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AntiMethodisminEighteenthCenturyEngland:ThePendleForestRiotsof
1748
MICHAELFRANCISSNAPE
TheJournalofEcclesiasticalHistory/Volume49/Issue02/April1998,pp257281
DOI:null,Publishedonline:08September2000

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Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. , No. , April .

# Cambridge University Press

Printed in the United Kingdom

Anti-Methodism in EighteenthCentury England : The Pendle Forest

Riots of
by MICHAEL FRANCIS SNAPE

Notice is hereby given, that if any man be mindful to enlist in his

Majestys service, under the command of the Rev. Mr. George White,
Commander-in-Chief, and John Bannister, Lieut.-General of his
Majestys forces for the defence of the Church of England, and the
support of the manufactory in and about Colne, both which are now in
danger, let him repair to the drum-head at the Cross, where each man
shall receive a pint of ale in advance, and all other proper
encouragements."

his notice, which was published at the height of the agitation

which beset the forest of Pendle in the summer of , conjures
images beloved of the Methodist hagiographer. Assuming quasimilitary titles, squire and parson rally a drink-sodden mob to do battle
against the preachers of the Gospel, and all in the name of religion and
commerce. Historians, however, are required to take a more dispassionate
view of the motives and actions of those who, through violence or polemic,
attempted to arrest the growth of the Evangelical Revival, a movement
which was to prove one of the most influential religious and cultural
movements in the history of the British Isles.# John Walshs pioneering
essay on Methodism and the mob was one of the first serious attempts
to treat anti-Methodist agitation sympathetically, and to place it in the
much broader context of the norms of popular protest in the eighteenth
century. However, detailed academic studies of anti-Methodist protests
remain scarce, and the strong correlation between these and other
examples of popular hostility towards other deviant religious groups, such
as Catholics, Nonconformists and Jews, remains understated.

CRO Chester Record Office ; JRULM John Rylands University Library of

Manchester ; LRO Lancashire Record Office
" A. C. H. Seymour, The life and times of Selina countess of Huntingdon, London , i.
.
# For a recent treatment of the influence of evangelicalism in nineteenth-century Britain
see David Hempton, Religion and political culture in Britain and Ireland, Cambridge .



To understand why the rise of Methodism provoked such a strong
reaction, it is necessary to examine the political and religious background
and to note some important features of contemporary community life.
Although mid eighteenth-century England was once viewed as politically
stable, historians have recently shown that its peace and prosperity was
precarious to say the least. For a society overshadowed by the carnage
and destructiveness of the civil wars of the previous century, the prospect
of further strife was traumatic, and the very real possibility that the
followers of the exiled House of Stuart might once again plunge the
country into bloodshed and anarchy was, as Linda Colley has argued,
a crucial factor in ensuring their ultimate defeat.$ However, Jacobitism
was not the only spectre at the feast. The religious and political excesses
of extreme Puritanism during the Civil War and Commonwealth period
rendered Protestant Nonconformity distinctly suspect after the Restoration and its religious settlement of . Whilst the limited extent of
the Toleration Act of and subsequent failures to repeal the Test and
Corporation Acts were symptomatic of the continuing suspicion in which
Dissenters were regarded by the legislature during the eighteenth century,
popular hostility towards Dissenters could occasionally find more violent
expression, most notably in the Sacheverell Riots of and in the
disturbances which followed the accession of George in .% In the
context of the times, the zeal of early Methodism could seem disturbingly
reminiscent of the enthusiasm of the seventeenth century, a febrile
disposition believed to be characteristic of the Protestant sectaries of that
period and one which Samuel Johnson defined as A vain belief of private
revelation and John Locke as the conceits of a warmed or overweening
brain .& The widespread fear engendered by the apparent recrudescence
of religious enthusiasm in the nascent Methodist movement was voiced in
a letter published in the Gentlemans Magazine in May :
Those who are acquainted with the History of former Times know what
monstrous Absurdities in Opinion, and what vile Practices Enthusiasm will
produce ; from what small Beginnings, and by what inconsiderable Persons, as to
parts and Abilities, the greatest Disturbances in Church and State have arisen.
The last Century furnishes us with a melancholy Proof in our own Country.
Whoever will be at the Trouble of comparing the first Rise of those Troubles
which at last overturnd the Constitution, and ruind the Nation, will see too
great a Similitude between them and the present Risings of Enthusiastick Rant,
not to apprehend great Danger that, unless proper Precautions be taken in Time,
the remote Consequences of them may be as fatal.'
$ L. Colley, Britons : forging the nation , London , .
% J. Stevenson, Popular disturbances in England , London , ; J. Albers,
Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues : religious identities in eighteenth-century
Lancashire , in J. Walsh, S. Taylor and C. Haydon (eds), The Church of England c.
c. : from toleration to Tractarianism, Cambridge , at pp. .
& S. Johnson (ed.), A dictionary of the English language, London .
' Gentlemans Magazine ix (), .

Notwithstanding this fear and hatred of enthusiasm, Roman Catholicism remained the most reviled form of religious deviancy in eighteenthcentury England. Colin Haydon has demonstrated the potency of English
anti-Catholicism during this period, a prejudice which not only served as
the most decisive factor in ensuring the defeat of the Catholic Stuarts but,
in the form of the Gordon Riots of , also generated the worst popular
disturbances of the whole eighteenth century. Moreover, within the
fevered taxonomy of contemporary anti-Catholicism, even Protestant
extremists could be passed off as unwitting accessories of popery for, as
Bishop George Lavington argued in his famous work The enthusiasm of
Methodists and papists compared, Jesuits, and other Romish Emissaries, have
often mingled, and been the Ringleaders, among our Enthusiastic
Sectaries ; loudly exclaiming against the Pope, and pretending to Purity
and Reformation.( Other events of the seventeenth century seemed to
provide additional justification for this tendency, the late s, for
example, having witnessed the emergence of a sinister alliance between
popery and some Dissenters in support of James s tolerationist policies.
It was Methodisms misfortune to appear at a time when fears of
Catholicism and of Jacobitism were at an unusually high level. During the
s, and largely because of signs of official laxity in the enforcement of
the penal laws, fears of Catholic growth were widespread amongst
Anglicans and Nonconformists alike.) Because driving the Catholic
community underground had made it impossible to gauge its real
strength, the illusion of Catholic growth was one which was easily
conjured and just as easily sustained. Wesley himself was powerfully
influenced by it. In his famous post-conversion sermon on Salvation by
Faith , preached before the University of Oxford in June , Wesley
argued that :
Nothing but this can effectually prevent the increase of the Roman delusion
among us. It is endless to attack, one by one, all the errors of that Church. But
salvation by faith strikes at the root, and all fall at once where this is established.
It was this doctrine, which our Church justly calls the strong rock and foundation
of the Christian religion, that first drove Popery out of these kingdoms ; and it is
this alone can keep it out.*

The outbreak of hostilities with Englands old Catholic enemies, Spain

from and France from , stoked the flames of anti-Catholic
hysteria, particularly as these new circumstances lent the Jacobite menace
renewed vigour. The Jacobite rebellion of saw major outbreaks
of anti-Catholic violence across England, much of it whipped up by
( G. Lavington, The enthusiasm of Methodists and papists compared, London , i. .
) C. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century England : a political and social study,
Manchester , .
* J. Wesley, Salvation by faith , in Sermons on several occasions by the Rev. John Wesley, ed.
J. Beecham, London , .



government-sponsored propagandists. Given the High Church and partly
nonjuring background of the Wesley family, and also the pronounced
theological and devotional eclectism of John and Charles Wesley,"! early
Methodists could hardly fail to be suspected of popery and of Jacobitism.
Hogarths famous cartoon Enthusiasm Delineated of depicted a
tonsured Methodist preacher, suitably attired in a plaid waistcoat,
preaching to a wild and credulous congregation."" Similarly, in an
epistle to the Gentlemans Magazine from a resident of Salisbury spoke of a
scandalous Methodist preacher of whom During the late rebellion, many
things were observed, in his preaching and conversation, that rendered
him suspected of being in the interest of [the rebels], and but for his
seeming piety and simplicity of behavour, he would have been called to
account for the same."# Seven years later, Bishop Lavington was of the
opinion that Methodism related to popery in much the same manner as
it had to the sectaries of the seventeenth century :
I would not be understood to accuse the Methodists directly of Popery ; though
I am persuaded they are doing the Papists work for them, and agree with them
in some of their principles their heads filled with much the same grand projects,
driven on in the same wild manner ; and wearing the same badge of peculiarities
in their tenets not perhaps from compact and design ; but a similar configuration
and texture of brain, or the fumes of imagination producing similar effects."$

