The Church Militant: The American Loyalist Clergy and the

Making of the British Counterrevolution, 1701-92

Peter W. Walker

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2016
 © 2016
Peter Walker
All rights reserved
 ABSTRACT

The Church Militant: The American Loyalist Clergy and the

Making of the British Counterrevolution, 1701-92

Peter W. Walker

This dissertation is a study of the loyalist Church of England clergy in the American Revolution.

By reconstructing the experience and identity of this largely-misunderstood group, it sheds light

on the relationship between church and empire, the role of religious pluralism and toleration in

the American Revolution, the dynamics of loyalist politics, and the religious impact of the

American Revolution on Britain. It is based primarily on the loyalist clergy’s own

correspondence and writings, the records of the American Loyalist Claims Commission, and the

archives of the SPG (the Church of England’s missionary arm).

The study focuses on the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies, where Anglicans

formed a religious minority and where their clergy were overwhelmingly loyalist. It begins with

the founding of the SPG in 1701 and its first forays into America. It then examines the state of

religious pluralism and toleration in New England, the polarising contest over the proposed

creation of an American bishop after the Seven Years’ War, and the role of the loyalist clergy in

the Revolutionary War itself, focusing particularly on conflicts occasioned by the Anglican

liturgy and Book of Common Prayer.

The dissertation proceeds to follow those loyalist clergy who left the Thirteen Colonies as

refugees, tracing their reception in Britain, their influence on conservative churchmen there, and

their role in rebuilding the imperial Church of England in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Particular attention is given to the relationship between the loyalist refugees, the English high

church movement, and the Scottish Episcopal Church. Bridging British, Canadian, and colonial
American history, the dissertation suggests that the American Revolution galvanised an Anglican

religious revival in the British Empire and shaped an emerging alliance between the Church of

England and conservative politics. It ends in the 1790s, as this alliance solidified under the

influence of the French Revolution.

Most scholarship on religion and the American Revolution is ultimately concerned with

the politics of the revolution. This dissertation, by contrast, asks how the politics of the

revolution affected the religious lives of those who lived through it. It provides a sympathetic

account of the loyalist clergy’s religious identities and beliefs, and situates them in the context of

early-modern British religious history. In doing so, it reconstructs a distinct spiritual culture

which was concerned with the holiness of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom. It locates the

clergy’s loyalism in the longer history of political martyrdom, a category that has been

overlooked by secular-minded historians of loyalism.

The loyalist clergy were also preoccupied with the lack of state support for the colonial

Church of England. Together with their allies and sympathizers in Britain, they formulated a

powerful critique of the British Empire’s religious pluralism: an important but overlooked

contribution to counter-enlightenment and counter-revolutionary thought in Britain. By studying

that critique, this dissertation highlights the limits of state support for the colonial Church of

England prior to the American Revolution, and identifies a turn towards greater state support in

the wake of American independence.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iii

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv
Note on Spelling ........................................................................................................................... vii
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1
“A War of Religion”? The Loyalist Clergy and the American Revolution ............................ 5
An Ecclesiastical Conglomerate: The Loyalist Clergy and the British Empire.................... 19
Chapter Outline ..................................................................................................................... 34
1. Episcopizing New England: Anglican Missionary Enterprise in America, 1701-63 ........ 39
Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 39
The SPG and the American Mission Field ........................................................................... 43
The Anglican Great Awakening in New England ................................................................ 59
The SPG and the New England Churches: Denominational Competition or Religious
Warfare? ................................................................................................................................ 69
“The Maintenance of an Orthodox Clergy”: The Mayhew-Apthorp Controversy ............... 74
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 81
2. “The Fountain of all our Misery”: The Bishop Campaign and the Growth of Anglican
Disaffection, 1763-70............................................................................................................ 84
Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 84
The SPG Missionaries and the Bishop Question, 1701-63 ................................................... 92
The Ecclesiastical Settlement of Quebec ............................................................................ 103
“The Principles of the Toleration”: Thomas Secker’s Proposal for a Bishop .................... 107
The SPG Missionaries’ Campaign for a Bishop ................................................................. 113
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 126
3. Loyalist Martyrs: Praying for the King in the American Revolution.............................. 130
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 130
Voices in the Wilderness: The Emergence of Anglican Loyalism, 1766-74 ...................... 137
Oaths, Perjury, and Prayers for the King: Anglican Loyalism as a Religious Test ............ 142

i
 Suffering, Persecution, and Martyrdom: Agency and Victimhood in Anglican Loyalism 153
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 161
4. His Majesty’s Suffering Church: The American Refugee Clergy and the Roots of
Imperial Reform ................................................................................................................ 164
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 164
Trauma, Displacement, and Exile: The Experience of the Loyalist Refugee Clergy ......... 168
Sympathy, Suffering, and Memory: The Identity of the Loyalist Refugee Clergy ............ 179
Church, State, and Nation: The Reception of the Loyalist Refugee Clergy ....................... 189
The American Loyalist Claims Commission ...................................................................... 196
“Immortal Honour”: Samuel Peters’s Loyalist History ...................................................... 204
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 207
5. The Church Triumphant? American Independence and the Rebirth of the Imperial
Church of England ............................................................................................................ 210
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 210
Loyalist Proposals for Imperial Church Reform ................................................................. 216
The Reconstruction of Ecclesiastical Sovereignty after American Independence ............. 231
“Paroxysm of Moderation”: The American Émigrés and the English High Church
Movement ........................................................................................................................... 243
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 254
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 258
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 273

ii
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Map of the northern colonies in 1730 p. 52

Figure 2: Seal of the SPG p. 58

Figure 3: Chart showing number of SPG missionaries by region, 1719-75 p. 61

Figure 4: Map of the SPG missions in 1722 p. 62

Figure 5: Map of the SPG missions in 1763 p. 62

Figure 6: “The Savages Let Loose, or The Cruel Fate of the Loyalists” p. 177

Figure 7: “Shelb—ns Sacrifice, or the recommended Loyalists” p. 177

Figure 8: “Portrait of John Eardley-Wilmot” p. 188

Figure 9: “Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in 1783” p. 188

Figure 10: “Repeal of the Test Act” p. 267

Figure 11: “Sedition and Atheism Defeated” p. 268

iii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first thank-you is to Chris Brown, who has been a model advisor. I am grateful for his

exacting concern with quality scholarship and for allowing me the freedom to follow my own

interests and passions. I am lucky to have had Evan Haefeli as an unofficial second advisor. Evan

first coaxed an interest in American history out of me, and has continued to inspire me to think

about history in ever broader terms. I am also indebted to the other members of my committee:

Susan Pedersen, Charly Coleman, and Ned Landsman (who kindly agreed to join at short notice).

I will continue to think about their questions and comments for an awful long time.

The research for this dissertation was carried out at various libraries in the UK and the

US. I would like to thank the staff at the American Philosophical Society, Bristol University

Library, the British Library, Columbia University’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, the

General Theological Seminary, Lambeth Palace Library, the Lewis Walpole Library, Rhodes

House Library, the UK National Archives, and the Special Collections at William & Mary. I owe

a particular thank-you to Caitlin Stamm at the General Theological Seminary for locating

Thomas Bradbury Chandler’s books.

I am grateful to the following institutions for funding this research: Columbia University,

the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Lewis

Walpole Library, and the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church.

Many people read sections of this dissertation while it was a work-in-progress: Mary

Freeman, Nicole Longpré, and Emily Rutherford, and the participants of The Breakfast Club,

Columbia’s Modern British History Seminar, the Missionary Encounters in the Early Modern

iv
World conference, and the Summer Academy of Atlantic History. The final product has been

vastly improved by their feedback. Zach Carmichael generously offered his services as an editor.

I am deeply indebted to James Bell for his scholarship on the colonial Church of England,

his invaluable biographical database of the colonial clergy (www.jamesbbell.com), and for

giving me access to that database. Katharine Carté Engel, Joseph Hardwick, and Michael

McDonnell shared their forthcoming publications with me. Alex Baltovski, Arthur Burns,

Brendan McConville, Chris Minty, and Deborah Valenze all helped this project in various ways.

I owe a rather belated thank-you to my teachers at Oxford: particularly Joanna Innes, Bob Harris,

Ruth Harris, Simon Skinner, and Oliver Zimmer.

Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the people who have made the last six years fun:

Harun Buljina, Clay Eaton, Tom Fogg, Holly Frei, Hannes Hemker, Katie Johnson, Nicole

Longpré, Sean O’Neil, and Etienne Stockland; my in-laws: Linda and Jerry Miracle, Mike and

Debbie Morris, and Jordan Morris; my partner, Melissa Morris, for far more than I ought to try to

express in a dissertation acknowledgements section; and above all my family – Mum, Dad, Phil,

and Sarah – who supported me through all of this without ever taking any of it too seriously.

This work is dedicated to them, with love.

v
To Mum, Dad, Phil, and Sarah

vi
 NOTE ON SPELLING

Archaic spellings have generally been modernised, except where doing so would have

compromised the original meaning. Likewise, contractions and abbreviations (such as ye for

“the” or yt for “that”) have been expanded.

vii
 INTRODUCTION

In May 1773, on the eve of the American Revolution, John Sayre preached to a convention of

Anglican clergy assembled in the city of New York. These sermons usually discussed the state of

the Church of England in America and the nature of the mission facing its clergy. Sayre chose to

emphasise the suffering, persecuted condition of what he called “our established church.” “In

this new world,” he lamented, “we behold the church in an unparalleled situation.” Without the

blessing of a resident bishop, it was “like a system without a centre,” a pale shadow of its parent

church. These “present humiliating circumstances” could only be “a punishment on her

children.” He also suggested that this experience of suffering and persecution could be a source

of moral authority and spiritual power. The Church of England, after all, had been “sublimed in

the flames of martyrdom” from the beginning. He urged his hearers to “forgive our enemies,

persecutors and slanderers,” while zealously defending the church for which they suffered: “it is

our duty… when injuries are offered to the church, to ward them off; or openly censure and

oppose them.” In this vision of militant Anglicanism, colonial Anglicans were to suffer for their

loyalty to the church, and it was through their suffering that the church would ultimately

triumph.1

It is hard to sympathise with Sayre’s conviction that colonial American Anglicans were

weak, suffering, and persecuted. The eighteenth-century Church of England thought of itself as a

powerful, established state church. In Britain, the church was an entrenched pillar of the political

establishment, a principal component of the accumulated “old corruption” that liberal reformers

1
John Sayre, A Sermon Preached before the Convention of the Clergy, of the Provinces of New-York and New-
Jersey, on Wednesday the 19th Day of May, 1773 (New York: James Rivington, 1773), 14-15.

1
would whittle down in the half-century following American independence.2 Rival denominations

of Presbyterians and Congregationalists vigorously contested the idea that American Anglicans

were persecuted, instead seeing the introduction of state power into the church as the very

essence of Anglicanism. Indeed, it is difficult to reconcile the idea of colonial Anglicans as

powerless victims with the wide array of very real privileges they enjoyed. These included the

financial backing of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) and the

political support of the many colonial governors, office-holders, and imperial administrators who

were members of the Church of England. Finally, the idea sits uneasily with American

Anglicans’ subsequent history as the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, which

became the church of the social and economic elite.

Nevertheless, colonial Anglicans such as Sayre were in a genuinely paradoxical situation.

They were far from being weak and powerless, but it is possible to understand why they saw

themselves this way. The Church of England was the established, national church in England,

but it was not established throughout the British Empire. In the southern colonies of Maryland

and Virginia, Anglicans comprised a large majority of the population and retained many of the

political privileges they enjoyed in England. In the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies, by

contrast, Anglicans were a minority, but one who thought of themselves as a majority.

Understanding this predicament requires a certain amount of sympathy for a group who are often

far from sympathetic. Yet this kind of situation was not uncommon in an extended, supranational

polity such as the British Empire. Majority populations in one part of the empire often found

themselves as minorities elsewhere. Colonial Anglicans might be profitably compared to other

minority imperial populations, such as Protestants in Northern Ireland or white settlers in South

2
Philip Harling, The Waning of “Old Corruption”: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779-1846
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

2
Africa. There are, of course, many crucial differences between these groups, but the parallels

between them are instructive for the light they shed on this peculiar imperial dynamic.

Following the outbreak of the War of the American Revolution, Sayre sided with the

imperial government against the advocates of independence, along with a great majority of his

coreligionists in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies. The overwhelming loyalism of

these northern Anglicans seems unsurprising, given historians’ tendency to see the Church of

England as the natural ally of the political establishment. Why wouldn’t the representatives of

entrenched political and ecclesiastical authority wish to defend the status quo? This dissertation

challenges that assumption. It argues that their loyalism indicates the weakness of the imperial

Church of England, not its strength, and exposes a set of rarely acknowledged tensions between

church and empire. The loyalist Anglican clergy are important because they occupied one of the

religious fault-lines of the eighteenth-century British Empire.

By taking seriously Sayre’s conviction that the colonial Church of England was weak,

suffering, and persecuted, this dissertation also rethinks the politics of loyalism. Loyalists were

not simple conservatives. Loyalism was contractual. Loyalists rallied to the political

establishment, but in exchange demanded reward and compensation. Loyalism could therefore

become a radical and profoundly disruptive force, undermining social hierarchies, contesting the

distribution of political power, and usually creating far more problems for the government than it

solved. As William Nelson pointed out in 1961, American loyalists were often members of

“cultural minorities.”3 American loyalism, like the many other loyalisms that have proliferated

throughout modern British history, could be an avenue for vulnerable, marginalised, or

3
William H. Nelson, The American Tory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 12-17, 85-115, quotation 89.

3
disaffected groups to demand recognition as British subjects, along with the benefits that

entailed.4

As well as assessing the loyalist clergy’s role in the revolution, this dissertation follows

their subsequent trajectories as loyalist refugees – to Britain, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,

Quebec, and sometimes back to the United States. After the end of the war in September 1783,

Sayre took part in the loyalist exodus from the new United States. He died the following year in

Nova Scotia, unemployed and impoverished. Yet the story of the refugee clergy was not simply

one of failure. Rather, they played an important role in the religious, ecclesiastical, and

ideological reconstruction of the British Empire after the American Revolution.

In the wake of American independence, the Church of England became a truly imperial

church for the first time. The secession of thirteen American colonies substantially altered the

religious composition of the British Empire. Together with the conservative reaction in British

society against the revolution, it created the conditions for the Church of England’s political

resurgence, in Britain itself and throughout the empire. Many individual émigrés actively lobbied

for the creation of a new, conservative established church in Britain’s remaining North American

colonies. Collectively, the refugee clergy became a symbol of the American loyalists’ martyrdom

and conscientious suffering, providing the resurgent Church of England with immense moral

authority. The creative tension between the Anglican majority in England and the Anglican

minority in America worked in both directions.

Finally, this dissertation foregrounds the religious experience of the American loyalist

clergy. Their experience as a religious minority generated a distinct spirituality that emphasised

the holiness of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom. This spirituality not only shaped their

4
Allan Blackstock and Frank O’Gorman, eds., Loyalism and the Formation of the British World, 1775-1914
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014).

4
reaction to political events, but also allowed them to seize on the political crisis as an opportunity

to advance a program of religious renewal. Often, scholarship on religion in the American

Revolution has been ultimately concerned with politics: for example, studying the relationship

between denomination and political allegiance. This dissertation, by contrast, asks how the

politics of the revolution shaped the religious experience of those who lived through it.

“A War of Religion”? The Loyalist Clergy and the American Revolution

The loyalist Anglican clergy often asserted that the entire American Revolution was a rebellion

against the established church. In October 1776, for example, the loyalist clergyman Charles

Inglis wrote, “altho’ Civil Liberty was the ostensible Object… it is now past all Doubt, that an

Abolition of the Church of England was one of the Principal Springs of the Dissenting Leaders’

Conduct; & hence the unanimity of Dissenters in this Business.”5 Historians have sometimes

taken these kinds of statements as evidence that the colonial Church of England really was a

wellspring of loyalism, and that dissent from the church did indeed act as a midwife to the

American Revolution. In fact, it will be shown that the loyalist clergy were a polemical minority

within colonial Anglicanism. Studying them sheds light on the ecclesiastical tensions that

aggravated the imperial crisis, and on the role that religious and moral concerns played in the

political contestation. However, they did not speak for the whole colonial Church of England –

even if they claimed to. Ultimately, they were less important for their role as loyalists in the

Thirteen Colonies than for their subsequent influence as refugees and émigrés elsewhere in the

British Empire.

5
Rhodes House Library, USPG Papers [henceforth USPG], B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis [to the SPG], October 31 1776.

5
 Historians who have addressed the role of denominational conflict in the American

Revolution have tended to overstate their case. Most influentially, Carl Bridenbaugh’s Mitre and

Sceptre argued that the American Revolution was a “kulturkampf” between the Church of

England and Protestant Dissent. Bridenbaugh argued that the Anglican clergy were “neo-

colonials” whose doctrines of “passive obedience” were rejected by colonial Dissenters’

“religious republicanism.” Bridenbaugh celebrated the revolution as a struggle not just for

political but also for religious liberty.6 From a very different perspective, the intellectual

historian J. C. D. Clark agreed that the American Revolution was a battle between rival

theologies. He contended that revolution required a rejection of Anglican theology, which

deposited all political and ecclesiastical sovereignty in the monarch. This challenge came from

new forms of rationalist, heterodox theology (rather than from the Presbyterians or

Congregationalists emphasised by Bridenbaugh).7 More recently, James Bell has restated

Bridenbaugh’s thesis, arguing that the American Revolution was a “War of Religion” between

Anglicans and Dissenters: a rebellion against an expanding, colonial Church of England

supported by, and in turn supporting, the imperial government. Bell concluded, “at once the

Anglican church, by the very nature of its Englishness, was one of the causes of the American

Revolution and also a victim of the turn of radical political events.”8 In different ways, these

6
Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689-1775 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1962), xiii, 254, 307. Bridenbaugh was following older interpretations such as Claude
Halstead Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1902) and Van Tyne, The
Causes of the War of Independence: Being the First Volume of a History of the Founding of the American Republic
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922).

7
J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-
American World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

8
James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008), quotation 221; see also the same author’s The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early
America, 1607-1783 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Empire, Religion and Revolution in Early
Virginia, 1607-1786 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

6
three historians each privilege the perspective of those colonial Anglicans and Dissenters who

believed that the American Revolution was a war of religion, while minimising the heterogeneity

of the wider colonial religious scene.

These arguments draw their strength from the fact that contemporary observers often

attributed the American Revolution to Protestant Dissent. In a speech to Parliament in 1775,

Edmund Burke famously observed that “all Protestantism… is a form of dissent. But the religion

most prevalent in our Northern Colonies… is the dissidence of dissent; and the Protestantism of

the protestant religion.” For Burke, the colonists’ Dissenting religious beliefs underpinned their

“fierce spirit of Liberty.” Since these beliefs were “unalterable by any human art,” the only

solution was accommodation and compromise.9 Burke’s assumptions were shared by

contemporaries from across the ideological spectrum. For the Tory pamphleteer John Shebbeare,

the colonists’ religion made them natural rebels. Shebbeare equated the “Bostonian fanatics”

with “the presbyterian race,” and compared their “seditious clamours” in America to “their

rebellion against Charles the first” in the 1640s: the last great British rebellion against church

and king.10 For the philosopher and scientist Joseph Priestley, a strong supporter of the colonists,

the Americans’ religion made them natural friends to liberty. Priestley believed that “the

Americans (particularly those of New England)” were “chiefly dissenters and whigs”: this is why

a tyrannical government oppressed them.11 Whether the colonists’ religion was a virtue to be

9
Edmund Burke, Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq., on Moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies,
March 22, 1775, 2nd ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1775), 25, 28, 41.

10
John Shebbeare, An Answer to the Queries Contained in a Letter to Dr Shebbeare, Printed in the Public Ledger,
August 10, Together with Animadversions on Two Speeches in Defence of the Printers of a Paper, Subscribed a
South Briton, 2nd ed. (London: S. Hooper & T. Davies, 1775), 177-78.

11
[Joseph Priestley], An Address to Protestant Dissenters of all Denominations, on the Approaching Election of
Members of Parliament, with Respect to the State of Public Liberty in General, and of American Affairs in
Particular (London: Joseph Johnson, 1774), 5.

7
celebrated, a sin to be punished, or a reality to be accepted, Priestley, Shebbeare, and Burke

agreed that Protestant Dissent was a defining characteristic of the Americans in general and the

patriot movement in particular.

This consensus says more about the language of religion and politics in the eighteenth-

century British world than it does about the actual political divisions taking shape in the colonies.

Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic routinely associated popery with tyranny, the Church of

England with authority, and Protestant Dissent with liberty (or anarchy).12 Yet in the colonies,

the political division between loyalists and patriots only sometimes corresponded to the

denominational division between Anglicans and Dissenters. As Robert Calhoon and Ruma

Chopra remind us, the American Revolution was a civil war in which “every Protestant

denominational community, and even Jewish synagogues and Roman Catholic parishes,

harbored Patriots, Loyalists, and neutralists.”13 It is true that in Connecticut and Massachusetts

there was considerable ideological sympathy between a transatlantic Dissenting interest and the

radical political program.14 In New York and New Jersey, likewise, political polarisation often

approximated to a denominational division between Anglicans and Presbyterians. 15 Yet to

12
Peter Lake, “Antipopery: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion
and Politics, 1603-1642, eds. Ann Hughes and Richard P. Cust (London: Longman, 1989), 72-106; Peter Lake,
“Anti-Puritanism: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England, eds. Kenneth
Fincham and Peter Lake (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 80-97.

13
Robert M. Calhoon and Ruma Chopra, “Religion and the Loyalists,” in Faith and the Founders of the American
Republic, eds. Mark David Hall and Daniel L. Dreisbach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 101-116,
quotation 101.

14
Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New
England (New Haven: Yale University press, 1977); Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century
Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from
the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1959); Bartholomew Peter Schiavo, “The Dissenter Connection: English Dissenters and Massachusetts Political
Culture: 1630-1774” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1976).

15
Patricia U. Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1971), 248-57; Ruma Chopra, Unnatural Rebellion: Loyalists in New York City During the

8
attribute the entire rebellion to Protestant Dissent involves a highly selective reading of events.

In Philadelphia and Delaware, the Anglican clergy largely opposed the revolution, but they did

so as part of a larger, anti-Presbyterian alliance alongside the Quakers.16 More strikingly, any

attempt to equate the revolutionaries with Protestant Dissent entirely excludes the Anglican-

majority southern colonies: Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Thanks

to these southern Anglicans, more members of the Church of England signed the Declaration of

Independence than members of any other denomination.17

Moreover, the loyalist clergy were far from representative of the colonial Church of

England. In the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies, the majority of the clergy actively

supported the loyalist cause, whereas their coreligionists in the southern colonies generally

accepted American independence.18 The large majority of the colonial Church of England’s

adherents, ministers, and churches were located in the southern colonies, particularly in

Maryland and Virginia.19 The northerners were a small minority within colonial Anglicanism

Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 33-34; Donald F. M. Gerardi, “The King’s College
Controversy and the Ideological Roots of Toryism in New York,” Perspectives in American History 9 (1977): 145-
96; Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in
Early New Jersey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 67-90.

16
Nathan Kozuskanich, “‘Falling Under the Domination Totally of Presbyterians’: The Paxton Riots and the
Coming of the Revolution in Pennsylvania”; John B. Frantz, “Religion, the American Revolution, and the
Pennsylvania Germans”; and William Pencak, “Out of Many, One: Pennsylvania’s Anglican Loyalist Clergy in the
American Revolution,” all in Pennsylvania’s Revolution, ed. William Pencak (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2010); Sydney V. James, A People Among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-
Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); Anne M. Ousterhout, A State Divided: Opposition
in Pennsylvania to the American Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987).

17
John Frederick Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism in North America (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1984), 232-33. Burke explained the southern colonists’ “love of liberty” as a result of the hypocrisies of slave-
holding: Burke, Speech, 29.

18
Nancy L. Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the American
Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 64-87.

19
Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 236-72

9
and they were unusual in many ways. Within their colonies they were religious minorities, both

politically and demographically: this was not something to which eighteenth-century Anglicans

were accustomed. They were ministered to not by a regular, parish-based clergy, but by SPG

missionaries, who often subscribed to an unusually high church version of Anglican theology.20

Traditional church historians focused disproportionately on these northern missionaries,

sympathising with their high church theology and openly lamenting the “laxity in morals and

want of spiritual life” prevailing in the south.21

In fact, the Church of England in the south was simply a different creature. It faced its

own set of challenges: throughout the eighteenth century, its legal privileges came under attack

from colonial legislatures, religious minorities such as the Baptists, and leaders of the Anglican

laity who opposed clerical authority.22 It nevertheless retained a considerable degree of popular

support, particularly in Virginia where the church was deeply integrated into the colony’s social

life.23 Paradoxically, then, the church in Maryland and Virginia – with its parish clergy,

majoritarian population, and state support – resembled the parent church in England, yet these

20
Donald F. M. Gerardi, “The Episcopate Controversy Reconsidered: Religious Vocations and Anglican
Perceptions of Authority in Mid-Eighteenth-Century America,” Perspectives in American History, new series, 3
(1987): 81-114; Donald F. M. Gerardi, “Samuel Johnson and the Yale ‘Apostasy’ of 1722: The Challenge of
Anglican Sacramentalism to the New England Way,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 47,
no. 2 (1978): 153-75.

21
William Stevens Perry, The History of the American Episcopal Church, 1587-1883 (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1885),
quotation vol. 1, 420. For similar treatments, see S. D. McConnell, History of the American Episcopal Church, from
the Planting of the Colonies to the End of the Civil War (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1891); William Wilson
Manross, A History of the American Episcopal Church (New York: Morehouse, 1935); Raymond W. Albright, A
History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York: Macmillan, 1964).

22
Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press,
1982), 103-205.

23
John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Brent Tarter, “Reflections on the Church of England in
Colonial Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 112, no. 4 (2004): 338-71.

10
southern Anglicans generally accepted American independence. Their support for the revolution

was grounded in a position of strength and security.

Given the difficulties involved in any effort to equate a particular denomination with

support for or opposition to the revolution, recent scholarship has tended to deemphasise

denominational conflict and instead locate a political role for religion in other spheres.

Scholarship on the religious dimensions of the American Revolution has overwhelmingly

focused on its relationship to the evangelical revival. Historians have often seen in

evangelicalism a more democratic and distinctively American form of religion, although others

have disputed this view.24 A related question concerns the move towards the disestablishment of

religion in the independent United States, which proceeded gradually and unevenly from one

state to the next.25 There has been persistent interest in the role of “religion” itself in the

founding of the United States.26 There has also been a small amount of interest in the role of anti-

24
For example, see Jerome Dean Mahaffey, The Accidental Revolutionary: George Whitefield and the Creation of
America (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2001); Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” in
New Directions in American Religious History, eds. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997), 173-205; Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989); for dissenting views, see Sam Haselby, The Origins of American Religious Nationalism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Thomas S. Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England After Puritanism
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); John Murrin, “No Awakening, No Revolution? More Counterfactual
Speculations,” Reviews in American History 11, no. 2 (1983): 161-71.

25
For example, see John A. Ragosta, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win The
American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Stephen Waldman,
Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (New York: Random House,
2008); James H. Hutson, Church and State in America: The First Two Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008); Mark D. McGarvie, One Nation Under Law: America’s Early National Struggles to Separate Church
and State (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004); Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Susanna Christine Linsley, “The American Reformation: The
Politics of Religious Liberty, Charleston and New York, 1770-1830” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2012).

26
John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2011); Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New
York: Basic Books, 2010).

11
Catholicism in the American Revolution.27 Altogether, the picture emerging from this more

recent scholarship is that the denominational conflict emphasised by Bridenbaugh was less

important than other religious fault lines such as that between evangelicals and non-evangelicals

or that between the supporters and opponents of church establishments. By revisiting the

relationship between American loyalism and the colonial Church of England, then, this

dissertation rejects the overstated thesis that the entire American Revolution was a “war of

religion” or a “kulturkampf,” and instead provides a more nuanced account of the role of the

British Empire’s internal ecclesiastical tensions in driving the post-1763 imperial crisis.

Likewise, from the perspective of the historiography of American loyalism, the loyalist

clergy are an object of older scholarly interest now ripe for reassessment. It should be noted here

that historians of American loyalism routinely complain about the historiographical neglect and

marginalisation of their subject, and yet there is a vast body of scholarship on the loyalists

stretching back to the event itself. The topic has an inbuilt contrapuntal quality: the loyalist

perspective will never replace the patriot perspective as the dominant narrative of the revolution.

The challenge has been to integrate the loyalists into the wider histories of the American

Revolution and the eighteenth-century British Empire. Neither has wanted to adopt a group who

were defined by failure and who resisted the emergence of separate British and American

identities.28

27
Robert Emmett Curran, Papist Devils: Catholics in British North America, 1574-1783 (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2014); Jason K. Duncan, Citizens or Papists: The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New
York, 1685-1821 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); Charles P. Hanson, Necessary Virtue: The
Pragmatic Origins of Religious Liberty in New England (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1998);
Francis D. Cogliano, No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England (Westport, CT:
Greenwood University Press, 1995).

28
For historiographic surveys, see Liam Riordan, “Loyalism,” Oxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History
[www.oxfordbibliographies.com]; J. M. Bumsted, Understanding the Loyalists (Sackville, NB: Centre for Canadian
Studies, 1986); Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1974), 383-

12
 Prior to the mid-twentieth century, the American loyalists were often studied by

historians with conservative political sympathies. They appreciated the loyalist critique of the

radicalism and turmoil unleashed by the revolution.29 As Keith Mason has perceptively noted,

this scholarship cast loyalism as a romantic lost cause, corresponding to the treatment of

Jacobitism by British historians.30 It frequently highlighted the loyalist Anglican clergy, who

could easily be found thundering against all forms of rebellion, insubordination, and unrest. In

1901, for example, the historian Alexander Flick stated that “the political science of Anglicanism

was…a fundamental principle in loyalism.”31

Scholarship on the loyalists shifted gears in the late 1960s, driven by a new interest in the

politics of the revolution. Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

contended that the revolution was primarily a political contestation, an intervention that required

historians to examine both sides of the political equation.32 The formation of the Loyalist Papers

Program in 1968, which compiled a massive bibliography of loyalist source material in the US,

408; Wallace Brown, “The View at Two Hundred Years: The Loyalists of the American Revolution,” Proceedings
of the American Antiquarian Society 80, no. 1 (1970): 25-47.

29
Lorenzo Sabine, The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in the War
of the Revolution; Alphabetically Arranged; with a Preliminary Historical Essay (Boston: Charles C. Little & James
Brown, 1847); Alexander Clarence Flick, Loyalism in New York During the American Revolution (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1901); Van Tyne, Loyalists; James H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the
Other Side of the American Revolution (Boston: James H. Stark, 1910); Wilbur Henry Siebert, The Loyalists of
Pennsylvania (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1920); E. Alfred Jones, The Loyalists of New Jersey:
Their Memorials, Petitions, Claims, Etc. From English Records (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1927); E.
Alfred Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts: Their Memorials, Petitions and Claims (London: Saint Catharine
Press, 1930); Epaphroditus Peck, The Loyalists of Connecticut (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934).

30
Keith Mason, “The American Loyalist Diaspora and the Reconfiguration of the British Atlantic World,” in
Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World, eds. Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 239.

31
Flick, Loyalism in New York, 9.

32
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 1992). First published 1967.

13
the UK, and Canada, facilitated the new wave of interest in loyalism.33 Subsequent studies

challenged the then-prevailing view that loyalism was driven entirely by deference to traditional

authorities such as church, king, and aristocracy. Instead, they showed that the loyalists pursued

a variety of strategies designed to find accommodation or compromise between the patriot

movement and the imperial government, often motivated less by an ideological commitment to

empire and monarchy than by a conservative desire to avoid revolution. 34 Paradigmatic of this

approach is Bailyn’s study of Thomas Hutchinson, the Governor of Massachusetts, who emerges

as a moderate and pragmatic figure trying helplessly to stem increasingly radical, irrational, and

unpredictable political events.35 These conclusions re-evaluated the significance of the loyalist

clergy. Once seen as representative of loyalism as a whole, they instead began to appear only as

advocates of “doctrinaire Toryism,” a “reactionary philosophy of order and obedience” located at

the authoritarian fringe of the loyalist spectrum (in the words of Robert Calhoon).36

More recently, a new wave of scholarship has shifted attention further away from the

loyalist clergy and towards a wide variety of previously unacknowledged loyalisms. Following a

33
Gregory Palmer, ed., A Bibliography of Loyalist Source Material in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain
(Westport, CT: Meckler, 1982); Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution
(Westport, CT: Meckler, 1984).

34
Nelson, American Tory; Wallace Brown, The King’s Friends: The Composition and Motive of the American
Loyalist Claimants (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1965); William Allan Benton, Whig-Loyalism: An
Aspect of Political Ideology in the American Revolutionary Era (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1969); Wallace Brown, The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: William
Morrow, 1969); Robert M. Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1973); Catherine S. Crary, ed., The Price of Loyalty: Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973); Bailyn, Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson; Robert A. East and Jacob Judd, eds., The
Loyalist Americans: A Focus on Greater New York (Tarryton, NY: Sleep Hollow Restorations, 1975); Janice Potter,
The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1983).

35
Bailyn, Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson.

36
Calhoon, Loyalists, x.

14
period of declining interest in loyalism in the 1980s and 1990s,37 historians began to produce

studies of African American loyalists,38 Native American loyalists,39 loyalist women,40 and so-

called “ordinary loyalists.”41 This scholarship followed in the wake of an historiographical turn

towards the histories of groups who did not fit into or were made victims by the national story.

For those with a limited capacity to influence the turn of political events, the outbreak of

revolution and war was often catastrophic, but also created opportunities for new forms of

political negotiation and resistance. Altogether, these historians have resoundingly rejected the

elite focus of narrowly-defined political histories of loyalism in favour of a far more expansive

37
For important exceptions, see Sheila L. Skemp, William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990); Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk, eds., Loyalists
and Community in North America (Westport, CA: Greenwood Press, 1994); Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M.
Barnes, and Robert S. Davis, eds., Tory Insurgents: The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays, 2nd edn. (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010) (first published 1989). Declining interest in the loyalists in America
coincided with the renewed interest in the refugees in Canada that accompanied the bicentennial of the end of the
War of American Independence, for which see fn. 44 below.

38
Mary Louise Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 1999); Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (London:
BBC, 2005); Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their
Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006); Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Black Loyalists: Southern Settlers
of Nova Scotia’s First Free Black Communities (Halifax, NS: Nimbus, 2013). For earlier work, see James W.
Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870 (New
York: Africana Publishing Company, 1976).

39
Robert S. Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada, 1774-1815
(Toronto: Dundurn, 1992); Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderlands of
the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 2006); Jim Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and
Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775-1782 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008). For earlier
work, see Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743-1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1984).

40
Janice Potter-MacKinnon, While the Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 1993); Ann Gorman Condon, “The Family in Exile: Loyalist Social Values after the Revolution,”
in Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759-1800, ed. Margaret Conrad
(Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis, 1995); Sarah C. Chambers and Lisa Norling, “Choosing to be a Subject: Loyalist
Women in the Revolutionary Atlantic World,” Journal of Women’s History 20, no. 1 (2008): 39-62. For earlier
work, see Mary Beth Norton, “Eighteenth-Century American Women in Peace and War: The Case of the Loyalists,”
William and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1976): 386-409.

41
Joseph S. Tiedemann, Eugene R. Fingerhut, and Robert W. Venables, eds., The Other Loyalists: Ordinary People,
Royalism, and the Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1763-1787 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009).

15
and diverse picture of multiple forms of political experience and participation, entailing a less

celebratory account of the revolution itself.42 Accordingly, attention has entirely shifted away

from the clergy once seen as the spokesmen of the loyalist cause.43

The important insights generated by these findings might now be applied to reassess the

experience and significance of the loyalist clergy. This new scholarship suggests that loyalism

often proceeded from a position of weakness rather than strength, and could potentially offer

marginalised groups an opportunity to contest their subordination. The same dynamics hold true

of the Anglican clergy’s peculiar brand of loyalism. In a more surprising way, they too sought to

use their loyalism to secure attention and favour from a government which they believed had

shown little concern for their interests. The new scholarship on loyalism also provides a far

richer picture of the ways in which individuals could experience a period of turmoil, revolution,

and civil war. Yet our understanding of the loyalist clergy remains dependent on an older model

that understands loyalism only as political ideology. Reassessing the loyalist clergy can further

enrich our understanding of the multiple forms of political subjectivity that operated during the

eighteenth-century age of revolutions. As this dissertation will show, the loyalist clergy claimed

that they were the victims of religious persecution, but they were not simply passive objects.

Rather, they actively fashioned themselves as persecuted subjects. In doing so, they played a

crucial role in the moral contestation between patriots and loyalists.

Finally, this dissertation furthers scholarship on the transnational dimensions of the

loyalist diaspora, its impact on the British Empire, and its significance for the international

42
In addition to the work cited above, see also Ruma Chopra, ed., Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary
America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), a collection of documents with an excellent introductory
essay.

43
For important exceptions, see Philip Gould, Writing the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in
British America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Chopra, Unnatural Rebellion.

16
history of the American Revolution. Here, too, it is worth emphasising that historians have never

neglected the loyalist refugees. The so-called “United Empire Loyalists” have been a subject of

great interest in Canadian historiography, including a flurry of popular and academic histories

published around the bicentennial of the 1783 Peace of Paris.44 Around 60,000 refugees left the

United States.45 Loyalist migration swelled the population of Nova Scotia and the new colony of

New Brunswick, and vastly increased the economic and strategic importance of Britain’s

remaining North American colonies (which collectively became known as British North

America). In modern Canada, the refugees have been the object of an enduring national origins

myth. According to this myth, the American Revolution created not one but two nations: the

United States, founded in opposition to the British Empire, and Canada, founded (somewhat

paradoxically) in support for the empire. Historians have advanced a variety of theories to

explain the impact of loyalism and counterrevolution on Canadian society, always operating

within a framework of comparison with its southern neighbour, and usually focusing on the

refugees themselves as the bearers of loyalism and counterrevolution.46

44
A. G. Bradley, The United Empire Loyalists: Founders of British Canada (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1932);
Esther Clark Wright, The Loyalists of New Brunswick (Fredericton, NB, 1955); Phyllis Blakeley and John Grant,
eds., Eleven Exile Accounts of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Toronto: Dundurn, 1982); Alan Skeoch, United
Empire Loyalists and the American Revolution (Toronto: Grolier, 1982); David G. Bell, Early Loyalist Saint John:
The Origin of New Brunswick Politics, 1783-1786 (Fredericton, NB: New Ireland Press, 1983); Wallace Brown and
Hereward Senior, Victorious in Defeat: The Loyalists in Canada (Toronto: Methuen, 1984); Ann Gorman Condon,
The Envy of the American States: The Loyalist Dream for New Brunswick (New Ireland Press: Fredericton, NB,
1984); Joan Magee, Loyalist Mosaic: A Multi-Ethnic Heritage (Toronto: Dundurn, 1984); Christopher Moore, The
Loyalists: Revolution, Exile, Settlement (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984); Neil MacKinnon, This Unfriendly
Soil: The Loyalist Experience in Nova Scotia, 1783-1791 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1986).

45
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2011), 351-58.

46
Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South
Africa, Canada, and Australia (New York: Harcourt, 1964); Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism, and
Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32, no. 2
(1966): 143-171; David Mills, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784-1850 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 1988); Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the
United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990); Norman Knowles, Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario

17
 The one body of scholarship which, until very recently, has truly neglected the loyalists is

the historiography of the British Empire. For Canadian historians, the loyalists have been the

bearers of a distinctively Canadian identity; for American historians, they have been at a

minimum a foil for understanding the revolution. For British historians, however, they have only

been an embarrassing disruption to the national story, neither fully British nor fully American (or

perhaps both at the same time).47 For this reason, the recent interventions made by Maya

Jasanoff and Keith Mason have been crucially important. Jasanoff’s Liberty’s Exiles revealed the

global dimensions of the loyalist diaspora and its surprising impact on the British Empire. While

imperial officials hoped that the influx of loyalists into the empire’s remaining colonies would

strengthen the forces of authority, the refugees turned out to be a diverse, demanding, and

unmanageable crowd. They created new problems of imperial government and imported many of

the old ones from the thirteen rebellious colonies.48 Likewise, Mason has argued the loyalist

Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Jerry Bannister,
“Canada as Counter-Revolution: The Loyalist Order Framework in Canadian History, 1750-1840,” in Liberalism
and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution, eds. Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 98-146. Critics have objected to the tendency of this approach to
equate Canadian loyalism with the refugees who left the Thirteen Colonies, pointing out that the non-refugee
population also rejected the American Revolution. Elizabeth Mancke, “Another British America: A Canadian Model
for the Early Modern British Empire,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25, no. 1 (1997), 1-36;
Elizabeth Mancke, The Fault Lines of Empire: Political Differentiation in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, c. 1760-
1830 (New York: Routledge, 2005); Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections on the Early American
Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 1-34.

47
In addition to work on the loyalists in the Thirteen Colonies and on the refugees in British North America (cited
above), the loyalist refugees were sometimes studied by historians of colonial America, for whom their experience –
in Britain, British North America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere – formed a coda or side note to the American story.
The most important and insightful work here is Mary Beth Norton, The British Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in
England, 1774-1789 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972). See also North Callahan, Flight from the
Republic: The Tories of the American Revolution (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967) and Lewis Einstein, Divided
Loyalties: Americans in England during the War of Independence (London: Corben-Sanderson, 1933).

48
Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles.

18
diaspora is important for the precise reason it has been neglected by British historians: because it

disrupts the story of the emergence of distinct American and British identities.49

Building on these insights, this dissertation addresses the reception of the loyalist refugee

clergy in Britain and British North America, their relationship with their allies and sympathisers,

and their influence on the reconstruction of the imperial Church of England. It highlights the

continuities between American loyalism and loyalist politics in Britain, extending the

international history of the American Revolution to encompass the history of the British

counterrevolution. The experience of the refugee clergy sheds light on the process whereby the

United States and Britain became separate nations, ecclesiastically as well as politically, and on

the new role that the Church of England adopted in the British Empire in the wake of American

independence. At the same time, their diasporic identity stubbornly continued to disrupt any

effort to equate the interests of church, state, and nation. To understand the significance of their

experience as refugees and émigrés, it is first necessary to discuss the relationship between the

eighteenth-century Church of England and the British Empire.

An Ecclesiastical Conglomerate: The Loyalist Clergy and the British Empire

The British Empire represented a serious problem for the Church of England. The strong position

that the church enjoyed in England did not extend to the rest of the empire, or even the rest of the

British Isles. Scholars usually frame this problem by discussing the extent of the church’s

support for and participation in imperial expansion, noting the limits of eighteenth-century

49
Mason, “American Loyalist Diaspora”; Keith Mason, “The American Loyalist Problem of Identity in the
Revolutionary Atlantic World,” in The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era, eds.
Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 39-74; and the other essays in that
volume.

19
Anglicans’ enthusiasm for the empire or the difficulties they faced adapting to the new world.50

Yet the problem facing the church in the empire went deeper than a lack of zeal. The Church of

England was the national church, but the British Empire was a supranational polity. Existing

scholarship has not acknowledged the threat that this contradiction posed to the Anglican ideal of

an established church. Historians do not fully appreciate the extent of this problem because for a

long time scholarship on eighteenth-century Anglicanism proceeded along separate tracks laid

out by national church histories: on the one side, the history of the Church of England, and on the

other, the pre-history of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States.51

This dissertation uses the loyalist clergy to analyse the tensions that prevailed between

church and empire. These tensions troubled their identity as members of the Church of England

outside England, and lie at the root of their embattled and encircled sensibility, their radicalising

50
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1990), 127-28; Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial
America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 13-37. By contrast, Rowan Strong highlights support within the
Church of England for an active role in the empire: Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire, c.1700-
1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 41-117.

51
For important works on the English side: William T. Gibson, The Church of England, 1688-1832: Unity and
Accord (London: Routledge, 2001); Jeremy Gregory, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660-1828: The
Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); Nicholas Tyacke (ed.), England’s
Long Reformation, 1500-1800 (London: UCL Press, 1998); The Church of England, c.1689-c.1833: From
Toleration to Tractarianism, eds. John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993). For the American side: Bell, Imperial Origins; Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism;
Frederick V. Mills, Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978); Bruce E. Steiner, Samuel Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition
(Oberlin, OH: Ohio University Press, 1971); and numerous articles in the Anglican and Episcopal History and its
predecessor The Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church. There is also a smaller literature on the
Church of England in the British Empire: Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial
Anglicanism in British North America, 1745-1795 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000);
Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire; Brian Cuthbertson, The First Bishop: A Biography of Charles Inglis
(Halifax, NS: Waegwoltic Press, 1987). For recent works that resist the division between Britain, empire, and
America: Brent S. Sirota, The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680-1730
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014); Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of
the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Travis Glasson, Mastering
Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012);
Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York: Routledge, 2008); Susan Hardman Moore,
Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Robert G. Ingram,
Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England
(Woodbridge: Boydell 2007).

20
blend of disaffection and entitlement, and their keen sense of suffering, persecution, and

martyrdom. Aggressively loyal to the empire, they also felt rejected and forgotten by it. Seen by

their local rivals as potentially dangerous representatives of imperial power, they themselves

feared for their very future in America. Understanding their experience at a subjective and

emotional level thus sheds light on the larger question of the British Empire’s ecclesiastical

constitution.

The problem facing the church in the empire manifested a better-known but still

understudied problem, the relationship between England and Britain. Britain and the British

Empire were larger than England, but the Church of England remained the principal engine of

specifically English identities and interests. Historians who have sought to disaggregate English

and British history have usually focused on what was particular to Scotland, Ireland, and Wales,

rather than what was particular to England. Needless to say, the English were hardly neglected

by the British imperial state – far from it – but neither were they represented perfectly, and the

resulting discrepancies could sometimes be a source of friction. To note the dissonances between

English and British history is not to champion the virtues or self-sufficiency of a “little

Englander” history, but rather to locate England more critically in archipelagic and Atlantic

processes of state-building, nation-building, and empire-building.52

Some historians have understood the British Empire in terms of the “expansion of

England.” According to this approach, the English first colonised their immediate neighbours

52
David Armitage, “Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?” American Historical Review 104
(1999): 427-45 [reprinted in David Armitage, Greater Britain, 1516-1776: Essays in Atlantic History (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2004)]; J. G. A. Pocock, “British History: A Plea for a New Subject,” Journal of Modern History 47, no. 4
(1975): 601-21. The phrase “little Englander” history comes from Linda Colley’s review of Boyd Hilton, A Mad,
Bad, and Dangerous People? England, 1783-1846 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): Linda Colley, “Little
Englander Histories,” London Review of Books 32, no. 14 (2010): 12-14.

21
and then proceeded to colonise further afield.53 Yet Britishness was something that often took

shape outside England. Pro-Union Scots were among the most enthusiastic exponents of a new

and specifically British identity.54 An imperial framework reveals the discrepancies between

Englishness and Britishness more clearly. As Ned Landsman has shown, a new set of British

identities emerged in the British American colonies during the eighteenth century. Responding to

John Murrin’s thesis that these colonies “in fundamental ways became more European, more

English, in the eighteenth century,” Landsman argued that Murrin’s “Anglicization” was better

understood as the fostering of provincial British identities in America, not colonial assimilation

to metropolitan English norms.55

The conflicts generated by the Church of England in the British Empire reveal

disagreements over the respective roles of Englishness and Britishness – and Anglicanism and

Protestantism – in constituting imperial and national identities. Linda Colley’s Britons

formulated the most influential interpretation of eighteenth-century British national identity.

Colley argued that otherwise diverse Britons were ultimately united by a shared Protestantism.56

Though Colley focused on Britain itself, historians have applied this thesis to the British

53
Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1975); J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London:
Macmillan, 1883).

54
David Armitage, “Making the Empire British: Scotland in the Atlantic World, 1542-1707,” Past and Present no.
155 (1997): 34-63 [reprinted in Armitage, Greater Britain]; Colin Kidd, “North Britishness and the Nature of
Eighteenth-Century British Patriotisms,” Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (1996); Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s
Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689-c.1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).

55
Ned Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (New York: Twayne,
1997), especially 6-7; John Murrin, “A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in
Beyond Confederation: The Dilemma of American National Identity, eds. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and
Edward C. Carter II (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 336.

56
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 10-54.
First published 1992.

22
American colonies.57 However, others have criticised Colley’s emphasis on the unifying effects

of Protestantism, instead emphasising the conflict generated by divisions between Anglicans and

other Protestant denominations.58 In a competing interpretation of the eighteenth century, J. C. D.

Clark’s English Society emphasised England rather than Britain, and Anglicanism rather than

Protestantism. Clark introduced the concept that eighteenth-century England was a “confessional

state” in which church and nation were held to be coterminous, and in which the state supported

the Church of England and vice versa.59 Clark’s thesis has had a major influence on historians of

the eighteenth-century Church of England.60 Yet if England was a “confessional state,” we

cannot readily apply the thesis to the wider British world beyond England.61

If England was a confessional state, the British Empire was an ecclesiastical cacophony.

An array of different established churches existed in different places, often in tension with one

57
David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
especially 8. Colley’s more recent work on empire and identity has placed less emphasis on Protestantism than
Britons did: Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002);
Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007).

58
Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, eds., Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650-c.1850
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Grayson M. Ditchfield, “Church, Parliament, and National
Identity, c.1770-c.1830,” in Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660-1850, ed. Julian Hoppit
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 64-82; Peter Nockles, “The Waning of Protestant Unity and the
Waxing of Anti-Catholicism? Archdeacon Daubeny and the Reconstruction of ‘Anglican’ Identity in the Later
Georgian Church,” in Religious Identities in Britain, 1660-1832, ed. William T. Gibson and Robert Ingram
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 179-230.

59
J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology, and Politics during the Ancien Regime
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Clark published an earlier statement of this thesis as English
Society, 1688-1832: Ideology, Social Structure, and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985). See also J. C. D. Clark, “Protestantism, Nationalism, and National Identity,
1660-1832,” Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000): 249-76, which responds to Colley, Britons.

60
The concept of England as a “confessional state” has been widely adopted, as has Clark’s original periodisation of
1688-1832; the revised periodisation of 1660-1832 has not fared as well.

61
Clark’s Language of Liberty is an effort to resolve this problem. Here, Clark posits a wheel-and-spokes model of
empire, presenting the American Revolution as a colonial reaction against an English, Anglican centre. I am more
persuaded by a polycentric model of empire that acknowledges conflicts in the metropole, as well as the diversity in
the colonies that those conflicts sustained.

23
another. In comparison to its European competitors, the British Empire was unusual for its

failure to extend the metropolitan church establishment to the colonies. Complex and rapidly

changing religious conflicts in the British Isles in the seventeenth century drove imperial

expansion and exported religious pluralism to the empire. As the religious situation in Britain

was continually changing, colonies formed at different times received different ecclesiastical

arrangements.62 The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89 secured the ascendancy and security of

Anglicanism in England, but at the price of massive compromises. The American colonies,

meanwhile, each retained their own arrangements, but some form of church establishment

remained the norm everywhere. In general, the Church of England was fully or partially

supported by the state in the southern colonies and most of the Caribbean colonies; the New

England colonies levied taxes to support Congregational or Presbyterian churches; the Mid-

Atlantic colonies recognised some form of religious pluralism or partial establishment; and in

newly acquired territories military governors usually directed such matters.63 Protestantism

worked to unite the British Empire, but tensions within Protestantism also pulled it apart:

tensions among its multiple church establishments, as well as tensions between establishment

and dissent.

As Landsman has emphasised, the British Empire’s religious tensions were not simply

those between an old world ideal of ecclesiastical establishment and a new world reality of

religious pluralism. Rather, they were written into the ecclesiastical constitution of Britain itself.

62
Evan Haefeli, The Accidental Pluralism of Colonial America: Toleration, Religious Conformity, and English
Expansion, 1497-1662 (forthcoming); Evan Haefeli, “Toleration and Empire,” in British North America in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, ed. Stephen Foster
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 103-35; Pestana, Protestant Empire, 66-99, 112-18.

63
Jeremy Gregory, “‘Establishment’ and ‘Dissent’ in British North America,” in British North America, ed. Foster,
136-69; Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven, 50-54.

24
The relative weakness of the state in Britain fostered the colonies’ distinctive and autonomous

institutions.64 Following the “Glorious Revolution,” William III failed to secure the loyalty of

Scottish Episcopalians. As a result, the government established Presbyterianism in Scotland and

outlawed the Scottish Episcopalians for their presumed support for the Jacobite cause. The 1707

Act of Union between England and Scotland confirmed the independence and established status

of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Scottish Episcopalians who recognised the revolutionary

religious settlement soon secured a large measure of religious freedom from the Westminster

Parliament, but the majority of Scottish Episcopalians retained their attachment to the Stuarts.

Additional penal laws were subsequently passed against these Jacobite Episcopalians, or non-

jurors. Both the jurors and non-jurors continued to appeal to their English Tory co-religionists

for support.65 The Union thus created something unique: a bi-confessional state, with two

separate established churches in different parts of a single kingdom. Episcopalians were legally

suppressed in Scotland, and Presbyterians were legally suppressed in England. The

representatives of the church establishment in one part of the kingdom were a distrusted and

marginalized religious minority in the other, and vice versa.66

The Act of Union also underpinned the ongoing coexistence of multiple church

establishments in America. There was a real constitutional paradox here. The monarch swore to

64
Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials, 20-24; Ned Landsman, “The Legacy of British Union for the North
American Colonies: Provincial Elites and the Problem of Imperial Union,” in A Union for Empire: Political Thought
and the British Union of 1707, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 297-317.

65
Alasdair Raffe, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660-1714 (Rochester: Boydell
Press, 2012); Bruce Lenman, “The Scottish Episcopal Clergy and the Ideology of Jacobitism,” in Ideology and
Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759, eds. Eveline Cruickshanks (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers,
1982). A useful overview is provided in Rowan Strong, Episcopalianism in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Religious
Responses to a Modernizing Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1-33.

66
James J. Caudle, “James Boswell and the Bi-Confessional State,” in Religious Identities, ed. Gibson and Ingram,
119-46.

25
uphold the Church of Scotland, but remained “Supreme Governor” of the Church of England.

The British Empire was therefore united by submission to King-in-Parliament, but not by

membership of the King’s church. This paradox made the constitutional authority of the Church

of England in America genuinely ambiguous. Did the Act of Union create a single exception for

Scotland? Or did it limit the Anglican establishment to England? Contemporaries were unsure

how to answer this question. Indeed, the status of English legislation such as the 1689 Toleration

Act in the wider British Empire remained a matter of fundamental ambiguity and disagreement.67

A principal goal of this dissertation, then, is to analyse the British Empire’s little-studied

ecclesiastical pluralism. By “ecclesiastical pluralism,” I am referring to something more specific

than “religious pluralism”: not just a religiously diverse population, but a plurality of established

churches operating in different provinces of the same polity. Historians often assume that

religious pluralism was a defining characteristic of empire. For example, David Armitage has

noted that the lack of “a pan-British ecclesiology… exacerbated the denominational diversity of

the British Atlantic world” and guaranteed that the empire had “no unitary theological

foundation.” Instead it would be imperfectly held together by a common Protestantism. 68 Yet

ecclesiastical establishment was the norm in each individual colony: it was only collectively that

these colonies added up to produce a diverse empire.69 One way of making sense of the British

Empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism is suggested by Katherine Carté Engel, who posits the

existence of an “imperial Protestant establishment.” Engel emphasises the extent to which

67
Ned Landsman, “The Episcopate, the British Union, and the Failure of Religious Settlement in Colonial British
America,” in The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America, eds. Chris Beneke and
Christopher S. Grenda (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 75-97.

68
Armitage, Ideological Origins, 9.

69
Haefeli, Accidental Pluralism.

26
different Protestant leaders pursued a common project of religious governance, thereby shifting

our attention from competition to cooperation, and from a narrowly theological or legal

definition of an established church towards a broader understanding of entrenched political and

religious power.70

It is true that cooperation rather than conflict was the norm, but the existence of a pan-

denominational religious establishment also created problems. Historians often discuss the

political problems involved in governing a composite monarchy, in which different laws, taxes,

or representative bodies operated in different parts of a single polity. Policies intended to placate

subjects in one part of a composite monarchy might antagonise subjects elsewhere.71 We can

similarly analyse the challenges of governing an ecclesiastical composite such as the British

Empire. In fact, the dissonances involved were arguably much more fundamental. The

government not only taxed different provinces in different ways, but suggested that various

forms of religious truth applied in different places.

The English high church movement strongly criticised the empire’s ecclesiastical

pluralism for this reason. High churchmen saw the empire as an unnatural ecclesiastical

conglomerate. Their problem with the empire was not just its religious diversity: it was the fact

that the same government that was supposed to be protecting the Church of England was also

70
Katherine Carté Engel, “The Imperial Protestant Establishment and Religion in the Eighteenth-Century British
Empire” (forthcoming). I am grateful to Prof. Engel for sharing this article and allowing me to cite it before
publication.

71
For composite monarchy as a cause of the American Revolution, see J. G. A. Pocock, “Empire, State and
Confederation: The War of American Independence as a Crisis of Multiple Monarchy,” in Union for Empire, ed.
Robertson, 318-48; H. G. Koenigsberger, “Composite States, Representative Institutions and the American
Revolution,” Historical Research 62 (1989): 135-53. For the more general use of the concept, see J. H. Elliot, “A
Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past & Present 137 (1992): 48-7; Conrad Russell, “Composite Monarchies in
Early Modern Europe: The British and Irish Example,” in Uniting the Kingdom: The Making of British History, eds.
Keith J. Stringer and Alexander Grant (London: Routledge, 1995), 133-46; David Hayton, James Kelly, and John
Bergin, eds., The Eighteenth-Century Composite State; Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689-
1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

27
protecting different churches in other parts of the empire. How could the state be trusted to

uphold the Church of England when it was persecuting episcopalians in Scotland and America

and supporting Dissenters instead?72 The imperial state, these high churchmen concluded, was

more interested in waging war on a global scale and governing far-flung territories and diverse

populations than in safeguarding religious orthodoxy. This context of global warfare and empire-

building is crucially important for the history of secularisation in Britain.73

Though often studied only by specialists in Anglican history, the high church tradition

has a much larger importance as a kind of barometer of secularisation. Broadly speaking,

eighteenth-century Anglicans were divided into “high” and “low” church parties. In theological

terms, the former were concerned with the distinct and indispensable role of the clergy in

transmitting orthodox religion with state protection and support. The latter were more willing to

accommodate diverse beliefs within the established church and were less attached to the

particular role of the clergy.74 Brent Sirota has recently made the case for seeing the eighteenth-

century high church movement as a critique of modernity, particularly the forms of secularisation

instituted by the “Glorious Revolution.” Sirota argues that high churchmen sought to recover an

independent and distinctive role for the clergy against the encroachments of an increasingly

pluralistic society and against a state that was more concerned with governing than with

72
This religious critique of empire might be situated within the wider history of domestic criticism of empire, which
was usually motivated by fear that the different moral standards operating in the empire would infect the metropole:
Jack P. Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013).

73
Ingram, Religion, Reform and Modernity, 285-86.

74
Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Peter Nockles, “Church Parties in the Pre-Tractarian Church of
England, 1750-1833: the ‘Orthodox’ – Some Problems of Definition,” in The Church of England, c.1689-c.1833,
eds. Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, 334-59. Here, Nockles helpfully distinguishes this eighteenth-century use of the
terms “high” and “low” church from the more familiar use of the terms in the nineteenth century to refer to an
Anglo-Catholic “high church” party and an Evangelical “low church” party.

28
protecting religious orthodoxy.75 One of the contributions this dissertation makes is to argue that

the high church critique of modernity had an important imperial context which gives the

movement a new significance.

Eighteenth-century high churchmen had an ambivalent relationship with the state.

Because they believed that church, state, and nation ought to be co-extensive, they were among

the sharpest critics of religious pluralism. At the same time, they were adamant that the church

should never be reduced to an agent of the state: the church and state should support one another,

but the church should never be the junior partner. For this reason, they sometimes argued that the

Church of England should abandon its established status rather than accept the compromises

demanded by its reliance on the state, which – they believed – repeatedly failed to uphold its side

of the bargain. Precisely because they aspired to a perfect union between church, state, and

nation, in other words, high churchmen often toyed with the idea that the church should separate

from the state and the nation rather than accept anything less.76

Eighteenth-century high churchmen therefore oscillated between defending and opposing

the ecclesiastical constitution: a pattern exemplifying the compromised and paradoxical character

of the eighteenth-century Church of England. The “Glorious Revolution” and the 1689

Toleration Act left the Church of England as the established church, but severely curtailed the
75
Sirota, Christian Monitors, 149-222, especially 151-52; Brent S. Sirota, “The Occasional Conformity
Controversy, Moderation, and the Anglican Critique of Modernity, 1700-1714,” Historical Journal 57, no. 1 (2014):
81-105. A similar argument has been made by C. D. A. Leighton, “The Nonjurors and the Counter-Enlightenment:
Some Illustration,” Journal of Religious History 22, no. 3 (1998): 270-86; C. D. A. Leighton, “Hutchinsonianism: A
Counter-Enlightenment Reform Movement,” Journal of Religious History 23, no. 2 (1999): 268-84; C. D. A.
Leighton, “‘Knowledge of Divine Things’: A Study of Hutchinsonianism,” History of European Ideas 26, no. 3
(2000): 159-75; C. D. A. Leighton, “Scottish Jacobitism, Episcopacy, and Counter-Enlightenment,” History of
European Ideas 35, no. 1 (2009): 1-10. The idea of high churchmanship as a critique of modernity accords with
Donald Gerardi’s interpretation of the high church SPG missionaries in America: Gerardi, “Episcopate Controversy
Reconsidered.” For the “Glorious Revolution” as event that drove secularisation and modernisation, see Steve
Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

76
Nockles, Oxford Movement, 44-103, especially 103, where Nockles characterises Tractarian opposition to
establishment as a “tactical weapon.”

