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The Baptist Western Association 1653–1658

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Geoffrey F. Nuttall
Geoffrey F. Nuttall
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Church History, New College, University of London
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Extract

The identification of a tract without title-page or caption title in the Library of the Society of Friends in London, together with the location in the Library of the Baptist College, Bristol, of another tract of which no copy was known to exist, makes it possible for the first time to summarise fully the beginnings of the Baptist Western Association. The Association's activity, apart from days spent in waiting upon God in fasting and prayer, was twofold: the resolution of queries submitted by the churches represented; and the issuing of circular letters of exhortation to the churches. Circular letters issued from nine of the Association's first ten meetings are printed in the first of the tracts mentioned, queries submitted and resolved at nine of the meetings in the second. From other sources we know that in 1655 the Association ordained as its superintendent Thomas Collier, the editor of both tracts; and that in 1656 it issued a Confession of the Faith. An assembly of ‘messengers’ or representatives of churches in the South-Western counties of England, meeting normally once in the spring and once in the autumn, the Western Association was a pioneer among those regional associations of churches which have ‘always been a feature of Baptist life’. Correct information concerning its meetings and leaders, and the churches represented, is thus desirable. The fifty-seven queries, moreover, with the answers they received, throw light upon issues then the concern of many beyond Baptist circles.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , October 1960 , pp. 213 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

page 213 note 1 For Collier, see D.N.B.; a note in Baptist Hist. Soc. Transactions, I (1908–1910), 121Google Scholarf.; additions to his bibliography, Ibid., n.s., xiii (1949–50); and McLachlan, H. J. on his thought in Unitarian Hist. Soc. Transactions, X (1951–1954). A full study of this manysided man is much to be desired.Google Scholar

page 213 note 2 Cf. II Cor. viii. 23; and ‘The office of “Messenger”’ in B.H.S. Trans., XVII (1957–1958).Google Scholar

page 213 note 3 Payne, E. A., The Baptist Union: a short history (1958), 3Google Scholar; cf. ‘Association Life till 1815’ in B.H.S. Trans., V (1916–1917).Google Scholar

page 213 note 4 Ivimey, Joseph, A History of the English Baptists, IV (1830), 257–62,Google Scholar, gives a partial and confused account of the Association's meetings and of the signatories to its circular letters, with a vague reference to a ‘pamphlet from whence the above account has been extracted’. Fuller, J. G., A Brief History of the Western Association, Bristol [1843], 6–11Google Scholar does little more than copy Ivimey: ‘the pamphlet from which Mr. Ivimey’ prepared his account ‘is, unhappily, not to be found’. Evidently neither Ivimey nor Fuller had access to the tract containing the queries and answers. The copy of this at the Baptist College Bristol (T.f.8.(5)), which is without date or printer, has the caption Several Resolutions and answers of Queries, sent in from several Congregations, at several general meetings of Messengers from the said Congregations, in the County of Somerset and the Counties neer adjacent; the text, which follows immediately, begins ‘The First was at Wels the 8th and 9th daies of the 9th moneth 1653’ and ends (p. 16) with a brief postscript signed by Collier. An imperfect copy (pp. 7–22 only) of the tract containing the circular letters follows it. The complete copy of this at Friends House (T.323.10), again without date or printer, has (i) + 26 pages. After a brief preface (sig. A) signed by Collier, the text begins ‘The 7th day of the 9th Moneth, 1653. From the Messengers of the Churches assembled at Wells, to the Churches of Christ, ’.Since both tracts were issued for what may be called domestic purposes, their rarity and lack of title-pages is not surprising.

I desire to thank the Librarian of the Society of Friends and the Librarian of the Baptist College, Bristol, for their courtesy and help.

page 214 note 1 The explicit statement in the tract not used by him, ‘The First was at Wels’, confirms Ivimey's conjecture, which Fuller queries, that this was in fact the first meeting of the Association.

page 214 note 2 The Association met most frequently at Wells. ‘In Wells was the seat of the old Ranters, Garment and Robins, who proclaimed the great God’: T. Collier, A Looking-Glasse for the Quakers (1657), 16, after relating the Quaker James Nayler's ‘exaltation in the West’, ‘particularly, in Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Bristoll’.

page 214 note 3 Not 6–7, nor September, as, following Fuller (and Ivimey), M. E. Reeves, in V.C.H. Wiltshire, ed. Pugh, R. P. and Crittall, E., III (1956), 103, n. 41.Google Scholar

page 214 note 4 For both these letters, see further below. Collier's ordination by the Association as its superintendent must not be taken to imply that he had not been active earlier; as early as 1646 he is called ‘the first that sowed the seeds of Anabaptism … in these parts’ (i.e. in the West of England) in a letter of that year printed by Thomas Edwards, Gangraena, Part III (1646), 41. Edwards also printed (Ibid., 51 f.) two letters by Collier himself, mentioning churches in the West gathered by him.

