1792] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 35 1 



come into the Ecclesiastical union, as the State itself had been the 

 last to come into the Federal — now sent delegates. The clergy 

 and laity, too, of North Carolina acceded to the union. Dr. Smith 

 was again elected President of the House of Clerical and Lay 

 Deputies. 



At this convention an important and striking event occurred. 

 At the last convention, that of 1789, it will be remembered that an 

 indisposition existed on the part of Bishops White and Provoost 

 to proceed to consecrate Dr. Bass, who had been recommended by 

 the church in Massachusetts to the Episcopate — because those two 

 bishops considered that when they received consecration in Eng- 

 land, in 1787, it was understood that a third person would come 

 from America to receive consecration at the hands of the English 

 bishops before any bishop should be consecrated in America; a 

 consecration which till now had not been made. All difficulty was 

 now removed. The Rev. James Madison, D. D., of Virginia, had 

 been consecrated at Lambeth, England, in December, 1790, so 

 that we now had in America one bishop (Seabury) deriving Epis- 

 copal orders through the Bishops of the Church in Scotland, and 

 three (White, Provoost and Madison) deriving them through the 

 Church of England. Dr. Bass was not as yet quite ready to be 

 consecrated ; but the church in Maryland, understanding now 

 that Dr. Smith did not mean to ask for consecration, elected 

 the Rev. Thomas John Claggett, D. D., of Maryland, for their 

 Diocesan.* 



A form and manner of ordaining or consecrating a bishop having 

 been agreed upon at the convention at Trinity Church, Monday, 

 the 17th of September, 1792, was fixed for the consecration of Dr. 

 Claggett; the consecration to take place in the edifice just named. 

 Never before had the consecration of a bishop been witnessed on this 

 continent; never before in any part of the world a consecration of 

 a bishop deriving his orders, as with the presence of the four 



* Dr. Claggett was born in Prince George's county, Maryland, in 1743, was gradu- 

 ated at Princeton in 1764, and in 1767 was ordained by Dr. Richard Terrick, Bishop 

 of London. In 1768 he was appointed by the Governor of Maryland to the Rector- 

 ship of All Saints, in Calvert county, in which parish he continued till the beginning 

 of the Revolution, when he retired to his residence in Prince George's, remaining 

 without charge. He remained in this place and without charge until 1779, when he 

 began to officiate in St. Paul's, in the county just named. In 1780 he was elected its 

 Rector. His name appears in all kinds of early conventions of the church. 



