Methodism and the mob in the eighteenth century

Abstract

Early Methodism is often studied as an example of a popular religious movement, but the purpose of this paper is to explore some of the reasons behind its unpopularity, for suffering and persecution characterised its early phases as well as growth and success. The persecution of Methodists took many forms. Perhaps the hardest to bear were those least often recorded, such as the eviction of society members from their homes and jobs, or the unnerving social ostracism which made life intolerable in many villages and families. The persecution usually described in the journals of the methodist pioneers, however, was that inflicted by ‘the mob’. ‘The mob’ was an elastic term in their vocabulary and could range from a knot of village youths throwing stones to the ferocious urban crowds which cruelly assaulted worshippers in Exeter in 1745 and Norwich in 1752. ‘Mobbing’ too covered a gamut of activity. Much of it was rude horseplay, like the release of sparrows at the candles in a cottage meeting; some was petty malicious damage, like the breaking of windows. But not infrequently it erupted more violently. Preaching-houses at St Ives, Sheffield, Arborfield, Wolverhampton, Nantwich and Chester were pulled down, and others severely damaged. A number of houses, generally of poor people, were wrecked or sacked. Many persons, women and children among them, were cruelly beaten and some scarred or injured for life. A few, like William Seward, first blinded and then killed by a mob at Hay in 1741, paid for their beliefs with their lives. The knowledge of these ordeals, transmitted by biographies and oral tradition, gave the movement its equivalent of a martyrology and built up that image of heroic, primitive Methodism which, like the image of primitive Christianity itself, stimulated and reproved the piety of later, more comfortable generations.