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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
‘For a bishop to live at one end of the world, and his Church at the other, must make the office very uncomfortable to the bishop, and in a great measure useless to the people.’ This was the verdict of Thomas Sherlock, bishop of London from 1748 to 1761, on the provision which had been made by the Church of England for the care of its congregations overseas. No Anglican bishopric existed outside the British Isles, but a limited form of responsibility for the Church overseas was exercised by the see of London. In the time of Henry Compton, bishop from 1675 to 1713, Anglican churches in the American colonies, in India and in European countrieshad all sought guidance from the bishop of London. By the 1740s the European connection had been severed; the bishop still accepted some colonial responsibilities but the arrangement was seen as anomalous by churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic. A three-thousand-mile voyage separated the colonists from their bishop, and those wishing to seek ordination could not do so unless they were prepared to cross the ocean. Although the English Church claimed that the episcopate was an essential part of church order, no Anglican bishop had ever visited America, confirmation had never been administered, and no church building in the colonies had been validly consecrated. While a Roman Catholic bishopric was established in French Canada at an early date, the Anglican Church overseas had no resident bishops until the end of the eighteenth century. In the words of Archbishop Thomas Seeker, this was ‘a case which never had its parallel before in the Christian world’.
1 Lambeth Palace Library (hereinafter LPL), Fulham Papers, xiii. 41–2.
2 Porteus, B., A Review of the Life and Character of the Right Reverend Dr Thomas Secker, 5th edn, London 1797, 62–3Google Scholar.
3 LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 228–9.
4 Ibid. xxxvi. 61, III–12.
5 Ibid. viii. 311; xv. 228–9; xxxvi. II.
6 In 1986 when Bishop Graham Leonard gave his support to the deposed parish priest of St Michael's, Tulsa, Oklahoma, he emphasised his view that the overseas jurisdiction of the bishop of London was ‘a matter of legal debate both with regard to its origin and to its subsequent history’, and for this reason made no claim to be acting in virtue of it: Peart-Binns, J. S., Graham Leonard, Bishop of London, London 1988, 198Google Scholar. For earlier studies of the subject see, e.g., Cross, A. L., The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, New York 1902CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Manross, W. W., The Fulham Papers in the Lambeth Palace Library, Oxford 1965Google Scholar.
7 LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 228–9.
8 Hill, G., English Dioceses, London 1900, 349–349Google Scholar.
9 Stevens, H., The Dawn of British Trade to the East Indies as recorded in the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1599–1603, London 1886, 116, 216, 275, 281Google Scholar; Wood, A. C., A History of the Levant Company, Oxford 1935, 222Google Scholar.
10 Kingsbury, S. M., The Records of the Virginia Company of London, Washington 1906–1935, iii. 14, 17Google Scholar.
11 Wright, L. B., Religion and Empire: the alliance between piety and commerce in English expansion 1558–1625, Chapel Hill, NC 1943, 65Google Scholar; Wood, , History of the Levant Company 223Google Scholar.
12 Brydon, G. M., Virginia's Mother Church and the Political Conditions under which it Grew, Richmond, Va. 1947–1952, i. 9Google Scholar. In 1607 the company granted an absentee rectorship to the geographer Richard Hakluyt, who chose a younger man named Robert Hunt to go to Virginia on his behalf. The company had obtained approval for Hakluyt's appointment from the archbishop of Canterbury: ibid. i. 40–3. Richard Bucke, the second English clergyman in Virginia, arrived with a commendation from Thomas Ravis, bishop of London from 1607 to 1609: Whitaker, A., Good Newes from Virginia, London 1613Google Scholar, unpaginated ‘epistle dedicatorie’. In the eighteenth century it was alleged that John King, bishop of London from 1611 to 1621, had assisted the company in finding candidates for the ministry in Virginia, and thus acquired a more general oversight of the Church beyond the seas; but recent studies have generally rejected the suggestion. Brydon, , Virginia's Mother Church, i. 419–21Google Scholar, shows that there is no firm evidence to support it. See also Cross, , The Anglican Episcopate, 8–12Google Scholar.
13 Brydon, , Virginia's Mother Church, i. 83, 90–3Google Scholar; Seiler, W. H., ‘The Anglican parish in Virginia’, in Smith, J. M. (ed.), Seventeenth Century America: essays in colonial history, Chapel Hill, NC 1959, 120–42Google Scholar; Middleton, A. P., ‘The colonial Virginia parish’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church xl (1971), 431–46Google Scholar.
