1. Cited in Halévy, op. cit., III, p. 53. For accounts of Methodism’s political stance during these years, see E. R. Taylor, Methodism and Politics, 1791–1850; and R. F. Wearmouth, Methodism and the Working Class Movements of England, 1800–1850 (1937), especially the chapters on ‘The Methodist Loyalty’ and ‘The Methodist Neutrality’. See also The Town Labourer, ch. 13, ‘The Defences of the Poor’.
1. T. P. Bunting, Life of Jabez Bunting, D.D. (1887), p. 338.
2. Ibid., p. 11. It is interesting to note that Oastler’s father, a Leeds clothier, was also a Methodist and a ‘Tom Painite’. In his maturity, Oastler’s opinion of Methodism was scarcely more complimentary than that of Cobbett.
3. J. Wray, ‘Methodism in Leeds’, Leeds Reference Library.
1. T. P. Bunting, op. cit., pp. 527–8.
1. Ibid., pp. 295–7, 312–14, 322–3; Bamford, Early Days, pp. 100–101. It is fair to note that the Established Church and other Nonconformist sects also forbade the teaching of writing on Sundays.
2. The only humanitarian cause to which Methodists like Bunting gave consistent support was Anti-Slavery agitation; but as the years go by, and the issue is trotted out again and again, one comes to suspect that it was less a vestigial social conscience than a desire to disarm criticism which propped this banner up.
3. L. Tyerman, John Wesley (1870), III, p. 499. See also J. Sutcliffe, A Review of Methodism (York, 1805), p. 37.
1. See W. J. Warner, op. cit., pp. 168–80.
1. R. H. Tawney, op. cit., pp. 227 ff.
1. Weber, op. cit., esp. pp. 54, 60–67, 160–61, 178; E. Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (1960 edn), p. 80.
2. Nor is this work-discipline in any sense limited to Methodism. We are discussing Methodism here as the leading example of developments which belong also to the history of Evangelicism and of most Nonconformist sects during the Industrial Revolution.
3. Weber, op. cit., pp. 66–7, 282; Tawney, op. cit., pp. 198 ff. Baxter’s writings were favoured reading among the early Methodists, and were much reprinted in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
1. Report of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, I (1798), pp. 238 ff.; account of the Duke of Bridgewater’s colliers (near Manchester). The Duke’s colliers were regarded as ‘more moral’ than most, and ‘some of the duke’s agents are men of a religious cast, and have established Sunday schools…’
2. A. Redford, op. cit., pp. 19–20. As late as the 1830s, Samuel Greg was complaining of ‘that restless and migratory spirit which is one of the peculiar characteristics of the manufacturing population’.
3. V. W. Bladen, ‘The Potteries in the Industrial Revolution’, Econ. Journal (Supplement), 1926–9, I, p. 130. See also M. McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Disciple’, Hist. Journal, IV, I, 1961, p. 30. It was Wedgwood’s aim to ‘make such Machines of the Men as cannot err’.
1. R. Guest, A Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture (1823), pp. 38, 43.
2. In the seventeenth century the Puritan sects had a large weaver following, but – except in the West of England – this tradition had little life in the early eighteenth century.
1. Ure, op. cit., pp. 13–21. Cf. also p. 23: ‘It is in fact the constant aim and tendency of every improvement in machinery to supersede human labour altogether, or to diminish its cost, by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers, for trained artisans.’ As an expression of the mill-owners’ intentions this is interesting, and relevant to the textile industries; but as an expression of a ‘law’ of capitalist development, Marx and Engels perhaps gave Ure’s claims too much credence.
1. Ibid., III, chs. 1 and 3. My italics.
1. Cf. D. H. Lawrence in The Rainbow: ‘They believe that they must alter themselves to fit the pits and the place, rather than alter the pits and the place to fit themselves. It is easier.’
2. Ure, op. cit., pp. 423–5.
1. Weber, in his brief discussion of Methodism in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, exaggerates the Calvinist elements in its theology, and thereby fails to see its special adaptability as a religion of the proletariat. He thus presses too far the sense of a ‘calling’ among the Wesleyans, especially when he seeks to apply it to the ‘calling’ of the working man, a doctrine which has less significance in England than those of submission and obedience.
