usually contesting the right of the majority to saddle upon them clergymen for whose ministrations they had no desire. 1 The annoyances and disabilities that dissenters and disaffected members of the Establishment suffered were clearly not so numerous nor so severe as they had been in the past; 2 none the less they were able to keep alive the impression that nothing but a spirit of bigotry and obdurate tyranny could explain the prolonged attitude and policy of the Standing Order. 3
(b) Connecticut
Before directing attention to the effect which this weakening of the forces of ecclesiastical domination had upon the minds of the leaders of the Establishment, it will be necessary to review briefly the course which affairs took in Connecticut*
Despite the fact that the founding of Connecticut had directly resulted from the ecclesiasticism of Massachusetts, the forces of ecclesiastical tyranny proved to be more strongly entrenched in Connecticut than in the parent state. 5 This was due in part to the homogeneity of the population, 6
- 1 Backus, op. cit., pp. 353 et seq.
- 2 Ibid., p. 379.
- 3 Actual disestablishment did not come in Massachusetts until 1833.
- 4 Since the particular purpose of this chapter is to explain the bitter spirit existing between the orthodox party and dissenters in New England near the close of the eighteenth century, rather than to re-write the history of the struggle for full religious toleration, much that occurred in the long process of severing the bond between church and state may be passed over. Attention will be focused upon the character rather than the chronology of the struggle.
- 5 Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America, p. 238; Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, pp. 123 et seq.
- 6 Greene, The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, p. 121; Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America, p. 243.
