student. During the two years which Mansfield spent as a graduate student, he read many of the books which Berkeley had donated to Yale College. This led to his conversion to the Episcopal Church, which was then in its infancy in Connecticut.
    For three years after the completion of his studies, Mansfield was employed outside the church. He took charge of Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. After this time, he resolved to become an Episcopal clergyman.
    In those days such a decision was nothing to be taken lightly. Not only was the Congregational Church still the established, state-supported religion, but the Episcopalians faced an extreme difficulty in ordination. As there was no American Bishop in those times, in order to be ordained, a man would have to sail to England - a hazardous and risky venture. Mansfield left for England in 1748, and "it illustrates the degree of Puritan bitterness which prevailed at that time . . . that even his own sister, upon hearing that he had sailed to England to receive ordination from her Bishops, prayed that he might be lost at sea," Beardsley notes in his History of the Church in Connecticut. Upon reaching London, he was ordained Deacon in Kensington Church in London on August 3, 1748 and advanced to the priesthood on August 7, 1748. Mansfield was given an assignment by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to serve as missionary to Derby and vicinity. This was not an easy assignment, due not only to the large area which his circuit covered, but also to the prevailing situation of the Episcopal Church in Puritan Connecticut.
    Connecticut was founded by Puritan influences, who established a state religion in the Congregational Churches. These Puritans had left the mother country, England, so that they might more freely observe their own religion, which differed from the established Church of England. However, upon coming to this country and finding themselves in the majority, they began to practice the same type of oppressive rule of religion by the state which had caused the Puritans to flee England.
    "Church and State were as closely united here, at that period, as ever they were in England. The ecclesiastical civil powers were blended together, and liberty of conscience