USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > Newport > Trinity church in Newport, Rhode Island; a history of the fabric > Part 4
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The nave covering may be described, in another way, as a nearly flat ceiling with a large cove at each side, into which the gallery barrel vaults penetrate.
It should be noted that at each end of the galleries the barrels, instead of springing from an entablature or, rather, architrave against the east or west wall, are penetrated by another barrel with its heading arch on that end wall and with its axis the same as that of the gallery, that is, parallel with the line of piers. These four cor- ner bays are thus covered by "three-part vaults," or what we might call "half-groined vaults." This, which appears in Figure I 2, was to accommodate the windows which once were in the gal- lery ends, and, indeed, still are, sash, glass and all, though they have been covered with lath and plaster on the inside and are con-
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cealed, except from a careful observer, by the blinds on the out- side. 59 These windows, it will be seen in the plan, were not merely close against the responds at the end of the line of gallery piers, they actually overlapped or went behind them. The patching of the plaster can still be plainly seen in the end walls. The windows in the west end of the aisles, it will be noticed, are crossed by the gallery stairs. It was to make room for these stairs in Christ Church, which is wider than Trinity, that the western aisle windows, origi- nally doors, were set off the axis of those in the gallery, as has just been noted. Trinity was too narrow for this device.
How closely, now, do these churches follow St. Andrew by the Wardrobe? On the exterior there is no resemblance at all, save that St. Andrew's, which is of brick, has five windows. The tower is at one corner of the west front, and not in the center. There is no spire.
In the interior resemblances appear, but the differences are so great that the idea of directly copying St. Andrew's or of working from the drawings of it, must be set aside. Imitation there is, but no copying.
St. Andrew's is five-bayed, as are both Christ Church and Trin- ity; but the proportions are different. St. Andrew's is nearly square, 59 feet by 69. Christ Church is 50 by 70; Trinity, roughly, 46 by 70.
It has already been explained that the key to the design of these churches lies in the covering of nave and galleries and in the lines of columns or piers which support, not only this covering, but the galleries themselves as well. Apart from this organism, the inte- rior appearance of neither of the New England churches recalls that of St. Andrew's. If we consider piers and ceiling, there is a strong resemblance-they belong to the same family among Wren's great variety of churches.
59 This work was done in 1867.
FIGURE 14 Interior of Trinity Church, looking East
1
-
FIGURE 15 Bay of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe
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THE DESIGN
The nave of St. Andrew's is covered with a high semicircular barrel or tunnel vault, a horizontal half cylinder, a "compass ceil- ing," which springs from the tops of the piers and is therefore pen- etrated by the gallery vaults (Figure 13).
Christ Church has the barrel vault, but this gives less impression of height, for in section it is a rather flat ellipse instead of a semi- circle. Furthermore, it springs from a cornice above the crowns of the gallery vaults, which thus do not penetrate it. This arrange- ment differs sharply from that at St. Andrew's.
Trinity has a barrel-vaulted ceiling which in section (Figure 14) is nearly a very flat four-centered arch. It might be described as a ceiling which is practically flat in the center, with a cove at each side. This gives even less impression of height, but it is not in shadow, for the gallery vaults penetrate the vault as they do at St. Andrew's.
The gallery ceilings in St. Andrew's are all groined vaults (Fig- ure 15). Those at Christ Church are all transverse barrels, faced with arches which, as has been explained, open into the nave with crowns below the cornice, from which the high vault springs; while at Trinity there are, as we have seen, three transverse barrels and two three-part vaults, all opening into a cove at the side of the ceiling.
To find the model for this gallery vaulting, which is practically the same in the two New England examples, we must leave St. Andrew's and turn to Mason's suggestion of St. James's, Piccadilly, or Westminster, which is not one of the so-called City churches, but was begun by Wren in 1683 for the Earl of St. Albans, while St. Andrew's was begun in 1686. In this church we have the barrel vault in the nave, but the galleries have the transverse barrel vaults from which both those in Christ Church and those in Trinity must have been copied (Figure 16).
In St. Andrew by the Wardrobe, the piers are cross-shaped in
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
plan at the aisle level and square in the galleries. They are panelled in both stages. There is no fluting. Christ Church keeps the cross- shaped panelled pier in the aisle, but has a square fluted pier in the gallery, while Trinity has both stages square, that in the aisle panelled, that in the gallery fluted.
