Essay/Term paper: Anglicans puritains and q

Essay, term paper, research paper:  College Papers

There has been a persistent historiographical tradition from
the beginning of the nineteenth century that the earliest
settlers of Newfoundland were Puritans who were guided
religiously by dissenting ministers. Anspach, the Anglican
missionary and schoolmaster in St. John's and Harbour Grace,
wrote in his History of the Island of Newfoundland (1819): "A
considerable colony, composed chiefly of Puritans,
accompanied to Newfoundland Captain Edward Wynne, whom
Sir George [Calvert] had sent with the commission of Governor,
to prepare every thing necessary for his reception ..."(1) Judge
Prowse, reproducing information from a now entirely lost
pamphlet by Mrs. Siddall, the wife of the Congregational
minister G. Ward Siddall at St. John's, on The Origin of
Nonconformity in St. John's, Newfoundland, in his History of
the Churches in Newfoundland (1895), a supplement to the
influential History of Newfoundland (1895), popularized from
fact and fiction the most comprehensive picture of Puritanism
on the island. Its beginnings can according to Prowse be
traced to the time of Queen Elizabeth when "some of the English
separatists (Independents) were banished to Newfoundland ...,
and in the small scattered settlements then existing about St.

John's and Conception [Bay], these victims of Elizabeth's
ecclesiastical tyranny could easily hide themselves away." We
are told that the "separatists were the extreme branch of the
Puritans, who had broken away from the Church and the
Hierarchy."(2) The story did not end here, but "Guy's colonists
and their zealous Puritan pastor, Erasmus Stourton, would
join with these exiles, and in this manner a small independent
body may have been formed, and their numbers would be
increased during the reign of Charles I." Prowse went on to
suggest that George Downing, the Harvard graduate, received
an invitation from "the Newfoundland Independent Church" to
preach in 1645 when he visited Newfoundland. He also alluded
to a similar offer made in 1660 to the Rev. Richard Blinman,
"an English Divine." Finally, he speculated about the demise of
Puritanism in Newfoundland, that "probably owing to the
want of organisation, this body as a separate denomination
died out ..."(3) It appears that the Prowse-Siddall assertions
about Puritan Separatists in Newfoundland are largely based
upon comments in John Wood's Memoir of Henry Wilkes (1887),
because the information provided in Prowse duplicates almost
verbatim Wood's presentation, which also maintained that
organized Congregationalism "flourished in this oldest British
colony," and that on several occasions Congregationalist
clergymen were invited "to settle as their pastor." (4) The
association of Rev.Erasmus Stourton with Puritanism was
further affirmed by M. F. Howley in his sketch on "The Roman
Catholic Church in Newfoundland" in Prowse's History of the
Churches in Newfoundland, where the Anglican priest in
Calvert's plantation is simply referred to as "the Puritan
divine".(5) W. Pilot in the Church of England chapter in the
same tome had Stourton come to the island as first clergyman
in 1611, when he was alleged to have accompanied John Guy
on his second visit to Newfoundland and remained there until
1628, when he became chaplain to the Earl of Albemarle
[sic].(6) Prowse, in his voluminous documentary companion
History had Stourton also come out with Guy on his second
voyage, but in 1612, and return after his "collision" with Lord
Baltimore in 1628. Here Stourton was depicted in a moralistic
vein as a "narrow minded sectary, and a troublesome,
meddlesome busybody," who upon his return to England
"hastened to pour into the ears of his Puritan allies the
frightful fact that Baltimore actually had mass celebrated."(7)
And in the reputable, though now seriously dated academic
treatment of Ralph Greenlee Lounsbury, The British Fishery at
Newfoundland: 1634-1763 (1934, reprinted 1969), the story of
Erasmus Stourton, the alleged "Puritan minister" and "member
of Guy's original settlement," was taken over from the
Anspach-Wood-Prowse tradition without hesitation.(8) Even as
professional a historian as A. L. Rowse, in his 1958 Trevelyan
Lectures at Cambridge on The Elizabethans and America, still
made Stourton "an aggressively Protestant preacher" under
Guy, who was later banished by Lord Baltimore for his
"troublesomeness."(9) It was Raymond J. Lahey, who in his
study on "The Role of Religion in Lord Baltimore's Colonial
Enterprise" seriously questioned the Puritan origins of early
Newfoundland settlement since "the assertion is not adequately
supported." While for him "the possibility cannot be excluded,
especially in light of the Puritan migrations current in that
period, contemporary reports afford it no real
confirmation."(10)
Lahey's article on religion in Lord Baltimore's Avalon did not
permit a detailed exploration of the alleged dissenting
presence in seventeenth-century Newfoundland. I wish to do so
in the present paper by addressing the following question: what
was the nature of seventeenth-century institutional
Protestantism in Newfoundland, and is there any reason to
assume an organized dissenting presence on the island? I shall
confine myself strictly to the evidence regarding the Anglican
and Protestant dissenters, since the role of Roman Catholicism
has been explored already in detail by Lahey(11) and
Codignola.(12) My task is limited in so far that I do not
attempt to scrutinize the religious background of all
individual settlers but rather focus on the practice and
theology of the clergy that officiated in Newfoundland's
proprietary settlements as well as on the religious stance of
their patrons. In addition I shall explore the scope of the
Separatist and Congregational presence in Newfoundland
during the period that proprietary settlements flourished on
the Avalon peninsula.
A brief definitional comment is in order. Most of the authors
alleging Puritans in Newfoundland have in mind
Independents or Congregationalists, those groups of dissenters
who insisted that no compromise with the Church of England
was possible and who espoused a radical break with what they
perceived to be an apostate church. Separatist conventicles in
England and Holland as well as the Pilgrims of New England
adopted this radical piety and polity. Scholarship is divided on
the question of whether to treat Elizabethan "Puritans" and
"Separatists" as branches of one tree, some leading
contemporary researchers on early English dissent, especially P.
Collinson and P. Lake, emphasize the distinctiveness of both
movements. While many Puritans during Elizabethan times
were able to exist within the English Church, Separatists were
incapable of such compromise and defined themselves
sociologically in local and congregationally autonomous
groups. Their exile in Holland and North America was a
consequence of their sectarian non-compromise in religion.
