Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN Born Msgr, 29.1759. Died April, 22.18Z2. Enymmi byF.Caapa^fram.an.OryinaLPainting, in tfitfossession, tf if? F&ary. FACSIMILE OF FRONTISPIECE TO JOHN AUOLEY'S LIFE OF COXE FEARY. 1823. A CENTUKY OF VILLAGE NONCONFORMITY AT BLUNTISHAM, HUNTS. 1787 TO 1887. WITH INTEODUCTOEY SKETCHES OF EELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE I?TH AND 18m CENTUEIES. K W. DIXON. CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED AT THE UNIVEESITY PEESS. 1887 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. To my Friends in Bluntisham and its neighbourhood, who have been and are connected with the Congregational Meeting-House there, I give this Memorial of "One Hundred years of Village Nonconformity." ROBERT WALKER DIXON. May 25th, 1887. 2017713 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Bluntisham-cum-Earith 1 CHAPTER H. Puritanism . % 6 CHAPTER HI. Huntingdon, St Ives, and the Lecturers 11 CHAPTER IV. Dr Robert Wilde 23 CHAPTER V. Mr Henry Denne . . . . .-'"''. ^ : . ... 30 CHAPTER VI. Francis Holcroft and Joseph Oddy . . v " .- ; . . 38 CHAPTER VH. The Act of Uniformity 44 VI CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER VIII. King Charles the II.'s " Indulgence." 53 CHAPTER IX. Influence of St Ives and of the Church at Rowell .... 57 CHAPTER X. Persecution of Mr Abraham Gill and others 63 CHAPTER XI. The Society of Friends 72 CHAPTER XH. Religious influence in the 18th Century 95 CHAPTER XIII. John Wesley 100 CHAPTER XIV, George Whitfield 104 CHAPTER XV. William Fletcher of Madely 109 CHAPTER XVI. William Grimshaw of Haworth 116 CHAPTER XVH. John Berridge of Everton ..... .,:-.:.; 123 CHAPTER XVHI. Henry Venn of Huddersfield and Yelling CONTENTS. Vll PAGE CHAPTER XIX. State of the Establishment . '.. .A.'" ...,-,;> . . .138 CHAPTER XX. Rise of the Church at Bluntisham . ^*< .- < - ' . . 143 CHAPTER XXI. Profession of Faith and List of early Church Members . . . 153 CHAPTER XXII. Mr Coxe Feary's Call to the Pastorate and the Building of the Meeting-house 159 CHAPTER XX1U. Life of Mr Coxe Feary 168 CHAPTER XXIV. Mr Coxe Feary 226 CHAPTER XXV. Selections from Bluntisham Church Book 234 CHAPTER XXVI. Somersham, Colne and Woodhurst 242 CHAPTER XXVII. The Old Meeting-house Congregation in the Eighteenth Century . 251 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Congregationalists 255 CHAPTER XXTX. Mr Samuel Green 259 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER XXX. Rev. John Edmund Simmons, M.A 271 CHAPTER XXXI. The Progress of the Church at Bluntisham . . , v . 276 CHAPTER XXXH. Rev. F. W. Goadby, M.A. Lond 281 CHAPTER XXXIII. The Rebuilding of the Meeting-house, and Purchase of the Manse. 233 CHAPTER XXXIV. The Decade before the Centenary 294 CHAPTER XXXV. Conclusion 306 CHAPTER I. BLUNTISHAM-CUM-EARITH. THE village of Bluntisham-cum-Earith, in Huntingdon- shire, is situated on the left bank of the river Ouse, on the borders of the Cambridgeshire Fens. Earith is on the low ground, where its neat respectable looking houses fringe either side of the high-road leading to the bridge which crosses the Ouse. Here was the ancient ford through the river and the causeway across the marshy ground leading on to the Isle of Ely. The Romans appear to have thrown up earthworks at this point as a protection from marauders by river, having their settlement in the more healthy district of their Colonia the Colne of our day. When the neighbouring country depended on water carriage for its coal and other supplies, Earith must have been a place of importance, of which the wharves, now fallen into disuse, are evidence. Antiquarians will be interested in the Roman Camp, usually called the Bulwark, on the left of the road, between the river Ouse and the Old Bedford cutting. In 1826, in a ditch dividing the meadows lying between Earith and the church, was found a bronze statuette inlaid with silver, of a Roman Jupiter Martialis, in nearly perfect preservation. T. B. 1 2 BLUNTISHAM-CUM-EARITH. Botanists will be interested in knowing that a few years ago the "water-soldier" (Stratiotes aloides), now almost extinct, grew in pools about these marshes. The adder's-tongue fern grows on the river banks. The water-violet, the fringed water-lily, and the yellow loose- strife abound in and about the river. Bluntisham stands on the high ground which slopes on the east and south to the border of fen land through which the river flows. The soil varies in fertility. Its substratum is Oxford clay, in which are found gypsum, gryphites, belemnites, ammonites, and fossil wood. The surface of the Oxford clay is diversified with deposits of boulder-clay, patches of gravel which appear to belong to several different deposits, and alluvial soil. The church is half a mile from the centre of the village of Bluntisham and the same distance from Earith ; it stands alone on the brow of the high ground over- looking the border of fen land through which the river flows. Its architecture is chiefly of the perpendicular style, but it is distinguished by its picturesque chancel apse. The church forms a prominent object in the landscape, for it stands high with tower and spire, and it has witnessed all the events chronicled in this volume, which have taken place since the addition of its latest architecture just preceding the Reformation. An event of importance to the village took place in 1815 when the enclosure of the parish was effected. By this the appearance of the land that part of it which had remained up to this time unenclosed was altered by the hedges planted for bounding the lands and defining owner- ships. Owing to the increased area of arable land and its better cultivation, the population was increased, and BLUNTISHAM-CUM-EAEITH. 3 cottages with their gardens were added to the village in proportion. The changes that affect the appearance of our country villages those not situated in the mineral or manufac- turing districts are usually very gradual in their process. But tempest and fire respect not our slowly changing rural habits. The tremendous hurricane of September 1741, which at noon swept over Somersham and Bluntisham, lasting thirteen minutes, during eight of which it raged at its full violence, was within the memory of middle-aged people who were living in 1784 to 1787, when the congre- gational church was formed and the meeting-house was built. This terrible storm untiled the Rectory, demolished its stables, and destroyed twelve of the one hundred houses in Bluntisham ; sixty empty barns, and all the mills in the track of the storm were blown down. Accompanying the storm was a mist reaching about thirty yards from the ground, which rolled along at the rate of one and a half miles a minute, with a noise like thunder. Several fires have occurred during the last thirty years, which have somewhat changed the appearance of the village, leaving gaps and occasions for new buildings, and so the number of old-fashioned thatched houses has much decreased. Before these fires the majority of the houses were thatched and whitewashed. These irregular old-fashioned buildings, with their gabled roofs and windows with small leaden panes of glass, were picturesque and homelike. Sometimes they had overhanging stories, suggestive of ample shelter, and deep thatches suggesting a liberal home roof. There is a cosiness and restful ap- pearance about the old English village homes that endear them to us greatly; they savour of the old times, when the inmates had leisure to ruminate, and enjoy intervals from 12 4 BLUNTISHAM-CUM-EARITH. labour in reflection when they were more anxious about the quality of their work than its quantity when their nervous systems were not excited by telegrams, by the arrival of letters twice a day, or the struggle to catch the first post out when a newspaper once a week was suf- ficient to keep them posted up in the news of the period when the monthly periodical or the " quarterly" was a joy to look forward to, and a new book was an event for the year when they felt they could read all the periodicals if they chose, but that three or four were sufficient when there was time to read a good book through, and carefully to digest it. There was the old farm-house kitchen in which the dinner is over by half-past twelve, and by two o'clock the pewter is replaced clean and bright on the shelves, the distaff is plied and the spinning-wheel is whirring. Then they rose with the sun and went to bed with the birds. In godly households after supper is over the Scriptures are read : in the summer the setting sun streams through the open door, bathing in its soft light the generations next to pass away ; or in the winter as they sit in the ample chimney corner in the quaint high-backed chairs flanked by younger generations on the oak settles, the fire- light from the hearth wood fire gleams on the pewter on the shelves, and dances about the settles. Now is the time for the transmittal of household lore traditions of troubled times, when the martyrs suffered under Philip and Mary, and the Puritans under the Stuarts, yet stood up bravely for purer religion and for liberty, especially for freedom from priestcraft. They talk of the time when the two thousand ejected ministers turned out of their pleasant homes into the wide world, and of Whitfield and the Wesleys, how they are turning the world upside- down by their earnest gospel preaching. BLUNTISHAM-CUM-EARITH. 5 In telling the story of the rise and progress through a hundred years of the little church of Bluntisham, it will add to the interest of our story to relate the history of some of those movements which prepared the way for its commencement. Indeed they go to the making of the conditions necessary to its foundation. CHAPTER II. PURITANISM. THE translation of the Bible into English by Wiclif, and its dissemination over the land, made an epoch in the religious history of our country, and the knowledge of the Scriptures prepared the way for the change in our national religion effected in the sixteenth century. The teachings of Wiclif, by lip and pen, and by means of his itinerant preaching lay friars, prepared men's minds for the Reformation. The outward effects of the Reformation must have moved men in and about Hunting- donshire and set them thinking, even had the deeper questions involved in the change failed to do so; for by far the largest part of the lands of that district changed hands, passing from those of the great monastic insti- tutions into those of laymen, and the numerous religious houses familiar to so many generations of Huntingdon- shire men ceased to exist. A change so important must have brought the whole question home to the minds of the people whose lives were troubled by the outward material changes wrought by the Reformation, as well as by the inner spiritual significance of the movement. In their habits, inherited ideas, modes of thought, and ways of life, men are very conservative ; they dislike PURITANISM. 7 change, for most changes involve trouble, both physical and mental, the latter often perplexed and painful; more- over they have to overcome the wholesome dread of changing for the worse. These mental efforts are especially troublesome, be- cause of the difficulty of decision, and people consequently avoid making them. In the momentous matter of religion men found before the Reformation all their wants met, so far as those wants were recognised, by the same church which asserted her authority for defining them and limit- ing their extent. The machinery required to provide for their religious needs was around them, kept going by funds provided for the purpose, entirely independent of and apart from their own effort, and generation after generation had taken for granted that in this old order of things all religious requirements were met. It is true that with some of the more actively earnest minds it was not so, as with the Wiclifites and Lollards who had for more than a century testified against the existing state of things. But the Reformation, through its alien- ation of church lands, its dissolution of religious houses, and its change of religion, displaced the old order. Those of the old faith found their needs unsatisfied, and those of the reformed religion were to a large extent in the same difficulty, since many of the parish priests were too conscientious to change their religion and remain in their places, and from the scarcity of suitable men of the reformed faith many parishes were without ministers. Thus the people could no longer take for granted that their religion was provided for them, because the state, which had in a great measure substituted itself for the church, very inadequately provided compensation for the sweeping changes it had effected in the religious machinery 8 PURITANISM. of the nation. These religious wants, felt, but not now met, roused the minds of men and set them thinking how these wants could be satisfied. In some places they formed themselves into independent religious communities, as at Bocking in Essex, and at Faversham in Kent, during the reign of Edward VI. In other places they combined to influence or supplement the state-church institutions, and when they deemed these totally inefficient they sup- planted them. In this way the mode of supplying the religious wants was changed. From the accident of the times arose the necessity for voluntary support of religion, and to these voluntarily supported religious communities we are indebted in a great measure for the maintenance and transmission of real religion in England. What was at first regarded as an unfortunate necessity, has after two centuries of practice come to be regarded by a large part of our nation as a matter of principle, and its infringement even by endowment as prejudicial to the true interests of religion. Thus we slowly but effectually learn our lessons. There is an interesting MS. in the British Museum of "Particulars of the Glassies" holden at the Bull in Northampton entitled "Articles wherewith ye Ministers of Northam. and Warwick shires are charged etc. 16 July, 1590. 2 Item, some of the especiall places so appoynted for the Synodes, are London, Cambridge at tymes of commencement and Sturbridge ffayre, and Oxford at the Act ; because at those tymes and places they may assemble w* least suspition." "4 It'm, sondrie Ministers who mett in one or more Synodes assembled w^in a yeare and a halfe last past and lesse, concluded and agreed that everie man in his severall charge should e endevoure to erect a government PURITANISM. 9 of Pastors, governinge Elders, and Deacons: That they shoulde teache and houlde that all ministers who are called accordinge to the order of the Churche of Englande to be an unlawfull, or have an unlawfull callinge: And that such allreadie beeinge ministers, as stand affected well unto their Courses, and whom they dare trust, shoulde be induced to renownce their former callinge by Bishopps, and to take a newe approbation by them in their Classis, beeinge an assemblie of sondrie ministers w th in a certayne compasse in a shyer, and whereof they have about iiij. in a shier, or so manye as convenientlye may be : And that this is the Lordes ordinance, wherebye orielye they must stande in theyr ministerie: and that the lyke approbation shal be used in those that were not ministers before : And that after such callinge, they that were not ministers afore, may preache untill they be called to some certayne charge. At what tyme if the people of such place call them, then are they to be holden full ministers, and may minister the sacraments. Never the lesse it is permitted, that y" 3 shall goe to the Bishoppe for writinge (for their safe standinge in theyr callinge) as unto a Civill magistrate in a matter belonginge onelye to the outwarde man, and none otherwise, ffor they holde, that thereby he receaveth not anye power to be a minister; or to lyke effect hath it bene concluded, or is practised amongest them." " 5 I'tm, in sondrie places of this realme such their determinations have been and are put in vse and practice : ...The sayde Snape renownced or woulde not stande in his ministerie by the callinge of the Bishoppe, and was agayne (as afore) allowed or called by the Classis; but woulde not thereupon administer the Lordes Supper. But afterwards the parishe of St. Peters afore sayde, or 10 PURITANISM. some of them, knoweinge that by reason of such deter- mination he might not accompte himself a full minister, untill some particulare congregation had chosen him ; They did thereupon choose him for their minister; And by that callinge and as afore, doth he stande in his ministerie at this present, and not by the callinge of the Bishoppe." "6 Item, one Larke not farre from Wellingboroughe in the sayde shier being not afore a minister accordinge to the churche of Englande had the approbation of the sayde Snape and others of a Classis upon tryall made of him : And then was by them willed for his safe standinge to goe to a Bishoppe (as to a Civill magistrate onelye) for writinge." About the year 1572 the Bishop of Peterborough wrote to Lord Burleigh "seeing the Puritan preachers are increased and wax bold very bold and stout-like men, that seem to be not without friends." At this time Robert Browne, the leader of the Brownists or Inde- pendents, was living in the neighbouring county of Rutland. Evidently this neighbourhood was a trouble to the Bishops. CHAPTER III. HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. LET us see what further religious influences would be likely to touch the ancestors of the people of Bluntisham and its neighbourhood who formed themselves into the church there and founded this meeting-house a century ago. Anthony Tuckney, D.D., Master and Regius Professor of Divinity, was born in 1599, and bred at Emmanuel Col- lege, Cambridge, of which College he was chosen Fellow. After preaching at Boston, he was called to London in 1643 by the Parliament, being one of two members chosen of the Assembly for the county of Lincoln ; in which capacity he was much esteemed. It being then a dangerous time in the county by reason of the heat of the war, he took his whole family with him and never returned ; though at the desire of the people, he kept the title to the Vicarage till the Restoration, but received none of the profits. In 1645 he was made Master of Emmanuel College, which required him to spend some months in the year at Cambridge; and in 1648 he returned with his family thither, and was that year Vice-Chancellor. In 1653 he was chosen Master of St John's, and afterwards Regius Professor. He was by virtue of this office Rector of Somersham in Huntingdon- shire. 12 HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. He was a man of very great humility; and yet few kept up more authority than he did in the University when Vice-Chancellor, or in the College he was Master of; to which many gentlemen and ministers sent their sons, merely upon his account. After the Restoration, provision was made by the Act for confirming and restoring ministers, that Dr Tuckney should be restored to his Rectory of Somersham ; but he did not enjoy it long. He was one of the Commis- sioners at the Savoy, but was soon out of hopes of any accommodation. Before the time for the conferences was expired, he received a royal letter, professing great respect, signed by Secretary Nicholas, dated Jan. 1, which gave him a supersedeas from his public employment, promising him 100 per annum during life, to be paid by his suc- cessor. The good Doctor thought it would be to no purpose to contend with the court, and that he could not long keep his places as things were then managed : he therefore resigned them both ; and had the annuity which was pro- mised punctually paid for several years by Dr Gunning who succeeded him. He retired to London, and there preached sometimes in his own house, and occasionally in the families of several friends. During the plague he lived at Colwick Hall near Nottingham, where he was soon troubled, and confined in the house of Robert Pierre- point, Esq. ; but was there treated very civilly, and in a few months discharged. Upon the five-mile Act, he removed to Oundle and thence to Warmington in Northampton- shire. After the fire in London, in which his library was burnt, he removed into Leicestershire, and next to Totten- ham, from whence in 1669 he removed to Spittle-yard, where he died in 1670 in the 71st year of his age. He had the character of an eminently pious and learned man, a true friend, an indefatigable student, a candid HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. 13 disputant, and an earnest promoter of truth and god- liness. During some part of the interval between the years 1639 and 1645, Mr Richard Jennings, of Catharine Hall, Cambridge, lived in Huntingdonshire. He was born at Ipswich, and entered on his ministry in Northamptonshire in the year 1639, during which time he lived with "that excellent Christian Mrs Elms, noted for her hospitality to the Nonconformists." In 1645 he settled at Combe in Suffolk, and was ejected Aug. 24, 1662. He continued in the parsonage house till 1678, when he came to London. He spent the latter part of his life with three pious widows at Clapham, where he died Sept. 12, 1709. He was a man of unaffected piety ; a considerable scholar ; one of a good invention and a strong memory. He retained his juvenile learning in an advanced age, and was able to preach with- out notes at ninety-two. He passed through the world without noise and ostentation, and without even appearing in print. About the year 1642, Mr Ferdinando Pool who was born at Ulsthorpe in Leicestershire in T596 settled in Huntingdonshire, being presented with the living of Great Catworth, worth about 130 per annum, where he lived for about seven years ; yet such was his contempt for the world, such his affection for the good people of Thrumpton, and such his grateful respect to his good friend Mrs Piggot, that when the war was over, he voluntarily left his living, and returned to a much smaller allowance. Mrs Piggot of Thrumpton had by her interest and money sheltered him from the Bishop's courts for several years, and in her family his seven children had been born; he left her when the civil war broke out, settling in Huntingdon- shire as one of the associated counties. He remained 14 HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. at Thruinpton until Bartholomew day, 1662, when he was ejected. He died in 1676, aged upwards of eighty years. He was a man of great humility and sincerity, a true Nathanael without guile. He also possessed considerable ministerial abilities, he was particularly eminent in prayer, and had many remarkable answers to his prayers. Early in the 17th century William Laud, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was Archdeacon of Huntingdon, teaching the clergy that the Lord's Supper was a sacrifice, and the table an altar, a doctrine which necessitated the officiating " priest." Thus this test question of the Romish Church was brought prominently before the people of Huntingdonshire. John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, from his episcopal palace at Buckden, whither he had retired, being in disgrace with the court on account of his Puritan proclivities, resisted these first innovations on the reformed worship, and when the disciples of Laud began to remove the Communion tables from the body of the church or chancel, and place them altar- wise by the east window, so as if possible to convert them into altars, Bishop Williams told them it was contrary to the law of the Church of England, which in its Homilies warns us " to take heed lest our Communion become a sacrifice." There must have been much of the Puritan spirit in Huntingdon, of which later in this century we have evi- dence in a letter written from the gaol at Ilchester by the Rev. Joseph Allein, an ejected minister from Taunton, and author of " An Alarm to the Unconverted," to his friends at Huntingdon. This letter is dated " from the prison at Juelchester October 29th, 1663," where he was confined together with six other ministers and fifty Quakers, who all had their lodgings in one room, the air of which became so offensive that they took out HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. 