Editing Thomas Clap (section)

==Later religious conflict==
[[File:The Annals or History of Yale College Thomas Clap 1766.jpg|thumb|left|190px|[[Book frontispiece|Frontispiece]], ''The Annals or History of Yale College in New Haven, in the Colony of Connecticut'', by Yale President Thomas Clap, 1766. Volume carries notation: "Given to the Library of Yale College by [[Ezra Stiles]] 1785."]]
Clap, meanwhile, was concerned by the poor preaching of [[Joseph Noyes]] and by the initiation of Anglican services in New Haven. To avoid loss of students to the College of New Jersey (now [[Princeton University|Princeton]]), founded by those who had defended Brainerd's expulsion, and to defend orthodoxy, he convinced the trustees to appoint him as professor of divinity and to authorize separate worship for the students each Sunday. Both the Old Lights and the Episcopalians objected to this. In 1753, Rev. Samuel Johnson wrote to Clap that were he to continue with separate worship, the Episcopalians would complain, and that the charter of 1745 would be found to be invalid, as only the King could make a corporation, and that Yale would cease to exist. Clap agreed to let the Anglican students attend their own church.

Perhaps more important to Clap than questions of religion, the New Lights increased their political power in the Connecticut Assembly and the state established [[Congregational church|Congregational Church]]. In 1754, [[Thomas Fitch (governor)|Thomas Fitch]], an outspoken Old Light, was elected governor, while [[William Pitkin]], who supported the New Lights, was elected deputy governor, and almost all the Connecticut Congregationalist associations and consociations had New Light majorities.<ref>Grasso, Christopher, ''A Speaking Aristocracy: Transforming Public Discourse in Eighteenth-century Connecticut'', UNC Press Books, 1999, p. 153</ref>

Meanwhile, there were conflicts within the Corporation. [[Benjamin Gale]], son-in-law of Jared Eliot, a corporation member, had published a pamphlet arguing for discontinuation of the colonial grant to the college, and no grant was given in 1755. Clap set out to raise an endowment for a professorship of divinity, and [[Naphtali Daggett]] was appointed the Livingstonian Professor of Divinity on March 4, 1756.<ref name=baldwin/> Noyes offered to share his pulpit with the new professor, agreeing to subscribe to the Assembly's Catechism and the Savoy Confession of Faith, and the students returned to his First Church for worship.

Clap, however, became disenchanted with Noyes' Old Light orthodoxy and poor preaching and obtained a decision that not only could Yale students worship separately, they could form their own congregation and administer Communion. The announcement of the corporation's decision on June 30, 1757, was bitterly controversial, and, in the aftermath, discipline at the college collapsed. The General Assembly intervened, threatened a Yale "visitation". Despite being now distrusted by both Old and New Light factions, Clap's defense of the college as separate from the state caused the assembly to ultimately side with Clap.

He was not so successful with his own tutors and students. The student body was caught up in the rebellious spirit of the 1760s, resolving to drink no "foreign spiritous Liquors any more" and declaiming in chapel against the British Parliament, and petitioning the Corporation with their grievances, insisting on the removal of the disciplinarian Clap. The students stopped going to classes and prayers and generally abused the tutors, who resigned.

The corporation ordered an early spring vacation, and few undergraduates returned. President Clap offered his resignation at the corporation meeting in July 1766. He continued as the head of Yale until commencement on September 10, 1766, when he presided over his last commencement, delivered his valedictory address, and resigned.<ref name="kelley68">Kelley, [https://books.google.com/books?id=B2aDRhohtx8C&q=Yale+a+history&pg=PA68 p. 68.]</ref> Professor Naphtali Daggett followed him as president ''pro tempore''.<ref>Belden, Ezekiel Porter. ''Sketches of Yale College''. Saxton and Miles (1843), p. 36.</ref>

Clap died four months later in New Haven at the age of sixty-three.<ref name="kelley68"/>

[[Jackson Turner Main]] finds that teaching in colonial days was a poorly paid, part-time, temporary job. Young men typically moved on to more secure occupations as soon as possible. There was one great exception: Reverend Clap.  At his death he lft an estate worth £6,656, including 600 acres of land. His wealth came from marriage and his attention to lucrative investments. <ref> Jackson Turner Main, ''Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut'' (1985) p 258 </ref>