Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 21

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 21

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THE STATE AND RELIGION-While the constitutional inhibition that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," might be predicated as much to a purpose to protect state establishments already exisiting as to a purpose to protect individual freedom or worship, which it has come to mean in the twentieth century, the limitation of government to civil things precluded "establishment" in Rhode Island in the sense of a state church supported by public taxation. Thomas Jefferson evaluated his achievement in procuring disestablishment in Virginia as of importance almost equal with his writing of the Declaration of Independence, and disestablishment was not accomplished in several states until long after the Revolutionary War. The established church in Massachusetts was supported by public taxes until the middle of the nineteenth

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century. Rev. James MacSparran made one journey to Bristol to intercede for members of the Church of England who had been cast into jail for refusal to pay taxes to support the established Congregational church while Bristol was a Massachusetts town. There was oppo- sition in Rhode Island not only to an established church but also to an established ministry. Roger Williams adhered strictly and rigidly to his belief that the minister should support himself, rather than be sustained by his congregation. His position on this matter was as revolutionary as his doctrine of soul liberty. While preaching and teaching at Salem and Plymouth he supported himself and his family by physical labor. To this belief he adhered in Providence Plantations. John Clarke, who preached to congregations in Pocasset and Newport, earned his living by practicing his profession of physician. That his education had been partly theological is indicated by his authorship of a Concordance to the Bible, Clarke's Complete Concordance, one of the books listed in the inventory of the estate of William Har- ris. Robert Lenthal, who preached in Newport, was as well a teacher in the town's public school. Samuel Gorton, while awaiting trial in Massachusetts, attended Sunday services only on condition that he might be permitted to answer the minister. Anne Hutchinson's first offence against the Massachusetts theocracy was committed when she undertook to extend her home class for women into a preaching service, in which she expounded her own theology. William Blackstone, recluse farmer, preached in Providence. Some of those who found nothing of good in the early settlers and early settlements in Rhode Island needed no other evidence to convince themselves of evil in the colony than the want of an established minis- try. To assert that they were wholly wrong would involve almost a denial of the moral influence of the conscientious priests, ministers and rabbis who labor to preserve the spiritual life in modern communities. Yet in a period in which an established church and an estab- lished ministry in Massachusetts had produced unmitigated tyranny, an opposition to both that swung beyond the middle ground of toleration might be justified. Roger Williams him- self was a hardy perennial among dissenters; witness his withdrawal from the Church of England, his conflict with the Congregational establishment in Massachusetts, and his separa- tion from the Baptist group in Providence after a few weeks of enthusiasm for baptism by immersion, to become a Seeker, which meant, in final analysis, that his religion was not dog- matic, and that he found no theological system completely and continuously satisfying. He did not go from Massachusetts to found a new church.

Among the earliest orders of the government at Pocasset was one for the building of a meetinghouse, a measure not incongruous in view of the political establishment modeled on patterns taken from Israel. The Pocasset settlers for the time being were harmonious in a common enterprise of banishment or withdrawal from the establishment in Massachusetts. They were non-conformists there, yet not necessarily one in doctrine-because they agreed only in disagreeing. The reorganisation in Pocasset and Newport on purely political lines followed logically a recognition that they differed among themselves in religion. Eventually most of them became either Baptists or Quakers. Anne Hutchinson had been close to Quak- erism in her emphasis upon the "inner light." As the colony strength was recruited by those who were banished or withdrew from other colonies or by those who came directly to Rhode Island because of the guaranty of freedom of worship, the division into sects persisted, and because of the marked diversity and the small number in each instance who found themselves in harmony in dogma, meetings of those who could agree one with another were held in private dwellings. The King's commissioners in 1665 reported : "In this province only they have not any places set apart for the worship of God, there being so many subdivided sects, they cannot agree to meet together in one place; but according to their several judgments, they sometimes associate in one house, sometimes in another."