14 In contemporary records the words ‘institution’ and ‘induction’ are often used interchangeably, but induction to the temporalities is always meant. The ceremony was conducted by the incumbent of a neighbouring parish, deputed by the governor for the purpose. See Campbell, P. F., The Church in Barbados in the Seventeenth Century, Barbados 1982, 92Google Scholar.
15 Brydon, , Virginia's Mother Church, i. 131, 137, 174Google Scholar; Campbell, , The Church in Barbados, 60–3, 70Google Scholar; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series 1661–8, no. 84.
16 Campbell, , The Church in Barbados, 106, 119Google Scholar.
17 Virginia's Cure, or an Advisive Narrative Concerning Virginia…as it was Presented to…Guilbert Lord Bishop of London, London 1662Google Scholar.
18 Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series 1613–80, nos 522, 899; State Papers, Colonial Series 1661–8, nos 118, 652; State Papers, Colonial Series 1677–80, no. 515.
19 Sutch, V. D., Gilbert Sheldon: architect of Anglican survival 1640–75, The Hague 1973, 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 PRO, SP 84/147, fo. 156; PC 2/43, fos 185–6, 261–2; SP 16/247, fo. 2. Laud's intervention was directed at the Merchant Adventurers' church in Delft, which had long been a Puritan stronghold: Sprunger, K. L., Dutch Puritanism: a history of English and Scottish churches of the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Leiden 1982, 234–51Google Scholar. The order in council which placed the Adventurers' churches under the bishop of London was probably first drafted while Laud himself still held that office. When his nomination as archbishop of Canterbury was confirmed on 19 Sept. 1633 he failed, or saw no need, to alter the draft. See also Cross, , The Anglican Episcopate, 17Google Scholar.
21 Rushworth, J., Historical Collections, London 1659–1701, ii. 409Google Scholar; Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series 1613–80, no. 404.
22 Heylyn, P., Cyprianus Anglicus, London 1668, 276Google Scholar.
23 Although the Merchant Adventurers at Delft had conformed, there were some 25 or 30 English churches in Holland at that time, and most remained resolutely Puritan. English chaplains serving in other countries also generally preserved their independence. Laud might have turned his attention to Hamburg, where the Merchant Adventurers had a second church to which the order of 1633 could have been applied, but the Prayer Book was not brought into use there until the accession of Charles II: Sprunger, , Dutch Puritanism, 259–60Google Scholar. PRO, CO 1/20, fos 220–I.
25 State Papers, Colonial Series 1675–6, no. 571.
26 PRO, CO 31/1, fos 51–2. Clergy in the island of St Vincent were said to have received their benefices from the ‘bishop of Canterbury’ both before and after the Interregnum: Ogilby, J., America: being the latest and most accurate description of the New World, London 1671, 385385CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 BL, MS Harley 7377, fo. 10; cf. Penny, F., The Church in Madras, London 1904–1922, i. 50Google Scholar.
28 LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 3–10; BL, MSS Harley 3790, nos 1–4; 7377, fo. 49.
29 Guildhall Library, London (hereinafter GL), MS 9531/16.
30 Ibid. MS 25200, no. 28. The treaty, agreed by Cromwell and the Portuguese ambassador in 1653–4, was not signed by the king of Portugal until 1656 (BL, MS Add. 22908, fo. 23). Zachary Cradock, the first chaplain in Portugal, went to Lisbon in September 1657, returned to England after 2½ years, then served in Lisbon again for a short period, apparently in the late 1660s (PRO, SP 89/15, fos 180–1). Bishop Henchman's involvement must have related to Cradock's second visit.
31 Ibid. fo. 296; GL, MS 25200, no. 28.
32 State Papers, Colonial Series 1669–74, nos 592, 704, a t p. 305; Campbell, , The Church in Barbados, 70–1Google Scholar.
33 The fullest biography of Compton is Carpenter, E., The Protestant Bishop, London 1956Google Scholar. For his travels abroad see pp. 10–16.
34 State Papers, Colonial Series 1675–6, nos 783–4, 789; LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 11.
35 Compton's recollection, in the latter years of his episcopate, was that ‘when I first came to this diocese…I found the bishop had by act of council a title to the jurisdiction of sending ministers into all foreign plantations’: ibid. SPG Papers, viii. 240; cf. An Account of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London 1706, 11Google Scholar. However the committee's vague reference to charters suggests that in 1676 the alleged act of the council was unknown.
