USA > South Carolina > History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 1 > Part 17
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This act gave great displeasure to the dissenters, who were deprived by it of a seat in the Assembly, and disqualified for holding office. It was a violation too of the eighteenth article of the Royal Charter granting liberty of conscience. Many churchmen disapproved of it, especially that feature of it ap- pointing lay commissioners, as an invasion of episcopal juris- diction, the colonies being a part of the diocese of the Bishop of London, and governed by commissaries,-officers appointed by the bishop to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction in a par- ticular part of his diocese where he cannot attend in person.
159
JOSEPH ASH SENT TO ENGLAND.
1700-1710.]
This, court the Carolinians took to be a Court of High Com- mission like that of James II., and regarded it with abhorrence. But the governor, intent on his purpose, would listen to no re- monstrance. Rev. Mr. Marston, who succeeded Mr. Marshall as rector of St. Philip's, spoke against the proceedings of the House with unmeasured severity, "comparing them to Korah and his rebellious company," accusing them of proceeding maliciously against him for visiting Thomas Smith, the dis- senter, while under the custody of their messenger : for this reason he was summoned to the bar of the House and de- prived of his salary, £150, till his better behavior. Mr. Marston continued his spirited and imprudent opposition to these measures and their abettors, and in 1705 was arraigned before the Board of Lay Commissioners and deprived of his living. Of these twenty commissioners, at the head of whom was Gov- ernor Johnson, Mr. Marston, in a letter to Dean Stanhope, says, "eleven of the twenty were never known to receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper." Their zeal, therefore, could not be prompted by any love of true religion, or by any regard to Christ the Saviour, as Lord and head of the church. It merely arose from political considerations, and from a desire to propitiate the proprietary government, and win the appro- bation of the . authorities at home. One of Mr. Marston's objections to the whole proceedings of the Assembly, he thus expresses : "I cannot think it will be much for the credit and service of the Church of England here, that such provisions should be made for admitting the most loose and profligate persons to sit and vote in the making of our laws, who will but take the oath appointed by the late act." *
The inhabitants of Colleton county, which was settled chiefly by dissenters, met and drew up a statement of their griev- ances, and Col. Joseph Morton and Edmund Bellinger, land- graves and deputies of the proprietors, with all the other members of Colleton, and several of great respectability in Berkley, prevailed on Joseph Ash, one of the most zealous in the opposition, to embark for England as agent of the ag- grieved party, which embraced fully two-thirds of the colony. The governor and his friends did their utmost to prevent his obtaining his passage in any vessel from Carolina, and it was not without difficulty that he reached Virginia, whither his instructions were sent to him.t
Rev. Archibald Stobo, the Presbyterian minister of Charles-
* Dalcho, p. 63.
+ Oldmixon, Hewatt, Rivers.
160
ARCHIBALD STOBO.
[1700-1710.
ton, warmly opposed this establishment from the beginning, and brought to the view of the colonists those severities and hardships the dissenters in England had suffered from the rigors of Episcopal government. " Several circumstances proved favorable to Stobo's opposition ; he possessed those talents which render a minister conspicuous and respected, and the people that party zeal which becomes violent from ill usage and persecution." "He had a natural aversion from the Episcopal jurisdiction, and no minister of the colony had engrossed so universally the public favor and esteem. The governor and his adherents found it necessary to sow the seeds of division among his followers, and, from maxims of policy, to magnify his failings, in order to ruin his great power and influence."* Mr. Ash, on his arrival in England, sought Lord Granville, but found him in the interests of the dominant party at home ; he only promised that he would cause his secretary to write to the governor, and require of him an answer to the charges preferred. Mr. Ash immediately began to draw up a representation of the case which he intended for the press, but dying before it was finished, his papers fell into the hands of his enemies, and among them the letters of Landgrave Smith, sent to Ash while in Virginia and England, to which reference has before been made, and which rendered Mr. Smith the ob; ject of censure and imprisonment. Mr. Ash, under the excite-
* Hewatt, vol. i., p. 178. London, 1779. What the failings of Mr. Stobo were, we are not informed. We judge him to have been a man of most de- cided character, uncompromising in his assertion of what he believed to be right, and in his denunciation of what he knew to be wrong. In a subset quent page, we shall see that he was too earnest an adherent of Presbyterian government to please all parties in the church at Charleston. It will be remembered, too, what charges were brought against the Scotch ministers by the " scape-graces" of the colony of Darien, for their protracted services. The following anecdote is repeated by Mrs. Flud, in her MS. history of the Legare Family, of a scene in church between the first emigrant, Solomon Legare, and Mr. Stobo. "Mr. Legare was strict in the observance of regular hours, and to his great annoyance, the Rev. Mr. Stobo, who preached at one time in the Congregational church, gave sermons of such unusual length that ff they often interfered with the dinner hour. At length Mr. Legare was determined to submit no longer to such irregularity ; and the next Sabbath he got up, with his family, in the midst of the discourse, and was about to leave the church, wlien the Rev. Scotch gentleman perceiving liis intention, called out from the pulpit: 'Aye, aye, a little pitcher is soon full!' }Upon which irreverent address, the Huguenot's French blood became excited, and turning himself about in the middle of the aisle, he still more irreverently, and not altogether to his credit, retorted, 'And you are an old fool !' He then quietly went home with his family, ate his dinner, returned with them to the church, and then listened to the balance of the discourse as gravely as if nothing unusual had occurred."
