of the Independent ministers
in New England. Their dissent was aggressive, persecuting, puritanical.
Meeting-houses were cold, sermons long and dry, music vocal only.
Religious teaching and the laws it procured, foolishly assumed to
regulate all the acts of life. Extravagance was denounced and fined. In
1750, the Massachusetts Assembly forbade theatres as "likely to
encourage immorality and impiety." Rhode Island took similar action in
1762.

[Illustration: Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.]

The ministers of Boston viewed bishops almost as emissaries of the
devil. Herein in fact lay the primary, some have thought the deepest and
most potent cause of the Revolution, since kings and the bishops of
London incessantly sought to establish Anglicanism in Massachusetts, and
English politicians deemed it outrageous that conformists should be
denied any of that colony's privileges. For some time, under William and
Mary's charter, in this province where Congregationalism had till now
had everything its own way, only Church clergymen could celebrate
marriage. In New York and Maryland, too, hostility to the establishment
greatly stimulated disloyalty. This was true even in Anglican Virginia,
where the Church found it no easier to keep power than it was in
Massachusetts to get power, and where the clergy were unpopular,
concerned more for tithes than for souls.

[Illustration: Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.]

Colleges were founded early in several colonies. Harvard dates from
1638; William and Mary, in Virginia, from 1693; Yale, from 1701; the
College of New Jersey, from 1746, its old Nassau Hall, built in 1756 and
named in honor of William III. of the House of Nassau, being then the
largest structure in British America. The University of Pennsylvania
dates from 1753; King's College, now Columbia, from 1754; Rhode Island
College, now Brown University, from 1764. Educational facilities in
general varied greatly with sections, being miserable in the southern
colonies, fair in the central, excellent in the northern. In Virginia,
during the period now under our survey, schools were almost unknown. In
Maryland, from 1728, a free school was established by law in each
county. These were the only such schools in the South before 1770.
Philadelphia and New York had good schools by 1700; rural Pennsylvania
none of any sort till 1750, then only the poorest. A few New York and
New Jersey towns of N