Crown and Mitre

An Essay Saint Andrew's Day

Crown and Mitre

Martyn Percy

On November 14 1784, Samuel Seabury was ordained as the first American Bishop. Following the conclusion of the American War of Independence in 1783 (formally ended by the Treaty of Paris that same November), Episcopalians in Connecticut – Anglicans in North America were still known by the nomenclature of ‘the King’s Church’ – had elected one of their number to seek episcopal orders. Samuel Seabury, though not the first choice, was chosen when the preferred candidate withdrew on health grounds.

The Church of England hierarchy was politely defensive and dismissive of the American Episcopalian request. English Anglican bishops declined to help their American cousins on several grounds and placed obstacles in the way of further progress. Did Seabury have a diocese? Clearly not (yet). Did he have a Cathedral? The War of Independence had left America economically broken, and the British were still engaged in a naval blockade of the ports, so building a cathedral was hardly a priority when much of the population was starving. Would any new bishop in the former thirteen colonies swear an oath of allegiance to George III? As this loyalty to an unaccountable foreign monarch (i.e., the German king) was, in part, the point of the American War of Independence, the question seemed engineered to produce inaction.

Nonetheless, Seabury spent many, many months trying to overcome the obstacles, but to no avail. However, the Scottish Seabury’s consecration was an event of the most enormous portent. It was the first split in the global Anglican polity, and it occurred a century before the Anglican Communion could even be said to exist. Seabury was democratically elected in a republican country. There was no monarchy to defer to. This consecration of an American bishop – the first – therefore set up a tension in Anglican polity that has persisted through to the present. Is Anglicanism a democratic polity? Or is it imperialistic and monarchical in decision-making?

It was a high irony that the centre of the Jacobite Revolts between 1715 and 1745 should be Aberdeen. It was the first Scottish city to proclaim the Stuarts as rightful monarchs, and therefore the hub of rebellion against the Hanoverian monarchs. That Aberdeen should also be the city where Samuel Seabury was consecrated chimes with the revolutionary tone of the age. English Bishops declined to consecrate Seabury as he could not swear an oath of allegiance to George III. The consecration in Aberdeen – the city at the centre of the Jacobite Revolt, which is an accident, to be sure – posed a problem that looped back to events earlier that century.

After the first Jacobite rebellion, the English Parliament retaliated in 1705 with the Alien Act, imposing severe restrictions on Anglo-Scottish trade unless and until the Scottish Parliament recognised the Hanoverian lineage. The 1707 Treaty of Union was the agreement of both Parliaments to acknowledge one monarch, and form a united kingdom – the United Kingdom. This union, incidentally, created the largest free trade area and collaboration in 18th-century Europe. It was delivered mainly on English terms, primarily for the protection of English interests, and intended to maintain a Protestant government, church, state and monarch – and at the same time rule out any continental Catholic challenge.

With this in mind, the unhappy history of Whig-Tory relations with the European Union is hardly surprising, as Brexit emerged as an English-led movement not endorsed by the Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh. As ever, the English prefer their monarchical-endorsed autonomy to the benefits of collaborative democratic federalism.

When George I came to the throne in 1714, the vast majority of Scottish Episcopalians chose to side with Edward Stuart, the son of James II, as the rightful monarch. By not recognising the reign of the Hanoverians, the Scottish Episcopalians consigned themselves to decades of marginalisation and penalisation until the death of Charles (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) Stuart in 1788. It is hard for 21st-century readers to grasp the full extent of the difficulties faced by Anglicans in Scotland from the 16th century through to the end of the 18th century.

Scottish Episcopalians had retained some support during the turbulence of their Reformation, and then Cromwell’s revolution. But the settlements – terms of peace, in effect – after the demise of the short-lived Republic and return of the monarchy left Episcopalians in an invidious position. Successive gestures (Acts of Indulgence) in 1693 and 1695 allowed Scottish Episcopal clergy to retain their livings if they accepted the (English) monarchy. If they were unwilling to do so, they were deposed and deprived. Around one hundred Episcopal clergy took advantage of the offer, conditional upon swearing the oath of allegiance to the new Hanoverian lineage. The remainder declined, giving rise to house churches and meeting houses comprising clergy and congregations loyal to the Stuart lineage.

In 1719, however, any Episcopal congregation or church meeting that would not pray for the new King (George I) was closed. Episcopalian bishops dwindled in number – death and the deprivation of livings reducing their number to just one by 1720. To make matters more complicated, so-called ‘Qualified Chapels’ for Episcopalians began to emerge in Scotland. They literally did ‘qualify’, as they adopted the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, and their congregations were led by English or Irish Anglican clergy, loyal to the Hanoverian lineage. There may have been three dozen such congregations at their height, but the number of deprived Episcopalian congregations would have been far, far greater.

It was only in 1788, when the remnant non-juror Episcopalians refused to recognise the claim to the throne lodged by Henry Benedict Stuart on the death of Charles Stuart. The fact that Henry Stuart was also a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church was a bridge too far, even for Episcopalians. This was the point at which Scottish Episcopalians recognised the Hanoverian claim to the throne of a United Kingdom and offered their allegiance to George III. By 1792, Scottish Episcopalians were once again legal and able to function, perhaps for the first time in 250 years since the Scottish Reformation.

The irony is striking for the American Episcopal Church, since it rests on not one but two rebellions. The last Jacobite revolt and claim to the British throne, and the American War of Independence, with a revolution against the British throne, have helped to create an Episcopal church founded on revolt against monarchy and its claims to legitimacy, and the beginnings of a polity rooted in democracy. Although in noting this, we must bear in mind that the Jacobites were hardly democrats, since they were championing an alternative rival monarchy with very different theological sympathies.

