Benjamin Church (physician)

Benjamin Church
Posthumous portrait of Benjamin Church[1]
Committee of Safety
In office October 7, 1774 – July 19, 1775
Constituency	Boston
Deputy to the Provincial Congress
In office October 7, 1774 – July 19, 1775
Constituency	Boston
Personal details
Born	August 24, 1734 Colony of Rhode Island
Died	1778 (aged 43–44)
Other political affiliations	Sons of Liberty
Spouse	Hannah Hill ​ (m. 1754)​
Alma mater	Harvard College
Occupation	Doctor
Military service
Allegiance	Massachusetts Bay United Colonies Kingdom of Great Britain
Branch/service	Continental Army Medical Service British Army Spy
Rank	Chief Physician & Director General

Benjamin Church (August 24, 1734 – 1778) was effectively the first

With growing friction between the colonies and Great Britain, Church supported the Whig cause vigorously with his pen. There is evidence that during this period he was variously considered as an ardent Patriot and as a secret Tory sympathizer. He examined the body of Crispus Attucks and treated some of the wounded in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In 1773, he delivered the annual Massacre Day oration, To Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March 1770, which marked him as an orator of high order.

In 1774, Church was elected a delegate to the

In May, Church went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to consult the Continental Congress about the defense of Massachusetts colony. On July 27, that body authorized the establishment of a Medical Department of the Army with a Director General and Chief Physician who would be head of both the Hospital Department of the first Army Hospital and of the first headquarters of regimental surgeons (located in the Henry Vassall House, Cambridge, MA). In the meantime, on July 2, General George Washington had arrived at Cambridge to take command of the colonial forces, and Church was one of the committee appointed to receive him.

Church had difficulty administering his department, and the regimental surgeons. A storm of complaints poured into Army headquarters, and Washington was compelled to order an investigation of the Medical Service. In his own defense, Church complained that rivals were jealous of his position and reportedly asked for permission to leave the Army. In the meantime, an incident arose which brought him before an Army

"Criminal correspondence" and court martial

In July 1775, Church had sent a cipher letter addressed to a Major Cane, a British officer in Boston, through a former mistress. The letter was intercepted by another of the woman's ex-lovers, and was sent to Washington in September. When two teams of gentlemen decoded it, they found it contained an account of the American forces before Boston, though no disclosures of great importance. It did, however, declare Church's devotion to the Crown, and it asked for directions for continuing the correspondence.

The matter was placed before a court of inquiry made up of general officers, Washington presiding, to whom Church admitted the authorship of the letter, but explained that it was written with the object of impressing the enemy with the strength and position of the colonial forces in order to prevent an attack while the Continental army was still short of ammunition and in hopes of aiding to bring about an end to hostilities. The court considered that Church had carried on a criminal correspondence with the enemy and recommended that the matter be referred to the Continental Congress for its action. The report of Washington to the President of Congress stated:

I have now a painful though necessary duty to perform, respecting Doctor Church, the Director of the Hospital. About a week ago, Mr. Secretary Ward, of Providence, sent up one Wainwood, an inhabitant of Newport, to me with a letter directed to Major Cane in Boston, in occult letters, which he said had been left with Wainwood some time ago by a woman who was kept by Doctor Church. She had before pressed Wainwood to take her to Captain Wallace, Mr. Dudley, the Collector, or George Rowe, which he declined. She gave him the letter with strict injunctions to deliver it to either of these gentleman. He, suspecting some improper correspondence, kept the letter and after some time opened it, but not being able to read it, laid it up, where it remained until he received an obscure letter from the woman, expressing an anxiety as to the original letter. He then communicated the whole matter to Mr. Ward, who sent him up with the papers to me. I immediately secured the woman, but for a long time she was proof against every threat and persuasion to discover the author. However she was at length brought to a confession and named Doctor Church. I then immediately secured him and all his papers. Upon the first examination he readily acknowledged the letter and said that it was designed for his brother, etc. The army and country are exceedingly irritated.

Church was briefly incarcerated in a room of the Henry Vassall House in Cambridge, where his carved name can be seen today.^[6]

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress arraigned Church on November 2. Despite an eloquent appeal in his own defense, he was unanimously expelled as a member of the House due to other "coded documents" of his being found in the trial proceedings that Congress regarded as proving his guilt.^[7] The Continental Congress on October 17, 1775, elected John Morgan "in the room of" Church, and on November 7 passed the following resolution:

That Doctor Church be close confined in some secure jail in the Colony of Connecticut, without use of pen, ink and paper, and that no person be allowed to converse with him except in the presence and hearing of a magistrate of the town or the sheriff of the county where he is confined, and in the English language, until further orders from this or a future Congress.

In accordance with this resolution, Church was confined at Norwich, Connecticut. Becoming ill, he was released from jail in January 1776, and was permitted considerable movement under guard. On May 13, he returned to Massachusetts under bond. He remained imprisoned until 1778, and was named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act of that year. Shortly thereafter he sailed from Boston, presumably for Martinique, but the vessel on which he took passage was never heard from again.^[8]

Assessment

When scholars were able to open General Gage's files early in the 20th century, they discovered earlier letters with significant intelligence about the American forces that could only have come from Church.^[9] The files included notes that had been entrusted to him to carry into and out of Boston. Until then, historians had had difficulty estimating the degree of Church's guilt. It is now clear that he was supplying the British military with information in early 1775.^{[citation needed]}

Church's widow and family were pensioned by the British government.^[10]

Popular culture

• In the video game Assassin's Creed III, Church is portrayed as a member of the antagonistic Templars, and secretly joins the service of George Washington in order to influence him and his army. However, after losing faith in the Templar cause, he betrays his Order by secretly spying for the British and, after being exposed and disgraced, attempts to flee to England aboard the fictional man o'war HMS Welcome with supplies stolen from Washington's army. He is intercepted by the Assassin Connor Kenway and his father, Templar Grand Master Haytham Kenway; the Welcome is boarded and a defiant Church is beaten severely by Haytham before Connor stabs him to death and retrieves the supplies from a nearby island.^[11][12]
• Church appears as a character in the novel Thieftaker by D. B. Jackson in which he examines the titular character.^[13]

See also

• Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War
• Intelligence operations in the American Revolutionary War
• List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea

References