29
political and legal privileges that constituted its establishment, and allowed Protestant Dissenters

to participate extensively in the political life of the nation. 77 The Church of England therefore

remained the established church while ceasing to be a truly national church. Many Anglican high

churchmen protested against the “Glorious Revolution” by leaving the church to become “non-

jurors” (i.e. episcopalians dissenting from the Church of England). Other high churchmen

accepted the new regime despite their reservations, and continued to act as the most ardent

defenders of the Church of England’s remaining political privileges.78 In the nineteenth century,

high churchmen bitterly opposed Catholic emancipation – the admission of Catholics to

Parliament – but once this legislation was passed, many left the Church of England and instead

joined the Roman Catholic Church. This seemingly paradoxical realignment made sense from

the perspective of high church theology. They wanted Parliament to safeguard religious

orthodoxy, but if it could not be trusted to do so, then the Roman Catholic Church became the

next best option.79

In this sense, we can see the high church tradition as one of the theological routes

towards the separation of church and state in Britain: a more surprising one than the theology of

dissent from the established church. The separation of church and state was not only driven by

religious groups who opposed the existence of established churches, but also those who

77
John Spurr, “The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689,” English Historical Review
104, no. 413 (1989): 927-46; Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke, eds., From Persecution to
Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

78
G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688-1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury Bishop of
Rochester (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).

79
Nockles, Oxford Movement, 270-306.

30
supported them in principle but in practice sought to protect them from the encroachments of

religious pluralism.80

Finally, this dissertation argues that American independence went a long way towards

resolving the empire’s ecclesiastical contradictions and tensions, making the prospect of a truly

imperial Church of England plausible as never before. The loss of the American colonies meant a

far-reaching reconfiguration of the relationship between church and empire. Historians

sometimes suggest that American independence accelerated a transition from an empire of

sameness to one of difference, in which metropolitan and colonial subjects were distinguished

and increasingly authoritarian government reserved for the latter.81 Yet the loss of the American

colonies also meant the end of much of the ecclesiastical pluralism that had previously disrupted

the Church of England’s place in the empire. Following the American Revolution, the governors

of Britain’s remaining North American colonies began to offer the colonial Church of England

the support they had previously withheld. This support had not been forthcoming in the older and

more ecclesiastically diverse empire.82

Understanding the relationship between the church and the empire, and the impact of the

American Revolution on that relationship, means bringing together three bodies of

historiography that have often proceeded separately: scholarship on colonial America, the British

80
On this idea, see Sirota, “Occasional Conformity Controversy,” 85. For a parallel approach in French history, see
Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-
1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). For an alternate view, see Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment:
Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Jonathan Israel,
Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006); Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights,
1750-1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

81
Peter J. Marshall, “Empire and Authority in the Later Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History 15, no. 2 (1987): 105-22; Christopher A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and
the World, 1780-1830 (London: Longman, 1989).

82
Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 237-60.

31
Empire, and Britain itself. Of course, these three historiographies have not been completely

insulated from one another. They study many of the same people and institutions, they work on

material in the same language, and they sometimes use the same archives. Yet, with some

important exceptions, they have not always been very good at talking to each other. This is

simply a problem of disciplinary conventions.

Individually, British history, imperial history, and colonial American history fail to

recognise the problem that the British Empire represented for the Church of England. From the

perspective of British history, the church’s role in the empire is a problem that lies elsewhere.

From the perspective of colonial American history, when written as the national history of the

United States, colonial American Anglicans appear only as the forbears to the American

Episcopal Church, and their anomalous place in the empire is obscured. From the perspective of

British imperial history, meanwhile, the problem is one of absence: why wasn’t the Church of

England more active in the empire? It is only when these three historiographies are brought

together that the dissonance between church and empire becomes apparent.

Historians have only recently begun to integrate the history of British North America into

the wider history of the British Empire in India and elsewhere. Peter Marshall’s work provides

an important framework here.83 It has been harder to integrate British history with what is

sometimes called “imperial and commonwealth” history. In 1999, David Armitage famously

called for the history of state- and nation-building in the British Isles and of empire-building

further afield to be treated as a single process.84 Armitage’s proposal has had an enormous

influence on the field of Atlantic history, but this kind of work usually foregrounds Britain’s

83
Peter J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, c.1750-1783 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005).

84
Armitage, “Greater Britain.”

32
overseas colonies. It has had less influence on scholars working on Britain itself. In 2002,

Armitage recognised that scholarship placing the history of England in an Atlantic context

remained peculiarly underdeveloped, but this observation has been cited more often than it has

been addressed.85 It is significant, for example, that Marshall’s more recent effort to integrate

British and American history takes as its starting point the independent United States.86 Britain is

hardly absent from Atlantic history, but it typically appears as a fountainhead dispersing

merchants, migrants, missionaries, soldiers, and bureaucrats; less is known about the impact of

the Atlantic empire on Britain. Of course, there is a large body of scholarship that assesses the

impact of the American Revolution on British politics, society and government, but this

scholarship treats American events as external stimuli on British actors: a context for

understanding British history, but not part of the same story.87 This dissertation therefore seeks to

advance the still relatively small body of literature that takes the influence of the American

Revolution in Britain seriously, not just as an influence on British history, but as an event in

British history.

85
David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, eds. David
Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 25 [reprinted in Armitage, Greater
Britain].

86
Peter J. Marshall, Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American
Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

87
Recent examples include Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000); Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of
the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Dror Wahrman, The Making
of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

33
Chapter Outline

This dissertation is primarily a study of the loyalist Church of England clergy in Connecticut,

Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey; their experience before, during, and after the

American Revolution; and their relationship with their supporters and allies in Britain. It is based

chiefly on the Church of England’s institutional archives, particularly the records of the Society

for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), the eighteenth-century church’s

missionary arm, founded in 1701. The society required its missionaries to write every six months

with a description of their parishes. It was assiduous in archiving these letters for its own

administrative purposes. This has produced an exceptionally rich and extensive collection,

consisting of well over ten thousand missionary letters from the colonies that became the United

States, in addition to correspondence from the rest of the British Empire and the records

generated by the society’s internal administration. This is hardly an unknown archive. Historians

of the colonial church have long relied on it, particularly the selections published in the

nineteenth century.88 Nevertheless, the sheer size of the collection ensures that it is far from

exhausted. In addition, this dissertation also uses the papers of the Archbishops of Canterbury

and Bishops of London, the records of the American Loyalist Claims Commission, and the

published and unpublished papers of a number of individual loyalist churchmen.

The dissertation begins by tracing the emergence of a loyalist identity among the Church

of England clergy in the northern colonies. Chapter One surveys the activities of the SPG in New

88
Historical Notices of the Missions of the Church of England in the North American Colonies, Previous to the
Independence of the United States: Chiefly from the MS. Documents of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts, ed. Ernest Hawkins, (London: B. Fellowes, 1845); Documentary History of the Protestant
Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Containing Numerous Hitherto Unpublished Documents
Concerning the Church in Connecticut, 2 vols., eds. Francis L. Hawks and William Stevens Perry, (New York: J.
Pott, 1863-64); Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, 5 vols., eds. William Stevens
Perry (Hartford, CT: printed for the subscribers, 1870-78); Classified Digest of the Records of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701-1892, ed. C. F. Pascoe (London: SPG, 1893..

34
England, beginning with the society’s origins at the close of the seventeenth century and ending

with the escalation of denominational conflict at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. It

examines the conflicted identity of the SPG missionaries, who were charged with building an

established church in colonies where it was absent, and it emphasises the peculiar and local

character of the region’s Anglican culture. It also examines the conflicts generated by the

expansion of the SPG presence in New England, such as the Congregationalist minister Jonathan

Mayhew’s published attacks on the society in 1763. These published controversies shaped the

character of the missionaries’ loyalism during the American Revolution, but they also hide a

more nuanced picture of day-to-day coexistence and mutual toleration, and should not be taken

as evidence that Anglicans and Dissenters were locked in an unceasing and irreconcilable “war

of religion.”

The relationship between the SPG missionaries and their Dissenting neighbours

deteriorated rapidly with the controversy over the appointment of an American bishop following

the end of the Seven Years’ War. Chapter Two examines this controversy from the perspective

of the SPG missionaries. The missionaries had long been fixated on the absence of an American

bishop as a symbol of the incomplete and suffering character of the American Church of

England, but they had traditionally left the issue in the hands of the church’s governors. As they

watched the imperial reforms that took shape following the 1763 Peace of Paris, they grew

increasingly afraid of being forgotten. Ignoring the instructions of the English bishops, they

launched a public campaign for a bishop in 1767. It was a disaster. The missionaries succeeded

only in further antagonising those colonists who were already alarmed by the 1765 Stamp Act.

The episode left the missionaries convinced that Dissenters were persecuting them and that their

friends in England had abandoned them. Existing scholarship has understood the controversy as

35
a colonial backlash against an expanding imperial state. Seeing the controversy through the

missionaries’ eyes reveals a different picture. They were not the agents of the imperial state;

rather, they were continually infuriated and perplexed by the absence of metropolitan support.

Seen in this way, the controversy appears as a crisis of ecclesiastical pluralism, one of a series of

local conflicts sparked by the expansion and diversification of the British Empire during the

Seven Years’ War.

The missionaries’ failure to secure the appointment of an American bishop laid the

foundations for their peculiar brand of loyalism during the War of the American Revolution,

described in Chapter Three. The missionaries believed that if the church in America had been

properly supported by the state from the beginning, the rebellion could have been prevented.

They saw the rebellion as an attempt to persecute the church, particularly following decrees that

praying for the king constituted treason. While colonial patriots accused the missionaries of

actively promoting unlimited obedience and submission, the missionaries presented themselves

as the passive victims of religious persecution. Neither perspective tells the full story. The

missionaries actively embraced martyrdom and propagated accounts of their victimhood and

conscientious suffering. Understanding the missionaries’ identity as loyalist martyrs sheds light

on the role of religious and moral concerns during the revolutionary political contestation, and

helps explain the moral authority that the refugee clergy subsequently commanded in Britain.

The dissertation proceeds to consider the role of the refugee clergy in the reconstruction

and reimagining of the imperial Church of England in the aftermath of the American Revolution.

Chapter Four examines the communities of clerical refugees that coalesced around a shared

experience of suffering, displacement, and exile. The plight of these immiserated refugees

occasioned political controversy. While radicals in Britain accused them of provoking the

36
rebellion by preaching discredited Tory doctrines, the refugee clergy became a celebrated

philanthropic cause in the Church of England. Following the end of the war, the émigrés learnt to

narrate their loyalism to receptive audiences in Britain. They imbued their loyalism with a sacred

significance, emphasising their conscientious fidelity to the Book of Common Prayer, while

enlarging on their political role in battling the rebellion and preaching loyalty. The idea of the

missionaries as loyalist martyrs provided an appealing narrative that explained the revolution to

English churchmen and sacralised the national church’s experience of trauma and rebirth.

Chapter Five, finally, considers the émigré clergy’s role as lobbyists for the

reconstruction of the imperial Church of England. It examines their attempts to obtain Anglican

bishops for the new United States and for Britain’s remaining North American colonies, using

these efforts as a window into the ecclesiastical reconfiguration of the British Empire following

American independence. The loss of the American colonies persuaded the empire’s governors to

create a strong established Church of England in British North America, but the challenge of

providing for those Anglicans who remained in the independent United States also introduced

new tensions into the relationship between church and empire. Anglicans thus remained troubled

by the fact that their church was supposed to be a national church but was self-evidently not

coterminous with the British Empire: there were non-Anglicans within and Anglicans without

the empire. This chapter also documents the émigré clergy’s close relationship and mutual

sympathy with the English high church movement. Together, American émigrés and English

high churchmen assembled a narrative that cast the entire American Revolution as a rebellion

against the established church. These contexts help explain the resurgence of the English high

church movement in the late eighteenth century. Finally, the conclusion surveys some of the

efforts that English high churchmen made to turn the Church of England into a truly national

37
church during the French Revolution. In this way, it highlights the influence in Britain of the

loyalist clergy and their distinctively American theologico-political culture.

38
 CHAPTER ONE

Episcopizing New England: Anglican Missionary Enterprise in America, 1701-63

Introduction

On July 6, 1767, the missionary James Scovil wrote a letter to Daniel Burton, the secretary of the

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), reporting the condition of his

parish of Waterbury, Connecticut. Scovil lamented the “truly Pitiable” condition of “the

languishing Church in this Land.” While his congregation had “a hearty Love & Affection” for

“the most pure and primitive Church in the World,” they were surrounded and oppressed by

“Dissenters” who continually “insult and revile us.” Not only was the church oppressed by its

enemies in America, it was abandoned by its friends in England. Scovil spoke of his “real Grief

and Concern, to find the venerable Society declining, to open any more Missions in New-

England,” and complained bitterly of “the deplorable… want of resident Bishops, to ordain,

govern, and confirm those of our Communion.” Scovil believed that the sufferings and hardships

borne by the American church were all but incomprehensible to his English correspondent,

insisting, “they who live in England, where the Church is rather triumphant, can have but a faint

idea of its truly militant State here in New-England.”1

The distinction between “the church militant” and “the church triumphant” was

frequently invoked by the SPG missionaries to contrast the position of the church in America

with that of the church in England. The Connecticut-born missionary Samuel Johnson compared

1
Rhodes House Library, USPG Papers [henceforth USPG], B23 n. 343: James Scovil [to the SPG], July 6 1767.

39
the “established & uppermost & flourishing” condition of the church in England with the

“militant and depressed state… it is in here, scattered about into little parcels & among

enemies.”2 The contrast between the church militant and the church triumphant had long been

invoked by Christian theologians to distinguish the church in the world, constantly battling

against sin, from the church in heaven, finally victorious in that struggle. The missionaries’ use

of this idea to describe their situation in America illustrates the paradoxes that shaped their

identity and experience.

These Anglican missionaries were, by definition, a minority population who identified

with a powerful established church. To be a missionary for the Church of England meant

aspiring to such an establishment while at the same time existing as a religious minority, lorded

over by “Dissenters” and denied the fully established status that defined the church to which they

belonged.3 On the one hand, this experience could be humiliating. The missionaries often spoke

of the “insults” they encountered, and complained that they did not meet with the respect that the

national church deserved. On the other hand, their minority status created possibilities for certain

kinds of religious experience that were not available to their coreligionists in the old world. As

far as the missionaries were concerned, they had chosen the Church of England not for the

rewards of establishment, but in spite of the challenges of persecution. While they longed to

command the strength and security enjoyed by Anglicans in England, they also felt that their

2
Samuel Johnson to Matthew Graves, June 27 1748, in Samuel Johnson: President of King’s College. His Career
and Writings, ed. Herbert and Carol Schneider (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929) [henceforth SJCW], 1:
132.
3
A note on terminology: I will sometimes refer to New England Congregationalists and Presbyterians as
“Dissenters.” My use of this term is intended only to convey the ideology, perceptions, and subjective experience of
the Anglican loyalists. For colonial Americans, the use of the term “Dissenter” was a matter of ideological
disagreement. While many churchmen saw New England Congregationalists and Presbyterians as “Dissenters” from
the a Church of England that was established everywhere in the British Empire, these groups often retorted that their
churches were established in America, where the Episcopalians were the real “Dissenters.” At the same time, these
groups often identified with a transatlantic Dissenting interest that sought to protect the religious liberties of non-
Anglicans.

40
position on the frontline of the church’s expansion imparted unique moral authority and spiritual

authenticity. The Christian church, after all, was not of this world: its final triumph would only

come in the next.

The SPG missionaries’ identification with the English ecclesiastical establishment

alarmed their denominational rivals, who feared that they would necessarily want to impose the

Church of England onto those colonies that had hitherto escaped its oppressions. In 1763, the

minister of the West Congregational Church in Boston, Jonathan Mayhew, complained that the

SPG misused its considerable funds by sending its missionaries to convert New England

Congregationalists and Presbyterians from one form of Protestantism to another, neglecting the

proper object of its attentions, African slaves and Native Americans. For Mayhew, the SPG

presence in New England – a beacon of pure and reformed Christianity – indicated the

perversion of the missionary impulse and its appropriation for sinister ends. The missionaries

could not have been motivated by a sincere desire to save New Englanders’ souls, because they

did not need saving. Rather, the missionaries were the agents of an intolerant, authoritarian, and

quasi-popish strand of high church Anglicanism, which sought to enforce submission to the

English ecclesiastical hierarchy in America’s stronghold of religious liberty.4 While the

missionaries were convinced that they were persecuted, their rivals saw them as persecutors.

This tension lies at the heart of their loyalism.

The expansion of the SPG presence in New England in the first half of the eighteenth

century fuelled a series of conflicts with the pre-existing Congregationalist churches, of which

Mayhew’s denunciation of the SPG was the most prominent instance. Anglican expansion in

New England, and the conflicts it caused, offers a case study of what John Murrin has called

4
Jonathan Mayhew, Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts, Designed to Shew their Non-Conformity to Each Other (Boston: Richard & Samuel Draper, 1763).

41
“Anglicization.” In the model first advanced by Murrin and refined by subsequent scholarship,

the American Revolution was precipitated by processes that made the colonists more British,

rather than more distinctively American. Increasingly close ties between the Britain and its

colonies could bring both integration and conflict, and could export to the colonial periphery the

political, cultural, and religious tensions that operated in the metropole.5 This model provides an

alternative to the interpretation advanced by Carl Bridenbaugh, who suggests that the American

Revolution was a “kulturkampf” between Church and Dissent. Bridenbaugh characterised the

SPG’s advances as an “Anglican invasion” of New England, which galvanised the colonists to

rise in revolt in defence of their religious liberty.6 According to Bridenbaugh’s model, an

increasingly powerful imperial centre intruded on the colonial periphery and thereby provoked

the American Revolution: a backlash against the forces of imperial integration.7

Bridenbaugh’s depiction of the imperial Church of England misrepresents both the

British and the colonial sides of the equation. It is not true that the missionaries represented the

imperial state: they continually complained that they were neglected by their political and

ecclesiastical governors in England. Nor can they be understood as agents of the imperial centre,

sent out to assimilate the periphery to metropolitan norms. New England Anglicanism was not

simply imported from England; rather, it had grown out of a schism in New England’s

5
John Murrin, “A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in Beyond Confederation:
The Dilemma of American National Identity, eds. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 333-48; Ned Landsman, From Colonials to
Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (New York: Twayne, 1997); Nancy L. Rhoden, “The
American Revolution (I): The Paradox of Atlantic Integration,” in British North America in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, ed. Stephen Foster (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 255-88; Nancy L. Rhoden, “Anglicanism, Dissent, and Toleration in Eighteenth-Century
British Colonies,” in Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic, eds. Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew
Shankman, and David Silverman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 125-52.
6
Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689-1775 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1962), 52-82; quotations xiii, 77.
7
John Murrin, “1776: The Countercyclical Revolution,” in Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the
Transatlantic World, ed. Michael A. Morrison and Melinda Zook (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 65-
90.

42
Congregationalist churches, and as such it retained its own peculiar character. The missionaries’

clashes with New England Dissenters should not be seen in terms of an “Anglican invasion” of

the colonies, but rather as a fundamentally local conflict that was facilitated by the British

Empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism. The SPG missionaries’ culture of militant loyalism and

Anglican martyrdom germinated in this context.

The SPG and the American Mission Field

Jonathan Mayhew’s denunciation of the SPG raises the question: why did the society send

missionaries to places like Cambridge, Massachusetts? The SPG presence in New England

reflected a belief, widely current in the eighteenth-century Church of England, that the church

was established (at least in principle) everywhere in the British Empire, with the single exception

of Scotland. Yet the operation of the SPG also entailed a large amount of improvisation and

compromise. In fact, the society’s very existence was an improvised response to the declining

support that the established church received from the state following the “Glorious Revolution”

of 1688-89. The society’s leadership in England also disagreed over exactly what the

missionaries were doing in New England, and the extent to which their presence was intended to

challenge the authority claimed by Congregationalists there. Congregationalists claimed that they

were the established church in New England, and this claim was neither unambiguously

acknowledged nor refuted by the leaders of the Anglican church. Instead, the church’s

relationship with Dissenters remained a matter of both tactical and ideological disagreement.

These ambiguities underpinned the troubled identities of the missionaries themselves.

43
 In order to understand how the SPG operated, it is first necessary to distinguish it from

the more familiar, modern understanding of missionary enterprise associated with

evangelicalism, in which missionaries are sent out from the imperial centre to the periphery in a

quest for religious conversions. This understanding is associated with the evangelical missionary

societies established in the 1790s, notably the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), the London

Missionary Society (1795), and the Church Missionary Society (1799). Hitherto, the SPG had

been the Church of England’s only missionary organisation.8 The founders of the new societies

protested that the SPG was not doing enough to bring the gospel to the heathen, and was instead

concerned only with the religious needs of European settlers. Scholarship has often seen the SPG

through the distorting lens of this evangelical critique. Indeed, a number of influential histories

of British missions entirely pass over the eighteenth-century activities of the SPG and instead

begin with the founding of the evangelical societies in the 1790s.9 Historiographical debate on

the SPG has therefore tended to revolve around the question, “whom was the SPG trying to

convert?” Historians usually agree that the society was more concerned with European colonists

than with indigenous Americans or enslaved Africans.10 This consensus has sometimes been

challenged by historians who have highlighted its support for slave baptism and the creation of

8
For histories of the SPG, see Daniel O’Conner, Three Centuries of Mission: The United Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, 1701-2000 (London: Continuum, 2000); Margaret Dewey, The Messengers: A Concise
History of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (London: Mowbrays, 1975); Hans Jacob
Cnattingius, Bishops and Societies: A Study of Anglican Colonial and Missionary Expansion, 1698-1850 (London:
SPCK, 1952); H. P. Thompson, Into All Lands: The History of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts, 1701-1950 (London: SPCK, 1951); C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the SPG: An Historical
Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701-1900 (London: SPG, 1901).
9
Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and
British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Apollos, 1990); Norman Etherington
(ed.), Missions and Empire, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005).
10
Troy O. Bickham, Savages Within the Empire: Representations of American Indians in Eighteenth-Century
Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Laura M. Stevens, The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native
Americans, and Colonial Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

44
Indian schools as evidence of a missionary impulse, however ineffectual these initiatives were at

spreading Christianity.11

In fact, the eighteenth-century SPG was guided not by a quest for conversions, but rather

by the model of a territorial church that was responsible for all of its presumptive parishioners.

Jeffrey Cox points out that the British missionary impulse originated, not with an evangelical

quest for religious conversions, but rather with a territorial, parish-based established church that

was confronted with “new spiritual obligations” as a result of the empire’s expansion.12 The

society itself did little to distinguish between the particular needs of Native Americans, enslaved

Africans, and European settlers. Instead, it worked to help the Church of England fulfil its

spiritual responsibilities towards all of its presumptive parishioners in America by sending

ministers and schoolmasters and providing them with financial support, books, and other

materials like church bells. In 1734, the SPG missionary Samuel Johnson revealingly described

himself as a member of “the Honourable Society incorporated by Royal Charter for providing

Ministers for the Plantations.”13 Though a misnomer, this was in fact an accurate description of

the SPG’s approach to the American mission field. The SPG was concerned with ecclesiastical

supply rather than demand and with territory rather than population.

The SPG originated in the efforts of reforming churchmen to strengthen the Church of

England, in Britain and its colonies, in response to the drying up of state support following the

11
Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire, c.1700-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 11-14.
On the SPG’s advocacy of slave baptism and associated active support for Atlantic slavery, see Travis Glasson,
Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012). Contrast the earlier interpretation of Frank J. Klingberg, Codrington Chronicle: An Experiment in
Anglican Altruism on a Barbados Plantation, 1710-1834 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1949);
Frank J. Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism in Colonial New York (Philadelphia: Church History Society, 1940);
Samuel Clyde McCulloch, ed., British Humanitarianism (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1950).
12
Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise Since 1700 (London: Routledge, 2008), 22-51, quotation 49.
13
[Samuel Johnson], A Second Letter from a Minister of the Church of England to His Dissenting Parishioners, in
Answer to Some Remarks Made on the Former (Boston: n.p., 1734), 7.

45
“Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89. The revolution placed the Church of England in a paradoxical

situation. It remained the established church, but could no longer rely on the unlimited and

unambiguous support of the state. Instead, it began to pursue its responsibilities as the national

church through the creation of voluntary societies and the mobilisation of lay support.14 One of

the products of this moment of post-revolutionary reform and ecclesiastical improvisation was

the creation in 1698 of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), a

voluntary organisation under the direction of the Church of England bishops. The SPCK declared

its aim to reinforce the work of the clergy by publishing and distributing religious literature and

establishing charity schools. It originated with the Bishop of London’s deputy in Maryland,

Thomas Bray, who was alarmed by the shortage of colonial Anglican ministers and their lack of

education and financial support.15 Fearing the greater resources commanded by both Protestant

Dissenters and Catholics, Bray proposed the creation of a central directing body to further the

interests of the Church of England. This body would be a Protestant “Congregatio pro

propaganda fide,” an Anglican counterpart to the Catholic missionary orders.16

Three years after the founding of the SPCK, its supporters founded a new society, the

SPG, introducing a rough division of labour between the domestic and colonial spheres. The

royal charter that incorporated the SPG articulated Bray’s concerns about the weakness of the

church in the colonies. The charter observed that the insufficient “Provision for Ministers” in the

king’s colonies left his subjects in need of the sacraments and vulnerable to atheism, infidelity,

14
John Spurr, “The Church, the Societies and the Moral Revolution of 1688,” in The Church of England, c.1689-
c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism, eds. John Walsh, Stephen Taylor, and Colin Haydon (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 110-48; Brent S. Sirota, The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and
the Age of Benevolence, 1680-1730 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 110-48.
15
Cnattingius, Bishops and Societies, 9-11.
16
Craig Rose, “The Origins and Ideals of the SPCK, 1699-1716,” in Church of England, eds. Walsh, Taylor, and
Haydon, 172-90.

46
and popery. The society was instructed to provide “a sufficient maintenance… for an orthodox

clergy to live amongst them” and “such other provision… as may be necessary for the

propagation of the gospel in those parts.”17 As Brent Sirota has argued, the SPG was an

improvised response to “the fundamental limits of establishment capacity and concern for

ecclesiastical expansion.” Sirota rightly emphasises the ways in which voluntary improvisation

often departed in practice from the traditional, territorial parish system, in Britain and the

empire.18 Nevertheless, this system remained the ideal to which the SPG aspired. The SPG was

to carry out the same work in the colonies that the SPCK was carrying out in Britain.

The SPG immediately had to decide which colonies lacked an established clergy. Despite

Bray’s initial concerns stemming from the poor quality of the Maryland clergy, the society

decided to send missionaries to all the mainland American colonies except Maryland and

Virginia, where the colonial governments already supported an established Anglican ministry.

This decision meant sending missionaries to the New England colonies, where the colonial

governments already supported the Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches. The extent to

which the ecclesiastical independence of the New England colonies should be respected was a

matter of disagreement within the society. Bray himself had declared that the society would not

“intermeddle, where Christianity under any form has obtained Possession” and would respect the

rights of the New England colonies, “where Independency seems to be the Religion of the

Country.”19 The choice to send missionaries to New England therefore departed from Bray’s

intentions.

17
Cited in Thompson, Into All Lands, 17; also printed in A Collection of Papers, Printed by Order of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: Joseph Downing, 1712), 1-13.
18
Sirota, Christian Monitors, 223-51, esp. 224-25.
19
Thomas Bray, A Memorial, Representing the Present State of Religion, on the Continent of North-America
(London: William Downing, 1700), 9. Cited in John Frederick Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism in North America
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 88.

47
 The justification for sending missionaries to New England was that they were not there to

convert Congregationalists and Presbyterians, but only to provide for those New England

Anglicans who could not in conscience worship with the majority churches. The presence of

SPG missionaries in New England was therefore justified by the same principle of religious

toleration that English Dissenters appealed to in order to justify their separation from the Church

of England. However, this construction did not specify whether the Congregationalists and

Presbyterians were seen as an established church or, alternately, as Dissenters from a Church of

England that was established throughout the British Empire. This was a potentially controversial

and divisive issue, and best left alone.

This was the explanation given in an official history of the SPG published in 1730,

written by the society’s secretary David Humphreys. He explained that “great Numbers of

Inhabitants” of New England “were exceeding desirous of worshipping GOD after the Manner of

the Church of England.” These were “were looked upon as Sectaries” and denied “Liberty of

Conscience” by the New England Congregationalists and Presbyterians, who “acted as an

Establishment.” Humphreys denied that the society were “acting with an overbusy Zeal of

obtruding the Church of England Worship upon any Sort of People abroad.” Instead, he pointed

out that they only sent missionaries to congregations who had petitioned for one. Humphreys

included some of these petitions as “an uncontrollable Evidence and Proof” that “the Society did

not concern themselves here, till they were loudly called upon.” The activities of the SPG

missionaries in New England were therefore justified by the Congregationalists’ and

Presbyterians’ own commitment to a “general Liberty of Conscience.”20

20
David Humphreys, An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts. Containing their Foundation, Proceedings, and the Success of their Missionaries in the British
Colonies, to the Year 1728 (London: Joseph Downing, 1730), 36, 38-39, 45, 61.

48
 At first, the new society’s proselytising rhetoric was directed primarily at Quakerism,

masking the ambiguity of the SPG’s stance towards other Protestant denominations. The most

radical, disruptive, and alarming Protestant sect, the prevalence of Quakerism was seen as an

index of the weakness of the established church. The society instructed an itinerant missionary,

George Keith, to travel through the colonies gathering information and preparing the way for

settled missionaries. Keith was a former Quaker who had become bitterly opposed to the sect. He

engaged in a series of pamphlet controversies and staged theological debates with Quakers, and

repeatedly interrupted Quaker meetings, where he and his assistant would turn up with local

notables, such as a Justice of the Peace. His modus operandi was to wait for a moment of silence

and then begin talking in favour of the Church of England. When the Quakers inevitably

responded with “their Noise and Clamour,” Keith would deny that he was interrupting their

meetings, since no-one was talking anyway; he was only speaking the truth, and the Quakers

were interrupting him. If the Quakers claimed the protection of the Toleration Act, Keith would

respond that they were technically not protected by the Act.21 Unlike Quakers,

Congregationalists and Presbyterians were explicitly included in the provisions of the Toleration

Act, indicating its importance in restraining the SPG in New England. Nevertheless,

Congregationalists and Presbyterians were inevitably antagonised by Keith’s anti-Quaker

rhetoric. At Boston, Keith unintentionally became embroiled in a published controversy with the

Congregationalist minister Increase Mather after preaching on the duty of obedience to

ecclesiastical authority in a sermon against Quakerism; Mather pointed out that the same

argument might apply to Congregationalists and Presbyterians.22

21
George Keith, A Journal of Travels from New-Hampshire to Caratuck, on the Continent of North-America
(London: Joseph Downing, 1706), 4, 5-6, 17-18, 29, 45-46, 55-57, 66-67, 75.
22
George Keith, The Doctrine of the Holy Apostles & Prophets the Foundation of the Church of Christ, as it was
Delivered in a Sermon at Her Majesties Chappel, at Boston in New-England, the 14th of June 1702 (Boston: Samuel

49
 Keith’s anti-Quakerism aside, the SPG was more concerned with the provision of parish

clergy than with converting any specific constituency. The SPG quickly drew up a set of

instructions to its missionaries that essentially described the responsibilities of parish clergymen.

Recognising the missionaries’ great distance from ecclesiastical oversight, the society instructed

them to provide notitia parochialis (“parish reports”) every six months, counting the number of

communicants, Dissenters, Papists, and heathen among their parishioners. They were to keep

“those of our Communion… steady,” while seeking “to convince and reclaim [Dissenters] with a

Spirit of Meekness and Gentleness.” They were also given directions for the instruction of

“Heathens and Infidels”: they were to “begin with the Principles of natural Religion, appealing to

their Reason and Conscience; and thence proceed to shew them the Necessity of Revelation.”23

The SPG’s role was to provide Anglican ministers who would assume responsibility for all their

parishioners, whether Christian or heathen, Protestant or Catholic, Anglican or Dissenter.

These emphases were also reflected in the SPG’s efforts to measure its success in

America. As a voluntary society, the SPG had to justify its activities to its members and donors.

It did so by publishing a series of maps, tables, charts, and statistics, all of which implied a

model of a territorial, parish-based church. An SPG broadside published in 1704 included a table

of “all the ENGLISH Dominions on the Continent of North-America from N.E. to S.W. with the

Indian Nations bordering upon them,” listing the “Present state of religion,” the “Assistance

received from the Society,” and the “demands upon the Society for Ministers, Schools, [and]

Phillips, 1702); Increase Mather, Some Remarks on a Late Sermon Preached at Boston in New England, by George
Keith, M.A., Shewing that his Pretended Good Rules in Divinity, are not Built on the Foundation of the Apostles &
Prophets (Boston: Nicholas Boone, 1702); George Keith, A Reply to Mr. Increase Mather’s Printed Remarks on a
Sermon Preached by G. K. at Her Majesty’s Chappel in Boston, the 14 th of June, 1702 (New York: William
Bradford, 1703).
23
Collection of Papers (1712), 18-28, quotations 24, 27-28.

50
Libraries.”24 In 1706, the first historian of the society, Bishop White Kennett, explained that the

SPG hoped to “continually send over more Missionaries, both Itinerant and Resident” and

“contribute to the erecting and endowing of more Churches, and Chapels, and Schools, and

Libraries.”25 They continued to print annual reports listing the names and location of its

missions. In 1730, Humphreys provided the following formulation of the society’s achievements:

“the Success of the Society’s Labours has exceeded their first Hopes… above Sixty Churches

have been built, a very great Body of People have been instructed; many Schools have been

opened for the training up of Children and Youth in the Knowledge of the Christian Faith… and

above Eight Thousand Volumes of Books, besides over One Hundred Thousand small Tracts,

have been dispersed among the Inhabitants.” Humphreys’ history also included two maps of the

society’s missions, one for Carolina and one for the northern colonies (Fig. 1).26 The SPG thus

measured its successes, not by publishing accounts of conversions, but rather by mapping the

places where it operated and counting the numbers of churches, ministers, schools, and books it

provided.

24
An Account of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: Joseph Downing, 1704), 2-3.
25
[White Kennett], An Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Established by the
Royal Charter of King William III (London: Joseph Downing, 1706), 90.
26
Humphreys, Historical Account, 353-4, maps between 80 and 81 and between 144 and 145.

51
Fig. 1: “A Map of New England, New York, New Jersey and Pensilvania” (1730)

Source: Humphreys, Historical Account (1730), between 144 and 145.

52
In this way, the society assumed equal responsibility for the spiritual needs of European settlers,

enslaved Africans, and Native Americans. In 1730, Humphreys explained that the society’s work

“consisted of three great Branches, the Care and Instruction of our own People, settled in the

Colonies; the Conversion of the Indian Savages, and the Conversion of the Negroes.”27 The

society implicitly distinguished between the Indian nations neighbouring the British colonies and

the Indian “servants” and African slaves who lived “intermixed” within them, and assumed more

responsibility towards the latter than the former. In White Kennett’s words, “besides this

Attempt of Converting the five Nations, the Society has taken Care of all possible Means to

instruct the few Indians that were disperst among the English, and the Negro Slaves.”28 To this

end, the society maintained “negro catechists” at New York, Philadelphia, and its Barbados

plantation, the Codrington Estate.29 Its efforts to proselytise Native Americans, primarily through

the establishment of “Indian schools,” were directed at the Iroquois and especially the Mohawk,

through whom the British sought to claim sovereignty over territory extending to the Great

Lakes.30

There was nevertheless some disagreement within the SPG over the respective priority to

be given to proselytising the heathen and providing ministry to European settlers. The question

became acute at moments of financial crisis. In 1708, the society was in dire financial straits, and

resolved not to send additional missionaries until the situation improved. In 1710, immediately

27
Ibid., 22-3.
28
Kennett, Account of the Society, 58.
29
Humphreys, Historical Account, 231-75.
30
William B. Hart, “Mohawk Schoolmasters and Catechists in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Iroquoia: An Experiment in
Fostering Literacy and Religious Change,” in The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800. eds. Edward G.
Gray and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn, 2002), 230-57; Humphreys, Historical Account, 230-57; Thomas
Wilson, An Essay Towards an Instruction for the Indians, Explaining the Most Essential Doctrines of Christianity
(London: J. Osborn and W. Thorn, 1740). For the Iroquois and British sovereignty, see Francis Jennings, The
Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from its
Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: Norton, 1984).

53
after the celebrated visit of four “Indian kings” to London, the SPG committee resolved that “the

conversion of heathen and infidels… ought to be prosecuted preferably” to the rest of the

society’s work, and therefore ordered “that a stop be put to the sending any more Missionaries

among Christians.” The financial crisis was resolved in 1711 by a royal collection, and the

resolution against sending missionaries to Christians was soon forgotten.31

The nature of the society’s mission was articulated in the charity sermons preached at its

annual meeting. Different preachers provided different formulations of this mission, and overall

the sermons acted as a forum in which the society’s priorities were debated.32 The sermons’

immediate concern was to solicit charitable donations. Many emphasised proselytising the

heathen Indians. The speakers typically elaborated on the biblical injunction to preach the gospel

to all nations, contrasting the particularity of the Jewish religion with the universality of the

Christian. They thereby made the society’s work necessary to fulfil prophecy and demonstrate

the truth of the gospel.33 Specifically, they sought to inculcate pity for the “poor Indians,”

thereby fostering emotional and affective ties among the members, servants, and supporters of

the society.34

Other preachers prioritised the society’s responsibility for the European settlers. The first

charity sermon provided the following formulation: “the design is in the first place to settle the

State of Religion as well as may be among our own People there… and then to proceed…

31
James B. Bell, The Imperial Origins of the King’s Church in Early America, 1607-1783 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004), 91; Pascoe, Two Hundred Years, 68-69.
32
Glasson, Mastering Christianity, 26-27.
33
Robert G. Ingram, “From Barbarism to Civility, From Darkness to Light: Preaching Empire as Sacred History,” in
Oxford Handbook on the British Sermon, 1689-1901, eds. Keith A. Francis and William Gibson (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), 481-96. For examples, see Gilbert Burnet, SPG Sermon (1704), 1-11; Thomas Sherlock,
SPG Sermon (1716), 10, 24; Thomas Herring, SPG Sermon (1738), 5; Richard Osbaldeston, SPG Sermon (1752), 7-
8. References to the annual SPG charity sermons (and the attached abstracts of the society’s proceedings) will be
abbreviated throughout. For the full titles, see the bibliography.
34
Stevens, Poor Indians, 111-37.

54
towards the Conversion of the Natives.” Sending libraries and ministers would accomplish both

goals.35 In 1730, Humphreys asserted that “the English Planters had the Title to their first Care,

as Brethren and Countrymen… Besides, it would be ineffectual to begin with an Attempt to

convert the Indians and Negroes… For both the former Sorts of Men, would necessarily take

their first Impressions concerning Christianity, from the English.”36 In 1754, the Archbishop of

York, Robert Hay Drummond, repeated:

“The People in our Colonies consist of different sorts: Masters, that is, Planters or
Merchants – White Servants, that is, those that go from these countries and serve
voluntarily, or Criminals judicially transported – some few Indian Servants – and
Slaves for life, mostly Negroes. These are all the Objects of our care; besides the
Indians, which are the original inhabitants, who live mostly upon the back of our
Colonies, but who are considerably diminished in our neighbourhood.”

Indeed, Drummond continued, the settlers themselves had become “as wild, and as devoid of any

sense of Religion, as the savages.” It was “in vain to talk of the conversion of the Heathen; while

too many of our own People” are “sinking into barbarism.”37

Drummond was typical in comparing the European settlers’ irreligion to the Indians’ and

Africans’ heathenism and savagery. British metropolitans routinely described British settlers in

terms of a moral otherness, and in doing so likened them to Native Americans.38 The colonists

were anxious that, if the Indians had degenerated through the effects of their savage

35
Richard Willis, SPG Sermon (1702), 17-18.
36
Humphreys, Historical Account, 22-23.
37
Robert Hay Drummond, SPG Sermon (1754), 14-16, 19-20.
38
Jack P. Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), xii-xiii, 51-83; Strong, Anglicanism, 71.

55
environment, the process would also eventually affect the English.39 A pamphlet soliciting

support for the 1711 public collection described the design of the SPG as “to communicate the

glorious Light of the Gospel to those that sit in Darkness and the Shadow of Death; by whom I

don’t only mean those Indians… but even many of those who bear the Name of Christians.”40 In

1730, Humphreys wrote that “the very Indian Darkness was not more gloomy and horrid, than

that in which some of the English Inhabitants of the Colonies lived.”41 The SPG’s mission

therefore lay in “reducing infinite Numbers both of Pagans and nominal Christians from the

Power of Satan unto God,” in the formulation provided by an SPG broadside from 1704.42 In

1758, for example, the missionary Thomas Thompson published An Account of Two Missionary

Voyages, one to Monmouth County in New Jersey and the other to the British slaving fort at

Sierra Leone. While the former involved rescuing European settlers from Quakerism and the

latter involved converting heathens, both voyages were presented as part of a unified missionary

project.43

As the national church, the Church of England assumed responsibility for the spiritual

needs of the entire population of the British colonies. It considered its responsibilities towards

European settlers, native Americans, and enslaved Africans as essentially alike. At particular

moments, members of the society would debate where its priorities lay, a debate that reflected

39
Jill Lepore, The Name of the War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage
Books, 1998), 5-6, cited in Cathy Rex, “The Massachusetts Bay Colony Seal, James Printer, and the Anxiety of
Colonial Identity,” American Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2011): 65.
40
A Letter from a Member of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to an Inhabitant of the City
of London, Giving an Account of the Late Address from the Said Society to the Queen ([London?]:[n.p.], [1711?]), 2-
3.
41
Humphreys, Historical Account, 21.
42
Account of the Propagation of the Gospel, 4.
43
Thomas Thompson, An Account of Two Missionary Voyages by the Appointment of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The One to New Jersey in North America, the Other from America to
the Coast of Guiney (London: Benjamin Dod, 1758).

56
the underlying question of whether Native Americans and enslaved Africans should be

“Christianised” and then “civilised,” or “civilised” and then “Christianised.”44 The society also

tended to emphasise its mission to the heathen when seeking charitable donations and in other

forms of publicity. Its seal, for example, depicted a group of dark-skinned, bald, and naked non-

Europeans, with the words “Transiens Adjuva Nos” (“come over and help us”).45 Yet the focus

of the scene is not the population on the shore, but rather the disproportionately large, Bible-

wielding clergyman on the prow of the boat. The message was clear: the presence of an Anglican

ministry would dispel all forms of darkness, irreligion, and savagery (Fig. 2). The missionaries’

task was not to convert any specific population, but rather to build an established church in

places where it was not properly supported by the state.

44
Frederick Cornwallis, SPG Sermon (1756), 18-19.
45
Thompson, Into All Lands, 19. “Come over and help us” is from Acts 16, 9. The same words are used on the
famous seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for which see Rex, “Massachusetts Bay Colony Seal.”

57
Fig. 2: Seal of the SPG (1706)

An Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
(London: J. Downing, 1706), frontispiece.

58
The Anglican Great Awakening in New England

With the considerable financial support provided by the SPG, Anglicanism expanded rapidly in

New England in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Anglican expansion encroached on

the long-standing dominance enjoyed by New England’s Congregationalist and Presbyterian

churches, setting the stage for the denunciation of the SPG as an agent of imperial authority by

the missionaries’ denominational competitors. Yet Anglican expansion involved more than the

imposition of foreign missionaries by the distant and authoritarian SPG, as the society’s rivals

would have it. New England Anglicanism grew in response to local demand.46 In practice, much

of the society’s role consisted of funding and coordinating local activities. Missions were opened

in response to petitions from individual congregations, who frequently supplied their own

candidate for ordination. New England Anglicanism was not simply a clone of the metropolitan

religion, exported to the colonial periphery by a metropolitan missionary society. Rather, it

developed its own peculiar, local character.

There was virtually no settled Anglican presence in New England prior to the 1680s. As

part of the centralising and authoritarian imperial policy pursued by Charles II and James II,

Anglicanism was pushed aggressively by imperial officials such as Edward Randolph, Joseph

Dudley, and Edmund Andros. The revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684

and the creation of the Dominion of New England in 1686 provided the conditions for the

creation of King’s Chapel in Boston, the first Church of England parish in the region. 47 The

revolution of 1688-89 and the demise of the Dominion of New England checked this policy of

46
Jeremy Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England: The Church of England in British North America, c. 1680-
c. 1770,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 20 (2010): 85-112.
47
Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 107-15.

59
royal support for the colonial Church of England.48 Thereafter, Boston’s fledgling Anglican

congregations were sustained by Atlantic networks of British merchants.49 New England

Anglicanism found an aggressively high church, anti-Puritan polemicist in the Boston-born

bookseller John Checkley.50 Checkley was accused of Jacobitism and prosecuted for libel in

1724 for publishing Anglican and non-juring polemic. He asserted in his defence that the Church

of England was the established church in New England, something that his opponents vigorously

denied.51

As the scale of the SPG’s activities in America expanded, its focus increasingly shifted

away from the southern colonies and towards the northern colonies, and its presence in New

England expanded dramatically. In 1720, the SPG had thirty missionaries in America, of whom

just four were stationed in New England, in addition to eighteen in the Mid-Atlantic colonies and

eight in the southern colonies. The number of missionaries in New England jumped to thirteen

by 1730 and twenty by 1740. The SPG’s activities in the Mid-Atlantic colonies also expanded

significantly while its presence in the southern colonies stagnated over the same period. As the

century progressed, the society’s attentions continued to shift away from the southern colonies

and towards New England and the Mid-Atlantic (Fig. 3). The SPG’s expansion was concentrated

on the strip of coast between New Haven and New York, in Connecticut back towns, and around

the city of Boston (Figs. 4 & 5.)

48
Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 163-69.
49
Ross Newton, “‘Good and Kind Benefactors’: British Logwood Merchants and Boston’s Christ Church,” Early
American Studies 11, no. 1 (2013): 15-36.
50
Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 115-23.
51
Thomas C. Reeves, “John Checkley and the Emergence of the Episcopal Church in New England,” Historical
Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 34, no. 4 (1965): 353, 356-57.

60
 Fig. 3: SPG missionaries by region, 1719-75
Source: SPG Sermons (1719-75)
50

45

40

35

30

61
25

20

15

10

0
Year 1720 1722 1924 1726 1728 1730 1732 1734 1736 1738 1740 1742 1744 1746 1748 1750 1752 1754 1756 1758 1760 1762 1764 1766 1768 1770 1772 1774

Newfoundland and Nova Scotia New England Mid-Atlantic North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia Caribbean
Fig. 4: SPG missions in 1722. Source: SPG Sermon (1722)

Fig. 5: SPG missions in 1763. Source: SPG Sermon (1763)

62
 A watershed for New England Anglicanism came in 1722 with the so-called “Yale

apostasy.” At the Yale commencement ceremony, four Congregationalist ministers – Samuel

Johnson, Timothy Cutler, Daniel Browne, and James Wetmore – publicly declared their

conversion to Anglicanism. Soon after, they sailed for England to receive ordination by a bishop.

The group had become convinced of the need for ordination after reading a shipment of English

books. The scale of the apostasy, its public nature, and the fact that it occurred in the

Congregationalist stronghold of Yale caused New England’s religious establishment great

alarm.52

Congregationalist converts drove Anglican growth in the region throughout the following

decades, shaping its distinctive culture and identity. Of 63 missionaries operating in New

England between 1719 and 1783, at least 29 were converts from New England’s

Congregationalist churches. This number includes at least 13 missionaries who were formerly

Congregationalist ministers. These ministers often converted along with their congregations, as

one convert – the missionary John Wiswall – later recalled. Not only did Congregationalist

converts comprise almost half of the New England missionaries, they were also frequently

assigned by the SPG to other colonies. Of 80 missionaries operating in New York and New

Jersey in the same period, at least 15 were former New England Congregationalists.53

These converts departed from New England’s Puritan traditions in important ways, but

they were also a product of those traditions. Anglicanism in New England took on a fiercely high

church, anti-Puritan character, exemplified by the bookseller John Checkley. At the same time,

52
Donald F. M. Gerardi, “Samuel Johnson and the Yale ‘Apostasy’ of 1722: The Challenge of Anglican
Sacramentalism to the New England Way,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 47, no. 2
(1978): 153-75.
53
This analysis is based on the list of SPG missionaries contained in the SPG’s printed annual reports, and in the
biographical information available in James Bell’s dictionary of the colonial Church of England clergy, available at
www.jamesbbell.com; National Archives, AO13/82, ff. 166-169: Memorial of J Wiswall, King’s County NS,
November 19 1783.

63
as subsequent chapters will demonstrate, it retained many characteristics of the converts’ Puritan

background, including a penchant for revivalism and a tradition of celebrating the holiness of

suffering and martyrdom.

The peculiar character of the SPG missionaries was reinforced by their ties to the

Episcopal Church of Scotland. Following the “Glorious Revolution,” Presbyterianism was

established in Scotland and the Episcopalian clergy were ejected from their livings. Legislation

was passed preventing them from holding livings in England. Many of the ejected ministers

emigrated – some to Ireland, some to America – and Scottish Episcopalians continued to

emigrate throughout the eighteenth century.54 There is evidence to suggest that many found

livings in the colonial Church of England and constituted a significant influence on colonial

Anglicanism. Most Scottish emigrants went to Virginia or Maryland, a route facilitated by

Scottish involvement in the tobacco trade. In 1710, 44% of the university-educated Anglican

clergy in the Chesapeake were educated in Scotland; this figure remained as high as 36% in

1770.55 In the 1690s, the Bishop of London’s Commissary in Virginia – the Scottish-born James

Blair – was accused by Governor Edmund Andros of having “filled the Church and the College

with Scotchmen.”56

Scottish Episcopalians also constituted a significant presence in the northern colonies.

Between 1719 and 1783, there were at least 17 Scottish-born missionaries operating in the New

54
For the wider context of Scottish migration to America, see Thomas C. Smout, Ned Landsman, and Thomas M.
Devine, “Scottish Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Europeans on the Move: Studies on
European Migration, 1500-1800, eds. Nicholas P. Canny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 76-112; Ned Landsman,
“Nation, Migration, and the Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600-1800,” American
Historical Review 104, no. 2 (1999): 463-75.
55
James McLachlan, “Education,” in Scotland and the Americas, 1600 to 1800 (Providence, RI: John Carter Brown
Library, 1995), 66-67.
56
Edward Carpenter, Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury His Life and Times (London: SPCK, 1948), 353.

64
England and Mid-Atlantic colonies.57 The number is probably much higher if the children of

ejected ministers and other Scottish emigrants are taken into account. The future loyalist Charles

Inglis, for example, was the son of an ejected minister who emigrated from Scotland to Ireland.58

Another missionary, James Honyman of Rhode Island, was also the son of an ejected minister.59

The SPG actively sought to provide livings to the ejected ministers, many of whom were

faced with destitution. The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison, the Bishop of London

Henry Compton, and the Archbishop of Dublin William King were all active in raising funds to

support the ejected clergy.60 In 1703, the SPG received a testimonial for George Macqueen, who

had expected “to be settled in a good Living” in Edinburgh but was driven from his country by

“the Rage of the Presbyterian Party.”61 Later that year, the society discussed the idea of sending

one of the deprived Scottish bishops to America to be installed in a new colonial episcopate.62

The nature of the Scottish influence on the colonial Church of England is complex and

seriously under-researched. Many of these Scottish immigrants were inclined to Jacobitism, and

they could sometimes be found resisting the efforts made by the English bishops to assert their

authority in America.63 At the same time, the Scottish clergy, who had seen their church

57
For the source of these figures, see fn. 53 above.
58
John Wolfe Lydekker, The Life and Letters of Charles Inglis: His Ministry in America and Consecration as First
Colonial Bishop, from 1759 to 1787 (London: SPCK, 1936), 1-2.
59
David Parrish, “Jacobitism and the British Atlantic World in the Age of Anne” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow,
2013), 240-79, 100.
60
Carpenter, Thomas Tenison, 386-400; Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop: Being the Life of Henry
Compton, 1632-1713, Bishop of London (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956), 301-21; John Skinner, An
Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, from the First Appearance of Christianity in that Kingdom, to the Present Time.
With Remarks on the Most Important Occurrences. In a Series of Letters to a Friend (London: T. Evans & R. N.
Cheyne, 1788), 601-602.
61
USPG A1 n. 47: John Macqueen to SPG, Dover, Jan 16 1703 (new style).
62
USPG A1 n. 65: Philip Stubbs to SPG, Wadham College Oxford, Apr 14 1703.
63
Parrish, “Jacobitism and the British Atlantic World,” 99-114, 221; Ned C. Landsman, “British Union and
American Revolution: Imperial Authority and the Multinational State,” in The American Revolution Reborn, eds.
Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming), 117, 124. I
am grateful to Prof. Landsman for sharing this article and allowing me to cite it before publication.

65
overthrown by Presbyterians, were often particularly hostile to American Dissenters. Memories

of the persecution of Scottish Episcopalians continued to shape the identity of the SPG

missionaries.64

The continued expansion of Anglicanism in New England in the 1730s and 1740s must

also be understood within the context of the evangelical “First Great Awakening.” For

sympathetic observers, these decades witnessed an outpouring of divine grace following a period

of religious and moral decline, boosted by the activities of itinerant revivalist preachers such as

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. For its critics, however, the self-proclaimed

revivalists were dangerous and disorderly “enthusiasts.”65 Some historians have doubted whether

such loaded terms as “awakening” and “revival” can be used to explain historical change.66

Nevertheless, the notion of an evangelical revival can be used in a meaningful way to describe

new forms of religiosity, centred on the laity rather than the clergy and the individual rather than

the church. These emerged among migratory populations where established, parish-based forms

of church authority were weak or disrupted.67

The missionaries themselves saw Anglican growth in New England as a reaction against

the Great Awakening. The missionaries deplored the disorder and enthusiasm of evangelical

“New Lights,” revivalists, and other itinerant preachers. Their reports of evangelical enthusiasm

gathered pace after 1741 in response to George Whitefield’s New England preaching tours.

These accounts described the “strange Effects,” “dismal Out-cries,” and “surprizing

64
In addition, Brendan McConville has suggested that one of the functions of the SPG was to ship Jacobite
sympathisers out of Britain to America, where they might do good work. Personal communication.
65
Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2007).
66
Jon Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction,” Journal of
American History 69, no. 2 (1982): 305-325.
67
W. Reginald Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

66
Convulsions” produced by enthusiastic preaching. Samuel Johnson lamented that “Taylors,

Shoemakers, and other Mechanics, and even Women, Boys and Girls” had begun preaching.

Another missionary added, “even the ignorant Negroes and Indians have set up preaching and

praying by the Spirit.” The missionaries’ letters all told the same story: in response to “the

Tempest of Enthusiasm,” great numbers of Dissenters “repair to our Communion, as the best

Refuge from those wild Principles and Practices.” According to their favourite metaphor, the

Church of England was an “ark” of order and stability.68

If Anglican growth in New England was partly a reaction against evangelical enthusiasm,

it was also a beneficiary of the same broader social and political processes that produced the

Great Awakening. These included demographic change, increasingly close ties between England

and its colonies, and the weakening of settled church authority.69 Anglican expansion also

entailed social diversification as it spread beyond the urban elite of office-holders and wealthy

merchants to whom it had been confined in the seventeenth century. 70 From the perspective of

New England Dissenters, Anglican growth in the region was part of these disruptive trends.

The SPG missionaries adopted many of the irregular proselytising techniques associated

with the Great Awakening. Most notably, they adopted the practice of itinerant preaching, a

characteristic feature of the evangelical revival.71 While Anglicans in England condemned the

practice, the SPG employed many itinerant missionaries in America. Even the stationed

missionaries engaged in extensive itineracy within their parishes. They were often invited to

68
Henry Stebbing, SPG Sermon (1742), 42; Matthias Mawson, SPG Sermon (1743), 40-2; John Thomas, SPG
Sermon (1747); Richard Trevor, SPG Sermon (1750), 41.
69
Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” 85-112.
70
Bruce E. Steiner, “New England Anglicanism: A Genteel Faith?,” William and Mary Quarterly, 27, 1 (1970):
122-35.
71
Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994); Deryk W. Lovegrove, Established Church, Sectarian People:
Itinerancy and the Transformation of English Dissent, 1780-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

67
preach by the inhabitants of neighbouring towns. In 1732, the Boston minister Timothy Cutler,

one of the Yale apostates, preached at a town fourteen miles away “at the Desire of some of the

Inhabitants.” Ebenezer Punderson preached at a nearby town after receiving “a very importunate

Letter from the Heads of 12 Families.” The shortage of church buildings was another cause of

irregularity. In 1722, James Honyman preached “to the greatest Number of People he ever had

together since he came to America… no House being able to hold them, he was obliged to

preach in the Fields.” In 1733, Ebenezer Miller reported visiting a town seventeen miles away,

where he “a Preached in a Private House, where he had as large an Auditory as the House could

well contain.”72 The Congregationalist minister Noah Hobart complained, “the first Itinerants I

ever knew were Missionaries from the Society for propagating the Gospel.”73

The reports of Anglican growth that were circulated in the SPG’s printed reports also had

a decidedly revivalist quality. Frank Lambert has argued that the Great Awakening was a self-

realising fiction, produced as the circulation of news around transatlantic networks linked a

series of discreet, local religious events into a self-conscious international revival.74 The SPG’s

annual reports functioned in a similar way. The missionaries sent their letters and notitia

parochialis to the society’s secretary in London, where they were collated into an annual report,

and commentary was added on the overall direction and meaning of the missionaries’ activities.

In 1744, the report declared, “the Letters from this Country [New England] are filled with

Accounts of large Accessions of new Members to the Church, and with Petitions for new

72
George Berkeley, SPG Sermon (1732), 55; John Lynch, SPG Sermon (1736), 38; John Waugh, SPG Sermon
(1723), 51; Richard Smalbroke, SPG Sermon (1733), 61.
73
Noah Hobart, A Serious Address to the Members of the Episcopal Separation in New-England. Occasioned by Mr.
Wetmore’s Vindication of the Professors of the Church of England in Connecticut (Boston: J. Bushell and J. Green,
1748), 72.
74
Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

68
Missionaries.”75 Again in 1747, “the Letters from this Province continue to bring very

satisfactory Accounts of the Progress of true Christianity therein.”76 In turn, the reports were

published, shipped back to the missionaries in America, and circulated there. They sometimes

provoked criticism from rival denominations, who accused the missionaries of exaggerating their

achievements.77 The publication and circulation of the missionary reports was an important

source for a collective identity among the SPG missionaries and a shared awareness of an

empire-wide project of Anglican expansion and revival.

The SPG and the New England Churches: Denominational Competition or Religious Warfare?

Throughout the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the SPG missionaries and the New

England Congregationalists and Presbyterians existed in a state of uneasy tension. This enmity is

most evident in the controversial theological pamphlets that the two sides continually launched at

one another. From the perspective of the New England churches, the expansion of the Church of

England in the region was a cause for alarm. Its ministers practiced lax morality, preached quasi-

popish theology, and demanded obedience to the English ecclesiastical hierarchy. Their activities

were profoundly disruptive, disregarding pre-existing church authorities and drawing support

from marginal social groups. From the perspective of the SPG missionaries, conversely, the New

England Congregationalists and Presbyterians were Protestant Dissenters who had assumed the

status of an established church. They preached a gloomy Puritan morality but were most likely

motivated by hypocrisy and ambition.

75
Philip Bearcroft, SPG Sermon (1744), 43.
76
John Thomas, SPG Sermon (1747), 38.
77
Lambeth Palace Library [henceforth LPL], MS1123/3 n. 288: Henry Caner to Thomas Secker, December 23 1762.

69
 These published materials suggest a state of unceasing and irreconcilable conflict.

Accordingly, Bridenbaugh and Bell both point to these pamphlet debates as proof of an ongoing

“war of religion” between church and dissent in America. Yet as Jeremy Gregory reminds us,

“denominational rivalry and competition (of which there was plenty) are not the same as

religious conflict or war.”78 The ongoing pamphlet battles must be set against the day-to-day

experience of mutual toleration and coexistence. Moreover, the practice of theological

controversy cannot be taken as evidence of an outright rejection of religious pluralism.

Theological controversy needs to be seen in the context of a tense but ultimately workable model

of early-modern toleration, in which religious difference was despicable, religious coercion

could be a form of charity, and yet some degree of coexistence remained an unavoidable

necessity.79

While a number of the missionaries published controversial theological pamphlets, the

missionaries’ letters to the society provide a less conflict-ridden picture of denominational

relations. One missionary, Matthew Graves at New London in Connecticut, was especially proud

of his good relations with his Dissenting parishioners. He reported that the “Presbyterians and

New Lights, attend him regularly… when they have no Meeting.” On one occasion, “in the

Absence of a neighbouring Dissenting Teacher, [he] was desired to do Duty in the Meeting-

House.”80 Graves wrote to the society on another occasion, explaining, “in many Houses &c,

where I officiate, it frequently happens, that not one of the Church of England is present.” In this

situation, no one in his audience was able to make the responses required by the unfamiliar

78
Gregory, “Refashioning Puritan New England,” 92.
79
Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500-1700 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006); Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of
Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007).
80
Edmund Keene, SPG Sermon (1757), 44; Richard Terrick, SPG Sermon (1764), 67-8.

70
Anglican liturgy. Graves therefore asked if he might “personate Ministers & Hearers” by

performing both sides of the call and response himself.81 Graves preaching to an audience

comprised entirely of Dissenters represents an extreme example of missionary evangelisation,

but the presence of Dissenters at Anglican worship seems to have been the norm, not the

exception. Cutler reported that on Christmas Day his church “was thronged among others by

some Hundreds of Dissenters.”82 These examples suggest a more nuanced picture of

denominational pluralism than the “war of religion” discerned by Bridenbaugh and Bell. Lines of

confessionalisation were not clearly drawn, and interested hearers moved with ease among the

offerings provided by different churches, whether motivated by curiosity, good will, scepticism,

a spiritual duty to exercise informed choice, or the lack of a more desirable alternative.

