setts, until they were over the border, and had reached the milder barbarism of the Indians. Here is a quaint account, from another document, of the settlement of Rhode Island: The People of Boston (who always had a perfect hatred against those who differed in opinion from them, & if any have bin persecutors, they may bee said to bee bloody ones) had some Quakers in the land, & how to rid themselves fairly of them, they had many consultations, which at last ended in this result: They would banish them to some place or other, from whence they might bee sure to be never troubled with them again. Their hearts were then somewhat tender, & not sufficiently hardened for those barbaritys & murders they afterwards committed; but yet their Mercys were very crueltys, for they banished these Quakers to this Island, where in all probability they must have perisht with hunger, or else bin destroyed by the heathen. Hither these poor creatures being come, they dig them caves in the Earth, & by the kindness of the Indians outlive the severitys of a long and sharp winter. The spring coming on, they obtaine leave from the Sachem to manure the Ground, & in a little time wraught themselves into good Estates, which some even of the first settlers injoy even to this day. Being thus happily seated, they petitioned King Charles, that they might have a Charter to themselves, fearing lest they should fall under the lash of the Bostoners againe, who had bin soe inhumane & barbarous to them in their banishment (p. 41). It is not a little instructive to see how early the causes were at work, which have to so great a degree unchristianized New England; and how clearly that result was foreseen from the first: Three fourths of the Country never participate of the Lord's Supper, & if any should beg it as for the Salvation of his Soul, yet he could not obtaine his requests without comeing up to their terms, & telling storys of the time of his conversion, & when the work of Grace was wrought on his heart. Even in the space of little more than one Generation, near one half of the people are unbaptized, & let Parents doe what they can, give never so good account of their Faith, & live never so uprightly towards God and towards Man, yet their children shall not be admitted to Baptism, unless one of the Parents bee of their Communion, & promises to walk after the Church Covenant. So that in a few ages, by their Independant Practise, Paganism will a second time overspread the land, & there will be as much need of Evangelizing the English, as there is now of the Indians (p. 51). But let us turn over to some other document. Here (pp. 64, 65) is the Memorial and Petition from Thomas Coram to the Archbishop of Canterbury, begging that something may be done for the Church in the Colony, and picturing the condition of things in language of terrible darkness. He says: That in the years 1693 and 1694 and some time after, there was but one Minister of the Church of England in all ye Inhabited part of y English Empire in America, settled by ten or more different Colonies, contiguous, but under different sorts of Government, 600 or 700 Miles in length or more, on the Sea Coast, from Virginia Northward to the utmost extent of the then settled and Inhabited English Country on the Main Land of America. The said Minister, whose name was Mr. Hatton, was a very worthless Man, he resided at Boston, and was utterly unfit to Gaine or Reconcile to the Church such Descentors so strongly inveterate against it; but he was far from ever attempting to do so, for he would frequently on Saturday Nights set up and play at Cards all or the greatest part of the Night, in company with an Irish Butcher and an Irish Barber, and another or more of such his acquaintance, whereby he was usually so much disordered which prevented him from officiating next day at Church, which gave its numerous Enemies great opportunities to ridicule against it, and those few Inhabitants of yo large Town of Boston who were desirous to go to Church were very often disappointed & greatly discouraged. But the main gist of Thomas Coram's appeal to the King, is to ask his Majesty to set on foot at Cambridge a "king's college," to offset Harvard College and Yale, and still another proposed college in the Jerseys. And-with all our subsequent experience touching the best modes of civilizing the Indians-it makes one smile to read honest Thomas Coram's idea of the probable usefulness of King's College in keeping the Indians from sympathizing with the French. He says: And moreover for the said College to be encouraged & enabled to Gaine and bring over and secure to the British Interest the Nations or Tribes of Indian Natives Inhabiting in the Wilderness nearest to the said British Colonies or Settlements, and also to maintain & properly to instruct a fit number of yo