The life and times of Bishop White

Front matter

jtvSi OF M;#f^

^"' 10 1925

/i

Preface

The career of Bishop White involves the history of the first half century of the American Episcopal Church. He was its first Bishop in the English line, and to him for fifty years fell the duty of guiding its growth and presiding over its councils. When he died in 1836, he was so well known that it was not thought necessary to write a biography in detail, and Dr. Wilson's Memoir is the only attempt that has been made to set forth his individual career. Bishop Perry has rendered invaluable service in gathering up and putting into print the documentary ecclesiastical history of the period ; but, so far as I know, this is the first attempt that has been made to give a personal portrait of this great Church leader, and to show what part he had in the civil and religious life of the times in which he lived.

Bishop White was not a voluminous letterwriter, and most of his contemporaries passed away without putting on paper their impressions of him, so that the painting of his portrait has

11 PREFACE.

not been an easy task. Had it not been for the excellent memory of his great-granddaughter, Mrs. Elizabeth White Reed, the widow of the lamented Prof. Henry Reed, and for the comprehensive knowledge of the Bishop's life and times possessed by his great-grandson, Mr. Thomas H. Montgomery, this work would have greatly lacked in such colour and in such accuracy of detail as it has. The materials have been gathered from free access to Bishop White's manuscripts, from Dr. Bird Wilson's ** Memoir," from his own very full '* Memoirs of the Church," and from the biographies of his later contemporaries.

There are three notable portraits of Bishop White, — the one by Gilbert Stuart, painted when he was first consecrated to the Episcopate ; the one which has been engraved by John Sartain, and represents him as the Chaplain of the Continental Congress ; and the one made by Inman in his extreme old age, which has been chosen for reproduction, because it best presents him in his official character.

J. H. W.

Brookline, Mass.

Contents

Chapter Page

Introduction by Bishop Potter v

I. Early Life 1 1

Introduction

Next in interest to the story of beginnings is the story of transplantations. We turn with inexhaustible curiosity to see how it was that a small people became great, — that a few wise and courageous souls led the way in lifting a nation out of ignorance and barbarism up to the high places of the world, out of bondage and poverty up to wealth and power. And the same story only grows more interesting when it takes on that other form in which a nation or a race illustrates its out-populating power in colonization. Indeed, in some aspects of it, this study is more interesting than the other; for however much or little one may hold with Buckle as to the modifying, if not formative, influences upon nations of climate, soil, and the other characteristics of environment, it can never cease to be interesting to note how far race-characteristics, and, above all, great moral and spiritual ideas, have survived exportation, and what inherent force they have revealed to illustrate themselves — to grow and flourish — in a new country.

It is this which will always make the story of the English colonization of America of pre-eminent in-

VI INTRODUCTION.

terest. There are few peoples whose insular position and traditions have made their distinctive traits more marked or characteristic. Indeed, there is no parallel in history to the sturdy dominance of those traits, or the cool and resolute indifference, whether to ridicule or resistance, with which the Englishman has not only transported himself but everything, even to his beer and his bath-tub, to the remotest regions and the most inhospitable climes. In these he has still maintained his undimmed attachment to his fatherland, and his persistent maintenance of its speech and customs. Those of other lineage emigrate, and leave their language and their customs more or less largely behind them. Even Oriental peoples let go their most cherished usages. But the Englishman compels other nations to speak his tongue, to learn his ways, and so, at any rate, to respect his race-attachments.

Colonization has illustrated this fact, both by what it has perpetuated and by what it has modified. And this is the significance of the English transplantation to these shores. In one aspect of it, it was a revolt ; in another, it was a reproduction of the best life of a great nation in what we who are Americans believe to have been nobler and larger forms. The Puritan recoil against ecclesiastical intolerance did not indeed express this in form, but it included it in fact ; for where it pressed for freedom in one direction, it unconsciously affirmed the righteousness of that freedom in others. If it be said that the note of religious tolerance was not expressed in the Puritan

INTRODUCTION. Vll

settlement, it must also be said that the germ of it was present in the lines which determined that settlement. And so with all the rest. The Puritan ideas of civil government, of the family, of personal rights, were not ours ; but they were the soil out of which, by no violent transition, these latter have come.

