NONCONFORMISTS.
At length Calamy and six others were publicly set apart to the ministry, at Dr. Annesley’s meeting-house, by the Doctor himself, Vincent Alsop, of Princes Street, Westminster, Daniel Williams, pastor at Hand Alley, Bishopsgate Street, Richard Stretton, of Haberdashers’ Hall, Matthew Sylvester, of Carter Lane, and Thomas Kentish of the Weigh-House. Annesley began with prayer; Alsop preached; Williams, after another prayer, delivered a second sermon; then he read the testimonials in favour of the candidates; next each of them delivered a profession of faith; and then, one after another, different ministers prayed; Sylvester followed with a charge, and concluded with a psalm and a prayer.[499] The service lasted from before ten o’clock until past six.
As vacancies in Nonconformist pastorates occurred, successors had to be appointed; and it is amusing to meet in the Diaries of the day, cross lights thrown upon the choice of ministers. The famous antiquarian Thoresby was in 1693 a leading member of the old Dissenting Church at Leeds. When deprived of its excellent instructor, Mr. Sharp, “we had several meetings to consult in order to the choice of a successor. I had the usual hap of moderators, to displease both the extremes. In the interim I wrote to several ministers to supply his place. We rode to Ovenden, and made our first application to Mr. Priestly, a person of moderate principles, learned, ingenious, and pious; but the people about Halifax and Horton could not be prevailed upon to resign their interest in him, without which he was not willing to desert them. I afterwards rode with some of the people to Pontefract, to solicit Mr. Manlove, who was at first very compliant, yet after relapsed, but in the conclusion accepted the call and removed to Leeds.”[500]
1688–1702.
Glimpses are caught of meeting-house politics. Thoresby received from his cousin a discouraging account of Mr. Manlove; but when this candidate visited the people, Thoresby found an unanimous desire for the man’s coming, testified by proffered subscriptions.[501] After this person’s settlement at Leeds, the love of Thoresby towards him and the old Dissent began to cool. His archæological pursuits brought him into the society of ecclesiastical dignitaries, and he frequently attended the parish church. By degrees his sympathy with Episcopalians deepened; he received the sacrament with them—a proceeding which offended old friends, and produced alienation. Attracted on the one side and repelled on the other, after hanging for awhile in suspense between the opposite communities, he found himself drawn into the bosom of the Establishment. The Corporation elected him one of their fraternity, and not long afterwards we find him saying: “I received a most comfortable letter from my Lord Archbishop of York, answering many objections against my Conformity, and gave me great satisfaction.”[502]
NONCONFORMISTS.
Fallings-off from Dissent happened in one place, accessions occurred in another. A clergyman, named Michael Harrison, who had usually preached at the church in Caversfield, gathered a congregation of Dissenters at Potterspury, near Stony Stratford, and died a Nonconformist minister at St. Ives.[503] Amidst the reproaches of High Churchmen at the growth of Dissent, from Low Churchmen there were received expressions of goodwill. Hough, Vicar of Halifax, stepped into Heywood’s new place of worship at Northowram, and putting off his hat, exclaimed: “The good Lord bless the Word preached in this place!”[504]
The education of boys, and the theological training of those designed for the ministry, were matters of great anxiety during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and afterwards received increasing attention.
Seminaries for Dissenters did not in the seventeenth century attain the dignified title of colleges. They were schools where youths were educated for secular vocations, and only by degrees did they become the resort of candidates for the ministry. There was no trust-deed, no constituency, no council, but the entire management rested with the person responsible for opening the institution. In the romantic district of Craven, Richard Frankland, a learned ejected minister, received pupils, but the Five-Mile Act drove him to Attercliffe. First and last he educated three hundred youths for the professions of law and of medicine, and for the work of the Christian ministry.
1688–1702.