The missionaries’ reports of Dissenting hearers at Anglican worship are one aspect of a

conciliatory discourse that pervades the missionaries’ letters, emphasising mutual charity and

Christian friendship. It is clear that this discourse was partially fictitious. Firstly, it was a

pragmatic strategy for winning converts. As Charles Inglis explained in 1761, “the Christian

Spirit and good Policy, I think, dictate Mildness to [the Dissenters]… My Churches are

accordingly crowded with them.”83 Similarly, Peter Bours reported, “his Church is in a peaceable

and increasing State, a good Harmony continuing to subsist between that and the Dissenters.”84

Secondly, this discourse often became a tactical weapon that allowed the missionaries to claim

moral authority over Dissenters. Samuel Fayerweather described how, surrounded by Dissenters

“expressing great Bitterness against the Church of England… he finds it best to be mild and

81
USPG B23 n. 144: Matthew Graves, April 20 1765; LPL MS1124/3 ff. 68-69: General Meeting of the SPG, July
19 1765.
82
Matthew Hutton, SPG Sermon (1745), 40.
83
LPL MS1123/3 n. 234: Charles Inglis to Thomas Secker, June 21 1761.
84
William Ashburnham, SPG Sermon (1760), 41.

71
gentle, peaceable and forbearing.”85 These caveats aside, the missionaries’ professed respect for

Christian toleration ultimately served to contain denominational tensions within certain bounds.

Likewise, rhetorical aggression did not mean that the two sides entirely rejected the

legitimacy of one another’s existence. Theological controversy was a tool of evangelisation,

designed to secure the faithful and reclaim apostates. It was therefore a condition of religious

coexistence. In the 1730s, the Yale apostate Samuel Johnson published a series of letters seeking

to reclaim his “Dissenting Parishioners.” In response, the Congregationalist minister John

Graham objected that, in New England, it was Samuel Johnson who was the Dissenter. 86 In a

1746 ordination sermon, Noah Hobart sought to stem the trickle of Congregationalist ministers

who left the New England churches by “turning missionary.” Hobart’s sermon condemned

Anglican doctrine and urged his hearers against apostasy, provoking James Wetmore, another

Yale apostate, to condemn Hobart’s “wicked Calumny.”87 The pamphlets’ heated language was a

rhetorical device and an indication of the high stakes involved.

Accordingly, these pamphlet controversies were carried out at various levels of

sophistication. At one extreme stood erudite theological disputes such as Graham’s 128-page

reply to Johnson, a point-by-point denunciation of Church of England theology in its entirety.88

At the other stood more ephemeral broadsides, ballads, poems, and satire, including material

85
John Egerton, SPG Sermon (1763), 41-42.
86
[Samuel Johnson], A Letter from a Minister of the Church of England to his Dissenting Parishioners (New York:
John Peter Zenger, 1733); [John Graham], Some Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet Entitled A Letter from a Minister of
the Church of England, to his Dissenting Parishoners ([Boston]:n.p., 1733); Johnson, Second Letter; [John
Graham], Some Remarks upon a Second Letter from the Church of England Minister to his Dissenting Parishioners
(Boston: D. Henchman, 1736); [Samuel Johnson], A Third Letter from a Minister of the Church of England to the
Dissenters. Containing some Observations on Mr. J. G.’s Remarks on the Second (Boston: n.p., 1737).
87
Noah Hobart, Ministers of the Gospel Considered as Fellow-Labourers. A Sermon Delivered at the Ordination of
the Reverend Mr. Noah Welles (Boston: D. Henchman, 1747), 20-26; James Wetmore, A Vindication of the
Professors of the Church of England in Connecticut. Against the Invectives contained in a Sermon preached at
Stanford by Mr. Noah Hobart (Boston: Rogers and Fowle, 1747), 31.
88
Graham, Some Remarks upon a Second Letter.

72
circulated in manuscript form. Graham denounced “those scurrilous Libels and Pamphlets”

printed by the missionaries, “besides other Rhymes more privately handed about.” Johnson

retorted that the Congregationalists had disseminated their own “barbarous Rhymes,” pointing to

a broadside that mocked Congregationalist apostates who joined the SPG. The broadside, “An

Excellent New Ballad to the Tune of, To all you Ladies now at Land,” sang, “A Gown will all

your Evils cure, / With a Fa, la, la, la, la.”89 This kind of satirical theology adopted a

disrespectful or flippant tone because it was supposed to be effective and persuasive.

Some degree of theological debate was necessary to legitimise religious difference. Both

sides remained attached to the ideal of religious unity. They agreed that schism was a sin. When

Hobart sought to dissuade his hearers from “contracting the awful Guilt of Schism,” Wetmore

retorted that the Congregationalists belonged to “the Mystical Body of Christ only as

Excrescences or Tumors in the Body natural.”90 Because schism was understood as causeless

separation, debates about the guilt of schism could not be carried on without discussing the

theological points of contention. Particular attention focused on the motive of converts.

Congregationalists suggested that the apostates who “turned missionary” were attracted by the

SPG salary.91 In response, the missionaries insisted that they suffered for their faith, pointing to

the dangerous and expensive voyage to England they made to receive ordination. One such

apostate, John Beach, insisted, “I have by this Change gained perfect Satisfaction in my own

Conscience.”92 When Congregationalists argued that there was nothing to stop Anglicans

89
Graham, Some Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet, 14; Johnson, Second Letter, 17; The Catholic Remedy (“America”
[i.e. Boston?]: n.p., 1732). For another example, see [Noah Welles], The Real Advantages which Ministers and
People may Enjoy Especially in the Colonies, by Conforming to the Church of England ([Boston?]: n.p., 1762).
90
Hobart, Ministers of the Gospel, 25; Wetmore, Vindication, 29.
91
Welles, Real Advantages, 35.
92
John Beach, A Calm and Dispassionate Vindication of the Professors of the Church of England, against the
Abusive Misrepresentations and Salacious Argumentations of Mr. Noah Hobart (Boston: J. Draper, 1749), 42.

73
attending the existing New England churches, the missionaries explained why those forms of

worship were unconscionable. Johnson wrote to Graham, “our Defection was not causeless… I

have abundantly proved… that you have grievously erred in casting off the original

Government” of the Church of England.93 Theological controversy was necessary to justify

religious division, even as it ended up exacerbating confessional tensions.

The rhetoric involved in theological controversy often became heated. It is easy to see

why Hobart was offended by the suggestion that the Congregationalists were a tumour on the

body of Christ, or why Johnson was offended by songs that mocked his religious conversion.

This was violent rhetoric, but it was not real violence. The idea of suffering, persecution, and

martyrdom was an important part of the missionaries’ theologico-political imagination, but this

does not mean that they were being persecuted; nor were they persecuting their opponents. The

fact that New England Anglicans and Dissenters continually argued with one another in this way

does not indicate an SPG-led “Anglican invasion” of America; rather, it reveals just how much

the two sides had in common with one another.

“The Maintenance of an Orthodox Clergy”: The Mayhew-Apthorp Controversy

These disputes intensified dramatically in 1763, when the Congregationalist minister Jonathan

Mayhew declared that the SPG should not have sent missionaries to New England in the first

place. The incident placed a brake on the SPG’s activities in New England and proved a major

influence on the subsequent character of the missionaries’ loyalism. The opening of a new SPG

93
Johnson, Second Letter, 44.

74
mission in Cambridge, Massachusetts, precipitated Mayhew’s denunciation of the SPG. The

subsequent debate between Mayhew and the new missionary, the wealthy Bostonian East

Apthorp, heralded a significant rhetorical escalation of the long-standing tensions between the

SPG missionaries and the New England churches. The issue immediately became entangled with

a hitherto separate but no less controversial topic, the proposed appointment of an American

bishop, which is examined in detail in the following chapter.94

The Mayhew-Apthorp controversy illustrates some of the imperial frictions generated by

the British Empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism. The conflict boiled down a debate about whether or

not the Church of England was established in New England. The two sides disagreed on this

question in a fundamental way. Their disagreement was facilitated by the fact that the

constitutional authority of the Church of England in America was genuinely ambiguous.95

However, the Mayhew-Apthorp controversy should not be taken as evidence that the American

Revolution originated in a reaction against an expanding imperial Church of England. This is the

view of the controversy taken by Bridenbaugh and Bell. They each in different ways accept

Mayhew’s contention that the SPG was an agent of imperial authority, and see Mayhew’s

condemnation of the SPG as part of a wider assertion of colonial independence from the

intrusions of the imperial state.96 This view exaggerates the support the missionaries received

from England and misrepresents the fundamentally local character of the conflict. The

controversy is best understood, not as a clash between centre and periphery, but rather as one of

a series of local skirmishes facilitated by the British Empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism.

94
Charles W. Akers, Called Unto Liberty: A Life of Jonathan Mayhew, 1720-1766 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1964), 166-97.
95
Ned Landsman, “The Episcopate, the British Union, and the Failure of Religious Settlement in Colonial British
America,” in Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (eds.), The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and
Intolerance in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 77-88.
96
Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, 207-29; and Bell, War of Religion, 67-80.

75
 Earlier theological controversies had encompassed debates about the proper missionary

role of the SPG, which was accused of causing schism by its activities in New England. Graham

denied that the English bishops had authority to send ministers there. 97 Hobart argued that the

SPG missionaries ought to be sent to the neighbouring Indians or to the irreligious southern and

Caribbean colonies, where they were truly needed. While “the Society have been so kind as to

erect eight Missions” in Connecticut, Hobart wrote, “the numerous Nations of Indians that

border on the British Plantations, are… wholly left to perish in heathenish Darkness and

Idolatry.”98 The Congregationalist minister Noah Welles, meanwhile, thought the SPG’s funds

would be better applied for the relief of starving Anglican clergy in Old England. 99 Beach

retorted that the SPG was chartered to remedy “the great Want of Ministers among his Majesty’s

Subjects in the Plantations who were already Christians.” He denied that the missionaries were

actively proselytising members of the New England churches: rather, they were only tending to

sincere consciences. He agreed it was “a greater Good to convert one Infidel to Christianity, than

an hundred Dissenters to the Church,” but maintained that no “great success” could be expected

among the Indians “until they are willing to live in a civil manner.” He repeated the consensus

that the Indians “must become men, before they will be Christians.”100

The usual published theological controversies were temporarily halted by the Seven

Years’ War. The war had a powerful anti-Catholic dimension. On the outbreak of war the SPG

97
Graham, Some Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet, 34.
98
Hobart, Serious Address, 53, 129-30, 132.
99
Welles, Real Advantages, 34.
100
Beach, Calm and Dispassionate Vindication, 32; John Beach, A Continuation of the Calm and Dispassionate
Vindication of the Professors of the Church of England: Against the Abusive Misrepresentations and Fallacious
Argumentations of Mr. Noah Hobart (Boston: D. Fowles, 1751), 68, 71; John Beach, A Friendly Expostulation, with
all Persons Concern’d in Publishing a Late Pamphlet, Entitled, The Real Advantages which Ministers and People
may Enjoy, Especially in the Colonies, by Conforming to the Church of England (New York: John Holt, 1763), 33-
34.

76
had instructed its missionaries to “promote Brotherly Love… particularly among all Protestant

Inhabitants” and to pray for “our commercial, free, and Protestant Colonies.”101 They took these

instructions seriously. The inhabitants of York County in Pennsylvania praised their missionary,

Thomas Barton, whose “Zeal and Warmth in Behalf of Liberty and Protestantism” endeared him

to Anglicans and Dissenters alike. Barton himself reported that, “tho’ his Churches are Churches

Militant indeed, subject to Dangers and Trials of the most alarming kind, yet he has the Pleasure

every Sunday to see the People crowding to them with their Muskets on their Shoulders,

declaring that they will die Protestants and Freemen, sooner than live Idolaters and Slaves.”102

The SPG recognised that its represenatives played a crucial political role. It instructed them to

preach obedience to government and to make particular efforts to win the friendship of potential

Indian allies by actively proselytising.103

The relationship between the SPG missionaries and the New England churches began to

deteriorate following the end of the war. Mayhew’s denunciation of the SPG was precipitated by

the controversial opening of a new mission in the Puritan heartland of Cambridge, Massachusetts

in 1763. The English bishops who directed the society understood that new missions were a

potential cause of conflict, and only opened them in response to a petition from the inhabitants.

In 1755, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker approved one such petition on the

grounds that the mission would “provide divine service for such as have been long separated” on

“a principle of conscience,” concluding, “we shall not apply the society’s money to produce a

separation.”104 The missionaries complained that the bishops were excessively cautious about

101
Frederick Cornwallis, SPG Sermon (1756), 43-9.
102
Edmund Keene, SPG Sermon (1757), 54-5.
103
Ibid., 43-49 (“Instructions from the Society, for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to their
Missionaries in North America”).
104
LPL MS1123/2 n. 100: Thomas Secker to Timothy Cutler, September 15 1755.

77
opening new missions.105 The bishops were also careful to moderate the society’s rhetoric,

recognising, “nothing must on any account be said, which may be applied to strengthen such

Imputations upon us, as have been lately published in New England.” Discussing a publication

soliciting charitable donations, they agreed, “bringing over others to our Church… ought surely

to be rather incidentally hinted at, as a desirable & not unlikely Consequence, than pointed out as

the principal Design; which in Truth it is not.”106 When petitioned by Cambridge in 1759, the

bishops recognised that the mission’s proximity to Harvard University “might probably furnish a

Handle for more than ordinary Clamour.” Nevertheless, they were eager to secure the interest

and influence of the proposed missionary, East Apthorp, the son of a wealthy Boston

merchant.107 The society approved the mission, and it opened in October 1761. Apthorp reported

that he was treated “with great Respect & Decency” by the local population.108

By the summer of 1763 the mission was attracting familiar accusations about the

society’s misplaced priorities, of which Mayhew’s Observations was the most influential.

Pointing to the SPG’s name, charter, and seal, Mayhew contended that the society ought to spend

its money proselytising the heathen rather than seeking to “episcopize” New England. It had

“defrauded” both its donors and “the People who were the proper Objects of their Charity,”

namely, “the Southern colonies upon the continent, the Indians bordering upon us, the West

India islands, and the many thousands of Negro slaves in them,” all of whose “names were made

use of most pathetically, to excite our compassion.” Had the society used the “money which they

have sunk in New-England” to “civilize and christianize” the Indians, not only would their souls

105
USPG B2 n. 85: Samuel Johnson, January 27 1763.
106
LPL MS1123/1 n. 54: Thomas Secker to Thomas Herring, January 22 1752.
107
LPL MS1123/2 n. 145: Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, July 19 1759.
108
LPL MS1123/2 n.152: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, October 20 1759.

78
be saved, but they would also be secured as diplomatic, military, and trading partners. 109 Apthorp

defended the society by repeating that its “primary intention” was “to maintain a public Religion

in the English Colonies, among the natural subjects of Great-Britain”; proselytising the heathen

was “secondary.”110 What began as a rather obscure debate about the terms of the SPG’s

founding charter quickly intensified into a wide-ranging and increasingly bitter published

controversy over the proper role of the Anglican church in New England.111

What was at stake in this controversy was the question of whether the Church of England

was “established” in New England. Both sides used this term imprecisely. Apthorp argued that

the SPG’s role was to provide for “the support of the Church of England… among its own

members in America, as the best mode of Christianity and allied to the English Government.”

Sometimes, he emphasised the need for a “public religion” in America; at other times, he

emphasised the need to provide for the “tender consciences” of those New England Anglicans

who could not bring themselves to worship with the Congregationalist and Presbyterian

109
Mayhew, Observations, 20-22, 30, 107, 108, 110, 130, 156; Jonathan Mayhew, A Defence of the Observations on
the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Against an Anonymous
Pamphlet (Boston: R. & S. Draper, 1763), 141-42.
110
East Apthorp, Considerations on the Institution and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts (Boston: Green & Russell, Thomas & John Fleet, 1763), 10-11.
111
[John Aplin], Verses on Doctor Mayhew’s Book of Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Providence: William Goddard, 1763); [Arthur Browne] Remarks on
Dr. Mayhew's, Incidental Reflections, Relative to the Church of England, as Contained in his Observations on the
Charter, and Conduct of the Society (Portsmouth: D. Fowle, 1763); [Henry Caner?], A Candid Examination of Dr.
Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts. Interspers’d with a Few Brief Reflections upon some other of the Doctor’s Writings (Boston: Thomas & John
Fleet, 1763); [Caleb Fleming], The Claims of the Church of England Seriously Examined: in a Letter to the Author
of an Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: W. Nicholl, 1764); Jonathan Mayhew, Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, Entitled
An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Conduct and Charter of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts. Being a Second Defence of the Said Observations (Boston: R. & S. Draper, 1764);
[Thomas Secker], An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations, on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Boston: R. & S. Draper, 1764); East Apthorp, A Review of Dr.
Mayhew’s Remarks on the Answer to his Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: John Rivington, 1765).

79
churches.112 Mayhew seized on this contradiction, pointing out that if the New England

Anglicans required toleration, they could not also be an ecclesiastical establishment: “those of

the established religion in any country, cannot properly be said to need toleration therein. And

many, if not most of our episcopalians, triumph exceedingly in a presumption, that their church,

exclusive of all others, is established here; and consequently that, not they, but we, need

toleration.”113 This led Apthorp to respond with a discussion of the different meanings of the

word “toleration”: Mayhew was calling for “the word Toleration to be taken in its legal and

usual sense… [but] it was meant, to signify only, gentle treatment, which the verb, Tolerate,

often means.”114

The controversy reveals a fundamental disagreement over which form of religion, if any,

was established in New England.115 This disagreement was written into the imperial constitution

by the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland, which provided for two co-existing

established churches within Britain itself. Mayhew pointed out that the SPG did not send

missionaries to Scotland, nor would it tolerate the Scottish Society for Promoting Christian

Knowledge sending Presbyterian missionaries to the Anglican-majority colonies.116 In response,

the Boston minister Henry Caner appealed to the Act of Union, by which – he claimed – the

Church of England was established everywhere outside Scotland. On this basis, he asserted that

“all other his Majesty’s dominions (Scotland excepted) are made a part of the constitution of the

English nation.”117 The SPG’s activities in New England were controversial because the

112
Apthorp, Review of Dr Mayhew’s Remarks, 23-26.
113
Mayhew, Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, 42.
114
Apthorp, Review of Dr Mayhew’s Remarks, 29.
115
Landsman, “Episcopate,” 76-77.
116
Mayhew, Observations, 73; Mayhew, Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, 32.
117
Caner, Candid Examination, 22.

80
constitutional authority of the Church of England outside England was fundamentally contested

and ambiguous.

The conflict proved a serious setback for the SPG. It was a major factor in derailing

English support for the creation of an American bishop. It also led the English bishops to scale

back the opening of new missions in the region. Secker explained to Johnson, “I fear the world

will think we have settled too many missions in New England & New York,” informing him the

society had “resolved to be hereafter more sparing in the Admission of them.” 118 The

missionaries complained that the bishops had abandoned them. Caner replied to Secker, “if the

Society should be obliged to desert the Churches in New England Dr Mayhew’s malicious

slander and falsehood will have obtained its End.”119 The next year Apthorp resigned his post

and left for England. He wrote to Johnson that he was sorry “to find religion the subject of so

much controversy…Even my opinion of the conduct of our Society is not without some

hesitation; though I think they have done more real service to religion than by any other

application of their fund.”120

Conclusion

The missionaries were not the representatives of the British imperial state, even if they wanted to

be. They were a peculiar group. As the missionaries of the established church, their identities

was shaped by a continual tension between the ideal of the established, territorial church to

which they belonged, and their everyday experience as a religious minority. The fact that so

118
LPL MS1123/3 n. 325: Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, September 28 1763.
119
LPL MS1123/3 n. 331: Henry Caner to Thomas Secker, November 16 1763.
120
East Apthorp to Samuel Johnson, September 22 1763, in SJCW, 3:275-76.

81
many of them were converts from Congregationalism underscored their idiosyncratic and local

character. The Congregationalist ministers who “turned missionary” did not simply leave their

old identities behind, nor did they wholly assimilate into their new religious community. Like

many converts, they joined a new group only to immediately begin fashioning it into something

different.121 Their conflicts with their Dissenting rivals cannot be taken as evidence that the

entire American Revolution was a “war of religion” that placed American Anglicans on the side

of government and American Dissenters on the side of the patriot movement. Something

approximating this politicised confessional division did eventually prevail in New England,

where the SPG missionaries were overwhelmingly and fiercely loyalist. However, those sections

of the colonial Church of England that were most loyal to the British Empire were those that had

least in common with the metropolitan church.

If the conflicts and tensions prevailing between the SPG missionaries and the New

England Dissenters were fundamentally local in character, they were also a product of wider

constitutional ambiguities concerning the place of the Church of England in the British Empire.

The empire was united by submission to the British monarch, but not by membership of the

king’s church. As such, the SPG missionaries had a far more complex relationship with imperial

authority than the model posited by Bridenbaugh and Bell, which casts them as the frontline

troops of an “Anglican invasion” of New England. On the one hand, the missionaries were

confident that the Church of England – the national church and the king’s church – was or ought

to have been established throughout the British Empire. On the other hand, they were continually

frustrated and perplexed to find that the official political support to which they felt entitled was

not forthcoming. Their loyalism proceeded from this radicalising blend of disaffection and

121
Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998), 3-43. I owe this reference to James Laine (Macalester).

82
entitlement. Eventually, as the following chapter will show, their growing anger with the

government reached a breaking point over the issue of an American bishop.

83
 CHAPTER TWO

“The Fountain of all our Misery”:

The Bishop Campaign and the Growth of Anglican Disaffection, 1763-70

Introduction

In January 1766, at the height of the Stamp Act crisis, the Rhode Island missionary Marmaduke

Brown wrote to the SPG to propose a solution to the governments’ political problems. Brown

noted that “whilst this country in general was actuated by an intemperate zeal” in opposition to

the Stamp Act, “nothing of this spirit appeared in our congregation.” He lamented that the

Church of England, in its current position, was “little better than in a state of persecution.” As

such, they were in a truly dangerous situation. As a “small minority” it was impossible for them

“with the least degree of safety to oppose the sentiments of a majority.” This majority was

motivated by “frenzy or enthusiastic principles” and “liable to be turned on to the perpetration of

the most execrable acts.” He insisted that “a religious establishment” was “necessary to preserve

the peace & quiet” of the country, and expressed his wish “that the Government would pay more

attention to the welfare of the church of England in north America than it has hitherto done.” His

letter ended with a dire warning: it was “the opinion of many, who do not pretend to the spirit of

prophecy, that a disregard to this will be some time or other attended with consequences fatal &

pernicious.”1 For Marmaduke Brown and the other SPG missionaries, the outbreak of open

1
Rhodes House Library, USPG Papers [henceforth USPG], C.Am.9 n. 66: Marmaduke Brown [to SPG], January 2
1766.

84
rebellion the following decade was the entirely predictable consequence of the government’s

failure to support the Church of England in America.

For the SPG missionaries, the suffering, martyred character of the Church of England in

America was symbolised by the absence of an American bishop. Anglican expansion in the

empire had proceeded in an improvised, piecemeal fashion, and the structures and offices of the

church had never been exported in their entirety. Instead, a precedent emerged that placed

American Anglicans under the authority of the Bishop of London. The bishop’s spiritual and

administrative functions were not easily exercised across the Atlantic. Henry Compton, Bishop

of London from 1675 to 1713, delegated his administrative role to a “commissary” residing in

the colonies: a delegate acting in the bishop’s name.2 However, the commissary’s authority did

not encompass the bishop’s spiritual functions, such as the administration of confirmation and

ordination. The latter was a particular grievance to the American advocates of a bishop, as it

required prospective clergymen to make the lengthy, expensive, and potentially dangerous round

trip to England in order to be ordained, something they believed was limiting the growth of the

church in America.3

In the late 1760s the SPG missionaries began publishing in favour of the creation of an

American bishop, provoking public controversy. Opposition came from the same quarters that

were simultaneously mobilising against the Stamp Act. For its opponents, the prospect of

2
J. H. Bennett, “English Bishops and Imperial Jurisdiction, 1660-1725,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant
Episcopal Church 32, no. 3 (1963): 175-88.
3
Alfred Lyon Cross, The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1902); Frederick V. Mills, Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978); Stephen Taylor, “Whigs, Bishops and America: The Politics of Church Reform in Mid-
Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Journal 36, no. 2 (1993): 331-56; Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and
National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745-1795 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2000), 155-209; Robert G. Ingram, Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century:
Thomas Secker and the Church of England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 234-59; Kenneth R. Elliott, Anglican
Church Policy, Eighteenth Century Conflict, and the American Episcopate (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).

85
Parliament sending a bishop to America indicated the same tyrannical impulses that were also

manifested in the Stamp Act. John Adams, writing in 1815, recalled that “the apprehension of

Episcopacy, contributed 50 years ago, as much as any other cause” to mobilise popular

opposition to Parliament’s pretensions to tax and legislate for the colonies.4 Indeed, many of the

principal opponents of the bishop proposal also played leading roles in the patriot movement.

John Adams and Samuel Adams were both actively involved. The missionaries’ activities also

provoked efforts at political union and cooperation among the Dissenting clergy, many of whom

subsequently acted as influential advocates of the patriot cause.5 The same was true on the

loyalist side. The pro-bishop publishing campaign, led by the missionaries Charles Inglis,

Samuel Seabury, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler, carried over directly into a loyalist publishing

campaign in the 1770s. The peculiar character of the missionaries’ loyalism during the revolution

was substantially the product of their failure to obtain an American bishop in the 1760s.

The bishop controversy has generated an unusually large body of historiography, mostly

concerned with its relationship to the American Revolution.6 The most influential interpretation

is that advanced by Carl Bridenbaugh, who emphasised its importance in mobilising the patriot

movement and imbuing it with a sacred significance. Bridenbaugh was keen to celebrate the

American Revolution as a struggle not just for political but also for religious freedom. He largely

accepted the view that the bishop proposal constituted an “Anglican plot” to impose the Church

of England on the colonies, an interpretation drawn from the proposal’s contemporary

4
John Adams to Jedidiah Morse, December 2 1815, in The Work of John Adams, Second President of the United
States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown &
Company, 1850-56), 10:185-88.
5
James B. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
6
Frederick V. Mills, “The Colonial Anglican Episcopate: A Historiographical Review,” Anglican and Episcopal
History 61, no. 3 (1992): 325-44

86
opponents.7 This thesis has recently been restated by James Bell, whose focus is on the Anglican

advocates of the bishop and their insistence that a stronger colonial church would strengthen the

forces of order, authority, and hierarchy.8

One line of opposition to this thesis has come from scholars of colonial Anglicanism who

object to the credence Bridenbaugh gave to a genuine “Anglican plot” against religious liberty.

These scholars have shown that English and American churchmen were willing to create a

“purely spiritual” bishop in America who would not enjoy the wide-ranging political powers

exercised by bishops in England.9 They have also emphasised that the bishop’s advocates

constituted a small minority within the colonial church. The proposal was pushed by the SPG

missionaries in the northern colonies, but was met with indifference or even hostility by the far

larger number of churchmen in the southern colonies, who feared the disruption and potential

oppression that would come with any aggrandizement of the political and ecclesiastical

authorities.10 Finally, this scholarship has highlighted the theological questions that divided the

high church, pro-bishop northern Anglicans from the low church, anti-bishop southern

Anglicans. The latter celebrated an expansive role for the laity, while the former insisted on the

indispensable role played by the clergy. If there was a political program motivating the advocates

7
Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689-1775 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1962), 171-340.
8
James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008), 67-120.
9
Jack M. Sosin, “The Proposal in the Pre-Revolutionary Decade for Establishing Anglican Bishops in the
Colonies,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 13, no. 1 (1962): 76-84; Don R. Gerlach, “Champions of an American
Episcopate: Thomas Secker of Canterbury and Samuel Johnson of Connecticut,” Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church 41, no. 4 (1972): 381-414.; Peter M. Doll, “The Idea of the Primitive Church in High
Church Ecclesiology from Samuel Johnson to J. H. Hobart,” Anglican and Episcopal History 65, no. 1 (1996): 31;
Don R. Gerlach and George E. DeMille, Samuel Johnson of Stratford in New England (Athens, GA: Anglican
Parishes Association Publications, 2010), 155-85.
10
Frederick V. Mills, “The Internal Anglican Controversy Over an American Episcopate, 1763-1775,” Historical
Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 44, no. 3 (1975): 257-76; John Frederick Woolverton, Colonial
Anglicanism in North America (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 220-33.

87
of a bishop it was not a desire for a more centralised empire so much as a protest against the

increasingly pluralistic, modern, and commercial society they inhabited and the consequent

erosion of the clergy’s distinctive role.11 Altogether, the thrust of this scholarship is that colonial

Anglicans were less concerned with imperial politics than with obtaining whatever they believed

necessary for the spiritual life of their church. This is a negative argument, opposed to the

suggestion that the pro-bishop activists were imperial stooges.

Scholarship has done little to explore the significance of the bishop controversy for what

it reveals about the British Empire’s ecclesiastical constitution. Bridenbaugh and Bell cast the

Church of England as the imperial church: its expansion drove imperial centralisation but

eventually provoked a disintegrating backlash. Yet the government’s disinterest in creating an

American bishop surely demonstrates that the Church of England was not the imperial church,

however much some its members wanted it to be.12 The British monarch was the Supreme

Governor of the church, and the creation of a new bishopric therefore required an Act of

Parliament, but King-in-Parliament also governed a religiously diverse, far-flung empire in

which the interests of the king’s church were not always a political priority. For high churchmen

on both sides of the Atlantic, the church’s long-running failure to create a colonial bishop

revealed the costs and drawbacks of its established status.

The church’s leaders proposed the creation of a colonial bishop on many occasions but

failed to win the support of British politicians, who recognised its potential for destabilising

political controversy. The SPG lobbied for one in the early 1710s but the proposal came to

11
Donald F. M. Gerardi, “Samuel Johnson and the Yale ‘Apostasy’ of 1722: The Challenge of Anglican
Sacramentalism to the New England Way,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 47, no. 2
(1978): 153-75.
12
Ned Landsman, “The Episcopate, the British Union, and the Failure of Religious Settlement in Colonial British
America,” in The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America, eds. Chris Beneke and
Christopher S. Grenda (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 88-94.

88
nothing.13 In the early 1740s, the new Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock mobilised widespread

support for the project from the church’s ecclesiastical hierarchy. Sherlock was keenly aware of

the enormous administrative burden of governing the rapidly expanding colonial church.14 He

stopped appointing commissaries to administer the colonial church in his name. This was an

effort to bolster the case for a fully-fledged bishop, but had the immediate effect of exacerbating

the Americans’ practical difficulties.15 An important factor limiting the bishops’ willingness to

push the issue was fear of resurrecting divisions between high and low church parties within the

Church of England.16

The expansion and diversification of the British Empire during the Seven Years’ War

(1756-63) was a key context that revived the bishop controversy. The war exacerbated the

empire’s religious tensions and created the problems of government that precipitated the

American Revolution. The acquisition of Bengal from the Mughals and Quebec from the French

challenged an older ideal of the British Empire as “Protestant, commercial, maritime and free.”17

Imperial diversification brought increasingly authoritarian government, convincing British and

American radicals of a conspiracy against religious and civil liberty. 18 Parliament passed the

1765 Stamp Act to make the enlarged empire pay for itself, but this and similar legislation

provoked an outcry against Parliamentary tyranny. Colonists also feared the corrupting influence

13
William Fleetwood, SPG Sermon (1711), 36; John Moore, SPG Sermon (1713), 56-57; An Abstract of the
Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in the Year of Our Lord 1715
(London: Joseph Downing, 1716), 17-18.
14
Lewis Walpole Library, MSS 6: Edward Weston Papers, vol. 4 n. 5: Thomas Sherlock to Edward Weston,
September 9 1748.
15
Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 113-38.
16
Taylor, “Whigs, Bishops and America.”
17
David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
8.
18
Peter J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, c.1750-1783 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005); Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in
British North America, 1754-1766 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001).

89
of the orientalised “nabobs” who grew rich from their management of the East India Company.

They were incensed by the import of cheap tea and by the collapse of the Company’s finances in

1772.19 Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic were also alarmed by the government’s

indulgence of Quebec’s Catholic population. The government acquiesced in the presence of a

French Catholic bishop in Quebec after 1766. In 1774 it passed the Quebec Act, which enlarged

the province, allowed Catholics to participate in its government, created a crown-appointed

governor, and allowed the use of French law. For its opponents, the Quebec Act manifested

tyranny and popery, especially as it was passed at the same time as the four “intolerable acts”

punishing the Boston radicals (coincidentally, in fact).20

The acquisition of Quebec not only alarmed American patriots, who feared for the

fundamentally Protestant character of the empire, it also alarmed the northern Anglicans, for

whom it demonstrated the problems with the empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism. The supporters of

the colonial Church of England saw both an opportunity and a crisis in the empire’s religious

diversification. The SPG missionaries were convinced that a stronger colonial church would help

to bind the expanded empire together, and that the best way to achieve this was through the

creation of a colonial bishop. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker, also saw the

end of the war as an opportunity to obtain a more favourable settlement for the colonial church.

He proposed the creation of a bishop to the government, but his proposal was soon halted by the

19
Benjamin L. Carp, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & The Making of America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2010), 10-18; Philip Lawson and Jim Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti’: Perceptions of Nabobs in
Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain, Albion 16, no. 3 (1984): 225-41.
20
Philip Lawson, The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution (Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989); Philip Lawson, “‘Sapped by Corruption’: British Governance of
Quebec and the Breakdown of Anglo-American Relations on the Eve of Revolution,” Canadian Review of American
Studies 22, no. 3 (1991): 301-23; Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution
(New York: Basic Books, 2010), 57-74; Charles H. Metzger, The Quebec Act: A Primary Cause of the American
Revolution (New York: The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1936); for British opposition to the Act, see
David Milobar, “Quebec Reform, the British Constitution and the Atlantic Empire: 1774-1775,” Parliamentary
History 14, no. 1 (1995): 78-80.

90
widespread unrest greeting the Stamp Act. The government recognised that any indulgence of

American Anglicans would only add to the political unrest. The SPG missionaries felt

humiliated: government allowed a French Catholic Bishop in Canada but denied the same

privilege to the national church. In this context, they launched a publishing and petitioning

campaign, staged around Thomas Bradbury Chandler’s An Appeal to the Public, in Behalf of the

Church of England in America (New York, 1767).

The missionaries’ campaign for a bishop exemplified the radical and disruptive character

of their loyalism. The campaign constituted a loyalist rebellion against the missionaries’ political

and ecclesiastical governors.21 Ignoring the English bishops’ pleas for caution, the missionaries

launched their own appeal to public opinion. The campaign succeeded only in further alarming

those colonial Dissenters who were already concerned about threats to their religious and civil

liberty. The missionaries were driven by anger, frustration, and radical disaffection from the

compromised ecclesiastical character of the British Empire. Their failure further alienated them,

not only from the colonial Dissenters who opposed their efforts, but also from the British

politicians who had favoured Dissenters over the king’s church, and even the English bishops

whose professed concern for the American church seemed meaningless in practice. The

missionaries aggressively asserted their loyalty to the empire, but they were never simply

interested in supporting the status quo. Rather, their loyalism was a way of demanding radical

change in the empire’s ecclesiastical constitution.

21
This phrase has also been used to describe refugee politics in New Brunswick: David Bell, Loyalist Rebellion in
New Brunswick: A Defining Conflict for Canada’s Political Culture (Formac: Halifax, 2013).

91
The SPG Missionaries and the Bishop Question, 1701-63

The SPG missionaries saw the absence of a colonial bishop as a symbol of the imperfect and

incomplete constitution of the Church of England in America, and a fundamental cause of the

colonies’ religious and political problems. Scholarship on the bishop controversy has debated the

question of whether the wished-for bishop would enjoy the political powers of an English-style

bishop, as its opponents maintained, or would be “purely spiritual,” as its supporters promised.

The scholarly consensus suggests that, while the bishop’s supporters sometimes expressed hopes

for the former, they agreed that a “purely spiritual” bishop was infinitely better than no bishop at

all, and might even hold certain advantages over a more politically compromised English-style

bishop.22 This historiographical focus on the true intentions of the pro-bishop party has framed

the issue as a moral question: were they trying to establish the Church of England in America, or

were they only seeking toleration for their own religious beliefs? This framing does not

acknowledge their sheer frustration with a social order that subordinated them – members of the

national church – to Protestant Dissenters.

The missionaries believed that the Church of England was the established church in

America – at least in principle. They considered it staggeringly unjust that colonial Dissenters

had arrogated that role to themselves. Not only this, the missionaries believed they received

worse treatment from American Dissenters than English Dissenters received from the Church of

England. In 1759, the Connecticut missionary Samuel Johnson told the Archbishop of

Canterbury, “the Church is really in a State of Persecution under them here, where they have,

without any warrant from their Charter, pretended to establish themselves.”23 Whatever the

precise details of their proposed solution to this unnatural state of affairs, what comes across

22
Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 207-8; Sosin , “Proposal”; Cross, Anglican Episcopate, 256-58.
23
Lambeth Palace Library [henceforth LPL], MS1123/2 n. 130: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, March 20 1759.

92
most strongly from the missionaries’ rhetoric is the extent of their disaffection from the status

quo.

The missionaries’ pleas for a bishop were grounded in the real frustrations they

experienced as a religious minority in the northern colonies. Like religious minorities

everywhere in the empire, this status entailed a series of social, political, and legal disadvantages.

Anglican expansion in New England in the first half of the eighteenth century brought conflict

with the Dissenters’ legal privileges, such as the collection of church rates, until intervention

from England secured Anglicans a more comfortable toleration.24 In New York, the situation was

more complicated. The Church of England had a partial establishment, confined to four parishes

centred on the city itself. Competition between a church party and a Presbyterian party

dominated politics in the colony. In 1754, the church party established King’s College, an

Anglican-dominated institution. They were strenuously opposed by the Presbyterian leaders

William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. The Church of England’s partial

establishment thus ensured a particularly bitter rivalry with its Presbyterian competitors.25

Despite these important differences in the church’s legal and political status from one colony to

another, the missionaries themselves freely moved around the entire New England and Mid-

Atlantic region, and consistently described it as a place where the church was not properly

supported by the state.

The missionaries saw a bishop as an indispensable part of the church’s spiritual

constitution. Many New England Anglicans had converted from Congregationalism. The two

denominations were largely distinguished by exactly this question of church government. The

24
Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 107-35.
25
Donald F. M. Gerardi, “The King’s College Controversy and the Ideological Roots of Toryism in New York,”
Perspectives in American History 9 (1977): 145-96.

93
“Yale apostates” converted in 1722 after reading a shipment of books that convinced them that

episcopal ordination was practiced in the primitive church. They not only converted to the

Church of England, but subscribed to a particularly high church strain of Anglican theology. This

theology emphasised the need for sacraments that could only be administered by the clergy, and

the need for episcopal ordination to perpetuate the clergy.26 The apostates lost no time in

petitioning for the creation of an American bishop, and continued to do throughout the following

decades.27 A leading role was played by Samuel Johnson, a “Yale apostate,” first president of

King’s College, and tutor to many of the younger missionaries.28

The missionaries believed that the absence of a bishop hindered the church’s growth in

America. In 1724, Johnson wrote to the Bishop of London describing the state of religion in

Connecticut, explaining, “the people here… have an inveterate enmity against the established

church. But of late the eyes of great multitudes are opened to the great error.” The church could

not reap this bountiful harvest, as he was the only Anglican clergyman in the colony. The need to

travel to England for ordination deterred potential clergymen from entering the ministry. After

all, Daniel Browne, one of the Yale apostates, died of smallpox in London after travelling there

for ordination. Johnson concluded, “the fountain of all our misery is the want of a bishop, for

whom there are many thousands of souls in this country… [that] do extremely suffer.”29 Again in

1745, Johnson wrote to Thomas Secker, who was then Bishop of Oxford, to complain about the

26
Donald F. M. Gerardi, “Samuel Johnson and the Yale ‘Apostasy’ of 1722: The Challenge of Anglican
Sacramentalism to the New England Way,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 47, no. 2
(1978): 153-75.
27
Samuel Johnson to Dr. Delaune, August 10 1725, in Samuel Johnson: President of King’s College. His Career
and Writings, ed. Herbert Schneider and Carol Schneider (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929) [henceforth
SJCW], 3:221-22.
28
Don R. Gerlach and George E. DeMille, Samuel Johnson of Stratford in New England (Athens, GA: Anglican
Parishes Association Publications, 2010).
29
Samuel Johnson to Edmund Gibson, January 18 1724 in ibid., 3:217-18.

94
“tedious expensive & dangerous voyage” required by prospective clergymen. Without this

hurdle, “the Church [in America] would be double to what it now is, within 7 or 10 years

time.”30

The lack of episcopal government caused real administrative problems. A bishop’s role

included the enforcement of clerical discipline and other forms of administrative oversight. In

1765, the New York missionary Samuel Auchmuty wrote to the society to report that a

missionary named Milner had absconded after getting drunk and sexually assaulting a fifteen-

year-old boy; Auchmuty’s letter segued into a plea for a bishop to guarantee the good character

of prospective clergymen.31 The Boston minister Henry Caner frequently requested a

commissary for New England, complaining that it fell on him to manage the resulting problems

of order and discipline.32 Other missionaries were reluctant to accept a commissary in place of a

bishop: Johnson instead proposed that one of the English bishops visit the American colonies

every seven years.33

Beyond these practical concerns, the SPG missionaries believed that the absence of a

bishop was a mark of shame and dishonour to the American church. In 1752, Johnson wrote to

Secker lamenting that “a concern for the best interests of Christianity… should run so very low

in this degenerate age that we may not be allowed so much as one bishop.” The same year, he

explained to the SPG secretary that the want of a bishop was a matter of “great dishonor and

detriment to the Church and Christianity.”34 He wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas

30
LPL MS1123/1 n. 35: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, July 25 1745.
31
USPG B2 13: Samuel Auchmuty, September 25 1765.
32
LPL Fulham Papers (Colonial Series) [henceforth FPC], vol. 6 ff. 46-47: Henry Caner to Richard Osbaldeston,
November 6 1762.
33
Samuel Johnson to Thomas Sherlock, September 25 1751, in SJCW, 1:151.
34
Samuel Johnson to Philip Bearcroft, October 30 1752, in ibid., 1:163-64.

95
Herring, that “Error & Vice” would “gain the ascendant” unless the American church was

provided with a bishop “to assist & go before us in stemming the Torrents.” Citing the 1633

George Herbert poem “The Church Militant,” he lamented, “as the Church doth hither westward

fly, so sin doth dog & trace her instantly.”35 In 1759, Johnson expanded at greater length on the

injustice of Dissenting opposition to an American episcopate. “And when they enjoy without

molestation their presbytery in the full vigor of its Discipline, is it not a Cruel thing that they

should be so bitterly against the Churches enjoying her own form of Government & Discipline,”

he asked, “& is she not reduced to a miserable pass indeed, that she cannot provide for her

Children abroad here, without their Consent for it?”36 The want of an American bishop

symbolised all that was unnatural and perplexing in the position of the colonial church.

When the missionaries insisted on the suffering, martyred character of the colonial

church, their complaints were grounded in the real dangers that Americans faced making the

round trip to England for ordination. Candidates for the ministry often died while making the

journey, usually from smallpox.37 Their deaths created a martyrology that embodied the

sufferings of the American church. The town of Hebron in Connecticut was singularly unlucky:

they applied to the SPG for a missionary in 1736, and finally received one in 1759 after the

ordination voyage proved fatal to their first three candidates.38 Among the candidates who died

making the voyage was Samuel Johnson’s son William. In 1751, Johnson told Secker that

35
LPL MS1123/1 n. 64: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Herring, June 25 1753.
36
LPL MS1123/2 n. 130: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, March 20 1759.
37
Smallpox was endemic in the Old World. Americans were therefore particularly vulnerable to it, whether they
were Native Americans or the descendants of European settlers. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great
Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001), 13-43.
38
Their first candidate, Barzillai Dean, was shipwrecked and drowned; the second, Jonathan Colton, caught
smallpox on the voyage home and died, and the third, James Usher, was captured by the French and died of
smallpox at Bayonne. The fourth, Samuel Peters, also caught smallpox in England but recovered and returned to
Hebron where he would become an exceptionally hard-line loyalist during the 1770s. See Edward Cresset, SPG
Sermon (1753), 44-45, Anthony Ellys, SPG Sermon (1759), 56.

96
William was preparing for orders, complaining, “it is somewhat shocking to me that he must go a

thousand leagues for orders when of twenty-five within my knowledge who have gone that

voyage on that errand five have died or been lost.”39 The next year, following another

candidate’s death, he wrote to a friend, “would to God those who oppose sending bishops would

consider the guilt they contract thereby.”40 His worst fears came to pass when William travelled

to England for orders in 1755 and died of smallpox there the following summer.41 In a letter to

Secker, Johnson tempered his grief with hope that his son’s death might be providentially useful:

“I should scarce have thought his Life ill-bestowed, if it could have been an occasion of

awakening this stupid age to a sense of the necessity of sending Bishops… This is now the

seventh precious Life that has been sacrificed to the unaccountable politics of this apostatising

age.”42 These deaths were personal tragedies that invested the bishop question with enormous

emotional and spiritual significance.

In their correspondence with English churchmen, the SPG missionaries often emphasised

that an American bishop would carry political as well as religious benefits. This was not the root

cause of their desire for a bishop so much as a rhetorical strategy intended to secure the support

of potential allies. The missionaries argued that Anglicanism would tie the American colonies to

Britain, and that Anglicans were necessarily more loyal than Dissenters because they recognised

the ecclesiastical as well as the political supremacy of the king. Johnson believed that British

politicians were reluctant to create an American bishop because they feared “our effecting an

independency on the government at home.” He sought to counter this fear, explaining that

39
Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, September 25 1751, in SJCW, 1:151.
40
Samuel Johnson to J. Berriman, October 30 1752, in ibid., 1:159-60.
41
LPL MS1123/2 n. 102: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Herring, October 25 1755.
42
LPL MS1123/2 n. 111: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, December 5 1757.

97
Dissenters held “antimonarchial… principles” while colonial Anglicans “abhorred” the idea of

“independency on England.” He concluded that “the most effectual method to secure our

dependence on the Crown of Great Britain would be to render our constitution here, both in

church and state, as near as possible conformable to that of our mother-country.”43 The following

year, he again denied that “our general desire of bishops to preside over us” constituted “any

disposition towards an independency on our mother country,” considering this “strange” logic

typical of “the reasonings of this degenerate age.”44

The missionaries were also keen to emphasise that they were not Jacobites. The

association of high church Anglicanism helps to explain their insistence that a bishop would

promote dependence on the British monarchy. The missionaries’ Dissenting rivals often accused

them of Jacobitism; in response, they insisted that they now gave the same absolute loyalty to the

Hanoverian dynasty that their predecessors had given to the Stuarts.45 Because high churchmen

insisted on the spiritual independence of the church with the monarch as its head, it was difficult

for them wholeheartedly to accept the replacement of the monarch at the Glorious Revolution.

Many Anglican “non-jurors” refused to swear allegiance to the new ecclesiastical settlement, and

the theological works of non-jurors and Jacobites such as Charles Leslie were often celebrated by

high churchmen for their strong assertion of the church’s spiritual independence. 46 In 1725,

Johnson wrote to the Bishop of London informing him that the non-jurors were active in the

colonies, warning, “for want of a bishop of the Church of England people are in danger of

43
Samuel Johnson to John Potter, March 3 1737, in SJCW, 1:87-88.
44
Samuel Johnson to Edmund Gibson, November 8 1748, in ibid., 1:93-94.
45
David Parrish, “Jacobitism and the British Atlantic World in the Age of Anne” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow,
2013), 240-79; Thomas C. Reeves, “John Checkley and the Emergence of the Episcopal Church in New England,”
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 34, no. 4 (1965), 349-60.
46
Henry Broxap, The Later Non-Jurors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924).

98
running out of one schism into another and withal into a state of disaffection to His Majesty King

George.”47

The missionaries argued that strengthening the American church would increase the

power of the monarch. Johnson believed that the growth of New England Anglicanism would

strengthen the monarchical element in those colonies’ constitutions, which leaned too far

towards democracy. Around 1750, he sent a list of “Proposals Regarding the Government” of

Connecticut to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Herring. These proposals argued that “our

government… is much too popular,” and suggested, “it would be happy for us if the government

of the colony were resumed into the hands of the Crown and a new constitution introduced

among us.”48 In 1760 he sent Thomas Secker an essay he proposed publishing in the London

Magazine. He explained that “all the disadvantages [Connecticut] labors under are owing to its

constitution being a little more than a mere democracy and the prevalence of rigid enthusiastical

conceited notions and practices in religion and republican mobbish principles and practices in

policy.”49 The essay suggested a union of the colonies and the creation of a viceroy, a single

currency, and an American bishop. Johnson asked “whether it is not very dishonourable to the

mother country… that the church which is established in England and consequently an essential

part of the British constitution and has ever been the greatest friend to loyalty, should not be, at

least, upon as good a foot as the other denominations.” Secker wisely advised Johnson not to

publish the essay.50

47
Samuel Johnson to Edmund Gibson, February 1 1725, in SJCW, 3:220-21.
48
LPL MS1123/1 n. 40: “Samuel Johnson on the State of Law & Government in New England,” n.d.
49
LPL MS1123/2 n. 190: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, July 13 1760.
50
Samuel Johnson, “Questions Relating to the Union and Government of the Plantations,” July 13 1760, in SJCW,
1:297-300; LPL MS1123/2 n. 213: Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, November 4 1760.

99
 Although the SPG missionaries were occasionally anxious about a lack of support from

senior churchmen in England, they were confident that Thomas Secker was a proven friend to

the American church. He had forcefully expressed his support for the creation of an American

bishop in his sermon to the SPG in 1741.51 The sermon was distributed in America, and Johnson

thanked Secker for having “pleaded the Cause of that noble & most important charity.” 52 As

Bishop of Oxford from 1737 to 1758, Secker took considerable interest in the colonial church,

obtaining honorary degrees for the American clergy and raising funds for the establishment of

King’s College.53 The missionaries’ hopes were therefore raised when Secker was promoted to

Canterbury in 1758. The New York and New Jersey clergy sent him a congratulatory address

celebrating his proven “solicitude for the Prosperity of the Church in America.”54 The

Connecticut clergy also proclaimed that their hopes for a bishop “do greatly revive with your

Grace’s Promotion.”55

Secker promised his support to the SPG missionaries while urging them to avoid

antagonising their opponents. He recognised that the missionaries’ outspoken claims about the

established status of the Church of England in America were likely to provoke Dissenters on

both sides of the Atlantic. He warned Johnson that “the Dissenters in America are so closely

connected with those in England… that we have need to be continually on our Guard against

them.” Antagonising them would only delay the cause: “this I have long had at Heart… But

51
Thomas Secker, SPG Sermon (1741), 32-33.
52
LPL MS1123/1 n. 35: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, July 25 1745.
53
Don R. Gerlach and George E. DeMille, “Samuel Johnson and the Founding of King’s College, 1751-1755,”
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 44, no. 3 (1975): 33-52; LPL MS2598, “Autobiography of
Thomas Secker,” f. 57.
54
LPL MS1123/2 n. 118: Clergy of New York and New Jersey to Thomas Secker, June 22 1758.
55
LPL MS1123/2 n. 122: Clergy of Connecticut to Thomas Secker, October 5 1758.

100
pushing it openly at present would certainly prove both fruitless and detrimental.”56 Johnson

circulated Secker’s letter around the SPG missionaries, who welcomed this declaration of

support from the highest of authorities. Johnson replied, promising “to govern my self… by the

principles and with the temper as your Grace inculcates,” and hoping that Secker would take

action “when it shall please God to bless us with an honourable peace.”57

As the end of the Seven Years’ War approached, the SPG missionaries hoped that peace

would bring a favourable political settlement. The accession of George III to the throne in

October 1760 gave the missionaries reason to hope that political forces in England were finally

turning in their favour: the new king was reportedly a friend of the church.58 In 1761, Johnson

sent Secker a “draught of an address for bishops on a peace.” Secker reined Johnson in: “the

right time to try is certainly when a peace is made, if circumstances afford any hope of success.

But this is a matter of which you in America cannot judge.”59 In 1762, the New York clergy sent

the new Bishop of London, Richard Osbaldeston, a congratulatory address, hoping that “we may

live to see an Establishment, whereby the Bishop of London may become Archbishop of the

American Colonies, with at least two or three resident Bishops, as his Suffragans.” They pleaded

for Osbaldeston’s support for the American church, which “extremely suffers” throughout “his

Majesty’s now vastly extended dominions.” They considered it “extremely indecorous that the

established church of our mother country should be continued in a condition… so far inferior to

that of the sectaries that are only tolerated.”60

56
LPL MS1123/2 n. 121: Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, September 27 1758; Ingram, Religion, Reform and
Modernity, 209-59.
57
LPL MS1123/2 n. 130: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, March 20 1759.
58
LPL FPC vol. 6 ff. 44-45: Clergy of New England to Thomas Sherlock, January 26 1761.
59
Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, December 10 1761, in SJCW, 3:261-63.
60
LPL FPC vol. 41 ff. 271-72: Clergy of New York to Richard Osbaldeston, n.d.(received December 3 1762).

101
 That same year, William Smith, the Anglican Provost of the College of Philadelphia,

travelled to England and presented Secker with a lengthy “Account of the American Colonies.”

Smith calculated the number of colonial Anglicans at 446,000, the Presbyterians, Independents,

and Baptists at 372,000, and other denominations, such as Quakers, Moravians, and German and

Swedish Lutherans, at 510,000. He noted that this last constituency was growing rapidly and

included many groups that were potentially friendly to the Church of England.61 He nevertheless

warned that a time might come when the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists “shall not

only far exceed the number of the Church People in the Colonies, but even in the mother Country

too.” In this event, “they may think of such an Independency and separate Government for

themselves.” He therefore concluded “that in a Political as well as religious view” the Church of

England should be given “at least a Chance of keeping Pace in her Growth with the various

Sects… that she may be a Check upon them and a Pledge for the affection of our Colonies.”62

For William Smith, the approaching end of the war was a critical moment when the dependence

of the colonies could either be secured or lost forever.

Meanwhile, the missionaries began bickering among themselves over who would become

the new bishop. Johnson wrote to warn Secker that Smith’s “ambition is doubtless, that

(expecting there would have been a peace), one of his designs was to have endeavoured to be

made the first bishop in America,” which “would be very disgustful to the generality of the

Church in these parts.”63 With the end of the war approaching, the promised support of the

61
For an example of Smith’s efforts to engineer opportunities for conciliation between the Church of England and
the episcopalian German Lutherans, see LPL FPC vol. 8, ff. 14-15: “Petition of representatives of the High German
Church of St Georges in Philadelphia,” October 21 1764.
62
LPL SPG Papers, vol. 10, ff. 140-173: “Account of the American Colonies drawn up for the Bishop of London by
Dr. Smith” 1762.
63
LPL MS 1123/3 n. 259: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, April 10 1762.

102
Archbishop of Canterbury, and a new king on the throne, they were confident that their hour was

at hand.

The Ecclesiastical Settlement of Quebec

Britons and British Americans enthusiastically celebrated the end of the Seven Years’ War, but

quickly began to disagree over the nature of peace-time government. Alongside the well-known

disputes over imperial sovereignty and taxation, the end of the war also heralded discussion of

the empire’s religious character. The acquisition of the French colony of Quebec represented a

serious challenge to an empire in which antipopery had long provided social cement and

ideological purpose. Efforts to accommodate Quebec’s large Catholic population alarmed many

Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic, who saw a conspiracy against civil and religious liberty

in any indulgence of popery.64 Peter Doll has suggested that imperial religious policy after 1763

sought to impose a Protestant Reformation on the Catholic Church in Quebec by encouraging the

Canadian Catholics to recognise the British monarch’s ecclesiastical authority. Doll explains,

“like the Reformation in England, it would be a matter of changing the existing church rather

than imposing a new one.”65 This interpretation supports a model of the British Empire as an

ecclesiastical conglomerate: the principle of ecclesiastical pluralism was extended to

accommodate the majoritarian Catholic Church in Quebec, which became one more locally

established church among many. Although the extent of government support for Canadian

Catholics should not be overstated, it is easy to see why the acquisition of Quebec alarmed

Anglicans in the northern colonies. They faced the humiliating prospect that the government

64
Lawson, “Sapped by Corruption.”
65
Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 92-122, quotation 98.

103
would recognise a popish ecclesiastical establishment while continuing to deny a full toleration

to the national church.

Willingly or not, imperial religious policy had to reach some kind of accommodation

with the Catholic Church due to the sheer size of Quebec’s Catholic population. Catholics were

the targets of severe penal laws everywhere in the British Empire. These were often mitigated in

practice by non-enforcement or “connivance,” especially where large Catholic populations made

enforcement impossible: most obviously in Ireland, as well as in more recently conquered

territories such as Grenada.66 Nevertheless, the scale of the problem in Quebec was

unprecedented. Quebec’s Protestant population was miniscule. Even the most expansive policy

of connivance would struggle to accommodate the gap between principle and reality. The size of

the Catholic population precluded the mass expulsion enacted in Acadia at the start of the war.67

A number of schemes were proposed to the SPG for methods to convert the Catholic population

to Protestantism.68 However, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 made the problem an immediate

one by declaring that the English legal system would be imported wholesale, a policy that the

colony’s military governors believed unworkable.69

The SPG missionaries were particularly interested in the question of whether or not a

Catholic bishop would be permitted in Quebec. The peace treaty left this question open. The

office had been vacant since the last Bishop of Quebec died in 1760. By the Capitulation of

Montreal in 1760, the British promised to safeguard “the free exercise” of the Catholic religion,

66
For Ireland, see Louis Cullen, “Catholics Under the Penal Laws,” Eighteenth-Century Ireland 1 (1986): 23-36;
Maureen Wall, Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century: Collected Essays of Maureen Wall, ed. Gerard O’Brien
(Dublin: Geography Publications, 1989), 8-9. For Grenada, see Mary Louise Sanderson, “‘Our Own Catholic
Countrymen’: Religion, Loyalism, and Subjecthood in Britain and its Empire, 1755-1829” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt
University, 2010), 100-105.
67
Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 92.
68
LPL SPG vol. 11, f. 27: “Copy of part of the revd Mr Des Vaux’s Letter to Mr. Peckell,” April 6 1765.
69
Sanderson, “Our Own Catholic Countrymen,” 76-8, 91-100.

104
but refused to allow the French monarchy to continue nominating a Catholic bishop. In 1763, the

Treaty of Paris promised that the king’s “new Roman Catholic Subjects may profess the worship

of their Religion… as far as the Laws of Great Britain permit.”70 A Catholic bishop nominated

by the French monarchy was clearly unacceptable, but perhaps one nominated some other way

would be permitted. Soon after the end of the war, the Catholic population of Quebec began

petitioning for a bishop.71 They explained that a bishop was necessary to the practice of their

religion and was therefore guaranteed by the peace treaty.72

The SPG missionaries hoped that the religious diversification of the empire would

strengthen their demands for an Anglican bishop. In 1760, Henry Caner wrote to Secker to

suggest that the recent conquest of Quebec promised “an Opportunity for reviving the happy

Scheme of appointing Bishops for America.” By the Capitulation of Montreal, “the French at

Canada have insisted upon being allowed a Bishop, though to be dominated by his Majesty.” He

asked, “shall these forced Subjects, the Fruit of Conquest be indulged a Blessing, which cannot

be permitted to his Majesty’s natural born Subjects? In what Light my Lord shall we be viewed

by the christian World?”73 Caner proposed appropriating the revenues of the Catholic Church in

Quebec for the support of an Anglican bishop, thereby sidestepping Dissenters’ principal

objection, the fear of being taxed for the bishops’ support.

A similar scheme was advanced by Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester and well-

known political economist. Like Caner, Tucker proposed using the revenues of the Catholic

Church in Canada to fund an Anglican bishop. The bishop’s powers would be limited to

70
Metzger, Quebec Act, 207-12.
71
Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 101-103.
72
LPL SPG vol. 11, f. 24: “Extracts from the Address of the Chapter of Quebec to the King,” September 12 1763.
73
LPL MS1123/2, n. 205: Henry Caner to Thomas Secker, October 6 1760.

105
ordination and confirmation, and any discussion of membership of government councils should

be kept secret to avoid alarming Dissenters. The SPG should further allay Dissenters’ fears by

withdrawing funding from a handful of missions in the New England colonies. The proposal

concluded by asking, “whether it would not be right to confine [the] whole Merits of the Cause

to the two Grand Protestant Points of Liberty of Conscience & the Right of Private Judgment?”

Tucker proposed requisitioning and repurposing the Catholic ecclesiastical establishment of

Quebec while positioning the issue as a question of religious liberty for colonial Anglicans. 74 In

1764, Johnson praised Tucker’s character and hoped that his “plan” was to be “laid before this

Parliament.”75

In the event, the Treaty of Paris would be interpreted as permitting a Catholic bishop.

This policy was advocated by Robert Hay Drummond, the Archbishop of York, whose advice

was sought by the Privy Council. Drummond proposed that the governor appoint a Catholic

bishop, but one whose powers were limited to ordination and stripped of all pomp and ceremony.

The bishop and the Catholic clergy should take the oaths of allegiance and pray for the king. The

Catholic Church’s property should be safeguarded, except the Jesuits’, which should be

transferred to the SPG. Catholic missionaries to the Indians should be replaced by Protestant

ones. Such a policy would serve, firstly, to secure the freedom of the Catholic religion; secondly,

to maintain the ecclesiastical supremacy of the king; and thirdly, to encourage the Church of

England in the colony.76 The Vicar General of Quebec, Jean-Olivier Briand, had already begun

praying for the British monarch. George III’s papers include a copy of Briand’s order for a Te

74
LPL SPG Papers vol. 11, ff. 28-29: “Queries humbly offerd to ye Consideration of the Friends of Protestant
Episcopacy in North America,” June 1765.
75
Samuel Johnson to Ebenezer Dibble, February 9 1764, in SJCW, 3:280-82.
76
LPL FPC vol. 1, ff. 197-202: “Heads of a Plan for the Establishment of Ecclesiastical Affairs in the Province of
Quebec,” n.d.; Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 109-10.