It was not only in print, however, that Methodism was linked so explicitly
with popery and with Jacobitism. One of John Wesleys early hearers at
the Old Foundery in London could only conclude that he was a Papist,
as he dwelt so much on the forgiveness of sins ,"% whilst Wesley noted in
"! John Wesley was influenced by the life and example of Catholic mystics such as
Thomas a' Kempis and Gregory Lopez, and he transmitted these influences to his
followers, particularly through his Christian Library. Wesley was also impressed by the lives
of Gaston de Renty, the seventeenth-century founder of the Company of the Blessed
Sacrament, and Gregory Lopez, a sixteenth-century Mexican hermit, as examples of
Christian perfection, Moreover, both he and Charles Wesley found inspiration in the
instantaneous conversion experience of Blaise Pascal. The Wesleys Arminian theology,
Johns dictatorial tendencies and Methodist practices such as frequent communion and
confession in band meetings all fuelled accusations of popery. Naturally, the conversion
of Charless son, Samuel, to Catholicism in the late s was highly incriminating :
E. Duffy, Wesley and the Counter-Reformation , in J. Garnett and C. Matthew (eds),
Revival and religion since : essays for John Walsh, London , ; H. Rack, Reasonable
enthusiast : John Wesley and the rise of Methodism, London , ; T. A. Campbell, The
religion of the heart : a study of European religious life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
Columbia , ; D. Butler, Methodists and papists : John Wesley and the Catholic Church in
the eighteenth century, London , , ; A. M. Lyles, Methodism mocked : the satiric
reaction to Methodism in the eighteenth century, London , , .
"" J. Miller, Religion in the popular prints , Cambridge , .
"# Gentlemans Magazine xvii (), .
"$ R. Polwhele (ed.), The enthusiasm of Methodists and papists considered by Bishop Lavington,
London , .
"% C. Goodwin, The religion of feeling : Wesleyan Catholicism , History Today xlvi
(October ), at p. .

his Journal how, in a sermon of April , the vicar of St Ives denounced

Methodists as the new sect enemies of the Church, Jacobites, Papists
and what not ! Significantly, the Methodist meeting-house in the same
town had been burnt down some months earlier by a mob celebrating a
naval victory over the Spanish."&
Besides falling foul of the political and religious climate of the mid
eighteenth century, early Methodism also seemed at variance with many
of the norms of contemporary life. The Methodist conversion experience
seemed liable to invert the order of social subordination, as the converted
flaunted new convictions and lifestyles before their social and domestic
superiors. Whilst the most public example of such impertinence was the
defiance commonly shown by the itinerant preacher towards squire and
parson, the observance of strict and often nocturnal routines of prayer by
those fleeing from the wrath to come "' generated considerable domestic
strife. That the unawakened should have been so suspicious of Methodist
meetings is readily understandable, not only because of the neglect of
work which constant attendance on Methodist meetings was supposed to
entail, but also because of the salacious speculation which surrounded
Methodist love feasts and holy kisses , speculation which was certainly
fuelled by the libidinous activities of certain rogue preachers."( As the
Gentlemans Magazines Salisbury informant said of one such preacher :
Many sober and judicious persons have expressed their fears, that the nocturnal
meetings held at his house were scenes of debauchery and impurity ; for now and
then a bastard-child was brought into the world by some of his female devotees ;
but still the priest himself was unsuspected, till one of the leaders of his female
disciples a servant maid about declared herself with child by him [and]
the fire of jealousy has broken out in many families, where wives or daughters
were his followers.")

Of course, there were wider social and economic ramifications to these

domestic disputes. In a society in which the authority of the father was
widely seen as being God-given and closely analogous to that of the
monarch,"* Methodism was seen as a dangerous social solvent, the
rebellions it engendered amongst wives, children and servants boding ill
for the stability of society as a whole. Moreover, in the context of an
economy in which the household was the basic economic unit,#! a family
"& Stevenson, Popular disturbances, .
"' J. Wesley, The nature, design and general rules of the united societies in London,
Bristol, Kings-wood and Newcastle upon Tyne , in R. Davies (ed.), The Methodist societies :
history, nature and design, Nashville, Tenn. , .
"( For the notorious career of Westley Hall, Wesleys antinomian brother-in-law, and
also for suspicions surrounding Wesley himself see Rack, Reasonable enthusiast, , .
") Gentlemans Magazine xvii (), .
"* S. Gill, Women and the Church of England from the eighteenth century to the present, London
, .
#! J. Rule, The vital century : Englands developing economy, , London , .



in which discord and disruption had taken root, and whose members were
unable to work together, was liable to starve. In this respect, it was clearly
the misfortune of early Methodism to appear upon the national stage
during years of foreign war and industrial depression, circumstances
which could only have heightened the precariousness of the household
economy during the early years of the s.#"
If Methodism posed a threat to the peace and prosperity of families,
and also, therefore, to the body politic, then it also served to threaten the
fragile harmony of community life as well. Contemporaries recognised
that village communities were ultimately bound together by the concept
of neighbourliness , and by the ties of mutual obligation which this
entailed. Methodisms tendency to undermine communal solidarity by
setting its followers apart from other members of the community was most
pronounced with respect to its stand on many of the recreational aspects
of popular culture. Throughout England, community harmony was
fostered by calendars of popular festivities, amongst which the annual
parish feast (or wake) usually held pride of place.## The wake was a
traditional celebration originally held on the Sunday closest to the feast
day of the saint to whom the parish church was dedicated, but by the
eighteenth century parish wakes usually occurred at harvest time, when
food and money were in plentiful supply.#$ The parish wake could involve
the local community in revelry which lasted into the following week,#%
often being accompanied by the annual rush-bearing ceremony to the
parish church#& as well as by a number of sports and pastimes in which
many of its younger members were keen to excel. With respect to the
competitiveness of some of the accompanying festivities, one eighteenthcentury commentator observed that rustics esteemed one another more
or less the following Part of the year according as they distinguish
themselves at this Time .#' Moreover, under the stimulus of the Act of
Settlement of , by which parishes were made responsible for the
maintenance of paupers who had either been born within their boundaries
or who had otherwise gained a right of settlement,#( eighteenth-century
#" The years have been identified as the years of the worst recession to take place
over the period : P. Langford, A polite and commercial people, Oxford , .
## J. Brand, Observations on popular antiquities, London , ; R. Suggett,
Festivals and social structure in early modern Wales , Past and Present clii (),
at pp. . For a discussion of the annual cycle of popular festivities see B. Bushaway,
By rite : custom, ceremony and community in England , London , .
#$ E. P. Thompson, The patricians and the plebs , in Customs in common, Harmondsworth , ; Suggett, Festivals and social structure , .
#% R. W. Malcolmson, Popular recreations in English society , Cambridge ,
; Suggett, Festivals and social structure , .
#& This was a very widespread practice in contemporary Lancashire : J. Albers, Seeds
of contention : society, politics and the Church of England in Lancashire , unpubl. PhD
#' Spectator ii (), .
diss. Yale , .
#( D. Eastwood, Governing rural England : tradition and transformation in local government
, Oxford , ; D. Hey (ed.), The Oxford companion to local and family history,
Oxford , .

