A Luton Baptist Minute Book, 1707-1806

Summary

An outline of national legislation concerning recusants and nonconformists, with an illustrative selection from county documents, was the subject of a paper in a recent volume. Although the Minute and Account Book of the Luton Baptists, which covers the period 1707 to 1806, gives little evidence of the effect on the Luton dissenters of national or even local affairs, it does supplement the story of Bedfordshire nonconformity by details of the activities of a typical Baptist congregation during the 18th century. The Minutes are contained in a small book of nearly 500 pages, bound between parchment covers. The pagination is rather confused. The book begins at 1707 and continues to 1744; then follow lists of members for 1707 and 1769 and some memoranda dated 1779 to 1785. The book is then reversed and begins at the opposite end from 1744.

The Luton Baptist community can be traced to the late seventeenth century as an offshoot from the church then centred at Kensworth, when 65 members separated from the parent body and established themselves at Luton as an independent congregation under the leadership of Thomas Marsom. Unfortunately no records of the Luton church’s early days remain. The earlier records of the Kensworth community, too, have disappeared, but a later MS. register in the possession of Dagnail Street Baptist Church, St. Albans, gives the names of 29 Luton residents who were entered as “members of the baptized Congregation of the Church of Kinsworth” from 1675 to 1690 by Hugh Smyth of Wheathampstead. It also records the election of Brother Marsom as a minister in 1688 : “Imediatly after the Decease of that Laborious Servant of Christ, Thomas Hayward, the whole Church was asembled at Kinsworth to consider there scattered state, and there the Church Did Elect Bro. Finch, Bro. Marsom & Bro. Harden, Jointly and equally to officiate in the room of Bro. Hayward, in breaking bread and other administeration of ordinances.” At the same time the church agreed to provide and maintain at their own charge a “preaching brother to serve the Church and to goe from Meeting to Meeting and, to every place the Church shall apoint him within this Congregation.”