Even when distinguishing Puritans and Separatists, the former
are no longer viewed in exclusively doctrinal terms, e.g., such
as being radical Calvinists. Modern scholarship views
Elizabethan Puritanism rather as a religious subculture whose
Protestantism is crucially determined by their intensity in piety
and commitment to reform rather than as an alternative to
"Anglicanism." It is the lack of experiential and ecclesiastical
data on seventeenth-century Newfoundland Anglicanism
which makes it difficult to determine the quality of religious
commitment in the proprietary settlements.(13) Nevertheless, as
far as Newfoundland historiography is concerned, most of the
individuals and groups envisaged by Prowse and Wilkes can be
associated with London Separatism or New England
Congregationalism. It is the presence and scope of that
tradition in Newfoundland which this paper seeks to explore.
The Early Anglican Presence in Newfoundland
While Anspach was still unaware of Erasmus Stourton's presence
in Newfoundland, since the publication of Howley's
Ecclesiastical History, but especially since the appearance of
Prowse's Histories, he is credited with being the first minister in
Newfoundland and also associated with John Guy's plantation
in Conception Bay. Lahey,(14) Hunt(15) and Cell(16) have
dispelled the notion that Stourton accompanied Guy on his
second voyage, because the "Puritan divine" would have done
so at the age of 9. Since Lahey's study and with the editing and
publication of the relevant colonial records by Cell, the
presence of Stourton can be clearly confined to Calvert's Avalon
in 1627-28. Lahey nominates instead Richard James as having
"the distinction ... of being the first Anglican cleric known to
have ministered in Newfoundland."(17) Before discussing
James and Stourton, let me suggest as candidate for being the
first Anglican clergyman on the island yet another priest who
until now has been overlooked entirely, the Reverend William
Leat.
>From the records of the Virginia Company it appears that as
early as 28 January 1622, Rev. William Leat, an Anglican
clergyman then in London, with previous experience in
Newfoundland, was recommended for a position in Virginia by
John Slany,(18) the treasurer of the Newfoundland Company.
The archival document reads as follows:
Mr Deputy acquainted the Court that one mr Leat a
Minister beinge heretofore in Newfoundland and
preacher there whom mr Slany the marchant
commended for his civill and good carriage the said
mr Leat havinge upon conference with some of Virginia
heard a good report of that Countrye was nowe
desirous to goe over ...(19)
Leat, after preaching a trial sermon at the ancient St. Scyths
Church (Sithe's Church) on the border of Cordwainer Street
Ward in London and finding "approbation," was told to wait
in London until a ministerial position would become available
in Virginia.(20) On 10 June he was sent to Virginia,(21) but
already on 20 Jan. 1622/3 the governor and the Council of
Virginia wrote to the Company: "The little experience we hadd
of mr Leake (Leat) made good your Commendations of him,
and his death to us very greveous."(22)
While hardly anything is known about Leat's theological and
ecclesiastical stance, the trial sermon in one of London's oldest
churches and the recommendation of Leat by Slany as a
preacher "commended for his civill and good carriage" hardly
makes him a candidate for Separatism, even if he may
personally have held Puritan convictions. Slany's association
with the Newfoundland Company and Leat's presence in
London in January of 1622 further suggest that he served as a
minister in the Cupids Cove settlement, originally begun by
John Guy, although a preaching presence at Bristol's Hope
settlement or in Vaughan's settlements at Trepassy and Renews
cannot be ruled out. The exact dates and duration of his
service can also no longer be determined. All that can be said
about this possible Anglican clergyman in the Cupids Cove
settlement, where a "godlie minister" had been requested for the
"greate comforte to vs all and a credit to the plantation" by
John Guy as early as 1610,(23) is that nothing specific about
the religious orientation of the minister or the colonists is
known. This conclusion is supported by the remaining
documents regarding that colony, which do not suggest an
organized dissenting presence in the plantation, not even in
the neighbouring Bristol's Hope settlement, where, since 1618,
the anti-Catholic yet equally anti-Puritan poet Richard
Hayman served as governor.
Sir William Vaughan's Welsh utopia on the southern Avalon
peninsula was hardly a refuge for Puritans and Separatists
either.(24) Like his contemporary Hayman, Vaughan despised
Papists and Puritans alike, as is obvious from his works The
Golden Fleece (1626) and The Church Militant (1640). In the
Golden Fleece Vaughan devotes a separate chapter to the
condemnation of Thomas Cartwright, Robert Browne and
other Puritans through Archbishop Whitgift and indicts their
allegedly overweening spiritual pride.(25) And in The Church
Militant, Puritans with their "Idoll-passions blinde" are placed
side by side with Roman Catholics, who are accused of
indulging in sensual pleasures.(26) Thus, even if Leat could be
assigned to Vaughan's plantation instead of Guy's, what we
have said so far about the anti-Puritan stance of his proprietor
alone would make it highly unlikely that the south Avalon
plantation was the home of English dissenters.
There was also an unnamed Episcopal Church of Scotland
minister, who accompanied Sir William Alexander's Nova
Scotian settlers on their ill-fated first voyage to Cape Breton, a
journey which ended prematurely in Newfoundland, where Sir
William owned a plantation which he had purchased from
William Vaughan. According to Alexander's An
Encouragement to the Colonies (1624), the planters and their
minister wintered in St. John's in 1622-23. Here a relief ship
arrived from England on 5 June 1623 and discovered that the
"Minister and Smith (both for Spi[ri]tuall and Temporall
respects, the two most necessary members) were both dead
..."(27) We do not know when the clergyman died and the
extent of his ministerial activity in Newfoundland but may
safely assume that he shared his employer's own moderate
Episcopalian convictions.(28)
Richard James,(29) another Anglican, who briefly appears in
a letter of Calvert's first governor of the Avalon settlement,
Richard Wynne(30), cannot be called a Puritan either. Wynne
had requested from Calvert shortly after his arrival in
Newfoundland on 28 August 1621
... praying your Honour, that I may be furnished with
all necessary Tooles and provision of Victuals the next
yeare, and if your Honour may, with about the number
of twenty persons more, whereof a Surgeon, and a
learned and religious Minister: that then your Honour
may be pleased by Gods assistance, not to doubt of a
good and profitable successe in euery respect, and a
flourishing plantation, women would bee necessary
heere for many respects.(31)
The "learned and religious Minister" who arrived in the
plantation the following summer was Richard James, a
much-admired scholar, world-traveller, and future first
librarian of the famous Cotton library in London. He is
acknowledged in a letter of Wynne to Calvert of 30 June 1622
with the following words:
And vpon the last of Iune Master Iames came hither,
from Renouze,(32) and the Salt-maker Master Iohn
Hickson; from whose hands I receiued two Letters more:
that by Master Iames being of the 4. of May, and the
other by Hickson of the 10. of the same.(33)
In Wynne's very descriptive letter to Calvert on the state of the
plantation, of 17 August 1622, which includes a detailed list of
the inhabitants, "Master James," however, is no longer listed.
