“It was a very unfortunate time to preach a sermon”

The Rev. Jonathan Mayhew insisted that, even though his sermon on 25 Aug 1765 decried the Stamp Act, Bostonians couldn’t have taken that as encouragement to riot against royal officials.

But crowds did riot the following night, and in particular they ransacked the house of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson.

At least one member of Mayhew’s own congregation was upset at him: the wealthy merchant Richard Clarke (shown here in a painting made about a decade later by his son-in-law, John Singleton Copley). Clarke decided to leave Mayhew’s church.

On 3 September, the minister wrote to the merchant in a last-ditch effort to patch things up. This long letter, published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1892, reveals that Mayhew, while still justifying what he had preached, had second thoughts about his sermon.

The problem had started, Mayhew said, with people urging him to preach about the Stamp Act.

I had in company, before, often heard the ministers of this town in general blamed for their silence in the cause of liberty, at a time when it was almost universally supposed, as it still is, that our common liberties and rights, as British subjects, were in the most imminent danger. They were called cowards, and the like. And I had myself, for weeks, nay, for months before Aug. 25, been solicited by different persons to preach upon that subject, as one who was a known friend to liberty; and was in some measure reflected upon, as not having that good cause duly at heart, at this important crisis. This was a reproach, which I knew not well how to bear…

Still, the minister insisted that his sermon cautioned against violence.

But certain I am, that no person could, without abusing & perverting it, take encouragement from it to go to mobbing, or to commit such abominable outrages as were lately committed, in defiance of the laws of God and man. I did, in the most formal, express manner, discountenance everything of that kind.

Mayhew quoted several sentences from his sermon (as recreated from his notes) to reinforce that point. In particular, he stated that, contrary to what Hutchinson claimed, he had preached about the whole Biblical verse, which included the warning “use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh.”

Nevertheless, Mayhew lamented, people misunderstood him!

But as I found that some persons besides yourself had, thro’ mistake, and others through malice, represented my discourse in that odious light; and some, for their own ends, seemed disposed to make such a use of it as was remote from my thoughts, yea, as I had most expressly & formally guarded against; I thought it a duty incumbent upon me to exculpate myself in the most open & solemn manner.

Days after the riot, the minister visited Clarke’s house and asked for advice “about putting something which I had written, in the public prints, relating to that very unhappy Affair.” Clarke declined to help with that newspaper essay, and I don’t think it ever appeared.

On Sunday, 1 September, Mayhew preached another sermon to condemn the riot—and he said he got criticized for that, too.

This I did the last Lord’s day, as probably you have heard; and did it so effectually, that I understand many persons are now highly displeased with me, as if I were a favourer of the stamp-act; of which I have still, however, the same opinion that I ever had, as a great grievance; in opposition to which, it is incumbent upon us to do everything in our power, within such restrictions as I had mentioned in my first discourse referred to.

I still love liberty as much as ever; but have apprehensions of the greatest inconveniences likely to follow on a forceable, violent opposition to an act of parliament; which I consider, in some sort, as proclaiming war against Great Britain. These are the Sentiments of my soul, which I more particularly declared the last Lord’s day, in the fear of God, and with the deepest concern for the welfare of my country, and all the British Colonies, at this most alarming Crisis which they have ever known, whether they do or do not submit to said act. What the end of these things will be, God only knows.

That seems rather prescient, doesn’t it?

The main point of Mayhew’s letter, though, was his acknowledgment that he hadn’t anticipated how people would respond to his sermon and would have done things differently if he’d known:

I readily acknowledge, what I was not so well aware of before, that it was a very unfortunate time to preach a sermon, the chief aim of which was to show the importance of Liberty, when people were before so generally apprehensive of the danger of losing it. They certainly needed rather to be moderated and pacified, than the contrary: And I would freely give all that I have in the world, rather than have preached that sermon; tho’ I am well assured, it was very generally liked and commended by the hearers at the time of it.

Judge Peter Oliver later wrote that the minister had “felt some severe Girds of what is vulgarly called Conscience; but he found, too late, that his Words were too hard of Digestion to be ate.”

Clarke must have shown Mayhew’s letter around because in his Massachusetts history Thomas Hutchinson wrote:

Dr. Mayhew, the preacher, in a letter to the lieutenant-governor, a few days after, expressed the greatest concern, nothing being further from his thoughts than such an effect; and declared, that, if the loss of his whole estate could recall the sermon, he would willingly part with it.

In fact, Mayhew’s letter to the lieutenant governor (quoted yesterday) said, “I had rather lose my hand, than be an encourager of such outrages as were committed last night”—still insisting he hadn’t encouraged any. Hutchinson must have gotten the two expressions of regret amalgamated in his mind.

In the end, Hutchinson and his circle felt that Mayhew recognized his words had been dangerous and hoped that he’d be an example to other Whig leaders to tone down their rhetoric. The town’s politicians seem to have maintained the same talk of British liberties in danger, but they tried to exercise more control over popular demonstrations—enshrining Liberty Tree, remaking Pope Night that year, and loudly disavowing protests that went too far.