. . . And All I Got Was This Lousy Defrocking

For the past week, I've been trying to dig up the information to do a post, as promised, on traveling to and from Chestertown back in the day. Unfortunately, I don't have all the necessary materials with me and it will have to wait -- just like my post on Board member Samuel Chew's 'Ye Olde THUG LIFE.'

So in the meantime, let's play early America's favorite pastime, 'Shame That Bastard!' Starring: Washington College President, the Reverend Timothy Clowes.
Clowes was president of Washington College from 1823 to 1829, and rector of Emmanuel Church from 1827 to 1829. Either Chestertown wasn't the right fit for him or he was extremely unlucky. After he took control of the college, the state legislature handed down new regulations mandating new paperwork for increasingly elusive funds. The college puttered along, falling behind its contemporaries to the north, and then . . . well . . . Remember that crazy-expensive edifice that Smith sold his right arm to build? Yeah, that burned to the ground in, like, ten minutes. Lost in the flames was Clowes' library, with books valued at approximately $1,000.

So Clowes next used all of his good fortune to raise money for a new college building. Take a guess at how that one worked out.

Good grief.

As if things couldn't get any worse for Clowes, in 1829, he gets charged with "immoral and scandalous conduct." I here on out defer to a 26 year old lecture from former Emmanuel rector, Greg Straub:

The charge was that while Mr. Clowes was rector, he had been seen fornicating with a Miss Cordelia Clarkson who was, as a consequence, great with child. Although Mr. Clowes had moved on to New York State before his indictment, an ecclesiatical trial was staged in 1829 in Chestertown under the chairmanship of the Rt. Rev. William White, D.D. Many of you will recognize Bishop White as first presiding Bishop of the Continental Congress. In 1829, fifty-five years after the Continental Congress, Bishop White was still interested in the affairs of the Church (no pun intended).

Mr. Clowes refused to attend the trial, and Bishop Onderdonck of New York refused to extradite him, because, as he wrote Bishop White, "he was at college with me."

The entire transcript of the trial is available and it makes fascinating reading. The two witnesses called against Mr. Clowes were parishioners. One had seen Mr. Clowes and Miss Clarkson holding hands after church one Sunday. Another parishioner had seen them at night, as he put it, "fornicating in the grass." He reported he had been painting his porch at the time and they had beeen only a hundred yards or so away. Asked if it was dark out, the witness said it had been. Asked why he had been painting his porch in the dark, the witness made no answer. [JRB: Just like every other damn episode of Law and Order]

This sketchy evidence was enough to produce a conviction, especially after it had been learned that Mr. Clowes had given 200 shares of Chester River Bridge stock for the support of Miss Clarkson's soon-to-be-born child, whether out of compassionate generosity or of guilty paternity will never be known. Both Miss Clarkson and Mr. Clowes denied the charges.

Perry Mason would have had a field day with the defense. But the prosecution won out with the argument that Mr. Clowes woul dhave been at the trial had he been innocent. His written response to his conviction was a well-reasoned defense which postponed his defrocking another fourteen years.

The details surrounding Clowes' departure from Washington College aren't as clear. According to Fred Dumschott's history of the college, Clowes "submitted a proposal to the board for its consideration" on April 18th, 1829. What the proposal was is not clear, as the board merely recorded it was made and that they turned it down on June 9th. By August, the search for a new president was in full-swing.

Clowes would spend the rest of his days free from flammable schools and fertile parishioners.

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