Church and state in Massachusetts, 1691-1740

Preface

Six years ago I was working on a brief study of the ecclesiastical development of provincial Massachusetts, to present as a master's thesis at the University of Illinois. In putting together the material I was struck with the fact that there were some broad empty spaces in the story of the gradual encroachments on the old Puritan system by religious dissenters. By the middle of the eighteenth century Anglicans, Baptists and Quakers were all recognized in ecclesiastical law and possessed certain privileges, but the process by which these results had been gained was not clear. Histories of New England Baptists showed that the real work of this sect was practically limited to the second half of the century; local histories of Anglican churches recounted the efforts of the Massachusetts Churchmen; but neither explained the steps by which all three groups gained a fairly comfortable status in Massachuset^*^; law before the middle of the eighteenth century.

A solution of this problem has been found in the early records of the Society of Friends in New England and in London, The best collection of New England Quaker records, the minutes of the New England Yearly Meeting and of the Rhode Island Quarterly, are in the library of the Moses Brown School at Providence. Others may be found at the Newport Historical Society, the New Bedford meeting house and the meeting house at Lynn. All have been used again and again for local and genealogical purposes but rarely for any general study. In every case they show so close a connection between the Quakers of Massachusetts and those of England that the records of the London Yearly Meeting and the London Meeting for Sufferings are essential for a clear understanding of what the New England Quakers of the early eighteenth century were doing. At Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, the records of the London Quakers are preserved in the Friends' Referi CHUKCH AND STATE IN MASSACHUSETTS [458

ence Library and tell a story of astonishing Quaker activity, of which the work done for New England was but a small part.

I wish to express grateful appreciation to the members of the Society of Friends who put their time at my disposal and made it possible for me to use the various Quaker records. Here I would mention especially Dr. Edward T. Tucker of New Bedford, Dr. Seth K. Gifford of the Moses Brown School at Providence, and Norman Penney of the Friends' Reference Library in London.

Aside from the Quaker collections my materials have been found in the State House at Boston, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England Baptist Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the John Carter Brown Library at Providence, Essex Institute at Salem, Bristol County (Mass.) Court House at Taunton; and in London at the S. P. Gr. House, the British Museum, Dr. Williams' Library, the library of Fulham Palace, the Public Record Ofl&ce, and the ofiflce of the Privy Council.

I especially want to acknowledge the courtesy and kindness of Mr. C. F. Pascoe who made it possible for me to use the letters and journal of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Rev. Sadler Phillips who put at my disposal certain boxes of papers belonging to the library of the Bishop of London.

For constant assistance and advice I am indebted to Professor Evarts B. Greene of the University of Illinois, under whose direction this study has been completed.

Susan Maetha Reed.

Lake Erie College^

September, 1914.

Contents

PAGE

Preface 3

CHAPTER I Introduction 7 CHAPTER H The Ecclesiastical System of Provincial Massachusetts 19

CHAPTER HI Opposing Elements 35

CHAPTER IV The System in Practice 50

CHAPTER V The Quakers and Their Allies 86

CHAPTER VI The Church of England 148

Conclusion 190

Index 203

CHAPTER I.

Introduction

The year 1691 opens the second period in the constitutional history of Massachusetts. From the coming of the Puritan settlers of the town of Boston in the stirring days of Charles I's reign to the last years of the restored Stuarts, the Bay Colony had nothing more elaborate than the old charter of 1629 as its instrument of government. This was not primarily a document for the governing of a colony but the charter of a commercial company, organized by certain English Puritans with a view of settling the Massachusetts shore, but not then ready to state their purpose of becoming colonizers. With the sudden transformation of the stockholders of the IMassachusetts Bay Company into settlers of Massachusetts Bay, this charter, carried across the Atlantic, became the source of authority in the local administration of affairs, and by a gradual process of stretching and adapting its provisions to suit the new conditions it was made to serve as a colonial constitution for over lialf a century. In this way an unusual degree of independence was maintained by the local authorities, and the spirit of the leaders in this Puritan experiment in government became strongly fastened on the manners of the colony. A governor and council as well as an assembly were elected by the freemen of the colony, and the legislative body kept up the traditions of the first-comers in maintaining a theocratic and exclusive form of government which was fully developed and fairly aggressive by 1660.