wakes may well have adopted an exclusive and belligerent tone and been
used as a means by which parish communities sought to define themselves
and their members against outsiders and interlopers.#) Given all these
circumstances, wakes were widely regarded as conducive to lewdness,
drunkenness and violence, and there had always been a strong body of
puritanical opinion which had objected to these celebrations on the
grounds of their impropriety and on account of their popish derivation.
Like Puritanism before it, Methodisms active disapproval of parish
wakes, and of many similar aspects of popular culture, generated
considerable controversy and a good deal of animosity towards its
proponents.#*
As the foregoing discussion will have indicated, the tenor of eighteenthcentury English society was highly conformist. In this respect, England
differed little from other contemporary European societies for, as A. F.
Upton has noted, most societies in early modern Europe were consensus
societies whose members subscribed to one common set of values
individuals or groups who did deviate were seen everywhere as subversive and rightly open to ruthless repression .$! This conformity to
established norms was often enforced by ordinary people rather than by
those in authority, the most graphic demonstrations of the popular
enforcement of moral and legal norms in eighteenth-century England
being the numerous crowd disturbances of the period. Edward
Thompsons pioneering work on the eighteenth-century English crowd
has shown how contemporary food rioters responded to violations of the
customary moral economy (whose principles had been enshrined in law
by Tudor and Stuart legislators),$" the attitude of these crowds being to
see that justice was enforced by the established authorities if possible, by
direct popular action if necessary .$# However, this popular sense of
justice was also carried over into labour disputes and into protests against
the enclosure of common land, the building of turnpike roads and against
the implementation of Pitts Militia Act of .$$ It was also very much
in evidence in the collective ducking and murder of two supposed witches
by a crowd near Tring in April , fifteen years after the repeal of the
witchcraft statute of .$% The maintenance of Englands post-
religious settlement was no less susceptible to popular enforcement, most
English men and women subscribing to the view that Nonconformity
should be contained, Catholicism suppressed, and the rights of the
Church of England upheld. These convictions informed the clamorous
#) Suggett, Festivals and social structure , , .
#* Ibid. ; Malcolmson, Popular recreations, .
$! A. F. Upton, Sweden , in J. Miller (ed.), Absolutism in seventeenth-century Europe,
London , at p. .
$" E. P. Thompson, The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth
century , in Customs in common, .
$# R. W. Malcolmson, Life and labour in England , London , .
$$ Stevenson, Popular disturbances, .
$% Gentlemans Magazine xxi (), .



popular protests which led to the repeal of the Jewish Naturalisation Act
in and also fed the popular agitation against the scant measure of
relief granted to Roman Catholics in , a wave of agitation which
culminated in the orgy of destruction and bloodshed that were the
Gordon Riots of .$&
In legal terms, early Methodism was a slippery phenomenon. Although
practices such as itinerant preaching and field preaching constituted clear
violations of the Church of Englands canon law,$' it was much harder to
see where Methodism as a movement stood in relation to statute law in
general and to the Toleration Act in particular. Because its leaders, and
notably John Wesley, were insistent in regarding Methodism as a renewal
movement within the Church of England, they maintained that
Methodism was exempt from the terms of the Toleration Act, which
applied only to Trinitarian Nonconformists. Although this claim was
disputed by Anglican jurists, most notably Edmund Gibson and Richard
Burn,$( Methodist preachers and meeting-houses continued to go
unregistered by either the civil or the ecclesiastical authorities, a clear
violation, in the eyes of many, of the spirit if not the letter of the
Toleration Act. If the Toleration Act was thus unable to provide a
meaningful check to Methodist activities, then the Conventicles Act of
also failed to have the desired effect. Because the express purpose of
this act had been to suppress seditious activities at Nonconformist
meetings, Wesley (who went to great lengths to demonstrate his loyalty to
the political establishment throughout his public career)$) argued that
this had no application to the Methodist movement, an argument which
echoed the case made by some Nonconformist ministers in relation to the
first Conventicles Act of .$* Moreover, and particularly after ,
the mood of Englands governors was not conducive to the strengthening
of laws against religious Nonconformity, the Whig ministries of the period
presiding over a nation which enjoyed a considerable measure of de facto,
if not de jure, religious toleration.%! However, notwithstanding the
disposition of government and the nicer points of legal debate, it seemed
to many contemporaries that Methodism with all its connotations of
popish and puritanical excess was subversive of a religious settlement
$& T. W. Perry, Public opinion, propaganda, and politics in eighteenth-century England : a study
of the Jew Bill of , Cambridge, Mass. , ; D. S. Katz, The Jews in the history
of England , Oxford , ; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century
$' R. Burn, Ecclesiastical law, London , ii. .
England, .
$( D. Hempton, Methodism and the law , Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library
of Manchester lxx (), at p. ; Burn, Ecclesiastical law, ii. .
$) Rack, Reasonable enthusiast, .
$* P. Collinson, The English conventicle , in W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), Voluntary
religion (Studies in Church History xxiii, ), .
%! H. Trevor-Roper, Toleration and religion after , in O. P. Grell, J. Israel and
N. Tyacke (eds), From persecution to toleration : the glorious Revolution and religion in England,
Oxford , ; P. Corfield, Georgian England : one state, many faiths , History
Today xlv (), .

which the law was unable to enforce and the countrys rulers were
reluctant to uphold.
The specific focus of this essay is the anti-Methodist agitation which took
place in the forest of Pendle, in east Lancashire, during the summer of
. This agitation ranks amongst the most notorious of all eighteenthcentury anti-Methodist incidents in England, the list of those preachers
caught up in its violence John Wesley, Benjamin Ingham, William
Grimshaw and John Bennet reading like a roll-call of the leaders of the
revival in the north of England. As such, the Pendle forest disturbances
have been the subject of several previous studies. However, notwithstanding the extent of recent work on the economic, political and legal
consciousness of the eighteenth-century mob, or crowd as Edward
Thompson preferred to call it, surprisingly little has been said of the
motives of the rioters themselves. Previous accounts of these disturbances
have tended to echo the view that the members of the anti-Methodist mob
were merely the pawns of the wily and belligerent incumbent of Colne,
the Revd George White.%" In this they have merely reiterated the
accounts of the victims of this violence, or of sympathetic evangelical
historians, all of whom seem loth to accept the genuine nature of the
profound popular antipathy which the new preachers of justification by
faith aroused.%# Such versions of events are fundamentally misleading, for,
as Jan Albers has pointed out, It should not be assumed that religious
stereotypes were only created or perpetuated by the elite, or that they
merely trickled down to the masses . The people , whether
artisans, labourers or shopkeepers, were perfectly capable of acting out of
their own sense of denominational imperative. %$ It is this popular
dimension to the Pendle forest riots of which this essay aims to
recapture.
One of the principal obstacles to an accurate representation of the riots
is the person of George White himself, who was the subject of the following
obituary by John Wesley :
[White] was for some years a popish priest. Then he called himself a Protestant
[and] had the living of Colne. It was his manner first to hire and then head the
mob, when they and he were tolerably drunk. But he drank himself first into a
jail, and then into his grave.%%

By all accounts, the incumbent of Colne was a colourful and controversial

%" J. Albers, Seeds of contention , ; F. Baker, William Grimshaw, London ,
; Hempton, Methodism and the law , ; T. D. Whitaker, An history of the original
parish of Whalley, Manchester , ii. ; A. Wainwright, In the shadow of mighty
Pendle , Methodist Recorder, Dec. .
%# JRULM, MAW G}A : W. Grimshaw, Answer to a sermon lately published against the
Methodists, Preston, ; Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. .
%$ Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , .
%% Journal and diaries III, ed. W. R. Ward and R. P. Heitzenrater, Nashville, Tenn.
, xx. .