36 LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 48.
37 GL, MS 9531/17, fo. 10; Routh, E. M. G., Tangier: England's lost Atlantic outpost, London 1912, 295, 305Google Scholar.
38 PRO, CO 279/18, no. 320.
39 Ibid. 279/37. In Virginia the governor's prerogative dated back to the 1630s if not earlier: LPL, Fulham Papers, xi. 3–4; Brydon, , Virginia's Mother Church, i. 428Google Scholar.
40 GL, MS 10925A; PRO, CO 279/18, no. 320; LPL, Fulham Papers, Compton, ii. 86.
41 GL, MS 10925A.
42 Ibid. MS 9540/2, fos 2, 4 and passim.
43 LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 48–9, 61.
44 Ibid. 48–9; GL, MS 9540/2, fo. 10.
45 Ridge, A. D., ‘All at sea’, Archives vi (1964), 229–34, at p. 232Google Scholar.
46 State Papers, Colonial Series 1677–80, nos 475, 480; Labaree, L. W., Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors 1670–1776 New York 1935, ii. 484Google Scholar.
47 Ibid. 486, 492.
48 State Papers, Colonial Series 1677–80, nos 337–9; Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series 1613–80, nos 1145, 1165.
49 GL, MS 11184; LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxv.
50 Labaree, , Royal Instructions, ii. 486Google Scholar; State Papers, Colonial Series 1677–80, no. 1264.
51 Spangenberg, B., ‘Vestrymen in the House of Burgesses’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church xxxii (1963), 77–99Google Scholar.
52 LPL, Fulham Papers, vii. 1; State Papers, Colonial Series 1681–5, no. 8.
53 GL, MSS 9531/17, fos 28–9; 9657/5; Anderson, J. S. M., The History of the Church of England in the Colonies and Foreign Dependencies of the British Empire, London 1845–1856, ii. 579–82Google Scholar; Penny, , The Church in Madras, i. 82Google Scholar.
54 State Papers, Colonial Series 1677–80, no. 1488.
55 State Papers, Colonial Series 1681–5, nos 111, 123, 1409, 1435; Campbell, , The Church in Barbados, 96, 141Google Scholar.
56 State Papers, Colonial Series 1681–5, nos 123, 311.
57 State Papers, Colonial Series 1685–8, nos 127, 130; LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 15; Chandler, T. B., A Free Examination of the Critical Commentary on Archbishop Seeker's Letter to Mr Walpole, to which is added…a Copy of Bishop Sherlock's Memorial, NewYork 1774, 107–8Google Scholar. For the Jamaican Act of 1681 see LPL, Fulham Papers, xvii. 207–8; xviii. 49.
58 Labaree, , Royal Instructions, ii. 489–90Google Scholar; LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 232; xxxvi. 48–9.
59 Ibid. 61; Cross, , The Anglican Episcopate, 31–2Google Scholar; Manross, , The Fulham Papers, pp. xv–xviGoogle Scholar; Bennett, J. H., ‘English bishops and imperial jurisdiction 1660–1725’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church xxxii (1963), 175–88, at p. 184Google Scholar. The blank page was noticed as early as 1725: LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 228–9.
60 Ibid. 229–32. Compton's letter to the governor of Virginia (xv. 232) names the intended commissary as ‘Mr Clayton’. This almost certainly indicates John Clayton, rector of Jamestown 1684–6 and later dean of Kildare; cf. Berkeley, E. and Berkeley, D. S., The Reverend John Clayton: a parson with a scientific mind, Charlottesville, Va. 1965Google Scholar. For the date of Compton's letter (Sept. 1685) see LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 48–9.
61 Ibid. SPG Papers, viii. 240.
62 Carpenter, , The Protestant Bishop, 80–100Google Scholar; State Papers, Colonial Series 1685–8, no. 946; Labaree, , Royal Instructions, ii. 489–90Google Scholar.
63 LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 229–30.
64 It is not known whether they issued any overseas licences. None of the subscriptions recorded from the commissioners' term of office (in GL, MS 9540/4) is for an overseas licence; but the surviving subscriptions are very few in total. A concurrent subscription book exists (GL, MS 9540/3) but has no entries between 4 Sept. 1686 and 11 Oct. 1688.
