the ministry, the colonial agents, and the great body of English dissenters, did not lessen the prevailing suspicion and fear among the colonists, especially among those of New England. They felt no confidence in the profession [u] that authority purely ecclesiastical would alone be accorded to the bishop, or that American churchmen themselves would long be satisfied with a bishopric so shorn of power. And already, on November 1, 1766, the Episcopalians of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut had met together in their first annual convention at Elizabethtown. [v] The avowed object of their conference was the defense of the liberties of the Church of England, and "to diffuse union and harmony, and to keep up a correspondence throughout the united body and with their friends abroad." [151] It was a time of drawing together, whether of the colonies as political bodies, or of their people as groups of individuals affiliating with similar groups beyond the local boundaries. Upon November 5, 1766, also at Elizabethtown, the Consociated Churches of Connecticut had united with the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia in their first annual convention, which was composed of Presbyterian delegates to the Synod and of representatives from the Associations in Connecticut. While the general object was the promotion of Christian friendship between the two religious bodies, the spread of the gospel, and the preservation of the liberties of their respective churches, the conventions of 1769-75 determined to prosecute measures for preserving these same liberties, threatened "by the attempt made by the friends of Episcopacy in the Colonies and Great Britain, for the establishment of Diocesan Bishops in America." [152] Accordingly this representative body at once entered into correspondence with the Committee of Dissenters in England. In recalling these movements towards combination, one remembers that, among the dissenters, the Quakers had long held to their system of Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual Meetings, to their correspondence with the London Annual Meeting, and to the frequent interchange of traveling preachers. In the years 1767-69, the scattered Baptists of New England had united in the Warren (Rhode Island) Association. It was a council for advice only, yet its approval lent multiple weight to the influence of any Baptist preacher. It urged the collection of all authentic reports of oppression or persecution, and a firm, united resistance on the part of the weaker churches. [w] The founding of Brown University, Rhode Island, as a Baptist College in 1764, gave the sect prestige by marking their approval of education and of a "learned ministry."