This in itself was irritating to the restored Stuarts, who were suspicious of an independent colonial government so thoroly Puritan; but the attack which was begun upon Massachusetts in Charles II's reign was primarily economic. The Navigation Acts of England were fashioned to produce a more efficient commercial system throughout the empire. To promote this scheme, every province must bury its individual advantage for the good of the whole, — a thing which the colony of Massachusetts Bay was not content to do. The resistance to authority which Massachusetts offered, with other evidences of an independent spirit, was the cause of the investigation ordered in the colony in the sixties, of the coming of Edward Randolph as royal agent, and of the subsequent quo warranto proceedings which resulted in the loss of the charter. Pending the organization of a strong royal government, Massachusetts during part of the year 1686 was under the authority of a governor and council appointed by the king. Then followed its incorporation in the Dominion of New England, a territory planned to embrace all the broad lands lying between the Delaware and the St. Lawrence, and placed in the hands of Sir Edmund Andros as governor and representative of the royal prerogative of the later Stuarts. Widespread dissatisfaction with the Andros regime found a chance to express itself when the news of the English revolution of 1688 reached Boston, and the royal government was then overthrown.

In the meantime Increase Mather, who had been dispatched to England as the representative of Massachusetts in the general resistance to Andros, had been making every effort in frequent audiences with James and later with William to secure the old charter once more. This proved impossible and inadvisable; all that remained was to attempt to obtain a new charter from William and Mary wliich should reserve to the governing powers of Massachusetts as much as possible of their former rights and privileges. The result was the province charter of 1691 which opened the second period of Massachusetts history. During the interim between the overthrow of Andros and the arrival of the new charter a temporary government along the old lines managed affairs but gave way to the new regime when the second charter reached Boston. The method of reorganization in Massachusetts indicates the extent to which William III continued the colonial policy bequeathed him by the Stuarts. In the charter of 1691 Massachusetts, which now included Plymouth, was made a royal province. The governor was to be appointed by the king and to possess an extensive veto power, while the king himself held the further right of refusing colonial legislation. By these means the authority of the General Court would be much limited and the province would be forced to fall in line to a certain extent with the wishes of the English government. The old order suffered severely by these limitations of its political power. It suffered also as an ecclesiastical state through a change in the francliise. ,The older rule of church membership as a qualification for voting now gave place to a property qualification, and many persons formerly excluded now had a voice in the government. Thus it came about that Massachusetts began the second period of her history with an enlarged boundary and under a royal government, on aristocratic lines as before, but no longer as a theocracy. The influence of the new government on the relation between church and state was soon to become apparent.

The Massachusetts charter, as we have seen, illustrates the way in which William III followed the colonial policy of the last two Stuarts in its political and economic phases. William believed, as had the Stuarts, that the well being of the empire lay in the enforcement of the Navigation Acts; he believed that colonial governments which had shown a tendency to resist such law in a spirit of independence must be controlled, and that the way to do this was to be found in uniting them and bringing them more closely under the crown. In the reign of Charles II there had appeared some indications of a desire to advance a religious policy, suggesting the ambitions of Archbishop Laud in the days of Charles I. That unity, so desirable in the administration of the colonies, might be forwarded by supporting the missionary work of the Anglican Church in the British possessions beyond the seas, and by means of the establishment of Episcopacy as the state church throughout the colonial empire the royal government might have a definite hold upon the colonies. That variety in religious forms and creeds, which was characteristic of British America, was increasing the growth of particularism which the authorities at home were anxious to prevent, as it made more difficult the problems of administration. It is doubtful if such a plan was ever frankly recognized as a governing policy. Certain it is that while the commercial greatness of England was an object which each reigning house and each political party came more and more to seek, the enforcement of such a religious policy as this depended too much upon the attitude of monarch or chief minister toward the English Church.

If such a scheme was in existence, hdng dormant, at the accession of William and Mary, it was not to be called to activity by a representative of Dutch Protestantism and low churchmanship. Succeeding reigns, which adhered to the enforcement of British imperial control over the political and economic life of the colonies, were inconsistent in ecclesiastical affairs. This side of colonial policy was for the most part neglected during the century introduced by the coming of William of Orange except under Queen Anne. The reign of William and Mary was in this way a disappointment to the English Church, and much more so was the period of the early Georges, when the Church in its enterprises over the seas received little sympathy from Walpole. For this reason the Church of England, during the greater part of this time, found itself on almost the same footing in the colonies as any one of the dissenting sects. The laws which proclaimed an establishment at home were not generally considered as extending to the colonies. Whatever attempts were made to advance Episcopacy in the provinces belonged not to the government but to the Church itself, working through individuals and organizations in both England and America, and only on rare occasions assisted by governmental authority.

