people reseated at intervals of three or four years. Frequent disputes and even long-continued feuds were caused by this perplexing business of seating a congregation according to rank and dignity."
But before any of these ranklings had time to bud and blossom, the proprietors went forward and built a house, paying for it with the three annual instalments; and at the age of twenty-five the pastor married Miss Elizabeth Lee, of Salisbury, Conn., a descendent of William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth. The bride was brought home through the narrow wood-roads, mounted on a pillion behind her husband. It was an ideal union. She long outlived him, and in his will he paid her a beautiful tribute, and in the tenderest words bequeathed
her to "the affectionate care of his sons."
In studying the career and character of Mr. Allen, we are looking at one of the most heroic and influential figures that ever filled a pulpit in America; for "the fighting parson," as he came to be called after the Revolution, was a strong and independent thinker. He early gave his mind to the study of the problems and principles that led up to the Revolution, and having once perceived a truth, he had the courage of his convictions. Mr. J. B. A. Smith, certainly one of the ablest town historians living, says very justly, that popular tradition preserves that in a man's character which is odd, to the neglect of that which is intrinsic and sterling. Hundreds have heard of Allen valiantly taking up arms, who think nothing about the fact that his political action was an outcome of his religious conviction, and take no count of the steady piety of an unsullied life and of his beautiful care and tenderness as a husband and father. New England theology had attained a high pitch of hair-splitting theorizing; but Mr. Allen's practical mind held in small respect any religious faith which did not manifest itself in deeds. He regarded resistance to oppression and devotion to equal rights as the most sacred of duties, for only thus, he believed, could the cause of pure and unfettered religious worship itself be secured. In the six troubled years from the time when Mr. Allen had brought his fair bride to his home, to the breaking out of hostilities at Lexington, a searching of men's spirits had been going on, and strict dividing lines had been drawn. The young minister was among the first to declare himself as ready to resist royal iniquity. He did not hesitate to preach patriotic sermons from his primitive pulpit; and going over the border into New York, he advocated Whig doctrines at Canaan, Claverack, Kinderhook, and elsewhere, advising the most stringent measures against the "enemies of America." His zeal so far evoked the "spirit of '76" that a company of minutemen commanded by Capt. David Noble was holding weekly drills before the battle of Lexington. Capt. Noble sold two farms, with the proceeds of which he supplied his company with one hundred and thirty stand of arms, and he also furnished them with uniforms, — buckskin breeches, and coats of blue turned up with white. He went to Philadelphia to get his material, and there he hired a professional breeches-maker, who came home with him, and the garments were made up in his own house. The women were holding "spinning-matches" and "clothing bees," and the pastor, "the very embodiment of patriotic ardor, went from gathering to gathering, and from house to house, and everywhere left a new sense of the holiness which invested the impending strife for liberty."
In 1776 a corps of levies from the three regiments of Berkshire men went to
now the Episcopal Rectory.