American High Churchmanship and the Establishment of the First Colonial Episcopate in the Church of England: Nova Scotia, 1787

Abstract

The creation in North America of the first overseas diocese of the Church of England was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable and unlikely of the changes in British colonial policy which resulted from the American Revolution. Before the war, the Anglican campaign for the appointment of colonial bishops had been a major reason for the colonial fear of British tyranny; many Americans, particularly Nonconformists, vigorously protested against a scheme which they saw as a bid to recreate a Laudian ecclesiastical tyranny. But the post-war colonial policy envisaged the colonial bishop as a focus of political stability and loyalty. The new prestige and political responsibility accorded by the government to the Church was equally remarkable in view of the government's Erastian suppression of Convocation since 1715 and its politic responsiveness to Dissenting sensibilities. Despite occasional outbreaks of clerical frustration at the Church's inability to act independently, the Church of England had been unable to escape this political domination. This paper will attempt to explain why, given the government's prior hostility to the design, ministries in the 1780s should have decided to extend the church hierarchy to the colonies.