While the government failed to carry out the plan of promoting the Church in the colonies, the Church itself turned to the matter with zeal. Beginning with the efforts of the Bishop of London, acting as diocesan of the colonies, and continued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S. P. C. K.), under the influence of Dr. Bray, the work culminated in the formation of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S. P. G.), which was to devote itself entirely to the British possessions beyond the seas. In the reign following that of William and Mary, when the influence of Queen Anne was cast on the side of the Society, it made a real beginning and grew rapidly.

The Church of England's enthusiastic interest in missionary work among the colonies of British America had no counterpart in any of the other Protestant sects of the mother country except the Quaker body. At the opening of the eighteenth century the Protestants of England outside of the Anglican Church were divided among four important denominations, — Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist and Quaker,— and these sects possessed certain differences which distinguished them from one another as clearly as from the established church. Closest to the Church of England were the Presbyterians who still favored a state church but disapproved of much of the form and ceremony which the Anglicans maintained. The Congregationalists, with doctrinal views which were little different from those of the Presbyterians, denounced the theory of a church establishment, and were therefore more in sympathy with the Baptists than with the Presbyterians, except in theology. The Baptists, the term covering a number of dissenting groups which traced their origin to the continent, were more radical in their treatment of the ideas of the Keformation than any of the other nonconformists except the Quakers. The latter far surpassed them, standing alone as the Protestants of Protestants, unique in belief, in an exclusive attitude toward other Christians, and in their customs. During the last decade of the seventeenth century the leaders of the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, the two sects having most in common, made some earnest attempts to unite on a single platform, but neither group as a whole responded with enthusiasm, and the plan fell through. The same fate met another scheme for bringing together Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists into a loose union. Through all these years the Presbyterians were the most favored by the Church and were far more inclined to compromise in matters of form and ceremony than the more rigid Baptists and Congregationalists who accordingly looked upon them with some distrust.

Union among these three bodies of dissenters was apparently impossible, and as time went on it became evident that they were less numerous and less vigorous than their early history had predicted. They were no longer growing rapidly, adding to their ranks at the expense of the Church of England, as they had in earlier days; they were at odds with one another and they were torn with religious controversy, each within itself. In the last decade of the seventeenth century came the lengthy discussion connected with the various attempts made to secure the passage of a comprehension bill which would make it possible for many of the nonconformists to be gathered again into the national church. When this failed, bringing out the points of difference rather than of likeness among Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists, and the impossibility of broadening the Church so as to include any great number of them, they were almost immediately overtaken by the reactionary legislation of the early eighteenth century. After their vain struggle, during Queen Anne's reign, to oppose the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts which seriously limited the political sphere and educational advantages of all who were not Churchmen, many gave up the position they had held as too costly a luxury. The great men of the first generation had not been followed by others of so high a degree of eminence, able to lead their followers in the face of changed conditions, and many of the prominent nonconformists, when convinced that no method of comprehension could be arranged, or when occasional conformity was made illegal, returned to the Anglican Church. Finally, the reign of Queen Anne was hardly ended when the anti-Trinitarian controversy became acute, stretching over a period of many years and dividing the ranks of the nonconformists once more, now on new lines. Real vigor and unity were conspicuously lacking in the three English nonconforming sects which traced their origin to the Reformation.

The case of the Quakers was very different. By the second quarter of the eighteenth century their strangely rapid decline had begun but in George I's reign it was not yet apparent that their days of steady growth were numbered, and these years mark for them a period of great vigor as a religious body and as a political force. Actual persecution was now a thing of the past, and they were living like the other dissenters under the Toleration Act. In wealth and political influence they occupied a position second only to that of the established church. Their political power should in large measure be traced to their strongly centralized organization over which the London Yearly Meeting exercised supreme authority. Difficulties carried by weekly and monthly meetings to this central body were turned over by it to the Meeting for Sufferings which in frequent sittings considered all subjects with due care and took active measures for redress. Through numerous wealthy and prominent members who were close to the government in William's reign the ear of authority was reached with little difficulty. It was in Quakerism ' that the Anglican Church of the late seventeenth century saw its most dangerous adversary and in the Quaker doctrine read a statement of belief which it looked upon as non-Christian and attacked accordingly. The conversion of the Quakers of England was one of the purposes of the S. P. C. K., while work among the Quakers of the colonies was an important object of the S. P. G.

The duel between the Quakers and the Anglicans in the colonies, each backed by a powerful influence at home, the London Yearly Meeting and the English Church, became a leading feature of the ecclesiastical situation in

America in the early eighteenth eentiny. The period saw the highest point in numerical strength which Quakerism reached in America as well as in England, and it saw also the most important strides taken by the Church of England in the colonies between the Restoration and the Declaration of Independence. Successful attempts were made to establish Episcopacy by law in several colonies, and Anglican churches, the result of missionary enterprise, sprang up in the whole line of English settlements from New England to the West Indies.

