Anglican Clergy in Colonial America Ordained by Bishops of London
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Anglican Clergy in Colonial America Ordained by Bishops of London JAMES B. BELL J->/uRiNG the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until after 1790, the Church of England parishes and missions in Ameri- ca were served by ministers who had been either recruited in England for posts in the colonies, or who had been born, edu- cated, and recommended for a pulpit in the colonies and trav- elled to England for holy orders at the hands of an English prelate. The Church of England in Colonial America was really an English institution, unable to adapt itself to new cir- cumstances and never self-contained. First, the ecclesiastical dependence of the clergy, deeply rooted in history, made epis- copal ordination essential for native Americans seeking to join the Anglican ministry. Secondly, the colonial church was the only Protestant denomination in the colonies which had its center of supervision in London, thirty-five-hundred miles across the Atlantic Ocean. As the provincial church looked to England for parsons to fill its pulpits, it was only during the years between 1760 and 1775 that a majority of native-born Americans began to supply the ranks of the clergy. In fact most of the ordinands throughout the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries had been educated at Oxford, Cambridge, or the Scottish universities. For many of these men an appoint- ment to an American post was thought to be little more than 103 104 American Antiquarian Society a temporary, missionary kind of assignment. In England there was an oversupply of Anglican ministers, and rather than to risk no preferment, men were willing to chance the modest and frequently tardy incomes, poor living quarters, scarcity of books, and uncertain tenure which repeatedly was the experi- ence of many parsons in America. On both sides of the Atlantic men seeking appointments in the colonies had to accomplish certain preliminary require- ments. First, they had to present themselves to the Bishop of London who considered their letters of introduction, which may have been penned by an Anglican clergyman, or a colo- nial governor or lieutenant-governor, reviewed the candidates, credentials, and arranged for their examination and ordina- tion. The postulants were supposed to demonstrate, before examining chaplains, their knowledge of the Bible, the Prayer Book, the Creeds, the Thirty-nine Articles, Greek and Latin, and scriptural and church history. After successfully passing the examination the candidate proceeded to take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience, and to acknowledge the Thirty-nine Articles. The ordination rites came next: first to the diaconate, and then, usually one or two weeks later, to the priesthood. The Bishop of London performed these ceremonies or some other bishop designated by him should he have been pressed on other business, away from the city, or ill. For example, the Bishop of Carlisle ordained to the priesthood on February 19th, 1764, at St. James's in Westminster, William Walters of West Rox- bury, a great-grandson of Increase Mather and a graduate of Harvard College (1756), and who was appointed assistant minister of Trinity Church, Boston. After payment of certain fees, generally half a guinea for his orders and about £l 18s. 6d. he received from the Bishop of London's deputy the license by which he was authorized to serve as a minister to a particu- lar parish. The new ordinand also subscribed to a solemn declaration of conformity to the liturgy of the Church of Eng- Anglican Clergy in Colonial America 105 land, as established by law, an act required of all seeking preferment of any kind, either at home in England, or abroad in America. Soon after ordination the men were to arrange passage for the voyage to America. They were not to linger in London or elsewhere in England. Licensed clergymen, travelling to posts in the colonies, were presented with £20 sterling to defray the cost ofthe trip. Initiated during the reign of Charles II, and continued by successive monarchs until the American Revolution, this stipend was known as the King's or Queen's Bounty. For Americans, making the trip to London was doubly expensive and their travel funds were either raised by the parishes which hoped to employ them as priests, or among family and friends. The cost of a round trip from the colonies to London frequently ranged between £50 and £80 sterling. Occasionally free passage was obtained which at least reduced part ofthe expenses ofthe trip. The sea journey usually took about four weeks and the Americans, on a round trip voyage, ordinarily spent two months on the high seas and four months in London fulfilling the requirements for ordination and li- censing to serve parishes in the colonies. For more than thirty years it has been thought that the Ordination Registers of the Bishops of London had been lost particularly as a consequence of various dislocations caused by World War II. The Registers