106
Deum to be sung to celebrate the royal marriage in 1761.77 In the summer of 1766, Briand was

consecrated in Paris as the new Bishop of Quebec with the British government’s unofficial

sanction. This shift in imperial religious policy signalled a new official willingness to work

alongside the Catholic Church in Quebec.78 Meanwhile, the Papacy’s support for Briand’s

appointment indicated a growing willingness on its part to support Protestant governments.

Briand would be a vocal loyalist during the 1770s.79

“The Principles of the Toleration”: Thomas Secker’s Proposal for a Bishop

At the same time that Quebec’s ecclesiastical settlement was under official review, Thomas

Secker presented the king’s ministers with a proposal for the creation of an Anglican bishop in

America. The missionaries’ hopes were raised by Secker’s active support. Secker frequently

expressed his sympathy and friendship for the American church, and the SPG missionaries

enthusiastically reciprocated these sentiments. However, the two parties held very different

understandings of the proposed bishop’s meaning and significance. In part, this was a question of

strategy. While Secker recognised the strength of the Dissenting interest in England, the

missionaries never understood how the support of no less a figure than the Archbishop of

Canterbury could fail to overcome any political obstacles facing the project. More

fundamentally, Secker’s proposals were premised on obtaining a religious toleration for colonial

Anglicans that corresponded to the toleration enjoyed by English Dissenters under the 1689

77
Jean-Olivier Briand to his Flock, February 1762 (copy), in The Correspondence of King George the Third: From
1760 to December 1783. Printed from the Original Papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, ed. John
Fortescue (London: Macmillan, 1927), 1:25-27.
78
Lawson, Imperial Challenge, 44, 75-8.
79
Luca Codignola, “Roman Catholic Conservatism in a New North Atlantic World, 1760-1829,” William and Mary
Quarterly 3rd Series, 64, no. 4 (2007): 722-25.

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Toleration Act. The missionaries, by contrast, expected that a colonial bishop would vindicate

their claims to represent the national church in America. They did not fully understand the limits

of what Secker was offering.

Secker believed that the new-found security enjoyed by the British colonies in America

after 1763 created an opportunity to negotiate a more generous toleration for colonial Anglicans.

He kept the SPG missionaries abreast of political developments while continuing to repeat his

instructions that they behave in a quiet and peaceful manner and avoid antagonising American

Dissenters. In March 1763, he promised Johnson that the government would soon be considering

“schemes… for the settlement of his Majesty’s dominions.”80 In September, he reported that the

new southern secretary, Lord Halifax, “is a friend to the scheme,” but warned that “the present

weak state of the ministry” made immediate support unlikely. He added, “I know not what

disposition will be made of the lands belonging to the popish clergy in the conquered

provinces.”81 Johnson, meanwhile, grew increasingly impatient. In December he asked Secker,

“is there then nothing more than can be done, either for obtaining Bishops, or demolishing these

pernicious Charter Governments?” Johnson proposed a general address from the colonial clergy.

He also suggested that a crown-appointed bishop would help the project of “converting the

French… as they have been used to a Bishop of their own.”82 The following May, Secker

reported to Johnson, “I see not how Protestant Bishops can decently be refused us, as in all

80
LPL MS1123/3 ff. 269-71: Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, March 30 1763.
81
Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, September 28 1763, in SJCW 3:277-78.
82
LPL MS1123/3 n. 336: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, December 20 1763.

108
probability a Popish one will be allowed, by connivance at least, in Canada.” Secker repeated the

instructions, “what relates to Bishops, must be managed in a quiet, private manner.”83

In summer of 1764, Secker presented the king’s ministers with a proposal for American

bishops that emphasised the principle of religious toleration. The proposal was drawn up by

Robert Hay Drummond, the Archbishop of York, who was simultaneously advocating a pro-

Catholic policy in Quebec. Citing the population figures provided by William Smith, Secker and

Drummond emphasised the “great… Numbers of Episcopalians in America.” However, they did

not repeat the argument – repeatedly made by the SPG missionaries – that a colonial bishop

would foster the loyalty and dependence of the colonies. Instead, they simply argued that the

American Church of England was “distinguished by the want of the complete Exercise of

Religion.” They acknowledged that “the Church of England is Established in many Colonies,”

but did not make this claim about New England. Instead, they mentioned New England

Anglicanism in a deliberately ambiguous way: “without considering it as Established, it seems,

even from the Charter of the Colonies of New England, to have an equitable claim” to the

freedom of conscience enjoyed by “every other religious Persuasion.”84

Secker and Drummond not only demanded toleration for American Anglicans, they also

promised that any American bishop would be tolerant of American Dissenters. The proposed

bishops’ powers would be limited in comparison to the English bishops’. They would not be

supported by tithes. They would have no role in government, and their authority would be

limited to their spiritual functions. They would not be sent to the sensitive New England

83
Thomas Secker to Samuel Johnson, May 22 1764, in Thomas Bradbury Chandler, The Life of Samuel Johnson,
D.D., the First President of King’s College, in New-York, Containing Many Interesting Anecdotes (New York: T. &
J. Swords, 1805), appendix, 195-98.
84
LPL SPG vol. 10 ff. 174-9: “Thoughts on the Present State of the Church of England in America,” June 1764. An
annotation attributes the proposal to Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York, with corrections by Secker.

109
colonies. Therefore, there could never be “any sort of Grounds to foresee consequence of

exorbitant Church Power, of any Spiritual Tyranny or Intolerancy.” The Church of England

clergy were known to be moderate, and were acknowledged to be so by Scottish Presbyterians

and English Dissenters. The objections came only from “some of the warmest in America.” The

proposed bishops would not “infringe upon any ones Liberty in any Colony,” but rather would be

modelled “upon the most extensive Principles of the Toleration.”85 This was a reference to the

1689 Toleration Act, which secured both the toleration of Protestant Dissenters in England and

the ascendancy of the established Church of England. Here, again, there was a certain amount of

deliberate ambiguity, typical of the silences and omissions characterising any official discussion

of the constitutional authority of the Church of England in America.

Secker’s desire to avoid political controversy was undone by the outcry greeting the

opening of the SPG mission at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The opening of the mission prompted

the Boston Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhew to denounce the SPG for sending

missionaries to New England, as the previous chapter discussed. Mayhew feared that that a

colonial bishop was going to be appointed, fuelling his attack on the SPG.86 Apthorp appeared a

likely candidate for the appointment, and he had begun constructing a large parsonage house for

the Cambridge mission, said to resemble a bishops’ palace. Mayhew accused the SPG of “a

formal design to root out Presbyterianism, &c. and to establishing both Episcopacy and Bishops

in the colonies.” He warned his audience that “the affair of Bishops has lately been, and probably

now is in agitation in England.”87 At this time the Boston newspapers also began to report

85
Ibid..
86
Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, 207-29; Bell, War of Religion, 81-90.
87
Jonathan Mayhew, Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts, Designed to Shew their Non-Conformity to Each Other (Boston: Richard & Samuel Draper, 1763),
103, 107.

110
rumours that a bishop was about to be settled in America.88 Secker wrote to Caner to warn him,

“this controversy will increase the Difficulty of obtaining Bishops for America… I hope our

American Friends will behave, in the mean time, as prudently as possible.”89 Mayhew’s

pamphlet drew a response from Thomas Secker himself, in which he defended his proposal for

bishops.90 Secker’s pamphlet was published anonymously but his authorship was widely

known.91

The debate between Secker and Mayhew showed that it was unclear what the creation of

a bishop would say about the constitutional status of the Church of England in America. Mayhew

was confident that it would mean the export of the entire English constitution in both church and

state. He presented New England as a haven of religious liberty for Protestant Dissenters who

had been persecuted in Old England, and he warned that the creation of an American bishop

would bring persecution to America. He reminded his readers “what our Forefathers suffered

from the mitred, lordly SUCCESSORS of the fishermen of Galilee… which occasioned their

flight into this western world.” He warned that “the church of England might become the

established religion here; tests be ordained… and all of us be taxed for the support of bishops.”

He ended with a dramatic plea: “is it not enough, that they persecuted us out of the old world?

Will they pursue us into the new to convert us here?”92

Secker, meanwhile, argued that resident bishops were necessary for American Anglicans

to practice their religion. The proposed bishops would hold no political power: this was “the real
88
Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, 231.
89
LPL MS1123/3 n. 319: Thomas Secker to Henry Caner, September 15 1763.
90
[Thomas Secker], An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations, on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Boston: R. & S. Draper, 1764).
91
Jonathan Mayhew, Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, Entitled An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the
Conduct and Charter of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Being a Second Defence of
the Said Observations (Boston: R. & S. Draper, 1764), 3.
92
Mayhew, Observations, 155-56.

111
and only Scheme that has been planned for Bishops in America.” The opponents of such a

scheme were opposing “such Indulgence as they would claim themselves,” and could not “call

themselves Patrons of religious Liberty.”93 Mayhew agreed that a purely spiritual bishop would

be unobjectionable, but doubted whether such a bishop would be content without the greater,

political powers held by his English peers.94 He did not believe Secker’s promise that a bishop

could be created without importing the entire English constitution to America.

Secker and Mayhew also disagreed over the extent to which the colonists’ religious

liberty was threatened by popery. Secker emphasised the tolerance of the Church of England,

pointing out that “the Act of Toleration was passed by Members of the Church of England,” and

arguing, “not only the present Bishops, but the present Age is grown much milder in religious

Matters.” As evidence that Anglicans “are Friends to a Toleration even of the most Intolerant, as

far as it is safe,” Secker proudly observed that “Popish Bishops reside here, and go about to

exercise every Part of their Function, without Offence and without Observation.”95 For Mayhew,

however, the presence of popish bishops was itself a threat to religious liberty. Mayhew thought

that Secker’s statement “has a much less tendency to reconcile us to the proposal about

American bishops, than to give us an alarm for the welfare of our mother country… I hope never

to see popish bishops thus going about without offence, in New-England.”96 For Mayhew and

others like him, the acquisition of Quebec was a cause for alarm, suggesting that the government

would create both Anglican and Catholic bishops, whereas for Secker, the empire’s religious

diversification was an opportunity to secure a more generous toleration for American Anglicans.

93
Secker, Answer, 51-52, 57.
94
Mayhew, Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, 42.
95
Secker, Answer, 30, 56-58.
96
Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, 70-71.

112
 In the event, imperial expansion sparked a political crisis that precluded any possibility of

changing the old colonies’ ecclesiasical constitutions. Parliament passed the Stamp Act in the

spring of 1765. The Act provoked continent-wide opposition, blindsiding the Act’s authors.

Opponents of the Act adamantly denied any notion that Parliament had the constitutional

authority to tax the colonies.97 Opposition to Secker’s proposal for a bishop came from the same

quarters. In addition to the published controversy, the proposal encountered organised political

opposition on both sides of the Atlantic. The Assembly of Massachusetts commissioned their

agents in London to oppose the proposal, and sought the assistance of the Protestant Dissenting

Deputies, the political representatives of English Dissenters. The coincidence of the Stamp Act

protests with the Mayhew-Apthorp controversy ended any official consideration of a proposal

that might add fuel to the flames of colonial unrest, especially given the tendency of colonial

radicals to equate the two issues. Secker quietly abandoned the plan.98

The SPG Missionaries’ Campaign for a Bishop

Following the collapse of Secker’s proposal, the SPG missionaries began to take matters into

their own hands. They could not understand why the promised support of the church’s leaders

was not enough to persuade the king’s ministers to support the king’s church. They had

traditionally left the matter in the hands of their ecclesiastical superiors, but now began to

question their zeal. Their petitions to England grew increasingly belligerent and insubordinate,

going so far as to propose that the Church of England separate from the state. The missionaries’

97
Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, 3rd ed. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
98
Ingram, Religion, Reform and Modernity, 245-46.

113
growing rebelliousness culminated in the publication of Chandler’s An Appeal to the Public in

the autumn of 1767 in an attempt to rouse the church’s allies from their indifference. Chandler’s

Appeal instead unleashed a torrent of opposition from Dissenting radicals, confirming the

missionaries’ belief that they were being persecuted.

While Secker’s proposal was underway, the missionaries grew more and more impatient

at the lack of progress. They sent a series of increasingly frustrated petitions to Britain

throughout 1764 and 1765.99 In 1764, the new Bishop of London, Richard Terrick, requested

information about the American church from the principal American clergy. Johnson replied

explaining that in New England the Independents “have established themselves by Law” and

“treat us of the Church as Dissenters.” The Anglican church was “extremely injured, & in a state

little short of persecution… we suffer the Contempt & triumph of our neighbours, who even

plume themselves with Hopes… that the Episcopate is more likely to be abolished at home than

established abroad.”100 Inglis sent a similar response: “surely Justice itself would award us a

Privilege which is not denied to the most despicable Sect among us.”101

While the Stamp Act protests convinced the government that the imposition of a bishop

would add to the unrest, the SPG missionaries believed the protests vindicated their claims to be

more loyal than their Dissenting rivals. Johnson lamented the incompetence of the ministry for

passing the Stamp Act. Had the Act been postponed, a bishop could have been sent and “it would

have been but a nine days wonder.” Johnson deplored the lack of “zeal, courage and activity”

among the friends of religion, lamenting, “I fear there is a greater probability that the episcopate

99
LPL FPC vol. 1 ff. 296-97: Clergy of Connecticut to Richard Terrick, September 14, 1764; ff. 298-99: Clergy of
Connecticut to the King, June 5 1765; LPL FPC vol. 8 ff. 10-11. Clergy of New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania to Richard Terrick, September 20 1764.
100
LPL FPC vol. 1 ff. 302-303: Samuel Johnson to Richard Terrick, July 15 1765.
101
LPL FPC vol. 41 ff. 281-82: Charles Inglis to Richard Terrick, August 27, 1765.

114
will in not many years be demolished in England than established in America.” 102 Another

missionary, Thomas Bradbury Chandler, told the society that had the Church of England been

properly supported then “a general submission to the parent country” would prevail, adding,

“and who can be certain that the present rebellious disposition of the colonies is not intended by

Providence as a punishment for that neglect?”103

The shift in the mood was tied to a shift in leadership, away from the aging Samuel

Johnson and towards the younger and more radical Thomas Bradbury Chandler of New Jersey.

Johnson was not present when the New York and New Jersey clergy met in convention in

October 1765. Instead, Chandler took the lead in composing a set of petitions to the king

requesting bishops. These petitions expressed reluctance at receiving a purely spiritual bishop:

“altho’ this is less than could be reasonably expected in a Christian Country, as we know of no

Instance since the Time of Constantine in which Bishops have not been invested with a

considerable Share of Civil Power; yet we shall be glad to accept of it.” They also complained of

a lack of activity in England: “the Trial, we presume, has not of late been fairly made, although

much has been said.”104 They warned the king that if the hardships suffered by the Church in

America were continued, “she must finally sink, and with her the firmest Security for the Loyalty

of your Majesty’s American Subjects.”105 Informing Johnson of what had transpired, Chandler

wrote, “you will see that we have used great freedom with our superiors, but we were all of

opinion that without speaking freely we might as well be silent.” Chandler deplored Secker and

Terrick’s excessive “prudence,” concluding, “the Church would not suffer so much under open

102
Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, September 5 1765, in SJCW, 1:354-55.
103
USPG B24 n. 90: Thomas Bradbury Chandler, January 18 1766.
104
LPL FPC vol. 6 ff. 156-57: Clergy of New Jersey and New York to Richard Terrick, October 2, 1765.
105
Reprinted in Thomas Bradbury Chandler, The Appeal Farther Defended; in Answer to the Farther
Misrepresentations of Dr. Chauncy (New York: Hugh Gaine, 1771), 21-27, quotation 22.

115
persecution, as it now does by the irresolution and pusillanimity of its friends.”106 Other

churchmen, including the New York clergyman Samuel Auchmuty, criticised Chandler for

sending a disruptive petition at a time of mounting political unrest over the Stamp Act.107

The missionaries’ frustration and impatience was further aggravated in April 1766 when

two recently-ordained missionaries, Samuel Giles and Hugh Wilson, drowned in a shipwreck in

the Delaware Bay on the return voyage from England. Johnson reminded Secker that the number

of missionaries who had died making the voyage now stood at ten in fifty-one, “which is a much

greater loss to the Church here in proportion than she suffered in the times of popish persecution

in England!” He asked Secker, “will our dear mother country have no bowels of compassion for

her poor depressed, destitute children of the established church [?]”108 The other missionaries

repeated Johnson’s sentiments in their correspondence with the society. Auchmuty combined an

account of the “inconsolable,” “truly pitiable,” and “destitute” state of “poor Giles’s wife” and

child with a plea for bishops.109 Inglis sent a similar letter, writing, “out of this Evil He may

bring Good to our Church” if the accident would serve to “rouse our Friends to exert themselves

in our Behalf.” He warned, “I pray God the Government may not have Cause to repent, when it

is too late, their Omission of what would be so great a means of securing the affections &

Dependence of the Colonies.”110

Soon after the death of Giles and Wilson the missionaries received news that Briand had

arrived in Quebec. The same month, Inglis wrote again to the society, “this I hope is a Prelude to

the like Indulgence to the best Friends that England has in America… Surely it would sound very

106
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Johnson, November 12 1765, in SJCW, 1:355-57.
107
Samuel Auchmuty to Samuel Johnson, June 12 1766, in ibid., 1:362-63.
108
Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, May 2 1766, in ibid., 1:360-61.
109
USPG B2 n. 16: Samuel Auchmuty, April 19 1766.
110
USPG B2 n. 57: Charles Inglis, April 27 1766; n. 58: Charles Inglis, May 1 1766.

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strange, & the Politics must be preposterous, that denied them an Indulgence which is granted to

Moravians & Papists.”111 The missionaries were therefore in a particularly belligerent mood

when they received word from Secker and Terrick that same month that the petitions the New

Jersey clergy sent the previous year would not be presented to the king. A bishop might have

been sent before the Stamp Act, Secker told Johnson, but there was no hope of support in the

immediate future.112 The missionaries reacted with disbelief. Chandler asked Johnson how it was

possible that a scheme allegedly supported by the king, his ministers, and the English bishops

had proved unworkable, complaining that their English correspondents seemed to hold no “other

intention than to delude and baffle us.”113

The missionaries made their anger known to Terrick and Secker. Caner sent an especially

bitter letter to Secker, lamenting “the glaring reproach to a protestant kingdom of admitting a

Popish bishop… and at the same time [to] deny or reject the repeated earnest desires of ten times

their number.” He could not “figure out to myself” the ministry’s policy: two-thirds of

Americans “are republican by principle and consequently adverse both from Monarchy and an

ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and the remaining third denied those advantages which… shall tend to

give the weight in favour of the Mother Country and Constitution.” He concluded by warning of

impending catastrophe: “let common sense determine how long the mother country will be able

to preserve her authority.” If the government continued to bow to the clamours of the Dissenters,

Caner wrote, “I confess I tremble to think of the consequence. Revolutions in a kingdom are

always to be dreaded, and for my part I cannot separate in my mind the apprehensions of this

111
USPG B2 n. 59: Charles Inglis, July 10 1766.
112
Secker to Johnson, July 31 1766, in SJCW, 3:286-88.
113
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Johnson, September 5 1766, in ibid., 1:366-69.

117
nature from a rejection of the essential and original institutions upon which the constitution is

founded.”114

Johnson went further still. In a letter to Secker, he advanced a remarkable demand:

American bishops should be consecrated and sent without the permission of Parliament, even if

it meant the church giving up its established status in England. “It is certainly the Church’s duty,

my Lord, to do all that is possible… to secure the protection and favour of the state. But

episcopacy being the original and apostolical constitution of the church, I must think it too sacred

and venerable a thing to give up.” Bishops should be sent, “be the consequence what it will.” He

proclaimed, “if the Church must go into a state of open persecution” by separating from the state,

“she must and ought, rather than to let her bishops cease to be.”115

The increasingly belligerent SPG missionaries actively opposed a proposal that would

have sent commissaries in the place of bishops. The revival of the Bishop of London’s

commission had been proposed by William Smith, and Secker and Terrick also supported the

idea. In the autumn of 1766, the New Jersey clergy petitioned Terrick for bishops and declared

that they would not accept commissaries in their place. The insubordination of the New Jersey

clergy was barely contained by the customary language of petition: “although we have the

highest veneration for the wisdom of our superiors, yet as members and clergymen of the Church

of England, we are very unhappy, and we know not how to be silent, while it continues to suffer

in such an unprecedented manner.” They also repeated their disbelief at the lack of favour shown

to them: “the world sees, that if we had been Dissenters, or Moravians, or Papists, we should not

114
LPL SPG Papers vol. 12 f. 119: Henry Caner to Thomas Secker, 16 October 1766.
115
Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, November 10 1766, in SJCW, 1:378-81.

118
have been so long laboring for an episcopate to so little purpose. And yet… we belong to the

national church.”116

Other missionaries deplored the New Jersey clergy’s insubordination. William Smith

wrote to Terrick, warning that the New Jersey petition manifested the “strange” notion of “an

independent Church of England,” which “gains too much Ground here.”117 Richard Peters,

Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, explained to Terrick that the convention had been full

“of a kind of resentment that Bishops… had been so long denied them.” “They cannot observe

any temper” in the affair, he complained.118 Auchmuty also criticised the Convention in a letter

to the SPG: “I was not at it, but I find it high time to check their Career a little – they take too

much upon them, and will, unless they are soon convinced of their Error endeavour to Rule the

Society & their Superiors… it is high time that some subordination should take place.” 119 In

contrast to many of the missionaries, Richard Peters and Samuel Auchmuty both had a close

relationship with the political authorities: Peters was a former proprietary secretary, while

Auchmuty was son of a judge of the admiralty and brother of the loyalist judge who presided in

Sewall v. Hancock.

Even as the missionaries rejected the “prudence” counselled by Secker and Terrick, they

boldly asserted their impeccable loyalty. In June 1767, the Massachusetts and Rhode Island

clergy petitioned Terrick, noting that “in the late tumultuous Times we have laboured to cultivate

a spirit of Obedience & Loyalty… Few of our own People have been concurred in the popular

Disturbances.”120 The Connecticut missionary James Scovil wrote to the society, complaining

116
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Johnson, January 19 1767, in ibid., 1:387-91.
117
LPL FPC vol. 8, ff. 25-26: William Smith to Richard Terrick, November 13 1766.
118
LPL FPC vol. 8, ff. 27-28: Richard Peters to Richard Terrick, November 14 1766.
119
USPG B2 n. 22: Samuel Auchmuty, December 20 1766.
120
LPL FPC vol. 6, ff. 62-63: Clergy of Massachusetts and Rhode Island to Richard Terrick, June 17, 1767.

119
that Dissenters “have plentifully reproached us with the hated name of Jacobites… but when the

Stamp Act brought our loyalty to the test, I thank God the scale turned greatly in our favour.”121

It was in this context that the New York and New Jersey clergy abandoned their reliance

on the English church hierarchy and launched their own appeal to public opinion. Johnson had

first proposed an appeal to the public at the end of 1765. Samuel Johnson’s other son, William

Samuel Johnson, explained to Myles Cooper, Johnson’s successor at King’s, that the publication

would be targeted principally at the southern clergy: “such ought to be printed and since we have

much to fear from the lukewarmness, prejudice or ignorance of our Brethren in the southern

Colonies dispersed among them especially.”122 William Samuel Johnson thought the project

stood little chance of success, but acknowledged “in so important a Cause it is honourable even

to have attempted.”123 Samuel Johnson proposed that Chandler undertake the publication.

Chandler agreed on the need “to bring the Dissenters and some of the Church people, and…

some of our clergy into a just way of thinking on the subject.” 124 The publication was the work

of a committee under Chandler’s direction.125 Chandler sent Terrick the completed tract in

October. He explained that he had tried to avoid antagonising Dissenters, noting, “there are some

other Facts and Reasons, which could not be prudently mentioned in a work of this nature, as the

least Intimation of them would be of ill Consequence in this irritable Age and Country.” He

nevertheless hoped that “my feeble Attempt might be a Means of engaging some Person at

121
USPG B2 n. 343: James Scovil, July 6 1767.
122
Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, MS#1283, “Clarence Haydon Vance Papers”: W. S. Johnson to
Myles Cooper, December 20 1765. Copied from original in Connecticut Historical Society.
123
Ibid., W. S. Johnson to Myles Cooper, February 12 1766. Copied from original in Connecticut Historical Society.
124
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Johnson, September 5 1766, in SJCW, 1:366-69.
125
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Johnson, January 19 1767, in ibid., 1:387-88.

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Home… to take the Cause in Hand.”126 Meanwhile, Samuel Johnson announced to his son, “Dr.

Chandler is going to publish the best thing ever done in America.”127

Chandler’s Appeal sought to tread the thin line between appeasing the American church’s

opponents and mobilising its friends, but the latter object was clearly his priority. Chandler

repeated the now-familiar line that “that the Bishops to be sent to America, shall have no

Authority, but purely of a Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Nature”; therefore, “Opposition to such a

Plan, has the Nature of Persecution.” At the same time, he warned “those who have the Direction

of the national Affairs” that if “the national Religion is not made… a national Concern” they will

be “negligent of the Duty they owe to God and the Public.” Most alarmingly to colonial

Dissenters, the Appeal began with a twenty-five page account of the apostolic origin of

episcopacy.128 Chandler latter said that he regretted this choice.129

Chandler also sought to emphasise the Church of England’s peculiar loyalty. He asked

whether “there has been something grossly amiss and unprecedented in our Behaviour, which

has brought down upon us the Displeasure of our Superiors.” He contrasted this lack of official

favour with the unimpeachable loyalty of colonial Anglicans, who are bound “by the most sacred

Ties of our religious Principles and Christian Duty, to support, to the utmost, the National Civil

Establishment.” Here, Chandler included an apologetic footnote: “this Declaration is not

intended to imply any Accusation of others.” He acknowledged the “many British Subjects…

who reject Episcopacy, and yet are warm Advocates for our happy Civil Constitution,” while

restating, “Episcopacy and Monarchy are, in their Frame and Constitution, best suited to each

126
LPL FPC v. 6 ff. 164-67: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Richard Terrick, October 21 1767.
127
Samuel Johnson to W. S. Johnson, May 17 1767, in SJCW, 1:401-403.
128
Thomas Bradbury Chandler, An Appeal to the Public, in Behalf of the Church of England in America (New York:
James Parker, 1767), 3-25, 46, 78-9, 82.
129
Chandler, Appeal Farther Defended, 27.

121
other.” This was Chandler doing his best to avoid casting doubt on the loyalty of colonial

Dissenters, but he was clearly much more interested in rousing the church’s friends from their

apparent indifference.130

It is unsurprising that Chandler’s Appeal provoked a storm of protest from Dissenters. As

Carl Bridenbaugh has shown, the Appeal was subject to widespread criticism in the newspaper

press.131 Two newspapers were set up for the very purpose: the American Whig in New York and

the Cenitel in Philadelphia. In response, Chandler along with Charles Inglis, Samuel Seabury,

and Myles Cooper established their own Whip for the American Whig. These three papers were

published weekly for over a year.132 The escalating controversy also generated a dispute between

the SPG missionaries and a number of Anglican clergy in the southern colonies, who disowned

the missionaries’ actions.133 Chandler complained that “the Writers against the Appeal have

endeavoured to avail themselves of the present Troubles; representing the Taxation of the

130
Chandler, Appeal to the Public, 40-2, 114-15.
131
Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, 260-87.
132
A Collection of Tracts from the Late News Papers, &c., Containing Particularly the American Whig, a Whip for
the American Whig, With Some Other Pieces, on the Subject of the Residence of Protestant Bishops in the American
Colonies (New York: John Holt, 1768). In addition to the publications cited below, see: Charles Chauncy, A Letter
to a Friend, Containing, Remarks on Certain Passages in a Sermon Preached, by the Right Reverend Father in
GOD, John Lord Bishop of Landaff, before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts (Boston: Kneeland & Adams, 1767); Charles Chauncy, A Letter to a Friend, Containing Remarks on Certain
Passages in a Sermon, Preached by the Right Reverend John, Lord Bishop of Landaff, Before the Incorporated
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts… With a Supplement, Containing an Answer to the Plea
of T. B. Chandler, D.D. of New Jersey, for American Bishops (London: S. Blandon, 1768); [Charles Inglis], A
Vindication of the Bishop of Landaff’s Sermon from the Gross Misrepresentations, and Abusive Reflections,
Contained in Mr. William Livingstone’s Letter to his Lordship (New York: J. Holt, 1768); William Livingstone, A
Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Landaff; Occasioned by Some Passages in his
Lordship’s Sermon, on the 20th of February, 1767, in which the American Colonies are Loaded with Great and
Undeserved Reproach (New York: printed for the author, 1768); Letter Concerning an American Bishop, &c. To Dr.
Bradbury Chandler, Ruler of St. John’s Church, in Elizabeth-Town ([Philadelphia?]: [William & Thomas
Bradford?], 1768); Charles Chauncy, Compleat View of Episcopacy: As Exhibited from the Fathers of the Christian
Church, until the Close of the Second Century (Boston: Daniel Kneeland, 1771).
133
[Samuel Auchmuty], An Address from the Clergy of New-York and New-Jersey, to the Episcopalians of Virginia;
Occasioned by some Late Transactions in that Colony Relative to an American Episcopate (New-York: Hugh
Gaine, 1771).

122
Colonies, and the Proposal of sending Bishops to America, are Parts of one general System.”134

Historians have often repeated Chandler’s judgement, pointing to the involvement of men such

as John and Samuel Adams, John Wilkes, and Francis Hollis as evidence of a close affinity

between the patriot movement and the bishops’ opponents. Whatever the impact of the

controversy on the patriot movement, the important point here is that the SPG missionaries saw

the political unrest as a form of religious persecution.

Much of the debate generated by Chandler’s Appeal concerned the question of whether a

colonial bishop would have purely spiritual powers or would herald the imposition of the English

ecclesiastical establishment. Charles Chauncy, Mayhew’s successor at Boston, answered

Chandler’s Appeal. Chauncy warned that the advocates of a bishop “have in view nothing short

of a complete CHURCH HIERARCHY after the pattern of that at home… with the allowance of no

other privileges to dissenters but that of a bare toleration.”135 In his published response, Chandler

complained, “all the Opposition that has been made against the Settlement of American Bishops,

has been made on the Supposition of their being different from what we have held up to public

View.” He repeated, “we want not an Episcopate on the Footing of a State-Establishment; we

desire no more than a complete Toleration.”136 In a subsequent pamphlet, Chauncy explained

that American Dissenters had no objection to a bishop with “PURELY SPIRITUAL powers…

no human dignity, temporality, or worldly appendage,” but argued that such a bishop was

unknown in the Church of England.137 Like Mayhew, Chauncy did not believe that the Church of

England would create a bishop that was any different from the bishops in England. For Chandler,

134
Thomas Bradbury Chandler, The Appeal Defended: Or, the Proposed American Episcopate Vindicated, in
Answer to the Objections and Misrepresentations of Dr. Chauncy and Others (New York: Hugh Gaine, 1769), 2.
135
Charles Chauncy, The Appeal to the Public Answered, in Behalf of the Non-Episcopal Churches in America
(Boston: Kneeland and Adams, 1768), 202.
136
Chandler, Appeal Defended, 9, 266.
137
Charles Chauncy, A Reply to Dr. Chandler’s “Appeal Defended” (Boston: Daniel Kneeland, 1770), 92-93.

123
it was this opposition to a “purely spiritual” bishop that constituted a form of religious

persecution.

Yet when Chandler spoke about a bishop that was “purely spiritual” rather than

“political,” he was using these terms in a very specific way drawn from the Anglican theology of

church and state. By a “purely spiritual” bishop, he meant one that would have no part in the

affairs of government, unlike the bishops in England. From his point of view, this could even be

a good thing if it helped to preserve the bishop’s spiritual independence. Certainly, it did not

mean giving up the claim that the Church of England was a national church that warranted

support from the state and in return would preach loyalty to the state. In his debate with

Chauncy, Chandler explained that the English bishops’ political powers were only incidental to

their spiritual authority: “the episcopal Authority may be altogether from the Church, and not

from the State; and yet it may be guided and controlled by the State; without losing its Nature or

essential Character.” At the same time, he could not resist concluding by noting that the Church

of England’s “Constitution… peculiarly harmonises with the civil Government of the Nation”

and its members are “therefore entitled to the peculiar Affection of Government.” 138 For

Chauncy, this insistence that the Church of England was the national church was precisely what

made the missionaries’ demands objectionable.

Given the extent of the controversy, it is unsurprising that Chandler’s Appeal failed to

secure political support from Britain. Furthermore, the missionaries lost their key English ally

when Thomas Secker died in 1768. The new Archbishop, Frederick Cornwallis, was a stranger to

the missionaries, and in their correspondence they complained about his lack of zeal for the

American church. On his death, Secker had instructed his executor, Beilby Porteus, to publish his

138
Chandler, Appeal Farther Defended, 177, 239.

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manuscript letter to Horatio Walpole in favour of American bishops, reigniting the episcopate

controversy and drawing a response from the radical freethinker Francis Blackburne.139

Forgetting the tensions that had accumulated in their relationship with Secker, the missionaries

sought to appropriate his memory in their cause, reprinting Porteus’s biography of Secker

alongside a host of material documenting English support for the creation of an American

bishop.140 They also continued to correspond with, and receive assurance of support from, a set

of influential high churchmen including Robert Lowth, the Bishop of Oxford, and George

Berkeley, son of the philosopher.141

The missionaries also continued to send the English church hierarchy increasingly bitter

petitions. In 1770, Auchmuty reported to the SPG that at a recent convention of the clergy at

New York he had “prevented any further applications to their superiors upon the subject of an

American Episcopate,” repeating his opinion that the missionaries “in general have too high an

opinion of their own importance, and foolish Zeal.”142 The next year, the Connecticut clergy sent

a petition to Terrick, complaining of “the distressed and truly pitiable State of the Church of

England in America.” The petition pleaded the loyalty of the colonial Anglicans: “there never

were, in proportion, so many loyal Subjects, bred in any Church, as has been in the Church of

England… But this Church cannot be supported long in such a Country as this, where it has so

139
Thomas Secker, A Letter to the Right Honourable Horatio Walpole, Esq; Written Jan. 9, 1750-1 (London: J. & F.
Rivington, 1769); [Francis Blackburne], A Critical Commentary on Archbishop Secker’s Letter to the Right
Honourable Horatio Walpole, Concerning Bishops in America (London: E. & C. Dilly, 1770). For the original
letter: LPL MS2589, pp. 44-56: Thomas Secker to Horatio Walpole, 1751.
140
Thomas Bradbury Chandler, Free Examination of the Critical Commentary on Archbishop Secker’s Letter to Mr.
Walpole (New York: Hugh Gaine, 1774); [Thomas Bradbury Chandler], An Appendix to the American Edition of the
Life of Archbishop Secker: Containing his Grace’s Letter to the Revd Mr Macclanechan, on the Irregularity of his
Conduct; with an Introductory Narrative (New York: Hugh Gaine, 1774); Beilby Porteus, A Review of the Life and
Character of Archbishop Secker ([New York]: [Hugh Gaine], [1773]).
141
Samuel Johnson to Robert Lowth, October 25 1768, in SJCW, 1:448-49; 486-87: W. S. Johnson to Myles
Cooper, January 18 1773. These relationships are discussed in more detail in Chapter Five below, 243-47.
142
USPG B2, n. 36: Samuel Auchmuty, June 8 1770.

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many, and potent Enemies.” The injustice involved was staggering: “every blazing Enthusiast

throughout the British Empire is tolerated in the full Enjoyment of every Peculiarity of his

Sect.”143 The national church alone was denied toleration. Later that year, the New York and

New Jersey clergy sent a similar petition: “the strongest and best Security Great Britain can have

for the Fidelity of her American Colonies, must arise from those Principles that are taught in our

Church, and in ours only.”144 The missionaries’ expectations were low. The petitions were

carried by Myles Cooper as he travelled to England in order to seek a royal charter for King’s

College. Chandler observed the irony:

“He goes partly as a missionary from us, in order to convert the guardians of
the Church from the errors of their ways. I think our sending missionaries
among them is almost as necessary as their sending missionaries to America.
But I fear the difficulty of proselyting such a nation will be found greater than
that of converting the American savages.”145

Conclusion

The missionaries could not understand why political support from Britain was not forthcoming.

It is difficult to reconcile their fear of being abandoned and forgotten with Bridenbaugh’s

suggestion that the SPG represented “British imperialism in ecclesiastical guise.”146 The

empire’s governors were willing to support each colony’s religious majority, even the Catholic

majority in Quebec. However, they had little to gain and much to lose from supporting local

religious minorities, even where those minorities were members of the national church in the

143
LPL FPC vol. 1, f. 317: Clergy of Connecticut to Richard Terrick, May 19 1771.
144
LPL FPC vol. 41, ff. 334-35: Clergy of New York and New Jersey to Richard Terrick, October 12 1771.
145
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Johnson, October 26 1771, in SJCW, 1:482-84.
146
Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, 57.

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mother country. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker recognised the need for

compromise in such a religious diverse empire. He sought to obtain a stronger establishment for

the southern Anglicans and a more favourable toleration for the northern Anglicans, but he was

not willing to challenge the rights of New England’s majoritarian churches.

The bishop controversy should be seen as one of a series of local conflicts that were set

off by imperial expansion during the Seven Years’ War, alongside the Stamp Act crisis and

disagreements over religious policy in Quebec. The Seven Years’ War further diversified an

already diverse empire. It was not easy to govern such an empire. Government support for the

Catholic majority in Quebec was unavoidable, but it alarmed Protestants elsewhere in the

empire. Meanwhile, the Anglican population of the northern colonies grew increasingly

frustrated at the lack of attention they received. They wanted to be treated like a majority, but the

government was unwilling to do so. Supporting them would alarm those colonies’ Dissenter

majorities, as well as the large and powerful Dissenter minority in England. New England’s

Dissenters were alarmed at the prospect of an imperial Church of England, but in reality there

was never much political support in Britain for the creation of an American bishop. The bishop

controversy, then, was not a Dissenter rebellion against an expanding imperial Church of

England. Rather, it was a disruptive and destabilising rebellion by American Anglicans against

an empire that had forgotten them.

The SPG missionaries were simultaneously alienated from the British Empire and

convinced that they were more loyal and more authentically British than their Dissenting rivals.

Their capacity to appeal to England for political support met with little success in practice, but it

alarmed their Dissenting neighbours. The bishop controversy, then, was not the empire-wide

crisis depicted by Bridenbaugh so much as a very local quarrel. Katharine Carté Engel has shown

127
that as the New England Dissenters’ criticism of the colonial Church of England became more

virulent, they increasingly lost the support of their coreligionists in Britain. She suggests that we

see the bishop controversy as a political argument that divided a formerly united transatlantic

Dissenting interest.147 In the same way, the bishop controversy convinced the missionaries that

they were more attuned to the real interests of the Church of England than were its own bishops

and archbishops. They were loyal to their own idealised conception of the British Empire, not to

its more complex, multiconfessional reality. They were loyal to an empire in which the Church

of England was a truly imperial church, established throughout the American colonies. This was

manifestly not the case in practice.148

Understanding the missionaries’ predicament requires a certain amount of sympathetic

reconstruction, not just of their theological commitments but also of their emotional response to

the unfolding of the imperial crisis after 1763. They were members of the national church who

were not treated as such. They had always demonstrated their conscientious commitment to the

Church of England by labouring in its service in conditions nothing short of persecution. They

had risked their lives to travel to England to receive ordination from a bishop because they

believed it was the practice of the primitive church. They had always been promised support

147
Katherine Carté Engel, “Revisiting the Bishop Controversy,” in The American Revolution Reborn, eds. Patrick
Spero and Michael Zuckerman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming). I am grateful to Prof.
Engel for sharing this article and allowing me to cite it before publication.
148
Nancy Rhoden has recently suggested that one aspect of the “Anglicization” process was “the consolidation and
expansion of the colonial Church of England,” a process she calls “Anglicanization.” Rhoden suggests that
“Anglicanization” entailed an “intensified embrace of the church-state model” in America. Yet in this case, the
missionaries’ strict attachment to the fundamental unity of church and state was out of step with contemporaneous
English churchmen’s more compromising and moderate understandings of religious toleration, of the kind employed
by Thomas Secker in his efforts to advance a colonial episcopate. Here, as elsewhere, “Anglicization” did not
simply involve assimilation to metropolitan norms; there was also plenty of mistranslation and anachronism. Nancy
L. Rhoden, “Anglicanism, Dissent, and Toleration in Eighteenth-Century British Colonies,” in Anglicizing America:
Empire, Revolution, Republic, eds. Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David Silverman (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 125-52. For more on anachronism, see Brendan McConville, The King’s
Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2006).

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from Britain, and it always failed to materialise. With Britain’s providential victory over the

French and Spanish in the Seven Years’ War, they were confident that their governors would

finally begin to take notice of the enlarged and increasingly important American empire. Instead,

they soon found the colonies in turmoil over the Stamp Act and their pleas for religious

toleration violently opposed by the leaders of the political unrest. The government, instead of

rewarding their loyalty, had bowed to the demands of these Dissenters – while allowing a popish

bishop to be sent to Quebec.

The SPG missionaries continued to assert their aggressive loyalty to the British Empire as

the imperial crisis worsened in the early 1770s. It seems unsurprising that so many Anglican

clergy should have been loyal to the empire during the American Revolution, but these were not

representatives of imperial authority, however much they wanted to be. They became loyalists

not to defend the status quo, but rather to demand radical constitutional change. Their failure to

obtain an American bishop not only determined their allegiance upon the outbreak of war in

1775, it also shaped the character of their loyalism. Bridenbaugh has suggested that American

patriots’ opposition to the bishop proposal infused the revolutionary political program with a

sacred quality, marrying a quest for political rights to a quest for religious liberty.149 Although

Bridenaugh exaggerated its importance to the patriot movement, a similar argument can be made

about the influence of the bishop controversy on the loyalist SPG missionaries. As the following

chapter will show, they continued to play the role of martyrs for the Church of England,

proclaiming the power of their religious beliefs by choosing to suffer for them under conditions

of religious persecution.

149
Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, xiv. See also Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of
Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997); Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and
the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven: Yale University press, 1977).

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 CHAPTER THREE

Loyalist Martyrs: Praying for the King in the American Revolution

Introduction

Following the outbreak of fighting between colonial and British troops in the spring of 1775,

American patriots sought to clamp down on loyalists in their midst. John Sayre, the SPG

missionary to the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, recalled that he was “always known to

disapprove of the public conduct and strongly suspected of endeavouring to counteract it.” He

had hitherto continued in “tolerable quiet”; now, a Committee of Safety began disarming

suspected loyalists, and his house was “beset by more than two Hundred armed Horsemen.”

Finding his wife “sick and in the latter stages of pregnancy,” they abandoned the attempt, and the

committee instead ordered Sayre to sign his name to the Continental Association, the series of

economic sanctions against Britain adopted by Congress the previous year. Sayre refused. He

explained to the committee that, as “a servant (though unworthy) of the Gospel of Christ,” he

could not consider taking up arms against “the Parent State.” Even if he was “brought into a state

of bondage,” he “ought not to complain,” since “in Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free.”

He insisted that he was a sincere friend “to America and its liberties,” but maintained that the

only proper response to “the present unnatural war” was to pursue “a true and general

reformation” of manners in both America and Britain. Sayre published his letter to the committee

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in the New York Journal, and it was approvingly republished in Philadelphia by the Quaker

pacifist and slavery abolitionist Anthony Benezet.1

Despite Benezet’s approval, Sayre’s conscientious objection to the war failed to win the

committee’s sympathy. He was declared an enemy to his country and banished from Fairfield.

He was permitted to return after seven months, but was confined to his parish, and his

congregation continued to be “oppressed merely on account of their attachment to their Church

and King.” Bullets were shot through his church, its windows were broken, and its hangings and

lead roof tiles were carried away. He resolved “to remain with my people to see the end,” but

after Fairfield was burnt to the ground by British troops, Sayre fled to New York and joined the

city’s swelling population of loyalist refugees. Here, he reflected on the spiritual meaning of his

trials and tribulations. His congregation had borne their suffering with “patience and fortitude

indicative of the power of religion.” They had “considerably increased, not only in numbers, but

also in attachment to the church; notwithstanding the many oppositions to religion and Loyalty

that have been made.” He had lost all his worldly possessions, but retained something infinitely

more valuable: “a conscience void of offence towards GOD and towards men.”2

John Sayre and the loyalist SPG missionaries thought of themselves as loyalist martyrs.

Their history as a religious minority in the northern colonies, together with their origins in the

New England Puritan tradition and their ties to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, had generated

a distinctive culture of militant Anglicanism. This culture celebrated a willingness to suffer for

the sake of conscience and contended that to undergo persecution was a sign of a true church.

Long before the onset of the American Revolution, they had understood their experience as a

1
John Sayre, From the New York Journal ([Philadelphia]:n.p., [1775]). For Benezet’s reprinting, see the English
Short Title Catalogue citation number W12317 and W18707.
2
Rhodes House Library, USPG archive [henceforth USPG], B23 n. 233: John Sayre [to the SPG], November 8
1779.

131
religious minority in terms of suffering for their allegiance to a distant national church. They had

routinely complained that they were forgotten and abandoned by the government at home and

that they were persecuted by American Dissenters, especially given Dissenters’ opposition to

their efforts to obtain a colonial bishop. Their response to the American Revolution grew out of

this tradition. They were convinced that the rebellion was a rebellion against the Church of

England, and that they were being persecuted for their loyalty to church and king; specifically,

for their conscientious fidelity to their ordination oaths and to the Book of Common Prayer. This

claim served a number of functions: it vindicated the sincerity of colonial Anglicanism to its

critics; it fuelled calls for moral reform and religious revival; it was used to attract political

support from Britain; and it contested the moral high ground against patriots who claimed that

they were the suffering victims of a tyrannical empire. Most important of all, it provided the

missionaries themselves with spiritual support at a time of personal trauma.

The American Revolution was an opportunity for the missionaries to demonstrate the

sincerity of their religious beliefs under conditions of persecution. Historians have recognised a

similar dynamic for other denominations, including Quakers such as Benezet. 3 The sincerity of

conscience was a point of particular contention between the SPG missionaries and their

denominational rivals. Both sides agreed that religious pluralism was regrettable, while religious

coercion was inexcusable; they thereby made conscience the only legitimate ground of religious

dissent. The SPG missionaries were repeatedly accused by their denominational rivals of

insincerity: of joining the Church of England not for conscientious reasons but because they were

3
A. Glenn Crothers, “Northern Virginia’s Quakers and the War for Independence: Negotiating a Path of Virtue in a
Revolution World,” in The Other Loyalists: Ordinary People, Royalism, and the Revolution in the Middle Colonies,
1763-1787, eds. Joseph S. Tiedemann, Eugene R. Fingerhut, and Robert W. Venables (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009),
105-30; Jean F. Hankins, “Connecticut’s Sandemanians: Loyalism as a Religious Test” in Loyalists and Community
in North America, eds. Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk (Westport, CA: Greenwood
Press, 1994), 31-43; Sydney V. James, A People Among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century
America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).

132
attracted by the promise of wealth, status, and moral laxity. 4 By embracing martyrdom, then, the

missionaries were providing irrefutable evidence of the sincerity of their consciences. For this

reason, the SPG missionaries saw the American rebellion as an unprecedented crisis for the

Church of England, but a crisis that held out the promise of spiritual rebirth. In turn, this claim

provided the missionaries with tremendous moral authority in the Church of England as it

considered its response to the American Revolution. Understanding the missionaries’ identity as

loyalist martyrs helps to explain why they held such fascination for conservative churchmen in

England after American independence. Anglicans do not usually get to be martyrs.

Scholarship on the loyalist Church of England clergy – and indeed, on the American

loyalists in general – has often sought to impose a distinction between “active” and “passive”

loyalists. According to this distinction, the former were motivated by ideology or self-interest to

attempt to stem the rebellion, while the latter were reacting helplessly to events beyond their

control. The distinction is drawn from contemporary ideology: while American patriots

contended that the loyalists were actively complicit in Britain’s suppression of colonial liberties,

the loyalists presented themselves as the passive victims of the rebellion. Historians interested in

the politics of loyalism have often followed the patriot perspective. Focusing on those Anglican

clergymen who published loyalist pamphlets, especially the trio of Samuel Seabury, Thomas

Bradbury Chandler, and Charles Inglis, they have emphasised the importance of Anglican

theology in furnishing loyalist ideology.5 Conversely, historians of the colonial Church of

4
See Chapter One, 69-74 above.
5
Robert B. Calhoon, “The Loyalist Perception,” in Tory Insurgents: The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays, 2nd
ed., eds. Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and Robert S. Davis (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press, 2010), 3-14; Janice Potter-MacKinnon and Robert M. Calhoon, “The Character and Coherence of the Loyalist
Press,” in ibid., 129-59; Robert M. Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 191-265; Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,
enlarged edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1992), 318. Calhoon cites J. C. D. Clark’s work to assert that the
“doctrinaire Toryism” represented by Seabury, Inglis, and Chandler was “normative” in England: Calhoon,

133
England have reacted against the implication that episcopalianism was inescapably bound to

reactionary politics, arguing that the loyalist clergy were not Tory ideologues so much as the

passive victims of persecution endured on account of their ecclesiastical connections to the

British monarchy.6

The most sophisticated treatment of the Church of England in the American Revolution is

Nancy Rhoden’s Revolutionary Anglicanism, a “collective biography” of the colonial clergy.

Rhoden has conclusively demonstrated the diversity of political and religious opinion within

American Anglicanism. Significantly, she draws attention to a middle ground of “neutrals” lying

between the patriot and loyalist extremes, who were more concerned with maintaining religious

provision for their congregations than with supporting one or other side of the political

contestation.7 As in any civil war, individuals were motivated by a fantastic variety of factors,

and their response to political events can be situated at various points on a spectrum between the

poles of enthusiastic support for one side or the other. Rhoden brilliantly captures this element of

individual experience and diversity. Nevertheless, approaches that try to understand how the

entire colonial Church of England responded to the American Revolution do not engage with the

question, “what did it mean to be an Anglican loyalist?”

Attention to the moral and spiritual valences of Anglican loyalism reveals forms of

political subjectivity that operated during the American Revolution which are rarely recognised

by historians. The concept of loyalist martyrdom disrupts the distinction between “active”

“Loyalist Perception,” 12. see also James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American
Revolution (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 123-69.
6
For example, William Stevens Perry, “The Alleged ‘Toryism’ of the Clergy of the United States at the Breaking
out of the War of the Revolution: an Historical Examination,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal
Church 45, no. 2 (1976): 133-44.
7
Nancy L. Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the American
Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). Bell pursues a similar taxonomy: Bell, War of Religion, 222-40.

134
loyalists and “passive” loyalists or “neutrals.” Although the missionaries claimed to be the

passive victims of the rebellion, they were active in embracing martyrdom and celebrating

accounts of loyalist suffering. Scholars of religion and gender have shown that the religious

sphere offered women opportunities to exercise agency and authority through the embrace of

suffering, weakness, martyrdom, and bodily mortification.8 The loyalist clergy can be

approached in the same way. By fashioning themselves as persecuted subjects, they played a

crucial role in the political contestation, particularly the struggle for moral authority. They can

therefore be situated in the history of political martyrdom. 9 Yet whatever the political

implications of their martyrdom, religion was the operative category here: the concept of

martyrdom draws its strength from a distinction between this world and the next, and a

willingness to suffer in this world for the sake of the next. There can be no such thing as wholly

secular martyrdom.10

The concept of loyalist martyrdom therefore provides a corrective to secularised histories

of the American Revolution. Implicit in the historiographical impulse to categorise the loyalist

clergy as “active” or “passive” loyalists is a distinction between “politics” and “religion”: active

loyalists were motivated by politics, passive loyalists were motivated by religion. This chapter,

rather than imposing an anachronistic distinction between the religious and political elements of

8
Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008); Barbara B. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the
Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in
the Secular Age (New York: Viking, 1999); R. Marie Griffith, God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power
of Submission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
9
Brian Cowan, “The Spin Doctor: Sacheverell’s Trial Speech and Political Performance in the Divided Society,”
Parliamentary History 31, no. 1 (2012): 28-46; Melinda S. Zook, “Violence, Martyrdom, and Radical Politics:
Rethinking the Glorious Revolution,” in Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain, ed. Howard
Nenner (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998), 75-95.
10
Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999); Brad S. Gregory, Salvation and Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

135
the missionaries’ loyalism, instead explores the ways in which their religion and politics were

mutually constitutive. Contemporaries did recognise a distinction between the respective realms

of “religion” and “politics,” but this distinction was inherently contested, and the line between

the two was informed by both political and theological considerations. The loyalist clergy

insisted that loyalty to the state was a religious obligation that transcended that politics of any

particular government or party. Yet for American patriots, the loyalist clergy were preaching

politics in the guise of religion.

We cannot hope to understand the meaning that the revolution held for contemporaries

without understanding their religious, spiritual, and moral motivations. Where historians have

emphasised the religious dimensions of the American Revolution, they have generally done so

by giving an all-important role to political theology. Although this kind of approach can generate

important insights, it also has a reductive element: the revolution was about politics; politics was

about ideology; and ideology was about theology: therefore the revolution was about theology.11

This chapter works towards a more expansive picture of the pervasive role of religion in the

American Revolution, focusing on the lived experience of the loyalist SPG missionaries, the

substance of religious belief and practice, holy texts such as the Book of Common Prayer and the

Bible, and generic literary forms such as martyrdom narratives.

11
J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-
American World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

136
Voices in the Wilderness: The Emergence of Anglican Loyalism, 1766-74

In the decade between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the outbreak of rebellion, the missionaries

consistently provided the society with reports of their efforts to combat radicalism and inculcate

principles of loyalty among their parishioners. For these missionaries, loyalty, obedience, and

submission were religious rather than political virtues, and the quiet and peaceable behaviour of

their congregations constituted a religious rather than a political test. By deploring the rebellious

disposition of the colonists, the missionaries were critiquing what they saw as the deep-seated

immorality of colonial society: an immorality, they believed, that could only be remedied by the

principles taught in the Church of England. These reports were not only directed against the

emerging patriot movement but also against the alleged neglect of the American church by its

civil and ecclesiastical governors in Britain, particularly in their failure to create an American

bishop. While the missionaries lamented the development of colonial radicalism, they failed to

provide any organised opposition to it until a focal point was provided by the meeting of the

Continental Congress in 1774. The significance of these early denunciations of colonial

radicalism lies not in their political impact, but rather in explaining why, upon the outbreak of

rebellion, the missionaries were so convinced that the crisis could have been averted had the

Church of England been properly supported in America from the beginning.

The missionaries viewed the widespread protests against the 1765 Stamp Act as a moral

crisis. In their correspondence with the society, they described their efforts to inculcate principles

of loyalty and obedience among their parishioners. Shortly after the passage of the Stamp Act,

Thomas Bradbury Chandler of Elizabeth Town in New Jersey informed the society of his

attempts to “allay the Ferment, & to promote a peaceable Submission to the Higher Powers, not

137
only for Wrath, but for Conscience Sake.”12 In his next letter, he complained that the spirit of

protest and rebellion made it “hard to dissemble any truths or precepts of the Gospel, and some

of them, relating to civil society, it is now become dangerous to declare.” Chandler’s

condemnation of the protests did not indicate support for the Stamp Act. “Every Friend… to the

Happiness of the Colonies, or even of Great Britain… must wish that the Parliament would relax

of its Severity,” Chandler wrote, adding, “I do not mean… to excuse the Conduct of my

Countrymen: for I really detest it, & do endeavour to traverse & counteract it to the utmost of my

ability.” For Chandler, civil obedience was simply a “precept of the Gospel.”13

The missionaries therefore viewed the quiet and obedient behaviour of their

congregations as a test of their religious principles. Bela Hubbard wrote from New Haven that

not a single member of his congregation had joined the Sons of Liberty, which he considered

evidence that “my Labours in the Vineyard of Christ, has not been altogether in Vain; I have not

failed to exhort them (in these unhappy times,) to let the world see, that Churchmen fear God,

and honor the King.”14 In this way, in 1770, Samuel Seabury hoped that “even these

Disturbances, will be attended with some advantage to the Interest of the Church. The Usefulness

& Truth of her Doctrines with Regard to civil Government, appear more evident from these

Disorders, which other Principles have led the People into.” He expected the church people’s

loyalty to be “remembered many Years in this Country with Approbation.”15

The missionaries’ denunciations of the Stamp Act protests also reflected the encircled,

embattled sensibility of Anglicanism in the northern colonies. The missionaries knew that they

12
USPG B24 n. 88: Thomas Bradbury Chandler, July 5 1765. Chandler is quoting Romans 13, 5: “Wherefore ye
must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.” This passage, on the duty of submission to
authorities, was frequently cited by the missionaries in their condemnations of colonial radicalism.
13
USPG B24 n. 90: Thomas Bradbury Chandler, January 8 1766.
14
USPG B23 n. 171: Bela Hubbard, January 10 1769.
15
USPG B2 n. 178: Samuel Seabury, March 29 1770.

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belonged to the national church but found themselves surrounded and oppressed by the church’s

enemies, and they therefore looked to king and Parliament for security. For this reason, the

missionaries watched with alarm as Parliament surrendered to the political unrest by repealing

the Stamp Act in March 1766. Samuel Andrews explained to the society that in Connecticut, the

Dissenters have “the Authority in their own Hands” and had demonstrated their “inclination to

distress, and even Extirpate the Church.” Now, the repeal of the Stamp Act had led them to

believe “they have Nothing to fear from your side the Water.”16 Likewise, James Scovil warned

the society, it “has been only fear of the authority on your side the water that has restrained them

heretofore from proceeding against the church, with the utmost severity.”17 As early as October

1767, Ebenezer Dibblee of Stamford declared, “God have Mercy upon us, if the Provinces here

should throw off their connection, dependence, and subjection to the mother country.” 18 In this

way, the missionaries provided dire warnings of the prospect of American independence that

appeared far-fetched to more level-headed observers, but which the missionaries would later

claim were prescient.

The missionaries’ reports to the society painted a picture of the political disputes in which

the colonial Church of England was overwhelmingly loyal while colonial radicalism was almost

exclusively the work of Presbyterians and Congregationalists. John Beach observed that “the

Church People in these parts are the best affected towards the Government of great Britain, & the

more zealous Churchmen they are by so much the stronger affection they discover for King &

Parliament.”19 William MacGilchrist of Salem in Massachusetts warned the SPG of the synergy

16
USPG B23 n. 12: Samuel Andrews, June 25 1766.
17
USPG B23 n. 342: James Scovil, July 8 1766.
18
USPG B23 n. 107: Ebenezer Dibblee, October 1 1767.
19
USPG B23 n. 40a: John Beach, April 14 1768.

139
between religious and political radicalism. The patriot movement was exploiting the religious

passions of Protestant enthusiasts to whip up support for their political program. The patriots’

“chief Demagogue,” denouncing Parliamentary taxation, had warned his hearers that “their

Churches were in danger” and compared Thomas Secker to Archbishop Laud, all “to set a keener

edge on his Hearers passions.”20 Dissenting ministers were throwing themselves behind the

protests in a vain quest for popularity. They “in all cases take the popular side, and are carried

down with the torrent.” The patriot leaders had “confessed, that they could not have succeeded in

inflaming the minds of the People” without the backing of a “regiment of black-coats.”21 They

routinely compared the radical movement to the seventeenth-century Presbyterians who had led

the last great rebellion against church and king under Oliver Cromwell. In 1768, the Connecticut

missionary Samuel Peters complained that “American Puritans” such as William Livingston

were seized with “the Glorious Idea of an Oliverian Revolution.”22

This stark picture of Dissenting radicalism and Anglican loyalism needs to be seen as part

of the missionaries’ long-running efforts to persuade the church’s civil and ecclesiastical leaders

to properly support its interests in America. For the missionaries, American Anglicans’ loyalty

was not only a vindication of their religious principles, but also proof that those principles

aligned with the secular interests of the government. James Scovil argued that the Stamp Act

crisis had once and for all vindicated the Church of England’s claim to be more loyal than the

Dissenters: “they have plentifully reproached us with the hated Name of Jacobites,” he wrote,

“but when the Stamp Act brought our Loyalty to the Test, I thank God, the scale turned greatly in

our Favour.” For Scovil, these events demonstrated that the SPG were unwise to be so cautious

20
USPG B22 n. 181: William MacGilchrist, June 28 1768.
21
USPG B22 n. 182: William MacGilchrist, June 29 1769.
22
USPG B23 n. 329a: Samuel Peters, June 25 1768.

140
about opening new missions in New England.23 In the same way, Chandler lamented, “if the

interests of the Church of England in America had been made a national Concern from the

beginning, by this Time a general Submission in the Colonies to the Mother Country, in

everything not sinful, might have been expected, not only for Wrath, but for Conscience sake.”

Chandler even warned that the “present rebellious Disposition of the Colonies” could be

“intended by Providence as a Punishment for that neglect.”24

As always, the missionaries were concerned above all with the state’s failure to provide

the American church with a bishop. They hoped that their proven loyalty during the years of

protest and unrest would convince British politicians that it was in their best interest to support

the established church in the colonies. Samuel Andrews pleaded with the society that the “noble

example of Loyalty” set by the church people “recommend them as a suitable Object of the

Attention and particular Care of Government,” specifically by “establishing an American Bishop

or Bishops.”25 Likewise, in 1772, Matthew Graves concluded his biannual report with a prayer:

“the Blessing of a Bishop would make true Religion & Loyalty overspread this Land. Hasten,

hasten, O LORD, a truly spiritual Overseer to this despised, abused, persecuted Part of thy

Vineyard for CHRIST JESUS’s sake, Amen! Amen!”26

23
USPG B23 n. 343: James Scovil, July 6 1767.
24
USPG B24 n. 90: Thomas Bradbury Chandler, January 18 1766.
25
USPG B23 n. 12: Samuel Andreews, June 25 1766.
26
USPG B22 n. 160: Matthew Graves, January 1 1772.

