The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut by M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

M >> M. Louise Greene, Ph. D. >> The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

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While the Episcopalians were agitating for a larger liberty than that
granted by the Toleration Act, the other dissenters, Rogerines,
Quakers, and Baptists, were not idle.

The efforts of the Rogerines were marked more by violence than by
success. They had become less fanatic, and persecution had died away
during the first ten years following the passage of the Toleration
Act. All might have gone smoothly had they not suddenly stirred
Governor Saltonstall to renewed dislike, the magistrates to fresh
alarm, and the people to great contempt and indignation. This they
accomplished by a sort of mortuary tribute to their leader, John
Rogers, who died in 1721. This tribute took the form of renewed zeal,
and was marked by a revival of some of their most obnoxious
practices. The Rogerines determined to break up the observance of the
Puritan Sabbath. Immediately, an "Act for the Better Detecting and
more effectual Punishment of Prophaneness and Immorality" was
passed. It was especially directed against the Rogerines. Its most
striking characteristic was that it changed the policy of the
government from the time-honored Anglo-Saxon theory that every man is
innocent until proved guilty, to the doctrine that a man, accused,
must be guilty until proved innocent. In so oft-recurring a charge as
that of being absent from public worship, it became lawful to exact
fines unless the accused could prove before a magistrate that he had
been present. But this first act did not dampen sufficiently the
renewed zeal of the Rogerines, and for two years there was a
continuance of sharp legislation to reduce their disorderliness. They
were fined five shillings for leaving their houses on Sunday unless to
attend the orthodox worship, and twenty shillings for gathering in
meeting-houses without the consent of the ministers. They were given a
month, or less, in the house of correction, and at their own expense
for board, for each offense of unruly or noisy behavior on Sunday near
any meeting-house; for unlawful travel or behavior on that day; and
for refusal to pay fines assessed for breaking any of the colony's
ecclesiastical laws. These laws [87] were enforced one Sunday in 1725
against a company of Rogerines who were going quietly on their way
through Norwich to attend services in Lebanon. The outburst of
religious fervor spent itself in two or three years. Governor Talcott
did not believe in strong repressive measures, and it was soon
conceded that the ignoring of their eccentricities, if kept within
reasonable bounds, was the most efficient way to discourage the
Rogerines. Summarizing the influence of this sect, we find that they
contributed nothing definite to the slow development of religious
toleration in Connecticut. If anything, their fanaticism hindered its
growth, and they gained little for themselves and nothing for the
cause. As the years went on and their little sect were permitted to
indulge their peculiar notions, and the props of the State were not
weakened nor the purity of religion vitally assailed, the Rogerines
contributed their mite towards convincing mankind, and the Connecticut
people in particular, that brethren of different creeds and religious
practices might live together in security and harmony without danger
to the civil peace.

During the seventeen years that Governor Talcott held office, 1724-41,
the life of the colony was marked by its notable expansion through the
settlement of new towns, [f] and by the dexterity with which its
foreign affairs--its relations to England and its boundary disputes
with its neighbors--were conducted. The last dragged on for years,
calling for several expensive commissions and causing much
confusion. The Massachusetts line was determined in 1713; that of
Rhode Island in 1728; and that of New York in 1735. Connecticut, in
all these cases, had to be wary lest the attempts to settle these
disputed claims should weary, antagonize, or anger the King.[88] Many
of the old charges were renewed, and Connecticut was no longer
regarded as a "dutiful" colony, but rather as one altogether too
independent, from whom it might be wise to wrest her charter,
subjecting her to a royal governor. As early as 1715, her colonial
agent had been advised to procure a peaceable surrender of the
charter. To this proposal, Governor Saltonstall had returned a
courteous and dignified refusal. But the danger was always cropping
up. Governor Talcott's English official correspondence is full of
details concerning Connecticut's increasing anxiety concerning the
attitude and the decisions of the home government; over the dangers
consequent to her institutions or to her charter. It was repeatedly
suggested that that charter should be surrendered, modified in favor
of the King's supervision, or annulled. In the Governor's letters, one
follows the intricacies of the boundary disputes, of the complicated
Mohegan case, and sounds the dangers to the colony from the
disposition and decisions of the Crown.[89]

