Studies in Modern History General Editor: J. C. D. Clark, Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of British History, University of Kansas Titles include: James B. Bell Mark Keay A WAR OF RELIGION WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S Dissenters, Anglicans, and the GOLDEN AGE THEORIES DURING American Revolution THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND, 1750–1850 James B. Bell THE IMPERIAL ORIGINS OF THE Kim Lawes KING’S CHURCH IN EARLY AMERICA, PATERNALISM AND POLITICS 1607–1783 The Revival of Paternalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (editors) Marisa Linton SAMUEL JOHNSON IN HISTORICAL THE POLITICS OF VIRTUE IN CONTEXT ENLIGHTENMENT FRANCE Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard Karin J. MacHardy Erskine-Hill WAR, RELIGION AND COURT THE ATTERBURY PLOT PATRONAGE IN HABSBURG Diana Donald and AUSTRIA Frank O’Gorman (editors) The Social and Cultural ORDERING THE WORLD IN THE Dimensions of Political Interaction, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1521–1622 Richard D. Floyd James Mackintosh RELIGIOUS DISSENT AND POLITICAL VINDICIÆ GALLICÆ MODERNIZATION Defence of the French Revolution: Church, Chapel and Party in A Critical Edition Nineteenth-Century England Robert J. Mayhew Richard R. Follett LANDSCAPE, LITERATURE AND EVANGELICALISM, PENAL THEORY ENGLISH RELIGIOUS CULTURE, AND THE POLITICS OF CRIMINAL 1660–1800 LAW REFORM IN ENGLAND, Samuel Johnson and Languages of 1808–30 Natural Description Andrew Godley Marjorie Morgan JEWISH IMMIGRANT NATIONAL IDENTITIES AND TRAVEL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN NEW YORK IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN AND LONDON, 1880–1914 James Muldoon William Anthony Hay EMPIRE AND ORDER THE WHIG REVIVAL, 1808–1830 The Concept of Empire, 800–1800 W. D. Rubinstein Lynne Taylor and Hilary Rubinstein BETWEEN RESISTANCE PHILOSEMITISM AND COLLABORATION Admiration and Support for Jews in Popular Protest in Northern France, the English-Speaking World, 1940–45 1840–1939 Anthony Waterman Julia Rudolph POLITICAL ECONOMY WHIG POLITICAL THOUGHT AND AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION SINCE THE ENLIGHTENMENT James Tyrrell and the Theory of Essays in Intellectual History Resistance Doron Zimmerman Lisa Steffen THE JACOBITE MOVEMENT TREASON AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN SCOTLAND AND IN EXILE, Defining a British State, 1608–1820 1746–1759 Studies in Modern History Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-79328-2 (Hardback) 978-0-333-80346-2 (Paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England A War of Religion Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution James B. Bell © James B. Bell 2008 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-54297-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-36052-9 ISBN 978-0-230-58321-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230583214 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bell, James B., 1932– A war of religion : dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution / James B. Bell. p. cm. — (Studies in modern history) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Religious aspects. 2. Dissenters—United States—History—18th century. 3. Anglicans— United States—History—18th century. 4. Dissenters—United States— Biography. 5. Anglicans—United States—Biography. 6. Christianity and politics— United States—Church of England—History—18th century. 7. United States—Politics and government—1775–1783. I. Title. E209.B38 2008 973.3’8—dc22 2008011740 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 In Gratitude to William A. Coolidge and to an Inspired and Inspiring Band Of Teachers and Scholars Raymond W. Albright, Charles E. Batten, John B. Coburn, Rollin J. Fairbanks, Theodore P. Ferris, Joseph F. Fletcher, Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, Harvey H. Guthrie, Clifton Lunt, Lloyd G. Patterson, Henry M. Shires, Charles W. F. Smith, Owen C. Thomas, Peter Waring, and William J. Wolf. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations and Tables ix Prologue x Acknowledgements xvii Some Useful Dates xix PART I A Century of Controversies 1 The Seeds of Discord: An English Church Established in Boston 3 2 Discord Enlarged: The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 17 3 A Handmaiden for Episcopacy: John Checkley of Boston 33 4 The English Origins of a Colonial American Controversy 42 5 Noah Hobart Decries Anglican Expansion: Thomas Sherlock Proposes an American Bishop 58 6 Jonathan Mayhew Fears a Bishop and Challenges the Purpose of the S.P.G. 67 7 Pleas for an American Bishop in the 1760s: Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker and Thomas Bradbury Chandler 81 8 A Radical Response to a Bishop: John Adams, Samuel Adams, and John Wilkes 91 9 The Controversy over a Bishop in the Colonies outside New England 107 PART II A New Controversy: The Political Sentiments of the Clergymen 10 The Impact of the First Continental Congress and the Local Committees of Safety 123 vii viii Contents 11 Critics of the Continental Congress and Common Sense: Jonathan Boucher and Charles Inglis 140 12 A Challenge to Radical Politics: Samuel Seabury, Jr., and Thomas Bradbury Chandler 156 13 Quiet and Militant Patriots 170 14 William Knox Seeks to Establish an Ecclesiastical Imperial Policy for the American Church 187 15 The State of the Clergy in 1775 and 1783 195 16 The English Church, a Cause of the American Revolution 211 Appendix I Political Sentiments of Colonial Clergymen of the Church of England during the American Revolutionary War, 1775–83 222 Appendix II A Summary of the Birthplaces, Birth Years, and Colleges Attended by Colonial American Church of England Clergymen, 1775 241 Notes 246 Bibliography 294 Index 316 Illustrations Illustration 8.1 ‘An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America’ (Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum) 101 Illustration 8.2 ‘The Mitred Minuet’ (Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum) 105 Tables Table 15.1 Number of clergy in the New England colonies, 1775–83 199 Table 15.2 Number of Clergy in the Middle Colonies, 1775–83 202 Table 15.3 Number of Clergy in the Chesapeake Colonies, 1775–83 204 Table 15.4 Number of Clergy in the Southern Colonies, 1775–83 208 ix Prologue Two principal colonial observers and participating essayists on radical political affairs in the 1760s and 1770s claimed that the question of an American Anglican bishop was a cause of the Revolutionary War. Writing from the vicarage in Epsom, County Surrey, in England in the mid-1790s, the exiled Maryland schoolmaster and parson Jonathan Boucher recalled that during the pre-Revolutionary War years in the colonies, ‘Episcopacy was opposed for no reason whatever besides that of thwarting and irritating those who, being known to be friends to the church, were concluded to be also friends to the Crown: how much it was the fashion, at the same period in question, for people of all ranks to speculate, philosophise, and project Utopian schemes of reformation; which, as it was conducted in America, led, as regularly as ever any cause produces its corresponding effect, first, to the demolition of the Church, as that, in its turn, no less certainly led to the overturning the State’.1 Boucher’s assessment of the issue was supported and extended 40 years after the beginning of the War for Independence by John Adams, who recounted to a historian of the conflict that the episcopacy controversy and the authority of parliament to appoint bishops and creates dioceses in the colonies was a cause of the war.2 In the train of Professor J. C. D. Clark’s study The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832, which examines and illuminates the political and intellec- tual relationship between the British Isles and America, this book considers the experience of the colonial English church between 1686 and 1783.3 From the founding of James Town in 1607 to the end of the Revolutionary War, the church in America maintained essential transatlantic ties.4 Connections that were fashioned by the vital need for the recruitment and ordination of clergymen; for the supervision by successive bishops of London; and the assistance of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for the financial support of missionaries in the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies after 1701.