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REFASHIONING PURITAN NEW ENGLAND: THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA, c. 1680–c. 1770

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2010

Abstract

The position of the Church of England in colonial New England has usually been seen through the lens of the ‘bishop controversy’ of the 1760s and early 1770s, where Congregational fears of the introduction of a Laudian style bishop to British North America have been viewed as one of the key factors leading to the American Revolution. By contrast, this paper explores some of the successes enjoyed by the Church of England in New England, particularly in the period from the 1730s to the early 1760s, and examines some of the reasons for the Church's growth in these years. It argues that in some respects the Church in New England was in fact becoming rather more popular, more indigenous and more integrated into New England life than both eighteenth-century Congregationalists or modern historians have wanted to believe, and that the Church was making headway both in the Puritan heartlands, and in the newer centres of population growth. Up until the early 1760s, the progress of the Church of England in New England was beginning to look like a success story rather than one with in-built failure.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2010

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References

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14 See Boyd Stanley Schlenther, ‘Religious Faith and Commercial Empire’, in The Oxford History of the British Empire, ii, ed. Marshall, 128–50.

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48 Lambeth Palace Library, SPG Minutes 1, fo. 48v, 18 May 1705. Bradford did publish an edition of the Prayer Book in 1706, with a reissue in 1710, which was the only edition printed in North America during the colonial period: James N. Green, ‘The English Book Trade in the Middle Colonies, 1680–1720’, in Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, ed. Amory and Hall, 199–223, at 213–14. The venture was a publishing failure since, as Bradford informed the SPG, the Prayer Books were not subsidised and therefore were too expensive for people to buy.

49 Reported in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to James Johnson, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 24, 1758 (1758), 38.

50 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 257v, Thompson to SPG, 26 Mar. 1764.

51 Frederick Keppel, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 16, 1770 (1770), ‘Abstract of Proceedings’, 2.

52 The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (2 vols., New York, 1973), see i, 406, 4 Jan. 1699, ii, 779, 25 Dec. 1714.

53 Ibid., i, 385, 25 Dec. 1697.

54 Reported in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Matthew Hutton, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 21, 1745 (1745/6), 40.

55 Quoted in Martin Benson, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday, February 15, 1739–40 (1740), 55.

56 Hobart, A Serious Address, 56.

57 It has been suggested that many people were unchurched in the eighteenth century: Bonomi, Patricia U. and Eisenstadt, Peter R., ‘Church adherence in the eighteenth-century British American Colonies’, William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (1982), 245–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For some of the failings of the Congregationalist churches in attracting the laity, see Onuf, Peter S., ‘New Lights in New London: A Group Portrait of the Separatists’, William and Mary Quarterly, 37 (1980), 626–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 For example, MHS, MS N-2249, folder 33, 18 Feb. 1770.

59 MHS, MS N-2249 (XT) Old North Church, Vestry Book, 1724–1802, 170.

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67 Literary Diary of Stiles, ed. Dexter, i, 294–5, 488. Steiner, ‘New England Anglicanism’, puts the figure at 25,000 persons at that date (122).

68 Gilbert, Alan. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England. Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London and New York, 1976), 31–2Google Scholar.

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70 This was according to John Beach, the missionary there, in letters to the SPG in 1762, quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to John Egerton, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 18, 1763 (1763), 51. For the original, see Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 55, Beach to SPG, 6 Apr. 1762.

71 The Records of Trinity Church, Boston, 1728–1830, ed. Andrew Oliver and James Bishop Peabody, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, lv and lvi (Boston, MA, 1980). See also Tyng, Dudley, Massachusetts Episcopalians, 1607–1957 (Pascoag, RI, 1960)Google Scholar.

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73 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to John Waugh, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St. Mary-le-Bow; on Friday, February 15, 1722 (1723), 51.

74 George Berkeley, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St Mary-le-Bow, on Friday, February 18, 1731 (1732), 17, 22.

75 Mayhew, Observations on the Charter, 43.

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78 Nelson, ‘Anglican Missions’, 449–51.

79 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 200, Matthew Graves to SPG, 20 Feb. 1763.

80 For example, dissenters contributed to the refurbishment of the interior of the church at Hebron: see ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to William Warburton, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 21, 1766 (1766), 23.