One case in particular demands a passing consideration because of its
far-reaching effects, and because it paralleled in time the
legislation in the colony which broadened the Toleration Act. This was
the famous case of John Winthrop against his brother-in-law, Thomas
Lechmere, to recover real estate left by the elder Winthrop to his son
and daughter. The suit brought up the whole question of land entail in
Connecticut, and, with it, the possibility of an economic and social
revolution in the colony which would have been the death-blow to its
prosperity. Winthrop, by appealing the case to England, brought
Connecticut into still greater disfavor, and risked the loss of the
charter, together with many special privileges in religion and
politics which the colony enjoyed through a liberal interpretation of
that instrument. In the course of the suit, the constitutional
relations of Crown and colony had to be threshed out.

John Winthrop's father died in 1717, when, according to Connecticut,
but not English, law of primogeniture, Winthrop received as eldest son
a double portion of his father's real estate, and his sister, Thomas
Lechmere's wife, the rest. Winthrop's brother-in-law was not a man
wholly to be trusted to deal justly with his wife's property; but
this, in itself, was a very small factor in the suit. Winthrop was at
variance with the Connecticut authorities, and was dissatisfied with
his share both of his father's property and of his uncle's, whose heir
he was. No matter how much his own personal interests might endanger
the colony, Winthrop resolved to have all the property due him as
eldest son and heir under English law. He appealed his case to
England, taking it directly from the local probate court, and ignoring
the Court of Assistants, where he might have obtained some
redress. Moreover, to influence the decision in his favor he included
in his list of grievances many of the old offenses charged against
Connecticut. He did this, even while acknowledging that the colonial
Intestate Act, framed in 1699,[90] was but the embodiment of custom
that had existed from the beginning of the colony. While this case
dragged on, it was again intimated to Connecticut that the surrender
of her charter, or at least the substitution of an explanatory
charter, might be an acceptable price for the royal confirmation of
her Intestate Law. Finally, Winthrop went to England, and was given a
private hearing, at which no representative of the colony was present.
As a result of this hearing, an order in Council was issued February
15, 1728, annulling the Connecticut Intestate Act as contrary to the
laws of England and as exceeding charter rights. Moreover, the
colonial authorities were ordered to measure off the lands, claimed by
Winthrop, and to restore them to him.

Of course, it would take some time to obey the order. Meanwhile, if
this restitution were made, if the decision were submitted to, it
would invalidate so many land titles as to threaten the very existence
of Connecticut's economic structure. The colony sought the best legal
talent obtainable. For seventeen years Connecticut continued this
expensive lawsuit, urging always her willingness to comply in the case
of Winthrop, if only the decision be made a special one and not a
precedent,--if only an order in Council, or an act of Parliament,
would reinstate the Connecticut Intestate Law. Her agents in England
were instructed to demonstrate how well the colonial division of
property had worked, and that under the English division, where all
real estate went to the eldest son, if it were practiced in a new and
heavily wooded country, whose chief wealth was agriculture, the rental
of lands would yield income barely sufficient to pay taxes and repair
fences, and there could be no dowry for the daughters. A still further
result would be, that the younger sons would be driven into
manufacturing or forced to emigrate. In each case the Crown would
suffer, either by the loss of a colonial market for its manufactured
products, or by an impoverished colony, incapable of making
satisfactory returns to the royal treasury. [91] Moreover, in the case
of emigration, when Connecticut, lacking men to plow her fields, could
no longer produce the foodstuffs the surplus of which she sold to the
"trading parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island" to supply the
fisheries, the Crown would feel still another baneful effect from its
attempt to enforce the English law of entail. Again, there was another
aspect from which to view the annulment of the Connecticut Intestate
Law. Its annulment would render worthless many past and present
land-titles. Creditors who had accepted land for debt would
suffer. Titles to lands, held by towns, as well as individuals, would
become subject to litigation; the whole colony would be plunged into
lawsuits, and its economic framework would be rent in pieces. The
Intestate Law was in accordance with custom throughout New
England. When in 1737 a similar statute in Massachusetts was sustained
by the King in Council in the appeal of Phillips _vs._ Savage,
Connecticut, notwithstanding the renewed and repeated suggestions to
give up her charter, took courage to continue the contest.

