charges against him proving only too well-founded, he was deposed from the
council, and was glad enough to slip off back to England at the first
chance. Three years later, Dale of the iron hand came over fresh from the
Netherlands, and put religion, like everything else, under martial law.
The captain of the watch was made a sort of tithing-man, whose business it
was to preserve order and encourage godliness at the point of the bayonet.
It was his duty, half an hour before divine service, morning and evening,
to shut the ports and place sentinels, and, the bell having tolled for the
last time, to search all the houses, and to command every one (with the
exception of the sick and hurt) to go to church. This done, he followed
the guards with their arms into the church, where he laid the keys before
the governor. On Sunday he was ordered to see that the day was noways
profaned by any disorders.
The Ancient Planters were strict Sunday keepers. The earliest law decrees
"The Sabbath to be kept holy, that no journeys be made except in case of
emergent necessitie on that day, that no goods bee laden in boates, nor
shooteing in gunns or the like tending to the prophanation of the day."
The offender who disobeys this decree is sentenced to pay a fine of a
hundred pounds of tobacco or "be layd in the stocks."
Henry Coleman was excommunicated for forty days for scornful speeches, and
putting on his hat in church. The minister as well as the church was
protected by law from irreverence and disrespect. In 1653, it was ordered
by the court that, for slandering Rev. Mr. Cotton, "Henry Charlton make a
pair of stocks and set in them several Sabbath-days during divine service,
and then ask Mr. Cotton's forgiveness for using offensive and slanderous
words concerning him." A few years later, Mary Powell, for slandering a
minister, was sentenced to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders,
and to be banished the country. I tremble to think what would have been
the fate, had he fallen into episcopal hands, of the Puritan who spoke of
bishops as "proud, popish, presumptuous, paltry, pestilent, and pernicious
prelates;" and further as "impudent, shameless, and _wainscot-faced_." I,
for one, should have voted to take something from his punishment, on the
ground of his supplying the world with a new and most expressive phrase.
Maryland, liberal in all sectarian matters, strictly forbade calling names
such as "Heretick, Schismatick, Idolator, Papist, Antinomian, etc.," and
sentenced the offender to a fine of ten shillings. She also dealt
summarily with unbelievers. Her assembly ordained that "whatsoever person
or persons shall deny the Holy Trinity, or shall utter reproachful
speeches concerning the Trinity or any of the said persons thereof, shall
be punished with death and confiscation of land and goods to the Lord
Proprietary."
The first church in America was a very simple affair, an old rotten tent
set up in the Jamestown marsh under the pines and hemlocks. The soft May
weather made even so much shelter unnecessary, and it was replaced by an
awning stretched between the rustling boughs. But busy as the settlers
were, they set to work at once on a chapel built of logs and covered with
sedge and dirt, which in turn was replaced by a church of timber, fifty
feet long, by more than twenty in breadth. This finally was replaced by
the brick building whose ruined arches alone remain to tell its story.
When Lord De la Warre arrived in Virginia and found the colonists in
desperate straits, he wisely occupied their attention by setting them to
repair and refurnish the wooden church then in existence, and to decorate
it with flowers. Here during his government he worshipped in a degree of
state more fitting for a cathedral than for a wooden chapel in the
wilderness. He went to church in full dress, attended by his
lieutenant-general, admiral, vice-admiral, master of the horse and the
rest of the council, with a guard of fifty halberd-bearers in red cloaks
behind him. When the service ended, the procession filed out with as much
solemnity as it had entered, and escorted the Governor to his house.
Religious observances played an important part in the early days of the
settlement. The first statute made by an early legislative assembly,
requires that in every plantation some house or room be specially
dedicated to the worship of God, sequestered and set apart for that
purpose, and not to be of any temporal use whatever.
It is curious, in view of this last clause, to find it recorded of the
House of Burgesses itself: "The most convenient place wee could finde to
site in was the quire of the churche." Surely no place could have been
more appropriate for the gathering of the first free assembly of the
people in America, and it was equally fitting that their proceedings
should open with a prayer for guidance in the path which was destined to
be darker and more difficult than they knew. "Forasmuch as men's affaires
doe little prosper when God's service is neglected," a prayer was said by
Mr. Bucke, the minister, "that it would please God to guide and sanctifie
all our proceedings to His owne glory and the good of this Plantation."