141
Oaths, Perjury, and Prayers for the King: Anglican Loyalism as a Religious Test

As the imperial crisis worsened after 1774, the missionaries responded in a variety of ways,

following a variety of motivations and circumstances. Some, such as Seabury, Inglis, and

Chandler, took an early and active role in petitioning against the rebellion, a direct continuation

of their campaign for an American bishop in the 1760s. Others, such as Samuel Peters, furiously

denounced the rebellion from their pulpits and quickly attracted violent opposition from

American patriots. Many of them spoke of the need for the clergy to avoid entering into the

political disputes one way or another. However, the proper boundary between “politics” and

“religion” was hotly contested: where the clergy believed that the sinfulness of rebellion was a

Christian doctrine that superseded politics, those who preached this doctrine were accused by

patriots of supporting the government in the political contestation. Whatever the extent of the

missionaries’ efforts to avoid political controversy, they were all politically suspect simply by

virtue of their association with the Church of England. As the political crisis worsened, and after

fighting broke out between British and provincial troops, American patriots sought to extract

guarantees that suspected loyalists would support the independent United States, and neutrality

quickly ceased to be an option. Other missionaries became refugees through entirely contingent

circumstances, for example when fleeing the general devastation wrought by the war. A few

missionaries, such as Edward Bass, sought to compromise with their patriot neighbours, and

were quickly denounced and disowned by their fellow-missionaries and by the SPG hierarchy.

Despite this manifest diversity, the missionaries were ultimately united around a belief that the

Church of England was being persecuted as a result of the American rebellion.

As far as the loyalist missionaries were concerned, their clashes with American patriots

occurred over matters of conscience rather than politics. They were most often brought from

private scepticism to public opposition to the rebellion over one of two issues: either the taking

142
of oaths of allegiance, or the act of praying for the king. In both cases, they insisted that their

political allegiance was mandated by their conscientious obligations, thereby elevating loyalism

beyond the realm of politics and making it a matter of spirituality and holiness. To be a loyalist,

in their view, was to have chosen the interests of one’s eternal soul over the temptation of sin.

Not only was the rebellion sinful in itself, the rebels were also perpetrating religious persecution

by passing laws against praying for the king or by requiring his sworn subjects to take new oaths

of allegiance to the independent United States.

At the opening stages of the war, loyalism was suppressed through extra-legal or semi-

legal channels. Committees of Safety, Inspection, and Correspondence were created across the

colonies after 1773, and took an active role in enforcing the Continental Association the

following year. Committees of Safety and ad hoc popular meetings might require suspect

individuals to take oaths of allegiance, to sign the Continental Association, or to surrender their

weapons. Following the Declaration of Independence, revolutionary governments assembled a

more formal legal apparatus for the suppression of loyalism, and expanded and reinforced this

apparatus throughout the war.27 This apparatus included test laws requiring oaths of allegiance to

the United States; laws against treason, including treasonous correspondence or treasonous

speech; laws against trade with Great Britain; and laws banishing loyalists or confiscating the

property of exiled loyalists.28 Legal and extra-legal suppression of loyalism continued to exist in

synergy. Popular meetings demanded the creation of anti-loyalist laws, pushed for legal action

against suspected loyalists, and executed the orders of Committees of Safety. Studying the

27
Calhoon, Loyalists, 295-305.
28
Claude Halstead Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 318-41
(Appendices B & C).

143
suppression of loyalism in Connecticut, David Villers concludes, “Tories could be excused for

believing the quasi-vigilantism was built into the structure of local Whig authority.”29

The issue of oath-taking made the disputes over sovereignty and allegiance a matter of

one’s eternal interests. Oaths remained an ever-present part of public life in the eighteenth

century, and were widely used to determine political allegiance during the war, but an oath was

also a spiritually weighty matter, a contract between the individual and the Almighty.30 Test

Laws required oaths of allegiance to the independent United States, while Committees of Safety

and popular meetings might demand that oaths of allegiance be taken on an ad hoc basis. Such

demands were often targeted at public officials who had previously taken oaths of allegiance to

the king, including the Anglican clergy, who had sworn allegiance to the king on their

ordination. Luke Babcock was seized by rebels in October 1776 and imprisoned after declaring

himself “bound by his Oath of Allegiance to the King.”31 Another New York missionary, John

Beardsley, was driven from his parish after refusing to take “a Test Oath of Allegiance to the

usurping Independent States of America.”32

The clergy’s ordination oaths also obliged them to use the Book of Common Prayer,

making their fidelity to the liturgy a matter of particular significance. William Clarke explained

to his congregation that “by Vows, Oaths & Subscriptions, which have been made on Earth &

recorded in Heaven, I am obliged to act as a Dutiful Subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King

George the Third; and to the Constant use of the Liturgy of that Church of which, under GOD, he

29
David H. Villers, “‘King Mob’ and the Rule of Law: Revolutionary Justice and the Suppression of Loyalism in
Connecticut, 1774-1783,” in Loyalists and Community, eds. Calhoon, Barnes, and Rawlyk, 17-30, quotation 24.
30
John Spurr, “A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 11 (2001):
37-63. See for example the controversy over Quakers’ efforts to substitute a “solemn declaration” in place of oath: J.
W. Frost, “The Affirmation Controversy and Religious Liberty,” in The World of William Penn, eds. R. S. Dunn and
M. M. Dunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 303-22.
31
USPG B2 n. 191: Samuel Seabury, New York City, March 29 1777.
32
USPG B3 n. 39: John Beardsley, New York City, December 26 1776.

144
is the Head.”33 For Clarke, to take a new oath of allegiance to the independent States was to

commit the sin of perjury.

Even greater spiritual significance was attached to conflicts over the prayers for the king

contained in the Book of Common Prayer. The Prayer Book was both a sacred text and a roundly

political one.34 Its exposition of the duties of subjects and the unity of church and state made it a

point of conflict as the rebels sought to establish both political and ecclesiastical sovereignty.

Most immediately controversial was the liturgy’s prayers for the reigning monarch and royal

family: “That it may please thee to keep and strengthen the true worshipping of thee in

righteousness and holiness of life, thy servant George, our most gracious King and Governor…

That it may please thee to be his defender and keeper, giving him the victory over all his

enemies...” The litany also included prayers for deliverance “from all sedition, privy conspiracy

and rebellion.” In addition, the Anglican liturgical year included commemorative services for the

anniversaries of Charles I’s execution and Charles II’s restoration. These strongly condemned

the seventeenth-century Puritan rebellion against church and king and celebrated Charles I as a

Christian martyr, comparing him to Jesus Christ.35 Also contentious was the observance or non-

observance of fast days, displays of national contrition at times of public crisis, which were

proclaimed by those in power on both sides.

Following the Declaration of Independence, the act of praying for the king was outlawed

throughout the rebellious colonies. In May 1776, Jacob Bailey was imprisoned “for neglecting to

read a proclamation for a public fast… refusing to publish the declaration of Independency, and

33
USPG B23 n. 339: [William Clarke], “Address to the People of Dedham and Stoughton” [March 1777].
34
Jeremy Gregory, “‘For All Sorts and Conditions of Men’: the Social Life of the Book of Common Prayer during
the Long Eighteenth Century: or, Bringing the History of Religion and Social History Together,” Social History 34,
no. 1 (2009): 34-35, 52.
35
Book of Common Prayer (1662 ed.); John Seed, Dissenting Histories: Religious Division and the Politics of
Memory in 18th Century England (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 88-90

145
continuing to pray for the King.”36 Samuel Seabury closed his church at West Chester after the

New York Congress “published an Edict making it Death to aid, abet, support, assist or comfort

the King, or any of his Forces, Servants or Friends.”37 In January 1777, Edward Winslow

reported that he was harassed by a Committee of Safety “for continuing to officiate in public, as

usual, without any Omission or Alteration of the Service, which it seems was expected upon the

Declaration of Independency.”38 The Church of England clergy in America thus found

themselves in a position mirroring that of Roman Catholics in Britain, their religious practice

outlawed as a result of their allegiance to a supra-national church.

The outlawing of prayers for the king presented a dilemma to the loyalist missionaries.

Inglis explained, “to officiate publicly, & not pray for the King & Royal Family, according to the

Liturgy, was against their Duty & Oath, as well as Dictates of their Conscience; & yet to use the

Prayers for the King & Royal Family, would have drawn inevitable Destruction on them.”

Seabury wrote to the English bishops asking if it was permissible to omit the prayers for the king

from the liturgy, and was told only that “it shall be left to the Prudence and Direction of those

Clergy themselves.”39 Inglis believed that the only proper course for the loyalist clergy was to

stop officiating, rather than officiate using a modified or incomplete liturgy. 40 Other approaches

were also discussed. Edward Winslow and William Clarke agreed that the praying for the

Congress was unconscionable but discussed the propriety of omitting the prayers for the king,

noting a precedent in the actions of the loyalist clergy during the seventeenth-century Civil War.

36
USPG B25 n. 226: Jacob Bailey, July 22 1779.
37
USPG B2 n. 190: Samuel Seabury, December 29 1776.
38
USPG B22 n. 295: Edward Winslow, January 1 1777.
39
Keller Library, MSS.SeLL61 box 1-3, n. 34: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Seabury, Feb 4 1779.
40
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.

146
They nevertheless opted against this compromise on the grounds that such action could not be

taken without authorisation from a bishop.41

Although the loyalist clergy maintained that their loyalism was mandated by the Prayer

Book, Anglican patriots were able to reconcile the Prayer Book with their allegiance to the

United States. They replaced prayers for the king with prayers for Congress, on the grounds that

the prayers should simply be for the reigning civil powers at any particular moment. In this view,

the king’s role as supreme governor of the Church of England was an incidental rather than an

essential part of its constitution. The same position was eventually taken by loyalist Anglicans

who remained in the independent United States, but the loyalists insisted that only the king could

absolve them of their allegiance by recognising American independence: “then, & not till then, I

shall think myself lawfully & properly absolved from my Oath of Allegiance,” William Clarke

declared.42 Before then, the substitution of the prayers was a course associated with those

southern Anglicans who has also rejected the pre-war proposal for an American bishop.43

For the loyalist missionaries, these southern Anglicans’ opposition to an American bishop

and their readiness to abandon their allegiance to George III demonstrated that loyalism was

intrinsic to Anglican doctrine as properly conceived. Following the Declaration of Independence,

Charles Inglis proudly reported that “all the Society’s missionaries, without excepting one,” in

New York, New Jersey, and New England, “have proved themselves faithful, loyal Subjects” by

closing their churches rather than modifying the liturgy. The Virginia clergy, however, had

issued a decree against praying for the king: Inglis observed that he “never expected much good

41
USPG B22 n. 295: Edward Winslow, January 1 1777; USPG B23 n. 408: Edward Winslow, August 15 1776;
USPG B22 n. 154: William Clarke, February 23 1781. Clarke and Winslow turned to the non-juror William
Nelson’s life of Bishop Bull: William Nelson, Life of Dr. George Bull, Late Lord Bishop of St. David’s, with the
History of those Controversies in which he was Engaged (London: Richard Smith, 1713), 39.
42
USPG B23 n. 339: [William Clarke], “Address to the People of Dedham and Stoughton” [March 1777].
43
Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism, 64-87.

147
of those Clergy among them who opposed an American Episcopate.”44 Anglican patriots, in this

view, were no true Anglicans.

The clergy who refused to officiate using a modified liturgy searched for compromises

that would allow them to continue their pastoral responsibilities. John Beardsley fled his parish

after refusing to take an Oath of Allegiance to the independent states, but allowed a layman to

read the liturgy, “omitting only such collects as would give offence to those claiming to be in

authority among them.”45 Some missionaries were willing to depart from the liturgy when

officiating in private. William Clarke officiated using “so much of the Liturgy as the times will

bear, in Private (where I suppose my self to have that Liberty in Modelling the Prayers, that I

have not in Public).”46 Clarke, Matthew Graves, and others ceased officiating at public worship

but continued performing “occasional Duties” such as baptism and funerals.47 Other forms of

religious instruction might also be offered. John Sayre refused to use the liturgy, “for I could not

make it agreeable either to my inclination or conscience to mutilate it, especially in so material a

part, as that is therein our duties as subjects are recognized.” Instead his congregation met “at the

usual hours” and read passages from the Bible “as seemed adapted to our cause in particular or to

the public calamities in general.”48 After Joshua Wingate Weeks closed his church, he

“frequently visited [his] flock from house to house, instructed their children, comforted them

under their troubles, [and] endeavoured to encourage them in their religion & loyalty.”49

44
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
45
USPG B3 n. 40: John Beardsley, October 26 1781.
46
USPG B22 n. 150-51. William Clarke, January 5 1778.
47
USPG B23 n. 339: [William Clarke], “Address to the People of Dedham and Stoughton” [March 1777]; USPG
B23 n. 164: Matthew Graves, September 25 1779.
48
USPG B23 n. 233: John Sayre, November 8 1779.
49
USPG B22 n. 260: [Joshua Wingate Weeks], “The State of the Episcopal Churches in the Province of
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Etc.” [1778].

148
Revolutionary authorities objected to the public act of praying for the king but connived at the

offending prayers when performed behind closed doors.

Although the missionaries complained that they were the passive victims of religious

persecution, the performance of prayers for the king offered an occasion for active political

resistance. The political meaning attached to the prayers depended on the circumstantial details

of a specific performance. William Clarke announced his intention “to read the Prayers for the

Kings Majesty, with as distinct and audible a voice as I could speak.”50 Inglis continued to

officiate using the prayers in rebel-held New York. One Sunday “a Company of about one

hundred armed Rebels marched into the Church, with Drums Beating & Flutes playing” and “the

people expected that when the Collects for the King & Royal Family were read, I should be fired

at.” He continued with the service, and the matter passed without incident.51 Inglis closed his

church after the Declaration of Independence, but others continued to officiate using the prayers

for the king. Edward Winslow “publicly declared” his refusal to deviate from “those solemn

Engagements of Allegiance to the King & Fidelity to the Church which my Oaths, Conscience,

Judgment & Inclination jointly bind me to maintain.”52 After the Declaration of Independence he

was brought before a Committee of Safety at Braintree, to whom he declared it “my Duty to pray

for my Sovereign.” Winslow continued officiating using the prayers until 1777, when he too

closed his church.53

Refusing to officiate at all could also indicate political resistance. Inglis reported that the

missionaries who closed their churches did so at “great Hazard; for it was declaring in the

50
USPG B22 n. 154: William Clarke, February 23 1781.
51
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
52
USPG B23 n. 406: Edward Winslow, August 8 1775.
53
USPG B23 n. 408: Edward Winslow, August 15 1776; USPG B22 n. 295: Edward Winslow, January 1 1777.

149
strongest manner our Disapprobation of Independency.”54 William Clarke explained to his

congregation that the Anglican church service had been outlawed because its prayers “plainly

Discountenance all Kinds of Rebellion & Opposition to his Kingly Government.” 55 Samuel

Seabury resolved, “if I went to Church & omitted praying for the King, it would not only be a

Breach of my Duty, but in some Degree countenancing their Rebellion.” He therefore closed his

church, telling his congregation “that till I could pray for the King, & do my Duty according to

the Rubric & Canons, there would be neither Prayers, nor Sermon.”56

A missionary who omitted the prayers for the king, Edward Bass of Newburyport, was

dismissed from the society’s service for disloyalty. 57 Bass strenuously denied that he had broken

his allegiance to the king, provoking an illuminating debate about how to define a loyalist, and

indicating the centrality of the Prayer Book to the identity of the loyalist missionary community.

Finding himself in an overwhelmingly hostile environment, Bass opted for accommodation

rather than martyrdom. He proposed omission of the prayers on the basis that “half a Loaf was

better than no bread.”58 Immediately after the Declaration of Independence, Bass’s congregation

wrote to him requesting that he omit prayers for the king; Bass agreed that doing so was

“necessary to the existence of the Church in this place.”59 In the summer of 1778, the missionary

Joshua Wingate Weeks migrated to London as a loyalist refugee, and informed the society that

Bass had omitted the prayers; he also reported rumours that Bass had prayed for Congress and

54
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
55
USPG B23 n. 339: [William Clarke], “Address to the People of Dedham and Stoughton” [March 1777].
56
USPG B2 n. 190: Samuel Seabury, December 29 1776.
57
Daniel Dulany Addison, The Life and Times of Edward Bass: First Bishop of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1897), 131-74.
58
USPG B22 n. 154: William Clarke, February 23 1781.
59
Addison, Edward Bass, 154-55.

150
preached a charity sermon to gather contributions for clothing the rebel army.60 Samuel Peters,

another refugee in London, also reported a rumour that Bass had read the Declaration of

Independence from his pulpit.61 The society expelled Bass at the beginning of 1779.62

It took two years for news of his expulsion to make its way back to Massachusetts, but

when it did, Bass immediately set about contesting the society’s decision.63 He argued that the

omission of the prayers was a small measure of compliance that had allowed him to continue

offering religious provision at Newburyport.64 He denied praying for Congress or reading the

Declaration of Independence, and attributed these malicious rumours to the jealousy of the

refugees: “some of the Missionaries & others who quitted the Country were extremely

prejudiced against us who stayed behind & kept our churches open.” He insisted that he had

“presented as firm & unshakeable Loyalty to his Majesty & attachment to the British

Government as was consistent with my remaining in the Country.”65 Bass also mobilised the

testimony of a number of well-respected loyalists in his favour, who reported that he “has

demeaned himself in all respects as becomes a good Subject of the King, unless his Omitting his

Majesty & Royal Family in the liturgy be reckoned an exception.”66 He had manifested his

loyalty in “frequent repeated conversations” and sermons breathing “a spirit of moderation &

60
USPG B22 n. 260, [Joshua Wingate Weeks], “The State of the Episcopal Churches in the Province of
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Etc.” [c. July 1778]; n. 261: Weeks, January 21 1779.
61
USPG C.Am.3 n. 105: Samuel Peters, November 18 1782.
62
USPG B22 n. 55: William Morice, “State of the Evidence against Mr Bass who was dismissed the Society’s
service on charges of improper & disloyal behaviour which originally gave offence to his brethren” n.d.
63
USPG B22 n 44: Edward Bass, October 30 1781.
64
USPG B22 n. 46: Edward Bass, March 15 1782; n. 47: Edward Bass to Samuel Hales, November 6 1782; n. 48:
Edward Bass, January 9 1784; n. 55: [William Morice], “State of the Evidence.”
65
USPG B22 n. 49: Edward Bass to William Morice, June 21 1784.
66
USPG B22 n. 50: 50. Governor John Wentworth to SPG, June 11 1783; n. 52: Mark Wentworth and George
Jaffrey to SPG, October 22 1782.

151
obedience.”67 According to these testimonies, Bass’s loyalty was manifested not in his adherence

to the unaltered liturgy, but rather in his character, conversation, and sermons.

The society nevertheless maintained that Bass had broken his allegiance to the king by

stopping praying for him. The directors of the society were convinced that the “loyal part of the

episcopal Congregations in America” had uniformly shut up their churches; that by altering the

liturgy Bass broke his ordination oath and perjured himself; and that using the Prayer Book

without the prayers for the king “is publicly renouncing allegiance to him.”68 Additional factors

worked against Bass. He had failed to suffer sufficiently for his loyalty: one refugee reported that

Bass lived in Newburyport “without any Insults or Molestation.”69 Bass was also suspected to

have material incentives towards disloyalty: Weeks suggested that Bass hoped his congregation

would increase his salary, while Peters reported that Bass had publicly declared that he did not

need the SPG’s support.70 Finally, the directors of the society believed they could not trust the

testimony in favour of Bass, fearing that it came from false loyalists and perjurers.71 Bass, who

remained in the independent United States after the war and later became Bishop of

Massachusetts, continued to contest his expulsion, but was never reinstated.72

Bass’s expulsion reveals the role of the SPG in enforcing the loyalism of its missionaries,

and the extent to which the missionaries themselves policed one another’s behaviour. The War of

67
USPG B22 n. 52c: William Miller to SPG, May 5 1783.
68
USPG B22 n. 58: “Reasons humbly offered why those missionaries who have left out the prayers for the King,
Royal Family &c should not receive any salary from the Society from the time of their first doing it ‘till they return
back to their duty & use the liturgy as they promised to do at their ordination” n.d.
69
USPG B22 n. 54: Colonel Peter Frye to SPG, May 24 1783, with notes by William Morice.
70
USPG C.Am.3 n. 105: Samuel Peters, November 18 1782.
71
USPG B22 n. 57: [William Morice’s notes on Samuel Hale], n.d.; USPG C.Am.3 n. 106: Samuel Peters, May 20
1783.
72
Edward Bass, A Brief Account of the Treatment which Mr Bass, Late Missionary from the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at Newbury-Port, New-England, hath received from the said Society
(London, n.p.: 1786).

152
American Independence, like any civil war, raised the uniquely troubling question of how to

identify friend from foe when both sides were outwardly indistinguishable.73 The loyalist

missionaries were eager to distinguish themselves from false loyalists and self-interested

“trimmers” in order to define their own actions in terms of principle and conscience rather than

self-interest. For the loyalist missionaries, true loyalism meant fidelity to the church, as

manifested in the Book of Common Prayer and the clergy’s ordination oaths. Testimony in

favour of Bass’s public character was ultimately less important than the question of whether he

had broken his oaths of allegiance to the king and fidelity to the Book of Common Prayer.

Suffering, Persecution, and Martyrdom: Agency and Victimhood in Anglican Loyalism

In April 1775, observing the impeding “Horrors of a Civil War,” William Clarke wrote to the

SPG to describe his sufferings at the hands of “an Infatuated & Deluded People.” Clarke prayed

“that as creature comforts fail, I may be brought nearer to the Creator & Fountain of all, & may

be inclined more ardently to seek the riches of eternity where the Faithful Servant shall meet

with a Bountiful Reward!”74 In ruminating on the spiritual meaning of his suffering, Clarke’s

letter was typical of the SPG missionaries’ correspondence during the war. It is true that the

missionaries suffered tremendously as a result of the rebellion, but their fixation on the meaning

of these trials and hardships should also be understood in the context of a Christian tradition that

celebrated the holiness of worldly suffering. According to this tradition, a willingness to suffer in

this world indicated a recognition that one’s true interests lay in the next. The spiritual authority

73
Dror Wahrman, “The English Problem of Identity in the American Revolution,” American Historical Review 106,
no. 4 (2001): 1236-62.
74
USPG B22 n. 148-49: William Clarke, April 17 1775.

153
borne of suffering was critically important in the moral contest between patriots and loyalists, in

which both sides represented themselves as the suffering victims of the other’s tyranny.

The missionaries’ celebration of holy suffering entailed a self-identification as martyrs,

the willing victims of religious persecution. Martyrdom has deep foundations in the history of

Christianity, ultimately referring to the model of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.75 The

category of martyrdom was revived at the Reformation as a source of authority in the contest

between rival interpretations of Christianity. There is an extensive scholarship on the meaning

and cultural influences of martyrdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but historians do

not usually apply this category of analysis to the supposedly more secular eighteenth century.76

However, the loyalist missionaries’ belief that they were being persecuted for their religion is

essential to understanding their experience of the American Revolution, as well as the moral

authority they commanded in Britain in the aftermath of American independence.

The loyalist missionaries often compared one another to Christian martyrs, willingly

submitting to persecution or even death for their loyalty to the church. Richard Mansfield

proudly reported that his suffering parishioners had displayed a “spirit of martyrdom.”77

Although death was a requirement for martyrdom in its most restricted definition, the loyalist

missionaries celebrated all of those who suffered in the cause of religion. Charles Inglis praised

the Connecticut missionary John Beach, who continued to pray for the king following the

Declaration of Independence, and, “upon being warned of his Danger, declared, with the
75
Candida R. Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York:
Harper Collins, 2013); Boyarin, Dying for God.
76
Alice Dailey, The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2012); Thomas S. Freeman and Thomas F. Mayer (eds.), Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c.1400-1700
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007); Susannah Brietz Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Sarah Covington, The Trail of Martyrdom: Persecution and
Resistance in Sixteenth Century England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003); Gregory,
Salvation and Stake.
77
USPG C.Am.3 n. 42: Richard Mansfield, August 6 1782.

154
Sureness & Spirit of a primitive Confessor – ‘That he would do his Duty, preach, & pray for the

King till the Rebels cut out his Tongue.’”78 By comparing Beach to a “primitive Confessor,”

Inglis was following a distinction in the history of the early church between the “martyrs” who

had died for the church and the “confessors” who had suffered for it. Moreover, a number of

missionaries did suffer death for their fidelity to the loyalist cause, and were commemorated as

victims of the rebellion by those who survived. After Ebenezer Thompson died at the end of

1775, Henry Caner wrote to the society that “his Death is partly owing to a bodily disorder, &

partly owing to some uncivil treatment from the Rebels.”79 Edward Winslow, officiating at

Thompson’s funeral, praised his willingness to suffer for his loyalty: “he continued firm in his

Principles to the last… he met with some harsh Treatment, under which he gave substantial

Evidence of a truly Christian Temper.”80

The missionaries’ celebration of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom drew upon a

variety of precedents. The loyalist missionaries frequently compared themselves to the apostles

and to the “primitive” (i.e. early) Christians. Joshua Wingate Weeks believed that “the conduct

of the Loyalists… resembles that of the primitive Christians towards their brethren suffering

persecution… they are ready to suffer & die for each other.”81 Ebenezer Dibble hoped that the

missionaries would “be inspired with a spirit of primitive Christianity, patiently to suffer.”82

Addressing his congregation, William Clarke quoted the Book of Revelations, which instructed

the church at Smyrna to gladly undergo persecution: “fear none of those Things which thou shalt

78
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
79
USPG B22 n. 135: Henry Caner, January 14 1776.
80
USPG B23 n. 407: Edward Winslow, April 10 1776.
81
USPG B22 n. 260: [Joshua Wingate Weeks], “The State of the Episcopal Churches in the Province of
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Etc.” [1778].
82
USPG B23 n. 122: Ebenezer Dibble, October 10 1775.

155
Suffer; Behold the Devil shall cast some of you into Prison, yet ye may be Tried, and ye shall

have Tribulation ten days; be thou faithful unto Death, & I will give you the crown of Life.”83

In searching more recent Christian history for precedents of the persecution of churchmen

by Protestant extremists, the loyalist missionaries passed over the Protestant martyrs of the

Reformation and instead compared themselves to the persecuted Episcopalians of the

seventeenth-century Civil War. Charles Inglis suggested that “the Sufferings of the American

Clergy” were “not inferior to those of the English Clergy in the great Rebellion of last

Century.”84 These comparisons highlighted the continuity of the monarchy as a sacred

institution. First and foremost among the Anglican martyrs of the Civil War was the executed

King Charles I, who in the 1770s was still being celebrated in the House of Commons as the

Church of England’s “only canonized saint.”85 Another reference point was the ejection of

Scottish Episcopalian ministers after the revolution of 1688. Thomas Bradbury Chandler owned

a collection of tracts about the ejected Scottish ministers, which he heavily annotated.86

For the loyalist missionaries, the spiritual significance of their sufferings depended on the

premise that the rebels were seeking to persecute the Church of England in America. In the more

explicit and rigorous definitions provided by Catholic martyrology, it was a requirement that a

martyr be the victim of odium fidei, or hatred of the faith, to be considered for canonization.

Protestant martyrologies implicitly employed a similar distinction. Matthew Graves described his

experience during the rebellion as “a continued scene of Persecutions, Afflictions, & Trials

83
USPG B22 n. 339. [William Clarke], “Address to the People of Dedham and Stoughton” [March 1777]. Clarke is
citing Revelation, 2:10.
84
USPG B2 n. 68. Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
85
Andrew Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 237.
86
These are held by the Keller Library at the General Theological Seminary. Chandler’s books on the ejected
Scottish ministers are bound together as 208 T67 531, and include titles such as A Late Letter Concerning the
Sufferings of the Episcopal Clergy in Scotland (London: Robert Clavel, 1691) and An Account of the Present
Persecution of the Church of Scotland, in Several Letters (London: S. Cook, 1690), among others.

156
almost even unto death, for my religious Principles, & unshakeable Loyalty to my King &

Country.”87 Were the rebellion to succeed, Edward Winslow warned, the Church of England

would fall victim to the unrestrained persecutions of American Dissenters, and be “totally

suppressed.”88 The missionaries pointed to Dissenters’ support for the rebels, and Anglicans’

support for the government, as evidence that American Dissenters were using the rebellion as an

opportunity to persecute the church. Inglis explained: “altho’ Civil Liberty was the ostensible

Object, the Bait that was flung out to catch the populace at large, & engage them in the

Rebellion; yet it is now past all Doubt, that an Abolition of the Church of England was one of the

Principal Springs of the Dissenting Leaders’ Conduct; & hence the unanimity of Dissenters in

this Business.”89 Samuel Seabury likewise believed that American Dissenters had sought “to turn

the popular fury upon the Church,” demonstrating “the persecuting Spirit of Independency.”90

In narratives of martyrdom, the martyr chooses suffering or death in this world rather

than betray his or her conscience. Accordingly, the missionaries repeatedly stated that their

sufferings were the result of their fidelity to conscience. Joshua Wingate Weeks explained,

“would I conform to the present reigning Powers, I suppose my people… would maintain me

handsomely – but my conscience forbids me to throw off my allegiance.”91 William Clarke gave

thanks “that in all the Distresses and Persecutions I have endured, I have continually had that

Inward Consolation that arises from a Good Conscience.”92 Inglis made the same point of the

87
USPG B23 n. 164: Matthew Graves, September 25 1779.
88
USPG B23 n. 407: Edward Winslow, April 10 1776.
89
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
90
USPG B2 n. 187: Samuel Seabury, May 30 1775.
91
USPG B22 n. 259: Joshua Wingate Weeks, September 7 1775.
92
USPG B22 n. 150: William Clarke, January 5 1778.

157
missionaries as a whole: “they suffer for Conscience-Sake, & for adherence to their Duty. Their

merit is so much the more enhanced.”93

The missionaries sought to record their martyrdom for posterity. Recounting the rebels’

persecution of the Anglican clergy, Inglis wrote, “whatever Reluctance or Pain a benevolent

Heart may feel in recounting such Things… yet they ought to be held up to View, the more

effectually to expose the baneful nature of Persecution.” He proposed that “every instance of this

kind” be “faithfully collected,” comparing such a work to the historian John Walker’s Sufferings

of the Clergy (1714), a memorial to the 2,400 Anglican ministers ejected from their livings

during the Civil War. Inglis’s seventeen-page letter to the SPG, detailing the sufferings borne by

the missionaries throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey, was surely intended as

the beginnings of such a work.94 Likewise, Richard Mansfield compiled “an Account of the

sufferings of the Loyalists in Connecticut,” hoping “that it might serve as a monument to their

steadfast Loyalty in the worst of times.” He was forced to flee from his parish after the memorial

was discovered by the rebel leaders.95

Funeral sermons provided an occasion for the commemoration of loyalist martyrdom.

Samuel Auchmuty caught a fever while travelling at night through rebel-held territory, and died

in March 1777. Preaching at his funeral, Inglis represented Auchmuty’s sufferings as a sacrifice

to conscience: “unshaken in his Loyalty to our gracious Sovereign, and in his Attachment to our

happy Constitution, he spurned the Voice of popular Applause, where Conscience forbid him to

approve of it.” Inglis told his audience that Auchmuty’s loyalism was intrinsic to Anglican

doctrine: “the Principles of our Church, founded on the Word of God, inculcate Loyalty in the

93
USPG B2 n. 72: Charles Inglis, November 26 1779.
94
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
95
USPG B23 n. 278: Richard Mansfield, December 29 1775.

158
strongest Manner.” Moreover, “our Church… is interwoven with the State; so that overturning

the one, would be endangering, if not overturning the other.” Inglis therefore compared the plight

of American Anglicans suffering from “the wide spread Ruin that overwhelms this Continent” to

the persecution suffered by Christians in the third century. He hoped that the harrowing effects of

persecution would promote a revival of “primitive” Christianity: “the Calamities of the present

Times afford Christians but too many Opportunities” to imitate the piety, charity, and fraternity

exhibited by the apostles. In turn, the experience of persecution would fuel spiritual revival and

the reformation of manners, following the example of Christ’s resurrection, which provided the

apostles with “an ocular Demonstration of the glorious Change which they were to undergo at

the Resurrection.” Inglis concluded that warfare, pestilence, and famine served this providential

purpose: “these are the awful Messengers of Heaven, sent in Part to punish guilty Sinners; partly

to chasten the People of God, and amend whatever is amiss in them.” In short, God was letting

his church suffer in order to hasten its triumph.96

The SPG missionaries agreed with Inglis that the rebellion would promote a revival of

American Anglicanism. They were confident that whatever the Church of England had lost in the

rebellion, it had gained more in moral authority. William Clarke believed that the loyalist

Anglicans’ conduct would “convince both Friends & Enemies of the Sincerity of our Religious

Profession,” thereby “promoting the revival & permanent stability of our Church.”97 Writing as a

refugee from Halifax, Jacob Bailey reported “the most daring profaneness, the most shameless

debauchery, and the boldest defiance of every moral sanction, universally prevail among the

Rebels,” but not “the church men and royalists.” Bailey was therefore convinced that, after the

96
Charles Inglis, A Sermon on Philip. III. 20, 21. Occasioned by the Death of Samuel Auchmuty, D.D., Rector of
Trinity Church, New-York, Preached March 9, 1777 (New York: Hugh Gaine, [1777]), 4, 12, 19, 19-20, 27.
97
USPG B23 n. 339: [William Clarke], “Address to the People of Dedham and Stoughton” [March 1777].

159
suppression of the revolt, “the church would flourish abundantly in the New England colonies.”98

In 1782, Inglis informed the society of an Anglican revival in Connecticut, where “the steady,

uniform Conduct of the Society’s Missionaries… raised the Esteem & Respect even of their

Enemies: Whilst the Pulpits of Dissenters resounded with scarcely any Thing else than the

furious Politics of the Times… The Consequence is, that many serious Dissenters have actually

joined the Church of England.”99 The same year, Ranna Cossit reported an Anglican revival in

New Hampshire, where the church “now appears more honourable… with those who have been

its Persecutors,” who had grown disillusioned with “the Fanatic Democracy.”100

The missionaries hoped that their sufferings would not only promote religious revival,

but would also attract political support from Britain. They had long been frustrated by the

government’s failure to support the Church of England in America over its Dissenting rivals,

above all in failing to create an American bishop. The missionaries had always claimed that they

were the friends of government, and Dissenters were its enemies; now, they believed that their

conduct during the rebellion demonstrated the truth of that claim, once and for all. Auchmuty

hoped that the suppression of the rebellion would be an opportunity for the government

“effectually to establish the Church of England here upon as solid a basis as it is in England or

Ireland.” He continued, “if this opportunity is lost, the Church is ruined, the Loyalty of his Sons,

(who have endured every Persecution but Death) will be but ill rewarded.”101 Inglis agreed that

the suppression of the rebellion was an opportunity for the creation of a long-wished-for

American bishop: “then will be the Time to make that Provision for the American Church which

98
USPG B25 n. 228: Jacob Bailey, July 26 1779.
99
USPG B2 n. 74: Charles Inglis, May 6 1782.
100
USPG B3 n. 353: Ranna Cossit, May 10 1782.
101
USPG B2 n. 20: Samuel Auchmuty, November 20 1776.

160
is necessary… by granting it an Episcopate.” He explained that the government had to choose

between “the King’s loyal Subjects here, members of the National Church” and “the Clamours of

Dissenters, who have now discovered such Enmity to the Constitution.”102 The missionaries had

always claimed as much in their unsuccessful efforts to persuade the government of the need for

an American bishop, but it had taken the unprecedented calamity of a continent-wide rebellion to

vindicate their unheeded warnings. Inglis’s only fear was that this revelation had come too late.

Conclusion

The missionaries’ identity as martyrs for the loyalist cause is particularly significant because the

holiness of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom is not usually associated with the Church of

England in this period. Martyrdom is the weapon of the weak, while the Church of England was

a powerful established church. The Elizabethan Church of England commemorated the

Protestant martyrs executed under Queen Mary in order to justify its separation from Rome, but

while these martyrs were handy for denouncing popery, they were of little use in criticising rival

groups of Protestants. In fact, narratives of martyrdom were quickly deployed against the Church

of England by separatists who situated themselves as the true heirs to the Marian Martyrs.103

British Catholics also quickly began to formulate martyrdom narratives against the Church of

England.104 Anglicanism acquired a new generation of martyrs when episcopalianism was

suppressed during the seventeenth-century Civil Wars: most famously the royal martyr, Charles

102
USPG B2 n. 68: Charles Inglis, October 31 1776.
103
Dailey, English Martyr.
104
Anne Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535-1603 (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2002).

161
I, as well as the ejected ministers commemorated by Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy.105

Walker’s Sufferings was a response to Dissenters’ commemoration of “Black Bartholomew’s

Day,” when 2,500 Puritan ministers were ejected from the Restoration Church of England by the

1662 Act of Uniformity. Yet as Fiona McCall has observed, Walker’s martyrology sat

uncomfortably with the political agenda of Anglicanism after the Restoration, when the Church

of England “preferred to propagate the myth of its strength, of unbroken Church tradition, and

not to refine a rhetoric of suffering that might challenge this.”106 In New England, however,

martyrdom remained a potent weapon in the struggle between rival denominations of Separatists,

Baptists, Quakers, and Antinomians. Even the Congregationalist churches, New England’s

authoritarian establishment, clung to the identity of persecuted Protestants fleeing to the

wilderness.107 The loyalist missionaries were convinced that they were more authentically British

than their religious and political rivals, but they were a product of this tradition. Anglican

loyalism was an American creation.

At the same time, the theology of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom did retain appeal

for those English churchmen who were particularly concerned for the safety of the established

church in an age of upheaval. The high church movement remained attached to the memory of

the persecuted episcopalian ministers of the interregnum and to the commemoration of the

105
Fiona McCall, Baal’s Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013);
Matthew Neufeld, “The Politics of Anglican Martyrdom: Letters to John Walker, 1704-1705,” Journal of
Ecclesiastical History 62, no. 3 (2011): 491-514. For the importance of the interregnum to the formation of
Anglican identity, see Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Judith Maltby, “Suffering and Surviving: The Civil Wars, the
Commonwealth and the Formation of ‘Anglicanism,’” in Religion in Revolutionary England, eds. Christopher
Durston and Judith Maltby (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp 158-80.
106
McCall, Baal’s Priests, 195.
107
Adrian C. Weimer, Martyrs’ Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).

162
martyrdom of Charles I.108 Throughout the eighteenth century, high church Anglicans continued

to warn of “the Church in danger”.109 For high churchmen – committed to the unity of church

and state and to an organic, holistic view of the political and ecclesiastical community – the

church truly was in danger in the new political and religious order instituted by the 1688

Glorious Revolution and 1689 Toleration Act, in which freethinkers and deists published against

the church without censure, Protestant Dissenters were protected by the state, and the church was

shorn of the legal authority to enforce the attendance of its parishioners. For this reason, as

subsequent chapters will demonstrate, English high churchmen were deeply interested in the

SPG missionaries who embraced martyrdom rather than betray their consciences, ordination

oaths, and Prayer Books. The loyalist missionaries are significant, less for their impact on the

course of events in America, and instead for their influence on the political resurgence of

Anglicanism in Britain, where their experience was deployed by defenders of the established

church to demonstrate that religion itself was under attack in the Age of Revolutions.

108
Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 51-52.
109
Geoffrey S. Holmes, “The Sacheverell Riots: The Crowd and the Church in Early Eighteenth-Century London,”
Past & Present, 72 (1976): 55-85.

163
 CHAPTER FOUR

His Majesty’s Suffering Church:

The American Refugee Clergy and the Roots of Imperial Reform

Introduction

Thomas Bradbury Chandler had not seen his wife and daughters for over a decade when he

embarked from England to New York in the summer of 1785. In 1775, after twenty-two years as

missionary to Elizabeth Town in New Jersey, he was attacked by a mob for publishing loyalist

pamphlets. He fled to New York, but found himself in danger there as well. After taking refuge

on a British warship in New York harbour, he made the difficult decision to sail for England. His

companions on board ship for the six-week voyage included two other loyalist Anglican

clergymen, Myles Cooper and Samuel Cooke, also fleeing from revolutionary violence.1

Chandler spent the whole of the war in London. He kept himself busy, doing what he

could to advance the interests of the American church and the American loyalists, and operating

in a network of fellow-refugees, senior churchmen, and sympathetic politicians. In a letter to

Samuel Seabury, he described these activities as “the greatest alleviation of my uneasiness at this

cruel Absence from my Family.” His papers only offer glimpses of this painful separation. In

1779, he wrote again to Seabury, observing that he would no longer recognise his youngest

daughter, who was seven months’ old when he left. The same year, his diary recorded going

1
Keller Library, BX5995.C48 A3 1775: Thomas Bradbury Chandler, “Memorandums, 1775-1786”; National
Archives, AO13 vol. 108, ff. 195-198: Memorial of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, November 27 1782.

164
three months without a letter from his family: “a most tedious interval!” Two of his children died

while he was in exile.2

Chandler had no prospects in Britain. More seriously, his health began to deteriorate. He

spent the summer of 1781 on the Isle of Wight “living almost entirely upon goat’s milk” to treat

a “scorbutic ulcer,” but to no avail. Following the end of the war, and after the advancing illness

prevented him from accepting an appointment as the new Bishop of Nova Scotia, Chandler

sailed back across the Atlantic to his family in New Jersey. They were still living in the

parsonage house where he left them ten years earlier. In his letters to friends in Britain, Chandler

reported that “independency has been ruinous to the country” and insisted that “another

revolution must and will take place.” Nevertheless, he remained at the parsonage until his death

in 1790. Though deeply alienated from the new political order, Chandler had come home.3

The stories of American loyalist refugees such as Chandler reveal personal traumas and

real suffering. Most serious were those associated with the war itself: death, destruction,

displacement, shortages, poverty, and epidemics. Then, there were the oppressions inflicted by

American patriots: imprisonment, banishment, fines, insults, and social ostracism. Less tangibly,

but no less seriously, there were the psychological traumas of exile, homelessness, and

separation from friends and family. These traumas forged a loyalist identity that revolved around

suffering: suffering for the sake of one’s loyalties and conscientious commitments. Indeed,

2
Chandler, “Memorandums,” October 16 1779; Keller Library, MSS.SeLL61 box 1-3 [henceforth “Seabury
Correspondence”], n. 28: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Seabury, May 16 1777; n. 34: Thomas Bradbury
Chandler to Samuel Seabury, February 4 1779.
3
Rhodes House Library, Oxford, USPG papers [henceforth USPG], C.Am.3 n. 86: Thomas Bradbury Chandler [to
the SPG], October 3 1785; AO13 vol. 108, ff. 201-202. Memorial of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, January 9 1787;
Samuel Clyde McCulloch, “Thomas Bradbury Chandler: Anglican Humanitarian in Colonial New Jersey,” in British
Humanitarianism, ed. Samuel Clyde McCulloch (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1950), 100-123; William
B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit: or, Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of
Various Denominations (New York: Robert Carter, 1857-1869), 5:140-41.

165
loyalty would not be a virtue without some degree of self-denial: it would only be self-interest.4

In turn, suffering generated moral authority. The loyalists knew that they had been hard done by,

but only because they were in the right. Their sufferings became a source of authority, not only

in the moral contestation with the patriot movement, but also in their dealings with the British

government. They had suffered at the rebels’ hands for the loyalty to the government, but the

government had failed to protect them. They upheld their obligations to the government, but the

government failed in its responsibility to protect them: it was therefore in their debt. This

contractual logic gave their loyalism its subversive potential.

Theirs was also a diasporic identity. The American Revolution was a civil war that

created an identity crisis in Britain and the new United States: how could members of the nation

be distinguished from their outwardly similar former brethren? 5 For the American loyalists, the

revolution created a very different kind of identity crisis. They were asked to choose between

their British and American identities, but they did not want to have to make this decision.

Instead, as Keith Mason has argued, their experience of emigration and exile hardened their

attachment to the loyalist cause – at least at first.6

Moreover, the American loyalists were emigrants twice over. Their identity was shaped

by the experience of multiple migrations: from Britain to America, and then from America to

Britain.7 They often compared themselves to other groups of persecuted religious refugees,

including New England’s first Puritan settlers. Even before they fled the American Revolution,

4
Troy Jollimore, On Loyalty (New York: Routledge, 2013), 1-3.
5
Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2004).
6
Keith Mason, “The American Loyalist Problem of Identity in the Revolutionary Atlantic World,” in The Loyal
Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era, eds. Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012), 39-74.
7
Compare Patrick Griffin, The People with No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the
Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689-1764 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

166
the SPG missionaries’ zealous and uncompromising attachment to the Church of England might

be thought of as a diasporic attachment to English institutions. These commitments struck

contemporaneous English observers as excessive or anachronistic. “The Clergy of this Country;

both those of the Establishment & of the Presbyterian Interest… are Fire-brands to a man, & can

speak with no sort of Patience of each other”, observed the English Tory Ambrose Serle –

himself something of a firebrand.8

How did the reception of these radicalised refugees shape identities and ideologies in

Britain? Of the 60,000 loyalist refugees who left the Thirteen Colonies, around 13,000 migrated

to Britain.9 Scholars have interrogated Britain’s identity as a refuge for persecuted European

Protestants throughout the early modern period, a centre for émigré politics during the French

Revolution, and a haven of humanitarianism in the nineteenth century.10 However, scholarship

on the impact of the American loyalist refugees in Britain remains surprisingly thin. Historians

have alternately treated them as a tragic epilogue to the story of American loyalism, or as the

triumphant founders of British Canada. More recently, Maya Jasanoff has studied the American

loyalist diaspora for its effects on the remaking of the British Empire after American

independence, but Jasanoff’s concern is with imperial history, not with politics, society, and

culture in Britain itself.11 Yet the reception of the refugees was significant as an opportunity for

Britons to perform their charity, justice, and moral superiority over Americans; as a platform for

8
Ambrose Serle, The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776-1778, ed. Edward H.
Tatum, Jr. (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1940), 131.
9
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2011), 351-58.
10
Caroline Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Modern Refugee
Relief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
11
Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles.

167
the loyalists to vindicate themselves publicly; and as source of public discussion and sometimes

controversy over who was to blame for the rebellion.

Ultimately, the loyalist refugee clergy never met with the reward or recognition that they

felt they deserved. The refugees were not easily able to integrate into British society. While

metropolitan Britons found great possibilities, connections, and resources in the empire, Britain

offered few opportunities to the empire’s inhabitants.12 Very few of the refugee clergy ultimately

remained in Britain. Instead, they travelled back across the Atlantic for Nova Scotia, New

Brunswick, or Quebec, or else – like Chandler – returned to their former homes in the new

United States. Nevertheless, the refugee clergy did have a significant ideological impact on

conservative churchmen in Britain and thus on the reconstruction of the imperial Church of

England. Their identity as loyalist martyrs proved attractive to English high churchmen

concerned about the threats facing religious orthodoxy in an age of upheaval and revolution.

Trauma, Displacement, and Exile: The Experience of the Loyalist Refugee Clergy

The émigré clergy’s identity as loyalist martyrs was forged in their traumatic experience of the

Revolutionary War. The rebellion proved devastating to the colonial Church of England. In

1774, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had sixty-four missionaries in the New

England and mid-Atlantic colonies. Nineteen died during the war. Twenty-six emigrated as

loyalist refugees, either to Britain, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or Canada. Only twenty-two

ultimately remained in the United States.13 It was rare for the missionaries to die violent deaths.

12
Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2011).
13
These numbers are drawn from the SPG’s printed annual report, together with the biographical information
provided by James Bell’s dictionary of the colonial clergy: [www.jamesbbell.com]. There were also a number of

168
The New York missionary Ephraim Avery was found near his home with his throat cut. 14

Another New York missionary, Epenetus Townsend, died in a shipwreck en route to Nova

Scotia.15 More often, these deaths were the result of diseases that thrived among displaced

populations, particularly smallpox, which the British troops brought with them.16 The loyalist

clergy nevertheless attributed all manner of deaths to the hardships and persecutions imposed by

the rebels. After Samuel Auchmuty died of a fever, his widow Mary attributed his death to the

“extreme distress of Mind” that “he felt for the Miseries of their Country.”17

These men became refugees for many reasons. A handful of early loyalists who

publically attacked the patriot cause were forced to flee from their homes to escape popular

violence. In September 1774, Samuel Peters was “condemned by the mob to be Tarred &

Feathered & Hung” but escaped and fled to Boston, and then on to London.18 The majority of the

refugees, however, only emigrated following the outbreak of fighting in 1775. Many were simply

fleeing from the war’s destruction. John Wiswall, the SPG missionary at Falmouth in

Massachusetts, sailed to England after British troops burnt the town to the ground. 19 Others were

escaping from political repression. As newly-formed Committees of Safety began to tender oaths

of allegiance to groups whose loyalties were suspect, neutrality rapidly ceased to be an option.

Joshua Wingate Weeks’ journal recorded that he sailed to England “that I might avoid the

clergy who were not SPG missionaries, who were similarly likely to emigrate: these included ministers to wealthy,
self-supporting urban congregations such as John Troutbeck, William Walter, George Bissett, and Charles Inglis; the
clergy associated with King’s College such as Myles Cooper and Jonathan Vardill; and schoolmasters such as
Robert Boucher Nickolls.
14
USPG B2 n. 190: Samuel Seabury, December 29 1776.
15
USPG B2 n. 72: Charles Inglis, November 26 1779.
16
Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001).
17
AO13 vol. 63 ff. 136-139: “Life of Samuel Auchmuty”; AO13 vol. 113A ff. 84-85: Memorial of Mary Auchmuty,
March 24 1781.
18
AO13 vol. 42 ff. 286-99: Memorial of Samuel Peters, November 28 1782.
19
USPG B22 n. 135: Henry Caner, January 14 1776.

169
persecution of Justice Ward & the Committee, who were for forcing me to take an oath of

allegiance to the states.”20

The population displacement caused by the war created new communities of refugees

within the American colonies, brought together in loyalist centres such as Halifax and New

York. Many of the New England missionaries took shelter in Boston following the outbreak of

political unrest, creating an early loyalist community there. In April 1775, Henry Caner, the

Anglican minister at King’s Chapel in Boston, advised the neighbouring clergy to take refuge in

the city as the crisis worsened and the king’s troops began to arrive.21 His subsequent letters

described the deterioration of conditions in the besieged city, as the wealthy inhabitants fled for

Halifax, Quebec, the West Indies, or England, driven by food shortages and epidemics. The loss

of wealthy Anglican parishioners further exacerbated the clergy’s precarious situation.22

After the king’s troops evacuated the city in March 1776, the Boston loyalist community

collectively relocated to Halifax in Nova Scotia. Caner recalled, “I suddenly & unexpectedly

received notice that the King’s Troops would immediately evacuate the Town. It is not easy to

paint the Distress & Confusion of the Inhabitants on this occasion.” He lost all of his property,

apart from his bedding and clothing.23 In Halifax, the refugees were united by a shared

experience of suffering, displacement, and exile, but their poverty and desperation also created

plenty of antagonism and bickering. One of the exiles from Boston, Jacob Bailey, described the

new arrival of five hundred additional refugees with mixed emotions. He acknowledged that

“their sufferings on account of their loyalty, and their present precarious and destitute situation,

20
Joshua Wingate Weeks, “Journal of Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks, Loyalist Rector of St. Michael’s Church,
Marblehead, 1778-1779,” The Essex Institute Historical Collections 52 (1916): 2.
21
USPG B22 n. 131: Henry Caner, April 18 1775.
22
USPG B22 n. 132: Henry Caner, June 2 1775; n. 133: Henry Caner, July 15 1775; n. 135: Henry Caner, January
14 1776.
23
USPG B22 n. 136: Henry Caner, May 10 1776.

170
render them very affecting objects of compassion.” At the same time, he feared that “this

unexpected addition to our numbers will raise the price of every necessary.”24 Bailey praised the

humanity and charity with which the new arrivals were cared for, but his fellow-refugee Mather

Byles complained bitterly that the incumbent Nova Scotian clergy were monopolising the

military chaplaincies that constituted one of the few sources of clerical employment.25

Another refugee community took shape in the city of New York, occupied by royal

troops from August 1776 to the end of the war. The garrisoned city acted as a magnet for loyalist

refugees from across the rebellious colonies, including those making the onward journey to

England. In February 1777, twelve of them wrote to the SPG, thanking their friends in Britain

who “have frequently sympathized in our Calamities” and exhibited “the Anxiety of Parental

Tenderness.”26 Other clergymen continued to arrive from afar afield as Virginia.27 The Boston

clergyman William Walter, a refugee in New York, told the SPG that he found it “no small

Consolation” that he could “be of some advantage to my distressed Brethren who, flying from

the Rage of Persecution, come hither in their way to England.”28 Inglis described to the society

how “the Missionaries & other Refugee Clergymen who have taken Sanctuary here, have their

Difficulties,” principally a want of employment.29 A steady stream of refugees left New York for

Britain, but most remained until the last withdrawal of British troops on November 25, 1783. The

British troops were evacuated to Halifax, and many of the city’s loyalist inhabitants went with

24
USPG B25 n. 264: Jacob Bailey, October 14 1782.
25
USPG B25 n. 233: Mather Byles, August 2 1779; B22 n. 95: Mather Byles, October 15 1779.
26
USPG B3 n. 343: Clergy of New York, February 8 1777.
27
USPG B3 n. 348: William Walter, May 18 1780; B2 n. 73: Charles Inglis, May 20 1780.
28
USPG B3 n. 346: William Walter, December 23 1778.
29
USPG B2 n. 72: Charles Inglis, November 26 1779.

171
them, entailing yet another displacement. The Scottish missionary George Bisset later recounted

“the gloomy prospect of the speedy evacuation of the last asylum of unhappy loyalists.”30

Those who could afford to left for England. In London, a network of refugees met in the

New England Coffee House to discuss American affairs and lobby for compensation.31 Thomas

Bradbury Chandler and Joshua Wingate Weeks, both of whom kept journals, regularly dined

with a network that included colonial officials such as Thomas Hutchinson, Francis Bernard,

Joseph Galloway, Peter Oliver, and Ambrose Serle, as well as fellow clergymen such as John

Vardill, Myles Cooper, Samuel Peters, and Jonathan Boucher.32 The refugees sought to fashion

themselves as a source of first-hand knowledge and expertise on American affairs. Chandler met

regularly with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London, and occasionally senior

politicians. Soon after his arrival, he met the Prime Minister Lord North “and had Half an Hour’s

Conversation with him on American Affairs.”33 He continued to correspond with fellow-loyalists

in America and sought to publicise their sufferings, publishing extracts of the letters he received

from Samuel Seabury in the Morning Chronicle.34

Other émigrés also engaged in loyalist publishing while in London. Jonathan Vardill was

one of the authors of the Declaration and Address of His Majesty’s Suffering Loyalists, to the

People of America (1781). By enumerating the “unequalled Sufferings” of the American

loyalists, the Declaration sought to appropriate the patriots’ rhetoric of defending colonial liberty

from a tyrannical government. It argued that “the System of Persecution and Tyranny” adopted

30
AO13 vol. 68A ff. 150-51: Memorial of George Bisset, October 24 1783.
31
Mary Beth Norton, The British Americans: The Loyalists Exiles in England, 1774-1789 (Boston: Little, Brown
and Company, 1972), 186-222.
32
Weeks, “Journal”; Chandler, “Memorandums.”
33
Chandler, “Memorandums,” July 14 1775.
34
Seabury Correspondence, n. 34: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Seabury, February 4 1779.

172
by Congress “towards their loyal and dissenting Countrymen” was designed “to impress the

more extensively on all, the great duty of Non-resistance and passive Obedience.”35 Myles

Cooper, meanwhile, published loyalist poetry in the Gentleman’s Magazine. One poem

recounted the night he became “an Exile from America.” He was woken from a peaceful sleep

by a student, who informed him that a mob was coming to kill him in his bed. Though grateful to

have found peace and freedom in Britain, Cooper also described the melancholy of exile: “with a

longing, lingering view / I bade my much-lov’d York adieu.”36

As Mary Beth Norton has observed, the experience of exile challenged and disrupted the

American loyalists’ identity. Made refugees by their allegiance to Britain, they found themselves

treated as foreigners by the British.37 On first arriving in London, Chandler engaged in plenty of

sightseeing, got his hands on a visitors’ guidebook, and was pickpocketed twice in less than a

week.38 He eagerly took part in popular loyalist rituals, attending a meeting of the Marine

Society where “many a loyal Toast was given, and many a loyal Song was sung” such as “God

Save the King of Old England – the Roast Beef of Old England – Rule Britannia &c.”39 The tone

of Chandler’s diary is often one of gratitude for the reception that he and the other American

clergy met with from English churchmen. He recorded an instance of the “Kindness and

Condescension” shown by Frederick Cornwallis, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Samuel

Peters. When meeting the Archbishop, Peters “was overwhelmed with such an Awe, that he was

35
The Declaration and Address of His Majesty’s Suffering Loyalists, to the People of America (London: T. Becket,
1782), ii, 10. For Vardill’s authorship, see AO12 vol. 20 pp. 22-29: Memorial of John Vardill, November 14 1783.
36
“Stanzas written on the Evening of the 10th of May, 1776. By an Exile from America,” Gentleman’s Magazine:
and Historical Chronicle 46 (July 1776): 326-27.
37
Norton, The British Americans.
38
Chandler, “Memorandums”: July 19 1775; July 20 1775; July 25 1775. The guidebook was London and its
Environs Described: Containing an Account of Whatever is most Remarkable for Grandeur, Elegance, Curiosity or
Use (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1761).
39
Chandler, “Memorandums”: April 8 1777.

173
unable to speak” until Cornwallis told him, “you have come from New-England, and, I suppose,

you look upon an Archbishop as something more than human; but I am as much a mortal

Creature as yourself.”40 Others were less impressed. Joshua Wingate Weeks was frustrated with

William Morice, the SPG secretary, who “complimented me that I spoke better than any

American he ever heard which I do not take to be any great compliment because I know people

here who have spent a few years at Oxford hold the Americans in utter contempt.” He added,

“many such latent rubs have I met with since setting my foot on the land of liberty and pride.”41

Some of the émigrés obtained clerical livings. However, there was no general policy of

providing the refugee clergy with livings in the Church of England. Appointments were often in

the gift of aristocratic patrons, and the few clergy who received them, such as Myles Cooper and

Jonathan Boucher, were typically those born in England who retained social connections there.42

Boucher complained of the lack of concern for the clerical refugees shown by the Bishop of

London and Archbishop of Canterbury, observing, “they are cold & formal, & seem to think they

do Wonders, when they give you a Dinner.” He fared better with the Bishop of Bangor, who was

brother-in-law to Boucher’s patron in Maryland, the Governor Robert Eden.43 Robert Nickolls,

the son of a wealthy Jamaican planter, became a military chaplain to the Earl of Percy, who

subsequently presented him to the Rectorship of Stoney Stanton in Leicestershire. 44 Jonathan

Vardill, a professor of moral philosophy at King’s College with a reputation as a writer, was

40
Ibid., April 11 1777.
41
Weeks, “Journal,” 203.
42
Jonathan Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738-1789. Being the Autobiography of the Revd.
Jonathan Boucher, Rector of Annapolis in Maryland and Afterwards Vicar of Epsom, Surrey, England, ed. Jonathan
Bouchier (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), 144, 176-78; Clarence Haydon Vance,
“Myles Cooper,” Columbia University Quarterly, 22 (1930): 283-84.
43
Jonathan Boucher to John James, Paddington, January 8 1776, in “The Letters of Rev. Jonathan Boucher,”
Maryland Historical Magazine, 8, 4 (1913): 343-37.
44
Robert Boucher Nickolls, “Letter of Robert Boucher Nickolls, 1775,” Publications of the Colonial Society of
Massachusetts, 24 (1895): 435-38.

174
engaged by the Secretary of War Charles Jenkinson as a pamphleteer for the government and

wrote a series of pamphlets and essays against Congress and their British sympathisers. 45

Boucher, Nickolls, and Vardill all made successful careers in England. As late as 1791, Vardill

requested promotion within the church on the grounds of his loyalist publications in the 1770s

and 1780s.46 In 1789, “the Loyalist Clergy, late of North America” were among the groups

sending addresses to George III after his recovery from illness.47

These success stories were the exception rather than the rule. Often leaving America with

scant money or possessions, the refugees were impoverished and continually complained about

the high cost of living in Britain. Applying to the government for support in 1781, John Doty, the

missionary to the Mohawk Indians, complained that he “finds it extremely difficult to support

himself and his wife (the companion of his Misfortunes) in this expensive Metropolis.”48 Many

left London for the provinces in search of a lower cost of living. Too old to perform the work of

a military chaplain, Henry Caner made his way from Halifax to London, where (like Nickolls) he

attached himself to the household of the Earl of Percy. After the Earl was unable to procure a

living for Caner’s son-in-law, Caner reluctantly moved to Cardiff, “where I am told the

necessaries of life are much cheaper, & consequently where I may preserve my self from

starving a year or two longer.”49 Caner found that Cardiff was a “pleasant country Town” but

complained of the want of conversation with friends and news from America.50 His letters

45
[Jonathan Vardill], Unity and Public Spirit, Recommended in an Address to the Inhabitants of London and
Westminster (London: W. Davis, [1780]); AO12 vol. 20, 22-29: Memorial of John Vardill, November 14 1783.
46
LPL SPG vol. 8 f. 214: John Vardill [to John Moore], March 12 1791.
47
LPL Fulham Papers (Porteus), vol. 17 ff. 188-89: The Diary, or Woodfall’s Register (April 25 1789).
48
AO12 vol. 19 pp. 30-31: Memorial of John Doty, February 6 1781.
49
Bristol University Library, DM388 [“Henry Caner Letter-Book”], n. 672: Henry Caner to Lord Percy, May 23
1778.
50
Ibid., n. 680: Henry Caner to Thomas Bradbury Chandler, July 21 1778; n. 685: Henry Caner to Elizabeth
Wentworth, July 28 1778.

