King's Chapel During the Revolution
Meaghan L.
Throughout
the history
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, there had always existed friction between
the Anglicans who worshipped at King's Chapel and the Puritans of Boston.
This could first be seen when King's Chapel was first being built in 1688,
when the Puritans objected by throwing food and dead animals at the structure.
Later, starting around the 1720s, the Congregationalists despised the
wealthy, upstanding merchants, Loyalists and royal government officials
that made up the Anglican congregation, as well as the decoration and
luxury of the actual church building, and what they considered to be lax
religious morals. Other poorer citizens blamed these wealthy citizens
for their hard times, feeling that the merchants held all the economic
power in the post-French and Indian war depression.
Although feelings had always been tense between the Anglican and Non-Anglican
people of Boston, it wasn't until after the French and Indian War had
ended and the American Revolution began that the conflict became especially
apparent.
Events
such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, and the passing
of the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts, increased the friction between
the Patriots and the Loyalists. These divides were not just political
though; they were religious as well. King's Chapel was an Anglican Church,
loyal to the crown. Upstanding Loyalist members of society, and parishioners
of King's Chapel, played a large role in the American Revolution.
John Hancock was tried for not following customs requirements by a warden
of King's Chapel and royal governor, Francis Bernard.
Other parishoners included customs officials (possibly the people most
hated by Patriots) Thomas Kirk, Charles Paxton, Henry Hulton, and Robert
Hallowell, whose house was ransacked by Patriots.
Events like the Stamp Act and Boston Massacre increased the friction between the Patriots of Boston and the Loyalists who worshipped at King's Chapel.
The
Crown lawyer Samuel Fitch was also a member of King's Chapel congregation.
In one
of their more outright attacks on King's Chapel, the Sons of Liberty made
a figure of Commissioner Paxton and hanged it in effigy between figures
of Satan and the Pope - not only a message warning Loyalists, but a message
warning Anglicans, whom the Congregationalists feared would become a church
of "popery."
On March
10, 1776, Reverend Henry Caner, the pastor of King's Chapel, was told
by Patriots to leave the church. Between that day and the 17th (Evacuation
Day), Caner and a thousand other Loyalists left Boston for Halifax, Nova
Scotia. There were only forty-three pew-holding families left in the small
King's Chapel congregation, and, of them, most eventually became Patriots,
Americans.
After
the British troops evacuated Boston, and even more so after the end of
the war in 1781, the enormous political revolution was reflected in the
church's congregation. Instead of a wealthy, Loyalist, Anglican parish,
the new parish was one of Patriots and Congregationalists, marking the
end of British rule and the founding of a new people.
Bibliography
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Freedom Trail-King's Chapel and Burying Ground. Home page. 20 October 2000. National Park Service. <http://www.nps.gov/bost/Kings_Chapel.htm>
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantem Books, 1986.
King's Chapel Association. Welcome to King's Chapel: A Self-Guided Tour. April, 1998.
Mayer, André. King's Chapel The First Century (1686-1787). Boston, Dec. 1976.
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Pictures from from: Boorstin, Daniel J., and Kelley, Brooks Mather. and A History of the United States. Needham, MA: Prentice Hall, 1992.