King’s Chapel

In June of 1684, England officially revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter, the 1626 document by which the government operated. This reaction to the colony’s growing independence from the mother country left a kind of legal limbo, one of the many factors that would contribute to the witch hysteria eight years later.

In December of 1686, Sir Edmund Andros became Royal Governor of the Dominion of New England, a territory that included Massachusetts Bay Colony (which at the time included part of Maine), Plymouth Colony, Province of New Hampshire, Rhode Island Colony, Connecticut Colony, Province of New York, and East and West Jersey. (Joseph Dudley preceded Andros as President of the New England Council, from the spring of 1686 until Andros’s arrival.) The Dominion and Andros only lasted until 1689, when the Glorious Revolution in England replaced King James II with King William and Queen Mary. When word of this change reached Massachusetts, the people rose up, arrested Andros, and sent him back to England.

Massachusetts was founded by Puritans fleeing the Church of England and the leaders of the colony had never allowed the Anglican Church to gain a foothold in Massachusetts, until Andros’s arrival. He asked all the Puritan churches in Boston for space to hold Anglican worship. When none were offered, he demanded the keys to the Third Church from Reverend Samuel Willard, and services were held there until King’s Chapel was built in 1688. Andros had seized a back corner of the burying ground for the purpose – the cemetery adjacent to King’s Chapel is today known as King’s Chapel Burying Ground, although it has no affiliation with any church.

Inside the church, above pew #33, a plaque memorializes Thomas Newton, who was the first attorney general to the Court of Oyer and Terminer, from June 2 through July 26, 1692. He was replaced by Anthony Checkley, who remained the prosecutor for the remainder of the trials.

The first King’s Chapel was small and wooden, built on the corner of School and Tremont Streets. The new, larger stone chapel that stands today was completed in 1754 to accommodate the growing congregation. Two other Anglican churches were founded in Boston in the 1700s – Old North Church in 1723 and Trinity Church in 1733. During the American Revolution, Anglicans came under attack and many fled Massachusetts. The remaining King’s Chapel worshipers joined Trinity, and the stone chapel was used by Old South. After the revolution, in 1787, King’s Chapel became an independent Christian Unitarian Church, the first in the United States. It remains a Unitarian Universalist church today. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

58 Tremont Street