It is doubtful, however, whether they would have come so peacefully and so happily if it had not been for that providential ordering which, in grave emergencies, whether in Church or State, produced the men to meet them. It is impossible to remember the story of our first days, whether in the Colonies or in the Republic, without recognizing the deep and lasting influence for good of a few strong and wise men.

Of one of these this volume tells the story. It was the happy fortune, as men sometimes account such things, of the Church of which he became the Presiding Bishop, to possess in WiUiam White one with a singular adaptedness for a difficult and delicate task. An English subject by birth, and an American citizen by deliberate choice and adoption, he belonged to two hemispheres, and included in his beautiful and gracious personality the best traits of both. An English Churchman by baptism and inheritance, when the time came to be an American Churchman, he adjusted himself to his new relations without violence or inconsistency ; and in recognizing his obligations to his country, cast no scorn upon the Anglican motherhood from which, both in Church and State, he had sprung.

Vlll INTRODUCTION.

It was the union of these two which made the former especially odious to a vast majority of his American fellow-citizens. That they had grounds for their dislike of an Established Church, and their apprehension as to its possible encroachment upon their personal liberties, can scarcely be denied ; and yet when they proposed to dismiss the Church in which so many of them had been nurtured out of the horizon of their interest or loyal affection, because of their quarrel with the State, they were on the eve of a blunder the proportions of which, in view of the religious possibilities of the near future in America, it is not easy to estimate. For to-day it is beginning to be seen, as it never has been seen before, that the Church of which William White was a bishop has an office of reconciliation which no other body can even pretend to attempt. As one follows the Episcopate of White, it is impossible not to own that his clear and penetrating vision discerned this from afar. And to lay foundations with this larger outlook in view, was his great and unique office.

There have been those who have been ready to resent his prudence, to contemn what they called his excessive timidity, and to protest against what seemed his too easy temper of concession. But it is well to remember that he was confronting emergencies which might easily have had another issue than the one that, as a matter of fact, did come to pass, and that his position was one of pre-eminent difficulty and isolation. In the end his vvisdom and moderation, and his equal courage and humility, made a way for him

INTRODUCTION. ix

through all difficulties ; and he lived to see a great wish brought to the promise, if no more, of a noble conclusion. Without heat, without bitterness, with an inexhaustible patience and an often marvellous foresight, he made it possible for the Church of England to live again in her Republican daughter, and taught her clergy and laity how to be loyal to their glorious past, and yet sensitive and responsive to their more glorious future.

It is in the study of such a life that they who hope and believe great things for the Church which William White helped to transplant in her completeness to American shores, will find a clew to the problems that confront her to-day ; and it is therefore a timely office which the author of this volume has rendered to his fellow-Churchmen and his fellow-countrymen in placing it within their reach.

HENRY C. POTTER.

Diocesan House, New York.

St. Bartholomew's Day, 1892,

BISHOP WHITE.

Chapter. I. Early Life

The White family, like the Washington family, had the distinction of high character and excellent social rank. Both families had an eminent, if not distinguished, English ancestry, and it is as important in the one case as in the other that the two men, one of whom is rightly called the " Father of his country," and the other the Patriarch of the American Episcopal Church, should be traced to some extent in their English connections in order to give weight to their position in the American colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The English history of the family can be traced back through a period of more than three hundred years. The father of Bishop White came to this country in 1 72 1 as a boy to seek his fortune. He was the youngest son and the only member of his family who made his home in the new world. He kept up his intercourse by frequent letters with his three sisters, who shared warmly in their brother's ideas of liberty across the Atlantic. They were themselves Jacobite gentlewomen. The portraits of their parents, painted by Sir Godfrey

Kneller, were sent to their brother in Philadelphia in 1776, and are still in the custody of members of Bishop White's family. They are remarkable pictures. Mr. William White is dressed in the style of a gentleman of the Non- Jurying period in English history, and Elizabeth Leigh, who was apparently much younger than himself, is represented as in the prime of life. It is the portrait of a woman of energy and nerve, and Bishop White records that she had a great deal to do in developing the character of his own father when he was a mere lad in his English home. She was left a widow at an early age and remained such until her death in 1742, at the age of sixty-six.

