ed on Sunday with a devotion directed not less to fashion
than to religion. We must not forget that America was really not
America then, but Colonial England. A graceful militarism was the
order of the day, and in the fashionable congregations were redcoats
in plenty. The Church of England, as represented and upheld by Trinity
Parish, was the church where everyone went. If one were stubborn in
dissenting--which meant, briefly, if one were Dutch--one attended such
of those sturdy outposts of Presbyterianism as one could find outside
the social pale. But one was looked down upon accordingly.

It is not hard to make for oneself a colourful picture of a typical
Sunday congregation in these dead and gone days. Trinity was the
Spiritual Headquarters, one understands; St. Paul's came later, and
was immensely fashionable. Though it was rather far out from Greenwich
the Greenwich denizens patronised it at the expense of time and
trouble. A writer, whose name I cannot fix at the moment, has
described the Sabbath attendance:--ladies in powder and patches
alighting from their chaises; servants, black of skin and radiant of
garment; officers in scarlet and white uniforms (Colonel "Ol" de
Lancey lost his patrimony a bit later because he clung to his!)--a
soft, fluttering, mincing crowd--most representative of the Colonies,
and loathed by the stiff-necked Dutch.

Trinity got its foothold in 1697, and the rest of the English
churches had holdings under the Trinity shadow. St. Paul's (where Sir.
Peter Warren paid handsomely for a pew, and which is today perhaps the
oldest ecclesiastic edifice in the city, and certainly the oldest of
the Trinity structures) was built in 1764, on the street called Vesey
because of the Rev. Mr. Vesey, its spiritual director. The "God's
Acre" around it held many a noted man and woman. Yet, as it is so far
from the ground in which we are now concerning ourselves, it seems a
bit out of place perhaps. But one must perforce show the English
church's beginnings, soon to find a more solid basis in St. John's
Chapel, dear to all New Yorkers even nowadays when we behold it
menaced by that unholy juggernaut, the subway.

St. John's was begun in 1803 and completed in 1807. It was Part of the
old King's Farm, originally granted to Trinity by Queen Anne, who
appears to have done quite a lot for New York, take it all in all. It
was modelled after St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, in London, and always
stood for English tra