Anti Methodists in Pendle

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AntiMethodisminEighteenthCenturyEngland:ThePendleForestRiotsof1748

MICHAELFRANCISSNAPE

TheJournalofEcclesiasticalHistory/Volume49/Issue02/April1998,pp257281DOI:null,Publishedonline:08September2000

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Howtocitethisarticle:MICHAELFRANCISSNAPE(1998).AntiMethodisminEighteenthCenturyEngland:ThePendleForestRiotsof1748.TheJournalofEcclesiasticalHistory,49,pp257281

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Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. , No. , April . Printed in the United Kingdom# 1998 Cambridge University Press

257

Anti-Methodism in Eighteenth-Century England : The Pendle Forest

Riots of

by MICHAEL FRANCIS SNAPE

Notice is hereby given, that if any man be mindful to enlist in hisMajestys service, under the command of the Rev. Mr. George White,Commander-in-Chief, and John Bannister, Lieut.-General of hisMajestys forces for the defence of the Church of England, and thesupport of the manufactory in and about Colne, both which are now indanger, let him repair to the drum-head at the Cross, where each manshall receive a pint of ale in advance, and all other properencouragements."

This notice, which was published at the height of the agitationwhich beset the forest of Pendle in the summer of 1748, conjuresimages beloved of the Methodist hagiographer. Assuming quasi-

military titles, squire and parson rally a drink-sodden mob to do battleagainst the preachers of the Gospel, and all in the name of religion andcommerce. Historians, however, are required to take a more dispassionateview of the motives and actions of those who, through violence or polemic,attempted to arrest the growth of the Evangelical Revival, a movementwhich was to prove one of the most influential religious and culturalmovements in the history of the British Isles.# John Walshs pioneeringessay on Methodism and the mob was one of the first serious attemptsto treat anti-Methodist agitation sympathetically, and to place it in themuch broader context of the norms of popular protest in the eighteenthcentury. However, detailed academic studies of anti-Methodist protestsremain scarce, and the strong correlation between these and otherexamples of popular hostility towards other deviant religious groups, suchas Catholics, Nonconformists and Jews, remains understated.

CROChester Record Office; JRULM John Rylands University Library ofManchester ; LROLancashire Record Office

" A. C. H. Seymour, The life and times of Selina countess of Huntingdon, London 1844, i.261.

# For a recent treatment of the influence of evangelicalism in nineteenth-century Britainsee David Hempton, Religion and political culture in Britain and Ireland, Cambridge 1996.

258 michael francis snape

To understand why the rise of Methodism provoked such a strongreaction, it is necessary to examine the political and religious backgroundand to note some important features of contemporary community life.Although mid eighteenth-century England was once viewed as politicallystable, historians have recently shown that its peace and prosperity wasprecarious to say the least. For a society overshadowed by the carnageand destructiveness of the civil wars of the previous century, the prospectof further strife was traumatic, and the very real possibility that thefollowers of the exiled House of Stuart might once again plunge thecountry into bloodshed and anarchy was, as Linda Colley has argued,a crucial factor in ensuring their ultimate defeat.$ However, Jacobitismwas not the only spectre at the feast. The religious and political excessesof extreme Puritanism during the Civil War and Commonwealth periodrendered Protestant Nonconformity distinctly suspect after the Res-toration and its religious settlement of 1662. Whilst the limited extent ofthe Toleration Act of 1689 and subsequent failures to repeal the Test andCorporation Acts were symptomatic of the continuing suspicion in whichDissenters were regarded by the legislature during the eighteenth century,popular hostility towards Dissenters could occasionally find more violentexpression, most notably in the Sacheverell Riots of 1710 and in thedisturbances which followed the accession of George i in 171415.% In thecontext of the times, the zeal of early Methodism could seem disturbinglyreminiscent of the enthusiasm of the seventeenth century, a febriledisposition believed to be characteristic of the Protestant sectaries of thatperiod and one which Samuel Johnson defined as A vain belief of privaterevelation and John Locke as the conceits of a warmed or overweeningbrain.& The widespread fear engendered by the apparent recrudescenceof religious enthusiasm in the nascent Methodist movement was voiced ina letter published in the Gentlemans Magazine in May 1739 :

Those who are acquainted with the History of former Timesknow whatmonstrous Absurdities in Opinion, and what vile Practices Enthusiasm willproduce; from what small Beginnings, and by what inconsiderable Persons, as toparts and Abilities, the greatest Disturbances in Church and State have arisen.The last Century furnishes us with a melancholy Proof in our own Country.Whoever will be at the Trouble of comparing the first Rise of those Troubleswhich at last overturnd the Constitution, and ruind the Nation, will see toogreat a Similitude between them and the present Risings of Enthusiastick Rant,not to apprehend great Danger that, unless proper Precautions be taken in Time,the remote Consequences of them may be as fatal.'

$ L. Colley, Britons: forging the nation , London 1992, 85.% J. Stevenson, Popular disturbances in England , London 1992, 2730 ; J. Albers,

Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues : religious identities in eighteenth-centuryLancashire , in J. Walsh, S. Taylor and C. Haydon (eds), The Church of England c. c. : from toleration to Tractarianism, Cambridge 1993, 317333 at pp. 3278.

& S. Johnson (ed.), A dictionary of the English language, London 1755.' Gentlemans Magazine ix (1739), 23942.

259the pendle forest riots

Notwithstanding this fear and hatred of enthusiasm, Roman Catholi-cism remained the most reviled form of religious deviancy in eighteenth-century England. Colin Haydon has demonstrated the potency of Englishanti-Catholicism during this period, a prejudice which not only served asthe most decisive factor in ensuring the defeat of the Catholic Stuarts but,in the form of the Gordon Riots of 1780, also generated the worst populardisturbances of the whole eighteenth century. Moreover, within thefevered taxonomy of contemporary anti-Catholicism, even Protestantextremists could be passed off as unwitting accessories of popery for, asBishop George Lavington argued in his famous work The enthusiasm ofMethodists and papists compared, Jesuits, and other Romish Emissaries, haveoften mingled, and been the Ringleaders, among our EnthusiasticSectaries ; loudly exclaiming against the Pope, and pretending to Purityand Reformation.( Other events of the seventeenth century seemed toprovide additional justification for this tendency, the late 1680s, forexample, having witnessed the emergence of a sinister alliance betweenpopery and some Dissenters in support of James iis tolerationist policies.

It was Methodisms misfortune to appear at a time when fears ofCatholicism and of Jacobitism were at an unusually high level. During the1730s, and largely because of signs of official laxity in the enforcement ofthe penal laws, fears of Catholic growth were widespread amongstAnglicans and Nonconformists alike.) Because driving the Catholiccommunity underground had made it impossible to gauge its realstrength, the illusion of Catholic growth was one which was easilyconjured and just as easily sustained. Wesley himself was powerfullyinfluenced by it. In his famous post-conversion sermon on Salvation byFaith, preached before the University of Oxford in June 1738, Wesleyargued that :

Nothing but this can effectually prevent the increase of the Roman delusionamong us. It is endless to attack, one by one, all the errors of that Church. Butsalvation by faith strikes at the root, and all fall at once where this is established.It was this doctrine, which our Church justly calls the strong rock and foundationof the Christian religion, that first drove Popery out of these kingdoms; and it isthis alone can keep it out.*

The outbreak of hostilities with Englands old Catholic enemies, Spainfrom 1739 and France from 1743, stoked the flames of anti-Catholichysteria, particularly as these new circumstances lent the Jacobite menacerenewed vigour. The Jacobite rebellion of 17456 saw major outbreaksof anti-Catholic violence across England, much of it whipped up by

( G. Lavington, The enthusiasm of Methodists and papists compared, London 1754, i. 133.) C. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century England: a political and social study,

Manchester 1993, 1249.* J. Wesley, Salvation by faith, in Sermons on several occasions by the Rev. John Wesley, ed.

