USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > Newport > Trinity church in Newport, Rhode Island; a history of the fabric > Part 5
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"Elizabeth Munday relict, widow & sole executrix of last will and testament of Richard Munday late of said Newport, says :- Said husband in his life time was employed by your Honorable Committee to draw a plan for a Publick Building in Newport for said Colony & that he did with fidelity, skill & pains effect the same ... & continued in such service of the Colony for directing & forwarding said building till a few days before his death .. . received no allowance sufficient for particular service by himself and other hands according to ye particular acct to your Honors exhibited."77
Richard Munday nowhere, so far as is yet known, called him- self architect, nor is it claimed that he did not take contracts. He, "by himself and other hands," executed his buildings. But we have
76 Sept. 26, 1743, R. I. Colonial Records, v, 71.
77 R. I. Petitions, v, 37.
58
TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
here, in addition, advice, a plan and a report. He actually did work done by the modern architect. Peter Harrison differs from him only in that he, so far as we know, took no contracts and did no actual work.
Some of the entries in the church records are quite significant, also. In 1731, the vestry wished to see Mr. Munday "at the Church, to consider about repairing the steeple."78 Three days later, August 30, 1731, it was "Voted: that the committee ... agree with some person for the doing thereof (the repair) as they shall think proper, with the advice of Mr. Richard Munday."79 Here is a difference between the adviser and the executant, and, though in this case it may be explained by the assumption that the repairs were slight and that Munday, who then lived in Bristol, could not do them as cheaply as a local man, and that he said so, yet these calls for advice continued as long as Munday lived.
When Dean Berkeley gave the organ, "Mr. Richard Munday" was to be desired "to come here forthwith, to advise and assist us in preparing a plan to set up the organ in this church."8º Again the wardens were ordered to "advise with Mr. Munday about making a pew in the northeast part of the gallery," and later, about the tower. All these entries show advisory service which is very much like that of the present-day practitioner.
Mason is right. Richard Munday built Trinity Church. What- ever the source of the design, he worked it out. However much the building varies from Christ Church or from St. Andrew, Ward- robe, the changes are of his designing.
78 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 51.
79 Ibid., p. 52.
80 Ibid., p. 59.
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THE BUILDING
The Building
T HE new Trinity Church was raised and covered by Decem- ber 6, 1725, so that there could be held in it a meeting of the minister, church wardens and vestry, at which meeting it was voted to push the work along "with all convenient dispatch" and to bring a plasterer from Boston for "greater certainty of having it handsomely plaistered."81
The church, in plan and section, was exactly what it now is, ex- cept that it was shorter, that is, it did not extend so far eastward but was restricted to the length of the Brinley lot, and that it had no apse. It was planned, however, differently from the earlier build- ing. It was no longer a "hall church," consisting of one room with a square chancel at the east and a gallery at the west, but was a basilican church divided lengthwise into a nave and two aisles. There was now a gallery over each aisle, as well as one at the west end. At the east end there was no apse.
The five bays in the framing required six bents or combinations of posts. Each bent, beginning with the westernmost, was framed together, "scribe and tumble" fashion, on the ground, which means that each piece of timber was carefully cut to fit its exact place and was actually tried in place so that it was known that all the joints would fit and that no stick had been cut too long or too short. They were then "raised" in the old-fashioned way, probably with gin pole and capstan. There were plenty of riggers in Newport to direct the work, and the whole town was present, ready to help or to look on as it might happen. The bent, footed at the bottom so that the posts would slip into the mortises in the sill, rose slowly until it stood plumb and was stayed and braced in its place. The girts were slipped into their mortises between the posts as each
81 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 40.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
bent followed its predecessor into place. The plate, which carried the common or small rafters of the roof and tied the bents together at the top, was hoisted into its place on the outer ends of the tie- beams, and men were sent up to "pin" it by driving heavy wooden treenails down into the ends of the ties. The studs had to be set while the girts were put in place, but the braces for each girt were put in at the same time, for they were what held the framing plumb and square.
The ceiling joists were laid in place and the floor boards put down for a footing for the men. The rafters and braces of the trusses were set with gin poles, single sticks with guys to keep them in place and a block at the top for hoisting timbers.