161
JOSEPH BOONE SENT AS AGENT.
1700-1710.]
ment of his feelings, undoubtedly carried his charges against Gov. Johnson too far : and yet Archdale says, "Sir Nathaniel Johnson, by a chimical wit, zeal, and art, transmuted and turned this civil difference (about the expedition against St. Augustine) into a religious controversy ; and so setting up a standard for those called High Church, ventured to exclude all the dissenters out of the assembly, as being those princi- pally that were for a strict examination into the grounds and causes of the miscarriage of the Augustine expedition."*
The dissenters were now greatly discouraged, and those of British origin were filled with apprehensions lest they should be involved in Carolina in the same troubles which made them leave their native country. Their counsels were various. Some were for removing to Pennsylvania, others were for addressing the House of Lords to consider their grievances and intercede with her majesty. The last measure prevailed. Joseph Boone was sent over as their agent, bearing with him their memorial to the House of Lords. The principal mer- chants in London, trading to Carolina, united with Mr. Boone also in a petition to the proprietors to repeal the obnoxious act. He solicited the palatine for seven long weeks before he could induce him to call the board together ; and when it was done, and their cause warmly espoused, and with the most solid reasons, by Mr. Archdale, the palatine curtly answered, "Sir, you are of one opinion, and I am of another ; our lives may not be long enough to end the controversy. I am for this bill, and this is the party that I will head and countenance." Mr. Boone desired to be heard by counsel. The palatine re- plied, " What business has counsel here? It is a prudential act in me ; and I will do as I see fit. I see no harm in this bill, and I am resolved to pass it." The petition fared other- wise, however, in the House of Lords. They declared the act " contrary to the charter, not consonant to reason, contrary to the laws of the realm, and destructive to the constitution of the Church of England, an encouragement to atheism and irre- ligion, destructive to trade, and tending to the depopulation and ruin of the province."t They also petitioned the queen, to "deliver the province from the arbitrary oppressions under which it now lies." To this the queen gave a favorable an- swer. The subject was referred to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations. They consulted the crown-lawyers,
* Archdale's Description of South Carolina, in Caroll, ii., 110.
t See the Resolutions in Dalcho, p. 66, and Hewatt, i., 174.
11
162
THE CHURCH ACT OF 1706.
[1700-1710.
who declared that the laws ought to be made void. On the 24th of May, 1706, the lords commissioners reported to the queen, that the lords proprietors had forfeited their charter, and recommended that it be annulled by legal process. On the 10th of June, the queen declared the enactments of the colonial assembly null and void. There had also been passed an order in council, that the queen's attorney and solicitor should inquire what course was to be pursued for recalling the charter. The Society for Propagating the Gospel also resolved to send no more missionaries to Carolina until the 16th section, about lay commissioners, be repealed.