175
continued to despair of “the coldness & neglect of some, from whom I once expected, &

[thought] I had a reason to expect, very liberal efforts of friendship & assistance.”51 Similarly,

when Sarah Troutbeck, the widow of the Boston clergyman John Troutbeck, petitioned for

compensation after the war, her claim recorded that she had “gone into the north for

cheapness.”52 For this reason, most of the refugee clergy who had made their way to Britain later

sailed back across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or Quebec. Others, like

Chandler, eventually returned to the new United States.

In addition to those who fled from the rebellious colonies during the war, many more

emigrants left the United States following Britain’s recognition of American independence in

1783. The American loyalists were horrified by the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which not only

recognised independence but also failed to secure provisions for the restoration of confiscated

loyalist property. In the summer of 1782, as the likelihood of a negotiated peace became clear,

Samuel Seabury reported to Chandler that “the affection and attachment of the Loyalists within

the British lines… are nearly expired.”53 Sir Guy Carleton, the commander-in-chief of the British

forces, feared that the loyalists, “under the fear of being abandoned by Great Britain,” would

seek the protection of the French.54 As the details of the settlement emerged, Chandler lamented

that the treaty, an act of “outrageous insanity,” had abandoned the American loyalists to the

mercy of “the now legalized, sanctified rebels.” He wailed, “it is over with England. Her Stamina

have failed; her Constitution is ruined; and her Dissolution must soon follow.”55 Cartoons such

51
Ibid., n. 701: Henry Caner to Lord Dartrey, October 12 1778.
52
AO12 vol. 105, “Massachusetts Bay: tabular statement, 1783-1790,” p. 112.
53
Seabury Correspondence, n. 45: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Seabury, August 5 1782.
54
American Philosophical Society, Mss.973.314.L93 [“Papers of American Loyalists”]: Guy Carleton to Thomas
Townshend, November 16 1782.
55
Seabury Correspondence, n. 47: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Seabury, March 15 1783.

176
as “The Savages Let Loose” and “Shelburne’s Sacrifice” agreed, suggesting that the government

had sacrificed the loyalists to the savagery of the Americans (Figs. 6 & 7).

Fig. 6: “The Savages Let Loose, or The Cruel Fate of the Loyalists” (1783)

Lewis Walpole Library 783.03.00.01+

Fig. 7: “Shelb—ns Sacrifice, or the recommended Loyalists. A faithful representation of a Tragedy shortly to be
performed on the Continent of America” (1783)

Lewis Walpole Library 783.02.10.02

177
 The loyalists remaining in the United States were therefore among the victims of the

redrawing of political boundaries by the Peace of Paris. Just as calamitous was the associated

redrawing of ecclesiastical boundaries. The loyalist missionaries found themselves, not only

outside the borders of the British Empire, but outside the limits of the national church. In May

1783, the Connecticut clergy petitioned the SPG, urging “that to all our former Calamities, this

insurportable one, may not be added, of being discarded by the Society.”56 Despite the request,

the society resolved to withdraw its operations from the United States, rather than impinge upon

the new nation’s ecclesiastical sovereignty.57

To the loyalist missionaries, the SPG’s withdrawal from the United States was the last in

a long series of betrayals. The secretary of the society, William Morice, wrote to the missionaries

and presented them with a choice between emigrating to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or

Quebec, or remaining in the United States and losing their income from the society. The decision

came down to individual circumstances, rather than political sympathies, but for all of the

missionaries the choice was deeply distressing. Roger Viets of Simsbury in Connecticut replied

to Morice, restating his conviction that “my conduct was right and my Sufferings, not to say

Persecutions were wrong.” Nevertheless, he wished to remain in Connecticut and “live peaceably

& inoffensively” among his persecutors.58 He implored the society to pity his “sickly Wife” and

“helpless Children” all weeping “Tears of Gratitude for Favors past and Tears of Anguish at the

Prospect of future Poverty.” He was only asking for “such Relief as We according to our Ability

have never refused to loyal, conscientious Sufferers.”59 Viets eventually consented to move to

56
USPG C.Am.3, n. 92: Clergy of Connecticut, May 6 1783.
57
Ross, SPG Sermon (1785), 52-55; Seabury Correspondence, n. 87a: William Morice to Samuel Seabury, April 29
1785; n. 87b: Copy of SPG Resolution, April 15 1785.
58
USPG C.Am.3 n. 53: Roger Viets, October 29 1784.
59
USPG C.Am.3 n. 55: Roger Viets, August 3 1785.

178
Nova Scotia, preaching a farewell sermon to his congregation at Simsbury that he characterised

as “my last, and in some sense as my dying expressions.”60

The missionaries who remained complained that the society had cast them aside, adding

an economic and psychological cost to existing hardships. Another Connecticut missionary,

Ebenezer Dibblee, begged the society not to abandon its servants: “their perseverance, through

that sea of trouble, torrent of abuse, personal danger, distress and want… merits in my humble

opinion the continuance of the Venerable Society’s notice and charity.” 61 He wished “to flee

away & be at rest” and enjoy his “attachment to the British Constitution,” but he was unable to

move his “afflicted” family into “a new world, distant from all family connexions.”62 Dibblee’s

friend Benjamin Moore told the society, “although he bears his misfortunes like a Christian, I

could but observe a few Days ago (when he mentioned the withdrawing of the Society’s Bounty)

a Tear stealing down his Cheek.”63

Sympathy, Suffering, and Memory: The Identity of the Loyalist Refugee Clergy

Samuel Seabury also wept onto the letter that he wrote to his friend and fellow-loyalist, Myles

Cooper, then a refugee in Britain. Seabury thought it hardly worth the expense to send “this chit

chat across the Atlantic,” but he explained that he “could not help it” because the letter allowed

him to imagine Cooper’s immediate presence: “I am talking to you… And have wrought myself

up into such a persuasion that you are sitting just there… with your pipe, retaining one Whiff for

60
Roger Viets, A Serious Address and Farewell Charge to the Members of the Church of England in Simsbury and
the Adjacent Parts; by Roger Viets, Lately their Missionary (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1787).
61
USPG C.Am.3 n. 68: Ebenezer Dibblee, May 3 1785.
62
USPG C.Am.3 n. 69: Ebenezer Dibblee, September 1790.
63
USPG C.Am.2 n. 91: Benjamin Moore, August 24 1785.

179
Whiff, just as it used to be. – Heigh! Ho! I must take a turn across the room, or my paper will be

too wet to write upon.”64 Seabury’s high emotional register was typical of the loyalist refugees’

correspondence, which is full of vibrant and articulate discussions of sympathy, suffering,

sacrifice, and weeping. Historians have often spoken of the need for a “sympathetic” history of

the loyalists’ “forgotten” point of view.65 There is a sense in which calls to sympathise with the

loyalists is inadvertently reproducing their own quest for sympathy. It is not enough to

sympathise: we also ought to critically interrogate their language of sympathy and suffering.

The discourse of suffering performed a number of functions for the refugees. Most

obviously, it was a source of moral authority, both in the political contest with American patriots

and in their efforts to obtain reward and compensation from British authorities. The language of

suffering also served to create affective ties of sympathy and pity, both within communities of

loyalists and between the American loyalists and their British allies. The loyalist missionaries

continually emphasised their suffering in their correspondence with the society. Joshua Wingate

Weeks wrote, “if ever any set of men desired the pity of the benevolent & the attention of the

powerful, it is we, who are suffering in the cause of our God & our King.”66 Jacob Bailey

characterised the New England clergy “as Sufferers for our Allegiance, our Conscience and

Religion,” appealing “to the compassion of the Society to the regard of Government and the

generosity of all christian people in Britain.67 William Walter wrote to the society, arguing that

“the man who suffers for his Attachment to Government has a Right to the Notice & Assistance

64
National Library of Scotland, Fettercairn Papers, Box 75, f. 3: Samuel Seabury to Myles Cooper, December 19,
1778. I am grateful to Dr Christopher Minty (Massachusetts Historical Society) for providing me with this reference
and a transcript of the letter.
65
Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1974), x-xi.
66
USPG B22 n. 259: Joshua Wingate Weeks, September 7 1775.
67
USPG B22 n. 68: Jacob Bailey, July 6 1775.

180
of every Friend of that Government.”68 The SPG missionaries sought charitable relief by

emphasising their suffering, dwelling on the difficulty of providing for their wives and children.

Richard Mansfield appealed for charity for his wife and nine children, “all of them overwhelmed

with grief, & bathed in tears, but very slenderly provided with the means of support.”69

This highly emotional language of suffering served to unite the loyalist community and

their allies in Britain through affective ties of sympathy and pity. Citing the Book of Job, the Old

Testament archetype of Christian suffering, John Beach wrote to the society, “have Pity upon

me, have pity upon me O my Friends.”70 The missionaries’ appeal to the society’s pity was also

an appeal to ties of patronage and deference. In February 1777, a community of displaced

loyalist clergy in New York City, refugees from across the Thirteen Colonies, wrote a joint letter

of thanks to the SPG, who “as Men, & as Christians… have frequently sympathized in our

Calamities” and exhibited “the Anxiety of parental Tenderness.”71 Describing the evacuation of

Boston, Mather Byles appealed in emotional terms to the SPG for sympathy and pity, writing,

“my Story needs not be enlarged or exaggerated: it scorns the little Embellishments of Art.

Relate the naked Fact to my Superiors: & every humane Eye, must drop the compassionating

Tear.”72 Byles pleaded for “Evidence that I am not forgotten; that my Sufferings are pitied, & my

Conduct approved.”73 In exile in Halifax, Byles also identified with his fellow loyalist refugees,

calling them “my Fellow Sufferers.”74 Likewise, Samuel Seabury related to the society his pity at

the sufferings of his parishioners: “it is melancholy to observe the Dejection strongly marked in
68
USPG B3 n. 347: William Walter, January 11 1779.
69
USPG B23 n. 278: Richard Mansfield, December 29 1775.
70
USPG B23 n. 50: John Beach, October 31 1781. Beach is citing Job, 19:21.
71
USPG B3 n. 343: Clergy of New York, February 8 1777.
72
USPG B22 n. 92: Mather Byles, May 4 1776.
73
USPG B22 n. 94: Mather Byles, October 8 1777.
74
USPG B22 n. 93: Mather Byles, March 29 1777.

181
their Faces.”75 In this way, accounts of suffering, and of sympathy for suffering, served to forge

an affective community among loyalist churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic.

These continual references to suffering were not purely rhetorical. There are grounds for

treating the refugees as a group who were lastingly affected by their experience of wartime

trauma. Historians have been ready to discern the effects of trauma on revolutionary war

veterans.76 The same approach might be applied to the loyalist refugees. The American physician

Benjamin Rush, writing in 1789 on the medical and psychological effects of the American

Revolution, observed that the loyalists were frequently afflicted with “melancholia” following

the withdrawal of the British troops. The “common people” termed this disease “protection

fever”; Rush proposed to call it “Revolutiana.”77 An instance of Rush’s “Revolutiana” might be

observed in the family of Ebenezer Dibblee, who in 1790 reported that his son had committed

suicide in Nova Scotia “in a fit of Desperation” and his two daughters were afflicted with

“hysterical affections, which terminates in insanity for a long time.” Dibblee believed that their

“ruinous State of Health… originated in the terrors tumults & distresses in the time of war.”78

The refugees needed to refer to their sacrifices in their efforts to obtain sympathy,

compensation, and reward, but this need was contradicted by the impulse to leave their traumatic

past behind. While listing their sufferings and losses to sympathetic hearers, many of the

refugees also spoke of the painfulness of recollection or the desire to remain silent about the past.

James Scovil reminded the SPG, “I have gone through a series of Distresses, to mention which,

75
USPG B2 n. 191: Samuel Seabury, March 29 1777.
76
John Phillips Resch, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in
the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 47-64, especially 62-64.
77
Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations (Philadelphia: Prichard & Hall, 1789), 192-95.
78
USPG C.Am.3 n.69: Ebenezer Dibblee, September 27 1790; USPG C.Am.2, n. 91: Benjamin Moore, August 24
1785.

182
particularly, would be but the renewal of former Grief.”79 Richard Mansfield simply declared, “I

endured many Things too painful to remember.”80 For William Clarke, who lost both his hearing

and his speech while imprisoned on a ship in Boston harbour, silence was the only option.81

Yet silence about past sufferings did not necessarily mean forgetting. On the contrary,

repeated references to the unspeakable and the unnameable ensured that past miseries remained

present: they were expressed precisely through silences and omissions. Ebenezer Dibblee,

writing to the SPG, noted that they had already “been well informed of the difficult part their

Missionaries have had to act.” For this reason, Dibblee thought it “unnecessary to enter into a

minute account of my personal dangers & sufferings… choosing to cast a Veil over many past

occurrences which were a reproach to humanity.”82 Silence about past trauma could also unite

the refugee clergy, when entering into specifics may have raised tensions or disagreements.

Dibblee, who chose to remain in the Connecticut after the war, wrote to Samuel Peters, who

chose to leave for London, noting that they had both suffered unmentionable things. Dibblee

thought that his own trials “would amaze a disinterested and unprejudiced observer,” but they

did not need to be enumerated for Peters, who had a “Specimen” of them in his “own unhappy

Experience.” Instead, repeating the metaphor, Dibblee chose “to cast a Vail over, rather than,

enter upon a particular recital of past Occurrences.”83

Most importantly, a language of shared suffering also provided the refugees themselves

with psychological support at a time of real hardship. The exiles drew on ideas that celebrated

79
USPG C.Am.3 n. 57: James Scovil, March 26 1783.
80
USPG C.Am.3 n. 42: Richard Mansfield, August 6 1782.
81
USPG B3 n. 346: William Walter, December 23 1778.
82
USPG C.Am.3 n. 65: Ebenezer Dibblee, June 1 1783.
83
Ebenezer Dibblee to Samuel Peters, September 10 1784, in Ebenezer Dibblee, “Letters from the Reverend Doctor
Ebenezer Dibblee, of Stamford, to the Reverend Doctor Samuel Peters, Loyalist Refugee in London, 1784-1793,”
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 1, no. 2 (1932), 60-62.

183
virtuous suffering: where weaker men would have chosen the path of self-interest, they had

chosen to suffer rather than betray their duties, thereby valuing their consciences above worldly

comforts and luxuries. Inglis lamented the plight of the refugee clergy in New York, “excellent

Men... ornaments to their sacred Profession… now reduced to such Difficulties.” He nevertheless

concluded on an up-beat note: “it is some satisfaction, however, to think that they suffer for

Conscience-Sake, & for adherence to their Duty. Their merit is so much the more enhanced.”84

Writing from Halifax, Byles reported that his “Spirits were at first greatly depressed: but,

sensible that I suffer in a just Cause, I have the Pleasure to find that my Mind is in some Measure

conformed to my Circumstances.”85

Of course, this psychological support might be more forthcoming in theory than reality.

Samuel Curwen, a Massachusetts judge and refugee, found the idea of virtuous suffering hollow

and hypocritical. Philosophical treatises on the “duty of submission and resignation under pain,

sickness, and poverty… are amusing to a mind at ease,” but of little use “in real life.” Curwen

spoke contemptuously of “Seneca and the long list of moralists”: let them “be brought to the

mouth of the cave of poverty; let hunger, thirst and nakedness, in all their grisly terrifying shapes

stare them in the face, then let them, if they can, exemplify these ideal doctrines.”86

While Curwen was referring to Stoic philosophy, the refugee clergy’s discussions of

suffering also carried a series of religious meanings, drawing on a Christian tradition that

celebrated poverty and sacrifice. According to this tradition, a willingness to endure bodily

mortification indicated a recognition that one’s true interests lay not in this world but rather with

84
USPG B2 n. 72: Charles Inglis, November 26 1779.
85
USPG B22 n. 93: Mather Byles, March 29 1777.
86
Samuel Curwen, Journal and Letters of the Late Samuel Curwen, Judge of Admiralty, Etc., An American Refugee
in England, from 1775 to 1784, ed. George Atkinson Ward (New York; C. S. Francis & Co., 1842), 93-94.

184
the fate of one’s eternal soul.87 The archetype for this tradition was Christ’s redemptive sacrifice.

The missionary John Tyler, for example, told the SPG that throughout the war he continued “to

follow the Captain of our Salvation, who was made perfect through Sufferings.”88 Not only was

suffering Christ-like in itself, the loyalist clergy were also convinced that they had endured these

hardships for the sake of conscience. According to this logic, the loyalists had chosen to suffer

rather than betray their conscientious convictions: the very fact of their sufferings therefore

became proof of the power of religion.

This logic was unpacked by Samuel Peters in a funeral sermon for the refugee Thomas

Moffatt. Peters concluded the sermon by addressing the loyalists: “you, like Dr. Moffatt, left

your Property to enjoy yourselves and the Peace of Conscience, knowing Virtue to be preferable

to Iniquity, and Fidelity to Perjury and Rebellion.” They had become like Jesus Christ, who, “in

Loyalty to his Father, left his Throne in Heaven, became poor on Earth… forsaken by all.” Peters

compared their experience to the “Poverty and Persecution” undergone by St Paul, reminding

them that “Holy David pronounced Afflictions to have been good for him.”89

The loyalist clergy’s conviction that they were the victims of religious persecution was

particularly significant in giving meaning to their experience of exile. The fact of having chosen

emigration for the sake of one’s religious beliefs could reinforce those convictions, providing a

source of stability in the otherwise disorientating experience of migration and displacement.90

The refugee clergy repeatedly compared their trials to that of various Biblical exiles banished

87
Jenny Mayhew, “Godly Bens of Pain: Pain in English Protestant Manuals (ca. 1550-1650),” in The Sense of
Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture, ed. Karl A. E. Enenkel and Frans van
Dijkhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 299-322.
88
USPG C.Am.3 n. 85: John Tyler, October 3 1782.
89
Samuel Peters, A Sermon, Preached at Charlotte Chapel, Pimlico, on Sunday the 25 th of March, 1787, on the
Death of Thomas Moffatt (London: D. & D. Bond, 1787), 25-27.
90
Jesse Spohnholz and Gary K. Waite, “Introduction,” in Exile and Religious Identity, 1500-1800, eds. Jesse
Spohnholz and Gary K. Waite (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), 1-7.

185
into the wilderness. John Stuart, the SPG missionary to the Mohawks, had emigrated from

Schenectady to Upper Canada in 1781. In 1785, in a letter to a friend in the United States, Stuart

painted an attractive picture of the refugee experience in Canada: “we are poor, happy people,

industrious beyond example. Our gracious King gives us land gratis and furnishes provision and

clothing, farming utensils &c.”91 The next year, in a sermon on the opening of a the first

Anglican church in Upper Canada, Stuart shifted tone, instead comparing the loyalists’

experience to King David’s exile from Sion, and the Jews’ captivity in Egypt and Babylon.

Stuart explained, “whenever the Church of Christ has been persecuted and dispersed, one certain

consequence has been the enlargement of his Kingdom.”92 The American loyalist refugees – like

other religious refugees – were providentially carrying Christianity into the wilderness.

The clergy’s reference points were not only Biblical exiles such as King David but also

more recent religious refuges. The early modern world was marked by numerous bodies of

religious exiles, fleeing from various waves of persecution and confessional state-building.93

Indeed, the word “refugee” entered the English language to refer to persecuted Huguenots

fleeing from Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. 94 First and foremost among

these, of course, were those who had fled into the new world. While their enemies identified with

the Puritans who had fled into the wilderness to escape from a persecuting Church of England,

the loyalist refugees found a rejoinder to that tradition in their own flight from persecution in

America. As an exile in New Brunswick, the Massachusetts churchman Walter Bates produced a

91
Loyalist Narratives from Upper Canada, ed. James J. Talman (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1946), 347-48:
John Stuart to William White [?], [Kingston], November 2 1785.
92
John Doty, A Sermon Preached at the Opening of Christ's Church at Sorel in the Province of Canada, on Sunday
the 25th of December 1785 (Montreal: Fleury Mesplet, 1786).
93
Susanne Lachenicht, ed., Religious Refugees in Europe, Asia, and North America (6 th – 21st Century) (Hamburg:
Lit, 2007); Spohnholz and Waite, Exile and Religious Identity.
94
Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace, 18.

186
history of the Puritan ministers who had first emigrated to New England. They had fled from

persecution only to persecute their own enemies: Quakers, Baptists, and Anglicans. Bates

contrasted them with the “church ministers and loyal British subjects… [who] fled from

persecution into the wilderness of Nova Scotia, A.D. 1783, and established the Church of

England in Kingston.”95 These narratives were intended to discredit patriot leaders’ use of the

myth that America was a haven from persecution. The refugee clergy appropriated that myth,

imagining themselves as a new generation of persecuted refugees. This myth proved deeply

appealing to conservative churchmen in Britain, but it also underlines the fact that the loyalists

were distinctly American.

95
Kingston and the Loyalists of the “Spring Fleet” of A.D. 1783. With Reminiscences of Early Days in Connecticut:
A Narrative, ed. W. O. Raymond (Saint John, NB: Barnes & Company, 1889), 4.

187
Fig. 8: Benjamin West, “Portrait of John Eardley-Wilmot” (1812)

Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art.

Fig. 9: Henry Moses, “Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in 1783,” (1815), engraving after an oil
painting by Benjamin West.

Wilmot, Historical View, frontispiece.

188
Church, State, and Nation: The Reception of the Loyalist Refugee Clergy

In Britain, the refugee clergy formed a distinct component within the wider loyalist diaspora.

Recognisable by their clerical dress, many of them arrived in Britain early in the war, having

emigrated after the Declaration of Independence and subsequent outlawing of prayers for the

king. The visibility of the Anglican clergy within the loyalist diaspora made the status of the

Church of England in the British Empire a subject of political discussion and could provide

evidence to confirm suspicions that the rebellion had been, at heart, a rebellion against the

established church. John Wilmot, the MP who directed the compensation process, recalled that

“great numbers of the Clergy” became “obnoxious from their early exertions in favour of his

Majesty and the British Government.”96 They were prominent in Benjamin West’s painting

celebrating Britain’s reception of the loyalist refugees. West depicted a diverse cast of loyalists

including an Anglican clergyman, alongside an Indian chieftain, emancipated slaves, widows,

orphans, a lawyer, and a judge (Figs. 8 & 9).97

Responsibility for the refugee clergy initially fell on the Church of England itself,

providing an opportunity for English churchmen to celebrate the American clergy’s

conscientious suffering and zeal under persecution. In December 1775, Thomas Bradbury

Chandler and Myles Cooper proposed that the SPG hold “a public subscription to relieve the

American Clergy, who are suffering for their Loyalty.”98 The subscription was carried out by

parish clergy in Sunday church services, under the patronage of the archbishops, bishops, and

96
John Eardley-Wilmot, Historical View of the Commission for Enquiring into the Losses, Services, and Claims, of
the American Loyalists, at the Close of the War between Great Britain and her Colonies, in 1783: with an Account
of the Compensation Granted to them by Parliament in 1785 and 1788 (London: J. Nichols, 1815), 9.
97
Ibid., frontispiece, and vii-viii for a description. The original painting is lost, but is reproduced in the background
of Benjamin West’s portrait of John Wilmot.
98
Chandler, “Memorandums”: December 7 1775; December 13 1775; Seabury Correspondence, n. 26: Thomas
Bradbury Chandler to Samuel Seabury, April 8 1776.

189
king, and raised a total of £6,691.99 Chandler acted as the agent for the distribution of the

collection and played no small role in determining who counted as a suffering loyalist. 100 In

1779, another public collection by the SPG to replenish the funds depleted by supporting the

missionaries during the war raised a further £16,490.101

The distribution and collection of the relief payments united the American loyalist clergy

and their English allies with an affective language of suffering, sympathy, and pity. The Bishop

of Sodor and Man, Richard Richmond, recommended the collection to his clergy by appealing to

their “sympathising pity, and affectionate concern for our distressed fellow laborers in the

ministry.”102 In a sermon preached to the annual meeting of the SPG in 1777, William Markham,

the Archbishop of York, supported the collection for the suffering American clergy. Markham

related the “painful” events of the previous two years: “the ministers of our church pursued with

a licentiousness and cruelty, of which no Christian country can afford an example, the

neighbouring savages perhaps may.”103 At this point in the sermon one of the refugees who was

sitting in the congregation, Joshua Wingate Weeks, burst into tears. Weeks recounted that, until

that point he found the homily “lifeless,” but “when he [Markham] came to speak of the

sufferings of the clergy in America… it renewed in me a remembrance of what I had felt, it

99
Lambeth Palace Library [henceforth LPL], SPG Papers, vol. 6 ff. 368-74, “An account of Subscriptions towards
the Relief and Support of the American Clergy, viz. £6684:0:7 and of the distribution thereof”; f. 378,
“Advertisement in copy 1779, concerning subscriptions for the relief of American clergy, with a state of the
accounts to [May?] 30 1779”; ff. 379-88, “Subscription for the American Clergy at Messrs. Gosling”; ff. 389-90,
“An account of the Distribution of the Sum of £6691:10:7 being the amount of a Subscription for the Relief of the
American Clergy.”
100
Chandler, “Memorandums”: June 10 1776; January 8 1777; September 19 1778; December 2 1778; December 8
1779; LPL, Archbishops’ Papers (Cornwallis), vol. 4: “Subscriptions for the Missionarys in America, 1776-9.”
101
John Thomas, SPG Sermon (1780), 55-64, 66; To the Most Reverend Father in God, our Right Trusty and Right
Entirely Beloved Councillor, Frederick, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury ([London]:n.p., [1779]); LPL Fulham
Papers (Colonial Series), vol. 41 ff. 375-80, “Memorandum & Observations Relative to the Society, etc., by order of
the Bishop of London.”
102
[Richard Richmond], Reverend Brethren, you will Herewith Receive the Letter of our Most Gracious Sovereign…
([n.p.]:[1779?]), 2.
103
William Markham, SPG Sermon (1777), xiv.

190
opened afresh the wounds of grief and tears flowed in liberal streams from my eyes. Good God!

Who can tell what I suffered.”104 The recipients of the relief payments also wrote to the SPG

from America, thanking them for their “particular Marks of Attention & Favour” for “the

suffering Clergy in this Country.”105 The Connecticut missionaries Bela Hubbard and Samuel

Andrews both expressed their “Gratitude to unknown Benefactors” for the relief payments.106

The sheer scale of these charitable collections also provoked public discussion of the

clergy’s loyalism. The language of the 1779 collection announced that the SPG missionaries

were being persecuted for their loyalty. The authorising royal letter, read from pulpits across the

country, explained that the collection was for the support of “the Clergy, who refused to

renounce their allegiance” and who were consequently “deprived of their churches.” 107 The

Archbishop of Canterbury also wrote to the parish clergy, explaining that the collection was

being made for the “many Clergymen remaining in a state of persecution” in “the revolted

colonies.”108 In turn, the parish clergy preached sermons in support of their persecuted American

brethren. The Reverend Francis Rufford of Worcestershire urged his congregation to support

“those missionary Pastors” who were “now in a State of Persecution,” comparing the

missionaries to the apostles: they “Hunger and Thirst, be naked, and sick, and in Prison.”109 The

Lincolnshire clergyman John Whitcombe explained that “our missionaries, by their adherence to

the British government, have… derived on themselves ill-will and persecution,” and urged his

104
Weeks “Journal,” 346.
105
USPG B3 n. 343: Clergy of New York, February 8 1777.
106
USPG B23 n. 25: Samuel Andrews, July 1 1782; n. 179: Bela Hubbard, July 19 1782.
107
Thomas, SPG Sermon (1780), 59.
108
Ibid., 62.
109
Francis Rufford, Compassion to Men's Souls the Greatest Charity; and the Necessity of a Subscription for the
Support and Relief of Missionaries (Worcester: E. Berrow, 1779), 11 (quoting Matthew 25:44).

191
hearers to support “these pious and deserving men, with their helpless families.”110 The Monthly

Review praised these efforts for “the relief of those missionaries, &c., who are sufferers for their

inflexible attachment to this country.”111

The scale of the public collection could also attract hostile attention. William Mason, a

whig clergyman and correspondent of Horace Walpole, wrote to the Public Advertiser to criticise

the Duchess of Kingston for her large donation to the relief fund. Mason argued that “the

distresses in question” had been exaggerated and suggested it would be best to bring the colonial

clergy home.112 Another letter to the Public Advertiser attacked “the American Refugees” as “the

grand Incendiaries of Mischief,” who had provoked “the most expensive bloody, and unnatural

of all Civil Wars.” The writer acknowledged that some of the refugees were “unhappy, honest,

and distressed Persons” but denounced by name clerical refugees. The letter compared Thomas

Bradbury Chandler to Henry Sacheverell, the high church clergyman who was impeached by

Parliament after provoking anti-Dissenter riots with an inflammatory sermon in 1709.113

The refugee clergy attracted these kinds of accusations through their outspoken

condemnation of the rebellion. In December 1776, the former president of King’s College Myles

Cooper preached a fast day sermon before the University of Oxford in which he attributed the

rebellion to the Lockean doctrine of a social compact. Cooper took the opportunity to champion

the loyalty and sufferings of American churchmen. He informed his audience of the “inflexible

Loyalty” of “the Greater Part of the Members of the Church of England, and, in Several of the

110
John Whitcombe, A Sermon Preached in the Parish-Church of Walesby, in Lincolnshire, on Sunday the 3d.
October 1779 (Lincoln: W. Wood, 1780), 16.
111
The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, vol. 61 (October 1779), 320.
112
William Mason to Horace Walpole, Mar 25 1776, in The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed.
W. S. Lewis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937-1983), 28:254-56. The letter was sent to the Public
Advertiser but not published.
113
Copy of an Illiberal and Disrespectful Letter founded on Party Prejudice; with a Candid and Impartial Answer,
as far as Any Answer is Deserved to so Scurrilous a Pen ([New York?]:n.p., [1779?]), 1-2.

192
colonies, all its Clergy, without Exception.” These loyalists underwent such “Persecution and

Cruelty, as would excite the Indignation and Horror of every Soul in this Assembly.” They were

“harassed by Committees, dragged about by the populace, and driven through the streets…

reduced from Affluence to Extreme Poverty… torn from their Families, and forced into

Banishment, leaving their Wives and Children at the mercy of their Persecutors.” Some were

“bound and fettered like the worst of Malefactors, and then consigned to endless

Imprisonment…perishing for want of Necessaries.” Others took “refuge in the Wilderness, for

many weeks together, without food and without shelter.”114

Cooper’s uncompromising denunciation of the rebellion and his criticism of the

colonists’ principles antagonised the colonists’ British suppoerters. A published letter to a

newspaper from a “Disciple of Locke” suggested that Cooper should not receive any relief from

the “subscription for the relief of the American clergy” since he was preaching doctrines that

were hostile to the spirit of the British constitution. It was these Tory doctrines, not Locke’s, that

had caused “the present deplorable defection of our American brethren.”115 Horace Walpole also

condemned Cooper in Parliament.116

The loyalists’ claims often made their way into published propaganda and political

argument. The American Revolution provoked a debate in Britain about the respective merits

and demerits of the British constitution and the republican system advanced by the American

rebels. A number of writers in this debate took note of the persecutions undergone by the

American loyalists. These writers were not concerned with combatting the rebellion so much as

114
Myles Cooper, National Humiliation and Repentance Recommended, and the Causes of the Present Rebellion in
America Assigned, in a Sermon Preached Before the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1777), 18-19.
115
This newspaper cutting is inserted into the British Library’s copy of Cooper, National Humiliation, which is
reproduced in Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, document number CW 3319106886. It is not possible to
determine which newspaper title the cutting is taken from.
116
Vance, “Myles Cooper,” 280-81.

193
discrediting it in the eyes of its British supporters. In turn, the loyalist refugees were keen to

weigh into these debates as they believed that British radicals were encouraging the rebellion in

America. At the outbreak for the rebellion, Charles Inglis reminded the refugee John Varidll that

“the Opposition and Writers against Government in England are Chargeable with many of our

Confusions here.”117

Ambrose Serle was one Tory writer who used the loyalists’ stories of suffering and

persecution to attack the British radical movement. In 1775, he published a pamphlet titled

Americans Against Liberty, arguing that the British constitution was the only true guarantor of

liberty. Despite the Americans’ pretended love of liberty, their republican system was lawless,

persecuting, violent, and arbitrary.118 The following year, Serle travelled to New York with the

British army and met a number of American loyalists. His journal recorded that on one occasion,

while dining with a group of loyalists, “the Discourse turned principally upon the Distresses of

the Inhabitants, and of themselves who had not seen their Wives and Families for the Space of

nine Months, [and] upon the general Inhumanity of the Rebels.”119 Later that year, Serle

published a new and expanded edition of Americans Against Liberty which now included a

discussion of the persecutions undergone by the loyalists. In the new edition, Serle pointed out

that property had been “seized by lawless committees” upon a mere “suspicion of difference.”

People had been “stigmatized… only for refusing obedience to the arbitrary dictates of an

audacious committee or an impudent mob.” The rebels “have forced husbands from their wives

and children, and sons from their parents.” In short, Serle concluded, “no cruelty has been

117
British Library, Egerton MS 2135, ff. 5-6: “A Real Churchman” [i.e. Charles Inglis] to John Vardill, May 2 1775.
118
[Ambrose Serle], Americans Against Liberty: Or, An Essay on the Nature and Principles of True Freedom,
Shewing the Design and Conduct of the Americans tend only to Tyranny and Slavery (London: J. Mathews, 1775).
119
Serle, American Journal, 36-37.

194
omitted, which savages would omit, upon those, who have opposed their violent proceedings.”120

For Serle, the sufferings of the American loyalists discredited the patriot movement and its

British supporters.

Other writers specifically mentioned the unique persecutions undergone by the loyalist

SPG missionaries. In 1776, for example, the Dissenting minister and political radical Richard

Price published a pamphlet titled Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty in which he

supported the claims of the American colonists.121 The pamphlet drew a response from the Tory

writer John Shebbeare. Shebbeare was particularly keen to criticise the Dissenting churches of

New England and instead celebrate the moral and political virtues of the established Church of

England. Pointing to the plight of the loyalist clerical refugees, explained that the rebels were

Dissenters who were persecuting members of the Church of England in America:

“Even at this hour, the spirit of persecution and intolerance reigns in all their hearts
as strong as ever. They have driven the ecclesiastics of the church of England, the
only one by law established in the colonies, from their livings, into distress and
almost want of bread. This truth is evinced by the collections, which are now
making in England, to prevent their being starved by the rebellious liberty-of-
conscience men; and several ecclesiastics of the church of England have fled to this
kingdom, to save their lives, which the presbyterians threatened to destroy.”

These new persecutions, Shebbeare explained, were simply the latest manifestation of the New

Englanders’ intolerant spirit. The first Puritan emigrants claimed to be seeking religious liberty,

but they soon grew “convinced of the absurdity of every man’s following the decisions of his

120
[Ambrose Serle], Americans Against Liberty: Or, An Essay on the Nature and Principles of True Freedom,
Shewing the Design and Conduct of the Americans tend only to Tyranny and Slavery, 4th edn. (London: J. Exshaw,
1776), 56-58.
121
Richard Price, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and
Policy of War with America (London: T. Cadell, 1776).

195
own conscience.” Instead, they established the “presbyterian” church in New England and denied

political rights to members of the Church of England.122 For Shebbeare, the idea that the rebels

had persecuted American Anglicans became an argument in favour of the established church in

England against its Dissenting critics.

The American Loyalist Claims Commission

After the end of the war, the ad hoc payments and pensions that the refugees received from the

government evolved into a full-blown process of compensation. This idea originated in the

lobbying activities of the refugees themselves, who were convinced that their loyalty entitled

them to recognition and reward. In June 1783, Parliament created a commission “to enquire into

the losses and services of those who had suffered… in consequence of their loyalty.” This

initiative was largely an apologetic response to the government’s failure to secure a clause in the

peace treaty for the restoration of confiscated loyalist property. Parliament initially instructed the

commission to examine and standardise the haphazard existing system of payments and

pensions, and subsequently voted a series of massive sums to be distributed among the loyalists.

The commission heard claimants present their cases and awarded pensions and compensation

payments according to the scale of their losses, the extent of their loyalty, and their moral and

122
John Shebbeare, An Essay on the Origin, Progress and Establishment of National Society; in which the
Principles of Government, the Definitions of Physical, Moral, Civil, and Religious Liberty, Contained in Dr Price’s
Observations, &c. are Fairly Examined and Fully Refuted (London: J. Bew, 1776), 108-109, 112.

196
political merit. The commission distinguished between six categories of loyalty, awarding higher

compensation to those deemed consistent and active loyalists.123

The loyalists themselves were frequently embittered by the inadequacies and

shortcomings of the compensation process. The commission deemed various kinds of financial

losses ineligible, thereby provoking a flurry of complaint. Their exacting standards made it

difficult for the claimants to evidence their losses, especially given the disruption and confusion

associated with the war. Those making small claims were at a particular disadvantage.

Altogether, the loyalists received only a small fraction of what they claimed.124 Nevertheless, by

the time the commission’s work drew to a close in 1790, it had examined over 5,000 claims and

awarded approximately three million pounds in compensation.125 From another perspective, then,

the scale of these payments is a testament to the loyalists’ ability to make demands of the

government. Joshua Wingate Weeks flatly told one of the commissioners, “it is certainly

reasonable that I should derive the same advantages from Government which I had lost by my

adherence to it.”126 Historians have used the records of the commission (problematically) as a

source for the socio-economic composition of American loyalism,127 and (more successfully) as

a source for accessing the loyalists’ identity.128 They might also be seen as part of a conversation

123
The claimants were categorised(rather confusingly) as: “1st. Those who had rendered services to Great Britain.
2 . Those who had borne arms for Great Britain. 3 rd. Uniform Loyalists. 4th. Loyal British Subjects resident in Great
nd

Britain. 5th. Loyalists who had taken oaths to the American States, but afterwards joined the British. 6 th. Loyalists
who had borne arms for the American States, but afterwards joined the British Navy or Army.” Wilmot, Historical
View, 57.
124
AO12 vol. 109 ff. 10-11: “First General Statement of Claims made by and losses liquidated of American
Loyalists.”
125
Wilmot, Historical View, 1-90; Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution
(Westport, CT: Meckler, 1984), x-xxv.
126
AO13 vol. 49 ff. 676-677: Joshua Wingate Weeks to Thomas Dundas, October 13 1788.
127
Wallace Brown, The King’s Friends: The Composition and Motive of the American Loyalist Claimants
(Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1965); Eugene R. Fingerhut, “Uses and Abuses of the American Loyalist
Claims: A Critique of Quantitative Analyses,” William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1968): 245-58.
128
Keith Mason, “American Loyalist Problem of Identity.”

197
between the loyalists and the government over the definition of a loyalist, their role in the

rebellion, and the lessons to be learnt from the American Revolution.

For the loyalist clergy, the compensation hearings represented an opportunity to enlarge

on the political virtues of the colonial Church of England. In these hearings, they compared the

American rebellion to the seventeenth-century civil wars, in which Protestant Dissenters had

rebelled against church and king while churchmen supported the government. In his memorial to

the commission, Charles Inglis insisted, “there was the strongest resemblance between… the late

Rebellion in America and that of 1641 in Great Britain… the one seemed to be an exact

counterpart of the other.” They were both superficially about liberty, but “the subversion of

Monarchy and the Church of England were the real objects” of each.129 Other loyalist clergymen

explained that their membership of the Church of England made them devoted subjects to the

constitution in both church and state; by contrast, Republicanism and Protestant Dissent were

natural bedfellows. Samuel Peters told the Commission that he was driven from Connecticut by

his “Republican and anti-episcopal Countrymen,” who targeted him because he was “a steady

Friend to the Church of England and the British Constitution.”130 In this view, loyalty was

mandated by the principles of the church. Simply by virtue of their membership of the church,

the clergy had chosen loyalty over republicanism. John Wiswall explained that he “conformed to

the Church of England” because he became convinced that “the republican System of New-

England which existed both in Church & State” was harmful to the “Rights of Mankind.”131

According to this logic, the loyalism of the Church of England pre-dated the American

Revolution. The SPG missionaries’ long-standing controversies and conflicts with Protestant

129
AO12 vol. 20 pp. 368-387: Memorial of Charles Inglis, February 10 1784.
130
AO13 vol. 42 ff. 286-99: Memorial of Samuel Peters, November 28 1782.
131
AO13 vol. 82 ff. 166-169. Memorial of J Wiswall, November 19 1783.

198
Dissenters became proof that they had always been battling against republicanism. They had

foreseen the coming of the revolution long before anyone else even suspected it. Inglis explained

that he had observed “a restless and seditious spirit to prevail in some parts of America long

before the proceedings there occasioned any public alarm.”132 Chandler told the commissioners

that An Appeal to the Public, his 1767 publication in favour of the creation of an American

bishop, was motivated by a prophetic “view to the Good of the State at the same time, and an

apprehension of the Evil that was then approaching.” Likewise, Samuel Seabury informed the

commissioners that American Dissenters’ publishing campaign against the proposal for a

colonial bishop, particularly the newspaper The American Whig, “was the immediate forerunner

of the late Rebellion; and pointed out to the Americans a separation from Great Britain, the rise

of an American Empire, and the fall of the British Empire & government.”133

The refugee clergy repeated their claim that they were loyalist martyrs, who had been

persecuted for their conscientious fidelity to the church. The Scottish missionary Harry Munro

told the commissioners he “made a sacrifice of his own ease his health & property in the late

unhappy Contest and troubles whereby he has sustained considerable Losses and is become a

great sufferer in the Cause.”134 The loyalist clergy had long understood their sufferings during

the rebellion as a form of religious persecution, a test of their faith, and they repeated this

language in their applications for compensation. Joshua Wingate Weeks told the commission that

he was “in great distress, owing to the long series of persecutions, which for near four years he

has undergone.”135 Jonathan Odell also recounted that “a series of Persecutions, on account of his

132
AO12 vol. 20 pp. 368-387: Memorial of Charles Inglis, February 10 1784.
133
AO12 vol. 19 pp. 355-362: Memorial of Samuel Seabury, October 20 1783.
134
AO12 vol. 24 pp. 36-40: Memorial of Harry Munro [1786].
135
AO13 vol. 75 ff. 492-493: Memorial of Joshua Wingate Weeks, March 19 1779.

199
open & decided Character as a Loyalist, was commenced against him.”136As proof of their

loyalism, they pointed to their refusal to pray for Congress, and their decision to shut their

churches rather than omit the prayers for the king. Mary Serjeant, the widow of the

Massachusetts missionary Winwood Serjeant, told the commission, “if my Husband would have

submitted to Pray for the Congress and leave out his most Gracious Sovereign, he might still

have… avoided those afflictions to which his refusal subjected him, and which certainly

hastened his Death.”137 James Sayre, the son of the deceased missionary John Sayre, likewise

told the commissioners that his father had “continued to officiate as a Clergyman of the Church

of England and to pray for the King until the last.”138

This rhetoric of passive suffering, victimhood, and martyrdom sat uneasily with the

commission’s insistence on active services in favour of government. This tension had a gendered

component. In other contexts, the SPG missionaries could characterise themselves as weak,

suffering, Christian martyrs without compromising their gendered identity as professional men.

Martyrdom, after all, was the ultimate expression of spiritual independence, and independence

was a key component of eighteenth-century masculinity. Cotton Mather, for example, had

praised the early Christian martyrs for their “manly Christianity.”139 However, the missionaries’

“manly Christianity” held little traction with the commission, which wanted to see loyalists using

their power and influence to combat the rebellion.140

136
AO12 vol. 16 pp. 296-300: Memorial of Jonathan Odell, March 23 1784.
137
AO13 vol. 49 ff. 283-84: Mary Serjeant to Daniel Parker Coke and John Wilmot, December 1 1782.
138
AO12 vol. 1 pp. 259-68: Evidence on the Memorial of James Sayre Junr.
139
Cotton Mather, Manly Christianity: A Brief Essay on the Signs of Good Growth and Strength in the Most Lovely
Christianity (London: Ralph Smith, 1711), cited in R. Todd Romero, Making War and Minting Christians:
Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011),
31.
140
For more on eighteenth-century manliness and religion, see Janet Moore Lindman, “‘Play the Man… For Your
Bleeding Country’: Military Chaplains as Gender Brokers during the American Revolutionary War,” in New Men:

200
 Those claimants who most successfully deployed a language of passive suffering and

helplessness were the widows of clergymen. When Mary Serjeant presented her “humble suit” to

the commissioners, she explained that her “own Industry” could only provide a “very scanty”

subsistence to support her “young and helpless family.” She begged the commissioners to listen

to “the Prayer of the Widow and orphans.”141 In the same manner, Mary Auchmuty told the

commissioners that her husband, Samuel, “fell a Sacrifice to his principles of Loyalty & Duty”

after undergoing “a series of most uncommon Persecution from the Rebels in America.” She

explained that “her late Husbands nearest Connections… are rendered incapable of affording her

or her Daughter material relief.”142

The aging and infirm among the loyalist clergy employed a similar language of passivity

and helplessness, but this was unlikely to secure them significant compensation. Reviewing the

case of the elderly Henry Caner, the commissioners agreed that “he can hardly live upon his

allowance in this country.” Nevertheless, they concluded, “if he had a family we should have

thought it very proper to have added something to his allowance. But being a single man we

think that in proportion to other cases his present allowance will be sufficient.”143 Likewise,

William Clarke told the commissioners that he had lost his speech, hearing, wife, children, and

Manliness in Early America, ed. Thomas Foster (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 236-55; Jeremy
Gregory, “Homo Religiosus: Masculinity and Religion in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in English Masculinities,
1660-1800, eds. Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen (London: Addison Wesley, 1999), 85-110; Romero, Making
War and Minting Christians; Anne S. Lombard, Making Manhood: Growing Up Male in Colonial New England
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Lisa Wilson, Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in
Colonial New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
141
AO13 vol. 49 ff. 283-84: Mary Serjeant to Daniel Parker Coke and John Wilmot, December 1 1782.
142
AO13 vol. 113A, ff. 84-85: Memorial of Mary Auchmuty, March 24 1781.
143
AO12 vol. 105, “Massachusetts Bay: tabular statement, 1783-1790,” p. 56.

201
property. The commissioners resolved, “we feel this to be a Case of great Compassion, but as he

is a single Man” they resolved against an increase in his allowance.144

The loyalist clergy searched for other ways to demonstrate their active services in favour

of government. John Doty recounted that he sought “to warn the People privately and used every

means in his Power to confirm them in their allegiance. He likewise as far as he thought right

exhorted them from the pulpit to the same Effect.”145 Robert Nickolls argued that “in his station

according to his ability and opportunity, [he] did constantly recommend peace & duty of

allegiance.” He pointed specifically to his role as a schoolmaster, teaching loyal principles at a

time when “all the seminaries in New England” were “solely calculated to form republicans in

State and Independents in Church.”146 Inglis pointed to the loyalty of his congregation as

evidence of his active services in favour of government: “it is but justice to mention that they

almost all continued Loyal, no more than three of four persons of any note among them having

taken an active part in the Rebellion.”147 Those clergy who had published loyalist pamphlets had

the easiest time demonstrating their role as active loyalists, confidently asserting that their

publications had had an impact in counteracting the rebellion. Seabury recalled that he responded

to various Dissenting publications “with a View to prevent the ill effects [they] might have on

the minds of the People.” Their tendency was to “corrupt the minds of the people with regard to

Government, & to weaken their attachment to the Constitution of this Country both in Church &

State.”148 Jonathan Vardill likewise listed his loyalist publications as evidence of his role in

144
AO12 vol. 99, 53: Revd Mr Clarke, February 26 1783.
145
AO12 vol. 19, 32-35: Evidence on Memorial of John Doty, February 6 1781.
146
AO13 vol. 47 ff. 749-752: Memorial of Robert Boucher Nicholls, December 13 1783.
147
AO12 vol. 20 pp. 368-387: Memorial of Charles Inglis, February 10 1784.
148
AO12 vol. 19 pp. 355-362: Memorial of Samuel Seabury, October 20 1783.

202
combatting the rebellion.149 Testifying in favour of Vardill’s claim, Inglis confirmed that these

publications “tend[ed] to counteract the Spirit of Sedition then breaking out” and thereby

“rendered Services to Government.”150

To some extent, then, the loyalist clergy and the American Loyalist Claims Commission

were at odds with one another. The commissioners were concerned with rewarding loyalists who

had actively fought the rebellion and rendered services to government. Yet as far as the loyalist

Anglican clergy were concerned, their loyalism was a matter of fidelity to the Church of England

– its doctrines, liturgy, and ecclesiastical hierarchy – under conditions of religious persecution.

Their loyalism was proof of the power of religion, a demonstration of the sincerity of their

conscientious convictions, and a call to religious revival. It was never simply about strengthening

the government. Yet there was the potential for a powerful synergy between these distinct

agendas. The loyalist clergy were eager to persuade the government that the colonial Church of

England had been the most consistent and effective wellspring of loyalty. They insisted that their

allegiance proceeded, not from self-interest or circumstance, but from principle, and that these

principles were a matter of conscience. Transferring his loyalty from the church to the

government to Britain, Inglis told the commissioners that “he always acted from the dictates of

his conscience” in his “Loyalty to the King and attachment to the British Constitution and

nation.”151 In this way, the refugee clergy made their conscientious loyalty to government and

their self-sacrifice for the British nation a sacred matter.

149
AO12 vol. 20 pp. 22-29: Memorial of John Vardill, November 14 1783.
150
AO12 vol. 20 pp. 30-35: Evidence on the Memorial of John Vardill, November 8 1784.
151
AO12 vol. 20 pp. 368-387: Memorial of Charles Inglis, February 10 1784.

203
“Immortal Honour”: Samuel Peters’s Loyalist History

For many of the loyalists, the compensation hearings represented an opportunity to vindicate

themselves publically. One of the refugee clergy, Samuel Peters, published a history of the

rebellion that recorded and celebrated the sufferings undergone by the SPG missionaries. Peters

was unusual in many regards. He was particularly aggressive in his denunciation of the patriot

movement. He became the first missionary to leave the American colonies as a refugee, after he

was driven from Hebron by a mob in October 1774. Peters’ correspondence and publications are

characterised by a braggadocio that ended up alienating most of his friends. In 1781, as an exile

in London, he published a General History of Connecticut, which recounted the entire history of

the colony from its first settlement through to the outbreak of the rebellion. The General History

sold well. It ran to a second edition the following year, was sold in America, and was translated

into German. Much of the attention it received was hostile. A number of replies criticised its

treatment of Connecticut’s seventeenth-century history for its flippant disregard for the truth.152

For Peters, the General History was an opportunity to diagnose the causes of the

American Revolution. Peters explained that the real causes of the revolution were poorly

understood. Many writers had noted the “reasons ostensibly held up by the Americans,” but these

were “merely a veil to the true causes.” Peters emphasised the failure to export the metropolitan

constitution in church and state. He observed that “England, as if afraid to venture her

constitution in America, has kept it at an awful distance, and established in too many of her

152
[Samuel Peters], A General History of Connecticut, from its First Settlement under George Fenwick, Esq. To its
Latest Period of Amity with Great Britain; including a Description of the Country, and many Curious and
Interesting Anecdotes (London: Printed for the Author, 1781); Sheldon S. Cohen, Connecticut’s Loyalist Gadfly:
The Reverend Samuel Andrew Peters (Hartford, CT: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of
Connecticut, 1976), 27-34. The copy at the British Library [C.32.f.7] has been extensively annotated by a hostile
reader who strongly disagreed with almost everything Peters had to say.

204
colonies republicanism.” This failure to extend the metropolitan constitution was not the result of

colonial opposition, but rather of England’s disrespect for the Americans. Indeed, one reason for

the rebellion was that “the Americans saw themselves despised by the Britons.”153

Above all, Peters believed that the failure to extend the established church was a principal

cause of the rebellion. He lamented “the sinful omission of not sending a bishop to that country.”

An American bishop “would have effected greater things among them than an army of 50,000

men.” Instead, the Dissenting ministers of Connecticut formed a union to oppose the authority of

King and Parliament. Peters argued that the failure to send an American bishop was not just the

result of Dissenting opposition, but of the arrogance and selfishness of the Church of England’s

leaders. He complained that “England has also been as careful to keep to herself her religion and

Bishops as her civil constitution… A million of churchmen in America have been considered not

worthy of one bishop, while eight millions in South Britain, are scarcely honoured enough with

twenty-six.” Peters specifically mentioned the Bishop of London’s disrespectful reply to a

petition sent by the Connecticut clergy: “I was… mortified with the implied censure of a great

man in very high office upon a meeting of the episcopal clergy, in his answer to an address they

took the liberty to present to him, in the vain hope of its being productive of some benefit to the

church in America… Britain lost by it half her friends in New-England.” If only the Bishop of

London had listened to the American missionaries, the rebellion could have been prevented.

Instead, the bishop managed to alienate the king’s best friends and most loyal subjects.154

As well as describing the causes of the American Revolution, Peters also took the

opportunity to record the sufferings endured by the SPG missionaries. The final section of the

General History was a description of these sufferings. Peters explained that “the episcopal clergy

153
Peters, General History, 368-70.
154
Ibid., 293-94, 336-37, 369-70, 379-80, 409-10.

205
have acquired immortal honour by their steady adherence to their oaths,” and provided a lengthy

description of their “sufferings.” Gideon Bostwick was lashed with his back to a tree. Myles

Cooper was almost murdered by rebels. “The Rev. Messieurs Graves, Scovil, Dibblee, Nichols,

Leaming, Beach, and diverse others, were cruelly dragged through mire and dirt.” Richard

Mansfield and Roger Viets were imprisoned for “charitably giving victuals and blankets to

loyalists flying from the rage of drunken mobs.” Peters (writing anonymously) made sure to

mention that “among the greatest enemies to the cause of the Sober Dissenters, and among the

greatest friends to that of the church of England, the Rev. Mr. Peters stood conspicuous.”155

Peters was not just concerned with celebrating the SPG missionaries’ loyalism, but more

specifically with commemorating their martyrdom. He explained that the missionaries’

sufferings demonstrated the sincerity of their conscientious convictions. Those who doubt the

“zeal and sincerity” of Connecticut churchmen “are under a mistake; for they have voluntarily

preferred the church under every human discouragement, and suffered persecution.” 156 Peters

provided a detailed description of the heroic fortitude shown by the loyalist missionary John

Beach. The description closely adhered to the literary conventions of a martyrdom narrative, and

is worth citing at length:

“This faithful disciple disregarded the congressional mandate, and praying for the
King as usual, they pulled him out of his desk, put a rope around his neck, and drew
him across Osootonoc river, at the tail of a boat… But his loyal zeal was
insuperable. He went to church, and prayed again for the King; upon which the
Sober Dissenters again seized him, and resolved upon cutting out his tongue; when
the heroic veteran said, ‘If my blood must be shed, let it not be done in the house of
God.’ The pious mob then dragged him out of the church, laid his neck on a block,
and swore they would cut off his head; and insolently crying out, ‘Now, you old

155
Ibid., 394, 405, 414, 418.
156
Ibid., 227.

206
 Devil! say your last prayer,’ he prayed thus, ‘God bless King George, and forgive
all his and my enemies!’ At this unexpected and exalted display of christian
patience and charity, the mob so far relented as to discharge and never molest him
afterwards…”157

In this narrative, the rebels attempted to demonstrate their power over John Beach through force

and violence. Instead, they gave him a public platform from which to demonstrate the sincereity

of his conscience. In turn, this public demonstration of faith was powerful enough that it allowed

Beach to triumph over his persecutors.

Conclusion

Despite Peters’s efforts to celebrate and immortalise the missionaries’ religious zeal under

persecution, his subsequent trajectory as an émigré was less than illustrious. He was aggressively

ambitious, and ended up alienating most of his former friends. After the end of the war, he was

one of many American clergymen who hoped to be appointed as the Bishop of Nova Scotia. In

1784, he published an anonymous attack on Charles Inglis, the favourite for the appointment.158

His authorship was widely known, and most of his fellow missionaries ended their relationship

with him after the incident. In 1791, he sought unsuccessfully to be made Bishop of Quebec.

Then, in 1794, he managed to get himself elected as bishop for the new state of Vermont, but

was never consecrated. He applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury for consecration many times,

and was repeatedly rebuffed. In a letter to the Duke of Portland, the Archbishop explained that

Peters had recently been prosecuted for assault and battery and would therefore not make a

157
Ibid., 420-21.
158
[Samuel Peters?], Reply to Remarks on a Late Pamphlet, Entitled A Vindication of Governor Parr and his
Council, &c. By J. Viator (London: John Stockdale, 1784). For Peter’s authorship, see Cohen, Connecticut’s
Loyalist Gadfly, 42.

207
suitable bishop.159 Soon after this, the government withdrew his loyalist pension, and he returned

to the United States. In 1807, he published a biography of the Cromwellian regicide Hugh Peters,

from whom he claimed descent (falsely). In 1819, he travelled to Prarie du Chien on the

Mississippi river to pursue a land speculation scheme, but without success. He eventually

returned to Hebron and died there in 1826.160

Although Peters was clearly unusual, his career shows how difficult it is to assign a

typical trajectory to the loyalist refugee clergy. Keith Mason has suggested that the loyalist

refugees’ efforts to emphasise the continuous, steadfast, and unchanging nature of their identiy

were progressively undone by their repeated dislocations and relocations. Over time, any united

diasporic loyalist identity was dissolved and disaggregated.161 Peters appears to be a case in

point. Certainly the loyalist clergy’s claim to have suffered for their conscentious adherence to

church and king often failed to secure them any kind of compensation or reward. Peters was

probably not the only loyalist to end up disillusioned.

Nevertheless, the myth that the loyalist clergy generated proved deeply appealing to

conservative churchmen in Britain in the aftermath of the American Revolution. As the

following chapter will show, their identity as loyalist martyrs was attractive to English high

churchmen who were concerned about the threats facing religious orthodoxy in an age of

upheaval and revolution. Even before the revolution, English churchmen had often engaged with

the empire by sympathising with the sufferings of its inhabitants. As Laura Stevens has shown,

the SPG’s propaganda emphasised the spiritual sufferings of Native Americans, thereby creating

159
LPL SPG Papers, vol. 17, ff. 124-5: John Moore to the Duke of Portland, September 12 1794.
160
Cohen, Connecticut’s Loyalist Gadfly, 48-53.
161
Keith Mason, “American Loyalist Problem of Identity.”

208
emotional and affective ties among churchmen who supported their proselytization.162 There had

always been some amount of slippage between depictions of Native Americans and European

settlers.163 Now, the suffering loyalist refugees became the new object of English churchmen’s

pity. They provided a narrative of the American Revolution as a rebellion against a martyred

church, sacralising the Church of England’s experience of trauma and rebirth. For English

churchmen, this narrative was spiritually, politically, and ideologically useful. Even as the

refugees themselves complained that they were despised, neglected, and forgotten, their

sufferings became a source of immense moral authority for a resurgent Church of England.

162
Laura M. Stevens, The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
163
See Chapter One, 53-57 above.

209
 CHAPTER FIVE

The Church Triumphant?

American Independence and the Rebirth of the Imperial Church of England

Introduction

The recognition of American independence in 1783 entailed a far-reaching ecclesiastical

reordering of the British Empire. Throughout this dissertation, I have emphasised the set of

constitutional tensions that prevailed between the Church of England and the empire. If

eighteenth-century England was a “confessional state” in which the church and state existed in

symbiosis, then the British Empire was an ecclesiastical conglomerate in which different

churches were supported in different territories, often in tension with one another. American

independence went some way towards resolving these constitutional and ecclesiastical

contradictions. Historians usually emphasise the diversity and cosmopolitanism that

characterised the new British Empire created by American independence.1 This is true, but the

British Empire after 1783 was also arguably a lot more Anglican than it had been before the

revolution. American independence removed a vast and irreducible Dissenting constituency and

left the Church of England with a more plausible claim than ever to be a truly imperial church.

Of course, the population of the empire remained religiously diverse, but churchmen argued that

1
C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 (London and New York: Longman,
1989); Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 181-214; Keith Mason, “The American Loyalist
Diaspora and the Reconfiguration of the British Atlantic World,” in Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in
the Atlantic World, eds. Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 239-
59; Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2011); Peter J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, c.1750-1783 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005).

210
the moderate and tolerant Church of England was well-suited to governing such a population.

Yet if American independence resolved some of the tensions between church and empire, it left

other tensions unresolved, most obviously, the continued coexistence within Britain of the

Church of England and Church of Scotland. In addition, the dilemmas of ecclesiastical

sovereignty raised by American independence also introduced new tensions into the relationship.

From the perspective of Britain’s remaining North American colonies of Nova Scotia,

New Brunswick, and Quebec, American independence led to the creation of a new, conservative

established church firmly supported by the state.2 As Peter Doll has argued, in the new political

context of the post-revolutionary moment, the empire’s governors began to offer the colonial

Church of England the political support they had previously denied it.3 The loyalist SPG

missionaries finally obtained their long-wished-for colonial bishop when Charles Inglis was

consecrated as the first Bishop of Nova Scotia in 1787.4 This change in imperial religious policy

was part of a wider turn towards authoritarianism, a political project that sought to reinforce

social hierarchies and clamp down on potential sources of sedition.5

Yet as Peter Marshall reminds us, American independence also entailed a traumatic

disruption of a deeply integrated Protestant Atlantic.6 By leaving a huge number of American

Anglicans outside the borders of the British Empire, American independence raised new

2
In 1784 Nova Scotia was partitioned, creating the new colonies of New Brunswick and Cape Breton. Cape Breton
was merged back into Nova Scotia in 1820. Quebec, sometimes known as Canada, was partitioned in 1791 into
Upper Canada (present day Ontario) and Lower Canada (present day Quebec).
3
Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745-
1795 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), 155-236.
4
Ross N. Hebb, Samuel Seabury and Charles Inglis: Two Bishops, Two Churches (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2010).
5
Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 (London and New York: Longman,
1989); Peter J. Marshall, “Empire and Authority in the Later Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History 15, no. 2 (1987): 105-22.
6
Peter J. Marshall, “Transatlantic Protestantism and American Independence,” Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History 36, no. 3 (2008): 345-62.

