ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH EPISCOPAL HIERARCHY. pend business.* In 1750 an act was passedt designed to prevent the manufacture of nails in the colonies by prohibiting the erection or maintenance of "slitting mills" for converting iron bars into thin rods (from which the nails were made). Indeed, England seemed to regard the colonies merely as outlets for her manufactures, as feeders for her trade, and as convenient distributors. of her capital. Had the reciprocal benefits to the colonists been as great as the returns from the operation of these acts, or had the tendency of the government at home been toward making the trade restrictions more lenient, possibly the breach between the mother country and the colonies might never have become any wider; but each succeeding ministry endeavored to win popularity at home, for which the easiest method was to adopt some new scheme for monopolizing colonial trade. Hence the tension became acute, culminating in the Revolution.‡ Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 240. 23 George II., c. 29. For the history of the Navigation Acts see the chapter on "The Commercial Legislation of England and the American Colonies 16601760," in Ashley's Surveys, Historic and Economic (1900); G. L. Beer, The Commercial Policy of England Toward the American Colonies (1893); Sir J. Child, New Discourse of Trade (1694); R. Coke, Discourse of Trade (1670); W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (4th ed., 1903); W. S. Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping (1876); J. R. Macculloch, “Navigation Acts" in Dictionary of Commerce; Sir S. H. Northcote, A Short Review of the History of the Navigation Laws of England (1849); J. Reeves, The Law of Shipping and Navigation 209 The attempt to set up an Anglican episcopal system in the colonies was another cause of irritation, if not one of the chief causes for the separation of the colonies from the mother country. While perhaps not to be ranked with the Navigation Acts, the Stamp Act, etc., yet it was an important factor in moulding revolutionary opinion and differentiating revolutionary parties.* John Adams, writing in 1815, says, ing in 1815, says, "Who will believe that the apprehension of episcopacy contributed fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the attention, not only of the enquiring mind, but of the common people, and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional authority of Parliament over the colonies? This, nevertheless, was a fact as certain as any in the history of North America. The objection was not merely to the office of a bishop, though even that was dreaded, but to the authority of Parliament, on which it must be founded, [for] if Parliament can erect dioceses and appoint bishops they may introduce the whole hierarchy, establish tithes, forbid marriages and funerals, establish religions, forbid dissenters." Jonafrom the time of Edward III. to the end of 1806 (1807); P. A. Bruce, The Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (1896); W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England (1890); Joshua Gee, Trade and Navigation of Great Britain. 221. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, p. John Adams, Works, vol. x., pp. 185, 288; Mellen Chamberlain, John Adams, the Statesman of the American Revolution, p. 25, note. 210 ACTIVITIES OF LAUD AND BISHOP OF LONDON. than Boucher also insisted that this controversy was "clearly one cause that led to the revolution.""* The Church of England had been established by law during the colonial era in Virginia, the Carolinas, Maryland and Georgia, but, with the exception of three counties in New York, it had no legal existence anywhere, and in New England" scattering the seeds of Episcopacy was sowing tares by the Evil Ones." It was to escape the soul-destroying conformity and episcopal tyranny that the Puritans had fled to New England, as they went to the New World not so much to erect a state as a church, though they made no pretensions to liberality or toleration. To the Puritan mind, Episcopacy and monarchy were associated in their evil effects, and any attempt to set up bishops was certain to excite the jealousy of the New Englanders. Even in Virginia, where the church was strongest, the institution of a hierarchy would have received a cold welcome. In 1634 William Laud, at the head of the High Commission, began his attacks on the Puritans (in his attempt to extinguish all forms of dissent) by means of fines, imprisonment and exile. In 1638 Laud resolved to send a Bishop to New England for their better government, with power to compel obedience, but the * Boucher, View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution, p. 150. See also W. S. Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, vol. i., pp. 394 et seq., 425. Mellen Chamberlain, John Adams, p. 24. civil wars prevented any further efforts to set up an episcopate.* And in 1645, Laud, after impeachment proceedings before the House of Commons, was sent to the scaffold.