Thomas White was only sixteen years old when he arrived in Maryland with a hundred guineas in his pocket. His father had been a dissipated man and had died early. He left his wife and six children, of whom Thomas was the youngest, in straitened circumstances. Young White became an apprentice to the clerk of the county of Baltimore, and at the end of his apprenticeship was appointed his deputy. He practically educated himself in the law, and was successful in his profession. He was frugal in his habits, and put all his spare money into lands which had not been taken up from the proprietary office. In addition to this, he was made a colonel of the county militia and appointed to the office of surveyor of the district. He speedily rose to a position of influence, and at the age of fortytwo removed to Philadelphia, where he married two years later as his second wife the widow of a Mr. Newman, who was of Quaker ancestry, but had always been a member of the Episcopal Church, and whose family had been all along connected with it. Concerning his father, who died in September, 1779, in his seventyfifth year, Bishop White wrote as follows : —

" My father left the world with the reputation of unsullied integrity through life; and I think I may say that he possessed a remarkably correct judgment of men and things. In his domestic character he was indulgent and exemplary. During the last twenty-two years of his life, he was so far a cripple, in consequence of a fall from a carriage, as to walk on two canes with handles. This kept him out of all society except such as could be had at his own hospitable table and fireside ; and, except in afternoons [that] of some of the principal gentlemen of the city, of his own age, who in those days habitually assembled at the public coffee-house for society merely." ^

His mother's maiden name was Esther Hewlings. She was a daughter and grand-daughter of wardens of St. Mary's Church, Burlington, the latter leaving the Society of Friends in the Keithian controversy. They were early settlers of West Jersey, under the purchase made by William Penn before the settlement of Pennsylvania. She had two children by this second marriage, William White and his sister Mary, who was one year younger than himself, and who became the wife of Robert Morris, the " financier of the Revolution." His mother dieei on the last day of the year, 1790, in her seventy-first year. Her son in a letter to Bishop Hobart says : " My mother, if I am not misled by partiality, possessed an excellent understanding, with

1 MS. Autobiography addressed to Bishop Hobart.

sincere but unostentatious piety." In further mention of her, he makes grateful acknowledgment of the early impression made by her religious instructions upon his young mind.

William White, who was to be in his early prime the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, in the line of the English succession, thus writes of his birth and of his earliest years : —

" It depends on a few hours whether I should be considered born in 1747 or 1748; being a man of Old Style, which began the year on the 25th of March, and I was born on the 24th ; so that the change of style brought my birthday to the 4th of April. At the age of seven, I was transferred from the school of a mistress to the English school of the newly erected College of Philadelphia, of which my father was a trustee, having been so from the beginning of the institution, under the name of an academy. The master of the school was Mr. Ebenezer Kinnersley, who often appears in the early works of Dr. Franklin as a co-operator with him in his electrical experiments. At about the age of ten years I went into the Latin school, under the mastership of Mr. Paul Jackson, a man considered as possessed of a fine genius and of classical attainments. Not long after my entrance into the school, he left it. This proved a misfortue to me ; it being found convenient to his successor, Mr. John Beveridge, a thorough grammarian, with little else to recommend him, to reduce the number of his classes. Inconsequence, I was elevated to the one above us, passing from the beginning of an easy book to the latter part of a difficult one to boys of our standing. I record the incident for the purpose of censuring this and every similar expedient for the hastening of boys through grammar schools, which is frequent. At the age of thirteen, our class being examined for college by the Provost and the Vice-Provost, although three were rejected, I was not one of them. Among the many incidents recollected by me of the sound discretion of my father there is his putting of his prohibition on my then entering of college. It was humiliating at the time, although softened by the permission, obtained at his request, that I should be with the now Head Class in the Latin School, in one part of the day only; the other part to be spent in the school in which arithmetic was taught, and in which usually one hour of the day only was spent by each class in its last year in the Latin school. Had it not been for this postponement, I should not have gone through college, as I trust I did, with reputation. There have since occurred frequent occasions of comparing the conduct of my father with that of others, much to their disadvantage. I was three years in college, my pupilage ending on my birthday in 1765, — which was the last day of examinations, although a month before the commencement ! '' ^

He was graduated just as he had completed his seventeenth year.