J. Beecham, London 1851, 14.


government-sponsored propagandists. Given the High Church and partlynonjuring background of the Wesley family, and also the pronouncedtheological and devotional eclectism of John and Charles Wesley,"! earlyMethodists could hardly fail to be suspected of popery and of Jacobitism.Hogarths famous cartoon Enthusiasm Delineated of 1739 depicted atonsured Methodist preacher, suitably attired in a plaid waistcoat,preaching to a wild and credulous congregation."" Similarly, in 1747 anepistle to the Gentlemans Magazine from a resident of Salisbury spoke of ascandalous Methodist preacher of whom During the late rebellion, manythings were observed, in his preaching and conversation, that renderedhim suspected of being in the interest of [the rebels], and but for hisseeming piety and simplicity of behavour, he would have been called toaccount for the same."# Seven years later, Bishop Lavington was of theopinion that Methodism related to popery in much the same manner asit had to the sectaries of the seventeenth century:

I would not be understood to accuse the Methodists directly of Popery; thoughI am persuaded they are doing the Papists work for them, and agree with themin some of their principlestheir heads filled with much the same grand projects,driven on in the same wild manner; and wearing the same badge of peculiaritiesin their tenets not perhaps from compact and design; but a similar configurationand texture of brain, or the fumes of imagination producing similar effects."$

It was not only in print, however, that Methodism was linked so explicitlywith popery and with Jacobitism. One of John Wesleys early hearers atthe Old Foundery in London could only conclude that he was a Papist,as he dwelt so much on the forgiveness of sins ,"% whilst Wesley noted in

"! John Wesley was influenced by the life and example of Catholic mystics such asThomas a' Kempis and Gregory Lopez, and he transmitted these influences to hisfollowers, particularly through his Christian Library. Wesley was also impressed by the livesof Gaston de Renty, the seventeenth-century founder of the Company of the BlessedSacrament, and Gregory Lopez, a sixteenth-century Mexican hermit, as examples ofChristian perfection, Moreover, both he and Charles Wesley found inspiration in theinstantaneous conversion experience of Blaise Pascal. The Wesleys Arminian theology,Johns dictatorial tendencies and Methodist practices such as frequent communion andconfession in band meetings all fuelled accusations of popery. Naturally, the conversionof Charless son, Samuel, to Catholicism in the late 1770s was highly incriminating:E. Duffy, Wesley and the Counter-Reformation, in J. Garnett and C. Matthew (eds),Revival and religion since : essays for John Walsh, London 1993, 119 ; H. Rack, Reasonableenthusiast : John Wesley and the rise of Methodism, London 1992, 420 ; T. A. Campbell, Thereligion of the heart: a study of European religious life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,Columbia 1991, 23 ; D. Butler, Methodists and papists : John Wesley and the Catholic Church inthe eighteenth century, London 1995, 3141, 1857 ; A. M. Lyles, Methodism mocked: the satiricreaction to Methodism in the eighteenth century, London 1960, 889, 945.

"" J. Miller, Religion in the popular prints , Cambridge 1986, 1989."# Gentlemans Magazine xvii (1747), 531."$ R. Polwhele (ed.), The enthusiasm of Methodists and papists considered by Bishop Lavington,

London 1820, 67."% C. Goodwin, The religion of feeling: Wesleyan Catholicism, History Today xlvi

(October 1996), 449 at p. 44.


his Journal how, in a sermon of April 1744, the vicar of St Ives denouncedMethodists as the new sectenemies of the Church, Jacobites, Papistsand what not ! Significantly, the Methodist meeting-house in the sametown had been burnt down some months earlier by a mob celebrating anaval victory over the Spanish."&

Besides falling foul of the political and religious climate of the mideighteenth century, early Methodism also seemed at variance with manyof the norms of contemporary life. The Methodist conversion experienceseemed liable to invert the order of social subordination, as the convertedflaunted new convictions and lifestyles before their social and domesticsuperiors. Whilst the most public example of such impertinence was thedefiance commonly shown by the itinerant preacher towards squire andparson, the observance of strict and often nocturnal routines of prayer bythose fleeing from the wrath to come"' generated considerable domesticstrife. That the unawakened should have been so suspicious of Methodistmeetings is readily understandable, not only because of the neglect ofwork which constant attendance on Methodist meetings was supposed toentail, but also because of the salacious speculation which surroundedMethodist love feasts and holy kisses , speculation which was certainlyfuelled by the libidinous activities of certain rogue preachers."( As theGentlemans Magazines Salisbury informant said of one such preacher:

Many sober and judicious persons have expressed their fears, that the nocturnalmeetings held at his house were scenes of debauchery and impurity; for now andthen a bastard-child was brought into the world by some of his female devotees ;but still the priest himself was unsuspected, till one of the leaders of his femaledisciplesa servant maid about 18declared herself with child by him [and]the fire of jealousy has broken out in many families, where wives or daughterswere his followers.")

Of course, there were wider social and economic ramifications to thesedomestic disputes. In a society in which the authority of the father waswidely seen as being God-given and closely analogous to that of themonarch,"* Methodism was seen as a dangerous social solvent, therebellions it engendered amongst wives, children and servants boding illfor the stability of society as a whole. Moreover, in the context of aneconomy in which the household was the basic economic unit,#! a family

"& Stevenson, Popular disturbances, 389."' J. Wesley, The nature, design and general rules of the united societies in London,

Bristol, Kings-wood and Newcastle upon Tyne, in R. Davies (ed.), The Methodist societies:history, nature and design, Nashville, Tenn. 1989, 68.

"( For the notorious career of Westley Hall, Wesleys antinomian brother-in-law, andalso for suspicions surrounding Wesley himself see Rack, Reasonable enthusiast, 52, 267.

") Gentlemans Magazine xvii (1747), 531."* S. Gill, Women and the Church of England from the eighteenth century to the present, London

1994, 1114.#! J. Rule, The vital century: Englands developing economy, , London 1992, 1819.


in which discord and disruption had taken root, and whose members wereunable to work together, was liable to starve. In this respect, it was clearlythe misfortune of early Methodism to appear upon the national stageduring years of foreign war and industrial depression, circumstanceswhich could only have heightened the precariousness of the householdeconomy during the early years of the 1740s.#"

If Methodism posed a threat to the peace and prosperity of families,and also, therefore, to the body politic, then it also served to threaten thefragile harmony of community life as well. Contemporaries recognisedthat village communities were ultimately bound together by the conceptof neighbourliness , and by the ties of mutual obligation which thisentailed. Methodisms tendency to undermine communal solidarity bysetting its followers apart from other members of the community was mostpronounced with respect to its stand on many of the recreational aspectsof popular culture. Throughout England, community harmony wasfostered by calendars of popular festivities, amongst which the annualparish feast (or wake) usually held pride of place.## The wake was atraditional celebration originally held on the Sunday closest to the feastday of the saint to whom the parish church was dedicated, but by theeighteenth century parish wakes usually occurred at harvest time, whenfood and money were in plentiful supply.#$ The parish wake could involvethe local community in revelry which lasted into the following week,#%

often being accompanied by the annual rush-bearing ceremony to theparish church#& as well as by a number of sports and pastimes in whichmany of its younger members were keen to excel. With respect to thecompetitiveness of some of the accompanying festivities, one eighteenth-century commentator observed that rustics esteemed one another moreor less the following Part of the year according as they distinguishthemselves at this Time.#' Moreover, under the stimulus of the Act ofSettlement of 1662, by which parishes were made responsible for themaintenance of paupers who had either been born within their boundariesor who had otherwise gained a right of settlement,#( eighteenth-century

#" The years 17448 have been identified as the years of the worst recession to take placeover the period 170060 : P. Langford, A polite and commercial people, Oxford 1989, 162.

## J. Brand, Observations on popular antiquities, London 1810, 32932 ; R. Suggett,Festivals and social structure in early modern Wales , Past and Present clii (1996), 79112at pp. 11011. For a discussion of the annual cycle of popular festivities see B. Bushaway,By rite : custom, ceremony and community in England , London 1982, 3448.

#$ E. P. Thompson, The patricians and the plebs , in Customs in common, Harmonds-worth 1993, 512 ; Suggett, Festivals and social structure , 81.

#% R. W. Malcolmson, Popular recreations in English society , Cambridge 1973,18 ; Suggett, Festivals and social structure , 81.

#& This was a very widespread practice in contemporary Lancashire : J. Albers, Seedsof contention: society, politics and the Church of England in Lancashire , unpubl. PhDdiss. Yale 1988, 198. #' Spectator ii (1711), 281.

