The numbers, position, and experiences of Episcopal ministers in the provinces at the period of the war have been recently presented in an elaborate and well-authenticated monograph on the subject.[672] From this it appears that there were at the time not far from two hundred and fifty clergymen, all of foreign ordination. The lack of Episcopal supervision brought with it laxity of discipline. At the southward the church gathered into it the wealthy, the officials of the government and of the army and navy, professional men, and merchants. But their clergy, instead of being, like their few brethren at the North, stipendiaries of a foreign society, largely derived their support from those to whom they ministered, and so, though being under the oath of allegiance, were more free to share the patriotic sentiments of the laity, and they did so. Clergy and laity in the Southern provinces seem, many of them, to have been as strongly opposed, for temporary or other reasons, to the introduction of a foreign prelacy as were those at the North. Several of the Episcopal clergy in the Middle and Southern provinces proved themselves most ardent patriots, not only in discourse but by taking chaplaincies in the Continental armies, and even serving in the ranks and as officers in command. The trial test for deciding their position was in the religious services required of them on the days appointed by Congress for thanksgiving or fasting. Their choice was not a free one between a full or a mutilated service of prayer. The severest sufferers of this class were among the Episcopal ministers of New York and Connecticut, who resolved to stand for loyalty. Some, however, trimmed to time and necessity; others were patriots. Provoost, afterwards the first Bishop of New York, espoused the side of the people.[673]
It was in New England that the "Puritanism" of which Galloway wrote had the prevailing influence; and a very energetic and effective influence it was, working with other agencies in making the English civil government all the more odious because of the lordly prelates, who ruled not only in church, but in state. The inherited and traditionary spirit of New England had kept alive the memory of the ecclesiastical tyranny which had developed Puritanism in Old England, and of the trials and sacrifices by which deliverance had been secured. Those very New England colonies in which the rebellious spirit was most vigorous had been in but recent years, by help alike of sympathizers and opponents, conservatives of the old ways and reformers with the new, working their own way of relief from their theocratic basis of government, and securing freedom for themselves in belief and worship, with progress in the severance of church and state. They could not patiently contemplate the establishment of prelacy among them. Two occasions, operating as warnings, had freshened the old Puritan spirit of New England just previous to the opening of civil contention. One was the project, which had been zealously pressed, of sending English bishops into the colonies, whose functions the popular mind refused to distinguish between those which they exercised as lords, both spiritual and temporal, in England and those of ordination and confirmation, etc., which was all that was required of them as "superior clergy" here. An animated pamphlet controversy had been waging on this subject a decade before the outbreak of hostilities, in which appeared as a champion on one side the bold and able minister Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, and on the other, Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury.[674] No English prelate ever had functions or presence on our territory. The other reason, for a revival of the hostility here against the Established Church, was found in the coming hither into the old Congregational parishes, and the maintenance here by an English missionary society, of a number of Episcopal ministers. It was charged—not, however, justly—that the benevolent founders of that society had endowed it solely for the support of missionaries to neglected and forlorn persons,—fishermen and others in the colonies,—whereas it was used to promote division and disaffection in places well provided with a ministry. This charge was overstrained, for no missionary was sent to any place where there were not those, few or many, who were actual members of the English Church, or who stood out against the doctrine and discipline of Congregationalism. None the less did hostility to the English Church help largely to stimulate the spirit of rebellion.[675]