The side walls were covered with pine boards, with ship-lapped horizontal joints, and over these in turn were nailed the clap- boards, beaded on the lower edge and laid with ship-lapped verti- cal joints.
The base is a heavy affair of one plank (Figure 18) projecting quite a distance from the wall above and a less distance from the stone below. This may be its first appearance, although it was very common in the older houses and is quite a characteristic feature, seldom, if ever, met with elsewhere.
The cornice (Figure 18) is of the type known as Ionic; that is, it belongs to the Ionic order. It is not Palladio's Ionic, however, but is rather that of Vignola, though it does not conform to that mas- ter's proportions. Wren used the type now and then, but he gener- ally preferred not to use the dentils. He left the dentil band plain. Here the dentils are used in a peculiar form (Figure 23), with a semicircular top for the interval instead of the usual square end- ing. This may be derived from Vignola, again, but from his com- posite cornice, which has a peculiar close for the interval, the ef- fect of which Munday was perhaps trying to get without carving. We do not know what architectural books Munday possessed, but,
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THE BUILDING
K-
1'-5'4'
1-9"
O
1
2
4
5
6
FIGURE 18 Cornice and Base
among the twenty-three books-besides the two Bibles-listed in his inventory, there must have been something of the kind.
The window frames are of cedar. That wood was also used for some, at least, of the finish of the Colony House. These were not at first built for the sliding sash which now fill them. Sash windows were not absolutely new, in 1726, but they could hardly have been common, to say the least, in English churches, for the first general use of them seems to have been in 168 5 when they appear
62
TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
at Whitehall, to be used a little later at Hampton Court and Greenwich.
Trinity's windows did not have them till at least 1740, perhaps under pressure from the example of the Colony House. In that year, the committee appointed December 29 to audit "all ac- counts relating to the church" was instructed also "to discourse with Capt. Ezbon Sanford about sashing the church windows."82 This shows that the church did not have sliding sash but, since it now has them, that it must have received them about that time, though nothing more appears to be on record.
The ordinary treatment of an English church window was a di- vision by mullion and transom. The spaces were filled with iron frames, parts of which were arranged for opening. There is no trace of any such divisions in the window frames of Trinity, and the frames as they are must be original-the expense of making and setting new frames as well as sash would have been very great. Nor are iron casements for windows of that size, 4 feet 25/8 inches by 9 feet 11/8 inches, to be considered.
The frame was filled by one wooden casement, set in a deep re- bate on the inside, which is still in use for the present lower sash.
New sash were made, two for each window, using the old glass and perhaps a good deal of the old casements. A new rebate was cut in the frame for the upper sash. This, as can still be seen, is only half an inch in depth (Figure 19). The top sash was made sta- tionary; the lower could be raised.
An iron hook is hung on the outer reveal of the jamb to keep the lower sash, when raised, at a fixed height. These are not com- mon-indeed are probably unique-for wood is generally used.
This is not the first appearance of the sliding sash. It is specified in the contract for the Ayrault house in 1739, with springs to hold the sash at any height desired and to make it hard to open from 82 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, P. 73.
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THE BUILDING
CATCH, NEW REBATE
iVPPER SASH-FIXED
LOWER SASH- MOVABLE
OLD FIXED (ASEMENT)
LOWER
ISASH!
OLD
NEW
CATCH
FIGURE 19 The Change to "Sash" Windows, with the Catch for the Movable Lower Sash
outside. The Wickes house, probably built in 1745, in Old War- wick, long ago destroyed-which was very likely Munday's, or more probably Wyatt's work, as it had a hood like that in the Ayrault house-had weighted lower sash. The pocket was hol- lowed out of the jamb of the heavy frame.
All the windows in the body of the church and in the tower are now fitted with blinds. The vestry voted on April 20, 1835, an appropriation which included the "balance due for blinds." These were probably put up in 1834, before the church was painted in that year. Mason adds: "This was the first time blinds were used on the church windows."83
The church had at first six doors: two at the east end of the nave, two at the west end and two in the tower. Of these, the east- ern were soon removed and windows put in their place, to light the pews ordered to be built in the spaces leading to these doors. The two at the west are original. Those in the tower are possibly 83 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church (2d series), pp. 49, 52.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
copies of them. The two doors on the north differ in breadth. That in the tower is the wider. These two have elaborate pediments (Figure 20), while the two south doors, which also vary in width, have the usual triangular form, a sure sign that Church Street, the Church Lane, was always the principal approach.