Neither is he mentioned in Nicholas Hoskins' letter to Calvert of
18 August 1622.(34) The picture painted about the life in the
colony by Wynne was that of a purely secular undertaking,
which, except for the fleeting presence of Richard James, the
passionate voyager, who within the space of a few years can
also be found in Shetland, Greenland and Russia, lacked all
appearance of a Puritan colony, and even the religious fervour
and tension observed in the same plantation five years later
when Aston was governor.
James's stay, which appears to have been of the shortest
duration, cannot be exploited in favour of a Puritan presence.
James--as many of his contemporaries--was a virulent
anti-Catholic but no friend of Puritans, despite the quote by
Anthony Wood in Athenae Oxonienses that he was "a severe
Calvinist, if not worse."(35) Wood is led astray by James's
anti-Catholicism, which can almost be termed congenital
when one considers the correspondence of his uncle and fellow
librarian Thomas James, the friend of Archbishop Ussher.(36)
But Richard James remained theologically and ecclesiastically
clearly within the pale of conformity and ends his largest and
still unpublished work, "De canonizatio Thomae Cantuariensis
et suorum," a history of Archbishop Becket, with an invocation
that sees England's enemies from without and within--Pope,
Jesuits, and Puritans--equally perish on the rock of a Britain
aware of its legitimate imperial presence.(37)
Later, James, who in 1630 is said to have been "sent minister
thither some nine years ago," remembered Newfoundland as
an unfriendly place where he had "found between eight and
nine months' winter, and upon the land nothing but rocks,
lakes, or mosses, like bogs, which a man might thrust a spike

down to the butt-head in."(38)
The evidence regarding Erasmus Stourton's presence in
Calvert's Avalon is at best ambiguous regarding his alleged
Puritanism. While Stourton's theological education at St.
John's College, Cambridge, could indeed have exposed him to
Puritan thought, as it did for his fellow student at the college,
Sir Simonds D'Ewes, the hay-day of Puritanism at Cambridge
was waning and the reaction gathering momentum until it
reached a peak during Laud's term as Archbishop.(39)
Stourton's Narborough, Leicestershire, roots reveal even less
about the family's religious orientation. None of the documents
illustrative of his short stay as a 24-year old in Newfoundland
from 1627 to 1628 leaves the impression that the Protestant
settlers in the plantation were dissenters with a religious
mission. Stourton's conflict with the Roman Catholic priests,
whom Lord Baltimore had brought with him to Newfoundland,
concerned their unabashed practice of Catholicism, in
particular that the priests "Hacket and Smith euery sunday
sayth Masse and doe vse all other the ceremonies of the church
of Rome in as ample a manner as tis vsed in Spayne."(40) The
second stumbling block was an even more serious infraction of
the penal laws, the alleged forced baptism of a Protestant child
by a Roman Catholic priest with the approval of Lord
Baltimore. Stourton testified: "And this examinant hath seene
them at Masse and knoweth that the childe of one William
Poole a protestant was baptized according to the orders and
customes of the church of Rome by the procurement of the sayd
Lord of Baltamoore contrary to the will of the said Poole to
which child the said Lord was a witnes."(41) In depositions
taken at Ferryland in 1652 in connection with claims of Cecil
Calvert against Sir David Kirke, a 60 year-old William Poole,
then living in neighbouring Renews, affirmed his Protestant
convictions by stating that "if it did lay in his power for the
victory he would rather give it to Sr David Kirke by reason Sr
David is a protestant and my Lord of Boltomore a Papist."(42)
The public practice of Roman Catholicism in the settlement
during penal times but especially the forced baptism of a
Protestant child by a Roman Catholic priest in the presence of
an Anglican priest would have been considered objectionable if
not treasonable by most Anglican clergymen.(43) Stourton
could not content himself with Calvert's officially sanctioned
religious pluralism on the island. It was after all a novum in
seventeenth-century Britain and had been made possible in
part by the liberally phrased Avalon charter(44). It is therefore
not surprising that he reacted especially strongly to a case of
religious preference transcending the boundaries of the
existing British law. But Stourton's deposition does not yield
any additional evidence that either the community or the
priest were zealous Puritans, as alleged by Prowse and others.
Even if he had Puritan theological leanings, the pastor's
observations and judgments remained well within the confines
of what one would have expected from any contemporary
Anglican priest.
The praise of the poet Hayman,(45) governor of Bristol's Hope,
about the "Parson of Ferryland" cannot be exploited in favour
of Stourton's alleged Puritanism either. The statement of
Hayman regarding Stourton is value-neutral on the type of his
Protestantism. He writes in his Quodlibets:
102. To my Reuerend kind friend, Master Erasmus
Sturton,
Preacher of the Word of God, and Parson of Ferry Land
in the Prouince of Aualon in Newfound-Land.
No man should be more welcome to this place,
Then such as you, Angels of Peace, and Grace;
As you were sent here by the Lords command,
Be you the blest Apostle of this Land;
To Infidels doe you Euangelize,
Making those that are rude, sober and wise.
I pray that Lord that did you hither send,
You may our cursings, swearing, iouring mend.(46)
Hayman himself shared the anti-Catholicism of his age but was
equally critical of the Puritans as the following epigram from
the same book, penned in Newfoundland, shows:
32. A Description of a Puritane,
out of this part of the Letany,
>From Blindnesse of Heart, Pride, Vaine glory, &c.
Though Puritanes the Letany deride,
Yet out of it they best be descride:
They are blind-hearted, Proud, Vaine-glorious,
Deepe Hypocrites, Hatefull and Enuious,
Malitious, in a full high excesse,
And full of all Vncharitableness.
A Prayer hereupon.
Since all tart Puritanes are furnisht thus,
>From such false Knaues (Good Lord deliver vs.)(47)
And yet the Stourton case exhibits a "Puritan" dimension
nevertheless, the choice of individuals to whom the Anglican
priest appealed after his forced departure from Newfoundland.
Stourton's deposition of 9 October 1628 quoted above was made
before "Nicholas Sherwill marchant Mayour of the borough of
Plymouth and Thomas Sherwill marchant two of his Maieties
Iustices of peace within the sayd borrough."(48) Nicholas and
Thomas Sherwill were hardly unbiased observers. The name of
Sherwell or Sherwill is synonymous with Plymouth
Congregationalism and nonconformity. Thomas Sherwill, the
prominent merchant, was a well-known dissenter whom a
contemporary Collector of Customs described as "a seditious
fellow" and who had smuggled dangerous books to be printed
in Holland. He was MP for Plymouth from 1614 until his death
and, like his brother Nicholas, for three terms mayor of the city.