15 the glass and removed some of the tiles from the roof. At the Act of Uniformity in 1662 the Rev. Samuel Brooks, B.D., Fellow of Catharine Hall, Cambridge, was turned out for refusing to take the engagement. He was a learned man, a great school divine, and a laborious tutor, who always had a numerous company of pupils of good rank. He died on his own estate in Essex. Stephen Marshal, the leader in the Smectymnuus con- troversy with Bishop Hall, was a native of Godmanchester. This celebrated book was written before the civil war in answer to Bishop Hall's " Divine Right of Episcopacy." It is curious that Huntingdon, where for a time Laud was Archdeacon, should have furnished several Puritan leaders, but perhaps we should rather regard it as the natural con- sequence. In Archbishop Laud's Metropolitan Visitation, about 1634, his Vicar-General says: "At Huntingdon, divers ministers in that division were suspected of Puritanisme, but being questioned professed absolute conformitie." Prudent men ! Here Oliver Cromwell was born and brought up, and it was with the Puritans he delighted to associate. He invited the sturdy Nonconformists to his house, read the Scriptures and prayed with them there, and it is reported took his own turn at exhortation. Carlyle says, " Oliver naturally consorted henceforth (1624) with the Puritan Clergy, in preference to the other kind ; zealously attended their ministry when possible ; consorted with Puritans in general, many of whom were Gentry of his own rank, some of them Nobility of much higher rank. A modest devout man, solemnly intent, ' to make his calling and election sure/ to whom in credible 16 HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. dialect, the Voice of the Highest had spoken. Whose earnestness, sagacity and manly worth gradually made him conspicuous in his circle among such. The Puritans were already numerous. John Hampden, Oliver's Cousin, was a devout Puritan, John Pym the like ; Lord Brook, Lord Say, Lord Montague, Puritans in the better ranks, and in every rank abounded. Already either in conscious act, or in clear tendency, the far greater part of the serious Thought and Manhood of England had declared itself Puritan." Dr Beard was Master of the public school at Hunting- don, and Oliver Cromwell's schoolmaster. He wrote a book entitled " The theatre of God's judgments, by Thomas Beard, D.D., and preacher of the word of God in the Town of Huntingdon " ; which he dedicated to the Mayor and burgesses, for several good reasons, one of them, ' because Mr Mayor, you were my scholar and brought up in my house." Oliver Cromwell, in his first speech in Parliament made 11 Feb. 162f, said, "I have heard by relation from one Dr Beard, that Dr Alabaster has preached flat Popery at Paul's Cross, and that the Bishop of Winchester had commanded him as his Dio- cesan, he should preach nothing to the contrary." Where- upon it was ordered that Dr Beard of Huntingdon be written to by Mr Speaker, to come up and testify against the Bishop the order for Dr Beard to be delivered to Mr Cromwell. But the king hastily interfered, and on Monday, the 2nd of March, 1629, Mr Speaker Finch was forcibly held down in his chair " till it pleased the house to rise " ; while Parliament with locked doors, refusing egress or ingress even to the King's Usher, passed their three reso- lutions then immediately vanished, for they understood the soldiery was coming. Probably Cromwell brought word to Dr Beard that he was not wanted now. On the HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. 17 8th of July, 1630, Oliver Cromwell, Esquire, and Thomas Beard, D.D., were named Justices of the Peace for the Borough of Huntingdon. At St Ives they had a Puritan Vicar the Rev. Job Tookie, who for refusing to read the " Book of Sports " was ejected from the living. The Book of Sports was issued in the year 1618, though in deference to Archbishop Abbot's objections, it was not enforced ; but under Laud, orders were issued in 1633 that it should be read in all the churches. This order when emphasised by the Bishops occasioned great trouble to the Puritan clergy. Mr Tookie's ejectment would probably date not later than this year, perhaps before. During Bishop Wren's episcopate at Ely thirty-one clergy were ejected owing to the Bishop's " articles " and refusal to comply with the order to read the Book of Sports. Mr Tookie, of St Ives' Vicarage, was the son of a minister, and his family had furnished several ministers in the past. He had a son Job, who was ejected under the Act of Uniformity in 1662. "He went to St Albans, where he was preacher in the Abbey, and gathered a Congregational Church, but the wideness of the place dimmed his voice. He had eminent ministerial gifts, which were well approved. Being persecuted he came to London in 1665, and lived in Bunhill fields, where great numbers about him died of the plague, but he and his were preserved. He took all opportunities to preach till his strength failed him. He was eminent for his gift in prayer, in which he was so happy in his expression and so pathetic in his supplication as warmed the hearts of his hearers and contributed not a little to the usefulness of his labours during the whole of his ministry." He died in London, Nov. 20th, 1670, aged 54 years. The persecu- tions of the Puritans of Laud's times are apt to be over- T. B. 2 18 HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. looked, owing perhaps to the overwhelming numbers who suffered in 1662, and the subsequent years of persecution. Yet no inconsiderable number of Puritan clergy suffered for their nonconformity under Laud. One example shall be given. During Laud's London episcopate Thomas Shepard accepted the invitation to Earl's Colne in Essex to be " lecturer " there ; the people desired he would re- main with them longer than the three years, the usual term for the engagement of a lecturer. Shepard was not suffered to remain here unmolested. On the 16th Dec. he was summoned by Laud to appear before him in London. Mr Shepard relates : " As soon as I came in the morning about 8 of the clock falling into a fit of rage he (Bp Laud) asked me what degree I had taken in the University. I answered him that I was Master of Arts. He asked of what College. I answered Emmanuel (Camb.). He asked how long I had been in his diocese. I answered three years and upwards. He asked who maintained me all this while, charging me to deal plainly with him, adding, withal, that he had been more cheated and equivocated with, by some of my malignant faction, than ever was man by Jesuit. At the speaking of which words, he looked as though blood would have gushed out of his face, and did shake as if he had been haunted by an ague fit, to my apprehension by reason of his extreme malice and secret venom. I desired him to excuse me. He fell then to threaten me and withal to bitter railing, calling me all to naught, saying, ' you prating coxcomb, do you think all the learning is in your brain ?' He then pro- nounced his sentence thus. I charge you that you neither preach, read, marry, bury, nor exercise any ministerial function in any part of my diocese ; for if you do and I HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. 19 hear of it, I'll be upon your back and follow you wherever you go, in any part of the kingdom, and so everlastingly disable you ! I besought him not to deal so in regard to a poor town. And here he stopped me in what I was going to say. ' A poor town ! You have made a com- pany of seditions, factions, bedlams; and what do you prate to me of a poor town ?' I prayed him to suffer me to catechize on the Sabbath-day in the afternoon. He replied, ' Spare your breath, I'll have no such fellows prate in my diocese. Get you gone ; and now make your com- plaint to whom you will.' So away I went, and blessed be God that I may go to him !" True to his word, Laud allowed him no rest at Earl's Colne ; after several narrow escapes from the officers of the Star Chamber he retired to another place to friends in Essex, then to Keddon, five miles from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and other places. Still pursued and deprived of the means of support, he turned his thoughts to New England, and reached Boston in America, October, 1635, after a year's delay through various accidents. With regard to the Lecturers, Carlyle tells us that in the year 1624 Dr Preston, a Puritan College Doctor, formed a plan for buying up such lay-impropriations as offered themselves, and by these supporting good ministers in destitute places. " The funds thus gained by subscrip- tions which the Doctor set on foot, were also used to defray the expenses of ' Lecturers ' or Preachers, who having scruples about ceremonies, were not generally in priests' orders, but in ' Deacons' ' or some other orders, and who had permission to ' lecture.' The wealthy merchants of London, almost all of them Puritans, took it up ; and by degrees, the wealthier Puritans over England at large. These ' Lecturers ' preached or lectured in market towns 22 20 HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. on market-days ; on Sunday afternoons for some idle or otherwise engaged Priest, or as ' running Lecturers,' now here, now there. They were greatly followed by the serious part of the community. Some years later these Lecturers had risen to such a height, that Dr Laud, now come into authority, took them seriously in hand, and with patient detail hunted them mostly out ; nay, brought the Scoffers themselves, and their whole enter- prise, into the Star Chamber, and there with emphasis enough, and heavy damages, amid huge rumour from the public, suppressed them." This was in 1633. Dr Wells was one of these "Lecturers" and so was poor Mr Shepard. Another of these "Lecturers" was Mr John Pointer, who was born about the year 1599. " Left an orphan, his guardian was enabled to give him a liberal education by means of a very considerable estate left for that purpose. At the age of eighteen, he entered Oxford University and became a Canon at Brasenose College. He after- wards spent a year at Leyden. On returning he under- took a lecture at St Mildred's, Bread Street, London, where he preached twice every Lord's day. He was forced to quit this by the Idcumbent, after carrying it on for two years. Afterwards he was called to be lecturer at Wootten- waven in Warwickshire ; from whence he was forced to depart by the opposition of some Papists. He next ob- tained from the company of mercers in London a lecturer's place in Huntingdon, though he had eleven competitors." Mr Pointer was then apparently about thirty-one years old when he went to Huntingdon. He preached there on Saturday (the market day) for the benefit of the country people, and gave the town a sermon every Lord's-day in the great church, gratis. Some years afterwards, the lecture being supplied by neighbouring ministers, he HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. 21 preached twice every Lord's-day. In this place he con- tinued eleven years, till the troubles of the war forced him to London, whence he afterwards removed to Oxford with his family. Then for three years he had no stated employment, being unwilling to accept any sequestered living, though he had the offer of about twenty of that sort. At length he preached for Dr French in his turn at Whitehall. When the doctor died, without any seeking for it, Cromwell put him into the vacant canonry of Christ-Church, Oxford, making him promise that he would take as much pains in the ministry as he had done at Huntingdon ; which he did, by preaching once in six weeks in the college, and every Lord's-day at St Thomas' church, gratis. He kept his turn also at St Mary's, and in four towns in the country. After the Restoration he was cast out, and he never preached afterwards; but visited the sick, whom he was " officious to serve." He was very studious ; a grave preacher, and a man of con- siderable worth. He died Jan. 2, 1683, in his eighty- fourth or eighty-fifth year. In the year 1631 Oliver Cromwell, leaving his mother in her house at Huntingdon, came to live at Slepe Hall, St Ives, where he farmed until 1636, when he removed to Ely. In a letter he wrote to Mr Storie, dated St Ives, 11 Jan. 1635, he writes: "they that build up spiritual temples, they are the men truly charitable, truly pious. Such a work as this was your erecting the lecture in our country in the which you placed Dr Wells, a man of good- ness and industry and ability to do good every way ; not short of any I know in England, and I am persuaded that sithence his coming the Lord has by him wrought much good among us." In Dr Williams' library there is a MS. informing us 22 HUNTINGDON, ST IVES, AND THE LECTURERS. there was -in 1715 a congregation of Presbyterians in St Ives with 500 members. And in Calamy's History of his own times, in 1713, it is said that the minister of this congregation was Michael Harrison, who had been a minister of the Established Church, but had seceded to the Presbyterians. The year 1642 is assigned, in the Con- gregational Year Book, as that of the foundation of this church. Report is doubtless correct in asserting that it had its origin in the ejectment of the Rev. Job Tookie from the Vicarage. CHAPTER IV. DR ROBERT WILDE. DR ROBERT WILDE was born at St Ives in 1609. He was destined for the church, and was chosen Minister of Aynho, in Northamptonshire, after the ejectment of a "scandalous" minister by the Parliamentary Commis- sioners. He was a candidate for this place with another minister, and when asked by a friend whether he or his competitor had got Aynho, Wilde answered, "We have divided it I have got the AY, and he has got the NO." At Aynho he remained until his ejectment, 24 Aug. 1662. He was celebrated for his wit and his poetry ; the above is a specimen of the former, and a specimen of the latter we will give. Dr Calamy tells us that Richard Baxter was much displeased with Dr Wilde's facetiousness, and thought it injurious to his usefulness as a minister. Baxter, on his way from Kidderminster to London, called upon him at Aynho to reprove him " as the times were very dark." When he came there he found the Doctor had gone to church, it being observed by him and his people as a fast day. Baxter got into a corner of the church, and when the sermon was over came to the Doctor, thanked him warmly for his sermon, and desired that he would reprove and rebuke him sharply, as he deserved it. Baxter added, " For my great uncharitable- 24 DR ROBERT WILDE. ness and folly in believing reports," and he then explained why he had called upon him. A minister who knew Wilde personally writes thus of him : " He was excellently qualified unto his ministerial work ; none more melted or melting in prayer, nor more serious and fervent in preach- ing Christ and his gospel." Calamy adds that " those who knew him, commended him, not only for his serious- ness, but also for his strict temperance and sobriety. He was very serious in serious things." On his ejectment he retired to Oundle, where he died in 1679, aged 70 years. A little before his death he preached on Rev. xivth and 12th verse, " Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus," when he said, " It is but a short time and I shall soon be in Paradise." As Dr Wilde was different to the usually conceived type of a Puritan, it will be interesting to know more of his character. Wood says that "he was a fat, jolly, and boon Presbyterian," and elsewhere speaks of " the humour of Dr Robert Wilde, the poet." Dr Wilde's poems were originally published in sheets, and in 1670 they were collected and published in one volume. They enjoyed an immense popularity. Dry den says that " Wilde was the Wither of the City, and that the citizens bought more editions of his works than would lie under all the pies at the Lord Mayor's Christ- mas." When his famous poem first .came out in 1660, Dryden says " I have seen them reading it in the midst of 'Change time; nay, so vehemently were they at it, that they lost their bargains by the candles' ends." Dryden adds, "it was equally well received amongst great people." One of his poems describes the character of a leader amongst the nonconformists, one of the ejected ministers, and shows Dr Wilde's appreciation of him, and his principles; we give it here. It is entitled DR ROBERT WILDE. 25 " A poem upon the Imprisonment of Mr Calamy in New- gate." "This page I send you, sir, your Newgate fate Not to condole but to congratulate. I envy not our mitred men their places, Their rich preferments, nor their richer faces : To see them steeple upon steeple set, As if they meant that way to heaven get. I can behold them take into their gills A dose of churches as men swallow pills, And never grieve at it : let them swim in wine While others drown in tears, I'll not repine. But my heart truly grudges, I confess, That you thus loaded are with happiness ; For so it is : and you more blessed are In Peter's chain, than if you sat in his chair. One sermon hath preferred you, so much honour A man could scarce have had from Bishop Bonner; Whilst we, your brethren, poor erratics be, You are a glorious fixed star we see. Hundreds of us turn out of house and home, To a safe habitation you are come. What though it be a gaol? Shame and disgrace Rise only from the crime, not from the place. Who thinks reproach or injury is done By an eclipse to the unspotted sun? He only by that black upon his brow Allures spectators more; and so do you. Let me find honey, though upon a rod, And prize the prison, where my Keeper's God: Newgate, or hell, were heaven, if Christ were there He made the stable so, and sepulchre. Indeed the place did for your presence call : Prisons do want perfuming most of all. Thanks to the Bishop and his good Lord Mayor, Who turned the den of thieves into the house of prayer ; And may some thief by you converted be, Like him who suffered in Christ's company. Now would I had sight of your mittimus ; Fain would I know why you are dealt with thus. DR ROBERT WILDE. Gaoler, set forth your prisoner at the bar. Sir, you shall hear what your offences are. First, It is proved that you, being dead in law, As if you cared not for that death a straw, Did walk and haunt your church as if you'd scare Away the reader and his Common Prayer. Nay, 'twill be proved you did not only walk, But like a Puritan, your ghost did talk. Dead, and yet preach ! those Presbyterian slaves Will not give over preaching in their graves. Item, You played the thief, and if't be so, Good reason, sir, to Newgate you should go : And now you're there, some dare to swear you are The greatest pickpocket that e'er came there. Your Wife, too, little better than yourself you make She's the receiver of each purse you take. But your great theft, you act it in your church I do not mean you did your sermon lurch, That's crime canonical but you did pray And preach, so that you stole men's hearts away, So that good man to whom your place doth fall Will find they have no heart for him at all. This felony deserved imprisonment. What ! can't you Nonconformists be content Sermons to make, except you preach them too? They, that your places have, this work can do. Thirdly, 'Tis proved, when you pray most devout For all good men, you leave the bishops out: This makes Seer Sheldon by his powerful spell Conjure and lay you safe in Newgate hell: Would I were there too, I should like it well. I would you durst swap punishments with me ; Pain makes me fitter for the company Of roaring boys ; and you may lie in bed, Now your name's up ; pray do it in my stead. And if it be denied us to change places, Let us for sympathy compare our cases ; For if in suffering we both agree, Sir, I may challenge you to pity me : I am the older gaol bird ; my hard fate Hath kept me twenty years in Cripplegate ; Old Bishop Gout, that lordly proud disease, DR ROBERT WILDE. 27 Took my fat body for his diocese, Where he keeps court, there visits every limb, And makes them, Levite-like, conform to him. Severely he doth article each joint, And makes inquiry into every point; A bitter enemy to preaching, he Hath half a year sometimes suspended me ; And if he find me painful in my station, Down I am sure to go next Visitation; He binds up, looseth ; sets up and pulls down ; Pretends he draws all humours from the crown. But I am sure he maketh such ado, His humours trouble head and members too: He hath me now in hand, and ere he goes, I fear for heretics he'll burn my toes. Oh, I would give all I am worth, a fee, That from his jurisdiction I were free! Now, sir, you find our sufferings do agree, One bishop clapt up you, another me : But Oh ! the difference too is very great You are allowed to walk, to drink, to eat ; I want them all, and ne'er a penny get ; And though you be debarred your liberty, Yet all your visitors I hope are free. Good men, good women, and good angels come, And make your prison better than your home. And may it be so till your foes repent They gave you such a rich imprisonment. Dr Wilde did not differ so much from the leaders of the Puritans as many suppose. Milton, Colonel Hutchinson, Selden, and Owen fairly representative Puritans were all distinguished by their graceful dress and their polished manners. Bastwick finds fault with the Independents : " you shall find them with cuffs, and those great ones, at their very heels, and with more silver and gold upon their clothes and at their heels (for these upstarts must now have silver spurs) than many great and honourable personages have in their purses." Anthony Wood charges 28 DR ROBERT WILDE. Owen at the University, " with scorning all formality a young scholar, with powdered hair, snake-bone band-strings with very large tassels, and Spanish leather boots, with large lawn tops and his hat mostly cocked, instead of being a good example to the University." Cromwell himself, when Whitelock told him, on his return from Sweden, how he had amused the members of his Embassy with music and dancing in the long winter nights, expressed his emphatic approval " of such very good diversions." One of the most popular preachers of the Commonwealth was Henry Smith, whose sermons, like Latimer's, abound in broad English humour. Milton, who appears to have thought that his works would only be read by the Puritan section of his countrymen, wrote for them "L' Allegro" and " Comus ". See also Mrs Hutehinson's portrait of her husband. We have already mentioned two ejected ministers who were born in the puritan town of St Ives. There is yet a third who was born there Mr Robert Perrot ; as his useful life was spent partly as minister at Dean in the adjoining county of Bedfordshire, and after his ejectment from that living, in Aug. 1662, in his native county of Huntingdonshire, a short sketch of him here will not be out of place. He was a serious, lively, useful preacher, took great pains in visiting his flock (so Calamy tells us), and was remarkable for starting and prudently managing spiritual discourse in common conversation. Indeed his whole carriage was exemplary. He practised physic, and after his ejectment attempted to settle as a physician, first at Kettering, and then at Nottingham ; but the breaking out of the plague, by the coming of some Londoners in 1666, prevented the one, and many incon- veniences the other. About this time he had an oppor- DR ROBERT WILDE. tunity of preaching in Huntingdonshire for Mr Rede, in a public church near Buckden. Though this was under Bishop Laney's eye, he met with no molestation. Here he continued three years, and left on the death of Mr Rede. He went to Maidstone in Kent, where besides practising physic, he preached twice on the Lord's-day, and held a lecture besides. Here he died, aged 87 years. In his last sickness he was very composed and resigned ; neither fond of life nor afraid of death. CHAPTEK V. MR HENRY DENNE. WE now pass from St Ives and its puritan interest of the first half of the 17th century, to return to it later on, when we will mention a few indications of the non- conformist influence which it exercised in the second half of that century. In 1641 the inhabitants of Huntingdon- shire petitioned Parliament, expressing their sympathy with the Lord Kimbolton, impeached by Charles of high treason, and beseeching them, ' to root out the Papists and their religion, to devote the Popish lords and bishops, and others, from the house of Peers, and exenterate these evil counsellors from that illustrious assembly.' In Edwards's "Gangrana" published in 1646 we are told that the Isle of Ely abounded in Sectaries. About this time the neigh- bourhood of Bluntisham was much stirred by the ener- getic gospel preaching of Mr Henry Denne, who was educated at Cambridge University and ordained in the year 1630. He afterwards embraced Puritan views and exercised great influence. He joined the Arminian Bap- tists, and became a member of the church meeting in Bell Alley, Coleman Street, London. This Church sent him forth into Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, to propagate Christian truth. His labours were effectual ; many churches sprang iuto existence, amongst them those of Fenstanton MR HENRY DENNE. 