81 For the Great Awakening in a broad context, see Kidd, Thomas S., The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, 2007)Google Scholar. For New England in particular, see Winiarski, Douglas L., ‘Souls Filled with Ravishing Transport; Heavenly Visions and the Radical Awakening in New England’, William and Mary Quarterly, 61 (2004), 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his ‘“A Journal of Five Days at York”: The Great Awakening on the Northern New England Frontier’, Maine History, 42 (2004), 47–85; Nordbeck, Elizabeth C., ‘“Almost Revived”: The Great Revival in New Hampshire and Maine, 1727–1748’, Historical New Hampshire, 35 (1980), 2458Google Scholar. See also Goen, Clarence C., Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740–1800 (New Haven, 1962)Google Scholar.

82 See Gilbert, Religion and Industrial Society. For a revised view see Gregory, Jeremy, ‘“In the Church I will Live and Die”: John Wesley, the Church of England and Methodism’, in Religion and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Gibson, William and Ingram, Robert (Ashgate, 2005), 147–78Google Scholar, and David R. Wilson, ‘Church and Chapel: Parish Ministry and Methodism in Madeley, c. 1760–1785, with Special Reference to the Ministry of John Fletcher’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 2010).

83 Lambeth Palace Library, SPG Minutes iv, 1740–4, fo. 254, Caner to SPG, 10 Nov. 1743. An abstract of this was quoted in Philip Bearcroft, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 15, 1744 (1744), 43–4.

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85 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Bearcroft, Sermon, 44.

86 Goen, Revivalism and Separatism, 157; John Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (1990), 320.

87 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Samuel Lisle, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 19, 1747 (1747/8), 54.

88 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Hutton, Sermon, 40. See also Stenerson, Douglas C., ‘An Anglican Critique of the Early Phase of the Great Awakening in New England: A Letter by Timothy Cutler’, William and Mary Quarterly, 30 (1973), 475–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is an edition of Cutler's letter of 28 May 1739 to Bishop Gibson's request for information about the recent outbreak of revivalism and contains his views on Jonathan Edwards’ account of the religious revival in Northampton.

89 Quoted in Matthias Mawson, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday, February 18, 1742–3 (1743), 41–2. On women in the revival, see Brekus, Catherine, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America (Chapel Hill, 1998)Google Scholar, Juster, Susan, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca, 1996)Google Scholar.

90 Chauncy, Charles, Enthusiasm Described and Caution'd Against (Boston, MA, 1742)Google Scholar. Compare this with the tract attributed to Thomas Comber, prebendary of Durham cathedral, Christianity no Enthusiasm, or, the Several Kinds of Inspirations and Revelations Pretended to by the Quakers Tried and Found Destructive to Holy Scripture and True Religion (1678); George Hickes, The Spirit of Enthusiasm Exorcised in a Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford, on Act Sunday, July 11 1680 (1680); and George Lavington, The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compared, 3 Parts (1749–51). Seventeenth-century English Presbyterians had also targeted those they considered enthusiastic sectaries: Thomas Edwards, The First and Second Part of Gangraena, or, A catalogue and Discovery of Many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time (1646). On the durability of religious language castigating opponents, see Jeremy Gregory, ‘Articulating Anglicanism: The Church of England and the Language of “The Other” during the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Religion, Language and Power, ed. Nile Green and Mary Searle Chatterjee (2008), 143–66.

91 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Richard Osbaldeston, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 21, 1752 (1752), 37.

92 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Frederick Cornwallis, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 20, 1756 (1756), 38.

93 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Johnson, Sermon, 38. On the iconic status of Plymouth, see Seelye, John, Memory's Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock (Chapel Hill, 1998)Google Scholar.

94 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Egerton, Sermon, 53.

95 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 145, Davies to SPG, 28 Dec. 1762.

96 See Welles, Noah, The Real Advantages which Ministers and People May Enjoy Especially in the Colonies, by Conforming to the Church of England; Faithfully Considered, and Impartially Represented, in a Letter to a Young Gentleman (Boston, MA, 1762)Google Scholar, which satirised the Church's links to politeness, moderation and financial gain (as well as to Popery).

97 Quoted in Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 88.

98 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 102, Davies to SPG, 3 July 1762.

