Note 120:1 — Chapter IX

Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 210-212, 220. In a few instances the work suffered from the unfit character of the missionaries. A more common fault was the vulgar proselyting spirit which appears in the missionaries' reports ("Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 12-79). A certain naïf insularity sometimes betrays itself in their incapacity to adapt themselves to their new-world surroundings. Brave and zealous Mr. Barton in Cumberland County recites a formidable list of sects into which the people are divided, and with unconscious humor recounts his efforts to introduce one sect more (ibid., p. 37). They could hardly understand that in crossing the ocean they did not bring with them the prerogatives of a national establishment, but were in a position of dissent from the existing establishments. "It grieved them that Church of England men should be stigmatized with the grim and horrid title of dissenters" ("The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 192). One of the most pathetically amusing instances of the misfit of the Englishman in America is that of the Rev. Mr. Poyer at Jamaica, L. I. The meeting-house and glebe-lands that had been provided by the people of that parish for the use of themselves and their pastor were gotten, neither honorably nor lawfully, into the possession of the missionary of the "S. P. G." and his scanty following, and held by him in spite of law and justice for twenty-five years. At last the owners of the property succeeded in evicting him by process of law. The victim of this persecution reported plaintively to the society his "great and almost continual contentions with the Independents in his parish." The litigation had been over the salary settled for the minister of that parish, and also over the glebe-lands. But "by a late Tryal at Law he has lost them and the Church itself, of which his congregation has had the possession for twenty-five years." The grievance went to the heart of his congregation, who bewail "the emperious behaviour of these our enemies, who stick not to call themselves the Established Church and us Dissenters" ("Digest of S. P. G. Records," p. 61; Corwin, "Dutch Church," pp. 104, 105, 126, 127).