Dissenters and Nonconformists (1)

Introduction
From the 17th to the 19th centuries there were many chapels of various traditions, starting in the City and its immediate outskirts. Most were small but a few were sizeable, attracting big congregations. They split and re-formed regularly over doctrinal issues - not the same ones that concerned Anglicans! At first, there were no national denominations and structures, though various 'Associations' of ministers and congregations emerged (some of them straddling the traditions). So for much of this period we should speak of 'Dissenters' (their preferred term) rather than 'nonconformists'. The labels 'Independent', '(English) Presbyterian', 'Congregational' and 'Baptist' remained fluid for some time, with clergy and members moving between different groups. Rejection of infant baptism was sometimes a trigger, but there were many other factors. The term 'Anabaptist' is sometimes used for those who re-baptized adult believers, but more accurately applies to more radical groups who also rejected involvement with civil government.

Two clergy examples of this fluidity are William Stephens [see below] and Joshua Toulmin (1740-1815) [right], described a serial dissenter.  He trained at Coward's Academy in Wellclose Square (run by his relative Dr Samuel Morton Savage) and began his ministry as a Presbyterian in 1761, but four years later became a Baptist. In his later years - by which time he had been radicalised by the American and French revolutions - he became a Unitarian.

A lay example is provided by this Baptist Magazine obituary of Robert Harris in 1822: at various periods of his life he had links with the General Baptists at Prescott Street, the Calvinist Baptists at Alie Street (where he was secretary of the Friend to the Aged Society), the Countess of Huntingdon's chapel and Pell Street Meeting.

More important were the theological 'labels' : for example, was a church Calvinist or Arminian? From the mid-19th century, some of the more liberal congregations - whom others labelled 'Arian' and/or 'Socinian' - embraced the new designatation 'Unitarian' (though there were no Unitarian churches in this area). Then came the various brands of Methodism. In our patch, we also had Lutheran and other Reformed churches, founded to serve national congregations (Danish, Swedish and German), and the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. Work with seamen, and other projects, was often undertaken on a 'non-denominational' basis. All these are explored in the following pages.

There were also many one-off radical groups, such as the Muggletonians, described here.

The picture today
Charles Booth, writing at the end of the 19th century, said that, with a few exceptions (noted below), all the nonconformist chapels are in difficulties, but not wiped out as in Spitalfields. But in the 21st century, all have now gone, save for St George's German Lutheran Church, the Strangers' Rest Mission at 131 The Highway, and Coverdale and Ebenezer Congregational Church in Bigland Street.

A 1916 Baptist Bibliography states that between 1777-1837 there were 120 Baptist churches in London, most of them Calvinistic, though those styled 'General' (or 'of the New Connexion') were not. Some were 'Strict' (that is, practising restricted communion, only for those regarded as doctrinally united) and/or 'Particular' (that is, preaching a particular view of the atonement, that Christ died only for the 'elect' - so-called 'double predestination'). For more information about the various congregations and their ministers from 1668-1760, see Joseph Ivimey English Baptists vol.3 (B.J. Holdsworth 1823).

Particular Baptists, Wapping / Prescot Street / Commercial Street

What is claimed to be the oldest continuous Baptist congregation began in 1633, when John Spilsbury and others left the Independent Calvinist church founded in 1616 led by John Lathorp to establish a 'New Testament' church, on confessional and 'covenant' principles. The reason for their leaving has been much debated, since documentary sources (such as the 'Kiffin manuscript') are uncertain: was it an amicable split to set up a 'church plant', or did it turn on baptismal discipline? One version says that, having become convinced that infant baptism was invalid, they were re-baptized by sprinkling, and again (via the Dutch Mennonites) by immersion - and that another dissenter, John Smyth, baptized himself in this way (so-called 'se-baptism') - but for various reasons all this is unlikely.

Spilsbury was a signatory both of the 1644 Confession of Faith and the 1659 Declaration of several of the People called Anabaptists; he also wrote one of many contemporary works on baptism, A treatise concerning the lawfull subject of baptisme (1643, which he revised in 1652). [He is not to be confused with his namesake, the mapmaker and engraver (1739-69) who invented the first jigsaw puzzle in 1767.]

