Bookkeeping

Safeguarding The King’s Chapel of the SavoyThe King’s Chapel of the Savoy

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297 John White, of Muddy River and Roxbury; Freeman 1677; lieut.; married Elizabeth, eldest daug. 222 Capt. Wentworth Paxton, possibly a New England native, Vestryman ( ); royal navy, Capt. of the Newport; died New England, 1736. 213 A large number of the titles listed here still survive in the Kings Chapel Collection of the Boston Athenaeum.

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Among the 21 marriages performed by the ministers in 1774 none were for royal officials but the next the number increased to 38 of which 6 were for English military personnel. The names of persons for whom burial services were performed at the Chapel are recorded in a Burial Register that began to be maintained in 1714. The Register was not maintained at Kings Chapel until 1714 and records that 1,146 were performed by the ministers at the Chapel between 1714 and 1776. The entries include the decedent’s name, the next of kin, if a child, the name of the parents and if an adult, the name of the husband or wife and occasionally the person’s occupation. The cause of death is seldom noted but occasionally it is recorded as from small-pox, injury on the job, or a stroke.

THE CONGREGATION

A strong testimonial to the record, activity and purpose of Kings Chapel is provided over the decades by the increasing number of persons who were the subjects of and noted in the Registers of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials performed year after year by the ministers during the colonial era. Records that denote decade after decade the names of persons baptized, the names of the parents and eventually the names of the sponsors; for marriages the names of the parties married, their towns of residence and the names of the witnesses; and for burials the name of the deceased persons, the causes of death, their ages and the names of the immediate survivor. The founding and continuing support of a New England Anglican congregation required the interest of influential parties on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean that included high-ranking London civil and ecclesiastical officers who were charged by the crown with the supervision of the emerging overseas imperial territories. Establishing the congregation required a minister and at least the prospect of a handful of local supporters and potential leaders. But the Boston situation differed significantly from the initial appearance of the Church in the royal colonies of Virginia and Maryland or in the towns of Charleston, Philadelphia or New York. The Anglican congregation in Massachusetts called for the strong, protective and forceful attention of the royal governor of the province, Edmund Andros,6 for oversight of the establishment and advancement of the Church.

Turmoil gripped the members of Christ Church after the minister, Timothy Cutler, suffered a paralytic stroke in 1756 and died nine years later. In contrast the political sentiments of a larger but unknown number of members of Kings Chapel that included shopkeepers, tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers, whether they ranged across the spectrum of active loyalists to active patriots, are unknown. The value of their property, if any, was beyond the concern of reigning public officials and their political and economic influence was considered modest. Notably the term “Anglican,” does not seem to have been applied to the body during the period. Nor does the word appear in use on the pages of the bishop of London’s correspondence with colonial clergymen deposited in the collection of the Fulham Palace Papers at the Lambeth Palace Library in London. Only once during the era was the use of the word “Episcopal” noted in the records to describe and identify Kings Chapel or its members.

The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy

In addition, two Boston Anglican ministers, Timothy Cutler58 and Samuel Myles, both graduates of Harvard College, attempted to be appointed as members of the Harvard Board of Overseers, which was unsuccessful, met with strong and relentless opposition after five years of legal action. The first phase was remarkable and brief, only three years that marked the arrival of the first minister, Robert Radcliff, the establishment of the congregation and the bloodless overthrow of the first royal governor, Edmund Andros, and government in April 1689. Radcliff immediately resigned his post in the political and uncertain turmoil, fled to England and was succeeded by a young native colonist and Harvard College graduate not yet ordained, Samuel Myles, whose ministry lasted twenty-nine years until his death in 1728. Warden ( ); Vestryman ( ); born in Boston, 5 June 1711, son of William and Elizabeth (Brinley) Hutchinson; Harvard College, A.B., 1702;  father a wealthy merchant, died in 1721 of smallpox, leaving all of his real estate to Eliakim as the eldest son, but dividing the personal property equally among the six children; Eliakim, Harvard College, A.B., 1730; married 13 Nov. 1738 Elizabeth, daug.

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His firm commitment to the first years of the Chapel was followed by successors in the office that continued with more moderate and nuanced support for the remainder of the colonial era. 344 Gilbert Deblois, born New York 1725, son of Stephen and Ann Deblois; Warden ( ); married Ann, daug. Of William and Ann (Holmes) Coffin; merchant; served local residents, British Army and naval officers sundry goods, including linen, fabric, clothing; proscribed at the Revolution; loyalist; fled to Halifax; returned to Boston after war; banished, estate  confiscated; died England 1791 age sixty-three. Between 1749 and 1753 the committee persistently Safeguarding King’s Chapel Finances: BooksTime’s Partnership continued to address the urgent task of raising funds to complete the construction project. By 1751 one hundred and ten persons contributed to the campaign of which eight were women and a further effort undertaken the next year to complete and finish the building garnered an additional seventy-six contributors. Yet the total sum of contributions was not enough to meet the costs and the members of the Boston-based Episcopal Charitable Society, some of whom were members of Kings Chapel, stepped forward and for more than twenty years carried the financial burden for a substantial portion of the costs for the building.

King’s Chapel

It is unclear how Caner came to suggest to the committee the English-born Newport architect, Peter Harrison, to produce the exterior and interior drawings for the proposed second Chapel. He was enlisted for the task and produced the plans that were approved by the committee and followed precisely by the construction workers. In the summer of 1754 the construction of the new stone Kings Chapel building was completed and Henry Caner conducted the first worship service in the new facility on August 21st. He carried his observations further and firmly argued that the statutes of Parliament bound the colonies and the mother country, and as the Church of England was established by an Act of Parliament, it should also be established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.15 Two years later, he was appointed the Collector of Customs for the crown in Boston and throughout the American provinces. In turn, perhaps to advance his own career with influential London officials, Randolph also became a strong advocate and spokesman for the establishment of an Anglican congregation in Boston with the supportive assistance of a handful of local merchants. Boston in 1686 included three Congregational churches, the First Church founded in 1630, the Second Church (1655) and the Old South Church (1670), the First Baptist Church (1665), the French Huguenot Church (1685) and one Friends Meeting.