If the church of that time was devoted to temporal uses, religious
services were not confined within its walls. Alexander Whitaker, the
apostle of Virginia, writes home that he _exercises_ at the house of the
governor, Sir Thomas Dale, every Saturday night. This "exercising," or
hearing of the catechism, with prayer and song, in private houses, was a
matter of necessity in days when a parish covered a space hardly to be
crossed in a day's journey, with the roads or bridle-paths choked with
undergrowth, and blocked by fallen logs. The Rev. Mr. Forbes seems to have
been of a complaining nature, yet he rouses one's sympathy when he tells
of the difficulties under which he labored.
"My parish," he says, "extendeth LX miles in length, in breadth about XI."
Over this distance were scattered some four hundred families, to whom he
was expected to minister. "Sometimes," he goes on plaintively, "after I
have travelled Fifty Miles to Preach at a Private House, the weather
happening to prove bad on the day of our meeting so that very few met, or
else being hindred by Rivers and Swamps rendred impassable with much rain,
I have returned with doing of nothing to their benefit or mine own
satisfaction."
Few clergymen of that day and region took their duties so seriously. They
were for the most part quite willing to have service read by some
deputy-priest or layman in the "chapels of ease;" or if they must
officiate, they chose some sermon from Thomas Fuller or Jeremy Taylor, or,
as a last resort, constructed one at small expense of labor on a
scaffolding of headings resting on an underpinning of text. A fine example
of this method of sermon-building I find in the discourse sent home by the
pious Whitaker. He takes as his text, "Cast thy bread upon the waters,"
and expounds it after this fashion:
"1. The dutie to be performed: _Cast thy bread._ Be liberal to all.
"2. The manner of bestowing alms: By _casting_ it away.
"3. What is to be given? _Bread_; all things needful, yes, and of the best
kind.
"4. Who may be liberal? Even those that have it. It must be _thy_
bread--thine own.
"5. To whom we must be liberal: To all; yea to the _Waters_."
This kind of sermon had the double advantage of being easy for the
preacher, and restful to the congregation. It went along at a comfortable
jog-trot, like a family horse, and the hearer was in no danger of being
hurled over the head of revival eloquence into lurid threats of future
punishment. If the preachers of the Church of England did not kindle
spiritual ardor, at least they did not keep children awake o' nights, nor
frighten nervous women into hysterics.
While these drowsy discourses were going on in the Southern colonies, the
Puritan divine in the New England pulpit was throwing off such cheerful
observations as these: "Every natural man and woman is born full of all
sin, as full as a toad is of poison, as full as ever his skin can hold;
mind, will, eyes, mouth; every limb of his body and every piece of his
mind." The future awaiting such a wretch, he sets forth vividly: "Thou
canst not endure the torments of a little kitchen-fire on the tip of thy
finger, not one-half hour together. How wilt thou bear the fury of this
infinite, endless, consuming fire in body and soul!" To these inspiring
doctrines of the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, another Puritan preacher added his
conviction that "there are infants in hell not a span long."
To the credit of the Colonial Church of England be it recorded that no
such sentiments disgraced its pulpit and made its Sabbath terrible to
little children. The day was one of innocent enjoyment, and the church
building was dear to generation after generation, as a peaceful and
memory-hallowed spot. The early settlers had little money to spend in
adorning their churches, yet from the beginning there was a great
difference between the bare and square wooden New England meeting-house
and the quaint Southern church of brick or stone, recalling in every line
the beloved parish churches of Old England. The churchmen, unlike the
Puritans, found no sin in beauty or adornment. St. John's Church at
Hampton bore the royal arms carved on its steeple. Colonel Springer left
by his will one thousand pounds of tobacco to pay for having the Lord's
Prayer and Commandments put up in the new church at Northampton. By a
statute of 1660, parishes are enjoined to provide at their own cost a
great church Bible and two books of Common Prayer in folio for the
minister and "clark"; also communion-plate, pulpit-cloth, and cushion,
"that all things may be done orderly and decently in the church."
