PART III
CONTRASTING COMMUNITIES:
TWO CASE STUDIES IN DISSENT

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Chapter Eight
An "Introversionist Sect":
Nailsworth's Society of Friends

Religious sentiment played a crucial role in the transition to modern English society. Laborers and artisans, as we have seen, used millenarian language to resist the erosion of a customary way of life; yet the Dissenters' churches that many attended directed their zeal into more conservative channels. In Gloucestershire, evangelicalism stimulated the reawakening of the older sects, with the one great exception of the Society of Friends.

Shedding an earlier pietism, the Nailsworth Society of Friends became an "introversionist sect" and remained so throughout its history.^[1] Bureaucratic sectarianism in church order and discipline signified the Quakers' rejection of the world; yet a rationalist and quietist spirituality enabled them to undertake in elitist fashion the general reform of the social order. The Society of Friends embodied a hybrid form of religious organization, intermediary between Wesleyan Methodism and New Dissent. Yet because of its hostility to evangelicalism, the Quaker church order stood as a counterexample to the religious sensibility of the age and for this reason merits special attention.

Organizational Change and Decline

The Quakers arrived at Nailsworth in the 1650s and were the first Dissenters to build a meetinghouse.^[2] Throughout their history the Quakers prized their autonomy to an obsessive degree and for this

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reason never attracted a large membership, although they permitted nonmembers to attend their prayer meetings. Between 1660 and 1834 the Society experienced a great fall in membership and a marked change in social composition, which gave it a more pronounced lower-middle-class character.

These changes can be traced from the minutes of the Society's Monthly Meeting, the Society's marriage records, and a membership listing covering the period 1812-1834.^[3] The minute books document the shift in qualitative terms, and the marriage records and membership listing provide quantitative evidence. The decline in membership became manifest not only in the failure of Quakers to recruit more members than they were losing but also in the membership's extraordinary geographic mobility, which the Society's highly centralized organization facilitated.

Table 58 gives the decennial distribution of Quaker marriages of members resident at Nailsworth, Avening, Horsley, and Min-chinhampton. It also provides an occupational breakdown for grooms with known occupations for the three watershed periods of decline. This decline is appropriately measured by the frequency of local marriages, since the Quakers, unlike other Dissenters, refused to marry within the parish church, as required by law until 1837. Marriages at Quaker meetinghouses, furthermore, were restricted only to members; "mixed marriages" with outsiders were strictly forbidden.^[4]

The period from 1660 to 1719 witnessed the maximum number of marriages, averaging 14.5 decennially. Of the eighty-seven marriages for the period, fifty-one, or 58.6 percent, of the grooms had known occupations, and of these thirty-two, or 62.7 percent, were artisan broadweavers. The Society's occupational structure assumed a pyramidal shape, which is depicted in figure 19.

The middle class, consisting of clothiers, dyers, drapers, fullers, and mercers, occupied the top of the pyramid; petty retailers, broadweavers, and other artisans, constituting the great majority, occupied the center; and clothworkers, who represented a proletarian element, made up the least significant proportion at the bottom. Except for the absence of the gentry, Quaker social structure broadly conformed to the configuration of contemporary local society in this preindustrial period.^[5]

From 1720 to 1759 a significant decline in the number of mar-

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Fig. 19.
Social pyramid: status of 
Quaker grooms, 1660-1719.

riages took place.^[6] Of the twenty-three marriages recorded, ten, or 43.5 percent, of the grooms specified their occupations. Unlike the previous period, this sample revealed severe distortions in Quaker social structure. Although the upper middle class remained the same in number and composition, a dramatic shrinkage occurred among the lower-middle-class and proletarian sectors at a time when the advance of industrialization should have led to an increase. This distortion persisted, moreover, until a Quaker presence at Nailsworth finally disappeared in the 1850s.

Quaker marriages after 1760, however, do not fully portray the degree of membership stagnation. Once again they reveal a significant fall in the number of marriages, suggesting a further decline in strength, but they do not record occupational information for any of the grooms. The membership list for the period 1812-1834

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offers a more complete picture. Table 59 gives the frequency distribution of each occupation. The upper and lower middle classes clearly predominated, but this time neither weavers nor any proletarian elements appeared. Moreover, only twenty-nine members were recorded for the entire period, during which an extraordinarily high turnover occurred (depicted in tables 60 and 61).

Table 60 describes the joint distribution of membership acquisition by type of dissolution. Twenty-one, or 72.4 percent, came from outside the locality; of these, fourteen, or 48.3 percent of the whole, were dismissed to other locations because of migration. Only three, or 10.3 percent, were born in the locality and re-

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mained there until death or the end of the period covered by the document. Five, or 17.2 percent, were converts, but three of them were either expelled or resigned, and the two others migrated.

Table 61 shows, moreover, that most of those who migrated had lived in the locality for only one to five years; three of those expelled or who had resigned lived there between sixteen and twenty-three years. Both of these cases demonstrate, from different standpoints, the obvious fact that the Quakers could not retain a stable membership base. The membership was hardly indigenous; most tended to migrate after a short duration, and the few converts who demonstrated strong commitments by the length of their attachment to the Society were eventually expelled or forced to resign. This pattern of continuous decline emerges clearly from the minute books of the Nailsworth Monthly Meeting. This meeting serviced a wide region beyond Nailsworth, including Painswick and Cirencester. Still, the minutes made frequent references to the activities of local Friends. In 1795 the local Friends were "in too weak a state properly to hold a preparative meeting," an activity that was crucial to the maintenance of Quaker discipline.^[7] By 1805 the local Nailsworth meeting "ha[d] for a few years past declined to

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meet [in] the sixth month, which the [Monthly] Meeting considers improper."^[8] Again, in 1808, the minutes expressed apprehension regarding "the alteration of the number of Friends belonging" to the Nailsworth Particular Meeting.^[9] By 1822 complaints were regularly heard "that several of the members in the compass of the Nailsworth meeting are not diligent in their attendance of our religious meetings."^[10] By 1838 "the state of the Nailsworth meeting, . . . from its peculiar circumstances" forced the Monthly Meeting to discontinue "meetings for worship on a first day afternoon."^[11] This pattern of decline, furthermore, reflected a national trend: "The New York Epistle" to the Yearly Meeting in London, reported the Gloucester Journal in 1837, "alluded in terms of regret to the desolation of the Society in the borders of England."^[12] By 1854 the Friends had formally united the Nailsworth Monthly Meeting with the Meeting at Gloucester to create a larger regional network for want of members at the local level.^[13]

Quaker church order, discipline, and theology explain to a considerable degree the Society's numerical decline and changing social composition. Together these elements defined the Quakers as an undemocratic and highly repressive body that made membership in their Society both unappealing and difficult to obtain. "That [the Society] is not popular," one commentator remarked

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with pride, "may easily be accounted for. . . . Its discipline is not only rigid in regard to morals, but prohibits . . . many kinds of public and private amusements, many descriptions of reading and all excessive sensual indulgences." Its style of worship, moreover, was "unostentatious, meditative and tranquil with nothing to charm the imagination"^[14] and stood in marked contrast to the evangelicalism that attracted hundreds to the Shortwood Baptist Church during the same period.

Church Order and Discipline

The Friends organized their Society hierarchically and directed it centrally.^[15] At the base stood the local meetings for discipline and worship. The former consisted of "preparative meetings"; these were organized separately by gender and were used to monitor the moral condition of members. Meetings for worship were held jointly, and nonmembers were permitted to attend. The Friends held meetings for worship three times during the week and twice on Sunday and held meetings for discipline at least once a month on the Sunday prior to the regional monthly meeting. Members were expected to answer the "Queries," a kind of catechism formulated by higher authorities, during meetings for discipline. The national Yearly Meeting outlined the procedure in 1757 for the women's Quarterly Meeting of Gloucester:

the answers [to the queries] of such preparative meetings [should] be delivered to the respective Monthly Meetings next ensuing, & a general answer from each Monthly Meeting [should] be drawn up in writeing [sic ] and delivered into the Quarterly Meeting.^[16]

Altogether, then, meetings for discipline and worship constituted the "particular meeting" or local chapter of the Society.

The particular meeting elected representatives to the monthly regional meeting, the Society's next highest body, which also met separately according to gender. The meeting surveyed the condition of the membership at the local level by collecting answers to the queries and writing a report based on them for the Quarterly Meeting and investigating specific violations of the Society's rules. The minute books of the Monthly Meeting, in fact, provide

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detailed accounts of the business, and especially the discipline, of the Society.

The Quarterly Meeting encompassed an even wider region and heard appeals from members challenging the decisions of the Monthly Meeting. It collected reports forwarded from the Monthly Meetings and sent a more generalized summary of them to the Society's Yearly Meeting in London. Conversely, it communicated to the lower bodies any changes in the Society's rules effected at the Yearly Meeting. Finally, the Quarterly Meeting elected a "General Committee" to coordinate its activities with those of the lower bodies, especially "in the maintenance, education, or apprenticing [of] its poor members actually requiring such aid."^[17]

The activities of the two meetings and the General Committee were administered by a hierarchy of officials who aided in the enforcement of discipline. These included ministers, elders, and overseers of particular meetings. Elders, who included women, were elected at Monthly Meetings and acted as lay leaders. In theory they were supposed to supervise the ministry, but the post "was . . . more honorific, and tended to be regarded as a compensatory status symbol for affluent . . . Friends."^[18] Each particular meeting appointed overseers who ensured "when anything appears amiss, that the rules of our discipline be put in practice."^[19] Members joined the ministry voluntarily, but such commitment required an especially superior "disposition . . . to piety and virtue" that all Friends could acknowledge.^[20]

The Quakers eschewed a professional ministry and instead adhered to the theory of spontaneous inspiration. Although all members qualified for the office in principle, only those men and women who "spoke fairly often . . . and proved acceptable" actually occupied it.^[21] Frequent speakers were "recorded" and distinguished from the rest of the meeting by seatings in a frontal gallery. Those who spoke less often but wished to join the ministry were inhibited only by "a difficult psychological barrier."^[22]

In theory, all "stations of the church" were to be assumed from a sense of humility and even self-abnegation. Ministers, especially, were to assume their duties in a spirit of self-sacrifice, in emulation of the passion of Christ,^[23] and for this reason the Society did not provide them with a maintenance. Quaker humility and other-

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worldliness formally contrasted with the grandeur and authoritarianism of the Church of England. As attributes of "saintliness," however, Quaker attitudes contributed paradoxically to defining a distinctive hierarchy within the Society.^[24] Indeed, the "stations of the church" represented a genuine structure of authority, reinforced by the system of indirect elections to the Society's higher bodies and by the manner in which directives were communicated to the lower ones. This form of church order was "presbyterian" in character^[25] and stood in sharp contrast to the congregational-ism of the Forest Green and Shortwood churches. Quaker church order, in other words, facilitated control by an elite; the officers of higher bodies could not be held responsible to the local membership, and it was no easy matter to appeal their decisions.

