The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

by M. Louise Greene

Within her own borders, Connecticut was peaceful, prosperous, and contented. For the most part, she was free from the harassing danger of Indian war. She readily contributed her share for the common defense of the colonies, and sent her loyal quotas to fight for England's territorial claims. For many years, Connecticut was shrewd enough to steer clear of the disastrous inflation of paper currency which overtook her sister colonies. Many strangers were attracted by her prosperity, so that, notwithstanding frequent emigrations of her people, she trebled her population about once in twenty years all through the first century of her existence. With this increasing population came, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, members of the Church of England, who settled in Stratford and in the towns adjacent to New York.[j] They quickly found that their previous impressions were erroneous, and that Connecticut would not tolerate their religious services. Consequently, a report of the religious condition in Connecticut was made in England, in 1702, at about the time the Quakers complained of renewed persecution and at a time when the enemies of the colony were extremely active in charging her with misconduct.

A report of Connecticut's ecclesiastical constitution and of her oppression of dissenters was made to the Bishop of London by John Talbot, who, with George Keith, had traveled through Connecticut on his way from New York to Boston. These men were missionary priests of the Church of England. In New London, Governor Saltonstall, then the minister of that town, knowing that there were a few Church-of-England men in the place, had met the travelers, "civilly entertained them at his house," and "invited them to preach in his church." [75] The Governor might not, the magistrates certainly did not, feel so kindly disposed toward Talbot a year or so later, when it was found that, upon his return to New York, he had written home to his superiors in England, earnestly advocating an American episcopate. True, he urged that the American bishop should have ecclesiastical powers only, and that those ecclesiastico-civil in character, such as the probating of wills, granting of marriage licenses, and the presentation of livings, should remain in the hands of the colonial governors. But the Connecticut authorities were not forgetful of Laud's purpose in 1638 to appoint a bishop over New England, and its frustration by the political unrest at home. They recalled that the revival of such a project had floated as a rumor about those royal commissioners of 1664 to whom they had given such satisfactory, if evasive, answers. Moreover, an Order in Council of 1685, of which there is external evidence, though the order itself is not recorded, had vested ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the colonies in the Bishop of London. [76] Connecticut knew also that four years later, in 1689 (the year that Episcopacy erected King's Chapel, Boston, with its royal endowment of £100 per year), the first commissary had been dispatched to Virginia to superintend the churches there. The Crown, as yet, had deemed it unwise to thrust an episcopate upon its dissenting colonies, and, except for a short time before Queen Anne's death, it was to take no interest in the plans for the American episcopate until some forty years later, when the King thought to discern in it some political advantage. But early in 1700, when complaints were lodged against Connecticut, there was a strong party within the English Church itself who were most anxious to see the episcopal bond between the mother country and her colonies strengthened. For this purpose, they had sent to America, in 1695, the Reverend Thomas Bray to report upon the conditions and churchly sentiment within the colonies. His report was published under the title, "A Memorial representing the State of Religion in the Continent of North America." It was an appeal for episcopal oversight, and resulted in the formation in England, in 1701, of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. To this organization belonged all the English bishops with all their influential following. The Society regularly maintained missionary churches and missionary priests throughout the colonies. Candidates for this priesthood were required to submit to a thorough examination as to their fitness. Before sailing, they were required to report to the Bishop of London as their Diocesan and to the Archbishop of Canterbury as their Metropolitan. They were required to send full semi-annual reports of their work and to include in them any other information that promised to be of interest or advantage to the Society. John Talbot and George Keith were two of these missionaries.