During these years the question of the constitutional relation of
colony and Crown was frequently raised, and Connecticut was called
upon to show that her laws were not contrary to the laws of
England. She had to prove that they were not contrary to the common
law of England; nor to the statute law, existing at the founding of
the colony; nor to those acts of Parliament that had been expressly
extended to the colony. This was the most commonly held of the three
interpretations of "not contrary to the laws of England." The most
restricted interpretation was that all colonial laws higher than
by-laws, and "which even within that term touched upon matters already
provided for by English common or statute law, were illegal" or
"contrary." Under this interpretation, "the colonies were as towns
upon the royal demesne." Connecticut herself held to a third
construction, maintaining that, as her own charter nowhere stipulated
that her administration should accord with the civil, common, or
statute law of England, she, at least, among the colonies was free to
frame her own laws according to her own needs and desires. Holding to
this opinion, which had never been corrected by the Crown, Connecticut
maintained that "contrary to the laws of England" was limited in its
intent to contrary to those laws expressly designed by Parliament to
extend to the plantations. Moreover, Connecticut insisted that the
colonies were not to be compared to English towns, because, unlike the
towns, they had no representation in Parliament. The Connecticut
Intestate Act was opposed to the English law according to the first
two interpretations, but not according to the third. Further, the
Connecticut authorities felt that if the conditions which had given
rise to the law were fully realized in England, the apparent
insubordination of the colony would disappear in the light of the real
equity of the colonial statute. In Governor Talcott's letter, dated
November 3, 1729, under "The Case of Connecticut Stated," there is a
summary of the reasons why the colony hesitated to appeal directly to
Parliament for a confirmation of the Intestate Act. She was afraid of
exciting still greater disfavor by seeming to ask privileges in
addition to those already conferred upon her in her very liberal
charter. She was afraid of courting inquiry in regard to her
ecclesiastical laws, her laws relating to the collegiate school, and
also sundry civil laws. The colony feared that the result of such an
investigation would be that she would thereafter be rated, not as a
government or province, but as a corporation with a charter permitting
only the enactment of by-laws. Moreover, she dreaded to be ranked with
"rebellious Massachusetts," and thus further expose herself to a
probable loss of her charter.

After contesting the decision against her for many years, at last in
1746 she virtually won her case through a decision given in England in
the suit of Clarke _vs._ Tousey,[92]--a suit which had been
appealed from the colony, and which presented much the same claim as
Winthrop's. The decision in favor of Clarke was equivalent to a
recognition of Connecticut's Intestacy Law. It has been pointed out
that, important as the Winthrop controversy was from the economic
standpoint, it was equally important as fore-shadowing the legislation
of the English government some thirty years later, and as defining the
relation of colony and Crown. Moreover, in 1765, as in 1730, "economic
causes and conditions," writes Professor Andrews in his discussion of
the Connecticut Intestacy Law, "drove the colonists into opposition to
England quite as much as did theories of political independence, or of
so-called self-evident rights of man."

It was during the continuance of this troublesome Winthrop suit, while
boundary lines were still unsettled, while as yet the Mohegan titles
remained in dispute, while the most grievous charge of encouraging
home manufactures, and many other complaints were brought against
Connecticut,--it was in the midst of her perplexities and conflicting
interests that the dissenters within her borders sought greater
religious liberty. They sought it, not only through their own local
efforts, but through the strength of their friends in England, who
brought all their influence to bear upon the home government. With
such help Episcopalians had won exemption in 1727, and within two
years Quakers and Baptists were accorded similar freedom.