31 and Warboys. Before becoming a Baptist he was curate at Pyrton in Hertfordshire, fulfilling for ten years the duties of a parochial minister. In December, 1641, he preached at Baldock a visitation sermon which gave rise to much excitement, and ultimately to his separation from the Anglican Church. In this sermon, preached before the Clergy, he embodied those great truths of God's word, which for ten years he had delivered to his own parish- ioners. But they were unpleasing to many of his clerical auditory, scarcely less so than the fidelity with which he reproved their vices. " Thus do you," he boldly says, " in some cases dissolve in the tavern, that which you con- firmed in the pulpit, making a mock at all the ordinances of God, and seducing those by your conversation for whom Christ died." Mr Denne sought to revive the knowledge of the gospel, at the same time he denounced pluralities and the time-serving and licentiousness of the clergy. But while Presbyterians and Independents were free to preach anywhere not so the Baptists. Towards the close of 1644, the Cambridge committee for providing ministers and removing " scandalous " ones, arrested and imprisoned Mr Denne. By the influence of Mr Desborough or Disbrowe, a brother-in-law of Cromwell, the matter was brought before parliament, and Mr Denne soon released. In the same year or early in 1645 he became minister of the parish of Eltisley in Cambridgeshire, though his residence was at Caxton, about a mile distant. James Disbrowe, lord of the manor of Eltisley and brother of Major-General Disbrowe (says Noble the Tory writer) whose name appears in the Fenstanton records as elder of the church, " has placed over the parish of Eltisley Mr Henry Denne whom he had, through the interest of the all-powerful Mr Cromwell, released from prison 32 MR HENRY DENNE. Psalm singing was as heinous a sin here, as bending the knee to Baal, and it was then as much noted for the devout exercises practised there, as any other canting place in the kingdom." Mr Denne appears as the de- fender of the Quakers ; and pleads in the same pamphlet, for a perfect toleration of papists, in respect of their re- ligious belief ; transubstantiation, purgatory etc. cannot he argues affect their relations with the state, but if they refuse to abjure such doctrines as " faith is not to be kept with heretics," or the like, then let them be dealt with as men not fit to live in a commonwealth ; let them be banished, thus anticipating Locke's judgment in this matter. Mr Denne also defends the celebrated "Tinker" of Bedford against the " frivolous " charges of the Cambridge Reader in Rhetoric. As for Bunyan, says Mr Denne, "you seem to be angry with the Tinker, because he strives to mend souls as well as kettles and pans. The main drift of your letter is to prove that none may preach except they be sent." In Denne's j udgment it was enough that the church at Bedford had called the " Tinker " to preach the gospel. He needed no better commission than that. Mr Denne died, it appears, about the year 1661. This epitaph, said to have been written by a clergyman, a friend of his, only remains : " To tell his wisdom, learning, goodness unto men, I need say no more; but here lies Henry Denne." We can add a few more facts concerning Mr Henry Denne. Edwards in his "Gangraena" states that Denne employed himself during the year 1646 in "going up and down the country, spreading his corrupt opinions and dipping." In June he was arrested at Spalding in Lincolnshire, and brought before two justices of the peace, MR HENRY DENNE. 33 charged with baptizing in the river four persons. We are not informed of the result of his arrest, except that he was confined "to the provost marshal for that day, being the Lord's day, that he should not make a meeting nor stir in the town that day by people resorting to him." Mr Denne appears, like many men of his pro- fession, to have entered the army, and to have taken part in the war which overthrew the king, having got into trouble for disputing the right of Parliament to order the troops to Ireland, owing to the engagement the troops had made on Triplow Heath. The next intelligence we have of Denne is from a newspaper of the time : "Satur- day, May 19, 1649. This day also came intelligence of the surprisal of the revolted troops about Burford in Oxfordshire; they, being twelve troops, were all taken; very few escaped, some of the chief of which were im- mediately condemned to suffer death, viz. Cornet Tompson and Cornet Denn, or, as we call him, Parson Denn; and two corporals, Church and Perkins; these being found guilty upon the articles of mutiny are therefore adjudged to die. Cornet Denn, being a man of parts, and one who had been esteemed for piety and honesty, received his sentence with great manliness and fortitude of spirit, and yet with so much relenting and acknowledgement of the just hand of God, the justice of the sentence, and his submission thereunto, that he seemed to rejoice with willingness to suffer under so righteous a sentence, and he professed openly, that although his heart could not accuse him of an evil meaning, yet was he convinced of the evil of the action, and dangerous consequences of it."... The four condemned persons were, one after the other, brought to the place of execution, in the sight of the rest of the soldiers. Cornet Tompson and the two T. B. 3 34 MR HENRY DENNE. Corporals suffered the penalty of the law. Cornet Denne being called out, came with much composure of spirit, expecting to die, but the general having commanded the Lieutenant-General Cromwell to let him know at the place of execution that his excellency had extended mercy to him, he soberly and suddenly replied: "I am not worthy of such a mercy; 'I am more ashamed to live than afraid to die' weeping bitterly." In justice to Mr Denne we must give an extract from his explanation. He says : " We did believe that there stood between us and Ireland (referring to the order to march into Ireland) an engagement made by the army at that famous rendezvous at Triploe Heath," when the army engaged to disband, on certain conditions one of which was that a council should be formed of officers, and two soldiers from each regiment. Denne, with others, urged upon his Excellency this condition, "before we could submit to his Excellency's order." Denne makes manifest to his fellow-soldiers, in his declaration to them, that he regrets his late rash attempt, and adds: "Oh ! how necessary it is at all times to draw near unto God for wisdom and understanding to guide and direct us in all our ways." In the month of October, 1653, Denne laid before the Fenstanton church a proposal to traverse the neighbouring districts in order to preach the gospel, reminding them of our Lord's com- mand to communicate to all the riches of His grace. The church elected him as one of their evangelists, and sent him forth to the work. During the year 1654 Mr Denne extended his evangelistic labours to the county of Kent, revisiting the scenes of his ministry ten years' before. It led to an earnest request on the part of the church at Canterbury, that Mr Denne should be per- mitted to settle in that city. MR HENRY DENNE. 35 Early in 1655 he proceeded thither, with the cordial concurrence of the church at Fenstanton, being supplied by them with money, horses, and all necessary con- veniences for the journey. On his arrival at Canterbury, early in February, he found a hearty welcome, and a house prepared for his reception. Shortly after the Resto- ration of Charles II., the insurrection of Venner gave rise to the apprehension and imprisonment of many Baptists, and others supposed to sympathise with the principles of the Fifth Monarchy men. On the very day of the royal proclamation, forbidding the assembling for worship of "anabaptists, quakers, and other sectaries," the London baptists presented to the King "An humble Apology," protesting against their sup- posed participation in Venner's rebellion. The royal ear was closed. This apology and others were in vain. The meeting-houses were invaded by a rude and savage soldiery, and the prisons were soon filled with the victims of intolerance. In common with the Quakers, a few baptists deemed it sinful to take an oath, and their release from imprisonment was rendered still more hopeless by the Bill brought into the House of Commons in May 1661, for the suppression of baptists and quakers, having especial reference to their refusal to swear. Mr Denne came forward, and addressed his brethren in prison, endeavouring to show them that to take an oath is a lawful act, sanctioned by the word of God. From the time of its formation till the year 1676 or 1677, the church at Fenstanton enjoyed the services of Mr John Denne as elder. He was the eldest son of Mr Henry Denne and resided at Caxton. The first volume of the Fenstanton records is all in his neat, good, writing 32 36 MR HENRY DENNE. and consists of 384 quarto pages. Mr John Denne after- wards resided at St. Ives, and died in the year 1676 or 1679. In the expressive language of the records he " died in the faith." A family of six children were born to him between 1654 and 1672. Mr Henry Denne had a second son Jonathan who with his wife Sarah were members of the Fenstanton Church ; they had six children registered as born to them. This strong Missionary Church of Fenstanton lived on, past the middle of the present century, and in con- junction with that of Warboys, must have been an active religious influence, bearing upon Bluntisham in the 17th and 18th centuries. Indeed we are expressly told that at a meeting held at Fenstanton on the fifth day of the fourth month 1653, Edmund Mayle declared their pro- ceedings at Over, and also at Bluntisham and Somersham. In the records of the Warboys church we are told " by the preaching of Henry Denne, many in this county received the faith, of whom some were of this town." The baptists disputed with Eusebius Hunt, " parish teacher of Warboys," concerning the baptism of infants, on which occasion it appears Henry Denne preached in " the stone house " or parish church. After a second dispute, Denne demanded of Hunt whether he judged it best to sprinkle infants or let them alone ? Hunt answered, " let them alone." This occurred in the year 1644. In the Fen- stanton church register the names and residences are given of members from 1645 to 1692. They appear to have been drawn from as many as thirty-eight parishes, a few of which we give : St Ives, Holywell, Haddenham, Eason, the Hemingfords, Papworth, Yelling, Gamlingay, Cone (no doubt Colne), Sutton, Over, Hoton (no doubt Houghton). Visitors, we are told, "did go to Somersham, Yelling, MR HENRY DENNE. 37 Holywell, Over, Earith, Colne, and several times to Blunt- isham, to see different church members residing at these places." " In the time of the Commonwealth Henry Denne was refused the use of the parish church at St Ives by the Minister's committee. He went outside the town and preached under a tree, telling the people that Christ had died for Judas as well as for Peter, after which Henry Denne shook the dust off his feet against St Ives and departed." CHAPTER VI. MASTERS FRANCIS HOLCROFT AND JOSEPH ODDY. THERE were two men whose lives, devoted to Christian teaching, exercised a notable and widely extended influ- ence in Cambridgeshire and the surrounding counties. These were Mr Francis Holcroft and Mr Joseph Oddy. Both were Masters of Arts of the Cambridge University, the one a Fellow of Clare Hall, and the other of Trinity College. Both were presented to livings in Cambridge- shire, Mr Holcroft to Bassingbourne, Mr Oddy to Meldreth, and both were ejected from their Fellowships and Livings by the Act of Uniformity in August, 1662. Closely asso- ciated in their Evangelistic work after their ejection, sometimes they shared the same prison, at other times were confined in different prisons at the same time and for the same reason. Both upon their release prosecuted their plans with renewed vigour, preaching at Cambridge in spite of a drum which the Gownsmen beat in their meeting, preaching too all over the country, followed by such multitudes that they were often forced to preach abroad. Five years only divided them in their deaths, and they lie buried side by side in the little burial ground at Oakington purchased by Mr Holcroft and bequeathed by him, together with a small estate for the poor of his Church, for a burial ground. Over them a toinb is MESSRS FRANCIS HOLCROFT AND JOSEPH ODDY. 39 erected, which may still be identified by travellers passing on the high road. These two men exercised an influence in the district, of which Cambridge is the centre, akin to that of the two Wesleys in their larger field of action. Calamy says, " These two men were the founders of almost all the non- conformist churches about Cambridgeshire the church at St Andrew's Street, Cambridge, being one of them and exercised a general superintendency over them, assisted by three other elders." Their earnest labours for the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ, and for the highest interests of their neighbours, kindled a corre- sponding earnestness in hearts, responsive to the heavenly call, making their hidden life in Christ manifest, quicken- ing it into new life a life doubtless in many instances transmitted from parents to children, and from friend to friend. Along with, and also apart from it, would pass traditions of acts the outcome of the renewed life all of which must have prepared the neighbourhood of Blunt - isham to respond to the efforts afterwards put forth by Mr Coxe Feary and his friends, when they founded their church, the centenary of whose meeting-house this narra- tive commemorates. A few particulars of the lives of Masters Holcroft and Oddy will interest those who value their work. Mr Francis Holcroft was son of a knight who lived at Westham near London, he was a pupil of Mr David Clarkson, and Chamber-fellow with Dr Tillotson, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. He embraced puri- tan principles, and became, when at Cambridge Univer- sity, a communicant with Mr Jephcot, of S waff ham -prior, eleven miles from Cambridge, who was ejected in 1662. His chamber being over the college-gate, he often observed a horse waiting before it a long time on Lord's-day morn- 40 MESSRS FRANCIS HOLCROFT AND JOSEPH ODDY. ings for one of the Fellows, to go to preach at Litlington, a village thirteen miles distant, and often returning with- out the preacher, who was much given to intemperance and debauchery. Touched with compassion for the souls of the neglected country people, and ashamed of con- tinuing idle in the college, when preaching was so much wanted, he offered to supply that parish. The offer was accepted, and his ministry was successful to the conversion and edification of many. About the year 1655 he accepted the living of Bassingbourn, where he laboured " in season and out of season," great multitudes following him. " Having become acquainted with many of the congregational judg- ment, he fell in with it, and became very zealous for it, so that he formed a church upon that plan, and was much against holding communion with the parish churches." Many of the members of his church living in distant villages, he and his assistant, Mr Oddy, administered the sacrament at one or other of these villages every Lord's-day. Mr Robinson writes that "After the ejectment Mr Holcroft considered himself as being still pastor of his flock ; and as they could not all meet in one place, he determined to meet and administer the ordinances to them in separate bodies, at the different towns where they lived. But as this would have been too much for one man he assembled his people at Eversden to consider the matter, when they chose Messrs Joseph Oddy, S. Corbyn, J. Waite, and Beare, elders. These all laboured in the same work till the next year, 1663, when Mr Holcroft was imprisoned in Cam- bridge Castle for preaching at Eversden, Mr Oddy for preaching at Meldreth, Mr Corbyn and Mr Waite shared the same fate, and Mr Beare escaped only by flight. While the Pastors and Elders were thus separated from their flock, the people continued to meet together, and MESSRS FRANCIS HOLCROFT AND JOSEPH ODDY. 41 passed their time in prayer and reading the scriptures. Sometimes some of the ejected ministers preached to them privately, and now and then the gaoler allowed Mr Hoi- croft to go out in the night and preach to them and administer the Lord's Supper. They had also letters from him, one of which was printed in 1688, entitled, 'A Word to the Saints from the Watch-Tower.' Mr Holcroft was considered the pastor of all the churches in the county, till soon after Mr Oddy's death, when these congregations became separate churches. This change was rendered necessary by Mr Holcroft's illness, first brought on by colds caught after excessive heat in preaching. This ill- ness induced melancholy, and he continued to decline till on January the 6th, 1692, he died, at Triplow, either in his 59th or 63rd year. His courage and spirits returned before his death and he departed with great joy." Mr Milway of Bury says of his preaching, " It appeared to me truly apostolical, primitive and divine." Mr Robinson says, "...he seems to have been one of those uncommon men in whom the excellencies of several centred. His learning was enough to have gained him an ample reputa- tion, but his knowledge of the gospel of Christ was aston- ishing. His preaching was less methodical than that of his contemporaries, but then it was more useful." Dr Calamy adds, " He was indefatigable in his labours, preaching perpetually about the country, so that there is scarcely a village in Cambridgeshire but some old person can shew you the barn where Holcroft preached. He had a lion-like courage, tempered with the most winning affability in his whole deportment. His doctrines were moderate Calvinism, and he had a great zeal for noncon- formity, though a still greater for true piety, which he revered even in his enemies. During his long imprison- 42 MESSRS FRANCIS HOLCROFT AXD JOSEPH ODDY. ment in Cambridge Castle he was exceedingly cheerful, and though in the latter part of his life his spirits failed, yet all his conversation was heavenly and divine." Mr Oddy was born at Leeds, and passed from his school there to Cambridge University. At some period he re- tired to Willingham, where he in 1667 took up the work of Mr Bradshaw, who had formed a church there in his own house, and at this time left Willingham for London. Mr Oddy not only preached to this people but also all over the Fens. He was so much followed, persons travelling over twenty miles to hear him, that he was sometimes constrained to preach in the open fields, on which account it is less to be wondered at that he was frequently imprisoned. He was once confined five years together, but at length his preaching privately to his friends was connived at. Upon the Indulgence in 1672 he retired to Cottenham and gave himself up entirely to itinerancy till his death, May 3rd, 1687. Mr Oddy was quick at repartee and apt at rebuke. On one occasion, soon after his release from prison, he was accosted by one of the Cambridge wits with, " Good day, Mr Oddy, Pray how fares your body? Methinks you look damnably thin ! " to which Mr Oddy promptly replied, " That Sir's your mistake, 'Tis for righteousness' sake; Damnation's the fruit of your sin ! " We must add one other anecdote of him, "When preaching one night in a wood between W T illingham and Cottenham, sitting upon his horse, that he might the more readily escape if molested by informers, he was broke in upon so abruptly, that he was thrown from his horse, and MESSRS FRANCIS HOLCROFT AND JOSEPH ODDY. 43 quite stunned by the fall. In this state of insensibility, he was laid by his persecutors across the horse and in that position carried to Cambridge Castle." In the recital by Mrs Churchman of her troubles of this time we are told " Persecution now came on apace ; the Dissenters could have no meetings but in woods and corners. I, myself, have seen our companies often alarmed with drums and soldiers. Every one was fined five pounds a month, for being in their company The great trial now came on ; they found and seized my beloved pastor (F. Holcroft) and carried him to ' Cambridge Castle,' but even there God appeared wonderfully for him \ he preached, and many souls were converted in that place." Mrs Churchman afterwards mentions attending a meeting at a place called "Toft." Mr Oddy (co-pastor with Mr Holcroft) preached. Among the State Papers is a Spy book showing the surveillance of the neighbourhood of Bedford and Cambridgeshire; it speaks of Meldreth, " where are concourses of many hundreds, both Indepen- dents and Baptists; that Francis Holcroft stops at the house of Widow Hawkes at Barlyn in Hertfordshire and holds meetings in the neighbourhood, three hundred at a time, and also meets with many hundreds at Cambridge." CHAPTER VII. THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. LET us now turn our attention to the direct and in- direct religious influence exercised by the nonconforming ministers. They were those who would not conform to the new " Act of Uniformity," which obliged all ministers of the State Church to declare their unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained in the book of Common Prayer etc. This they could not do, some for the excellent reason that it was not published until a few days before the 24th of August the very day ap- pointed for the ejection of such ministers as would not make the declaration. We cannot enumerate the many reasonable objections made by the nonconforming ministers. That they were in earnest they shewed by leaving their parsonages and casting themselves abroad on the world a few weeks before the tithe was collected. It is grievous to think of the sad farewells spoken and made in church and congregation, Rectory and Vicarage. They were driven from their pleasant homes, exchanging these for want and homeless wanderings. Amongst other things, the assent and consent, bound them to deny the Lord's Supper to all who would not take it kneeling. De Foe says "having occasion to go to THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. 45 Windsor with a gentleman with whom I had had some contest about the position of receiving this sacrament, and the coercions then in fashion, it chanced we went into the Royal Chapel of St George's and reviewing the fine painting I was surprised that the government persecuted the Dissenters for not receiving the Lord's-supper kneeling, while in the altar piece the Saviour was represented ad- ministering the Last Supper to his disciples all sitting round the table it was strange how a fair government could persecute its subjects for refusing to receive in a position which at the same time, they acknowledged thus publicly our Saviour himself did not practice at the first institution. My friend was astonished and struck dumb." Through the " Act of Uniformity " in the thousand parishes, the voice of the devout Teacher of truth and preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was silenced, and his familiar form seen no more in the house of the sick, nor at the bedside of the dying, nor speaking words of comfort to the bereaved, pointing them to the blessed hope of reunion in their risen Lord. The deep mourning of the ejected, and of those from whom they were separated, rendered more bitter by the sense of the injustice of the Act, cast a heavy cloud over the land. Its present and future consequences were most disastrous. Not only did the nonconformists suffer under the Act of Uniformity, but from an Act which received the Royal assent on the 31st October 1665 called the " Oxford five mile act." It required all parsons and others in holy orders who had not subscribed the " Act of Uniformity " to swear that under any circumstances it was unlawful to take up arms against the king, and that they would not at any time endeavour any alteration of government in church or state. Those nonconformist ministers who would not 46 THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. subscribe this oath, of passive obedience, were forbid under a penalty of forty pounds, except in passing the road, to come within five miles of any city, town corporate, or borough, that sends burgesses to Parliament, or within five miles of any parish, town, or place, wherein they had, since the passing of the act of oblivion, been parsons etc. or where they had preached in any conventicle. They were also rendered incapable of teaching any public or private schools, or of taking any boarders to be instructed, under the same penalty. In the year 1670 the Conventicle Act, was re-enacted with two additional clauses "that if any justice of the peace refuse to do his duty in the execu- tion of this act he shall forfeit five pounds ; and that all the clauses of this act, shall be construed most largely and beneficially for the suppressing conventicles, and for the justification and encouragement of all persons to be em- ployed in the execution of them." Although the Act says seditious conventicles, yet it is plain to any one acquainted with the history of those times and with the trials of those who were fined, that the real intention was to enforce con- formity to the establishment. The agents chiefly em- ployed were profligate mercenary informers who boasted to the conscientious sufferers that they were servants to the king and church, and that they would make them leave their conventicles and conform. Some of the worst men in the community found lucra- tive employment as spies ; their pay depending upon the diligence with which they hunted down the peaceable people who frequented the gatherings of the noncon- formists. They had every inducement to be vigilant, for they received 7 or 8, sometimes even as much as 15, for a single successful conviction. The common people had many stories of the judgments that befel the informers. THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. 