Dr. William Smith, who w^as Provost of the College when young White entered the lowest room of its academy and when he left it at graduation, was a prominent man in Philadelphia, and was associated with him as a trustee of the College from the year 1774. At a later time, when he had been elected by the convention of Maryland for the Episcopate of that State, Mr. White, who was then Bishop of Pennsylvania, refused to recommend him to the General Convention for this high office, and he adds : " To me his failure was prin-

^ MS. Autobiography.

cipally owing. My reasons are not detailed, partly because there has been no reproach cast on me on that account, and partly because, in our frequent collisions, I ought not to claim the commendation of an impartial narrator. During his subsequent years we were on very amicable terms." He evidently did not think that Dr. Smith was fitted in temperament and spirit for the Episcopal office, and it was characteristic of him that he was always entirely independent and honest in reaching his decision concerning actions in which he had to take responsibility. Dr. Smith was one of the leaders in the early organization of the Episcopal Church, and his failure to enter the Episcopate did not prevent his rendering efficient service in those early days.

His early inclination toward the ministry is illustrated by a story told by a lady a year and a half older than he was, who was his intimate playmate when they were both children. She used to say when she was herself advanced in life : —

" Billy White was born a bishop. I never could persuade him to play anything but church. He would tie his own or my apron around his neck for a gown and stand before a low chair which he called his pulpit; I, seated before him on a little bench, was the congregation, and he always preached to me about being good. One day I heard him crying, and saw the nurse running into the street, calling to him to come back and be dressed. He refused, saying, ' I do not want to go to dancing-school, and I won't be dressed, for I don't think it is good to learn to dance.' And that was the only time I ever knew Billy White to be a naughty boy." When this lady in his later life repeated these remmiscences of his childhood to the Bishop, they amused him, and he added that his mother, finding him so unwilling to learn to dance, gave it up, " though," he continued, " I am by no means opposed to others learning, if they like to dance." ^

His own account of himself after graduation is the best statement that can be given of the influence which led him to study for the ministry : —

" My leaving of the College, being at the point of time when the choice of a profession ought to be final, there shall be noticed the circumstances which led to its being in favour of the ministry. It may be recorded with truth, but let it be with humility and with sorrow for innumerable failures, and for the having fallen far short of what was due to the advantages of early years, that there is not recollected any portion of my life, during which I was altogether regardless of the obligations of religion, or neglectful of the duty of prayer. But in about the middle of my sixteenth year, there occurred some circumstances, particularly the decease of an amiable young lady of my own age, but in whom I had not felt any further interest than as an acquaintance of my sister. This event gave to my mind a tendency to religious exercises and inquiries, which were also promoted by its being understood that a visit was to be expected from the Rev. George Whitefield. His former visits had been principally before my birth ; and the last of them had been when I was too young to have retained the recollection of his person. His commg at this time caused religion to be more than commonly a subject of conversation, and this added to the existing tendency of my mind. I heard him with great delight in his wonderful elocution, although informed that it was greatly impaired by the state of his health, which had evidently affected his throat and had

1 Dr. Bird Wilson's Memoir, p. 21. 2 swelled his person, reported to have been naturally slender. Under this disadvantage, his force of emphasis and the melodies of his tones and cadences exceeded what I have ever witnessed in any other person." ^

Again he says : —

"Even before my graduation, and especially after it, the expectation of my being for the ministry had drawn to me the kind attentions of the clergy, particularly of Dr. Peters and Mr. Duch6, the rector and one of the assistant ministers of Christ Church and St. Peter's, to the former of which our family belonged. Although I shall always remember those two gentlemen with respect and affection, on account of their merits and their kindness to me, yet there was in each of them a singularity of religious character which lessened the profit of an intercourse with them. Dr. Peters was a native of England, and had come to this country nearly forty years before the time now spoken of. He was then a young clergyman, of a respectable family in Liverpool, of an excellent education, and of polished manners. It was said that his acquaintance had been cultivated by the genteel families of the city, but that, being no favourite with the then rector of Christ Church, the Rev. Archibald Cummings, he accepted from the Proprietary Government the secretaryship of the land office, which laid the foundation of a considerable fortune. He was also the secretary of a succession of governors, and continued to be of the governor's council until his decease. At an age turned of sixty, he gave up his lucrative offices and became more serious in religious concerns than at any former period of his life, although his morals had been correct, his attendance on public worship constant and solemn, and his preaching occasional. Soon after, the rectorship of the

1 MS. Autobiography.

church becoming vacant, by the decease of the Rev. Dr. Tenney, the successor of Mr. Cummings, Mr. Peters was chosen to it. The singularity alluded to was his adopting of the notions of Jacob Behmen and William Law, in consequence of which his sermons were not always understood. In social discourse he could be exceedingly entertaining on an ordinary and on any literary subject, especially if it regarded classical or historical learning. Yet, from the moment of turning the conversation to religion, he was in the clouds.

