As noted previously
in this series, there has been – and continues to be – some debate among
historians of the period as to the precise timeframe of the American
Revolution. While conventional wisdom would have it that the thing started in
1775 and ended in 1783, even a moment’s thought would recall that these dates actually
conform to the commencement and conclusion of the Revolutionary War. Certainly
this conflict lies at the very center of America’s revolutionary saga, acting
as both crucible and catalyst for the personal, political, and philosophical
horizons of an entire generation, but it, too, flowed into and out of something
larger. With this admission, however – that the Revolution was bigger than the
war that bears its name – things become slippery. When did the Revolution begin
if not in 1775? Is 1774 the answer, when the First Continental Congress held
its inaugural session in Philadelphia? Or is it 1765, during which the Stamp
Act Congress met in New York City? Maybe 1764, when the Sugar Act was passed and
the first rumblings of discontent rippled through British American society? Or
perhaps one ought to go back as far as 1689, when the Bill of Rights was approved
by Parliament and the “rights of Englishmen” were firmly laid down. In truth,
there would seem to be valid cases for each of these dates, just as 1787, 1803,
or even 1815 might reasonably be offered as valid end markers for the often
discordant processes that gave birth to the United States of America. Bearing
all this in mind – that there likely isn’t one answer so much as many potential
answers, or perhaps more broadly that the Revolution was never as neat and tidy
as we might like to imagine – let’s talk for a moment about something that
happened in the year 1750.
There was a
church in Boston then – still is, in fact, though it has since been rebuilt –
in the West End of the city on Cambridge Street. It was a Congregationalist
house of worship – a Calvinist faith in large part descended from 17th
century New England Puritanism – attended at the time by a twenty-nine year old
minister named Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766). On January 30th, 1750,
Mayhew delivered a sermon which he judged to be fitting to the occasion – one
which he doubtless hoped would inspire those who heard it to understand certain
aspects of the world in which they lived in a new and different way. In this he
was quite successful, judged solely by the tenor of contemporary accounts.
Transcribed and printed in Boston under the rather verbose title, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers, it was
purported by local resident John Adams (1735-1826) to have been, “Read by
everybody.” Subsequent editions were even produced and sold in London in 1752
and 1767. The latter outcome is particularly surprising given Mayhew’s liberal
theological leanings and his avowed antipathy for the Anglican Establishment.
Its popularity, of course – if not necessarily the acceptance of its central
thesis – may have had something to do with its subject matter. The occasion
that Mayhew was responding to was the one hundredth anniversary of the
execution of Charles I (1600-1649), and in particular the contemporary
mainstream Anglican practice of marking the day with fasting and repentance.
Charles was not a figure worth revering, Mayhew argued. Indeed, his punishment
was warranted by his behavior.
Mayhew deployed
scripture to this effect, arguing that the Bible did not provide cover for
tyranny any more than its various passages could be fairly applied out of
context to support that which the Almighty most obviously opposed. God wanted
all of his children to live in peace, health, and security, he asserted, and
accordingly had no patience for autocrats like Charles. By oppressing his
people, this so-called martyr-king had violated the will of the Lord and sown
the seeds of his own destruction. As sermons go, this would have been powerful
enough as a description of the blessed wrath which even the most elevated of
sinners could expect for their misdeeds. But there was yet more to what Mayhew
had to say on the matter. His case was not that God had removed Charles from
the throne – and, in turn, from the mortal plain of existence – in punishment
for his sins. Rather, it was that Charles’ behavior towards his people had rendered
his claim to their loyalty and obedience null and void and that their
subsequent overthrow of his reign was not only justified but constituted
something of a moral imperative.
The influence of
English political philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) was strong in this
argument. Just as the author of Two
Treatises on Government had argued in 1689 that rulers who no longer served
their essential purpose – i.e. promoting order in and protecting the liberties
of the community they claimed to rule – could be legitimately overthrown, so
Mayhew asserted in 1750 that the validity of a law, a magistrate, or a
government was contingent on its promoting the happiness and prosperity that
God desired for the whole of humanity. Granted, the minister of Boston’s Old
West Church did not explicitly acknowledge the similarity of conviction between
his argument and Locke’s. But the parallel was most certainly there, marking
the deeply political resonance of Mayhew’s sermon. High Anglicans and High
Tories were alike the targets of his ardent disapproval, and his zeal seemed to
flow out of both the principles of his faith – Congregationalism being a
persecuted sect in Britain – as well as his Whig political leanings. Mayhew’s Discourse thus skillfully blended the
sacred and the profane – the Bible and political philosophy – in a way that was
both demonstrably popular in its era and arguably prophetic as to certain
events that loomed on the horizon. Not only did it seem to prefigure, at a time
when Anglo-American relations were enjoying perhaps their last sustained period
of harmony and concordance, the need for a durable argument against
unconditional obedience to authority, but also it embodied the combination of
religious and philosophical conviction that would yet form a cornerstone of the
Patriot rationale of resistance.
