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THE TORIES OF -CHIPPENY. HILL, CONNECTICUT _

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Na] AMO T, COE §

The Tories of Chippeny Hill, Connecticut

A Brief Account of the Loyalists of

Bristol, Plymouth and Harwinton,

who Founded St. Matthew’s Church in East Plymouth in 1791

BY

E. LeRoy Pond

THE GRAFTON PRESS

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMIX

_ Copyright, 1909, By THE GRAFTON PRESS NEW YORK

DEDICATED To the venerable Rev. X. A. Welton, discoverer

of the Tory Den, and rescuer of the Tories from the field of legend

ILLUSTRATIONS

Tue Tory DEN : 2 : Frontisprece

FACING PAGE Map or tue Tory REGIon : : : 10 GRAVE OF Capt. NATHANIEL JONES . 5 $2

View Looxine SoutH rrom THE Tory DEN Cuiirr 52 Sr. Marrurw’s Cuurcu at East Prymourn . 74

Rev. ALEXANDER ViEeTS GRISWOLD, D.D. : 82

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I Curereeny Hinu

Il Tue Rev. James NicHots III Tur Tory Principies IV Tue Tory Den V Captain Witson’s Sons or LIBertTy VI STEPHEN GRAVES VII Moses Dunsar VIII Tur Wanine or Toryism

IX East Cuurcu

APPENDIX Signers of Petition Early Enrollment Descriptions of Chippin’s Hill The Tory. A Poem

INTRODUCTION

HE hamlet of East Plymouth, two miles north of

Terryville, Connecticut, and more commonly known as “East Church,” was brought into existence about 1792, by the building of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church by a clan of Tories. These Tories, or, if you so prefer, loyal members of the Church of England—for they could not conscientiously be loyal to the head of the church without bearing the name of Tory—lived in the farmhouses scattered along the hillsides where the boundaries of the present towns of Bristol, Ply- mouth and Harwinton now meet. With Chippeny Hill in the town of Bristol, or Chippin’s Hill as it is common- ly called now, as a centre, they had gathered together, unshaken by the stress of the times as the stone ledges north of them, united by family bonds, and by the perse- cutions of marauding Sons of Liberty, under the leader- ship of that “designing church clergyman,” the Rev. James Nichols. It is certainly time that some memorial of their lives is placed upon paper. Their loyalty to their beliefs, though perhaps not guided by prudence, is certainly to be admired, and that they were hunted, robbed, flogged, and driven to the ledges for refuge, because of this loyalty, deserves not to be forgotten. They were noble men, some of them, and courageous, yet there remains little to remember them by save here and there a family tradition. In this attempt to weld

10 INTRODUCTION

together a collection of facts directly and indirectly concerning the life of that Tory clan, the writer is greatly indebted to the research and assistance of Rev. X. A. Welton, of Redlands, California, who is un- ashamed of his Tory ancestry, and he is also indebted to Mr. James Shepard, of New Britain.

WNH

a

CO Nn

Tevryville

Mar or tHe Tory

Carrington homestead.

Nathaniel Matthews homestead. South Chippens Hill School- house.

Constant Loyal Tuttle home- stead, built by Caleb Mat- thews.

. Hungerford homestead.

Jones homestead.

North Chippens Hill School- house.

- Mount Hope Chapel,

. Isaac Welles Shelton home- stead.

450

slo} Res.

Bristol.

REGION

to. Cyrus Gaylord homestead.

rr. East Church.

12. Site of Ensn, Ozias Tyler's “New House,” destroyed by fire 1905.

13. Roadway entering the ledges toward Tory Den,

14. Fork in roads where Graves was flogged.

15. Stephen Graves homestead.

LO, Lory en:

17. Old Stone Bridge, over which a cross road anciently led to

Chippens Hill.

™~

CuaptTer I CHIPPENY HILL

HE place where the churchmen first came together was Chippeny Hill, within the confines of New Cambridge, the present Bristol. From the time of its settlement by white men, the history of the Hill has been connected with the growth of the Church of Eng- land in New Cambridge. The Brooks and the Matthews families settled there between the years 1742 and 1747, and were soon joined by others of the Church of Eng- land. It was in July, 1747, that a group of the mem- bers of the meeting house at New Cambridge revolted, owing to the Calvinistic doctrines of the new minister, Rey. Samuel Newell, and “publicly declared themselves of the Church of England and under the Bishop of England.” Those who seceded, most of them influential members of the Society which they were leaving, were Caleb Matthews and Stephen Brooks, patriarchs of the families that bore their name, John Hickox, Caleb Abernathy, Abner Matthews, Abel Royce, Daniel Roe, and Simon Tuttle. Caleb Matthews was a captain of militia, and he was also the chairman of the Society’s committee and of the building committee which was then making plans for a meeting house. Both he and Simon Tuttle were spared to live until the Revolution. Abner Matthews was also a member of the building com- mittee. John Hickox had been the Society’s treasurer.