Meanwhile, several of the colonists, who had heard nothing of the manner in which these oppressive acts were regarded in England, left the country and removed to Pennsylvania. It did, however, occur that the House of Assembly, at a meeting subsequent to that which passed the act excluding dissenters, voted its repeal, which shows on which side the true majority was, and that the former vote had been carried by management and trickery ; but this vote was rejected by the governor and council. The law remained in force, the assembly was dissolved by the governor, and a new one was elected under this law. Some refused to qualify, and the next on the sheriff's lists were summoned to their seats. Thus a Commons House was secured favorable to the establishment of Episcopacy, who passed a law for continuing themselves in authority for two years, and for eighteen months after the change of government either by the present governor's death or removal, alleging as a reason their fear that by the succession of a new governor the church [of England] may be either undermined or wholly subverted. When the manner in which their acts were received in the mother country was known, the objectionable acts were re- pealed, and the church act (Statutes, vol. ii., p. 282) was passed, which was the law of the colony till the American Revolution. Lord Granville died at the close of 1707, and William Lord Craven was made palatine,-a man of milder temper and greater moderation than his predecessor, and more tolerant towards the religious opinions of others. Everything, however, seemed to favor the Episcopal church and discourage dissenters. The Society for the Propagation of Religion in Foreign Parts, to which at its origin some dissenters had con- tributed, was under Episcopal rule, and though professing to advance the gospel, by providing clergymen for the whites, and instruction for the Indians and slaves, the churches not in the Establishment found that it did not contribute to their
163
POPULATION IN 1708.
1700-1710.]
upbuilding. The public library, which was established by the munificence of the proprietors, of Dr. Bray, the Bishop of London's commissary in Maryland, and the inhabitants, was placed also under the care of the incumbent of the Church of England in Charleston,* and, as was natural to expect, while it was kept in existence, by the books which it circulated it aided the church of the Establishment rather than those op- posed to it. Indeed, the close of the first decade of the eigh- teenth century marked an era in which high-church illiberality witnessed a new revival, and the turbulence of its waves was felt even on these shores of the New World.
Oldmixon, in his History of the British Empire, published in 1708, states the population of Charleston at 3,000 souls, of Dorchester at 350; Wilton, or New London, he describes as a little town of about eighty houses.
In the same year a statement was made, signed by Sir Na- thaniel Johnson, Thomas Broughton, Robert Gibbes, George Smith, and Richard Beresford, in which the population of the entire province was said to be 9,580 souls, of which the pro- portions were as follows : Free men, 1,360 ; free women, 900; white servant men, 60; white servant women, 60; white free children, 1,700 ; negro slaves, men, 1,800 ; negro slaves, women, 1,100 ; Indian slaves, men, 500; Indian slaves, women, 600; negro slave children, 1,200; Indian slave children, 300.
A letter from South Carolina, dated Charlestown, June 1, 1710, and reprinted in 1732, makes the following comparative statements :- p. 43. "It is not necessary to insert the exact numbers of the several inhabitants ; but the proportion they bear to one another, and each to the whole, are as follows :
Whites,
{ Planters, as Traders, Artisans, 2
81 1}
-
to 12;
All the whites,
Indian subjects,
to the whole, as 66
12
to 100."
Negro slaves,
22
P. 45. "There are eight ministers of the Church of England, three French Protestant congregations, where two of their min- isters were lately proselyted to the church, five of British Presbyterians, one of Anabaptists, and a small one of Quakers. The ministers of the Church of England have each £100 per
* November, 1700.
164
CITY OF CHARLESTON.
[1700-1710.
annum, paid out of the public treasury, besides contributions and perquisites from their parishioners. The other ministers are maintained by voluntary subscriptions. The proportions that the several parties in religion do bear to the whole, and to each other, are at present as follows :
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, including those French who re- tain their own disci- pline, Anabaptists, Quakers,
41
to the whole as 4}
1 0x -
to 10."
The city of Charleston was but of limited extent .- There were but a few scattered houses beyond the line of fortification, each within a small enclosure. The spaces between were grown up in " young pyne, bushes, shrubs, and the Jamestown weed." The manners of the town were. simple, and, except the wide street " out of Charlestown, for three or four miles, called the Broadway," which "is so delightful a road, and walk of a great breadth, so pleasantly green, that no prince in Europe, by all their art, can make so pleasant a sight," and which was indebted to nature more than to art-everything was exceed- ingly rural. The landgrave. Smith's account of the manners of the people were, that " the young girls received their beaus at three. o'clock, having dined at twelve, expecting them to withdraw about six o'clock, as many families retired to bed at. seven in the winter, and seldom extended their sitting in sum- mer beyond eight o'clock, some of their fathers having learned to obey the curfew toll in England. In those days, one hun- dred and fifty years ago, their rooms were all uncarpeted, the rough sides of the apartments remained of the natural color or complexion of whatever wood the house chanced to be built of. Rush-bottomed chairs were furnished instead of the hair seating or crimson velvet of our day, and without which, and a handsome sofa to match, many do not think it would be possible to exist." -- The Olden Time of Carolina ; Charleston, 1855.