1. Jabez Bunting, Sermon on Justification by Faith (Leeds, 1813), p. 11. Bunting’s imagery reminds one that in January of this same year (1813) some Luddites had suffered the full ‘penal consequences’ on the gallows, while others had had their penalty ‘graciously remitted’ to fourteen years transportation.
1. Weber and Tawney, of course, direct attention to the parallel development of Puritan and Utilitarian dogmas: cf. Tawney, op. cit., p. 219: ‘Some of the links in the Utilitarian coat of mail were forged… by the Puritan divines of the seventeenth century.’ It was Methodism, however, which forged the last links of the Utilitarian chains riveted upon the proletariat.
1. Excepting, of course, the Baptists – notably in Wales.
2. For an example, taken from this tract, see p. 62 above.
1. The language often suggests that the objective component of the ‘sin’ was masturbation. And this might well be deduced from three facts: (1) The introversial nature of penitent self-absorption. (2) The obsessional Methodist teaching as to the sinfulness of the sexual organs. (3) The fact that the children of Methodists were expected to come to a sense of sin at about the age of puberty. See G. R. Taylor, The Angel-Makers (1958), p. 326 for the increase in literature on the subject in these years.
1. Joshua Marsden, Sketches of the Early Life of a Sailor (an autobiography in the third person) (Hull, n.d.), passim.
1. Sketches of the Early Life of a Sailor, pp. 104, 111.
2. Joseph Nightingale, Portraiture of Methodism (1807), pp. 203 ff.
1. R. Southey, Life of Wesley and Rise and Progress of Methodism (1890 edn), 381 ff.
2. J. E. Rattenbury, The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley (1948), p. 240:
We cast our sins into that fire
Which did thy sacrifice consume,
And every base and vain desire
To daily crucifixion doom.
3.W. Hazlitt, ‘On the Causes of Methodism’, The Round Table (1817), Works, IV, pp. 57 ff.
4. Weber, op. cit., p. 53.
1. Ibid., pp. 158–9.
2. Only an appreciation of the degree to which this obsession came to permeate English culture – and in particular working-class culture – can lead to an understanding of why Lawrence was impelled to write Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
1. See R. A. Knox, Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950), pp. 408–17; G. R. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 166–7.
1. J. E. Rattenbury, op. cit., p. 132.
2. Ibid., pp. 109–11, 202–4, 224–34; and J. E. Rattenbury, The Evangelical Doctrines of Charles Wesley’s Hymns (1941), p. 184. This subject is due for renewed and more expert attention. Mr G. R. Taylor’s study of The Angel-Makers is suggestive, but his attempt to find a ‘sexual’ explanation of historical change in patrist and matrist child-orientations is pressed to the point of absurdity.
1. The Editor of the Examiner [Leigh Hunt], An Attempt to Shew the Folly and Danger of Methodism (1809), esp. pp. 54–64, 89–97. The language also laid the Methodists open to charges that love-feasts, watch-nights, and revivalist fervour became occasions for promiscuous sexual intercourse. Among sober critics, Nightingale discounted these accusations, Leigh Hunt supported them, Southey reserved judgement. See such canaille as A Professor, Confessions of a Methodist (1810).
2. Cf. W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1891 edn), II, p. 585: ‘The ghastly images [the Methodist preachers] continually evoked poisoned their imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression, discoloured all their judgements of the world, and added a tenfold horror to the darkness of the grave.’
1. Lecky, op. cit. III, pp. 77–8.
2. Cf. Wilberforce, A Practical View of Christianity, p. 437: ‘Remember that we are all fallen creatures, born in sin, and naturally depraved, Christianity recognizes no innocence or goodness of heart.’
1. These years cover the period of the rise and dominance of Jabez Bunting and his circle. After 1830 liberalizing tendencies can be seen at work within the Methodist Connexion; and although Bunting fought a determined rearguard action, by the 1840s Methodism entered a new and somewhat softened stage. On the one hand, some second or third generation mill-owners and employers left the Methodists for the respectability of the Established Church. On the other hand, Methodism appears as the authentic outlook of some in the small shopkeeper and clerical and sub-managerial groups, in which a muted radicalism is joined to the ideology of ‘self-help’. See E. R. Taylor, op. cit., chs. 5, 6, and W. J. Warner, op. cit. pp. 122–35.