Having hopefully
established that his Discourse is
indeed worth exploring in depth, let us now say a few words about this Mayhew
fellow himself as well as the context from which he emerged. Born October 8th,
1720 on Martha’s Vineyard, Jonathan Mayhew was the scion of a Puritan migrant
family that was among the first to settle the coastal islands of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 1630s. His father, Experience Mayhew
(1673-1758) was a Congregationalist missionary and minister who preached among
the local Wampanoag people for over six decades, while his mother, Thankful
Hinkley, was the daughter of Thomas Hinkley (1618-1706), the last governor of
the Plymouth Colony before its merger into the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
Doubtless influenced by the dedication of his forebears to the spiritual and
material wellbeing of their fellow man, Jonathan likewise pursued a life in the
ministry. To that end he attended Harvard College between 1744 and 1749 and then
received a doctorate of divinity from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Harvard,
at that time in its history, was in the midst of a lengthy period of struggle
between the traditionalist and liberal sects within its faculty. This
environment, spurred in large part by the ongoing, continent-wide Protestant
religious revival subsequently labeled “the First Great Awakening,” was surely
a major influence on Mayhew’s theological and philosophical leanings,
encouraging as it did a spirit of inquiry and activism. His time at Aberdeen is
likewise noteworthy for having taken place in the middle of an era of
scientific and philosophical innovation since described as a “Scottish
Enlightenment” on par with contemporary trends in mainland Europe. Doubly educated
in settings characterized by greater-than-average intellectual dynamism,
Jonathan Mayhew was thus particularly inclined, upon the assumption of his
duties at Boston’s Old West Church, to question both the spiritual and
theoretical underpinnings of the reigning socio-religious order.
A significant
element of that order, it turned out, was the cult of King Charles the Martyr.
Though very much a product of the Restoration (1660), during which time – as
Mayhew himself rather tarty remarked in his sermon – both Parliament and the
public as a whole tended to be more than usually deferential to the monarchy in
general and Charles II (1630-1685) in particular, the commemoration of the
execution of Charles I remained a “state service” in the Anglican Book of Common
Prayer until the middle of the 19th century. In consequence, from
the early 1660s onward, the title of the Church of England service for the 30th
of January read,
A FORM OF
PRAYER WITH FASTING,
To be used
yearly on the Thirtieth of January,
Being the
Day of the Martyrdom of the Blessed King CHARLES the First;
to implore
the mercy of God, that neither the Guilt of that sacred and innocent Blood, nor
those other sins, by which God was provoked to deliver up both us and our King
into the hands of cruel and unreasonable men, may at any time hereafter be
visited upon us or our posterity.
While the sentiment
here expressed was chiefly the product of – and intended to appeal to – High
Tory sensibilities, January 30th remained a mandated Anglican
observance alongside the likes of November 5th (the anniversary of
the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605) and May 29th (the anniversary of
the restoration of Charles II). As to how exactly this came to be, the answer
would seem to lie in large part with the publication of a rather curious piece
of socio-political propaganda called Eikon
Basilike.
Its title being Greek for “royal
portrait,” Eikon was represented at
the time of its first appearance in 1649 as the final testament of the lately
executed Charles I. It was purported to have been written by the
then-imprisoned monarch during his confinement at Carisbrook Castle on the Isle
of Wight between 1647 and 1649, though this was impossible to confirm, and
detailed the late king’s forgiveness of his executioners, his steadfast believe
in the prerogatives of his office, and the personal and spiritual importance he
continued to attach – even in the face of death – to the episcopal structure of
the Church of England. The document presented Charles, in prose intended to
elicit emotion rather than establish a firm and rigorous intellectual
justification, as being at once steadfast and penitent, unwavering in his
belief in monarchical authority and remorseful only for the sacrifices he had
been forced to make to satisfy the demands of Parliament. In light of the
freshness of the shock that still surrounded Charles’ execution – Eikon first saw print a mere ten days
after the king was beheaded at Whitehall Palace – this appeal to the sentiment
of a people yet still in the midst of an exceedingly tumultuous social and
political climate was particularly well devised. In spite of official
disapproval by the notoriously heavy-handed governments of the subsequent
Commonwealth (1649-1653) and Protectorate (1653-1659) of England, Eikon went through almost forty editions
in its first year of print alone, occasioned a rebuttal from poet and Commonwealth
partisan John Milton (1608-1674) – the poorly-received Eikonoklastes – and was even restructured and set to music in 1657.
