Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/90

58 The Church of England in America. [i640- Jersey was somewhat similar. There no legal provision was made for any form of worship. Yet more than one governor acted on the assumption that, as the colony was directly dependent on the Crown, and as the governor was a servant of the Crown, the established Church of England had a certain claim to support and to precedence. In Maryland and Virginia the Church of England was established by Acts of the colonial legislation, in the Carol mas by the Proprietary Charter. In all four colonies Dissenters existed, numerically probably weaker than the Anglicans, in intelligence and spiritual activity fully their equals. In none of these colonies were the learning and character of the clergy or the state of ecclesiastical discipline such as to give the Church any advantage in its contest with Dissent. The clergy of the southern colonies may not have fallen and probably did not fall short of the general standard of life about them : they certainly did not rise above it. The habits of the southern planter, coarse, boisterous, and unspiritual, were often redeemed by his vigour, by his clear recognition of public responsibilities, and by the extensive and exacting demands of private administration. The clergy shared to the full in the temptations of laymen, but not in the counterbalancing influences ; and their failure to reach a higher standard was naturally more remarked. The weakness of Anglicanism in the American colonies has been attributed to lack of organisation and controlling machinery. The appointment of commissaries by the Bishop of London, to whose diocese the colonies in theory pertained, was no doubt an inadequate substitute for direct episcopal control. The establishment of an American episco- pate was urgently advocated by Bishop Berkeley. The attempt nearly succeeded, and was only frustrated at the last moment by the imperfectly concealed hostility of Walpole. Yet one may doubt whether any machinery could have done much for a Church which was clearly felt by the majority of the settlers, and especially by the most earnest and spiritually minded section of them, to be exotic, which could appeal to no inspiring associations in the past, and which had done little for the mental and spiritual life of the colonies since they had become separate communities. Whatever might be the shortcomings of New England, her eyes were never shut to the truth that man does not live by bread alone. Strenuous though her sons might be in the pursuit of wealth, yet material aims were never suffered to stifle the spiritual and intellectual side of life. Her care for education is among the worthiest of her traditions. So early as 1647 the legislature of Massachusetts established elementary schools in all townships of fifty householders, and grammar- schools in all containing more than a hundred. A similar system was established in Connecticut. In Plymouth little seems to have been done before incorporation with Massachusetts. In Rhode Island the first school came into existence in 1640; but it was not till the