12 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

Nehemiah Royce, a younger man, within a few weeks followed the original eight in joining the new congrega- tion, and he was followed in October, 1748, by Benjamin and Stephen Brooks, Jr., and Joseph Gaylord. It is the opinion of Mr. James Shepard that the dissenters were inclined to worship according to the Church of England even before they were settled at New Cambridge. The Brooks family, the Matthews family, the Gaylords, the Rices, and the Tuttles came from Wallingford, where Church of England services had been held as early as 1740.

The selection of the Calvinist, Rev. Samuel Newell, came after a strong factional conflict within the walls of the meeting house. The orthodox wished to call him as early as 1744, but the liberals refused to accept him, and after a few years of preaching by various candi- dates, among whom were Ichabod Camp and Christopher Newton, both of whom later became Church of England clergymen, the orthodox faction became the ruling majority and obtained the man they desired. The new church naturally found itself in conflict with the old Society, which was the legal municipal corporation of New Cambridge, and it was several years before the matter of taxation was satisfactorily readjusted. At the time of the Revolution, the largest part of the Church of England residents in New Cambridge had chosen Chippeny Hill as their dwelling place.

It is a tract of land which was well worth recognition, both as farming land and because of its sightly situa- tion. North of it lie the Ledges, a section of rocky woodland; west of it are seen the hills of Litchfield county. ‘The Hill itself is one of those long ranges,

CHIPPENY HILL 13

running north and south, that are peculiar to that part of the country, and although it escapes by a few rods from being within Litchfield county, it may truly be called the easternmost member of that north-stretching fraternity of hills. Below it, on the east, stretches the valley of the Farmington, with the houses of Bristol vis- ible at the south, and the distant church spires of Farm- ington visible at the north. It was from this valley that Cochipiance, the Indian, came, from the band of Tunxis Indians that encamped there. He found the Hill in New Cambridge a good place, and claimed it and the surrounding region as his hunting preserve, making his home there by a good spring on the eastern slope. After- ward the white men bought it from him. Two high- ways, half a mile apart, run northward along the hill until they are lost in the woods and ledges. The west- ern one of the two has long been known as Hill street. A cross road at South Chippeny Hill is called Shumway from the name of an Indian, Shum, whose trail it was. By the year 1774 the hill was cleared and fertile land.

Why it was that the farmers of this section were mostly Church of England men, it is hard to say. Whether their long open hill life bred an independence that rebelled against the Calvinistic tenets of the estab- lished church or whether the bright sun that causes the strawberries to ripen there warmed the hearts of those that ate them, we may not know. Certain it is that by 1774, they were a colony of churchmen.

On Sundays, they rode down the Hill to their church at New Cambridge, which was east of the meeting house, across the training ground, near where the north wing

14 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

of Federal Hill schoolhouse now stands. There a mis- sionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts conducted the services for them. First, Rev. William Gibbs of Simsbury, then for a time the converted dissenters, Rev. Ichabod Camp and Rev. Christopher Newton; after them, Rev. Richard Mans- field of Derby: then for a number of years until 1773, Rev. James Scovil of Waterbury, and, finally, Rev. James Nichols. Their friends and cousins alighted at the block in front of the meeting house; but they entered the church and joined in the litany, and the choristers led them in the chant. Then they rode back to the Hill.

Meeting house little boys doubtless twitted church little boys that they were not as good as they, yet, methinks, the meeting house little boys wished sometimes that they might climb up on the pillion and ride away to Chippeny Hill. Life was not so stern there. There were good things to eat Sabbath afternoons on Chip- peny Hill and there was time to play. And there were good things to eat at other times, too. When the Christmas time came, Chippeny Hill boys had puddings with raisins in them. And there were Christmas trees, trees inside the house, with candles on them. And that was the time when the Yule log was put on the fire and the stories were told and the songs were sung. Of course it was wicked. Parson Newell would say that such things were an abomination of heathendom and the ruination of souls; but what fun it must have been. And girls, and boys too, actually had playthings given to them. The customs of merry old England, which the Puritans despised, were certainly cherished there.

