16

New World Flock

Trinity Church

New York, New York

August 1785

In his mind, Alex imagined watching the carriage with his wife, houseguest, cook, and footman rattling down Wall Street until it disappeared in the throng of traffic, then returning to his empty house to wander the empty rooms, wondering how he was going to make it through the next six days alone.

In reality, he was already on his way to the office before the carriage had even turned north on Broadway. He didn’t even have time to miss his wife, although he did. Their recent argument was still on his mind, along with the thought that his firstborn was on the way—the beginning of the Hamilton dynasty! A child of his own, a future torchbearer to his legacy! The pressure it put upon him was tremendous. He had so much to do, so much to prove, to himself, to his wife, to his city, to his country.

He had to get started. There was no time for sentiment.

First, he had his weekly meeting with his partner in the firm, Richard Harrison, then spent the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon at Federal Hall filing a series of relatively trivial motions. Around three o’clock, he headed to Trinity Church for the day’s true work: a meeting with Reverend Provoost.

It was a meeting he’d been putting off for some time. It was not in Alex’s nature to admit defeat, especially when it came to a matter of the law. In Alex’s mind, the law was designed to facilitate solutions, not impede them—make people more free, not hem them in with unnecessary restrictions. But if there was a loophole or exception to the church’s charter, he’d been unable to find it after months of scrutiny.

Reverend Provoost kept him waiting nearly half an hour before seeing him. His waiting room turned out to be the chapel itself, which as an intimidation tactic Alex had to admit was pretty good. He sat in the straight-backed pew (not his, but one belonging to someone named David Sloane) and stared up at the sober wooden cross hanging at the front of the church. If he’d harbored any thoughts of trying to soft-sell the situation, let alone spin it, that cross banished all such ideas from his mind.

At last, a deacon came out and brought him into the office. As Alex entered, Reverend Provoost came out from behind his desk with a warm if tentative smile. He shook Alex’s hand and directed him to a chair, while he sat on the room’s leather sofa. “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Hamilton. It’s been so long that I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about our little case.”

Alex chuckled. “No such luck, Reverend. I think you know that my wife is expecting our first child. That has consumed much of our life these past months.”

Alex groaned mentally as he heard these words leave his mouth. Blame the wife? What kind of second-rate attorney was he?

“It is a wondrous blessing, and I hope that it is the first of many,” the reverend said with a serene, practiced face.

“Nevertheless,” Alex continued, “I have had time to review your holdings as well as the pertinent statute law.”

The reverend nodded eagerly. “And have you found us a way out of our predicament?”

Alex hung fire a moment. He felt like a general about to surrender his sword in defeat.

Finally, he decided that the easiest way to say it was just to say it.

“There are some things you can do,” he began. “The easiest—and I use that term relatively—would be to transfer the bulk of the church’s holdings to a separate corporate entity. Its trustees would be drawn from the parish officers, so it would be wholly controlled by Trinity. Its income would be separate from the church’s, but could be funneled back to the church as needed.”

Reverend Provoost frowned. “So we would simultaneously own the land and not own it at the same time? That seems . . . complicated.”

“It is a common arrangement among more profit-driven business enterprises.”

“So the church’s assets would be considered part of a—how did you put it?—‘profit-driven business enterprise’?” The reverend did not sound enthusiastic.

“Unfortunately, yes. You wouldn’t be subject to any restrictions on your income, but you would have to give Caesar his due, I’m afraid.”

The rector shifted uncomfortably. “You mean pay taxes.”

Alex nodded. “Alas, there’s no way around it. You would lose a not inconsiderable portion of your income, but the loss would be made up tenfold by the increased revenue—in a few years.”

The priest nodded, but his eyes had drifted away. His head bobbed back and forth like a cat’s grooming itself. At length he looked up. “You will forgive me, Mr. Hamilton, but your proposal has a whiff of Mammon about it.”

Alex couldn’t disagree. “I admit that it is less than ideal.”

“It makes the church look like a business,” the reverend continued in a firm, slightly scolding voice. “And a dodgy one at that.”

Alex tried not to wince. “You must remember that the church wouldn’t be paying taxes; the external corporation would.”

