At the town meeting on the first Monday in November, 1777, the names of James Carter and Daniel Allen were stricken from the black list, apparently without opposition.  That the Reverend Timothy Harrington, Lancaster’s prudent and much-beloved minister, should be denounced as an enemy of his country, and his name even placed temporarily among those of “dangerous persons,” exhibits the bitterness of partisanship at that date.  This town-meeting prosecution was ostensibly based upon certain incautious expressions of opinion, but appears really to have been inspired by the spite of the Whitcombs and others, whose enmity had been aroused by his conservative action several years before in the church troubles, known as “the Goss and Walley war,” in the neighboring town of Bolton.  The Reverend Thomas Goss, of Bolton, Ebenezer Morse, of Boylston, and Andrew Whitney, of Petersham, were classmates of Mr. Harrington in the Harvard class of 1737, and all of them were opposed to the revolution of the colonies.  The disaffection, which, ignoring the action of an ecclesiastical council, pushed Mr. Goss from his pulpit, arose more from the political ferment of the day than from any advanced views of his opponents respecting the abuse of alcoholic stimulants.  For nearly forty years Mr. Harrington had perhaps never omitted from his fervent prayers in public assemblies the form of supplication for divine blessing upon the sovereign ruler of Great Britain.  It is not strange, although he had yielded reluctant submission to the new order of things, and was anxiously striving to perform his clerical duties without offense to any of his flock, that his lips should sometimes lapse into the wonted formula, “bless our good King George.”  It is related that on occasions of such inadvertence, he, without embarrassing pause, added:  “Thou knowest, O Lord! we mean George Washington.”  In the records of the town clerk, nothing is told of the nature of the charges against Mr. Harrington, or of the manner of his defence.  Two deacons were sent as messengers “to inform the Rev’d Timo’o Harrington that he has something in agitation Now to be Heard in this Meeting at which he has Liberty to attend.”  Joseph Willard, Esq., in 1826, recording probably the reminiscence of some one present at the dramatic scene, says that when the venerable clergyman confronted his accusers, baring his breast, he exclaimed with the language and feeling of outraged virtue:  “Strike, strike here with your daggers!  I am a true friend to my country!”

Among the manuscripts left by Mr. Harrington there is one prepared for, if not read at, this town meeting, containing the charges in detail, and his reply to each.  It is headed:  “Harrington’s answers to ye Charges &c.”  It is a shrewd and eloquent defence, bearing evidence, so far as rhetoric can, that its author was in advance of his people and his times in respect of Christian charity, if not of political foresight.  The charges were four in number:  the first being that of the Bolton