These doors are peculiar and archaic. The pilasters may be re- newals, for they do not fit the pedestals, which have the same panel moulding as the pews, but the whole order is incorrect, as if the joiner was working from memory, and gives one a good deal the impression made by the so-called Connecticut Valley doorways.
Still, these pediments go back to England and probably to no less a man than Edward Marshall, a mason and sculptor-the two were not incompatible in Wren's time-whose monument to the poet Drayton in Westminster Abbey shows the same curious inverted semicircle instead of a break in the center of the pediment. Joshua Marshall, Edward's son, did a good deal of mason work on Wren's churches.
The church had a tower at the west end, which was the same in form as the present structure which replaced it in 1768. Whether it had a spire at first, it is not possible to say. It certainly had one in 1761, for an accident is recorded which involved the very top of it. 84
The men of the earlier eighteenth century, like those of Wren's time, did not use the terms "steeple" and "spire" interchangeably. They made a distinction between the tower and the spire, but called the combination of the two "the steeple." The original medieval meaning of the word, to quote Parker's Glossary, is "an acutely pointed termination given to towers and turrets," but this was later used to include, not only this sharp crowning member, but the various stages of the mass which had been built up on the tower and which had developed from the low roof of the old campanile. 84 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 121.
FIGURE 20 North Door of Trinity Church
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THE BUILDING
This mass was made steeper and steeper and more and more or- nate by the medieval designers, and translated into classic form by the men of the Renaissance-by nobody with more success than Wren and his followers.
So Dr. Cutler, in his letter of October 10, 1727, to the S. P. G., writes of "the Steeple's area" and goes on: "The Spire (not yet begun for want of money) will be of wood."
Sir Christopher Wren's son, also Christopher, wrote the Paren- talia-memoirs of the Wren family-before 1747. He based it, of course, on what he had heard from the great architect. He gives a list of Wren's churches, with brief descriptions, and these have been checked by the Wren Society so that, up to 1708, we know quite well how the fifty-four churches looked.
He describes St. Bride's: "The Altitude of the Steeple is 234 Feet; it consists of a Tower, and a lofty new Spire of Stone"; and St. Mary le Bow: "The principal Ornament of this Church is the Steeple. ... It is built of Portland Stone, consisting of a tower and a spire. ... "
Dr. Cutler's spire was built during, or shortly after, 1740. When that at Trinity was built it is difficult to say-probably about ten years later. What it was like is not known, but it was probably like the present spire, of the same design as that of Christ Church. There is still a third spire in this group-almost all the New Eng- land spires are gathered into tribes-that of the old meetinghouse in Wethersfield, built in 1771.
The powers of the air seem to have borne malice against the old steeple of Trinity, whatever it was like. It needed repair in 1731, probably because of lightning, since the bell needed repair at the same time; and the damage must have been considerable, as a com- mittee was appointed to do the repairing and Munday was sent for to advise upon the matter. Repairs, according to the records, were made fairly often, for whatever reason.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
After many repairs, the tower was finally condemned. On April 7, 1768, it was voted "that the old tower of the Church, which is reported by a survey of carpenters to be very defective, be pulled down, and a new one, of wood, be erected in its place."85
"On Easter Monday," say the church records, "being the 26th day of March, 1733," the vestry "Ordered that Jahleel Brenton, Esq., and Capt. Godfrey Malbone be empowered to purchase oil and colors for the painting of the Church without and [illegible] within, as soon as they conveniently can, and they agree with a workman for this purpose. . . . "'86 The word which in the original record has been marked out, or has had another word written over it, may, it is just possible, be read as "beautifyed." This was a little over six years after the completion of the building.
