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The Proposal in the Pre-Revolutionary Decade for Establishing Anglican Bishops in the Colonies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Jack M. Sosin
Jack M. Sosin
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History in the University of Nebraska
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Extract

Time supposedly heals all wounds, but the religious strife between Puritans and Anglicans in the seventeenth century had left a bitter legacy in the minds of the New England Congregationalist ministers. Even after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 had in time brought the principle of religious toleration for the protestant sects in the mother country, the animosities of the Stuart regime still evoked suspicion and distrust in the minds of those in New England whose ancestors had left England to found their Zion in the wilderness. But many years had passed since the days of archbishop William Laud, the Clarendon code and the policy of conformity. Although Anglicanism was dominant in England, by the middle of the eighteenth century it was tempered by the principle of toleration for dissenting protestants. But in New England those professing the Anglican faith were a minority among the Congregationalist offspring of the founding puritan fathers. Even in those provinces to the south where it represented the majority of the colonists the Anglican Church suffered from one great defect. There were no resident bishops in America; consequently, those colonists who wished to be ordained as ministers must make the long, expensive, and often hazardous journey to England. Few could undertake such a trip so that most of the Anglican clergy in the colonies came from the mother country.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1962 , pp. 76 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

page 76 note 1 Hooker, Richard James, ‘The Anglican Church and the American Revolution’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1943), 3.Google Scholar

page 77 note 1 Secker to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, 4 November 1760, Documents relative to the colonial history of the state of New York, eds., Edmund B. O'Callahan and Berthold Fernow, New York and Albany 1856–87, vii. 447. Hereafter cited as New York Colonial Documents.

page 77 note 2 See the letter of the Anglican ministers in the Boston area to Secker, 26 January 1761, and their Address to the King, Lambeth Palace Manuscripts, Library of Congress transcripts, 1123, III, nos. 218, 219. The endorsement on the Address is in Seeker's hand.

page 77 note 3 Rev. William Smith to _____________?, 12 August 1762, Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith, D.D., ed. Smith, Horace Wymes, Philadelphia 1879–80, i. 302Google Scholar.

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page 82 note 1 (Copy), ‘The Bishop of London to the Board of Trade on the provision for the Clergy in the Colonies, &c. March 1, 1766’, Shelburne Papers, lix. fols. 1–11. An extract is printed in Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, ed. Munroe, James, Edinburgh 1908–12, vi. 446Google Scholar.

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page 84 note 3 Entry for 13 March 1772, ‘Journal of Voyage from Newport in the Colony of Rhode Island to London, Travels thro’ many Parts of England & Scotland—begun July 8th 1771 by Henry Marchant’, microfilm copy in the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, Rhode Island. The MS. is in the possession of Miss Alice Clarke of Cohoes, New York. I am indebted to Miss Clarke for permission to use the microfilm copy at the Rhode Island Historical Society.

page 84 note 4 The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, New York 1902, 255–8.