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The various triumphs in the direction of liberty of conscience evidence a sense of civil right in the community, which forced itself on the Government, rather than a sense of religion. But religion, too, was in steady growth. The Dissenters had greatly increased during this period, and amongst them the names of some of their ministers had acquired a general reputation. Robert Hall, of Leicester, and afterwards of Bristol, threw a new lustre on the Baptist community. He was the son of a Baptist minister, was at first educated by Dr. Ryland, the learned Baptist pastor of Northampton, and afterwards took his degree of M.A. at King's College, Aberdeen. He commenced his ministerial career in Bristol, and subsequently resided as minister at Leicester for twenty years. On the death of his old tutor, Dr. Ryland, he became the president of the Baptist Academy at Bristol, and pastor of Broadmead Chapel, in that town. Robert Hall was not inferior to any of the clergy of the Establishment in learning or eloquence. He was for eleven years the Baptist minister in Cambridge before removing to Leicester. In Cambridge he succeeded to a man nearly as remarkable, the celebrated Robert Robinson. At this university town he attracted the notice of some of the leading Established clergy and professors, and of the world at large, by his "Vindication of the Freedom of the Press," and his splendid sermon "On Modern Infidelity." Dr. Parr has left a testimony to the merits of Robert Hall in his will, which does honour to his liberality:—"Mr. Hall has, like Jeremy Taylor, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the subtlety of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint." To the same body belonged the celebrated author of "Essays on the Formation of Character," John Foster, also of Bristol.

Amongst the followers of Whitefield became conspicuous Rowland Hill, Matthew Wilks, and William Huntington. Of the followers of Whitefield, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, became the patron, as she had been of Whitefield himself, whom she made her chaplain. This remarkable woman founded schools and colleges for the preachers; and so completely did she identify herself with this sect that it became styled "Lady Huntingdon's Society." Perhaps the most celebrated of these preachers, after Whitefield, was Rowland Hill, who was a younger son of Sir Rowland Hill, of Hawkstone, in Shropshire. He was educated at Cambridge for the Church of England, but preferred following Whitefield, and for many years went about preaching in the open air, like Whitefield, in different parts of the country, and particularly amongst the colliers of Kingswood. In 1783 his chapel, called the Surrey Chapel, being built, he settled in London, and continued his ministry in the metropolis till his death in 1833, at the age of eighty-eight. Rowland Hill was as much celebrated for his humour and eccentricity, which he carried into his preachings, as for his talents. He was also an author of various productions, the most popular of which were his "Village Dialogues."

Perhaps a still more remarkable man of the same denomination was William Huntington, originally a coalheaver, struggling with severe poverty; yet, believing himself called to the ministry, he boldly followed his conceived duty, through much discouragement and persecution. He has left an autobiography, in which his perfect faith in and reliance on God are justified by the most remarkable supply of all his wants, and support in a widely extended and useful ministry. After the death of his first wife he married the wealthy widow of Sir James Sanderson, a London alderman, and passed his latter years in affluence.

Amongst the Independents the names of John Clayton and William Beugo Collyer, and amongst the Unitarians Dr. Priestley, Theophilus Lindsey, and Thomas Belsham are conspicuous.

But the most remarkable growth of religion was through the instrumentality of the Wesleyan Methodists. These spread over all the country, through town and village, into places where the ministers of the Establishment had fallen into a spiritual sleep from want of rivalry. In Wales they found a great and almost unoccupied field. In Cornwall, where Wesley had been abused and pelted with stones, they became universal, and still continue to astonish the visitor to that county by their extraordinary numbers, almost every Cornish miner being of that sect. Throughout England the spread of Methodism has been a most influential cause of the revival of activity and discipline in the Established Church itself; for it soon became evident that the Church must exert itself, or the body of the people, especially in the country and in manufacturing districts, would be absorbed by the Wesleyan interest.