In the next century, there is a record of an order sent to England for
gold-leaf to enrich a chancel, which was to be made gorgeous with an
original painting of an angel holding back a crimson curtain, draped with
a golden cord and tassel.
[Illustration: Y{e} Pulpit.]
The pulpits in the old churches were placed at an angle, if the church
were in the form of a cross; or if the building were an oblong on one
side. These pulpits were so high that, unless the preacher were very tall,
nothing could be seen by the congregation but the top of his head. Bishop
Meade confesses that when he was to speak from one of these old
box-pulpits, he would often hurry to church before his hearers, in order
to pile up bricks or boards on which to stand. The good bishop must
sometimes have found his thoughts sadly distracted from the sermon by the
necessity of keeping his balance on his improvised platform.
The sharp distinction of classes, which was so marked a feature of the
Cavalier Colonies, showed itself even in church. Certain pews were set
apart and marked "Magistrates" and "Magistrates' Ladies." Into these the
great folks marched solemnly on Sundays, followed by their slaves bearing
prayer-books, and never suspecting that their conduct was at variance with
gospel principles. The great families kept their private pews for
generations, and held firmly to their privileges. Matthew Kemp, as
churchwarden, was commended by his vestry for displacing "a presuming
woman, who would fain have taken a pew above her degree." In the very
earliest church, Lord De la Warre's seat was upholstered in green velvet
with a green "cooshoon;" Governor Spotswood's pew in Bruton Parish Church
at Williamsburg was raised from the floor, and covered with a canopy,
while the interior was ornamented with his name in gilt letters. In 1750,
it was ordered by the vestry of St. Paul's Church, Norfolk, that "three
captains and Mr. Charles Sweeny be allowed to build a gallery reaching
from the gallery of Mr. John Taylor to the school-boys' gallery, to be
theirs and their heirs' forever."
Washington's pew was an ample square, fitted with cushions for sitting and
kneeling. The Puritans would have thought it a glaring iniquity to pay
such heed to creature comfort in the house of God. They would have been
more in sympathy with the Virginia dame of high degree who, in tardy
atonement for her pride, directed that her body be buried under the
pavement in the aisle occupied by the poor of the church, that they might
trample on her dust. Such gloomy and ascetic associations with the house
of God were rare at the South. The church was a centre of cheerfulness,
and the Sabbath was supposed to be a day of innocent enjoyment. All work
was frowned upon as inconsistent with a due observance of its sanctity,
however; and the Grand Jury in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1704,
presented Thomas Simms, for travelling on the road on Sunday with a loaded
beast, William Montague and Garrett Minor for bringing oysters ashore on
the Sabbath, James Senis for swearing and cursing on the holy day; but
outside such restrictions as these, no Blue Laws enforced gloom as part of
the decorum of Sunday-keeping.
When the church-bell, hung usually from the bough of a tree, began to
ring for service, the roads were filled with worshippers moving
churchward, full of peace and good-will. First might be seen the young men
on horseback, with the tails of their coats carefully pinned in front, to
protect them from the sweat of their horses' flanks. Lumbering slowly
after these equestrians came the great family-coaches, from which the
ladies are assisted by the dismounted gallants. Every young damsel is
planning some social festivity. Before or after service, invitations are
given, and visits of weeks in length are arranged at the church door. It
is to be feared that these colonial maidens sometimes allow their thoughts
to wander in sermon-time, from their quaint little prayer-books, with
their uneven type and crooked f's, and that they are thinking of dinners
while they confess themselves sinners. But their levity is not treated
severely by the priest, for he is as eager for his Madeira as his young
parishioners are eager for their minuet.
They were jolly dogs, those colonial clergymen of the Church of England in
the eighteenth century, and no more to be taken seriously than Friar Tuck,
whose apostolic successors they were. Parishioners who wished spiritual
counsel had difficulty in finding the parson. In the morning he was
fox-hunting, in the afternoon he was over (or under) the dining-table,
and the midnight candle shone on his wine-cup and dice-box.
