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.”