Michael Malone - Weebly

founder, had fled England to escape religious
persecution at the hands of Thomas Laud, Archbishop
of Canterbury. Elijah was no Puritan, and as if to make
of his only son a testament saying so, he named him
Thomas Laud Dingley. And so began that generational
battle waged down three centuries of Dingley firstborn
males, a battle in which rebellion against the father
continued a familial (and national) tradition of
theological revolt. For if the father were High Church,
the son was sure to be Low, or Higher still (a few, in
fact, vaulting up into Catholicism, a few slipping off the
ladder of faith entirely). Thus, Thomas Laud, in spite of
his name, was very Low, and his son, Timothy,
consequently, very High, and he it was who had
ordered from England in 1740 not only the organ (the
cost of whose annual upkeep was higher than Jonathan
Fields's salary), but the rosewood confessional that still
stood in its somber niche at the rear of St. Andrew's
(High) Episcopal Church. There, for an hour on
Saturday, Father Highwick kept up the old-fashioned
tradition of private confession, cheerfully absolving the
half-dozen elderly lady sinners who brought him their