The two Sherwill brothers took their public religion seriously
and had founded an orphanage in 1615. The Puritan
tradition of the family was later continued by Rev. Nicholas
Sherwill, the son of Nicholas Sherwill mentioned in the
Stourton deposition. The younger Nicholas became a
prominent nonconformist leader and, before receiving a
preaching license in 1672, had spent two months in jail in
1665 for his nonconformity.(49) Whether the dissenting
commitments of Stourton's Plymouth confidants permits any
conclusion about his own religious and ecclesiastical stance is
uncertain. Perhaps he merely sought redress from individuals
in public life whose demonstrated Protestantism was known.
The employment of Stourton at the time of his deposition as
chaplain to Christopher Villiers, Earl of Anglesey,(50) a brother
of the Duke of Buckingham, does not suggest any specific
Puritan affinities either. The earl, an undistinguished courtier
who benefitted from his brother's nepotism, had no Puritan
leanings, neither did the duke, for whom religion was largely
a matter of political convenience. If he can be characterized
religiously at all, his allegiance was to Laud and the
Arminians, not the Puritans.(51) The Buckingham connection
explains, however, Stourton's subsequent rectorate in Wallesby
and his fleeting albeit anonymous inclusion into the literary
history of seventeenth-century England. For it was Stourton to
whom an enigmatic autobiographical reference is made by
Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, when the author
mentions that he resigned from his living at Walesby "for some
special reason."(52) The special reason was Erasmus Stourton,
who was presented with Burton's quickly vacated living and
rectorate by Lionel Cranfield, the Earl of Middlesex, a relative
by marriage to Stourton's former employer Christopher Villiers
and the Duke of Buckingham.(53) The religious profile of All
Saints church in Walesby, situated in a relatively small
Lincolnshire village and averaging 5 baptisms and 3 deaths a
year, can--even if its rector evidenced some Puritian
sympathies--hardly be described as "Puritan," neither can the
religious orientation of its patron Lionel Cranfield. Stourton's
son Thomas took over the rectorate after his father's death in
1658 and remained in the parish until his own death in
1677.(54) Thus the question of Stourton's "Puritanism" has to
remain-- for the time being--unanswered, until more data can
substantiate the quality of his religious life and practice.
After Calvert's quick departure in 1629 and prior to Kirke, rules
issued for the fishery in Newfoundland by Charles I in 1633
ordered that "vpon the Sundayes the Company assemble in meet
places, and have diuine Service to bee said by some of the
Masters of the Shippes, or some others, which prayers shall bee
such as are in the Booke of Common Prayer."(55) But also the
subsequent history of the Avalon settlement under Sir David
Kirke,(56) who attempted a rejuvenation of the plantation
after he and his associates had wrested it from the Calverts,
does not show any features of nonconformity and Puritanism.
In fact, the opposite is the case. The patent to the Duke of
Hamilton and Sir David Kirke of 13 November 1637 makes
reference to Calvert's breach of trust, when deserting
Newfoundland and "leaving the same in noe sort provided for
..., leaving divers of our poore Subjects in ye said Province
liveing without Government." This trust, which Charles I now
placed in the London patentees, included both "the
propagation of the true Religion amongst Heathens there
liveing and more especially ... tender care of our owne poor
Subjects there already residing."(57) The charter, which
eventually envisioned incorporated cities in Newfoundland,
provided consequently for "the Patronage and Advouson of all
Churches and Chappells, which are, or shall happen hereafter
to be built in the said Continent, Island or Region of
Newfoundland," and required "that none may thither resort to
inhabite, that are not of that true Christian Faith, whereof it is
our cheifest happynesse to be Professor and Defender." To
enforce this Anglican conformity, every future resident of
Newfoundland twelve years and older was required to take the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy before leaving for
Newfoundland.(58) Moreover, the patent strictly directed the
proprietors of the plantation to "establish the Orthodox
Religion publickly professed and allowed in our charge of
England."(59)
In matters of the "orthodox religion" Sir David was hardly a
liability. As a stalwart Anglican he despised Roman Catholics
and Puritans alike and actively guarded against a dissenting
presence in his Newfoundland plantation. This is obvious from
his correspondence with Archbishop Laud, whose counsel in
ecclesiastical matters Kirke requested, presumably because
Laud headed the commission which from 1634 on oversaw
judicial and ecclesiastical matters in the British colonies.
Several policy directives of Laud from 1630-1640 were designed
to suppress in the plantations of Britain "factions and
schismatical humours," establish "good conformity and unity
of the Church," and gain firm control of the colonies by tying
ecclesiastical affairs strictly to the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Bishop of London.(60) In Kirke the archbishop found a
compliant colonial administrator, as a letter from Ferryland
of 2 October 1639 to Laud shows. Kirke writes:
That the Ayre of Newfound-Land agrees perfectly well with all
Gods Creatures except Jesuits and Scismaticks; A greate
mortality amongst the former Tribe so affrighted my Lord
Baltimore, that hee utterly deserted the Country. And of the
other sect, wee have heard so many Frensies from our next
neighbouring Plantation, The greatest his Majesty hath in
America; that wee hope our strict observance & use of the Rites
and service of the Church of England, as it is our cheifest safety,
by the blessing of God, whose ordainance wee are constantly
persuaded it is; So maye it discourage forever all seditious
Spirits to mingle with us, to the disturbance of that happy
Conformity which wee desire, maye bee established in this
Land. To this good End, if it shall please your Grace to give us
directions, for the time to come (for wee doubt not that the
country may bee peopled in a short time, with a numerous
Plantation of His Majestyes subjects) wee shall with all Respect &
faythfulness receive & practise Your Graces Injunctions ...(61)
The "other sect" of the "next neighbouring Plantation, The
greatest His Majesty hath in America ..." refers most likely to the
Congregationalists of New England. And yet Kirke's compliance
cannot be attributed entirely to his Anglican faith. Kirke
placed religion also in the service of colonial legitimation at a
time when the London-based colonists with their
wage-oriented economy had to defend themselves against West
country attacks that sought to maintain the old share-based
adventurism. This becomes clear in Kirke's "Reply to the
Answeare to the Description of Newfoundland" of 29 September
1639. Here he legitimized--despite the clear absence of any
missionary activity among the natives of Newfoundland--his
plantation with refence to one of the "principal reasons" of the
original patent, "the hope of the Conversion of those heathens
to the Christian Faith." The fact that Kirke's major opposition in
England, the Western Adventurers, represented religiously a
strong dissenting element may also have been exploited by him
before Archbishop Laud, whose attempts at establishing
Anglican conformity in the colonies were well known.
