This was hard measure. Poor Ingham had been most unjustly accused of being the author of the Yorkshire riot, and had defended himself; and now the editor of the Weekly Miscellany charges him with insincerity, dishonesty, and causing public scandal; and officiously prescribes that he should ask public pardon. Hooker was too much of a partisan to discharge his editorial duties with even-handed justice. Ingham made no reply to the Editor’s unwarrantable attack; but the latter printed two other letters, in which the same hostility was rampant. The first was dated, “Wakefield, July 16, 1740,” and fills an entire folio page, and nearly one third of another. In reply to Ingham’s statement, that he was not in the parish of Dewsbury when the riot commenced, nor for several days afterwards, the anonymous letter-writer calls this “an equivocating way of talking,” for three men of veracity had declared that he was all the while at Osset, a township in the parish. Can this be true? We cannot but disbelieve it. Ingham was incapable of such equivocation. The following extracts also are too manifestly malignant to be altogether truthful:—
“There were more of Mr. Ingham’s followers concerned in the riot than he would have the world to believe. For one fellow, who had lived with him several months under the same roof, was one of the ring-leaders of the rioters,—a very busy man in breaking the miller’s utensils, and a kind of helper of those to wheat flour who had no right to it. This godly man fled from justice, and has not since been heard of. Another of Mr. Ingham’s admirers at Osset very carefully helped himself at the mill; and he also absconded, till, as he thought, the danger was over, and now he appears again. A third of the Methodists concerned in this riot, was taken up by some of his Majesty’s justices of the peace, and was sent to York among other criminals, where he awaits his trial at the next assizes. If Mr. Ingham had inquired as particularly as he pretends, he would have ascertained that when these outrageous men gathered from several towns to seize upon Mr. Pollard’s corn at Crigglestone, there were not only two, but two hundred, perhaps many more, of his followers mixed with others in the same wicked design.
“This gentleman denies that he ever preached up a community of goods; and yet one of his former hearers at Osset, who is now returned to the Church, assured me that Mr. Ingham had often done that, and had told his auditors, ‘That none of them need to labour, for God would provide for them; and that they must throw themselves upon Jesus Christ, their whole life being spent in religious exercises being no more than sufficient to save their souls; for they who were rich ought to supply the wants of the poor.’ ‘So,’ says he, ‘had I followed Mr. Ingham’s advice, I should not have been worth a groat.’ And even Mr. Ingham’s brother declared, ‘If I mind our Ben, he will preach me out of all I have.’ This information I had from Mr. Glover, of Osset. I am far from thinking Mr. Ingham persuaded any to rise in this tumultuous manner, and charitably hope he did not approve of the riot; yet, when all circumstances are laid together, it is a great presumption that his preaching up a community of goods to men of low condition, was an encouragement to them in this dear season to make bold with more than their own.”
“As to the charge about ‘the scarlet whore,’ the writer acknowledges that when the gentleman in Leeds, who had given the information, was cross-examined, ‘he quibbled, gave ambiguous answers, and, in short, could be fixed to nothing.’”
In reference to Mr. Ingham’s “new way of worship,” all that the correspondent of the Weekly Miscellany can allege, is the following:—
“Mr. Ingham has preached in a croft at Osset to a confused number of people, drawn together from several parishes, which more resembled a bear-baiting than an orderly congregation for the worship of God. When Mr. Rogers,[99] one of his fellow-itinerants, came into these parts, he accompanied him to Westgate-Moor, adjoining to Wakefield, and stood by him, while the other harangued the mob from a stool or table. Mr. Rogers, in preaching from ‘Beware of dogs,’ advised his hearers to beware of the ministers of the present age; for all the ministers now-a-days preach false doctrine to tickle their carnal ears, that they may fill their coffers with money, and preach their souls to the devil. Another of Mr. Ingham’s associates, Mr. Delamotte, who is still a laic, being asked by a clergyman why he did not proceed regularly for a degree, and then for orders, answered, ‘If you mean episcopal ordination, I assure you I think the gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it.’ Rogers also told the same clergyman, that he was ‘as much inspired as St. Paul was, except the working of miracles; and that he could not commit actual sin.’ Besides all this, Mr. Ingham keeps his meetings, unauthorized by law, at Dewsbury, Osset, Mirfield, and other places, particularly at Horbury, in this parish, where he prays, sings, expounds, preaches, and visits the sick, without the consent or knowledge of the minister who resides there, though he is always ready to discharge his duty, and is much superior to Mr. Ingham in every respect for the discharge of it. As to the services he uses, it is a medley of his own; for though he makes use of the Common Prayer, he disguises and spoils it by his own additions. Much more might be said about his disorderly meetings, particularly locking himself up with a select number of his hearers till midnight, or after.”
The writer thus concludes:—
“Let this intruder, who pretends to act as a minister of the Established Church, say by what Canon in any General Council, by what Constitution in any National Church, he takes upon himself to wander from place to place, sometimes preaching in the fields, and sometimes creeping into private houses, to the great disturbance and disquiet of the lawfully appointed ministers, and raising schisms and distractions in a Church established upon primitive antiquity.”[100]
The other letter was not dissimilar to the one already quoted. It was dated, “Dewsbury, August 18, 1740,” and signed “A Layman;” and was published in the Weekly Miscellany, on August 30th. This charitably alarmed “Layman” brands the Methodists as “hot-headed enthusiasts;” speaks of Ingham and Delamotte as “those high pretenders to purity and holiness;” and stigmatises the latter as an “enthusiastic babbler,” pouring out “effusions of nonsense.” The following is the concluding paragraph:—
“Whatever sorry evasions Mr. Ingham may make to extenuate his wickedness in being instrumental to the riot at Dewsbury; yet, it is certain that he is highly culpable, and was, if not at the bottom, the sole cause of it. The principles he instils into his adherents are such as, when known, no better consequences could be expected than those that have followed: and what further mischief may ensue, if he be not restrained, is shocking to consider:—no less than the introducing of Popery, or, at least, some measures of his own destructive to the tranquillity and happiness of the community.”