CHIPPENY HILL 15

Yet there was work to be done on the Hill. There was corn to plant and wood to cut. In the winter the long flames went roaring up the chimney, and the winds that rise in Goshen swept down upon them. It was not England. No churches with their long choirs had these people seen, nor cathedrals, where the organ bellowed gloriously. Yet they had heard of them from the mis- sionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. And they loved their home, England. Not that they expected ever to see it, but they liked to read of it, those who could read, and all of them delighted to hear of it; the great cathedral at Canterbury where the archbishop lived; and St. James Palace, where Prince Charles was brought up as a boy and later re- turned to his own again; and the King, the head of the Church, and, by the grace of God, Defender of the Faith. They liked to hear what play had been presented before him, what noble he had knighted, what hospital he had founded, what sculptor, poet, or artist had received favor at his hands. They prayed for him as their sovereign lord and king,—not lukewarmly, my friends, as you repeat the Lord’s prayer day after day, but affectionately,—for a living prince, that he might ever incline to the Heavenly will, that the King of Kings might endue him with heavenly gifts, grant him to live long in health and wealth, strengthening him that he might vanquish and overcome all his enemies, and finally after this life that he might attain everlasting joy and felicity.

The troubles of 1775 were a great shock to these loyal people. The Boston port bill had thrown the Puritans into agitation. It seemed as if they were demented.

16 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

They blasphemed the name of the king, and in the streets of New York they defaced his statue. “If you pray for the king,” said the meeting house men, “then we will kill you.” So the members of the church in New Cambridge closed its doors in silence.

Cuarter II THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS

HE principle of loyalty to the king, which was the guiding light of the Chippeny Hill band, was in- stalled in great measure by Rev. James Nichols. In the words of the public records of Connecticut, concerning seventeen of his parishioners, they were “‘much under the influence of one Nichols, a designing church clergyman who instilled into them principles opposite to the good of the States” and “under the influence of such princi- ples they pursued a course of conduct tending to the ruin of the country and highly displeasing to those who are friends to the freedom and independence of the United States.”

Rev. James Nichols*, born in December, 1748, the son of James Nichols of Waterbury, was graduated from Yale College in 1771. The churchmen of New Cam- bridge, at a vestry meeting held August 2, 1773, voted to have him for their minister, and appointed a com- mittee to confer with him. They then owned a small building at New Cambridge near the training ground, where Rev. James Scovil occasionally held services but

*Rev. James Nichols was an only son; grandson of Joseph and Elizabeth (Wood) Nichols of Waterbury. His mother was Anna, daughter of Daniel and Deborah (Holcomb) Porter and widow of Thomas Judd. Daniel Porter was a physician, The Nichols family owned much land in Waterbury.

18 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

as he also cared for other parishes, they desired a permanent minister of their own, and united with the parish of Northbury (now Plymouth) to procure one.

In the report of the Society for the Propagation of the - Gospel in Foreign Parts read at the annual mecting, February, 1774, before the distinguished assemblage of its patrons, at the parish church—the Church of St. Mary Le Bow, the church of the Bow-bells, in Cheap- side, which Sir Christopher Wren had built after the great fire,—the portion treating of the field in Con- necticut says: ‘The two parishes most distant from Waterbury, viz., Northbury and New Cambridge, con- sisting each of about forty families, have voluntarily engaged to support their own minister. Sixty pounds sterling and a glebe of very good land are to be his maintenance. ‘The Rev. James Nichols, a gentleman well recommended, hath lately been ordained to those parishes ; and the Society, in consideration of his receiv- ing no salary and of the commendable zeal of the people, have presented him with a gratuity of twenty pounds.” The people of New Cambridge had already, at a vestry held August 30, 1773, voted forty pounds yearly for their part of his stated salary and “voted to raise twenty-five pounds to carry him home.” He was the last man from Connecticut to take holy orders from “home” before the Revolution. The statement that Nichols was “well recommended” is worthy of notice. Nine particulars are named in the reports of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of which the Society required those who recommended a clergyman to testify, and of these, number eight is “His affection for the present government.”

THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS 19

The young priest of twenty-five had a bitter time of it in his parish. He administered baptism at New Cambridge in May, 1774. The following day, May 9th, is the date of the last vestry meeting recorded as held in the church, for the wave of insurrection was sweeping over the country, rendering public allegiance to the king dangerous, and the church only followed the example of the other churches throughout New England when it ceased its public services. For the ten years thereafter of his pastorate, he held meetings in farm houses, and the people were practically without a church. His parish, as reported by Rev. Mr. Scovil in 1773, consisted of thirty-three families and forty-seven communicants in New Cambridge, and forty-five families and sixty-three communicants in Northbury and in the bounds of Harwinton. He was the recognized instiga- tor of the strong love for England that imbued his flock, and the patriots hunted for him high and low. When they found him hiding in a cellar near Cyrus Gaylord’s home in East Plymouth, they tarred and feathered him and dragged him in the neighboring brook. He is also said to have been shot at several times. He baptised his son, Charles Nichols, January 21,1776. November 22, 1776, he sold a farm of seventy acres to Jonathan Pond. With Moses Dunbar, he was tried by the Superior Court in Hartford, January 27, 1777, for treasonable practices against the United States, but was acquitted. May 22, 1777, seventeen Tory prisoners from New Cambridge were examined at the house of Mr. David Bull at Hartford by a com- mittee of the General Assembly, and were found to be “much under the influence of one Nichols, a designing

20 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

church clergyman.” He received his ministerial taxes in 1778, at Salisbury, and in 1779 and in 1780 at Litch- field. It is probable that Salisbury was familiar ground to him for his father’s residence was there in 1756. The receipts for the taxes, as they appear upon the records of the New Cambridge society, are as follows:

“To the Collector of Minister Rate in Farmington. This may certify that the People of ye Town belonging to the Episcopal church have paid ye Minister Rate to me for the year 1777 and this may discharge the same. Salisbury, March 7, 1778.—James Nichols, Mission- ary.”

“Litchfield, February 27, 1779, this may certify the Collector of minister Rate for the parish of New Cam- bridge that the people of the Episcopal Church of said Parish under my care have paid their rates to me and I hereby discharg the Colector said Rate is on. Test. James Nichols, Clerk.”

“Litchfield, Dec. 29, 1780, this may certify the Colector of minister Rate for the parish of New Cam- bridge that the people of the Episcopal Church under my care have paid their Rate to me and I hereby dis- charge the colector is on list. James Nichols, Minister.”

Receipts like the foregoing were customarily accepted by the collectors of the “Standing Order” from Church of England clergymen, but the law did not authorize the acceptance of them except from a resident clergy- man. Nichols was not of course a resident at New Cambridge while living as a fugitive at Litchfield. Con- sequently we read that, “At a meeting of the inhabitants of the Parish of New Cambridge holden at the Meeting House on the 17th of February, 1779, it was voted that

THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS 21

our Collector shall collect the Rates of the People of the Church of England.”

Nichols took his nephew with him to Litchfield as a valet, and there the boy found the girl who afterward became his wife. From Litchfield, the young minister made occasional visits to his former parishioners at New Cambridge. He administered baptism once in 1777, and not after that until 1780. At a vestry held at Jo- seph Gaylord’s in March, 1782, it was voted that he give one-third of his time to West Britain, now Burlington, and provision was made for the collection of his minis- terial rate by subscription; Nathaniel Matthews being chosen to receive the subscriptions. At a vestry meet- ing held at Joel Tuttle’s, in 1783, William Gaylord and Samuel Smith, jr., were elected to make up and collect Mr. Nichol’s rates. The last baptism at New Cam- bridge performed by him was March 21, 1784. It was on January 30, 17/80, that he baptised among others, a daughter of Stephen Graves, whether at the Graves home or at some other farmhouse it is not recorded.

The snow came and there was famine in the Amer- ican camp in New Jersey. Two days later, Long Island Sound was almost frozen over in the widest part so that persons crossed the ice from Staten Island, an under- taking never before possible since the first settlement of the country. With Long Island Sound almost frozen over, Harwinton and Litchfield were certainly cold places, and Parson Nichols, I wot, was glad when his pastoral visit was over, and his valet led the horses to the stables in Litchfield and he could seat himself once more by the warm fireside.

