“This is not to say that the few lay ministers roaming the colony before the Anglicans arrived were at all discriminatory in their gospelizing. Indeed, it was widely recalled that in 1683 "one Atkinson Williamson who was a great Lover of strong Liqour” had inadvertently baptized a bear (“and some Wicked people doubtless they were that made him first fudled and the got him to Christen the Bear”)! Thomas Smith to Robert Stevens, Jan. 16, 1708