In the 1650s the congregation met in Coleman Street, where John Watson and Hansard Knollys ministered, but they settled in Wapping, in Meeting House Alley, or Yard (between Broad Street and Old Gravel Lane) in rented premises which they may have shared with an Independent congregation.  But their meetings remained illegal.

John Norcott led the congregation from 1670 to his death in 1676; he had been ejected in 1662 from Anglican ministry in a Hertfordshire parish, and was regularly harrassed  for conducting illegal and 'riotous' assemblies. He too wrote a book on baptism: Baptism discovered plainly and faithfully according to the word of God. Wherein in set forth the glorious pattern of our blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ, the pattern of all believers in their subjection to baptism - which went through many editions: 1672, 1675 (with a preface by William Kiffin & Richard Claridge), 1694, 1700, 1709, 1721, 1722, 1723, 1740, 1801, 1878 ('corrected & altered' by C.H. Spurgeon) and 1911.

Hercules (or William) Collins was the next pastor. By 1686, there were 387 members, with a large turnover not only through death, but by excommunication or deafault of various kinds - discipline against those who became Quakers, Seventh Day Baptists or those who presented children for Anglican baptism was strict. Days of prayer, fasting and humiliation were observed in what were difficult times - especially from 1683-7, when persecution was fierce; the chapel was abandoned and they met in private houses. In 1684 Collins was imprisoned in Newgate for a time, and fined the huge sum of £100. But in anticipation of the 1689 Toleration Act (allowing dissenters to own property) they planned a purpose-built chapel in Wapping, with a lease on land in 'James Street' - never named as such on maps, but almost certainly on Johnson Street, on the west side of Broad Street - which thus became the earliest authorised Baptist chapel. Almost immediately it was found to be too small, and galleries were added. It also had one of the first dissenting burial grounds. Church members were buried free of charge, but in 1699 others paid 40/- (20/- for a child), to be paid to the Deacons for the poor, plus 10/- for a headstone and 30/- for a stone over the ground. In due course, they also established a purpose-built house in Artichoke Lane, Wapping (some way from what became Artichoke Hill), seating 200 people.

Collins was a prolific writer, beginning with his Orthodox Catechism in 1680, for preventing the Canker and Poison of Heresy and Error (a Particular Baptist version of the 1562 Heidelburg Catechism - and includes the first Baptist foray into the question of congregational singing, which he supported - this was to become controversial); works on baptism, Some Reasons for Separation from the Church of England (1682), the sovereignty of God - Mountains of Brass, or, A Discourse upon the Decrees of God (1690), and ending in his dying year (1702) with The Temple Repair’d: Or, An Essay to revive the long neglected Ordinances, of exercising the Spiritual Gift of Prophecy for the Edification of the Churches; and of ordaining Ministers duly qualified. With proper Directions as to Study and Preaching, for such as are inclin’d to the Ministry  - a plea for proper ministerial training!

Subsequent ministers were Edward Elliott (from 1704), William Curtis (from 1718), Clendon Dawkes (from 1719 - who left for another chapel, but soon moved again because it practised mixed communion), and Samuel Wilson (1726-50), who lectured against the Socinian James Foster.

In 1730, after 43 years in the Wapping chapel, they moved to new premises in [Little] Prescot Street. (Robert Seymour's 1735 Survey of the Cities of London & Westminster - a part-published update of the work the Elizabethan chronicler John Stow - mentions on p705 an Anabaptist congregation in Meeting House Yard: was he out of date, or did another congregation take over this chapel? He also mentions an Anabaptist meeting in Virginia Street, on the corner of Penitent Street.) John When Wilson died, they invited Benjamin Beddome (who had been a student at the church) to become the minister, writing both to him and to his church in Bourton: they declined to release him. Some then wanted to appoint James Fall, but after a vote Samuel Burford was offered the post - he was related by marriage to Stephen Williams, one of the deacons. He came from Lyme in 1755, and died in 1768, aged 42 (leaving a wife and young family).

