The Queen of England sent St. Paul’s, Wickford a present three centuries ago, and being thrifty New Englanders, they are still getting some use out of it. 
The gift, sent by Queen Anne in 1709, comprised a two-piece silver communion set, a Bible, a Book of Common Prayer, a book of homilies and a set of paraments, or liturgical textiles. The communion set was on the altar on Queen Anne Sunday, August 4, as St. Paul’s celebrated its founding in 1706 with a Eucharist in the Old Narragansett Church.
The old church, which does not have electricity, was the parish’s home from 1707 until the current church was built nearby in 1847. During its earliest years, the parish was involved in a bitter dispute 20-year dispute with Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut over Queen Anne’s gift, says Ruth Ann Lewis, a long-time member of the parish and the docent coordinator at Old Narragansett.
According to “Queen Anne’s Gifts to ‘Old Narragansett’ or The Case of the Contested Church Silver,” an article by Joseph W. Hammond, the controversy began in 1710 when the Rev. Christopher Bridge, St. Paul’s first priest, was reassigned to a church in Rye, New York due to “difficulties” with the Rev. John Honeyman at Trinity Church, Newport. The nature of these difficulties is not clear, but they led Henry Compton, then Bishop of London, to declare that Bridge had “committed an insolent riot upon the Church of Rhode Island.”
Bridge’s departure created a vacancy at St. Paul’s that lasted nine years. During that time, the queen’s gift was “reassigned,” to Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut, Hammond writes. When St. Paul’s next rector, the Rev. William Guy arrived, the effort to reclaim the gift began. It would continue for almost two decades as increasingly emotional letters from the two parishes to three successive bishops of London (two of whom died during the controversy) crisscrossed the Atlantic.
Finally, in June 1729, the Rev. Samuel Johnson of Stratford wrote to the Bishop Edmund Gibson of London saying he would return the gift to St. Paul’s. “I was obliged to use a great deal of Resolution & Self-denial on this Occasion,” he wrote, “but I hope Time will by Degrees compose the Temper of those of my people who have been greatly exasperated on this Account.”
The silver was back on the altar, augmented by a silver tankard that was not part of the original gift, on Queen Anne Sunday when Bishop Nicholas Knisely preached and presided at the service using portions of the eucharistic liturgy from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.