This system did not become established, however, without opposition from the local membership. The persistent weakness of the Nailsworth particular meeting, the continual indiscipline of its membership, was in part the expression of a democratic protest against creeping bureaucratization. In 1754 the Women's Meeting at Nailsworth took special note of "the repeated advice of the Yearly Meeting at London that Elders should be appointed to take the oversight of the Flock [and] Overseers to advise the Friends where they see anything amiss."^[26] The minutes record further local resistance to bureaucratization in December 1790 when the Quarterly Meeting "declined the practice of receiving representatives from the particular meetings and directed in future that appointments of representatives be at several Monthly Meetings only. . . . The particular meetings are accordingly deseired [sic ] to decline in future making such appointments."^[27]

Thus, by resisting the tutelage imposed by elders and overseers and by demanding direct representation to the higher church bodies, local Friends demonstrated their democratic inclinations. Their failure to realize democracy created demoralization, however, which led to a decline in membership.^[28] As a concession, however, the Yearly Meeting introduced a provision in 1806 to allow appeal of Monthly and Quarterly Meeting decisions to a special disinterested tribunal. The reform sought to diffuse discontent by providing a grievance procedure, but the tribunal retained the right to refuse a hearing,^[29] and the situation at Nailsworth did not improve significantly after its implementation.

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Another aspect of the movement for greater church democracy concerned the status of women. Geoffrey Nuttall has noted that in the seventeenth century Quakers were more advanced than other Dissenters in allowing women to hold office, although this leniency was confined to the ministry and only very slowly came to include participation in business meetings.^[30] In 1823 Amelia Davis, who "appeared in the ministry among us," was nominated to membership in the select "meeting of ministers and elders."^[31] Yet the men's meeting had to appoint a commitee of women "to consider the propriety of recommending her"; the men clearly had retained the dominant role.^[32]

In numerous matters of discipline that involved women (especially cases associated with marriage), the men always directed the women's meeting to make visitations and submit reports. This pattern created tensions that probably never were fully alleviated despite attempts to settle the matter. In 1819 the Yearly Meeting, alluding to these difficulties, rendered the following judgment:

This meeting being informed that . . . there is a diversity of sentiment, whether any reference should be had to the women Friends in the answers to the men's queries, think it right to express its judgement that the answers from the men's meeting are intended to refer to the state and conduct of the whole body.^[33]

In general, the growth of bureaucracy greatly contributed to the Society's numerical decline; although Quaker authoritarianism affected all members, it contained a significant gender bias as well.

The severity of Quaker discipline, through the regularity of expulsions, complemented the growth of bureaucracy in contributing to membership loss. At the same time, the Society judged candidates for membership according to highly rigorous standards, which made recruitment of outsiders especially difficult. The children of members, or of former members who remained within the Society's orbit, and offspring of "mixed marriages" were usually the only ones granted membership. Recruitment, therefore, remained largely kinship based, although in theory membership was open to anyone capable of showing agreement with Quaker principles and customs.

Quaker discipline meant to ensure that Friends conformed to the profession of faith that defined membership in the Society. It is

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paradoxical that a church, which placed such great emphasis on the independence of the Holy Spirit in its operations on the soul, should have made formal conduct so important a test of spirituality. Richard Gilkes, a Quaker minister from Nailsworth, complained "how much the principles of Friends were misrepresented by those who said we relied upon our own works for salvation."^[34] Yet only by "works" could the truth, in practice, become manifest. Thus the Monthly Meeting spent most of its time enforcing proper conduct. The frequency distribution of offenses for which members were punished during 1754-1854, including induced resignations, is as follows: marriage by a priest, eighteen; bankruptcy, seven; paying tithes, two; "misconduct," eight; resignations, four; and doctrinal expulsions, 1.

Discipline I: Courtship, Marriage, and Kinship

The most common offense committed was "marriage by a priest to a person not of our Society." The disciplinarians invoked this phrase routinely. "Marriage by a priest" violated the testimony against a "hireling ministry,"^[35] a view of episcopacy that expressed the most radical Protestant tendencies of the Reformation. "To a person not of our Society" referred to a violation of the rule prohibiting "mixed marriage" that the Quakers rigorously enforced. This rule contributed to the largely kinship-based character of the Society and highlighted its sectarianism. In theory the two rules were coequal in stature, but in practice a "mixed marriage" was the more serious infraction.

The Society opposed mixed marriages on both practical and spiritual grounds. On practical grounds, it was argued, those who held "contrary opinions and habits" in religion would not be able to achieve lasting domestic harmony, nor properly to rear their children. In the words of a minute from the Yearly Meeting of 1783, "Disorder in families is thereby occasioned, generally rendering a married state . . . a state of confusion and perplexity, and laying waste that united religious care . . . for the education of their off-spring in the principles of true religion."^[36]

Those who followed the impulses of mutual affection without regard to religious differences deluded themselves in thinking that a purely secular attachment could bring them lasting happiness;

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such an attachment the Society regarded as a form of idolatry. God blessed a marriage only when both partners made the worship of Him, according to the "Truth," their joint object.^[37] Thus marriage existed for the glory of God and as such served as the foundation of church organization. Indeed, the Friends sought "the strongest sanctions our discipline could supply" to make religion a family affair;^[38] they expelled violators routinely, as in every instance where members transgressed the norms of the Society.

The Society enforced its rigid insistence on group endogamy by strict control over Friends' private lives. Quaker courtship practice, for instance, required that the parents of young couples formally approve the match, and that the monthly meeting investigate whether both parties were free from other engagements. If the prospective groom belonged to another monthly meeting, the Nailsworth Society required a certificate of commendation from it, testifying to the uprightness of his character. Betty Williams and Willam Worms, in a typical example, followed the accepted procedure by announcing their intent to marry before the monthly meeting. Each obtained parental permission, and the meeting appointed Sarah Bowley, an elder among the women, "to enquire into [Betty's] conversation and clearness from all others with respect to marriage and report to the next meeting where the young couple are desired to come."^[39] All issued satisfactorily, and the meeting granted the couple permission to marry.

These investigations were far from routine matters. John Bevington of Netherton, Worcestershire, and Hester Staples of Nails-worth had announced their intention to marry in the usual fashion. However, a letter was received from the Evesham Monthly Meeting "informing this meeting, that upon inquiry into John Bevington's conduct, it appeared to be such, that they could not grant him any certificate, for which reason a stop is put to his further proceeding toward marriage."^[40]

The minutes provide no further details concerning Bevington's alleged "conduct." The couple, however, considered this action to be arbitrary and refused to submit: a year later the minutes reported that Hester and John were "married by a priest." A committee investigated the matter "in a spirit of Christian love and tenderness, agreeably to our known discipline," but reported that Hester "seemed not at all dissatisfied with her late proceedings,

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neither desirous of continuing membership of our Society."^[41] In such a manner did the strictness of Quaker rules regarding marriage lead to the needless loss of members. Hester Staples's refusal to submit, moreover, is evidence of the independence of character of many of the Friends at Nailsworth, especially the women.

Although most expulsions for mixed marriage also referred to "marriage by a priest," the evidence indicates that the former was the more serious offense. In March 1807 the women's meeting notified the men that it had discharged its duty in visiting Lucy Clark: "she being likely to be connected in marriage with a person not in profession with us."^[42] Although the marriage had not yet occurred, Lucy Clark persisted in her wish to carry it forward and perhaps negotiated for permission to marry at the Friends' meetinghouse, since no mention is made of her intention to marry in Church. Her prospective groom may have been a Dissenter from another denomination.^[43] A committee, composed this time of male Friends, visited her four months later and expelled her for continued intransigence.^[44]

Two similar cases affirm that marriage to nonmembers was the primary reason for such expulsions. In August 1810 the minutes reported that Ann Hatcher (née Gibbs) "joined in marriage by a priest to one not of our society." During the first visitation, she acknowledged the "inconsistency" of her act but pleaded as her excuse that "she was induced to form the acquaintance with her husband, in order to marry from being told, that there was little or no doubt but he would shortly be admitted into membership, which was about six months [!] previous to his case being determined upon by the monthly meeting."^[45] A committee paid her a visit a second time, during which she reaffirmed her earlier statement and added that "she discovered a considerable attachment to the Society." The meeting found her answers satisfactory, and in this singular instance took no further action.^[46] Clearly, her husband's prospective membership had saved her from expulsion.

Mary Pinnock (late Gardner) was not as fortunate. In June 1811, the minutes reported that she had been married by a priest to a nonmember "without Friends knowing of such a connexion being formed." When a committee visited her in July, it discovered that she had moved to Southwark, London, and the monthly meeting requested the Friends there to make an inquiry. Her secretive-

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ness and subsequent flight were motivated by a fear of expulsion. She may have learned from Lucy Clark's case that if the spouse had no immediate prospect of membership, openness in such matters counted little. When finally visited in London, "she expressed sorrow," abjectly, "for having taken such a step, with a strong desire that friends . . . not disunite her." She attended meetings regularly, while in London, and declared "her intention of continuing that practice whatever decision may be come to in her case."^[47] The Nailsworth meeting thus felt "called upon to testify against such disorderly conduct" and expelled her.^[48]

Control over courtship was therefore central to the proper ordering of marriage; such ordering was especially important, since Quakers treated the family as the foundation of church government. In addition, Quakers felt obliged to mediate disagreements within marriages; in this respect their meddling testified to the unprecedented degree of control they sought over members' lives. The case of Samuel and Sarah Clark suggests that the Society sought to reconcile differences that could arise from sexual difficulties. "Misunderstandings" had existed between Samuel and Sarah for some time, but the "endeavours of the Friends where the parties reside have hitherto been unavailing to reconcile the difference."^[49] The monthly meeting appointed two Friends to pay them a visit, and four months later the couple could report that "the resentment and shyness between us is removed."^[50]

In 1796 the minutes reported a more serious case involving William and Rebecca Wilkins of Nailsworth. The case first appeared in February 1796 and was not finally disposed of until June 1797, following visits from several deputations. The minutes first reported that "the two live in a state of separation from each other," whereupon the monthly meeting dispatched two deputations, one from the men and another from the women, to visit each party. William stated that he "objected to the term separation [;] his wife's absence was on her part voluntary and permissive on his."^[51] Rebecca departed, so she claimed, because her husband "retain[ed] a woman in the house that was disagreeable to her." William refused to comment on this allegation, however, "seeing it would tend to criminate another [sic ]." The suggestion that William had brought his mistress into his home was a considerable scandal, "a shade on our Society," and his refusal to yield forced

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the Society to disown him "to clear the reputation of truth and Friends."^[52]

This case is interesting for two reasons. It demonstrates that Quaker women believed themselves to have had conjugal rights and that the Society concurred. Quaker patriarchalism was therefore not a rigid norm. William did not admit to any impropriety in his actions; the minutes only hint at the possibility. He had acted instead on the assumption of male domination of the household, and this was perhaps an equally serious offense. In denying him absolute authority, by the substance of their intervention, the Friends embraced the "closed domesticated" notion of copartnership between husband and wife.^[53] Moreover, by the fact of their intervention, they denied the absolute autonomy of the family. Since the Quakers viewed church government as resting on the kinship network, the Society had, in principle, the right to interfere.