children of those Natives, which would doubtless produce perpetual security and advantage to His Majesty's Subjects in those Northern parts of America; for that those Indians are grateful and kind if well used. But through y want of care and good usage from yo English in times past to those Indians, they' therefore became Enemies, and do continually embrace all opportunities to Joyne the French against yo English, greatly to their destructive damage, as too often has appeared in all those parts of North America (p. 66). We wonder how many free scholarships in Columbia or Princeton would suffice to "gaine and bring over and secure" the Modocs and the Camanches, so as to "produce perpetual security and advantage" to our citizens on the frontier. But Thomas Coram was not the only person in those days who looked upon a full collegiate course as the best civilizer of the Indian, and was convinced that the earning of a sheepskin with Latin on it would cure the red man of his hereditary propensity for taking scalps. There is a certain Foundation at Dartmouth, we believe, from which the Indians (for whom it was intended) have long since disappeared, but the endowments remain, and are quite as convenient for the use of white men, as if they never had been set apart for the benefit of the red. A few pages further on (p. 73), we find Col. Lewis Morris giving to an English archdeacon an account of the missionary labors of the apostolic Keith, and pleading for some one to be sent to East Jersey, "which wants very much, the whole province not having one of the Church, many Dissenters of all sorts, but the Greatest parts generally speaking cannot with truth be called Christians;" and also to Braintree in Massachusetts, of which he says: "Braintry should be minded; it is in the heart of New England, and a learned and sober man would do great good, and encourage the other towns to desire the like. If the Church can be settled in New England, it pulls up Schisme in America by the roots, that being the fountain that supplyes with infectious streams the rest of America." Braintree, indeed, had a company of staunch Churchmen in it, as the names of Vesey and Barclay would indicate. On pages 84 and 85, there is a really eloquent letter from some of them to the Bishop of London, defending themselves from the charge laid against them by a Mr. Newman, that they were animated only by a spirit of contradiction, and were weary of their attempt to set up a Church: Were this Charge true, we cannot think on it but with greatest horror and detestation, that we should be so impious & hypocritical towards God, & so surly & unframeable towards man; that, for contradiction sake, pretend to set up a Church of Eng Meeting, now we have the witness of God Almighty & our own consciences that we are sincere; and do it heartily unto the Lord, as knowing from him we must receive our reward; . . . & Mr. Vesey, Minister of the Church of N. York, when he was a youth can say that he, with his parents & many more, were communicants of the Church of Engd & that in their Family at Braintree Divine Service was daily read, which things to mention would argue great pride & vanity were it not in our own defence, also we leave it to your Lordship to judge, how contrary to reason it is, that a fit of contradiction in us should last more than 20 years; & that we that have it cannot be at all bettered by it, nor obtain the least good but procure to ourselves many & great evils; we are indeed weary of having ourselves & children exposed to scorn & contempt, in being often called Papists, & Idolaters & what not, for only cleaving to the Church, our holy religion ridiculed & called the Mass, with great scorn & contempt, our estates forcibly taken from us by those whose wills are the measure of their actions, for the support of Dissenting ministers, of these things we are indeed weary, but we are not weary of worshipping God in the way of the Chh of Eng & Cleaving to it & we do heartily thank our heavenly Father that He hath called us to this state of salvation. • . The Churchmanship of Massachusetts ought to be of sturdy stuff, considering the Colonial schooling it enjoyed! But we have not yet gotten beyond the eighty-fifth page of this goodly volume, and if we go on at this rate, we shall never get through. Let us make a bold skip of more than an hundred pages, and we shall find (p. 191) a long and very able petition to the King from several clergymen of the Church (and among them Dr. Timothy Cutler, McSparren, and Samuel Johnson), setting forth the illegal oppressions under which all Churchmen were made to groan during the dominion of Puritanism, the Puritans "unwarrantably rating and assessing them for the support and maintenance of the Independent teachers, and for the repairing and building the Independent meeting-houses; and, in