The history of nonconformity
in Plymouth.
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"I give thefi Boiks^
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Ann S. Farnam Fund

THE

HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY
IN PLYMOUTH.

E. N.-' WCMtH, F.G.S.,
Sonorar-y Member of the Plymouth Institution.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN
PLYMOUTH.
BY B. N. WOKTH, T.G.S.
* ^»
HONORARY MEMBEK OP THE PLTMODTH INSTITUTION.
(Bead November 2nd, 1876.]

The dawn of the Eeformation sheds Httle light on the religious
history of Plymouth. "We can only infer, not trace, the course in
this town of the rehgious conflict of the sixteenth century. There
is no evidence whatever that Plymouth contained any sympathisers
with "WicHiffe ; that LoUardry ever obtained a footing within its
walls. But there is evidence inferential, if not direct, that the
Eeformation was welcomed in the "Western town, and developed
into its extremer phase of Puritanism. At first the spirit of the
Vicar of Bray must have been widely prevalent. There is no
record of disturbances arising in connection with the dissolution of
the monasteries, or the declaration by Henry VIII. of his supreme
headship of the Church. No sympathy was shown with the great
"Western rebellion of 1549 against the new owners of the Abbey
Lands, and for the restoration of the old faith. On the contrary,
Plymouth afforded an asylum to the refugees, and was assailed
unavailingly, on their retreat from Exeter, by the Cornish insur
gents, though they burnt the "steeple" with the town's evidence.
Perhaps it was in set-off for this that one rebel was subsequently
"burnt" at the town's expense. But aU this did not prevent
Plymouth from moving with the times when Mary came to the
throne. If Protestantism was reaUy much in favour here, its
professors must have been very lucky or very circumspect. Ply
mouth furnished no martyr to the Marian fires ; she has no place
in the bloody record of Fox ; and the only indication of religious
persecution at this time of which I know is the deprivation of the
vicar of St. Andrew, John Peryn, in the last year of Philip and
Mary. And yet when Elizabeth came to the throne Plymouth
readUy acquiesced in the new policy; and since the corporation

2 JOUENAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
subsequently had the grant of the advowson of St. Andrew, they
must have been regarded as thoroughly loyal
All this would seem rather to indicate the spirit of Gallic than
that of Geneva. Still the Puritanic leaven must have been strongly
at work, at least in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. Indeed
so strongly marked does the Puritanism of Plymouth become that,
whatever outward conformity to Catholicism there may have been
under Mary, I believe the principles of the Reformed religion had
continued to be firmly held, and that it was only in seeming, and
not in fact, that Plymouth went back to the old faith.
The early Puritan was not a Nonconformist. He was simply a
religious reformer within the pale of the Church, who differed from
it, not in doctrine, but concerning the retention of vestments and
ceremonials, which seemed to him to savour of Popery. His
morality was severe, his piety ardent, his principles narrow, and
in obstinate fidelity to conviction he gave place to no man.
Puritanism grew more rigid after the accession of Elizabeth. The
men who fled beyond seas to escape the Marian persecutions had
become largely imbued with the principles and practice of foreign
Protestantism. A numerous and earnest body rejected the liturgy of King
Edward, and adopted the Presbyterian scheme. Hence early in
the reign of Elizabeth the divergence between the two sections of
the Eeformers widened to the inclusion of the question of dis
cipline. Both, as Neal* says, agreed that there ought to be " one
religion, one uniform mode of worship, one form of discipline and
of church government for the whole nation, with which all should
comply outwardly, whatever their inward sentiments might be."
They differed eventually, not only on the form of that religion,
but upon its legal foundation — its relation to the State. It was
not until after several years of hot conflict, bitter enmity, and of
persecution on the side of power, that the Puritans distinctly
severed themselves from the national church, and established
separate Presbyterian worship. Nor was this decisive step taken
until the Puritan mitiisters had been ejected and, so far as could
be, silenced. And even then the struggle to influence the character
of the national Church continued.
"We have evidence of markedly Puritan feeling in this diocese.
* Neal's " History of the Puritans," the leading authority for many of the
statements in the earlier part of thia lecture.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 3
Coverdale was the bishop during the reign of Edward VI. Dodds,
the dean of Exeter, and Tremayne, proctor for the Exeter clergy,
were among the leading advocates of Puritan views in the Con
vocation of 1662. It was but a few years after this that, according
to Neal, the Puritans were shut out of the Church by sequestration,
imprisonment, and the revocation of their preaching licenses ; and
that several of the leading ministers so silenced agreed that, under
these circumstances, it was their duty to break off from the public
churches, and provide places where they might worship God ac
cording, to their own consciences. Hence there was erected the
flrst Presbytery in England — that of "Wandsworth ; and Puritanism
first became Nonconformist.
Plymouth does not seem to have given occasion to any disputes.
I have shown that there was a strong Puritan feeling in Devon.
That Cornwall shared therein is proved by a petition sent up to
Parliament, in which it was stated that one hundred and forty
clergymen in that county werfe unable to preach a sermon ; that of
one hundred and sixty churches the greater number were supplied
by men guilty of the grossest sins ; and in which Parliament was
asked to dispossess these " dumb dogs and ravenous wolves," and
appoint faithful ministers in their stead.
The absence of reference to Plymouth in the voluminous records
of the ecclesiastical disputes of this time shows that the Plymouth
folk were well of one mind. That mind b?ing Puritan, Puritanism
here did not become Nonconformist until a much later date. The
evidence is clear. The corporation had the patronage of the living,
and exercised large control over church matters. And of the
Puritan character of the corporation (a self-elected body, be it
remembered) there can be no doubt. Take the two leading n?em-
bers. Sir Francis Drake was the son of a Puritan clergyman, who
fled from Devon into Kent, because he had been called to account
under the Six Articles Act. Sir Francis himself was a strong
Puritan, and a frieni of Fox the martyrologist, whom we find
him addressing as his "loving and faithful sonne in Christ Jesus."
And that Sir John Hawkins, Drake's famous kinsman, was also of
Puritanic sympathies we may gather from his great esteem for
Emilius Paget, the silenced Puritan vicar of Kilkhampton. From
these two we may judge the rest.
But we do not rest here. The Plymouth work of those days
was to fight Spain ; and Plymouth men lived for little else.
A 2

4 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
Spaniard and Papist were to them one. They hated aU that
savoured of Popery, save golden candlesticks and jewelled shrines.
Everything conspired to foster the Puritanic spirit within the
community. Other foreign influence was not wanting. Francesco
Diaz, a Spanish captain, found lying in Plymouth harbour, in 1568,
eleven French cruisers, which, with half a dozen English, carried
the flag of the Prince of Conde, and scoured the Channel in search
of Catholic ships. One of these vessels was commanded by "William
Hawkins, brother of Sir John, and himself a corporator.
Plymouth, thus distinctively Puritan, was, as compared with the
rest of the kingdom. Nonconformist in fact if not in name. But
actual Nonconformity was not long wanting. The earliest separatist
Protestant body was the Anabaptist ; or, as we now say, the Baptist.
Save in the rite of adult baptism the Anabaptists differed widely.
There were the bloodthirsty Anabaptists who seized Munster under
John of Leyden, and carried out a reign of terror which reflected
wiih lurid power the horrors of the Catholic persecution. There
were the devout, sincere, liberal-minded Anabaptists, who seem to
have got hold of the principles of religious liberty and toleration
when all the rest of the Christian world was' in more than heathen
darkness thereon. There were the rationalistic Anabaptists, who
brought all doctrines to the tribunal of their private judgment, and
in the enjoyment of that freedom sought to live in peace with all
men. The true Anabaptists persecuted nobody ; they were per
secuted of all. Henry and Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, each in
turn sent them to the stake. There still exists at Moretonhamp-
stead an ancient General Baptist congregation, which tradition
carries back to the days of Mary, and associates with, the sufferings
of her reign. The early Baptists came from Holland ; and it is
highly probable that the frequent intercourse between this port and
that country led to Baptist opinions being implanted here. Much
about the same time the views of Browne, from whom the early
Independents took the name of Brownists, must have been received.
I am not sure that Browne ever visited Plymouth, but the seed
was sown by some one; for when in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers
came hither on their way to America, they " were kindly enter
tained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling." The
Pilgrim Fathers were Independents; and the earliest recorded
Nonconformist organization of Plymouth was such a mixed con
gregation of Independents and Baptists as was then common.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 5
Indeed it was out of such mixed assemblies that the Baptist
societies sprung.
But we must return to the local Puritanism. This developed
remarkably during the reigns of Elizabeth and James. In 1609 an
order was made that no beer should be carried through the streets
on the Sabbath except for the supply of strange ships; and we
have another Puritanic clue in the constitutions of the Hospital of
Orphans' Aid, founded by Thomas and Nicholas SherwUl in 1617 ;
and of the Hospital of the Poor's Portion, founded by John Gayer,
Abraham Colmer, and Edmund Fowel, "in performance of the
trust reposed in them by the Mayor and Commonalty," in 1630.
In the constitutions of the Orphans' Aid we read : " Our will
and desire is chiefly that they may be trained up religiously to the
knowledge and fear of God, and to that end that they be cate
chized duly every day in the principles of religion, or at least one
of them by turn in the hearing of the rest, either in the evening
after supper, or at some other time as their tutor shall see con
venient. Further our wUl is that duly, morning and evening, and
at their repasts, they be held to prayer and thanksgiving. "We
would have them observe that they be duly at church at sermons,
and other times convenient, and behave themselves reverently
there, and that they be examined touching what they learn there,
and restrained from idle recreation, on the Sabbath-day especially.
.... As we would have especial care taken that the Sabbath-day
be duly observed generally in all religious exercises, so more par
ticularly for the perpetual remembrance of God's mercy to this
land and His whole Church, more especially manifested to this
place in that great deliverance a.d. 1588, we desire that yearly on
the Sabbath-day next before the 25th July, there be read by them
the whole prophecy of Joel, which was preached on and particularly
applied to that invasion and deliverance, in this church about that
time, and in part accomplished in our sight ; and further that there
be sung at the same time either the 46th or the 124th psalm, or
some other to the like purpose."
The orders of the Poor's Portion direct : " First and principally
we ordain that care be had that honest and religious orders and
exercises be used within the said house, and by all the inhabitants
therein, and that they be instructed and exercised in religious
duties on the Lord's-day at such times as the public assemblies for
religion are not ; that eveiy morning and evening they have their

