Birthplace: Charlestown, Massachusetts May 31, 1684
Died: Boston, Massachusetts August 17, 1765
Rector: 1719-1722

The third Rector of Yale College was Timothy Cutler. He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on May 31, 1684, the son of Major John Cutler, an anchorsmith by trade. He went to Harvard at thirteen and graduated in 1701, the year of Yale's founding.

Cutler was ordained a Congregational minister at Stratford in January 1709. Ironically enough, in view of what was to follow, he replaced the Reverend John Read, who had been "corrupted" by Church of England theology. In March of the following year he married the daughter of Samuel Andrew, the acting Rector of the Collegiate School.

Cutler's ministry at Stratford seems to have been successful. He was an eloquent preacher and an excellent linguist. He had the highly cultivated but probably equally disturbing habit of interspersing his sermons with fluent Latin. In his early years he was clearly considered the outstanding young Congregational minister who, the parish at Stratford felt, was a proper antidote to the creeping Episcopalianism within its midst.

While living at Stratford, Cutler became a close friend of the Yale tutor, Samuel Johnson. Together the two men studied the books in the Dummer collection, many of them written by Anglicans. During these years it is likely that both Cutler and Johnson, if not completely converted, were well on their way toward accepting the tenets of the Episcopal theology in place of their congregationalist heritage.

Yale College in this period was facing a crisis which developed from the insubordination of the fourteen students at Wethersfield. After the Commencement of 1718 the trustees ordered them to come to New Haven. They complied but still continued to be rebellious. They developed an antipathy toward Tutor Johnson, and early in 1719 some left New Haven, complaining of his "insufficiency." Under this pressure, as well as that from the General Assembly and Governor Saltonstall, the trustees offered the post pro tempore to Timothy Cutler, hoping that his strong personality would calm things down. His Anglican leanings were then unknown. He thus became the first resident Rector. To the College he showed a strong hand; Ezra Stiles, while characterizing him as "a grand figure at the Head of a College," also attributed to him a "high, lofty, and despotic mien." In September 1719 he was elected full Rector.

A general air of optimism now surrounded the campus. The early growing pains were a thing of the past, and for the first time the College was united. The trustees were more than satisfied with Cutler, who was unquestionably a man of great scholarship and ability and seemed to have the necessary strength to control the students. As for the students themselves, except for a rebellion in 1721 over the food, which led to the stealing of some chickens, geese, and pigs in the town, they seemed well satisfied. The teaching was of a noticeably higher caliber than it had been in the past. The study of Newton and Locke was introduced into the curriculum.

In the summer of 1722, however, rumors began to spread that Mr. Cutler and some neighboring clergymen had made important changes in their religious convictions. Rector Cutler, in fact, finished the prayer at the 1722 Commencement with an Anglican blessing. The following day, Cutler and the others who were implicated (Jared Eliot, minister of Killingworth; John Hart, minister of East Guilford; Samuel Whittlesey, minister of Wallingford; James Wetmore, minister of North Haven; Daniel Browne, tutor; and Samuel Johnson, minister of West Haven) were invited to meet with the College trustees. All were graduates of Yale College, and for some months there had been meetings in the College library and elsewhere at which they had discussed matters of doctrine, especially ordination.

The young heretics took the occasion to announce that "all were seeking light on the duty of entering the visible communication of the Church of England." The trustees were shocked and dismayed.

Governor Saltonstall now came forward in an attempt to bring the dissidents back into the fold. He called a public debate on the issue, himself serving as moderator. The trustees, hardly a match for Cutler, Johnson, and the others, were completely out-classed. The result was predictable: the trustees "excused Cutler from all further service" as Rector and accepted Browne's resignation. Actually, only three of the original heretics (Cutler, Browne, and Johnson) continued their allegiance to the Anglican Church. The others, at least for the present, reverted to Congregationalism. It was at this time that the trustees determined that all future rectors would have to swear to the Confession of Faith of the Saybrook Platform.

Cutler, Browne, and Johnson promptly sailed for England, on November 5. There Cutler barely escaped death from smallpox, which did kill Browne. At the end of March 1723, Cutler was ordained in the Church of England by the Bishop of Norwich and received the degrees of Doctor of Divinity from both Oxford and Cambridge before returning to America in September.

In Boston, he became Rector of Christ Church, where he served until his death in 1785. He immediately became embroiled in several disputes with the local Congregational ministers, whom he began to attack in his typically headstrong manner and with a convert's zeal. High Tory, egotistical, and uncompromising, he became a leader of the New England Anglicans. He also managed to destroy most of the good will which had developed between the dissenters and the Anglicans in the Boston area. His hostility to the Congregationalists became so marked that he was eventually denied his rightful seat as an Overseer of Harvard College.

In his later years Cutler harbored schemes for converting Harvard to Anglicanism. Failing in these, he revealed plans for establishing a rival Episcopal College in Boston. In addition he seems to have had ideas of attacking Yale's orthodoxy. Until his death he never ceased in his efforts to have an Episcopal bishop appointed to the American Colonies.

Source: Holden, Profiles and portraits of Yale University presidents pages: 19- 22