_Church and Clergy_
The first tavern at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was kept by a deacon of
the church, afterwards, steward of Harvard college; and the relation
of tavern and meeting house did not end with their simultaneous
establishment, but they continued the most friendly neighbors. Licenses
to keep houses of entertainment were granted with the condition
that the tavern must be near the meeting-house--a keen contrast to
our present laws prohibiting the sale of liquor within a certain
distance of a church. Those who know the oldtime meeting house can
fully comprehend the desire of the colonists to have a tavern near at
hand, especially during the winter services. Through autumn rains and
winter frosts and snows the poorly built meeting house stood unheated,
growing more damp, more icy, more deadly, with each succeeding week.
Women cowered shivering, half-frozen, over the feeble heat of a metal
footstove as the long services dragged on and the few coals became
ashes. Men stamped their feet and swung their arms in the vain effort
to warm the blood. Gladly and cheerfully did the whole crowd troop from
the gloomy meeting house to the cheerful tavern to thaw out before
the afternoon service, and to warm up before the ride or walk home in
the late afternoon. It was a scandal in many a town that godly church
members took too freely of tavern cheer at the nooning; the only wonder
is that the entire congregation did not succumb in a body to the potent
flip and toddy of the tavern-keeper. In mid-summer the hot sun beat
down on the meeting house roof, and the burning rays poured in the
unshaded windows. The tap-room of the tavern and the green trees in
its dooryard offered a pleasant shade to tired church-goers, and its
well sweep afforded a grateful drink to those who turned not to the
tap-room. There are ever back-sliders in every church community; many
walked into the ordinary door instead of up the church alley. The
chimney seat of the inn was more comfortable than the narrow seat of
the "pue." The general court of Massachusetts passed a law requiring
all inn-keepers within a mile of any meeting house to clear their
houses "during the hours of the exercise." "Thus," Mr. Field says
wittily, "the townsmen were frozen out of the tavern to be frozen in
the meeting house." Our ancestors had no reverence for a church save as
a literal meeting house, and it was not unusual to transform the house
of God into a tavern. The Great House at Charlestown, Massachusetts,
the official residence of Governor Winthrop, became a meeting house in
1633, and then a tavern, the Three Cranes, kept by Robert Leary and
his descendants for many years. It was destroyed in June, 1775, in the
burning of the town.
The first revenue relinquished by the West India Company to the town
of New Amsterdam was the excise on wine, beer, and spirits, and the
sole condition made by Stuyvesant on its surrender was as to its
application, that the salaries of the Dominies should be paid from
it. For a year beginning November, 1661, the burghers of Esopus paid
a tax on liquor, the proceeds of which were used to build a parsonage
for the minister. St. Philip's church in Charleston, South Carolina,
was originally built by a tax of two pence a gallon on spirits imported
in 1670. Between 1743 and 1750 the public revenues of South Carolina
were all raised by three per cent duties on liquors, wines, sugar,
molasses, slaves, and imported dry-goods, and produced about forty-five
hundred pounds, of which one thousand pounds were devoted to paying the
salaries of ten ministers. The dedication of St. Michael's church in
Charleston, South Carolina, was followed by a great dinner, at which a
large amount of liquor was consumed.
Under such circumstances it could not be expected that the clergy would
be much troubled with scruples on the use of liquor, and the evidence
is that they were not. We must bear in mind that the use of liquors was
universal in those days. "Ordination Day" was almost as great a day
for the tavern as for the meeting house. The visiting ministers who
came to assist at the religious service of ordination of a new minister
were usually entertained at the tavern. Often a specially good beer
was brewed called "ordination beer," and in Connecticut an "ordination
ball" was given at the tavern--this with the sanction of the parsons.
The bills for entertaining the visitors for the dinner and lodging
at the local taverns are in many cases preserved. One of the most
characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. It runs:
To keeping ministers, £ s. d.
2 mugs toddy, 2 4
5 Segars, 5 10
1 pint wine, 3 9
3 Lodgings, 9
3 Bitters, 9
3 Breakfasts, 3 6
15 Boles punch, 1 10
24 Dinners, 1 16
11 bottles wine, 3 6
5 Mugs flip, 5 10
5 Boles Punch, 6
3 Boles Toddy, 3 6
The bill is endorsed with unconscious humor, "This is all paid for
except the Minister's Rum."
Here is another ordination bill:
30 Boles of Punch before the People went to meeting.
10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting.
44 Bowles of Punch while at dinner.
18 bottles of wine.
8 Bowles of Brandy.
Cherry rum [quantity not mentioned].
When the fathers met in synod at Cambridge in 1648, there was a liquor
bill in connection with the expense of the meeting. At the ordination
of Edwin Jackson in Woburn, 1729, the town paid for six and one-half
barrels of cider, 25 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of brandy, 4 gallons of
rum.
In the South the clergy were addicted to horse racing, gambling, and
drunken revels. One of them was for many years president of a Jockey
Club. They encouraged among the people the celebration of the sacrament
of baptism with music and dancing in which the clergymen took part, a
custom which shows signs of returning in England. One fought a duel in
a churchyard, another thrashed his vestry. One parson preached in his
stocking feet, one in his study coat, and one ran a distillery. Many
of them were appointed by the British government and by the Bishop of
London and they were affected by the irreligious listlessness and low
moral tone of the English church in the eighteenth century.
Alexander Graydon tells us that in his early days any jockeying,
fiddling, wine-bibbing clergyman not over-scrupulous about stealing
sermons was currently known as "a Maryland Parson." The Maryland clergy
are said to have been more vicious than those of Virginia. They raced
horses, hunted foxes, drank, gambled, joined in every amusement of the
planters and would extort marriage fees from the poor by breaking off
in the middle of the service and refusing to go on until paid.
One Dr. Beatty was acting as chaplain to an army of five hundred
men led by Franklin to defend the frontier against the French and
Indians after the burning of the Moravian mission at Gnadenhutten,
Pennsylvania. "Dr. Beatty complained to me," says Franklin, "that the
men did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. When they
were enlisted, they were promised, besides hay and provisions, a gill
of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, half in the
morning, and the other half in the evening; and I observed they were
as punctual in attending to receiving it; upon which I said to Mr.
Beatty, 'It is perhaps below the dignity of your profession to act as
steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out, and only just after
prayers you would have them all about you.'" The shrewd suggestion was
adopted by Dr. Beatty, and the philosophic Franklin says "Never were
prayers more generally and punctually attended; so that I thought this
method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for
non-attendance at divine service."
This chapter may well be concluded with the famous and oft quoted
letter of Cotton Mather to John Higginson:
"September ye 15, 1682.
"To ye Aged and Beloved Mr. John Higginson:
"There is now at sea a ship called the Welcome, which has on
board an hundred or more of the heretics and malignants called
Quakers, with W. Penn, who is the chief scamp, at the head of
them.
"The general court has accordingly given secret orders to
Master Malachi Huscott, of the brig Porpoise, to waylay the
said Welcome, slyly, as near the Cape of Cod as may be, and
make captive the said Penn and his ungodly crew, so that the
Lord may be glorified, and not mocked on the soil of this new
country with the heathen worship of these people. Much spoil
can be made by selling the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves
fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and we shall not only do
the Lord great service by punishing the wicked, but we shall
make great good for his minister and people.
"Master Huscott feels hopeful, and I will set down the news
when the ship comes back.
"Yours in ye bowels of Christ,
"COTTON MATHER."