are the essential formal entry book listing in chronological order the names of the men who were ordained to the offices of deacon and priest by the Bishops of London, or by some other bishop ofthe Church of England designated by the Bishop of London and the place of their ordination. The Registers have been deposited recently in the Guildhall Library in the City of London; recorded as Guild- hall MSS. 9535, London Diocese, Ordination Registers; Vol. I, 1550-1557; Vol. II, 1578-1623; and Vol. Ill, 1675-1809. All but a few names of parsons who served in the American Colonies, and noted in my list, are recorded in Volume III of 106 American Antiquarian Society the Ordination Registers. Also helpful in compiling data on the accompanying list of clergymen have been the Additional Subscription Books, small volumes which carried the signa- tures of the men who had been ordained by the Bishops of London and who had sworn to conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England. These books are also deposited in the Guildhall Library and are recorded as: Guildhall MSS. 9540A, London Diocese, Additional Subscription Books; Vol. I, 1757- 1765; Vol. II, 1775-1796. These manuscripts, have not been previously searched and are quite useful in determining the universities attended by many of the men and the precise dates and location in London of their ordinations to the diaconate and priesthood. Over sixteen-hundred men served as ministers of the Church of England in colonial America, from the first settlement at Jamestown to the close of the War of Independence. I have attempted to locate each man, not only in his parish in the colonies, but also in the Ordination Registers and the Addi- tional Subscription Books. About one-third, six-hundred-and- six, of the Anglican clergymen who served in the American colonies prior to 1783 were ordained by the Bishop of London. As the basis for compiling my list of Anglican clergy in the colonies I used the excellent volumes prepared by Frederic Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Lancaster, Mass., 1936); The Colonial Clergy of Maryland, Delaware and Georgia (Lancaster, Mass., 1950); The Colonial Clergy of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Car- olina (Boston, Mass., 1955); 'The Colonial Clergy of the Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1628-1776,' American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, LXVI, (1956). I also found helpful a compilation of'Clergy- men Licensed to the American Colonies by the Bishops of London: 1745-1781,' by George Woodward Lamb, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, XIII (June 1944) hereinafter referred to as HMPEC; however, his presentation Anglican Clergy in Colonial America 107 is based entirely on Collections of the Protestant Episcopal His- torical Society for Tear 1851 (New York, 1851), Lamb re- presented pages 107-120 ofthe 1851 Collections. Using the Rawlinson Manuscripts deposited in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, John Clement compiled 'Clergy- men Licensed Overseas by the Bishops of London, 1696-1710 and 1715-1716,' HMPEC, XVI, (Dec. 1947); also 'Anglican Clergymen Licensed to the American Colonies 1710-1714,' HMPEC, XVII, (Sept. 1948). Dr. Nelson Rightmyer com- piled a list too of'Clergymen Licensed to the American Colo- nies, 1679-1688//-/MP£C, XVII, (June 1948). None of these sources, however, is complete: all of them rely on secondary source material and none contain the in- formation ofthe date and location of ordination, or the college, if any, which the ordained attended. This information could only be gathered from a folio-by-folio search of the Ordination Registers and the Additional Subscription Books at the Guild- hall Library. All Anglican clergymen who served in the colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have not been noted, as not all Anglican ministers had been ordained by the various Bishops of London. My list of over sixteen-hundred parsons has been compiled from several sources: the thirty-six volume manuscript collection of the Bishops of London which is now deposited in the Lambeth Palace Library; the Letters, Jour- nals, and Account Books ofthe Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, deposited in the Society's ar- chives at its headquarters in Tufton Street, London; papers of the Archbishops of Canterbury, at Lambeth Palace Library, and also from collateral historical works of the period. The following list of six-hundred-and-slx clergymen has been checked not only with my master list of Anglican parsons who served in the American Colonies, but also with all ofthe above noted biographical data. The following form has been used in presenting the list of 108 American Antiquarian Society men who were ordained by bishops of London, and whose names are recorded in the Ordination Registers: Name; Uni- versity; Date of ordination to the Diaconate; Date of ordina- tion to the Priesthood; by whom ordained if not a bishop of London; the place of ordination if known, and the number of the folio in the Guildhall MSS.