Abraham Booth (1769-1806) was the next pastor, for 37 years until his death. He came from a humble background in Nottinghamshire, which made him a surprising choice for a sophisticated congregation, but he became a prolific and widely-read writer - and his books have been reprinted in modern times. The most famous is The Reign of Grace from its Rise to its Consummation (1827). He also preached against slavery, as well as on specifically Baptist doctrines. In an otherwise positive review of his life and writings, William Jones in 1806 felt he had been less than candid in rebutting the charge that he taught Sandemanianism - the belief that mere assent to the gospel, without evidence of grace, is sufficient for salvation. He was a prime mover in setting up the training college that would become Regent's Park College in Oxford, and was the first London Baptist pastor to support the new Baptist Missionary Society.  His will began

William Stephens (1756-1839) found him a hard act to follow. He began ministry as an Independent, then as a Congregationalist, and then served with Haldane and taught at his Edinburgh Tabernacle (Scottish-style Wesley and Whitefield), before receiving believer's baptism in the Waters of Leith. A year later, in 1807, he came to Prescott Street as a Baptist. During his brief time, 31 members seceded, for Artillery Street: Stephens too was suspected of being Sandemanian, and when he moved to Manchester in 1810, and to Rochdale seven years later, he was challenged on the issue by William Gatsby [see below].

Thomas Griffin followed, then from 1832 Charles Stovel, who was also active in the anti-slavery cause, and is pictured [below] among those at the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention (Benjamin Robert Haydon, National Portrait Gallery). In 1846 he published Christian Discipleship and Baptism: Being Eight Lectures in Reply to the Theory Advanced by Dr. Halley in the Congregational Lecture of 1843. James Grant's Metropolitan Pulpit of 1839 printed this assessment - imagine publishing something similar today!  

The Rev. C. Stovel, of Little Prescott-street Chapel Goodman's-fields — the chapel in which the celebrated Abraham Booth, author of the "Reign of Grace," and other well-known works, so long preached — has only been five or six years in London. He is rising in influence among the Dissenters generally, and in importance and popularity among the body with which he is connected. He is a man of very considerable mind. He often thinks deeply, and strikes the hearer by the originality and force of some of his conceptions. His matter has the further merit of being condensed. It is not, however, without the drawback of being very unequal; and this not only in one sermon as compared with another, but often in the same sermon. At one time you are struck with the force and felicity of his ideas; at another, perhaps in a few minutes afterwards, he is very common-place. He is one of the most variable preachers in these respects I have ever heard; and not less variable is he in his delivery. At one time he is all fire and fervour; at another he is languidness itself. He stands on the latter occasions as still, always of course excepting the motions of his mouth and his head, as if the fountains of life within him had dried up. When, however, he gets warm, at particular parts of his discourse, he becomes exceedingly animated and liberal of his gesture. His arms are then seen flying about, suddenly thrown up perpendicularly, and as suddenly drawn down again. His voice too, which was not only so low as to be little more than audible, while every word seemed reluctant to emerge out of his throat, is now raised to a pitch which fills the whole of the chapel, and would fill it were it twice as large. If these flights in the reverend gentleman's ideas and delivery were more sustained, instead of having only a congregation of about three hundred persons or less, he would soon double the number of his hearers. Mr. Stovel speaks at one time rather slowly; at other times his delivery is characterised by some degree of rapidity. Mr. Stovel's aspect is forbidding, and his manner is not without some harshness. He often addresses his congregation in so authoritative a sort of manner, that you would fancy he had the notion that men could be literally compelled to believe, repent, and be saved. His friends, however, say, that with all his roughness of exterior he has a very warm heart. He is the author of several small books; but I am not aware that any of them have excited general interest in the religious world. They all display considerable talent, especially his treatise on Church Government. He is the only Dissenting minister I know in London, who regularly preaches three times on a Sunday. His salary is two hundred pounds a year. He is small in stature, and slender in form. His face is thin, and his features are large and marked. His eyes are deeply set, but are quick in their motions, and expressive in their glances. His complexion is pale, and altogether looks as if his health were not good; though I believe he has no cause of complaint on that score. His hair is ample enough, and is of a dark brown colour. His age cannot exceed forty.

