During a period of about six years Watts appears to have resided in the family of Sir John Hartopp; in the paragraph above quoted he refers to his removal to the house of Mr. Hollis, in the Minories. The names of the places associated with the ministrations or the residence of Watts and his fellow ministers in the City, sound to our ears now strange and singularly unromantic and uninteresting; but what they are now we must not for a moment suppose they resembled then. Even the Minories—now the last place in which one could wish to reside—lay, at that time, open and fresh towards the pleasant fields of the east end of London, a rather distinguished neighbourhood beneath the shadows of the Tower, and pleasantly refreshed by the breath from the waters of the then really silvery Thames, whose banks were alive with the songs of watermen. The Minories or Minoresses—so called from the nuns of the Order of St. Clair—had once been the region of noble residences; here had been the residence of Sir Philip Sidney, here his body lay in state. The spot was, and is, full of interesting memories. The family of the Hollis’s was from Sheffield, in Yorkshire, and having founded churches in Doncaster and Rotherham, removing to London, the father of Watts’ friend became one of the most helpful representatives of Nonconformity in the City, immediately connected with the church assembling in Pinners’ Hall, beneath the pastorate of Dr. Jeremiah Hunt. To this place, in consequence of the narrow and dilapidated state of the building in Mark Lane, Watts and his people were compelled to remove in the year 1704. Pinners’ Hall had for years been used by Nonconformists, and in their turns Baxter, Owen, Bates, Manton, and Howe had all preached in it to crowded congregations, hence the reason, most likely, of the friendship of the minister and Mr. Hollis.
We have few particulars of Watts in his pastoral work. From the first days of his pastorate his health was a frequent source of interruption to his activity. The hymns and poems frequently expressing the experience of pain, weakness, and weariness are no fancies; they express a very devout spirit of resignation, with regret, as he expresses it, that “many other souls are favoured with a more easy habitation, and he hoped with a better partner, accommodated with engines which have more health and vigour;” but he instantly recovers his spirits to exclaim, “Shall I repine then, while I survey whole nations and millions and millions of mankind that have not a thousand’s part of my blessings?” He was laid aside by sickness for five months soon after he became assistant to Dr. Chauncy, 1698; he was the subject of another illness soon after his settlement in the pastoral charge in 1701; a violent fever seized him in 1712, his constitution was shattered by it, his nerves weakened and unstrung, and he prevented from returning to his public work until October, 1716; we find from his own record that he was confined by illness in 1729; and many other occasions might be discovered of these sharp bodily afflictions. Life around him was usually beautiful and serene; he seems to have possessed a very large revenue of love, but he unquestionably possessed this “thorn in the flesh,” nor can we doubt that such experiences to such a faith as his, gave personal meaning to his hymns. He sung very often as one stretched on a rack, and not the least of his pains must have been that his incessantly active nature, his constant design and desire to carry out some purpose or to pursue some task found itself checked and arrested. Dr. Gibbons quotes a paragraph from a very beautiful letter to a friend, a minister, in affliction, through which there runs a vein of true spiritual friendship, and a pathos which his own experience of trials would very naturally inspire: “It is my hearty desire for you that your faith may ride out the storms of temptation, and the anchor of your hope may hold, being fixed within the veil. There sits Jesus our Forerunner, who sailed over this rough sea before us, and has given us a chart, even His Word, where the shelves and rocks, the fierce currents and dangers are well described, and He is our Pilot, and will conduct us to the shores of happiness. I am persuaded that in the future state we shall take a sweet review of those scenes of Providence which have been involved in the thickest darkness, and trace those footsteps of God when He walked with us through the deepest waters. This will be a surprising delight, to survey the manifold harmony of clashing dispensations, and to have those perplexing riddles laid open to the eyes of our souls, and read the full meaning of them in set characters of wisdom and grace.”