Matters hardly changed under Governor Treworgie(62). His
instructions of 1653 stated "That upon ye Lords day the
Accompanye assemble in meet place for divyne worship," which
may have been the mansion house of the Kirkes at
Ferryland.(63) That the building of a formal church with a
separate minister was an unlikely proposition is already
evident from the sparse population and the isolation of the
settlements, a point alluded to by a former inhabitant of
Newfoundland during the 1630s and 1640s. Thomas Cruse, a
long-time resident of Bay Bulls before and during Kirke's time,
stated in a deposition at Totnes, Devonshire, in 1667:
And tht during ye abode of this depont in ye NewFland there
was nott any church Erected there. and iff one should be built
ye harbs are soe ffar distant each ffrom othr and ye ways soe
impassable through ye woods tht itts impossible ffor people to
come to ye Church ffrom any off ye harbs ware ye people move
then they are whareas in most of wch harbos ware nott above 2
or 3 poor ffamilies.(64)
The religious profile of the early ministers and proprietors as
well as the character of the settlements thus lead to the
conclusion that there is no evidence for an organized
Protestant dissenting presence in Newfoundland's proprietary
settlements either before or during Sir David Kirke's time, who
was perhaps the strongest proponent of Anglican conformity on
the island. The lack of institutional development and
demographic transience made organized religion even less
likely outside the formal colonial establishments, where
settlement hardly went beyond the family or small planter
unit. If we raise briefly the question why there were no
organized Puritans or Separatists in Newfoundland, the
answer has to include the purely economic nature of the
settlements as well as the religious make-up of the societally
established noble proprietors and company officers. Religious
dissent and Puritanism can rather be found among the
opponents of settlement in Newfoundland, the West Country
seasonal fishing captains and merchants, who did not attempt
to establish an organized religious presence in Newfoundland.
That they were even vulnerable to heterodox forms of
Protestantism is illustrated by some of their conversions to the
Quaker faith in 1659 in St. John's Harbour. The only
significant exception among the Newfoundland proprietors is
the case of the Roman Catholic, George Calvert, Lord
Baltimore. His case is a splendid example of the close
relationship between religious conflict and the confessional
dissent of the Newfoundland proprietor.
Congregationalists and Quakers in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century Newfoundland
Prowse's suggestion quoted in the introduction to this paper,
that religious Separatists "were banished to Newfoundland "
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, cannot be dismissed out
of hand, although he and subsequent historians that mention
it remain vague and furnish no source citation whatsoever.
Wood, the informant of Prowse, is more explict. He attributes
the dissenting presence primarily to George Mourt's (Morton)
Relation Or Iournall of the beginning and Proceedings of the
English Plantation setled at Plimoth in New England (1622).
An examination of Mourt's Relation shows, however, no
evidence for a Puritan or Separatist presence in
Newfoundland.(65) The only substantive Newfoundland
connection alluded to in Morton is the help that New England
settlers received from Thomas Dermer and the native American
Tisquantum, who from 1616 to 1618 lived under John Mason's
governorship at Cupids.(66) It is likely that most of Wood's
information came from the widely available Chronicles of the
Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth by Alexander Young,
which was published first in 1841 and reproduces several of the
early New England journals, discourses, and dialogues. Among
the reprints is also Governor Bradford's A Dialogue, Or the Sum
of a Conference Between Some Young Men Born in New England
and Sundry Ancient Men that Came Out of Holland and Old
England, Anno Domini 1648. It retains a summary statement
which refers to the exiled London Separatists in Holland
during the reign of Elizabeth as follows: "For many of them had
lain long in prisons, and then were banished into
Newfoundland, where they were abused, and at last came into
the Low Countries ..."(67) It is clear from Bradford's context
that he refers to the intended exile of the London
Congregationalist leadership to the Magdalen Islands, an
undertaking which ended in abject failure and which
eventually reconciled the Separatist congregation with their
leadership, not in Newfoundland or the Magdalen Islands but
in Holland. This earliest brush with Puritans did involve
Newfoundland on the periphery, but it is no exception to what
will be observed later in regard to the seventeenth-century
Congregationalist presence in Newfoundland, that this
association is most tenuous and transitional. In the case of the
London Elizabethan Separatists, it involved at most four
individuals, however quite significant ones. London
Separatists, i.e. radical Protestant dissenters who felt no
compromise with the Established Church was possible and
engaged in the formation of separate congregations, were
severely persecuted during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which
in 1593 saw new legislation passed against such "seditious
sectaries."(68) . After the execution of Henry Barrow and
others, also many members of the London conventicles suffered
imprisonment but were eventually allowed to emigrate to
Holland minus their leaders. The London leadership consisted
of Francis Johnson,(69) his younger brother George, as well as
one of their ruling elders, Daniel Studley. These men, together
with another member, John Clerke or Clarke, were permitted to
join an exploration party to the Magdalen Islands under the
condition that they not return to England.(70) It is possible
that Charles Leigh(71) and Stephen van Harwick, captains of
the "Hopewell" and "Chancewell" that took these early London
Congregationalists to British North America, had Separatist
ties themselves, and the intended stay at the Magdalen Islands
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was in preparation not only for a
subsequent colonization by the exiled London
Congregationalists in Holland but also a defence of British
mercantile interest in the region and may have been sponsored
by walrus fishing interests.
The "Chancewell" with George Johnson and John Clarke on
board was shipwrecked near Cape Breton and subsequently
plundered by Basque fishermen but eventually found by
accident by the sister ship the "Hopewell" upon its return from
the Magdalen Islands. After some retaliatory raids against
Basques on the Avalon peninsula, the "Hopewell" returned to
England with the Separatists who eventually rejoined the exiles
in Holland without ever returning again to the Magdalen
Islands or Newfoundland.
There is some indication of religious activities, notably by the
more aggressive George Johnson, on the boat and among
sailors in Newfoundland, but also of religious strife with his
fellow Separatists and the captain. To the chagrin of the
captain, George Johnson seems to have lent to a sailor A True
Confession of the Faith (1596), one of the Barrowist major
confessional documents. George Johnson later narrated the
incident as follows:
... the Pastor [Francis Johnson] stoode very fast and
faithfull to his brother [George Johnson] being likely
(thorow the envy of a Master of one of the Ships, and
some of the Meriners) to come into trouble about our
printed confession of faith, which he there had, and
lent to one of them: also when they came into
Newfound Land, one of the Captaines reviling George
Johnson behinde his back about the same matter, the
Pastor defended him, and openly rebuked the Captaine
...(72)
The brief transitional presence of four Separatists in
Newfoundland during the summer of 1597 and one
documented act of religious proselyting aboard the ship seems
to be the occasion for the subsequent global statement about a
Separatist presence in Newfoundland during the Elizabethan
persecutions.