figure, and it is hardly surprising that his high-profile activities should
have come to dominate accounts of the events in question. Born to
Catholic parents in county Durham, White was educated at the famous
English College at Douai, where he went by the name of Danson,%& and
here he seems to have acquired all the skills of disputation which he would
later employ against the Methodists.%' However, White left France and
the Catholic Church in , was ordained an Anglican priest, and was
licensed to the chapelry of Colne at the recommendation of John Potter,
the archbishop of Canterbury, the previous incumbent of Colne having
been deprived of the living after being convicted of adultery in the
consistory court of Chester.%( Seemingly regardless of the background of
his appointment, White proceeded to compound and perpetuate the
scandal which his predecessor had caused. Whilst minister of Colne,
White developed a fruitful line in anti-Catholic polemic, becoming the
editor of the journal Mercurius Latinus and the author of The miraculous
sheeps eye at St Victors in Paris (), a doggerel poem directed against
Jacobites, monks, the French and the veneration of relics.%) Whites
literary preoccupations, in combination with the dire state of his personal
finances, appear to have heavily impinged upon his parochial ministry. In
the words of the Revd Thomas Whitaker, a later historian of the parish
of Whalley, White frequently abandoned [his duties] for weeks together
to such accidental assistance as the parish could procure. On one occasion
he is said to have read the funeral service more than twenty times in a
single night over the dead bodies which had been interred in his
absence .%* In William Grimshaw alleged that White had, in fact,
been imprisoned for debt in Chester castle, and had spent the three years
following his release raking about in London, and up and down the
Country .&! In , however, White appears to have returned to Colne,
having married a woman whom Whitaker described as an Italian
gouvernante .&" In view of his chequered career, it is hard not to concur
with Whitakers opinion that White was a man neither devoid of parts
or of literature, but childishly ignorant of common life, and shamefully
inattentive to his duty .&# Such prolonged scandal and neglect could not
fail to have had its effect on the people of Colne, a visitor to the town in
describing it as a poor dark town in respect of religion .&$ That such
a verdict had some substance is no doubt reflected in the lack of building
work which was carried out on the church of St Bartholomews, Colne,
%& The Douay College diaries : the seventh diary , ed. E. Burton and E. Nolan
(Catholic Record Society, ), xxviii. .
%' M. Sharratt, Excellent professors and an exact discipline : aspects of Challoners
Douai , in E. Duffy (ed.), Challoner and his church : a Catholic bishop in Georgian England,
%( LRO, DDB}}B}.
Cambridge , at pp. .
%) G. White, The miraculous sheeps eye at St Victors in Paris : a poem in two cantos, London
%* Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. .
, .
&! J. Carr, Annals and stories of Colne and neighbourhood, Manchester , .
&" Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. .
&# Ibid. ii. .
&$ W. Bennett, The history of Marsden and Nelson, Nelson , .

building work which was fundamentally reliant on the goodwill and

initiative of the laity.&% Despite Colnes rapidly growing population, its
status as a market town and its wealth as a centre of the regional textile
industry,&& St Bartholomews was neither adorned nor extended between
and , a situation which seems highly suggestive of local attitudes
towards the Established Church and which stands in marked contrast to
developments elsewhere in Lancashires prosperous textile districts.&'
Despite Whites prolonged absences, a clear reflection of the motives of
the anti-evangelical rioters of can be found in his Sermon against the
Methodists, which was first preached at Colne at the height of the
disturbances of that year. Taking as his text Cor. xiv. , For God is
not the Author of Confusion but of Peace, as in all Churches of the Saints ,
the incumbent of Colne embarked upon a skilful exposition of Methodist
error in all its aspects. In language redolent of extreme Latitudinarianism,
White betrayed much of the intolerance which these supposedly moderate
churchmen often displayed towards those who kicked over the traces of
church order in order to pursue the dictates of their own deluded
consciences.&( Not only did he point out that the methods and doctrines
of the revivalists defied both the Church of Englands discipline and
theology, but he also invited his audience to consider the wider
implications of Methodisms unchecked advance, namely :
[How] our Dissenting Enemies will triumph on this fresh Disunion, how
industrious Trade (lately so notable in these Parts) the greatest Bulwark of our
Nation, the envy of neighbouring Establishments, in Consequence of so many
constant Attendances on this new Model of worshipping the Creator, will become
an idle Concern ; how Family affairs will suffer an inevitable neglect.&)

Whilst the thoughts of his listeners were turned to the end of the
Established Church, the decline of local industry, and the ruin of family
life, White also invited them to give further consideration to the
depressingly anti-social nature of this new religious phenomenon, pointing
out that True Religion was never intended to sower our Tempers, to give
&% Albers, Seeds of contention , ; M. Smith, Religion in industrial society : Oldham and
Saddleworth , Oxford , .
&& The population of the chapelry of Colne nearly quadrupled between c. and
: M. F. Snape, Our happy reformation : Anglicanism and society in a northern
parish, , unpubl. PhD diss. Birmingham , . By the second half of the
eighteenth century, Colne had become the centre of the woollen trade in N.E.
Lancashire , a cloth hall built in holding more than stalls. In , , pieces
of worsteds were manufactured in the chapelry, having a commercial value of , :
Bennett, History of Marsden and Nelson, .
&' CRO, EDA } ; Snape, Our happy reformation , ; Albers, Seeds of
contention , ; Smith, Religion in industrial society, .
&( M. Goldie, The theory of intolerance in Restoration England , in Grell, Israel and
Tyacke, From persecution to toleration, at p. ; R. Ashcraft, Latitudinarianism and
toleration : historical myth versus political history , in R. Kroll, R. Ashcraft and P.
Zagorin (eds), Philosophy, science and religion in England , Cambridge , .
&) JRULM, MAW G}A : G. White, A sermon against the Methodists, Preston , .



us a melancholly Turn of Countenance, or even to deprive us of the decent
Conveniences and innocent Amusements of Life.&*
What the points raised by Whites sermon seem to discount is that
version of events which was first devised by Whites evangelical opponents
and which has been uncritically rehearsed by historians ever since, namely
that the whole of the anti-Methodist violence which occurred in Pendle
forest in the summer of represented the craven attempt of a
demagogic parson to prevent further Methodist inroads into his sadly
neglected cure. In actual fact, the evidence would seem to indicate that
the concerns which White expressed were already fully shared by a great
many of his parishioners a situation which would seem to suggest that
the role of the wayward curate of Colne in these disturbances was actually
more reactive than proactive. In other words, in a rare display of pastoral
involvement, White was actually responding to the anxieties of his flock
rather than creating them.
The coming of the evangelical revival to the locality of Pendle forest
was the result of three factors : its geographical situation astride the busy
commercial route connecting the textile areas of east Lancashire to those
of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the prolonged years of pastoral scandal
and neglect which the chapelry of Colne had experienced, and the preexistence of two religious societies in the neighbourhood. Religious
societies within the Church of England had emerged under strong clerical
guidance during the Restoration and they were, by the early eighteenth
century, a notable feature of devotional life in England.'! Although
possibly lacking in their old vitality by the s,'" the societal model was
far from moribund, and it was in a relatively new society in Londons
Aldersgate Street that Wesley underwent his famous conversion experience on the night of May .'# Being the resort of the devout,
these societies were naturally susceptible to the message of salvation by
faith preached by the disparate representatives of the nascent revival and
they were rapidly infiltrated and annexed by Methodist and Moravian
alike.'$ Although the origins of Colnes religious societies lie veiled in
obscurity, it is likely that they were originally formed and directed by an
&* Ibid. .
'! W. M. Jacob, Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century, Cambridge ,
; J. Walsh, Religious societies : Methodist and Evangelical , in Sheils and
Wood, Voluntary religion, .
'" C. Podmore, The Fetter Lane Society, , Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society
xlvi (), at p. ; Walsh, Religious societies : Methodist and Evangelical
'# Podmore, The Fetter Lane Society , .
.
'$ Walsh, Religious societies : Methodist and Evangelical , ; Davies, The
Methodist societies : history, nature and design, , and H. Rack, Religious societies and the
origins of Methodism , this J xxviii (), at p. . For evidence of the
disruption which this caused see William Berriman, A sermon preachd to the religious societies
in and about London, at their quarterly meeting, in the parish church of St. Mary Le Bow, on
Wednesday, March , with a view to stop the growth of some modern irregularities, London
, .