6 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
set times for prayer and thanksgiving, that continual watch be had
over them for avoiding all profaneness, &c. whatsoever."
It was in the reign of Charles I. that Plymouth Puritanism
received its first check. Plymouth was one of the towns in which
the desire for a preaching ministry had led to the appointment of
lecturers, which was an ingenious device to supply the want of
Puritan sympathizers among the parochial clergy, whence the
Puritanic leaven had been rigorously weeded out. The corporation
appointed the lecturers as well as the incumbents, and in September,
1631, the king ordered that Thomas Forde, of Brixton, who had
been expelled the University of Oxford for preaching against the
stone altar set up by Dr. Fewens in Magdalen Hall Chapel, was
not to be chosen in that capacity. The Mayor replied that the
king should be cheerfully obeyed. Two years later more serious
difSculties arose. There was then living here a certain Sir James
Bagg, the contemptible tool of a contemptible master — the worth
less Buckingham — in whose interest he sought to use his official
position in connection with the Customs and the Admiralty to
govern the town. The character of this man is sketched in one
word by himself. "Writing to Buckingham he subscribes himself,
"Tour slave!" He seems to have been the constant fomenter of
evil. In 1632 Upham, then vicar of St. Andrew, died. The cor
poration, in exercise of their undoubted right, appointed Alexander
Grosse, the Puritan vicar of Plympton St. Mary. Grosse's institu
tion was refused by the Bishop, and the king illegally presented
Dr. Aaron Wilson, a thorough-going Eoyalist and Episcopalian.
A connection so commenced could not prosper. Who was the
aggressor I cannot say, but Wilson dragged tho corporation before
the Star Chamber on the pretence that the erection of the Hospital
of Poor's Portion was an interference with his territorial rights ;
and they not unnaturally sought to have a lecturer of their own
views since they could not approve the vicar. Bagg came to
Wilson's aid. He moved the king, who wrote to Bishop Hall that
certain persons had been endeavouring to maintain a lecturer in
Plymouth without the approbation of the incumbent ; and that the
Bishop was not to admit any such, but to settle Thomas Bedford,
and not permit him to be disquieted by Grosse, whom I hence
gather to have been doing lecturer's duty. But the corporation
were pertinacious ; and I have to suggest that the petition which
was presented to the king in the following year, asking permission

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 7
to erect a new church, had far loss to do with the want of church
accommodation in the town (the population of which had been
greatly reduced by pestilence) than with the want of Puritan
preaching. Wilson could not be got rid of, the lecturer was of
the same type ; what more ready mode of solving the difficulty
than the erection of another place of worship ? At any rate the
church was built, largely if not wholly out of the rates of the
town ; and since the Civil War not only delayed its progress, but
prevented its consecration until the Eestoration, and in the interval
it was used for Presbyterian worship, there is a sense in which
Charles Church may fairly be called our oldest Nonconformist
meeting. During the siege in the wars of the Commonwealth (1642-46)
there were several religious assemblies in the town, and not only
Presbyterians, but Baptists, Independents, and Fifth Monarchy
men, were represented. Plymouth, moreover, was then the refuge
of many of the ministers of the adjoining parishes, who could not
exercise their functions in the presence of the Eoyalist soldiery ;
as it was likewise the prison of not a few Episcopal clergy, whose
zeal for the Eoyal cause brought them into the arena of political
confiict. There is little to record concerning the progress of Noncon
formity here during the Commonwealth, when Presbyterianiam
was the established faith. St. Andrew was occupied by the Eev.
George Hughes, leader of the Devonshire Puritan clergy, a man of
high character, unblemished reputation, sincere piety, and great
ability. The liturgy had been abandoned before his time by
Francis Porter, preacher of Charles. There were two Noncon
forming congregations. The oldest, the Baptist, is now repre
sented by the Baptist Churches of George Street and Mutley, of
Devenport, and of many other places in the neighbourhood. A care
ful, detailed, and interesting history of this Church has been written
by my friend Mr. H. M. Nicholson. It sprung from the mixed
congregation of Baptists and Independents already mentioned, and
its records date back to 1648. In that year Abraham Cheare,* a
native of Plymouth, and a fuller, was baptized, and shortly after
wards received an invitation to the pastorate, which he accepted in
* Cheare I take to have heen of anJExeter family. There waa huried at
St. Andrew, AprU 30th, 1588, "Mighele Cheere, of Exon;" and two yeara
later a daughter of Joan Sheere was interred.

8 JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
the following year. The society must have been large, as the
invitation was signed by one hundred and fifty members. In 1651
a piece of land was bought in the Pig-market, now Bedford Street,
and a meeting-house erected; which was rebuilt in 1751, abandoned
in 1789 in favour ofthe chapel in How Street, and flnally, having
been converted into stores, removed in April, 1865.
The Independents of the old united congregation and those of
the garrison during the siege do not seem to have left any suc
cessors, and the Baptists continued the only separatists in Ply
mouth until the middle of 1654. There then came hither about
the sixth month John Audland and Thomas Arey, two of the early
Quakers, and were "received of many who were waiting for the
Lord's appearance." They held several meetings in public and in
private ; " and on the flrst day the s'* John Audland went to one
of the steeple-houses in the Towne, and testyfled against the priest
and there worship, and also sounded truth amongst them, for w"*"
the s'' John Audland received from the people in the steeple-house
pritty much Abuse ; and the s* Thomas Arey he went to the Baptist
meeteing, and sounded truth amonge them, who stod in great op
position to his testimony." On the 16th of the third month of
1655 Thomas Salthouse and Miles Halhead visited Plymouth, and
established .the flrst meeting, their reward from the powers that
were being thirteen months' imprisonment at Plymouth and Exeter.
In the same year George Fox paid the first of his four visits to
Devonshire, and his journal records how, " Having refreshed our
selves at our inn, we went to Eobert Cary's house, where we had a
very precious meeting. At this meeting was one Elizabeth Tre-
lawny, daughter to a baronet. She, being very thick of hearing,
came close up to me, and clapped her ear very nigh me while I
spoke ; and she was convinced. After the meeting came in some
jangling Baptists; but the Lord's power came over them, and
Elizabeth Trelawny gave testimony thereto. A fine meeting was
settled there in the Lord's power, which hath continued ever since."
There is a tradition in the Plymouth Society that the first
meeting-house of the Quakers here was a thatched building which
stood at the head of Sussex Street. Near this was undoubtedly
the original Quaker burial-ground, used as such before the erection
of the original meeting-house on the site in Bilbury Street in 1674
and not given up until 1721. The present meeting-house replaced
the old one in 1804.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 9
Plymouth was governed in all strictness during the Presbyterian
regime ; and there still remain a few illustrative records. Thus,
in 1659, John W^ood was presented for walking on the Hoe during
" sermon time," and George Cragg for suffering company in his
house to drink burnt wine during " sermon time ;" while in June
the constables of Old Town Ward presented John Olde "for keeping
men drinking yesterday, being Lord's-day." This last of course
is in accordance with modern ideas.
If the ruling powers had contented themselves with no more
than this, matters would not have been so bad ; but Milton was
right — "New presbyter was but old priest writ large."
Of religious liberty these Presbyterians had but the faintest idea.
They were as zeedous State Churchmen as the Episcopalians,
and in behalf of their views were quite as ready to persecute.
They were as rigorously fond of their Directory as the Prelatists
of their Prayer-book ; and under their sway many an Episcopal
clergyman was fined, imprisoned, ejected. A law was even intro
duced into Parliament to punish blasphemy with death. Walker
says all that can fairly be said against them (and a great deal more)
in his well-known " Sufferings of the Clergy." But we must re
member that here, as subsequently, politics were involved with
theology. Episcopalian and Eoyalist, Presbyterian and Eound-
head, were synonymous. Moreover, according to the accepted
theory of a State Church, the officers of that church must be sub
ordinate to the State. If the State changed its religion, it changed
its officers likewise. The manner of the change is more important
here than the change itself; and in the method adopted during the
Commonwealth I do not see so much specially objectionable.
"Whatever was done was done methodically by process of law;
and such care was shown for the ejected that they were assigned
a fifth of the revenues of their livings for their maintenance, and
were thenceforward unharassed. We shall have occasion again to
refer to this. Undoubtedly there were many cases of individual
hardship ; undoubtedly a good deal that Walker says is true. But
he starts with the idea not only of the divine right of the king,
but of the divine right of the clergy ; and his references to Ply
mouth are singularly unfortunate.
No such political considerations excuse the action of the Presby
terians towards the Quakers. The Independents and Baptists

10 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
were able to take care of themselves. Cromwell, with a large-
hearted liberality, even protected the arch-heretic Unitarian Biddle.
But the Quakers had very few friends ; and, as in the earlier days
of the Eeformation, the men whose religious position depended
solely upon the exercise of the right of private judgment perse
cuted those who dared to follow their judgment to different
conclusions. The Quakers were fair game, and safe. I admit
that they were aggravating, and that they showed little considera
tion for others in their perpetual testifyings in steeple and meeting
houses. The persecutions, of the Quakers at Plymouth began with a
drunken naval chaplain, who attended a meeting held by Halhead
and Salthouse in the garden of John Harris, and got excessively
angry at being told to combine works with faith. He complained
to John Paige, the mayor, and Salthouse and Halhead were com
mitted to the assizes as disturbers of the public peace, and for
"diverse other high misdemeanours against a late proclamation
prohibiting the disturbance of ministers and other Christians in
their assemblies and meetings." They were the disturbed; they
were prosecuted as the disturbers. Then Margaret Killam offended
the dignity of his worship the mayor by speaking to him on re
ligious matters ; and to gaol she went. Next year Priscilla Cotton,
Margaret Cole, and Katherine Martindale spoke to the priest and
people in the Church, after the priest — George Hughes, I sup
pose — had flnished his sermon ; and to gaol went they : while
Barbara Pattison was locked up for interrupting a funeral sermon.
In 1658, John Evans, for speaking to the people in a steeple-house,
was not only imprisoned, but whipped through the streets. And
so matters went on, until by 1660, the year of the glorious restora
tion of Charles II., every prison in the county was crowded with
the Friends. "Within two months of that year the High Gaol
and Bridewell of Exeter received no less than seventy, including
aU the men inhabitants of Plymouth of that persuasion.*
The evil days of Nonconformity were now at hand. For a
quarter of a century, with intermissions that made the recurrence
of tyranny but more galling, Presbyterian and Baptist, Inde
pendent and Quaker, were subjected to a persecution more per
sistent than any which England had known. " Continually
* See the " History of the Friends in Devonshire." By Mr. E. Dymond