47 After the Act of Uniformity came into force, Huntingdon- shire benefited by the presence of several of the ejected ministers who resided within the county. Mr Vintress was ejected from Church Brampton, Northamptonshire. He is said to have much resembled Mr Stephen Marshall, one of the authors of " Smectym- nuus," which title his initials commence who was born at Godmanchester. It is probable that Mr Marshall would sometimes visit his native place perhaps find shelter there during the persecutions, his presence may have been the attraction which induced Mr Vintress to settle at Godmanchester on his ejectment from Church Brampton in 1662. He died at Godmanchester and is spoken of as a person of great worth, and above the common level of ministerial abilities. Laney, Bishop of Lincoln, whose episcopal palace was at Buckden, allowed Mr Samuel Ainsworth, the ejected Rector of Kelmarsh and at this time continuing in his nonconformity, to preach publicly for some years together in the adjoining parish of Brampton. This good Bishop, we are told, also connived at the preaching of the Rev. Mr Rolt, the ejected minister of Tempsford, when for some time he preached publicly in a church near Buckden. We have already referred to a similar indulgence in the case of Mr Robert Perrot, ejected from Dean and a native of St Ives, Hunts. Nor was this good Bishop the only one who was friendly to the Nonconforming Ministers. Some years later, in the year 1681, Bishop Barlow dated a letter from Buckden, March 16th, written to the ejected minister of Long Whatton, Leicestershire. " My reverend brother, I have received yours, and this comes with my love and respects, to bring you thanks for the rational and pious book you so kindly sent me. Though my 48 THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. businesses be many and my infirmities more, being now past 74, yet I have read all your book, and some parts of it more than once, with great satisfaction and benefit. For in your meditations of the love of God and the world you have instructed me in several things which I knew not before, or at least considered not so seriously and so often as I might and ought I shall pray for a blessing upon you and your studies : and your prayers are heartily desired by and for your affectionate friend and brother, Thomas Lincoln." " To my reverend friend, Mr Samuel Shaw, at his house in Ashby de la Zouch." What a pity that such a correspondence was not more frequent be- tween these suffering nonconforming clergy and their conforming brethren in power. Mr John Moore, the ejected minister of Clavering, Essex, after his ejection, preached at Easton, in Hunting- donshire, where he had an estate. He died in 1673, and is described "as a man of an humble spirit and of a blameless conversation." Philip Nye, M.A., of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, was born 1596. In 1633 he went to Holland to escape Laud's persecutions. He returned at the be- ginning of the long parliament, and by the Earl of Manchester's favour became minister of Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire. " He had a great concern in choosing the members of the Assembly of divines, in which he was one of the dissenting brethren. He was one of the chap- lains who attended the commissioners to Charles I. in the Isle of Wight, 1647, and was made one of the Triers of ministers in 1652. He was also a principal person in managing the meeting of the congregational churches at the Savoy, by the Protector's orders ; when the Declara- tion of the faith, order, and practice of the congregational churches in England was agreed upon by their Elders THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. 49 and Messengers, October 12, 1658. After his ejectment he preached privately, as opportunity offered, to a congre- gation of Dissenters till the year 1672, when he died, aged 76. " He left behind him the character of a man of uncommon depth, who was seldom or never outstretched ; but was of too warm a spirit." He had drawn up a com- plete history of the old Puritan Dissenters ; but the MS. was unfortunately burnt at Alderman Clarkson's in the fire of London. But, besides the influence exercised by these good men after the ejectment under the Act of Uniformity, Aug. 24th, 1662, Huntingdonshire had the benefit of the previous years of puritan teaching in several parishes from which the ministers were after- wards ejected. From Bottlebridge Mr Simon King was ejected. He had been schoolmaster at Bridgnorth, where Mr Baxter and he lived together in the same house ; they were after- wards fellow-labourers in Coventry. After Mr King's ejectment in 1662 he lived at Long Orton, near Peter- borough. He is described as " an able scholar, a man of solid judgment, of an honest heart, and unblamable life ; inclined to no extremes." From the valuable parsonage of Elton, Mr Cooper was ejected in 1662. "He was a grave, venerable person of the Puritan stamp ; and a man of great note in this country, for the purity of his life, the prudence of his conduct, and his ministerial abilities. From Hemingford Mr Heath was ejected. From Overton Longville Mr Edward Spinks was ejected, who at the Restoration had been previously ejected from Castor in Northamptonshire, a living worth 300 a year, in the gift of the Bishop of Peterborough. " Mr Spinks was an able preacher and a man of great T. B. 4 50 THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. note. After he was silenced he lived near Mrs Elmes. his Wife's Mother, who had a good estate, and made all nonconformist ministers welcome at her house ; " pre- sumably this was in the same county as Overton Long- ville. From Cherry Orton Mr Gibson, M.A., was ejected, " a good scholar, and an eminent preacher." Mr Scott was also one of the ejected of this county. From Standground, Mr Richard Kidder was ejected ; he afterwards conformed and became Bishop of Bath and Wells. "He is well known as the author of a valuable work entitled ' The Messiah '." His predecessor in the living of Standground was Ken, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, where he composed his popular morning and evening hymns. He was afterwards translated to the bishopric of Bath and Wells ,Sfa of intercourse Mr Feary supplied a striking example. The habit of it indeed constituted one of the distin- guishing features of his character ; and it may be doubted whether the great success which attended his labours is not to be ascribed, under God, more to his diligence and tenderness in this respect than even to his preaching. " The loveliness of his deportment to his people will not be easily forgotten. He had a talent for insinuating re- ligious truth into their minds by conciliating their esteem, winning their affections and fixing their attention. His temper was so amiable, his conduct so gentle and his concern to do good so apparent to all, that even persons indisposed to religion would receive instruction from him pleasantly, and in some such instances it was received effectually. To the poor of his flock he was especially attentive, and on many occasions he has been known to leave the society of his more opulent friends to visit them. Indeed it was his general practice, when he went into any of the adjacent villages to dine with a friend, to steal away in the afternoon for an hour or two on purpose to call upon his poor friends to converse with them on spiritual subjects, which he would do in the most simple, artless and affectionate manner. If he found any of them in distress, he was sure to devise some plan for their relief; not unfrequently did he relieve them out of his own pocket; and when this was not the case, he would appeal to the liberality of his friends. He always took great delight in promoting the spiritual welfare of his young friends, who frequently flocked to his house on a Lord's-day evening, to enjoy his edifying conversation. He often told them that upon their conduct and exer- tions depended the prosperity of the cause, when he should have left the world." 220 LIFE OF MR COXE FEARY. That such a man should acquire influence in a society which he so faithfully and affectionately served is per- fectly natural ; but though this influence was at length considerable, he never perverted or abused it ; he never employed it to 'lord it over God's heritage/ or claimed any dominion over the faith of his people. Indeed, if such had ever been his intention, he took the most un- likely method to accomplish it ; for he continually in- culcated, both in preaching and conversation, the most dignified, liberal and independent principles. Convinced of the personal responsibility of every man for his own sentiments and conduct, and of his consequent right to freedom of enquiry and judgment, and knowing for him- self the value of intellectual independence, Mr Feary never wished for a moment to deprive others of a privilege which he himself estimated so highly. " To the law and to the testimony," he wished every sentiment he uttered to be brought for examination ; and while he pressed upon his people most earnestly the necessity of an interest in Christ, and the importance of eternal things, he exhorted them to 'search the Scriptures' for themselves, to think for themselves, and, with application by prayer to the fountain of grace and illumination, to judge for themselves whether the truths he delivered to them were so or not. Still his influence in the congregation, to a great extent, was in- evitable ; what he did not assume his people most freely yielded to him ; and thought themselves happy under his inspection and care. Thus he ruled most entirely in their hearts, and swayed over them a sceptre of love. He thought, he acted, he read, he prayed and preached for the whole of his hearers ; and all were well satisfied. If the meeting was to be enlarged, he was to project the plan : if a Sunday School was to be formed, he was to be LIFE OF MR COXE FEARY. 221 the leader : if poor friends were in distress, he was the man to whom they were to repair for advice and relief. Whatever difference of opinion might subsist among any of his hearers in matters relating to the cause, all were well satisfied with his superintendence." " His general knowledge was varied and extensive ; and, as much of it related to matters of business and the common affairs of life, his friends frequently sought his judgment in their own concerns, and seldom repented regulating their conduct by his advice. He was ever ready to listen to them ; he sympathised with them in their sorrows, participated with them in their joys ; and was highly delighted whenever it was in his power to render them any service. He was remarkable also for the facility with which he could transfer his attention from one person and subject to another." " Whether he was engaged with the builder, farmer, gardener or tradesman, he never was at a loss ; but could always adapt his con- versation to his circumstances, so as to instruct, or receive instruction from, those with whom he conversed." "He was an ardent friend to civil and religious liberty; detesting bigotry and intolerance wherever he met them, and by whomsoever they were displayed. If ever he was in danger of being betrayed into any transgression of the limits of moderation and decorum, it was on this topic : so strongly were his feelings excited when any instance of oppression or persecution was announced to him, that he could scarcely find language to express his detestation of it. For a short time, indeed, at one period of his life, as he himself confesses, political and other speculations pro- duced an unhappy effect upon his mind, and diminished the ardour of his spiritual feelings; an effect which is sure to occur, whenever any inferior object or pursuit is 222 LIFE OF MR COXE FEARY. allowed to encroach upon that station which things of the highest interest ought to occupy alone. This considera- tion appears not to have been overlooked by Mr Feary ; for to his honour it may be remarked that, in after life, how warmly soever he might continue to feel, and at times to express himself, when he thought the interests of liberty were endangered or attacked, the spirituality of his mind suffered no depression, his ministerial and pastoral assiduity no check, and his preparation for a future world no interruption. So strong and so dominant was the religious principle in his heart. To the concerns of the present state he gave that kind degree of attention which they appeared to deserve ; ' But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. ' In some men the assertion of independent principles is often accompanied with the practice of oppression ; and the liberty they allow is in the inverse ratio of that which they claim. In Mr Feary the love of liberty was a genuine sentiment, prompted by benevolence, and carried out into practice. Hence arose the kindness with which he treated the poor of his flock, his domestics and dependents, and his liberality towards all who had intercourse with him. His conduct, in other respects, was as independent as his principles ; nothing could induce him to act in opposition to the dictates of his conscience and his con- viction of duty. Though he stood alone, he would main- tain the 'cause of right;' and persevere in any course he was assured, on careful enquiry, was consistent with the will of God. Such a union of firmness with modesty, of humility with zeal, of ardent feeling with steady per- severance, of genuine piety with liveliness of temper, as Mr Feary exhibited, is not often presented to our view." LIFE OF MR COXE FEARY. 223 "During a period of thirty-five years did this excellent man preside over the church and congregation with fidelity and love ; and the greatest harmony ever sub- sisted between himself and them. In that time were admitted into the church about two hundred and seventy members, the greater part of whom received their first religious impressions from his ministry. Such a number, in so long a period, would not be deemed extraordinary in some situations, where the church was previously organized and the congregation large ; but here it should be recollected, there was not only no church when Mr Feary began his labours, but no materials of which to form one, until some years afterwards; and it is some- what remarkable, that one of the persons to whom he first read a sermon of Mr Whitfield's, was nearly the last member he received into his church." "Although Mr Feary was domestic in his pastoral, as well as his personal habits, spending his days almost entirely among his own people, and therefore seldom ex- changed services with other ministers in the neighbour- hood, yet he ever manifested towards them a spirit of the greatest cordiality, and was beloved and esteemed by them in return. He also enjoyed the friendship of several eminent men, who became acquainted with him in his seclusion, duly appreciated his worth, and spoke of him in terms of the sincerest regard. Among these may be noticed the late Rev. Andrew Fuller, of Ketter- ing; the Rev. Robert Hall, of Leicester, who resided at Cambridge during the most active period of Mr Feary 's life; the Rev. W. Jay, of Bath; and Dr Gregory, Pro- fessor of Mathematics in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich." "In estimating the value of a character, much con- 224 LIFE OF MR COXE FEARY. sideration is due to the situation and pursuits of him who sustains it ; and in comparing the different occupa- tions of mankind, none, in the eye of a Christian, will appear to be of superior, or equal importance to that of him who seeks to prepare his fellow- creatures for an eternal world. Many persons have run a more splendid career of worldly glory, many have been distinguished by higher endowments and brighter talents ; but if a life of piety and benevolence, of activity and usefulness in the church of Christ, be entitled to commendation and remembrance, few indeed have a greater claim to them than this amiable and excellent man. All who feel an in- terest in the prevalence of true religion, will be thankful to God for what he has wrought by him : will rejoice in the good which he has been the instrument of effecting ; and will delight to contemplate its consequences as likely to extend to future generations in this world, and to everlasting ages in the world to come." Several sentences in this chapter were extracts from a letter written by Mr Matthew Tebbutt, of Bluntisham, to Mr Bosworth. LIFE OF MR COXE FEARY. 225 Inscription on a tablet in the Meeting-House at Bluntisham. By Mr Newton Bosworth. IN THE ADJOINING BURIAL-GROUND ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OP THE REV D . COXE FEARY, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS THE FAITHFUL PASTOR OF THIS CHURCH, WHICH, UNDER GOD, WAS RAISED BY HIS INSTRUMENTALITY, NURTURED BY HIS CARE, AND INSTRUCTED IN DIVINE THINGS, ALIKE BY HIS PREACHING, AND HIS EXAMPLE. HAVING LEARNED IN EARLY LIFE THE VALUE OF RELIGION, AND EXPERIENCED ITS EFFICACY TO PURIFY THE HEART, AND LEAD THE SOUL TO GOD, HE WAS PROMPTED BY THAT LOVE WHICH THE GOSPEL INSPIRES, TO DIFFUSE AMONG HIS FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS THE BLESSINGS HE HAD HIMSELF RECEIVED. HlS SUCCESS WAS GREAT, AND HIS REJOICING ON ACCOUNT OF IT, SINCERE. BY A LIFE OF ZEALOUS AND BENEVOLENT EXERTION IN THE CAUSE OF ClIRIST, AND FOR THE GOOD OF SOULS, HE ENDEARED HIMSELF TO A NUMEROUS CONGREGATION, WHO HERE RECORD THEIR GRATITUDE FOR HIS LABOURS, AND THEIR AFFECTIONATE VENERATION FOR HIS MEMORY. HE DIED ON THE 22ND DAY OF APRIL, 1822, IN THE 63RD YEAR OF HIS AGE. T. B. 15 CHAPTER XXIV. MR COXE FEARY. Mr Coxe Feary must have been a loveable man. He had the milk of human kindness in his nature. His genial disposition, so kindly, so gentle, and his affable manners expressing these qualities so simply, made him a general favourite. The respect people bore to him was swallowed up in their love. It is pleasant to contemplate the farmer pastor: contact with nature in the field with his farm labourers, kept him in touch with the rural con- gregation. Their anxieties were his, as were their hopes. A good seeding, a dry hay time, a fine harvest, were a joy to him and to them. Many a time has the homely pastor smelt the sweet breath of the kine in the pasture or the straw yard, and watched them chewing the cud of content, a satisfied look has come over his face, as his fingers felt the soft well-filled coats of his fatting stock, or regarded his sleek sleeping pigs. Many a spring morning has burst upon him, when with joy he has listened to the singing of the birds, and heard the lowing of the cattle expectant of food and attention; has been refreshed by the sparkles of dew on the tender herb, and the delicious suggestion of odour from the dampened mould. In the evening he has watched the cows returning again, lowing as they come ; and listened to their lazy crunching of the sweet hay in MR COXE FEARY. 227 the stall, as they yielded to the milk-maid their rich burden. The sight of the chased lark seeking his protec- tion touched his heart. The budding trees nature teem- ing with life and beauty the harvest field, full of activity and the promise of a speedy harvest home all awake his fancy and stir his feelings. He carried a critic's eye up the straight even furrow, left by the ploughshare, and it rested on the row of shining rooks following doing good work. The smooth rolled barley ground, with the fresh shoots of the corn pushing through the soil after the warm April showers, gratified him. He took pride in the clean stubble, discovered after harvest, and in the well hoed field of roots. In these respects Mr Feary was most suitable for the position his Christian character and aims qualified him to fill at Bluntisham. He was the chairman of the farmers' market dinner at St Ives on Mondays and took his part in parish work. His father and mother lived in the same house their son afterwards inhabited. They took their son Coxe to the church to be baptized, and from the register we learn that their names were Benjamin and Elizabeth Feary. It was this lady who being deaf made the pulpit stair her " coign of vantage " for hearing her son speak. Mr Coxe Feary tells us that when he was a boy he did the work on the farm that boys can do. His family appears to have lived in the parish from the early part of the seventeenth century. The house in which Mr Coxe Feary was born, and in which he died, is the first on the left of the road which leads to the village of Bluntisham out of the St Ives and Earith high road. It now belongs to the grandsons of Mr Coxe Feary, Mr Feary's daughter Naomi having married her first cousin once removed, Mr Stephen Feary, the grandson of the minister's only brother, whose son 152 228 MR COXE FEARY. John was the said Stephen's father. This house fronts the rectory grounds which are on the opposite side of the road. It is conveniently near the Meeting-house which stands a little higher up the road on the opposite side. We must go into the garden behind this house which he owned as well as inhabited. It is a pleasant garden and bears evidence of the good taste of him who planned it. Here are the gravel walks which Mr Feary laid out and the lawn which he laid down. These evergreen shrubs and trees were chosen and planted by him, and the forest trees overshadowing the arbour are also his planting, all done by clever hands, prompted by a heart in love with its work. The summer-house on its low raised mound was his handiwork, in its bower of trees, w r ith its opening to the sunny south, its pleasant view of pasture and river, and beyond an extensive gently rising landscape of rural fields and villages, marked by the church spires of Holywell and Over. It was from this summer-house that Mr Coxe Feary addressed his neighbours and friends in the early times before the barn was used they gathered on the grass plot around and in front of the low mound on which he stood to declare the goodness of Jesus Christ. When Mr Simeon of Cambridge preached at Mr Feary's he began the service at five o'clock in the morning; he took up his position where the pump now stands at the back of the house, the doors and windows of which were open, and the overflow of the rooms and passages stood round him in the court which divides the house from the garden. This service impressed the people and good effects followed. Mr Feary had one brother Stephen, who married a sister of Mr William Prentice. He lived in Sutton fen and attended the ministry of the Rev. Thomas Robinson of MR COXE FEARY. 229 Mepal Church, who afterwards removed to Leicester: he was the author of " Scripture Characters." Mr Stephen Feary was greatly concerned at his brother's dissent it would bring disgrace upon his family, and when he finally left the Establishment and became a preacher and a settled minister, it must, he thought, bring financial failure upon him. But after a time he changed his views on these matters, put a different relative value upon things, and eventually joined his brother's church at Bluntisham. Henceforth he will be a regular worshipper at the meeting there. His daughter, Mrs John Ilett, said, "My father had a few books and read them ; " of these his family has preserved Robinson's " Scripture Characters," and " Scott's Bible," which he took in parts, as they were issued. Mr Coxe Feary was twice married. His first wife was Miss Elizabeth Potto, of Earith, who lived only twelve months after their union. In November 1798, his second marriage took place. The lady was Mrs Jane Bosquain, widow of John Bosquain, esq. of St Ives, Huntingdonshire, whose family were French Refugees in 1684. Her maiden name was Shortland, a Nonconformist family at Rowell in Northamp- tonshire. Only one daughter survived her parents Naomi afterwards Mrs Stephen Feary. An old friend of Mr Feary mentions in a letter Mr Feary's strong disappro- bation of, and dislike to, all clerical badges, titles and dis- tinctions; "it was his wont, warmly to exclaim in reference thereto, ' Never will / be styled, or nicknamed Reverend, for reverend and holy is His name, and it shall not be mine'" There are two matters of interest in Mr Audley's "Memoirs of Mr Feary" which must not be omitted. Both relate to his Baptism. He tells us " that although 230 MR COXE FEARY. Mr Feaiy became a decided Baptist, and, as might be expected, the greater part of the church gradually united with him in that sentiment; yet there was nothing rigid either in him or in them. The church was open for all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and Pedo- Baptists were received into its communion with the greatest cordiality." The other paragraph is concerning Mr Baron, who performed the ceremony. " He was pastor of the Baptist Church at Cottenham, in Cambridgeshire. He was born at Soham, and when a boy was acquainted with Mr Fuller," of Kettering, " whose superiority of mind to all the other boys with whom he associated, was evi- dently manifested. Mr Baron became a member of the Independent Church at Isleham, and was called by that church to the work of the ministry. After preaching some months to the church at Cottenham, with great acceptance, he was invited to be their pastor, accepted the invitation, and was ordained July 2nd, 1783." The old meeting-house at Cottenham was the place in which those excellent men, Messrs. Holcroft and Oddy, preached, and their pulpit is still preserved; but before Mr Baron's ordination, as it was out of repair and too small for the congregation, the present meeting-house was erected. But there was such a continued increase of hearers, that the new meeting-house was three times enlarged, and considerable numbers were added to the church. Mr Baron was one of Mr Feary's early associates, and to the day of his death, Nov. 7, 1807, he was highly esteemed by him, and by his friends at Bluntisbam, both as a Christian and a minister of Jesus Christ." His great talent lay in village preaching, there he was quite at home, and was exceeded by few in the county. In token of the interest Mr Feary took in the people of his flock we record the MR COXE FEARY. 