Connecticut Quakers, though few in numbers, were very determined to
have their rights. From 1706, the Newport Yearly Meeting had
encouraged the collecting and recording of all cases of "sufferance."
In 1714, at the close of Queen Anne's War (1702-13), the Newport
Yearly Meeting reported to that of London that "there is much
suffering on account of the Indians at the Eastward, yet not one (of
ours) had fallen during the last year, Travelling preachers having
frequently visited those parts without the least harm.... Friends in
several places have suffered deeply on account of not paying
presbyterian priests, and for the Refusing to bear Armes, an Account
of which we Doe herewith Send." In 1715, the English law had granted
them the perpetual privilege of substituting affirmation for oath. The
Quakers were determined to have the same freedom in the colonies as in
England. Accordingly, they watched with interest the test case between
the Quaker constables of Duxbury and Tiverton,--both, then, under the
jurisdiction of Massachusetts,--and the authorities of that
colony. Fines and persecutions were so much alike in Connecticut and
Massachusetts that a dissenter's victory in one colony would go far
towards obtaining exemption in the other. The Quaker constables had
refused to collect the church rate, and for this refusal were thrown
into prison. Thereupon a petition, with many citations from the colony
law books, was sent to England, begging that the prisoners be released
and excused from their fines, and that such unjust laws be annulled.
The Privy Council ordered the prisoners released and their fine
remitted. This decision was rendered in 1724, and, with the success of
the Episcopalians three years later, still further encouraged both
Quakers and Baptists to seek relief from ecclesiastical taxes and
fines. Two years later, in May, 1729, the Quakers appealed to the
Connecticut Court for such exemption, and were released from
contributing to the support of the established ministry and from
paying any tax levied for building its meeting-houses, provided they
could show a certificate from some society of their own (either within
the colony or without it, if so near its borders that they could
regularly attend its services) vouching for their support of its
worship and their presence at its regular meetings. [93]

Turning to the Baptists, the oppressive measures employed to make them
violate their conscience ceased on the inauguration of Governor
Talcott in 1724. Thereafter, those among them who conformed to the
requirements of the Toleration Act received some measure of freedom.
To the neighborly interest of the Association of Baptist Churches of
North Kingston, Rhode Island, and to the influence of leading Baptists
in that colony, including among them its governor (who subjoined a
personal note to the Association's appeal to the Connecticut General
Court), was due the favor of the Court extended in October, 1729, [94]
to the Baptists, whereby they were granted exemption upon the same
terms as those offered the Quakers.

Thus in barely twenty years from the passage of the Toleration Act,
Episcopalian, Quaker, and Baptist had driven the thin edge of a
destroying wedge into the foundations of the Connecticut
Establishment. Each dissenting body was pitifully small in absolute
strength, and they had no inclination toward united action. Quakers
and Baptists were required to show certificates, a requirement soon to
be considered in itself humiliating. The new laws were negative, in
that they empowered the assessor to _omit_ to tax those entitled
to exemption, but they provided no penalty to be enforced against
assessors who failed to make such omission. Indeed, in individual
cases, the laws might seem to be scarcely more than an admission of
the right to exemption. However, it was an admission that a century's
progress had brought the knowledge that brethren of different
religious opinions could dwell together in peace. It was an exemption
by which the government admitted, as well as claimed, the right of
choice in religious worship. It was a far cry to the acknowledgment
that a man was free to think his own thoughts and follow his own
convictions, provided they did not interfere with the rights of other
men. The new laws were a concession by a strongly intrenched church to
the natural rights of weaker ones, whose title to permanency it
greatly doubted. They were a concession by a government whose best
members felt it to be the State's moral and religious obligation to
support one form of religion and to protect it at the cost, if
necessary, of all other forms,--a concession, by such a government, to
a very small minority of its subjects, holding the same appreciation
of their religious duty as that which had nerved the founders of the
colony. It was a concession by the community to a very few among their
number, who were divergent in church polity and practice, but who were
united in a Protestant creed and in the conviction, held then by every
respectable citizen, that every man should be made to attend and
support some accepted and organized form of Christian worship.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] The Rev. John Hart of East Guilford, Samuel Whittlesey of
Wallingford, and Jared Ellis of Killingworth. These men were always
friendly to the Churchmen.

[b] The Rev. Daniel Brown died in England. In the next forty years,
one tenth of those who crossed the sea for ordination perished from
dangers incident to the trip.

[c] This year the home influence of the Church of England had been
brought to bear with sufficient pressure to forbid the calling of a
general synod of the New England churches which had been desired, and
towards which Massachusetts had taken the initial step. See
A. L. Cross, _Anglican Episcopate_, pp. 67-70.

