Between Sacred and Secular Martyrdom: Loyalism and the Church of England in the Age of the American Revolution

During the American Revolution, the colonial Church of England clergy supplied some of the most influential loyalist writers and intellectuals. Samuel Seabury, who today has become widely recognizable due to his appearance in Hamilton: An American Musical, should be considered as representative of this type of loyalist: elite, articulate, and motivated by a heady combination of Anglican grievances and ideological opposition to democracy, republicanism, and religious pluralism. This paper is drawn from a book project that situates these characters in the longer genealogy of the conservative tradition, showing how Seabury and others like him seized upon the defense of “established” religion as a mobilizing issue in the Age of Revolutions. Historians have not recognized their significance because they were thoroughly defeated in the United States. Their influence lies elsewhere: as refugees, they succeeded in shaping the conservative reaction to the American Revolution in what remained of the British Empire.

This paper asks how these Anglican loyalists used the Christian martyrdom tradition. It draws inspiration from the brilliant work that scholars of early modern religion have done on martyrdom, with which historians of the American Revolution rarely engage. It focuses on a single case study: the Connecticut clergyman John Beach, who was attacked by American patriots during the Revolutionary War for refusing to omit the customary prayers for King George III from the Anglican church service. Three published versions of Beach’s story exist: one from New York in 1776, one from London in 1781, and one from New Brunswick in 1840. By comparing these versions and situating them in their different contexts, this paper shows how stories of loyalist martyrdom advanced various overlapping political and religious objectives, demonstrating that the early modern Christian martyrdom tradition remained influential through the era of the American Revolution and beyond.