INTRODUCTION

Throughout the period under study, metropolitan observers were on the whole highly critical of the state of the Church of England in Britain's American colonies, particularly in relation to the plantation-based settlements of the mainland south and of the islands. The clergyman-philosopher George Berkeley spoke for many of his fellow church members when he wrote in 1725 that “there is at this day, but little sense of religion, and a most notorious corruption of manners, in the English colonies settled on the continent of America, and the islands.” To Bishop Berkeley, this unhappy state of affairs could best be remedied by sending more and better qualified clergy “to reform morals, and soften the behaviour of men,” as in his view the Anglican churches throughout the colonies were nothing more than “a drain for the very dregs and refuse” of British clergy. To Charles Leslie, whose account of his experiences in Jamaica was published in 1740, the fault lay at least as much with the men who constituted the island's elite; although there were “indeed here several Gentlemen that are well acquainted with Learning … these are few; and the Generality … love a Pack of Cards better than the Bible.” The physician and evangelical Christian Robert Poole, who traveled throughout the Leewards in the late 1740s, complained repeatedly that the various churches he encountered were “thinly visited and carelessly attended to,” which he interpreted as a sign of the settlers' irreligious nature, as corroborated by the fact that “many of those who call themselves Christians, [were] keeping open Shop, with their Goods publickly exposed to Sale” on Sunday, and that even those who attended services “by their Behaviour, seem'd pretty great Strangers to the Duty of worshipping God with Decency and Reverence.”