#( D. Eastwood, Governing rural England: tradition and transformation in local government, Oxford 1994, 25 ; D. Hey (ed.), The Oxford companion to local and family history,Oxford 1996, 41415.


wakes may well have adopted an exclusive and belligerent tone and beenused as a means by which parish communities sought to define themselvesand their members against outsiders and interlopers.#) Given all thesecircumstances, wakes were widely regarded as conducive to lewdness,drunkenness and violence, and there had always been a strong body ofpuritanical opinion which had objected to these celebrations on thegrounds of their impropriety and on account of their popish derivation.Like Puritanism before it, Methodisms active disapproval of parishwakes, and of many similar aspects of popular culture, generatedconsiderable controversy and a good deal of animosity towards itsproponents.#*

As the foregoing discussion will have indicated, the tenor of eighteenth-century English society was highly conformist. In this respect, Englanddiffered little from other contemporary European societies for, as A. F.Upton has noted, most societies in early modern Europe were consensussocieties whose members subscribed to one common set of valuesindividuals or groups who did deviate were seen everywhere assub-versive and rightly open to ruthless repression.$! This conformity toestablished norms was often enforced by ordinary people rather than bythose in authority, the most graphic demonstrations of the popularenforcement of moral and legal norms in eighteenth-century Englandbeing the numerous crowd disturbances of the period. EdwardThompsons pioneering work on the eighteenth-century English crowdhas shown how contemporary food rioters responded to violations of thecustomary moral economy (whose principles had been enshrined in lawby Tudor and Stuart legislators),$" the attitude of these crowds being tosee that justice was enforced by the established authorities if possible, bydirect popular action if necessary.$# However, this popular sense ofjustice was also carried over into labour disputes and into protests againstthe enclosure of common land, the building of turnpike roads and againstthe implementation of Pitts Militia Act of 1757.$$ It was also very muchin evidence in the collective ducking and murder of two supposed witchesby a crowd near Tring in April 1751, fifteen years after the repeal of thewitchcraft statute of 1604.$% The maintenance of Englands post-1689religious settlement was no less susceptible to popular enforcement, mostEnglish men and women subscribing to the view that Nonconformityshould be contained, Catholicism suppressed, and the rights of theChurch of England upheld. These convictions informed the clamorous

#) Suggett, Festivals and social structure , 1045, 11011.#* Ibid. 837 ; Malcolmson, Popular recreations, 610.$! A. F. Upton, Sweden, in J. Miller (ed.), Absolutism in seventeenth-century Europe,

London 1992, 99121 at p. 99.$" E. P. Thompson, The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth

century, in Customs in common, 185258.$# R. W. Malcolmson, Life and labour in England , London 1981, 122.$$ Stevenson, Popular disturbances, 4568.$% Gentlemans Magazine xxi (1751), 186.


popular protests which led to the repeal of the Jewish Naturalisation Actin 1754 and also fed the popular agitation against the scant measure ofrelief granted to Roman Catholics in 1778, a wave of agitation whichculminated in the orgy of destruction and bloodshed that were theGordon Riots of 1780.$&

In legal terms, early Methodism was a slippery phenomenon. Althoughpractices such as itinerant preaching and field preaching constituted clearviolations of the Church of Englands canon law,$' it was much harder tosee where Methodism as a movement stood in relation to statute law ingeneral and to the Toleration Act in particular. Because its leaders, andnotably John Wesley, were insistent in regarding Methodism as a renewalmovement within the Church of England, they maintained thatMethodism was exempt from the terms of the Toleration Act, whichapplied only to Trinitarian Nonconformists. Although this claim wasdisputed by Anglican jurists, most notably Edmund Gibson and RichardBurn,$( Methodist preachers and meeting-houses continued to gounregistered by either the civil or the ecclesiastical authorities, a clearviolation, in the eyes of many, of the spirit if not the letter of theToleration Act. If the Toleration Act was thus unable to provide ameaningful check to Methodist activities, then the Conventicles Act of1670 also failed to have the desired effect. Because the express purpose ofthis act had been to suppress seditious activities at Nonconformistmeetings, Wesley (who went to great lengths to demonstrate his loyalty tothe political establishment throughout his public career)$) argued thatthis had no application to the Methodist movement, an argument whichechoed the case made by some Nonconformist ministers in relation to thefirst Conventicles Act of 1664.$* Moreover, and particularly after 1714,the mood of Englands governors was not conducive to the strengtheningof laws against religious Nonconformity, the Whig ministries of the periodpresiding over a nation which enjoyed a considerable measure of de facto,if not de jure, religious toleration.%! However, notwithstanding thedisposition of government and the nicer points of legal debate, it seemedto many contemporaries that Methodism with all its connotations ofpopish and puritanical excess was subversive of a religious settlement

$& T. W. Perry, Public opinion, propaganda, and politics in eighteenth-century England: a studyof the Jew Bill of , Cambridge, Mass. 1962, 17980 ; D. S. Katz, The Jews in the historyof England , Oxford 1994, 246 ; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-centuryEngland, 20444. $' R. Burn, Ecclesiastical law, London 1763, ii. 280.

$( D. Hempton, Methodism and the law, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Libraryof Manchester lxx (1988), 93107 at p. 95 ; Burn, Ecclesiastical law, ii. 47.

$) Rack, Reasonable enthusiast, 37080.$* P. Collinson, The English conventicle , in W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), Voluntary

religion (Studies in Church History xxiii, 1986), 2324.%! H. Trevor-Roper, Toleration and religion after 1688 , in O. P. Grell, J. Israel and

N. Tyacke (eds), From persecution to toleration: the glorious Revolution and religion in England,Oxford 1991, 389408 ; P. Corfield, Georgian England: one state, many faiths , HistoryToday xlv (1995), 1421.


which the law was unable to enforce and the countrys rulers werereluctant to uphold.

The specific focus of this essay is the anti-Methodist agitation which tookplace in the forest of Pendle, in east Lancashire, during the summer of1748. This agitation ranks amongst the most notorious of all eighteenth-century anti-Methodist incidents in England, the list of those preacherscaught up in its violence John Wesley, Benjamin Ingham, WilliamGrimshaw and John Bennet reading like a roll-call of the leaders of therevival in the north of England. As such, the Pendle forest disturbanceshave been the subject of several previous studies. However, notwith-standing the extent of recent work on the economic, political and legalconsciousness of the eighteenth-century mob, or crowd as EdwardThompson preferred to call it, surprisingly little has been said of themotives of the rioters themselves. Previous accounts of these disturbanceshave tended to echo the view that the members of the anti-Methodist mobwere merely the pawns of the wily and belligerent incumbent of Colne,the Revd George White.%" In this they have merely reiterated theaccounts of the victims of this violence, or of sympathetic evangelicalhistorians, all of whom seem loth to accept the genuine nature of theprofound popular antipathy which the new preachers of justification byfaith aroused.%# Such versions of events are fundamentally misleading, for,as Jan Albers has pointed out, It should not be assumedthat religiousstereotypes were only created or perpetuated by the elite, or that theymerely trickled down to the masses. The people , whetherartisans, labourers or shopkeepers, were perfectly capable of acting out oftheir own sense of denominational imperative. %$ It is this populardimension to the Pendle forest riots of 1748 which this essay aims torecapture.

One of the principal obstacles to an accurate representation of the riotsis the person of George White himself, who was the subject of the followingobituary by John Wesley:

[White] was for some years a popish priest. Then he called himself a Protestant[and] had the living of Colne. It was his manner first to hire and then head themob, when they and he were tolerably drunk. But he drank himself first into ajail, and then into his grave.%%

By all accounts, the incumbent of Colne was a colourful and controversial

%" J. Albers, Seeds of contention, 5756 ; F. Baker, William Grimshaw, London 1963,13043 ; Hempton, Methodism and the law, 99 ; T. D. Whitaker, An history of the originalparish of Whalley, Manchester 1872, ii. 249 ; A. Wainwright, In the shadow of mightyPendle , Methodist Recorder, 4 Dec. 1902.

%# JRULM, MAW G}A 208 : W. Grimshaw, Answer to a sermon lately published against theMethodists, Preston, 1749 ; Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. 249.

%$ Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , 236.%% Journal and diaries III, ed. W. R. Ward and R. P. Heitzenrater, Nashville, Tenn.

1988, xx. 427.


figure, and it is hardly surprising that his high-profile activities shouldhave come to dominate accounts of the events in question. Born toCatholic parents in county Durham, White was educated at the famousEnglish College at Douai, where he went by the name of Danson,%& andhere he seems to have acquired all the skills of disputation which he wouldlater employ against the Methodists.%' However, White left France andthe Catholic Church in 1741, was ordained an Anglican priest, and waslicensed to the chapelry of Colne at the recommendation of John Potter,the archbishop of Canterbury, the previous incumbent of Colne havingbeen deprived of the living after being convicted of adultery in theconsistory court of Chester.%( Seemingly regardless of the background ofhis appointment, White proceeded to compound and perpetuate thescandal which his predecessor had caused. Whilst minister of Colne,White developed a fruitful line in anti-Catholic polemic, becoming theeditor of the journal Mercurius Latinus and the author of The miraculoussheeps eye at St Victors in Paris (1743), a doggerel poem directed againstJacobites, monks, the French and the veneration of relics.%) Whitesliterary preoccupations, in combination with the dire state of his personalfinances, appear to have heavily impinged upon his parochial ministry. Inthe words of the Revd Thomas Whitaker, a later historian of the parishof Whalley, White frequently abandoned [his duties] for weeks togetherto such accidental assistance as the parish could procure. On one occasionhe is said to have read the funeral service more than twenty times in asingle night over the dead bodies which had been interred in hisabsence.%* In 1749 William Grimshaw alleged that White had, in fact,been imprisoned for debt in Chester castle, and had spent the three yearsfollowing his release raking about in London, and up and down theCountry.&! In 1745, however, White appears to have returned to Colne,having married a woman whom Whitaker described as an Italiangouvernante.&" In view of his chequered career, it is hard not to concurwith Whitakers opinion that White was a man neither devoid of partsor of literature, but childishly ignorant of common life, and shamefullyinattentive to his duty. Such prolonged scandal and neglect could notfail to have had its effect on the people of Colne, a visitor to the town in1752 describing it as a poor dark town in respect of religion.&$ That sucha verdict had some substance is no doubt reflected in the lack of buildingwork which was carried out on the church of St Bartholomews, Colne,

%& The Douay College diaries: the seventh diary , ed. E. Burton and E. Nolan(Catholic Record Society, 1928), xxviii. 159.