† Prior to the Restoration, it was supposed that the Bishop of London ought to be consulted regarding the affairs of the English churches in America, but it was not until 1675, when Henry Compton was transferred to the see of London, that legal sanction was given to such authority. At that time instructions were sent to the royal governors to see that the Book of Common Prayer was read each Sunday and Holy Day, and that the sacrament was administered according to the rules of the Church of England, while no minister could be prepared to any benefice in the colony without a certificate from the Bishop of London as to his conformity. From that time Compton endeavored to increase the diocesan authority of the Bishop of London in the colonies and to improve the spiritual conditions of the colonial clergy. In 1701 Compton procured the incorporation of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and his work was carried further by Gibson who Arthur L. Cross, The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, in Harvard Historical Studies, vol. ix., p. 21, note 2; Chamberlain, John Adams, pp. 25-26. See S. R. Gardiner, The Personal Government of Charles I., and The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I.; and Lives of Laud by Hutton, Benson and Simpkinson. Cross, Anglican Episcopate, pp. 1-25. ACTIVITIES OF BISHOP OF LONDON. was authorized by royal commission to hold spiritual courts. The missionaries in the Middle and Northern colonies petitioned for the institution of bishops in America,† but the Southern clergy were too well satisfied with existing conditions to desire interference on the part of a resident hierarchy. The society lent the weight of its influence to these petitions, Queen Anne had sanctioned the scheme, and a bill was about to be introduced in Parliament, when the Queen died and the proceedings ceased. The project received little encouragement from George I. or from Sir Robert Walpole, and for the following twenty-five years agitation waned, but was revived by a sermon. preached by Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford. He said that such an establishment would not encroach upon the present rights of the civil governments in the colonies nor endanger their independence. But the Reverend Andrew Eliot pointed out in reply that if a prelate were introduced, it would be necessary to tax the people for his support, which if the assemblies refused to do, the whole strength of the Church of England would be exerted to procure the enactment of a law by Parliament to tax the colonies N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. v., pp. 849-854. See also S. E. Baldwin, The Jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n. s. vol. xiii., p. 190. † Perry, American Episcopal Church, vol. i., p. 396 et seq. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, pp. 211-212; Cross, Anglican Episcopate, p. 101. 211 for this purpose.* Eliot said in a letter to Thomas Hollis: "The people of New England are greatly alarmed; the arrival of a bishop would raise them as much as any one thing."+ There was also opposition to the episcopate in New York, one of the reasons given being that the Livingstons and their Whig associates had been educated at Yale, where Calvinism and hatred of prelatical authority were violent and where they therefore had imbibed principles of civil and ecclesiastical liberty. Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London from 1748 to 1761, used every endeavor to secure the installment of bishops in America, but he preferred to follow a policy that should force the American Episcopalians to demand their own episcopate.|| He was warned that his schemes would arouse bitter feelings,§ but persisted, and in 1750 was aided by Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, who outlined a plan for setting up an episcopate in America which was very moderate in tone, disclaiming coercive authority over the laity, providing that bishops should not be maintained by the colonies, and expressing the intention that no bishop should be sent Eliot, Remarks on the Bishop of Oxford's Sermon, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2d series, vol. ii., pp. 209-210. + Chamberlain, John Adams, p. 31. 212 THE JONATHAN MAYHEW CONTROVERSY. to places in the hands of dissenters.* During 1763-1765 occurred the socalled Jonathan Mayhew controversy, arising from a pamphlet published in 1763, in which he attempted to show that the Society for Propagating the Gospel was designing to root out Presbyterianism and set up episcopacy in the colonies. This pamphlet breathed an intense spirit of religious and civil liberty, and undoubtedly intensified colonial hatred of the threatened episcopal hierarchy‡ Secker, now Archbishop of Canterbury, replied that the Episcopalians in the colonies possessed a constitutional right to enjoy the ministrations of bishops, and that in a land where there was any pretence to toleration, the members of the Church of England should have that privilege in full. Secker then drew up a plan for the duties of such a bishop. Mayhew answered that, once bishops were introduced