Like their brethren across the Atlantic, the colonial clergy were strong
on doctrine. "They abhorred popery, atheism, and idolatries in general,
and hiccupped 'Church and State!' with fervor." Yet their morals were at
so low an ebb as to justify the complaint made against them that they were
"such as wore black coats and could gabble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern,
exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissoluteness destroy
than feed their flock."
One clergyman assaulted a dignitary in vestry-meeting, pulling off his wig
and subjecting him to various indignities, and capped the climax of
audacity by preaching the next Sunday from the text: "I contended with
them and cursed them, and smote certain of them and pulled off their
hair." Another minister fought a duel behind his church, and a third, the
Rev. Thomas Blewer (pronounced probably _Blower_), was presented by the
Grand Jury as a common swearer. All efforts to reform the clergy were in
vain. Ministers were sometimes tried for drunkenness, and some of the
tests of what constitutes drunkenness were laid down by the court:
"Sitting an hour or longer in the company where they are drinking strong
drink and in the mean time drinking of healths, or otherwise taking the
cups as they come round, like the rest of the company; striking or
challenging or threatening to fight." Staggering, reeling, and incoherent
speech are justly regarded as suspicious circumstances, and the advice
continues: "Let the proof of these signs proceed so far till the judges
conclude that behavior at such time was scandalous, undecent, unbecoming
the dignity of a minister." There is unfortunately only too clear a case
against the colonial clergy; but it is only fair to take into account the
condition of the church at home. If the clergymen in Maryland and Virginia
gambled and drank, so did those in England and Wales. Did not Sterne grace
the cassock? Did not Gay propose taking orders for a living, and did not
Swift write from a deanery stuff too vile for print? There was some talk
at one time of sending this great Dr. Swift over to Virginia as a bishop,
and a worthy one he would have been, to such a church.
The eighteenth century was a period of decadence in the colonial ministry.
Things had not always been so bad. When the first settlers came to
America, the clergymen who accompanied them were men of sterling worth and
character. They were moved by a hope of converting the Indians, and came
in a true missionary spirit. The journals of those adventurers testify to
the courage with which their chaplain braved dangers and bore
discomforts. "By unprosperous winds," they say, "we were kept six weeks in
sight of England; all which time Master Hunt, our preacher, was so weake
and sicke that few expected his recovery. Yet, although we were but
twentie myles from his habitation, and notwithstanding the stormy weather,
nor the scandalous imputations against him, all this could never force
from him so much as a seeming desire to leave the businesse." All through
the journey he was brave and cheerful, though there was a constant ferment
of wrath in that hot-headed ship's company, which might have ended in
bloodshed, "had he not, with the water of patience and his godly
exhortations, but chiefly by his true, devoted example, quenched those
flames of envy and detraction." Finally, after the fire at Jamestown,
Master Hunt lost all his library and "all he had but the cloathes on his
backe, yet none never heard him repine at his loss."
Following Hunt came the good Whitaker, "a schollar, a graduate, a preacher
well born and well friended in England," who from conscientious desire to
help the savages left "his warm nest and, to the wonder of his kinsmen,
and to the amazement of them that knew him," undertook this perilous
enterprise. Of such pith and worth were these first priests; but the
Indian massacre made a great change. Friendly intercourse with the natives
being cut off, there was no chance for missionary work among them, and the
plantations were too far apart to make a vigorous church life possible.
The pay was small and the field barren, so that there was little
temptation either to the ambitious and intellectual, or to the spiritually
minded class of the clergy, to come to America. They were as a rule,
therefore, the ignorant, the dissipated, and the _mauvais sujets_ who
filled the colonial livings. Yet at the lowest ebb there were exceptions
to this rule. There, for instance, was Rector Robert Rose, whose tombstone
describes him as discharging with the most tender piety the "domestick"
duties of husband, father, son, and brother, and in short as "a friend to
the whole human race." His journal gives a glimpse of his relations with
his parish, very cheering in the dreary waste of quarrels and bickering so
common in those days. On one occasion, during a drouth, when a famine
threatened, he told his people that corn could be had from him. On the
appointed day a crowd gathered before his house. He asked the applicants
if they had brought money to pay for the corn. Some answered cheerfully,
"Yes," others murmured disconsolately, "No." The good priest then said:
"You who have money can get your corn anywhere, but these poor fellows
with no money shall have my corn."