%' M. Sharratt, Excellent professors and an exact discipline : aspects of ChallonersDouai , in E. Duffy (ed.), Challoner and his church: a Catholic bishop in Georgian England,Cambridge 1981, 11226 at pp. 11516. %( LRO, DDB}80}B}36.

%) G. White, The miraculous sheeps eye at St Victors in Paris: a poem in two cantos, London1743, 716. %* Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. 249.

&! J. Carr, Annals and stories of Colne and neighbourhood, Manchester 1878, 161.&" Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. 249. Ibid. ii. 250.&$ W. Bennett, The history of Marsden and Nelson, Nelson 1957, 146.


building work which was fundamentally reliant on the goodwill andinitiative of the laity.&% Despite Colnes rapidly growing population, itsstatus as a market town and its wealth as a centre of the regional textileindustry,&& St Bartholomews was neither adorned nor extended between1733 and 1794, a situation which seems highly suggestive of local attitudestowards the Established Church and which stands in marked contrast todevelopments elsewhere in Lancashires prosperous textile districts.&'

Despite Whites prolonged absences, a clear reflection of the motives ofthe anti-evangelical rioters of 1748 can be found in his Sermon against theMethodists, which was first preached at Colne at the height of thedisturbances of that year. Taking as his text 1 Cor. xiv. 33, For God isnot the Author of Confusion but of Peace, as in all Churches of the Saints ,the incumbent of Colne embarked upon a skilful exposition of Methodisterror in all its aspects. In language redolent of extreme Latitudinarianism,White betrayed much of the intolerance which these supposedly moderatechurchmen often displayed towards those who kicked over the traces ofchurch order in order to pursue the dictates of their own deludedconsciences.&( Not only did he point out that the methods and doctrinesof the revivalists defied both the Church of Englands discipline andtheology, but he also invited his audience to consider the widerimplications of Methodisms unchecked advance, namely:

[How] our Dissenting Enemies will triumph on this fresh Disunion, howindustrious Trade (lately so notable in these Parts) the greatest Bulwark of ourNation, the envy of neighbouring Establishments, in Consequence of so manyconstant Attendances on this new Model of worshipping the Creator, will becomean idle Concern; how Family affairs will suffer an inevitable neglect.&)

Whilst the thoughts of his listeners were turned to the end of theEstablished Church, the decline of local industry, and the ruin of familylife, White also invited them to give further consideration to thedepressingly anti-social nature of this new religious phenomenon, pointingout that True Religion was never intended to sower our Tempers, to give

&% Albers, Seeds of contention, 65 ; M. Smith, Religion in industrial society: Oldham andSaddleworth , Oxford 1994, 3940.

&& The population of the chapelry of Colne nearly quadrupled between c. 1720 and1801 : M. F. Snape, Our happy reformation : Anglicanism and society in a northernparish, 16891789 , unpubl. PhD diss. Birmingham 1994, 17. By the second half of theeighteenth century, Colne had become the centre of the woollen trade in N.E.Lancashire , a cloth hall built in 1775 holding more than 190 stalls. In 1781, 42,843 piecesof worsteds were manufactured in the chapelry, having a commercial value of 54,900 :Bennett, History of Marsden and Nelson, 1289.

&' CRO, EDA 2}38 ; Snape, Our happy reformation , 22 ; Albers, Seeds ofcontention, 64 ; Smith, Religion in industrial society, 347.

&( M. Goldie, The theory of intolerance in Restoration England, in Grell, Israel andTyacke, From persecution to toleration, 33168 at p. 333 ; R. Ashcraft, Latitudinarianism andtoleration: historical myth versus political history, in R. Kroll, R. Ashcraft and P.Zagorin (eds), Philosophy, science and religion in England , Cambridge 1992, 15177.

&) JRULM, MAW G}A 208 : G. White, A sermon against the Methodists, Preston 1748, 21.


us a melancholly Turn of Countenance, or even to deprive us of the decentConveniences and innocent Amusements of Life.&*

What the points raised by Whites sermon seem to discount is thatversion of events which was first devised by Whites evangelical opponentsand which has been uncritically rehearsed by historians ever since, namelythat the whole of the anti-Methodist violence which occurred in Pendleforest in the summer of 1748 represented the craven attempt of ademagogic parson to prevent further Methodist inroads into his sadlyneglected cure. In actual fact, the evidence would seem to indicate thatthe concerns which White expressed were already fully shared by a greatmany of his parishioners a situation which would seem to suggest thatthe role of the wayward curate of Colne in these disturbances was actuallymore reactive than proactive. In other words, in a rare display of pastoralinvolvement, White was actually responding to the anxieties of his flockrather than creating them.

The coming of the evangelical revival to the locality of Pendle forestwas the result of three factors : its geographical situation astride the busycommercial route connecting the textile areas of east Lancashire to thoseof the West Riding of Yorkshire, the prolonged years of pastoral scandaland neglect which the chapelry of Colne had experienced, and the pre-existence of two religious societies in the neighbourhood. Religioussocieties within the Church of England had emerged under strong clericalguidance during the Restoration and they were, by the early eighteenthcentury, a notable feature of devotional life in England.'! Althoughpossibly lacking in their old vitality by the 1730s,'" the societal model wasfar from moribund, and it was in a relatively new society in LondonsAldersgate Street that Wesley underwent his famous conversion ex-perience on the night of 24 May 1738.'# Being the resort of the devout,these societies were naturally susceptible to the message of salvation byfaith preached by the disparate representatives of the nascent revival andthey were rapidly infiltrated and annexed by Methodist and Moravianalike.'$ Although the origins of Colnes religious societies lie veiled inobscurity, it is likely that they were originally formed and directed by an

&* Ibid. 23.'! W. M. Jacob, Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century, Cambridge 1996,

7792 ; J. Walsh, Religious societies : Methodist and Evangelical 17381800 , in Sheils andWood, Voluntary religion, 280.

'" C. Podmore, The Fetter Lane Society, 1738 , Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Societyxlvi (1988), 12553 at p. 132 ; Walsh, Religious societies : Methodist and Evangelical 283. '# Podmore, The Fetter Lane Society , 140.

'$ Walsh, Religious societies : Methodist and Evangelical , 2846 ; Davies, TheMethodist societies: history, nature and design, 215, and H. Rack, Religious societies and theorigins of Methodism, this Journal xxviii (1987), 58295 at p. 583. For evidence of thedisruption which this caused see William Berriman, A sermon preachd to the religious societiesin and about London, at their quarterly meeting, in the parish church of St. Mary Le Bow, onWednesday, March , with a view to stop the growth of some modern irregularities, London1739, 1523.


earlier incumbent of Colne, only to be neglected, along with the rest of hisparochial ministry, by George White. According to the Moravianchronicler William Batty, it was a member of one of Colnes local religioussocieties who invited the Revd Benjamin Ingham, an old friend of JohnWesleys, though by now a convinced Moravian, to the vicinity of Pendleforest, telling him that several wanted to hear him preach about Colnein Lancashire .'% Ingham visited Colne in February 1743, his visitmarking the first by any evangelical preacher to the neighbourhood. ByNovember 1747, and in accordance with formal preaching plans devisedin the same year, Ingham was preaching to six different Moraviansocieties in the neighbourhood of Colne and Pendle forest, these societiesbeing located at Colne, Rough Lee, Wheatley Carr, Higham, Simonstoneand Southfield.'&

Benjamin Ingham, however, was not the only evangelical preacher tobe active in the area during the 1740s. For some time Ingham appears tohave worked in collaboration with John Nelson, a Birstal stonemason andprote! ge! of John Wesley, but the two men parted company when Inghamplaced his societies under the Moravians,'' Wesleyans and Moraviansholding quite different views upon the manner in which the gift of savinggrace was mediated to the believer.'( It was the Scottish-born WilliamDarney who had the distinction of founding the first Methodist societiesin the area. Converted in 1742, from 1744 to 1747 Darney lived at MillerBarn near Newchurch-in-Rossendale and from here he plied his trade aspreacher-cum-pedlar along the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire,founding societies in Todmorden, the Rossendale valley and in and aroundthe forest of Pendle.') Darneys greatest contribution to the local revival,however, was the part which he played in the conversion of the curate ofHaworth, William Grimshaw, in 1744. Although Grimshaws devotionalreading had predisposed him to the revival prior to this date, andalthough he had entertained Benjamin Ingham in 1743,'* it appears tohave been Grimshaws meeting with William Darney in September 1744which acted as the catalyst for his conversion, his bemused parishionersnoting his subsequent participation in the pedlars prayer meetings andconcluding that Grimshaw had turned Scotch Wills clerk.(!