And yet the question of a "Puritan" presence in
seventeenth-century Newfoundland suggests itself also by its
proximity to the New England settlements. English, French and
Basque fishing had made the island well known to Europeans,
and after the initial failures of the Virginia plantation, it
became for a while an even more attractive option for
settlement than America. This awareness was supported later by
concrete links with the early American settlers. Newfoundland,
for example, because of its proximity to America and its British
fishing presence, was seen as a refuge by the Jamestown
colonists when their second attempt at settlement failed in the
face of troubled relations with natives.(73)
Also the early colonists of Massachusetts Bay were keenly aware
of Newfoundland, used its harbours and fished on the Banks.
In 1629, for example, the "Mayflower," the "Pilgrim," and
another ship were sent by the Massachusetts colonists equipped
with men and "lines, hooks, knives, boots, and barrels necessary
for fishing; desiring our men may be employed either in
harbour or upon the Bank [of Newfoundland] to make use
thereof for lading our ships ..."(74)
The provisions trade with New England became also more and
more active throughout the seventeenth-century.(75) David
Kirke observed New England's "great traffic with
Newfoundland" and cited the potential of an accelerated
trade with Virginia and New England as one of the reasons for
"planting a colony in Newfoundland."(76)
Another possible indicator of a dissenting presence in
Newfoundland has been the mention of Puritans in the letters
of the Carmelite Father Simon Stock to Rome regarding the
Avalon settlement.(77) But with the publication of this entire
correspondence by Luca Codignola it is clear that not a single
reference seems to reflect a specific knowledge about organized
Protestant dissenters in Newfoundland. Rather, the letters refer
vaguely to a colonial presence and have in mind the American
settlements. The most specific one among these references speaks
about the emigration of 4000 Puritans from England but gives
as their destination simply "the northern part of America."(78)
Thus, despite the proximity to the New England plantations,
there is no documentary evidence for organized dissenting
communities in Newfoundland until the time of Sir David
Kirke. This situation changed only slightly in the 1640s and
1650s.
Newfoundland's first serious contact with dissenters took place
in 1641, when a delegation of three Massachusetts Bay
colonists were sent via Newfoundland to England to plead for
relief. Two of the three agents were well-known Congregational
clergymen: Reverend Hugh Peters, then pastor at Salem,
Massachusetts, the future chief chaplain in Cromwell's army
and opponent of Archbishop Laud at his trial, a preacher
executed later himself for his alleged involvement in the death
of King Charles I; (79) and the dissenting minister at Roxbury,
Massachusetts, Thomas Welde.(80) Both men stood for an
unyielding Protestantism, as their involvement in the
notorious trial of Dame Anne Hutchinson, a
seventeenth-century visionary and pacifist, had shown. The
clergymen and their fellow agent, the Boston merchant
William Hibbins,(81) whose wife Anne was later executed for
allegedly practising witchcraft, were accompanied by none less
than Governor John Winthrop Jr.(82) as well as the disbarred
lawyer Thomas Lechford(83) and forty other passengers from
New England. Winthrop reports that "there being no ship which
was to return right for England" the party "went to
Newfoundland, expecting to go from thence in some fishing
ships." The group departed on 3 June and arrived after a
journey of 14 days in Newfoundland, presumably in one of the
harbours on the Avalon peninsula's Southern Shore, but was
too large to find immediately suitable transportation to
England. Thus they "were forced to divide themselves and go
from several parts of the island, as they could get shipping."
While the ministers waited for transportation they preached to
the fishermen in Newfoundland. John Winthrop wrote in the
journal that forms the basis for his posthumously published
History of New England from 1630 to 1649:
The ministers preached to the seamen, etc., at the island, who
were much affected with the word taught, and entertained
them with all courtesy, as we understood by letters from them
which came by a fishing ship to the Isles of Shales about the
beginning of October.(84)
The activity of Reverends Peters and Welde represents, however,
no premeditated preaching tour or missionary endeavour but
occurred during their brief stay on the island. This occasional
preaching they share with two other committed
Congregationalist clergymen who visited Newfoundland on
their way from Massachusetts to the West Indies and England.
Prowse refers to the Rev. George Downing as having been
invited to preach by "the Newfoundland Independent Church"
as early as 1645.(85) John Wood, in the Memoir of Henry
Wilkes, writes likewise that Downing, while in Newfoundland,
"received an invitation from the Congregationalists to settle as
their pastor."(86) The obvious source for Downing's presence
must also have been John Winthrop's seventeenth-century
History of New England from 1630 to 1649, which states the
following about this consummate politician and future
minister of Cromwell:
The scarcity of good ministers in England, and want of
employment for our new graduates [of Harvard College] here,
occasioned some of them to look abroad. Three honest young
men, good scholars, and very hopeful, viz. a younger son of Mr.
Higginson, to England, and so to Holland, and after to the
East Indies, a younger son of Mr. Buckley, a Batchelor of Arts to
England, and Mr. George Downing, son of Mr. Emanuel
Downing of Salem, Batchelor of Arts also, about twenty years of
age, went in a ship to the West Indies to instruct the seamen. He
went by Newfoundland, and so to Christophers and Barbados
and Nevis, and being requested to preach in all these places, he
gave such content, as he had large offers to stay with them. But
he continued in the ship to England, and being a very able
scholar, and of a ready wit and fluent utterance, he was soon
taken notice of, and called to be a preacher in Sir Thomas
Fairfax his army, to Colonel Okye his regiment.(87)
The quote does not speak, however, as alleged by Prowse and
Wood about a specific dissenting body which one could classify
as "the Newfoundland Independent Church." In fact the casual
and transitional mention of Newfoundland in an account of
a voyage of a twenty-year-old to the West Indies, suggests that
the preaching of George Downing was an occasional affair
rather than an invitation to become the minister of a
well-defined church in Newfoundland.
The next Congregationalist stayed also only briefly in
Newfoundland, but his preaching seems to have been more
purposeful. Rev. Richard Blinman (1608-87),(88) a preacher
from Wales and an Oxford graduate, had gone to New
England in 1640 but became embroiled in several
ecclesiastical disputes, necessitating several changes in locale,
the latest from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to New London,
Connecticut. The final doctrinal battle fought by this
conservative dissenter in New England concerned the
fundamental self-definition of American Puritans, whether to
maintain the strict standards of private and public morality,
or--through a so-called "half-way covenant"--accommodate
the congregations with the social fact of being the established
religion in several regions of colonial America and relax the
membership requirements placed on individual members.
