In this distracted state of the colony, the inhabitants of Colleton county, composed chiefly of Dissenters, met and drew up a state of their grievous circumstances, which they resolved to transmit to the Proprietors, praying their Lordships to repeal this oppressive act. John Ash, one of the most zealous men in the opposition, agreed to embark for England as agent for the aggrieved party, computed to be at least two thirds of the whole inhabitants of the colony. The governor and his friends, apprized of this design, used all possible means to prevent him from obtaining a passage in any ship belonging to Carolina. Upon which Ash went to Virginia, to which province his instructions were conveyed to him, and from thence he set sail for England.
After his arrival he waited on Lord Granville, the Palatine, acquainting him with the design of his message; but met with a very cold reception. That nobleman was too deeply concerned in bringing about that establishment against which Ash came to complain, favourably to listen to his representations. Accordingly, after staying some time in London, and giving the Proprietors all the information in his power relating to public affairs, the only satisfaction he could obtain from the Palatine was this, that he should cause his secretary write to the governor an account of the grievances and hardships of which Mr. Ash complained, and require an answer from him with respect to them. Mr. Ash, observing how the Palatine stood affected, and despairing of success, immediately began to draw up a representation of their case, which he intended for the press: but before he had finished it he was taken sick, and died; and his papers fell into his enemies hands. He was a man of a warm and passionate temper, and possessed of all those violent sentiments which ill usage, disappointment, and oppression, naturally kindle in the human breast. His representation, intended as an appeal to the nation in general, for the sufferings of the people under the tyrannical proprietary government, was full of heavy charges against the governor and his party in Carolina, and bitter reflections on their conduct, which he considered as in the highest degree injurious to the colony.
Without doubt the Lords Proprietors planned this establishment with a view to the peaceful influence it would have upon the civil government of the country, as the preamble to the act expressly indicates. Their feeble and fluctating state required the assistance and authority of an established church, and the sanction of religion, to give it more weight and influence with the people. How far the measures adopted served to promote the desired end, and were consistent with prudence and good policy, will afterwards more clearly appear.
[Sidenote] Lay commissioners appointed.
[Sidenote] The acts ratified by the Proprietors.
Sir Nathaniel Johnson having advanced so far, was determined to proceed in spite of every obstacle thrown in his way. He instituted what the inhabitants of Carolina took to be a high-commission court, like that of King James the second. It was enacted, that twenty lay-persons be constituted a corporation for the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with full power to deprive ministers of their livings at pleasure, not for immorality only, but also for imprudence, or on account of unreasonable prejudices taken against them. In vain did many persons complain of this institution, as tearing the ecclesiastical jurisdiction out of the hands of the bishop of London, in whose diocese the whole British colonies in America were included. The governor, bent on carrying into execution the favourite plan of the Palatine, paid little regard to the uneasy apprehensions of the people. According to the act for erecting churches, the colony is divided into ten parishes; seven in Berkeley, two in Colleton, and one in Craven counties. Money is provided for building churches; lands are granted for glebes and church-yards; and salaries for the different rectors are fixed and appointed, payable from the provincial treasury. When these bills were transmitted to England, to be ratified and confirmed by the Proprietors, John Archdale opposed them, and insisted, that the Dissenters of Carolina had not yet forgot the hardships they suffered in England from acts of uniformity; that the right of private judgment in religious matters was the birth-right of every man; that undisturbed liberty of conscience was allowed to every inhabitant of Carolina by the charter; that acts of conformity, with penalties annexed to them, have in general proved destructive to the cause they were intended to promote, and were utterly inconsistent with Protestant principles; and therefore that these bills, so unpopular and oppressive in Carolina, ought to be repealed, as contrary to sound policy and religious freedom. The majority of the Proprietors, however, did not view them in this light, and the debate ran high between them. At length the Palatine, equally tyrannical as bigotted put an end to the dispute, by telling Mr. Archdale: "Sir, you are of one opinion, I am of another; our lives may not be long enough to end the controversy. I am for the bills, and that is the party that I will head and support." In consequence of which the acts were ratified by four Proprietors, and the following letter was sent to Sir Nathaniel Johnson. "Sir, the great and pious work which you have gone through with such unwearied and steady zeal, for the honour and worship of Almighty God, we have also finally perfected on our part; and our ratification of that act for erecting churches, &c. together with duplicates of all other dispatches, we have forwarded to you by Captain Flavel."
