Seabury, SAMUEL, the first Bishop of Connecticut, was born in that state, at Groton, 30th November 1729, graduated at Yale in 1748, studied medicine for a year at Edinburgh, and received deacon's and priest's orders in England in 1753. For some time he was a missionary of the S. P. G.; in 1757 he was promoted to the 'living' of Jamaica, Long Island, and ten years later to that of Westchester, New York. The Whigs, however, prevented his ministering, and once imprisoned him for six weeks at New Haven. He then removed to New York, where he made his medical knowledge contribute to his support, acted as chaplain of the King's American Regiment, and wrote a series of pamphlets which earned for him the special hostility of the patriots. In 1777 Oxford made him D.D. On 25th March 1783 the clergy of Connecticut met at Woodbury and elected Seabury bishop; and for sixteen months he waited vainly in London for consecration, the archbishops, though personally favourable, being timid and indisposed to move without the sanction of the civil authority. On 14th November 1784 he was consecrated in the upper room of a house at Aberdeen by Bishops Robert Kilgour, Arthur Petrie, and John Skinner, of the Scottish Episcopal Church, whose connection with the state had been severed nearly a century before. Bishop Seabury's jurisdiction embraced (by consent) Rhode Island as well as Connecticut, and he acted also as rector of St James's Church, New London. In 1792 he joined with three bishops of the English succession in consecrating a fifth, Bishop Claggett, through whom every American bishop derives from Seabury and the Scottish Church. Seabury's further services included the securing to the episcopate of its proper share in the government of the church, and the restoration of the oblation and invocation to the Communion Office (from the Scottish Office). He died 25th February 1796. See his Life and Correspondence, by Dr E. E. Beardsley (Boston, 1881; Lond.
'Eminent English Churchmen' series, vol. iii. 1884). The Seabury Centenary was celebrated in Aberdeen (October 7) and at St Paul's Cathedral (November 14) in 1884.