RISE OF CHURCH SOCIETIES-Some time between August, 1637, and the following March, Roger Williams was baptized by immersion in Providence by Ezekiel Holyman, and himself

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baptized eleven others, including Holyman, thus forming a Baptist society in Providence Plan- tations. There was also an early Baptist society at Newport, to which John Clarke and after- ward Obadiah Holmes preached. Coddington, Dyer, Easton, Bull and others became Quak- ers, and as both Baptists and Quakers were not welcome at Plymouth, or Massachusetts, or Connecticut, the societies in Rhode Island were increased both by newcomers and adherents recruited from the earlier settlers. Still they did not include all; Roger Williams departed from the Baptist society, and certainly was not a Quaker. Samuel Gorton and his followers were neither Baptists nor Quakers. William Harris was baptised with Roger Williams, and later became a Quaker. To Rhode Island came also members of other persecuted sects, and some of sects not persecuted, including communicants of the Church of England, French Huguenots,* Moravians, Sabbatarians, Hebrews, and possibly Roman Catholics, though Gov- ernor Sanford in 1680 reported no "Papists." In 1684 Simon Medus, David Brown and other Hebrews were assured by the General Assembly that "they may expect as good protection here as any stranger being not of our nation residing amongst us . . . . ought to have, being obedient to his majesty's laws." Cotton Mather in 1695 listed Antinomians, Familists, Ana- baptists, Anti-Sabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters, in Rhode Island ; "every- thing in the world but Roman Catholics and real Christians." Trinity Church, Episcopal, was established at Newport in 1699, and St. Paul's Church at Kingstown a little later. A Seventh Day church was organized in Newport in 1671, and Seventh Day Baptists were prom- inent among the founders of Westerly and Hopkinton. As the colony grew in numbers, churches, meetinghouses and synagogues were erected, and congregations were organized to support a ministry on the basis of voluntary contributions.

With the Huguenots who settled at Frenchtown in the Narragansett country* came their minister, Reverend Ezekiel Carre. When the settlement was abandoned only two Huguenot families, those of Dr. Pierre Ayrault and Gabriel Bernon, remained in Rhode Island. These settled at Newport and were among those who founded Trinity Episcopal Church, and who petitioned the King for assistance in the settlement of a minister. In 1704 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent Reverend James Honeyman to Newport. He became rector of Trinity Church, and visited Little Compton, Tiverton, and Freetown. Two years later Reverend Christopher Bridge gathered an Episcopal society at Kingstown; nearly a century later the building was removed to Wickford, and there was known as St. Paul's. Other Episcopal societies were established, at Bristol, while the town was still held by Massachusetts, and at Providence, the latter through the effort of Gabriel Bernon. Congre- gational societies were established in Newport and Providence. Baptist societies and Quaker societies also established churches. In 1739 Callander reported thirty-three churches in Rhode Island, of which twelve were Baptist, ten Quaker, six Congregational or Presbyterian, and five Episcopal; besides other groups not having established places of worship. These societies were voluntary. To supplement the declaration of religious liberty in the Charter, Rhode Island in 1716 enacted a statute, thus :

WHEREAS, In the fifteenth year of his majesty's reign, Charles II, of blessed memory, there was a Charter granted to this his majesty's colony, in which were contained many gracious privileges for the encouragement and comfort of the inhabitants thereof; amongst them, that of free liberty of conscience in religious concernments, being one of the most principal; it being a moral privilege, due to every Christian, as by his majesty is observed, that true piety, rightly grounded upon gospel principles, will give the best and greatest security to sovereignty, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obliga- tions to true loyalty; and this present Assembly being sensible, by long experience, that the aforesaid privilege, by the good providence of God having been continued to us, has been an outward means of continuing good and amicable agreement amongst the inhabitants of this colony, and for the continuation

*Chapter III.

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and better support thereof, as well for the timely preventing of any and every church, congregation and society of people now inhabiting, or which shall hereafter inhabit within any part of the jurisdiction of this colony, their endeavoring for preeminence or superiority of one over the other, by making use of the civil power for the enforcing of a maintenance of their respective ministers.

Be it enacted by this present Assembly and by the authority thereof it is enacted, that what main- tenance or salary may be thought needful or necessary by any of the churches, congregations or societies of people now inhabiting, or that hereafter may inhabit within any part of this government, for the support of their, or either of their minister or ministers may be raised by a free contribution, and no other ways.