The importance of kinship becomes especially apparent when one examines how the Society treated membership applications. Many of those who had no apparent familial connection with the Society were scrutinized more carefully. Normally, a candidate for full membership attended Friends' religious services as an expression of interest in the Society. Attendance during the candidacy period also enabled Friends to observe the candidate's behavior and opinions. Indeed, the length of one's candidacy could be considerable.

In March 1792 Eli Evans of Nailsworth formally applied for membership. The meeting deferred his request for two months, although to Friends he seemed especially eager. After four visits, ending in October 1793, the meeting inexplicably denied his request.^[54] He reapplied in January 1804, but the minutes reported that while "he is in a great measure convinced of our religious principles, his behavior is not entirely consistent therewith." The meeting once again deferred action for two months but finally decided that "upon further enquiry he does not support our testimony against tithes."^[55] This type of scrutiny was typical; however, in this case the amount of time that elapsed before anyone could raise a serious objection seems problematic. Considering his two applications for membership and the twelve years he undoubtedly attended Friends' religious meetings, the belated discovery of his

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"opinion" on tithes comes as a considerable surprise. The protracted nature of his candidacy and the tone of the minutes themselves suggest a deep reluctance by the Friends to entertain the membership of an outsider.^[56]

The minutes communicate a different attitude when the candidacies of members' children or the offspring of "mixed marriages" were considered. Although the Society adhered to the normal practice of inquiring into a candidate's opinions, the monthly meeting remained biased in favor of those who could demonstate a familial connection. When Samuel Clark applied for membership in 1798, a deputation was appointed "to enquire of him the grounds on which he attends our religious meetings and if it appears proper to them to enquire also if he is desireous of availing himself of the privilege of his situation as the off-spring of a mixed marriage."^[57] He answered that he attended "from motives of duty" and, according to the report, "does seem desireous" to avail himself of his privileged position.

Why such a privilege should have existed in the case of the progeny of mixed marriages the meeting never made explicit; it was something admitted to only informally and had to be handled with tact. The practice of "birthright" Quakerism contradicted the formal principle underlaying the issue of membership. Modeling themselves after the children of Israel,^[58] the Friends viewed themselves as a distinct people, a kind of "folk," which suggested a biological affinity accompanying the receipt of grace. The children of mixed marriages, or of otherwise fallen members, could enjoy the privilege of a more lenient treatment of their membership applications because of the presumption of a partially inherited grace. This assumption did not conform to the theory of grace formally embraced by the Friends, however, which emphasized the primacy of individual experience and conformity to a strict code of conduct.

Indeed, a degree of hypocrisy seems to have attended the practice of birthright Quakerism. Was it necessary to inquire of Samuel Clark the grounds on which he attended Friends' religious meetings if, at the same time, he could invoke a special privilege? Clearly there was an inconsistency. Clarke's answer, that it was "from duty" that he attended such meetings, was, in principle, unsatisfactory. His application was therefore reconsidered three months

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later, at which time it was "agreed to be left for the present and the Friends of Nailsworth preparative meeting are desired in the meantime to have him under their notice."^[59] Still, Clarke was soon admitted to membership, and without the rigorous scrutiny of opinions that accompanied the membership applications of such outsiders as Elie Evans.

Social custom also influenced such attitudes. Many of those expelled for mixed marriages remained within the Society's periphery; the practice of open participation enabled them to attend meetings for worship but not meetings for discipline. The expulsion of Mary Pinnock, already cited, clearly illustrates this fact.^[60] Curiously, the custom of establishing a periphery mitigated the severity of Quaker discipline. Although actual fellowship was something more desirable, loss of that status did not remove one entirely from the community. Nor was readmittance to membership automatically foreclosed.^[61] Attendance at Quaker schools and religious meetings by children of a disunited member, and eventually their own formal applications for membership, strengthened the entire family's attachment to the Society.

Benjamin G. Gilkes, the son of Richard Gilkes, who had been a leading Quaker minister, offered his resignation because of what appeared to be an unavoidable marriage to an outsider.^[62] Dutifully, he cited the need "in every case of unequivocal delinquency from whatever cause it may have arisen that the line of discipline should be promptly and impartially drawn."^[63] Yet he also expressed the not unrealistic hope "that such a disunion will neither alienate the minds of Friends from my dear children, nor in any degree interrupt that harmony and social intercourse, which has ever been to myself a source of much real pleasure."^[64] He had little to fear on either ground. The Society' had expelled Elizabeth Scusa because of a mixed marriage but after several years readmitted her to membership, together with her daughter, Caroline, who had "been brought up in the practice of attending meetings of Friends." Elizabeth confessed to "the disadvantages attendant on mixed marriages"; the proof of her repentance consisted in the way she reared her daughter and in the fact that, "for a considerable time past," she had "been frequent in the attendance of our religious meetings."^[65]

Thus, it was possible to circumvent the "disadvantages" of

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mixed marriages by remaining personally active at the fringes of the Society and by introducing one's children to its religious life. By doing so, the disunited member maintained an aura of fellowship and contributed to the Quakers' sense of themselves as a people, unified by the bonds of kinship. The special significance this bond held for the Quakers accented their hypersectarianism.

Other forms of discipline equally expressed the extremism of Quaker sectarianism. Expulsions for bankruptcy, in their severity, caricatured the "moral economy" of a capitalist order yet were of such a conservative cast that they simulated a spirit of autarchy. Quaker sectarianism also became manifest in intolerance of doctrinal differences that in one case resulted in expulsion and in four others led to resignations, even when no actual violation of the rules occurred.

Discipline II: "Moral Economy" and Religious Orthodoxy

In several bankruptcy cases the minutes of the Monthly Meeting reveal the importance the Society attached to "sober" business dealings and, once again, the extent to which it felt obliged to regulate the personal affairs of Friends. In three cases the Society expelled the members under investigation and in two others absolved them. In each instance the Society's judgment was based on the following considerations: the extent of the individual's responsibility, whether the member in question had approached Friends for advice before his situation deteriorated, and the steps actually undertaken by him to satisfy his creditors.

These cases hold a special interest partly because they illustrate the psychological disposition of members when confronted by the discipline of their community. Some resisted the encroachments of the Society in various ways and were expelled as much for displays of independence as for technical violations of the rules. Those whom the Society absolved were judged innocent of all responsibility for their condition, or else had acted correctly by reporting their plight directly to a Friend. Expressions of contrition, conveying an aura of self-abnegation, often accompanied a willingness to accept discipline in such matters.

These cases also reveal a hyperconservative attitude toward

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business activity. The degree of control exercised by the Society, together with its morality toward indebtedness, strictly upheld the sanctity of contract, but in a manner that discouraged risk-taking.^[66] For the Nailsworth Quakers, the "Protestant ethic" reinforced a limited and traditionalist approach to trade.^[67]

The case of James Motley illustrates these patterns especially well. In September 1804, the monthly meeting "made an assignment of the whole of his property both in present possession and reversion to trustees for the equal benefit of all his creditors," who were to receive 20s. [!] in the Pound. This was a good beginning, but the monthly meeting also wanted "to be informed whether or not he appeared sensible of the impropriety of his former conduct which brought his affairs into embarrassment."^[68] In October he refused to concede guilt but by March 1805 finally expressed "sorrow" for the "impropriety." Evidently, a creeping demoralization had overcome him, reaching its nadir in July 1805 when "he [was] imprisoned in the County gaol for debt and removed to Fleet prison."^[69] Motley had failed to consult Friends about his business dealings and resisted their judgment of "impropriety" for a considerable period. His attempt to satisfy his creditors and a belated acknowledgment of error, no matter how contrite, could not, however, save him from expulsion, nor from debtors' prison.

In April 1809 William Hinton found himself in a similar position. "His mode of transacting business for some time has been very disreputable," and although he agreed to disclose his financial affairs fully to Friends, he failed to make good this promise. His "harassed state of mind" made him appear "to be going on in the same state of embarrassment and failure of punctuality in his engagements, as he had done for a considerable time past." Hinton's personal deportment apparently had deteriorated along with his business affairs; and sobriety in personal habits, for the Friends, symbolized coherence and "morality" in business.

This morality failed, however, to sanction unfettered capitalistic activity. Although the Society required Friends to conduct their affairs in a manner respectful of the property rights of others, an attitude consistent with "possessive individualism,"^[70] the monthly meeting applied a peculiarly conservative interpretation of this doctrine, which discouraged risk-taking and evoked a spirit of customary restrictiveness. Thus, Hinton's "great impropriety" lay in

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the "drawing of accommodation drafts," or short-term loans for covering current expenses, which the greater world treated as a routine business practice. Still, the Society expelled him as much for displays of personal independence as for the use of entrepreneurial methods since he also resisted Friends' importunities: "he is more inclined to resent the interference of Friends," the meeting concluded, "than to benefit by their advice."^[71]

The case of Joseph Davies, expelled in 1829 for "embarrassed circumstances," further highlights Quaker conservatism in this same sphere.^[72] An inquiry had revealed "that after his circumstances became embarrassed, he continued to borrow money when he knew himself to be insolvent and which now appears to have been the case for some years past." Friends did not accuse Davies of concealing this insolvency from his creditors, but only of acting imprudently. Evidently, he had hoped to save a deteriorating situation through continued borrowing; nor could he have been so insolvent as to carry on this practice "for years." His strategy may well have been the most rational choice under the circumstances and a genuine act of entrepreneurship. For the Quakers, however, granting of a promissory note violated the rules of equity even where the remotest chance of failure to honor its terms existed. Although such an attitude accorded with the contemporary legal emphasis on unconditional promise-keeping, the moral assumptions underlaying it constrained legitimate risk-taking.^[73]

For Sarah and George Bond, Quaker discipline had a more salutary effect. In their case Friends gave well-received practical advice, which revealed both a prudential approach to trade and an intimate involvement in the private affairs of members. The report to the monthly meeting stated that "trade was so limited as to be inadequate to their expenses of living . . . and to this may be added, they met with some losses."^[74] The Bonds had contemplated indebtedness to salvage their business, but before proceeding further "they advised with a Friend . . . and determined to wind up their affairs speedily." The Friend judged, seemingly on rational grounds, that theirs was too marginal an enterprise. His advice may have been colored as much by moral considerations, however, since the Bonds hesitated to draw this conclusion independently. The monthly meeting "read [the report on their affairs] with satisfaction" because the couple had avoided compounding

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their "embarrassment." More importantly, however, they had consulted Friends before acting. Quaker discipline, while demanding that the Bonds be "sensible of the situation in which they involved themselves," clearly encouraged timidity and dependence rather than self-reliance.