While the other nonconformists were relatively stronger in the colonies than in England, they were, as in the mother countrj^, less influential on the whole than the Society of Friends. The various sects had little or no official support from parent groups at home and were even more disunited than they. Of these the Presbyterians were to be found in no great numbers as yet for the chief Presbyterian immigration, that from Scotland and Ireland, belongs to a later period. The Baptists of the colonies were more closely allied with the Quakers than with either Congregationalists or Presbyterians, for their insistence on the separation of church and state placed them at odds with the nonconforming established churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The latter, which called themselves Congregational but were usually known as Presbyterian or Independent, had drifted so far from any corresponding group in England that they were looked upon rather unsympathetically by English nonconformists, especially because of the extremes in ecclesiastical legislation of which both colonies were guilty.

The weakening of the tie between the nonconformists of England and New England had come gradually and through no voluntary act on the part of either. It had come in spite of a friendly intercourse between the leaders on the two sides of the Atlantic. Increase Mather was as closely associated with the nonconformists of England as with those of his native land; many of the New England ministers of 1700 had visited England or corresponded with nonconformists at home and the works of English divines were read eagerly in Massachusetts. One primary cause for the independent growth of the churches of New England was the lack of a central organization binding them to the churches of the mother country, as existed in the case of the Anglican and Quaker bodies. Founded independently by the two branches of English dissent, the Nonconformists proper and the more radical Independents, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth had kept in close touch with the English Puritans through the Civil War and Commonwealth periods because of their common cause at a stirring time. Only with the Restoration came the dissolution of the bond of interest that united New England with nonconformity at home, and in view of the lack of a governing system held in common, it is small wonder that the two divisions fell gradually apart. There was no longer the exciting interest in a great common cause, an interest stimulated by the conditions in the last years of Charles I's reign; nor was there the common excitement which belonged to the period of the Civil War in England when many of the New England Puritans returned to enter the army.

From the Restoration on the nonconformists of England and New England had diverse interests and developed differently. On the Massachusetts shore the two Puritan colonies grew more and more closely together and worked out a system of church and state government which drew inspiration from both Plymouth and the Bay. At the time of the province charter, which joined Plymouth to its larger neighbor, the final compromise was effected and the two systems merged into one. This w^as the basis of Massachusetts ecclesiasticism in the eighteenth century. At the same time the aggression of outside forces was helping to weld together more firmly the members of the "standing order." Such was the coming of the Quakers with the conversion to Quakerism of many persons of the Massachusetts towns who had already given evidence of a varying form of theology. A little later the recognition of the

Church of England worship in Boston, in James II's reign, tended to increase that rigidity in theology and ecclesiasticisni which was a characteristic of the second and third generations of New England nonconformity. This development in Massachusetts failed to attract much attention from the English nonconformists who would not have been very sympathetic toward it ; and conditions in England, already described, were in the meantime holding their attention and giving them interests which made little appeal to New England Congregationalism. The discussion connected with the comprehension bill emphasized distinctions between Anglican and Puritan which New England had taken for granted and had no desire to minimize. The reactionary legislation of Queen Anne's reign did not extend to the colonies. The anti-Trinitarian movement, which convulsed England in the early eighteenth century, bad no great effect in New England until almost a century later. From these ecclesiastical and theological contests waged in England during the reign of William and Mary and that of Anne New England Congregationalism was therefore well nigh free, and in proportion to this freedom it hardened and narrowed, drawing apart and caring little for the constantly developing and increasingly liberal dissent of England.

In spite of this failure on the part of New England nonconformity to maintain a close union with the dissenters in England, the strength of the state church in both Connecticut and Massachusetts was such that Quakerism made but sliglit inroads in the former and in the latter was pushed out into the border counties. For this reason the Church of England, when planted in Connecticut, was facing not the Quakers but rather the strongly established Congregational system. Massachusetts, on the other hand, offers the unique case of a three-cornered combat in which the two bodies which possessed most vigorous support at home and were victorious, one or the other, in most of the middle and southern colonies, were here outnumbered and long defied. Their adversaries, the Congregationalists, while not receiving systematic, organized help from a parent group abroad, were so united and so rigid that for a long time they were able to deny any concessions.

