To Benjamin Franklin from Mason Locke Weems and Edward Gantt, Jr., 9 July 1784
From Mason Locke Weems and Edward Gantt, Jr.8
ALS9 and copy: American Philosophical Society
No 170 Strand. July 9th. 1784
Not having the honour to be known to Your Excellency we should preface this with an Apology, but as it relates to a Subject of public & Important Concern, we hope your Excellency will excuse form & Ceremony.
We are Natives of America & Students of Divinity, having no form of Episcopal Ordination in our own Country1 we Came to England more than a twelvemonth ago for Orders and have been all that time Soliciting the Arch Bishop but in vain. His Grace will not ordain us unless we will consent to take the Oath of Allegiance.2 Mr Chase a Friend of ours advised us to write to your Excellency3 and acquaint you with the Deplorable Condition of our Church. Waving all Pathetic Description, permit us to assure Your Excellency that of Sixty Churches in our State (Maryland) there are upwards of thirty vacant.—4
Romish Orders are Good.— We shall take it as a great favour done to ourselves & State if your Excellency will inform us as soon as possible whether we can take Orders in France.
Be pleased to Let us know very particularly what Oaths we must take and What Tenets we must subscribe. If the Arch Bishop of Paris will ordain Us we will come over most Chearfully. Your Excellency will add to the Obligation by giving us a Speedy Reply. Mr Adams has invited us to go over to Denmark,5 but the Orders from Denmark are not so Good as we wish them to be—
We have the honour to be Your Excellency’s Most Obedt humble—Servts.
Mason Weems
Edward Gant
No 170 Strand
Notation: Edd. Gant July 9. 1784
8. Episcopal divinity students from Maryland. Weems had sailed to Europe in early 1782 and disembarked in Nantes before continuing to Edinburgh for his studies. Though JW (in Nantes) wrote to BF recommending him, Weems evidently did not go to Passy: XXXVI, 669–70. Edward Gantt, Jr. (1759–1810), left Maryland late in 1783. The two men seem to have joined forces in the spring of 1784, after Weems had spent months trying to find a solution to the chief obstacle to his being ordained in England: the requirement that priests swear oaths of allegiance to the British crown: Adams Papers, XVI, 63–4; Walter H. Stowe et al., “The Clergy of the Episcopal Church in 1785,” Hist. Mag. of the Protestant Episcopal Church, XX (1951), 263; George B. Utley, The Life and Times of Thomas John Claggett … (Chicago, 1913), pp. 43–4; Joshua Johnson to JA, Feb. 27, 1784 (Mass. Hist. Soc.).
9. In the hand of Weems, who signed both names.
1. Though American Anglicans had reframed themselves as Episcopalians, they still had no bishop in the United States and were thus forced to seek ordination from the parent church. Efforts were under way to change that. The previous August, Gantt attended the Md. Episcopal convention in Annapolis, where he was one of the signatories to a letter to the bishop of London requesting the consecration of their newly elected bishop: Frederick V. Mills, Sr., Bishops by Ballot: an Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York, 1978), pp. 158, 192; Arthur P. Middleton, Tercentenary Essays Commemorating Anglican Maryland, 1692–1792 (Virginia Beach, 1992), pp. 48–50; Md. Protestant Episcopal clergy members to the Bishop of London, Aug. 16, 1783 (University of Pa. Archives and Records Center).
2. Weems’s first applications had been to the bishop of London and the bishop of Llandaff, the latter of whom had eventually referred him to the archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore (ODNB). The archbishop, though sympathetic, informed Weems that only an act of Parliament could alter the law that required priests of the Church of England to swear oaths of allegiance to the king. That response essentially left Weems with two alternatives: wait for Parliament to act or obtain ordination in another country from a bishop of another denomination: Adams Papers, XVI, 63–4.
3. The previous February, Marylanders Samuel Chase (XLI, 15n) and Joshua Johnson (XXIV, 209n), whom Weems consulted in London, also advised him to write to JA: Adams Papers, XVI, 63–4. The correspondence between Weems and JA, which spanned several months, is described below.
4. The decline of the American Anglican Church during the Revolution can be traced in large part to the conflicted loyalties of its clergy, who were bound by oath to support the king, and to the devastating impact of disestablishment on church finances: Mills, Bishops by Ballot, pp. 158–9, 168–71; Middleton, Tercentenary Essays Commemorating Anglican Maryland, pp. 45–6.
5. The invitation actually came from the Danish court. JA had informally (he said) queried the Danish envoy to the Netherlands, who in turn wrote to the foreign minister, Rosencrone. Based on an opinion from the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Theology, the king ruled that a Danish bishop could not only ordain Weems but do so in Latin rather than Danish, as a convenience to the American. The profession of faith would be consonant with Anglican requirements, except for the omission of the oath of allegiance. Rosencrone instructed the Danish envoy to communicate this to JA, who, on receiving the relevant letters on April 22, immediately sent copies to Congress as well as to Weems. Weems followed up on May 14, asking JA for a letter of introduction to a Danish bishop. JA sent him a passport instead: Adams Papers, XVI, 72n, 173–4, 215–16; William White, Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church … (New York, 1880), p. 328; Soren J. M. P. Fogdall, “Danish-American Diplomacy, 1776–1920,” University of Iowa Studies in the Social Sciences, VIII (1922), 27–8; JA to Armand F. L. Mestral de Saint-Saphorin, [April 22, 1784], JA to Weems, April 22, 1784, JA to Weems, May 19, 1784, all three at the Mass. Hist. Soc. As far as we can determine, BF was unaware of this previous communication with the court of Denmark.