Richard Blinman, like his friends John Davenport(89) and
John Winthrop Jr., was unwilling to concede any compromise
and eventually was rejected by many of his own congregation
in New London, which he left for Newfoundland in 1659. Here
his preaching presence in Ferryland is documented in three
letters, two of which are now lost, but one of them, to his close
friend the Rev. John Davenport, of 22 August 1659, is
summarized at length in the correspondence between John
Davenport and Governor John Winthrop Jr. The other, a letter
of the same date to Governor John Winthrop, has been preserved
among the Winthrop Papers. Davenport writes to Winthrop:
... and to let you know that I have received a large
letter from Mr. Blinman, dated Aug. 22, whereby I
understand that God hath brought him to
Newfoundland, in safety and health, and maketh his
ministry acceptable to all the people there except some
Quakers, and much desired and flocked unto. He hath
made choice of a ship for Barnstable to his content, the
master being godly.(90)
Since the letter of Blinman to John Winthrop from Ferryland
has never been published before, I shall shall edit here in full,
with the permission of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the
section that is of special relevance to his Newfoundland
stay.(91)
Honor'd Sir
(....)
We landed in Ferry land harbor the 20th day in the
evening after or loosing from New London; and I
suppose we had, 3 dayes sooner if we had not falne to
the westw[ard?]s of Cape de Race into Placentia Bay.
The Lord brought us all safe, & well; the moth'r with
the litle ones, who had litle seasickness at all, & my
selfe, Beyond all expectation none considerable, the
children some of them fatter, then when we set sayle,
& through the great mercy of o'r God, the great
inconveniencies o'r friends feared, were removed; &
those that were (especially in so small a vessel) the
Lord helped us so to beare them, that they were not
overburdensome part of one night & of one day, we
had a strong gale, & a growne sea, th[a]t we could
not cook, o'r provisions as at oth'r times, & then my
wife began to grow faint; but the Lord shewed us
mercey in mitigating wind & sea, th[a]t we got some
hot victualls for her & the sucking child, & so both
were refreshed. It would be too long to give yo'r
wo[rshi]p account of all particul'rs in o'r voyage;
but the Lord was wonderfully gracious to us.
Being arrived, we were welcommed, not onely by o'r
friends, viz: good m[aster] Keeny,(92) Ralph
Parker(93) (who also came to meet us & towed us
up) but also by the Lady Kirke,(94) & sundry masters
of ships and oth'rs, whom we never saw, togeth'r with
an offer of passage for me & my family to England,
in sundry ships of the west-parts; w[he]r[e]in I could
not but sea a gracious smile of God. We have
pitch[e]t upon mr Denis(95) who was in the Bay,
who arrived since we did, I hearing a [fol. 1 verso]
good report of him. 3 Convoys already come by Bay
of Bulls [?]. newes you have, though not so late, yet
more certaine, than we have, w[he]r[e]by you (I
doubt not;) understand the great revolutions in
Engl: - New Engl: - prayers & humiliations have
pr'vayed much w[i]th God formerly, & I trust, they
will so still. One Capt: [illegible] that lately came
over to call Governor Treworthy(96) to account for
arrears to the Proprieto's, told me, that mr Hugh
Peter[s](97) is about 4 moneths ago [4 words
marked through by ink and entirely illegible] in
sore horr'r of spirit crying out of him s:[elf] as
damned & confessing strange activitys of wch he is
guilty. Sit fedes penes authorem.
Mary Fisher the Quaker,(98) & anoth'r named
Esther(99) are arrived at St Jones-harbor, & there
they vent their opinions. I heare 2 or 3 m[aster]s of
ships are perverted by them. Some have sent to me, to
desire me to come over, but I see it not my way. I
expect them here dayly. I heare, that some m[aster]s
of ships, forbid their men to heare them. They have
both beene (as they report) at Constantinople, & in
oth'r places among the Turks; wch report fits [?] wth
letters I saw at New haven.
Since my writing the former part of my letter I have
rec'd a letter from Mr Denis, with whom I am to go,
who in his owne name, & ye name of many oth'r
m[as]t[er]s of ships in St Jones harbo'r, doe earnestly
importune me to come over to them, & presse me
w[i]th such arguments, that I cannot but see a call
of God in it, & I am to goe suddenly thither, by a
boat wch they have sent in purpose for me. People
flock from neighbouring harbo'rs to heare the word
of God, & attend diligently; what fruit the Lord will
give, is knowne unto himself. I cannot enlarge by
reason of my intended voyage to morrow morning.
(....)
Ferryland-harbo'r Aug. 22. 1659. yo'r wo'ps to his
power
Richard Blinman
Blinman stayed in Newfoundland only until the late fall of
1659, for in a letter to Governor Winthrop of 9 March 1660, the
Puritan minister wrote that it "pleased God of his grace to
bring me & all mine safe to England from New found land in
23 dayes, to Appledore neere Barnstaple, & the winter coming
on, & my youngest child falling sick (who is now recovered, the
Lord blessing yo'r purging powder) stayd my journey into
Wales."(100) He wintered with his friend William Bartlett, the
Congregational minister at Bideford. After a short journey into
his native Wales, which did not secure him a ministerial
position as he had hoped, Blinman opened a medical practice
in Bristol, where he also died in 1687.(101)
Richard Blinman is the only Congregationalist minister for
whom a short but decisive preaching presence in
Newfoundland can be documented. His stay there was prepared
or at least helped by two members of his New London,
Connecticut, congregation, William Keeny and Ralph Parker,
masters of ships who either fished in Newfoundland waters or
traded goods in Ferryland. Blinman's preaching success does
not permit, however, any firm conclusion about the religious
make-up of his listeners. All that can be said is that he seems to
have had a successful preaching engagement that summer
under the auspices of the boat masters and Lady Kirke. Also the
immediate offer to Blinman of a passage for him and his
family to England, which he took up later in the year, suggests
that his stay was never intended as a service to a dissenting
congregation in Newfoundland. And the inconclusive effects of
his preaching, indicated by the statement--"People flock from
neighbouring harbo'rs to heare the word of God, & attend
diligently; what fruit the Lord will give, is knowne unto
himself."--rules out any organized religious community in
Ferryland or elsewhere on the island.