211
questions about the unity of church and nation. More immediately, it raised the urgent problem

of the location of ecclesiastical sovereignty. This problem can be thought of as the ecclesiastical

counterpart to the better-known dilemmas of political and constitutional sovereignty that

American independence created in both the British Empire and the new United States.7 On what

authority would American Anglicans be reconstituted into a new American church? What

responsibilities, if any, did the Church of England retain towards its coreligionists in the new

United States? What did American independence mean for the relationship between church,

state, and nation in both countries? The answers they gave to these questions often rested on

what can seem to us obscure points of theology, such as the canonical procedure for ordaining

different levels of clergy or the validity of different lines of episcopal succession, but these were

issues that held significant ideological stakes for churchmen as they considered their response to

American independence.

Different sections of the Church of England in America responded to these questions in

different ways. The southern Anglicans who had generally supported American independence

proposed creating a new ecclesiastical constitution modelled on the republican constitution of the

new nation. Meanwhile, the northern Anglicans hoped to secure continuity with the Church of

England by having the English bishops consecrate an American bishop. In 1783, the Connecticut

clergy dispatched Samuel Seabury to England for this purpose; when the English bishops refused

to consecrate an American citizen, he travelled to Aberdeen and was consecrated by the bishops

of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. The possibility of a permanent division between northern

and southern Anglicans was forestalled when the English bishops subsequently agreed to

7
David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2007); Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World
Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Michael A. Morrison and Melinda S. Zook, eds.,
Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the Transatlantic World (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

212
consecrate bishops for New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and American Anglicans agreed

on a new constitution for the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States in 1789.8

American independence not only created new divisions between churchmen on different

sides of the Atlantic, but also exacerbated divisions within the Church of England. Most

severely, the question of ecclesiastical provision for churchmen remaining in the United States

precipitated the secession of the Methodists out of the church as a separate denomination,

thereby dealing an enormous blow to the strength of the church establishment in England.9 This

same question also created new divisions between high churchmen and low churchmen within

the Church of England over the proper location of ecclesiastical sovereignty. High churchmen

generally supported Seabury’s Scottish consecration as the best defence against the republican

innovations threatened by the episcopalians of the southern states. Low churchmen, however,

denounced Seabury for snubbing the Church of England and turning instead to the Episcopal

Church of Scotland, which they continued to associate with its historic support for the Jacobite

cause. Ultimately, Seabury’s Scottish consecration led to a renewed high church interest in the

Episcopal Church of Scotland and a campaign for the repeal of the penal laws against Scottish

Episcopalians in the 1790s. This interest in the Episcopal Church of Scotland indicated high

churchmen’s frustration with the compromises demanded by the Church of England’s

establishment within an ecclesiastical conglomerate such as the British Empire.

The American Revolution also introduced new tensions into the status of the church

establishment in Britain. The experience of imperial expansion, revolution, and war forced a

relaxation of the established churches’ political privileges in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

8
Frederick V. Mills, Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978).
9
Dee E. Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

213
Following the precedent of the 1774 Quebec Act, the anti-Catholic penal laws were relaxed in

England and Ireland in 1778 in an effort to recruit Catholic soldiers; the proposed extension of

relief to Scotland was abandoned in 1780 in the face of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots. These

concessions to Catholics were accompanied by a significant concession to Protestant Dissent –

particularly heterodox Dissent – in the ending of compulsory subscription to the 39 Articles in

1779.10 The American Revolution also pushed English Protestant Dissenters towards a reforming

program that wedded demands for religious toleration with political radicalism.11 In 1784, the

Dissenting minister Richard Price extolled the new United States as a beacon of liberty for the

rest of the world to emulate, laying particular emphasis on the abolition of church establishments

and the creation of a genuine “liberty of conscience” that extended beyond mere toleration. 12 In

1786, he republished Thomas Jefferson’s “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” in London.

This proved a major influence on Dissenters’ campaign for the repeal of the Test and

Corporation Acts, launched the following year.13 The campaign immediately encountered

trenchant opposition. Before long, it was resoundingly defeated amid the wider conservative

backlash against the early stages of the French Revolution.14 The failure of this campaign

exposed the limits of the government’s willingness to make concessions to religious minorities.

10
Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), 236-66.
11
Peter N. Miller, Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion, and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 266-348; James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution, and English
Radicalism: Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
12
Richard Price, Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making it a Benefit
to the World (London: n.p., 1784), 34-49, quotations 34.
13
Colin C. Bonwick, “English Dissenters and the American Revolution,” in Contrast and Connection: Bicentennial
Essays in Anglo-American History, ed. H. C. Allen and Roger Thompson (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1976), 99-101.
14
Grayson M. Ditchfield, “The Parliamentary Struggle over the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 1787-
1790,” English Historical Review 89, no. (1974): 551-77.

214
 The American Revolution thus introduced a new degree of polarization into religious

politics in Britain. Scholars have usually emphasised the stimulus given to British radicals and

reformers.15 By contrast, Linda Colley highlights the popular rallying to the established order in

the 1770s and 1780s, challenging the conventional dating of popular loyalism to the 1790s and

the conservative reaction to the French Revolution.16 While British opponents of the American

Revolution usually appealed to principles of law, constitutionalism, and Parliamentary

sovereignty, the 1770s and 1780s also saw a revival of older Tory demands for obedience to both

church and king.17 Historians have seen this Tory efflorescence as evidence of new political

divisions,18 as a chapter in a continuous and evolving Tory tradition, 19 or as a restatement of the

principles of the political establishment.20 In any case, a major emphasis of these writers was a

renewed attachment to the political privileges of the established church.

This renewed activism in defence of the established church formed part of a tradition of

high church criticism of the British Empire and its associated ecclesiastical compromises. Peter

Nockles’s study of the high church tradition in the eighteenth century emphasises the role of a

15
Colin C. Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 1977); Bradley, Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism; Harry T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the
American Revolution (London: Longman, 1998); Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism:
Political Ideology in Late-Eighteenth Century England and America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990);
John Sainsbury, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769-1782 (Kingston: Mc-Gill-
Queen’s University Press, 1987).
16
Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760-1820,” Past &
Present 102 (1984): 94-129.
17
Gould, Persistence of Empire, 142.
18
Paul Langford, “Old Whigs, Old Tories, and the American Revolution,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History 8, no. 2 (1980): 106-30, James E. Bradley, “The Anglican Pulpit, the Social Order, and the Resurgence of
Toryism during the American Revolution,” Albion 21, no. 3 (1989): 361-88; James J. Sack, From Jacobite to
Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
19
J. A. W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political
Thought (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), 120-93; M. E. Avery, “Toryism in the Age of
American Revolution: John Lind and John Shebbeare,” Historical Studies 18, no. 70 (1978): 24-36.
20
J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Régime
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

215
circle of “Hutchinsonians” surrounding William Stevens, William Jones, and George Horne, so-

called for their advocacy of the anti-Newtonian philosophy of John Hutchinson.21 The American

Revolution had a profound impact on this group, who not only published against the rebellion

but also formed close friendships with many of the American émigré clergy. With the coming of

the French Revolution, this group played a leading role in attacking English Jacobinism,

publishing both the Anti-Jacobin Review and the British Critic. In championing a role for the

Church of England as a fortress of loyalism against the onslaughts of atheist Jacobinism, these

high churchmen contended that both the American and French Revolutions were essentially

rebellions against established forms of religion. In doing so, they appealed to the experience of

the loyalist SPG missionaries in the northern colonies. A key figure here was Jonathan Boucher,

an English-born clergyman who spent the years 1759 to 1775 in Virginia and Maryland, where

he took an active part in the side of government. He returned to England as a loyalist refugee and

developed a close friendship with the Hutchinsonian circle. To a degree that has not been

recognised, the English high church movement was deeply critical of the ecclesiastical

compromises demanded by the empire, particularly the imperial government’s willingness to

support multiple, competing established churches. The SPG’s missionaries’ critique of the

American Revolution helped English high churchmen to imagine a different relationship

between church and empire.

Loyalist Proposals for Imperial Church Reform

For the American loyalist clergy and their English allies, the American rebellion represented an

opportunity to effect the reform of the imperial Church of England. Long before the outbreak of
21
Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).

216
rebellion, the loyalist clergy had been frustrated by the lack of state support for the Church of

England in America, particularly in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies. They hoped

that the rebellion would convince the church’s governors – that is to say, the English bishops and

the king’s ministers – of the need for a strong and tolerant established church, firmly supported

by the state. In advancing their case, they constructed an historical narrative of the American

Revolution as a Dissenting rebellion against the established church. This narrative involved a

highly selective reading of events, and it drew heavily on the loyalist clergy’s first-hand

experience and perspective. American independence meant that these proposals for reform in the

old colonies went unrealised, but they proved a major influence on the reforms that were enacted

in Britain’s remaining North American colonies after 1783.

An important source for this program was a circle comprising Charles Inglis, Joseph

Galloway, and Ambrose Serle. Serle was an English evangelical and prolific religious writer. In

1775, he published a pamphlet denouncing the Americans rebels for attempting “to sanctify their

Revolt by a specious Appearance of Religion.” Serle argued instead that true freedom lay in

submission to the law, both human and divine, citing both Locke and Hooker in support.22 Serle

was also an under-secretary to the Earl of Dartmouth, the secretary of state for the colonies and a

leading patron of the evangelical movement. In this role Serle accompanied the royal army in

America from 1776 to 1778, recording a series of hostile observations of the American rebellion

as inherently sinful.23 In September 1776, the Governor of New York General Tryon

commissioned Inglis and Serle to manage the loyalist New-York Gazette, which the army had

22
[Ambrose Serle], Americans Against Liberty: Or, An Essay on the Nature and Principles of True Freedom,
Shewing the Design and Conduct of the Americans tend only to Tyranny and Slavery (London: J. Mathews, 1775),
12.
23
Edward H. Tatum, Jr., “Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776-1778,” Huntington Library Quarterly 2,
no. 1 (1938): 265-84.

217
taken over from the printer Hugh Gaine.24 Serle and Inglis were joined in New York by Joseph

Galloway, the Pennsylvania loyalist politician, who was en route from Philadelphia to London.

The author of various proposals for a constitutional union between Britain and its colonies,

Galloway was also an active evangelical, who befriended John Wesley as an exile in Britain.25

Over the following year, Serle’s journal recorded a series of conversations between the three

loyalists about the causes and consequences of the rebellion.26 In one conversation on “the final

Settlement of American Affairs,” they attributed the rebellion to defects in the civil and

ecclesiastical constitution of the colonies, and agreed on the need to assimilate the colonies’

constitutions to that of the mother country following the end of the rebellion.27 Both Galloway

and Inglis subsequently published proposals for rebuilding the British Empire along these lines.

Inglis and Serle were particularly concerned with the need for an Anglican establishment

in the colonies. For several years before his arrival in America, Serle had believed that greater

state support for the colonial Church of England would counteract the influence of the patriot

movement.28 Serle carried these convictions to America, where he observed that “the Dissenting

Preachers” advocated rebellion from their pulpits; he concluded that “Republican

Presbyterianism can never heartily coalesce with Monarchy & Episcopacy.” 29 Serle and Inglis

24
Ambrose Serle, The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776-1778, ed. Edward H.
Tatum, Jr. (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1940), 113-14; Ruma Chopra, “Printer Hugh Gaine Crosses and
Re-Crosses the Hudson,” New York History 90, no. 4 (2009): 276-77.
25
[Joseph Galloway], A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great-Britain, and the Colonies: with a Plan
of Accommodation, on Constitutional Principles (New York: James Rivington, 1775); John E. Ferling, The Loyalist
Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1977); Julian P. Boyd, Anglo-American Union: Joseph Galloway’s Plans to Preserve the British Empire, 1774-1788
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1941). These historians are not interested in Galloway’s
evangelicalism, for which see Galloway’s entry by Frank Baker in the American National Biography.
26
Serle, American Journal, 115-16, 116-17, 130-31, 172-73, 198-99, 201-202, 204-205, 209-10; Boyd, Anglo-
American Union, 54-58.
27
Serle, American Journal, 198-99.
28
Tatum, “Ambrose Serle,” 268-70.
29
Serle, American Journal, 90, 285.

218
agreed on the need for an American episcopate and the provision of glebe land to the established

clergy. Serle thought the land might come from the confiscated property of the rebels, and that

the redistribution “should make Part of the general System, which Government may adopt upon

the Conclusion of the War.”30 Serle and Inglis also agreed that the rebellion had been encouraged

by “Presbyterian Preachers, with a View to the Extirpation of the Church of England from the

Colonies.” They lamented that “the Religion of the State” was “established by mere Words,” and

condemned Dissenters for their manifest intolerance of a church “which has expressly provided a

Toleration for their own.” The Dissenters’ perverse hypocrisy provided “an argument for the full

Establishment of the Church in the final Settlement of Affairs.”31

This diagnosis of the causes of the rebellion was articulated more extensively in a

manuscript that Inglis drew up for the Earl of Dartmouth in May 1777, titled “A Brief Inquiry

into the Causes of the Rebellion in America.”32 Inglis emphasised his first-hand observation and

knowledge of the colonists’ “Principles and Manners” over a period of twenty years. These

principles, he believed, were the real cause of an otherwise inexplicable rebellion, since the

colonists had no “Real Grievances” to complain of. Rather than attributing the rebellion to any

short-term political cause, such as the repeal of the Stamp Act or the activities of the opposition

in Parliament, it was necessary to explain how the “mass of the people” had their “minds…

poisoned, & previously disposed to Independency” in the first place. For Inglis, the culprit was

the prevalence of “Republican or Democratic, Levelling Principles” associated with Protestant

30
Ibid., 209-10.
31
Ibid., 115-17.
32
Lambeth Palace Library [LPL], Papers of Charles Inglis (MS Film 229-231), C-26: Charles Inglis, “A Brief
Inquiry into the Causes of the Rebellion in America: with a Short Sketch of the Methods most likely to Secure the
Future Peace of the Colonies, and their Dependence on Great Britain. The Whole Founded on Unquestionable Facts.
By a Real Friend to the British Constitution, viz. the Reverend Mr. Charles Inglis, Rector of New-York,” New York,
May 8 1777. There is also a copy in the papers of the Earl of Dartmouth: The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth,
Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1887-96), 2:438.

219
Dissent. The principles taught by the established church “are favourable to Monarchy, & the

Ecclesiastical Establishment in England,” whereas “the whole System of Dissenters is of a

Republican Cast.” The first colonies were settled “at a Time when the Nation was overrun with

Enthusiasm.” Dissenting principles were therefore written into the colonies’ constitutions from

the beginning, and they continued unchallenged due to “the unaccountable Neglect to encourage

& support the National Church.” As a consequence, “those Principles have now produced the

same Convulsions here, that they did in England formerly.”33

Inglis pointed to the behaviour of churchmen and Dissenters in the northern colonies in

order to support his contention that the rebellion was a product of Dissenting principles. He

celebrated the SPG missionaries’ role as loyalist martyrs, explaining that “the Clergy of the

Church of England in these Colonies, always discountenanced the Rebellion & unanimously shut

up their Churches” rather than “omit the Collects for the King & Royal Family.” On the other

hand, only 12 of 550 Dissenting ministers in New England had remained loyal. In turn, the

political sympathies of the clergy determined the allegiance of their congregations. Inglis

claimed that “that Barely one in a Hundred” of the Presbyterians and Independents “have proved

loyal; while among Churchmen, hardly one in fifty has been a Rebel.”34

Of course, Inglis’s statistics quietly elided those colonies were the loyalty of the Church

of England was less apparent. By “northern colonies,” Inglis explained, he meant “the New

England Colonies, New York, & New Jersey,” making no mention of Pennsylvania, where many

of the leading Anglican clergy had come to support the cause of independence. Inglis also

struggled to account for the southern colonies, which, he acknowledged, “have joined in the

Rebellion, notwithstanding the Members of the Church of England are most numerous there, & a

33
Inglis, “Brief Inquiry,” 3-5, 7-9, 40.
34
Ibid., 9, 11-12.

220
legal Provision is made for the Clergy.” Inglis explained that even where the southern rebels

were nominally members of the Church of England, they were not motivated by true Anglican

principles. The prevalence of irreligion and immorality in the southern colonies was well-known.

Indeed, some southern churchmen had even “joined with the Dissenters in opposing an American

Episcopate.” The southern Anglicans, in other words, were no true Anglicans. Inglis nevertheless

counted the southern Anglicans when he asserted that there were a million churchmen in

America, comprising a third of the population.35

Having diagnosed the causes of the rebellion, Inglis proceeded to prescribe a cure. This

would consist, first, in “granting a Constitution to the Colonies… resembling that of the Parent

State,” and second, in “infusing right Principles into the Colonists” by strengthening the colonial

Church of England. Inglis explained that he would leave the first expedient to the colonies’

secular governors, and instead expounded on the second. The first step, of course, was the

creation of two or more American bishops, with no temporal authority, role in government, or

authority over the laity. Inglis argued that “the want of Bishops has greatly retarded the Growth

of the Church of England in America, & has been a very heavy Grievance on its Members.” The

argument took shape along familiar lines: “All the different Sects here have their respective

Forms of Church Government & Discipline complete – Moravians, & even Papists have their

Bishops by the Authority of Government.” Yet the “National Church” alone was left “without a

complete Toleration.” The bishops and the clergy ought to be supported by the Crown “until a

proper Settlement can be obtained by the Establishment of Parishes.” Meanwhile, the Dissenting

ministers, synods, and presbyteries should be licensed, as they were in England, and licenses

should be denied to those who had participated in the rebellion. The SPG’s successes

35
Ibid., 11-12, 29, 33.

221
demonstrated what might be accomplished with proper backing from the state: “the seeds of

Loyalty & sound Religion were scattered by them through many extensive Tracts of Country; &

those now yield to a plentiful Increase.”36 From his perspective of SPG missionaries such as

Inglis, the total breakdown of imperial authority was the entirely predictable consequence of the

government’s failure to properly support the national church in America.37

While Inglis’s proposals concentrated on the need for ecclesiastical reform, the argument

for constitutional reform was articulated by Joseph Galloway in a 1780 pamphlet titled

Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (1780).

Galloway’s pamphlet concentrated on the need for a constitutional union between Britain and the

colonies; accordingly, historians have emphasised this aspect of Galloway’s program. Yet

Galloway also followed Inglis in assigning the origins of the rebellion to the New England

colonies’ Puritan and republican origins. He explained that these colonies had been settled by

enthusiastic sectaries, whose religious principles compelled them to oppose the monarchy: “this

kind of popular independence in ecclesiastical, was so nearly allied to that in civil polity” that

they were necessarily linked in “the human mind.” These emigrants were able to obtain a charter

that realised their “Puritanic and democratical wishes,” which thereafter remained written into

the imperial constitution. In this sense, the American rebellion had its origins in the beginning of

the sixteenth century, with the first secession of sectaries from the established church.38

Galloway also followed Inglis in attributing the rebellion to the activities of the

Congregationalist and Presbyterian clergy of New England, New York, and New Jersey. In 1763,

36
Ibid., 15-17, 19, 27.
37
Ibid., 1, 3, 16-17, 19, 26-27.
38
[Joseph Galloway], Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion. In
which the Causes of that Rebellion are Pointed Out, and the Policy and Necessity of Offering to the Americans a
System of Government Founded in the Principles of the British Constitution, are Clearly Demonstrated (London: G.
Wilkie, 1780), 3, 25-26, 30-31.

222
he explained, the Dissenting clergy proposed “an union of the congregational and presbyterian

interest throughout the Colonies.” This was where the rebellion began: “it was these men who

excited the mobs,” promoted “the non-importation agreement,” and “led the assemblies to deny

the authority of Parliament.” Like Inglis, Galloway concluded that the American rebellion “has

risen from the same source, and been conducted by the same spirit with that which effected the

destruction of the English Government in the last century.” Yet the parallel also offered

Galloway cause for hope: “the Colonies at this moment are in that very disposition in which

Charles II. found the people of Britain at the time of his restoration.” The disaffection was

confined to the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, “while the people of Established Church,

Methodists, Lutherans, German Calvinists, Quakers, Menonists, &c. are warmly attached to the

British Government.” Once the rebellion was suppressed, these groups would support the

correction of “the constitutional defect in the authority of Parliament” that had allowed the

rebellion to happen in the first place.39 Inglis and Galloway both agreed on the need to extend the

metropolitan constitution in both church and state to the American colonies. While Inglis

emphasised the ecclesiastical and Galloway emphasised the civic elements of the constitution,

the two loyalists were articulating different sides of the same coin.

Inglis, Galloway, and Serle were not the only ones calling for the establishment of the

Church of England in America. As a loyalist émigré in London, the Maryland clergyman

Jonathan Boucher successfully positioned himself as a source of information about the rebellion.

Boucher was well connected, and met Lord George Germain, the Secretary of State for America,

on several occasions.40 In November 1775 he submitted a plan for suppressing the rebellion to

39
Ibid., 48-55, 110-11, 116.
40
Jonathan Boucher to John James, Paddington, January 8 1775, in “The Letters of Rev. Jonathan Boucher,”
Maryland Historical Magazine, 8, 4 (1913): 343-37.

223
Germain’s under-secretary, William Knox. Along with Inglis, Galloway, and other writers,

Boucher declared that it was necessary to look beyond the recent conflicts over Parliamentary

legislation to understand the true causes of the rebellion. The colonies had been “planted in

Imperfection”, and the “seeds” of the revolt “are co-eval with the Colonies Themselves.” Once

the rebellion was put down, it would be necessary to “new-model their Governments.”41 Boucher

elaborated on this plan in a subsequent letter to William Eden, the Lord of Trade, and brother to

Boucher’s patron in Maryland, the Governor Robert Eden. Here, Boucher attributed the rebellion

to Dissenters, specifically “the Independents in Religion & Politics of the Northern Provinces.”

He insisted that “the Establishments there, both in Church & State, are Presbyterian”, and “all

conspire to cherish Republicanism.” Conversely, “most of those who have been brought up… in

Church of England principles, are adverse to their Cause.” Boucher championed the cause of the

loyalist clergy, promising that “the Members of the Church of England, particularly her Clergy,

have, on this unhappy Occasion, distinguished themselves much to their Honour” and were

accordingly “persecuted in a Manner, scarce credible of a civilized People.”42

A similar agenda was pursued by the loyalist refugee clergy in London. John Vardill, the

professor of moral philosophy at King’s College, came to England for orders in 1774 and was

prevented from returning due to the outbreak of the war. Chandler instructed Vardill to assume

the “public Character of Plenipotentiary for the Church,” and their correspondence frequently

discussed the “Scheme for an American Episcopate.”43 When Chandler sailed to England the

following year, he joined Vardill in acting as a lobbyist for the American church. Chandler’s

41
Jonathan Boucher [to William Knox?], November 27 1775, in “The Letters of Jonathan Boucher,” Maryland
Historical Magazine, 8, 3 (1913): 246-56.
42
Jonathan Boucher to William Eden, London, January 7 1776, in “The Letters of Jonathan Boucher,” Maryland
Historical Magazine, 8, 4 (1913): 338-43.
43
National Archives, AO13/105 ff. 284-85: Thomas Bradbury Chandler to Jonathan Vardill, August 3 1774; ff. 286-
87: Chandler to Vardill, December 15 1774.

224
diary records a number of conversations with both Vardill and Ambrose Serle.44 Together with

Jonathan Boucher, Chandler obtained the support of John Moore, the Bishop of Bangor and

future Archbishop of Canterbury.45 In May, the SPG began an enquiry “into the Steps heretofore

taken by the Society for obtaining an American Episcopate.” The enquiry lasted several months

before petering out: these kinds of reforms would have to wait until the establishment of peace.46

These proposals were supported by appealing to the sufferings of the loyalist missionaries

in America. In 1777, New York’s loyalist refugees wrote to Chandler, Cooper, and Vardill

authorising them “to act in their Names in Behalf of the American Church.”47 In 1780, they

wrote again to Chandler, Cooper, Vardill, and Boucher with a petition for the creation of an

American bishop. From their perspective in New York, the role of denominational division in the

rebellion was undeniable. They advanced familiar arguments which now rose to a fever pitch in

intensity. The petition insisted that the rebellion “has afforded an opportunity of discovering the

real Sentiments and Inclinations of the several Colonists.” The petition insisted that

“Presbyterians and Congregationalists were the active Promoters of the Rebellion.” By contrast,

churchmen have “every where, but more especially in the northern and middle Colonies,

opposed the Spirit of Sedition.” They have also “been the principal Sufferers, and have felt all

the Outrages of Republican violence and Persecution.” This difference in conduct was

attributable to no other cause than “their respective Principles.” The government’s policy of

moderation towards Dissenters had been catastrophically misguided: “the Fear of giving them

offence has been one Reason why the Church has been so much neglected in America… And it

44
Keller Library, BX5995.C48 A3 1775a, Thomas Bradbury Chandler, “Memorandums, 1775-1786”: July 6 1775;
July 10 1775; July 14 1775.
45
Ibid., January 17 1777.
46
LPL MS2576 f. 31: Minute of a Committee for an American Episcopate, 16 May 1777.
47
Chandler, “Memorandums”: May 16 1777.

225
would seem as if Providence meant to punish that Neglect by making those very Dissenters a

National Scourge.” The evidence was irrefutable: “to increase the number of Churchmen… is the

same as to increase the Number of loyal Subjects.”48

Of course, these various plans to correct the failures of imperial ecclesiastical policy in

the Thirteen Colonies were abruptly terminated by Britain’s military defeat in America. Instead,

loyalist hopes for the establishment of a conservative church in the Thirteen Colonies were

displaced to Britain’s remaining North American possessions. Loyalist hopes for rebuilding the

church in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec followed the same principles articulated by

the likes of Inglis, Galloway, and Serle during the war. Samuel Seabury, along with many other

loyalists, had spent time during the rebellion imagining the future for the American Church of

England on the reestablishment of peace. In 1777, he told Chandler that he had prepared a “Plan

for the Settlement of the Church.”49 In 1783, Seabury travelled to England to seek consecration

as Bishop of Connecticut, but he remained deeply invested in the fate of the Church of England

in the British Empire. Seabury believed that his arguments for the establishment of the church

remained valid for Britain’s remaining North American colonies, even though Anglicans in the

now independent United States would have to make their own ecclesiastical arrangements.

In November 1783, he presented this plan to the Archbishop of York, William

Markham.50 Seabury hoped that loyalist emigration from the new United States would afford an

opportunity to build a new colony built on loyalist principles. He explained that his work as an

agent directing the emigrations from New York had left him “personally acquainted” with the

48
LPL SPG Papers, vol. 10, ff. 189-92: Samuel Seabury, Samuel Cooke, and Charles Inglis to Thomas Bradbury
Chandler, Myles Cooper, John Vardill, and Jonathan Boucher, 28 October 1780.
49
Keller Library, MSS.SeLL61, box 1-3 [henceforth Seabury Correspondence], n. 28: Thomas Bradbury Chandler
to Samuel Seabury, May 16 1777.
50
Seabury Correspondence, n. 59: Samuel Seabury to William Markham, November 24 1783.

226
“temper and disposition” of the emigrants, of both the “considerable” and the “inferior” classes.

Along with Inglis and Serle, Seabury believed that “the independent mode of religion, which is

the prevailing one in New England, is, from its very nature, incompatible with monarchical

government,” whereas “the constitution of the Church coincides with the true principles of the

British Government.” Seabury attributed the American rebellion to “republican tenets,” and

specifically the principles taught in the Dissenting colleges of New England and then

“disseminated through the provinces by dissenting teachers.” The inhabitants of Connecticut,

Seabury explained, “are of an adventurous and enterprising disposition,” and often “went into the

other colonies” as itinerant preachers and schoolmasters. The rebellion thus originated with the

New England Dissenters, specifically those of Connecticut, whose principles had spread to and

infected the other American colonies.

By attributing the rebellion to “principles” rather than legitimate grievances, Seabury

provided a diagnosis that warranted a central role of the Church of England as a wellspring of

loyal principles. Seabury argued that “no civil policy, however good and exact” can command

loyalty “without the aid of religious and moral principles.” He warned that “the same thing will

probably happen in Nova Scotia” as happened in the Thirteen Colonies, “and there seems to be

no way of preventing it, so effectual, as the full establishment of the Church of England.”

Seabury therefore recommended the creation of a parish system in Nova Scotia, the appointment

of a loyal clergyman to each parish, a bishop to supervise them, and the establishment of a

college to teach loyal principles. There would be no difficulty “procuring a sufficient number of

Clergymen,” as many of the loyalist missionaries would be willing to emigrate. The church

227
should be supported by land grants from the state, and the inhabitants should also be taxed for

the support of the church as soon as they had emerged from their initial poverty.51

Charles Inglis also continued to press the case for a conservative church establishment in

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec. In November 1785, he prepared a report for the

Archbishop of Canterbury titled “Hints Concerning the Ecclesiastical & Religious State of the

Province of Quebec.”52 The following April, a set of proposals were presented to the Earl of

Liverpool, the President of the Board of Trade, apparently authored by Inglis. Inglis began by

observing that a “well chosen national religion is necessary for both civil and pious reasons.

Religion can be an agent of both stability and discord.” Inglis observed that provision had

already been made in Nova Scotia for state support of the Church of England. A similar

provision could easily be obtained in New Brunswick, whose population and government were

mostly loyalists. It was particularly necessary in Quebec, the loyalty of which was most in doubt.

Inglis argued that these measures were necessary to guard against “vagrant and enthusiastic

Preachers from the revolted Colonies,” warning that they “will pour into the British Colonies -

they have already been very troublesome in Nova Scotia.”53

These kinds of proposals for a conservative established church in the colonies

commanded a new degree of secular support in the immediate aftermath of the American

Revolution, as imperial governors sought to prevent future rebellions at the same time that

American independence drastically shifted the empire’s confessional balance. An important role

was played by William Knox, an Irish-born imperial official, government pamphleteer, SPG

51
Ibid..
52
Inglis Papers, C-3-22: “Journals, 1785-1810,” November 30 1785.
53
LPL SPG vol. 11 ff. 30-36: “Anonymous proposals for setting up a Church establishment in Canada, 3 April
1786.”

228
administrator, and friend of Thomas Secker.54 Knox was a key figure in the abortive 1780

proposal for the colony of New Ireland in present-day Maine, which would have seen the

establishment of the Church of England.55 He remained closely involved in the SPG’s efforts to

establish the Church of England in British North American and ensure state support for its

ministers.56 At the end of the war, Sir Guy Carleton, as Governor-in-Chief of British North

America, strongly supported efforts to establish the Church of England in Nova Scotia, New

Brunswick, and Quebec. His secretary was Jonathan Odell, a loyalist missionary and clerical

émigré. In August 1783, Odell wrote to Chandler promising that Carleton supported the

establishment of the church in Nova Scotia, given “the Spirit of Loyalty, which has remarkably

distinguished those of the National Church, especially in the Middle and Eastern Colonies.”

Carleton was convinced that “the proposed establishment… would be perfectly acceptable to a

large majority of a Colony that is chiefly to consist of loyal Exiles.”57

These aspirations were substantially realised in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. As

Judith Fingard has shown, the Church of England was soon established in Nova Scotia with a

parochial system and land grants from the state.58 Similar measures were introduced for New

Brunswick, such as the 1786 “Act for preserving the Church of England, as by Law established

54
Judith Fingard, The Anglican Design in Loyalist Nova Scotia, 1783-1816 (London: SPCK, 1972), 8-11, 16-19;
Leland J. Bellot, William Knox: The Life & Thought of an Eighteenth-Century Imperialist (Austin, TX: University
of Texas Press, 1977); Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic
World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 202.
55
Ann Gorman Condon, The Envy of the American States: The Loyalist Dream for New Brunswick (New Ireland
Press: Fredericton, NB, 1984), 43-45.
56
LPL SPG vol. 10 ff. 193-6: [William Knox], “Memorial of SPG to Lord Sydney, Secretary of State for the
Colonial Department,” n.d., reprinted in [William Knox], Extra Official State Papers. Addressed to the Right Hon.
Lord Rawdon, and the Other Members of the Two Houses of Parliament, Associated for the Preservation of the
Constitution and Promoting the Prosperity of the British Empire, (London: J. Debrett, 1789), vol. 1, appendix pp 8-
12.
57
LPL SPG vol. 14 ff. 269-70: “Extract of a letter of Revd Mr Odell, now assistant secretary to Sir Guy Carleton, to
Dr Chandler, New York, 29 August 1783.”
58
Fingard, Anglican Design, pp 74-113.

229
in this Province, and for securing Liberty of Conscience.”59 Quebec, however, was a more

complicated case, and would later be addressed in the 1791 Quebec Act, which partitioned the

colony into Upper Canada, – where the Church of England and an Anglican episcopate was

established – and Lower Canada – where the recognition of the French Catholic Church and

legal system continued to operate.60

This new turn in imperial religious policy reveals that the interests of the Church of

England and the British Empire aligned in a new way in the wake of the American Revolution.

The loyalist missionaries’ demands had previously received little attention, but now began to

receive political support. Before 1775, increased state support for the colonial church would have

risked unrest; after 1783, it seemed to promise stability.61 An important reason for this shift was

a growing suspicion of all forms of religious, political, and social dissent in the aftermath of the

American Revolution, and the perception that the American Church of England had manifested

its loyalty during the rebellion. However, the extent to which these new policies changed the

underlying ecclesiastical organisation of the empire should not be overstated. The American

loyalists wanted to see the metropolitan constitution in church and state extended to the

American colonies, and they achieved something like this in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Quebec, however, retained an irreducible French Catholic population. Here, the solution was

partition of the colony in 1791, sticking to the older model of ecclesiastical pluralism.

59
Condon, The Envy of the American States, 184-88; Ross N. Hebb, The Church of England in Loyalist New
Brunswick, 1783-1825 (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004), 65-133.
60
Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 237-60.
61
Ibid., 210-36.

230
The Reconstruction of Ecclesiastical Sovereignty after American Independence

Even as American independence made possible the establishment of the Church of England in

Britain’s remaining North American colonies, it also disrupted the unity of church and nation. As

Peter Marshall has highlighted, American independence introduced new divisions and fracture

lines into the Protestant Atlantic.62 Most immediately for the Church of England, American

independence raised a series of troubling questions about the location of ecclesiastical

sovereignty. Who would assume spiritual responsibility for those American Anglicans who were

no longer British subjects? This was a question with enormous practical implications. The most

immediate problem concerned the ordination of clergymen for the independent United States.

The ordination oaths required candidates to swear allegiance to the king, and an Act of

Parliament was required to change the oath’s formula.63 For many American churchmen,

particularly high churchmen, the only solution to this problem was the creation of an American

bishop, but any bishop consecrated by the bishops of the Church of England would also need to

take the oaths of allegiance to the king. In the absence of an Act of Parliament, American

candidates devised a number of improvised expedients to obtain consecration from other sources,

such as seeking ordination from non-English bishops, and many American churchmen

considered obtaining an American bishop in the same way.64

It was this situation that finally broke the Methodists’ increasingly tenuous allegiance to

the Church of England. The Methodist leader John Wesley had continually denied that the

Methodist societies would or should separate from the Church of England, however

autonomously they operated in practice. In 1784, however, he ordained Francis Asbury and

62
Marshall, “Transatlantic Protestantism.”
63
LPL SPG vol. 8 f. 187: Charles Moss to John Moore, 9 May 1784
64
Richard G. Salomon, “British Legislation and American Episcopacy,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, 20, 3 (1951): 278-92.

231
Thomas Coke and instructed them to continue performing ordinations as the “superintendents” of

the American Methodists. Wesley justified the decision by explaining that “no one either

exercises or claims any Ecclesiastical Authority at all” in the revolted colonies: “here therefore

my Scruples are at an End: and I conceive myself at full liberty.” He also suggested that it was a

blessing that “our American Brethren are now totally disentangled… from the State” and were

therefore “at full liberty, simply to follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church.” 65 This

decision represented a watershed in the secession of the Methodist societies from the Church of

England. It was over this issue that John Wesley definitively parted ways from his brother

Charles, who cautioned against separation.66 Charles Wesley preferred Seabury’s solution;

indeed, he met Seabury and corresponded on this issue with Thomas Bradbury Chandler. 67 If

American independence resulted in a new alignment of the interests of church and state in British

North America, the dilemma of how to minister to episcopalians outside the British Empire also

significantly weakened the Church of England by precipitating the Methodist secession.

Seabury’s efforts to obtain consecration encountered the same problem. Consecrated

bishops were required to swear allegiance to the monarch, and an Act of Parliament was required

to change the oath’s formula. An Act of Parliament was passed allowing the English bishops to

consecrate American clergy without requiring an oath of allegiance, but the restriction against

the consecration of foreign bishops remained in place: Parliament was unwilling to impinge upon

the ecclesiastical sovereignty of the new nation, especially given the long history of controversy

65
LPL SPG vol. 10 f. 197: Copy of Printed Statement of John Wesley Concerning his Appointment of Coke and
Asbury as Superintendants of the American Methodists (September 10 1784). Wesley had long been attracted to the
religious possibilities offered by America: Geordan Hammond, John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive
Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
66
Gareth Lloyd, Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
180-212.
67
Seabury Correspondence, n. 86: Charles Wesley to Thomas Bradbury Chandler, April 28 1785 (extract).

232
over American bishops.68 After waiting eighteen months in England, Seabury’s application for

consecration was finally refused. In this eventuality, the Connecticut clergy had instructed him to

seek consecration in Scotland, and accordingly Seabury travelled to Aberdeen and was

consecrated by the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church in November 1784. 69 Seabury’s

decision entailed a rejection of the Church of England’s political interests, as the Episcopal

Church of Scotland remained disaffected from the Hanoverian monarchy.

Seabury explained to the SPG that his decision to seek consecration in Scotland was an

act of desperation. For too long, efforts to obtain an American bishop “had been repeatedly

frustrated upon political accounts… The difficulties were now increased. The colonists were

become aliens.” Once Parliament agreed that the Church of England could ordain American

clergy but not consecrate an American bishop, it was clear that what was on the table was a

return to the status quo ante bellum. Seabury made his case by appealing to the toleration

instituted in the new state of Connecticut. An Act passed the Connecticut assembly in January

1784, “by which the Church of England so called was put upon an equal footing of privileges &

legal protection, with any other denomination of Christians, & enabled to manage their religious

affairs according to their own principles.” Parliament should not fear offending Congress, since

“all religious affairs being, by the articles of Confederation, reserved to the particular States, &

therefore out of the power of Congress.”70

Seabury’s Scottish consecration divided opinion in the Church of England. In April 1785,

the SPG withdrew the salaries of the missionaries remaining in the United States. Seabury later

told the Scottish bishop John Skinner that he believed the cessation of salaries was a

68
Salomon, “British Legislation.”
69
Seabury Correspondence, n. 53: Daniel Fogg to Samuel Parker, July 14 1783 (copy); Bruce E. Steiner, Samuel
Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Oberlin, OH: Ohio University Press, 1971), 183-224.
70
Seabury Correspondence, n. 82: Samuel Seabury to SPG (draft), February 27 1785.

233
“punishment” for his decision to seek consecration outside the Church of England. 71 Seabury’s

consecration was alarming to various shades of opinion in the Church of England. There were

those who feared that the sending of a bishop would be an affront to the new republic. The

Scottish-born missionary Alexander Murray, who had come to England as a refugee, wrote to the

Scottish bishops to oppose the consecration on the grounds that Seabury “was actively and

deeply engaged against Congress” and would therefore “render Episcopacy suspected there.”72

The consecration also attracted hostile comment from Dissenters, who objected to the Scottish

Episcopalians’ high church brand of episcopalianism and alleged Jacobitism.73

Seabury’s consecration was also opposed by those churchmen who feared the

implications of seeking ecclesiastical sovereignty outside the boundaries of the Church of

England. A vocal opponent of Seabury’s consecration was the imperial reformer Granville

Sharp, best known for his abolitionist activities.74 Sharp believed that bishops should be elected,

and was convinced that this right was enshrined in Britain’s ancient constitution. He wrote to his

many American correspondents urging the United States to adopt these ancient constitutional

freedoms, including that of election to ecclesiastical office.75 Although Sharp criticised what he

saw as Scottish Presbyterians’ “violent & intolerant Spirit,” he feared that the legal suppression

of the Episcopal Church of Scotland would make the validity of the episcopal succession

suspect. In a letter to Dr James Manning, the Provost of Providence College, Sharp explained

71
John Skinner to Jonathan Boucher, 17 May 1786, in “The Seabury Consecration: Additional Letters,” Historical
Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 3, 4 (1934): 256-57.
72
William Seller to Robert Kilgour, 6 November 1784, in ibid., 241-43.
73
Gentleman’s Magazine: and Historical Chronicle 55, no. 3 (April 1785): 278-80: “Letter from L.L.”
74
Frederick V. Mills, “Granville Sharp and the Creation of an American Episcopate: Ordo Episcoporum Est Robur
Ecclesiae,” Anglican and Episcopal History 79, no. 1 (2010): 34-58.
75
LPL SPG vol. 8 ff. 188: Granville Sharp to Benjamin Franklin, Old Jewry, London, 17 June 1785. Sharp
addressed this cause in Granville Sharp, An Account of the Ancient Division of the English Nation into Hundreds
and Tithings (London: Galabin and Baker, 1784), 296-365.

234
that the Scottish Bishops have “no real Congregation” and instead derived their authority from

“the pretender, a foreign Prince.”76 Sharp supported the election of bishops, and lobbied to have

William White and Samuel Provoost – the Bishops-elect of Pennsylvania and New York

respectively – consecrated in England. In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sharp

explained that such a step was necessary to defeat “the pretensions of Dr. Seabury, & the

nonjuring Bishops of Scotland” and “also to guard against the presumptions of Mr. Wesley &

other Methodists.” Ultimately, for Sharp, the issue came down to whether the Church of England

ought to restrict itself to the king’s domains. The consecration oath was an “obstacle, which at

present restrains the Archbishops & Bishops of England from extending the Church of England,

beyond the bounds of English Government!”, a restriction that Sharp considered absurd.77

On the other hand, Seabury’s decision enjoyed the support of those English high

churchmen who were particularly concerned with protecting the church’s independence from the

state. For them, the established status of the Church of England was less important than the fact

of apostolic secession via a continuous chain of bishops. In fact, high churchmen feared that the

political entanglements of the Church of England could sometimes threaten its religious

orthodoxy, an entanglement from which the Scottish Episcopalians were enviably free. George

Horne, the Bishop of Norwich and a key figure in the English high church movement, supported

Seabury’s decision to go to Scotland.78 Writing to Horne, Seabury explained, “I have a sincere

veneration for the Church of England, & I am grieved to see the power of her Bishops so

restrained by her connection with the State.”79 In response to hostile comment on Seabury’s

76
LPL Archbishops’ Papers (Moore), vol. 6, ff. 111-4: Granville Sharp to Dr. Manning, February 22 1785.
77
LPL SPG vol. 8, ff. 190-1: Granville Sharp to John Moore, 15 September 1785.
78
Seabury Correspondence, n. 73: George Horne to Samuel Seabury, January 3 1785.
79
Ibid., n. 75: Samuel Seabury to George Horne (draft), January 8 1785.

235
Scottish consecration, apologists for the Scottish Episcopalians emphasised the non-political and

entirely spiritual character of their church. A letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine criticised the

English bishops for “spending more of their time and talents in politics than in their proper

religious duties,” and suggested that many English laws were “derogatory, and even

destructive… of the unalienable rights of episcopacy.” Citing George Herbert’s “The Church

Militant,” the writer suggested that the Scottish bishops were sending a purer form of episcopacy

into the western world than the corrupt form that prevailed in England.80

The Scottish bishops and their English allies were also highly critical of the southern

episcopalians and their various proposals to reform the liturgy or elect bishops. The Scottish

bishop John Skinner, for example, wrote to Jonathan Boucher, remarking that the Philadelphia

Convention was “on a very different plan from that of our worthy friend Bishop Seabury. Full of

those Republican Notions which have brought about their boasted Revolution, they are now

about to erect an Ecclesiastical Commonwealth on the ruins of Episcopacy.”81 In 1787, Jonathan

Boucher wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, warning of the dangerous “innovations that will

be introduced by these New Trans-Atlantic Bishops” who will “find many Friends among the

Latitudinarian Members of our own Communion.”82

Seabury’s consecration precipitated the consecration in England of the Bishops-elect

William White and Samuel Provoost. In October 1785, the Philadelphia Convention petitioned

the English bishops asking them to consecrate White and Provoost. Like Seabury, the

Convention appealed to the religious liberty instituted in the new United States to assure the

English bishops that Americans’ long-held opposition to episcopacy was no longer a problem.

80
Gentleman’s Magazine: and Historical Chronicle 55, no. 3 (April 1785), 248: “Letter from W. C.”
81
John Skinner to Jonathan Boucher, 15 June 1786, in “Seabury Consecration: Additional Letters,” 257.
82
LPL SPG vol. 8 f. 196: Jonathan Boucher to John Moore, 9 March 1787.

236
The petition explained that, “in these States, there is a Separation between the Concerns of

Policy and those of Religion,” and enclosed extract from the states’ constitutions to demonstrate

that the sending of a bishop would not encounter any political opposition.83 The English bishops

obliged and set about seeking an Act of Parliament that would permit the consecrations without

the oaths.84 The Act was obtained and White and Provoost were ordained in February 1787.85

The American consecrations in turn precipitated the creation of a bishopric of Nova

Scotia. The appointment of a bishop for Nova Scotia had been under discussion since the end of

the American war, but proceeded slowly. In February 1786, Granville Sharp wrote to John

Moore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, explaining the new urgency of appointing a bishop for

Nova Scotia and Canada. Sharp warned that Seabury (who had been consecrated) and Provoost

and White (whose search for consecration was underway) had a claim to the various legacies that

had been established for the support of an American bishop. 86 William Knox also wrote to the

Prime Minister William Pitt in 1787 with a similar warning. Knox argued that, now that

American bishops had been consecrated, a Nova Scotian bishop was necessary to prevent the

colonial clergy seeking education and consecration in the republican United States. He warned

that to “the supply of the Churches in the British Colonies with such pastors would be like

garrisoning our strongest Fortress with troops of the Enemy.” For Knox, the principles of loyalty

could only be taught by churchmen who were both members of the Church of England and

subjects of the king. The American episcopalians were of the same communion with members of

83
LPL SPG vol. 10 ff. 200-9: “Petition of Clerical and Lay Delegates to General Convention to the Archbishops and
Bishops,” 5 October 1785.
84
LPL SPG vol. 10 ff. 214-15: “Draft of Reply to Committee of General Convention,” January 1786.
85
Salomon, “British Legislation.”
86
LPL SPG vol. 8 f. 193: Granville Sharp to John Moore, 17 February 1786

237
the Church of England, but they were nevertheless aliens.87 Boucher, on the other hand, had the

opposite set of apprehensions: he warned Inglis “not to suffer his Hands to be so tied up” that his

function would be confined to “the mere Limits of a British Colony” and he be prevented from

cooperating with Bishop Samuel Seabury in Connecticut.88

These considerations eventually propelled the consecration of Charles Inglis as Bishop of

Nova Scotia in 1787. There was considerable debate over the choice of bishop, with a number of

loyalist refugees seeking the appointment. Thomas Bradbury Chandler appeared to be the most

eligible candidate, but was unable to take the position due to his deteriorating health. Instead it

went to Charles Inglis, who was consecrated in August 1787.89 As Peter Doll has emphasised,

the Bishop of Nova Scotia was given no temporal powers, following American high

churchmen’s demands for a “purely spiritual episcopate.” The new bishop would be “purely

spiritual” only in the narrowly theological sense of not holding concurrent political office. The

appointment received the support of the king’s ministers, who expected that such an episcopate

would be a source of loyal principles.90

Seabury’s Scottish consecration also led to a revival of English high church interest in

Scottish Episcopalianism. At the time of Seabury’s consecration, the Episcopal Church of

Scotland was subject to severe penal laws and was closely associated with Jacobitism, and ties

between English churchmen and Scottish Episcopalians were accordingly few and far between.

American episcopalians, by contrast, were more familiar with Scottish Episcopalianism. Many of

the SPG missionaries were Scottish emigrants or the children of Scottish emigrants. 91 When

87
LPL Fulham Papers (Colonial Series), vol. 1, ff. 102-105: William Knox to William Pitt, [August 7 1787].
88
Seabury Correspondence, n. 113: Jonathan Boucher to Samuel Seabury, June 12 1786.
89
Inglis Papers, C-3-22: “Journals,” August 12 1787.
90
Doll, Religion, Revolution, and National Identity, 235-36.
91
See 63-65 above.

238
Seabury left Connecticut in July 1783, the Connecticut clergy instructed Seabury, “if none of the

Regular Bishops of the Church of England will ordain him, to go down to Scotland and receive

ordination from a non-juring Bishop.”92 The Anglo-Irish high churchman George Berkeley

independently reached a similar proposal. In November 1783, as it became clear that Seabury

was unlikely to obtain consecration in England, he wrote to the Scottish Primus, Bishop John

Skinner, proposing that Seabury be consecrated by those Scottish bishops “who are not shackled

by any Erastian Connexion.”93 However, Berkeley’s familiarity with Scottish Episcopalianism

was unusual.94 Another high churchman, William Stevens, according to his biographer James

Allan Park, “did not know that there was an Episcopal Church remaining in Scotland, till the

affair of the consecration of Bishop Seabury, of Connecticut.”95

As churchmen outside England, the former SPG missionaries and Scottish Episcopalians

had a lot in common. Seabury’s decision to go to Scotland for consecration and the Scottish

bishops’ decision to consecrate Seabury were based on a recognition of these commonalities. In

turn, Seabury’s consecration forged a new set of relationships between the former American

loyalists and Scottish Episcopalians. Thomas Bradbury Chandler praised Bishop Skinner’s

consecration sermon: “you have ably, clearly, and unanswerably explained the origin and nature

of ecclesiastical authority… This is a subject which I have repeatedly had occasion to consider,

in the course of my publications in defence of our claim to an Episcopate, and I am ashamed to

find that it is so little understood by the English clergy in general.”96 In the wake of Seabury’s

92
Seabury Correspondence, n. 53: Daniel Fogg to Samuel Parker, July 14 1783 (copy).
93
LPL MS 1541: Eeles Collection, 34-35: George Berkeley Jr. to John Skinner, November 24 1783.
94
British Library, Add.MS 75464, n. 5: William Jones to Charles Poyntz, March 24 1785.
95
[James Allan Park], Memoirs of William Stevens, Esq. (London: The Philanthropic Society, 1812), 141.
96
Thomas Bradbury Chandler to John Skinner, London, April 23 1785, in John Skinner, Annals of Scottish
Episcopacy from the Year 1788 to the Year 1816, Inclusive: Being the Period During Which the Late Right Rev.

239
consecration, Boucher began a correspondence with the Scottish bishops.97 Samuel Peters wrote

to the Bishop of Moray, Arthur Petrie, in 1786, sympathising with his “trials and sufferings in

consequence of liberty, revolution and Protestantism which make you perfect & entire.” Peters

explained that, like the Scottish Episcopalians, he had been “expelled by the Rebels to make

room for another Revolution.”98

Seabury’s Scottish consecration precipitated a wave of English high church activism in

support of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. The Scottish Episcopal writer John Skinner

described the consecration of Samuel Seabury, “one of the suffering loyalists during the late

war,” as a boon for the Scottish Episcopal Church: it “contributed to raise her in some measure

out of that obscurity into which a run of distress had plunged her.”99 Scottish Episcopaliansim

became an important inspiration for English high churchmen because it offered a model of what

a disestablished Church of England might look like. Park explained that the Scottish

Episcopalinism “ought to be known by all well informed” English churchmen because it

explained “the nature and constitution of the Christian Church, as unconnected with the State.”100

George Berkeley began corresponding with the Scottish bishops after Seabury’s consecration.101

These networks were soon mobilized in support of a campaign for the repeal of the penal

laws against Scottish Episcopalians. This campaign was precipitated by the death in 1788 of

Charles Edward Stuart (“the young pretender”); his heir, Henry Benedict Stuart, was a Catholic

John Skinner, of Aberdeen, Held the Office of Senior Bishop and Primus: Of which a Biographical Memoir is
Prefixed (Edinburgh: A. Brown & Co., 1818), 44-48, quotation 46.
97
John Skinner to Jonathan Boucher, Jun 25 1785, in “Seabury Consecration: Additional Letters,” 252-54.
98
LPL MS 1834, f. 73: Samuel Peters to Arthur Petrie, February 20 1786 (copy).
99
John Skinner, An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, from the First Appearance of Christianity in that Kingdom,
to the Present Time. With Remarks on the Most Important Occurrences. In a Series of Letters to a Friend (London:
T. Evans & R. N. Cheyne, 1788), 683-84.
100
Ibid., 132
101
British Library, Add.MS 39312, ff. 43-44: George Gleig to George Berkeley Jr., December 3 1785

240
cardinal who made no effort to prosecute the Jacobite claim. Accordingly, the Scottish

Episcopalians declared their willingness to start praying for George III and they sent a delegation

to London to negotiate for the repeal of the anti-episcopalian penal laws in exchange.102 In 1789,

Berkeley suggested, “if we have lost the sovereignty of thirteen ungrateful colonies… let us

console ourselves with the reflection, that, through the lenity of our government, we have gained

the hearts of a number of our fellow Britons.”103 The Scottish campaign was supported by a

circle of English high churchmen, particularly William Stevens, the SPCK secretary George

Gaskin, the Scottish judge James Allan Park, and the Bishop of St. Asaph Samuel Horsley.104

The penal laws in question were repealed in 1792.105

Following the repeal of the penal laws, there was a short-lived proposal to reunite

Scottish Episcopalians under the auspices of the loyalist émigré Jonathan Boucher. Since the

early eighteenth-century, Scottish Episcopalians had been divided between Whig and Jacobite

parties: the Whig minority were willing to take the Oath of Abjuration in order to secure freedom

from the penal laws, but the Jacobite majority would not. In 1793, the Bishop of Edinburgh

William Abernethy-Drummond proposed resigning his Diocese in Boucher’s favour.106 As a

clergyman of the Church of England, Boucher could act as a figurehead to unite the two

102
F. C. Mather, “Church, Parliament, and Penal Laws: Some Anglo-Scottish Interactions in the Eighteenth
Century,” English Historical Review 92, no. 364 (1977), 540-72.
103
George Berkeley Jr., The English Revolution Vindicated from the Misrepresentation of the Adherents of the
House of Stuart: In a Discourse Preached at Cookham, in the Diocese of Saram, on Sunday, October 25, 1789
(London: T. Cadell, 1789), 16.
104
Park, Memoirs, 136; F. C. Mather, High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733-1806) and the Caroline
Tradition in the Later Georgian Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 116-38; British Library, Egerton MS
2185 [John Douglas Papers], f. 188: William Abernethy-Drummond to John Douglas, June 20 1789.
105
Skinner, Annals of Scottish Episcopacy, 79-264.
106
William Abernethy-Drummond to John Skinner, March 13 1793, in Skinner, Annals of Scottish Episcopacy, 266-
67; John Douglas Papers, ff. 87-88: William Abernethy-Drummond to John Douglas, Hawthornden, August 27
1793.

241
parties.107 However, the plan was dropped in the face of opposition from those who feared the

extension of English ecclesiastical authority into Scotland.108

The changing political status of Scottish Episcopalians is significant because it shows

how the American Revolution reconfigured the tensions between the confessional state and the

British Empire, resolving some and exacerbating others. The social and political unrest of the

late eighteenth century had contradictory implications for the status of religious minorities. On

the one hand, the government proved increasingly suspicious of all forms of religious dissent.

Yet for some denominations, this was offset by a new degree of sympathy for forms of religion

that were seen to be more authoritarian. In a different context, British Catholics and Scottish

Episcopalians were both condemned for their historic support for Jacobitism, yet in the age of the

American and French Revolutions, these perceived absolutist tendencies became arguments in

their favour.109 In this new context, these groups also proved increasingly willing to support

Protestant governments: this is an important reason why the Jacobite claim to the throne lapsed

after Charles Edward Stuart’s death.110 However, English high churchmen’s newfound sympathy

for the Scottish Episcopalians did not indicate a simple rallying to the status quo, but rather a

mounting frustration with the compromised and imperfect character of the confessional state,

where the British government failed to protect their coreligionists north of the Tweed.

107
Swem Library, College of William & Mary, Mss.93 B66 [Jonathan Boucher Papers], B/3/68: William Stevens to
Jonathan Boucher, Otham, September 11 1793.
108
John Skinner to William Forbes, n.d., in Skinner, Annals of Scottish Episcopacy, 268-70.
109
Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 238-44.
110
Luca Codignola, “Roman Catholic Conservatism in a New North Atlantic World, 1760-1829,” William and Mary
Quarterly 3rd Series, 64, no. 4 (2007): 717-56.

242
“Paroxysm of Moderation”: The American Émigrés and the English High Church Movement

English high churchman had a long-standing interest in the American colonies, and particularly

in those New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies where Anglicans formed a religious minority.

This interest pre-dated but was significantly amplified by the American Revolution. Peter

Nockles has observed that English high churchmen were particularly interested in the

disestablished Episcopal Church of Scotland because it allowed them to think through their

anxieties about the established status of the Church of England.111 The same argument can be

made about high church interest in the American colonies. The mutual sympathy between the

American loyalist clergy and the English high church movement indicates an overlooked

imperial dimension to high church thought. English high churchmen were deeply critical of the

ecclesiastical shortcomings of the British Empire, and they strongly supported the American

loyalists’ demands for an Anglican bishop in the American colonies.

At the most basic level, English churchmen’s interest consisted in administrative and

political support for their American co-religionists. In the absence of an American bishop, the

American colonies fell within the mandate of the Bishops of London. The Archbishop of

Canterbury, meanwhile, was the ex officio head of the SPG. Thomas Secker, of course, had taken

an unusual degree of interest in the American Church of England, corresponding with churchmen

across the American colonies, lobbying for the creation of an American bishop, and supporting a

variety of other initiatives.112 His efforts to create an American bishop were supported by an

111
Peter Nockles, “‘Our Brethren of the North’: the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Oxford Movement,” Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 47, no. 4 (1996): 655-82.
112
Robert G. Ingram, Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of
England (Woodbridge: Boydell 2007), 209-59.

243
array of orthodox churchmen, such as Robert Lowth, the Bishop of Oxford, and Beilby Porteus,

Secker’s chaplain and future Bishop of London.113

Yet the English supporters of the SPG were often motivated by a deeper sympathy with

the plight of disestablished churchmen. An important early source of contact between the SPG

missionaries and the British high church movement was George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher,

Tory, and high church bishop of Cloyne.114 In 1724, Berkeley proposed the creation of a college

in Bermuda that would strengthen the American church by training Euro-American candidates

for the ministry, and (echoing proposals to convert Catholic children to Protestantism in his

native Ireland) by taking captive Native American children and raising them as Christians.115

Berkeley spent the years 1728-31 in Rhode Island attempting to muster political support for the

scheme, during which time he established a lasting friendship with Samuel Johnson, to whom he

later donated £1,000 towards the establishment of King’s College.116 Johnson retained these links

with Berkeley’s son, the younger George Berkeley, himself an important figure in the English

high church movement.117 In 1756, Samuel Johnson’s son William Johnson, who was in England

for ordination, met the younger George Berkeley, who introduced him to a “very valuable set of

fellows of several of the colleges, Hutchinsonians, and truly primitive Christians, who yet revere

the memory of King Charles and Archbishop Laud.” William Johnson told his father that these

113
Ibid., 247-48; Samuel Johnson to Robert Lowth, June 25 1767, in Samuel Johnson: President of King’s College.
His Career and Writings, ed. Herbert Schneider and Carol Schneider (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929,
4 vols.) [henceforth SJCW], 1:409-10; Samuel Johnson to Robert Lowth, October 25 1768, in ibid., 1:448-49.
114
Ian Campbell Ross, “Was Berkeley a Jacobite? Passive Obedience Revisited,” Eighteenth-Century Ireland 20
(2005): 17-30; Graham Conroy, “George Berkeley and the Jacobite Heresy: Some Comments on Irish Augustan
Politics,” Albion 3, no. 2 (1971), 82-91. There is a lot of scholarship on Berkeley’s philosophy, but there is
surprisingly little work addressing his religion and politics.
115
George Berkeley Sr., A Proposal for Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations, and for
Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, by a College to be Erected in the Summer Island, Otherwise
Called the Isles of Bermuda (London: H. Woodfall, 1724): 4, 6.
116
LPL MS1123 vol. 2 n. 130: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Secker, March 20 1759.
117
British Library, Add.MS 46689, ff. 14-20: “Memoirs of Dr. Berkeley, written by a Friend,” n.d.

244
Hutchinsonians “speak with much tenderness of our unhappiness in the want of bishops and do

all they can to promote such a design.”118

Upon the outbreak of the American rebellion, English high churchmen proved among the

loyalist missionaries’ staunchest supporters. The English clergy in general took the side of the

government during the contest.119 Even so, the high church clergy took a particular interest in the

loyalist SPG missionaries. Many leading high churchmen were members of the society. 120 Many

leading figures in the high church movement were also actively involved in running the

operations of the SPG. William Stevens’s biographer recalled that he “constantly attended” the

meetings of the SPG.121 Most immediately, these high churchmen provided support and

friendship to the American loyalist refugee clergy while they were in England. In his memoir,

the loyalist émigré Jonathan Boucher praised William Stevens as “the most temperate, judicious,

cordial, and valuable friend that ever any man was blessed with,” with whom he shared a “kind

of instinctive congeniality of temper and principles.” Stevens introduced Boucher to George

Horne, John Frere, William Jones, and Samuel Glasse, the last of whom resigned his living at

Epsom in Boucher’s favour.122 In 1777, Boucher and Stevens attended a loyalist meeting “to

drink Church & King with sundry other constitutional Toasts after the manner of the Tories of

118
William Johnson to Samuel Johnson, May 25 1756, in SJCW, 1:255-56.
119
Paul Langford, “The English Clergy and the American Revolution,” in The Transformation of Political Culture:
England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century, ed. Eckhart Hellmuth (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990), 275-307.
120
In 1780, for example, the SPG’s list of members included George Berkeley Jr., Charles Daubeny, John Frere,
Samuel Glasse, George Horne, Samuel Horsley, Charles Poyntz, William Stevens, and Spencer Madan. Thomas,
SPG Sermon (1780), 71-88.
121
Park, Memoirs, 21.
122
Jonathan Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738-1789. Being the Autobiography of the Revd.
Jonathan Boucher, Rector of Annapolis in Maryland and Afterwards Vicar of Epsom, Surrey, England, ed. Jonathan
Bouchier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), 147-48.