The Baptist Recorder of 1851 said of the old Prescot Street chapel

The result was that a new chapel, in Commercial Street, was opened in 1855, at a cost of £10,500 (less £6,560 raised from the former premises). The Primitive Church Magazine noted

Beulah Chapel, Commercial Road
The General Baptists of Beulah Chapel, Commercial Road also had a long history. Started at Tower Hill, they moved to Goodman's Fields in 1689, Virginia Street in 1712, Mill Yard in 1741, Church Lane in 1763 and to Commercial Road ('between 2 and 3 Devonshire-place') in 1821. They corresponded with the New Connexion from 1770, but were not regularly received until 1786. George Ward Pegg (who was from Derbyshire, and trained at Leicester College) was the minister from 1845, when morning worship was at 10.45am, evening worship at 6.30pm (Lord's Supper on the 1st Sunday of the month) and Monday and Thursday prayer meetings. Seats to be had of the deacons. Charles Booth, writing at the end of the 19th century, noted that they nearly fill their church.

Seventh Day General Baptists, Mill Yard
More intriguing were the Seventh Day General Baptists of Mill Yard [now Leman Street], Goodman's Fields. This was the main centre of Seventh Day (Saturday) worship - which had a long and varied history in this country - until the American-inspired Adventists arrived on the scene in the 1870s. (There was one other London congregation, in Canonbury, plus some oddities elsewhere such as 'Tunkers', 'Keithians' and 'Quaker Baptists'.) 

Established in 1692, it was the church of two original 'Saturday men', an unlikely pair: John James, a Fifth Monarchy Man who was hung, drawn and quartered in 1661 on the basis of trumped-up charges, at Bull Stake Alley Whitechapel [the white cross marks the entrance to the alley] , who was pastor until 1661; and Dr Peter Chamberlen (1601-83), the third in a line of distinguished surgeons of that name and pastor from 1653 [right]. They acquired a permanent meeting house at Mill Yard; when their benefactor Joseph Davis' son died, they were able to expand and create a burial ground, and also let the premises to some 'Sunday Baptists'. Subsequent ministers were William Sellers (1670-1678), Henry Soursby (1678-1711), John Savage (1712-20 - whose grandson Samuel Morton Savage was a tutor at the Congregational Academy in Wellclose Square, 1744-62) and John Maulden (1712-15). From 1721-27 a newly-formed Particular (Calvinist) Baptist group joined them on Saturdays, but doctrinal splits soon followed.

In 1726 Robert Cornthwaite, from Bolton, became their pastor, at the age of 30, remaining until his death in 1755. He was a keen controversialist, and in his time there were some distinguished members: Nathan(iel) Bailey [left] whose Universal Etymological Dictionary went through thirty editions between 1721 and 1802, and Sir William Tempest [right], a lawyer and Fellow of the Royal Society. Cornthwaite also knew William Whiston, the Cambridge mathematician, Arian, and translator of Josephus. Anne Arbuthnot said, in 1744, that any tour of London should include the seventh-day men, and sweet-singers of Israel at Goodman's Fields.
 
Daniel Noble (1729-1783) was their next pastor, from 1752 to 1783. He was Presbyterian-educated, remained an elder at a 'First-Day' Baptist church, and also held a Church of England advowson (the right to present to a living)! There were a hundred regular worshippers, plus a chapel for 250 below and a gallery above for servants. For a few years he employed Thomas Paine [right] to teach at his 'great Academy' in Leman Street, at a salary of £20 a year plus £5 for finding his own lodging. Paine's biographer George Chalmers says Here he continued, teaching English, and walking out with the children, till Christmas 1766, disliked by the mistress....and hated by the boys, who were terrified by his harshness. Mr Noble relinquished [him] without much regret.

Noble's colleague Peter Russell succeeded him until 1789, and then William Slater [left] until his death in 1819; there was a fire in 1790, necessitating a rebuild. The congregation was in decline, and the chapel closed until 1826, when 'First Day' Baptists began to lead worship. However, Slater's son-in-law William Henry Black became an afternoon preacher in 1840 and averted closure; he moved onto the site in 1844. He had rejected the Hutchinsonian biblicism of his native Aberdeen, and became a member of several learned societies. Having catalogued manuscripts at the Ashmolean Museum he was given a post at the British Museum, and in 1841 at the Public Record Office. Legal troubles arose because the trustees had became Anglicans; they were briefly evicted, and he fought the case at his own expense - it was only finally resolved in 1869 (shades of Charles Dickens!) By then, it is said that the congregation had fallen to one man and three women (two of them his daughters). 

