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One. The Education of Jacob Bailey
- University of Massachusetts Press
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d 1 one The Education of Jacob Bailey Early one bitterly cold mid-December morning in 1759, a schoolmaster named Jacob Bailey set out on foot from the town of Gloucester in the province of Massachusetts. These were the first steps on a journey that would eventually take him all the way to London, England, and back—a journey that would change his life forever. For in London, schoolmaster Bailey, also authorized to preach as a Congregationalist, would take holy orders and return to Massachusetts an ordained clergyman and missionary in the service of England’s official state church, the Church of England, sometimes called the Anglican Church. Jacob Bailey’s first destination was Boston, some thirty miles distant. On the way he stayed overnight at a tavern in the town of Lynn. There he listened with growing disgust as a soldier recently returned from the ongoing war with France and her Indian allies regaled his listeners with a grisly account of slaughtering helpless French prisoners.1 Bailey resumed his journey the next morning in weather so frigid he could not have continued had not a companion shared his horse with him so he could ride part of the way. From Boston, Bailey would take ship for England, but first he had to collect the documents required for ordination by the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the missionary arm of the Anglican Church. Letters of introduction and recommendations from Boston’s Anglican clergy were easily obtained. From Dr. Silvester Gardiner, a prominent Boston physician, entrepreneur, and leading Anglican layman, Bailey received financial assistance for the journey, as well as assurance of an appointment to a new parish on the eastern frontier of Massachusetts, now called 2 Chapter One Maine. There Dr. Gardiner and his business associates were promoting settlement and needed the civilizing and stabilizing influence of the Anglican church behind them. Harvard College, from which Bailey had graduated in 1755 and received his master’s degree three years later, readily granted him a signed, official diploma as a certificate of education. However, the college president, the Reverend Edward Holyoke, a Congregational minister, perhaps revealed his disapproval of Bailey’s religious intentions by refusing to provide a testimonial about his moral conduct while at college. When Bailey persisted by asking a second time, President Holyoke dismissed him with “incivility” and “barbarous roughness,” a reminder, if one were needed, of the animosity that many Congregationalists still bore toward adherents of the Anglican church from which their Puritan forefathers had separated over a century earlier. Now, indeed, the Anglicans were threatening to establish a bishopric in their very midst, a possibility that only enhanced sectarian hostilities.2 No matter; Bailey had obtained the credentials he needed and then some. From Mrs. Jane Mecom of Boston, sister to none other than Benjamin Franklin, he carried personal correspondence to her famous brother, then residing in London as the colonial agent for Pennsylvania, thereby assuring him of an introduction to the great man. Bailey sailed for England on January 19, 1760, one of several civilians crammed aboard a twenty-gun man o’ war providing protection against the French for the small fleet of merchant vessels. At no time was a winter’s crossing of the stormy Atlantic in a sailing ship a pleasant experience. For Jacob Bailey, assigned to the cramped steerage, it was sheer hell. Of course they encountered violent storms, one so extreme as to threaten their very survival. And of course Bailey was seasick. But accentuating his discomfort were the strange noises, the smells, the confusion, his accommodations, and his companions. Above decks the weather was frigidly cold and wet, but Bailey described down below as a “dark and dismal region, where the fumes of pitch, bilge water, and other kinds of nastiness almost suffocated me in a minute.” His sleeping accommodations consisted of a greasy canvas hammock, which he had to share with another passenger. Although Bailey’s messmates, or companions, included several individuals of refinement and sensitivity, too many were just the opposite: an Irish midshipman who seldom opened his mouth “without roaring out a tumultuous volley of stormy oaths and imprecations ,” and an equally profane lieutenant of marines, about fifty years old and of gigantic size, who “quickly distinguished himself by the quantities of liquor he poured down his throat.” In describing the ship’s boy Bailey [34.204.3.195] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14...