Conventions of the Clergy

Abstract

Conventions of the colonial ministers supplemented the leadership and oversight role of the King’s church provided by royal governors and commissaries. These sessions were a uniquely American innovation, beginning in the 1690s and meeting with increasing frequency as the eighteenth century passed. Yet the three means for providing supervision over the church — two driven by guidance from London and one from within the ranks of the men in the colonies — held in common the need to apply some form of ecclesiastical leadership over the King’s church. Wherever these three intersecting procedures for superintending church affairs were present they worked together. Occasionally where one party was stronger than the others it became the dominant authority.