" Mr. Duche was of a respectable family in this city [Philadelphia]. He was in the first-class of graduates of our College, and having finished his studies in it with reputation, he spent some time in the English University of Cambridge. A remarkably fine voice and graceful action helped to render him very popular as a preacher. His disposition also was amiable. The greatest infirmity attending him was a tendency to change in religious sentiment. A few years after his ministerial settlement, he took to the mysticism of Jacob Behmen and William Law. From this he became detached for a time, and his preaching, which was more zealous than either before or after, seemed to me to border on Calvinism, although, probably, he was not av/are of or designed it. In this interval my personal knowledge with him began, and, having one day asked of him the loan of Law's works, then much talked of, I received a refusal, and the reason given being the danger he had formerly been in from the reading of those books. He relapsed, however, to the theory of the Mystics, and continued in it until the troubles [arose] which drove him from his native country. In England, he became a convert to the opinions of Baron Swedenborg, and in these he continued until his decease. ... In recollecting the pleasure taken in his conversation, I think myself singularly happy in not having been drawn by it from what then and ever since I have considered as correct views of our holy religion." i

No better account of his life while under the pastoral charge and spiritual direction of these revered clergymen can be found than that which he has himself furnished in the short autobiography already quoted from : —

" From the time of my graduation in May, 1765, to that of my going to England, October, 1 770, I employed myself in attention to sacred and other literature, perhaps not without some profit. Yet that portion of my life is now looked back on as what might have been much more improved by literary cultivation, and thus have prevented the deficiencies which have been the unavoidable result of a multiplicity of concerns. This is the proper place of recording the benefit received in conjunction with four other youths designed for the ministry, by a species of theological exercise, instituted on the proposal of the Rev. Dr. Smith, the Provost of the College. During three successive seasons and within the space of a few months of each, on Sunday evenings, these exercises were performed in the hall of the old College, then not much less in size than either of our two churches, and in the audience of numerous and respectable assemblies. The ground-work of what we wrote and delivered was the history of the Bible. On each evening two of our company delivered their compositions, previously corrected by the Provost, who afterwards enlarged on the subject. Although this was far from being a complete course of ecclesiastical study, it called to a variety of reading and to a concentration of what was read. There was also use in the introduction to public speaking. The young men with whom I was associated were Thomas Coombe, Thomas Hopkinson, brother of the late Judge Hopkinson, John Montgomery, and Joseph Hutchins."

^ MS. Autobiography.

This was the best substitute possible for a theological training at that time in the British colonies of North America.

In the absence of a bishop for the American colonies, all candidates for the Christian ministry in this country were obliged to go to England for ordination. The Bishop of London had nominal jurisdiction of the American clergy and parishes. Dr. Richard Terrick was then the Bishop of London, and William White embarked for England in October, 1770, to obtain orders at his hands. He was ordained deacon in the following December Ember season in the Royal Chapel, of which the Bishop of London was dean. He was not yet old enough to receive priest's orders, and continued about a year and a half in England, spending a great part of the time with two aunts, the sisters of his father, until he should reach the requisite age. His life with them and his journeys in different parts of England caused the time to pass rapidly and delightfully. It may here be further said of the family in England, with whom his father had kept up a constant correspondence since he came to this country, that his grandfather became so dissipated that he left his wife and six children without property. His widow was equal to the emergency, and had recourse to millinery for subsistence, and brought up her daughters to the same business. The eldest son became a silk mercer ; a younger son went out to the East Indies and soon died there ; the youngest of the family, who came to America, was the father of Bishop White. The three sisters, after losing their mother, the two married ones having in the mean time lost their husbands, Hved together, chiefly on jointures and annuities, purchased by their profit in business, in a genteel competency at Twickenham. It was to him that they bequeathed at death their entire estate, amounting to about ;£"3,ooo sterling. When young White made his first visit to England, one of the sisters had just passed away. Of the others he writes as follows : —

" I was received by the survivors, Miss White and Mrs. Weeks, as a son. They were excellent women, which was also the character of their deceased sister. The eldest in particular [has been] ever since considered by me as one of the finest women I ever knew. With an excellent understanding, exemplary piety, and great dignity of manner, she possessed the vivacity of youth at above the age of seventy." i