“Respected for his pleasing manners and eloquent

22 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

preaching,” he became Rector of St. Michael’s Church at Litchfield in May, 1780. ‘This church had been deprived of the services of a minister from 1774 to 1780 owing to the lack of the usual support from the old country, but had been held together by Captain Daniel Landon and other loyal souls who met regularly despite the fact that the church windows were the favorite tar- gets of hoodlums. lLandon’s granddaughter remem- bered that when General Washington passed through Litchfield, the soldiers, to evince their attachment for him, threw a shower of stones at the church. He re- proved them saying, “I am a Churchman and wish not to see the church dishonored and desolated in this manner.”

Nichols “collected a respectable congregation,’’ wrote Truman Marsh, who became rector in 1799, ‘‘and did much to remove prejudice and to raise the church from its low and depressed state.” He resigned May, 1784, about the same time that he left New Cambridge and Northbury. In 1785 he drafted an “Address of Thanks” to the Legislature for incorporating the church society.

The historians of Litchfield knew little about Nichols. Statements that he came from Salem, Mass., are in- correct. There was a church clergyman by the name of Nichols at that place, and mentioned ‘in the letters to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, but his name was Robert Boucher Nichols and he was a native of the Barbadoes and a graduate of Oxford. James Nichols, though ordained by the Society, was not one of their regular missionaries, which partly accounts for the scant mention of him in their reports.

Certain correspondence with Jonathan Pond, who

THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS 23

lived at the foot of Fall Mountain, within what is now the town of Plymouth, throws light on his later career. On August 23, 1784, in a business letter to Jonathan Pond, he wrote from Arlington, Vermont, “Your agent was not sufficiently impowered to make a settlement on any conditions but payment of money which was not in my power. I expect to be down at Litchfield in about a fortnight, but of this I am not certain. My business is such I cannot assign time and place to meet you, but I shall be hereabouts until the latter part of September. The gentleman Mr. Andrews will inform you I am willing to submit the matter to men &c other matters of conversation he can relate to you which would be tedious to write.” Before this, Novem- ber 19, 1782, he had written to Jonathan Pond, the place from which he wrote being unknown, “I am desirous of leaving our matter to men Mr. Graves has nominated, Mr. Prindle, Capt. Phelps, & Lieutenant Cook of Harwinton. I am fully agreed to those gen- tlemen and I hereby impower my friend Mr. Stephen Graves to sign instructions with Lieut. Thomas Brooks in my behalf.” In December, 1785, Jonathan Pond re- covered judgment in the Litchfield county court against Nichols as an absent and absconded debtor for a debt of two hundred and fifteen pounds, as a result of which judgment Judah Barnes, constable, levied execution upon two pieces of land belonging to the debtor, in Bristol, appraised at about one hundred and sixty pounds. His last letter to Pond was as follows:

“Arlington, February 12th, 1787. “Sir—Upon Mr. Tuttle’s request and also my own

24 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

earnest desire of an amicable settlement between us I have come to this resolve. I will meet you and him at any time after the 15th of March at Williams Town bay state where if we do not settle I will pay you a reasonable price for coming and I hereby declare I will not give you any trouble in Law on any account in your journey and this writing shall be sufficient to assure you of the same. My meaning is I will not commence any action whatever against you in the bay or Vermont State until after the first day of May next.

“‘Sir—I have an earnest desire to see you but as Mr. Tuttle will inform you necessary business will prevent my coming to Connecticut until next sammer when matters might be better settled, but they are now in such a situation that it seems necessary and a saving of costs to accommodate matters soon..

“Sir, Wishing you and your family well, “T remane, Yrs. “James Nichols.”

It is difficult to say whether the Pond correspond- ence is of any material importance in judging Nichol’s character, but it has been given for what it may be worth. The controversy was evidently over the title to the Pond homestead which Jonathan: Pond purchased of James Nichols. Where Nichols obtained his title was a mystery that baffled Jonathan Pond and he was compelled eventually to purchase the farm a second time from Charles Ward Apthorpe, a Tory of New York. According to a little old scrap of paper among the Pond documents, apparently an unsigned abstract of title, Nichols obtained the farm from certain-named

THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS 25

individuals, who, it was surmised, were heirs of the parties to whom it had been mortgaged. The mort- gagees, according to the paper, had previously given a warrantee deed of it “to Charles Ward Apthorp of the City of New York who (sd Apthorp) has joined the Enemy and forfeited his estate.” The fact that Apthorpe had forfeited his estate is emphasized by an exclamation point. It is true that Charles Ward Apthorpe joined the enemy. He had been a patron of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel since 1758, his name appearing in the reports in company with that of Rev. East Apthorp, D.D., the rector of the parish church of the Society, St. Mary Le Bow, and he was the second assistant manager of the Court of Police in New York established by General Howe’s proclamation of May 1, 1777, drawing a salary of two hundred pounds therefor. Of him Judge Jones in his scathing criticisms of his fellow Tories says: “This gen- tleman never attended; the appointment was designed as a sinecure.” He was a wealthy purchaser of mort- gages in Waterbury and about Connecticut, a member of His Majesty’s Council governing New York, and was indicted because of the latter fact for high treason by a rebel grand jury of New York. His estate, according to Jones, was confiscated together with those of the other members of the royal council—but, alas for the title of Jonathan Pond, his estate in Connecticut was not forfeited. He laid claim to it through his attor- ney, the honorable James Hillhouse, in 1792, and, in response to repeated demands from Hillhouse, who was attending Congress at Philadelphia, Jonathan Pond, honest old blacksmith with a family of eight children

26 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

on his hands, raised the cash and paid for the farm a second time.

Having considered Nichols’ life in Connecticut, let us see how he fared in Vermont.

The little community of Arlington, in Vermont, was a Church of England town chartered in 1761 by people mostly from Litchfield, Connecticut, and later settled by emigrants from Newtown and New Milford, Con- necticut. In 1784 the inhabitants resolved to install a minister and build a church. ‘“‘The Rev. James Nichols, a clergyman from Connecticut, of more than ordinary parts, was employed, and the services of the church which for some time had been very irregular were resumed at private houses.” It was about 1786 that Nichols was called and the church edifice was com- menced. Owing to the poverty of the inhabitants the building was not completed until 1803, but it had been furnished with temporary seats and was used for public worhsip about 1787, and was, in fact, the first church in the State. The name of the parish was St. James, and the salary of Mr. Nichols—its first rector—was twenty pounds a year, raised by assessment upon “the grand list.” On June 4, 1788, “the Rev. James Nichols, having by his intemperate habits lost the respect of his people, was dismissed.”

Sandgate, a place not far from Arlington, proved to be a more permanent field of labor for this gentleman from Connecticut. It was while he was here that he and the Rev. Daniel Barber of Manchester organized the first annual convention of the Episcopal Church in Vermont, which was held at Arlington in September, 1790. One of its purposes was to take action to

THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS 27

preserve to the church the lands which had belonged to it before the war. Nichols and Barber were the only clergymen who attended. Barber read the prayers and Nichols preached the sermon. Nichols also preached the sermon at the next recorded conven- tion in 1792.

In 1793, the Rey. Bethuel Chittenden and the Rev. J. C. Ogden, men of a more spiritual type, increased the number of clerical members of the convention to four, and the Rev. Dr. Edward Bass of Newburyport, Massachusetts, was at that time elected bishop.

A special convention two months later at Manchester elected the Rev. Samuel Peters, D.D., bishop, and dispatched a messenger post haste to the Archbishop of Canterbury to have him consecrated. Peters was a notorious refugee from Connecticut and was an enemy of Dr. Bass. Nichols and Barber were evidently in favor of Peters, for they signed a letter of recommenda- tion to the archbishop, and there was considerable cor- respondence between Nichols and Peters. Chittenden and Ogden protested vainly for Dr. Bass.

This convention was a packed one and but nine out of twenty-four parishes were represented. Colonel Jarvis of Toronto, Canada, a son-in-law of Dr. Peters, was very active in securing a majority of votes for Dr. Peters and Colonel John A. Graham of Rutland, a rela- tive, placed his name in nomination.

Dr. Peters was at this time in England, living upon a pension from the government, and was a Tory of the objectionable kind. He had been driven from his home in Hebron, Conn., because of rabid loyalty and in retaliation wrote his “General History of Connecticut,”

28 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

which contains the famous Blue Laws spun from his brain that have since been associated with the name of that State. He hated Dr. Bass as the devil hates holy water, for that able and good clergyman of Newbury- port had reluctantly yielded to the stress of the Revolu- tion and peaceably held services without mention of the king and royal family. This cost him the withdrawal of financial support by the home society, due partly to the enmity of Dr. Peters, but he was reinstated and finally became Bishop of Massachusetts. Dr. Samuel Peters was a brilliant but eccentric man. His ruling passion was ambition. He loved kings, admired the British government, revered the hierarchy, and pos- sessed strong influence in England. His pension was forfeited by a quarrel with Pitt but he maintained some sort of a living from fictitious land sales and charity, until his death in New York in 1826 at ninety-one years of age.