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 11
mocked with hollow promises of relief, now favoured by a
temporary indulgence, and then visited anew with redoubled
persecution, their whole life hung in suspense on the capricious
humour, and on the result of the conflicting purposes of the court
and the" parliam^t. . . . Persecution and indulgence, indulgence
and persecution, in ceaseless alternation, make up the entire
history of the time. Tet a sense of religious duty withheld the
Puritan ministers from laying aside their pastoral functions. The
strength of a solemn vow still bound them to their flocks. So
long as the penal laws were in force they preached to their people
in private, and visited them by stealth ; while their retreats were
hunted out by informers of the most infamous character, their
places of meeting broken in upon by a licentious soldiery, and
learned and holy men, dragged to the bar of justice for simply
preaching the gospel, were insulted by magistrates, brow-beaten
by judges, and laid up in fetid and unwholesome gaols — at that
time nurseries of pestilence, and destitute of every Christian comfort
and decency — among highwaymen and murderers."*
I hold the religious persecutions under his most religious and
gracious majesty Charles II. — that merrily despicable monarch —
to be the worst this kingdom has known. Mary was a consistent,
conscientious bigot, a devoted daughter of her Church, who be
lieved it better a few should burn here than many hereafter. And
after all, burning is so far merciful that it is quickly over.
But Charles was a faithless, heartless, conscienceless debauchee,
whose persecutions had no higher motive than the revenge of a
mean coward spirit, without the warrant of conviction, without
the excuse of policy. James, like Mary, was consistent, and had
a policy — the policy of the re-establishment of his faith. But if
the men differed, their acts did not. Both played with their
victims before they killed them; and under their Christian rule
thousands of men and women, driven from house and home, for
bidden all means of livelihood, whipped here and imprisoned there,
pilloried, branded, and cropped, suffered tortures to which the fires
of Smithfield would have been a crowning mercy.
And the second Charles among his other virtues counts that
blackest sin of ingratitude. It was to the Presbyterians, quite
as much as to Monk, that he owed his recal from exile. This
was recognized in his declaration at Breda: "We do declare a
* Tayler's " Eetrospect ofthe Eeligious Life of England," pp. 250, 251.

12 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted,
or called in question for differences of opinion, which do not disturb
the peace of the kingdom." And in the following October another
declaration conceded, for the sake of pacification, "thatthe ministers
should be freed from the subscription required by the Canon, and
the oath of canonical obedience ; receive Ordination, Institution,
and Induction, and exercise their function and enjoy the profits of
their livings without being obliged to it ; and that the use of the
Ceremonies should be dispensed with where they were scrupled."*
Within less than two years came the Act of Uniformity, and
Bartholomew -day, 1662, saw two thousand of the ablest, most
learned, and most pious ministers of the Church cast out there
from, because their consciences would not allow them to declare
their unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained in and
prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, which, by the way, as
modifled by Convocation, very few of the seven thousand whose
consciences were less tender could have seen.
" Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject
Those Unconforming ; whom one rigorous day
Drives from their Cures, a voluntary prey
To poverty, and grief, and disrespect,
And some to want — as if by tempest wrecked
On a wild coast.
*******
Men the dictate of whose inward aense
Outweighs the world ! whom self-deceiving wit
Lures not from what they deem the cause of God."
Persecution began in Plymouth before the Black Bartholomew.
One Captain William Pestell paid the West a visit in 1661,
apparently in the character of spy. He wrote to Secretary Nicholas,
on the 26th September, that the Fifth Monarchy Men were as
sociated with the Presbyterians in encouraging the people to
withstand the common prayer ; that " several of the old sea-cap
tains at Plymouth were determined that the common prayer should
not come into Mr. Hughes's church," and that there was the same
feeling at other places on the coast, where Anabaptists and Quakers
abounded. The Presbyterians could not be touched until the Act of Uni
formity; the Quakers were in prison before Charles returned; only
* Calamy's " Abridgment," vol. i. p. 152.

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 13
the Baptists were available. So Abraham Cheare was sent to
Exeter gaol for encouraging religious assemblies, and remained
there three months, until released by " special grace."
Plymouth was singled out for special visitation. Its gallant
stand for the Parliament made it a marked town. Its corporation
continued thoroughly Puritan. Every way it was obnoxious to
the ruling powers. So Plymouth had a call from the commissioners
appointed to regulate corporations, who ejected the mayor, made a
clean sweep of his brethren, and turned out Hughes from the
vicarage of St. Andrew, a week before the fatal 24th of August.
The mayor, WiUiam AUen, a Presbyterian, gave place to William
Jennens, who justified his selection by proving an adept in persecu
tion ; and the old corporators to new aldermen and councillors of
the same school. Four ministers were silenced in Plymouth.
George Hughes, the vicar ; Obadiah Hughes, his son, ejected from
a studentship at Oxford ; Thomas Martyn, lecturer at St. Andrew ;
Samuel Martyn, his son, an occasional preacher. Porter, minister
of Charles Church, then unconsecrated, conformed. George Hughes
and Thomas Martyn were sent to Drake's Island, under the charge
of two files of musketeers. That rugged rock then held the
dignity of state prison ; and among its occupants were General
Lambert (who died there). Colonel Lilburne, and Harrington, the
author of " Oceana." Hughes was attacked with dropsy and scurvy,
and after nine months was released on bond for £2,000 (given by
his friends without his knowledge) not to come again within
twenty miles of Plymouth. So he retired to Kingsbridge, where,
in July, 1667, he died. Martyn was released under a similar bond
for £1,000. He had been silenced some months before Bartholo
mew Day, on pretence of speaking certain words in private
conventicles, which he altogether denied. At the same time
Cheare was again seized, and lodged in the gaol at Exeter for
three years. Obadiah Hughes is said to have been imprisoned,
but if so it could not have been for long.
The Bartholomew storm beat most violently on the heads of the
ministers ; but there are entries in the accounts of our corporation
' which indicate that the congregations suffered likewise, though
their turn had not yet fully come. Between August 14 and Sep
tember 29, 1662, £3 lOs. were paid for sending away prisoners to
the common gaol. These were neither rogues nor malefactors ; for
they were carried in under a separate entry ; and I do not think it

14 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
unimportant to note that in the following year a whipping-post
was set up in the workhouse, and the cucking-stool repaired.
It may be said, indeed it has been said, that the ejections of
1662 were but a retaliation for those of the Commonwealth. I
would not defend persecution in any shape. I cannot say that all
fault was on one side ; but this I must say, that, so far as Ply
mouth is concerned, these persecutions are almost without the
miserable excuse of retaliation. Aaron Wilson, according to
Walker, soon after the commencement of the civil war, was sent
away prisoner in a ship to Portsmouth. I do not justify this;
but bear in mind that Wilson had been iUegally thrust upon the
town, that he had made himself obnoxious personally, and that
his ill-treatment was connected with the great civil confiict. On
WUson's death the king, again illegally, appointed Bedford, and
him the corporation sent prisoner to London. Then Hughes was
appointed, or, as Walker says, "by the factious part of the town
of Plymouth thrust into the vicaridge " — a statement utterly false
in its implication, as the corporation only acted in their right.
Hughes had episcopal ordination, and, according to Calamy, was
duly instituted. Not a whisper can be breathed against his piety,
consistency, and ability ; and the legality of his occupancy of the
living can hardly be questioned. The illegality of his removal is
clear. Doubts have been cast upon his institution. There is a
story told in Calamy that one of the ruck of the time-servers, who
looked on the restoration of the Stuarts as the prelude to a feast of
fat things, obtained the gift of the vicarage, and came down to
turn Hughes out. "Are you sure the place is vacant?" said he;
and, showing his institution, " they went away with a flea in their
ear." This is very Ukely to be true; since, in August, 1661,
one Dr. Lionel Gatford was presented to the living because he had
been chaplain at Pendennis, and this would account for his not
having it. When I add to what I have said of Wilson and Bed
ford that one Hobbes was frightened to death (according to
Walker) by being told he should be thrown into the grave if he
came to the churchyard again with his mass-book, I have said all
that can be said of the persecution of Episcopalians in Plymouth.
When the appointed ministers were removed their adherents
were not left utterly to themselves. There lived then in Plyraouth
a certain Nicholas Sherwill, member of a wealthy merchant family,
an M.A. of Magdalen, a Presbyterian, who had received episcopal

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 15
ordination. He, with the younger Hughes, had been imprisoned,
and set free on promising not to return to Plymouth without leave
of the governor, the Earl of Bath, or his deputy. His absence
could not have been long ; for he commences the first register-book
of the Unitarian congregation in Treville Street, now preserved
at Somerset House, with the entry of the marriage by him at
Stonehouse, on the 17th September, 1662, not a month after
Bartholomew-day, of Walter Trowt and Katharine Crampron;
while on the 28th November he baptized Mary, the daughter of
George and Mary Lapthorne. He had no cure, but was an occa
sional preacher, and he miuistered to the people who adhered to
Hughes and Martyn when they were cast into prison. In the
congregation thus formed the two societies in Treville and Batter
Streets originated. It has been held that there were two congre
gations from the commencement ; but as Hughes and Martyn both
ministered in the same church, and as Sherwill was the only
minister free to engage in ministerial work in Plymouth imme
diately on the ejection, it seems clear that the Nonconforming lay-
folk of Plymouth must for a considerable time have constituted
one body, though meeting in different places, as best they could.
But SherwUl ere long had assistance. Obadiah Hughes was
ordained by Jasper Hicks, the ejected from Landrake, and flve other
ministers, and preached in the neighbourhood as he had opportunity.
At length, being no longer safe, he removed to London in 1674,
where he became minister of a large congregation. John Quicke,
ejected from Brixton, also preached in Plymouth, and once spent
eight weeks in the Marshalsea. Quicke continued preaching at
Brixton after Bartholomew-day, until removed by force. When
prosecuted for this he excused himself on the ground that there
was no one else to supply the spiritual wants of his people ; and
though imprisoned, contrived to escape on appeal. He would not
agree to give up preaching as a condition of liberation ; and indeed
made the best of his opportunities in gaol by preaching to the
prisoners there. For this Bishop Ward prosecuted him, and, I am
happy to say, unsuccessfully. Nathan Jacob too, the ejected
minister of Ugborough, rode to Plymouth once a fortnight, and
eventually became permanent pastor here.
But for several years Sherwill was clearly the sole regular
minister of the Plymouth Presbyterians. George Hughes never
saw Plymouth after his retirement to Kingsbridge. He was then