Indeed, a Friend could go as far as formal bankruptcy if he made a "reasonable" effort, monitored by the Society, to satisfy his creditors. Thus in July 1822 the Society found James Miller in "embarrassed" circumstances because of "overtrading and having made bad debts."^[75] At first he agreed "to pay [his creditors] 5s. in the Pound on condition of their granting him four years credit, during which time he would pay the remainder with interest." Although the arrangement was sufficiently normal by contemporary standards,^[76] Friends found it unsatisfactory, since their rules denied Miller the right to any consideration. Instead, they forced him to liquidate the whole of his estate for the benefit of his creditors and to pay them 10s. in the Pound. Yet even this effort proved initially unsatisfactory: "from the confused state of his accounts," a committee of inquiry reported, "we have not been able to judge ourselves in this respect." Six months later Miller paid his debt at the 50 percent rate, declaring obsequiously that he did not "consider his obligations discharged . . . until he had paid the whole." He wanted "to pay every man his due,"^[77] and for this demonstration of "good character" the meeting dismissed his case.^[78]

Thus, in several bankruptcy cases the minutes of the monthly meeting reveal that the real violation occurred where the member either failed to consult the Society regarding the state of his business affairs or had steadfastly refused to follow its advice once his situation had become known. This preoccupation with control, contrary to the Weber thesis, discouraged entrepreneurship; Friends, in adopting an unusally cautious concern for the morality of business practice, regarded the pursuit of enterprise as potentially harmful to group solidarity. "It doth not appear," commented the answer to the third query sent to the Yearly Meeting in 1775, "that any [Friends] overcharge themselves with business to the hindrance of their service."^[79]

Still, despite these constraints, the Society offered a system of emotional support that relieved members of the anxiety and uncertainty they confronted as actors in the marketplace. The sense of

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gratified relief the Bonds clearly derived by conforming to Quaker discipline stands in sharp contrast to James Motley's "sorrow" and William Hinton's "harassed state of mind," both consequences of uninhibited freedom.

Quaker sectarianism was revealed further in the Society's strict enforcement of doctrinal orthodoxy among Friends. In four cases members resigned voluntarily, recognizing that the Society could not sanction plural affiliation, and in only one case did expulsion occur. Those who resigned wished to attend Church of England services and did so without feelings of hostility toward the Society. David Bowley, Jr. resigned "on account of his preferring the established national worship"; after visiting him, Friends recounted a friendly reception but could not report a change in his attitude.^[80] Mary Roberts had resigned "from a conscientious scruple on the subject of the sacrament," and not from any objection to the Society's "pure mode of worship, general opinions and excellent discipline."^[81] Another David Bowley, objecting with equanimity to the Quaker conception of grace, resigned in 1840 and drew a firm but friendly defense of the Society's system of worship from the monthly meeting.^[82] These departing Friends accepted reluctantly the need to relinquish membership; for them disagreements of principle, when grounded in reason, allowed for a mutually agreeable, although by no means inevitable, separation.

Amiability was absent, however, in the one expulsion for doctrinal reasons recorded by the monthly meeting. In 1807 the Society expelled Daniel Roberts for propagating "certain visionary and absurd notions of one Joanna Southcott, which are repugnant of the religious principles of Friends," namely, her ostensible assertion that "she herself [is] an instrument divinely appointed for and necessary to the redemption of mankind."^[83] The Society did not adandon Roberts lightly, however; it expelled him only "after much entreaty to reform" lasting well over a year.^[84] Still, his wife and children felt obliged to resign in protest against this treatment of him: "while we remain members amongst you, we conceive ourselves to be in some degree implicated in your unjust, unfeeling and cruel treatment of him."^[85]

Six years later, however, his son, Oade Roberts, reapplied for membership. The minutes report that "his seceding from the Society arose from his youth and inexperience and in submission to his

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parents. Yet he took the blame himself for a decision that has caused him much regret."^[86] In 1818 Ann Roberts, together with her children, John and Mary,^[87] followed suit. They wanted to rejoin, in contrast to their earlier sentiments, "a Society with which we are connected by so many important and interesting motives." In an oblique reference to Daniel Roberts, they reported themselves "gratified . . . that every obstacle which might have opposed [their readmission] has long since [been] extinguished."^[88] Clearly, the dual loyalty felt by the Roberts family at the time of his expulsion ceased after the lapse of a decade. Once again Quaker discipline subverted patriarchal authority; if the Friends treated the family as the foundation of church government, they also believed that each member owed primary loyalty to the Society. For Roberts's wife and three children, attachment to the community proved irresistible because of the emotional and spiritual succor it offered.

Spirituality

Besides a restrictive marriage policy and a repressive church order, Quaker spirituality provided a further obstacle to membership growth since it stood outside the mainstream of the Evangelical Revival. Geoffrey Nuttall has described Quakerism of the 1650s as an "enthusiastic movement,"^[89] but by 1750 the Society clearly had grown quietist.^[90] Although this change conformed superficially to the mood created by the Anglican-Nonconformist consensus of the early eighteenth century, for the Quakers it signified a spiritual withdrawal from the world, and at first a political one as well.^[91] Quietism complemented the formation of a church hierarchy from 1667/68^[92] and manifest itself in the way the doctrine of the "Light Within" came to be applied. In the long term, however, after enthusiasm gave way to rationalism, Quaker political activism would revive.

Quakers contributed to radical Protestant belief during the seventeenth century by formulating the doctrine of the Light Within, which offered a distinctive interpretation of how the Holy Spirit transmitted grace. Although resembling Calvinism in adhering to a concept of free grace, this doctrine was more radical in at least two respects: it posited the absolute freedom of the Holy

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Spirit, even from dependence on Scripture,^[93] and held forth the possibility of conversion, which a strictly interpreted high Calvinism had denied. The doctrine therefore implicitly created the possibility of universal redemption. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit entered the soul of a worshiper and led him spontaneously to an instantaneous conversion. His sudden "convincement" of Truth^[94] was expected to conform to Scripture abstractly, not as the result of a close reading of biblical texts. Nor was the process by which he received Truth dependent on a preacher as the instrument of its transmission.^[95] God alone inspired the reception of Truth, freely and mystically.

Thus the accent of early Quaker spirituality, prior to the Restoration, had been millenarian and enthusiastic. Psychic disturbances had often accompanied the experience of illumination. "Ah! the Seizing of Souls," recalled one contemporary observer, "and the prickings at [the] heart, which attended that Season; some fell on the Ground, others crying out under the sense of opening their States."^[96] Under conditions where many anticipated Christ's second coming,^[97] the doctrine of the Light Within easily induced such emotional fervor. Communal interaction, moreover, sustained a highly charged atmosphere, since enthusiasm often spread contagiously among a group of worshipers.

In the post-Restoration period, when millenarian expectations no longer seemed credible, the Quakers turned inward, and the experience of "convincement" changed correspondingly. The "quickenings" of the heart transfigured themselves into a quiet rationalism, and Quaker meetings became known for their silences.^[98] Silence heightened one's capacity for reflection and established the groundwork of continuous inspiration by accenting the individualism that underlay the doctrine of the Light Within.^[99]

The Society's spiritual transition, therefore, embraced a dual contradiction. The early Friends were anarchistic in organizational matters; yet their enthusiasm led them to a collectivist form of spiritual unity. As enthusiasm gave way to quietism, Quaker spirituality shifted its accent to individual experience, while in organizational matters the Society grew hierarchical and centralized. Indeed, at Nailsworth, the Society's bureaucratization resulted from, and fostered reciprocally, an atomized and inward-

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looking membership. By the late eighteenth century, however, this very structure had induced the formation of a "pilgrim" consciousness among Quakers that facilitated their turn toward activist reform politics.^[100]

Conclusion

By the second half of the eighteenth century, the Nailsworth Quakers had eschewed their earlier enthusiasm by acquiring in its place a quietist and rationalist spirituality. Simultaneously, the Society developed an exclusive kinship-based membership while becoming rigidly bureaucratic and hierarchical. Both developments discouraged recruitment and embraced a contradiction: Quakers grew spiritually individualistic as they became organizationally corporatist. Their spirituality led them to espouse liberal humanitarian political reform, while their corporatism articulated a customary yet petit bourgeois distrust of universal market relations. The Society proved unable, however, to withstand the forces of social change and the rigor of its own discipline, as high rates of membership loss, through geographic mobility and expulsion, led to its virtual disappearance from Nailsworth by 1850.

The working classes had found Quaker spirituality and author-itarianism unappealing, favoring instead enthusiastic but democratically organized religion.^[101] Nationally, the early Methodists and Welsh evangelicals were the first to attract a working-class following, and by the late eighteenth century older Nonconformist congregations had followed suit. Before 1750, as we have seen, other Nailsworth Dissenters displayed nearly as much sectarian-ism as did the Quakers; Congregationalists moderated their rigidities first, and the Baptists later followed their example.

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Chapter Nine
Secularization and the Shortwood Baptist Church

If the Society of Friends persisted in its sectarianism, the Short-wood Baptist Church adapted to the Evangelical Revival and transformed itself into a denomination. Denominationalism, however, symbolized the "secularization" of society. Elie Halèvy understood this term to mean the appropriation of religious values by the wider culture,^[1] just as Max Weber believed that a "Protestant ethic" had transfigured itself into the spirit of capitalism. But "secularization" could also mean a decline in religious belief and practice. The transition from sectarianism to denominationalism often appears in the literature as the expression of such a change, and many have attributed its causes to industrialization, greater geographic mobility, and urbanization.^[2]

This chapter examines patterns of Baptist membership growth, church order, and discipline and relates them to the larger structural changes caused by industrialism. Although the growth of the Shortwood church affirmed the idea of community at a time of general dissolution of traditional communal bonds, its emergence as a denomination by 1851 led soon thereafter to the dilution of religious feeling among those failing to migrate from the locality. The religious enthusiasm felt by migrants, meanwhile, persisted and even intensified under secularizing pressures, however disassociated from the church they became. The Evangelical Revival may have contributed to Shortwood's considerable expansion, yet by doing so paradoxically fostered its institutional decline in the long term.