In St. Andrew's the gallery pier stands directly upon the cap of the pier of the aisle (Figure 1 5) and thus breaks the gallery rail into sections. Neither Trinity nor Christ Church has this feature. In both these churches the upper pier stands on a pedestal which forms a part of the gallery front, but which breaks forward enough to bring its face in line with the plinth of the pier above it. The top rail of the gallery is continuous and breaks around this pedes- tal. There are three instances of this type in Wren's churches: St. Clement Dane's; St. James's, Piccadilly; and St. Andrew's, Hol- born. In this last, the pedestal is treated nearly as it is in our two examples, though the gallery fronts in all these churches are not so simple as in ours, and they all have columns and groined arches in the galleries.
Christ Church and Trinity are the only churches in this country with superimposed piers. In all the other examples now standing, where the columns support the roof as well as the gallery, these columns rise in one order from floor to ceiling, as in the present King's Chapel, St. Paul's Chapel, New York, and the First Bap- tist Meeting House, Providence. Single columns support the roof in Christ Church, Cambridge, and in Goose Creek Church, South Carolina, but in these cases there are no galleries.
It should be understood that a very serious problem is offered by the use of the gallery in either a meetinghouse or a church wherein the columns, instead of merely supporting the gallery and stopping beneath it, rise from floor to ceiling and support both gallery and roof. This problem, of which Sir Christopher Wren
FIGURE 16 St. James's, Piccadilly, looking East
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THE DESIGN
was acutely aware, is to reconcile the gallery support with that of the roof-to make the column or the piers carry both roof and gallery gracefully. The problem, indeed, was created for Wren by the galleries which, apparently, he was often compelled to use, for he was bound by the size of the congregation and the size of the lot whereon the old church had stood. This problem was: how shall the gallery front be so supported that it shall look well- shall seem to be adequately sustained and yet shall be so united with the supports of the roof that the combination shall not look either ugly or abrupt ? Wren tried several ways of doing this with varying degrees of success. The way generally used in this country (as at the present King's Chapel) and in England by James Gibbs (as at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields) was to let the front of the gallery abut directly against the curve of the column, as in Figure 17A. This ignores rather than solves the difficulty, but it keeps the tall column, and Gibbs, who was a master of church architecture, prob- ably thought this the more important point. One of Wren's meth- ods, that at St. Bride's, was a pilaster against coupled columns; another, at Christ Church, Newgate Street, a wide pier under the single column. He probably abandoned these forms because they obscured the view and he used variants at St. James's, Piccadilly, (B), with the column upon a pier, and again, at St. Andrew by the Wardrobe (c) and St. Andrew's, Holborn (D). The last, though it has a column over the pier, is yet, in its clear definition of the pedestal, the nearest to our New England examples.
On the outside, the two churches, Christ Church and Trinity, were a good deal alike, if we allow for the difference between brick and wood. Each had, at first, five bays with two tiers of round- headed windows and four windows at each end, an apse with a great window at the east, and a projecting tower at the west end. Trinity seems to have had more doors. This was because no cen-
A. King's Chapel Boston
B. St. James's, Piccadilly London
C. St. Andrew by the Wardrobe London
FIGURE 17
Systems
of Columns
D. St. Andrew's, Holborn London
E. Trinity Church Newport
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THE DESIGN
tral door could be set in the tower, as there was no approach on its front. The only approaches were at the sides of tower and church. Here there were six doors in all.
The spires of the two churches were at one time almost exactly alike. The spire of Christ Church is not now like that of Trinity, but old prints prove that it once was. Though almost certainly designed at the same time as the church-for Dr. Cutler speaks of the spire which he says is to be of wood-it was, actually, not built till 1741. It formed, no doubt, the pattern for the spire which crowned the old tower of Trinity, and which was built probably a few years later, though no records tell us the date. Certainly at Trinity the present spire, which in 1768 replaced the older one, was practically a copy of the Christ Church example, and as the contract for the tower of the new Trinity steeple60 calls for a replacement of the original, it seems possible that the second spire was also a replacement-that the spire of Trinity was always, in appearance, what it is now, and that it was a copy of the spire of Christ Church.