65 Manross, , The Fulham Papers, p. xviGoogle Scholar.
66 PRO, CO5/1305, fo. 77; State Papers, Colonial Series 1689–92, nos 639, 876; Campbell, , The Church in Barbados, 96–7Google Scholar.
67 Brydon, , Virginia's Mother Church, i. 280Google Scholar; GL, MS 9531/18, fo. 153.
68 PRO, CO 5/1395, fos 94–5.
69 LPL, Fulham Papers, xi. 221; Brydon, , Virginia's Mother Church, i. 284–6, 429–30Google Scholar; Perry, W. S., Historical Collections relating to the American Colonial Church, Hartford, Ct. 1870–1878, i. 214Google Scholar.
70 LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 125.
71 Campbell, , The Church in Barbados, 97Google Scholar.
72 LPL, Fulham Papers, ii. 145–6, 149.
73 Cnattingius, H., Bishops and Societies: a study of Anglican colonial and missionary expansion 1698–1850, London 1952, 9, 25–6Google Scholar.
74 Cobbe, R., Bombay Church, or a True Account of the Building and Finishing of the English Church at Bombay, London 1766, 55–61Google Scholar.
75 GL, MS 9531/18–27. In the eighteenth century registers the last entry referring to an overseas consecration is dated 5 June 1709, when a chapel and burial ground at Fort William in Bengal were consecrated under a commission from Bishop Compton: Ibid. MS 9531/18, fo. 180. Bishop William Howley, when approached in 1815 about the possible consecration of the church at Oporto, expressed his concern that it was situated within the boundaries of a Roman Catholic diocese, and doubted his competence ‘to authorise such a proceeding in the diocese of another bishop’: Delaforce, J., Anglicans Abroad: the history of the chaplaincy and church of St James at Oporto, London 1982, 42–3Google Scholar.
76 For Gibson's life and work see Sykes, N., Edmund Gibson, London 1926Google Scholar.
77 LPL, Fulham Papers, xx. 9–10.
78 Pearson, J. B., A Biographical Sketch of the Chaplains to the Levant Company, Cambridge 1883, 10Google Scholar; LPL, SPG Papers, ix. 34. One Russia Company chaplain obtained the bishop's licence on 1 June 1717 (GL, MS 9540/9, unfoliated), but this did not become established practice. The company maintained its independence from episcopal authority until 1866 (Ibid. MS 11749/2, nos 344, 353).
79 LPL, Fulham Papers, Gibson, ii. 78; GL, MS 9540/2, passim; Shaw, J., Charters relating to the East India Company 1600–1761, Madras 1887, 143, 185Google Scholar. LPL, Fulham Papers, xlii. 33 is a list of East India licences issued by Gibson between 1725 and 1742.
80 Besides the older churches at Hamburg, Lisbon and Oporto, there were Anglican chaplaincies founded in 1698 at Rotterdam and Amsterdam, where licensing by the bishop remained normal practice until the end of Robinson's episcopate: GL, MS 9540/9, passim; Loosjes, J., History of Christ Church (English Episcopal Church) Amsterdam, 1698–1932, Amsterdam 1932, 147–17Google Scholar. Only in the churches at Danzig and Leghorn, both established in 1706, did the clergy have no licence from the bishop of London. At Leghorn the first chaplains were recommended by the archbishop of Canterbury and licensed by the crown: Anderson, , The Church of England in the Colonies, iii. 82, 86Google Scholar. There is no record of an episcopal licence for either Leghorn or Danzig in the bishop's subscription book for 1706 (GL, MS 9540/7), but a crown licence for Leghorn is in BL, MS Add. 38889, fo. 130V.
81 PRO, SP 89/15, fo. 115; Delaforce, , Anglicans Abroad, 9Google Scholar.
82 An example had been set by Basil Kennett, the first chaplain at Leghorn, who was the subject of violent attacks by the Roman Catholic population. Kennett had a licence from Queen Anne, and the future of the chaplaincy was secured by a despatch from the British government, that the queen would regard any harm to the chaplain as an affront to herself and that military force would be used if necessary to obtain satisfaction: Anderson, , The Church of England in the Colonies, iii. 82–3Google Scholar.