16 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
sixty years of age, and worn out by infirmities. Thomas Martyn
took advantage of the Indulgence of 1672, and returning to Ply
mouth, became minister of a Nonconformist society. There are
entries of baptisms by him in the TrevUle Street registers from
June 12th, 1672, to February, 1675, and he did not die untU
1677. I believe it was upon his return that the division of the
followers of the Ejected into two societies took place ; for to this
date the existence of two separate bodies can clearly be traced.
Sherwill continued in the ministry until his sudden death. May
15th, 1696. His last entry of baptism was on the 7th May pre
ceding. As the interments took place in the churchyard of the
parish, where SherwUl could not officiate, he did not register
burials ; but he entered the texts and occasions of funeral sermons
preached by him from August 15th, 1662, until September Sth,
1695. In his later years he had an assistant named Byfield, of
whom Fox says that he had "the best sense and parts"* of any
Dissenter he had ever heard. Sherwill was succeeded by John
Enty. Such briefly is a history of the establishment of the two con
gregations which represent in Plymouth the Bartholomew of 1662.
Let us retrace our steps awhUe, and consider the conditions under
which that estabUshment took place. We have seen how their
immediate founders, with the Baptist Cheare, were visited with
imprisonment. Less fortunate than Martyn and Hughes, Cheare
remained in bonds untU 1665. Between 1662 and 1665 the re
cords of borough expenditure clearly indicate that persecution was
onward. In 1662-3 money was paid, not only for sending several
persons to the gaol, but to poor people to give" in evidence against
them; and in 1663-4 Eichard Philp and Abraham Appleby are
entered as having been paid for their expenses in going to the
assizes to give evidence against "the blind preacher." Who was
this blind preacher ? Philp was an informer. He appears in the
following year as having been paid, with John Wolfe, for giving
evidence against Daniel Northerne, who from a subsequent entry
we learn was pilloried. He must have been either a popular or a
dangerous character, for it took five men to guard him in the
piUory. WiUiam Jennens, the church-and-king mayor of 1662-3, was
* John Fox, of Plymouth, whose MSS. are preserved at the Plymouth
Public Library.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 17
a very zealous persecutor : probably he would have dignified his
conduct by a higher title. Among those who were proceeded
against during his mayoralty by his order, presented by James
Jackson and Lucas Cocke, churchwardens, were the following :
Samuel Northcott, senior and junior, Thomas Durant and wife,
Eichard Maine and son, William Allen, his wife, son, and man
servant, Captain Burthogg, Daniel Parrett, Johu GlanviU, Anthony
Windeatt and wife, Thomas Short, Thomas Spry, Nicholas Gloyn,
John Merrin, Thomas Spencer, John Daubance, Anthony Field,
Eoger Towle, Jacob Sanders, Charity Mohun, Eichard Hall,
WiUiam Stitson, Walter Trowte, Catherine Trowte — Presby
terians ; John Trenicke, Thomas Trenicke, Edward Cole, Eichard
Vincent, James Blackburn, Thomas Teate, Josias Pickes, Samuel
Fletcher, Eichard Blagdon, John Bennett — Baptists ; Nicholas
Cole, Anthony Todd, Arthur Cotton, Margaret Dier, Elizabeth
Ditford, John Light, Francis Light, Eichard Smith, Francis Eawle,
George Crocker — Quakers. Some of these were prosecuted for not
attending church, some for not observing the rites of the Church
as to baptism and marriage.
Great as was the persistence of the persecutors, that of the per
secuted was greater. Writing from Exeter Gaol, 17th of 7th
month, 1662, Cheare says : " The poor lambs that I have left have
been visited by the constables again and again at their meetings,
summoned before the mayor, fined for not coming to church, yet
have a Uttle strength left to meet in the same place, expose their
goods to be spoUed, &c., rather than consent to promote that which
their soul is grieved at."
That October between forty and fifty were taken in one meeting,
ostensibly on the ground that they refused to promise not to take
up arms against the king.* There appear to have been rumours
about this time that Plymouth was to be the rallyiug-point of a
EepubUcan insurrection.
The Conventicle Act came into operation in July, 1664; and
1665 was a year of special activity with the dominant party.
Cheare by the efforts of his sister was released, and returned to
Plymouth. He enjoyed his liberty a month Then he was appre
hended, lodged a month in the Guildhall prison — a wretched den
— and finally conveyed to Drake's Island, where he lay until his
death, after great suffering, on the 5th of first month, 1668.
* See State Papers.
B

18 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
Cheare had numerous companions in suffering on the island besides
Lambert and LUbum. To one of these, Edward Cock, who died
in 1666, Cheare alludes by name; and also to a companion prisoner
at Exeter, John Edwards, junior, who died there in his twenty-
seventh year. Burnet says of the Baprists that they were generaUy
men of virtue, and of a universal charity ; but these were days in
which virtue availed nothing, and charity was a scoff.
SherwiU was also imprisoned in 1665. On the 6th of October
he was called on by some officers of the garrison to go to a tavern,
as the goveiTior was waiting for hira. He went, was taken into
custody by a guard of soldiers, imprisoned, and not released until
the 4th of December.
In the March foUowing, 1666, WUUam AUen* records in his MS.
diary that, without any law commanding it, most of the townsmen
of Plymouth took the oath appointed for Nonconformist ministers;
and several were compeUed to enter into bonds to the amount of
£1,000. "Tea," says Allen, "besides such kinde of impositions
were not practised in any part of the two kingdoms as in Ply
mouth." If so things must have been bad indeed. And I find
that in 1664-65 the pillory and stocks were repaired.
The passing of the Five Mile Act in 1665 marked the culmina
ting point of this first period of persecution. For the next three
years Nonconformity in Plymouth seems to have been winked at.
Nonconformists could not assemble for public worship, nor take any
part in public affairs ; but it was something to be able to meet
without danger of disturbance by constable or soldier, and being fined
or imprisoned at justicial caprice. By the Five Mile Act ministers
were not allowed to come or be except in travelling within five
miles of any city, town, corporation, borough returning members
to parliament, or of a place in which they had exercised the min
istry, unless they took an oath of fidelity to the Constitution in
Church and State, and swore that it was not lawful to take up
arms against the king.
In 1670 persecution was renewed, and a new Conventicle Act
passed. The flrst Conventicle Act of 1663 declared that wherever
five persons, beyond those of the same household, should assemble
in a religious congregation, each should be liable, for the first
offence, to be fined £5, or imprisoned three months ; for the second
offence the penalty was doubled ; and the third entailed transporta-
* The mayor who was ejected for his Nonconformity.

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 19
tion for seven years, or a fine of £100. The new Aot reduced the
fines for the first and second offences to 5s. and IDs.; but fined
the preacher and the house-owner £20 for the flrst offence, and
£40 for the second ; and there was a clause declaring that all
doubts were to be given against the conventicles.
WilUam Jennens was again in his element. He fortified him
self by advice from the recorder. Sir John Maynard, as to the
effect of the Act, and set heartily to work. So he and the mayor,
WiUiam Symons, were very busy, in August and September, going
about with a body of soldiers hunting out and breaking up meet
ings, and committing the conventiclers to prison. Allen records
the breaking up of one meeting at Eobert Mening's, and of another
at Mr. T  y's ; which means I presume, Trelawny's. Theii there
was another meeting proceeded against at Thomas Teabsley's.
Several Quakers were sent to gaol, and special mention is made
of one AbigaU Libby.
In 1672 Charles issued his famous declaration of indulgence,
which aUowed the Ucense of Nonconformist preachers and meeting
houses. Under it there were Ucensed in Plymouth not only
SherwUl and Martyn, but the younger Hughes, John Quicke, and
George Mortimer, who had been ejected from Harberton, and
apparently returned thither to minister. John Glanville, who had
been proceeded against for not coming to church, had his house
licensed for worship, as did Thomas Yeabsley. A house near
Charles Church was also Ucensed, and the widow Menir's at
Stonehouse. This iUegal indtdgence was speedUy revoked, and persecution
again broke out ; but I am unable for the next ten years to trace
the course of events. During this period there were times when
the Nonconformists practically enjoyed considerable liberty. There
were also special local influences at work in their favour. The
tone and temper of the corporate body changed gradually as the
commission-intruded corporators died off, and new men were chosen
to take their places. Moreover, powerful friends were not wanting.
Chief of these was Brett, a wealthy merchant, who had served his
apprenticeship with Samuel Northcote, the mayor removed and
imprisoned in 1659, for scrupling to publish a proclamation of
parUament in church. Brett was a great supporter of Noncon
formist ministers; and not only maintained whole famiUes of
Nonconformists in their need, but furnished them with means to
B 2

20 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
leave the town. His son afterwards entered the ministry. Brett
was a man of singular equanimity. Nearly all his property was
lost in the capture of one ship — the Industry. He remarked to
his daughter that there would be a little less for her, and said no
more.* During this period Charles and his brother, the Duke of York,
paid the town a couple of visits, when the corporation displayed
an exuberant and costly loyalty. To be stirred to loyalty in these
days was also to be moved to persecution ; but Charles, whatever
he may have thought of the Nonconformist men, had no ill-feeUng
towards the Nonconformist women, if they were young and good-
looking. Allen's sont records, with a certain amount of satis
faction, that his wife was kissed both by Charles and his brother
on the Hoe. I suspect she was not alone in this.
Whatever the extent of the luU may have been, there was a
very decided revival of oppression in the concluding years of the
reign of Charles. The church-and-king party had again got the
upper hand in the corporation, and used their power unsparingly.
The character of the men is shown by the fact that they took the
pains to send to Launceston to invite that " famously loyal " f
infamous brute Jefferies to pay the town a visit. This did not
prevent his subsequently demanding the surrender of the town
charter. In 1682-83 the persecutions were thus again in full swing.
Nathaniel Jacob and Samuel Martyn were conveyed to the high
gaol by Peter MUlet, Samuel Grere, John Bosaverne, Francis
Spurrell, and other constables ; while Eichard Stephens and John
Pane were equally energetic in carrying Quakers thither. In the
following year, 1683-4, there is an entry of payments to one
Eichard Hall and his son Henry for their expenses in going to
the assizes to give evidence against Nonconformist ministers.
Jacob and Martyn and Sherwill were, so far as I know, the only
ones in the town, and Sherwill appears to have escaped. The
Baptists were without a pastor from the time Cheare was taken
from them until 1687, when James to favour the Papists indulged
the Protestants. Tet through nineteen years of persecution sixty-
six members had kept the faith. Thomas Voisey, ejected from
* John Pox's MSS.
t Samuel Allen, who hag also left a frag(pentary diary.
X Yonge's "Plymouth Memoirs."