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Membership Growth and Decline, 1775-1864

The Shortwood Baptist Church roll permits reconstruction of membership growth patterns for the 1775-1864 period.^[3] Three intervals have been distinguished, which broadly followed the rhythm of economic change: 1775-1806, the era of protoindustrialization; 1806-1836, the age of factory formation; and 1837-1864, the era of definitive industrial decline. The subinterval, 1852-1864, marked an especially critical turing point in the region's economic fortunes; earlier stagnation became entrenched in these years and significantly affected the condition of the Short-wood church.

Two complementary ways of studying membership growth exist; the first examines gross additions over the course of each period, and the second examines actual membership levels. Gross additions consisted of baptisms and restorations; since Shortwood followed the custom of believers' baptism, these figures represent the actual number of conversions. "Restorations" referred to those who rebaptized themselves after a period of exclusion from membership. Actual membership levels for each year have been calculated by subtracting total annual losses from total annual additions and adding the result to the previous year's membership figure. The base membership in 1758 was sixty-six; the figure for each succeeding year, therefore, represents the cumulative increase in membership, as well as the actual membership for a particular year. Annual additions and losses and annual membership appear in time series respectively as figures 20 and 21, and compound-interest growth rate coefficients accompany them in table 62.

Significant patterns emerge. During the first period, the conversion rate faltered, as annual frequencies varied too widely to reveal any trend. Nevertheless, since outmigration remained minimal, membership levels grew at a respectable rate. The pitch of intensity of the Evangelical Revival mounted between 1806 and 1838, as the pace of economic change accelerated, and the conversion rate rose correspondingly, especially among women.^[4] Since outmigration had not yet become a serious problem for the church, nor for the locality as a whole, total membership grew at a much stronger pace. Between 1837 and 1864, migration of church members

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Fig. 20.
Time-series of Baptist Conversions and Membership Losses 1775-1864.
Key: Solid Line = Conversions
Broken Line = Total Loses

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Fig. 21.
Time series of total Shortwood Baptist Church membership, 1775-1864.
Source: Shortwood Baptist Church roll (see text).

reached its highest levels, and the conversion rate fell dramatically; the growth rate for total membership also dropped for the first time in the church's history. Conversions actually reached quite high levels between 1837 and 1849, but the equally high level of outmigration negated any positive effects on membership growth these may have had. The absolute decline of conversions and total membership followed around 1850 and accelerated in 1857.

Tables 63 and 64 depict just how crucially outmigration affected membership stability. For each of the three main periods under consideration, table 63 gives a breakdown of average total mem-

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bership loss by its individual components: migrations, deaths, and exclusions. Table 64 indicates the percentage of average total membership loss accounted for by each of these components in each period.

The results of these tables reveal a dramatic increase in migrations from 11.0 percent of the average total loss in 1775-1805 to 20.0 percent in 1806-1836 while increasing to 35.0 percent in 1g37-1864. Deaths accounted for most of the losses in all periods, but in the last period the number of deaths declined sharply as outmigration accelerated. Not only did the great majority of migrants leave after 1837; most went to other parts of Britain or abroad. How did high geographic mobility affect their religious attitudes?

The Impact of Geographic Mobility

In 1849 Shortwood's minister, T. F. Newman, circularized members "living abroad" with the aim of discovering whether they wished their names to remain on the church roll. If for any reason they could not retain affiliation, he advised them to attend another church in the vicinity of their homes that followed "right doctrine." Nearly twenty responded to his initiative. Most wished to remain members for sentimental reasons, and those who requested formal dismissal did so reluctantly. These letters may have represented a biased sample of migrants' attitudes, since those hostile or indifferent were less likely to have responded. Still, not all potentially eager respondents found themselves in a position to write.^[5] The preponderance of female correspondents reflected the sex ratio of the church membership, which suggests a degree of representativeness.^[6] At minimum, these letters articulated an important body of opinion among Shortwood's migrants; correspondents gave similar reasons for attachment to the church, and several of them encountered the same obstacles in establishing a normal religious life.

M. F. Munden referred to his "unsettled state of life" and his desire to have one "spiritual home" and for this reason wished to retain full membership at Shortwood and an occasional association with the Baptist church at Hitchen, Hereford. Munden described himself as "a poor fellow entirely dependent . . . on my

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own personal and daily toils for all I have of this world's gear" and regretted that he could not offer a contribution.^[7] Ann Jones, writing from Cheltenham under worse circumstances, also expressed a desire to remain on the church roll. "I should never have left Shortwood, my home," she lamented, "if I had work to have don [sic ]." Leaving Shortwood had not improved her situation: "I was in Birmingham Union [for the poor] and now ham [sic ] in Cheltenham Bethell Union House and I had the bad misfortune to louse [sic ] a Sovring [sic ], which have brought me very poor." Nostalgically, and perhaps in the hope of obtaining comfort, she added further: "I never shall forgett [sic ] the kindness that you showd [sic ] to me when my husband and I was living together. If any of the friends are dispose [sic ] to come to see me I should be very glad to see them."^[8]

Nostalgia, indeed, marked many of these letters. Hannah Smith recalled how, although "providential operations" had kept her from Shortwood, that church was "where I received my first spiritual good," and for this reason she wished to remain a member.^[9] Sarah Green likewise responded that while circumstances had removed her from Shortwood, it was "the place where I received my earliest Christian impressions."^[10] In more pathetic tones, Charlotte Boulton, writing from Cheltenham, expressed her desire to remain a member: "i still livs [sic ] in hops [sic ] if it is the will of got [sic ] that somday [sic ] i may have the privag [sic ] of youniting [sic ] with all my dear friends again."^[11]

Nostalgia reflected the deep sense of loss felt by many migrants, especially the poor among them. The tribulations of Hannah Jones, a widow who died before receiving Newman's circular, reveal especially well the extent of this anomie; her friends, two Stockport grocers, rendered an account of them worth quoting at length:^[12]

My impression is that she died for want of more nourishment. . . . During that illness when [there was] no hope of her recovery I was with her giving the little assistance I could, she requested me to go to Peter her son to ask him to come, for she wished [to see] him. . . . Peter said NO[!] I will never see her nor speak to her nor never forgive her nor never do anything for her but what the law compels me. . . . Peter would do nothing for her, then she was drove by necessity to apply to the parish. . . . I feel sorry to record the cruel conduct of Peter to his mother. He said "I

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suppose she was my mother. I do not know who was my father." Peter was informed directly of her death. His reply was "I will have nothing to do with her." . . . I wrote to her son John two letters. No answer. She told me John said [she] owed [him] £20. . . . As to her daughter Susan—she was the worst. Peter's partner's wife [in the brushmaking trade] spoke well of Hannah Jones, having lived next door for eleven years.

The kinship network had clearly failed Hannah in her time of greatest need; her children expressed bitter hatred of her, and her son Peter evidently nursed the grievance of his illegitimacy. Hannah's case affirms what Michael Anderson found for Lancashire's working-class families during the Industrial Revolution: an instrumentalist attitude governed familial relations, however nominally close.^[13]

By contrast, the Shortwood community had surrounded its "flock" with the womblike security of Christian love. Despite the want of opportunity for migrants to express their devotion more formally, the intensity of their religious feeling and attachment to Shortwood remained highly pitched. The objective difficulties migrants faced in establishing a new spiritual home gave rise to irregular patterns of worship that only nominally reflected the secularizing impact of geographic mobility.

The most common mode of worship adopted by migrants was that described by M. F. Munden, in his letter cited above, namely, to attend other churches occasionally as a hearer. Matilde Robin, writing from London, gave an eloquent description of the difficulties she faced in attending a Baptist church, and how she managed to surmount them.^[14] "I do not know how long or how short the time of my residence in this locality may be," she confided, testifying at the same time to the precariousness of her situation. She was able to "attend chapel but once in two Sundays and that is in the evening." Yet she expressed the hope "in future to enjoy more fully the privileges of the gospel which have borne me up for years past." Moreover, "because I know no Baptist chapel near me, I attend Doctor Leftchild's. He is a good plain preacher and a good Christian . . . but his is an Independent chapel." She could not bring herself to join the Independents, however, because to have done so would have meant that "I must alter some of [my] opinions and that I cannot." Nevertheless, she went on to express the latitudinarian view, grounded in "sound doctrine," which was

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moderate Calvinist, that no sect could be excluded from heaven "that can cast away their own good works . . . rejoicing that salvation is of free grace and not of works, of free grace that none might perish."^[15]

Evidently, Matilde Robin possessed decided religious views and a deep spirituality that neither the infrequency of her attendance at chapel, nor the fact that circumstances forced her to attend one of a different persuasion, mitigated. Neither was she exceptional in this regard. Servants, perhaps more than others, faced direct pressure from employers to conform to the religious discipline of their households. This problem aroused complaints in two letters sent to T. F. Newman.^[16]

Hannah Neale described her movements over the course of several years and how she was eventually able to resist the pressures of her employer successfully. After leaving Shortwood, she resided at Stroud for twelve months, where she attended the Baptist chapel. She had not obtained a formal dismissal, however, "for I thought that prays [sic ] the Lord may yet bring me back again." Then, for the next three years

I lived with people who attended the Church of England and they wished me to attend the same place of worship, but I must say it was a very great trick, so very different was that service to what I had been accustomed to here [;] and during the whole I was not . . . to meet in communion with god's people.

After returning to Stroud, she embarked on a different course:

I was determined to have the privilege of going to the chapel again. I therefore asked permission to go but was denyed [sic ] for they wish their servants to go where they go [;] but I would not give up with asken [sic ], so I asked again and at last got safe to go to my own place.

This experience chastened her, forcing her to sacrifice the illusion that she would ever return to Shortwood. Appreciating the opportunity to attend once again the Baptist church at Stroud, she announced her intention to "enjoy the full privilege of membership there" and requested a formal letter of dismissal.

Hannah Neale's religious principles were perhaps less formed than Matilde Robin's. It was not a doctrinal issue that made her insist on choosing her own mode of worship, only the "great trick" of a foreign custom that the Anglican communion

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embodied. The formality of Church of England services alienated her intuitively from "god's people," as the rules of her household had done in practice. Ann Sansom, writing from Didmarton, Gloucestershire, alluded to the same difficulties, "as my master and mistress both attend Church and wish for their servants to attend there." She was more deferential toward her employers than Hannah Neale but expressed the hope "to be able to attend Mr. Michael's chapel" when her household returned to Tetbury on Lady Day. Presumably, at that time she intended to prevail upon her employers to allow her to attend chapel. How earnestly she did so would be difficult to say, although her attachment to Shortwood was genuine enough: "I must tell you dear sir that I do not feel at home anywhere but at Shortwood. . . . Dear sir I shall be very happy to give my mite at any time when help is needed."