default of payment, by distraining their goods and laying their persons in actual imprisonment, and using all methods possible to discourage the inhabitants from embracing our government, doctrine, and liturgy, whereby the members of our Churches are miserably distressed by the force and violence that is used upon their Persons and Estates in case of the least refusal or delay to contribute to the support of the dissenting Teachers and their meeting houses; and on which account, at least 30 of the members of the Church of England have been imprisoned at one time in one Town." But what was done with this able and important petition? The following memorandum of action thereupon will show that the circumlocution-office was already invented, and in full operation, at that early period: 1726, Mar. 20th. 1727, May 13th. The said Petition was lodged in the Council Office. By order in Council it was referred to the consideration of a July 14th. By order of the Comte of Privy Council, the said petition Nov. 14th. The Lords Commissioners for trade wrote a letter to the King's then Attorney, and Solicitor General, for their opinion, &c. Upon search it does not appear that the Attorney, and Solicitor General, ever made any report, or that any further proceedings were had on the fore-mentioned petition. When the petition was allowed to lie for sixteen months before it was even so much as referred, the committee, and the King's Attorney and Solicitor-general did not need any further prompter to tell them that the most acceptable way to perform their part of the business was to say nothing more about it. But, whether of service or not, the Churchmen of those days seemed to have learned well at least one part of the Gospel; and, having unjust judges at home, they did all they could to strengthen the righteous cause by sturdy repetition and unfailing importunity. Again and again does this disagreeable business put up its ugly phiz in the communica tions written to persons in England. The Rev. Mr. Davenport, for instance (p. 309), speaks of many being kept from joining the Church By reason of public taxes to the support of the dissenting worship, which they must submit to or suffer imprisonment, as has been the case of two of our wardens, who, for not paying their rate towards the meeting house at Hanover (one of the towns in this parish) have been put in prison, from which one of our present wardens was delivered in his way to it, by the Constable's violent wresting his money from him, which as yet he has no recompense for. One other of our communicants, for not paying his rate towards the dissenting Teacher in Marshfield (a neighboring Town) was brought in sight of the Gaol, but escaped it by the humanity of a Gentleman who laid down the money for him; in truth, Sir, these taxations seem to be the weightiest arguments against our cause, which our advasaries are not ignorant of, for here and in Hanover all our [people] are assessed for the maintenance of their respective teachers, which they must pay, or loose their liberty in common gaol, which they are now daily threatened with, & daily expect. The reason of this dogged resistance of Churchmen to Puritan exactions was not merely the natural desire to save their money; but it was the well-grounded conviction that the Colonial laws providing for such exactions were really contrary both to British law and to the true meaning of the Colonial Charter. It was a serious nuisance to Churchmen, and their attempts to secure justice at law at length began to have some influence with their persecutors. When Matthew Ellis, of Medford, was imprisoned by Richard Sprague, constable of that town, he prosecuted the constable in return; and, when beaten, carried the case up to the Superior Court, and then to the Court of Review; and when all these Colonial courts went against him, as was natural, he appealed to the King, and Richard Sprague was "cited to appear before a Committee of the Right Honble the Lords of his Majesty's Privy Council, to answer before them for his imprisoning said Ellis." This was rather more than the Puritan constables had bargained for. And, furthermore, the gradual changes of men and things brought it to pass that now and then a Churchman was chosen constable; and then the awkwardness of the Puritan laws began to appear more clearly. We find here (p. 311) a grave and formal petition from David Shaw, one of the constables of the town of Brimfield, "To his Excellency, Jonathan Belcher, Esq.,' Governor & Commander 1 1 In a letter from Dr. Cutler (p. 671), he makes the following allusion to Gov. Belcher: "Not long ago this gentleman married his daughter here to a person baptised and brought up in the Church; but not before he had strictly obliged him entirely to forsake the Church, which the booby has faithfully done." |