family in Maryland; he sought her out, and after convincing himself of the truth of her painful story, he took her under his protection, chivalrously de- fended her from the attempts of Belchier and his hired assistants to carry her off, and finally restored her to her friends in Talbot. It would seem that Miss or Mrs. Bozman, was easily consoled, and was not deterred by her previous ill fortune from making a second adventure in matri- mony, for in the following year, she married the Reverend Thomas Bacon, who like Belchier was a foreigner and a clergyman, but very unlike him in personal and professional character. It would seem from circumstances about to be related that in each case she married privately, and probably without the consent of her parents.
These two marriages, in the first of which Mr. Bacon acted as the officiating clergyman, and in the other as one of the principal parties to the contract, involved him in two prosecutions and one civil suit. He was charged with a criminal neglect to publish the bans, or to obtain a license for marriage, in both cases. Of course, if the marriages were regular, conjecture is at fault to determine why he should have omitted so necessary a formality. But it is certain from the records of the county, that upon information lodged by one Archibald McCallum, the grand jury did present and indict him for having privately contracted
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marriage with a certain Elizabeth Belchier, alias Bozman, without having first made publication of his intent to marry at some church or chapel of ease &c.
He was tried and convicted of the offence, and was fined five thousand pounds of tobacco, one half of which was to go, according to the law, to the informant. This sum, Mr. Bacon, for reasons that are not apparent, refused to pay, and a civil suit was entered against him at the March court of 1758 for the recovery of the amount, in which he was cast, and was required to pay in addition to the original fine of five thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight pounds of tobacco and six pence currency, "for damages sustained by reason of detention and refusal to pay." One year after these occurrences, he was arraigned under a like indictment for
joining in marriage a certain John Belchier, then of the same parish and county, Clerk, and a minister of the church of England, and a certain Elizabeth Bozman, then and now of the same parish, and a Protestant of the persuasion of the church of England, without due publication of such marriage being first made, or license from the Gov- ernor &c.
In this case the attorney for the Lord Proprietary entered a nolle prosequi.
It is not strange that under the depressing influences of these legal prosecutions and of his continued ill health he should have taken a gloomy view of life, at this period of his career. Even the work on the laws, which he was diligently pursuing and which had afforded him pleasing employment and amusement, instead of dispelling his despond- ency, was probably deepening it, for he was already beginning to expe- rience the embarrassments and hindrances in its accomplishment which have already been noticed. Music, his great delight, had ceased to solace him and had been abandoned. It doesn't seem that even the birth of a child gave him special gratification. The following letter written from Dover to his friend Callister who had changed his residence from the Head of Wye to Oxford, and dated March 17, 1757, betrays the dejection, though it does not explain it, under which he was then suffer- ing. He writes:
Dear Sir: An increase of family necessarily induces an increase of wants. I have a parcel of garden ground and neither a spade to dig it with nor seed to sow in it. If you have got any spades, let me have one by the bearer, and a few seeds out of your stock. Perhaps a cheese may be had-necessary, as you know on certain occasions. Pray let
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me have a bushel of salt, or my beef will spoil. I write to you with the freedom of a friend, as I shall always style you, though God knows, few are the friends I have now in this world. If you have any news by your ship, on whose arrival I wish you joy, please let me have a sketch of it. If bad keep it to yourself for I have had no other for some time past and begin to be heartily tired of it. I would not write to you on such a scrap of paper, if I had plenty of it as formerly; but the man without money or credit, must do as he can. Music has departed and gone into another world from me. The laws are my employment and my amuse- ment, yet they are dry sort of stuff, and sometimes apt to stick in the throat. I have a heart still open to candor and friendship, which you will always find, when I shall at any time have the pleasure of assuring you in person that I am, with great esteem, Dear Sir, your very affec- tionate humble servant, Thomas Bacon.
Complaints of poverty must have been without foundation from a man enjoying a living such as St. Peter's, and the income from a large glebe. Apprehensions of the loss of friends must have been equally groundless with one who enjoyed the esteem of the best men of the prov- ince and of the county. In the gloom of despondency he evidently saw spectres of want and desertion that had no real existence.
Either driven by these troubles, or influenced by another motive, pres- ently to be named, the prompting of which few, even of those who pro- fess to be governed by duty and not by interest, have the power of resist- ing, Mr. Bacon determined to leave the Eastern Shore. The rector of All Saints parish in Frederick county having died in the year 1758, Mr. Bacon was invited by the vestry and people to act as nominal cu- rate until certain difficulties in the way of his institution as rector should be removed, when he was expected to take full charge of the parish. He was nevertheless to remain the legal incumbent of St. Peter's parish, where the Rev. Thomas Thornton, who since 1754 had been his curate, was to perform all ministerial duty. This arrangement continued until 1760, when Governor Sharpe writes:
Mr. Bacon continues to officiate there [at all Saints] as reader and Mr. Thornton to officiate as curate under Mr. Bacon at St. Peter's19
In this year all impediments to his induction having been removed, he was formally presented to the living of All-Saints' parish by Lord Balti- more through Governor Sharpe. This was regarded as the most valu-
19 This statement is made upon the authority of Dr. Allen; but Mr. Thornton's name appears in the registry of St. Peter's parish as Rector, on Easter Monday, Apr. 16, 1759, while the last appearance of Mr. Bacon's name is in the record of Easter Monday, March 27, 1758.