The word "colors" must have included white lead, for there is no colored paint to be found on the outside of the church. The oil probably meant boiled oil, and it may include the priming coat, for the coat next the wood is of boiled oil, probably with litharge for a dryer. This may have been a priming coat put on as soon as the woodwork was in place. It was practically a good varnish and was waterproof. It must always have been rather dark, giving the effect of a brown paint with a high gloss, but the bright tone of new wood must have shown through it and made it lighter than it now appears wherever, by the cracking of the upper coats of lead, which would not readily cling to it, it is made visible.
Above this coat of varnish are several of white lead and oil- probably boiled-with litharge again as a dryer. This litharge was a yellow powder which, while it caused the white lead and oil to dry, imparted to the coat of paint a delicate cream color which may have given the idea of the so-called "Colonial Buff," if any- one can demonstrate just what that was. Above a thickness of this
85 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, pp. 135, 136.
86 Ibid., p. 60.
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THE BUILDING
faintly creamy paint comes another stratum which belongs to mod- ern times. In it is no sign of the yellow of the earlier coats. The litharge was possibly used in less quantity and in liquid form.
It was intended, according to a vote of February 25, 1733, that the cost of the painting should be met by subscription of "£250 to defray the charges of setting up the organ and satisfying Mr. Perchival and Mr. Munday ... painting ye Church and secur- ing the tower from injury by the weather."87
As Mr. Perchival was finally paid £10088-there is no record that Mr. Munday received anything-there would be but £150 for repair and painting. This should have sufficed, for the estimate for painting the outside of the First Baptist Meeting House, in Providence, was only £74 Ios. Probably the money did not come in readily, as may be gathered from a vote of May 14, 1733, "that James Martin forthwith draw up a proper instrument in order to collect by subscription money sufficient to defray the charge of painting the Church, and that Mr. Peter Bours and the said Mar- tin go about therewith."89
A vote of the vestry on May 10, 1736, makes it doubtful whether the church could have been painted in 1733. The vestry voted: "That Capt. John Brown and Capt. Godfrey Malbone .. . agree with Mr. David Wyatt, or some other person, to paint the church." Subscriptions were to be asked "for discharging the same."
It seems curious that the church should need painting in three years, though it may be that in 1733 only the boiled oil and lith- arge were applied, and that, in 1736, it was proposed to use white lead.
87 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, P. 59.
88 Ibid., p. 63.
89 Ibid., p. 61.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
The Interior
T HE new church could have had no apse at the east end, for the latter, as a glance at Figure 6 will show, was too close to the lot line. The old altarpiece, according to the intention recorded by Dr. MacSparran in his letter to the church at New London, was to be given to St. Paul's at Narragansett.9º The records of St. Paul's do not mention such a gift. It may be that the Rev. Mr. Honyman meant to include it when reporting to the S. P. G. "that the people had given the old Church, with all its furniture, to a neighboring place." If this is true, it went to Warwick.
It was never in the new church, for by the same vote in which the vestry empowered Messrs. Brenton and Malbone to paint the church, those gentlemen were "likewise to get a frame for an altar piece"91-not for "the altar piece," be it noted. A few months later, however, the words "the altar piece" do make their appear- ance. The earliest extant MS. record book contains this entry, dated August 27, 1733: "Jahleel Brenton and Captain Godfrey Malbone ... procure a frame for the Altar piece in order to its being fixed, or past the same onto the wall which they shall judge proper."
A new altarpiece, therefore, replaced that which was given by the Venerable Society. How much even of this remains ? The Com- mandments, to judge by the letter of the "Exodus" and the "Chap- ter," as well as by the frame painted on the canvas, could go back to this date. It has, however, been repainted; that is, the lettering has been done over-probably several times.
A vote is recorded on September 1, 1834: "that the Painting Committee be authorized to pay Oscar F. Wentworth $6 in ad-
90 "Except the altar piece, which was expected to be given to Narragansett." (Mason, An- nals of Trinity Church, p. 43.)
91 Ibid., p. 60.
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THE INTERIOR
dition to his contract for lettering, &c, the Ten Command- ments. ... "92 The Lord's Prayer has "who" for "which" in the opening sentence, and the spacing of its lettering is very nearly that of 1800, as is the spacing in the Creed, which thus is of the same date. Probably both are replacements, or at least repaintings of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed of 1733, which may have been destroyed or badly injured in the taking away by the mob in 1779 of the king's arms, which Bull and Mason agree were part of the altarpiece (Figure 21).
