After the passage of this bill the Governor declared that there was no ministry but of the Church of England ; and through his power, with the aid of the '' Society for Propagating

the Gospel in Foreign Parts," a minister of the Church of England was inducted into the church at Rye in the year 1704, but Episcopal services were not introduced into White Plains until 1724, when the Rev. Mr, Jenny preached there three or four times a year ; and such services were held down to the time of the Revolution, which utterly ruined the mission.

During the war the clergy were placed in an embarrassing position. Not to pray for the King, according to the litany, was to act against the dictates of their consciences, while to have used the prayers would have been to draw upon themselves persecution and destruction. The only course left them was to suspend the exercise of their functions and shut up their churches. After the war the church became an independent branch of the Church of Christ, and having organized an ecclesiastical union, free from alliances with human sovereigns, demonstrated its congeniality with our free institutions.

In 1787 White Plains and Rye united in erecting a church edifice at the latter place, of which the Rev. Richard C. Moore was chosen rector, September 5, 1787. Pursuant to the requirements of the laws of the State of New York relating to the incorporation of religious societies, a meeting of the congregation of Rye Church was held and a certificate of incorporation made, dated the 21st day of February, 1795, in which " the rector and two of the congregation of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the towns of Rye and White Plains, in the County of Westchester, certify that Peter Jay and John Barker were elected church wardens, and Joshua Purdy, Jr.," and seven others were elected vestrymen ; and that " the style and title shall be ' Christ's Church in the town of Rye, in the County of Westchester and State of New York.' "