Talbot's appeal for the American episcopate was seconded in 1705 by fourteen clergymen from the middle colonies who convened at Burlington, N. J., to frame a petition to the English archbishop and bishops. In it they set forth the necessity in America of a bishop to ordain and to supply other ecclesiastical needs. The petitioners added that a bishop was also necessary to counteract "the inconveniences which the church labors under by the influence which seditious men's counsels have upon the public administration and the opposition which they make to the good inclinations of well-affected persons." [77] In this appeal for a bishop stress was laid upon the cost and dangers of a trip to England for ordination, [78] and also to the frequent loss of converts from the independent ministry because of the lack of ordination privileges in America. These references, and also that to the "counsel of seditious men," could not be agreeable to large numbers of dissenting colonists. They would not be viewed with favor in Connecticut, where, by 1705, Episcopalians had become so numerous that a wealthy New Yorker, Colonel Heathcote by name, and a man thoroughly acquainted with his New England neighbor, undertook to look after the Church-of-England men as unfortunate brethren of a common faith. He appealed to the English Society for the Propagating[k] of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to extend its missions into Connecticut. He asked that Rector Muirson be stationed at Rye, New York. Colonel Heathcote's idea was:—

to first plant the church securely in Westchester on the border of Connecticut; and secondly, from that point to act upon Connecticut, which was wholly Puritan and withal not a little bigoted and uncharitable.

Naturally, whatever of tolerance the Connecticut people might have shown two traveling preachers would turn to opposition when they saw the deliberate and well-organized attempt of this proselyting church, this old enemy of their forefathers, to invade their colony and undermine their own Establishment. Consequently, when, in company with Mr. Muirson, Colonel Heathcote began itinerating through southwestern Connecticut, ministers and magistrates frequently opposed and threatened them. The people occasionally welcomed them. They did not object to hear and to criticise the strangers, and were sometimes willing to have their good neighbors, if they chanced to be Church-of-England men, enjoy the ministrations of these passing visitors. In some places, however, the civil officers went so far as to go about among the people, even from house to house, to dissuade them from attending Mr. Muirson's services,[l] and, at Fairfield, the meeting-house was closed lest it should be "defiled by idolatrous worship and superstitious ceremonies." [79] The Episcopalians themselves later acknowledged that, until 1709, they suffered little persecution beyond "that of the tongue." [m] When they were not permitted to organize churches, and were forced to pay taxes for the support of Congregationalism, they complained bitterly to their friends in England, and such oppression was listed among the many other misdemeanors, which, at this time, were cited against the former "dutiful colony of Connecticut."

One of the schemes that Connecticut's enemies sought to carry out, both for their own advancement, and as a proposed punishment for an unruly colony, was a consolidation of the New England provinces under a royal governor. This consolidation was approached when Governor Fletcher of New York was appointed military chief of Connecticut. His attempt, in 1693, to enforce his military authority over Connecticut troops engaged in protecting the northern frontier, resulted in his failure, and in his angry report to the home authorities of Connecticut's insubordination and disloyalty. The colony at great expense sent Major Fitz-John Winthrop to England to answer these charges. He was successful in proving that Connecticut had not exceeded her charter rights in her determination to appoint her own military officers; that, in the wars, she had faithfully contributed her share to the common defense; and moreover, that it was essential that she should have the immediate control of her own troops to quell internal disorder, should it arise, or to repel the sudden approach of an enemy upon her exposed borders. Major Winthrop also succeeded in having the colony's military obligations defined as the furnishing to the common defense of a number of her militia, proportionate to her population and to be under their own officers, and in war time a further draft of a hundred and twenty men to be under the direct control of the governor of New York. Notwithstanding the splendid success of Winthrop's mission, this same charge of insubordination was repeated in a long and later list of grievances against the colony.

The consolidation scheme was revived by the appointment of Governor Bellomont over New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and as military head of Rhode Island and Connecticut; but the governor never tried to enforce his authority in Connecticut. In 1701 and 1706, bills aiming at this proposed consolidation were introduced into Parliament. That of 1701 failed of consideration from "shortness of time and multiplicity of issues." In 1704 an attempt was made to secure the appointment of a royal governor over Connecticut through an Order in Council, but that body preferred to leave the matter to Parliament,—hence the bill of 1706 favoring consolidation which failed of passage in the Lords. It failed largely because of the energy and eloquence of Sir Henry Ashurst, the Connecticut agent.