231 fact that after the Sunday luncheon at the inn, etc., the farmers and their wives were accustomed to gather in Mr Feary's sitting-room, where he would converse with them till afternoon service. The room was often crowded. There is an interesting entry by Mr Feary in his diary memorials, "May 8, 1786. This day found myself much exercised about my temporal affairs, which very much embarrassed me, not seeing any probable source of relief to answer my present demands. In my distress, I retired to the Throne of Grace, spread my case before the Lord, and was enabled to plead his promise and faithful- ness to his children. To his glory I record it, he heard and answered me in the day of my distress, by sending me a supply from a friend from whom I had no expectation. ' Thus in the mount of the Lord, his gracious hand shall be seen.'" Doubtless it was in reference to pecuniary em- barrassment at this time that his brother's remark was made which rendered poor Mr Feary " extremely uncom- fortable in his mind;" he chronicles the remark in his diary on the 19th May, "he believed I should, through my foolishness, bring myself to poverty." This was said in reference to his turning preacher. But he never wanted, and was enabled to keep things together, maintain himself and his family respectably, and leave a nice little property to his only surviving child, Naomi. Mr Coxe Feary was buried in the meeting-house ground. On the tombstone is the following inscription composed by Mr Matthew Tebbutt " Here mingle with the dust the mortal remains of the founder of this Cause the excellent Coxe Feary ; whose amiable temper, various knowledge, and agreeable manners, commanded universal esteem ; while his affectionate solicitude to promote the welfare of his flock, endeared him to them while living, 232 MR COXE FEARY. and has embalmed his name in their memory now he is no more. He died 22nd April, 1822, aged 63 years." The following obituary notice of Mr Feary is believed to have been written for the county newspaper by his friend Mr Matthew Tebbutt : " Died a few weeks ago at Bluntisham in this county the Rev. Coxe Feary, who was for many years a highly respectable and eminently useful minister of a numerous and flourishing church and congregation of Protestant Dissenters in that Village. Few men have laboured in the cause of God with more zeal and perseverance than he did, or have more faith- fully and affectionately discharged the solemn and important duties of the ministerial office. The private as well as the public character of this excellent man was truly admirable, being one continued exhibition of all those eminent virtues and lovely qualities, which dignify elevate and adorn human nature. Such was the urbanity of his manners, the goodness of his heart, and the unaffected sweetness of his disposition, that he never failed to obtain the warm regard of all with whom he was acquainted. Although Mr Feary was eminent for the gentler graces, and for a mind possessed of the most delicate and refined sensibility, he was by no means destitute of those solid principles of action which are the foundation of moral excellence. His mind was too deeply imbued with love to God and with good will to men, ever to permit him to be led astray by any hopes or fears from the path of rectitude and duty. It was this rare and happy union of whatever is amiable and gentle with the strictest integrity, and the greatest inflexibility and decision, in which the dis- tinguishing excellence of his character consisted. The ruling passion of his heart was love. This generous and powerful principle it was which taught him in imitation of that great and glorious Being who sends His rain on the just and on the unjust and whose tender mercies are over all His works to MR COXE FEARY. 233 discover the utmost benignity towards all liis fellow-creatures around him. In reviewing his whole character, as developed by his uniform conduct it is obvious that he was one of those rare specimens of human nature which approach as near to a state of moral perfection as it is possible for man to attain, in the present imperfect state. The last two or three years of the life of this good man were embittered by a series of bodily affliction and distress, but the happy moment at length arrived which terminated all his troubles and introduced his happy spirit into the regions of immortal life and joy." CHAPTER XXV. SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUNTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. WE confine these to the Pastorate of Mr Coxe Feary. Elizabeth Feary of Bluntisham, mantua maker, and the sister of C. Feary, the pastor of the church, was admitted on a profession of faith in Christ Jesus, on the 16th September, 1787, was baptized on the 13th May, 1792. After a life of usefulness, as a Christian and a member of the church, she died much lamented by her friends and the poor of the church and congregation on the 2nd October, 1807. She was married to Mr Asplan, one of the deacons of the church. Thomas Ratford, of Fendrayton, Cambridgeshire, Dairy- man, was admitted Nov. loth, 1787. When he joined the church he gave the following account, viz. : He was induced by a neighbour to come to Bluntisham as a matter of curiosity to hear a boy preach : on entering the barn he found his attention arrested by the novelty of the scene, and his mind was very much impressed with the hymn, which Mr Asplan was reading. It was that hymn 'Broad is the road that leads to death, and thousands walk together there, while wisdom shows a narrower path, with here and there a traveller,' etc. This produced such severe reflections upon his past sinful and wicked conduct, as to fling him into inexpressible horror, and distress of SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUNTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. 235 mind, he looked upon himself as a monster of wickedness, neither fit to live nor die ; thus burdened with guilt, and tormented with the fear of Hell, he was under such temptation to destroy himself, that he went to a pond with full purpose to put an end to a life, too miserable to be sustained. But God who is rich in mercy, at the moment he gave up all for lost, graciously appeared for him, by delivering him from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son. He died suddenly on the 10th Dec., 1813, aged 84 years, after making an honourable profession of the gospel nearly thirty years. 1788, May 15. James Green, of Swavesey, Cambridge- shire, Shoemaker, admitted. 1788, May 15. Chas. Cole, of Swavesey, Cambridge- shire, Farmer, was admitted on a profession of faith. 1788, May 18. Mary Finch, the Wife of Edward Finch of Houghton, Labourer, admitted. 1788, June 15. James Ingle, of Over, Camb., Farmer, admitted. 1788, Elizabeth Cole, the Widow of Wm. Cole, of Blun- tisham, Schoolmaster, admitted. 1788, Elizabeth Royston, the Widow of Mr Royston, of Woodhurst, Farmer, admitted: she was called by divine grace under the ministry of Mr Venn of Yelling. 1789, May 4. Ann Shepperson, the Wife of Wm. Shepperson, of Ramsey, Farmer, admitted : after an honour- able profession of the gospel, she died Dec. 12th, 1802, full of divine consolation in the Lord. 1790, Dec. 24. Hannah, the Wife of Henry Kent, of the Parish of Earith, Gentleman, admitted. She was a woman remarkable for her good sense, amiable dis- position, benevolence of heart, and zeal for the cause of God. 236 SELECTIOXS FROM THE BLUXTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. 1790, Dec. 24. Elizabeth, the Wife of John Bell, of Earith, Fowler, admitted. 1791, June 9. Ann Christmas, the Wife of J. Christ- mas, admitted. Died Nov. 1804. 1791, Dec. 1. John Nunn, of the parish of Over, Camb. Farmer, admitted, after giving a most pleasing and edifying account of the Lord's gracious dealings with him, and of the reasons of his withdrawing himself from the church of Christ at Willingham, where he formerly stood a member. He died Feb. 1793. 1792, April 26. William Gregory, Schoolmaster, of Bluntisham, admitted. 1793, July. Susanah Willson, Wife of Thomas Willson, of Witton, admitted. 1796, Feb. 21. Stephen Feary, of Sutton Fen, Isle of Ely, Farmer, the only Brother of Coxe Feary, admitted. 1796, May 28. John Ayers, of Earith Bridge, Willing- ham, Camb., Fisherman, admitted, he was a most ex- cellent Christian and entered into rest May 28th, 1807. 1796, Dec. 5. Noble Robinson, of St Ives, admitted., after relating a pleasing and interesting account of the Lord's gracious dealings with him. 1799, Jan. 16. Thomas Ulph, of St Ives, Ironmonger, admitted. 1799, Sept. Jane Feary, Wife of Coxe Feary, the Pastor of the Church, admitted. 1800, Oct. 22. Ann Jackson, of Houghton, admitted. 1800, Nov. 28. Daniel White, a very amiable youth, son of Thos. White, of Bluntisham, Dairyman : he was apprenticed at Cambridge, and while there attended Mr Simeon's church, who took great notice of him. His friend Coxe Feary procured him a situation suited to his inclinations, as Student in the Bristol Academy, where he SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUNTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. 237 entered on his studies Jan. 8, 1801, under the patronage of the Bristol fund. He was baptized June 3, 1801, and preached at Bluntisham the same day for the first time ; after continuing four years at Bristol, he was invited to a Baptist church, at Cirencester, Gloucestershire. 1801, Feb. 18. Jonathan Ilett, formerly of Somer- sham, Farmer. He died full of hope, April 8, 1805. His funeral sermon from Deut. xxxii. 9 and 10. 1802, Dec. 1. Mary Ilett, Wife of Mr J. Ilett, Farmer, in Somersham Fen, died Dec. 1814. 1803, July 31. Edward Camps, of Wilburton. Gentle- man, admitted on giving a very pleasing and interesting account of the Lord's gracious dealings with him. 1803, Aug. 28. William Camps, of Wilburton, Camb. Gentleman, admitted. He with his Brother, Mr Edward Camps, fitted up a place for public worship upon their own premises, a congregation having been gathered, they chose Mr Langford, a schoolmaster in the village to be their Pastor. The two brothers applied for their dismissal on this account, Dec. 1808. 1803, Dec. 20. Ann Tebbutt, Wife of William Tebbutt, gentleman, admitted. 1804, Jan. 18. William Tebbutt, Bluntisham, gentle- man, admitted. He went to Cambridge to bring his youngest son from school ; leading the horse to the water, the animal rose up and came down with his forefeet upon his leg, which brought on a violent fever, of which he died, in the course of a few weeks, on the llth Jan., 1815. The following account was found among his papers after his death and contains the substance of what he delivered to the church when he was admitted. " My first im- pressions of a religious nature were in reading Hervey's Meditations, a book which I purchased about fourteen 238 SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUNTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. years ago, and such were my impressions at the time that it became a matter of serious enquiry with me What must I do to be saved ? I thought the preachers I had been in the habit of hearing were men that bore no resemblance to the author of that book. From this view of things I was resolved to go somewhere else, and in taking a view of the neighbourhood where I lived Dr Haweis was presented to my mind, accordingly I went ; but the humbling doctrines of the gospel which he so eminently set forth were at first not very palatable to me who accounted myself pretty moral, who had escaped the gross vices of the age ; but by constantly attending, my views on the subject altered, and I trust I can say I felt my need as well as my interest in the Saviour of mankind. In going constantly there I formed an acquaintance with several religious characters from whom I received no small advantages, and the loss of whom I regretted at leaving that country. I remember once in particular being invited to spend a sabbath evening where the con- versation turned upon religious subjects and prayer, and where we did not break up until near midnight ; the con- versation made a lasting impression on my mind, which convinced me of the propriety of our strengthening and confirming one another in our most holy faith ; thus I continued to go very comfortably until Providence bv a variety of circumstances fixed my situation here. On coming to Bluntisham, not having an opportunity of hear- ing the gospel in the church, such were my prejudices, that I had no wish to hear it anywhere else. Conse- quently not attending to the means, my zeal for divine things gradually declined and wore away when it pleased God to remove my Uncle by death, and my Partner in life seemed to give a decided preference to worship in this SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUXTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. 239 place (i.e. the Nonconformist meeting-house), which at first was not very agreeable to me, bat finding it to be the bent of her mind it induced me to unite with her rather than be separated. Accordingly I began to come now and then, until at length I came altogether, but still I was full of doubts and fears, lest I should be wrong in dissenting from the Church of England ; but in going to an ordination at St Neots, my mind was relieved from that embarrassment, that, with reading works on the sub- ject has confirmed me in the principles of Dissent. Thus I stand this day desiring to enter into church fellowship and communion with you, hoping through divine grace to adorn my profession by a suitable life and conversation, so long as I remain among you." 1804, June 18. Francis Paul, of St Ives, admitted. 1807, June 4. Elizabeth Watts, Wife of Wm. Watts, of Bluntisham, Labourer, died Dec. 1808. 1808, Feb. 4. Mary Paul, of St Ives, admitted. In a very long letter to the church she writes that it was her "happiness to be brought up by religious Parents whose earnest prayer and solicitude was to train us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." She also refers to the benefit she derived from the sermons of Mr Coxe Feary, especially one from Deut. xxxii. 2, and by reading the 18th chapter of Dr Doddridge's "Rise and Progress." 1811, May 11. Mrs Smith, of Colne, Wife of John Smith, Labourer, admitted. Died Jan. 1812. 1812, Ap. 2. Wakefield Cooper, of Woodhurst, Labourer, admitted. 1813, Dec. 29. William Ellis, of Colne, Labourer, admitted. 1813, Dec. 29. Thomas Bid well, of Colne, Labourer, admitted. 240 SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUNTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. 1814, Mar. 3. Sarah Butcher, Colne, dressmaker, Niece of Mr Coxc Feary, admitted. 1814, Mar. 31. Ann Pedley, Widow of Wm. Pedley, of Earith, Labourer, admitted. 1814, Mar. 31. Eliz. Kignal, of Earith, admitted. 1814, June 1. Thos. Wilderspin, of Needingworth, admitted. 1814, Dec. 1. Ann Ekins, Wife of George Ekins, of Woodhurst, Farmer, admitted, upon giving the following account of her religious experience. " Long time have I laboured under a desire of joining God's people, but have frequently been, discouraged when I have heard how others have been enabled to stand up and tell the time and manner of their convictions and conversion. Were I to begin with my convictions it would be from a child but through the follies of youth, and from being also in a situa- tion unfriendly to religion these convictions were smothered until through the invitation of Mr Ilett's family I was brought to hear the preaching of Mr Feary, where I trust the Lord met with me, though sin and Satan have often drawn me aside. In these dark seasons I have been very much distressed. I trust, although I cannot ascertain when and how, and by what steps and advances the blessed change was wrought, yet through grace, I can say, one thing I know, whereas I was once blind and now I see myself a lost undone creature by nature unable to extricate myself, and I would cast myself entirely upon the merits of Christ's death and sufferings for redemption, whose mercy is extended to the chief of sinners, or else with such a heart as mine I dare not presume. Should I be per- mitted to cast in my lot with the people of God, I am well aware what watchfulness is required, and nothing draws me back so iQuch as a fear of dishonouring the Lord, if I should be left to the propensities of my own heart. ANN EKINS." Dec. 1st, 1814. SELECTIONS FROM THE BLUNTISHAM CHURCH BOOK. 241 1815, Nov. 13. Willm. Watts, of Colne, admitted. He spoke for some time in a most engaging manner of what the Lord had done for him, saying that his religious impressions were occasioned by a dream in which he be- held a most awful display of the Last Day, when Jesus Christ shall judge the world in righteousness. His mind was so affected by the sight, that the impression terminated in a change of heart, which has been manifested by an amiable and lovely deportment for more than two years. 1815, May 3. Mary Feary, Bluntisham, mantua- maker, was admitted on giving a most interesting account of the manner in which she was brought out of darkness into the light of the gospel. 1815, May 3. Ann Giles, of Colne, mantua-maker, admitted. 1817, Feb. 27. Coxe Butcher, of Colne. Nephew of C. Feary, admitted. 1817, Dec. 4. William Weston, Somersham, Wheel- wright, an amiable youth of about nineteen years of age. He gave a most interesting account of his religious views and feelings, which indicated an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile. It was truly charming. T.B. - 16 CHAPTER XXVI. SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. Mr Coxe Feary in his "Memorials" writes: "1786, May 17th. This evening I walked to Somersham, and for the first time preached there, from Ephes. ii. 1 3. The barn was very full, my mind was in some degree at liberty, the people very serious, and I hope the Lord was with us of a truth." For some time meetings were held in the barn, till, their numbers increasing, the friends there decided to have a regular place of worship, and we are told by Mr Audley "Mr Feary having several members and friends at Somersham, two miles from Bluntisham, to whom he preached lectures, they were desirous of a more comfortable place than that in which they had worshipped for their occasional meetings. Ground therefore was purchased, and a very neat meeting-house erected, which was opened in the spring of 1812. Mr Fuller, of Kettering, preached an excellent sermon at Bluntisham the preceding evening, and the next morning a very encouraging one at Somersham, from Zech. iv. 10, 'Who hath despised the day of small things ? ' The congregation was so large in the afternoon, that it was thought expedient to have the service in a close. Mr Ragsdell, of Thrapston, preached from Matt. vi. 10, ' Thy Kingdom come.' The sermon in the evening was by Mr Edmonds, of Cambridge, from Psalm Ixxiv. 21, ' Arise, God, plead thine own cause.'" SOMERSHAM, COLXE AND WOODHURST. 243 It appears that the zealous Baptist minister of Need- ingworth, Mr Thomas Ladson, previous to this, had fre- quently visited Somersham and continued to do so till his death, preaching in houses opened for him. When he died, the persons who attended his services appear chiefly to have joined the Bluntisham congregation under Mr Feary. Mr Ladson was a High Calviuist, and is reputed to have said, " A man under peace has no more to do with the law than a dead man with his old shoes." This was received as though intended in the debased antinomian sense, and not in its original and Apostolic meaning " Therefore ye are no longer under the law, but under grace." When Mr Ladson first held meetings at Somersham, the resident clergyman was much annoyed, and sum- moned him to appear at the Huntingdon Assizes for holding a conventicle and creating a disturbance, but Ladson being protected by the " Act of Toleration," which had recently come into force, the petty persecution fell to the ground. The Curate's action appears to have strengthened Mr Ladson's cause, for shortly afterwards a cottage at the bottom of Church Lane was converted into a permanent meeting-house for his followers. A grave-yard attached to this meeting-house is still in exis- tence, being probably one of the smallest in the kingdom. The "Act of Toleration" alluded to as having recently come into force was that modification of the legal dis- abilities under which dissenters had laboured imposed by Queen Elizabeth and by the " Act of Uniformity " and the "Test and Corporation Acts." This "modification" became law in 1779 just ninety years after the other modifications of these Elizabethan and Stuart pena statutes, which modification was enacted in the reigu 162 244 SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. of William and Mary, and was called " The Act of Toleration." Before 1779 all Dissenting preachers and teachers were required to take oaths and subscribe be- fore a general or quarter session all the Articles of Religion excepting the thirty-fourth and fifty-sixth, or neglecting to do so, were liable to the penalties of the " Act of Uniformity " and the " Conventicle " and " Five Mile Acts" of Charles II. The names of all sub- scribers to these Articles were required to be registered. Dr Doddridge was summoned by a clergyman for non- compliance with the provisions under the " Test Act " respecting Dissenting Teachers, but the prosecution was stopped by order of George II., who declared that he would have no prosecution for conscience sake during his reign. It was fortunate for Mr Ladson that he was protected by the new " modification " against the perse- cuting intolerance of the Curate. The congregation at Somersham still continued a branch of the Bluntisham church, but in the year 1818 became a separate community. Its independence came about in this way. In that year Mr Coxe Feary was seized with paralysis, and was so ill that he was obliged to give up active work, and the church at Bluntisham had to get preaching supplies, one of whom they chose for their new minister. An earlier supply Mr Joseph Belsher being much liked by the Somersham part of the Blun- tisham congregation, they, to the number of fourteen, requested their dismission, in order to form themselves into a separate church of the same faith and order. With this request the church at Bluntisham complied. Somers- ham became consequently a separate church ; and having chosen Mr Belsher for their pastor, they addressed an affectionate letter to the church at Bluntisham, in which, SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. 