2. Southey, op. cit., p. 561. We can see, for example from Bamford’s memoirs of the 1790s, and from Thomas Cooper’s Life (when as a Methodist schoolmaster in the 1820s he regarded it as a sign of grace that he should not strike his pupils) that Wesley’s teachings were humanized by many of his late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century followers. But see the orthodox utilitarian advocacy of Jabez Bunting, in Sermon on a great work described (1805).
1. The History of John Wise, a Poor Boy: intended for the Instruction of Children (Halifax, 1810).
1. Cited in J. L. and B. Hammond, Lord Shaftesbury (Penguin edn), p. 74.
2. T. Cooper, Life, p. 37.
3. Those writers today who rightly expose the human depreciation resulting from the commercial abuse of the media of communication, seem to me to have matters out of proportion when they overlook the extent and character of mass indoctrination in earlier periods.
1. Rev. Thomas Bancroft, 12 February 1798, P.C. A. 152.
2. See D. Read, Peterloo (Manchester, 1957), pp. 51 ff., and below, p. 788.
3. The sense of fellowship in the early years of the Church is expressed sympathetically in L. F. Church, The Early Methodist People (1948). See also, of course, Dr Wearmouth’s books, among many others.
1. Southey, op. cit., pp. 382 ff.
2. See the discussion of the ‘enthusiasm’ in R. A. Knox, op. cit., pp. 520–35.
1. F. A. West, Memoirs of Jonathan Saville (Halifax, 1844).
2. W. M. Stamp, Historical Notices of Wesleyan Methodism in Bradford (1841), p. 85.
3. F. W. Bourne, The Bible Christians (1905), pp. 36–42.
4. K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (1960 edn), pp. 192–6.
1. In March 1801, Earl Fitzwilliam was enquiring into the activities of the followers of Brothers in Bradford, led by Zacchaus Robinson, a weaver, who ‘was for many years a strong Methodist, & what is here called a Class Leader’. Fitzwilliam Papers, F. 45 (a).
2. T. A. Ward, op. cit., pp. 188–9; Eben-Eser, The Little Book (1811).
3. R. Wedgwood, The Book of Remembrance (1814).
1. Cited in Alfred, 24 August 1811. See also F. W. Bourne, op. cit., pp. 55, 64–5, for accounts of women possessed by the devil, and of a woman ‘who declared herself to be Christ’.
2. Southey, Letters from England (1808, 2nd edn), III, p. 238.
3. Ibid., III, p. 232.
1. This last passage is not Joanna’s, but a ‘small part of the thoughts’ of ‘a gentleman of vast respectability’ who was among her followers. All the other passages are from Joanna’s writings. See Strange Effects of Faith, 5th Book, p. 235; 6th Book, p. 275; A Continuation of Prophecies (1802), pp. 15, 48–9; A Word in Season (1803), p. 17; A Word to the Wise (1803), p. 32; Sound an Alarm in My Holy Mountain (1804), pp. 31, 45; A Warning to the World (1804), p. 8; Copies and Parts of Copies, &c. (1804), p. 49; Letters and Communications (1804), pp. 44–5; Answer to Five Charges in the Leeds Mercury (1805), pp. 20–21; Divine and Spiritual Communications (1809), pp. 20, 39. See also G. R. Balleine, Past Finding Out (1956), chs. 1 to 7; William Sharp, An Answer to the World (1806).
2. Followers of the cult were obliged to wear beards. For Southcottian penetration into the north, see J. Crossley, Remarks and Inquiries on a Sermon Preached by the Rev. J. Cockin (Leeds, 1806); G. Turner, A Vindication for the Honour of God (Leeds, 1807); W. Cooke Taylor, op. cit., p. 230; F. Peel, Nonconformity in the Spen Valley, pp. 187–8.