One may conclude that geographic mobility, accelerated by a declining economy, had a contradictory effect on the religious behavior of migrants. Whereas it created barriers to their ability to worship in an accustomed fashion, anomie—created by forced mobility—increased nostalgia for the security and warmth of what for many was their first spiritual home. Indeed, many preferred an irregular mode of worship, provided they could retain their spiritual ties to Shortwood, an association that gave them fortitude. Geographic mobility, therefore, did not lead automatically to the dilution of religious feeling, however much it may have rendered religious affiliation a part-time affair. The fall in the conversion rate at Shortwood around 1850 suggests, however, that trade depression and the consolidation of the factory system may have produced a stricter secularizing effect locally.

Attendance at Shortwood, ca. 1850

The fall in the conversion rate began in the wake of the 1848 depression. In a September 1848 letter to the Western Association of Baptist Churches, the Minchinhampton Baptists described "a long dreary Winter [with] most of our people having been out of employ, and others struggling with privations from the deadness of trade."^[17] Referring three years later to four recent conversions, T. F. Newman remarked sadly: "amidst [a] scene of barrenness, it is a mercy to have a little crop."^[18] According to contemporaries, a

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fall in attendance at open communion services occurred among "hearers" at all churches and accompanied a "great fall" in conversions, especially at Shortwood. R. M. Newman, in a short history of the church, attributed this development to the advent of the factory system:

When the [people] had to walk to their work in the mills, attendances at all places began to fall considerably; the hours of work were long, and they probably rested on Sundays at home and looked after their gardens. This change brought about a great fall in membership [at Shortwood] about 1850.^[19]

The fall in the rate of conversions affirms Newman's observation, although the evidence of attendance of those in full communion at Shortwood suggests that the impact of factory life had not yet come into full operation.

It is necessary to examine, as far as possible, the quality of religious experience at this time. Individuals often translated the atmosphere of a depressed economy, and the consolidation of a new form of work discipline, into feelings of personal despair. Rather than acting as a buffer against anomie, the religiosity of members living locally in 1852/53 often reinforced it. In the long term, this failure would lead to the "great fall" in attendance to which Newman had alluded; in the short term, attendance by members living locally revealed a transitional pattern.

A survey of the local membership, undertaken by T. F. Newman in 1852/53,^[20] complements the earlier time-series analyses by permitting study of attendance at the moment when conversions and membership levels began to decline. Names appearing in the minister's survey were linked as closely as possible to the enumerator's lists for the 1851 census.^[21] Of the 547 members listed in the survey, 177, or 32.3 percent, were sampled. Only those living locally and in the immediate vicinity of the Vale were selected because of the otherwise highly scattered membership. Besides the regularity of attendance, recorded by the survey, the census adds information regarding occupation, age, sex, and residence. "Attendance" served as a dependent variable, and the others as independent variables,^[22] in a multiple classification analysis.^[23]

Table 65 presents the analysis of attendance based on five variables, and table 66 contains the significance tests of the interactions

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between them. The variable "frequency of attendance" (F_att ) was transformed into numerical scores and broken down into the variables of class, sex, age, and region.^[24] "Class" divides neatly into three groups, based on occupations listed in appendix K, and "age" is more conveniently analyzed when similarly divided into cohorts. "Region" coincides with distance intervals radiating from the center at Nailsworth village and its adjacent hamlets. The first region stands for the central Vale and the second, for the hamlets on its immediate periphery: Barton End, Horsley, Dowend, and

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Rockness districts.^[25] The gender distribution of the sample reveals a preponderance of females at nearly 2:1, which corresponds to the sex ratio of conversions since 1775.^[26]

In general, the findings show that attendance by class and age demonstrates the comparative health of the church, although fore-shadowing future difficulties; attendance by region, however, clearly reveals a more negative pattern. No significant difference

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existed between the sexes, despite the much higher number of female members in the sample.

Attendance by social class shows the middle class attending nearly at the mean; small retailers, artisans, and skilled factory workers, who constituted class 2 (see table 65), attended just above the mean; laborers, unskilled clothworkers, and the miscellaneous poor, who composed class 3, attended just below it. The variation, although insignificant, suggests an incipient trend. Since evangelical Christianity provided a framework for the integration of classes,^[27] the absence of significant variation implies continuity with the height of the Revival. At its height the poorest individuals very likely attended with the greatest regularity, but in our sample they attended the least frequently, a pattern suggesting incipient alienation from the Chapel community. In the long term, secularization would be associated with the alienation of the poorest strata from organized religion.^[28] At the same time, class z showed the highest frequencies of attendance. This group included many skilled weavers who were working in factories^[29] and for whom the workplace had partially supplanted the Chapel as the center of communal life. Nevertheless, the especially high attendance of weavers at 43.6 times per year indicates continuity with the height of the revival.

This purely quantitative finding, however, masks a dramatic change in their collective spirituality during the first half of the nineteenth century. Evangelicalism may have provided a framework for social integration. As Eric Hobsbawm initially observed, however, it also contained a "Ranter" potential that middle-class Chapel deacons eschewed.^[30] Evidence regarding popular disorder in the Stroud region between 1827 and 1839 shows a language of protest framed by antiauthoritarian enthusiasm.^[31] By 1850, however, this militancy gave way to what E. P. Thompson has accurately termed the "chiliasm of despair."^[32]

Deference, sanctioned by religious feeling, had certainly coexisted with the militancy of the late 1820s and 1830s, but the latter clearly predominated. Still, despite hostility to the factory system in 1839, protestors began adapting half-consciously to its discipline. Although Chartists agitated throughout the Stroud region during the 1840s, leading clothiers successfully countered them by campaigning against the Corn Laws.^[33] The depression of 1848

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coincided with the final defeat of Chartism, and the combined effects of these events created an atmosphere of desperation. Many who had previously displayed a robust confidence regarding their Election came to internalize anxiety concerning their salvation. "Enthusiasm" now expressed itself more readily in deference to authority, self-abnegation, and acquiescence to an alien form of work discipline.

In 1854 the suicide of Isaac Keynton, a Minchinhampton Baptist weaver, evoked this widespread mood of psychological depression;^[34] details from the inquest imply that suicide was common among the working classes of the region at this time.^[35] Keynton's distress illustrates, moreover, how a Calvinist ethos, when negatively expressed, could inform deferential attitudes.

At the inquest, Keynton's wife reported that he had suffered paralysis in his limbs and had become despondent as a result. According to newspaper accounts, he had two chief concerns while in this state: fear of being unable to satisfy the manufacturer for whom he worked and depression with a general feeling of hopelessness, revealing a religious tendency.

The second witness, a fellow clothworker, corroborated Mary Keynton's testimony. He described how the deceased "often talked to him lately in a desponding way; seemed like one completely broken down. Often spoke of himself as a reprobate , and one for whom there was no mercy" [emphasis added]. Jeffreys, the clothworker, found the deceased drowned in Longfords Lake and had good reason for going at once to this spot: "[It] was where another man had drowned him-self some months ago, and on that occassion deceased said to him 'he could hardly bide in his loom; he could not beat it out of his head that he must go and drown him-self in the very same place.'" These two manifestations of Keynton's depression were undoubtedly related. Clearly, he viewed his paralysis as a providential act, as a sign that God had not chosen him after all, although overwork very likely caused his illness. Nor did illness permit him to satisfy his employer, a failure he treated as further proof of his own unworthiness. Nonconformity, by promoting sobriety, had long encouraged this link between virtue and utility, although sympathy for human frailty often softened normative rigor. Under the new factory system, however, a more negative emphasis finally persevered. Still, the

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"great fall" in attendance, much lamented by contemporaries, had not yet occurred among those in full communion, although among hearers, as we have seen, a decline in attendance accompanied a faltering conversion rate. This paradox highlights the transitional nature of the early 1850s, and attendance patterns, when examined by age cohort, affirm this observation.

Attendance, when measured by age cohort, reveals an optimistic picture for 1852/53, but darker elements present also foreshadowed a future negative trend. Referring again to table 65, "age" proved to be the most important independent variable because of its higher eta score. In general, if we count cohorts 1 and 3 together, there is a slight bias toward youth in the sample despite the high outmigration of the period; this fact suggests a comparatively healthy church membership. We have already seen that for a sample of Nailsworth's hamlets including Shortwood, the age-sex composition actually improved during the 1840s. The size of the twenty-five- to thirty-four-year cohort increased significantly, as the early middle-aged, thirty-five to forty-four years, fell correspondingly and almost all other cohorts remained stable.^[36] The marginal effect of outmigration on youth shows that contemporary complaints exaggerated the problem.^[37] Although Nailsworth suffered from severe trade depressions in the 1830s and 1840s, its economic decline proved to be a more protracted process, extending into the late nineteenth century.

The pattern of variation in attendance between age cohorts reinforces this impression of comparative health. The three youngest cohorts together had higher attendance than did the older ones, and the second cohort (ages twenty-seven to thirty-seven) had by far the highest, whether controlling for other independent variables or not. Young adults viewed Sunday services as an appropriate courtship setting, as much as a means for expressing religious devotion.^[38] The next eldest cohort (ages sixty to seventy) attended at the second highest rate because of the proximity of death and the special concern for salvation its nearness evoked. Still, the very eldest attended least frequently because of the infirmities of age.

Those aged forty-four to fifty-nine years were the great exception to this broadly optimistic picture. Their mean attendance fell significantly below the grand mean. They were the most numerous cohort and constituted the pivotal middle-aged group; neither

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motives of courtship nor proximity to death could encourage higher attendance.^[39] Death was neither imminent nor something, should it strike, that could rob them of the fruits of a full life. The middle-aged were more preoccupied by the cares of this world than were either their juniors or seniors and, for this reason, were the most secularized of all Shortwood's membership.

Paradoxically, the spiritual concerns of youth and the elderly could be similar. The elderly prepared for imminent death; youth did the same from fear of its unpredictability. For youth, death's suddenness amid the fullness of life was a prospect both awesome and spiritually provocative. A young woman named Harriet Dangerfield, writing to the Shortwood minister in 1849, described her own spiritual odyssey in terms that substantiate these inferences.^[40] As a child, she had received instruction at the Shortwood Sunday School and "was blest with pious parents."^[41] Nonetheless, her spiritual engagement evolved over a considerable period, during which she discovered the meaning of death:

About the age of sixteen I was very much concerned about my never dying soul. I had many convictions of sin but stifled them and they where [sic ] has [sic ] the morning cloud and the early Dew. They soon passed away and I cared nothing for them and I turned to the world a little longer, till two years and six months ago[.] Then convictions returning again and made a lasting impression upon my mind. Has [sic ] I was about the busy cares of the world the thought came very powerfully [sic ] to my mind where would my soul be if it should be called out of time into eternity that night. At that time I deeply felt the need of a Saviour. This led me to kneel down before god and humbly ask him to forgive me for Christ's sake. I trust and believe from that hour that he heard and answered my prayer and [made] me a new creature in Christ Jesus.

