Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.
Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.
In all the southern colonies the English Church was established, a
majority of the people its members, its clergy supported by tithes and
glebe. William and Mary secured it a sort of establishment also in New
York and Maryland. Yet at no moment of the colonial period was there a
bishop in America. No church building was consecrated with episcopal
rites, no resident of America taken into orders without going to London.
[footnote: See, for these facts, The Century for May, 1888.] Even in
Virginia, till a very late colonial period, the clergy retained many
Puritan forms. Some would not read the Common Prayer. For more than a
hundred years the surplice was apparently unknown there, sacraments
administered without the proper ornaments and vessels, parts of the
liturgy omitted, marriages, baptisms, churchings, and funerals
solemnized in private houses. In some parishes, so late as 1724, the
communion was partaken sitting. Excellent as were many of the clergymen,
there were some who never preached, and not a few even bore an ill name.
It was worst in Maryland, and "bad as a Maryland parson" became a
proverb. The yearly salary in the best Virginia parishes was tobacco of
about 100 pounds value.
The Carolina clergy at first formed a superior class, as nearly all the
early ministers were men carefully selected and sent out from England by
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Here there was special
interest in the religious welfare of the slaves. All Over the South the
Church ministers owed much to competition with those of sects,
especially those of the Presbyterians, to which body belonged many of
the Scotch and Irish immigrants after 1700. Dissent was dominant
everywhere at the North. A vast majority of the people even in New York
were dissenters, though the Episcopal clergy there successfully resisted
all efforts against the Church tax, notwithstanding the fact that the
same injustice in Massachusetts and Connecticut oppressed their brethren
in those colonies. The New York clergy also fought every sort of liberal
law, as to enable dissenting bodies of Christians to hold property. It
was in good degree this attitude of theirs that filled the country,
Virginia too, with such hatred of bishops.
But this spirit was fully matched by that of the Independent ministers
in New England. Their dissent was aggressive, persecuting, puritanical.
Meeting-houses were cold, sermons long and dry, music vocal only.
Religious teaching and the laws it procured, foolishly assumed to
regulate all the acts of life. Extravagance was denounced and fined. In
1750, the Massachusetts Assembly forbade theatres as "likely to
encourage immorality and impiety." Rhode Island took similar action in
1762.
Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.
The ministers of Boston viewed bishops almost as emissaries of the
devil. Herein in fact lay the primary, some have thought the deepest and
most potent cause of the Revolution, since kings and the bishops of
London incessantly sought to establish Anglicanism in Massachusetts, and
English politicians deemed it outrageous that conformists should be
denied any of that colony's privileges. For some time, under William and
Mary's charter, in this province where Congregationalism had till now
had everything its own way, only Church clergymen could celebrate
marriage. In New York and Maryland, too, hostility to the establishment
greatly stimulated disloyalty. This was true even in Anglican Virginia,
where the Church found it no easier to keep power than it was in
Massachusetts to get power, and where the clergy were unpopular,
concerned more for tithes than for souls.
Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.
Colleges were founded early in several colonies. Harvard dates from
1638; William and Mary, in Virginia, from 1693; Yale, from 1701; the
College of New Jersey, from 1746, its old Nassau Hall, built in 1756 and
named in honor of William III. of the House of Nassau, being then the
largest structure in British America. The University of Pennsylvania
dates from 1753; King's College, now Columbia, from 1754; Rhode Island
College, now Brown University, from 1764. Educational facilities in
general varied greatly with sections, being miserable in the southern
colonies, fair in the central, excellent in the northern. In Virginia,
during the period now under our survey, schools were almost unknown. In
Maryland, from 1728, a free school was established by law in each
county. These were the only such schools in the South before 1770.
Philadelphia and New York had good schools by 1700; rural Pennsylvania
none of any sort till 1750, then only the poorest. A few New York and
New Jersey towns of New England origin had free schools before the
Revolution. Many Southern planters sent their sons to school in England.
In popular education New England led not only the continent but the
world, there being a school-house, often several, in each town. Every
native adult in Massachusetts and Connecticut was able to read and
write. In this matter Rhode Island was far behind its next neighbors.
Newspapers were distributed much as schools were. The first
printing-press was set up at Cambridge in 1639. The first newspaper,
Publick Occurrences Foreign and Domestic, was started in Boston in
1690. The first permanent newspaper, the Boston News Letter, began in
1704, and it had a Boston and a Philadelphia rival in 1719. The Maryland
Gazette was started at Annapolis in 1727, a weekly at Williamsburg, Va.,
in 1736. In 1740 there were eleven newspapers in all in the colonies;
one each in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia (from 1736), three in
Pennsylvania, one of them German, and five in Boston. The Connecticut
Gazette was started at New Haven in 1755; The Summary, at New London in
1758. The Rhode Island Gazette was begun by James Franklin, September
27, 1732, but was not permanent. The Providence Gazette and Country
Journal put forth its first issue October 20, 1762. In 1775, Salem,
Newburyport, and Portsmouth had each its newspaper. The first daily in
the country, the Pennsylvania Packet, began in 1784.
James Logan.
Other literature of American origin flourished in New England nearly
alone. It consisted of sermons, social and political tracts, poetry,
history, and memoirs. The clergy were the chief but not the sole
authors. Of readers, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston had many.
Much reading matter came from England. Charleston enjoyed a public
library from 1700. About 1750 there were several others. That left to
Philadelphia in 1751, by James Logan, comprised 4,000 volumes.
William and Mary had established a postal system for America, placing
Thomas Neale, Esquire, at its head. The service hardly became a system
till 1738. In ordinary weather a post-rider would receive the
Philadelphia mail at the Susquehannah River on Saturday evening, be at
Annapolis on Monday, reach the Potomac Tuesday night, on Wednesday
arrive at New Post, near Fredericksburg, and by Saturday evening at
Williamsburg, whence, once a month, the mail went still farther south,
to Edenton, N. C. Thus a letter was just a week in transit between
Philadelphia and the capital of Virginia. In New England, from here to
New York, and between New York and Philadelphia, despatch was much
better.