Trinity Church

By 1750, the parish had recruited most of New York’s upper class from other denominations; adding St. Paul’s Chapel in 1766 because of its success. The church’s spire symbolized its power,  easily dominating the city’s skyline at 175 feet. So did its location on Broad Way and Wall St., surrounded by the mansions of the West Ward, just a block west of City Hall, a short walk to both the Queen’s Head Tavern by the Fort (where the elite Social Club regularly gathered) and the Merchants’ Coffee House at the East River docks (where the Sons of Liberty and the future Loyalists often met). On a Sunday in the 1760s and 70s, carriages and horsemen would be thronged outside its doors, waiting to ferry men like James DeLancey, Thomas Gage, and Cadwallader Colden back to their mansions. 

Although New York did not split neatly along religious lines, many viewed the Imperial Crisis in such terms from the start. And while men like Isaac Sears and Hercules Mulligan also worshiped at Trinity, the bulk of this extremely wealthy parish, and most of its leadership, ultimately sided with Britain during the war, as the main colonial beneficiaries of the empire. More than half the Anglican priests in the colonies at large would be forced to give up their posts during the war. Banned from preaching, ministers saw their homes destroyed and families threatened. A few were even killed.

And while public debate continues today over the Founders’ religiosity and intentions for church-and-state, colonists often voiced a far different set of concerns. By spreading the message from the pulpit, ministers on both sides turned a political war into a holy one, radicalizing where secular argument could not. George Whitfield, star of the Great Awakening, held revivals for the rebellion while passing through New York. And rebels from across the colonies likewise viewed ministers like Trinity’s Charles Inglis as some of their most fearsome opponents before the war.

Trinity’s parish enjoyed special treatment during the occupation, its vestry empowered to handle matters of business and social welfare. But they lived in a state of deep anxiety after the surrender of British forces in Oct. 1781, like a half-million other Loyalists in America. Unlike the soldiers who began departing for home, many of these New Yorkers wished to remain in the city. But they feared for their livelihood and safety, after more than six years in which rebels everywhere stripped Loyalists of property and civil rights, and sometimes did far worse.

Even before the formal peace was negotiated in Sept. 1783, governments began enacting Loyalist codes that in New York went further than any other state. Those named as traitors were a veritable Who’s Who of the colonial era — or, rather, its Loyalist wing. And while most of the remaining Anglican priests were exempt, Trinity’s rector was named to be “executed for high treason.”

More than half of the congregation would therefore flee before the final evacuation that November, leaving for England and other British colonies — joining 60,000 who had left already, including many Anglican ministers. Far more would stay. But here at the end of “Part II: War and Occupation,” we use this famous church to explore both what the Revolution meant in religious terms and what the end of British occupation meant for New York’s Loyalists, elite and not.