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Politics & Government

Oxford's Tory Clergyman

Oxford town historian takes a look at the life of the Rev. Richard Mansfield.

The Episcopal churches of the Naugatuck Valley share a unique and historic clergyman. The Rev. Richard Mansfield served as minister to a circuit that extended from West Haven to Waterbury, nearly 60 miles.

Mansfield’s father, Jonathan, was a deacon in the New Haven Congregational Church.  The son studied to become a Congregational clergyman. He finished all the required studies for admission to Yale College (now Yale University) at age 11. College rules required him to wait until he was 14 before admission. He graduated in 1841 with first honors of his class. This earned him a prize that led to his conversion to Episcopalian.

Episcopal Bishop Berkeley provided an endowment for the "scholar of the house" prize for best grades in Greek. The prize paid for two years as a graduate student at Yale.  During Mansfield’s graduate studies, he read books the college received from Berkeley. This led to his conversion to the Episcopal Church, which was then in its infancy in Connecticut.

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For three years after the completion of his studies, Mansfield worked outside the church. He took charge of Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, and he resolved to become an Episcopal clergyman.

The Congregational Church was the state-supported, established, religion. Episcopalian ordination was difficult.

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There was no American Bishop. To be ordained, a man needed to sail to England.  Mansfield left for England in 1748.  Beardsley wrote in History of the Church in Connecticut:

“It illustrates the degree of Puritan bitterness which prevailed at that time ... that even his own sister, upon hearing he had sailed to England to receive ordination from her Bishops, prayed that he might be lost at sea."

Mansfield received ordination in London. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts assigned Mansfield as missionary to Derby, Connecticut, and the vicinity.

The Puritans who founded Connecticut came to America to observe their own religion, instead of the established (Episcopal) Church of England. Coming to this country and being the majority, they began to practice the same type of oppressive rule of religion that had caused the Puritans to flee England.

Beardsley wrote, "Church and State were as closely united here, at that period, as ever they were in England. The ecclesiastical and civil powers were blended together, and liberty of the conscience and the theory of human rights existed more in name than in reality. The people were compelled to support the Congregational order, which was the order of faith established by the civil government. Nor was that all. None had liberty to worship publicly in any way, nor could men vote or hold civil office, except in the original Colony of Connecticut, unless they were members of some Congregational Church."

In 1708, the General Assembly approved the "Act of Toleration." Those who disagreed with the Congregational Church were free from punishment for non-conformity. They were, however, not exempt from taxes to pay for the support of the Congregational Churches and their clergy.

One of the less well known of Mansfield's accomplishments was the introduction of the black walnut tree. He brought the tree into the Derby area when he returned from his 1748 trip to England for his ordination.

During the Revolutionary period, Episcopalians faced many challenges. Those who supported the American Revolution considered the Episcopal clergy highly suspect.  The clergy’s ordination ceremony included an oath of allegiance to the King. Fear of arrest and imprisonment caused Mansfield to leave his wife and family behind when he fled for a short time to New York State. 

Norman Litchfield and Sabrina Hoyt, in their History of the Town of Oxford, said, "From 1775 to 1778, the old Record book of St. Peter's Church in Oxford contains no word of either parish or vestry meetings, and it may be that during that period, the church was closed."

At the close of the war, only 10 Episcopal clergy remained in Connecticut. The others fled to British Canada. Mansfield was one of 10 who remained and met in secret in Woodbury to elect the Rev. Samuel Seabury to become Bishop. For this purpose, Seabury was persuaded to travel to England and seek proper consecration. Through the efforts of Mansfield and the other clergy who remained in Connecticut, the tide of migration was stemmed. Mansfield came to be recognized as one of the leaders of the Connecticut Episcopal clergy.

"Dr. Mansfield was obliged to cease preaching some twenty years before his death on account of the failure of his voice, and from that time he could only make the attempt occasionally, when extreme necessity required it. His general health, however, remained unimpaired and his efforts to be useful among his people out of the pulpit was unintermitted ‘till a very late period of his life,” notes H. Mansfield in the Mansfield Genealogy.

Mansfield died at his home on April 12, 1820, at the age of 96, having seen the church change from a struggling minority, persecuted and despised, to an accepted church in area communities.  Oxford’s two Episcopal churches are:

  • , founded in 1764.
  • was founded in 1812, and will celebrate its 200th anniversary next year.

Today, the Derby Historical Society preserves Mansfield’s home, where they conduct special historical programs for area schools, as well as provide opportunities for the public to view the interesting and historic house.

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