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Loyalist as Royalist, Patriot as Puritan: The American Revolution as a Repetition of the English Civil Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

James C. Spalding
James C. Spalding
Affiliation:
Mr. Spalding is director of the school of religion in The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
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Extract

Patriots at the beginning of the American Revolution were conscious of participating in a tradition of liberty derived from their Puritan forefathers. Not only did they refer back to the crossing of the sea by their ancestors who “bravely threw themselves upon the bosom of the ocean, determined to find a place in which they might enjoy their freedom, or perish in the glorious attempt,” but they also spoke of themselves as “the descendants of Oliver Cromwell's army,” “the descendants of Cromwell's elect.” Benjamin Rush thought of himself as being a son of liberty genetically when he wrote, “I am the great grandson of an officer John Rush who fell fighting against King Charles 1st under Oliver Cromwell.”2

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 329 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

1. Letter from Boston, 26 May 1775, Farley's Bristol Journal, 8 July 1775, Letters on the American Revolution, ed. Margaret W. Willard (Boston: Houghton, 1925), p. 120Google Scholar; and letter from Boston, 20 November 1774, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 19 January 1775, in ibid., p. 12. For these references and the next one from Benjamin Rush, I am indebted to Catherine Albanese of Wright State University.

2. Benjamin Rush to Granville Sharp, Philadelphia. 9 July 1774, in “The Correspondence of Benjamin Rush and Granville Sharp 1773–1809,” ed. Woods, John A. Journal of American Studies, 2. 1Google Scholar (April 1967): 9.

3. Jefferson, Thomas, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Ford, Paul Leicester, 10 vols. (Letterpress edition: New York, 1892–1899), 1: 9–11.Google Scholar See also Jefferson, Thomas, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1: 1770–1776, ed. Boyd, Julian, 18 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 106Google Scholar: for possible references in Rushworth, John see Historical Collections, 8 vols. (London, 1659–1701), 1, pt. 3: 494,Google Scholar also 29.

4. Jefferson, , Papers, 1:105.Google Scholar

5. Boucher, Jonathan, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738–1789, ed. Bouchier, Jonathan (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1967), pp. 118 f.Google Scholar These reflections were originally written down in 1787.

6. Ibid., p. 105.

7. Boucher, Jonathan, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; in Thirteen Discourses Preached in North America Between the Years 1763–1775; With an Historical Preface (London, 1797), pp. 324 f.Google Scholar The most thorough study of the thought of Jonathan Boucher has been made by Anne Young Zimmer and Alfred Kelley, H., “Jonathan Boucher, Constitutional Conservative,” Journal of American History, 58, 4 (03 1972): 897–922.Google Scholar Although Boucher, on p. lxxxv in the preface of this book maintains that he is publishing the sermons “very nearly as they were delivered from the pulpit” between 1763 and 1775, Zimmer and Kelly show through excellent historical criticism why these sermons cannot be taken all that literally. This article must be read now by anyone who wishes to make a serious study of Boucher. Though Zimmer and Kelly maintain that while the published text “cannot be accepted simply as a literal reproduction of his American sermons” they nevertheless assert that the text “may very well expound in a general way the content of at least certain sermons he delivered earlier in America, particularly in the last stages of his Maryland career.” See p. 902. It is with such caution but also with such confidence that we are using the text. We are using only those sermons which come from “the last stages of his Maryland career.”

8. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, p. 347.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 353.

