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consecrated by the non-juring Bishop Taylor, and they together consecrated Mr. Talbot. The story is wrapt in secrecy and tradition. Political disqualifications pre- vented the public exercise of their office, and few records remain of any private acts. The known result was the recall of Doctor Welton and the dismissal of Mr. Talbot from his office.

So when, in 1729, Dean Berkeley visited Rhode Island there was no bishop serving in the American Church. North and east of Maryland were but eighty parochial clergymen, all but those in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Newport missionaries of the society, and in 1761 about two hundred and eighty thousand Church people in the thirteen colonies. The bitter cry went up, "The Churches of France and Spain provide Bishops for their people, even one in Canada. Moravians have theirs. . .There never was so large a tract of the earth overspread with Christians without so much as one Bishop, nor ever a country where Bishops were more wanted."

And so the years passed on. Mr. Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, was in the van of those who sent unceasing appeals for the head so sorely needed. He was grateful to the Bishop of London for his suggestion that a suffragan might be sent, though it came to nothing, as did another proposition that the bishop of some small diocese in England might be released for temporary service. In vain he pleaded the state of a Church destitute of conference and general government, of the candidates for Holy Orders who must travel one thousand leagues to obtain them. As late as 1761 only about one in five of these men who went to England for this purpose returned to America.