The Churches 261 



parsonage in fear and trembling, as he was closely watched by 

 the authorities. Upon the Declaration of Independence, he 

 shut up his church. Upon September i, 1776, after lying 

 hidden for some time in the AVilkins house with Dr. Chandler 

 of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Dr. Myles Cooper, President 

 of King's College, he, with his companions, took advantage of 

 the neck being unguarded and escaped at night to Long Island. 

 "Upon finding they had missed him, the rebels vented their 

 rage on his church and his property, converting the former 

 into an hospital, tearing off the covering and burning the pews; 

 and damaging the latter to the value of three hundred pounds 

 currency." 



In his letter of November 12, 1777, he writes: "That 

 about a month before, I had visited "Westchester, and thought 

 of staying the winter there, but was obliged to drop such 

 intentions on General Burgoyne's defeat; as the Rebels upon 

 that event came to that town by night and carried off forty- 

 two of the inhabitants." He removed from Long Island to 

 Staten Island; but finding it "impracticable to return to 

 Westchester, or reside on Staten Island," he took up his 

 residence in New York in 1778, and lived there until the end 

 of the war, acting as chaplain of Colonel Fanning's King's 

 American Regiment of Loyalists. 



In 1784, he went to England for consecration as bishop; 

 but the English bishops discovered that they could not legally 

 consecrate any one for a foreign country who would not take 

 the oath of allegiance to the King, which Dr. Seabury, being 

 now an American citizen, would not do. The laws of Scotland 

 did not contain any such provision, so Dr. Seabury went there 

 and was consecrated bishop at Aberdeen. In the summer of 

 1785, he returned to America as Bishop of Connecticut and 

 Rhode Island, and took up his abode in New London, where he 



