Anglicans Puritains And Q Essay, Research Paper

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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