“An external corporation composed of the same people who run the church.” Reverend Provoost did everything but roll his eyes. “It is semantics. And if you will forgive my saying so, it sounds as if the church would be trying to pull a fast one. That is not exactly the message of probity we wish to send to our parishioners.”

Ouch, Alex thought, but the truth was, he knew the rector was correct in his assessment. It’s why he had delayed so long in presenting the plan.

“You said this was one option,” the reverend continued. “What are the others?”

“Just one other option. I confess that I am loath to even suggest it.”

“It sounds extreme. Though after your first plan, I’m not sure how much more extreme one can go.”

“It is,” Alex said. He took a deep breath. “You could dissolve the church.”

Reverend Provoost stiffened. His smile widened, but it was a reflexive action, as if a muscle had contracted in a spasm. “Dissolve?” he repeated. “Like . . .” He shook his head as he tried to think of something one dissolved. “. . . tapioca?” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Alex nodded understandingly. “Trinity Church’s charter, and indeed the charter of every Episcopal church in the New World, is ironclad. The Anglican church is, after all, an extension of the monarchy, and thus participated in the crown’s attitude toward its colonies.”

“I would like to disagree with you, but unfortunately I cannot. Many of us here at Trinity felt the Anglican church had lost a certain measure of ecclesiastical sovereignty over the years, which is why we supported the cause of independence.”

“Your support lent incalculable credence to the soldiers’ efforts,” Alex echoed quickly, happy to find common cause with the reverend. “Nevertheless, Governor Clinton saw fit to carry over the church’s original provisions rather than try to find some more tenable arrangement. This may have been an oversight on his part, or it might be that he didn’t want any challenges to his power in his own region.”

Reverend Provoost chuckled. “I will let that comment pass lest I incriminate myself.”

“However,” Alex continued, “there are as yet no laws governing the formation of new churches in our country, and thus no reason that they should have to be established on the same draconian terms crafted by the Church of England. You would have to change the church’s name, of course, but that shouldn’t be an impediment. You did it when you went from Anglicanism to Episcopalianism, just as the Anglicans did when they left the Catholic Church behind.”

Reverend Provoost stared at Alex. “Do I understand you? You are not asking me to change the name of the parish. You are asking me to change the name of the faith itself. From Episcopalianism to, what, the Church of New York?”

“If you want. Or the Church of the United States of America. Or perhaps something more independent. Whatever it is, it would give you the freedom to renegotiate your charter from the ground up.”

“A—new—church?” The reverend seemed dumbfounded. “A New World reformation, as it were? With who knows what new laws and customs to go along with the new name?”

“That is your area of expertise, not mine. I am only trying to make the church a stable financial entity so that it can fulfill its mission to succor the people of New York City.”

“But that’s just it, isn’t it? We would, at least to outsiders, be making changes to orthodoxy for the sake of gold. It—it doesn’t seem seemly.”

Alex did his best to remain calm. He knew the plan was outlandish, but having presented it, he felt he had to make the case. And why not be unseemly? It was a new country, after all. Americans had thrown off the British monarchy, which was seven hundred years old. The Church of England was three hundred fifty years old, and that had been tossed aside, too. Why not something as simple as a name?

“What is unseemly,” Alex said now, “is that the colonial government of this land saw fit to use the church in its efforts to control its colonies. You would only be correcting that.”

“By appearing to reject our faith and create a new one. Mr. Hamilton, the Reformation was several hundred years in the making and reflected the will of thousands of clergymen and untold millions of Christians. It was not cooked up, if you will pardon the expression, in a lawyer’s office.”

Alex took that one on the chin. “There was a reason why I led with the first option,” he said, attempting a self-deprecating grin.

“Turning the church into a business. What, shall we start selling sausage rolls in street carts, too? Or tickets to heaven, how about that?” the reverend asked.

Alex swallowed his grin. “If I have offended you, Father, I do beg your pardon.”

“It is not my pardon you need to seek, Mr. Hamilton.”

Alex kept his face impassive, but inwardly he rolled his eyes a little. It was Reverend Provoost who had come to him, after all. Reverend Provoost was the one who wanted the church to make more money, not Alex. “It seems clear that my plans are not appealing to you.”

“You are being droll,” the reverend said.