earlier incumbent of Colne, only to be neglected, along with the rest of his
parochial ministry, by George White. According to the Moravian
chronicler William Batty, it was a member of one of Colnes local religious
societies who invited the Revd Benjamin Ingham, an old friend of John
Wesleys, though by now a convinced Moravian, to the vicinity of Pendle
forest, telling him that several wanted to hear him preach about Colne
in Lancashire .'% Ingham visited Colne in February , his visit
marking the first by any evangelical preacher to the neighbourhood. By
November , and in accordance with formal preaching plans devised
in the same year, Ingham was preaching to six different Moravian
societies in the neighbourhood of Colne and Pendle forest, these societies
being located at Colne, Rough Lee, Wheatley Carr, Higham, Simonstone
and Southfield.'&
Benjamin Ingham, however, was not the only evangelical preacher to
be active in the area during the s. For some time Ingham appears to
have worked in collaboration with John Nelson, a Birstal stonemason and
prote! ge! of John Wesley, but the two men parted company when Ingham
placed his societies under the Moravians,'' Wesleyans and Moravians
holding quite different views upon the manner in which the gift of saving
grace was mediated to the believer.'( It was the Scottish-born William
Darney who had the distinction of founding the first Methodist societies
in the area. Converted in , from to Darney lived at Miller
Barn near Newchurch-in-Rossendale and from here he plied his trade as
preacher-cum-pedlar along the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire,
founding societies in Todmorden, the Rossendale valley and in and around
the forest of Pendle.') Darneys greatest contribution to the local revival,
however, was the part which he played in the conversion of the curate of
Haworth, William Grimshaw, in . Although Grimshaws devotional
reading had predisposed him to the revival prior to this date, and
although he had entertained Benjamin Ingham in ,'* it appears to
have been Grimshaws meeting with William Darney in September
which acted as the catalyst for his conversion, his bemused parishioners
noting his subsequent participation in the pedlars prayer meetings and
concluding that Grimshaw had turned Scotch Wills clerk .(!
The ongoing evangelisation of the LancashireYorkshire border soon
bred problems which were characteristic of the English revival as a whole.
The first of these arose from the tensions between the disparate elements
of the local revival. We have already noted how, in the early s,
Nelson and Ingham were compelled to part company on connexional and
'% JRULM, Eng. : W. Batty, An account of Benjamin Ingham and his work ,
'& Ibid. .
.
'' B. Moore, Methodism in Burnley and east Lancashire, Burnley , .
'( Campbell, The religion of the heart, ; Rack, Reasonable enthusiast, .
') T. Hargreaves, The rise and progress of Wesleyan Methodism in Accrington and the
'* Batty, Account of Benjamin Ingham, .
neighbourhood, Manchester , .
(! Moore, Methodism in Burnley and east Lancashire, .



doctrinal grounds. Such differences, however, continued to dog the local
revival, resurfacing dramatically in when William Darney fomented
a dispute in the Moravian society at Rough Lee over the question of
allowing Wesleyan itinerants to preach there.(" In May these
tensions resulted in a formal secession, Darneys faction detaching itself
and forming Rough Lees second, Methodist, religious society.(# The
second problem which evangelical expansion engendered was hostility
from the wider community. Amongst the earliest signs of tension between
evangelicals and their neighbours was the attack made upon Benjamin
Ingham by the relatives of one Susanna Varley of Pendle forest. The
tensions which led to this incident were superficially domestic and
familial, William Batty noting that Susanna had adopted a hostile
attitude towards her husbands conversion and that Ingham had
consequently been mobbed by Mr. Harkey, uncle to Susanna Varley,
and others being provoked thereby .($ Although Batty reports that
Susanna later became reconciled to her husband,(% her earlier anxieties
must be placed in their broader context.
At this time, Pendle forest, like most of east Lancashire and the West
Riding of Yorkshire, was dominated by the cottage-based textile industry.
Local clothiers were highly sensitive to perceived threats to their
livelihoods, and their degree of collective awareness had been demonstrated in when, like the clothiers of Lancaster, Halifax and Burnley,
they had presented a petition to parliament concerning clarification of the
terms of the Calicos Act of .(& That evangelicals were sensitive to the
charge that they represented a further threat to local industry was
illustrated in William Grimshaws answer to the accusations made on this
point in Whites Sermon against the Methodists :
Sir, I make the following appeal to your own conscience, whether you do not
believe that trade receives more obstruction and real detriment in one week from
numbers that run a hunting, from numbers more that allow themselves in various
idle diversions, an hour, two, or sometimes three, daily, for what is vulgarly called
a noon-sit, and from many yet more, who loiter away their precious time on a
market-day in your own town, in drunkenness, janglings, and divers frivolous
matters, than from all that give the constantest attendance to this new model of
worship in the space of two or three months ?('

However, we have noted that Methodist hostility towards many

popular recreations went far deeper than mere concern for their economic
consequences, and on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire the
evangelicals campaign for a revolution in leisure activities (( was
(" Batty, Account of Benjamin Ingham, .
(# Ibid. .
($ Ibid. .
(% Ibid. .
(& Journal of the House of Commons, xxii, Feb. }. The Halifax petition complained
that the over-zealous implementation of this act had led to prosecutions for the wearing
(' Carr, Annals and stories of Colne, .
of local fustians.
(( J. Walsh, Methodism and the mob in the eighteenth century , in G. J. Cuming and
D. Baker (eds), Popular belief and practice (Studies in Church History viii, ), .

pursued with unwonted vigour. John Bennets diary records how, in

August , local Methodists set about sabotaging the parish feast at
Luddenden, a Yorkshire village several miles to the south-east of Colne :
[August rd ] We had a general meeting near [Luddenden]. There was
Exh[orters] present and a great No. of People [and] we was obliged to be in the
Field. Mr. Grimshaw began the Meeting. He prayd, Sang, and gave a Word of
Exhortation . The Enemy was not well pleased, I believe we kept many back
from the Feast which otherwise wold have gone . After the Meeting was ended
Mr. Grimshaw thanked the People for their Company & desired to see them all
the Day following, and as many more as they cold engage.

The next days events revealed a community very much divided against
itself :
We met the next Day near Ewood [Bennet recalled] . Our no. was greatly
increased, And our Enemies roared horrably. The Rush Cart [went] down while
we were singing. It was dressed with Flowers and Garlands The Drum beat, the
Musick played, and they fired their Guns, which caused the Valley below us to
Echo, as tho the Hills had fallen. What with the Drum, Musick, Guns firing, and
Shouting one side of a little Croft, And we singing on the other, You wold have
really thought the English & French Armys were engaged in Battle.()

If, as Robert Malcolmson has argued, parish feasts encouraged social

cohesiveness through their emphasis on fellowship, hospitality and good
cheer and, like other festive occasions in a small community, served to
articulate a vision of the social harmony for which its members wished ,(*
evangelical action of this kind constituted a palpable attack on the
community as a whole. Moreover, what would have exacerbated the
situation was the fact that the principal fomentors of the Luddenden
escapade were outsiders, and that they were interfering with a celebration
which, by the eighteenth century, was already charged with a latent
belligerency towards outsiders. John Walsh has aptly described the
typical Methodist itinerant as an intruder, a stranger, and an agitator ,)!
and what is noticeable about the neighbourhood of Pendle forest in
is that the number of these troublesome strangers had risen sharply over
the previous year.
The year saw two major organisational developments which led
to an influx of evangelical preachers into the area of Pendle forest. Firstly,
as we have seen, the Moravians developed a formal preaching plan for the
area which brought more Moravian preachers to it on a regular basis.
Secondly, the secession within the Moravian society at Rough Lee was
closely followed by John Wesleys first visit to the area)" and by the formal
incorporation of all Darneys societies into the Wesleyan connexion.
Thereafter, both the Moravian and Wesleyan connexions seem to have
() JRULM, John Bennets diary, Aug. , .
(* Malcolmson, Popular recreations, .
)! Walsh, Methodism and the mob , .
)" Journal and diaries III, xx. .



ensured a regular rotation of itinerant preachers through the district,
William Grimshaw reflecting the new arrangements in his letter to John
Wesley of August : I am determined to add, by the divine
assistance, to the care of my own parish, that of so frequent a visitation of
Mr. Bennets, William Darneys [and] the Leeds and Birstal Societies, as
my own convenience will permit, and their circumstances may respectively seem to require.)# These developments did not escape the
attention of the revivals local critics. As early as August Joseph
Williams, a Kidderminster merchant, overheard a conversation between
two inhabitants of Colne (one of whom, significantly, was an innkeeper)
in which Grimshaw was roundly condemned for the depressing tone, the
inordinate length and the irregular venues of his sermons.)$ In , the
Methodist itinerant John Bennet noted in his diary how another local
critic felt the chastening hand of Providence :
a Man had been scandalousely defameing Mr. Grimshaw, and as he came Home
from the Market his Horse flung him [and] broke the Collar bone of his Neck,
and [he] escaped Death very narrowly.)%

What must, of course, be borne in mind when placing such hostility in

its context is the jealous particularism of contemporary community life, a
tendency which not only modulated the celebration of the parish feast but
which often found legitimate, if not peaceful, expression in the sporting
rivalries of neighbouring communities. That such fierce localism was not
lacking amongst the inhabitants of Colne and Pendle is apparent from a
contemporary hunting poem, which depicts its hero, the son of a
prominent local family, in a fit of local bravado :
May the Muckle Deal scrat me and claw me
Says Parker if I stay at home
May the Curse of my country befall me
For Colne and my Parish Ill hunt
As long as Huntings in fashion.)&