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 21
Thatcham, who used to preach in Plymouth, had died of fever,
brought on by his excessive labour, in 1668. Jacob and Martyn
were imprisoned about six months.
In 1684 the loyal justices of Exeter made an order offering
40s. a head for the apprehension of Nonconformist ministers,
and Bishop Lamplugh commanded it to be read by his clergy
in their churches;* but I cannot flnd that it affected Plymouth,
although under the new freeman's oath appointed in that year
every freeman was sworn to give the mayor notice of aU con
venticles. How strongly, notwithstanding such sore afflictions, the fires of
civil and religious liberty still smouldered in their embers, was
happily manifested when James was hurled from the throne, and
persecuted — stUl Puritan — Plymouth was the first town to declare
for his successor. The Toleration Act was passed in 1689. This,
though imperfectly, secured freedom of worship to all Dissenters
who took the oath to the government, and gave security to their
preachers who subscribed the doctrinal articles of the Church
of England. It comprised the Quakers, but " excluded Eoman
Catholics and those who impugned the Trinity from its benefits ;
and it left the Test and Corporation Acts, passed in Charles II.'s
reign, which made participation in the Lord's Supper, according
to the rites of the Church of England, a legal quaUflcation for
civil office, in full force against Nonconformists."!
With the accession of Dutch William much of the better feeling
and spirit returned ; much of the animosity died out. When, full
of years, Nathaniel Jacob died in 1690, Canon GUbert preached
his funeral sermon in St. Andrew Church, and concluded his dis
course with the weighty words, "I have said more of this worthy
man than I dare say of myself, or deserve that any person should
say of me."
Freedom once given. Nonconformity speedily took a prominent
position in the town. Long after the ejection many of the Pres
byterians cherished the hope that there might yet be settled terms
of comprehension. Nor until hope had departed did they commence
the erection of meeting-houses. For nearly thirty years their con
venticles were held in private dweUings. Martyn the elder baptized
at "Greene House, near Charles Church, in Greene Street;" and
it is not unlikely that this was Sherwill' s residence, as we know
* Neal, "Hist. Puritans," vol. iv. p. 495. f Tayler, p. 533.

22 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
that he Uved in that immediate locality. A chapel was erected
on the site of the present Unitarian Chapel about 1689 by the
adherents of Nathaniel Jacob ; for when in 1690 Nathaniel
Harding succeeded Jacob tbe congregation was large, and must
have had a special place of assembly, and a trust deed of 1708
states that the chapel had been used several years previously for
divine worship. Harding came to Plymouth from Ireland — more
by accident than design — just after Jacob's death, was chosen in
his stead, and remained pastor untU 1743.
SherwUl's congregation about the same time, or a little earUer,
met at the "Old MarshaUs." They occupied it certainly for len
years,* and probably until the erection, in 1705, of the chapel in
Batter Street. The " Old MarshaUs" stUl exists — in the oldest
portion of the distiUery premises in Southside Street. Tradition
connects this ancient building with the Dominicans. It may have
been part of the flfteenth century guildhaU ; but whatever its
origin, it was used in the seventeenth century as the Marshalsea
or town prison. Probably the extensive additions to the Jacobean
Guildhall in 1667 rendered a separate prison unnecessary.
Fox says of the dissenting ministers of his day, that " they were
generally enthusiasts, and retained greatly that canting way of
speaking and that old method of composition which was peculiar to
the old preachers." He was stiU less complimentary to the con
gregations; for he speaks of the "seats and the beasts that sat in
them," and of "the people of the country meetings as of mean
rank and meaner understandings." StUl under Harding (who was
universally respected, and whom Fox terms a man of singular
piety) and Enty the two societies flourished; and in 1715 mustered
1260 hearers. Both were on friendly terms, and the interchange
of pulpits common. Doctrinally both congregations were Calvinistic,
and known as Presbyterian. And though there was no actual
presbytery or synod in the county, there was an analogous organi
zation in the Exeter Assembly. On the 18th October, 1655, an
association of Presbyterian ministers of the county was formed at
Exeter to deal with matters of doctrine and discipline. This asso
ciation held two meetings a year ; and the county was divided
into seven divisions, the ministers in which used to meet monthly.
George Hughes was the first moderator ; and the articles of asso-
* There are entries of baptisms at the " Old Marshalla" from July 27th,
1687, to August 20th, 1697.

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 23
ciation were signed by one hundred and thirty-one ministers. In
the foUowing year Independent ministers were admitted, and an
address voted to the Lord Protector. There is no record of the
Assembly's history during the troublous times of Charles and James
the Second ; but after the Act of Toleration it became the govern
ing body of the Presbyterians of the county, examining and
admitting candidates for the ministry, ordaining them, and
exercising generally presbyterial powers. These old Noncon
formists were heedful to provide a learned ministry as weU as a
spiritual. The ejected were almost universally men of university
breeding. The exclusion of Nonconformists from the universities
caused them to estabUsh academies, some of which obtained great
and deserved repute. Seeker and Butler were both educated in
the academy of Mr. Jones, of Tewkesbury. The most famous in
the West was that of Mr. Warren, at Taunton ; but Mr. HaUet
had a notable one at Exeter. Into the latter Hallet's son, who
corresponded with Whiston, introduced Arian views about the
year 1708. These were taken up by five or six of the students,
and eventuaUy spread into the ministry, giving rise to what was
known as the Western Arian controversy, which raged fiercely
among the Presbyterians and CongregationaUsts of the West.
Matters came to a head in the Assembly in 1716. The orthodox
party won the day; and Pierce of Exeter, the leader of the Arians,
and several other ministers, were ejected from the assembly, and
left to preach, as Fox says, "to the poor remains of a few broken
congregations, which had good-nature and charity enough to stand
by their ministers, whose reputation, interest, and usefulness were
absolutely ruined by the rage, aspersions, and violence of the other
party." Fox, himself inclined to Ariaiusm, credits the orthodox ministers
of his day with beUeving that they were specially commissioned
for the governance of the church; in fact, with holding the
doctrine of apostolical succession. The two Plymouth congrega
tions were Uttle affected by the first Arian wave. But the ex
pulsion of that heretical element by no means purged the Assembly.
Arianism found such favour with the younger ministers that at
length, in 1753, the Assembly refused to declare against the
admission of candidates to the ministry who would not profess
faith in the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And so in
process of time the Assembly became — though there neither were

24 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
then, nor are now (for it stUl exists), any doctrinal conditions
attached to membership — flrst Arian, and then Unitarian.
Arianism first made head in Plymouth under the ministry of the
Eev. H. Moore, successor to Mr. Harding ; and as it showed itself
at the same time in the Batter Street congregation, where it was
favoured by Mr. Hanmer, assistant to Mr. Baron, there was a
double exodus ; the orthodox of both congregations settling in
Batter Street, the heterodox in Treville Street, which has since
been distinctly Unitarian.
An exceedingly interesting feature of the religious life of the
town has passed into obUvion. Few call to mind the fact that
Plymouth was the seat of a colony of Huguenot refugees, who
settled here when driven from their own country by the Eevocation
of the Edict of Nantes. The first party escaped across the Channel
in an open boat from Eochelle, arriving on the Sth September, 1681.
They numbered between forty and flfty, and were joined by so
many others that they established two congregations, one at
Plymouth and the other at Stonehouse. It is the one redeeming
feature in the years of persecution which followed, that these poor
creatures do not seem to have been molested. We know little more
concerning them than is to be found in the registers of the two
congregations, now at Somerset House; those of the Stonehouse
congregation ranging from 1692 to 1791,* and those of the Ply
mouth congregation from 1733 to 1807, the earlier records having
been lost. The register of 1733 commences with an entry of the
election, on the llth April in that year, as wardens, of Pierre
Hory Laine, Jayre Valeau, Jean Pare, and Moyere Thomas, in
succession to Jean Pare, Etienne Brigeau, Francois Thomas, and
Etienne Cagna — twenty-four heads of famiUes assenting. In tho
July foUowing there is an entry of the distribution of the royal
bounty of fifteen guineas to fifty-one poor members of the com
munity, ranging from eighty-two years of age to an infant in arms.
Allowing flve to a family, and assuming that the recipients of the
bounty did not take any set part in the management of the church
affairs, the number of the little colony may be reckoned at between
150 and 200. For fully half a century these sufferers for con
science lived in Plymouth, among, but not of, our forefathers.
When they were householders they were entered in the rate-books
under the style of Monsieur or Madame. Thus in the poor rate
* It was not dissolved until 1810.

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 25
assessment for 1720, the earliest preserved, we find with the prefix
of Monsieur the names of Perry, Peter Perry, Francis Thomas, F.
Jourdan (reputedly the first introducer of the printing business
here), James Borgeau, Peter Bone, James Euffiat, Charles le Mar,
Isaac Oust, Mignan, Euffiat, Valleau, Boteet, Pratt, Lavigne,
Sherren, Freno, Dammer, Chardevoine, Bourvit, and Euleau. Then
we have Mesdames Cateau, Burfeans, Langaller, and "Mons.
Osorio's widow." Other names of French origin occurring without
either prefix (which was probably applied only to the well-to-do)
are Francis Colas, Peter Averilla, Isaac and Peter Lelander, Abra
ham Angoure, GUbert de Lapp, Gerrard, Stephen Cagna, Ch.
Peneau, Bignon, Barbe, and Gabon, the latter described as a French
barber. There was likewise a Dr. Freno.
The registers supply us with several family names in addition to
those already given, among them Du Bouohet, Du Clou, Dore,
Dechereaux, Arnaud, Bordier, Cherri, Viall, Blondett, Guillard,
Benoit, Bastard, Ecus, Dubois, Lardieu, Travers, Duval, Vincent,
Herring, GUle, Delacomb, Gruzelier, Bonnet, Maingy, Darton,
Lamoureux, Mousnier, and PaiUin.
WhUe the original refugees Uved, and the first generation of
their descendants, the foreign character of the little band was dis
tinctively kept up ; but the registers show that with the second
generation exterior influences of association and intermarriage
began to work ; and the third was far more English than French.
The knowledge of the mother tongue wore gradually less and less
among the younger members of the community, and the attendance
on pubUc worship, which was of course conducted in the French
language, graduaUy dwindled untU it was confined to a few aged
persons only, on whose death the congregation became extinct.
James Devoit was pastor from his arrival, in 1685, untU his death,
in 1723. In 1733, the date of the flrst register, Pierre du
Bouchet was minister. He was succeeded in 1739 by Jacob
Bordier; who was foUowed in 1764 by Jaques Touzeau. It was
during his pastorate that the congregation gave up the chapel
which they had erected in How's Lane, and which was removed
about 1785 to give place to the present edifice. Touzeau was the
last minister. He died in February, 1810, having been pastor
nearly half a century, and having outlived nearly all his people.
For many years he kept a French school in Lower Lane, and he
was much respected in the town.