The Charter had protected liberty of conscience; the statute inhibited the establishment of religion by forbidding public taxation for the support of churches. The author of the statute was not named in the colonial record; possibly he was Captain John Eldredge, an Assistant. For some reason not disclosed in the record, Captain Eldredge was bitterly assailed by Gabriel Bernon, who had been prominent in the movements to establish three Episcopal churches, Trinity at Newport, St. Paul's at Kingstown, and St. John's at Providence, and who might be a strong exponent of establishment. At the November session of the General Assem- bly, 1716, Gabriel Bernon "having exhibited a petition before the Assembly, wherein were divers foul charges against Captain John Eldredge, an Assistant of this colony, and the matter being duly debated, the said Captain John Eldredge was deemed innocent of the slanders; and also willing, upon the acknowledgment of said Bernon, to require no other satisfaction," the Assembly ordered Gabriel Bernon to sign two acknowledgments, one for causelessly charging Captain Eldredge, and the other for contemptuously and disorderly behaving himself before the said Assembly. Gabriel Bernon signed two acknowledgments accordingly, and the matter was closed.

How RHODE ISLAND DIFFERED FROM MASSACHUSETTS-The story of the eastern towns held, by Plymouth first and later by Massachusetts, in defiance of the Charter, illustrates the difference between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. When the latter extended its jurisdic- tion to include Plymouth, the court of quarter sessions ordered the people of Swansea to choose a minister. The Baptist Church at Swansea was the target aimed at. The town met the situ- ation by electing Elder Samuel Luther, the Baptist minister, as town minister, and by appoint- ing "tithing men" with a tacit understanding that no tithes ever would be collected in Swansea. The Congregational society petitioned for a division of the town unless froo should be raised for the support of the ministry, which meant an assessment upon the town for the support of the Congregational society. The town upheld liberty of conscience. In 1718 Barrington was set off from Swansea, after persistent petitioning, and the Congregational society there was supported by tithing. In Bristol, which was settled by Congregationalists, an Episcopal soci- ety was established in 1721; both churches were supported in part by grants from public taxation. In 1744 the towns asked for legislation permitting each church to tax its own con- gregation. Little Compton was fined £20 for refusal to support a Congregational church by taxation.

"Heterodoxy" was declared, by the Superior Court of Rhode Island in 1739, to be "ortho- doxy" in Rhode Island. In 1668 the Pettaquamscott purchasers, who were Episcopalians then, granted 300 acres of land for the support of an Orthodox minister. Later the grantors left the Church of England and became, for the most part, Congregationalists. In 1723 Reverend James McSparran, Episcopal minister, and Reverend Joseph Torrey, Presbyterian, claimed the grant. The Court sustained the Presbyterian church on the ground ( 1) that under the Rhode Island Charter all denominations were Orthodox; and (2) that most of the grantors were Congregationalists or Presbyterians when the grant actually was carried into effect.

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THE NARRAGANSETT COUNTRY-The Great Swamp fight and the defeat of the Indians in King Philip's War* ended Narrangansett domination of the territory now principally included in Washington County, and opened it up for settlement. There the foundations for the woolen and worsted industry were laid by the Hazard family, and there developed also an almost patriarchal society based upon large land holding under the plantation system. The tendency in this direction at Newport had been restricted by meagre territory. In the Narra- gansett country there was more land, and it attracted many from Newport. Slave labor was employed extensively, and a society developed resembling somewhat the organization in the South before the Civil War. The planters as a rule were wealthy or became wealthy. They bred fine horses, and the Narragansett pacers achieved world renown for speed in harness. Thither in 1721 came Rev. James MacSparran, described as a "man of parts and of ardent Celtic temperament, a strong ecclesiastic." He married Hannah Gardiner, of South Kings- town, and thus established alliance with such influential families as the Gardiners, Robinsons, and Hazards. Sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he built the "Glebe House" on the Narrow River near St. Paul's Church. His name is preserved in the South County by MacSparran Hill. To visit him came Dean Berkeley in 1729, while the latter was sojourning at Newport. A parish school in connection with St. Paul's Church, later moved to Wickford, was maintained for two years.