1
FRENCH CHURCH IN CHARLESTON.
165
1710-1720.]
1 :
.
BOOK FIFTH. A. D. 1710-1720.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY furnishes us with very few incidents appertaining to the ecclesiastical history of the second decade of the eigh- teenth century. Mr. Livingston continued to preach to the CHURCH IN CHARLESTON, and Mr. Stobo was exercising his ministerial gifts wherever his labors were most needed in the colony.' Perhaps he had already taken up his residence at Wilton. Wherever his family were located, there can be no doubt of his faithfulness in his vocation, of his perseverance and energy. The Presbyterian church had as yet attained but a limited development in the British colonies. The presbytery of Philadelphia, the earliest of our ecclesiastical bodies, had but about eight members at the beginning of this period. When they divided themselves into three presbyteries, to form the synod of Philadelphia, in 1716, their whole number had reached seventeen ; and at the close of this period (1720) the entire number was twenty-seven. The reason of the slow growth of the Presbyterian church in this earliest period has been found in the quiet and peace they enjoyed at home for a length of time after the accession of William of Orange. The French and English persecutions began earlier, continued longer, and drove them forth into other countries, while those of Scotland and Ireland were soon over.
The FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCH IN CHARLESTON cannot be very distinctly traced through this decade. Dr. Ramsay says the Rev. Mr. Boisseau was minister in 1712. How long before or how long after that year he served this church we do not know.
On the 14th of February, 1714-15, an act was passed "Im- powering Charles Franchome and Samuel Peronneau, elders of the French church in Charlestown, or their successors, elders of the sª church for the time being, to sell and alien a cer- tain tract of land in Berkley county, devised to the poor of
166
FRENCH CHURCH AT JAMESTOWN.
[1710-1720.
said church by Mary Longuemere, alias Aunant, to and for the use, &c., of the persons aforesaid."*
The FRENCH CHURCH AT JAMESTOWN ON THE SANTEE still en- joyed the labors of Pierre Robert ; and our Huguenot brethren, about this time, received an accession to their ministers in Rev. Claude Philippe de Richebourg, who removed from Trent river, in North Carolina, to Jamestown, on the Santee, in 1712. He was pastor of the colony of French refugees, driven forth from their country by the edict of Revocation, whom King William had sent to Virginia in 1690, and who were settled at Manakin Town, which occupied a fertile tract of land on James river, about twenty miles above Richmond. They were joined in 1699 by three hundred, and in 1700 by two hundred, and subsequently by one hundred more.t The provincial legisla- ture of Virginia constituted this settlement a parish under the name of "King William's parish in the county of Henrico." Dissensions arose among them, and in 1708 the great body of them removed to Trent river, in North Carolina. From this settlement they were driven by a rising of the Tuscarora and Coree Indians, and a general massacre of the whites in their neighborhood,t and Richebourg, and probably others, found their way to the province of South Carolina.
"The character which has been transmitted to us of this persecuted minister of the gospel, exhibits as its peculiar trait a devotedness to the cause of Christ. He appears to have been a man of unobtrusive manners, of deep and fervent piety, and of a serious temper of mind. Adversities and poverty seem to have been his portion in the lot of life." "He seems to have lived, after his removal to South Carolina, for two or three years without a spiritual charge, and without any pecu-
* Presbyterian, Feb. 23d, 1850.
+ We may suppose that a large portion of these transportations consisted of Huguenots who accompanied William from Holland. Eight hundred of them, history informs us, were in his army. They formed an entire regiment, under the command of the Duke of Schomberg, in the battle of the Boyne, in 1690. In the decisive battle of Aghrim, in the following year, these auxiliaries, commanded by Ruvigny, (Earl of Galway), contributed by their gallantry to the victory obtained over the French and Irish Papal army under the com- mand of St. Ruth.
# This massacre took place on the 11th of September, 1711. One hundred and eleven persons, principally on the Roanoke and Chowan, were victims, and many died under lingering tortures. Lawson, Surveyor-General of N. C., and its earliest historian, was taken prisoner while exploring the Neuse river, and murdered by the savages-January 15th, 1718-19. Presbyterian, April 20th, 1850.
