1. Photostat copies of the Minutes referring to America have been placed in the Library of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadephia. Until recently the only account of the Deputies was A Sketch of the History and Proceedings of the Deputies appointed to protect the Civil Rights of the Protestant Dissenters, etc., London, 1814, a copy of which is located in Brown University Library,Google Scholar Providence, R. I. In 1952 Cambridge University Press published the only modern treatment of the subject, Bernard L. Manning, The Protestant Dissenting Deputies, edited by Ormerod Greenwood. I am particularly indebted to Prof. Greenwood for his assistance in locating and securing photostats of the Minutes.

2. Colman to Law, Sept. 23, 1742. The Law Papers, Correspondence and Documents during Jonathan Law's Governorship of the Colony of Connecticut, 1741–50, Hartford, 1907, I, 59.Google Scholar

3. Updike, Wilkins, A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, etc., Boston, 1907, 73ff.Google Scholar

4. Minutes, July 23, 1740; Aug. 26, 1741; Oct. 11, 1752. The Kingston Church voted thanks to Mr. Samuel Holden of London, who was the first chairman of the Deputies' Committee and a well known benefactor of Harvard College. Updike, op. cit., 378.

5. Minutes, Oct. 8, 1746, an address of loyalty from the Boston pastors; Oct. 23, 1751, addresses of sympathy on the death of the Prince of Wales, to George II from Connecticut clergy, and to the Dowager of Wales from the Boston pastors.

6. Minutes, May 2, 1753, letter from New Hampshire re having Councillors appointed who would befriend the “Dissenting Interest.”

Sept. 29, 1756, two letters from New York and New Jersey, “relating to a Governour of New Jersey in case of the death of their present Governr,” Dr. Avery and Mr. Mauduit were appointed “to assist the Colony in the affair all they could,” and reported later that they had called on the Earl of Halifax and learned “that the Person the Colony feared would be made Governour was not at present thought of.” In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1759 Rev. Samuel Johnson of King's College indicates that the Deputies' New York correspondents were Livingston, William, Smith, William and Scott, John M.. Ecclesastical Records of the State of New York, Albany, 1905, V, 3728.Google Scholar

On Feb. 23, 1757 Dr. Avery reported to the Deputies that he had received a request from New England “to Intercede with the Lords of Trade That Mr. Oliver” be appointed to be secretary of Massachusetts. He had waited on the Earl of Halifax but the Earl had refused to promise. Andrew Oliver was appointed secretary, in 1758.

7. Palmer had been recommended to Governor Law by the Chairman of the Deputies' Committee in a letter dated Feb. 25, 1743 in which he offers to use his influence “in securing the rights of the Churches and College in your Colony as well as the Safety and Prosperity of your State.” (Law Papers, I, 79).Google Scholar

8. Washburn, C. G., ed., Jasper Mauduit, Agent in London for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1762–65, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1918, LXXLV, 78.Google Scholar James Otis hailed the appointment of a dissenting agent as “a bitter pill to an Oxinman, a bigot, a Plantation Governor, whose favourite plans are,.… propagating high church principles among good peaceable Christians.”

9. Manning, op. cit., 407. The spearhead of the Committee was its chairman, Dr. Benjamin Avery of Guy's Hospital, who personally conducted much of the correspondence with the Colonies. “Dr. Avery's access to ye Ministry at ye Head and in ye Name of ye Commitee is ever easie and their Weight with them very great.” (Colman to Law, Sept. 23, 1742, Law Papers, I, 59).Google Scholar

10. References to the College of New Jersey are found in the Minutes, June 14, 1749, and Feb. 28, 1753. The letter contained “a Narration from Governour Belchier touching the Erecting a Publick Seminary for Religious -Literature in new Jersey.” Tennent and Davies visited the Committee on Jan. 30, 1754.

On Feb. 23, 1753 “the Case of the German Protestants in Pensilvania” was presented to the Committee. Dr. Avery was one of the fifteen founders of a Society to aid the Germans. See A Brief History of the Rise and Progress of the Charitable Scheme, Carrying on by a Society of Noblemen and Gentlemen in London, for the Relief and Instruction of poor Germans, and Their Descendants, settled in Pennsylvania, etc., Philadelphia, 1755Google Scholar; also Weber, S. E., The Charity School Movement in Colonical Pennsylvania, 1754–63, Philadelphia, 1905, 23 ff.Google Scholar

The letter from Eleazer Wheelock, Samuel Moseley and Benjamin Pomroy re securing a charter for an Indian School was read on Nov. 24, 1756. The Minutes do not indicate what action was taken by the Committee, but a letter from Dennys De Berdt to Wheelock, Feb. 25, 1757, indicates that he and Dr. Avery presented a memorial to Lord Halifax, who approved the plan for a school, but, advised that instead of going to the expense of a royal charter, Wheelock should get a law passed by the Connecticut Legislature establishing the school, “which when it comes here he promises shall be ratified in Council.” Letters of Dennys De Berdt, Trans. Col. Soc. of Mass., 1910–1911, XIII, 411.Google Scholar See also Wheelock, E., Narrative of the Original Design, Rise, Progress and Present State of the Indian School in Lebanon, Conn. (1762)Google Scholar, reprinted in Old South Leaflets, No. 72, 11.

