arrangement which tho irritating was not impracticable. The Anglican law of 1735 was made perpetual in 1742.169 The Anglicans of Massachusetts were behind the Quakers in beginning their struggle to resist maintaining the state church, as there were very few of them in the country towns of the province until after the founding of the S. P. G. When once started the struggle resembled the Quaker conflict in the support which it received from the parent body at home, when it met failure in Boston, as well as in its dependence for success upon political conditions in England. The Massachusetts provincial governors understood that their function in ecclesiastical matters was to use their influence in suppressing warring religious factions and in maintaining "liberty of conscience," as their instructions commanded, in accordance with the wording of the province charter. In the instructions of the early provincial governors of Massachusetts there were no special charges in regard to support of the Church of England, but the natural sympathy of men who were stanch Anglicans or who supported the state church of England for political reasons offset this omission, and the governors were generally looked upon as the protectors of Anglican interests. Dudley, who had the clearest vision of his mission as the exponent of British colonial policy, was especially anxious to curb warring ecclesiastical interests and showed a friendly consideration for Quaker as well as Anglican when they came armed with petitions to governor and council, while he readily discharged ecclesiastical prisoners of either body. In spite of his adopted Anglican sympathies he recognized his limitations when faced by any Massachusetts law which had been allowed in England; and in spite of repeated proddings by the Churchmen, he went only so far as to make urgent recommendations to stubborn towns where the Anglicans were in an uncomfortable position. Shute, less well versed in the rights of the Massachusetts legislature, carried the policy of protecting the Church to the point of overstepping his pre169 Mass. Prov. Laws, III, 25, ch. 8, 1 July, 1742.

rogative when he made definite orders in regard to the treatment of Anglicans. Dummer, who like Dudley recognized that relief for "dissenting sects" must come from action by the General Court, nevertheless supported the cause of the Church when he used his influence to secure a law in favor of Anglican interests. His work was so effectual that the Massachusetts act of 1727, relating to the maintenance of the ministry, contained a clause for the partial exemption of Anglicans.

Back of the royal governors during this whole period the English Church was itself working busily, through the S. P. G. and the Bishop of London. The scattered Churchmen of Massachusetts very early began to make application to the Society and to the Bishop, seeking relief from ecclesiastical charges, and some earnest recommendations came to Dudley, Tailer, and Shute from across the water. If the number of Churchmen in the country towns of Massachusetts had been larger, their appeals might have had more effect, but they were not pushed consistently, and the opportunity to accomplish something before the death of Queen Anne was lost. A little later the belief that Shute had authority and was exercising it for the benefit of the local Churchmen relieved the Society of responsibility. A changed conception of the power of the governor and a better appreciation of the legal status of Episcopacy in Massachusetts came to the Society at about the time that Gibson succeeded Robinson in the see of London; and under his influence the organization took up seriously the problem of gaining exemption for New England Churchmen. After a study of the Massachusetts ecclesiastical law and an appeal to Dummer to use what influence he could, the Society agreed to carry the affair before His Majesty and address the King in Council. Politics delayed immediate action but the agitation was not without its effect on the Massachusetts General Court. This body was conscious of its unpopularity with the Board of Trade; it feared an unfriendly decision and anticipated it by following Dummer's suggestions and passing the law of 1727. The activity of

the Church party was therefore reflected in Massachusetts legislation but not so far as to satisfy the Anglicans. Finding that the law had gained practically nothing for the local Churchmen, the Society agreed to revive its previous attempt with the crown, a decision soon strengthened by the passage of the Massachusetts Quaker laws of 1728, 1729 and 1731. The influence of the Bishop of London was not sufficient to gain results satisfactory to ecclesiastical interests, but again the General Court was guided by fear of the possible course which events in England might follow. Governor Belcher's recommendation in favor of a satisfactory law was accepted; the act of 1735 was passed and in 1742 it became perpetual.

CONCLUSION.

This study of church and state in Massachusetts of the early eighteenth century may properly be closed with a summary of the main conclusions which have been reached. While some of these are of local interest merely, others have a much broader significance. The object of the study has been to reconstruct the ecclesiastical system of provincial Massachusetts and to show the steps by which it was broken down through the efforts of hostile forces.

In the year 1691 Massachusetts faced the problem of an ecclesiastical adjustment when she found herself reconstituted as a royal province with an enlarged boundary and a broadened franchise. Her first step was to pass a series of legislative acts and resolves which renewed as far as possible the ecclesiastical law of the seventeenth century, while technically granting liberty of conscience, as decreed by the province charter. When these laws failed to be effective by reason of the pressure of elements opposed to their execution, subsequent laws made an attempt to carry through by pressure what the earlier legislation had been unable to accomplish. Fines, distraint, and imprisonment became more and more common as the laws hardened in a firm endeavor on the part of the law makers to maintain the old standards in the face of changed conditions.

The opposing forces which gave the leaders most uneasiness were two,-the Episcopal element which appeared in the country towns of the province soon after the organization of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the growing communities of Baptists, Quakers, and "other irreligious persons" who were to be found mainly in the region which had formerly belonged to Plymouth Colony. This second group was made up chiefly of de

scendants, in the second and third generations, of the Puritan founders of the commonwealth or of Plymouth Colony, who were inclined to carry to its logical conclusion the spirit of independent thinking which had been their heritage. Moving on from the older towns where extreme orthodoxy was the order and social prestige depended on it, they settled in the newer plantations of the northern and southern counties where their variations made less stir with the government at Boston or Plymouth. In due time many of them accepted Baptist or Quaker doctrines, either finding the theology of these sects more satisfying than the extreme Calvinism of Massachusetts orthodoxy, or attracted by a freer political doctrine than that on which they had been reared. There were many who still sympathized with much of the old Puritan teaching and yet stood for a complete separation of church and state such as Rhode Island maintained. Others-and these doubtless made up the greater part of the inhabitants of the villages least under the control of the governmentwere frankly uninterested in church platforms and creeds, tho not violently opposed to religious teaching. Among such men the leaders of the hierarchy met little opposition so long as they were willing to finance the churches which they were trying to establish and did not endeavor to enforce the law for the maintenance of the ministry.

Such was the condition in Massachusetts in the last decade of the seventeenth century. The old ecclesiastical system was failing to maintain itself in its earlier vigor, and as the laws were made increasingly elaborate, with a view to strengthening the position of the state church, the opposition grew more determined to defy them. The opening of the eighteenth century saw this opposition in two organized camps, that of the Anglican Church, working principally through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and that of the Quakers, supported by the Society of Friends in England. In tracing the steps by which these bodies secured the exemption legislation of the eighteenth century, we observe that the Anglicans