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able living in the province, being thought to be worth one thousand pounds sterling per annum. By this act the Proprietary displayed his friendship and esteem for his "domestic chaplain." His parish now embraced a vast district of country, though there were but three places of worship according to the established form. These were remote from each other, and attendance upon them involved much labor, which Mr. Bacon was ill able to endure, owing to his physical infirmity, and his otherwise ill health. Of his career in this new field of labor little is known, for the records of the parish have disappeared. Aside from his ministerial labors, in which he had assistance, he was engaged in bring- ing out his great book, the superintending the issue of which may have been one of the motives, besides the handsome stipend of his parish, for his removal from Talbot, more remote from the place of printing than Frederick, and not so readily reached. As in Talbot so in Freder- ick he showed himself to be the friend of popular education; regarding that as the best help a rational religion can receive, the greatest boon a true philanthropy can bestow, and the strongest defence a wise patriot- ism can erect. We find him in 1763 uniting with a number of his fellow citizens in securing the passage of an act entitled "an Act to establish a public school in Frederick county," and he was made one of the board of visitors appointed by this act to manage the affairs of this school, which was to be organized under the law of 1723, authorizing the estab- lishment of free schools in each of the counties. It may not be amiss to mention the names of the other gentlemen associated with him, as some of them have acquired a historic celebrity. They were: Col. Thomas Cressap, Mr. Thomas Beattys, Mr. Nathan Magruder, Capt. Jos. Chap- line, Mr. John Darnell, and Col. Samuel Beall. This school was organ- ized and, it is believed, was merged in the Frederick Academy of later years.
It may be readily believed, or rather it is impossible not to believe, that a mind as active as that of Mr. Bacon, and a heart as warm in its humane impulses could not have remained unemployed in some useful and beneficent work. Yet from 1765 when his book appeared nothing whatever is known of him farther than he was performing his duties as a faithful minister of the church. If he were inactive, this inactivity was owing to ill health for he never recovered from the insalubrious influences which operated upon him during his long residence at Dover. He died in Frederick county May 24th, 1768. Inquiry has failed to discover the place of his burial, for neither public gratitude for valuable services, religious veneration for an example of a laborious and pious
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life in the church, nor even filial affection has erected any monument, however simple, to his memory.
Of Mr. Bacon's private life and character little is known. The letters which have been published indicate something of these. He was sociable in his disposition, and in as much as he was acceptable to the most re- fined people of the province his manners and conversation must have been agreeable. Nevertheless he was inclined to melancholy, not an uncommon trait in men engaged in intellectual pursuits. Of his fond- ness for music frequent mention has been made. He performed on the violin and violincello, and according to Mr. Callister, was a very credit- able composer. There is ground for belief that he used his musical accomplishments in aid of his Charity School, by performing at public concerts in different parts of the country. It is not difficult to accept without question that estimate of his character given by Dr. Allen, who says:
He was known to have been an affectionate husband, a tender parent, a kind master, and most agreeable companion. * As a neighbor he was ready to advise, speedy to assist, compassionate and charitable.
His wife and three daughters survived him, who returned, after his death, to Talbot. Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, went to England at the request of her uncle, who had become Sir Ant'y Bacon, of Glamor- ganshire, in Wales, where she married George Price Watkins, Esq., of Brecon, and afterwards inherited a very considerable fortune from her uncle. Rachel, the second daughter married a kinsman, Mr. Risdon Bozman Harwood, of Talbot county, and dying left two daughters. The third daughter, Mary, married Mr. Moses Passapc, of Dorchester county, of whom there are descendants living in Baltimore at this time.
The following is a complete list of the publications of which Mr. Bacon was the author.20
I. A Complete System of Revenue in Ireland, 1774. Bibliographers have not been able to trace this book. The edition of 1774 must be a reprint of one published anterior to 1737. Mr. Callister calls it a "book of rates." Mr. Bacon says of his "Abridgement" that the laws of Maryland were to be digested alphabetically under proper heads in the same manner as he formerly abridged the laws of the revenue in Ire- land. This book therefore was of similar construction to the Index of Bacon's Laws at large-which is really his "Abridgement."
20 In the compilation of this list, the writer has been very materially assisted by I. W. Lee, Esq., Librarian to the Md. Hist. Soc.,-the very best authority in Maryland Bibliography.
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II. Four Sermons upon the great and indispensable duty of all christian masters and mistresses to bring up negro slaves in the knowl- edge and fear of God. Preached in the parish church of St. Peter, in Talbot county in the province of Maryland, by the Rev. Thomas Bacon, Rector of the said parish-[motto of seven lines] London: Printed by John Oliver of Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, 1750, 16° pp. 142.
III. Two Sermons-London: 1749.
IV. Six Sermons-London: 1751.
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