The ongoing evangelisation of the LancashireYorkshire border soonbred problems which were characteristic of the English revival as a whole.The first of these arose from the tensions between the disparate elementsof the local revival. We have already noted how, in the early 1740s,Nelson and Ingham were compelled to part company on connexional and

'% JRULM, Eng. ms 1062 : W. Batty, An account of Benjamin Ingham and his work,12. '& Ibid. 34.

'' B. Moore, Methodism in Burnley and east Lancashire, Burnley 1899, 1.'( Campbell, The religion of the heart, 125 ; Rack, Reasonable enthusiast, 202.') T. Hargreaves, The rise and progress of Wesleyan Methodism in Accrington and the

neighbourhood, Manchester 1883, 11. '* Batty, Account of Benjamin Ingham, 12.(! Moore, Methodism in Burnley and east Lancashire, 3.


doctrinal grounds. Such differences, however, continued to dog the localrevival, resurfacing dramatically in 1746 when William Darney fomenteda dispute in the Moravian society at Rough Lee over the question ofallowing Wesleyan itinerants to preach there.(" In May 1747 thesetensions resulted in a formal secession, Darneys faction detaching itselfand forming Rough Lees second, Methodist, religious society.(# Thesecond problem which evangelical expansion engendered was hostilityfrom the wider community. Amongst the earliest signs of tension betweenevangelicals and their neighbours was the attack made upon BenjaminIngham by the relatives of one Susanna Varley of Pendle forest. Thetensions which led to this incident were superficially domestic andfamilial, William Batty noting that Susanna had adopted a hostileattitude towards her husbands conversion and that Ingham hadconsequently been mobbedby Mr. Harkey, uncle to Susanna Varley,and othersbeing provoked thereby.($ Although Batty reports thatSusanna later became reconciled to her husband,(% her earlier anxietiesmust be placed in their broader context.

At this time, Pendle forest, like most of east Lancashire and the WestRiding of Yorkshire, was dominated by the cottage-based textile industry.Local clothiers were highly sensitive to perceived threats to theirlivelihoods, and their degree of collective awareness had been demon-strated in 1736 when, like the clothiers of Lancaster, Halifax and Burnley,they had presented a petition to parliament concerning clarification of theterms of the Calicos Act of 1721.(& That evangelicals were sensitive to thecharge that they represented a further threat to local industry wasillustrated in William Grimshaws answer to the accusations made on thispoint in Whites Sermon against the Methodists :

Sir, I make the following appeal to your own conscience, whether you do notbelieve that trade receives more obstruction and real detriment in one week fromnumbers that run a hunting, from numbers more that allow themselves in variousidle diversions, an hour, two, or sometimes three, daily, for what is vulgarly calleda noon-sit, and from many yet more, who loiter away their precious time on amarket-day in your own town, in drunkenness, janglings, and divers frivolousmatters, than from all that give the constantest attendance to this new model ofworship in the space of two or three months?('

However, we have noted that Methodist hostility towards manypopular recreations went far deeper than mere concern for their economicconsequences, and on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire theevangelicals campaign for a revolution in leisure activities (( was

(" Batty, Account of Benjamin Ingham, 20. (# Ibid. 23. ($ Ibid. 46.(% Ibid. 46.(& Journal of the House of Commons, xxii, 27 Feb. 1735}6. The Halifax petition complained

that the over-zealous implementation of this act had led to prosecutions for the wearingof local fustians. (' Carr, Annals and stories of Colne, 1612.

(( J. Walsh, Methodism and the mob in the eighteenth century, in G. J. Cuming andD. Baker (eds), Popular belief and practice (Studies in Church History viii, 1972), 223.


pursued with unwonted vigour. John Bennets diary records how, inAugust 1748, local Methodists set about sabotaging the parish feast atLuddenden, a Yorkshire village several miles to the south-east of Colne:

[August 3rd 1748] We had a general meeting near [Luddenden]. There was6 Exh[orters] present and a great No. of People [and] we was obliged to be in theField. Mr. Grimshaw began the Meeting. He prayd, Sang, and gave a Word ofExhortation. The Enemy was not well pleased, I believe we kept many backfrom the Feast which otherwise wold have gone. After the Meeting was endedMr. Grimshaw thanked the People for their Company & desired to see them allthe Day following, and as many more as they cold engage.

The next days events revealed a community very much divided againstitself :

We met the next Day near Ewood [Bennet recalled]. Our no. was greatlyincreased, And our Enemies roared horrably. The Rush Cart [went] down whilewe were singing. It was dressed with Flowers and Garlands The Drum beat, theMusick played, and they fired their Guns, which caused the Valley below us toEcho, as tho the Hills had fallen. What with the Drum, Musick, Guns firing, andShouting one side of a little Croft, And we singing on the other, You wold havereally thought the English & French Armys were engaged in Battle.()

If, as Robert Malcolmson has argued, parish feasts encouraged socialcohesiveness through their emphasis on fellowship, hospitality and goodcheer and, like other festive occasions in a small community, served toarticulate a vision of the social harmony for which its members wished,(*

evangelical action of this kind constituted a palpable attack on thecommunity as a whole. Moreover, what would have exacerbated thesituation was the fact that the principal fomentors of the Luddendenescapade were outsiders, and that they were interfering with a celebrationwhich, by the eighteenth century, was already charged with a latentbelligerency towards outsiders. John Walsh has aptly described thetypical Methodist itinerant as an intruder, a stranger, and an agitator ,)!

and what is noticeable about the neighbourhood of Pendle forest in 1748is that the number of these troublesome strangers had risen sharply overthe previous year.

The year 1747 saw two major organisational developments which ledto an influx of evangelical preachers into the area of Pendle forest. Firstly,as we have seen, the Moravians developed a formal preaching plan for thearea which brought more Moravian preachers to it on a regular basis.Secondly, the secession within the Moravian society at Rough Lee wasclosely followed by John Wesleys first visit to the area)" and by the formalincorporation of all Darneys societies into the Wesleyan connexion.Thereafter, both the Moravian and Wesleyan connexions seem to have

() JRULM, John Bennets diary, 3 Aug. 1784, 89.(* Malcolmson, Popular recreations, 84.)! Walsh, Methodism and the mob, 222. )" Journal and diaries III, xx. 171.


ensured a regular rotation of itinerant preachers through the district,William Grimshaw reflecting the new arrangements in his letter to JohnWesley of 20 August 1747 : I am determinedto add, by the divineassistance, to the care of my own parish, that of so frequent a visitation ofMr. Bennets, William Darneys [and] the Leeds and Birstal Societies, asmy own convenience will permit, and their circumstances may re-spectively seem to require.)# These developments did not escape theattention of the revivals local critics. As early as August 1746 JosephWilliams, a Kidderminster merchant, overheard a conversation betweentwo inhabitants of Colne (one of whom, significantly, was an innkeeper)in which Grimshaw was roundly condemned for the depressing tone, theinordinate length and the irregular venues of his sermons.)$ In 1747, theMethodist itinerant John Bennet noted in his diary how another localcritic felt the chastening hand of Providence:

a Man had been scandalousely defameing Mr. Grimshaw, and as he came Homefrom the Market his Horse flung him [and] broke the Collar bone of his Neck,and [he] escaped Death very narrowly.)%

What must, of course, be borne in mind when placing such hostility inits context is the jealous particularism of contemporary community life, atendency which not only modulated the celebration of the parish feast butwhich often found legitimate, if not peaceful, expression in the sportingrivalries of neighbouring communities. That such fierce localism was notlacking amongst the inhabitants of Colne and Pendle is apparent from acontemporary hunting poem, which depicts its hero, the son of aprominent local family, in a fit of local bravado:

May the Muckle Deal scrat me and claw meSays Parker if I stay at homeMay the Curse of my country befall meFor Colne and my Parish Ill huntAs long as Huntings in fashion.)&

Such loyalties also found expression in the annual football-play whichoccurred at Downham between the men of that village and the men ofNewchurch-in-Pendle, an event which proved so popular that it hadcome close to eclipsing the annual sermon around which it had arisen.)'