But Black [right] was sufficiently well-known to be sought out and interviewed by C.M. Davies [who served briefly in this parish and whose tale is told here]. Once he had found the unlikely-looking, unsavoury place he was much-impressed by this venerable scholar-like old man, arrayed in clercial black, with a long white beard....I expected to find some illiterate scholar, with a hobby ridden to death, when lo! I found myself in the presence of a profound scholar and most courteous gentleman, who informed me that he thought in Latin, said his prayers in Hebrew, and read his New Testament lessons from the original Greek!...In the service he prayed for all 'honest and sincere persons of whatever nation or profession: for Jews and Mahomedans and Christians: and that all may be fitted for nobler and purper state of society, and have their share in the First Resurrection'. The congregation was small, but it would be no harm if some of our Sunday preachers would take a quiet run out on Saturday to Goodman's Fields to see him at work.

Black's own son-in-law William Mead Jones - significantly, an American - succeeded him; but they only kept going by means of a charity compensating old people for loss of Sabbath wages. The Mill Yard site was sold to the LNER in 1885 (having cleared the burial ground), and the cause shifted, with American finance, to Highbury (where the minister combined Saturday-Sabbatarianism with Freemasonry and the Order of Danielites - strict vegetarianism).

For more detail on all the above, see the Epilogue of David S. Katz Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth-century England (Brill 1987), and various parts of this Australian site.


Free Chapel, Chapman Street
In 1821 'some friends in the Baptist persuasion' opened a Free Chapel at 2 (Lower) Chapman Street, where attenders will be admitted free from all contributions. Messrs Salier and Gibbs were set apart as its joint ministers, and ordained there on 11 August 1823. The deacons and managers issued an 'Affectionate Address' appealing to the members and congregation for support to supply more fully with the means of grace those districts of this great metropolis, where poverty and wretchedness have taken up their residence.

In December 1828 they were advertising:

This was one of a number of similar advertisements cited by the doughty J.E.N. Molesworth, Vicar of Rochdale, in a typically trenchant article 'Dissent and Simony' in Common sense, or. Every-body's magazine (1842)  [cover picture right]  in which he argued that, while Dissenters were critical of the Anglican patronage system, their own practices were far more objectionable, being based on naked commercial opportunism, offering supposedly lucrative openings for ministers to exploit in desirable locations (though Chapman Street was hardly a good example of this). 

See here for an 1832 meeting in 'Mr Palmer's Schoolroom' protesting against a proposed parliamentary Bill to provide state funding for education.

The chapel was still active in 1848.

There were two Calvinistic Baptist chapels, both 'Strict and Particular' (see above), both in Alie Street.

Church of Christ, Little Alie Street
This congregation's life began in 1750. Its building was, said a later observer, a somewhat small chapel. William Dowers was the minister from 1757-95. During his time Isaac Smith, alleged to be the first dissenting clerk to receive a salary, of £20 a year, left his employment as a draper and composed and published a set of psalm tunes, which are in very general use among Dissenters, and some of them in many churches (Psalmo-Doxologia 1822). 

In 1789 the deacon Mr Fleming baptized William Winterbotham [pictured], 'on profession of faith', in the river at Old Ford. Winterbotham had renounced infant baptism and the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, and became a Baptist minister. An orthodox and radical Calvinist, he was tried for sedition in 1792. The court claimed, If ever the trumpet of sedition was sounded in the pulpit it was done in this instance. He was in prison from 1793-97, during which he wrote books about China and the United States.

