Birthplace: Scituate, Massachusetts June 26, 1703
Died: New Haven, Connecticut January 7,1767
Rector: 1740-1745
President: 1745-1766

Thomas Clap, dogmatic and obstinate Congregational clergyman and Newtonian scientist, was the head of Yale College for more than twenty-six years. Born on June 26, 1703, in Scituate, Massachusetts, one of the earliest founded towns in Plymouth Colony, he was the second son of Deacon Stephen Clap and his wife Temperance.

Clap was educated in Scituate by the parson of South Church, Nathaniel Eells, and may also have received instruction from the Reverend James McSparran, an Episcopal missionary of Rhode Island. In 1718 he entered Harvard, where he studied under Thomas Robie, one of Harvard's leading scientific scholars. Clap was graduated in 1722 at the age of nineteen, having done especially well in the sciences, a foreshadowing of his lifelong interest in scientific endeavors. He returned to Scituate and studied divinity under Eells. Three years later he went once more to Cambridge to take his master's degree.

Young Clap now prepared to enter the ministry; on August 3, 1728, he was ordained pastor of the Windham Congregational Church, in Connecticut. A little more than a year later, he married Mary Whiting, the fourteen-year-old daughter of his predecessor, Samuel Whiting. After bearing six children and burying four of them, she died in August 1736, at the age of twenty-four. Clap later married Mary Lord, the wealthy daughter of John Haynes, and the widow of both Rosewall Saltonstall and Elisha Lord.

Clap distinguished himself at Windham not by brilliance or eloquence as a preacher, but rather by his single-minded devotion to the Church. A strict disciplinarian, he was a stern enforcer of rigid Calvinist morality. He played a major part in the famous Breck controversy of 1734-35 when Robert Breck was first ousted from the Windham parish for "unorthodoxy" and then opposed, though unsuccessfully, in his attempts to be ordained at Springfield. No doubt it was Clap's autocratic rule at Windham and his fame as an orthodox Congregationalist that attracted the attention of the Yale trustees. When Elisha Williams resigned in 1739, the trustees promptly elected Clap Rector. He was installed on April 2, 1740.

The College now entered upon a long and constructive, though often stormy, course. The new Rector was well versed in mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy, and placed more emphasis on science in the curriculum than had previously been done, to the extent that his administration was considered something of a golden age of science in Yale's colonial history. There is evidence that he gave preference to those candidates for tutorship who revealed scientific abilities. Clap was in constant touch with Benjamin Franklin (1) and other colonial men of science concerning experiments here and abroad, and he built at Yale the first orrery or planetarium in America. He later prepared a paper on meteors which was well received before the Royal Society in London. Clap also dabbled in agricultural science and invented a simplified design for the wheat plow. An expert on Newton, he seems to have been far ahead of his time in respect to most scientific matters, although he did argue in one sermon that the use of artificial light was dangerous to Christian morals.

Despite this interest in science, Clap believed that the principal duty of the College was to educate men for the ministry, and the curriculum remained steeped in theology. Clap himself instructed the Seniors. There was a tutor for each of the remaining classes; each tutor began with a Freshman class and stayed with the class for three years. In 1755 the Reverend Naphtali Daggett of Smithtown, Long Island, a Yale graduate of the Class of 1748, was appointed Professor of Divinity, the first Yale professorship.

The new Rector undertook the much-needed reform of the unsystematic college regulations, introducing a new set of laws in 1745 which was comprehensive and explicit. He also drafted a new charter, patterned after those of Oxford and Cambridge, which the General Assembly granted in 1745. This charter officially fixed the campus at New Haven and changed the name of the institution to Yale College. In addition, the Rector was given the title of President, and his authority was increased. Under the first charter the executive authority was vested solely in the trustees, but now the President was to wield the executive powers in coordination with the trustees (now called Fellows), the corporate name being "The President and Fellows of Yale College in New Haven." Indeed, during his term Clap was the undisputed head of the school. He initiated other reforms, including the reclassification of the books in the library, which now contained some 2,500 volumes; their listing in the catalogue was arranged to correspond to the years and subjects of the curriculum. While Clap was President, the library was increased by some 1,400 volumes. In the Abraham Pierson tradition, Clap himself wrote a dull textbook on ethics and helped to found Linonia, a literary and debating society.

The College also underwent what at that time was an extensive physical expansion as a consequence of the steadily increasing enrollment; there were one hundred and twenty students in 1747. Connecticut Hall was begun in 1750 and finished in 1753, financed from the proceeds of a lottery sanctioned by the General Assembly, the sale of a captured French vessel, and additional funds voted by the Assembly.

Although progress was made in many areas, Clap's strict theological convictions-it was paradoxical that he accepted the "new science" of the Enlightenment but not its new philosophical and humanistic ethical notions-and his autocratic methods began to make enemies and to raise opposition to his policies almost from the outset of his administration. He violently opposed the Great Awakening and the itinerant revivalists. He forbade students from attending revival meetings held in private homes located near the College. On one occasion he expelled a student, David Brainerd, on flimsy evidence, for making uncalled-for remarks concerning the spiritual condition of one of the tutors.