Seabury was consecrated by three Scottish bishops who were non-jurors (i.e., did not recognise the authority of the reigning British monarch, which was hardly a problem for an American republican). But it would mean that some of the still wavering Americans who thought that British rule might be restored and the colonies revert were unlikely to receive or recognise ‘foreign’ episcopal orders.

Politically, there was fear in both Britain and America that the consecration of a bishop who was not loyal to the crown was an anti-monarchist act. It is worth bearing in mind that the French Revolution (1789-1799) was only a few years after the conclusion of the American War of Independence (1776-83). This was far closer to home for the English, and too close for comfort. The French Revolution was a period of major societal and political upheaval, which witnessed the collapse of the monarchy, the establishment of the First French Republic, and culminated in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the start of the Napoleonic era. The French Revolution is one of the defining events of Western history, and the potential threat and risks it posed to English ecclesial polity cannot be understated.

Put simply, an ecclesial polity founded on monarchical establishment works differently from a democracy. The Old World order operates through paternalistic implicit means and does not need a written Constitution. Those who rule reign. The New World Order, in contrast, has a Constitution, works through explicit democratic debate, and clarity in governance.

So much for crowns. But what about mitres? Shortly after his ordination as a bishop in Aberdeen and upon returning to Connecticut, Samuel Seabury commissioned a mitre from a men’s top hat merchant in New York. Although mitres were not typically worn by Hanoverian bishops at the time, Seabury’s pro-Catholic beliefs motivated him to have one made from black beaver fur to resemble a top hat.

According to E. Edwards Beardsley’s Life and Correspondence of The Right Reverend Samuel Seabury, DD (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881, pp. 318-319), Seabury wore the mitre during the first ordinations in the United States in 1785 and at other significant ceremonies. Seabury had tried to order an episcopal mitre in London before returning to America. This being the Hanoverian era for the Church of England, Seabury was coldly informed that none had been manufactured or tailored since the Reformation. No Hanoverian bishop wore them.

Some claim that Seabury wore his mitre like a top hat in public, given its similar design. However, I have yet to find evidence to support this. But he was the first bishop in modern Anglicanism to have a mitre. It was made out of black beaver skin. On the back crown of the mitre, in gold filigree, is sewn a crown of thorns—consistent with Seabury’s high eucharistic theology.

What is clear, however, is that Seabury was an early exemplar of the High-Church tradition that we would see in the Ritualism of the Oxford Movement some fifty years later. Some might be puzzled at the re-assemblage of liturgical provisions. For Seabury, the apostolic succession was vital for maintaining the unity of the church — one faith, but now practised somewhat differently on two continents.

Liturgically, Seabury believed that all eucharistic celebrations were derivative of the bishop’s “celebration” of the Eucharist, and he further believed that the bishop celebrating the Eucharist completed the sacrificial act of Jesus on the cross. Seabury believed, in effect, that his cathedral was wherever he was. Dan Handschy’s article in Anglican and Episcopal History (‘Samuel Seabury’s Eucharistic Ecclesiology: Ecclesial Implications of a Sacrificial Eucharist’, March 2016, Vol. 85, No. 1, pp. 1-23) highlights an essential aspect of the story regarding Seabury’s mitre, particularly his Eucharistic theology that focuses on the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death on the cross.

Today, one might regard this as a kind of theological narcissism. But we should not be surprised at this egocentric approach to episcopacy. He might have picked some of this up from Scottish Laudian theology and the entitlement of the English episcopal establishment. When all was said and done, Seabury was a conservative monarchist who was now a bishop.

In many respects, and across the global Anglican penumbra, we are faced with the same feverish tensions of the American and French revolutions. These tensions pitch autocracy against democracy as an Old World versus New World rivalry. The revolutions of France and America were against monarchical governance and tyranny, as those who claimed to be subjects of such regimes could argue that those who reigned over them were unreliable and unaccountable, and somewhat capricious in their care for the citizenry under their rule.

Seabury’s date of birth was November 30th, St. Andrew’s Day, and the patron saint of Scotland. The Scottish flag features in a corner of the Episcopal coat of arms to remind American Anglicans of their Scottish ancestry. It is an irony that, in our time, with continued calls for Scottish independence and much afoot in English nativism, we find the tensions of 250 years ago unresolved in the 21st century, in politics and in the church.

The English Anglican bishops don’t want to be accountable to the people. They still function as quasi-monarchical officeholders, presiding over their fiefdoms much as early Saxon kings once did. General Synod is hardly evidence of democracy, and feels and functions more like a Communist assembly presided over by a bureaucratic politburo on the eve of the Berlin Wall being breached. Many now believe that an Old World autocracy cannot survive in public life (save as a symbol of the legitimate rule of law and an elected government), nor can it survive as a model of governance in ecclesial life.

The exercise of Scottish independence almost 250 years ago had far-reaching consequences for the Church of England. This remains unfinished business for the United Kingdom, the English, and the debates over devolved government. For the Church of England, however, the consecration of Samuel Seabury by the Scottish Episcopal church and its non-juror bishops represents a split in the form of governance within Anglicanism that has now become a chasm. To put it plainly, the rule of one person is a monarchy or an episcopacy. But the rule of law is a republic. The future of Anglicanism lies there.

Martyn Percy’s Church, Communion and Culture: Samuel Seabury and the Fate of Global Anglicanism, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock [pb] will be published in 2026.