people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages (living in those parts) to human civility and to a settled and quiet government.” 1 An ordinance under the sign-manual of the King, and the Privy Seal, explanatory of these Letters Patent, and passed November 20, 1606, before any expedition under either of these grants had sailed, further declares, "That the said presidents, councils, and the ministers, should provide that the Word and service of God be preached, planted, and used, not only in the said colonies, but also, as much as might be, among them, according to the rites and doctrine of the Church of England." 2 Under this Royal Patent the first expedition to Virginia sailed December 19, 1606, and landed at Jamestown, May 13, 1607. This colony had for its chaplain the saintly Robert Hunt, an English clergyman chosen for this work by the celebrated Hakluyt, with the concurrence of Archbishop Bancroft, the Primate of all England. Of his pious labors, and of the godly men who followed him, Bucke, Whittaker, and Copeland, and others like them, devoted Presbyters of the English Church, we have not time to speak. They labored not alone for the white colonists, but for the aborigines. Their efforts were not unsuccessful, and their record is on high. A little later the same year, May 31, 1607,— the expeditions thither of the preceding year having proved unsuccessful, the first colony to the Northern Virginia, or, as afterwards called, New England, set sail from Plymouth, under the patronage of Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. This expedition, as was the case with that to the Chesapeake, had its chaplain. It is but recently that his name has been discovered. That honored name is 1 Anderson, 1, p. 165. 2 Id. 1, p. 166. Stith's Va., p. 37. Chalmers's Polit. Annals, p. 16. RICHARD SEYMOUR. An ingenious conjecture has been lately advanced by one of our most exact and well-informed historical investigators, that this clergyman was connected with the Ducal house of Somerset, the family name of which house being the same as that of our first New England missionary clergyman, and that he was possibly a younger son of the first Duke, who was himself, but a few days afterwards, a Patentee in the company which succeeded that of which we have been speaking. Be this, as it may, that Richard Seymour was a Presbyter of the English Church, has been acknowledged by our most painstaking and accurate historical writers, and the language of Strachey, the historian of the expedition, in which the services of the Church and the "publike prayers" themselves, are referred to in language which is conclusive on this point. 1 This colony, brought to our coast in a fly-boat called the Gift of God, under Popham's command, and the good ship Mary and John, of London, of which Raleigh Gilbert, son of Sir Humphrey, was the captain, came in August 7, to an island where "they found a crosse set up, one of the same which Captain George Weyman, in his discovery, for all after occasions, left," and on "Sonday, the chief of both the shipps, with the greatest part of all the company, landed on the island where the crosse stood, the which they called St. George's Island, and heard a sermon delivered unto them by Mr. Seymour, his preacher, and soe returned abourd againe." Having chosen a fitting place for their settlement, near the mouth of the river, on the 19th of August, 1707, as Strachey informs us, They all went ashoare where they had made choise of their plantation, and where they had a sermon delivered unto them by their preacher; and after the sermon, the president's commission was read, with the lawes to be observed and kept." 1 Ante, p. 101. Bartlett in Ch. Monthly, 1, p. 56. Mindful of their professed designs for the instruction of the Indians, after several explorations, in which, though under much provocation, they abstained from firing their guns at the crafty natives, they sought to bring them to their humble church, and there acquaint them with the worship of the Englishman's God. Under date of October 4th, the narrative thus details one of these efforts: "There came two canoas to the fort, in which were Nahanada and his wife, and Skidwares, and the Basshabaes brother, and one other called Amenquin, a Sagamo; all of whome the president feasted and entertayned with all kindness, both that day and the next, which being Sondaye, the president carried them with him to the place of publike prayers, which they were at both morning and evening, attending yt with great reverence and silence." 1 Thus cultivating amity with the natives, and thus mindful of their God and Church, this little colony proceeded to establish themselves upon our soil, with success for a season. The church thus inaugurated in Maine, reappeared twentyeight years afterwards, when first Richard Gibson, and then. Robert Jordan came to minister to the settlements on the coast. They were checked in their labors by the restrictions of the Massachusetts government, even so far as by imprisonment for clerical duties; and after that colony, "under pretence of an imaginary patent line, did invade our rights and privileges, erecting their own authority," 2 at length the Church was compelled to yield to that power, and depart from the place, leaving her members without the ministrations of their affections and choice. The question has been presented, how do we know that the Common Prayer prefaced the sermon given on that memorable August 19, 1607, thus giving it claim to the honor of having been the first form of worship in the English tongue 1 Strachey, pp. 168, 172, 178. sounded on the crisp air of New England? The subsequent language of Strachey, where he refers to the "morning and evening" and "publike prayers," is certainly conclusive, when we remember that the use of the Book of Common Prayer was then obligatory by the terms of the very patent under which these men had sailed. The nature of the service in which they were engaged confirms this statement. It was the public induction into office of the magistrates of the new plantation; and the statute law of England then, as was the case for many subsequent years, required the reception of the sacrament from the hands of a clergyman of the Established Church, either at the time or immediately after such formal institution. This was the case in the sister colony of Virginia, where, on June 21st, of this same year, the day after the members of the council had been fully sworn in, and the organization of the government happily accomplished, the Holy Sacrament was duly celebrated for the first time within the limits of the United States.1 That a similar observance marked these inaugural rites on our Northern coast, it is hardly possible to doubt; and the fact that special mention is not made of it by Strachey, who received his knowledge of the fortunes of the Sagadahoc Colony at second hand, and who has condensed his account of their proceedings into the briefest possible space, is easily explained on the ground that such a procedure was the ordinary rule, and that only the exception would be likely to receive direct notice. Surely to convince us that the Episcopal Liturgy was used in connection with this sermon, it were enough to cite, in addition to the positive injunction of the Patent, the "laws of uniformity" and "canons ecclesiastical" of England then enforced by the court of High Commission. The disuse of this service would have perilled the very existence of the company, had they desired it; while the fact that they sent out in every subsequent case none but clergymen 1 Anderson, vol. 1, pp. 174, 175. well affected toward the Church of England, 1 proves that no such wish was ever entertained by them. The connection of the principal men of the colony with England's highest noblemen as well as with her Christian worthies of an earlier day, goes to confirm the fact of the Episcopal character of both preacher and people; and Popham's brother, holding office under the Crown, and Raleigh's nephew, and Gilbert's son, would hardly be found linked in with the "separatists" from the English Church at so early a date as this. In fact, the "separation" from the Church of England had not as yet begun; for, if we may credit Neal, the first actual instance of Independency" or or "Congregationalism" in England was not till the year 1616, when Henry Jacob gathered his Church," and openly separated from the Establishment. 2 66 66 And now, to sum up all this matter in the language of one, the weight of whose authority has secured these words of his a place in the Historical Collections of Maine, these facts are established: "That the first religious services [in the English language] of which any knowledge has been preserved, as having taken place in New England, were performed by the chaplain of this colony; that these services were held in accordance with the ritual of the Church of England; that the minister who celebrated this worship and preached these sermons was a clergyman of that Church, deriving his authority for his sacred office from ordination by the hands of a Bishop of the same Church; and that these acts were performed at first on an island, and in the open air, and afterwards continuously in a church near the Kennebec River, on the west side of one of the peninsulas of the coast, in the year 1607, thirteen years before the landing of the colony on Plymouth Rock, and some time before the Puritans left England to reside for a season in Holland."3 1 The Rev. William Morrell in Massachusetts, and Gibson and Jordan in Maine, were pioneer clergymen of this Church. 2 Neal's History, Pt. 2, ch. 2. 3 Maine His. Col, vol. 6, pp. 177, 178. |