EARLY EDUCATION-Of the earliest settlers of Rhode Island Roger Williams, John Clarke, Samuel Gorton, William Coddington, and William Harris, certainly, and perhaps others were well educated. Samuel Gorton's marvelous knowledge of Scripture appears in his letters and in his "Simplicity's Defence." William Harris, though throughout his long life a radical disturber of the peace of the colony in ways that appear to be almost inexplicable, was a man of tremendous ability, and of learning by reading if not by school instruction. The inventory of his library showed a remarkable choice of books, thus: Dictionary ; London Des- pencetory, Method Physic, and Surgeon's Mate, medical; Norwood's Triangles (and a set of surveying instruments) ; two Bibles, Clarke's Complete Concordance, Contemplations Moral and Divine, Treatise of Faith, Gospel Preacher, religious; Coke's Commentary on Littleton, Touchstone's Wills, Statute Poulton, Declarations and Pleadings, the Executor's Office, Expo- sition of Law Terms, Layman's Lawyer, Law Juryers, Justice Restored, Dalton's Country Justice, lawbooks; Nature's Explecation, the Effect of War, Gentleman Jockey, New Eng- land Memorial, Introduction to Grammar, Lambarth's Perambulations. The fact that Rhode Island, in its rejection of authority, did not establish a school system by ordinance, has deceived many students of the history of education in America into believing that little attention was paid to education in the early days of the colony. By some an alleged neglect has been ascribed to Separatism, Indian wars, Baptist and Quaker opposition to schools, the absence of an established church, and even dislike for institutions of any sort common in Massachusetts and Plymouth. Rhode Island was never engaged in a war with the Indians, though her soil was invaded in both the Pequot War and in the attack upon the Narragansett fort in the Great Swamp. It would be difficult to sustain the thesis that the early settlers left Massachusetts and Plymouth because of dislike for schools, inasmuch as the Massachusetts snooping; ordi- nance of 1642 ordering the teaching of the catechism and the capital laws followed the ban- ishment of Roger Williams by six years, and all of the principal early migratory movements, led by Williams, Clarke and Coddington, and Gorton. Plymouth passed no law for the support of schools until 1663, twenty-seven years after Providence had been settled. The association of schools with established churches was common throughout the Christian era, beginning with, the early Christian catechetical and catechumenal schools established by the

*Chapter V.

¡Ordering citizens to keep a watchful and vigilant eye upon their brethren and neighbors.

CLYDE SQUARE, RIVER POINT

THE SQUARE, ARCTIC

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Roman Catholic Church, and continuing with the development of medieval universities under church promotion. The Reformation, favored as it was by the invention of printing with the possibility of producing books in quantities at low cost, witnessed an extension of elementary education by Protestants and Catholics, as both recognized the importance of reading. Luth- erans and Calvinists, Christian Brothers and Jesuits, Port Royalists and Huguenots, all turned to the education of the common people as a means whereby to advance their several causes. In spite of the fact that so much and more of history tended to demonstrate the theorem that an established church tends to favor the development of an educational system, it did not tend to prove the converse, that is, that a school system could not arise in the absence of an eccles- iastical establishment. And, besides that, an historical investigation limiting itself to the dem- onstration of a theorem was quite likely to neglect other possibilities, as it did in the instance of Rhode Island. Even the astute and capable Richman was led to the error of declaring that Rhode Island did not achieve a state system of public schools until 1904, the year in which the district law was repealed and district schools were abolished. Furthermore, the theory of association of church and school neglects the salient characteristic of the American public school system, like the state, as distinct and separate from any ecclesiastical organization. Following the lead of Rhode Island, America has separated church and state, and has placed education in the category of state functions. A system of public schools rising in association with an established church would be as impossible in Rhode Island as would be an ordinance of the type of that passed in Massachusetts in 1642 commanding the teaching of the catechism. Moreover the rather common interpretation of the Massachusetts ordinance as a school statute erecting a system of the elementary type of reading and writing schools characteristic of America, is erroneous, inasmuch as the catechism could be taught, as it had been taught for sixteen centuries, orally by questions and answers. Altogether too much importance has been attached by historians to the Massachusetts ordinance of 1642. The accusations of indiffer- ence or neglect against Separatists, Baptists, and Quakers, were made principally by those who hated all three, and could find no merit in them whatsoever.

