King's Chapel is the fifth in the order of Boston churches. The architect was Peter Harrison, of Newport, R. I., and the plan embraced a steeple, which Mr. Harrison thought essential to his general design, and would have a "beautiful effect." For want

Governor

of funds, however, the steeple was never built. Shirley laid the corner-stone on the 11th of August, 1749, and after giving the workmen £ 20 (old tenor) to drink his health, went into the old church, which was still standing, where a service appropriate to the occasion was held by Rev. Mr. Caner, the rector.

Mr. Harrison had been requested to present drawings with both a double and single tier of windows. Two rows were adopted, the lower ones giving that prince of punsters, Mather Byles, an opportunity of saying that he had heard of the canons of the church, but had never seen the port-holes before. The stone for the chapel came from Braintree, and was taken

from the surface of the ground, no quarries being then opened. The rough appearance of the stone is due to the limited knowledge of the art of dressing it which then prevailed.

Greenwood's little work on King's Chapel gives the following facts. It was first erected of wood in the year 1688, enlarged in 1710, and, being found in the year 1741 in a state of considerable decay, it was proposed to rebuild it of stone. · A subscription for this purpose was set on foot, and Peter Faneuil (of Faneuil Hall memory) was chosen treasurer of the buildingfund. The building was to be of stone, and was to cost £25,000 (old tenor). It was not to be commenced until £10,000 were subscribed.

Among the first subscribers were Governor William Shirley, Sir Charles Henry Frankland, and Peter Faneuil. The Governor gave £ 100; Sir H. Frankland, £ 50; Faneuil, £ 200 sterling. Faneuil died in 1742, and the matter was for some time laid aside, but was revived by Mr. Caner in 1747. A new subscription was drawn up. Governor Shirley increased his gift to £200, and Sir H. Frankland to £150 sterling. For the subscription of Peter Faneuil the society was obliged to sue his brother Benjamin, who was also his executor, and recovered it after a vexatious suit at law.

The new chapel was built so as to enclose the old church, in which services continued to be held, in spite of its ruinous condition, until March, 1753, when the society was obliged to remove to Trinity. The congregation having applied for the use of the Old South on Christmas day, a verbal answer was returned granting the request on condition "that the house should not be decorated with spruce," etc.

Efforts to obtain money to complete the chapel were made in every direction. Among others, Captain Thomas Coram, founder of the Foundling Hospital in London, who had resided in this country, was applied to by a gentleman then in London; but no sooner had he mentioned the object of his visit than he was obliged to listen to a burst of passionate reproaches for some alleged slight the vestry of King's Chapel had formerly put upon him. The old gentleman finally told his visitor, with

an oath, "that if the twelve Apostles were to apply to him in behalf of the church, he would persist in refusing to do it."

The portico was not completed until 1789. In that year General Washington was in Boston, and attended an oratorio in the chapel, which had for its object the completion of the portico. The general was

dressed in a black velvet suit, and gave five guineas towards

this purpose.

The old building, which gave place to the present one, had an apology for a tower, on the top of which was a crown, and above this a cock for a vane. A gallery was added after the enlargement in 1710, and the pulpit was on the north side. Opposite

OLD KING'S CHAPEL.

was a pew for the governors, and near it another for officers of the British army and navy. In the west gallery was the first organ ever used in Boston, given to the society by Thomas Brattle. A bell was purchased in 1689, and a clock was donated in 1714 by the gentlemen of the British Society. The walls and pillars were hung with the escutcheons of the King, Sir Edmund Andros, Governors Dudley, Shute, Burnet, Belcher, and Shirley, and formed a most striking contrast with the bare walls of the Puritan churches of the town. In the pulpit, according to the custom of the times, was an hour-glass to mark the length of the sermons, while the east end was adorned with an altar-piece, the Ten Commandments, Lord's Prayer, etc. The emblems of heraldry have disappeared. It was the usage of the church to place the royal governors at the head of the vestry.

As you enter the chapel, at your left hand is the monument of William Vassall, erected by Florentine Vassall, of Jamaica, in 1766. To the right is a beautiful monumental tablet dedicated to the memory of the young men of the chapel who fell in the

late civil war.

On the School Street side are mural tablets to William Sullivan, John Lowell, Thomas Newton, one of the original founders, and Frances Shirley, wife of Governor William Shirley. Within the chancel are busts of Greenwood and Freeman, rectors; while the burial-ground side contains tablets to Charles Apthorp and Samuel Appleton. Over the vestry are the names of Charles Pelham and William Price, patrons of the church. These are about the only monumental marbles to be seen in our city churches, though others have mural tablets. The Vassal monument is a beautiful specimen of the art in the last century, and was executed by Tyler, a London sculptor. These add interest to the church, and reflect in a modest way the glories of old St. Paul's and of Westminster Abbey.

The first bell was cracked, while tolling for evening service, May 8, 1814. The wits seized upon the accident with avidity, and commemorated it in the following effusion (Paul Revere recast the bell, and some churchman answered the innuendo) :

"The Chapel church,
Left in the lurch,

Must surely fall;

For church and people

And bell and steeple

Are crazy all.

"The church still lives,

The priest survives,
With mind the same.
Revere refounds,

The bell resounds,

And all is well again."

:

The present organ of King's Chapel was procured from England in 1756, and paid for by private subscription. It cost £500 sterling, and was said to have been selected by the immortal Handel himself, though the great maestro was then blind. Over this organ a crown and a couple of gilt mitres were said to have been placed in times gone by.

In the year 1775, when Boston was in a state of siege, the British military and naval officers worshipped in King's Chapel, as they had in fact done during the previous years the town was in occupation of the British soldiers. The burial of three soldiers of the Sixty-fifth Regiment are the last-recorded interments in the Chapel cemetery previous to the evacuation of the town in March. The rector, Dr. Caner, went to Halifax with the king's troops, taking with him the church registers, plate, and vestments. The service, which had in part been presented

by the King, amounted to two thousand eight hundred ounces of silver. It was never recovered.

When the society of King's Chapel were ready to rebuild, in 1748, they desired an enlargement of the ground for their site a few feet northwardly, also a piece of ground at the east side, on part of which then stood the Latin School. After a good deal of negotiation between the town and the church committee, the church erected a new school-house on the opposite side of the street on land belonging to Colonel Saltonstall, where the Latin School remained up to a comparatively recent time. The removal of the old school-house was viewed with no favorable eye by the townspeople, and Joseph Green, a Harvard graduate of 1726, and a noted wit, expressed the popular feeling thus:

"A fig for your learning! I tell you the town,

To make the church larger, must pull the school down.
'Unhappily spoken!' exclaims Master Birch;

'Then learning, it seems, stops the growth of the church."

After the departure of the royal troops, the popular furor against everything savoring of their late allegiance to the throne found expression in the removal of the royal emblems from public buildings, changing the names of streets and everything that bore any allusion to the obnoxious idea of kingly authority. King's Chapel was therefore newly baptized Stone Chapel, a name that has in turn been discarded for the old, high-sounding title of yore. In the reign of Queen Anne the church was called "Queens Chappell."

The establishment of the Church of England in Boston was attended with great opposition. The Puritans, who had fled from the persecutions of that church in the old country, had no idea of admitting it among them in the new. In 1646 a petition praying for the privilege of Episcopal worship, addressed to the General Court at Boston, caused the petitioners to be fined for seditious expressions, and the seizure of their papers. Charles II., after his accession, wrote to the colony requiring, among other things, that the laws should be "reviewed" so as to permit the Episcopal form of worship, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, etc. The chief people and elders of the