On Oct. 6, 1762 the Committee received a petition from the Boston ministers, for their assistance “in getting the Royal Assent to an Act of the Genl. Court … for Granting a Charter to sevl. Persons there for Evangelizing the Indians in North America.” This was a rival organization to Wheelock's School. On March 30, 1763 the Committee reported that they had “used their Endeavours … but had not been able to Succeed in their Application.” A letter from Rev. Andrew Eliot to Jasper Mauduit, June 1, 1763, expresses disappointment at the failure to secure the charter: “Such a Correspondence we apprehend quite necessary for us, who find by the Fate of our Charter, that our Enemies are more and greater than we were aware of.” Washburn, , Jasper Mauduit, 120.Google Scholar Their failure made them pray the Deputies “to Oppose any application to the Throne” by Wheelock and his friends “to Found a College in Hampshire in America.” On inquiry the Deputies found that “at present no application will be made to the Throne for that purpose.” It was not until 1769 that Wheelock obtained a royal charter for Dartmouth College.

The Minutes of April 10, 1764 note the loss by fire of Harvard College building. This was probably in response to a letter sent to Mauduit by the Corporation of Harvard College “praying him to sollicit Benefactions (from such as may be Charitably dispos'd) for the Reparation of our losses, by the Destruction of our Library and Apparatus.” (Trans. Col. Soc. of Mass., XXV, 25–26).Google Scholar

11. Greene, M. L., The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, Boston, 1905, 276Google Scholar; Blake, S. L., The Separates or Strict Congregationalists of New England, Chicago, 1902, 109 ff.Google Scholar

12. Quoted in Trumbull, Benjamin, A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical, New London, 1898, II, 459.Google Scholar

13. Minutes, May 30, 1744 note that, “Dr. Avery reported an Affair relating to Connecticut, and was “desired to draw up such an Answer therto as he shall think fitt.” On June 27, the answer was heard and approved by the Committee, and on Sept. 26 ordered to be copied into the Minutes together with Governor Law's letter. The latter is not included among the Law Papers; there is there, however, a letter from one of the Deputies, Eliakim Palmer, Mar. 30, 1744, giving his opinion that “your Laws against the People who call themselves Methodists are a little too severe & and may as such have a Contrary Effect from what is proposed by them.” (Law Papers, I, 140).Google Scholar

14. On Jan. 21, 1745 Benjamin Colman of Boston wrote to Governor Law that he had received a letter from Dr. Avery in which “he hopes your Honour will take kindly from Him, & from ye Committee of ye Dissenters, what he has wrote you in their name respecting ye Law about Itinerant Preachers: he indeed trembled (he sayes) for your Charter.” (Law Papers, I, 250)Google Scholar. On Sept. 1, 1745, Law wrote to Palmer, “Ye Advice of the Contee which I gratefully acknowledge and am very thankful for, I communicated it to our Assembly, what of Heat yr might have been is much abated and hope we are become temperate.’ (Ibid., II, 48).

15. This report had been sent to England by Rev. Ebenezer Punderson, S. P. G. missionary at Groton, Conn. (The Walcott Papers, 1750–54, Col. of Conn. His Soc., Hartford, 1916, 108, 118).Google Scholar In Manning, The Protestant Dissenting Deputies, 418, 419, the name Punderson has been misprinted “Sanderson.”

16. Minutes, Oct. 10, 1753. The Governor's letter is also printed among The Walcott Papers, 316. There is a letter from Avery to Timothy Cutler of Boston dealing with the Pitt case in Lambeth Palace Library. See Guide to the MSS. Materials for the History of of the U. S. in the British Museum etc., C. M. Andrews and F. G. Davenport eds., Washington, 1908, I, 70.Google Scholar

17. Letter from Dr. Thomas Prince of Boston, (Minutes, Mar. 20, 1754). Five years before on Oct. 27, 1749 the Committee had received a petition to the King and Council from Jonathan Parsons, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, Mass., “complaining of an Oppression by the Congregational Church of the Presbyterians in obliging Presbyterians to pay to the Congregational Church,” and of persecution and imprisonment “for their conscientious scruples.” The petition is printed in Cook, M. D., A Genealogical Address, Newburyport, 1862, 7–8.Google Scholar It was carried to England by a Mr. Partridge. See also Journals of Mass. House of Representatives, Boston, XXVI, 25, 70.Google Scholar Evidently the Deputies discouraged the petitioners and instead persuaded the Massachusetts Legislature to grant them some relief. Stearns, J. F., A Historical Discourse Commemorative of the Organization of the First Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, etc., Newburyport, 1846, 38Google Scholar, indicates that the petitioners obtained a written opinion from the Attorney-General in England, “and only desisted from their purpose because some judicious friends abroad thought such a representation as they would be obliged to make, might endanger the charter of the colony, and prove injurious to the interests of the English dissenters.” Undoubtedly this is a reference to the Deputies.

