entirely reduced to logical propositions.
The bishops who studied with the Platonists saw no conflict between this more mystical approach to theology and scientific investigation of the sort advocated by the members of the Royal Society. Burnet, a historian and an amateur chemist, joined the Royal Society in 1664. Patrick was the probable author of A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude Men (1662), which explained that the Platonists encouraged science by freeing it from the metaphysical categories of Aristotelian thought.
The bishops’ approach dovetailed nicely with the Royal Society’s vision of a reasonable faith in a second way.4 If one stressed practical morality, clear discourse, and philanthropy rather than the difficult points of doctrine, it was far easier to show the reasonableness of the Christian faith. Archbishop Tillotson, for example, cooperated with Royal Society member John “Wilkins’s project of creating a clear and plain style of discourse,” and became one of the most popular preachers of the era.5 Gilbert Burnet wrote an Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (1699) in which he questioned the need for the heated debate over predestination that divided English Protestants of their day into competing Calvinist and Arminian camps.6 Burnet suggested that either position was in keeping with a reasonable understanding of the English Thirty-nine Articles. This advocacy for toleration soon earned the bishops the title latitudinarian, a label that had also been used of their Cambridge teachers.
Like the members of the Royal Society, the latitudinarian bishops recognized the importance of the English colonies in America. They were a rich resource whose scientific management would bring prosperity to England. They were also diverse and divided religious communities to which a moderate enlightened faith of the Church of England could offer a unifying vision.
Henry Compton (1632–1713), the Bishop of London who, like the latitudinarians, was a Cambridge graduate, was also an important figure in regard to the colonies in America. Before appointment to the see of London in 1675, Compton had served as Charles II’s chaplain of the Chapel Royal. In that capacity he had been responsible for the religious education of both Mary and Anne. He was an active supporter of the Glorious Revolution, and after it he was a trusted adviser who was able to encourage royal patronage for religious and benevolent projects in the colonies.
In the last two decades of the seventeenth century, English monarchs gradually expanded the authority they exercised over the American colonies. In 1684 Charles II cancelled the proprietary charters of Massachusetts and Bermuda, making the territories royal colonies. As Duke of York, James Stuart was himself the proprietor of New York (1664), but after following his brother to the throne as James II (1685), he added New York to the number of royal colonies. In 1691 William III and Mary II designated Maryland as a royal colony as well.
With a larger number of the colonies directly under royal control it became possible for sympathetic monarchs to follow policies favorable to the Church of England. William and Mary, and Anne chose just such a course of action. They instructed their royal governors to lobby the colonial legislatures for the establishment of the Church of England (an action that required subsequent approval by the English Privy Council). The policy was successful in Maryland (establishment in 1702) and South Carolina (1706), and partially successful in New York. (In 1693 the royal governor of New York persuaded the state assembly to adopt an act providing for “Protestant” clergy in New York City and in Richmond, West Chester, and Queen’s counties; the governor equated “Protestant” with the Church of England, but the majority in the assembly disagreed, making the system largely unworkable.) It was unsuccessful in New Jersey. Queen Anne’s successors would, however, later expand establishment to Nova Scotia (1758), Georgia (1758), and North Carolina (definitive legislation in 1765).7
The colonial governments in these territories had the responsibility of founding and providing support for parishes of the Church of England. They fulfilled this responsibility most consistently in Maryland, a former Roman Catholic colony in which a large percentage of the populace had always been sympathetic to the Church of England, and in South Carolina. The colonial religious establishment was less successful in North Carolina and Georgia, both because of the late date of enactment and because of the presence of those who had chosen to settle there precisely because of dissatisfaction with the religious situation in Virginia and South Carolina. The late date of establishment would prove less detrimental in Nova Scotia, because the church’s favored status would not end with the American Revolution.
While members of the Church of England in England were not in complete agreement about the wisdom of the church-state alliance that the English government expanded in America after 1688, many of them shared a common conception that was quite different from the dream for world evangelism of the first generation of colonists. Bishop of Gloucester William Warburton (1698–1779) would later explain this new understanding of the relationship of religion and nationhood in his Alliance between Church and State (1736). For him, the church was the soul of the state; it taught a natural religion to individuals who, as a result, became better citizens.8 Residents of the colonies in which the Church of England was established came to share a similar opinion; for them, the Church of England and civic responsibility became increasingly intertwined.9 This integrated view would, however, create problems when the American Revolution severed the ties between church and state.
The Church of England would not be able to expand its establishment to include all of the American colonies. With the exception of the partial establishment in New York, no colony between Maryland and Nova Scotia would have an established Church of England; Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and members of other denominations were too firmly entrenched. The monarchs were, however, able to take steps to encourage and support individual Church of England congregations in those areas. Queen Anne, at the urging of the latitudinarian bishops, designated certain annates and tithes, which had been diverted to the state by Henry VIII, as a fund for the support of low-income clergy.10 From this fund—the so-called Queen Anne’s Bounty—she also authorized gifts to clergy willing to travel to the colonies as missionaries. In addition, the queen made gifts to individual congregations.
During this period, supporters of the colonial Church of England founded their first parishes in Massachusetts (King’s Chapel, Boston, 1688), Pennsylvania (Christ Church, Philadelphia, 1694), New York (Trinity, New York City, 1697), Rhode Island (Trinity, Newport, 1698), New Jersey (St. Mary’s, Burlington, 1703), and Connecticut (Christ Church, Stratford, 1707).
In England, bishops appointed representatives, called commissaries, to perform functions in distant portions of their dioceses.11 In 1684 Henry Compton, the Bishop of London (1685–1715) decided that he would use this system in the American colonies. Though the colonies were not formally a part of his diocese, governmental offices and commercial houses in his diocese controlled the commerce and government of the colonies. Finding no other provision for the supervision of colonial religion, Compton adapted the commissary system to provide some leadership for the Church of England in the colonies.
In 1684 Compton appointed John Clayton (1656 or 1657– 1725) as his first commissary. Clayton was a graduate of Oxford; in the eighteenth century such