245 among other things, they say, " It would afford us pleasure, and give to the world a proof of your regard, if you would permit our esteemed friend, your pastor, to take a part in the solemnities of our Ordination, on the 17th March, 1819." Mr Feary was incapable of attending, but Mr Green (Mr Feary's co-pastor) went, and gave the charge to Mr Belsher. Colne was another village regularly visited by Mr Coxe Feary and his friends. Meetings for prayer were held week by week in some cottage offered for the purpose. At one time these meetings took place regularly in the cottage of James Blake, a weaver. Comparatively recently a pretty little meeting-house has been erected by the Bluntisham congregation at a cost of 225. It was opened on the 15th Dec. 1869. The first record we have of Mr Feary's visits to Wood- hurst is in his "Memorials," the diary in which for a few early years he made some entries. " May 24th, 1786. This evening, expounded the 42nd Psalm at Woodhurst. Found my mind comfortable in speaking to the people. Many were refreshed, and made to rejoice in the Lord their God." These visits to Wood- hurst were frequent and regular ; the meetings were held in a cottage, and were much valued by the people. We learn from the oldest living member of the Bluntisham Church, admitted 31st April, 1829, a pleasant account of the primitive ways of the little band of earnest Bluntisham folk, who so frequently walked over to Woodhurst, to hold meetings there. Miss Gregory, the daughter of one of the mothers of the Church, for her mother, then Miss Ann Fordham, was one of the foundation members of 1786, has herself been for more than half a century a nursing mother of the church at Bluntisham. She has often heard 246 SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. her mother describe the walks to and from Woodhurst on these occasions. How, after the cottage meeting was over, the little company would travel back to Bluntisham to- gether; in the fine weather, as they went they would sing a hymn, then kneel down by the way side, while one of their number lifted his voice in prayer; then rising from their knees, they journey on, "singing as they go" a truly processional hymn, with the roads for their aisles, the stars for their lights, and the open country for their great cathedral. How sweetly the voices must have sounded to the villagers they were leaving, as the strains from the wayfarers became fainter waning as the dis- tance increased or to the villagers they approached, waxing more distinct a pleasant harbinger of their re- turn. These pilgrims of the night remind us of the pil- grims of the middle ages, chanting their litanies as they proceeded from shrine to shrine, along the ways still bear- ing the name of " The Chantry." Fancy stirs us, as we walk along these consecrated ways, the air is tremulous with pleasant memories, which take the place of the sweet sounds hushed long ago. " ! \ojt they die on yon rich sky, They faint on hill and field and river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever, Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying." In the winter, when the weather was bad, the road from Bluntisham to Woodhurst was execrable no gravel deep ruts soft deep mire and puddles of water rendered it almost impassable no fit place or time for kneeling by the way side now. We must watch, as well as SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. 247 pray, all our energy needed to walk circumspectly, and preserve ourselves from falling into the sloughs, and avoid the deep ruts, and the hollows rilled with mud. Some- times the way was so bad that it seemed impassable for women rthen the men would carry their wives pick- a-back, and so get them over these worst places. Thus the work was carried on. Worthy folk they have their reward. Sometimes Mr Feary would go to Woodhurst a three miles walk in the afternoon to make calls on some of the folk sick or otherwise. On these occasions he made it a practice to take tea in some cottage selected for the purpose, and thither the neighbours would repair, each bringing some contribution to the general store ; one brings a loaf of bread, another a pat of butter, someone a bit of cheese, or a little tea and sugar or new milk : one wonders what would happen if each had been moved to bring the same thing all butter for instance but their movings would be more discreet ; then the donors would stay and partake of the gifts, and the conversation led by the Pastor, or some veteran Christian, would feed the soul, while the simple viands fed the body ; and so they would go from strength to strength, hoping all of them to appear before Zion when their life's race is run. Homely, pleasant neighbourly ways these, very sensible and human. On one occasion the careful housewife brought out a towel which she spread over the minister's knee-breeches lest they should get soiled by the bread and butter and tea. As they brake bread together did not the Lord sit down with them? Truly it was a right method of remem- bering him in the sacramental supper. They, "breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." 248 SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. A circumstance, somewhat remarkable, occurred in one of Mr Feary's visits to Woodhurst, which, although he left no memorial of it was related by him many years ago, and is confirmed in all the material parts of it by another of his friends. He went to visit a sick person. Prayer was proposed, and all the persons in the house were called to be present. Amongst them was a poor washer-woman. When they arose from their knees they were all bathed in tears. The impression made on the good woman was lasting, and issued in her conversion to God. She after- wards became a member of the church, and continued to the end of life a consistent Christian. Mr Feary has been heard to mention another instance of a person converted by his prayer. It is thought to have occurred during a visit to a sick person at Woodhurst, or at some other place. " Mr Feary having a considerable number of hearers from the village of Woodhurst, three miles from Bluntis- ham, a small place was built for their accommodation in 1798, and regularly vested in the hands of Trustees," Mr Coxe Feary dissenting minister, being one of them. " Here their beloved friend and pastor preached lec- tures, sometimes on Lord's day evenings, at other times on week days." The friends at Woodhurst built this meeting-house themselves, and they paid for it themselves (clay-bricks and thatched), and it was to be " for the use of a congregation of protestant dissenters from the church of England to resort to for the worship and service of God." The land, twenty-two feet by fifteen, was given by " John Bletsoe," for the above purpose, " of his own voluntary will." The building itself was but twelve feet by ten, the rest of the bit of land serving for the way of ingress and egress. At one time, in order to conduct the week night SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. 249 service on Thursday evenings, two farm labourers used regularly to walk over from Bluntisham, there and back six miles, after their day's work sometimes a hard day of thrashing corn in the barn ; after conducting the prayer meeting in this little meeting-house, they had their supper, and walked back to their houses, to rise early the next morning to their day's labour. Mrs Ann Ekins, nee Longland, who lived at Wood- hurst, was a regular attendant at Bluntisham meeting, and an earnest friend of Mr Feary, she used to drive with her family to Bluntisham every Sunday, and stop the day to attend the services morning and afternoon, passing the interval in the meeting vestry. When her husband, Mr George Ekins, lay at the point of death, and she was expecting to be left with six little children her father, Mr Thomas Longland, of Warboys, came over to see her he had good property was a farmer there, and hated dissent. Said he to his daughter, " If you will for- sake those ' Culemites ' I will provide for you as a lady, but if not, I will cut you off without a shilling ! " She stuck to her " Culemites." Her father lived to change his mind, and to respect her convictions. "Culem" seems to have been the name of a man at Needingworth, and dissenters in the neighbourhood were called after him by way of reproach. One of the six little children was "John Longland," who in 1829, on 30th July, became a member of the Bluntisham church and a hearty supporter of all good works throughout a long life. Wakefield Cooper, of Woodhurst, was a member of the Bluntisham church, he regularly dispatched his children to the Sunday School at Bluntisham every Sunday there was no Sunday School at Woodhurst in those early times and the children went regardless of weather. His daughter, 250 SOMERSHAM, COLNE AND WOODHURST. Mrs Elsom, is still living, and at the age of eighty-two, recalls the time seventy years ago, when she was one of these children her teachers were, Miss Susan Gregory and Miss Jane Feary, the daughter of the Pastor who diedjust before her father. Joseph Cooper was another of these children. John Barratt, and Hawkins, more than seventy years ago, were regular attendants at the Bluntis- ham Sunday School. Joseph Cooper who yet lives to tell us, that he had a spelling-book given him at the school, and that his teacher was " Mitch el Harrison 1 ," of Earith. 1 This good man died some years ago in the United States, leaving in his will a legacy to the Bluntisham church in token of his loving memory. CHAPTER XXVII. THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE CONGREGATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE red brick walls and gables, the large square windows, with small leaden framed panes of glass, forming the outside the heavy pillared galleries, the lofty pulpit, and high backed pews, which distinguished the inside of the old meeting-house at Bluntisham, were very dear to the old folk of Mr Coxe Feary's time in the last century. It was their spiritual home, and with some, their spiritual birth-place. In it they had met the Lord Jesus. Their souls were fed on the Heavenly manna and refreshed from the presence of the Lord. Here from the lips of their beloved Pastor, they listened to the words which fell from other lips nearly seventeen centuries ago, which had been spirit and life to generation after generation. How often, when the Sabbath morning came round, did the words of the Psalmist burst from their hearts " I was glad when they said unto me, ' Let us go into the house of the Lord ' ; Our feet shall stand within thy gates." And the refrain, " They shall prosper that love thee." They had often "walked to the house of God in company" and "taken sweet counsel together." Let us follow the good folk of three generations ago, and repair also to the place " whither the tribes go up." So we fall in with the crowd 252 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE CONGREGATION of worshippers, as they converge on the meeting-house, by the different roads and paths. The numbers of vehicles of all sorts, and people on horse-back, and afoot, is aston- ishing, reminding one of a fair. Some come on pillions, from long distances, and often through miry places nine miles, twelve, fifteen, and one lady rides on horse-back from Parson Drove, a distance of twenty-five miles, thus travelling fifty miles in the day. Out of Sutton Fen, in bad weather, three Miss Fearys, nieces of the minister, ride, each on her horse how else could they pass along the miry black fen roads ? Mrs George Ekins drives in with her family from Woodhurst all weathers, although near upsetting in crossing the brook, and like to stick in some slough, on the gravelless cross-road. Out of Somers- ham Fen, comes Mr John Ilett and his family. Miss Elizabeth Vail's grandfather walks every Sunday from Chatteris, a distance of nine miles, and then there is the return journey, in all eighteen miles. Gigs, chaises, carts with springs and without, single horses, and pillions, but mostly pedestrians, collect from Colne, Somersham, Pidley, Woodhursfc, Earith, Needingworth, St Ives, Over, Holy- well, Fen Drayton, Fen Stanton, Ramsey, Chatteris, March, Wistow, Upwood, Sutton Fen, Somersham Fen, Witton, Houghton, Godmanchester, Abbot's Ripton, Swavesey, Manea Fen, Doddington, Warboys, Wilburton, and even from Parson Drove. And so from all parts they gather, and put up their horses at the village inns, or at some friendly farm buildings. In the winter, the red cloaks of the women brighten and warm the scene, and their black coal-scuttle bonnets aid the picturesque, they seem made to catch the wind wonderful it is in stormy weather how bonnet and head keep together, but their connection is secured by a long dark wooden skewer. Should the hymn IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY. 253 book have been taken home, it returns swathed in a pocket-handkerchief and a sprig of " lad's love " with it ; and doubtless somewhere, where the women are seated, there are rows of pattens. There are the men the labourers in their best smocks, with plaited breast-plates, in their knee-breeches and gaiters, and beaver hats perhaps some veteran still donning the old fashioned three-cornered hat. These beavers are not removed until the wearers have secured their sittings, and have leisure to attend to such trifling matters of detail, and then they are hung up on the wooden pegs that form long rows on the walls of the meeting-house below and in the galleries. In the summer, the .women are in their short linseys, high waisted gowns, with balloon-like sleeves, and the men in grey worsted stockings and low shoes with buckles. Within the meeting, the men file off to one side and the women to the other. The high straight-backed pews are fast filling and the galleries are getting crowded most of all in the afternoon. To short people, the only indication of the presence of some of the shorter members of the assembly, is the time-honoured beaver, hanging on the peg above his seat. Two lines from a hymn of Dr Watts's or Rippon's selection are given out at a time, and then sung by the congregation sitting, then two more lines, and so on ; for the majority of the humbler worshippers are unable to read. There are some good voices, treble and bass, and they take the lead in the fugue tunes, which are often so intricate in their windings, that folk are apt to lose their way. Then comes the long prayer, when all rise and, turning round, stand to worship the position adopted in the most ancient services. During the sermon of about an hour in length, after some of the heads and divisions have been set forth, strenuous exertions are 254 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE CONGREGATION. made by unfortunate persons overtaken by drowsiness, \vho, fearing sleep, ward off such an impropriety and evi- dent loss, by standing upright. Several deaf people sit on the pulpit stairs to get the better of deafness the minister's mother being one of them, and another the equestrian lady in her habit from Parson Drove. The table pew is the regular resort of the veterans of the congregation relicts of the generation fast passing away. The services probably begin at half-past ten in the morn- ing, and half-past one in the afternoon. In the interim, the wayfaring part of the congregation, who do not fre- quent the village inn or the houses of friends, repair to the vestry, where in winter there is a fire. Hither come some good folk, and sell to the needy food penny loaves of bread, pats of butter, and bits of cheese, and frequently a boiling kettle and tea provide a refreshing cup and so strength is renewed for the service in the "afterparts of the day," when they flock again into the meeting-house. When an illumination is necessary, sundry "dips" are lighted about the place and at long intervals it is always a dangerous process they are snuffed by fingers or snuffers, and a light is sometimes prematurely quenched. And so our great-grand-parents made holyday, and kept alive and vigorous their higher life, at least this was one valued means of doing so, and all chief purposes were answered and highest needs met. Wherein are our new " churches " and newer fashions, with their show and debt, better than these quiet old world ways ? Will not their zeal and piety compare with our own ? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. WICLIF and his followers were the precursors of the Puritans of the sixteenth century. They were imbued with the same principles, which under different circum- stances the outcome of the experience of two centuries developed into the opinions of the Puritans of the Tudors' and Stuarts' reigns. Wiclif gave the scriptures to the people in their own tongue ; inviting thereby their indi- vidual judgment in matters of religion. He would depend less upon the Priests wished to give the sacramental cup to the laity. He desired simplicity and purity in the doctrines and forms and teachings of the church, and laboured for a greater degree of independence for the laity in respect of religion. His ideas on these subjects were transmitted from him and his immediate followers through the Lollards, who were the living links of connection be- tween Wiclif and the Puritans. The Puritans strove for purity of ritual, of morals and of religion within the Established Church ; they desired to have simplicity in the forms of worship, and in doctrine ; and acknowledged the Scriptures as the sole authority for defining what these should be. There were others, who, holding these views and so far they were Puritans went further. They held congregational prin- 256 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. ciples would worship apart from the Established Church and were therefore called Separatists. Some of these were Ana-baptists, and were the ancestors of the Baptist Congregationalists of the present day ; some were Bedo- baptists, and were called by the names of their leaders, as Brownists, Barrowists, etc., they were the ancestors of the Independent Congregationalists of our own time. Speaking generally, these Separatists held that religion should be neither patronised nor controlled by the State, but be let alone ; they were the forerunners of our present Liberationists. The Brownists in Queen Elizabeth's reign stated their ideas on this matter with great clearness at a discussion which one of their number Francis Johnson held with a Puritan minister of Kent, in which the former says, on the subject of Disendowment, " The Queen may take to her own uses the Lordships and possessions of the Prelates and other clergy, which happy work, by what princes soever it is done, as certainly it will come to pass, for the Lord of Hosts hath spoken of it, it will greatly redound to the glory of God, the honour of themselves, the free passage of the gospel, the peace of the Church, and the benefit of the whole Commonwealth." He also proposes that the endowments of the Church of England should be given "for schools, universities, the upholding of hospitals, almshouses, and the like ; for help of poor widows, and fatherless, and strangers, for the impotent sick and helpless of all sorts ; for making and repairing of bridges and highways." He adds, " The Brownists would have these idolatrous livings returned to the Common- wealth from which they were taken. But our forward (puritan) ministers that wish the Prelates down and their livings taken from them would gladly have them for their own use. As you (Henry Jacob) have pleaded for them." THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. 257 In Charles the First's reign the " Brownists " petitioned for a full and impartial toleration for the great benefit of freedom of conscience. They asked for toleration of all "Brownists," "Puritans," " Socinians," "Arminians," "Papists," etc. " We beseech you, give your consent, agree, vote for it that every man may have freedom of conscience. LET THEM ALONE. We desire nothing but the truth by this freedom and connivancy. Truth will at last appear ; that which is of men will be dissolved, that which is of God will continue and remain for ever ! Neither will they be contented with any thing that shall be established by Act of Parliament, were it never so good. Only freedom will in time cause the truth to shine upon them." "The matter therefore, of so great importance and consequence, we submit, leaving to your honours' profound and deep judgments, humbly requesting and imploring, again and again, that, for the quiet of the State, for the comfort of the subject, and for the love of truth, you cause and proclaim a toleration, that for religion none shall be persecuted, but every one freely enjoy his own conscience..." Unfortunately these just and enlightened views found no favour. The Convocation of 1640 decreed that "no person shall import or print any of the books of the Brownists, Separatists and other Sectaries, on pain of excommunica- tion, and of being further punished in the Star Chamber." The Brownists were no insignificant sect ; as early as 1580 Sir Walter Raleigh spoke of them as existing by "thousands." In 1583 Brownists and Anabaptists are freely classed together, a natural classification, since their ideas on internal Church polity were, and are, identical, and both are suitably designated Congregationalists. The Congregationalists were joined by many Independents T. B. 17 258 THE CONGREGATIOXALISTS. and Baptists during the reign of Charles I. and the Commonwealth. The former did not generally disapprove of the connection of religion with the state, their stand was against prelacy. At the ejectment of 1662 large numbers of the non- conforming ministers, and their flocks who sympathised with them, swelled the ranks of the Congregationalists, chiefly of that branch of them known since the time of Charles I. as Independents. They held in theory, the propriety of a state church, but w r ould have it differently regulated. The church at Bluntisham was founded by Bedo-baptists, or Independents. Mr Feary subsequently changed his views on the subject, and practised "believers'" baptism, most of the members following his example ; but it occasioned no difficulty and no change in any other respect, each member simply carried out his own con- viction, and throughout the century that has intervened no difficulty has arisen on this question. There are many other churches in our land adopting the same practice, in which Congregationalists, using one or the other, or neither form, work harmoniously together. CHAPTER XXIX. MR SAMUEL GREEN. THE following memoir appeared in The Baptist Maga- zine, August, 1840: Memoir of the late Rev. Samuel Green, by his Son, the Rev. S. Green, of Walworth. "'The memory of the just is blessed,' and when a righteous man whom God has rendered useful is taken out of the world, it behoves survivors to preserve a record which may have the effect of inducing others to tread in his steps so far as he trod in the footsteps of Christ, and also to magnify the grace of God in him. On this ac- count, as well as because the church has a right to every- thing belonging to her ministers that may be beneficial, the following memorial is presented of my late honoured father. His own memoranda furnish the materials. " His origin was lowly, little likely to send forth a minister of talent and usefulness. Nuneaton in Warwick- shire was the place of his birth, a town which in moral and spiritual cultivation is still far behind many other parts of this country. Much, however, of improvement in these particulars has been mercifully achieved there since 1770, the year in which my father was born. His pa- rents were poor but industrious, and for the station they 172 260 MR SAMUEL GREEN. occupied highly esteemed, but they were without the fear of God. As their family was large, every child as early as possible was placed at the wheel or the loom. A free- school in the town furnished to my father, up to his eighth year, the rudiments of learning; and subse- quently an evening school somewhat augmented his stock of knowledge. His mind was inquisitive, his ap- plication close, and to use his own words, 'I soon be- came more learned than any of my father's children.' Between the ages of eight and ten years he was led to entertain great apprehensions as to his condition before God. How this subject was presented to his mind does not appear. His parents his mother especially regular in the discharge of the external duties of religion, were accustomed frequently to commend to his attention the word of God ; so that it would not be difficult to account for this concern. The Spirit of God, even at this early age, was preparing him by such means as were within his reach for the engagements of future life. His distress was exceedingly great ; he describes himself as deploring his immorality, or wishing he had many years before then been in hell, vainly imagining that he would have become familiar with his pain. What might not have been the blessed advantage to himself, and probably to others, had he then been favoured with such means of instruction as might have fully set before him the way of salvation ! Children of the disciples of the Redeemer cannot too highly prize the blessing of such parentage. These im- pressions, however, soon wore away, and my father after- wards became a kind of ringleader among boys of his own age, and even of more advanced years. He describes himself as lost to all fear and shame, as abandoned to every vice which his age and circumstances would allow. MR SAMUEL GREEN. 