1. See G. R. Balleine, op. cit., chs. 8 to 14; W. H. G. Armytage, Heavens Below, pp. 274–6; and below, pp. 879–82.
2. Divine and Spiritual Communications (1809), p. 33.
3. Halifax Theatre Royal playbill, 1793.
4. Political Register, 12 June 1813.
1. Census of Religious Worship, England and Wales, 1851 (1853), p. Ixxviii. Orthodox Wesleyan circuits with over 1,000 members in 1815 were claimed to be: London, Bristol, Redruth, St Ives, Birmingham, Burslem, Macclesfield, Manchester, Bolton, Liverpool, Colne, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Birstal, Bradford, Halifax, Isle of Man, Sunderland, Wakefield, Dewsbury, Epworth, York, Hull, Darlington, Barnard Castle, Newcastle, Shields. See M. E. Edwards, ‘The Social and Political Influence of Methodism in the Napoleonic Period’ (London Ph.D. Thesis, 1934), p. 244.
2. Primitive Rebels, pp. 129–30.
1. See E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Methodism and the Threat of Revolution’, History Today (1957), VII, p. 124.
2. See e.g. Leigh Hunt, op. cit., p. xiv.
3. H. B. Kendall, History of the Primitive Methodist Church (1919), pp. 7–8, 31. The rôle of the revival may be fixed by the legendary incident, recorded by Kendall, of a ‘Luddite’ of 1817 who was meditating assassination, and was waylaid on his mission and brought to the chapel instead.
1. Similarly, Professor Armytage finds that the years of maximum emigration from the industrial districts in the 1840s to the Mormon City of Zion were years of Chartist inactivity. See below, p. 882.
2. T. Cooper, Life, pp. 85–6.
1. These words are put into the mouth of a Methodist preacher in a radical tract, A Dialogue between a Methodist Preacher and a Reformer (Newcastle, 1819), but they faithfully represent Methodist sermons of the time.
2. Political Register, 3 January 1824.
1. Cf. E. Fromm, Fear of Freedom (1960 edn), pp. 81–3.
2. R. F. Wearmouth, Methodism and Working-Class Movements, 1800–1850, p. 61: Ezekiel, XXI, 25–28. It is interesting to note that this text was also used by English Levellers: cf. Gerrard Winstanley, Fire in the Bush (1650): ‘You oppressing powers of the world… do you remember this? Your overturning, overturning, overturning, is come on to you…’ For another example, see below, p. 560.
1. Hugh Kelly, The Stone Cut Out of the Mountain (Newcastle,1821), p. 13: H. Kelly, An Impartial History of Independent Methodism (Newcastle, 1824).
2. Placard in author’s possession. The recommended reading from Jeremiah is: ‘Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work.’
1. Benjamin Gregory, Autobiographical Recollections (1903), pp. 126–9.
1. ‘The members of this Conference have a School at King’s Wood, at which their sons (and not the sons of their congregations,) are educated! . . This, too, is maintained at the expense of the congregations…. The sons, thus educated, sally out, in due time, to be gentlemen; that is to say… to be Excisemen, Tax-gatherers, Clerks and Officers of various sorts.’ Political Register, 27 January 1820.
2. Ibid., 3 January 1824.
3. Ibid., 23 July 1803: ‘Of the six traitors… executed with Despard… three were Methodists, and had a methodist teacher to attend them in their last moments…. The sect consists chiefly of grovelling wretches in and about great towns and manufacturing places…’ Cf. T. E. Owen, Methodism Unmasked (1802).
1. Ibid., 27 January 1820, 13 January 1821.
1. J. T. Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne, 1772–1852 (1952), pp. 21–32. See also the same author’s life of William Clowes.
2. See E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, ch. 8. The Primitive Methodists numbered 200 in 1811, 7,842 in 1820. See H. B. Kendall, op. cit., p. 31.
1. A Letter to a County Gentleman on the Subject of Methodism (Ipswich, 1805).
1. B. Wilson, op. cit., p. 3; Halifax Guardian, 25 May 1839. Hanson was expelled by the Methodists for this speech.
1. National Chartist Hymn Book.
2. Halifax Guardian, 21 April 1848. See also the slogans of 1819, below, p. 760.
3. F. Peel, Spen Valley, Past and Present (Heckmondwike, 1893), pp. 317–19.
1. Commonwealth, 16 November 1866; People’s Paper, 2 July 1853; History of Luddenden Dean Chapel (1928), p. 5. For a man of similar force and integrity, from the Primitive Methodists, John Skevington of Loughborough, see Harrison, ‘Chartism in Leicester’ in A. Briggs, Chartist Studies (1959), pp. 70 ff.