Your Pastor has not asked for any consideration
being willing to try to Scrabble along with the people while they are in
low circumstances." His neighbor, Rev. Mr. Sprague, of Dublin, formally
petitioned his church not to increase his salary, "as I am plagued to death
to get what is owing to me now," or to buy anything with it when he got it.
The minister in Scarborough had to be paid L5,400 in paper money to make
good his salary of L60 in gold which had been voted him.
"Living low" and "scrabbling along" seems to have been the normal and
universal condition of the New England minister for some time after the War
of Independence. He was obliged to go without his pay, or to take it in
whatever shape it might chance to be tendered. Indeed, from the earliest
colonial days it was true that of whatever they had, the church-members
gave; meal, maize, beans, cider, lumber, merchantable pork, apples,
"English grains," pumpkins,--all were paid to the parson. Part of the
stipend of a minister on Cape Cod was two hundred fish yearly from each
parishioner, with which to fertilize his sandy corn-land. In Plymouth,
in 1662, the following method of increasing the minister's income was
suggested: "The Court Proposeth it as a thing that they judge would be very
commendable and beneficiall to the townes where God's providence shall cast
any whales, if they should agree to set aparte some p'te of every such fish
or oyle for the Incouragement of an able and godly minister among them.
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