261 His conduct was the grief of his parents, especially of his mother, whose heart he conceived the Lord was now opening. They fancied he would commit some crime, at once ruining himself and involving them in pain and disgrace. He had joined a benefit club whose members aided each other in sickness; but, as is unhappily the case with many such societies, their time and money were too often spent in rioting and drunkenness. One of their number had engaged in a pugilistic contest which ended fatally; and while with the rest of the club, my father stood at the grave of his fallen companion, and listened to the reading of the office for the burial of the dead, his mind was powerfully impressed with the awful- ness of the delusion cherished by expressing over such a man the hope that he rested in Christ, and would rise to everlasting life. ' My serious thoughts at this time,' he says, ' returned, yet they were not effectual to change my heart.' Some check was, nevertheless, laid upon his career. About that time the preaching of a Mr Hemmington in one of the village churches near Nuneaton was beginning to excite considerable attention. Many of the people flocked to hear him. A simple, fervid, evangelical minis- tration was a new thing in those days. The memory of the oldest inhabitant could furnish nothing parallel, and though the village was at six miles' distance, many, and among them some of the acquaintances and companions of my father, went every Lord's day to hear him. ' There was no small stir about that way.' Some said one thing and some another ; the great number of the townspeople thought, however, that a strange whim was obtaining possession of the people, to take them so far to listen to the ravings of a man whom they considered at best but a harmless fanatic. 262 MR SAMUEL GREEN. " Meri vale church was crowded. 'Among the persons who flocked thither,' says my father, 'was a young man with whom I had been intimately acquainted. I could not tell what was now come to him ; he never made his appearance among his companions, and if at any time he was seen in the street, it seemed as if he wished to get out of it as soon as possible. I thought much about him, and as I deemed myself wiser than he, I fancied if I went once to the church to hear this man, I should be able to show my friend his mistakes. With this view I ventured to go. Mr Hemmington was not that day in his pulpit. A Mr Valentine, a clergyman like-minded, addressed the congregation with great earnestness on the errors into which ungodly men fall as to religion 'There need not be, they say, so much ado about it ; God is merciful,' with other things of the same kind. ' But,' added he, ' when they come to die, ask them whether they think religion important whether there can be too much concern for the soul's salvation whether faith in Christ be an un- necessary thing; they will then hold a different language.' " The appeal seemed directed to me. I was exactly the individual whose language had been uttered, whose thoughts had been brought out. I cannot describe my feelings ; but though it is now twenty-eight years since, the scene is fresh in my remembrance. I imagine I .see the man of God in the pulpit; the people crowding in every direction, in the pews and aisles of the church; the gothic arches, the carvings, the old-fashioned seats, the walls green with mould and damp; nay, I seem as if now seated in the old gallery, and beginning with the utmost consternation to say to myself, ' What have I been doing all my life ? I am mistaken; I am utterly wrong; these people are right; I must become a new man.' It seemed MR SAMUEL GREEX. 263 then as if I had been totally blind, and that now my eyes were opened. I can never forget those moments. What surprise I felt! How it was or from whence it came. I knew not, but when the service was ended I came out of church full of astonishment, and instead of trying to con- vince my companion of his delusion, I viewed those who understood the things I had heard as the happiest people in the world. Persons who walked so far to hear the word of God were likely in returning to seek to benefit each other by mutual conversation; and it is pleasing to discover from my father's journal, that many of them met in the evening of the Lord's day at the house of one of their number for united supplication and for reading the Scriptures. He went to their meeting the very evening after his mind had received the impressions already mentioned. All were astonished; some hoped for the best; some were thankful; but when after a short time he began to tell how great things the Lord had done for him, he was met by cold suspicion and doubt. ' So notorious a wretch as I to be converted was to them an unlikely thing; they could scarcely believe it; as yet they knew but little of God's ways, and did not understand the language of Paul, "where sin abounded grace did much more abound." ' On this part of his history my father remarks with great force, 'Wisdom is necessary in dealing with newly-awakened persons; but what good might not be expected if Christians would but imitate the tenderness, the gentleness, and affection of Christ, who feeds his flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs in his arms, and carries them in his bosom. How great the unreasonableness, how irreparable the injury, of old Christians forgetting the weakness of childhood.' The impressions thus made led him as a guilty sinner to seek pardon through the blood of 264 MR SAMUEL GREEN. atonement; the obtaining of which, while it set him free, and created a joy unspeakable and glorious, induced the conviction which never forsook him that to the free grace of God alone he was indebted for his recovery from eternal wretchedness. 'I was sunk,' he says, 'to the lowest depths of degradation and misery a monster of iniquity a very devil; yet God had mercy on me; ten thousand thanks to his holy name.' The exclusive reign of divine grace in the salvation of a sinner was not with him so much an opinion as a feeling; it was one of the things embraced by his consciousness, not simply assented to by his judgment. And here I may take leave to say, though my father through his whole life utterly detested the idea of so limiting the mercy of God as not to invite all freely to partake of it, and of supposing that any obstacle pre- vents man's obeying the invitation but the state of his heart, he ever maintained those doctrines which are usually denominated Calvinistic. The free grace of God in conversation was his frequent theme. Early in life he married. His wife was young ; her mind had been graci- ously enlightened; and her deep piety, her affectionate disposition and sound sense admirably adapted her for a companion to him. He soon fell, however, into great pecu- niary straits and difficulties, from which there seemed no way of escape but one, against which every feeling of his heart rose in strong opposition. After struggling against these difficulties for some time ineffectually, a debt of about four pounds induced him to enlist as a common soldier into the County Militia. This body at that time assembled for a month in each year, to be trained to the military art; they were not likely, as he thought, to be called away from home. Soon afterwards, however, the French war assumed such an aspect as to put in requisition MR SAMUEL GREEN. 2G5 all the forces Government could command, and my father was ordered to join his regiment, .to occupy different parts of the coast as occasion might require. With a heavy heart he left home; his necessary companionship was anything but favourable to the growth of devout and religious feeling; yet he says, 'I feared and prayed, and became diligent in the use of whatever means of grace I could command, seeking from God that support and direc- tion which were so needful at this trying season. The more my companions ridiculed my religion and persecuted me, the more I looked to the Lord; and now I cannot but thankfully adore the mercy and the power which preserved me from evil.' "In the company in which my father was, there was another man, Edward Burton, ' to whose memory justice/ he says 'is much in arrears.' He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost ; and perhaps by some he will be remembered as afterwards the humble pious pastor of a small congregation at South-hill, Bedfordshire. Mr Burton was a preacher during his soldier's life. My father's mind had been greatly exercised on the subject of preaching, previously to his assuming the red coat ; the two men, therefore, one a sergeant, and other a corporal, became exceedingly intimate. Sergeant B., the elder, watched over his friend with a fatherly care, and occasion- ally admonished him with a brother's kindness. " At Liverpool, my father, who had mostly attended among Baptists since his soldier's life had commenced, was about to join the church under the late Samuel Medley, from whom he received much kind and Christian attention ; but at that juncture his company was ordered to a considerable distance, so that he was not privileged to put on Christ by a public profession till some time 266 MR SAMUEL GREEX. afterwards, while encamped near Folkestone, in Kent. In the regiment there were several pious soldiers, accustomed to meet for worship under the guidance of Sergeant Burton ; his absence on Lord's day led to my father's being solicited to take his place ; and the church at Folkestone hearing of this circumstance, requested him to give them an opportunity of judging what were his gifts for the ministry. A point of order seems to have pre- vented their calling him to the work he longed for ; still they agreed that ' he might preach when opportunity offered and necessity required.' His connexion with Folke- stone was but short. The regiment to which he belonged was ordered to Colchester ; but the want of full accord- ance between his views and those of the estimable minister who then laboured there, stood in the way of his re- ceiving much encouragement. His mind was severely tried, and often did he pray that his ardent desires for the ministry might be taken away, as he had but little hope of their being gratified, ' Once,' he says, ' I came to the resolution to give up my profession of religion ; but as this purpose was being settled, it suddenly occurred to me, while I was walking in the barrack-yard, that if I did so I must renounce the house of God, and no more associate with his saints; on which the snare was mercifully broken, and I escaped.' At length the regiment was ordered to Norwich. Much kindness on the part of the friends at Colchester was shown at parting, and often in his later life have I heard my father refer to his stay there, as endeared by a thousand grateful remem- brances. Good was done in the church, partly through the instrumentality of the soldier-Christians; and both Baptists and Independents vied with one another in their expressions of affectionate solicitude for their welfare. MR SAMUEL GREEN. 267 My father says, 'There was not a happier man in all the regiment than myself; for, notwithstanding my little difficulties, the Lord was with me and strengthened my persuasion that he would in due time accomplish the great desire of my soul, and enable me to preach to sinners the glad tidings of salvation. When we came within about a mile of Norwich, to which we were all entire strangers, I was thinking about preaching.' Soon after their arrival it was noised abroad, that there was a preaching sergeant among the soldiers, and he was speedily sought for to occupy the many pulpits of the city and neighbourhood. The corporal was not forgotten ; and my father says, 'in a little time I was requested to preach in the vestry of the late Mark Wilks' meeting, on a Lord's-day evening. This I did, and was desired to repeat the exercise, but without any further prospect.' At East Dereham, the minister, Mr R Denham, was declining in health ; Sergeant Burton was sought to supply his place ; but when on one occasion he was unable to go, Mr Wilks who was looking out for a supply, met my father in the street. Said he, ' Corporal Green, you must go and preach at Dereham.' My father resisted this un- expected proposal ; but Mr W. was not a man to be refused, so that he felt constrained to apply for leave of absence, and was soon on the road to East Dereham, where he preached. He afterwards preached at Diss for the people under the pastoral care of Mr Charles Farmery. Mr Denham soon afterwards died. Mr Farmery was looked to as the adviser of the people in their affliction, and though they could only raise a salary of 20 per annum, it \vas deemed right by the church to request my father to take the oversight of them in the Lord. He was a soldier, however, and procuring his discharge was a 268 MR SAMUEL GREEN. difficult affair. He could not raise the necessary sum ; three or four pounds was all the Dereham people could venture to promise. My father belonged to a class of men greatly valued by the officers; it was not likely they would give him up ; but he determined on making the trial. His captain readily promised he would do all he could with the Colonel to further my father's wishes. The next day my father was ordered to attend on the Colonel, who, after several enquiries, said, ' Yes, corporal, you shall have your discharge for 20.' My father bowed and hastened to his friend Farmery; the money was borrowed and the next day his discharge was procured. During his connection with the army, my father had obtained many furloughs, and walked many weary miles, to visit his beloved wife and family; but he was now delighted with the prospect of once more living with them, and of prosecuting the work dearest to his heart. He removed with them to East Dereham, but soon after- wards his wife died leaving him with three small children, all this added to the duties, of the pastorate greatly op- pressed him. But God was with him, and his usefulness began to appear. Soon afterwards he married a daughter of a farmer in Norfolk ; and by the help of a school which for a few years was greatly prosperous, he was enabled to live. " His ministry at Dereham continued for twenty-two years, during which the church and congregation steadily increased. The meeting-house was enlarged in 1815, and my father having given up his school labours, visited many of the villages around on Sunday evenings. In three of them small meeting-houses were fitted up. With the Independents my father was always on terms of kindly intercourse. Though a Baptist from conviction, he was MR SAMUEL GREEN. 209 neither bigoted nor narrow. He loved, and could maintain fellowship with all who loved Christ." At the close of 1818 Mr Green left Dereham and be- came co-pastor with Mr Coxe Feary at Bluntisham, where he laboured for eleven years. In the summer of 1829, while on a visit to his old friends in Norfolk, he was seized with paralysis, and in 1830 relinquished his charge at Bluntisham, and removed to Thrapstone. When his son saw him in April he was very peacefully waiting his dis- missal, which happened on the 17th August, 1840. His son says of him that he was a man of stern, un- bending integrity a sturdy saint, who carried his religion into every engagement. His preaching was exceedingly simple and earnest. He had felt the power of the gospel working an effectual change in his own heart; he anti- cipated this result in others only as it was explained and urged home by every consideration which affection could employ. He was of untiring activity and diligence. In early life he has been known to keep school the whole of every day in the week, Saturday afternoon and Sunday excepted to preach twice at home on that day sermons that must have cost him much thought and application walk three or four miles, and preach at night, then walk home, to return to the same round during the succeeding week. To this he thought himself called ; and when he had such an impression, no labour was too great, no toil or sacrifice too severe. His desire was to spend and be spent in the service of God. Mr Green died at Cambridge, and was buried in the Bluntisham Meeting-house burial ground. In the meeting- house a tablet is erected to his memory, with the following inscription. " To the memory of the Rev. Samuel Green who ministered to this congregation from 1819 to 1830 for 270 MR SAMUEL GREEN. a time as co-pastor with the Rev. Coxe Feary and after- wards as his successor, a good soldier of Jesus Christ, up- right in his conduct, loyal in his devotion to his Divine Master, fearless in his contention for the faith once delivered to the saints. He died August 17th, 1840, aged 70 years." CHAPTER XXX. JOHX EDMUND SIMMOXS, M.A. John Edmund Simmons, M.A., was the son of the Rev. John Simmons, Baptist Minister of Wigan in Lancashire ; his mother lived to the age of ninety-five years and was buried in the Bluntisham meeting-house ground; to the time of her death she could see to read any print without the aid of spectacles. In speaking of her son the pastor of Bluntisham church she would say, "We always thought there was some'at in John." Mr Simmons married the daughter of a Church of England clergyman, she had pro- perty, and it enabled him to spend sufficient time at Glasgow University to take his Master of Arts degree. He had a brother who was minister of the Baptist Church at Olney a clever man and well educated. Mr Simmons was pastor of a church at Stony Stratford before he came to Bluntisham, where he remained for thirty-eight years. His character was tenacious and independent, he was strictly honourable, upright and conscientious. He was possessed of philanthropic goodness of heart and bene- volence of disposition, with a prevalent concern for the well-being of his neighbours, particularly of his own flock. These moral qualities were combined with some valuable mental ones. He had an excellent memory, and power of 272 JOHN EDMUND SIMMONS, M.A. concentration and took a firm grasp of subjects which en- grossed his attention. These mental characteristics, with his habit of independent thought, enabled him to treat a subject by his own method, and in his own particular way. He held his opinions strongly and it was not easy to move him from them, nor was it likely he would be easily moved from them, for he had arrived at his conclusions, thought- fully and deliberately ; and his goodness of heart, his excellent mental powers and his long experience entitled his opinions to deference and respect. His course was marked by its consistency, maintaining an even balance his people could depend upon him. His theology was Calvinistic, but he was not extreme in any of his doctrinal views. He much admired and read Scotch Presbyterian Theology. He resembled in appearance what we imagine was the type of the puritan minister of the Calvinistic school, al- though there was nothing morose or stern about him. On the contrary, there was a drollness with him, and frequently a quizzical expression on his features indicative of humour and much human feeling. There was a quaintness about his face and his general style which provoked curiosity and excited interest. He had the face and person and gait of a man to whom the lover of the uncommon would desire an introduction, and using it, would not be dis- appointed. His conversation evidenced a man extensively read, both in old literature aud in that of the present time, and well versed too in the periodicals and newspaper topics of the day. There was a curious aptness to be interested in all sorts of whimsical subjects, old world topics and oddities, and curiosities of literature. He was reserved and apparently not easily moved, yet he was possessed of a very kind heart and much feeling, which JOHN EDMUND SIMMONS, M.A. 273 was more easily roused than people generally sup- posed. His quiet manners covered a nervousness not very ap- parent, but which nevertheless was there, and often lent awkwardness to a somewhat peculiar address. Notwith- standing his determination to maintain the mastery over his emotions, he was sometimes overcome, and his strong feeling shown by long pauses in his sermon, and occa- sionally even a burst of weeping. At times, when under deep feeling his sermons were very affecting, and powerfully appealed to his people on behalf of the truth. Holding to a sound orthodoxy on important points, he yet was fond of going into uncommon theories, and sometimes astonished friends as well as strangers by propounding some quaint theory or supporting some unusual hypothesis. There was readiness to serve, accompanied with curious awkward- ness in rendering the service, e.g. some of his young people were desirous that their pastor should undertake a Bible- class for them, and at length screwed up their courage, and apprised him of their wish. He at once assented, and arranged a time for meeting. When they met he waited to hear from them what they wanted him to do, they with the diffidence belonging to their age were nonplussed, and the well-meaning pastor left, after saying he thought they wanted to say something to him. He was very independent in his action, and took entirely his own course in his ministerial teachings and pastorate. After a course of sermons on the Calvinistic doctrines of election, etc., which lasted longer than was agreeable to some of his people one of them venturing in some way to give the pastor a hint of the feeling prevalent on the matter, Mr Simmons remarked that such feeling evidenced the natural depravity of the heart fighting against the T. B. 18 274 JOHN EDMUND SIMMONS, M.A. truth, and the need they had of such sermons he should put them through another course ! Some thought if the pastor occasionally exchanged pulpits with another minister, the simple fact of a change might be beneficial. He acted on this suggestion, but provided such poor exchanges that his people regretted they had made the suggestion. His preaching was always sensible and good, and he frequently displayed feeling which shewed itself in his own peculiar way. On one occasion when he preached before the Associated Ministers of the county, his sermon struck all present as one of singular force and power. Sometimes in his sermons he would make sententious remarks which were easily remembered. Referring to some persons who objected to work, excusing themselves on the ground, " that they were not brought up to it," said he, " Such folk will soon be brought down to it." He was a poor visitor. Once a humble member of his congregation said, "You see Mr Simmons is a very good man but he can't force con- versation out of you." Yet he enjoyed a quiet social cup of tea at the homes of his people and shewed very sociable feelings. He would drop in at a house and the friend would say, "You'll stay and take tea with us, Mr Sim- mons?" "Just what I've come to do," he would reply, and the tea would be hastened to suit his early hours. Accustomed to a very quiet life in his country house at Colne, about a mile from Bluntisham, his daily enjoyment was in a walk or in calling on some friend and driving him out with him in his pony chaise, on which occasions he would remark that if people knew more of the beauties that laid immediately around them, they would not want to go so far away from home for their enjoyment as they now thought necessary. He took great quiet satisfaction in the rural surroundings of his drives. JOHN EDMUND SIMMONS, M.A. 275 Mr Simmons was buried in the meeting-house ground, and on a mural tablet within the meeting-house is this inscription, " Erected by the congregation worshipping in this place to the memory of the Rev. John Edmund Simmons, M.A., who was their Pastor 38 years, from 1830 to 1868, and during the whole of that time, by his able and varied presentation of the truth of God's word, and by a life of unblemished and unostentatious piety obtained the confident affection of his flock and the respect of the neighbourhood around. ' He that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men.' He died September 5th, 1868, aged 72 years." 182 CHAPTER XXXI. THE PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH AT BLUNTISHAM. THIS chapter is placed here because it appears better to look back, than to anticipate. From the selections from the church book, and the sketches given of the various ministers, much of what we have to tell concerning the progress of the church at Bluntisham has been told ; what remains we will endeavour to give in this chapter. Sometimes water holds in solution certain substances, the presence of which is not detected by ordinary observa- tion, until it is manifested by the introduction of some other substance which attracts it, and then beautiful crystals are formed. A process akin to this took place at Bluntisham and its neighbourhood; some of the people, sensitive to the touch of the Spirit of God, were attracted to Mr Coxe Feary, they gathered round him, the Christian Church was formed, beautiful, because in some degree it made manifest the spirit of Jesus Christ and put on some of the white garments of holiness. As the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed his life, that we might have an ideal church before us, Christians need offer no excuse for enthusiasm when they recognise in any community an attempt to realise this ideal. Mr Coxe Feary and his friends earnestly sought to do this, and succeeded in a good measure. The church they founded was a home for PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH AT BLUNTISHAM. 