18. The petition is printed in Denison, Frederick, Notes of the Baptists and their Principles in Norwich, Connecticut, Norwich, 1857, 32 ff.Google Scholar The representatives who appeared before the Deputies were Bliss Willoughby and Moses Morse.

19. Backus, Isaac, A History of New England with Particular Reference to the Baptists, 2nd. ed., Newton, 1871, II, 101Google Scholar; Greene, op. cit., 280.

20. Requests from other American colonies brought to the Committee included an application from Rev. Henry Haywood, of the General Baptist Church in Charleston, S. C., for legal advice regarding a legacy left to the “Dissenting Minister there.” See Benedict, David, A General History of the Baptist Denomination, Boston, 1813, II, 121, 162; Minutes, 04 5, 1749.Google Scholar

On Sept. 25, 1754 a complaint was received that “Missionaries in New York had been Obstructed on the Acct. of their not being Episcopally ordained.” Dr. Avery was appointed to take up this matter with the Earl of Halifax.

Minutes, Sept. 23, 1751; Oct. 23, 1752; and Oct. 10, 1769 record requests for books and for “the pious Charity of well disposed persons in behalf of the Dissenters in Nova Scotia.” There is a copy of this petition in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, (MSS. Vol. 284, doc. 18).Google Scholar

21. Foote, W. H., Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical, Philadelphia, 1850, 157 ff.Google Scholar Samuel Davies became president of the College of New Jersey in 1758.

22. Minutes, April 26, 1751; Foote, op. cit., 179.

23. The complete letter is in Foote. (Ibid. 180–206). On Jan. 29, 1752 the Committee notified Davies that they had the case under consideration and would give all the assistance in their power.

24. Foote, op. cit., 207–211; Minutes, Sept. 27, 1752.

25. The instructions are printed in Foote, op. cit., 211–214.

26. The Journal is reproduced in Foote, op. cit., 228–281. It contains a characterization of Dr. Avery—“an amiable gentleman, very affable, of a swift, ready address, and seems qualified by Divine Providence designedly to act for the dissenters in Court.”

27. Ibid., 255; Minutes, Feb. 27, 1754, March 20, 1754.

28. Foote, op. cit., 275.

29. Minutes, Jan. 29, 1755. The letters are printed in Foote, op. cit., 297.

30. Manning, op. cit., 123.

31. Davies, Samuel, “On the Defeat of General Braddock Going to Fort DuQuesne,’ Sermons, Barnes, A., ed., New York, 1841, III, 226–227.Google Scholar

32. Minutes, March 10, 1756. Franklin's “Plan” is in Smith, A. H., ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1907, III, 358–366.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., III, 266. Hazard's “Scheme” is in Boyd, J. P., ed., The Susquehannah Company Papers, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1930, I, 251–255.Google Scholar Samuel Hazard was an elder in Gilbert Tennent's congregation in Philadelphia, and a trustee of the College of New Jersey; thus he was closely associated with the friends of S. Davies.

34. Ibid., I, 247; 280; Pennsylvania Archives, First series, II, 301–302. Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia also had a scheme promising regular pay and grants of land in Ohio to all soldiers who volunteered to fight the French and Indians, (Bailey, K. P., The Ohio Company of Virginia and the Westward Movement, 1748–1792, Gleadale, Calif., 1939, 215)Google Scholar, but it is unlikely that Davies would send this plai. to the Deputies.

35. Minutes, Apr. 14, 1749, May 5, 1749.

36. Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1749–1750, Boston, 1951, XXVI, 43, 48.Google ScholarCarpenter, Edward, Thomas Sherlock, 1678–1761, London, 1936, 203Google Scholar, quotes a letter, Herring to Hardwicke, Dec. 1, 1749, intimating that the “agency” of Dr. Avery and Mr. Palmer was regarded with “a very evil eye” in England, and the formal vote of the Massachusetts Assembly was “greatly resented,” especially “by London clergy who obtained a copy of it, and to whom it sounded harsh to be told in some sort by an Assembly of Dissenters, that Episcopacy is contrary to the Liberties of a Protestant Country.”