The English prototype or the source of the design is harder to determine. There is, apparently, nothing exactly like it. Cer- tainly it is not a copy of St. James's, of either church of St. Andrew, or of St. Clement Dane's. If it had one arch instead of two, in the stages above the short one which rises from the tower roof, it would come quite close to the steeple of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and it seems very probable that the designer had this example in mind. The silhouette reminds one also of St. Austin, Watling Street.
The window arrangement in the tower is also very close to that of St. James's, Piccadilly.
This double arch, with a pier defying ordinary rules of design and standing in the center where an arch ought to be, is another touch which, while it seems unorthodox to us, fits the church and 60 "Steeple" includes both tower and spire in the parlance of those days.
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reminds us of the use of even bays and central piers in Abingdon Town Hall, which Christopher Kempster, the mason, built from a design of Wren's.61
The spire of Christ Church was blown down or badly damaged in a gale in 1804, and was restored in 1807 by Bulfinch, who fol- lowed the old lines. About 1847, there was a further change in which the present clock was set in the space formerly occupied by the two arches which still exist in Trinity. Another spire, almost exactly like that of the Newport church and like that of Christ Church as it was, is still to be seen on the tower of the Congrega- tional Meeting House in Wethersfield, Connecticut, built in 1771.
It is quite plain that Trinity, while it follows Christ Church, does not copy it exactly, and it is even plainer that neither church is a copy of any one of Wren's churches now standing. Each church is made up in a different way from several different buildings.
The designers of these churches, unless one man did both, must have had either a first-hand and quite extensive knowledge of Wren's work, or some drawings to work by. Very likely they had both. It is perhaps easier to think that Wren himself had combined these various elements in his own way in some sketch or in a set of plans-even for St. Anne's, which werenever used-than to assume such mastery of his own manner here in New England, where the housewrights were still steeped in older ways, in a Boston and New- port which still had about them much of the seventeenth century.
In other words, why should not the St. Anne tradition, or some- thing very like it, be found to have some truth in it?
Perhaps this can be illustrated from buildings which are even a little later than Christ Church and Trinity. If William Price had really designed Christ Church, why, when Trinity on Summer Street in Boston was built, could not he, as one of the original group of founders, have contrived that something better should 61 Wren Society Publications, v, 18.
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THE DESIGN
be built than the housewright's church which was erected for that parish ? In Providence, at no great distance from Newport, there was built, in 1723, the First Congregational Meeting House for the first mission which the Puritans ventured to send to what they thought (as Bellomont thought Newport) a pagan wilderness. It is a plain rectangular building, as lacking in great quality when com- pared with the Newport church as the Boston Trinity is beside Christ Church.
If any drawings of St. Anne's, made before the decision not to rebuild, were actually brought to this country, it was most prob- ably through Price that this was done. On this supposition, Price selected and acquired the drawings, and this, with a possible mis- reading of Dr. Cutler's letter already referred to, might be enough to start his fame as the designer. He could hardly have obtained any such plans through the Venerable Society, for Dr. Cutler wrote to it an account of his new church, carefully set down its di- mensions and noted that it had not received its spire.
There was a tenuous connection with John James, the English architect, which might possibly have helped Price. The latter, as has been said, was a print- and bookseller; James's father was a London printer. There may have been some acquaintance based on trade.
It is not necessary to claim the importation of plans of the particular church of St. Anne. Arthur T. Bolton, F.S.A., the cu- rator of Sir John Soane's Museum and one of the editors of the volumes published by the Wren Society, wrote, in answer to an inquiry on the point: "I think that it is fair to say that these two churches derive from St. Andrew's Wardrobe now in Queen Vic- toria Street, being local variations based quite possibly on the double-page Plate 13 in volume Ix,62 an outline of St. Clement Dane's .... There is in both your churches a knowledge of Wren's 62 Of the Wren Society Publications.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
construction of St. James's, Piccadilly, 1683. I think the reason for the choice of St. Andrew's Wardrobe as a model, would be that it was a cheap church of the Tuscan order, with panel casings in- stead of the columns, as at St. Andrew's, Holborn and St. James's, Piccadilly."