This diversion not only served to keep people away from church (beingthe exact opposite of what had been intended when the sermon wascommissioned in 1679), but was also waged with such rowdiness that onone occasion a visiting preacher felt compelled to abandon his pulpit inorder to confiscate the ball around which the contest was raging, thus

)# William Grimshaw to John Wesley, 20 Aug. 1747, cited in Moore, Methodism inBurnley and east Lancashire, 7. )$ F. Baker, William Grimshaw, London 1963, 130.

)% John Bennets diary, 17 Dec. 1747, 27.)& LRO, DDB 74}3, Hunting poem of Pendle, Colne, Marsden and Trawden.)' Lancashire (Reports of Charity Commissioners, 1900), X: Whalley; Whitaker, History

of the original parish of Whalley, ii. 23.


establishing a precedent which enabled the sermon to be preached withappropriate decorum thereafter.)( Jan Albers has argued that, in theeighteenth century:

A religion was a culture and cosmology as well as a theology, available for theindividual to adapt in whatever ways and to whatever degree he or she saw fit.For some this involved a fundamentally spiritual experience expressed in churchattendance and formal piety ; for others throughout the social scale theidentification was essentially cultural operating more like a modern ethnicidentification.))

In this respect, the footballing incident at Downham, in common withother local pastimes, such as the parish feast and bonfires and bell-ringingon 5 November,)* serves as a good illustration of the nature of popularAnglicanism at this time, an identity which David Hempton has describedas a delicate mixture of social utility, rural entertainment and moralconsensus .*! Certainly, a vital component of local identity in theeighteenth century was attachment to the parish church. John Walsh andStephen Taylor have invoked the example of Italian local patriotism orcompanilismo as a model for understanding the quality of this at-tachment.*" In a very real sense, they argue:

The church could attract the kind of tribal loyalty given to kin or to parent [as]powerful feelings were drawn to it by the presence of ancestors in its graveyard.The parish church engaged not only loyalty to Anglicanism but also the otherpowerful isms with which the Church of England was inextricably bound up:localism and atavism.*#

In the light of this we may understand how attachment to the Church ofEngland was still very much alive in the chapelry of Colne in the 1740s,notwithstanding the best efforts of successive incumbents to undermine it.Moreover, if localism and atavism generally helped to engage loyalty tothe Church of England, then the recent history of this particular chapelryprobably served to sharpen local opposition to the revival. Memories ofthe civil wars of the mid seventeenth century were undoubtedly strong inLancashire and served, as Jan Albers has shown, as the inspiration behindmuch of the fiercely partisan and populist rhetoric used by LancashiresWhigs and Tories during the eighteenth century.*$ During the first half of

)( W. S. Weeks, Clitheroe in the seventeenth century, Clitheroe 1900, 106.)) Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , 333.)* Bennett, History of Marsden and Nelson, 143.*! Hempton, Religion and political culture, 17.*" Campanilismo derives its name from the campanile, or church tower, the proudest and

most visible symbol of the historical community : J. Walsh and S. Taylor, The Churchand Anglicanism in the long eighteenth century, in Walsh, Taylor and Haydon,The Church of England c. c. , 27. *# Ibid. 278.

*$ Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , 3212. Echoes of theseconflicts were detectable in local folklore as late as the early twentieth century, when onelocal antiquarian was told the story of a tragic young woman whose lover was killed at


the seventeenth century, the chapelry of Colne had been notably resistantto Puritanism, and in 1645 a dramatic incident had occurred in which twoparliamentarian soldiers had burst into the parochial chapel duringservice time in order to eject Colnes Laudian incumbent, ThomasWarriner. According to Whitaker, the worshippers had rallied to theirparson and it was their intervention alone which had saved the priest frombeing summarily shot in the churchyard.*% If this incident wasremembered, and was not in itself sufficient to bolster resistance to theMethodists, then the parishioners of Colne could also reflect with somepride, as Whites sermon reminded them, on the fact that theirneighbourhood had provided the re-established Church of England withsome of its most able divines, no fewer than three post-Restorationarchbishops of Canterbury and York namely John Tillotson, JohnSharp and John Potter having been born in the area.*&

However, locally as nationally, Methodism could be identified with theJacobite menace as readily as it could be identified with the republicansectaries of the seventeenth century. We have already noted howMethodism was liable to be identified with the cause of the exiled Stuarts,not least because of the High Church, nonjuring and Oxford connectionsof the Wesley family. By the late 1740s, and largely because of the politicalsympathies of its Catholic and nonjuring communities, Lancashire hadacquired a reputation for Jacobite intrigue and sedition which was secondto no other English county. In 1694, seven Catholic gentlemen had stoodtrial for treason in a dismally unsuccessful show trial in Manchester, andseveral hundred local volunteers had come out in arms for the Stuarts in1715 and in 1745.*' Given the proximity of the 45, the recent march ofthe rebel army through Lancashire, and the presence of some well-knownJacobite families in the neighbourhood,*( it seems likely that the men ofPendle forest, who loyally drank the health of George i and George ii ontheir accession days,*) discerned some sinister purpose behind the comingsand goings of Methodist itinerants. Such suspicions may well account foran isolated attack upon the Scottish itinerant, William Darney, by a mobnear Accrington, an attack which led Darney to mount a prosecution for

Marston Moor. The story was told him by Mr. Tattersall Wilkinson who in turn had itfrom his grandfather who was born in 1766, and who heard it from his grandfather wholived about the time of the occurrence : T. Ormerod, Calderdale, Burnley 1906, 30.

*% Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. 248 ; Bennet, History of Marsden andNelson, 115. See also A. G. Matthews, Walker revised: being a revision of John WalkersSufferings of the clergy during the grand rebellion , Oxford 1948, s.v. ThomasWarriner. *& White, Sermon against the Methodists, p. iv.

*' P. Monod, Jacobitism and the English people, , Cambridge 1993, 30841.*( Within a few miles of Pendle forest lived the Towneleys of Towneley Hall, the

Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall, the Nowells of Read and the Halsteads of Rowley Hall.For their sympathies and activities see S. W. Baskerville, The management of the Toryinterest in Lancashire and Cheshire 17141747 , unpubl. DPhil. diss. Oxford 1973, 102 ;Monod, Jacobitism and the English people, 1001 ; J. Prebble, Culloden, Harmondsworth 1967,2589 ; R. Sedgwick, The House of Commons , London 1970, ii. 424.

*) Bennet, History of Marsden and Nelson, 143.


a Riot and an Assault against ten named individuals in the crown courtof the duchy of Lancaster in March 1746.**

Whatever the factors behind the anti-evangelical agitation of 1748,seventeenth-century precedents might at least have served as warnings ofthe means by which the inhabitants of Colne and Pendle forest dealt withtroublesome deviants. The notorious Pendle witch trials of 1612 and 1634had enjoyed considerable popular support, the youthful instigator of thoseof 1634 being escorted from church to church on Sundays in order that hemight more readily identify local witches."!! Furthermore, as in otherplaces throughout England, early Quakerism met with a violent receptionin the district, several Friends becoming the objects of collective violencein the 1650s when they attempted to preach at the market cross inColne."!" The turbulent currents which flowed beneath the surface oflocal society were no doubt a function of the areas demographic history.Settled piecemeal during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the forestof Pendle, like other forest areas in England, was chiefly populated bycottagers and smallholders, men and women of an independent dispositionwho were conscious and assertive of their rights. In such areas, the lack ofa natural ruling class meant that their inhabitants were often lacking ina sense of social discipline, and forests had the reputation of being the mostviolent and ungovernable parts of seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuryEngland."!# In the case of the forest of Pendle, the weaknesses of lawenforcement were demonstrated in 1699, when no fewer than six localconstables were indicted at Preston quarter sessions for failing to stop afootball-play on the Sabbath, an event which their indictment describedas a most notorious riott of above four hundred persons."!$

If outraged localism was, as I have suggested, one of the principalfactors behind the anti-evangelical violence of 1748, then the catalyst forit was the inability of the law to deal effectively with the growth of therevival and with its attendant problems. We have already noted theinability of statute law to deal with Methodism, but the ecclesiastical lawwas equally ineffectual. The canons of 1604 had expressly forbiddenprivate meetings of ministers and lay people, the drawing up of rulesorders or constitutions in causes ecclesiastical, without the kingsauthority , and any consultations and directions by such gatherings whichcould conceivably subvert any part of the government and disciplinenow established in the church of England."!% Such proscriptions,however, were hard to sustain given the emergence and acceptance of the

** PRO, PL 28}2."!! W. Notestein, A history of witchcraft in England, Washington 1965, 14658 ; J. T.

Swain, The Lancashire witch trials of 1612 and 1634 and the economics of witchcraft ,Northern History xxx (1994), 6485.