26 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
Many of the descendants of the refugees still reside in this
locaUty. Such names as Darton, GruzeUer, and Lamoureux, are
of course easily identified ; but in most cases there has been some
amount of Anglicising. Thus Cherri is Cherry ; Touzeau, Tozer ;
Gille, Gill; Pare, Park; Bonnet, Bonny; Lardieu, Laidew ; Ecus,
Eowse ; ViaU, Vile ; Lavigne, Lavin ; Conde, Cundy ; Benoit,
Benoy ; GuUlard, Jillard ; Jourdan, Jordan.
Towards the middle of the last century Conformity and Non
conformity alike feU dull and lethargic ; decorous indeed, but
wanting in energy and spirit — the form of Christianity truly,
but lacking the vitality. The religion of feeling had no place
where all was formal and frigid. Church and chapel come under
the same condemnation. Nor -was Plymouth any exception to this
rule, though St. Andrew boasted the polished Zachary Mudge,
whose sermons Dr. Johnson praised so highly, and the TreviUe and
Batter Street congregations were enlivened somewhat by the stir
rings of the Arian controversy. As to the Baptists, they were " a
poor disjointed people," a " smaU remnant," the membership falling
off until it was reduced to eight.* At Plymouth therefore, and in
the growing town of Dock, there was ample scope for the exertions
of the early Methodists, and both Whitfield and Wesley reaped an
abundant harvest.
Calvinistic Methodism was the flrst estabUshed. Whitfield came
to Plymouth about 1744 with the intention of embarking for
America. But before that date his labours had borne local fruit.
One Andrew Kinsman, a native of Tavistock, converted by
reading one of Whitfield's sermons, settled in Plymouth as a
grocer ; and by him and his wife chiefly (she was a Mrs. Ann
TUey, and gave the ground) the Tabernacle in Briton Side was
built, in the garden behind his house. Adams and Cennick and
Midleton, with other of Whitfield's coUeagues, and Kinsman him
self, occupied the pulpit at first. In 1750 Kinsman became a
regular niinister, and in 1752 removed to Devenport, where he
buUt the flrst dissenting chapel. The Tabernacle remained his
property, and he was stiU accustomed to preach there, his chief
assistants being named Dunn, Paddon, and McAU. Kinsman was
a duly-quaUfied member of the church miUtant. When a party of
seamen, led by their lieutenant, , broke into the Tabernacle while
he was preaching, with intent to put out the lights, and "castigate
* Nicholson, pp, 66, 67.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 27
the congregation" — one of the humours, I presume, of a press-
gang — Kinsman seized the leader, and took him before the magis
trates. "When Kinsman died he left the Tabernacle in trust for
the purpose of perpetuating the gospel. The bequest was annuUed
by the Mortmain Act, and Kinsman's son became the owner. He
was a very autocrat. The minister wished to get married. Kins
man preferred his ceUbacy. The minister got married. Kinsman
padlocked the door of the Tabernacle, planted himself in a window
opposite, armed with loaded pistols, and threatened to shoot any
one who meddled with his property. So the congregation were
ejected as weU as their minister. For a whUe they met in the
Baptist Chapel, which was placed at their service. At length
Norley Chapel was buUt (then caUed the New Tabernacle), and
opened December 8th, 1797. What became of the then Old
Tabernacle for a few years I cannot say. There was a Mr. Cooper
there in 1808, who formed his congregation into a Baptist church,
and who was ejected by Kinsman in 1811. His congregation then
divided, part going to the Moravian Chapel at the Old Mitre, and
part to a currier's shop in Duck's Lane (Week Street), whence
they moved, in 1812, to a chapel in Willow Street, built by the
UniversaUsts, first caUed the Philadelphian Church, but then the
Eefuge Chapel.
The New Tabernacle, so far as I am aware, was the first dis
senting place of worship in the town in which an organ was
placed. The instrument was built by a carpenter of Tumchapel
named Eedstone, chiefly at the expense of Mr. Cater. Terrible
was the discord which resulted. There was nothing that the old
Baptists quarreUed about more fiercely than the propriety of
singing hymns in pubUc worship ; and the organ has continued
down to our own day to be the abomination of sundry Presby
terians, especiaUy of the Free Kirkers. The organ in the New
Tabernacle led to a division in the congregation, and in the end to
the re-opening of the Old Tabernacle. The Friday before the
organ was to be opened a letter was received, signed "David,"
announcing that Dagon had fallen before the ark, and that the
writer had discovered the art of taking his guts out. On examina
tion it was found that aU the pipes of one stop had been taken
away, proving, as Harris, who records this incident, quaintly says,
" that the thief was no musician."
Wesleyan Methodism was established in a settled shape in Ply-

28 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
mouth in the year 1745, when a class was formed. This was
twelve months before Wesley— himself, be it remembered, of Non
conformist descent — paid his first visit to the town in September,
1746 ; and as a result he found several zealous local preachers
hard at work, and great activity and zeal. More than thirty years
elapsed before any attempt was made to erect a chapeL The
members met in private houses, and there was a good deal of open-
air preaching on the Parade, by the great tree in Briton Side, in
rooms in Catte Street, Batter Street, in the Moravian Chapel, and
the Old Tabernacle. The first Wesleyan Chapel in the Three
Towns was commenced in 1779 in Lower Street, chiefly by the
exertions of Eedstone, a carpenter in the navy, and Nehemiah
Jane, a quarterman in the Dockyard. This sufficed untU 1792,
when the chapel in Buckwell Lane (then called Mud Lane) was
begun in Mr. Prideaux's garden. Thenceforward the progress of
Wesleyanism was exceedingly rapid, though the larger population
and greater activity of Dock gave it such a preponderance that
Devenport stiU names the district. Ebenezer Chapel was com
menced in 1815 ; and consequent upon the cessation of the war
and the depression thus caused, Wesley Chapel had to be closed
until 1847. Salem Chapel, however, was buUt in the meantime,
in 1828. In 1864 the erection of King Street Chapel was com
menced ; and now there is to be a new chapel erected in North
Street, in substitution for Wesley and Salem.
The period of the great French war, one of the greatest activity
in all business affairs in Plymouth and Dock, was marked also by
the greatest activity in reUgious matters ; thus described by a no
means friendly contemporary hand : " Amidst the general dissipa
tion and rage for worldly aggrandizement, a religious disposition
was everywhere prevalent. Churches, chapels, and meetings were
crowded with auditors ; the latter not only on Sundays, but many
evenings in the week. Besides public places of worship, parties
of the pious assembled at each other's houses, and embryo preachers
here first practised the rudiments of their future caUing. These
spiritual pastors were principally uneducated mechanics and arti
ficers in the Dockyard and town. Never perhaps did moralist
survey a more incongruous spectacle than this place afforded. The
most open and undisguised profaneness and the most rigid sanctity
seemed equally predominant. On one hand were heard the revels
of debauchery and drunkenness ; and on the other, the praises and

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 29
prayers of devotional congregations ! The sanctuaries of religion
were surrounded by the temples of profligacy." *
This sounds very bad, and would sound much worse, did we
not reflect that an equaUy stem censor might write pretty much
the same, apart from the multipUcity of irregular meetings — the
true conventicles — about the Plymouth of the present day. The
contrasts are weU-nigh as strong. There were, however, unusual
reUgious activities here seventy to ninety years ago, chiefly in the
direction of Calvinism. Several personal causes were formed by
different preachers, most of which perished with the failing popu
larity of those to whom they owed their origin, while the religious
societies of their day stiU continue to exist and^flourish.
The most remarkable feature connected with this period in the
religious history of the town was, however, the revival of perse
cution. The old spirit had never died ; but it had shown itself in
petty ways. Thus when the great Exeter heresiarch, James Pierce,
was buried at St. Leonards, and it was proposed to place on his
tombstone a tribute to the "learned, reverend, and pious" James
Pierce, the rector objected that Pierce was not learned, because not
bred at a university ; not reverend, because not episcopally ordained ;
not pious, because not orthodox ; and so his last resting-place was
inscribed simply, "Mr. James Pierce's Tomb." And in like
manner, on the death at Newton Abbot of Isaac Gilling, his
remains were altogether refused interment. An appeal to the
owner of the peculiar. Sir WUliam Courtenay, resulted only in the
gratuitous advice to bury him in the marshes, and so in the end he
was interred in his own meeting-house.
But the dead care Uttle about these things ; and the Plymouth
persecution was of the living. Though the Birmingham Bible-
and- Crown riots did not extend to Plymouth, the spirit which
actuated them found its way hither in high places. The Unitarian
Chapel opened at Devocport in 1791 was closed, because the Com
missioner of the Dockyard intimated that dockyardsmen who at
tended there would be dismissed as disloyal subjects; and by
perjury and maUce the Eev. W. Winterbottom, junior minister of
the Baptist congregation at Plymouth, was punished for seditious
words he never uttered, and for treason of which he was not guilty.
It was the custom in those days for Dissenting congregations to
celebrate the anniversary of the landing of the Prince of Orange
* Britton and Brayley's "Devon," p. 185.

30 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
by special sermons; and on the 5th of November, 1792, Winter-
botham preached such a sermon in How's Lane from Exodus xiii. 8,
"Thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying. This is done
because of that which the Lord did unto me." This he followed
on the 18th of the same month by a sermon from Eomans xiii 12,
" The night is far spent, the day is at hand : let us therefore cast
off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light."
For these sermons he was brought to trial in the following July.
The evidence for the Crown was wholly insufficient to sustain any
charge ; indeed, so far as regarded the second sermon, it consisted
entiiely of the jumbled notes of one Edward Lyne, a clerk to the
Collector of Excise, and of the random recoUection of John Denby,
a midshipman, that he agreed with Lyne. On the other hand,
there was abundant testimony that the sermons, though political,
were anything but seditious. Tet Winterbotham was found guUty.
He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, two for each sermon ;
a fine of £200, £100 for each ; and to find £900 security for his
good behaviour for flve years ; while the expenses of the trial were
£337. But his friends at Plymouth stood by him, and after his
release he returned to minister among them.
While undergoing his first year's imprisonment on the state side
of Newgate, Winterbotham published the two sermons. Careful
and candid perusal will show that while Winterbotham was an
ardent reformer he was no sower of sedition. He defended the
Eevolution of 1688 ; denounced the Church-and-King riots at Bir
mingham ; condemned religious persecution in every form and
shape; argued that "all government originates with the people,"
that ' ' the people have a right to cashier their governors for mis
conduct," that they "have a right to change the form of their
government if they think it proper so to do ;" insisted on the need
of parliamentary, legislative, and financial reform ; and expressed
a fervent hope for the due progress of the revolution in France.
But he added, If " we labour under evils, we need not throw our
selves into a state of anarchy and confusion to obtain redress ; to
this you should prove superior; we want neither revolution nor
blood." He advised his hearers to " take no doctrine on trust."
"Persecute no man for his religious opinions, however different
from your own. Extend with pleasure to others the liberty you
claim for yourselves, believing a man may fill up tho relative ties
of society with honour though the dogmas of his religious creed

