A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland

scribed as "a laborious and judicious Performance."¹ It is probable that at
this time he was in the civil service of Great Britain, and that he remained
in that service until the year 1744, when on September 23d he was ordained
deacon by the Rt. Rev. Thomas Wilson, Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man,
who a few months later, on March 10, 1744/45, ordained him to the priest-
hood for the specific purpose of service in the Plantations.² He arrived in
Maryland between July and November 1745, settled at Oxford in Talbot
County, and within a few months had become rector of St. Peter's Parish
of that county. During the thirteen years of his rectorship he exercised his
pastoral functions with notable success; he established a Charity Working
School for poor children of all races, and preached ceaselessly to his parish-
ioners their duty in the spiritual care of their negro slaves. Throughout his
life in Maryland he was notable for his charitable enterprises; his kindness
to the Acadians, when a shipload of these distressed neutrals was landed
at Oxford, was of such a nature as to have been remembered until the pres-
ent day. An accomplished musician, a hearty, sociable being of excellent
parts, he was, as one of his parishioners wrote, "a very considerable man here
& in great Esteem with every great Man from the Governor to the Parish
Clerk;" and the same admirer wrote a few months later, "I think him the
worthiest clergyman I ever knew, not Excepting the Bishop."³ His good
deeds, his learning and his personal charm have caused Thomas Bacon to
be remembered when men of greater piety and of more rigidly correct life
have been forgotten.⁴

Evidently there was in his composition a strain of impetuosity which did
him great disservice. On two occasions he was fined large sums of tobacco
for his disregard of the law respecting the publication of the banns of mat-
rimony. The first of these was when he united in marriage Miss Elizabeth
Bozman to a reprobate brother clergyman, and the second was the occa-
sion of his own marriage to this lady in the year 1757. Even before this, in
the year I755,he had been indicted and compelled to stand trial on a charge

pose the Revenue of Ireland, etc. IV. The Method of Making Entries, etc. (An appendix containing forms of
informations ... on the act of excise.) 5 pts. Dublin, 1737-36. 80. (In British Museum. Press Mark 517. e. 6).

¹ Bacon's obituary in Maryland Gazette for June 9, 1768. Given in full later in this chapter.

² See Appendix B of Bishop Wilson's Sacra Privata, ed. Oxford and London, 1853.

³ Callister Letters. Ms. in Maryland Diocesan Library. In the second quotation, Callister, a Manxman, refers
to Bishop Wilson, almost a divinity among his islanders. For a Manxman to compare any man favorably with
Bishop Wilson was praise indeed.

⁴ Even the rapacious parson, Bennett Allen, who having been promised the succession to Bacon's parish of
All Saints, Frederick County, could not conceal the impatience with which he awaited his colleague's death,
wrote to him in 1768: "I have always loved your character for that Milkness of Blood, (as Dryden expresses it)
and Goodness of Heart, for which you are remarkable; and respected you as a Man of Letters, a Friend of the
Lord Proprietary; and a Benefactor to the Public:..." (Maryland Gazette, September 29, 1768).

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