William Shenstone was the next minister until his death (aged 62) in 1833; during his time 680 members were admitted. He lived in Bedford [now Ford] Square, behind the London Hospital. In 1799 was produced A declaration of the faith and practice of the Church of Christ, in Little Alie-Street, Goodman's-fields. By 1842 this had become a set of 'Articles of Faith' and was copied elsewhere. In 1807 a group of 'super-lapsarians' (the hyper-Calvinist insistence that the fall from grace had to happen so that God to act to show mercy in Christ) left for Mr Franklyn's church in Red Cross Street, because Shenston did not preach to deny all ungodliness. In 1815 he published Vestry hymns, or, Effusions of the heart: being a collection of original hymns on experimental subjects: particularly adapted to prayer meetings. In 1825 he provided gifts of clothing for the children of Alie Street School, and a winter shawl for the mistress.

In 1832 the congregation tabled a petition praying the members of the House of Lords so far as in them lies, to avert the impending Storm of Divine Vengeance, by passing a Law for the speedy and total Abolition of Slavery in all His Majesty's Dominions.

The Primitive Church Magazine of 1846 records that the next minister, Mr Dickerson, had congregations in the morning and evening from 400 to 500, and 392 church members, plus a Sunday School, a Sick Visiting Society, a Friend-in-need Society for assisting poor lying-in-women.

Half a century later, the Booth Archives contain an interview with Mr Palmer, greengrocer and Sunday School superintendent. The chapel closed in 1921. According to Mrs Basil Holmes, writing in 1904, they had used Sheen's burial ground. In recent years this has been exhumed by Cherished Land Ltd.
 
Zoar Chapel, Great Alie Street
In the scriptures, Zoar was the only 'city of the plain' not destroyed along with Sodom (Genesis 19) and is mentioned in Isaiah 15.5 as a 'place of refuge': hence it became one of the names chosen for chapels. This chapel was in Great Ayliffe (Alie) Street, Goodman's Fields, a few yards from Red Lion Street. Built for Elias Keach, a popular preacher, in 1698, it was a good-sized specimen of a 17th century conventicle and had a great deal of old oak about it; it was described in 1851 as a large edifice, and in tolerable condition. It has been claimed as the model for Little Bethel in Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop, though so has Orange Street Chapel, Leicester Square and others. It became a leading 'Gospel Standard' congregation [see below]. 

John Bailey was minister at the turn of the 19th century, and in 1810 published The Poor Pilgrim, in a series of Letters, being some account of the Life and Experience of John Bailey, Pastor of the Particular Baptist Church at Zoar-Chapel, Great Alie Street, Goodman's Fields. He also produced a hymnbook Sion's Melody; he died in 1830. 

Thereafter, although John Austin became pastor in 1832, it served as a particular venue for visiting preachers of 'sound views' ; the chapel also published a monthly directory of chapels where 'faithful' men could be listened to. The sermons of some of the famous names of the day who preached here are still in print [click here for samples], such as 

William Gadsby (1773-1844) of Manchester, who as well as 12,000 sermons produced a widely-used hymnbook, a set of rules for church discipline which were widely-followed, and in 1835 started, with his son, the conservative Gospel Standard magazine

Joseph Charles Philpot (1802-69), 'the Seceder' (an ex-Anglican) who edited Gospel Standard for twenty years

John Warburton (1776-1857)

John Kershaw (1792-1870), pastor of Hope Particular Baptist Chapel, Rochdale for 53 years [not to be confused with a Methodist namesake 1766-1810, a ship's surgeon from Whitby who later settled in Stoke Newington]

Around the time of the ritualism riots at the parish church, they became embroiled in a rather different controversy, over the eternal Sonship of Christ, which others at the time were denying as unbiblical. On 11 December 1860 they issued this resolution

This was argumentatively and nit-pickingly taken up by William Palmer of Homerton in Eternal Generation Derogatory to all the Persons in the Holy Trinity, but especially to the Persons of the Son and Holy Ghost. The magazine The Gospel Standard came to Zoar's defence, at considerable length. 

Charles Booth (1902), notes that, in contrast with nearby St Augustine Settles Street, its congregation from almost everywhere except immediate neighbourhood: some stay all day on Sunday: the congregation bound together by the strictness and exclusiveness of their doctrine and the terms of church membership:  cannot unite with other neighbouring congregations which are 'Strict' but not 'Particular': old-fashioned, high-backed pews: pastor sits aloft. In due course the congregation moved to Varden Street [pictured] and the chapel became a warehouse. It is now one of the three English congregations of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

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