Sir Henry also succeeded in getting a copy of the various charges against the colony, which were thought to justify annulling her charter, and in obtaining a grant of time to submit them to the Connecticut General Court for a reply. The colony found that it was charged with encouraging violations of the Navigation Laws; with holding in contempt the Courts of Admiralty; with failing to furnish troops and to place them under officers of the Crown; with executing capital punishment without any authority in her charter; with encouraging manufactures, contrary to the known wishes of the Crown; with irregular and unjust court proceedings; with treating contumaciously the royal commissioners sent to settle the Mohegan land controversy; with injustice to the Quakers; with forbidding services of the Church of England; and with disallowing appeals to England. These were the more important complaints. In behalf of the colony, Sir Henry appeared before the Privy Council, and in able argument showed that many of the charges were without foundation; that some of the colony's acts which were complained of as unlawful were well within her charter privileges; and that the decisions of her courts, far from being illegal, had, in nearly every case, when brought to the attention of the English government, been approved by it. Further than this, the Connecticut agent obtained a stay in the proceedings of the Mohegan case,[n] though it was soon reopened and seriously menaced the colony until the settlement in her favor in 1743. In the famous Liveen or Hallam case, Connecticut opposed an appeal to the Crown, because such an appeal would give the Privy Council the right to interpret the charter and pass upon the colony laws.[o] Though Sir Henry Ashurst had succeeded in having many of the charges dropped, the danger had been so great to the colony that he privately advised the government to conciliate the Crown by protesting its immediate readiness to fulfill all military obligations, and, as a further proof of loyalty, to repeal at once the old law of 1657 against heretics which Queen Anne had just annulled (October 11, 1705) at the request of the Quakers. The General Court, as we have seen, followed his advice, and repealed the law in so far as it concerned Quakers. But this was not enough to satisfy other dissenters in the colony. The Rev. John Talbot had arrived in England in 1706 to plead in person [80] for an American bishop, and Colonel Heathcote in 1707 wrote [81] with respect to the Episcopalians in Connecticut that it would be absolutely necessary to procure an order from the Queen freeing the Church of England people from the established rates, or they would always be so poor as to be dependent upon the Society for Propagating the Gospel. He further asked the repeal of the law whereby the Connecticut magistrates "refuse liberty of conscience to those of the established (English) church." Colonel Heathcote adds that it would not be much more than had been granted to the Quakers, and that it "would be of the greatest service to the Church than can at first sight be imagined."

So great was the importunity of the Connecticut Episcopalians, that, in 1708, Governor Saltonstall wrote to England to disarm their complaints against the colony. It looked as if religious discontent might become a dangerous thing. Royal disfavor certainly would be. It might be better to condone the lack of religious uniformity among a few scattered dissenters, differing among themselves, and to endure it,—obnoxious as it was,—than to suffer the loss of the Connecticut charter. Moreover, this tendency to the spread of nonconformity might be controlled by judicious legislation. Furthermore, it would be politic to have upon the colony lawbook some relief for dissenters from its Establishment similar to the English statutes relieving nonconformists there from adherence to the Church of England. Hence the Toleration Act, and, of necessity, the proviso in the act of the following session of the General Court whereby it approved the Saybrook Platform.

The Toleration Act was of no benefit to Rogerine or Quaker, who by their principles were forbidden to take the oath of allegiance that it demanded. It was of little practical advantage to Baptist or Episcopalian, but it was a move in the right direction. According to its terms, dissenters, before the county courts, could qualify for organization into distinct religious bodies by taking the oath of fidelity to the crown, by denying transubstantiation and by declaring their sober dissent from Congregationalism. They could have such liberty, provided that it in no way worked to the detriment of the church established in the colony,—that is, the law did not exclude any dissenter "from paying any such (established) minister or town dues as are or shall hereafter be due from him."