After the departure of Mr. Stiles the First Church was without a pastor for three years. Much time was spent in "going after ministers." The young Yale graduates who preached on trial did not please the church, whose sympathies were still with Massachusetts. Finally the Rev. Abiel Leonard, a graduate of Harvard College,[78] was installed on June 23, 1763. Of the twelve churches asked to assist in the ordination only one[79] was a Connecticut organization. In fact it was not until the year 1815 that the church, after an adherence to the Cambridge order of faith for a hundred and twenty-five years, finally accepted the "Saybrook Platform," and joined the Connecticut association. The church was prosperous under Mr. Leonard. Largely owing to his influence the quarrel between the First and Third Churches was healed.[80] In 1775, on the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, Mr. Leonard was made Chaplain of the Third Regiment of Connecticut troops. The church, at the request of the commander, Colonel, afterwards General, Israel Putnam, granted the necessary leave of absence. The following year Washington and Putnam joined in writing a letter[81] to the church at Woodstock asking for a continued leave of absence for Mr. Leonard, praising him in the highest terms, and saying: "He is employed in the glorious work of attending to the morals of a brave people who are fighting for their liberties--the liberties of the people of Woodstock--the liberties of all America." Agreeable a gentleman as Mr. Leonard was, he was suddenly superseded while on a visit to Woodstock, and on receiving the mortifying news when _en route_ to join the army he at once committed suicide. If ever there was an "able, orthodox, godly minister," of the true Massachusetts type, such as old Woodstock always loved to have, he was the Rev. Eliphalet Lyman, who was ordained in 1779. Although a graduate of Yale College,[82] he fulfilled the conditions of the Cambridge Platform, and continued pastor of the First Church for forty-five years, and was warmly interested in the religious and educational development of the town. He was the last of the historic ministers of Woodstock. He was respected and he was feared. The boys stopped playing ball when "Old Priest Lyman," in cocked hat and knee breeches, remembered by some of you here to-day, walked up the common. VIII.