The church had owned valuable lands in Vermont, and Peters had hoped, as did Nichols no doubt, and, in fact, all the church people more or less, that it might retain its ancient possessions. It was almost vital to the existence of the church in Vermont that this be allowed. A contemporary wrote that there were “no Episcopal churches in the State, but a few church people and only two or three strolling ministers who cannot get a decent support.” One reason in favor of Dr. Bass was that he could continue to live at Newburyport and thereby save expense.

The Rev. Daniel Barber, Nichols’ friend, clung to his glebe land when the town of Manchester brought a suit of ejectment against him and won out, but the

THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS 29

State immediately legislated glebe lands away from the church and the struggle was for naught. The contest for a bishop was abandoned. Peters could not secure consecration from either the Archbishop of Canterbury or from the American bishops, and the consecration of Dr. Bass was not effected at this time. This contest, however, was the means of drawing a line between the spiritual leaders like the Rev. Bethuel Chittenden and Mr. Ogden and those more materialistically inclined like Nichols and Barber, and fortunately for Vermont the better class prevailed. Barber, who, according to Peters, was “expelled from Vermont by starvation,” gamely kept up his struggle for land at Claremont, New Hamp- shire, where he formed a convention of churches detrimental to the Vermont organization. In advanced years, wearied with domestic trials, he gave up the strug- gle and in 1815 entered the Roman Catholic priesthood, being deposed from the Episcopal church in 1818.

The Rev. James Nichols was the only clergyman present at the Vermont convention in 1795, at which Colonel Graham made report of his unsuccessful trip to England to procure the consecration of Samuel Peters. The convention passed a resolution of thanks for Colonel Graham and a resolution of thanks and regret for Dr. Peters.

In 1796, 1797, and 1798, Nichols did not appear at the annual conventions. It is supposed that he con- tinued at Sandgate although there is mention at one time of his being minister at Manchester. In the convention of 1799 a letter from William Smith, secretary of the Convention of the Diocese of Connecticut, written by the order of the Bishop and Clergy of that Diocese to the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Vermont, respect-

30 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

ing the Rev. James Nichols, was read and ordered to lie on the table for consideration. When the letter was taken up, it was voted “That the Convention do disap- prove of the conduct of the Rev. James Nichols and that they do recommend to the several churches in the State not to employ him as a Clergyman until he pro- cures a Certificate from the Standing Committe that he has reformed his conduct and that he will do honor to his profession.” F

“Rev. James Nichols,” reports Bishop Griswold, “having by his letter dated at Manchester, Vermont, July 2, 1819, declared his resolution to renounce the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church and in future not to exercise any of its functions, and in con- sequence, agreeable to the provisions of the 2nd canon of the General Convention of 1817, he the said James Nichols, on the 2nd day of September, 1819, in the presence of Rev. Mr. Crocker and other clergymen, was declared to be, and is, suspended from his grade of the ministry.” ‘The Rev. Carlton Chase, D. D., in Thomp- son’s History of Vermont writes thus: “The writer is constrained though with sorrow to mention the names of two other individuals who for a time bore no incon- siderable part among the friends of the Church—the Rev. James Nichols, who resided at Sandgate, and the Rev. Russell Catlin who resided at Hartland. The for- mer was a man of talent and eloquence; the latter pos- sessed neither. It is painful to think of, and better not to describe, the latter days of either.”

It was not until June 17, 1829, that the “designing church clergyman” of Chippeny Hill “died miserably” at the home of one of his two sons at Stafford, Genesee County, New York, aged eighty and one-half years.