  • The congregation’s financial situation remained increasingly more difficult and unstable during the 1760s and 1770s, attributable in part to the death of Charles Apthorp in 1758, the declining health of the aging minister, Henry Caner, and the rising civil and public demonstrations of objections to British imperial policies.
  • Initially the congregation was organized and led by several royal officials, prominent merchants with business ties to English counterparts and by substantial local property owners.
  • Plunged into uncertainty and a difficult position, the vestry comprised of local residents undertook a bold, controversial procedure and followed a very New England process of identifying, recruiting and appointing a successor for the position.
  • The honor fell to the English-born Yale College graduate, Henry Caner, whose tenure lasted for thirty years, until the outbreak of the War for Independence in 1776.
  • The first and heaviest burden for the vestrymen was to continuously address the debt burden accumulated over the years in the course of the construction of the new building.
  • Radcliff was succeeded in 1689 by Samuel Myles, a graduate of Harvard College in 1684 and a schoolmaster in Charlestown for three years and not yet ordained.61 Perhaps he had been recruited and selected by the members of the vestry on the basis of attending services regularly at the Chapel or was a protégé of Radcliff and known to several members of the governing body.

165 Isaac Jones, of Dorchester, son of Thomas, probably born in England, married (1) Hannah Heath, (2) Mary Bass; died before 6 Dec. 1699. 105 Lewis Deblois, Vestryman ( ); merchant; loyalist; fled to England; died 1779 age seventy-one. 1685 from London;  apothecary, medical lawyer and physician; made attorney general 26 July 1686; 9 Nov. 1686 Council appointed first Clerk of Superior Court; jailed during April 1689 revolution in Massachusetts with Edmund Andros, Edward Randolph, Francis Foxcroft and others. In addition to undertaking and overseeing a systematic plea for funds, the committee was also responsible for identifying and selecting an architect for the new building and supervising the details of the construction process. Caner and Apthorp were a congenial and productive team that masterfully and diligently executed their carefully orchestrated strategies for raising funds from the members of the congregation and from philanthropists. No prospect for a contribution on either side of the Atlantic escaped notice and the committee gave constant detailed consideration to the rebuilding of the Chapel.

THE RECORDS

Yet the congregation was sharply divided over the need and expense of rebuilding the Chapel, a situation dramatically represented with a vote at the Easter Monday, Annual Meeting of the congregation on 18 April 1748, an occasion when two hundred and five members voted in favor of proceeding with the replacement of the building while one hundred and ninety-seven persons were opposed. A few days later the Wardens and Vestrymen facing the realities of the substantial expenses for rebuilding the Chapel agreed (22 April 1748) to borrow money on their own personal accounts to enable the project to proceed. Complementing and supplementing the records of the Wardens and Vestrymen’s meetings of Kings Chapel during the colonial period that provide the names of the leadership of the congregation over the decades, a group comprised of prominent Boston royal government leaders, merchants, lawyers and property owners were the companion Registers of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials performed by the ministers. The volumes yield a glimpse of the comprehensive character of the social structure of the congregation, the names listed in each volume are invaluable resources for persons searching for their Boston ancestors and for the historian of early New England offers a comprehensive overview of the persons who comprised the congregation and the wide ranging occupations that they represented. Contrasting with the visible supportive role of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s governors on behalf of the interests of Kings Chapel, it is difficult to assess and determine the role and influence, if any, that the members of the congregation exerted on the course of affairs.

Presumably he was unfamiliar with the historical origins, practices and Canons that governed Church of England congregations but he steadily performed his ministry for thirty-nine years without noticeable objection or controversy until his death in 1728. The largest segment of the congregation was the unnamed and unnumbered worshipers who occupied the public seats in the church without being contractually required to pay a fee to maintain the church’s fabric. The frequency and amount of their weekly contributions for the support of the Chapel is recorded in the financial records for a few years. No less elusive and impossible to identify and extract is the number of regular transient attendees at worship services, a group of persons perhaps with or without a regular attachment to another Boston religious group but they were solicited to contribute funds during the 1740s and 1750s for the rebuilding of the church building.

Book traversal links for Historical Introduction 1686-1776, Kings Chapel

His words, thoughts and expressions of feelings of hope and disappointment were written far from his appointments in Fairfield, Connecticut and Boston, Massachusetts, in the distant towns of Halifax, Nova Scotia, London, England and Cardiff, South Wales between 1776 and 1778. Caner was not a political activist discussing or responding in favor or opposition to local or imperial issues but he was a witness to a chain of public events, political oratory and polemical publications that led to his dislocation and exile. Perhaps he desperately hoped that the revolutionary situation and war would be brief and the old order would be restored, modified and recovered. If so it would explain his possession and preservation of the Chapel’s most valuable inventory of Church plate, a part of the Records of the Vestry, which had usually met at his house,112 and the Registers of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, the primary records of the congregation’s ninety year history. His unrelieved words in letters to friends, fellow clergymen, the bishop of London and archbishop of Canterbury, are filled with the sense of heartache and heart break. The words of his messages to the two prelates recite the repetitive aftershock of agony, loss, and the bleak prospects for a clerical appointment to fill his time and support his life.