It has been suggested that some dark secret, long lost, about the means of obtaining plans for Christ Church is hidden under the words "in some way or other," but no mystery really existed. It must be remembered that Dr. Cutler had nothing to say about the building of Christ Church. That was determined by a group- the subscribers-from King's Chapel, who were not yet an organ- ized parish, though they had engaged Dr. Cutler as a future rec- tor. They intended to own the church, a point which will be ap- preciated on reading the accounts of the induction of Commissary Price and his locking the church door on the Vestry as a part of that ceremony. They were also determined that the Bishop of London should not have the right of presentation, and so arranged matters, apparently quite amicably, with that prelate.63 As build- ers of a church of their own, therefore, they selected a capable builder, a man with English experience, gave him drawings such as have been suggested, accepted the drawings which he himself made, and awaited the completion of the church. When Dr. Cut- ler came home, the walls were up and the building nearly ready for the roof. As Dr. Cutler was a New Englander who had been a Connecticut Congregationalist, there was no induction ceremony. He took, apparently, the view of his parishioners.
When the congregation at Trinity, Newport, began in their turn to build a new church, they probably instructed Richard Munday to use Christ Church as his model. Reasons of price and expediency or of taste will account for most of the departures from the pattern. Though the early records, which are very frag- 63 Greenwood, History, p. 88.
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THE DESIGN
mentary, do not mention his name, there are constant references to Richard Munday in the minutes of the vestry, and these show that so long as he lived, he was consulted about any changes and they make it hardly possible to doubt that, as Mason suggests, he laid out and built the church. Indeed, one of his descendants re- peats a family tradition that he came from England to build Trin- ity and Christ Church, Alexandria! This last is impossible, as the specification for the Virginia church is dated 1767, and the first seems hard to believe if we think that Munday was in Newport probably about thirteen years before Trinity was built.
According to the records of Trinity, Richard Munday married, on November 29, 1713, Martha Simons, of Newport. He had pew number 10 in the older Trinity in 1719,64 and in that year, "Att a Town Council setting April 12," Richard Munday "pd five pounds & Renewed his Lycence for a year."65 He kept an inn, therefore; but it must have been in some rented house, for the first real estate he owned, he bought on May 20, 1721, from "Francis Gilbert, Vintner" for £110, "land in Newport, con- taining 40 feet [front] including housing, edifices, buildings, fences & improvements."66 He is called "house carpenter" in the deed. This may have been the house he "improved" as a tavern. The bounds-west on land of John, south on land of Mary Ham- bly, east and north on "highways or streets"-give little clue to the location. Mr. William P. Sheffield once said that Munday lived on the slope at the west of Easton's Pond, which does not seem a good "tavern stand." Still, he bought the land of "Francis Gil- bert, Vintner."
In 1722, Munday was admitted a freeman. 67
64 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 34.
65 Newport Town Council Records, v, I.
66 Newport Land Evidence, VI, 212.
67 May I, 1722, R. I. Colonial Records, IV, 309.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
On July 25, 1726, he bought three lots on the west side of Thames Street, one of Thomas Staples of Newport, for £80; one of Nathaniel Kay, Esq., of Newport, for £100; and one, with a house, of Henry Wright, bricklayer, of Newport, for £300.
This was part of a fictitious lawsuit (perfectly friendly), known as a "common recovery," in which Munday, "house carpenter," figured as the "tenant," Richard Mew, merchant, as the "de- mandant" and Benjamin Bull, gentleman, as the "vouchee" (he was "vouched to warranty"). The purpose of this quaint old bit of English law, as stated in the preamble, still in the record, was "to bar the said Benjamin Bull and Persons claiming from by or under him either in tail or Reversion Expectant or Remainder Depend- ant on the same." After the lots had been "recovered," Richard Munday and his wife Martha, on October 19, 1726, sold each one of these lots back to the man of whom it was bought. Nathan- iel Newdigate, one of the best lawyers in the colony, appears as a witness in the deeds. 68
In 1731, Munday was living in Bristol, for on June 22 of that year Mrs. Munday died there. Galleries were added to St. Michael's Church in 173 1,69 and it seems more than probable that he went there to build them. In 1733, he had not been long in the town, for he gave that fact as a reason for declining to serve when elected constable.
On January 27, 1731/2, Richard Munday and Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard were married by the Rev. Mr. Usher, then rector of St. Michael's, Bristol.70
Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard was not a widow. She was a spinster, born about 1708 and given the courtesy title of "Mrs.," often be- stowed in those days upon single women of good family. Her social
68 Newport Land Evidence, VII, 117, 118, et seq.
69 Updike, History of the Narragansett Church, 11, 218.
70 St. Michael's Church Records.
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THE DESIGN
position was very good. Her father, the Hon. Nathaniel Hubbard, was a justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony of Massachu- setts; her mother was Elizabeth, daughter of John Nelson, a prom- inent lawyer in Boston and one of the principal figures in King's Chapel. To carry her pedigree still farther back: one of her great- grandfathers was Governor John Leverett of Massachusetts, an- other was the Rev. William Hubbard of Ipswich, the historian of New England.