Such loyalties also found expression in the annual football-play which

occurred at Downham between the men of that village and the men of
Newchurch-in-Pendle, an event which proved so popular that it had
come close to eclipsing the annual sermon around which it had arisen.)'
This diversion not only served to keep people away from church (being
the exact opposite of what had been intended when the sermon was
commissioned in ), but was also waged with such rowdiness that on
one occasion a visiting preacher felt compelled to abandon his pulpit in
order to confiscate the ball around which the contest was raging, thus
)# William Grimshaw to John Wesley, Aug. , cited in Moore, Methodism in
)$ F. Baker, William Grimshaw, London , .
Burnley and east Lancashire, .
)% John Bennets diary, Dec. , .
)& LRO, DDB }, Hunting poem of Pendle, Colne, Marsden and Trawden.
)' Lancashire (Reports of Charity Commissioners, ), X : Whalley ; Whitaker, History
of the original parish of Whalley, ii. .

establishing a precedent which enabled the sermon to be preached with

appropriate decorum thereafter.)( Jan Albers has argued that, in the
eighteenth century :
A religion was a culture and cosmology as well as a theology, available for the
individual to adapt in whatever ways and to whatever degree he or she saw fit.
For some this involved a fundamentally spiritual experience expressed in church
attendance and formal piety ; for others throughout the social scale the
identification was essentially cultural operating more like a modern ethnic
identification.))

In this respect, the footballing incident at Downham, in common with

other local pastimes, such as the parish feast and bonfires and bell-ringing
on November,)* serves as a good illustration of the nature of popular
Anglicanism at this time, an identity which David Hempton has described
as a delicate mixture of social utility, rural entertainment and moral
consensus .*! Certainly, a vital component of local identity in the
eighteenth century was attachment to the parish church. John Walsh and
Stephen Taylor have invoked the example of Italian local patriotism or
companilismo as a model for understanding the quality of this attachment.*" In a very real sense, they argue :
The church could attract the kind of tribal loyalty given to kin or to parent [as]
powerful feelings were drawn to it by the presence of ancestors in its graveyard .
The parish church engaged not only loyalty to Anglicanism but also the other
powerful isms with which the Church of England was inextricably bound up :
localism and atavism.*#

In the light of this we may understand how attachment to the Church of

England was still very much alive in the chapelry of Colne in the s,
notwithstanding the best efforts of successive incumbents to undermine it.
Moreover, if localism and atavism generally helped to engage loyalty to
the Church of England, then the recent history of this particular chapelry
probably served to sharpen local opposition to the revival. Memories of
the civil wars of the mid seventeenth century were undoubtedly strong in
Lancashire and served, as Jan Albers has shown, as the inspiration behind
much of the fiercely partisan and populist rhetoric used by Lancashires
Whigs and Tories during the eighteenth century.*$ During the first half of
)( W. S. Weeks, Clitheroe in the seventeenth century, Clitheroe , .
)) Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , .
)* Bennett, History of Marsden and Nelson, .
*! Hempton, Religion and political culture, .
*" Campanilismo derives its name from the campanile, or church tower, the proudest and
most visible symbol of the historical community : J. Walsh and S. Taylor, The Church
and Anglicanism in the long eighteenth century , in Walsh, Taylor and Haydon,
*# Ibid. .
The Church of England c. c. , .
*$ Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , . Echoes of these
conflicts were detectable in local folklore as late as the early twentieth century, when one
local antiquarian was told the story of a tragic young woman whose lover was killed at



the seventeenth century, the chapelry of Colne had been notably resistant
to Puritanism, and in a dramatic incident had occurred in which two
parliamentarian soldiers had burst into the parochial chapel during
service time in order to eject Colnes Laudian incumbent, Thomas
Warriner. According to Whitaker, the worshippers had rallied to their
parson and it was their intervention alone which had saved the priest from
being summarily shot in the churchyard.*% If this incident was
remembered, and was not in itself sufficient to bolster resistance to the
Methodists, then the parishioners of Colne could also reflect with some
pride, as Whites sermon reminded them, on the fact that their
neighbourhood had provided the re-established Church of England with
some of its most able divines, no fewer than three post-Restoration
archbishops of Canterbury and York namely John Tillotson, John
Sharp and John Potter having been born in the area.*&
However, locally as nationally, Methodism could be identified with the
Jacobite menace as readily as it could be identified with the republican
sectaries of the seventeenth century. We have already noted how
Methodism was liable to be identified with the cause of the exiled Stuarts,
not least because of the High Church, nonjuring and Oxford connections
of the Wesley family. By the late s, and largely because of the political
sympathies of its Catholic and nonjuring communities, Lancashire had
acquired a reputation for Jacobite intrigue and sedition which was second
to no other English county. In , seven Catholic gentlemen had stood
trial for treason in a dismally unsuccessful show trial in Manchester, and
several hundred local volunteers had come out in arms for the Stuarts in
and in .*' Given the proximity of the , the recent march of
the rebel army through Lancashire, and the presence of some well-known
Jacobite families in the neighbourhood,*( it seems likely that the men of
Pendle forest, who loyally drank the health of George and George on
their accession days,*) discerned some sinister purpose behind the comings
and goings of Methodist itinerants. Such suspicions may well account for
an isolated attack upon the Scottish itinerant, William Darney, by a mob
near Accrington, an attack which led Darney to mount a prosecution for
Marston Moor. The story was told him by Mr. Tattersall Wilkinson who in turn had it
from his grandfather who was born in , and who heard it from his grandfather who
lived about the time of the occurrence : T. Ormerod, Calderdale, Burnley , .
*% Whitaker, History of the original parish of Whalley, ii. ; Bennet, History of Marsden and
Nelson, . See also A. G. Matthews, Walker revised : being a revision of John Walkers
Sufferings of the clergy during the grand rebellion , Oxford , s.v. Thomas
*& White, Sermon against the Methodists, p. iv.
Warriner.
*' P. Monod, Jacobitism and the English people, , Cambridge , .
*( Within a few miles of Pendle forest lived the Towneleys of Towneley Hall, the
Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall, the Nowells of Read and the Halsteads of Rowley Hall.
For their sympathies and activities see S. W. Baskerville, The management of the Tory
interest in Lancashire and Cheshire , unpubl. DPhil. diss. Oxford , ;
Monod, Jacobitism and the English people, ; J. Prebble, Culloden, Harmondsworth ,
; R. Sedgwick, The House of Commons , London , ii. .
*) Bennet, History of Marsden and Nelson, .

a Riot and an Assault against ten named individuals in the crown court
of the duchy of Lancaster in March .**
Whatever the factors behind the anti-evangelical agitation of ,
seventeenth-century precedents might at least have served as warnings of
the means by which the inhabitants of Colne and Pendle forest dealt with
troublesome deviants. The notorious Pendle witch trials of and
had enjoyed considerable popular support, the youthful instigator of those
of being escorted from church to church on Sundays in order that he
might more readily identify local witches."!! Furthermore, as in other
places throughout England, early Quakerism met with a violent reception
in the district, several Friends becoming the objects of collective violence
in the s when they attempted to preach at the market cross in
Colne."!" The turbulent currents which flowed beneath the surface of
local society were no doubt a function of the areas demographic history.
Settled piecemeal during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the forest
of Pendle, like other forest areas in England, was chiefly populated by
cottagers and smallholders, men and women of an independent disposition
who were conscious and assertive of their rights. In such areas, the lack of
a natural ruling class meant that their inhabitants were often lacking in
a sense of social discipline, and forests had the reputation of being the most
violent and ungovernable parts of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
England."!# In the case of the forest of Pendle, the weaknesses of law
enforcement were demonstrated in , when no fewer than six local
constables were indicted at Preston quarter sessions for failing to stop a
football-play on the Sabbath, an event which their indictment described
as a most notorious riott of above four hundred persons ."!$
If outraged localism was, as I have suggested, one of the principal
factors behind the anti-evangelical violence of , then the catalyst for
it was the inability of the law to deal effectively with the growth of the
revival and with its attendant problems. We have already noted the
inability of statute law to deal with Methodism, but the ecclesiastical law
was equally ineffectual. The canons of had expressly forbidden
private meetings of ministers and lay people, the drawing up of rules
orders or constitutions in causes ecclesiastical, without the kings
authority , and any consultations and directions by such gatherings which
could conceivably subvert any part of the government and discipline
now established in the church of England ."!% Such proscriptions,
however, were hard to sustain given the emergence and acceptance of the
** PRO, PL }.
"!! W. Notestein, A history of witchcraft in England, Washington , ; J. T.
Swain, The Lancashire witch trials of and and the economics of witchcraft ,
Northern History xxx (), .
"!" Bennet, History of Marsden and Nelson, .
"!# Malcolmson, Life and labour, ; Stevenson, Popular disturbances in England, ;
E. P. Thompson, Custom law and common right , in Customs in common, , and
"!$ LRO, QSP }.
Whigs and hunters, London , .
"!% Burn, Ecclesiastical law, i. .