10. Ibid., p. 355.

11. Ibid., p. 356.

12. Ibid., p. 357.

13. Ibid., p. 372.

14. Ibid., p. 367.

15. Ibid., p. 375.

16. Ibid., p. 435.

17. Ibid., p. 435.

18. Ibid., p. 436. Boucher respected Washington but spent thirteen more pages to destroy the reputation of Franklin.

19. Ibid., p. 401. See Hall, Joseph, Contemplations, The Sixth Volume (London, 1622), p. 52.Google Scholar This is not the conclusion of Hall's Contemplations as Boucher asserts, nor is it a direct quote. The royalist statement “but on himself let his crown flourish” is from Boucher, not Hall. The Monmouth reference is on p. 387 in Boucher's A View of the Causes. The identification of Absalom with Monmouth had already been made before the rising by John Dryden in his poem Absalom and Ahitophel of 1681. This poem was familiar to Boucher (see p. 412). See Caroline Robbins' comment on the bitter end of the Monmouth affair: “The republicanism of Colonel Abraham Holmes and others on the scaffold show that the spirit of the more radical debaters at army councils persisted in a few men.” Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealth Man (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, pp. 407–410.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 422: see pp. 429 f.: “An appearance of religion Ahitophel had, and so had Cromwell.”

22. Ibid., pp. 431 f.

23. Ibid., p. 434.

24. Boucher, , Reminiscences, p. 113.Google Scholar Boucher had a firmer commitment to the principle of freedom of speech than those patriots who drove him eventually from an American pulpit. See Walker, Robert G., “Jonathan Boucher, Champion of the Minority,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 2 (01 1945): 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Walker held that though Boucher was a Tory, he held firmly to the rights of minorities in the area of free speech. Also Baker analyzes Boucher's sermon “On the Toleration of Papists,” which demonstrates a concern for religious toleration including Catholics and “any other religious dissenters” even though he wanted to work out some kind of religious establishment.

25. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, pp. 499 fGoogle Scholar. See Smith, William, D.D., A Sermon on the Present Situation in American Affairs: Preached in Christ Church, June 23, 1775 (Philadelphia, 1775)Google Scholar; and Duché, Jacob, The Duty of Standing Fast in our Spiritual and Temporal Liberties, A Sermon, preached in Christ Church July 7, 1775 (Philadelphia, 1775).Google Scholar

26. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, pp. xlviii f.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 495.

28. Ibid., p. 455.

29. Boucher, , Reminiscences, pp. 100 f.Google Scholar

30. Smith, , Sermon on the Present Situation, pp. 16, 20 f.Google Scholar The fact that Anglicans like Smith and Duché used the Glorious Revolution as their model rather than the English Civil Wars suggests a source of ideological weakness in the loyalist cause. By long tradition the Anglican clergy were the natural allies of the crown, but one of the consequences of their approving acceptance of the Glorious Revolution was that they were “Whig” Anglicans. That some loyalist sentiment remained in both Smith and Duché can be observed in their later responses to the American Revolution.

31. Ibid., p. 23.

32. Duché, , The Duty of Standing Fast, pp. 12 f.Google Scholar

33. Zimmer, and Kelly, , “Jonathan Boucher.” p. 922.Google Scholar

34. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, pp. 454 ff.Google Scholar

35. Smith, , Sermon on the Present Situation, pp. 20 f.Google Scholar

36. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, p. 482.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 484. Boucher remained a “Tory” Anglican with respect to the Glorious Revolution. This position was maintained in Bishop Overall's Convocation Book, MDCVI: Concerning the Government of God's Catholick Church, and the Kingdoms of the Whole World (London, 1690), pp. 57 f.Google Scholar In Canon 27 of this book it is held that one must obey kings who have unjustly gotten or wrung by force the government from the true professor. Even in this case his authority is still from God. Some “NonJurors” were able later to accept the authority of William and Mary because of Overall's argument. Boucher cites Overall on p. 525 of A View of the Causes. The Glorious Revolution could be accepted as a fact but without seeing its outcome as a model for what might later be done.

38. Ibid., p. 487. Needless to say there are no Puritans in the list, but they represent a late seventeenth-century royalist churchman's heroes of the faith. Beza's name probably should be deleted.

39. Ibid., pp. 507 f., 535, 546.

40. Boucher, , Reminiscences, p. 123.Google Scholar

41. Boucher, , A View of the Causes, p. 588.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., pp. 595 f.

43. Ibid., p. 1 [L].

44. Ibid., p. xxix.

45. Ibid., p. xxxvi; see also pp. xxxiv f.

46. Ibid., pp. xlvii f.

47. Ibid., p. lxxi.