[Sidenote] The petition of Dissenters to the House of Lords.
The Episcopal party having now got their favourite form of divine worship established by law in Carolina, began to erect churches in such situations as were most centrical and convenient for the settlers; and, to supply them with clergymen, application was made to the society in England for the propagation of the Gospel. The Dissenters, despairing of all hopes of redress from the Proprietors, became greatly discouraged, and could not brook the thoughts of being again subjected to the same troubles and miseries which had compelled them to leave their native country. Some were for transporting their families and effects immediately to Pennsylvania, in order to sit down under Penn's free and indulgent government; others proposed an application to the House of Lords in England, praying that august body to commiserate their distress, and intercede with her Majesty for their relief. For this purpose a petition was drawn up, and carried over by Joseph Boone to England. Several merchants in London, after Boone's arrival, being convinced of the illegal means by which those grievous acts were brought to pass, and of their pernicious consequence to trade, joined the petitioners. Accordingly, about the beginning of the year 1706, the following petition was presented to the House of Lords: setting forth, "That when the province of Carolina was granted to the Proprietors, for the better peopling of it, express provision was made in the charter for a toleration and indulgence of all Christians in the free exercise of their religion; that, in the fundamental constitutions, agreed to be the form of government by the Proprietors, there was also express provision made, that no person should be disturbed for any speculative opinion in religion, and that no person should, on account of religion, be excluded from being a member of the General Assembly, or from any other office in the civil administration: That the said charter, being given soon after the happy restoration of King Charles II. and re-establishment of the church of England by the Act of Uniformity, many of the subjects of the kingdom who were so unhappy as to have some scruples about conforming to the rites of the said church, did transplant themselves and families into Carolina; by means whereof the greatest part of the inhabitants there were Protestant Dissenters from the church of England, and through the equality and freedom of the said fundamental constitutions, all the inhabitants of the colony lived in peace, and even the ministers of the church of England had support from Protestant Dissenters, and the number of inhabitants and the trade of the colony daily increased, to the great improvement of her majesty's customs, and the manifest advantage of the merchants and manufacturers of the kingdom.
"But that, in the year 1703, when a new assembly was to be chosen, which, by the constitution, is chosen once in two years, the election was managed with very great partiality and injustice, and all sorts of people, even aliens, Jews, servants, common sailors and negroes, were admitted to vote at elections: That, in the said assembly, an act was passed to incapacitate every person from being a member of any General Assembly that should be chosen for the time to come, unless he had taken the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the church of England; whereby all Protestant Dissenters are made incapable of being in the said assembly; and yet, by the same act, all persons who shall take an oath that they have not received the sacrament in any dissenting congregation for one year past, though they have not received it in the church of England, are made capable of fitting in the said assembly: That this act was passed in an illegal manner, by the governor calling the assembly to meet the 26th of April, when it then stood prorogued to the 10th of May following: That it hath been ratified by the Lords Proprietors in England, who refused to hear what could be offered against it, and contrary to the petition of one hundred and seventy of the chief inhabitants of the colony, and of several eminent merchants trading hither, though the commons of the same assembly quickly after passed another bill to repeal it, which the upper house rejected, and the governor dissolved the house.
"That the ecclesiastical government of the colony is under the bishop of London; but the governor and his adherents have at last done what the latter often threatened to do, totally abolished it; for the same assembly have passed an act, whereby twenty lay-persons, therein named, are made a corporation for the exercise of several exorbitant powers, to the great injury and oppression of the people in general, and for the exercise of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with absolute power to deprive any minister of the church of England of his benefice, not only for immorality but even for imprudence, or incurable prejudices between such minister and his parish; and the only minister of the church established in the colony, Mr. Edward Marston, hath already been cited before their board, which the inhabitants of the province take to be an high ecclesiastical commission-court, destructive to the very being and essence of the church of England, and to be held in the utmost detestation and abhorrence by every man that is not an enemy to our constitution in church and state.
"That the said grievances daily increasing, your petitioner Joseph Boone is now sent by many principal inhabitants and traders of the colony, to represent the languishing and dangerous situation of it to the Lords Proprietors; but his application to them has hitherto had no effect: That the ruin of the colony would be to the great disadvantage of the trade of this kingdom, to the apparent prejudice of her Majesty's customs, and the great benefit of the French, who watch all opportunities to improve their own settlements in those parts of America."