It is not extraordinary, therefore, that even so early as 1703 the church relieved Watts by choosing a co-pastor, Mr. Samuel Price, a native of Wales, but a student from Attercliff, in Yorkshire. As it was necessary to have a co-pastor, he was chosen upon the express desire and earnest recommendation of Watts; but many years appear to have passed between the choice of the church and his ordination as joint pastor, for Watts’ autobiographic memoranda says: “June, 1703, Mr. Samuel Price was chosen by the church to assist me;” but he was not ordained to the office of co-pastor until 1713. This relationship continued until it was dissolved by death. They were colleagues considerably upwards of forty years, and Price succeeded his beloved and amiable friend, whom he survived about seven years; he died in 1756, having been connected with the church fifty-three years. Watts mentions him in his will as his faithful friend and companion in the ministry, and leaves some little legacy, “as only a small testimony of his great affection for him, on account of his services of love during the many harmonious years of their fellowship in the work of the Gospel.” Watts several times, in the course of the prefaces and dedications to his published works, refers affectionately to his colleague; and his colleague when he died expressed a wish that he might be buried as near as possible to his honoured friend. It may be incidentally mentioned that he was uncle to the celebrated Dr. Richard Price.
Although his companion in the ministry neither as a preacher nor man of letters approached the eminence of Watts, it would seem that he was in every way acceptable as a preacher and a pastor, “judicious, and useful, and eminent in his gift of prayer,” says Gibbons. Certainly, the old place in Mark Lane became too small, for, after a temporary sojourn in Pinners’ Hall, in 1708 the congregation removed from Mark Lane[11] to Duke Street, St. Mary Axe.
It had been the site of one of the most celebrated metropolitan ecclesiastical establishments previous to the Reformation, the Priory of the Holy Trinity, the founder of which was Matilda, Queen of Henry I.; it became a huge establishment and enormously wealthy, the richest convent in England, some have said; rich in lands and ornaments, and incomparably surpassing all the other priories in the same county. The prior was always an alderman of London, although, if he happened to be exceedingly pious, he appointed a substitute to enact temporal matters; and on solemn days this clerical alderman rode through the city with the other aldermen, but arrayed in his monastic habit. On the dissolution of the monasteries this became one of the earliest spoils, and it was given by Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Audley, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and afterwards Lord Chancellor. On the site of the old priory he erected a splendid mansion, in which he resided until his death in 1544. His daughter and sole heiress, Margaret, married Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, so the estate descended to the Howard family, and became the Duke’s place; he lost his head; passing to his eldest son, he sold it in 1592 to the mayor, corporation, and citizens of London. This is a singular piece of history, which Wilson, in his “History of Dissenting Churches,” has gathered from Strype, Maitland, and Pennant.
In the time of Watts the neighbourhood had scarcely fallen from its high estate. Time had been since the period of the Reformation when Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and the Earl of Northumberland had their houses here; and Bury Street derived its name from the abbots of Bury, who also had a residence on this spot. Since the time of Cromwell, however, the region had become a kind of Juden Strasse. The Jews, who now form its principal inhabitants, then first settled there. The spot on which the chapel was built was part of a garden, although removed from public observation, a necessity laid upon the Nonconformists of that time, who were compelled to retreat into obscure recesses to escape the vigilance of prowling informers. The building has now entirely passed away, but we very well remember it, one of the old square substantial buildings with its galleries, exactly an ideal conventicle of those times, one of those in which the Nonconformists seemed to teach that there was no beauty in architecture which they particularly desired. The rich furniture and attainments of the ministers’ minds contrasting singularly with the plain and altogether unornamented and even barn-like simplicity of the scene of their ministrations: almost the only buildings which now retain the entirely unornamented architecture of the Puritan times are those of the members of the Society of Friends. Such was the building opened in Bury Street, October 3rd, 1708; it is also interesting to notice that it was erected at the costly sum of £650! In the present year of the publication of this volume a building has been erected in the City of London for the same order of communicants as those in Bury Street, at a cost of £55,000. The two sums are very suggestive of a comparison and contrast between the Nonconformists of the time of Watts and of to-day.