[d] Stratford.

[e] This same year, George I granted to Bishop Gibson a patent
confirming the jurisdiction which, as Bishop of London, he claimed
over the Church of England in the colonies. George II renewed the
patent in 1728-29.

[f] Between 1700 and 1741 more than thirty new towns were organized,
making twice as many as in 1700.

CHAPTER IX

"THE GREAT AWAKENING."

Wake, awake, for night is flying:
The watchmen on the heights are crying,
Awake, Jerusalem, arise!--Advent Hymn.

The opposition of Episcopalian, Quaker, and Baptist to the Connecticut
Establishment, if measured by ultimate results, was important and
far-reaching. But it was dwarfed almost to insignificance, so feeble
was it, so confined its area, when compared to that opposition which,
thirty-five years after the Saybrook Synod and a dozen years after the
exemption of the dissenters, sprang up within the bosom of the
Congregational church itself, as a protest against civil enactments
concerning religion. This protest was a direct result of the moral and
spiritual renascence that occurred in New England and that became
known as the "Great Awakening." History in all times and countries
shows a periodicity of religious activity and depression. It would
sometimes seem as if these periodic outbreaks of religious aspirations
were but the last device of self-seeking,--were but attempts to find
consolation for life's hardships and to secure happiness
hereafter. Fortunately such selfish motives are transmuted in the
search for larger ethical and spiritual conceptions. An enlarged
insight into the possibilities of living tends to slough off
selfishness and to make more habitual the occasional, and often
involuntary, response to Christlike deeds and ideals. But so ingrained
is our earthly nature that, in communities as in nations, periods
alternate with periods, and the pendulum swings from laxity to
morality, from apathy to piety, gradually shortening its arc. So in
Connecticut, numbers of her towns from time to time had been roused to
greater interest in religion before the spiritual cyclone of the great
revival, or "Great Awakening," swept through the land in 1740 and the
two following years. The earlier and local revivals were generally
due to some special calamity, as sickness, failure of harvest,
ill-fortune in war, or some unusual occurrence in nature, such as an
earthquake or comet, with the familiar interpretation that Jehovah was
angry with the sins of his people. Sometimes, however, the zeal of a
devoted minister would kindle counter sparks among his people. Such a
minister was the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, who mentions five notable
revivals, or "harvests,"[a] as he calls them, during his sixty years
of ministry in the Northampton church. A few other New England towns
had similar revivals, but they were brief and rare.

Notwithstanding these occasional local "stirrings of the heart," at
the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth century a cold,
formal piety was frequently the covering of indifferent living and of
a smug, complacent Christianity, wherein the letter killed and the
spirit did not give life. This was true all over New England, and
elsewhere. Nor was this deadness confined to the colonies alone, for
the Wesleys were soon to stir the sluggish current of English
religious life. In New England, the older clergymen, like the Mathers
of Massachusetts, conservative men, whose memories or traditions were
of the golden age of Puritanism, had long bemoaned the loss of
religious interest, the inability of reforming synods to create
permanent improvement, and the helplessness of ecclesiastical councils
or of civil enactments to rouse the people from the real "decay of
piety in the land," and from their indifference to the immorality that
was increasing among them. This indifference grew in Connecticut after
the Saybrook Platform had laid a firm hold upon the churches. Its
discipline created a tendency, on the one hand, to hard and narrow
ecclesiasticism, and, on the other, to careless living on the part of
those who were satisfied with a mere formal acceptance of the
principles of religion and with the bare acknowledgment of the right
of the churches to their members' obedience.[b]

It is a great mistake [writes Jonathan Edwards] if any one imagines
that all these external performances (owning the covenant, accepting
the sacraments, observing the Sabbath and attending the ministry), are
of the nature of a _profession_ of anything that belongs to
_saving grace_, as they are commonly used and
understood.... People are taught that they may use them all, and not
so much as make any pretence to the least degree of _sanctifying
grace_; and this is the established custom. So they are used and so
they are understood.... It is not unusual ... for persons, at the same
time they come into the church and pretend to own the covenant, freely
to declare to their neighbors, that they have no imagination that they
have any true faith in Christ or love to Him.[95]

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