"!" Bennet, History of Marsden and Nelson, 11617."!# Malcolmson, Life and labour, 11012 ; Stevenson, Popular disturbances in England, 578 ;

E. P. Thompson, Custom law and common right , in Customs in common, 1038, andWhigs and hunters, London 1975, 2780. "!$ LRO, QSP 831}19.

"!% Burn, Ecclesiastical law, i. 5001.


religious societies in the later years of the seventeenth century,notwithstanding fears in some quarters that they were potentiallyschismatical."!& As a loosely defined network of religious societies, earlyMethodism only placed itself in breach of accepted church order andpractice when individual Methodists indulged in such clear excesses aspreaching without episcopal licence."!' Moreover, the limited sanctionsavailable to the ecclesiastical courts hardly placed them in the position oftribunals capable of putting an end to the recurrent offences of adetermined minority."!( If the ecclesiastical authorities therefore lackedthe means of curtailing Methodist activities, then those of the archdioceseof York throughout the 1740s also lacked the resolve to do so. Throughoutthe four-year archiepiscopate of Thomas Herring, the attitude of thechurch authorities to the burgeoning Yorkshire revival was one of tacitindulgence, a policy which did not seem set to change with the accessionof Matthew Hutton in 1747, the new archbishop merely cautioningWilliam Grimshaw against preaching in licensed meeting-houses duringhis primary visitation of that year."!) On the other side of the Pennines,the courts of the diocese of Chester proved equally unhelpful. As early as1746, the chapelwardens of Newchurch-in-Pendle presented six indi-viduals to the deanery court of Blackburn for [keeping] unlawfulconventicles , but there is no evidence to show that the court ever actedupon these indictments."!*

If troublesome Methodists were pursued in vain in the ecclesiasticalcourts, then a similar lack of success was also encountered in the secularcourts. The abortive nature of an appeal to statute law was made clear totwo local clergymen in the course of 1748. In the first instance, JamesFishwick, the curate of Padiham, had a mind to have prosecuted theMethodists and consulted a Preston attorney on the subject. The lawyersubsequently informed him that legal action was quite impracticable, averdict which Fishwick seems to have accepted.""! The lack of an effectivelegal remedy was also made clear to the less quiescent George White in afarcical scene in another attorneys office just prior to the Preston quartersessions of October 1748. As John Bennet recounts, whilst leadingMethodists were drawing up a charge of assault against their assailants ofthe previous summer, the belligerent curate of Colne appeared upon thescene:

When Mr. Fenton [the attorney] was giveing Direction for an Indictment Mr.[White] came rushing in to get an Indictment drawn agt. John Jane forPreaching The Clark told him there was no such Thing He cold not Indict him The Parson sd then the Devil was in it He desired Paper & Pen & Ink and

"!& Jacob, Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century, 78 ; Walsh, Religioussocieties : Methodist and Evangelical , 2823.

"!' Hempton, Methodism and the law, 101."!( Snape, Our happy reformation , 4326."!) Baker, William Grimshaw, 1302. "!* CRO, EDV 5, 1747.""! John Bennets diary, 30 July 1748, 87.


sd he wold draw one [up] himself. He began to write something, but no Mancold understand what it was, nor what he meant, only he mentioned John Jane.Mr. Fenton our Attorney looked over his Shoulder and sd Sr. You speild Janewrong upon wch Mr. Fenton showed him the Indictmt. drawn up agt himself byJn. Jane for putting him into the Stocks &c. Mr. White reads it over, throws itdown, and goes down the Stairs with all the hast imaginable."""

Given the inability, and even the unwillingness, of the ecclesiastical andsecular authorities to deal effectively with their evangelical problem, itseems inevitable that the people of Colne and Pendle forest should havetaken this duty upon themselves. At first, it would seem that popularharassment of Methodists was fairly spontaneous. In November 1747, forexample, Some drunken people made disturbances at a Moravianmeeting in Colne, an incident which gave Benjamin Ingham a presageabout the mobbings and disturbances which were to occur the followingsummer.""# In June 1748, as there was then a prospect of troublous times the Moravians agreed to license their meeting-houses,""$ a precautionarymeasure which the Wesleyans were averse to taking, and which shouldhave granted the Moravians and their property a measure of protectionunder the law.""% Events, however, were to prove otherwise, for on 12 Julythe first incident occurred in an organised campaign of unremittingharassment which was to continue for the next six weeks. BenjaminIngham and William Batty were presiding at a Moravian meeting inColne when:

Mr. White the minister of Colne came with a mob [and] rushed into thehousewhere they were, and came full drive at them with his rod in his hand:but they stepped upstairs, and the people shut the door after them, so that theyescaped his blow. Afterwards he and his crew abused the people, but did no greatmischief. Still they broke up the meeting and drove the people out.""&

The pretext for this attack soon became clear, for White was soon leadingother attacks on what were plainly considered to be unlicensed meeting-houses in nearby villages. As Batty later complained, Several of ourplaces were publicly licensed at Preston Sessions, the certificates of whichwere shown to Mr. White; but he paid as much regard to human laws,as he does to divine, i.e. none at all.""'

On Sunday 24 July, White preached his Sermon against the Methodists,and shortly thereafter John Jane, a Wesleyan itinerant, was set uponwhilst passing through Colne.""( On this occasion, the offence invokedwas that of vagrancy, Jane being described by his attackers as :

""" Ibid. 7 Oct. 1748, 1012. ""# JRULM, Eng. ms 1062, 34. ""$ Ibid. 42.""% The Act of Toleration had made the disruption of a service held in a licensed

meeting-house subject to a 20 fine, whilst the Riot Act of 1715 had made the demolitionof licensed meeting-houses a capital offence: Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on thelaws of England, cited in ed. D. B. Horn and M. Ransome, English historical documents, London 1957, 3912 ; M. Watts, The Dissenters: from the Reformation to the FrenchRevolution, Oxford 1985, 267. ""& JRULM, Eng. ms 1062, 467. ""' Ibid. 48.

""( W. Jessop, An account of Methodism in Rossendale and the neighbourhood, Manchester 1880,107.


A very disorderly Person wandering about & giveing no good Act. of himself, &occasioning Riots and Disturbancesparticularly at Colne on Sunday lastoccasioning great Tumults & disturbing the Congregation abt. to attend divineService."")

John Jane was secured in the stocks before being hauled before a local JP,Richard Whitehead, who duly despatched him to the Lancashire house ofcorrection in Preston in accordance with the stipulations of the VagrancyActs of 1740 and 1744. By August it was clear that the anti-Methodistcampaign had spread from Colne to Pendle forest, for whilst preachingnear the village of Higham, a Moravian named Thomas Moore wasseized by a group armed with yet another pretext for its actions. As JohnBennet remembered:

They hurried [Moore] away to Padiham a little Town Noted for Rioters, andquickly alarmed the Town, A Company of base Men gathered together tho onthe Sabaoth Day Even[in]g and abused both the Preacher & his Friends Theymade the Preach[er] Sign a Paper that he wold never more come thither toPreach untill he was quallified [i.e. licensed].

To add insult to injury, Moore was also compelled to give the MobMoney to Drink, and paid the Expences .""* A few days later, WilliamBatty was hauled from another Moravian meeting and brought beforeGeorge White for examination on the same grounds. Clearly dissatisfiedwith Battys credentials, White and his followers drummed him beforeJustice Whitehead at Blackburn on the following day."#!