The royal arms were not always in the chancel, even in Eng- land, and in the one church in the colonies which retains the arms- Goose Creek Church, South Carolina-they are above the chancel arch, on its western face, the favorite place for them in England when they first appear.
The use of the arms,93 which began under Edward VI, was compulsory during the Restoration. With the accession of the Hanoverians, it seems to have been insisted upon to combat Jac- obite tendencies among the clergy. We may be allowed to query whether the intense Jacobitism of Checkley, which so troubled Dr. Cutler in Boston, brought about the use of them in New Eng- land. They certainly existed in Christ Church, but there is no mention in the records of Trinity, either of their existence or of their destruction! Yet Major Bull, who was born in 1778 and wrote in 1810, must have talked with people, his own family and others, who had seen them, and probably with eyewitnesses of the riot in which they were torn down. He says: "A few days after the British left Newport, some young men of the town, and among them two American officers, entered the church and despoiled it of the altar-piece, consisting of the King's arms: the lion and the unicorn. They were highly ornamental, and were placed against
92 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church (2d series), p. 49.
93 Cox and Harvey, English Church Furniture.
CHAR FATHER
I BELIEVE > GODT
A
TU
...... ..... . ... .........
...........
2 80 AMEN
:: AMEN."
NMI PH2
FIGURE 21 Suggested Arrangement of Altarpiece and King's Arms
7I
THE INTERIOR
the great window."94 Mason describes them as "the arms of Great Britain (woven in with the design and made part of the carving)."95
The combination of the tablets and the arms must, then, be a fact. It would not be hard to arrange, except perhaps for the curved plan of the chancel, but, after the manner of the altarpiece at St. Dionis, Backchurch, now destroyed, or that of St. Margaret's, Lothbury,96 which once had the arms, it could have been carried out in a way that would agree with Bull's and Mason's narrative.
That the arms were by no means always a part of the altar- piece is clear, not only from the fact that they were so placed, in 1709, in only twenty-four of Wren's fifty-four churches, but also from three original designs offered by London joiners with their bids for the altarpiece of St. Stephen's, Walbrook. One has the arms in the pediment and two are without them entirely.
The chancel floor below the footpace of the altar originally ex- tended north and south, so that the pedestals of the great pilasters stood upon it. It extended farther into the church, of course, than it now does, and it was a step higher than it now is. There were three steps at the north and at the south. These must have been removed when a pew was built "at each side of the steps of the altar," in accordance with the vote of June 24, 1736, but traces of them, which came to light when the pews were removed, were hidden and remain so under the apparent foundations of the Browne and Wheaton tablets.
The ancient altar from the original church stood against the east wall. If there were any chairs-the rector was generally in either reading desk or pulpit-they have long since vanished. The altar and footpace must have been "enclosed," to use the word in the Parentalia list of Wren's churches, by the rail run-
94 Updike, History of the Narragansett Church, 11, 169.
95 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 24.
96 Wren Society Publications, x (Photographic Supplement), 27.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
ning north and south, as was usual after 1660, and returning east- ward against the outer wall. This original rail, however, long ago disappeared.
In 1729, occurred the famous visit of Dean Berkeley, who in 1733, bestowed upon the church the organ which still stands in the western gallery. Small as this instrument was-witness the original case, the central part of the present group which still stands in the gallery-it was a notable gift97 and the vestry be- stirred themselves to place it properly. They sent for Mr. Charles Theodore Perchival, a musician of Boston, and requested Mr. Munday to come "forthwith," so that he might "advise and assist" them "in preparing a plan to set up the organ in the church."98 This was wise, for the problem involved more than hoisting the sections of the organ into the gallery and putting them together. There were pews to be reckoned with. This west gallery was I I feet 4 inches wide, inside the rail, without the forward break in the center of the front, which was originally straight. There was a line of these pews against the west wall, a line in front, and an alley between (Figure 22A).
There was also an upper gallery, against the west wall, like that which once existed in the First Baptist Meeting House at Provi- dence and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, London.
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