At the town meeting on the first Monday in November, 1777, the names of James Carter and Daniel Allen were stricken from the black list, apparently without opposition. That the Reverend Timothy Harrington, Lancaster's prudent and much-beloved minister, should be denounced as an enemy of his country, and his name even placed temporarily among those of "dangerous persons," exhibits the bitterness of partisanship at that date. This town-meeting prosecution was ostensibly based upon certain incautious expressions of opinion, but appears really to have been inspired by the spite of the Whitcombs and others, whose enmity had been aroused by his conservative action several years before in the church troubles, known as "the Goss and Walley war," in the neighboring town of Bolton. The Reverend Thomas Goss, of Bolton, Ebenezer Morse, of Boylston, and Andrew Whitney, of Petersham, were classmates of Mr. Harrington in the Harvard class of 1737, and all of them were opposed to the revolution of the colonies. The disaffection, which, ignoring the action of an ecclesiastical council, pushed Mr. Goss from his pulpit, arose more from the political ferment of the day than from any advanced views of his opponents respecting the abuse of alcoholic stimulants. For nearly forty years Mr. Harrington had perhaps never omitted from his fervent prayers in public assemblies the form of supplication for [pg 384] divine blessing upon the sovereign ruler of Great Britain. It is not strange, although he had yielded reluctant submission to the new order of things, and was anxiously striving to perform his clerical duties without offense to any of his flock, that his lips should sometimes lapse into the wonted formula, "bless our good King George." It is related that on occasions of such inadvertence, he, without embarrassing pause, added: "Thou knowest, O Lord! we mean George Washington." In the records of the town clerk, nothing is told of the nature of the charges against Mr. Harrington, or of the manner of his defence. Two deacons were sent as messengers "to inform the Revd Timoo Harrington that he has something in agitation Now to be Heard in this Meeting at which he has Liberty to attend." Joseph Willard, Esq., in 1826, recording probably the reminiscence of some one present at the dramatic scene, says that when the venerable clergyman confronted his accusers, baring his breast, he exclaimed with the language and feeling of outraged virtue: "Strike, strike here with your daggers! I am a true friend to my country!"
Among the manuscripts left by Mr. Harrington there is one prepared for, if not read at, this town meeting, containing the charges in detail, and his reply to each. It is headed: "Harrington's answers to ye Charges &c." It is a shrewd and eloquent defence, bearing evidence, so far as rhetoric can, that its author was in advance of his people and his times in respect of Christian charity, if not of political foresight. The charges were four in number: the first being that of the Bolton Walleyites alleging that his refusal to receive them as church members in regular standing brought him "under ye censure of shutting up ye Kingdom of Heaven against men." To this, calm answer is given by a review of the whole controversy in the Bolton Church, closing thus: "Mr. Moderator, as I esteemed the Proceedings of these Brethren at Bolton Disorderly and Schismatical, and as the Apostle hath given Direction to mark those who cause Divisions and Offences and avoid them, I thought it my Duty to bear Testimony against ye Conduct of both ye People at Bolton, and those who were active in settling a Pastor over them in the Manner Specified, and I still retain ye sentiment, and this not to shut the Kingdom of Heaven against them, but to recover them from their wanderings to the Order of the Gospel and to the direct way to the Kingdom of Heaven. And I still approve and think them just."
The second charge, in full, was as follows:—
"It appears to us that his conduct hath ye greatest Tendency to subvert our religious Constitution and ye Faith of these churches.—In his saying that the Quebeck Bill was just—and that he would have done the same had he been one of ye Parliament—and also saying that he was in charity with a professed Roman Catholick, whose Principles are so contrary to the Faith of these churches,—That for a man to be in charity with them we conceive that it is impossible that he should be in Charity with professed New England Churches. It therefore appears to us that it would be no better than mockery for him to pretend to stand as Pastor to one of these churches." To this Mr. Harrington first replies by the pointed question: "Is not Liberty of Conscience and ye right of judging for themselves in the matters of Religion, [pg 385] one grand professed Principle in ye New England Churches; and one Corner Stone in their Foundation?" He then explicitly states his abhorrence of "the anti-Christian tenets of Popery," adding: "However on the other hand they receive all the articles of the Athanasian Creed—and of consequence in their present Constitution they have some Gold, Silver, and precious stones as well as much wood, hay, and stubble." He characterizes the accusation in this pithy paragraph: "Too much Charity is the Charge here brought against me,—would to God I had still more of it in ye most important sense. Instead of a Disqualification, it would be a most enviable accomplishment in ye Pastor of a Protestant New England Church." A sharp argumentum ad hominem, for the benefit of the ultra-radical accuser closes this division of his defence. "But, Mr. Moderator, if my charity toward some Roman Catholicks disqualified me for a Protestant Minister, what, what must we think of ye honorable Congress attending Mass in a Body in ye Roman Catholic Chappel at Philadelphia? Must it not be equal mockery in them to pretend to represent and act for the United Protestant States?" ...
The third charge was that he had declared himself and one of the brethren to "be a major part of the Church." This, like the first charge, was a revival of an old personal grievance within the church, rehabilitated to give cumulative force to the political complaints. The accusation is summarily disposed of; the accused condemning the sentiment "as grossly Tyrannical, inconsistent with common sense and repugnant to good order"; and denying that he ever uttered it.
Lastly came the political charge pure and simple.
"His despising contemning and setting at naught and speaking Evil of all our Civil Rulers, Congress, Continental and Provincial, of all our Courts, Legislative and Executive, are not only subversive of good Order: But we apprehend come under Predicament of those spoken of in 2 Pet. II. 10, who despise government, presumptuous, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of Dignities &c."
Mr. Harrington acknowledges that he once uttered to a Mr. North this imprudent speech. "I disapprove abhor and detest the Results of Congress whether Continental or Provincial," but adds that he "took the first opportunity to inform Mr. North that I had respect only to two articles in said Results." He apologizes for the speech, but at the same time defends his criticism of the two articles as arbitrary measures. He also confesses saying that "General Court had no Business to direct Committees to seize on Estates before they had been Confiscated in a course of Law," and "that their Constituents never elected or sent them for that Purpose," but this sentiment he claimed that he had subsequently retracted as rash and improper to be spoken. These objectionable expressions of opinion, he asserts, were made "before ye 19th of April 1775."
It is needless to say that the Reverend Timothy Harrington's name was speedily erased from the black list, and, to the credit of his people be it said, he was treated with increased consideration and honor during the following eighteen years that he lived to serve them. In the deliberations of the Lancaster town meeting, as in those of the Continental Congress, broad views of [pg 386] National Independence based upon civil and religions liberty, finally prevailed over sectional prejudice and intolerance. The loyalist pastor was a far better republican than his radical inquisitors.