The wave of anti-evangelical violence reached its climax in a brutalassault on John Wesley and a group of his associates near Barrowford, atownship in the chapelry of Colne. Significantly, this incident occurred on25 August, at about the time when the parishioners of Colne celebratedthe feast of St Bartholomew (24 August), the patron saint of their parish.Wesley had set out from Haworth that morning, in the company ofWilliam Grimshaw and others, in order to visit his society at Rough Lee.There he was intercepted by a a drunken rabble led by the deputyconstable of Barrowford, who ordered Wesley to accompany him to thatvillage in order to be questioned by its constable, one James Hargrave. Ina strongly-worded letter written on the following day, Wesley recalled thesubstance of this interview, which again seems to have been aimed atestablishing the legality of his preaching activities. Upon Hargravesdemand that Wesley and his friends come to Roughlee no more, Wesleyrather characteristically informed him that he would sooner cut off hishand than make such a promise. He did, however, agree that he wouldnot preach there that night, and also that he would show Hargrave hisauthority for preaching when next he came."#" Though this compromisewas reached, their interview took place amidst scenes of unrestrained

"") JRULM, Eng. ms 1062, 48. ""* John Bennets diary, 11 Aug. 1748, 92."#! Baker, William Grimshaw, 135."#" Letters II, ed. F. Baker, Oxford 1980, xxvi. 325.


violence. Wesley was physically assaulted whilst under escort toBarrowford, and was forcibly prevented from escaping once there.Following the conclusion of Wesleys interview with Hargrave, the crowdturned their fury on Grimshaw and another Wesleyan itinerant namedThomas Colbeck, and subsequently extended their attack to the whole ofWesleys party. According to the letter which Wesley wrote to Hargraveconcerning the incident :

The other quiet, harmless people, which followed me at a distance to see what theend would be, [the mob] madeflee for their lives amidst showers of dirt andstones, without any regard to age or sex. Some of them they trampled in the mire,and dragged by the hair. Many they beat with their clubs without mercy. Onethey forced to leap down (or they would have cast him headlong) from a rock tenor twelve foot high into the river, and even when he crawled out, wet andbruised, they swore they would throw him in again. At this time you sat well-pleased close to the scene of action, not attempting to hinder them. And all thistime you was talking of justice and law."##

Although the anti-Methodist crowd at Barrowford achieved its immediateobjective of preventing Wesley from preaching at Rough Lee thatnight,"#$ its behaviour marked the end of this type of organisedharassment. The pattern of events up to the incident at Barrowford wouldseem to suggest that the anti-Methodist crowd had been anxious tomaintain a strong semblance of legality. On two occasions, JusticeWhitehead had been left with no alternative but to act upon the chargeswhich had been brought against evangelical preachers arraigned beforehim, although on both occasions it had been evident that he had hadscant sympathy with the methods used by their captors. With respect tothe arraignment of John Jane, Whitehead later claimed that his gentletreatment of the prisoner had only served to antagonise Whites followers,his opinion of Jane (who had rebuked him for drinking a little wine afterdinner) being that he was a good Man, but surelyturned in his heada little ."#% Similarly, when William Batty was brought before him,Whitehead contented himself with cautioning him against preachingwithout a licence, reminding him, for his own safety, that his captors werea tumultuous and raging people . Piqued by such leniency, the curate ofColne was alleged to have burst out, I hope, Mr. Whitehead, you do notencourage these men. I vow to God, before they preach in my parish, Illsacrifice the last drop of blood to root them out. "#& Probably becauserelations with legally constituted authority could only be strained, themembers and leaders of the anti-Methodist crowd went to great lengthsto demonstrate their own probity and discipline. When John Jane wasfrogmarched to Blackburn, not only was he brought before a magistrate

"## Ibid. 326."#$ Ibid. 324. Wesley informed Hargrave that, when he returned to Roughlee, he found

abundance of people, many of whom pressed me to preach there; but I told them, I hadgiven my word I would not preach there that evening.

"#% John Bennets diary, 29 July 1748, 85. "#& Baker, William Grimshaw, 135.


but there were also three parsons on hand who all gave him goodadvice ."#' Pretensions to legality were, however, bolstered principally bythe adoption of military titles and appurtenances, this being a commonploy amongst rioters of the time."#( A drummer was a notable feature ofthe anti-Methodist crowd, whilst Wesley himself remembered the crowdat Barrowford as an army [which] drew up in battle array."#) Theadoption of a quasi-military character was intended to serve as alegitimising factor in activities which sailed perilously close to the marginsof the law. Clearly, as John Walsh has observed, in this as in other anti-Methodist incidents, an assurance was needed that the acts of violence inquestion were not immoral, illegal or excessive ."#*

Such pretensions to legality also help to explain why anti-Methodistviolence should have ceased so abruptly after the events at Barrowford.These had carried the anti-Methodist crowd well beyond the limits of thelaw, and, as Jan Albers has pointed out, a vital precondition of muchsectarian violence in the eighteenth century was the confidence that itcould be perpetrated with impunity."$! The incident at Barrowford hadbrought the crowd face-to-face with an adversary who not onlyappreciated the illegality of their actions, but who also possessed themeans by which to requite his injuries. In his letter to James Hargrave,Wesley was at pains to point out that his arrest, which had beenundertaken without a warrant, had been utterly illegal , and that thewhole action of taking him to Barrowford against his will amounted to anassault upon the kings highway [and] contrary to his peace, crown, anddignity."$" Moreover, regardless of the crowds determination to see thelaws against Nonconformists upheld, Wesley raised the pertinentquestion:

Alas ! Suppose we were dissenters (which I utterly deny, consequently lawsagainst dissenting conventicles are nothing at all to us) ; suppose we were Turksor Jews: still are we not to have the benefit of the law of our country?"$#

Wesley concluded by offering a compromise settlement to the affair. IfHargrave undertook to suppress all mobs at Roughlee and the partsadjacent, and promised only to use the due processes of the law againstthose whom he suspected of breaking it, then he would proceed no furtherwith the matter. If, however, such a pledge was not forthcoming, thenWesley threatened to try another course ."$$ This other course was theinitiation of legal proceedings against Hargrave and his confederates,

"#' John Bennets diary, 29 July 1748, 86."#( A contemporary account of an anti-Catholic disturbance in the Yorkshire village of

Stokesley, in which the local mass-house was destroyed, mentions the perpetratorsmarching in orderwith drum beating and colours flyingbeating up for volunteers forhis majestys service : Gentlemans Magazine xvi (1746), 40. See also Stevenson, Populardisturbances, 129 ; Thompson, Moral economy of the crowd, 236.

"#) Journal and diaries III, 241. "#* Walsh, Methodism and the mob, 217."$! Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , 332."$" Letters II, 325. "$# Ibid. 326. "$$ Ibid. 3267.


which were commenced at Preston quarter sessions in the followingautumn. Here the result seems to have been an impasse ; the jury rejectedthe charges of assault which the Methodists made against George White,whilst the bench in turn dismissed those which were made against JohnJane."$% Wesley then carried the case to the court of Kings Bench, wherehe managed to secure the dismissal of James Hargrave from his office assurveyor of the kings highway, but the case eventually foundered througha lack of funds, the indifference of Grimshaw and other plaintiffs, andbecause of the death of one of Wesleys principal legal advisers."$&

Although Bennet described the collapse of the case as detrimental to theCause of Christ ,"$' it is not hard to see that the initiation of legalproceedings had had the desired effect. In September 1748 it seems thata further attempt by George White to raise a mob proved abortive,"$(

whilst by the following month Bennet was able to note in his diary:

I went to Rough Lee [from Shorrock Green, near Blackburn] where I hadpromised to be, and preach[ed] in the Night because of the Mob I stayd atHigham untill it began to be dark, and so slipt down when the Noisy World wasgoeing to rest There was many Persons to hear Preaching, and the Lord waswith us. We had none to make us afraid, and I returned away in Peace."$)

The nature of the anti-Methodist violence which occurred in and aroundColne and the forest of Pendle during the summer months of 1748provides a great insight into the grounds and mechanisms of contemporaryanti-Methodist violence. Distinctly popular in character and conservativein tenor, the local men and women who joined the anti-Methodist crowdwere concerned to protect their Church, their king, their families, theirlivelihoods and the integrity of their communities. They were also verymuch concerned with the maintenance of what they believed to be thespirit of the law, a factor which was to prove crucial in their eventualdispersal. With the case of Colne and Pendle forest in mind, it would seemthat collective anti-Methodist violence, however much it was condemnedand dismissed by its victims as the product of vicious leadership andpopular licentiousness, did not emerge out of a vacuum but fed on acomplex of national and local circumstances, including a very richrepository of local tradition. Perhaps as much as anything else, it was asign of the supreme arrogance of many contemporary enthusiasts thatthey wilfully chose to ignore this fact.

"$% What is significant about the jurys verdict is that John Bennet found its foreman tobe one of our very enemies : John Bennets diary, 7 Oct. 1748, 101.

"$& Baker, William Grimshaw, 137 ; Hempton, Methodism and the law, 99."$' Baker, William Grimshaw, 137. "$( Ibid."$) John Bennets diary, 11 Oct. 1748, 103.

Documents

Anti Methodists in Pendle