O Lord, look down from heaven, behold, visit, and relieve this they servant. Look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy; give him comfort, and sure confidence in thee; support him under all trials of his present sickness, relieve his pains, if it seem good unto thee, and keep him in perpetual peace and safety. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Book of Common Prayer 1785, for King’s Chapel
King’s Chapel was founded by Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros in 1686 as the first Anglican Church in New England during the reign of King James II. The original King’s Chapel was a wooden church built in 1688 at the corner of Tremont and School Streets, where the church stands today. It was situated on the public burying ground because no resident would sell land for a non-Puritan church.
In 1749, construction began on the current stone structure, which was designed by Peter Harrison and completed in 1754. The stone church was built around the wooden church. When the stone church was complete, the wooden church was disassembled and removed through the windows of the new church. The wood was then shipped to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia where it was used to construct St. John’s Anglican Church. That church was destroyed by fire on Halloween night, 2001. It has since been rebuilt.
During the American Revolution, the chapel sat vacant and was referred to as the “Stone Chapel.” The loyalist families left for Canada, and those who remained reopened the church in 1782. It became Unitarianunder the ministry of James Freeman, who revised the Book of Common Prayer along Unitarian lines in 1785. Although Freeman still considered King’s Chapel to be Episcopalian, the Anglican Church refused to ordain him. The church still follows its own Anglican/Unitarian hybrid liturgy today. It is a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