245
old time.”123 Likewise, Thomas Bradbury Chandler’s diary recorded dining with William

Stevens and William Jones on several occasions.124

English high churchmen also supported the loyalist missionaries’ political goals,

particularly the creation of an American bishop. This case was advanced most forcefully in a

tract written in 1776 by William Jones. The tract went unpublished, perhaps because of its

provocative denunciation of American Dissenters.125 William Jones strongly agreed with the

American loyalists’ conviction that the rebellion could have been prevented by a resident bishop.

He reminded the government that “episcopacy ought, according to the laws of God, and the

rights of Englishmen… to have been settled in the American Colonies above an hundred years

ago.” He followed the loyalists in arguing that episcopacy had both “a political as well as a

religious claim to be protected against all other interests, as congenial and friendly to the British

government.” Yet, rather than being protected, it “has been left under every possible

disadvantage” for fear of offending “the Presbyterians.” He considered it absurd that “Papists are

licensed; Presbyterians are obliged; where the religion of the crown and government is not

tolerated!” If Secker’s efforts to create an American bishop had succeeded, “it would have given

a seasonable check to the growth of the rebellion, which has since broke out.”126

While Thomas Secker’s earlier arguments in favour of an American bishop were

premised on securing religious toleration for American Anglicans, Jones wholeheartedly sided

with the loyalists’ most outspoken condemnations of American Dissenters. He appealed

123
Boucher Papers, B/3/3: William Stevens to Jonathan Boucher, Broadstreet, Sept 12 1777.
124
Chandler, “Memorandums”: August 8; September 15; October 8 1775; August 21 1776.
125
William Jones, “An Address to the British Government on a Subject of Present Concern (1776),” in The
Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev William Jones, M.A., F.R.S., in Twelve Volumes. To
Which is Prefixed, a Short Account of his Life and Writings, ed. William Stevens (London: F. & C. Rivington,
1801), 12:354-63. The tract is included in this 1801 collection, and dated to 1776, but I cannot find a published copy
or a review from before 1801.
126
Ibid., 355, 358, 362.

246
explicitly to the moral authority of the suffering loyalist refugees, “the loyal Church of England

party” who “are under oppression and persecution from the Dissenters abroad, and are obliged to

fly over hither to the seat of government.” The rebellion demonstrated beyond question that this

policy of moderation had misguided all along: “now this paroxysm of moderation is come to a

crisis, we may have sense and spirit to inquire at last, who the Presbyterians are, and why it is of

such great consequence not to disoblige them? They are Calvinists by profession, and

Republicans in their politics.” He was emphatic in attributing the American rebellion to the

Presbyterians: “this has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning as certainly as that in 1641.”

Yet, he concluded, good might yet come from the rebellion, if “the charm which has bound us

will now at last be dissolved.”127 Jones repeated his opinion in a work published in 1795, when

he wrote that “the dispute between Dr. Mayhew, an American Dissenter, and Archbishop Secker,

about the sending of Bishops from hence to America… I have always considered as the

beginning and end of the revolt that soon followed.”128

In this way, the American Revolution proved an important influence on the conservative

ideology espoused by English high churchmen during the 1780s. For English high churchmen,

the American rebellion was not only a political, but also a moral disaster. They believed that all

rebellion against government was, at base, a rebellion against God. The rebellion had manifested

the wider religious indifference and laxity that characterised modern commercial society. This

was the diagnosis advanced by East Apthorp, the Massachusetts-born missionary whose

appointment at Cambridge provoked Mayhew’s attack on the SPG. After leaving America and

obtaining a living in England, Apthorp preached a fast day sermon attributing the rebellion to the

127
Ibid., 355-56, 361-62.
128
William Jones, Memoirs of the Life, Studies, and Writings of the Right Reverend George Horne, D.D. Late Lord
Bishop of Norwich. To Which is Added, His Lordship’s Own Collection of his Thoughts, on a Variety of Great and
Interesting Subjects (London: G. C. & J. Robinson, 1795), 157-58.

247
moral corruption engendered by commercial society. He emphasised his first-hand knowledge of

“our national character both at home and abroad” on account of his transatlantic career. He

repeated the common argument that the rebellion could not be explained with reference to its

short-term political causes, since, “the real or supposed grievances, that might affect the liberty

or property of the Americans, were not at all proportioned to such an effect, as the revolt of

thirteen provinces.” Instead, “the true cause… originates from the state of national manners

throughout the Empire, as influenced by our commerce.” This diagnosis was more a critique of

English society than of American. Apthorp explained that the love of luxury was more advanced

in England, where it had produced “excessive opulence” and “speculative irreligion,” while in

America it had only produced “indifference in religion, and alarming symptoms of infidelity.”

The American rebellion, then, arose from the colonists’ “studied imitation” of English luxury. 129

The same year, Myles Cooper, the former president of King’s College and another

American émigré, provided a similar analysis in a fast day sermon preached to the university of

Oxford. Like Apthorp, Cooper attributed the rebellion to the irreligious spirit of the modern age.

He explained that “the want of religious Principles, [and] want of Seriousness” are “the most

striking Features, in a true portrait of the present age.” The consequence of “the great increase of

our Wealth” was the prevalence of “Idleness, and an unquenchable thirst of Pleasure…

Lewdness and Debauchery, Outrage and Violence.” The current “CIVIL WAR” could only be an

act of “Divine Vengeance,” “a Punishment for the sins of This Nation…our neglect of Religion

(and perhaps partly for our neglecting to provide for the Support of it in our PROVINCES and

PLANTATIONS).”130

129
East Apthorp, A Sermon on the General Fast, Friday, December 13, 1776, for the Pardon of Sins, Averting
Judgements, Imploring Victory, and Perpetuating Peace to the British Empire (London: J. Robson, 1776), 6, 9.
130
Myles Cooper, National Humiliation and Repentance Recommended, and the Causes of the Present Rebellion in
America Assigned, in a Sermon Preached Before the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1777), 8-11.

248
 English high churchmen condemned the American Revolution in similar terms. In 1776,

the Bishop of Llandaff, Richard Watson, preached a sermon that celebrated the principles of the

Glorious Revolution. William Stevens promptly condemned Watson for encouraging the

American rebels. For Stevens, Watson’s interpretation of “Revolution principles” served “to lay

the blame of the present commotions on the government, and to justify the Americans in their

rebellion.” Stevens insisted that the “present unnatural rebellion” should be attributed to “the

forwardness of the people, not the tyranny of government… to the blessings they enjoyed, not to

the grievances they suffered.” Stevens proceeded to compare the American rebels to the

seventeenth-century regicides. Citing the language of the Book of Common Prayer’s service for

Charles I’s martyrdom, he insisted that “the fomenters of the present disturbances in America,

are the descendants of those ‘cruel and unreasonable, those violent and blood-thirsty men…by

whom the innocent and blessed martyr was barbarously murdered.’”131

The American Revolution also prompted high churchmen to condemn the contempt for

authority which they saw as characteristic of modern English society. In doing so, they advanced

a hard-line case against all forms of political opposition, appealing to the divine authority of

government and the sinfulness of rebellion. In 1776, William Stevens republished a tract by the

non-juror Roger North. The tract celebrated the doctrine of “passive obedience or non-

resistance” and argued that the best way to defend “the rights of the people” was not through

resistance, but by “patient suffering.”132 Two years later, in a published sermon on the text “Fear

God, Honour the King,” William Jones reminded his audience that “kings and rulers have their

131
[William Stevens], Strictures on a Sermon, Entitled, the Principles of the Revolution Vindicated; Preached
before the University of Cambridge, on Wednesday, May 29 th, 1776, by Richard Watson (Cambridge: J. Woodyer,
1776), 27-28; Robert M. Andrews, Lay Activism and the High Church Movement of the Late Eighteenth Century:
The Life and Thought of William Stevens, 1732-1807 (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
132
[William Stevens], A Discourse on the English Constitution; Extracted from a Late Eminent Writer, and
Applicable to the Present Times (London: G. Robinson, 1776), 8-9, 31; Andrews, Lay Activism, 163-64.

249
authority from God.” For this reason, “rebellion against government is an offence against God

himself.” Englishmen should be grateful to “live in a country, where the fear of God and the

honour of the king, are inculcated by the laws of the state, and all the forms and doctrines of the

church.”133 In 1785, George Berkeley preached a sermon lamenting the “infidelity, and…careless

neglect of religion” that constituted “the crying sins of the passing century.” Berkeley declared

that, since “Civil Government is the ORDINANCE OF GOD,” it was both “danger” and a “sin” to

make “violent innovations in any constitution of government whatever, that has been long

established, and to which the people have been accustomed quietly to submit.”134

High churchmen’s conviction that they lived in a sinful, rebellious, and irreligious age

was therefore well established even before it was vindicated by the outbreak of a new revolution

in France. In the summer of 1789, the French Estates-General met in Paris, promptly

reconstituted itself as the National Assembly, and passed a Declaration of the Rights of Man and

the Citizen. William Jones attributed these events to the approaching end of the world. Jones’s

jeremiad pre-empted the more widespread condemnation that the French Revolution would

attract as it began to radicalise; even Burke, an unusually early critic of the revolution, would not

be moved to write his Reflections until the following year. Jones, by contrast, was already

convinced that “as the world degenerates, and Christian piety declines… the last age of the world

shall be troubled, in an unusual manner, with popular tumults and commotions.” Such

commotions were partly the result of “wild and novel opinions,” and partly a “just judgement of

God upon those who have forsaken him.” For Jones, these dangerous opinions were principally

133
William Jones, The Fear of God, and the Benefits of Civil Obedience: Two Sermons, Preached in the Parish
Church of Harwich in the County of Essex, on Sunday, June 21, 1778 (London: J. & F. Rivington, 1778), 19, 21, 33-
34.
134
George Berkeley Jr., The Danger of Violent Innovations in the State Exemplified from the Reigns of the First Two
Stuarts, in a Sermon Preached at the Cathedral and Metropolitan Church of Christ, Canterbury, on Monday, Jan.
31, 1785, 2nd ed. (Canterbury: Simmons & Kirkby, 1785), 4, 24.

250
those of deists such as the early-eightenth-century freethinker Matthew Tindal. These principles

had recently been manifested “in the British colonies of America,” where “subjects who were

peaceable, happy, wealthy, and prosperous, changed on a sudden into discontented insurgents.”

Now, “much sooner than we could have expected has the contagion spread itself to a

neighbouring country.” Jones insisted that he had warned of the danger at the time, refering to

his 1778 sermon, Fear of God.135

In his ongoing criticism of the French Revolution, Jones confidently asserted that the

established church – and the established church alone – could safeguard British society against

the dangers of innovation. For Jones, both the American Revolution and the French Revolution

were the work of the church’s enemies. The support for the American and French Revolutions

given by Rational Dissenters such as Richard Price and Joseph Priestley constituted evidence

that both revolutions were, at bottom, revolutions against established forms of religion. In 1792,

he authored a broadside titled One Penny-Worth of Truth, from Thomas Bull to his Brother John.

The broadside was intended to dissuade the lower orders from Jacobinism, and a number of

editions were printed and distributed by the loyalist Association for Preserving Liberty and

Property against Republicans and Levellers. The broadside argued that the “Troubles in

America” were “all brought upon us from the Beginning by the Dissenters, there and here.” Both

Price and Priestley wrote “Mob-Principles of Government, to justify them.” Now, the Rational

Dissenters had the audacity to complain about the national debt and the associated heavy taxes,

when it was “these People, who brought our burdens upon us.”136

135
William Jones, Popular Commotions Considered as Signs of the Approaching End of the World. A Sermon,
Preached in the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury, on Sunday, September 20, 1789 (London: G. C. & J.
Robinson, 1789), vii-viii, 1-2, 8, 13.
136
[William Jones], One Penny-Worth of Truth, from Thomas Bull to his Brother John ([London?]: n.p., [1792?).

251
 The case for the continuity between the American Revolution and the French Revolution

was articulated most forcefully by loyalist émigré Jonathan Boucher in his View of the Causes

and Consequences of the American Revolution (1797). This tract purported to be a collection of

thirteen sermons preached in North America between 1763 and 1775. Historians recognise the

tract’s importance to conservative political thought. Following an assumption that the American

Revolution was primarily about taxation, representation, and consent to government, they have

focused overwhelmingly on the twelfth sermon, “On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Non-

Resistance.” In this sermon, Boucher praised Filmer and condemned not only Lockean theories

of government by consent, but the very idea of civil liberty. 137 Boucher’s biographer Anne

Zimmer has shown that he heavily revised these sermons before publishing them, and only began

to champion Filmer as an exile in Britain; his publications from his time in America show

nothing of this hard-line case for passive obedience and non-resistance. Zimmer therefore

concludes that Boucher’s tract was a commentary not on the American but rather the French

Revolution.138 Indeed, the tract began by describing the French Revolution as “the first-born, in

direct lineal succession, of a numerous progeny of revolutions, of which that of America

promises to be the prolific parent.”139

Boucher was deeply concerned with the problem of church and empire. His diagnosis of

the causes of the American Revolution repeated many of the arguments developed by the loyalist

SPG missionaries, but also extended beyond them. Like Seabury and Inglis, Boucher attributed

137
Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; in Thirteen Discourses,
Preached in North America between the Years 1763 and 1775: With an Historical Preface (London: G. G. and J.
Robinson, 1797), 495-560.
138
Anne Zimmer and Alfred H. Kelly, “Jonathan Boucher: Constitutional Conservative,” Journal of American
History 58, no. 4 (1972): 897-922; Anne Y. Zimmer, Jonathan Boucher: Loyalist in Exile (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1978), 268-72.
139
Boucher, View of the Causes and Consequences, i.

252
the rebellion to the “spirit of Republicanism” that “overturned the Constitution of Great Britain

in 1648” and was “carried over to the Northern Colonies of America by the first Puritan

emigrants.” The same principles inevitably produced the same effects, hence the American

Revolution’s resemblance to the seventeenth-century civil war: “in all it’s leading features,

whether considered in it’s origin, it’s conduct, or it’s end, it was but a counterpart of the grand

rebellion in this country in the last century.” Boucher even suggested that the classic work of

Anglican polemic against the Puritan commonwealth, Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and

Civil Wars in England, “is perhaps as good as any that could yet be compiled of the American

revolution.” Like Seabury and Inglis, Boucher believed “it is now indisputable” that rebellion

began with “the American opposition to episcopacy,” and argued that the national constitution in

church and state should be extended to the American colonies.140

However, as Boucher acknowledged, this emphasis on Dissenting principles only

explained the rebellion of the New England colonies. Only four of the thirteen rebellious

colonies “were people by avowed independents.” Although “the defection of those four has been

satisfactorily accounted for… … it still remains to be asked, what were the inducements and the

causes which led others not so circumstanced into rebellion?” Boucher also had to account for

the prevalence of churchmen among the rebels in the southern colonies. He regretfully

acknowledged that “there were many (alas! very many) Churchmen, both in Virginia and in

Maryland, who, unmindful of their own principles, became rebels.” As far as Boucher was

concerned, the rebel churchmen had strayed from the true principles of the Church of England,

which, properly understood, were perfectly matched to those of the civil constitution and would

necessarily entail loyalty to the government. Indeed, the rebel churchmen were the same who had

140
Ibid., xxvii-xxix, 102, 150.

253
opposed the creation of an American bishop: an utterly unaccountable betrayal of their own

church and their own professed religious principles.141

Boucher attributed the immorality of the southern clergy to the defects in the

ecclesiastical constitution of the southern colonies. He explained that “the Northern Clergy,”

who were uniformly loyal, “were in general missionaries, and received salaries from the Society

for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.” By contrast, “their brethren in the South

were established; but so established as in no small degree to be still dependent on the People, and

on them alone.” The Virginia clergy were elected by their congregations, while those of

Maryland were dependent on their congregations for financial support.142 In other words, the

American Revolution not only demonstrated the need to extend the ecclesisatical establishment

throughout the British Empire, but also the need to reform that establishment so as to guarantee

the independence of the church. In this, the model to be emulated was not England’s flawed

ecclesiastical constitution, but rather the SPG missionaries in the northern colonies, who alone

had safeguarded the church’s spiritual independence, orthodoxy, and unswerving loyalty to the

king.

Conclusion

In their efforts to obtain a more favourable establishment for the colonial Church of England, the

American loyalist clergy formulated an historical narrative of the American Revolution as a

“Presbyterian rebellion” against the established church. This narrative drew heavily on the

missionaries’ first-hand experience, especially their alleged persecution at the hands of American

141
Ibid., xxxi, xxxiii, 94.
142
Ibid., xlix-l.

254
Dissenters. It contended that the underlying cause of the rebellion lay in the seventeenth-century

Puritan emigration to New England and the consequent failure to fully extend the constitution in

church and state throughout the British Empire. It served to attribute the rebellion to Dissenting

principles: a diagnosis that demanded an indispensable political role for the colonial Church of

England as a wellspring of loyal principles. It depended on parallels with seventeenth-century

British history, and entailed a highly selective reading of events, focusing exclusively on the

northern colonies and Connecticut in particular, either silently omitting the southern colonies or

treating them as an exception to the rule and a problem to be explained. Those historians who

have suggested that the American Revolution can be understood as a “War of Religion” – Carl

Bridenbaugh, J. C. D. Clark, and James Bell – are reproducing many of the core features of this

ideological narrative, such as the emphasis on the intellectual origins of the revolution, the

attribution of both loyalist and patriot ideologies to rival theologies, and the contention that the

bishop controversy was a dress rehearsal for the subsequent political contestation.

The “Presbyterian rebellion” narrative was deployed by the American loyalist clergy and

their English sympathisers as they renegotiated the relationship between church and state during

and after the American Revolution, and secured a far more expansive role for the church in the

empire. Yet the high church critique of the British Empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism long

predated the revolution. This critique emerged most strongly at the periphery of the colonial

church, fuelled by the missionaries’ grievances against the disestablished or part-established

status of the church in the northern colonies and the disadvantages it faced in competition with

colonial Dissenters. When the revolution came along, they seized upon the opportunities it

offered to advance their reforming agenda.

255
 This critique commanded the support of those English high churchmen who were anxious

about the compromises demanded by the establishment of the Church of England within the

British imperial state, which was more interested in waging war on a global scale and governing

diverse and far-flung territories than with safeguarding religious orthodoxy. The mutual

sympathy prevailing between the American loyalists and the English high church movement

sometimes disguised a considerable degree of creative misunderstanding. For example, while the

SPG missionaries railed against their Dissenting rivals’ Puritan principles, English high

churchmen suggested that “fanaticism” had been defeated in England at the end of the

seventeenth century, leaving “infidelity, and a careless neglect of religion” as the principal threat

to religious orthodoxy.143 Nevertheless, both groups agreed that the government’s neglect of the

church was a principal source of the evils of the age. Like the American loyalists, English high

churchmen rallied in support of the government but they were not motivated by simple

conservatism or reaction against the threat of upheaval. Instead, they responded to the prospect

of revolution by pursuing a competing program of moral reform, religious revival, and a renewed

assertion of the established church’s political role.

Historians who have studied Britain’s response to the American Revolution usually

emphasise conservative attempts to prevent further upheaval. They have suggested that the

American Revolution pushed the empire’s governors towards cosmopolitanism and paternalism,

a turn derived in part from exposure to the diversity of the American loyalist refugees.144 This is

an understanding of “counterrevolution” of the kind proposed by Crane Brinton in 1938: a

project of ending the revolution, with France’s Thermidorian Reaction of 1794 as the

143
Berkeley, Danger of Violent Innovations, 24.
144
Eliga Gould, “American Independence and Britain’s Counter-Revolution,” Past and Present 154 (1997): 107-41;
Mason, “American Loyalist Diaspora.”

256
paradigm.145 Yet underneath this prevailing conservative reaction, the English high church

movement was a radical undercurrent of ultra-loyalism. They saw in the American loyalist

diaspora, not a lesson in imperial diversity, but rather evidence that the British imperial state was

failing to protect the Church of England: it had been unable to prevent the persecution of

American Anglicans, or to provide for the spiritual needs of Anglicans remaining in the United

States, or even to look after the refugees themselves.146 Rather than celebrating cosmopolitanism,

high churchmen saw the empire’s ecclesiastical pluralism as a “paroxysm of moderation.”

145
Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 205-36.
146
Grayson M. Ditchfield, “Ecclesiastical Policy under Lord North,” in The Church of England, c.1689-c.1833:
From Toleration to Tractarianism, eds. John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge,
University Press, 1993), 228-46.

257
 CONCLUSION

Religion stands on tip-toe in our land,

Readie to passe to the American strand.
When height of malice, and prodigious lusts
Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts
(The marks of future bane) shall fill our cup
Unto the brimme, and make our measure up…
Then shall Religion to America flee:
They shall have their times of Gospel, ev’n as we.
…Yet as the Church shall thither westward flie,
So Sinne shall trace and dog her instantly…
Thus also Sinne and Darknesse follow still
The Church and Sunne with all their power and skill
But as the Sunne still goes both west and east;
So also did the Church by going west
Still eastward go; because it drew more neare
To time and place, where judgement shall appear.

George Herbert, “The Church Militant” (1633)

George Herbert’s poem expresses an idea that was deeply appealing to the loyalist SPG

missionaries. True religion was always moving from east to west. No sooner was it settled in a

place than it was beset by sin and corruption and had to travel onward in search of new and

unspoilt pastures. Sin thus chased religion from Egypt to Greece, Rome, Germany, Britain, and

then on to the new world. We readily associate this idea with the Puritans who emigrated in the

seventeenth century to establish a “city on a hill” in the new world, a beacon of true religion for

the old world to emulate. But Puritans were not the only ones who were excited by the religious

258
possibilities of empire.1 In 1726, the high churchman George Berkeley famously proclaimed

“Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way” in his Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts

and Learning in America.2 In 1753, Samuel Johnson cited “good old Mr Herbert,” lamenting that

vice, error, and freethinking had followed the Church of England to America.3 In 1785, the

Scottish bishop John Skinner preached a sermon for Samuel Seabury’s consecration in which he

cited Herbert’s poem, praying that “a valid and truly apostolic ministry, may, like the glorious

light of heaven, go out from the east, to the utmost boundary of the western world.”4

The loyalist SPG missionaries were simultaneously the most enthusiastic exponents and

the sharpest critics of an Anglican empire. The believed that the role of the British Empire was to

plant the Church of England – the repository of the purest and most primitive form of

Christianity – in the new world. They therefore had a crucial part to play in the fulfilment of

sacred history. The principal challenge they faced in this endeavour was not the persecutions and

insults of the Dissenters, however galling they may have been, but rather the religious

indifference that prevailed in Europe. Try as they might, they could not persuade their

coreligionists in England to see the full religious importance of the empire. Their position on the

front line of the church’s flight to the west allowed them to see the true interests of the Church of

England more clearly that could its own bishops and archbishops. For this reason, they often

spoke of the possibility of leaving both the Church of England and the British Empire rather than
1
George Herbert, The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941),
191-98. Herbert’s The Temple, from which the poem “The Church Militant” is drawn, was enormously popular,
going through thirteen editions by 1709. It was reprinted in 1773 by John Wesley and reprinted again in 1799. Helen
Wilcox notes that it “appealed to a readership spanning the political and ecclesiastical spectrum,” from Charles I to
the regicides: “Herbert, George (1593-1633),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
2
George Berkeley Sr., A Miscellany, Containing Several Tracts on Various Subjects (London: J. and R. Tonson and
S. Draper, 1752), 187-87.
3
Lambeth Palace Library, MS1123/1, n. 64: Samuel Johnson to Thomas Herring, June 25 1753.
4
[John Skinner], The Nature and Extent of the Apostolical Commission: A Sermon, Preached at the Consecration of
the Right Reverend Dr Samuel Seabury, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut (London: J., F., & C.
Rivington, 1785), 31.

259
be held back by the old world’s religious compromises and corruptions. Ultimately, though, they

were tied to the empire. They were nothing without it. All they could do was to try and reform it

by proclaiming themselves its most loyal subjects.

In George Herbert’s poem, the church militant travels west until it circles the globe and

return to the east. In the same way, the missionaries were not only concerned with planting the

church in the new world, but also with reforming the church in the old world. As historians have

shown for the seventeenth century, Protestants who were excited by the religious possibilities

offered by New England did not want to leave Old England behind; they also hoped to use the

American example to effect a reformation in Britain.5 Likewise, the loyalist émigrés who left

America for Britain proved a major influence on religious reformers there, particularly on the

resurgent English high church movement.

In their diagnosis of the religious possibilities and shortcomings of the British Empire,

the émigrés held up a mirror to English society, and English high churchmen used them to think

about the compromises imposed on the Church of England by the British imperial state and by

increasingly modern, pluralistic, and commercial society. Well into the following century,

English high churchmen and Tractarians continued to look to the Episcopal Church in America

to think about the relationship between church, state, and nation in Britain.6 In 1801, the high

church polemicist Charles Daubeny wrote to Jonathan Boucher, “from the Communications

which I have received both from Scotland & America, I am sorry to remark that where

Episcopacy does not possess the Advantage it enjoys in this Country, of an Establishment, it

5
Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2007); Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004).
6
Peter M. Doll, “The Idea of the Primitive Church in High Church Ecclesiology from Samuel Johnson to J. H.
Hobart,” Anglican and Episcopal History 65, no. 1 (1996): 41-42; Peter Nockles, “The Oxford Movement and the
United States of America,” in The Oxford Movement: Europe and the Wider World 1830-1930, eds. Stewart J.
Brown and Peter Nockles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 133-52.

260
appears to be accompanied with more Zeal for the Constitution of the Christian Church.”7 In

1838, the English Tractarian E. B. Pusey was still arguing that the failure to create an American

bishop had caused the American Revolution.8

For Anglicans who were strongly attached to the unity of church, state, and nation, it was

hard to know what to make of the empire. It was an arena that offered the Church of England

unrivalled opportunities for world-wide expansion, but one where the church also faced daunting

competition from Dissenters and Catholics, and where it could rarely count on the support of the

state. Some churchmen, such as Thomas Secker, were willing to stray from the strict principles

of the establishment in order to advance the interests of the church overseas. Others had

difficulty stomaching the compromises demanded by the empire’s irreducible ecclesiastical

pluralism. They aspired to a thoroughly Anglican empire, while lamenting the severely

compromised empire that existed in reality. They oscillated between wanting to reform the

British Empire and wondering if they were better off without it.

An instructive example here is provided by Josiah Tucker. Historians usually focus on

Tucker’s economic thought, but he was also a strong supporter of the high church movement. In

1764, he advanced a proposal to create an Anglican bishop in Quebec.9 A decade later, he argued

that Britain should grant independence to the rebellious American colonies. By doing so, he

explained, Britain would retain the commercial benefits of the Atlantic trade system while

ridding itself of the political problems of imperial government. After examining the economics

of American independence, Tucker’s pamphlet concluded by proclaiming its religious

7
Swem Library, College of William & Mary, Mss.93 B66 [Jonathan Boucher Papers], B/5/23: Charles Daubeny to
Jonathan Boucher, North Bradley, September 16 1801.
8
E. B. Pusey, The Church, the Converter of the Heathen: Two Sermons Preached in Conformity with the Queen’s
Letter in Behalf of the SPG (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1838), 53-59, cited in Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in
Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 74.
9
This proposal is discussed in Chapter Two, 105-106 above.

261
advantages: if Britain resigned its claims to ecclesiastical authority over the colonies, then

colonial Dissenters would stop opposing a Church of England bishop. This would put an end to

“the Persecution which the Church of England daily suffers in America.” Tucker explained, “all

their Fears will vanish away, and their Panics be at an End: And then, a Bishop, who has no more

Connections with England either in Church or State than he has with Germany, Sweden, or any

other Country, will be no longer looked upon in America as a Monster, but a Man.”10 Tucker

strongly believed in the unity of church and state – he also published tracts defending

compulsory subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles – but he feared that this model was not

working to the advantage of the Church of England in America.11

In the wake of American independence, the interests of the Church of England and the

British Empire aligned in a new way. As Tucker foresaw, the colonial Dissenters who had

strenuously opposed the creation of an Anglican bishop were entirely unperturbed when Samuel

Seabury arrived in America in 1785 as Bishop of Connecticut. For Britain, meanwhile, the loss

of the American transformed the relationship between the church and the empire. Churchmen in

Britain took a renewed interest in the imperial church, and the government proved increasingly

willing to support the colonial church in ways it had previously refused to do. The loyalist

émigrés lived to see the Church of England play a far more expansive role in the settler empire

that it had in the years preceding the American Revolution. This is one reason why historians

have misunderstood the American loyalist clergy: they have seen them retrospectively in light of

the very different relationship between church and empire that took shape after the revolution.

10
Josiah Tucker, “The True Interest of Great-Britain Set Forth in Regard to the Colonies; and the only Means of
Living in Peace and Harmony with Them,” in Four Tracts, together with Two Sermons, on Political and
Commercial Subjects (Gloucester: R. Raikes, 1774), 214-16.
11
Josiah Tucker, An Apology for the Present Church of England as by Law Established: Occasioned by a Petition
Laid before Parliament, for Abolishing Subscriptions (Gloucester: R. Raikes, 1772); Josiah Tucker, Letter to the
Rev. Dr. Kippis, Occasioned by Treatise, Entituled, A Vindication of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers
(Gloucester: R. Raikes, 1773).

262
 The transformation of the imperial Church of England was most evident in British North

America. The SPG, no longer able to send missionaries to the United States, instead poured its

considerable resources into Britain’s remaining North American colonies. In 1783, the SPG

funded eleven missions in Nova Scotia and a further three in Newfoundland. By 1800, it had

sixty-five missions in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Canada, and Cape Breton.12

Many of these missions were occupied by American refugees (and then, in many cases, by their

children) strengthening the counterrevolutionary character of the Anglican church in these

colonies. As Bishop of Nova Scotia, Charles Inglis shaped an ecclesiastical establishment

defined by strong government support for the Church of England alongside a generous toleration

for the colony’s large non-Anglican population, a model adapted from Inglis’s native Ireland.13

In Quebec, too, the 1791 Constitutional Act established the Church of England by setting aside

land reserves for its clergy. Under the leadership of an Englishman named Jacob Mountain, who

became the first Bishop of Quebec in 1793, the church assumed the role of bulwark against the

Jacobin influences emanating from France.14 In 1843, Mountain declared, “loyalty is another

12
Beilby Porteus, SPG Sermon (1783), 41-47; Henry Reginald Courtenay, SPG Sermon (1800), 25-30.
13
Judith Fingard, The Anglican Design in Loyalist Nova Scotia, 1783-1816 (London: SPCK, 1972); Ann Gorman
Condon, The Envy of the American States: The Loyalist Dream for New Brunswick (New Ireland Press: Fredericton,
NB, 1984); Curtis Fahey, In His Name: The Anglican Experience in Upper Canada, 1791-1854 (Ottawa: Carleton
University Press, 1991); Ronald Rees, Land of the Loyalists: Their Struggle to Shape the Maritimes (Halifax, NS:
Nimbus, 2000); Ross N. Hebb, The Church of England in Loyalist New Brunswick, 1783-1825 (Madison: Farleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2004); Ross N. Hebb, Samuel Seabury and Charles Inglis: Two Bishops, Two Churches
(Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010).
14
Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745-
1795 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), 237-60; Richard W. Vaudry, Anglicans and the
Atlantic World: High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2003); F. Murray Greenwood, Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of
the French Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Thomas Millman, Jacob Mountain, First Lord
Bishop of Quebec: A Study in Church and State, 1793-1825 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1947).

263
conspicuous fruit of Church-principles in a Colony,” adding, “the Bishops and Clergy… will

never fail to inculcate a deep and dutiful attachment to the Monarchy of England.”15

These transformations were not confined to British North America. A glance at the

scholarship on the Church of England in the “Second British Empire” is enough to demonstrate

the extent of the changes made possible by American independence. Rowan Strong concludes

that in the period 1783-1830, “imperially minded Anglicans” finally encountered the “the

imperial state-supported extension of the Church of England dreamed of by some since the

sixteenth century.”16 In the first half of the nineteenth century, the church began to think of itself

as a truly imperial institution, charged with ministering to the ever-increasing numbers of British

emigrants, and developing new kinds of institutions and networks in order to do so.17 In

Australia, a rapidly expanding colonial church was supported financially by the British

government and enjoyed wide-ranging political and legal privileges until up until the 1830s.18

This trend is even apparent in Britain’s colonies in India. The eighteenth-century East India

Company had actively excluded Christian missionaries from its territories, and had given

financial support to Hindu and Muslim religious institutions. For the Company’s critics, this was

nothing less than the “establishment” of heathenism. In 1813, after a complicated three-way

contest between high church reformers, evangelicals, and the East India Company’s directors,

Parliament created an Anglican Bishop of Calcutta in 1813; it also granted missionaries access to
15
Cited in Michael Gauvreau, “The Dividends of Empire: Church Establishments and Contested Identities in the
Canadas and the Maritimes, 1780-1850,” in Transatlantic Subjects: Idea, Institutions, and Social Experience in
Post-Revolutionary British North America, edited by Nancy Christie (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2008), 214-215.
16
Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire, c.1700-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 118-
222, quotation 196-97.
17
Joseph Hardwick, An Anglican British World: The Church of England and the Expansion of the Settler Empire,
c.1790-1860 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).
18
Michael Gladwin, Anglican Clergy in Australia, 1788-1850: Building a Religious World (Woodbridge: Boydell,
2015); David Stoneman, “Richard Bourke: For the Honour of God and the Good of Man,” Journal of Religious
History 38, no. 3 (2013): 341-55.

264
the Company’s territories.19 In short, the first half of the nineteenth century saw colonial

Anglican church establishments become the norm throughout the British Empire. Some

exceptions remained, of course. For example, after the Cape Colony was taken from the Dutch in

1795, the British continued tolerating Dutch civil and religious institutions: here, the policy

resembled the earlier approach to Quebec.20 Nevertheless, ecclesiastical pluralism was now the

exception, when previously it had been the rule.

American independence also shifted the balance of religious power in Britain,

galvanising various efforts to turn the Church of England into a truly national church. The moral

crisis associated with the revolution mobilised numerous projects of moral, religious, and

political reform.21 Amongst these, reforming churchmen sought to use the established church as

an engine for promoting popular loyalism. High churchmen such as William Jones and William

Stevens were particularly concerned with combatting the principles of deism, radicalism, and

revolution and instead articulating an alternative set of loyalist Anglican principles. They formed

a “Society for the Reformation of Manners” in 1792, which began publishing a set of influential

counterrevolutionary periodicals – The British Critic (1793-1843), The Anti-Jacobin Review

(1798-1821), and The Orthodox Churchman’s Magazine (1801-1816) – as well as a massive

19
Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York: Routledge, 2008), 79-92; Penelope
Carson, “The British Raj and the Awakening of the Evangelical Conscience: The Ambiguities of Religious
Establishment and Toleration, 1698-1833,” in Christian Missions and the Enlightenment, ed. Brian Stanley (Grand
Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans and Curzon, 2001), 45-70; Penelope Carson, The East India Company and Religion ,
1698-1858 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012).
20
R. E. Close, “Toleration and its Limits in the Late Hanoverian Empire: Cape Colony, 1795-1828,” in Hanoverian
Britain and its Empire, eds. Stephen Taylor, Richard Connors, and Clyve Jones (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 299-
317.
21
Arthur Burns and Joanna Innes, eds., Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain, 1780-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003); Christopher Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Joanna Innes, “Politics and Morals: The Reformation of Manners
Movement in Later Eighteenth-Century England,” in Eckhart Hellmuth, ed., The Transformation of Political
Culture: England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 57-118;
Matthew Wyman-McCarthy, “Rethinking Empire in India and the Atlantic: William Cowper, John Newton,”
Slavery and Abolition, 35, 2 (2014): 306-27.

265
collection of loyalist theological tracts titled The Scholar Armed Against the Errors of the

Times.22 Yet these counterrevolutionary activities were not purely academic. They also sought to

instruct the people in loyalist principles: a project with potentially radical implications. The Anti-

Jacobin Review sought to engage with a mass, democratic readership. 23 In 1813, they founded

the self-explanatory National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the

Established Church, which established “National Schools” not only in Britain but throughout the

British Empire. By 1833, there were 146 “National Schools” in Wales alone.24 Other

conservative churchmen sought to instruct the people by publishing cheap moral literature or

founding Sunday Schools.25

22
Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); Elizabeth A. Varley, The Last of the Prince Bishops: William Van Mildert and
the High Church Movement of the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); F. C.
Mather, High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733-1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Later
Georgian Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Emily Lorraine de Montluzin, The Anti-Jacobins, 1798-1800:
The Early Contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).
23
Kevin Gilmartin, Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790-1832 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
24
Henry James Burgess, Enterprise in Education: The Story of the Established Church in the Education of the
People Prior to 1870 (London: SPCK, 1958); A. B. Webster, Joshua Watson: The Story of a Layman, 1771-1855
(London: SPCK, 1954); Joanna Innes, “L’“education nationale” dans les îles Britanniques, 1765-1815,” Annales 65,
no. 5 (2010): 1087-1116; Tudor Powell Jones, “The Contribution of the Established Church to Welsh Education
(1811-1846),” in The History of Education in Wales, eds. Jac L. Williams and Gwilym Rees Hughes (Swansea:
Christopher Davies, 1978), 113.
25
Scott Mandelbrote, “The Publishing and Distribution of Religious Books by Voluntary Associations: from the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to the British and Foreign Bible Society,” in eds. The Cambridge
History of the Book in Britain. Volume 5: 1695-1830, Michael F. Suarez and Michael L. Turner (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 613-30, especially 621; Anne Stott, Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003); Sarah Trimmer, The Guardian of Education, 5 vols., ed. Matthew O. Grenby
(Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002).

266
Fig. 10: “Repeal of the Test Act” (1790)

Lewis Walpole Library 790.02.20.01.2+

267
Fig. 11: “Sedition and Atheism Defeated” (1790)

Lewis Walpole Library 790.03.18.02

268
 The challenges posed by the American and French Revolutions not only galvanised

reforming churchmen, but also produced a new degree of popular support for the church. The

roots of the loyalist rallying to the established order lie in the popular reaction against the

American Revolution.26 With the outbreak of a new revolution in France in 1789, the Church of

England acted as a rallying point for an enormously popular loyalist movement, which took

shape through institutions such as the Association for the Protection of Liberty and Property

against Republicans and Levellers.27 Conservative writers championed the moral virtues and

political utility of the Church of England as a pillar of the social and political order. 28 When

English Protestant Dissenters began lobbying for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts,

they provoked public meetings up and down the country in defence of the Church of England’s

legal privileges.29 Cartoons such as “Sedition and Atheism Defeated” and “The Repeal of the

Test” equated Protestant Dissent, Jacobinism, and atheism (Figs. 10 & 11). By the 1790s,

Unitarian Dissenters were repeatedly made victims by “Church and King” mobs, leading many

26
Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760-1820,” Past &
Present 102 (1984): 94-129.
27
Kevin Gilmartin, “In The Theater of Counterrevolution: Loyalist Association and Conservative Opinion in the
1790s,” Journal of British Studies 41, no. 3 (2002): 291-328; Jennifer Mori, “Languages of Loyalism: Patriotism,
Nationhood and the State in the 1790s,” English Historical Review 118, no. 475 (2003): 33-58; Mark Philp, “Vulgar
Conservatism, 1792-3,” English Historical Review 110, no. 435 (1995): 42-69; Harry T. Dickinson, “Popular
Conservatism and Militant Loyalism, 1789-1815,” in Britain and the French Revolution, 1789-1815, ed. Harry T.
Dickinson (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), 103-25; David Eastwood, “Patriotism and the English State in the
1790s,” in The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, ed. Mark Philp (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 146-68; Robert R. Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country: The English Loyalists and the French
Revolution (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); Mark Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon: The British
Response to the Threat of Invasion,1797-1815 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)
28
James J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760-1832 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993); Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics, and Public Order in England, c.1760-1832
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Gregory Claeys, The French Revolution Debate in Britain: The
Origins of Modern Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Mark Philp, Reforming Ideas in Britain:
Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013).
29
A Collection of the Resolutions Passed at the Meetings of the Clergy of the Church of England, of the Counties,
Corporations, Cities and Towns, and of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Assemble to Take into
Consideration the Late Application of the Dissenters to Parliament (London: J. C. & C. Rivington, 1790).

269
of them to emigrate to France or the United States.30 Meanwhile, the arrival of large numbers of

Catholic clergy who had been made refugees by the French Revolution gave the Church of

England a new opportunity to perform its sympathy, charity, and tolerance.31

Efforts to turn the Church of England into a truly national church continued to command

strong political support until the mid-nineteenth century. These efforts failed for many reasons.

One of the most significant hurdles they faced was the problematic relationship between the

national Church of England and the other nations that made up the United Kingdom. Stewart

Brown has argued that, in response to the 1801 Union between Britain and Ireland, both the

Church of Scotland and the new United Church of England and Ireland sought to “mould the

peoples of the three kingdoms into a single Protestant nation-state.” In the first quarter of the

nineteenth century, Parliament significantly increased government funding for both national

churches. At the same time, English, Scottish, and Irish Protestants made strenuous effort to

convert Irish Catholics to Protestantism. These initiatives failed to prevent the loosening of ties

between church and state by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic

emancipation the following year.32

These constitutional changes were a major setback for the national churches, limiting the

amount of state support they received. Nevertheless, the national churches’ aspirations did not

immediately lose steam. That only happened in the following decade when both churches were

30
Stuart Andrews, Unitarian Radicalism: Political Rhetoric, 1770-1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003),
85-104, 136-77.
31
Maya Jasanoff, “Revolutionary Exiles: The American Loyalist and French Émigré Diasporas,” in The Age of
Revolutions in Global Context, c.1760-1840, eds. David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 37-58; Kirsty Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution: Émigrés in London, 1789-
1802 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); Dominic Aidan Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after
1789: An Historical Introduction and Working List (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1986); David Rice, “Combine Against
the Devil: The Anglican Church and the French Refugee Clergy in the French Revolution,” Historical Magazine of
the Protestant Episcopal Church 50, no. 3 (1981): 271-81.
32
Stewart J. Brown, The National Churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1801-1846 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), quotation viii.

270
fractured by internal divisions: by the Great Disruption on the Scottish side, and by the

Tractarian movement on the English. The Tractarians who left the Church of England and the

Evangelicals who left the Church of Scotland were both seeking to protect the church from the

state. English Tractarians disliked the fact that Parliament was funding the Church of Scotland,

while Scottish Evangelicals disliked the fact that Parliament was funding the Church of England.

Britain’s ecclesiastical pluralism thus continued to drive the separation of church and state.33

Colonial Anglicanism faced a similar problem. Joseph Hardwick has highlighted the church’s

efforts to fashion itself as a patron for various British identities in the settler empire, not just as

an ethnic church for the English. These efforts would flounder by the mid-nineteenth century, in

both Australia and British North America, largely as the result of Scottish and Irish migration.34

Conservative churchmen failed to turn the Church of England into a truly national

church, but they came closest to success in the half-century following the American Revolution.

American independence meant the reconfiguration of the empire’s ecclesiastical constitution.

Together with the conservative reaction against the revolution, this created the conditions for the

Church of England to claim a central role in these late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century

nation-building projects. These projects were motivated by fear that the church was in danger in

an age of political, social, and intellectual upheaval. From another perspective, however, this

period was one of overbearing Anglican dominance. J. C. D. Clark has suggested that an “old

regime” under the “hegemony” of the Church of England was a reality that persisted from the

1660 Restoration through to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828. Yet as Joanna

Innes has noted, Clark’s “old regime” was not so much a social and political reality as an

33
Ibid..
34
Hardwick, Anglican British World; Gauvreau, “Dividends of Empire,” 199-250; Jennifer Ridden, “Making Good
Citizens: National Identity, Religion, and Liberalism among the Irish Elite, c.1800-1850” (PhD diss., King’s College
London, 1998), 277-83.

271
aspiration for “the more intemperate kind of Tory Anglican, circa 1790.”35 Clark’s “old regime”

came to realisation in the period c. 1780-1830.

Conservative churchmen – in both Britain and America – were never driven by a simple

desire to support the government or defend the status quo. It seems unsurprising that the Church

of England, as an established church, should have participated in the conservative reaction

against the threat of revolution. Yet loyalists on both sides of the Atlantic had their own agenda.

They saw the American Revolution not as a bolt from the blue, but as an escalation of everything

they already thought wrong with the societies they lived in. Terms like “conservative,”

“loyalist,” or “reactionary” oversimplify this complex dynamic. We might instead think of these

groups as counterrevolutionaries, who sought to prevent revolution by pursuing an alternate set

of equally radical transformations.36 The history of the international “age of revolutions” ought

then to include not just the creation of democratic republics on both sides of the Atlantic but also

the emergence of counterrevolutionary political programs. Counterrevolutionaries contributed as

much to modernity as did the revolutions they opposed.

35
Joanna Innes, “Jonathan Clark, Social History, and England’s ‘Ancien Regime,’” Past & Present 115 (1987): 191.
For a similar critique of Clark’s Language of Liberty, see David Armitage, “The Last War of Religion,” London
Review of Books 16, no. 11 (1994): 11-12 [reprinted in David Armitage, Greater Britain, 1516-1776: Essays in
Atlantic History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)].
36
Gilmartin, Writing Against Revolution, 2-3; Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French
Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

272
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Friday, February 18 1731. London: J. Downing, 1732.
[Blackburne, Francis]. A Critical Commentary on Archbishop Secker’s Letter to the Right
Honourable Horatio Walpole, Concerning Bishops in America. London: E. & C. Dilly, 1770.

Bisse, Philip. A Sermon Preach’d Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday the 21st of February, 1717. London: J. Downing, 1718.
Boucher, Jonathan. A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; in
Thirteen Discourses, Preached in North America between the Years 1763 and 1775: With an
Historical Preface. London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797.

Boulter, Hugh. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 16th of February, 1721. London: J. Downing, 1722.
Bradford, Samuel. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday the 19th of February, 1719. London: J. Downing, 1720.
Bray, Thomas. A Memorial, Representing the Present State of Religion, on the Continent of
North-America. London: William Downing, 1700.

[Browne, Arthur]. Remarks on Dr. Mayhew's, Incidental Reflections, Relative to the Church of
England, as Contained in his Observations on the Charter, and Conduct of the Society.
Portsmouth: D. Fowle, 1763.

Burke, Edmund. Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq., on Moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with
the Colonies, March 22, 1775. 2nd ed. London: J. Dodsley, 1775.

Butler, John. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 20, 1784. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1784.
Butler, Joseph. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 16, 1738-9. London: J. Downing, 1739.

279
[Caner, Henry]. A Candid Examination of Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and
Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Interspers’d with a
Few Brief Reflections upon some other of the Doctor’s Writings. Boston: Thomas & John Fleet,
1763.

Chandler, Edward. A Sermon Preach’d Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday the 20th of February, 1718. London: J. Downing, 1719.
Chandler, Thomas Bradbury. The Appeal Defended: Or, the Proposed American Episcopate
Vindicated, in Answer to the Objections and Misrepresentations of Dr. Chauncy and Others.
New York: Hugh Gaine, 1769.

–––. The Appeal Farther Defended; in Answer to the Farther Misrepresentations of Dr.
Chauncy. New York: Hugh Gaine, 1771.

–––. An Appeal to the Public, in Behalf of the Church of England in America. New York: James
Parker, 1767.

–––. Free Examination of the Critical Commentary on Archbishop Secker’s Letter to Mr.
Walpole. New York: Hugh Gaine, 1774.

–––. The Life of Samuel Johnson, D.D., the First President of King’s College, in New-York,
Containing Many Interesting Anecdotes. New York: T. & J. Swords, 1805.

[Chandler, Thomas Bradbury]. An Appendix to the American Edition of the Life of Archbishop
Secker: Containing his Grace’s Letter to the Revd Mr Macclanechan, on the Irregularity of his
Conduct; with an Introductory Narrative. New York: Hugh Gaine, 1774.

Charles, Chauncy. The Appeal to the Public Answered, in Behalf of the Non-Episcopal Churches
in America. Boston: Kneeland and Adams, 1768.

–––. Compleat View of Episcopacy: As Exhibited from the Fathers of the Christian Church, until
the Close of the Second Century. Boston: Daniel Kneeland, 1771.

–––. A Letter to a Friend, Containing, Remarks on Certain Passages in a Sermon Preached, by

the Right Reverend Father in GOD, John Lord Bishop of Landaff, before the Incorporated
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Boston: Kneeland & Adams, 1767.

–––. A Letter to a Friend, Containing Remarks on Certain Passages in a Sermon, Preached by

the Right Reverend John, Lord Bishop of Landaff, Before the Incorporated Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts… With a Supplement, Containing an Answer to the
Plea of T. B. Chandler, D.D. of New Jersey, for American Bishops. London: S. Blandon, 1768.

–––. A Reply to Dr. Chandler’s “Appeal Defended”. Boston: Daniel Kneeland, 1770.

280
Clagett, Nicholas. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday, February 18, 1736. London: J. Downing, 1737.
Cleaver, William. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 21, 1794. London: S. Brooke, 1794.
Cooper, Myles. National Humiliation and Repentance Recommended, and the Causes of the
Present Rebellion in America Assigned, in a Sermon Preached Before the University of Oxford.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1777.

Cornwallis, Frederick. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-
Le-Bow, On Friday, February 20, 1756. London: J. Downing, 1756.
Cornwallis, James. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 15, 1788. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1788.
Courtenay, Henry Reginald. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church
of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on Friday February 21, 1800. London: S. Brooke, 1800.
Cresset, Edward. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 16, 1753. London: J. Downing, 1753.
Denne, John. Want of Universality no Just Objection for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts; A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 19th of February, 1730. London: J. Downing, 1731.
Doty, John. A Sermon Preached at the Opening of Christ's Church at Sorel in the Province of
Canada, on Sunday the 25th of December 1785. Montreal: Fleury Mesplet, 1786.

Douglas, John. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 15, 1793. London: S. Brooke, 1793.
Drummond, Robert Hay. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church
of St. Mary-Le-Bow, On Friday, February 15, 1754. London: J. Downing, 1754.
Eardley-Wilmot, John. Historical View of the Commission for Enquiring into the Losses,
Services, and Claims, of the American Loyalists, at the Close of the War between Great Britain
and her Colonies, in 1783: with an Account of the Compensation Granted to them by Parliament
in 1785 and 1788. London: J. Nichols, 1815.

281
Egerton, Henry. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 21st of February, 1728. London: J. Downing, 1729.
Egerton, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 18, 1763. London: J. Downing, 1763.
Ellys, Anthony. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 22, 1759. London: J. Downing, 1759.
Ewer, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 20, 1767. London: J. Downing, 1767.
Fleetwood, William. A Sermon Preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on
Friday the 16th of February, 1710/11. London: J. Downing, 1711.
[Fleming, Caleb]. The Claims of the Church of England Seriously Examined: in a Letter to the
Author of an Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. London: W. Nicholl, 1764.

[Galloway, Joseph]. A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great-Britain, and the
Colonies: with a Plan of Accommodation, on Constitutional Principles. New York: James
Rivington, 1775.

–––. Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion. In
which the Causes of that Rebellion are Pointed Out, and the Policy and Necessity of Offering to
the Americans a System of Government Founded in the Principles of the British Constitution, are
Clearly Demonstrated. London: G. Wilkie, 1780.

George, William. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 17, 1748. London: J. Downing, 1749.
Gilbert, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 17, 1743-4. London: J. Downing, 1744.
[Graham, John]. Some Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet Entitled A Letter from a Minister of the
Church of England, to his Dissenting Parishioners. [Boston]:n.p., 1733.

–––. Some Remarks upon a Second Letter from the Church of England Minister to his Dissenting
Parishioners. Boston: D. Henchman, 1736.

Green, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 19, 1768. London: J. Downing, 1768.

282
Greene, Thomas. Sermon Preach’d before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 21st of February, 1723. London: J. Downing, 1724.
Hallifax, Samuel. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 20, 1789. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1789.
Harcourt, Edward. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 16, 1798. London: S. Brooke, 1798.
Hare, Francis. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 21st of February, 1734. London: J. Downing, 1735.
Hayley, Thomas. Liberty of the Gospel Explained, and Recommended. A Sermon Preach’d
Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their
Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on Friday the 15th of February,
1716. London: J. Downing, 1717. 33-40
Hayter, Thomas. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 21, 1755. London: J. Downing, 1755.
Herring, Thomas. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 17, 1737-8. London: J. Downing, 1738.
Hinchliffe, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 16, 1776. London: J. Downing, 1776.
Hobart, Noah. Ministers of the Gospel Considered as Fellow-Labourers. A Sermon Delivered at
the Ordination of the Reverend Mr. Noah Welles. Boston: D. Henchman, 1747.

–––. A Serious Address to the Members of the Episcopal Separation in New-England.

Occasioned by Mr. Wetmore’s Vindication of the Professors of the Church of England in
Connecticut. Boston: J. Bushell and J. Green, 1748.

Horsley, Samuel. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 20, 1795. London: S. Brooke, 1795.
Hume, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 19, 1762. London: J. Downing, 1762.
Humphreys, David. An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts. Containing their Foundation, Proceedings, and the Success of their
Missionaries in the British Colonies, to the Year 1728. London: Joseph Downing, 1730.

283
Hurd, Richard. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 16, 1781. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1781.
Hutton, Matthew. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 21, 1745. London: J. Downing, 1745.
Inglis, Charles. A Sermon on Philip. III. 20, 21. Occasioned by the Death of Samuel Auchmuty,
D.D., Rector of Trinity Church, New-York, Preached March 9, 1777. New York: Hugh Gaine,
[1777].

[Inglis, Charles]. A Vindication of the Bishop of Landaff’s Sermon from the Gross
Misrepresentations, and Abusive Reflections, Contained in Mr. William Livingstone’s Letter to
his Lordship. New York: J. Holt, 1768.

Johnson, James. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 24, 1758. London: J. Downing, 1758.
[Johnson, Samuel]. A Letter from a Minister of the Church of England to his Dissenting
Parishioners. New York: John Peter Zenger, 1733.

–––. A Second Letter from a Minister of the Church of England to His Dissenting Parishioners,
in Answer to Some Remarks Made on the Former. Boston: n.p., 1734.

–––. A Third Letter from a Minister of the Church of England to the Dissenters. Containing some
Observations on Mr. J. G.’s Remarks on the Second. Boston: n.p., 1737.

Jones, William. “An Address to the British Government on a Subject of Present Concern
(1776).” In The Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev William Jones,
M.A., F.R.S., in Twelve Volumes. To Which is Prefixed, a Short Account of his Life and Writings,
edited by William Stevens, 12: 354-63. London: F. & C. Rivington, 1801.

–––. The Fear of God, and the Benefits of Civil Obedience: Two Sermons, Preached in the
Parish Church of Harwich in the County of Essex, on Sunday, June 21, 1778. London: J. & F.
Rivington, 1778.

–––. Memoirs of the Life, Studies, and Writings of the Right Reverend George Horne, D.D. Late
Lord Bishop of Norwich. To Which is Added, His Lordship’s Own Collection of his Thoughts, on
a Variety of Great and Interesting Subjects. London: G. C. & J. Robinson, 1795.

–––. Popular Commotions Considered as Signs of the Approaching End of the World. A Sermon,
Preached in the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury, on Sunday, September 20, 1789. London:
G. C. & J. Robinson, 1789.

284
[Jones, William]. One Penny-Worth of Truth, from Thomas Bull to his Brother John. [London?]:
n.p., [1792?].

Keene, Edmund. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 18, 1757. London: J. Downing, 1757.
Keith, George. The Doctrine of the Holy Apostles & Prophets the Foundation of the Church of
Christ, as it was Delivered in a Sermon at Her Majesties Chappel, at Boston in New-England,
the 14th of June 1702. Boston: Samuel Phillips, 1702.

–––. A Journal of Travels from New-Hampshire to Caratuck, on the Continent of North-America.

London: Joseph Downing, 1706.

–––. A Reply to Mr. Increase Mather’s Printed Remarks on a Sermon Preached by G. K. at Her
Majesty’s Chappel in Boston, the 14th of June, 1702. New York: William Bradford, 1703.

[Kennett, White]. An Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,
Established by the Royal Charter of King William III. London: Joseph Downing, 1706.

–––. The Lets and Impediments in Planting and Propagating the Gospel of Christ. A Sermon
preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their
Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on Friday the 15th of February,
1711/12. London J. Downing, 1712.
Keppel, Frederick. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday, February 16, 1770. London: J. Downing, 1770.
[Knox, William]. Extra Official State Papers. Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Rawdon, and
the Other Members of the Two Houses of Parliament, Associated for the Preservation of the
Constitution and Promoting the Prosperity of the British Empire, 2 vols. London: J. Debrett,
1789.

Law, Edmund. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 18, 1774. London: J. Downing, 1774.
Leng, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 17th of February, 1726. London: J. Downing, 1727.
Lisle, Samuel. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 19, 1747. London: J. Downing, 1748.
Livingstone, William. A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of
Landaff; Occasioned by Some Passages in his Lordship’s Sermon, on the 20th of February, 1767,

285
in which the American Colonies are Loaded with Great and Undeserved Reproach. New York:
printed for the author, 1768.

Lowth, Robert. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 15, 1771. London: J. Downing, 1771.
Lynch, John. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 20, 1735. London: J. Downing, 1736.
Madan, Spencer. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 15, 1799. London: S. Brooke, 1799.
Maddox, Isaac. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 15th of February, 1733. London: J. Downing, 1734.
Manners-Sutton, Charles. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church
of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on Friday February 17, 1797. London: S. Brooke, 1797.
Markham, William. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 21, 1777. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1777.
Mather, Increase. Some Remarks on a Late Sermon Preached at Boston in New England, by
George Keith, M.A., Shewing that his Pretended Good Rules in Divinity, are not Built on the
Foundation of the Apostles & Prophets. Boston: Nicholas Boone, 1702.

Mawson, Matthias. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday, February 18, 1742-3. London: J. Downing, 1743.
Mayhew, Jonathan. A Defence of the Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Against an Anonymous Pamphlet. Boston: R. &
S. Draper, 1763.

–––. Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts, Designed to Shew their Non-Conformity to Each Other. Boston: Richard &
Samuel Draper, 1763.

–––. Remarks on an Anonymous Tract, Entitled An Answer to Dr. Mayhew’s Observations on the
Conduct and Charter of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Being a
Second Defence of the Said Observations. Boston: R. & S. Draper, 1764.

Moore, John. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 15, 1782. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1782.

286
Moore, John. Of the Truth and Excellency of the Gospel. A Sermon preach’d before the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish
Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on Friday the 20th of February, 1712/13. London: J. Downing,
1712.
Moss, Charles. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday, February 21, 1772. London: J. Downing, 1772.
Nelson, William. Life of Dr. George Bull, Late Lord Bishop of St. David’s, with the History of
those Controversies in which he was Engaged. London: Richard Smith, 1713.

Newcome, Richard. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday, February 20, 1761. London: J. Downing, 1761.
Newton, Thomas. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday, February 17, 1769. London: J. Downing, 1769.
North, Brownlow. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 20, 1778. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1778.
Osbaldeston, Richard. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-
Le-Bow, On Friday, February 21, 1752. London: J. Downing, 1752.
[Park, James Allan]. Memoirs of William Stevens, Esq.. London: The Philanthropic Society,
1812.

Pearce, Zachary. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
On Friday the 20st of February, 1729. London: J. Downing, 1730.
Peters, Samuel. A Sermon, Preached at Charlotte Chapel, Pimlico, on Sunday the 25th of March,
1787, on the Death of Thomas Moffatt. London: D. & D. Bond, 1787.

[Peters, Samuel]. A General History of Connecticut, from its First Settlement under George
Fenwick, Esq. To its Latest Period of Amity with Great Britain; including a Description of the
Country, and many Curious and Interesting Anecdotes. London: Printed for the Author, 1781.

[Peters, Samuel?]. Reply to Remarks on a Late Pamphlet, Entitled A Vindication of Governor

Parr and his Council, &c. By J. Viator. London: John Stockdale, 1784.

Porteus, Beilby. A Review of the Life and Character of Archbishop Secker. [New York]: [Hugh
Gaine], [1773].

287
–––. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, on
Friday February 21, 1783. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1783.
Pretyman, George. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, on Friday February 17, 1792. London: S. Brooke, 1792.
Price, Richard. Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of
Making it a Benefit to the World. London: n.p., 1784.

–––. Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice
and Policy of War with America. London: T. Cadell, 1776.

[Priestley, Joseph]. An Address to Protestant Dissenters of all Denominations, on the

Approaching Election of Members of Parliament, with Respect to the State of Public Liberty in
General, and of American Affairs in Particular. London: Joseph Johnson, 1774.

Pusey, E. B. The Church, the Converter of the Heathen: Two Sermons Preached in Conformity
with the Queen’s Letter in Behalf of the SPG. Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1838.

Reynolds, Richard. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-
Bow, On Friday the 16th of February, 1727. London: J. Downing, 1728.
[Richmond, Richard]. Reverend Brethren, you will Herewith Receive the Letter of our Most
Gracious Sovereign…. [n.p.]:[1779?].

Ross, John. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow,
on Friday February 18, 1785. London: T. Harrison and S. Brooke, 1785.
Rufford, Francis. Compassion to Men's Souls the Greatest Charity; and the Necessity of a
Subscription for the Support and Relief of Missionaries. Worcester: E. Berrow, 1779.

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