Still, Harriet did not remain entirely free from doubt about the durability of grace:

So i [sic ] went on from step to step till death made its inroads in the family and removed one of my cousins Eliza Dangerfield. Has [sic ] I stood by her bedside I thought if I was in her place if I should be has [sic ] she was. And I prayed to god through Christ sake to prepare me for eternity. About that time I began to feel more of my own wicked heart and of my own unworthiness. I felt I could do nothing without Christ and . . . I put my whole trust in him . . . for salvation. . . . I was then brought to mourn the loss of another cousin. A few days before her death

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she called me to her bedside and took me by hand and said, well Harriet if you have begun to seek the Lord persevere on, he will be your guide unto death. And I felt happy at that time.

These observations illustrate a spiritual development characteristic of Baptist youth.^[42] They also evoke a more universal religious sensibility, the "chiliasm of despair," already depicted in extreme form in the suicide of Isaac Keynton, and articulated in the moderate Calvinism practiced at Shortwood. By awaiting the appearance of a savior, Harriet had demonstrated a belief in free grace; yet through prayer she believed it possible to seek Election actively and in this manner demonstrated her confidence in universal redemption. Still, God's gift, not human agency, mattered most.

Harriet strictly adhered to this procedure. She composed her letter to Newman two years before baptizing herself and in the interim vacillated over whether she indeed belonged among the Elect. Not even baptism, however, could free her completely from doubts about her worthiness.^[43] Although the doctrine of final perseverance should have eliminated all doubt, the Shortwood Baptists practiced only "speculative antinomianism" and expected the Saints to conform to the letter of the law. Members might lapse, but not without feelings of despair, as the case of Daniel Gill further illustrates.

Gill, a Minchinhampton Baptist, "appeared before the church and was desireous [sic ] to delay his fellowship from fear of his unfitness."^[44] Gill baptized himself two months later in September 1847, but during the interval, his "mind . . . [became] much exercised with a variety of convictions and temptations," and, according to the church minute book, "he has received strength by the encouraging counsel of brother Jones." Nevertheless, in March 1848 Daniel Gill was "overtaken by temptation . . . [and was] very abject by his fall from rectitude," and the church suspended him for three months.^[45]

In the cases of Daniel Gill and Isaac Keynton, a morbid preoccupation with unworthiness yielded to despair. The quiet, depressive tone of Harriet Dangerfield's letter shows that she, too, bordered on despair but succeeded in establishing an emotional equilibrium, however much she may have vacillated thereafter.

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She later withdrew from membership,^[46] and others eventually followed her example in greater numbers.

Still, the incipient decline of the Shortwood church became manifest more fully in rates of attendance by region. Those living within the Vale attended services 42.5 times per year on average, but those residing on its immediate periphery attended only 38.5 times.^[47] The difference became even more pronounced when holding other variables constant. Distances between the Vale and its immediate periphery ranged no more than two miles; by contrast, the congregation of an earlier era, as we have seen, came regularly from fifteen adjacent parishes, and some communicants traveled upward of fifteen to thirty miles.^[48] This change clearly reflected a secularizing trend. With its modern discipline and requirement that workers walk to work, the factory system encouraged those living a short distance from chapel to rest on Sundays rather than attend religious services; they tended their gardens instead.^[49]

Church Order and Discipline

The growth of the Shortwood Baptist Church during the first half of the nineteenth century also had stimulated the founding of other Baptist churches, first at Minchinhampton in 1765 and later at Avening in 1820. Following Benjamin Francis's example,^[50] itinerant preaching soon became a prescribed duty of all ministers and lay leaders. By the 1860s, Baptist societies, operating from London, regularly gave financial support to congregations unable to finance this activity independently.^[51] In 1847 the Minchinhampton Baptists established two village preaching stations to "spread the Word" to outlying settlements.^[52] Archer Blackwell, one of the founding fathers of the Avening church, bequeathed money to the Shortwood deacons for the purpose of aiding this pursuit,^[53] and they took a very active part in promoting it. John Heskins, the younger, elected deacon in 1807, "was called by the church [four years later] to exercise his gifts in the ministry of the Word." He fulfilled his task highly successfully in the neighboring villages and hamlets,^[54] and "[h]is dwelling became . . . frequented by the pious poor who were there certain to receive both sympathy and relief."^[55]

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Not all churches approved of itinerant preaching. The Church of England long considered the practice incompatible with the requirements of a settled congregation.^[56] In contrast, Wesleyan Methodists had founded their sect on the basis of itinerancy and invested much authority for the supervision of local societies in their preachers, whom Wesley and the "Legal Hundred" after him strictly controlled.^[57] The Baptists adopted a more decentralized approach by subordinating itinerants to the authority of the local church meeting. For Baptists, members of the "gathered church" exercised absolute sovereignty over the election of deacons, the acceptance and exclusion of members, and all other business affecting the church. The Shortwood community thus developed its own special interests and loyalties, which paradoxically might sometimes conflict with village preaching.

Itinerants rarely intended to found new churches, for these could easily compete with the more established congregations. Village preachers intended only to "spread the Word" to the scattered populations of the district, who were often unable to attend a church, or to recruit a larger following for Shortwood itself. The appearance of new Baptist churches sometimes occurred as an unintended and unwelcome consequence of itinerancy. The history of the founding of the Avening church holds special interest for this reason.

Considerable divisiveness accompanied the founding of the Avening church.^[58] In 1804 several members of Shortwood resident at Avening village proposed the creation of a more convenient place of worship for themselves. Although members at Shortwood, they often frequented a small house in Avening village belonging to Abraham Cox. Between 1804 and 1819 "Messrs. [S. E.] Francis, Burchell and Flint [Shortwood deacons] preached in the house when they visited Avening and sometimes in the open air." Eventually, they built a small preaching room, twenty feet by thirty feet, on a plot of ground provided by John Blackwell, an Avening landowner and a Shortwood deacon. Lewis, Flint, and Revd. Winterbotham from Shortwood presided over its opening, and with their help the congregation discharged the debt of £168 18s.

. in that same year. Several Shortwood deacons and one Congregationalist minister, Revd. John Pain, assumed the trusteeship; this ecumenical spirit expressed itself further in the

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trust deed's description of the premises' function: "a place for public worship . . . by Protestant Dissenters of the Baptist denomination and Calvinistic persuasion with liberty to accept the occasional assistance of ministers and preachers of other denominations of Protestant Dissenters." Until 1819, "the building was kept open by neighboring ministers and others as an evening sector only." Shortwood leaders remained content to leave the preaching room in this condition. However, the progress of the Revival caused Avening residents to consider the establishment of a chapel:

[In 1819] the Christian friends of Avening contemplated with great pleasure the increasing attention and deep interest many of the inhabitants of the village felt . . . particularly among the young people, several of them enquiring their way to Zion with their faces witherward, some of them assisting at our prayer meeting in leading the devotion with acceptance.

On August 4, 1819 the Shortwood members living at Avening addressed a letter to their church, in which they reported on the situation in their village and requested the establishment of a Baptist church there. A Shortwood deacon, after an independent study, opined in his report "that [the church] ought not to sanction the measure under existing circumstances." With the exception of two votes in favor, the Shortwood meeting voted to deny the request from Avening. The meeting refused for two reasons: allegedly, the Avening people were "attempting to so dissention [sic ] in the church and oppos[ed] the interest of Shortwood," and "it was further urged that we were so poor and illiterate that we could not support or manage such concern." The Avening people refused to accept this decision: "But we know from the Holy Scripture that the Lord despiseth not the poor nor the way of small things," and after mature deliberation, they formally erected their own chapel. They were not, of course, left entirely to their own devices, for Stephen and Cornelius Blackwell, wealthy clothiers and landowners, provided the Avening church with effective leadership.^[59]

On October 31, 1819 Revd. Henry Hawkins, Baptist minister from Eastcombes, baptized eight new members, and "nearly 40 Christian friends from nine or 10 different Dissenting churches sat down with us at the 'Lord's table'."^[60] Table 67 provides a break-

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down of this ecumenical celebration. The figures show that despite opposition from Shortwood, many of its members demonstrated goodwill by attending the convocation. By summer 1820, the two churches reestablished friendly relations. Shortwood's new enthusiasm "for our prosperity" heartened the Avening people, who in August received from the older church formal letters of dismissal for their founding members.^[61]

This controversy has a broader significance for several reasons. First, it highlights the extent to which the members of independent churches prized their autonomy both as individuals and as a congregation. "As a community," the Minchinhampton Baptists wrote to the Western Association in 1848, "we are beginning to recognize the important right that every man must think and act for himself on religious subjects and nothing be allowed to arrogate worldly authority over us as a church."^[62] Moreover, the arrogance displayed by Shortwood's deacons hinted at a degree of social cleavage within its own ranks and, consequently, at a growing "denominational" status. Indeed, the Shortwood leadership came to be dominated by a group of clothier families who had intermarried, as figure 22 illustrates. Others came from the lower middle class and at least one from the working class: Isaac Hillier, pig butcher and later bacon-curing manufacturer; Daniel Cook, a prosperous haymaker; Levi Chandler, a Nailsworth shopkeeper; Charles Jenkins, a baker; and Simon Dodge, a cloth spinner.^[63] The

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Fig. 22.
Familial bonds between the clothier-deacons of Shortwood
Source: See text.

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presence of these men gave the diaconate a more egalitarian aspect, but over the course of several generations, the network of clothier families had come to constitute the church's inner leadership.

The events at Avening, moreover, illustrate how the deacons conducted their leadership. The church membership, of course, elected them directly, as it did the minister himself. They were responsible for directing church business meetings, which sometimes required the preparation of special reports; occasionally they acted as a special tribunal, rendering judgments on controversial questions, as in 1824 when some members circulated a petition to establish a choir and to introduce instrumental music into church services.^[64] In 1839 the deacons decided to visit designated districts within the neighborhood to promote contact with a "flock" that had grown impersonally large.