religious societies in the later years of the seventeenth century,
notwithstanding fears in some quarters that they were potentially
schismatical."!& As a loosely defined network of religious societies, early
Methodism only placed itself in breach of accepted church order and
practice when individual Methodists indulged in such clear excesses as
preaching without episcopal licence."!' Moreover, the limited sanctions
available to the ecclesiastical courts hardly placed them in the position of
tribunals capable of putting an end to the recurrent offences of a
determined minority."!( If the ecclesiastical authorities therefore lacked
the means of curtailing Methodist activities, then those of the archdiocese
of York throughout the s also lacked the resolve to do so. Throughout
the four-year archiepiscopate of Thomas Herring, the attitude of the
church authorities to the burgeoning Yorkshire revival was one of tacit
indulgence, a policy which did not seem set to change with the accession
of Matthew Hutton in , the new archbishop merely cautioning
William Grimshaw against preaching in licensed meeting-houses during
his primary visitation of that year."!) On the other side of the Pennines,
the courts of the diocese of Chester proved equally unhelpful. As early as
, the chapelwardens of Newchurch-in-Pendle presented six individuals to the deanery court of Blackburn for [keeping] unlawful
conventicles , but there is no evidence to show that the court ever acted
upon these indictments."!*
If troublesome Methodists were pursued in vain in the ecclesiastical
courts, then a similar lack of success was also encountered in the secular
courts. The abortive nature of an appeal to statute law was made clear to
two local clergymen in the course of . In the first instance, James
Fishwick, the curate of Padiham, had a mind to have prosecuted the
Methodists and consulted a Preston attorney on the subject. The lawyer
subsequently informed him that legal action was quite impracticable, a
verdict which Fishwick seems to have accepted.""! The lack of an effective
legal remedy was also made clear to the less quiescent George White in a
farcical scene in another attorneys office just prior to the Preston quarter
sessions of October . As John Bennet recounts, whilst leading
Methodists were drawing up a charge of assault against their assailants of
the previous summer, the belligerent curate of Colne appeared upon the
scene :
When Mr. Fenton [the attorney] was giveing Direction for an Indictment Mr.
[White] came rushing in to get an Indictment drawn agt. John Jane for
Preaching The Clark told him there was no such Thing He cold not Indict him
The Parson sd then the Devil was in it He desired Paper & Pen & Ink and
"!& Jacob, Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century, ; Walsh, Religious
societies : Methodist and Evangelical , .
"!' Hempton, Methodism and the law , .
"!( Snape, Our happy reformation , .
"!) Baker, William Grimshaw, .
"!* CRO, EDV , .
""! John Bennets diary, July , .

sd he wold draw one [up] himself . He began to write something, but no Man
cold understand what it was, nor what he meant, only he mentioned John Jane.
Mr. Fenton our Attorney looked over his Shoulder and sd Sr. You speild Jane
wrong upon wch Mr. Fenton showed him the Indictmt. drawn up agt himself by
Jn. Jane for putting him into the Stocks &c. Mr. White reads it over, throws it
down, and goes down the Stairs with all the hast imaginable."""

Given the inability, and even the unwillingness, of the ecclesiastical and
secular authorities to deal effectively with their evangelical problem, it
seems inevitable that the people of Colne and Pendle forest should have
taken this duty upon themselves. At first, it would seem that popular
harassment of Methodists was fairly spontaneous. In November , for
example, Some drunken people made disturbances at a Moravian
meeting in Colne, an incident which gave Benjamin Ingham a presage
about the mobbings and disturbances which were to occur the following
summer.""# In June , as there was then a prospect of troublous times
the Moravians agreed to license their meeting-houses,""$ a precautionary
measure which the Wesleyans were averse to taking, and which should
have granted the Moravians and their property a measure of protection
under the law.""% Events, however, were to prove otherwise, for on July
the first incident occurred in an organised campaign of unremitting
harassment which was to continue for the next six weeks. Benjamin
Ingham and William Batty were presiding at a Moravian meeting in
Colne when :
Mr. White the minister of Colne came with a mob [and] rushed into the
house where they were, and came full drive at them with his rod in his hand :
but they stepped upstairs, and the people shut the door after them, so that they
escaped his blow. Afterwards he and his crew abused the people, but did no great
mischief. Still they broke up the meeting and drove the people out.""&

The pretext for this attack soon became clear, for White was soon leading
other attacks on what were plainly considered to be unlicensed meetinghouses in nearby villages. As Batty later complained, Several of our
places were publicly licensed at Preston Sessions, the certificates of which
were shown to Mr. White ; but he paid as much regard to human laws,
as he does to divine, i.e. none at all.""'
On Sunday July, White preached his Sermon against the Methodists,
and shortly thereafter John Jane, a Wesleyan itinerant, was set upon
whilst passing through Colne.""( On this occasion, the offence invoked
was that of vagrancy, Jane being described by his attackers as :
""" Ibid. Oct. , .
""# JRULM, Eng. , .
""$ Ibid. .
""% The Act of Toleration had made the disruption of a service held in a licensed
meeting-house subject to a fine, whilst the Riot Act of had made the demolition
of licensed meeting-houses a capital offence : Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the
laws of England, cited in ed. D. B. Horn and M. Ransome, English historical documents
, London , ; M. Watts, The Dissenters : from the Reformation to the French
""& JRULM, Eng. , .
""' Ibid. .
Revolution, Oxford , .
""( W. Jessop, An account of Methodism in Rossendale and the neighbourhood, Manchester ,
.

A very disorderly Person wandering about & giveing no good Act. of himself, &
occasioning Riots and Disturbances particularly at Colne on Sunday last
occasioning great Tumults & disturbing the Congregation abt. to attend divine
Service."")

John Jane was secured in the stocks before being hauled before a local JP,
Richard Whitehead, who duly despatched him to the Lancashire house of
correction in Preston in accordance with the stipulations of the Vagrancy
Acts of and . By August it was clear that the anti-Methodist
campaign had spread from Colne to Pendle forest, for whilst preaching
near the village of Higham, a Moravian named Thomas Moore was
seized by a group armed with yet another pretext for its actions. As John
Bennet remembered :
They hurried [Moore] away to Padiham a little Town Noted for Rioters, and
quickly alarmed the Town, A Company of base Men gathered together tho on
the Sabaoth Day Even[in]g and abused both the Preacher & his Friends They
made the Preach[er] Sign a Paper that he wold never more come thither to
Preach untill he was quallified [i.e. licensed].

