A REVIEW OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ARCHBISHOP SECKER.
New York: Hugh Gaine, 1773. [4], iii, [1], lxviii pp. With the half title. Errata note at bottom of final page. About Fine. The first American edition. Bound in modern calf-backed modern boards, gilt spine rules and gilt-lettered red morocco spine label, with:
[Chandler, Thomas Bradbury]: AN APPENDIX TO THE AMERICAN EDITION OF THE LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SECKER: CONTAINING HIS GRACE'S LETTER TO THE REVD. MR. MACCLANECHAN, ON THE IRREGULARITY OF HIS CONDUCT. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE. New York: Hugh Gaine. 1774. xx, 28 pp. Horizontal closed tear at leaf 3-4 [archivally repaired, no loss]. Else Fine. This is the first edition.
Porteus was, as the Review's title page declares, "Rector of Lambeth and Chaplain in ordinary to His Majesty." He was also a prominent voice in the British anti-slavery movement. His eulogy of Archbishop Secker is the first American edition, reprinted from the 1770 London. Thomas Secker was Archbishop of Canterbury and an unapologetic advocate of an American Episcopate. He was thus the adversary of ministers like Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy, who resisted his attempts to 'Episcopize' America. Porteus scolds them for their "unreasonable and groundless Jealousies of the Church of England." Mayhew's opposition to "the Proposal for appointing Bishops in some of the Colonies" wholly misunderstood Secker's motives for the appointments, there being no intention to render the Church of England the established religion in America.
Gaine apparently printed two slightly different title pages for Chandler's pamphlet. One prints Porteus's name as author of the Life of Secker [Evans 12191]; the other [our copy] does not. Chandler was a Connecticut-born Episcopal priest and Yale graduate. He, like Secker, entered the pamphlet wars in the Church of England's dispute with Reverends Chauncy, Mayhew, and others. Proof that politics follows religion, Chandler would bitterly attack the Continental Congress. "The occurrences of April 1775 were too much for his Loyalist fervor and he departed for England the following month" [DAB].
Porteus: Evans 12960. ESTC W29061.
Chandler: Evans 13192. ESTC W38291. Item #37446
Price: $1,250.00