He even expelled two students for attending separatist services while living at home during summer vacation. Against the furor that followed, Clap defended himself in the New York press and also printed an official statement of the case. At one time or another he seems to have carried on at least one heated quarrel with practically every prominent minister active in the New England Colonies. He once turned down a large gift of books because the donor had "erroneous" religious opinions. In addition to attacking the revivalists of the Great Awakening and, of course, the Anglicans, Clap also turned against the "Old-Light" theological liberals. He became dissatisfied with the theology of the Reverend Joseph Noyes of the First (Center) Church of New Haven, which the students attended; in 1753 he withdrew the students from Noyes's charge and himself preached on Sunday for the next three years, until Daggett relieved him in 1756. The Church of Christ was established the next year, and a chapel was built in 1761-63 adjacent to Connecticut Hall (the second story being used for a library). Students from non-Congregational families could continue to matriculate at Yale, but they now had to worship in Yale's Congregational chapel, a policy which caused much bitterness among the Anglicans.

In 1757 Clap went still further and attempted to impeach the old but widely respected Noyes as a member of the Yale Corporation (the generally accepted name for the trustees) on the dubious charge of heresy. All he achieved, however, was the loss of many of his friends sitting on the Corporation. But the President persisted in his authoritarian course, forcing the resignation of tutors who did not rigidly conform to his own theological creed, and keeping away from the students, under lock and key, books in the library which contained deistic sentiments.

During the second half of his administration, Clap had to contend with an attempt of several members of the Connecticut General Assembly to gain political control of the College (2). On three separate occasions the General Assembly received petitions, instituted by Clap's enemies, calling for a legislative "visitation" of the College's affairs. In 1763 Clap made a masterful defense before the Assembly against any such visitations and effectively put an end to all efforts for establishing state control over the internal affairs of Yale. But the financial support of the Assembly was now lost for good, although the Assembly had not in fact given the College any funds since 1755.

Meanwhile, Clap had become thoroughly unpopular with the students. Campus disorder increased. In 1755, for example, after Clap punished a junior over a bell-ringing episode, rebellious undergraduates overturned Clap's privy and destroyed some of his other property as well, causing him to take "a ride to Hartford for about a fortnight to give them time to cool." In 1762 the trustees sadly noted that the students had reached a somewhat "wicked" state:

Particularly, they are very negligent in attending on Prayers and Recitations, Recite but poorly and behave themselves with Levity, Whispering and Inattention at Prayers and Recitations, are frequently out of their Chambers, spending their Time in Idleness loud Talk and Laughter in Studying Time, and frequently make indecent and disturbing Noises of various Kinds in play Time, spend a considerable Part of their Time at Taverns, and generally show an habitual Disposition of Mind inclined to Vanity. . . There are many secret Acts of Wickedness done in the Dark, which are very evident by the Effects, and yet the particular Actors are not easy to be detected, such as stealing the Great Bible and the Monitors Bills, tearing off the Caseings from the Windows, stealing the Weights, tearing the Laths, Plastering and Boards from the Walls of the House, cutting down the Clock Case, ringing the Bell, contrary to Law, and many such Things as betoken a wicked Temper of Mind (3).

In 1765 Clap forced two tutors to resign for "heresy," and the third resigned in protest. Enrollment was declining, and only two tutors were engaged to replace them. Clap now instructed both the Seniors and the Freshmen. Matters did not improve, and the students again rioted in the spring of 1768, demanding that Clap be removed for senility and arbitrariness. The new tutors resigned, and all instruction was left to Clap and Naphtali Daggett, Professor of Divinity. Thereupon, two-thirds of the students went home. The remainder were dismissed early for summer vacation. No one could he found to replace the departed tutors, and the affairs of the College seemed at a standstill. Clap finally resigned in July 1766, although he officiated at a final Commencement in September.

He lived just a few months longer and died on January 7, 1767. Even at the end he alienated most of his few remaining friends: he left his widow only £100 out of a large estate for which her original wealth had been chiefly responsible. That, remarked an acquaintance, "finishes up his Character among benevolent minds." Clap wrote a history of Yale College (The Annals) which, if not altogether reliable, is interesting because it is the earliest account of Yale's origins. Although undoubtedly he was the classic embodiment of Puritan illiberalism, under his administration, the second longest in its history, Yale became one of the two leading intellectual centers of colonial America. While he refused to tolerate "heresy" in religious matters, he instilled in a generation of Yale students a regard for science which greatly contributed to the impetus of the "scientific revolution" in America. Administration of college affairs was systemized and stabilized, and it is probably fair to say that Thomas Clap's was one of the most constructive presidencies in Yale's early history.

Source: Holden, Profiles and portraits of Yale University presidents pages: 31-37

(1) Franklin was awarded an honorary MA degree in 1753.

(2) The General Assembly had voted Clap an annual salary of £100 in 1755.

(3) Report of The Fellows, as quoted in R. D. French, The Memorial Quadrangle, A Book about Yale (New Haven, 1929) pp. 172-173.