To add insult to injury, Moore was also compelled to give the Mob
Money to Drink, and paid the Expences .""* A few days later, William
Batty was hauled from another Moravian meeting and brought before
George White for examination on the same grounds. Clearly dissatisfied
with Battys credentials, White and his followers drummed him before
Justice Whitehead at Blackburn on the following day."#!
The wave of anti-evangelical violence reached its climax in a brutal
assault on John Wesley and a group of his associates near Barrowford, a
township in the chapelry of Colne. Significantly, this incident occurred on
August, at about the time when the parishioners of Colne celebrated
the feast of St Bartholomew ( August), the patron saint of their parish.
Wesley had set out from Haworth that morning, in the company of
William Grimshaw and others, in order to visit his society at Rough Lee.
There he was intercepted by a a drunken rabble led by the deputy
constable of Barrowford, who ordered Wesley to accompany him to that
village in order to be questioned by its constable, one James Hargrave. In
a strongly-worded letter written on the following day, Wesley recalled the
substance of this interview, which again seems to have been aimed at
establishing the legality of his preaching activities. Upon Hargraves
demand that Wesley and his friends come to Roughlee no more , Wesley
rather characteristically informed him that he would sooner cut off his
hand than make such a promise. He did, however, agree that he would
not preach there that night, and also that he would show Hargrave his
authority for preaching when next he came."#" Though this compromise
was reached, their interview took place amidst scenes of unrestrained
"") JRULM, Eng. , .
""* John Bennets diary, Aug. , .
"#! Baker, William Grimshaw, .
"#" Letters II, ed. F. Baker, Oxford , xxvi. .

violence. Wesley was physically assaulted whilst under escort to

Barrowford, and was forcibly prevented from escaping once there.
Following the conclusion of Wesleys interview with Hargrave, the crowd
turned their fury on Grimshaw and another Wesleyan itinerant named
Thomas Colbeck, and subsequently extended their attack to the whole of
Wesleys party. According to the letter which Wesley wrote to Hargrave
concerning the incident :
The other quiet, harmless people, which followed me at a distance to see what the
end would be, [the mob] made flee for their lives amidst showers of dirt and
stones, without any regard to age or sex. Some of them they trampled in the mire,
and dragged by the hair . Many they beat with their clubs without mercy. One
they forced to leap down (or they would have cast him headlong) from a rock ten
or twelve foot high into the river, and even when he crawled out, wet and
bruised, they swore they would throw him in again . At this time you sat wellpleased close to the scene of action, not attempting to hinder them. And all this
time you was talking of justice and law."##

Although the anti-Methodist crowd at Barrowford achieved its immediate

objective of preventing Wesley from preaching at Rough Lee that
night,"#$ its behaviour marked the end of this type of organised
harassment. The pattern of events up to the incident at Barrowford would
seem to suggest that the anti-Methodist crowd had been anxious to
maintain a strong semblance of legality. On two occasions, Justice
Whitehead had been left with no alternative but to act upon the charges
which had been brought against evangelical preachers arraigned before
him, although on both occasions it had been evident that he had had
scant sympathy with the methods used by their captors. With respect to
the arraignment of John Jane, Whitehead later claimed that his gentle
treatment of the prisoner had only served to antagonise Whites followers,
his opinion of Jane (who had rebuked him for drinking a little wine after
dinner) being that he was a good Man, but surely turned in his head
a little ."#% Similarly, when William Batty was brought before him,
Whitehead contented himself with cautioning him against preaching
without a licence, reminding him, for his own safety, that his captors were
a tumultuous and raging people . Piqued by such leniency, the curate of
Colne was alleged to have burst out, I hope, Mr. Whitehead, you do not
encourage these men. I vow to God, before they preach in my parish, Ill
sacrifice the last drop of blood to root them out. "#& Probably because
relations with legally constituted authority could only be strained, the
members and leaders of the anti-Methodist crowd went to great lengths
to demonstrate their own probity and discipline. When John Jane was
frogmarched to Blackburn, not only was he brought before a magistrate
"## Ibid. .
"#$ Ibid. . Wesley informed Hargrave that, when he returned to Roughlee, he found
abundance of people, many of whom pressed me to preach there ; but I told them, I had
given my word I would not preach there that evening .
"#% John Bennets diary, July , .
"#& Baker, William Grimshaw, .



but there were also three parsons on hand who all gave him good
advice ."#' Pretensions to legality were, however, bolstered principally by
the adoption of military titles and appurtenances, this being a common
ploy amongst rioters of the time."#( A drummer was a notable feature of
the anti-Methodist crowd, whilst Wesley himself remembered the crowd
at Barrowford as an army [which] drew up in battle array ."#) The
adoption of a quasi-military character was intended to serve as a
legitimising factor in activities which sailed perilously close to the margins
of the law. Clearly, as John Walsh has observed, in this as in other antiMethodist incidents, an assurance was needed that the acts of violence in
question were not immoral, illegal or excessive ."#*
Such pretensions to legality also help to explain why anti-Methodist
violence should have ceased so abruptly after the events at Barrowford.
These had carried the anti-Methodist crowd well beyond the limits of the
law, and, as Jan Albers has pointed out, a vital precondition of much
sectarian violence in the eighteenth century was the confidence that it
could be perpetrated with impunity."$! The incident at Barrowford had
brought the crowd face-to-face with an adversary who not only
appreciated the illegality of their actions, but who also possessed the
means by which to requite his injuries. In his letter to James Hargrave,
Wesley was at pains to point out that his arrest, which had been
undertaken without a warrant, had been utterly illegal , and that the
whole action of taking him to Barrowford against his will amounted to an
assault upon the kings highway [and] contrary to his peace, crown, and
dignity ."$" Moreover, regardless of the crowds determination to see the
laws against Nonconformists upheld, Wesley raised the pertinent
question :
Alas ! Suppose we were dissenters (which I utterly deny, consequently laws
against dissenting conventicles are nothing at all to us) ; suppose we were Turks
or Jews : still are we not to have the benefit of the law of our country ?"$#

Wesley concluded by offering a compromise settlement to the affair. If

Hargrave undertook to suppress all mobs at Roughlee and the parts
adjacent , and promised only to use the due processes of the law against
those whom he suspected of breaking it, then he would proceed no further
with the matter. If, however, such a pledge was not forthcoming, then
Wesley threatened to try another course ."$$ This other course was the
initiation of legal proceedings against Hargrave and his confederates,
"#' John Bennets diary, July , .
"#( A contemporary account of an anti-Catholic disturbance in the Yorkshire village of
Stokesley, in which the local mass-house was destroyed, mentions the perpetrators
marching in order with drum beating and colours flying beating up for volunteers for
his majestys service : Gentlemans Magazine xvi (), . See also Stevenson, Popular
disturbances, ; Thompson, Moral economy of the crowd , .
"#) Journal and diaries III, .
"#* Walsh, Methodism and the mob , .
"$! Albers, Papist traitors and Presbyterian rogues , .
"$" Letters II, .
"$# Ibid. .
"$$ Ibid. .

which were commenced at Preston quarter sessions in the following

autumn. Here the result seems to have been an impasse ; the jury rejected
the charges of assault which the Methodists made against George White,
whilst the bench in turn dismissed those which were made against John
Jane."$% Wesley then carried the case to the court of Kings Bench, where
he managed to secure the dismissal of James Hargrave from his office as
surveyor of the kings highway, but the case eventually foundered through
a lack of funds, the indifference of Grimshaw and other plaintiffs, and
because of the death of one of Wesleys principal legal advisers."$&
Although Bennet described the collapse of the case as detrimental to the
Cause of Christ ,"$' it is not hard to see that the initiation of legal
proceedings had had the desired effect. In September it seems that
a further attempt by George White to raise a mob proved abortive,"$(
whilst by the following month Bennet was able to note in his diary :
I went to Rough Lee [from Shorrock Green, near Blackburn] where I had
promised to be, and preach[ed] in the Night because of the Mob I stayd at
Higham untill it began to be dark, and so slipt down when the Noisy World was
goeing to rest There was many Persons to hear Preaching, and the Lord was
with us. We had none to make us afraid, and I returned away in Peace."$)

The nature of the anti-Methodist violence which occurred in and around

Colne and the forest of Pendle during the summer months of
provides a great insight into the grounds and mechanisms of contemporary
anti-Methodist violence. Distinctly popular in character and conservative
in tenor, the local men and women who joined the anti-Methodist crowd
were concerned to protect their Church, their king, their families, their
livelihoods and the integrity of their communities. They were also very
much concerned with the maintenance of what they believed to be the
spirit of the law, a factor which was to prove crucial in their eventual
dispersal. With the case of Colne and Pendle forest in mind, it would seem
that collective anti-Methodist violence, however much it was condemned
and dismissed by its victims as the product of vicious leadership and
popular licentiousness, did not emerge out of a vacuum but fed on a
complex of national and local circumstances, including a very rich
repository of local tradition. Perhaps as much as anything else, it was a
sign of the supreme arrogance of many contemporary enthusiasts that
they wilfully chose to ignore this fact.

"$% What is significant about the jurys verdict is that John Bennet found its foreman to
be one of our very enemies : John Bennets diary, Oct. , .
"$& Baker, William Grimshaw, ; Hempton, Methodism and the law , .
"$' Baker, William Grimshaw, .
"$( Ibid.
"$) John Bennets diary, Oct. , .