There is here a foundation for the presumption that Richard Munday was more than a mere carpenter.
Of this marriage there were five children, whose baptisms are recorded at St. Michael's: Mary, March 11, 1732/3; William, July 21, 1734; Nathaniel, Sept. 28, 1735; Rebecca, Jan. 2, 1736/7; Richard, Mar. 12, 1737/8. Both Munday and his wife are recorded as communicants of St. Michael's, Feb. 15, 1732/3.71
Apparently Mr. Munday lived in Bristol till near the middle of 1738. Possibly the new Colony House, ordered by the Assembly in 1738-1739, brought him back. The account books of John Ste- vens,72 who did mason work as well as carving of gravestones in Newport and its neighborhood, show that Munday was either building or repairing a house in that year. Mr. Stevens has charges against Mr. Richard Munday for "6 B" of Lime" and "Building your Cellar Walls" on September 22, 1738, and, as the account runs on till October 16 and into November, 1740, it is safe to assume that the house was in Newport.
At some time in 1738, calling himself "of Newport, house- wright ... sick in body," he made his will. He recovered from this illness, planned the Colony House, consulted with the committee in charge, and probably saw the work begun. On May 8, 1739, the wardens were ordered to consult him again about the tower.
71 St. Michael's Church Records.
72 Now owned by Mr. John Howard Benson.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
In 1739, he was in partnership with Benjamin Wyatt-at least, both signed the contract-for building Daniel Ayrault's house, formerly on the corner of Thames and Ann Streets. John Stevens records:
"Daniel Ayrault, Dr. Feb. 17. Bargained to do the Masons Work and Stuff for 345-6-o."
This was after Munday's death. On April 30, 1741, he records: "to ye Remains of Mr. Munday's account, by your order, 5-7-3." That is, apparently, charged to Wyatt.
Munday died in the last of October, 1739, as his will was pro- bated in Newport on November 5.73 He appointed his wife execu- trix and left to her "one full half part of my house and land in Newport aforesaid and of all of my estate both real and personal." He also gives to her, as executrix, "the other half of said house and land and all the rest of my estate, real and personal, for the use of my children William, Nathaniel, Richard, Mary, and Rebecca .. . for their nurture." The children were all minors. In Munday's inventory, which shows comfortable circumstances, his "chest of tools" is valued at £33 12s. This, with his watch, his will gives to his son William. This would lead us to suppose that Mr. Mun- day, as he was carefully called, who was named "housewright," was what is called a "carpenter-architect."74 We have seen that he joined with Benjamin Wyatt in the contract to build the house for Daniel Ayrault, of which the door is now at the Newport Histor- ical Society. Drawings for this house, of the most sketchy charac- ter, still exist and are referred to in this contract; and as the draw- ings of the Chaloner house of 1735, built apparently by Wyatt alone,75 are done in the same way exactly, it is probable that Wyatt
73 Newport Town Council Records, VIII, 64.
74 It is possible that this was what was meant by "housewright" as distinct from "house car- penter.'
75 Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies, p. 56.
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THE DESIGN
made the drawing and Munday designed, and perhaps supervised, the elevations and details of the house. The front door has the beautiful hood of the Wren type, already remarked upon, showing first-hand acquaintance with Wren's work. It is certain that Mun- day made plans and was consulted on work which other men car- ried out; in other words that he acted at times as the architect in our sense, not merely as the builder who designed his own work. It can be shown that he designed and began to build the Colony House. The Colonial Records give the action of the Assembly on his wife's petition, in 1743, for "an allowance of the account of her late husband, Richard Munday, against the colony house; ... It is thereupon voted and resolved, that Peter Bours, Esq. and Capt. Jeremiah Lawton, be, and they are hereby appointed a committee, to consider what shall be allowed to the petitioner, for her late husband's advice and attendance, &c., about the colony house, and drawing a plan thereof, and make a report thereon."76 Thus the Assembly's record. The actual petition goes further:
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