page 214 note 5 24–27.8. in Several Resolutions, but the letter is dated 28.7.

page 214 note 6 For Pendarvis (d. 1656), minister of the church at Abingdon, see D.N.B., as Pendarves; Payne, E. A., The Baptists of Berkshire (1951).Google Scholar

page 214 note 7 The place of meeting is absent from the circular letter but appears in Several Resolutions.

page 214 note 8 The first of these queries, with the same signatories as to the letter issued from this meeting, was printed in B.H.S. Trans., I (1908–1910), 65–8 from a copy, then preserved at Regent's Park College (now at Oxford) but no longer traceable there, of lost MSS. of the church at Whitchurch, Hants.Google Scholar

page 214 note 9 Whitley, W. T., Baptist Bibliography(1916: henceforth referred to as Whitley) has collected a number of references to Strange, who was of Barnstaple (see below), not of Whitchurch (as Whitley).Google Scholar

page 215 note 1 Atkins signed the Confession as of Bridgwater and was still there in 1669; Facy was of Tiverton: see Original Records (1911), ed. Turner, G. L., ii 1104Google Scholar, 1184. For two tracts probably by this John Owen, see Whitley, items 22–663, 4–682.

page 215 note 2 In Several Resolutions 18 is misprinted 81.

page 215 note 3 Glass (d. 1666) was of Bovey Tracy, Devon: see Whitley.

page 215 note 4 Wexford.

page 215 note 5 Stoke is Stoke St. Mary (William Hare, who signed the Confession as of ‘Stoak’, was of Stoke St. Mary: see Original Records, i. 263); Hatch is Hatch Beauchamp, the next village to Stoke; Riden is Ryden in the parish of Williton; Dalwood is in Devon, not far from the boundary with Somerset; Abington in Bark, is Abingdon, Berks.; Sydbury is Chipping Sodbury; Lime is Lyme Regis; Lupit is Luppitt; Bradley is North Bradley. Messengers from all these churches save Dalwood, Abingdon, Dartmouth and Totnes signed the Confession. Miss Reeves (loc. cit.) is mistaken in stating that ‘The Association letter of this year [1656] from Wells was signed by four so-called Wiltshire churches, Andover (Hants.), Bradley, Amesbury, “Cleppen-Netten” … the last is unidentified’ [ ? Chipping Norton]. Of these churches only Bradley signed the Confession, and none of them signed any of the three letters issued during 1656.

page 215 note 6 Printed by Ivimey, iv. 292 f. from the copy in the MS. Minute Book of the church at Lyme formed on 15 October 1653 ([Richards, W. R.,] Lyme Regis Baptists 1653–1953, [1953], 4)Google Scholar; this Minute Book also contains copies of some of the letters printed by the Association (Ibid., 5).

page 215 note 7 Aldridge signed the Confession as of Ryden; in 1672 he was of Croscombe (OriginalRecords, ii. 1122). Wells signed the Confession as of Bridgwater and was still there in 1669 and 1672 (Original Records, ii. 1124).

page 216 note 1 The church at Kilmington, Devon, was one with that at the neighbouring Dalwood: see Whitley, item 95–654 in Addenda. William Crab and Nicholas Elliott of Bradley, George Parsons of Hatch, and Henry Hineham (elsewhere Hynam) of Bristol were all among the signatories of the Confession.

page 216 note 2 For discussion of this point, see my Visible Saints: the Congregational way 1640–1660, Oxford 1957, 91 ff.Google Scholar

page 216 note 3 Within a year Thomas Budd, who became a Quaker and ‘dyed a Prisoner at Jlchester, in 1670’ (First Publishers of Truth (1907), ed. Penney, N., 228)Google Scholar, was entertaining Friends in his home at Ash, Martock, close to Montacute, Som. (see my Early Quaker Letters (1952), no. 380).Google Scholar

page 217 note 1 For the eschatology of the ‘gathered churches’, including ‘preaching to the Jews’, see Visible Saints, ch. iv.

page 217 note 2 Braithwaite, W. C., The Beginnings of Quakerism, 2nd. ed., Cambridge 1955, 203.Google Scholar

page 217 note 3 For Salthouse, see further D.N.B. and my Early Quaker Letters; Wastfield was of Brislington, near Bristol, Collens of (East or West) Lydford, Som.: Braithwaite, op. cit., 386. Through these Quaker replies to it, Whitley knew of the Association's letter from Tiverton and entered it (item 17–657), without locating a copy, as if it were a substantive piece.

page 218 note 1 Thurloe, John, State Papers (1742), ed. Birch, T., VII. 138 ff.Google Scholar

page 218 note 9 For Rede, his farm, which still stands, and the church at Porton, formed in 1655, with Rede among those appointed ‘to adminster ye ordinances’, see B.H.S. Trans, I (1908–1910), 55–61. The copy of M.[ary] Cary's Word in Season to the Kingdom of England (1647) in the same volume at Friends House also bears Rede's autograph.Google Scholar