Jonathan Boucher: The Preacher Who Would Not Stop

Jonathan Boucher served as an Anglican minister in Virginia and Maryland from 1759 to 1775. He was an educator, a friend of George Washington whose stepson he tutored, and an increasingly outspoken critic of the revolutionary movement. As the political situation deteriorated he continued to preach, first cautiously and then directly against independence. He armed himself. He left Maryland in September 1775 and spent the next thirty years in England. His case against the Revolution, published in 1797, was dedicated to Washington. Washington replied in friendship. The primary sources are at the Internet Archive and Founders Online.

Boucher arrived in Virginia in 1759 as a tutor and became an ordained Anglican minister shortly after. He established himself in Maryland by the mid-1760s and built a reputation as an educator and preacher. He was personally acquainted with George Washington, who brought his stepson John Parke Custis to study with Boucher. The relationship was friendly and extended across several years of correspondence. When the political situation began to deteriorate, Boucher found himself in a position he had not sought: a Church of England minister who believed in legitimate authority, surrounded by people who were actively challenging it.

He continued preaching through the early 1770s, increasingly aware that his sermons were unwelcome. By 1775 the situation had become dangerous. He wrote later that he preached for the last several months of his time in Maryland with two loaded pistols on the cushion beside him, and that a mob of over two hundred people once gathered outside his church demanding that he not preach. He preached anyway. His autobiographical account of these events is in Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, confirmed at the Internet Archive.

Boucher gave his last sermon in Maryland in September 1775 and left for England within days. He was not expelled. He chose to leave when it became clear that continuing was impossible. His farewell letter to Washington, written August 6, 1775, is at Founders Online. It is a bitter document from a man who felt his friendship and his arguments had both been ignored.

In 1797, twenty-two years after he had left Maryland, Boucher published A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution, a collection of thirteen discourses presenting the Loyalist constitutional case against independence. The work was dedicated to George Washington. Boucher acknowledged Washington's leadership of the American cause and dedicated the book to him as an act of personal respect that survived their political disagreement.

Washington received the dedication and replied with a cordial acknowledgment. The letter is at Founders Online. A man who had preached with pistols on his pulpit against the revolution Washington led dedicated his collected case against it to Washington, and Washington responded in friendship. The correspondence between them is one of the stranger and more human documents in the founding era archive.

Boucher also wrote an autobiography covering his American years, published posthumously as Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, 1738-1789. It covers his arrival in Virginia, his relationships with colonial leaders including Washington, the deterioration of the political situation, and his eventual departure. It is a more personal document than the View and provides context for understanding the sermons as the product of a particular life and set of relationships. Both are confirmed at the Internet Archive.

His three decades in England produced extensive written work. He continued to argue the Loyalist constitutional position long after the war was over and independence was settled fact. He died in Epsom, England, in 1804, thirty years after leaving America.