and Episcopalians attained a majority in the legislatures, it would be only a step further to levy taxes for the support of bishops, to enact test acts, ecclesiastical courts, etc.ll While there were few new arguments advanced, the controversy seemed to bind men closer in the rising revolutionary parties, and, according to Adams, the attempt to set up an American episcopate "spread * Perry, vol. i., p. 408. † Perry, p. 410 et seq. Chamberlain, John Adams, p. 30. Cross, Anglican Episcopate, pp. 154-156. § Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, p. 216. an unusual alarm against the authority of parliament.” * The crisis was reached during 17671771 when Thomas B. Chandler and Charles Chauncy began their pamphlet war. Chandler in 1767 wrote his Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Church of England in America, favoring the institution of bishops and presenting a plan similar to the plans of Butler and Secker. He said that the discontent among the colonies had not been caused by the fear that bishops would be settled among them, but by what the colonists regarded as an "unconstitutional oppressive act."† But Chandler omitted to mention many good reasons justifying the colonial dread of a hierarchy, including "those only which could be mentioned safely," and Chauncey, after presenting the old and some new objections, accused the advocates of the episcopate of suppressing their real motives and questioned their good faith.‡ This pamphlet, too, was accompanied by an acrimonious war in the newspapers, a fact chiefly important in showing that the episcopal question had become important in the political agitation of the time. As a result, the breach between the Puritans and the Episcopalians grew wider and wider, the former advocating forcible resistance to the oppressive measures of Parliament, while the latter favored * Adams, Works, vol. x., p. 288. Cross, Anglican Episcopate, p. 170. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, pp. 217-219. HOSTILITY OF THE COLONISTS. non-resistance and passive obedience. It is certain that many Episcopalians would have taken the colonial side in the political struggle, had they not been driven to the royalist ranks by the force of their injured religious convictions.* The Virginia House of Burgesses had refused to sanction the introduction of bishops, though the colony was Episcopalian, and thus Virginia and Massachusetts stood side by side, Massachusetts in 1768 having instructed its agent in London to oppose the establishment of an episcopate in America. In drafting this letter, Samuel Adams said: "We hope in God such an establishment will never take place in America, and we desire you would strenuously oppose it. The revenue raised in America, for aught we can tell, may be as constitutionally applied towards the support of prelacy as of soldiers and pensioners."+ Again, as late as 1772, the Boston committee of correspondence declared that various attempts "have been made and are now made, to establish an American Episcopate;" but it was also stated that "no power on earth can justly give temporal or spiritual jurisdiction within this province ex Cross, Anglican Episcopate, p. 214. John Adams says that "the church people are, many of them, favorers of the Stamp Act at present." Works, vol. ii., pp. 168, 348. + Hosmer, Samuel Adams, p. 105; Chamberlain, John Adams, p. 31; Wells, Life of Samuel Adams, vol. i., p. 157. See also Hawks, Contributions to American Church History, vol. i., p. 126 et seq.; Baldwin, Jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, p. 210; Perry, American Episcopal Church, vol. i., p. 419. 213 cept the Great and General Court."* Whatever the Virginia churchmen may have thought of the New England Congregationalists, they met on the common ground of hostility to Anglicanism.† It is evident, therefore, that the religious controversy helped to embitter the minds of the colonists and to hasten the impending crisis. "When it is recollected that till now [1771] the opposition to an American Episcopate has been confined chiefly to the demagogues and independents of the New England provinces, but that it is now espoused with much warmth by the people of Virginia, it requires no great depth of political sagacity to see what the motives and views of the former have been, or what will be the consequences of the defection of the latter."‡ Still another cause for irritation was the attitude of the mother country toward banking and currency in the colonies. As early as 1690 Massachusetts had issued paper money to aid in fitting out an expedition against Canada, and soon the other colonies followed her example. But so unstable were financial conditions, that by 1748 the price of £100 coin had risen from £180 in paper in Pennsylvania to £1,100 in paper in New York. In 1720 Parliament passed the "Bubble Act," designed to break up such private banks as had been chartered * Adams, Works, vol. ix., pp. 287-288; Thornton, Pulpit of the American Revolution, p. 192. Chamberlain, John Adams, p. 37. Boucher, View of the Causes of the Revolution, p. 103. |