Samuel Seabury (November 30, 1729 – February 25, 1796) was the first American Episcopal bishop, the second Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and the first Bishop of Connecticut. He was a leading Loyalist in the Province of New York and Connecticut Colony at the time of the American Revolution and a known rival of Alexander Hamilton.
He was born in North Groton (since renamed Ledyard), Connecticut, in 1729 in a home that still stands as a Historic Landmark on the corner of Church Hill Road and Spicer Hill Road in Ledyard, Connecticut. His father, also Samuel Seabury (1706–1764), was originally a Congregationalist minister in Groton but was ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England in 1730. Seabury, the father, was a rector in New London, Connecticut, from 1732 to 1743, and of St George's, Hempstead, New York on Long Island from 1743 until his death. Samuel Seabury, the father, claimed as property a slave named Newport, who is documented in his will.
Samuel Seabury, his son, graduated from Yale College in 1748, and studied theology with his father. He studied medicine in Edinburgh Medical School from 1752 to 1753 and was ordained deacon by John Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln, and priest by Richard Osbaldeston, Bishop of Carlisle, on December 21 and 23 respectively, 1753. Seabury was rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey, from 1754 to 1757, rector in Jamaica, New York, from 1757 to 1766, and of St. Peter's, Westchester (now the Westchester Square neighborhood of The Bronx) from 1766 to 1775.
Samuel Seabury grew up in an economy based on slavery, and in a slaveholding family. His father legally owned at least one slave, Newport, who is marked in his will. Samuel Seabury became a slaveholder when he married Mary Hicks on October 12, 1756. Seabury's father-in-law, Edward Hicks, gifted his daughter with an enslaved woman. Edward Hicks promised the Seaburys a certain level of financial assistance and his failure to do so soon became part of a legal dispute. As part of the ongoing dispute in the 1760s, Hicks transferred the ownership of four slaves to Samuel Seabury. Hicks and the four enslaved people later moved into the Seabury home. After Hicks died, Seabury transferred three of the slaves back to the Hicks estate. Seabury continued to legally own one slave, Charles, as his property.
According to the 1790 census, the Seabury household in New London had three slaves. After the Bishop died, a probate inventory of his estate listed a 38-year-old woman, Nell, and a 9-year-old girl, Rose. Seabury's journal notes that Nell worked in the parsonage house at St. James's Episcopal Church in New London, where he and his daughter Maria lived.
American Revolution and dispute with Alexander Hamilton
Seabury was one of the signatories of the White Plains Protest of April 1775 against all unlawful congresses and committees and, in many other ways, he proved himself a devoted Loyalist. He wrote "Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress" (1774) under the pen name A. W. Farmer (standing for "a Westchester farmer"), which was followed by "The Congress Canvassed" (1774). Alexander Hamilton responded to these open letters in "A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, from the Calumnies of their Enemies". Seabury wrote a third "Farmer's Letter" entitled "A View of the Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies" to answer Hamilton, and Hamilton completed the exchange by writing "The Farmer Refuted" (1775).
The three "Farmer's Letters" are forceful presentations of the Loyalist claim, written in a plain, hard-headed style. Their authorship was long in question, but it is certain that Seabury claimed them in England in 1783, when he was seeking episcopal consecration. At the same time, he claimed authorship of a letter entitled "An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province of New York" (1775), not signed by the Westchester farmer, which discussed the power of what he viewed as the only legal political body in the colony. Seabury's clarity of style and general ease of reading set him apart from his ecclesiastical colleagues throughout his life.
The pieces Seabury wrote under the pen name A.W. Farmer in the Letters to a Westchester Farmer display not only Seabury’s Loyalism, but a particular view of social hierarchy and slavery. In “A View of the Controversy,” Seabury wrote that “liberty is a very good thing, and slavery a very bad thing” and later notes that “abject slavery” equated in some way with “cruel oppression.” In his Revolutionary writings, he indicated that slavery was a state that individuals, namely white Loyalists, must avoid. In this Seabury aligned with his rebel American counterparts, such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, though he was on the opposite side of the conflict.
Seabury was arrested in November 1775 by local Patriots and was kept in prison in Connecticut for six weeks. He was prevented from carrying out his ministry; after some time in Long Island, he took refuge in New York City where he was appointed chaplain to the King's American Regiment in 1778. At the end of the war, he moved to Connecticut and was loyal to the new government.
On March 25, 1783, a meeting of ten Episcopal clergy at the Glebe House in Woodbury, Connecticut, elected Seabury bishop as their second choice (a favorite son was elected first but declined for health reasons). There were no Anglican bishops in America to consecrate him and so he sailed to London on July 7. In England, however, his consecration was considered to be impossible because, as an American citizen, he could no longer take the oath of allegiance to the King. He then turned to the Scottish Episcopal Church, although he had also approached the surviving non-juring bishops in England, William Cartwright of Shrewsbury and Kenrick Price of Manchester. The Episcopalians in Scotland were and are not the established church; they were a legally recognized but oppressed church which refused to recognize the Hanoverian kings. Earlier scandal had been caused by the presence of two non-juring bishops in America in the 1720s (John Talbot and Robert Welton) who were removed from their positions after being accused of schism in the Church of England in America.
Seabury was consecrated in Aberdeen on November 14, 1784, on the condition that he study the Scottish rite of Holy Communion and work for its adoption, rather than that of the 1662 English prayer book. To the present day, the American liturgy adheres to the main features of this rite in one of its Holy Eucharist Liturgies. Seabury was consecrated bishop by Robert Kilgour, Bishop of Aberdeen and Primus of Scotland; Arthur Petrie, Bishop of Ross and Moray; and John Skinner, coadjutor bishop of Aberdeen. The consecration took place in Skinner's house in Longacre, approximately 500 metres from the present St Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen. The chair on which Kilgour sat to perform the consecration is preserved in Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Keith, Moray. The anniversary of his consecration is now a lesser feast day on the calendars of the Episcopal Church (United States) and the Anglican Church of Canada and other churches of the Anglican Communion.
Seabury's consecration by the non-juring Scots caused alarm in the British government who feared an entirely Jacobite church in the United States, and Parliament was persuaded to make provision for the ordination of foreign bishops. Seabury's tenacity in the matter had the effect of making possible a continued relationship between the American and English churches. The problem was revealed not to be one of liturgical restrictions (the oath) but of political plans.
Seabury returned to Connecticut in 1785 and made New London his home, becoming rector of St James Church there. A meeting of his Connecticut clergy was held during the first week of August 1785 at Christ Church on the South Green in Middletown. On August 3, the first Anglican ordinations on American soil took place at Christ Church in Middletown, and Henry Van Dyke, Philo Shelton, Ashbel Baldwin, and Colin Ferguson were ordained to the Holy Order of Deacons that day, with Ferguson being ordained priest on the 7th. Seabury said of Christ Church, Middletown, "Long may this birthplace be remembered, and may the number of faithful stewards who follow this succession increase and multiply till time shall be no more."