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 31
be not what you approve." Indeed, in a note he goes so far as to
say, "The conduct and not the creed wiU to me ever be the
criterion of Christianity  I shall ever deem that govern
ment tyrannic that does not afford equal advantages to the Catholic
and Protestant, the Churchman and Dissenter, the professor of
Judaism and the foUower of Mahomet." Again, " Instead there
fore of teaching your offspring bUndly that they are governed by
King, Lords, and Commons, teach them that these are men ; that
themselves are to arrive at the stature of men ; that the excellence
of their government is not in having King, Loids, and Commons,
but in King, Lords, and Commons governing according to laws
which secure the rights of every individual of the realm, and who
are only worthy of esteem whUe they respect and venerate those
rights." The second sermon enforced the reciprocal duties of gov
ernor and governed; and denounced persecution: "The day is at
hand when men wUl no longer be persecuted for their reUgious
opinions, further than they are destructive of morality, .... each
worshipping God according to the dictates of his conscience, none
daring to make him afraid, finding that whUe conscience is left at
Uberty men can unite as citizens and Christians ; yea, as friends."
And so too, raising his voice on behalf of the " unhappy African,"
he declared, " The lught of slavery and bondage is far spent, and
the day of universal Uberty is at hand." Such was the man, such
were the sentiments, such the language ; in those days deemed
worthy of persecution. Tet there was a little religious charity
even then. "When Gibbs, Winterbotham' s co-pastor, died, Dr.
Hawker, the famous vicar of Charles, and Mr. Hitchens, of St.
John Chapel, Devonport, were among his pall-bearers.
Mass was celebrated in the Citadel Chapel during part of the
reign of James II. by Christopher Tumer, his Majesty's CathoUc
chaplain. But this did not lead to the local revival of Eoman
Catholicism ; quite the contrary. The first priest who is known to
have statedly ministered in Plymouth itself since the Eeformation
was the Eev. Edward WiUiams, chaplain to Mr. Eichard Chester,
of Buckland- tout- Saints, who occasionally visited tbe town. This
was a century since. The flrst missionary station with regular
worship was, however, estabUshed by the Eev. Thomas Flynn, an
Irish Franciscan, in a room over a stable behind the George Inn,
Dock. The flrst chapel, that in St. Mary's Street, Stonehouse,
was erected by the Eev. Jean Louis Guilbert, a French refugee.

32 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
and opened in 1807; and it was not untU the Cathedral was
erected (the foundation-stone was laid by the present bishop in
1856) that Plymouth again possessed a Eoman Catholic pubUc place
of worship. A century and a quarter after Plymouth gave shelter
to the persecuted Huguenots, it afforded a resting-place to a com
munity of persecuted Catholics. A sisterhood of the order of Poor
Clares, who had been compelled to flee from France, occupied the
premises at Coxside now used by Messrs. James as offices, from
1813 to 1835. Eecently part of the old Carmelite property of the
White Friars has been acquired by the Eoman Catholics, who re
established their worship on the site whence it had been driven at
the dissolution of the monasteries. Plymouth was created a
bishopric in 1851. Dr. Errington was the first bishop, and was
succeeded by the present prelate. Dr. Vaughan, in 1850.
Concerning the other religious bodies represented in the town a
few dates will suffice. A few families of Jews settled here about
1740, and in 1764 buUt their synagogue. The UniversaUsts, who
now meet in Henry Street, worshipped previously .in chapels in
Eichmond, Park, and Ebi ington Streets. They have had an exist
ence here for nearly a century. The Plymouth meeting of the
Brethren dates from 1831. They erected what is now the
Temperance Hall in Ealeigh Street, and the large chapel in
Ebrington Street, and have divided into several sections. The
Catholic Apostolic body established themselves here in 1836. The
Bible Christians, who date from 1818, erected their chapel in Zion
Street in 1847. The Wesleyan Association body, another off-shoot
from the Wesleyans, for nearly twenty years occupied the Old
Tabernacle. Now, united with other dissidents under the name
of the United Methodist Free Church, they occupy the large chapel
in Ebrington Street, already mentioned. The Primitive Methodists
have a little chapel in the same street. The Presbyterian con
gregation originally formed at Devonport in 1857 removed to Eldad
in 1862. The Moravians are no longer represented in the town.
They were active workers in the last century. Their chapel at
Devonport, built in 1771, is now the only one west of Bristol.
And here, without further detail, my retrospect must close.
This century does not present many saUent features in the history
of our local Nonconformity. But it has seen the gradual removal
of the pains and penalties attached to the exercise of private judg
ment, and obedience to the voice of conscience, in the sixteenth and

JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 33
seventeenth centuries. Under WiUiam III. the imperfect Tolera
tion Act was passed. Under Anne the burdens were made heavier
by acts against occasional conformity, forbidding habitual dis
senters to attend worship and take the sacrament occasionaUy in
the Established Church, and preventing dissenting teachers froA
undertaking the education of youth. On the accession of the
House of Hanover these were repealed. Fifty years, during which
public opinion became increasingly indifferent and therefore tol
erant, elapsed before a further step was made. In 1779 profession
of a belief in the Scriptures, with the declaration of Christianity
and Protestantism, became the legal condition of toleration, instead
of the acceptance of the doctrinal articles of the Church ; and in
1812 provision was made for the registration of places of worship.
In 1813 Unitarians were flrst admitted to the legal beneflt of
toleration. In 1828 the Test and Corporation Acts were swept
away. In 1829 the Catholics were emancipated. The establish
ment of the London University flrst restored to the Nonconformists
the advantages of a university education. In our own time the
Jews have been relieved from the final shred of their disabilities ;
and church-rates (abolished long before in Plymouth by common
consent) have been swept away.
There is now greater religious liberty than the land ever knew
before ; and the result is neither the old-time predicted anarchy
nor immorality, but greater activity of reUgious life. The present
generation has done more work in church and chapel buUding, and
in religious organization, than the five preceding centuries. The
whole fabric of persecution has been proven utterly baseless ; its
reasons as poor as its practice was cruel; its fears as worthless
as its hopes were vain. Faggot and scourge have done their best,
and worst. Thumbscrew and rack have worn out in their evil
service. Gaol and gibbet have been glutted. And what has been
the harvest ? In the past retaliation. In the present an evil
memory. Nought has availed to quench the fire of free opinion.
" The Beautiful and True
Live through all ages, while the false dies out."
All the blood shed, all the pain wrought, but aided what they
were meant to crush. And now the children of persecuted and
persecutor Uve and work side by side, for the most part in the
honest and honourable rivalry of good effort, though in tho under-
c

34 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.
currents of life words of scorn, sneers of hate, and gnashings of
impotent rage, do now and then arouse old feelings that should
sleep, and caU upon us to remember how
" Truth fails not, but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime.
That in the morning whitened hill and plain,
And is no more ;— drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air.
Or the unimaginable touch of time."
It is not then to arouse the old antipathies, but to teach the
nobler lesson of charity and good will, that I have endeavoured to
trace the part which Plymouth has played in the history of Non
conformity — a part in which I at least see no reason to be
ashamed. Here, as elsewhere, Nonconformity has been tinged
by error, blurred by inconsistency, not free in itself from the
faults it condemned in others. It has exaggerated trifles, and
overlooked points of greater moment. But these failings were those
of its day, which charity, perfected in suffering, taught it little
by little to cast aside ; and they are atoned for by a manly
courage, a firm trust, an earnest piety, which sustained it through
all its troubles; and in varying shape — the form changing, but tbe
spirit one — ^have preserved it until now.
I could say much more : this is neither the time nor the place.
But still at least I may add : However much that old bitter leaven
of religious antipathy, which leads men to hate each other for the
love of God, and which it is so easy to develope into persecution,
may linger with us — however much Conformist and Nonconformist
among themselves, and toward each other, may lack of Christian
charity, — the old animosities revive with fading influence and
narrower power, the beUs do ring out the
"Ancient forms of party strife."
And here of late in Plymouth, what 1576 dared not,- 1676 would
not, 1776 could not — do, 1876 has done.* At the call of humanity
the widest differences of doctrine, and discipline, and formulary
* The reference here is to a meeting held in the Plymouth Guildhall a
short time previously to the delivery of the lecture, in which men of the
most diverse religious views united with one voice to protest against the
Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria.

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 35
have been forgotten, and men of aU shades of belief, all forms of
worship, have found a common bond of union in a work of Christian
charity. " Oh, human heart, thou hast a song
For all that to the earth belong,
Whene'er the golden chain of love
Hath linked thee to the heaven above."

APPENDIX.

LISTS OF MINISTEES.
Ministers of the Baptist Church. — Abraham Cheare, 1649-1668 ;
persecution then kept the church without a pastor for nineteen years ;
Robert Browne, 1687-1688; — Warner, 1688; Robert Holdenby,
1688-1690; Samuel Buttall, 1690-1697 or 1698; Nathaniel Hodges,
1698-1701 ; — Bryant commenced 1707, not ordained until 1710 ;
Wm. Bennick, 1718-1720 ; Caleb Jope, 1720-1722 ; Elkanah Widgery,
1723-1725 ; John Ridley, 1726-1730 ; Didcot Hoare, mentioned as
pastor in 1737 and 1739 ; John Binnick, left in 1747 ; PhUip Gibbs,
1748 (ordained 1749) -1800; Isaiah Birt, co-pastor with Mr. Gibbs,
1782-1789 ; WUliam Winterbotham, at first co-pastor, and afterwards
successor to Mr. Gibbs, 1790 (four years in prison, 1793-1797)-1804;
— Ragsdale, 1808-1810; John Dyer, 1811-1814 ; G. Gibbs, 1816-1819 ;
S. Nicholson, 1823-1856 ; G. Short, co-pastor, and afterwards successor
to Mr. Nicholson, 1856-1858; T. C. Page, 1860-1869; John Aldis,
1869-1876; Robert Lewis, co-pastor, 1870-1876; J. Benwell Bird,
pastor of Mutley Chapel, 1876.
Ministers of the Unitarian Congregation. — George Hughes
and Thomas Martyn, ejected in 1662 ; Nicholas SherwUl, 1662-1672 ;
Thomas Martyn, 1672-1677 ; Nathaniel Jacob, 1677-1690 ; Nathaniel
Harding, 1690-1744; Henry Brett, assistant to Mr. Harding, 1707-
1723 ; Joseph Cock, ditto, 1721-1731 ; Henry Moore, assistant to Mr.
Harding tiU 1744, and afterwards his successor, 1731-1762; John
ReyneU, 1762-1784 ; John Hanmer, co-pastor with Mr. Reynell, 1762-
1771; Thomas Watson, 1785-1788; Thomas Porter, 1789-1794; John
Kentish, 1794-1795 ; John Jones, ll.d., 1795-1798 ; John Tingcombe,
1798-1806; John Jones, 1807-1812; Isiael Worsley, 1813-1831;
WiUiam James Odgers, 1832-53 ; John HiU, 1853-1854; Hem-y Knott,
1854-1865 ; J. K. Smith assisted Mr. Knott for about two months

