A War of Religion pp 33-41 | Cite as
A Handmaiden for Episcopacy: John Checkley of Boston
Abstract
Between the establishment of the first Anglican congregation in Boston in 1686 and the year 1720, the community experienced many changes. In 1690 Boston was the largest town in America with a population of about 7000 residents that increased to an estimated 12,000 persons in 1720.1 The economic and political influence of merchants, built on a flourishing and expanding maritime commerce, affected town and provincial affairs. Following the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter in 1684 and the establishment of royal government in 1686, imperial government encountered unsettled political circumstances in the 1690s and an uneasy acceptance under governors Joseph Dudley and Samuel Shute between 1702 and 1719. Both men were Anglicans and members of the S.P.G. Yet as G. B. Warden has persuasively recounted, from 1692 to 1775 `the Bostonians steadfastly refused to elect any Anglican as a Representative to the General Court (legislature) and elected only one Anglican Selectman’.2
Keywords
Church Leader Anglican Congregation Imperial Government Lieutenant Governor Imperial AuthorityPreview
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Notes
- 1.Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625–1742 (New York, 1964) I: 143.Google Scholar
- 6.Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Cambridge, 1933) IV: 120–37, VI: 439–67.Google Scholar
- 7.Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, 1963): 37.Google Scholar
- 8.Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Cambridge, 1933) VI: 127.Google Scholar
- 9.J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (Cambridge, 1994): 5.Google Scholar