Confession of Richard Barns, August [22,] 17851

Introduction

Richard Barns was born on February 12, 1717, the son of Richard and Anna Barns of Marlborough, the town from which Westborough was set off and incorporated on November 18, 1717.2 He married seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Bruce on May 10, 1739, and seven months later their son Richard was born.3 Richard and Elizabeth confessed fornication on November 22, 1741, and were “restord, ownd the Covenant and their Daughter Anna was baptizd,” but there was no mention of their son Richard who, we may imagine, died an early death.4 Richard and Elizabeth had eight more children between 1742 and 1761.5 Elizabeth Barns died on June 17 or 18, 1776.6

Late the next year, as Parkman wrote in his diary, “Old Mr. Barns,” then sixty years old, “wants to be marryed to Miss Jemima Maynard; and they unhappily need to be.”7 Jemima, the forty-year-old daughter of David and Ann Maynard,8 gave birth to their daughter Abigail on March 23, 1778.9 Later that year, Parkman “went to see and talk with Mrs. Barns being under the Guilt of Fornication. I solemnly called her to Repentance.”10 Although Parkman later visited Richard Barns “under his Confinement by broken Bones,”11 there is no indication in his diary that he again approached Jemima or Richard about their sin.

On January 9, 1785, more than two years after Parkman’s death, a committee of the Westborough church “treated with” the now nearly sixty-eight-year-old Richard Barns “for Breach of the Seventh Command (as has been but too well known).” His response was that he had “broke no Law and has no Satisfaction to make.”12 On March 14, the church voted that they were “Dessatisfied with Richard Barns in Consequnce of his breach of the seventh Commandment.”13 Six months later, after a three-member committee was appointed to “go and Converse” with Barns, the church heard and accepted Barns’s confession.14

What brought Barns around after having denied breaking a law and asserting that he had “no Satisfaction to make”? Age may have played a role: as he wrote in his confession, he was now in “this the decline of my Life.” But probably more important was the church’s decision to resolve several outstanding matters, with other residents encouraged to make confessions and still others urged to become full communicants rather than remaining half-way members. Under Parkman’s ministry, committees had never been charged with meeting with half-way members. In the absence of a settled pastor, the church may have been particularly eager to put its house in order. Capt. Stephen Maynard, one of the half-way members who was approached by a committee, stated that he thought the change was made to please Adoniram Judson, a candidate for the Westborough pulpit. Maynard stated that he considered “himself in Relation to the Church” and asserted that “the Late alteration made by the Church in Despensing with their mode of Admitting person to the priviledge of Baptism” was done “to please Mr. Judson, a late Candidate, and supposed himself that it was wrong.”15

Whatever his reasons and the pressures that were brought to bear on him, Barns was now back in the fold. In the absence of any record of the baptism of his daughter Abigail, it is likely that she had died before her father’s confession. Richard died in September 1791,16 and five years later, on October 30, 1796, his widow Jemima made “her confession of the sin of fornication in her youth” and was “forgiven and received into the Church.”17 Jemima died less than a year later.18

The Confession

I confess tho to my Shame and Sorrow that I have been Guilty of the Sin of Fornecation, to the Reproach of myself and family and the wounding of my Chrestien professeon—thereby exposed myself to your Christian Resentment, and rendered myself Obnoxious to the people of God—I think I am sensibly convenced of my guilt therein and of the dishonor done to my Maker thereby—on Account of which I freely humble myself before God—and ask with penitence his forgeveness—and ask the forgeveness of this Church, and wish You to Receeve me again to Your Charity and desire Your prayers for me, that I may by the Grace of God be enabled to walk in this the decline of my Life worthy of my Covenant engagements and the Religion of My Lord and Master.