A most interesting sidelight is cast by Blinman upon the
missionary activity of Quaker women in St. John's. The
reference to the two Quaker pioneers Hester Biddle and Mary
Fisher widens our knowledge of the Quaker presence in
Newfoundland. Hester Biddle, a Quaker visionary, who visited
at one time King Louis XIV of France, went, according to
George Fox, in 1656 for the first time "to the new founde
lande:"(102) In the same year intelligence from Lisbon to
Secretary of State John Thurloe speaks of "an English shipp
come in here from Newfoundland. The master hath beene on
board of us. There is not, they say, one person in the shipp,
officer or marriner, but are all Quakers."(103) The letter of
Blinman confirms a subsequent trip of Hester Biddle and Mary
Fisher, the future wife of the Baptist Quaker convert William
Bayley, a merchant from Poole. The preaching of these two
women in St. John's was successful enough to convert "2 or 3
masters of ships" and initiate counter measures by the rest,
including the invitation to Blinman to come to St. John's,
which according to his letter to Winthrop he was prepared to
do. Newfoundland remained also on the list of support-worthy
Quaker missionary endeavours in England. On 25 February
1660 a collection was recommended for Quaker missionary
activities at the annual meeting in Skipton, which listed
Newfoundland among the countries where such activity was
taking place.(104) Quaker individuals and families from the
Poole region and from Ireland continued to play a regionally
limited but prominent role in eighteenth-century
Newfoundland, when one considers the activities of the Quaker
minister and salmon fishing pioneer George Skeffington of
Bonavista; the influence and presence of the Poole merchant
families of White, Taverner, Vallis, Jeffrey, Mifflen, and
Colbourne in Bay de Verde or Trinity; the Harrisson, Penney,
and Neave families in Placentia; and the Irish Quaker
families, most notably the merchant houses of Strangman,
Courtenay and Ridgway as well as the Jacobs, Penrose and
Harvey families engaged in the Waterford-Newfoundland
provisions trade.(105)
But the brief stay of London Congregationalists and the brief
preaching activity of Hugh Peters, Thomas Welde, George
Downing, and Richard Blinman in Newfoundland
demonstrate that the presence of Congregationalists and
Puritans in Newfoundland from 1597 to 1659 appears to have
been occasional and without any firm institutional footing.
This situation did not change during the second half of the
seventeenth century. Thus the picture painted by Anspach and
especially by Prowse and Wood of a substantial and organized
"Puritan" or Separatist presence in seventeenth-century
Newfoundland is highly unlikely. Only with massive
immigration, a resident merchant presence, and a greater
institutional development did Quaker, Methodist, and
Congregational dissenters have a social and cultural impact
during the second half of the eighteenth century.
NOTES
1. Lewis Amadeus Anspach, A History of the Island of
Newfoundland: Containing a Description of the Island, the
Banks, the Fisheries, and Trade of Newfoundland, and the
Coast of Labrador (London: By the Author, 1819), 86.
2. Prowse, History of the Churches in Newfoundland (London:
Macmillan, 1895), 49.
3. Ibid.
4. John Wood, Memoir of Henry Wilkes, D.D., LL.D.: His Life and
Times (Montreal: F.E. Grafton; London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1887), 2-3.
5. Prowse, History of the Churches in Newfoundland , 26.
6. Ibid., 1.
7. D.W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland From the English,
Colonial and Foreign Records (London: Macmillan, 1895
[reprinted 1972]), 101.222
8. Ralph Greenlee Lounsbury, The British Fishery at
Newfoundland: 1634-1763 (New Haven:Yale University Press,
1934 [reprinted 1969]), 207.
9. A. L. Rowse, The Elizabethans and America: The Trevelyan
Lectures at Cambridge 1958 (London: Macmillan, 1959), 167.
10. R.J. Lahey, "The Role of Religion in Lord Baltimore's
Colonial Enterprise" Maryland Historical Magazine,
72/4(1977), 492-511, 494-5.
11. In the article mentioned above. See also Raymond J. Lahey,
"Avalon: Lord Baltimore's Colony in Newfoundland," in G. M.
Story, Early European Settlement and Exploitation in Atlantic
Canada: Selected Papers (St. John's: Memorial University of
Newfoundland, 1982), 115-37.
12. Luca Codignola, The Coldest Harbour of the Land: Simon
Stock and Lord Baltimore's Colony in Newfoundland,
1621-1649 (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University
Press, 1988).
13. For a concise statement of the definitional issues and the
change in scholarly opinion regarding Puritanism and
Separatism during Elizabethan times, see Susan Doran,
Elizabeth I and Religion: 1558-1603 (London & New York,
1994).
14. R.J. Lahey, "The Role of Religion in Lord Baltimore's
Colonial Enterprise," 506-8.
15. E. Hunt, "Stourton, Erasmus," Dictionary of Canadian
Biography [hereafter DCB], Vol. 1: 1000 to 1700 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1966), 614.
16. Gillian T. Cell (edit.), Newfoundland Discovered: English
Attempts at Colonisation, 1610-1630 (London: The Hakluyt
Society, 1982), 284-5, 293, 295.
17. Lahey, "The Role of Religion in Lord Baltimore's Colonial
Enterprise," 495.
18. On John Slany and his brother Humphrey see Gillian T. Cell,
"The Newfoundland Company: A Study of Subscribers to a
Colonizing Venture," The William and Mary Qarterly
22(October 1965), 615.
19. "Extracts from the Records of the Virginia Company
Concerning the Selection of Ministers to Send to Virginia," 16
Jan. 1621/22, Vol. 1: 575; 28 Jan. 1621/22, Vol. 1: 591; 10 June
1622, Vol. 3: 651; 20 Jan. 1622/23, Vol. 4: 15; published in
George Maclaren Brydon, Virginia's Mother Church and the
Political Conditions Under which it Grew: An Interpretation of
the Records of the Colony of Virginia and of the Anglican
Church of that Colony 1607-1727, 2 Vols. (Richmond: Virginia
Historical Society, 1947). Vol. 2: 420-1.
20. Ibid., 2:420.
21. Ibid., 2: 420-1.
22. Ibid., 2: 421.
23. John Guy to Sir Percival Willoughby, 6 October 1610, in Cell,
Newfoundland Discovered, 64.
24. On Sir William Vaughan, see Gillian T. Cell's biographical
article in DCB, 1: 654-7.
25. Orpheus Iunior [= William Vaughan], The Golden Fleece ...
(London: W. Stansby, M. Flesher et al. for Francis Williams,
1626), Part I, chapter 17, 133-7; cf. Part III, 87.
26. William Vaughan, The Church Militant ... (London: T.
Paine for H. Blunden, 1640), Preface (unpaginated).
27. William Alexander, An Encouragement to Colonies
(London: William Stansby

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