16, as a result of which, on the following day, at a special meeting of the trustees, it was voted to "excuse the Rev. Mr. Cutler from all further services as Rector of Yale College", and it was provided that all future rectors and tutors should declare to the trustees their assent to the Saybrook Confession of Faith, and give satisfaction as to their opposition to "Arminian and prelatical corruptions." They returned Yale to its previous orthodoxy, what the former Yale Tutor, the American Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1770 described as "the scholastic cobwebs of a few little English and Dutch systems that would hardly now be taken up in the street.” Several nineteenth century Harvard and Yale commentators, citing Cutler's Puritan opponents, suggest that Cutler was never wholeheartedly a Dissenter, that he had been converted to Episcopalianism when at Stratford by John Checkley, and that in spite of this fact had accepted the rectorship of a Congregational college, publicly declaring what he had privately believed only when a desirable place in the Established Church was assured him. With the 1929 publication of American Dr. Samuel Johnson's Autobiography, we find that Cutler, Yale Tutor Daniel Brown, and seven other local clergy formed a study group in 1719. Assigning Johnson to translate, and meeting in secret at each other's homes, they carefully studied the source texts in Yale's library in the original languages over a three-year period. They only reluctantly decided that their Presbyterian ordination was questionable, and that an Episcopal ordination was to be preferred. Despite great pressure from Governor Saltenstall, their family, friends and the Puritan community (so fierce, that five of the nine recanted), Cutler, along with three others, determined to become ministers of the Church of England. Later life During a yearlong visit to London, Cutler was ordained by the Bishop of Norwich in March 1723. He also received the degree of D.D. from both Oxford University and the University of Cambridge, the first American-born clergyman to receive a Doctorate. Cutler became rector of the newly formed Christ Church, Boston, where he served until his death. Cutler became one of the leading Episcopal clergymen of New England, venerated for his learning, but perhaps too haughty in manner to be popular. He founded the church at Dedham and took care of Christ Church, Braintree. Puritans, however, dominated Boston. Massachusetts leaned toward a theocracy under Cotton Mather, who defended