Altho the New England nonconformists were not receiving direct aid from the dissenting bodies in England they were supported indirectly by William's government. The Massachusetts province charter itself indicated the extent to which sympathy might be expected from this Dutch Protestant ruler who was frankly disappointed in the failure of the comprehension bill and in his inability to do better for the English nonconformists than to secure the Toleration Act. The new charter, the work of Increase Mather, under the authority of William, specified that liberty of conscience should be allowed throughout the province, and no special recognition of the Church of England was demanded. It failed therefore to support the encroachments of Episcopacy which had appeared in the previous decade, aided by Randolph and Andros. The next few years saw the allowance by the king in council of Massachusetts legislation which practically renewed the ecclesiastical system of the seventeenth century. While to a certain extent continuing the methods of the Stuarts in dealing with political and economic problems in New England, William was not ready to make great use of the English Church as an agent in accomplishing his object.

The opposition to the established church of Massachusetts which had been opened by the intruders of the midseventeenth century was renewed soon after 1691 and now had an altered basis for attack in the terms of tlie new charter. The Quakers were the first to enter the conflict, drafting appeals to the governor and to the Friends of London before the S. P. G. had even been organized. They were regularly supported by the Baptist churches of the province, but the assistance thus given them was meager, as the r»aptists were not a numerous sect in New England until after the religious revival of the middle of the century known as the Great Awakening. The Anglican invasion of Massachusetts, pushed forward after the founding of the S. p. G., was an important factor in the progress toward the new era, but was less effective than the Quaker movement for reasons that will appear. The work of Anglican and Quaker, while slow and diflficult, was aided by the low condition of spiritual vitality which New England experienced in the years immediately preceding the Great Awakening. The very absence of spiritual vigor demanded many laws to enforce customs which were now tending to lapse, as the people were no longer interested in maintaining the old standards. The elaborate ecclesiastical structure reared in order to meet the situation was artificial, and had no strength of its own to resist continued pressure upon it.

The nature of this artificial structure and the scheme of attack made against it by outside forces will be treated in the following discussion. As a study of institutions it places some emphasis upon the actual constitution of the Massachusetts church town at the highest point of its development and just before its disintegration began. As a study of English influence on colonial life it pays some attention to the political and religious forces at work in England to show what part they played in the events which occurred in Massachusetts.

CHAPTER II. The Ecclesiastical System op Provincial Massachusetts

The provinee of Massachusetts Bay offers an unusual field for the study of contending religious forces in America in the early eighteenth century. Against a stronghold of rigid church establishment, in the hands of nonconformists, 'two religious bodies, Anglican and Quaker, contended for years Avith little apparent effect but with ultimate success. In so doing they gradually broke down the Massachusetts ecclesiastical system which had come into being in the seventeenth century, had withstood the attacks of Antinomians, Baptists and early Quakers, had lapsed during the Andros regime but was later revived under the province charter. In elaborateness of detail and rigid formality the system reached its highest development in the first' quarter of the eighteenth century, in the years when organized attacks upon it caused it to draw its mantle of exclusiveness more closely, and before the attacking forces had begun to gain their demands. It Avas, therefore, under the provincial government and not during the colonial period that this eminence was attained, a fact surprising in view of the many ways in which the province charter created a new era.

Postponing for the moment a consideration of the structure of the Massachusetts system as it was formed in the seventeenth century and hardened in the early eighteenth, let us examine the status of the man who did not sympathize with the existing order in the period before the provincial government. Perfect sympathy, as expressed in church membership, was required as a qualification for admission to the privileges of the body politic under the first charter, and an increasing majority of the inhabitants of the colony were thus excluded from the franchise in spite of the results of the half-way covenant. Actual hostility, such as appeared in the views of certain dissenting sects which had crept in, was the attitude which the persecuting laws of the seventeenth century were framed to meet. Permitted more and more to lapse, these laws became a dead letter with the abrogation of the charter and under the governments which immediately succeeded. In the commission by which James II constituted a president and council for Massachusetts Bay, a "liberty of conscience" was ordered to "be allowed unto all persons," the Church of England to be "particularly countenanced and encouraged."^ While the Churchmen of Boston, under the leadership of Randolph and Mason, the only Anglicans on the council, failed to make hoped-for headway, the New England Quakers were recording their appreciation of the changed conditions when they met in the summer of 1686. "We enjoy outward Peace at present," they wrote to the London Yearly Meeting, "the parsecuting spirits being under contemp themselves, and much awed by the present Power in England, so that we enjoy our Meetings Peaceably."2 The injunctions issued to Dudley, when repeated in the Andros commission,^ resulted in very unusual concessions which were allowed to both of these hostile bodies. The progress which was made by the Episcopal group in Boston was among the causes of the attempt to regain the charter, as well as of the revolt against authority in 1689 ; the other religious sects were well satisfied in finding