99 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/1, fo. 152, Browne to SPG, 10 Sept. 1760.

100 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 134, Samuel Peters to SPG, 24 Dec. 1762. Joshua Bailey, the itinerant missionary on the eastern frontier of Massachusetts, rode between 600 and 700 miles in 1761: ibid., fo. 169v, Bailey to SPG, 26 Mar. 1761.

101 Hall, Timothy D., Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial Religious World (Durham, NC, 1994)Google Scholar.

102 Berkeley, Sermon, 56.

103 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fos. 200–1, Graves to SPG, 20 July 1763.

104 Quoted in ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ attached to John Hume, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 19, 1762 (1762), 44.

105 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 100, Fayerweather to SPG, 25 Dec. 1761.

106 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2, fo. 89v, ‘Petition from the Church of Warwick in the Colony of Rhode Island, 17 June 1762’.

107 Cameron, Letter-Book of the Rev. Henry Caner, 239, Caner to Secker, 23 Oct. 1767.

108 Ibid.

109 Ibid.

110 On the Mathers see Middlekauff, Robert, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728 (New York, 1971)Google Scholar. For Byles's father, also called Mather Byles, see Eaton, Arthur Wentworth, The Famous Mather Byles: The Noted Boston Tory Preacher, Poet and Wit (Boston, MA, 1914)Google Scholar. For our Mather Byles, see Shipton, Clifford K., Sibley's Harvard Graduates, xiii, 1751–1755 (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1965), 626Google Scholar.

111 MHS, MS N-1153: ‘Life and Letters of Revd Mather Byles’, 78.

112 Boston Gazette, 25 Apr. 1768. For one colonial Anglican clergyman's positive response to Byles's conforming, see Peters, Samuel, Reasons Why Mr Byes Left New London, and Returned to the Bosom of the Church of England (New London, 1768)Google Scholar, but for an opposite view (highlighting the financial reasons for the move) see Gales, Benjamin, A Debate between the Rev Mr Byles, Late Pastor of the First Church in New-London, and the Brethren of that Church (New London, 1768)Google Scholar. It is worth noting that the bitter anti-British feeling of 1765–6 occasioned by the Stamp Act had abated somewhat between 1766 and 1770: Jensen, Merrill, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1968), chs. 1011Google Scholar.

113 For a useful overview, see John Shy, ‘The American Colonies in War and Revolution, 1748–1783’, in The Oxford History of the British Empire, ii, ed. Marshall, 276–323, esp. 307–13. See Hatch, Nathan O., The Sacred Cause of Liberty. Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven, 1977)Google Scholar; Wood, Gordon S., The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2004)Google Scholar; and Breen, T. H., ‘Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising’, Journal of American History, 84 (1997), 1339CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 Bell, War of Religion, 160ff.

115 William McGilchrist to SPG, 17 July 1764, in Historical Collections relating to the American Colonial Church, ed. Perry, iii, 514–15.

116 William McGilchrist to SPG, 27 June 1766, ibid., 525.

117 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to John Ewer, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 20, 1767 (1767), 48ff.

118 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Jonathan Shipley, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 19, 1773 (1773), 22.

119 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to Edmund Law, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 18, 1774 (1774), 27.

120 I have checked the digests of the letters printed in the ‘Abstracts of the Proceedings’ added to the printed sermons preached to the SPG with the originals in Rhodes House Library, Oxford.

121 Clark, Language of Liberty, 216–17.

122 Cameron, Letter-Book of the Rev. Henry Caner, 250, Caner to Terrick, 29 Sept. 1773.

123 Ibid., Caner to Terrick, 258, 7 Oct. 1774. For Peters, see Cohen, Sheldon S., Connecticut's Loyalist Gadfly: The Revered Samuel Andrew Peters (Hartford, 1976)Google Scholar.

124 Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. Dexter, ii, 502, 20 Dec. 1774.

125 Quoted in the ‘Abstract of Proceedings’ appended to William Markham, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 21, 1777 (1777), 58.

126 Breen, Timothy, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

127 Caner, Henry, A Candid Examination of Dr. Mayhew's Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Boston, MA, 1763), 89Google Scholar.

128 Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre.

129 Mills, Frederick V., Bishops By Ballot. An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York, 1978)Google Scholar.