Finally, the Avening church incident portrays the type of communion usually practiced by Baptists of the region. Combined with an evangelical approach, "open communion" rendered the Shortwood, Avening, and Minchinhampton Baptist churches hotbeds of enthusiasm. These communities admitted all Christians to the "Lord's table" but permitted only those formally baptized, according to their ordinance, to participate in church meetings. Still, those who attended services as hearers could also attend weekday evening prayer meetings. By allowing such broad participation, these churches spread their influence throughout the region and thereby created pools from which to recruit new members. Many hearers, for instance, chose burial at the Shortwood grounds, the register of which faithfully records their status.^[65]

As table 68 shows, the ratio of hearers to members buried at Shortwood remained stable at nearly 2:1 for the years 1808-1837. For the 1854-1873 period, however, the proportion of hearers to members decreased significantly. The decade 1854-1863 witnessed the maximum decline in the proportion of hearers and reflected the trend toward depopulation of the district. Although the relative proportions of hearers to members returned to previous levels in the next decade, total adult burials had nevertheless declined significantly.^[66]

Despite this overall success, not every Baptist easily accepted the practice of open communion. One person writing from Chelsea in

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1849 wanted to know whether Shortwood was "of strict communion principles" before requesting dismissal to it. On learning that it was "based upon the principle of open communion and not strict," he dropped all proceedings.^[67] The Stroud Baptist Church adhered to open communion until 1826, when, by order of the church meeting, it decided to exclude non-Baptist hearers:

The order of this church having hitherto allowed the admission of unbaptized persons to their communion, to which the greater part of their number were consciously opposed, a meeting was called to consider the propriety thereof when the church agreed to admit only those baptized by immersion to commune with them at the Lord's table.^[68]

All Baptist churches in the vicinity practiced baptism by immersion, which they connected indissolubly to believers' baptism. "The birthday of a Christian," one contemporary remarked about

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the Revival, "was . . . shifted from his [infant] baptism to his conversion, and in that change the partition line of two great systems is crossed."^[69] Baptists normally required a candidate to testify about one's experiences before the church meeting and on this basis determined one's fitness for membership. Candidates needed to show, in particular, precisely how Christ had appeared to them as a savior—how, in other words, they became recipients of free grace.

If the church meeting acted as the ultimate source of authority in the matter of membership admission, it also assumed the responsibility of enforcing discipline.^[70] Like the Quakers, Baptists placed much emphasis on keeping "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace" but on crucial points displayed greater flexibility and willingness to acknowledge the reality of human frailty. They drew a clear distinction between the "slips and failings that are sinful" and those that were decidedly so. They organized class meetings so that members could watch one another's "conversation," not necessarily to condemn, but to give support and encouragement in maintaining a coherent mode of living. Ketura Smart, in a letter addressed to S. E. Francis, a senior Shortwood deacon, expressed the importance she attached to such fellowship, although she had come to reside at Horton, Gloucestershire:^[71] "because during my youth you always manifested a kind and almost parental solicitude for my temporal and eternal welfare." She continued, "Nor shall I . . . forget the many, many happy hours I have passed beneath your roof, and in the society of friends at Shortwood." Because they often gave comfort, class meetings became the primary means through which the church cultivated a sense of community.

At the same time, these meetings provided the means for the transmission of Puritan values to a working class in formation. The Quakers, by contrast, considered a wide range of behavior as grounds for expulsion and often despite mitigating circumstances. Although exclusions accounted for a significant percentage of membership loss at Shortwood,^[72] the available evidence indicates that, for the most part, they were for offenses of "gross immorality." Exclusion was the most extreme step that could be taken, and first offenders were usually suspended instead. Thus the church excluded Alice Stephenson on November 27, 1737 "for her notoriously wicked behavior and conversation . . . accustoming herself

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to get drunk and speak obscene words and railing against the church."^[73] Ann Wakefield was "totally excluded" on May 18, 1755 "on a strong suspicion of fornication and an evident proof of incest with a brother."^[74] Mary Webb similarly fell from favor in January 1740 for the more pathetic yet no less sinful act of "receiving wood which her children had stolen with an intention to burn it"; the church had suspended her on earlier occasions for the same offense.^[75] During Benjamin Francis's ministry, exclusions were made only for "drunkenness and whoredom" or dishonesty, lying, and theft.^[76] Unlike the Quakers, however, the Baptists tolerated "mixed marriages." Although article IX of the Shortwood covenant enjoined single members against "enter[ing] into conjugal bonds with any that are unbelievers," in practice Baptists defined unbelievers more literally than did Quakers, who treated them as persons "not member[s] of our society." When Benjamin Francis tested his colleague Joshua Thomas by asking, "Should a member be put by from communion for marrying one of the world, or no ?" Thomas answered with Francis's tacit concurrence, "I don't think it unsuitable to marry any pious Protestant. . . . If a member be married to a pious Pedobaptist, I would not put him by, merely for that."^[77] Among Baptists, therefore, some pluralism of religious affiliation at the time of marriage prevailed.

Consequently, Shortwood members generally derived a warmer sense of community than did the Quakers, particularly during the early period of the Industrial Revolution, when it was most needed. Yet it is reasonable to conclude that in the long term this sense of community failed to provide a buffer against anomie, once the factory system triumphed definitively. The eclectic nature of Calvinist doctrine provided an opening for enthusiasm at the height of the factory's emergence yet paved the way for a more thoroughgoing submission to a new order by 1850 through greater insistence on "sobriety" and appeals to the latent anxieties of its members regarding their Election.^[78]

Newman's sermon from Matthew XX, on the "Parable of the Husbandman and Labourers," preached in the midst of a deep economic depression, reveals especially well the cultural values about work and poverty that evangelical Nonconformity promoted in this later period.^[79] The husbandman contracted with a group of laborers in early morning to work his fields for an entire day for

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the equivalent of

. During the course of the day, however, the husbandman returned to the market several times (at noon, 3 P.M ., and 5 P.M. ) and on each occassion found new hands waiting to be employed: a surplus labor problem had clearly existed. Out of charity, the husbandman offered to employ each successive group of laborers for the same wage he paid the first group, who subsequently protested against what they perceived as unfair treatment. Those employed at later hours clearly produced much less for the same wage; Newman, therefore, depicted the husbandman's behavior as Christian generosity, while portraying the protesting laborers as mean-spirited.^[80] Yet one may also argue with the protesting laborers that the husbandman had, in effect, underpaid them, and was able to do so because of an admittedly glutted labor market; the wages received by laborers hired at 5 P.M. could easily have represented the market price of their labor. In the context of a depressed economy, Newman's sermon could only have discouraged workers from challenging their employers' calls for wage reductions, supposedly effected to spread the available work around.^[81]

Newman, nevertheless, conceded that poverty often resulted from circumstances beyond the control of the worker and not always from "immorality." His sermon on the "Parable of the Husbandman and the Labourers" contains this assumption implicitly, but in later sermons he articulates it explicitly:

I do not forget that sometimes the extreme of poverty is the result of vicious habits—the direct off-spring of Sin—and perhaps the existence of such cases has tended to freeze up the stream of benevolence from those whose penury has not resulted from their crimes. Now and then a case of miserable destitution may be directly traced to the habits of intemperance and profligacy. But in addition to these, and to a far greater extent, will you discover instances of individual and domestic suffering to which no taint is attached—want of employment, . . . health, the inevitable claims of a numerous family, the weakness, and decrepitude of age.^[82]

By enjoining his congregation that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," Newman partially and half-apologetically reasserted the more traditional evangelical role of his church as comforter of the oppressed. Still, the Shortwood church had grown more thoroughly denominational by 1850, and the schism of 1866, which led to the formation of the Nailsworth Tabernacle,

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underscored this development. The Tabernacle's minutes sketch the history of the dispute, precipitated by the need to choose a new pastor, in tones that evoke the class feeling that informed it:

It would appear . . . that a very small minority of the richer and more influential of the members obstinately opposed the general wish of the church, threatening to withdraw their support in the event of Mr. Jackson becoming pastor. This high-handed and unwarranted conduct of the few naturally gendered bitterness and ill feeling.^[83]

Sixty to eighty members withdrew to form the Tabernacle but failed to sustain themselves for any considerable length of time, and by the turn of the century the Methodists had taken over their meetinghouse.^[84]

Nevertheless, the event provides an interesting counterpoint to the schism of 1707, which had led to the formation of the Shortwood church. Plebeian members had initiated each episode, but the earlier one, because of its genuine theological character, contained real possibilities for the growth of a Chapel community. The later espisode, devoid of theological meaning, simply reflected the social alienation of some and therefore contained few possibilities for the further prosperity of organized religious life. Social antagonism, however deeply felt, confined itself to a minority and thereby failed to alter the prevailing atmosphere of class collaboration; the conflict represented instead the last breath of an earlier militancy.

Summary and Conclusion

In contrast to the Society of Friends, the Shortwood Baptist Church had emerged as the premier Nonconformist community at Nailsworth and the largest of its persuasion outside London. Shortwood's history epitomized the transition from sectarianism to denominationalism, found in the sociological literature, and has thereby provided an example of "secularization."^[85]

From its founding in 1707 until the advent of Benjamin Francis's ministry in 1758, the Shortwood church remained a High Calvinist, Particular Baptist sect, drawing a doctrinaire distinction between itself as an Elect and "the world." At the time the church contained a homogeneous membership consisting mainly of artisans. After 1758, although formally remaining Particular Baptist,

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Shortwood adopted a moderate Calvinist and evangelical outlook, which reconciled the doctrines of universal redemption and free grace and led the Baptist community toward denominationalism. This theological shift enhanced Shortwood's capacity for spiritual tolerance and enabled it to appeal successfully to a new industrial working class while drawing its leaders increasingly from among the middle class. Its practice of open communion, especially, softened the sectarian distinction between "God's People" and "the world" and thereby stimulated overlapping attendance at different churches and even "mixed marriages" between Baptists and Anglicans.

Openness, pluralism, and spiritual universalism, however, trademarks of a denominational religious culture, led under exogenous pressures to a long-term weakening of institutional religious life, although not necessarily in the religiosity of all individuals. This weakening became evident in the impact of geographic mobility after 1840, falling conversion rates, and a shifting pattern of attendance at services in 1852/53. This last indicator, although showing positive signs, foreshadowed a future negative trend.

Evangelical communitarianism, articulated by the Shortwood Baptist Church, sought initially to recreate the integrated life of a traditional sect, but on a broad popular basis. The ideal of communal solidarity, however, obscured the consequences of exogenous pressures: the social stratification of memberships and the inherent divisiveness of their mutual relations. By the 1850s, a fully denominational Baptist community came to mirror the class structure of industrial society, and the triumph of a liberal evangelicalism over a more radical variant accompanied and facilitated this development. The "conjuncture" of demographic, social, and religious-cultural changes brought about the final transition to gesellschaft and a more secular way of life.

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