37. Law to Avery, Oct. 27, 1749, Law Papers, III, 340, 366.Google Scholar With the advice of the Committee, Dr. Avery recommended as agent, Mr. Samuel Storke, “a steady Dissenter, a Dissenter upon Principle.” See also Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, First series, IX, 471–472, 512Google Scholar; X, 103; and Minutes, Feb. 28 and Mar. 14, 1750.

38. Minutes, Mar. 14, 1750, Oct. 10, 1750; Manning, op. cit., 31.

39. Minutes, Mar. 14, Mar. 28, May 30, 1750 and Sept. 23, 1751. The subject is thoroughly covered in Cross, Arthur L., The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, New York, 1902,CrossRefGoogle Scholar where many of the documents are reproduced.

40. Minutes Sept. 23, 1751, May 2, 1753. The “Minutes of the Ecclesiastical Convention of New Hampshire,” printed in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XVII, 152–153, record that in 1752 they received “an affectionate reply from Rev. Benjamin Avery, D. D., of Guy's Hospital, in behalf of the dissenting Protestants of England.”

41. Minutes, Oct. 10, 1764. Samuel Davies had described Mr. Mauduit as “a very candid serious man.” Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of Boston was not so complimentary, “I have myself some grounds to suspect him, as a double-minded man…in a strait between honesty and the wicked policy of the times.” (Washburn, , Jasper Mauduit, 113).Google Scholar Rev. Andrew Eliot probably expressed the sentiments of most New Englanders, “It gives particular satisfaction to those who wish well to our Churches that we have an Agent who has a natural Care for them, and by whom we can so easily apply to the body of our dissenting Brethren in England.” (Ibid., 120).

42. Minutes, Oct. 17, 1764; Hutchinson, Thomas, History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, London, 1828, III, 110 ff.Google Scholar

43. Printed with “Minutes of the General Convention of Delegates,” Records of the Presbyterian Church U. S. A., Philadelphia, 1904,Google Scholar Appendix, 22 n. It is also in the Deputies” Minutes, March 9, 1768.

44. Minutes, April 11, 1768. The letter concludes with the words: “As you and we are engaged in one common cause, you may depend upon it, that if any Attempts are made to revive this design, we shall carefully watch, and exert our utmost Endeavours to prevent the carrying it into execution.”

45. See Cross, Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, chs. 7–8, for review of pamphlet and newspaper controversy, 1768–1771.

46. Minutes of General Convention, 10. The Massachusetts Churches objected to the distances involved in the plan of union. They also felt that it might alarm the British Ministry and precipitate the appointment of a bishop. To underscore this argument they quoted the late Dr. Avery: “Till danger appears it is best not to give an alarm; it is wise not to awaken jealousy lest we feel its unhappy consequences. This was a caution given us by Doc'r Avery some years ago — a gentleman of first distinction among the dissenters, and for many years Chairman of the Committee of Deputation. These are his words: “Hitherto the affair of the American Bishop lies dormant and seems not likely to be revived unless we awaken it by an indiscreet and intemperately zealous opposition; this it is hoped our friends in New England will cautiously avoid’” (Ibid., 24).

47. Ibid., 25–26; Minutes July 31, 1770. This letter had originally been sent to the Deputies in October, 1768, but went astray. A second copy was sent in September 1769, and evidently took ten months to reach the Committee.

48. Minutes, Aug, 4, 1770. See note 44 above.

49. Minutes of General Convention, 29–30. Unlike the preceding letters, this one was not copied into the Deputies’ Minutes. It is of interest to note that in 1769 a group of Presbyterians and Baptists in New York organized a Society of Dissenters to watch over “the civil and religious rights and privileges of those … who do not profess to belong to the Church of England.” To this end the Society planned to correspond with the Dissenters’ Committee in London, and prepared a circular letter which resembles that of the General Convention of 1770. See Osgood, H. L., “The Society of Dissenters,” American Historical Review, VI, 498–507.Google Scholar

50. Minutes, Jan. 16, 1771; Minutes of General Convention, 34.

51. Quoted in Cross, op. cit., 235 ff.

52. Minutes, March 1, 1772, also contain a copy of a brief letter from Rev. John Rodgers of New York emphasizing the actions of several of the colonial legislatures in opposition to a bishop.

53. Minutes, Apr. 22, 1772.

54. Minutes of General Convention, 36.

55. Ibid., 38. These lines are frequently attributed to John Witherspoon, who as Chairman of the General Convention in 1773 signed this letter. It is more probable that they are the words of Rodgers, McWhorter and Russell, who were the committee appointed to write the letter.

56. Ibid., 40.

57. A Sketch of the History and Proceedings of the Deputies, 24.

58. Ibid., 10.