In Wales, such was the neglect of religion by the Establishment, that, previous to 1804, there was scarcely a clergyman of the Church of England in the principality who was a native, or could preach in Welsh. The capability of a minister to make himself understood by his parishioners had been totally disregarded by those who had the presentation to livings; the exercise of patronage had alone been cared for; the souls of people went for nothing. About that time the Rev. Mr. Charles was engaged as curate in a Welsh parish. He found not a single Bible in the parish, and on extending his inquiries he scarcely found a Bible in Wales. He made this fact known to the public, in an appeal for Welsh Bibles, and for this appeal and the attendant exposure of the clerical neglect he was dismissed from his cure, and could find no bishop who would license him to preach in any other parish. But his truly Christian act had excited the attention of the religious public, and had the effect of establishing the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804.

In Ireland the bulk of the population had been left to the Catholic pastors, who were maintained by their flocks, the property of the Catholic Church having been long transferred by Act of Parliament to the Church of England, or, as it was called, the sister Church of Ireland. The number of parishes in Ireland had been originally only two thousand four hundred and thirty-six, though the population at that time was half that of England; but in 1807 Mr. Wickham stated that, in 1803, these had been consolidated, and reduced to one thousand one hundred and eighty-three. In some of these parishes in the south of Ireland, Mr. Fitzgerald stated that the incomes amounted to one thousand pounds, to one thousand five hundred pounds, and even to three thousand pounds a year; yet that in a considerable number of these highly endowed parishes there was no church whatever. In others there were churches but no Protestant pastors, because there were no Protestants. The provision for religious instruction went wholly, in these cases, to support non-resident, and often very irreligious, clergymen. In fact, no truly religious clergyman ever could hold such a living. The livings were, in fact, looked upon as sinecures to be conferred by Ministers on their relatives or Parliamentary supporters. It was stated that out of one thousand one hundred and eighty-three benefices in Ireland, two hundred and thirty-three were wholly without churches; and Mr. Fitzgerald said, "that where parishes had been consolidated, the services rendered to the people by their clergyman had been diminished in proportion as his income had been augmented; for no place of religious worship was provided within the reach of the inhabitants; nor could such parishioners obtain baptism for their children, or the other rites of the Church; and the consequence was that the Protestant inhabitants, in such places, had disappeared."

Measures to alter this disgraceful state of things were repeatedly introduced, but as steadily rejected. The collection of tithes seemed to occupy the chief attention of the Established clergy of Ireland, even where they rendered no spiritual services, and eventually led to a state of irritation and of dire conflict between the Protestant incumbent and the Catholic population which did not cease till after the death of George III. The clergyman called in the soldiery to assist him in the forcible levying of tithes, and the bloodshed and frightful plunder of the poor huts of the Irish in this bellum ecclesiasticum became the scandal of all Christendom ere it was ended by the Act of a later reign, which transferred the collection of tithes to the landlord in the shape of rent.

In literature, and the amount of genius in every branch of it, as well as in mechanical skill, few ages ever transcended that of George III. Though he and his Ministers did their best to repress liberty, they could not restrain the liberty of the mind, and it burst forth on all sides with almost unexampled power. In fact, throughout Europe, during this period, a great revolution in taste took place. The old French influence and French models, which had prevailed in most countries since the days of Louis XIV., were now abandoned, and there was a return to nature and originality. "The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," collected by Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, and the publication of the old Scottish ballads by Walter Scott, snapped the spell which had bound the intellect since the days of Pope, and opened the sealed eyes of wondering scholars; and they saw, as it were, "a new heaven and a new earth" before them. They once more felt the fresh breath of the air and ocean, smelt the rich odour of the heath and the forest, and the oracles of the heart were reopened, as they listened again to the whispers of the eternal winds. Once more, as of old to prophets and prophetic kings, there was "a sound of going in the tops of the trees." In Great Britain, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Shelley—in Germany, Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Richter—in Scandinavia, Tegner, Oehlenschläger, Stagnelius—with a world of lesser lights around them, stood in the glowing beams of a new morning, casting around them the wondrous wealth of a poetry as fresh as it was overflowing. As in poetry, so in prose invention. The novel and romance came forth in totally new forms, and with a life and scope such as they had never yet attained. From Fielding and Sterne to Godwin and Scott, the list of great writers in this department shed a new glory on the English name. In works of all other kinds the same renewal of mind was conspicuous; history took a prominent place, and science entered on new fields.