Alex shook his head. “Merely trying to make my exit with what’s left of my dignity.”

“I do not mean to chastise you, Mr. Hamilton. You are young and well-meaning, and obviously your service to your country is not in question. But you must realize that the church’s reputation is built entirely on appearances. If even a shadow of suspicion were to fall over our affairs, we would lose credibility with our flock. It is simply too great a risk.”

Alex couldn’t disagree. He really wanted to, but he couldn’t. “I understand, Reverend.”

“I am afraid you will have to try to come up with something else.”

Alex’s heart sank a little. On the one hand, he was grateful that he wasn’t being fired. On the other, he had already devoted dozens of hours to this case with no progress—and no pay—and he had bills of his own. And he knew even better than Reverend Provoost that the church would not compensate him unless he succeeded.

“Of course, Reverend,” he said, then continued: “This is perhaps not the best time to bring this up, but I wonder if I might speak to you about another matter.”

The reverend shrugged amicably. “You’re here, and you’re always a pleasant interlocutor. What’s on your mind?”

“My wife, Eliza. As you know, she has long been concerned about the plight of the city’s orphans.”

“A most warmhearted woman. She has housed many a young urchin in the rectory until finding a more suitable home for them.”

“You are most generous to accommodate her. Well, now she has it in mind to create a ‘more suitable home’ as you say, for all the city’s orphans. A more permanent one.”

“You mean an orphanage?”

“Exactly, Reverend. She has begun a subscription service among the city’s top families, and is even now embarked upon a trip north to see the Murrays, Beekmans, Van Cortlandts, and Morrises to secure their support as well. She already has a guarantee of more than six hundred pounds a year, and if I know her, she’ll return with the last four hundred she desires for the facility.”

The color drained from Reverend Provoost’s already pale face. “A thousand pounds a year! That is a fifth of our income!”

“Indeed, Reverend. When Mrs. Hamilton sets her mind to something, she doesn’t do it halfway.”

“I should say not. Perhaps I should have hired her to work out this charter business instead of you.”

Alex laughed good-naturedly and resisted pointing out that he hadn’t been hired as much as lassoed. “Which brings me to my request, Reverend. Eliza still needs a domicile in which to house the new facility. I might have mentioned that the church has a few empty buildings it isn’t using.”

The reverend nodded. “I think I see where this is going. Well, what building did you have in mind?”

“It is a warehouse on Vesey Street. As I understand it, it hasn’t been used since the city was liberated five years ago.”

A laugh from Reverend Provoost. “I suspect you know better than I do at this point. What were the terms you were thinking of?”

“Terms, Reverend?”

“For the lease of the building.”

Alex was a little taken aback. “Well, you see, Reverend, with the church’s finances being what they are, you are not exactly in a position to, well, to make any more money.”

“I know things are tight, Mr. Hamilton, but is it really so dire that we must give away our property?”

“According to my calculations, Reverend, if the property were developed in a manner commensurate with the buildings that surround it, it would generate income of about one or two hundred pounds a year. At this point, you could probably sell it for a thousand pounds, which is, as you know, a fifth of your income cap as defined in your charter. And you have dozens more properties like this one. Scores. Even using the most conservative valuations, the worth of your material assets alone, before any income is taken into consideration, exceeds the limit of your charter by two or three times—”

Alex broke off. A thought had just come to him. It was half formed as yet, but if he was correct . . . !

“Is something wrong, Mr. Hamilton?”

“Pardon?” Alex shook his head, then suddenly stood up. This idea would make his earlier scheme for a new church seem like a run-of-the-mill property claim. And yet not only would it be completely beyond reproach, it would save the church. “No, no, Reverend, nothing is wrong. Only I think I’ve just solved your problem.”

“What? Do tell?”

“It’s just a theory. I have to check a few things first. I don’t want to get your hopes up. But if my hunch is true, I can completely free you from any restriction whatsoever.”

“That is unbelievable,” the reverend said. “Can you give me a hint as to what your plan is?”

“I’m sorry, Reverend, I’m not even sure I can put it into words just yet. Suffice it to say, that you will be only too happy to part with one of your buildings for Mrs. Hamilton’s orphanage.”

He shook the flabbergasted rector’s hand quickly and dashed from the office.