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NOTE 16. The Threat of the Anglican Bishops

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Volume 3, Part 3, Ideology and Religion

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Chapter 16, The Threat of the Anglican Bishops

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During the first half of the 18th century, there were sporadic schemes to impose Anglican

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bishops upon the American colonies. The schemes had been bitterly resented by all the non-Anglicans

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in America, and even opposed by most of the Anglicans themselves, who were generally low

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church and happy to be governing themselves free of English control. The schemes had died

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down during the war with France, but even then, Bishop Thomas Secker, who had assumed

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the post of Archbishop of Canterbury in 1758, quietly laid plans to revive the scheme as

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as soon as the war was over. His installment was the occasion for the Reverend Samuel Johnson

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of New York, a long-time advocate of an American episcopate, to join with a group of Anglican

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ministers in New York and New Jersey to petition for this innovation. Secker replied with the

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assurance that he had long had at heart the idea of American bishops. He added that the

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The matter must remain in abeyance, but that the powerful Lord Halifax, President of the

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Board of Trade, was enthusiastic over the scheme. As soon as the war was over, Secker

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launched his campaign. The grand design for imperial assumption of power over the colonies

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was well underway, Secker informed Johnson, and the time was therefore right for pushing

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and the Project for American Bishops.

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The imperialistic Duke of Bedford was, not surprisingly, quite willing, but Secker continued

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in secrecy until plans could fructify.

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It was in an atmosphere of fear and rumor engendered by these machinations that agitation

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against an American bishopric resumed in the colonies.

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The controversy burst to the fore in early 1763 when the great libertarian divine of

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Massachusetts, Jonathan Mayhew, was provoked by an Anglican minister's spirited defense

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of the Anglican society for preservation of the Gospel. The Reverend Mr. Mayhew's famous

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reply, observations on the Charter, strongly attacked the SPG's long-standing and dangerous

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Agitation for an American Episcopate. Against this scheme, Mayhew thundered, when we consider

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her Church of England enormous hierarchy, ascending by various gradation from the dust

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to the skies, and the threat that all of us will be taxed for the support of bishops and

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their underlings. Can we avoid crying out? Will they never let us rest in peace? Is it

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Is it not enough that they persecuted us out of the old world?

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Will they pursue us into the new to convert us here, compassing sea and land to make us

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proselytes?

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What other new world remains as a sanctuary for us from their oppressions in case if we

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need?

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Where is the Columbus to pilot us to it before we are deluged in a flood of episcopacy?

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Mayhew's stirring observations performed the function of intensifying and polarizing the

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conflict, stirring interest in activity among his supporters, and drawing bitter replies

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from several prominent Anglicans. Many of the replies called for a full-fledged Anglican

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establishment, while a rebuttal pamphlet by Archbishop Secker tried to be more moderate

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and to stress the simple administrative functions of American bishops.

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Jonathan Mayhew was unimpressed.

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Once they are here, Mayhew replied, the bishops will try to attain the power of their English

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colleagues and ambition and avarice never want plausible pretexts to accomplish their

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end.

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A gradual plan for bishops was in the long run as grave a threat as the extreme one.

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Indeed, Mayhew wisely commented, people are not usually deprived of their liberties all at once,

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but gradually, by one encroachment after another, as it is found they are disposed to bear them.

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Furthermore, Mayhew expressed great distrust of the revival of high Church-Tory principles

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and Maxims, under the new king, George III.

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Jonathan Mayhew's pamphlets in 1763 and 1764 on the Anglican Question had a profound effect

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in rallying colonial opposition to an Episcopal scheme and in sowing distrust of and hostility

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to English imperial projects.

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The Treasurer of Massachusetts wrote of the unprecedented general approbation and applause

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greeting Mayhew's observations.

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John Adams, writing later of these events, testified to the importance of the controversy

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that began with Mayhew's pamphlets.

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It spread a universal alarm against the authority of Parliament.

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It excited a general and a just apprehension that bishops and diocese and churches and

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priests and tithes were to be imposed on us by parliament. It was known that neither

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king nor ministry nor archbishops could appoint bishops in America without an act of parliament.

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And if Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England with all its

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creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies and tithes, and prohibit all other churches.

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So influential were Mayhew's writings, indeed, that the conservative, Calvinist, Congregationalist,

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who had been hostile to Mayhew's highly liberal views, now ranged alongside him and the other

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so severe was the reaction that the frightened archbishop-secker was soon willing to call off the whole thing, but the damage had been done.

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Furthermore, rumors tended to fly overseas of impending appointments of American bishops, thereby keeping America hostile and on the alert.

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Meanwhile, irritations against church and state accumulated in America.

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The Anglican governor of New York, James Delancey, refused to allow Presbyterians and Lutherans

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to control their own property.

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And as early as 1761, the Crown had prohibited the emigration from England of any school

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School Teacher to New Hampshire, who was not an Anglican and certified by the Bishop of

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London.