Cuarter III THE TORY PRINCIPLES

HATEVER may have been the degree of good-

ness or of evil existing in that “designing church clergyman,” the Rev. James Nichols, it is cer- tain that the principles he taught were the principles which governed the Chippeny Hill folk. How deeply they had studied them is a matter of controversy. The report of the committee at Hartford that examined the seventeen prisoners from New Cambridge states that “they were indeed grossly ignorant of the true grounds of the present war with Great Britain.” Yet there were educated men among them just as there were among the other Tories throughout the country, and it is unfair to assume that their actions were based simply on their love for their church and antipathy to its opponents, or that they were more ignorant of the grounds of the war than some of their Puritan neigh- bors. Moses Dunbar, in his life on Long Island, had had an opportunity to become acquainted with the thoughts and feelings of the Tories in New York. Rev. James Nichols at Litchfield had also been able to keep in touch with events. It was at Litchfield, by the way, that Governor Franklin of New Jersey, son of Benja- min Franklin, but a royalist governor, was kept in honorable confinement. There were many Tories in Western Connecticut, and especially about Stratford,

382 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL

who were in constant communication with those of Long Island and New York, and the churchmen of Connecti- cut were all closely allied by family ties. Bishop Seabury, as he became later, was one of the leaders of the Tories near the New York State line. It is, perhaps, well to consider why these were Tories.

There were, as there are and ever will be, men who uphold government and detest lawlessness. A rebellion that succeeds is a rare thing. It is called a revolution, and he who rebels without success, or at least without good reason, is justly stamped a rebel. Ultimate suc- cess, single-handed, against Great Britain was, from a practical point of view, a mere dream. The possibility that some other nation, in warfare against the great enemy, might set up the American colonies as a weapon of offense was only a hope and did not change the condi- tions. Granting success, were the reasons sufficient? In- efficiency in the home government and taxation without representation were the reasons given for the rebellion. Were they good ones, good enough to justify civil war? Men like Seabury and Governor Franklin thought not. There was no great suffering wrong hanging upon the necks of the American colonists. They were eating, sleeping, and living in a well gov- erned country, and civil war is a horrid thing. Rotten- ness and inefficiency in administration might exist, but there were other ways of curing it than by bloodshed.

There was also more than one side to the taxation question. Great Britain had been fighting a combina- tion of the most powerful civilized nations. One of these, France, had sought to seize the American colonies. England came to their defense and did what they could

Grave or Capr. NATHANIEL JONES

In East Plymouth Cemetery. He was the leading member of the New Cambridge (Bristol) band of Tories,

THE TORY PRINCIPLES 33

not have done: saved them from a ruler of foreign tongue and detested religion. Who should pay the expense of this war if not the colonists? England was not a wealthy land, and the colonies had received the benefit. Yet when a nominal tax was imposed, the colonists became enraged, and exclaimed against “Taxation without representation!” They did not petition for representatives in Parliament. They did not offer to tax themselves. ‘There was reason to sus- pect that taxation with representation would be as distasteful to the disgruntled ones as taxation without representation. The taxation reason for desiring in- dependence did not seem important in the eyes of the loyalists.

‘Three thousand miles of intervening water,—that was a good reason for independence; difference in relig- ious belief,—that was a good reason for independence ; lack of sympathy with English life in general was a good reason for independence. But to the true church- man these reasons did not exist. England was the re- ligious center and place of pilgrimage; it was home. The mere technicality of a few cents on tea could not sever their attachment to the home government.

A good example of loyalism is the following speech delivered in September, 1776, before a large body of the inhabitants of Long Island, a speech which Moses Dunbar himself may have heard:

“Gentlemen, Friends, and Countrymen:—Being ap- pointed by his Excellency, General Howe, to raise a corps of Provincials for his Majesty’s service, I readily engage in the attempt from principle, and in conse- quence of the fullest conviction that there are yet very

384 THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL ‘many among us who still retain the most unshaken loyalty to our gracious sovereign, and zealous attach- ment to the blessings of the British constitution. Now is the time to exert our endeavors if we wish to rescue ourselves from the evils of Republican tyranny, or our country from ruin. The misrule and persecutions of committees, conventions, and Congresses are no longer to be endured; they have become insupportable—they are too enormous for description. There are none of us but what have already seen or felt the cruelty and oppression of their Republican despotism. Without affecting one salutary purpose, those self-created bodies have violated all the sacred ties of civil society, prostrated all law and government, and arbitrarily usurped an absolute control over the natural rights, the reason, and the consciences of their fellow subjects. Instead of supporting constitutional liberty, and re- dressing public grievances, the special purposes of their original associations, they have denied their fellow citizens the greatest and most valuable of all possible privileges: those of personal liberty and freedom of speech. Instead of endeavoring, by dutiful represen- tations in a constitutional method, for a reconciliation with the parent state, and thereby restoring to us the innumerable benefits and advantages of the former happy union between Great Britain and the colonies, they have most