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When the Revolution set in, about two thirds of the clergy were royalists and one third stood for the patriots. The line of cleavage did not run on the line of faithful and unfaithful ministers. When Governor Eden was requested to leave, which he did in 1776, the authorities of Maryland prescribed a form of prayer for the new instead of the old government, which a majority of the incumbents could not conscientiously use. These must pay a treble tax or leave the country. Most of them left, and a large number of churches were closed.

Nor was this opposition to the Revolution confined to the clergy of the Establishment. The Quakers, being non-combatants, left the province. The Methodists, being a special sect of the Establishment, shared in the odium cast upon it. Mr. Asbury, the chief representative of Mr. Wesley, and a man of truly apostolic fervor and devotion, was apprehended and fined, and had to live two years in retirement in Delaware. Fines and imprisonments were not uncommon for preachers of all kinds who declined to take the oath of allegiance to the United States; but toward the end of the war, when they were found not to be politically active, their preaching was acquiesced in.

The war left the church in Maryland prostrate, but not in so forlorn a condition as that of some other colonies. Eighteen or twenty clergymen remained, and the churches were not so generally demolished or dilapidated as in Virginia, which had been the scene of greater and more frequent conflict. The "Declaration of Rights," issued in November, 1776, had secured to the Church of England all the glebes, churches, chapels, and other property then owned by her; and subsequently, in 1779, the legislature passed an act to establish select vestries, and vested in them as trustees all the property that belonged to those parishes while they were a part of the Church of England. This

THE CHURCH AFTER THE REVOLUTION.

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Declaration also affirmed that all persons professing the Christian religion were equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty. It had, however, prohibited all general assessments by vestries for the support of ministers, but reserved for the legislature the right to impose, at its discretion," a common and equal tax for the support of the Christian religion in general," allowing each taxpayer to designate the denomination to whose support his contribution should be applied. In accordance with this provision a number of vestries in 1782 gave notice of their purpose to petition the legislature to make a general provision for the support of Christianity. The movement, however, was premature, and was not consummated. the anomalous condition of the Episcopal Church, disestablished virtually, and without any governing power, even of the State, an attempt was actually made during the war, by the legislature, to organize it by appointing ordainers to the ministry. The movement was frustrated chiefly by Rev. Samuel Keene, who hastened to Annapolis, and by his exertions gave it its quietus.

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We here end the account of the colonial church in Maryland, as its subsequent history forms part of the effort for its resuscitation as an independent American ecclesiastical organization.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COLONIAL CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND, OUTSIDE OF CONNECTICUT.

STRICTLY speaking, there is no history of the Episcopal Church in New England before the beginning of the eighteenth century, and scarcely any before the middle of that century. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was essentially its founder, so far as its temporalities were concerned, and that society was incorporated in 1701. Previous to the exertions of this society, individual Episcopal clergymen were found in the Puritan colonies, and isolated, feeble, and unsuccessful attempts were made from time to time to establish church settlements. They all gave way before the overwhelming tide of Puritan emigration. One characteristic of all the New England Puritan settlements, which distinguished them essentially from those of the colony in Virginia, was that their inhabitants dwelt together in towns. The climate and the soil tended to produce this result, but equally the absorbing interest of the people in religion and the nature of their ecclesiastical system. The town was an organization for united worship as well as for the conduct of secular affairs. This centralization of interests discouraged even individual dissent, and made it especially obnoxious.

The earliest of these settlements made their landing at Plymouth December 21, 1620. Though they were Sepa1 Fisher, "Colonial Era," p. 99.

JOHN LYFORD AND THOMAS MORTON.

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ratists, and not merely nonconforming members of the Church of England, as were the Puritans who followed, they had from time to time individual churchmen resident among them. The Rev. John Lyford, a minister of the Establishment, came over in 1624, sent by merchants of the New England Company. He does not seem to have been a very stable, or at times a very reputable, character, and, as Bradford expresses it," will goe minister the sacraments by his Episcopal calling." 1 There was no disposition to countenance a schism in the colony, and Lyford was banished. Nevertheless Plymouth Colony in general avoided harsh measures in dealing with theological malcontents, and even served as an asylum for persons whose tenets and practices made them uncomfortable in the colony of Massachusetts Bay.

The rapid growth of this colony is shown in the fact that twenty years after the landing of the Pilgrims it contained eight towns and a population of twenty-five hundred; and thirty years after that, in 1671, there were fifty towns and eight thousand people; and in this large community there was no trace of Episcopal institutions or influence.

In 1622 Thomas Morton came over with thirty followers and established himself at Passonagesset, a hill in the present town of Quincy. He led the life of a burly English squire, sportsmanlike and free; erected May-poles and celebrated Christmas with feasting and jollity, and maintained the character of a stout churchman more addicted to the feasts than the fasts of the church. His mode of life was a social scandal, and was exceedingly obnoxious to the general sentiment of the early settlers. Plymouth suffered it, but not the colony of Massachusetts Bay, after they became established. Endicott of Salem caused

1 Bradford," Plymouth Plantation."

his May-pole to be cut down, and rebuked the revelers for their profaneness. There was no spirit of religious devotion in this little company, and that in itself was a sufficient stigma. Morton, indeed, read prayers before his household, and conducted services on Sunday as a lay reader; but as these acts of religious decorum were accompanied by a life of laxity and worldliness, in the eyes of these colonists they only added to his offenses; so that to use the Prayer-book and to be of a gay humor were the principal articles of his condemnation. He was arrested by Captain Miles Standish, and sent to winter on the Isle of Shoals. His own account of his neighbors is: "I found two sorts of people, the one Christians, the other infidels. These I found most full of humanity and more friendly than the others." He made his way to England, and wrote a little book styled "New English Canaan," which on his return did not smooth matters for him. He was doubtless severely treated by those to whom his manners were wholly repugnant. He was imprisoned for a year, fined a hundred pounds, and then set at liberty. His property having been destroyed, he wandered from the community, sought refuge in the royal province of Maine, and died two years after at Agamenticus. He left no good impression for the church.

In 1623 Rev. William Morell came over with Robert Gorges, son of Sir Fernando, but saw no opportunity to exercise his ministry. He returned to England within a year, and left no mark behind him. Rev. William Blaxton, graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1625 occupied the present site of Boston. He was then not thirty years old, and had probably come as an assistant to Morell, who was the ecclesiastical head of Robert Gorges's expedition in 1623. Besides Blaxton, Thomas Walford was settled at Charlestown and Samuel Maverick at East

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