277 kindred spirits, for all those who were striving to put on the Lord Jesus, and to have his " mind " within them. And it has offered a spiritual home to all such, through the century that ensued. None can tell the good it has effected or measure the benefits it has conferred. To God only are these known, and it may be that some who have passed from the little community below, to the great gathering of the church above, are telling with joy results unknown here, but revealed there, results beyond value. We all crave sympathy. To get it fully in matters of small importance is a pleasure ; in affairs of greater im- portance, it is proportionally valuable ; and on questions of vital importance, it is precious indeed. Full sympathy of soul with soul, on subjects which move the profoundest feelings of the heart, and elicit the deepest emotions, is priceless treasure. It was this highest, fullest sympathy, which this- Christian community had to offer, and as one soul after another was touched by the love of God, and the grace of his dear Son, they naturally came for sym- pathy to those, who having had a like experience, were able to give it. What was it but the craving for full sympathy, on the most soul-stirring topics, that led the people of Bluntisham to waylay Mr Feary on his return from Yelling, that impelled them to drive or walk, twenty-four miles on the Sabbath day, or the lesser distances, in search of what their souls longed for? What but this led them to withdraw from their parish church, and frequent the conventicle, in close room, and draughty barn? It was not to their social advantage, either in position, or in gifts, or (at that time) in the respect of their neighbours. But now they have formed their little church, this pressing need is met, as far as human nature, in its imperfect sympathies, is able to meet it. " Come 278 PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH AT BLUNTISHAM. with us and we will do you good," was the hearty invita- tion of Mr Feary and his friends. Here one, and there one, gladly responded, and entered the inner circle of the church, or joined with the congregation worshipping at the new meeting-house. So the little -church was built up. Mr Feary was excellent in diffusing the Christian spirit of love amongst his people, and in attracting his neighbours by the power of his love, and the force of his Christian character, and under his pastorate, distinguished by its simplicity, and earnestness, the church and congre- gation rapidly increased. His successor, Mr Samuel Green, took up the work when illness obliged Mr Feary to resign. Mr Green carried on the good work on the same lines as his predecessor. Neither had received much school learning, nor any college education, nor especial training for the ministry, but both brought to bear on the neighbourhood, what was far beyond this characters which had been formed in the school of experience. Contact with their fellow men, in the every-day affairs of life, made them conver- sant with commonplace ways and needs they knew men's habits, and ways of looking at things, and therefore knew how to help them, and to present to them God's truth. Had they not known toil in the field in the camp? The every-flay difficulties that meet men in their struggle for gaining their daily bread these they had experienced, and through perseverance, and patient continuance in well doing, by power of heart, rather than by force of intellect, they had achieved their position as leaders ; this quality and this natural education, particularly fitted them for the pastorate of the village folk. During the three pas- torates, occupying the first eighty years of the church's existence, many efforts were put forth for the advance- PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH AT BLUNTISHAM. 279 ment of the Kingdom of the Redeemer At Home In the Neighbourhood And Abroad. At Home. The old meeting-house had been built, and the land purchased, at a cost of 623 Os. 7d., the whole paid for by the congre- gation. A grave-yard prepared for use ; a Sunday-school formed and carried on, when such schools were far from general. The meeting-house had been twice enlarged, once in 1797, when it was increased by an addition of one- third more accommodation on the ground-floor, at a cost of 230. 10s. dd., and again in 1817 when a gallery was erected for the accommodation of the Sunday-school children, at a cost of 192. In 1805 a new vestry was built which cost 100. In 1810 the burial-ground was enlarged, and fenced in, at a cost of 70. In the Neigh- bourhood. We have seen how friends went over to Somersham, and Bluntisham and Colne. How the little room was built by the friends at Woodhurst, and the meeting-house at Somersham, in 1812, both in a great measure through the energy and Christian life of the church at Bluntisham. And Abroad. Collections were made for various good objects, far removed from their own personal influence, e.g. Mar. 3, 1805, Collected for the Baptist church and congregation at Cradley in Worces- tershire, 14. 10s. In 1806, wishing to convert the Jews, the good friends collected 17. 3s. after a sermon preached by Mr Frey, a native of Franconia. Then they collected about the same time the sum of 31. 10s. 6d. in "aid of the distressed Germans, who were reduced to poverty, and went through the calamities of war." On the 14th June, 1808, they made a collection for the church at South-hill, which amounted to 13. 2s. and this same year, they collected for a church in Cornwall 17. 9s. 6d. In 1812 Mr Feary makes a memorandum in the church 280 PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH AT BLUNTISHAM. book, " Collected for ministers, and meeting-houses, in about eighteen months, the sum of 91. 5s." Another entry made by Mr Feary under the year 1816, "The church and congregation collected for the French Pro- testants, who (since the abdication of Napoleon, and the placing the Bourbons on the throne,) have been most shockingly and barbarously persecuted by the Catholics ; we sent them 15. 2s. Gd." Although these entries all occur during the first Pas- torate, it appears from an entry made by Mr Green, in 1824, that the debt contracted in the building of the new gallery, behind the pulpit, was not paid off till April of that year, and at the same time that this old debt was cleared, " The new wall at the back part of the Meeting- yard was built, and paid for. This is deemed a great mercy by the church." Mr Green makes the following entry: "April 20th, 1826, This day was held by the church as a day of prayer and supplication to God, that he would mercifully bless us with his holy spirit, make the means of grace useful to the conversion of sinners, and the promotion of his glory. It was a good day with our souls. We were well attended. Our friends seemed more than satisfied." In the year 1845 Mr Thos. Pulsford visited Bluntisham and held revival services. They resulted in many names being added to the church roll. During the nine months following his visit there were one hun- dred and twenty-six additions to the church. Mr Simmons observes in an entry made "Oct. 31st, 1845, Present statistics, 280 members, 230 Sabbath scholars, 4 village stations. Clear increase last year 120 members." CHAPTER XXXII. FREDERICK W. GOADBY, M.A. A CHANGE of ministers is always a time of trial to a Congregational Church, and at Bluntisham it seemed especially difficult to provide a successor to Mr Simmons after his pastorate of thirty-eight years. Yet this was accomplished with entire success, and a choice was made which resulted in a connection between pastor and people of warm affection during its whole continuance. The course taken by the church was perhaps somewhat unusual and deserving of notice. Conscious that the resources of the congregation were not sufficient to maintain in comfort a pastor with a wife and family, it was determined to seek a minister from among the young students of Regent's Park College, who had conducted the services of the chapel during the illness of Mr Simmons. This plan had the merit of giving a young minister the opportunity of gaining experience among country people, and more time for study and out-door life than when plunged at once into the bustle of a large town. It is pleasant to remember that Mr Goadby, who came straight from college, spent about eight happy and useful years at Bluntisham, and with matured knowledge and confirmed health then under- took the charge of an important congregation at Watford. Those who knew him will never remember without a touch of pain how soon a virulent fever contracted on the 282 FEEDERICK W. GOADBY, M.A. Continent snatched him from the fairest prospects of usefulness and happiness. Mr Goadby was an accomplished scholar, of which his degree as M.A. of London is a sufficient guarantee, but he was much more. His attainments had not crushed or enfeebled his imagination, and he carried his load of learning lightly. A true poet, he constantly in his sermons illustrated the truths of religion by some bright gleam of genius. Preaching on Penitence he said, "When once the tears of sorrow for sin against our Heavenly Father begin to fall, the cloud soon dissolves and the sun of his favour again shines upon us." Two at least of his hymns the world will not willingly let die, and that written for the reopening of Bluntisham meeting-house after restoration seems assured of immortality. The two concluding verses are almost perfect, and were the expression of genuine feeling. When they were sung many a tender chord became responsive to the touch of a master. " And if our hearts to-day Are touched with secret pain, And thoughts of missing faces blend With our rejoicing strain ; let the eye of faith That heavenly temple see, Where, amidst holier, vaster throngs They ever worship Thee." Surely the humble worshippers in Bluntisham meeting- house whose passing away was lamented in these lines shared with the friend of Milton mourned as Lycidas, the honour of embalmment in true poetic verse. Mr Goadby died at Watford a few years after his removal from Bluntisham, to the great grief of all who knew him, and especially to the sorrow of the working men of his new field of labour. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE REBUILDING OF THE MEETING-HOUSE AND PUR- CHASE OF THE MINISTER'S HOUSE. THE order of events is most easily shown by extracts from the chronicles in the church books. It appears that Mr Simmons made no entries in the church book sub- sequent to the year 1850. The next entries are made by Mr Goad by, commencing in 1868 the first year of his Pastorate, "the Rev. J. E. Simmons, M.A., having resigned the Pastorate of the church through serious illness, in the early part of the year, application was made to Mr F. W. Goadby, M.A., Student of Regent's Park College, London, to supply the pulpit for a few Sundays on the completion of his college term in July. This he did on the last Sunday in July, and first two Sundays in August. On the last of these days a meeting of the church was held, and he was asked to supply for a further period of a month, with a view to the pastorate. With this request he complied, and preached during the months of September and October. On the llth October, after the morning service, conducted by the Rev. J. P. Campbell, of Cambridge, the sense of the congregation, and after- wards of the church was taken respecting an invitation to Mr Goadby to become Pastor of the church. As a consequence of the resolutions then passed the following letter was written to him. 284 THE REBUILDING OF THE MEETIXG-HOUSE "BLUNTISHAM, Oct. 13th, 1868. " My dear Sir, Your probationary stay at Bluntisham with a view to the pastorate having expired, the pleasurable duty devolves upon me on behalf of the church and congregation, of informing you of the result of the Meeting held on Sabbath morning. After the service was concluded, the congregation were requested to remain a short time. It was then put to the whole body by a show of hands and it was found there was a decided majority in your favour, at the same time there was a considerable minority against. After some remarks had been made, and suggestions offered, as to the desirability of una- nimity, and of the minority foregoing their objections, and falling in with the majority a motion was put, and carried, that the sense of the congregation be retaken, and it was found there was a far less minority than the first time. The church were then requested to remain a short time, and a resolution was then put, and carried, that you be invited to take the oversight of the church. That motion was carried nem. con. ; one member it is true had opposed, but before the meeting closed publicly withdrew it. And that the Great Head of the Church may guide, direct, and enable you to see your way clear, is the prayer of, yours (on behalf of the church and congregation) Most faithf uUy, JOHN C. FEARY." "This invitation Mr Goadby gave his anxious and prayerful consideration, and on Sunday, Oct. 25th, a letter was read from him to the church and congregation, ex- pressing his acceptance of it. On Lord's day, Nov. 8th, he entered upon his duties." The Recognition services in connection with the settle- ment of Mr Goadby were held ou the 27th January, 1869. AND PURCHASE OF THE MINISTER'S HOUSE. 285 The following is a portion of the report that appeared in the " Freeman Newspaper." " Long before the afternoon service commenced, the chapel was crowded with friends from far and near. The introductory services were conducted by the Rev. Thos. Lloyd, minister of the free church, St Ives. The Rev. W. Robinson, minister of St Andrew's Street Chapel, Cambridge, then gave an address on the nature of a Christian Church, taking the following divisions as the basis of his discourse. I. A church is a congregation. II. A true church of God is holy. III. A church should be free unto men, subject to the Lord Jesus Christ. IV. It should exist for the edification of its members, and as a witness to those around. Mr Feary, deacon, then read a very interesting statement, which included an account of the origin and rise of the church, and of the steps which led to the invitation of the new Pastor. Mr Goadby then gave some account of his Christian life, his entrance on the ministry, his views on the various doctrines held by Baptist, and other Christian bodies, and of the reasons which led to his acceptance of the Pastorate. The Rev. J. H. Millard, B.A., of Huntingdon, then offered an exceedingly suitable and earnest ordination prayer. After this the Rev. Dr Angus, President of Regent's Park College, delivered the charge to the minister, from 2 Thess. iii. 1, and at the close referred to his knowledge of Mr Goadby from his five years' resi- dence under him as a student. The service was closed by the Rev. S. Kerry, of Calcutta. At 5 o'clock tea was pro- vided in the school room and chapel, for the large number of visitors and friends who were present. The service in the evening was introduced by the Rev. W. E. Winks, of Wisbech, and the Rev. Jackson Goadby, of Leicester, preached a stirring sermon." 286 THE REBUILDING OF THE MEETING-HOUSE " 1869, Oct. 12. A special church meeting was held this evening," to take into consideration the constitution and rule of the church, respecting the Ordinances. It was stated by the Pastor that although the church was ordinarily spoken of as a Baptist church, there was nothing in the church book to indicate that the church regarded Baptism as an essential to church fellowship. There were records of Baptisings, but the Articles of faith and practice were drawn up prior to the embracing Baptist views by Mr Coxe Feary, when in 1791 he changed his opinions on that point. The Pastor further stated, that while the practice had undoubtedly become Baptist, there had been, and were a number of members on the church books who held different views, and had been admitted without baptism. In this openness of fellowship he fully concurred, and personally, he could see no reasonable objection to its being extended to the ordinance of the Lord's supper also, so that the simple tests of membership in the church should be, " faith professed in the Lord Jesus Christ and a life consistent with such a profession." After a discussion the church decided, " That in case of conscientious difference of opinion with regard to either ordinance, the church reserves the power to admit, or otherwise, according to the case before it, no case to be considered as a precedent for another, but each case to be considered on its own merits." The next especial matter of interest for us is the fol- lowing entry. " 1869, Dec. 15. The want of a chapel at Colne, for week evening and Sunday afternoon services, has long been felt. This year an effort has been made to erect such a place, 100 being promised to the Pastor for this purpose in the course of a few days. A building in every AND PURCHASE OF THE MINISTER'S HOUSE. 287 way suitable, and exceedingly tasteful, has been erected, and was this day opened. Kev. J. H. Millard, B.A., of Huntingdon, preaching therein in the afternoon, and Messrs Millard, W. E. Winks, C. P. Tebbutt, W. Tebbutt, J. L. Ekins, and the Pastor, addressing a public meeting in Bluntisham Chapel in the evening." "1871, June 15th, Thursday. The chapel which had been built at Colne, cost more than was anticipated namely about 225 of which 100 had yet to be found it was proposed in the early part of this year to have a Bazaar etc. in order to liquidate the debt. Great efforts had been made by the ladies of the congregation for some months, and to day a Bazaar was opened in the school- room. There were four stalls presided over by different ladies, and also music and refreshments. Visitors were numerous from all parts of the county. In the evening a sacred concert was given in the chapel, which was crowded to excess. Miss Perl, of London, Miss Tebbutt, of Nottingham, and other friends, as well as our own choir, rendered efficient service, and Neville Goodman, Esq., M.A., and the Rev. J. P. Campbell, of Cambridge, delivered addresses." " Friday. The bazaar was again opened this afternoon and evening, and a pleasant entertainment of music, readings, etc. given for a couple of hours. The success of the effort has been in every way decided the debt being quite cleared off, and it is expected there will be a considerable surplus." And so the new chapel at Colne was paid for. The next project entertained by the people was ex- plained at a special meeting of the congregation called for August 5th 1873, to consider the propriety of pur- chasing a " minister's house " and of " altering the chapel." 288 THE REBUILDING OF THE MEETIXG-HOUSE At this meeting it was proposed to raise the sum of 1000, of which 500 was to be spent on the purchase, or building of a house, and 500 on the improvement of the chapel. Mr C. P. Tebbutt offered a house ad- joining his own, with a large garden and orchard for 450. This offer was accepted, and the house agreed to be bought on behalf of the Trustees of the chapel. Since that time this house has been the house for the minister, and a very suitable pleasant house it is, some way farther up the village than the chapel or " meeting-house." On the 9th November, 1873, Messrs John Coxe Feary, Charles Prentice Tebbutt, Charles Daintree, and William Barrett, were chosen Deacons. Mr Stephen Feary having been for the last few years the only deacon, it was thought desirable that others should share with him the labours and responsibility of this office. By December, about 1000 has been promised by members of the church and congregation and friends outside the chapel alterations are being rapidly pushed forward all the necessary prepa- rations are making, and it is hoped to begin the actual renovation next May. Already, in pursuance of the scheme, a small vestry for the minister has been added to the vestry behind the chapel, and this will be all ready for use next Sunday the first in the new year. On New Year's Day 1874, a tea meeting was held. About two hundred and thirty people sat down to tea addresses were delivered in the chapel by Mr Tebbutt and the Pastor. The choir sang several anthems, and Messrs Feary and H. Jackson each read appropriate selections. The tea was given by the ladies of the con- gregation, and the proceeds were dedicated to the building fund. It was felt that an earnest and united feeling pervaded the meeting, which augured well for the spirit AND PURCHASE OF THE MINISTER'S HOUSE. 289 in which the various special duties of the year were to be met. When the spring came the old meeting-house was pulled down and during all this year and into the next the workmen are all astir in the building of its successor, which is being constructed in the way most suitable to use up old materials, and so lighten the burden of heavy expenses, and the new building is to suggest the old one, so that sacred memories, happy associations and time- honoured connections may, unbroken, be passed on to the new meeting-house. So they take down the old place tenderly and reverently, respecting its cherished traditions, its corruptible parts return to the dust, but its uncorrupted parts are renewed and reared into the perpetuation of itself. It will not be a new building, neither is it the old one, to one who had parted from the old meeting-house in his youth then returned to its successor in his old age, the appearance would be a puzzle is it the same or another ? The old materials, which are not perishable, have combined with new ones, and it is a resurrection. The old meeting-house is "clothed upon," and in its transformation its identity is preserved blessed recollections, sacred traditions, hallowed associations, happy memories these all cling to it all that is worth preserving is there what had decayed has passed away " behold all things are made new." It has become an emblem of the change awaiting its old friends at present sleeping quietly around it. When the next New Year's Day came round, friends at their social tea could congratulate themselves on their nearly completed meeting-house, and so Jan. 1st, 1875, was spent thank- fully and hopefully. But before the month was out, a sad farewell must be made our old [friend Mr Stephen T. B. 19 290 THE REBUILDING OF THE MEETING-HOUSE Feary nephew and son-in-law to the first pastor, a link connecting us with the past, is taken away. The event is thus noticed in the church book. " 1875, Jan. 22. This day the church and congre- gation and many friends from a distance assembled to perform a sad and painful duty to lay in their last resting place the earthly remains of our dear friend and helper the late Stephen Feary, who died of paralysis on the 17th instant. He joined this church in 1840, and for many years was its trusted and beloved servant, as deacon. For many years he led the prayer meetings, and 'gave out' the hymns at the Sabbath worship. But of late his sight and hearing failing him. he has been compelled to relinquish most of his more active duties. He was stricken with paralysis at St Ives market, on Monday the 4th (the previous day he had attended the three services, assisting as usual at the Lord's supper in the afternoon). He was brought home, and for a day or two seemed rallying, but a second stroke falling on the Friday, he became unconscious, and gradually sank to rest. Much sympathy is felt for bis widow, who is now deprived of one with whom she has walked for nearly forty years. Mr Feary was universally beloved for his kindly and sympathetic nature. He has gone to be witb Christ, which is far better." Mr Feary died in his seventy-third year. The rebuilt meeting-house was opened on Wednesday, the 9th of June, 1875. At 12 o'clock the morning service was conducted by the Rev. J. H. Millard, B.A., of Hunting- don, and a sermon was preached by the Rev. Henry Allon, D.D., of Union Chapel, Islington. In the evening a public meeting was held at which Thomas Coote, Esq., of Fenstanton presided, and the speakers were Rev. AND PURCHASE OF THE MINISTER'S HOUSE. 291 J. T. Browne, of Northampton, Rev. Dr Allon, Rev. Dr Robertson, of Cambridge, Neville Goodman, Esq., M.A., of Cambridge. At the morning service a hymn composed by Mr Goadby was sung. Our fathers' Friend and God, In whom they live for aye, Hear thou their children, Lord, and thine! ki ', Be near to us this day. Upon this hallowed spot Thy face has often shone ; Thy Word been preached, Thy mercy felt, Thy will with gladness done. In faith we now renew Our fathers' Sabbath home, And with the memories of the past Link all the years to come. Grant, Lord, with this new House, New grace our hearts to cheer, New life within, new power without, God of our fathers, hear ! And if our joy to-day Be touched with secret pain, And thoughts of missing faces blend With our rejoicing strain. let the eye of faith That Heavenly Temple see Where, amidst holier, vaster throngs, They ever worship thee. The total cost of this rebuilding and purchase, in- cluding all fixtures in the meeting-house, and all repairs and alterations of the minister's house, amounted to 2307. 19s. 4