Facts are the most stubborn things with which the historian has to deal. He may wish that history might be what the Kaiser is said to have declared, "not so much a record of what has been, so much as what can be made of the record," but facts are facts and immutable. The facts establish an enviable record for Rhode Island in education. The actual beginning of the American public school system was in Rhode Island. Newport, in August, 1640, voted in town meeting to set aside 100 acres of land for a school, four acres of land for a houselot for the schoolmaster, and to give the income of another 100 acres "for a school for the encourage- ment of the poorer sort to train up their youth in learning." Robert Lenthal was engaged as schoolmaster. Here, then, was the first American public school, a school controlled and sup- ported exclusively by the public. This was not the casual provision for a school to be main- tained for a few months only, nor was it the promise that a school might be established later, which is the general trend of similar records in the instance of certain Massachusetts towns. The schoolmaster was engaged, and the large endowment in land indicated permanency. The names of two schoolmasters who succeeded Robert Lenthal, as the first American public schoolmaster, John Jethro and Thomas Fox. are preserved in the fragment of the Newport town records that escaped obliteration during the Revolutionary War. In 1661 the land set aside in 1640 was exchanged for other land. Eventually the land was sold, and the proceeds invested as an endowment for the public schools of Newport, which is still intact. Of the first schoolhouse erected in Newport little is known, except that it was still standing in 1685, but so decrepit and decayed that it had ceased to be used in 1700, when Ebenezer Mann asked permission to take some of the timbers for use in building his new house. In 1706 Newport sold some of the school land to furnish the "schoolhouse in or near the market place in New-

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port," probably the schoolhouse ordered constructed by the town meeting of 1704. The for- tunes of this schoolhouse were variable; one vote in town meeting rescinded the order to build and granted land to Samuel Cranston and others to build. Later a tax of f150 was laid to supplement the proceeds of the land sale, and in 1708 the Town Council was ordered to administer the school and school estate. William Gilbert was chosen schoolmaster in 1709, receiving the use of the schoolhouse, "the chamber and the cellar, the profits arising from the school land in this part of the town and some convenience for keeping of fires in the winter season." In 1710 William Galloway was granted "the liberty of teaching a Latin school in the two little rooms in the schoolhouse of this town." Other schoolmasters, including John Cal- lendar and Terrence Donally, are mentioned in the fragmentary record. Another schoolhouse was erected in 1713, and in 1723 106 acres of land were set aside for a school in the eastern part of the town, called the Woods, and now part of Middletown. All the public schools were ordered repaired in 1726. The records mention two schoolmasters, but not by name, in the Woods in 1729. The record, so far as it is readable, indicates reasonably a continuous public school enterprise in Newport from 1640 to the Revolutionary War, and the facts, so far as Newport is concerned, completely and adequately refute the allegation of opposition to or neglect of the education of youth. Besides the public schools, there were private schools, including a Church of England foundation for a school in connection with Trinity Church. In this school Edward Scott, granduncle of Sir Walter Scott, taught nineteen years.

Samuel Gorton purchased Warwick from the Indians in 1642, but his first settlement was interrupted when he was captured and carried off to Massachusetts .* Not until Roger Wil- liams returned from England with the Parliamentary Patentt did Gorton and his companions venture back to Warwick, and resume the development of their plantations. There is enough of record intact and decipherable to indicate that Warwick had a building used for school pur- poses and also for public meetings as early as 1652. Of this school little is known. The record of 1716 refers to a schoolhouse built on land owned by the town, a grant of land to be used with it, a tax of f130 to be raised for the school, and the reservation of a right to hold meetings in the schoolhouse. Joseph Carder, Charles Morris, Thomas Lippitt, and Ephraim Arnold were among the schoolmasters who taught in this schoolhouse.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 21

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716