36 journal of the Plymouth institution.
previous to Ms death, and continued on into 1866, but was never
appointed miMster ; T. W. Freckelton, 1866-1874 ; WiUiam Sharman,
1875. Ministers of the Batter Street Congregation. — George Hughes
and Thomas Martyn, ejected in 1662 ; Nicholas SherwUl, 1662-1696 ;
— Byfield, assistant to Mr. SherwiU ; John Enty, 1696-1720 ; Peter
Baron, at first co-pastor with Enty, came to Plymouth in 1700, was
ordained 1704, chosen mimster 1720, died 1759 ; John Moore, assistant
to Mr. Baron, and Ms successor, 1727-1760 (the trustees then chose
John Hanmer, the congregation Christopher Mends — the latter was put
in possession by a mandamus, and Hanmer became co-pastor at Treville
Street); Christopher Mends, 1762-1799; Herbert Mends, co-pastor with
his father, afterwards Ms successor, 1782-1819; J. MitcheU, 1819-1821 ;
Richard Hartley, 1822, driven away some years after because seen in a
London theatre ; W. Morris ; T. C. Eine, 1839-1846 ; Joseph Steer,
1846-1851; John Barfltt, 1851-1854; W. R. Noble, 1855-1860; E.
Hipwood, 1860-1867 ; W. WMttley, 1867.
Ministers of Noblbt and Sherwell Chapels. — Norley Chapel
was opened 1797. — Charles Soper, 1798-1805 ; Thomas Pinchback,
1807-1811; Francis Moore, 1812-1816; James Doney, 1816-1823;
W. P. Davies, 1825-1831 ; G. Smith, 1833-1842 ; Eliezer Jones, 1844-
1856 ; C. Wilson, 1858. During Mr. Wilson's ministry Sherwell Chapel
has been erected. The foundatipn-stone was laid in September, 1862,
and the opemng services held in September, 1864. The schoolrooms
were opened iu March, 1868.

EXTEAGTS FEOM COEPOEATION ACCOUNTS.
August 1662 to 29th Sept next following
" Item paid for sending away of severall psoii"^'^ to the comon goale
w"'in the said time £3 10."
Sept 29th 1662 to Sept 29th 1663
" Item paid for sending away severaU persons to the Goale the
said yeare as appeareth by the noate of perticulars now pduced to
tMs accompt £4 13."
" Item paid for sendinge severall persons to the Goale & to poore
people to give in evidence against them £1 15."
1663-4 " Item paid Richard PMlpe & Abraham Appleby for their charges
in goeing to the Assizes to give evidence against the bUnd preacher
£3 4 6."

THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 37
1664-5 " Item paid Richard PhUpe and John Wolfe charges as witnesses
against Daniel Northerne £3 0 0."
Subsequently a payment of £3 4s. is recorded to five men who guarded
Daniel Northern when he was set in the piUory.
In the records for 1664-5, in addition to minor disbursements, there
is an entry of £30 paid to John Martyn, the Mayor, for his expenses in
entertaining the Bishop and Ms retinue and others several days, when
Ms LordsMp came to consecrate Charles Church. Andrew Horsman
and another were paid £1 lis. 4d. for their expenses in inviting the
Bishop ; and one Mr. Jackson had 8s. 6d. for the rent of his tent, and
for putting it up and taMng it down, which reads suspiciously Uke a
record of a luncheon in the churchyard.
1670-71 In 1670-71 £18 5s. was paid to several mimsters.
1665-6 In this year £5 8s. was paid for sending away persons to gaol.
1669-70 " Item paid the Ssirjeants charges for carrying Quakers to Exon
£1 10."
"More paid for carrying Abigail Libby to goale 11" /6'' and for
James Holbertons charges to give in evidence against her 25=
£1 16 6."
" Item paid Mr. WiUiam Jennens for fee and charges to S' John
Maynard for advice about the conventicle act £1 6 6."
"Item paid Samuel Carkeete for Ms charge and horse hire in
rideing to Exeter to precute a meeting wMch was att Mr. Yeabsleys
house £2 5 0."
1682-3 " Item paid unto Peter MiUett & Samuel Grere John Bosaverne,
Francis SpurreU & other constables toward their charges in carrye-
ing Mr. Jacob and Martyn Nonconformist preachers to the high
gaol £4 5."
"Item paid unto Richard Stephens & John Pane constables toward
their charges in carrying severall Quakers to prison £4 9."
1683-4 " Item paid unto Richard Hall and Henry HaU his son for their
expenses and for horse hire in goeing to the County Assizes to give
evidence against Nonconformist ministers with other disbursements
relating to the same £3 5 0."

38 JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.*

THE OLDNONCONFOEMIST EEGISTEES.
Sherwill commences Ms part of the register vrith the words, " Bap
tized by mee Nicholas SherwiU," and his first entry is, " Nov 28 1662,
Mary daughter of Mr George and Mrs Mary Lapthorne who was borne
Oct 31st." From 1662 to 1676 he baptized in aU thirty, the Mghest
number in any one year being four. After this latter date the baptisms
are more numerous, and reach to as many as fifteen in 1690, averaging
ten annuaUy. The last entry is on the 7th of May, 1696, and he died
suddenly on the 15th. There are three entries of marriage : "Marryed
by mee Nicolas SherwiU 1662 Sept 17 Mr Walter Trowt and Mrs
Katharine Crampron at Stonehouse. 1663 July 15 Matthew Greet and
Ruth Hingston at Brixton. 1670 May 3 Mr Abraham SherwiU and
Mrs Joanna Fortescue of Spridleston at Plymton Morris." Interments
took place of course in the parish churchyard, and there are no entries
of burials. There are, however, entries of " funeraU sermons preached
by mee Nicolas Sherwill." The first was on the 15th August, 1662, the
week before Bartholomew-day, at Staverton or Harberton. The next
was on February 12th, 1670, and thence they continue down to Sep
tember 8th, 1695. It is very evident that Sherwill was a man of note
in those days. In 1672 he preached a funeral sermon for Walter Trowte
at Exeter; in 1677 (September 21st) that for his friend the Rev. Thomas
Martyn ; on the 29th May, 1692, for the Rev. Mr. Henry Flamank at
Tavistock ; and on June llth of the same year for Samuel Martyn at
Liskeard. The text for the two Martyns was Damel xii. 3 ; that for
Flamank Hebrews xiii. 7.
Thomas Martyn commences his register of baptisms in the same book
as SherwUl, but in a preceding page, June 12th, 1672, with the baptism
of " Benjamin ye son of WiUiam and Mary Woodmason ; " and of
twelve baptisms down to the llth September of that year, most are
stated to have taken place at " Greene House neare Charles Church
in Greene Street." I have Uttle doubt that this was SherwUl's private
residence, as I have discovered that he lived in this exact locaUty. The
entries in Martyn's handwriting cease in September, 1673, but are con
tinued in another hand down to February 3rd, 1675. It has been
generaUy supposed that Martyn died in 1673 ; but there is the evidence
of Ms funeral sermon by Sherwill that he died in 1677. As the book
in which Martyn and Shervrill made their entries is marked " Register
booke 1672," it is quite probable that at that date Martyn copied in his
previous baptisms from another record.

THE HISTORY OP NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 39

THE HEBEEW COMMUNITT.
The land on wMch the Synagogue in Catherine Steeet stands was
originaUy the property of the Corporation, by whom it was leased.
It was then a garden ; and the original lease to the founders of the
present Synagogue was in 1762, the lessees being J. J. Sherenbeck,
gentleman, of Plymouth, and G. J. Emdon, shopkeeper, of Devonport,
the two elders of the Hebrew commuMty at that date. The Synagogue
was then buUt ; and subsequently the freehold w^as acquired. One of
the most liberal benefactors of modern Plymouth was a Jew, and a
native of Plymouth — Mr. Jacob Nathan. His bequests were —
£1,000, the interest to be given Jialf-y early to the following : Israel Myers,
Joseph Abrahams, Ann Isaacs, Bella and Esther Levy, and Harriet Bellem,
and on their demise to the Hebrew Soup Kitchen, Aldgate, London, and the
Guardians of the poor Hebrews, London ; £1,200, interest of, to the Hebrew
Blind Asylum, London ; £1,000, interest of, to the poor of Jerusalem ; £3,000,
interest of, for establishing a school to be called the Jacob Nathan School, for
teaching Hebrew, expounding the Holy Scriptures, and elementary education ;
£600 for establishing the Jacob Nathan School; £1,000, interest of, for the
maintenance of the Hebrew public worship — Plymouth congregation ; £500
for a burial-ground for Hebrews, Plymouth. The interest of the following sums
also to be applied to the purposes named : £400, to be divided on different
holidays to the Jewish poor, Plymouth ; £200, for clothing children attending
the Jacob Nathan School; £100, for supplying coals to Jewish poor, Ply
mouth; £100, for Jewish Ladies' Benevolent Society, Plymouth; £150,
Jews' Free School, Greek Street, Soho, London; £200, for the Jewish Hospital,
Norwood; £200, for Jewish Free School, Westminster; £200, for Jewish
Orphan Asylum, Tenterground, Goodman's Fields, London; £200, Jews'
Infant School, London ; £200, Jews' Free School, BeU Lane, Spitalfields ;
£200, Jewish Institution for Diffusion of Knowledge ;' £200, Jewish College,
Finsbury Square; £200, Jewish West Metropolitan School, Red Lion
Square; £200, Philanthropic Society, London; £200, Hand -in -Hand
Asylum, London; £50, Hebrew Benevolent Society, Bristol; £60, Jews'
School, Birmingham; £50, Ladies' Benevolent Society, Liverpool; £50,
Hebrew School, Newcastle; £60, Jewish Mendicity Society, Portsmouth;
£200, South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital, Plymouth ; £200, Public
Dispensary, Plymouth; £150, Female Orphan Asylum, Plymouth; £150,
Blanket Society, Plymouth; £150, Eye Infirmary, Plymouth; £60, Lying-
in Charity, Plymouth; £50, Branch National Life-Boat, Plymouth: £50,
Humane Society, Plymouth; £50, Sailors' Home, Plymouth; £30, Female
Penitentiary, Plymouth; £50, Blind Asylum, Plymouth; £70, Female
Home, Plymouth ; £50, Industrial School, Plymouth ; £50, Ragged School,
Plymouth; £150, Orphan Asylum, Stoke; £150, Public Hospital, Devon-
port; £50, Blind Institution, Devonport; £200, Metropolitan Hospital,
Devonshire Square, London; £200, London Hospital, Middlesex; £60,

40

JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION.

British Asylum, Clapham; £60, British Home for Incurables, Clapham;
£50, Deaf and Dumb Asylum, London; £70, National Orphan Asylum,
Ham; £50, Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Exeter; and, absolutely, £19 19s. to
the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals, Plymouth ; the Hke to the
Plymouth Soup Kitchen; and £30 to the Plymouth Benevolent Society.

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