1
167
REV. CLAUDE PHILIPPE RICHEBOURG.
1710-1720.]
niary resources for the maintenance of his family; and, we are informed by Humphrey, contemplated a removal out of the colony, 'on account of his great want.' "
The infirmities of age creeping upon him, Pierre Robert re- signed his charge, and Richebourg was called by the congre- gation to succeed him in 1715. He continued in the pastorship "until his death, in 1718-19. His will* (the original manu- script in the French language) is still preserved in the public office in Charleston, and breathes the true spirit of the Chris- tian, resigned under the dispensations of Providence, steadfast in the faith, and triumphant at his approaching death. His wife, Anne Chastain, and six children, survived him. Some of his descendants, who are not numerous, have attained to wealth ; and no instance is known of any of them having been destitute of the comforts of life.
"Some misstatements have been made by writers of histori- cal sketches of the Huguenots, in reference to Richebourg, which the private and public records have corrected. He was not the first minister of the Huguenot church on the Santee, as stated by some, nor was he ever its rector, as conjectured by others."
We quote from the Presbyterian, published at Philadelphia, (April 20th, 1850), in which the writer is at issue with Dr. Humphrey, secretary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and from Dr. Dalcho, in a number of particulars. "The parish of St. James, Santee," says Dr. Humphrey, " consists chiefly of French refugees, conforming to the Church of England. It contains upwards of one hun- dred French families, and sixty English, besides free Indians and negro slaves. Their minister hath only the salary of the country, and some occasional gratuities, the whole making but a very scanty support. The Rev. Mr. Philip de Richebourg was their first minister, and approved himself in all respects a worthy man ; upon his dying, in 1717, the parish was a long time without a minister. In 1720 the Rev. Mr. Pouderous, a French clergyman, went over, and was fixed there by the Bishop of London ; but neither he nor Mr. Richebourg had any constant salary from the society, though they have had several occasional gratuities. The people are religious and
* Dated "Quinzième jour de Janvier, l'an mill sept cens dix-huit dix- neuf," (January 15th, 1718-19.) He probably died soon after its execution. Dr. Humphrey states that he died in 1717. The exact period of his death is not known.
168
ACT OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
[1710-1720
industrious, and very soon, in the year 1706, petitioned the Governor and General Assembly to have their settlement erected into a parish, and signified their being extream de- sirous of being united to the body of the Church of England, whose doctrines and discipline they did most highly esteem ; and the Governor and Assembly did pass an act that year, erecting their settlement into a parish, fixing the parochial church at Jamestown, and setting forth its boundaries, which contained about eighteen miles in compass, but by a subse- quent act they have been much enlarged : The Rev. Mr. Pou- derous continues now (1730) their minister, very industrious in his function."*
The first act of the Assembly constituting this a parish bears date April 9, 1706, the celebrated Church Act, before alluded to, Nov. 30, 1706.+ The bounds of the parish were en- larged Dec. 18, 1708. On petition of the vestry, £100 was appropriated out of the public treasury, June 3, 1712, "to- wards purchasing the plantation of Alexander Chastaigner, and the houses thereon standing, for a glebe, parsonage-house, and church.t
Against several of these declarations, the writer in "The Presbyterian" contends that not Mr. Richebourg, but Pierre Ro- bert, was their first pastor, and that the Huguenots of the Santee were not united with the Episcopal church in 1706, and that the History of Humphrey is " an ex parte work, got up to advance the interests of the Episcopal church ; that it is replete with in- accuracies and misstatements in every part which his subject re- quired him to compare with original and authentic documents." " The preamble" of the Act of April 9, 1706, " declares the law enacted in compliance with a petition from the inhabit- ants of that settlement ; and for the promotion of piety and true religion !" (as if those French Huguenots were destitute of these, and none .but churchmen could possess them), " and the thorough instruction of youth in the principles and practice of the Christian religion, according to the doctrines of the Church of England." The provincial legislature seems to have acted in this instance as an auxiliary to the missionary so- ciety for propagating the gospel among a people destitute of piety and true religion. To accomplish a purpose so laudable, it declares the church in Jamestown, or any thereafter erected in the settlement, a parish church, which shall continue so for-
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