" As they got the
"keepe of a hors," and their own board for Saturday and Sunday, and on
Monday morning a cash payment for preaching (though often the amount was
only twelve shillings), they were richer than with a small yearly salary
that was irregularly and inconveniently paid. Often too they entered by
preference into a yearly contract with a church, without any wish for
regular settlement or ordination.
A large portion of the stipends in early parishes being paid in corn and
labor, the amounts were established by fixed rate upon the inhabitants;
and the amount of land owned and cultivated by each church-member was
considered in reckoning his assessment. These amounts were called voluntary
contributions. If, however, any citizen refused to "contribute," he
was taxed; and if he refused to pay his church-tax he could be fined,
imprisoned, or pilloried. For one hundred years the ministers' salaries
in Boston were paid by these so-called "voluntary contributions." In one
church it was voted that "the Deacons have liberty for a quarter of a yeare
to git in every mans sume either in a Church way or in a Christian way."
I would the process employed in the "Church way" were recorded, since it
differed so from the Christian way.
It is one of the Puritan paradoxes that abounded in New England, that the
community of New Haven, a "State whose Desire was Religion," and religion
alone, was particularly backward in paying the minister who had spiritual
charge there.
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