83 LPL, Fulham Papers, Gibson, ii. 15; Fulham Papers, Sherlock, iii. 8–39.
84 In the event, a few candidates with a title to a European chaplaincy still came to London for ordination, and occasionally a chaplain in difficulty sought the bishop's help (Ibid. Fulham Papers, xii. 203–4; Fulham Papers, Gibson, ii. 18–19; Fulham Papers, Lowth, ii. 204–24); but no European licences are mentioned in the episcopal records between 1720 and 1815, when Bishop Howley resumed licensing (GL, MS 9532A/2, 95).
85 LPL, Fulham Papers, xv. 139–48, 217–32; Bennett, , ‘English bishops and imperial jurisdiction’, 183–4Google Scholar.
86 LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 61–2, 111–12.
87 Sykes, , Edmund Gibson, 334Google Scholar, from Gibson MSS formerly in St Paul's cathedral library; LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 62; Fulham Papers, Gibson, ii. 79. For Gibson's colonial ordinations and licences before the grant of his patent see GL, MS 9540/10, passim.
88 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series 1720–45, no. 74; LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 63–89, 111–12; Fulham Papers, Gibson, ii. 79–80; Sykes, , Edmund Gibson, 336–7Google Scholar; LPL, MS 2589. 67–74.
89 Ibid. 1–5.
90 Cross, , The Anglican Episcopate, 289–93Google Scholar. The clauses about the morals of parish clerks were also omitted from the second patent.
91 LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 111–12; Chandler, , A Free Examination, 110Google Scholar.
92 Cross, , The Anglican Episcopate, 294–309Google Scholar.
93 LPL, Fulham Papers, ix. 268–9; x. 28–31, 62–3, 134–5.
94 Ibid. xii. 3, 259–60.
95 Ibid. iii. 134–41, 191–2, 197–8; vii. 314–15; xvii. 147, 207–8; xviii. 53–4.
96 In 1743 Gibson announced that he would not ordain anyone from the colonies without such a testimonial: ibid, xxxvi. 131.
97 Thus in 1736 William Currie was made deacon on 17 Sept., ordained priest on 29 Sept., and licensed to serve in Pennsylvania on 1 Oct. (GL, MS 9540/10, fos 218–19). Later in the century the interval of a year or so became more usual: Manross, , The Fulham Papers, 298Google Scholar.
98 Seeker, T., A Letter to the Right Honourable Horatio Walpole Esq., London 1769, 3–4Google Scholar; Porteus, , Life of Thomas Seeker, 61Google Scholar.
99 Jones, H., The Present State of Virginia, London 1724, 68, 97Google Scholar.
100 LPL, Fulham Papers, i. 245–6; Isaac, R., The Transformation of Virginia 1740–1790, Chapel Hill, NC 1982, 68, 120Google Scholar.
101 Cross, , The Anglican Episcopate, 88–112Google Scholar; Sykes, , Edmund Gibson, 367–73Google Scholar.
102 LPL, Fulham Papers, vi. 278–9; BL, MS Add. 32719, fo. 113; Chandler, , A Free Examination, 103–22Google Scholar (similar text in LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 136–47); Carpenter, E., Thomas Sherlock 1678–1761, London 1936, 191–230Google Scholar.
103 LPL, Fulham Papers, xiii. 116; Carpenter, , Thomas Sherlock, 222–4Google Scholar; Chandler, , A Free Examination, 110Google Scholar.
104 BL, MSS Add. 32719, fo. 97; 35590, fo. 208. Sherlock's refusal may also have been an attempt to force the government to appoint colonial bishops: cf. Ibid. 32719, fo. 113, where Sherlock avows that it would be ‘the glory of my life’ if he could be ‘the instrument of…putting the Church abroad upon a true and primitive foot’.
105 LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 72–3. In the preamble to Gibson's patent the king declared that the jurisdiction ‘nobis ut Supremo Ecclesiae in terris Capiti solummodo spectat’ (Ibid. MS 2589, 1).
106 GL, MSS 9531/17, fo. 10; 9540/2, fo. 9, 30 Oct. 1677; LPL, Fulham Papers, xxxvi. 48–9. Before Compton's time Peter Heylyn had stated that English churches in Holland and other foreign countries were part of the diocese of London (Heylyn, , Cyprianus Anglicus, 276)Google Scholar. The claim could still be maintained in 1690 (PRO, CO 5/1305, fo. 96); but in 1748 Sherlock insisted that ‘the plantations are no part of the diocese’ (BL, MS Add. 35590, fo. 208).
107 LPL, Fulham Papers, xx. 202–3.