He was quite human, this old parson, and liked his glass of "Fyal" or
Madeira, but he knew when to stop, and he feared not to rebuke the rich
and great among his parishioners when he saw them making too merry. He
enters in his journal the date of a call on one of his leading families,
when he found the father absent at a cock-fight. The rector adds the
significant memorandum: "Suffer it no more!"
In spite of a few bright exceptions like this, it is idle to deny that the
relations between parish and clergy in the Southern church ill bore
comparison with those of the Puritan and his minister; and this not
because of doctrine, but chiefly because the Puritan minister represented
the free choice of the people, who supported him willingly, and looked
upon him with reverence, as the messenger of the Lord. In South Carolina,
where the clergy were chosen by the vestries, the same harmony and
good-will existed, but the church in Virginia writhed under the injustice
of taxation without representation.
The parishioners were expected to receive and maintain the clergyman
appointed them without criticism or question. How any attempt on the part
of these vestries to discipline or dismiss the minister they supported
was received, we may judge from this letter, sent by Governor Spotswood to
the churchwardens and vestry of South Farnham parish in 1716:
"Gentlemen: I'm not a little surprised at the sight of an order of yours,
wherein you take upon you to suspend from his office a clergyman who for
near sixteen years has served as your minister.... As no vestry in England
has ever pretended to set themselves up as judges over their ministers, so
I know no law of this country that has given such authority to the vestry
here. If a clergyman transgresses against the canons of the church, he is
to be tried before a proper judicature, and though in this country there
be no bishops to apply to, yet there is a substitute for a bishop in your
diocesan.... In case of the misbehavior of your clergyman, you may be his
accusers, but in no case his judges; but much less are you empowered to
turn him out without showing cause."
This haughty language recalls the messages of Charles the First to his
parliament. Yet in spite of his support of the priest against the parish,
the Governor never dreamed of recognizing him as his own equal. Some years
later, when the stately old aristocrat was in his grave, a member of the
clergy sued for the hand of his widow, Lady Spotswood. The reverend suitor
writes after a very humble and apologetic fashion: "Madam," he begins,
"by diligently perusing your letter I perceive there is a material
argument--upon which your strongest objection against completing my
happiness would seem to depend, viz.: That you would incur ye censure of
ye world for marrying a person in ye station of my station and character.
By which I understand that you think it a diminution of your honour and ye
dignity of your family to marry a person in ye station of a clergyman.
Now, if I can make it appear that ye ministerial office is an employment
in its nature ye most honorable and in its effects ye most beneficial to
mankind, I hope your objections will immediately vanish--that you will
keep me no longer in suspense and misery, but consummate my happiness."
After a long enumeration of the dignities, spiritual rather than social,
appertaining to the clergy, he closes thus: "And, therefore, if a
gentleman of this sacred and honourable character should be married to a
lady, though of ye greatest extraction and most excellent personal
qualities (which I am sensible you are endowed with), it can be no
disgrace to her or her family; nor draw the censures of ye world upon them
for such an action." Such language is in curious contrast with the
attitude of New England, where the praise bestowed on a woman by Cotton
Mather as the highest possible compliment was, that she was worthy to be
the wife of a priest.
The chief cause of irritation between parson and parish in the colonial
church was from the beginning the question of the ministers' salaries. In
some places these were very small. It appears, for instance, in the record
book of the church at Edenton, in North Carolina, that Parson Garzia in
the year 1736, was paid only £5 for holding divine service. But in
Maryland and Virginia the salaries were frequently higher than those paid
in New England. In each Virginia borough a hundred acres were set off as a
glebe, or parsonage farm. Besides this and the salary, there were fees of
twenty shillings for a wedding by license and five shillings for every
wedding by banns, beside forty shillings for a funeral sermon. It is
easier to understand the fulsomeness of these old funeral discourses when
we learn how well they were paid for, and realize that, in common honesty,
the minister was bound to render a forty-shilling certificate of character
to the deceased.