Following the aforementioned restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660 –
in large part a consequence of the chaos that followed the death of English
head of state Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) – this widespread sense of public
sympathy was finally given official sanction with the Church of England’s
canonization of Charles I in 1660 and the memorialization of his execution in
1662.
Granting that all of these events
occurred some sixty years before Jonathan Mayhew was even born – and in a land
three thousand miles distant from his home in Martha’s Vineyard – he
nonetheless had ample reason to rankle at the mere concept of Charles I as a
saint and a martyr in the service of God. As a Non-Conformist Protestant
minister of the Congregationalist faith, Mayhew would already have been
disinclined to favor any aspect of Anglican worship which appeared in substance
to resemble Roman Catholicism. Charles’ elevation to sainthood and his
commemoration as a martyr both fit this description. At the same time, being
descended from Puritans who migrated to New England in the 1630s to escape the
oppressive religious policies of Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud
(1573-1645) would have doubtless inclined Mayhew to view the reign of Charles I
– who appointed Laud in 1633 – as having been particularly repressive and
torturous for those who refused to adhere to tenets of the orthodox Anglian
faith. As it happened, religious non-conformity was often harshly punished
under the authority of Archbishop Laud though the use of the Court of High
Commission and the Star Chamber – both extremely powerful judicial bodies
answerable only to the monarch – with regular punishments including being
whipped, branded, pilloried – i.e. being shackled by the neck and hands as a
form of public humiliation – or cropped – i.e. having one’s ears forcibly
removed.
In 1637, evidently
hoping to export this draconian, state-sponsored form of Anglicanism into
Scotland, Charles used his authority as nominal head of the Scottish Church to
introduce a new psalter that was nearly identical to the English Book of Common
Prayer. Having not been consulted beforehand, the Scottish Parliament and the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland essentially revolted, with the
latter going so far as to abolish episcopacy – i.e. the rule of bishops – and
declare the national church a Presbyterian polity governed by elders and deacons.
Charles responded by declaring Scotland to be in a state of rebellion and spent
the next three years attempting to assert his will by force of arms. Not only
did the resulting campaign involve the raising and funding of armies without
the consent of Parliament – whose members had not met since 1629 – but it also
saw the king dismiss the first assembly of the commons of England summoned in
eleven years after sitting for only a month. The second Parliament called in
1640 – the so-called “Long Parliament” – proceeded to imprison Laud and the
Earl of Strafford (1593-1641), Charles’ Lord Deputy of Ireland and close
advisor, hamstrung the king’s ability to dismiss its members in 1641, and
eventually took up arms against the authority of the Crown in 1642.
The aggressive
religious policy of Charles and Laud was at the center of this series of
escalating incidents, and it accordingly stood to reason that the core of the
resulting opposition to his reign came from among his Non-Conformist Protestant
subjects. English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians in particular proved
themselves especially ardent in their hostility to Charles’ fleeting attempts
to maintain the moral and practical basis for his rule, and enthusiastically
participated in his capture, overthrow, and eventual execution in 1649. Little
over a decade later, on the far side of a tumultuous experiment with republican
government and radical church reform along Puritan lines, the restored Charles
II and his High Tory/High Anglican allies proceeded to erect a series of laws
intended to drastically restrict the civil rights of England’s non-Anglican
population. The Corporation Act (1661) essentially forbade anyone not a member
of the Church of England from holding public office of any kind. The Act of Uniformity
(1662) made the use of the Book of Common Prayer mandatory in all Anglican
services. The Conventicle Act (1664) forbade unauthorized public religious
assemblies of more than five people. And the Five Mile Act (1665) prohibited
Non-Conformist ministers from coming within five miles or an incorporated town
or of teaching in most schools. Of these so-called “Penal Laws,” only the Five
Mile Act was no longer in force as of 1750.
While once again
granting that Jonathan Mayhew was removed from the reigns of Charles I and
Charles II by a wide expanse of time and tide, it might fairly be argued that
he was not exempt from the effects thereof. Though he spend his life and career
in Massachusetts – a community founded and governed by Puritans and their descendants
– he could not but have been aware that the faith professed by himself, his
family and his neighbors remained a persecuted one by the laws of the British
state. Loyal or not, obedient or not, Mayhew would nevertheless have been
forbidden from holding public office in Britain or even attending a religious
service that was not authorized by the Crown. Combined with the knowledge of
how badly his coreligionists had suffered under the reign of Archbishop Laud
and the efforts made by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts – an Anglican missionary group founded in 1701 – to convert New
England’s Non-Conformist population, he would indeed seem to have had little
reason to view the Church of England in general, and its commemoration of
January 30th in particular, as moral affronts to his personal understanding
of salvation.
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